Chapter Text
As the door to his countryside estate slowly swung open in the humid summer night, Quatre Asselin immediately recognized something was wrong.
It had been a few weeks since he’d visited the Impact Zone complex, weeks he’d spent trying to lock the horror of what he’d seen in yet another one of his "mental archives" - a drawer or two below the Volgan riots and his deployment on Tau Ceti. It did take more effort than usual, but the flurry of obligations that now dotted his days, between preparing for the next Fist World season and his new class of Navy cadets, greatly helped compartmentalize it all.
That and, of course, the brief time spent together with Cortada, to which he almost confessed the whole affair. He then remembered that the man was, quite begrudgingly, obligated by contract to always record his outings through his augmentations. The folks at Blacktower didn’t particularly care for what he actually got up to on his off-time of course, and the footage was usually deleted if it wasn’t worth selling to local authorities or tabloids - but bringing up that kind of info on an open mic was probably going to get him in trouble with the brass, and he couldn’t be bothered to sit through another disciplinary hearing like that.
However, the moment he spotted a very visible stain of dried something on his pavement, accompanied by a smell he couldn’t quite recognize, he felt as if the lock he’d put on those memories had just been shattered - causing the drawer to slide open and hit him right in the stomach.
The silver lining of this situation was that he’d noticed the stain - and thus, most likely the beast - before it could have gotten the drop on him. He still held the initiative, meaning he could just take a step back, lock the door and drive away. Whatever happened after that would be the hazmats’ problem.
Yet, for some reason, he didn’t. He, instead, slid on his sunglasses and tapped a small button on their side - switching the tapestry of nanites that made up their lenses into light amplification mode. He then slowly unholstered his .44 magnum and inexplicably began to inch forward, as if he could actually ambush a being that apparently existed to hunt and feed.
Still, the door behind him remained open - and with it, a way out of this nightmare-to-be. Further with every step, but always within reach. Clarity, too, followed with every step - and as the parquet floor creaked gently under his boots’ soles, something began to dawn on him as well.
He wanted to see him.
He wanted a good look at what his moron of a friend had turned into. He wanted to go up to its vein-streaked visage and tell him exactly what he thought of his host. He wanted to unload his sidearm into it and watch its body flail helplessly onto the ground.
Even though most of his wishes were likely not to be, not that night at least, this sense of macabre curiosity had pushed him as far as the first flight of stairs - following what had become a trail of clear, viscous stains. And if the thing hadn’t pounced on him yet, that meant it was likely waiting for him on the floor above.
The image of that monster relaxing on his couch, zapping through his NETVision channels, barrelled into his train of thought for one split second before being shushed away like a stray dog - only to be replaced by another, sillier thought, likely born from a similar sense of exasperation.
As he cleared his corners with practiced motions in an effort to dissipate the mounting dread, Quatre had indeed began to wonder if it would have still enjoyed horror films. He quickly ruled that out, for most of them would have just become documentaries to it.
Renard, the real Renard, would have chuckled at that.
Room after room, corner after corner, his breach and clear routine brought him back to the first floor’s living room with no sign of hostile activity. Maybe he’d gotten lucky. Maybe the beast hadn’t found him and left. Maybe there hadn’t been any beast in the first place - as it could have either been a rabid direwolf or possibly another prank by those strange youths from the old city. Why did he always assume the worst so quickly?
Unfortunately, as an onslaught of perfectly reasonable hypotheticals assaulted his mind, a reminder of what ingrained this sense of hypervigilance into him suddenly came dripping from the ceiling - landing squarely onto the shoulder of his 700 Réal flight jacket.
He’d been so preoccupied with the corners, he’d forgotten to look up - which is where his own personal nightmare had been waiting for him, clinging to the ceiling with clawed limbs which he didn’t expect it to have.
So, the beast pounced and Quatre braced for it - a sharp spike of pain and hatred, piercing him swiftly through the chest. His body tenses up and he lets out a noise, the kind he always pictured engulfing enemy comms whenever he took a life from the comfort of his Frame’s cockpit.
But the spike never comes.
The beast has him pinned to the ground, but its hands aren't digging into his entrails as much as they are tracing his body - feeling him up. Undoing buttons when they can.
Ripping cloth when they can't.
By the time he opens his eyes again, Quatre can feel something cold and slick running along his neck - along with the slightest scraping of jagged teeth. As he tries to focus on the situation, all he can hear is the increasingly louder litany of grunts and yelps coming from his assailant.
The nature of the situation sets in - and his initial panic is replaced by confusion, then fear once more: a worse kind of fear, one he'd never really contemplated before.
Wide-eyed under the sunglasses, he begins fighting it - hoping he can reach for his waist holster before the situation can escalate further. He knows his .44 won't be enough to put it down, but he doesn't need that - all he needs is to run away. As he was used to, by now.
Unsurprisingly, the creature tries to keep him down, straddling his lap as tongue, claw and teeth scrape his body with hungry abandon. A touch so alien, yet worryingly familiar - enough to remind him of that damned dormitory. Billions had perished since those days - many by his hand, even more by that of the monster straddling him.
If anything, this new form was more honest about its nature.
Suddenly, the creature lets up slightly - sitting up on his hips to look down to its prey. Its mouth remains slightly agape as it breathes, but curved upwards in the parody of a smile. No, a grin. His grin.
How dared it.
Conscious of its newfound freedom, Quatre's arm moves on its own: aiming to slap this stolen grin off the face of this alien thing. Before the Lieutenant can take stock of just how foolish of an idea that is, he feels cold skin against his hand.
The sound of palm against face booms across the estate like a gunshot. Quatre didn’t expect it to connect, considering this creature was supposedly gifted with "impossible reflexes". Yet, that very same creature was now hanging limply on its side, running a clawed hand along that same cheek. It looked… pathetic.
Familiarly so.
Blackened eyes now stare at Quatre, gleaming slightly against his light amplification lenses, almost as if to ask "what did I do wrong?". Quatre wishes he could put it in as few words as possible - but before he can say anything, the beast crawls away in silence.
It sat down under a window, bathed in the artificial half-light of the planet's new moon - holding its knees to its chest in a familiarly childlike manner. Its gaze still fixated on the Lieutenant, who suddenly felt like he'd entered something of a feverish flashback. A memory of simpler days, twisted into a nightmare.
This should be the moment where he gets up, runs to his car, redlines it as far away from the estate as he can and calls a saturation bombardment on the whole damn lot. Instead, he simply walks up to the creature and sits next to it. A torrent of curses runs through his mind as he does so, but somehow he can't help it.
This may get him killed - but unlike the thing staring at him, dripping clear, viscous liquid on his 250 Réal carpet, he is only human.
He’s dreamed of this day for the past twenty years: seeing that fool again, finally speaking to him. Asking him how could he - how could he throw away everything his mother had worked for in the pursuit of petty revenge. How could he have thrown him away in favor of some jumped-up fascists he’d never even seen in the academy. He had missed him. He had missed him so much. Despite everything, he had wanted to be by his side - as an advisor, as a confidant.
As a friend.
The more he thinks about it, the angrier he gets - until this veritable flood of emotion finds itself bottlenecked in the Lieutenant’s throat. He clenches his fist and lets himself speak.
“Well, I’ve done as you told me: I’ve waited. Is this it?”
He cursed himself once more for blurting that out, tongue dry and hands still shaking.
The creature remained silent for a few moments, looking confused itself. Then, in the blink of an eye, it pulled Quatre close in a tight embrace - holding the Lieutenant's head to its chest.
A pulse.
Under a burnt-out containment gown, Quatre could indeed hear a weak, nigh-imperceptible pulse. A sign of life. A sign that, despite everything, that fool was still in there, somehow.
For better or worse, this was indeed it.
Then, a hand that had been caressing his hair slowly moved to the cap of his neurojack, trying its best to rip it open delicately. It still stung, but what followed was somehow worse.
Another cold, slick protrusion was now, in fact, slithering inside his neuroport - not quite a tongue, but something equally repulsive. Enough to make him thankful he'd drank lightly on his night out, as he felt the burning of bile rising up onto his palate. Then, for a moment, he felt nothing at all.
In that split second of oblivion, something inside of him had changed - and before he could even ask himself, the answer resounded from a corner of his own mind. Not spoken through any word he knew, but rather through raw electrical impulses - as if delicate fingers were strumming a melody on his nervous system.
In that moment, he knew that the creature he'd been so eager to bury was something special. That, unfortunately, the appraisal of that fanatical egghead at the Impact Zone had been very much correct: this wasn't a predatory symbiote puppeting a corpse, this was something more.
And, more importantly, it meant no harm - not to Quatre, at least. Because, no matter how far from his own species this new creature was, it carried inside the essence of a dear friend. A foolish friend, one he'd wanted to deck in the face long before he'd been transmuted into his new existence - but that, for all his resentment, he couldn't find it in himself to truly hate.
And so, with his mind still swimming in that bright oblivion, Quatre leaned onto him. For the first time in roughly twenty years, he embraced that old friend. He embraced Renard DeColde.
And for the first time in twenty years, he felt at peace. A peace he figured wouldn't last, and thus needed to be taken in as wholly as possible.
He could plan later, now he needed to let himself live.
- LA FIN N'EST PAS LA FIN -