Title: Lives Revised
Summary: Erik Lensherr and Charles Xavier swap lives.
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Author: Paint Me Violent
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Note: Made for the prompt "Erik and Charles switch lives growing. Erik living in luxury and making friends with Raven. Charles being forced to watch his mother being shot because he can't telepathically talk and being raised as a weapon. But their personalities are practically the same, Erik is a bit jaded but smart and Charles is a tad arrogant but understanding." at 1stclass-kink.
Chapter One: Childhood.
It is 1934 and Erik Lensherr watches his parents making last-minute preparations for their holiday in Britain.
"A short holiday." His mother looks at him with her deep clear blue eyes. "I have no doubts you will like Britain."
He is not a fool. His parents have never ever been in a hurry to go anywhere – whether it is a restaurant or another country. He is not deaf. He hears worried whispers. Whispers of dead Jews found on the roadsides of Berlin.
And Erik Lensherr, being a smart boy, only smiles at his mother:
"Of course, mother."
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It is 1936 and Charles Xavier is hearing things - small, frightened whispers that can't reach his ears and instead brush his mind. And then…
"We are moving to Poland, Charlie. Your father has got a job there."
And Charles Xavier is so excited about the prospect of seeing new places that he doesn't hear worried whispers in his mother's mind.
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It is 1935 and Erik Lensherr watches his father working on the layout of the newest fighter aircraft. And Erik is so bored that he starts playing with small metallic details.
"Mein Leibling, how do you do it?" asks his mother coming in the hangar and sitting down by little Erik.
"I will metal to bend to me, Mama, and it does." Erik smiles proudly. And there is a good reason to be proud – what other five-year-old boy can control metal?
"Can I see it once more, Sonny?" His mother is gentle, understanding. She truly wants to see it, decides Erik and without batting an eyelash, he commands all the tables in the room to rise in the air and dance a waltz of metal.
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It is 1937 and Charles Xavier is tugging on his mother's skirt. He wants to play but there is no one to play with in the entire neighborhood. He just doesn't understand them. He can't understand their whispers and that frightens him.
He doesn't want to be in Poland. And every time he asks to go away, to leave this country behind and never return (because there is something dark looming over them and they won't be able to hide, it will find them anywhere they go and reach its ugly claws towards them… there will be no salvation).
His mother smiles and gently picks him up, tells him that his father has a job here that can't be abandoned.
And Charles goes to his room…
It's cold. It's dark. He is alone.
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It is 1939 and the voice of Neville Chamberlain is drowning in the background of his father's study. The days of stress and strain are ahead. Britain is at war with Germany. And people are asking God to protect them. But Erik Lensherr doesn't fear, because…
'Oh, they are so far away and nothing will happen to our home.'
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It is 1939 and Charles Xavier watches the world around him fall on its knees in front of the soldiers caring a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black swastika in the middle.
It is Chaos. Charles doesn't hear whispers; there are only screams – desperate and painful. They fill his head, his memories and his soul.
They break into their house – mother, clutching her son and father, trying to protect them (shot in seconds) and screams. Screams. They fill everything. And now the silent house will hold memories of blood and terror, and a silent echo of the agonizing cry of a seven-year-old whose fate had been decided with one thundering shot.
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It is August, 1940 and Erik Lensherr looks at his father with numb eyes. He understands, but at the same time he wants to howl in anger that has such a bitter taste. The only thing that stops him is that his father is right. They need to leave. And his father has duty. He can't go with them.
When they board the small plane that will take them to safety that is America, Erik is reaching towards every small detail in the plane, probing it, feeling it, living with it if only for a second. And it makes him wonder if he can stop the awful throbbing in his heart (Heart has blood and blood has metal and Erik has control over metal, so it wouldn't be that hard.), but declines the idea because feeling is good, too.
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It is Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau. And that says everything there is to know, but little Charles Xavier doesn't know it yet.
He doesn't know how long his mother and he had been thrown from one camp to another, from one truck to a bigger one. All he knows these days that blood smells of rusty metal and that even a small offense results into a forehead with a bullet.
And then it is his mother being taken away. She screams and tries to break free, tries to reach him, but she is so fragile, so tired, so weak, that after so long little Charles remembers that he can make them.
'Freisetzung!' He watches as their hands fall from his beloved mother and then there is only mud on his lips.
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It is metal. Firm and strong, but soft and pliant under his will. And then one rainy morning Erik finds more than metal. It is so beautiful that he can't take his eyes away. He sees small blue dots everywhere – they are like tiny glowworms. And Erik shapes them like metal. He wraps them around himself and nothing can touch him.
School becomes bearable and as he plays with these dots, he learns to tune them out, to use them as means to give himself strength, and when he accidently produces a bolt of electricity that shatters the window in his History class, he finally understands what means are in his hands.
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He listens to the man that is sitting opposite him talk about genetics and evolution and Charles doesn't understand, because this man's mind is silent – there are no whispers, no pictures, no feeling of his mind – just a big hollow spot.
And then he is asked to talk, to order something, to make the guard who is standing near the door do something, anything. But Charles can't concentrate. He hears whispers, sees pictures, but he can't order the man to go away. He tries to gain access to the mind, he tries to reach it with his own mind and it doesn't work.
"Maybe you need a little bit of motivation?"
Herr Doktor tsks and motions to the guard at the door. And then there is his mother – grey and ill-looking. She is being held by two guards, because her own legs won't allow her to stand. She is weary and she has never before looked so broken. And oh, God, it is all his fault.
"Mother!" he exclaims. And then realization downs upon him and he stares at Herr Doktor who is holding a revolver aimed at his mother.
"Wie machen das so: Ich zahle bis drei. Und du machst ihre etwas tun. Order sie stribt."
Charles's eyes widen and he looks at one of the guards, desperately wishing them to move, to make them do something so that his mother is free from their grasp.
"Eins."
He is shaking from fear. What is he won't be successful? What will happen to his mother?
"Zwei."
His body is tense, like an arrow on the sting of a bow. And he is trying and trying. Again and again. But God, why don't they listen?
"Drei."
But trying is not enough.
His mother falls.
He screams.
He unleashes.
Guards die.
Herr Doktor laughs.
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He doesn't like sleeping in his room. It is too big and there is far too little metal. Instead he prefers his room where metal is everywhere. It hums and keeps him calm and he falls asleep much faster.
His mother has already gone to bed. And he is heading to kitchen to find something to eat before going to bed. He could have asked Molly, one of the maids, to bring him a sandwich, but it's a late hour and he hates asking for something he can do himself – it makes him feel disabled or really old. Thank you very much, but he is a normal ten-year old kid.
But a sudden knocking on the parade door breaks him out of his musings and Erik sprints to the door in hopes that maybe his father has finally come to visit them. He tears the door open and comes face to face with a blue child in a basket.
Erik blinks and then a smile appears on his face.
That Christmas was the happiest Christmas the Lensherr family had in a long time.
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When they adjust metal to his forehead to see how wide his range is, it is electroshock they motivate him with. And his undying rage makes it so much easier.
Herr Doktor laughs and laughs and laughs. And Charles wants nothing more than to shut him up and choke him with his laugher. And then laugh himself as he watches Herr Doktor dissolve into nothingness.
But for now he will burn and scream.
And then the Soviet Union comes and Herr Doktor flees and Charles swears revenge. And, oh, it will be sweet.