Fanfic - Cabal - Part 3
Title: Human Nature to Miscalculate
Rating: PG-13 for fade-to-black sexual content in the first part.
Characters/Pairings: Cabal/Leonie in the beginning
Summary: Cabal was not a man who fancied mistakes, in himself or others. However, it must be acknowledged that in some mistakes required a lapse in judgment on two sides, rather than one, where the placement of blame is a waste of good time and justifications.
Notes: Takes place after Johannes Cabal the Detective.
Part III - Cabal Deliberates
“It’s far better for me to stay away,” Cabal spoke calmly, putting on a pair of rubber gloves with painful snaps. He walked to the other corner of his lab, plugged in the extension cord to the bulb above his worktable. “Besides, I can hardly see what part in this I have…” he considered. “Forget I said that. It was uncharacteristically dense. Even I don’t believe that lie.” He pulled his tools closer, knitted his fingers together and stretched outwards. They cracked painfully. “She can raise the child alone. Yes? Of course she can. A child needs the mother more, anyway.” No, he didn’t believe that either. He took out a vial of batch 249, held it up to the light in a check for impurities. “I never wanted to be a father.” The needle slid through the protective wax coating, and he took out a small portion of the batch. With trained fingers, he lifted it to the light and tapped the side. He turned to his audience. “What do you think?”
“I wish I was dead, that’s what I think.” The skeleton cocked its head to the side, macabre grin not changing in the least.
He glowered and his face twisted to better express his displeasure with batch 230 - it had very little human personality, and it contained the section of the human soul dedicated to wretched jokes and pitiful puns.
“You’re no help at all,” Cabal replied, inserting the needle into the blot of congealed blood sitting on his worktable. He waited for the serum to take effect. “Take notes.” Flaws aside, 230 was the only one of his creations with which he would trust an object as sharp and potentially lethal as a pencil. He began rattling off a list of variables for future reference.
The clot of blood did nothing.
Irritated, Cabal stared at it, willing it to move. He took a swab, placed some of the blood on a thin slab of glass as long as his finger. Placing it under a microscope, he observed nothing out of the ordinary. “It’s a failure…” he did not like failure, and no response at all was a step backwards he hadn’t counted on.
“Just like the condom?” The skeleton asked, then laughed, or rather, cackled. How a skeleton could cackle without lungs or a trachea was the biggest mystery Cabal had absolutely no interest in solving. “Oh my, that’s never going to get old.”
He looked up from his work, wondering where he’d put that damn hammer.
“Herr Cabal---” the skeleton started.
“Do you think this is funny!?” Cabal roared. “If you happen to make one more joke about…that. I promise to grind you into bone dust and sell it as a calcium supplement! Is that clear?”
“I just thought you might like to know that batch 249 is escaping out the door as we speak. But I don’t know why I want to tell you if you’re going to be Mr. Grumpy Pants about the whole thing.” Eyes widening, Cabal reeled around to see a flat, crimson blob scuttling across the tile floor and making for the exit. He yelled, a combination of multiple stressors, and charged after it. “You’re welcome!” the skeleton reminded futilely.
He didn’t use the bust of Napoleon Bonaparte this time; extermination instead required the strategic use of a bucket and the incinerator. The one benefit to batch 249 was that it helped him work out some of the pent up energy he’d been trying to wrestle through since he’d received The News.
He called it a day and went for tea.
Over the grandfather clock, the carrion crow was preening itself. Cabal leered at it from his great armchair. Why did the entire world seem to be mocking him this week?
…Because he’d made a very simple mistake and was now dealing with the consequences. For someone as generally competent as he was, there was something laughable about it.
And now his conscience was joining in the fun.
“Is it really my problem? She had as much decision as I did and I made every effort to prevent it,” he countered.
Leonie was just getting out of graduate school. She would have a hard time supporting two people with whatever job she would get. The child wouldn’t be the same size as a small dog forever.
At that, Cabal made a noise. “Well I’m not going to put down my life of crime and settle with her. That’s unacceptable. And my home is hardly baby-proofed.” He felt silly just saying the word ‘baby’, monumentally so. A more dignified term needed to be devised. ‘Baby’ sounded too childish. “Marrying her is out of the question. What else should I do?”
Monetary support.
Cabal nodded. “Easy enough. The carnival made me a rich man. I need to keep a decent amount as a financial buffer, but I can give her most of it. What else?”
Be there for the child.
“No.”
Why the bloody hell not?
“The reasons are called Legion, for they are many. I have a pro-con chart worked out. I seem to have left it in my office, otherwise I’d show you.” The cons far outweighed the pros. “I don’t like children. I make them cry whenever I can --- it’s one of the few villainous traits I’m proud of. As I’ve previously stated, Leonie and the child will be safer the farther away I stay.”
The very fact that he was thinking about that, about their safety, already showed that it meant too much to pretend they didn’t exist.
It was an uncomfortable notion, an instinctive desire to protect, one of said protectorates a would-be foe. He hadn’t consented to it, and he wanted it gone. Unfortunately, his soul disagreed with him.
He hesitated over the last rationale, not wanting to admit it to anyone, least of all his conscience. “A child is something that the universe can hold ransom over you.”
His conscience had nothing to say about that, instead telling him to take it up with his fears.
Rating: PG-13 for fade-to-black sexual content in the first part.
Characters/Pairings: Cabal/Leonie in the beginning
Summary: Cabal was not a man who fancied mistakes, in himself or others. However, it must be acknowledged that in some mistakes required a lapse in judgment on two sides, rather than one, where the placement of blame is a waste of good time and justifications.
Notes: Takes place after Johannes Cabal the Detective.
Part III - Cabal Deliberates
“It’s far better for me to stay away,” Cabal spoke calmly, putting on a pair of rubber gloves with painful snaps. He walked to the other corner of his lab, plugged in the extension cord to the bulb above his worktable. “Besides, I can hardly see what part in this I have…” he considered. “Forget I said that. It was uncharacteristically dense. Even I don’t believe that lie.” He pulled his tools closer, knitted his fingers together and stretched outwards. They cracked painfully. “She can raise the child alone. Yes? Of course she can. A child needs the mother more, anyway.” No, he didn’t believe that either. He took out a vial of batch 249, held it up to the light in a check for impurities. “I never wanted to be a father.” The needle slid through the protective wax coating, and he took out a small portion of the batch. With trained fingers, he lifted it to the light and tapped the side. He turned to his audience. “What do you think?”
“I wish I was dead, that’s what I think.” The skeleton cocked its head to the side, macabre grin not changing in the least.
He glowered and his face twisted to better express his displeasure with batch 230 - it had very little human personality, and it contained the section of the human soul dedicated to wretched jokes and pitiful puns.
“You’re no help at all,” Cabal replied, inserting the needle into the blot of congealed blood sitting on his worktable. He waited for the serum to take effect. “Take notes.” Flaws aside, 230 was the only one of his creations with which he would trust an object as sharp and potentially lethal as a pencil. He began rattling off a list of variables for future reference.
The clot of blood did nothing.
Irritated, Cabal stared at it, willing it to move. He took a swab, placed some of the blood on a thin slab of glass as long as his finger. Placing it under a microscope, he observed nothing out of the ordinary. “It’s a failure…” he did not like failure, and no response at all was a step backwards he hadn’t counted on.
“Just like the condom?” The skeleton asked, then laughed, or rather, cackled. How a skeleton could cackle without lungs or a trachea was the biggest mystery Cabal had absolutely no interest in solving. “Oh my, that’s never going to get old.”
He looked up from his work, wondering where he’d put that damn hammer.
“Herr Cabal---” the skeleton started.
“Do you think this is funny!?” Cabal roared. “If you happen to make one more joke about…that. I promise to grind you into bone dust and sell it as a calcium supplement! Is that clear?”
“I just thought you might like to know that batch 249 is escaping out the door as we speak. But I don’t know why I want to tell you if you’re going to be Mr. Grumpy Pants about the whole thing.” Eyes widening, Cabal reeled around to see a flat, crimson blob scuttling across the tile floor and making for the exit. He yelled, a combination of multiple stressors, and charged after it. “You’re welcome!” the skeleton reminded futilely.
He didn’t use the bust of Napoleon Bonaparte this time; extermination instead required the strategic use of a bucket and the incinerator. The one benefit to batch 249 was that it helped him work out some of the pent up energy he’d been trying to wrestle through since he’d received The News.
He called it a day and went for tea.
Over the grandfather clock, the carrion crow was preening itself. Cabal leered at it from his great armchair. Why did the entire world seem to be mocking him this week?
…Because he’d made a very simple mistake and was now dealing with the consequences. For someone as generally competent as he was, there was something laughable about it.
And now his conscience was joining in the fun.
“Is it really my problem? She had as much decision as I did and I made every effort to prevent it,” he countered.
Leonie was just getting out of graduate school. She would have a hard time supporting two people with whatever job she would get. The child wouldn’t be the same size as a small dog forever.
At that, Cabal made a noise. “Well I’m not going to put down my life of crime and settle with her. That’s unacceptable. And my home is hardly baby-proofed.” He felt silly just saying the word ‘baby’, monumentally so. A more dignified term needed to be devised. ‘Baby’ sounded too childish. “Marrying her is out of the question. What else should I do?”
Monetary support.
Cabal nodded. “Easy enough. The carnival made me a rich man. I need to keep a decent amount as a financial buffer, but I can give her most of it. What else?”
Be there for the child.
“No.”
Why the bloody hell not?
“The reasons are called Legion, for they are many. I have a pro-con chart worked out. I seem to have left it in my office, otherwise I’d show you.” The cons far outweighed the pros. “I don’t like children. I make them cry whenever I can --- it’s one of the few villainous traits I’m proud of. As I’ve previously stated, Leonie and the child will be safer the farther away I stay.”
The very fact that he was thinking about that, about their safety, already showed that it meant too much to pretend they didn’t exist.
It was an uncomfortable notion, an instinctive desire to protect, one of said protectorates a would-be foe. He hadn’t consented to it, and he wanted it gone. Unfortunately, his soul disagreed with him.
He hesitated over the last rationale, not wanting to admit it to anyone, least of all his conscience. “A child is something that the universe can hold ransom over you.”
His conscience had nothing to say about that, instead telling him to take it up with his fears.