Before you start reading this I'd like to make it clear that this is not a
story.  It is a character examination of Archangel before the X-men told 
him to stop being such a whiny ass about his metal wings.  That said, here it 
goes.

Strange and Hidden Faces
By Adam Bourret

  Before Apocalypse got his hands on me, I made it a point to study history.
After all, an adolescent rich boy with no real friends must find peace in 
something to me it was the roots of the world.  Something about them excited 
me, made me wonder why and how they happened or how they could be changed and 
what would happen if they were changed and so on and so on.  The facts and 
fantasies filled most of my childhood.  I have a lovely memory of sitting in 
the lavish basement of the Hellfire Club telling Shinobi Shaw what would have 
happened if Washington, in the midst of chopping down the cherry tree had 
accidentally landed the tree on himself.  It was my favorite scary story.  
Shinobi didn't find it as horrifying as I did.  Infact he laughed at the idea 
of accidentally killing yourself with a tree.  But even at my young age I was 
not surprised.  Shinobi was a twisted child.
  But that has become so much more than a scary story for me now.  I can 
still picture every right down to the perspiration on young Washington's face 
and the look in his eyes before the tree hits him.  What scared me as a child 
haunts me as an adult.  For after Washington's ribs are crunched under the 
tree's weight I see the Washington's hand is empty.  Apocalypse looms on the 
other side of the tree brandishing an axe.
  I have a deep paranoia, a hidden fear of everyone and everything around 
me.  I can no longer read my beloved history books as a child.  King John 
signing the Magna Carta pushing for a more peaceful race, Genghis Kahn slowly 
assimilating republics into his empire, the strange quivering man who tried 
to assassinate Reagan so that Jodie Foster would know his name.  They, and 
many more could all be Apocalypse.  Shaping the course of human history,
pushing us, ever so slightly into his oblivion.
  I have never shared these sick visions with any of my friends not even my 
closest companions. I still don't believe they can ever feel a sense of logic
in my fantasies. Perhaps you yourself see no logic present.  Why wouldn't he 
just come out and take the world with force?  Even I do not know the answer 
to that question and I supposed that sure be a sort of comfort to me.
  But still ...
  A hidden gunman stains Jackie Kennedy's suit with her husband's blood, 
someone decides that Caesar needs to be slain, an oracle at Delphi predicts 
exact futures withoutbatting an eyelash. Millions of people, people you know, 
you meet, you hear about, you pass on the street.
  Doesn't it thrill you?  Secretly thrill you that some of them, even one of
them, is Apocalypse?