Author´s note:

Oookay, I felt like writing today and am quite content with what this chapter turned out to be. Hope you like it. And I hope you will appreciate with many many reviews that it took me only a few days for another update.

PsychoSpiff: Thanks a lot. :-) (beams)

Meow: 2.0: Pyro Edition. Looool, that was hilarious, it made me laugh :-D I might steal that expression... if I may?... to put it into some later chapter... hehe

Genkai Shihan: Oh yeah... I guess Erik will soon wonder, too. Wouldn´t have been logical to let him take the necklace if there wasn´t any significance to it or was it? ;-)

Emperor K. Rool: Yup, he just said it to annoy her, he looks like the guy to do things like that.

Okay, nuff said, this chapter´s going to be quite dark and such... hope you don´t mind.

Chapter 15

Chances

They had climbed the helicopter wordlessly and a gaze had been enough for Erik to let Mystique know his plans concerning Warthington had been cancelled. He did not tell a reason for it and if he was honest with himself, he did not even know one himself. Or, better: he did not know which of the two reasons had been the one to make him head back to the lair in stead of doing what he had left the lair to do. Was it what he told himself? That the street fight had cause enough uproar for a night? That people would expect mutants to be behind it? Sure they would. There had been eye witnesses for Pyro and the others, so by now the estates of famous people... especially those who had a word or two to say in mutant affairs.. would have been called and made safe. They would not expect Magneto to arrive at Worthington´s in the dead of night, but Erik preferred not to let it come to this. Maybe he had by now given in to the fact that there had been some truth to what Mystique had said earlier. He had not had a true plan. He had left the lair in a rush... in the desperate – and lightheaded - urge to get back to action. Or was there another reason behind abandoning his further ´plans´? He knew there was. He knew he could not trust Mystique. Not yet. She had taken no action against him which he knew had nothing to do with her fearing him, but she had not come to his aid either when he had been confronting Pyro. She had not been far away he knew. She had witnessed the fight, but she had not dropped in as her remark had made only too clear. He did not want to rely on her in this state of mind. He had known her for years, but life had told him never to trust anyone too much. Mystique had been close to being offered his unlimited trust once... but no more.

Erik felt tired. More than he would have admitted and more than once on their way back to the lair he found himself fighting against his urge to close his eyes. He wanted to sleep. He felt weary. But sleeping in the company of another was a proof of trust. One he was not willing to risk. Not yet.

They did not talk. The constant, silent flapping of the rotor blade was the only sound that filled the helicopter cabin. Mystique had remained in her Raven Darkholme shape and he had stopped feeling irritated by it, as he knew this was just the way she wanted him to react. No. He was above that.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Rain. He knew it meant no good as soon as he felt the first raindrops fall. He opened his hand and watched, transfixed to the vision of his own, small palm how a raindrop fell onto his skin. Then a second one. And yet another. The rain became heavier. He knew his clothes would be soaking wet soon, he knew he was going to be cold and he knew there was nothing that was going to stop the cold... nor his fear. He rubbed his hands together although he knew it was useless and that just as his fingerless dark grey gloves were not able to hold back the biting chill of the day, nothing would help to fight the cold within him. He knew... he had felt this before... so often... so many nights.

He looked up and his gaze met the eyes of his mother. Her shape, just as his own, expressed fear and hopelessness in every fibre of her being, every breath she took, visible in the form of small clouds of whitish smoke that floated away from her greying face through the rain breathed fear... termination.

"Don´t be afraid!" She tried to force a smile, but didn´t succeed. He knew she was trying to fight back tears, he knew her fear was just as intense as his own despite the effort she was making not to show to her young son. "Don´t be afraid, Erik. All will be fine. They won´t... separate us. I won´t let them." Her words were barely more than a whisper, words that were ripped from her lips by the wind, the rain and the fear eradiating from the crowd they were a part of. Dozens, hundreds of people – men, women, children. Many of them sobbing, others nearly paralized in shock and horror... those that had heard stories about the place they were taken to. A place of no return. Not just a camp as they wanted to make them believe, but...

He couldn´t help but let his eyes wander over their heads... and towards the walls... the gate... the masses of barbed wire, encaging figures that hardly deserved to be called human beings any more...

Erik bit back a sound of pain when one of the soldiers hit him in the back with the hilt of his gun. "Los. Vorwärts!" The words uttered in German sounded cruel, merciless. He stumbled on. His father looked at him over his shoulder, his black, sloppy hat nearly covering his eyes which were rimmed with darkness and exhaustion after days of hunger, cold and fear in a train compartment the Germans didn´t even use to transport their cattle anymore. Cattle was worth more to them than what those trains transported these days.

His feet were carrying him although he was not consciously thinking about moving his feet and thus moving closer and closer to the gate that had appeared before them a time ago. A gate made of steel, rain streaming from its pitiless bars, dropping from the wire that was slung around it and pinned to the tops to hinder the poor creatures it imprisoned from an escape they did not have the strength for anyway.

"Erik. Stay with me!" He felt his mother clutch for him, wrap him in her arms, her clothes just as dirty and soaked as his own. He kept his gaze on the gate. Blinked. He suddenly felt very tired and agitated at the same time. Fear was taking its toll. His fingers were already starting to tingle strangely. His panic deepened, but he tried not to show. He would be strong. He had to be strong. If it was true what they said about these camps they would separate them from his father. They would make him work till he died. He needed to be strong. For his mother he needed to leave his fear behind.

Suddenly the crowd became agitated. Just as his mother had a moment ago, he saw people suddenly grab each others arms, He could see a man putting his hands onto a young boy´s shoulder. Father and son, he was sure. They looked at him for a moment. A moment which seemed strange, out of focus and unfamilar. They did not belong here for some reason.

When Erik turned his head, he saw more soldiers approaching from behind, their faces without emotion and pity, grey and lifeless as the rain. Those were not humans, he thought. Why were they doing this?

The crowd began to huddle together like a herd of sheep fearing wolves. Small screams and sobs were to be heard everywhere around him when Erik was continually pushed closer and closer to the gate. The tingling in his fingertips became more obstrusive. He tried to ignore it. He closed his eyes and concentrated, thinking that if the tingling was leaving, everything would be all right. He knew it was an illusion, but did not care. The shoving and pushing continued and he was forced to re-open his eyes. He had to blink as raindrops were falling heavily from the rim of his shabby cap, soaking his hair, soaking his face, watering his eyes, mingling with the tears that had begun to trickle down his cheeks. He did not know what was happening. All he knew was that suddenly his mother´s embrace was gone and gone was the little warmth her weary, ill-nutritioned body had been giving him.

"No!" He sobbed, screamed and her scream echoed like madness in his ears .. madness called upon humans by humans that were not worth to be labelled human. Rough hands were pushing him aside, seemingly unaware that one of the poor creatures had been abandoned, pushing him away from his mother. He stared in shock, unable even to scream, tears streaming down his face, his hand reaching for her, his lips moving wordless confessions of his panic.

He struggled with all the strength that was left and had to find it was not much... not more than a small child could have given. His father had clapped his hand over his mother´s mouth in the desperate attempt to silence her... to make her stop screaming their boy´s name... maybe the soldiers would just oversee him... just leave the boy outside the gates like an abandoned piece of cloth... not do to him what they told they did to those poor souls that were taken to the camps. Her screams were muffled, her eyes remained wide in fear, in panic when their gazes met... met... and the gaze was broken.

He screamed, he was out of his mind. His head felt heavy, his vision blurred and he only half consciously felt the soldier´s arm wrap around him, hold him back... he continued screaming... screaming...he stretched out his hand... and the tingling in his fingertips exploded to excrutiating pain...

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Erik could have sworn the pain was still there, the pain he had felt when all those years ago, his mutancy had first shown. For a moment he left his eyes pressed shut, panting heavily, feeling he was sweating all over... feeling from the huskiness of his breath that the screams of his dream had been screams of his own. Screams of fear and despair that had carried through the nightmare and into his waking life, transforming the fear of the young, Jewish boy he had once been into the scream of the man, the mutant, the homo superior...he had become...he had become again.

His fight against the soldier had shown its effects, too. Erik opened his eyes and pushed aside what was still in his bed from the pillow he had for the most part struggled away and off him. For a moment he stared at the ceiling, then he switched on the small lamp on his bedside table with a shaky flick of his hand. Warm, yellow light filled the room and chased away the dread of grey shadows on the nightly walls.

Sleep was gone for the night, he knew. There was no use in trying to lie down again and find the peace of silent dreams. He knew this peace would be denied from him tonight.

He got up and walked towards the window and with every step he made the dreams slipped a little further back into the shadows of the past from whence it had come. The colour grey became less threatening, screams that had been echoing in his head moments ago faded into the emptiness of forgetting, images he had lived through as he had so many times before, became blurry. All... all, but one. He had known they did not belong to this place, to this time, when he had seen them. They had never been in his dream before. A father and a son, looking at him, shortly before his family had been taken from him. No, they had never been there, because they had not lived back then. It had been Erik himself who had put them into his nightmare. He had seen them only hours ago. A dark-haired man throwing a brick at a young mutant who was to threaten his little son´s life. A man and a boy in panic from the gaze of a mutant who saw them as worthless ... unworthy creatures not as valuable a life form as he was.

Erik Lehnsherr closed his eyes when his hands grabbed the iron window sill. It felt good and soothed his nerves and heartbeat. Sometimes these nightmares came out of nowhere, sometimes they had a reason for torturing him again. As they had had this night. He had not thought about his doing back that evening when he had seen what Pyro was about to do. He had just reacted. And now he knew why...the panic in this man´s eyes had been a mirror of what he had so many years ago seen in the eyes of his mother. The uttermost panic of a person who knew there was no chance of escape. They had not had a chance once. His mother, his father, they had never had a chance once they had been put at the mercy of those that thought them unworthy of being alive at all. Magneto suddenly knew why only a few hours ago he had definitely made Pyro his enemy... it was because he had decided that the little creature that had stumbled over the stone and fallen onto the street deserved a chance he had never been given.