Rewrite of THAT scene from Infinity War as, not only did the whole movie did Gamora dirty, it also presented Thanos' abuse as a valid form of love on a goddamn cosmic scale by giving him the goddamn Stone. Overall I liked the movie but Goddamn it had some massive HMMMM moments.
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I Love You
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Thanos watched Gamora fall. His body was stiff as if failing to comprehend what he had just done.
As his daughter disappeared from view, just over the precipice of the cliff, his knees eventually gave away.
He never heard her hit the ground; the sound must have been mercifully muted by the altitude and thick fog that permeated the place.
Thanos closed his eyes, a tear finally spilling over. He did love Gamora, despite his daughter's claim to the contrary. He loved her as his daughter. But, he had no other choice. He had hesitated once before; never again.
Any moment now, the stone would appear. It had to. Thanos loved Gamora.
Nothing happened.
"And like that," came a quiet voice of the red-skulled man, "you've failed."
Thanos' deep sorrow was momentarily replaced with confusion. "What?"
"The Stone. You're not getting it." As Thanos turned around to regard the red-skulled man, he had the audacity to look off into the distance, towards the cliff, to where Gamora… "In the end, you were just like everyone else. Just like me."
Thanos blinked. "No. I loved her-"
"It matters not what you think-"
"No!" Thanos grabbed the red-skulled man by the neck, ignoring the feeble attempts at clawing his hand open. "I did, I truly did-"
"So you may think," the red-skulled man managed to choke out. "The Stone judged otherwise-"
With a yell, Thanos tightened his grip, until the soft muscle gave way and blood run down his fingers.
Thanos opened his palm and the ghost's corpse fell to the ground, the head barely hanging on to the body. It dissipated into smoke the moment it touched the ground, leaving behind no indication that the red-skulled man had ever existed.
Barely holding back tears, Thanos looked at the bottom of the cliff where an unmoving black and green figure lay.
Gamora.
His fists were shaking. He loved Gamora! He had spared her, he had taken her in, he had trained her into the capable trained woman she became. He didn't know what he did wrong for her -and Nebula by extension but she had always been a failure- to turn against him and reject his teachings. Hell, he had even accepted her back with open arms, despite her betrayal.
Thanos loved Gamora, but apparently, even the Universe itself was too short-sighted, too blind to see it.
The Universe was wrong then. Just like his planet had been wrong. Just like the whole Galaxy was wrong in refusing his message and causing him to resort to such extreme measures.
"I love her!" Thanos screamed to the skies. His voice reverberated, pebbles trembling at its mere presence, before it echoed into nothingness.
The Stone was nowhere to be seen.
With a yell, Thanos jumped off the cliff as well. Howling wind whipped at him but he kept his gaze focused on the bottom, aiming to land away from his daughter's corpse
The ground cracked as he landed, using the Reality stone to break his fall and prevent any damage.
Carefully, he walked to where Gamora lay. Maybe it was because of the numerous cracks that run deep, the freezing cold, or just the way she hit the ground, but she had no pooling blood or any other major disfigurement.
Thanos was thankful; he couldn't maintain what little composure he had if she had been mutilated by the fall, like the many others he had sent to their deaths.
As he stood over Gamora, he felt his throat constrict and his fists tremble in rage.
One last try. One last attempt to make the Stone, the Universe, understand.
"I loved her."
He kneeled next to the corpse and stroked her hair.
"I loved her."
He thought of all the wonderful moments they had together, of the first time they met and he gave a dagger that she had kept even after her betrayal, of the start of her training, of the many times she overpowered her siblings, of her first assignment, her first kill. Gamora had occasionally be protested, but Thanks was her father, and he only did what he saw as best. If that was not love, then what was?
Thanos closed his eyes tears threatening to spill again.
When he opened them, nothing had changed.
Still no stone.
With a deep resigned breath, Thanos stood up. Fine then. Reality would bend to his whim. It, they all would understand.
Thanos got up and walked around the area, stepping over long-decayed skeletons; other failed sacrifices apparently.
He paused, taking a deep breath and clearing his mind. He heard a low buzz, a vibration that affected the very air. There was power here. Thanos could sense it from the moment he arrived.
But, it was out of his reach, like seeing sunlight filter through curtains. There was a veil, a seal, that hid the Stone from him. A seal that ought to have broken the moment Gamora fell.
Thanos raised his gauntlet where the Space Stone glowed. The howling wind died, pebbles trembled, the snow began to melt.
Finally, something trembled in front of Thanos' vision, like an optical illusion. It was right at the tip of the Gauntlet, smaller than the tip of one's finger.
A rip in reality. The Soul Stone's hiding place.
With a feral grin, Thanos pushed the Gauntleted fingers inside the rip and pulled, as if ripping away gift wrapping.
As Thanos expanded the tear to accommodate his size, he thought that maybe that red skulled man had been a distraction. The Stones playing games with him.
Yes, that must have been it. Thanos loved Gamora after all. The Stone's follower had just tried to toy with him and Thanos, the trusting fool that he was, went along and now Gamora was gone.
The tear was now tall and wide enough for Thanos to step in. It was made of black, though there was a glimmer of light at the centre. The Soul Stone.
Thanos stepped into the tear and grabbed the Stone before it disappeared from him again, before it played more tricks at him again.
The non-existent ground trembled, there was no air and Thanos couldn't breathe, screams reverberated in his ears, Nebula's screams, Gamora's screams-
Thanos blinked and found himself over the cliff's precipice as if he had never stepped down. The red-skulled man was nowhere to be seen.
The Soul Stone glowed brilliantly on his Gauntlet.
As Thanos was about to leave this cursed place, he spared one last glance at Gamora's corpse. Even in death, her expression had managed to morph from one of shock to a mocking sneer. It was the same mocking sneer she had given Thanos, proclaiming he could never love anything.
But she had been proven wrong. They had all proven wrong. Thanos had the stone and a tear in the very fabric of reality to prove so.
"I love you," Thanos muttered as he walked away from the frozen wasteland, the -s-t-o-l-e-n- rightfully-acquired stone humming on his gauntlet.
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Hey folks, this is how you present an abuser's love: by not goddamn validating it with what the abuser wants, but instead showing how fucking deluded they are. Their own perspective may present what they feel towards their victim is love via some impressive mental gymnastics, but in actuality there is no actual love, a la Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (god now that was a wonderful movie).
In case my ''''symbolism'''' was too obscure, the only way Thanos managed to acquire the stone was by breaking reality itself via temper tantrum, only reinforcing the notion that he didn't really (cue *see what I did there* snarky comment) love Gamora.