Victor Kohl, abductor, traitor, fugitive of the kree empire, assistant in mass-spaceship murder, wanted Jersey City arsonist--and fake funeral giver.

He turned and paced in the darkness. His fingers clenched, and he formed from the shadows a scarab-shield, a sword, twirling them in his fingers. He danced forward, striking imaginary foes until they retreated. He puffed the shield and sword back to their mother darkness, but the imaginary enemies returned so he forged in his fists a hammer.

Sure, the people he abducted over the years he eventually tried to free. The ones still willing to accept that freedom, untainted by the greed and beliefs of the kree empire.

For a long time, Victor had held himself trapped under the surface of the truth--he helped build a great army, he recruited for a cause that welcomed the unwelcome; those lies made his skin crawl now.

If he'd helped those people sooner, how many more would've cared about freedom?

But, he hadn't, because he never wanted to break through the surface of the truth into the frigid claws of his guilt.

Underhanded, he swung the barrel-headed hammer, letting it fly from his fingertips at the top of its arc. It whistled through the air, and he dispelled it into shadows before gravity could take hold.

He hadn't, until Dante. An embering fire to hold off the ice of his guilt.

But now the world shoved in his face that even trying to face one kind of guilt led to the deaths and mutilated bodies of a hundred other people in the icy deep.

Victor paced one way, to the capture and ruination of inhumans' lives. He paced the other way, to fix that mistake and get a lot of kree soldiers killed, faces and voices Victor knew from living on the same spaceship for years.

Was it better or worse that he never bothered to learn any of their names?

He paced a third way, for latching onto the idea of superheroes and his friends here, trying to...help people, yet messing up, causing damage, and getting hated for it.

He paced back to position one, start of the triangle trapping him in,  and crafted a pair of daggers from the shadows. Crouching low, he slashed at the dark, bare feet sliding over concrete in callused whispers.

He shifted the daggers to a sword, double-handed, rising to a stance and swinging like his blade could hack at intangible enemies closing into his vision's range.

How stupid to believe he could escape the regrets hedging him in so wholly wherever he turned.

***

Victor slept curled beside Dante's warmth, Ivy and Ette whispering from the opposite corner of the quilt spread over the dried concrete.

Or, Victor tried to sleep.

Six aqua drones stood like silent sentinels around the water tube, staring into the black bay as if perfectly blank expressions would keep the bloated faces of the dead kree away. Did kree souls care about apologies from the living side of the grave? Did they care about apologies from six of the people responsible for their deaths?

Victor had made up that line about souls flying swift as starlight. As far as he knew, kree who died got jettisoned into space, out of mind as soon as their bodies spiraled off into the vacuum. How many of those soldiers hated Victor for his position, his powers that kept him aloof from the frontlines of common battles?

What did a funeral uttered to the glass and an Earth ocean actually do? Absolve them of responsibility? Quiet the cold anger from the restless dead?

Victor shut his eyes, blocking out the questions. He huddled closer to Dante for the warmth, dead-souls' stares chilled his backside, but what if they weren't actually there, and the goosebumps were all Victor's guilt?

He weighed them against each other; the cold of dead kree, or the cold of his guilt at sentencing them to death. Which possibility burdened him more?

He clenched his jaw--it shouldn't matter. Kree: dead, funeral: happened, Victor could do nothing else about it.

Except try to forgive himself.

His eyes popped open.

Dante's soft expression filled his view. Thick eyelashes, still cheeks, lips twitching with his dreams. Dante's hand had curled through Victor's hair before he fell asleep, the other tucked to his chest. So Victor couldn't pull away without risking waking Dante.

Except try to forgive himself.

A faint voice--maybe his aunt's, maybe Dante's from before they battled Lightning Storm--echoed the words. Victor was quite certain neither person had actually spoken them. Rather, a dim flicker of his parents, faces only fog, meant the words. But Victor didn't remember their voices either, so his aunt's lilted voice, and Dante's soft one, said them instead.

"Victor," Victor mouthed, breath tickling Dante's tousled hair. Dante's nose twitched and instantly Victor clamped his lips shut.

"Victor," he retried, not allowing a breath to pass his lips, "I forgive you."

He grimaced.

"I forgive you," he mouthed again. "You don't need to...be the cold eyes staring at your own backside. You've done your best to make it better, right? Yeah? So then you can let it go."

Dante twitched in his sleep again, and Ette snorted. The shiver in the air didn't fade, but Victor lifted Dante's hand from his hair and slid their fingers together. "Good night, Dante," he whispered.

***

Author note: I forgive you, even if you haven't voted on this chapter :)