He was so very much like her father. The same righteousness in their words, the same poetry on his lips as he spoke of his cause. Her father called it duty, he called it purpose, but in the end it was a calling they had chosen. She sensed the same power in him, that quality that set him apart from other people, smaller people. They were separate, and by definition, alone atop the peak.
Even the door he opened led to almost the same place her father had taken her. Thanos children were trained in his domain, in darkness and shadow. They slept and bled upon the rocks, and the warmth of the galaxy did not reach them. The walls here were concrete and steel, a shining metal, and the air smelled thick with sweet-smelling smoke, but the feeling was the same. Isolated. Controlled. A place where pain shaped a person’s destiny.
Nebula might have hesitated except for that touch upon her arm. For all the similarities to her father, there was one key difference. This man, Ra’s, saw her. He looked upon her and did not see something to re-shape, to mutilate and torture for his own experiments. He saw the potential within her already, and he offered not to change her – but to teach her.
There was so much she wished to learn.
“They revere you,” she noted as they made their way through the training area. The disciples – for that was what they were without question – could not help but stare and Nebula did not blame them. She had been fighting the urge to stare at him herself. A few eyes even gazed curiously at her. Perhaps they were wondering what she had done to prove herself, to gain the privilege of walking so close to the undeniable master. Nebula let her disguise fall entirely, revealing the blue and silver and purple metal that encased her instead of skin. Her eyes darkened entirely, and her hair vanished, revealing the one strip of gold she still held onto. Nebula’s fingers brushed against it, wondering what Stark would think of a place like this. But just as quickly, she pulled her fingers away and pushed the thought to the back of her mind.
This Stark was not the one she had survived with. He was not her friend, just as the Gamora of this universe was not her sister. She was as alone in this universe as she had ever been. Perhaps more so – until she met Ra’s.
She stopped, arms crossed across her chest. Jaw set with determination, a fire burning in her dark eyes. “Where do we begin?” she asked, a demand softened by the presence of so many whom she sensed would spring into action over the slightest disrespect towards Ra’s. “You have brought me here for more than just a tour.”
She was quiet next to him, as he led her through the chamber, though he could see her eyes roaming the room with a wary sort of familiarity--as if she was seeing another place, superimposed on this one. He did not know what she had done, before this. And to an extent, it didn’t matter. The training his assassins underwent was meant to ground them in the present. To keep their pasts from plaguing them, trailing at their feet like shadows and coming out of nowhere to invade the mind when focus was most necessary.
The past could be shaped into a weapon, but you still had to learn how to wield it.
His touch to her elbow seemed to ground her, draw her back. “They do,” he agrees--no point in false modesty, not in this. “They consider me to have given them new life--in some cases, quite literally. As I said, these students are my most loyal. There is nothing they would not do, if I asked it of them.”
He was used to their staring, and had thoroughly expected them to stare at her as well. He had not expected her to give them a proper reason to, her skin turning cold and purple and hard beneath his touch, her hair disappearing, eyes returning to the black she’d let him catch a glimpse of at the gala. .
Murmurs of concern erupted from the assassins behind him, and he heard the fight still, even despite his orders, as the men paused to look. “Yes. I have. I brought you here because I thought that you might be something special. I see now that is true in more ways than one. And I appreciate your interest in starting to train. But it is important for you to understand the mission, first. My training comes with a commitment. I will help you move on from your past, I will shape you into a better fighter--but in return, I require service. And you should know the cause to which you would commit yourself. ‘Ajils.”
Immediately, the assassins gathered at his feet, and Ra’s folded his hands behind his back as he begins to speak, voice slipping into the steady cadence of a teacher, a storyteller. “I created the League many centuries ago to help the world maintain balance. As a species, we’ve an unfortunate predilection to self-destruction. Power breeds complacency, corruption, and my League is intended to keep a steady hand on the balance of power. But in recent centuries, that mission has been forced to adjust in focus--humanity’s activities have stopped affecting simply our own civilizations and begun to threaten the planet itself, and all life upon it. In nature, when a species’ growth threatens its ecosystem, we cull the weak of the population to ensure the survival of the rest.”
