Chapter Text
Max hated George.
To Max, George was the definition of evil. From the time they were in middle school onwards, Max despised him. Hatred has engulfed his heart to the point where it has become unadulterated loathing. Every encounter with George ignited a fire within Max, making it impossible for him to see any redeeming qualities. He often imagined the day when he could finally confront George, hoping to unleash all the pent-up frustration that had built over the years.
It all started back when they were 11 years old. They used to be quite close, sharing secrets and dreams as young boys do. They shared a similar passion, which was playing chess, and both were very exceptional and talented. Their chess club advisor was very impressed with them and decided to send them to every competition known to man. As they progressed through the tournaments, however, a fierce rivalry began to develop, fueled by their contrasting personalities and differing approaches to the game. A healthy competition quickly turned into profound resentment.
“Max, you’re our hope and future. Make us proud.”
Their advisor would whisper these words after delivering a motivational speech to the team. He was certain that George could hear it because of their close proximity, large ears, and extraordinary concentration, which made it impossible for him not to hear or at least read their advisor's words.
Both of them were considered prodigies, or the chess world's brightest young stars, by those in their immediate vicinity, but it was like an open secret that everyone favored Max more than George, especially their advisor, Toto Wolff.
Despite the favoritism, George remained undeterred, focusing on honing his skills and proving his worth. He believed that true talent would eventually shine through, regardless of opinions held by others.
And Max respects him for that. Or at least, he used to respect him for that.
Everything went down when they went head-to-head against each other at the final round of the Junior World Tournament. The match between them lasted an eternity because George was able to counter Max's every move in their fierce competition for first place. Max was getting nervous and worried about the consequences of losing this battle. As the seconds ticked away, he could feel the weight of expectations pressing down on him. With each failed attempt to gain the upper hand, doubt began to creep into his mind, leaving him to question whether his hard work and dedication would be enough to secure victory.
"If I lose this, my father will beat me up black and blue. I need to win this." Max repeated this challenge in his head multiple times like a mantra. Unfortunately for him, his nervous system contributed to his downfall, as his attempts to depose George led to an increasing number of errors.
“I suggest we have a draw. It’s the best solution.”
Max tried to coax George into agreeing, as he couldn't bear to lose the tournament; a tie victory was better than second place. And the punishment for it would not be that severe.
George raised an eyebrow, weighing his options. After a moment of contemplation, he smirked and replied, “A draw sounds tempting, but I think I can outmaneuver you one last time.”
He knew George understood why Max was desperate to win the event and every other tournament they participated in together. George was usually the one who understood Max the most; he typically yielded when it came to Max because he knew Max needed to win. But not this time. Max could see the determination in George's eyes, a glimmer that suggested the present would be a battle unlike any other. With a deep breath, he tightened his grip on the controller, ready to unleash every trick he had up his sleeve.
And George won that tournament. Max was left feeling betrayed and frustrated, grappling with the reality that his closest ally had outsmarted him. As he replayed the match in his mind, he couldn't shake the feeling that this loss would change their dynamic forever. And it did, George no longer yielded when it came to playing against him. He had unleashed his full potential, once hidden behind his ‘good friend’ facade to protect Max from the cruelty of his father now turned into his greatest strength.
The inability to control his anger and temper is something Max inherited from his father and couldn't escape. Despite his efforts to break the cycle, he often found himself in situations that triggered that familiar rage. Each time, he vowed it would be the last, but the struggle felt like an endless battle. And that’s why he accepted the interview with the local newspaper company.
“Max, we know how close you were with George, your fellow chess prodigy. Can you give us an insight into what happened behind the scenes after George refused your draw offer during the last tournament?”
The question hung in the air, and he could feel the weight of memories flooding back. Max took a deep breath, reminding himself that this was his chance to finally articulate the turmoil he had endured since that fateful match.
“I was shocked when we spoke immediately following the match about how awful it was. I've never witnessed someone making such a concerted effort to fuck someone over as he was. After defeating me once, he became extremely conceited.”
Max clenched his fists, the frustration bubbling to the surface. “It was like he reveled in my defeat, as if it validated his entire existence,” he continued, his voice steady despite the emotion behind it. “It felt personal, almost like he took pleasure in seeing me struggle. I know I need to let it go, but it’s difficult to shake off the feeling that he crossed a line.”
Of course, half of those claims were correct, and the rest were completely false. Somehow, Max felt compelled to exact revenge on George for allowing him to endure such pain from his father.
And the media and chess fans have been harassing George non-stop right after the interview went viral all over the internet. They were spreading malicious rumors about George to the point where he could hardly step outside without facing judgmental stares. As the pressure mounted, George found himself questioning not only his decisions but also his own integrity in a world that thrived on scandal and sensationalism.
Max was practicing his new move alone with only his crystal chessboard he bought in Istanbul last year when his phone lit up with notifications from his friends and the media. Apparently, George has decided to fight back against all of the whispers and rumors swirling around him. Determined to reclaim his narrative, he was ready to confront his critics and prove that he was more than just a subject of gossip.
"Max was acting irrationally and out of rage, which was an unreasonable response. Even though we had the same advisor and trained with the same trainer, that doesn't mean I have to play by his rules or let him use me as a stepping stone to the title. This is a competition, and I'm his rival. I am an individual and fight my own fight. I refuse to submit to his dominance simply because he is the favorite of the fans. Winning is important to me as well, and he ought to know better.” George said in determination.
"I have my own path to carve, and I intend to make it clear that I'm not just a background player in his story. Each match is an opportunity to showcase my skills and prove that I deserve to be in the spotlight just as much as he does." With a fierce resolve, George tightened his grip on the bat, envisioning the cheers of the crowd as he stepped onto the field. "This season is mine for the taking," he thought, ready to make every moment count and fight for his place among the greats.
“And if he couldn’t grasp what I’ve just said, then you should ask him if he’s the greatest because he’s Max Verstappen or he’s Max Verstappen because he’s the greatest.”
And Max saw red. Not the hot, careless flare of anger that burns itself out, but something colder, heavier. An unadulterated loathing that settled in his chest like iron.
It was not hatred born of a single wound. It was the sum of a thousand small affronts: George’s quiet certainty, the way the world seemed to bend just enough to make room for him, the effortless grace with which he occupied spaces Max had bled to earn. George did not need to sharpen his edges; he was smooth, polished by approval. That, more than anything, made Max recoil.
Loathing crept through him like a slow poison. It tightened his jaw, made his hands curl, turned every neutral expression George wore into an insult. Even George’s silences felt deliberate, as though they were judgments disguised as restraint. Max despised how calm George could be, how untouched, how safe, as if suffering were optional and George had simply declined it.
Worst of all was the mirror George unknowingly held up to him. In George’s presence, Max became acutely aware of his own rawness, his fractures, the fury he carried like a second spine. And Max hated George for that too, for existing as proof that the world could reward softness while demanding brutality from others.
So the loathing did not explode. It endured. It stayed sharp, precise, and watchful, waiting for a moment to justify itself.
But Max never noticed the moment the loathing shifted its shape. There was no clear fracture, no warning tremor, only the quiet realization that George had begun to occupy him.
What started as awareness became attention. Attention hardened into vigilance. Max watched the way George moved through rooms, how his schedule unfolded with maddening consistency, how his presence left traces, laughter lingering in hallways, conversations bending subtly toward him. Max told himself it was strategy, that knowing an opponent was simply preparation. But soon, George’s movements became a rhythm Max unconsciously followed.
And then Max was everywhere George was.
Not by coincidence, by compulsion.
If George succeeded, Max had to eclipse him. If George excelled, Max sharpened himself until excellence felt insufficient. Every achievement of George’s became a challenge issued without words, a provocation Max could not ignore. It was no longer about winning; it was about outdoing. About proving, relentlessly, that whatever George could be, Max could be more, faster, sharper, undeniable.
George became a measure rather than a man. A standard Max chased with near-religious devotion. The irony was cruel: in trying to assert his own superiority, Max began to orbit George entirely. His choices bent around him. His ambitions echoed George’s path, only louder, harsher, more desperate.
And still Max told himself it was loathing.
But loathing does not watch so closely.
Loathing does not follow.
Loathing does not shape a life around another’s shadow.
By the time Max realized this, George was no longer merely someone he despised, he was the axis upon which Max had begun to turn.
By the time they were no longer playing chess, by the time the board had been folded away into memory and replaced with lecture halls and deadlines and the dull architecture of college life, Max’s vigilance did not loosen. It refined itself. Years of watching had taught him patience, taught him how to exist just outside the edge of notice, where obsession could masquerade as coincidence and presence could be explained away by chance.
George did not know this. George believed the world still obeyed ordinary rules.
The knowledge that George had a date arrived in Max quietly, almost politely, as facts always did. A café near campus. Early evening. A man named Oscar. The name itself irritated Max, not because it carried weight, but because it existed at all. Because it implied replacement. Because it suggested a future that did not include Max, which to Max felt less like exclusion and more like theft.
Max did not follow George inside.
He never needed to.
From across the street, he watched the glass windows of the café glow with the artificial warmth of curated intimacy. Inside, George sat too straight, smiling in that careful way he used when he wanted to be kind without promising anything. Oscar leaned forward, earnest, unaware that sincerity was already a liability. Max catalogued everything with the same precision he once reserved for strategy. The way Oscar laughed too loudly. The way he gestured with open palms as if offering himself up for inspection. The way George nodded, indulgent, generous with attention in a manner Max found offensive.
Possession settled in Max’s chest, dense and unquestioned. It did not announce itself. It simply was. George was not something to be shared, not something to be discovered by strangers who had not earned the right through years of scrutiny and suffering. George did not belong to Oscar. George belonged to the long hours of being watched, to the silent records Max had kept, to the version of George that existed when no one else was looking.
So Max began to intervene, delicately, from afar.
A message reached George’s phone first. Anonymous. Brief. Unremarkable. A reminder of an assignment due tomorrow, phrased just ambiguously enough to sound urgent. George frowned, apologized, checked his calendar. Oscar waited, smiled too hard. The rhythm of the conversation fractured, just slightly, like a sentence interrupted and never properly resumed.
Then the environment itself seemed to conspire. The café grew louder as a group arrived, chairs scraping, laughter blooming without restraint. Oscar leaned closer to compensate. George leaned back, instinctively defensive, his smile thinning. Max watched this adjustment with satisfaction that did not quite feel like joy, but resembled relief.
Another interruption followed. A call this time. George declined it, but the screen lit up long enough for Oscar to notice. Someone persistent, Oscar joked. George laughed, but the laugh did not land. It hovered, unsure of itself. Max imagined George’s thoughts tightening, his attention slipping from the present moment, pulled instead toward vague responsibility and unnameable unease.
Max did not need to invent disasters. He only needed to nudge.
Outside, the streetlight flickered. Inside, Oscar knocked over his glass while gesturing, water spreading across the table, soaking napkins and sleeves. He apologized too much. George insisted it was fine. It was not fine. Nothing felt fine anymore. The date sagged under the weight of small disruptions that refused to resolve themselves into coherence.
Max felt an odd calm watching this. Not triumph. Not cruelty. Something closer to correctness. As if he were restoring order rather than destroying it. As if George’s discomfort were a necessary correction to an error that should never have occurred.
When George finally stood, offering a polite excuse about exhaustion, about another day, about how nice it had been, Max felt the possessiveness settle deeper, anchor itself more securely. Oscar nodded, disappointed but unaware of the true nature of his defeat. He would never know there had been a third presence at the table, silent and meticulous, rewriting the evening line by line.
George stepped back into the night alone, pulling his coat tighter, unsettled without knowing why.
Across the street, Max turned away.
He did not feel guilt. Guilt required uncertainty. What he felt instead was confirmation. George remained untouched, unclaimed by strangers, returned to the world as Max understood it. Watched. Preserved. Still his, even if George had never agreed to such an arrangement and never would.
And that, to Max, was irrelevant.
George belongs to him.
Only him.
His nemesis, his subject.
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Max watched George every time George studied in the library, and the watching no longer felt like an action but a condition of being, as natural and uninterrupted as breathing. The library itself seemed to accommodate this devotion. It offered corners, shelves, reflections in glass, places where a person could exist without fully arriving. Max learned these places the way others learned prayers.
George had a routine, and routines were merciful. He arrived at nearly the same hour each day, never rushing, never late, as though time adjusted itself for him out of courtesy. He chose the same floor, the same stretch of tables near the windows, where the light was good but not generous. Max knew which chair George preferred and which ones he avoided, the ones that creaked, the ones that placed his back too openly to the room. Even before George reached for a book, Max already knew which one it would be.
He knew the titles not as abstractions but as objects with weight and texture. He knew which books George treated carefully and which he abused with marginal notes and folded corners. He knew which passages George lingered over, not because they were difficult, but because they unsettled him in a quiet way. Max counted the rereading without effort. Once for understanding. Twice for reassurance. A third time when something in George refused to let go. Max noticed how George’s eyes moved more slowly on the third reading, how his fingers paused at the same lines, how his breathing changed almost imperceptibly.
George never noticed the repetition. Max did.
There were days when George read nothing new at all, returning instead to familiar pages as if testing whether they would still recognize him. Max found this comforting. It meant continuity. It meant George remained legible. Other students came and went, rearranged chairs, whispered, laughed too loudly, lived lives that felt erratic and unnecessary. George remained consistent. Predictable. Safe within the boundaries Max had memorized.
Sometimes George would stop reading and stare into the middle distance, pen hovering uselessly above the page. These moments mattered most. Max watched them with reverence. He could tell when George was thinking about the text and when the text had failed to contain him and his thoughts had drifted elsewhere. Max imagined himself as the natural destination of that drift, not as a person, but as an idea, a gravity that pulled without needing acknowledgment.
Max did not see this as intrusion. Intrusion implied trespass, and Max believed he had earned his access through patience. Years of attention had given him an intimacy George had never consented to, which made it purer in Max’s mind. Uncomplicated by conversation. Untainted by misunderstanding. George, as observed, was truer than George as spoken to.
When George packed up his bag and left, Max always waited a few minutes longer. He let the space cool, let the chair remain empty long enough to feel like a deliberate absence rather than a loss. Then he stood, calm and precise, already knowing where George would be next, already rehearsing the quiet satisfaction of being right again.
In Max’s mind, George occupied a singular position that no one else was permitted to touch. Nemesis was too small a word, yet it was the only one Max allowed himself. An enemy, yes, but a necessary one, a fixed point against which Max defined sharpness, purpose, existence itself. And like all things Max considered his, George was not to be interfered with.
So when the name Charles Leclerc began to circulate, Max noticed immediately.
Rumours moved through college the way damp moved through old walls, quietly at first, then everywhere at once. Charles spoke in lowered voices and convenient pauses, letting implication do the work of accusation. He smiled when he spoke of George, a thin smile that suggested knowledge without substance. People listened. People always did. George remained unaware, still moving through his days with the same careful neutrality, the same unguarded decency that made Max’s chest tighten with something dangerously close to panic.
Max did not confront Charles publicly. That would have been crude, inefficient, visible.
Instead, Max became present in the boy’s life the way he had once become present in George’s, though with far less patience. Charles began to notice gaps in his days he could not explain. Missed messages. Doors that seemed to close just as he reached them. Conversations that stopped when Max entered the room, not because Max spoke, but because his silence rearranged the air. Charles laughed it off at first, then stopped laughing altogether.
Pressure accumulated. Not blows, not threats spoken aloud, but a narrowing of the world. Meetings with faculty that went badly. Friends who distanced themselves without explanation. Evidence of his own words returned to him, stripped of context and sharpened into something dangerous. Max did not need to fabricate much. Charles had been careless. Carelessness, Max believed, was a moral failing.
By the time Charles broke, it surprised no one except Charles himself.
The hospitalization was brief and clinical and spoken of in hushed tones, as if the institution itself did not want to be involved in the story. Exhaustion, they said. Stress. A collapse brought on by guilt and fear that had nowhere to settle. Max never visited. He did not need to see the damage to know it had been done.
What mattered was the apology.
Charles sought George out after he returned, pale and shaking, eyes hollowed by a terror that no longer had a clear object. He apologized too much, too thoroughly, confessing to things George barely understood, begging forgiveness for words George had never even heard. George listened, stunned, uncomfortable, offering absolution out of instinct rather than comprehension. He walked away confused, carrying a weight that had never been his to bear.
Max watched from a distance, satisfied.
Order had been restored. The boundary held.
George remained untouched by rivalry that was not Max’s. No one else would be allowed to claim him as an enemy, to define him through malice or distortion. If George was to be opposed, it would be cleanly, privately, with precision. Anything else was noise. Anything else was trespass.
And Max did not tolerate trespass.
Not where George was concerned.
His father’s voice had never left him. It lived on, calm and unquestioned, as axiomatic as gravity.
“If you wants something, you should demand and take it.”
Max had not understood it fully as a boy. He had imagined objects, victories, positions of standing. It was only later, much later, that the sentence found its proper shape. It settled itself around George.
He wanted George in everything.
Not merely in triumph or rivalry, but in the totality of being. He wanted George’s admiration and his resistance, his warmth and his recoil. Love, if it came, must be complete. Hatred, if it arose, must be just as consuming. Anything diluted would be an insult. Anything lukewarm would be failure. To be ignored by George would be annihilation.
And so Max’s obsession took on the careful polish of devotion.
He did not think of himself as cruel. On the contrary, he believed his attention refined George, gave his life a coherence it might otherwise lack. Max knew George’s habits better than George knew them himself. He knew which compliments would unsettle him, which silences would linger too long, which absences would provoke relief and which would leave a faint, troubling hollow. Max shaped himself accordingly, always just present enough, always just withdrawn enough, cultivating significance the way one cultivates a garden, through restraint as much as intrusion.
In this, there was a peculiar beauty.
George moved through the world with the gentle assurance of someone who believed in balance, in mutual regard, in affections freely given and freely withdrawn. Max watched this with something like reverence. It was a lovely illusion. It deserved, in Max’s estimation, to be tested. What was grace if it could not withstand pressure. What was goodness if it could not endure being chosen too fiercely.
Max did not wish to destroy George. Destruction was vulgar. He wished to claim him, to be woven so deeply into George’s emotional fabric that no feeling could arise without passing, however briefly, through Max first. Joy would glance off him. Fear would circle back to him. Even resentment would be a form of intimacy, proof that Max had reached places no one else had access to.
This, Max told himself, was not madness. It was clarity.
Love, in its truest form, was not passive. It was not content with hoping or waiting. It demanded recognition. It insisted upon its own inevitability. If George was to love him, it would be with understanding. If George was to hate him, it would be with equal force. Either would suffice. Either would bind.
Sometimes Max imagined a future in which George finally turned, truly turned, and saw him not as coincidence or background presence, but as necessity. The thought was so precise, so quietly intoxicating, that Max felt almost tender in its presence. He would not rush it. After all, the most enduring attachments were never declared loudly. They were simply made unavoidable.
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Max watched.
It was always quiet, always patient, and always exact. The tiny camera he had installed gave him access to a world George never suspected existed, and Max never tired of it. There was a sacredness to these moments, a slow unfolding of detail that no casual observer could ever appreciate. George was asleep now, reclined against the pillows with the ease of someone who had not yet learned the burdens Max had come to know were his by right.
Even in repose, George commanded attention. The lines of his face were softer without the insistence of posture or self-consciousness. His jaw relaxed, no longer precise and deliberate, revealing the subtle curve of his throat, the quiet slope of his cheekbones. Max memorized the contours of his lips, how they parted just enough to hint at breaths drawn slowly, rhythmically, as if the air itself feared to disturb him. Every blink of the sleeping eye that fluttered, every small twitch of the brow, was recorded and catalogued in Max’s mind.
And then the eyes. Even closed, Max imagined them open. The central heterochromia was exquisite, a ring of deep blue circling the brown hazelnut that gave his gaze its uncanny depth. Max had traced it in memory, in screenshots, in sketches no one would ever see. The black flecks within the hazel seemed to move when George laughed, when he frowned, when he stared across a room unconsciously marking everything he saw. Now, in sleep, they were hidden, yet Max imagined them there, half-lidded in curiosity even as his lids rested. He missed them terribly, the way a man might miss the sun after months of rain. The memory of George’s gaze made him ache with something that was both tender and sharp, something that bordered on possession.
Max admired the subtlety of George’s hands as they rested lightly on the bedspread, the fine arch of his fingers, the way they curled inward like they belonged to no one but themselves yet somehow belonged to him. Even the rise and fall of his chest was a rhythm Max had come to know intimately, a steady music that he could follow in the dark without faltering. The way George’s hair fell across his forehead, tousled and perfect without effort, the way the sheets caught in gentle folds against his shoulders, each was a line in a private poem Max composed every night.
It was not enough to watch George awake, not enough to track his routines, to anticipate his movements, to manipulate the world so that George remained untouched by rivals or strangers. No, Max’s devotion, his obsession, required the full spectrum. He wanted the quiet, unguarded moments, the form at rest that revealed what no eyes but his should ever see. He watched the rise of George’s chest when he shifted, the way his lips pressed together before opening again, the faintest crease in his brow as if he were dreaming of some distant calculation.
It was love, and it was something darker than love. It was possession disguised as admiration, obsession wrapped in reverence. Every small detail was a testament, every line and shadow a secret claim. Max would not say it aloud. He could not. But in the hush of the room, through the unblinking eye of the camera, he traced George as he slept, as though memorizing him in case the world ever took him away. He missed George’s eyes most of all, those impossible eyes, and he held that absence in his chest like a sharp jewel.
And still he watched. Always.
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Max sat alone in his room, the light reduced to a single lamp that did not illuminate so much as interrogate. The walls seemed closer than usual, as if the space itself had grown impatient with him. He did not pace. Pacing suggested uncertainty, and Max had long since mistaken fixation for resolve.
The thought had finished forming days ago. What remained was its echo, repeating itself with the dull authority of inevitability. Choice, he had decided, was a sentimental myth. People did not choose. They arrived at conclusions the way bodies arrived at the ground—through gravity, not intention.
His father’s words returned, stripped of warmth and context, reduced to their bare command.
If you want something, take it.
Max examined the sentence as one examines a wound that no longer bleeds. Wanting, he realized, was not a feeling but a claim. And claims, once made, demanded fulfillment. To hesitate now would not be mercy. It would be dishonesty.
George’s image occupied his thoughts with unbearable clarity. Not the public version, not the composed student with careful smiles and well‑measured speech, but the private one Max had assembled piece by piece over years of watching. George as he truly was, unguarded and unknowing. George as a presence that existed even when unseen. Max believed, with the calm certainty of a man past argument, that no one had ever known George this completely.
And knowledge, Max thought, must confer rights.
When the day arrived, it did not announce itself. It came dressed as routine. Coffee. Streets. Familiar turns taken without thought. Max followed at a distance that felt ceremonial rather than furtive, like a procession only he understood.
George got out of his car and Max ran to him and immediately forced feed him with the sleeping tonic he bought weeks ago. The boy struggled a bit before the tonic took over and left him limp all over Max. Max carried George sleeping body inside his car and put him in the passenger seat.
“Now, you’re mine. Only mine. Always mine, my beloved nemesis.”
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George woke with the immediate certainty that something was wrong, not because of pain, but because of stillness. The air felt unfamiliar, heavier, as though it belonged to a room that had not learned his name. The ceiling above him was blank, unrecognizable, offering no reassurance of place or memory. For a moment, he attempted to move and found that the attempt itself was useless, swallowed before it could become action.
Panic arrived late, embarrassed by its own slowness.
“Don’t struggle,” a voice said gently, almost kindly, from somewhere nearby. “You’ll only convince yourself you’re afraid.”
Max stepped into view with the composure of a man entering a church rather than a room where the truth had finally run out of excuses. He looked unchanged. That was the most unbearable part. The same posture. The same restraint. As if this were merely another conversation delayed too long.
George tried to speak. His voice betrayed him, thin and confused, unfit for the enormity of the moment.
Max smiled, not with cruelty, but with relief.
“You see,” Max said, “this is why I had to do it. You never listen when things are said at the correct volume.”
George stared at him, trying to assemble the world in the correct order. Coffee. Evening. The ordinary mercy of routine. None of it reached this place. None of it explained Max standing there as if he belonged.
“You don’t understand what this is,” Max continued, pacing slowly, reverently, as though each step had been rehearsed. “You think this is obsession. That word is convenient. It lets you believe I lost myself. But I have never been more intact than I am now.”
George shook his head weakly. “Max… this isn’t—”
“It is exactly what it is,” Max interrupted, softly. “I watched you for years, George. Not because I wanted to own you. Because I already did. You were just the last one to realize it.”
He stopped in front of George, crouching slightly so their eyes aligned. For a moment, something almost like tenderness passed through Max’s expression.
“You were my measure,” he said. “My opposition. My proof that meaning could exist if one sharpened it enough. And do you know what nihilism taught me?”
George’s breathing grew shallow.
“That meaning doesn’t disappear,” Max said. “It gets claimed by the one brave enough to take it.”
There was no shouting. No hysteria. Only certainty delivered like doctrine.
“I don’t need you to love me,” Max continued. “Love is unstable. It asks too many questions. What I need is acceptance. Acceptance is honest. Acceptance understands that resistance is just delayed agreement.”
George felt something cold bloom in his chest, something worse than fear. Recognition. The realization that Max did not see himself as a villain. He saw himself as inevitable.
“This is your fate,” Max said quietly. “Not because I forced it. But because you led me to it. Every habit. Every silence. Every time you let me exist just close enough.”
He stood, straightening his sleeves as though concluding a lecture.
“You don’t have to understand today,” Max said. “Understanding always comes later. For now, rest. The world you knew was temporary anyway.”
And as Max turned away, leaving George alone with the sound of his own breathing, George understood something with terrible clarity, This was not about possession. This was about a man who had mistaken emptiness for destiny, and decided to drag another soul into it so he would not have to face it alone.
So George smiled in triumph.
“Finally.”