Fandom Captain America: The First Avenger/X-Men movie verse (2000 – 2006)
Character(s)/Pairing(s) Bucky Barnes, Max Eisenhardt (Erik Lehnsherr), Magda, Steve Rogers; Max/Magda
Genre Alternate Universe/Crossover/Drama/Het/Historical Fiction/Prompt
Rating PG
Word Count 1,924
DisclaimerCaptain America and X-Men c. Marvel
Summary Kink meme prompt fill. Steve Rogers met Max Eisenhardt when Rogers' team helped the Red Army liberate Auschwitz. Fast forward sixty-seven years, Erik Lehnsherr and Steve cross paths in central park six years after the events in X3.
Warning(s) potential spoilers for Captain America: The First Avenger, X-Men movie verse (2000 – 2006), and spoilers for Magneto's 616 background story, potential X-Men First Class spoilers. My brain just kind of operates in a collective canon.
NotesI used MCU with the 616 universe because it helps when I can hear the character's voices in my head. This was written for a friend who put, "Captain Rogers was on the front lines in Germany toward the end of WW2, liberating the concentration camps. It was there he met a young man called Max Eisenhardt (or Erik Lehnsherr depending on your favoured canon.) Years later, one day, in Central Park, they played chess" on the Avengers Kink Meme on the LJ. I just couldn't help myself. I had to touch it.

Problems

While Steve and his handpicked team tracked the Red Skull and his tesseract, the team had a secondary mission to assist the Allies in liberating the camps across Eastern Europe. The team followed a lead to Poland, but instead of the Red Skull, Steve and his team found the Red Army. Steve knew that some of the other countries saw him as a poodle in a dress. Encountering pockets of various Allied forces gave Steve a crash course in international diplomacy. He treated them with respect, but held his ground when he had to. The soldiers were preparing to liberate a nearby death camp and welcomed the extra help.

"They say it's worst," one of the Soviets told Steve and his associates around rations. "We don't expect a fight." According to other soldiers with some translation, they suspected that Auschwitz had been evacuated like a few other camps and only the prisoners who could not march were left.

The next day, the Red Army entered the campus. Auschwitz was forty-eight camps spanning a large area of Poland south of Katowice and west of Krakow. It would be a large undertaking to organize and assist all the prisoners that remained. Steve and Bucky went with the group entering Monowitz. Monowitz, also known as Auschwitz III, was a work camp. There were prisoners in the yard. They stayed behind Max, who looked like a child. Steve knew from experience that Max was most likely in his teens, if not at most twenty-years old. Like the others around him, Max was shaven, infested, and beyond malnourished. Max surveyed the soldiers with wary eyes.

The Soviets called out in various languages, trying to determine who could speak what language to try and establish a line of communication. Max's gray eyes searched the soldiers and then settled on Steve. "Him," he said in German. "We will speak with him." Max's voice was hoarse.

"Looks like you've made an impression," Bucky said quietly to Steve.

Steve nudged Bucky briefly. Steve had a crash course in basic German from Bucky who had learned it from some other soldiers so they could communicate with people who might not know English. Steve really hoped he would not speak incorrectly. He stepped forward. "I'm Steve Rogers," he said and offered Max a hand.

"Max," Max replied. He took Steve's hand cautiously. "You're not them," he said, his eyes shifting to the Red Army, "or like him." Max's eyes shifted to Bucky before returning to Steve.

"No, but we fight for the same things," Steve said and shook Max's hand carefully. "Do you know any English?"

Max thought about his response. "A little," Max spoke in English. "Some don't speak German." He ran his tongue along his rotting teeth. "I have two," he thought of the right word, "requests. Then I will help."

"What is it?" Steve asked. He was willing to entertain requests. He did not know if the Red Army was.

"Tell everyone," Max said. "Tell them what you saw, what this is." The sentences sounded practiced. His accent was still very thick. Max turned towards the group behind him and gestured to one of the others who looked like children. The girl had to be the same age as Max. "This is Magda," Max said, "and I want her out first."

Magda's eyes darted around the soldiers. "We are a pair," she said in quiet German. "He comes with me."

"Alright," Steve said after Bucky confirmed the translation. "I will make sure to honor these things." He would try. It was all he could do. His team could not stay past the next day. They had to find the Red Skull.

This satisfied Max. It was apparent he must have been hiding and aiding the other prisoners in the yard somehow due to their age and ability to walk. They responded and respected his judgments.

Once the Red Army took charge of the liberation, Steve worked as best he could to ensure that Magda and Max would remain together and be some of the first to leave the camp. Once he was completely certain that these requests would be honored and the Red Army no longer needed their assistance, Steve and his group left Poland to follow a lead on the Red Skull's whereabouts.

Max and Magda were some of the first prisoners to leave Monowitz. They remained together, married, and began a family. Max changed his name to Erik Lehnsherr and moved his growing family to the Soviet Union. Time passed and a horrible fire in an inn killed their daughter and estranged Magda from Erik. With his family gone, Erik began a quest to get revenge on the Nazis.

Eventually Erik met Charles Xavier and became part of the X-Men. His revenge against the Nazis turned into a quest for mutant acceptance and mutant supremacy. It was only after Charles died and Erik lost his mutation that Erik realized he was using Nazi techniques to further his own goals. The thought was sobering and it tasted sour.

It was now six years since Erik lost his powers. He spent his days in good weather at the chessboards in Central Park. Sometimes he played people, sometimes he played himself. Occasionally he thought he might be playing Charles. Erik wondered if there was a ghost of Charles left over from too many nosy excursions into Erik's mind.

Erik's eyes moved up from the chessboard and widened in recognition when movement caught his attention. A man who had to be nearing thirty approached, but Erik knew the man had to be well over ninety-years-old. Erik heard the rumors about a team discovering Captain America alive and frozen in the Arctic, but he had not believed the reports. Yet, Eric would know that face anywhere. It was the soldier who was not a soldier. The one man in a mess of the professional soldiers who Erik thought he could trust all those decades ago.

"Excuse me," Erik called out to Steve. When he had Steve's attention, he asked, "If you're not busy, would you mind a game?"

Steve knew the man had to be talking to him. He walked over and took a seat across from Erik. "Alright. Why not?" He smiled a little but it did not quite reach his eyes, which still held the weight of his thoughts. "So, how do we play?" Steve had never learned chess.

Erik explained the basic moves and rules. He set up the board, his hand shaking occasionally. Steve helped set up his half of the board, mirroring Erik's half. He listened carefully. Steve was the white pieces, so he went first.

After a few moves, Erik said, "You look like you have a lot on your mind."

Steve's eyes flickered from the board to Erik. He almost denied it, but he found himself nodding despite himself. "Yeah, but you don't want to hear it." He doubted Erik could understand. He felt like no one could understand.

"You would be surprised," Erik said. He watched Steve move a rook into a vulnerable position. "People talk about old man problems and young man problems, but problems are problems." Erik moved his bishop.

Steve surveyed the board. "Well, you could say I'm a fish out of water," he said. "I feel like Rip Van Wrinkle." He picked up one of his pawns and rolled it around his hand. "Everything's different than I remember." He set the pawn down a space ahead.

Erik nodded. He could understand. He knew that losing his powers, Charles, and the mutants was not the same as Steve's frozen slumber, but both problems were about stages of grief and coping. "Yes," Erik said. "I remember when you marched across Europe." Erik took time with his move even though he already knew the move he wished to make. "I know what it's like to lose something you did not know was possible to lose."

Steve looked at Erik, trying to place him. He knew that Erik might be someone who he had never met, but something tugged at his memory. "I know it sounds weird, but it was 1945 a month ago."

"I've heard a lot of weird things," Erik said. "I've done a lot of weird things." The game was close because Erik allowed it to be close. However, he would have Steve's king in the next three or four moves if Steve moved like a typical beginner. "I used to manipulate metal objects by concentrating with my mind."

Steve almost dropped his knight. That was not the kind of weird he expected. "What?"

"When I was a boy in the camps," Erik said, "I suddenly was able to bend metal just by thinking about it. I could hide people by bending metal, letting people into unexpected places, and returning it to its original form to fool the Nazis and HYDRA. It's how I kept from going on the death march." Erik waited a moment for the shaking in his hand to stop before picking up his queen. "I was a mutant."

"Like the Wolverine?" Steve asked. He remembered the Canadian soldier who had to parachute with Steve's team, though Wolverine did not stay with the team much longer after they touched down to ground.

"No," Erik said, "better." He set his queen in position. "When I had my mutation," Erik clarified after a pause. "He still has his."

"How do you…" Steve's voice trailed and he tried to think of the right word, "handle it?" He could tell it weighed on Erik as a death might.

"Some days I do and some days I don't," Erik admitted quietly. "I wake up every morning and I leave my apartment. I come here often and in the cold months, I read at the library." He leaned back in his seat. "I lost more than just my powers. I lost people. You want me to tell you loss gets easier, but we both know certain losses always hurt, but living beside the losses becomes easier with practice."

Steve nodded. "One day at a time," he said. Steve studied the board. His finger traced lines out from his king. "I think I'm in that check thing you told me about."

Erik sat forward again. He surveyed the board. "I should have realized." He thought he had one more move before he had Steve in check.

"So, I try to move out of it, right?" Steve asked. He considered the board again and he moved his king to the right.

Erik took stock of the board, double checking his strategy. In the past year, incidents like this happened from time to time. He moved his knight. "I believe that is check again."

Steve chuckled a little. "I almost thought I was winning." He could not find a way to move his king that would not fall prey to Erik's remaining pieces. "I think I can't move." He looked at Erik. "So, you won."

"Yes," Erik said. "Checkmate."

"It was an interesting game," Steve said, not sure how else to put it. Fun was not the word, but the conversation had helped somehow. "I'm glad we got to talk." He stood up. He wanted to stay, but he had an appointment to keep with a SHIELD agent. "I know you said you knew who I was, but I don't think I caught your name."

Erik met Steve's gaze and held it for a moment, debating something. "It was Max," he said, "a long time ago, when we first met."

The End