Forgive Us Our Transgressions 10/16
For a brief moment, Erik spared a thought for packing, for all the belongings he was leaving behind.
And then, with a pang, he realized they weren’t really his belongings.
They were things Charles had bought for him, things that Charles thought he should own.
To be the person Charles thought he should be.
There were the turtlenecks and slacks, that reminded the other man of the Erik he had first met in Miami, before the helmet, before the cape, before Magneto.
There were the little bits of metal, bought for Erik to play with, to treat his gift like a toy, rather than a weapon.
They were more Charles’ belongings than Erik’s, not because he paid for them, but because they represented everything that Charles wanted Erik to be. And everything he wasn’t.
Erik frowned, his features hardening as he strode by Mystique’s side.
“Where’s my helmet?” he asked sharply.
“In the car. I figured you’d want it.”
“And you left me without it because?”
“Angel,” Mystique said shortly, her tone harsh. “She thought it would serve as a ‘peace offering’ for Charles.”
Erik sighed. The girl was probably correct, as loath as he was to be without his helmet for even a minute these days.
It wasn’t even that he thought Charles would pry-although he knew the man had no compunctions when he thought it was for the greater good-but the helmet had come to represent his new life, or his old new life, the one he was just foggily remembering. It represented everything he had left behind.
Again.
It was with a sigh of relief that he placed the metal on his head, settling into place like it had never been gone. He couldn’t feel its powers, but still he somehow felt that an emptiness descended over him, knowing that Charles couldn’t get to him.
Mystique sat at his side in the back of the car, Janos at the wheel, and gave him an inscrutable look.
“Do you have something to say?” he finally asked.
“No,” she said sullenly. “Actually, yes-What were you doing there for so long?”
Living, Erik thought. learning. About his powers, how to care about other people. Loving. Not just Charles, although that was a deep ache inside of him. But the children: their bright happy faces as they exercised their powers, their worries and fears that he so wanted to assuage.
His mind strayed to Lorna-with no mutation but her bright green hair, no power that he could turn to his advantage, nothing that would make her a tool, a weapon.
She was useless, as far as the Brotherhood was concerned.
But she was a bright, amusing child, fiercely intelligent with an infectious laugh.
Before, he would have turned his back on her, dismissing her out of hand.
He thought of the shy smiles she had given him, the way she lingered nearby, delighting in his company, in his small demonstrations of his power.
He shook his head, shaking away the ache that wormed its way into his chest at the thoughts.
How to explain the weeks of silence to Mystique, and the rest of the Brotherhood?
“The illness took a long time to recover from,” he said shortly, telling her nothing more. The memory loss would make him seem weak-something he couldn’t afford in front of his colleagues.
These were not friends, he had to remind himself, not even Mystique, who he had known for the longest. They followed him because he was powerful, because he was intimidating-because none of them thought they could overthrow him.
He thought of the X-Men, the way the discussed every issue, the way they argued and yelled at each other, but always worked things out. The way they seemed to be equals in the house, even with Charles.
They were friends-No, more than that. They were family.
But Erik hadn’t had a family since Schmidt killed his mother.
“But I’m fine now,” he said, resolute. Letting Mystique know the conversation was over.
She frowned, but didn’t push the subject. She knew her place. Beneath him, not at his side.
His heart clenched.
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The memory slammed into him forcefully. The feel of a blade, sliding into flesh. Not just the feel of it in his hand, but the feel of every atom of metal as it parted flesh, as it delved deeper into muscle and sinew. The moist, wet feeling as blood started to spurt from the wound.
The feel of a bullet, fracturing a skull, piercing brain tissue.
The feel of a helmet, crumbling in on itself, destroying the head within it.
Metal and flesh and blood, all viscerally flooded his mind.
He knew what it was like to kill a man; how to do it instantaneously, and how to make it last.
He knew where to stab to get an hour’s worth of answers, or just a minute’s.
He had killed, he realized with horror, he had taken life after life-dozens, probably hundreds. He had dragged entire buildings down, crushing every person inside.
Rationalization followed on the heels of realization; they had been bad people, they had deserved it. Nazis, bigots, scientists, torturers. They had all deserved it.
And yet, he flinched from the knowledge that they had died at his hand.
Kindness keeps the world afloat, Charles’ voice whispered in his ear, an echo of a few days before.
He had agreed with Charles so readily, the words obvious at the time.
But were they?
I have the power to read your mind, Charles told him. But it was more than that, wasn’t it?
So much more.
He had the power to suggest, to influence, to force. Without his helmet Erik had been entirely vulnerable. Charles could have crept into his mind and tweaked anything he wished. He could have changed everything about Erik, and Erik never would have known.
Every thought he had now was suspect. He felt disgust at the idea of killing a man, of slicing through his windpipe and listening to him sputter his last breaths. But was it his revulsion, or Charles’?
He had accepted death before, accepted the necessity of killing some to save many, to save his people from bigotry, persecution, enslavement, genocide.
He worked for the greater good; he had always been so sure of that fact.
And yet now, doubt crept into his mind.
Erik gritted his teeth against the sensation.
He knew what it was to kill, he reminded himself, and he knew what it was to enjoy it.
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The first memory of the camps came to him while he was sleeping, worming its way insidiously into his mind.
Strangely, it wasn’t his mother, or the straining, bending metal gate, or even Schmidt, which first came to him.
Instead, it was hunger.
Overwhelming, all-encompassing hunger. The kind that gnawed at your insides, making you cramp up with pain. The kind that made it hard to eat even when food was available, making it taste like ash in your mouth, making you gag at the sensation of something solid sliding down your throat.
He had known deprivation, had known what it was to be poor, to go without.
He had had no idea of how bad it could be.
He stared at the door of his tiny cell, dark and foreboding in the dim light.
How long had he been in here? How long since someone last remembered to give him something to eat?
A scrap of stale bread, tossed into the dirt at his feet.
He had fallen upon it ravenously, feeling the texture of grime and filth, sandy in his mouth.
But that had been days ago.
There were many things Erik wanted. He wanted his mother back. He wanted revenge. He wanted freedom.
But more than anything, he wanted something to eat.
Erik woke, his stomach growling in sympathy to the dream-boy he had once been. His anger was always focused on the big moments: separation from his parents, his mother’s murder, Schmidt’s torture.
He tended to forget the long stretches of quiet misery that came in between, dark and lonely with nothing but his hunger and his thirst to occupy his mind.
Days, weeks, locked in various rooms and cells. The shuffle of boots outside his door, the taunts of the soldiers. The dirt, the cold, the hunger.
That was what life at the camps was like, punctuated by moments of utter horror.
He rubbed at his eyes, feeling his stomach clench in want. He didn’t remember where the kitchen was in this house, but suddenly he felt that he’d die if he didn’t have a piece of fruit, rich and juicy and full of nutrients his body had once learned to go without.
Rickets, scurvy, pellagra…the list of diseases and disorders rattled through his mind. Behind his fear of prejudice, oppression, and genocide, these simpler fears lingered, a steady hum throughout his life, making him reach for fresh fruits and vegetables whenever possible.
To have survived the camps, and Schmidt, only to succumb to a lack of vitamin C. That was a fear he had always carried with him.
The safe house was small, and Erik found the kitchen with little trouble, hunting through the refrigerator and the cupboards for anything that would satisfy his cravings.
He ate canned peaches wistfully, thinking of the spacious and clean kitchen in Westchester. Of eating food simply for the pleasure of it, with no thoughts of starvation, of anaemia, of endless want that could not be abated.
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Settling back in with the Brotherhood was more difficult than Erik would have thought. He knew he needed to be Magneto, the uncompromising, unmerciful leader, but taking on that mantle against after so long was a struggle.
He found himself at his desk, melting down paperclips and forming them into small shapes and sculptures, almost unconsciously. The metal twisted and melted, shaping itself into pleasing little forms, ones that would make Charles smile.
“Boss?” Janos voice was timid outside his door.
Erik couldn’t quite remember if the other man had always addressed him so hesitantly, or if his people were reacting to his shift in temperament, his obvious discomfort at being back in their midst.
Surely he was scarier before, as the uncompromising Magneto, and yet, he suspected they were all unsettled by the changes in him that he couldn’t hide.
“Come in,” he barked, trying to remember how he used to sound. Gruff? Angry?
The man entered the room lightly, his small, slender form an unpleasant echo of the way Charles looked before-
Before the accident.
And hadn’t that been a distressing realization-that Charles’ “accident” from so “long ago” was Erik’s work, the result of a careless wave of his hand.
The result of his rage, untempered by Charles’ much-flouted serenity, striking out at everyone within reach.
Even Charles.
His memories were slow to filter back in, and yet he could viscerally recall the feel of Charles in his arms, not the way he had been that last night in the mansion, sleek and sensual and purring at Erik’s touch, but broken and bloodied, limp within his grasp. He could feel the sand, gritty as it stuck to Charles’ damp skin, could feel Charles’ moist breath on his face as he panted through the pain.
Such a contrast to the way he had last touched Charles.
But worse than that, he could see the look in Charles’ eyes, the betrayal, the revulsion, as he spoke those damning words.
My friend, I’m afraid we do not.
“Boss?” Janos’ voice cut into his reverie and Erik looked up sharply.
He was expected to be their leader, to shoulder the weight of responsibility of all their lives, of their mission.
He could not be weighed down by the loss of one man’s legs.
“Yes?” he snapped, harsher than he meant to be.
“We’ve got something.”
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Chapter Eleven