𝕯 𝕺 𝕺 𝕸

"And you do not? Why do you hide your face, if not to hide your greatest shame? Not the accident itself, oh no, but what it means. Sign of failure by the rash actions of a boy, one of many blemishes on his doomed soul." No, he doubted the other would recognize the hypocrisy of his words. Pain had numbed him too much, too far gone to recognize the regret.

Until the one horrible day that he would.

"Oh, that is where you are mistaken, for our scars run far deeper than any flesh. Our weakness is shared, no matter how hard you may deny them." He casts his gaze back through the windows, to the hills and mountains far in the distance. How many times had they been broken? In those frigid mountains, in the flaming depths, in the forgotten halls? This-- Broken by failure, as he so puts it, was no different. He would forge himself anew. For he endured.

"You see only two paths. Path of Victor, and the path of Doom. Flesh, or metal." Perhaps he had the right of it, a story this long abhorred a rewrite, especially when his role had been so ingrained in its pages. Was this to be their fate, the push and pull between the status quo and the small glimmers of change?

To accept it was to accept one's doom.

"If the mask is shame, then it is that which I made by my own hand. As the failures ever will be." It was less the mindset he abhorred, and more that he would lower himself so. Inferior technology, assumedly compatriots unwilling to truly change their world. Yet here he stood, bared free for all the world to see, so exposed as to show signs of forlorn reverie for this palace, the mountains that so cast a shadow over the sun drenched lands.

"There are two paths. Victory. Failure. If victory means what you have become then I do not wish it. You talk of freedom as though these burns, this marred visage, was not one we could have always fixed. Like the body is one I am forced to bare, not one I chose to." After all, even now if he so chose, he could switch bodies with the double, or anyone else in this world. If he so desired to wipe away the scars of his first brutal failure, he surely could. But that was the point.

"Bah!" A dismissive hand as ever is waved off into the aether, grand flourish of the despot in all his glory. "You will never write your own story, so long as you play your games as Iron Man. Like some child on Hallow's Eve, dancing about to scare the demons away. What paltry toys you play with are beneath us."

To remember, to feel the weight of that hard flesh, to know that the Hell Doom knew was to callous, not to weaken. "You seem to misunderstand your own station. Taking the divine light from gods, rewriting realities on the whim of only Doom-- Those powers are and will always be Doom's right. But the pen you choose to scribe your fate is not. Forging our own path was done with grit, hatred. We made this armor, we stitched this tunic. Built Latveria up brick by brick. That armor you wear is a betrayal of all this petulant grand standing you preach."

Doom (2000) #1

He knows himself well enough to know the ultimate futility of his words, but they are cathartic nonetheless. Therapy, in any other name, perhaps. He would chuckle if he had the time for it.

"And why haven't you, oh great lord of all?" The more this tin man spews bile and venom and hate, the more he looks down upon him, fiercer does his fire burn. Metal hammering into something old, yet something new. The strength of character, painfully absent from him for what seemed like an eternity.

He could always rely on himself to get the job done.

He mirrors the other's posture, arms going behind his back, as he steps away from the monarch, starting to walk around the throne room like it was his own. "Years, and years, and decades of the same old song and dance. Complacent. Have you conquered the world, my lord, have you finally bent them under your iron heel?" He does not wait for an answer, for he knew it already. "Failure, at every turn."

So much time wasted, a tantruming child behind his armor, trying to bend the arc of the world to his will just so he could be loved. Bah. A new path was needed.

"The iron and the fire. Sensations numbed like a dullard. Fattened up by my very own myth. A decaying despot in his throne." He stands on one of the many great windows of the chamber, a hand raised as he looks upon his home. An echo of it, at the very least.

Fingers glow with a dull green, small black spots dancing at the fingertips before he closes his fist shut. "When it was these hands that clawed and bled for everything I gained. Flesh and blood that climbed into the heavens and stole the fire from the gods' homes.

Heroism-- Hah! As if that wasn't as foolish a route as the one he had taken before. Should he sit around the campfire, sing kumbaya? Hope that friendship was the true magic all along and they could hug the world better?

"Was it the armor that walked in the woods of shadows and nightmares? Was it the myth of Doom that defied the Beyonder? Nay-- It was the will of Doom, the man himself. Not this addled automaton who coasts on his reputation and unrealized visions of the future."

At last he turns his head to look upon him, gaze filled with disgust, lips upturned in a sneer. A purposefully overly dramatic display, to one whose guise was forever frozen.

"And yet still, there is one difference between the two of us."

More than the obvious, more than the singing impossibility of power and command upon legions of mechanized soldiers. More than the mystic powers wrought from the hands of gods and sorcerers to be wielded by no other man but Doom. For Doom was not a man, Doom was not flesh, Doom was not armor. Doom was the idea, the might behind the word and man. The comfort of the Latverian people down below, living in peace.

"You live in regret, burdened by the failures. Broken by them. Healed of the scars we gave ourselves. Embracing this nothing of a man. Admonish me for my failures, for they are your own as well. But do not burden me with your weakness. For Doom still remains here. It was Doom who survived the winter in the frigid mountains of Latveria, shrouded in the warmth of his father's fading light. It was Doom, who with great fury and might, freed his mother's soul from the depths of Hell, it was Doom who offered the greatest salvation to the most bitter of enemies, and brought forth the most brilliant mind into this world when Richards and his science could not."

Skinless, toothless, words hold no bite that had never already been considered by the despot. Doom had yet to save the world, met with failure and the collapse of hubris at every turn. Yet here he stood, unbroken, unshaken from his goals. Even the mighty Bast had bent the knee and recognized that Doom's way would be the only way that humanity would survive its own vile hand.

"When you misstep, you trip, fall. Now, on your way down, you look back to remember when you could catch yourself. Know I do not hate you for what you have become, but for how you lie to yourself about its withstanding, and admonish Doom for your own regret." They both knew how this ended either way. Even if this change felt permanent now, the world would prove itself unable to accept Doom, or even Victor, despite the well intentions, the will to help, and the might he brought forth to do so. Those who would contest them were creatures of status quo, benefiting from the stories remaining unchanged whether they were conscious of it or not.

PAIN?

              THAT IS FOR LESSER MEN.

Piece by piece does the armor retract, retreating into plates, which hid under plates, becoming impossibly small until it was no more, save for the cloak that wrapped around a simple, yet well tailored, suit. Until the shawl, too, is no more, gone with the wind, with the flourish of a wrist.

There, he stood, Victor Von Doom laid bare, a simple man, against the iron despot of Latveria. Many a man had come before him, many a man had perished.

Biting are the other man's remarks, things he had whispered to himself in quiet moments, now spoken plain, spoken loud. Good. He needed the reminder. The fires of youth striking the soft, pliable metal of his existence.

"Ah, yes." He holds his head high, canted slightly, gazing into the other man's eyes. "The man that was burned away all those years ago, whose soul was chipped away with deals innumerable. A myth, a legend, a nightmare to be feared."

Yet he does not back away, he stands firm, chest broad, gaze fiery-- But, also perhaps, ever so pitying. "I have embraced the nothing-- For I have seen everything. Lifeforce, powers of the Beyonder, they are nothing compared to what I have wielded since."

"And when I did so, when all of reality was at my whim and gods themselves bent the knee in servitude of the one true God Emperor, there was but one that stopped me. One thing in all of existence that held me back from true divinity--"

Silence is the golden symphony sent in reply to this visage of unwrapping foil. This pompous future nothing that held itself in such confidence and high regard that he could stumble his way through the halls of a grand palace of his better, and speak on matters he was supposedly so well educated on that he could make the measure of a man in inches, when he truly had lived in miles.

It is with that heavy hand the skinless Doom weaves these insults, blames others for his failure, and damns his greater self for his grandest failures. Insults that fall upon deaf ears to one who would not consider the words of 'nothing' more than that. A nothing spouted like vile poison from a nothing itself was at the end of it all unmistakably still that.

Chest puffed, nose held high, and yet the skinless is still meager. A tower among fellow man, but an anthill before Doom.

"If I am what holds you back, and now you are free, then truly you must have now accomplished it all, yes? You have saved the world from itself? Ended starvation among the peasants and paupers, killed the greed of the lords who hoard their gold and fill their fat bellies?" It's biting, the tone of the despot. Vicious because he knows if all were the case, then his double would have no reason to look back. No reason to remember.

"You are not Doom. You will not be me, and I will not be you. You are not enlightened, you are impotent-- Neutered by these luddites traipsing around and playing hero. Much so that you have become one of them. Even let vanity take hold of you again to remove the power behind the name."

All that power he spoke of, the air of impossibility one could ascend to. Temptation is there, to remind this Victor truly of what it meant to be Doom, to have their mission, to be imbibed drunk on their pain so that they were numb to that which they caused so long as it meant salvation for his people and those who would accept him.

It is a strange feeling, to be belittled by one's own self. Strange, yet hardly surprising. For many times had he doled the same judgment on other, lesser, Dooms. A bitter twist of fate to be considered among them.

Let him. He had always done his best work when thought less by others, this time was no different. He had grown soft, so it seemed, only so he could be forged anew, forged stronger than before.

"Do not presume to know me, Victor, for it has always been our greatest weakness." Loud and spiteful to hide the raw nerve underneath, same as it ever was. He knows full well what he looks to the other, that kernel of fear inside of him, that deep down, he could be bent and broken. Just like any other man.

"No." His voice is decisive, gauntlet coming apart with a hiss alongside his decree, receding into the forearm plates, "You, are what happens when I become numb. When pain dulls all other senses until it, too, is but a distant sensation. An opiate." Bare fingers curl around the edges of the flat face plate, pulling it off to reveal the healed face beneath.

Blistering hot iron grimace gives little mystery to the true feelings that linger and lurk beneath the surface of that cold casing he had created to hide himself from the world. Eyes are level, a calm in place of the storm that raged.

It had been ages since he had seen the unmarred visage that he hid away. One would expect a shock, even a blink, something to shudder the surface offered by the other. Doom had seen into the castes of oblivion, made enemy out of Hell itself. Yet there is no thing that disgusts him more than this attempt at manipulation.

Education.

He would surmise.

Or rather the attempt at such, by a supposedly more enlightened individual. The burden of freedom, Victor thought, made a strong man soft. "When, was the last time you felt gravity actually weigh upon you, Victor? Do you think this freedom makes you strong enough to take the actions that need to be done?"

Was it comforting, to hide your actions behind the weight of another man's legacy? Did it make his double feel he was actually accomplishing what they had desired? This iron copy had come here to remember what they had both been in a time when they were clearly stronger.

"So you have forgotten." He affirms. Rising once again, far less elegant steps tear him back down the throne room to stand in front of this poor xerox. Arms linked behind his back, beneath the evergreen cascading billowing of his cloak. Staring into the other, peering into the visage. In turn remembering why it was he wore the mask to begin with.

"A charlatan?! You DARE?!" Iron fist glows green as it is raised to attack-- before being lowered after a breath. Not for the sake of the man, who could deflect it with ease, but for the sake of the throne room, for the sake of Latveria. His purpose here was to be educational, not a pathetic contest of power.

"Once more, I concur." Eyes dart along the various HUD elements, poke and prodding of his counterpart clear in his systems. He had bolstered the armor from Stark's design work, magic and technology alike, but, unfortunately, the base code was, ultimately, Stark's.

And Stark's technology would always be inferior to his own work.

No matter, the armor could be discarded with a thought if he so wished. Let the other Victor poke and prod to his heart's content.

"The things I have seen, Victor, the lives I have lived...It has given me pause." A rare moment of vulnerability, further shame for the other no doubt, but then again, he was talking to no one but himself. "The ground has shifted beneath me, causing me to forget myself. I will no longer allow it."

Of course it was always a test of one's weakness, so to speak. Letting him search and pick apart to his hearts content. Ever the amount of running water coursing beneath such a placid surface. His double barks, before jaws are sealed taught once more as he bows the head and tails himself to the ideas that Victor had put forth.

Through his research and cultivation of knowledge across the vast infinity of space, he had come to know many things about world's parallel and perpendicular to his own. Possible futures, original pasts, a sliding timeline that constantly shifted with the passive manipulation by unseen forces. Lobotomized doubles, senile invalids, pitiful pretenders. Doom's legacy across the multiverse was scantly consistent.

"The ground shifts with you inside of it. A feckless worm, content with mediocrity. Salvation in life with your spine removed, so long as the exoskeleton built by another's hand helps you stand upright. Without it, you are nothing but another neanderthal, bruising your knuckles as you drag them along the cobble."

Beyond himself.

The idea was one rooted in lunacy. Many times had they ascended to godhood, felt the warmth of the heavens between his fingers whilst he held such limitless power.

There is something twisted in seeing one's own reflection; to see them sit where you were ought to be, to speak with a voice that was your very own. This castle was a death trap to those unwanted, its secrets known to none but one.

"You know as well as I that we are protected more than mere metal." Glowing greens of the iron mask stare the other down before shutting off, revealing the piercing eyes underneath. "But I...concur. This is but a temporary means to an end."

To, what, make proud a man he'd often considered lesser? Play pretend with a moniker he looked down at with disdain? No, this...This was but a chrysalis, a container for greater things to come, for he had long outgrown the guise staring at him.

"Had I any say in the matter, now, I would not become you." An errant toss of the hand sees the goblet careen across the room through the air, vanishing in a quick burst of light before it or the contents within clatter to the throne room floor. "Some charlatan, waltzing around in another man's armor as some Inferior Iron Man. A Stark by any other name."

Security measures and their exploits were certainly two way streets. A duplicate of himself simply walking through the palace, and his own remote systems peaking about in the various odds and ends of software, to test the legitimacy in the field of science rather than relying on magic.

"Games like this are beneath me. Boring. Dark reflection-- BAH!" Comfortably turning his back on his double, Doom takes idle steps toward his throne. The seat of power in all of Latveria.

"Doom has never built anything upon the laurels of another. If this is some game to gain redemption, it will fail because it is not yours." Taking his seat, leaning his metal clad chin upon furled knuckles. Intense gaze burned like a raging fury as it stared those beams of hatred through his own visage. If ever there would have been a greater metaphor.