oh hey while i'm here i finished a Small Scene from the comic rewrite!! because fuck it, i had the idea, and i needed to immediately fix some things. under the cut for spoiler reasons, i guess, i'm kinda just taking random things i like and mashing them together at this point ?? WHATEVER here it is !!
Are you alright?
Maximus frowns at the question, and shrugs. “Oh, they were already prosthetics. I can rebuild it. Won’t take long, so don’t fret.”
But it hurts, doesn’t it?
“Not particularly.”
Maximus turns away to tinker with the broken parts of a gun on the table, still wearing the torn jacket, the edges singed away.
Blackagar takes the few steps closer to stand at his side, well aware of the half-truth he was being told. Maximus never admitted when he was injured or in pain, but he was his brother; Blackagar had known him almost his entire life, and he knew him well enough to know when Maximus was being truthful or not.
And he’s heard him grumble complaints and rub at his arms often enough to know that they did hurt. Blackagar hadn’t known, couldn’t have known - before Blackagar himself, Attilan did not speak of things like this. Attilan did not speak of many things before Blackagar. There are many things now that he doesn’t want to speak of.
If he had known how much it would affect Maximus, he would have tried to constrain himself more. Maximus was clearly able to live with it, but there was a lifetime of pain that Blackagar was responsible for now, that he couldn’t really do anything to prevent. A lifetime of different.
Blackagar himself was stuck in a lifetime of different. All he’s ever wanted was to prevent his family from being him, and all he’s seemed capable of doing is being the cause of their suffering.
“Your sulking is distracting me.”
Blackagar glances at his brother, who had stopped prodding at the contents on his table to look up at him. Blackagar tilts his head. I would sulk less if I knew you were alright.
Maximus scoffs, and makes a move to cross his arms, before belatedly moving the one to rest on his hip, instead. “Oh, go worry over someone else. I’ve already told you I’m fine. I do need to fix this, so go away.”
He turns his gaze back to the table, though he makes no move to mess with any of it anymore. Nor does he make any move to walk away.
They stand in silence for a long few moments.
“How is Medusa?” Maximus asks quietly.
Blackagar feels his lips twitch. Recovering. She’ll be strong enough to join in the fight.
“And Karnak?”
Focused on tracking down Vox. A lot has happened. I don’t know if he’s processed most of it.
Maximus lets out a humorless chuckle. “I suppose a lot has happened.” He taps restlessly against the edge of the table. “Have you sent anything out to Ahura and Luna?”
Crystal’s trying to get to them. She may leave for Earth. You are free to go with her, if you would like.
Maximus hums. “Of course I am. You wouldn’t keep me trapped here.”
I do not know how this fight will turn out. Ahura and Luna are fond of you. Perhaps more than they are fond of me.
Maximus meets his gaze again, and there’s an anxious glint in his eyes. “We’ve survived worse, brother. When this is over, we will go to Earth together.”
Blackagar can hope those words to be true. He wants them to be true.
“Besides,” Maximus says, waving with his arm as he trots off, leaving Blackagar to trail after him, “I do believe this is my fight, as well. My city was attacked, my cousin killed.” He digs through a charred box of half-melted metallic parts, before making an annoyed noise and dragging the entire box back towards a cleaner part of the floor, his only remaining table taken up already.
“And he killed Lockjaw,” Maximus says, grief finally seeping into his voice, as he turns an intense gaze to Blackagar, “I want revenge. I’m not running.”
Then I am glad we want the same thing.
“And it only took our entire city falling.” Maximus replies with a smirk.
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