prefers_magneto | Anger is Cool; Come to the Dark Side.

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[Continued from here]

When Storm arrived, she would find Erik sitting at one of the outdoor tables, his back to the wall so he had a view of the street. A sunny afternoon made the sunglasses and fedora not seem suspicious to the average passerby, but he did also have the good sense not to advertise his face in public.

He looked up when she approached, gestured to the chair across from him, giving it just enough of a nudge with his power to push it out for her slightly.

"I was certain you'd change your mind."

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From:

prefers_magneto

"To fear and to hate what they don't understand." He leaned forward. "And then to kill it."

From:

mistressofelements

"That's just not true, Erik."

Not to mention that no matter how different mutants could sometimes seem from the rest of humanity, the fact remained that most of them were born from entirely 'normal' parents, and in actual fact not all children with mutant parents were mutants themselves. If it was in the nature of people to hate what they could not understand, and to kill it, then one almost had to assume that mutants shared this trait.

From:

prefers_magneto

That was probably true, but it wasn't what drove Erik.

"I've seen it before."

He crossed his arms. Unconsciously protecting himself?

"The rhetoric is the same. Now there are rumblings of a law requiring mutants to identify themselves and be registered. Do you know what happens next? Because I do. And if we let it get that far, it will be too late."

From:

mistressofelements

"Enlighten me. What happens next."

She has an idea what parallels he might be seeing here, and she would be lying if she said that she doesn't see them too. She can see them all too clearly, really.

But declaring war on humanity simply doesn't seem like the way to go.

From:

prefers_magneto

"When they start talking about registration, extermination is already the plan. They'll use their lists to round us up, burn a number into our foreheads and throw us into a hole. That's when they start killing us en masse. That's what the registration is for, you know: so they don't miss any of us."

He watched her as he spoke.

"We have to stop them now. Before they pass a law that endangers us all."

From:

mistressofelements

She gave him an almost incredulous look, a little stunned by how sure he was that this was the future that lay in store for them.

"What happened to you?"

Because that was one hell of a specific vision of how things were going to turn out.

From:

prefers_magneto

He watched her for a moment, trying to weigh the balance of risk in telling her. Either it would make her see, or she would feel sorry for him. He spit on people's pity; he would never be a victim again, but if it made her see...even if she returned to Charles, there would be a voice in his camp. Charles couldn't ignore the signs forever.

He shrugged out of his jacket, letting it hang over the back of his chair, then unbuttoned the cuff of his left sleeve, rolling it up with precision.

"I was catalogued," he told her. He gave the sleeve one more roll, then turned his inner forearm towards her, revealing the unmistakable trademark of Auschwitz. "For liquidation."

He didn't leave it open to her for long. As the word 'liquidation' left his mouth, he withdrew his arm, shoving his sleeve back down to his wrist with sharp tugs.

"I've heard these arguments before. Nobody believed it would happen, because they didn't want to consider that human beings were capable of perpetrating the murder of civilians - unarmed men, women and children - with factory efficiency, with as little care as you'd step on an ant. And that was their mistake, because that's exactly what happened."

He folded his hands on the table between them and met her with steely eyes.

"Now, when it comes down to it, how do you think they're going to solve... What is it they're calling it? Oh, right. 'The Mutant Problem'."

Edited Date: 6 Jun 2014 20:45 (UTC)

From:

mistressofelements

She was fairly certain that the last thing Erik wanted from her was sympathy, which is why the words I am so sorry stuck in the back of her throat and went unuttered, even if the horrified look in her eyes spoke them clearly enough anyway.

It all made sense now. Everything he was doing, everything he wanted to accomplish.

She still didn't agree, but she could see it now. She could see what he saw through the lens of his own experience. She could grasp why he was so insistent that this was all going to end in systematic erasure of them all.

"I don't know."

That was the truth, and yes, sometimes she was afraid that what Erik feared really was how things were going to end.

"So what's your plan for stopping it?"

From:

prefers_magneto

"Stop it early. Before it can't be stopped anymore. I'm gathering intelligence on the activities of worldwide government agencies and I'm gathering mutants who are willing to fight for our survival when it comes to that. Because it will. Registration means extermination is already the plan; that's how it starts. I intend to finish it long before it comes down to mass graves."