Medusa leads you into the room.
"You do know what all this means, don't you?" she asks, and just like that, you are a father. Less than a cluster of cells, a brand new being is already blooming inside your wife - a son! - and although there is temperance in the certainty of the genetic council's reaction, the nervous, insatiable excitement glowing inside you is undeniable. You are a king, father to your people, and you will be a father to your son.
But how quickly they are able to turn the anticipation to frozen dread. How do you let them take away your son before you have even seen him, held him? Before he has even begun to grow? It is not easy, but it is inevitable. In your core you are a king before you are a father. Maybe this is because of the sterile quality of your own childhood, or maybe it isn't. In any case, your wife is turning from you in horrified shame by the the time you realize you have decided; as ever, she reads you better than your own conscious does. But she cannot read how your heart is breaking, because it is closed very deep inside your chest and it is habit to keep the agony from coloring your eyes. She sees only the betrayal, and it resonates through your very bones with the reverberations of guilt deep into the night, long after she has made her escape to Earth.
The silence in your chambers at night is oppressive. You dream of infant cries, the innocent vocalization of an untainted spirit, and the darkness is lonelier than ever before for missing what you didn't know you could. In the end you go to them, on earth, and there are no words for them to describe their suffering, just as there are no words you could speak – even if able – to express what you feel when you hold your son in your hands for the first time (the love, or the remorse. Both are boundless). It is like holding a galaxy, an unending spectrum of glorious light confined to a tiny body, at once resonating with primordial power and somehow breakable beneath your hands, so fragile you almost fear to touch him. In this moment, there is nothing you love better than your son and you swear to yourself that you will never let him go ever again. He is a beacon of hope; a promise; though his beginning has already been spoiled, there is so much yet to come.
A king's promise to himself is breakable in the face of higher responsibilities. Giving him up a second time is harder, now that you have met him; your beautiful son, perfect features an exquisite balance of father and mother, and yet still something entirely his own - clear eyes and smooth skin and a shock of soft downy hair. The Genetic Council cannot be denied, and Medusa's words beg for you that he be returned soon.
But they send him to Earth (again – why is he taken there again?), and the blue pearl that was once the home of all your people becomes the prison of your son, alienated and alone, left to the mercy of whoever – whatever - might encounter him first. A death sentence, some might say, for a boy so young, but he is your son and some small defiant part of you cannot help but believe that he will endure. There is nothing else you could believe without cracking.
Karnak and Gorgon bring him back – though far too much time has passed – and you can't help but wonder at the black luck that seems to plague your family. You are not superstitious – unlike the village that took him in, saved him, and threw him out again once he seemed not to fit – but in the dark despair of nighttime you cannot help but search for something to blame other than yourself, other than the spoilt blood that runs through both your veins. You do not find what you are looking for.
In time you send your son to the Pacifiers. When you nod assent, the room maintains a surprising clarity in your vision – surprising because you feel like you are falling, falling, falling away - your limbs numb. You are reminded of Maximus, the fevered light in his eyes and the way it turns your stomach that you cannot help but love him. In this way, you know you will love Ahura no matter what, but it is agony to realize that you condemn your son just as Agon and Rynda did you, for some 'greater good', some 'greater safety' that is always reserved for everyone but you. You damn your kingship. You rail against it. You curse your power, you scream and scream without being able to make a sound until there are tears streaming from your cheeks, evaporating as they fall from the searing heat of your pain, and you throw back you head to let out a real, out-loud sob -
No – you stand blankly, immovable in the throne room until the court all leave. Medusa alone remains, but she, too, is silent.
Time passes, as it does. There are crises, and triumphs, and tears and laughter (though you can laugh only with your eyes). You have to put Maximus down more than once, and refuse to let go of the clinging hope that he will somehow return to the way he was before. (He was never 'the way he was' in your mind. But the hope won't acknowledge that. He is your brother, and that matters.) Ahura, for his part, is punted here and there – custody of the fantastic 4, controlled by Maximus, subdued by the pacifiers, safely far away in freedom; dead, for all you know of him. You keep track of where he goes, but do not presume to seek him out too directly. Healing is needed, and you are uncertain, yet, of your ability to provide it.
Then the worlds start to collide. Though you are a king, and you threw away so very much before for this, it is strange; at the end of the world, the only thing that matters is your son. At once your most selfish and selfless ideal, it is like he is suddenly a beacon of light, drowning out the importance of lesser things around it. He is your son, and that matters. The worlds colliding; lives snuffed out by the worldfull, over and over and over; it makes most concerns pale to insignificance, but somehow it will be all worth it if Ahura endures. His significance is only heightened by the backdrop of chaotic destruction. You seek him out.
He is so tall – so much taller than the last time you saw him.
And you want to scream at him: I love you, Ahura. I love you, but telling him this could kill him and devastate the very landscape around you – destroy the matter surrounding you both down to the very atoms. This is the nature of your power, the depth of your emotion. The distance of the gulf between you. Giving him up this final time is akin to tearing your heart out of your chest, and though no being you know of would be capable of doing so - such is your might – Ahura succeeds without even trying. The iron strength of his gaze is devastating, for you know that he has achieved such strength on his own, without even the need for his own father's guidance. Saving him is worth all his hatred, worth any pain you can endure and beyond.
And as you are parted for what must be the last time, it hits home that all of your history has been naught but distance and going away – never joining, never learning one another, never healing the gap that was born between you. This is your son; you do not know him, and he does not care. He has grown far beyond your teaching and your love, and in some way this is the proof of a successful father.
But you cannot bring yourself to feel any pride about that.