Titan Star!
The Titan Star where Thanos resides is not Saturn's moon in the Solar System, but is located in the Milky Way Galaxy.
The Titan Star once basked in glory.
But now?
Hawk stands in an endless desert, but the sand beneath his feet is not sand, but metallic dust ground to the extreme. Looking up, the sky is not blue, but a dying star gazes coldly down like a giant orange eye on the land it once nourished.
Massive city debris floats in the air, narrating the planet's former splendor.
Endless bones buried in the endless desert, occasionally revealed by gusts of wind, hinting at the civilization that once existed on this planet.
The Eternal Race once established a highly developed, perfectly ordered utopia here with flawless city planning, no poverty, no conflict.
What a pity!
The past is the past, the present is the present.
When Hawk found Thanos, the latter seemed as if he had undergone a brutal battle, sitting blood-soaked by a seabed, dazedly staring at the ocean that once flowed with golden liquid, but now remained a vast plain with cracks.
No sign of Bruce Banner nearby.
But...
Not far away, a colossal five-cylinder entity lay still, like a mountain range, with golden liquid flowing from it.
Celestial God Team, three-cylinder juveniles, six-cylinder adults.
And the five-cylinder?
About to mature?
Hawk glanced at the silent five-cylinder celestial being, quickly withdrawing his gaze before walking straight to Thanos' side, sitting down, and watching the dry and cracked seabed.
"I heard you wanted to see me?"
"Yes."
"I'm here."
Hawk said, glancing sideways with a calm look at Thanos, who resembled a giant purple potato from a fairy tale.
"You may speak."
"The destruction of Titan Star."
Thanos' voice revealed no emotional fluctuation, and whether Hawk wished to hear it or not, he began narrating the origin and demise of the planet.
Hawk knew how Titan Star was destroyed.
Poor Thanos, manipulated by Death, slaughtered his own Titan Star to win a smile from her.
And the result?
He loved Death like a first love, while Death saw him as a clown and turned her attention to Deadpool, leading the humiliated Thanos to grant Deadpool the power of immortality.
Yes.
This is how Deadpool became immortal, not by Death, but by Thanos, because as long as Deadpool can't die, he can't meet Death.
But this is the comic version of Thanos.
Not here.
As Thanos narrated, Hawk understood the cause of Titan Star's destruction beneath his feet.
Titan Star did not perish by Thanos' hand, nor by the resource depletion depicted in the movie version, but through self-destruction.
Correct.
Self-destruction: the descendants of the Eternal Race on this planet collectively chose to annihilate.
Regarding the reason?
Hawk's Seventh Sense quickly probed through the entire Titan Star, seeking life energy within the planet's dead core.
And then...
He saw a fully formed yet unfinished Celestial God Team member.
Fully formed because it already had limbs and a torso.
Unfinished because its internal organs were incomplete.
Celestial God Team members rely on the life energy of a Planet of Life to develop, but when the life on the planet perishes, and it ceases to spin, naturally, there's no source of life energy.
Thus!
The Celestial God Team member incubated within Titan Star, metaphorically speaking, became a stillborn.
"Tsk!"
Hawk instinctively clicked his tongue, then looked at Thanos with curiosity in his voice.
"When did this occur?"
"A very long time ago."
From the beginning of Thanos' memories, his kin already knew there was a Celestial God Seed incubating within their planet.
But...
"They chose to ignore."
"They chose to feign ignorance."
"They chose to muddle through."
After all, Titan Star was never an Eden, nor a utopia; it's just a self-proclaimed refuge.
Everyone knows
The Eternal Race of Titan Star are rebellious, for they were infected during the battles with the aberrant yet survived, awakening memories formatted by the Celestial God Team.
The ancestors of Titan Star's Eternal Race learned of this and were enraged, making a choice.
They betrayed the Eternal Race, fled from the Planet of Life they managed, and came to Titan Star, believing they had escaped the watchful eyes of the Celestial God Team, and took root here.
So...
Rebellion happened, their rebellion manifested as cowardice.
The ancestors did.
The kin did too; upon learning their planet bore a Celestial God Seed, they lashed out in fury, pretended nothing happened, and went on muddling through.
Until—
The emergence of Thanos, different from other kin since childhood, his way of thinking naturally differed from the cosmos.
It was like Yue Ding versus Li Xiao Yao.
Like worshiping the moon and claiming the Earth is round, Thanos also called on his people to resist, to fight.
And what was the result?
Li Xiaoyao told worshiping the moon that love is infinite, and the Titan Eternal Race told Thanos to believe in the wisdom of future generations.
Hawk, listening until now, was a bit entranced and couldn't help but pursue the resting Thanos with questions.
"And then?"
"Did you awaken them?"
"No."
Thanos clutched his chest, took a few breaths, then put his hand down and shook his head: "I made that decision for them."
Hawk raised his eyebrows: "And yet you're saying it was their choice to self-destruct?"
Thanos nodded: "Yes, they chose self-destruction, but this choice was made by me on their behalf."
The process was very complicated.
To put it simply, the Eternal Race on Titan wasn't the true Eternal Race, but one infected with the gene of the Aberrant.
But over the years of reproduction and survival on Titan, only Thanos truly inherited the complete genes of the Aberrant, being the only one to inherit genes from both the Eternal Race and the Aberrant.
It's well known.
The Aberrants have a peculiar ability, their leader, much like a queen bee, can control the entire hive.
And Thanos, inheriting the Aberrant's genes, was like a queen bee.
He had thought about using words, using motivation to inspire his people to resist, to not be cowards anymore.
But they wouldn't budge, they really wouldn't budge.
So on one starlit afternoon, as he sat there, Thanos made an exceedingly difficult decision.
He directly injected the consciousness of self-destruction into the other hive worker attributes of the Aberrant-gene-inherited people.
"After that, I realized that life is numb."
"Survival is life's instinct, even if current survival means losing the future, most life forms will still choose to be content with the situation."
"Relying on them to make choices is a delusion."
"Someone needs to stand up and make choices for them."
"So I stood up."
"Since then, I walked out of Titan, looking for one Planet of Life after another that was parasitized with a Celestial God Seed."
"Blackwood Throat."
"Black Dwarf."
"They are all lucky survivors of the birth of a Celestial God; their planets were destroyed by the birth of a Celestial God, so they are willing to follow me, making choices for those planets unable to choose."
"..."
While listening to Thanos' account, although Hawk had some reservations about Thanos' views, he remained a competent listener, occasionally nodding, providing Thanos with emotional value while he told his story.
He agreed with Thanos' point about survival being life's instinct.
But he disagreed with Thanos' view that someone needs to stand up and make that choice for them.
In short.
Hawk wasn't that bored.
If you damn well want to destroy or not, what does that have to do with me? Staying at home doing nothing is better than dealing with others' messes.
Your destruction, what does it have to do with you.
Similarly!
Your destruction, what does it have to do with me.
"So..."
"Do they accept you?"
After hearing Thanos' account, Hawk looked at Thanos, his voice calm: "For instance, your adopted daughter, Gamora, do you think she accepts your views?"
Hearing Gamora's name, a trace of barely noticeable sadness flashed in Thanos' eyes.
But——
"She will understand."
"Ha."
Hawk, upon hearing this, chuckled lightly: "Now you're deceiving yourself again, no different from your people."
Hearing this, Thanos fell silent.
What's that saying?
Seeing is believing, experiencing is understanding.
In the eyes of those living on planets Thanos intervened in, even if destruction was their choice, what does it have to do with Thanos.
Thanos might have made choices for their survival, but it doesn't stop those planetary life forms from hating and opposing Thanos, even wishing to kill him.
Hawk did not find any meaning in justifying Thanos.
He merely spoke from a third-party perspective, just like he never thought about intervening in the decisions of Earth.
In short.
Survive or destroy, you choose for yourselves.
Hawk doesn't participate and doesn't intervene.
The only thing he can do is to remain as Earth's last resort after Earth makes the right choice.
Of course.
If Earth makes the wrong choice, he'll move to the World Tree directly.
That's a digression.
Hawk smiled, looked at the silent Thanos, and directly said: "So, you wanted to see me to discuss whether we should be cosmic saints?"
Thanos came out of his silence and shook his head: "No, I initially thought this path of mine was right, but after I saw you, I realized that my path was also wrong."
Hawk's eyebrows raised.
Thanos' voice was low.
"After seeing you, I suddenly realized that I am not a savior, but an accomplice."
"..."