Rich freezes in place and for a moment he can only look at Grif, like what Grif just said needs time to tunnel inside him until he can finally comprehend it - and it reaches what it's tunneling for. It reaches something deep, underneath the creatures crawling in his skin and through his brain.
He does love Grif's stubbornness, because it's not just stubbornness for the sake of stubborness anymore, it's stubbornness in the face of things that are wrong. Say what you will about him, but when something terrible's going on, Grif doesn't know when to quit.
If Rich is coming up against that stubbornness right now...what does that mean about him? What does that mean about what he's doing?
Screaming.
There are tears in Grif's eyes and Rich's eyes brim with tears to match. Somehow, his arm reforms out of that tentacled mass, the tentacles holding Grif shifting so they're coming out of Rich's shoulder instead. He reaches up his very normal human hand to cup Grif's face, and almost thoughtlessly his thumb brushes away the tear in the corner of Grif's eye.
Why aren't you screaming?
"Why aren't I... Why aren't I ...?" he breathes out.
Everything feels so good. He knows his place, he knows who he is, know's what he's doing is right. He's more confident than he's ever been in his life.
...which means something's wrong. He's struggled with a massive inferiority complex since he was a teenager, and now it's gone all of a sudden? Now everything feels perfect and he feels complete? It feels just like... just like ...
"The Phalanx," he breathes out, eyes going wide. "Just like..."
He looks at Grif dangling in the tentacles and for just a moment he sees Ko-rel there instead, bleeding, dying in his arms after he helped Gamora kill her. His very first Nova, dead, all because he couldn't fight off the Phalanx infection fast enough.
No. He's not letting it happen again. Not this time.
Not again.
Not to him.
Why aren't you screaming?
It's his own voice. The strange voice that sounds like something other is actually his voice, reaching through all the muck the same way it did once before.
Why aren't you screaming, Richie? he asks himself.
"I... am..." he grinds out between his teeth.
Attaboy.
He screams and tosses Grif aside, away from himself, before the things inside him have a chance to take control and hurt him. It's good that he did it because as soon as they start losing control, they try to take over again by force, try to shove his mind down deep where it can't reach the surface again. Tentacles sprout out from all over his body, and his face turns that sickly purple again, his eyes glowing purple. The tentacles accidentally knock off his helmet and he crouches there, gripping at his head like his hands are the only thing keeping it from exploding.
But he's not giving up without a fight this time.
"Oh no you don't, you monsters! You screwed up! I know you're in there now and I can see you for what you really are!" He starts ripping tentacles off himself, trying to get them out of his skin, weeping as years of painful memories pour back in without the rosy filter the squids had placed over them. "Did you really think you could make me forget everything you did to me?! Did you really think after stopping you from taking my universe that I'd just lay down and let you take this one? That'd I'd sit back and let you take the multiverse? Like hell."
no subject
Rich freezes in place and for a moment he can only look at Grif, like what Grif just said needs time to tunnel inside him until he can finally comprehend it - and it reaches what it's tunneling for. It reaches something deep, underneath the creatures crawling in his skin and through his brain.
He does love Grif's stubbornness, because it's not just stubbornness for the sake of stubborness anymore, it's stubbornness in the face of things that are wrong. Say what you will about him, but when something terrible's going on, Grif doesn't know when to quit.
If Rich is coming up against that stubbornness right now...what does that mean about him? What does that mean about what he's doing?
Screaming.
There are tears in Grif's eyes and Rich's eyes brim with tears to match. Somehow, his arm reforms out of that tentacled mass, the tentacles holding Grif shifting so they're coming out of Rich's shoulder instead. He reaches up his very normal human hand to cup Grif's face, and almost thoughtlessly his thumb brushes away the tear in the corner of Grif's eye.
Why aren't you screaming?
"Why aren't I... Why aren't I ...?" he breathes out.
Everything feels so good. He knows his place, he knows who he is, know's what he's doing is right. He's more confident than he's ever been in his life.
...which means something's wrong. He's struggled with a massive inferiority complex since he was a teenager, and now it's gone all of a sudden? Now everything feels perfect and he feels complete? It feels just like... just like ...
"The Phalanx," he breathes out, eyes going wide. "Just like..."
He looks at Grif dangling in the tentacles and for just a moment he sees Ko-rel there instead, bleeding, dying in his arms after he helped Gamora kill her. His very first Nova, dead, all because he couldn't fight off the Phalanx infection fast enough.
No. He's not letting it happen again. Not this time.
Not again.
Not to him.Why aren't you screaming?
It's his own voice. The strange voice that sounds like something other is actually his voice, reaching through all the muck the same way it did once before.
Why aren't you screaming, Richie? he asks himself.
"I... am..." he grinds out between his teeth.
Attaboy.
He screams and tosses Grif aside, away from himself, before the things inside him have a chance to take control and hurt him. It's good that he did it because as soon as they start losing control, they try to take over again by force, try to shove his mind down deep where it can't reach the surface again. Tentacles sprout out from all over his body, and his face turns that sickly purple again, his eyes glowing purple. The tentacles accidentally knock off his helmet and he crouches there, gripping at his head like his hands are the only thing keeping it from exploding.
But he's not giving up without a fight this time.
"Oh no you don't, you monsters! You screwed up! I know you're in there now and I can see you for what you really are!" He starts ripping tentacles off himself, trying to get them out of his skin, weeping as years of painful memories pour back in without the rosy filter the squids had placed over them. "Did you really think you could make me forget everything you did to me?! Did you really think after stopping you from taking my universe that I'd just lay down and let you take this one? That'd I'd sit back and let you take the multiverse? Like hell."
He isn't going to make it easy for them.
"Grif's not the only one that's stubborn."