Doom sits in the middle of the ring, inside Olympus. Everyone has gone. He is alone with his thoughts.
[Doom] Pain comes in many forms.
[Doom] There’s the physical and the mental.
[Doom] I sit here in both. Tonight was my opportunity to become King. Tonight was supposed to be the moment of my arrival. It was supposed to signify my purpose.
[Doom] Instead, I’m left in pain. I couldn’t achieve what I set out to achieve. I did everything in my power, yet the pain in seared into my brain – unforgettable, undeniable and entrenched within my soul.
Doom stands, walking towards the ropes.
[Doom] So called friends can be a gift and a curse, can they not? Felix Foley helped me become Tag Team Champion. He served a purpose. He was a gift. But when he came down to the ring as referee, he was nothing short of a curse.
[Doom] Because of him, all I feel now is pain.
[Doom] I understand you Grimskull, more than you’ll ever know. You believed in your friendship with Vision. You trusted in it. For a while, his friendship was the greatest gift you’d ever received. He helped you escape Deathrow and offered you a way to freedom. There was no greater gift than his loyalty to you and your cause.
[Doom] But when the day came that he forced you into making a choice that you didn’t want to make and then burned the flesh from your skull, believing to have killed you where you stood, his friendship was no longer a gift. It became a curse.
[Doom]And when all that had happened, all you had left was pain.
[Doom] So, you lent into the pain.
[Doom] You didn’t back away from it. You didn’t shy away. You made a choice to let that agony consume your every waking thought. It changed you. It shaped you. It made you become something entirely different. That pain is now your mantra. That moment is now who you are, Grimskull.
[Doom] So, what do I do?
He begins walking around the ring.
[Doom] Do I let the pain consume me? Do I let it torment and manipulate my thinking until there’s nothing left? Am I supposed to lean into it, Grimskull?
[Doom] Because I could, couldn’t I?
[Doom] And if I did, I’d be no better than you. I’d be worthless and pathetic. I’d be weak. Because you see, the strong don’t survive because they suffer pain. The strong don’t survive because that pain offers them some kind of reward.
[Doom] The strong survive in spite of that pain.
[Doom] The strong survive because they know how to use it and they know, more importantly, when to let it go.
[Doom] The same can be said of those so called friends.
[Doom] Sometimes you need to know when they’re gift…
[Doom] And when they’re a curse.
[Doom] That also appears… true.