Chapter Text
Herbert’s blood pools around his feet as he stifles another cry of agony.
Around him lay numerous petals of various types, colors, and shapes. All stained in his blood and viscera as they tumble out in heaps from the current casame open on his chest.
Notes, similarly dotted in blood, lay around the table in front of him laying out a far different project than he would normally approach.
While it did involve the reagent it was not with the direct intention of improving the product. Rather it was meant to fix a problem Herbert had found himself suffering more and more from in the past few months.
The chills and fever were already concerning enough when they didn’t go away. Dan showed him some comfort and kindness at first, but when they did not alleviate he began to ignore them. Assuming them some byproduct of a new batch reagent that he couldn’t get Herbert to stop taking. And Herbert was foolish enough to go along with that explanation as well.
Till he coughed up a flower petal.
It’d been on a day where Dan was at the hospital late so he was able to hide it easily enough, but that didn’t stop the wave of horror and dread that gripped Herbert’s soul as he stared down at the red petal that fluttered down from his lips.
Scrambling to his note book he wrote of the sight and began to theorize what might have happened. Changing the reagent’s formula not long after assuming that would fix the issue.
It didn’t though.
More and more petals continued to come from within him till one day he found himself doubling over the toilet bowl vomiting endless amounts of them.
When he was finally able to lift his head again a whole flower lay in the petal laden water. Staring up at him as an ominous show of the power of whatever disease had taken hold of Herbert’s body.
His focus changed from reagent to finding answers for this affliction. All the while to not alert Dan to what was happening.
He kept telling himself that he would tell the other man when he’d figured out what was happening. Where an equation had gone wrong and he knew how to fix it. When he could provide concrete answers to anything he’d be able to think up to reassure him that he wasn’t going to leave him anytime soon.
And he found those answers eventually.
It was a shot in the dark when he entered a bookstore to expand his search. So when he, in desperation, stopped in the more– fictitious book section he was shocked to find a book with a description that matched his affliction.
As he read more, though, he realized that he couldn’t tell Dan what was happening.
Because then he would have to tell him the truth.
The more the book described the affliction, which he learned was more of a rumor through many cultures but referred to as hanahaki disease, the more Herbert withdrew into himself in horror.
It was quickly made clear to him that it was linked to love. A desperate kind of love that festered within a person begging to be released but never allowed to.
He refused to admit that this was what was happening to him.
He accepted everything else the book stated about the disease. The flower blooming through the body, particularly the heart and lungs, a patient dying when the roots took hold, and so on and so forth. But he would not admit that he was suffering from the very feelings that brought forth such an extreme reaction.
Not after The Bride.
He’d done that once already.
He’d created a form for Dan to finally love him in, and he was rejected.
He was not going through that again.
Not now.
Not this way.
By now it’d been about a month since he learned of the disease in full and he’d begun his— elaborate plan of freeing himself from it.
He’d toiled away with idea after idea. The book had provided some but he thought they were too— obvious. Besides, no one would be able to do the necessary procedure. Not without a lengthy and enlightening discussion.
A discussion he’d decided to never have now. Finding himself content to live life wishing for more but knowing that more will never come.
He found himself far happier being a loveless creature that works for the betterment of humanity.
Till now.
Till some unseen force decided he needed to confront his truth in full. In the most merciless way possible.
A loud squelching noise came from within him as he was jolted back to reality. His body shuddered from the rolling wave of pain that came with it. Finding it difficult to breathe he was forced to grit his teeth and pull again on his heart.
Because that’s what he’d decided was the best option. To remove the source and replace it with another.
No one had tried a heart transplant on themselves before, sure, but Herbert knew he could do it. Even if the heart didn’t take enough reagent would force it to.
It had to.
He’d made a whole new batch for that specific reason.
This couldn’t— wouldn’t fail.
This was his way out.
This would be how he’d beat the disease and be allowed to continue to still experience the feels it seemed to bent on forcing him to remove.
Because it was one of the only things keeping him attached to his humanity. And if he lost that– he didn’t know what would happen.
Would his passion for the reagent consume him full fold with no clear possibility in sight? He preferred not to think about it. Because that wouldn’t happen. He wasn’t going to allow that to happen.
Another yank and his knees practically gave out on him. Squelching emanates from his chest as veins ching onto the organ for dear life while roots fall around him. Losing their grip on what had been a very palatable host for them.
Breathing was practically impossible by now and he knew that if he didn’t get this over with now he wasn’t going to make it.
In his agony he fails to notice the sounds of footsteps coming down the stairs though. He fails to catch when his name is yelled out for. And he fails to realize when the door opens and Dan stands still in the doorway.
Mouth agape in a wordless horror as he took in the gorey mess that surrounded Herbert West currently.
The roots, blood, petals, and viscerae standing as almost beautiful opposites to the other as they lay in such artistic manners in any other context he would have thought it were an art display.
But it wasn’t. The petals were visibly coming from the hole in Herbert’s chest where his heart was supposed to.
His nails were dug into the organ that was important for sustaining him as it was held aloft in his hand as if he were presenting it to some unseen figure.
His face was a mess of pain and determination as he was clearly trying to free it from the grasp of both its veins and what Dan could, at best, guess were roots.
Roots attached to a man’s heart. Dan thought he would have seen everything by now with West, and yet he always seemed to continue to surprise him.
“Herbert?” Dan asks, making his presence known as he began to approach the poetically gorey scene before him.
Such a sight was far too similar for his liking to when the Bride self-destructed. He could still hear her cry of “Is this what you want” haunting him at night. It wasn’t unusual for him to sit bolt up in bed hearing that scream ringing in his ears. So seeing it practically recreated by Herbert was mortifying to witness.
Herbert’s eyes slowly made their way over to where Dan stood. His expression morphed from a grotesque concentration to something more akin to the horror that Dan was currently experiencing.
He opens his mouth wanting to quell Dan’s obvious worry but can’t get the words out.
He has no breath left to form them.
He doesn’t have time to focus on Dan but his looming presence destricats Herbert from what needs his attention right now. The plan he’d worked so hard on was coming apart at the seams, and he wasn’t ready for what would come after if that happened.
The closer Dan got the more terrified he became. He now was able to discern that there was an I.V of reagent being pumped into his arm. If the scene wasn’t so ludacris he would have rolled his eyes at how Herbert had prioritized reagent over oxygen.
Then his eyes caught sight of how the hole was being kept open. Something of a clamp appeared to be keeping the skin at bay but it didn’t leave a lot of room for the important organ.
Herbert’s skin was as pale as any of their cadavers and he knew that if he were unhooked from the reagent he wouldn’t last a second.
He wants to scream. To yell. To let Herbert know how horrific this was, but he could tell that Herbert already knew that.
That’s why he hadn’t told him.
Whatever was happening Hebert knew it was wrong, and that Dan wouldn’t be happy with it.
So he was going to force himself to be okay with it. Just so the stupid scientist in front of him didn’t bite the bullet in such a stupid way. wouldn’t perish in such a dramatic way.
Rushing over now to Herbert he awkwardly grabs ahold of the heart as well. His fingers just above Herbert’s in such a delicate way under any other circumstances Herbert would have pulled away. Here, though, he was forced to hold on for the sake of his life.
With assistance from Dan they both gave it one pull, and the heart was released.
More roots appeared, seemingly from nowhere, to spill out from Herbert’s inside. Dan would swear later he saw them twitching. Neither party had time to take this in as Herbert’s eyes motioned to Dan where the replacement heart was.
Dan grimances to himself, “I know your approach to the scientist’s is odd Herbert, but I never took you to be the type of man to attempt a one man heart operation.”
Grabbing gloves from off the table he quickly puts them on and delicately picks up the spare heart.
“I understand you like to do things in– unorthodox ways, but I think a heart-lung machine would have been necessary.” he adds, trying to keep his cool by prodding at Herbert’s fally.
His own heart sinks though when Herbert’s legs buckle and he is left leaning against the wall.
Getting on his knees he begins what could best be described as a poor man’s heart proceder.
“Peru is coming in handy right about now.” he says to himself, but feels reassured when Herbert can’t help but crack a smile at that.
Hours go by as Herbert seems closer and closer to the black maw he worked so hard to keep others away from. More and more reagent being pumped into his veins just to keep something of a circulation going. Dan wasn’t sure where that would leave blood flow if he pulled this off.
He had a few chances to look at the ‘plan’ Herbert had laid out for himself, but kept finding ways to poke holes in it. Keeping a catalog at the back of his head that he’d list off to Herbert when he survived this.
Because Dan was going to make sure he survived this. In spite of Herbert seeming hellbent on surviving this procedure without him.
Putting the last stitch in he withdraws his hands. Afraid that something will happen at the slightest movement he stands as still as possible. Holding his breath, waiting to see if Herbert would start breathing again.
Seconds turn into minutes as Herbert’s vacant eyes stare right through Dan. He is left barely breathing, but breathing enough to allow Dan a minor rest bite from the gnawing fear in the back of his mind that Herbert had died. That the reagent had stopped working and he’d left him alone.
Nervously placing his hand on Herbert's cheek he mutters, “You’re going to need some bed rest now. I’ll go ahead and call the hospital.”
Picking up Herbert as he stands, cradling the smaller man like he had many ill patients, he walks over towards the door.
His eyes briefly look back to the pile of roots and petals he’d removed from Herbert’s insides. His stomach twists with concern as he opens the door and exits the gore covered laboratory.
The images still linger in his mind how he had to carefully pull them out. All the sounds they made slithering their way out from inside Herbert. How some had clung on so desperately to his tissue that he had to awkwardly cut them out. There was so much going on there that he couldn’t even begin to fathom how it could be related to the reagent.
If it was at all.
With a heavy sigh he closes the door behind him. Being left with the ominous feeling that whatever explanation Herbert eventually gives him he won’t like.