Author's Note: I had been planning this out for sometime, and the timeliness of 'Secret Invasion' provided me with an elegant way to sort of fit everything together to some previous event in Bob's life that would, by simply having happened, have driven him away from Manhattan and life as The Sentry. So after you read this installment, a few things might be either clearer or muddier for you, compared with the current state of the Marvel Universe. Try to take the events recounted with a grain of apocryphal salt, and, as always, dear readers: happy reading.

This is Bob Reynolds in the light.

Sitting at the very center of the Sun. A burning ball of energy tooling its way between the Perseus and Sagittarius arms.

And Bob Reynolds? The Sentry? Who has the power of a million of these exploding suckers? He doesn't mind the heat--there's a lot of it--or the pressure--there's a lot of that, too. 13,600,000 degrees Kelvin. Bob did the math quickly and converted that into about 45 million degrees Fahrenheit. And it didn't bother him. He wondered if the amounts of gamma radiation here would have even given Banner a run for his money.

'The Sentry. It's me', he'd said. The car ride home had been silent, and when they finally got home, Bob simply showed her the costume.

He'd kept it where he always did: in the closet in the master bedroom.

She'd stared at it for a long minute like she knew what it was and who he was, and then looked at him and she got those lines on her forehead of great ponderous worry. Then she'd turned slowly and sort of sauntered out of the house, back to her Land Rover and got in and left. Bob watched her go, watched her pull out of the drive and amble down the street to the stop-sign at the end. She turned left towards town and didn't even use a turn signal.

Bob'd stared after her, out the window, for another long minute. He looked at the suit, still in his arms, and back out the window. The moon was shining brightly: a silver dollar.

Then he put the suit on.

And then here he was.

You still haven't answered my question.

(Did I not?)

Don't play the innocent with me. Answer. The question.

(Which is?)

You. Thinking you could outrun me. Me.

Your greatest creation.

(Yes. If you must know.)

Let me get this straight.

You thought you.

Could escape me.

(Yes.)

I am you, Robert Reynolds! Don't you get it?!

No, your problem isn't that you don't get it—you do that fine enough. Your problem is that you don't know what to make of it.

Your problem is that you don't know what to do about it.

And because of that, you take everyone else's problems on yourself.

Why did you tell her? Why in God's green ass did you think you owed Sarah Inqvist honesty—or anyone else for that matter? Do you know who you are?

(Bob Reynolds.)

You're the Sentry, goddammit! You don't have time for petty little human convictions like love and longing. End of the day, you do two things and those are all the people remember you for. You smile big and you save people. Nothing else matters. Not honesty, not commitments, not people. The only commitment you need to make is to yourself and to me.

(You know that's not true. I go where I'm needed.)

You go where you want to go, and that's the sad, selfish fact. Did you ever stop to think that maybe I exist to give you the psychobabble you know you so desperately want? To tell you what you know is true, even if you don't want to hear it. You've got enough quacks and jackasses telling you what to do—always have. But it was really only ever me who gave you what you wanted.

There's one Sentry and one Void in here. That's gods' plenty. There's no room for Sarah Inqvist and there was certainly never room for Lindy.

(Stop.)

No! Not this time, Bob. Not until you realize why it is you're so completely fucked up, and so completely unwilling to do anything about that!

I am you, Robert Reynolds, and I've even taken to calling you by your slave name to prove my point.

You need someone to stand up to you a lot of the time and say 'No, this isn't a good idea.' Most people your age have an internal monologue that tells them certain things might be bad ideas: their inner Puritan. You had no such filter and it almost killed you. You remember that?

Freshman year at Empire State, you were so goddamn bent on fitting in that you skipped lunch one day and went downtown and made instant friends with some horrible people and bought as much blow as the fifty in your pocket could get you. It was the 80s after all, Dinkins was in charge and a generous grant of General Grant got you more of that shit than you knew what to do with. You went back to school and literally sat on the fifty yard line for those knuckle-dragging linebacker mouth-breathers to stroll out and ask you what the fuck you thought you were doing. It was all you could do to simply jangle the bag in front of them. Then they more or less threw themselves at you, and you were everyone's best friend.

That was the beginning. You kept it up and kept it hidden from Lindy, until, oops, you sneak into the lab one night looking for a cheap thrill because you're into cheap thrills and down the Sentry serum or whatever the hell they were calling it. And then, with the power of a million exploding so-and-so's...

God. You sicken me. You know that?

You know how much I had to sacrifice?!

Just to keep you halfway sane.

I was the bo'sun on that stupid little Jolly Roger. And I let you fucking go. Let you keep buying your shitty blow, and maybe I even egged you on. And then you kept going back to those people downtown.

Ripping off your parents.

Missing their funeral because you were too busy making coke deals with your jerkoff fucking linebackers to give a shit.

And you used to be so good, Bob. You were a star in High School. A star that burned so brightly. And then you threw that away. You threw away a fucking Rhodes Scholarship because…because why? Because you wanted to.

Because of Lindy? Because you were too busy taking her to Make-Out Creek and trying to woo your way right into those conservative chinos of hers?

Or was it because when that Rhodes offer came in the mail, you were too busy doing harder stuff. Jamming a syringe into your arm?

I'm not sure anymore.

Even my own memory is hazy.

It's the story of your own goddamn life, Sentry: one big ugly Medieval manuscript with massive lacunae. Even today. Even after Emma Frost brought you back.

It's 1991, and you just found a quiet place on Long Island, and you're sitting there with Lindy, staring up at the Moon and watching its silvery edge reflect off the endless ocean. That was a good day...

It's 2005 and Emma Frost's inside your head, uncovering some stupid and horrible memory about The General and Jason Wyngarde fucking with your mind. The General, Bob. Of all the people...

It's six months ago and you're in the middle of Times Square. And you see the end, don't you? These Skrulls, these rat bastards that hid out on this worthless little mudball of yours for years…you see them. And you face them down. You fight, and you kill, and you use every last shred of the infernal machine that makes you The Sentry to drive them back. Until it's just the four of you facing an armada of them. You, and the Kree-Skrull hybrid running around with the rest of the pubescent hormonal superheroes, and his little boyfriend who's got more wicked witchery than Stevie Nicks. And there's Stark too, but you have no problem with Stark, because he's Stark and he's seen fit to give you a place in the world and that's important to you. You don't have a problem with any of these people, but you do have a problem with yourself.

You see it all. There are good people here and they're not going to survive. You see it, because I'm the one who gives it to you, like I gave it to the Hulk all those years ago. A horrible and wonderful glimpse into the future. There's a belligerent homunculus who calls himself K'lrt, and he's leading the enemy troops right down Fifth Avenue on a scorched earth policy. And there's you jamming a lamppost through his head and throwing him like a javelin into the river.

There's the Hulkling, laying there in a pool of his own blood on the steps of the Baxter Building, and shortly dying. There're the Fantastic Four, then there's Fury and the Avengers, and they're all keeping K'lrt and his legions busy. There's poor little Billy Kaplan, crouched over Teddy Altman's shriveling genetic grab-bag of a body, and he won't stop crying. And you didn't even need me to see how this one ended. There's a beautiful kid here with someone at his side who loves him dearly—the kind of love they don't talk about anymore, the kind of love that doesn't happen anymore, the Halley's Comet of love, that only comes around once in twelve lifetimes—and he's not going to live. And you stand there and you take in every horrible moment of it.

You watch the genetic abomination—and you can't stop thinking of Teddy as much more—die a horrible death in his lover's arms. You watch poor Billy Kaplan cry and still cradle that dead body in his arms. He keeps saying that he's sorry, and keeps rocking back and forth and you don't know if you should walk up and give him a halfhearted conciliatory pat on the shoulder. If you should play Mister Responsible Hero and help him out here, because you've never had to do anything like this before.

You're the Sentry. You do smash and grab. That's your bit.

But Teddy Altman dying is a bridge too far, even for you and especially for the enemy.

When poor Billy Kaplan finally pulls away from the body, it's long since gone cold, and the heroes are still fighting K'lrt and his legions.

Billy stands up and his arms go into fists and they shake and his lips quiver. His eyes have been leaking long repressed tears for a long time now, and he stares out at the enemy legions. And you see it in his eyes, in that slightly furrowed brow and the just plain dark look he gives you before he looks back at the people that killed his lover.

Death.

He looks at you and his eyes are angry and apologetic. And you swear you hear him say, as he apologises for what he's about to do, "I want them to die."

And that doesn't bother you. He gets up and just looks at the enemy legions and they start to melt before his crying eyes. You stand there and watch and you connect your mind to his. You see what he does: he focuses his black magic in on every one of them and makes each one a target. And he makes his black magic burn them alive, like heretics in an unholy land.

There are Skrull and human bodies, pedestrians caught in the crossfire, liquefying in the streets because of a teenager's anguish, and you don't stop him.

Deep down you want to, but then you don't, because you want to see what happens. You want to see righteous anger inflicted on someone who deserves it for once, and you want to see the enemy utterly destroyed, even if the omelette is worth breaking a lot of eggs.

Because deep down you're not a nice person, Bob.

And deep down, you know this.

You also know that one day everyone you know and love is going to die, if they haven't already, and this doesn't bother you as much as the knowledge that you yourself will die.

And you are going to die. Very hard.

I'm going to be the one who drives the pitch-black knife into your heart of hearts. And, when that happens we'll both go down to Hell where we belong, Sentry.

No one will be there to stop it.

Because you're going to end up all alone. And you know something?

You want it that way.

This is my greatest victory, Sentry, and you gave it to me on a silver platter.

You. Alone.

Null.

Void.

Continued...