Genosha? No, Kansas... No... Wednesday. Sometime. Maybe? Somewhere. Sometime. It's Red.
"See there, kid."
It was a distant dream.
"No matter what my old man and his geek friends were selling you, I got the straight dope."
Standing in a strange room, surrounded by people he didn't know. Strangers. Villains.
"Learned the hard way, 'bad guy' is a better side of the coin to land on."
And on the screen in front of him, an explosion, big and blinding and horrifying. Headmaster Logan had been there... The man with his hand on Evan's shoulder had been speaking to him. Someone was dead. Someone named Fantomex was dead, and the man with his hand on Evan's shoulder had been somehow responsible for it.
Just a dream. Just a far-away dream.
A dream that had Uncle Cluster draped in a chair nearby, his chest ripped open wide, bathed in the light of the fire on the screen.
Dead.
A nightmare.
The world had been so red.
They were in Kansas, back home on the farm. Uncle Cluster was there, and they were playing catch, just like they always did when he had long lessons to teach, and no actual physical training to be done. Evan liked it this way, the rhythm of the grab-and-throw of the ball was always relaxing. Familiar.
Back home.
"So, this En Sabah Nur," Cluster said, finally gearing up for the lesson at hand, "he was the first mutant on Earth." He caught the ball. "As such, he was selected by the Celestials to become Apocalypse, charged with ensuring the success of humanity's new mutations. Ensuring they would flourish, and become the dominant species."
Uncle Cluster threw the baseball.
"But Apocalypse's duty was held back by the X-Men."
The ball landed squarely in Evan's glove. A solid throw. An easy catch. Evan didn't remember the farm being so red, but it had always been this simple.
Home.
He threw the ball back.
"When the X-Man Wolverine learned of a reborn Apocalypse he formed a team to kill him," Cluster continued with another easy catch. Back and forth, with a one-sided conversation. "Only the monster was still just a boy."
And then silence. Silence and a dawning horror that left Evan stuttering.
"D-did they... kill him?" But the silence pressed on. The back-and-forth was over now. The ball didn't come back. Evan was staring at his uncle's back. "Uncle Cluster?"
Cluster walked away.
"Uncle Cluster!?"
He ran, ran through the tall grass, golden fields tinted red, ran after his uncle until his foot caught on a stone and he fell, hard, his forehead hitting another rock on the ground ahead. Or had it? He thought he'd caught himself. There'd been a crackle of something.
Evan was bleeding.
It wasn't serious. It wasn't anything horrible. Just enough that Ma had noticed as he'd come through the front door, holding his head. Just enough that she told him to go and wash it out. It didn't occur to him that the bleeding wasn't stopping, that bleeding never tended to last long, thanks to the nature of his powers. His head hurt. His mind ached. His uncle offered to give him a hand, but just stood in the bathroom doorway with his arms crossed as Evan crouched over the sink.
Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. Evan spoke up again, looking at Cluster's reflection in the bathroom mirror.
"Why... why didn't you ever tell me any of this before?"
And then their faces in the reflection melted away. A man that had been a dream a few moments before was standing in Uncle Cluster's place, heavy-set and grinning a wicked grin, power like smoke drifting from his eyes.
Evan wasn't looking at him. Evan was staring in horror at his own reflection, at the fierce, strong, brutal face staring back at him with crimson eyes where his own had been a moment before. He knew that face. He saw that face in the mirror every day already, but it wasn't his own. Not this one. Not the way it was looking back at him. This was the face that his classmates at the Jean Grey School had feared. This face, that was his and that wasn't his at the same time, was the face of a monster.
"Because 'Uncle Cluster' was the one who shot you, dear boy."
Evan screamed, a No that was ripped from his throat before he was even aware that he was being dragged out of the dream. He was laying on a thin foam mattress. The room around them was moving. No... they were moving. Evan, and the man from the mirror, were sitting on a bed in the back of a camper.
"W-where am I--?"
"Reality."
Such a simple answer. Evan could almost remember back when the simple answers actually answered anything at all. And up in the front, Creed was looking over his shoulder at him, smirking.
"Can't ever be too sure with so many telepaths runnin' around, though."
Creed. And the man driving was the one who had been talking to Headmaster Logan on the screen, hand on Evan's shoulder as the light from the explosion all but blinded him and Uncle Cluster's body sat cold and bloodied across the room.
But it had been a dream.
It had to be a dream.
"W-who are you?"
"We're the people who'll tell you the truth, Evan," he replied as they drove past a road sign that decreed that Kansas was another two-hundred and fifteen miles away. "The people who are going to tell you exactly what your 'friends' have done to you."
Villains. Genosha. Evan had been in Genosha and Creed had hurt Quentin, and had chased Evan down and knocked him out, and had dragged him to that place. The other man had killed somebody, one of Headmaster Logan's friends. Maybe even the Headmaster himself.
Kidnapped.
Uncle Cluster...
Evan's eyes narrowed, and he turned to the man from the mirror.
"I see you trying to use those eye blasts of yours. Wasted energy. Bit about me," the man said, sounding somewhere between smug and bored. "I'm a powerful telepath, equal to Charles Xavier. So, if I don't want you to access your eye blasts, you don't."
"Cheesitums?" Creed offered Evan a bag, grinning at him over a pair of dark shades. Evan ignored it.
"Better to sit back and relax, Evan," the man driving said. "We're not going to hurt you."
"What are you going to do to me?"
"To you? You make it sound so ominous, kid."
"I don't suppose you villains kidnapped me just to round out your road trip crew?"
Any other time, Evan might have been proud of himself for the quip. Mostly, he was just angry. Angry, and though he wasn't going to admit it, terrified. There were three of them, and there was one of him, and he didn't have access to his powers. The one sitting next to him, the telepath, had seen to that. Creed had taken Quire down without a second thought. And the man in the driver's seat, mohawk hairstyle and tattoos and all, cut an imposing figure.
"Would a villain share his Cheesitums?"
"Not a chance, Creed." An imposing figure, and at least one long bone claw, extending from his wrist the same way Wolverine's did from the back of his hands, reaching to snag a cheese stick from the bag. "That's some altruistic business, that. Listen, I'm not saying we're 'heroes.' What a weirdly egotistical thing to self-apply. And 'villain?' What does that even mean? People use the term 'villain' to describe anyone who opposes them. Everyone sees their enemy as a villain, kid. Hero, villain, these are words stupid people use."
The man popped the rest of his claws, three in total, with two coming from the back of his hand.
"Stupid people like your teacher and father figure, Wolverine. Stupid people like my dad. Who, also, happens to be Wolverine. Get the resemblance?"
It was kind of difficult to miss. The camper slowed as they pulled over at a service station along the side of the road. Creed climbed out and started heading toward the door.
"Let me ask you a question, Evan... What if I told you Sabretooth was going to murder everyone inside this gas station unless you killed him first... would you do it?"
"I'd find another way."
He'd have to. Heroes didn't kill. He'd... incapacitate him. Creed. Sabretooth.
"Here's the rub," Wolverine's son continued, "nothing short of killing him with your most powerful attack will stop him. Our pal the Shadow King is unlocking that potential in you now. There's not much time... Go!"
Not much time. Not much time before innocent people would die. Evan practically flew out the door of the camper, scrambling desperately toward the gas station. He wouldn't kill. He couldn't kill, but he had to find some way, something...
Sabretooth was inside. Evan could hear him chanting 'eeny, meeny, minie...'
Eye blasts. Raw power, flying at Creed from his eyes, the way Evan's Uncle Cluster had taught him to. A woman screamed, windows shattered, glass flew, and Creed went tumbling.
"Get out of here! Run!"
Really, Evan didn't have to tell them. They were already making a break for it door.
"Kid-Wolverine told you-- gotta use your full force to stop me, Frail." Sabretooth was sitting up. "You held back." He lunged forward, his hand plunging deep into the chest of the woman that had screamed a moment ago. Ripping through her and clear to the other side. "She dies."
"NO!"
Evan didn't think.
"Son of a bitch!" He just moved. Just single-handedly plowed Creed to the floor. "I'll-- I'll--"
Creed was smirking up at him.
"Go on then." And that huge, clawed hand of his closed around Evan's throat, lifting him off his feet with no effort at all. "That's what I figured. Get a good look. She ain't the last. I'll kill again, sweet boy. An' since you ain't got the stones to do the work... whoever I do kill is on you."
The parking lot was littered in bodies as Creed dragged Evan back to the camper by the back of his shirt. Logan's son was standing in a pool of blood, smiling. The smell of gasoline filled the air, mingling with the blood both in Evan's nose and in the growing pool on the ground.
The world had never been so red.
"See there, li'l buddy? That's what this road trip is going to be for the most part... a whole mess o' killin'." He climbed back into the driver's seat. Creed threw Evan into the back. "And the only way to stop us..."
A lighter flew out the window of the camper as they drove away.
"... is to kill us first."
Powerless all over again. Evan leaned against the wall of the camper, his head reeling. In the front seat, Creed and Wolverine's son were talking again. Almost pleasantly, if you could ignore the topic.
"Preemptively killing, it's a tough thing to get your head around. Even though we're a and of self-described murderers."
"A Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, as it were."
"But, you see, this is what both o' your adopted fathers do. Logan and Fantomex." Evan looked up at the driver, his lip curled back with barely restrained rage. He didn't even know a Fantomex. Did he? Dead. Like a father. Uncle Cluster's chest, torn wide open. "Killers. Shadow King, he's been in ol' man Logan's head. He knows all about it."
But how much of anything was the dream?
"How do you think we found out about you?"
So red.
"Found out the truth they won't tell you."
"All they'll give ya is a load o' 'follow what I say, not what I've done,'" Creed cracked open a bottle of beer, his hand still stained crimson with that young woman's blood.
"Your dads are grade-A hypocrites."
Evan's eyes narrowed again. Would they stop talking like that?
"They aren't my parents."
"Right. Your parents... our next stop."
What? Evan rushed to the door, looked outside. His breath had caught, his head was spinning. Outside the door... outside the door...
"Tolmen's field-- Oh, God!"
Home.
Home wasn't supposed to be this red.
"No!" Evan swung a hand out, a swift blow to the Shadow King's throat. Powers or not, his Uncle Cluster had taught him more than just eye blasts. The man slumped forward in his seat, gasping, and Evan pried open the camper's side door, throwing himself into the field outside and breaking into a run as the vehicle drove away.
He ran. Ran all the way home, down the long path to the front door. Up the steps, over the porch. Inside.
The faucet in the kitchen dripped into the sink.
"Mom! Dad!" Red. "Mom! You have to get out of here! Have to--"
The world was red.
It was their blood, running from their freshly cut throats. Creed's hand was on his father's head, slowly crushing his skull. Logan's son had his hand on his mother's shoulder. Her head was slumped forward against her chest.
Red.
"They ain't gotta do nothin'. Not anymore." Creed was grinning, clearly proud of his handiwork. "Warned ya we'd kill some again."
"You could have prevented this, Evan. You know?"
"Mom..."
Red.
"Dad..."
Red. An explosion that blew the side of the farmhouse clean away. It was Evan's doing, pure energy shooting from his eyes, destroying what was left of home and throwing the seared bodies of the two killers away from him.
Evan pursued. Fists easily the size of either of the men bore down on them, one beating Creed almost blindly. He didn't see the other come up behind him. Heard him, screaming that Evan was the chosen one, daring him to show him something. Claws of bone ripped through Evan's side, and he screamed.
"Show me what makes you so special!" Evan staggered back as the same claws raked deep trenches across his ribs. He shot more energy at his attacker. He missed. "That my father, who has never done anything for me... has given you so much!"
What was left of Evan's shirt was shredded away as those claws tore upward again, ripping gouges of flesh clean from his chest.
Red.
Maybe the world had always been this red.
"You want to see..." Red like the blood running down Evan's chest. Red like his eyes. Red like their hands, and his parents' throats dripping down to the floor. "I'll show you."
They were nothing, these two killers. They were miles beneath him, and cowering in his shadow.
They had taken everything from him.
"I'll show you power."
They ran. His hands closed around each of them, lifting them from the ground like a pair of ragdolls.
"You will suffer for what you did to them!" He squeezed. Creed made a noise of pain, almost like music in Evan's ears. There wasn't enough red. "I'll crush you-- I'll--"
So much red.
Home... was never meant to be so red, was it?
"I'll..."
He dropped them.
"I won't... I won't be like you."
It made his heart twist in his chest, the way Logan's son grinned up at him as he pulled himself to his feet.
"Well, okay. Pretty good self-control. So, now you get good news and bad news. Good news is we didn't really kill your parents, kid."
Evan shrank back down to his normal size, keeping his distance from the pair. Wary.
"The bad news," Creed added, "is we can never kill 'em..."
The world had never been so red. And smiling down at them, from the crimson of the sky, was the face of the Shadow King.
"...'Cause," Daken, the son of Wolverine, finished, "they never existed in the first place."
[NFB, NFI, sums up Uncanny X-Force issue #30. Trigger warnings for brutal murder and extreme mental torture all over the place, because Remender makes a living by breaking happy things. OOC is welcome.]
It was a distant dream.
"No matter what my old man and his geek friends were selling you, I got the straight dope."
Standing in a strange room, surrounded by people he didn't know. Strangers. Villains.
"Learned the hard way, 'bad guy' is a better side of the coin to land on."
And on the screen in front of him, an explosion, big and blinding and horrifying. Headmaster Logan had been there... The man with his hand on Evan's shoulder had been speaking to him. Someone was dead. Someone named Fantomex was dead, and the man with his hand on Evan's shoulder had been somehow responsible for it.
Just a dream. Just a far-away dream.
A dream that had Uncle Cluster draped in a chair nearby, his chest ripped open wide, bathed in the light of the fire on the screen.
Dead.
A nightmare.
The world had been so red.
They were in Kansas, back home on the farm. Uncle Cluster was there, and they were playing catch, just like they always did when he had long lessons to teach, and no actual physical training to be done. Evan liked it this way, the rhythm of the grab-and-throw of the ball was always relaxing. Familiar.
Back home.
"So, this En Sabah Nur," Cluster said, finally gearing up for the lesson at hand, "he was the first mutant on Earth." He caught the ball. "As such, he was selected by the Celestials to become Apocalypse, charged with ensuring the success of humanity's new mutations. Ensuring they would flourish, and become the dominant species."
Uncle Cluster threw the baseball.
"But Apocalypse's duty was held back by the X-Men."
The ball landed squarely in Evan's glove. A solid throw. An easy catch. Evan didn't remember the farm being so red, but it had always been this simple.
Home.
He threw the ball back.
"When the X-Man Wolverine learned of a reborn Apocalypse he formed a team to kill him," Cluster continued with another easy catch. Back and forth, with a one-sided conversation. "Only the monster was still just a boy."
And then silence. Silence and a dawning horror that left Evan stuttering.
"D-did they... kill him?" But the silence pressed on. The back-and-forth was over now. The ball didn't come back. Evan was staring at his uncle's back. "Uncle Cluster?"
Cluster walked away.
"Uncle Cluster!?"
He ran, ran through the tall grass, golden fields tinted red, ran after his uncle until his foot caught on a stone and he fell, hard, his forehead hitting another rock on the ground ahead. Or had it? He thought he'd caught himself. There'd been a crackle of something.
Evan was bleeding.
It wasn't serious. It wasn't anything horrible. Just enough that Ma had noticed as he'd come through the front door, holding his head. Just enough that she told him to go and wash it out. It didn't occur to him that the bleeding wasn't stopping, that bleeding never tended to last long, thanks to the nature of his powers. His head hurt. His mind ached. His uncle offered to give him a hand, but just stood in the bathroom doorway with his arms crossed as Evan crouched over the sink.
Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. Evan spoke up again, looking at Cluster's reflection in the bathroom mirror.
"Why... why didn't you ever tell me any of this before?"
And then their faces in the reflection melted away. A man that had been a dream a few moments before was standing in Uncle Cluster's place, heavy-set and grinning a wicked grin, power like smoke drifting from his eyes.
Evan wasn't looking at him. Evan was staring in horror at his own reflection, at the fierce, strong, brutal face staring back at him with crimson eyes where his own had been a moment before. He knew that face. He saw that face in the mirror every day already, but it wasn't his own. Not this one. Not the way it was looking back at him. This was the face that his classmates at the Jean Grey School had feared. This face, that was his and that wasn't his at the same time, was the face of a monster.
"Because 'Uncle Cluster' was the one who shot you, dear boy."
Evan screamed, a No that was ripped from his throat before he was even aware that he was being dragged out of the dream. He was laying on a thin foam mattress. The room around them was moving. No... they were moving. Evan, and the man from the mirror, were sitting on a bed in the back of a camper.
"W-where am I--?"
"Reality."
Such a simple answer. Evan could almost remember back when the simple answers actually answered anything at all. And up in the front, Creed was looking over his shoulder at him, smirking.
"Can't ever be too sure with so many telepaths runnin' around, though."
Creed. And the man driving was the one who had been talking to Headmaster Logan on the screen, hand on Evan's shoulder as the light from the explosion all but blinded him and Uncle Cluster's body sat cold and bloodied across the room.
But it had been a dream.
It had to be a dream.
"W-who are you?"
"We're the people who'll tell you the truth, Evan," he replied as they drove past a road sign that decreed that Kansas was another two-hundred and fifteen miles away. "The people who are going to tell you exactly what your 'friends' have done to you."
Villains. Genosha. Evan had been in Genosha and Creed had hurt Quentin, and had chased Evan down and knocked him out, and had dragged him to that place. The other man had killed somebody, one of Headmaster Logan's friends. Maybe even the Headmaster himself.
Kidnapped.
Uncle Cluster...
Evan's eyes narrowed, and he turned to the man from the mirror.
"I see you trying to use those eye blasts of yours. Wasted energy. Bit about me," the man said, sounding somewhere between smug and bored. "I'm a powerful telepath, equal to Charles Xavier. So, if I don't want you to access your eye blasts, you don't."
"Cheesitums?" Creed offered Evan a bag, grinning at him over a pair of dark shades. Evan ignored it.
"Better to sit back and relax, Evan," the man driving said. "We're not going to hurt you."
"What are you going to do to me?"
"To you? You make it sound so ominous, kid."
"I don't suppose you villains kidnapped me just to round out your road trip crew?"
Any other time, Evan might have been proud of himself for the quip. Mostly, he was just angry. Angry, and though he wasn't going to admit it, terrified. There were three of them, and there was one of him, and he didn't have access to his powers. The one sitting next to him, the telepath, had seen to that. Creed had taken Quire down without a second thought. And the man in the driver's seat, mohawk hairstyle and tattoos and all, cut an imposing figure.
"Would a villain share his Cheesitums?"
"Not a chance, Creed." An imposing figure, and at least one long bone claw, extending from his wrist the same way Wolverine's did from the back of his hands, reaching to snag a cheese stick from the bag. "That's some altruistic business, that. Listen, I'm not saying we're 'heroes.' What a weirdly egotistical thing to self-apply. And 'villain?' What does that even mean? People use the term 'villain' to describe anyone who opposes them. Everyone sees their enemy as a villain, kid. Hero, villain, these are words stupid people use."
The man popped the rest of his claws, three in total, with two coming from the back of his hand.
"Stupid people like your teacher and father figure, Wolverine. Stupid people like my dad. Who, also, happens to be Wolverine. Get the resemblance?"
It was kind of difficult to miss. The camper slowed as they pulled over at a service station along the side of the road. Creed climbed out and started heading toward the door.
"Let me ask you a question, Evan... What if I told you Sabretooth was going to murder everyone inside this gas station unless you killed him first... would you do it?"
"I'd find another way."
He'd have to. Heroes didn't kill. He'd... incapacitate him. Creed. Sabretooth.
"Here's the rub," Wolverine's son continued, "nothing short of killing him with your most powerful attack will stop him. Our pal the Shadow King is unlocking that potential in you now. There's not much time... Go!"
Not much time. Not much time before innocent people would die. Evan practically flew out the door of the camper, scrambling desperately toward the gas station. He wouldn't kill. He couldn't kill, but he had to find some way, something...
Sabretooth was inside. Evan could hear him chanting 'eeny, meeny, minie...'
Eye blasts. Raw power, flying at Creed from his eyes, the way Evan's Uncle Cluster had taught him to. A woman screamed, windows shattered, glass flew, and Creed went tumbling.
"Get out of here! Run!"
Really, Evan didn't have to tell them. They were already making a break for it door.
"Kid-Wolverine told you-- gotta use your full force to stop me, Frail." Sabretooth was sitting up. "You held back." He lunged forward, his hand plunging deep into the chest of the woman that had screamed a moment ago. Ripping through her and clear to the other side. "She dies."
"NO!"
Evan didn't think.
"Son of a bitch!" He just moved. Just single-handedly plowed Creed to the floor. "I'll-- I'll--"
Creed was smirking up at him.
"Go on then." And that huge, clawed hand of his closed around Evan's throat, lifting him off his feet with no effort at all. "That's what I figured. Get a good look. She ain't the last. I'll kill again, sweet boy. An' since you ain't got the stones to do the work... whoever I do kill is on you."
The parking lot was littered in bodies as Creed dragged Evan back to the camper by the back of his shirt. Logan's son was standing in a pool of blood, smiling. The smell of gasoline filled the air, mingling with the blood both in Evan's nose and in the growing pool on the ground.
The world had never been so red.
"See there, li'l buddy? That's what this road trip is going to be for the most part... a whole mess o' killin'." He climbed back into the driver's seat. Creed threw Evan into the back. "And the only way to stop us..."
A lighter flew out the window of the camper as they drove away.
"... is to kill us first."
Powerless all over again. Evan leaned against the wall of the camper, his head reeling. In the front seat, Creed and Wolverine's son were talking again. Almost pleasantly, if you could ignore the topic.
"Preemptively killing, it's a tough thing to get your head around. Even though we're a and of self-described murderers."
"A Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, as it were."
"But, you see, this is what both o' your adopted fathers do. Logan and Fantomex." Evan looked up at the driver, his lip curled back with barely restrained rage. He didn't even know a Fantomex. Did he? Dead. Like a father. Uncle Cluster's chest, torn wide open. "Killers. Shadow King, he's been in ol' man Logan's head. He knows all about it."
But how much of anything was the dream?
"How do you think we found out about you?"
So red.
"Found out the truth they won't tell you."
"All they'll give ya is a load o' 'follow what I say, not what I've done,'" Creed cracked open a bottle of beer, his hand still stained crimson with that young woman's blood.
"Your dads are grade-A hypocrites."
Evan's eyes narrowed again. Would they stop talking like that?
"They aren't my parents."
"Right. Your parents... our next stop."
What? Evan rushed to the door, looked outside. His breath had caught, his head was spinning. Outside the door... outside the door...
"Tolmen's field-- Oh, God!"
Home.
Home wasn't supposed to be this red.
"No!" Evan swung a hand out, a swift blow to the Shadow King's throat. Powers or not, his Uncle Cluster had taught him more than just eye blasts. The man slumped forward in his seat, gasping, and Evan pried open the camper's side door, throwing himself into the field outside and breaking into a run as the vehicle drove away.
He ran. Ran all the way home, down the long path to the front door. Up the steps, over the porch. Inside.
The faucet in the kitchen dripped into the sink.
"Mom! Dad!" Red. "Mom! You have to get out of here! Have to--"
The world was red.
It was their blood, running from their freshly cut throats. Creed's hand was on his father's head, slowly crushing his skull. Logan's son had his hand on his mother's shoulder. Her head was slumped forward against her chest.
Red.
"They ain't gotta do nothin'. Not anymore." Creed was grinning, clearly proud of his handiwork. "Warned ya we'd kill some again."
"You could have prevented this, Evan. You know?"
"Mom..."
Red.
"Dad..."
Red. An explosion that blew the side of the farmhouse clean away. It was Evan's doing, pure energy shooting from his eyes, destroying what was left of home and throwing the seared bodies of the two killers away from him.
Evan pursued. Fists easily the size of either of the men bore down on them, one beating Creed almost blindly. He didn't see the other come up behind him. Heard him, screaming that Evan was the chosen one, daring him to show him something. Claws of bone ripped through Evan's side, and he screamed.
"Show me what makes you so special!" Evan staggered back as the same claws raked deep trenches across his ribs. He shot more energy at his attacker. He missed. "That my father, who has never done anything for me... has given you so much!"
What was left of Evan's shirt was shredded away as those claws tore upward again, ripping gouges of flesh clean from his chest.
Red.
Maybe the world had always been this red.
"You want to see..." Red like the blood running down Evan's chest. Red like his eyes. Red like their hands, and his parents' throats dripping down to the floor. "I'll show you."
They were nothing, these two killers. They were miles beneath him, and cowering in his shadow.
They had taken everything from him.
"I'll show you power."
They ran. His hands closed around each of them, lifting them from the ground like a pair of ragdolls.
"You will suffer for what you did to them!" He squeezed. Creed made a noise of pain, almost like music in Evan's ears. There wasn't enough red. "I'll crush you-- I'll--"
So much red.
Home... was never meant to be so red, was it?
"I'll..."
He dropped them.
"I won't... I won't be like you."
It made his heart twist in his chest, the way Logan's son grinned up at him as he pulled himself to his feet.
"Well, okay. Pretty good self-control. So, now you get good news and bad news. Good news is we didn't really kill your parents, kid."
Evan shrank back down to his normal size, keeping his distance from the pair. Wary.
"The bad news," Creed added, "is we can never kill 'em..."
The world had never been so red. And smiling down at them, from the crimson of the sky, was the face of the Shadow King.
"...'Cause," Daken, the son of Wolverine, finished, "they never existed in the first place."
[NFB, NFI, sums up Uncanny X-Force issue #30. Trigger warnings for brutal murder and extreme mental torture all over the place, because Remender makes a living by breaking happy things. OOC is welcome.]