"Hey Doctor, have a good weekend?" The tall man in power armor rounded the corner of the lab to find Michael working at a table with a pad of paper in hand.

"It went as usual." He didn't even bother to look up from his notes.

"Oookay. Gotcha." Jason shrugged and moved on. It was too early to deal with the recluse, it was time for coffee and doughnuts and the morning patrol.

Michael waited until he was out of view and gathered together his scraps of notes. He had one chance at this so it better as hell work.

Around the deck from the lab Braxton sat with his feet up on the edge of the console reclined in his office chair. Upon hearing the gushing sound of the door opening he started upright and put his feet down on the floor. "Oh, it's just you doctor. Everything okay?"

"Yes, splendid in fact. We're having a staff meeting at five this morning, didn't you remember?"

"Uuuuh no.." Braxton searched his head for anytime he might have been ignoring any incoming messages. It was a long list of possibilities.

"You'd best hurry to the left lab wing, I'm getting supplies for the meeting right now." Michael kicked at the boxes in the corner to indicate them.

"Oh got ya'. Hey lock the door when you're done okay?" He rose and removed his helmet to take a deep breath of air on his way out.

"I will, no problem. See you shortly." Braxton exited and Morbius ran to the door pressing his ear to it. Silence, good. He took the handle and bent it over on itself. "Okay, quickly now, quickly!" Michael zoomed over to the console and began punching in numbers from his notes. "876540954...218756." he mumbled them all under his breath as he typed. The room glowed and expanded as a brilliant purple portal swirled in front of the console. "YES!"

Sirens sounded and the red lights of the alarm began to flash. Michael grabbed his notebook and heard the yelling behind the door as he leapt through with all the speed he could gather. He disappeared into the milky greyness of the center.


Michael walked in the door of his apartment and happily sat down his briefcase on the marble countertop. The lights were off. "Martine, are you home?"

"She isn't." The man came from the shadows of the hallway and stared Michael down with his luminescent red eyes. He looked like a crazed monster.

Michael reacted in shock and anger. "Where is she?! What have you done with her!?"

"Relax, I did nothing but call her, she thinks she's meeting you at the diner where you first ate together."

"How do you know about that?!"

"I know, I've been where you are. I know you're dying too." The monster sat on a barstool and motioned for Michael to sit in the adjacent seat. Michael obliged beginning to sense that something was very unusual about this strange man.

"You're me... Oh god, what happened? What is this?" He was shaking.

Morbius pulled the bottle of ouzo from the counter, poured himself a glass, and downed it in a rush. "You're planning an experiment. The one with the serum you've developed on a yacht in international waters. I'm here to tell you not to do it."

The human Michael took the bottle from the vampire's hand and drank a gulp down straight from it. "And if I do the experiment?"

"Emil dies, Martine dies, the joy of life dies, but you keep walking anyway because you, you can't die. You live. You will always live."

"I.. I don't understand! Why do this?"

"I'm doing this for her, for Martine who is as important to you as my Martine was to me.. so you can take care of her." Morbius slid his notebook across the table. "We're being watched and have very little time but this is what you need. Look at it, burn it to your memory and take this as well.. to remind you of what will happen if you fail." He reached into his pocket and grasped something tightly in his hand but a huge portal opened in the living room startling him and causing him to drop it. The loud rush of the swirling vortex was nothing compared to the voice of the man who stepped through.

"MORBIUS WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?" Charles Little Sky's yell boomed through the living room as two sets of men in power armor came through behind him.

Morbius didn't reply he simply stood up absolutely calm and offered his wrists held in front of him. The four armored men came forward to cuff him and as one went by he grabbed the notebook from Michael's hands. They offered no explanation to him as they all led the now cuffed vampire back through the portal. Before he left the monster formerly Michael Morbius smiled over his shoulder and shouted in Greek over the roaring noise "Iatré, therápeuson seautón!" Then the glaring portal closed in on itself leaving Michael alone with the sudden silence.

He ran to the coffee table, grabbed a pen, and started drawing out notes, long notes. He didn't so much as pause for twenty minutes filling up the page with chemical formulas. Martine barged in the door angrily slamming it behind her.

"Just what exactly is the big deal inviting me to meet you at the diner and then not showing up?!"

"Martine I.. I can't explain it. Something miraculous has happened."

"Oh yeah, what's the big miracle?"

"I think I just cured a rare type of leukemia.."

She shook her head in disbelief. "Wait.. really?! The one you'd been working on?! That's great news! I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"No, it's okay. It's just a theory, it needs testing.." She ran up and hugged him but smelled the scent of ouzo on his breath.

"Wait, have you been drinking?"

"Just a bit to calm my nerves.." He rubbed the back of his head as she crossed her arms angrily at him.

"Are you drunk?" She walked over to the bar. "Oh my god, look! See how much you drank?! That bottle was half full!"

"Martine I'm not.." Then the thought occurred to him that maybe he was. Perhaps the whole incident was stress and alcohol working a dual influence. Perhaps the cancer had spread to his mind and his thoughts were being affected.

She sighed and kissed him on the forehead. "I'm going to take a shower okay? I love you, please just stop writing and work on it tomorrow with Emil at the lab."

"I will Martine. I love you too." He held her close and buried his face in the crook of her neck before she pulled back and went towards the bathroom. The water noisily went on shortly after while he went to put the glass on the counter away. Something small and metal rolled around inside so he lifted it up to have a better look. Inside the glass was Martine's wedding ring, the one he had special ordered.

He walked over and knocked on the door to the bathroom. "Martine, love. Did you take your ring off?"

She shut off the shower. "What? No. See?" She held out her hand and he took it in his. The unique band shined in gold as it always had. He held up the other between his fingers, it was the same except for a dried and crusted substance covering the ring in red.


"You put me in a really fucking ugly position you know that!? What the hell were you thinking?!"

Morbius simply sat handcuffed to the chair, silent.

Charles ran his hands through his hair. "God fucking DAMMIT! You know nothing about that dimension or how it's different from ours! You stole operation codes, you destroyed ARMOR property! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!"

Still nothing. Morbius sat staring off into the distance.

"Just.. just tell me why?! Anything, just fucking talk!"

"Director..?" Deborah approached through the detention hall doorway with Morbius' notepad.

"Yes Deb come in.."

"The notes are a cure.. were a cure.. umm... was a cure for Morbius' condition, when he was human, sir. It's a rare condition but they cured it a few years back."

Morbius grinned, his fangs denting his lower lip.

"Oh you look so fucking proud of yourself! I can't even deal with this, this is a major breach of trust! I should throw your ass to SHIELD and let them put you out on the Raft with the rest of the villains!" Charles leaned down on the nearby desk resting on his knuckles.

Deborah softly stepped up to Michael and in a soothing voice asked him. "What did you say to him? That last thing you shouted.. it didn't transmit right over the noise."

Michael raised his eyes up to meet hers and smiled a wide and toothy grin. With a calm and reverberating voice he spoke the words "Physician, heal thyself" then laughed.

Charles looked away. The damage was done. There was nothing he could do. The Morbius of 610 now had the capability to cure his disease and completely change the turn of events that should have occurred. He sighed. "Goddamn it." It was all he could say.

Michael just kept laughing. Somewhere another version of himself could live his life full, perhaps have children, someday retired, and die, all never knowing just what it had cost him and who had paid the balance.


Greetings reader! A brief word from the author.

I hope you enjoyed the story. I set out with the goal of filling in some gaps in canon, fleshing out the relationship between Morbius and Martine, and showing a bit more of his character than the comics. I do hope I accomplished that goal well and that you had fun reading it (And hey, if so a review would be lovely!).

Morbius is my favorite character. Not my favorite Marvel character, not my favorite canon character, not my favorite comics character. My favorite character. Period. End of all discussion. I find him fascinating, he's a good man driven to do bad things and quite frankly Marvel throws him under the proverbial bus a lot. Bad writing, out of character depictions, retcons, pointless plots, Twilight jokes (For fuck's sake he was created a near forty years before Twilight! Please cut that shit out), he seems to get the short end of all sticks but he still keeps going. You can't stop him, he doesn't give up. I guess that's why I write, for a fictional vampire who needs at best a little encouragement and maybe one, just one, small moment of victory.

So this one's for you Morbius. May you find a moment of happiness no matter how fleeting.