By: Cmdr. Gabe E.
Note: This fanfiction occurs entirely in the X-Men movie-verse . Characters' unspoken thoughts are enclosed in .
Chapter 2: Alone to drown in his nightmare
Wolverine, the man he created, had left him to die.
"You will always be an animal, Wolverine. An animal!" He whispered through clenched teeth.
Colonel William Stryker hung there, like a helpless prey, as the heavy chains bound him tightly against the huge slab of concrete that Eric had chosen for his grave.
The sound of the large body of water breaking through the dam soon reached his ears, and he knew that his end would come soon.
His eyes looked up at the infinite, blue sky. He wished he could tilt his chin up and savor his last view of the world, but the chain that ran across his face inhibited him from doing so. He was trapped to drown under the icy waters that were soon going to engulf everything that took most of his life to accomplish.
He couldn't believe that the results of his hard work were all going to come crashing down.... To fade into memory as another attempt to control the mutant population of the world.
/"All that hard work for nothing!"/ He thought to himself angrily.
He thought the good guys always won. Then why was he going to die? He was the good guy. He wanted nothing but to save humanity. To make sure that no mutant would ever harm a human again. He hadn't done anything wrong. Why was he being punished?
The thoughts of his wife Karen still lingered in his mind. Plaguing him in every second of his existence. He remembered how he held her close --- how he tried to comfort her from Jason's mind games. He remembered her crying out in pain as Jason imprinted foul images into their heads.
But the time when she took her life was the moment he was never going to forget. He remembered the day when Jason came to dinner with fire and fury in his eyes. That moment was like a re-run that kept on playing in his head.
"I hate you!!!" Jason shouted, as he threw the table and everything on it across the room, causing the plates to shatter into fiery shards.
William quickly jumped towards his wife Karen to shield her from the sharp kitchen utensils that Jason directed towards them using his mutant power of telekinesis.
"Stop this, Jason!!!" William shouted as he looked at his son in the eyes.
"Who are you to tell me what to do and what not to do?!!! You're the reason why I'm like this!!!" He shouted as he started to bore dark images into his parents' brains, causing both William and Karen to cringe.
"You're the one who locked me up as a child because you thought I was a monster!!! I wanted nothing but trust from you, but you sent me to a school where you wanted them to strip a vital part of me!!!" Jason's eyes narrowed and the fire in them flared even more.
He stared into his father's cringing form, feeling neither pity nor love.
But what he didn't notice was the pain that he was causing his mother. He didn't want to hurt her. Jason's mother, Karen, loved him as a mother would love her child. And Jason loved her too. It was his father that he could not stand. It was his father who made him feel unloved.
"Jason, please stop!!!" Karen shouted as she dropped to the floor, clutching her head in her hands.
But Jason couldn't hear her. He was too concentrated into killing his father's mind.
William cried out in pain as Jason twisted every facet of his brain. Giving him living nightmares that he won't be able to wake up from.
Tears started to stream down Karen's cheeks. /"How could my sweet boy do this?"/ She thought to herself. The dark, morbid and painful images in her mind continued to grow. She could barely identify what was real anymore. Everything felt like a living hell.
Despite the fact that her body was unscathed, her mind tortured her with pain. She felt as if she was drowning, dying, disintegrating and bleeding to death all at the same time. And that was when she realized she wanted a way out.
William too, experienced the same torment, but Karen's willingness to reach out to her son's mind made her receive the punishment ten times more --- the punishment that wasn't supposed to be hers.
The last memory that William had of Karen was her crawling towards their utility closet.
She took out a power drill.... And struggled to plug it in, tears streaming down her cheeks as she did. There was too much pain. She wanted it all to stop.
He tried to reach out to her, but it was too late. With his hand just a couple of inches away from her, she bore the power drill into her head.
William saw every second of it, as if it was a vivid dream. He saw how the drill went into her skull, how the blood from her head splattered all over him, from his hand to his clothes and his glasses. He remembered how her head vibrated as the drill went into it, how her eyes were blood shot as she fell on the floor all bloody and dead. He loved her. He loved her more than he ever loved his son, and his son killed her. All his dreams of spending his life with her drifted away like a memory long forgotten.
But after that, the pain stopped. Jason stopped. And everything stood still. That's when he saw his son all helpless and submissive. He knew how Jason loved Karen too. And he was going to use Jason's weakness to his advantage even if it meant that he had to lobotomize him for his own means.
William submissively leaned against the slab of concrete that uncomfortably pressed against his back. He had tried fidgeting out of the chains before, but the ones that held him by the neck didn't give him a single chance to escape.
He could hear the water rumbling towards him --- The sound of his impending death drawing closer and closer. Soon he will drown together with what he had built, like a captain with his ship.
A name escaped his lips and the water swallowed him into its depths.
The X-Men mourned for the loss of their beloved Jean and left Alkali Lake soon after. It is doubtful that they would ever visit the place again. It would bring nothing but bad memories, especially that of a dead loved-one.
Scott said that both sides suffered great losses, and that is true. But for Wolverine, it's as if he had lost something more. He knew he had given up his past when he refused to rescue the man who had made him, but he still remembered Stryker and Lady Deathstrike --- two figures that will be forever lost, together with his past, and his identity.
Yuriko's head suddenly surfaced from the icy lake as she gasped for air. It was one of those moments wherein she was relieved that her mutant powers were enhanced by Stryker's work. Without her advanced healing abilities, near-perfect stamina and agility, and improved strength, she wouldn't have made it out of the sunken base alive.
TO BE CONTINUED.........