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*SONG LYRICS: “Cosmic Love” by Florence the Machine
**Quotes from ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare
Adam Warlock swam with all the stamina he possessed in his body through the River of Souls, their tormented wails and shrieks echoing in his ears as he kept his eye on the very one he was pursuing through the quickening current.
A mortal human woman who wholly held his heart in her hands…
Her precious soul severed from her wounded body after she had sacrificed herself to save him.
He pushed himself faster and faster but she floated further away from his reach, swirling deeper into the whirlpool that would pull her down into an endless abyss of eternal darkness.
The farther she was dragged away from his outreaching grasp, the slower he was swimming in the river’s never-ending depths, the other souls surrounding him in their mockery and the reveling of his failure to rescue her.
He reached out in one more futile attempt, his fingertips desperate to brush her limp hand, his agonized gaze locked on her peaceful expression of sleeping death. Her beautiful eyes forever closed; her sweet lips in a resting frown…
His mouth widened into a tortured scream as she remained out of his grasp, her luminescent soul glowing in an angelic halo… and she was swallowed up into the black cavernous heart of the underworld, gone forever.
In that moment Adam’s entire world was lost, as though he had died himself… all the light in his life extinguished…
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Adam’s eyes shot open as he gasped for breath, though oxygen wasn’t necessarily needed for him to survive. Perhaps just a reflex of being around so many humans on Knowhere…
He looked up at the all too familiar ceiling that he would recognize anywhere, his frantic heartbeat calming down as he felt the gentle rustling of movement within his arms. His lovely human paramour laid beside him, nestled against his bare chest.
An immense wave of relief flowed through him as he realized he just had another terrible dream…
All those weeks ago, he had been successful in retrieving her precious soul from the Underworld. And here he laid in her bed, both of them entangled underneath her sheets in the afterglow of consummating their love… an act that he would never forget in the remaining years of his lifetime.
When she had opened her eyes with the reunion of her soul binding itself again with her deceased body, he had never beheld a vision so glorious… seeing her smile again with the pain of her wound having vanished.
Until she had shown him how humans physically presented their passion and devotion for one another… her beautiful body displayed before him bare of any clothing, her long hair flowing around her face as she had hovered above him in her bed like an angel blessing him, her hands guiding him in the process of uniting her body with his own, their vocal harmony of mutual satisfaction as they reached the peak of romantic pleasure.
His arms around her ever so careful as they held her close, controlling his strength in the knowledge that she was still human and breakable, but her courage had astounded him in her action of pushing him out harm’s way…
She truly was his angel meant to be his salvation… and Adam to be hers. Her golden hero flying across the universe to bring her back from death…
“Adam?” Her soft voice pulled him out of his melancholy, her tangled hair brushing on his shoulder as she placed a kiss above his regulated heartbeat. “What’s the matter?”
He pulled her even closer to him, looking down to see the fog of doziness in her lovely eyes as he stroked her hair away from her face to better see her fair features. “I… I had a bad dream, my love. I didn’t mean to wake you. Forgive me…”
“It’s okay, WonderBoy. Do you wanna tell me about it?” Her fingertips reached up to brush away a piece of blonde hair matted to his perspiring forehead before moving to lovingly touch the arches of his unique eyebrows.
Adam gently took ahold of her raised hand and brought it to his lips, kissing the pulse of her wrist. As though to remind himself that she was alive and safe here in his arms… His mouth opened to respond to her question, his throat dry. And no words came out.
“You’re my hero, Adam. But it’s okay to be scared. You never really told me about what happened that day after… after I died.” A cold shiver racked up her spine and Adam protectively cradled her close, pulling the sheets further up to her shoulders to ensure she was kept warm.
If anyone asked her, she didn’t remember much after Adam had left her and Rocket in the med bay. All her senses had deteriorated from the torturous pain of her body succumbing to her wound. She had known she was dying and would most likely never see her Warlock again… The agony held her captive for what seemed like an eternity until a wave of merciful emptiness washed it away and everything around her was dark and numb and silent…
“That day…” Adam had found the resolve to speak, his deep voice reverberating through his chest as she laid her head on his pectoral, his fingers tracing along her spine, tickling the naked skin of her back. “When I returned to the med bay… I saw Captain Rocket holding your hand. I’d flown back as quick as I could, trying to get back to you before…”
He inhaled a shaking breath as he blinked back tears from his eyes. His hands clutched tightly around her and she welcomed the intensity of his arms welding her to his body.
Her fingers caressed the outline of his sculpted jawbone, yearning to comfort him as he recalled one of the worst moments of his short lifespan.
Sensing the patience radiating from her demeanor, Adam continued to speak, a tremor rattling his usually smooth candor of speech. “I saw you lying on the surgery table… and you were so still. Part of me didn’t want to believe it, but I knew you weren’t merely unconscious. You were gone. Your lovely face was absent of your beautiful blush, and your body completely lifeless. I held you in my arms as I do now… and I heard no pulse of blood in your veins, no heartbeat in your chest, no breath in your lungs… ”
She listened without interrupting him, her hand resting above his beating heart to keep him calm, occasionally pressing her lips to his shoulder and the side of his golden throat to wordlessly show her being there for him through this difficult confession.
Looking into his eyes to see the sadness and anger in his gaze as he talked further about his quest to the Underworld, his fear of losing her soul to the infinite whirlpool of death and his rapid aging the longer he remained in the river…
And his fulfillment of triumph when he rose up to the surface with her soul literally in his arms and bringing her back to Knowhere…
“I arrived back and carried your soul to where your body still laid and placed it within you. And I felt the warmth revive as I held your hand and watched your eyes open again, like newborn stars. And seeing you take your first breath in that moment… I had never seen anything in the universe more beautiful.” His lips turned up into an adoring smile as a tear of happiness trickled down his cheek.
She smiled back tearfully in return, his words absorbing in her mind in hearing the full story of her Warlock saving her. Simply because he loved her…
Momentarily closing her eyes, she felt the soft touch of his lips upon her eyelids as Adam kissed them one by one with all tenderness of his affection.
“My amazing Wonder-Boy…” She sobbed in disbelief and gratitude and his long fingers stroked along her chaotic hair, weaving through her silken strands of ribbons.
She nuzzled into his shoulder, her nose brushing against his throat as he spoke again, his words clear and smooth in the truth of them. “I love you… I know mere speech can’t properly express such sentiments. But I know in the days of getting to know you, they’ve been the happiest I’ve ever experienced and that day… made me realize how precious you are to me… You’re my starlight, leading me to follow you through whatever darkness may try to part us.”
She leaned back as she listened to his words, not able to think of a proper response to reciprocate his declaration to her. The petite mortal woman pulled him close to kiss her, rolling over onto her back so her golden-skinned Sovereign god could lean over her and they proceeded to make love again.
He remained awake after, still restless despite the exhaustion of their vigorous sessions of intimacy in her bed. However many minutes or hours passed every night they laid together, his being an alien, he was still fascinated by watching her in slumber, finding comfort that she was living and healthy once more. The tips of his fingers would ghost softly along the length of her small nose, the rosy texture of her lips, the faint dots of freckles painted along her cheeks, her long waves of hair framing her face like she was a work of art…
As she slept against his chest, he found himself half-occupied with one of her favorite volumes of literature, a collection of stories written by a long-dead mortal from Earth by the name of William Shakespeare.
With his increasing intelligence from birth, Adam sped through most of the most well-known works, strangely sympathizing with the somewhat juvenile and foolish Romeo Montague, knowing how the teenage youth felt in finding out his newlywed bride was dead and both of them not receiving their much coveted happy ending.
Then, he proceeded to read through the story of Hamlet, the prince of medieval Denmark driven insane by the specter of his murdered father and needing to place his entitlement to the throne above everything else, including his love for the fragile Ophelia.
Adam found himself remembering being under his own mother’s orders and her submitting to the High Evolutionary, likening the memory to the moments of Queen Gertrude denying any wrongdoing by her new husband Claudius. He found himself whispering Hamlet’s lines aloud in the quiet air, his emotions see-sawing between resentment and misery, the protecting presence of his human love keeping him from losing control of his inner demon of rage.
**“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a lair;
But never doubt I love…”
He read further near the ending of the story, to the scene where Ophelia had drowned herself and Hamlet’s regret in his treatment of her. The words of Shakespeare flowed effortlessly from Adam’s lips, as though they were written to be quoted in his voice.
**“I loved Ophelia… forty thousand brothers.
Could not with their quantity of love,
Make up my sum,
What wilt thou do for her?”
Adam willed himself to close the book before he could reach the climax, the failed duel resulting in Hamlet’s demise. He found himself identifying too much with the prince’s reaction to Ophelia’s death, the anger and the grief.
A lump built in his throat as he quietly placed the book onto the bedside table and snuggled close to his paramour, his own lovely Ophelia who was able to rise above death and pain, his uneasiness at the text he had just read ebbing away as his own eyelids began to grow heavy with fatigue.
Adam stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers, leaning over to place a kiss on her forehead, his heart brimming as her lips upturned into a small smile as she seemed to sense his touch within her sleep.
“Sweet dreams, my beautiful starlight.” His soft whisper misted along her face and the night cloaked over the mortal woman and her extra-terrestrial hero and they both dozed in their sanctuary of cosmic love.
*The stars, the moon…
They’ve all been blown out,
You’ve left me in the dark,
No dawn, no day
I’m always in this twilight,
In the shadow of your heart