Encounter ((closed))

[Shade]

A friend´s advice? she thought. The only real way as things had proven, even though she knew that without that conversation she had had with Mystique, things might look somewhat different now. But then again, wouldn´t she have come to the conclusion by now that the Brotherhood wasn´t the right way? She struggled against the thought that she had not had at least a small part in that decision. Mystique had opened her eyes, she had walked the rest of it alone. And now she was walking it to the end. Shade knew that it was difficult to predict Magneto´s reaction to her answer now, whatever she said, if it stuck to the truth, was dangerous, because it involved accusations. But still, the simple ´I am no fighter´ she would have chosen as an answer months back, was no longer an option. If she had to fight, she fought even if not as an X Men, but as an individual. She had no problem to stand for her opinion and furthermore this reply would have meant a bid for forgiveness. Please don´t despise me as the old Shade would have thought. She scoffed inwardly at the memory.

“Different reasons.” she replied. “things I saw, heard and concluded. About you. But also about myself.”

[Erik Lensherr]

"About me?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. He remembered she and Mystique had been chummy, towards the end of her stay at the lair, and figured that was the cause. "What has dear Mystique been telling you?"

[Shade]

"Who said this was about Mystique?" Shade gave back. "This was about me. About me deciding that I do not want to risk becoming a tool." She paused, forcing herself to take a break from talking before she could allow herself to lose her calmness. She knew that this would just be a disatvantage against him. As long as she could keep her composure, she could at least pretent she had the upper hand.

[Erik Lensherr]

"Did I ever treat you as such?" he asked, showing a visage of incredible hurt. Inside, he nearly seethed. Of course, there were mutants with their uses; the pawns. But there were others who showed potential to be more, and Shade had been one of them. So had dear Mystique, but she had shown where her loyalties lay. For the moment, anyways.

[Shade]

Shade turned her head, looking away, over to the boathouse. It was not just a motion of averting her gaze from him for a moment, but subconsciously also a gesture that demonstrated that her life had changed and her loyalties lay elsewhere. She knew the answer to his question, there was just one answer. No, he never had. He had shown her kindness, nothing else, even to in retrospect much of that looked like the attempts of a skilled charmer. The tale of the pretty coloured snake, an old Native American story she had spotted in a book once came to her mind.

"No." she said, looking at him again. "But you left Mystique when she got cured and when she left you you hooked up with my best friend just to pay her back." Her voice was much calmer than her thoughts were right now. "Who hurts my friends hurts me. So excuse me, but the thought was not too remote you see."

[Erik Lensherr]

On the inside, he nearly fumed. But tried to keep his calm visage, though minor irritation was visible briefly. And then something hit him. Shade had admired him once, and he had thought there was a tinge of affection there once as well. "Is this because you were jealous? You wanted to be in Rogue's shoes at one point, Shade," he told her, his mouth forming a thin line.

[Shade]

Shade couldn´t tell whether he had concluded things just now or whether he had sensed it back then, and it didn´t really matter anyways. What mattered was that he hit a spot with that remark. Her feelings for him were gone, replaced with feelings for someone she thought worthy of them and for a moment she felt torn between laughing at him and yelling just that into his face, that there were people much more worthy of her affection and jumping up to do something like shoving him agains the chest.

She got up from the rock to face him, her arms still crossed, her gaze now turning into more of a glare. "You think too highly of yourself and too low of me if you think this was the only reason." she said, her voice a little lower, not quite bordering on dangerously low, but hinting into that direction. It had been one of the triggers, but not the main influence and it made her furious that he broke it down to that now. Old Shade would never have dared to speak to him in such a manner, to stand up to him like this, braving his gaze with her arms crossed. She knew her words spoke admittance, but the childish, naive crush she had had on him was part of her self she had discarded. "This was about principles."

[Erik Lensherr]

He raised an eyebrow. "A matter of principle? Let me guess, you've decided instead to buy into that rubbish they preach here? Those pacifist methods will never right the wrongs committed to you, Shade," he told her tersely. "They won't bring justice to those who killed your brother, and they won't ensure a safe future for the rest of us."

[Shade]

Shade clenched her jaw, fighting back her anger. She had known that earlier or later he would be likely to play that card, Jimmy. He had been the reason she had joined in the first place, just as well as he had been one of the reasons why she had left. Mystique´s words were still ringing in her ears. Would he want his sister to become a murderer? She knew Magneto thought different of that, that he saw it as justice, not as a crime. And oh yes, there had been moments when she had almost shared that belief, moments when she had been bitter and desperate, when the nightmares had haunted her - but those nightmares had not returned ever since that one night she had told Gambit what had happened in her apartment. It was him who had taken the weight off her shoulders in that matter, not Magneto.

She knew that seeing those people dead was still something she somehow wanted and she knew that if they ended up dead somehow, she would see it as a just thing to happen. But there was a difference to what Magneto had told her. He would have used her eventually, righting that wrong would have been the beginning to pull her into things too big for her. She could not speak herself free of all sorts of crimes, but she was no terrorist, damnit.

"I didn´t buy into anything. No Brotherhood doesn´t automatically mean X Men." she half growled at him. "The world is not just black and white." She had unconsciously done a step closer, not to seek closeness, but to emphasize her words, to show that she very well dared to stand up against him, to tell her opinion as she never had before in front of him. That she was not scared of him even though he was so much more powerful. "There are more ways to right a wrong. Letting yourself be consumed by hatred isn´t the right one."

[Erik Lensherr]

"Fine," he snapped. The metal around his wrists shifted in his irritability, but they were hidden by the sleeves of his coat. "When those people come crawling back, killing more like they did your brother, those deaths are on your hands."

[Shade]

Shade´s eyes blazed in anger for a split second but she forced herself to keep control. She had sworn herself not to lose her temper that easily, it was just what he wanted, to show he was more powerful than her. He was hinting at guilt. And guilt had been a matter she had had to deal with for quite a while. The tormenting thoughts of whether there had been a way -any way- to help Jimmy and keep him safe. If only her powers had been developed back then the way they were now... If she had dragged him out of the room rightaway before he could reveal his mutation... There were still moments when those questions would torture her, creeping back into her thoughts, asking themselves over and over again and it was the memory of Gambit´s calm voice that kept them at bay. Asking questions like that will lead you nowhere good... sometimes we are caught in a current Shade... but for someone else, we are the current.

She took a breath, trying to steady her heart beat which had increased as well as her anger. She looked at him for a long moment, before slightly shaking her head. "What will attract more danger for people like us?" she asked in a voice calmer than she would have imagined possible. "provoking even more hatred against us? That won´t bring him back." She knew, that deep inside her, her decision to leave the Brotherhood was not rooted in her general repulsion against crime. She was no perfect citizen either and she also knew that under given circumstances she might welcome the death of those cowards that had killed her brother. Only, if that meant to sell herself to a terrorist organisation where she could not feel safe herself, where she lived in constant knowledge that she could be used and, even worse, knowing that she worked in a league with the person who had treated her friends in such a bad way, there was no way of doing it.

[Erik Lensherr]

"We cannot attract more hatred, their minds are already made up," he told her, adamant in his position. "We must take steps to ensure the future generations will not have to fear being taken in the night, being lynched, or sent to those horrible places." His voice was full of anger, yet there was also an undertone of hurt, just as his arm ached with the phantom pain of that needle in his skin.

[Shade]

Shade suppressed a sigh, her jaw still clenched. Even though she could not sympathise with the radicalness of his ideas any more (and when she still had she had had no idea of the vastness of them, so that didn´t really play in), she could clearly place what caused his words and bitterness. She had seen the tattoo, the fading numbers engraved into his skin, all those months back, that afternoon at the lair and his words woke images in her mind that she, young and lucky as she was, only knew from film clips and history books. It took away some of her anger and helped herself to get a better grip on her emotions that did not show on the outside as intense as they were inside of her.

"There are some people I would die for." she said, looking at him without blinking. "for the same people I would likely kill if that meant saving them. And I do not know what I would do, if I ever found out who they were." She knew that Magneto would connect ´they´ to the faceless murderers of her brother. "but your way of dealing it is not mine. I think it never was."

[Erik Lensherr]

"You tell yourself that now, Shade," he told her. "But I remember how eager you were, when you talked of revenge. I don't think you can even fool yourself to pretend it never happened." That look in her eyes, when she had told him about Jimmy, and his killers. How eager she had been to train, to help, to find a way closer to them so that she could seek revenge. Even she couldn't fool herself completely.

[Shade]

Shade gave him another long look, fighting back a snarl. "Do you think I forgot that?" she asked, slight disbelief in her voice. "Why should I lie to myself? Heck, yes I ran after you, for god´s sake I let myself get lured in the first day I came here." She uncrossed her arms, her hands forming fists unconsciously and the bracelett gave a slight sound. For some reason, that felt reassuring. Protection. "I didn´t leave because I forgot what they did to him. You should have realised that by now."