Marvel: The Awakened One

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Titan!

The Titan that Thanos called home wasn’t Saturn’s largest moon in the Solar System. It was a rogue planet hidden deep within the Milky Way.

Once, Titan had been glorious.

But now?

Hawk stood in the middle of a desert. The sand beneath his boots was not really sand—it was metallic dust, worn down to a fine powder by countless years of decay. He looked up. The sky was not blue. A swollen orange sun glared down like an indifferent eye on the world it once cared for.

Ruined cities floated in the atmosphere, drifting without purpose.

Bones lay buried beneath the metallic dunes. Occasionally, a howling gust of wind would sweep the dust away, revealing a skeletal hand or a shattered skull.

The descendants of the Eternals had built a utopia on this world. Every street had been planned down to the inch. No poverty. No conflict.

But that was then. This is now!

When Hawk found Thanos—the Mad Titan looked like he had just crawled out of a meat grinder. He sat by the edge of what used to be a vast ocean, his armor cracked and stained with blood. He stared blankly at the expanse, an ocean that once flowed with liquid gold but was now just a cracked plain of dried mud.

There was no sign of Bruce Banner anywhere.

But...

Just a short distance away, the mountain-sized corpse of a five-eyed Celestial lay slumped on its side, leaking rivers of golden fluid. It was motionless.

For Celestials, three eyes indicate a juvenile. Six eyes indicate an adult.

And Five Eyes? On the verge of adulthood.

Hawk glanced at the dead Celestial, then pulled his gaze away. He walked straight over to Thanos and sat down on the ground beside him, staring out at the cracked seabed.

”I heard you wanted to see me.”

”Yes.”

”I’m here,” Hawk spoke quietly, turning his head to look at the battered, purple-skinned warlord. ”You can talk now.”

”The destruction of Titan...” Thanos’s voice was flat. He did not care whether Hawk wanted to hear it or not. He began recounting the origin and ultimate demise of his homeworld.

Hawk knew the comic book version of Titan’s destruction.

In that timeline, the pathetic Thanos, hopelessly obsessed with the cosmic entity Death, had slaughtered his own people just to make her smile.

And the result? He treated Death like his first love, but Death saw him as a fool. She turned away and chose Deadpool instead. Feeling mocked and humiliated, Thanos cursed Deadpool with immortality.

Yes, that was the real origin of Deadpool’s immortality. It was not a gift from Death—it was a curse from Thanos, meant to make sure Deadpool could never die and be with her.

But that was the comic book universe.

This was different.

As Thanos spoke, Hawk finally understood the true history of the dead planet beneath his feet.

Thanos did not destroy Titan. It also did not die from resource depletion, as the movie version claimed. Instead, it was destroyed by self-destruction.

Exactly... Self-destruction. The descendants of the Eternals on this planet had chosen to destroy themselves together.

Hawk expanded his Seventh Sense, casting it deep into the core of the dead, motionless planet.

And then—

He saw it. A fully formed, yet incomplete, Celestial.

It was formed because it had already grown limbs and a torso.

It was incomplete because it was nothing more than a hollow shell. Its internal organs were unfinished, stalled in mid-development.

A Celestial seed needs the life energy of the planet’s people to grow. When all life on the planet is gone, the planet stops spinning and the life energy source is lost.

To put it bluntly, the Celestial incubating inside Titan had been stillborn.

”Tch!” Hawk clicked his tongue. He looked at Thanos. ”When did this happen?”

”A long, long time ago...” As far back as Thanos could remember, his people had known about the Celestial seed gestating within their planet.

However—

”They chose to ignore it.”

”They chose to pretend they didn’t know.”

”They chose to just live day by day, hoping for the best. After all, Titan was never a paradise. It was never a perfect place. It was just somewhere they fooled themselves into thinking was safe.”

The Eternals of Titan were rebels. During a battle with the Deviants, they had been infected. But instead of dying, the mutation had awakened them, restoring the memories the Celestials had erased.

When the ancestors of the Titan Eternals learned the truth, they were furious. And they made a choice. They betrayed the Eternals, fled the life-bearing planet they were assigned to protect, and came to Titan. They thought they had escaped the Celestials’ gaze, and they put down roots here.

So, they rebelled, but their way of rebelling was to hide in fear.

The ancestors did it. Their descendants did the same. When they found out their new home also had a Celestial seed, they got angry, but then did nothing. They went back to living each day, pretending everything was fine.

Until—

Thanos was born. From a young age, he was different from the rest of his people, and his way of thinking was different as well.

Thanos paused. Hawk leaned in. ”And then?”

”Did you wake them up?”

”No.” Thanos clutched his chest, taking a few ragged breaths. He lowered his hand and shook his head. ”I made the choice for them.”

Hawk raised an eyebrow. ”But you just said they chose self-destruction.”

Thanos nodded. ”Yes. They chose self-destruction. But I was the one who forced their hand.”

The process had been complicated...

The Eternals of Titan weren’t pure Eternals—they carried the Deviant gene.

But over the generations, only Thanos had inherited the complete, dominant Deviant gene. He was the only one who authentically embodied both the Eternal and the Deviant bloodlines.

The Deviants possess a unique ability. Their leaders operate like a queen bee, capable of controlling the entire hive.

And Thanos, having inherited the dominant Deviant gene, was the queen bee.

He had tried to use words, to use logic and passion to ignite a spark of rebellion in his people, to make them stop hiding.

But it was useless. They were dead weight.

So, one afternoon, sitting right here looking up at the stars, Thanos made a decision that broke him.

He took his own wish for self-destruction, the urge to deny the Celestial its prize, and forced it into the minds of his people. They carried the recessive Deviant gene and acted as the worker bees of the hive.

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”After that, I realized something. Life is numb.”

”Survival is the most basic instinct of life. Even if surviving today means sacrificing tomorrow, the vast majority of living things will always choose the comfort of the present.”

”Expecting them to make the hard choice is a delusion.”

”Someone has to step up. Someone has to make the choice for them.”

”So, I stepped up.”

”From that day forward, I left Titan. I traveled the galaxy, searching for planet after planet that had been infected with a Celestial seed.”

”Ebony Maw...”

”Cull Obsidian...”

”They are the lucky survivors of Celestial emergences. Their planets were destroyed when the Celestials hatched. That’s why they follow me. They are willing to help me make the choice for those planets that cannot make it themselves.”

”...” Hawk listened to Thanos’s monologue. While he had serious reservations about Thanos’s philosophy, he played the role of a good listener. He nodded occasionally, offering the validation Thanos needed.

He agreed with Thanos on one point: survival is a basic instinct.

But he rejected Thanos’s conclusion that ’someone needs to step up and make the choice for them.’

In a word: Hawk wasn’t that bored.

’If you want to destroy yourselves, go ahead. If you don’t, fine. What does it have to do with me? I’d rather stay home and relax than stick my nose in someone else’s mess.’

”So... Did they agree with you?” Hawk asked, his voice calm, after Thanos finished his story. ”Take your adopted daughter, Gamora, for example. Do you think she accepts your philosophy?”

At the mention of Gamora’s name, something shifted in Thanos’s eyes.

”She will understand...”

Hawk gave a short laugh. ”Now you’re just lying to yourself. You’re no different from the people you say you hate.”

Thanos fell silent.

To the people on the planets Thanos ’saved,’ even if destruction was inevitable, it was their choice to make. What right did Thanos have to interfere?

Thanos might have thought he was making the hard choice to help them survive, but that did not stop the people of those planets from hating him and wishing he were dead.

Hawk wasn’t trying to redeem Thanos.

He was just giving an outsider’s view, similar to how he felt about Earth’s choices: Survival or destruction, make your own choice.

Hawk didn’t participate, and he didn’t interfere.

The only thing he was prepared to do was be a safety net if Earth made the right choice.

If Earth made the wrong choice, he would just pack his bags and move to the World Tree.

Hawk smiled at the silent Titan. ”So, you wanted to see me just to argue about whether we should play cosmic savior?”

Thanos snapped out of his silence and shook his head. ”No. I used to believe my path was the right one. But after seeing you, I realized my path was wrong, too.”

”...” Hawk lifted an eyebrow.

Thanos’s voice sank. ”After seeing you, I suddenly realized... I am not a savior. I am an accomplice.”

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