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This actually happened in some of the cartoons! I gasped out loud when I saw it for the first time. (Go to about 10 minutes in for the full scene.) I thought I’d do something a little different, because while I love Erik in the First Class movies, I always wanted a happier ending for him…

The Howling Commandos, as a forward team focused on Hydra, hadn’t liberated many camps; the ones they had were Hydra slave labor camps, where the men were, if not well-fed, then at least not the gaunt, barely-alive prisoners they’d heard about from Red Army soldiers and Allied units. 

This camp was different; at the heart of it was some kind of lab. When Steve battered down the last reinforced door, he found a man holding a gun to the head of a young boy. 

“I’ll kill him,” the man said. Steve didn’t bother with an answer; the shield took the man’s head off before he could threaten the kid again.  

Still, in that second before death, Steve had seen the man’s finger spasm on the trigger, and felt the thickness in the air when the trigger wouldn’t move. He looked at the boy, looked at the body, and had a sense of destiny resettling itself in the world. 

“Was he the camp commander?” he asked the boy, who nodded, huge-eyed. “Commander…Shaw?”

The boy nodded again. He turned and pulled Steve’s now bloody shield out of the concrete wall like it was nothing. Then, with narrowed eyes, he floated it across to him, through the air, without touching it. 

Steve took the shield out of the air, shook off what he could, put it on his back, and said, “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” the boy said, in trembling English.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Erik Lensherr.”

Steve had seen a lot of things in the war; nothing like this, but there had been signs of strange experiments in Hydra labs. This was comparatively harmless.

“Well, I’ll make you a deal, Erik,” he said. “I won’t tell what I saw here just now, and you help me close this place down. Then we’ll take you to HQ and get you a hot meal. Sound good?”

Erik nodded, then offered, “They knew you were coming. They destroyed all the records.” 

“Doesn’t matter,” Steve said. “Come on.”

In the convoy, bringing the prisoners out of the camp, Steve brought Erik up to the cab of the lead truck, and put him in next to Bucky at the wheel.

“Who’s this?” Bucky asked.

“Erik,” Steve said. “He’s riding with us.”

“Sprichts du English?” Bucky asked. 

“Yes,” Erik replied. “I can speak. English, German, Yiddish, some Russian. Good interpreter. I can work for Allies?” 

“How old are ya?” Bucky asked.

“Sixteen,” Erik said. 

“You are twelve,” Bucky told him.

“I’m just small,” Erik replied.

“Yeah, because you’re twelve,” Bucky insisted. “Well, we’ll make sure the folks handling the refugees take good care of y – “

“No, he’s coming with us,” Steve said. 

“What?” 

“Erik’s coming with us to HQ. We could use an interpreter. And he’s small enough to make a good spy. He’s had enough of camps, ain’t ya, kid?” he asked, and Erik nodded. 

“You wanna join the allies, huh?” Bucky asked.

“I go with Captain America,” Erik announced. 

“Yeah, that’s what I said, and now I know better,” Bucky replied, but he was grinning. “Fine, on your own head be it. Sixteen my ass,” he said to Steve. 

Steve took off his helmet and plopped it onto Erik’s head. “Sorry, got a new sidekick now,” he told Bucky, who laughed. 

Years later, when a magazine asked Erik Lensherr why he agreed to become Captain America after the disappearance of Steve Rogers, he said, “Steve took a terrified twelve-year-old Jewish kid out of a slave labor camp, gave him a helmet, and told him he had power. I believed him. Turns out he was right.” 

ALSO IMAGINE MAGNETO AS CAPTAIN AMERICA WITH THE SHIELD. HOLY CRAP. 😀 

I had a dream last night that I was writing a sequel to this in which Erik is on the train when they’re going after Zola, and manages to yank Bucky back up into the train by the metal snaps and buckles on his uniform. So Bucky is part of the assault on Schmidt’s fortress, and he and Steve go down in the ice together, and are thus brought out of the ice together in the sixties. 

And they’re in a SHIELD conference room waiting to have what the HELL HAPPENED explained to them when they see through the glass wall Captain America and a guy in a blue jacket with a sniper rifle walking through SHIELD, and Steve is like “….TINY ERIK LENSHERR?” and Bucky meanwhile is like “And who the fuck are you?” to the young guy in the blue jacket and Erik’s like “Uhhhh this is my sidekick I’m training, his name is Tony, you may remember his dad…”

Also there was a bit where they went to Westchester and Charles was like “You really should pick a mutant name, all the kids have them and it sets a good example” and Erik’s like 

Erik: I’m already Captain America, can’t that be my mutant name?
Charles: It’s your name, Erik, you get to pick it. Please don’t pick Captain America. But I don’t approve mutant names for other people.
Erik: That’s a terrible policy. You let that one kid name himself Asskicker.
Charles: We’re working on it, Bobby has a troubling sense of humor.
Erik: Uh okay lol my name is….MAGNEEEEETOOOOO” *wiggles his fingers menacingly*
Charles: *rubs forehead* 

DAMMIT

Also I changed Shaw to Schmidt because apparently that was his alias in First Class, and I may wander off into an AU where Johann Schmidt and Karl Schmidt were brothers. 

I rewatched bits of First Class for this and I am once more reminded how I would watch an entire movie that was nothing but Erik Lensherr running around the world in a sharp suit fucking up Nazis.

Anyway here’s Wonderwall. 

***

Erik had been reasonably well-fed and looked after in Schmidt’s lab, but he hadn’t let his guard down once; the entire time he was there he’d eaten only what he was giving and usually not all of that, never wanting to have indigestion or a full stomach when he didn’t know what would happen from one minute to the next. Schmidt had been…volatile.

But Steve, giant, smiling Steve with his white star and his shield, had killed Schmidt in front of him, unkillable Schmidt. The shield had a strange feel to it; for some reason Schmidt hadn’t been able to absorb its energy the way he had other attacks.

Schmidt was dead and Erik was free, and just from listening to the soldiers Erik could tell the tide of the war was turning.

When they reached HQ, it turned out to be a collection of sturdy tents, and Steve sent Bucky (Erik hadn’t decided whether to trust Bucky yet) off to report to someone. Then he led Erik straight to the mess tent and started piling food on a tray for them both.

“No – that’s got pork,” he said, when Erik reached for the beans. Erik widened his eyes.

“Are you – ?” he asked.

Steve shook his head. “I had friends in the Jewish neighborhoods growing up,” he said. “And the Jewish fellas in the unit talk. You can’t get real Kosher in the army, but don’t eat the beans, they got salt pork in ‘em.”

Erik nodded soberly. He probably would have taken a bullet for Steve Rogers just then.

(There is a readmore below! Read more!) 

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