Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time it happened, he was driving home from the nearest small town, traveling at 70 miles per hour on snow-covered roads, with Rose in the backseat.

Forgetting yourself whilst driving wasn’t a crime in itself. The familiarity of a frequently traveled  road made rolling down hills, and navigating the twists and turns of endless desert roads feel easier, even boring and habitual.

Then you could daydream for a minute or two without causing a car wreck, philosophize about the uncertainties of life for a little longer—though you’d most likely hit a coyote if it chose that moment to test your car’s brakes, or to remove itself from this bleak and unforgiving world.

Ethan had driven by habit many times before, let his subconscious take the wheel, enjoyed it as it happened. 

Cruising, he called it. 

Mia’s favored word was reckless, which he thought a bit excessive when driving came as naturally as walking to him, but whenever she used it, she said it with love and a glint of amusement in her eyes, and he’d forgiven her for it. 

(You always forgive her)

But now, Ethan wasn’t familiar with these roads.

Cruising through the Romanian landscape wasn’t a habit of his, not just yet, and so, he hadn’t intended to tune out the mundanity of it either, especially not with baby Rosemary in the backseat. 

And yet. 

When Ethan blinked, he was suddenly stopped at the intersection just a block away from their house, instead of traveling down the beginning of the winding road, as if he had been teleported. 

"What the fuck," he said under his breath, gripping the steering wheel tighter. 

For a solid ten seconds, disorientation immobilized him. It took a concernedly long time for him to recognize the pine trees towering above him, and the rustic streetlight before him, to correspond these sights with the idea of my neighborhood.

Once back in his head, though, he turned to the backseat instinctively, so fast that the motion actually hurt his neck, from fear that Rose wouldn’t be buckled in her car seat anymore.

In his reeling imagination, he saw the car seat empty except for her beloved toy monkey, abandoned and never to be used again.

In reality, she stared back at him with her big blue eyes, wondering why they’d stopped already.

She talked to him in her nonsensical, baby-worded way, at the sight of him, stretching her hands out.

Ethan gripped the passenger side’s backrest, exhaling a shuddering breath, feeling very silly over his fear as he did.

"Gah," Rosa said seriously.

"I'm sorry," Ethan answered just as seriously, rubbing his face with his hand, "I'm just tired."

Realizing you’ve driven around without really thinking about it, usually elicited a small amount of shame, even when nothing had gone wrong. 

Having done so with his daughter in the car with him, it also elicited a great amount of terror in Ethan.

He considered all the what-ifs in quick succession and followed it with another, weaker, "I’m sorry."

Rose blinked back at him, none the wiser about the hypothetical car crash playing out in his mind, and waved her arms higher.

After shooting her a smile, he turned back to the road and drove on. When the house came into view, he tried to forget about the fact that he’d lost time, a full half hour to be exact.

It happens, he thought, knowing full well that it didn’t just happen if one was healthy. 

But with that, he’d decided to forget about it.

In their driveway a few minutes later, Rose in her baby carrier in one hand, plastic bags around his arm, Ethan pulled yet another pothos plant with round, plump leaves out of the trunk. 

As if the plants, the bringing and nurturing of life, however small, could ward off the black molten spots of death, and the memories of Louisiana.

* * *

The second time it happened, he wasn't even sure if it had actually happened at first.

"Earth to Ethan," Mia said, her voice penetrating the fog he had been involuntarily brewing in, forcing him back to the living room smelling of microwave popcorn and cheap beer—an aroma reminiscent of their shared weekends in college, simpler times, deliberately so.

"What?" he whispered as he turned away from the TV, and toward her instead. 

Smiling. Not reaching her eyes. Worried. Scared. Danger. Heart beating faster, faster.

He reached for a gun that should’ve been underneath the blanket, but wasn't there anymore—it was locked away in the basement, even though Rosemary couldn’t crawl yet.

"You went away there for a bit," her hand found his chin, and she held it from where she lay in his arms on the couch, gazing up at him with that uncertain smile of hers. "You okay?" 

Ethan swallowed down the rising dread as he reluctantly removed his hand from his hip. If it hadn't been for her apparent fear, he would've signed it off as daydreaming and not another blackout.

He nodded anyway. "Yeah," he assured her. "For..." he hesitated, swallowing again, "for how long was I out?" 

He tried to act casual, because it wasn't a big deal. It happens .

Mia stretched her hand out in reply, and Ethan looked to where she was pointing, dread building in his stomach. 

The after-credits were rolling.

Well over an hour.

His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach at that revelation. Cold sweat made the hairs at the back of his neck stand upright because, once again, he'd just blinked. He was sure of it. 

"I must've fallen asleep," Ethan explained, to both Mia and to himself. 

Her worrisome eyes flitted across his face, searching it for something. Stress? Deceit?

Black mold.

Mia hummed in contemplation, and said, "You didn't look asleep to me."

* * * 

The third time. God, why was there a third time? Hadn't he been through enough?

The third time, Ethan didn't go quietly into the dark. 

He was standing before the bathroom mirror, staring himself directly in the eyes with his toothbrush in his mouth, trying to understand what was wrong with him, when the room began to darken around him.

At first, he thought it must be the old ceiling light finally giving out, but looking up at it, he saw that it was still shining, albeit not brightly, and yet, his vision continued to turn black around the edges.

"What the—mph," he mumbled through the toothpaste in his mouth. He spit the foam out in the sink, raised his head, only to be met by more darkness, infecting every corner of the bathroom like... like... black mold.

Wherever he turned, the all-consuming blackness followed as if it were stuck to his eyeballs.

He gripped the sink, trying to control his breathing. Knuckles whitening as he tried to force the prodding entity away, for that was what it felt like. Exhaustion soon overcame him, his knees grew weaker, sweat broke out over his back, and he realized with fear, that he wouldn’t be able to resist much longer. 

Ethan thought he heard a child like giggle, gleeful and terrifying, and worst of all, familiar.

He suffered from the very distinct sensation that something was crawling inside his brain, coiling itself around his nerves, tightly.

“It’s just memories,” he told himself, struggling to get the words out. “Phantom fucking sensations that can’t hurt you.” 

The entity seemed to disagree with that sentiment, screwing itself even tighter around his spine, threatening to break it apart. 

What do you see around you? What can you hear? Repeat it to me, Mr. Winters, the therapist he’d been going to every Wednesday for the past three years said in his head.

Nothing, he thought desperately. I see nothing. And I hear someone taking pleasure in it. 

When his doctor prescribed coping mechanisms did not affect whatever spell he was suffering from, he thought of Rose instead.

Her innocent face chased away most memories of the Bakers, he'd come to find. Her laughter, even recalling her occasional temper tantrums, were better nightmare-repellent than any of Mia's pills could ever be. 

But he just heard that awful giggling again, all around him, even as he thought of Rose’s small face. 

And there was such an uncontrollable wave of hatred in those giggles as well, and it was washing over him like a tidal wave.

“Fuck,” Ethan hissed, feeling like he was about to vomit, groaning as he clutched the side of his head.

For a brief second, he thought about calling after Mia, because this wasn’t normal after all, but then he caught sight of his hand and that thought was instantly pushed away. His hand. It was spotted with black mold, slick like oil and swiftly spreading to the rest of his arm, killing whatever words he’d been thinking about saying because this wasn't real.

This isn’t real. 

“Ethan.” 

At the sound of Mia’s furious hiss of a voice, he swung around, just about keeping himself on his unsteady feet.

She was suddenly standing before him, concern written all over her face.

“Ethan? What are you doing? You’ll wake her.”

He wasn’t in the bathroom anymore, he realized then, but in Rose’s room, towering over her like the big bad wolf, mouth as black as a bottomless pit and stuffed with fangs dripping of saliva, snatching babes from their cribs.

This isn’t real, he thought again, tears burning in the corners of his eyes.

“Didn’t you hear me, or are you just ignoring me?” Mia continued in a quiet voice, still a little angry, though mostly just concerned. “I've been saying your name over and over again.”

"I didn't," Ethan said under his breath.

"You... didn't ?"

Now her concern seemed to grow to fear. Something in the tone of his voice must've tipped her off.

"What do you mean, you didn't?" 

Ethan didn't know what had taken control over his body, but the fact that it had brought him to their daughter, that it'd peered down at her whilst she was peacefully sleeping without him knowing it, was enough to send him over the edge he'd been tripping on for years now.

Ever since getting Mia back, he'd been mere inches away from, well... not flight, never that... but fight. He'd fought tooth and nail for Mia, and he'd do it a thousand times over for Rose, it was just a matter of when, that is what he had thought.

Seeing monsters in the shadows was an everyday occurence for him now after all, he was always reaching for a gun not there like a paranoid.

...Ethan just never expected the threat to be himself.

He looked at Mia with a cold sort of determination in his eyes. "I need another doctor," he said.

* * *

There wouldn't be a fourth time, he decided right there and then, in Rosemary's bedroom.

"What is it you Americans say?" A Dr. Popescu said, readjusting his glasses with his middle finger. "You're as fit as a...a… oh, right–a fiddle?"

"Is that your actual assessment, doc, or are you asking me?" Ethan returned, just managing to keep his voice from sounding as strained as he felt, with what, him sitting–shirtless–on the slab with his hands on his knees like a little kid.

The doctor smiled amicably toward him, and there was a hint of pity in his eyes as he did. "My professional assessment, Mr. Winters,” he began to remove the electrodes from his chest and arms. “You're a remarkably healthy, young, man." 

Like hell I am.

"Yeah? You've seen a lot of healthy, seemingly young, guys who sometimes pass out in your career?"

The doctor emitted a wry chuckle.

“From all outward signs,” he explained then, wheeling away the ECG machine back to its corner before meeting his eye again, “you're in good shape.”

“The key word is ‘outward’,” Ethan said as he pulled his sweater back on. He wanted more tests. He needed them to not lose his mind within the next few days, actually.

“How old is your child?” Dr. Popescu asked instead, seemingly out of nowhere. He must’ve noticed Ethan’s expression going dark and wary because he laughed his wry laugh again, scratching his neck, and then he pointed toward where he’d hung his jacket earlier.

He saw that Rose’s diaper bag was there as well when he turned around. Right . Ethan was so used to bringing it that he had forgotten he accidentally brought it with him this time too, even though Rose was currently back home with Mia 

He smiled to himself. “She’s just a little over five months.”

Dr. Popescu made a confirmation sound. As Ethan looked back at the doctor, he found him chewing on the inside of his cheek, as if contemplating one of life's big mysteries. Like what's the point of it? All that blood and death and memories of rotting flesh that never strayed far away from his head. What's the fucking point?

"Baby girls. Aren't they just lovely?" 

Ethan raised his brows, slightly startled by Dr. Popescu’s statement. "Sure... yeah, they're great." 

"I've got three myself," he elaborated, understanding that the direction of the conversation could've been perceived as strange otherwise. He slapped his hands on his lap. "Tell you what, Mr. Winters. I'll book some more tests for you, just to be on the safe side. Would that make you happy?"

It would make him very happy indeed. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Okay,” the doctor smiled briefly, then he slid behind his desk and began to look through his psychical calendar. He hummed. “I’d like to schedule an MRI scan for you. Does the 24th of January work for you?” he asked, looking up from the desk.

Ethan did the math in his head in just half a second. “That’s four months from now.” 

Dr. Popescu sighed, “I’m afraid that’s the best I can do. We’re a small town, after all.” Then he stared at him with a look that simply said, Do you want it or not?  

So much for getting fixed before losing himself completely. Fuck. What’s the fucking point? Why keep fighting?

You know why , he told himself, or whatever it was trying to drag him down with it.

“Whatever, it’s sure as hell better than nothing. I’ll take it.”

“It’s a date,” Dr. Popescu said, making jokes to lighten the mood but failing miserably. 

“It’s a date,” Ethan repeated so that he wouldn’t feel bad about it.

Ethan had his jacket on, and he was just about to step out of the office when he was offered the doctor’s rough, old hand and a tight, plastic smile. He shook it reluctantly, eager to be home again he intended to get the handshake over with quickly, but when he tried to pull away, Dr. Popescu tightened his grip instead, hard.

“S-sir?”

His hand was beginning to hurt.

“What is Chris up to these days?” Dr. Popescu said tonelessly. 

Ethan was stunned to silence, for a few seconds he couldn’t even place the name. Chris? His heart was beating faster. Why was he–the one available doctor within a 100-mile radius–bringing up Chris?!

He continued. “I haven’t heard from him in a while. Is he off saving the world, again ?” Dr. Popescu laughed, and it wasn’t until then Ethan heard just how fake his laugh sounded, how scared.

He hesitated, couldn't find his words. He suddenly felt as if someone was listening in on them, and had been ever since he first set foot in this room. Watching them.

He inhaled a shaky breath. "How the hell do you know Chris Redfield?" 

Dr. Popescue said nothing for a moment, then he let go of his hand. “Take care of yourself, Mr. Winters,” was all he said, and that… was that. 

Later that night, staring at the ceiling and feeling like a stranger in his own body, Ethan wasn't even sure if the doctor had mentioned Chris at all. Black spots were infiltrating his vision once again, and the nightly hours passed as if they were crawling.

* * *

“But we have to do something,” Mia blurted into the phone, clutching the receiver so hard she thought she might've heard her knuckles crack. 

Chris Redfield released a long sigh on the other end. “We,” he emphasized that one word, “don’t have to do anything. You need to keep doing what we’ve agreed on, Mia. Are you able to do that?"  

Oh, she hated how he said her name. Mia, with a hard ‘m’, as if she was a child and he was the adult reprimanding her. She was the one with the PhD, for fucks sake.

“Don’t be condescending, Chris,” she returned. Rose made noises from her baby rocker, and Mia looked down, smiling lovingly, albeit briefly at her, rocking her some more with her foot. “I never agreed to this. Not to anything like this, playing house with that–that thing!” 

Again, she didn't say, but she might as well have. 

“You agreed to watch over him, no matter what,” Chris said forcefully. “Isn’t that what you do best, Mrs. Winters? Watch?”

“Fuck you,” Mia spat out, grinding her teeth. Rose wasn’t old enough to pick up any bad habits from her parents yet–such as cursing–still, she felt herself naturally holding back.    

Chris should count himself a lucky man. 

 “Are you backing out of the deal? You know what that would mean, and I don’t want that life for Ethan any more than you–” 

“I’m not,” Mia interrupted sternly. “Chris, please. I just–” she trailed off, struggling to get a sense of her own feelings. God dammit, she thought. It was never this hard with Eveline–being her so-called ‘caretaker’–but this was Ethan, her husband and the father of her child. It was Eveline too, the pragmatic side of her filled in, some part of her, always there, peering in at their life through his eyes.

She counted her breaths as she tried to recollect herself. Rose blew some raspberries. 

 “Just try to avoid any more doctors, okay? It was hard enough to keep this one quiet. You have to hang in–”

“Right,” Mia said, her tone clipped. The guilt from when she gave Chris the name of Ethan's newly found doctor was still fresh.

“–there.” A beat of nothing. "You still there?”

“Yes–sorry.” Mia peered around the corner into their kitchen. The window she’d left ajar earlier creaked loudly, the autumn wind was picking up outside. “I just thought I heard something.”

“You thought you heard something, or you did hear something?”

“Thought,” Mia confirmed, even though she wasn’t entirely convinced herself. The house felt fuller all of a sudden, as if another body had just entered the safe sphere around them. 

“Do we need to send someone?”

Chris sounded concerned. Ever the man ready for an ambush.

Maybe if she’d trusted her instincts and said yes, Miranda wouldn’t have gotten to her. “No,” Mia answered instead, so used to hearing and seeing things that weren’t really there. “I think it’s just Ethan… yeah, it's just Ethan.” Who was she trying to convince? Chris, or herself? She wasn't even sure anymore. "I'll call you in another three days." 

Chris paused for a moment, hesitant to let her go. "Roger that."

* * *

We know you.

The Black God talked to her in sweet whispers, always present in the back of her mind.

Ethan Winters was a good man, Miranda had come to find these last few days. He treated her (treated Mia) with reverence, no different from how her followers celebrated her as their one true Mother. 

He was, therefore, easily fooled. Furthermore, he did not mind her temperament, he quivered before it. So desperate was he to keep the false narrative alive—their family from drowning, that he took it all in stride, the withdrawal of affection, as well as the hateful words. 

But the Ethan Winters standing before her now, leaning against the kitchen island, was not the good man she’d associated herself with for days. We know you, the Black God warned her calmly. When it smiled–with blackened teeth, and wider than he'd ever smiled–Miranda knew for certain. 

“You are not Ethan Winters.”

The entity wearing Ethan's face like a mask emitted a wheezy laugh, still smiling when it said, "And you're not Mommy..." he, or rather it, tilted his head quizzically, "or are you? No matter."

Ethan Winters, or not, he calmly stared at her when she reached for one of the larger kitchen knives. His mouth took on the shape of a small ‘o’ as he watched her arming herself, doing nothing to stop her from doing so. 

“Are you here for Rose?” he asked instead, standing straight, eyes two dark slits. “You soo are.” 

“Yes,” Miranda confirmed, seeing no use in lying. 

If the entity in possession of Ethan Winters had a predilection for Eva’s vessel, she’d have no difficulty subduing it; she instinctively knew that the entity was a part of her, just as instinctively she knew her God to be–as moldable as all others at the tips of her fingers.

The entity appeared to consider her revelation. Then it was grinning again. “He’ll kill you if you touch her. He’ll kill you if you as much as try.”

Could he? Miranda thought, hesitant for a rare and brief second, but considered it no further as her God reassured her he wouldn't stand a chance and the man himself began to emit sounds of pain.

He was coming back to himself, or struggling to.

He folded at the waist, grabbing the island for support, whimpering, and Miranda quickly discarded the knife, adopting the role of the concerned and loving wife yet again.

“Oh, Ethan,” she said, making her voice sound concerned as she approached him. "What happened?"

* * *

It happened again. This time, though, a voice was echoing in his head afterward, saying, We know you. Over, and over again. We know YOU. 

Who? Ethan thought desperately, looking at Mia, but feeling as if he wasn’t seeing her anymore. Who do you know? And is it really me?

Chapter Text

Everything around her was pitch black.

She couldn’t see anything, and someone, a stranger considerably taller given the way they loomed over her, was wringing her hands behind her back and pushing her forward through the total darkness of what seemed to be—a cave?

The air clung to her bare chest like a layer of film, and the space gave her a sense of claustrophobia anyway, so it was hightly likely that they were underground.

The blindfold was tight, tighter than it needed to be, and her hands were bound with rope, but Mia’s mind was still intact—even as the pain at the back of her head tried to tell her otherwise. And that was something. She could work with that. 

She’d been trained in these kinds of situations. 

Her ankle twisted to the side as they descended what might be a set of stairs without warning. The pain flashed for a second, just as sharp as it was sudden, before the stranger unceremoniously pulled her back on her feet, and it faded away. 

Nothing was sprained then. Good. She needed her body in working condition for when she was getting the hell out of here, and back to her daughter.

Rose.

Her sweet, innocent baby.

She’d probably never forgive herself for not listening to her instincts. Someone had been in their house, and some part of her had known it wasn’t Ethan, but she ignored it, told herself it’d turn out to be Eveline if worse came to worst, and now her family was paying for it. 

She’d grown docile. Furthermore, she had thought them safe, as if a phone call every third day could keep them safe from the things they’d experienced.

How naive—

The stranger pushed a door open next, she could tell by the sound of the creaking old wood, then after leading her around… something, a table of some kind considering how her legs brushed against it, another door opened by itself—one made of metal. 

Given no time to react to what would be her prison, she was shoved inside, and with her hands still tied behind her back, Mia braced herself for the impact. She clenched her teeth as her knees were torn open on the cave floor, and as the shoulder she'd landed on throbbed, courtesy of the sharp rocks.

The stranger stepped in after her. Before she managed to recollect herself to stave them off, they’d grabbed her aching shoulder with one leather-gloved hand, and her face with the other.

The smell of cigarettes hung in the surrounding air as they squeezed harder. 

“Let me go,” Mia demanded since words were her only weapon, staring straight ahead as she did, even though the stranger couldn’t see the fury in her eyes, “you fucking bastard. Take me back to my daughter, now—or I’ll—”

Their fingers dug deeper into her cheeks, far in between her teeth, to assert who was in charge of whom at the moment, and to cut her off. 

Mia released a cry of pain despite herself, and a laugh emitted from the stranger—the man, it sounded like, above her in return. “You’ll what?”

He pushed her into the wall behind her. Her blood rushed in her ears. Her eyes were useless, the fingertips gripping her as sharp as hooks, and for a few seconds she seriously feared he was going to break her jaw. 

But instead he sighed dramatically, and as he subsequently let her go, Mia assumed he’d decided against whatever horrible thing he had thought about doing.  

She could hear him stand up with a grunt. If she hadn’t, she would’ve sworn his hands were still on her face—about to tear it off like a time-worn door off its hinges. Her jaw was still throbbing.

“Don’t fool yourself,” he sighed with a dialect she wasn’t able to place until he fluently switched over to German, “you’re not in control down here.” A pause for effect. “None of us are. Try your best to get used to it.”

The moment the man shut and soundly bolted the metal door behind him, was the moment the weight of the situation hit her like a freight train.

Last week, she'd been able to lock the bathroom door behind her. For once, she hadn't broken down crying as the space closed in on her and brought her right back to the Bakers' damp basement—to being a prisoner, in both body and mind.

Alone in the darkness of yet another cell, Mia began to silently cry.

* * *

“That smells good. What’s that?”

Mia hit his hand with the soup ladle so hard it hurt, but she acted sweet about it. 

“Hands off, mister.” If side-eyes could kill, Ethan thought, before she gave him another placating smile. “It’s ciorba de legume…” she explained like he ought to know, and in response to the please elaborate look he gave her, she hastily said, “it’s a local recipe.”

“Wow,” he marveled, absentmindedly sucking on his sore knuckle for a second. “You’ve gone full native, haven’t you?” The knuckle, he saw, had begun to bruise slightly red. “...and learned how to cook,” he laughed, looking at her.

Mia stiffened at his remark, but she kept the plastic smile tightly secured on her lips. “I’ve always known how to cook. A mother should know how to cook, wouldn’t you say?”  

If you’d call sticky Jasmine rice and charcoal’ed chicken cooking, sure.

“Right, well,” Ethan waved his hand in surrender, keen to move on from any and all upsetting subjects—he wasn’t up for another shouting match, especially not with Rose sleeping soundly upstairs, and not over something as juvenile as Mia picking up a hobby.

“Local wine, too,” Mia changed the subject for him, smooth as ever. 

She brought the wine glasses, and he grabbed the red wine bottle from the island to be of use. “How nice,” he said, trying on a smile which just felt forced. 

Shrew eggshells. Every slip of his tongue led to a punch to his gut that mercilessly ripped the air from his lungs. When did this become them? They used to talk . About everything. About nothing. This wasn’t them, all fake smiles that cut like knives, and talking around their issues. 

Was Louisiana the when?

It had certainly taken its toll.

But no, that answer was too easy. The Bakers’ may have crushed Ethan and Mia into a thousand jagged pieces, cursed them with forever reminding each other of what they'd been through, but they hadn't broken them beyond repair—if they had, they wouldn't have had Rosemary. 

This change was more resent than that. 

“But if you're going to keep sulking all evening,” Mia started to say just as sweetly as she'd been saying everything else for the last three days, “maybe you shouldn't have—”

The wine bottle slipped through his fingers, and shattered into pieces as it hit the wooden floor.

Ethan stumbled back, just as startled by the sound as Mia was, whipping her head around, then staring at him with some sort of intensity in her eyes. 

He could feel it… prodding. Trying to get inside again.

Yeah. That was what it was. The fucking when.

They'd changed when he had started to go crazy.

“Ethan?” said Mia in a low voice, and Ethan thought she sounded more intrigued than worried about his well-being, which was disconcerting as well as heartbreaking.

“I'm okay,” he assured, even though she very clearly hadn't asked, as she began to approach him slowly. “I'm—still here. I'll… clean up the mess.”

But he couldn't close the fingers on his left hand, and because of that, his pants were now stained with splashes of red wine he'd probably never get out. Because of that, he was finding it harder, and harder, to breathe by the second. 

What do you see around you?

I see broken pieces of glass, Ethan thought, big jagged shards, and blood-red wine in the gaps between the floorboards, forever ruining the beautiful wood.

I see my wife staring at me as if I’ve lost my head.

Then he saw her mouth moving, but there were no sounds coming out.

“What?” Ethan managed to get out, so quietly it was barely audible above the thump of his heart. “Sorry. I wasn’t listening.”

She paused, giving him nothing to go on but that terrible blank stare a moment longer. “Will you take that?”

He was going to ask, but it was then his brain decided to switch back to this reality, and he heard the incessant ringing of a phone.

A phone, because it wasn't his ringtone, and neither was it Mia's, more like a default tune from 2003.

“Oh,” he said dumbly as he made toward the source of the sound, "right.” 

He found it buried in one of the kitchen drawers, the junk drawer actually, home of old receipts, several broken pens, and all the things you'd ever lost, and not only did it sound the part, but it looked like a proper burner phone too. 

Small and inconspicuous, easy to hide if you wanted to. 

At once, knowing what this phone was used for was the most pressing matter in the world. This could be the thing that makes sense of everything.

Ethan accepted the call and put the phone to his ear. “Hello?” 

Silence on the other side of the line. 

“Hello? Who is this?”

Mia was picking up the glass from the floor, one piece at the time, watching him closely.

"Damn it! I'm not in the fucking mood for a prank—”

“Ethan. Calm down." 

His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach at the flat sound of Chris’ voice.

He’d recognize it anywhere. It was Chris calling the random burner phone, of course it fucking was. 

"I understand that you're shocked, Ethan. I will explain everything to you when the time is right—"

He hadn’t quite recovered from his doctor appointment yet. What is Chris up to these days? Dr. Popescu had asked, whilst fearing for his life.

“When the time is right?” Ethan laughed in disbelief. Chris was meddling in their lives without his permission, even after he’d sworn the BSAA would leave his family the fuck alone at long last, and he had to wait for answers? 

“Calm—down,” Chris said forcefully, “I mean it. If you don’t want your family to get hurt, you better do exactly as I say.”

Ethan’s next words died right on his tongue then. They tasted like death as he forced them back down his throat, as everything, except Chris’ voice, switched off again. 

“Good,” Chris said, much calmer. “It is crucial that you act normal. Is Mia there with you?”

“Yes,” Ethan answered, trying to act as normal as possible, whatever the fuck that meant. Rose’s bedroom on the second floor suddenly felt very far away. Too far for him to reach in time, if something horrible were to happen.

Mia had stopped cleaning, he noticed. She was just sitting on the floor next to the shards, and she was still looking straight at him. 

“Tell her Elias is asking for her.” 

Who? 

Ethan wasn’t going to question anything. “Honey.” He held out the phone to her. “Elias wants to speak with you.” 

Mia smiled as she rose to her feet. "Is that so?" Ethan’s hand was shaking when she took the phone from him, but she didn't seem to notice. “Elias,” she said into it then with a voice he’d never heard her use before, sweeter than honey.

As they talked, he expected someone to break through one of the windows, or, that any second now, a rain of bullets would destroy the wallpapered walls, and paint them red with their blood. He wasn’t sprinting to Rose’s rescue because Chris had asked him to act normal—and whether he wanted to or not, he trusted the man's judgment.

“No, there’s nothing wrong,” Mia explained to Elias—Chris—on the other side of the line. “I don't always have the time to call you. I understand.” She lowered the phone. “He wants to talk to you again.”

He took the small, inconspicuous device back with a silent nod, and Mia went right back to meticulously removing the glass shards from the floor. 

Without looking up from the mess, she said, “Don’t talk too long. You do remember we were in the middle of dinner before you spilled our drink?” 

“I know—I know. I’ll make it quick.” 

He’d just put the phone back to his ear, when Chris uttered the words, "She had no idea who I was."

Ethan's head was spinning. He kept his eyes fixed on Mia. "What... does that mean?"

“That woman,” Chris said at the same time as ‘Mia’ grabbed the knife-like bottleneck off the floor, “isn’t your wife.”

(That impostor is going to kill us) 

I’d like to see her try, Ethan thought to the voice inside his head. 

* * *

Blood. 

That was what Chris saw when he entered the Winters’ home. On the floor, and on the walls. Everywhere. 

He’d ordered Ethan not to do anything. To stay put, and to not raise suspicion before he and his squad arrived. But he knew the man better than that, hadn’t been stupid enough to expect Winters to actually listen to such a straightforward order, but under no circumstances had he expected what he was met by at the house—the absolute carnage of it.

He should be used to the smell of guts and blood by now, and yet, his stomach flipped as he entered the dining room.

“Christ,” Tundra said next to Chris, taking in the sight of Ethan on top of what he’d until just recently thought to be his wife’s newly massacred body. 

The blood on his face was still wet, glistering in the overhead light. He smiled crookedly when he noticed that he had company. 

Chris drew his gun, and aimed it at Ethan’s head. His squad acted accordingly.

Soon enough, six different guns were aimed at what looked like Ethan, but for a fact wasn’t. How did everything get this fucked?

“Eveline,” said Chris, as calm as possible. “What did you do? Where the fuck is Mia?”

Eveline turned Ethan’s head to look at the corpse underneath him. The face that had once resembled Mia Winters was nothing but a sliced open mess of blood and bones. 

“Oh, no. This wasn’t me,” she said, placing his hand—drenched in black mold—innocently over his chest as she looked up at Chris with a knowing grin. 

Chris hesitated. “Ethan did this?”

She shrugged in response to that. And that was the only answer he got, for in the next second, Ethan returned from whatever corner of his mind he'd fucked off to by blinking up at him all confused like and falling head first to the floor with a hard, painful  thud.

“Son of a bitch.”

Chapter Text

When Ethan returned to his body, he wasn’t in their dining room anymore. There was snow pressed against his cheek, so cold it burned, and an ache in his arm from where he’d been repeatedly sliced with the bottleneck before he’d managed to get the upper hand, and taken it from Mia.

No, not Mia, he thought faster than a viper. That hadn’t been Mia, just like it hadn’t been Mia that cut his hand off with a bloody chainsaw.

No, no—not like that either. This hadn’t been her at all, not even a sliver.

That hadn't been her, the body he barely remembered stabbing, again and again… and again...

Ethan hasn’t killed his wife, Rose’s mother. He hasn’t—

(Say it three times, and it just might come true)

He groaned as he tried to push himself up to his elbows, ignoring the derisive giggles bouncing around in his head.

“Jesus…”

He took a look around the snow bank he’d been napping on for however long, the gears in his mind turning and working overtime trying to make sense of anything at all.

There was a broken down truck off to his side. Blood smeared all over the snow, and on himself. A dead man with a broken phone in his hand. No sign of Rose. Oh, god.

And no sign of anyone else for that matter.

(No one?) the voice of a girl asked him, giggling again. (I’m hurt!) Ethan tried his hardest to shut it out. (You can’t ignore me forever, you know).

“Bite me,” he said in defiance despite the surrounding emptiness, even though there was nowhere there, climbing to his feet. He assessed the damage to his body; slightly wobbly, but there were no broken bones, and his arm wasn’t bleeding anymore.

At the same time, the voice sing-sang his name, over, and over, like a scratched CD stuck in a never-ending loop.

Taking his therapist advice again, Ethan whispered, “I-I see a dead guy,” shakily to himself as he began to stumble his way forward, “his insides are on the ground, like a shitty fucking Pollock,” laughed at his own distasteful joke, spiraling just a little, “and I hear the voice of a crazy fucking—bitch.”

Eveline appeared before him with a flash of white, baring her teeth, and Ethan startled so hard he had to steady himself with the help of a tree trunk, or else he'd have fallen back to the ground.

Fuck. Jumpscares.

(Where are you going?) Eveline asked, letting the insult slide without further note. (You can’t run from me. I’m in your head! You wanna know what I see?)

He kept treading on through the deep snow past the hallucination, he wasn't going to entertain her.

Instead, Ethan decided that he was going to make sense of his memories. How far away could the house be, really? 

All the fir trees he saw were heavily weighed down by the snow, sparkling in the light of the moon, and shaped the exact same way (tall and menacing), offering him no clues whatsoever to his whereabouts.

He couldn't remember anything beyond going against Chris’ direct orders, and killing the impostor. 

He certainly didn't remember being in a car crash.

A sense of cold dread was starting to weigh him down the longer he walked, just like the snow did the branches, because no matter how hard he tried to search the deep recess of his mind, he couldn't remember what had happened to Rose.

The last few minutes? hours? however long, were blank.

Had Chris taken care of her? Was she being fed? Did she have her stuffed monkey with her? These were all important questions, and he was growing increasingly fearful that the answer to all of them was no.

Continuously wading forward, he thought he'd been walking straight ahead, until he reached his own tracks in the snow a few minutes later.

“Fuck.”

He was lost in the woods.

Sitting on the tree branch of a birch tree was Eveline, smiling down at him and kicking her feet. 

Eventually, he couldn't take being watched without saying anything anymore. “What?” he shouted, glaring right up at her with open arms, acknowledging her at long last, just like she'd wanted ever since that ride home from the Supermarket. 

But she just gave him a provocative look in return, and widened her grin, as if they were playing a game only she knew the rules of.

Well, fuck you too.

Ethan waddled over to the truck, in boots stuffed to the brim with melted snow, and searched the documents spread around the dead man for anything that might be of interest.

Eveline watched him quietly from her spot in the birch tree.

He found a mission brief, and he couldn't feel his fingers anymore, he noticed, as he flipped through it.

“So,” Ethan explained aloud, to Eveline, he supposed, the final drop in the barrel of crazy, “out of three mission objectives, they succeeded with the staggering amount of zero.”

His cynicism earned him another giggle. Yay.  

After finding nothing else in the pile of papers, maybe because he was turning desperate, Ethan finished a thought that had been forming for a while. If he was in fact losing it, why not go all the way? Why not use it?

With that, he turned to the ghost of Eveline, and gathered the guts to outright ask her for answers.

“Do you know where my daughter is?”

She swung her legs back and forth, tilting her head to the side like she had to think about it. A few excruciating seconds later, she nodded.

A burst of energy rushed through his heart. Hope. 

“Can you take me to her?” Ethan moved closer, or he was pulled in by the hook she'd buried deep within him the moment she decided to come back from the dead and haunt him. "Please."

Eveline nodded again, and flashed from the tree to a part of the woods where the snow lay untouched. 

He'd been hearing her for weeks, but this was the first time he was actually seeing her since the Bakers, and already he was asking her for a favor like a jerk with no deeper thought devoted to the implications of asking your personal demon for favors, than maybe that he shouldn't and doing it anyway.

Anything for Rose, he thought.

* * *

The village below the mountain was bursting at the seams. The houses were old from the beginning, but now they were in ruins; roofs were caved in, walls razed to the ground.

He was still following Eveline like a fool, and the further they went, he became more unsure that he had made the right decision in doing so. 

It was just that Ethan couldn’t fathom finding Rose here, in this clearly abandoned village. 

They were out of the woods, which on one hand was something; a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t good enough. Far from it. He’d asked her to take him to his daughter, not sightseeing.

The wind was picking up too as the night turned to day. Ethan was growing colder—he was only wearing a thin bloodied hoodie after all—as well as impatient. 

“Eveline,” he called after her. She didn’t turn around as she practically floated, and he squeezed through an alley between two houses. “Where is she? Are you really taking me to my daughter?” 

She shot him a deadly glare over her shoulder. (I am)

Ethan didn’t believe her. “Where is she, then? And what the hell is this place? I have not asked for a tour of the castle, certainly not for the package deal. Two for the price–”

She was forty feet in front of him, and in the next second she was inches away from his face, on her tiptoes, scowling. (Do you always talk this much?)

Ethan blinked back at her, and as the shock of her sudden appearance left his body, he couldn't help but find her disgruntled expression… amusing.

“Yeah,” he grinned.

The scowl turned to a look of absolute disgust. (I liked it much better when you ignored me)

He started laughing as she stormed off, earning himself another glare over her shoulder. 

“So?” he said then, serious again. “Is she here?” 

(She is. I can sense her, unlike a half-thing like you. She isn’t far–) Eveline came to a sudden stop. (No)

“No? What do you mean, no?” 

Eveline swiftly looked around, eyes wide and flickering across the snow covered ruins. If he hadn’t known any better, he’d said she looked… scared.

Ethan’s heart was filling with dread, her apparent fear wiping off on him like a contagious disease. “What?” he said, walking up to her, and grabbing her arm without even thinking about it. “What happened, Eveline?” 

She stared up at him, and she looked small all of a sudden, like a child instead of a terrible weapon of war.

(Rose–) closing her hands into fists, putting them together, and then separating them violently (–shattered) 

Shattered.

The word echoed inside his head.

“What does that mean?” Ethan hissed, squeezing her thin arm harder.

(I don’t know! She was right there, and now she is…) Eveline pointed toward the left, to the mighty castle, (and…) to the right, as if Rose was in several different places at once.

“No,” he whispered, following her hand as she trailed it along the ridge of a distant mountain covered in thick mist, “that can’t be.”

(There too)

“She isn’t.” Ethan told her harshly.

(She isn’t dead) Eveline looked at him, her face half-obscured by her long, black hair as it tugged around in the strong wind, (if that’s what you’re worried about)

“How can she not be?” 

(I’m telling you, she isn’t) 

“Okay, okay,” he said, letting her go and dragging a hand through his tussled hair, which was just as bloody as his hoodie. He inhaled a deep breath and exhaled it very slowly, feeling like he was going to be sick, but there was no way in hell he was giving up so soon. 

Not ever.

“Take me to the first piece, then.”

* * *

They made their way forward through a house, instead of around it, for a change in pace.

“Is that fresh blood?”

(You didn’t think we were alone here, did you?)

He wasn't going to say it, instead he found and armed himself with a knife sticking up from a table.  

Eveline laughed. (You really are stupid. Don’t you feel that?) 

“Feel what?” he asked, just as they entered the kitchen area of the house. Everything in the open space seemed decades old, the paint chipped and worn, the furniture functional at best and actually broken at worst. There were kitchenware scattered about, like a storm had recently passed through.

Never not thorough, Ethan opened every unlocked drawer and cabinet he came upon, earning himself a groan from a certain personal demon. “Be quiet.” He closed yet another cabiet, empty but for the cobwebs and one odd rat slinking out, and moved on.

He’d begun to pull open a checkered curtain in the far corner, when a gunshot splintered the wooden frame right next to his hand. 

(That!) Eveline proclaimed excitedly from behind him, answering his earlier question.

“No, no! Friendly, friendly!” Ethan shouted and raised his hands in surrender as an old man emerged from the dark pantry armed with a shotgun. 

No game. The man unloaded another shot.

Ethan was thrown back as the slug hit him in the arm, the one already sliced up, then caught himself on the kitchen table, the wound bleeding profusely within a second, staining it red. 

The old man was reloading quickly thereafter, preparing himself for another go.

“Woah, woah! I’m not here to hurt you!”

(You’re drenched in blood, Ethan)

“Shut up,” he growled off to his side, arm throbbing, “you’re not helping.”

(And you’re talking to yourself!) her voice bounced around the inside of his skull. (You really think—) Silence, then: (There’s something on the roof)

Ethan swiftly looked up, hearing nothing but the sound of the old man cursing as he dropped one of the shells to the floor. “What? Where?” 

Eveline flashed into existence next to him, pointing one finger to a spot in the ceiling, right above the old man. 

It was then he heard the growl. 

Not again, he thought.

“Who are you?” the man was saying, aiming his shotgun at Ethan instead of the real threat up above. “Who sent—!”

He thought, This man just tried to kill me, but when the clawed hand broke through the ceiling, it grabbed nothing but a few strands of gray hair. 

Ethan had yanked the man by the front of his shirt and pulled him to safety.  

Now hatless, the old man was just staring at him, dumbstruck, instead of doing something about the thing clearly out for their blood. 

“Fucking shoot!” Ethan snapped at him.

That got him going. He unloaded two shots through the hole in the roof, and the creature above them let out an ear-cutting screech before it fell to the floor and landed right by their feet in a bloody heap.

Once upon a time it had been a man, a very long time ago by the looks of it, but no longer. 

Ethan stared at the corpse, eyes round like a couple of dimes as he gasped, “What the hell is that?”

Chapter Text

“Lycans? You mean like werewolves?”

The old man nodded vigorously, proceeding to explain that these creatures have always been a part of everyday life, things that goes bump in the night and dead sheep turning up once a month, on the same night every month when the moon was round and full.

“But never like this?” Ethan questioned incredulously, glancing down at the pile of flesh somewhat resembling a human being lying in a puddle of its own dirty blood.

“No, never like this. Predators have patterns. Tend to stick to them, sir.”

“Just call me Ethan,” he said as he hunched down on top of his heels, studying the Lycan’s face from the bloodied and malformed teeth making up its jaw, to its beady and milky eyes, trying but failing to ignore the pale finger in the periphery of his vision, reaching out to poke at it. “Don’t touch that,” he admonished Eveline, inciting a pout of all things. 

The old man released a shuddering breath, but otherwise he ignored the fact that Ethan was essentially talking to empty air. A thing like this, surviving it together, maybe made the crazy parts easier to swallow, or well... he hadn’t run off yet at least.

“Well, sir—er, Ethan. You don’t seem that disturbed by it all, if you don't mind me saying so,” he mused.

Ethan stood and looked at the old man—his face was time-worn, every wrinkle telling a story of a lifetime each—who in return avoided eye contact like this particular abyss had just decided to gaze back. “How so?”

“I’d imagined,” he turned his hand, palm to the ceiling, “an outsider like you, would find Lycans harder to accept than this.”

The man was wary of him, Ethan could tell, but at least he wasn’t too scared to converse with him. 

He cleared his throat, not willing to go down memory lane at this moment of time, not with this person, still a stranger despite their blossoming friendship. “What’s your name?” he said instead of announcing that this wasn’t his first time at the nightmarish rodeo and all that, “I don’t want to keep thinking of you as old man, feels rude.” 

(How about a useless bag of meat that shot you? Twice)

Will you behave for just one second? Ethan thought, exasperated, glaring at Eveline, who was looking particularly childish as she sat cross-legged on top of the kitchen table.

(How is your arm?) she retorted, sneering viciously. (Hurts like hell, doesn't it?)

Her saying so brought his arm to the center of his attention. The pulsating pain was growing harder to ignore with each passing second already, and shit, it’s bled through the second towel.

The blood had been steadily oozing for the last few minutes, and his palm was now slick with it. Urgh.

He must’ve made a face, because the man concernedly asked, “How are you holding up?” 

“I’ll be okay,” Ethan said, struggling to keep the pain out of his voice, “as soon as I find my daughter.” He lifted the kitchen towel from the wounds, gritting his teeth, and as he did thick strings of blood came off with it. “Jesus.” 

Ethan tore his eyes away from the gory mess that was his left arm, and placed them on the man. “You don’t happen to have something for the pain?”

The man thought about it, and with an oh! he went off through the door they’d entered the kitchen from earlier. Ethan could hear something being unlocked, and rummaged though (ah, that would be the drawer he’d considered picking), before he returned with a green flask in hand. When he presented it, Ethan saw that the label was very worn.  

“It’s something, right? Not for pain, but to clean your wounds.”

“It’s perfect,” he said, despite it looking so archaic, as he took it from him and placed it between his knees to be able to uncork it with one hand. “Thanks.” 

“I’ll get you a new towel.” 

But before he could do that sensible thing, Ethan was dumping the contents all over his arm. A bolt traveled through his body the moment the liquid made contact with skin, making him screw his eyes shut as he hissed through his teeth, but the relief was also instantaneous, warm and wondrously enfolding like a hug.

Opening his eyes again, it took a moment for him to realize that the man was gaping back at him. 

“Sorry,” said Ethan as he put the empty flask on the table next to Eveline, wounds stitching themselves together already. “You were saying?” 

* * * 

The old man spared Ethan a LEMI pistol before they went off. A murder of crows circled the cloudy sky outside, drowning out more than half of whatever the old man was saying a few seconds into their quest for safety; one in the form of Luiza’s house.

“What was that?” Ethan asked absentmindedly, stepping through the snow and mud covering the ground, looking left and right, searching for any movement.

The small village square was coming up ahead, and he was bracing himself for another ambush; not the most opportune moment for small talk, honestly, but it made the man less scared, so what could he do. He wasn’t cruel. Not by nature. 

“My name, sir—Ethan, I meant to say—is Mihail.” Mihail quickened his pace to be able to walk next to him. Shotgun still clutched tightly in his hands, head nervously moving around. “Mihail Popescu.”

Nothing was coming barreling toward them. Nothing with razor-sharp claws, nor otherwise. The most dangerous creature around was turning out to be a little girl chasing the resting crows just to see them take flight and giggling about it. 

“Wait a minute,” Ethan said when he realized what he had said, stopping shortly. “Popescu? You don’t happen to have a brother?” 

“I do,” Mihail answered, puzzled.

“Huh. Small world.”

It took a few seconds for Mihail to understand what he was implying.

“What do you mean?” he exclaimed when he did, and Ethan was taken aback at the sudden intensity in Mihail’s eyes. What appeared to be a desperate need to know everything. “Do you know Matei?”

Ethan thought about it.

“Um, I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, “but I’ve met him. I think, at least. For all I know, Popescu could be a very common surname here in Romania.”

As if refusing to even consider the possibility that it maybe wasn’t the same man they were talking about, Mihail continued with his questions, “How is he?” he asked, and before Ethan could answer that question, he moved on to the next. “What is he doing?” 

“Slow down there, cowboy. Where to now?”

“Left up ahead. Does he remember me?” 

“I…” Ethan didn’t know how to answer that. He barely knew anything about the doctor, Mihail’s presumed brother, but the man looked so hopeful. Eveline even ceased her one-sided game of tag, and looked at them both, some unreadable expression on her face, just as out of her depth as Ethan, it seemed.  

“I don’t know,” he answered finally, truthfully. “I was his patient for a second in time. He seemed… kind, I guess.”

“A doctor?” Mihail’s eyes gleamed with pride. “Of course. It suits him well.” 

“He’s a father—to a handful of girls.” Ethan ducked under some low-hanging branches, and Mihail followed right behind. “To three little girls, actually.”

“Three, doamne!” he laughed. “When he left the village, he only just had Lidia—straight ahead now, just through the trees.” Mihail dragged a hand down his face, smiling tearfully. “And what about me? Did he mention me?” 

Ethan slowed down. They were completely surrounded by naked trees, the crows were getting louder in the sky. “Yeah…” he found himself saying without really knowing why, “he also said he had a brother… no more than that, but when he mentioned you, he did so fondly.”

(Liar)

Ethan gave Eveline an unfeeling look, not asking, but telling her to keep her damn thoughts to herself. If he hadn’t known any better, he’d have said she appeared betrayed by his lying to another person. Ha! You’re one to talk, he thought, which only worsened her expression, getting it closer to homicidal. 

“Matei,” Mihail whispered to himself, “fratele meu,” then he looked up at Ethan, holding his eye with intent. “Thank you,” he sniffled. “For years, I’ve known nothing—” he lowered his head, as if overcome by emotion. “Thank you.”

Eveline wasn’t looking at them anymore, but staring off into space—somewhere beyond the naked trees, and Ethan was thankful for it. He was uncomfortable enough at the other side of Mihail’s genuine gratitude, he could do without her judgment. 

“Don’t mention it.”

Mihail nodded his head in understanding, and made his way forward. 

“Luiza’s house,” he indicated the wooden house just below the descending hill before them, “we are almost—”

When Ethan’s ears caught the sound of the Lycan it was already on top of them.

It sprang from the trees to their left, bloody fangs bared in a gut-wrenching howl.

Ethan fired the pistol but missed as the creature easily veered to the side. His mind raced between disbelief— They can duck!? —and trying to realign his aim. In the next instant, the Lycan lunged straight for Mihail.

No!

Mihail couldn’t do anything, his shotgun useless in his grasp. His shoulders shook, as if shivering from cold, but it was fear that held him. Frozen in the face of death.

The Lycan’s teeth sunk into his jugular just as another arrived, flanking them. Ethan pivoted, but didn’t have the space for movement to do anything to protect himself, except to throw up his hand.

The dying scream of Ethan’s new companion bounced off the trees as the monster tried to bite his face off. As two fingers slithered down its throat instead.

The pain was not instantaneous, it took a few seconds for his brain to locate the source. 

When the electrical signal found its way to his spinal cord, Ethan screamed. 

The other Lycan must’ve finished with Mihail’s body, for it joined in on the feast. 

He was being eaten alive. 

Through it all, Eveline did nothing but watch. Watched as they tore him open and licked the flesh from his bones.  She must’ve seen them coming—Ethan was convinced of it.

Then at last, putting an end to it all, the pain and the visceral consumption of his body, (Liar) went through his head like a bullet, and turned everything black like the night.

* * *

Mia was about half-way through the lock with her makeshift saw when she heard the door creak open.

Hiding the tool—which really was just a broken, sharp-edged piece of pipe—under her pink cardigan on the cavern floor, she retreated to the darkest corner of her prison cell like an insect, studying the intruder while remaining unseen.  

The person that entered the underground laboratory wasn’t one of the guards that’d been bringing her water and ‘food’, nor was it the German asshole that had dispositioned her here, it was someone new; a woman, carrying herself like something holy despite the thick layer of blood on her face, and the cuts across her chest.

Her dress, almost torn to shreds, reached down to her heels and trailed behind her as she walked, almost floated through the room. The fabric hung looslely off her shoulders, the lower part was ornamented with ember feathers shimmering in the light of the wall lamps.

And this woman knew Mia was looking at her, Mia realized. She was looking right back. 

Her cold eyes penetrated the veil of blood that was her visage. Her nasal bone jutted out of the laceration wound across her face, and a quarter of her bottom lip was gone, sliced off, which made smiling hard, but bless her heart, she still tried.

“Who’d ya piss off?” 

No answer, no surprise there. But at least her smile fell, and that was a win in Mia’s book; she wasn’t here to make friends with her captors. She had other ways of getting out. 

Without saying anything, the woman retrieved a silk handkerchief from the upper drawer of one of the lab benches, and proceeded to carefully wipe her face with it. 

Silk against her skin, it was not only the blood that came off, but also the cuts themselves, closing one after other before Mia’s eyes, healing as if by the woman’s touch alone, like nothing could kill her. 

Mia’s heart was pounding, faster and faster, at what she was witnessing.

She couldn’t deny the déjà vu of the situation, no matter how dearly she wished to (Marguerite had demonstrated her powers much like this once, hadn’t she?) and it was sending her down a dark, and dangerous path.

A path toward helplessness. Toward compliance, and thereafter, ultimately, death. 

The handkerchief—no longer white, but entirely red with blood—was cast aside as Mia refused to be broken again.

But it was hard, not letting the helplessness consume her. 

Especially, when she saw, with all that blood gone, that it was Miranda, looking back at her.

“Dr. Winters,” her old colleague said with a pleasant smile on her lips. “We meet again.”

Heart in her throat, she stepped out of the darkness into the light. “You—”

“How long has it been since our collaboration? Is it a decade, already? It’s so hard to tell when you’ve lived for as long as I have—”

“Why have you brought me here, Miranda!?” Mia interrupted whatever monolog she was building up to, pressing her face up to the bars of her cell. “What have you done to my daughter? To my husband?” 

Miranda sneered back, and with that Mia remembered her even clearer; they never saw eye to eye during that time, a decade ago, and she had been on the other end of that expression too many times to count, and proudly so.

“Funny. This is exactly how I remember you. Always so to the point—like a spoiled child.”

“And you,” Mia said, voice dark and even as she grabbed one of the bars, “always so morally better than everyone else. I’ve heard your servants talk among themselves—Mother Miranda,” she spat the moniker out like it’d burned her tongue to speak it, as if it were poison, “still their self-proclaimed prophet, aren’t you? I’ll ask you again. Why am I here?”

“Why?” she approached the cell, cupping her hands in front of her. The smile was back, sharp as ever. “Why are you asking questions you already know the answer to?”

Mia said nothing, but she didn't break eye contact either. 

“Your daughter—”

“Don’t you dare mention her.”

“Your daughter,” Miranda repeated, lower than before, face to face with Mia now, looking every bit as demented as she was, “appears to be a perfect vessel for my sweet Eva. You have already outlived your purpose. Your death—is imminent.”

* * *

Left alone again, Mia sawed through the last bit of the lock, her body dripping in sweat.

She wasn’t going down that same path again. Not losing her mind again, waiting to be saved.

Not when it concerned her Rose. Not when Miranda intended to use her baby for her twisted desires to be reunited with her child, which was already long dead and buried.

Mia left her cardigan in the cell, grabbed a scalpel from the lab bench and went for the door.

It wasn’t locked.

Ethan wouldn't save her again, she decided right there and then. She was better than that now, the wounds had scabbed over these past three years, and sitting in another cell, praying for rescue, would only tear them back open again. 

With that, Mia left the underground laboratory with a mission. She knew Ethan could take care of himself, and if he was out there, that he was doing everything in his power to try to save their daughter. Why on earth would she do anything less? 

Chapter Text

In the beginning, after the end, there was nothing.

She was a vast, blank lake of emptiness in a realm beyond human comprehension; devoid of conscious thought and unaware of the concept of time

Eveline had been—so young, a poor girl victim of a shipwreck, and so old—withering down to the bones bound to a wheelchair.

Here she was nothing. 

Not even a ripple on the surface of the peaceful and black lake that was her unconscious mind. 

Some time later. For time still passed her by, even though she didn’t comprehend it—time was not forgiving. Some three years later, a father welcomed his newborn daughter to the world, and at the same time another daughter (a parasite with the desire to be more), one murdered in vicious cold-blood, remembered and was reborn.  

The words, “I won’t let anything hurt you,” awoke Eveline from her slumber. A ripple effect.  

She enjoyed being a silent observer at first. Being Ethan’s eyes, she had the front seat view of Rose’s life—of everything that she did not have, all that was taken from her, growing up in the labs. 

What she saw was a piece of the happiness she’d always dreamt of. Love handed over like it was a given, instead of something that had to be earned. 

“Good, Evie,” the man with dead eyes told her, “now make him dig the knife deeper into his leg. All the way through now—to the bone. Good girl. I’m so proud of you.” 

“Good girl,” Ethan said as Rose released a burp after a meal, the words tinted with laughter. “Did you hear that, Mommy?” 

“Don’t call me that. Please. I can’t—”

Whenever Mia cried, taking control over Ethan became easier.

Obviously, she had no desire to take Ethan’s place forever. She just wanted to feel, just for a short few seconds. The featherlight baby hair. The solid grip of the small hand around his thumb. The softness of the mattress underneath his back when he slept. But before she knew it, the ripples had become a stormy and violent sea, and being alive—again—was all she could think of.

Eveline was irreversibly more, and Ethan was…

…Ethan was dead again. 

One of the Lycans had wrapped its hand around his neck and snapped. And now they both ate as sounds of bones popping and viscera being swallowed down filled the valley. 

This death was punishment for lying. Eveline had been lied to, again, and again and again, and even a cowardly bag of meat—just as dead as Ethan a few feet away in the reddening snow—deserved not to be lied to! 

Bag of meat would’ve thanked her if he could move his mouth to shape the words. She was sure of it. He would have told her, Good girl.

It began to snow. 

Thick snowflakes fell down from the dark cloudy sky, all around them, melting when they touched the inside of Ethan’s still warm torso, but catching in his pale blond hair, and on the Lycan’s arched and spindly backs. 

Eveline sat unmoving on a rock. Watched as the snowflakes went straight through her arm, longing to just feel something. Studied the Lycans as they ate, wondering what the meat felt like, going down. 

Ethan looked empty now, didn’t he? Maybe she could slip inside before he returned, make herself at home in the nook and crannies of his body.

Make him fight for control for a change! See how he likes it.

But Eveline was just playing with the thought. Aware that Ethan was never truly empty. 

She hugged her knees tight as Ethan’s body then began to twitch. One of the Lycans ceased eating, hesitated as if bewildered by the corpse’s sudden movement, tilting its head to the side with a low whine, surely sensing something very wrong with this human. 

The other, meanwhile, heeded the twitches no mind, devouring an organ far too delectable to let itself be distracted in the middle of this particular meal.

It was at this moment that Eveline was glad that she now had a physical form, because existing outside of Ethan’s eyes, having a pair of her own, meant that she could squeeze them shut. And squeeze them shut she did.

But no matter how hard she pressed the palms of her hands against her ears, she couldn’t make the sounds go away. 

The scream that ripped out of the Lycan when it was caught was human-like. Agonized. Eveline coiled into herself at the sound of the Lycan’s bones crunching wetly, at the panicked panting, whimpering and almost begging before it, too, got to experience the tremendous pain of being eaten alive. 

A slick pop.

Something was crushed like an overripe fruit. 

The head?

Or the heart?

Eveline peeked through half-open eyelids, curiosity getting the better of her, regretting it immediately. She only caught a glimpse of it (the Lycan folded in half, sinking sluggishly into the cavity of Ethan’s torso—the teeth—the tendrils pushing it down, the tendrils catching the other Lycan that’d run off), before she shut her eyes again with a weak cry. 

The whole ordeal was over in just a few seconds, but she was keeping her eyes closed, far longer than what was necessary, scared to open them again.

This was the part of him she would never control.

Monster in every sense of the word.

After another moment, she slowly lifted her hands from her ears, and when she finally opened her eyes again, the Lycans were nothing more than another liter of blood, added to the puddle already surrounding Ethan, lying straight and motionless in a steadily thickening layer of snow. 

Even the bag of meat was gone; a mere spot of dark red remained on the otherwise white ground where he'd died. 

If Eveline hadn’t known what had just happened, if the sounds of Ethan consuming them all hadn’t etched itself into the grooves of her brain permanently, she wouldn’t have guessed it in a thousand years.

There was nothing left of them. Not even that itchy feeling at the back of her head, telling her that there was a thing nestled inside the Lycans—a kindred spirit of some kind. No traces of life. Not even any signs of death, except for the blood, obviously. Nothing!  

She was brought back from her churning thoughts of being consumed just like that, whole and fast, when Ethan attempted, the first of several just as useless attempts, to intake air with what must be an incomplete set of lungs.

Eveline sighed as she slid off the rock. For all its power, the mold had a lousy idea of human anatomy. The breath was more of a death rattle than a breath, but at least under circumstances like these, Ethan was more inclined to welcome her in with open arms. 

She slipped inside effortlessly and at the same time, Ethan slipped away, gently, into unconsciousness.

And the straw man was in tatters, missing a lot more than just two fingers. The mold had considered it enough to stitch him back together, but it’d overlooked the stuffing, that which made him think he was still human. Again.

Like a heart. Oh, he would’ve noticed a missing heartbeat. He wasn’t that stupid.

(And that would really push him over the edge, and we don’t want that, do we? Humans gets damaged, remember?)

Eveline needed him functional. For now. Rose needs him functional until she is whole again, she thought. The mold, not so much, she supposed, judging by its most recent handy-work. 

But that, she couldn’t know for sure. 

She couldn’t command this part of him anymore, not like she used to, although she could urge his body to rebuild itself in the image of a human. 

(Heart) Eveline gently coaxed the mold, projecting a working version of the organ into the ether. And the mold that was Ethan Winters obeyed.

* * * 

Ethan awoke with fire smoke in his lungs, setting off an immediate and rattling series of coughs. 

He hoarsely hacked, jolting upright with his hand clamped over his mouth before considering the severity of the injuries he’d sustained, and the pain in his mid-section, the pain was just as quick to respond to the motion as his lungs were to the thick, black smoke polluting the air. 

“Oh, fuc—!” 

He winced, and grasped his stomach with his other hand, fearing that everything was going to seep out, otherwise.

“Where…?” Another cough, hardly muffled by his right hand, sent a jolt of spine-chilling panic through him. Jack is going to hear , he thought incomprehensibly as he spat. “Eveline…?”

(You’re back)

Ethan let out a shuddering breath of... well? He wouldn't call it relief. Never in regard to Eveline.

But it was nice to not wake up alone for once.

The coughs settled, but the sooty taste of the smoke remained firmly stuck to the roof of his mouth as he proceeded to speak. 

“I’m back,” Ethan repeated incredulously as he lowered his hand from his face. “How…?” 

There was a fog obfuscating his mind, and a terrible ache in his stomach, both of them amplifying as he laboriously climbed to his feet.

He’d been so sure he was going to be killed. That he had been... killed. 

“What the fuck happened?”

There were only the two of them in the clearing, he discovered. He was also... bleeding, from a deep gash in his stomach. The skin beneath the tips of his fingers was cold where he had them pressed against it. He wondered for how long he’d been out. Dead. 

His fingers were drenched in blood. Two were missing, he remembered—no, eaten, he corrected himself, shuddering at the thought. 

I need first aid.

Eveline stood in front of him, he deduced an expectant sort of quality to her otherwise blank expression before he stumbled forward, and pushed past her. 

The black smoke that had been filling his lungs turned out to be coming from the wooden house next to the field. A house, judging by the decay of the wood and the slant of the roof, that must've stood there for decades. 

Luiza’s.

Once safe haven for all survivors, now charcoal black planks, riddled with embers, and enveloped in flames.

With the survivors still inside? No, no, no . He thought he could hear them scream. Were they… screaming? God, he was so dizzy, couldn’t think straight. 

Everything too much. Too little.

Ashes, not snow, raining down from above, dancing flames reaching for the skies, sending the crows into frantic circles; it was an omen of death if he’d ever seen one.

He turned to Eveline, gazing into the fire had made his eyes water, which aroused an unsympathetic snort out of her.

(The meat bag ran inside to help) she answered before he’d even found the strength to ask, clasping her hands behind her back as a delighted smile curved her lips. (He is lo—ng dead)

Ethan took it back. He would've much rather woken up without her. 

Needing support, he found himself the trunk of a tree, pressed one hand against the rough bark, painted it red, and kept the other wrapped around his throbbing stomach. 

Let the pain ground me , he thought, digging his fingers in deeper. A coping mechanism his therapist would surely disapprove of. 

(I'm just saying you couldn't have saved him! I just don’t want you to beat yourself up over it)

“I can see you’re smiling.”

(I am? Whoops)

He slammed his fist against the tree, shocking not only Eveline, but even himself with the force he put behind it. “God dammit! Why is everyone dying on me? Everyone… everyone except for you .”

Her smile fell away. (And? What of it? Are you—actually crying?) 

Ethan applied more pressure to his ruined stomach. Parted his lips to reply. Decided against it a moment later. 

He couldn’t teach sympathy to a monster.

“Let’s go,” he said instead, taking a step back through the fresh snow, away from the golden house in flames. 

(Where are we going?) Eveline asked, skipping as he limped forward. 

The gash in his stomach hurt with each step he took. Push forward. No matter how hard you’re beaten, or maimed. Don’t stop. Rose matters that much more .

“My daughter is in that old castle, isn’t that what you said?”

(At least one piece of her is) Eveline corrected insensitively.

“Then that’s where I’m going next. And I’m bringing the fucking shotgun.”

* * *

The Lycans gathering around him on the red tile roof were restless. Eager to get their revenge for their brothers, begging for it in their own feeble-minded way.

He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket as he ignored their yapping in his ear like dogs. A plan already taking form in his head. 

“Another outsider, huh?” he said to no one in particular. Talking to himself grew out of a necessity, now it was just an ugly habit he couldn’t shake. “So you’re the one Miranda wants me to fetch?”

Karl exhaled the smoke as the newly resurrected man vanished between the trees.

He had studied him, for as long as he possibly could. Seen it all, and drank every second up like a man deprived of liquids for years.

In the end, only his bloody shoe prints remained. But Karl had a hunch, he hoped more than he cared to admit, the outsider would leave a much bigger mark than that on this wretched fucking existence of theirs.

Chapter Text

Sweat. Running down her forehead and back despite the snowy weather. Her limbs. Throbbing, aching with fatigue. A road seemingly leading to nowhere, but, inconceivably, opening up to an ancient village instead, wrecked to a thousand bloody pieces.

Mia got out of the caves at long last, and had no idea where she was.

Nevertheless, she knew with certainty, this place was tainted by death. Even if she couldn’t see any bodies, the signs were so clearly there. Something in the air. Caught in her chest. Filling her with a bone-chilling dread.

Somewhere in this, what once must’ve been a secluded but still vibrant village, Rose will be sacrificed for no fault of her own, but simply, for being born to the parents she was born to.

When? Mia thought with urgency. How long did she have before it was too late? How? Where? 

Questions reeled in her head. Questions that had to be answered for her to bring Rose back to safety. And what she knew, what Miranda had told her, was nothing compared to what she didn’t know.

She was putting together a puzzle, without any of the pieces, just knowing if she didn’t finish it in time, Rose would be—she couldn’t even think the word.

Mia squeezed her hand around the scalpel. Not much of a weapon, but it had to do. The most important question of all. What was it? Where. Focus on one piece at a time. 

The village she’d come out of the woods to was cradled by a valley. A gothic castle looked over everything, completed with a murder of crows, and one threatening atmosphere. 

She’ll freeze if she continues to stand still, she knows that much. The wind was strong, the snowflakes like needles against her cheek. Focus on one puzzle piece—where could she be? Miranda loved her theatrics. I’d be a ritual sacrifice. A church?  

She jumped at the sudden cry of a fox, wholly caught up in trying to figure out what her next course of action should be. Heart thrumming frantically, Mia tried to block out the eerie noise being carried by the wind, like a woman, repeatedly crying out that same single note. 

The village was just a ghost of what it used to be, but the nature surrounding it was filled with life. And every sound—every bird call and rattle of naked branches as the wind blew through the trees—managed to send a shudder through her.

“Get it together,” she whispered harshly to herself. 

In an attempt to do just that, she took a deep breath, and exhaled it slowly. Inhaled. Exhaled. 

Her heartbeat slowed, and began to beat a steady rhythm after a few repetitions. 

Where, Mia thought yet again and answered herself with forward. Then she moved on, not even flinching when a crow took flight from a scarecrow to her right, emulating her old fearless self, the woman she was for the better half of her life. 

* * *

Walking aimlessly for a while through the village, she wasn’t surprised when she actually stumbled upon a church, with an adjacent graveyard. 

The door, just like the one down in the caves, wasn’t locked. Stealing must be unusual enough for it to be left open, Mia pondered, or there isn’t anyone left around to neither lock behind them nor steal. 

Pushing the heavy double door open, pondering which theory was most likely (the graveyard—unusually crowded for such a small village—and the sense of wrongness in the air, pointed toward the latter), she then came in to the first row of pews, a dark red Wilton carpet rolling out before her, from the center aisle all the way to the pulpit and a big, bulking mass.

Plates of lit candles littered the room; daylight trickled inside through cracks in the shabby ceiling, but that was the only source of light, and so, the interior of the church was dark, cloaked in shadows. 

It took her eyes a moment to get used to, everything taking on a green and blinding hue for a while longer than she’d have preferred. She kept the scalpel raised and ready as she waited for her eyes to adjust—and when they did, she saw that the bulking mass at the end of the room actually was a shrine. Depicting none other than Miranda, piercing eyes peering through a mask with a sharpened beak.

She wasn’t surprised at that either, stifling a humorless laugh. Naturally, ‘God’ had never resided within these dilapidated walls, just a mad woman and those who undoubtedly followed her.

Yet, somehow, Mia didn’t feel as such—didn’t feel… alone at all in the church.

The handful of flames flickered around her, as if disturbed by some burst of nonexistent wind, sending the shadows on the walls dancing, ominously.

She could feel herself reverting to old patterns, how she was about to chalk it up to just vivid imagination, but she had promised herself that she wouldn’t ignore her instincts again, and this was her guts talking, not her mind. Better fucking listen. 

With that, she held the scalpel out ahead of her, arm angled just so, more than ready to stab or slash at a moment’s notice.

Thereafter, placing on foot after the other on the carpeted floor, tracking wet footprints behind her, Mia slowly ventured deeper inside the small church. 

The bright flames continued to flutter, and each jerk further accelerated her heartbeat. She breathed in through her nose. Out through her mouth. Soothing the agitated drumming, lest she crumble in fear of what could be hiding among the pews. 

Mia considered calling out to make herself known—whoever was holed up here might be able to give her some answers—but decided against it; they might just as well try to kill her on sight. 

She had no idea what had happened here. There weren’t any bodies, but she was certain there had been blood.  

Just a few more steps now. Quietly. 

The innermost wall of the church was covered in a huge shadow. Like someone’s arched back, as they crouched behind the pew? Or just a piece of furniture?

She’d been so focused on that corner, so when the noise—like fluttering wings—came from above, Mia screamed aloud. 

Twisting around, scalpel aimed at the rafters, hand shaking, she instantly felt like a pathetic, blubbering coward as a crow frantically circled the ceiling for a few seconds, before finding itself a hole big enough to slip out of. 

Mia groaned. She’d done it again. Made a mountain out of a—

Just as she was about to second guess herself again, the panting reached her ear. 

Turning back slowly, dread flooded her stomach within seconds. From within the shadow-draped corner, there were a pair of eyes—white, shining and as dead as those of a fish—staring right at her.

Their owner, obtuse shoulders rising and falling together with its rapid breathing, neither man nor beast (though the body resembled a man), was sitting hunched next to the long wooden bench, above what looked like a legless corpse. 

Shit, she thought.

And through no fault of her own, she hadn’t even as much as moved, the thing in the dark corner bared its teeth with a snarl and rushed toward her.

It was fast, but she was ready, and therefore faster. Ducked out of the way effortlessly.

What she hadn’t been expecting though was that neither-man-nor-beast would be wielding a bloody axe. When the blade came down on her, it did so seemingly out of nowhere.

She barely had time to avoid it. Cursed loudly as she jumped to the side, and crashed into the shrine with her back, hard enough to hurt and for the portraits to come crashing down.

Spine aching, she watched, wide-eyed, at where the axe had cut through the wall of the church, splitting it clean in two. Then the man-thing pulled it out with little effort, and just in the matter of a few seconds it was going for her again. 

The next swing missed her with about an inch. She’d ducked, and rolled to the side at the very last moment. The axe cleaving through the shrine, wood splintering to pieces, behind her as climbed to her feet as quickly as possible. 

Plagued by yet another miss, the thing attacking Mia let out a frustrated roar. Half-growl, half-scream. She spun around, and looked at it, straight on, with a growing smile on her lips.

With a taunting motion of her free hand, she said, “Come on, then.”

Another roar. The creature flashed its rows, upon rows of sharp fangs, like a promise. Your throat and these teeth have a date, honey. 

“Do it!” 

It charged again, stumbling on the carpet in its eagerness, its lust for blood seemingly overwhelming it, making it reckless, dumb. 

Up, up went the axe. And down. Fast.

Mia ducked the blade at the last second yet again. She was playing hooky with death (wasn’t immortal anymore), she knew that. The adrenaline was flowing through her veins because of that very fact, when the axe slashed through nothing but air, inches away from her head, it rushed.

The neither-man flew past her, landing on its knees beside the ruined shrine. In the next moment, Mia went for its neck with the tiny blade clenched in her hand.

Not much of a weapon, but at least the scalpel sunk through the flesh there without much resistance. The hot blood spilling out stained her hand, made everything wet and slick. 

And yet, with a blade buried deep in its neck, with blood gushing out of the catenoid artery, it began to rise to its feet, emitting a growl that sounded annoyed at worst.

“What–?” Mia gasped in pure shock. Unfathomably, despite the blade and all that blood, it was getting back up. 

She pulled the scalpel out, and stabbed it through the meat of its throat. Still, it continued to rise higher. Stabbed its neck. Then its face as it slowly turned toward her with an enraged snarl, twitching but not dying.

Again, again, again, she pulled the blade out, and slid it back inside as deep as it would go. Die like you’re supposed to , she thought desperately.

Flesh began to peel off its face. For a second, Mia saw Marguerite instead. A second later, the creature that’d been lurking in the church was finally dead. Still, she continued to stab it with the scalpel, popping its eyeball, slicing its mouth open—one stab wound at a time—until its very jaw was coming off.

Die. 

Stay dead.

She repeated the latter words almost like it was a prayer.

After its death, the only sound, beyond her own trembling breath, was the sound of the wind blowing in through the splintered cut in the wall.

The thing lay still by her feet; an eyeless, and entirely silent husk.

She couldn’t remain here, Mia realized, sitting on the floor, shaking like a dead leaf in the wind as the adrenaline slipped out of her body like from an open wound. Rose was still out there, soon to be ritually sacrificed on some other altar in this godforsaken village. 

She’d been wrong about the church, but at least her mistake had led to information of what had happened here. Monsters, that’s what. Moreover, a mutation of some kind, unsettlingly similar to that of the mold, with the power to change the physical appearance of its victims (those fangs couldn’t be natural), as well as their mind.

That is, if her hypothesis was correct, that the creature that'd attacked her had once been human.

But with Miranda in charge, Mia harbored little doubt about it. She’d helped her old employer create the weapon that was Eveline, hadn’t she? Why not this?

Climbing to her feet again, brushing dust off her pants, she found herself thinking of Ethan with concern, of all things, worrying that he wouldn’t come out of an encounter like the one she’d just been through unscathed, but hurt—or worse. 

But then, she reminded herself, he was more than equipped to handle monsters such as these. Worrying about him would be nothing but a waste of energy. 

“Ethan,” she said into the quiet of the abandoned church, “I really hope you’re doing better than me, honey.”

She decided to take the axe with her—the shaft felt right at home in her hand, familiar (a final declaration of love spoken through bloody teeth, Ethan’s terrified eyes staring back at her). The blood on its blade wasn’t dry yet, she noticed without much feeling; small wooden splinters from the wall had stuck to it, she noticed as well.  

Her blouse was sodden with blood too, sticking to her skin, and she felt how it’d already begun to cool, meaning she’d be freezing within minutes out there in the winter cold.

The legless man’s shirt and jacket wasn’t too dirty. 

Mia took the liberty of borrowing them. A corpse wouldn’t be needing them, anyway. 

Finding her way through the village to another altar then became picking a random direction, and just hoping for the best.

* * *

“So?”

The light from the torches danced on the walls of the man-made cave, painting everything in a shimmering golden glow. 

(‘So’... what?) Eveline retorted, refusing to look at the man. (I thought you weren’t talking to me)

Ethan let out a long sigh, done with the childish manners, and infrequent mood swings of his involuntary guide about three dead Lycans ago. 

He was reminded of his little cousins for a second—more specifically; their crankiness in between dinner and dessert, patience at its absolute thinnest—before asking, “Why… wouldn’t we be talking?” as gently and quietly as he could just then, in case someone was lurking at the top of those stairs. 

Hands on small, bony hips. (I thought I was to ‘zip it’ before I)—here her voice took on the quality of something dark, and brooding, what she must've considered manly—(end up just as dead as ‘that disgusting thing’!)

She shot Ethan a look filled with nothing but ire.

He dragged a hand thought his hair, studying the way the torch burning behind her head, kind of just, shone through her. “That wasn’t–”

(—I’m helping you! And you threaten me? You ungrateful—f-fucking—idiot!) 

Oh, great. She curses now.

Ethan chewed at the inside of his bottom lip. Worked the smoothness there as Eveline continued to chew his fucking ear off like a rabid dog.

And she wasn’t quiet again until she—an entirety later—had to suck in another breath of air. Which made him stop to think for a second. Did Eveline… actually have to breathe anymore? Or was it just a residual habit from when she was still alive and actually breathing? 

Sure, Ethan had come to accept that she wasn’t just a figment of his imagination, but there were still a lot of unknowns, such as: breathing ‘cause she had to, or just for the heck of it?

“You done?” 

She stared at him for a moment, her mouth a tight line, eyes burning. 

“No?”

(Fucking stupid!) 

A sigh. “Okay.” Massaging the bride of his nose, he sure wasn’t looking forward to Rose at this age; which was an escaping thought that made his heart twinge. “Okay.” 

Eveline raised her eyebrows, seemingly seconds away from going at him again.

“I said ‘we’, didn’t I?” said Ethan then, acting faster, and meeting her eye as he did. “Before we end up dead. It wasn’t a threat, it’s just—I can’t aim when you’re standing in front of me—you’re not see-through, not entirely anyway.” Momentarily at a loss for words, he shrugged his shoulders. “Besides, it’s not like I actually could kill you. So what’s there to be angry about?”

Eveline looked nonplussed, but quickly collected herself.

(Right) she replied, lowering her gaze. (Sorry)

And just like that, the fight went out of her, not with a bang but a whimper.

Weird.

“So?” He chose to ignore her hesitation—as well as her uncharacteristic apology—because there were more important matters at hand like, “Is this the right way, or not, Eveline?”

She nodded, not looking at Ethan as she raised a hand toward the stairs. 

“Good,” he said with a small smile, making his way upward, and without thinking much about it, he patted her on the head as he passed her by. “Thank you.” 

She grumbled something incomprehensible in return, before going along. 

Ascending the stairs, they arrived to what appeared to be the castle cellar; a storage facility housing several huge barrels and baskets filled with apples and plums.

The wooden door on the wall in front of the stairs was securely locked (he wouldn’t be picking it anyway), and marble pedestals jutted down from the ceiling above them like stalactites. 

Shotgun loaded, and ready, Ethan lastly approached the ancient elevator. As he looked down at Eveline, she gave him another muted nod of confirmation. This is the way—he thought. 

“Well, well.” 

But that thought was interjected by an unfamiliar voice. Ethan turned around, heart firmly lodged in his throat, and in doing so, he was met by a man that might as well have appeared out of thin air. Clad in a trench coat and hat. Grinning manically. Scraps of metal—floating—around him and the comically large hammer thrown over his shoulder.

(He is one of them) Eveline hissed in warning, hiding behind Ethan’s back. 

Yeah, no shit, Ethan thought as he aimed the barrel of the shotgun at the man currently controlling piles of metal with his mind.  

“Didn’t think anyone was left,” said man marveled aloud with a thick accent, not even flinching at the sight of the gun. “You must be pretty tough, huh?”

Already finished with this conversation, Ethan asked, “Who the fuck are you?” 

His grin widened further. “Me?” He cackled, stomping out his cigar on the tiles as he waved a chastising finger. “No, no, no—that’s not the burning question here, stranger! Far from it.” 

“No?”

“No,” he smirked, mocking him, surely, as he angled his head and quirked a grayish brow; taking on a look of morbid fascination which Ethan didn’t like being on the meeting end of. “The burning question‘s just what... the hell... are you?”

Chapter Text

You're kidding me, right?

Ethan thought he kept the response that popped up in his head to himself, but Eveline snickered like he hadn’t, and then he wasn’t sure.

She was standing behind his back with one hand clutching the fabric of his tattered hoodie, and he was letting her. Not because he was protecting her from the stranger in the hat—he wouldn’t—but because she (was shaking) was already there, so she might as well… stay.   

So there she stood, peeking around his waist, fear—her fear—coming through the thinning membrane between them in lolling waves, bleeding right through, and increasing the already rapid thudding of his heart.

(I didn’t sense him) she whispered, the small grip around his hoodie tightening. (I didn’t sense him. He’s all wrong. Like a doctor)

Ethan was willing to agree with that assessment. 

The grin splitting the man’s face was sharp as a knife, which went for his canines as well. Eyes gleaming with something predatory behind his dark shades—silvery, when he angled his head just so—watching Ethan like how a kid would watch an insect burning in the concentrated light of a magnifying glass. 

Don’t be scared, Ev. 

(I’m—) A slight moment of hesitation. (I’m not)

The hairs on the back of his neck told him otherwise. Or was he the one who was scared? He wasn’t sure about that either. 

The man seemed to give up on the idea of getting an answer to his burning question.

“Not much of a talker, huh?” The Huh, was spoken with a hard puff of air. “Who would’ve thought—they way you’ve been talking to yourself?” Another burst of laughter, one syllable long, he wasn’t really finding any of this funny.

The scraps of metal floating around the man began to vibrate, blurring at the edges.

“I’d do you good to answer me, papa. You and me…” he started to say, then fell silent, shaking his head like he didn’t want to get ahead of himself, the hovering scraps steadying a bit.

The both of them were thinking, We don’t have time for this.  

“You and me… what?” Ethan said brusquely, eager to carry the conversation forward, to get it over and done with so they could move on with what they’d come here to do.

(You could just shoot him) Eveline suggested unhelpfully, really wanting the man to go away, now. 

“Ev,” he said before he could think better of. Not now,  he thought then, extra loud. 

The man raised an eyebrow, but otherwise made no show of noticing Ethan’s slip-up. “Karl Heisenberg,” he said, putting his hand out. “Mother Miranda took your kid—took my life—and together, well, I think we just might have a chance to put her in the ground.” 

His smile was still just as sharp, if not sharper, when he said this.

Eveline didn’t trust him, and she didn’t have to say it out loud for Ethan to understand that, but he was choosing not to listen to whatever she was feeling, keeping his eyes and mind fixed on Karl instead as best as he could, because nothing about this was actually up to her.

(Hey! Don't ignore me!)

Her voice grated terribly on his ears, ignoring her wasn’t easy.

(You can’t trust him. Y-you’ve got me, you don’t need him) she pleaded, but he wasn’t heeding her. (You’re not—)

But he was.

“Mind you,” Karl continued, cutting her off simultaneously, which Ethan was sure he would’ve done even if he’d been cursed with hearing her, “I had originally thought that we would use the kid. But that was before your—what should I call it? Your show?”

“Use my daughter?” Ethan questioned in a voice so devoid of emotions it would've been unsettling under any other circumstances. It was the same one he’d used in the kitchen, when he realized that Mia wasn’t really Mia. “My show?”

Show? Eveline thought as well. What show?

“Yeah. Hell of a show, too,” Karl said, eyes turning to the ceiling as if reliving a fond memory for a second, before he looked back down at Ethan. “You killing my Lycans,” he elaborated to little use when Ethan failed to catch his meaning.

“Um. Come again?”

“I knew you must be special—you have to be to catch Mother Miranda’s eye—but that—” Karl went on as Eveline suddenly flashed from behind Ethan’s back to right in front of him, more so talking to himself than to the other man, because Ethan wasn’t really listening. He was looking at Eveline and her wide—terrified eyes. And she was looking back; ready to take over if she deemed it necessary. 

Images of human flesh growing tendrils and teeth flashed into his head.

And just as quickly as they came, they disappeared, leaving only a deep-seated sense of vertigo behind.

Jesus. My head.

Like an ice pick was going through his eye. 

Standing before him, Eveline appeared to be on the verge of tears. Her bottom lip trembling.

Was that… one of her memories? 

From when? Judging by the presence of, there’s no use denying it here, mold. Louisiana? 

“—that was something else entirely.”

But when did it ever snow in Louisiana? 

Ethan narrowed his eyes at Karl, feeling confused because he couldn’t remember killing Lycans with anything but the shotgun currently in his hands, and how impressive was that, really? 

Considering the dog tags hanging from his neck, not very.

“Thanks…?” he said hesitantly.

Don’t ask, she thought. 

Don't ask? Ethan thought in return, head spinning from trying to keep up with two conversations at once, the throbbing headache not making it any easier. Don't ask what? 

“Do we have a deal?” Heisenberg interrupted his thoughts, and just like that, there was no time to think anything more on the matter, especially not when Eveline immediately answered with a (No!)

He flinched as the shrill sound of her voice cut into his ear like nails on a chalk board. Kill him, echoed on the inside of his skull. (He won’t help you) she exclaimed forcefully next. (He’s nothing but a filthy filthy liar, just like everyone—)

Stop.

Ignoring Eveline when she sounded like she was on the verge of crying hadn’t been easy. Ignoring her, when she was all he could hear and see, was harder. 

In all honesty, nothing inside Ethan said that he could trust the man standing before him. 

He was offered a helping hand, and his immediate instinct was to slap it away, to shoot, just like Eveline wanted him to, but thinking about it… about Rose… power in numbers, and all that… 

In the basement beneath a hundred-year-old castle—with what sounded like a snow storm raging just above his dizzy head—Ethan was reminded of the heat of Louisiana.

More than that, looking at the man before him, he was reminded of Zoe Baker.

She was the one that saved him at the end of the day, wasn’t she? 

If Zoe hadn’t taken a terrible risk and helped him—if the two of them hadn’t become unlikely allies back in Louisiana, he wouldn’t even have known about the neurotoxin. And without that, Jack would've most definitely killed him, and he wouldn’t have defeated Eveline—not even for a little while. 

Karl wasn’t necessarily a victim like Zoe, but not working with him, just because that was what Eveline wanted?

Not fucking happening.

Ethan was long past merely considering the idea of using him to get to Rose. If this Miranda was the one who took his daughter, and Karl also wanted her dead? Why wouldn’t he use that? 

But coming to any real conclusion about it was difficult, with Eveline voicing her discontent repeatedly from where she stood in front of him, appearing so close to tears.

Why did they have to make her look so young? he caught himself thinking, looking at her small scrunched up face, and big eyes. 

He hadn’t meant to assure her earlier, but when she was cowering behind his back, it was hard not to tell her she had nothing to be scared of. Why was that?

I'm not reconsidering, he thought, not sure who he was trying to convince. I’m not.

Furthermore, the pain in his head had evolved to something on the edge of unbearable. In the matter of a few seconds, he’d gone from dizzy to feeling a pulsing throb, and now; the man was expecting an answer, but the ice pick seemed to have carved out his right eye. 

Clean out of its socket—or so it felt.

(Ethan?) Eveline suddenly interrupted herself by saying, her crude words, and cutting insults replaced by concern. 

“Shit,” he said, legs buckling slightly. Eveline went to catch him, raising both her arms as if she had the strength and psychical body, to carry him.

Then the cellar not only began to blur and bleed into itself, but also darken around the edges, like so many rooms that’d come before it. Darkening around the edges fast.

And in the instant before the lights went out inside his mind, before the pain became too much to bear, he was brought another image. A gaping maw, which also was a torso, eating, eating, eating everything it got it hands on. And enjoying it.

* * *

Karl had been growing his army in secret for years now, and the Lycans roaming the village above, suckling on the bones of the villagers, was just the tip of it. 

On this side of the ring, a crazy cultist bitch! And on the other... let's see now.

1,285 soldats and counting, glorified corpses really, hanging around just underneath Miranda’s cloved feet, waiting for the order; several failed experiments which, no matter how disappointing, could substitute for cannon fodder, at the very least—and…of course, yours truly, the brain behind it all!

The man before him—not really a man, but a monster made of mold, swallowing Lycans like oysters—was just the ace he needed. The daughter, neatly chopped up and distributed equally among the lords, had been the original plan; but her powers, however strong, were nothing compared to her father’s.

And, honestly, she was an infant. What was he supposed to do? Throw her at Miranda? 

Yeah, right.

So, here we fucking are.

Karl hadn’t expected convincing the stranger to join his ranks to be easy, but he’d at least expected an answer; be it outright rejection, or reluctant acceptance, he’d expected something.

Dialogue was never his thing, even before Miranda confiscated his tongue, but was he really this bad? This out of touch?

No, he’d had corpses that were better conversationalists than the man with the shotgun. This wasn't on him.

Moving the fine threads of electricity in the air was as easy as moving a limb. He couldn’t recall not feeling that constant current anymore; too many years—too many of Miranda’s experiments had gone by, for him to remember what it was like to be truly human.

“Shit.” 

“Shit?” Karl repeated, eyes blown wide. “That’s your answer?”

He was always just one thought away from tearing the cold, metallic heart out of the latest disappointment. Didn’t even have to flick a wrist, or use the hammer to do it either. That was just for show—or, an old habit that hadn't keeled over and died.

In other words, it wasn’t looking so good for the stranger.

Impalement, it is then, he thought as he released a tired sigh. 

He selected a piece of metal from the surrounding whirlwind easily enough. An oblong thing that might have been a lightning rod or a fence post in the past, but which would now act as a spear—

But before he could do that, the man fired his shotgun.

At the same time as the slug hit him in the chest, slamming him two steps backward and the air out of his lungs, the shotgun flew out of the stranger’s hands and hit the floor.

The man cursed loudly, seeming shocked, frantic eyes focused solely on the weapon instead of the enemy in front of him. When he reached to pick it up—with an outstretched hand covered in webs of black veins—Karl was already forcing the metallic slug out of his chest.

And the pain that came with, was nothing compared to the utter offense he felt at being shot.

***

When Ethan returned from over yonder, he did so to a blinding, encompassing pain. When he was only ten he spilled boiling water on himself wanting to help his mother in the kitchen, this was that, only he had swallowed it now. 

His eyesight came as the charred flesh at the center of his stomach went from melting, to losing all sensation. He understood that he’d been impaled by something during however long he was out—he could feel it sticking out of his back—and then Eveline was shaking his shoulders.

(Don’t leave me) she was saying. 

Beyond her, Ethan saw Heisenberg preparing to send more metal through his body; his gaze cold, and bloodthirsty as the bolts, plates and cogs first pulled back, and then shot forward. 

“Wait, wait, wait”—he pushed Eveline aside with what little strength he had left—”don’t!”

“Oh, so now you want to talk?” Karl exclaimed, seriously pissed off, and well beyond talking by the sound of it. The metal came to a stop inches away from his face, though, which was something, he could work with that. “After putting a bullet in me!? I don’t think so, you moldy piece of shit.”

Ethan fixed Eveline with an accusatory stare, and she shrunk into herself. 

The multitude of feelings that came with having his body used like some—some puppet, had to be dealt with later, right now, there were far more pressing matters at hand…

Ethan looked down at where the foreign object had entered his stomach. The sensation may be gone, but his blood was still flowing along the rod and dripping onto the floor. If he didn’t get it fixed, he would bleed out, and then who would save Rose?

Mia?

“You stabbed me,” he said when he looked at Karl again, genuinely shocked. “Why?”

A statement of fact which only seemed to anger him more, his nostrils flaring. “You shot me first! Remember?”

Eveline flinched at the shout, her shoulders rising up to her ears as she hugged herself tight.

Ducking her head, she muttered a (I’m sorry) so quiet he almost couldn’t make it out.

Ethan couldn’t care less about her apology, so he wasn’t going to engage with her. But then, he didn’t have an answer for Karl either—technically ‘he’ had shot first—so for a moment he just stood there, feeling his body grow colder by the second. 

Zoe never hurt me, he thought.

“Sorry,” words dripping like venom from his tongue, “but on second thought I don’t really give a damn about your personal issues.”

“Sweet Mother,” Karl said under his breath, removing the hammer from his shoulder and putting its head on the floor instead.

The rod shot out of his back. And that, he could feel. 

Ethan fell to his knees, screaming. The thing hadn’t been smooth, and he could feel where its details had ripped the inside of his stomach. Ripped it to shreds.

He didn’t realize that Heisenberg had taken hold of his chin with his hand, until he used it to pull his head up, forcing him to look straight into his silvery eyes.

“Shut your trap—you’ve been through worse. You’re good with just a quarter of your kid?”

His heart stuttered. “Wha—what kind of question is that?” 

Karl released his face and displayed an open hand, the one not holding the hammer. “I'm just going out on a limb here, but—I assume you don’t want just her head.” 

Ethan blinked back at him, dread making his limbs grow colder yet.

“Her… what?” 

Eveline furled her shaking hands into fists beside him, and she was making eyes at the shotgun lying just a bit away from Ethan, telling him to use it and to use it now.

“Her head,” Heisenberg empathized, letting out a sigh as he massaged the bridge of his nose. “You are aware—”

He couldn’t get his mouth working, so he shut him up by grabbing the shotgun and raising it to his face, all within the span of a second, finger nearly hugging the trigger. 

If the next words coming out of his mouth made any indication he had hurt her, he was taking his fucking face off, to hell with the fact he was controlling sharp pieces of metal with his mind.

Karl stared blankly at the gun for a few seconds without saying anything, then he motioned with his free hand to somewhere far off as he went on to explain himself, “I have a piece of her. Safely tucked away in a flask at my factory—”

“Don’t say another word!”

“—and you’ll get it, if that’s what it takes for you to work with me, I will give her back to you, if—and this is crucial, only if—we go and kill my dear mother. I’ll even help you to all four of them, if I get to piss on her grave with this big ol’ smile on my face. The taking care of my personal issues part is unnegotiable, mold boy. Do we have a fucking deal?” 

Silence fell over the basement, except for the sound of ragged breaths.

This close, Ethan could see not only the specks of silver in his eyes, but his scars as well.

The pale, but thick lines crisscrossing over his cheek and the bridge of his nose, what once must've been deep cuts now forever etched into flesh.

"Well?" Karl said. His voice husky, barely above a whisper. 

Ethan spared a final glance to Eveline, who shook her head again.

No, didn’t think so. 

Well?

Beggars can’t be choosers.

With that thought, Ethan bundled up all the murderous intent he’d been building up since Karl entered the room, stood up, and pointed the shotgun to the ground.

Eveline continued to voice her disagreement even as he said, “Deal,” offering Karl his open hand. “Ethan Winters.”

God, he hoped he wouldn’t regret this.

“Ethan Winters,” Karl repeated, and jerked his head to the side, snatching a pair of medival-looking handcuffs out of the air before the rest of the metal scrambled to the ground, “...these are for you.” 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Instead of assuring him that he wasn’t serious, he did the exact opposite and produced a matching chain, just as old and rusty as the cuffs, presented them both to a hesitant Ethan.

“I assure you,” he said with one of the biggest shit-eating grins Ethan had ever seen, “I never joke. We can’t let everybody know we're in cahoots, now, can we?” he motioned impatiently with his hand for him to come closer. “No, not this early in the game! Besides, you just shot me. Isn’t a man allowed to take precautions?”

“Why do I—” he pointed to the chains. Struggled to find the words, his mind occupied with thoughts of Rose’s head in a flask, her eyes vacant and her mouth slightly open. 

Karl tutted. “Just do as you’re told, and you’ll be back here in no time. Don’t you trust me?” 

Ethan laughed incredulously, “Hell no.”

“Attaboy.” His grin couldn’t get any more wolfish. “Shall we?” 

Thinking about it for another moment, he decided to do what he was told. 

Holding his hands out, offering them to Karl like this, Ethan could see one of his own scars plainly, the one wound around his wrist like barbed wire, all healed wrong and still aching occasionally.

(You are going to regret this)

I think, Ethan thought as Karl cuffed both his hands, maybe a bit tighter then what was really necessary, I already am.

* * *

“You think she’s been here?”

Chris stood in the remains of what once must’ve been a well taken care of shrine, pondering that exact question with a cigarette inches away from his lips. 

There were signs of combat all around them. Blood splatters on the portrait on the wall. Wood splinters at his feet. What seemed like a prolonged struggle had taken place here, one which had ended with the violent death of the ‘man’ now lying in the middle of the aisle, missing pieces of his face.

“We’ve got another body,” Rolando (code name Umber Eyes) said over to his left. “Fuck. His legs. He didn’t stand a chance.”

“Do they ever?” Chris returned before crouching down before a blouse, so bloody, he could barely make out its floral print. 

“No… I suppose not.”

He rubbed the fabric between his thumb and finger, noting that the blood hadn’t dried yet. “We just missed her,” came his conclusion as he stood to his feet. “Goddammit, Mia.”

Taking a drag of his cigarette, he sensed the rest of the Hound Wolves’ sharing glances behind his back. 

Charlie, as Canine’s real name was, joined Chris at the front of the church after a moment. “So,” he said eventually, “taking down Miranda wasn’t exciting enough, eh?”

Emily (Tundra) said, “Now we’ve got Winters’ terrorist wife to deal with, too.” 

“Former terrorist,” Rolando interjected.

“Go big, or go home,” Dion (Night Howl) eloquently concluded.

Chris took the liberty of finishing his cigarette, he deserved that at least in times such as these, before turning to those willing to follow him into the valley of death. 

Taking the sight of them all in, he thought, Now what?

“Tundra, Canine. Set up base, here,” Chris said.

And with just that, the earlier humour was sucked out of the air. 

“Yessir.” 

“Night Howl, Umber Eyes. Locate Miranda, I want her exact location within the hour.” 

“Roger that.” 

“Lobo. Her laboratorium. Find it.” 

“I'm on it.” 

A sense of tiredness was already creeping up on him, merely speaking the orders aloud.

“I’m going after the Winters’,” he said lastly, something which was followed by a pregnant pause, he had a feeling what he was going to say next, mattered the most, and so, he weighed his words seriously.

“Ethan Winters will not be treated as a B.O.W until my say so. Have I made myself clear?” 

YES SIR.

Good.

Then let it be so.

Chapter Text

They walked through the cave system underneath the castle in silence, and everything smelled of damp stone and mud. 

Ethan’s hands, tightly secured in front of him, were starting to go unpleasantly numb. If he squinted, he could just make out the cuffs digging into the bony parts of his wrists. Heisenberg, though only a few feet in front of him, remained out of sight—Ethan couldn’t make him out in the slightest. 

He had a hard time believing that the tunnel was truly that dark. Karl’s steady pace seemed to suggest otherwise, and Ethan could see the wall lamps glowing—or at least, he wanted to believe he could. Or... were they?

He stared at the lamps until his eyes burned. Really focusing. Maybe he could see the faint fluttering of light—at least a hint? But even then, Ethan wasn’t sure. He thought it just as likely that he was fooling himself, willing his eyes to see something that wasn’t really there—light!—because in some strange way, the dark around him seemed to pulse, to breathe like a living thing. It felt as if it was only moments away from swallowing him whole again.

These past few days, he hadn’t been certain about a lot of things. And that uncertainty was starting to wear on him, more than he had the mental capacity to admit, especially underneath the earth’s surface. And with a deranged stranger as my escort on top of that!

…Talking about deranged escorts.

Eveline was nowhere to be seen, at least. Still, Ethan had a feeling that she wasn’t far away. 

After all, his vision was always the first thing to go whenever she decided to use him as her personal meat-puppet. 

Right.

She’d taken over his body again. 

He was already unsettled by the caves, but the thought of just how easily she could slip inside— how little control he truly had over his own mind—tightened the knot already coiled in his stomach. He felt violated. Used . This was why the dark scared him more than it ever had. 

They ascended an uneven flight of stairs carved from the stone walls. Ethan could do nothing but follow, like a leashed dog trailing its master, and let his thoughts wander. 

He couldn’t protect himself from her.

This had been a fact since the beginning, but it hadn’t really hit him until now.

So caught up with finding Rose that he’d forgotten what she had done to the Bakers.

Most things he’s faced he could shoot, even if it took about ten times as many bullets to kill them than it should, but not her. The bullets would just go right through.

You can't run from me. I'm in your head! he remembered her saying.

Our goals are aligned, he reminded himself in an attempt to sooth his racing thoughts. She also wants to find Rose. 

For now, another, less optimistic, part of his brain interjected.

But what if her goal changed? What then?

Ethan imagined living the rest of his life in the passenger seat, and felt his veins run cold with dread.

Actually. Having just his own thoughts for company was turning out to be a bit too much.

“Um. Sorry for shooting you,” Ethan told the darkness the chain originated from. Had he had any sense of feeling in his stomach left, he probably couldn’t have been the bigger man that apologized. Now he was just so fucking cold—where there should’ve been pain there was just a hollowness—and desperate for conversation. It didn’t even matter what kind, as long as it kept his mind off the ghost running through his veins, slowly phasing him out. 

“Water under the bridge,” came the darkness’ short answer. 

And… that was all he got.  

Okay then , Ethan thought in determination, not one to give up easily.

“Can you actually see anything in this light?” he asked out of genuine curiosity. Maybe the unnatural silver gleam to his eyes meant he could see in the dark. It didn’t seem impossible. Hardly anything—

He tripped on a rock—one moment his path was clear, the next, his foot caught hard on stone. If it hadn’t been for the chain, he would’ve smashed face-first into the cave floor, maybe broken his nose, instead he just stumbled for a few feet and gritted his teeth as the rusty manacles dug even deeper into his skin. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He grabbed the chain with both hands and used the leverage to regain his footing. His scar twinged like someone had poked the tip of a knife in it.

Back on his feet, he glared into the cavernous darkness, but Karl wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. “Asshole,” Ethan murmured as a sharp, burning ache began to spread in his stomach. So much for not feeling it.

“What was that?” Karl said, sounding way too amused about Ethan slipping and almost breaking something, like he was stifling a laugh. A clear image of Karl’s toothy grin flashed through Ethan’s mind, fueling the burning ire he already felt toward his captor–slash–ally. 

Why did he agree to this again? 

Ethan tried to answer that question as his vision swam, and his guts burned like they were on fire, but found himself unable—his reasoning didn't feel as logical as it had in the basement. 

He just… 

His only ally couldn’t be the ghost haunting him.

“Keep up,” Karl said, and Ethan did his best, only stumbling over his own feet occasionally, muttering curses under his breath whenever a stone decided to intercept his path. 

He could do nothing else but follow Karl toward what soon felt like his own impending doom. 

The walls started to close in around them. Soon, every step cost him another inch of space—both for his body and his sanity. The shoulders of his tattered hoodie began to collect moisture, growing wet and heavy.

Crouching did nothing to relieve the pain in his stomach. Ethan breathed rapidly, and the darkness did the same, pulsing in time with his breath. 

“Hey,” Karl called out angrily.

He didn’t realize that he’d fallen behind until Karl’s voice cut through the cavern. Beside the sound of his own ragged breath, there was another sound—several sounds—echoing through the caves. 

A bunch of furious animals were growling. 

He recognized them for what they were almost immediately. 

The echoes bounced off the cavern walls, making their true number impossible to tell, but there was no doubt in Ethan’s mind—they were outnumbered. And yet, Karl yanked the chain, pulling him toward the threat instead of retreating. 

“Woah, woah—” Ethan urged, digging his feet into the ground as if trying to stop a stubborn stallion from running wild. “What the hell are you doing?” 

His heartbeat increased, pounding in his chest like a hammer when the chain didn’t relent. The darkness at the edge of his vision throbbed faster. Breathing grew shallow and ragged as his panicked mind recalled the Lycan that had killed Mihail. The cave floor, once scattered with stones, now felt as smooth as ice—deceptively treacherous when he needed solid footing the most.

Slowly but steadily, he was being pulled toward a hundred jaws of certain death. It didn’t matter that he fought against it.

Seconds away from calling out for Eveline (though he’d never admit it to anyone, not even himself), hands pressed against the roof of the cave and his breath in his throat, the pulling ceased. 

Ethan released a shuddering sigh, realizing that the beginning of tears had formed in the corner of his eyes. Pathetic. The back of his right eye throbbed with an increasing intensity. 

The chain remained taut, even though Karl had given up on dragging him along. 

How could Ethan trust him so easily? That sob story about an overbearing mother was nothing but a lie—just a cover to turn Ethan into dog food.

The darkness was on the edge of all-encompassing now. He couldn’t even see his own feet. All that met his gaze was a pitch-black wall and the countless glowing eyes of the Lycans. Among them, one pair of eyes sat higher than the rest: Karl’s. Predator just like the rest of them.

Then, like a bolt of lighting from a clear sky, pain shot through the right side of Ethan’s head with a CRACK. 

* * *

Karl had more in common with the Lycans than he liked to admit. 

He would have preferred to have nothing in common with Miranda’s most shameful failures, but the Devil ( id est His Dear Pseudo Mother) took too much pleasure in tormenting him for that.

Be it as it may, he could see in this light—to answer Ethan’s earlier question—which also meant he could see Ethan’s legs melting away into the shadows, melting away into nothing.

Well, that explains it, Karl thought in annoyance, finally understanding why no amount of force could pull Ethan any further. He’d gone and fused himself with the cave floor.

Fear rippled through the pack of Lycans cowering behind him. Memories of their lost brothers flashed from mind to mind; KILL. Scared. HUNGRY. Kill. Kill. Kill.  

Their thoughts were, as always, chaotic and scrambled. Fueled by their shared and rapidly growing fear, they even managed to worm their way into Karl’s mind.

“Shut the fuck up!” he shouted at the blabbering pack of Lycans. Then, turning to Ethan, he sneered, “Could you be any more dramatic?” His voice was sharp with disbelief—but the words died on his tongue the moment they left his mouth. 

Karl gawked as Ethan Winter’s head lurched violently to the side, as if struck by something heavy.  

For a moment, nothing more than that happened. The moment stretched, teetering on the edge of awkwardness.

“Wha—” he began to say, but the word died on his tongue as the invisible force crushed the side of Ethan’s face inward. Staggering back a step in sheer shock, Karl exclaimed, “Fuck!”

There was no blood. Somehow, that made it feel even more wrong than the fact he was getting beaten by nothing. 

He didn’t know how to react to what was unfolding in front of him. Was it curiosity or a death wish that held him rooted to the spot? Even as he was urged to RUN, he remained, like an animal caught in the glare of a headlight; staring, and being stared at by a bulging eye, swaying loosely from its socket.

He’d only known the man for about a quarter of an hour, but he now knew his brain was a dry, sickly gray. How about that? he thought, smiling wickedly despite himself. 

The Lycans knew better than to be fascinated DECEIVED . They remembered. Trembled. Caught between the need to protect their leader and saving themselves. They knew what followed such an incomprehensible horror: feeding . And they knew—intimately—that it wouldn’t stop until nothing remained of them but a long, echoing scream for mercy.

But despite the images MEMORIES their leader could not be convinced to run. 

It was as if they all were suspended over an abyss by a single, fraying thread, waiting for it to snap. 

Karl felt the anticipation in the air—in his teeth.

Slowly, deliberately, he opened both arms like a ringmaster, still smiling as he did so. Releasing his grip on the chain, he let it float in the air, as if to say, Give it your worst.

It was then the Lycans began to run. They peeled away from him in a panicked frenzy, realizing that there was no saving their master. And in the same breath, the broken and bloodless thing reacted.

Through the gaping hole in the side of its skull, a torrent of black water erupted, drenching—not only it—but the entire cave, from floor to ceiling, in an instant.

Karl laughed at the sight, an empty yet triumphant sound that echoed through the cavern.

A fleeting thought passed through his mind, that he might not survive this, but all his focus was on one thing, and this here was why he was smiling; Miranda wouldn’t either.

* * *

It was cold when Ethan returned to consciousness. But colder than it should’ve been—colder than in the caves. 

His hands were stiff. He noticed this but a moment after registering the cold. Corpse-like, unmoving.

He was struggling to unfurl his fingers.

The cold—even colder than it’d been in the snow-clad village above ground—had forced its way down his throat, turning the task of taking a breath into a sluggish struggle for air, as though he were being denied it.

Ethan slowly opened his eyes. Tried to focus his mind on whatever lay in front of him instead of the burning in his lungs—but his brain could not interpret what his eyes were seeing. 

It was bright, terribly bright, and everything was shrouded in fog. The contrast to the caves was assaulting his eyes, making him dizzy. It took all his willpower not to clamp his eyes shut again. 

He parted his lips to call for help, but struggled to get just that one word out, and so, decided against speaking altogether. Probably just as well—there was no telling what kind of creatures lurked in the fog, waiting. Better to stay quiet. 

Looking but not seeing, he noticed his hands were shaking, too. Not just his hands, but his whole body. A trembling deep in his bones, unrelenting.

Although he did not know where he was, he knew he could not stay lying down.

The succeeding process of climbing to his feet was so long and excruciating, by the time he was standing, tears were falling down his cheek and dripping to the frozen ground.

The landscape before him (because it was a landscape, was it not?) stretched white as far as his eyes could see. Some hills dotted the horizon, but otherwise it remained completely uninterrupted—an endless expanse of nothing.

He had been here before, had he not?

As soon as he thought it, he knew it to be true. There was something eerily familiar about the view before him—like he was being reminded of a long-forgotten nightmare. He recalled fragmented memories, of waking up in a cold sweat, unsure of what he’d dreamt, and being oddly relieved that he could not remember. 

What is this place? How many times has he had this dream? 

Wrapping his arms around himself, he began walking toward the horizon. 

Though truth be told, dragging his faltering limbs scarcely resembled walking. But what else was he supposed to do? 

It was a dream—of that he was sure. What else could it be? How could Karl have dragged him to this empty place that was so far removed from the reality of the caves? 

Yet the cold bit into his fingers without mercy. 

He ought to know it was not plausible. But even so, he kept on walking, fearing that he would freeze to death if he remained still a second too long.

Subsequently, a different kind of tremor coursed through him—sharp and intense, as though a foreboding shadow had enveloped him and seized his hand.

This halted him abruptly, preventing any further movement and effectively paralyzing him.

He anticipated the child’s presence before he even turned his head. And there she was, holding his hand tightly.

“Eveline?”

He said her name, but the word was lost in the sound of his chattering teeth. 

She said nothing.

He stood there, staring down at her, waiting—for a taunt, a smirk, anything. At the very least, he expected her to gloat in his misery.

But there was nothing of the sort. 

She was not acknowledging him. No . Her face was not turned toward him at all.

After what felt like an eternity, her voice, firm and echoing, yet delicate, sliced through the stillness.

“Don’t... don’t look at it.”

But he looked, as he had before, as he ever would. She must have known—he was not made to resist.

* * *

“The man is of no real use to anyone else. And my daughters do so love… entertaining foreigners.”

“Lo–ooves it!” a second voice echoed, breaking into manic giggles.

What...? 

“Furthermore,” the strange, first voice—female, regal—continued with an undeniable air of superiority, “I can assure you if you entrust the mortal to the House Dimitrescu, my daughters and I shall deliver to you the finest cups of his slaughtered blood.”

God… he was the mortal, wasn’t he? Ethan figured as much. He fluttered his heavy eyelids, nausea swelling in his gut as he tried to grasp his surroundings.

What’s happening to me now? He was growing really tired of waking up with no idea where he was.

“Out of the way, ugly!” A small doll dressed in a tattered wedding dress shoved a creature—a grotesque pile of flesh draped in a cape—aside, invading Ethan’s personal space. His awareness was forced to surface at the sight, a fact immediately recognized by the doll’s observant eyes. “I want to see—oh! He’s awa–aake!”

Ethan stared, speechless, at the giggling, living doll as it twirled around in circles. 

“You mean—Y-You mean…? Both of you, shut the fuck up!”

Karl . That voice he recognized. Impossible to forget. 

“Where…?” Ethan croaked. He shuffled backward as far as the chain would allow, trying to put space between himself and the freakish doll. His eyes darted around, frantic for an escape—anything.

His eyes slowly adjusted. Crumbling stone. A caved-in ceiling. Pews. The ruins of a church?

“You mean you’ll screw around with him in private, and where’s the fun in that?” Karl barked. “Give him to me, and I’ll put on a show that everybody can enjoy.”

At last, Ethan’s gaze locked on Karl, his eyes burning. What the hell was he planning? And why was he being argued over like some prize pig?

“Oh, so gauche,” the haughty woman scoffed. Even seated, she clearly towered over them all—her chair elevated to compensate for her unnatural height. “What do we care for bread and circuses? The manthing’s suffering is assured, regardless.”

“Yack, yack. And if a man’s dick is cut off in the castle—blah, blah, blah!”

The mutant giggled. 

Excuse me? A shiver shot through Ethan’s body at the grotesque imagery that conjured.

“I’ve heard all your arguments,” said a new voice—calm, firm, and final. The woman it belonged to stood at the altar, so perfectly blended into the far wall that Ethan hadn’t noticed her until she spoke.  “Some of you were less persuasive than others. But… I’ve made my decision.”

A beat of silence.

“Lady Dimitrescu. The man’s fate is in your and your daughters’ hands.”

Karl shot up from his seat with a shout. “Like hell it is!” His canines flashed. “I brought him here. He’s mine!”

Lady Dimitrescu made no effort to hide her satisfaction at their leader’s decision.

“Hush now, before you embarrass yourself any further,” she purred, puckering her painted lips at Karl. “You’re acting like a spoiled brat.”

Then she rose to her feet—her gaze never leaving Ethan—as she grew taller. Taller. Taller.

“Hey,” Ethan gasped, struggling against the handcuffs. The only result was the harsh rattle of the chain echoing through the ruined church.  “Don’t I get a say in this?”

He had the distinct feeling this wasn’t going according to Karl’s plan, but whatever argument then followed the doll bride’s gleeful chant—“Fight! Fight! Fight!”—fell on deaf ears as a chilling realization took hold of him.

This...

This was Mother Miranda.

Just a few feet in front of him stood the woman who had stolen his daughter. Who had impersonated his wife for God knows how many days.

Every cell in his body screamed to kill her. Now.

And then Eveline was there. Suddenly. Inexplicably.

She appeared without a sound, as if summoned by the weight of his realization.

He started to question it—but then thought, strangely, it made more sense that she was here than not.

Somehow, it felt right, doing it together.

It should be alarming, even terrifying, how easily his thoughts turned to murder these days, yet it was not—Miranda was not a woman deserving of mercy, even though the innocent part of himself, the past version of him who had never been to Louisiana, might have thought otherwise.

(Is that—)

Yes.

(Mommy?)

Ethan tore his eyes from Miranda and watched Eveline drop to her knees.

She wasn’t looking at him, but at Miranda (mommy mommy mommy) and for a brief moment, a wave of sorrow swept over him, so cold and overwhelming, and hers, it nearly drowned the murderous rage rising in his chest. Nearly. 

“Ev?” he whispered as Eveline wailed, and sobbed, on her bare knees, resenting himself for feeling just a little bit concerned.

“Silence!” Mother Miranda thundered as black wings erupted from her back, cutting through the endless bickering with a single wave of her hand. “There will be no argument. My decision is final! Remember from where you came!”

With those final words, distracted by Eveline’s tears, the prized pig was hoisted off his feet with no say whatsoever.

As Ethan was subsequently dragged across the floor by Lady Dimitrescu, he came to yet another chilling realization.

The man he was supposed to be collaborating with had not offered him a single glance during the entire ordeal in the ruined church.

Not even now, feet flailing, neck craned trying to meet his eye, was Karl acknowledging him. The cowardly piece of shit.

Chapter Text

The ax head went through the peeling red door with a loud CHOP.

Tearing wood splinters as big as her arm off, Mia worked on making the hole large enough for her hand to slip through as quickly as she could.

She paused what she was doing intermittently to listen—to listen closely, and each time she stopped, held her breath, and listened she was becoming increasingly concerned when her ears picked up nothing. Not even crows anymore.

“It’s quiet,” she whispered to herself, and if Ethan had been there besides her, she was sure he would have added a, Too quiet with comically narrowed eyes, and about as much mysterious flare anyone—even the most fearless—could’ve managed under the circumstances.  The bad jokes would’ve been constant. All to cheer her up. 

If only Ethan was here, she thought, and interrupted that thought with another loud CHOP. 

A few moments later, she got her hand through. Still nothing. Nothing but the howling wind as she slowly turned the lock on the other side of the ragged, red door and then gently pushed it open.

On the other side, a clearing appeared, and she was in the process of determining where she was going next when a voice diverted her attention.

“Well! Isn’t this a pleasant surprise?” The obese man sitting in a cart the size of a small house chuckled heartily, sounding like someone that was hardly ever surprised. “My,” he said then, smiling reassuringly. “Now there’s no need for that, Mrs Winters.”

Mia aimed the axe at him, eyes blown wide, was about two seconds away from brining it down on the… merchant… by the looks of it, in spite of his reassuring words.

“That’s for me to decide,” she said, tone curt, heart positively beating out of her chest. “How do you know who I am?”

The last interaction she had with something living was the thing she’d killed in the church, Mia hadn’t expected to be met by a warm smile, and an assortment of stuffed sausages. She was taken back, but she wasn’t one to struggle in the face of the unexpected. She adapted. And if it turned out that she needed to split his pudgy stomach open, she would do it.

“Anyone that is anyone has heard of the likes of you,” he replied cryptically, looking at her instead of the axe head as she approached him cautiously. The lantern hanging off the cart’s side swayed as the merchant moved in his seat, sending its glow swirling over his plump cheeks. “Though I must say, I had expected to meet your husband first—but alas, it seems like he has gotten ‘help’ elsewhere.” He paused, contemplating. “Nevertheless.” 

“Ethan is here?” Mia exclaimed, throwing caution to the wind. She didn’t realize until just then that she’d feared that Miranda had done something to him as well. “Where?” 

The merchant smiled knowingly. How she despised that smile already. “He’s here somewhere,” he said, and it was irritating how deliberate his ambiguity sounded. “Or is that everywhere? Hm.”

“Who are you?” she demanded, but the frustration seeping into her voice made it sound a bit more like, Who do you think you are?

He opened his hands, motioning to his cart and his goods—a treasure trove of dried meats and spices—then put them to rest on his stomach. “I am but a humble merchant,” he answered. “Call me the Duke.” 

“The Duke,” Mia repeated absentmindedly, growing restless, thinking of Rose again. 

Taking a chance to look around the open area, she saw four wooden doors leading away from there, and what could only be described as an altar standing proud in the middle. Not deeming the Duke a threat, she peeled away from his shop on wheels and approached the closest set of doors. Locked, of course, with some kind of symbol depicting a baby. She spread her legs apart, and raised the axe above her head, aiming for the—

“Looking for your daughter?” 

She stopped what she was doing, the axe stuttering in the air, before she lowered it again. She turned to look at him, letting her eyes do the talking. 

Duke’s eyes were nothing but understanding. “Weapons, ammunition, healing salves—anything you desire for your quest, I can provide. Care to peruse?”

“I’m sorry,” Mia replied genuinely, “but I don’t have any money.”  

A gust of wind rattled the naked branches around them. 

“What’s that in your pocket, then?”

That would be the pocket of her borrowed jacket. Mia hesitated for a moment, but searched the pocket anyway, fingers connecting with something round and flat. A coin. 

I’m rich, she thought. “What’ll this get me?” she asked, not entirely serious, showing Duke her measly find as she walked over the cobblestones of the altar’s steps, back over to him. 

He offered her his open palm in return, nodding for her to hand it over, Mia intended to do just that, but was instead caught in a vicious grip when he closed his fat fingers around her hand. 

For a moment, he wasn’t smiling. The moment passed over as quickly as it arrived. Her fear began to reside the instant he let go of her, but her heart was still beating rapidly when he said, “You’re in luck, Mrs Winters.”

Leaning back, and reaching inside the darkness of the cart, he procured a gun. Mia was still trying to shake the feeling that someone had taken hold of her soul, and jerked it around a few times. “I’m currently in the process of restocking. 100 Lei is, during such circumstances, just enough.” 

Mia took the weapon from the larger man and checked it with practiced efficiency.

It was functional.

The weight of it settled in her hands—a heavy, comforting weight.

“Thank you,” she said earnestly.

“Always a pleasure doing business. Now, about your daughter.”

Mia looked up at him, listening intently.  “What about her?”

Preparing a cigar with a cutter, the Duke said, “There were rumors going around among my customers before—well, before the customers started dying.” He lit the cigar, and took a drag, blowing the smoke out with his next words. “About her whereabouts. Mind, these are only rumors, word of mouth from one prying person to another, and shouldn’t be taken as fact—”

Mia didn’t care about that. She’s been walking around blind for what felt like hours. Anything would be better than nothing. Even rumors. “Just tell me, Duke. Where is my baby?” 

The ember from the cigar painted his face in fire light. “Deep in the valley of mist, there is a dank, old estate—home to Donna Beneviento. That’s where you’ll find your daughter. Or so… they say.”’

That soul-jerking sensation came over her again. Doing her best to ignore the goose-flesh quality of her arms, she said,  “You’re not lying to me, are you?” 

“What good would lying to you do?”

Mia thought he was being truthful, even though the growing Cheshire-smile on his lips didn’t appear particularly honest.

“Go through that dreadful-looking gate and head down the road,” the Duke said, “and you’ll soon hear the sound of falling water. Follow that calming sound, and you’ll be at Beneviento’s within minutes. But be warned, Mrs Winters, though many have gone down that road—none have returned.” 

Mia smiled up at the Duke, matching his expression almost perfectly.

She was a new woman now. A gun in her hands.

Born again.

And she didn’t need to say a thing. The smile said it all: You clearly have no idea who you’re talking to.

“And call me by my first name,” she added, already turning. She had a feeling he knew it anyway. “Titles have always left a bad taste in my mouth.”

With that, Mia strode toward the dreadful-looking gate, cocking the gun without breaking pace. 

One clean shot to the lock—and the gate creaked open.

The Duke waved her off. “Good luck to you, Mia,” he called after her. “I do hope we’ll meet again.”

* * *

The wolf-man dropped to the ground with a small whimper, one foot pressed against its back, keeping it down, Mia finished the job with another bullet through its brain.

Its companion tried to flank her, but she knew it was coming. Her next bullet made a hole in place of its right eye, then it dropped to the muddy ground next to its buddy. She was breathing rapidly as she reloaded. Ears ringing incessantly. Mia was leaving a trail of blood behind.

The odd sensation the Duke had instilled in her was steadily being replaced with a different kind of sensation. Her limbs were shaking violently, and her mouth tasted of metal, but she was alive—something which she hadn’t been for what felt like ages—alive and fighting for her daughter in the most literal sense of the word, and it felt good.

The wolf-man missing an eye emitted a gurgle—a thing between a growl and a cry—as it writhed beneath her feet. She made quick work of it with the axe, painting the snow and her shoes with the insides of its head with just one well-aimed swing, preserving bullets for a potentially more dangerous adversary. 

If you followed the grim trail of bullet-riddled bodies scattered along the path, you’d find Mia by a two-storey house, the spitting image of all the rest of the houses in the village—old, withered, dying, dead. 

Putting the axe away, she struggled to hear the sound of running water through the pounding of blood in her ears. 

She wondered if people used to actually live here, taking a few seconds to gather her breath, still straining her ears to pick up any sound beyond those she was making herself. The corpses lining the roads suggested they must have, but the homes—crumbling and standing on their last limbs—appeared frozen in time, their medieval state starkly contrasting to the memories of her and Ethan’s modern places. She couldn’t fathom anyone calling them home.

It was like stepping into a whole different world entirely. An outdated world, that had died long ago, but failed to inform its habitats about the demise.

There. Any thought of houses, inhabitable or otherwise, disappeared at the sound of the waterfall.  

She was moving forward again, as if a switch had been flipped. 

Walking on a narrow path running along the edge of the house’s garden, she ignored the muddy puddles and the blood underfoot, her thoughts consumed by Rose. 

Yet, a warm and touching reunion was far from the only thing occupying the space between her ears. She couldn’t see any more wolf-men, as she had come to think of them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t lurking around the next bend. 

To her right, there was the mountain wall, but the path ahead of her blurred together in a veil of falling snow.

The garden on her left was wittered and mostly brown. What once must’ve been blossoming flowers on the other side of the metal fence were now just naked stems trembling in the wind. Crunching—

Mia heard the hooded figure limping through the flowerbed before she saw it. And then, moaning terribly, flesh taut over its features like a cheap Halloween mask, reaching for her with malnourished arms, it charged. 

Ten. 

The first bullet only made it wobble, eyes flashing with hatred, the second brought it down. 

“Nine,” Mia silently said to herself, feeling how rapidly her heart was beating. “Fuck.” 

She jumped the fence covered in flaking white paint. Bending down, she removed its hood with the gun’s muzzle. What she was looking at was nothing more than a carcass. Human, and yet not, just like the wolf-men. A person at some point? 

In the middle of that thought, she caught the pungent stench of rotting flesh, as if her brain had just then registered the full extent of the thing’s decay, and recoiled sharply. 

Had she lingered a moment longer, the odor would’ve had her puking her guts out in the snow. Instead, she sprang back onto her feet, her mind racing with the impending problem of running out of ammunition—a concern that was rapidly becoming more urgent than she had anticipated.

Determined, Mia turned toward the looming house. Even if there aren’t any bullets lying around, she thought, striding purposely toward it, at least there might be a stash of Lei . And Lei, as she had gleaned, was a language the Duke spoke fluently. 

Needing ammunition—whether finding or buying it—she made quick work of the door with a sharp swing of the axe, the phrase Here’s Johnny echoing in her mind in a distinctly Ethan-like fashion as the door gave away.

* * *

The snow was falling harder than it had before he entered the church, quickly erasing footprints and making it nearly impossible to track a certain rogue married couple. Nearly—but not entirely. They were leaving another kind of trail behind, weren’t they?

Chris grimaced as his boot crunched past yet another Lycan sprawled in the snow, its skull cleaved open by a single, surgical strike. The blood staining the freshly fallen snow crimson.

“Where the hell are you?” he muttered, the words whisked away by the wind as the silhouette of a two-story house loomed through the fog, sitting right beside the path.

The door of the house had been left slightly ajar. He might have missed it—if not for the creature emerging from the ground like the living dead, heading toward the door.

Chris walked up behind it with cold precision. His knife slid into the base of its neck, twisted once. The body crumpled without a sound.

Found you, he thought as he quickened his pace, stepping over yet another monstrous corpse, breathing through his mouth to dull the stench.

* * *

Recently abandoned, the place was heavy with the damp smell of decay and rotting food. She searched uneasily through personal belongings. An empty embroidered coin purse. The pockets of an old coat. A cabinet of garden tools. All the while feeling like she was committing an act of desecration. 

She told herself the residents (dead, likelier than not) wouldn’t be needing their things. But there were no bullets for her crimes. No coin either.

Mia blew her bangs out of her face, crouched in front of a light green dresser, and pulled out the drawers decorated with fading painted flowers. Left them open one by one. Old books written in Romanian. Underwear. Nothing that’d help her if another wolf came crashing through the door.

She muttered, and stepped into the kitchen, where the stench was more concentrated. An unfinished plate of food sat on the table, the white tablecloth underneath it stained at the edges. On the stove stood an open pot of stew, its murky color reminding her of a certain woman’s cooking.

Her stomach turned. She pulled the hem of her new jacket over her nose as the taste of old memories—salt, iron, rot—rose in the back of her throat. Without thinking, she snatched a lid from the counter and slammed it down over the pot.

Then she froze.

A noise—just behind her. Quiet, but still there. Loud enough to send her hand instinctively to her gun.

She stood motionless. A few seconds passed—each one stretching like an eternity—as she breathed in slowly, out deliberately.

A wolf-man would’ve attacked by now, she thought.

Determined not to be shot in the back by some faceless attacker, she spun—pistol rising in a sharp, practiced arc. She aimed toward the kitchen door, finger hovering just shy of the trigger.

And met the sight of a barrel aimed straight at her.

Her heart hitched in her chest.

“Don’t shoot,” said Chris severely.

She didn’t—but it was a damn near thing. And that became the first thing she said to the man who’d been charged with protecting her and her family.

“Then I guess I’ll count myself lucky,” he said.

“I guess you should.”

Neither of them lowered their weapons.

The table between them was like a barrier, impossible to cross. They were on the same side in this war, in all wars as Mia might define it on a good day, but at the same time they were apart, and perhaps they always would be.

S.T.A.R.S’ Golden Boy. The Connection’s Head Caretaker. Some things cannot be changed. 

But they had tried for Ethan. The both of them had, because Ethan was... well, Ethan. Loving husband, and perhaps a friend? Mia never quite figured that one out. Loyal to a fault. Stubborn as rocks. So forgiving.

But Ethan wasn’t here now.

And neither had lowered their weapon.

What she’d seen in the village, Chris being here, the puzzle pieces were beginning to fall into place, and the picture they formed was ugly.

“Are you going to tell me why you're here? Or am I going to have to figure that out myself, too?”

Chris narrowed his eyes. “Night Howl, this is Alpha.”

Mia felt irritation bubbling up inside her. Ignoring my question. Of course he is.

“Where is Miranda right now?” he asked, his eyes and weapon still locked on her.

She gave Night Howl a few seconds to respond, despite the frustration prickling beneath her skin. Whatever answer Chris subsequently received seemed to satisfy him—he lowered his rifle.

She bit her tongue, trying to ignore the burning irritation in her gut as he waited for him to explain just what was going on.

But instead of explaining anything, he scowled, appearing offended, and nodded toward her gun. 

She looked at the weapon in her hands. It went against her every instinct, but she set it down with a dramatic roll of her eyes. Looking directly at Chris, she asked, “Happy?”

“Very. Miranda can impersonate you.” He delivered this piece of information casually and moved on quickly, turning his attention to the small kitchen instead. “Where’s Ethan?”

Mia felt the small fragment of hope she’d carried within her—that Chris had taken care of him—shatter painfully in her chest. “How would I know?”

He turned to look at her, his expression darkening. “Shit.” He pressed his forehead into his hand. “I thought he was with you.”

“You did?”

“I was hoping,” he admitted.

“I’ve been locked up for—God knows how many days,” she said, her voice tight. “I thought…” Her voice faltered. She had also hoped. “I thought he was with you.”

If he felt the weight of that, if he realized this was the final nail in the coffin of his failure to protect any of them—he didn’t show it.

“This complicates things,” was all he said. “We need to find him.”

We?

Her irritation erupted into a blazing fire. He had the nerve to ask her for help? 

Instead of dignifying his idiotic and insensitive request with a response, Mia hurried around the table and swept past him into the hallway, ignoring his voice calling after her.

“Mia.”

She rushed on, past walls lined with family portraits and faded paintings of meadows and boats, shutting out the sound of his footsteps behind her.

Then he grabbed her arm.

“It’ll be Louisiana all over again.”

She turned toward him, yanked her arm from his grasp. “He didn't do anything wrong in Louisiana. Everything he did, he did to save me.”

“Maybe,” Chris said, unconvinced. “Or some version of you, at least.”

Mia bit her tongue and said nothing to that.

“But you know he’s a ticking, walking time bomb—just waiting to blow.” He inched closer, backing her against the wall. “How many years did you spend with the Connections, Mia? How many years of your life did you put into Eveline? Ethan put an end to all of your efforts, in one night.”

“I don’t need to hear this—” she shoved his shoulder with her hand, but he didn’t move so much as an inch. He was just as solid and unmoving as the wall behind her back—she was trapped. 

“Well, I need your help finding him,” he said matter-of-factly, ignoring her efforts to get away from him, ever lacking in empathy. “I won’t let him blow up my operation, like he did yours.”

That made Mia bark out a short, harsh laugh, deepening Chis’ frown. “Isn’t it a bit late for that?” she asked out of genuine curiosity. “Wasn’t your operation blown to smithereens the moment I was kidnapped?”

The reaction it drew out of him was immediate. He broke eye contact and looked away—such a clear display of shame. That look satisfied some twisted part of her, and she couldn’t turn away from it. She wanted to twist the knife deeper. Tell him, You promised you’d keep us safe , and watch how his regret would manifest itself. 

He turned to look at her again, exhaling a trembling breath. “I’m sorry—”

Mia raised her palm in front of his face, stopping him mid-sentence. She still wanted him to grovel, but she cut him off. “I don’t want any of your excuses.” She lowered her hand, trying—but failing—to stop it from shaking. She swallowed. “Could you… take a step back?”

He blinked at her, confused for a moment. “Oh,” he said then, and quickly moved away. “Sorry.”

What did I just tell you? 

Mia turned away from him, and took a deep breath with a hand on her chest. It came easier now that Chris wasn’t pressing her up against the wall anymore. Although, she could do without his pity. 

“Is that better?” he asked, concerned, but Mia just waved his worry off, not wanting to hear it. 

“Does Miranda have my daughter?” she asked instead, turning to look at him again. She knew it was hope that made her raise the question—hope that he’d deny it—even then she was surprised, and perhaps a little ashamed, upon hearing the words escaping her own mouth. 

Chris, even though she could tell it hurt him deeply to say it aloud, didn’t waste time to soften the truth, “Yes.” Then: “I can’t begin to tell you how sorry—” 

“Shut your mouth. Please,” Mia cut him off.

He obeyed, eyes dropping to the scuffed surface of his military-graded boots, giving her a moment to gather herself—to forcefully stitch the wound in her heart back together. 

It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but it only took her about five seconds.

“And Ethan?” she said, holding herself together as best as she could for her daughter—which, in truth, wasn’t well. She felt as if she was walking on the edge of hysteria. “Does Eveline have him?” 

Chris hesitated. This appeared harder for him to speak of, and that alone made fear shoot through Mia, in anticipation, of the worst.

When he finally spoke, after a long, strained silence, he didn’t look at her.

“I’m afraid so,” he said quietly, looking down the hallway. The words cut through her like a knife. “That’s why”—he turned to face her—“I’m asking for your help. There’s no one better for this job. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Oh, Ethan.

Her vision went blurry, but she refused to let the tears fall in front of Chris. She immediately forced her mind away from any deeper thought about her husband’s fate—but still, she wasn’t fast enough.

The idea that this might be her fault had slithered its way into her brain, and she already understood that, now that the thought had inserted itself, it’d never go away. After all, she never told him about Eveline’s return. Chris and she had worked together to ensure he would never find out. She had omitted the truth. Again.

A decision she regretted deeply now. 

“Oh my God,” she said quietly, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. What have we done? The guilt slithered around her heart, tightening with every passing second, as if trying to squeeze the life out of her.

She gazed up at Chris. She was certain he could see what she was feeling just by looking at her eyes—but she didn’t have the energy to even try hiding it.

“We should’ve told him.”

Chris let out a sigh, appearing as haunted as she felt. He understood her meaning without needing further explanation, and gently placed a hand on her shoulder.

“What’s done is done,” he said. “It’s our cross to bear—together.”

What a lovely thought. But she wasn’t about to engage in mutual repentance with Chris Redfield.

She gave him a mirthless smile nevertheless, which he took for sincere, smiling back before removing his hand from her shoulder.

At least he didn’t apologize again, she thought bitterly. 

* * *

It wasn’t a lie if it could be true, Chris told himself as they walked through the snow—the world around them silent in such a way that it pressed against the eardrums.

There was a very good chance that Ethan would no longer have control of his body. That by the time they found him, it would already be too late to save him from Eveline's clutches.

He didn’t regret his decision to let Mia piece together her own version of what had happened to her husband. If his fears proved true, they’d soon be facing two bioweapons instead of one—and he’d need all the help he could get to defeat whatever kind of monster Ethan might become.

Enlisting Mia’s help to track Ethan down was also a way to keep an eye on her. Because Mia Winters was just as likely as her husband to ruin three years of preparation in one night. 

How did this become my life? He’d been fighting bioterrorism for nearly twenty-five years.

And with every head cut off, two more grow back, he thought listlessly. 

It was a tiring way of life.

“Contact left,” Mia sighed as another creature stumbled from a shadowed corner of the ravine.

Chris didn’t have to say a word for her to know he’d handle it. He slipped off the path, made himself small—arms folded tight—then struck, a quick thrust to the throat, precise and silent.

He wiped the blood off on the front of his vest and turned as Mia brought the ax down on the head of a crooked, vaguely human-shaped figure. Its neck folded like an accordion, blood spurting from the wound. Then it fell to the ground. 

“How many of these fucking things—” she started to say, pulling on the handle to get the blade free from its skull.  “Do you hear that?” 

“Hear what?”

“Falling water.”

With a sharp tug, the axe came loose. She took off down the path before he could fully register what she’d said.

He hesitated, listening. There was a hum in the air—something distant. Maybe water. Maybe not. 

When she began to disappear into the swirl of snow, he stepped forward. “Mia,” he called.

She vanished completely. He cursed under his breath and pressed on.

The light reflecting off the snow changed, growing more golden with every step he took down the path. He didn’t pay it much attention, too focused on not losing her to worry about anything else.

The end of the path soon widened into something like a roundabout, and at its center stood a grave beneath a large, ancient tree. Broken dolls hung from its branches, swaying gently in the wind.

He was so absorbed in the sight of the grave and the spindly trees that he didn’t notice Mia until the sound of her fists knocking against wood reached his ears. 

When he turned, he saw her slamming her hands repeatedly against a wooden double door framed by two large pillars, trying to force her way into a tall stone building that looked eerily at home in this makeshift cemetery.

“She’s in there,” she said desperately, turning to look at Chris, her eyes wide and frantic. “Rose is on the other side of this door.” But no matter how hard she tried, it refused to budge. 

Even the axe—swung with full force against the red wood—failed to leave so much as a scratch.

What the fuck?

“She’s right there,” she repeated, more to herself than to Chris.

Could it really be that simple? he wondered, glancing at Mia with suspicion. There was nothing to indicate it—no sound, no sign—but maybe her mother’s instincts were picking up on something he couldn’t.

“Here,” he said, approaching her slowly, “let me try.”

He took the axe from her carefully as she continued peeking through the golden letterbox, calling out for her daughter.

That’s when he noticed the plaque beside the door.

Give up your memories, it read, the words engraved in golden letters.

He gently nudged her shoulder. When she looked up at him, he pointed to the plaque. 

“What do you think it means?” he asked once she’d finished reading.

She stood still for a moment. Presumably turning the enigmatic words over in her mind.

Then, without a word, she slipped off her wedding ring.

She paused, the ring hovering inches above the golden letterbox, and glanced at Chris.

He gave a small nod of approval.

Chris expected to hear the ring hit the floor on the other side of the door—but no sound followed Mia’s departure with her wedding ring. Not until the doors creaked open on their own.

They both held their breath as a dimly lit tunnel, what seemed to be a basement, appeared before them, illuminated by the flickering glow of candles.

“What the hell is this?” 

Could this be where Miranda kept her lab?

He should’ve noticed how quiet Mia had gotten.

But he was too distracted—by the sight of the hidden basement, by the strange wind blowing inward through the tunnel, like it was trying to pull them in.

He didn’t realize anything was wrong until she pressed the cold muzzle of her gun against his temple.

“What are you doing?” he asked calmly.

His heart was pounding slowly in his chest. He tried to turn his head to look at her, but she only pressed the gun harder against his head—wordlessly warning him not to try that again.

So instead, he raised his arms. He opened his mouth, intending to disarm her with a few well-chosen words. But she didn’t give him the chance.

“Back up.”

Her voice was firm and devoid of emotion—the kind of voice he’d expect from someone who’d spent most of their career with the Connections.

Not wanting to have his brains blown out, he backed away from the door slowly, keeping his arms raised.

“We can help each other,” he said as she stepped into view, the wind tugging violently at her hair and jacket, as if trying again and again to drag her into the basement.

She scoffed and, over the course of a long breath, just stared at him.

“Don’t you get it?” she said eventually, her gun never wavering. “I don’t want your help. You put us in witness protection right in Miranda’s fucking backyard!”

He had no response. Nothing he could say would make it better.

“Did you know?” she asked when his silence dragged on. “That she was here?”

Still, he said nothing.

She pressed her lips together, nodding as if confirming something to herself. His silence, it seemed, had said it all.

“It may already be too late for Ethan,” she said, stepping backward toward the doors, “but I can still save my daughter.”

Just then, Chris saw the tunnel not as a basement, but a great, gaping mouth, starving for memories and flesh. And in that moment, he knew, entering might as well be a death sentence.

“Don’t—” he said, stepping forward.

Too late.

Mia met his gaze as she crossed the threshold.

“Stay away from my family,” she said, just before the doors slammed shut, just like they’d opened, on their own.

Slammed shut right in Chris’s dumbstruck face.