I´m back with a new chapter for you to read and review. Phew, that one was not easy to write, so I hope you like it.

2wingo: Thanks four your help on Erik´s background. Having someone who knows the comics as well as you do to advise me really means a lot to me. :-) I was wondering about him being Jewish, too, as in the first movie you can clearly see his yellow Star of David on his jacket and the clothes of his parents when they are dragged into the camp.

AngelofSnow: Aww, thanks for the congrats, Angel. I can´t believe how long this story has become, either. It started as a rather small idea and now I seem incapable of stopping to write it. Come on, your story deserves much more credit! Glad you liked the intereaction of Magneto and Shade in this chapter. It´s kinda hard to write Erik when Shade´s around. I already have the feeling she somehow changes his behavior slightly. Hope that doesn´t come along as off character.

KumadaPuma: I´m quite excited how you´ll like the interaction between Erik and Mystique in this chapter. And well, the thing with him crushing her necklace was an idea that had lurked around my mind for quite some chappies. Glad you approve of that. :)

Meow: Thanks. Glad to see you liked the symbolism thingy here. As for the brotherhood: wait and see. ;-)

Eternal E: Again, interesting question. It´s great to see people get involved with the story. Okay, so Shade´s powers are in a way similar to Kitty, I agree, only Kitty can control passing through things more actively than Shade can as A) Shade needs to become invisible to walk through material and B) this aspect of her power is limited. Water does not affect her when she is invisible, she can move rather freely once she becomes invisible, it´s not exatly like flying it´s rather like walking on elements other than earth, like water e.g. (and to a certain hight also on air) as she does when leaving the lair to buy food. Shade can walk through walls but only if she is invisible and she can just move through things ahead of her, not under of above her so she wouldn´t be able to pass through a floor or something as Kitty can. And no, whenever she was stealing things, she would have to tug them under her jacket or something as this is the only way of ´making things invisible´.

Chapter 21

Kindling trust

Erik had watched the girl closely when he had crushed the pendant and in her eyes he had read pretty much what he had expected to see there: a wild mix of emotions, a sharing of relief, tension, curiosity and still a little bit of fear and shyness lurking somewhere in the back of her gaze, now mingling slightly with something he had not seen there before: respect and something that he might interpret as the very softest traits of a beginning bond of trust. For a short moment he had to fight the urge to break their eye contact. He had seen this trust, this respect – faint as it might be in the girl´s eyes yet – in so many other pairs of eyes. Some of them he had seen broken, staring into emptiness when he had staggered away over the debris at Alcatraz. Trust unfullfilled, respect that he had proven unworthy of.

Shade looked at the destroyed necklace for a short moment and then turned her eyes away from it. She was beginning to take another step, Erik knew. This, too, was a moment he had seen many times before.

"I think I´ll go to my room now, can I?" Her eyes, still shy, met his again.

He nodded. "Yes."

She got up again, but turned around when she had already reached the door leading to the corridor. He waited for her to speak the first words, seeing she was somewhat hesitating.

"What about my friends?" she asked. "I mean, will you...?"

"Yes, I will see what I can do for them." he answered, finding he had not thought about these poor creatures all evening. His first steps to reform the Brotherhood had occupied his mind and shortly kept it away from Shade´s request. "I will need your help, Shade." he said.

"My help?"

"Yes." He got up to place his empty plate on the counter. "First I need to find out where they are now. It seems unlikely to me they are still on Alcatraz island."

Erik could see the girl´s eyes flicker. "But... how can we ever find them if they have been taken away?"

"You told me about this friend of yours. The telepath."

"Think."

"Think, yes." He nodded. "He could be our link to your friends. He might pass information about your friends´ whereabouts to us. You told me he let you know the others thought you were dead?"

"He did, yes" Shade nodded slightly. "But I am no telepath myself. He can read my mind, but only when he wants to. At any other time I have no contact with him. Only when he... reads my mind and then I can ... like... hear his voice in my head or something. It´s like I feel he´s sneaking around in my head and this was also how he let me know what the others were thinking about what had happened to me."

Sneaking around in her head. Erik couldn´t abide a smile. He knew perfectly well what Shade was thinking. To those who knew the feeling of a telepath reading one´s mind, it was so easily to detect. Charles had seldomly intruded his thoughts, but Erik had felt it on the rare occasions when he had done so. For a moment a memory snapped back to his mind. Him standing on a light flooded corridor, shortly after he had left the hearing, shortly after he had listened to Senator Kelly talking away every reason from Jean Grey´s presentation about mutants. "Are you sneaking around in here, Charles?" he had asked his old friend without turning around, sensing his telepathy, tapping his finger slightly to his temple...

"When did he last get into contact with you?" he asked in a low voice, storing the memory away.

She seemed to think hard. "Yesterday ... shortly before I arrived here."

"Good. Be wary, Shade. When next time you feel his telepathy think a question. Make him tell you where they are. Then we can make the next step."

She seemed a little disappointed, but nodded and he nodded at her in a good natured way: "Off you go." he said and she left.

His eyes found the crushed pendant which was still lying on the table in front of him. He let it hover into the air, simply because he was enjoying the feel of metal answering to his call again. He had missed this so much. His lips curved into a smile.

"How long have you been standing there?" he said without turning his head, feeling the gaze of the blue shapeshifter like something physical. She didn´t answer to that, so he continued.

"I might need your help to free these young mutants", he went on, letting the necklace clatter onto the table again. While he was speaking this words he felt how hard it was to do so. In this moment he knew he was about to abandon a large bit of the pride he had not been willing to give away earlier. He couldn´t help but wonder.

"My help?" He could hardly tell whether her words were rather a question or an outcry. "You dare ask me to help you, Erik?" His smile vanished from his face when he turned to face her. "Yes." he said. "You returned to the Brotherhood and whatever grudges you hold against me does have nothing to do with the cause both of us have been following all these years."

She just stared at him, a blank look in her eyes that told him he had totally rendered her speechless which had hardly ever occured since he knew her.

"Help you." Her words sounded cold.

"Rather... it´s not helping me." he replied equally cold. "It´s freeing those mutants. They are used against our brothers, Raven and I will not suffer this. See my request as a request to help your fellow mutants if you can not bear the thought of aiding me." His voice had sounded emotionless at his harsh words, but his heart was pounding painfully when he said them. Her look, her demandour... all told him how much he had lost when he had abandoned Raven Darkholme... abandon... he didn´t like to put it that way... he had not abandoned her, she had been cared for, he had not abandoned Mystique, but left Raven Darkholme to her equals. "I don´t make you stay." he added in a low voice.

"No." she gave back. "But tell me Erik what choices did I have? Stay with... them? They treated me like a wild beast when I still was a mutant and not much better once the poison had gotten me. The only reason I did not kill you was that I somehow knew you, too, would recover. I´ve seen how they treat the mutants they capture Erik!" She had barely raised her voice. She had never done this when she had been very agitated... just like now. Like a wild cat her anger had shown rather in the way she held her body, the way her eyes were suddenly ablaze, the latent snarl that would creep into her voice. This was when she was dangerous. "As much as I hate you for what you did to me... if I want to help my brothers and sisters this means standing on Magneto´s side."

Her words evoked very ambivalent feelings. She had come back, yes, but not because of him, he knew now, just because of what they had tried to achieve all these years. She was still reasonable enough to acknowledge his abilities as a leader, as a persuader, as a fighter... but the rest was lost to them it seemed.

He simply nodded. He could count on her help. Like a reliable machine she would aid him. She would look at him blank eyed, the admiration, the love, the pride he had always read in them, gone forever, obeying his orders because their aims were the only thing that was now left for them to share. The only thing they still shared. He felt his throat go tight at these thoughts. The harsh words that had been on the top of his tongue a second ago, ready to be thrown at her, were gone.

"You know I can not undo anything of what I did..." he said. "You know how much it pained me to see what happened, Mystique." She just stared at him. "But you also know I will not take back what I said. I abandoned a human, not a mutant. We are superior, you know this, but they are still the minority. Pity is a luxury that I can not allow into my ranks."

"Pity." she said lowering her eyes making the word sound unique spoken with her resonating voice.

"And you know, Erik, I never forget."

"So do I." he said silently, their eyes locked, the atmosphere around them tingling in a way that could not only be blamed on the metal alone. After a moment, she broke their eye contact and started her way towards the door passing him silently. He stretched out his hand, letting it rest on her upper arm slightly. She didn´t pull back. "I need to be sure" he said. "I need to be sure I can rely on you." he said. "If not, I do not want you to take part in any other mission. You understand that, I know."

"As I said, it´s the cause Erik, not you." she avoided his eyes, staring into emptyness.

"Yes." he gave back. "And the Brotherhood wouldn´t be the same without my most trusted lieutenant."

Now she looked at him and at the first moment he was taken aback, as what he saw was something he had not seen with her since the day he had met her. A single tear had rolled down her blue scaled cheek, leaving a wet line on her skin, yet her eyes did not betray any emotion.

"Is this your way of saying sorry, Erik Lehnsherr?" she said coolly.

A sad smile entered his face without him being able to hide it

"As closely as it may get." he said.

She breathed in slowly as if trying to calm herself. "You´re a charmer, Erik." she then said. "You always were. "I do not know whether I am willing to let myself caught in your webs again." Her voice sounded cool, distant, but the touch of her scaled finger when she laid her hand on his to brush away his hand from her forearm was much softer. It didn´t betray anything of her being the fabulous combatant she was, it didn´t give away how hard she would use those hands to fight her enemies. Strong as the fangs of a wild cat. But her touch was soft. Surely much softer than she had intended.