THE AVENGERS AND ALL CHARACTERS IN THE STORY ARE PROPERTY OF MARVEL AND TOTALLY NOT MINE, NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED, PLZ DON'T SUES!
"Is this not simpler?"
The girl who kneels beside the old man was beautiful, but it is beauty in the process of being tarnished. Her long flaxen hair hung and dipped to the ground to be soiled by rainwater and filth. Her large, soft blue eyes brimmed with tears. Her full, red lips trembled with every sob that shook her slight frame. Once all of Germany would have lauded her, exalted her, merely for this face.
She was what the old man had marched off to war for, what he and his comrades had fought and bled for. Died for. That's what the posters had always said, no?, if not in so many words. Pictures of young, handsome,ideal Germans, always smiling, always joyful. If the posters had shown what the soldiers were truly fighting for, the war would have been over in a month.
The Man-the god- in a warrior's dress, holding his great glowing scepter, began to make his way through the cowed mass of humanity.
"Is this not your natural state?"
People didn't like to think of themselves as kneeling, or bowing. So they hadn't been made to do so. It had been quite brilliant, really. They had been made to think they were being exalted, while they were brought low. They had been made to think they were being liberated, while they were made slaves. Now the people knelt in fear, then they had knelt in worship. They had worshipped their god as fervently as any man of faith. A strange god it had been, though, in the form of a little man with a temper and a loud voice. But still, a god.
He had been the old man's god too, for a time. The old man had marched in step with the others, he had stood proud at ceremonies, boasted of his own natural worth. He had knelt then,without knowing it, and he had regretted it the rest of his life.
"It is the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation."
It was funny, likely the whole square would have knelt before the little man, with smiles on their faces, but they wept as they knelt before this…whatever this being was. People did not mind being ruled, so long as they did not know it.
As for the old man, he had stood up from his worship in the ruins of a theatre in Stalingrad, when he had seen what his god had truly wrought. He had sold his soul, he had knelt before the broken cross, and there he promised himself he would never kneel again. Not before the Hammer and the Sickle, and not before the gods.
"The Bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled"
The girl beside him began to pray, her tears beginning anew. The great horned god smiled.
"In the end, you will always kneel".
The old man gazed down at his withered hands, the hands that pulled triggers, pulled pins, stained the Fatherland with innocent blood. Europe was washed with the blood of soldiers, farmers, merchants, women, children. Because he had knelt, because they had all knelt. He would put a bullet through his skull the next day if he did nothing now. And so he did the only thing he could do.
He stood.
"Not to men like you."
"There are no men like me".
Tyrants, whether they dressed like kings, merchants, or warriors, were always
tyrants. Whatever their outward motivation, they were all the same.
"There are always men like you".
A Flash of blue light, and the staff was leveled at him, it's radiance growing every second.
"Look to your elder, people, let him be an example".
The old man was honored to be a shining one, at last.
