[Charles hesitates, licking his lips, because this is all so personal, and he's not sure if Erik would want him to say anything, but it's also entirely possible that Erik would want to tell her and just not be able to. It wasn't something he talked about with anyone. Charles only knew because he'd seen it largely by accident, and it wasn't like they discussed it much after the fact.
So he lets out a breath and just starts talking, almost mechanically.]
His mutation manifested when he was first separated from his parents at Auschwitz. He bent the metal gates as the guards pulled him away from them. A man - Erik knew him as Klaus Schmidt at Auschwitz, but he went by Sebastian Shaw later - who had seen the incident happen brought him into his office and tried to have him replicate what he'd done to the gates by telling him to move a small coin. He couldn't, and so Shaw brought in his mother and told Erik that if he couldn't move the coin on the count of three, he'd shoot his mother. Erik still couldn't move the coin in time.
[And the borrowed memories were so clear, it almost felt like he could hear Shaw counting - ein, zwei - and the gun shot, the body hitting the floor, as if he'd been there himself.]
Shaw spent the next year torturing him, trying to figure out how far Erik's abilities could be pushed by any means necessary. When he wasn't being hurt by Shaw, he was forced into working as a sonderkommando at the camp. Shaw abandoned him as the Red Army advanced, and Erik was selected with a group of others to dig their own grave and be shot before the Russians could liberate the camp. He was able to stop the bullet, but had to dig himself out of the mass grave it pushed him into after lying under the bodies of the others and pretending to be dead for hours. [And that made him want to be sick as he said it out loud, that people could be that heartless, that so many people had just been wiped off the face of the earth like they didn't matter, and again, the memories made it seem like he'd been there, biting his tongue bloody to keep from screaming or crying even though there are bodies on top of you.
He forces himself to talk past the sudden nausea, not really looking at Anya as he continues.]
He spent most of his life after the camp was liberated hunting down and killing the people responsible, and trying to find Shaw to make him pay for what he did to his mother. Last year, he met me, and we stopped Shaw from starting nuclear war.
cw for holocaust related imagery
So he lets out a breath and just starts talking, almost mechanically.]
His mutation manifested when he was first separated from his parents at Auschwitz. He bent the metal gates as the guards pulled him away from them. A man - Erik knew him as Klaus Schmidt at Auschwitz, but he went by Sebastian Shaw later - who had seen the incident happen brought him into his office and tried to have him replicate what he'd done to the gates by telling him to move a small coin. He couldn't, and so Shaw brought in his mother and told Erik that if he couldn't move the coin on the count of three, he'd shoot his mother. Erik still couldn't move the coin in time.
[And the borrowed memories were so clear, it almost felt like he could hear Shaw counting - ein, zwei - and the gun shot, the body hitting the floor, as if he'd been there himself.]
Shaw spent the next year torturing him, trying to figure out how far Erik's abilities could be pushed by any means necessary. When he wasn't being hurt by Shaw, he was forced into working as a sonderkommando at the camp. Shaw abandoned him as the Red Army advanced, and Erik was selected with a group of others to dig their own grave and be shot before the Russians could liberate the camp. He was able to stop the bullet, but had to dig himself out of the mass grave it pushed him into after lying under the bodies of the others and pretending to be dead for hours. [And that made him want to be sick as he said it out loud, that people could be that heartless, that so many people had just been wiped off the face of the earth like they didn't matter, and again, the memories made it seem like he'd been there, biting his tongue bloody to keep from screaming or crying even though there are bodies on top of you.
He forces himself to talk past the sudden nausea, not really looking at Anya as he continues.]
He spent most of his life after the camp was liberated hunting down and killing the people responsible, and trying to find Shaw to make him pay for what he did to his mother. Last year, he met me, and we stopped Shaw from starting nuclear war.