For makes_asteroids in the 5 Things Meme, "5 Times Genreal really hated Erik"
This is all set in xprofessor's X-Men AU universe. Meme is here.
Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with…nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated…
1.
When Erik returns to Auschwitz, he is flying. Charles strides after him in a miniature British uniform, a smudge of impossible cleanliness against the world, but as starvelings drop their burdens and stare at the young man whipping through the wind, raising his hands to rip buildings apart, Daniel only has eyes for Erik. He cries out, calls out, hands raised in reverent mimicry, prayers on his lips, jubilation, salvation, thank you Lord my God for this.
And Erik does not look at him, though he is everywhere. He rips the scaffolding from the headquarters, the officer’s mess, the guards’ barracks, the factories where the prisoner-laborers die crushed under concrete or between the teeth of their gear-making machines, flinging debris heedless of anyone in the way - anyone except his pale companion, who flinches away from them with wide-eyes and sick pity in his face, who tilts his head and says nothing, and for him, for that, Erik tilts his head back, listens, shifts course.
The guards pay Daniel no mind, for all that they’ve paused in their work, too busy shooting at the gleaming, well-fed children who will not be shot. Bullets and barbed wire and dull pipes skewer their tormentors, Aryan blood as red as anyone’s. He turns on the prisoners’ barracks when he can’t find what he’s looking for, the ovens, the showers. And when every building is torn down and cast aside in pieces, Erik snarls in fury and frustration, grabs up his accomplice, and vanishes to a dot in the sky as quickly as he came.
Daniel is stunned, motionless, gaping in confusion until a jolt of fear makes him move. He left them, left them like this without a thought, peppered with slaughtered guards in the middle of Nazi Europe. No more supplies would be coming, Daniel thinks numbly as he pries a gun out of cold-rigid, death-rigid gloves, the gun almost as tall as he is. There are no buildings left to huddle in at night, no walls to make a stand behind when they came to reclaim it so they have to move, he ponders as they run to the wrecked storerooms and gathering up everything they can carry, gulping down raw handfuls of thin flower where the bags burst open on the ground. But they have nowhere, nowhere to go, and they stare warily at the girls who crawl, shaking, not quite so skeletal as the rest, from the ruins of the officers mess, but they have been listening to the radio, and enough of those who shouted and strode and took charge in the first few moments listen, and Daniel points the gun at the ground.
There’s nowhere to go, just like Evian, just like always; South takes them out of occupied territory and into the arms of Axis allies, East is an inescapable war zone, North is nothing but Nazis until the sea.
The closest neutral country is Switzerland to the West, across the whole of greater Germany.
So this is the freedom he leaves to them, on a scrambling desperate march none of them will survive. They go West.
There’s a little bit of Poland left before they get to Germany, and they flow into the little towns like a river swollen and roaring in spring. There are a few Nazis in the first one to mind the trains, way-station to hell, and for every prisoner they shoot there are a dozen more, teeth-bared with claws for hands, to tear them limb from limb. Daniel howls, all mob and frenzy, then pulls back to himself.
When they get to Germany they will steal, they will beat windows and doors in with rocks, they will take coats and boots and any food they can hold, but for now the remains from the camp stores will serve them, and even so meager they feel like riches, enough to share with the staring Poles, and the weakest, the ill, the injured, stay with them for better or for ill, telling stories of how they came this way, the boy who leveled the power of nations, who flew. Messiah, messiah starts in whispers, and God is always cruel to him, and as he marches on to face his murderer, the beaten, growling beast of Daniel’s hatred curls up deep in his chest, finding other bones to gnaw awhile.
2.
Daniel barely stretches over his new arms and legs, still tiny next to everyone else but his body feels large to him, real and solid and rough like it’s never been before, the weight of earth in his footsteps, the scrape of his first hint of stubble like the scratch of sand on the wind. He trips over his gawking, teenage bones as he runs through the hallways of power, careening straight into America, who catches him with a laugh and warm hands that have more farmers’ calluses than soldiers’.
“Call me Alfred,” he says to Daniel’s stuttered sir, blue-eyed and blond but nothing like Germany at all, wide smiles and too much energy shining like a beacon in the war-weary committees as he bounces on the balls of his feet.
Boy deserves a place of his own, America and England mutter at each other in a way that would be bickering if it weren’t so very somber. They say it louder and glare around the globe, England’s green eyes flashing something much younger and bluer, and his new neighbors fidget and hiss and back down. Even Russia agrees, with a grin like an arc of blood on ice, his giant palm patting Daniel’s back over the scars, booming and gentle and Daniel’s skin crawls.
He ought to be grateful to England, England and his dash of blue, round-faced child younger than Daniel, who really won the war, but he can’t manage it, not for perfidious Albion. Not with Irgun holding his spine straight, we will fight the Nazis as if there were no British, and we will fight the British as if there were no Nazis, senseless and futile and brave, refusing to be kept even by kinder, gentler masters. Besides, England just wants to get rid of him, troublesome thing that he’s become, and more volatile than ever as brown-tattered refugees and brightly colored miracle creatures pour in. When Alfred says you are a marvelous people and you have more than earned this, he means it, he believes it, he has Justice Brandeis at his side.
Daniel leans into him, all nervous teenage energy as he starts to come alive again, caught in Alfred’s twinkling eyes, hands tight on his strong shoulders, face tipping up, breath to breath -
They rip apart at the buttons and buckles and zippers, Erik another spindly teenager in the doorway, heavy boots silent an inch off the ground, glowering.
Daniel quails while America puffs up with indignation, but Erik grabs Daniel by his shirt collar and drags them back to their rooms.
“He doesn’t give a damn about you,” Erik snarled, ignoring Daniel’s feeble protests. “America’s unscathed, in a position to be the next world power, but England has the edge on him thanks to us.”
And Daniel knows, in his bones, that Magneto does not mean Israelis. He means mutants.
“He wants our power and he’ll take advantage of your stupid crush to get it. Don’t go near him again.”
And that’s it, that’s his boss voice even though the titles haven’t been ironed out yet, and - and he has to believe Erik, he does, it’s not like Daniel can trust America just because he’s being charming now, but Daniel hates Erik for it anyway, just a little. Even if he’s right - he is right - did he have to say it like that, your stupid crush, the second person Daniel’s ever fallen for in four hundred years after the first one just finished stomping on his heart in the same steel-tipped boots Magneto wears.
But all he says is, “Okay,” and “I’m sorry,” and “I won’t.”
3.
Charles is dead, Charles who washed his hair when it grew back in ragged while Erik still couldn’t be in the same room with him, Charles who stroked soft hands over his face and said we will make such a home here and everyone you are is beautiful even when Daniel knows he’s not. His eyes are red like they haven’t been in decades, whipping autumn rains trailing flash floods in their wake, baked soil unable to absorb his tears.
But people die, people always die, loved ones most of all, and the settlers still need to be fed and housed and trained, and the children taught they can hold their heads high now, and Charles’s old duties dispersed to ministers and colonels while the flags fly half-mast. Israel is a country well-practiced at grief.
He slips into Magneto’s office, ignoring demands that he be left alone, his hands full of decent brandy he’d dug up god knows where, and latkes with a bit of sour cream that he needed three tries to fry properly without screaming and letting them burn, and a clipboard of refugee projections and housing plans and maps because somebody had to decide. He sets the comfort food and the drink on Magneto’s desk, trying not to cluck at how wan he’s gone because even if Daniel always worries, he probably looks just as awful right now.
He stands on tiptoes, barely gets “I brought you -” out of his mouth before Magneto flings the plate at him in a rage, cheap ceramic cracking against Daniel’s occipital bone as he scuttles backward.
“GET OUT,” Magneto roars, and Daniel knows he just means of the office, but the words still hit a fault line inside him, a shockwave of pain and fear and furious loathing quaking through him.
Another country, a stronger country, a country who felt as independent as Magneto tells him he is would have stood up then, blood running down his face, spat no, not this time, he will not be cast when he finally has a home, but Israel is not that country, so he scurry-crawls for the door, curls himself in the hallway with his palm shoved against the gash over his eye until the bleeding slows.
The hissing, tearing, venomous creature rears up inside him but he swallows it down, makes it coil and slumber in a heavy lump, because Magneto is the only savior he has left.
He washes himself off and goes to ask Emma.
4.
“Magneto,” Daniel says coldly, slapping the papers down, the new policy stark as the fresh ink on the pages. A law exempting mutants from prosecution for any accidental use of their powers, a system that makes it almost impossible to even allege purposefulness. For all intents and purposes he has two kinds of courts now, for two kinds of citizens. Mutants and humans can each settle affairs among themselves, but where the twain shall meet, mutants can do anything they like, and his people will have no redress.
They’re all your people, he tries to remind himself, but it’s hard, without Charles to smooth the differences, to hold these grafted-on ducklings to his breast, hard to look at one more overclass like so many others and call them his own.
“This has to change.” The Knesset has wrangled and hollered over it, but they hardly matter, and everyone knows it.
Magneto raises one eyebrow, so high it vanishes beneath the gleaming curve of his helmet.
“Does it now.”
“I won’t put up with this,” Daniel growls, even though his stomach feels like thin sea-ice, bitter cold, constantly breaking and churning. He clenches his fists at his sides to prevent them from trembling. “I will not be treated as an inferior in my own home, Sir.”
Magneto blinks slowly.
“This law isn’t even about you.”
“It means humans -“ Magneto doesn’t even let him finish.
“You’re not human.”
“They’re mine!” Daniel shouts, and he’s shaking all over now but he doesn’t fucking care. “They’re all mine, the Sabra and Ashkenazim and Sephardim and Mizrahim and even the Druze and Arab Christians and Muslims, they’re my people, and you treat them like -” And it’s so much more than this law, so many cold remarks, so many segregations Emma or Ben-Gurion mitigated, and Israel can’t take it anymore, a mob outside the capitol building, with signs and shouting and stubbornness, rambunctious but not violent, between rage and serenity. They won’t back down until he listens, he won’t -
Magneto backhands Israel hard across the face as the wrought iron fence cleaves a bloody swathe through the crowd.
“You wouldn’t even have a home if it weren’t for mutants protecting you, you ungrateful little shit,” Magneto snarls. “You wouldn’t have them, either. You'd all be fucking cinders without me, how dare you speak to me like that?” It goes on, boots in his ribs like the rhythm of a song he remembers from childhood, second verse same as the first. Of course the law is unequal, humans are inferior by definition, and Daniel is an unworthy, short-sighted fool for pretending otherwise. He’s fucking lucky Magneto deigns to take care of the Jews anyway, just for history's sake but they will know their place. He squeezes his eyes shut and wraps his arms over his ears, pretending he is merely protecting his head while something in him shrieks and roars and flings itself against the battered gate of his sternum.
5.
“He didn’t even want to save you!”
“You’re lying,” Daniel says flatly because even though something old and bitter in him sits up and remembers, it’s still unthinkable, it’s blasphemy, and his face goes stony with refusal. He can’t believe it. He can’t.
Charles is staring at him, hand half-way to clapping over his own mouth, eyes wide again, all pity and regret, but he can’t take it back, can’t deny it to spare him or Daniel will hold the slanderous lie against him forever. The only way out is through.
So Charles lowers his hand, shakes his head, so slowly, so sad.
“I wish I was,” and it comes out choked, because how much of his life has he wished Erik was a better man than he is? And then Charles draws Israel into his mind, the memories crisp and black-and-white like the reels of hidden British intelligence surveillance footage that leaks and races and roars across his media before Magneto can tear the towers down, the boy who flew, young again, ill-fed and sullen and curled into a corner. I don’t want to fight for anyone but me. And Charles says, How about for me?, and Erik takes his hand, and agrees, and never cared for Daniel at all.
Charles realizes too late the full force of the knowledge he has unleashed. He wanted to sway Daniel, not convulse him, Charles is small-minded and sentimental and selfish enough to love Erik still, but Daniel doesn’t care, not anymore. All Charles’s desperate cries for peace and all the mutant bodyguards in the world cannot deter him now.
Erik will not survive this revolution.
Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with…nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated…
1.
When Erik returns to Auschwitz, he is flying. Charles strides after him in a miniature British uniform, a smudge of impossible cleanliness against the world, but as starvelings drop their burdens and stare at the young man whipping through the wind, raising his hands to rip buildings apart, Daniel only has eyes for Erik. He cries out, calls out, hands raised in reverent mimicry, prayers on his lips, jubilation, salvation, thank you Lord my God for this.
And Erik does not look at him, though he is everywhere. He rips the scaffolding from the headquarters, the officer’s mess, the guards’ barracks, the factories where the prisoner-laborers die crushed under concrete or between the teeth of their gear-making machines, flinging debris heedless of anyone in the way - anyone except his pale companion, who flinches away from them with wide-eyes and sick pity in his face, who tilts his head and says nothing, and for him, for that, Erik tilts his head back, listens, shifts course.
The guards pay Daniel no mind, for all that they’ve paused in their work, too busy shooting at the gleaming, well-fed children who will not be shot. Bullets and barbed wire and dull pipes skewer their tormentors, Aryan blood as red as anyone’s. He turns on the prisoners’ barracks when he can’t find what he’s looking for, the ovens, the showers. And when every building is torn down and cast aside in pieces, Erik snarls in fury and frustration, grabs up his accomplice, and vanishes to a dot in the sky as quickly as he came.
Daniel is stunned, motionless, gaping in confusion until a jolt of fear makes him move. He left them, left them like this without a thought, peppered with slaughtered guards in the middle of Nazi Europe. No more supplies would be coming, Daniel thinks numbly as he pries a gun out of cold-rigid, death-rigid gloves, the gun almost as tall as he is. There are no buildings left to huddle in at night, no walls to make a stand behind when they came to reclaim it so they have to move, he ponders as they run to the wrecked storerooms and gathering up everything they can carry, gulping down raw handfuls of thin flower where the bags burst open on the ground. But they have nowhere, nowhere to go, and they stare warily at the girls who crawl, shaking, not quite so skeletal as the rest, from the ruins of the officers mess, but they have been listening to the radio, and enough of those who shouted and strode and took charge in the first few moments listen, and Daniel points the gun at the ground.
There’s nowhere to go, just like Evian, just like always; South takes them out of occupied territory and into the arms of Axis allies, East is an inescapable war zone, North is nothing but Nazis until the sea.
The closest neutral country is Switzerland to the West, across the whole of greater Germany.
So this is the freedom he leaves to them, on a scrambling desperate march none of them will survive. They go West.
There’s a little bit of Poland left before they get to Germany, and they flow into the little towns like a river swollen and roaring in spring. There are a few Nazis in the first one to mind the trains, way-station to hell, and for every prisoner they shoot there are a dozen more, teeth-bared with claws for hands, to tear them limb from limb. Daniel howls, all mob and frenzy, then pulls back to himself.
When they get to Germany they will steal, they will beat windows and doors in with rocks, they will take coats and boots and any food they can hold, but for now the remains from the camp stores will serve them, and even so meager they feel like riches, enough to share with the staring Poles, and the weakest, the ill, the injured, stay with them for better or for ill, telling stories of how they came this way, the boy who leveled the power of nations, who flew. Messiah, messiah starts in whispers, and God is always cruel to him, and as he marches on to face his murderer, the beaten, growling beast of Daniel’s hatred curls up deep in his chest, finding other bones to gnaw awhile.
2.
Daniel barely stretches over his new arms and legs, still tiny next to everyone else but his body feels large to him, real and solid and rough like it’s never been before, the weight of earth in his footsteps, the scrape of his first hint of stubble like the scratch of sand on the wind. He trips over his gawking, teenage bones as he runs through the hallways of power, careening straight into America, who catches him with a laugh and warm hands that have more farmers’ calluses than soldiers’.
“Call me Alfred,” he says to Daniel’s stuttered sir, blue-eyed and blond but nothing like Germany at all, wide smiles and too much energy shining like a beacon in the war-weary committees as he bounces on the balls of his feet.
Boy deserves a place of his own, America and England mutter at each other in a way that would be bickering if it weren’t so very somber. They say it louder and glare around the globe, England’s green eyes flashing something much younger and bluer, and his new neighbors fidget and hiss and back down. Even Russia agrees, with a grin like an arc of blood on ice, his giant palm patting Daniel’s back over the scars, booming and gentle and Daniel’s skin crawls.
He ought to be grateful to England, England and his dash of blue, round-faced child younger than Daniel, who really won the war, but he can’t manage it, not for perfidious Albion. Not with Irgun holding his spine straight, we will fight the Nazis as if there were no British, and we will fight the British as if there were no Nazis, senseless and futile and brave, refusing to be kept even by kinder, gentler masters. Besides, England just wants to get rid of him, troublesome thing that he’s become, and more volatile than ever as brown-tattered refugees and brightly colored miracle creatures pour in. When Alfred says you are a marvelous people and you have more than earned this, he means it, he believes it, he has Justice Brandeis at his side.
Daniel leans into him, all nervous teenage energy as he starts to come alive again, caught in Alfred’s twinkling eyes, hands tight on his strong shoulders, face tipping up, breath to breath -
They rip apart at the buttons and buckles and zippers, Erik another spindly teenager in the doorway, heavy boots silent an inch off the ground, glowering.
Daniel quails while America puffs up with indignation, but Erik grabs Daniel by his shirt collar and drags them back to their rooms.
“He doesn’t give a damn about you,” Erik snarled, ignoring Daniel’s feeble protests. “America’s unscathed, in a position to be the next world power, but England has the edge on him thanks to us.”
And Daniel knows, in his bones, that Magneto does not mean Israelis. He means mutants.
“He wants our power and he’ll take advantage of your stupid crush to get it. Don’t go near him again.”
And that’s it, that’s his boss voice even though the titles haven’t been ironed out yet, and - and he has to believe Erik, he does, it’s not like Daniel can trust America just because he’s being charming now, but Daniel hates Erik for it anyway, just a little. Even if he’s right - he is right - did he have to say it like that, your stupid crush, the second person Daniel’s ever fallen for in four hundred years after the first one just finished stomping on his heart in the same steel-tipped boots Magneto wears.
But all he says is, “Okay,” and “I’m sorry,” and “I won’t.”
3.
Charles is dead, Charles who washed his hair when it grew back in ragged while Erik still couldn’t be in the same room with him, Charles who stroked soft hands over his face and said we will make such a home here and everyone you are is beautiful even when Daniel knows he’s not. His eyes are red like they haven’t been in decades, whipping autumn rains trailing flash floods in their wake, baked soil unable to absorb his tears.
But people die, people always die, loved ones most of all, and the settlers still need to be fed and housed and trained, and the children taught they can hold their heads high now, and Charles’s old duties dispersed to ministers and colonels while the flags fly half-mast. Israel is a country well-practiced at grief.
He slips into Magneto’s office, ignoring demands that he be left alone, his hands full of decent brandy he’d dug up god knows where, and latkes with a bit of sour cream that he needed three tries to fry properly without screaming and letting them burn, and a clipboard of refugee projections and housing plans and maps because somebody had to decide. He sets the comfort food and the drink on Magneto’s desk, trying not to cluck at how wan he’s gone because even if Daniel always worries, he probably looks just as awful right now.
He stands on tiptoes, barely gets “I brought you -” out of his mouth before Magneto flings the plate at him in a rage, cheap ceramic cracking against Daniel’s occipital bone as he scuttles backward.
“GET OUT,” Magneto roars, and Daniel knows he just means of the office, but the words still hit a fault line inside him, a shockwave of pain and fear and furious loathing quaking through him.
Another country, a stronger country, a country who felt as independent as Magneto tells him he is would have stood up then, blood running down his face, spat no, not this time, he will not be cast when he finally has a home, but Israel is not that country, so he scurry-crawls for the door, curls himself in the hallway with his palm shoved against the gash over his eye until the bleeding slows.
The hissing, tearing, venomous creature rears up inside him but he swallows it down, makes it coil and slumber in a heavy lump, because Magneto is the only savior he has left.
He washes himself off and goes to ask Emma.
4.
“Magneto,” Daniel says coldly, slapping the papers down, the new policy stark as the fresh ink on the pages. A law exempting mutants from prosecution for any accidental use of their powers, a system that makes it almost impossible to even allege purposefulness. For all intents and purposes he has two kinds of courts now, for two kinds of citizens. Mutants and humans can each settle affairs among themselves, but where the twain shall meet, mutants can do anything they like, and his people will have no redress.
They’re all your people, he tries to remind himself, but it’s hard, without Charles to smooth the differences, to hold these grafted-on ducklings to his breast, hard to look at one more overclass like so many others and call them his own.
“This has to change.” The Knesset has wrangled and hollered over it, but they hardly matter, and everyone knows it.
Magneto raises one eyebrow, so high it vanishes beneath the gleaming curve of his helmet.
“Does it now.”
“I won’t put up with this,” Daniel growls, even though his stomach feels like thin sea-ice, bitter cold, constantly breaking and churning. He clenches his fists at his sides to prevent them from trembling. “I will not be treated as an inferior in my own home, Sir.”
Magneto blinks slowly.
“This law isn’t even about you.”
“It means humans -“ Magneto doesn’t even let him finish.
“You’re not human.”
“They’re mine!” Daniel shouts, and he’s shaking all over now but he doesn’t fucking care. “They’re all mine, the Sabra and Ashkenazim and Sephardim and Mizrahim and even the Druze and Arab Christians and Muslims, they’re my people, and you treat them like -” And it’s so much more than this law, so many cold remarks, so many segregations Emma or Ben-Gurion mitigated, and Israel can’t take it anymore, a mob outside the capitol building, with signs and shouting and stubbornness, rambunctious but not violent, between rage and serenity. They won’t back down until he listens, he won’t -
Magneto backhands Israel hard across the face as the wrought iron fence cleaves a bloody swathe through the crowd.
“You wouldn’t even have a home if it weren’t for mutants protecting you, you ungrateful little shit,” Magneto snarls. “You wouldn’t have them, either. You'd all be fucking cinders without me, how dare you speak to me like that?” It goes on, boots in his ribs like the rhythm of a song he remembers from childhood, second verse same as the first. Of course the law is unequal, humans are inferior by definition, and Daniel is an unworthy, short-sighted fool for pretending otherwise. He’s fucking lucky Magneto deigns to take care of the Jews anyway, just for history's sake but they will know their place. He squeezes his eyes shut and wraps his arms over his ears, pretending he is merely protecting his head while something in him shrieks and roars and flings itself against the battered gate of his sternum.
5.
“He didn’t even want to save you!”
“You’re lying,” Daniel says flatly because even though something old and bitter in him sits up and remembers, it’s still unthinkable, it’s blasphemy, and his face goes stony with refusal. He can’t believe it. He can’t.
Charles is staring at him, hand half-way to clapping over his own mouth, eyes wide again, all pity and regret, but he can’t take it back, can’t deny it to spare him or Daniel will hold the slanderous lie against him forever. The only way out is through.
So Charles lowers his hand, shakes his head, so slowly, so sad.
“I wish I was,” and it comes out choked, because how much of his life has he wished Erik was a better man than he is? And then Charles draws Israel into his mind, the memories crisp and black-and-white like the reels of hidden British intelligence surveillance footage that leaks and races and roars across his media before Magneto can tear the towers down, the boy who flew, young again, ill-fed and sullen and curled into a corner. I don’t want to fight for anyone but me. And Charles says, How about for me?, and Erik takes his hand, and agrees, and never cared for Daniel at all.
Charles realizes too late the full force of the knowledge he has unleashed. He wanted to sway Daniel, not convulse him, Charles is small-minded and sentimental and selfish enough to love Erik still, but Daniel doesn’t care, not anymore. All Charles’s desperate cries for peace and all the mutant bodyguards in the world cannot deter him now.
Erik will not survive this revolution.