he gaze darts between golden eyes, set afire by the last afternoon sun as it catches on every reflective surface on its way to them. the cool blue of the dull shadows, the dusty gray world of this house that has gone undisturbed for decades only interrupted by starbursts of sunlight on the rosey hued mirrors and the polished bedposts, the worn track that shows exactly where ethan's feet carry him through the house: all through the service kitchen and the sunroom he has turned into his study, the one bedroom that had a working fireplace he could feed split logs with black rings and bursting heads of mushrooms growing on them, the bathroom that is their or at least his own destination, with its strange skeletal structure of rusted brass and yellowed tile, receding grout that is lined, like everything else, in fuzzy mildew. just when he feels like his retinas will burn out from gazing at the twin suns burning into him, he finds relief in the wolfish grin, of too many teeth all crowded and overlapping at unpleasant angles. as always it makes the rings of teeth marks on his body burn with the memory of how they felt sinking into flesh, like pressing on a bruise to watch the blue-black cloud disappear for a moment whilst pale white blooms before it returns and with it, bloodflow and a strangely addictive release.

" unfortunately, they've got enough manpower to fuck up in multiple places. " karl savors his jokes, feeding into the reverberating rhetoric that so many other people around the world indulge in. whittling down the country of his birth to bullies and loudmouths. it was the same stuff he heard as a kid from his cousins when he would go with his mother back to her homeland for the summer, but somehow it stung more back then. maybe it was just the rose-colored glasses of childhood when everything feels like a personal attack or maybe it was the fact that every morning he was required to stand beside his desk, place his right hand over his heart, angle his body towards the little plastic flag hanging flaccid in a corner of the ceiling and recite the pledge of allegiance. from kindergarten to the last day of high school he repeated those thirty-two words that were drilled into his head and even if he has not spoken them in that exact order in nearly twenty years, he bets he could regurgitate them now with perfect clarity. " they're an international organization, they can be wherever they want and with everything else happening, people are scared. they want to help or they want protection. fear is the best propaganda anyone can harvest. imagine you know that more than anyone. "

it seeps through his newsfeed and is absorbed in social settings, when he still engaged in a living world that was not the half-scorched remains of this village or the mechanized necropolis below. every day there was stories of monsters washing ashore from the china sea or small outbreaks along the blurry line between eastern europe and northwestern asia. there was outbreaks everywhere that were slipping out, not to mention the ones he had heard about from various agents. the tragedy of the annabelle and the baker homestead was not an anomaly but a growing statistic that could no longer be ignored. before he chased an email sent by the ghost of his beloved, he refused to believe it, foisting it off on drug-fueled attacks and misidentified attackers reported by traumatized survivors-- then the inhumanity was brought right to him, or he stepped into it, he supposes.

karl has lived in this liminal space of humanity and monstrosity for longer than he has not but also, he has not seen how the outside world has suffered from it. the trappings of the old world wars show how out of touch he is, like his use of goggle-eyed televisions sets always in need of new cathode rays, he is still catching up, stuck just behind the speed of sound and unable to produce the sonic boom that will bring him into the modern century. he has no idea of what the molded were, of how they worked outside the reports and ethan's own failing descriptions... and the thing that he has the capacity to become. the stories he has heard, the news reports, the forum posts, everything he used to brush aside while he drank his double shot no whip, oat milk cappuccino now the soul focus of his life.

" of course we take their shit. " he agrees, indulging his companion's hoarding tendencies a might too much but only having the energy and time to break him of one bad habit at a time-- also they owe him all they have and more for failing to carry out one simple directive. " if they aren't gonna be useful or get killed before we ever even make contact, their crap is forfeit. anyone that crosses those fucking mountains are on our turf. " he has set his horn-head down and locked his knees proclaiming himself king of this hill, forgetting entirely too easily that he very entrance into this place was stumbling through the snowdrifts and carving a path of blood and crystal to karl's front door. " they'll be useful to us, one way or another. "

there it is, like a vein of glittering gold woven along cavernous wall, that ruthless streak in him. something he cannot remember as always being there but a remnant gained just the way he has a mangled, warped edge to his left hand or the tangled scars that bunch up when he smirks. his hands lift the bottom hem of his shirt out of his waistband where he dutiful tucks it. the clothes that are found not worn through by the hungry mouths of moths that leave their sticky cocoons in the folds usually do not fit him quite right. some that fit through the shoulders lift to expose swathes of skin along his wrists and midriff while others absolutely swallow him whole and he has to tuck and roll them to make them fit correctly. the angular hem drops free and nimble fingers deftly push each button through the frayed hole, every action leaving more of his skin exposed. the fabric has soaked up the sweat and soot from cooking and then cooled during his private concert, now stiff and itchy, specked black with charred splinters of wood and ash that will need to be scrubbed out.

" as long as we're on the same page, i'm feelin' good. don't want us running in two different directions when they show up. " -- and truly, it is a matter of when. the bsaa or their buddies blue umbrella, any of those that worked with the connections or whoever else, is not going to walk away from a precious commodity like the mold, offering immortality and neigh complete control of those infected. ethan peels the shirt from his back, the fabric pulling away like velcro before he drops it onto the sunken seat of a near-by chair. " we're a team. you and me. " there is no worry once the fighting starts, both times they have had an opponent to face they have fallen instantly into a rhythm like dance partners, but neither of them should jump the gun when there is the possibility of coming out with the better end of the deal.

there is no threat from men with guns — he fears the cage, not the wound. broken bones and incision sites, all of them suffering the same dull ache, far less of an irritant than the starshower of blinding light imprinted upon the backs of his eyelids when the sun is too bright as if experience has shaped the reaction of his body: a tolerance built for pain, the expectation of the strike from the hand that feeds or, perhaps, a gift from the horrid worm that has made a home of him, fight-or-flight instinct devoured, the wounds received a mere inconvenience — a severed throat barely registers, but the itch of a healing lesion drives him to the edge of madness. idiots with more ammunition than brainpower and all of them viewed under the patronizing gaze of a man whose lifeline has been extended longer than it should, rendering them naught but children playing soldier, do not frighten him. if they come, as they did before, too late to be of any use and unwilling to listen, he will kill them. if ethan doesn't.

brows furrow, scars and the etchings of senectitude both along his forehead pulled down as the comment is examined, the rapid disembowelling done with as little consideration as the corpses upon his table, unsatisfied with the implications: not the benefit of distance that comes from the pitying of villagers kept under the thumb but instead that he knows fear intimately, that he bought into propaganda dictated from the word of a self-made god / that he, too, has played his role as tyrant gleefully. both are, were, shades of something true. whatever organ is responsible for guilt has long since fallen prey to the wrought-iron revolution of his own body, but the implication, real or imagined, that he belongs under the same category as those who had made their faustian bargains sits inside him like a led weight, an anathema too intricately woven to be removed.

it is, however, soothed by the salve of ethan's words — the ease of how we, us, our falls from his tongue. to imagine them as the only two inhabitants of this commune is an idyllic thought he often must remind himself is not true, not when the beast-men and the ophidian-tongued women still mark the landscape though their numbers have fallen into the scant few, nor the giant merchant whose laughter shakes the snow and dew from the divaricating branches of mold that sprung up overnight as if god had remade the world anew, the old trees replaced by something sinister. ethan is much more conscious of it, be it paranoia or habit, knows that even in the depths of factory that they are not the only ones whose heartbeats reverberate tenfold in the dark ; we, us, our, another notch in the bulwark of his isolation, a thing depreciating over months as meals are shared, conversations indulged, bodies learned, scars gained. gifts that he does not yet understand — unable to hold them, unable to occupy them, not like the titanium heart or the home with dusty halls and stained windows filtering yellow light that ethan's lithe figure somehow blocks as if, whilst unaware, his vision whittled down and blinders strapped upon his head so that it is focused entirely on the man before him.

to find himself as treated — as acknowledged — as under the aegis of the newest saint to grace this village and not, as he had been, thrown to wolves and nature is an odd feeling. the warming paraesthesia, that accompanies it more so.

"how ruthless," the amphitheatre of his mouth, ever crowded with stained teeth, wide and adoring, "i like it." the last lord is not responsible for the fault lines in his partner, cracks in the foundation of his personality far before they knew of each others existence nor the ones that made themselves known after the disaster of dulvey, the same that had led the cryptogenic abattoir of ethan winters to his home, bloody hands around the barrel of the wolfkiller, but he feeds the infection of it nonetheless — repayment for his own, the rosy hues of affection that have bloomed inside the meat of him, a malady administered no different to the rot. he would do the same for any, he thinks, and oh, how he had tried. the apparition of a girl could not be summoned as a vengeful spectre and the lonely leviathan would not invite their mother to sleep upon the bed of his tongue. how much better their lives would have been if they had listened and allowed the iron steed to sow the seeds of discontent, iron caltrops and barbed wire. any sympathy that could be roused in the presence of a man who has lost everything would be ill-spent: ethan still has his wife, ex-wife, still has his daughter, his free will — never did he find himself fettered by eveline's roots like he had the gilded saints — and yet, he encourages the metastasis of justice. vengeance. so it may be another thing shared between them — ours.

"haven't run away from you yet, papa," ever has he been the dog at ruined altar, too proud to beg, too hungry to bite. "a team," the shape of it odd in his mouth when not ersatz, spoken like an invective, "with all its little benefits." self-satisfied, the purr of his internal engine reverberates along his throat and further still, to words elongated unnecessarily, whilst he leers unabashedly. the vacuum left in the doorway taken up by himself, left hand returning to its futile effort to push errant hair back out of his face whilst the other hovers, idle and unoccupied. "still, might be that they're too embarrassed. that's twice they've fucked it up - a real shitshow, both times - " but then again: third times the charm, or so they say — whoever they are, "regardless. we'll deal with it. we've got bigger fish to fry."

their objective one he finds much harder to concentrate on as ethan sheds his outer layers with an air of causality that is striking in how foreign it is, unlike the frenzied effort when they are body to body that has, more often than not, resulted in dishevelment rather than disrobement. he watches, grinning, imagining an array of fantasies: his penchant for voyeurism catered to by a private show, not of fingers on ivory keys but skin and bone; the idea that ethan will keep going, down to bone and muscle, the honesty of being as they truly are, amalgamations of rot clothed in fleshy layers. how unlike himself to consider the complexities of intimacy, a thing he has not known nor considered prior — he assumes it another facet of his ego, starved and slavering, a need that has developed teeth and not the softer qualities of him that had been expunged under god's scalpel. to be naked with another an oddity, only out of habit, another victim of his self-imposed isolation, not culture, shame a thing he has no use for. a nonchalance found in abundance this side of the world but ethan is not simply another person, another body. how hard it is to concentrate when the other is illuminated in the golden gaze of the waning sun — the approaching distance that will separate them a far more irritating splinter than that of men playing soldier. "so," left hand waves, dismissively, to keep itself occupied, "when are you going?" it sounds pathetic, sounds clingy, as if it is not a simple question asked but the whine of a child unable to care for itself. the embarrassment an aftertaste he can barely swallow. this must be how it felt to be his siblings, always begging for reassurances that would not come, afraid of being abandoned. "don't want to start something just for you to fuck off in the middle of it." a half-truth, bandaged over — time becomes irrelevant at the bottom of the earth.

thinking about when karl dies. the factory doesn't stop, not immediately, it's not tied to his life force by some mysterious magic — it's an extension of him, mostly metaphorical / representative, but he's not the one powering it. instead the factory preforms its death rattle as it powers down, the bulk of it turned pitch black as the lights go out and what little natural light there is through the cavern doesn't reach anywhere useful. it's still. it's silent. the smokestacks finally vanish. the barn rots and withers. the junkyard has always been a cemetery, the rusting carcasses of vehicles and machinery, but it becomes overgrown. reclaimed by nature. reclaimed by the mold. the soldat stand waiting for orders that do not come, not dead but not alive, either, just toys no longer played with.

there's no burial — there is, after all, no body to bury. just crystal and metal, the rest of him turned to ash. it was always going to end this way. the last lord of the village, gone.

sorry i’m still thinking about it. we haven’t hashed out more than the rough details, mostly because i want it to be left in my beloveds hands so it comes as a surprise to both me and karl but i’m thinking about the parallels. karl has always been the judas in miranda’s disciples. it’s a role he chose for himself, in spite of the one she picked for him ( and just like judas - how much of that was really his choice? god made him. ) the betrayer being betrayed. with a kiss? he can only hope.

Leon notes the guy's reluctance to part with his name in return, but decides to not press it for the time being. Whatever peace or allyship brokered here is likely tenuous at best and he'd do well to remind himself not to let his guard down throughout this endeavor.

Besides, he can't deny he doesn't find at least some amusement in calling the guy discount Magneto in the privacy of his own mind. Gotta find the laughs where he damn well can, especially in a place as dreary and dead as this one. " Oh, so you've met him, grand. Sounds like there's an interesting story there, " Leon doesn't bother to hide the note of amused derision in his own tone of voice; still a little bitter about their last few interactions━ Colorado, New York, to San Francisco, and the fact that each time he thinks he's gotten on some kind of even footing with the guy, Redfield pulls yet another stunt that shows Leon he still thinks himself above everyone else. Like he's the only one that can solve this shitfest, rather than, you know, asking for some help.

Pot. Kettle, he hears Chris' voice lob back at him and━ Yeah, yeah, Leon's aware of the hypocrisy of that thought, doesn't stop him from feeling the sting of it. Besides, while there used to be a time where he thought he could coast by at playing the damn hero, taking everything on himself because at least then the risk of anyone else getting hurt would be minimized, years of experience have thought him another story entirely.

But, he digresses.

" The church, huh? " He picks up on the tip, glad enough he doesn't actually have to go around traipsing in the woods and waves off discount Magneto's statement that there's nothing left around here and that it'd be best to move on. Though that may or may not be true, Leon would be foolish not to at least cover all corners before he decides to move on. " Well, I'm due my next confession anyway. " He shoots back glibly, before turning his gaze to peer out over the rubble and rotten buildings, careful enough to keep his companion in his periphery regardless.

There's several structures that stand out. The gothic looking castle up on the hill he's certain he doesn't want to get close to. The towers and turrets of a factory further down, from which smoke still rises and━ he's certain enough about this━ discount Magneto probably calls a home. And there, more towards the center, the peak of a church does indeed stick out.

Really like Spain all over again. Jolly. " What about you MC Hammer? Can I expect you along to laugh at my progress or━? "

"he's...hard to miss. built like a brick shithouse. not like anyone around here," spoken without a hint of irony, as if he too is not broader than he is taller, the fabric of his attire worn thin in its quotidian struggle to clothe him, years worth of manual labour resulting in muscle that has been lost or masked by layers of fat, "the grand old show of charging in guns blazing certainly wasn't subtle by any means, either." despite his efforts ( or perhaps in spite of ), the call for the cavalry to charge in had failed to live up to the last lord's lofty expectations. those who had answered the call now remained either interwoven between the twisting fingers of god bursting from the earth or picked clean, the empty shells of helmets picked clean of corpseflesh by starving scavengers. redfield's little group had fared better, but a disappointment overall ━ bsaa and hound wolf squad both now crossed out on his board, an opportunity rescinded: all of them, idiots, with more ammunition than braincells, in his opinion.

still, the story offered is painfully concise, his attention hooked on the protruding barb of sarcasm ━ sounds like leon's got his own story. the thought ricochets along the plating of his skull, unable to produce any convincing reason for why he would be here, in the village of the damned, looking for a man he does not like. even under miranda's thumb, he would spare no effort to search for any of his so-called-siblings should they vanish into smoke. his response would have been the same for that as it was for them crumbling into crystal and dust, their dying howls shaking the foundations of the mountains: good fucking riddance.

"oh? you think someone's listening?" his grin verges on the edge of sardonic, as if the very notion of a benevolent god is amusing ━ it is. "didn't do them any favours but who knows. maybe todays your lucky day!" as always he speaks to the vague audience of dead, arms gesturing out wide to the nothingness that would be ━ were he not used to it ━ oppressive. the absence of life given weight, its silence bitten back by the gnashing teeth and performative volume of the last lord. bodies that have decomposed between the rubble and those no longer recognisable as corpses save the fragments of bone jutting from shards of crystal, glimmering in the light. beast-men and winged-harpies, slaughtered in winter's path.

it is a punishable sin to speak with outsiders. to invite them in, worse. lucky for leon that the last survivor has a penchant for rebellion, for pure spite, the dial of his disregard cranked up to eleven: he'll play the friendly local, drag outsiders to their holy places, invite them to piss on her metaphorical grave and pretend, as he always has, that it does not elicit a discomfort implanted and fostered under gilded talons. each word spoken in english to an outsider, each dismissal of their aberrant god, all of it serves to whittle down the fetters she has bound him in until they snap.

how disappointing it has been for him, to realise killing her did not remove the fingerprints embossed on his insides: how many of his habits are his own and how many were formed in response to the woman delusional enough to think herself the mouthpiece to something holy? he doesn't think about it. doesn't want to.

"me? well, i had a long, thrilling day of picking through rubble planned but," sarcasm slips off a steel tongue with ease, head canting back to leon's direction, his feet already mid-stride over the ruins of a disembowelled porch, "sure, why not. wouldn't want you falling into the big fucking hole in the ground your friend left behind." the guise of consideration would, perhaps, sound far more genuine were it not for his general disposition: ever a victim to the same oil-slick inside the bellies of conmen and salesmen ━ he, the far more literal interpretation, the internal machine of him running on gasoline and crude oil, a beast undeterred by the algid gales trapped in the valley of this village.

in order to avoid the black undulating veins of god that sprawl across the village's heart, writhing as they always do, his feet lead them along the curve of wrought iron bars, fingers glancing over each like the idle strum of an instrument, until they reach the gate torn off it's hinges, slowly rusting beneath the snow. the wooden church itself, no worse for wear, besides the faces of painted saints suffering their war-wounds: scorch marks and splintered wood, shades of blue and gold stained beneath the black of blood, the goat-bone wards pulled from the doorway: safe no longer. "took a bit of a beating, but it didn't fall. guess that's one of god's little miracles, huh?"

it would not be dishonest to say he does not appreciate the clumsy shuffling of pronouns, of i to we, as if an after thought-- and that is what it is, of course. ethan is an after thought even as he stands directly in front of the man, filling his belly with a meal that is an unspoken apology for the ugly wound cut across his hand and for the lie of omission, then led him by invisible leash along the stairs to this spot there they converse in a threshold. it feels like everything has been stuck in this perpetual limbo, half living, half dead. he has more in-common now with the robotic arts and crafts projects that crawl around blindly in the mines a hundred feet or more below them than he does with the bulk of the man tripping over his words before him, they might as well hold their conversations of such great weight in the liminal space of a doorway, halfway between the fulfilling meal of meat and rice and hot bread and the indulgence that comes after.

" of course. loot the bodies. " he purses he lips, brow meeting low as he nods, as if it is the plainest course of action to take and it has nothing to do with karl's main fascination being weapons of destruction and the preserved bodies of the men that played with them. is he gonna keep them, he wonders, to make more of his fucking toys? defending himself lends a tint of moral righteousness but feeding wires and bolting ugly devices into their skulls trips over the line he observes. it becomes distasteful, a sick display of inhumanity. ethan tries his very best to ignore the roving figures that even in silhouette or painted in the thinnest illumination of red safety lights, could never be mistaken for human by anyone. his eyes fail in the heart of the factory, he stays within the one room that radiates like a captured sun, every outlet set into the concrete walls plugged in with tall standing lamps or cords snaking behind tables and along counters to desk lamps he removes the shades from. he is not scared of the dark but he wanders not where the circle of amber light fades to nothingness. karl continues on, his eyes shifting as if watching the invisible strings of radiowaves from somewhere dance before his eyes then pulls the start of his next sentence long, like some beast stretching languidly, pushing each limb out to its length and taking all the time it can after being called before finally moving to its master's side. " you suppose? " he cuts in quick, too used to stitching his words together at a faster pace, a holdover from a world constantly on the move, where time is money.

" a deal? " he echoes, doubt and disinteresting florescent in his words. he has made deals with them before and reaped the end results. he had walked away from his life, let his parents and sister mourn an empty grave, gave up the job he worked hard to gain and excel at for the promise of sanctuary. both of them had given up so much, their privacy, the ownership of their very bodies for endless tests and review, but it was supposed to be worth it. it was supposed to be the bedrock by which they could finally live the life they wanted. sure it would not be in a high-rise apartment overlooking los angeles or a beautiful ranch-style home on a bluff outside of houston, but it would be theirs and that was enough for him. he had mia back, regaining her health, both of them sleeping little in the wake of a newborn but everything seemed bursting with possibilities, only to have it all ripped out from under him, like a cruel joke.

whatever deal could be made between a dead man and a half-mechanized lord of nowhere with the international paramilitary organization would be one that would leave them with infinitely shrinking shortcomings. how long would it be before whatever they could provide them became not enough, before they were caged and collected, moved to a laboratory where there was equipment and teams of scientists ready to discover the nature of them both. the last thing ethan wants is more evelines being manufactured and shipped out. he has inherited the mantle of patriarch of the rot, it is his responsibility as much as it is his burden.

" we could get information from them, a resource outside is not a terrible option. " his eyes drop into the middle distance as he mutters to himself, zoe is helpful in only so many ways. she forwards him information about whatever she finds in regards to dulvey, to the great wall that was constructed around the ruins of her childhood home. she keeps an eye out by crawling conspiracy forums and hashtags of locals that were there to witness the missing fliers cover every powerline pole and shop window, the faces of the dozens and dozens of victims her parents claimed trampled by tourists flowing through the streets for mardi gras, year after year. she is, however, limited to civilian channels, she did not have her brother's interest in backdoor technologies. someone in a position of power would be helpful. mia would be more helpful, names of old coworkers or companies she remembered could get them in touch with someone that may have worked on the synthetic strains, including the e-series as well as miranda's official notes from that project he has yet to find within the faded covers of the journals he has been carving through... but he cannot ask her for that favor. she never wanted to answer his questions when things seemed perfect, she certainly is in a less approachable mood now.

" he's not my friend! " he snaps. as usual, he had pushed the continual chatter that emanates from karl just like the infernal buzzing, to the backburner, listening without actively listening, until he hears a familiar word that snags his attention. the abrupt turnabout from idle if not dubious consideration at the prospect of having a connection with fingers in all the right pies to a flaring temper brings his dark eyes right into the other's placid gaze. the leisurely line of his lean frame becomes taught, no longer a paper ribbon that would crumble at a single touch but razor wire strung across a threshold at throat level. tension builds in his jaw, attention wretched away with a petulant turn of his shoulders, falling into the room with his back to the other. at least karl is not accusing him of a romantic tie with chris this time. he swallows the anger and rejection, all the hurt and the painful, bitter betrayal of trusting someone to keep them safe only to have been let down. slowly the truth always comes out and while there is some accusations that turned out to not be as they seemed, he still harbors a craving to put his fist into the man's face until he cannot remember what it looks like.

" i don't give a shit how he feels-- no, you know what, i do actually. i hope he feels real fuckin' torn up over how royally he ruined everything. " all the pieces had fallen just right for ethan to end up here, and as much as his clouded mind thinks only of the next time they will sit down together for a meal or how it is going to feel to have karl's weight thrown against him again, it does not entirely easy the aching wound of a life torn apart. " if you think they are worth working with, i'll fall in line beside you but trust me, " his hands dart about as he speaks, motioning to his companion and then to himself, long fingers splayed across his chest, the tips of them catching the hard edge of the crest. " ok, i'm not interested in whatever he has to say for himself. i'm more likely to kill him before i forgive him. " ethan will resign himself to brooding in the background with fists clinched while karl puts that tongue of his to work negotiating whatever terms he thinks they can get. " you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, so i agree: we need every bit of information they have so we squeeze them for all their worth then cut them off. i do what i'm good at. " not a fiber in his being can argue against the fact that he is very good at killing whatever is put in front of him. " and you can watch me, front row seat this time. not the blurry lines of your busted tv sets. "

a plain statement, rife with what he feels is derision — something in the shift of expression, perhaps, or the residual ache of wounds collected over a century of indiscreet insults levied at him. it would not be the first time an idea of his has been rejected nor the first time he has been looked down upon, as if he a child at the table of those far more knowledgeable than he. it is an exercise in restraint to let it simmer rather than pull it out of man by force so he can examine it at all its angles: he trusts that ethan will be blunt with him if he is upset.

gaze briefly wandering to the shadowed reprieve of the walls that frame his companion, his own voice scratching questions amidst the rusted walls of his mind: when did you start caring whether someone was upset?

the difference between them, he supposes. what the last lord has to lose is the same as it always has been, his life and freedom. decades spent calculating the risks of every interaction, with his wretched family and those beyond it, so much so that it has become second nature. a survival instinct taken to its zenith. it should be the same for ethan and yet, despite the little victories claimed, the acknowledgement of a life left in tatters remain a sore spot he has not the grace to tiptoe over. the risk of death means little to a man in the honeymoon of his immortality — a thing stifled by ties to the living, a family he yearns to return to, a family he seeks to protect. an uncomfortable truth, that ethan worries for them and not for him — ethan does not need to worry about him at all, he thinks, because he is not a burden, he is more useful than any other could be ( and he will, as he always has, fight his way to the top of the list if he has too ) — that he prefers not to acknowledge unless it must be exploited.

all the cards up his sleeve rendered unnecessary and yet, they remain tucked there, encased in glass: break in case of emergency.

"mhmm," disinterest seeps out of him — for the topic at hand, not the body in front of him, no longer the alluring figure stretched out before him with a smile only illuminated at its edges but nonetheless distracting, "not to discredit your skills, of course, papa. if you could get into their systems then we'd have little need for others." how far the world of technology has moved, how outdated he is. curiosity cannot fill the voids in his knowledge, not until he has learnt how to adjust his magnetic field and ethan, stubborn as always, refuses to let him experiment on the single rectangular screen and keyboard he taps away at. somewhere, beneath the stacks of rolled parchment illustrating the warped bodies of her subjects and the leather-bond tomes tracing back the blood of kings, beyond the endless diaries full of delusional divinity written in his mothers scripture, sits the far more useful bounty. addresses of the places she crept off to for a week or two, the garments of the black god traded for the stark white of a labcoat. phone numbers or email addresses of her correspondents, an archive of printed reports sent to her chronicling the birth of the little girl who had mired ethan in the offspill. it is a matter of time until they find it, a resource they have more than any other.

of what he has, those pinned upon his board and those scattered across worktops and steel-checkered plate, much of it means little without context: names and dates, locations and coordinates, all utterly useless to a man tethered to the metastatic heart of this village and unlike those they could uncover from miranda's archives, most of them connecting to the man before him and not the rot that lies within him. the alternative, of sending ethan across the mountains to his homeland, unthinkable — luck ever in his favour and a talent for murder aside, the man needs a guiding hand, one painting the yellow ring in crooked circles around the target.

if they could get someone else to do their dirty work, they could use that time for something else. something more enjoyable. hands guided not around the grip of a gun but his own neck, until ethan's thumb presses against the scar there, until the ravenous thing inside him is finally sated ( the greater fear, more than any armed intruders: that the thing in him never will be ). his own hands move to ethan's waist, bony hips far narrower than his own, before they jerk back, abrupt, caught unawares by the bristling of his lover. "okay, okay, ex-friend, whatever." the attempt to hide his grin, so wide in verges beyond smug in the splitting of his maw, the crowded tombstones of his teeth on display, is a skill he has never quite perfected. never come close, either. as if the very spirit of schadenfreude made manifest. it is a comfort, that notion by itself an oddity, to know he has no rival for his affection — attention, however, he has yet to confirm. the blinders of vitriolic anger one he knows all too well.

"now, now. this is all hypothetical, of course. it's more likely they'll fall face first into that black shit covering half the village and get chewed up for dinner. or maybe they've moved on to fucking up something else. that's the american way, after all!" a statement as true to the last lord as it is hilarious, his laughter amplified in these empty halls, nothing but concrete and the body of his companion to dull the brontide, pattering out to nothing but the warm purr of his engine reverberating along his throat.

he likes this plan, simple as it is, likes that ethan defers to him. he would not have it any other way — at least, not outside those few occasions where a firm hand is appreciated and an order, however trite, sounds so appealing when strung on cupid's bow despite its crooked scar. should that follow the bloodshed? even better. "and good at it you are!" both hands lift to pat against the others chest, hefty in its approval, "my, how considerate of you. i do like to watch. put on a good enough show and i won't even have to join in to enjoy myself." all the splattershow performances in the world won't bring the same exhilaration as watching each wretched tyrant fall from their marble pillars, but if it is a choice between repeating that or the frenzied, viscera-covered scowl of his lover as he straddles him, as skilled with his fingers as he is the ornate length of the wolfkiller, he will pick the latter. "i'm still stealing their shit, though, if they do show up."

should they be close enough, he could follow the ripple in his magnetic field until he finds more of them or, perhaps, wherever they came from. expecting some little base, rife with new toys to play with — for the both of them — and information like those attached to plastic clipboards half-buried under the crumped corpse of the wrecked truck back out in the woods. "never know what might be useful. but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, huh? don't worry your pretty little head over it, papa."

he opens his mouth, lips no longer nearly bifurcated by scars put there by a stranger's knife long before he pierced the delicate bubble of karl's isolated home. a consideration to note that nothingness may be preferred, in all reality, to what can be found here but he is the only one that has seen the utter destruction wrought on this place, how it has twisted and bent to accompany the horrors shaping it around the replication of the once massive but mirthful man blown up to enormous proportions. he had made the mistake before, more than once, believing what his eyes told him was the helpful merchant. the duke had always appeared in strange places offering aid where it was needed, pointing ethan towards a goal crafted in cryptic rhymes or setting him on the track towards an item that needed collecting. the one here, the devilish marquee who hides behind a decorative mask, has an appetite only for torment. gone are the tempting aromas of dried herbs accompanying the sizzle of a hot pan, a meal crowned in tendrils of steam as he counts coins in his large palms, ensuring that everything is traded according to value and jotting down every transaction in a red ledger he kept in his breast pocket. there is now only the predation of young girls born vacant of memories or purpose.

karl has not seen the vision of girls hunted and mounted like trophies and even if he had, the weight of them are lost on him. they are not his daughters. every body he finds, half dissolved with pale hair just like his spilling out of strange swirling voids where their faces should be, incites rage and horror the likes he has no words for. he holds the agony of every one of them despite how he reminds himself they are hollow reflections of the real thing. fool him one, shame on him, fool him dozens upon dozens, maybe hundreds of times and yet, he still mourns them all the while harboring such unquenched wrath towards their maker and ender both.

he stays silent, a gift in an of itself, if but briefly. karl vomits his bitter resentment, a child kicking and screaming over spilled milk. there is no going back, the blade cannot be remove from his gut, the black blood that ethan expects to stain the palm of his hand still, pushed back into the open wound.

karl trips over his words, most likely far more experienced within the ghostly reproduction of his lover's skull. a shadow of himself, how much of him must be struggling to understand how everything works in this underworld, turning of the tables, now ethan is the one that must exercise patience to a newcomer. it is unfortunate that he finds himself lacking in that, instead delivering huffs and sighs, rolling his eyes and setting his arms across his chest as if this is a burden on himself, not karl but everything he encompasses. he has only ever traveled alone, dealing with the echoes of his past, the humid hell of dulvey, the frigid fear of the forest decorated with the corpses of crows strung up in trees and a meandering path cut through the snowy darkness. time and time again he feels the words bubble up his throat and nearly spill out his mouth, cutting to the quick but it is severed, resulting in odd notes or strangled grunts, until something slips through:

" are you afraid to even try? "

it lacks the piercing bite of an insult, colored in brilliant hues of concern, deepened with shadows of curiosity. a vista of garish pity it would never, could never be. the man would sooner fashion a noose around his throat and kill himself again than invite pity from ethan and so ethan gives him none. a single, probing statement, half in jest, a goading poke to incite an outrage, but the rest entirely understanding. he is new to this, suddenly stripped of his factory and his foot soldiers. his powers? unsure at this time. eveline kept hers, certainly. often he would find the horrid little gremlin leaning over his shoulder as he buried another of his roses in the ground, her mocking voice grating his ears before sending things flying away from them. miranda too, though he saw her far less, more often he felt her, moving around, like a parasite under his skin. a twinging muscle that will not stop spasming, driving him to the brink of madness.

" i'm with you, ok. " his shoulders drop slightly. the defensive tension along his back dissipating slowly, fighting his natural instinct to beat his head against a wall until it crumbles or someone else opens the door for him. " i found you and i'm not going to lose you. " he had walked into hell more than once following his heart, a thing of blood and tissue had taken him to dulvey just the same as the wriggling worm in its steel cage had drawn him back into the factory. in here, this pale imitation of his, like the smallest fingers on his left hand or the smooth skin where scared letters used to be on his forearm, works by blind necessity. a drive that has kept him whole and a shield he offers to his beloved, a title placed upon karl whether he accepts it or not. he is loved in spite of his gnashing teeth and insults. " we've been attacking this fucking thing from the outside for years, now we'll do the same from in here. it gives us a chance to work more directly with the code of it. " a winning grin curls one side of his mouth, hubris always looks good on him. his hand once more held out, an offer set on his palm, no longer marked with stigmata. " come on, partner. we've gotta places to go and uh, ghost-things to irritate. either way, it's better than sitting around here wallowing in your misery. that's just what she'd want you to do. no need to do that bitch's work for her. "

no one could ever replicate ethan winters but the man himself, too complex a creature to be crafted by the hands of a woman who has been blinded by her own vision — that in itself a thing of delusion, every body a tool that fails to measure up to the idealised image of a little girl lost before she had ever completed the metamorphosis into person — his executioner and lover both lacking in sharp angles besides the bony curves of protruding hipbones that he has ground himself down upon time and time again and yet, composed of more than softness, despite patches of velvet skin and wry smiles, bearing barbs beneath his tongue and the blunt force of stubborn will. the last lord, another title taken from him now when he has fallen like the left, knows that the mad saint's attempts to get under his skin would be far rougher: she has torn him open time and time again, patchwork made of skin and muscle, her attempts to cater to his ego so obvious in its saccharine offering that it turned sour. the comfort of ethan and his inclination to argument is of little comfort, weighted by umbrage, but a comfort nonetheless.

"to -" white-yellow eyeshine and matted hair, his voice as it always has been whether or not his vocal chords exist the way they once had: savouring drawl spoken between the hammer-strikes of his own aggression, a poor imitation on the rhythmic pounding of steel-plated skull. "i've spent my whole fucking life trying!" bang. "trying is what got me here!" bang. "a lifetime. two. under that bitch's thumb!" perhaps if he had bent the knee, she would have crushed him sooner — his freedom now a failing organ in the body of their rotten god, surrounded by ichor atramentous and all of it calling him with siren songs of oblivion. he would rather that than submission, but resists all the same; karl heisenberg did not spend a lifetime, two, scavenging for retribution only to have his reward taken from him.

it is the inversion of his lovers life, severed too soon, dulvey the tragedy that stained the remaining pages of the story — his tragedy written in the exordium. this, he supposes, their denouement. no amount of yelling, whether his own voice or the rising cacophony of the false factory, distracts from the truth, the wriggling worm of something human he has ignored but never lost: he is angry, he is fearful, he is — dead, but not defeated. on the verge of it, the divaricating angles of his feet firmly upon the mountains edge, but not yet doomed to follow impulse to its decisive end.

i'm with you. as if speaking to a version of himself still young and full of live, free of all the wrinkles and scar tissue life has given him, a remnant from a time when he pinned glossy photographs to his board, resentment carving the statement into each one if they aren't with me, they're against me. it feels distant here, now, a memory of a memory interpreted by electrical impulses taken from a brain that was, at one point, his. again, the repulsive tide turns inside his gut: how much of him has been taken to be fit inside another? what had been shaven off and discarded? memories and skills and facets of his personality left to rot on the butcher's floor, swallowed by the starving god.

he looks to ethan, all warm gold, the offered hand and curve of cupids bow devoid of all the wounds received. ethan winters, remade in his own image, the sculpture of a man made whole. not like him, the ironworker casting his own skin, the feral dog chewing his own bones. vanity never ranking in the top ten, or twenty, in the list of his priorities but it is another question met with only silence — he had forgotten what he looked like before miranda planted the seed of god in him, has half-forgotten what he looked like after. the madman hunting little rabbits hides the swirling void of his entropic face behind the pale mask — that is what he feels like. the raw, exposed nerve of him caught between spirals of steam and smoke. that too, a sense of wrongness, his life spent between the hard angles and edges of metal and earth, the softness of a body only ever felt with his fist inside a ribcage and the offered hand upon him.

jealousy rears its emerald head for but a moment, insignificant beneath the ticking of his thoughts. this is not his ethan. the one he pulled from the earth, bloodied and broken and wrestling with the truth. this is hers and yet — and yet he has stormed the impossible factory and speaks as if it has only ever been the last heisenberg.

no, not heisenberg. karl. karl. he remembers. ethan took his name with the barrel of the wolfkiller, embossed in gold lettering: thy will be done. of all the angles, ethan has always been michael, beautiful and bequeathed with flametongued sword.

"you're persistent, i'll give you that." appraisal or insult, both — his sarcasm ever tempered by the traces of approval found between his teeth. "wallowing in my - that's rich, coming from you." he does not take the offered hand, instead hooking filthy claws into the neck of his companion — physical but not, the coolness beneath his fingers as real as it is imaginary, the contradiction of this false world a thing his brain refuses to ignore but, more importantly, still desiring teeth and tongue and a firm hand that points the way.

ethan winters is a stubborn, self-righteous fool. karl heisenberg was — is — no different. worse, perhaps, if he were honest.

a pleasure it had been to be killed by his lover, an intimacy unrivalled, but too long has he gone without it, too long has he spent attempting to parse the memory to see how much of it had been the other man, how much of it the mother who rejected him and how much of it the god that had placed the fettered weights around his ankles.

he does not want pity. nor an empty hand devoid of scars, unfamiliar in its perfection, face-up as if offering scraps to a wild dog in performative gentleness.

deeper dig his nails, the greys of his knuckles under the aged leather of his skin half-stained by soot and oil, into the pleasant slop of a pale neck and bony shoulders. he offers no true loves kiss, instead, he inhales the others breath, or imagines it / replays the memory of what it was like, close enough for the steel wool of his beard to scratch the others jaw. "at least give me a proper reunion, papa."

rose stands back, brief to no acknowledgment of his half-hearted gratitude as she watches metal weave into rotting flesh. his anatomy looks human but is anything but, and rose stares, head tilted in misplaced child-like curiosity at the man's macabre carcass weaving into a living, writing body again to heave his head atop a stout, short neck. he comes together in slithering pieces, living and breathing and brimming with decay. ashen skin welds at the seams, held together by metalwork of his hands, but his wolfish eyes never left her. carnal and animalistic, but no intent to harm her. or so she hopes.

he finally gives a name to the face, and rose rolls it around her tongue in silence but doesn't speak it out loud just yet. instead, she holds the gun in a steel grip, knuckles so white the glowing mycelium looks like it may burst from underneath her skin. she wants to go now, she can feel the crystal calling to her. warm and welcoming in this mass grave of wilting roses that want to pry the flesh off her face, turn her into a nothing like them. but something he says makes her eyes snap back to him again, i'm like you.

there's a flickering horror that crosses her features at the possibility of a kinship with him. she's like him ? rose wonders if she too could be flayed and strung up like him, displayed in what seemed so painful and agonising and trapped in this nightmare. if she could still be alive after that, then she truly is a monster. she's never considered the extent of grotesque that these powers made her be, but she's truly like him then she needed to be unlike him, and quickly.

her hasty flight of thoughts is interrupt by the squeals of husks as they burst through the barricades behind her, and rose jumps back, nearly jumps into him and almost turns her ankle underneath the weight of the jerky motion. ❝ shit! ❞ the aims her crosshairs but the husks out number the bullets in her magazine, and she's not the best shot to begin with. her heart beats the glow into her veins, her instincts sharpen to guide her to use the powers, and rose grinds her molars in frustration, tucking the gun into the waistband of her jeans. the more she uses them, she thinks, the more intwined with her they become. would it be harder to get rid of these powers ? would it hurt ? was she anything without them ? would she die ?

she doesn't have time to consider her own mortality as the roses stumble nearer, joints crackle, screams muffled under scarred faces as they tunnel towards her and karl. her hands come up just as they had so many times before in this horrorshow, the glow burst from her skin as she plunges the mycelia into the husk closest to her and rips, the force flicks out like a whip and the husk falls back. and again, and again, until rose loses her breath, falls to one knee as one hand presses to her chest where her heart thumps violently, the other braces on her bent knee.

her hand pats for the white sage inside her pockets, already feeling nauseous as she flicks her tongue into the divots of her cheek, searching her dry mouth for whatever remains of the plants she's chewed on earlier. the husks are stunned on the ground but their bodies tremble as they begin to recover, and she still feels like a she will topple over the moment she tries to find her footing. more groans echo inside the tunnels and grow louder and closer. she ran out of sage, rose dimly realises, and begins to scamper back to her feet somehow.

❝ we have to go! i can't fight them off, the crystal is down there, i can feel it, we have to go ! ❞

all his life, he has lived in the shadow of a little girl, her name a weight fettered to each limb without consent, left to drown in the oil spill torrent of the black god's bowels for the crime of failing to live up to a child idealised to near sainthood. his afterlife, no different. rose, rose, rose. in his ears, on his tongue, carved into the very walls of this distorted reality as god itself tries to craft something in her image, the repeated cycle of malevolent birth stained with blood and rot: all of them, like him, failures.

looking at her now, he is unimpressed. disappointed. in truth, he did not know what he expected.

rose is, much to his annoyance, a refulgent streak of gold severing the landscape, all muted hues and blurry shapes. young and powerful, the way he ought to have been ( the way he was, perhaps ). between the furrowed lines of his skin, the seams of him poorly welded together, sits bitter jealousy: she's the star of the show here, not him. the very foundations of this reality were rebuilt to accommodate her steps, the very wind and all the reverberations of it scattered across the realm whispering her name.

worse than that, he thinks, is blood. she is ethan's daughter in every aspect — imagines she too will refuse to yield to the truth that they are all the same. ethan thrust him into this world, preformed the black baptism and lowered him into the icy rivers of the ninth stratum. spite widens his grin — rose is more like him than ethan by one simple, sad little truth: they had been doomed from birth.

should the child pay for the fathers sins? hadn't he?

dull gold eyes watch her, inspect her: scar tissue akin to his own, raised welts that follow veins and tendrils, but he can feel it — something bright and hot, pure unlike the tar of his insides. the reformation of his gut has left him starving.

"not fucking listening," she is so much like her father, "that crystal's the bait, kid." let those shambling malformed imitations tear her limb from limb, he thinks, hell, he'll throw her to them to spite ethan and miranda both, fuck them both — a sigh escapes, all sulphur and steam: he did not hurt her then to spite them, he will not now.

prometheus no longer, karl rises to his feet, bare atop solid rock and vine that are only as real as he imagines them to be. a single hand grabbing at her hood and yanking her back, pushing her into the yawning mouth of the cavern, a void interrupted at select intervals by the yellow gold of candlelight struggling against the dark. "but if you insist!"

" oooh-- nothing gets passed you does it? " he coos like it is something worth complimenting, the astute note of utter devastation wrought by his own hands. ethan knows there is no one left, he had assured it was true. he had been there when the last woman refused to tear her monstrous father's claws from her skirt and jump for his outstretched hand. he can still hear her, sometimes between the other nightmares and the dreams he is not entirely sure are not actually memories shoved into his head, screaming as the roar of the fire grew louder, her clothes and hair tinder for it to fill its belly with. every thing that moved after elena he had approached with prejudice. an old taste of copper at the back of his throat, threaded together with the note of decay everywhere. something that the cold tried to hide, the heavy air pushing the sickness back down into the earth. to lay dormant in the black soil until spring cracked open the vault and allowed it to all bloom once again.

it has been months since anyone had breeched the invisible bubble that has kept this place from the outside world but it did not mean that they had been forgotten. this little snow globe of a village had been shaken up and set beneath a spotlight. it was not just whoever miranda had been working with that knew about it now, the bsaa and anyone that has them in their pocket where aware of it. he had listened to chris' mumblings enough to know that things were moving behind the scene. as much as ethan salivates at the idea of digging his fingers into that corrupt nightmare of a bureaucratic pie, it is something for another time. he already has his hands full of miranda's journal entries stretching back decades and the family tomes of the four lords reaching back even farther. a million pieces of information that he knows must fit together to create a complete picture, a network of roots physical and ethereal that have sunk deeper and deeper into the soil, beyond the lowest points of karl's sunken temple, below the mirrored pool of amniotic fluid dripping like an oil spill from the slumbering god-thing.

" you know about disn-- " he begins, utter shock on his face. so far from the capitalist kingdom of america he would not expect a man so anachronistic as his companion to know of the land of the mouse. the two locations could not be any more different, the immaculate, paved paths of the false town with its painted facades and characters in dress, princess in big gowns kneeling to take pictures with painful smiles on their faces, themed meals selling for car payments, it is enough to make his head hurt. he cannot count the amount of times he was taken as a kid, until he got sick of it. until he could hear the music on the rides in his sleep. " even if it was disneyland, you'd hate it. don't buy the ' it's the happiest place on earth ' bullshit. it's loud and overcrowded and the hidden mickeys are not as charming as they think. " he speaks with all the vitriol of having to deal with the summer tourist flood and how it congested the already struggling highway system of los angeles with lost out-of-towners. " but if you play your cards right, maybe i'll bring you back one of those gaudy mickey ears with your name embroidered on the back. "

his chuckle reverberates off the walls, the hall billowing with the golden evening light seeming to come to life around him, as if he is not a harbinger of death but the seed that germinates, that presses air into stale, old lungs. the doorway comes into the edge of his vision and he leans against it, setting his narrow shoulder against the wooden moulding.

" absolutely i will. " he concedes, uninterested in protesting to the opposite. he will not be talked into diving into the black water at the depths of the ninth circle without just cause. if there was need of it, if something must be found down there or some body rescued, he would brave the void too like the lightless sea below his skin to ever find comfort in, but for recreation, for the indulgence of cold water against hot skin, it could never be what he desires. " playing? " his confusion mixes with his mirth, taking his victories like a sugary dessert he indulges in, as if licking his fingers of melting cream and summer-ripened fruit. " i don't think they were playing, they were real soldiers. i mean, they brought guns and everything, i know i caught a few bullets before we escaped. " what was a few more starburst scars along his back, lost amid all the other marks that disturbed his once flawless skin, bespeckled by sun-kissed freckles and dark moles like a lost constellation. the mad rush between the confrontation beside his former marriage bed was white noise in his ears, something desperate and deranged taking over his limbs until he was sat on the bench heaving breath that painted the sky above his head in billowing clouds, another body so close, a burrowing boil he had not noticed growing infected suddenly lanced and all the pressure and confusion lost, absolute clarity after burying himself inside another, that resulted in an instinct to run. more tallies to add to his body count, for whoever may be keeping track.

" do we actually have a plan if they come back? " his lean body stretches across the threshold in a diagonal slash, not really block the larger man's path but playing at it, as if daring his companion to move him if he wishes to enter. " i haven't really seen any movement any time i've gone out for a jog on the perimeter of town but that doesn't mean they won't wonder back in-- with more people this time. " as often as ethan goes by his gut instinct, he has to acknowledge that they must have some idea of what he can do, even if most of it was hidden from himself in his ignorance to the truth just below pale skin and golden hair. his teeth itch with the thought of it, wonders if chris would walk boldly in again with his elite group this time rather than a brutish assaults like the previous encounter. as always, opposing forces clash and spin within his core; would he rather demand answers of chris or tear him apart? with karl at his heel, he is not sure if it would be better or worse.

" a few of them won't be a problem but we can't stop a whole platoon. i mean, we could but i don't know if we should, ya'know. do we hide or work with them? " it was not ethan that had their paperwork pinned to his board, emails with their official headers under naked bulbs in that horrible, yellow room. red marker and big arrows pointing where they were crawling in through the holes in the fence. he is not partial to forgiven the hail of gunfire that interrupted the night air while his daughter slept in the room above. nothing any one of them could ever offer would earn his favor. unlike karl's part in rose's quartering and crystallization, they were a whole organization that had to recognize the insane decisions they were making and not one of them had the same excuses his lover had. exclusions made because karl is one man living under the thumb of a psycho, because he is a dog staving off emaciation by dining on roadkill, because he is a feast for the eyes with a burning hot body that fits perfectly against ethan's. " again, not that i'm against trying to kill them all but i don't want to make any decisions without running it by you first, partner. "

pursuit of total, complete isolation has ever been at odds with the worm inside of him, edacious and demanding, his performative streak fulgrant in the absence of any spotlight. perhaps that is why he has kept ethan around: a half-willing captive who can be taught to clap and cheer whenever his lungs grow tired of stale air and industrial dust, an ache soothed only by the salve of attention. each empty home, each passageway plunged into darkness with no one left to light the waxy white fingers protruding from each rough-hewn shelf, each door adorned with torn wings and woven twig held together with clotted blood all left swinging open wide — none of them rouse a loneliness he has lived with for half a century, only satisfaction, tainted with vitriolic offspill, a point of pride he has earned as the last survivor, sat atop his throne of iron and ash. he had not shed tears for those who walked these halls, slept in these beds, the very manor a mausoleum to his lineage — he would not for the villagers, either, all too eager to rush into the black bosom of their saint. they had got what they wanted. he had, too.

eventually, someone will come looking. paranoia concomitant with experience tells him so: humans are, by their nature, burdened by curiosity. whether a month, a year or five, someone will come to bleed the belly of god in the hopes of finding something valuable. the factory itself a testament to that — generations of men burrowing into the earth in the attempt to mine ichor from mother nature, her desiccated corpse plundered for ore and diamonds and he, himself, has made a home in the tunnels of her fossilized veins. someone, somewhere, will pierce the veil that separates him from the outside world and invoke calamity, he's certain. miranda bares the blame, her black mycelium spreading out from the roots of the village, those responsible for little eveline and those whose attempts to craft a suitable candidate had born little fruit. ethan, too, responsible in his own way, clumsy and incidental, a thorn in the side of the self-titled good guys now looking for their missing subject. it feels innocent compared to the blame that lies at his own feet, ringed in the burnished gold of marker ink — he had called the cavalry, the evidence scrawled in crude interpretations of the war he had imagined: blockbuster bombs and toy soldiers, his crooked words like a warcry, uppercase, followed by exclamation marks: bsaa, come!!

he will kill them, of course. self-preservation, the knife he turns inside himself, dictates it — providing all the excuse he needs ( as if he needs any ), recalcitrant nature aside. he has already considered the outcomes. the heads of soldiers, devoid of identity when covered by their masks, impaled on the ribs on ruined iron fences. a warning. that option, crossed out, the addendum added: too medieval. bulky bodies bearing the muscle memory of trigger fingers and body armour are far better suited to join the soldat ranks. stationed at the borders of the village, entrances and exitways. ethan will complain, of course, but that is no different to usual.

"yes -" answered as abruptly as he feels the interruption was. his knowledge limited in scope but not entirely absent — the semantics of what he knows and what he knows of unworthy of addressing. the vacuity of it a death rattle that had begun during the wartime era, stretching out throughout the fifties, finally falling silent somewhere around the sixties. there is nothing less appealing than the idea of wide open streets, bristling bodies, the sticky heat of summer sun, the incessant noise of children and adults mimicking their obnoxious joy but all the same, such an experience is alien in contrast to this little village where misery has been inherited as much as dark hair or pale skin. he has heard more laughter — genuine and warm, unlike the shrill cackles of doll or dragon that scratch his ears in all the wrong ways, more than his own, the deafening brontide summoned at will — more in the last few months than he has in seventy years. "oh! what a treat." of all the gifts he'd favour, he'd rather something useful, his sarcasm suggests, unvoiced, too busy chewing the meat of the sentiment and statement between his crooked teeth: ethan seems to think himself an expert on what he likes and loathes already. an assumption that would strike a particularly petulant chord within him if not for the foundation it is built upon: that ethan is learning to understand him, that he wants to. a prize so elusive in its rarity that the last lord does not know what to do with it.

"if they were real soldiers, they would have finished the job." bare fingers glance the walls as he gestures, taking up what space the bulk of his body does not. the fantasy of all-out war, of explosions painting the sky in firelight, of the heroic last stand, will not be sundered by a handful of idiots bearing automatic weapons. wandering feet come to a standstill, blocked by the length of ethan's body, sunlight painting him in sainthood in the shapes illuminated between doorframe and limb — it suits him. "do i - of course i - we - do. we kill them," an option offered bluntly, devoid of any fanfare, but underscored by his grin, wide and wicked, "then we take their stuff. wouldn't want it going to waste, after all..."

gaze askance, performative, casting the image of a man considering alternatives, he offers only one: "or we could interrogate them first. then kill them." what a sign ethan was when the bsaa came to reclaim their missing toy — freckled with blood and viscera the way he is now, with sunlight, the soft curve of his smile replaced by the frenzied scowling of a man acting on instinct and dragged out of the quite solitude that had allowed him to think before he acted, some impulsive inclination to violent retribution set alight upon crossing the threshold of the ruined home. stood at the borders of what he is: too other to be human, too human to be monster.

left hand splayed against his own breast, only one of the scars ethan has given him beyond the worn fabric of his shirt, gold returns to the man casting a shadow that allows his eyes some reprieve. "i suppose," another offer drawn out along his tongue, "we could strike a deal. if they have anything worth offering. i'm not completely opposed to it. they scratch my - our - backs, i'll scratch theirs. i'm a man of my word, after all -" his grin stretches impossibly wider, the uplift of his tone half-mockery: a liar's word means little at all, but he has not yet lied to ethan. "but there's a difference between using them for our own gain and you wanting to play nice with your soldier friend. redfield is an ape and i'm not risking my life so you can ease his guilty conscience."

it is the shrapnel they walk on, a component lodged in the foundation of their relationship that cannot be ignored — he will tear off the hand that feeds / he will detonate the bomb to drag them all to hell if there is no other option. a pure and noble heart would seek to destroy the megamycete, choosing the many over the few — fuck the many, he thinks, fuck the few who are not us, too. he will not die for someone else's noble goal. the real meaning goes unspoken: he deserves his freedom. "besides, you are so talented when it comes to murder. a shame to let that go to waste, papa."