Real-Life Myth

Eight.

On Thanos' mothership, Sactuary II, Gamora sits near the throne deep inside the ship. Thanos walks up, bringing a cup of food and holds it out to her. "I thought you might be hungry." He admits.

Gamora takes it, then hurls it across the room where it bangs against Thanos's throne with a loud clack. "I always hated that chair." She states. It's not a surprise to the mad titan.

"So I've been told. Even so. I'd hoped you'd sit on it one day." That statement absolutely disgusts Gamora.

"I hated this room. This ship. I hated my life."

"You told me that too." Thanos mounts two of the four steps to his throne, turns, and sits on the second from the top. "Every day. For almost twenty years."

"I was a child when you took me," she reminds.

"I saved you," he corrects. To him, those phrases are one of the same.

"No. No. We were happy on my home planet."

"Going to bed hungry, scrounging for scraps. Your planet was on the brink of collapse," he informs her, "i'm the one who stopped that. Do you know what's happened since then? The children born have known nothing but full bellies and clear skies. It's a paradise."

"Because you murdered half the planet," she remarks.

"A small price to pay for salvation."

Gamora scoffs. "You're insane."

"Little one, it's a simple calculus. This universe is finite, its resources finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correction."

"You don't know that!" She tells him.

Thanos scowls as his egotistical narcissism prevents him from fully listening to her. "I'm the only one who knows that. At least, I'm the only one with the will to act on it." He stands again and walks back to Gamora. "For a time. . . you had that same will. . . as you fought by my side. Daughter."

"I'm not your daughter. Everything I hate about myself you taught me."

"And in doing so, made you the fiercest woman in the galaxy. That's why I trusted you to find the Soul Stone."

"I'm sorry I disappointed you."

"I am disappointed," he agrees, "but not because you didn't find it." He leans down to put their heads at level to whisper. "But because you did." He looks at her. "And you lied."

Thanos and Gamora stand outside a large solid door that slides open vertically as they approach, then pause as a set of inner doors made of interlacing metal slide away. Inside, they see Nebula face-on, suspended horizontally in the air in the middle of the room, her breath shuddering in pain.

"Nebula," Gamora whispers, stunned to find her sister here. She hurries to Nebula's left side, to find that she has been partially disassembled, her components stretched apart. It's a cybernetic version of the medieval torture rack. Hannibal Lecter level of brutality. "Don't do this."

"Some time ago, your sister snuck aboard this ship to kill me," Thanos begins to explain.

"Please don't do this," Gamora begs.

"And very nearly succeeded. So I brought her here. To talk." Thanos curls his gauntleted fist, activating both the Power and Space Stones, scowling. This is causing Nebula's already extended pieces to stretch further outward. She begins to scream.

"Stop. Stop it." Gamora puts her hands on the gauntlet, pulling it down. "I swear to you on my life. I never found the Soul Stone."

Thanos signals a nearby servant who taps on a control pad. They hear Nebula's voice say, "Accessing memory files" and a sort of hologram of Gamora's face shudders to life.