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Namor could hear an adult voice prattling away in an obnoxiously child-like tone as he strode down the hall. Maximus had left the door wide open, the way he frequently tended to, as unconcerned with hiding his twisted little games as he was with disguising his sick mind. Namor gritted his teeth, steeling himself against disgust as he turned the corner and entered the room. His lip twitched, he should have grown accustomed to it by now, but he’d been unprepared for quite how revolted he would be by the scene before him.
Maximus was carefully shaving his catatonic brother with a straight razor as he chattered merrily away. He was taking as much care and precision in his work as he did with any diabolical task he undertook, shaving Blackbolt’s face clean without leaving the tiniest scratch or raising so much as a bit of redness on his skin. As ever, since Blackbolt had returned to the Necropolis blank-faced and robotic, Maximus made no move to harm him physically, looking after his brother with all the care of a hospice nurse and chattering constantly to him as though they were having a pleasant conversation. The mockery of affection was disturbing and loathsome in ways Namor couldn’t even articulate.
“--Of course we knew that, didn’t we, Brother? Lovely Medusa, such a treasure. She’ll see our people through these dark and troubled times. Or rather, she would, if these dark and troubled times were actually going to end. There’s no end to the end, after all. And it’s very difficult to see one’s way through something when there’s nothing on the other side, so I don’t suppose our people or ourselves will actually be seeing any change in this new status quo. Until our inevitable demise, of course,” Maximus babbled as he finished with the razor and wiped Blackbolt’s face with a towel. “Do you suppose there is nothing on the other side? Do you think there is an after-life for us? For the multiverse? Will a new multiverse grow in its place after this one has finally been fully extinguished? Or, suppose it gets down to just one universe left and that universe has nothing at all to collide with, will a new, healthy multiverse begin to grow off of that?”
Maximus set the towel aside and picked up a comb, setting to work on Blackbolt’s hair. “Is it getting too long? Shall we cut it? No? A few more days, perhaps?” he blathered. “You know, a thought occurs: if universes divide- very much like cells- within the multiverse, do you suppose that the incursions are happening faster than the universes divide? Because if not, if universes are being created more quickly, or even at an equal speed to that with which they are being destroyed, then the destruction will be theoretically unending. There will always be new universes, new Earths, to be destroyed, and so truly the end does not have an end. But the real question of import at a moment such as this is, will Prince Namor ever stop haunting the door jamb and speak up? What do you think, Brother?”
Namor snarled, crossing his arms and glaring at the irritating man-child.
“Oh no! Not the angry-face!” Maximus exclaimed, shrinking back and covering his eyes in mockery. “What have I done to offend, oh great sea king?”
“You tried to kill me,” Namor accused, growling the words through his teeth.
Maximus threw back his head and laughed, the giddy, unhinged sound almost inspiring Namor to nausea. “Now we both know that that is ridiculous and patently false!” he said when the fit had passed. “I hardly winged you. Had I wanted to kill you, all I would have needed to do was say ‘Brother, please turn your head an inch to the left,’ and you would have been nothing but a spray of atomized blood. The fact that you are standing here now is all you need to know that I have no desire to see you dead,” he reasoned, as Namor watched Blackbolt turn his head slightly, responding to Maximus’ words even though the command hadn’t been real. “Although, if I were to say that I wanted to kill you, would that perhaps inspire you to keep a closer eye on your compatriots?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Namor narrowed his eyes. “Speak plainly,” he demanded.
Maximus tossed the comb carelessly at the table and started resettling Blackbolt’s cowl. “Some of those present- and by ‘some’ I mean all of them- have begun to question your conviction, prince-king,” he said, a sound almost like rationality creeping into his voice. “They see you restrain yourself on the battlefield, they see the sentiment in your eyes, they see you fail to enjoy the bloodshed, and they think that perhaps you are soft.” He straightened up and turned to look Namor in the eye. “You should hear the things their minds whisper... But I know better. It’s arrogance, self-importance and self-indulgence that clouds their perception. I can see clearly that you are simply different than them, but no less strong, no less dedicated. You do what is necessary and nothing more, while they revel in the freedom of total nihilism.”
Namor allowed his glare to ease somewhat, considering the madman before him more carefully than before. The way he laughed and crowed during a slaughter, ardent and excited as he dispensed death through the puppet he had made of his brother, Namor had viewed him as much the same ilk as the others. Except that grinning and cackling seemed to be Maximus’ natural state; Namor suspected that if he punched the man in the face and shattered his jaw, Maximus might respond by laughing hysterically, and so perhaps his psychotic merriment wasn’t a very good measure of the man’s bloodlust. “... And you?” he asked.
“I?” Maximus tilted his head slightly and grinned. “I don’t begrudge you remembering that this is duty and not sport. I think you all the stronger for it. You fight for something. The others fight for nothing. That is the difference between you. I do not begrudge you for still holding some nobility in your breast, and I do not begrudge them for enjoying their release. You and they have different reasons, but both are legitimate and you are just as effective as they. They worry that sentiment will break you and cause you to falter, but I know that your first and strongest sentiment is for what remains of Atlantis, and that sentiment will drive you forward long after you have broken.”
“... What do you fight for, Maximus?” Namor asked in a quiet monotone. “Something? Or nothing?”
Maximus turned his head to look at Blackbolt and smiled. The grin was too wide and still smacked of madness, but there was also an unexpected sheen of fondness. “Like you, I have duty, I have love,” he said, his voice a little softer and less delirious than usual.
Namor sneered. “You have turned your brother into a puppet and you call that love?” he hissed, disgusted anew. It was sickening to look at Blackbolt, formerly the second strongest man Namor had ever known (after himself) and now a glass-eyed doll to be posed and played with by his demented little brother. But hearing Maximus somehow rationalizing his actions as stemming from loyalty? It was vile. He was vile.
“Oh, I know that we haven’t always gotten along. Our parents played us off each other. They treated us more as experiments than children. It caused a rift between us, even after he killed them,” Maximus sighed and Namor’s brow furrowed; Blackbolt had killed his parents? “But you know, ironic as it is, I think we owe our reconciliation to the skrulls. Blackbolt returned from space a different man than the one they had taken. A man who had had his foolish, impractical, childish ideals burned away, and in their place, new strength that he had never before wielded, new wisdom that he had been blind to for so long, new conviction to do what is necessary without shrinking away from unpleasantness.”
Maximus wandered around behind the chair he had Blackbolt settled in and draped his arms around his brother’s shoulders, hugging him and letting a hint of teeth show through his grin again. “This is a man I can respect. This is a brother I can love. This is a king I would let lead me to the grave,” he declared, pressing his cheek to Blackbolt’s for a moment before letting him go and straightening up to look at Namor again. “But you see, there are two very important things a king must be, and at times when the world is so steeped in blood as we find it now, they are so very mutually exclusive,” he said, smirking and biting his lip momentarily. “A king must be willing and ready to do anything, no matter how terrible, to protect his people. A king must be noble, shining and virtuous. In troubled times like this, these things cannot co-exist. Except when they can, which is why what I do now is so important.”
Maximus stroked a hand over his brother’s shoulder and glanced down at him again, smiling softly. “The king will protect his people, but no matter what must be done to achieve that, the name Blackagar Boltagon will be pristine.” He looked back up at Namor, his smile widening again, teeth gleaming. “Don’t you wish you had a brother like me, Prince Namor?”
Namor stared at him silently, feeling suddenly hollow and stretched, not trusting himself to speak. Because he did. He really did.
000
Blackbolt could feel his brother’s attention shift back to him. The haze of psychic static didn’t clear, but he could see Maximus in front of him, talking, and the stupor eased enough to let Blackbolt hear his words and focus on his face, although his body remained numb and unresponsive. “I think he is jealous, don’t you?” Maximus was saying. “Even with his kingdom all but gone, the crown weighs heavily upon dear Namor. Or perhaps it weighs so heavy because his kingdom is all but gone? One egregious failure (or several back-to-back) makes him all the more frightened of the next looming on the horizon. His people are shattered but now he fears the finality of extinction.”
What’s happening? Blackbolt asked.
“Right now? Nothing. Nothing. The last incursion was this morning and the alarm hasn’t gone off since,” Maximus shrugged. “I’m taking the afternoon off. I’ll get back to work tomorrow, assuming there are still clear skies, but it is all getting a bit exhausting. With your friends gone, I’m the only one here qualified to build the bombs. You’d think they might have tried to recruit someone else a little bit clever, but no, no, just a lot of jocks,” he sighed.
Blackbolt studied the obvious circles under his brother’s eyes. You look tired.
“Oh yes, Brother, I am,” Maximus agreed, rubbing his hands over his face and pushing his hair back. “All this saving and destroying worlds... it’s a bit more than I was expecting when I crashed your stag-party.”
You won’t be able to hold me forever. You’re weakening, Blackbolt noted, narrowing his eyes. Let me go now and I won’t put you in a stasis cell.
Maximus let out a weary chuckle, looking down and shaking his head. “I can’t do that though. I can’t abandon you now. It’s gone too far, and there’s so much further to go,” he said, a slightly mournful sound to his voice.
Blackbolt frowned slightly, and only then realized Maximus had given him back control of his mouth as well as his eyes. He tried to hold his breath for a moment, to test, and found, unsurprisingly, that his lungs were still not his to command. Maximus wasn’t so suicidal. So he returned his thoughts to what had caught his attention before, the sudden hint of dejection in his brother’s demeanor. You want to stop killing? he asked.
“The killing is monotonous,” Maximus said, shaking his head. “It is not sport. I find no thrill in it. There is no creativity to it. There is no time for devising new and exciting ways to kill those who would oppose us. There is only building more of the exact same bombs, securing bomb sites, and killing billions of people the exact same way, again and again and again. It is tedious,” his voice grew into a whine. “I am being run ragged doing mere assembly work and this is to be the rest of my existence, isn’t it? We do this until we one day fail and our world is the one to be broken. The apocalypse is boring, Brother.”
We can find another way, Maximus, Blackbolt said, trying to keep the thought confident, a command and not a plea.
Maximus laughed and shook his head. “... Your little fraternity spent a year looking for another way,” he said. “And now you are broken and scattered. Maybe another way will be found, but not by us. All I have time to do now is buy more time. And all you can do now is whatever I say. Maybe someone will save us, save everything, but we’re trapped, Brother. If we stop for even a day, even eight hours, time runs out and there will be no one to save. No one to be saved, no one to do the saving.”
Let me go, Maximus, he tried again. I can help you.
“Oh no, you mustn’t, Brother, you mustn’t,” Maximus said, looking suddenly alarmed and catching Blackbolt’s cheek against his palm. “Don’t you see? That’s precisely why I must. I have to keep you clean.” Maximus crouched down in front of him, finding Blackbolt’s hands and pulling them close to his own chest, staring up at him imploringly. “You are the Midnight King and I am your shadow,” he whispered. “I am darker than midnight, blacker than black. I will stain myself in a sea of red to carry you above it. I will keep you clean, Brother.” He gathered Blackbolt’s hands together, cupping them between his own, and kissed his knuckles. “If this ends in the end, then you will go to oblivion clean. If this ends in continuation, then you will remember: I am the one you can trust when you can trust nothing. I am nothing.”
Blackbolt closed his eyes for a moment, gritting his teeth, before again looking down at his brother, crouched at his knee. You talk of loyalty while committing treason and think them one in the same, he accused.
“I do,” Maximus agreed.
When did you acquire such loyalty for me?
“When you became a real king,” Maximus replied and then turned his head and leaned his cheek against Blackbolt’s knuckles. “When you became a real brother and a real father... When you became as strong and loving and loyal as people had always said you were but it was only ever just words until then. I am glad the skrulls tortured you, Brother. They made you much better than you were before.”
Blackbolt stared at him, a grimace pulling his face. His brother was insane. He knew that. But still, the things that came out of his mouth sometimes. Maximus, I will forgive you if you let me go now, he tried one last time.
“No, Brother,” Maximus shook his head and smiled up at him. “I have decided to love you and I will not let you ruin yourself.”