X-Men Evolution: Rogue Evolution

Lessons 7.2

It had been a little over a week since Anna had stepped foot in Bayville High. Time seemed to simultaneously fly and crawl by. It was nice, she supposed, to get out of the house after her and Scott's mandatory leave of absence from school at both Principal Darkholme's and Xavier's request. When she was first told - not asked - about the idea, she was angry. All she wanted was to put the events of the mountain behind her and move on. She figured the faster she could get on with life, the better. Now that she was back in school, back under Darkholme's watch, all she wanted was to crawl back under her sheets at home and pretend the world beyond had simply evaporated away.

She was technically aware of what was happening in her U.S. history class, but she felt little more alert than one of the posters of presidents hanging on the wall, watching what was going on below. They were talking about WWII, the lead-up, and the first few blows of the war. Anna knew the story as well as anyone did. The Germans were bad, and the Americans were good. There was Pearl Harbor and Nazis and all sorts of crappy stuff, but the good guys won, and that was what was important. Despite that, Mr. McCoy was determined to be twisted up in weird details and the supposed moral complexities the German people were made to face.

He talked about what it must have been like being a typical German citizen before the war when Hitler was still on the rise. How so many people at the time dismissed the guy for a weird greasy loser, and how sure they were that his insane ramblings would never turn into anything. Then how this strange cult of personality somehow appealed to the disenfranchised fringes of society and used their anger and frustration to transform them into devoted believers. The whole thing snowballed till finally, as Mr. McCoy put it, 'Germany became the first nation to fall to the Nazi Regime.'

After the lecture, the class had its typical rounds of fast-paced questions and 'Factoids,' but Anna couldn't hear what was said past the buzzing in her ears.

Eventually, the bell rang, and students funneled out the door with Mr. McCoy shouting after them about chapters to read that night. Usually, Anna was the first to rise and slip through the door just in front of her desk, but her legs didn't move, and her arms didn't reach for her backpack, still sitting in a heap at the foot of her chair.

She could feel Mr. McCoy's eyes fall on her, but she didn't return his look. "Anna, are you alright?"

Anna felt like a statue in her chair. She somehow managed to feel the full weight of her body resting on her bones as she sat. "...how could they have not known?"

"How could 'they' have not known 'what?'" She wasn't looking at him, but she could hear worry color his voice. "What's going on? Are you feeling unwell?"

"How could so many people not know that Hitler, of all people, was a monster?"

A pause leadened the air till she eventually heard the soft souls of loafers treading the vinyl floor. Eventually, Mr. McCoy entered the frame of her vision. He leaned his back against the whiteboard and rested the heels of his hands on the metal rim that supported the erasers and pens. "You're still going through it, aren't you? A few days is hardly enough time to..." His lips curled inward as he searched for the right words "to process what you went through back there."

She looked at him. "Well, how? Wasn't anyone smart watching him? Didn't anyone care?"

McCoy looked at her, then the tips of his shoes. "Well, it's not so cut and dry. Some certainly did. Hitler was hardly subtle about his beliefs at any given point. He was a lunatic through and through. Thing is, the world can't stop for every madman out there. Most of them fizzle out and end up becoming nothing. That's what so many thought would happen to him. It wasn't really till it was too late that most Germans saw what a monster had spawned right under their noses."