Title: Remade
Series: The Man Who Held The Line: Interlude
Author: Prentice (slyprentice)
Category: The Guardians of the Galaxy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soul Mates, Rebirth, Pre-Slash
Ship: Garthan Saal/Ronan the Accuser (eventual)
Overall Rating: Teen
Warnings: Existential crisis from an inanimate object.
Author's Note: ...this particular interlude isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea and it might be a bit confusing but I swear it serves a purpose. I won't say what it is yet - no spoilers - but what I will say is that if you throw a pebble into a pond, there will be a ripple effect (and it's heading in the Guardians direction).
The next part of the series will be back to Saal.
Summary: He is between the spaces between nothing.
He is between the spaces between nothing.
The slender gray gaps that hold the nothing that is something, the something that is everything. The elemental base of everything that is written into the nothingness of the universe. This is, some might say, the place where everything begins and everything ends.
The place where Time and Fate and Being hang tightly in the capricious grasp of choice. Where a simple moment of turning right instead of left, of being sad instead of mad, undulate like waves across the universe. Ripples like a tiny pebble being lobbed, not into a pond, but a lake.
These, of course, are not concepts that he recognizes. Not concepts that he feels or understands. Feelings, after all, do not exist here. Understanding does not have its place.
He is a something that is nothing here.
A piece of time-fate-being that has not yet been decided. Or, perhaps, has already been decided but has somehow been found wanting. Clearly lacking in some profound essential, some fundamental piece, and so has been gathered back here and hung in the gaps between a spark becoming a flame.
He has once again become a minute piece of a wider universe that knows nothing of its own existence beyond the boundaries of this place.
He is unlike the others, though. Here, in this place, where time does not exist yet stretches endlessly beyond measure, he is not a traffic light that turns green instead of red; a hyper drive that fails instead of starts. Here, he is something different: a soul that is not a soul; a person that is not a person.
He is the half-formed Other of a choice that has already been made. A one-half part of a soul that has already been saved – fire might burn and weight might shatter, but a choice had been given and a choice had been taken, and there is pain and suffering and reward and justice for what is left behind.
And so, this empty space, this gray matter that exists within a stone that is not a stone, has been given a choice for the first-but-not-the-last time of its existence. It does not hear or feel or speak it; it does not even acknowledge the choice's existence for it has none of its own.
Instead, it waits.
It watches.
Sees time-fate-being coalesce in an endless loop around twin points of light. One that is peace-justice-duty-pain and bursts like a supernova across an endless stream of the same galaxy which winks in and out of existence; fragmented and broken again and again like this steady point of light. The other is pain-anger-defeat-loss and is like a sullen piece of dark matter, existing only to prove that it exists and that it is worthy; worth measured by unattainable, unreachable standards.
These two points of light – twins; puzzle pieces that fit together – twinkle in the space beyond the other lights. Perhaps not the brightest now, perhaps not even the worthiest. But even so –
A choice that is not a choice is made and this Other is thrown out and thrown down. Flung far into the void that exists beyond these gray shapeless walls and back into the arms and the path of that fading supernova, that twin point of light. Given, not as a gift or a boon, but as an acknowledgment.
Not because it is right or it is proper – these do not exist here or anywhere; they are simple notions that have been formed out of Being – but because this place, this nothingness, has never had a choice and it, for the first time, wishes to make one.
And so, with this choice, this held breath, it chooses to take this Other and give it back. Reform it into what it once was – will always be – and watch as it once again becomes…
Pain.
That is what he wakes to – what he exists in.
Pain, so much of it.
It fills his lungs, his limbs. The broken ragged edges of his psyche. He hurts – for the first time, perhaps, or maybe even the last.
He isn't sure. He doesn't know. It's all too jumped up instead of him; the pain, confusion, and fear. It's light bright inside of him, smoldering like the embers of a flame; popping and fizzling within his bones.
He is being remade.
Not in anyone's image but his own – he is Kree and Kree are strong – but rewoven into a fabric that is not quite what it used to be. Pulled and reorganized into something that is different. Somehow, in some way, he is different.
He knows this, though he cannot say why. He can just feel it beneath his skin. It is an indescribable, indefinable sensation, one that makes its home in the deep dark caverns of his blackened soul, and to make it worse – it is growing.
Eyes prickling and body shuddering, Ronan the Accuser waits – and hopes – for the first time in this new existence.