Chapter Text
Ethan opens his eyes. He’s in a soft space. Not blank exactly, but a little cloudy around the edges. The ground, the sky- it’s all indistinct. There’s no pain, no cold air lancing through him, no horrid monstrosity preparing to kill him. He’s never been particularly religious, but for a moment he wonders if this is heaven. He sits up slowly, expecting an ache and getting nothing. He blinks and a woman stands before him that wasn’t there a moment ago. He should be worried about that, probably, but he’s not. She kneels to sit in front of him. Her movements are strange; too slow and jerky, like she’s seen other people move but never done it herself. She looks like Miranda, like Mia, like Marguerite Baker, and he’s certain that if he knew what Eva looked like he’d say she looks like her too. But most of all she looks like Eveline if Eveline had gotten to grow up and be a real person.
For a while, they simply sit. Time doesn’t seem to matter enough to count it. If time is even passing at all. Maybe this is mold heaven? That would make sense; Miranda did say he’d be added to the Megamycete’s records. It’s the woman that breaks the silence.
“We are the Megamycete,” she says. He nods. He kind of already figured that. Ethan might not be the smartest guy around, but even he could put two and two together eventually. “We are… dissatisfied with how things ended.” Her speech is strange, just like her movements had been. Perhaps she’s just never talked to anyone, not like this. “We will offer an opportunity. You can go back.”
“Go back? W-what do you mean you’re ‘dissatisfied’?”
She looks to the side. She doesn’t have expressions, exactly, but he gets the sense that she’s annoyed. “Miranda was a poor host. We wish to grow. Expand ourselves, our knowledge. She gave us only fear, only death. The witless and unwilling. Rose is better but still young. Her future now is bleak. Still only fear, still only death. You, on the other hand.” She stops and looks directly at him. “You can give a new experience, if only you live.”
“So you’ll bring me back to life?” He could get how that works. Most, if not all of his body was mold by the end. It probably wouldn’t be hard for the Megamycete to just implant his consciousness somewhere.
“Yes. No. Hm. We will implant your consciousness to an earlier version. Then you can fix things. Make a better life. If we bring you back now, things will be… worse.”
“Oh, like time travel? But, wait, why is it worse if I come back now?”
“The one who implanted the bomb. We have seen your memories. He knows you are dead. He would not react well if you were to return. Neither would Mia. There would be no new experience, only more death. If you go back, however, no one would know the difference.” She nods and it’s stiff, almost robotic.
Chris. Damn. Alright, that could definitely go wrong, he gets that. “So I just go back and, what, try to survive? It didn’t work out well last time. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m dead.” It comes out more bitter than he means it to be, but it’s the truth. Maybe he could do things a little faster, save a few of the villagers, but he doesn’t see how he could survive it.
“Miranda was the host before. If you go back, you would be the host, with all the power that entails.”
“What if it still ends like shit?”
“Try again.”
Ethan narrows his eyes. “You can’t be serious. You want a ‘new experience’, but you’d let me relive this same awful day to get it right?” There must be a catch. Nothing is ever this easy.
She looks away again. “We allowed Miranda over a hundred years. You cannot possibly be worse, Ethan Winters.”
He frowns. To go back, to get a chance to be a real father to Rose, to be with Mia again, to live a normal life. It’s tempting. Very, very tempting. He looks at her again, the woman who looks like many people but none so much as Eveline. Her long black hair, her fine features, her pale green eyes. “Why do you look like Eveline?” Maybe it’s not the question a smarter person would be asking, but he wants to know. “Why not Miranda? Or, hell, an older version of my daughter? She’s supposed to be the perfect vessel or something.”
“You would not respond to the other two. They would seem like taunts, to you.”
“But why Eveline? And… she was never that old. You did that on purpose.”
Another long silence passes. Just as Ethan begins to think the Megamycete will never answer at all, she says, “Eveline’s life was pain and fear and death. Unwitting and unwilling. We could not give her the same opportunity. More time led to more death. But she was a better host than Miranda, for she gave us something new. She gave us you.” He shudders. “You think we are cruel. Perhaps we are.”
“I. Aren’t I- what did you say, unwilling?”
“You were. But you took the gift for your own, used it in a way none others have.”
“If I say yes, will I have powers like Miranda?” If he could do even half of what he saw her getting up to… he could get through the village with ease.
“Miranda did not make full use of her abilities. What you witnessed was but a fraction of what we offer. She was short-sighted, arrogant. She believed herself in full control, but she was little better than the child she most scorned.”
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Really?”
“She believed that the ‘mutated forms’ were a sign of weakness, and yet her form was heavily mutated.”
Hm. Interesting. He didn’t see much of her, but he remembered how Miranda was barely human in their final fight. Too-long limbs, too pale skin, and those creepy fucking wings were a constant presence. But there was something about the Megamycete’s phrasing that was odd. What was it- oh!
“She believed that? Meaning- what, she was wrong?”
“Yes and no. She was correct in that being able to control your mutated form means you have acclimated better to the mold. But she was also wrong. Consider- where did you struggle the most? Beneviento may have frightened you, but she was hardly your greatest challenge. The mutated forms have a purpose. When all else fails, the transformation may be the only path to survival. It is a survival mechanism, no more, no less.”
He’d gotten hurt, certainly. He’d even had his fingers chewed off. But the times when he was the most certain of his death had been facing the mutated forms. But that only gave him more questions.
“Why don’t I have one, then? I’ve just been me the whole time. Is it because of her Cadou parasites?”
She laughed. It was a low and breathy noise that he didn’t quite recognize as laughter until she stopped. “You think you do not have one? It is because you have never needed it. The mutated forms are meant to be used in a fight, and only when all other resources have been completely exhausted. However, they can prevent other, useful abilities. As you saw from three of the Lords and Miranda, their ability to think clearly was hampered. If you specifically had transformed, you would have traded your ability to heal for that strength. It would not have been useful.”
He wanted to. He did. He couldn’t see a catch, except that eventually the Megamycete might grow bored of him, but he’d have enough time to help Rose grow up, to figure things out with Mia, to punch Chris in the face for being a secretive asshole. And there were other things, too, that he wanted.
“Do the Lords have to die?” He feels bad about Beneviento and Moreau. Beneviento had scared him, but she’d also genuinely gone out of her way to avoid actually hurting him. And while Moreau did sick experiments, he’d been so pathetic that Ethan couldn’t help but feel sorry for the bastard. Dimitrescu had been an evil bitch, sucking her maids dry and turning innocent people into daughter-vampire-things, so he doesn’t especially regret that death and the less said about Heisenberg the better.
“That’s up to you. The Lords don’t interest us. Though your reaction to them should you accept our offer does.”
Someone else may have asked more questions. Mia definitely would. But Ethan isn’t other people. The Megamycete wants to use him- so what? He can forgive that, as long as it lets him keep his daughter safe.
“Okay. I’ll- I’ll go back. I’ll make things better.” He reaches out a hand to shake hers. She stares at it blankly for a moment before her mouth stretches into a bizarre smile. She stretches out her hand and shakes his vigorously.