Fic: Liberation
Title Liberation
Fandom X-Men: First Class
Pairings gen
Rating/warnings PG-13. Holocaust.
Word-count 2543
Summary The end of the war approaches.
Author’s notes Written as a part of a fic exchange with xbedhead. Selfbetaed. Today happens to be Holocaust Memorial Day, although my posting it today is something of a coincidence. (I always feel a little guilty when I write these kinds of fic, but I don't know quite why. To my mind, we should be able to address difficult matters in fic as well your usual fic material.)
They have been growing restless for weeks. They know that the Red Army is on its way. Erik has heard Schmidt talk about it with the other doctors. He has heard the guards outside the hut where they keep them between experiments muttering about it. He registers and knows it, but he cannot think of liberation and freedom. All he can think of is pain - his own in the present, and Schmidt’s, which is to come, provided he survives to inflict it. Schmidt has spent almost a year figuring out how to hurt someone without using metal. In the beginning, when his powers were not as focused, they still used it - scalpels and needles and instruments he does not know the name of. Now that his abilities have grown so strong, they have instead searched for new methods. They find them easily - whips, glass-shards, cigarettes. His usefulness as a test-subject is coming to an end, that much he knows. They are giving him even less food than usual, and he thinks that his body is forgetting completely how to digest it. One of the glass-cuts on his foot has become infected. He can only walk if he stays leaned against the wall. Soon, he knows, very soon it will be over. It is simply a question whether he or the camp will continue longer.
That day, he does not see why they bring him to Schmidt’s rooms. They leave him lying on the table, and do not even bother to strap him down. Schmidt stays in his office - he must be in a hurry, because even if he is at the desk, he does not bother to sit down. From where he lies, Erik watches him sorting through the files the nurse (the one with a mole on her cheek) is taking from the filing-cabinet. He has never seen Schmidt like this before. He is used to his open-hearted, cruel grin, or his eyes turned dark with anger, but has never seen him distressed. The doctor throws file upon file onto the floor, where the nurse collects them and leaves with them. On occasion, Schmidt looks out of the window and swears under his breath. When the doctor opens it, Erik can smell smoke, not from the crematoria but from the bonfire the Medical Corps is making of their files. One of his first memories - he must have been three or four - is of a book-burning. Now the Nazis are burning their own science.
The nurse comes back again, beating soot off her apron. The stain seems to annoy her more than any splatter of blood has. Schmidt says something to her, and the nurse glances towards Erik. He remembers her name now - Greta Färke. If he lives long enough, he will kill her as well as Schmidt.
Schmidt throws the last folder on the floor and puts the few documents he is saving in his briefcase. With a few swift words he sends her away again. She takes the last folders and leaves. Schmidt locks the door behind her.
He stands there for a moment, frozen at the door. When he steps into his research room, there is something like defeat about how he moves. He stops beside the table, where he has stood so many times before. He flattens his hands against the surface and leans against it.
‘Ach, Erik,’ he sighs and chuckles. ‘Das hat uns so viel Spaß gemacht...’ He always talks about the experiments as fun games, but the way he says it now makes Erik realise that they are a thing of the past. Schmidt looks him in the eye, and however much he wants to he cannot look away. He wonders if he looks the same to Schmidt as he did that day he was first brought to his office, or if he is simply another shaven-headed and hollow-cheeked ghost, dressed in a prisoner’s uniform which does not fit. He wraps his arms around himself, hoping it will stop the constant tremble of his body. It continues, and Schmidt’s jaw tightens.
His hand goes to his pocket, and he draws out a gun, the same Luger as he shot Erik’s mother with a lifetime ago. Schmidt does not look away from him as he unlocks the safety catch and then straightens his arm. The muzzle of the gun becomes a blur as it passes close to his eye, and the cold circle of metal is pressed against his forehead. Even with Schmidt’s hand obscuring most of his vision he sees him watching him, prompting him with his eyes. Why does he not shoot?
And then he realises what that look means. This is a test, like everything else. He is giving him a choice. He is giving him one final opportunity to prove himself. Or is Schmidt wavering - deferring the final choice onto his victim? But he must know that Erik could not deflect a bullet now. If Schmidt had come at him with a syringe he does not know if he would be able to even bend the needle or turn it upon Schmidt himself. The opening of the barrel presses harder against his skin. He can feel it leaving a mark, as clearly as he can feel the metal of the gun and the bullets. There is banging on the door - Schmidt’s cronies, the fat one and the weaselly one, shout about that they have to go now. Erik feels the trigger move a little, but not enough. He wonders if he has the strength to push it.
But Schmidt swears under his breath and the pressure on his forehead is gone. He throws the gun away, as if it has burnt him, and grabs Erik under the arms. Erik tries to push him off, but he drags him off the table and over the floor to the emptied medicine cabinet. As he opens it, he lets Erik down and only holds him by the collar. Then he takes him around the waist and lifts him into the cabinet. Erik screams in protest and puts his arm out to stop the door from closing. It strikes his hand hard, and he feels something in his wrist splintering. The pain strengthens him, and for a moment, he thinks that he will be able to rip the lock off the door, but before he has time, he hears a padlock snap shut, and the strength dissipates. There are retreating footsteps, a door unlocking, people shouting. Then there is silence - Schmidt is gone.
Erik looks around, but sees nothing. No light leaks into the cupboard. He sobs, but cannot cry. The shaking breaths become one with the nervous tremble.
He does not know if time passes. He loses track of his own state of consciousness. The pain in his wrist and his foot and his gut mingle, and he does not know anymore which parts of him does not hurt. His legs, bent precariously at the knees to fit in the cupboard, fall asleep. He thinks of his mother and his father and the sun. He thinks of God. Perhaps this is dying, at last.
But then, somewhere, there are sounds. Footsteps, he realises, and suddenly he knows that he is awake. Voices - people moving around. He calls out - ‘Hilfe, Hilfe!’ - and then does not even bother to form words, but simply screams, as loudly as he can. The person on the other side of the door shouts in surprise, and he hears them beating at the lock. He feels the padlock being knocked off. The doors open, and light streams in, blinding him. A pair of arms reach in and grab him. The rank batches on the sleeves are German.
He continues shouting, and he tries to kick out at the two guards. A part of him does not know what he is doing - if they wanted him dead, they could have left him in the cupboard, but they would never want him anything else than dead, so why are they lifting him up? One of them carries him out of Schmidt’s office. He stops On occasion and makes sure that his head is still leaning against his shoulder. The other man points to his broken wrist. Erik wonders if he is imagining all this. They must be taking him out into the open to kill him. He loses consciousness.
When he wakes again, he is wrapped in blankets, and someone is splinting his wrist. It hurts, but is a relief nevertheless. The man doing it - a German soldier, he realises - tells him to scream if it makes it better. Erik keeps silent. He does not know where he is. When he looks around, he sees rows of bundles of filthy blankets. There are people under them - children. He wonders if they are dead, but then he realises that he can hear crying, and he knows it is not his. Some of the blankets are moving. There is a shout from the door. The soldier ties a knot on the bandage and goes to help. There is another soldier in the door, and in his arms a girl so thin she might have been made from sticks and wire. The man carrying her looks terrified, and his friend sighs and shakes his head. He carries her away again.
Erik looks around the room and realises that if they took away the dead girl, then this is not a place for dead people. He reflects on the army medic splinting his wrist. Not long ago (how long was he in the cupboard - weeks? days? hours?) they wanted to kill him. Now, they are helping them.
He listens to the soldiers and the other children. Most of the guards have fled. The adult prisoners are all gone, left on foot. The young and the dying were left behind. Now the ones who chose to stay are trying to collect the children from the vast camp and bringing them here. They are keeping them alive - they know the Russians will be here soon.
Erik does not understand why someone can go from killing to saving so quickly. It is not from kindness, he knows. The guards who stay on are not good, but not outright cruel anymore. Most of all, they all seem broken inside. One night, one of them sit close to Erik’s cot, a rosary between his clasped hands as he whispers prayers, asking to be forgiven his sins. If there were any justice in this world, he should be struck down just for that. But Erik is too weak, and he cannot memorise the man’s face. He lets him go - he spares just this one. He doesn’t feel right. They have cut up his foot to get rid of the pus, but it feels like it is coming back. His head is heavy, and everything around him feels so sharp. He realises in the morning that there are spots on his hands. The next day the child to his right dies from typhus.
All he can remember later of when the Russians come is that they shoot the man who had been asking God to forgive him. He wonders at the time if the liberation is just a hallucination brought on by the fever.
When it breaks, he is in a car or a buss. He cannot tell, only that it is moving and that the vehicle stinks. He wonders where they are moving him, and who “they” are now. Before falling asleep again, he thinks that perhaps he will not die from typhus after all.
He wakes again. Footsteps on tiles - arms carrying him. The smell of soap. He panics and tries to twist out of the grip. He knows what showers mean - he has heard the stories... But the grip is too tight, and before he can try to break it, they arrive. There are no showers, only battered metal bathtubs. They do not bother taking off his clothes, but instead rips them. The threads in the fabric yield easily. They lower him into one of the tubs, and the water turns grey around him. Beside him stands a woman in a white headscarf and a red cross on her sleeve. As she kneels and starts scrubbing him clean, he asks her in German if this is a hospital. She does not answer, and only addresses the other nurses in Polish.
Later, he finds himself in a bed, with real sheets and an actual bedstead. He is in a ward - he had been right, after all. Between the beds move nurses with syringes and medicines and bedpans, and doctors with stethoscopes and stately frowns. The doctor who comes to Erik’s bed wears spectacles, which make him look a little like Schmidt. Erik tries to get out of bed and hide, but he can barely sit. The doctor presses him down and asks him something in Russian, then in Polish. Finally he asks:
‘Wie alt bist du?’ When he does not answer straight away, the doctor suggests: ‘Zwölf?’ Twelve?
He is fifteen.
The hospital ward is like Schmidt’s cupboard in that Erik does not know if time really passes. He can fall asleep and not know when he wakes up if he has slept the night or just a few minutes. For the most part, he does not sleep at all - staying awake is the only way to keep the nightmares at bay. They give him medicines to calm him, but even when the chemicals are tugging at him to give in, he fights it. He does not want to see Schmidt leering at him, or the mass-grave he took him to see once, or the carpet in the office which bore a big stain of his mother’s blood. His wrist heals, and they manage to stop the infection in his foot. They make him eat, at first only soup and broth and lumps of sugar, then slowly proper food. One day one of the doctor claps his hands to call everyone’s attention and announces in several languages that Hitler has shot himself. After several days, he does it again to tell them that peace has been declared in Europe. Erik realises only later in the day that this means that he survived the war. He does not know how it makes him feel, but he starts to be aware of the existence of feelings again. They are not the same as before the war or before Auschwitz - it could never be - but there is something. He starts feeling alive.
A few weeks later, the doctor with the spectacles tells him that he is strong enough now that they should find him something to keep him occupied, and is there anything he particularly wants to do? Erik balls his hands into fists and stares at them. Of course there is. He wants to learn how to shoot, and how to fight, and how to manipulate metal faster and more precisely than Schmidt imagined he could. But he cannot ask for those things, and even if he could, he is still too weak for them. Instead, he makes up a list of languages he wants to learn.
Fandom X-Men: First Class
Pairings gen
Rating/warnings PG-13. Holocaust.
Word-count 2543
Summary The end of the war approaches.
Author’s notes Written as a part of a fic exchange with xbedhead. Selfbetaed. Today happens to be Holocaust Memorial Day, although my posting it today is something of a coincidence. (I always feel a little guilty when I write these kinds of fic, but I don't know quite why. To my mind, we should be able to address difficult matters in fic as well your usual fic material.)
They have been growing restless for weeks. They know that the Red Army is on its way. Erik has heard Schmidt talk about it with the other doctors. He has heard the guards outside the hut where they keep them between experiments muttering about it. He registers and knows it, but he cannot think of liberation and freedom. All he can think of is pain - his own in the present, and Schmidt’s, which is to come, provided he survives to inflict it. Schmidt has spent almost a year figuring out how to hurt someone without using metal. In the beginning, when his powers were not as focused, they still used it - scalpels and needles and instruments he does not know the name of. Now that his abilities have grown so strong, they have instead searched for new methods. They find them easily - whips, glass-shards, cigarettes. His usefulness as a test-subject is coming to an end, that much he knows. They are giving him even less food than usual, and he thinks that his body is forgetting completely how to digest it. One of the glass-cuts on his foot has become infected. He can only walk if he stays leaned against the wall. Soon, he knows, very soon it will be over. It is simply a question whether he or the camp will continue longer.
That day, he does not see why they bring him to Schmidt’s rooms. They leave him lying on the table, and do not even bother to strap him down. Schmidt stays in his office - he must be in a hurry, because even if he is at the desk, he does not bother to sit down. From where he lies, Erik watches him sorting through the files the nurse (the one with a mole on her cheek) is taking from the filing-cabinet. He has never seen Schmidt like this before. He is used to his open-hearted, cruel grin, or his eyes turned dark with anger, but has never seen him distressed. The doctor throws file upon file onto the floor, where the nurse collects them and leaves with them. On occasion, Schmidt looks out of the window and swears under his breath. When the doctor opens it, Erik can smell smoke, not from the crematoria but from the bonfire the Medical Corps is making of their files. One of his first memories - he must have been three or four - is of a book-burning. Now the Nazis are burning their own science.
The nurse comes back again, beating soot off her apron. The stain seems to annoy her more than any splatter of blood has. Schmidt says something to her, and the nurse glances towards Erik. He remembers her name now - Greta Färke. If he lives long enough, he will kill her as well as Schmidt.
Schmidt throws the last folder on the floor and puts the few documents he is saving in his briefcase. With a few swift words he sends her away again. She takes the last folders and leaves. Schmidt locks the door behind her.
He stands there for a moment, frozen at the door. When he steps into his research room, there is something like defeat about how he moves. He stops beside the table, where he has stood so many times before. He flattens his hands against the surface and leans against it.
‘Ach, Erik,’ he sighs and chuckles. ‘Das hat uns so viel Spaß gemacht...’ He always talks about the experiments as fun games, but the way he says it now makes Erik realise that they are a thing of the past. Schmidt looks him in the eye, and however much he wants to he cannot look away. He wonders if he looks the same to Schmidt as he did that day he was first brought to his office, or if he is simply another shaven-headed and hollow-cheeked ghost, dressed in a prisoner’s uniform which does not fit. He wraps his arms around himself, hoping it will stop the constant tremble of his body. It continues, and Schmidt’s jaw tightens.
His hand goes to his pocket, and he draws out a gun, the same Luger as he shot Erik’s mother with a lifetime ago. Schmidt does not look away from him as he unlocks the safety catch and then straightens his arm. The muzzle of the gun becomes a blur as it passes close to his eye, and the cold circle of metal is pressed against his forehead. Even with Schmidt’s hand obscuring most of his vision he sees him watching him, prompting him with his eyes. Why does he not shoot?
And then he realises what that look means. This is a test, like everything else. He is giving him a choice. He is giving him one final opportunity to prove himself. Or is Schmidt wavering - deferring the final choice onto his victim? But he must know that Erik could not deflect a bullet now. If Schmidt had come at him with a syringe he does not know if he would be able to even bend the needle or turn it upon Schmidt himself. The opening of the barrel presses harder against his skin. He can feel it leaving a mark, as clearly as he can feel the metal of the gun and the bullets. There is banging on the door - Schmidt’s cronies, the fat one and the weaselly one, shout about that they have to go now. Erik feels the trigger move a little, but not enough. He wonders if he has the strength to push it.
But Schmidt swears under his breath and the pressure on his forehead is gone. He throws the gun away, as if it has burnt him, and grabs Erik under the arms. Erik tries to push him off, but he drags him off the table and over the floor to the emptied medicine cabinet. As he opens it, he lets Erik down and only holds him by the collar. Then he takes him around the waist and lifts him into the cabinet. Erik screams in protest and puts his arm out to stop the door from closing. It strikes his hand hard, and he feels something in his wrist splintering. The pain strengthens him, and for a moment, he thinks that he will be able to rip the lock off the door, but before he has time, he hears a padlock snap shut, and the strength dissipates. There are retreating footsteps, a door unlocking, people shouting. Then there is silence - Schmidt is gone.
Erik looks around, but sees nothing. No light leaks into the cupboard. He sobs, but cannot cry. The shaking breaths become one with the nervous tremble.
He does not know if time passes. He loses track of his own state of consciousness. The pain in his wrist and his foot and his gut mingle, and he does not know anymore which parts of him does not hurt. His legs, bent precariously at the knees to fit in the cupboard, fall asleep. He thinks of his mother and his father and the sun. He thinks of God. Perhaps this is dying, at last.
But then, somewhere, there are sounds. Footsteps, he realises, and suddenly he knows that he is awake. Voices - people moving around. He calls out - ‘Hilfe, Hilfe!’ - and then does not even bother to form words, but simply screams, as loudly as he can. The person on the other side of the door shouts in surprise, and he hears them beating at the lock. He feels the padlock being knocked off. The doors open, and light streams in, blinding him. A pair of arms reach in and grab him. The rank batches on the sleeves are German.
He continues shouting, and he tries to kick out at the two guards. A part of him does not know what he is doing - if they wanted him dead, they could have left him in the cupboard, but they would never want him anything else than dead, so why are they lifting him up? One of them carries him out of Schmidt’s office. He stops On occasion and makes sure that his head is still leaning against his shoulder. The other man points to his broken wrist. Erik wonders if he is imagining all this. They must be taking him out into the open to kill him. He loses consciousness.
When he wakes again, he is wrapped in blankets, and someone is splinting his wrist. It hurts, but is a relief nevertheless. The man doing it - a German soldier, he realises - tells him to scream if it makes it better. Erik keeps silent. He does not know where he is. When he looks around, he sees rows of bundles of filthy blankets. There are people under them - children. He wonders if they are dead, but then he realises that he can hear crying, and he knows it is not his. Some of the blankets are moving. There is a shout from the door. The soldier ties a knot on the bandage and goes to help. There is another soldier in the door, and in his arms a girl so thin she might have been made from sticks and wire. The man carrying her looks terrified, and his friend sighs and shakes his head. He carries her away again.
Erik looks around the room and realises that if they took away the dead girl, then this is not a place for dead people. He reflects on the army medic splinting his wrist. Not long ago (how long was he in the cupboard - weeks? days? hours?) they wanted to kill him. Now, they are helping them.
He listens to the soldiers and the other children. Most of the guards have fled. The adult prisoners are all gone, left on foot. The young and the dying were left behind. Now the ones who chose to stay are trying to collect the children from the vast camp and bringing them here. They are keeping them alive - they know the Russians will be here soon.
Erik does not understand why someone can go from killing to saving so quickly. It is not from kindness, he knows. The guards who stay on are not good, but not outright cruel anymore. Most of all, they all seem broken inside. One night, one of them sit close to Erik’s cot, a rosary between his clasped hands as he whispers prayers, asking to be forgiven his sins. If there were any justice in this world, he should be struck down just for that. But Erik is too weak, and he cannot memorise the man’s face. He lets him go - he spares just this one. He doesn’t feel right. They have cut up his foot to get rid of the pus, but it feels like it is coming back. His head is heavy, and everything around him feels so sharp. He realises in the morning that there are spots on his hands. The next day the child to his right dies from typhus.
All he can remember later of when the Russians come is that they shoot the man who had been asking God to forgive him. He wonders at the time if the liberation is just a hallucination brought on by the fever.
When it breaks, he is in a car or a buss. He cannot tell, only that it is moving and that the vehicle stinks. He wonders where they are moving him, and who “they” are now. Before falling asleep again, he thinks that perhaps he will not die from typhus after all.
He wakes again. Footsteps on tiles - arms carrying him. The smell of soap. He panics and tries to twist out of the grip. He knows what showers mean - he has heard the stories... But the grip is too tight, and before he can try to break it, they arrive. There are no showers, only battered metal bathtubs. They do not bother taking off his clothes, but instead rips them. The threads in the fabric yield easily. They lower him into one of the tubs, and the water turns grey around him. Beside him stands a woman in a white headscarf and a red cross on her sleeve. As she kneels and starts scrubbing him clean, he asks her in German if this is a hospital. She does not answer, and only addresses the other nurses in Polish.
Later, he finds himself in a bed, with real sheets and an actual bedstead. He is in a ward - he had been right, after all. Between the beds move nurses with syringes and medicines and bedpans, and doctors with stethoscopes and stately frowns. The doctor who comes to Erik’s bed wears spectacles, which make him look a little like Schmidt. Erik tries to get out of bed and hide, but he can barely sit. The doctor presses him down and asks him something in Russian, then in Polish. Finally he asks:
‘Wie alt bist du?’ When he does not answer straight away, the doctor suggests: ‘Zwölf?’ Twelve?
He is fifteen.
The hospital ward is like Schmidt’s cupboard in that Erik does not know if time really passes. He can fall asleep and not know when he wakes up if he has slept the night or just a few minutes. For the most part, he does not sleep at all - staying awake is the only way to keep the nightmares at bay. They give him medicines to calm him, but even when the chemicals are tugging at him to give in, he fights it. He does not want to see Schmidt leering at him, or the mass-grave he took him to see once, or the carpet in the office which bore a big stain of his mother’s blood. His wrist heals, and they manage to stop the infection in his foot. They make him eat, at first only soup and broth and lumps of sugar, then slowly proper food. One day one of the doctor claps his hands to call everyone’s attention and announces in several languages that Hitler has shot himself. After several days, he does it again to tell them that peace has been declared in Europe. Erik realises only later in the day that this means that he survived the war. He does not know how it makes him feel, but he starts to be aware of the existence of feelings again. They are not the same as before the war or before Auschwitz - it could never be - but there is something. He starts feeling alive.
A few weeks later, the doctor with the spectacles tells him that he is strong enough now that they should find him something to keep him occupied, and is there anything he particularly wants to do? Erik balls his hands into fists and stares at them. Of course there is. He wants to learn how to shoot, and how to fight, and how to manipulate metal faster and more precisely than Schmidt imagined he could. But he cannot ask for those things, and even if he could, he is still too weak for them. Instead, he makes up a list of languages he wants to learn.