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"It's over," Ikaris said scoldingly.
Makkari, still seething with anger and pain at seeing the Eternal she loved most blasted into the liquid fire beneath their feet, made a guttural sound that was her approximation of a growl. Her suit glowed gold with cosmic energy, and she shot forward faster than a bullet, slamming into Ikaris, sending him into the rockface. Her emotions ran high, but her speed gave her the edge. Each blow was well-calculated. She pummeled him repeatedly until his back had slammed so far in it drew lava. She kept moving, faster than Ikaris could even see her, faster than he had ever observed her in battle, faster than he could anticipate where to grab for her throat to stop her. She was always out of Ikaris's optical blast range before the energy could leave his eyeballs or evading his too-slow hand.
She made a particularly savage swerve, creating a wave of sand that disturbed Ikaris's cosmic energy beam.
"Argh!" Ikaris grunted, momentarily blinded.
Makkari ran fast and furious to a point away from Ikaris in the time it took him to blink before running back at him to gain momentum and break the sound barrier. She ran and halted at just the right point that it triggered a targeted sonic boom, right into Ikaris. She didn't stop. She ran back and forth, launching sonic boom after sonic boom.
There was a reason Makkari was created deaf. The material that made up eardrums (whether human or synthetic) could never be sustained at the maximum speed Makkari could actually run. It could not survive the impossible forces of physics at play when cosmic energy propelled her at speeds faster than sound and even light. On the team, she was often counted on to transport people to safety, and she did so effectively, but at a speed that mortals and finite materials could survive at – never at her fastest, never at a speed that could kill.
The force of Makkari's attacks caught Ikaris dead on, and it was quickly followed by multiple speed-powered punches to his face. Once Makkari's onslaught abated, Ikaris was motionless against a far-away rockface, eardrums shattered, blue armor pierced, and his eyes crackling with unfocused cosmic energy. The parts of his eye that he used to concentrate his energy into beams were ruined.
Of the fighters among them: Gilgamesh threw the hardest punch, Thena was the most experienced and skilled warrior – the smartest on the battlefield, Kingo was the most versatile but least deadly. Then there was Ikaris, who was the most brutal. You could see it in how he took down the others his family with his optic blasts.
But Makkari? Makkari was the fastest, and she had never been so motivated to run in her life.
Now that she had dealt the hardest blows of her thousands of years on planet Earth, she stepped toward Ikaris slowly, watching for any sign that he was going to get up and attack what remained of their dysfunctional family again.
Before Makkari reached Ikaris, however, the ground began to change. Sersi was transmuting Tiamut.
Before the alteration was complete, the remaining Eternals were suddenly joined together, beams of cosmic energy warping and twisting until they connected them all with Tiamut. They found themselves floating above the ground, linked with the Emerging Celestial.
Each Eternal felt the presence of the other surviving Eternals, even Kingo who was not even nearby. The power that flowed among them was potent, something none of them had ever experienced, and nothing any of them dared channel and control.
Makkari felt Druig's presence, unspeakably relieved to know he was still alive.
Sersi, knowing the stakes and taking ownership of the position of Prime Eternal that Ajak left her, focused her powers, taking control of the Uni-Mind. She landed back on the ground, in the middle of Tiamut's palm and continued to project the transmutation process. Her entire being burned with the effort of channeling so much power, but she pushed forward. It had to be done. It had to, or else all these millennia were for nothing.
As the rest of Tiamut was rendered frozen, like a brand new ice cap in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the Eternals were lowered back to the ground.
With the exception of Sersi, everyone else's injuries remained. Without Ajak to set them to rights, their injuries were not going to go anywhere anytime soon.
Ikaris, still without the power of his optic lasers, still retained his ability to fly. With one last broken look at Sersi, he shot up into the blue sky and disappeared into the upper atmosphere.
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It was one thing to feel the familiar presence of Druig's mind when they were all connected to the Celestial Tiamut, but it was another thing entirely when Makkari's dark eyes fell on his limping form.
He was covered in dirt from the ordeal, but his eyes were still sharp and piercing. His gaze softened as Makkari ran toward him, pressing her forehead against his. He exhaled, finally able to relax.
Makkari's arms wound around him tight.
Druig lifted his head from hers to look her in the eye, his usual lopsided smirk adorning his pale face. "My beautiful, beautiful, and powerful Makkari," he whispered, communicating more with his breath than sound.
I thought I lost you, Makkari signed.
I'm here, Druig responded, always. His left hand found its way to her chin. May I? he signed.
Makkari nodded.
Druig guided her lips to his, swallowing her sigh of relief.
His fingers stroked her cheeks gently and reverently as they kissed, a meeting of minds as it was of lips, of millennia of longing and ageless unabating love. Druig could not influence Makkari's mind, but his telepathy caressed the edges of hers nonetheless, and her mind responded like the holding of hands. The boundary lines between them were there, but they were still intertwined.
Makkari's hands came up to Druig's face, hands as adept at communicating as any silver tongue, hands that had brought Druig's tormentor to his knees, hands that had found their place on Druig's person in one way or another over thousands of years but only in this way now. Now – when the world as they understood it had metaphorically shattered around them.
Makkari wasn't sure whose tears came first, even for someone so tactile. They both cried tears of release – of the horrific rawness of the battle, of so much time spent ignoring the connection between them only for it to come to a spectacular head here in this moment.
Druig kissed Makkari for what felt like ages in a single moment, but he broke away from her at the sensation of a hand tapping his shoulder.
When the pair looked up, they caught a glimpse of a tendril of cosmic energy retreating. Thena had managed to project something nonlethal at them.
Druig smiled sheepishly, as Makkari hid her blush in his chest.
"We're all glad you're alive, too," Thena said.
Druig's arms tightened around Makkari, as what remained of their family came together on the beach. There was a lot to process, a lot to figure out, but they would do it together.
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