wecanavenge | ✘ | 019

[Spam, backdated directly after this]

[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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[The one good thing, and it almost makes all the rest worth it. Maybe it is worth it, because at least he knows Charles will be there to lean on. Erik jerks a nod, clenching his jaw hard and breathing harshly in an attempt to calm himself. Things are trembling around him again, shivering, but not flying about.

They will walk away from it together, because to do anything else would be - unspeakably impossible. To stay here forever, to be crushed under the weight of it - to end up like Toshiko - no.

The last time he walked away with someone, he'd been running hand in hand with Magda. Erik chokes on a sob, and some objects do jerk around his room, then, slamming into things before settling and growing still again.]

[Charles hugs him a little tighter - if that's even possible by now - at that thought, remembering the face of the girl he'd never met but still wanted to thank for giving Erik a reason to survive when it seemed like all hope was lost. He doesn't know where he'd be now if Erik had died at Auschwitz, and he didn't want to think about it, really, because even with all the bad that had come along with it, he'd never regret meeting him.

Slowly, he uncurls one of his hands from the death grip it'd had on Erik's shirt and carefully rubs his back, projecting calm and security, trying to settle them both back into something that could pass for serenity.

Eventually, he feels himself starting to calm down, his breathing evening out, but he doesn't move to break their hold on each other, refusing to let go until Erik actually felt better and maybe just selfishly reluctant to move away. Both of them were terrible about asking for comfort, even when they needed it, but this was good, right now. It helped.]

[They barely knew how to accept comfort, even from the person who knew them better than anyone else in the world. Erik was still inclined, in some part of him, to push away and wait until he could balance himself, to destroy the rest of his room until he was exhausted. To cope alone, as he always had.

Even knowing he didn't have to be alone didn't make it easy. But he didn't actually want to be on his own, and that kept his instincts at bay, because the seething anger was still there, still threatening to rise and drown him - but with Charles, it felt like he could stay above water.]

[It's progress, however small - even though Charles would argue it's really not small at all - and he lets out a slow breath, lifting his head and resting his chin on his friend's shoulder, still gently projecting calm and rubbing his back.]

Is there anything else I can do?

[Not that he was making any move to pull away or anything. He wasn't going anywhere. Obviously.]

[Erik shook his head mutely, not trusting his voice, knowing his throat was too tight. No, he thinks, and tries to block off the get me off this ship, because he knows that isn't fair. There's no one to blame here but the Admiral.

And maybe himself, but he's not ready to believe that yet.]

[The quiet breath he lets out in response might have been laughter under better circumstances, but these are definitely not better circumstances.]

I'm working on it, my friend. [We're working on it, really, because neither one of them wanted Erik to be a radically different person or be hurt anymore by this place, or anything, really. Charles just wants him to be happy.]

✘ | 019 | VIDEO + SPAM

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