“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” — Ernest Hemingway
Ezekiel Bastien Ross
New York City, New York, U.S.A.
May 4th, 2012.
The chair I was lounged in was uncomfortable, which was strange to me.
Wasn’t the whole point of these things to make you as comfortable as possible so you’d spill your guts?
So that this guy could validate and justify all your horrible decisions while you sank into something expensive and cushioned and forgot you were being analyzed?
I shifted a bit, to put my weight on my thighs rather than on my ass, the hard leather creaking.
Apparently not.
The office was exactly what you’d expect from a man who charged three hundred dollars an hour to listen to people cry.
Warm lighting that had no business being as deliberate as it was, a bookshelf lined with titles like The Body Keeps the Score and Radical Acceptance arranged just a little too neatly to have actually been read recently.
There was a small plant in the corner that looked aggressively healthy, a diffuser on the windowsill putting something lavender into the air, and two chairs angled toward each other at the kind of careful degree that screamed I went to school for this.
A low table between us held a box of tissues that I was determined not to touch.
Opposite me, in a chair that looked considerably more comfortable than mine, sat Dr.
Alan Reeves.
Fifties, salt and pepper at the temples, thinning hair, basically the stereotypical image of his profession.
He had a legal pad balanced on one knee and a pen he hadn’t uncapped yet, and he was watching me with an expression that was professionally unreadable.
He hadn’t said anything beyond the greeting that had directed me to sit down.
He didn’t seem bothered by the silence we had been stewing in for the last minute.
Which, I had to admit, was annoying.
The quiet stretched.
I shifted in my chair, felt the hard edge of it dig into the back of my thigh, and did what I always did ,according to my ex, when emotional vulnerability was being asked of me: be a smartass.
“So is this where you ask me about my mother?”
He smiled at that, just slightly, and reached up to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.
“Would you like to tell me about your mother?”
“Yeah, actually. Great relationship. Buried last May.” I shrugged.
“No unresolved trauma there, Doc.”
“It’s a hard thing losing a core relationship like that, I am sorry for your loss.” He let that sit for a moment before adding, gently, “Did her passing hurt you?”
I felt it, that small dull ache that lived somewhere behind my sternum and had the decency to usually stay quiet.
I ignored it the way I’d gotten good at ignoring it and kept my voice easy.
“I ain’t a sociopath, of course it did. But like I said, I got over it. You can’t be angry at a drug addict for overdosing forever. It gets exhausting honestly.” I rubbed the back of my neck.
“Can we talk about something else?”
Dr.
Reeves held my gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable, in that way that made you feel like he was filing something away.
Then he nodded, once.
“Alright. I’m sure we’ll return to that in time.” He uncapped his pen.
“What would you like to talk about?”
“I don’t know. Isn’t that your job? Getting me talking?”
“My job,” he said, with the calm of someone who had heard every variation of that deflection, “is to create a space where you feel safe enough to do that yourself. There’s a difference.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and looked away toward the aggressively healthy plant.
“Then let’s talk about why you’re here, Ezekiel.”
“Ross. Please.” I looked back at him.
“And you know why I’m here. It was either this or jail.”
“I read the court mandate.” He set the pen down across the pad, a deliberate little gesture that said I’m not taking notes right now, I’m just talking to you.
“But I’d like to hear it from you. I can’t help you if you keep the door closed, Ross, and I can’t report any meaningful progress to the state if we spend our sessions like this.” A pause.
“So. What happened?”
I exhaled slowly.
Looked down at my hands, at the callouses across my knuckles that told their own story to anyone who knew how to read it.
“Fuck it,” I said.
“Fine.”
There was a pause as I centered myself, thumbs working over my knuckles the way they always did when I was nervous.
“There were three of them.”
Dr.
Reeves didn’t write anything down.
He just watched me.
“I was coming back from the gym. Late, maybe nine, nine-thirty. It had been raining all day so the streets were pretty empty and I had my hood up, headphones in, just trying to get home.” I leaned forward, forearms on my knees.
“I heard them before I saw them. There this sound people make when they’re doing something they know is fucked you get me? Like they’re trying to be quiet about it but they’re also feeding off each other, you know? This kind of low, ugly energy…”
The alley was narrow and poorly lit, the rain coming down in a thin persistent drizzle that had soaked through my hoodie somewhere around block three and hadn’t let up since.
My gym bag was heavy on my shoulder, my muscles carrying that good worn-out ache of two hours of bag work and sparring, and I had been thinking about nothing more profound than whether I had eggs at home.
Then something prompted me to turn my head into the alley I was passing by.
She was backed against the wall at the far end of the alley, three men fanned out in front of her in a tight, intimidating formation.
She looked young.
Fifteen, maybe sixteen, her dark hair plastered flat against her face by the rain, and along her forearms and across her forehead her skin was covered in shimmering scales caught the light from the street, pale and iridescent like something pulled from deep water.
Her teeth, when she bared them, were sharp.
She was terrified and trying very hard not to show it.
‘A mutant’
One of the men said something I didn’t catch as he fiddled with his belt buckle.
The other two laughed.
I pulled my headphones out.
“Hey! Back off you chomo fucks!”
“I told myself I was just going to break it up. Scare them off, make sure she was alright, keep it pushing.” I looked at my hands.
“I was calm about it. That’s the thing I keep coming back to. I walked in there completely calm.”
“What happened next, Ross?” Reeves asked.
“The big one, the guy fiddling for his shrimp dick, turned around and gave me this look.” I said.
“Called me a… M-word lover.” I was careful not to use the slur.
“Told me to fuck off if I knew what was good for me.”
“And what happened after that?”
I snorted.
“What do you think.”
The first one came in sloppy, telegraphing it from his shoulder, and I slipped it the way I’d been trained to, rolling my weight back and letting the fist pass close enough to feel the air of it brush my cheek.
My counter was clean.
Two to the body, short tight shots that folded him in on himself, and one to the jaw that snapped his head sideways with a wet crack.
I felt the impact travel up my arm, knuckles biting into bone.
He went down hard on the wet concrete, skull bouncing once, and stayed there.
“Oh shit!” “Fucker dropped Marcus!”
Controlled.
Methodical.
I’d done this ten thousand times on the bag.
The second one was smarter, hanging back, but I was focused on the big one holding the girl, and in my rush to get to her my attention drifted off him for a beat too long.
Something connected with the back of my head from a direction I hadn’t accounted for.
It wasn’t a fist.
It was heavier.
A tire iron, maybe.
Something dense enough that the impact rang through my skull like a bell.
Stars burst across my vision.
The alley lurched sideways.
My knees buckled and I dropped, one hand slamming into the ground to catch myself, gravel biting into my palm hard enough to tear skin.
Cold rain hit the back of my neck, ran down inside my collar, and for a second the whole world smeared, sound stretching and warping into something distant and hollow.
Then the first kick landed.
It drove into my ribs with a dull meaty thud that forced the air out of my lungs in a sharp grunt I couldn’t swallow.
Another followed immediately after, higher this time, catching the edge of my shoulder and spinning me slightly where I knelt.
A boot scraped across my cheek, grinding my face into the wet concrete, grit and rain and something metallic filling my mouth as my teeth clicked together hard enough to make my jaw ache.
They didn’t give me space to recover.
A boot clipped my temple and for a second everything went white again.
Then another hit landed.
And another.
A Timberland caught me square in the stomach hard enough to make bile crawl up my throat.
Somebody grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked me halfway upright just so the other one could drive the tire iron into my ribs with a horrible dull clang that I felt more than heard.
Pain exploded through my side.
I choked on it.
My body folded instinctively and they dropped me again, my shoulder smashing against the concrete hard enough to send another burst of static through my arm.
“Thought you was tough, huh?!” one of them barked.
A kick slammed into my spine.
Another stomp caught the back of my thigh.
Rainwater mixed with blood beneath my cheek, thin pink streams running through cracks in the pavement while their boots kept coming from every direction.
Every time I tried to push up another blow put me back down.
My forearms were already bruising dark from trying to shield my head, skin split across my knuckles and elbows where gravel had chewed into them.
The one with the tire iron crouched beside me, grabbed a handful of my hair and wrenched my head back.
“You shoulda minded your business.”
Then he drove the edge of the tire iron across my mouth.
Not a swing.
Just a brutal shove that split my lip open against my teeth.
I spat blood onto the pavement, that earned me another kick to the ribs, something cracked this time.
I heard them laughing above me, voices echoing strangely through the ringing in my skull.
“Yo this motherfucker leaking!”
“Nah nah, let him get up! Let him get up!”
“He ain’t getting up from that shit.” A boot pressed against the side of my face, grinding me into the concrete before finally lifting away.
The hits slowed after that.
Not because they felt bad.
Because they were getting tired.
I stayed where I was, breathing in wet choking gasps while pain pulsed through practically every inch of me.
My left eye was swelling shut already.
My side screamed every time I inhaled.
Blood dripped steadily from my nose onto the pavement below.
One of them spat on me.
Warm even through the rain.
“Ain’t so tough now, huh hero?”
They started backing off toward their disoriented friend, hauling him upright by the arms while he groaned and stumbled between them.
Somewhere during the chaos the girl had run.
‘Good.
At least somebody got out of this.’
The guy I’d dropped first finally steadied himself enough to limp over.
His face was swollen crooked already, one eye half shut, blood running freely from his nose.
He looked down at me with pure hatred.
Then drove one last kick into my ribs.
Agony detonated through my side and I curled tighter with a broken grunt as he spat onto the ground beside my head.
For a moment I just stayed there.
Rain hitting my back.
Blood in my mouth.
Everything hurting.
‘Ahh, I’ll get em next time.’
Then I heard them talking while they staggered back toward the mouth of the alley.
“Come on, the mutie bitch couldn’t have gone far.”
“They like hiding in alleys and shit.”
I closed my eyes for a second.
‘Ahh fuck.
Can’t pretend I didn’t hear that.’
I planted one hand against the wall beside me.
Every muscle in my body screamed when I pushed up.
My arm trembled violently under my weight, legs nearly folding again before I finally found my footing.
Blood and rain dripped from my chin onto the concrete below.
Behind me I heard one of them laugh.
Then it stopped as he looked back and saw me.
Because I was standing.
I swayed slightly, one hand still braced against the brick, chest heaving as pain stabbed through my ribs with every breath.
But I was standing.
“…Yo,” one of them muttered.
“Why this nigga still getting up?”
The guy with the tire iron stared at me like he genuinely didn’t understand what he was looking at anymore.
I wiped blood from my mouth with the back of my hand and spat red onto the pavement.
“HEY!” My voice came out rough and ragged.
“I ain’t done caving in your faces, you pussies!”
I pushed off the wall.
“Get back here and let me finish fucking you up!”
There was a second of genuine silence.
The kind that only happened when people realized something wasn’t right.
“Nahhh,” one of them said, almost laughing from disbelief.
“Yo this motherfucker built different.”
“I swear to God,” another muttered, tightening his grip on the tire iron, “Imma kill your bitch ass, word to my moms.”
The guy I had dropped first hesitated.
The third one said something sharp under his breath and they came together again, the way people do when they’ve decided that one person standing back up isn’t something they were prepared for.
I took another shot to the ribs that I’d feel for a month and gave back two for it, driving my fist into soft tissue, feeling something give under the impact.
My other hand snapped up, catching a jaw mid-turn, the crack of it sharp even through the rain.
“I was fine up until they jumped me,” I said.
“I had it. It was controlled, it was clean. But they fought dirty and came at me together and something just…” I searched for the word.
“Went quiet.”
Reeves leaned forward slightly.
“Went quiet how?”
“Like the volume got turned down on everything except what was right in front of me.” I was quiet for a moment.
“I…don’t fully remember the last part.”
I stepped in before they could reset, closing the distance so they couldn’t use it.
The second guy swung wild, panic bleeding into his movements now, and I slipped inside it, my shoulder colliding with his chest as I drove forward.
My fist buried itself in his stomach once, twice, felt the air leave him in a broken gasp, then came up hard under his chin.
His teeth snapped together with an audible crack and his head whipped back as he dropped.
The third one came at me from the side, shouting something I didn’t register, and I turned into it, letting his momentum carry him closer.
My hand caught his wrist, twisted, and I felt the joint strain under the pressure before something popped, his arm going slack as he screamed.
I didn’t let go.
My other hand drove into his face, once, twice, each hit landing heavier than the last, knuckles splitting open against bone, blood slicking my skin.
He sagged but I kept hitting him, stepping forward, driving him back until his heel caught on something and he went down hard.
The big one had recovered enough to move again, anger overriding whatever pain I’d put into him, and he came straight at me.
I saw it coming and met him halfway.
We collided.
His fist caught my ribs again, right where it already hurt, sending a sharp flare of pain through my side, but I didn’t slow.
I answered with a combination drilled into muscle memory, body, body, jaw, each strike landing with a dull heavy impact, each one driving him further off balance.
He stumbled.
I followed.
My fist connected with his face again.
And again.
And again.
Each hit felt different now.
Less controlled.
Less measured.
Bone giving way under repeated impact, cartilage collapsing, something wet and soft where there should have been resistance.
He went down, I went with him.
My hand fisted in his shirt, holding him in place as my other kept moving, rising and falling in a brutal relentless rhythm.
His arms came up weakly at first, trying to block, but they didn’t stay up for long.
They couldn’t.
The sound changed from sharp cracks to something duller.
Heavier.
My knuckles split fully, skin tearing open, blood slicking my fingers, his as much as mine, mixing together until there was no distinction.
It ran down my wrist, dripped onto his face, onto the ground beneath us, washed thin by the rain.
I didn’t stop.
Didn’t think.
Didn’t hear anything beyond the impact of my fist hitting him again and again and again.
By the time someone grabbed me from behind, hands locking around my shoulders and hauling me back, my arm was still trying to swing, muscles jerking against the restraint.
They pulled me off him, and when I saw his face, it looked like it had been caved in.
“The girl actually went to get help, I don’t remember much…but from what the cops said, I grievously harmed two of them and almost killed the third.” I continued.
“The state argued I went beyond self defense and defense of another. And I don’t know. Maybe they’re right. One of them, the big one…Dejon Williams…” I exhaled slowly through my nose.
“He was in a coma for a week. They weren’t sure he was going to make it. They still aren’t sure he’ll be the same.” I leaned back.
“I pled guilty. Didn’t see the point in doing anything else.”
“And the judge?”
“Took my history into account…and a statement from a friend from the academy, Jefferson really stuck his neck out for me.” I said mind going back to my childhood friend, before continuing on.
“That along with my mental health stuff. So instead of a cell I got a suspended sentence, mandatory anger management, and…” I gestured vaguely at the room, the lavender diffuser, the tissue box I still hadn’t touched.
“This. I guess I should’ve put on a costume before stepping in. They don’t seem to get in any legal trouble for saving people.”
Reeves looked at me for a long moment, “It must feel unfair, being punished for helping out someone.”
“Yeah well it is what it is.” I grumbled leaning back into the uncomfy chair.”
He glanced down at the pad on his knee.
“You mentioned a history of mental health issues. I actually wanted to touch on that see if it played a roll here. It’s listed here on your file that you suffer from Delusional Misidentification Syndrome. Would you be willing to go into that?”
“Yeah, sure. We’re on a roll right?” I leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling for a moment, like I could find the right place to start up there somewhere.
“So when I was a kid, I started to having these dreams.”
“What kind of dreams?”
“The kind that don’t feel like dreams.” I brought my eyes back down.
“You know how most dreams are kind of… loose? Like the logic doesn’t hold, things shift around, you wake up and it’s already fading? These weren’t like that. These were sharp. Consistent. Like I was living somebody else’s life every time I closed my eyes.”
Reeves had uncapped his pen again.
He was writing now, slow and measured, not looking down at the pad.
“Somebody else’s life. Can you describe what you mean by that?”
“Some guy,.” I shrugged, but it came out less casual than I intended.
“Regular kid. Different city, different family, different race, different everything. I’d dream his whole day sometimes. Waking up, going to college, talking to people I’d never met in my actual life but somehow knew the names of.” I paused.
“It always ended the same way.”
“How did it end?”
I was quiet for a second.
“School shooting.” I said it flat, the way you said things you’d made peace with a long time ago, or at least told yourself you had.
“Every time. Same hallway, same sound, same… ending. I’d wake up and my heart would be going like I’d actually been there.” I rubbed the back of my hand across my mouth.
“I was maybe seven the first time it happened. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it. I just thought it was a recurring nightmare .”
“Did it affect your day to day life as a child?”
“I mean, I wasn’t exactly sleeping great.” I said.
“Night terrors, mostly. My mom thought I was watching too much TV, and my…dad just used it as another excuse to beat on me.” He perks up that, scribbling onto his pad.
‘Shit I shouldn’t have mentioned that.’
“But other than being tired all the time it wasn’t… I don’t know. I functioned. I went to school, I had friends, I was normal enough that nobody pulled me aside and asked hard questions.”
“You said other than the night terrors it never really came up,” Reeves said carefully.
“But I want to make sure I understand. Were there other ways it affected you that you perhaps didn’t connect to the dreams at the time?”
I opened my mouth to say no and then stopped.
“I pick things up fast,” I said, slower now.
“Always have. Like, weirdly fast. My teachers used to say I had a gift for retention but it wasn’t really that. It was more like… some things I’d never been taught just felt already known. Like reaching into a pocket and finding something you don’t remember putting there.” I frowned.
“I didn’t think that was strange. I thought everyone was like that.”
“And the dissociation?”
I looked at him.
“You’ve read my file pretty thoroughly.”
“It’s my job, Ross.”
“Right.” I drummed my fingers once on my knee.
“Yeah. That one’s harder to explain. It’s not like I ever felt like I wasn’t me. It’s more like…” I searched the ceiling again.
“You know that feeling when a word stops sounding like a word if you say it too many times? Like the meaning just drops out of it and you’re left with this weird noise that doesn’t connect to anything?” I glanced at him.
“That, but with the world. Sometimes I’d just be going about my day and something would just… slip, the things that caused it never made any sense, it could be a documentary on Captain America, or the Baxter building and the feeling would come back. Like nothing around me was quite as real as it was supposed to be. Like I was watching myself from one step back.”
“When were you first formally diagnosed?”
And there it was.
I felt the familiar low irritation settle in behind my eyes.
“When I flunked out of the police academy,” I said.
“Psychological evaluation flagged me. They had some very professional words for the way my brain works, Delusional Misidentification Syndrome being the headline.” I spread my hands.
“So that was fun to find out at twenty two.”
“How did you feel about the diagnosis?”
“Honestly?” I said.
“Insulted. I’d been living with this my whole life and functioning fine, more or less, and then some guy with a clipboard, a lot like you actually, decides the word for it is delusional and suddenly it’s on my permanent record.” I looked at him.
“I’m not delusional, Doc. I know the guy in the dreams isn’t me. I know it. I’ve always known it. It’s just that the dreams don’t care what I know.”
Reeves wrote something down.
Then he looked up.
“Do you ever think about who he was? The person in the dreams?”
I was quiet for longer than I meant to be.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“He seemed like an alright guy. Didn’t deserve the ending he got.” I glanced toward the window.
“Nobody does, I guess.”The diffuser put something lavender into the air between us and neither of us said anything for a moment.
Reeves glanced down at his pad, then back up at me with the kind of careful, measured expression that meant he was about to open a door he wasn’t sure I’d let him through.
“There’s also a note here about your father. You mentioned he was abusive. Would you feel comfortable talking about that?”
I snorted.
“My old man was a no good woman beating piece of white trash. Used to beat on me too, whenever my mom was out fiending.” I leaned forward, forearms back on my knees.
“I remember this one time, I was so hungry I stole some food from this bodega down on Cypress Avenue. Guy knew who I was, knew my dad. Told him.” I rubbed my jaw slowly.
“He beat me up so bad my mom made me skip school for a week so they wouldn’t call CPS.”
I paused, and something old and hot moved through my chest at the memory of it.
“And I remember being so angry. At him, obviously, but at her too, for covering for him. Because this motherfucker sold dope to desperate sick people his whole life, but he beats on me for trying to eat? That’s where he draws the line?” I shook my head.
“Make it make sense.”
Reeves nodded slowly.
“Is that what drew you toward law enforcement? Wanting to bring some kind of justice against men like him?”
I looked at him staring straight into his eyes for the first time since I started spilling out my guts
“No” I said.
“My dad beat me so badly I still can’t see out my left eye as good as I used to, when I stopped crying over it I started wondering…who beats up evil motherfuckers like him?”
The steam from the cart smelled like home, a heavy comforting fog of cumin, turmeric, and sizzling lamb that cut through the sharp May exhaust of Midtown.
I didn’t need to look at the menu.
I’d been hitting this specific cart since I was a teen, long before the tourists found out about it.
“Yo Yusuf, how’s it going man, let me get a combo over rice. Extra white sauce, one line of red,” I said, my voice flat and practiced.
I tapped my phone against the card reader without looking up.
It was the StarkPhone 5, a sleek edge-to-edge glass display that looked like it had been pulled off the dashboard of a spaceship, my eyes locked on the glowing screen.
“You got it, boss. One line of red. Don’t come crying to me when your mouth is on fire,” Yusuf joked, the familiar rhythmic clack-clack-clack of his metal spatula against the griddle punctuating the sentence.
“Man, Stark really changed the game with those things, huh? Ever since he stopped making guns he’s been rolling out tech, it’s like he’s living in the year 3000. My kid says that phone is basically a supercomputer in your pocket.”
I didn’t respond.
I was busy scrolling through a grainy vertical video that had been uploaded three hours ago, now sitting at twelve million views.
The caption was just a string of panicked emojis and the hashtag #Munich#Ironman#CAPTAINAMERICA.
The footage was shaky, shot from the back of a terrified crowd in Germany.
In the center of the frame stood a man who looked like he’d stepped out of a high budget opera gone wrong, draped in gold and emerald armor with curved horns that caught the gala lights.
“Kneel!” the figure screamed on the recording.
The audio distorted, peaking into a harsh crackle, but the authority in his voice made my skin prickle even through the humid New York morning.
“Yeah it’s fast, I’ll give him that. Just wish he’d stop slapping his name on everything.”
Yusuf laughed.
“Yeah, true that. What’s got your attention anyway?”
“That attack in Munich. The guy calling himself Loki.”
“Astaghfirullah, crazy world man,” Yusuf said, sliding the heavy styrofoam container across the stainless steel ledge.
He nodded toward my phone.
“But hey, did you see the other guy? The one in the suit? They’re saying it’s him. Like, the actual Captain America. My pops is losing his mind.”
I squinted at a blurry frame of a man holding a circular shield, standing defiant against the god-thing in the plaza.
“I don’t know man. Rogers went down in the ’40s. Probably just some guy in a high-tech costume for PR.”
I tapped the screen, rewinding the grainy video.
The footage showed the man in the flag—the one everyone was calling Captain America—holding his ground against the gold-horned freak.
But then, the audio on the recording was drowned out by a heavy, rhythmic thumping of classic rock.
A red-and-gold streak blurred across the frame, hitting the armored guy so hard he flew backward into the museum steps.
“There he is,” Yusuf said, pointing a gloved finger at the screen as Iron Man landed in a three-point stance, his hand-cannons glowing.
“Stark’s always gotta make an entrance. You think he pays for the music rights, or does he just own the record label too?”
I snorted.
“He probably bought the band. Look at that… the guy in the horns just gave up. One look at a billionaire in a tin suit and he’s done.”
“It’s a circus, Zeke,” Yusuf sighed, turning back to the rice.
“A flying circus.”
‘Sure could have used him when the Hulk was tearing up Harlem though’
I took the heavy bag, the warmth of the rice comforting against my palm.
“Be seeing you, Yusuf, tha-” I’d only made it three steps toward the corner of 45th when the world went quiet.
Not a natural silence.
It was the sound of the air being sucked out of the street, a massive pressure drop that made my ears pop painfully.
Then came the sound.
A low subterranean thrum that vibrated in my teeth, followed by a sky-tearing crack that echoed off the glass canyons of Midtown.
I spun around.
Above Stark Tower, a beam of pure violent blue light had punched a hole through the clouds, swirling into a dark bruised vortex.
Yusuf dropped his spatula, the metal clattering uselessly against the pavement as he stared up at the sky, his face pale under the cart’s yellow umbrella.
“Ya Allah… mosh tani…” he whispered, his voice barely there.
That’s it for Chapter One of Brightest Day!
I know it is a bit of a slow burn but I felt it was important to establish who Zeke is before everything goes sideways for him.
I kept his backstory intentionally layered, but I am sure some of you have already started putting the pieces together.
I’m not sure if you could tell, but I had a lot of fun writing this one.
I really tried to make the world feel alive, and for those of you that couldn’t tell, this is going to be an AU that has more of the comics tied in but will be heavily based around the movies.
I wanted to get his ring in this chapter but I got carried away building him up, and honestly I have no regrets about it.
Honestly I felt that was important because his personality is really the backbone of this whole story.