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[wecanavenge]

User Name/Nick: Ari
User LJ: rivin
AIM/IM: FallenSun13
E-mail: Redrobin133@gmail.com
Other Characters: T'Pol, Tim, Olive, Arya

Character Name: Erik Lensherr
Series: X-Men: First Class
Age: Early thirties; he was between fourteen and seventeen when he entered Auschwitz in 1944; it's 1962 when he comes to the Barge.
From When?: After Erik's gets Charles paralyzed, and he realizes he's making a brotherhood. Death by teleport.

Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Erik could be a good man, he could be a visionary for a bright new world, but he's bent on revenge, and doesn't see the problem in wiping out thousands of innocent lives to protect himself and his kind.
Item: --

Abilities/Powers: Erik's powers are almost limitless, but he hasn't fully realized what he's capable of yet. He's learned how to manipulate magnetic fields enough to fly, but he hasn't learned that he can manipulate his own field to create a personal shield. One day, he'll be able to manipulate other peoples' bodies by controlling the iron in their blood stream. One day, he'll be able to reverse biomagnetic fields, he'll even be able to generate and absorb electricity.

Obviously, he hasn't discovered any of this yet. Erik can fly by manipulating the Earth's magnetic field, and he can manipulate metal around him. He can feel the movement of metal around him - such as feeling the ship-guns being trained on him in Cuba - and he can control his powers very, very well.

On the Barge, the majority of this will initially be unavailable to him. His powers will be extremely reduced; he can still feel all the metal around him - he'll know if someone is walking by with a gun - but he'll be unable to manipulate it as completely as he's used to. He will not be made human by their complete removal; that would pretty much ruin him. But while before it was impossible to fight his control physically (he forced a man to shoot someone, simply because the man couldn't stop the gun from being aimed), he can now be stopped. It would be a struggle between Erik's discipline, and the physicality of his opponent. It will also be far more taxing to use his ability than normal: even the smallest task is comparable to lifting a submarine out of the water.

Personality: Erik's life has been defined by a series of emotions: anger, pain, pride, and very briefly, serenity. As a Jewish boy growing up in Nuremberg, Germany in the late 1920s/early 1930s, things were expected of him: he was meant to be small, weak, and sneaky. He was meant to lose to the good German boys, to prove that the Reich was right. As a child, though, Erik wasn't very good at suppressing his pride; he never became very good at that. During a school physical olympics, he was shamed in every event: running, jumping, wrestling. The school's headmaster made an example of him, pointing out to the other boys that he was the 'perfect example:' "Small, weak, but vicious. So of course, when he loses, he snaps at the victors like a little dog. But now that we've noticed him, look, he just stares at the ground." There was a time when Erik was incapable of standing up for himself, and he's sworn since then never to allow others to speak of him or his kind that way again.

Outside of school, however, Erik was very different; he comes from a loving family and a warm environment, not what you would expect of a man who would grow up to become a terrorist. His family was religious, and Erik absorbed everything that meant while he was young, when practicing in the peace of your home was still a possibility. Those memories, however, were largely lost to him for a very long time, which took a great toll on him: his earliest years in Nuremberg were the happiest of Erik's life. Forgetting that was like missing a part of himself; but when Charles brought them back to the surface, they didn't really change who Erik had become. There were too many other influences on him for the reminder of the serenity taken from him to really change who Erik had become. His heritage was important to him, and still is in many ways - in his own way, he is still religious, though he no longer practices. Those memories are intrinsically linked to those of the Warsaw ghetto, and Auschwitz. It's difficult to access one without the other, and while the memories of his family are tranquil, the rest are anything but.

Almost everything that Erik is today has come from what Shaw made him into. He was only in the camp for a year, but everything Erik endured there influenced him. He can't forgive, he can't forget, and he can't move on. He was tortured, mentally and physically, in order to force him to better control his mutation. He was starved, treated conversely as both a sub-species and as the dominant, by different groups, between the time he entered the Warsaw ghetto and the time he was liberated from Auschwitz. Erik calls himself Frankenstein's monster, but he believes himself to be the vindicated one: he has e very right to feel anger over what was done to him. He has every right to want to kill Shaw - more than that, he has every right to carry the act out himself. He doesn't see himself as a villain - and if he thought to view his life in such fairy tale terms, then he would without a doubt be the hero. He has suffered genocide, he has been experimented on, and he has survived. Now he wants to make sure that never happens again.

That extends to his interactions with others: he will never feel sympathy for men making the wrong decisions simply because they were following orders. He will never excuse those who are incapable of thinking for themselves, whether they are passive or take action. He understands the mob mentality, and though he isn't above making use of it for his own purposes, he won't excuse falling to it for others. While Charles is able to forgive those who act out of fear, Erik only really understands acting for survival. For him, it's easy to divide people: those who let their fear rule them, and those who function despite it. Humans are, by and large, grouped into the former. He has recognized that he would not be who he is without Shaw, but he will never forgive what Shaw did to him, just as he will never forgive the Nazis who put him in that position.

Because of Shaw, Erik thought himself to be the only mutant for almost two decades. There is an inherent loneliness in him, but it isn't something he actively seeks to change: he accepted long ago that he was alone in his endeavors. The urge to build a brotherhood, to bring mutantkind together and bring them into dominance is a very new one - it's the last thing that Shaw has given him. Erik spent the majority of his life focused on revenge: he grew from the little boy terrified of the SS men to an adult seeking to avenge the wrongs done to him. He is not seeking to replace the family he lost, nor is he looking for peace; peace isn't an option. But revenge was, and he pursued it until he had it. No one can say that Erik is not a man of determination.

Despite his best efforts to remain alone and unattached, Erik allowed himself to be pulled in by Charles Xavier and the X-babies younger generation of mutants. He began to foster relationships that he hadn't had since he was a child, and it's part of what's shown him that he never wants to be as alone as he thought he was before meeting Charles. He's showing some surprising aptitude as a mentor, too; he doesn't relate well to children growing up in the sixties, but he does understand the mockery and oppression they face. They even showed him that he can be a decent teacher (though probably not one you'd readily turn to for help).

Ultimately, Erik is a strong man, with an iron hold on his black and white morals. He sees himself as in the right: the people he's killed have more than deserved it, and he knows he'll never kill those that don't. The problem is that in his mind, too many people deserve it. He isn't prepared to make peace with the demons of his past, and until he can accept that yes, despite everything, peace is an option, he will always be deemed as a terrorist instead of a visionary.

Path to Redemption: Essentially, Erik needs to learn that his need for revenge has not been a good thing. He especially needs to take to heart the lesson that Charles touched on: not all humans are like Shaw. The problem with this is he will hold to the fact that they aren't all like Moira, either; not all humans are good and open minded and welcoming of mutants, which means, in Erik's mind, they will always make themselves into t he enemy.

It isn't that he wasn't to kill every human that he comes across: it's that he expects them to want to kill him. Very few have shown to be different. Even the men at the CIA base were prejudiced, and they were meant to be allies. Erik doesn't believe that humanity will change; it hasn't in twenty years, or really, in the last hundred. Why would they suddenly start to accept, learn not to fear those who are different?

He will need to be shown that not all humans fail to differentiate between 'good mutants' and 'bad mutants.' He needs to learn that isn't acceptable to hurt or kill anyone who gets in his way. He needs to learn that he can't blame the many for the actions of the few. Erik needs to be shown that despite his experiences, people can and will make their own decisions, and that those people should not suffer because of those who make wrong decisions.

Good things to keep in mind: Erik didn't kill the banker, though he easily could have, and the banker probably more than deserved it in his mind because he was dealing with Nazi gold. And remind him that there is more to him than rage and pain: that isn't just a method of mastering his powers, it's something he needs to accept for himself as a person.

History: Erik was born in Nuremberg, Germany, in the late 20s. He spent his early years happily, living with his mother, father Uncle Max, and his sister Ruthie. He attended a boy's school, where he was the only Jewish student, and where a young gypsy woman and her daughter, Magda, worked. Erik received top marks in class, but that didn't change the fact that the country was changing, and the school with it. In 1935, his school conducted an athletic competition for the boys; Erik did very poorly in most of the events, and was mocked mercilessly by one of his schoolmates. So when the time came for the javelin toss, Erik was tired of looking like a fool in front of Magda; he'd been nursing a crush on her for weeks, and had even made her a necklace from scraps in his father's shop. He threw his javelin farther than any other boy in his class could, and won the gold medal. He left school that day lighthearted, intending to give Magda her gift; in his excitement, he ignored the warning one of his teachers - a hidden Jew himself - tried to give him: the nail that stands up gets hammered down.

Chasing after Magda, he found himself enmeshed in a crowd celebrating a parade - and the enacting of the Nuremberg Laws. His uncle was at the center of it, wearing a sign that proclaimed 'I have shamed a German woman.'

Erik helped get his uncle home, and the Lensherrs first realized what the coming years might bring. The next day, Erik was accused of cheating in the javelin throw. He was given an overly heavy javelin, and told to throw again. If it fell short, as it was intended, he was a cheater. He was supposed to let the German boys win, to not be the nail standing up. But Magda was watching, wearing his necklace, and his mutation made itself known again; he threw the javelin farther than he had the first time. The Headmaster told him that 'the Reich has no place for cheating Jewish scum;' he was expelled from the school, and as he left, a group of his classmates attacked him, beating him with the medals they had won earlier that day.

In 1936, they thought things might be different; signs proclaiming 'Jews not welcome here' were taken down as the Olympics came to Berlin, and the worlds' eyes turned toward Germany. Erik accompanied his father to the city; Jakob Lensherr was a decorated war veteran, and he was certain that he could call in a favor with someone in the government. The night ended with Jakob being beaten into a concussion, and his favor being cashed to save his life.

The next few years were filled with scavenging; money was tight, and anything Erik found was very much needed as his sister started to grow sick. Now and then, he'd run into his former class mates; they were never pleasant occasions. No November 7th, 1938, a Jewish teenager named Herschel Grynszpan assassinated the German attache Ernst vom Rath in Paris; Herschel acted in response to losing his entire family to deportation to Poland (who refused to admit the 15,000 forced deportees), but those actions brought consequences to the Jews still living in Germany. Kristallnacht began the night of November 9th; Erik, with his sharp eyes, saw the soldiers coming down the street, and managed to get his entire family out of their apartment in time. They hid in a graveyard for the next day, avoiding the terror, brutalization, and murder occurring on the streets. They watched their neighbors attacked, watched them killed for standing up for themselves.

By October of 1939, the Lensherrs had left Nuremberg for Poland. But as they crossed the border, they found that they had waited too long; as September came, so did the Germans. The Nazis invaded Poland, and the Lensherrs were forced to flee through the woods, narrowly escaping the Nazi Einsatagruppen ('operational groups') hunting down Jews and Polish intellectuals. Erik managed to lead his family to Warsaw - where, a year later, along with 500,000 other Jews, they were herded into t he Warsaw ghetto, a two mile long section of the city. In November, a ten foot wall - replete with barbed wire - was completed around the ghetto. By June of 1941, mass starvation had set in; official rations left Jews as low as 184 calories a day. For years, Erik's growth was stunted by this lack, and he remained small and gaunt for some time even after being liberated. However, his sister was very sick at this point, and to counteract these deadly rations, Erik followed his uncle's footsteps and began smuggling. He was adept at finding ways out of the ghetto through hidden holes and avoiding Nazi patrols (though once, a small boy tried to follow him and was not so lucky). He took to his old habits of finding money where no one else did; it helped him buy food to smuggle back in to his family.

That was the way of things for the next four years; Erik did what he could to help his family survive. At that point, trains were running regularly through the ghetto, with promises that those who left on them would find work and food and space. Erik scoped them out, and saw blood in the cars; so his family waited, growing hungrier and sicker. His uncle's patience ran out, and he left the ghetto never to return, supposedly to fight. They never heard from him again. Ruthie, who had not been well for years, finally succumbed; shortly after losing her, the choice was taken from them, and they were forced onto a train, and taken to Auschwitz.

During the initial separation - those who could work, and those who could not - Erik was parted from his parents. It was too much, he had lost too many people - as his mother screamed for the only child he had left, as the gates closed behind them, he tried to follow: it took four SS Officers to hold him back as his mutation manifested again. The metal gate bent and twisted under his desperation to reach his parents.

Shortly after that, he was introduced to Herr Schmidt - later known as Sebastian Shaw - who spent the next year torturing Erik in the name of teaching him to control his power. Shaw shot his mother in front of him to incite a reaction. That cemented Erik's hatred, and all his determination, from that day on, turned to staying alive, and killing Shaw.

A year later saw the ultimate defeat of Germany; as they began losing the war, they made efforts to cover up the horrors they committed in various concentration camps. Erik was kept separate from the Birkenau uprising, thanks to Shaw's interest; the entire Nazi party was hardly aware of him, after all, and his survival in the camp was largely because of Shaw, something he is still unable to fully comprehend. However, eventually the majority of Auschwitz was evacuated; Shaw left Erik in the camp, seemingly abandoning him. And in some of the last executions conducted in the camp, Erik was lined up with other Jews at a mass grave and shot. Shaw knew Erik would act instinctively; the bullets avoided him, though he was knocked into the pit. Later, he was able to crawl out. Only a few days after, he was liberated by the Red Army on January 27th, 1945.

And then the events of X-Men: First Class happened.
Sample Journal Entry: These floods are disgusting. What have I learned about forgiveness this weekend, hmm? What did giving me a red arm band and a loyalty to the Reich accomplish? Hmm?

You people are pathetic, the way you accept these forced alterations as if they were nothing. As if you can simply turn your cheek and go on as if nothing has truly changed. Experience does not make something like this acceptable, and you're fools if you believe that. The Admiral should pay for the things he's done.

Do you hear me, Warden? I refuse to endure this again. Do you hear me?
Sample RP: 214782. They had branded his arm, but the numbers had invaded his thoughts over the years, too. Sitting in his room - his new prison - Erik mulled over his thoughts, watching the small metals drift through the air. Lamps spun at the edge of their cords, occasionally flickering as they threatened to unplug. Staplers and paperclips floated in lazy circles.

Erik's eyes narrowed as he watched, realizing that he would be unable to lift much more than this. He should be able to rip the walls off this boat was easily as he could lift a weight. He had lifted an entire submarine, and now he was limited. Dampened. Less. And this was how they meant him to learn redemption?

The light went out as the lamp ripped out of the wall, responding to Erik's temper. Items knocked into each other, clattered against the walls and floors and ceiling, bouncing off to continue their made dash. Who were they to tell him what he needed? The Admiral was not God. He was not divine. Erik clenched his hand, and the numbers on his arm flexed over his muscles. The items arranged themselves slowly in the air, hovering feet in front of him.

214782. Erik grit his teeth. Maybe he was wrong; maybe the Admiral was God. They seemed to have an affinity for allowing the unfair, unjust, and undeserved to happen. Staring at the numbers in the air, Erik exhaled with an angry shout; the items dispersed, slamming into walls. The light bulb burst as his lamp broke against the wall. Erik never moved.

"Is this what I endured for?"

((It's short, so here's a little extra for padding.))

Special Notes: Erik's early history has been taken entirely from Magneto: Testament; I've made some alterations to fit with what we see of young Erik in the movie. Also, if possible, I would like to bring in Erik's helmet.