Our Mother the Mountain

28. Nietzsche

Please don't let me forget when I go back. Don't let the voices let me forget, either. And please, please don't make Evie forget.... She doesn't deserve that. I know you were taught that forgetting helps the pain, but it hurts to forget. Remember your time with Godric? He never lost who he was. Fear was important to him. It's important to me too, I realize that now.

Was it listening? It felt like it. Were the other voices even here? It didn't seem that way. Ethan's mind was his own at this moment, more or less, but there were always whispers. There had always been whispers, even before Dulvey.

Every human mind is its own world with its own inhabitants.

"Earth to Ethan," Karl waved, breaking the blond's thousand yard stare across the dark water. Ethan was standing on the balcony, reveling in the sight of the tide coming in as the full moon shone overhead. He could think more clearly when outside. Especially when it was dark like this. Not dark to him anymore; the white foam of the waves was positively fluorescent with his night vision, and the milky glow of the moon. Ethan chuffed at Karl.

"What? Bedtime? Don't tell me you want to cuddle."

"Nah, I wanna fu-"

"KARL!"

The brunette's heady, girlish laugh trailed back into the main room of the suite, and Ethan rolled his eyes. Good to know romance wasn't dead after all.

—-----------

The next day involved (to Karl's dismay) shopping and touristing in the city. Ethan was delighted in a way Karl hadn't seen in a long time, however, and he begrudgingly followed the blond, keeping his muttering to himself. The engineer couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched...was it real, or had the decades of working and living in a subterranean factory made him lose touch with reality? But then, the last time he'd felt they were watched, Ethan ended up dragged to a private diner by Chris Redfield.

After another extravagant dinner and long bath, the couple lay in bed in comfortable silence. Karl seemed restless, even after all of the physical activity, but Ethan sighed, seeming content as he nestled under the cool sheets.

"I missed everybody when we left, but it's crazy how two days has made me miss them so much more."

Karl scoffed. "Even Moreau?"

"Even Moreau. He's not so bad." Ethan threaded his hands behind his head. "Turns out everybody I thought was terrible has been pretty great, as soon as Miranda was removed from the equation." After a pause he added, his eyebrows raising, "Even Miranda herself."

"You yourself will always be the worst enemy you can encounter; you yourself lie in wait for yourself in caves and forests."

Ethan stared, turning his gaze directly on the engineer, who thumbed through an auto magazine he'd bought earlier; his only purchase. Ethan would have marveled at Karl's restraint had the older man not already clearly spent a fortune utilizing eBay at home.

"Nietzsche," Karl supplied casually, again not deterred by the shocked look on Ethan's face. The blond stared at him then, really stared. Karl's hair was still damp from the bath, and it was in those loose waves that were more defined, more like his brother's. It curled around his face almost angelically. The scars were hidden in shadow, and most of what Ethan could see was Karl's full, masculine profile. When reading, Karl always looked relaxed. At peace. Like a scholar who would never dream of hurting anyone. Simply a man who absorbed information as if it were life energy.

Soon enough yellow irises slid away from the photos of rusted Model T's, and lighted on the blond. Karl was caught in that expression halfway between confusion and a smirk.

"See somethin' you like?"

"I don't know what I'd do without you," Ethan blurted out, and Karl's eyebrows rose. The blond didn't want to walk back or retract his statement. He'd said it–what did the kids say? He'd said it with his whole chest and he didn't want to ruin that moment by backpedaling, or stuttering some apology. Karl seemed at a loss with how to handle this blunt admiration, however, and the brunette fidgeted with the edges of the magazine. Ethan could feel that same sense of...something, emanating from Karl. The thing he'd felt the night before. The unsaid thing.

"Karl, I'm not going to dig in your head and figure out what you're not telling me, but I'd appreciate it if you'd just...tell me. I don't want to have any secrets."

Heisenberg sighed and dropped the magazine. He ran his forefinger and thumb down the bridge of his nose. After a moment's silence, in which he seemed to struggle with his own emotion, he blinked. "All right."

Ethan felt his own heart sink, felt the familiar hurt of realizing he wasn't crazy–someone was actually not telling him something. He would bet against himself every time, and every time, his instinct would be right. One didn't need to have mold powers to know it. As Ethan struggled to stay stoic with his own trauma resurfacing, Karl raised a hand and clicked every light on in the room.

Then, to Ethan's surprise, Heisenberg leaned forward, sitting upright in the bed. He raised a hand and the familiar sensation of a magnetic field raised around them. Ethan's gaze turned from hurt to confused as he stared. Everything metal in the room began to float. Knobs on drawers rattled. When Ethan's stare moved from the slowly rotating debris, to Karl, the engineer shrugged and gestured. "Can't you feel it?"

Ethan frowned. Feel what? He could only sense the fields, right? Ethan rather suddenly remembered he himself wasn't human, and he closed his eyes abruptly. Trying to seek the feeling, whatever the feeling was. He hoped that his own nervous system was more attuned than his consciousness, to this field. That, or maybe the Black God knew.

But, Ethan realized as he sensed the magnetic fields fluctuating around his body in a way he'd never truly felt-it felt not unpleasant, but strange-what was different.

He opened his eyes. "You're...holding back."

Karl's eyebrows were still high, but his face looked harsher in the bright light. He dropped the field, and the lights turned off. As they were plunged into the dark room, Ethan could see Karl shaking his head slightly. "Nope."

"It's getting weaker?" Ethan's voice was high pitched; Karl's was a rumble.

"Guess so."

"Has that ever happened before?"

Karl used his powers once more, to light the bedside lamp. He pulled the magazine back toward him. "Nope."

"Fuck. Why is it happening now?"

"Donno," Karl shrugged. "Was hopin' you'd know, with your uh...connection. Didn't want to say anything, worry you...."

Ethan didn't know what to say so he hugged the other man, putting his head on Karl's shoulder. Well, fuck . He was finally getting his long-sought-after honesty from someone and it was just a terrible truth, with no obvious solution.

"I'll figure it out," he promised abruptly. Karl flipped a page.

"You always do," the engineer said in an upbeat tone, but Ethan could hear the resignation hidden deep in the other's voice. He thought of how dim the golden shine in Karl's eyes had become, when months before, they would positively glow like Christmas lights. Even in his arms, Karl's skin was blazing hot; now it was merely warm, as if the other man had a fever.