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.