Disclaimer: I'm definitely not making any profit out of this. The main character isn't even mine. Remy LeBeau, aka Gambit belongs to Marvel. So does Rogue, mentioned briefly.
Italics dialogue is in French. 'Just' is a French name by the way.
The Old Toy
You finished the puzzle for me in the end didn't you? You ragged old thing. Strange. Always thought Rogue was the one who talked to teddies.
You were the one who revealed the long hidden truth to me eventually, you with your button eye hanging off. I didn't want to believe it.
I remember now Ted. Thanks to you.
The whole nightmare began a week ago. Got a call from my friends the Mafia that some mass murderer was on the loose – the kind that'd take candy from a baby if it made them feel powerful.
Anyway, I caught wind of what this guy was up to and didn't like what I heard at all. He had money, he had power and he had plans with devastating outcomes for everyone – most of all mutants. It's not that he didn't like us freaks, he just saw us as a minority waiting to be exploited in any hideous manner. What was shocking was the amount of power he had over society's underbelly, my world – the raw fabric upon which this world is built. Not many can earn the respect of people so close to the truth of humanity – I know for I am one who has. It seems he earned their fear, marauder and snout alike. Well it isn't the 'why' that's important now… It's what happened after I found him.
I was staring down the barrel of a gun at this animal – nothing could stop me from ridding my people of him – when he looked deep into my eyes.
"Just?" The question was murmured fainter than a whisper but with ten times the impact. Damn. How did he know my name? He must have had more of an influence in the underworld than I thought… no, no one knew my name for I barely remembered it myself. How did he recognize me?
"How…?" I trailed off, the question left hanging in mid-air.
"Just LeBlanc?" he repeated and expanded upon my name.
"Wha…?" this was a new one on me.
"It is you," he was a little cocky for a man with a gun to his head. Probably planning on talking his way out. I remember thinking that's what I'd do if I had a gun to my head. I now despise that comparison.
Then it clicked. No one knew my birth name. Not even the Thieves Guild. I grabbed him roughly by his bound wrists.
"Come on."
I drove wildly along the dark, narrow streets of Oslo until we reached the stereotypical warehouse of which gangsters favour. I tied him up – just for good practise – and asked, just to be sure, "How do you know my name?"
"You don't recognize your own father, my dear son?" I snorted in denial. Yet all the facts available could not be ignored. True, I did not remember my real parents, but they would remember me – how many people have red on black eyes? "Look in my pocket," he said. There was a photograph: him, me and my mother. You were in his pocket too weren't you, Ted? Because you belonged to my mama before me. It was you that brought it all back: the father beating 'the devil' out of his three-year-old son; the husband beating his beautiful young wife for no other reason than he could and had the inclination to do so.
I remember mama taking my hand and running, taking me out of our house, away from our home, away from my father. He caught up with her and grabbed her, but she screamed for me to keep going. Never saw her again.
"Where's my mother?" I asked him through gritted teeth.
"She was a nuisance and had to be delt with," hot tears ran down my cheeks, his answer so cold.
Nothing.
The new silencer on my gun did a good job didn't it Ted?
The job was done. The threat, eliminated. But now I remember…
LA
This must be about the most mature and serious fic' I've posted so I hope you enjoyed it. It was cool coming up with a fairly original scenario, one which involved the X-men and Rogue but didn't revolve around them, one which was unfamiliar to my mind. I have the entire structure of this alternate universe mapped out in my head so perhaps there will be more of Remy – Just – on the mean streets of Europe someday… What do you think?