How could he explain that it was truly no one's fault? That the circumstances were the least important part of it all? A lifetime spent trying to do the right thing, to be a better man than his father, to help others--Reed was proud of it all. That it should end here was no more tragic than any other point might've been, in the larger scheme of things.
Lying crumpled against the wall, considering that he had at least kept the explosion contained, he let his mind wander. Death was quieter than he’d expected. It was still, and there was no pain. No small blessing, that.
And there was still Victor, of course. Some part of him had always known he'd be there at the end--another thing he could never have explained, even if he had enough time. Even if he wasn't bleeding out and--
What an awful mess he must be. Why was there no disgust in Doom's eyes? That look... he knew it from somewhere. From a lifetime ago, at their first meeting. In the split second before his walls went up forever, before he shut Reed out for good, there had been a look that made his breath catch; the recognition and understanding. The thing he could never put words around, the eerie sense of entanglement, as if they'd known each other their whole lives but could only see each other clearly for one half-tick; the pause between heartbeats. Just a sliver of a second in which there was no animosity or conflict or division. A moment of perfect synch before they slid out of step again.
Doom paused, as if he understood what Reed was experiencing. Crouching in front of him, his low, rumbling voice producing nothing but garbled sounds as far as Reed could discern. ...Of course. His eardrums must have been damaged in the blast. His head rang like a ball-bearing in a cylinder, round and round in a dreadful, echoing tone he couldn't quite shake off.
Victor was his grounding point, but it wouldn't last for long.
'You can't save me,' he thought. 'But it was always going to end this way for us, wasn't it?' He'd known that in the first moment, too--like flipping through the pages of a book and finding tragedy in the final sentence. He'd known from the very start.
It had taken a few years to understand that Victor could never be the cause, of course. Even longer to understand why.
'Are you even aware of it, Victor?' His thoughts were slowing down, pulling together sluggishly. 'Did you understand that you cared? Or what it meant?'
The eyes staring back at him through the mask’s narrow slots were not mocking or angry. More than anything else, they seemed... Afraid. Desperate and human and so awfully frightened that Reed wanted to reassure him--though he had no idea what he might've said.
Reaching out to him required more effort than anything ever had; his fingertips slid weakly across the mask’s sharp edges and he could only whisper the word “off.” He refused to spend his final seconds staring at Doom's cold, scowling metal features.
He wanted--
A click as the clasps released. A heavy thump as the mask landed on the floor, Victor's hands cupping his face, staring at him with bewilderment; hopelessness; grief. As if his heart were breaking. (As if he had a heart at all.)
Reed smiled. He could understand the words now--Victor demanding he stay alive, his ragged voice breaking as he pressed his forehead to his enemy’s.
Enemy. Such a strange word for what they truly were.
“My friend,” Reed whispered. There was comfort in seeing that familiar face. In knowing that he was not alone.
Doom shuddered and kissed his forehead before straightening again, forcing a brittle smile (odd that he was crying–wasn’t this precisely what he’d always wanted?)
"My only friend," he replied softly, but Reed’s eyes were empty, now. There was no bringing him back, no undoing this, no starting again for either of them. And oh, how he wanted to start again. To do everything differently, to tell him the truth--
But none of that mattered now. The danger had passed, and if Doom was found holding the cold, still form of a man he’d sworn to destroy a thousand times, let others assume what they would.
That he'd finally gotten his wish, that only one of them survived, that he was at last free from the irritation of this man's existence.
That he was entirely and utterly alone.