Genosha. Probably Genosha. In a Cold, Dark Room. Thursday. Probably Thursday. Maybe still Wednesday.
My parents were never real.
The red had almost completely gone away, now. Evan was left sitting on the floor in a room that would have been sterile white, if it was clean.
Simulations-- Computer programs.
It wasn't clean. There was still red.
Too much of it.
And Evan was left on the floor, knees tucked up to his chest, pressed against the far wall in that room covered in blood. His own blood, puddling on the floor. Smeared up the walls. He was back in the real world again, not trapped inside the Shadow King's illusions inside his own head. And everything hurt.
The pain from Sabertooth's less than gentle ministrations was something he barely noticed.
It can't sink in. I love them.
His eyes were staring blankly at the door ahead of himself, past the chair with the straps and all manner of nightmarish torture implements attached.
Miss them so much... Every day of my life is a lie. Uncle Cluster's lies. Headmaster Logan's lies.
Everything hurt, and nothing made sense.
How could good people lie to someone about something so important? Good people couldn't. Daken and Sabretooth... They told me the truth.
But they weren't good. They weren't. Were they? The heroes were the X-Men, the people he'd been staying with at the Jean Grey School. Except that the Jean Grey School hadn't been good for him at all. He'd been sent away, because of what he was. Because... of...
I'm nothing but a science experiment cloned from a boy Uncle Cluster murdered.
Because...
So many lies.
Apocalypse.
And the liars who hurt me. Maybe someone SHOULD hurt them.
Across the room, there was a suit. Made in his size. Bulky, almost grotesque. He'd seen armor like that before. He'd seen it on the one file on the X-Men's villain database that he'd been allowed access to. And he'd seen it in the mirror in his own head, when the Shadow King showed him a reflection of who he was supposed to be.
"Evan!"
Evan was pulled from his thoughts as the door to the side opened, and a tall, familiar figure came stumbling through. His heart skipped a beat, and he was on his feet in an instant.
"Un-Uncle Cluster!?" He didn't think, dropping the train of thought he'd been following there on the floor of the red-white-room, throwing his arms around his Uncle and burying his face in his shoulder. "I thought they'd... They'd told me you were..." Heavy. He was so heavy. "... dead."
And cold.
He shouldn't have looked. Shouldn't have looked at the mutilated face, blood dried on to skin that Evan had never actually seen under his Uncle's mask before. The mask was gone, now. Evan's first look at Cluster's real face, in all the years he'd known him, and it was...
He dropped the body, stumbled away wide-eyed as it crumpled to the floor, leaving a long red trail of gore clinging to the front of Evan's shirt.
"Surprise! Still Dead!"
And standing behind him, puppeting the corpse around at the end of tendrils made of flesh, a man without skin, laughing. Daken leaned against the doorframe next to the skinless man, looking almost pained. Almost. Except for the amused smile.
"That was screwed up."
"Indeed."
They were going to leave the body there. Right there on the floor. Right there on the floor in front of him, and Evan was pressed against the wall and he couldn't breathe. Couldn't breathe or think or run, there wasn't anywhere to run to, and his powers were still being pressed down and nothing was real. Nothing. Maybe this wasn't real, either. Maybe.
Except this wasn't the dream.
"Listen," Daken crooned as the skinless man walked away, "if you're pissed, I'd be pissed.... see that suit right there?" He gestured to the armor that was hung up against the far wall. "It's the real deal. Celestial made, one of Apocalypse's originals. It'll amplify your powers. Make you a god. Put it on and Shadow King can't keep you cut off from all those powers. Get revenge."
Evan didn't look up. Couldn't look up. His arms were wrapped around his knees again, and he was pressed back against the wall, and there was his uncle, cold and dead on the floor in front of him, laying in a pool of Evan's own blood.
"You need to think some more.That's okay. We'll leave you with your good Uncle Cluster. Maybe he can offer you some direction."
And then the door closed, and Evan was left alone again with nothing but the pain, a corpse, and a nightmare temptation waiting for him just across the room.
It was right there.
The suit. Apocalypse's power.
A god?
Who he was supposed to be?
Right there.
And maybe if he just put it on, Evan could set things right.
He was standing. He didn't even remember climbing to his feet.
He was close enough to touch it. Close enough to reach out, and...
"I couldn't do it the first time around..."
A voice behind him. Evan turned, his head somewhere in a haze, lost somewhere in a reverie. He pulled his hand away from his suit, and a man in a mask was looking back at him, a gun in one hand, and a sword in the other.
"But I can do it now."
"C'mon- C'mon- C'mon!"
Running. Evan was doing a lot of running these days, it seemed. And the man beside him, urging him to run faster. A rescuer?
How could he even trust that he was going to be rescued?
"Why should I trust you?" He was keeping pace with the man easily enough. A black and white uniform. Red X-logo on his chest and his belt. "How do I know you and X-Force aren't here to kill me?"
It wouldn't be a first, apparently.
"What am I? Some kind of unhinged psychopath covered in guns and swords?" Perhaps that was a trick question. "That's not the plan, okay? I'm not going to let anything--"
"I know why you're here! I know what you people did!"
"Shhhhhh-- Shush-- Shushy-- Shut it-- I'm not here to kill you! Last time we killed you I was in the dumps for-like-ever."
Somehow, that wasn't reassuring. Evan was backing away now as the man crouched before him, trying to get him to calm down.
There was no calming down, here.
"You're another liar-- another villain! Just like my Uncle Cluster!"
Dead. Dead on the floor, his blood smeared down the front of Evan's clothes. That face. The first time he'd ever seen that face... Dead. A liar. A murderer. And dead.
"Stop that talk." The strange man reached forward, grabbed Evan's shoulders and held him there, looking into his eyes with ones that seemed almost to glow red, thanks to the mask he was wearing. "Your Uncle Cluster was a good guy. No foolin'. He died to save Betsy. Did you know that? A guy like that giving his life to save somebody else... I mean, I'm no therapist. But that's growth. If he can lay down his life for someone he loves... There's hope for all of us."
Hope...
Evan stared at the man quietly. Hope...
Was there hope?
"Yes, Evan..." Daken's voice. "Show respect to the man who shot you in the head, cloned you, and raised you in a virtual reality that he sold to you as real."
"Were you listening the entire time? Super-rude." And then Evan was under the strange man's arm, being dragged away from Daken and the two people standing there with him. "Run! Never trust the fusty heart of an eavesdropper!"
"Wade helped kill the boy you were cloned from!" Two long, metallic arms reached forward from the chest of the woman that had been standing in Daken's company, and grabbed the man... Wade... by the back. No. Burrowed their way in. "He is not here to help you, Evan."
"Yowza. That cancer toxin is fast-acting. Really hurts." Wade was on his knees, looking up at Evan. And nothing made sense all over again. "Little help?"
"I... I don't..."
"Farouk has Evan's powers shut down until he's ready to do some killing."
"Oh, that's classy." Wade coughed, his body starting to swell, to contort in ways that would have been nightmarish if they didn't have to compete with what Evan had already seen in the past few days. Hours. However long it had been. "Always knew you were a dirtbag but this is the piece de resistance..."
And then Wade spun, drawing one of his swords and severing those tendrils, leaving them spewing green slime. "Angries up the blood."
Daken rushed at him, claws extended. Wade parried, leapt clear over Daken's head, and drew his gun as he landed behind him. Shot once, twice, three times, all solid hits to Daken's torso as the huge man, the one they called the Blob, came up behind him. Wade hit the ground slid under his legs and came up behind him, then dove out of the way before more of those tendrils could get him, burying themselves deep in the huge man's flesh.
Evan just stood. Watched. Couldn't move.
"My name is Wade Wilson. You killed my friend."
"I'm not playing games, Wade," Daken growled. Wade lifted his katana.
"Prepare to--"
And all at once, it was like a pressure was lifted off of one part of Evan's mind, and then slammed down, hard, on another piece of it. His access to his powers surged back. His ability to think about what he was doing, on the other hand...
He was only vaguely aware of the fact that he'd used his eye blasts, hitting Wade full-on in the back with a shot that brought the man to his knees.
There was a hand on his shoulder. It was friendly. Comfortable.
"Why'd you zap me, kid?!"
"These people, they told me the truth." Evan was hardly aware of where the words that he was speaking were coming from. Just that, in that moment, he believed them. "They could have killed me-- but they didn't."
"Farouk's in your head, kid," Wade protested, trying so hard, and failing, to pick himself up from the floor. "Y-you gotta fight it..."
"I'm merely helping the child see his true feelings." The hand on Evan's back, then. It belonged to the Shadow King. To Farouk. "And I believe what young Evan is trying to say is... he doesn't trust you."
At least that was something that Evan could agree with, even as the telepathic fog closed around his head completely.
Back in the room. Back on the floor. Daken, the woman, and Farouk were standing around the chair, Wade was strapped to it, talking about telepathic devices, about coming for Evan, not having a healing factor. Wade said something about squirrels eating eyes. Evan just stared.
Daken crouched down in front of him.
"C'mon. Put on that Apocalypse armor. Before the others come to finish what Wade botched. And they are coming." Evan just stared up at Daken as he spoke. Didn't say a word. He didn't want to be here. He'd never asked to even be. "I'm losing patience! If you're not with us, at a certain point you're against us. And you don't want to see that stage of the plan, kid."
They'd used him as a weapon. Used him to attack Wade. But Wade had come to kill him. Right? He was a liar. X-Force was all liars.
They'd killed him.
Evan heard his name being spoken. Something about being made to watch as they tortured Wade. He'd already been made to sit in a room with his uncle's body. He'd already watched his family die, only to find out that they'd never been real at all. What would watching do?
Watching would do a lot.
Evan was swaying in place on the floor. He couldn't look away.
They were tearing Wade apart. Beating him on the floor.
Evan was walking again. The armor was right there.
He could stop this.
Broken and bleeding on the floor, and Wade was begging him all the same.
"Evan... don't do it. Don't listen to 'em. You don't have to be him..."
Didn't he?
"It's a choice. All of it."
No. No. No no no he hadn't had a choice at all. His family wasn't real his uncle was dead his uncle had killed him and they were in his head. They were in Evan's head and taking him by the hand. And all he could do was walk obediently with the woman with the venomous tentacles as Wade protested on the floor.
"They're the bad guys."
He was standing by Daken's side. Watching a tank fill up with water.
Wolverine was in the tank.
X-Force had come for him.
"You see, Evan, all these years, no one can kill the old man." Daken's hand was on his shoulder again. So familiar, now. Friendly, even. And horrible.
"Evan, get away from him." Wolverine drew his claws. "Get out of here!"
"They try and try," Daken continued. "And the little creep heals and heals."
Wolverine lunged, then, at the pane that separated Evan and Daken from he room that was slowly filling with water, up to Logan's chest, now. Nothing gave. It was just the empty, sickening sound of adamantium against... against something stronger. "You know the secret to killing Wolverine, Evan? It's frighteningly simple. You drown him."
The water was over Logan's head now. The room was full.
"It'll take some time, but deprive the brain of oxygen long enough and it suffocates and dies. No healing that." Daken looked over his shoulder at Evan and smiled. "Would you kill me to save him?"
Silence. Evan stared at Logan through the wall. Logan, slowly running out of air, stared back.
"Well!?" The crack sound that Evan's jaw made as Daken hit him rang in his ears. His knees hit the floor, and Daken hit him again. "No? Fine! You want it like this-- You got it!"
His feet weren't touching the floor. Evan's feet weren't touching the floor. There was a hand around his neck, Daken's hand, holding him off the ground.
Somewhere far away, right there in front of him, Daken was still talking.
"You watch him die as he watches you!"
Evan didn't fight.
Fighting wouldn't change anything.
Everyone was already dead. Right in front of him and dying. Locked away in a room, bleeding away, about to become another corpse for Evan to share his space with.
Evan didn't fight, and then everything went black.
Yelling. Someone was yelling. Wade. Wade was yelling. Yelling his name. The woman was walking away. She'd stopped Daken. Stopped him from killing Evan and brought him back here.
"Okay." Wade was trying to rouse him. He didn't want it. Didn't. Blackness had been so much more forgiving than the red. "I-it's okay, kiddo. Stay down. Rest. You took a real beating..."
"W-we can't stay here."
The words felt like gravel in Evan's mouth. Like gravel and blood and broken teeth.
"Not so bad," Wade whispered. "They starve and beat us. No cable. We use our pants for the bathroom..."
"He's drowning Wolverine." Clarity. A sudden wash of it wrapping around his head letting him go. Evan pulled himself to his feet. "He's crazy. He'll kill us all."
And there was the suit.
"Kill us all unless I do it."
"He can't kill Wolverine," Wade protested. "Logan'll get us out. It's the only way these capers go. He'd get us out and we'll beat the Brotherhood, you'll see! He's done it a million times."
Made for him. Like a second skin.
"Please-- Please Evan-- stop it. This ends badly. We've been warned, kid. If you do this, it ends so badly... You have to stop..."
Like maybe he was exactly who he was always meant to be, this way.
"Stop?"
Raw power crackled around Evan, filled the room as he turned to face Wade. The armor was his, there was no question about it. Everything that the Shadow King had been holding down inside of him bubbled free, his injuries fading, fire and something so much more wild ripping around inside of him. If he'd been strong before, strong his his Uncle Cluster had been training him, now he was unstoppable.
Like a god.
"I've just started."
[NFB, NFI, warning for Oh God Let's Make This More Horrifying Shall We? There's no small amount of violence and abuse in this one, I'm serious. Taken from the pages of Uncanny X-Force issues 31-33. Almost done. OOC is welcome.]
The red had almost completely gone away, now. Evan was left sitting on the floor in a room that would have been sterile white, if it was clean.
Simulations-- Computer programs.
It wasn't clean. There was still red.
Too much of it.
And Evan was left on the floor, knees tucked up to his chest, pressed against the far wall in that room covered in blood. His own blood, puddling on the floor. Smeared up the walls. He was back in the real world again, not trapped inside the Shadow King's illusions inside his own head. And everything hurt.
The pain from Sabertooth's less than gentle ministrations was something he barely noticed.
It can't sink in. I love them.
His eyes were staring blankly at the door ahead of himself, past the chair with the straps and all manner of nightmarish torture implements attached.
Miss them so much... Every day of my life is a lie. Uncle Cluster's lies. Headmaster Logan's lies.
Everything hurt, and nothing made sense.
How could good people lie to someone about something so important? Good people couldn't. Daken and Sabretooth... They told me the truth.
But they weren't good. They weren't. Were they? The heroes were the X-Men, the people he'd been staying with at the Jean Grey School. Except that the Jean Grey School hadn't been good for him at all. He'd been sent away, because of what he was. Because... of...
I'm nothing but a science experiment cloned from a boy Uncle Cluster murdered.
Because...
So many lies.
Apocalypse.
And the liars who hurt me. Maybe someone SHOULD hurt them.
Across the room, there was a suit. Made in his size. Bulky, almost grotesque. He'd seen armor like that before. He'd seen it on the one file on the X-Men's villain database that he'd been allowed access to. And he'd seen it in the mirror in his own head, when the Shadow King showed him a reflection of who he was supposed to be.
"Evan!"
Evan was pulled from his thoughts as the door to the side opened, and a tall, familiar figure came stumbling through. His heart skipped a beat, and he was on his feet in an instant.
"Un-Uncle Cluster!?" He didn't think, dropping the train of thought he'd been following there on the floor of the red-white-room, throwing his arms around his Uncle and burying his face in his shoulder. "I thought they'd... They'd told me you were..." Heavy. He was so heavy. "... dead."
And cold.
He shouldn't have looked. Shouldn't have looked at the mutilated face, blood dried on to skin that Evan had never actually seen under his Uncle's mask before. The mask was gone, now. Evan's first look at Cluster's real face, in all the years he'd known him, and it was...
He dropped the body, stumbled away wide-eyed as it crumpled to the floor, leaving a long red trail of gore clinging to the front of Evan's shirt.
"Surprise! Still Dead!"
And standing behind him, puppeting the corpse around at the end of tendrils made of flesh, a man without skin, laughing. Daken leaned against the doorframe next to the skinless man, looking almost pained. Almost. Except for the amused smile.
"That was screwed up."
"Indeed."
They were going to leave the body there. Right there on the floor. Right there on the floor in front of him, and Evan was pressed against the wall and he couldn't breathe. Couldn't breathe or think or run, there wasn't anywhere to run to, and his powers were still being pressed down and nothing was real. Nothing. Maybe this wasn't real, either. Maybe.
Except this wasn't the dream.
"Listen," Daken crooned as the skinless man walked away, "if you're pissed, I'd be pissed.... see that suit right there?" He gestured to the armor that was hung up against the far wall. "It's the real deal. Celestial made, one of Apocalypse's originals. It'll amplify your powers. Make you a god. Put it on and Shadow King can't keep you cut off from all those powers. Get revenge."
Evan didn't look up. Couldn't look up. His arms were wrapped around his knees again, and he was pressed back against the wall, and there was his uncle, cold and dead on the floor in front of him, laying in a pool of Evan's own blood.
"You need to think some more.That's okay. We'll leave you with your good Uncle Cluster. Maybe he can offer you some direction."
And then the door closed, and Evan was left alone again with nothing but the pain, a corpse, and a nightmare temptation waiting for him just across the room.
It was right there.
The suit. Apocalypse's power.
A god?
Who he was supposed to be?
Right there.
And maybe if he just put it on, Evan could set things right.
He was standing. He didn't even remember climbing to his feet.
He was close enough to touch it. Close enough to reach out, and...
"I couldn't do it the first time around..."
A voice behind him. Evan turned, his head somewhere in a haze, lost somewhere in a reverie. He pulled his hand away from his suit, and a man in a mask was looking back at him, a gun in one hand, and a sword in the other.
"But I can do it now."
"C'mon- C'mon- C'mon!"
Running. Evan was doing a lot of running these days, it seemed. And the man beside him, urging him to run faster. A rescuer?
How could he even trust that he was going to be rescued?
"Why should I trust you?" He was keeping pace with the man easily enough. A black and white uniform. Red X-logo on his chest and his belt. "How do I know you and X-Force aren't here to kill me?"
It wouldn't be a first, apparently.
"What am I? Some kind of unhinged psychopath covered in guns and swords?" Perhaps that was a trick question. "That's not the plan, okay? I'm not going to let anything--"
"I know why you're here! I know what you people did!"
"Shhhhhh-- Shush-- Shushy-- Shut it-- I'm not here to kill you! Last time we killed you I was in the dumps for-like-ever."
Somehow, that wasn't reassuring. Evan was backing away now as the man crouched before him, trying to get him to calm down.
There was no calming down, here.
"You're another liar-- another villain! Just like my Uncle Cluster!"
Dead. Dead on the floor, his blood smeared down the front of Evan's clothes. That face. The first time he'd ever seen that face... Dead. A liar. A murderer. And dead.
"Stop that talk." The strange man reached forward, grabbed Evan's shoulders and held him there, looking into his eyes with ones that seemed almost to glow red, thanks to the mask he was wearing. "Your Uncle Cluster was a good guy. No foolin'. He died to save Betsy. Did you know that? A guy like that giving his life to save somebody else... I mean, I'm no therapist. But that's growth. If he can lay down his life for someone he loves... There's hope for all of us."
Hope...
Evan stared at the man quietly. Hope...
Was there hope?
"Yes, Evan..." Daken's voice. "Show respect to the man who shot you in the head, cloned you, and raised you in a virtual reality that he sold to you as real."
"Were you listening the entire time? Super-rude." And then Evan was under the strange man's arm, being dragged away from Daken and the two people standing there with him. "Run! Never trust the fusty heart of an eavesdropper!"
"Wade helped kill the boy you were cloned from!" Two long, metallic arms reached forward from the chest of the woman that had been standing in Daken's company, and grabbed the man... Wade... by the back. No. Burrowed their way in. "He is not here to help you, Evan."
"Yowza. That cancer toxin is fast-acting. Really hurts." Wade was on his knees, looking up at Evan. And nothing made sense all over again. "Little help?"
"I... I don't..."
"Farouk has Evan's powers shut down until he's ready to do some killing."
"Oh, that's classy." Wade coughed, his body starting to swell, to contort in ways that would have been nightmarish if they didn't have to compete with what Evan had already seen in the past few days. Hours. However long it had been. "Always knew you were a dirtbag but this is the piece de resistance..."
And then Wade spun, drawing one of his swords and severing those tendrils, leaving them spewing green slime. "Angries up the blood."
Daken rushed at him, claws extended. Wade parried, leapt clear over Daken's head, and drew his gun as he landed behind him. Shot once, twice, three times, all solid hits to Daken's torso as the huge man, the one they called the Blob, came up behind him. Wade hit the ground slid under his legs and came up behind him, then dove out of the way before more of those tendrils could get him, burying themselves deep in the huge man's flesh.
Evan just stood. Watched. Couldn't move.
"My name is Wade Wilson. You killed my friend."
"I'm not playing games, Wade," Daken growled. Wade lifted his katana.
"Prepare to--"
And all at once, it was like a pressure was lifted off of one part of Evan's mind, and then slammed down, hard, on another piece of it. His access to his powers surged back. His ability to think about what he was doing, on the other hand...
He was only vaguely aware of the fact that he'd used his eye blasts, hitting Wade full-on in the back with a shot that brought the man to his knees.
There was a hand on his shoulder. It was friendly. Comfortable.
"Why'd you zap me, kid?!"
"These people, they told me the truth." Evan was hardly aware of where the words that he was speaking were coming from. Just that, in that moment, he believed them. "They could have killed me-- but they didn't."
"Farouk's in your head, kid," Wade protested, trying so hard, and failing, to pick himself up from the floor. "Y-you gotta fight it..."
"I'm merely helping the child see his true feelings." The hand on Evan's back, then. It belonged to the Shadow King. To Farouk. "And I believe what young Evan is trying to say is... he doesn't trust you."
At least that was something that Evan could agree with, even as the telepathic fog closed around his head completely.
Back in the room. Back on the floor. Daken, the woman, and Farouk were standing around the chair, Wade was strapped to it, talking about telepathic devices, about coming for Evan, not having a healing factor. Wade said something about squirrels eating eyes. Evan just stared.
Daken crouched down in front of him.
"C'mon. Put on that Apocalypse armor. Before the others come to finish what Wade botched. And they are coming." Evan just stared up at Daken as he spoke. Didn't say a word. He didn't want to be here. He'd never asked to even be. "I'm losing patience! If you're not with us, at a certain point you're against us. And you don't want to see that stage of the plan, kid."
They'd used him as a weapon. Used him to attack Wade. But Wade had come to kill him. Right? He was a liar. X-Force was all liars.
They'd killed him.
Evan heard his name being spoken. Something about being made to watch as they tortured Wade. He'd already been made to sit in a room with his uncle's body. He'd already watched his family die, only to find out that they'd never been real at all. What would watching do?
Watching would do a lot.
Evan was swaying in place on the floor. He couldn't look away.
They were tearing Wade apart. Beating him on the floor.
Evan was walking again. The armor was right there.
He could stop this.
Broken and bleeding on the floor, and Wade was begging him all the same.
"Evan... don't do it. Don't listen to 'em. You don't have to be him..."
Didn't he?
"It's a choice. All of it."
No. No. No no no he hadn't had a choice at all. His family wasn't real his uncle was dead his uncle had killed him and they were in his head. They were in Evan's head and taking him by the hand. And all he could do was walk obediently with the woman with the venomous tentacles as Wade protested on the floor.
"They're the bad guys."
He was standing by Daken's side. Watching a tank fill up with water.
Wolverine was in the tank.
X-Force had come for him.
"You see, Evan, all these years, no one can kill the old man." Daken's hand was on his shoulder again. So familiar, now. Friendly, even. And horrible.
"Evan, get away from him." Wolverine drew his claws. "Get out of here!"
"They try and try," Daken continued. "And the little creep heals and heals."
Wolverine lunged, then, at the pane that separated Evan and Daken from he room that was slowly filling with water, up to Logan's chest, now. Nothing gave. It was just the empty, sickening sound of adamantium against... against something stronger. "You know the secret to killing Wolverine, Evan? It's frighteningly simple. You drown him."
The water was over Logan's head now. The room was full.
"It'll take some time, but deprive the brain of oxygen long enough and it suffocates and dies. No healing that." Daken looked over his shoulder at Evan and smiled. "Would you kill me to save him?"
Silence. Evan stared at Logan through the wall. Logan, slowly running out of air, stared back.
"Well!?" The crack sound that Evan's jaw made as Daken hit him rang in his ears. His knees hit the floor, and Daken hit him again. "No? Fine! You want it like this-- You got it!"
His feet weren't touching the floor. Evan's feet weren't touching the floor. There was a hand around his neck, Daken's hand, holding him off the ground.
Somewhere far away, right there in front of him, Daken was still talking.
"You watch him die as he watches you!"
Evan didn't fight.
Fighting wouldn't change anything.
Everyone was already dead. Right in front of him and dying. Locked away in a room, bleeding away, about to become another corpse for Evan to share his space with.
Evan didn't fight, and then everything went black.
Yelling. Someone was yelling. Wade. Wade was yelling. Yelling his name. The woman was walking away. She'd stopped Daken. Stopped him from killing Evan and brought him back here.
"Okay." Wade was trying to rouse him. He didn't want it. Didn't. Blackness had been so much more forgiving than the red. "I-it's okay, kiddo. Stay down. Rest. You took a real beating..."
"W-we can't stay here."
The words felt like gravel in Evan's mouth. Like gravel and blood and broken teeth.
"Not so bad," Wade whispered. "They starve and beat us. No cable. We use our pants for the bathroom..."
"He's drowning Wolverine." Clarity. A sudden wash of it wrapping around his head letting him go. Evan pulled himself to his feet. "He's crazy. He'll kill us all."
And there was the suit.
"Kill us all unless I do it."
"He can't kill Wolverine," Wade protested. "Logan'll get us out. It's the only way these capers go. He'd get us out and we'll beat the Brotherhood, you'll see! He's done it a million times."
Made for him. Like a second skin.
"Please-- Please Evan-- stop it. This ends badly. We've been warned, kid. If you do this, it ends so badly... You have to stop..."
Like maybe he was exactly who he was always meant to be, this way.
"Stop?"
Raw power crackled around Evan, filled the room as he turned to face Wade. The armor was his, there was no question about it. Everything that the Shadow King had been holding down inside of him bubbled free, his injuries fading, fire and something so much more wild ripping around inside of him. If he'd been strong before, strong his his Uncle Cluster had been training him, now he was unstoppable.
Like a god.
"I've just started."
[NFB, NFI, warning for Oh God Let's Make This More Horrifying Shall We? There's no small amount of violence and abuse in this one, I'm serious. Taken from the pages of Uncanny X-Force issues 31-33. Almost done. OOC is welcome.]