Winters and the Beast

Descent

Heisenberg's nerves were so wrecked by what he'd just done that he wanted to his eat his cigar instead of smoke it. He turned away slightly from the blond, looking over the expanse in the dark. They were probably 400 feet from the bottom of the canyon, and he knew the first 100 feet of it were filled with a suspended field of...whatever the fuck that had been.

Heisenberg didn't even dare to admit to himself how destroyed he'd felt when he followed Ethan's request. It crossed his mind, however fleeting, that this was Ethan's out--maybe the man would purposely not regenerate. Well fuck that--even if he'd turned into a crumbled pile of mold on the ground, Karl would have scooped him up and hauled his ass back to the house. But Karl also knew that Ethan would never do anything to purposely depart from his daughter.

His heart was thudding in his chest. The rain showed no signs of slowing, even though it had appeared from nowhere. Karl now approached the two teenage Roma boys, glancing down at his own blood-covered clothes and ignoring them. He exhaled a puff of cigar smoke. In their language he asked them to take the horse to a walking shelter up the trail.

"Don't worry about the fire," he added, glancing at its height. "Not rainin' enough to drown it out. Go sit in the shed and warm up."

The men were eager for this out after what they'd just seen, and with uncertain bows to the former Lord, they untied the horse and began walking in the direction of the warmer shelter.

Karl took his time going back down to Ethan. The other man looked different. He was holding himself differently. He radiated a new kind of energy. He looked alive, and yet something more than human. Karl couldn't sense why, other than the more self-assured and easygoing look in Ethan's eye. Must feel nice, to have the invasive thing in your body out, he thought with a bit of wry jealousy. And though this was all Karl had ever wanted--to see Ethan beaming, glowing as he stood confidently in the rain awaiting their next move--Karl himself was still shaken.

Why couldn't that tall blond idiot fucking remember their time together? He felt like the longer he waited to discuss it, the angrier Ethan was going to be. And Karl already didn't like it that Ethan was mostly always angry at him--but an Ethan who was stepping into his place as a strong agent of the landscape and his own power being mad at Heisenberg would feel even worse.

If the fucker would just remember. Karl had considered hitting him on the head with his hammer a few times. Based on what he'd just seen, Ethan could handle it.

Despite being flustered, Karl was still full of anticipatory energy for the night's next event. He had a paradoxical relationship with energy, always had, in that the more he expended the more he gained. This could have disastrous consequences, and had led to bad outcomes many a day in his long life. He sighed when he stepped near Ethan again.

"Shall we?" His arm extended, a ringing noise was heard by both, and the hammer flew into his palm a second later. Now he moved past Ethan and surveyed what he couldn't see. "We're gonna have to get closer."

Ethan frowned, and Karl raised the magnetic field. He'd done this particular task so often it was like breathing for him, but it still felt odd to pull metal scrap up from the mass grave below him. Several things sprang from the frozen ground, having been buried under inches of dust and brush. A car hood. A heavy engine from something. Flimsy tin, but it was attached to a breaker box.

Heisenberg shouldered the hammer and sauntered down, pausing on the next step to turn to look at Ethan. The man stood on the edge of the cliff.

"No."

"Why not?"

"You're gonna..." Ethan waved a hand. "It's not going to hold me."

Karl blinked. "Ethan, I just tore your heart out. I don't think a few magnetized steps will be an issue for you."