Life can Change: What a Marvel Part 4 (10k—>20k) (Patreon)

(AN: Photos can be misleading they usually just hint at stuff that’s going to happen in the entire Part).

Doctor Erik Selvig had not slept in thirty-six hours. He was aware of this in the abstract way. But that didn't matter. For now his eyes were open and his hands were calm and his mind was running at the particular clarity that came from caffeine, adrenaline, and a problem so beautiful it refused to let him rest.

The Tesseract sat in its containment cradle at the centre of the room, a cube of impossible blue light suspended inside a lattice of superconducting rings. Cables as thick as a man's wrist trailed from the cradle outward in a radial pattern, each one feeding into one of the support stations arranged around it, and at each station a scientist or technician hunched over a display screen or a keyboard or a manual control panel.

Selvig moved between three of the stations at once,

"I need the fluctuation readings from station four every ninety seconds, not every two minutes," he said to a young woman with glasses who was trying to write something down with one hand while typing with the other. "The harmonic drift is accelerating and if we don't catch the pattern early we're going to lose the lock. Do you understand me. Every ninety seconds."

"Yes, doctor," she said, already setting the timer.

He moved on, stepping over a bundle of cables without looking at them. Meanwhile Clint Barton was leaning against one of the support columns near the outer edge of the work area with his arms crossed and his bow slung across his back.

"Agent Barton," Selvig said without slowing down. "I need a word."

Barton pushed off the column and fell into step beside him. "Talk to me."

"Iridium," Selvig said. "I need iridium, and I need it in a quantity that is not going to be easy for you to acquire. The portal we are attempting to open is not simply a matter of channelling the Tesseract's energy. The cube generates the power, yes, but the aperture itself requires a stabilising agent, something dense enough and inert enough to hold the quantum field open against the pressure differential between this side of the portal and the other. Without it, whatever we open will collapse within seconds of formation and collapse in a way that will likely take a significant portion of this facility with it."

"How much iridium are we talking about."

"A hundred and fifty grams of weapons-grade material maybe," Selvig said, coming to a stop in front of one of the control panels and tapping rapidly at a sequence of keys. "Ideally closer to two hundred. And it needs to be pure."

Barton nodded slowly. "I'll get you your iridium, doctor. Leave it to me."

"Good," Selvig said, and was already moving on to the next station.

Barton watched him go for a moment and then turned and walked away to make his arrangements.

At the far end of the room, elevated above the main work floor on a platform of bare concrete that had been made for this express purpose, Loki sat on a high-backed chair that was not quite a throne but was doing its best to suggest one. His legs were crossed at the knee and his hands were folded in his lap around the Scepter, which lay across his thighs with its blue-jewelled tip pointing idly toward the far wall.

He lifted the Scepter slightly and turned the jewel toward himself and looked into it. The light inside the stone shifted. The blue deepened and pulsed, then drew him in, Loki closed his eyes and let himself go.

When he opened them he was standing on the floor of a vast hall made of dark stone, a hall that did not belong to any world in any realm that most beings had ever heard of. The air was for lack of a better word dead. There was no sound of wind, no sound of insects, no sound of water, no sound of anything living except the very faint rumble of an engine that might have been a starship.

Ahead of him rose a throne.

It was carved from a single piece of stone the size of a small house and it sat at the top of a broad staircase. On the steps themselves, about halfway up, a young woman with blue skin and a head that was partially bare augmented with metallic plating sat with one knee drawn up and a blade across her thigh. She was drawing a device along the edge of the blade to sharpen it.

She didn't bother looking up when Loki appeared.

Standing at the foot of the steps, directly in Loki's path, was a tall gaunt figure in a hooded robe whose face was scarred and jawless and whose mouth was a ruin of broken teeth and whispered threats. The Other turned toward Loki at the moment of his arrival and his body went rigid with immediate offence.

On the throne above them all sat the Great Tyrant himself.

Thanos.

He was enormous. That was the first thing about him and it would always be the first thing about him. The second would be his wrinkled purple skin and the golden armour he wore.

Loki did not bow.

He inclined his head, yes. He offered a small courtly gesture with one hand. But he did not bend his knee, he did not lower his eyes and he did not prostrate himself. A king does not bow

The Other saw it.

"You dare," the Other hissed, his voice was a dry rasp that slithered through the hall like something crawling across dead leaves. "You dare come before the Great Tyrant and stand upright as though you were his equal. You, a pretender prince of a dying realm. You, who came to us begging for an army. You, whose brother shames you in every hall of every world he enters. You will bow, runt of Asgard, or I will—"

"Enough."

The single word fell through the hall like a stone dropped into a lake and the Other's tirade cut off mid-sentence as though a hand had closed around his throat.

The Other bowed his head immediately and took half a step back and did not speak again. On the steps Nebula let out a short laugh and did not look up from her blade.

"Speak, Asgardian," Thanos said. The word was stripped of its honour the way he used it, delivered with the indifference of a man naming a species of insect. "And be brief. My patience is not limitless."

Loki inclined his head again with a small careful smile. "The portal is nearly ready, mighty Thanos. The Tesseract's stabilisation has progressed beyond our initial projections. The scientist I selected has proven every bit as capable as I suspected he would be and the pieces are coming together on schedule. Soon we will be able to open the way for the Chitauri to cross into Earth."

The Other stirred and bared the ruined mess of his teeth. "Then why," he whispered, "are you here. This is a report a lesser servant might have delivered. This is information beneath the attention of the Great Tyrant. You waste his time with trivialities, Asgardian, you waste his—"

"There is a problem," Loki said, cutting smoothly across the Other. "A problem I felt it prudent to bring before this court personally. And you may judge for yourself, mighty Thanos, whether my concerns are worthy of your attention."

Thanos gestured with a finger for him to continue.

"Earth is not undefended," Loki said. "I was aware of this going in. Midgard has its champions and I have read the files that were provided to me. The Captain of the World War, the man of iron, the scientist turned monster, the genetic aberrations they call mustangs. All of them are insignificant. My army will be more than a match for any of them individually and with the Chitauri numbers flooding through the aperture the defenders will be overwhelmed."

He paused.

"But there is one I would speak to you about directly. His name is Mark Grayson. The humans call him Invincible."

Thanos' eyes moved slightly at the word. He did not sit forward, but something in the set of his shoulders shifted from passive attention to active listening.

"For some time now he has been perhaps the foremost protector of that world. He is not a creation of the humans. He is not an enhanced subject of one of their sciences nor is he a mutant. He is something else. My research suggests that he is of unknown extraterrestrial origin, his species is one which no Asgardian record I have been able to access has catalogued."

"Enhanced Strength, Durability, Flight, those are the ones he actively uses but there is speculation amongst the files I have retrieved that he can do more."

The Other inhaled as though to speak again but Loki raised his voice slightly and carried on.

"He has fought and defeated beings that my brother would struggle against. He has engaged with threats that would have required the full attention of an Asgardian legion and he has done so alone and prevailed."

"The reports I have read describe him as a being whose physical capabilities exceed those of any of the other defenders by what appears to be an order of magnitude and whose recent development has only accelerated that gap. I have reason to believe," and here he paused and chose his next words with care, "that if this one being were to involve himself directly in the defence of the earth when the aperture opens, the victory I have promised you may become something considerably less certain."

"Incompetent," the Other spat, finding his voice again. "Incompetent and cowardly. An Asgardian prince frightened of a human half-breed. A pretender who cannot even assess his own odds without inventing monsters to excuse his coming failure. You shame your entire realm, runt. You shame every warrior who ever bore the name Asgardian and—"

On the steps, Nebula set the whetstone aside and raised her blade to the light and turned it slowly, admiring her work. "I could kill him," she said lightly, almost as an afterthought, her eyes still on her blade. "The Invincible. Send me, father. I will bring you his head before the Chitauri ever need to march. One more name for the collection."

Loki turned his gaze to her. "I doubt you could, daughter of Thanos," he said. "I say this with respect and with no intention to diminish your considerable reputation. But I have read the reports myself and I have seen the footage. This man has defeated a weapon of my own people, the Destroyer of Asgard, a construct of enchanted metal that even my brother Thor once struggled to put down. He is stronger than Thor. He is faster than Thor. He is more durable than Thor."

Nebula's face darkened and she opened her mouth to reply but the Other was already rushing back into the conversation. "Listen to him," the Other hissed, turning his ruined face toward Thanos and gesturing at Loki with a long bony hand. "Listen to the words that fall from this Asgardian's mouth. Strong as Thor. Faster than Thor. He cowers in advance of a creature he has never met and he asks the Great Tyrant to indulge his fears. He is incompetent, master. He is a disgrace. He is not fit to lead your armies to the outhouse let alone to the conquest of a world and I beg you, master, I beg you to reconsider—"

Thanos raised his left hand.

A pulse of purple-white energy shot from his palm in a single concentrated beam, the Other stopped talking because his chest was no longer attached to his legs. The upper half of him hung in the air for a half second in a state of startled disassembly and then the energy followed through and what remained of him scattered into fine grey ash that drifted slowly toward the floor.

Nebula stood from her place on the steps and walked down to where the ash was still settling and she nudged the largest remaining piece of the Other's body with the toe of her boot and kicked it casually off the edge of the dais into the abyss. "I never did like him," she said, before she sat back down.

Thanos lowered his hand.

He looked at Loki for a long moment. "This Mark Grayson," Thanos said at last, slowly, "is interesting to me. In all the long years of my work I have kept a careful catalogue of every species I have encountered and been forced to put down, and your description fits nothing in my memory. He is almost Kree in the description you give, but the Kree do not reach the levels you speak of, not even among their nobility. Perhaps he is another experiment of the Celestials. Those old fools have been seeding worlds with their curiosities for longer than most civilisations have possessed language and their creations occasionally slip into places they should not be."

He drummed the fingers of his right hand slowly on the armrest of his throne.

"No matter," he said at last.

He snapped his fingers.

From a side passage behind the throne there came the sound of footsteps and then a pair of enormous servants emerged, each of them easily twice the height of a man and built like trucks, and between them they were carrying two containers. They were not cages in any conventional sense. They were sealed metal boxes the size of small houses, reinforced with thick bands of alloy.

Whatever was inside each one did not move, or at least did not move in any way that could be felt from outside, but the air around the containers had a wrongness to it that made Loki's skin crawl faintly even at a distance.

The servants set the containers down at the foot of the dais and bowed and retreated.

Thanos regarded the containers for a moment and then looked at Loki. "These," he said, "are creatures I took from the edge of the known universe. Their home world has no name in any language I speak and I do not know that it had one even among their own kind. I lost many thousands of my best to capture what you see before you. Two specimens. Only two."

He leaned forward slightly on his throne.

"They are very proficient," he said, "at dealing with durable enemies. Their particular evolutionary gift violence, they are the ultimate predators, even a single one of their claws can cut through my skin like it were nothing."

"The tougher the prey, the more they hunt. Release them upon your Invincible and he will have something to occupy his attention while your army does its work. I find it'll be unlikely for him to survive them."

Loki's smile spread slowly across his face as he looked at the containers. "Mighty Thanos," he said, and he inclined his head in a gesture that came much closer to a proper bow this time, "you honour me beyond words."

"Do not thank me," Thanos said. "I have no need for such platitudes. When you are done with them, when your conquest is complete or when the battle is decided one way or another, use the Tesseract to teleport the creatures into deep space. Anywhere. It does not matter where. Far enough from any inhabited world that they cannot find their way back. If you fail to dispose of them properly I fear you will rule over a rather empty planet."

"I understand completely," Loki said, the smile on his face had not dimmed.

"Then go," Thanos said, and waved one heavy hand. "I tire of this conversation."

The hall dissolved.

_____________________________________

Mark was sitting on the sofa across from Charles' desk with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped loosely between them.

Today was one of their sessions.

He had been coming to these sessions for a few weeks now, though he had not told anyone about them. Not Natasha. Not Jessica. Not Sue or Rogue or Ben or any of the others. It was not that he was ashamed of them exactly, or at least not in any way that he could have articulated easily if someone had asked him. It was simpler than that.

The things he talked about in this room were things he was not ready for anyone else in his life to know he was dealing with and the idea of putting them into words in front of any of them was worse than the idea of carrying them alone for a while longer.

Charles sat in his chair on the other side of the small coffee table, his hands folded over his lap.

Before the X-Men, before all of it, Charles Xavier had been a working as a geneticist, but he was also a very well renowned psychologist. He had published in peer-reviewed journals. He had consulted on some of the most difficult cases in the field. His work on post-traumatic conditions in combat veterans had been quietly foundational to the modern treatment frameworks that the Veterans Administration still used today.

Very few people outside the field knew that Professor X was also Doctor Xavier. Mark had found out by accident, in a conversation with Hank, and had asked Charles the next day whether he could come and talk.

Charles had said yes immediately.

"The voices have been worse this week," Mark said quietly, his eyes on the carpet between his feet. "It's been harder to push them down. I can still do it. I'm still functional. I'm not losing myself or anything dramatic like that. But the background... has gotten louder and the things it's saying have gotten worse and I guess I'm just tired, Charles. I'm tired of hearing it all the time."

"Tell me what it says," Charles said calmly.

Mark let out a breath and pressed his fingers together until they went pale at the knuckles. "It calls me a coward," he said. "That's the most common one. It says I'm weak. It says I've gone soft. It says I should have killed Magneto when I had the chance and that every person who dies at his hands from here on is going to be a person I killed by failing to finish the job."

"It says my mercy is a lie I'm telling myself to pretend I'm not the thing I used to be. It says everyone around me is going to see through the act eventually. That Natasha's going to look at me one day and realise what i actually am and she's going to run. That Jessica already sees it and is just waiting for the right moment to say so."

He paused.

"And when it's not saying those things, it's remembering for me. It's showing me things. It shows me things I did in Limbo... some I had managed not to think about for weeks and then suddenly they're right there in front of me again... I can smell them. I can taste them. Do you know how hard it is to eat dinner when you're trying not to remember the taste of demon flesh."

Charles did not flinch. "I know it is difficult," he said simply. "And I am sorry."

Mark laughed, a short hollow sound that had nothing to do with humour. "I spent ninety years there, Charles. Give or take. Time was wrong the whole time and I couldn't always keep track of it but ninety years is my best estimate. Ninety years of waking up to fight and falling asleep after fighting and everything in between being fighting. I slaughtered millions of demons. Not thousands. Millions. I did things there that I did not know I was capable of. I became things I did not know I could become."

"I was just like my father. Worse than my father, maybe, because my father at least had his principles even when they were terrible... I had nothing but the next fight and the hunger that came after it."

He shook his head slowly.

"And now I'm back. Now I'm sitting on sofas and sleeping next to my pregnant girlfriend and helping kids learn to crack eggs without breaking them and having dinner with my family and pretending I'm the same person I was before I left."

"But how can you go back to normal after that?"

Charles was quiet for a long moment. "The answer is not that you go back," he said. "Because you cannot go back, Mark. That person, the one you were before Limbo, is not waiting for you at the end of this tunnel. He does not exist any longer. You are not him and you will never be him again, the sooner you stop trying to be him the sooner you can begin the actual work of figuring out who you are now. This is not a failure on your part. This is a truth about what happens to people throughout their life, even without trauma we all grow and change. Sometimes we don't want to and want to cling onto the person we once was, but you'll find that such things are impossible."

Mark looked up at him.

"What you can do," Charles continued, "is build a new version of yourself out of the materials you now have. That version will carry the memories of Limbo, but the memories do not have to be the centre of the new self. They can be one room in a much larger house, you can build the rest of the house around them with good materials, and over time you will find that you live in the other rooms far more than you live in that one."

He leaned forward slightly, his hands still folded.

"I would like to make a practical suggestion, if I may. You will not like it immediately but I would like you to sit with it."

"Go ahead."

"I think," Charles said, "that you should step away from the hero work for a while. Not permanently. I am not asking you to hang up the cape forever or to make some dramatic announcement to the world. I am suggesting a sabbatical. A period of weeks or months in which you deliberately and consciously do not go out looking for fights and do not respond to calls that other people can handle."

"It sounds like the voices you describe are being fed by the constant proximity to violence. If you want them to quiet down, you have to starve them. That means removing the fuel."

Mark was already shaking his head slowly. "I can't just stop, Charles."

"I am not asking you to stop being a hero. I am asking you to redirect the hero work. Perhaps into Humanitarian work. The city is still rebuilding. There are a dozen organisations right now who would be beside themselves with joy if a being capable of moving tons of rubble per minute offered to help them rebuild."

"The children in your class need you. Your ongoing work with Rogue needs you. Your own family needs you present and whole and not constantly distracted by the siren call of the next battlefield. You can do enormous good in the world without lifting your fists for any of it and I for one would very much like to see you try."

Mark was quiet for a while.

"It would feel like hiding," he said finally.

"It would feel like hiding because the voices will tell you that is what it is," Charles said. "But the voices are are remnants of a survival response that served you in Limbo and that does not serve you here. Do not mistake their volume for their accuracy."

Mark rubbed his face with both hands and then let them drop and looked out the window for a moment.

"Is the startup still in the plan," Charles asked, shifting the weight of the conversation slightly. "The one you and Susan discussed. I remember you mentioning it some weeks ago."

Mark nodded. "Yeah. Yes. We're still talking about it. It's on hold until we can stabilise things with Ben, because Sue doesn't want to put her full attention on anything else until she has a breakthrough with his situation, I understand that and I agree with her. But once we have a path forward for him, yes. The startup is going ahead. We have several ideas that we think could help out the world."

"Then focus on that," Charles said, and there was a quiet warmth in his voice now. "Focus on Ben. Focus on the work with your class. Focus on Natasha and the child that is coming. Focus on the humanitarian work you could do right now. Focus on building the thing that you and Susan want to build. Focus on the rooms in the house that are not the Limbo room. And when the voices come in and tell you that you are a coward for doing any of it, be satisfied in what you've created, anyone can destroy Mark, but it takes someone special to create. You can tell them as much."

Mark laughed at that, a real laugh this time. "You're recommending that I argue with the voices in my head."

"I am recommending that you stop granting them the unearned authority they currently have," Charles said with a small smile. "Speak back to them. Dismiss them. You are the landlord of your mind, Mark, and you have every right to tell the noisy houseguests to be quiet."

Mark shook his head with the small smile still lingering. "I don't know if I can actually do the sabbatical, Charles. Not the way you're describing it. But I'll think about it. I'll really think about it. And for what it's worth, even if I don't take all of it, some of what you just said was what I needed to hear."

"That is enough for today," Charles said gently. "It is more than enough. Small changes compound, Mark. Please remember that."

Mark's phone buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out to silence it and then saw the name on the screen and stopped. He looked up at Charles apologetically. "I'm really sorry," he said. "I need to take this. It's Tony and he doesn't call unless there's a reason."

Charles waved a hand with a small indulgent smile. "Go. We can pick up where we left off at our next session. Take care of yourself, Mark. And think about what I said."

Mark stood and squeezed Charles' shoulder briefly on his way to the door, and then he stepped out into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind him and answered the phone.

"Tony."

"There he is. The only man in my contacts list who takes longer to answer his phone than I do, and that is a distinction I do not hand out lightly. How are you, big guy, how's the family, how's the whole X-Men communal living situation working out for you, are they making you do chores? Please tell me they're making you do chores. I need to know that Charles Xavier has you on dish duty, it would complete my entire week."

Mark leaned against the wall outside Charles' office and closed his eyes and smiled despite himself.

"I'm doing fine, Tony. Everyone's fine. Nobody has me on dish duty. What do you want."

"What, a man can't call his favourite invincible super friend to catch up on the state of his personal life and the general health of his emotional wellbeing?"

"A man can. This man does not."

"You wound me, Mark. You genuinely wound me. After everything we went through together. After Vanko. After I saved your entire life from a very bad day with a very obnoxious Russian, this is how you treat our friendship."

"You did not save my life from Vanko. I saved your life from Vanko."

"Semantics. History is written by whoever calls the other person first, Mark, and I am currently on the phone with you. Listen. I am calling you because I want you to come to the tower. The New York tower. The one I bought in approximately fifteen minutes after Magneto had his temper tantrum because I have excellent real estate instincts. I'm hosting a thing. Nothing formal. Small gathering. Very tasteful. Bring your beautiful and extremely pregnant baby mama if you want, I am entirely flexible on guest list composition and I have excellent catering."

"No," Mark said.

"What do you mean no."

"I mean no, Tony. I'm not coming. I have a lot going on right now and the last thing I need is to fly into Manhattan to watch you hold court over a room full of your usual people while you try to impress everyone with your latest suit."

"Mark."

"No."

"Mark. Listen to me. I am calling you because it would mean something to me if you came. You personally. I am not asking you to wear a suit. I am not asking you to give a speech. I am asking you to show up to the new tower I just built in the city you just helped save and let me buy you a drink and a meal and have a conversation with you that isn't about work Two hours of your time. That's all I'm asking for."

"Tony—"

"I'll send a car. I know you don't need a car. I'll send one anyway. I'll send a stupid car and a stupid driver and a stupid bottle of stupidly expensive wine that I know you can't actually get drunk on but that you'll appreciate anyway because I have good taste in wine. Mark. Please. I would like to see my friend."

Mark rubbed his forehead with the heel of his palm.

"Tony, I genuinely don't have the—"

"I will keep calling. You know I will keep calling. I will call you in the morning. I will call you at lunch. I will call you at 3 a.m. I have done this before. I will do it again. I have unlimited patience and an unlimited phone plan. You cannot outlast me on this, my friend. The only way out is through."

Mark was quiet for a moment. Then he sighed and let his head thunk gently back against the wall behind him. "Fine," he said. "Fine. I'll come."

"Yes," Tony said, and the satisfaction in his voice was so complete that Mark could hear the grin through the phone. "Yes you will. Excellent choice. You will not regret it. Bring Natasha. Bring anyone you want. I will handle everything. I will see you soon, big guy. Do not stand me up or I will fly to Westchester personally and embarrass you in front of Charlie."

"Goodbye, Tony."

"Goodbye, Mark. I love you." The line went dead before Mark could answer.

He stood in the corridor for a moment longer with the phone still in his hand, his eyes on the far wall, and then he slid the phone back into his pocket and pushed off the wall and started walking slowly back toward the guest wing.