The Best there is...
A/N: Just a little one-shot about Wolverine, his life and the forces that have shaped and defined who he is. Set sometime after he regains his memories.
His name is Wolverine.
He's the best there is at what he does...and what he does best, isn't very nice.
Those very words were what had shaped the better part of his unnaturally long life.
Since that fateful day, several human lifetimes ago, when his claws, those lethal instruments of pain and death, had first emerged from the back of his hands, his life had been irrevocably dominated by two things. His instincts, ferocious and bestial which made him capable of acts of violence unimagined to mere mortals; and those who sought to harness his instincts, and his so-called 'gifts' for their own nefarious ends.
He had been recruited and coerced, trained and manipulated, brainwashed and indoctrinated year after year, decade after decade, war after war until he became, for the most part, no more than a tool in the hands of other men, his own identity lost forever in the depths of time. Soldier. Spy. Mercenary. Assassin. Weapon. He had been one and all of these. He had tortured and maimed and killed and carried out, on their orders, hundreds and thousands of heinous acts against his fellow men which would have surely ensured him an eternity of incineration in the damning flames of Hell if he ever got there.
But he never would get there. Heaven and hell would both be denied him forever by his 'gift'. His curse. Time and injury did not matter to him; to both he was impervious, in part due to nature and in part due to science. His bones, and his claws, had been forged of adamantium, stronger than steel, harder almost than diamonds...completely indestructible. He was indestructible. His enemies were not. History was littered with their corpses...
History was also littered with the names of those he had loved. Loved and lost. Rose. Kayla. Itsu. Mariko.
Jean.
But despite all he had lost, what he was eternally proud of was that he had never completely lost his soul. Had never completely lost himself to the beast within, unlike one other who had long made his existence miserable. Another with gifts, with instincts much like his. Once a friend...now a mortal enemy. Sabertooth. The man he was so much like, and yet so different from. Polar opposites irrevocably drawn towards each other to battle by fate and circumstance.
He remembered all now, despite the best efforts by powerful forces to the contrary. Psychological reprogramming. False memory implants. Brainwashing. 'Mindwipes'. His own conscience. So many forces had acted on his mind to make him forget. But in spite of them all he remembered now. And what he remembered made him resolve ever more strongly to atone for the sins of the past and work towards a better future. Not only for himself, but for mankind. He was now at a place where he could use his gifts to create rather than to destroy. To reshape mankind's destiny and to reshape the minds and bodies of children in need of help with their own unique gifts. He was finally, truly at home with the X-men.
And yet the past would continue to haunt him as long as he lived. Forever. And ever. The world around him would change. The past would not. He would not, no matter how much he tried. The beast within would remain, forever in danger of being unleashed.
He had been called by many names over his long life. James Howlett. Patch. Logan. Weapon X.
But no name truly symbolized who he was better than the name of a creature whose nature was so much like his own.
Wolverine.
His name is Wolverine.
He's the best there is at what he does...and what he does best isn't very nice.