About thirty years ago, a powerful political leader named Adolph Hitler instituted a plan that he hoped would secure him and his country complete dominance over the rest of the globe. One of the tactics he and his followers hoped would secure them a more perfect world order was to eliminate any minority that didn't fit into their image of the perfect man - religious and ethnic minorities, homosexuals, political enemies. The Nazis systematically stripped them of their rights, rounded them up and committed government sanctioned genocide. Millions of people were killed. I don't know if that means anything to you, but it's the most heinous act of violence ever committed in human history.
My closest friend was fourteen years old when he saw a man fatally shoot his mother because he couldn't move a coin the same way he'd bent the gates of the death camp when they'd tried to separate him from his parents. He spent the next year being tortured and experimented on by the same man, all while watching people like him starved and beaten and disposed of like garbage, after years of watching the escalating violence, the denial that things could go this far, and the way neighbors and friends turned a blind eye to all of it. After the camp he was at was finally liberated, he devoted his life to hunting down the man responsible for his mother's murder and killing the others responsible for what happened to his family and people like them.
I met him years later while he was still hunting for the man responsible. He hadn't realized there were other people out there with gifts like his, because the existence of mutation - having a supernatural ability like my telepathy, or his ability to manipulate magnetic fields - isn't commonly known in our world. People tend to react with fear and alarm when presented with something "unnatural" like that, so most of us spent our lives in hiding, feeling alone and consumed with fear about what would happen if someone were ever to find out of what we were capable of. Discrimination didn't end after the Holocaust, and if people were willing to commit murder over worshiping a different God than theirs, or for having a different skin color, what would their reaction be to someone born with wings, or the ability to walk through walls? Erik was afraid that humanity would react in the same way the Nazis had, and after he killed the man responsible for the death of his mother, he almost instigated a war between us and humanity. A war which we would have had no hope of winning, and would only have made matters worse for anyone out there like us.
Fortunately, [Although there's some amount of irony in that, because he's still vaguely torn about saying being here had been a good thing. The outcome was better than he ever could have hoped for when he'd been bleeding, injured and abandoned on a beach wishing things had turned out differently, but he's still got the scars to prove that this hadn't been anything close to easy.] We were both brought to the Barge, and once Erik graduated, we returned home and were able to lay the foundations for a much safer future for people like us, and the world in general.
I never held his fear or concerns against him, [And it's obvious that he means it. It's also blatantly obvious that this is someone Charles loves, supports and understands no matter how different their philosophy was.] But he let revenge almost destroy his life and the lives of countless others. He'd effectively become what he'd spent so long hating, and once he was able to let that go, we both had opportunity to do everything we can to prevent that sort of thing from happening again in our lifetimes.
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Date: 2014-03-03 01:05 am (UTC)About thirty years ago, a powerful political leader named Adolph Hitler instituted a plan that he hoped would secure him and his country complete dominance over the rest of the globe. One of the tactics he and his followers hoped would secure them a more perfect world order was to eliminate any minority that didn't fit into their image of the perfect man - religious and ethnic minorities, homosexuals, political enemies. The Nazis systematically stripped them of their rights, rounded them up and committed government sanctioned genocide. Millions of people were killed. I don't know if that means anything to you, but it's the most heinous act of violence ever committed in human history.
My closest friend was fourteen years old when he saw a man fatally shoot his mother because he couldn't move a coin the same way he'd bent the gates of the death camp when they'd tried to separate him from his parents. He spent the next year being tortured and experimented on by the same man, all while watching people like him starved and beaten and disposed of like garbage, after years of watching the escalating violence, the denial that things could go this far, and the way neighbors and friends turned a blind eye to all of it. After the camp he was at was finally liberated, he devoted his life to hunting down the man responsible for his mother's murder and killing the others responsible for what happened to his family and people like them.
I met him years later while he was still hunting for the man responsible. He hadn't realized there were other people out there with gifts like his, because the existence of mutation - having a supernatural ability like my telepathy, or his ability to manipulate magnetic fields - isn't commonly known in our world. People tend to react with fear and alarm when presented with something "unnatural" like that, so most of us spent our lives in hiding, feeling alone and consumed with fear about what would happen if someone were ever to find out of what we were capable of. Discrimination didn't end after the Holocaust, and if people were willing to commit murder over worshiping a different God than theirs, or for having a different skin color, what would their reaction be to someone born with wings, or the ability to walk through walls? Erik was afraid that humanity would react in the same way the Nazis had, and after he killed the man responsible for the death of his mother, he almost instigated a war between us and humanity. A war which we would have had no hope of winning, and would only have made matters worse for anyone out there like us.
Fortunately, [Although there's some amount of irony in that, because he's still vaguely torn about saying being here had been a good thing. The outcome was better than he ever could have hoped for when he'd been bleeding, injured and abandoned on a beach wishing things had turned out differently, but he's still got the scars to prove that this hadn't been anything close to easy.] We were both brought to the Barge, and once Erik graduated, we returned home and were able to lay the foundations for a much safer future for people like us, and the world in general.
I never held his fear or concerns against him, [And it's obvious that he means it. It's also blatantly obvious that this is someone Charles loves, supports and understands no matter how different their philosophy was.] But he let revenge almost destroy his life and the lives of countless others. He'd effectively become what he'd spent so long hating, and once he was able to let that go, we both had opportunity to do everything we can to prevent that sort of thing from happening again in our lifetimes.