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By Em-Spider Collected for The Wayside by Kielle
All characters are the property of Marvel Comics, and are used without permission and not for profit. Archive/pop-up/MST with permission only. PG-13 for implied naughtiness between two married people. Yes, to EACH OTHER. ;)
Each strand is alive, separate, shining. It all blazes, the parts larger than the whole, all the strands melding --yet still remaining separate -- into a mass of fiery color.
She is Medusa.
She is Queen, and the hair is her crown.
His hair is covered.
It, like so much about him, is hidden. She knows what color it is, though, and really only she remembers he has hair.
It's black. Dark. Brooding. Covered.
He would look totally somber, totally closed in, but for the tuning fork on his head.
It hardly detracts from his majesty.
He is Black Bolt.
He is king.
He broods.
She watches.
He meditates.
She sighs.
His mind is clear and blank.
Hers roils.
He turns to her, removes his mask.
She slips under the sheet. It's cool on her legs, too cold. She wraps her hair about herself to keep warm.
She needn't have bothered.
He's there in a second, hugging her close.
He's gotten up, of course, to meditate again. He was tempted simply to forgo it, but his sense of responsibility demands he clear his mind.
He returns to bed. The sheet is cold again. He stifles a shiver.
He's wrapped his arm over his wife's warm side. She's soft, and he remembers how much he loves her -- and he's asleep before he reminds himself yet again he's supposed to keep his mind clear.
He rolls away from her unconsciously, in sleep, and he feels her absence acutely even past the haze of eyelid. "Medusa!" he calls.
The sound shrieks around him, obliterating everything. The negative barrier quivers and shivers in its wake. The barrier remains unbroken.
He sits up in what is left of his bed, and looks out on the dark rubble around him.
The King blinks. Once, twice, three times.
He gets up, strides around Attilan -- what is left of it.
His people are dead, crushed, annihilated. He runs back to his palace -- the rocks that used to make it up.
His wife is dead; he feels it in his heart.
The Queen's hair, her crown, flows out from under a large piece of roof. He grasps the ends of it, runs it past his fingers; it lives no more. The fire has gone from it, the strands no longer feel like thin snakes in his hands, only hair.
It is only hair. Long, of course, and silky, but still only hair...it bears almost no resemblance to the wild mane that once crowned her head.
Why, then, is he left alive?
He is the King. This is his responsibility.
This is his kingdom.
Such as it is.
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