FIC: Frosty the Snowman (2/2) HIMYM / Warm Bodies
Title: Frosty the Snowman
Summary: Nothing says BrOTP at Christmas like zombies.
Rating/Warnings: X, Zombieism, death, blood, horror and angst.
Previously on: Part 1
Written for: da_phoenix13 , queen of the zombie fic.
Challenge: fanfic100 Prompt - "Zombie"
Word Count: 1,663
Fandom/Pairing: HIMYM, Barney/Robin mixed with a lot of Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion.
Spoilers: Set some amount of time after Season 6 - False Positive. Oh, and a Zombie Apocalypse.
Part 2
I close my eyes and there is silence - no ending, no crack of her weapon discharging. Her gun has jammed it seems. I stand there, face smeared with the blood and the grey matter of her companion, and she screams at me. Not a frightened, girl-scream, but a yell of horror and disgust and white-hot fury.
And still I stand there while another of my companions swipes her feet out from under her and her temple thuds against a table as she goes down. She doesn’t move, and because it’s dark and chaotic, the other Dead lose interest in her. They’ve really got no imaginations. It’s embarrassing.
But their inattention gives me time to shuffle forward and scoop her up in my arms. I crash through the room, carrying her weight easily, and smash my way out of the apartment and back down the old stairwell. I have no idea where I’m taking her. Some instinct tells me that the bar is a bad idea. After all, I’m carrying take-out and I don’t want to share.
But I head back towards the bar anyway, travelling the familiar streets like a box car on rails. I can’t deviate from my path. I don’t even know how anymore.
Strange feelings cloud over me. I look down at the woman in my arms and I know that she is very brave and very beautiful. I know this more from somewhere inside me than from any evidence back up in that apartment. I know it like it’s… a memory.
Somehow, I come to a stop. My bar is just at the end of the block but it’s like I’ve run out of energy. Strange sensations continue to assault me - Strange images, tastes and sounds.
I remember this street and this girl in my arms. I even remember my bar, but in a way that's barely recognisable from the wreck that it's become. Somehow I remember when my bar was anything but dead. Back then, it was bustling with young people and their laughter and the overwhelming stink of beer and perfume and life. My friends and I, we were the loudest. We were the kings and queens of this tiny corner of Manhattan. The girl in my arms, I know her name now. Her name is Robin.
And I know exactly where to take her. I take her home.
#~-
The brownstone above my bar is surprisingly intact and the apartment I enter isn’t badly wrecked. There’s still a couch in the middle of the living room and it’s there I deposit the unconscious girl.
The memories flood in on me, confusing and disorienting me. I pace slowly around the apartment, associating the various bric-a-brac of life with different events. There’s a miniature telephone box that I remember most strongly, and a poster on the wall. When I see the photographs I freeze and stand there, immobile, for some time.
I have no idea how long Robin remains unconscious, but when she wakes I’m still staring at the photographs. I remember them - the people in them, and me. These memories of me.
But... but... I know what I look like. I’ve spent whole days just looking into the mirror. The face in these photographs looks nothing like that face. The guy in the photos is…
Oh god, the guy in the photos is the guy I killed in the apartment. It’s the guy whose brains I ate. This isn't me, I realize. These memories are not my memories.
Suddenly there’s a roar from behind me and I turn, too slowly, and a hunk of glass embeds itself into my chest. I look up, dumbly. “Doesn’t… work.” I say, struggling with each word. I want to explain that she can cut up my body as much as she likes but unless she destroys my brain, I’ll keep coming after her like the freakin’ Terminator.
“You can talk?” She blurts, clearly surprised. I can see that she’s looking frantically around for some kind of weapon, her face flushed with anger. She’s swaying though. She’s weak and she’s hurt and she’s probably starving. At least I can empathise with that last emotion.
“Won’t… hurt… you…” I groan. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Of course I want to hurt her. I want to grab her by the hair and smash in her pretty head and scoop out her tasty cerebellum. But I killed her friend and for some reason I’m now afflicted with his pesky emotions. Did she know her friend was in love with her, I wonder? My body is pulsing and my chest feels tight, like my lungs are bursting, and it’s all a little too much for a zombie-about-town to deal with.
Plus, she’s really ruined my suit. I like this suit! In this suit I could almost pass for human. I never realized how much that matters until it was ruined.
“Sit… down…” I say, and it comes out slurred and irritable. She glares at me but it's not my fault I'm slow. Making words is hard. I can see why most of the Dead don't bother. “Before… you… fall-”
“Down?” She interrupts me. “Just know this. I’m going to kill you before you kill me. That is literally all your kind do, isn’t it? Jesus, I can’t believe I’m trying to have an existential conversation with a zombie!” She laughs, but it’s strained. For a moment, I think she’s actually going to comply.
Then she lunges across the couch and makes a break for one of the bedrooms. I, like the idiot-savant than I am, just stand there. I try to look like I’m weighing my options, but the only time I move fast is to catch my food and for some reason I can’t bring myself to eat her right now.
There’s just so many stolen memories packed inside my head, like flowers blooming haphazardly in a field. I worry that if I don’t take the time to look at each one, they’ll wither and die, leaving me a lonely, empty vacuum once more. This place, this apartment, Jeez, it was once so different. I can remember talking, as articulately and laconically, like my Dead-brain only manages inside my own head. My tongue wasn't a dried up old sponge and my lips weren’t thinned into a rictus grin. I could laugh and smile and even smirk, with nary a groan or a shrug in sight. I know these memories are stolen, ripped from Robin’s friend’s dying brain, but I savour them greedily, because they feel like mine.
In these memories, all around me were people, living people, who knew me and who loved me. But the irony is that, as I half expected, those feelings, those warm emotions, quickly evaporate leaving me bereft.
“Robin…” My lips fumble with her name, like my body is rebelling against the receding memories; rejecting them, like a virus. I can hear movement in the bedroom.
“You killed everyone didn’t you?” I hear her shout, then she does eerily quiet. After a few moments, the bedroom door creaks open. She’s got a gun, a shotgun, and she’s pointing it right at me. “Go for the brain, right? Yeah. Knew one day this baby would come in handy.”
“Gun… nut…” I say, because the residue of a stolen memory tells me that she is one. I should have known there would be weapons in her bedroom. Her dead friend would have known. Damn the unreliability of his dying brain!
A kind of horror passes over her face. “Stop that! Stop it!” She shouts. “You’re a thing! Stop talking and using my name and… and pretending you… just stop it!” She’s crying and the gun is shaking in her hands.
Robin Scherbatsky could always shoot straight, I think. Why is she trembling? Why hasn’t she fired?
“Do you know those people you killed?” Robin says, her voice catching, slowed down by emotion as she tries to regain some control of herself. “No, of course you don’t. You’re an undead monster. But if you did… if you had one shred of human feeling, you’d know that you just killed your best friend. You just killed Ted Mosby. I saw you do it! And the reason you got him was because he took one look at you and he thought there might be something left in that meat shell. Ted saw his friend and it made him weak! Ted thought he knew who you were!”
I can see her getting angry again. I can see her determination growing stronger and the gun getting steadier.
“Who… am I?” I ask her, my voice loosening a little through use. There’s more subtlety of tone, less rasp.
She just shakes her head and takes aim. “Only somebody I loved.”
And because I’m a zombie, and because she’s a woman with a gun, I lunge at her then, and the gun fires, but it misses my head and the buckshot eats through my shoulder and she collapses back under me. She manages to drag herself a couple of feet but I’m stronger and more inhuman than her, and I’m more dead than her, and I’m hungrier than her, and my teeth sink into her and snuff out the sparkle of her life.
Sparkles…
And then she’s gone.
#~-
I have no idea who I am.
I hang out in a bar a lot. It’s one of those basement bars that were fashionable in a city that used to be so teaming with life. But there’s no life here now, only us. The Dead.
But I have this idea, this belief that I belong here, like I’m waiting for something to happen or for somebody to come for me. It’s Christmas, and I feel like a kid waiting for Santa. Sometimes I reach into my jacket pocket and my fingers fumble at the crumpled paper inside. It’s a photograph - a photograph of five, laughing people. I have no idea who these people are but for reasons I can’t understand, when I look at the photo I feel the tiniest hint of peace.
So I keep the photo in my pocket like a talisman and I wait here, in this bar. Because good to stick with what you know. You know?
Summary: Nothing says BrOTP at Christmas like zombies.
Rating/Warnings: X, Zombieism, death, blood, horror and angst.
Previously on: Part 1
Written for: da_phoenix13 , queen of the zombie fic.
Challenge: fanfic100 Prompt - "Zombie"
Word Count: 1,663
Fandom/Pairing: HIMYM, Barney/Robin mixed with a lot of Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion.
Spoilers: Set some amount of time after Season 6 - False Positive. Oh, and a Zombie Apocalypse.
Part 2
I close my eyes and there is silence - no ending, no crack of her weapon discharging. Her gun has jammed it seems. I stand there, face smeared with the blood and the grey matter of her companion, and she screams at me. Not a frightened, girl-scream, but a yell of horror and disgust and white-hot fury.
And still I stand there while another of my companions swipes her feet out from under her and her temple thuds against a table as she goes down. She doesn’t move, and because it’s dark and chaotic, the other Dead lose interest in her. They’ve really got no imaginations. It’s embarrassing.
But their inattention gives me time to shuffle forward and scoop her up in my arms. I crash through the room, carrying her weight easily, and smash my way out of the apartment and back down the old stairwell. I have no idea where I’m taking her. Some instinct tells me that the bar is a bad idea. After all, I’m carrying take-out and I don’t want to share.
But I head back towards the bar anyway, travelling the familiar streets like a box car on rails. I can’t deviate from my path. I don’t even know how anymore.
Strange feelings cloud over me. I look down at the woman in my arms and I know that she is very brave and very beautiful. I know this more from somewhere inside me than from any evidence back up in that apartment. I know it like it’s… a memory.
Somehow, I come to a stop. My bar is just at the end of the block but it’s like I’ve run out of energy. Strange sensations continue to assault me - Strange images, tastes and sounds.
I remember this street and this girl in my arms. I even remember my bar, but in a way that's barely recognisable from the wreck that it's become. Somehow I remember when my bar was anything but dead. Back then, it was bustling with young people and their laughter and the overwhelming stink of beer and perfume and life. My friends and I, we were the loudest. We were the kings and queens of this tiny corner of Manhattan. The girl in my arms, I know her name now. Her name is Robin.
And I know exactly where to take her. I take her home.
#~-
The brownstone above my bar is surprisingly intact and the apartment I enter isn’t badly wrecked. There’s still a couch in the middle of the living room and it’s there I deposit the unconscious girl.
The memories flood in on me, confusing and disorienting me. I pace slowly around the apartment, associating the various bric-a-brac of life with different events. There’s a miniature telephone box that I remember most strongly, and a poster on the wall. When I see the photographs I freeze and stand there, immobile, for some time.
I have no idea how long Robin remains unconscious, but when she wakes I’m still staring at the photographs. I remember them - the people in them, and me. These memories of me.
But... but... I know what I look like. I’ve spent whole days just looking into the mirror. The face in these photographs looks nothing like that face. The guy in the photos is…
Oh god, the guy in the photos is the guy I killed in the apartment. It’s the guy whose brains I ate. This isn't me, I realize. These memories are not my memories.
Suddenly there’s a roar from behind me and I turn, too slowly, and a hunk of glass embeds itself into my chest. I look up, dumbly. “Doesn’t… work.” I say, struggling with each word. I want to explain that she can cut up my body as much as she likes but unless she destroys my brain, I’ll keep coming after her like the freakin’ Terminator.
“You can talk?” She blurts, clearly surprised. I can see that she’s looking frantically around for some kind of weapon, her face flushed with anger. She’s swaying though. She’s weak and she’s hurt and she’s probably starving. At least I can empathise with that last emotion.
“Won’t… hurt… you…” I groan. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Of course I want to hurt her. I want to grab her by the hair and smash in her pretty head and scoop out her tasty cerebellum. But I killed her friend and for some reason I’m now afflicted with his pesky emotions. Did she know her friend was in love with her, I wonder? My body is pulsing and my chest feels tight, like my lungs are bursting, and it’s all a little too much for a zombie-about-town to deal with.
Plus, she’s really ruined my suit. I like this suit! In this suit I could almost pass for human. I never realized how much that matters until it was ruined.
“Sit… down…” I say, and it comes out slurred and irritable. She glares at me but it's not my fault I'm slow. Making words is hard. I can see why most of the Dead don't bother. “Before… you… fall-”
“Down?” She interrupts me. “Just know this. I’m going to kill you before you kill me. That is literally all your kind do, isn’t it? Jesus, I can’t believe I’m trying to have an existential conversation with a zombie!” She laughs, but it’s strained. For a moment, I think she’s actually going to comply.
Then she lunges across the couch and makes a break for one of the bedrooms. I, like the idiot-savant than I am, just stand there. I try to look like I’m weighing my options, but the only time I move fast is to catch my food and for some reason I can’t bring myself to eat her right now.
There’s just so many stolen memories packed inside my head, like flowers blooming haphazardly in a field. I worry that if I don’t take the time to look at each one, they’ll wither and die, leaving me a lonely, empty vacuum once more. This place, this apartment, Jeez, it was once so different. I can remember talking, as articulately and laconically, like my Dead-brain only manages inside my own head. My tongue wasn't a dried up old sponge and my lips weren’t thinned into a rictus grin. I could laugh and smile and even smirk, with nary a groan or a shrug in sight. I know these memories are stolen, ripped from Robin’s friend’s dying brain, but I savour them greedily, because they feel like mine.
In these memories, all around me were people, living people, who knew me and who loved me. But the irony is that, as I half expected, those feelings, those warm emotions, quickly evaporate leaving me bereft.
“Robin…” My lips fumble with her name, like my body is rebelling against the receding memories; rejecting them, like a virus. I can hear movement in the bedroom.
“You killed everyone didn’t you?” I hear her shout, then she does eerily quiet. After a few moments, the bedroom door creaks open. She’s got a gun, a shotgun, and she’s pointing it right at me. “Go for the brain, right? Yeah. Knew one day this baby would come in handy.”
“Gun… nut…” I say, because the residue of a stolen memory tells me that she is one. I should have known there would be weapons in her bedroom. Her dead friend would have known. Damn the unreliability of his dying brain!
A kind of horror passes over her face. “Stop that! Stop it!” She shouts. “You’re a thing! Stop talking and using my name and… and pretending you… just stop it!” She’s crying and the gun is shaking in her hands.
Robin Scherbatsky could always shoot straight, I think. Why is she trembling? Why hasn’t she fired?
“Do you know those people you killed?” Robin says, her voice catching, slowed down by emotion as she tries to regain some control of herself. “No, of course you don’t. You’re an undead monster. But if you did… if you had one shred of human feeling, you’d know that you just killed your best friend. You just killed Ted Mosby. I saw you do it! And the reason you got him was because he took one look at you and he thought there might be something left in that meat shell. Ted saw his friend and it made him weak! Ted thought he knew who you were!”
I can see her getting angry again. I can see her determination growing stronger and the gun getting steadier.
“Who… am I?” I ask her, my voice loosening a little through use. There’s more subtlety of tone, less rasp.
She just shakes her head and takes aim. “Only somebody I loved.”
And because I’m a zombie, and because she’s a woman with a gun, I lunge at her then, and the gun fires, but it misses my head and the buckshot eats through my shoulder and she collapses back under me. She manages to drag herself a couple of feet but I’m stronger and more inhuman than her, and I’m more dead than her, and I’m hungrier than her, and my teeth sink into her and snuff out the sparkle of her life.
Sparkles…
And then she’s gone.
#~-
I have no idea who I am.
I hang out in a bar a lot. It’s one of those basement bars that were fashionable in a city that used to be so teaming with life. But there’s no life here now, only us. The Dead.
But I have this idea, this belief that I belong here, like I’m waiting for something to happen or for somebody to come for me. It’s Christmas, and I feel like a kid waiting for Santa. Sometimes I reach into my jacket pocket and my fingers fumble at the crumpled paper inside. It’s a photograph - a photograph of five, laughing people. I have no idea who these people are but for reasons I can’t understand, when I look at the photo I feel the tiniest hint of peace.
So I keep the photo in my pocket like a talisman and I wait here, in this bar. Because good to stick with what you know. You know?