The natural progress of time as measured by rotations of the Earth, encapsulated among its orbits about the sun in repetitive, circular pattern that was seemingly never ending notwithstanding, it was hard to say just how long he had been in this cosmic song and dance, one pawn of many that had found themselves in this loop of supernatural, sometimes paranormal, and all around strange set of comings and goings for reasons not wholly revealed. One could say it had been months had it not been years and years had it not felt like aeons, each day - each month - more problematic than the last with no real answer given by such a secretive, cumbersome universe; and even peering into the eyes of existential madness, something one could say very few had done - had the chance to do - beget no answers to not one life, but two, too far intersected to exist separately.

And still, the passage of time failed to erode the notion that he could remember the first time he had encountered The Horror in a situation that readily shared the descriptive moniker - a young man, not much younger than he was now, stepping out of his comfort zone to invite a young woman, none older than he had been, out only to see such mirth turn into a horrendous, outright ghastly sideshow of an evening; and he had been a hero - once upon a time - and he had attempted to help - as he sometimes did - until all good things, as they say, had come to an end; and more than the vile machinations of Arcade had been, that had been on him.

Ben Hargreeves hadn’t died that day, but slow at first and then all at once, duality failed to exist, the threshold crossed if not entirely erased between minds which, perhaps in understanding of their inherent doom, took not to fighting, but almost seamless cooperation in a world they never felt quite right in. They had been familiar, kindred spirits in a way, in simpicato with the desire to fit in and, equally so, the awkwardness found in attempting to figure it out. One’s plagues had become the other’s as one’s powers became the other’s - and then some - and experiences lost had become experiences found though, suffice to say, Henry had no grand desire to rescue his sister, arm cannibalized, by a terminal man - again just as Ben, simply along for the ride, may not have wanted to disappear once more into darkness.

What a joke, a great one of cosmic caliber, to have become associated with it, a shadow walking along the footsteps of someone else, watching as matters had gone from bad to worse to cataclysmic under the reflection of the universal expanse.

Curiosity had led him - not Ben, but Henry - to that stupid book, stark black and ancient, printed on indestructable pages of unknown material his fingertips failed - and perhaps didn’t want to - identify, and compulsion, impulsiveness, maybe the promise of power or the fallacy of immortality promised by otherworldly voices and an impish smile, saw him - not Ben, but Henry - read it, welcoming in forces unknown, dark and decaying in a world that had forgotten the primordial beings of old and introducing strings - divergent paths, split timelines, alternative lives that led to the same inevitable each time no matter the destruction left in his wake.

For a second time and surely not the last, they - not just Ben, but Henry as well - had died, perhaps not in the here and now, not in the present, but in the collapse of known existence in an upside down universe where up might as well have been down, good wa a contrived sort of evil, and cities could be washed away in floods of dark waters; and something new had been left in his place, a deal - a promise - made and all but etched into his skin to ensure existence where there would no longer be. The world - this one, seated in a proper place in the universal continuum - didn’t need a madman, driven to the brink of insanity until the collapse of rationality, and they didn’t need his followers, robed crusaders hoping to drudge old ones from murky depths; but he supposed everyone got the deceit they sowed in the end.

Perhaps it hadn’t been the best marker for a first year on this planet not normal, but super - superhuman, superpowered, supernatural. There were plenty of words to be thrown around about those who had become part of this at times underground - and at some times not-so-underground - sphere of beings, but any single one wasn’t all-encompassing of what he had been able to do. Little by little, there had been more and more, a cavalcade of abilities found simply in reading, something nothing more than a calming hobby on the worst of evenings when putting pencil to paper or stylus to tablet didn’t beckon the results he had hoped for; and now, after another death endured at the hands of magics far stronger than his own and much like he had in dimensions beyond, universes that had existed in that black mirror of existence, he had become a conqueror.

Krakoa had been the start, an abomination-driven siege against mutant-kind, once believed abominations in their own time, for what they had done and what they had failed to do for one of their own, forever slighted by that whom they revered as one of the best - one of the world’s strongest telepaths, half the two parts that had made for one of the most important mutants of millenniums to come, and the host for such a destructive and rejuvenating force in the cosmics. It was power, born in her very D.N.A. as manipulated by the same sinister means that had nearly seen to his end, and yet it was kept from her - not unlike his sister, but like her all the same. Alone, rejected, never seen as anything “special” when special was all she had been.

What a joke to only want to be acknowledge and accepted among your peers only to be so cruelly turned away and forged into the very force they considered you to be, something unreal and something unnatural that was better hidden in the depths of time than memorialized as a reminder of man’s fault and folly - at least Ben Hargreeves had a statue, ultimately destroyed and, in this place, moved to be forgotten alongside what were lost brothers - not dead, but simply disjointed by the ebb and flow of the primordial forces found at their fingertips.

But now, he had a place. Perhaps it was without purpose in the dwindling silence of that other half, the one that had none but one sibling and no father to cast such a disapproving glare upon him, but he had a place, a sense of belonging, something that made the shadowed tides of the afterlife unfamiliar no matter how many times - once a year when known time was considered - it had happened. Death and rebirth had become something as normal as a birthday - no, not so readily to be godly, but Henry understood the forces that played a part, some ancient, hidden in the recesses of his mind, while others had been fledgling, the whims of childlike innocence with magical backing who, in some way, may have understood the importance of remaining.

For that, if nothing more, Henry’s allegiance was due - for better, for worse, or for all the warring in Limbo that had ultimately been thwarted by the very same that, if in a miniscule span of time, marked what would be year three - three years of becoming The Horror in more ways than one and in ways he imagined his counterpart, early-graved and under the metaphysical whims of a drug-addled mind, couldn’t ever imagine.

The cost had only been everything.

What a joke it was to stir awake in the morning, twisting and turning around strewn blankets and folded over pillows - they never did last as long as one may have wanted - and realize something had been reset; that the universe and whoever controlled it, those powers that be, hadn’t yet considered finding another cosmic plaything to toss around, twist around, and confuse with their whims. What a joke it was to wake up in the face of all that had been lost, paintings and figurines and keepsakes lining shelves against relatively barren walls as if they had never moved, never disappeared in a wave of Rot, and never been sold off or thrown away or otherwise kept by grieving family members, including a father who readily believed he shouldn’t have buried his only son. What a joke it had been to not recognize the face in the mirror after a sleep-addled stumble into the bathroom no matter how familiar, how natural, how organic it was to the person he had been, Henry staring ahead as if he was unsure of everything - of the world around him, the time he was existing in, or the events that had preceded his stir from slumber.

But it was no joke, this giant reset button that seemed to make such a unilateral shift in his existence, and Henry, not yet dead again even though his stomach might have felt like he should have been, surely wasn’t laughing.