Marius & Namor | Skill Issue
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xp_logsMarius and Namor verbally clash over the ethics of power and retaliation near the lake. Their argument escalates to the brink of physical violence.
Trigger warnings: discussion of trauma and persecution
Marius didn't bother to pretend he was doing something as dignified as skipping stones; he saw little merit in acting as if he desired to do anything other than hurl objects as forcefully as possible. Besides, the Danger Room was in use.
He scooped another stone from the shore and hurled it into the lake, where it met the surface with a glunk.
Before the ripple of that last throw had finished settling, Namor was there. The lake rose to announce him, water curling upward at the shoreline in thin, serpentine ribbons before settling again, obedient as hounds returning to heel.
"Careful, Marius," he said dryly, folding his arms. "Throwing things simply to break stillness is dangerously close to action. I had assumed the Xavier-approved method required grief to be spoken in circles until it exhausted itself."
Marius blinked, startled. "Ah, bugger. Apologies, Your Highness. I didn't mean to disturb you." A thought crossed his mind. "You don't, ah, feel damage done to bodies of water, do you? Have I just assaulted a sovereign ruler?"
"And yet you threw more than one stone. A disappointing pattern."
Namor stepped fully onto the shore. There was nothing hurried in the way he moved. He bent to retrieve another smooth stone from the damp earth, turning it once between his fingers as the last widening rings settled into clear, black water.
"Here you stand on an inlet of a kingdom older than most civilizations still remembered by man, hurling rocks like a sulking child." His mouth twisted with aristocratic cruelty. "I confess, Marius Laverne, I had naïvely expected human rebellion to mature with age."
"Then I fear you've read me wrong. Never in my life have I been accused of maturity." Marius brushed the grit from his gloved hands with a distracted air. His movements, normally open and easy, were short and terse. The shadows beneath his eyes conveyed that Marius was currently a man who had been courting sleep with diminishing returns. "Again, my apologies. Much on my mind, but little action to be taken. It is truly an unfortunate combination."
"Mmm. Yes. I heard."
Namor weighed the stone in his hand, moving it back and forth. Testing.
"Your friend was abducted." This was cool and exact, stripped of melodrama or sympathy. "Again. Which does diminish the novelty of the occasion.”
A slight pause.
"One would imagine that after the fifth or sixth kidnapping, someone might begin offering coursework on preventative measures." His expression remained serene. "This was, once, a school."
The tension in Marius' body increased slightly, muscle groups tightening like a spring being slowly wound. "Yes, well," he said, "it's not as easy as all that, is it? We can do our best to prepare, but in my experience if someone has it out for us they'll find a way. As we have repeatedly seen."
Namor gave a quiet hum of contempt.
"You speak as though this is weather. Unfortunate. Unavoidable." His lip curled slightly. “The language of peace finds such ways to excuse failure.”
He cast the stone into the lake hard enough to leave a sharp, violent trench across the surface before it vanished.
"Men continue hunting your people because the consequences remain survivable. A haven that cannot protect its people is a dormitory draped in comforting rhetoric."
A muscle along Marius' jaw corded. He didn't move, but the cordiality began to drain from his voice. "Because people are so logical, yeah? Of course. Fanatics are famously forward-thinking. I'm sure you've made not one enemy who wouldn't trade their own life for a chance at you. Come across not one man ignorant of your identity. Perhaps Atlantis alone was the sole society never to produce individuals too foolish to grasp the consequences of their actions."
Where Marius had tensed at the edge of conflict, Namor went still.
"There are always men willing to die for hatred," he continued. "Atlantis had them too."
A pause.
“They succeeded. So, when I hear your kind speak of helplessness as inevitability, forgive me if I find the philosophy terribly unpersuasive." His eyes settled back on Marius, something in them gone flat and cold. "Your people return here to sleep between abductions. Your predators have merely learned to harvest them in the city rather than the courtyard, because they do not fear your impending wrath.”
His expression twisted in disgust.
"Safety is not the same thing as freedom, no matter how gently the cage is furnished."
Marius' patience, already slowly fraying during the conversation, finally snapped.
His voice didn't rise. Instead it lowered to a pitch the X-Man rarely used, scoured of all affability and affectation. It was as if the ash of artifice had been swept aside, revealing the glow of living coals.
"You think you have the solution?" he asked quietly. "You've never been meat in your life. Never been used like a dog because someone looked at you and saw not your blood or merit, but a thing. In the mansion or out of it, it's always the same. This isn't Atlantis, Your Majesty. We've no armies to send, no sanctions to levy, and nor do you. All your pronouncements come from atop a throne of sand, and may you never see the day there comes a wave high enough to sweep it out from under you. For me that day's already come and gone. That's what taught me the difference between living here and living out there. We'll be hunted wherever we go. At least when I was here, there was someone to fight for me."
Marius met the Atlantean's gaze and narrowed his eyes.
"Without us behind you, could you say the same?"
Namor held his gaze without blinking.
"You think I speak this way because I have never been prey,” he growled, biting on the words one by one. "Yet I was born to a kingdom that died while I slept."
His head tilted.
“When they pulled me from my slumber into this forsaken timeline, I awoke to a world where Atlantis was a grave and my people a myth.” His mouth curved downward. "Charles Xavier’s great refuge asked me to survive by hiding. Quietly. Secretly. Gratefully."
Whether the contempt loaded on that last word was for effect or true was hard to say, but he let it linger. Finally, Namor's stare broke toward the mansion.
"So no, Marius. I do not mistake safety for dignity. I have seen what becomes of people taught to mistake comfort for power. After all, livestock are kept safely in their pens as well. Fear is a language the world remembers."
"It's a wider world today, Your Majesty. Perhaps one day mutantkind will be a power upon the world stage, but the future is little good to us now. Ah, even as individuals we could raze cities -- murder their leaders, starve their crops, destroy their infrastructure -- but it's never those at the top who pay the real price, is it, but those at the bottom. The rest of the meat. Who still out-number us by a considerable margin, incidentally, and who will assume cowering acceptance of atrocity no more than we. How many of us will then be made to pay in return?" The heat in Marius' voice had dissipated, replaced now with something hard and cold. "From atop a throne it's easy enough to speak in absolutes, but the rest of us are mere men. Offer me a solution that does not end in escalating genocide. I didn't escape becoming Akkaba's mass murderer to undertake the role for mutantkind."
"There it is," Namor said. "The divide between us."
He folded his arms behind his back, posture easing into something almost bored. A full body sigh.
"You speak of the sovereign as if he stands apart from those beneath him. I was born to a throne, Marius — not its luxuries, but its burden. A sovereign who thinks only of individuals is an indulgent fool. A crown is not worn to save the few you can see, it is borne to shield the many he cannot."
"How fortunate for me, then, that I do not bear that burden." Namor was maintaining composure, and somehow Marius found that worse than if he'd managed to incite the Atlantean's ire. It was, perhaps, a testament to their . . . friendship . . . that the other man was showing restraint rather than rendering Marius a fine glaze across the mansion grounds. He couldn't imagine the ruler of Atlantis tolerated such insolence gladly. He should have been grateful for this forbearance.
Drawing a deep breath, Marius forced his fists to unclench. The wind kicked up, and as it touched his skin he became aware of a coldness at one of his fingertips; a tooth from one palm had sliced through his glove to pierce a finger.
"Clearly we shall come to no accord, which means this discussion holds no further value for either of us." Marius turned away from the Atlantean, his movements still stiff and angry. "You shall continue to live on your throne, and I in my cattleyard. That way we'll both be happy, eh?"
Namor’s expression did not change. If anything, Marius’ anger seemed to settle him further. The sea was often calmest before something drowned.
"Fine," he murmured. His gaze traveled over Marius slowly like one searching for pressure points. "Leave. Wait. Hope."
Then a faint, cruel curl of a smile.
"I wonder," Namor added almost idly, "what they will return your friend and those youths as once this place finally decides to act. Monsters? Weapons? Ruined things wearing familiar faces?" He bit his lip. "Though I confess, with two feline creatures already roaming these halls, I am uncertain why Xavier's would need more than one."
The attack was not artful. It was sudden.
His fist had raised at the same instant Marius whipped around to face Namor. The men were mere feet apart; two strides was all it took to bring the X-Man into striking range. In his eyes the barely-banked flames had roared to an inferno.
Marius swung.
The crack of impact never came.
Marius’ fist was caught mid-swing with ease, fingers closing around it like a vise. The force of it traveled nowhere. His opponent did not yield so much as an inch.
Only then did Namor truly smile.
Not another smirk of derision, nor an expression surgically deployed for effect. Instead, the sharp satisfaction of a bored shark watching prey remember it still possessed teeth.
"There you are," he said. His grip tightened just enough to hurt. "I was beginning to fear those cultists had bled the warrior out of you."
Marius glared at Namor with death in his amber eyes. It was not, however, to be his own. Even now he knew there could have been no other result in coming head-to-head with Namor in a true rage. Whatever secret deathwish the Australian might have been cultivating disintegrated in the face of one simple fact: If there was anything that might still be done for Kyle and the others, Marius had to be around to do it.
With great effort Marius collected himself, pulling on the tatters of his self control like a man dressing for the day. He leaned away, pulling his closed fist from Namor's now unresisting grip, and took a step back.
"Speaking as a ruined thing, Your Highness," Marius said, staring directly into the man's eyes, "go fuck yourself."
And with that, he turned his back and stalked away.
Trigger warnings: discussion of trauma and persecution
Marius didn't bother to pretend he was doing something as dignified as skipping stones; he saw little merit in acting as if he desired to do anything other than hurl objects as forcefully as possible. Besides, the Danger Room was in use.
He scooped another stone from the shore and hurled it into the lake, where it met the surface with a glunk.
Before the ripple of that last throw had finished settling, Namor was there. The lake rose to announce him, water curling upward at the shoreline in thin, serpentine ribbons before settling again, obedient as hounds returning to heel.
"Careful, Marius," he said dryly, folding his arms. "Throwing things simply to break stillness is dangerously close to action. I had assumed the Xavier-approved method required grief to be spoken in circles until it exhausted itself."
Marius blinked, startled. "Ah, bugger. Apologies, Your Highness. I didn't mean to disturb you." A thought crossed his mind. "You don't, ah, feel damage done to bodies of water, do you? Have I just assaulted a sovereign ruler?"
"And yet you threw more than one stone. A disappointing pattern."
Namor stepped fully onto the shore. There was nothing hurried in the way he moved. He bent to retrieve another smooth stone from the damp earth, turning it once between his fingers as the last widening rings settled into clear, black water.
"Here you stand on an inlet of a kingdom older than most civilizations still remembered by man, hurling rocks like a sulking child." His mouth twisted with aristocratic cruelty. "I confess, Marius Laverne, I had naïvely expected human rebellion to mature with age."
"Then I fear you've read me wrong. Never in my life have I been accused of maturity." Marius brushed the grit from his gloved hands with a distracted air. His movements, normally open and easy, were short and terse. The shadows beneath his eyes conveyed that Marius was currently a man who had been courting sleep with diminishing returns. "Again, my apologies. Much on my mind, but little action to be taken. It is truly an unfortunate combination."
"Mmm. Yes. I heard."
Namor weighed the stone in his hand, moving it back and forth. Testing.
"Your friend was abducted." This was cool and exact, stripped of melodrama or sympathy. "Again. Which does diminish the novelty of the occasion.”
A slight pause.
"One would imagine that after the fifth or sixth kidnapping, someone might begin offering coursework on preventative measures." His expression remained serene. "This was, once, a school."
The tension in Marius' body increased slightly, muscle groups tightening like a spring being slowly wound. "Yes, well," he said, "it's not as easy as all that, is it? We can do our best to prepare, but in my experience if someone has it out for us they'll find a way. As we have repeatedly seen."
Namor gave a quiet hum of contempt.
"You speak as though this is weather. Unfortunate. Unavoidable." His lip curled slightly. “The language of peace finds such ways to excuse failure.”
He cast the stone into the lake hard enough to leave a sharp, violent trench across the surface before it vanished.
"Men continue hunting your people because the consequences remain survivable. A haven that cannot protect its people is a dormitory draped in comforting rhetoric."
A muscle along Marius' jaw corded. He didn't move, but the cordiality began to drain from his voice. "Because people are so logical, yeah? Of course. Fanatics are famously forward-thinking. I'm sure you've made not one enemy who wouldn't trade their own life for a chance at you. Come across not one man ignorant of your identity. Perhaps Atlantis alone was the sole society never to produce individuals too foolish to grasp the consequences of their actions."
Where Marius had tensed at the edge of conflict, Namor went still.
"There are always men willing to die for hatred," he continued. "Atlantis had them too."
A pause.
“They succeeded. So, when I hear your kind speak of helplessness as inevitability, forgive me if I find the philosophy terribly unpersuasive." His eyes settled back on Marius, something in them gone flat and cold. "Your people return here to sleep between abductions. Your predators have merely learned to harvest them in the city rather than the courtyard, because they do not fear your impending wrath.”
His expression twisted in disgust.
"Safety is not the same thing as freedom, no matter how gently the cage is furnished."
Marius' patience, already slowly fraying during the conversation, finally snapped.
His voice didn't rise. Instead it lowered to a pitch the X-Man rarely used, scoured of all affability and affectation. It was as if the ash of artifice had been swept aside, revealing the glow of living coals.
"You think you have the solution?" he asked quietly. "You've never been meat in your life. Never been used like a dog because someone looked at you and saw not your blood or merit, but a thing. In the mansion or out of it, it's always the same. This isn't Atlantis, Your Majesty. We've no armies to send, no sanctions to levy, and nor do you. All your pronouncements come from atop a throne of sand, and may you never see the day there comes a wave high enough to sweep it out from under you. For me that day's already come and gone. That's what taught me the difference between living here and living out there. We'll be hunted wherever we go. At least when I was here, there was someone to fight for me."
Marius met the Atlantean's gaze and narrowed his eyes.
"Without us behind you, could you say the same?"
Namor held his gaze without blinking.
"You think I speak this way because I have never been prey,” he growled, biting on the words one by one. "Yet I was born to a kingdom that died while I slept."
His head tilted.
“When they pulled me from my slumber into this forsaken timeline, I awoke to a world where Atlantis was a grave and my people a myth.” His mouth curved downward. "Charles Xavier’s great refuge asked me to survive by hiding. Quietly. Secretly. Gratefully."
Whether the contempt loaded on that last word was for effect or true was hard to say, but he let it linger. Finally, Namor's stare broke toward the mansion.
"So no, Marius. I do not mistake safety for dignity. I have seen what becomes of people taught to mistake comfort for power. After all, livestock are kept safely in their pens as well. Fear is a language the world remembers."
"It's a wider world today, Your Majesty. Perhaps one day mutantkind will be a power upon the world stage, but the future is little good to us now. Ah, even as individuals we could raze cities -- murder their leaders, starve their crops, destroy their infrastructure -- but it's never those at the top who pay the real price, is it, but those at the bottom. The rest of the meat. Who still out-number us by a considerable margin, incidentally, and who will assume cowering acceptance of atrocity no more than we. How many of us will then be made to pay in return?" The heat in Marius' voice had dissipated, replaced now with something hard and cold. "From atop a throne it's easy enough to speak in absolutes, but the rest of us are mere men. Offer me a solution that does not end in escalating genocide. I didn't escape becoming Akkaba's mass murderer to undertake the role for mutantkind."
"There it is," Namor said. "The divide between us."
He folded his arms behind his back, posture easing into something almost bored. A full body sigh.
"You speak of the sovereign as if he stands apart from those beneath him. I was born to a throne, Marius — not its luxuries, but its burden. A sovereign who thinks only of individuals is an indulgent fool. A crown is not worn to save the few you can see, it is borne to shield the many he cannot."
"How fortunate for me, then, that I do not bear that burden." Namor was maintaining composure, and somehow Marius found that worse than if he'd managed to incite the Atlantean's ire. It was, perhaps, a testament to their . . . friendship . . . that the other man was showing restraint rather than rendering Marius a fine glaze across the mansion grounds. He couldn't imagine the ruler of Atlantis tolerated such insolence gladly. He should have been grateful for this forbearance.
Drawing a deep breath, Marius forced his fists to unclench. The wind kicked up, and as it touched his skin he became aware of a coldness at one of his fingertips; a tooth from one palm had sliced through his glove to pierce a finger.
"Clearly we shall come to no accord, which means this discussion holds no further value for either of us." Marius turned away from the Atlantean, his movements still stiff and angry. "You shall continue to live on your throne, and I in my cattleyard. That way we'll both be happy, eh?"
Namor’s expression did not change. If anything, Marius’ anger seemed to settle him further. The sea was often calmest before something drowned.
"Fine," he murmured. His gaze traveled over Marius slowly like one searching for pressure points. "Leave. Wait. Hope."
Then a faint, cruel curl of a smile.
"I wonder," Namor added almost idly, "what they will return your friend and those youths as once this place finally decides to act. Monsters? Weapons? Ruined things wearing familiar faces?" He bit his lip. "Though I confess, with two feline creatures already roaming these halls, I am uncertain why Xavier's would need more than one."
The attack was not artful. It was sudden.
His fist had raised at the same instant Marius whipped around to face Namor. The men were mere feet apart; two strides was all it took to bring the X-Man into striking range. In his eyes the barely-banked flames had roared to an inferno.
Marius swung.
The crack of impact never came.
Marius’ fist was caught mid-swing with ease, fingers closing around it like a vise. The force of it traveled nowhere. His opponent did not yield so much as an inch.
Only then did Namor truly smile.
Not another smirk of derision, nor an expression surgically deployed for effect. Instead, the sharp satisfaction of a bored shark watching prey remember it still possessed teeth.
"There you are," he said. His grip tightened just enough to hurt. "I was beginning to fear those cultists had bled the warrior out of you."
Marius glared at Namor with death in his amber eyes. It was not, however, to be his own. Even now he knew there could have been no other result in coming head-to-head with Namor in a true rage. Whatever secret deathwish the Australian might have been cultivating disintegrated in the face of one simple fact: If there was anything that might still be done for Kyle and the others, Marius had to be around to do it.
With great effort Marius collected himself, pulling on the tatters of his self control like a man dressing for the day. He leaned away, pulling his closed fist from Namor's now unresisting grip, and took a step back.
"Speaking as a ruined thing, Your Highness," Marius said, staring directly into the man's eyes, "go fuck yourself."
And with that, he turned his back and stalked away.
