Chapter Text

Mark was exactly seventeen years old when he crash landed on Earth after a major falling-out with another Viltrumite he was meant to listen to, without question.

He was exactly seventeen. (Human years, Earth years.)

He burned through Earth’s atmosphere, crashed into what he would later learn was the Pacific Ocean—it was salty and cold, terrible against the rips in his skin—and dragged the other Viltrumite in with him.

Mark, for the first time in seventeen years, learned what drowning was like.

Mark, similarly, learned what Earth was like, too.

(The Viltrumite’s body sunk in, and Mark bashed it through with a rock, hit, strangled, curled and coiled. The collision and the gasp; a great gap in his memory and resilience. The Empire would surely kill him for what he had done. Mark stared at the sinking corpse and found that he didn’t care.)

—

Mark was half-human.

It made him weak, by Viltrumite standards.

He was as fast as his counterparts. He was as strong as his counterparts—strong enough to remain alive, whole, and untouched. But where they had apathy, Mark was faced with a sudden wave of chill; a tremor in his spine, the sinking suspicion in his gut when he watched former peers lose their heads and lungs. Mark, by all standards, was an abnormality for feeling pain in the crevice of his heart.

The weak must die.

(Mark lived.)

—

Corinne was fast.

Not the one in space—the Viltrumite. Shaking, like starlight, and burning through flesh. Corinne was fast, brutal, and unwilling to bend the knee. Mark wasn’t sure why he thought she would understand. Pleading, begging—those things didn’t work with Viltrumites. (Weakness. It’s a plague.) Corinne, unlike Mark, was not half-human. She was not weak like him. She was not afraid of slaughter, or of blood on her hands, or of what anyone thought. When she led them to the fifth moon, Mark had seen humans. He had seen them, and their little spacecraft, and their adaptive technology. He had wanted to scream. Something ticked him off, in his brain. And it shouted at him to fly. It shouted at him to intervene.

Not in the Viltrumite way. Not like that.

But Corinne was faster, was worse, and she was loyal and strong in all the ways Mark wasn’t. She got to the humans first. Mark watched it happen.

He couldn’t stop it.

And she grabbed him from the front of his shirt, fabric bending under her hands. “What are you doing?” She hissed. “Do you truly feel bad for them?”

Blood was in the area. Space, cosmic, the gasping of lungs. “No,” he said, quietly, and hadn’t looked at her.

(Speak.)

She had cracked his jaw.

(Don’t speak.)

Mark was taught that the weak must be destroyed. They must save themselves. They must perish. The only empire to exist must be the Viltrumite Empire, belonging to the original planet of Viltrum. There was no mercy. There wa no time to wander, or waver, or wait.

The Viltrum Empire would not keep the weak.

And humans, by many conditions, were considered weak.

That meant there was only one goal.

One response.

“We kill them,” Corinne said, coldly. “So what?” Her hand wrapped around his throat. His human pulse jittered, once, twice, thrice, and then she squeezed his neck hard enough that his spine ground itself into dust to avoid the crushing pain. “We kill them. Or they’ll kill themselves. They’re in our way.”

In the way.

Mark raised his hand, pressed his palm into her wrist.

She didn’t even blink. “Do you understand, Mark?”

Something in his head cracked. A ravine of information, a void of memory. He was a Viltrumite. He was a human. Between the two, only one was preferable. His counterparts saw him as an abnormality. Weaker than them, but strong enough to survive. (Kill them.) Because you must survive. And Mark had done that, teeth grit, blood down his face. (Kill them.) But humans were different. They did not kill the way Viltrumites did. At least, that was what Mark had been told. (Kill them.) Something in his head, an old remedy sung to him by a woman he could not name, and he felt it.

Corinne’s hand was cold. Her blood would be warm. Was warm.

Mark could find out.

(Like the humans found out. Like she found out, when she took them by their limbs and made them into doormats for space dust. Found out. Found out.)

She pressed harder on his throat, thumb digging in. “Do you understand, Mark?”

There was only one way to move forward. There was only one way to move forward. To preserve strength. To preserve what it meant to live.

There was only one way to move forward. It was what they were taught.

Corinne leaned closer to her, white and grey, and said, “We have to—”

(Kill them.)

Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill—

“I understand,” Mark said, spitting blood, and then he took her by her neck and burst through the matter that swallowed them.

(The Empire is not my own. It is not yours.)

He took her through the moon, and then to Earth, and down into what he later learned was the Pacific Ocean.

The salt burned his wounds.

(He killed her.)

But, before killing Corinne, they fought.

That was the only way. That was the only path to pursue. Die. Don’t die. Mark’s brain was telling him a million things, muscles too tight, head threatening to explode.

Earth was right there—

Humans could die. They didn’t deserve to die.

(Did he?)

Corinne was faster than him. That was part of her appeal, maybe, why they sent her and Mark everywhere. Never to a permanent post, but always to overlook and potentially map out certain planets or rebellions. Stop it before it became worse. (It was already worse.) Mark was half, Corinne was full, and there weren’t enough Viltrumites to overlook every planet they subjugated. Hence, brute force. Hence, this… whatever this was.

It wasn’t meant to be murder.

Mark was going to murder her.

(Murder.)

But, Corinne was on fire now; blood and grit burning right off her clothes as they flew down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down.

They crashed through Earth’s exosphere, then the thermosphere, then the mesosphere, then the stratosphere, and then the troposphere. Corinne’s short hair whipped wildly, and Mark was holding onto her as tightly as he could—he wished he could crush her, he wished he was strong enough in this body to crumple her like a paper ball, tinfoil, bad aluminum—he wished he could kill her easily, wished her sudden ability to try and kill him while he flew them into a deep blue target wasn’t so—so—so—

The way all of the life seeped out. The way blood poured into the water, the way Corinne kicked and thrashed. The way Mark let her, pushing her down, choking on the water—Corinne opened her mouth to scream, and bubbles and streams and blood and teeth—Mark armed his hand at her jaw, squeezed her throat. He didn’t know what it was going to be like. He didn’t know how the end would reach. The water was salty, and dark, and Corinne kneed him in the gut. He felt something tear. The atmosphere—the oxygen—he wanted to breathe normally again but he was underwater trying to end the life of another Viltrumite.

He was going to be executed when he went back home.

(Mark, there’s something you need to understand.)

They hit the coast—not just water—and Corinne escaped from his grasp and shot up into the air. Sand and rocks kicked out, a tidal wave by one Viltrumite’s sudden drive for revenge—and Mark flew, followed, and grabbed her by the torso and lunged. The ocean gaped. He knew—distantly—that Earth was advanced enough to have people around, eyes watching—seeing—and that meant he needed to run faster, finish the job before someone got the wrong idea.

“Corinne,” Mark gasped, wetly, when Corinne tried to pry his jaw off his head. Instead, he grabbed her wrists, cracking the bone—cracking—cracking—and that thing in his head started wailing again.

(Home.)

He wasn’t home, anywhere, and Corinne couldn’t be kept alive.

They burst upwards, and Corinne tried to shoot above him—he latched onto her ankle, grabbed her and yanked her right back down. He saw the blood, the sudden pull—too much—of a limb. Kill them. Kill them. Kill her. Kill you. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you! He hit the water, turned upside down.

Before killing Corinne, they fought.

She rammed him hard. He held her under the water—unable to focus. His vision doubled, tripled, splintered apart. This couldn’t be real. The horror of betrayal, the looming threat that would await him once anyone realized what happened.

Fear, then, amongst the desperation—

He didn’t want to kill her.

But he had to kill her, or he would die, and that was—

—

The salt stung his lips when he swam up to the surface, a thick coating of ichor in his throat. He floated, for a while, trying not to move too much with his current state.

—

—what he had to do.

Because Viltrumites killed those weaker than them, subjected, enslaved. Because Mark was a Viltrumite and Corinne was weaker than him. Because they needed to run and humans stood no chance against the Empire and Mark couldn’t have them die. He couldn’t—

(Kill them.)

Mark held Corinne underwater, as far down as he could go. He slammed her into the sea floor, the pitch black—no light, not even aquatic creatures. It was dark. It wasn’t that far away from the coast. He slammed her into the sea floor and choked, drowned. She knew how to close her mouth, how to hold her breath—Viltrumites could last without oxygen for weeks—but Mark was instinctive, he fought and thrashed and lived—bubbles—not holding enough air with how furiously Corinne scrabbled at him until he choked on the salt water. He forced her to open her mouth, forced her to start choking, forced her to drown like a human would drown, like he was drowning.

But he needed to—

(Mark, there’s something you need to know.)

—raising his hand, raising his fist, forcing his way through a crowd as a sun rose and ninety-seven moons circled one planet and the people celebrated surviving—

Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill—

(—and he survived nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Mark, you’re a Viltrumite. Your mother cannot raise you. Earth isn’t suited for you. Mark, you have to understand—)

—her.

—

Mark was seventeen years old.

There was no God, holiness, or righteousness. (He would later be introduced to religion, and was baffled at the many things that humans did in order to feel comforted. He stood firmly on the belief that there was no holiness or righteousness.) There was blood, death, slaughter, and the Empire. There was a gaping wound between his father and him—an absence, a disconnection.

What was Earth’s purpose, if his father had left his post and stolen Mark?

(You should have left me with Mom.)

Being taught the ways of the Empire. Watching the slaughter, and the massacres—Mark hadn’t known what his hands were capable of. He killed three Viltrumites by the time he was fourteen. He couldn’t remember his mother. Viltrumites were not collective—not like other species—it was killing and bloodshed that brought them together. Mark didn’t fit in. He wore the colors, did as ordered, but his hands shook and he faltered when he was told to kill.

(I should have left you with your mother.)

Mark was seventeen years old.

Earth years. Human years. Viltrumites could live for hundreds of years. Mark was half-human, so he would likely die before the others. Live longer than humans, though.

He stared at the sun surrounding his post, stared at the human ship left to desecrate without its pilots, and looked back at Corinne.

(What mother?)

Mark learned.

Mark killed.

Mark was a Viltrumite. But, before he was a Viltrumite, he was a human teenager drowning in the Pacific Ocean.

—

Mark floated at the surface of the water for a while. Not very long, he didn’t think. Who knew how long was a long time on Earth. Humans aged quicker than Viltrumites, after all.

He teetered between the edge of awareness and the deep end of guilt-induced sleep.

The salt water licked at his face. He let his blood swim with the fish. Or the—not fish? Maybe Earth didn’t have fish. Aquatic creatures varied based on each planet, and even the areas on a planet, so maybe Earth didn’t have fish. Would it be hard to believe? Mark didn’t know. He didn’t remember Earth. He didn’t remember much if anything about this oxygen-surrounded planet. It was in a solar system, like all planets. It had a dominant, sentient species, like most planets. Dominant at the minimum, sentient as a bonus. It was a developed planet. It was the planet his father stole him from. Took him away from. Mark was born here, to a human mother, and he was currently floating along the surface of an ocean with salt and shivers and blood and guilt and anger.

Gutting.

Killing.

Murdering—

Hurting?

Mark lost track of a lot of things. He understood the mechanics, of course—living and dying, torture and execution, what it meant to save and what it meant to help. He understood that other species thought they could fight back. He understood—wasn’t supposed to, but did—that they were right to try. He understood. And he understood the mechanics of pain, and pleasure, and what it meant to repair old wounds in order to keep yourself in one piece. He wasn’t stupid. He was just—more affected—all the time—because of that human part of him. It lived in his head. He missed his Mom. (Not that he knew her well.)

Step One: missing Mom.

Step Two: wanting to go back to Mom and even though he didn’t know her.

Step Three: not liking hurting people because it felt wrong and his Mom always said it was bad even though the Empire did not give a single fuck about what a random subspecies said.

Step Four: whatever the fuck he was currently doing.

(Whatever he was currently doing… was hard to explain. Drowning in the Pacific Ocean. Salt and all. Ouch. The water was cold, and it stung, and Corinne was somewhere on the seafloor near the coast of whatever place he was near. Country? Nation? Empire? Community? He didn’t know. Mark sighed, floating on his stomach despite all the blood, and blinked sluggishly. The water moved, up and down, up and down. He wished it wouldn’t.)

Four steps, though. Ugh.

See? When he wrote it out like that, tried to come up with a steady trail to follow, he sounded semi-normal. He didn’t sound like a real Viltrumite. He didn’t sound honorable or loyal. But, he sounded kind. He sounded motivated. And that made sense, to him, because his father was either dead or long gone—even though you could only run from the Empire for so long, which wasn’t long at all. Mark was raised by a passing of hands, by intensive training that kept him up when he should be resting, and by the sudden upheaval of his loneliness every time he was assigned to a new outpost or a mission that only lasted him a few weeks.

Normally, he was paired with Corinne. She was much older than him, as a real Viltrumite, but considered similar in age through the cross-species reference list. Or whatever it was called. Again, that was something Mark didn’t keep track of.

The issue, of course, was that Mark didn’t like killing.

And they were sent to do just that, normally. A completely standard Viltrumite response. Show a planet the better way, the Viltrumite way, and if they didn’t agree, they would be wiped out or forced into submission. That was how it worked. That was how it worked. And Mark went along with it, as he often did, and tried to cover up the pain that thrummed steadily in his heart—or the adrenaline rush that told him to intervene, interfere, and mingle. Don’t wait, turned into don’t let them get hurt.

Mark did well, mostly, at covering up the human aspects. He buried them under guilt and blood and collapsed buildings and didn’t look into anyone’s eyes when he helped settle an outpost, complete transactions, transfers of power—the means to an end, intergalactic, just one empire. The Viltrum Empire.

But, this was Earth.

(Earth had its own empires, apparently, though they were called governments and didn’t span over multiple planets. It made sense, all things considered.)

And as far as Mark knew, no one had ever been sent to take over the post once Nolan left. Just a gaping void, where a Viltrumite soldier should be. Huh. That meant, by all means, Mark could maybe stay on Earth without having to try and fight another, likely stronger Viltrumite. It meant he wouldn’t have to kill anyone. It meant he wouldn’t have to wage a war in his own head, from living to killing. He wouldn’t have to worry about anything like that.

Except for the offhand chance that Corinne survived, or there was another Viltrumite on Earth already. Or, if someone tried to make him into something he wasn’t and he had to, well, fight back? Then? You know.

Small chances.

Mark sighed again, choking and sputtering on thick clumps of blood. It wasn’t pleasant. The water encased him, though, so he kept drifting.

—

There were words not spoken amongst Viltrumites. Phrases. Specific phrases, such as I love you or I’m sorry.

It wasn’t as if the concepts were foreign.

They were, if anything, background specs to life. Like partners, or marriages, or parental habits. Compared to other species, Viltrumites were rather militaristic. Their parental manners included the same layout as military structures, which Mark knew about both because Viltrum was run through its military, and because other planets had advanced defensive programs that he had learned about through his studies and observational periods.

Strict communications, strict performances.

Mark knew that Viltrumites were capable of human-like emotions, though such things were not truly visible. He did his best to look for them, match them—he was alone in his empathy most of the time, and being so isolated did him no favors.

Viltrumites didn’t say things like I love you. They did other things to show it—the love they were capable of, even if Mark didn’t understand it. They trained hard. They agreed to be monogamous. They ate meals together, in silence or quiet conversation. They did not kill one another for no reason. They did not kill one another over petty items of interest. They wrapped wounds when blood was spilled, if it was spilled. They enhanced and supported each other—not just out of a need to survive and conquer, but out of a need to keep the species united.

(Later on, Mark learned this would qualify as a pack-mindset. Collectivist? Humans had odd terms for the social aspects of creatures, though it felt odd to apply human social rules to Viltrumites.)

The main point, of course, was that Mark felt things that matched what he remembered from his Mom.

Mother. Mom, because he remembered how gentle she had been. How kind. Maybe it had been relative, as humans could be different from what he remembered, but she had been stern and loving. That was the term. And she had whispered to him, read him stories—books, with the pictures—and tucked him into bed, and made him meals. She had whispered I love you many times. It was the only echo of her voice he still remembered. And Mark didn’t particularly understand it—love, because parental affection looked far differently in the empire than it did on Earth. He had so few memories of Mom, so he couldn’t compare things accurately. Instead, he compared it to what he saw of other species. And they—had culture, and structure, and interactions that varied from Viltrumites, as well. Mark was left dumbfounded, often, which he had to cover up.

Specific phrases that weren’t spoken between people. I love you. Viltrumites. It was isolating, but he couldn’t explicitly say that, either. I’m sorry. And he couldn’t confide in anyone.

He stayed quiet. He had to be quiet.

But, in the silence of the ocean—a push and a pull, the tangling sound of water rushing about—Mark mumbled into the water. Over and over. “I’m sorry,” he said, so quietly. “I’m sorry.” He choked on water. Blood came out of his nose, down his chin and back into the water. He hurt. He was sorry. Mark licked at his lips, blood and salt. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

—

“Dad,” Mark whispered, quietly. “Where’s Mom?”

Dad looked at him. “On Earth.”

“Why?” Mark asked, even quieter.

They had been supposed to go to the park today, after Dad got home, that way Mark could enjoy the swings or climb the monkey bars. He had been excited to show Dad how far he could get without slipping. Mom already knew, from the last time they went to the park. Instead, they were—somewhere else. Not Earth. He stumbled closer, not used to flying. He wished he could show Mom. He was like Dad. He could fly.

Dad came closer, and put his hand on Mark’s shoulder. Heavy, too warm. “Mark,” the man said, “There’s something you need to know.”

—

He had to be quiet.

—

Earth had a sun.

Mark felt like he should have known that, but he hadn’t been paying attention. Now that there was an orange shimmer across the water, he was realizing that either it was becoming night, or becoming day.

He should have paid attention to the sky when he was fighting Corinne. Instead, he had been too focused on trying not to die. (And trying to kill her.) So, now, he stared at the golden-red ball set out in the distance. He floated aimlessly, opening his mouth every now and then to allow blood to melt into the salt, and water to rush into his mouth between his teeth, over the bitten-marks on his tongue. He was surprised, maybe, that he didn’t bite it clean off. Chip his teeth, too. The sun stared at him. He stared back, directly, and the longer he looked the more his eyes hurt.

Must be a human thing, unable to look at the sun. Mark had looked at plenty of suns before this, and it hadn’t stung so much. Maybe this—star—was closer than all the others.

(Know that you are stronger, faster, and better than every other species out there. Know that your mother cannot ever become one of us, and is not worth even a fraction of what we can be. What we are. Know that you are one of a kind, practically a pure blood Viltrumite—even with the human DNA—and you will be able to carry on for the Empire.)

He was looking at a human.

Mark, with all his blurry vision and bloody skin, was looking a human in armored—plated, supported—attire. It was smart. Humans didn’t seem to have impenetrable skin, so to cover it with material that offered better protection was the responsible course of action.

And—a boat?

He stared, more, and opened his mouth to let blood and salt water drain.

The human had a weapon. Looked like a gun of some kind, but Mark couldn’t be certain. He wasn’t that well-informed on the infantry that Earth’s inhabitants possessed. Probably a gun. So, probably long-ranged. So, he assumed, probably not something that would hurt him unless it got into his already-open wounds.

What language did humans speak, again?

And what was the most acceptable excuse to excuse landing on their planet and slaughtering one of his own? Without sounding insane? Did humans know they had an alien population on their planet? Or were they ignorant of such things?

Shit. Fuck.

Mark should have observed more. Studied harder. Shown a bigger interest in—

In taking over—

“Do you speak this language?” He asked, sluggishly, and really hoped it didn’t come across as some ancient or advanced warble of a linguistic no one fucking knew. That would suck. Really suck. “I didn’t mean to, get here, uhm.” He cleared his throat, hair sticking to his face. Fresh blood kept trickling down the side of his skull, from where Corinne had tried—and failed—to crack his bone open and scoop his brain out like a koyster. (He later learned that Earth had a similar creature, called an oyster. Crazy!) The human’s attire covered their face and mouth, just about all their skin, so Mark didn’t know what expression they were making. “Uh,” he didn’t even know what to say. “Sorry? Hi. I’m not trying—to—uh, stay. Exactly. Not really? I just. Well.”

He looked around, at the boat, at the red-dot of a sun, and then back at the human. And saw that there were suddenly a bunch more. Maybe twenty more? With guns. And similar attire.

Did he threaten someone by accident? He could have sworn—

Ah, fuck communication. Mark wasn’t good at it. He couldn’t handle the pressure, as his counterparts said, and that was... probably true. Fuck. He was gonna get executed for this. Fuck. Maybe he should just fly away. Swim down, then go on for however long he could, and then try and find his Mom on his own. Earth had a large population, right? But if he could describe his Mom and maybe see parts of the planet, maybe he could figure out where she was?

Mark wanted to swim back down and hide behind Corinne. Even though she was a corpse. Even though she certainly wouldn’t protect him—Viltrumites didn’t really do that. They did watch each other’s backs, but that wasn’t the kind of thing Mark would ask for. Fuck. Why did Corinne have to tell him? Why did she have to do that? Why did she—

(Kill them. Or they’ll kill themselves. Dead humans aren’t going to help us. It’s not for pleasure. But they won’t see reason unless we show them. This is us showing them.)

—make him do that?

Mark swallowed the salt, still floating aimlessly. The water was cold. He was pretty sure Corinne snapped his leg in half, but he didn’t want to check.

He cleared his throat. “Uhm. It’s puberty?”

—

Mark later learned, gratefully enough, that human puberty did not cause homicidal tendencies. He wouldn’t have to use that excuse again.

—

Viltrumites weren’t mindless killing machines. They had a culture. They had ideas, and means, and social hierarchies, and a way of living. Mark wasn’t a mindless killing machine. Corinne wasn’t either.

It was just that—

Out there, surrounded by galaxies and endless space, Mark got lost. Both in the geographical sense and in the mental sense.

What could he do except what he was ordered? He didn’t have room to be weak. Or to be too human. He was supposed to handle things like all his peers. Viltrumites did not kill for pleasure. Sure, some took pleasure in killing—quick, strong, and far deadlier than other species—but it wasn’t that they killed because they wanted a species to die. Except on the occasion a species was so weak that Viltrumites were told to exterminate them. (Kill them.) But, Mark didn’t settle into the role. He was seventeen. He didn’t have decades of battle experience behind him. That made him weaker than his peers, and yet—he was still here, obviously—not killing. Comfortable with killing. He could fight. He could destroy entire cities, wreck communities, physical structures, but he avoided raising a hand to another species. It drove his father up a wall, before Mark was delivered to the Viltrum Empire and was therefore instated to be re-educated. Taught proper Viltrumite customs and rules. Mark was surprised he passed any of those classes, with how often he was tearing his own hair out and scratching into his own skin over the sheer insanity of everything.

It became a habit, more or less, and as long as no one looked too much into it, none of it mattered. So what if he scratched too hard? Not a physical itch, but a mental one? It wasn’t like Viltrumite skin was easily damaged. You needed force. You needed grit. You needed will.

(Too bad Mark had all those things.)

Or, in his case, a good thing. He poked. He prodded. He scratched. He dug in, grappled with the way his nail hooked underneath a scab, the way he pulled at stitches if he was alone—if he had any.

Viltrumites didn’t seem to do that. The self-prodding. The self-harm.

Mark was either a genius for discovering a way to get rid of his fears, or a crazy bastard for deciding the only blood he would shed would be his own.

Hence, why he didn’t bring it up. It wasn’t exactly a stereotypical Viltrumite thing to do. And, from what he understood about humans on Earth, carving one’s body was considered an illness or a cry for help. Mark wasn’t crying. And he wasn’t asking for help regarding how he dug into his flesh and dreamed of prying it apart for the sake of seeing what made him so different from every other Viltrumite next to him.

Humans were complex social creatures with complex social structures. Mark couldn’t remember much, but he could assume that most humans didn’t tear themselves apart on the regular. It sounded like something he would just have to watch out for—keep tabs on, if he could—because the only species Mark knew that participated in routine mutilation were the Kovoxes, and they were batshit insane ever since being subjected to the Empire. So! He didn’t really know what to do about that! He was half-human, but that didn’t mean much in retrospect unless it was to insult him for his lack of pure blood status.

(There’s no record of a Viltrumite trying to kill themself. It must be the human part of you. It’s weak. Your only goal should be to—)

Again.

A culture to understand. Viltrumite valued their home, their people, and their mission. They weren’t mindless. They could think, and think quite well—seeing as they built entire empires and organizations in order to better take care of illnesses and poverty. Viltrumites, despite the slighter they committed—how merciless they became, how merciless they were taught to be, didn’t have to kill.

(I mean, there has to be at least one person who decided to do what I do. How many of us existed? How many of us still exist, even now? Someone has to understand what I’m doing.)

Mark didn’t have to.

He didn’t have to kill anyone. (Not even himself.) He could slip by, blood on his hands and between his fingers, and could continue on.

Humans didn’t seem to kill each other regularly, did they? Maybe they figured out a way to simply kill their planet rather than one another. (He later learned this was incorrect.) But the point still stood. Mark could survive this. He could ignore the drive in his head, the voice that tugged him along. He could rely solely on that other instinct, the one saying not to pull himself apart, not like that and not like this. He could avoid slaughter. He could avoid slaughter.

For fuck’s sake, it shouldn’t be too much to ask for, even as a half-Viltrumite.

—

Mark looked at the human. “Is this the part where I explain myself, or…?”

—

Mark knew that hospitals and medical posts were a thing. After all, Viltrum possessed them. State of the art. Far more advanced than what other planets could ever accomplish. However, it seemed that on Earth, hospitals and medical posts were available for more than just the strong and or imprisoned-about-to-be-executed.

They were also for aliens. From space. Like himself.

And he found himself in a white and silver room, with a loud machine that beeped, and a needle stuck in his arm. It was connected to a tube, dripping some kind of fluid, and he stared at it for a long time before someone finally told him it was called an IV, to help him rehydrate. Mark felt like he was flying—in the best way possible—true joy, when the wind rustled his hair.

He could still taste salt.

The man in the room didn’t seem interested in that particular detail, so Mark didn’t say anything else about it—I hadn’t realized Earth would taste like salt, or speak English—and so the man with thin, grey hair—and a half-concave jaw and cheek—introduced himself as Cecil.

“Mark,” said the half-Viltrumite, half-human. “I’m Mark.”

“Mark,” Cecil echoed, with a blank face.

“Yes,” Mark agreed, just to make sure that there was no confusion. Mark, he thought. Halfie. Nolan’s son. Something’s son. Halfie. Mark. Markus. Me.

The hospital was white and grey. It was equally as quiet as it was loud. There was no yelling or screaming. There were a lot of beeps, scuffles, and ruffling noises. He could breathe deep. His clothes had been replaced with—human clothes, Earth clothes—which wasn’t the worst thing. It could be… worse. It could be much worse, so Mark didn’t say anything about the gaudy color or the weird texture. He looked around the room, and then looked at the stranger, and then tried to come up with a reason for having crash landed on Earth, killing one of his own, and drowning her in the sea.

Cecil listened silently through most of it, until—

“I assumed,” Mark mumbled. “That humans also had a drive. To. Y’know. Kill, or live.” He poked at the stitches on his ribs, watched the skin move when he winced—his own body—and then let his hands go back to the sheets. “I guess it’s a survival drive, for humans, and not what I have.”

“What do you have?” Cecil asked. Mark couldn’t read his tone—dry, wary, not friendly. Humans had seemed friendlier than Viltrumites, despite their biological similarities to Mark’s main species.

Mark looked at him, frowning. “Two?”

The guy raised his brows. “Two drives?”

Well, how was he supposed to know? Everything Mark understood or thought he understood about humans was being thrown out the window. Being incinerated, torn apart. He wanted to choke himself out for even crash landing on Earth. He had never seen skies so blue, never seen a city built solely from perseverance. He had no idea where he was, on Earth, because apparently Earth was made up of hundreds of thousands of cultures, languages, and nations. It wasn’t like Viltrum at all.

Viltrumites killed. They were taught to kill. The weak and sick could not survive. One must remain in their prime and hold true to their posts. Do their jobs.

Mark just abandoned his.

And killed Corinne in the process.

(You’re your father’s son. Don’t you get it? The Great Nolan had a child with an Earth woman, and made you fight your way out of a foreign womb.)

“Humans are similar to Viltrumites,” Mark reasoned, finally. “Body-wise, at least. Humanoid. But we don’t think we can’t bite off our own finger.” He paused. “I’ve seen it happen—the biting. The destruction of ourselves to destroy something else.” He went back to fiddling with his stitches, unable to help himself. Morbid curiosity. Detachment. He could handle pain, that was something all Viltrumites could. “But humans—they can’t. Something tells them they can’t. Right?”

Cecil looked at him. “Right.”

“Right,” Mark said, feeling put-off again. He smoothed his thumb over the stitches, and it finally snagged—a nerve, then many—and he finally let go when the pain blotted his vision. Too raw, too much. “Viltrumites don’t have that thing. Human preservation.”

“You just kill mindlessly?” He asked, now, sounding judgmental as much as he did—something else, something else.

“They’re mindful,” Mark faltered, and shrugged, and stared at the sheets. “Very much aware. We know we’re doing it. The words kill them are specifically used.” But we think it’s necessary, we think we have to, so we do, so we have evolved to… just need to. He wasn’t too sure how to explain it.

“But you aren’t a Viltrumite,” The guy mused, calmly. “You’re a human.”

“Half,” Mark corrected, politely. “Half.”

He tugged at his IV, running his hand over it—vein, needle, vein, needle.

“That’s why you have both,” Cecil concluded. It sounded like he was beginning to put the pieces together, in a human-adjacent puzzle. Mark was rapt with interest—not that he could see the particular mental process. “Your biology is colliding. Is that it?” Cecil watched him, and then frowned harshly. He snapped. “Stop tugging at that.”

But they didn’t touch, and he didn’t reach out, and Mark didn’t feel any pain.

He unhooked his thumb, stopped tugging at the IV.

Mark looked at him, tried to see what Cecil’s face wore—the expression, was it exhaustion, boredom, fury, or grief? Not that he could reference the last emotion, as no one typically grieved on Viltrum. “Sorry,” Mark said, carefully, and stopped tugging at the IV in his arm.

(Intravenous therapy. To administer fluids.)

Humans were intelligent, not just weak scum. They had ways to cure people of their ailments. They had their issues—all species did—but seeing it in action made the fears and hopes in Mark’s stomach fester.

He cleared his throat. “I was told that humans experience a weird stage during their adolescent years.” What he had been told, however, was unhelpful. He had been twelve. The people talking to him had been mean, bloodied, and hadn’t liked his father. Mark hadn’t needed to kill them, and they hadn’t needed to kill him, but it was nature. He swallowed, “I figured, oh, it must be that weak part of me. But, no, ah. It’s just human. Not weak. Not—whatever you call that stage.”

Cecil stared blankly at him. “Puberty.”

“Yeah, that,” Mark nodded. “Viltrumites don’t have a survival drive. Or, if they do, it’s made from picking out the strong from the weak. Survival is suited for the strong. So, you must be strong to survive. If you aren’t, you die. And so on and so forth.” He swallowed, trying to sort it out—because he didn’t have that drive, not like Corinne, or his father, or anyone else he knew. Such a redundant explanation. “But humans. They’re different. Part of that is in me—the non-killing part—and it contradicts with the not-really-survival-but-kill drive of a Viltrumite.”

“You’re at war with yourself,” The man said out loud. Musing. “Over killing.” Another pause. Cecil tilted his head, looked at Mark’s stitches, the bruises, the wounds that couldn’t be healed any further on such short notice. “So, you kill your ally?”

Ally.

(Kill them. Kill them. Kill them.)

Mark’s stomach twisted, violent. “Corinne killed two humans first.”

The man snorted, a dry and rough sound. “But that’s normal for your species. Killing others. Killing the weak. Isn’t it?”

“Humans are my species, too, even if I wasn’t raised on Earth,” Mark justified, quickly, and it would have killed him on Viltrum to say this. Being beaten. Being pulverized. Being ostracized in a similar fashion, because he wasn’t pure blood, too emotional to be a real Viltrumite, and yet he obeyed and could follow the orders given—kill, fight, win, kill. Weakly, he confessed. “Corinne shouldn’t have done that.”

The Empire would end him for saying it.

They would also say Corinne was weaker than him, and deserved it, if she hadn’t been able to hold her own. (The halfie can fight, then. The halfie can win.) There would be no mourning. It would kill Mark, to see it happen. An absence of the ache he felt, an absence in everyone else.

Choking as the red sun finally brightened the sky. Choking as the body sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Cecil analyzed him for a long moment before speaking. “Is that what you think?”

“I think,” Mark muttered, and he hooked his thumb into the stitch, finally, and that thing in his brain said pull, pull, pull, pull! “That the Empire must die, and in order for it to die, I need help killing it.” He pulled at the stitch, finally, and felt his nerves light up like fire. “But, uh,” he looked at Cecil, almost embarrassedly. “I also came back to Earth because I’m pretty sure my Mom is still alive, and it would be nice to meet her? So, I was kinda hoping that—well—someone would know how to help me find her?”