Of Beginnings and Ends
Disclaimer: non of these people belong to me apart from Gregori who is a work of pure fiction based on my own sick and twisted mind I apologise for any inconsistencies from canon because I'm a DC fan mostly so I'm a bit shaky on marvel. Thank you to my beta reader because anyone who knows me knows my grammar sucks. So happy reading true believers and please review.
Chapter 1: A Journey Begins
Mr Sinister, once known as Nathaniel Essex, was sitting quietly in his laboratory thinking back to the days when he was young and there was more to his life than hurting and manipulating people. Back to when he had a wife and a son. He had been happy then – a feeling that was now just a pale echo of what it once meant.
His life had been good. But it had fallen apart his wife and child had died of disease, while he stood there helpless. He had sunk into the darkest pit of depression, imagining alcohol and opium as his only friends, until one day a man had appeared at his club in London. The man who changed his life, who had given it meaning again after his family, had introduced him to a benefactor who gave him free rein to research into genetics, so as to find a way to stop what had happened to his family from ever happening again. All too soon, though, his mysterious benefactor started taking advantage of his weakened mental stability via the closest man he had to a friend in this new life, Gregori Criche.
Hearing a noise in his empty lab Sinister looked up from his thoughts to see a familiar profile which he had not seen in over a hundred years. That of Gregori.
"Hello, my old friend. It has been too long. And my you have come on a long way since that dingy basement lab that Apocalypse had set you up in."
Sinister was surprised to see him as he believed him long dead in one of the power struggles that happened all too often around Apocalypse.
"I thought you were dead."
"You, of all people, Nathaniel, should realise that after serving Apocalypse for a time you learn how to dodge death. Or at least wait until you heal."
"Where have you been? I haven't seen you since 1914, when you persuaded that young man to shoot at a passing car."
"I've been around, watching how events have unfolded and adapting to this new century." Sinister noticed that Gregori still had a slight Romanian accent even having left his homeland with Apocalypse in the 14th century.
"So, Gregori. Have you come back to serve our master, or are you furthering your own ends like starting that war that annoyed Apocalypse so much?"
"Neither actually. I'm here to make amends. In these past few years I have come to realise that what I did for Apocalypse was not right. I could have had, as you say, a change of conscience. I regret all those people that I caused to die, the chaos that I produced which came all to naught. No, Nathaniel, I am not here to further my own agenda: I am here to save your soul to make you a man of whom your wife would be proud of again."
"How dare you bring up my wife? I buried the guilt of her passing and moved on long ago – you helped me do that! You showed me how I could use my knowledge to help better mankind, to prepare the way for a better path!"
"You claim that is what you have done my old friend? I think not all you have done is sink lower into that pit of self degradation that I found you in all those years ago. Are you so blind as to believe that what you do is for the betterment of mankind? What have you done since I left that has made life better for even one human, apart from killing them quickly rather than toying with them? You once wanted to end disease and suffering, yet you my friend are now what you once hated so much. You are a disease destroying mankind. preparing the way for a man who is so incapable of change and understanding that he hired us to teach him the ways of the world. You even call yourself Mr Sinister, since when was a doctor something sinister? You took an oath to help mankind when you became a doctor and you broke it! In my homeland do you know what we do to oath breakers? We cast them out! We kill them! If a man has no honour then he has nothing. I may be many things. A murderer? Yes. A tyrant? Yes. But I never broke an oath."
"You broke your oath to Apocalypse!"
"No, I did not, an oath is a two way deal he betrayed me so he broke the oath so I left, I vanished so I wouldn't have to deal with that idiot who missed the point of every lesson I ever gave him on politics."
Calming down as the weight of Gregori's words about his life sank in, Nathaniel Essex sank down to his knees in despair as he realised just what he had become. He had betrayed everything he once valued, becoming what he despised. And for what? An extended life? When all he had ever wanted was to see his family again. But now even this was taken away from him, as he was now all but immortal.
Seeing his old friend on his knees showing his first sign of humanity for longer than a lifetime, Gregori walked over to his friend and whispered, "Do not worry my friend, for I have a plan that will earn you a place with your family once again, and maybe a few thousand years of my divine sentence. But we will need help. Who would you say would be the best chance of defeating Him with us?"
Nathaniel spoke only two words before Gregori helped him onto his feet and out of his dark lab and into the light of a new day. "The X-Men."