Auther:
Magnus.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but this story. X-men and the
concept of
mutants are Marval's. Btvs belongs to Jason. I own
nothing. Poor me.
He
was still having trouble getting around. He was a mutant now.
And
even if most of the population had no idea they existed, he
did. Or
really Eric Lehnsherr had.
The first day he'd been
really out of it. Eric's mind had been
strong! It tried all it
could to fight him out of his own head, but
without Ethan's magic
he couldn't win.
But even after his consciousness had been
defeated Eric's powers and
memories had stayed with Xander.
The
teen could have dealt with the powers, they were cool as hell,
but
they didn't scare him. Because he knew already how to use
them,
something else Eric left him. It was the memories he wished
he
didn't have.
His memories of the Holocaust were the most
frightening things
Xander had ever seen. Vampires, demons, magic,
they didn't scare him
as much as the images in his mind did.
He
knew they weren't his memories, knew that it was Eric who
lived
through it. But he couldn't stop the images that bombarded
him when
he thought of the past.
Xander could remember the
day his parents were taken from him. He
tried to fight the guards,
tried to get to his mother and father,
but he couldn't. It was the
first time his powers had manifested
themselves.
He'd
twisted the metal gates between him and his parents, the very
iron
bent to his will as Eric tried to get to them. Only to be
smashed
in the face by one of the Nazi's rifles.
He'd failed, and his parents had been taken to the ovens.
Those images were enough
to make Xander vomit his dinner up the
first night after the spell
was broken. His insides felt twisted and
distorted. It hurt; it
hurt like nothing else in his life had ever
hurt.
It hurt
because Eric loved his parents, loved his family. It wasn't
the
indifference Xander felt towards his parents and they towards
him,
no. This was real love between a child and his parents.
And
when they died it didn't matter to Eric that he was a freak, a
Jew
freak, twice damned in that hellish place. He felt nothing but
sorrow
and disgust.
Eric blamed himself for their deaths. Blamed
himself because he
wasn't strong enough to protect them. And he
vowed never to be weak
again, never to be powerless as those he
loved were harmed.
The teen would like for the rest of Eric's
time in those camps to be
a blur, that they weren't going to stand
out as much as his parent's
death. But that would be a lie.
He
couldn't forget what had happened in the camps. Because Eric
would
have never allowed himself to forget. Something else he
promised
himself. To never forget one of their faces.
Hundreds of men,
women, and children. He'd watched them come and go.
Some from
firing squads, some were gased, and some like his parents
went
into the ovens.
Eric bore witness to it all. Never forgetting
a single face, a
single name, or a single scream in the night. And
Xander remembered
right along with him. And in feeling Lehnsherr's
conviction Xander
felt he didn't want to forget, he couldn't.
He
might not have made the promise, but he couldn't turn his back on
it.
Doing so would be unforgivable. To just close his eyes and
forget
it all; the very idea was obscene.
So like Eric Lehnsherr, Xander bore witness.
He knew he had to get out of the village,
had to get away from
people. So he took to the skies, not caring
who saw him do it
either. And he went into the jungles.
There,
he ripped and smashed everything around him. He let his new
powers
loose, and in only a few moments laid waste to one square
block
that used to be thick vines and trees.
It calmed him, but it
didn't make him feel better. He didn't know
anything that could.
But he'd spent his rage, and his hate. Hatred
for the ones that
did that to Eric and the others, and hatred for
those who stood by
and let it happen.
He was finally ready to go home.
