The Lord of Lies and Laughter
Disclaimer: All known and recognisable characters, locations, names etc. property of Marvel Entertainment. I am just playing with them for a little while.
A/N: This story is a sequel to my previous Remy-Centric X-men story: "The Devil's Own" and follows the same continuity established therein, except two years forward in time from the end of that story. If you have not read that story you may find this one a trifle hard to follow. In a nutshell, Remy left the X-men in a bid to defeat Sinister before he could use Remy against the X-men as a brainwashed Marauder sleeper agent. A lot of stuff happened including the X-men finding out the truth about Remy's past, and the truth of the Black Womb experiments Sinister instigated in Almogordo New Mexico. Although Remy left the X-men under better circumstances than comic canon (no trial, no Antarctica) he has since gone to ground and as of this story's start none of Xavier's brood know of his whereabouts.
Prologue: 2011 Egypt
Remy LeBeau gritted his teeth against the thrumming vibrations shuddering through the helicopter. His left leg ached from an old injury aggravated by the constant, bone jarring reverberations and his ears hurt from trying to hear anything at all beyond the thunder of displaced air. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the thin skin of the helicopter.
'Two minutes LeBeau.' The crackle of a male voice through the headphones covering his ears forced him to open his eyes again. Seated opposite him Sebastian Shaw, former Black King of the Hellfire Club and mutant industrialist billionaire, managed to look ready for the boardroom even in sky diver gear and headset. Remy resisted the desire to make an impolite gesture as he staggered up from the bench to move to the back of the 'copter cabin and the exit hatch.
Shaw rose up behind him and followed. The older man helped him wriggle into his pack and harness and then they both manhandled the hatch open.
Thwap, thwap, thwap; the wide swath of twilight stained desert below looked cold and hard and unforgiving as the helicopter swept lower and lower until the shadow of the chopper stretched out across the dunes like a really weird and gigantic insect.
'There,' Shaw stretched out a hand and pointed to a pyramid in the near distance as the chopper zoomed up on it, 'The Akkaba pyramid.'
It was one of the older type; shorter and more bulky looking than the Giza ones, with a flat top. There wasn't a sphinx in sight. Remy felt vaguely cheated. He made a mental note to visit the Valley of the Kings sometime. He checked his harnesses and pack once more. He wished for a cigarette – or maybe some gum. He looked down at the cold desert rushing along below without enthusiasm. He reminded himself of the big fat cheque Shaw would write out for him once this pinch was over. He filled his head with thoughts of popping champagne corks and overly friendly femmes with obvious assets.
The pyramid rose up in monolithic proportions as the chopper drew nearer. Remy managed a grin as he considered just how risky this whole play was. The chopper came to a buzzing stop and with Shaw operating the winch Remy started his descent down to the dunes.
Dangling in midair is never a good place to be and the biting cold of the desert at night smacked Remy in the face like a slap. He always forgot that deserts grew cold when the sun went down. He started counting seconds in his head, one-onethousand, two-onethousand, three-onethousand, until he was near enough to the ground to disconnect the harness and control his fall the rest of the way to the hard ground below.
He landed on reflex not on a mountain of shifting sand but instead onto hard, parched and cracked earth about fifty yards from the foot of the pyramid. He straightened up and gave the thumbs up signal to Shaw who waited in the chopper by the open hatch. The former Black King of the New York Hellfire Club was already winding in the winch.
Remy waited until Shaw returned the gesture, which just seemed weird from Mr-Capitalist-Mutant Supremo then he sprinted off across the hard, parched earth towards the Akkaba pyramid. There were some equally ancient flat little buildings, the size of porta-potties, made of massive chunks of stone, fronting the pyramid. Remy shifted into the deep slanting shadows cast by these little huts and pulled out Sek's blue print map of the interior of the pyramid.
He flicked his gaze over the schematics. According to Sek these porta-potty things actually housed tunnels slanting downwards and deep under the ground, coming up inside the pyramid; these were his ticket inside. He rooted in another pocket of his working clothes and retrieved his pack of gum. The fresh bite of spearmint exploded across his tongue as he chewed. He still wanted a cigarette. He was bored, tired and kind of cranky.
Pushing off the ancient stonework he had started leaning against he paced like a rangy cat around the periphery of the pyramid, mindful to keep to the shadows and remain vigilant. Unless something had gone badly wrong company would be calling real soon.
Time to kill and nothing else to do Remy gave himself an impromptu tour of the outside of the pyramid.
There were inscriptions carved into the stone at the base of the pyramid; hieroglyphs of some sort. Remy couldn't read them but he whipped out a tiny digital camera from yet another pocket in his form fitting outfit and snapped some pics; Sek would enjoy them and maybe they'd even be useful.
Fifteen minutes later and Remy was still bored, tired and cranky but now he was also cold. He was on his second stick of gum and had begun fantasising about lighting up a smoke and calling Shaw to pick him up. Shit happened; maybe his intel was wrong, maybe le petit Summers and his faithful mercenary Girl-Friday weren't coming after all.
He wanted to go home – or, at least to the place he'd been living for the last year. Home being a concept Remy had accepted was beyond his grasp. Why try to hold on to something unattainable? It just made him miserable and he was sick of misery. He didn't need a home, or a family, or any of that baggage anyhow. He was much happier like this. He didn't even really miss........didn't miss......the thought refused to form and Remy gave up on it. He shoved down the vague sense of restless unease that tried to rise up inside him. He was just suffering heist jitters and nicotine withdrawal, that was all.
Perching on a smooth slab of millennia old slave-hewn stone left in a jumble like old teeth in the desert, Remy fanned out a brace of cards. Give it an hour and then he'd call it quits. Shaw would just have to come up with a new plan. Remy wasn't spending any more time and effort on this pinch then he absolutely had too. It wasn't like he needed the money all that badly. He was just in this to pass the time.
*****
Remy didn't know what it was exactly that made the hairs at the nape of his neck rise up on end some indeterminate time later but suddenly he knew, every muscle in his body tensing, that it was show time; company had come a-calling.
He smiled, 'Fin'ly.'
Some kind of high-tech futuristic portal thing opened up with a flash, bang, and poof of cut-rate Hollywood pyrotechnics in the open space before the ancient porta-potty tunnel entrance to the right – about thirty feet from where Remy slunk away to merge with the deeper shadows of the desert. He crouched behind the fall of old stone and waited.
Two people emerged from the glowing portal seconds after. One was a woman, tall, with chin length dark hair and very pale skin. She wore the skin tight, form fitting wrinkle proof ensemble that all the spandex set liked, but accessorised nicely with some infeasibly huge assault rifles. Remy's lips curved up in a crescent moon of amusement as he watched the woman, who had a big black circular mark over one eye, scan the empty night with a frown.
Bon Nuit madame Domino, he whispered silently.
The second person to step out from the portal was a man built like a Brinks armoured truck and carrying more armaments than the average Texan Nuclear Family. His scarred left eye flashed gold light as he scowled into all corners, and the moonlight reflected dully off his biometallic arm. Remy bit his lip on a broad grin; ah oui the man's face was a picture.
Bon Nuit Cable; you looking like an ulcer waiting to happen, as ever.
The faint flicker of Cable's psi-probe brushed against Remy's brain as he crouched watching the two mutant mercenaries. He frowned as that faint touch scraped like a nail file over exposed nerve against his mind. He knew his shields and the psi-dampener embedded into his suit would protect him from a mild scan like this, but he still didn't like it. Two years, give or take, since Almogordo and any kind of psi-touch still hurt like rusty nails poking into his over-sensitive grey matter. Sometimes this worried Remy, but like most things not strictly to his benefit, he had become adept at ignoring the niggling concerns.
'We clear?' Domino's voice was as rough and strangely masculine as he had imagined it would be. Strangely she sort of reminded Remy of Arclight.
After a long moment Cable nodded once, just a jerk of his chin. His jaw was so tight it looked like rock. The homme must pay out a king's ransom in orthodontic bills. Remy smirked; this could be fun……so much fun. Remy enjoyed fun, in fact he dedicated most of his life these days to the pursuit of instant gratification. He liked things that way, it was better than how it had been in that time before Almogordo which he sometimes had trouble accurately recalling. Remy frowned and once again that strange sense of lingering alarm slipped away into the bruised recesses of his mind.
'Can we bodyslide in?' Domino asked Cable and Remy tensed. If the two 'ported straight into pyramid central it would make Remy's job harder – not impossible – but the effort versus reward ratio would shift dramatically out of his favour. Mon dieu, he might actually have to work for his paycheck.
'No, if this pyramid is host to Ozymandias there will be securities. We bodyslide in and we're going in blind.' Cable growled. Remy smiled once more; the effort/reward ratio shifted once more in his favour. That's right mes braves, he thought, do the hard work for me.
Domino sighed. 'Tunnels it is then.'
She unholstered one of her enormous guns and levelled the plasma rifle at the very solid stone of one of the porta-potty bunkers. Twenty seconds later there was a lot of stone dust in the air and the scent of burnt ozone rose up from the huge hole in the shattered stone.
Cable growled under his breath, 'That was flonquing stupid.'
Domino shrugged, 'I was cold, and screw it, we both know that the shit is going to go fan-side whatever we do so why piss about?'
Remy, still hidden behind the large pile of rubble grinned even more broadly. Oui, this was already fun. Remy was a man who always appreciated a woman of refinement, poise, and class and Domino was a real piece of work. She was wasted on a homme like Summers Jnr. Cable was still chewing her out, as it happened, as they both vanished down into the tunnel. Clearly all the Summers clan lacked the spontaneity and humour gene.
Remy darted out from his hiding place as soon as he was sure Cable was out of sensing range. He sprinted over to the opposite tunnel entrance and fished out a Joker card from his usual deck. He eased the card into a crack in the stone work. He held on to it between thumb and forefinger for half a second and then let go, taking a dozen or more steps back.
This explosion was much quieter and better finessed than the huge hole Domino had blasted out of a relic of antiquity. In fact most of the tunnel entrance was still intact when Remy's little card trick had played out. He paused for a moment, listening in case Cable or Domino were still close enough to hear the muted blast, then he started his own descent.
Underground tunnels all smell the same – just like old gym socks stuffed into the back of a metal locker; musty, sweaty, and sort of dry all at the same time. The darkness and the stink didn't much bother Remy however. He didn't need much light to see even in dark this intense and the scent was to him, experienced tomb raider that he was, the scent of money.
He padded through the darkness, flicking the switch on the tracking unit combined with the earpiece already riding in his inner ear. There was a tinnitus causing burst of static that almost made him lose his balance and trip and then Shaw's smooth voice filled his ear.
'LeBeau what's your status?'
Remy stopped and pulled out the Shaw Industries scanner from one of his many, many pockets. He flipped it on and shook the thing as the screen burst into bouncy blurs of green static.
'I'm just bon,' Remy murmured on the softest of breaths, 'But homme, got to tell you, your toys suck.'
He flicked his fingers against the scanning device until finally the screen cleared giving him a green line contoured map of his immediate vicinity. He noted also the two red dotes moving parallel to him along the other tunnel.
'Cable?' Shaw demanded ignoring the dig about his merchandise.
Remy peered at the malfunctioning tracking device. 'Don't t'ink de receptions good enough in here.'
There was a very long silence that followed this comment. Remy imagined the perfectly blank mask Shaw would be wearing as he tried to rise above Remy's level of cheerfully juvenile behaviour. There was a vaguely sibilant sigh over the faint crackle of static popping in Remy's right ear as the Black King took the high ground.
'I find I am forced to remind myself that despite my very great desire to the contrary, keeping you alive is to my profit. It would be in your best interest not to push me, LeBeau, or I might change my mind.'
'Mebbe, homme, but folks, dey tell me I be somet'ing of a masochist at heart, non? So mebbe you be better rememberin' dat I'm your only chance o' gettin' your throne back in New York, eh? Think mebbe den you might learn to lighten up, oui?'
It was petty and it didn't speak well for his basic maturity, but mon dieu, Remy sure got a kick out of yanking Shaw's chain. It reminded him of screwing with Cyclops, if Cyclops had been a billionaire industrialist mutant capitalist slave to the holy dollar sign that is. Eh, maybe Shaw wasn't that much like Cyclops after all. Remy frowned; it was strange that he should think about the X-Men leader now. He almost never thought about any of Xavier's disciples since Almogordo. It was better that way. Better because......because......
'Report in when you've breached the first guardian trap.' Shaw said distracting Remy from the thought he was having trouble holding onto. The homme did not sound amused. Strangely Remy wasn't feeling so lighthearted now either; funny that.
'D'accord,' Remy flipped the communication channel off.
For the next twenty minutes he prowled through unrelenting darkness, moving light as a cat over a solid overlay of millennia old dust and ancient, crumbling bones. He kept an eye on the tracking unit so he knew where Domino and Cable were. He beat the two hard case mutant mercenaries to the crossroads where the two tunnels combined by a good four minutes. He shook his head ruefully. Must be old age catching up with Cable. Then again Cable should have known better; never get a self-professed mutant messianic figurehead to do the work of a thief. Cable wouldn't last a day in the Guilds.
Before Remy lay only one path; a great yawning chasm of darkness so absolute even his eyes couldn't see beyond it. Remy shivered pleasurably; he had that ants over the skin feeling of being watched and he knew, just knew, that there was something nasty waiting in the darkness for him to make that last step into certain doom.
Merci Dieu he loved this stuff.
'Yoo-hoo,' Remy breathed under his breath, pulling a card from his deck and holding it lightly from between his fingers. He let a faint shimmer of charge run through the single card for a split second and then flipped it expertly into the waiting darkness beyond.
As the card seared through the air a few feet into the tunnel Remy thought he saw something hunkering down in the centre of the path about ten feet away. Something inhuman in shape, large as a small bear, but with front haunches that reminded him of a wolf on steroids.
There was a flash of sickly green light, like the dull gleam of predatory eye-shine before the card's charge winked out and the single card fell harmlessly to the floor of the tunnel, lost instantly to the darkness.
'And lo and betide, you who trespass against the Might of the One King in His slumber and face instead the wrath of the Guardian Beasts that preserve His sleep.' Remy quoted under his breath from memory the warning line Sek had translated for him. It looked like he'd caught a glimpse of one "beast" at least.
Tensed on the balls of his feet, ready to leap either way if it came to it, Remy waited to see if Apocalypse's pet pooch decided to come out and play. Monsieur chien obviously had more intelligence than the average weird and unnatural tomb fiend and stayed put.
'D'accord, I'm all out o' Scooby Snacks anyhow.'
Summoning up the mental picture he had memorised from Sek's map, Remy found the hidden hatch in the wall space just before the passageway narrowed into one path, swiftly enough. Contorting his body to fit was not fun but he soon had the right vertebrae slipping rhythm going as he inched upwards along the tight wall-crawl space.
He counted down in his head the seconds before all hell broke loose. Should be any minute now; Cable and Domino hadn't been that far behind him, after all.
'Jesus!'
He heard what sounded like the snarling of wild dogs combined with something almost…….mechanical, or otherwise unnatural. Obviously monsieur Cable hadn't bothered to read the instruction warning before he played tomb raider. Remy continued to inch upwards through the walls as the air-slicing sounds of laser-fire tore up the passageway below him. Next came the curses as Domino and Cable came face to face with the first of the pyramid's booby-traps.
Remy grinned, swiping sweat from his brow as he paused, wedged with his back against one sloping wall and his feet braced against the other. Mais oui, monsieur Cable might be the Askani chosen one but he didn't know jack about breaking and entering. Any rube knew that ancient pyramids that used to be the resting place of millennia old immortal mutant tyrants were going to come with traps, pitfalls, and surprisingly lively sentient statues. It was practically cliché.
*****
Ten minutes later, when the explosions and weapons fire blasts had long faded, Remy oozed out of the secret crawl space passage into a large chamber actually lit with flaming wall sconces. Picking himself up Remy took time out to dust himself off and check out the scenery.
The chamber was daubed with the remnants of past grandeur; magnificent friezes and whole walls of perfectly preserved hieroglyphs were the order of the day. The chamber was some thirty feet long and filled with the sort of shiny, glittery, things that made a career thief weak at the knees. There were also dozens and dozens of stone hewn statues filling every available space. The chip, chip, clink sound of someone hammering away at stone ran as a counterpoint rhythm to the otherwise complete silence.
I know why you are here.
One of the statues was moving. This particular statue had the appearance of a skinny man in a loin cloth and the headdress favoured by the ancient pharaohs. His body was a patchwork of cracked and crumbling stone, brown as dust. The statue held a chisel in one hand and a small mallet in the other. His eyes glowed red as his carven head turned on his scrawny neck with a sound not unlike two large stones grinding together.
'Is dat right?' Remy examined the statue-man curiously, 'You be Ozymandias, oui?'
I am and ever shall be he.
Remy nodded rocking back to the heels of his feet and then onto the balls, 'D'accord, dat's nice.'
He looked over at the statue the man-thing had been working on. Remy frowned and stepped forward. 'Hey homme, my nose don't be dat crooked.'
He examined the sculpting of his form with a critical eye coming to stand beside Ozymandias. The likeness was a good one, right down to the haircut. Remy didn't think he'd ever been sculpted before. Still this was not a good thing. He didn't want anyone knowing he'd been here and a six feet tall slab of solid stone with his face was a pretty big clue that everyone's favourite Cajun thief had been a-visiting.
'So, mon ami, dere a reason you do dis,' he waved a hand to incorporate all the statues surrounding them, 'all de live-long day?'
I am Ozymandias cursed by En Sabah Nur to ever record his might and greatness. I am the blind witness for all eternity.
Remy flicked his eyes over the statue. 'Right,' He rocked back on his heels again and fanned out a brace of cards, 'So long as dere a reason.' He glanced from the cards in his hands to the cards in the hands of his rock hewn counterpart.
He quirked his brows in surprised, finding that he was grudgingly impressed, 'Look at dat, mon ami; you even picked de right cards.'
I am Ozymandias I have no choice but to see as only the blind can see.
Remy ignored that particular bit of cryptic crap and instead paced around the chamber.
'Those who challenge the God-King shall know the depths of despair and languish upon the teeth of failure's rage,' he murmured to himself.
More than likely Cable and Domino were dealing with the reality behind that cryptic clue right this second; a reality that involved a potential thirty foot drop down to a spike-lined pit. By his reckoning he had about five minutes to get his business done here.
Something gold and shiny caught his eye and Remy ambled over to a pile of riches left abandoned in a corner of the chamber.
'Eh, what's dis den?'
He fingered a long chain of burnished hammered plate gold. The torque was heavy as only real gold could be. He ran it through his hands meditatively. He flexed the links and brushed his thumbs over the cool metal. Dollar signs and exchange rates danced through his mind. He shrugged off the pack from his back and tucked the chain away within in a hot second. Shaw wouldn't care if he helped himself to some spoils.
'You mind if'n I help myself, homme?' He asked Ozymandias over his shoulder as he eyed up a couple of big ass gold rings scattered on the floor like trash. He snatched them up and pocketed them.
Ozymandias continued to chip away at the statue. All in all, Remy decided as he continued his pilfering, it did not seem like much of an existence, spending eternity as a statue carving more statues. Oui, that didn't seem like any way to have fun.
I cannot stop you. Ozymandias replied.
'C'est Vrai,' Remy conceded honestly pulling the cards he had selected from the pack earlier from his sleeve. 'You can't.'
He twisted in his crouch as he pivoted and rose in one fluid, rapid, movement. His right arm swung out in a smooth arc as he loosed three cards straight at the statue-homme's back. Ozymandias did not stop chiselling even as the three brightly glowing cards whistled through the air and hit him dead centre in his back.
'Not'ing personal mon ami; dis is just business.'
Chips of stone exploded outward in a blistering, skin shredding spray as the cards hit. Remy dropped to the ground so his forehead brushed the stone floor and threw his arms over his head protectively. Pieces of debris rained down on him, pelting him like biting pellets and some even managed to cut through his uniform. He felt the hot trails of blood well up from the cuts.
Once the dust had settled Remy bounced to his feet, the rest of his hand of cards splayed between his fingers ready to be thrown just in case Ozymandias had more juice in him than seemed likely.
Clouds of choking dust hung in the air and clogged the back of Remy's throat as he waited tense and alert. Ozymandias' carved head lay on the ground a few feet from Remy's feet, red eyes still glowing. The body of the statue was in three or four large pieces across the room. The sculpture he had been working on, the copy of Remy himself, had been caught in the blast as well, precisely as Remy had intended.
He clucked his tongue. 'Ah oui, sometimes dere such a t'ing as too much o' a good t'ing. De world just ain't ready for dat much perfection.' He told the pieces of the Remy statue.
Stepping over the bits of Ozymandias carefully he moved closer and examined the broken masonry. Perfection was hard to destroy apparently because some of the chunks still bore the familiar mark of his face.
He crouched down and placed his hands over the largest lumps, letting his charge flow out into the stone through the thin fabric of his leather gloves. Stepping back swiftly he scooped up the head of Ozymandias and retreated to his waiting pack as the slow released bio-kinetic charge he had loosed through his hands ate away at the stone until nothing was left.
'Je suis desole, Monsieur,' he murmured to Ozymandias' head as he eased the lump of rock into his pack, 'Promise we find you a nice velvet pillow or somet'ing to sit on when we back in civilisation.'
Shouldering the now much heavier pack Remy pulled out Sek's map at the same time that he flipped on the communication unit.
'LeBeau status report?' Shaw did not sound any happier now than he had before and Remy belatedly remembered that he had said he would contact Shaw after the crossroads junction in the tunnels – which he hadn't done; oooops.
'We good to go, m'sieur,' Remy pulled out the tracking unit and noted that Cable was on his way. 'Gon set up our surprise for monsieur Cable an' den bail.'
'You have the item?' Remy rolled his eyes. He didn't know why Shaw was being deliberately vague; maybe it was some kind of bad guy code? Or maybe Shaw was just used to hiding behind deniability and believable liability clauses in his nine-to-five living. Perhaps after a while a homme just stopped being able to admit to anything when a body lived like that? Remy, who didn't give a damn about liability or deniability (or much of anything at all) anymore, chuckled lazily.
'Oui de head is in de bag.'
'Good, the chopper will be waiting for you at the designated rendezvous site in T-minus forty-five minutes.'
'Homme we ain't in an episode o' 24.' Remy rolled his eyes. 'What's de matter, you livin' out a G.I. Joe fantasy or somet'ing?'
'Shut up, LeBeau.'
Shaw cut the communication feed. Remy chuckled into the dust filled silence and then got to work. He pulled out another brace of cards. This part was going to take some concentration. He had to get the timing just right for monsieur Cable's warm welcome.
*****
Fifty eight minutes later, back in the chopper, Remy was once again fantasising about cigarettes when the pyramid of Akkaba blew its stack, sparking like a fuchsia neon top. Remy's lips quivered as he watched a millennia of ancient stone and world heritage flare up and paint the sky pink before spewing a mountain of rubble in all directions.
'How'd you like dem apples, Cable?'
Remy settled back in for the long flight back to civilisation and an equally long haul plane ride to the place where he now hung his metaphorical hat. Now that the fun was over he was back to being bone tired again.
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep offering up a silent prayer to the God he hated and the Saints he suspected had no time for him anyhow, that this night, if only this night, he could sleep without dreaming.
I am the blind witness for all eternity that was what Ozymandias had called himself, but he was wrong; he wasn't the Witness. There was only one Witness. There could only ever be one Witness. Remy squeezed his eyes more tightly shut, once more gritting his teeth against the whirring shudder of the chopper's flight.
Sleep was a long time in coming for Remy LeBeau and in his dreams, those hated dreams that never left him a moment's peace, he saw the face of his nightmares laughing at him. Time was running out; fate, tide and time wait for no man. The Apocalypse was nigh and deep down inside Remy knew he had only one chance, one choice, to make. He had to raise the Devil. It was time to bring M'sieur Essex back.
******
From the diaries of the late Irene Adler:
And twelve shall rise only to fall; one man's dream and one man's salvation twinned in failure's ashes. A black King moves to claim that which he has lost and more beside as one Old King seeks to rise from oblivion within a cage of corrupted flesh. The blind shall lead and the fires burn; the future is known only to be feared. The dream a millstone upon the necks of those that once dared to hope. The untouchable in mortal peril and the vanguard of a new tomorrow hunted from the shadow; a reckoning and a resurrection born of darkness most foul shall usher in a new beginning to an old dance. All this I have seen, a fate written in tears; there shall be many to see but only one may live to Witness. The lord of lies and laughter, watch as he dances.
All this I have seen; from desert sands to caves of ice. I have seen the future and now my eyes are blind and my tears to dust do turn. Let these words be warning. I am Destiny and all this I have seen.
Twelve shall rise but many more shall fall. The devil dances and the Apocalypse cometh.