****

All characters are trademarked and copyrighted to Marvel Comics. They are used without permission and no money is being made on this work.

Redemption, rebirth, renewal. I am giddy with it. It is a state I never expected to experience again. And if I am damned for accepting it, so be it. I have been damned before... now, all that I once was has been returned to me.

How do I even start to explain? Where does one usually begin?

At the beginning.

What if there is no beginning? What if you can't find the beginning? There are many points that I could stop and say maybe this was it, or maybe that was really where it all began, but then when you look at it, there's always an earlier point. Because I never would have been here or there at all, made this decision or that, if something else hadn't happened in the first place...

So back and back and back, and eventually the beginning turns out to be so long ago that maybe you can make the case that none of it was really your fault at all.

At the very beginning, I had everything, if a child can be deemed to have anything. My parents moved in the privileged stratospheres of the moneyed and influential, and I was taught to breathe that air as if it were second nature. I learned the material weight of my worth, learned to speak the diplomatic tongue required, learned to polish and ingratiate and smile and present myself as all I should be. The image of perfection. No weaknesses, no flaws, no fears.

Such gifts my parents gave me.

They did not always serve me well. In my dealings with the "normal" world, my upbringing was a red flag, my self-confidence deemed arrogance, and my excess of possessions and appearance seemed particularly unjust to others.

Many things can be forgiven, but if you are wealthy and handsome and popular, you have crossed one line too many. You eventually collect a crowd around you that is more vulture than anything else. They are only too happy to pick up the scraps that you leave behind, but they would be happier still to see you fall, and by and large, it is these people who make up the circle of your acquaintances. Cameron Hodge was one of these.

However, when I finally drew a bad card, even then my luck did not desert me. Not right away, anyway. Mutants were not yet common, not yet large enough in number to be a menace or a threat or good or evil. They were random curiosities; oddities still.

So one of the Worthington clan had finally fallen to the law of averages; one of them had sprouted wings and joined the ranks of mutants.

But they were beautiful, my wings, and I was beautiful still, maybe even more so now. At the time, it did not feel like an Achilles heel, but rather another gift. I had been given the sky. Free to fly! Was there anyone who had not even once idly wished for such a gift?! And it was mine.

When the wings first appeared, I kept them secret, I kept them mine alone. It was not shame; it was not fear. If anything, they seemed to make me whole, to make me more real than I had ever been before. They became everything to me - my secret soul, the piece of myself that I kept hidden because it was not meant for others; it belonged to me alone.

My charmed life.

Of course, it all went wrong. It was bound to, it was impossible that I should keep such privileges, such honors.

I fell from grace to gracelessness, fell from power to servitude, fell from freedom to chains - fell from my life to a mockery of it.

You think you know me. You think you understand. But you are fools. I am deceiving you, letting you believe...

Even now, you have no clue who I am, who I really am.

Shall I tell you?

But where to begin, where to begin...?

*****

The pain was excruciating, endless. Liquid fire and foul tastes and noxious smells and the silver stabbing of needles and wires and tubes... Muscles stretching, bones creaking under the pressure. Sickness and captivity and helplessness and torment.

And not a tear, not a whimper or wail, or it would all end in agony greater still.

"You are one of the strong," he said, the voice at my ear, a voice of power and age and promise. He reminded me of my father - such a peculiar thought. My father had never harmed me, never done more than raise his voice. Perhaps it was my state of mind at the time, or maybe it was the way he laid his hand on my shoulder and spoke of his plans for me. Not a gesture of comfort, but a kindling of power. "I shall make you one of the worthy, and you shall stand in judgement over those who are not worthy."

Perhaps he and my father were not so different after all.

"And those who have abandoned you - ah, you shall bring them to a bitter reckoning indeed."

Yes. Yes, there was a purpose worth living for.

Something - however tainted - to replace all that had been lost. To replace those pieces of my soul that were bound up in my wings.

"You shall not die." A promise, spoken in granite and steel, the most powerful voice I had ever heard. "Death shall become you well. Winged death to cleanse the world in fire and blood. You shall be my most cherished child, strong and fierce and irrevocably mine."

"I place this mark upon you, Worthington - the countenance of death. And you are mine."

*****

Apocalypse was... all that his name promised he would be. He was a harsh, demanding master with his foot ever heavy on my neck, on the necks of all his lackeys and servants, and if I were master over those lesser slaves, he never let me forget that he was master over me.

A deal is a deal, after all.

But I'd never learned those early childhood lessons of fair play and a promise being a promise forever and ever. Oh, I'd been taught about honor, sure enough. How to save face and make quiet arrangements in the shadows and look like a gentleman while tearing another man's life to shreds. Warfare in the business arena is all about winning at any costs, and looking good while doing it.

I wasn't looking so good these days.

Blue skin and wings... wings like these... They weren't the white feathered bundles of life and soul and joy that I had once owned. They were...

Ugly.

I was ugly.

Inside and out.

When taking an angel and remolding him, be careful that you don't twist too far. Your fallen angel is not that far removed from a demon.

*****

As might have been expected, I did not long remain with Apocalypse, having begun to realize that I was strong enough to prevail without him, if I chose. I returned to my mutant comrades, and if the bloodlust within me was not tamed, then at least it was leashed and hidden.

If I'd learned one thing from Apocalypse, it was endurance.

Endurance enough to tolerate that idiot Summers' blathering attempts at leadership, to pretend that I respected him, followed him, accepted him. To pretend that I didn't envy him his pretty, red-headed wife more than I could bear.

Of course, it is difficult to hide such things from a telepath. She knew my feelings well enough, heard them as clear as if I spoke them aloud. And she knew her husband - and his temper - well enough to keep certain things unsaid.

I cannot say I was truly accepted among them, but I think they tried. I kept to myself, and to the sky, as much as possible. And if things were strained and awkward and changed between Bobby and Hank and I, there were a few moments of understanding from Storm, who also shared the sky and seemed to understand better than all the others the toll my transfiguration had taken upon me. Sometimes I wonder if I might have found some measure of happiness with her. With Storm. She is like me, in many ways. Riding the winds, her own secrets wrapped like mist around her heart. Forget the telepath, the fiery red hair, the enticing, green-eyed sparkling smile... Maybe it was something genetic, some kind of fatal flaw built into me when Fate had given me too much, far more than one man deserved, but I was fixated upon that woman as if I were a moth and her telepathic soul was the blood-red flame that drew me in. Did I wrest myself from Apocalypse only to give myself over to her?

Of course, from the beginning, it was all bound to end in anger and jealously and betrayal and outrage.

And it did.

*****

And now we move past the background and come to the beginning.

It was in flight, in battle, in confrontation. Long past my falling out with the group. The details are no longer clear to me, even now... Does it matter? We were fighting. Apocalypse in the shadows at one end of the battle, and my team mates at the forefront of the fray. I had the air – the sky was mine - but Summers felled me with a blast that was enough to rend soul from body.

I fell.

Damn him. Damn him.

Blackness... death... something else... An odd moment, where I seemed to come face to face with myself, with what I had been, what I had become, and I saw myself flinch away.

And then I was falling again, the sounds of the battle lost in the roaring in my ears, and I tumbled into oblivion long before I hit the ground.

*****

There is an ironic symmetry to fate. In the end, the scales are balanced. If you are given too much, it will be taken away. If you suffer too deeply, you will receive redemption. Sometimes you go a long circle through hell only to come back to the beginning and be restored.

"Warren."

My name. My name on an unfamiliar voice.

"Warren."

No one really called me that anymore.

"Warren, can you hear me?"

"I think he's coming around..."

"Warren...?"

My eyes opened. A woman, beautiful woman leaned over me. Asian woman, deep purple hair, a scrawl of red etched over her left eye. Her hand on my face and her smile lighting with relief as I met her gaze. "Warren, thank god! Are you all right?" Her voice, with its British accent, was oddly incongruous with her form.

"Hey, for a minute we thought you'd bought it, pal!" That was Drake, pushing his icy form near to clap a cold hand on my shoulder. "That Sentinel just about took your head off with that blast." I pushed them both away, staggered to my feet - stunned, puzzled, confused. "Wh- what...?" A strangled, inarticulate protest.

"Warren, what's wrong?"

This was wrong - they were wrong. Everything was different. I was not where I should have been, where I had been. The battle raging nearby was peopled with strange participants. And Drake's form was the silver smooth coating of ice he had not been able to master since... since before I became Death.

And this woman...

And...

And my wings...

I turned my head and saw my wings. Saw my soul, my redemption. Beautiful, white, feathered, soft. Real wings. Mine. Restored. Mine forever. Not lost, not gone, not too late. Never again, never again...

Something brushed my mind, butterfly-light and questioning, and then the woman leaped forward, her expression gone utterly grim, her fist raised and a shining blade of mental power projected outward. She knew.

"Betsy-!" Robert squeaked in protest, in surprise, and raised his hand to stop her. I opened my mouth to belch fire, lifted my clawless fingers to ward her away, but my old defenses were gone.

Then she was in my arms, this woman whom I instinctively knew had been my lover - what was this attraction I had for telepaths anyway? - and that psychic blade slashed into my mind with all the force of her anger, scrambling this reality or dream or whatever it was back into gibberish and darkness.

*****

Those many endless days and weeks and months with Apocalypse had not been spent in vain. When my master rebuilt me, made me into Death, he made me strong and sturdy and whatever else might have changed, I retained some of those traits. I was not easily defeated, not long in regaining my strength, and smarter than I was often given credit for.

The woman - Betsy - had very quickly understood that I was not the one she expected, and had moved decisively against me. Unfortunately for her, her team mates were not so quick-witted, and had moved just as decisively against her. She lay unconscious a short distance away, tended by a blue-furred creature that spoke with the voice of Hank McCoy, but seven times the wit.

"I don't know, Hank," Drake was babbling, "she just went crazy, attacked Warren - what else could I do? Was it the Crimson Dawn?"

I had been handed enough gifts in my lifetime to know when I was receiving one. While they huddled with misplaced concern over their comrade, I took to the sky before they had even turned to look at me.

Voices called to me, but I let the wind carry them away.

It was as easy as that.

Oh, it wasn't the end, not by any means. I knew they would come after me eventually, but for the moment, their hands were tied. They fought the strange robotic creatures with such fervency that I knew much was at stake - too much for them to abandon the fight to follow one fleeing member. Some day they would come for me, but not today.

*****

And now all the pieces of the puzzle fit.

I understood who I was, where I belonged, where I was. Even, in a less precise way, what had happened.

I remember the day Alex was almost killed... He plunged into the water, and we all thought (hoped?) he was dead. But with true Summers luck, he survived, went home with his loving wife and for several days babbled on about how he was not who we thought he was, he was from somewhere else, he didn't belong...

And little Scotty had suddenly insisted Alex was not his father...

And even Madelyne had confessed to me, during one of our secret trysts, that her husband had changed, Alex seemed different somehow, but perhaps a brush with death could do such things to you...

No. Brushes with Death created monsters such as me. Clawed monsters with leather batlike wings, creatures who breathe fire, and live forever bound to a thousand different nightmares their master has created just for them.

Madelyne may have danced with Death from time to time, but she knew nothing of it, really. That really was a different Alex Summers, a man from another place. And when he came over to my world, perhaps a doorway had remained open, waiting for a second synchronous moment to occur... How fitting that he should be the one to provide that moment.

For when Alex Summers, fearless leader of the Six, had struck me down from the sky, I thought I saw myself before losing consciousness. Not myself, after all, but my other half. My counterpart from this universe, this dimension, this place... whatever and wherever it was.

I care not. I have wings again, a soul again. I am no longer the "Fallen" - I am free.

Thus, the wheel of fate spins round. One day you are crushed beneath its yoke, and the next you are lifted skyward, redeemed, restored. But the balance must always be preserved. For each one who rises to glory, another must fall...

I have his place; he has mine.

fin.