hexmix | inktober2022 wip: "radio" [wintersberg] (Reply)

so the actual 2022 inktober prompt was "scallop" but i didn't like it so i grabbed "radio" from the 2020 prompt list instead. it's just a coincidence that it perfectly works with another au idea i had which was based off an article i read about re8 A BILLION YEARS AGO. don't have it on hand but it was pure speculation based on trailers/game footage released before the game itself was out and it posited that heisenberg might be an ally, and furthermore than he might be the one to have brought ethan to the village for help (this was before there was knowledge of rose i believe).

anyway that stuck with me for obvious reasons and i've wanted to do a "heisenberg pulls a castiel and harasses ethan thru electronics in order to get him to ~~be his vessel~~ the village" au and used this prompt as an excuse to write the opening.

this au is set very early after ethan and mia arrive in romania, before rose was born. eventual wintersberg.

The first time he could distinctly remember it happening was early on, right after they’d just moved into the house. He hadn’t gotten the remote IT job with the ISP company yet–Chris was still in contact, it was well before he’d decided to throw up a wall of radio silence–and Mia was…

Mia was out.

He’d sequestered himself in the spare room and was determined to do something to pick away at the disorder. He had a CD player plugged in, playing some Best Of album that he kept zoning out to, and he’d plopped himself in front of a semicircle of boxes he was trying to sort.

It was stuffy in the room, and his nose was running from all the dust, and he’d only noticed the CD player kept fucking up because he’d drawn himself out of the pointless drifting by a powerful string of sneezes.

Wiping his watery eyes on the back of his wrist–he’d stopped obsessively looking at the scars at least–he clued into the fact that Fitzgerald had been interrupted by what sounded like radio interference, like when one station cut into another.

He’d gotten up, frowning, and went to see what the fuck was going on.

The CD player was one of those cassette/radio/CD combos, so old he’d been kind of surprised to have found it up here, but it had been set firmly to the CD player option. He messed with the little switch, pushing it to radio and causing static to cut in. He dialed through the stations, not finding any broadcasting a man speaking in English, which is what he’d thought he’d heard.

Thinking it little more than a fluke, just really really old electronics malfunctioning, Ethan switched the player back to the CD setting and started Fitzgerald up again, forgetting about the whole thing until half a month later, when he realized he’d been hearing the same man the same way, over and over.

An insistent, almost desperate voice, just barely breaking through a forest of static.

He asked for help a lot, and it took Ethan a while to puzzle out what he was asking for help with. Once he did, he spent around two weeks convinced he’d picked up some weird signal from somewhere, one that was just repeating one of those old radio shows. How the hell else was he supposed to interpret She’s keeping us here, we can’t get out, and she’ll come for you next if you don’t–

He’d only gotten it in fragments, only slowly pieced the whole thing together. Sometimes the man talked about outlandish experiments, some real horror movie shit about bringing the dead back to life, about twisting people into monsters, about inhuman powers and–

And Ethan had had enough of it. Had gotten into the habit of turning off the radio whenever the voice would cut through whatever he’d been listening to. He’d lived a fucking horror movie, and didn’t exactly want the reminder.

“The job’s in Budapest,” Mia said, shouldering her bag without looking up from her phone screen. She’d just gotten back from another job, one in…hell, Ethan didn’t remember. Felt briefly, distantly, guilty about it before he remembered that he should maybe be saying something to show that he was listening.

“How long are you going to be gone?”

Mia shrugged a shoulder. “Few weeks, probably.” She continued scrolling up on her phone screen, her face in profile. She was frowning, slightly.

Ethan nodded, realized she wouldn’t see it, and then said, half surprised himself by what came out of his mouth, “I quit.” And that got Mia’s attention. She looked up from her phone to turn that almost-frown on him. “The day before yesterday,” Ethan added.

“I thought…” she started, but then shook her head minutely, clearly coming to some decision as she smiled at him instead of finishing whatever she’d thought. “Nevermind, it’s fine, right? I’m sure Chris–” her smile wavered, and the reminder of Chris’ absence, of his silence, bubbled up in the space between them.

“It’s fine, Mia,” Ethan said, because it was. He’d been keeping busy enough, and at least this way he wouldn’t have to see Vlad’s condescending little smirk anymore. “They told me they’d be happy to take me back on later. If I, uh, wanted.” Which wasn’t exactly that far from the truth for him to feel any guilt in saying it.

Not that it mattered, because Mia was acting distracted again, checking her phone screen and resituating the strap of her bag. “You can call me if you need to,” she said. “Or the BSAA therapist. I know you said–”

“Mia,” Ethan said, his voice sharper than he’d intended, “it’s fine.”

Which was absolutely the wrong thing to say. Her expression turned serious, halfway to annoyed even, and she looked for a moment like she was ready to drop her bag and go back to babysitting him, making sure he wouldn’t, hell, fly off the handle or whatever the fuck her and the therapist had been worried about months ago now, back when he’d felt like he was suffocating, slowly, and it was her holding the pillow over his face.

But then her phone chimed, and she turned her stare to it instead and then said simply, flatly, “Call me.”

It was an order, and it rankled, but Ethan said, “Sure thing.”

Mia left without another word.

He sat on the couch listlessly for a while after she left, poking around on the language learning app he’d started using instead of relying on fucking Vlad, and then after a while turned on the TV just for background noise–he’d all but stopped using the CD player.

He was reorganizing the shelves in the pantry for lack of anything better to occupy himself with when he heard the man’s voice again.

He thought he’d been mistaken at first, because he knew he hadn’t even had the CD player on, but then he heard it again: I need your help. There’s no one else who can stop her.

It was clearly coming from the TV, and the coincidence of it–because that’s all it had to be, surely–had him feeling a little bit like he was sinking. Like he was off-kilter. Like he really was insane–

He stomped back into the living room, a forgotten can of beans in his hand, intending to snatch up the remote and just turn the damn thing off–

A grainy, desaturated face filled the screen. It was out of focus, and cut through with interference. Ethan could only really make out a bearded chin. Full lips nicked by a scar.

“--ters,” it said, the same voice he was always hearing, but this time–

“Ethan Winters,” it said again.

The can of beans hit the floor with a resounding thud.

The only explanation was that he was actually crazy.