“That man saved me from dying in the desert as an escaped slave, years ago.
He embraced me as his son, taught me how to fight, how to ride horses, how to lead....”
“....And yet .... I was so blinded by this idea of my own destiny, that I just left his body behind in the desert, under the rocks that was our fortress.”
Whisper, 'Night and Horses and the Desert'
(Minors DNI, this is yet another spicy chapter!)
Their scenes were fleeting, but I loved the brief snippets we see of En Sabah Nur and Ba'al (who is voiced wonderfully by Michael Dorn. Desert Worf, ahoy!).
Ba'al rescued this scared mutant slave kid in the desert. He could have left him behind, killed him, but he didn't. He took Nur in and raised him. They fight for a free Egypt together.
In front of their army, he addresses En Sabah Nur as his 'soul son'. Ba'al is 100% at Nur's side on both foot and horseback in every battle we see.
And Nur is so, so devastated when Ba'al dies in a fight that they started, due to their own paranoia and misunderstanding with the X-Men.
Nur's grief is portrayed so realistically in that scene. He's not going to sob, he's not going to wail, he's not going to lock himself in his room and play 'Hurt' by Johnny Cash for hours.
He's going to choke back rage and shove them tears back, because he's a warrior and that's what Ba'al would expect of him.
I wonder what he would have carried with him, since they did not bury Ba'al back at the fortress.
I explore it here. Along with the grief that Rogue carries from losing Gambit, as well.
