wecanavenge | ✘ | 019

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[His whole room is shaking. It's like an earthquake has gripped his room, but it keeps lasting and lasting, and only the last dregs of his control are keeping him from causing some serious, actual damage to the ship. But that won't solve anything. None of this will solve anything.

His communicator shoots across the room without being touched, without even a gesture. It slams into the wall, and Erik stares, glares at some empty, middle space without seeing anything. Without seeing the room, at least. He's certainly seeing red. It's a tantrum like he had when he was a child, gutted with loss and rage and heady with the power - things creak around his room, and things shift and shoot and move on their own, and he doesn't think he wants to stop it.]

[Video]

[The video clicks on, and Erik is sitting in his room, at his desk. He's wearing a black turtleneck, and though this is very much an I prefer Magneto time for him, he isn't wearing the helmet. He's composed, but there is such anger in his eyes for anyone looking for it. In front of him is a pile of books, and next to that another pile, half off screen; there may well be more.]

When I was a boy, I saw the Nuremberg Laws passed. It was 1935, and the government of the country I was born in took it upon themselves - with great Aryan support - to refine our understanding of who was German, and who was a Jew. If you had three or four Jewish grandparents, as I did, you were a Jew. If you had one or two, you were Mischling. A half-breed. Mixed blood.

The government told us what we were, but they didn't stop there. They told us who would could associate with. Who we could have sex with. My uncle was beaten and paraded through the streets, forced to wear a sign: Ich habe deutches Mädchen getchändet. I have shamed a German woman. Never minding, of course, that she made a choice, too; she was Aryan. She was above reproach.

That is what I was taught, when I was young. That those in power can do anything, and they will be backed so long as they speak charismatically enough.

[His composure is starting to slip, and he's far from calm - but he hasn't started yelling yet.]

I have been here exactly four hundred and forty-nine days, nearly a year and three months, and in that time I have made ample use of the library. Not long before I was judged and delivered to Barge justice, I learned of a man who denied the genocide that occurred in Germany and Poland. An American man, born in the land of the free, the home of the brave. [The disgust lacing his voice is thick, and he holds up a pamphlet; the most legible thing is the author's name, Harry Elmer Barnes.] He called us the swindlers of the crematoria.

[His voice goes strained, there, almost breaks, and he pauses to take a slow breathe.]

I know not all of you know what happened, in those camps. I know not all of you are from Earth, or my time or after. But these books-- [he gestures to the stacks] --they write about it as history. As past and gone, as fact, in most cases. [He's tossing the pamphlet away with a small sneer, letting it flutter to the floor behind him.]

It isn't just the past. It isn't something that happened a long time ago, though God knows I've tried to put it behind me. I can't. I won't. I shouldn't have to. [He pulls up the sleeve of his left arm, and holds himself so that it's just visible on camera: 214782.] This is the number they gave me. This was my identity. This was the number they called when they told me I was to be sonnderkommando.

[His voice is shaking now, and it's all anger.] Historians write about them, too. They wonder if we should have been prosecuted as war criminals. They say that because we had easier work, we're no better than the Nazis. They think we had a choice, but the only choice was dying slower - and searing into memory the hope on a woman's face when she's told she's going to be allowed to shower, the way she comforted her crying infant. And what could I say? Run? They'd have been gunned down, and me with them. [His hands are in fists.]

We watched them walk willingly - for a poor definition of willing - to their deaths, and when it was done and the gas had cleared, we carted them to the crematoria. I knew others who were buried under piles and piles of bodies. I learned-- [His voice does break there, and he glares harder, pushing on.] I learned how to set an old man's body and a child's together so they would burn better. I carted familiar faces into the furnace. And I should be held accountable.

[Another slow breath; some things on his desk have shifted and spilled, though he hasn't actually moved. The camera, at least, stays steady.]

I'm saying this now so you know. I've seen the limit of human suffering. I know what it is to endure. And my lingering anger over what I - what we were made to endure, is legitimate. I'm not screaming incoherently. [Yeah Megamind, he's talking to you.] And I am not, have not demanded that Toshiko live through what I lived through. That it's been assumed that I would put others through that is grotesque and ignorant. [See Alex, you don't get it.]

But I am telling you that demotion isn't enough. A week in Zero isn't enough, an apology isn't enough. We deserve reparations, and maybe she isn't guilty of war crimes, but she is guilty. I have been an inmate for four hundred and forty-nine days, and I have been her inmate for two hundred and ninety-four of those days. She's seen my file. She knows this information. And when I was sent to Zero because I was defending her, she did nothing.

[Something crosses his face, largely frustration.] Maybe she couldn't. But that doesn't erase what happened, because of her.

Don't tell me she's gotten what she deserved. We're told that this ship is meant to redeem, that it's meant to heal, but don't think for a moment that just because it works occasionally means it's equal, or just, or that everyone has the same chance.

We're told we're wardens or inmates. We're given a title and a job, and we watch each other fail, and fail, and fail. The Admiral would have us convinced that we all have the same opportunity, and I am telling you that we don't. That justice is in flux, that we cannot trust our charismatic leader peddling his deals, that graduation is a combination of work and good fortune, and that deluding yourself otherwise is not hopeful, it's foolish.

I was told that I could graduate, if only I tried, and did the right thing, the same as every other inmate here. I did the right thing. And I am done playing by arbitrary rules.

[Spam for Megamind]

[He needs to clear his head, desperately. The post helped, but the anger is still there, will always be there, he thinks, because he hadn't told everything. He hadn't said a word about Shaw, about the experiments. He hadn't mentioned the Vanquish, though it might have driven the point home; those were things he didn't want to face, publicly. Not yet. So he's walking, avoiding people and eye contact, though his posture is probably enough to put most off.

But he sees a flash of blue as he passed the lab, and Erik's gait slows and pauses for a breath. Megamind, who he wanted little than to punch yesterday. He doesn't know what it is that turns him around, that makes him lengthen his stride.]

Stop.

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Yeah. I-- know. [ He doesn't know what to say to that, really. 'Sorry, dude, you died'. 'Prefect for me my first month here, it was very educational', what? What did you say? Megamind would no longer be dependent on his warden to return him now -- he would have been targeted like Toshiko was in the Overlook. ]

[ But there's no use explaining that to Erik; he knows. ]

I got lucky in the Overlook. Just-- saw my dead parents and little things from when I was small. It wanted me to do the job myself, I guess. Believe I was worthless. So, I tore up bibles to teach Zev origami, and we kept each other-- alive, I guess.

Nobody-- murdered anybody.

[ They just found something to cling to, and cling they did. ]

And that's when everything went wrong for her.... and leads us... here. Where you are angry, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, and Toshiko's waiting for someone to do to her what she did to you, and then some.

[ He pauses, and swallows down another mouthful of beer, mimicking Erik's order and finding the stuff's not too bad. ]

So-- what do you want now?

[Of course he knows. Erik takes another long drink, keeping his eyes on Megamind instead of giving into temptation and looking away. His eyes narrow a little after a moment, and he leans forward.]

Are you saying this all started with the Overlook?

[ To Megamind's credit, he does not shrink back, and he does not look away. Instead, he takes a breath, tapping his fingers against his stein, before he says: ]

Yes. That's when-- everything went-- to crap.

We got together back around the time of the Wonderland crash. Right after we got, uh, the ship off the ground... well, one thing sort of led to another with us. Close quarters, working together, crisis. After that, everything was pretty good until the Overlook. Then, everything just started to decline until she was pretty much completely closed off completely 'round Christmas...

...and then the truth flood hit, and everything really came out.

[ He was quiet, before he admits: ] I thought it was just me, at first. That she'd... gotten bored with the novelty.

Edited 2013-04-06 14:40 (UTC)

[He sits very, very still for a long moment, sifting through the bits of information and deciding how he feels on the matter. She killed him. She drugged him and shot him twice, after he'd been hallucinating, after he'd very nearly killed himself out in the snow. She'd given in to it.

Maybe, a small voice told him, maybe because she didn't have someone helping her. Maybe because she hadn't had someone like Charles, desperate to make her survive.

It doesn't help, thinking that; it doesn't make him less angry. He knows he should have taken her offer to unpair them, but neither of them had known if his mutation would be gutted again, if he'd be half himself again, and that had been too big a risk for him to take. So she'd turned to drugs, and he hadn't spoken to her, and - what? Did that make this his fault?

No. No, that he refused to see. But there would always be the whisper in his ear, still...]

I knew a girl who was blue.

[He's not sure why he changes the subject - maybe because blame is not something he's prepared to discuss, but being different is.] She spent most of her life hiding it. She could change her appearance.

So can I.

[ It comes out easily; Megamind, for all his bitterness about certain things, about all his 'evil' and his pretense, can be both naive and trusting. He doesn't know Erik's fear about the Overlook, because Tosh never elaborated on what happened. He wouldn't be surprised by Erik's thoughts in the slightest... ]

[ But neither will he attempt to fathom them. He takes the subject change instead, and turns his watch face. ]

I've been [ a man with sandy hair, curling wildly in every direction ] a lot of people [ a short, chubby man with tall, silvery hair and a distinct resemblance to a rather chipper Marlon Brando in a spangled space-suit straight from the early eighties ] in my line of work. [ the warden finishes it, stern, heavy jowls, hair white. ]

[ He flips the watchface back to himself, and smiles. ]

But I didn't make the watch until I was a lot older. I -- didn't ever get that 'hide it' option, and by the time I did-- I was flaunting it instead.

[He watches, with a faint arch of his eyebrow. Technology still astounds him, sometimes, because it is magic to him in so many ways. It's humans making themselves mutants, as he'd thought of Tosh and Tony Stark - but Megamind isn't human.

Still.] It was part of her mutation. She hid to protect herself. To be a part of society. [He shakes his head once, sharply.] She didn't realize that society needs to learn to accept her. Not for a long time.

['Mutant and proud,' she'd said, and there is the ghost of something like a smile on his lips when he takes another drink.] Better to flaunt.

And that's what you're fighting against, isn't it? [ Naive, yes. Stupid? Never. Though he may regularly lack common sense and world experience, he can catch the obvious. He knows enough of Erik now. ] She should be able to flaunt it.

Or not flaunt it. Simply be it, and not have it be a big deal, right? Man, I cannot even imagine. It was always... a big deal. [ And then his eyes track the grain of wood over their table, as his thoughts spin to darker places. ] Or... worse. So there aren't people... putting numbers on her arm.

[He nods, after a pause of silence and stillness, tapping his finger against the bottle.] Society should conform to her. [To us.] Not the other way around.

She's safe, for now. She was protected. [And he is glad of that, glad Charles helped her keep out of harm's way. But he's bitter, too, that Charles didn't see what was happening to her.] And now she knows that she doesn't have to hide. She doesn't have to blend in, and she never will again. [He hopes. God, he hopes.]

[ It must be nice to belong somewhere. To have something that you were a part of. Jew, Mutant. Groups, identity. Megamind was briefly envious, and just as briefly, bitter. He could save his people, should he get his deal... but he could never know them. Paradox was a cruel mistress. ]

[ He just nodded, rather than voice anything, and drank his beer. ]

Do you want to graduate, then? To help your people with a deal, as a warden?

I don't want to have to graduate. The Admiral has no right to judge me for what I've had to do. [But he does pause, because which people? The mutants, who he meant to help before he was brougth here? Or the Jews, the gypsies, the millions of people who weren't as lucky as he was?

His stomach turns, and he sets his beer down.]

If I erase what happened with a deal, no one will ever understand what depths humanity can sink to. We won't know to say never again, because it won't have happened. We'll have no Geneva Convention, nothing in place to ensure that it never happens.

I didn't mean like that. I mean, for them now. Even if you did the other, you -- wouldn't even be able to go there, see the world you create. Paradox [ He pauses, and says, ] My deal is for my planet. Well, okay, the whole system. My nemesis, and I, we were sent from the system before the star completed it's core collapse.

If I can stabilize the sun, I can save both worlds and their populations. But I'll never be able to-- go there, to exist in that place. [ With people like himself. ] I'll always be somewhere else, in the timeline apart from the one I, uh, don't exist in.

Separate. [Alone, he means. It's a hard thought, but a familiar one. A very familiar one.] I thought I was lone for a long time. [But he shrugs, and drinks, and circles back to the question.]

I don't know. All I want is to stop wasting my time here and go back to where I can change things. Have an effect on the world. They would put us in internment camps, they would destroy us because they're afraid we'll destroy them first. That that's our goal.

[It had been Shaw's goal. For a while, it had been Erik's, too. He thinks, maybe, in some ways, it still is. Would he kill to protect? Yes. A thousand times, yes. And he wouldn't be sorry for it.]

[ Megamind shrugs; he knows he's alone, and it won't change anything for him, beyond the feeling of altruism he'll have once he knows that somewhere else, they're alive, and happy. ]

I wish I could help you. Wish-- someone hadn't decided this was necessary at all. Sometimes I wish I could go, 'Nah, I'll pass' and not play along. But we're here anyway, and there's no real way to make the best of a bad situation, is there?

[ He has his doubts. He has many of them, actually, and they'll probably still be there even when he leaves here to go home for a while. ]

What is your goal?

[He doesn't bother to answer, at first, because it's true: there is no way to make the best of this. He can bow his head and play along, he can wait for his next warden to come along and work with them instead of against or despite them. It leaves a sour taste on his tongue. Erik doesn't want another warden, he doesn't want an endless debate over right and wrong, because he knows already.]

Freedom. [No internment camps. Not ever.] Safety, equality. It's been nearly twenty years, and Antisemitism still exists, but no one lives in fear of the Nazis rising again. I don't want to wait another twenty years for mutants to have that kind of support.

Pretty noble goals. Possibly unattainable due to human nature-- [ because there's nothing cut sharper on race lines than a prison; Megamind knows how humans divide and label the 'other' very well. ] -- but that doesn't mean one shouldn't strive for it.

I wish I could help you. Maybe then-- [ maybe then he could have grown up with windows. ]

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✘ | 019 | VIDEO + SPAM

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