MARVEL's Avengers: Infinity War: Thanos Read online

  Real. The reality of his friendship with Sintaa had always seemed fraught and fragile. Thanos steepled his fingers before him and leaned in, thinking. He couldn’t imagine a scenario in which it would profit Sintaa to lie to him. Not about this. He applied his mighty brain to the task and realized, in a stunning blast of epiphany, that he did not need to apply his brain to this. This was not the matter of the flavor of quarks or the spin of electrons or the reactions of enzymes or the cleavage planes of crystals. This was a matter of emotion. Logic could not apply. It did not apply.

  “You’re my friend,” he said very slowly.

  Sintaa applauded and even pursed his lips for a loud, piercing whistle. “He got it! Ladies and gentlemen, the boy genius of Titan figured it out!”

  His skin could not betray a blush, but Thanos felt the blood rush to his cheeks nonetheless. He turned his head away. “You dolt.”

  “A dolt who has an evening planned.” Sintaa bolted out of his chair and grabbed Thanos by the arm. “Come on.”

  The sky never truly darkened over the Eternal City. The City itself seemed made of light, its bright surfaces limned with light-emitting piping that brightened even as the daylight dimmed.

  They walked from the MentorPlex. The sky was cluttered with aerorafts and floaters, thick with artificial congestion.

  The land-bound walkways were no better. Thanos, too tall and too broad, was aware of how disconcerting his presence was. The population of the cluttered, jammed walkways tried to give him a wide berth, stepping aside as he passed, stepping into and onto one another. Still, he found his elbows and his shoulders knocking people aside, his feet stepping on others’ feet.

  He tried to ignore it. Focused on something else. He wondered what would happen if there were suddenly an emergency. If all of these people had to run. It would be madness.

  “It’s so crowded. Worse than it used to be,” Thanos complained. “I don’t usually get to venture out this far. I didn’t realize. From above, it’s hard to tell.”

  “And this is why you should come outside every now and again,” Sintaa joked at his side, shoving his way through a clutch of people headed the other way.

  “I thought it was bad when we were kids, but this…”

  “It will get better when MentorPlex II and III are built,” Sintaa said. “What your father lacks in parenting skills, he makes up for in city planning, I have to admit. The overflow will be directed up, as always.”

  Thanos grunted something affirmative. His father had designed the Eternal City, had overseen the terraforming of Titan into a livable place. As distant and as unforgiving as his father could be, Thanos had to remind himself that the man had responsibilities that would crush lesser men to paste. A’Lars could be forgiven his endless distractions and neglects.

  Thanos found himself smiling, much to his surprise. Fifteen minutes in Sintaa’s presence and he was already much happier.

  In the entertainment district, Sintaa guided them through a crowd to a club, where light and shadow pulsed in time to bass-heavy music. Thanos paused, much to the anger and frustration of the throngs trying to make their way along the walkway.

  “A club?” Thanos rumbled. “What do you think I am, Sintaa?”

  “I think you’re a deadly dull killjoy who’s never had a moment that wasn’t devoted to figuring something out,” Sintaa said. “I think you need some time to be with other people and to stop thinking so much. Maybe even do something crazy and radical, like kiss someone.”

  Thanos barked with horrified laughter. “Kiss someone? Have you lost your mind? Look at me. Look at them.” He gestured at the Titans who flowed around him, doing their best not to look too long or too closely at the mutated thing in their midst.

  Sintaa waved away his concern like a bad smell. “One kiss and you’ll forget all about these provincial idiots and their base prejudices. You’ve spent your life letting your father convince you that you’re worthless. That your size and your appearance make you a monster. And because he’s a big deal and because he’s important, if he believes it, everyone else does, too.”

  Thanos opened his mouth to speak, but Sintaa silenced him with a gesture. “None of that’s your fault; it’s his. But trust me—when you kiss someone, you feel it. The connection. The intertwined nature of it all. You’re part of Titan, Thanos, and I’m going to prove it to you. Tonight.”

  Thanos allowed himself to be ushered inside. People stared as he squeezed through the door, which was too low for him and narrowed by a cluster of loiterers.

  Inside, the air was thick and close, and the club had gone dead quiet. The music was only outside; the inside was soundproofed. It felt as though walking through the door immediately submerged him in a vacuum, cutting off all sound. He put his hands over his ears for a moment, heard the reliable thud of his own heartbeat, and relaxed a bit. The claustrophobia of it took a moment’s adjustment.

  It was a so-called silencurium, a “quiet club,” where sound was forbidden, eliminated through the use of acoustically null flooring. On the central dance floor, a pulsating globe of multicolored light flashed and throbbed as bodies gyrated and ground against one another in a languorous, indecorous pantomime. The silence was so loud as to be deafening—utter quiet, utter lack of sound.

  It was a wholly impressionistic place. With no music to guide them, the dancers moved as their bodies dictated, and their motions were interpreted freely by the onlookers. There were as many shows going on as there were people in attendance.

  Sintaa led him to a table, where two young women waited. One—a green-haired beauty with flickering holotattoos at the corners of her eyes—lit up at the sight of Sintaa, gaped her mouth in a silent squeal, and threw her arms around him. Clearly, he was mated—at least temporarily—with the green-haired girl.

  Sintaa gestured for Thanos to join them at the table. The other girl wore her hair close-cropped and red like a ripe cherry, her skin pale yellow and speckled with green dots. She offered him a shy smile and moved enough that he was able to sit between her and Sintaa.

  He longed to speak, but the rules and science of the silencurium forbade it. So he sat in silence, hands clasped in his lap, and watched the whirling and twisting of the revelers. Even the dance floor seemed too crowded, bodies colliding in tranquility.

  Sintaa and the two girls wore polychromatic jumpsuits with holographic piping down the legs that shifted colors and transparent epaulets filled with a viscous fluid that languidly copied their shoulder movements. It was the fashion, and most of the dancers wore similar outfits: skintight leggings that shifted color and brightness, neon-bright elbow patches, knee-high boots with flickering holo detailing.

  Wearing prosaic, staid pants and a tunic in deep blue, Thanos felt even more out of place. But as time passed and as everyone’s attention remained on the dancers, his unease abated, and his shoulders lost their rigidity. Compared with the bustle and noise of the world outside, the silencurium was a haven. He’d heard of sensory-deprivation experiences before, but this place merged deprivation with sensory immersion, turning off the sound so the other senses came more alive.

  He turned to the girl next to him, and she offered him another smile. He tried out his own, cognizant as always of the way his misshapen chin distorted his expression.

  A robot drifted by, a platter hovering before it on which stood several glasses. The girl held out a hand to stop the robot, then grabbed two drinks and fingerprinted a transaction. She offered one of the drinks to Thanos with a questioning mien.

  He took it. Studied it. Sipped. It was green, bubbly, and too sweet, tasting of melon and elderberries and ethyl alcohol. Still, she drank, so he did, too.

  They watched the dance floor for a time, the bodies moving as though triggered by hidden signals, contorting and twisting in time to the pulse of the light globe. Shadows leaped and shivered on the walls and ceiling and floor, reconfiguring as the dancers shifted, paused, shifted again. Thanos was lost in it, in the sheer artistry of it, i
n the impeccable timing and press of it. Outside, the bodies crushed together were inconvenient and hassled. Within, they were art.

  He lost track of time, sinking into individual moments. And then there was a touch on the back of his hand, a light skim of sensation. It was his companion, who regarded him quizzically.

  Outside? she mouthed.

  He looked over at Sintaa, who raised an eyebrow and nodded. Thanos rose. To his surprise, she took his hand and led him through the crowd to the door.

  Outside, the sudden noise assaulted him as though it were a physical thing. He winced in pain—footsteps, music, throats cleared, voices raised. A mélange of sounds, all blending into a sonic battering ram attacking his senses.

  She stood with him, holding his hand as he readjusted to the world of noise again. “It’s hard the first time,” she said when he finally cleared his mind and looked over at her. “The adjustment,” she clarified.

  It was the first time he’d heard her voice. There was, he admitted, nothing special about it, and yet he wanted to hear more of it.

  “Speak more,” he told her.

  She laughed. “The genius has never heard of small talk.”

  “No. But I enjoy the sound of your voice. Am I supposed to offer a subject for discussion?”

  She shook her head. “It’s all right. My mother tells me I never shut up, so it’s nice to have someone who actually wants to listen.” She paused. “So. The famous Thanos. Son of A’Lars.”

  “Son of Sui-San,” he told her. “How could you tell?”

  It was an attempt at levity, and it worked. Her eyes danced with merriment. “You just look like a Thanos, I guess. Not a Jerha or a Dione or a—”

  “Sintaa?” he asked, looking over his shoulder for a moment. Sintaa was still inside the silencurium.

  “Definitely a Thanos,” she said. She cocked her head. “In this light, your skin doesn’t even look purple.”

  He didn’t know how to respond. The mutation of multiples of his solute carrier genes that had resulted in his purple phenotype was no fault of his own. And yet he had been ashamed and embarrassed by it his whole conscious life.

  “Then I suppose I like the light here,” he told her.

  She shrugged. “I like purple. It’s my favorite color.”

  He blinked, then blinked again. Was this why Sintaa had chosen her to sit with him tonight? Because his skin color wasn’t abhorrent to her? To say purple was her favorite color… On Titan that was akin to saying that death was her favorite part of life.

  As he pondered this, she regarded him with something like amusement. Finally, as though she had been holding her breath, she exclaimed, “Do you really not remember me?”

  He froze. “Remember you?” He’d met precious few people in his life, as isolated as he was. How could it be possible that he wouldn’t remember one of them?

  “I’m Gwinth,” she told him. “Gwinth Falar. From your infamous four hours of formal schooling.”

  The memory rushed at him. The projection of his blood. The pinprick that set off screams. And the girl who had so innocently and without recrimination asked about his purple skin.

  “You look so different,” he said. Somewhat lamely, he realized too late.

  She laughed almost musically. “That happens. You look the same. Just bigger. I can’t believe it’s really you. It’s so amazing to see you again.”

  He shook her hand, taking great care not to squeeze too hard. “I am pleased to meet you, Gwinth Falar. Again.”

  “Sintaa says you’re a genius.”

  “Sintaa says many things.”

  “So you’re not?”

  He found himself enjoying this… this… thing. It was called banter, wasn’t it? The pleasing wordplay between two people. He’d heard of it but had only become used to using words to argue with his father or to issue commands to androids.

  “I didn’t say that. I just said Sintaa says many things.”

  Her mouth quirked up on one side, and she seemed to chuckle. They moved into the crowd and walked together, still holding hands. The masses parted for them; the looks of shock and disgust were unavoidable, and Thanos felt obliged to apologize to her for the ugly glares in her direction.

  She merely shrugged. “When Sintaa told us he was friends with you,” she said, “none of us believed him.”

  “Could you not believe that I was capable of having a friend, or was it that you didn’t think I could tolerate him?”

  She laughed. “You’re funny. And you’re not trying to be, which makes it even funnier. We just didn’t believe him, is all. Everyone knew about you. You went away, but you were still famous.”

  “Notorious, more likely,” he told her.

  She chuckled the notion away. “Our parents talked all the time, especially when they knew you would be at our school, and then after you left. About how A’Lars and Sui-San gave birth to a…” Gwinth trailed off.

  “I have heard all the words before,” he assured her. “Monstrosity, perhaps? Grotesquerie? Deviant?”

  “We’re not our parents,” she whispered, eyes downcast. “We don’t hate and fear just because something is different.” She scowled at a passerby who stared, openmouthed, at them. “Not like these imbeciles, who can’t let things go. Who are afraid because it’s easier than thinking.”

  “Their fear is understandable,” he said, surprised to find himself taking their side against him, “and even logical. From an evolutionary standpoint. Tribal safety relies on keeping outside elements at a remove. Fear and hatred of ‘the different’ or ‘the distinct’ makes sense.”

  “Maybe thousands of years ago, when we lived shorter lives and had no medicine,” she argued. “But now? It’s a vestige of our past. It’s prejudice without a point.”

  He stopped walking for a moment and looked down at her. She smiled sardonically. “I’m no genius, but I’m not an idiot, either. Stop defending the people who hate you.”

  Thanos pulled her through the crowd and found a platform that jutted out above the walkway. It was a landing pad for cleaning bots, but currently empty.

  With his big hands around her waist, he lifted her to the platform, then clambered up himself. Below them, the crowd filled in the space that they had taken up, swallowing it whole, making it seem as though they’d never even been there.

  “I can’t find it in me to hate them back,” he told her. “Until I met you, I thought only Sintaa did not hate and fear me.”

  Sadness clouded her eyes. “Really? Only Sintaa? What about your father?”

  Thanos shook his head. “A’Lars does not fear me. And, truthfully, I do not believe he hates me. But he is disgusted by me.”

  “What a hypocrite,” she said with heat. “He’s your father. You’re from him.”

  Thanos considered. “That is probably why he feels so much disgust.” He pointed into the distance, to the MentorPlex. “See his works. See them all around you. This city is his true child, the child he always dreamed of. Beautiful and perfect and meticulous and obedient.”

  “And overcrowded,” Gwinth said drily.

  With a chuckle, Thanos gestured to the skeletal sketch that was the beginning of MentorPlex II. “He will fix that, too.”

  And then, a sensation he’d never experienced before—a touch on his face. His furrowed chin, to be exact. Her hand, tiny and delicate against the heft of his jaw, felt soft and smooth. Thanos tilted his head just slightly, leaning into her cupping palm.

  “Do you kiss?” she asked.

  Answers warred along his tongue, fighting to escape his lips: bravado, machismo, deflection, agreement.

  He settled on honesty.

  “I would like to.”

  She said nothing, merely leaned up to him, then pressed her lips to his.

  When you kiss someone, you feel it. The connection. The intertwined nature of it all. Sintaa’s promise rang through his mind, over and over.

  Kissing Gwinth, Thanos felt… the moist, yielding pressure of her li
ps. Her breath, warm against his cheek.

  And he felt…

  Joy.

  He named the emotion before he could be sure, then confirmed it. Joy. In those seconds that their lips pressed together, he experienced the first true happiness of his life. It was as though the combination of the two of them made something new, something unknowable until that very instant.

  His heart was just an organ, just a sophisticated biological pump evolved from the primitive coelom of early multicellular organisms. And yet… And yet, it seemed to sing.

  From just that kiss.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked him, eyes sparkling as they pulled apart.

  “I’m not,” he said, as though stunned. “For the first time in my life, I’m not thinking at all.” He pondered. “And you? After kissing the infamous Thanos?”

  “It’s like kissing anyone else,” she marveled, as though uncovering a miracle.

  He laughed with her. His mood, his spirit—both lightened. And then he realized something. Something old and new at the same time. A blunt wedge of knowledge came between them.

  “I have to go,” he told her. “I apologize, but there’s something that I have to do.”

  “Now?” She goggled at him.

  He did not give her time to protest further. He helped her down from the platform and then left her there in the crowd, pushing his way through, grateful for the first time in his life for the way people recoiled and moved away from him.

  “Thanos!” she shouted, lost behind him. “Thanos!”

  He ignored her. He had no choice. A puzzle piece lost for his life-span now turned up, and when slipped into place revealed…

  Possibilities. At last.

  CHAPTER V

  THE PSYCHOSYLUM HAD NOT CHANGED IN THE YEARS since Thanos had set foot within it, but his understanding of it had changed. As a child, he’d thought it was a place for those who—like his mother—had illnesses of the mind that could not be cured. A place built and tended to by A’Lars out of compassion for the less fortunate of Titan.