Gerard Way

Gerard woke before the bells.

He knew he had, because the room was still washed dull blue grey that came with the last hour of night, because the enormous windows had not yet begun reflecting the red flags outside, and because somewhere, the machinery of Draag had not yet woken to the morning.

He had learned the sounds. That was the first thing he told himself. He had learned the sounds because he was observant, because he'd always been observant, because if you lived somewhere long enough you learned which pipes groaned and which doors stuck and which lights hummed when they were about to die. It wasn't because Draag itself was starting to get to him. That would be ridiculous.

Gerard lay still beneath the blankets and stared at the ceiling. There were painted clouds up there. He hated them. They had been painted to look soft and innocent, billows of greys and whites, but whoever had done them had apparently never looked at an actual sky. The perspective was wrong. The shadows were wrong, and there was something vaguely threatening about them, though Gerard couldn't have said why. He had spent twenty minutes yesterday morning trying to figure it out before Ray had come to drag him out of bed.

Twenty minutes. He remembered that. Remembered sitting beneath the mural with his boots on the table, smoking nothing, because he'd quit years ago, and thinking about clouds. That was the sort of thing the Dictator did now. No. The sort of things he did now. Him. Gerard. Elected or not, that was still his name. He'd gotten to keep that at least.

He closed his eyes, just for a moment. Surely he could get five more minutes before he had to sit in a chair for most of the day without any real access to a good microphone, or rehearsal room, or hell, even Frank telling him he was being an idiot without the safety of a gun being ominously flicked off. Just five more minutes.

Get up.

His eyes opened again, and he glanced around the room. Nobody had spoken. He looked toward the door. Nothing.

"Okay," he whispered, and his own voice sounded strange in the room.

Too loud.

He sat up and swung his feet onto the floor with a little theatrical spin of his body, dragging the sheets with him. Thick black woollen socks landed against wooden floorboards draped in expensive heavy carpets.

Dress.

Gerard froze. There it was again. It wasn't a voice, not exactly, more like the shape of a thought that had arrived already finished. He stared at the uniform. He knew the order, of course he knew it he had done it the same way every morning for six weeks ever since he had returned to Draag not as the frontman of The Black Parade, but as the newly elected Grand Immortal Dictator. Shirt. Trousers. Boots. Coat. Cape.

The cape was hanging from its usual place beside the wardrobe. Black fabric, heavy gold stitching, the clasp catching the faint light. It had become so familiar that sometimes he forgot it was ridiculous. Sometimes he looked at it and thought it was beautiful. The fact he did bothered him.

Still, he stood there for several seconds, waiting to discover whether he had decided to get dressed or whether the decision had simply occurred in him.

"You're getting paranoid," he said to himself, and dressed anyway.

In the mirror, he looked almost convincing. That was another problem.

The black coat fitted him perfectly now, the high collar sharpened his jaw in a way that looked both attractive, and military. The dark makeup beneath his eyes made him look tired in a deliberate way, as though exhaustion itself had become part of the uniform. His hair refused to cooperate, which he privately considered one remaining victory.

He leaned toward the mirror.

"Good morning, Your Grand Immortal Dictatorship," he said, dragging out the word morning with a theatrical little bow to himself.

He smiled, lopsided scars tugging in his pale skin. His reflection smiled back. Gerard's smile disappeared very quickly after that.

Outside, the first bells began to ring. One. Two. Three heavy tolls, signalling through the white city blocks, that Draag was waking. All 714 miles, though Gerard had sworn it had been bigger.

He could already picture the streets below: the uniforms, the banners, the enormous screens preparing his face for the morning broadcast. His face. Not his voice, or some others, announcing the praises of the Grand Immortal Dictator. No, now, he was the one being praised.

Part of him liked that.

And that was the biggest problem of all.