X-Men: The Perfect Drug (today)
Written for psych_30. This takes place during Uncanny X-Men #274-275, and immediately before and during Adjectiveless X-Men #1-2. The prompt is "addiction."




The world is a bleak and wintry place, and he is tired.

Zaladane has exhausted him in a way he cannot easily fight. She defeated him and took his power, but that was not the worst of it. Battles, even against a stronger opponent, have never tired him before. It was that, when he looked into her eyes, he saw himself, in his own days of madness. One thing to fight evil. Another thing to fight the evil that you yourself once were.

And now he doesn’t know who or what he is. The clean fire of righteous anger is supposed to power him, to cleanse him of his doubts and weaknesses. But he could not be righteous in the face of Zaladane, and the twisted mirror she presented him. He killed her, because it needed to be done, and because to kill her was to kill the part of himself he most fears and despises. But her death doesn’t remove what she is from him. There is still a Zaladane deep within his own soul, and those most qualified to help him fight that battle have turned on him for killing the real thing.

So what shall he do now? He has tried fighting to save his people, and in the process he became a thing like Zaladane. He has tried Charles’ way, and three children are now dead as a result, the rest of those in his charge scattered widely, and nothing any better for his kind. Shall he try to conquer the world again? For what? The humans below are dedicated to killing one another, and he is tired of being vilified for trying to stop it. His own people do not want his help. So he hides on Asteroid M, and lets the Earth spin beneath him, denying to himself that he has any concern for the events that take place on it, or the people who live there.

And then those who wish to be his Acolytes flee to his doorstep, seeking sanctuary, and one is critically injured in his arms, and the righteous rage begins to awaken once more.

Cortez offers him an amplification of his power, and with the power comes resolve, and clarity. What he does is right, because what he fights is far, far worse than he could be. Whether it is the cruel betrayal of those he once called his friends, Charles and Moira, or the evil of the slavemasters of Genosha, the knowledge that once again he is right and they are as wrong as possible comes as a purifying fire, electricity dancing through his mind and burning away doubt. The memory of Zaladane is gone, the fear of her within himself irrelevant.

Once again, he is power. Once again, he is rage. Once again, he is all of one mind, heart and soul healed and whole through the power of his righteous fury. Bleak despair is gone, and he is once again truly alive, medicated back to health by violence and anger and the magnetic power surging through his blood and bone.

It is very much like a drug.