Breddy AUs

Tainted Reconciliation (Pt 3)

The days had flown by, nothing but a blur of planning. It almost made Brett dizzy how fast time had passed since they had gotten engaged. But now, standing in front of Eddy, time seemed to stop. Everything faded into the background. No more officiant and his boring speech, no more burning, almost judgmental gazes of his parents. Nothing mattered besides Eddy. The officiant finally ended his rambling, and Eddy slipped the ring onto his finger. Brett looked down at the matching bands. He marveled at his such a tiny thing could represent his whole world. Eddy's hand slipped around his waist, snapping him back to the present, pulling him in, tightening his arms around his waist, leaning down, lips almost touching...

Brett sighed. How he wished that wasn't all just a daydream. They said the real thing is always better than the dream, too. But it wasn't real. It was far from real. They weren't getting married. They probably never had been. Eddy was just playing with him the whole time, just using him to get through the apocalypse alive. He had had Brett wrapped around his finger the whole time, just to cruelly rip out his heart once he got bored of him. He had never actually loved him: it was just a lie. Right? After all, how could you move on from someone in less than a week if you truly loved them?
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He had been out, trying to find more food for them. The supermarkets and stores had long since been stripped of anything useful, so they had to scavenge and hunt in the forests. Luckily, there wasn't a shortage of food there. He had been following the line of snares, checking if any of them had caught anything, when he heard a noise behind him. He started to turn around, but he wasn't fast enough. The world had already gone dark.

He had woken up lying on a hard mattress, the rough fabric scratching against his back. For some reason, this bed felt familiar. Too familiar.
His eyes flew open and he bolted upright. The light blinded him for a minute, hurting his head, but his eyes soon got used to it. As soon as he saw where he was, his stomach sunk. He was back in the camp. The government run "shelter" camps. His memory slowly came back; he had been checking the snares when the bushes had rustled behind him, and then his vision had gone black and his memory stopped. Someone must have snuck up behind him and knocked him out, then brought him here. And if he was here... Where was Eddy? Was he ok? Had the government done anything to him? Anxiety bubbled in his stomach as he got up and left the room.

Eddy was cleaning up around the house when the knock on the door came. No one ever came around the house; there wasn't even anyone near their camp. He assumed it was Brett; he was a bit puzzled why he was knocking since they lived here, but he didn't think much of it. But when he opened the door, his stomach started sinking. It wasn't Brett. It was a government officer. Their presence at their house was not a good sign. He waited with his heart in his throat while the officer did the usual not quite formal but cold and distant introductions. And then she got down to business. They had taken Brett. There was only one way to keep him alive; date this girl they had found, pretend to be in love with her, get married, make them believe it was real. He couldn't believe they were doing this to them. Yes, the government didn't exactly love same gender marriage. But he never thought they'd go this far... The thought of dating someone else, marrying someone else besides Brett made Eddy want to puke. But the thought of Brett being harmed and killed was even worse. As soon as the officer had closed the door, he sank to the floor, breaking down into sobs.

Brett was back to being a lab assistant. In fact, it was the same doctor he had worked for the first time he'd gotten stuck in one of these camps. But this time, he didn't just help with filing papers and recording experiments. No. This time, he was the experiment.
They had found out that his blood cured the zombie virus. They had drawn so much blood, almost killing him from loss of blood. They tested so many things on him, injected so much into his body. He would have fought back, tried to escape. But they had killed his heart, too.
Around a week after he had been brought to the camp, the head of the camp called Brett into his office. By the time he got there, his hands were clammy and he was sweating. He wasn't looking forward to what the head had to say. Was Eddy alive? Had he been hurt? Had the government done something to him?
Had he been killed?