Chapter Text
The first time Karl Heisenberg sees Ethan Winters, he is… intrigued.
He’d known about him vaguely beforehand, Miranda having mentioned an extended absence, and he’d read the scant files she’d given them. But decades spent with only mutant freaks and sycophants for company had clearly left some kind of impact. He can’t remember the last time he’d even seen someone who wasn’t either a member of his little ‘family’, or one of the nameless, pointless cattle from the village in anything other than pictures in reports. So maybe he was already primed to be interested by this sudden stranger, a new, living face in this otherwise frozen monotony, but… no. No, there was something unique about this one.
Ethan Winters looked angry.
That was cause enough for interest, some reaction other than plain fear or reverence or contempt. There was a little fear, obviously (a compelling sign that the man wasn’t a complete idiot), and contempt enough to curdle milk, but anger above-all burned in the man’s gaze, and it was so goddamn refreshing that Heisenberg could only grin, crushing his cigar beneath his boot. Maybe he could use this, he thought, engineer’s instincts kicking into gear already on how to turn this to his advantage.
Of course, time for specifics later. He had appearances to keep. A flick of his wrist sends a nearby spike of metal into the man’s gut, somewhere painful but certainly not fatal, and he predictably crumples. Heisenberg considers, as he drags the iron-bound Ethan to the Lords’ meeting, that the first challenge would be getting the man out alive and not delivered to the over-sized bitch on a silver platter. (He wasn’t too concerned with the other two. Moreau’s proposal alone would likely be no more interesting than ‘put a cadou in him and see what happens’ and what a waste that would be.)
Miranda, ever so graciously, deigns to let Heisenberg decide the man’s fate, and he could have laughed in her fucking face for how well this works out for him. He doesn’t, of course, but the impulse still bubbles up beneath that facade of familial deference. He directs all that energy at Alcina instead, since she so kindly decides to start shit.
So caught up in planning, he almost forgets the bound man that they’re arguing over. But even surrounded by Miranda, the four Lords, and a slavering hoard of lycans, Ethan’s anger still clearly burns. A snarky comment is about all he gets out before he’s drowned out by yet more bickering, but a flicker of something dangerously akin to hope enters Heisenberg’s chest. He crushes it, just like the cigar from before; hope won’t do shit. Planning, preparation, action, those are what will free him. The occasional unplanned variable can be managed, can be used, but he’ll need to consider this carefully.
But if he does get an ally out of this… Well, no getting ahead of himself. Maybe the man’s all bluster. If he survives the gauntlet, the lycans, his ‘siblings’, then he’ll reach out.
He kneels briefly on the damp stone ground of the church and feels another grin spread as meets the scared, hateful look. He hisses, “Let’s see what you’re really made of, Ethan Winters.” Unspoken, he adds to himself, ‘Don’t fucking disappoint.’
~
That anger truly does burn. Ethan Winters tears through castle Dimitrescu like a wildfire, all three daughters and their leech of a mother gone in less than four hours. Heisenberg’s got scant cameras around the village, obviously, but they don’t catch details, only broad overviews. And while Ethan’s busy, so is he.
Miranda’s making some kind of final move, and like fucking hell will he let her have a victory after all of this, after everything she’s done to him.
So he keeps one ear on the security systems, even as he puts final touches on his own plans. Even as he adds those extra steps for a potential ally, one that looks more and more useful by the minute.
In sharp contrast to the window-breaking havoc of whatever happened in the castle, the visit to the Beneviento manor doesn’t take too long, and whatever happens inside remains a complete mystery. Probably for the best, Donna’s little abilities have always been a little too freaky for Hesienberg’s comfort. The fact that he thinks this while elbow deep in a soldat’s chest cavity doesn’t quite occur to him as being hypocritical.
~
The small, gray-scale Ethan on the monitor trudges through the stream, towards Moreau’s reservoir, holding a shotgun cradled in his arms, and limping from where that vârcolac got a good bite. Not limping much, though, and even as he walks it seems to get easier. By the time he vanishes from the camera’s view, he’s already striding along like it’s a day at the fucking park.
Heisenberg exhales cigar smoke, thoughts sparking.
Whatever Ethan Winters is, he’s not human. Can’t be, not shrugging off injuries like that. Interesting. It doesn’t dissuade him from seeking a partnership; if anything, it makes it more important than ever. Which means it’s time to do a little work, while the man’s busy with the fish doctor.
The signs are the easiest part, with the shit-hole that the village has descended into in the past day or so. Not that it started out fantastically. Sheet metal and piping and even bits of old car and transmission tower are wrenched free and twisted into place. There’s even a paintbrush with enough metal fastenings that he can write some messages with unexpected ease, using the same bright yellow paint he’s used to leave scraps of ammo around the place, all lit up by the candlelight that the village still relies on. Just goading enough to keep that anger fueled.
Moreau only has electricity in those fucking mines by Heisenberg’s goodwill, and slipping a few extra cameras around when he installed it had just seemed common sense. For whatever reason, the wretched ex-doctor seemed the most in Miranda’s thrall of any of them, and when Heisenberg made his move, he’d wanted to get a lock on Moreau straight off.
That doesn’t end up being necessary.
He’s back at his factory in time to witness the fight, and he takes a few minutes to do so. Water has done nothing to dim that fire, and as he watches Ethan duck under a convenient outcrop to avoid acidic bile, he finds two unexpected things have snuck into his chest when he wasn’t looking.
The first is that goddamned hope again. He strikes a match, lighting another cigar, and then snuffs out the match’s flame between gloved fingers.
Arguably even more unwelcome, the second is fear. It occurs to him now, watching Ethan methodically slot shells into his shotgun, that fire is a unbelievably useful tool up right up until it gets out of control. Who’s to say the man doesn’t just see him as another obstacle, doesn’t play Miranda’s fucking game like a good little pawn? But surely the anger, the hatred, that he’d seen in the other man’s eyes, surely they wouldn’t blind him to the real cause of all of this, the reason he’s in this village. Surely he wants to kill Miranda just as much as Heisenberg. (Well, maybe not quite as much. There’s very little in the world he wants more than to rid the world of that bitch himself, and that’s a forge that’s been smoldering for decades.)
Surely.
~
Well. That… Could have gone better. But it’s fine, he’s calm.
But if Ethan had just listened, if he’d just heard Heisenberg out, instead of jumping to conclusions-
Every piece of metal in the room vibrates, like a tuning fork that’s just been struck. He can hear Sturm chasing Ethan off deeper into the factory. He’s fine. Calm. The knife embedded in the wall wrenches downwards, then back across the pictures, a deep X now marked on the concrete wall.
The part that he's not willing to even admit to himself, the truly infuriating part, is that the man is still fascinating. Maybe it's from residing in this frozen corner of his own personal hell for so long, but even when it's directed at him, that fire inside of Ethan is captivating. He can't seem to resist the urge to stoke it when he can. Which... alright, maybe that didn't help the situation.
Whatever. He’s not stupid enough to believe Ethan will die, down there. But if he’s just contained long enough for Heisenberg to kill Miranda, then he can figure out what to do with the man later.
Because it turns out he was wrong, galling though it is to admit it. Ethan is stupid after all. What else could it be? If he’d rather fight soldats and trudge through iron scraps than hear Heisenberg out, then so fucking be it. If the disappointment is particularly bitter, then there’s no one else to judge. He is, as ever, alone in this.
~
After everything, he didn’t really think he’d fail. Not really. Maybe he’d be set back, maybe he’d start from scratch, but failure is an end point, a line in the sand, something from which there is no coming back. Therefore, not an option.
The aftermath of mutating is disorienting, always has been. Perhaps it’s even more so for being caused by rockets going off in his goddamned face. For a moment, everything is melted together.
Fire and metal and pain and water and hatred.
Everything starts to separate into disparate things, the rain running down his face, but shoes splash through the mud near his head before he can get his bearings, hat discarded a few feet away and glasses… somewhere? His pocket, maybe.
Ethan stares down at him from above the barrel of that ridiculous fucking magnum, and Heisenberg doesn’t have the smoked glass to guard himself behind. He stares up, expecting that intense, burning anger, could almost welcome it as an end, but.
But there is no heat, no anger, no hatred. Ethan Winters stares down at Heisenberg’s tattered, mud-soaked form and has the fucking nerve to look pitying. Electricity crackles in him, his own temper flaring, but nothing happens beyond a nearby, crooked nail giving a feeble twitch. He tries to push himself upright, but moving is apparently well beyond him, and he flops back onto the ground, gritting his teeth against the flare of pain.
“If you’re going to do it,” he grinds out, closing his eyes against that contemptuous fucking pity. “Do it.”
He expects a bullet. Maybe something more melee, if Ethan’s running low on ammo. What he doesn’t expect is the nothing that happens. His eyes open against his better judgment, only to find the gun lowering, rain dripping off the gun’s muzzle.
“I’m going to kill her,” Ethan says firmly. “Not for you, not for me, not for anyone else. For my daughter. For Rose.” He takes a step back, bandaged left hand scrabbling at his pocket for something. “Don’t get in my way again.”
Heisenberg wants to scream. He wants to kill the man, deprive him of oxygen until all that fire really is gone, wants to send every piece of metal in a five kilometer radius directly into Miranda’s fucking face, wants… wants to feel anything other than this deep, never-ending powerlessness.
Instead, he passes out.
~
He wakes next to the smoldering wreckage of his factory, and surrounded by the mass of his mutated form, a shed carapace of flesh melted against metal. Pain still all but blinds him, so he can’t have been out long, though at least the rain’s stopped. He pushes himself to his feet, a process that takes far longer than he’d care to admit. The horizon shows signs of conflict, mold bursting from the ground in great reaching roots.
Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe he can still get a final shot in, maybe that baby is unattended while Miranda and Ethan fight. Shit, maybe he's just curious. He trudges mold-ward.
~
By the time he gets there, it’s over. Of course it is. Miranda’s corpse is crystalline, and the megamycete is emerging, strangely floral tongues undulating in the early morning sky. And then-
Is that Ethan? What the hell is he-
Oh, fuck no.