Setting Sun
Anya Edie Eisenhardt came screaming into the world on the morning of November fourth nineteen forty-nine all pink and full of fire and brimstone. That had been the best day of Erik Lehnsherr then known as Max Eisenhardt’s young life. He and his wife were barely more than children themselves only eighteen years old at the time. She was perfection in his eyes with her tufts of dark hair and gummy smiles.
The first few months had been tough on Magda who had suffered from postpartum depression, though they didn’t call it that then. He had done his best to support his wife while also working. He was the one who got up with Anya during the night when she needed feeding or changing. Max didn’t mind though he would give the world for his daughter.
Max could see a lot of his mother in his daughter even being as young as she was. She had her grandmother’s dark eyes as opposed to Erik’s gray or Magda’s green. Erik knew she would be a beauty as she grew; his own mother had been a very beautiful woman before the war, being on the run had aged her.
His love for her only grew for his daughter as she got older and grew into a precocious toddler. She was quick to smile her gap tooth smile at her daddy when he got home from work. She was a daddy’s girl much to her mothers chagrin, always wanting to be with him and wanting next to nothing to do with her mother who was angry and spiteful.
Magda couldn’t understand why Max got all the love and affection while she got the temper tantrums and the refusal to eat anything green. Magda often took out these frustrations on Anya and while she wasn’t physically abusive not everything she said to the girl was nice.
Magda hadn’t taken to motherhood in the same way Erik had taken to fatherhood. Magda was resentful of her daughter who in her mind she believed had stolen what little childhood she had left after the war. Magda had only been seventeen when she had fallen pregnant and whilst she loved Max at the time she was really too young to know real love. She shouldn’t have gotten married so early. It had been what everyone her age was doing after the liberation as most of them had been left without any family.
It wasn’t that Max wasn’t a good husband, he really was; he kept food on the table and he gave her enough pocket money to buy something nice for herself if she desired to do so. Max wasn’t unkind; she just wasn’t ready for marriage at the tender age of seventeen.
***
The worst day of Max Eisenhardt was three days before his daughter's sixth birthday he had managed to scrounge up enough scrap gold to craft her a locket with his and her mother’s picture. The twenty four year old was so excited to give it to her that he had accidentally walked out into oncoming traffic. He had reacted on his instincts, stopping the car with his powers and giving the driver a fright. That’s when it happened the humans turned on him frightened of what they did not understand. Max hadn’t hurt anyone the mama car didn’t even have a ding. It didn’t matter they would come for him and he knew he needed to get his family out.
Max had managed to lose the mob taking the long way home or so he thought. They lived in a small Polish village and unfortunately someone in the mob knew where he lived. When he arrived home he saw their apartment building in flames and his stomach dropped to his feet. His family, his beautiful family, the mob had set fire to the building with no care for the innocents inside. What was left in his faith in humanity died that day in the flames.
Erik looked around frantically searching for his wife and child and he found Magda staring in horror at the flames. He ran to her gripping her shoulders when he didn’t see Anya.
“MAGDA!!! Where is Anya?!?” He was scared to death. Magda only pointed to their apartment and his stomach fell even further if that was possible.
“She was taking a nap and I had been talking to the flower vendor when they showed up” Magda had tears streaming down her cheeks at this point. Erik didn’t waste anymore time her booked it through the mob flinging them by whatever metal happened to be on their person so he could get to the doors.
He ran up all four flights of stairs and finally made it to their tiny two bedroom apartment. He flung open the door and ran to his daughters room. She wasn’t in her bed so he looked and looked and finally found her hiding under her mothers vanity. Max scooped her up scared of how still the five year old was.
When he made it down stairs and out to the street he brushed the soot off Anya’s face and she didn’t respond. She was still looking only like she was sleeping but Maxknew better his mother had looked like she was sleeping too if it hadn’t been for the gunshot wound. With shaky hands he slipped the locket over her head of brown hair.
He got up slowly. His face was a mask of rage and fury but he was still and calm. The mob had gone quiet when he carried the child out but it was only the calm before the storm. A storm that would continue to rage for years to come.
With an outstretched hand he snatched one of the men’s pocket watches letting it hover in his hand and he stopped the watch so that it would no longer tick again.
“Today you set out to kill someone that was different from you! Someone who was your friend at one point. You turned on him because he had an ability that you did not. In your prejudiced actions you did not kill that man you killed his innocent child who unlike her father was normal like her mother. You will pay gravely for your actions today” his voice rang out clear and strong and the crowd began to panic.
Erik took the watch and made it go through the flesh of every man involved leaving them in lifeless heaps on the ground. When he was done he called the pocket watch that was covered in blood back to him shoving it in his pocket where he would keep it as a reminder. He fell to his knees beside his daughter's body not noticing her shallow breaths that had come back after being in the fresh air. He was vaguely aware that his wife had run up to him.
“Max!!! Max!!! What have you done!?!?” She cried in horror as she looked at the fallen bodies around her. He hadn’t even noticed that she had placed a hand on her stomach.
“They killed our daughter, they tried to kill me! What would you expect me to do?!?” He sobbed.
“I expect you not to kill the entire village” she spat and Max couldn’t believe his ears. Why was she angry at him, why wasn’t she angry with them? They had killed Anya, his most precious person.
“You’re a monster get away from me and never come back I’ll take care of Anya” She spat her voice filled with malice and venom. That was the day Max Eisenhardt died and the day Erik Lehnsherr was born. He had acquiesced at Her demands he would give his wife that one last request. He did love her but he could see that she, like the villagers, did not accept him or his powers.
***
Magda was still crying and traumatized in the street when she heard the soft coughing of Anya. Anya was alive; she was battling smoke inhalation at the moment but she was alive unlike what her father thought. Magda scooped the drowsy girl up pulling her into her arms. Magda loved the girl but had she known she was alive she would have sent her to live with her father wherever he was going along with the baby she was pregnant with after it was born.
Magda didn’t really want anything to do with Max and that included his children. Magda wasn’t a mean woman she just wasn’t a woman who was cut out for motherhood. She always wished that she could go work in the metal shop and leave Max to take care of the children.
She eventually got up carrying the five year old to the hospital that was not far down the road. Tears streaming down her cheeks.