Author's Notes

Disclaimer
Due to the incredible lack-of-money-made-off-writing-this-story, I tried to auction the disclaimer off but nobody wanted it. So I ate it for dinner.

Since most of the Magneto fiction here involves devious plots to conquer the world/romantic involvement with Charlie Xavier, I figure flames wouldn't make a bad meal, either...

Prologue

1944:
A young Jewish boy, separated from his family in a Nazi camp. Struggling to rebel against the German guards and rejoin them, resulting in the emergence of his unique mutant powers, and consequently, the birth of one of the most powerful mutants in the world.

At the same time, hatred and the vow for vengeance against this bigotry burning in his heart, like a wildfire. The loss of a child's blind faint and ignorance, and turning his back on his God forever.

1949:
The same boy, no longer young, on the ship's deck leaning out to sea, as the Statue of Liberty welcomed him to his new home. America, the land of tolerance and peace. A place where no one would be persecuted because they were different. Or so he thought.

Later the same year, he met Charles Francis Xavier, a man who was somewhat like him, who possessed special powers that would set him apart from the rest of humanity, brand him forever as one who did not belong. With his new friend he theorized the existence of 'homo superior', or 'mutant', as they would later be called. Together they began work on Cerebro, a machine that would help to locate homo superior as the evolution went on around the globe. But like it or not, he remembered the camp and soldiers, and he knew it would happen again. Mutants were different, and therefore they would be persecuted, as had the Jews. It was up to him to protect his people from what he had gone through.

2000:
Now known as the mutant terrorist Magneto, the man formed a group known as the Brotherhood of Mutants consisting of three others, beside himself. They helped him build a grand machine, with which he plotted to mutate the world leaders at the UN World Summit. They would become his brothers, his people. And with their power, mutants would inherit the world.

All would have gone well, his plan would have worked if not for the intervention of Xavier's own group of mutants, the X-men. The Brotherhood was defeated, perhaps dead, his invention destroyed, and he himself captured.

Present:
Sitting in his plastic prison, he had plenty of time to think, and to revisit his memories. If nothing else, this isolation had helped him to focus on his ideals. It was clear, ever since he was dragged from his family, that the God he had been raised to believe in either didn't exist, or was too weak to help his people. It was clear that the world was crammed too full of discrimination and bigotry to ever have room for peace and tolerance. And it was clear that mutants would be the next victims.

"He who loses faith loses all." A phrase commonly heard, but not entirely true. Erik lost his faith, and every hope he had the day he lost his family to his German captors, but he never lost his determination. And even as he stayed imprisoned he remembered his vows, and swore to one day make the world safe for his people.

Still, there was something in this man that had died, and maybe Erik would never really know how much he had lost...hope.

Maybe.

Because hope is the light, and faith the candle that fuels it, and so one can always believe that even in the darkest night, a light still burns, light to make a blind man see, and bring a hopeless man hope.