Lures to Perfection

by thealternateuncanny

Summary:

A sequel to The Creation Of

Adam rejoins society after taking a break only to find that a significant amount of time has passed him by.

(Significantly more of an AU than explicitly an MCU work)

Chapter 1: Acceptance

“It is not everyday that I encounter intelligent life forms so far from breathable atmosphere.”

 

Adam’s eyelids open slowly upon hearing those words–the first sounds Adam’s ears have detected in who-only-knows how long. The voice is unfamiliar; powerful, but not quite harsh. It cuts easily through the air in spite of the fact that they are out in the vacuum of space.

 

He does not respond physically as though he is startled. Instead, he calmly turns his head to the individual addressing him.

 

The being appears to be an animated statue– like a smooth ore had once been poured into the mold of a man’s body before being brought to life. Tall, lean, unclothed yet not quite notably naked. The silver of his body may as well be a seamless armor covering every inch of him from the curvature of his clavicles to the sclera of his eyes.

 

He tilts his head at Adam with a hint of curiosity; the small movement emphasizing once more to Adam that he is not a metal statue the way he appears to be, but rather some type of living being. 

 

The strange new being continues to speak, his voice deep as before: “Might I ask what would drive a man to be so distant from the reach of suns and brighter moons, at the farthest and coldest stretches of the galaxy?”

 

He speaks in a way that is distinguished. If not for the different dialect, it would almost remind Adam of the way that people on Sovereign tend to make conversation with each other.

 

“I don’t get cold,” Adam explains, utilizing his real-life vocal chords for the first time since he left Knowhere and arrived here at Soulworld. 

 

Until now, the only person he’s spoken to after all this time has been Magus– who is presently pruning a tree on the other side of their mindscape. His body is invisible, undetectable to others, including the silver stranger. This is because the Magus does not have a separate body from Adam’s; the pair share an existence.

 

The silver stranger says to Adam, “I do not get cold either, as you can clearly see for yourself. I stand in space without anything to aid me. But you didn’t exactly answer the question I asked you. What are you doing in this place?”

 

Adam can’t tell if he likes the stranger or not. He thought he would be more upset than he is about having his peace interrupted, but nevermind that:

 

“Considering you’re here now with me, I guess I could ask you the same,” Adam replies. He turns to face the stranger a little more fully, to get a better glimpse at his face. Sharp features, with a prominent jaw and broad shoulders. Adam spots for the first time that the creature is standing on a long plank– a board– composed of the same silvery material as his body.

 

“I believe I may have asked you my question before you did,” the living statue says as politely as he can manage, a twinkle of humor in his silvery eyes. “Here is the deal: you tell your story– and then I will share my own.”

 

“I’m meditating,” Adam states.

 

“What for?” 

 

“No particular reason. Taking some time away from it all,” Adam explains.

 

“Time away from what?”

 

“Everything,” Adam answers. He has no reason to lie, nor a reason to not explain himself. He elaborates only a little: “I’ve been building a world.”

 

The silver eyes of the being seem to scan the surroundings of Adam on the empty red-rock moon. If Adam was “building a world,” there was certainly no sign .

 

“And you’re staying here ?” the stranger says. “Why?”

 

“Why not here?” Adam replies simply.

 

They stare into each other’s eyes; Adam is sure that the silver stranger would blink at him if he were able to blink.

 

“I’m afraid I do not quite understand–” The silver one starts.

 

“What is it that you can’t understand?” Adam asks, a bit of impatience with the stranger, whose brow shifts as he frowns in response.

 

“You say you are building a world. I don’t see anything.”

“The world is in my mind,” Adam responds, as though that should be obvious. “This moon is where I sit to think.”

 

“...So you mean to say that the moon itself does not mean anything to you,” the stranger says.

 

“I wouldn’t say it means nothing at all ,” Adam says, “But I found this place by mistake. I stayed here to rest because I liked the quiet of it all. Quietness made it easy to focus on what matters.”

 

“What is it that you found that ‘matters?’” The stranger asks out of genuine interest.

 

“Why should it matter to you what matters to me?” Adam asks. The stranger opens his mouth to speak, but Adam continues speaking instead, “And why should I share my thoughts– I don’t know you. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

 

“That’s the trouble, sir,” the living statue says, as politely as he can manage, “The land you occupy is meant for my master.”

“Master,” Adam repeats plainly. “This moon– it is somebody’s property?”

 

A pause. “...Yes,” the stranger explains, though it’s a lie. The idea that the moon belongs to the being he serves makes for a far simpler explanation than the reality of the situation, after all. “He is a Great One, my master, and he has his sight set on this moon… his moon …” the stranger adds, “As I serve him loyally, you can see that I cannot in good faith give up and allow you to remain h–”

 

“Fine.”

 

The stranger’s mouth hangs open after being interrupted mid-thought. “Pardon?” The silver one asks.

 

“You’re asking me to leave. Fine. It is done, easily,” Adam says with no wavering in his voice.

 

“It is?” The stranger asks. It seems he was expecting this conversation to go differently.

 

Adam continues, “I will find somewhere else quiet to go.” 

 

It is not much of a concern to him that he is leaving the red-rock planet behind. Soulworld may have been constructed on the little moon, but Adam’s creations, his thoughts– the things that matter most– are written into his very being. They exist in his consciousness, not on the moon that he is leaving behind.

 

“...Thank you, kindly, for your understanding,” the silver stranger states, relief painting his tone of voice. “...A world will have their beautiful-tomorrow due to your generosity and your patience–”

“Yes, fine,” Adam says dismissively. He doesn’t know what that last, cryptic comment could have possibly meant, but at this time, he doesn’t care enough to ask for elaboration. 

 

He has left enough home planets in his lifetime that he is not too daunted to leave this one, too. Still, within his chest, Adam’s heart is thudding with some sort of unidentifiable feeling. Discomfort, perhaps, at the idea of leaving his quiet place in the universe. 

 

Regardless of that discomfort, or whatever the feeling is, Adam stands to his feet, brushes his hands to his clothes to smooth them, and leaps into the void of space, his feet and fists glowing with great energy like the flame of a rocket. He is cutting through the vacuum of space, passing through nothingness and crossing great distances at rapid speed.

 

As he flies, he feels Magus’ presence within him, just below the surface of his skin.

 

“You’re leaving– just like that?” Magus asks, “The first moment anybody asks you to leave, you just roll over belly up and–”

 

“I didn’t exactly ‘roll over belly up,’” Adam says.

 

“Yes, you did,” Magus argues. “You surrendered the moon to that–”

 

“It was hardly a surrender.”

“Yeah? What else would you call what just happened?”

“Acceptance?” Adam offers.

 

“That’s such bu–” Magus starts.

 

“I’m not in the mood to argue right now,” Adam cuts him off. “Not with the silver one, not with you, not with anyone.”

 

“Where are we going? Knowhere? Sovereign?”

 

“Not in the mood for reunions,” Adam states. “Not right now. Not…today, anyways.”

 

“Well, what are you in the mood for?” Magus asks.

 

“Nothing. Or, anything but the places that I’ve been before.”

 

“That’s awfully specific of you,” Magus grumbles.

 

“Sh. I would have thought after all your endless rambling complaints–”

 

“I don’t ramble,” Magus states plainly. 

 

“-Yes you do– I would have thought you would be glad to leave the cold little moon behind,” Adam chimes.

 

“Oh, I am , don’t get me wrong,” Magus replies, “But none of this exactly makes it clear what happens next for us. If we’re not going back to any place you call home, then where are you headed towards?”

 

“What happens next for us,” Adam says, “Is that we find a nearby planet and get a drink or twelve, and attempt to socialize for once in our recent-lives, and then stay the night someplace more comfortable than a rock floating out in space.”

 

“Yeah?” Magus asks.

 

“How does that sound to you?”

 

“Sounds a little difficult to believe, considering where we just came from,” Magus points out.

 

“Sometimes, things happen for a reason,” Adam states, “Don’t you think?”

 

“What do you mean?”

“That silver stranger interrupted my meditation– perhaps it is a sign that it’s time to get back out there,” Adam says, “Do you agree?”

 

“I don’t see why not,” Magus responds plainly.

 

“Within reason, I’ll even let you control the body for a bit. If you promise to behave,” Adam adds.

 

“Behave? Me? No promises,” Magus half-jokes, but Adam can feel the surge of excitement at the very idea of it pulsing through their shared body’s veins. “Do you have a planet in mind for this…adventure of ours…or are you flying around aimlessly right now?”

 

“I admit I’m not very familiar with this corner of the galaxy,” Adam thinks aloud to Magus.

 

“So we’re wandering aimlessly?” Magus clarifies.

 

“Naturally.”

 

“Hmf,” Magus snorts a laugh.

 

“We’ll find someplace decent eventually,” Adam tells him, “All in good time.”

 

They do not speak to each other again for what must be the equivalent of a few hours.

 

It’s difficult to say how long he was actually traveling through empty space before he came across his first signs of life. (Admittedly, Adam hasn’t kept track of time in general in ages. He doesn’t even know how much time has passed since he left his life and the rest of the galaxy behind, and since he began the creation of Soulworld).

 

But the first planet he stumbles across is one that is clearly catered towards sustaining life: a lovely little greenish planet that comes into view on his left side. Adam turns to approach it at rapid speed, slowing his pace only as he begins slicing through the atmosphere, and eventually, he lands gracefully on solid ground. 

 

Gravity holds him, all around him; it is a similar gravity to the one on Sovereign. Heavy enough to not float away, but certainly not heavy enough to feel like a burden.

 

There are people of all different shapes, colors, sizes, all around him; there is not a singular identifiable species who occupy a majority of the population. One being walks by, over ten feet tall; another being has skin the color of daffodils with long antennae protruding from their forehead; another creature with wispy blue fur covering its jawline waves vaguely to Adam as he passes. 

 

The streets are busy and eclectic enough that very few passersby even paid attention to him when Adam made his landing. He’s grateful for that– that he didn’t cause some sort of spectacle.

 

And Adam inhales his first real breath in ages– the first since breathed on Knowhere on the day he took the life of the High Evolutionary. It feels so long ago, now– though again, he’s not actually certain of how long it could have been. The only thing he knows right now is that oxygen feels like an embrace from an old friend which every cell in his body is happy to be reacquainted with.

 

In the mindspace, Adam places a guiding hand on Magus’ upper back. They walk together through this foreign city in search of somewhere good to pass the time.

Chapter 2: Taurus (Tourist)

At first, Adam never learned the name of the planet he first visited. Not once did he ask, nor hear, its name mentioned in the whole first half of the week he stayed there.

 

The first night at that place, Adam sought out someplace cheerful as he'd promised to Magus before when they left the red-rock behind. There seemed no better place to stay than this wooden-planked building with clanking glasses and music emerging from its doors.

 

“Taurus?” One being asks, standing behind the bar.

 

Adam turns his head. “Pardon?” He asks.

 

“A golden Taurus,” the being repeats, nodding knowingly to himself.

 

“He's calling you a tourist,” one gruff voice of another troll-of-a customer informs Adam.

 

“Oh,” he says. “...Are tourists not welcome here?”

 

“You kidding? Tourists are this place's favorite fuckin thing,” the man says.

 

The bartender smiles broadly at Adam for emphasis.

 

“...Thank you,” Adam says, to nobody in particular out of that exchange. And he pulls up a seat.

 

He sat there at the bar and drank bottomless fizzy alcoholic beverages– listening to and applauding the performances of bards, who sang songs while standing up on risers at the tavern.

 

The whole experience made for good people-watching, in part because Adam has such great tolerance to alcohol; no matter how much of the drink he downed, it hardly made an impact on him. Not like the common folk, who ordered one round of beers, or shots, or others…one after another…and they danced all the remainder of their energy away before walking out the tavern’s doors to walk across the streets, to their homes…

 

The place admittedly reminded Adam a bit of Knowhere. This culture, whatever it was called, was comfortable with embracing the fun. Its population was composed of rag-tag bands of thieves, soldiers off-duty, vigilantes, and sure enough an abundance of tourists. 

 

There were a significant number of artists there, sitting alone along the walls with their sketchbooks, drawing scenes from the tavern. 

 

Or else they were sitting in groups, playing card games or gambling with their friends, or making music together along the road, or dancing in unison– highly choreographed, highly thoughtful and artful in their movement. (All Adam's prior exposure to dance was less planned out than this style).

 

The artists especially became more unhinged as the night progressed, particularly those who smoked some sort of neon-glowing substance just outside the front doors of taverns and shops. 

 

And as the skies became darker, the shopkeepers of this planet would close their windows, doors, turn off their storefront’s lights, and flock casually to the tavern as well.

 

Even the planet’s monarch took their place among the masses, buying a round for the most-recently-played band at the barside, providing the musicians with heartfelt compliments and spirits.

 

And people laughed and smiled until there were tears in their eyes, and it was beautiful.

 

Some of them greeted Adam, (not by name, of course), and the short, stout troll-man who sat beside Adam even offered to pay for his tab at the bar when he realized that Adam did not have any currency on him. 

 

The pair talked for the better half of the evening, then, exchanging stories. Watching. Listening. Even dancing together for a bit.

 

Adam slept at an inn; the place did not charge tourists money to stay there. It was clean and simple but the mattresses were soft, and the blankets and pillows were covered in lovely dainty floral patterns– some species of planet that are alien and unfamiliar to Adam. 

 

He woke the next morning feeling more rested and fulfilled than he had felt in a long time.

 

The second night Adam spent there, he decided to take advantage of the (to him, nameless) little planet’s greenery and natural beauties. 

 

The weather was good, so he spent that evening alone, outdoors, rather than cooped up within the lively tavern where he’d spent his first night. 

 

At that time, Adam took a stroll along a near-empty beach. The sand there was an odd texture; uneven grains, some large enough to be gravel and other finer than the eye could see, all mixed-up and multicolored. 

 

There were strange pointed shells, most of which had swirls and spots and stripes along their edges. The prettiest shells were most abundant where the sea kissed the shoreline and the seafoam gathered in bundles.

 

Adam asked a commoner, who looked to be at home there on the beach, if tourists were permitted to keep the shells they found. 

 

The commoner firstly smiled and said, “Welcome Taurus,” (Welcome, Tourist). Then the stranger told him yes, so long as he is careful not to accidentally misplace or harm a living organism. 

 

That actually surprised him, because before this, Adam hadn’t realized that these shells were all originally attached to living things. He thought that shells were minerals like crystals, generated from the earth rather from the earth's inhabitants.

 

Still learning. Always learning.

 

He spent a good few hours sifting through the odd sands, on his hands and knees, picking up and examining one shell at a time. 

 

At one point, he found some sort of crablike creature, still within its purple shell; the thing scuttled across the palm of Adam’s hand and plopped itself back into the water. 

 

Adam couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face, watching the strange creature move about.

 

Adam picked out a purple shell to keep on Magus’ behalf. He allowed his flesh to turn purple, temporarily, so that Magus could return the favor; his other-half ran his hands through the sand until he found a golden shell which matched Adam’s skin as the Warlock. 

 

Both shells were cleaned off in the crystal-clear waters, then carefully pocketed for safekeeping. It would be wise to keep them as reference in case either maker decided to recreate the critters for Soulworld.

 

The beach was even more beautiful– if that was even possible– at the time of the planet’s sunset. That is the time of day when the majority of people gathered in the previously-quieter place. It seems that it was customary that people gather here, on the shoreline, to “watch the water-constellations dancing,” they explained to Adam when he asked.

 

He hadn’t the slightest idea what it meant.

 

“You’ll see, Taurus,” one alien told him. So Adam turned his face to the sea, following the glances of the other people gathered all around, and he waited.

 

The last bit of sun faded away, down beneath the horizon line. Mere seconds later, Adam and many others gasped as the water seemed to light up in little pixels:

 

There are glowing jelly-creatures pulsing through the water, barely big enough for the eye to see, but absolutely impossible to ignore. 

 

They danced in formations that reminded Adam of the dance-troupes which performed on the streets the evening prior. It was as though these dainty creatures had practiced this; it was as though they existed for the sole purpose of being beautiful.

 

And the people– big and small– all gathered around to admire the sight, sitting quiet for a while. Then a little chorus formed along a pier and began to hum the most lovely harmony Adam had ever heard. 

 

Adam let his flesh half-shift to share Magus’ consciousness; he supposed it would be selfish of him to hog their life at such a special time like this.

 

Watching the jellies, Adam and Magus both thought the same thing: Soulworld needs something like this. A sea. Water-constellations. That peaceful sort of humming-music. 

 

There is perhaps nothing greater in this world, and in others, than the feeling of calmness that they are feeling right now.

 

Within the span of about an hour, the jelly-creatures stopped their dances and their glowing, becoming invisible once more to the naked eye. 

 

The people began to go their separate ways, mostly making their ways towards the taverns. Some of the commonfolk greeted Adam as they passed him by, “Hello, Taurus.” “Gold-one stayed for the water-stars.” “Good even, Taurus.” “Have a joy, one.”

 

Especially, he was acknowledged by those he had met the day prior; he shared a brief conversation with a bartender. 

 

It was that bartender who told Adam about a festival that was coming into town, for one night only: conveniently taking place on Adam’s third night visiting the planet. 

 

“Joy-place festivity, once in a year, Taurus, you travel well and plan joy,” the bartender tells him, the words making more sense individually than strung together, but Adam gets the picture.

 

“Where is the festival?” Adam asks.

 

“It is within us all, Taurus, all over Outpost, everywhere,” the bartender says knowingly. “You cannot miss.”

 

“Thank you,” Adam says. He supposes it he “cannot miss” it, then he will have no difficulty finding the festivities when the time comes.

 

He was right.

 

Adam visited that festival on the third day, then, and stayed from sun-up to sun-down. It would be difficult not to stay. The bartender was right; the festival was set up across every inch the eye could see on the planet. Adam couldn't help but wonder who was responsible for decorating it and setting it up- particularly that it happened so fast and the process went unnoticed by Adam.

 

Buildings were draped with fine colorful linens, mainly, as though to paint the town on-theme.

 

There were delectable sweet foods, some fried on disposable wooden sticks, and some that were more akin to sweet sorbets that Adam had tried in his past. The foods filled the air with pleasant aromas that made the heart sing, even from afar.

 

There were vendors– not only selling foods, but also exquisite garments and silks whose luxurious softness closely rivaled the goods produced on his mother-planet Sovereign. 

 

Another vendor made metal bangle bracelets and cuffs and chains with jewel inlays; they similarly reminded Adam of his mother, and the cold golden bracelets she would wear around her wrists always to distinguish her as High Priestess.

 

A person giving out the bangles handed one to Adam- “Taurus-gif! Costs nothing to a friend.”

 

“You're sure?” Adam asks.

 

“Yes!” They beam. He thanks her and she helps him fasten the bracelet to his wrist.

 

One other vendor took her place under an oval-shaped blue tent; she was painting intricate designs with makeup onto the faces of the festival’s attendees. The woman spotted Adam and smiled at him, bright eyes, and called out to him–

 

“Bright one,” she’d said with the biggest smile, and though her Allspeak language was clearly not her first tongue, she seemed to have a broader vocabulary than some of the others Adam had spoken to. “Let me add to your sparkle, you.”

 

He obliged, approaching her and she outstretched his hand to hold his in hers. 

 

With his permission, she painted florals (like the strange ones on the fabric of the inn’s sheets) onto Adam’s skin. All the while, she muttered admiration for his sparkly golden skin; she waved her hand to bring her friends closer so they can watch the way his flesh shimmered under the odd lights in the space. 

 

“You are magic?” One of them asked Adam, his hand rested in their own curious hands. “A warlock-sorcerer Taurus? From another far-off place?”

 

Adam smiles politely. “Warlock, yes,” he says simply. 

 

The person responds with awe in some other language that Adam doesn’t know. 

 

He glances aside to another tourist at the station– a Sakaaran is sitting there, the makeup artists showering the man with very similar compliments: “Very strong,” one male makeup-artist tells the Sakaaran, with the same devotion which Adam’s artist used to call him magic, “You are a brilliant one,” the artist tells the Sakaaran, whose insect-like mandibles shift as though he’s giving a beaming smile.

 

At the festival, there were bright neon lights along the pavement walking-paths. The lights– Adam realized as the sun went down– were made of tiny glass orbs which housed artificial versions of the sea-jellies he’d watched the night before on the beach.

 

When the night fell, that was when the music began on the stage at the center; that time of day is also when all the carnival rides began to power up. 

 

Toy miniature spaceships; slides and large-scale playground equipment; zero-gravity chambers; booths that housed games to win prizes. Fast-moving spinning rides, which Adam enjoyed thoroughly, but he found that it made some people rather dizzy and uneasy to ride.

 

The party did not end until sunrise. Then, and only then, did people go home and go to sleep. 

 

By then, Adam’s bed at the inn was lovelier than ever before. He and the planet’s other inhabitants slept until the afternoon to catch up from their long night before.

 

On the fourth night on that planet, Adam went back to the tavern for more drinks. 

 

He got there earlier than the common folk tended to get off of work, in order to meet with the stout troll-friend he’d met on his first night here. 

 

He and this new friend of his– Pip was his name– began to sample all the different types of bar-foods to see what Adam liked best.

 

“So,” Pip asked Adam, “(Thanks, man,)” Pip adds as an aside, as a server places down a plate’s worth of seafood appetizers that Pip and Adam had ordered. “What brings you to this end of the Dolenz System? Work? Pleasure?”

 

“The latter,” Adam informs him. “So the Dolenz System, then…that’s where I found myself?”

 

“Hmf. Came around to a place not even knowing where you are, then?” Pip asks, “This is Joygod’s Outpost.”

 

“Joygod’s Outpost,” Adam repeats aloud.

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“What brings you here, then?” Adam returns Pip’s question.

 

“Same as you, y’know? I’m from a neighboring planet. This place is as good as any to get drunk,” Pip says, “‘Specially during fest season.”

 

“I enjoyed the festival, yes,” Adam agrees.

 

Pip leans over the table and extends a hand towards a plate nearer to Adam. “Sorry ‘bout the reach,” he adds. “I’d hate to use my bad-old manners and offend a Sovereign of all people…you are Sovereign, aren’t ya? I’d hate to offend ya by assuming, too–”

 

“No worries,” Adam says, “And yes. I am Sovereign, at least technically speaking.”

 

“ Technically , you say,” Pip states, bringing his tankard of booze to his lips to take a hefty swig. “Say more.”

 

“I’m half-Sovereign,” Adam says.

 

Pip’s eyebrows raise. “Sovereign half-breed? I didn’t think that was–”

 

“I never said ‘half-breed,’” Adam corrects him. “It’s complicated.”

 

“How complicated is complicated?” Pip asks.

 

“I like to get to know a person better before telling my whole life’s story,” Adam explains.

 

“Fair enough,” Pip states, setting down his drink onto the table with a “thunk.” “Well, riddle me this, though: how’s a half-Sovereign get by on a planet who’s so pushy about blending in?”

 

“The people were always very kind to me. At least in the time that I’ve actually spent there. I was born, but not raised on the planet,” Adam tells him. “My first month of life, I found my way into a non-Sovereign home. I’ve only visited once since.”

 

“I didn’t know that was a thing,” Pip says, “Putting Sovereign kids up for adoption– I’ll bet you looked the same age as your older relatives, didn’t ya?”

 

“Yes– I looked older than some. Though there were stranger things about my household,” Adam says slowly. “My parent was a sentient raccoon, my brother a tree, and my sister a highly-evolved fish child.”

 

“Freaky-deaky types,” Pip says knowingly, “That’s my kinda company. Mad support.”

 

The corner of Adam’s mouth tugs upward to a fond-ish smile. In spite of the fact that he felt the urge to leave, Adam typically thinks fond things about his home life that he left behind. A doting (albeit lie-ridden) family. An older brother and a little sister. A team, with uniforms– a bedroom, a ship, a favorite playlist on the Zune, a sense of belonging.

 

“Yes, well, you can imagine that my circumstances were not the most conventional of ones,” Adam explains, “For Sovereign people or otherwise. Thus…I don’t know if it’s safe to assume I’d be the type to be easily offended  by conventional Sovereign manners.”

 

“Fair enough,” Pip says. “You try any of those poppers yet?”

 

“Not yet. What are they?” Adam asks, eyeballing the platter of food in front of them.

 

“Mantane caviar deep fried with hot peppers and Avalog. There’s some kinda cheese in it– I don’t really know what it is. Think it’s one of those plant-based types that have been trending in all the nearby outposts…I typically don’t care for the fake stuff, but the poppers are good enough for me anyway. You a fan of the texture of mantane caviar, or is it not your cup of tea?” Pip asks.

 

“...I admittedly don’t believe I’ve had it,” Adam replies.

“What? Fancy fuck like you never tried caviar?” Pip asks with genuine surprise.

 

“Like I said,” Adam starts, “I’m hardly an exemplar of my ‘fancy fuck’ people.”

 

“Hah. I like you,” Pip says. “You’re a hoot.”

 

“I’m glad to hear you think so,” Adam states, because he isn’t sure what else there is to say. He lifts a pair of chopstick-utensils to reach for one of the poppers on the plate between the two of them. Pip laughs heartily. “What?” Adam asks.

 

“It’s made ta be finger food. That’s all,” Pip says.

 

“Oh,” Adam states, but continues to handle the popper with his utensils anyways, biting into the thing rather than plopping it all into its mouth at once. Adam makes an expression like he’s considering the food.

 

“What’d you think?” Pip asks.

 

Adam’s mind thinks back to his mother: it is not proper to speak during meals; not the Sovereign way. He shields his mouth with his hand while he finishes chewing his bite and says, “Fine. I can see what you mean– I don’t think the cheese is real. But I don’t mind the tangy taste– the salty thing–”

 

“That’s the caviar,” Pip explains. “It’s the whole eggs of a mantane.”

 

“Interesting,” Adam states. “How does one manage to come across a supply of mantane eggs, of all things?”

 

“Not easily, that’s how. It’s a tough market,” Pip says. “That’s why they’re so fricken expensive.”

 

Adam’s eyes widen. “Pip, I apologize– I wish you would have told me before ordering it. I do not have any–”

 

“Money? Yeah. I know,” Pip says dismissively. “I don’t fuckin care. It’s my treat.”

 

“You’re sure?” Adam asks.

 

“Yeah, why the heck not, you know?” Pip replies. “It’s fest season. I’m celebrating time off work, a new friendship formed–” he lifts his drink towards Adam as though to emphasize the latter point. “Nothing wrong with a little bit of overindulgence every once in a while, don’t you think?”

 

“I suppose that’s fair,” Adam replies. “...I suppose I’ll drink to that as well.”

 

“Bravo, buddy,” Pip states, and downs what remains of his drink. Pip’s tankard is comically large in proportion to him, about the size of his skull. This is at least his third drink in, but thankfully he doesn’t seem too horribly inebriated.

 

“Well, well,” A woman’s voice rings out from the front of the tavern, beside their table. “What brings the Guardians’ Golden-Boy to this slimy end of the galaxy?”

 

When he realizes he’s being addressed, Adam’s head turns to follow the voice. If the green flesh didn’t give her away– the distinct fierceness in her voice certainly would. “Gamora,” Adam states in acknowledgment. He hasn’t met her since he was no more than a child.

 

“That seems ta be the question of the evening, huh?” Pip chimes in, then hiccups. He grumbles his other thought only a little louder than under his breath: “Not surprised a goldilocks like ya sticks out like a sore thumb…”

 

“I am here for leisure,” Adam tells Gamora coolly, “Though you should know I’ve been neither Guardian nor boy for a long enough while…” he allows his skin to turn over to Magus quickly. “...And you can see for yourself that I’m not always so golden, either.”

 

Gamora’s eyebrow twitches, with more curiosity than anything else. The woman has her hair braided back out of her face– which is splotched with the remnant of a little bit of war paint. 

 

There are a half a dozen followers flanking either side of her, the whole group of them, Gamora included, wearing what Adam recognized to be Ravager garb.

 

“I didn’t expect to see a familiar face so far out here, is all,” Gamora states. “Friendly or otherwise.”

 

“Am I the ‘otherwise’ in question, then?” Adam asks in the form of Magus, a big grin forming on his face. That alone seems to be a bit unsettling to Gamora’s Ravager followers in particular.

 

“Depends,” Gamora asks. “Last time I met you you were…”

 

“Different,” Magus offers.

 

“...Well…yes,” she says.

 

“Time, Gamora,” Magus says, leaning back with ease in his chair. “It changes people.” He reaches a bare hand to the platter and takes another one of the poppers into his hand. “Since we met, I have seen new places, things…Have you ever tried mantane caviar?” he asks.

 

“...I can’t say that I have,” Gamora says.

 

“Sounds expensive,” one of her followers mutters over her left shoulder.

 

“It is,” Gamora replies.

 

Magus turns to Pip. “Do you mind?” he asks.

 

“Not at all,” Pip says. “A friend of my friend is a friend of mine.”

 

“ If we’re friends, that is,” Magus adds playfully, his eyes meeting Gamora’s again. “You tell me. A little fist fight in my younger, more naive years…is that enough to tarnish my reputation in your mind?”

 

“That was years ago,” Gamora states. “I see no reason we can’t let bygones be bygones.”

 

“Well. In that case,” Magus starts, and Pip loudly scoots his chair over, gesturing to the newly-opened space at the table.

 

“Grab a seat, all,” Pip says cheerfully. “Waiter,” he calls, “Another round of the caviar poppers, when you’ve got a sec.”

 

It is the next day– the fifth one– that Adam encounters a calendar for the first time, and he learns that he meditated in Soulworld for five straight years.

 

Five years. He was nearing his first birthday when he first left his home on Knowhere– the birthday that would mark the beginning of his adulthood. Since, five whole years had managed to pass him by. Those five years in solitude felt shorter to him than the five days he’d spent exploring the festivities of Joygod’s Outpost. 

 

He finds himself in that feeling of emptiness; this is too much to cope with and keep a smile on his face all at once. 

 

So on the fifth and sixth days and nights spent at Joygod’s Outpost, Adam does not leave bed. 

 

He curls up wrapped in the covers alongside Magus, who smooths Adam’s hair, as it sits funny and contorted against the inn’s pillow. 

 

“What are you moping about?” Magus uses his gentlest voice. Adam rolls his head into his pillow, leans against Magus’ shoulder. Exhales.

 

“You know,” Adam says.

“I know.”

 

A pause. They stay there for a while. Adam rolls back over again to look at Magus, whose eyes are oddly patient with the presently-distressed aspect of himself.

 

“It doesn’t make things better, with you laying here and moping about, though,” Magus points out.

“I can’t fucking do anything else.”

 

“Can’t or won’t?” Magus asks. “You don’t want to pry yourself out of bed? Head out to a tavern?...This place is perfect.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Then why not enjoy it so long as you’re here?” Magus asks.

 

“Sure, I’m here now. But for how long?” Adam asks. “A few short days? That’s all I get?”

 

“No,” Magus argues, “You don’t have plans. Don’t have some sort of higher purpose. You decide how long you stay, it’s not like it matters.”

 

“It does matter.”

 

“Enlighten me, then. What matters?”

 

“It matters that I don’t belong here–” Adam says, at which Magus rolls his eyes. “Stop,” Adam continues. “I’m confiding in you.”

 

“And I’m listening,” Magus says. “You’re saying you feel lost. I’m telling you, you’re not lost, you’re traveling.”

 

“Yes. Traveling. I’m a tourist–”

 

“A ‘Taurus,’” Magus jokes, referencing the way that the common folk here speak.

 

“It has been ages since I’ve been somewhere that I belonged…if I ever did in the first place. I feel as though I’m realizing it again–”

 

“Realizing what?”

 

“That I’m–”

 

“Nothing?” Magus pokes at Adam, referencing a conversation they’d shared in the past. “Less than nothing? If I wasn’t allowed to mope about that then, then you’re certainly not allowed to mope about it now.”

 

“Shut up. Let me feel it out,” Adam responds coldly.

 

“...Fine. Feel it out. Don’t let me stop you.”

 

“I won’t.” 

 

“How miserable of you. You can’t even decide what to be upset about,” Magus tells him.

 

“Yes, I can. I’m upset,” Adam counters, “...Because I feel lost.”

 

“...Let me,” Magus replies quietly moments later.

 

“What?” Adam asks quieter.

“You’re unhappy. Let me have it.”

 

“Have–”

 

“The mind. The body. The feeling that you’re lost– give it to me,” Magus offers.

 

Adam shakes his head no, but doesn’t shy away from nestling himself closer to Magus where they lay beside each other in Soulworld– their body still laying lonely in their bed at the inn.

 

“Why not?” Magus pries when Adam doesn’t speak. Nudges Adam once, in a playful manner. “Do you not trust that I would be on my best behavior? Worst I’d do is…get some drinks? Find some company for the night? Nothing wrong with a little indulgence every once in a while,” he references Pip the Troll’s words from days prior.

 

“...I already told you,” Adam says. “I just need to feel this out.”

“Right,” Magus chides, “The way you ‘felt it out’ for the past few years. What’s a few more spare days, anyways? In the grand scheme of things…it’s nothing. Less than nothing.”

 

At the snark, Adam rolls over wordlessly onto his other side, back facing Magus. Magus closes his mouth and leans over, his chest against Adam’s back and an arm thrown over them.

 

He watches over Adam’s shoulder as Adam’s hands begin to glow– he is Creating within Soulworld. Sculpting little life forms from the energy of his fingertips.

 

They’re little insects who begin to crawl, and some hover into the air; their abdomens glow.

 

“What’s their name?” Magus asks Adam, breaking their quiet with an olive-branch of sorts.

 

“The Maker encountered something like them on Terra. They had many names there,” Adam tells Magus. "No name is more right or more wrong- Dippers. Lightning Bugs. Flying-fire. And many more proper names as well."

 

“Interesting,” Magus says. “Are you a little bit inspired by our little beach-visit the other day?”

 

“Mhm,” Adam hums, watching the insects scatter to the skies of Soulworld. 

 

“I was too,” Magus tells him.

 

“I know,” Adam says, and the glow of his fingers dance to form the shape of pointed little terrestrial snails, vaguely resembling the kinds of shells Adam had picked from the beach’s shoreline.

 

Magus outstretches his own hand to make a creature of his own– another one of the insects which fly, and light up the sky like little golden constellations. 

 

“How long do you want to sleep for this time?” Magus asks quietly.

 

Adam doesn’t know, or doesn’t care. One of the two.

 

“Not so long this time,” Adam says plainly. “...I think I like being back around people. I just need a second to–”

 

“Feel it out?”

“-I was going to say close my eyes. But yes.”

 

Magus rolls over to look upward at the sky, watching the bugs fly away, their lights smaller and smaller with distance.

 

“...So long as we’re here,” Magus starts, “what would you say if I asked to have the body to sleep tonight?”

 

Magus’ mouth almost curls into a smile as Adam immediately surrenders over consciousness.

 

“I don’t care so long as you don’t leave,” Adam adds, and he too turns over to lay on his back next to Magus.

 

“You’re too kind.”

 

“Compared to what you’re probably deserving of? Yes I am,” Adam tells him.

 

“Prick.” Magus leans the side of his head against Adam’s; an acknowledgment that he’s there.

 

That is how they spent the remainder of their vacation, in that meditative state.

Chapter 3: Makerfall

Adam was eventually woken up from his meditative state by the innkeeper, who’d grown worried when the tourist took a couple days to venture outside of his room.

“Okay, Taurus?” a kind voice had asked, peeking their head through the door to speak, but averting their gaze out of respect for the visitor’s privacy.

 

His body stirs, leaving his restfulness. Magus immediately exits the skin so Adam can take over. Adam mentally curses Magus for surrendering the body at one of the worst times of day– waking. His body protests the act, quite unhappy to be disturbed. 

 

Inside the mindspace, Magus remains as sleepy as he’s able, staying slumped over, using Adam’s side as a pillow.

 

“Yes,” Adam confirms to the innkeeper checking in on him. He places a hand on Magus’ head, a silent warning as sits upright in the bed and rolls back his shoulders, a small stretch. Magus is forced to move as well from Adam’s shifting. “I’m okay. Thank you.”

 

“Very joy,” the innkeeper responds. Magus yawns; the contagion of the act makes Adam yawn too. “Sorry to wake,” the innkeeper adds.

 

“That’s quite alright. We all have to wake eventually,” Adam says, partly to tell Magus off for being so disgruntled.

 

“Yes. I brought food,” the innkeeper says. “You have not had. I may walk here, Taurus?”

 

“...Yes, you can come in,” Adam responds, and the innkeeper enters through the doorway, stepping forward and offering Adam a very polite and sympathetic smile. 

 

“Very tired, Taurus?”

 

“Yes. I was,” Adam says, glancing down at the Magus, whose eyes still aren’t open. “I needed to catch up on some rest.”

 

“Very hungry, also, yes– Taurus lives off more than only sleep, yes, food is here. Have none of the worry. It does not cost a thing to a friend.” They extend a tray of food, and a tall glass of water. “Set it here?” The innkeeper gestures to indicate the edge of Adam’s mattress.

 

“That’s great. Thank you for your hospitality,” Adam tells them, and the innkeeper sets the tray down there. “You’re too kind.”

 

“Not too kind, Taurus, just kind enough,” the innkeeper replies with a smile. “Need others?”

 

“I am perfectly happy here. Thank you,” Adam says.

 

“Thank you,” the innkeeper replies, “Have a joy, one,” and steps out of the room, gingerly closing the door behind them.

 

Adam eyes the food for a moment, unmoving. 

 

“That was kind of them,” Adam states aloud. “The people here are all very kind.” He nudges the half-awake Magus. “Get up before you make me fall back asleep.”

 

Magus proves he’s awake enough, because he flops over atop Adam to push the pair of them laying horizontally on the mattress once more. Adam exhales a laugh as his back hits the mattress.

 

“And what would be so bad with just a little more sleep?” Magus asks, face pressed to Adam’s chest.

 

“I think maybe it’s been more than two days,” Adam tells him, his hand atop the back of Magus’ skull.

 

“Shit. Has it really?” Magus asks, more lively now. He even sits up partly and opens his eyes to meet Adam’s.

 

“I think so.”

 

“Could’ve fooled me…I suppose two days is a far shorter time to rest than five years was,” Magus states. He sits upright the rest of the way to glance behind them at the tray. “What’d room service bring?”

 

“Seems to be all good things.”

 

“Excellent.” Magus stretches, and examines the platters of breakfast. “I see. All good things, indeed.”

 

“You want it?”

 

“If you’re not hungry,” Magus mutters, “By all means, hand it over. The food here is far too good to let go to waste.”

 

Adam doesn’t move or say anything for a moment. He’s wearing one of those Faces that Magus is all too familiar with. Magus manages to stop thinking about food for two seconds to ask, “What’s on your mind now?”

 

“I think I need to visit home,” Adam says.

 

“Yeah? Which one?” Magus replies, a glimmer of humor in his voice.

 

“Mum’s.”

 

“Ah. The big metal jail.”

 

“Sovereign isn’t a jail.”

 

“It was when you were small.”

 

“I was never ‘small,’” Adam replies.

 

“Smaller, then. Smaller minded at least–”

 

“And being there never felt like I was imprisoned.” 

 

“I was referring to the other folks who live there. You get what I’m getting at, right? The Gold People trapped in the Old Ways?”

 

“But they haven’t been trapped. Not recently, anyways– not since the High Evolutionary was–”

 

“Killed?” Magus offers.

 

“Eliminated. Yes.”

 

“Still,” Magus states, “It’s strange to me that you actually want to go back– everything is quite dull in comparison to this place.”

 

“Most places are.”

 

“Oh, I agree. But I mean next to Sovereign, which looks to be bland and boring despite its golden luster..and especially considering that you have scars on your soul from that place.”

 

“That’s part of being alive, isn’t it?” Adam points out.

 

“Okay. But still. Only a few days ago you were saying that you weren’t in the mood for reunions. Why the sudden urge to see Sovereign, of all places?”

 

“It’s been five years,” Adam states. He eyes the platter again. He thinks about the innkeeper– the way they’d checked in on him. He thinks of an old friend of his he’s left behind– Haya. She used to check on him in the mornings the way the innkeeper had today. “...And I woke up thinking about it.”

 

“About Sovereign?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Well,” Magus says, “Do what you want. It’s not like I can stop you.”

 

“You disapprove of me visiting.”

 

“I don’t really care enough to disapprove. I’m more uninterested.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I don’t have a connection to that place,” Magus replies, “But I know you do. So, no, I can’t and won’t stop you from doing whatever you like.” A quick pause. “...Can I ask a favor of you?”

 

“What?”

 

“If you’re really going to leave, can I spend today here first? One more night?”

 

“You want a day in the body?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“...With full control?”

 

“I know you. I know you wouldn’t give up ‘full control,’” Magus replies. “Maybe as much as you’ll relinquish?”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I want to. That’s why.”

 

They stare at one another.

 

“...I’ll do you one better,” Adam says softly. “You be patient for a while, while I visit home first, then we’ll come back here and you can have a dozen days, if you’d like.”

 

“You’re serious?”

 

“Mhm. But no funny business. And there would have to be rules.”

 

“Rules.”

 

“Perhaps guidelines is a better word–”

 

“Better? You mean it’s a gentler word,” Magus points out.

 

“Yes,” Adam says, “I do.”

 

A pause. “You’ve got yourself a deal,” Magus tells him, “But you should know it’s a deal I’ll be holding you to.”

 

“The same goes for me,” Adam replies, “I need you to behave on Sovereign. In fact, I think you may need to stay put in Soulworld for a bit.”

 

“Ah, yes. The common folk need their Golden Boy, after all,” Magus chimes. “Their Warlock . Their personified perfection–”

 

“Are you going to let the food grow cold? Or are you done speaking now?” Adam asks.

 

Magus raises an eyebrow. “So I can have it, then? You never actually said I could.”

 

“You can.”  Adam lets the flesh turn purple. The body is Magus’ for the time being.

 

“Thank you,” Magus speaks aloud, outside of their mindscape. He cracks his tense neck to the side, popping the pieces back in order, and then he digs into the meal that the innkeeper provided. Adam doesn’t pry and stays quiet the whole time, up until Magus surrenders the skin back to Adam, turning golden once more.

 

They clear their plate when it’s empty, and they half-make the bed so that whoever is here next can get the room in proper order with ease.

 

Following that, without another word to his newfound friends– even Pip– Adam leaves before evening falls on Joygod’s Outpost. 

 

He flies and flies and flies through the void, admittedly with an empty of a mind as he’s ever had. There is some truth to what Magus was saying, after all. This place may have been the planet where he was born, but it is not without its negative memories.

 

Nevertheless, he continues his journey, following his gut to navigate the stars until, after what might have been days straight of travel, he lands on his birthplace, Sovereign.

 

He lands there at the beginning of a day, with the sky at its brightest and the streets at their liveliest. The infrastructure itself is mainly the same– at least the same as when Adam had last seen it. Plenty of changes had been implemented since he actually lived there.

 

But the decor, the rooftops, have begun to shift. Many buildings have become painted reds and blacks, which stand out particularly harshly among the mainly-golden planet, and against the jewel toned skies.

 

Many homes have become draped in precious fabrics, velvet like and luxurious, as all things on Sovereign ought to be. Adam even thinks he catches sight of street art illustrated along one of the walls on the main street of the textile district.

 

When Adam gets his first glance in years at Sovereign people, he sees them from a distance; they’re as small as ants to him. They grow as he nears them and lands briskly on his feet.

 

The people have decorated themselves just as differently as they have decorated their streets. Many of them wear makeup– though not everybody. The fact that individual expression is evident within Adam’s first few seconds of Sovereign interaction is telling enough as-is.

 

The common folk have begun to wear their hair differently than before as well. Not a hair out of place still, to be sure, but different nonetheless. One woman wears her hair in two neat buns atop her head; one man keeps his hair long. Neither style was like any Sovereign style Adam had ever seen before.

 

While Adam is busy taking in that initial view of his people, he is immediately met with a swarm of golden faces and wonder-eyes, and the outstretched hands of dozens of Sovereign citizens. 

 

“Warlock–” one woman says in adoration.

 

“By the stars, you’ve returned to us at last–”

 

“You’re back–”

 

Someone wraps their hands around his forearms in a loose and casual sort of embrace;  “Bless the Divine, it’s been so many years–”

 

“Have you come to save us, Warlock?”

 

“Save you?” Adam asks. He begins to think that there must be some new threat looming over his planet.

 

“From these wild new ideals, my god. The Sovereign ways have nearly vanquished from our roads. It’s not a good idea to deviate– you should tell them to stop going against the grain,” the Sovereign man tells Adam.

Another citizen butts into the conversation. “Don’t listen to a word he says. He’s little more than a cranky older gentleman who is stuck in the old ways. It’s Year Five Makerfall, for divinity’s sake.”

 

“Makerfall?” Adam echoes. It’s a word he’s never heard before.

 

“The mad-Maker’s passing marked the dawn of a new era in Sovereign culture. We altered our temporal measurement to mark the occasion,” one Sovereign standing beside Adam explains. “This era we live in is called Makerfall.”

 

“Sacrilege that you should adopt that phrase into your life, child, the Maker has been providing for our people since the first of our people were generated,” the apparently-older man (Sovereign do not visibly age very much) pushes, with his hands still touching Adam, but his attention drawn to the rebellious young one. “It is not right that our people the Sovereign should measure our time to mark the date of his passing– the death of god is not an achievement.”

 

“Agree to disagree,” the younger Sovereign chimes,and glares at the older gentleman, and does some sort of gesture, placing a hand over the top of their forehead and miming the action of peeling off a face mask. Adam thinks of the High Evolutionary, and the way his own face mask had been peeled.

 

Several of the Sovereign folks behind the younger Sovereign mimic the motion; it’s routine for them. Nearly ritualistic.

 

In Adam’s absence, his people began to measure their time– and their morality– all centered around the death of the High Evolutionary. Adam wasn’t sure what to expect from this place after the passage of time. But this was an impressive new level of “blasphemy.” 

 

Adam can’t help but think of his mother and the offense she would take to Sovereign’s changes. He also can’t help but be a little bit giddy inside at the very idea of it.

 

The older man turns to Adam now. “The disrespect of anyone born after the fifth generation. I tell you–” his face shifts. “...Not that that includes you, Warlock, I do not mean to offend–”

 

He shoves people away to make room to kneel before Adam. The man is still clinging onto Adam’s arms.

 

“Tell me I am forgiven, please, Warlock. I need to be forgiven by your mercy,” the older Sovereign declares, bowing his head.

 

Adam exhales, not quite a sigh-and-eye-roll, but more just from the exhaustion of the encounter. He does not shrug the man away.

 

“All my people are dear to me. I will always have forgiveness in my soul–” Adam starts.

 

“Oh, leave him alone, you obnoxious, sagging-nutsack of a man,” the younger Sovereign chimes in once more, peeling the older man’s hands off of Adam’s arms. “Can you not see he’s overloaded by these crowds? He doesn’t need your grating voice and your grimy hands all over his personal space.”

 

Adam wraps his hand around his recently-free forearm, wrist, rubbing the soreness of his arms which were grasped a little too tight to be comfortable.

 

“Are these people bothering you, divine one?” Another voice calls out.

 

“...None of my people could ever be a bother,” Adam replies.

“Such kindness– and so wise. You can see it radiating off of him,” another nearby person tells their peer.

 

“You look like you could use some air,” one Sovereign states, “Everyone, back up a step or two for the divine. We are crowding him too much.”

 

Several nearby people spread out, though it’s far from enough. This is partly due to the fact that the folks in the outer circle didn’t move an inch.

 

“Warlock,” a woman’s voice says loudly from behind Adam. He turns to face her, though the act is a struggle since there are so many bodies in close proximity to him. “Darling. Thank you. Thank you– I have been wanting to tell you thank you for all this time. And now I finally can.”

 

That woman takes one of Adam’s hands into both of her own, cradling it. 

 

“Gilda,” Adam recognizes her. This woman worked in the dining room at the citadel; she used to set the tables before each meal. She beams that he remembered her name. She squeezes her hands around his. “What are you thanking me for?”

 

“‘What are you thanking me for,’ he says,” one Sovereign tells another with some surprise.

“For being born. For becoming the Maker of our people,” the woman named Gilda says. 

 

That confuses him initially; he didn’t make Sovereign. Then he remembers he absorbed the essence of the Maker into his own being. Adam wonders if his people know anything about that. The woman continues listing reasons to have gratitude towards Adam: 

 

“-For saving us from the clutches of corruption and captivity and certain doom– and for allowing us to create something beautiful with our brave, newer planet.”

 

Over Gilda’s shoulder, Adam watches as many people bow their heads in reverence, to him. 

 

Thankfully, nobody else fully drops to their knees the way they used to bow for him when he was a godling. Being worshiped is not unpleasant, per se, but Adam wouldn’t consider it the most fantastic of experiences either.

 

Watching his people lower themselves, make themselves smaller for him, has always been almost enough to make him ill. To Adam, it conjures up memories of the way that the High Evolutionary had to physically elevate himself to look down upon his people. The insistence of being larger than life; the need to make others small and crushable.

 

And the idea of ruling, altogether, feels unappealing to Adam. He would much prefer to protect than to rule over a people. In fact, the first time Adam met the Sovereign public, he had knelt right back at them when he saw they were all kneeling for him. Adam was so young that he hardly had logical reason to. But he knew that it felt right.

 

When the people surrounding him stop listing reasons to have gratitude for Adam, he slightly lowers his head in response, mimicking their behavior towards him.

 

And a hush of whispers surround him as they are awestruck by him once more.

 

And more people chatter.

 

And more people begin to speak louder and louder and louder.

 

The air becomes thick as the population increases, and citizens begin to flood the streets. Some folks, in their excitement, ran into all the shops and houses to inform everyone they could that their divine savior had returned. 

 

The space becomes loud enough quickly that Adam can no longer distinguish who is saying what. The sound was awful. But there was a different part of this moment that was too beautiful and touching to ignore: 

 

He has never seen so many Sovereign smiles in one place before.

 

Adam is so stunned (and frankly, overwhelmed) by the experience that he doesn’t even see it when Haya– the very person he set out to visit today– pushes past the crowds to get to him. He doesn’t process her presence until she is physically touching him, her arms pulling him into a hug.

He realizes instantly, from the warm fuzzy feeling he gets inside, that it is his first real hug in over five years. He breathes like he’s been holding his breath for a long time. She does the same. 

 

“Adam,” Haya says. Involuntarily, he smiles. How nice it is to be called his name out loud– not just Taurus or Warlock or Golden Boy. Oh, to be treated like a real person again…

 

He and Haya stay like that without exchanging any words for several seconds until Adam hears a sniffle.

 

He parts from her to examine her face, brows contorted with concern now; her face is scrunched as she cries. His thumbs swiftly brush her tears away. He can’t think of anything to say at this moment; it’s a good thing that Haya knew precisely what to say to him.

 

“Oh, my dear boy, you haven’t the slightest idea just how much you’ve been missed.”

 

She presses a motherly sort of kiss to his temple which makes his entire nervous system spike in stress, upon remembering that displays of affection used to be among the most taboo things a person could do on this planet.

 

Haya doesn’t even seem afraid. And this is coming from the same woman who advised an infant Adam to start “smiling in secret” to protect his reputation.

 

“This place is so different,” Adam states.

 

“It is,” Haya agrees. “I think you’ll find that we’ve changed for the better. During Makerfall, we’ve taken up your philosophy, you know–”

 

“My philosophy?” he asks.

 

She finally parts their embrace to look at him properly. There is sadness in her eyes, still tears within them from before– but she offers him a timid and knowing smile. “We’re learning. Always learning.”

 

“Warlock,” one of the Sovereign shouts from behind him, attempting to get his attention.

 

Several citizens begin to push towards him; Haya and Adam both feel as though they’re being closed in on.

 

“...We should go someplace else. We need to talk,” Haya tells him. 

 

And before he knows it, she’s taking Adam by the hand and pulling him, pushing others out of the way. The sudden move is jarring, and nearly (but not quite) frantic in nature; Haya is leading him towards the citadel, trying to get him out of the view of all the others.

 

“Haya, is everything alright?” He asks it out of genuine worry– for his weeping first friend, who is committing perhaps the ultimate sin against proper Sovereign social rules by crying in a public place– and for his people as a whole– and for the urgency in which Haya is dragging him away from the swarm of the public.

 

She literally shoves someone aside who refuses to move and attempts to put their hands onto Adam.

 

“He’s only just returned,” she projects her voice loudly, only slowing to address the crowd for a second. “Let him get his bearings, please.”

 

“Yes, Mistress,” one Sovereign calls back to her.

 

“You’re a ‘Mistress’ now, then?” Adam asks.

 

“I’m the current-acting head of the House.”

 

“What house?”

 

“The House of Sovereign Law.”

 

“You’re a lawmaker?”

 

“No,” Haya replies, “Just the one who manages the lawmakers. They look up to me.”

 

“...That’s lovely,” he says. “You have a good heart for leading.”

 

"As do you," she tells him. Her hand meets the handle of the door to the citadel at last. She opens the door and they pass through the threshold. 

 

She stops walking as they’re alone in the hall, and turns to face him once more. The heavy door thuds loudly as it closes all on its own seconds later. Adam would jump at the noise if he weren’t so accustomed to it; this citadel is his childhood home.

 

“How have you been all this time?” Adam tries to spark up a conversation.

 

“I’ll do you one better. Where have you been?” Haya asks, barely more than a whisper, yet the words cut through the near-silent citadel halls loudly. Adam opens his mouth to speak. She doesn’t allow him to get a word in. “I have been worried sick , child– so sick you wouldn’t believe.”

 

“You worried-?”

 

“How could I not?” She interrupts him, “You up and left for the better half of a decade with no point of contact to anybody at all. Please tell me, at least, that you were someplace safe?” Her eyes try to search his face for answers.

 

Guilt. Adam swallows the lump in his throat to the best of his ability so can answer her in a steady voice. “I was.” 

 

“Where were you? What were you doing?”

 

“I’ve been taking some time to grow,” he says slowly, willing himself to be calm and collected, “I assure you, it was not my intention to be away for years.”

 

“What was your intention?”

 

“To pause. I didn’t mean for years to pass. It just happened…I would have given warning, or method of contact, if I would have planned on longer. I just had to be away for a while and I lost track of time.”

 

“Where did you stay? Some remote planet on the far reaches?” she asks.

 

“A moon,” Adam tells her. “A small moon on the edge of Dolenz.”

 

“Dolenz? That system doesn’t have any occupied moons– there is nothing with an atmosphere–” she starts.

 

“I stayed there alone,” he tells her. He watches disbelief creep into her eyes. “I slept through it. I slept for five years. I did not breathe nor drink water nor eat.”

 

“Not at all?” Haya asks.

 

“No need,” Adam replies.

 

“Yes, need,” Magus mutters, which of course Haya doesn’t hear, but it makes Adam turn to face Magus. 

 

He hasn’t actually noticed his other half’s presence for the rest of the Sovereign trip up until this point. It’s a nice reminder that Magus did not disobey Adam’s request to behave and keep his distance while on their home planet.

 

“...As I already said, it was not my plan to sleep for so long. Though I’ll admit that I’m glad that I did,” Adam states. “I felt…incomplete, and unwell…and after everything I’d experienced, some time away from other peoples’ eyes was more than welcome.”

 

“You wanted to be away from everything on Knowhere,” Haya states, and Adam is almost bewildered to hear the name of that place from her mouth. “I can understand that much. But what I couldn’t understand for all this time, is why you did not return to your home here in Sovereign once you made that choice to leave Knowhere.”

 

“Sovereign was not my home at the time when I left,” he replies. “I did not consider it.”

 

Something shifts in her eyes. Hurt, maybe.

“I am aware you did not consider it home, yes,” Haya states, “I know you were born into Sovereign culture under extraordinary and uncomfortable circumstances. But when you left, it was finally safe here. For once, our planet was liberated, and eternity was at Sovereign’s fingertips. Your life here would not have been uncomfortable the way it was before. We would have given nearly anything in this life to see to it that you were brought up well, the way it was always meant to be, if only we had the chance.”

 

Admittedly, Adam had never thought that Haya would have wanted any part in guiding Adam as he grew. How silly that seems now; he knew very well that she was his first-ever friend and supporter in this world or any.

 

When he failed to save his mother, Adam had initially believed that he no longer belonged to anybody; he believed he failed Sovereign. The idea of returning in the full-term was never an option to him. Even his visits home were only that: visits. He never once considered moving back.

 

He also didn’t consider that any person really, really wanted him there to begin with.

 

He can hear the ignorance in that mindset of his bouncing off the walls of the gilded halls. He can feel the emotion ruminating from Haya, in her voice and her stance. Adam hangs his head, not like a bow like before, but rather in shame. 

 

“I’m sorry, Haya,” he mutters. He doesn’t know what else to tell her.

 

“You’re sorry?” she asks, not quite betrayed but evidently full of sadness. That doesn’t make him feel any better about the matter.

 

“Of course I am. I’ve clearly upset you.”

 

“No. It is us who owe you the apology if you did not believe your return would be what was best for you. Our whole planet failed you, young as you were–”

 

“Sovereign didn’t fail me,” Adam intervenes with that sentiment before she can continue it. “My mother didn’t fail me. My people didn’t fail me. And you certainly didn’t.”

 

“But we did, didn’t we?…We did not do enough to make your own home feel warm for you. If we had, you might have come back, or at least stopped by to tell us you were leaving,” Haya says, “ I apologize that you did not deem your own homeland to be approachable. At the bare minimum, we could have just told you how dear you really are. You have people who love you for all that you are. I wish you felt that, then and now and always. I am sorry that you didn’t hear that enough while you were growing.”

 

“Please don’t be sorry,” he says quietly, fighting the threatening lump in his throat again.

 

It makes him so sad to see her upset like this. 

 

Haya has never been anything but friendly and warm and welcoming towards him: a gentle-hearted being from the moment they met to the moment they last saw one another. To Adam, she was Sovereign’s goodness all wrapped up into one individual. 

 

He couldn’t find the words to express that to her. Not that he had the chance to. Haya started speaking to him again: “I have no choice but to be sorry. It is how I honestly feel about the situation in my soul– I feel sorry for the way you were brought into this world, and I feel sorry that you left.”

 

“...And I am sorry to have caused you any grief at all,” Adam tells her.

 

“It’s not your fault. Though it is true that our people felt nothing but grief, when you’d first gone away. Your leaving was the first time our people had lost anyone since the decimation of Thanos,” Haya explains, “First your mother’s life claimed, then your disappearance. Our hearts wept for you. All of us. And me especially, since I was the one who…was supposed to take care of your family always. My purpose in this world, and you were both gone in one fell swoop.”

 

“Your purpose? You mean you were designed to serve us, specifically?” Adam asks. He’s known all his life that Haya was a servant and handmaiden to the High Priestess Ayesha, but he never considered all the implications of that.

 

“For your mother,” Haya replied. “A few years after she was born, and several years before you were made, I was no more than a fetus in a birthing pod. The Maker designated me to care for your mother. I served her for decades. We were never close, but it was rather special to me that I was the first of her servants that she told when she began developing you. And you grew, and were born, and…then when Ayesha passed on, that meant you were mine to care for.”

 

“I didn’t know any of that,” Adam replied. He tries to imagine what it would be like if his own people he was designed to serve had left suddenly. How empty he would have felt. To an extent, he understands- he'd gone through a crisis of his own when he decided that he did not have one singular "purpose" in this life no matter his intent.

 

“I know,” she says, “You were an infant. I wouldn’t expect you to know that there was someone waiting up for you. The only thing I expected you knew is that your Mum was no longer with you. That’s a scary revelation to have…And it’s not that it would have mattered. The important thing was that you have some place that is constant and kind to grow up in. You chose someplace other than Sovereign,” She wipes her own newly-forming tears away. “Which is well within your right. But now you’re back, and it’s been all this time, and I’ve been here…Now, I have to be the…”

 

Her words trail off. She is quiet for a good, long while. 

 

“What is it?” Adam asks. 

 

A pause, as she makes a decision. “Follow me, dearest. There’s something very important.” 

 

“What is it?” Adam repeats himself.

 

“Just follow me, please.”

 

Then without another word, she pulls him by the hand once more, down the vast halls where he once learned how to walk.

Chapter 4: Messages

Summary:

Adam reminisces as Haya leads him through the citadel on Sovereign.

Notes:

Content warnings for loss, medical issues, and topics surrounding trauma

Adam used to believe that the citadel was the greatest thing the galaxy had to offer. In his earliest days, when he had yet to venture far from it, he thought maybe it was the center of the universe. 

 

He was young. Naive. And for the record, he is grateful nowadays that those assumptions he made were incorrect, because even in Adam’s youngest days, he didn’t particularly like his home. The place gave him a sort of discomfort that he couldn’t quite place, even then. He was too inexperienced with life to understand what about it gave him that unease.

 

Returning, and following a clearly-anxious Haya down the vast gilded halls, is enlightening.

 

Adam has come to the conclusion that there is something inherently cold about the place. Take, for instance, the wall decals. They don’t paint the image of “inviting.” The vertical panels are reminiscent of a cage. Just as Magus had described it before their return here: a metal jail.

 

Up above, the lightning fixtures appear sharp, like if they fell, they might impale somebody. There are geometric elements to the room, made more with math than art in mind. 

 

The walls angle in a way that makes Adam feel small. Perhaps it was constructed tall to resemble power. But that, Adam thinks, would be counterintuitive; how is one meant to feel mighty in halls that are built to make its inhabitants feel smaller than they are? For a place that seems so obsessed with aesthetics, could they not have chosen a softer, more appealing one for their citadel?

 

And the hallways themselves have a stench to them. Not unpleasant per se, but certainly distinct, strong. It’s the part of the visit so far that has stood out most of all to Adam.

 

You would think scent wouldn’t be so significant, but Adam had learned, once, that the olfactory system of the anatomy– the part in charge of smells– passes directly through the brain’s memory and emotional systems. He thinks he can understand the implications of that now. Every little particle in these halls feels like a memory to him, vivid as the day he first experienced it. That’s all messages being received to his brain due to specific patterns of molecules in the air.

 

Along the tiles, there is a waxy scent- floor polish. Never a speck of dirt or smudged footprint left behind. It smells like his first day alive, when he walked to the dining room with his mother. He’d been proud of himself for being able to walk without stumbling very much. He believed it was a major accomplishment. 

 

He’d learned fast that to the people who’d mattered most, his first steps were not quite important. He’d learned he needed to be more. Harder and stronger. More powerful, beautiful, more capable. The floor polish smells like a pang of feeling like he’s failed someone. Like he’s meaningless if he can’t be strong, and know all the answers, and be better than he is.

 

There's also the faint smell of anise rising up as tiny tendrils of smoke from an incense stick, and myrrh. Adam never had the chance to ask his people what the purpose of the incense was. Perhaps they were ceremonial in the religious practice for the Maker; perhaps they were just aesthetic, considering that they’re still in use even during the era of Makerfall. 

 

He can recall the first time he smelled it, though, maybe his second or third day alive. Haya had taken him on a stroll in between his early-morning training sessions. She had taken him along to pick up table settings for a banquet that evening– one that Adam was not permitted to attend. No children allowed. It was official Sovereign business or something. 

 

But Haya had let him pick out the linen table dressings, and the incense to be burned. Prolonged proximity to the smoke made his head feel fuzzy. He hadn’t liked it, but hadn’t disliked it either. The halls smelled like that day, and that feeling of indifference and numbness and being left out and being young and confused.

 

Additionally, there is a hint of antiseptic among the odorants as they're near the infirmary and the nursery, and Dr. Zota's lab. Naturally, it makes Adam think of his pod, which leads to thinking about its most recent owner: 

 

Eve. She’d be about halfway done cooking by now, a small thing forming in her cocoon, in a time before scents and memory and worry. He’ll have to remember to go and pay her a visit. Checking in with her feels like the brotherly thing to do.

 

The polish, the incense, the lab– they aren’t horrible scents in the slightest. But even emotional associations aside, all of those things combined with the permanent tang of metal in the air sort of smells like a burnt, bloody mess. 

 

It seems the very essence of Adam’s infancy left a sour imprint on his memory pathways.

 

He is lost in thought from the sights and the smells that when Haya turns left, he doesn’t. He stops in his track, realizing that he’d walked down the wrong path, no longer following her. All the while, Haya reels back around to wordlessly grab him by the hand to pull him along.

 

“I’ll follow where you go. You don’t need to drag me along,” Adam informs her, “I’m not overly fond of being pulled.”

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, releasing his hand. “I just– this has been a long time coming.”

 

“What is?” Adam asks. “What’s so urgent?”

 

She doesn’t answer him; typical of the adult Sovereign he grew up around. “I’ve had all this time to think about how I might show you, but I’ve found it doesn’t matter how much time passed. I still haven’t figured out a…solution.”

 

“Solution for what? What is it that you’re showing me?” Adam asks, stomach churning with dread, “Can you just tell me, please? You’re beginning to actually frighten me.”

 

She inhales, holds it for a moment, then, they turn the corner into a room Adam’s never seen before at the citadel: a large complex desktop and an intergalactic communications board.

 

“...What is this?” Adam asks.

 

“Our main communications office,” she tells him.

“And why did you bring me here?” he asks.  

 

“People left voicemail for you,” Haya admits at last. Their eyes lock as he processes what she’s just said. Magus’ stomach turns on Adam’s behalf. 

 

Adam starts, for clarity: “When you say ‘people,’ you mean–” 

 

“Your dear ones on Knowhere,” she confirms.

 

The Guardians. “They left messages? To here?” Adam says in a funny voice. Magus’ blood runs cold on Adam’s behalf. 

 

He feels it in his gut: run . He doesn’t.

 

“Of course they have.” Haya begins to continue walking, gesturing for him to follow her. He does. She continues to explain, “From the day you were gone, they’ve been trying to contact you through me.”

 

“Why?” 

 

Haya blinks. “What do you mean, why?”

 

“Why did they contact me? What did they say?”

 

“A whole lot,” she says, “Considering the first message came in years ago, and the most recent is about three weeks old.”

 

“Three weeks?- They’re still reaching out to this day?” Adam asks.

 

Haya tells him, “Of course they are. You’re they’re child, and you’ve been missing–”

 

“No,” Adam interrupts, “Not ‘of course.’ It’s been years– they didn’t have to keep trying after all this time–”

 

“But they did. You’re their child,” Haya repeats.

 

“I’m not even a child anymore,” he says.

 

“That doesn’t make a glimmer of a difference to the people who held you when you were a baby,” Haya says. 

 

“I was never a baby,” he argues.

 

“You were,” she says. “You most definitely were, dear. You came into their lives when you were so young you didn’t know how to write your own name down. They could never just forget you. Just like I couldn’t.”

 

“Sovereign hate the Guardians– you still allowed them to flood your systems with messages for me, when I wasn’t even here?” Adam asks, his heart thudding frantically, because something about this feels off.

 

“The Guardians are disliked by many Sovereign, yes, but I could not bring myself to be among those who resent them. Not when they took such care of you,” Haya tells him, “And not when they were so kind as to be merciful towards our Maker, cruel as he was, and to keep him alive and imprisoned in their home where he could not cause any more harm.”

 

Adam makes an exhale-noise that could have been half of a laugh, if this was funny at all.

 

Haya continues, “Despite our people’s rocky relationship with the Guardians, it became very clear to me that they are not without morals, and not wholly without reason. So I agreed to keep in contact with their Captain for some time, until you made your way home safe.”

 

Haya’s words race through Adam’s mind; she’s saying she admired Rocket for leaving the Maker alive instead of killing him, like he said he had. 

 

Would she believe Adam is without morals, then? Without reason or mercy or kindness?

 

“I left them because I killed the High Evolutionary and they didn’t,” Adam admits, because he isn’t certain that she even knows that. 

 

“I’m well aware, child,” she responds, colder than she intended. “Very well aware of the circumstances of your departure.”

 

A moment passes where neither of them moves or says another word or even breathes, maybe.

 

“...Did you resent me for it?” Adam asks.

 

“Not you, no. I would be…lying…if I claimed to not have been upset by the ordeal. You’re our boy. You raised a hand against another in a cruel way. That’s…upsetting.” 

 

“Sure,” Adam says plainly, involuntarily. 

 

Haya continues, “Granted, the Maker frequently raised his hand against others. He made a habit out of causing harm. You don’t. Not the way they intended for you to. With the Maker’s end, I get the impression that you were only acting out of emotion and not bloodlust. Fear, perhaps, though I imagine you were mainly guided by that blinding rage that you would’ve inherited from your Mum. I couldn’t be upset at you for killing him, even though I was upset that you killed. Does that make sense?”

 

He feels like a child again, like she’s explaining the ways of Sovereign social norms…How very different the times are– that they should be discussing Adam’s history of killing god instead of how to hold his shoulders with proper posture.

 

“Yes, I think I understand,” Adam replies. 

 

“I do think that I was more resentful of the fact that you also inherited Ayesha’s need to run from everyone. You really didn’t have to run off like that. Not when there were so many people to take care of you.”

 

“I didn’t want that,” Adam replies in an odd voice, an odd feeling in his chest. “I didn’t want anybody there. I needed to be alone.”

 

“But why?” Haya asks. “All these years, I’ve heard only glimpses of what your family on Knowhere had to say to you…To your point, dear, they didn’t give up after all this time. That feels special, doesn’t it? To have a place to call home that will care for you even in spite of–”

“Of what I did?” Adam offers, interrupting her.

 

“I was going to say in spite of everything that happened,” she says briskly. “Because I’m not of the opinion that blame is entirely necessary here. I know very well that our god raised his hand to you. And I know more than anyone that he frequently went out of his way to cause bodily and psychological harm to your mother. I’m the one who patched her when he hurt her enough to blemish her skin. I’m the one who held her hand when she refused to turn to anybody. I’ve already said this, but I’ll say it again because I can’t say it enough: I wish you’d have turned to me, too. Or that you would have just stayed with the Guardians, or…returned to them at least…”

 

“I couldn’t. I didn’t feel safe in my own skin,” Adam replies. He wonders if he’ll ever have the chance to stop having to explain that about himself.

 

“I know, dear, but it’s no reason to leave for half a decade.” He wonders, also, if people will ever forgive him for losing track of time.

 

“That was a mistake,” Adam says. “...I…am not unwilling to return to them. I just needed space.”

 

She offers a sad smile to him. “I’m glad you said that.”

 

“Said–?”

 

“That you’d be willing to see them again. Because you should know, I called Knowhere upon your arrival to this place.”

 

“Did you?” Adam asks, and he doesn’t know how to feel.

 

“Yes. We made a pact. The first of us to see you would contact the other,” she tells him. That smile is still on her face. There’s something in her eyes.

 

“Did you bring me here to show me the messages, then?” Adam asks.

 

“Yes, because you should hear some things before your visit,” she says. “You couldn’t listen to them all before their arrival– they left enough messages for you that it would take days to listen through all of them. But there are some…things.”

 

She leaves it at that. He stares at her.

 

“Things,” he repeats. 

 

“Yes,” she tells him. “Things. Have a seat here. I’ll put in the access code.”

 

“I’d rather stand,” he states plainly.

 

“Suit yourself,” she says. Haya fires up the computer in front of them, and the screen lights up, displaying a massive archive of files.

 

“This is–” Adam starts, about to remark about the sheer number of messages, but Haya interrupts him by clicking on the first one.

 

“Hey, kid, ” the voice in the message says, and Adam’s throat closes in on itself in shock. 

 

Adam practically falls into the seat in front of the communications board. From the first few seconds alone, his eyes well up with tears. It’s Rocket’s voice.

 

“Oh, baby,” Haya mutters, seeing how instantly emotional he’d gotten. He doesn’t dispute the term of endearment; now is not the time to feel grown.

 

He hadn’t even realized just how much he’s missed Rocket.

 

Rocket’s message continues. “I don’t know if you’re even gonna be getting this message. But I wanted to say some stuff to ya anyways.” 

 

Haya rests a hand on his shoulder. “You want some privacy? Or would you prefer I stay?”

 

“Stay. Please,” Adam whispers quickly, so he can attend to listening to Rocket’s message once more. 

 

Adam’s eyes are examining the screen; the messages are logged and labeled by date, time, coordinates of the message’s sender, and the sender’s name. The selected message has closed-captions generated, displaying Rocket’s words on screen in front of him.

 

At first Adam was reading along with Rocket’s message, then his eye caught a few messages below the first one: a message from Phyla. Another from Groot. Rocket. Phyla. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Mantis. Rocket. Phyla. Rocket. Rocket. Groot. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. 

 

“You left in a bit of a hurry– I didn’t get to say all I needed to. I have a feeling you didn’t either. So first, you should know you could call anytime. You have my permission. Even if it’s just to cuss me out. Might even be warranted. I don’t mind. It’d honestly be nice just to hear your voice.”

 

Message from Rocket. Nebula. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Phyla. Rocket. Groot. Rocket. Rocket.

 

Adam stares so hard at the archive screen lit up in front of him, the glow of the many files displayed the only light in the room, but it illuminates his face enough that when Haya glances over at him, she can see he’s crying enough to brush his tears away. Just like he had for her before. 

 

“--Need ya to know that I could never hate you if I tried,” Rocket said, “Even after all that…I couldn’t ever hate you and I really and seriously didn’t mean ta hurt you. It’s just that sometimes– you’re young, so you don’t get this yet– but sometimes there are little half-truths, half-lies that are a helluva lot kinder than the full-truths or the full-lies are. You know? And I…didn’t tell you about the High Evolutionary. That was one of the half-lie moments.”

 

The archive reads: 

Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Phyla. Rocket. Rocket. Nebula. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Groot. Rocket. Phyla. Groot. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket.

 

Rocket continues, “I know. I told you he was gone, didn’t say he was rotting away in some cell on Knowhere.”

 

Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Phyla. Rocket. Phyla. Rocket. Rocket. Phyla. Rocket. Rocket.

 

“But I just need you to know I didn’t lie just ‘cause it was easier for me. Alright? It wasn’t just what was convenient. It was what I thought was for the best. He was my Maker too…and I thought what I told you was for the best.”

 

Adam scrolls on and on and on– he passes rapidly through pages of messages marked from years ago, and then halts quickly.

 

Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Phyla. Groot. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Rocket. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. Phyla. 

 

He examines the screen once, twice, three times and tries to make sense of it before he reaches a hand forward to pause the message. He forces a calm inhale. He thinks he feels a fuse burn out in his skull; he thinks he feels something break.

 

“Are you okay?” Haya whispers.

 

Adam releases his breath; it’s the only response he gives and he puts his face in his hands, placing pressure on his volatile temples, sinuses, over his burning eyes. It’s like he’s had the wind knocked out of him, and he is unable to experience the sensation of anything else for several seconds.

 

Haya’s eyes glance to the side at the screen, displaying the names on the archives. “Darling,” she mutters.

 

“...Did he–” he chokes on the word. It sits suffocatingly at the base of his throat. 

 

“Three years ago, he passed,” Haya says softly. “I’m sorry.”

 

She just about jumps out of her skin as Adam’s fist swiftly slams into the screen in front of him, the impact of the hit destroying major chunks of the room. 

 

He stares, wild-eyed as the broken glass fragments come raining down onto the desktop. Immediately after the impact, his body lurches slightly and in lieu of a yell, he makes a sound like a wounded animal, which prompts her to approach and gather him close to herself.

 

Magus stands out of their way. He watches Adam’s frame shaking, watches the way that Haya is present for him. Soothes him in a way that only Magus has, for the past several years. Magus watches as Haya leans in to whisper something to him– something that he can’t quite make out. 

 

“I was told that he passed peacefully, darling, of natural causes. Old age,” Haya is muttering to Adam. “His child told me he’d over thrice outlived his species lifespan even before he met you– his life was long and fulfilling, and his end was just the same.”

 

Magus approaches hesitantly when Adam only responds with a cry. “Here,” Magus whispers from beside him, outstretching a hand as though indicating Adam should lean in to him. Adam ignores him, stays in his place in Haya’s embrace. He can’t get a good breath in. “Adam, give it, please,” Magus asks again, but Adam doesn’t even turn to face him.

 

Magus’ throat seizes from a mix of Adam’s grief and Magus’ own…whatever this feeling is. His eyes burn dry and his chest has this feeling like something is taking a swim inside his lungspace– a kind of hungry rage looming there. He feels the urge to take Adam and run. Coming back here was a bad idea–

 

Dry your eyes, you insolent fool. He was just a fucking animal.

 

Adam and Magus both jump at the disembodied voice– the one only the two of them can hear. It’s the Maker’s voice, an echo from within the soul stone.

 

This room smells like his coat. It smells like his sickening laugh, or his sing-song “Toodle-oo” or his fist or his peeling face mask or his gaze.

 

What are you doing here?

 

Filthy fucking rodent.

 

Get out. Out! You aren’t wanted here!

 

Who’s the fool who let me in? Hm?

 

Who’s the monster who got what he deserved?

 

Did I, now? An eternity in a solitary paradise of my own creation– how miserable. I’ll tell you, it’s a great deal better than what 89P13 received upon death…no eternity is granted for lower life forms. Speaking of getting the ending he deserves–

 

“SHUT UP!” Adam shrieks through his tears, rage bubbling over like a shaken carbonated beverage, fizzling over.

Haya jumps at the sound of it, the sudden outburst. “...What’s that, love?” she asks, because nobody said anything.

 

In all these years, ever since absorbing the High Evolutionary into his own mind, Adam and Magus have never heard his voice so clearly before. It’s as though he’s right in front of Adam– closer than Magus himself. Magus tenses his jaw.

 

Disgusting trash-eating, disease-ridden animal. Useless scraps of metal and flesh, not all so unlike you and your miserable people– only far uglier, and far less understanding of his place in the world.

 

You’re going to kick a man while he’s down?

 

Sickening, disgusting– disturbing little beast– you hear that, Warlock? You hear the words I am saying to you? I did not design your people to value foul things. If you truly grieve for this creature, this thing, then you are the most foolish and brainless of–

 

Oh, shut it!

 

Don’t tell me to be quiet, worm–

 

Why is it so fucking loud. He nearly forgets what he’s upset about in the first place, through all the noise. It’s only increasing in volume over time. It’s becoming unbearable. 

 

-Who’s the worm here? Whose world is it? You’re less than a worm– you don’t even have a body here. You’re nothing. Less than nothing.

 

And yet I am far greater than you will ever be.

 

Adam frantically scrambles his hand free from Haya’s hold and begins to scratch at his forehead; his fingers try to get a grasp of the stone embedded into his skull.

 

Haya is speaking to him but he doesn’t hear her. He doesn’t actually hear Magus, either, even when Magus speaks to him, or to the High Evolutionary. He only knows the Maker’s words. 

 

Adam’s hands activate with energy as he begins to prod at his forehead. He wants to be free from the High Evolutionary’s voice. It’s the only thing on his mind: no longer his sorrow. He doesn’t know to feel sorrowful. He knows it’s Loud– the messages his stone is projecting into his headspace.

 

Haya is attempting to move his hands away, to make him quit whatever he’s doing. She doesn’t know for sure, but it looks harmful.

 

He feels a click as he begins to free the stone from his head. Magus shoves himself into the skin, stopping Adam from yanking it out any further.

 

“STOP IT– ugh–” Magus says aloud, his purple hands holding the stone in place; it’s still attached by several threads, but he doesn’t like the feeling of the partly-severed connection. “Stop that. You need to just…stop.”

 

“Stop what? What happened to you?” Haya asks, and Magus blinks. Breathes in. Out. 

 

Magus isn’t sure when most of his vision blurs away, but it does. And his flesh fades to a sickly grey, and his body stays still, leaned up against Haya, who brushes a fallen white hair out of his face, and runs the side of her finger along his cheek.

 

She puts her hands back onto his face, his arms, his shoulders, She’s trying to be of comfort in any way she can. “What’s going on, dear? How can I help?”

 

The body is unhappy.

 

This is the most Magus has been in the body without a trace of Adam, perhaps ever. And he is so miserable that he can’t bring himself to even move. There’s some sort of disconnect between the thing that makes him himself and the form of his body in the world around him.

 

“I’m so sorry…so sorry that you’re feeling this loss.”

 

Right– that’s why the body is so damn upset. The realization hits him again: a harsh wave crashing on an unsuspecting shoreline.

 

Gone. He’d left, with no chance to say a goodbye. 

 

“How can I make this better? What do you need?”

 

She said something to him; he should respond. He wills his mouth to form words.

 

“I need you to stay.”

 

“Alright. I can do that, easily. I’ll stay right here with you,” she tells him. 

 

“...You’re nice,” Magus tells her.

 

She makes a sound like she’s laughing through her tears. Magus shifts his head and the stone just barely shifts too, from the movement. She frowns, staring at its loose connection. “…I’m going to call for your father, his office isn’t far.”

 

“My father is dead,” Magus and Adam mumble: the realization hitting again. The thought of it comes in waves.

 

“Dr. Zota!” Haya hollers, her head pointed towards the doorway that they came from.

 

He wants to just fall completely slack like dead weight, but before he knows it, his body tenses suddenly, starts convulsing, flesh turning gold, then golder, then a sort of yellowish tone, glowing, and the stone in his forehead burns hot, and it was over before he knew it was happening, vision going out like a screen, unplugged, and the head feels full, and the world feels empty. 

 

He is very unaware of his surroundings for a moment, save for the vague sensation of smelling that burnt-blood smell in the air– the metal, the polish, the incense all mingled, sending messages from his history through his body. And then that’s gone too and there is nothing.

Chapter 5: Blemish.

Summary:

A collection of moments in Haya's life.

Notes:

Content warnings for generally unhealthy environments, medical issues/description of injury and blood, topics surrounding trauma, and topics surrounding a society that is built off of ideas of "perfection."

Eras prior.

 

“I do not understand this new generation’s insistence on public naming ceremonies,” the High Priestess Ayesha says, standing stock still to allow her chambermaid to aid her in getting dressed for the occasion. “In the very oldest days, names were not given. Only roles. High Priestess, Fishingboat’s Captain, Medical Doctor, Chemist, Judge, Captain. It told the people everything they ought to know about a person. Names were no more than an accessory. All of a sudden, this generation rolls along and they all want their hatchlings presented with names of their own, right from birth…It’s just about unnatural as it gets, isn’t it?”

 

Haya bites back a subtle smile. She fastens a golden piece of armored cloth around Ayesha’s waist, and begins to tighten the woven silk threads trailing up her spine to fit her form as though she had been poured into the garment.

 

“Yes, Ma’am,” Haya says softly, but clearly. The High Priestess does not care for it when she mumbles. “Though I believe I understand the new ritual naming, from my own perspective.”

 

“Enlighten me,” Ayesha half-demands, half-asks through her sheer curiosity. “Why place such emphasis on assigning names at such a young age?”

 

“The people have been more and more frequently having offspring of their own personal designs, Ma’am,” Haya explains. “Gamete-donors are more involved than ever before, as I am sure you have perceived. They often choose to tutor the infants of their own procreation and to provide support and guidance as they grow. While not quite a nuclear family structure as lesser-evolved planets tend to implement, the Sovereign people have…actually followed your generation’s influence of having names in the first place, and adapted the act of naming into a sort of celebration of their new relatives.”

 

“Yes, I know that much,” Ayesha says in her scolding voice, gesturing her hand dismissively. “The act of providing our peoples’ young ones with support is not where I take issue. My issue is with naming them from birth. It feels like a gross invasion of the infant’s agency, does it not? The act of choosing a name for oneself…it was one of the moments that I personally felt most alive. It feels wrong to tear that away from a young one. Doesn’t it?”

 

“You think the children should have autonomy over what they are called?” Haya asks, her nimble hands tying the ends of the now-taut silken strings behind Ayesha’s back.

 

“To an extent, yes,” Ayesha responds briskly. “I think it’s awful presumptuous of us that a better name could not come around later in the child’s life.”

 

“Would you grant blessing to a name change, if somebody were to feel passionately about using one of their own picking, then?” Haya asks curiously.

 

“Situationally, I would accept this, yes,” Ayesha replies. “I feel a hair out of place underneath my headpiece. Would you be so–”

 

“Yes, Ma’am, I am happy to fix it for you,” Haya replies. “I could braid it, if you prefer…considering the festivities at hand, you may like to have the extra security.”

 

“Very well,” Ayesha replies. She goes to sit so Haya can fix her hair.

 

“The infant being born is named in your honor, Miss, were you aware of that? Her name will be Aoife,” Haya says, pronounced like “Ava.”

 

“Aoife,” Ayesha repeats the name aloud. “Aoife the Silkwormer.”

 

“Silkweaver, I thought, though perhaps I am mistaken,” Haya corrects her, and begins to brush her hair for her with a gilded hairbrush.

 

“Silkweaver,” Ayesha replies, “That’s right. I was the mistaken one.”

“Not at all, Ma’am,” Haya says, as a pleasantry mostly, to dismiss the idea that Haya could have possibly been accusing her High Priestess of having been wrong. “This is a name derived, I presume, from the Maker’s admirations– from the mythologies of creation.”

 

“Derived from the name Eve, I believe so,” Haya says. “Her name means life, just as yours does. This particular variation also meant beauty in its location of origin. I believe it is fitting, because I believe her name is beautiful. A perfect echo of what our people are meant to be.”

 

“Indeed it is,” Ayesha says plainly. “Did you choose your own name, Girl?”

 

“My naming was a complicated matter,” Haya responds honestly. “It came later in life, not at birth. Though my originators placed the idea of it before me, and I agreed to it.”

 

“I see,” Ayesha replies.

 

“It is of my own belief,” Haya says, “That a name so fitting to a person’s title, genetic predispositions, and overall purpose in life could never be unsuitable, no matter when the name is assigned. However, I understand I may be a bit of a hypocrite on the matter, considering I didn’t choose my own name either. Not like you and the others before, Ma’am.”

 

“Nevermind what either of us thinks. I suppose this day is meant to be just what you said,” Ayesha states, “A celebration for the new parents, and for their emerging child. This day is a beautiful one. I should hate to put a damper on it with my old-fashioned opinions. They are going about this as proper Sovereigns, after all– there have been no deviations from our social standards at play.” 

 

“Yes, Ma’am.” She finishes the first braid and moves onto the other half, so the pair could be woven together like a wreath around Ayesha’s head.

 

“I believe it is possible I should like to celebrate a day like this of my own one day,” Ayesha says. “Perhaps I should stop judging altogether. I may follow suit.”

 

“You would like a name celebration for yourself, Ma’am?” Haya asks, brows almost furrowing with puzzlement, more of a twitch than anything else, as she dismisses her incoming expression change to save face. It’s unspeakable to think of such a major change in norms; if adults can throw their own naming ceremonies, then it would be as though a pebble hit a pond, sending ripples like shockwaves through what counts as normalcy. It’s quite unlike the Sovereign people, especially for the High Priestess.

 

“No, you dull-minded girl, I meant of course for my own offspring.” Haya is just thankful Ayesha didn’t raise her voice to a yell, or move and ruin the hairdo.

 

Haya is hit with a pang of guilt as well as a hint of something unrecognizable– maybe optimism.

 

“You are thinking about procreating, Ma’am?” Haya asks in a hushed voice.

 

“Perhaps someday, it will not be out of the question,” Ayesha responds. “I have seen generation after generation of Sovereign born. It would be…extraordinarily rewarding, I believe, to personally uplift one as they grow into model citizens of our great planet. Would it not be?”

 

“I couldn’t agree more,” Haya lets out the words like a whisper. She mentally crosses her fingers in a prayer to someone disembodied. She thinks the childhood stages of Sovereign people are the most magical times– the most special times to make someone’s acquaintance. 

 

The wonder in their eyes when they see the art galleries for the first time, or when they realize that the Citadel is only one of six major districts strung together like beads to form the whole of Planet Sovereign…when they realize how expansive the universe is, and how special their people are within it. How valued they are to be made with precious materials, with every gene in line and every living being with meaning and purpose.

 

Haya’s own birth had been like that. She remembered her Caregiver, stoic as she was, not being able to bite back a proud smile when Haya first looked up at the sky to see a large swirling stormcloud above. And she’d told the Caregiver, quite endearingly: “Look at the way the sky breathes…I have never seen something so lovely in my life,” at a whopping two-days old. (To this day, she swears it remains true; the gorgeous Sovereign skies on the Citadel’s rock have ensared her attention indefinitely).

 

All Sovereign are precious; the baby ones are as precious as they get. They come into the world as perfect as they were designed to be, with no opportunity to cause any flaw whatsoever.

 

It is Haya’s own Caregiver that is delivering the child, Aoife, today. She is grateful to say that she was invited to partake in the delivery team– just to accompany the girl and her progenitors, and to help clean her face and her hair of the cocoon’s contents.

“Speaking of the birth, and the naming ceremony,” Haya says, “You will have to forgive me for my absence in an hour or so. It was my Caregiver who was assigned to deliver the child, Aoife, today. I was kindly invited to partake in the delivery team– just to accompany the girl and her progenitors, and to prepare her for the later festivities.”

 

“Yes, I signed off on that, to ensure your presence,” Ayesha dismisses.

 

“You did?”

 

“The Caretaker was insistent on your presence, yes. I told her it was no matter to me, so long as there was ample time for you to get me ready, which there was.”

 

“...Thank you, Ma’am,” she says, a little bit dumbfounded.

 

She stays and completes readying her High Priestess until the time has come.

 

…

 

Moments later.

 

“One step back, everyone– that’s it–” the Caregiver coaches those surrounding the birthing pod, housed within the nursery of the Citadel. Against the Caregiver’s command, the Mother of the incoming child steps forward rather than back. The pod opens and the Mother approaches alongside the Caregiver and the Midwife, the three of them gently pulling young Aoife out of her cocoon’s insides.

 

The girl is tall and lean, with firm-built musculature, prominently standing out through her sparkling golden flesh, which is covered in cocoon contents. The Mother has snatched the girl away before anybody else could get their hands on her. The Caregiver and Midwife both back down respectfully, to Haya’s surprise. When she had been born, there was certainly no Parental contact like this. 

 

Times are changing, subtle as that change may be.

 

Aoife makes an unhappy noise, and her Parents both shush her with care, her Mother leaning back and forth slightly as though to rock her to sleep. Haya exhales, awestruck by the sheer gentleness of the experience; what a lovely way to bring a life into this world, with care and comfort, rather than with tools in her face. 

 

“My darling, darling girl,” the Mother mutters into the girl’s ear. 

 

“Is she breathing yet?” the Midwife asks. The cocoon contents sometimes halt an infant’s breath for their first few seconds of life. The more difficult cases require a tool to help free the contents from their airways, though the technology has evolved well enough that very few incubating Sovereign will ever attempt to inhale the contents by mistake.

 

“She’s breathing very well, yes,” the Mother replies. “Good girl, making our lives easier than her older sister did.”

 

“Isn’t that the truth?” the Father says with amusement. 

 

The Caretaker hands over a blanket. “I am glad to hear it. Wrap her up tight, nice and snug, now,” the Caretaker tells the Mother, and she clutches the blanket around the infant’s frame.

 

“Oh, I know,” the Mother had whispered tenderly to her child. “I know…You want to be back there more than anything, don’t you, lovey?”

 

“Yes,” Aoife says, and Haya’s breath hitches at the realization that the child has just formed her first word.

 

“Oh, very good, baby. Well done, lovey,” the Mother croons, and the Father comes along to the other side, where the new family sits together.

 

“May I have her for a moment?” the Father asks.

 

“Yes, my love,” the Mother tells him, and they shift their child’s weight to lay across her Father, her head against his chest.

 

When the child is moved, that’s when Haya spots it. Her heart just about stops dead in its tracks: “What is that on her?” Haya asks, truly worried.

 

The Parents both turn to face her, cradling their child in their embrace. 

 

“Her face,” the Mother says, in a voice that bites, her hand petting through the child’s hair. “It’s her face.”

 

“That, my dear, is the reason we’ve requested your presence today. It’s a nevus simplex,” the Caregiver explains. “A kind of birthmark.”

 

“A birthmark on a Sovereign?” Haya whispers. “One that lasted through full-term?” The Caregiver nods. 

 

“We were told there was a fifty percent chance it would fade away entirely before reaching a major developmental stage,” the Father explains in a hushed and hurried voice. “It didn’t, at first, and we chose not to start over with our sweetness, so we played a waiting game to see if it would fade on its own.”

 

“Which it didn’t,” Haya says.

 

“She’s the most perfect girl,” the Mother continues, as though attempting to justify herself. “All this aside, she would be among the most beloved members in the entire silk district. A fine weaver, with fine-tuned hands and the temperament of the gentlest Sovereigns of history– she is lovely , through and through.”

 

“I believe that she is, yes,” Haya whispers. She can’t place it, but there is something strangely pretty about the unique nature of her birthmark. She thinks it is not ugly in the slightest, though Haya’s opinion is not the one that counts most in this matter.

 

Some Sovereign have “acceptable blemishes” such as distinctive dimples or a singular beauty mark beneath their eye or above their lip; that is a rarely-approved physical variation, most of which end up having to be incredibly subtle. Some of the older generation who were designed for the indoors develop freckles if they travel too often; those genes were weeded out over time, though those who had freckles could only severely lighten, and not remove them entirely. Dr. Zota is a prime example.

 

“Have you spoken to Dr. Zota?” Haya asks, on that thought. He designed the techniques to lighten blemishes of that nature.

 

“Of course we have,” the Father says. “Aoife will be outfitted for a repaired complexion on the affected areas through cosmetic augmentation– a quiet procedure nobody needs to know about. In the meantime, we will utilize concealing makeup, from this day forward until her treatment at the beginning of next week. That concealing makeup is your purpose here.”

 

“Does the High Priestess know about this?” Haya asks. She remembers Ayesha saying that she had signed off on Haya’s involvement with this newborn.

 

Immediately, with a frown and some urgency, “No. No, she can never know about this. She will believe we have deceived her and will be unaccepting of our girl– that can’t happen.”

“The High Priestess is dancing with the idea of nurturing one of her own,” Haya says. “Perhaps she would be accepting when she sees that your daughter is as perfect as perfect can be, as soon as the complexion-procedure is completed–”

 

“If you have to say perhaps to make your statement valid, then it isn’t a consideration to be made. Her divine one’s wrath is not a risk that we will take,” the Mother states.

 

“I understand,” Haya says. “I will be of assistance in any way that I can.”

 

…

 

After.

 

She accompanied the infant and her family to a bathing chamber, then applied thick layers of makeup over the flesh impacted by blemish. She spent extra time to ensure that every detail of Aoife’s flesh was up to the golden standard of the people. She was to be presented to Ayesha and the other Sovereign later today, after all– not a speck of skin can appear unwell without causing a scene. She is left, for a moment, without the company of the girl’s Parents, as they touch base with Dr. Zota down the hall.

 

“Is there something wrong with me?” the child, Aoife, had asked. “I heard whispers from the servants.”

 

“Not wrong, no,” Haya tells her. “Admittedly, perhaps unacceptable to some.”

 

“Unacceptable in what way?”

 

“In the way that there will need to be extra measures taken to help you blend in,” Haya says, “Just as I am blending this makeup into your face, so you cannot tell where the mark starts or ends…you will need to blend in to the rest of our people in order to be deemed acceptable.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why?” Haya asks. “It’s the Sovereign way.”

 

“Mummy says we’re leaving Sovereign if ‘shit hits the fan,’” Aoife tells Haya, repeating what she’s heard before as young children often do.

 

Haya pauses. Sovereign never leave their planet indefinitely. It would be detrimental to the culture; it would have unspeakable ramifications. 

 

“...I highly doubt that to be the case,” Haya tells the girl. “Your mother and father are valuable members of the silk district. I am certain that if they said they might leave in crisis, they were speaking exaggeratedly.”

 

“What is exaggeratedly?” Aoife asks.

 

“It’s when somebody overmagnifies their words or a given situation for some level of emphasis or theatrics.”

 

“I’m not sure what that is,” Aoife tells her.

 

“That’s alright, my girl, nobody will quiz you on the matter,” Haya says.

 

“But what if they did?” Aoife asks, leaning forward, big eyes like she’s saying something very serious. “What if they quizzed me about exaggeratedly and I don’t know the answer?”

 

“In your humble beginnings, I assure you,” Haya says, “You have nothing at all to worry about.”

 

“I don’t?”

“Sovereign is a lovely place to live when you’re a baby,” Haya assures the girl. “There are programs where you get to know the other children born in your year, and orientations for your purpose within the district that you will be living…There are scheduled outings to the other ends of Sovereign so you might meet new people and experience the rich culture. I often wish that I were able to rewind time in my own lifespan, and be a baby in your generation.”

 

“Why’s that?” Aoife asks.

 

“Because you only get to experience things for the first time once ,” Haya tells her. “Don’t you worry at all. You’ll get worry-lines on your beautiful face– just enjoy the newness of it all. And learn to love this planet of ours. I think you’ll find it’s very worthy of love.”

 

“Alright, then,” the girl says.

 

…

 

The ceremony for Aoife’s name announcement, and her presentation to the people, went as it ought to.

 

The next time that Haya saw Aoife, her face blemish was gone. It was strange because Haya had believed that she was to be called in over the next several days to apply concealing makeup, in the days leading up to Aoife’s cosmetic procedure with Dr. Zota. However, she had never been summoned back.

 

Perhaps they found a new makeup artist. Perhaps they changed the date of the procedure.

 

Either way, the girl was golden. She was as beloved among the silk district as Aoife’s parents claimed she would be.

 

…

 

Years after Aoife. Days after the birth of Adam.

 

Haya is the one to clean up a deceased rodent from the Citadel’s precious floors; Adam is dismissed from his training with his mother and the Maker. He walks unaccompanied roaming the halls of the Citadel to go find help.

 

Adam appears in the doorway where the servants go to take their breaks, splattered with blood; he looks quite unsure of what to do and how to feel. 

 

The servants know exactly how to feel. They all feel a sickness strike their guts at the sight of it. They all leap to their feet as though in a footrace;

 

“Oh, Adam, dear–”

 

“Is this your blood?”

“What happened?” they all ask in fussy voices.

 

“It’s rodent,” Adam says dully. 

 

That poor little boy was just born– and born improperly, at that. 

 

It was not a gentle beginning for him. It was not a first-moment surrounded by proper comfort; Ayesha’s were not the first hands to touch him, and he was not even ready to emerge yet when it happened.

 

Haya had been the one to comfort a distraught Ayesha the night it happened.

 

She hurriedly follows after him, having recently discarded the carcass of the animal whose blood was on him. By the time Haya arrives, the other servants have already mostly completed undressing him of the foul-stained garments on his body, and they’re helping him step into the warm waters of the washing tub.

 

He leans into the water, closing his eyes as though he’s been waiting for this all day. The boy is unmoving, fully accepting of his fate that he is in the hands of others. He looks like he might fall asleep if left here undisturbed for a moment; he looks as though he is in dire need of that sleep.

 

Haya takes her place up by his head, to tend to his face and hair. It’s a small amount, but there is some blood splatter near his eye. With its placement and its general coloration, Haya is reminded of Aoife, the girl born years prior with the blemish built on her face. How is it that Aoife’s mark was unacceptable, but this is? How is the mishandling of this boy, in any way, exemplary of their people’s perfection? Blood on his young face is far more a blemish than any birthmark could ever claim to be.

 

But as with all things in this world, Haya’s opinion is not the one that matters most.

 

As she cleans his face free of the rodent’s blood, Haya spots something perhaps even more surprising, albeit far less upsetting than the presence of rodent blood:

 

Adam has the subtlest of freckles splayed across his cheekbones in the place where someone might blush while flustered. They match the intensity– yet not the layout– of the freckles on Dr. Zota’s face. Fitting, considering he had been the progenitor. 

 

Freckles are typically weeded out on a genetic level nowadays, and that hardly goes unnoticed, left behind in a genetic code by mistake. That means that Dr. Zota himself must have been the one to leave them intact. Or perhaps it was even the High Priestess. 

 

Haya could never believe that to be the case. She could also never be the one to bring it to Ayesha’s attention by asking.

 

“Were you in the sun today?” she asks, gliding a finger over a constellation of freckles, so subtle that you would have to be seriously searching for them to find them there.

 

“I was a lot of places today,” he replies, misunderstanding her as young ones often do. “I don’t know that I went to the sun.”

 

He didn’t speak for the rest of the evening.

 

After washing, Adam walked on his own to his bedroom. Haya checked on him moments later to find that he’d gotten himself into bed, hugging a pillow to his chest as though his life depended it. Fast asleep, by the looks of it; she isn’t surprised. 

 

His blankets are pooled by the foot of the bed, mainly. Maybe he’d kicked them aside, either by accident or by design, or perhaps he’s still infant enough that he hadn’t known how to properly make them lay over his body. 

 

Regardless, Haya steps forward quietly and pulls the sheets around him. Nice and snug, now, Haya hears her own Caretaker’s voice play in her mind. The boy stirs but doesn’t wake entirely.

 

…

 

That same evening.

 

After checking on Adam and tucking him into his bed, Haya enters Ayesha’s bedchambers. She slows her walking through the doorway and hears heaving sobs coming from the other end of the chamber.

 

“...It’s only me, Ma’am,” Haya announces her presence loud and clear. The High Priestess hates it when she mumbles. 

 

“Putting that filthy fucking animal in front of my son–” she looks up at the approaching Haya, and her face is covered with a new level of desperation; it’s a face she hasn’t had since the day the Maker had first realized that the Sovereign had made contact once with 89P13. Haya looks down to see that Ayesha’s fist is bleeding, and her vanity shattered. She punched it.

 

“That looks deep,” Haya says, rushing forward now to Ayesha’s aid. Ayesha sobs and doesn’t fight it when Haya takes the injured hand into her own; she lets out a hiss of pain. “Tell me nobody else did this to you.”

 

“They did not,” Ayesha says briskly, rage and pain painting her voice. She’s shaking. 

 

“This could be fractured,” Haya says. “We should go to see–”

 

“I won’t be going to him,” Ayesha interrupts.

 

“Dr. Zota can at least tell you if your bones are shattered. And he can help cosmetically, too,” Haya tries to convince her.

 

“Unacceptable. Call for Shinski or somebody instead to operate the scanning-machines, I won’t have Carlo Zota anywhere near me,” she argues. 

“Shinski is off-planet until tomorrow with Morlack and Hamilton,” Haya reminds her. “Zota is your best bet.”

 

“Then I will suffer until tomorrow,” Ayesha insists. 

 

“I will go get first aid to tend to the surface portion of the wound,” Haya says, scrambling now to retrieve a first aid kit. “You should sit and make yourself comfortable. That injury must hurt greatly.”

 

“I assure you it does,” she says.

 

Ayesha squeezes her eyes shut while Haya works, not unlike how her son had laid still as Haya cleaned the blood off his face. Haya tends to the High Priestess quietly so as not to disturb her nor spike up her anger once more.

 

“Did you check on him?” Ayesha asks suddenly, when Haya is just about to wrap up cleaning her hand.

 

“On Adam, you mean?” Haya asks. “Yes. I checked on him. He’s asleep in bed.”

Ayesha exhales. It’s not quite a sigh but it might as well be for her standards. “...I am angry all the time,” she says.

 

“I know, Ma’am,” Haya says. 

 

Ayesha’s head snaps to look at her in the eye, rage in her gaze. “Spare me the smart remarks, you stupid girl–”

 

“I only mean,” Haya interrupts to try to keep her anger managed, “That I would be enraged too, if I were in your place.”

 

“Well, you’re not in my place,” Ayesha spits out, “And be thankful for it. For Maker’s sake, that’s my baby boy and I’ve hardly even held him, all in the name of a god who is cruel .” She says the last word like it’s a curse. Her face is contorted with disgust that 

 

“He’s right down the hall. There is no shame in going to him, to hold him in your arms right now if you’d like,” Haya tells her. She kneels in front of Ayesha.

 

“But there is shame in it,” Ayesha says, face contorting again like she might cry. “I have already not done enough to ensure his success– I cannot hold him. I cannot permit him to fail at being a stalwart for our people, entirely unbreakable– he has to be stronger than I am.” The final words resonate through the room for a moment. She smooths her face with her uninjured hand in frustration. “If he fails now, it’s a failure on my end as well. I will pay a penalty, followed by a larger penalty that impacts our whole society. More than likely, it will result in the destruction of our entire civilization. That– any of that– is not a price I am willing to gamble for.”

 

Haya thinks once more of young Aoife’s birth, and the girl’s Parents’ words: divine one’s wrath is not a risk that we will take.

 

She also thinks of what Aoife’s parents had proposed in the event that Aoife was unaccepted in Sovereign, if her blemish was ever detected.

 

“...Have you ever considered leaving Sovereign?” Haya asks.

“What?” Ayesha asks.

 

“The planet, I mean,” Haya explains, “Have you or the General or Captain or anybody ever considered buying a vessel to evacuate the planet?”

 

“How in heavens would that do us any good?” Ayesha asks. “We would be without our home, our resources, our pod technology– we would abandon our precious Anulax? Our beloved, sacred planet? And the Maker would make it a point to find us no matter where we are…No. Leaving has never been in question,” Ayesha states, bitter even at the suggestion, “So there are truly no other alternatives. Adam has to succeed. That is that.”

 

Haya is shocked that Ayesha’s response was not more explosive than it was, at the suggestion of abandoning the planet in a last-stitch effort to save the people.

 

“...I am sorry that these burdens are yours and your child’s to bear,” Haya whispers. She cradles Ayesha’s newly-wrapped hand in her own. Ayesha tosses away her hand in retaliation.

 

“You are not the one who should be sorry,” she says briskly, “Leave me. I’m exhausted, and I am not in the mood to entertain your bordering-on blasphemous attempts at comfort.”

 

“Alright, Ma’am. I will schedule an appointment for you to check in with Shinski for that hand, sometime soon after he arrives,” Haya tells her.

 

“Begone,” Ayesha insists.

 

And Haya leaves her, just as she asked.

 

…

 

After Adam’s return to Sovereign, years since he had last made contact.

 

It is clear to her that faint evidence of freckles, an ancient artifact in his forehead, a scar through his chest, and an odd upbringing were not the only blemishes on Adam Warlock’s supposed perfection.

 

The distress of learning that a loved one had passed while he was away seemed to lead to some other sort of fit; he was speaking to nobody at all– perhaps to himself or to someone disembodied. He was shouting and crying and his words turned entirely nonsensical. Some of them were not even in the language he speaks fluently. Some did not even sound like his own voice.

 

His hand was fumbling at the artifact implanted to his skull and forebrain as though he intended to pull it off his own head.

 

And he was experiencing some kind of medical event– almost akin to a seizure– before settling down a bit, once his  flesh had turned a purple-gray hue that would have made his mother Ayesha roll in her grave. 

 

He is responsive up until the point where she calls for Dr. Zota to help him; about a second or two later, something changes.

 

He convulses and glows, as though possessed by some sort of divine energy. The light originating from him becomes actually blinding; she feels a piercing pain behind her eyes and then it’s over.

 

…

 

She is ripped from the comfort of familiar air, dragged within a glimmering, liminal space that is strange to her. 

 

Everything is far more vibrant than the distinct color schemes assigned to the Sovereign landscape– even the marketplace and the countryside which houses the silkworm-farms and mining districts are drab; even the whirling, deep skies seem to pale in comparison to this place. The most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life before has officially been beat: 

 

Look at the way the sky breathes. I have never seen something so lovely in my life

 

She is unaware of how she arrived here, or where “here” is, or why it matters. The more important bit is perhaps the fact that her body feels absent. 

 

Absent, yet she remains. How strange.

 

Her memory attempts to retrace her steps. The fact that she has memory, at all, is more than likely a good sign, she thinks. 

 

What happened before she arrived here in the place where the sky breathes?

 

Adam was here– no, not here, but on Sovereign. He was on the floor, his body betraying him while he was feeling most vulnerable, experiencing the loss that she had introduced him to. Haya had called for help; he seemed like he needed help. And there had been a very bright light, and then she was here.

 

The experience wasn’t entirely painful per se, but not painless either; there is inevitable discomfort when a soul is ripped away from its host entity and brought somewhere new. She does not understand that that is what happened to her. But she understands that something significant has changed.

 

She begins to walk the meadowlands of whatever strange new world she’s landed on. There is a man out in the distance, pruning a bush, humming cheerily under his breath.

 

She squints her eyes. It can’t be–

 

“Maker,” she exhales, eyes widening.

 

“I’m impressed you recognized me, what with all my change in appearance. What, no curtsy? Have the Sovereign people forgotten their manners already?” he asks in his familiar mocking tone. His face looks contorted and wrong; the mask of it half-hanging down from his face, but he's worse for wear than she would have thought. His entire body is blemished with poorly-healed old wounds and injuries.

 

“I do not bow to dead gods who preach false ideologies and slaughter their creations,” Haya states. 

 

“Hah,” he says in an empty half-laugh, “Cheeky, this one is. Aren’t you?”

 

“You died. Am I dead too, then? Is that what this is?” Haya asks him.

 

“That depends on your perspective, I believe,” he tells her. “I know very well that you know who I am, but considering we are to spend time in the same lonely plane for a whole, I suppose that we may as well make proper acquaintances. Herbert Edgar Wyndham.”

 

“What is that?”

 

“I’ve just told you my name. Of course, they call me High Evolutionary, mainly. What is it that they call you?”

 

“Chambermaid, mainly,” she says.

 

“And your other name?”

“Haya,” she tells him. She’s hesitant to share, but after a second’s thought, she supposes it could do no harm.

 

“Ah, an Earthly, Arabic name, meaning ‘decency,’ ‘modesty,’ ‘shyness,’ ‘life,’ among others…Tell me, Chambermaid, are you any of those things?” he asks.

 

She hesitates. “That depends on your perspective, I believe,” she quotes him.

 

“As I said before,” he states, “Cheeky.”

 

“Where are we?” Haya asks. “Is this the plane of the afterlife– the place beyond Eden that we hear about in our mythologies?”

 

“You know something?” the Maker asks, “I think I’ll let you roam around and find out for yourself.”

Chapter 6: Dust.

Summary:

Gamora and Nebula don't talk often, though they make it a point to catch up every once in a while.

& Other brief snapshots of the story.

Notes:

This chapter contains some discussion of death/grief. Warning that there maybe subtle amounts of body horror and medical things, though the latter two are not described in any thorough detail.

 

“I’m afraid that I do not understand,” the Silver Surfer says, not daring to look up from his kneeling position before his great master. “It was only days ago that we last sought out your sustenance–”

 

“This is the price you pay for your insistence to leave sentient life undisturbed,” Galactus’s booming voice says plainly. “You have asked me to increase my frequency in need for consumption– and as a result, you increase the frequency of your own work. Have you reconsidered your end of the bargain?”

 

“I will not, Your Greatness,” the herald mutters.

 

“You have asked me to starve overtime to appease your wishes, and I am kind enough to oblige. But do not waste time groveling at my feet. You will seek a new rock immediately, and one with no less than thrice the strength of my most recent moon” Galactus states, “I am starved.”

 

“More than– thrice ?” the Surfer asks, as he processes his master’s command. The being is essentially demanding that an unoccupied moon will not be enough.

 

“You must serve me to my needs. What I need is more than what you offered before,” Galactus says, “I will have something with life upon its crust. To what degree that life has intelligence, I leave that up to you.”

 

“Our agreement was no sentient life is to be harmed. Is that an agreement that stands?” the Surfer inquires, hoping that he does not sound like he is asking for too much. 

 

The being tells him, “Until the day you realize that sentient life is smaller than dust in the winds of eternity, then our agreement stands. Though I demand you provide more than you have. Leave me ravenous again, and I swear to it that I will choose my next target at random. Do I make myself abundantly clear, Oh Desperate One?”

 

“Yes, abundantly, Your Excellence,” the Surfer states, “Thank you for your grace and patience.”

 

“Leave.”

 

“I will,” the Surfer mutters plainly, and he takes off like a rocket into the void to seek out another celestial body to target for his master’s meal.

 

---

 

It is a little known fact, but there is a high-quality mahogany pool table floating through outer space in the skull of a deceased Celestial being. Terran-made. Quite expensive. Initially it had been pirated, then sold and stolen and stolen once more. Then, it had been sent as a present to Peter Quill once after his return from the Decimation of Thanos. 

 

He’d left it on Knowhere when he departed. It was far too bulky to pack even if it were practical, or necessary, for that matter. Besides, many of the folks he held dear had grown fond of playing the game over drinks in the early hours of the nights, when the buzz of booze in their brains were just beginning to make them feel all giddy inside. 

 

It was that, and the dart board and the Zune; they stayed. Cruel to part a home with the things that make it home.

 

Over the years, the pool table has been touched less and less, in part due to business keeping everybody busy, and in part due to the fact that most people who understood how to properly play its intended game had left Knowhere or simply passed away. 

 

Time creates gently cruel reminders like dust to remind us of the things that have been left to sit alone for years, untouched.

 

Nebula removes the smooth mahogany plank, the table top’s lid, whose color is muted from the fuzzy layer of dust. It’s dusty enough that its texture is comparable to the roughish, green, velvetlike material that lines the table itself. She sets the covering aside, with no help, no thanks at all to the person who’s keeping her company: her soon to be opponent in the game.

 

“Get the sticks off the wall over there,” Nebula commands, soft spoken, as she brushes her hands together so the dust will fall away from her. 

 

Then she reaches into the webbed nets along the rim of the table, grabbing colorful balls which clack together in a noise that’s somewhere wedged smack-dab between annoying and satisfying. Morbidly enough, the sound reminds her of snapping her neck back into alignment, or cracking knuckles just right, or breaking the jaw of an enemy with one’s bare hands.

 

Gamora wields a pair of long wooden cues– the ones Nebula had told her to retrieve. “You said this was a bar game? I’ve been to many bars across many systems, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before. You’ll have to explain it to me.”

 

“That’s fine,” Nebula states plainly, “It’s a Terran game.”

 

“I see. You Guardians just love your Terran artifacts,” Gamora dismisses. “Have you ever even been to see it for yourself?”

“You know I have,” Nebula replies. “Hand me a cue stick. Mine is the one on the left.”

 

“Thus, the blue marker,” Gamora remarks, handing over the cue that has blue tape wrapped around the butt end of it. “Speaking of bar games, my crew and I took a visit to Joygod’s Outpost recently, on the far end of Dolenz.”

 

“I’m familiar,” Nebula states.

 

“When I was there, I had an interesting run-in with an old friend of your team’s,” Gamora continues, her eyes meeting Nebula’s.

 

Nebula’s own eyes glance at the cue in her hand briefly, then back at Gamora again. Old friend. Nebula doesn’t actually have all too many of those; she naturally thinks of him first: “Quill was there?” she asks, a bit of anticipatory surprise in her voice at the idea that he’d venture back out into space without telling anybody.

 

“Not Quill ,” Gamora says, her mind jumping to the image of the man’s face. It had been so long since she’d seen him that his appearance is little more than a foggy memory. “I bumped into Adam.”

 

“Adam?” Nebula asks, her brows narrowing. “When? You said recently?”

 

“A few days ago,” Gamora confirms.

 

“What was he doing at Joygod’s?”

 

“Drinking excessively with his friend. Downing mantane caviar like they were Zarg nuts,” Gamora tells her, shifting her weight to get comfortable now that they’re starting up the conversation. “He and his troll-friend picked up our tabs at the tavern that night. He must be loaded. Do you think he might be tapping into Sovereign’s fortune?”

 

That’s a lot of information to unpack. Nebula’s mind is racing.

“We hadn’t heard any word of Adam in over half a decade until today,” Nebula says. “And all of a sudden, we just can’t stop hearing about him.”

 

“How do you mean?” Gamora asks.

 

“We received a message from our contact on Sovereign today– she said he’d landed there. Just decided to pay a visit, all of a sudden.”

 

“Well, yes, it’s his home planet,” Gamora says blankly.

 

“Nobody on Sovereign had heard from him since he left the Guardians,” Nebula tells her. “Not so much as a hint as to where he’d gone.” 

“Interesting,” Gamora replies, simply, as though she doesn’t care quite enough for it to be actually interesting beyond pleasantries.

 

“The team’s going there now,” Nebula says.

 

“What, to Sovereign?” Gamora asks.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Because Adam is there?”

 

“I told them they shouldn’t bother, but you know the foolishness I manage here…” Nebula states, “...I didn’t do much to try and stop them. I knew it wouldn’t do anybody any good to argue. They’ve missed him. He was lost when he went missing.”

 

“Lost, as people who go missing often are,” Gamora chimes in a plain voice. “Well,” Gamora says, shifting her stance again as though a little impatient, and twirling the cue in her hand in a subliminal effort to get Nebula to get to it, and explain the game already, “You should know that he seems to be doing alright for himself. Huh. I felt so bad – one of my guys tried to proposition him – you know the guy who has the thing for shapeshifters? Two rounds in, and my guy starts–”

 

“Wait. Can you say what you mean by that?” Nebula interrupts.

 

Gamora blinks. “Sister, do you not know what a proposition is?” She asks it in a borderline playful tone of voice.

 

“I meant the part about shapeshifting,” Nebula states. She feels a sudden dull ache of dread in her skull. She wants to know if that was a superfluous detail about Gamora’s crewmate, or if it was referencing what Nebula thought it was referencing.

 

“Well, he changed ,” Gamora says, “Adam changed forms while we were at the bar.”

“Changed how?” Her brain is moving a million miles per moment that her sister blankly blinks at her.

 

“Mostly just his skin and hair–” Gamora starts.

 

“ Shit ,” Nebula whisper-yells, tossing her cue aside and starting to rush through the doorway.

 

“What is it?” Gamora asks, some impatience in her voice, following after her. “Nebula–”

 

She reels around to face her sister briefly. “You’re telling me that Adam wasn’t gold when you were talking to him?”

 

“Mostly not, no,” Gamora confirms. “He was at the start. Then he changed.” 

 

Nebula makes a frustrated sound, “Aggh!” She sort of throws her hands half-heartedly and continues storming down the streets of Knowhere. 

 

“What is happening?”

“That’s not Adam Warlock. Team set out for Sovereign hours ago. He could kill them .”

 

“What do you mean? What exactly is the problem here?” Gamora asks. “He changes shapes, and suddenly you think he’s out for blood?”

 

“Essentially, yes.”

 

“But why?”

 

“The problem is that a couple years ago, baby Adam couldn’t control his dark side and people paid the price with their lives,” Nebula states. “And then he left in the wake of slaughtering his own planet’s god in an uncontrollable tantrum.”

 

“He didn’t seem out of control. That whole night–”

 

“You said he wasn’t gold that whole night? So he let that thing out on his own accord?” Nebula asks for clarification of what she’s assumed to be the case.

“I– guess so,” Gamora says, “Yes. But– okay. Slow down.”

“Don’t you tell me to slow down. My daughter is on her way over there.”

 

“If you care that much, and he’s as bad as you say, why did you let her go in the first place?” Gamora asks.

 

“Have you ever tried to tell a Star Child ‘no?’” Nebula answers Gamora’s question with another question, easily. “If that thing hurts a hair on her head–”

 

“Nebs, I spoke to him. He’s not a ‘thing,’” Gamora replies, “There’s no need to be so dramatic about it.”

 

“Oh, so you’re an Adam expert, now? Who’s the one among us who taught him how to tie a fucking shoelace?” Nebula says, seething.

 

“I don’t understand how you of all people can do that,” Gamora chides then, “To go from speaking about him like a child you helped bring up, to referring to him as a ‘thing.’”

 

“Leave it. If you knew what we were dealing with–” Nebula starts.

 

“Enlighten me. What exactly are you dealing with here?” Gamora asks.

 

“Anulax-powered energy vampire,” she says, “With an animate brain implant that has an insatiable appetite for souls . So you bet your ass I’m not slowing down. You go find Kraglin and tell him he’s in charge until I’m back.”

 

“Are you actually going to handle this by yourself?” Gamora asks.

 

“What, do you suddenly feel inclined to come with me?” Nebula asks, turning to face Gamora again, a familiar scowl on her face, the kind that was commonplace when they were younger, but it’s ebbing away overtime to the point where Nebula’s expression almost draws forth a twisted nostalgia from deep within Gamora’s chest. 

 

“Ask me,” Gamora says, “And I might.”

 

“I should, if you’re so buddy-buddy with him, like you say,” Nebula says, her words almost like spitting venom.

 

“Alright. Why are you angry with me?” Gamora finally asks, still trailing through the roads, following Nebula as she walks with a purpose.

 

“Because you could have told me sooner that you saw him,” Nebula states, “You could have called me anytime. But no. You have to mention it casually over a sisterly game of pool , like it was nothing.”

 

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Gamora says, “I didn’t know this was some big thing. And for the record, it wasn’t all that long ago that I saw him at Joygod’s. It was only a few days ago.”

 

“Guardians are a family,” Nebula says. “When in doubt– if you spot someone eating their weight in caviar on a distant pirate’s outpost, you make the call. Whether you have the reason to think you should , or otherwise.”

 

“Noted,” Gamora says. They turn the corner, and she spots the old Guardians ship, which is the target destination of Nebula’s power-walk, apparently. “So. Do you want me to go with you to Sovereign or not?”

 

“That’s fine. Better hope this piece of shit can make the trip and back,” Nebula says, more a verbalized inner monologue than intended to inform Gamora, though it functions both ways. They board the vessel. “Mind the dust. She’s been grounded, sitting here almost a year, since Drax bought that new vessel for my kid’s birthday.”

 

Gamora’s face contorts a little, her frown lines prominent as her nose crinkles, hit with the familiar whiff of Quill’s old ship. “No need to remind me to mind the dust. I remember this ship– it was always filthy.”

 

“You think so?” Nebula asks, “You should’ve seen the one he had before this one.”

 

“I believe it,” Gamora chimes, and brushes her fingertips across a leather seat, then staring at the dusty residue left upon her fingertips.

 

---

 

Adam floats within the waters of Soulworld– the seas that were stocked with life and light, inspired by their visit to the Dolenz system, during festival season.

 

He is surrounded by temperate waters: calm. No mighty waves to disrupt his gentle floating beneath the surface. Yet he feels a disruption shifting the water column around him, disrupting the planktonic flow of the water-constellations lighting up the area around him.

 

Magus dove in after Adam, swimming casually through the water. He mindlessly takes his hand to tug at the band tying his curled white hair away from his face; Adam watches Magus’ newly-freed hair move like wild tendrils, as though the hair has a mind of its own.

 

He offers a wordless, underwater smile to his other half. The smile is reciprocated.

 

And he swims in a circle around Adam, playful enough to indicate that he’s looking for a game. Adam obliges him, and their hands and feet both ignite with energy; they propel themselves through the sea at rapid speeds, chasing one another.

 

Their movement creates a rumbling sound, as though a natural disaster is taking place in Soulworld. Just above them, the displaced water leaps into the sky and crashes back downward once more. 

 

They kick at one another, attempting to slow each other down, to get ahead in the race; they pull each other backward by the ankles and shove and push, until Adam senses they’re rapidly approaching the shoreline, and he grabs Magus by the arm and pulls him along, below him, so he slides roughly on his back onto the sandy shore, the pair re-exposed to Soulworld’s air.

 

Magus laughs hard, the kind of laugh he does where he sort of throws his head back.

 

“I win,” Adam tells him as he hovers above him.

 

“You win.” His laughter simmers down as he stares up at Adam’s face. 

 

It’s moments like these where Adam most readily notices Magus’ features that differ from Adam’s own. The ever-more-prominent grayish freckles on his face, for instance, or the nearly-unnoticeable differences in his nose, or the way his expressions are worn differently from Adam’s own.

 

With the lack of nutritional input, Adam’s appearance did not change while meditating for years. His hair hadn’t grown an inch. It’s something he hadn’t explicitly given much thought to until being up and about again for some time. Magus’ hair, on the other hand, had grown out so long. Being a figment of Adam’s psyche means that his own appearance hardly has to obey the rules of nature.

 

Adam dusts his fingers along Magus’ hair to free it from some of the invading sand. “Look at you. You’re a wreck,” Adam tells him, fondness in his voice. Magus looks back at him with big eyes, and that plain expression he uses when he’s scheming.

 

Sure enough, Magus grabs Adam and playfully yet forcefully pushes his face down into the shoreline, scrambling himself to the side, grabs a handful of sand and tosses it atop Adam’s head. Adam laughs harder than he has in a long time.

 

“And now you’re a wreck to match,” Magus jokes, sprinkling another handful of sand over Adam was Adam spits out a mouth full of sand grits, laughing all the while. As Adam’s hands fuss to attempt to rid his own hair of the sand, Magus places a steadying hand over his. “No need to pretend otherwise. Nobody’s watching.”

 

Adam pauses his action. “I suppose you’re right,” he says. He opts to recline in the warmness of the shoreline for some time; his body is tired regardless. Magus does the same, beside him.

 

“I’m often right.”

 

“You keep telling yourself that.”

 

“You keep believing it,” Magus says, trouble in his voice and his smile, and Adam begins to try to blink away some runaway grains of sand that are falling into his eyes. “Hold still a moment–” He brushes the sand away with his thumb. “That better?”

“Much, thank you.”

 

They stare at one another, faces close for a second. Adam reaches to brush some of the spare dustings of sand and salt that sit among Magus’ freckles.

 

“You’ve been getting a bit of sun,” Adam tells him.

 

“Perhaps more than ever before, in Joygod’s,” Magus says. “Do I still get to go back, like we talked about?”

 

“Soon,” Adam tells him. Magus’ mouth curls into a smile.

 

And in spite of everything this day has brought, the two of them are calm for a while. Moments like these are the very reason that Adam has come to think of his shattered soul as a blessing more than a curse.

 

One of the glowing-bugs they invented after their visit to Joygod’s flies by with a gentle buzz and lands atop the side of Adam’s face. The little creature begins to climb up from his cheek to his temple, to the center of his forehead over the stone, its body glowing like a tiny golden sun all along the way.

 

“It looks like you’ve got a friend here,” Magus states.

 

“Yes,” Adam says, offering his hand to the bug, which crawls onto his fingers. “Come on, then,” he says, holding the bug on his hand in front of both of their faces so he can see it clearly. The thing stares at him as though with wonder, not budging from his fingertips. “You want to fly off?” he asks. “You don’t have to stay here with me–”

 

“I think she wants to stay with you, actually,” Magus tells him, watching the bug. “She likes you.”

 

“Suit yourself,” Adam says, lowering his hand with the bug still clinging to his finger. Why any thing could like him is beyond him, which is a thought he doesn’t verbalize, but Magus hears it loud and clear. He watches the bug as its light flickers on, off. On, off.

 

And Adam sighs, and rolls over slightly so he can look up at the skies.

 

“How are you feeling?”

 

“Like I could sleep another five years and it would never be enough.”

 

“Hm.”

 

“Don’t worry,” Adam reassures, “I won’t.”

 

“I know.” An avian creature squawks, flying overhead. “...I’m sorry you missed it.”

 

He doesn’t need to elaborate further for Adam to know what he’s referring to. “You and me both,” he states. 

 

He didn’t care for the loss of the first parent, didn’t like bearing witness to his mother’s untimely end. There were haunting visions of her passing that plagued both his sleeping and waking lives in his childhood. And the grief was far more potent and raw and fresh when it came to his Mum’s passing. One moment she was there, and the next she was gone, and he did not know how to live with that fact.

 

There’s a disgusting mercy in having been absent for another loved one’s passing– he’ll never have the haunting image of Rocket’s final seconds in his head the way he had with his Mum. Yet he can’t help but feel a great swell of pain over the fact that he was not present for it. At least to say goodbye. Or most importantly to just tell him thank you, to hold his similarly-grieving loved ones.

 

He’s sorry he missed it, too. 

 

That guilt and that hurt has burrowed itself into a pit in Adam’s gut, and it’s a feeling he hasn’t been able to shake since he learned that Rocket had been lost to time. 

 

The loss-sensation, interestingly, replaced a different feeling of hurt from deep within Adam: the kind of feeling that he hasn’t been able to brush away for the life of him in ages. Adam verbalizes his observation: “It’s strange.”

 

“What is?”

 

“I don’t particularly feel hungry anymore. Do you?”

 

“I’m always hungry,” Magus says.

 

“I suppose you’re right,” Adam responds, “...So…you don’t feel that?”

“What?”

 

“The…” he thinks of how to describe it, “Sudden burst of energy.”

 

“Maybe slightly.”

 

“Slightly,” Adam repeats out loud. More than slightly. It was as though Adam hadn’t touched food in a millennia, and suddenly he was sustained. There was something else, too. “And…do you feel the other bit? Right now, I feel as though somebody is cutting into my skull–”

 

“They very well might be. You tried to pull out the stone, remember? Nearly severed its essential connection points–”

 

“No, I wasn’t,” Adam states, turning to Magus with a frown. “Pull out the stone– I didn’t do that at all.”

 

“But you did, Adam. You don’t remember?”

 

Adam thinks. It’s difficult, given the sharp sensation in the center of his head, and the faint, distant sound of drilling and scraping metal tools. “I’m having difficulty remembering very much of today at all, actually.”

 

“Are you, now?”

 

“Yes,” Adam whispers. His eyebrows furrow a little, eyes unblinking as he continues to stare up at the Soulworld skies. “...I think that the Maker was there. He wouldn’t leave me alone.”

 

“Yes. That’s right,” Magus says softly.

 

“...I don’t understand how that could have happened. I thought all this time that I crushed him– that I made him fade away into nothingness, rather than allowing him to manifest his essence into the stone…” Adam says, “...I think that must be why I pulled at the stone. I didn’t like to think that he had a place within it.”

 

“I’ve told you this perhaps a million times, Adam,” Magus says patiently, “You couldn’t be a destroyer even if you wanted. It’s not within your nature.”

 

“Isn’t it, though?”

“Not particularly,” Magus says, “Devourer, perhaps, but not destroyer. You’re a creator . You make . Whether you always intend to or not.”

 

“I simply hadn’t realized that I made place for him in my own mind,” Adam replies, “I feel ill at the thought that he’s become a part of us. And ill for the fact that I didn’t previously realize that to be the case– that I didn’t know he was present enough to speak like that.”

 

“He was cruel to wait for a moment like that,” Magus states, “While you were vulnerable.”

 

Adam thinks about it and remembers, a little more clearly, the last things he experienced outside of Soulworld up until this point. 

 

“You took over the body without my blessing,” Adam says, less of an accusation and more like a simple statement.

 

“I needed to protect the stone,” Magus explains in a slow yet steady voice. “I didn’t do anything else. Do you trust that about me?”

 

“Yes,” Adam says. “Of course I do.”

 

“...Thank you.”

 

They watch as the light-bug finally takes off into flight, dashing through the air away from them. Adam’s newly free hand reaches to touch the aching stone on his forehead.

 

“I’m sorry. I hate to think of it causing you discomfort,” Magus says. “Do you want me to–” have a turn in the body, he’s going to offer.

 

“No, you shouldn’t,” Adam states, “We’re on Sovereign. It’s for the best we stay golden, for our sakes and theirs.”

 

“If you insist,” Magus says.

 

“I do insist.”

 

“Alright, then.”

 

They stay, choosing ignorance as on Sovereign, the stone is surgically re-secured into its spot in their brain, as Dr. Zota hums carefree yet focused under his breath as his hands work. The scientist hadn't even needed to go out of his way to put them to sleep; they'd done it of their own accord.

 

---

Ayesha’s boy is much more at peace now, with his skull cut open, than he was when Zota had gathered him off of the ground. He’d like to ask him, at some point, what the devil he thought he was doing when he managed to dislocate the soul stone. There is a time and a place for asking questions of that nature; Adam had been shivering violently as though electrocuted when Zota had first come across him. The pair didn’t exchange a single word. Zota isn’t certain he processed that he was there.

 

The stone hasn’t been shifted so severely that this will be a complicated, nor a long, procedure. Zota didn’t even call for a second set of hands to aid him. He will not be needing any breaks; he will not need the assistance, nor want less capable hands on his offspring’s head to begin with.

 

He works steady and capable, and hums.

 

There is a familiar sound of a ship landing just outside the Citadel. 

 

“I think your friends have arrived,” Zota tells him, his only acknowledgment of the ship-sounds and the angry Sovereign citizens, unwelcoming towards the strangers. "It sounds as though they're causing quite the riff-raff, aren't they?" His hands continue to work at his own pace. If Adam can choose to ignore Zota's surgical tools, then Zota can choose to ignore a little ruckus outside the walls of his workplace.

Notes:

In case anybody jumped into this one without reading the first, here are a few potentially helpful points established from the first story in the series:

-Dr. Zota was Adam's biological parental donor; he had an indiscernible but clearly romantic relationship to Ayesha. They had a falling out over creative differences in Adam's design, namely the presence of the Magus.
-While their closeness, codependency, and intimacy is a huge theme in both the first story and this one, I have no romantic intentions behind the portrayal of Adam and Magus.
-In this variation, the Soul Stone is an ancient artifact that the Sovereign elite invested in after the decimation of Thanos, to ensure extra protection for their civilization. The Stone itself houses its own sentience, but most significantly to the story it houses the sentience of those who inhabit it- the souls it has consumed, and other aspects of Adam's identity.

Thank :)

Chapter 7: Truth.

Summary:

Haya investigates her new state-of-being. Meanwhile, the Guardians land on Sovereign.

Notes:

This chapter is slightly longer than what's typical; I tried breaking it into two parts but ended up preferring the content all being in one update.

“Are you afraid to see him?” Phyla asks, not fully turning her face to ask the question.

 

“I am Groot.”

 

“Yes, I agree,” Phyla responds, adjusting her posture in her seat, her hand fiddling with her hair. It’s only natural that the nerves should kick in.

 

Groot finishes landing the vessel onto a plot in the Sovereign Cosmodrome– where off-planet ships are meant to land during visits. It’s a smaller portion of land than what might be appropriate proportionally to the size of the planet itself. Sovereign’s main rock alone is enormous; the planet in its entirety is larger than some smaller star systems combined.

 

Intergalactic travelers are rare here. Generally unwelcome. There are some resources, such as the Cosmodrome itself, which were designed to accommodate non-Sovereign people during their stays. There is not even a single hotel open for tourism. 

 

Guests are meant to register with the elite people and get clearance from security staff. They are meant to be monitored at all times, and they are expected to sleep within their space vessels where they’re parked at the Cosmodrome. Sometimes, travelers are invited personally to stay with host families or at the Citadel, as per the elite’s request.

 

Phyla’s contact in all of this, Haya, is considered an “acting Sovereign elite.” She gave the clearance, and the instruction of how to arrive undisturbed. 

 

In spite of that, an unidentifiable item of food finds its way splattered onto the ship’s windshield. Phyla jumps a little, startled. From the way it had cracked, the projectile must have been some kind of egg.

 

The egg splatter is accompanied by a voice: “Get lost, filth. Sovereign is not a tourist destination,” the muffled shout of one Sovereign man can be heard just outside of their vessel, standing on the landing strip of the Cosmodrome, as though he’s been waiting hours to greet them in this manner.

 

“What a lovely people.” The sarcasm arises from Heather, the young lady seated beside Phyla. She’s painted intricate green eye makeup and black lipstick onto her face this morning. Not one for subtle, simple looks, with her fully shaved head, shaved eyebrows to make room for prominent painted-on ones, and long dangly earrings that sparkle dramatically when they catch the light just right.

 

“Have you read up on Sovereign much, Heather? Because if you haven’t…I’m afraid you’re in for a bit of a surprise,” Phyla tells her.

 

“I know enough,” Heather states, her spare hand fiddling with an earring in the shape of a crescent moon. Her other hand is busy resting on her girlfriend’s armrest atop her hand; ever since she and Phyla started seeing one another, Heather’s hand has been essentially glued there. Keeps her grounded.

 

“I am Groot,” their third-wheel– Phyla’s surrogate brother– chimes.

 

“You think?” Phyla asks.

 

“I am Groot,” he confirms. And he completes her parking job, turning off the ship’s engine, and rising up from the pilot’s seat. Massive as Groot has grown to be, he has to duck to not hit his head on the roof of the ship’s cockpit.

 

The heckler Sovereign man can still be vaguely heard outside, waiting for them.

 

“These people aren’t known for being aggressive, are they?” Heather asks, less out of worry and mostly out of sheer curiosity.

 

“Verbally, yes. Physically?” Phyla says, “They try not to get involved with anything that could dent their pretty skin. They aren’t known for fighting, or keeping weapons on their ground. Even the feistiest of Sovereign shouldn’t be a real threat to any of us.”

 

“I am Groot.”

 

“Yes, and that too,” Phyla says.

 

The three of them gather their personal belongings; Phyla puts the Zune into Heather’s satchel. She lifts Blurp– their little stowaway– into her grasp and carries his little fuzzy body under one arm. They deboard the ship and Groot locks it behind them with a key fob.

 

“Fucking impure–” the Sovereign man approaches to begin his insults. “You filthy beings with filthy genes. Only those who are plucked from the Maker’s Garden are valuable enough to walk these sacred grounds–”

 

“Oh, don’t be so rude, Mr. Wallace,” a Sovereign woman states, entering through the space on the left. “How very antiquated of you. Have you not learned that our people have outgrown such behavior?” She speaks bluntly and wears a minimally-expressive face, but there is a glimmer of both humor and politeness upon it. “Besides,” the woman says, staring at Phyla, “It seems our Warlock’s houseguest is among the Maker’s final creations. Unless I am mistaken, of course. You are a Star Child, ma’am?”

 

“I was, yes,” Phyla says plainly. Star Children grow up eventually; they grow out of their name. “We’ve come to see Adam.”

 

“I’m well aware of your intentions here, yes. Lady Haya kept me informed. The Warlock is currently among his close ones in the Citadel,” the Sovereign woman tells her. “I will alert them of your arrival, if they have not perceived your presence already.”

 

“Thank you,” Phyla tells her. “May I know your name?”

 

“If you would like it,” the Sovereign woman says. “Barbara. Chair of Foreign Affairs on Sovereign. You’ll have to forgive the brash ways of our commoners like Mr. Wallace– it is not often we see visitors here. Rarer yet that they are present for a mere visit, rather than a global crisis of some sort. The Sovereign people sometimes have difficulty trusting strangers and their…” her eyes meet both Groot and Heather now, “...Strange forms and stranger-yet ways and customs.”

 

“I’m well aware of your culture’s hesitations to new company,” Phyla states. “Thank you for…accommodating us. It meant the world that we received notice of Adam’s arrival here.”

 

“I would caution you against calling him simply ‘Adam’ to common folk, child,” the woman, Barbara, says, “You are in territory that considers him the divine Sovereign being. He is god.”

 

A swirl of a million thoughts passes through Phyla’s mind, as though an overcast for a storm, when rain just barely misses. 

 

The sweet, clumsy child that Phyla remembers him to be does not read to her as ‘god.’ Strong as he was, he was Adam to them. Their Adam. 

 

The boy who learned to braid Phyla’s hair– who would hog the Zune to listen to Adrian Belew’s music on loop, who would ask far too many questions and laugh far too little and dance far too stiffly. He was the person who would pull all-nighters to speak to Phyla when she was restless and afraid of nightmares.

 

And they call him “god” here. Not by his name.

 

She wonders whether that’s what he prefers or not.

 

Phyla had been spared from seeing Adam at his very worst– save for the first time his stone activated in their fight with the tyrant Autolycus. She’d witnessed that much and seen, firsthand, how distressing it was. Her uncle Kraglin had shielded her and brought her home safe to Nebula during that whole endeavor. 

 

She’d only seen Adam one more time since then, on the day before he slaughtered the High Evolutionary. She was young, then. Small. Now, Phyla is nearly sixteen years old– and Adam would be considered even older yet. He would have jumped from Sovereign infant to Sovereign adult by the time he met his first birthday. Phyla’s changed so much since. She can only imagine how Adam must be.

 

---

 

Haya wakes in a bed, unsure of where she is, except for the fact that she hasn’t left the planet.

 

Not all worlds value the fine things that Sovereign does. Every bedsheet on the planet, for elite and commonfolk alike, are made from a unique silk, with an luxuriously high thread count. That’s how Haya was sure without the shadow of a doubt, from the moment she wakes, this bed is her peoples’.

 

Familiarity doesn’t change the fact that she hasn’t the slightest idea how she got to be here.

 

Where was she before this? There is a dense fog over her mind, and a potent ache in her skull, throbbing as though her heart has migrated to the place just above her eyes.

 

“Hello, Godling,” a male voice says above her; Zota. Once again, she doesn’t have a doubt in her mind who addresses her, but she’s puzzled by the manner that he does it. 

 

Godling?

 

Soft spoken and gentle, uncharacteristically so– and yet it feels too loud to her given her piercing head pain.

Zota walks across the room and the mattress warps under his weight as he sits at the edge of the bed, resting a hand onto the side of her arm. 

 

He pauses. “Or in your current state, I suppose ‘Goddess’ may be more appropriate,” he tells her, a humorous tone in his voice as though to say, huh , who ever could have guessed this?

 

“My apologies,” Zota adds briefly. “We haven’t met.”

 

When the man leans in to get a clearer look at her face, his face falls rapidly. He feels as though he has been smacked in the face with a kind of hurt he didn’t know was possible. In Zota’s offspring’s current state, he– she – strongly resembles her mother Ayesha.

 

“Dr. Zota?” his child– no, the woman– calls for him in recognition. Her body is slowed down with exhaustion, and her words are jumbled as they form in her mouth. 

 

The sharp and awful pain at the center of her forebrain remains. Even after being awake for a few moments, she hasn’t grown accustomed to it. She can’t bring herself to move from her place, buried in the bed. It’s as though someone had sewed her up after putting heavy rocks inside all her limbs. 

 

She exhales, evidently in pain. Zota brushes the long-ish hair out of the way of her face and she blinks her eyes open to see him more clearly.

 

“It’s quite alright,” Zota mutters, at a loss of what more can be said.

 

“...Did I collapse?” she asks him.

 

“You did.”

 

“Did I hit my head?” she says then. “It hurts.”

 

“Yes, I imagine it does,” he says. “And I imagine you did hit your head as well. Your body sustained no severe damage. Nothing lasting. Though I’ll ask, what happened that severed your stone’s connective tissues–”

 

“Stone?” she asks.

 

“Perhaps you are not the right one to ask,” he states. “Do you mind if I speak to another of you? I’d like to find out what went wrong, so I can be of assistance–”

 

“No, I don’t understand,” she says. Her brain finally processes the room that she can see over Zota’s shoulder. This is Adam’s room. “How did I get to be here?”

 

“I brought you here after your visit to my hospital,” he tells her.

 

“Why not to my room? I don’t understand…”

 

“I see,” Zota says with a frown. “I think I understand– you must be brand-new, aren’t you? Newly-formed?”

 

“What does that mean?” she asks, a waver in her voice. 

 

Zota has known her for ages, since she was first born. She’s so confused as to why he’s speaking to her this way, like they haven’t been acquainted, like she’s “brand-new.” 

 

Her breathing begins to pick up a little from the mixture of confusion, and hurt from her skull. “What’s going on here?” she asks.

 

“Oh, darling one, you don’t need to be upset. There’s no need to feel any level of panic,” Zota tells her gently, resting a hand on the side of her face. “Just slow down a moment, and take deep breaths–” 

 

The fact that he, of all people, has referred to her of all people as “darling one” is jarring to say the least.

 

Something is very wrong about this picture. All of it.

 

“Dr. Zota?” she asks, voice wavering with a bit of fear.

 

“Sh. Just slow down,” he croons, “And wait for it to pass. It’s quite alright. There’s no need to be upset…” he repeats, “We’ll let you drift off, now, so I can speak to Adam, please?”

 

She doesn’t understand in the slightest what he could mean by this. But she is too pained and exhausted to not oblige his request to lay there, to breathe, slow down, as Zota smooths her hair as though encouraging calmness, sleep.

 

---

 

There is some sort of warping feeling in her veins, and a strange tingle on every inch of her body as though she’s made of static electricity. 

 

She doesn’t recall falling asleep, but she wakes up once more, far less fatigued, in a different and liminal place. 

She’s splayed out on the ground as though she’d been dropped there, on some kind of sandy shoreline, where she can hear the gentle waters crashing near her feet. An ocean . Without prying herself up off the ground quite yet, she turns her head towards it to view the water.

 

Beautiful. Perhaps beyond comparison. The way that the water sparkles in the light from the gorgeous skies above– it’s unnaturally bright and pigmented. The ocean appears so alive, so organic, that it might as well have its own pulse.

 

She feels a very strong sense of loneliness here. That loneliness is cut through like a knife by the voice of someone nearby:

 

“When I said to stay ,” he says, and Haya turns her view away from the sea to face its source. It looks like Adam. His flesh isn’t golden. His hair is long and white. “This wasn’t precisely what I had meant. But I see it’s a tad too late to make that clarification, isn’t it?”

 

She recognizes where she is, now. It’s the place with the swirling skies, where she’d met her Maker.

 

Right. That had happened. She’d nearly forgotten that encounter.

 

“Oh, I’m back here,” she says, scrambling to support her upper body weight, to sit half-upright, glancing around at her surroundings. “This is so peculiar… where are we? ”

 

“We,” he says, “Are in the quiet place where Adam goes when the outside world is unsuitable.”

 

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asks, hopelessness in her voice. Every answer she’s gotten– from the Maker, from Zota, and now from this gentleman– has been so damn cryptic. 

 

She sits fully upright now, folding her legs and properly facing the man before her. The sand shifts beneath her, its texture gritty but not entirely uncomfortable. Her fingertips dance along the surface of the earth below her, exploring its many textures. How fascinating. 

 

This place is far different from Sovereign, from anywhere. Her full-body weakness is mostly absent in this place; she can only barely feel it. But she’s more than capable of experiencing other vivid sensations, from the salty breeze blowing north, to the delicate grains on the beach.

 

“It means you’re in new territory now, Sovereign,” the other man– Magus– tells Haya. “You’re in my home.” 

 

“What?” she asks; everything is still so unclear.

 

“And while we’re here…while we’re face to face…you should know that my home has rules ,” Magus continues, “Well, one rule, really. The most important one.”

 

“And what might that be?”

 

“You don’t bother Adam,” Magus says, “You keep your distance from him.”

 

“Bother Adam– how?” she asks.

 

“We’re in his mind,” Magus tells her, “And if he finds out you’re here, it will be…detrimental. You should keep away from him so he won’t find out. At least for now.”

 

“In his mind? What could you possibly mean by that?” 

 

Magus pokes the stone in the center of his forehead as indication. Her own hand travels to that spot on her forehead; she is startled to find a stone of her own protruding from the center of her head.

 

What is this? The foreign object is lodged into her flesh as though it had always been there, as if it were meant to be a piece of her face. It has sensation when she touches it; the stone can feel her fingertips on it. Can feel the stray grain of sand that she’d accidentally carried upward towards it.

 

But none of this makes sense. Has she somehow gained a stone like Magus has, like Adam does?

 

“It seems you’ve joined the fray,” Magus tells her, as though he can read her thoughts loud and clear, “and become one of us.”

 

“Us?”

 

“Adam,” he tells her.

 

“Adam?”

 

“You’re pretty fond of repeating everything that I say, aren’t you?” he chides. “That ought to make for a very fun experience living together,” he adds, a sarcastic dullness in his voice, almost a lament.

 

“Living together?” she asks.

 

“My point stands,” he states. 

 

“But– why. How–?” she starts, then the words don’t leave her mouth.

 

“I think you got entangled in the mess when the stone was displaced,” he tells her. “I didn’t cause this, so it must have been by mistake, right?” It was clearly a rhetorical question, because he speaks before she can get a word in. “It’s such a shame, really. I believe he actually cared for you.”

 

“Do you mean to tell me,” Haya says, trying to make sense of Magus’ vague words, “And correct me if I’m wrong–”

 

“Oh, I will,” he adds.

“-I’ve found my way into the stone in Adam’s head?”

 

“You have,” he says. Her stomach flip-flops. “It happens.”

 

“But how?” she says, “How did it happen? I don’t understand any of this–”

 

“Trust me, you’ve made your lack of comprehension very clear to me,” Magus tells her, “And unfortunately, I’m growing tired of hearing of it. I’m sure all of your questions will be answered, all in good time–” 

 

His words stop. Magus realizes that he’s speaking to her in a similar way that Adam would typically speak to him . All in good time. All in good time. It was something of a promise when it came out of Adam’s mouth. When Magus said it, he meant it more dismissively than anything else.

 

But hearing the words aloud, even from his own mouth, turns Magus’ thoughts to Adam once more.

 

He can already see it now, in his mind’s eye– the soul crushing emotion Adam is bound to feel if and when he realizes he’s caused Haya harm. He was already upset, already hurting. It’s just wrong.

 

If Adam were here, speaking with Haya, he would begin to offer her comfort and apology and guidance and closeness. He’d opened his arms to Magus, when they’d first met; there is no doubt in Magus’ mind that Adam would put anything and everything aside to ensure that Haya was alright here in Soulworld.

 

That all sounds, to Magus, like an awful waste of their time. What’s done is done.

 

“...Would you mind getting lost before Adam returns to me?” Magus asks. 

 

“Getting…lost?” Haya asks.

 

“I’m asking you to get away from me. Adam likes to be near my side, and as I’ve said before, it would be bad for his well-being to see you here now.”

 

“...This is so much,” Haya whispers, trying to process everything. “If Adam is here , I want to be beside him…He’s only just learned of some terrible loss, and I would like to be present for him.” She makes eye contact with Magus. “You– we spoke. Right? You and me, just before…it happened?” she asks. “You wanted me there with you, too…You told me you needed me to stay.”

 

He blinks at her. “It wasn’t our intention to kill you.”

 

“Is that what this is?” she asks, “...I’ve been killed?”

 

It’s a harrowing thought. Sovereign were not designed with death particularly in mind. Though they could pass away, they typically didn’t. Had little reason to.

 

“They call a proper grave marker a ‘head stone’ for a reason,” Magus jokes. “...The stone was the one who took action against you. Your…sense of being was stolen from your body. It resides here, now, instead of residing in a body. If you call that death, then I would understand completely.”

 

She pauses. “...So I am dead, but my spirit survived?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And I live inside of the stone from this point forward?”

“You’re getting it.”

 

“And you don’t want Adam to know that I’m here–” she starts.

 

“Your presence in Soulworld would become a reminder to Adam that he has reason to be untrusting of himself,” he tells her, and she mouths the word Soulworld to herself, processing it, “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think it would be best, to protect him, if you stayed as far away as possible.”

 

“Where am I meant to go?” Haya asks.

 

“Anywhere that he isn’t,” he says.

 

“I– wait. If I live in the stone…was I dreaming it, or was I really speaking to Dr. Zota before?”

 

“That wasn’t a dream. You were in the skin,” Magus tells her, “You took control of the skin and spent time living in the body, in the real world.”

 

“And that’s what you did, too, when Adam transformed into you,” she says, trying to make sense of it all.

“Yes.”

 

“...I think I understand now. Thank you,” she says, “You’ve actually been of great help to me in all this mess. I am grateful to you.”

 

He makes a face of distaste; it’s odd that she’s thanking him for anything at all.

 

“You really are sweet by nature for a Sovereign, aren’t you?” he states his observation out loud. 

 

Her memory drifts to a time where she’d made the same statement about a younger Adam, when he was recently born:

 

I am not upset. It is just that you are quite kind by nature, aren’t you? Quite sweet.

 

Sweet?

 

Good. Thoughtful…Generally kind-hearted.

 

Oh. Thank you.

 

It was not meant as a compliment.

 

I am sorry. Is it a bad thing to be good and kind?

 

Not actually. I think they’re very good things. I just find it interesting.

 

What’s interesting?

 

That you of all people are good and kind.

 

This man in front of her, this Magus– the man who never introduced himself, but she just naturally knew his name like it was penciled into her memory– is far more like the type of being that Haya had initially expected from Adam. Magus’ eyes are not without spirit and defiance, for instance, but there is something cold about him. Hard, like armor. Not explicitly unkind, but not inherently kind, either. Living weaponry, like the Warlock was designed to be.

 

Her thoughts are interrupted as an avian creature squawks loudly overhead; she turns to face it, and takes in the look of the rest of her surroundings once more.

 

She becomes grateful once again that Adam, of all people, was good and kind, even if unconventional. If she was doomed to spend the rest of her existence within the brainspace of somebody foul, it would be a far more gruesome fact to come to terms with. Adam’s brain is beautiful to her. She doesn’t particularly feel afraid.

 

“...This place feels like a decent one to spend one’s time,” she states, and in spite of everything. 

 

“Adam loves it,” Magus says, his own gaze following Haya’s to look at their shared surroundings.

 

“I’m sure that he does,” Haya mutters, her hands feeling the many textures of the earth surrounding her again. Adam always loved to feel new things– the rougher, raised seams of stitchwork on fabrics, the delicate woven laces or smooth metallic wall trimmings. He was constantly seeking out touch. 

 

Having a mindspace where he is capable of feeling, like this, may be the most characteristically Adam thing that Haya can imagine.

 

“You should go,” Magus reminds her, raising to his feet. He even extends his hand to help her stand, “Before he gets back to me.”

 

When she reaches for him, her hand falls right through his hand as though he were nothing.

 

The pair stare, puzzled.

 

“...Interesting,” he says, face twitching into an odd expression. “...You can feel your surroundings as though they were here. But you can’t make contact with me…It’s as if you and I are phantoms to one another.”

 

She just keeps staring at him.

 

“...What?” he asks, finally. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

 

She’s looking at him that way because she had felt him, in a strange sort of way. When her hand had glided through his, she had felt this awful sensation, as though she were in proximity with someone capable of terrible things .

 

Her nerves spike and her insides churn as though she were bearing witness to a nasty fight or some kind of tragedy before her. What is it about this Magus that evokes Bad?

 

She can’t try to deny the sensation she received from attempting to make contact with him. But he hasn’t done anything. He’s just standing there– she’s in his home space– she shouldn’t retaliate his cruelty even if she wanted to, because he hasn’t done anything at all.

 

“I’ve just realized that I’m dead,” she states in half-truth. Of course that fact is jarring to her– her life is over. Yes. But she really doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that she feels suddenly frightened of Magus’ presence.

 

“...Strange feeling, isn’t it?” he asks. She detects a certain level of sympathy in the comment.

 

“Are you?” she asks him. “Dead?”

 

“In a way,” he answers. 

 

As much as she’s suddenly filled with new questions for him, she finds that she doesn’t particularly like him enough to ask them.

 

“...Right,” she says. “I suppose I’ll be seeing you.” 

 

And she gets up and brushes the sand from her and walks off into the edge of the forest that begins just along the shoreline. 

 

She does not run, but she also does not turn to look back at Magus. There is a frown on her face that just won’t waver.

Is a bad feeling enough reason to believe someone is inherently evil?

 

---

 

Sovereign is a gorgeous place.

 

That much, Phyla should have been able to guess without having been here before. Their entire culture was originally designed as an aesthetic experiment. Every building is constructed to some level of what they consider “perfect.”

 

They pass a small marketplace, a jeweler’s building, and a row of Sovereign homes. None of the structures– homes included– appear cozy or organically blend into their environment. Still, they’re pretty nonetheless. 

 

There’s a hum of loud noise in the air– people hollering and some kind of a chant in the far distance. Some sort of big-group gathering.

 

Whatever is happening, every person they pass seems satisfied with their lives, regardless if they appear to be at work or leisure. Surprisingly, only about half of passing citizens give Phyla and the others strange looks. (Those who do seem more confused about Groot or Blurp than anything else).

 

At one point, Phyla and Heather both see one woman walk by– a young-ish looking person for Sovereign standards– donning a mohawk and pointed, winged eyeliner. She makes a “rock-on” hand gesture to Heather, as though complimenting her on her own look.

 

“...I thought the Sovereign were–” Heather started.

 

“Liberated,” Phyla interrupts. “They’re liberated.”

 

“I was going to say that I thought they were more stuck up than this,” Heather continues. “I never could have imagined that this would be what it was like, here.”

 

“‘Liberated’ is an interesting way to put it, Ms– what’s your name?” Barbara asks.

 

“Vell,” Phyla tells her.

 

“Ms Vell,” she continues. Her face turns to reveal a strange expression– her mouth forming a thin line as though masking distaste. “You’ve arrived on a particularly…’rowdy’ day in our culture. The Warlock’s return is recent. They’ll be holding a celebratory mass.”

 

“I am Groot?” Groot asks.

 

“What kind of mass?” Phyla asks, translating for him. She’d ask the same question regardless.

 

“As in the kind that gathers in the Church,” Barbara explains, her hand outstretching to indicate the large, golden building to their left. 

 

It’s a big building; a tall one. The roof is a sculpture, like a theatrical face mask. There is a horde of Sovereign gathering there, filing in one at a time. They’re all dressed extravagantly and bizarre, none exactly alike.

 

Heather squints and then her eyes widen upon realizing that the “blockade” she thought she was seeing was actually rows upon rows of Sovereign people, standing perfectly still in prayer.

 

“Oh, wow,” Heather mutters under her breath.

 

“This is atypical of our culture, to all gather at the exact same time,” Barbara tells them. “Like I said before: it’s not every day that god comes home to us. I would be there myself, if I were not serving the Warlock by bringing you to the Citadel.”

 

“I am sorry to bring you away from your rituals on such a special day to your people,” Phyla tells her.

 

“Do not apologize,” Barbara says, “It’s my duty to fulfill. I am happy to do it.”

 

There’s something comforting about that– learning that the woman isn’t unhappy to be in the company of the non-Sovereign Guardians. That was something that had worried Groot in particular, beforehand. He hadn’t loved his last visit here when he came to Sovereign with Rocket.

 

As the city’s center, the Citadel is impossible to miss. It’s the pointed building arranged in a circle, located just beyond the religious structure where the people are crowding. Because of its location, they have to approach the church to get to their destination.

 

The nearer they grow, the louder and more prominent the chant of the people becomes:

 

“We worship the truth, it is good,” one woman says as though giving a military address to the crowd. She projects her voice loud enough without the need of an amplifier.

 

“We have faith that we all have a soul,” the crowd replies to the woman.

 

“We have faith in our spirit and worth,” the woman yells.

 

They reply, “We have faith in the glory of life.”

 

“We have faith in resilient people.”

 

“We have faith in the strength of our thoughts.”

 

“We have faith in the things that we see.”

 

“We have faith that the Maker is gone.”

 

“We have faith that the future is ours.”

“We worship the truth, it is god.”

 

By the time they’ve completed the call-and-response portion of the prayer, Phyla, Heather, Groot and Blurp are quite close to the church itself. The front door is wide open.

 

The individual leading the prayer is among the crowds outside of the church. She makes herself clear now among the crowd, on top of a platform with her hands raised upwards in praise;

 

“Be freed now from the lies of creation, the lures to perfection which led us to sell our souls captive to the one who sought to destroy us. We will not fall victim to the burden of purpose,” she shouts, “This here is the most profound, most universal truth we will ever know and embrace.”

 

Heather takes a few steps to her right to attempt to peek her head through the open doorway to the church.

 

“I wouldn’t step much closer if I were you,” Barbara warns, and Phyla and the others’ attention turn to her. “I wouldn’t go within the church.”

 

“Are they…among those unwelcoming of outsiders?” Heather asks. “It’s just that this bunch seems friendlier than the others towards us–”

 

“It isn’t the folks gathered outside that are the problem, in my book,” Barbara explains, “There’s a group gathered in prayer within the walls of the church. The first few generations of Sovereign are something of religious fanatics. They say that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” she says. “Perhaps it is kindest if I leave it at that.”

 

“Do the older people still worship the Maker?” Phyla asks, lowering her voice so the Sovereign surrounding her have less of a chance of hearing her mention the High Evolutionary.

 

“I am Groot,” Groot adds.

 

“He’s wondering if this chant is some sort of protest,” Phyla tells Barbara, “Or if the people inside would protest the things being chanted out here…”

 

“I wouldn’t say it’s protest in either direction,” Barbara states. “It’s true that some of the Sovereign will not deviate from their Maker. Others converted, and decided to devote their zealousness to the Warlock instead.”

 

“In what way?” Phyla asks. “How do they worship him? As a…creator? A savior?”

 

“A bit of both,” Barbara explains, “They say he is the reincarnation of the very first sentient life, if you believe in that sort of thing.”

 

“I am Groot.”

 

“He asked, ‘do you?’” Phyla tells her. “Do you believe that’s what Adam is?” Barbara had said that she’d be taking part in this religious ritual, if she wasn’t working at this time.

 

“I don’t think it matters much what anyone believes,” Barbara admits. “The Warlock saved our hides, all of us, on this world and many others. He acts warm and kind towards all he meets. He is the product of two of the greatest people to walk our planet, and he holds the powers of the universe itself in his grasp, should he ever choose to utilize it. He has earned his title as god. They worship him. Even when he was gone, they kissed the very ground he walked on. I cannot bear to blame them for the extent that they pray to him. If he is not good, I’m afraid we’ve all lost already…That’s the reason I pray. But that’s just my own perspective.”

 

“...He’s my brother,” Phyla says. “Mine and Groot’s. You can imagine that it’s strange for us to hear, and to see, people gathering in ritual on his behalf.”

 

“From what I can understand about the Warlock, he feels the same way,” Barbara says, which is of comfort to Phyla in an odd way. It’s nice to know he doesn’t obsess over his status here. “He is patient with their devotion. I don’t get the impression that he understands what to make of it.”

 

“Have you met him personally?” Phyla asks.

 

“Very little,” Barbara tells her. “Not in the way you claim to know him, by any means. Though his mother and I were close colleagues.”

 

“Can I ask you something about her?” Phyla asks.

 

“You can ask away. I suppose my willingness to provide an answer will depend on the question,” Barbara says.

 

“What would she think of all this?” Phyla asks. “His mother.”

 

“The ritual worship?” Barbara clarifies.

 

“Yes,” Phyla says.

 
“Ayesha was among the most devoted to her Maker,” Barbara says. “She’d hate the blasphemy of it all. But Ayesha loved her child and her people far more than that malevolent god, by the time she’d reached the end of her life’s road. At least some part of her would be very pleased, I’d say– even proud.”

 

---

 

“You know I gave you flesh and organs for a reason? Could’ve made you inorganic, if we really wanted. But we made you into one of us intentionally.” 

 

Zota speaks to his progeny as Adam blinks awake. His spirit feels like it’s been poured back into his body; he stretches a little, becoming accustomed to his surroundings.

 

“Fuck,” Adam mutters under his breath, for no singular, particular reason. 

 

Zota makes a sound that might have been a chuckle. “It’s not very comfortable, is it? Neglecting each and every one of your needs tends to do that to a living thing– tends to wear them down until they’re in a rough state. It appears you spent some time, recently, quite malnourished, for instance. A little gaunt, a bit of loss of your muscle mass. Lethargy, I imagine. You probably just can’t get enough sleep for the life of you. Is that right?”

 

“How the hell did I get here?” Adam asks, his brain feeling like it’s been sliced into, since it has.

 

“I brought you,” Zota tells him. “I figured your own bed would be a more comfortable place for us to talk. The last time I spoke to you in my infirmary, you attempted to bash my face in. Remember that?”

 

Adam’s response is a miserable groan as his hand finds his face.

 

Zota says, “Yes. Well, I should hope you’ve done some growing up since then, considering you haven’t been a child for a long while. As I was saying before, I understand very well– better than anybody– your remarkable resilience and your incredible ability to survive a variety of impossible circumstances. However, as the man in charge of many of those design elements of your anatomy, it would be irresponsible of me to spare you the lecture.”

 

“What are you droning on about?”

 

“You are not an abstract concept,” Zota says, “You are not a disembodied god. I’ll say it again, because it seems you need reminding of that fact: you have a body . You actually need to be feeding it what it needs. Do I make myself clear?”

 

“I don’t need anything,” Adam grumbles dully in response.

 

“Is that so?” Zota asks. He isn’t yelling at him, but his voice reads as explicitly unhappy. Adam doesn’t care for it. “Is that why you’ve spent all your time doing fuck-all, depriving yourself of life sustaining resources?”

 

“Stop talking so loud, my head hurts,” Adam’s words come out sharper to match Zota’s own lecturing tone.

 

“I’m sure it does,” Zota states, “That’s bound to happen, what, with half a decade of oxygen deprivation and severed neural matter in your skull. What the heavens did you do to manage to pull the stone out of its position? You could have done a great deal of damage– the kind of damage not easily overcome. Even for you. You’re lucky that the harm was not so drastic.”

 

“I don’t know how or why I did it,” Adam says. “It just happened.”

 

“That sort of brute force doesn’t ‘just happen,’” Zota scolds. “You can’t just claim that this was some sort of accident.”

 

“It was,” Adam argues. 

 

“Were you attempting to pull it out of your head?” Zota pries, tensely.

 

“I was attempting to shut him up ,” Adam states, slowing his latter words for emphasis. 

 

He’s awake and aware enough now that the ebbing and flowing feeling of grief for Rocket has returned, full-fledged. His heart pounds awfully in his chest and his throat feels dry.

 

Fuck. 

 

He wants nothing more than to sit in silence for a moment, the way he’d grown so accustomed to in his time spent on Soulworld. Quietness is a good place to feel grief.

 

But unfortunately, his progenitor is not completed with his line of questioning.

 

“Who? The Magus?” Zota asks, in response to the cryptic “him” that Adam had referenced.

 

“The High Evolutionary.”

 

Zota’s face falls. “...He was speaking to you?” he asks, his prominent brows shifting.

 

“Very loudly. Very…horribly,” Adam tells him. “He crept in on me while I was attempting to mourn, and I couldn’t bear it. I must have pulled at the stone out of instinct to quiet him.”

 

“...I didn’t know you would be able to hear him in your head,” Zota states.

 

“You don’t know plenty of things,” Adam says. He’s had a bitterness towards Zota ever since their very first meeting. 

 

It was his bloody idea to give him the soul stone to begin with; this is all his fault. All of it.

 

“Yes,” Zota replies. “I’m well aware that I’m not omniscient. I could never pretend to be.” A pause. “I didn’t know your victims would stay with you, even in the event they were unwanted. I am…also unaware of exactly how you went about taking the volatile-god’s life. But I know that they upset you. Greatly enough that you left the place that you called home. And I know that this…reunion which is about to take place…cannot be easy for you.”

 

Adam finally meets Zota’s eyes. The lecture-voice is gone. 

 

“Are they here?” Adam asks.

 

“Yes,” Zota tells him. The lecture voice is gone. “Your Guardians have arrived. I wanted to have this word with you before sending for them. It is clear to me they were unpleased by your murder of the High Evolutionary. If this is the case, then I’m sure they never told me that they were proud of what you’d done.”

 

“Of course not–”

 

“I am,” Zota says, “I am abundantly sure that I’ve never been prouder in the whole of my existence, to learn that you’d done what you had,” Zota tells him. “I wanted you to know that somebody was proud, in case the Guardians do not have that same warm regard towards you. That is all.”

 

A long beat. Their eyes, identical to one another, are glaring at one another directly now.

 

“Considering you left them, I imagine they had a very different response to your actions,” Zota says.

 

“Yes,” Adam states plainly, “They did.”

 

“For what it’s worth, I am regretful to hear that you haven’t been freed from that monster,” Zota says, “If I’d known that, I believe I would have found another means of…empowering you.”

 

“It’s a little late for regret,” Adam states.

“Yes,” Zota says. 

 

And that is that.

 

Zota clears his throat. 

 

“...Do you feel as though you’ve settled back into your own skin properly?” he asks, “I didn’t want to call for your company until you’d changed. I don’t imagine your Guardians would want to see any…other,” Zota adds.

 

“Thank you,” he states. 

 

It wouldn’t be a good new-first impression, if Adam hadn’t been himself when they were reunited.

 

“Do you feel ready to see them?” Zota asks.

 

“I don’t know when I’ll ever be ready,” Adam says. How is he meant to face them after everything they’ve been through, and after all this time? How could he speak to the ones who raised him, without having the privilege of seeing Rocket?

 

“...I recall a time you considered them your family,” Zota states. He thinks of the first time he met Adam. It was a first-encounter he’d dreaded ever since he and Ayesha had their falling out. He would never be “ready” to meet Adam either; he fully understands. He just can’t find the words.

 

“They are family,” Adam says. “But it’s been years. I don’t know what they’ll think of me.”

 

“You want to know what I think?” Zota asks. Adam doesn’t respond. Zota tells him anyway. “I think they’d want to see you. And from what I can recall from what I’d witnessed in the past…You’d want to see them too.” 

 

A pause. Adam nods in spite of himself.

 

“Good lad,” Zota tells him, and he removes his hand from Adam’s arm; it’s the first Adam really notices that the hand had been there in the first place.

 

“Where’s Haya?” Adam asks, finally realizing her absence as Zota stands up off of the side of the mattress. The place where he’d been seated was her spot – the place where she’d sit when she would tell him good night as a child.

 

“I haven’t seen her since your arrival,” he states, “I’ll send for her, too, if you’d like, if I see her on the way to retrieve your guests.”

 

“Please do,” Adam says. He supposes she must have gone to greet the Guardians, while Zota brought Adam in to reattach the soul stone properly.

 

Zota’s hands aid Adam in sitting himself upright, his back resting on the headboard of the bed. And without another word, Zota leaves Adam’s room to find Adam’s family for him.

 

Magus hops up onto the mattress to sit beside Adam, making him aware of his presence.

 

“I can never tell if I like or hate him,” Magus says, watching Zota leave.

 

“That makes two of us,” Adam states.

 

Magus sighs comfortably and props his head up with his arm, to lean and look at Adam. “How are you feeling?”

 

“Emotionally? Physically?” Adam asks for clarification.

 

“Try all of the above.”

 

“I feel like something is off,” Adam admits.

 

Magus frowns. “Off how?”

 

“I don’t know what it is,” Adam says, “I just know that I don’t like it very much.”

 

“That’s no fun.”

 

“No, it really isn’t,” Adam agrees. “I’m tired. I’m always tired.”

 

“Do you buy into what Zota’s saying? That you’re lethargic from the time in Soulworld without nutrition?”

 

“I follow his logic, sure. Doesn’t mean I like the man,” Adam states.

 

“Of course. Hm,” he says, reaching his hand to work the tension from Adam’s temple. Adam closes his eyes. “I’d offer to take the headache for a while, but it’s really not a good time, with the Guardians on their way to visit.”

 

“Yeah,” Adam says blankly.

 

“How are you feeling about seeing them?”

 

“Sick.”

 

“Mhm.”

 

“Intimidated. Sad. And maybe…an inch of me is excited. They’re my family. They’re very dear to me, of course.”

 

“I know they are,” Magus says. “That doesn’t make this easy.”

 

“Not easy at all.” Adam readjusts how he sits. “You know, I may need you to be patient with me for a while. I know I’d said you could go to Joygod’s– I stand by my statement. But I may ask to spend a day or two there in the skin first.”

 

“Oh, please take however long you’d like,” Magus says, “So long as I get my time, too. I won’t leave until I’ve drunk the last drop of that ale they brew…”

 

“It sounds to me like a good deal.”

 

Magus smiles. “I’m glad we have something to look forward to after all…this.”

 

“I am too,” Adam says. “I’m glad we have something to look forward to at all ,” he adds.

 

Adam’s face falters slightly as he thinks about it all again. Rocket’s passing. The incoming reunion.

 

Magus’ face falters to match. He leans his head against Adam’s shoulder. “It’s going to be fine, you know,” he tells him. “And if it isn’t…then we can expedite our plans to go to Joygod’s. Just launch right through the ceiling and fly over in an instant.”

 

Adam makes a “hmf” sound, amused, and can’t help the smile that comes onto his face at the thought of it. “That’d be on brand for me. Running off like that.”

 

“A reputation to uphold,” Magus jokes back. “Now, chin up, Warlock. You’ve got friends waiting for you. That’s what this was about, right? Saying hello again to the ones you’ve missed?”

 

Adam hugs his knees to himself. “...Yes,” he says. “I think the fact that I’m frightened means I care. So this will be good for me, no matter how it goes.”

 

“Well, I’ll leave you to it.” He feels as Magus presses his lips to his temple. “Try not to kill someone this time,” he jokes. Adam’s hand smacks him away with a hearty laugh, somewhere smack-dab in the middle of bitterness and adoration for his companion’s dark humor. Magus chuckles and disappears from Adam’s sight. He waits alone for the incoming visitors.

 

---

 

Phyla’s blood runs cold upon seeing the man who greets them at the Citadel’s doors.

 

“Adam?” she asks him, her voice coming out funny.

 

Dr. Zota makes an odd face in response. “Not quite,” he replies. Phyla lets go of the breath she didn’t know she was holding in.

 

“I am Groot,” her brother tells her.

 

“...Yes, of course. That makes sense,” she says, and her brain categorizes the slight variations to Zota’s face that make him different from Adam. Slightly different nose. A little more mature in the face and in attire. His skin looks almost less polished; he doesn’t have a stone in the center of his forehead.

 

Zota turns to Groot. “Well, you’ve grown a great deal since your last stay here,” he states plainly. “Grown like a weed .”

 

“I am Groot,” Groot says, and Phyla and Heather don’t translate that comment. It was rude.

 

Phyla offers her hand for Zota to shake. “Phyla Vell,” she tells him her name. Zota just stares at her hand. She puts it back down again with a frown.

 

“If my duty here is done,” Barbara, their guide, cuts through the awkward quiet, “Then I will be headed towards the masses. Call me if you need anything.”

 

“That’s fine, Barb, thank you,” Zota responds, and she leaves with a curt nod.

 

He doesn’t step aside nor hold the door open for the guests. Just stands there for some time. 

 

“I don’t believe I know most of you,” he states.

 

“Yes,” Phyla says, annoyed, “That’s why I tried to introduce myself before.”

 

“I would lower your tensions before visiting Adam,” Zota tells her. “He’s not feeling particularly upbeat today.”

 

“...Are you going to take us to see him or not?” Heather asks on Phyla and Groot’s behalf. She’s the only one with no personal relationship to Adam; she’s the least intimidated by this ordeal.

 

“Harm a hair on his head or spit a single foul word, and I’ll have you banished indefinitely,” Zota warns, holding the door open for them to enter.

Notes:

One thing about me is I've been planning to have Haya be the source-soul that becomes the Goddess since about the halfway point through writing The Creation Of and I'm super stoked to have finally incorporated that plotline.

I've had a lot of good time for writing lately, thankfully, so I'm hoping I can keep a frequent update schedule going in the next few days-to-weeks.

Thanks as always for reading- and special thanks to comments. I get a lot of joy from reading them.

<3

Chapter 8: Thoughts

Summary:

Adam reconnects with long-lost roots.

Dolenz System: nothing.

Benhazin: nothing.

Shi’ar: nothing.

 

All these planetary systems, so full of life or full of nothingness, with very little in between.

 

Norrin Radd– the Herald of Galactus– is on a race against time to find a hit, surfing through the void and nothingness of outer space, on what he has come to believe to be a fruitless journey.

 

There is a build up of guilt within his throat and in his chest; he is unsure how he can possibly be expected to deliver what his master demands of him.

 

His internal monologue has become a mindless chant of “I’m sorry, Galan, I’m sorry, Galan, I’m sorry.”

There has to be something empty somewhere– a place that fits Galactus’ requirements to quench his cravings, yet a place empty and noncognitive enough to be fair to sacrifice– as though anything about this could ever be fair in the first place. 

 

He zips along; Andromeda Galaxy: nothing. He would just cry if he had the energy.

 

---

 

Haya crosses the path of a fellow inhabitant of this “Soulworld” plane– a man with a large stature, armored in some sort of homemade attire, the same color and composition as the red clay earth that covers much of Soulworld’s land.

 

He is kneeling in the meadow, plucking little glowing coils out of the ground. Whoever he is, he is not like the High Evolutionary and Magus; Haya had known them at a glance. This man is a complete stranger to her.

 

“Good day,” Haya says to announce her presence. When one is going to be sharing an existence with other souls, it is probably for the best that she be polite and friendly towards them from the start.

 

The large being turns his gaze up to see Haya. There is nothing in his expression except for the wild bewilderment in his eyes.

 

He doesn’t speak at first, and resumes his picking– 

 

Pluck. Pluck. Pluck.

 

Haya approaches a few steps closer and bends to get a better look at what he’s weeding.

 

“They’re lovely,” she says, her eyes observing closely, as he picks the glowing things from the ground, setting them into a large bundle he’s set beside him.

 

“Lovely, you think?” he asks. “They’re invasive, is what they are. I have to pull them up all the time, before they can manage to take over the whole lot.” 

 

The man speaks in a dialect similar to the Sovereign’s, but far less smooth and satiny. It sounds almost as though his vocal chords are a pair of rocks scraping against one another. Haya holds back a cringe.

 

“Enlighten me,” Haya says. “I’m new here and still learning to understand this place–”

 

“Aren’t we all?” he mutters in response.

 

“How is it that a world built in fiction can be able to obtain invasive plant life?” Haya asks. “There isn’t another world surrounding this place– no alien species to be introduced here, right?”

 

“Ah. They aren’t plants,” he states, “They’re thoughts.”

 

“Thoughts?”

 

“Adam’s, mainly, as I’m sure you could imagine. Most things in this place are Adam’s,” he states. “He gets so swamped with them.”

 

“With thoughts, you mean?”

 

“What else?” he responds. “The Magus was meant to keep them at bay, but he doesn’t care for the task of keeping the lawn. So he gave the job to be. It’s my very own Sisyphean punishment, this is– each day I uproot thousands of thoughts and each night they begin to fill the fields once more.”

She frowns. “And this is a punishment for what kind of crime, exactly?”

 

“Killing,” he says, “And then being killed, subsequently after.”

 

Haya frowns. “I see,” she says. “But why you? Why do you have to do this task, of all things?”

 

“I was the first meal,” the man explains. “The stone’s first target.”

 

Haya thinks back on everything she knows about this stone– everything she’s heard from Magus, and everything she’d very barely picked up on from her connections to the Guardians, and her history with knowing Ayesha and Zota.

 

She thinks she can recall Rocket explaining, once, that Adam had absorbed another soul once before– a tyrant.

 

Must be him. How fascinating it is to her, to think that this man had been reinvented as a lawnkeeper.

 

 “...What do they call you?” she asks him, more a formality than anything else.

 

“Autolycus was my name, back when I needed one,” the man explains. “Don’t need one here.”

 

“Why do you say that?” she asks.

 

“Well, I’m not something Adam built, and I’m not someone he wanted here…” Autolycus explains, picking up another thought from the meadow’s lawn. “I’m not one of his thoughts. ‘Xcept maybe a bad memory, I suppose. Fool gave me a stupid voice– he’d never heard me speak in life for reference. And he didn’t build me a body of my own. I had to make this one out of the clay, like old man Herbert Wyndham did.”

 

Herbert Wyndham. That’s the name the Maker had used to introduce himself to Haya when she’d first arrived here– Herbert Edgar Wyndham. It fascinates her to think he would go by such an improper personal title in this place, but then again, he’s lost his status in Soulworld.

 

“So that body isn’t real?” she asks. She means both this man’s body, and the Maker’s.

 

“Real as yours is. Just that mine’s not my own, not to my liking,” he says. “Didn’t have much of a choice. He didn’t make one and I didn’t ask. I keep my distance from Adam and the Magus, thanks very much, and they’re the Makers here. ‘Mfine making do with what I can.”

 

Pluck. Pluck. Pluck.

 

“Does Adam know you prune his thoughts?” Haya asks. She think she’d like to know if there was someone else responsible for her loss of a train of thought, and all that.

 

“Adam,” Autolycus says, “Wishes every day he had fewer thoughts in the fields of his mind. I don’t think he cares a second to know how they manage to go away, so long as they leave him alone in the end.”

 

Haya’s peripheral vision catches sight of a bundle of new thoughts pushing their way up from the grass on Autolycus’ left.

 

“They grow fast,” Haya observes aloud.

 

“They do,” he agrees, and reaches his hand out to pluck the new growth out right away. “Helps to catch them while they’re new, like this– the roots are shorter. Less give in the soil to fight back when I tug ‘em out, you know?”

 

Haya bends down to pick up a thought by her feet.

 

“No, that’s–” Autolycus tries to stop her, to no avail, because she brings the thought, root and all, up to her face to observe curiously. “-one of the decent ones,” his voice falls away.

 

“I can hear it,” she whispers. “It’s faint, though it sounds like music…Something with strings, and a vocalist. A male one.” Her eyes squint as she tries to pay closer attention to the thing in her hand. “And…I think I can smell something sweet in the air,” she says, “mixing with the smell of…smoke in the distance. Perhaps a cigar, or another…inhalant of some sort.”

 

She feels it. And she continues to think aloud. “Not an explicitly pleasant smell, but not unpleasant, either.” She closes her eyes. “There’s a scratchy blanket laid out on the bedside. It’s worn out and old, but it’s mine, and I never rest without it if I have any say in the matter...And there’s a small girl on my left, listening to a…music box. It’s not just a stranger. She’s…the little one with the Guardians. Phyla, is her name. She’s speaking over the tune. I can barely make out the melody, but I know it by heart regardless– I must have heard it a million times before. It’s my very favorite artist, and among his favorite songs. The girl is making fun of me for it. Not in a mean-spirited way, but rather…playfully.”

 

A pause. She opens her eyes to look at the plantlike thought once more, turning it to its other side, bringing it a hair closer to her ear in case it would help her feel it more clearly. It doesn’t. Holding it between her fingers was close enough to perceive at its fullest. But she feels a sort of lump form in her throat from the act of doing so– perceiving it.

 

“This thought is lovely, not invasive. I think it’s gorgeous, indeed,” Haya states plainly. “I should like to preserve it, rather than throw it into your garbage pile, there–”

 

“Fine by me, lady,” Autolycus says, “You’re the one who ripped it up. I’d’ve left it there. But that’s just me.”

 

“Do you hear them and smell them, the way that I just did?” Haya asks him.

 

“Too many and not enough time, for each and every one of ‘em,” Autolycus states, “But sometimes, when I’m not sure if they’ve gotta stay or go or whatnot.”

 

Haya twirls the glowing thing in her hand and turns to walk away. “It was good to meet someone else in this place,” she tells him, without saying any more. 

 

She heads into the forest she’d been eyeing nearby– the one with the big trees, with the big winding branches. With how pointed they are, you’d think they’d be easily perceived as threatening, but she sort of imagines them as a collection of arms, outstretched in a dance, or something. Perhaps even beckoning her closer.

 

There is a ginormous rock formation and a small, thin-flowing river along the woods’ edge, where she decides to take a seat to rest for some time.

 

As she sits there, Haya tucks the thought-thing behind her ear, keeping it near and safe where she can feel its presence.

 

The melody of the song is not of Planet Sovereign. But she knows it well enough, somehow. Her mouths form the next lyrics; she knows it by heart. It goes: “ After all, I'm only sand to irritate the oyster and to wait for a pearl…”

 

She closes her eyes. Feels it. At the end, the song’s lyrics tell her, “fly. ” She allows her mind to oblige and drift away for a moment.

 

---

 

As Haya closes her eyes in Soulworld, Adam opens his own, real-world eyes in the outside one. They’ve opened in response the Citadel bedroom door opening.

 

The very first thing Adam sees– feels– is a bark-like noise arising from a fluffy thing, which leaps up onto his bed, clambers to his lap. Licks his face.

 

Adam reaches out gentle hands to pet through the thing’s fur.

 

“Oh,” he feels like he’s choking, and he wraps his arms around Blurp, hugging the furry F’saki to his chest with adoration. 

 

He leans his face into the creature’s fur. So many times in his youth, he’d fallen asleep like that– with his far-smaller animal friend as a second-pillow of sorts. Sometimes Blurp would snore; other times he would manage something like a steady purr. More often than not, Blurp would produce a sound that was a mixture of both of those things.

 

Adam adjusts how Blurp sits in his arms, cradling the creature closer, but now in an angle where Adam can get a look at him. He hasn’t looked at him nearly enough in his life. One of his very first, and most loyal friends. One of the first reasons that Adam knew he had a conscience; one of the reasons the other Guradians has believed Adam had a heart.

 

“I missed you, my friend,” Adam whispers to Blurp, that choking sensation still caught in his throat. “...You’re looking well-fed,” he tells him fondly, “...And a bit gray,” he says, running a golden hand through the aging creature’s soft fur.

 

“...He’s missed you, too.” 

 

Adam’s head shoots upward to meet the source of the voice, which is, to be honest, unfamiliar to him.

 

“He’s been sleeping, every night, almost exclusively on your blanket. The striped one,” the person continues, though Adam had immediately knew which blanket she must mean.

 

The speaker is a young lady. Light hair, red suit. Distinctive markings on her face. Eyes of two different colors. Her expression is difficult to read, but then again, Adam is sure his is, too.

 

It doesn’t matter that time has changed her. He’d know her anywhere. Thoughts fill his head of the days that he last knew her.

 

“Phyla,” Adam says. Her mouth curls into a smile. Part of her had been worried he wouldn’t even recognize her, since it’s been so long…

 

Through the doorway, a huge hulking creature emerges; wooden flesh and the towering stature. Adam adjusts his posture and just thinks to himself “oh wow” at the sight of the floral colossus–

 

“I am Groot,” Groot tells Adam before Adam has the chance to speak first. His heart leaps once again from seeing yet another familiar face.

 

“...You’ve grown so much,” Adam says, “Both of you.”

 

“I am Groot?” Groot asks.

 

“Yes,” Adam confirms. “Please, come in.” And the pair do. “I’m…sorry I can’t get up to greet you right now, in my weakened state,” he tells them.

 

“I am Groot,” Groot tells him. Adam just nods. “I am Groot,” Groot adds.

 

As the pair properly enter through Adam’s doorway, he gets a good look at them for the first time since they were all quite young.

 

Phyla was not so much smaller than him anymore, as far as stature goes. Even if he’d been standing up, and they were facing one another, Adam’s chin would not rest on the top of her head, not like when she was tiny. While Adam was always technically younger, Phyla was always the little sister. It’s so strange that she isn’t so little anymore.

 

Groot, on the other hand– in both age and stature, he excels at living up to the title of big brother. He’s grown several feet larger and wider than he was before. This is particularly impressive, considering Groot had grown gigantically even in the months between Adam’s arrival to the Guardians, and his leaving them a bit under a year later. 

 

“May we sit?” Phyla asks, not wanting to assume it’s alright to approach. She gestures vaguely, awkwardly, to the empty spot on his mattress. “Is that alright, if we sit with you?”

 

“Yes, of course,” Adam replies softly. 

 

He considers how often the three of them used to lay around, sprawled on couches or bedtops together, during transport to far-away missions, and in between them when they’d stay up late nights to play games on Knowhere– it’s so odd to think that his very own sister would hesitate to be closer to him.

 

---

 

Haya’s eyes flutter open when she is suddenly surrounded by a more potent version of that pleasant Thought–

 

The music has amplified. The tastes, smells, feelings of Adam’s memory feel far stronger than before.

 

In fact, it seems that the thought has replicated itself in abundance, spread around the grass near her restring-rock like a weed.

 

“And if I land on Earth again, I’ll be happy just to cut my face while I shave…”

 

The vocalist’s gentle voice resonates on the wind. Phyla’s laughter joins it, echoing along the geography of Adam’s mind–

 

“You always wanna listen to Adrian,” she’d told him.

 

Haya muttered aloud the same words that Adam had told Phyla in response: “I like the sound of his voice.” 

 

“Dad said it’s my turn with the Zune.”

 

“It’s nearly three a.m. I doubt that Dad is even awake,” Adam told her.

 

“You’re a pest,” she says. 

 

“Who’s the pest here?” Adam responded, “You’re the one invading my room.”

 

“You’ve had your chance to listen all night. Can’t I have a turn?” Phyla asked. 

 

“That’s fine. You can have it when the song is done,” Haya, and Adam’s memory, responded to the echo of a conversation. 

 

Phyla had hopped up to sit atop the mattress, beside Adam. “I had another one of those dreams,” she admitted. “I don’t care that it’s late. I don’t want to sleep right now.”

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Adam offered, “Or is it the kind of night where you’d rather ignore it?”

 

“Ignore it,” Phyla confirmed.

 

He wordlessly pats the space directly next to him. She scoots there and leans her head against his arm; she’s too short to reach the top of his shoulder at this angle.

 

“We can listen together,” Adam said, “Okay?”

 

She nodded.

 

The song goes: “And I would have regrets were I to pirouette inside a metal jet….And I am not prepared to sprout a pair of wings and fly. Fly…”

 

When Phyla eventually drifted off to sleep, Haya had carried her home, tucked her into bed. Left the Zune on the bedside table in case she woke again.

 

…Haya hadn’t. Adam had. 

 

But to Haya, in this moment, she swears she remembers that memory as her own.

 

---

 

Phyla’s seen a lot of intense things in her life; she’s hardly ever afraid of anything anymore. But as she gingerly approaches Adam, she can’t help but notice that her heart is pounding as though she’d just sprinted for several miles straight.

 

Her brain shifts back to her exchange with Groot earlier– 

 

Are you afraid to see him? 

I don’t think so. Ask me again later when he’s right there in front of me.

 

Perhaps the funny bit, to her, is that she still can’t tell if it’s actually fear or some other unnameable feeling that’s brewing inside her chest.

 

Regardless of what the emotion is, she takes a seat at his side. These Sovereign bedsheets are so soft it almost takes her aback. Phyla folds her legs beneath her, on the edge of the mattress. She is close– but not quite making contact– with Adam. 

 

She finds herself at a loss for words; it seems Adam and Groot are both feeling the same loss, because neither of them have said a thing.

 

Groot doesn’t sit on the bed, but walks near and outstretches a branch, placing a tendril to brush down Adam’s face softly. Groot had been the first among the Guardians to save Adam as a baby– first to hold him, to greet him when he woke, to speak with him about anything at all. 

 

Not that Adam had understood what he’d said, at the time. But especially considering Adam’s circumstances, even then as a young one, the boy had always had such an open heart, an eagerness to know more. He’d made it a personal goal to learn to understand Groot.

 

By the time he could, the two had labeled themselves brothers; Groot would sit and tell him stories, or explain things that Adam didn’t know yet. Or just tell jokes to pass the time, to make him smile, or even produce one of his far-rarer and far-more-valuable laughs.

 

Groot runs the branch down the side of Adam’s face; his baby brother. He’s smaller than before, from Groot’s new perspective from his incredible heights.

 

Adam, wordless as he is, sets his hand atop Groot’s outstretched branch in acknowledgment.

 

“I am Groot,” Groot tells Adam. The Sovereign’s eyes shift to something just a little bit softer than his more stoic-look before.

 

The brief softness turns to amusement as Blurp makes a bark-like sound and leaps up to lick Adam’s face.

 

He and Phyla both pet the F’saki with great fondness.

 

“Oh, I know it’s been too long,” Adam mutters to Blurp gently, scratching under the critter’s chin. 

 

“I am Groot.” Way too long.

 

Adam isn’t sure if he should– or if he wants to– apologize for that. He doesn’t.

 

The animal throws its head against Adam again in a nuzzle. So dramatic. In other circumstances, Phyla might have rolled her eyes at the F’saki’s constant neediness for attention. But with how long it’s been, Phyla wondered if Blurp believed he’d never see his favorite person ever again.

 

She understood what that was like. She can’t judge.

 

Phyla turns her attention from Blurp to Adam, deciding it’s time to actually speak to the man of the hour.

 

“I’m sorry,” she starts. “Is it alright if I – hug you?” The words feel awkward as she forms them in her mouth. She wishes they didn’t.

 

“I’d like that,” he tells her, apologetic in his voice as he detects that she feels just as odd about this as he does. 

 

It was always so easy when they were young; they’d ask “ Do you want me to squeeze you and make it all better?” when the other was sad, or Adam would lift Phyla off the ground when she’d stretch her arms to indicate wanting to be lifted…

 

This time around, though, Phyla scoots herself a bit forward, towards him, placing her hands on him at first. And she chuckles.

“I forgot how much you were like a furnace,” she said, and finally wraps her arms around him. 

 

He leans in, each other’s heads rested on each other’s shoulders, and that familiar warm, fuzzy feeling Adam always gets when someone holds him takes over his skin. But it’s paired this time with a pang of sadness– the same sorrow he’d felt when he’d learned that Rocket had passed.

 

Why is it that this hug feels like grief more than a happy, long-overdue reunion?

 

Perhaps it is the idea that they’ve lost so much time– that the lot of them had missed one another growing up. Or perhaps it’s grief for the simpler times when a simple, shared hug wasn’t unfamiliar to them.

 

He puts his hand to rest on Groot’s branch, which is still wrapped around them like a creeping-vine, strong and sturdy and full of care.

 

“I’ve missed you very much,” Adam had muttered. She detects that guilt in his voice and tightens her hold; Do you want me to squeeze you and make it all better?

 

“Where have you been keeping yourself?” Phyla finally asks; it’s the question that’s been on her mind for just about as long as she can actively remember.

 

“Nowhere in particular,” Adam admits. It’s easier than saying the full truth, that he’d been alone in Dolenz. “What about you?”

 

Their hug parts so they can face one another as they catch up.

 

“Knowhere, in particular,” Phyla says, her mouth curling into a smile at her own word play.

 

Adam’s mouth tugs into a small smile of his own, at that.

 

Any worry Phyla had been previously feeling runs away.

 

“I am Groot,” Groot points out.

 

“Yes, well– that was ages ago,” Phyla elaborates, “I did spend some time off-planet and off-duty for school. I’ve mainly been living at home, since.”

 

“Good. That’s good,” Adam replies with a nod. 

 

“I…don’t think you’d recognize it,” Phyla says, “If and when you ever went back to Knowhere. It’s all different now. Even the roads were repaved.”

 

“Yes, well,” Adam says, “I was surprised to even recognize Sovereign, with how much it’s changed.”

 

“Answer me honest. Did you really only just get here?” Phyla asks, “Or did Haya lie on your behalf so we’d keep our space?”

 

“I only just got here this morning,” Adam confirms. “Haya was– well, upset with me, that I’d been gone. Was she not with you when you came in?” Adam asks, brows narrowing with a little bit of puzzlement.

 

“We haven’t seen her,” Phyla says.

 

“I am Groot.”

 

“Yes, Barbara,” Phyla adds to Groot’s statement. “The…foreign ambassador, or whatever her role is. She saw us to the Citadel. And the…uhm, older and more frightening you saw us here.”

 

Adam grimaces slightly at that. “Oh, I wish you wouldn’t refer to him that way,” he says plainly. “I don’t care for being so closely…affiliated.”

 

“Sorry. Not the best of relationships with him?” Phyla asks, regarding Dr. Zota.

 

“Not the worst,” Adam responds.

 

“I’ve left Heather out to sit with him,” Phyla says apologetically.

“Heather,” Adam repeats the unfamiliar name.

 

“Partner,” she sort-of explains. “I’ll be sure to introduce you later.” Then continues with her original train of thought, “You know, he basically threatened us, if anyone quote ‘harmed a hair on your head.’ Said he’d have us banished or whatever.”

 

“Yes, he does that,” Adam says. “He loves to have people thrown out.”

 

“I am Groot,” Groot says.

 

“Yes, I’m sure you do remember,” Adam responds.

 

“I am Groot,” Groot jokes, hoping he may be able to make Adam laugh. To his joy, Adam smiles wider, at least.

 

“So, what’s got you stuck in bed?” Phyla asks.

 

“I underwent a minor surgical procedure on the connective tissues of the soul stone,” Adam he tells them.

 

“I am Groot?”

 

“It’s nothing,” Adam states, “It’s complicated.”

 

“Only you could try to claim so confidently that something can be ‘complicated’ and ‘nothing’ all at once,” Phyla points out. 

 

“Well, that tends to be the case when the problem is all in your head,” he says, offering a greater smile at his own joke, poking tenderly at the space beside the stone in his forehead.

 

“You’re family, Adam,” Phyla says, “I have time in my life for your complicated things, should you choose to ever speak about them. That’s…why I’m here. I wanted to come here and tell you that.” 

 

“That–” he starts.

 

“That I want to make this a regular thing,” she says. “That I don’t want to go years without speaking, again. If that’s alright with you, that is.”

 

“It is,” he says. “Yes, of course it is.”

 

“Will you be staying here on Sovereign?” Phyla asks.

 

“...Likely not for long,” he admits. “I’m interested in traveling for a bit.”

 

“Will you be back?” she asks. 

 

He thinks about it. “Yes,” he says. “I think I’d like to be back. I have people here I care about, and who care about me…”

 

“So I can continue to leave contact here, for you, then,” Phyla clarifies.

 

“I don’t see why not.”

 

“Excellent,” she says. “Oh, and there was something else, before I forget all about it.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

She reaches into her pocket for something. “It’s your turn.”

 

“My turn?” he asks.

 

Their eyes meet as she holds the Zune out towards him. 

 

“Goodness knows, I’ve been hogging the damn thing for myself,” Phyla says.

 

He stares at the thing before accepting it from her. It makes his heart clench with ache; it feels just the same in his hand. 

To him, the Zune looks like late nights when the folks at Knowhere would play card games, when Peter Quill would dance on tables, when Drax would spin the Star Children whirling around the streets in a near-constant celebration of nothing in particular. It looks like his father’s attempt at winking when he’d say something mischievous. It looks like roasted Zarg nuts and storytime and writing lessons and sparring sessions; suiting up for missions, drifting through space, saving lives, saving each other.

 

Having this little music-box in his hand is like being reunited with a piece of himself that had been carved away.

 

Proof it was a real piece of his history, and not just rosy thoughts constructed by his mind.

 

“New pair of headphones,” she says, before he can make note of it. “The old ones were giving me trouble. These are pretty nice, too. Do me a favor and try not to break them. And do me another favor while you’re at it–” she puts his hand over his– the one that’s holding the Zune. “I don’t mind where you go,” she says, “I don’t mind what you do. But I’m gonna hold you to your word. Let’s actually keep in touch this time, alright? So we can trade off again when it’s my turn with the Zune?”

 

“I’d like that very much.”

 

The awful sharpness of all his grief dulls into something blunt and nonthreatening, and his mind is flooded with only the best of thoughts.

Notes:

Note: the song reference from the first part, in italics, is “Fly” by Adrian Belew.

Notes:

Welcome back

(This story is still a work in progress; updates are incoming but may not be on the most consistent schedule for the time being)

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of The Warlock's Story