A/N: This is a new story of mine with two main original characters. Elaina is mine and Horrorshow belongs to a friend and I'm using him with his permission. All the other characters are property of Marvel. Also note, I am elaborating on Magneto's backstory throughout with information different than the X-Men movie universe. It comes from a comic book called X-Men: Magneto Testament. It's an elaborate depiction of his time in Nazi Germany. If you haven't read it, it is amazing and I highly recommend it. Other than that, he is Michael Fassbender Magneto for all intents and purposes.

Prologue: The Verdict

Just outside of a New York courtroom, a man stood just to the side of the entrance. His pale blue eyes were scanning each and every person as the passed him impatiently on their way inside. No one paid the spectator more than a passing glance, which they gained very little information from due to the fedora and its brim, which was perfectly angled downward to cover the top half of the man's face. If they could see the expression that the hat was hiding, the passer-bys would have seen that the man was just as uninterested in them. In fact, if it was possible to be more disenchanted he was. Once his eyes passed over them sure they were not the person he was waiting for, he moved on. The man continued this routine for several minutes, searching to no avail until he was until he too grew just as anxious as those passing him. The loud chatter of those entering the courthouse was momentarily interrupted by the metallic sound of one of the hinges attaching the door coming loose. Only a couple that happened to be walking inside at the moment noticed. They muttered a flippant comment about how they paid enough in taxes that surely the government could afford to keep the building in better repair and moved on. No one, however, noticed the ever-so-slight twitch of the man in the fedora's fingers, which seemed to have occurred at the exact moment of the incident… or how the missing screw stopped almost instantly at his feet.

When the man stranding outside the courthouse looked up from a half-amused glance at the screw next to his left foot, the object of his searching was in front of him. He was another man, at least a head taller that the one who had been waiting for him. His pace as he approached was slow and calculated, not at all in a hurry in spite of the fact his companion had been waiting for him at least fifteen minutes. His movement and stature suggested very little phased the man approaching the courthouse door and the situation at hand was not one of those instances. While he ascended the final few steps to the door, he shot a glance at the figure waiting. He watched as he impatiently as he stood up even more strait, positioned the fedora on his head so that it no longer hid so much of his face, and took several steps in his direction in order to close the distance between them faster until, at last, the two of the were standing face to face.

"Horrorshow," the waiting man greeted curtly.

"Magnus," was the approaching man's response in a tone similar to the one that had been taken with him.

"You're late."

"Hey, if you want punctual, call Grand Central Station. If you want shit done, call me."

Magneto quietly scoffed at the remark. He expected nothing less from Horrorshow. From anyone else, the statement would have been self-important and insolent (two things he did not tolerate) but for the man standing in front of him, it was true. Although he wasn't a man Magneto particularly enjoyed being around, Horrowshow was nothing if not efficient. The two of them had been doing business for some time and he always delivered what he promised. His methods were, at times, a bit medieval and unorthodox (Magneto had learned years ago not to inquire about them) his results could not be argued with. The two men exchanged a look while still more people passed by them to enter the building. The sound of the door opening and closing, now even louder with the one of its hinges unattached, reminded the man in the fedora of the task at hand.

"Shall we go inside?" Magneto asked.

Horrorshow didn't say a word in response to his companion. Instead, he shifted over to the side and moved passed Magneto. He began walking toward the door, never once looking back to see if he was following behind. As he at last moved into the courthouse, he couldn't help but laugh darkly to himself. No sooner had he made it to the first hallway, he had already caught a glimpse of the same image at least four times. It was always the same: the symbol of Lady Justice, blindfolded with a perfectly balanced scale in one hand and a sword in the other. According to the ancient image, justice was supposed to be blind, equal, and sharp in its execution. 'What a load of bullshit,' Horrowshow mused to himself at the idea. If that were true, the world would be different that it actually was. If the fierce-looking lady truly had any power, men like him and Magneto would not exist because there would be no need for them. No. She was just an image for people to hide behind now. The ideals she stood for were just words now, hollow and without meaning. He had the distinct feeling as he finally reached his destination (one of the man courtrooms down a long, narrow hallway) that the events of this day was only going to be more of the same and serve as fuel for his seething opinions against humanity's twisted view of what they called justice.

One right behind the other, the two men entered the courtroom discreetly under the cover of the chatter the other spectators were filling the room with. The two of them sat down quietly in the last row with only minutes to spare before the proceedings were to begin. Magneto took the limited time he knew he had to look at his target, the reason he enlisted Horrorshow's help and the only things that could get him willingly into a courtroom again after spending ten years in hundreds of feet below the Pentagon. The view of the defendant's chair was limited from where he was seated, but it also decreased the chances of him being noticed. The distance would have no bearing on his companion's ability to use his gift (the real reason they were there) but the man still couldn't help but look in the direction of his interest all the same. As he focused in, he recalled everything he had learned about the figure sitting across the room in a lonely chair, waiting more impatiently than anyone else to hear the court's verdict. Still, it did little to prepare him for what he saw.

Magneto knew that the defendant's name was Elaina Cohen. He knew that she was a woman in her early thirties, only a few years younger than him. He also knew that, before her current trouble, she had been a head nurse at a local hospital. Finally, he knew that the man seated directly behind her dressed in an expensive black suit with his wheat-colored hair slicked back of his slightly rounded face was Daniel Cohen, her husband. For now, he was just Mayor of a small town upstate, but many people (Daniel himself not least among them) had high hopes for his budding political career. Even in the midst of his extensive probing into both of the Cohen's life, Magneto found very little outside of the situation at hand that interested him. That was, until moments ago when he got his first glance at the woman he had taken such an interest in.

From an early age, Magneto considered himself to be a very observant person. It was a gift that had saved his life time and time again (even before his mutant gift manifested), though it had not been enough to save his family. 'We need your good eyes, Max,' his uncle used to say to him when they were on the run from Warsaw. His eyes had allow him to observe when acting was dangerous, helped him to feed his family when they were starving in a ghetto, and even though he had a different gift he relied on now, he still used his eyes to judge people. As soon as he put his penetrating gaze on Elaina Cohen, he knew he had misjudged her. If he was honest with himself, Magneto would have admitted he had expected the woman to be little more than a politician's trophy wife. He had expected to see someone weak. Yet, as soon as he saw her, he knew all such assumptions had made were wrong.

Magneto could barely see Elaina through the mounds of heads between them, but when she turned around to face the crowed of people behind her, he could tell a great deal about her even from a distance. She was no one's trophy wife, though it may have appeared differently in public. From the moment he could see her brown eyes, he could see the woman had a quiet sort of strength about her, the kind you had to look hard to see. Perhaps she had never even noticed herself or only just discovered it in the midst of the current situation, but it was obvious to the pair of blue eyes fixed on her in the back of the courtroom. He had seen before, though not recently. Yes, he could tell the accusations and the trial had taken their tole on Elaina, but they had not broken her. The thought alone of what could happen to her in the next few moments would have been enough to drive some people to their limit, but the one seated in the defendant's chairs sat gracefully in place, her body angled toward her husband with a reserved look on her face. The couple was whispering to one another (something only they could hear) when the trial reconvened.

Horrorshow watched the stern-faced judge re-enter the room and stood next to his seat above everyone else with Lady Justice, blindfolded and balancing her scale, just behind him. Seconds later, twelve more people filed into their places on the judge's right side. No one had said a word yet, but as the rest of the room momentarily rose, he could guess from the look on the juror's faces what was coming. 'What a load of bullshit,' he mentally cursed. Even though he wasn't there to fight anyone, could have easily snapped some necks at that moment. He could take one look at the skinny women in the defendant's chair and tell poisoning little old ladies was not her thing. From the looks of her, he doubted if she swatted files outside of the hospital environment. It had been her own bad luck to be in the hospital room when the old lady died and her own stupidity to try and mess with the security cameras days later so no one would notice. Of course, ignorance was a crime in and of itself, but punishable by a good, old-fashioned ass kicking, not what he had the feeling was about to happen. In the seconds that it took for everyone to sit and the judge to start talking, Horrorshow couldn't help but think lady Justice was not the only blind person in the room.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?" the judge asked in his most official voice.

"We have, your honor," the foreperson, a tall man with greying hair, answered.

Every eye in the room watched as a tiny piece of paper was transferred from the man who had just spoken to a uniformed officer. When the object was again handed off to the judge, he read it with an expressionless look on his face. No one else likely could see the subtle change in the black-robed man in the center of the room, but Magneto could. He noticed his back straighten up as he read Elaina's fate. The look on his face became even more stern than it had been moments ago and, from the small change, the man in the back of the room could tell a lot. He could tell the young woman's moments of freedom were numbered and that the judge thought what he was doing was justice. It never ceased to amaze him would people could bring themselves to believe. Gullible men like him were the reason the man was who he was, the kind that would have believed Hitler was a great man when he said he'd make Germany great again, all by getting rid of the Jews. Magneto couldn't help but feel badly for her being at the mercy of someone like him. In some small way, he understood her pain.

While the rest of the people watched the judge hand the verdict back to the officer, Horrorshow focused on Elaina. Even though the drama was about to begin, he had a job to do. So far, he hadn't been able to sense the woman's gift… or lack there of. He knew untrained mutants often showed their ability during moments of high stress and if she wasn't under enough already, she was certainly about to be.

"The defendant will rise," the judge ordered. Horrorshow started to focus even harder as Elaina quietly obeyed the command. Seconds later, the officer started to read.

"In the case of the state of New York verses Elaina Cohen, we the jury find the defendant guilty of voluntary manslaughter."

"Thank you, ladies and gentleman of the jury, for your work today. Sentencing will commence one week from today. Until then, the defendant will remain in the custody of the state."

And, with one dramatic and unnecessary pounding of the judge's gavel, it was all over for most of the people in the courtroom. The show was over. The officer who read the verdict wasted very little time approaching his new prisoner. Elaina turned to the side, cooperating without question as he cuffed her hands behind her back and led her out of the room to a holding cell. In a few hours, she would be taken to prison. All of this was for a crime she didn't commit. The young woman barely had time to whisper something the men in the back of the room couldn't hear to her husband before she vanished from the sight of the spectators.

In the seconds before Elaina was lead out of the room, Magneto felt it. It was something he hadn't experienced in years, but he could still remember: fear. Not normal fear, like a child caught in a storm, but the crippling, all consuming emotion that followed him around most of his childhood. The kind of fear he felt when he felt when he and his family were running from Nazi's, the kind of fear he felt the night before the bullets when through the skulls of his mother, his father, his uncle, and his sister, and the kind he fear he felt each and every day after that for years in Auschwitz, moving the bodies of his own people that were little more than skin and bones, into giant furnaces so that their smell and their ashes filled the camp. The sights were practically nothing compared to the distinct smell of burning flesh or the sound of women and children in the gas chambers when they realized they weren't there for a shower. Most people never knew this kind of fear, but Magneto did. He sat earily still in his seat, reliving what all of these things had been like until Elaina was out of sight and Horrorshow spoke to him, pulling him violently out of the almost trance-like mental state he was in.

"What a fucking circus," his low voice filled the back of the room.

Magneto scoffed at his choice of language. "Did you at least get the answer I paid you for?"

"Everyone in the entire damn room got it," Horrorshow replied curtly, his eyes momentarily passing over the herd of people who were now leaving the room. "What just happened, that was all her. The pawns felt it. I felt it. You felt it too, Magnus."

Magneto didn't reply, not for a long moment. He let the gravity of what Horrorshow had just told him sink in. what he had just felt, the memories and the hear, had all been the product of the young, think woman who had been sitting in the defendant's chair a moment ago. Of course, he already knew it hadn't been intentional, that being the wife of a politician and a nurse had likely given her very little time to even think about her mutation. Like many others he had encountered in the past, Elaina had tried to hide her gift. Yet, there were times that even those most adept and hiding it could not. Her genes had been there, telling her to fight back while the court's officer put her in chains. Today, she had fought against her base instincts, but he couldn't help but wonder what would happen if she were to give in to them.

"She made the entire room feel what she was feeling," Magneto mused aloud.

"My guess would be she could make anyone feel anything she wanted, if she knew how," Horrorshow elaborated. "It's a good thing we have helmets…"

"That could be useful."

"Does that mean I need to get my hammer and organize a prison break? I haven't done that in a while."

"No," Magneto replied. "That won't be necessary, not now anyway."

"She's going to prison, Magnus. Probably for a long time."

"So I'll know exactly where to find her if I change her mind."

"Did you even look at her?" Horrorshow asked. "A skinny little spoiled housewife like her locked up with murderers? She'll be dead in a week. If her cellmate doesn't carve her out a new face, she'll find a way to do it herself."

"I don't think so," Magneto retorted. "You felt what she just did."

"Sheer dumb beginner's luck, Magnus. Just because her mutation showed itself just now doesn't mean it will every time big Bertha comes calling."

"Then she'll learn to survive regardless. She would never join us now, not willingly. Once she learns what power she has, the lengths people would go to take it, and that its worth protecting, that's when you'll bring her to me. Not before."

"What makes you think she'll learn any of this behind bars?"

"Because it'll be all she has left," Magneto said, quietly glancing at his arm and remembering the number there, inked into his skin.

Horrorshow unceremoniously got out his chair, his knuckled clenched until they were white. He had the nearly uncontrollable urge to throw a punch at something. When Daniel Cohen passed and threw a vaguely curious glance his way, he almost lost the already thread thin hold he had on his ever-mounting temper. The slick bastard looked as though he could have used it. He didn't look nearly as phased as he should have for a man who was likely only going to be able to see his wife through glass for the next several years in Horrorshow's opinion. As mush as he would have enjoyed feeling his fist colliding with the soft skin of Daniel's face, he held it back. He could have also punched Magneto. There were times when the chip on his shoulder made him as blind as the people who decided Elaina's fate and this was one of those times. He didn't have to say another word to know what the man had planned for the young woman and it infuriated him. He normally didn't care enough to have an opinion on Magneto's plans, but something about this situation was different and made him care enough to be angry.

"You want to make her into another you, Magnus," Horrorshow said as he walked away. He knew there was no arguing with him and his only two options were to punch him in the jaw or to walk away before he did something he would regret. Just this once, though he didn't even fully understand why, he decided to go for the later option. "You want her to suffer and learn to hate everyone and everything like you do, but not everyone is like that… like everyone thinks that way. Maybe jail will change her, maybe it won't and banking on that is cruel. It makes you no better than the people that put her there. If you change your mind, you know where to find me."

With those words, Horrowshow walked out the door. By the time he left, people in the courtroom had filed their way out as well. Magneto remained seated all alone in the once filled room, however, his mind buzzing. The man that accompanied him simply didn't understand… no one understood. It wasn't that he wanted Elaina to suffer at the hands of humans. The fact was that he desperately wanted her gift. He wanted her to use it against those that wanted to exterminate the mutant race and he wanted to be there to watch it. Even though the day was far off, he could already see it: enemies dropping to their knees in front of Elaina, paralyzed with fear before they could even fire a warning shot and him next to her to finish the job.

As he stood up to leave the room, Magneto knew his new vision for the future involving Elaina Cohen was precarious. He knew there was no way she would agree to join him now, but had faith that time would allow her to se things from a different perspective. Of course, it would take some time, but he was a patient man. Sooner or later, the man was confident he would get what he wanted. There was nothing he could do now but wait and continue the fight with the people he had. He would forget this woman and what she had done until the time was right. After all, it wasn't as if he was a stranger to loss… or forgetting, pushing the horrors in his past down in order to continue living. At times, simply existing was one of the ways he revenged himself on those that had tried to kill him but failed. This quiet type of fighting was a start and it was one of the things he knew Elaina would learn in the time she spent locked up. Once she had this, he would be waiting to teach her more. He would be waiting to accept her and watch her become more and more powerful until their race took their proper place above human. Then they could finally be assured a slaughter like he had experienced as a boy would never happen again.