As Glacius starts hacking, Carlisle's channel ripples back against him; he squeezes his eyes shut, desperately trying to focus as ink continues to spill from his mouth. The main hole may be closed, but there is still much to do, and he must focus on the gills next. Carlisle opens his eyes once more, struggling to focus as he searches for the contaminant. It's around the back of Glacius' neck he finds it, spotting a thorny vine emerging from the folds in the alien's neck: the barbs are curved, latching into Glacius' gills like the fangs of a beast.

Carlisle's hands shake, guilt washing over him in that instant. Fanged ivy.

Glacius starts coming around, purple blood pouring from his ruined gills, yet Carlisle is petrified. This is his fault, truly and irrevocably. It was his plant -- he was the one who'd told Glacius about it, where to find it, what it looked like. The alien would have been better off if they hadn't agreed to live together, if they'd never met, if—

He's drawn from that precipice of immediate despair as Glacius hacks painfully, each inhale like agony, each cough excruciating as blood spills from him in tandem with the ink from Carlisle's own mouth. The clergyman knows that feeling far too well, and cannot let his friend suffer. He's still needed, if only for now.

And then there's a flurry of motion: Carlisle tears open the drawer to the nightstand, grabs his pruning shears, and gets to work, his tongue failing him as he tries to keep himself on task, resolute. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry I did this and I'll fix it and then you don't ever have to speak to me again but please don't die Glacius just please don't die—

The freezing blood coats his hands and mingles with the ink oozing from his fingernails, making the handles of his shears slick, but he works out the vine bit by bit, careful not to rip the barbs from Glacius' neck, turning the tendril this way and that to keep the thorns from tearing through him further.