TITLE: An Edge of Darkness, part 1
sequel to Shadowside
AUTHORs: Macx and elfin
SERIES: Shadowside
RATING: NC-17
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to us, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money :)
FEEDBACK: Loved
SUMMARY: Charles can't let go of the unknown, so incredibly powerful mutant who nearly killed Erik. He's determined to find out who she/he/it is. But curiosity has a hefty price...

Four months had passed since their fateful trip to Shadowside Creek. No one had died, but the scars of the attack were still very visible. Erik bore them like all of his marks: stoically, not thinking about what his body looked like, actually more bothered by the fact that the creature had gotten the drop on him. He prided himself on his reflexes, his ability to fight, and to come out on top. Not on that fateful day.

He had pushed the case into the back of his mind, refusing to give it any more thought. They had enough other mutants to check out. In those past months he had spent too long recovering, training, rebuilding his strength. Reaper had taken over the cases, flown or driven to the places where Cerebro had registered a mutant, and she had been accompanied by various students or mutants who just happened to be at the manor.

Like Azazel.

It was weird how the red-skinned teleporter had started to live here. Before Shadowside Creek he and Riptide had come and gone, taking up slack from the teaching schedule, setting their own courses with the older students. But now… they had rooms, they were there every morning, and it was starting to be as normal as everything around here.

Riptide had taken a liking to travelling with the team and Erik had felt a slight sliver of jealously, which he had quickly squelched. With the number of mutants out there, one team wasn't enough. Charles had agreed that they needed at least four pairs of mutants to cover all of the US and there were a lot more mutants all over the world. It was an immense task they had set for themselves and Erik knew he could fly all over the world all his lifetime and never find them all.

Azazel had given no reason as to why he had decided that now was the time to make up permanent camp at the manor. Four years had passed since Shaw's death and Emma Frost taking over the Hellfire Club – without Azazel and Riptide. Those two had suddenly appeared at Xavier's doorstep. Charles had welcomed them and while Erik had been suspicious, he had to trust his telepathic lover that Charles knew what he was doing.

As it had turned out, he had.

Coming back from his morning rounds, Erik nodded at Greg, their landscape artist, who was showing three teenagers a wildly blooming bush and explaining something about it. While his stint as a teacher had been meant to help when both Erik and Charles had been laid off as a result of the creature's attack, he had seamlessly slid into the spot of the teacher. The children came to him, asking questions, and there were two who were very interested in flora. Greg had really taken a liking to teaching on and off.

Erik wiped his sweaty face, slinging the towel around his neck. The morning runs always helped wake him up. Sometimes Charles went along. Erik had been surprised how enduring his lover was. While Charles wasn't a couch potato, he had a tendency to hole up in his study or the library for hours upon hours, type away, read, research. He was a scholar.

An adorable, loveable, sometimes a bit too idealistic professor.

Erik grinned, remembering last night. There was hardly any doubt in his mind that Charles Xavier was far from your run of the mill professor type. The body underneath those knit sweaters, Oxford professor suits and pressed shirts was hardly reason to complain. Nor was flexibility a problem.

Something curled in his stomach. Warm and longing and intense.

No, no complaints.

Walking into their room, Erik briefly looked around whether Charles was still there, but as not otherwise expected, he wasn't. He took a quick shower, dressed in what Charles called his 'uniform' – black shirt, black pants – and headed downstairs.

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He hadn't been able to let go of the girl. If she was a girl at all. Well, she was a mutant, Charles knew. A powerful, unique and gifted individual. He knew so little about her and wanted to understand it all. No reference text, no paper, no research had given him an inkling as to what he was dealing with. Charles was fascinated.

The girl was hiding, keeping the world at bay. She had chosen a decrepit cabin as her home. Or not?

With her ability to manifest creatures like the monster or the rabbit, she might be playing tricks on observers concerning the cabin, too.
Her psychic abilities had to be off the chart!

Add to that the fact that Charles hadn't been able to get a telepathic fix on her, she had become close to an obsession. He had spent a lot of time looking into this phenomena, had dug up all he could about Shadowside Creek, but he wasn't any closer to solving the mystery of her origin.

The previous owner of the land and cabin had died a long time ago. He had had no children himself and the land had fallen to distant heirs, who didn't care about it all that much. They had tried selling it off with no luck. The asking price was laughable, but with the history of weird things happening, no one was buying. The one time the ski resort had thought about getting the land, a representative had been so scared that he had refused to even make a one-dollar bid.

Charles had pondered buying the land himself to keep the girl's safe haven safe. Erik had just stared at him as if he was mad.

"She's managed to stay hidden for hell knows how long, Charles! You buying that land will raise more questions than keep her any safer than she already is."

Yes, it had been a sound argument.

So he had poured over historical texts, ancestry of the last owner – Owen McPherson, 92 when he had died, local – and the whole family. There had been no clues as to whether one of them had mutant abilities. Mutants rarely stood out. They tried to hide.

With no luck the conventional way, Charles had started to look at Cerebro more and more often. Erik didn't like the brainwave scanner and he hated it even more when Charles came out of it with a headache, disorientation or worse, a migraine from Hell. But Charles knew Cerebro was necessary for their work and he was the only one right now who was able to use it. Hank had added a lot of safety protocols and they kept developing the device, but Erik would never trust it.

Cerebro might be the only way to reach out to their unknown mutant. The girl was a presence unlike anything he had ever touched, able to ward off curious scans, and she appeared to be able to fracture herself. As if every manifestation was also a part of her.

Charles was burning with curiosity.

And he was a scientist. He needed to know.

So he decided to try something new.

Instead of using Cerebro to look for mutants, he would try to home in on the girl, find a way to contact her. She was no clear presence, but maybe, now that he knew that, she would be easier to assess. Maybe he could get into her mind, talk to her. Maybe he could finally find out what and who she was.

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Adjusting Cerebro to his parameters didn't take much time. Charles had learned a great deal about the device and he had early on realized that it represented almost limitless possibilities. Hank had planned it as a brainwave amplifier, but it was so much more. For a telepath it was like an extension of himself. Charles could reach everyone if he wanted to. The moment he immersed himself it was like a rush. The pain of the connection, the headaches, the sometimes-migraines, it all paled in comparison to the results he yielded.

Cerebro enabled him to find any mutant anywhere, anytime, any place at all. And since he knew where the girl was, finding her wasn't a problem. Touching her aura was easy. He now only had to go through the mass of interference she consciously or unconsciously created.
Four months ago it had been something completely unknown and never before handled. Now he knew. Now he thought he understood. He could do this, contact her, scan her, find out more about this unique mutation.

At least that was the plan.

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He was in the familiar gray surroundings. Like a thick fog with shadows of people appearing at random intervals. All were dark, never in color, which told him that those were non-mutants. Now and then he saw glimpses of a mutant mind, but he didn't follow up on it. He had a different goal. As he moved closer and closer to the one he was looking for, Charles noticed that other mutants became scarcer, then were completely gone. The over 7000 inhabitants of Shadowside were all humans. Not even the slightest mutation.

Curious.

He stored that information for later evaluation.

Now he looked at the colorful representation of the strong mutation he had discovered before. No shape, no form, no hint as to whether it was male or female, young or old. It was simply there. An amorphous mass that was bright and strong and alluring in its own way.

Charles stopped. He sent a greeting, waiting.

Nothing happened.

So he moved in.

The cloud of color drifted out of his way, parting as if splitting in two, and Charles was stumped by how little he got of the mutant.

"Hello?" he asked again. "I know you can hear me. Please, I just want to talk to you."

The cloud whirled and he thought he saw strange shapes. It had no center mass. There was no definition to it like to any other mutant he had ever met. While scanning Charles had been aware of so much in every single mind he had met.

He had even once touched Erik and he had been struck speechless by the coiled energy and power, the sheer strength underneath a deceptive layer of control. Erik had just scratched the first few layers of his potential. Charles had once mused that with the development of his gift, Erik should be able to influence subatomic particles, maybe even gravitational fields. He had demonstrated that he was able to briefly float an object, though it strained him.

Looking at his partner's representation in Cerebro he had felt this surge of wonder and love once more. He wasn't singularly drawn to that power, but it was amazing and beautiful and wonderful and… and it was Erik. His Erik.

Now he was looking at something very different, but he felt the power. This was just another shield, something to throw him off. The mutant was able to manifest illusions, maybe everything he or she thought/dreamed about. It was an incredible power, but who was wielding it?

Going deeper, concentrating only on this one mind, Charles tried to determine where the mutant was. He sensed he was close. There was something like a dense center, a tiny black hole in the middle of all this whirling mass of nothingness.

"Hello? You don't have to be afraid. I don't mean to hurt you."

He came closer.

And then he saw the shape. Dark and dense in the middle of the mind's representation. It was coiled. Powerful. So very much like Erik. Charles was stunned that he still couldn't make out who he was talking to.

Maybe it was the surprise, the hesitation, that briefly had him lose his concentration.

The next thing he knew the black hole bloomed, like an explosion taking part, and it overwhelmed his mind. He screamed, inside Cerebro and outside in the chamber. He felt the other mind rush toward him, taking what it wanted, and he fought back. Instinct had him fall back upon defensive techniques he had taught himself a long time ago. He raised shields, pushed the other mind back, and from deep within he heard the roar at the other end of the anchor line.

The anchor line!

With a strength born out of desperation and terror of losing Erik, he surged at the thing, grabbled with it, hauled it out of his mind and pushed it back. It screeched, surprised at his actions.

Protect Erik. Protect the anchor. It had been damaged to badly once before and Charles vividly recalled the pain and desperation, the emptiness, the voice, the darkness.

Not again.

Never again!

He lashed at the other mutant, stunning him. He had probably never met anyone able to defend himself like that, or anyone coming this close.

Charles caught flashes, images, recoiled from the bad taste of loneliness, abandoned hopes and the terror of human contact.

Then there was only the flood.

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Halfway down the stairs, Erik lost his footing as just for a moment his mind went black and a wave of nauseating pain rolled over him. He stumbled, managed to stop himself from falling by grabbing at the bannister, and knew instantly what had caused it.

::Charles!::

He made it to the base of the stairs, feeling as if a war was going on in his head before determinedly blocking the confusing messages. Where the hell..? But it didn't take a genius to figure out what was happening, where Charles was, and he felt a rage that he hadn't felt in a long time.

He ran down to the lower levels, hammering on the door of Hank's lab as he went, yelling Hank's name. The doors to Cerebro opened when he got close, and he was inside as soon as he could get his body through the gap, taking the grated metal steps two at a time, stopping when he reached the platform.

"Charles!"

He was on his knees, fingers wrapped around the railing, knuckles white, infernal helmet still on his head. Erik crouched at Charles' side, hands on the machine, ready to free his lover who had sweat dripping from his forehead, eyes closed, eyeballs twitching.

"No!" Hank was running to the control panel, not even looking at him. "Don't take it off. You could seriously damage or even kill him."

"He's under attack!"

"I need to shut it down."

Erik was furious and helpless, hands on Charles' sweating, trembling body, trying so hard not to grip him and shake him.

"I can't believe you've done this," he said, knowing full well Charles was unable to hear him. "For God's sake, Charles! We talked about this! Hank!"

"I'm trying! Cerebro connects Charles with other mutants. One of those mutants seems to have made the link two way. It's connected with him. These readings are off the scale!"

He sounded excited and fearful at the same time, while all Erik could do was watch his lover suffering, battling, perhaps for his sanity. He thought about the anchor line, thought about using it, worried that he'd do more harm than good. He wasn't blocking now but Charles wasn't actively using it, Erik just didn't know why. He didn't know how, or if, he could use it. Charles was the telepath, the initiator, he used the anchor when he was over stressed. But, for whatever reason, he wasn't using it now. And that was the scariest thing of all.

"Hank!"

"I'm trying!"

Without warning, everything powered off. The lights, the machine... In the dark, Erik took his chance and lifted the helmet from Charles head. The moment he did, Charles went limp in his arms, falling against him like a rag doll.

"Charles?"

Pressing two fingers to the side of his partner's throat, Erik found a strong pulse to his extreme relief. But Charles wasn't opening his eyes, wasn't responding and when Erik finally tried to find him on the anchor line, all he felt was an empty hole in his head, much like he had felt when he'd realized their connection had been damaged after the mutant creature attack so many months ago. But it wasn't that the line was broken, just as if Charles wasn't at the end of it. It was difficult to describe, even to himself.

Hank had gone again, presumably to get help, but Erik picked up Charles in his arm, carrying him through the lower levels to the medical wing, relieved when Reaper met him in the doorway. Black eyes in a white face met his and her calmness in face of his panic settled over him.

Reaper might not have the best bedside manner, but she knew what she was doing and her no-nonsense behavior suited Erik better than any coddling. She didn't argue with him about carrying Charles, nor did she kick him out of the infirmary. She simply started to check the unconscious telepath.

"Do you know how long he was in Cerebro?" she asked while running tests.

"No," he ground out.

She only nodded once.

tbc...