Chapter 3: Set Up
Telemachus growled, before turning away. "I'm going to that fish-freak. Leave me be." he hissed. But before he could go, Karl stopped him.
Karl’s hand clamped on Telemachus’s shoulder like a steel vise, stopping his retreat toward the door. The sudden contact crackled with static, smelling of ozone and old leather. "Fish-freak? Really?" Karl’s voice was low, strained. "After that little speech, you bolt for Moreau?" His fingers tightened, not quite painful but undeniable. Grounding. Real.
Telemachus froze. He didn’t pull away. Didn’t look back. His hoodie’s dragon design rippled slightly with the tension in his shoulders. The silence stretched, thick with the unspoken weight of I like you and Karl’s raw confession about touch. Dust motes danced in the weak light from the grimy window. The forgotten radio buzzed static like a trapped insect.
"Talk, Kibtsuji," Karl growled. He released Telemachus’s shoulder but didn’t step back, blocking the exit. He scrubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw, the movement agitated. "Or just stand there radiating awkwardness. Fantastic." He glanced pointedly at the cluttered counter, littered with burnt breakfast debris. "Those goddamn cookies weren’t even good. Sawdust and sugar. Yet here I am, craving ’em. Explain that."
Telemachus slowly turned. His gaze flickered to Karl’s face, then away, focusing on a dusty stack of engineering manuals. The kitsune mask lay nearby, its smooth porcelain surface reflecting nothing. His clawed hands flexed at his sides. The question about cookies felt absurd, jarring after the electric rawness of moments before. A deflection. A lifeline Karl was clumsily throwing.
Instead of words, Telemachus moved. He stepped past Karl, not toward the door, but toward the cluttered bookshelf crammed beside it. He reached behind a precariously leaning tower of schematics, fingers deftly avoiding a dangling coil of copper wire. He pulled out the familiar glass jar half-full of crimson roses, their scent suddenly vivid against the lingering burnt grease.
He selected one, its stem cool and thorny between his claw tips. The petals were velvety, impossibly vibrant in the dim room. He held it out towards Karl, silent. An offering. A plea. An apology for running? A reminder of what he could give? The dragon on his back seemed to coil tighter.
Karl stared at the rose. Then at Telemachus’s averted eyes. Frustration warred with something else in his expression – exhaustion, maybe, or a flicker of that terrifying vulnerability. "Another flower?" he scoffed, the sound harsh. He didn’t take it. "That’s your answer? To cookies? To anything?" Ozone thickened the air. A loose screw on the floor skittered a few inches.
Telemachus kept the rose extended. His silence wasn’t defiance now, but a deep, wounded quiet. His shoulders slumped slightly under the dragon emblem. The scar tissue on his exposed jawline, where Karl had kissed him, seemed to pulse faintly. He nudged the rose forward another inch, insistent.
Karl let out a sharp breath, almost a hiss. "Fine." He snatched the rose roughly, avoiding Telemachus’s claws. He jabbed it next to the first one in his coat collar. The crimson blooms looked garish against the worn leather, a violent splash of color. "Happy? Two floral tributes for surviving your bloody awful hospitality." He turned away, pacing two agitated steps towards the workshop door.
He stopped, back still turned, fists clenched at his sides. The air hummed with pent-up magnetism. "The Cadou twists everything, Kibtsuji," he rasped. "Desire. Touch. Even conversation. Makes it feel like handling live wires blindfolded." He half-turned, his profile sharp in the gloom. "Your silent, rose-flinging routine? It’s safer. I get it." His voice dropped, rough as gravel. "But it’s also a fucking wall." He met Telemachus’s wide, startled eyes. "And I hate walls."
Telemachus turned away. "I love you, Karl." he whispered, not realizing Heisenburg heard him.
Karl froze. The magnetic hum in the air died abruptly, replaced by a silence so absolute Telemachus could hear the frantic drumming of his own heart against his ribs. He hadn’t meant for the words to escape. They felt raw, ripped loose by the tension and Karl’s harsh declaration about walls. He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable recoil, the explosion of metallic fury.
Karl turned slowly. His face was unreadable stone behind the round glasses, but the air itself seemed to thicken, charged with an unstable energy. A loose screw on the floor skittered erratically, drawn towards him. "Love?" The word fell like a dropped wrench onto concrete. Flat. Hollow. He took a single step forward, the heavy boot thud unnaturally loud. "You utter that word here? In this wreckage?" His voice climbed, rough-edged with disbelief. "After everything? After the Cadou, the experiments, the rot inside us?"
He gestured sharply, encompassing Telemachus, the cluttered room, the jar of roses, the discarded kitsune mask. "Love? What a fucking joke, Kibtsuji." The sarcasm was a blade, sharp and cold. "Is that another one of your silent, wounded bioweapon quirks? Offer roses, whisper confessions you think go unheard?" He jabbed a finger towards his own temple. "My hearing works just fine. Even for stupid declarations."
Telemachus flinched as if struck. He scrambled backwards, the claws on his shoes scraping harshly on the floorboards. Shame burned hotter than any fever. He lunged for the kitsune mask on the counter, fingers fumbling, desperate for the porcelain armor, the familiar anonymity. His hoodie snagged on the edge of a bookshelf, tearing slightly. He needed the mask. Needed to hide.
The mask flew from his grasp before he could touch it. Karl’s hand was outstretched, fingers curled in a subtle gesture of control. The smooth white porcelain hovered in the air just out of Telemachus’s reach, spinning slowly. Karl watched him, his expression unyielding. "Running back to your shell? Typical." The words were a low growl, vibrating with suppressed energy. "You lob that word like a grenade into this room, then try to vanish behind a piece of pottery?"
He took another step closer, the rose petals in his collar trembling faintly. "Love?" he repeated, the word a bitter taste. "You don’t know the first damn thing about it. Not the kind that survives what we are." His gaze flickered, just for a microsecond, to the scar he’d kissed. "Not the kind that doesn't end in screaming."
Telemachus stood rigid, his clawed hands clenched at his sides. The silence stretched, thick with ozone and dust and the weight of the unspeakable things Karl hadn't said. He couldn't reach the mask. Couldn't speak. Couldn't move. He just stared at Karl, the raw vulnerability in his gold-flecked eyes a stark contrast to Karl’s hardened fury. The dragon on his hoodie seemed to ripple, trapped.
Karl held his gaze for a long, charged moment. The floating mask drifted lower, then gently settled back onto the countertop beside the jar of roses. The magnetic pressure lessened, leaving the air thin and cold. "Forget cookies," Karl spat, the sudden shift jarring. He turned sharply, his coat flaring. "Forget... that." He waved a dismissive hand towards the space between them. "Just catalogue the damn scrap pile. Alphabetically. By alloy composition." He strode towards the workshop door, the heavy tread deliberate, final. "And keep your confessions to yourself. Or whisper them to the fish-freak. See how that tastes."
The workshop door slammed shut behind him with a resonant clang that vibrated through the floorboards. Telemachus flinched. He stood alone in the sudden vacuum of noise, the only sound the faint, crackling static of the forgotten radio. He looked at the kitsune mask, then at the two defiant crimson roses Karl still wore. One looked slightly crushed. Slowly, shakily, he sank to his knees on the dusty floor.
Then he stood up, took his things, and left.
He sat in a treehouse he had been given by Miranda. He felt alone. Lonely. So empty. Black roots began to crawl up the treehouse, attaching to him as he dissolve into more sadness.
Karl, feeling bad, went searching for him and went to Moreau to find him.
The sucking mud of Moreau’s reservoir clung to Karl’s boots, threatening to swallow him whole with each step. Ozone crackled faintly around him, repelling the worst of the slime, but the stench of stagnant water and rotting fish was a physical blow. "Kibtsuji!" he bellowed, the name swallowed by the dripping canopy of skeletal trees. "Telemachus!" Only the grotesque gurgle of distant aquatic mutants answered. He hated this place. Hated the damp, hated the despair that oozed from the very mud. Hated the slick, cold knot of regret tightening in his own chest.
He spotted the treehouse, a sagging structure shrouded in weeping moss, nestled in a colossal, half-submerged cypress. Tendrils of thick, black, root-like growth snaked up its supports, pulsing faintly. A familiar white hoodie sleeve was just visible through a gap. Karl’s metal wrench floated free of his belt, spinning ominously. "Kid? You better not be turning into swamp mulch in there." He approached, boots sinking deeper. The air tasted metallic, wrong. It wasn't just the mud. It was the Cadou, agitated, spreading.
Karl hauled himself onto the lowest branch, the wood groaning under his weight. He peered into the treehouse’s dim interior. Telemachus was curled against the far wall. Not just curled – bound. Thickening black tendrils, like solidified corruption, snaked from the decaying floorboards, twining up his legs, his torso, anchoring him. One tendril curled possessively around his throat. His exposed jawline, scarred and vulnerable, was clenched tight. Sweat plastered dark hair to his temples, and his breath hitched in shallow, ragged gasps. His eyes, wide and unfocused, held a terrifying emptiness. The kitsune mask lay discarded beside him, knocked aside.
"Shit," Karl breathed, the word sharp and flat. The Cadou was flaring, feeding on the kid’s despair, reacting to the emotional storm he’d helped unleash. The roses. The confession. His own brutal rejection. Fuel for the parasite. The wrench hummed violently in the air beside him. "Looks like the local flora developed opinions." He forced his voice steady, sardonic. "Trouble sharing space, Kibtsuji?" He scanned the tendrils, assessing their grip, the pulsing darkness radiating from their connection points. Tearing them off physically would be messy. Agonizing. Possibly fatal if they'd anchored deep.
Telemachus didn’t react, trapped in a silent agony beyond words. A faint tremor ran through the tendrils, tightening their hold. A low, distressed whine, utterly silent but vibrating the air like a plucked wire, emanated from him. Karl felt it in his teeth. The Cadou wasn't just holding him; it was integrating. Grounding the live wire, indeed. Straight into the rot.
Karl dropped into a crouch inside the cramped space, ignoring the foul smell and the unsettling pulse of wrongness beneath him. His gloved hand hovered over the thickest tendril gripping Telemachus’s thigh. He focused, brows furrowed behind his glasses. The magnetic field intensified, a low thrum resonating through the wood. He wasn't trying to repel metal. He was trying to repel the Cadou itself – the metallic elements laced within its biological structure, the trace ions in its unnatural growth. He pushed, not with brute force, but with the precise, vibrating frequency he used to align complex machinery. A grating sound emerged as the black tendril shuddered, its hold loosening infinitesimally. Sweat beaded on Karl’s forehead. "Stubborn bastard, aren't you?"
Telemachus gasped, a sudden, harsh intake of breath. His eyes flickered, finding Karl’s face. Confusion, pain, and a flicker of desperate hope warred in his expression. His clawed hand twitched towards the discarded mask, then fell back. The silent whine intensified.
"Don't look at me like that," Karl grunted, maintaining the agonizingly slow, precise magnetic pressure. Another tendril anchoring Telemachus’s arm spasmed and retracted slightly, leaving raw, weeping skin beneath. "Just trying to evict the squatter." He shifted focus, the wrench spinning faster beside him like a nervous satellite. The tendril around Telemachus’s throat pulsed dangerously. Karl adjusted the field, a low growl escaping him as he fought not to rip it apart and damage the kid in the process. "Hate delicate work."
"Go away, Heisenburg." Telemachus hissed, using a root to push the man away.
The black root surged, thick as a serpent, slamming into Karl’s chest with the force of a battering ram. Air exploded from his lungs in a harsh grunt as he crashed backward, splintering decaying wood before hitting the sucking mud below with a heavy, wet thud. Ozone crackled violently around him, repelling the encroaching sludge, but the impact reverberated through his bones. "Persistent little weed, aren't you?" he coughed, mud clinging to his coat, wrench spinning wildly in the air beside his head. He glared up at the shadowed opening of the treehouse. "Told you I hate delicate work!"
Inside, the tendrils constricted in response to Telemachus's desperate command, digging deeper into his limbs, the one around his throat tightening like a vice. Breath became a ragged, impossible struggle. White spots danced before his eyes, the world narrowing to the pulsing black veins against his skin and the suffocating pressure. He tasted bile, fear a cold stone in his gut. His silent scream vibrated the air, a high-pitched whine that made Karl’s teeth ache even through the mud. The Cadou was winning, feeding on his anguish, weaving him into the swamp's decay. His clawed fingers scrabbled uselessly against the slick, living bindings, finding no purchase. The discarded kitsune mask watched, eyeless.
Karl heaved himself upright, mud sloughing off his coat. Pure frustration warred with a cold, sharp spike of alarm. He’d caused this. His brutal words, the slammed door – they’d been the catalyst that sent the kid spiraling into the Cadou’s waiting embrace. The two roses were crushed against his chest inside his coat, a silent accusation. "Fine!" he roared, abandoning subtlety. "Have it your way!" He threw his arms wide. The very air screamed. Every molecule of metal within the roots – trace iron, nickel, the heavy elements laced into the Cadou's unnatural biology – surged towards his call.
The effect was immediate and violent. The thick tendrils binding Telemachus spasmed grotesquely, tearing away from the rotten wood and his flesh with a sickening, wet ripping sound. Black ichor sprayed, thick and foul-smelling. Telemachus gasped, a raw, wet inhalation as the constriction vanished, leaving behind deep, weeping punctures and angry red lacerations. He collapsed forward onto the damp, spongy floor, trembling violently, clawed hands instinctively clutching his ravaged throat. Agony radiated from every point of contact, sharp and deep.
Debris rained down – splintered wood, shredded black root matter. Karl stood below, chest heaving, the magnetic field collapsing. His wrench clattered onto a half-submerged log. He stared up at the wreckage of the treehouse entrance, the ozone scent battling the overwhelming stench of decay and fresh blood. Silence descended, broken only by Telemachus's harsh, wheezing breaths and the relentless drip of swamp water. Karl spat mud onto the ground. "Delicate," he muttered, the sarcasm brittle. "Right." He scanned the unstable structure. Getting the kid down without both of them sinking into the mire was the next problem. The roses felt heavy in his pocket.
He gripped the lowest branch, hauling himself back up with more effort this time, his boots finding precarious purchase on the slick wood. Telemachus hadn’t moved, curled in on himself in the center of the small, ravaged platform, shivering. The extent of the damage was stark in the dim swamp light: deep gouges in his arms, legs, and neck oozing dark blood, his white hoodie torn and stained black and crimson. The dragon design was almost obscured. His eyes were squeezed shut, face contorted in silent agony, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his scarred cheeks. He flinched violently as Karl stepped onto the creaking floorboards.
Karl crouched beside him, keeping a careful distance. The smell of fresh blood was sharp and metallic, mingling nauseatingly with the swamp rot. He didn’t reach out. "Well," he said, his voice uncharacteristically flat, devoid of its usual rumble. "That was spectacularly stupid. Even for you." He pulled the crushed roses from his inside pocket. One was mangled beyond recognition. The other, though bent, still held its deep crimson color. He tossed the ruined one aside into the muck below. The remaining rose he held out, not offering it directly, just letting it rest on his open palm near Telemachus’s clawed hand. "Turns out," he added, watching the kid’s trembling shoulders, "swamp roots have terrible table manners."
Telemachus slowly cracked open his eyes, blinking against the sting of tears and grime. His gaze landed on the single, battered rose in Karl’s muddy glove. It hovered there, a stubborn shred of impossible color in the decay. His breathing hitched, a wet, painful sound. He didn’t reach for the flower. Instead, his gold-flecked eyes, filled with a pain far deeper than the physical wounds, lifted to meet Karl’s. The silent accusation hung in the thick, humid air, heavier than the swamp stench: You did this. You let the rot in. Then his eyes rolled back, and his body went utterly limp, consciousness finally surrendering to the shock and agony. The only movement was the slow, dark seep of blood onto the rotting wood. Karl stared at the unconscious form, the rose still lying uselessly in his hand. The weight of the kid's silent words pressed down, colder than the mud, sharper than the thorns.
The weight of the kid's silent words pressed down, colder than the mud, sharper than the thorns. Karl stared at Telemachus’s limp form, the battered rose a stupid, useless splash of crimson in his muddy glove. Blood pooled dark on the rotten wood beneath the kid’s shredded hoodie. Stupid. Stupid. The word echoed in his head, a hammer striking an anvil. He hadn't just slammed a door; he’d thrown the kid headfirst into the Cadou’s waiting decay. Heisenberg’s jaw clenched. Tendons stood out on his neck.
He couldn’t carry him down normally. Not through that sucking mire with those injuries. “Fine,” he muttered, the sound rough in his throat. He focused, the air crackling instantly. The magnetic field coalesced, not violently this time, but a careful, humming cradle around Telemachus’s broken body. It lifted him gently, a few inches off the blood-slick boards, hovering like fragile cargo. Karl guided the field, maneuvering the unconscious figure down through the shattered entrance, then stepped off the branch himself, landing with a heavy splash in the mud below. He kept the field steady, holding Telemachus aloft above the filth as he trudged back towards the marginally drier path leading away from Moreau’s domain. The single rose, forgotten, fluttered down into the black water.
Back in the cluttered sanctuary of Telemachus’s room, the air tasted thick and stale after the swamp's decay. Karl lowered the hovering body onto the worn couch with agonizing slowness. The magnetic field dissipated with a sigh. Telemachus looked gutted. Ragged tears in the white hoodie revealed deep, weeping punctures and angry lacerations on his arms, legs, and that vulnerable throat. The jagged silver scar Karl had kissed stood out starkly against livid bruising and blood. His breathing was shallow, uneven. The kitsune mask lay on the cluttered coffee table where Karl must have placed it earlier, watching. Karl shoved aside a pile of schematics, clearing space. He ripped the emergency med-kit from its shelf, the plastic cracking under his grip. Bandages, antiseptic – useless for this. Panic, cold and unfamiliar, clawed up his throat. He’s dying because I’m an asshole.
He dropped to his knees beside the couch, the worn floorboards creaking. Mud smeared the rug. His gloved hands hovered uselessly over the worst gash on Telemachus’s forearm. The kid’s power. Healing with a kiss. But only others. Never himself. The memory slammed into Karl: his own lips on that scar last night. Grounding a live wire. Seeing the damage. Acknowledging it. Could this…? Was it even possible? Telemachus moaned softly, a sound like air escaping a bellows, his head lolling. Blood trickled fresh from a puncture near his collarbone. Karl’s breath hitched. This wasn’t machinery. This was flesh. Broken flesh he’d helped break.
“Don’t you dare die on this stupid couch, Kibtsuji,” Karl rasped, the command harsh but stripped bare. “Not after surviving Miranda. Not after surviving me.” His hand, still gloved, brushed a strand of sweat-damp hair from Telemachus’s clammy forehead. The kid flinched weakly at the touch, even unconscious. Karl froze. The metallic scent of blood filled his nostrils, mixed with old paper and dust. Do it, you coward. The thought was a jolt. He stared at the jagged silver scar on Telemachus’s jawline – the map of old pain he’d traced with his thumb, kissed with… something. Not desire, he’d insisted. But what? Something essential. Something real in this Cadou-twisted wreckage. Shaking slightly, Karl slowly, deliberately peeled off his right glove. The leather scraped against his calloused skin.
He reached out, his bare hand trembling as it hadn’t in decades, not since the Cadou’s first agonizing integration. His rough fingertips, stained with grease and swamp mud, traced the edge of the deep laceration on Telemachus’s throat. The skin felt feverish, fragile. He leaned down, his shadow falling over the kid’s battered face. The scent of blood and ozone was overwhelming. He hesitated, a fraction of a second, his breath catching. Then Karl pressed his lips, firm and deliberate, not to the fresh, horrific wound, but to the old, familiar silver scar on Telemachus’s jaw. A silent plea. An anchor thrown into the storm. Live.
A jolt, not magnetic, but pure, golden energy surged under Karl’s lips. Telemachus gasped, his body arching off the couch cushions as if struck by lightning. Karl jerked back, stunned. Light – actual, warm, golden light – pulsed from the point of contact, the jagged silver scar, spreading like liquid sun across Telemachus’s skin. It flowed over the deep punctures on his arms, the ragged tears on his legs, the vicious wound on his throat. Where the light touched, torn flesh knitted itself back together with impossible speed. Bruises faded from livid purple to sickly yellow to nothing. The ragged edges of the hoodie still hung open, but beneath the fabric, only smooth, unbroken skin remained, pale except for the network of old silver scars. The golden glow flickered once, twice, then vanished as suddenly as it appeared, leaving behind the scent of ozone and… roses. Telemachus’s breathing deepened, evening out into the rhythm of deep, untroubled sleep. Karl stared, frozen, his bare hand hovering in the air, the ghost of the light still seared onto his retinas. The crushed rose was a heavy, accusing weight in his coat pocket.
Telemachus's cat ears drooped slightly. "K-karl? Why are you here?" he questioned, breaking the kiss. "I thought you hated me."