Title: All You Were Needing When You Still Believed in Me
Author: kelly1_watxm
Summary: Wanda has never met Magda, but my daughter is more like her mother than she will ever know. For andthexmen's Off-Season Fic Off #7 – Masks. (Magneto first person POV one-shot)
Rating: T (14+)
Length: 1500ish
Characters: Erik , Wanda, Pietro, Magda, Charles, Anya
Warnings: Character death, mention of blood, references to the Holocaust.
Disclaimer: Marvel owns.
A/N: 1) This is sort of a mixed chronology clusterfeck of the Magneto/Wanda/Pietro story within the WATXM verse. It's stated in canon that Lorna's been on Genosha her whole life, and how Wanda and Pietro relate to Erik in this verse has always made me feel as though they've been raised by him since they were born too. No gypsies or anthropomorphic cow midwives XD.
2) A majority of the dialogue comes from Foresight.
Wanda stares at me with a look that is pure malice, pure Magda, before turning on her heels. For the first time, I have allowed my daughter to see who I truly am.
And she is repulsed by it.
This is not right. "Wanda, you've stood by my side for this long; don't abandon me now." She understands the need for sacrifice, she understands what the sentinels, the senator, the solidarity means to the mutant cause; I have prepared her for this. Everything has led to this moment. This isn't supposed to happen; this wasn't supposed to happen again. "You're the only one I can count on."
Beside me, my son exhales a small, soft sound at these words. This is why I need Wanda: my little girl, my legacy. I have made her in my image. I have made them all what they are. Pietro is weak because of it; petty, scared. Lorna is protected—too young, too naive. Of all my children, Wanda has the vision, the intelligence, the fire. I have put everything into her.
She pauses on the threshold of the doorway.
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Anya's birth occurred at a time when husbands had very little to do with the delivery; it was handled by doctors and nurses behind closed doors. All that was expected of me was frantic pacing and cache of celebratory cigars to distribute upon the conclusion of the whole affair. It's agony. I am not a man who relinquishes control easily, and Magda's anguished screams are enough to convince me that they are torturing her in there.
"Relax, Erik, this is part of the process." Charles is present; I appointed him responsible for my sanity and he had been more than willing to oblige. This was months before I knew he was telepathic, before things would sour between us; I had simply assumed he had a knack for inducing a certain tranquillity in me. Perhaps he did, and his telepathy was not part of the equation at all. Years later, many of my exchanges with Charles would be tainted through this filter.
I smile wanly at him, loosening my grip on the vinyl armrest slightly. Another cry from behind the swinging doors causes me retighten it almost immediately. "Ever the optimist, Charles." It was a variation of a conversation we would repeat ad nauseum in the future, when he was building a school and I was building an army, but for now it is devoid of the subtext... for now I appreciate his naive faith.
It is the only time I will ever see Charles smoke. My little girl is beautiful.
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Everything freezes, reels back, ghosting over an instant in time until I see both the memory and the present with equal clarity. The set in her shoulders, blades squared and arched back beneath long, dark curls... history is repeating itself. Of course, the truth behind that adage is why I've had to do this, why I've sacrificed everything: my people, my children, my humanity. Mankind will never learn. Nothing changes.
I wait for Wanda to turn around, even as she begins walking away from me; an I'm so sorry, father, an I understand, father.
But that is not how the story goes.
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Magda pulls herself from my grasp. "What are you?" I don't know how to answer her question.
The mob lies at our feet, dozens of bodies growing cold even amongst the flames, no longer able to hold me back from saving Anya. But my daughter is no longer alive to save. Her awful keening wail has stopped, a rabbit scream from when my father took me hunting as a young boy. I will never forget that sound. I will never forget that smell. Acrid, like the ovens once were. The fire rages through our home, through me. Charles is wrong about them. They will never understand. I rub at my wrist, feeling the raised numbers there without seeing them, without seeing anything. My eyes blur. I want to hold my wife. I will never hold my daughter again.
"You killed them." For the first time, behind the careful concealment of my powers, behind my role as husband, as father, my wife has seen who I truly am. And she is repulsed by it.
Magda turns, sets her shoulders, and walks away from me.
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I will never learn that nothing changes. No matter what I do, everything is already written -- the atrocities, the triumphs – within the universe and within my own life.
The sentinels are destroyed. I was willing to sacrifice everything for what I believed, but I never imagined it would be for nothing. I have failed my people, I have failed my children. And now I stand on the shore, and I await my judgement.
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Relax, Erik, this is part of the process. I repeat Charles' words over in my head, trying to ignore the terrifying noises Magda is making. It is only worse because I am right here in the room this time. Everything will be fine. My wife will be fine. My children will be fine. Not a single fibre of me believes this.
The doctors in my service are crimson and frantic. A tiny heartbeat thrums through the monitor; abnormally fast, they said, a sign of duress. The metallic scent of blood is overwhelming. My son has decided to enter the world feet first and tearing, two months before he is expected.
I wish Charles were here; I have no talent for optimism. I am under no illusion that he wouldn't have a moral opposition to what is happening under this roof, however, I do think he would be much more competent than the telepath I am currently employing. Magda moans, thrashes.
"Hayes, keep her sedated!" Gene Hayes is barely eighteen, and showing admirable effort under the circumstances. I should not chastise him, but I desperately need to do something, to exercise what little control I have over the situation. I have not felt this kind of overwhelming helplessness since Auschwitz.
"I'm trying my best, si---" His sentence is cut short as he screams in tandem with Magda. Like everyone gathered here, the strain of the last eight weeks is evident on his face. My people caught up with my wife several months after she disappeared, near the Romanian-Transian border. She was moving around less and it was evident why when then brought her back to me, her stomach distended with pregnancy. Twins: a boy, my heir, my legacy, and a girl who would never replace Anya.
Even from the start there were... complications. Swelling, high blood pressure – everything made worse by her captivity, by my presence. I brought the telepath on board almost immediately; Magda thinks she is in Transia, some elaborate fantasy in which she has escaped to Wundagore Mountain. They all look at me like I'm a monster. I cannot lose another child. I cannot lose my children. When they are safe, I will stop this. I will make her understand -- who I am, what I am, why I must do this. She knows as well as I do what humanity is capable of. She will understand. We will be a family again.
The boy is corpse pale and slicked with blood. Stillbirth. I feel sick. They are trying to hide him from me. And then he lets out a terrible noise, a gurgling unnatural shriek above the frenzied yelling of the doctors trying to save the other twin (it is already too late, I am certain of it,) above sounds that surely mean my wife is dying. The cry brings no relief, only terror, only loathing. I hate this abomination. This writhing, screeching, foul thing is my legacy, the squirming personification of everything that shouldn't be, and I ache to destroy it as it has destroyed my wife and my daughter and my future. The doctors are distracted.
"Erik." My name is growled through clenched teeth. Madga. Furious, righteous. My telepath has failed me. Her eyes are eerily focussed. She knows, she sees, she understands perfectly. This is who she wanted to protect our children from...not the mutant but the man. For the first time, I see who I truly am, and I am repulsed by it.
And then she's gone.
The condolences of my staff are forced and empty. The children are cleaned, wrapped, moved to a room away from their mother. I will not hold the boy. I never hold the boy. He is four pounds, premature; he is heavy with my shame. But my little girl is beautiful, like her mother–dark hair, blue eyes–and she will be my legacy. She will know who I am, she will see, she will understand, and she will embrace it.
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"Wanda, don't do this."