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You came back wrong.
After getting your head bashed in by some frat boy with a bright future who didn't want you spilling about how he'd taken advantage of you, your mother had been distraught. It'd been just you and her since your deadbeat dad dipped out on you two when you were six, and losing her child, her world, had broken her and driven her off the edge.
She'd found a coven, paid some witches, dabbled in necromancy. And she brought you back.
But you didn't come back right. Not quite human. Not quite her baby.
It was almost as if the sight of you snapping your leg bone back into place after a car accident was too horrible of a reminder that you'd died. It was the terrible truth that she'd done the unspeakable, committed blasphemy to bring you back from the dead, to bring you back as something only resembling her child, a child of God.
She abandoned you. Went to a convent, and pledged the rest of her life to the Lord as penance for you, her greatest sin.
You spent the last ten years wandering the country aimlessly, always sure not to stay in one place for longer than three years, lest anyone notice you don't age the way they do. From Los Angeles, you'd gone to Reno, then to Denver, then to Springfield.
And just over a year ago, you ended up in Uptown— the worst part of Elysium. There was something thrilling about living in a crime-ridden city, an allure you simply couldn't resist, especially since trivial matters such as mortality no longer applied to you.
You love Elysium as a whole, and all it has to offer, but there's something special about Uptown. It feels like stepping directly into a page or episode of your favorite media growing up, like you get to experience Gotham or Sunnydale for yourself. Maybe it's fucked up of you to romanticize a place so many people suffer in, but you can't help it; life without death is dreary, and you need to get your kicks from something.
Things go well for about six months. You delve into the city's nightlife when you can, more to people-watch and live vicariously through them than lose your mind in the high yourself. You make a few casual friends this way, playing the part of chaperone and designated driver while they chip away at their livelihoods with drugs and alcohol. It's nice to be able to socialize again, to have friends, even if it's with the people society considered scum, lower-than-low.
It all goes to shit one Friday night, as you're leaving a club on the outskirts of Uptown, frighteningly close to Purgatory. As you herd your cattle to your car, you notice you're down one sheep. Upon interrogating the group, one of them drunkenly giggles and says that your friend snuck off into the alleys with some guy around twenty minutes ago.
Most people would just leave it be at that— with as many active serial killers as there are in Elysium, anyone who goes into the Purgatory alleyways after sunset is just asking for it, and there's no sense in putting even more people in danger trying to save them.
Luckily for your friend, you're not most people, and you lack sense.
The things is, you didn't mind dying— you enjoy it, even. Though the permanence of death has been lost to you, the act of dying itself— the pain, the fear, the desperation, the chase— leaves you so exhilarated you can almost fool yourself into believing you can feel your stagnant heart racing in your chest. It's a high you can't get from anything else— not from alcohol, drugs, or murder. (Which, you had tried. You'd found that son of bitch and got your dues back in blood.)
So, sacrificial lamb that you are, you'd be lying if you say you aren't chomping at the bit to throw yourself into danger and go darting in and out and between alleyways, searching for your missing friend.
You'd be lying if you say you aren't excited to throw yourself in front of the crowbar directed at the back of her head as she's sucking the face of random club guy.
Your shout for them to run cuts off with a choked cough as your ribs crack and cave into your lungs. In a shining moment of selflessness, the guy valiantly shoves your friend behind him and away from the danger, before both of them book it in the other direction, leaving you to rot.
Well, that kinda sucks. You were expecting her to cry out for you at least a little bit.
You don't have the time to dwell on it, though. You cough up a clot of blood and barely manage to get to your knees when another blow lands on your spine. With a sickening crack, you collapse back onto the ground, losing feeling in your legs. As the crowbar comes down on you repeatedly, ruthlessly, you curl in on yourself, hiding your face behind your hands and arms, seemingly cowering in fear.
Your crooked smile fueled by pain and adrenaline stays hidden from the world.
About three hours later with ringing ears and a head stuffed with cotton, you come to, still in the alleyway.
Waking up after dying is what you imagine a computer feels like after a software update: booting up slowly, taking stock of where everything is and ensuring it's all running smoothly before powering up fully.
This time, when you wake up, nothing is operating correctly.
Gathering your innards and shoving them back inside the gaping hole in your stomach— which is humbling, as the flesh has been carved and peeled back like a damn pouch— is a unique experience, one that has you grimacing. It isn't your first time getting murdered since you've been resurrected, but it's certainly the first time your killer's gotten… artsy with their canvas. The mess almost isn't worth the thrill of the kill.
Next, you focus on your limbs, twisting your contorted and broken arms and legs back into place with a few snaps and clicking noises. Your whole body shakes with odd, jerky movements that resemble being possessed as you concentrate all your energy on getting your bones back where they belong. It's more of a mental thing than a physical one; you just have to imagine the injury healing itself, and usually, it does.
The flesh pouch on your stomach will require more effort, though. You'll have to go home, stitch it up, and wait about a day for the stitches to disappear and your organs to settle back into place.
With your broken limbs now little more than aching bones and stiff joints, you get to your feet. One arm keeps your stomach in place as you do a mental review of everything inside you, much like a phone-wallet-keys check. Your intestines are jumbled but there, you still have your whole liver and both kidneys, you aren't missing any fingers, toes, or teeth—
It takes you a minute to figure it out, given that the thing doesn't function anymore, but you don't have your heart.
Peering back down, you notice that, sure enough, there's a large, expertly cut gash in your chest, and a suspiciously empty spot behind your rib cage. You were so distracted by your stomach-turned-satchel that you completely overlooked it.
You sigh and throw your head back, trying to locate your heart. You found out around four years ago that your body and organs have some kind of fucked up Find My iPhone feature built into them. It'd been very useful in getting your kidneys back from those traffickers.
(You don't exactly need your organs to live, but it's nice to have them all, as it allows all your bodily functions to take place, which in turn, makes you still feel human. Without your intestines, you can't eat, and without your kidneys, you can't do, well, anything.
You absolutely don't need your heart— it serves no purpose to you now. But damn if you don't want it.)
It hasn't gone very far. You hobble about three blocks over, limbs still shaky and stomach still open, until you reach the site of another crime scene. The victim looks much like you did just a few minutes ago, and you feel a twinge of sympathy in your heart knowing that unlike you, they won't be coming back.
A twinge in your heart, which is currently being held by your murderer.
Your face screws up in confusion— is the man comparing them? He holds a heart in either hand, one coated in fresh crimson and still twitching, and the other perfectly unmoving, caked in flaky, dried blood.
It isn't hard to guess which one's yours.
You clear your throat, watching as the man kneeling before the corpse stiffens for the briefest of moments, before his head whips around to face you. The tips of his hair are coated in blood, his clothes are drenched in it, and the same red smatters the hockey mask covering his face.
You hold back a snort. How cliche.
"Hey man," you say, eyeing the heart in his right hand. "Can I have that back?"
Slowly, with a fluidity that has the hairs on the back of your neck standing up, the man gets to his feet. He puts the freshly-harvested heart down beside the corpse, still holding onto yours. He picks a butcher's knife off the ground. It makes a horrible scraping sound against the concrete that has your eye twitching.
He tilts his head to the side, taking you in. "Y'know, I'm pretty sure I killed you."
You shrug, expression a bit sheepish as you say, "You know what they say about nothing in life being permanent."
That gets an honest-to-god chuckle out of him. It sounds a little manic. "Ain't that the fuckin' truth."
When he doesn't say or do anything further, you hold an expectant arm out, gesturing to your heart. "I kinda need that, and I don't really think you need three of those."
He hums, considering. "Wasn't beating when I tore it outta you."
"I bet not," you answer dryly. "It's no more use to you than it is to me."
He tosses it up once, twice in the air, getting a feel for it. You frown. Admittedly, you're not very fond of your less-than-vital organ getting the baseball treatment.
"Catch!" He yells, then throws it up higher than before. It arcs through the air, and your arm shoots out instinctually, trying to grab it.
The knife cleaves clean through the bottom half of your arm. The severed limb hits the floor, your heart landing a few inches away from it.
You click your tongue. "Well that's just rude." Seriously, you even asked nicely. Now you're gonna need more stitches.
Hysterical laughter bounces off the alley walls. You roll your eyes, annoyed. This little encounter has taken far longer than it's needed to, and all you've done tonight is be inconvenienced. With a huff, you kneel down, and the laughter crescendoes when you remove your arm from your stomach in order to reach for your arm, allowing the pouch to flap open and your guts to peek out.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," you mutter. You tuck your arm beneath the half of it that hasn't been severed, then grab your heart and hastily shove it back into your chest. You'll worry about getting everything properly in place later, when there's not a deranged killer mocking you. "Seriously, fuck you."
"This is fuckin' rich," the man says, voice almost musical from how gleeful it is. "Does your revival time tie into your cause of death?"
"My injuries do affect my time asleep, yes," you answer as you get to your feet. You glare at him. "And thanks for the tons of stitches and blood transfusions I'll need, by the way."
"Anytime, sweetheart." You roll your eyes, and your irritation increases tenfold as he falls into step beside you when you start walking away. "Plenty more where that came from. Y'ever been decapitated? Ripped limb from limb? Pulverized?"
"That's a little personal. I just met you."
"C'mon, darlin', indulge me. If I crucify you, will you rise on the third day in accordance with the scripture?"
You grind your teeth together. "Shut the fuck up and leave me alone."
"If I stab ya to death instead of beating you with a crowbar, how long of a nap will you take?"
"Why don't you try it if you're so damn curious?" You sneer, and as soon as the words are out of your mouth, you regret them.
You manage to make it around the corner before the knife sinks into your back.
extra.
"I think we should take you to the hospital, like, now."
You sigh, pulling the "borrowed" hoodie tighter around you. "I'm fine, man. Just take me back to my place."
Your friend gives you a look. "Dude, you like, barely have a heartbeat. I think you're in shock. The hospital can give you some shit for that."
Of course, since you're just a magnet for lunatics with weapons, some madman had just held you at gunpoint in front of your friends. He didn't even want anything, just started yelling at you about how people like you were the reason people like him were out on the streets suffering and missing out on fortune and fame.
Whatever that means.
You're not in shock, because to be in shock you'd have to have been scared, and you certainly aren't scared of dying. Death isn't something that terrified you back when you had that encounter with the Devil's Butcher which you "miraculously survived," and it certainly isn't something you've been a stranger to in the months following it. You spent most of October being killed in more ways than you can count, and learning far more about your undead body and regenerative properties than you previously had any interest in knowing.
At some point, Ronin's obsession with you had turned into an obsession with you. He's since exhausted ideas for the various ways in which he can kill you, but you're still stuck with him, for better or worse.
Not that you mind it. You haven't minded it for a while now— dying, or his company (which go hand-in-hand less these days, but you two don't exactly have conventional interests).
So, no, your "faint" heartbeat isn't a result of shock. It's actually a lack of a heartbeat because, well—
Your heart is sitting in a jar. On a shelf. In Ronin's room.
You'd managed to wrangle him out of the phase of holding various of your limbs and organs hostage a few months ago, but your aorta seems to be the one thing he isn't willing to let go of.
You try not to think about it too much.
"Being in a hospital is only gonna work me up more." You're not lying— the stress of doctors prodding at an undead you is enough to give you hypothetical high blood pressure. "Just let me go home. I promise I'll be fine."
Your friend's face collapses into a frown, as does his posture, and you know you've got him. "Fine, just— text me when you get back, alright?"
You nod. "Yeah, of course. Wouldn't want you to worry."
He rolls his eyes. "We're all always worrying about you. I'm surprised you haven't died out on these streets, yet."
You laugh, a little harder than you should. If your friend finds it weird, he doesn't comment on it. After saying your goodbyes and reassuring that, yes, you'll text as soon as you get home, you two go your separate ways.
You suck in a deep breath, reveling in the slight breeze. It's the perfect temperature with the onset of late spring, warmer than winter but not enough to have you shedding the hoodie just yet. This part of Uptown has been quieter recently, and safer to walk through this time of night— all thanks to the owner of said hoodie.
Halfway to your apartment complex, there's a strange fluttering in your chest that has you suppressing a cough.
You grimace. One of the things you learned pretty early into your… "relationship" with Ronin is that your heart felt a lot more outside of your body than within it. It didn't respond to anything inside your body because there was nothing for it to respond to.
But when something made contact with it, outside of simply being held, that's when you would get the ticklish feeling in your chest cavity. Though you pretended it bothered you, you both knew that you found the semblance of a heartbeat oddly comforting.
Regardless, you take out your phone and open the encrypted chating app (which had thrown you for a loop when Ronin added you to it three months ago, but at this point, that's par for the course with him).
walkingundead: stop messing with my heart weirdo
Your response comes in the form of a spike of pain in your chest which does make you cough this time.
walkingundead: wtf was that
walkingundead: are you using it as a pin cushion or something?
goreboy: or Something
walkingundead: it's not a damn voodoo doll ronin
goreboy: maybe not
goreboy: but hey. there's an Idea
goreboy: if we Harvest your Flesh ya think we can a build a Mini-You?
walkingundead: let's not find out
goreboy: no, Let's
goreboy: we can find out Tonight
goreboy: almost Home, darling?
walkingundead: if you break in and start cubing me again i'm gonna send V an SOS
goreboy: wow
goreboy: didn't take you for a Snitch
walkingundead: desperate times call for desperate measures
walkingundead: and i'd like to wake up without having to worry about piecing myself back together, thanks
Another pinching pain stabs through your chest.
walkingundead: would you CUT THAT OUT
goreboy: already did Cut It Out
goreboy: in case you've Forgotten
walkingundead: do you think you're funny
goreboy: hilarious
walkingundead: seriously ronin i'd like to be able to sleep tonight
goreboy: i can Help with that
walkingundead: without being dismembered*
goreboy: you really know how to Ruin the Mood
goreboy: but i'll tell ya what
goreboy: if you want your Beauty Sleep that bad
goreboy: come on over here and Take It for yourself
You sigh. Is this really his way of asking you to spend the night?
walkingundead: you are such a peculiar creature
goreboy: i'm Flattered
goreboy: don't keep me Waiting long, darling
You're certain the fluttering in your chest from Ronin toying with your heart again— in more ways than just the literal.