Work Text:
Black Bolt thinks of his son. Traveling through the vast expanse of space in a simple ship, he thinks of Ahura. He also thinks of his people, his cousins Gorgon, Triton, Karnak and he thinks of his wife Medusa (he’s not sure he can even call her that anymore). But mostly, he thinks of his son, Ahura. This is a world of gods and monsters and he’s not sure which end of the spectrum he falls on. Despite all the complexities and nuances of the large world he’d been born in, and a larger one he later found himself in, he only had simple goals. He wanted to be good. To be just. To be merciful. But they seemed far too nebulous concepts now.
He doesn’t know if he succeeded. Well, that’s a lie. He knows he hasn’t. A broken king exiled to a nameless prison to rot in forever isn’t a metric of success that anyone uses. But it’s an ongoing battle.
He had had it all. A kingdom with people to rule over, admiration and respect of his subjects, the company of his friends, and his family, who’d loved him more than anything. He now stands a king without a kingdom, a warrior without a weapon, his voice taken away unjustly. (Or maybe it was just. Maybe it was retribution for his failure). He played brother to someone who’d sooner see him killed, king to a queen who deposed him, and father to a son who despised him.
How is Ahura? He wondered. He didn’t have any concrete means of knowing, still being too far from Earth to make proper communication on this ship possible, but he hoped. He hoped he was alright, more than that, that he was thriving, which is what any parent wants for their child.
Well, I wouldn’t know, he supposes. What would he know of being a parent? Of all the failures in his life, this is one of the largest, and most impactful, one that he’d hoped to sort itself out if he ignored it enough, but it only seemed to get worse. How foolish of him.
Ahura is now CEO of someplace called Ennilux now. An old inhuman settlement of some sort turned into a corporation, he thinks. That it happened in The Quiet Room had only solidified itself more as a point of pride. A place he’d carved away to find himself, maybe have his family with him, that’s what he saw it as. Some place to be free from the responsibilities of a monarch. Someone where he could share a life with Medusa, with Ahura.
And he had another charge now. Blinky. The non-terrestrial girl who’d managed to worm her way into his heart. He’d try this time. To be better. To her. And, to Ahura, should he get the chance. Randac, he hoped he did. He could do this better. He could do this proper. He could help turn his life and his influence of those around him more than the aftermath of a series of cascading failures where there was only some small silver lining to keep them mollified.
That wouldn’t pass anymore. Now people saw him for what he really was. A fraud. A fool undeserving of a crown. A man so fixated on his own people that he had foregone all the others. The blame for their not-so-recent skirmish with the mutant community at large could be squarely laid at his feet. He was so focused on reviving the Inhumans that he had not thought about what it would mean in the larger scheme of things. Or perhaps he had and ignored it. That was what he was now. Someone willing to do anything for any price that it incurred, as long as he saw serving an ultimate greater good. Black Bolt the cruel, they may call him in eons to come. Black Bolt the merciless. But under it all was just a person trying to do the best with what he was given. A mind to think with which now seems broken. It may be the curse of being a Boltagon, he thinks. First it was Maximus, now him. He could only hope Ahura didn’t succumb to the same fate. But looking back, hope had never really gotten him anywhere. He knew it was a leader’s duty to provide hope for their subjects, so they may keep striving for a better life, a better world, but personally hope had done jack-all for him.
He brought himself out of the reverie of self-deprecation. This wouldn’t do. Focus on the positives he thought. You can see Ahura again, he thought. He didn’t know what he would do if when he saw him again. Wrap him up in the biggest embrace, perhaps. Say that he’s sorry. He’ll try. That he knows he’s a failure. That Ahura will have more to look forward to than an absentee father who sent him out of his realm in a misguided attempt of keeping him safe. It wouldn’t be enough. He doesn’t know of anything that would be. But at least it’s a start. A father for a boy who’s lived several lifetimes. It would be amusing if it wasn’t so heartbreaking.
But there was no more time for pondering. He was being hailed. Some representative for an entity called a Seven planets’ conclave is demanding their ship. And the time has come for him to take action.