Abominations like himself needed an outlet for their restlessness or they became destructive menaces to lesser life forms. That had been the fate of Hugo, the Professor's former friend and lab assistant. After becoming an interdimensional monster, there was little reasoning with him anymore. Of course, Hugo could hardly be blamed for that. Once someone lost their reference point for rationality, there was little left to reason about.
Destruction was the first and easiest coping mechanism for all consuming madness. Paradox's newly made immortal was not unique in that regard.
Before allowing the creature free reign, Paradox had plunged a fist into its power core, embedding a miniature star within its center. The luminous sphere provided the anodite with an additional supply of power as it was carried into the air by currents of unrestrained energy. Its body was the conductive rod, scorching mana encircling it in a vortex.
"I remember my first descent into insanity," Paradox chimed wryly, not that the former Ben Tennyson was around to hear him anyway. The creature was too preoccupied laying waste to the polar landscape.
A second outlet for restlessness was creating purpose as humans do. As a mortal researcher, the Professor had dedicated his entire life to better understanding his place on his earth, but it was all for naught when every truth he knew was swallowed away by space-time.
Paradox never told lies.
When he admitted to Ben that he admired humankind's unique ability to make life meaningful, he had been sincere. Inspired, he tried to give himself reasons to care, distracting himself with the frivolous: fashion, the varied cultural traditions of different galaxies, or the curious misadventures of local heroes.
"Who are you?" The same bearded man would always ask, wearing a valiant glower and apprehensive green eyes. He towered over the other mortals, a large fish in a tiny pond trying to threaten a cargo ship.
"I'm not entirely sure myself. An explosion displaced me from my own reality. I was trapped in the event horizon for so long that I lost my own name. I didn't age, or need to sleep, or eat. I just existed. At first, I went mad, of course. After a few millennia, I got bored with that and went sane."
"Well, that doesn't tell us anything. What do you want? Why are you here?"
"I'm here to help you repair the fabric of space-time."
Paradox indulged his every iteration with the same story, always reintroducing himself, never tiring or growing frustrated with having to repeat himself. Sometimes—during the brief moments Eon wasn't assaulting him—when Paradox was able to gaze into his enemy's crazed violet eyes, he couldn't help but to wonder …
Which iteration are you?
Eon's many faces never betrayed his origins. Sometimes, he appeared to him wearing a familiar unshaven face. Sometimes he was falling apart, a ghoul unable to hold his own shape but unwavering in his pursuit to end Paradox's life.
The Professor was never able to give voice to his curiosity, and he didn't want to insult his enemy by asking. Instead, he was content to play along with Eon's little games, feigning ignorance about why he was so determined to remove every Omnitrix-wielder from the multiverse. He pretended not to notice Eon's obsession with killing the insignificant Benjamin Tennyson.
A sweeping force tackled him from behind.
Paradox was sent skidding across the glacial floor.
When he came to a stop, twin blades tore through the backs of his shoulder blades, staking him into the ice. He was pinned on his stomach, unable to view his assailant (although, he already had a strong feeling about who it was). Grunting, he lifted his head, only to have his face smashed back down into the ice.
"Paradox!"
Eon gave him no opportunity to respond. He twisted his daggers deep into his spine—as if it could even hurt—and yanked them savagely out of his back, driving them in again and again and again. Pointlessly. Repetitively. Obsessively. But his bloodthirst ultimately led him nowhere. Paradox did not bleed. He could never die. Wispy ozone gas dripped upward from his stab wounds and into the heavens.
All the while, Eon cursed his name in every language he knew, screaming inconsolably, blaming him incoherently for countless perceived slights. Disregarding his lack of results, he mindlessly continued cleaving Paradox between the shoulders, trying his best to shred him asunder. His insane, murderous ramblings hinted he was having another one of his explosive temperamental episodes.
Paradox wished he could make the madness bearable for him. One of his favorite qualities about Eon was his verbosity when they were fighting. He could be unintentionally funny with his insults and amusing observations from a perspective Paradox never would have considered himself.
"Eon," He wheezed after each brutal piercing through the chest, but the gasps were more of a tic than actual pain. Residual human habits tended to die hard. "Did you know there was a short time during the month of December in 1914 when two sides of a war temporarily ceased battling? The soldiers were able to share a few days of peace, celebrating the holiday season with their own enemies. Wonderful, wouldn't you agree?"
Above him, there was hesitation. The dagger was sluggishly dragged back out of his body, but it didn't come down again. Paradox hoped the trivial information was bringing him back from the mania of all infinity on high.
"What are you even yammering about, you foolish– " Eon roared, but he didn't get to finish, sent sailing into a glacier by a ruthless bolt of lightning discharged at him.
Distracted by the Professor's seemingly unrelated tangent, he hadn't seen the blast of light aimed at him by Paradox's abomination. The star he fused into the creature's core had predictably helped it absorb more power. Still, it was not content with what it had, thirsting after all power. It hungered insatiably, and Eon was a radiating fountain of energy himself.
No longer pinned, Paradox was forced to skate around on the ice to avoid being targeted by his own creation. "I'm proposing a Christmas truce between hated enemies."
"There will be no such thing!" Eon rose from the melting ice, undying hysterical fever in his eyes. "Because I am not your hated enemy, Paradox."
"No," Paradox agreed gently. "You are not my hated enemy."
"I am your executioner! As long as you exist, we will never share peace . Your very nature is disgusting to me—you are an infernal, wretched pest. A revolting, overly-sentimental old fool! Do not dare flatter yourself by classifying yourself as a threat. You are not remotely comparable to me. An enemy? You are nothing! Do you understand me? Nothing. There exist no words across any planet, galaxy, nor reality that could possibly do justice to how abhorrent you are."
"Well, that certainly doesn't seem to stop you from trying to find them." The Professor laughed affectionately, genuinely entertained by the tirade.
Eon howled at the same time the anodite did. As punishment, the armored man fired a hot purple beam at the nuisance, supercharging the creature beyond its capabilities. The star housed within its core could no longer withstand the pressure. Unknowingly, Eon had initiated the volatile process of star death. The anodite exploded in a fiery supernova before violently collapsing inward in an implosion that ate everything surrounding it. The resulting black hole wrenched everything forcefully into its spinning center.
Paradox, who had witnessed innumerable wormholes, did not bother fighting against the grip drawing him closer. In fact, his whole purpose behind hiding the star within Tennyson's remains had been in the hopes Eon would trigger a collapse. Predictably, his temper had gotten the better of him again, and he had done exactly that.
Unconcerned, Paradox knew that he could find his way back out once he was pulled in. In contrast, Eon began panicking as they were snatched into the lightness unknown. He was not as familiar with navigating space-time. It was still very easy to imprison him in alternate realities or get him lost in pocket dimensions. Paradox would not describe him as stupid. Eon was nowhere near unintelligent, but he was a bit simple, short sighted, and thankfully too incurious to bother learning enough about the multiverse to map it out as Paradox had.
They were launched into a murky gray land devoid of gravity. Without rhyme or reason, rips in the fabric of reality devoured and spat out everything from cars and homes to the smallest lost socks and keys. People spontaneously arrived and disappeared like waste washed onto sandy shores before being taken by the tides again. Conceptual units were not spared either; forgotten symbols that once represented abstract concepts floated on by like mindless fruit flies, obsolete and no longer in use since nobody remembered them. All that was lost to time littered the tallest plateaus, deepest craters and crevices, filling the pocket dimension with colorful chaos and a cacophony of meaningless echoes and chimes. Senseless colors. Incomprehensible shapes.
"What is the meaning of this?!" Eon demanded, latching onto his knees as they hurdled through a universe foreign to him but home to Paradox. The broken visor of his beloved enemy's helmet exposed his badly decomposing face as he stared up at him with wine-dark eyes. Little did he know, he was giving Paradox a rare gift, allowing his ordinarily hidden features to be admired freely.
"A black hole," Paradox explained needlessly, casting him a long look through half-lidded eyes. Perversely, he took secret, guilty pleasure in the way Eon held him. Unless he meant to harm him, it wasn't often he touched Paradox. Base desires were ignited in the deep recesses of his mind, reactivating morehuman wants he'd forgotten. He'd not been human for a very long time, but he could almost imagine he was with Eon's unmasked chin hovering just below his navel.
"I know what a black hole is!" Eon seethed, robbing him of his reverie. Manifesting two blades beneath his wrist, he drove them into Paradox's abdomen, sinking his fingernails into Paradox's hips so he couldn't be shaken off. The illusion that they were anything more than bitter rivals was tragically shattered, but the attractive curl of his purpled lips did not go unappreciated.
He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, staving off a moan—just not for the reasons Eon would have believed.
Feeling like a lecher now, Paradox exhaled mournfully, smiling at him apologetically when he opened his eyes again: "Ah, then perhaps you wanted to know more about this realm. This is Vacuity Village, a dimension situated within the null void. In other words, it is a pocket dimension within another pocket dimension."
"Why did you bring us here?"
" I did no such thing." It was the truth. " You decided to kill an anodite containing a star. Its death caused the wormhole that brought us here making this your doing. You should learn to regulate your emotions better. Your actions just destroyed an entire planet."
"How quaint, Time Walker. I did not know you were capable of caring so deeply for obscure worlds and their measly inhabitants." Eon chuckled throatily, the deep rumble of his chest vibrating against him. Give me the strength, Paradox mentally pleaded toward any deity who happened to be listening, averting his gaze from the man's wicked mouth and jagged canine teeth.
"I have to care. I force myself to. I am not very pleasant company otherwise." He said absently, focusing on the limitless stars to distract from his shameful physical arousal. He couldn't recall ever feeling more terribly awkward.
The worst part was how clueless Eon was. He was content to keep twisting his wonderfully muscular arms around his midsection, burying his wrist blades in more deeply , grinning proudly at himself for fishing the smallest reactions from Paradox. A flinch. A gasp. A bitten-off groan.
"Do you waste time trying to repair spiderwebs, too?" Eon sneered.
"Sometimes." The Professor said truthfully, reflecting on how everything resembled a web from where he could see. "I try, but I am not always successful. He died before he could make amends with his grandfather."
"What?"
"Benjamin Tennyson"
"What does that goat-faced clown have to do with anything?"
"He perished in the snow in one universe."
"So?"
"Don't you wonder if he would have been forgiven?"
The knives stopped burrowing. Paradox instantly regretted speaking.
Or, maybe not.
When he gave Eon his attention again, he was met with lovely, confused violet irises. For a moment, Eon was innocent, struggling to comprehend the context behind what was being asked—the hidden meaning—everything Paradox didn't say. When he was lost, it was so easy to forget what he looked like lethal and to fool himself into believing he was making a breakthrough in untangling the muddled inner workings of Eon's messy mind.
So, Paradox watched his mind work with fascination, wishing his lips could smooth out the little furrow developing between his brows. The frustrated scowl shrieked all the things Eon would normally verbally lob at him: Why does that matter? Why must you always speak in riddles? You don't make sense. You never make sense. I hate you for not making sense! His expression bore an eerily familiar resemblance while remaining so uniquely Eon and only Eon. Even when cutely perplexed, his eyes retained their half-mad brightness.
"No, I don't care," Eon finally settled on. "I do not preoccupy myself with the petty melodrama of lesser creatures as you do. You're the only one who bothers with the shallow lives of the most worthless creatures."
"Don't say that; You're neither worthless nor shallow."
Paradox's statement could have been understood in a multitude of ways. With Eon, it was near impossible to predict how he would react to anything really. Even the Professor's most flattering compliments were often lost in translation. He could flat out tell Eon that he was handsome—when he remembered to keep himself from rotting too much—and he would still manage to misconstrue it somehow. Paradox never minded this, but he was also presently being impaled with a relentless force that would have murdered him had he been human.
Suffice it to say, after centuries of being unable to reach an understanding with him, there was little left Eon could do to bother him anymore.
You're neither worthless nor shallow, he had said; firstly, because it was true. In fact, Eon stood to benefit from being more shallow. If he were more particular about appearances, perhaps his shape would stop fluctuating so dramatically. Secondly, Eon was only insulting himself since he was one of Paradox's preoccupations. And finally, delivered with more subtlety, was a hint of comparison to Ben Tennyson since he was the subject of the conversation.
Simply put, if Eon was calling Ben Tennyson worthless, he was (technically) also giving himself the label.
Naturally, Eon immediately jumped to the very last possible way he could have interpreted it. Nostrils flaring, his eyes became slits, his breathing growing erratic. The wrist blades plunging deep into Paradox's belly retracted altogether, leaving the ghostly vapor of his blood to cloud the air around them. Claws fisted themselves into his chest, pulsing threateningly with hot mana, trying to rip his chest open next—to ironically tear out the vital organ he no longer possessed, both in the metaphorical and literal sense. Eon didn't know it yet, but he already had his heart. It was always going to be his, and he could have anything else of Paradox that he wanted.
Politely ignoring the escalation, Paradox's fingers locked around Eon's wrist to still them and prevent him from excavating any further.
"I don't force myself to care about everything, Eon." Not about you. "Many of the things I hold dear become so easy to love that it's more of a challenge not to."
Eon barked a harsh, disbelieving laugh. "You? Love? You don't even bleed. But I guess if they mean that much to you, I'll help them join you when I finally kill–"
Paradox released his wrists, allowing Eon's own momentum to carry him forward. Claws found their way entirely through the other side of his body as Eon slipped and slammed into him so completely: knee to knee, hip bone to hip bone, and lips to lips.
An ache he had not been aware of was soothed instantly, pacified by the taste of the mouth. He savored the flavor of the galaxy on his tongue, eagerly chasing the scent on Eon's breath. Gripping the back of his neck, Paradox became intoxicated, addicted to the sweetness seeping into his system, making him feel electric. It wasn't enough; he wanted his mouth everywhere—teeth and tongue scraping against every piece of him, every celestial fiber, in the same way Eon fought to obliterate each of his molecules.
It ended quickly, but the moment and its sensations had been fried into Paradox's very being, imprinted against him, seeming to linger for a new eternity. He almost believed he had ascended to an even higher plane of existence than the one he was already on, his body singing with static pleasure.
In typical mercurial fashion, Eon's reaction left him at a loss. Scrambling to separate himself, his bulky body briefly writhed against Paradox's, knocking intimately against him as he escaped.
Horrified, Eon reeled. Forcibly, he dislodged the claws from his chest and raised a hand to his own anemic lips. He stared with newly terrified eyes, backing away onto the ashen floor. It was the most hurtful injury he had inflicted thus far, and Paradox would have rather been stabbed again.
"Honestly, Eon? You're a few centuries too late to play the part of an uncorrupted church maiden." His temper flared for the very first time.
It wasn't fair. Eon did not have the right. How was it that he could so shamelessly come to blows with Paradox, incessantly and repeatedly mutilate him in the most grotesque of ways, but be scared away by a simple kiss?
"Why did you do that?" Eon demanded, regarding him as though he were a mysterious stranger now. "What do you want from me?"
"I think that should be rather obvious by now."
You.
"Not that. You can't want that . " He choked out, countless conflicting emotions flickering across his features, the most recurring one still being horror.
"Oh? Why can't I?" Paradox raised a brow.
"Because we're… It's not… I don't…" He started before stopping again, his frenzied eyes on everything except him. "I'm not- "
Was the idea so nightmarish to him?
Apparently not.
Something sparked in his eyes, his brows lifting in realization at Paradox's displeased little frown—his frustrated heartbreak. When he realized this new power he had over the Professor, he wasted no time weaponizing it. The fear dissipated, a beautiful grin stretching out across Eon's face. He laughed cruelly, finding his nerve and fire to hurt him worse than when he had been physically mutilating him.
Hissing out every word, Eon gleefully marched forward. "Because you can't. You may chase after flawed facsimiles and cope with as many counterfeits as you'd like, but there is nothing else like me. I am not your precious Ben Ten-thousand, nor am I any other sort of cheap copy you can toy around with or replicate. You will never have me or my affection; you are beneath me."
He sealed his words with a mana-charged punch to the face, as close to any kiss Paradox would ever receive from him. Pained by more than just the blow, he staggered back. Sickeningly, he wanted Eon to hit him again. It was better than nothing at all.
Suddenly, he was able to understand. Why Eon had been so fearful of being kissed—so scared of being wanted by him . Eon seemed to be saying that his venom distinguished him from all of his counterparts. In every universe, he would always despise him because he wouldn't be himself otherwise. Despising him was one of the only things Eon had left, which remained distinct and wholly his own in a sea of so many.
And he couldn't deny thinking of Eon as yet another incarnation of a familiar face, speculating over the mystery surrounding which version of the world had borne a thing like him. But as much as the pure truth distressed Eon, it was simply what he was. It was not all that he was, and it did not mean he was interchangeable with any of his parallels, but he couldn't deny he was a darker shade of Tennyson.
"Very well, Eon." He said pityingly when the stars from the force of his fist had left his eyes. Paradox quickly had to catch Eon's arms before he could give him another. "I won't… take that away from you. If it brings you some semblance of clarity and makes you feel better, continue hating me."
Eon growled at the phrasing. "As if I needed your permission, arrogant bastard!"
"I accept your hate as I would your love, since you've denied me the latter." Paradox continued, knocking his ridiculous helmet off and nearly crushing Eon's body against his own with the unyielding hold he had on his forearms.
Unruly raven tresses floated all about his face from the lack of gravity, exposed to the ill-lit atmosphere of Paradox's domain. Violet eyes widened, darting away from him once he jerked his face to the side. He bared teeth angrily, shoving up against Paradox's chest, but there were no knives in his hands anymore.
"But Eon, you seem to be under the strange impression that you are unremarkable and that it is only your disdain for me that sets you apart. That is completely false, so allow me to correct your mistake as I always do for you—"
Because Paradox so loved his mistakes, too. All of them. Every multiversal misstep. Every ugly scar he left on space-time. Paradox's lips were at his ear, his mouth tickling at the trace of stubble that lined the corner of his jaw.
"—And only you . Perhaps that is what it means to care about someone unconditionally. You've already tried gutting me more than enough times if that isn't proof enough on its own. While it's true I'm fond of every version of you, the only version I want is this one."
His fingers trailed up the length of Eon's forearms and shoulders, taking both sides of his face and making him look. Eon stopped straining against him at last, so frozen and rigid, his pale sickly skin giving him the illusion of being a cadaver.
"There exists exactly one Eon, with his violet eyes and violent temper. Impulsive Eon, who ruins his own plans because he loses sight of them so easily, who cannot so much as remember what he is supposed to look like—"
" Stop! " Eon began twisting again, incensed again by the reminder of his resemblances.
"—because he is more than another Ben Ten-thousand. Eon, who ascended beyond his mortal coil and became more than he was ever meant to be all on hisown, whose brilliance is sometimes overshadowed by his madness. That Eon has endeared himself to me like no other."
The truth was jarring. Forced to listen to who and what he was for once instead of running away or trying to destroy it, Eon trembled in his arms, the wall of his delusions crumbling around them.
Paradox leaned in and kissed him between the wild eyes he adored.