Work Text:
For Doctor Doom, it had been quite simple to obtain the records from State University archives. He simply put in a request. He could have gone and requested a favor based on donor privilege, that was how these institutions functioned. Resolving the bureaucratic matter of patient privacy had been simpler, they pertained to a young man once known as Victor von Doom, after all. They had been in the hands of fools for too long and he would be firmly reclaiming them today.
Doom’s armored fingertips skimmed the faded paper medical record and the short paragraphs describing the extent of his wounds from the lab experiment… The experiment that had failed due to Reed Richards’ insistence that he, Doom had made a calculation error—a mistake. That meddling had set off a domino effect, but he supposed the end result was both fated and forged by Doom's very own iron fist. He was the Lord of Latveria now, this small country carved into the Carpathian Mountains.
Richards’ handwriting was burned into his memory, he needed no reminder of that particular marginalia. He suspected his old notes were in Richards' possession after all these years… not that the man would ever understand what he had been trying to accomplish. Even now, his mother’s soul laid in the Nether-World, where he could not rescue her.. And though he still had the scars that had been left by his foray past the veil between life and beyond… His machine still had worked.
Behind the grim iron mask, the corner of his lips upturned as he saw the report of missing formal discharge records. Yes.. when the bandages had come off and he had seen the scarring, he had resolved to leave the hospital for ever higher learning in the mountains of the Himalayas—he had already been expelled from the school that could not understand his genius. It seemed as if State University flirted with Doom’s infamy and supergenius frequently for publicity at its fundraising events… often with Richards' name tied to his own. They would not get a single Latverian note unless they replaced every statue and bust of every so-called American luminary with that of Doom.
Doom was nearing the end of the box. He would have automated and scanned copies for himself that he knew the hospital had not the time nor means to digitize. He would decide if he felt charitable to return to the institution facsimiles—perhaps with some redactions and revisions.
Doom paused at a stack of unassuming papers that spanned the month of his convalescence. It was old-fashioned by now, a paper and pen Visitor Sign-In Sheet. The familiar handwriting that was burned into his memory peeked out from the corner. He pulled it out.
The sheet read: VISITOR'S NAME: Reed Richards; REASON FOR VISIT: seeing my friend Victor, followed by the room number. Doom steadied his hand at the fragile paper in his hand, a record of the past as much as it was inaccurate and false, they had never been friends. It was.. by this pretense that Richards had somehow gained access to his bedside? Doom’s memories of the time were clouded by pain, the analgesic drugs not nearly sophisticated nor powerful enough back then. It had been a hard lesson, in more ways than one and he had learned a great deal of what pain could accomplish.
Doom stared at the phone number that was still in use to this day. He knew it to be a working number as recently as last week. It had been.. A dire situation. Doom had needed another pair of hands and a mind that was closer to his than not. That incident was resolved.
He quickly calculated the TIME IN and TIME OUT as totaling 82 minutes. Doom breathed heavily behind the mask. What could a teenaged Mister Fantastic have spent eighty-two minutes doing by Doom's bedside? Begging for forgiveness? Insisting he hadn’t intended subtle sabotage?
Under SIGNATURE, Doom finally landed at Richards' signature in its swirled script. It was not so different from Reed Richards’ signature now, just with less flare–less obvious showmanship for the ringleader of New York City’s premier superhero troupe known as the Fantastic Four. Leaving this record was very foolish indeed, it would have been a simple matter to forge Richards' signature. Perhaps to write an entire journal. He knew Reed’s hand well.
At the very next line in the sign-in sheet was a visit the very next day. Only this time there was a '' marked under VISITOR'S NAME, REASON FOR VISIT, and PHONE. Doom stared at the '' , a ditto mark, which meant ‘the above is to be repeated’. Doom let the sign-in sheet drop back into the box rather than crumple it in his hand. That little shorthand, that handwritten flare of the current Mister Fantastic sent a spark of rage into his breast. This was always what Reed had been like, a little show-off. That ditto mark which had been in use since even ancient times on cuneiform tablets—on something as mundane as a hospital sign-in sheet.
It was with certainty that Doom knew Richards would have gotten pleasure out of using Ibid. for his doctorates.
He had read them.
- Richards, Time’s Trick Arrow, 20-21.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., 28.
Doom cocked his head and stared at the long line of ditto down the expanse of the sign-in sheet. It was as if the clerk had dedicated an entire sheet, knowing this student had the one room to visit… or perhaps that particular patient had but the one visitor.
On one of the lines, under REASON FOR VISIT, was an addition, a declaration of an item: flowers. Doom recalled there had been blue flowers left on the table by his hospital bed. They had been wilted by the time he could open his eyes, when he was finally lucid. There had been a little card, too. But he could not recall what it read, nor was that flimsy sentimental piece kept in this box. It was lost to time, probably tossed out.
Doom's thumb stroked the corner of the page. It was still a pity–keeping meticulous records was just a good strategy. Everything should be at his fingertips, even miscellany such as that.
There was no rhyme, reason, or rhythm, it was the morning, afternoon, evenings. Ironic that this man so obsessed with Doom would miss the crucial awakening, would miss Doom’s resolve to climb. What did he think would happen if Doom had awoken in his presence? Richards was, as he had always been, a foolish, sentimental creature. These visits meant nothing. Nothing.
Doom placed everything in the box and put it away. It would be filed and stored and hidden away from the world. And from his mind.
It was best to leave that past behind.