Masters of Death

Dead is the new Alive

When he woke up he was disoriented. Everything felt just a little bit off. The air had too many strong smells, whatever he was laying on was too rough, he could hear... lots of noises. Beeps, running, wheels, talking. (Was someone crying?)

Vlad would have assumed he was still in the lab with Jack and Maddie, had it not been for the strongest scents being the familiar smell of 'Soleil Brûlant' with an underlying hint of cigar smoke and the much closer smell of 'Bitter Peach'. Two things he had learnt to associate with family a long time ago. Father and Anya.

What he couldn't identify right away, trying to crack his eyes open, was the origin of a slight ozone tang and something that smelt how he would imagine saline solution tasted like.

The damp weight across his chest also threw him, shifting just a bit as he finally managed to blink crusty eyes open, only to be met with Anya's red rimmed eyes and puffy face.

Tears. Tears are salty. The saline smell.

His sister was crying. Full on sobbing her heart out and she- Vlad narrowed his eyes, taking both of his apparent visitors in. Something wasn't quite right, there was more grey in fathers hair, Anya's hair was longer than it should have been...

They both looked older than he remembered.

"What the fuck happened"

👻

As it turns out, quite a bit. 2 years. 2 years he had been in a steadily declining coma with no solution in sight.

Right up until he had finally (and it turns out quite permanently) flatlined and inexplicably woken up again.

In another universe, one without the high end private healthcare Jonathan Masters insisted on, having never met, one without Tatiana being able to afford medical school, working 3 jobs to afford her baby brothers medical costs, Vlad had woken up in extreme pain, alone, and had stayed that way for another 8 years before he was able to leave the hospital, his new obsession driving him steadily to madness as it sat undiscovered and unfulfilled.

Everything was a bit of a whirlwind after that, Anya bless her heart had managed to fudge the records of his vitals and forged a diagnosis of brachycardia to explain his 'slow' (read: nonexistent) heartbeat when they realised it wasn't going to return to normal.

Father had paid the hospital handsomely and had them sign some extremely harsh NDA's before thanking them for their time and ushering his children home.

...And then Vlad spent the next year trying to figure out and acclimatise to the fact that he was for all purposes dead and possessing his own corpse. Thankfully he was already in contact with the ghost of his dairy obsessed grandfather. Who incidentally was pleased as punch to be related to the first half ghost in a millennia.

It made Vlad's newly formed pink coloured core hum with content, and this was how he discovered that his 'ghostly obsession' was his family. Their health, comfort, happiness... anything he could do for them.

In that other, dark universe, he learnt this all from a hospital bed, and it was only after the death of a sick Jonathan Masters and the subsequent inheritance, already in the throes of madness, that he discovered his predicament. The obsession he had latched onto in the absence of a stable family life was his mild crush on one Madeline Walker.  Discovering her marriage to the man that killed him and the children that had been born had been that last push over the edge.

Life (well, half-life) moved on. He learned what had been happening in the world since his accident, moved back home, sold various inventions and patents he had created both before and after he woke up, and generally tried to rebuild everything that had been lost to him.

If he casually ignored any and all correspondence that looked to have been sent his way by the Fentons nobody could blame him. After all, they had ended him in hospital, and then he had cornered the steadily growing market of Ecto-related sciences to the point that he now had more money that his father. The one silver lining to the end of their joint work. A growing and widespread belief in the supernatural.

He created a company, and rose up in the world.

Right up until he came home one day to find someone... something he didn't recognose sat on his desk and pondering the old grandfather clock that sat off to the side.

Sure it looked like a ghost but... something wasn't quite right there, the blue tinged skin and red eyes were similar to himself, but the staff he held and the various timepieces... gave off something far different to anything he had encountered thus far.

His ghostly core, still apparently in its infancy, with no designation of its own yet, was pulsing. Could feel the presence in front of him like a great tidal wave, but welcoming instead of warning.

"Hello Vladimir. I've waited a long time to meet you"