Darkness forevermore, and inevitable, but the waiting game was over.

And still, even in the conclusion: the light at the end of the tunnel, you couldn't help but long for the limbo: a realisation in time with the one that the conclusion was no better than the fight to get there.

The town was scared: the whole world had hidden behind its bedroom door today, and just like that, shadows had come out to play, and really, it was an unfair fight, and that still was an understatement.

The sun was absent from dark cloudy skies, and the weather told every tale that people could no longer speak, because no longer was this rumour, speculation and history: this was right here and this was right now, and this was as real as the cold chill against skin: both human and not quite so human alike.

Fear was unavoidable: fear was everything - the beating in your heart, and the red in your blood, the shape in the corner of your eye, and you were thankful: thankful but unaware.

They were different, though, and from the depths of hell which they crawled from burned red with fire and rage, soon leaving nothing but ash and ember.

This wasn't a burning fire: this wasn't a raging fight, this wasn't fair, this wasn't passion, this wasn't power - this was the ash and desperation it had left behind, because if there ever was a war, it had already been won, and the skies painted black made it rather clear as to who was the victor.

But resilience was human down to the bone, and soon there'd be nothing left, but the determination that had brought them here, and the towns people did try: wooden stakes by the dozen and prayers said by their plenty, but still, darkness sat a top the hill, and soon enough, the wretched hand of darkness would crawl out: bony knuckles and rotting flesh, and take the last hope left.

Faith was powerful, though: faith was all there really was left, and faith was exactly what kept the lights on in the church: the majority of the town crowded in there - afraid and screaming out in cry, but reality was in the truth that they couldn't hide there forever, and it was known like nothing else that one day, they would make their way up onto the hill, and into the graveyard, and die there in the darkness.

It wasn't a spectacular death, to say the least: it was quick and taken without as much of a care, and it was kind of death and destruction you heard of in fairytales, and fucking prayed to stay away from you in real life, but this was a nightmare down to perfection: trees barren and dark - branches twisted and crawling out like wooden fingers of skeletal hands - the world was dead, and soon the church would empty, and the town would meet the same fate.

All there was protecting them from such a fate, even if only temporarily so, was one little crucifix on the church door: faith, and that was all that was the weapon.

But faith, especially in a situation such as this, was nothing more than temporary, and with the rain pounding down on the church door, and the wind howling out a thousand skin tingling curses, the door and the crucifix upon it would soon be nothing.

-

Bob Bryar had very little faith left: his determination comprising of very little other than a stubborn hatred for fanged scum of the earth, and his favourite wooden stake in his coat pocket.

Still, one stubborn man with one weapon was very little when put against an army of apathic, bloodthirsty undead, but of course, Bob Bryar was not alone.

Still, his company wasn't exactly that of a warrior legion, but more so along the lines of the few friends that had stuck by him in this hellhole they regretted to call home, but that didn't seem to matter at all, because maybe, just maybe, Bert had an inkling that they had an edge here.

And God, if he even existed in this wasteland, would say that Bert McCracken was usually right.

Bert was nowhere near as angry as Bob: calm, but nowhere near complacent, just at rest with himself and the very real possibility of his demise - he'd been waiting on it for far too long now anyway, but still never any less determined than Mr Bryar himself.

Mikey was insistent upon two things: being here, and Pete not being here - it was more of a protective boyfriend thing than an angry ex-boyfriend thing, because with Pete and Mikey, and Ray gone for days now, and due to the situation, presumed dead, there was most definitely a thing between Pete and Mikey.

Bob wouldn't of course ever consider mentioning the likelihood of Ray's mortality, or well, the lack of it, to Mikey, especially not in circumstances such as these, because although Mikey may be irritating at the best of times, they needed everyone they had now.

Pete was almost as stubborn as Bob in the fact that he was going to be here, and he was going to look after Mikey - as ridiculous as that may sound, considering the two of them, and the world around them.

Frank was sat on Bob Bryar's sofa with his knees pulled up to his chest as he tried to contain himself: it taking every ounce of self-control he had to stay and not run as far as he could away from this chaos and impending doom - of course, the likelihood was that he'd die before he got out of the town itself, but with his heart beating in double time, he had enough adrenaline pumping through his veins to ensure he was reckless enough to try anything.

"You don't have to do this." Gerard had repeated it for something like the tenth time now, and Frank continued to only nod in his direction: a silent 'I know', and Gerard forced his worries back inside him, biting down on his lip a little as he tried not to think too hard about just how this could very easily end up for them, and god, it was killing him. "Frank, I'm scared. I'm scared for you."

"Don't be." Frank sighed out, letting Gerard sit down beside him: the vampire twitching in a way that Frank couldn't quite place - it unnerved him just a little, but he had far more troublesome things to think about right now. "Be scared of them."

"I am one of them - how could I be scared?" Gerard pointed out the obvious, but Frank couldn't help but feel like he was missing the point just a little.

"If you weren't scared of them you wouldn't have any problem with me doing this." Frank added, his voice just a little spiteful, but out of nothing but nerves.

"Not necessarily, because I have a fucking problem, Frank-" Gerard's tone soon grew louder and turned a whole new kind of fucking sour.

"Yeah, you really do seem to have some sort of fucking problem if you can't make your fucking mind up and act like a rational fucking person!" And with that Frank made his way out of the living room and into the hallway, stopping dead in his tracks at the front door, not quite having the guts to continue, because this was more to prove a point than to actually benefit anything, and Frank didn't quite think his life was worth the satisfaction of pissing off Gerard.

"Don't." Gerard closed the door behind them, grabbing Frank by the shoulder and gripping tight into his skin.

"Why not?" Frank's voice was scratched and raw: nonchalant to the extent that it unsettled Gerard a little.

"Because I can't have you die - I can't deal with that: I need you." Gerard words were lovesick and pathetic to say the least, and really, this was very Romeo and Juliet, but right now, Frank would argue against his love for Gerard within a heartbeat.

"It's always about you, isn't it?" His voice was spiteful: just doing this to be cruel, and perhaps it was the stress and the pressure of the chaos outside, or at least that was what Gerard liked to think to keep the insanity at bay.

"Me?" Gerard exclaimed, shaking his head frantically, because he knew nothing like he knew the fact that Frank was wrong. "This is all about you."

"How so?" Frank was unconvinced and even found himself holding in laughter at Gerard proclaiming he actually cared about anyone other than himself, which really was news to Frank, although a better word for it would probably be bullshit.

"You're everything, Frank. You know how I- you know how I care, and I don't understand just what has made you unable to see that: to see that with every kiss I give you everything, perhaps that's what you are to me. I am nothing, and you the water in my cup - half full or empty it doesn't matter - all that matters is you... I- I-..."

"Lies." Frank wrote it off before his mind could even consider it, pushing Gerard away and taking another step towards the door, his hand grasping the handle, and right now, if Gerard had a heart, it would be beating right out of his chest and onto the floor.

"Frank!" He was desperate and pleading, and it was beautifully pathetic, and almost entertaining on Frank's end, if he was sadistic enough to think so, that was.

"Give me one fucking reason why I shouldn't just walk out and leave."

"You'll die." Gerard practically screamed the words at him, but really, it wasn't necessary, as they were absolutely nothing but obvious.

"Yeah, we all die eventually, Gerard: humans, anyway... you're not familiar with mortality are y-"

"I love you."

And the words had left his lips before he could stop himself, and the silence that followed was enough to finish him off completely.

"There's my reason." He added, swallowing hard, but the sinking feeling in his stomach still refused to go away.

And, again, silence and stillness as the two remained frozen: gazes looked and locking for something, anything in each other's eyes, but eventually, just like everything, the little bubble of reality on hold stopped and faded away into nothingness.

And Frank's hand moved away from the door.

-

"We've got very little hope, but we've got faith, and we've got fucking stakes, and more damn hope than any of those fanged assholes, no offense, Gerard and Mikey, you are my favourite vampires." Bob Bryar's battle speech was fuelled less on inspiration and passion and more so on the last bottle of whisky he could find in the kitchen, but it mattered, nevertheless.

"We're going to die out there." Pete came to verbalise the thought on everyone's mind.

"We're not going to." Bob corrected him with a crooked little smile: misplaced under the circumstances. "We just have to uphold this place - it's simple, look, they'll reach here after the church has been emptied and they've been killed, but we just have to keep defending this place, and killing any that get it, and I've called in a favour or two: I have a friend or two, or many, and we have backup, we have hope."

"Who the hell are these friends?" Mikey asked, eyes widened a little, but really, he was in absolutely no place to turn away any hope he could get right now.

"Vampire slayers have vampire slaying friends, and you see, they're using the graveyard like a hive: take out the hive and the bees will die with no shelter and food, they'll be lost and weak and we can help finish the job. We'll win, I promise you: Bert says we have hope, and it's Bert, so we'll be fine - anything Bert says is true."

And as everyone else clapped in response to Bob's explanation, Frank's heart almost stopped beating entirely as he came to remember Bert's vision regarding Gerard, and how that had so suddenly become possible, and just how that was absolutely nothing more than Frank's fault.

"Okay, so everyone does know how to kill a vampire, don't they?" Bert added, just to check, laughing a little, and as to how he could in the circumstances, Frank had no idea: his brain seizing up and slowing down at the realisation of destiny and how everything clicked together and finally fell into place.

Because right now, Frank would give anything to die in Gerard's place, and as fucked up as it was, he meant it more than he'd even meant anything before - this was on him, after all. 

-

Gerard and Frank sat in the living room alone: too many hours to count having passed since Bob's motivational, slightly drunken speech, but still, it felt like no time at all, especially with the threat of the inevitable hanging in the front of Frank's mind.

And yet, he still couldn’t quite bring himself to tell him, and fuck, that was fucked up beyond belief, but still, there was very little Frank could do at this point.

Bob, Mikey, and Pete were at the front door, defending the place from the front, and Bert was supposed to join the two guarding the backdoor, but it became apparent that he'd either died or fucked off elsewhere, and really, neither Frank nor Gerard wanted to worry themselves with the possibility of either right now.

The backdoor was seemingly free of vampires: almost like they were scared of this, or just really didn't like the backdoor... who knew that vampires didn't like anal? Gerard had certainly given Frank the absolute opposite of that impression, but then again, that wasn't something that Frank would ever find himself regretting.

What he did find himself regretting was let this happen, and the way his throat seized up completely whenever he ever considered letting the truth slip his lips, and in silence he continued to reside: his heart sinking back down in his chest as they sat in silence and waited.

"Thought you might like some company, huh?" The two jumped at the vampire stepping from nowhere in front of them: Gerard getting to his feet immediately, and Frank freezing into place as he came to recognise the fanged face.

"Alex?" Frank was a little startled to say the least, and really, from that look in Alex's eyes, he was nothing but terrified. "What the hell's going on? What have you become? What's happened?"

"I'm just like him: what's your problem, Frankie? And I'm here to claim you as my own, and to do that... I need to..." His eyes fell upon Gerard with the world's biggest smirk: sending shivers down both of their spines.

"You- you-... no. Alex, please, no. Don't like beat him up or anything, please, we've been through this-"

"Oh Frankie? You think I'm just going to punch him a little? Oh, no, I'm going to finish this for once and for all." And Gerard remained far too silent, and far too composed as Alex pulled out a stake from his coat pocket. "You know how this goes, don't you, Gerard?"

The vampire nodded: avoiding Frank's gaze and the possibility of actually giving the nineteen year old any answers at all. "I know."

"You don't seem scared." Alex noted, smirking a little as his eyebrows rose in Gerard's direction, and really, Frank was screaming on the inside, yet somehow frozen into silence by the situation around him.

"I'm not." Gerard clarified: his face expressionless, and almost as if he'd been fucking expecting this, and goddamn, Frank was still frozen to the spot, his throat closing in around his words as he struggled to breathe.

"You should be."

"That's debatable." Gerard shrugged it off, stepping forward and simply pushing Alex away from him. "Considering my immortality, you know? That's not an authentic fucking stake, Alex, it's not going to fucking work - come on."

"But Gerard- you-" Frank's throat finally allowed just three words to pass his lips, and really, it wasn't the most coherent sentence by any means. "You said!"

"Oh... so now it gets interesting." Alex smirked, pausing for a moment in his quest to kill Gerard, and just to see how this turned out.

"Doesn't mean that I meant it, didn't it?" Gerard bit down on his bottom lip, gathering enough courage to meet Frank's gaze and finish this: one last ditch attempt to save himself. "I'm a vampire: we're not capable of love, we're not capable of emotion, not really. I don't love you, Frank. It's fine."

"And the plot thickens." Alex's eyes widened: glancing between the two of them. "But, Gerard, if that's a lie, that's a pretty good one, but it's an awful fucking shame that I have a fucking wonderful way to prove it either way."

And with one smooth motion, Alex plunged his stake through Gerard's heart.

And at first nothing, and Gerard was almost shocked that it had actually worked, but before he knew anything: life was sucked from him and he fell back against the floor.

Bert McCracken was never wrong, after all.

But within seconds, Alex was also down against the floor with a stake through his heart, and none other than Bert McCracken, just a little late, having done so.

"I didn't tell you everything, Frank: I don't tell people everything, because then they meddle and they mess and they try to 'fix' things - the town has an order, it's to keep the treaty and balance and peace, but, now, it's nothing but chaos, and I... I don't see the point in that anymore." 

Frank remained frozen in place: staring right at his dead boyfriend, totally unable to let it go - he was frozen, after all.

"Gerard's fucking dead: he's dead..." Frank choked out, and really, speaking it aloud made it all so much worse.

"I can fix that.. I can fix things... I'm not supposed to, but... this town is fucked enough already... and he didn't deserve this... he didn't at all." Bert knelt down besides Gerard's body and placed his hands on Gerard's chest, muttering something under his breath that Frank didn't quite catch, before turning to Frank with a look of urgency in his eyes. "Get the bandages, Frank - I need to pull the stake out and when I do, we need to stop him bleeding out, because like that he will die."

"You're not human, are you?" Frank met Bert with wide eyes.

Bert shook his head with a small smile. "No, but keep quiet about this: you're not supposed to know and this is not supposed to happen, you're supposed to just get the bandages, and we pretend the stake missed his heart, okay?"

Frank nodded, returning with the bandages, and passing them to Bert, who muttered something else under his breath before pulling the stake out, Gerard releasing a pained gasp as he did so: the vampire's body jerking as life drained back into him, but just like that, he was bleeding, and he was fucking dying again.

"Fuck-" Gerard choked out, his vision fuzzy and distorted as Bert frantically bandaged up the wound on his chest, applying pressure in order to keep him from bleeding out and pressing down on Gerard's chest before muttering something else under his breath, and with that Gerard's breathing began to regulate, his eyelids slowly flickering upon and focusing on Frank. "What the fuck happened?"

"You died." Bert was entirely too nonchalant about it, and Gerard really wasn't expecting that as a response. "I brought you back: I'm not supposed to, but-"

"Yeah, I get it: visions, magic... it makes sense. You're a wizard, you're basically Harry fucking Potter, okay... I caught onto this ages ago." Gerard rolled his eyes: speaking with entirely too much sarcasm for someone who was dead just a minute ago.

"I prefer the term sorcerer-"

"I prefer Frank's asshole." Gerard rolled his eyes, attempting to sit up, before finding that that was a very bad idea indeed, but before he could even fathom a complaint, Pete rushed into the room: wide eyed and practically screaming.

"He's dead: Mikey's dead."

"What? How? No- I-"

"Ray... Ray killed him... he... he's one of them now."

And that broke Gerard's heart, completely, because like this, without Mikey, none of it was worth it at all: he'd give his life for Mikey's, and technically he already had: this whole vampire thing, this eternal darkness and suffering, it was always for Mikey - to save his little brother, because poor little Mikey Way never deserved to die.

But it seemed that not even Gerard could look after him forever.

-

one more chapter left;) votes and comments would be cool because who doesnt love a bit of character death??? hey okay i love you all i promise<3