Disclaimer: I don't own Gambit, and having never owned any comic, never mind a Marvel one, all interpretations of the character and his past are derived from X-Men and X-Men Evolution cartoons. Settings and descriptions are inspired by the movies.

A/N: I do own Blaze. Apologies for gruesome imagery ending this first bit, rest won't be so graphic.

01

"So if the Contés are paying Isis off to keep her mouth shut about the Cannes affair, but Trey is in a bidding war with Pierre Cardome back in Paris over the Moulin contract, are you sure that we've covered our backs? Is alternatively sweet-talking and beating the crap out of Mika and his crew going to confuse matters enough so nobody realises what we've been up to? If they all knew we'd beaten them to the file, they'd be after us before we got chance to sell it on. And who are we selling to anyway, the Contés or Isis, or someone completely different?"

If Gambit hadn't known exactly what his apprentice was talking about, she would have lost him way back in that little speech. The Cajun master thief shook his head slightly, opening the door to his room in the crummy roadside motel and let his apprentice enter before him. They were currently somewhere near Arras, in the Pas-De-Calais region of Northern France, It had been a very long night and they had worked damn hard for the last twenty-four hours. But it had been worth it, the CD-Rom in his trench coat pocket worth Blaze's weight in cold, hard cash. The nineteen-year-old ex-thieves guild boy wonder collapsed casually on the creaking bed. He shrugged out of his coat and kicked off his boots, reaching for the laptop on the bedside table as his seventeen-and-a-half-year-old English apprentice went to put the kettle on.

To look at them, no one would have believed they were high on the Parisian police's most wanted. Not to mention hunted in a solid handful of other countries worldwide. Two mutant kids; he with his startling red-irises-on-black-whites eyes, mop of untidy red-brown hair that permanently needed cutting, over six foot now and getting more muscular by the day. His mutation was the ability to charge solid matter, breaking chemical bonds and releasing stored energy via explosions. Gambit was confident in his skills both as a mutant and a thief. Blaze on the other hand was a mutant in the strongest stages of denial. A petite redhead, she'd grown up a lot since he'd first taken her training upon himself. Her quick mind, wicked sense of humour and willingness to try anything once kept Remy entertained. Her melting brown eyes, flawless skin and feminine curves too much temptation that Gambit swore he never would give in to.

"We'se see Petite," Gambit finally answered her questions as vaguely as possible. She'd learn one day this whole game was about waiting to see what happened, not about planning for every eventuality only to have life come back and kick you where it hurt. "It all about leverage."

"Yeah well, you're getting obsessed with leverage and it's giving me a headache. Whatever happened to straightforward nicking stuff?" She smiled at him as she leant back on the surface behind her, waiting for the kettle to boil. Dressed casually in flared jeans and trainers, her long red hair tumbled in curls around her face and down her back. She had the power to create fire, but she couldn't control her murderous ability. So instead she had a whole rigmarole of meditation and breathing techniques, little rules and mind-over-matter tricks that kept her power wrapped up inside her. And having seen what she was capable of, seen the corpses charred in a Parisian alleyway, whatever she did to stop it happening again was fine with Gambit.

"This nothin'," He quipped offhandedly, shoving the disk in the drive and booting up the file. "I ain't even got you started on blackmail yet..."

"Sounds interesting." Blaze rolled her eyes sarcastically, turning back to her brew-making activities. "Coffee or tea?"

"Coffee, t'ree sugars, no milk." Gambit ordered, making Blaze wrinkle her button nose at the though of it. She liked coffee plenty, the sweeter the better, but no milk? Yuk. She sighed, pouring the boiling water into two vaguely clean mugs.

"I ache all over," The redhead moaned, "Do you think the baths in this place are big enough to use?" They'd only been at this motel a few days and Blaze had done little but complain about Gambit's choice of establishment ever since. Still it suited him perfectly, as the motel was completely anonymous.

"Depend what you wanna use 'em for, non?" Gambit bantered whilst taking the hot mug from Blaze's hands, without shifting the laptop that sat on his lap.

"Eugh, thanks for that insight." The not-so innocent, at least not as he'd first feared, English girl pulled her face comically. Gambit smiled as he replied, "Hey, you filled in the gaps yourself Cherie."

"Well," Blaze changed the subject, "Seeing as my room still doesn't have running hot water, can I use your bath? Promise I wont be long."

"Sure Blaze, jus' don't flood the place." Remy waved her away, frowning as he began skim-reading the stolen data, reaching blindly to put his coffee down on the bedside table. He was so tired his muscles were tense with it, his eyes hurting a little as he tried to focus them on the unforgiving laptop screen. But this had to be done, he needed to check it was complete, make sure he really did have what was wanted... Blaze busied herself digging out a clean-ish motel towel, brown, to match the scruffy room's brown bathroom suite and beige tiles, not to mention the assorted mould and fungi, then headed for the cupboard-sized en-suite's door.

"Oh merde..." Blaze's awed voice caught a little huskily on the back of her throat, made Gambit look up instantly. She hung onto the door as if standing alone was suddenly impossible, but the faux oak enamel under her fingers was already blistering and blackening as her control on her powers slipped a little. Worried, Gambit moved the laptop and clambered back to his feet, taking Blaze's warm wrist and moving her hand from the door before the room went up in smoke. She didn't protest, swinging away from the bathroom as the towel dropped to the floor. Blaze's pretty face was grey and she looked seconds from vomiting. Gambit glanced through the door.

Red. The bathroom was covered in it, the air thick with the stench of it. Blood splashed up the beige tiles in fountains, human body parts in the sink and on the floor. The shower curtain was hung in tatters, thick with the coagulating crimson liquid. His toothbrush, well, suffice to say Gambit would be stretching to a new one pretty sharpish. What was left of the body, a broken torso and some poor idiote's head, were still in the bathtub. His eyes were open, shocked and very, very dead. Gambit shut the bathroom door. Blaze threw up.