Disclaimer: Fhqwhgads. That is all.

THE SHADOW KING

Chapter Eight: One. Two. Three.

For all the skills, experiences, and world views that stood between them, Erik and Charles never had a difficult time understanding each other when it came to one topic: Strategy. It was natural since day one, an easy hand off between the two of them as each situation called for one realm of expertise or another and everything else was filled in with the comfortable logic of battle. An ease that was only strengthened by their nightly games of chess.

So when it came time to lay down the battle plan for their altercation with Shaw, it was almost a relief, as it was the the only thing they hadn't argued about that day. Taking down Shaw wasn't an easy task, to be sure, so they had to take away as many advantages as they possibly could. They'd have to take him out of his home playing field and shake his confidence, removing the sub from the ocean handled both of those quite nicely.

After that, it would be up to the children to draw Shaw's support away and keep them busy as long as they could. A gross oversimplification, of course, the boys in themselves had worked on several supporting strategies, made themselves familiar with what to expect from one another, and Charles would be listening in and directing them to who needed help.

Then, of course, it was Erik's job to go in and confront Shaw. What he was supposed to do when he got there was very specifically not talked about in their strategy session because they'd talked the topic to death already, and even if they did make a plan at that point, it would be entirely up to Erik's good graces if he followed them or not. As for Charles, he would stay behind. Neither of them had any illusions about his fighting skills and Shaw wouldn't have a hope of defending himself against Charles if he couldn't get to him.

It was all a very smooth process, with little to no argument. That made it all the more alarming when Charles chose to dramatically alter it at the very last moment.

"You're what?" Erik bit out in question, the children brushing past him on their way out of what remained of Hank's Blackbird, off to keep their respective parts of the plan in order.

Charles reset his jaw in that way that showed he had no inclinations of changing his mind, "I am going with you."

Mystique and Moira were standing near the unnatural opening of the plane, where the jagged edge of their half of the plane suddenly met open sand. The massive form of the beached submarine was a bent mess farther down, three mutants already standing defensively in front of it.

Erik wordlessly shook his head for a moment, not quite decided if he should be worried or aggravated. Had this been the plan all along for Charles? To give Erik the illusion of freedom until the last second and rip the choice from his hands just as he reached it? Erik's fist clenched tightly on one of the remaining metal struts holding the Blackbird together, franticly searching his friend's face for some kind of deception.

"If you think this will stop-" Erik said quietly, so low that Moira and Mystique probably only heard an indistinct growl.

"This has nothing to do with that," Charles said calmly, not bothered by the inherent accusation. He gave the older mutant the moment to reign in the instinctive temper before he continued, taking a step closer so he could speak lowly, "Something isn't right, my friend."

Erik let out a stern breath, refusing to feel foolish over the assumption, "How so?"

Charles frowned, trying to figure out how to articulate what he had just felt, "I looked into the teleporter's mind and..." it was too clean, too easy to break into. It was filled with base thoughts about the day, some relevant information yes, but far more about what Azazel had eaten in the last week, the coordination of gathering menial supplies at the last two ports. For someone who had spent more than some time with a telepath, he expected some base defenses, at least. This felt far less like putting locks on a door and much more like leaving twenty dollars on the coffee table and hoping the thief took that instead of your expensive jewelry.

Maybe for other telepaths this would have been enough, the effort of digging deeper too arduous, but for Charles it was a glaring red flag. He dove deeper, and the deeper he got, the more obvious the defenses were. Someone had taught these mutants and taught them well. Even Angel's mind spoke of years of training when she'd only been with Shaw for a matter of weeks.

"His mind, and the others as well, they've been tampered with. There are gaps, very masterfully hidden ones no less, where information should be while other information is just... given over without the slightest struggle."

"Frost?" Erik asked seriously, mind already working on the implications of the discovery.

"No," Charles shook his head contemplatively, "Unfortunately, she wasn't anywhere near this talented."

Erik's hand tightened around the bar reflexively, indenting the metal beneath his fingers as he watched Shaw get away in his minds eye. This opportunity lost yet again, seeming so real for a second that he nearly jumped as Charles latched a firm grip on his arm, drawing his attention back.

"I'm going with you." Charles said in a way that told Erik a million other things. Shaw was still there. All was still not lost. He wasn't alone in this.

Wordlessly, Erik nodded, drawing an immediate grin out of Charles, the telepath's grip on his arm tightening in encouragement before he stepped away towards the surreal stretch of the Cuban beach.

"What?" Raven breathed out in disbelief, jumping in front of her brother at the last second, visibly torn between being the warrior woman she was grooming herself to be and the scared sister she instinctively still was.

Charles just smiled and rested a soothing hand on her blue cheek, "Stay here. Use your training. Be our eyes and ears and keep the boys in order. Yes?" Charles was similarly split, his tone and words all militaristic, his actions only that of a brother who was infinitely proud of her but would still very much like to reach down and zip her uniform up to her neck.

"Of course." She said confidently, mostly bravado. The bolstering brush of Erik's hand on her shoulder helped with that, as his unquestioning acceptance of her always did. He pushed past a second later, feet hitting the sand in a way only a man with a solitary lifelong motivation could. It left Charles, as usual, to hurriedly tie everything up before he rushed after him.

Charles caught up with him after a few quick orders to Moira about their backup rendezvous point, a private airstrip a few miles from the beach where Charles had telepathically found a man who had no reservations about quietly taking exorbitant amounts of American money to fly them home. As soon as he fell into step next to Erik, everything else seemed to click as it always did. It was a particularly vivid sense of rightness. He'd felt it when they'd gone to recruit, when they'd broken into that Russian general's home like the most mismatched set of actions heroes ever conceived. From the rebel upturned corner of Erik's lips, it seemed Charles wasn't the only one who'd picked up on it.

"To think you were trying to leave me behind." Charles said only loud enough for Erik to hear as they advanced on a rather dazed looking riptide.

Erik only answered with a quick flash of teeth and a sharp hand motion, pulling a section of the ship to mercilessly pin the Spanish mutant to the sand. Adding the proverbial insult, Erik walked on top of it without a moment's hesitation, seeming a little too pleased as he looked back at Charles, openly challenging his pacifism in the face of battle.

He didn't get a proper chance to gloat as Charles was already most of the way up into the ship when he started, but the point was made. Erik had no intentions of playing to Charles's sensitivities, and Charles was going to have to run with it... and run he did.

Once Erik was inside the sub, any sign of Erik's fleeting amusement evaporated, his pace only slowed when he visibly reigned himself in to work over strategy in his head. Charles stayed tapped into it, half listening to the others, directing Shaun to the ship Alex had found himself stranded on. It was exhausting, to be truthful. Keeping a hold of Erik's mind in its current state was something like holding onto a ledge by his fingernails, and as they got farther into the ship, it seemed to be harder and harder to hear things outside, even in a telepathic sense. It would be fascinating if it wasn't so completely terrifying.

"This is it." Charles said, eyes catching on where he knew the controls for the nuclear reactor were. Erik shut them off quickly, if only to have some kind of outlet for his frustrations. Charles looked over at him cautiously, the machinery around them sparking.

"He has to be here." Charles said preemptively even as Erik responded only in waves of disbelief and barely tethered rage. Given what they knew about the tampering in the other mutants' minds, they'd chosen not to follow the floor plan Charles had pulled from their heads, at least not precisely. Every bit of information he had seen had been practically pointing arrows at the room beyond the door in front of them which rang a particularly clear sort of trap to the two of them. They'd searched everywhere else before they had no more options. They had to go through. It was the only place Shaw could be.

Erik reached for the door jaggedly, limbs flooded with adrenaline, Charles kept back and to the side just in case. Erik twisted the hatch and pulled, the door swinging in heavily...

Empty.

"He's not here." Erik growled, stepping through.

"What?" Charles stumbled in after him, careful of his footing on the uneven floor. He turned a circle in the room, disbelieving. "This can't be right, Erik, he has to be here."

Then, with the feeling quite like dropping through a patch of thin ice, the last door slid open behind Erik and there was Shaw.

But he wasn't alone.

Standing next to the man, his hand firmly wrapped around her wrist, was a girl, twelve years old at the very most. Dark skin, hair an amazingly stark white under the lights of the mirror room, and she was utterly terrified.

"Erik!" Shaw called happily, looking pleased as punch, "So good to see you again. Oh, and you brought a friend!"

The only answer Shaw got was Erik stepping resolutely in between him and Charles, expression so unreadable even Charles was having a hard time figuring it out. Shaw didn't seem the least bit bothered.

"You must be Charles, then. I'd hoped I was going to meet you." Shaw said with a fatherly smile, He tilted his head down to look at the girl. Her eyes widened at the gesture, an obvious flinch shocking her features as he brushed away a white curl, "Come now, Ororo. Say hello. Ororo here is the newest addition to our team, very promising."

Even as he should have had every warning in the world, the tense of Erik's shoulders, the utter lack of response, even the fact that Charles was still hanging on to Erik's nearly incoherent mind, when Erik moved abruptly into the mirror room Charles found himself wholly unprepared.

He moved with a sort of beastly fluidity, mind white hot with anger so much it was physically painful to hold onto. Erik hand shot forward and pulled, tugging the girl quickly out of Shaw's grip by the snaps of her coveralls. Ororo stumbled out on fear addled legs, Erik sidestepped her and sent her out of the room even as he advanced in, the mirrors seeming to swallow him whole.

"Erik!" Charles moved to do something, he wasn't sure, maybe pull him back. Erik cut off any further complaints by pushing Ororo right into Charles's legs, forcing his attention there instead.

"Don't worry Charles," Shaw said as the heavy hidden door closed in front of him, "I'll speak with you next."

As gentle as he could without traumatizing the girl further, Charles untangled Ororo from where she'd instinctively latched on to his uniform and lurched toward the door, resisting the urge to bang his fist on the outside. He concentrated everything he had on getting in, mentally and physically, one hand at his temple, the other skimming the wall for some hidden latch. It all proved fruitless. Whatever it was that had been tampering with his abilities was all concentrated in the room beyond, turning it into a terrifying void in the world that no effort could penetrate.

...and Erik was in there with Shaw. The same Shaw who had just spent the last five minutes absorbing the equivalent amount of energy to a nuclear bomb.

Charles pressed his forehead against the wall, driving away all the worst case scenarios that were crowding in from the edges of his subconscious. The wall wasn't soundproof, not entirely at least. The words were muffled, but what he did catch wasn't anything good. The distinct silence from Erik was bothering him more than anything.

"Erik..." He whispered against the wall, not sure what he wanted to communicate, but wanting to do it nonetheless.

"Who are you?" The girl squeaked after a moment, voice too shaky to really identify her accent.

Charles let out a steadying sigh before he turned, fingers still on his temple as he tried to futilely find a way into that room. The girl looked up at him with large dark eyes, lip caught between her teeth.

"Ororo, isn't it?" He asked breathlessly, compassion bleeding out of him for the girl. She nodded slightly, "My name is Charles, we're going to take you somewhere safe just as soon as my friend returns."

She nodded again, taking another step towards where he was leaning against the door, fingers twisted in the purple denim of her overalls. For a moment, Charles considered sending her back out to find Moira and Raven, but he couldn't risk having her run across what he knew was an open battlefield.

An ominous crunch jolted his attention back to the mirror room, fingers pressing back against his temple with renewed purpose. Instead of finding the gap of nothing in the world, Charles caught on to a wisp of Erik's incredibly distinctive mind.

"Erik!" Charles said directly into his mind, not wanting to tip Shaw off, "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."

The affirmative he received in return was indistinct but still there and it drew a near hysterical smile to Charles's lips. Any progress was good in this situation.

"Ororo," An idea occurred to him and he turned to the girl, "Did you know how to open this room? Did you see how he did it?"

"Why?"

That was right about when it occurred to Charles that something was off with this girl. All of her earlier mannerisms had abruptly dropped, leaving her standing there calm and collected, if confused at his question. Separating a sliver of his telepathy he'd been dedicating to the room beyond, he reached out to her.

"Who are you?" Charles asked harshly.

The barest touch of her mind had told him many things. She was Ororo. She was that scared girl, however she wasn't alone in her own mind. The presence that had been hiding in the deepest parts, waiting, now felt no problem with revealing itself. A telepath. The telepath. The one who should be very, very dead.

"Come on," The Shadow King chided in Ororo's voice, "You can't say you don't recognize me. You can never forget what another telepath feels like."

Charles stayed resolutely silent, pushing away the questions that came to his mind first. How? Why? It wouldn't matter, it would only waste time.

"I am not a child anymore," He stated calmly, "I am far more adept than I was then."

"I don't doubt that. I know you're better than I am. I have known it for a long time. It's why I always pick our battles so carefully." Not-Ororo smiled, "Like I know in a moment, you're going to be very much otherwise occupied."

As if on cue, the sound of beams crashing through the mirror room's ceilings sounded smashing the void to bits with it. Charles saw the situation clearly through Erik's eyes, saw Shaw advance. He reached out to tell Erik-

Ororo's hand clamped down on his, dark eyes curiously soulless as she stared up at him, "I don't need this girl intact to speak with you, Charles. If you warn him in any way, I will turn Ororo's psyche inside out."

Charles wasn't a person beyond hate, not by any terms, it was usually just so much harder to hate a person if you understood the way their mind worked... and he did, for the majority of the population. The Shadow King, on the other hand... he had no concept.

"What. Do. You. Want?" Charles glared past the girl's eyes and into the presence within her.

Ororo smiled wider, the expression not fitting on her face, "I want you to do exactly what you were here to do..."

Both of the telepaths looked up as Erik's real plan came to the surface from where it was so carefully hidden under the shards of past traumas, he reached out silently with his powers and yanked Shaw's helmet from his head.

"Now Charles!" He got the message both through the muffled call through the door and the connection he'd kept with Erik's mind. It was a split second decision on too little information, even with the Shadow King looking all too pleased, Charles reached out and dug into Shaw's .

"Good boy, Charlie." Ororo whispered.

"Silence." Charles growled, fighting to keep control of Shaw's mind even as his presence in it made him feel absolutely ill. Shaw was no amateur when it came to telepaths and the sheer amount of years he'd lived didn't help either. He could make an armor of every terrifying, despicable thing he'd ever done, wrap it around the core of himself. It forced Charles to either push them away or tear through them entirely, either option left him feeling like he'd lived them himself, like he was Shaw.

He pushed through regardless, knowing he had little choice. He knew what Shaw would to do Erik now if he had the opportunity and he would never let that happen.

Shaw's mind fought him till the bitter end, until Charles found that central brightness and he dug in, halting all of his movements. In the next instance he was staring out of two sets of eyes. Erik and Ororo loomed in front of him, both with frighteningly similar looks of achievement on their faces. When Erik put on that helmet he was twisted between betrayal and relief. At least now the Shadow King would have no influence on him.

"This is what we're going to do." Charles heard Erik through Shaw's ears as Ororo sat down beside him. He hadn't even realized his legs had given out.

"One."

She reached out, placing one of her small hands over his mouth without explanation.

"Two."

"This is going to hurt." She told him.

"Three."

She was right.

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AN: First and foremost I want to apologize for the wait. I had this chapter halfway written in a very different form when a friend and mentor of mine passed away and it just... Geh. I didn't want to work on anything for a long time. So I scrapped the chapter I did have and made this one. I like it much better anyway so that's great, but I very sorry about the lack of chapter... oh and the cliffhanger.

I am a terrible person. :) Yes.

The gap between chapters this time will be much shorter. I promise!

Also, hopefully I got rid of the typos and junk but I was eager to get this out once I had it. So forgive me for anything you find. I will probably jump back in and correct it tonight or tomorrow.