BLOOD RELATIONS
by AstroGirl
Author's Note: Rated PG-ish for some violence, some angstiness, and, um, mild vampirism? It's an AU branching off from shortly before episode 2x10, "Indy Show," and contains spoilers for that episode.
1. Some Nights It Doesn't Pay to Get Out of the Coffin
The vampire's name was Herman. "I know, I know," he'd say on the rare occasions when he introduced himself to people for what he was, "Wrong member of the Munster family." Somehow the joke was a little less tedious if he made it himself, before anybody else had the chance.
Jarod hadn't gotten the joke. But then, Jarod also hadn't screamed or fainted or freaked out when he stumbled across Herman crouched in an alley sucking the blood out of a rat. None of that annoying "This isn't happening!" or "I must be going crazy!" or "Oh, my god, you're crazy!" stuff, either. He'd just been... interested. And once Herman had carefully explained to him that, honestly, he'd never made a habit -- or even an occasional hobby -- out of jumping people in alleys and stealing their blood, Jarod had been remarkably accepting.
Which made him OK in Herman's book. Herman was willing to take acceptance wherever he might find it. Breathing people always seemed to find him unnerving. He suspected that this had a lot to do with the way he was always forgetting to blink. And other vampires tended to put a premium on being stylish, or badass, or artistically tormented; whereas Herman... Well, Herman was the kind of guy who crouched in alleys eating rats and didn't even bother making up poems about it afterward.
So when Jarod asked for his help in punishing the man who'd attacked that little girl, Herman was glad to oblige. It wasn't just because he liked Jarod, though; there was also the principle of the thing. If a creature like Herman could refrain from hurting kids, he didn't see why someone who didn't even need blood to live should be allowed to get away with it. And you really had to appreciate the poetic justice: You think it's fun to prey on the helpless? Let's see how it feels when you're face-to-face with a real predator! Besides, Herman, who usually tried hard to avoid scaring people for fear of unwanted attention, rather enjoyed the chance to flash a bit of fang and do that little glowing thing with his eyes. It was fun.
At least, it was fun until it all went horribly wrong.
The gun seemed to come out of nowhere. Even Jarod, who'd apparently planned this encounter down to the millimeter, had missed it. But Herman, though he hardly considered himself a shining example of the breed, still had a vampire's acute senses, a vampire's supernatural reflexes. He saw the gun emerging from the man's pocket, saw his finger tightening on the trigger, and had the time to act.
He should have grabbed the gun and wrestled it away, or crushed the man's hand before he could fire. But Herman had been afraid of guns when he was alive, and like the fear of spiders he'd first acquired after finding one on his pillow as a child, that fear had not disappeared just because it was no longer particularly rational.
He leapt away from the man and fled. And the bullets that had been meant for him pounded instead into the body of his mortal friend.
Herman burst out the door of the abandoned warehouse where they'd staged their plan and was halfway down the dark, quiet street before he regained enough willpower to force himself to stop and go back. When he returned, their victim was gone, and Jarod was lying in a spreading pool of blood that made Herman's mouth water and his heart ache. Jarod's own heart was failing and stuttering, each irregular beat sounding fainter than the last in Herman's sensitive ears.
"Oh, hell," he said, realizing at once that he couldn't simply let the man die and that, in one sense or another, death was already unavoidable. "I'm really, really sorry about this," he whispered, and bent down to suck out what little remained of Jarod's blood.
He'd never done this before, but he knew the basics. Hell, anyone who'd ever read an Anne Rice novel -- or, in his case, had seen a movie based on one -- knew the basics. And he'd mostly been conscious when it was done to him, on the idle whim of a bored bloodsucker with a really stupid sense of humor. Unfortunately.
The hardest part was steeling himself to rip open a gash in his own flesh. He was hardly capable of hating the sight of blood these days, but he still made an exception for his own. Soon enough, though, it was done, leaving him feeling woozy with blood loss and the knowledge of just how big a screw-up he was.
His first impulse, as Jarod's heartbeat finally fluttered to a stop, was to leave. After all, he'd just gotten a first-class demonstration of why it was better not to get involved. Plus there was the distinct possibility that Jarod would wake feeling pissed off at him as well as hungry, and Jarod really hadn't struck him as someone it would be good to have pissed at you. He'd be protected from the sun here, anyway, and while he'd doubtless be confused at first, Jarod was an intelligent and adaptable guy. He'd do fine, even without help.
But then... They were sort of family now, weren't they? And even on short acquaintance, Herman knew how Jarod felt about family.
He sighed, settled down next to Jarod's still, bloody form, and waited for him to wake.
2. Plus Ça Change...
Dying had been very inconvenient for Jarod's lifestyle. Once, he'd been capable of becoming anyone. Now, he was capable of becoming anyone who didn't have to go out into direct sunlight.
Still, it was better than dying permanently. Not that Jarod was afraid of death; he'd simulated it often enough that it no longer held much terror for him. But the idea of never learning the full truth about himself, and of his parents out there somewhere never knowing what had ultimately happened to him... It wasn't something he liked to think about. Besides, a year and a half out of captivity, he still had too many people to help, too much of the outside world to explore, too many new experiences to enjoy.
He had apparently tasted the last ice cream he was ever going to eat, though. Adaptable as he was, that was the one thing he was having real difficulty coming to terms with; not a day went by when he didn't miss ice cream. Well, at least blood tasted a lot better than wheatgrass. Or it did now.
Of course, there was blood, and then there was blood. Jarod quickly realized that Herman's strategy of living mostly on rats was not going to work for him. There wasn't much blood in a rat, for one thing. You had to kill them to get enough out of them, and Jarod felt too much affinity for rats to be entirely comfortable with that. More important, he found that a steady diet of animal blood dulled his brain, taking the sharp, creative edge from his thoughts. As with the similar effects he'd often experienced from lack of sleep, he could compensate for a while, but he was only... well, no, not quite only human, he supposed. Not anymore. He was still a creature with physical needs, though. They'd just changed a little.
He added to his store of badges, becoming more doctors, more nurses, more medical technicians. And blood bank employees. Lots of blood bank employees. Finding a decent meal had become a Pretend in itself, requiring as much care and planning as any other. It wasn't just convincing people that he belonged -- which now also included convincing them that he was a human being. He had to scrutinize each establishment's records closely and make complex attempts to predict the future of supply and demand. Killing rats was bad enough, but the possibility that some child might die for lack of blood that he'd consumed was one he simply would not allow.
Needless to say, he also had a plan B. The right supplies, a van with a convincing paint job, yet another badge, and the occasional assistance of Herman turned him easily into a mobile blood wagon, cruising the streets of poor neighborhoods after sunset. He paid the impoverished and the homeless who came to him far more than they would have gotten at an actual blood bank, gave them doughnuts and Pez from a Dracula dispenser, even sometimes took them out for a full meal to make up for the one they'd unknowingly given him.
It was a little frustrating, spending so much time on feeding himself when he had so many other things to do, but at least he met interesting people this way, and could feel that he was doing slightly more good than harm. It wasn't something he could continue for long in one place without attracting attention, though. Nothing new in his life, there; just one more reason why he had to keep moving on, alone.
He was more than a little sorry, though, to be leaving Herman behind. Herman was no Sydney, but he'd tried his best to teach Jarod what he needed to know, proud as a new papa at Jarod's every vampiric achievement, and Jarod could not but be grateful and touched.
When they parted ways, Herman's farewell words were, "Take care of yourself, son." It ought to have been ridiculous; the other vampire looked no older than he, and they'd only met for the first time a few weeks before. But he said them without self-consciousness or irony, and Jarod felt his body suffused with a warmth he hadn't experienced since he'd died and blood-tinted tears prickling faintly at his eyes.
He had one last task to perform, of course, before leaving the city of his rebirth. Between his computer skills and his new vampire senses it was easy enough to track down the man who'd escaped justice by shooting him. But once he was safely behind bars, confessing his crimes in frightened babblings to anyone who might have the power to protect him from dead men with fangs, there was nothing to keep Jarod there any longer.
And he still had plenty of things to do. If nothing else, he had to figure out exactly what he was going to say to Sydney.
3. Alternative Medicine
Swathed head-to-toe in heavy cloth, behind dark lenses that still let in too much light for comfort, Jarod approached Sydney's cabin. Venturing out like this was unpleasant and conspicuous, but he'd had little choice. If he'd waited for nightfall, he might very well have been too late.
Sydney greeted him at the door with a gun. Unafraid, Jarod pushed his way in, retreating gratefully into the dimness away from the windows, and pulled off his mask, headscarf, and glasses.
"Jarod?" Sydney's expression shifted quickly from surprise and confusion to concern. "You shouldn't be here. They might come looking--"
Jarod shook his head. "They won't. I sent Raines and Miss Parker off on a complicated and entirely believable wild goose chase. We won't see them before tomorrow, at the earliest." In a softer voice, he added, "How's your brother?"
"He's dying," said Sydney quietly. "You knew?"
"It's why I'm here," said Jarod. He hesitated. He'd rehearsed this conversation, simulated it inside his mind, but he still felt strangely nervous. Like the child he'd once been, desperate for Sydney's approval, or at least his understanding. "There's... something I need to tell you. Or to show you."
"Yes? What is it?" Sydney's voice was calm, patient, but Jarod didn't need a vampire's perceptions -- or even a Pretender's perceptions -- to see the weariness and the strain in his face.
"Something happened to me," he said. "Something difficult to believe." He took a deep, unnecessary breath, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again, letting them flash red. He peeled back his lips, exposing fangs. "This is what I am." He grabbed Sydney's hand, pressing it to his chest. "Feel that, Sydney? No heartbeat. I don't have one now."
Horror and fascination met on Sydney's face, and Jarod swallowed hard, unsure which of the two hurt more, that Sydney might see him as an abomination, or as an interesting scientific phenomenon. He thought perhaps there might be sympathy there as well, but he didn't dare to think about it too hard. He wasn't here to ask for Sydney's blessing, anyway.
"Is this real?" said Sydney.
"It's real," he said. "I was dying. I was shot four times, Sydney, and every bullet hit something vital. This was done to me to save my life."
"Jarod..." Sydney shook his head, the gun he'd held falling limply to his side. "I'm sorry," he said, his words blurred with sympathy and shock.
"Don't be. I'm not a monster, Sydney. I've been like this for weeks, but I haven't killed anyone. I haven't wanted to. I'm still... me." He found himself choking a little on the last word. Whatever had changed in his life, it hadn't left him any more certain of his own identity. "I've been investigating it scientifically," he said. "Experimenting on myself, examining my blood and tissue. I still don't understand it fully, but there are healing properties in my cells that..." He paused, shaking his head. They might not have time for full explanations. "The damage that someone with this condition can heal is extraordinary. Injury, disease... And it doesn't matter whether it happened before or after the change."
"My God," said Sydney. "You're talking about Jacob."
"I couldn't save my own brother." Jarod forced down a lump in his throat. "But maybe... Maybe I can save yours."
"He might be able to give us information about your parents," said Sydney, his voice neutral, betraying nothing.
"Yes. But that isn't the reason."
"You want to... to make my brother into a vampire?" Sydney laughed, the sound laced with pained desperation, but real, nonetheless.
"We prefer undead-Americans," Jarod said, and Sydney laughed again, but Jarod could see the conflicted fear in his eyes. "Do you trust me, Sydney?" he said, quietly.
"Jarod, I..."
They were interrupted by a groan from the next room, leaving Jarod uncertain whether to be frustrated or relieved at not getting to hear the end of that sentence. He supposed he could understand if the answer was "no," but that wouldn't make it any easier to bear. Especially as, despite everything, he still trusted Sydney.
Sydney rushed to Jacob's side, and Jarod followed. Sydney's twin was very close to death; Jarod could see it, smell it, hear it in the stuttering beats of his heart. And it was clear that Sydney knew it, too.
Jacob was trying to speak, but no words emerged. Sydney grasped his hand and murmured loving, reassuring things to him in English and French.
Jarod put his hand on Sydney's shoulder. "Let me save him, Sydney. Please." Red moisture blurred his vision for a moment. He blinked it back, swallowing. "Please." Sydney's hand tightened on his brother's but he didn't reply.
"Look at me," said Jarod. "Sydney. Look at me." Sydney did. "Who am I?"
"You're Jarod," he said, and the affectionate certainty in his voice threatened to bring tears to Jarod's eyes again.
"I'm Jarod," he said. "And he'll be Jacob. He'll have the chance to be Jacob again, after all this time."
Jacob drew in a wheezing breath and did not let it out again. "Sydney..." said Jarod, feeling an unaccustomed sense of panic rising up inside him. He would not do this without Sydney's permission. He would not. But time was running out.
Sydney closed his eyes tightly and nodded. "Do it, then," he whispered. "Before I change my mind. God help me. Do it."
Jarod squeezed his shoulder, then knelt down quickly beside Jacob's body. He heard Sydney murmuring something and realized suddenly that it was a prayer. He'd never heard Sydney pray before.
He brought his lips down gently to touch Jacob's neck. Interesting. Underneath the stink of disease and the lingering odors of hospitals and decay, he smelled exactly like Sydney.
Jarod could feel his fangs aching the way they always did before feeding, could feel the newly formed glands in his mouth releasing the antiseptic, anesthetic secretions that evolution or design -- he'd never figured out which his condition owed its existence to -- had thoughtfully provided to make things easier on everyone. Carefully, he licked Jacob's skin. He might be beyond pain now, and would be beyond disease soon, but Jarod had no desire to hurt him, or to make this any more difficult than it must be.
Slowly he sank in his fangs, and tried not to invest too much hope in the small, quiet voice inside him that said that maybe, just maybe, this would finally make them family.
4. Blood Brothers
Sydney would have gladly given his brother a kidney had it been necessary, and there were times during the last three decades when he'd found himself wishing it were possible to trade his own life for Jacob's recovery. He did not in the least mind offering his blood when Jacob needed it.
Indeed, the process was oddly pleasant. Jarod had hypothesized a sort of low-level psychic field, designed to help keep victims passive or willing donors willing, a possibility Sydney found fascinating. For his own part, it reminded him of when they were children huddling together for comfort and the soothing sensation of his brother's presence would help to ease hurts far more painful than the half-numb wound in his neck.
It was what tended to come after Jacob had fed that troubled him.
"You should let me keep going," he said this time, as he always did. The same pleas, the same arguments. "Bad things are coming, Sydney. One way or another. I don't want to lose you."
Thirty years ago he hadn't listened to Jacob's arguments, or his warnings, and he'd come to deeply regret that mistake. So when Jacob spoke, Sydney listened. The things his brother had told him about the past, shocking as they were, had not surprised him, and he found it harder now to reject Jacob's insistence that something must be done about the Centre than to accept it. In light of which, certainly any advantage they could gain must be useful, and making oneself as hard to kill as possible was a sound and logical idea. And yet...
There were very few things of which Sydney was afraid; he sometimes thought that he'd exhausted his capacity for fear early in his life. But a deep-seated suspicion that over the years he'd slowly let parts of his humanity slip away while he refused to notice made the thought of willingly and literally surrendering what humanness remained profoundly frightening to him. He recognized the illogic in this; he did not after all believe that Jarod and Jacob had become monsters now. But perhaps they had been better men than he to begin with.
There might well be a difference, too, between having this condition thrust upon you and choosing it for yourself. Grasping desperately for a way to save his brother's life, even if it meant trading one kind of living death for another, surely must be forgivable, if there was any cosmic power in the business of offering forgiveness. But enough of the Catholicism of Sydney's youth remained to him to make the thought that according to traditional folklore he would be damning himself distressing. Then again, if there were such a thing as damnation, it had probably become inevitable for him long ago, and the entire question was academic.
In the end, Sydney made his decision not out of resignation, or pragmatism, or the desire to conquer his fear, but simply because it was his brother asking. They'd done everything together once, and he refused to accept the thought of one of them leaving the other behind ever again.
"Next time," he said at last. "Next time, you can do it."
Jacob's handclasp was cold, and there was blood at the corner of his relieved and happy smile, but his eyes were still Jacob's. Sydney squeezed his hand and smiled back. "You just want me to have fangs so that you'll finally know what you look like," he said.
Sydney woke up suddenly afterward, as if someone had flipped a switch inside him and brought his consciousness back after a long period of non-being. His senses, though, came back to him more slowly. The first thing that registered was the sight of his brother's face hovering over him with a mingled expression of concern and something that looked very much like pride. Every detail of Jacob's face seemed sharper and clearer that it ever had before, even though Sydney was distantly aware that the only source of illumination was a faint spill of moonlight through the blinds on the far wall of the room. But there was something else, too, behind the face... Sydney closed his eyes again.
He had always fancied that he could feel something of a connection to his brother. Nothing concrete, nothing easy to pin down, but from the time they were children, he could always point to Jacob with his eyes closed, could always guess his mood even when he was still on the other side of a door. The phenomenon had always interested them both, though neither had ever been entirely sure it was real. But now... He could feel Jacob, as clearly as he had seen him. More clearly, perhaps. He could feel relief and love and a sense of togetherness, could almost hear the thoughts flitting elusively across the surface of Jacob's mind, and could feel Jacob feeling it, too. Some faint part of his mind started drafting up research protocols to investigate this fascinating discovery, but he was distracted by an insistent growling in his stomach, and an aching feeling in his teeth, and a smell that made his mouth water. He hadn't felt this hungry since he was very, very young.
He opened his eyes again to see Jarod offering him a transparent bag of rich, red fluid with a red-and-white striped straw stuck into it at a jaunty angle. He wondered briefly when Jarod had got here, and how he'd known, but then Jarod had always had a way of knowing things, even before... this. And Sydney's sudden, intense desire for what was in that bag was, at the moment, more important to him than any questions.
They each put a hand on one of his shoulders while he drank, and when he'd finished, Jarod took the empty bag from him. "How do you feel, Sydney?" he asked quietly
"Less hungry now," Sydney said, his voice only a little shaky. "Thank you."
Jacob touched Sydney's hair, smoothing it down. "You see?" he said, very softly. "It's simply another state of being. You haven't become a monster, have you?"
Sydney looked up into his face, then at Jarod's. He raised a hand tentatively to his mouth, feeling the sharpness of fangs beneath his lip, and considered both their questions carefully. He felt... He felt shaken and tired, and yet full of some still-untapped source of vitality. He felt conflicted, uncertain about the future and even more uncertain about the past. He felt a great and guilt-ridden love for the people in this room with him. He felt capable of dealing with what came next. Whatever it might be.
"No more than I was yesterday," he said. He reached out his hand, and let Jarod pull him to his feet.
5. Tonight Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Every day, Sydney came to work at the Centre before dawn and left after sunset. No one noticed anything different. And it was easy enough to make excuses for not hunting Jarod during the day, especially since Jarod was emerging far less often now and, of course, never appearing anywhere other than at night.
Angelo knew, Sydney was fairly certain, but Angelo only smiled and said nothing. Sydney felt confident both that Angelo would never reveal the secret on his own and that no one would ever bother asking him what he thought or knew. Oddly, Sydney found the fact that Angelo was not afraid of him did much more to reassure him than any of the comforting things he tried to tell himself about what he had become.
Parker would doubtless grow suspicious eventually. She knew him too well by now, a possibly inconvenient fact, but not one that he could bring himself to regret. Well, he would find a way to cope with her discovery when it happened. Dealing with her would be delicate, but he believed he would be able to gain her silence and her acceptance, if not necessarily her understanding.
In the meantime, he walked the Centre's halls and ran his experiments and made his reports on the search for Jarod as if nothing had changed, and the Centre continued to treat him as it treated its own. The Centre, Sydney imagined, was unlikely to care whether you drank blood or bathed in it, as long as you knew how to play by the rules of its game.
But if the Centre saw no relevant differences in him, he could hardly say the same for it. His new, enhanced senses made the dark and unpleasant things at the Centre's heart much more difficult to ignore. Faint, lingering smells of chemicals and rot haunted some of the most clean and comfortable offices, and occasionally, passing down brightly lit corridors, he could smell blood and pain behind locked doors, or hear a heart beating in rapid, fluttering terror. Sometimes from the medical wing there were screams so loud that, even at this distance, he could scarcely believe that he hadn't heard them before.
But the keen senses that made days at the Centre increasingly unpleasant at least served him well when he left at night. He could always tell when he was being observed, and he found it remarkably easy to slip away unnoticed, though he was careful not to do so too obviously or too often.
Jacob frequently moved from place to place for safety -- they'd quickly decided that the cabin was far too obvious a place to look should anyone decide Sydney had secrets worth investigating -- but Sydney never had to ask where to find him. He just knew, the same way Jacob inevitably knew when he was coming.
Often, when he deemed it safe to go and see his brother, he would find Jarod there as well, stopping by with advice, and false identification papers, and bags of blood. On such nights, the three of them would sit together and draw up careful, minutely constructed plans, and Sydney would leave before dawn smiling and feeling better than he had in thirty years.
Monsters had ruled over the Centre for far, far too long. Soon it would be time for the vampires to let in the light.