With Pride
"And you... you outlasted them all."
His head was splitting with pain. He was used to this, of course; it came with the abilities he harnessed. But pain like this he had never felt before, never in his wildest nightmares. What had happened?
Blurs ran through his mind. Laughter… screams… red. There had been red, lots of it. He remembered the color, but what else had happened?
"I see you're conscious."
His eyes shot open. A tall, pale humanoid was leaning over him, although his outline was blurred. Lance's mind was still ringing… who was this guy?
"You remember me, don't you?" said the humanoid. "Of course, you did take a few nasty blows – " it was at this time that he recognized the sticky substance clinging to his skin as blood " – so you might be a little dazed."
He sat upwards and looked from side to side, immediately regretting this action.
Dead bodies were all around him. Those of faceless humans, various mutants… and his allies. The X-Men. The Brotherhood.
All were dead.
"Ah, now I think you are remembering."
Summers, Todd, Pietro, Grey… No.
Kitty was sprawled face-up across the grass. Blood stained her clothes, and there were cuts all across her face and neck. She was dead.
Now he remembered.
They had all come here, to fight him. That man, that scientist – what was his name? Sinister. That was it. They had come here to fight Sinister but the Friends of Humanity showed up and all of these mutants had been there and –
The humanoid, Sinister, chuckled. "You gave me quite a show."
The ground beneath him bent to his will, rolling in waves towards his assailants. They fell like flies, and the cliff behind him began to crack dangerously. His enemies were receiving his anger, his ferocity. They were receiving his rage.
"Until that one slash across the chest finally brought you down, however. It was spectacular, really, how you kept fighting even with the gunshot wounds to your torso and legs," mused Sinister. Lance felt dizzy, as if he would fall backwards off the face of the cliff only inches behind him.
He smiled darkly.
"You should be proud. You outlasted Xavier."
Xavier was dead? No, he couldn't be dead. Lance was no follower of the psychic, but there was no way he could be dead.
"He had to have taken out a hundred or so with that last blast he sent out. Of course, it killed him, but he was going to die anyway." Lance could see a large knife sticking out of Xavier's chest. His wheelchair lay demolished beneath him. "Actually, I thought Lensherr would last the longest, but he died shortly before Xavier. And you… you outlasted them all."
It couldn't be. They couldn't all be dead. They couldn't have lost.
But they had. He had failed. He had failed his friends. He had failed his brothers.
He had failed Kitty.
"It's quite a spectacle, really," the scientist commented dryly. "You, whose power is derived from passion and anger, outlasted the rest of them, the disciplined. You are the last X-Man."
Lance opened his mouth with quite some effort. "I'm not an X-Man."
Sinister shrugged. "You ran to their aid. This you cannot deny."
He sighed and pulled a gun from a holster at his hip. He himself did not look to have taken any damage, or maybe he had just manipulated his body to make it look like that. The cartridge clicked into place.
"Do not die with shame, Mr. Alvers. You put up a good fight. You are the last of Xavier's troops." He smirked. "You showed the world what you could do. Your efforts were in vain, but your DNA will further my cause. Such raw power did not go unnoticed. Die with pride, Mr. Alvers. And most of all, do not scream. Surely you do not want your last words to be a call for help."
He raised the gun so it was level with Lance's head. "Maybe, I just might pair some of your DNA with Ms. Pryde's. That seems to be your heart's desire." The gun was now aimed straight at Lance's forehead. "Your death will give me a good amount of pleasure, I must admit. I was hoping I would get to kill the last of the X-Men."
Lance opened his mouth to speak once more. His voice was feeble and parched, yet his words remained firm, resolute.
"No."
The simple statement caught Sinister off-guard. Here Lance was, a crippled wreck of a man, openly defying who might now be the most powerful mutant alive. Sinister hesitated for only a moment, but this was all the time Lance needed. He threw his arms back and grabbed the edge of the precipice, pushing himself over the edge with the last of his strength. He fell for what felt like an eternity to him before hitting the ground with a crack as his bones shattered into pieces.
He was dead upon impact. He had succeeded. That bastard would never kill him. Never.
Above his corpse on the rocky shelf, Sinister leaned over the edge of the cliff and made a disapproving noise. He turned without another word, his gun dangling loosely from his fingers.
Lance Alvers was still grinning.