Disclaimer: See first chapter.
Author's Note: I bet you guys forgot about you…wrong! I've just been super-duper busy! I have fourteen days left in this term, and it's trying to do me in. But once it's done – I will be over halfway to my nursing certification! Yeahs!
Okay, going off the biographies I've dug up on Magneto, the best I can figure is that he was born in the late 1920's. So…as the author of this fanfic/oneshot/drabble, I've decided that *this* Magneto was born in 1927, making him seventeen in 1944. I want to apologize in advance for any possible 'false' historical references you may come across.
OccAmy Phyre requests an X-Men crossover. Magneto/Harry pairing and "Tattoos".
Deep in the recesses of his mind Magneto, the man known to very few as Erik Lehnsherr, and to even less as Max Eisenhardt, knew this wasn't real. It was an illusion, somehow implanted by Charles Xavier's blasted ex-student Jason Striker, a mutant who was now referred to as nothing more than Mutant 143. Charles had told him about the boy's abilities in passing, but apparently time and the manipulation of his father had made the boy much stronger than they could even imagine; for while Jason was shaping a complex illusion that required great skill to fool a telepath as strong as Charles…Jason also had the ability to create an illusion to ensnare him as well. An illusion that took him back to Nazi occupied Poland, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, to the time when he first laid eyes on another being who had gifts like him. A boy with deep green eyes filled with sorrow. A boy simply known as 'Healer' to the guards, but it was in Erik that the boy confided that he was born with the name Harry Potter.
Auschwitz II, known as Birkenau, was one of the most infamous extermination camps the Nazi's had ever built - One of the finest accomplishments to the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". The camp had over 6,000 SS troops controlling it's actions and patrolling it's fences, but the majority of its workforce were the kapos, and the sonderkommandos like himself – Jewish prisoners who served as orderlies or the grunts who sorted the new 'arrivals' to camp, and dumped their corpses into the mass graves.
He could see himself as he was in 1944, back when he was seventeen and even five years of hard labor as a prisoner could do nothing to hide the fact that he would be a very attractive male if he had a little more to eat. When he looked in the mirror every morning, he could still see his father's chin, his mother's soft lips, and the combination of the two in his world-weary eyes. The ritual examination of his face every day was what kept him focused: focused on his dreams of freedom, focused on his long deceased family, and away from the fearful, jealous, and hateful eyes that he knew would follow him throughout the day.
He had no idea how he had caught the eye of one of the soldier's, but one minute he was pushing a wheelbarrow back to the gas chamber, and the next he was being yelled at in a crude mixture of Polish and German, ordered to the most feared block in the camp, the barracks that served as the torture chamber for those who were not lucky enough to receive a quick death. He passed cells that held people screaming, some murmuring nonsense to themselves, and some that held people who would never speak or move again. It was after he had collected his new 'load' and was about to leave, that he heard the voice of an angel singing softly, an angel held behind rusted iron bars, an angel who bore an upside down pink triangle upon his chest and the crude tattoo of six numbers - his identification number on his left arm and so very similar to his own. .
The angel was surrounded by filth, wearing nothing but thread-bare tattered clothing that did nothing to hide his otherworldly beauty. In his youth, his mother had spoken of the Lord's army, his angels, and for the first time in his life he truly wondered if his mother's stories were true. The boy, this angel had pale skin that seemed to glow even in the non-existent light of his cell, and hair as dark as the midnight sky. It was the boy's eyes that haunted him, eyes that brought back memories of home; of verdant fields in the country, of soft grass for napping under the guard of a lazy willow tree, of the past, and of a far too distant future.
He would come back to the barracks whenever he was able, always being careful to avoid the sight of the guards, as well as the other 'occupants' of the most feared block in the camp. He would creep up to the angel's cell and stare inside, talking to the boy in hushed tones while keeping an eye out for the guards. It was during another trip to the boy's cell that he learned why the guards kept Harry alive. One of the guards had somehow been shot in the side during firing practice, and two of his buddies had dragged him before the imprisoned homosexual teen and demanded the 'faggot' heal their comrade.
Even to this day, whether he understood it under the influence of Striker's illusion, he was still in awe of Harry's abilities. Amazing abilities that had saved the soldier's life and abilities that as he would soon come to learn, had kept Harry alive for nearly two years without food or water. It was only after he had revealed his own still developing powers to Harry, taking an old bullet and manipulating it into the shape of a rabbit, did the imprisoned 'healer' finally talk to him. Day after day he would visit the boy's cell whenever he could, whispering of the outside world, of how he and his fellow sonderkommandos were planning and plotting a revolt…and of his dreams of freedom, dreams that he would only admit in secret were unachievable if Harry was unable to be at his side.
Days became weeks, weeks became months, and it was a frigid early morning on the last day of September that he returned to the cell once more, only to find it empty of his angel. He had run from the barracks in a panic, his normally calculative and calm mind was running rampant with fear and panic. It wouldn't be until the next day after a night of no sleep that he would find Harry's body in the pit – a gunshot wound thorough his chest and an almost peaceful smile on his lips. A smile that to even the most ignorant of people spoke of freedom, and of an escape to a place where Magneto could not follow, not yet anyway.
It would be a week later, on October 7th that he and the other sonderkommandos lead the uprising against the SS with makeshift weapons of stone, axes, hammers, and homemade grenades. They would succeed in overpowering the guards, and blowing up the crematorium before being joined by the kommandos from other areas of the camp. In the dead of night, with only the blaze of fires lighting the sky, did Magneto flee with his comrades. And while those men ran with dreams of reuniting with loved ones who may have possibly survived against the odds, he would dream of revenge, of a world where he would no longer fear death and imprisonment; not for his family's religion, and not for the abilities that made it so he could become so close to his love…even if it was only for such a short time.
His mind seemed to clear at once, and first he stared into the mismatched eyes of Jason Striker before his hands slowly drifted up to land on the familiar helmet he had worn for so long, the helmet that protected his mind, his secrets, and his memories from those would only take those long hidden treasures and abuse them. Normally he would be tempted to leave his own friend Charles under the thrall of Mutant 143, and use the time between then and the man's freedom to make a clean escape, but the illusionist knew far too much.
And it was with far too much pleasure, that Magneto ripped one the metal sheets off the wall of Striker's false Cerebro and decapitated the mutant that dared to force him to relieve the happiest and saddest months of his long life.
…I guess I was in a sad mood writing this story, more so than I realized I suppose. Nothing too wrong over here, but it's hard not to write about the holocaust and not have things so maudlin.
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