Authors Note: Please allow for time between the chapters. Life won't wait for a fic to be finished, unfortunately. One must do what is possible in the allotted time. Thank you ahead of time for your patience.
The Bleeding Star
By Andrea the Spiky Sithster
Chapter One: Travelling Back
Who is he?
No one seemed to be able to answer that. More sadly still, when he asked, " What am I?" they were at an even greater loss. They didn't know. They didn't want to know.
He was accustomed to it, however. He was the boy in the corner, the freak, the outcast. But even the outcasts didn't want to speak to him. They were their own elite group. One might as well have a membership card.
But he never cried. He'd run away, he would fear them, he would bleed when they hurt him. But he would not show emotion- it was a gift far too sacred for his weak little body, and for their enjoyment as well. Enough of trying to be brave, he reasoned. Hide; hide away and be silent as a mouse and they will leave you alone.
This was the philosophy that dominated his every waking moment until the day the man with the ice-blue eyes came to visit him…
Now he is alone, just like he was when he was young, but it is a different kind of loneliness he feels. He is in the presence of mutants like himself, mutants born obvious of their enhancements and thus an object upon which ignorant human beings projected their fear and hatred. He is alone because, in this group, there is no good-natured banter, nor long, deep conversations. There are orders, and there is obedience. Now more than ever he is not free to think.
He is now a killer. A killer of homo sapiens; a killer of cowards, of liars, of ignorance; a killer of killers. A killer of innocent people as well, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He never feels remorse for them because they, to him, were too insignificant to notice. This philosophy he learned from his master. If he had realized that this too was ignorance, the very thing that drove him to the life he lives, then perhaps his sleep would not have been as restful.
He has lost the old fear as well as the old weakness- it died in the snapping of bones and the welters of sticky glorious blood and the ice-blue eyes of the man who coveted the flame of hatred that to this day burns within him.
He resides on a remote island, in a cave he calls home. He takes orders from a man more powerful than the President of the United States, or the Queen of England, as he is more inclined to think, being of former residence in Britain. If anyone cared enough to talk to him he would not be the least hesitant in admitting his subservience to this man, this mutant called Magneto. For Magneto is a savior of sorts- a bitter one, full of resentment and hatred and generous with physical abuse. But he is all there is now, all there had ever really been, and all that will ever be. He will die for Magneto without hesitance, and Magneto expects as much. Expendability and loyalty takes priority in the expectations of his Brotherhood.
The orphanage with its days of terror and abuse, hesitance and sadness, are gone now. Life now is one full of death and revenge and nameless hatred and obedience. At least now he has direction in his chaotic life: go the way Magneto directs, or go underground. Triumph or failure. Life or death.
Yes, he certainly doesn't lack direction any longer.