In the world of Age of Apocalypse -- a reality created by Legion's attempt to kill Magneto, upending the time-stream and leading to a desolate world -- there are only a handful of heroic figures, each of whom has embraced darkness to survive the brutal lives they've been given. One of the most memorable heroes from the Age of Apocalypse was the storyline's particularly dark take on the typically optimistic teleporting member of the X-Men, Nightcrawler -- who ended up playing a surprisingly important role in the core-Marvel Universe of Earth-616 following the events of his original introduction.
In most versions of the Marvel Universe, Mystique ended up abandoning her son in an effort to stay alive and ahead of a band of murderous humans. But in the world that would eventually become the Age of Apocalypse, she kept her son -- and although their relationship would eventually become a tense one due to her mercenary ways, they remained on far better terms than most incarnations of their relationship -- with Nightcrawler never taking the surname Wagner and instead going by Kurt Darkholme. In this world where mutants became the dominant species through a violent uprising led by Apocalypse, Nightcrawler was one of the handfuls of heroic figures who joined up with Magneto's rebel X-Men, fighting for a world where humans and mutants could co-exist.
When the X-Men discovered a time-displaced Bishop and learned of how the world was supposed to be, the various mutant heroes were given unique missions to help ensure the timeline was restored -- with Nightcrawler and Mystique forced to extract Destiny from her home in the Savage Land. Nightcrawler was one of the X-Men who ultimately survived the final battle of his world and continued his work as an X-Man. However, the world was soon thrown into chaos again when the Logan of this reality was forced to use a Celestial Death Seed to become the new heir to Apocalypse. Nightcrawler was one of the only mutant heroes who were able to stay in the fight but grew even colder after his wife Linda was killed by the Blob.
Eventually, he and the rest of his remaining allies encountered the Uncanny X-Force of Earth-616, who'd forced Dark Beast to bring them there in search of a Life Seed. Nightcrawler became a reluctant ally of the Earth-616 heroes and eventually accompanied them to their home reality so he could hunt down the Iceman and Blob of his own world (who'd escape into Earth-616). This version of Nightcrawler resisted any attempts to truly befriend him -- with the other X-Men spurned on by the recent loss of their own Nightcrawler to make Kurt Darkholme feel more at home. Although they helped him hunt down and kill the traitorous Iceman, this Nightcrawler eventually betrayed his allies to the Earth-616 incarnation of Mystique.
In return, she gave up the Blob, who Nightcrawler killed by teleporting a shark directly into his stomach and allowing it to eat him from the inside. Going on the run from the mutants he'd betrayed, Nightcrawler ended up approaching Dark Beast once more in hopes of returning to their native world. Unfortunately, the attempts by Dark Beast resulted in a massive tear in the multiverse, threatening the stability of both Earth-616 and the Age of Apocalypse reality by allowing the Celestial-level threat called the Exterimantors to move into the worlds in X-Termination. Encountering a more hopeful counterpart of himself in the reality-hopping X-Treme X-Men's Kurt Waggoner, the Age of Apocalypse-Nightcrawler was humbled when he saw his more noble counterpart sacrifice his life to help stall the Exterminators.
Trapping the beings in the Age of Apocalypse reality and destroying it to fully and finally contain them, Nightcrawler used his powers to help seal the gate -- even though the act ultimately killed him in the process. In many ways, the Age of Apocalypse Nightcrawler was one of the few genuinely heroic figures from that dark universe, driven by grief to become a murderer and redeemed in his final moments.
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