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She closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip as he destroyed her methods of defense, turning the gun into nothing more than a jumble of useless parts and curving the knife in one itself. She’d have to start carrying around a shard of glass for protection, as that seemed to be the only weapon her brother couldn’t destroy. And like hell she was going to try managing without some way to defend herself.

“I cannot allow such weapons to be used against mutants,” Magneto said as Ruth swallowed again and opened her eyes, taking a deep breath. “My trust for homo sapiens in what they deem as ‘self-defense’ is quite low.”

Ruth forced back the urge to let loose a bitter laugh at that; she thought of the refugees her sons ferried over to the Xavier School. None of those people were dangerous, only afraid for their lives and for their families. Ruth sympathized with them heavily; she’d been much the same back in Warsaw, when she was plotting to keep her family out of the Nazis’ hands. She wished them far better luck than she’d had.

“So instead, I will accompany you,” he added, letting her former means of defense clatter to the ground like the useless scrap they now were. “Shall we?”

She wanted to refuse, to run back to the safety of her clinic and isolate herself in a dark corner so she could properly mourn. But food was running low, and she was out of bandages and antiseptic. As much as she wanted to scream and rage and try to get it through his head that he was turning into a mutant version of Hitler, Ruth couldn’t afford to do any of that. One word from him, and she’d be dead. Hitler and all of his soldiers couldn’t kill her, but her own brother could. It made her heart clench painfully in her chest at the irony.

“What will your subordinates think,” she muttered as she began walking, “seeing you refrain from murdering a human.”

Ruth thought about her clinic; they’d have to abandon it as soon as they were able, now. Charles had offered her shelter at the school whenever she needed it, and if she couldn’t shake Erik before making it to her supplier, then they would both have to flee to the estate as quickly as possible.

One day, Magneto’s soldiers would tire of the human he could never seem to kill. They’d do the job for him, and Ruth would finally take her place in an unmarked mass grave, just as the S.S. would have wanted. Would that make him realize what he’d become? To learn that his sister had been shot into a shallow grave that he will never be able to find?  Or was he too far gone for that?  

“I would have expected someone with your understanding of what has been done before to understand,” Magda said, her bitter resolve obvious. “You say you fought the last time, but not this time? If we do not fight back, that is where we will be. That is where your children will end up. Bound. Chained. Starved. Tested on as your own brother was. And yet you stand here fight for them?”

Ruth swallowed, Magda’s words ringing true. She hadn’t even been eighteen when she’d taken in her children, and it had been an ordeal to deal with their traumas and challenges as well as her own. But they weren’t children anymore, and Ruth was a far cry from the seventeen-year-old ex-resistor she’d been when she’d stumbled back into Warsaw with five children at her heels.

“I was in their new camps,” Magda continued. “The ones they call labs now. Locked in a glass box while they tried to see what made me work. Erik saved me. He will lead us to a world were we do not have to live and fear and no more children are murdered because of what they are. You would fight this? Fight your own freedom?”

“You think no more children will die because of what they are? More children will be murdered if Erik gets his way, Magda! How many children out there are humans? How many have committed no crimes against you beyond being born human?”

Such was the problem with preemption; innocent children who bore no hatred or prejudice would only be brought up on hatred and fear of those who sought to destroy them.

“Three of my children are human, Magda,” Ruth added. “My mother and father were human. I am human.”

Magda spoke as though Ruth were a mutant. Sometimes, Ruth wished she was. Maybe if she were, Erik would treat her like his sister. Maybe he wouldn’t keep her a secret, too ashamed to reveal that he had a human relative, one he couldn’t bring himself to kill. The only blood relative of hers to survive Hitler’s Final Solution, and fate had seen fit to drive another wedge between them.

But it was nothing Ruth could change. She couldn’t re-write her genetic code to include that coveted mutated gene. All she could do was work to increase tolerance in those around her and save whomever she could. After all, 'whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.' 

The recognition was obvious on Magda’s face, bringing with it panic and fear, and Magda tensed from the memories. Ruth felt a small stab of pity for her; while she was glad Magda had survived, it was saddening to see that she’d been reduced to someone carrying out much the same rhetoric. It was the same emotion she had in regards to her brother.

“Poland killed many people,” Magda replied. “Perhaps the girl you knew is dead. You were right when you called me a soldier of Magneto’s. That is who I am now. It’s who you should be, too, for you have seen what happens when we fail to fight back.”

“I was a soldier back then,” Ruth replied. “Two uprisings, both with hardly any survivors. I know what it means to be a soldier, and that’s not what I see in Magneto’s ranks.”

All she saw were violent, jilted people who wanted to make the world suffer as they had. Those were not soldiers, not even comparable to the men and women and children who had given their lives back in Warsaw for the dream of freedom. They were more comparable to terrorists and mercenaries, and Ruth wanted no part in any of it.

“All I can see, Magda, is a would-be army that is so full of hatred that they want to exterminate an entire group of people for something they can’t control. And that will always be something I fight against.”

Genocidal rhetoric, the elimination of an entire group of people—be it in preemption or for the supposed sins of a few—for things they cannot control, it all smacked of the Third Reich and the implications of it all made Ruth jolt awake screaming each night, remembering Warsaw and Auschwitz. If Erik and Magda had their way, she would be right back in Auschwitz, chained up and violated. And this time, there would be no brother with strange powers unwittingly giving her the chance to escape.

“I will give him the lights,” the stranger replied. “I will not return full power to this house until I leave. No phones or radios and if you or he tries to signal or warn anyone that I am here...then I will burn this house to the ground with everyone in it.”

Ruth narrowed her eyes but kept her gun level as the intruder stepped into the light. She look incredibly familiar, something about her making Ruth almost certain that she had known her once, a lifetime ago. She pushed the thoughts aside and slowly entered the kitchen, staying close to the drawers and cabinets. Keep every defense option within reach and quick access.

“So long as full power remains cut off to my house, the gun stays out and ready to fire,” Ruth informed her.

Considering ‘everyone’ only included her, the intruder, and Howard, Ruth wasn’t entirely concerned. They had good insurance, and Xavier’s staff adored her; she’d have no worries about where to stay or how to go about rebuilding. She was a woman who could gamble if the need arose. Ruth kept her fear safely locked away, fixing the stranger in as penetrating a gaze as she could manage. The woman wouldn’t be able to so much as blink without Ruth being aware.

She’d been little better than a child the last time she’d been faced by someone with powers she lacked, but she never forgot the feeling.

“You’re his sister, then,” the stranger said. “The human loving dirty little secret...Well, well, well.”

There was a short burst of anger at that. ‘Dirty little secret’ indeed. The human sister of Magneto, the notorious anti-human mutant leader—how many would kill her without a second thought because of his genocidal rhetoric? It was an uncomfortably familiar thought, one that had reawakened old nightmares Ruth had thought she’d long since put to rest.

“And who might you be? One of Magneto’s soldiers, I’m guessing. A bit surprising; Erik made it very clear that no one was meant to know about me.”

Ruth shifted in her spot on the sofa, curled up next to her husband. The house was relatively quiet—save for the sounds of I Love Lucy emanating from the television and the ticking of the grandfather clock, there wasn’t a sound to be heard. It had been an eventful day; Alicja had visited in order to give her parents a chance to meet the adorable little boy she was working to adopt. It was wonderful to hear a child’s shrieks of laughter again.

“Think we should head off to bed,” Howard asked, reaching for the remote.

“Probably a good idea,” Ruth agreed. “I need to be at the clinic by seven tomorrow morning.”

“So early?”

“Mrs. Johnson called me earlier today; the poor woman was frantic. From the sound of it, little Suzie is starting to manifest a physical mutation. It took twenty minutes to calm her down and assure her that I would see Suzie first thing in the morning.”

“Gotta give your brother credit; more parents are starting to go to you when their kids do weird things instead of trying to hide it.”

“I’d give him more credit if he—” Ruth was cut short when the lights and television suddenly shut off. “What the—” The sound of breaking glass filled the air and the pair immediately rose to their feet.

Ruth immediately felt for the table where she’d set her purse, locating her handgun. A few warning shots were usually enough to fend off any would-be burglars. Gripping the pistol, she made her way to the kitchen door, Howard hot on her heels.

She paused by the kitchen door frame, angling herself so that she could better observe the situation. Shattered glass glittered where the moonlight hit it, and the back door was open. As her eyes better adjusted to the dark, she could make out a figure. Ruth flipped the safety off and aimed.

“Who’s there?”

Erik commented on the names, saying they were lovely. Ruth smiled at the praise. True, she didn’t choose the names (the closest they came to that was the nickname Mirek used in school because apparently no one who wasn’t Polish could figure out how to pronounce his name), but she’d always thought the names suited her children.

His agreement with her opinions on human experimentation were strong, and Ruth wondered again what he’d endured while imprisoned in the camps. Part of her wanted to ask, wanted to know, while another part of her refused to ask. She would never tell him what she’d gone through in Auschwitz, and she could not possibly expect him to be so forthcoming. If he ever wanted to tell her, then it would be his own choice.

“Strange by what? Societal standards?” Ruth paused in her work at his inquiry. Perhaps ‘strange-looking’ hadn’t been the right combination of words to use, but it wasn’t exactly an everyday occurrence to see a blue skinned lady outside of Hindu paintings and sculpture. “Using such words to describe a mutant is precisely what is wrong with society’s perception of us.”

Ruth nodded a bit in comprehension; she understood the sentiment very well. Society was often at fault for the prejudices they bore and the horrors that spawned from them, she was perfectly able to admit that. She’d witnessed firsthand what such horrors could occur, and the idea of such events occurring again—especially ones that would threaten Erik’s life—was enough to make Ruth’s stomach twist uncomfortably.

“Are any of your children mutants,” Erik asked. “Do they bear a physical mark of their mutation? And if so, would you refer to them as strange as well?”

“It wasn’t right of me to use ‘strange,’” Ruth admitted. “‘Striking’ may have fit better, or perhaps ‘memorable’. And no, I would not call my children strange—but I’ve taken care of them ever since the Soviets reached Auschwitz. Perhaps I would have gained a sort of blindness to it if that were the case.”

She paused for a moment before continuing. “Two of my children are mutants: Alicja and Mirek. Neither of them bear physical markers of their mutations, but I would not love them any less if they did.” But would they have even survived Auschwitz if they did?

Erik asked her how long she’d had her own clinic as Ruth returned her attention to patching the wounds. “It hasn’t been all that long. We opened in 1962, after a long and ridiculous argument with the former landlord. Apparently he was of the belief that a woman couldn’t possibly manage an entire clinic on her own.”

Ruth had immediately set to work proving him wrong and within six months of opening, she was operating one of the most successful clinics in the county—a status she had maintained with staunch conviction.

“I think it best not to answer that to ensure you have deniability should the authorities ever question you,” he told her when she asked about his own life. “I am a wanted man, after all.”

She laughed a little at that. “Well, I am certain that dropping a baseball stadium on the White House is a situation the Secret Service never had to deal with before, but really, it was a bit over the top. I see you haven’t lost your flair for the dramatic,” she teased in return, finishing up the stitches and grabbing a gauze pad and medical tape.

“How many children do you have?”

“Five,” Ruth answered, a proud smile spreading across her face. “Alicja, Leonard, Mirek, Silvie, and Urszula.”

Even though she hadn’t given birth to them, they were still her children. She had raised them in the aftermath of the liberation, had given them a home and sense of family, they called her Mama and made every effort to keep in contact even as their lives took them off to do great things outside of New York. Ruth could talk about them for hours, about how proud she was of them and their accomplishments. She wondered if he had any children, or a wife that he loved. If so, Ruth would very much like to meet them.

“As you should,” Erik replied when she voiced a concern for the future. “Many mutants died for the sake of human science. All to create a world where we cease to exist.”

It was all very Third Reich, much to Ruth’s concern. Her thoughts turned to Alicja and Mirek, the only mutant children she had. Alicja was becoming a promising doctor in her own right and Mirek was becoming a force to be reckoned with in the political arena. A world without them...or her Howard...Ruth shuddered at the thought.

“No one should have to die for science,” Ruth commented. “Mutant or not, no one should meet their end in such a way.”

She took the scissors and carefully began to snip at the threads.

“There was no risk of that,” Erik insisted in response to her saying that he was lucky not to bleed out. “She hit precisely what she was aiming for.”

“So you know her well? I’m afraid that I do not and therefore could not accurately judge if she was truly aiming to wound or if she had intended to kill,” Ruth pointed out as she cleared the threads away from the wound. “All I saw was my brother—who I had thought was dead—on national television getting shot by a strange-looking woman.”

Ruth wondered a bit about that woman; did she have a family? Someone who loved her and cared about her? Ruth certainly hoped so; no one should have to go through life alone and unloved. It was no way to live, no matter how one looked. She cleared away the last of the threads and pulled out her needle and thread.

“Which medical facility do you work at?”

“My own,” she replied as she prepped the needle. “I own and operate a small clinic in North Salem.”

She’d get a young mutant in her clinic on occasion, some obviously mutant while others could pass for human until they sneezed or coughed and their powers flared. One young soul had singed the wall of one of her examination rooms when his mother brought him in for a flu shot. He cried and apologized over and over again until Ruth managed to calm him down and tell him that it was okay.

“And what about you,” she asked as she stitched the wounds up. “Where do you live? Any family or friends?”

“Are you happy, then? It sounds like you have done well for yourself.”

She smiled a bit. “I’m as happy as I could have been, thinking that everyone I had known and loved in Warsaw had died,” she answered as she set the cloth aside and pull out a small vial of antiseptic and a cotton ball. She had moved on simply because she hadn’t had much choice. It was either move on and become stronger for it, or let herself become consumed by bitterness and regret. Mama and Papa wouldn’t have wanted that for her. Or for Erik, either.

“Trask was partnered with international and domestic governments,” Erik corrected with the topic turned to Trask, “making everything he did legal by their standard, as they also funded his projects. They even gathered mutants for him to further his research and granted him permission to experiment on them, regardless of the cost. The government was very aware of what he was doing, and the many lives of mutants that died in the process of his cruel experimentation.”

Ruth listened carefully as she disinfected the sub-par stitching and fished out her medical scissors. She frowned a bit at the implications of human experimentation—she thought of her youngest daughters, of the hell they went through under the hands of Mengele before Ruth brought the Soviets to Auschwitz. It was disconcerting that the U.S. government could ever condone the torture and murder of human beings in the name of science—but part of Ruth was not at all surprised. She knew very well the lengths governments were willing to go to in the name of securing national interests.

“He is not on trial for illegal experimentation,” Erik added. “He is on trial for selling military secrets.”

“Ahh, I see,” she replied. “My mistake, then. It’s a disturbing revelation of events. It makes me worry about the future."

She commented on his stitching and Erik’s natural arrogance shone through in his retort.

“Just because I do not have the same medical expertise as you may have perhaps acquired does not mean that I am not able to tend to my own wounds adequately.”

“Then allow me to be the one to inform you that ‘adequate’ is not the bar to which you should aim when dealing with a neck wound. Do you know how many critical arteries are located in the neck? You are lucky you did not bleed to death. Now hold still,” she said as she brought the scissors to the stitching.

“That makes two of us,” Erik commented when she told Rigby that she thought he was dead.

Ruth felt a twinge of relief at that; so Erik had thought she was dead and that was why he never tried to find her. They had both thought the other dead; in a way, it was something of a relief compared to some of her fears. She fished out her first aid kit as Erik told Rigby to leave them alone—Erik must have been recruiting for his Brotherhood, then. Ruth didn’t spare much thought to pondering what use Erik could have for a mutant whose strongest power was in his nose and his muscles as the man raised his hands up in surrender and made a break for it. One less person to worry about when it became obvious that the only mutant thing about Ruth was the red tint to her hair.

“It hasn’t,” Erik assured, his voice full of arrogant confidence that made Ruth quirk an eyebrow in skepticism. “It is a minor injury.”

“You were shot in the neck,” she stated. “Regardless of how minor you think it is, I will feel far better if I take a look at it.”

He took a couple of steps towards her and she readjusted her hold on her purse. Ruth had had some time to adjust to the idea that Erik was alive; he was still wrapping his mind around the fact that she wasn’t dead in an unmarked mass grave somewhere in Poland. They’d have to talk about that, of course—certain bits, no doubt, as there was no way Ruth was ever going to tell him what exactly happened to her while she was imprisoned in Auschwitz. She’d had twenty-eight years to come to terms with what was done to her, and between Howard and the children, she’d made peace with most of it. Had Erik managed to find any modicum of peace? Or were his anti-human sentiments his way of coping?

“Where have you been all this time?” There was a great deal of uncertainty in his voice; much like her, he was probably overflowing with questions and had no idea where to begin.

“Here and there,” she replied. “There’s a park bench just around the bend; I’d rather you be sitting so that I can get a better look.”

Erik had gotten so tall; he had to be nearly half a foot taller than her. She could remember when he was still a little thing, having to literally look up to her. He’d been in the middle of a growth spurt the last time she’d seen him, and he was rapidly approaching her height.

“To better answer your question, I went back to Warsaw after Auschwitz was liberated,” she clarified, leading him to the bench she’d mentioned. “I stayed there until May, and then intended to return to Düsseldorf, but I was stuck in Frankfurt for awhile.”

She’d met Howard there, a charming U.S. soldier with too much shrapnel in his left leg to be worth anything to his unit and was convalescing in a military hospital before being shipped home. Ruth smile a bit at the memory.

“After Frankfurt, I decided to forgo Düsseldorf for New York City. I’ve been living in North Salem, New York, since 1950.”

Locating the bench, she gestured for him to sit down.  Ruth grabbed her water bottle from her purse and the clean scrap of fabric she kept with her at all times; one could never know when one would need to clean up a cut or a scrape.  Or a gunshot wound. 

"And you," she asked as she wet the cloth.  "What have you been doing?  Aside from getting shot by blue-skinned women and making grand speeches against humans, of course."