Chapter Text
The sky was quiet.
Far above the sleeping curve of Earth, where the stars met the sky and just above the cloud, a lone figure hovered above it all. Massive, unmoving, with crags of muscle carved from shadow and starlight. Carved like the scar that sliced across his face and over his sightless right eye.
Below him, continents lay draped in darkness, their scattered lights flickering like distant embers. Humanity slept, unaware. He preferred it that way. Far from prying eyes. His empty right sleeve whipped in the air and forgotten as in his remaining hand, he held something as insignificant and small as a thought.
An infant child. Half-viltrumite, half-human.
She made no sound. No cry, no protest. Silent except for occasional breath and the faint, unsteady motions of life that should not be as loud to him as they were. A tiny thing that would have meant nothing for a Vilturmite until she groggily opened her eyes. White, unfocused orbs that stared into nothing.
Conquest looked at her, and for the first time in centuries, his hand did not immediately obey him. This child, this mistake, was less than nothing. “Weak,” he grumbled, the word dissolving into the void. “Defective.” The language came easily. It always had.
On Viltrum, there were no debates. No hesitation. No grief. Weakness was not pitied. It was corrected by erasure to ensure their genetic superiority. A necessary cruelty for the survival of the strongest. He had done it before. Crushed a child’s head like an apple for less. Countless times. For Viltrum.
But still, Conquest hesitated because this was more than just a defective baby. This baby was his.
The viltrumite’s thick fingers curled slightly around her head. Not yet enough to harm, but enough to feel how little pressure it would take. The delicate curve of her skull fit easily within his grasp. A single motion. A single decision. It would be swift.
“It would be mercy,” Conquest continued, quieter now, as if convincing something within himself. “They won’t let her survive. Not like this.” She wouldn’t because it would be Viltrum’s will to erase this genetic weakness. The stars offered no argument. “She will suffer,” his voice lowering to a mere breath, “That is what weakness earns.”
But the words felt… misplaced. Conquest tightened his grip, just enough for the thought to become real. Just pop the baby’s head and move on to the next one. Find another human mate and then… and then…
He stopped.
His jaw clenched, teeth grinding together as something unfamiliar resisted the motion. Not doubt. Not uncertainty. Like gravity itself was holding him back from moving on. Something heavier.
Loss.
The woman’s face refused to leave him. Not as memory alone, but as presence. Warmth where there should have been only cold clarity. She had been a brief flicker in his life, yet absolute in consequence. She had spoken to him as though he were not a weapon. As though he were not something built for obedience and destruction.
“Blind,” he repeated under his breath, as if repetition could restore Viltrumite surety, “She can’t even see,” his voice hardening into a growl as he forced himself back into what should be an easy decision. “She is a genetic defect.”
Then he paused as if the words hurt to just say.
“And I…” He exhaled slowly. “I am meant to ensure our purity.” But his eye was drawn to her, memorizing every feature that reminded him of her. “I should have done it immediately. At birth. No attachment. No complication.” But the thought continued to persist and hold him back. Conquest’s gaze shifted to the earth below him and knew gravity could do what he couldn’t. He just needed to… do it.
“And yet…” The word hung there unfinished. Regret was not a language Viltrum had prepared him for. And yet it was his duty.
Duty. Period.
The word alone should have been enough. That alone had always been enough reason to commit utter atrocities in Viltrum’s name. Slaughtered and tortured countless lives on countless worlds for EONS on duty alone. Not just men, but women and children too. And he had no regrets. He even relished the bloodshed that slathered his hands like thick mud.
No one would care if one more life was snuffed out. One more light. Why should he? Conquest looked down at this insignificant speck on his long lifetime again. Insignificant in his greater mission.
At the small, unmoving face. At the empty eyes that did not flinch, did not recognize him, did not fear him. Did not see the inevitable doom staring at her. His grip tightened further. “It would have been easier…,” he growled, voice rough with his own frustration grinding his words, “…if I had not named you.” The memory came back to him, mere hours before.
A dim room. The smell of iron and something softer. A hand, her hand, weak and trembling, yet still reaching for him like he wasn’t something to be feared. She had asked for something so small it had seemed irrelevant at the time.
“Give her a name.”
A simple request without realizing it was more than that. It was a dying wish. Names had never mattered. Never mattered to him because he’s never even been given a real name. Only a purpose. Conquest.
Still, he had given the child one at her behest. A strong Viltrumite name before realizing the genetic defect. A single word that sounded unfamiliar in his mouth and heavier than it should have been. The moment it left his lips, something had changed and then she was gone. His light was gone. The warmth. The presence. Something he didn’t know he had until the loneliness sat in the pit of his stomach once more. Just gone. Not in war or battle or anything Conquest could have prevented with all of his strength. Extinguished with the ease of blowing out a candle.
Leaving behind this… this fragile, silent thing in his hand. Even now, the name echoed in his mind. Not as a designation, but as an anchor he didn’t even realize he’d forged. Not until it pulled against him. His fingers trembled. “Your mother…” Conquest’s voice uncharacteristically faltered in his throat, catching on something raw. Something foreign. “She believed in something that does not exist.”
There were more humans on Earth. More genetically comparable mates to take. Nolan’s own child was born this year. Conquest could take whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
What’s time to a Viltrumite? He closed his eyes briefly, jaw clenching as if he could force the memory away. “She saw me as something I am not. I… I will make it quick.” The words came out harsher than intended, but Conquest tried to believe it. He needed to believe it. Because duty is all he’s ever known.
Then Conquest’s hand began to close. Slowly. Decisively. This was what he was. This was what he did. This is for the good of Viltrum.
And no one would care. The dark night sky remained indifferent and the Earth below didn’t care nor the moon above. No one in the galaxy would ever care. That single fact sat heavily in his chest until something small and unexpected happened. A sound.
A laugh.
The infant seemingly laughed in the face of death, a mask worn by her father, and it wasn’t much but it gave Conquest pause as though struck. She reached upward without aim or understanding, outstretched stubby fingers, until they grasped his thumb. Weakly and clumsily. Not trying to push him away but clung to him.
Conquest stared. Her grip was nothing. Less than nothing because she was nothing. It held no strength, no force, no resistance. Yet he couldn’t move. The infant gurgled and laughed again, the sound echoing strangely in the emptiness, as if the universe itself did not know what to do with it and cast it aside into the void.
The void that sat in the Viltrumite’s cold chest. This child, his child, held him as though he were her whole world. As though those same hands weren’t stained with the blood of trillions. She could not see the hand that held her life between its fingers. She could not see him. But Conquest could see her and realized that while no one in the galaxy would care.
He would.
Finally, his hand slowly opened. The breath he didn’t even realize he was holding left his lungs, uneven and breaking in a way he couldn't recognize in his own ears. Breaking alongside the certainty he built. This child was nothing, but not to him. “No,” Conquest whispered, though it was unclear whether it was refusal or surrender. “No… I can’t.”
And the sky, vast and uncaring, bore witness to something Viltrum had never accounted for. The Mighty Conquest, Viltrum’s strongest enforcer, lowered his head and pressed the fragile, blind child against his face. Careful, almost reverent, as if he feared that even his grief might break her and undo something he couldn’t afford to lose.
All the while she giggled as his mustache, symbol of Viltrumite might, tickled her.
“Argylle,” he whispered, the name no longer foreign. Trembled with meaning that transcended the indoctrination of Viltrum. Mattering more to him than anything else at that moment. And for the first time in his existence, he did not feel like a conqueror. Only a sad lonely man in the silent dark, holding onto the only light he had left and would ever know.
“My Argylle.”