It's been five years. Wow. Um...have a oneshot. A bit of a spoiler for anyone who has read 'She Got It Honest'. It's been years - (gasp) I became one of those writers. C'est la vie - that's life. I got the prompt - 'I'm not excited to exist today' - from .com.
Disclaimer: All Marvel associated characters are not mine, but property of Disney - y'all, Remy's a Disney Prince now!
-where-are-the-line-breaks-?-
"I'm not excited to exist today." Gambit said from where he hung upside down from the ceiling. The chains wrapped around his ankles were decidedly uncomfortable. The ones around his arms and torso weren't much better, allowing him no slack or movement. His captors had done an admirable job restraining him. Jean Luc couldn't have done a better job. The finishing touch with the inhibitor collar had been over the top in his opinion. Taking his trench coat - with all of its lovely pocket and useful tools - was just mean-spirited.
He knew there was something off about this job from the beginning but ignored his better instincts. But his contact was one that he trusted, always giving him excellent information that had been pivotal on previous job. He went by Mr. Standish and was a paranoid, nervous little man. At the moment, he could only assume someone had gotten to him and forced him to leave out the pertinent facts. When he got out of his, he'd have to pay the man a visit and have a long talk about loyalty and the lesser of two evils and blow up his house.
The warehouse around him was not the place he'd been robbing - a lab of some kind, a series of files on some project. A thief didn't ask questions like that. He might make a discreet backup copy and take a peek later. Never knew what useful and lucrative things one could find that way. The boxes stacked around him block his view of an exit, and the floodlights pointed at him destroyed night vision. Still, the sense of being watched tingled on his neck.
Or the blood rushing to his head was about to give him an aneurysm.
"So were ya just gonna be a creep and hang out in the shadows or were we gonna talk sometime today? Got places t' be."
He didn't actually know that anyone was there, but they'd be stupid to just leave someone like him unsupervised. It was a safe bet. Of course, they were dumb enough to capture him in the first place, so who knew?
He didn't hear the footsteps but was pleasantly surprised when a face framed with red appeared to his right. Always did love him a redhead. And in a catsuit too.
"Well," he drawled. "Got to say I wasn't expecting you, cherie."
"I'll bet. Probably somebody more like him?" She spun him around, and yeah. Somehow the guy with the eye-patch seemed a lot more appropriate for this type of situation.
"I'd rather talk to her," Gambit informed him.
"You broke into a secure SHIELD facility that legally doesn't exist intending to steal top secret information critical to the defense of this country. I don't really care about your preferences, son."
He'd heard of SHIELD. There was no way this was going to end well for him. SHIELD had reach and resources and very little oversight from what he understood. Spies and spooks and boogeymen. And now he was in their radar.
"Steal? Oh, nah, see, I think we just got ourselves a misunderstandin' here."
"Gambit. Le Diable Blanc. Remy Lebeau of New Orleans, adopted son of Jean Luc Lebeau and second 'prince' of the Thieves Guild. What exactly am I misunderstanding?"
Gambit couldn't think of what. Normally, he was quick on his feet for a glib answer, but his were up in the air at the moment. The blood pooling into his skull was not helping. He actually felt a bit of worry at his sluggish response but shoved that annoying trickle of doubt away.
"I could lock you down someplace small and dark with that collar around your neck for the rest of your life and just let you out for the science geeks to run whatever experiment they want on you. Even if you managed to escape from one of these places, you wouldn't get far before that little necklace blew your head off."
Everything felt a little dull and flat, and reminded him of swimming in the murky waters of the bayou. He wondered if the collar was doing anything else to him other than blocking his powers. Power blocker, bomb, and drugs - they really went all out. The thought of dying wasn't appealing but neither was living out his days as someone's lab rat.
"What do you think, Agent Romanoff?" He asked the redhead, and she circled around to stand next to One Eye, a tablet in her hand. "Send him off to the Basement?"
"I think it'd be a waste," she answered, eyes intent on whatever was on the screen. "We can always use another asset. He's trained. A little wild, but we have worse."
"Hm. He'll need a handler."
Her eyes snapped to Gambit then the other man, and he saw the first flicker of emotion from the woman. Annoyance. Gut instinct told him that was not a look he wanted directed at him.
"I call not 'it'."
"Overruled. You want him in SHIELD? He's your problem," he told her before turning around and walking into the shadows beyond the light. "Handle it as you see fit and start the paperwork either way."
Gambit watched her watch him go. He cursed internally when that annoyed look was directed fully on him. He met her stare, her gaze dissecting him and reminding him inexplicably of his Tante Mattie. Irrationally, he wished One Eye back.
"Understand this. You are my responsibility, but you will not be my problem. Behave or I will put you down. Are we clear?"
Loopy from what he expected was some type of drug, he half expected her to whip out a wooden spoon. Refuse, get knocked out again only to wake up in some ridiculous prison facility in Antarctica probably, just because he hated the cold. Or agree, go along with her until he found a way to slip her collar. Without getting his head blown off.
"Your recruitment strategy could use some work," he told her, unable to prevent the flippant reply.
"Please," she snorted, and he noted that she didn't seem offended. "This is an improvement. At least you didn't get shot. But hey, the night's still young."
"You don't leave a man much choice, cherie."
"You will address me as Agent Romanoff or Black Widow. And you always have a choice. What's it gonna be? Got places t' be," she said, a parody of his earlier words, accent and all. She did take offense at being called out of her name. He made a note and underlined it in red and took a mental picture of the gun at her hip and the comfortable way she rested her hand on it.
But Black Widow. That name explained so much.
"Sure," he said, all ease and nonchalance. "Let's go be heroes."
"Good choice," she assured him, then snapped her fingers.
At her cue, the lights went off and the ones overhead came on, illuminating the warehouse fully. In the light, it revealed the squad of armed agents, rifles trained on him. He was almost too busy gaping to notice one of the goons undoing the chains that held him suspended. Only long practice at the fine art of falling kept him from breaking his landing with his head, but that shoulder was going to bruise marvelously. Agent Romanoff smirked down at him, and he felt that this was likely to be the theme of their relationship. Beautiful woman or not, he was not looking forward to it at all.
She wasn't the type of woman to kick a man when he was down, he found, but she was the type to engage the commands on her tablet that had the collar releasing some kind of knockout drug into his system. He felt his in his neck as something pricked him, and black edged his vision.
End-so line breaks aren't a thing anymore?
This is just to get my feet wet a little as I haven't written a proper word of fic in years. I didn't have the time or inspiration for the longest, but I might - might maybe we'll see - be coming back. I'm not certain where my notes are for 'She Got It Honest' but I still remember the big points I wanted to get to. I might go over a few things in previous chapters that bother me now - my style changed a little, I think. I hope. I read all of your reviews, guys, and I gotta say thank you to everyone who still loves that story - all of my stories.