Some time ago, I started branching out from my usual fandom and read Tarnished by, RogueMoon. I loved it and was a little heart-broken that it was left unfinished. However, I was inspired by it and the rest of RogueMoon's work that concentrated on Gambit's sense of identity and his frustrations with his parentage.
Some liberties have been taken with some of the continuity. I think most Marvel fans can understand why. It's my first time writing something that doesn't involve DMC. I hope I do the characters justice and that you enjoy. Thank you. Happy Father's Day!
Teddy Bear
Logan walked to the rec room with a six pack of beer in hand and the hockey finals on his mind. He briefly considered going to Harry's before thinking about how crowded the little dive was going to be. He was sure it was going to be packed with rowdy World Cup fans. The students were off on an overnight field trip with the staff and most of the older students acting as chaperones for the smaller ones. It would be one of the few times he'd have the mansion, let alone the big screen to himself. Life couldn't be sweeter right now.
He stopped just shy of the threshold, sensing another occupant in the room. His keen sense of smell picked up on the dull burning of anxiety, bitterness, heartache, and whiskey. Damn, he thought, should have came down a little earlier. He came mostly for the glory of the sixty-five inch 4k screen with more modes than he knew what to do with, and the surround sound, but figured he could stand to watch it elsewhere. He turned to leave whoever was in there to drown his sorrows, but curiosity got the better of him.
He entered and saw Gambit sprawled along the couch with a bottle of Jim Beam in one hand and an old, ratty teddy bear dangling by a paw in the other. His gaze was far away, despite being fixed on the TV screen. Logan could tell that he really wasn't seeing the hungry lioness tackle the gazelle in front of him. The younger man was a still as a statue. The only movements Logan caught were the slight rise and fall of the breath in his chest and his arm bringing the bottle to his lips for a swig.
Logan stood there torn, wondering if he should talk to man or find a TV in time to catch the faceoff, which by his count would be in less than five minutes. The beers were chilled with more ready in the refrigerator for intermission. There was some bad blood between the teams and feral in him wanted to fights they would start tonight. But, the damned Cajun just had to take a large gulp and down half the bottle in one go. And was that a sniffle just now? The man gave a sigh and the bear dropped into the shredded box parked below, splashing out some packing peanuts along the way. Logan hadn't noticed the package before.
"Didn't know ya were inta stuffed animals, Gumbo."
"M' not," Remy slurred. He gave a lazy grin that never quite reached his eyes and then took another swig.
"Slow down there. That's the last one."
Remy shook his head. "Non. Dat's da las' one." He pointed to empty bottle by his feet. "Got sum mo,' me. Come an' join da fun, mon amie." He motioned to the two other full bottles lying on the couch next to him.
Something was seriously wrong. His teammate usually only drank enough to get a good buzz going to celebrate. He was already hitting that third sheet in the wind. He thought Remy had given up the depressive binges a long time ago. If Gambit kept it up, Logan knew he'd have to drag him down to the med lab and have Hank pump his stomach.
Logan could only make guesses as to who or what left his fellow X-Man in this state. He'd been awfully attached to those kittens Mystique left him. Did something happen to them? Maybe Some side chick? Rogue again? A heist didn't go his way? No, the kid's a professional. Kid? Sure he over a century on him, but Gambit's a grown-ass man and pretty damn near pushing forty by now.
"T's no' abou' sum girl or Rouge, iffin' dat's what y' t'inkin'."
For someone who claimed to not be a Spook on more than one occasion, Gambit sure had a knack for knowing people's thoughts.
Logan nodded.
"Didn't know ya were in town," Logan made small talk, "Not with the way the Guild and X-Factor's been running ya around."
Logan was among the few who knew of his extra-curricular activities outside of the X-Men and sporadic teaching for the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning.
Remy waved a dismissive hand. "Gambit got sum time to hisself. Figure 'e stop by." Another swig. "Den Gambit see a package 'dressed to 'im. Almost didn' open it when 'e see where it come from."
Logan didn't see a return address but the postage was from England. He picked up the discarded bear. A tri-folded card with sealing wax and impeccable penmanship fluttered out of the box. The calligraphy-worthy cursive script read: To my son on the occasion of his birthday. The note was imprinted with a coat of arms.
"From de Milburys of London," Remy said.
Logan twisted a cap off one of his beers and settled into the opposite end of the couch, figuring he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. He took a sip and studied the bear.
The ragged thing was missing a marble eye. It carried an ancient mildewed musk and was dirty as if it had been buried until recently. The stuffing was hard as a rock in some places and loose and saggy in others. Logan figured by the mended threads that the stuffed animal had either lost its batting or it rotted away over the years. The bear must have been almost as old as him.
The name sounded familiar to Logan, but he couldn't quite place it. "Know 'em?"
Remy gave a sardonic grin. "Dr. Nathaniel Essex," he answered.
"Sinister," Logan affirmed. "Damn." He almost dropped the old toy at the revelation. He set it in his lap, downed his bottle, and opened a new one.
"Who's Adam," Logan asked. He ran his thumb over the name sewn into the paw.
"It's a long story dat I need t' be good and liquored up before I tell you." Remy's honeyed Cajun patois faded part way through the sentence. He finished the bourbon. He slid the bottle down by his feet, clanking against the other glass bottle.
"I think you've had enough fer now."
His eyes glowed like hot coals. "I will let you know when I am ready." This time it didn't even resemble a southern drawl. He cracked open a new bottle and promptly took a few gulps.
Remy eased back to catch his breath. "'My boy, please do speak the Queen's English, thank you very much. Always regard Adam with at least that much respect. Never speak that horrid Yat in my presence again'!" Now, his voice took on a regal British accent befitting of a BBC correspondent.
Logan felt it was a little disconcerting that he was learning more about the younger man in the passing moments than in the years they had know each other. Still, Logan met it all with a neutral face. He took in Remy's changing accents and the fact that he was revealing things that would have never been said had he been sober. The man clearly had a lot on his chest and he wasn't about to interrupt. The older man sent up a quiet prayer hoping that either Remy would find some peace or will have forgotten what he said by the time alcohol had dissipated from his system.
"Mon Père taught me how to fake any dialect when I took a job. E'ery t'ief's job ees t' be an acto'. Fulfill da role parfaitement. Don' let 'em know 'ow ed'cated yo' are. Let 'em t'ink you from da back waters, dat yo' ain't pass da t'ird grade. But he still let me be comfortable off hours. Did you know Sinny hated the way I spoke so much that he made me take elocution lessons for almost two years? He said he'd beat it out of me if he had to. I think I was the only Marauder that had been tutored between missions." Remy's accent thickened before finally settling on a boring Mid-Atlantic dialect, not quite American or British. He gave a mirthless chuckle.
Both took a drink. They glanced at the TV as the lioness signaled for her cubs to approach the carcass.
Finally, Remy spoke again.
"Sinny used to be a regular guy before he got tangled up with Apocalypse. Back then he was a pretty talented doctor. He had his wife, Rebecca and his son, Adam. Then one day the boy died. He was only about four-years-old. Sinister told me it was likely hemophilia and Spina bifida. The good doctor completely lost it when he couldn't save his son. He believed if science was just a little more advance there could have been treatments for Adam. He obsessed about applying Darwinian theories to disease and death. Poor Rebecca was ignored through it all. "
Remy paused again, deciding he wasn't drunk enough at the moment.
"Jeez, Rems, he told ya all this?"
He nodded. "Spent a lot of time in his labs. After Seattle. After the Tunnels. Hell, even when Hope was a baby. He keeps a lot of details in his journals. Guess no one should be surprised that he volunteers that much information. He talks a lot between his evil-villain monologues. You think that maybe he and Mags bought those speeches from the same burnt-out English Majors? Can you imagine it? He keeps a dozen college kids in his basement chained to Macs. Probably lured them all there with promises of beer, ramen, and paid student loans."
"Still better than most internships." Logan took a drink.
Remy chuckled and Logan sorted at the joke. A pause settled, allowing the tension to permeate the room again.
"Then the sick fuck dug up the kid to study the corpse." Several large gulps. Even Logan took a drink at that. "Poor Rebecca reburied her son and died of a broken heart. Essex ran to Apocalypse who granted him the longevity to further his research. He became Sinister."
Remy tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling and gave another joyless smile.
"But then again, you probably didn't need the history lesson. You're really here for the million dollar question: 'Who is Adam to me?' Simple enough. Guess you could call him my father, although Sinny always referred to him as my brother."
A lie? It had to be. There was no way that it could be true; no way Remy would speak such a betrayal after Logan went to bat for the newly appointed Thief King for so many years. But there was nothing, no sign that Wolverine could sense. No salty tang of sweaty anxiety in the air, no facial tics, or a change in heart rate. Just the patented Gambit poker face.
The feral in him hated the contradiction.
"Start talkin' sense, Gumbo." A growl rose in him. His deep blue eyes met Remy's fiery demon eyes. Wolverine was seconds from clearing the distance between the two and unsheathing his claws. "Either yer pullin' my leg or yer way older than ya look."
Remy laughed. Logan sniffed the bitterness in the act.
"Neither. Think about it Wolvie. The bear isn't brand new. Adam was born around 1897. I figure sometime before Father's Day. This wasn't the first time I've been sent little trinkets. First time was a little wooden train. I had to have been… maybe thirteen? I already passed the tilling and got contract for one of my first jobs. A Dr. Essex came calling one day. Said he was working on a project in Canada and found a better job, but his colleagues still had his research journals. He said he wanted me to steal them back. I didn't trust him. The guy was uh… off, but he paid good money. Papa and I agreed. Before I knew it, I was in a heavily guarded base with the notebooks in hand and a man with metal claws gutting everything man he came across. I managed to not get skewered and did one of the only sensible things since I met Sinister— I burned his diaries. I reported that something went down at the base and I couldn't get to his notes. He and Papa were a little disappointed. Papa offered to wave the fees, but Essex paid me in full anyways. A few months later I get the toy in the mail with Adam's name carved into the bottom."
"What'd ya do with it?" Logan finished off another bottle of beer and opened another.
"Almost trashed it. I ended up giving it away to some orphanage. Didn't know who sent it. There was never a return address, but it was postmarked from England. They kept coming around the same time every year afterward, somehow showing up every time I moved. I didn't think about it; didn't want to think about it. I didn't start putting two and two together until after he fixed my powers. He said, 'It's like seeing him again.' Later, when I was with the Marauders, he shared more stories about his dead son while commenting on my resemblance to him. After that, Dark Beast went ahead and filled in the details. He went on about how Sinister preserved DNA samples from Adam; how he wanted to make a living weapon to use against Apocalypse. Monsieur Bête said there were too many holes in Adam's DNA, too much degradation over the years. Sinister used himself and some kid from Alaska to fill in those holes. Then, Monsieur Bête told me I was his master's best work, how it was such a shame the Thieves stole me from his lab in that hospital."
"Ya don't mean—" Logan's face twisted into a look of disbelief, disgust, and concern all at once.
"I think I actually vomited when he told me."
Gambit took another drink and stared ahead.
"All this time, the best case scenario would have been that I was abandoned at birth because of my mutation." The disdain was heavy on his voice. "And there you have it; I am the son of— No. Can I even call myself that?"
The two men were silent for a moment still processing what had been said.
"Maybe lab rat is more appropriate," Remy spoke.
"Oh, Rems—"
"—Yes. A lab rat to an evil mad scientist, a dead kid, and ol' One Eye. It's so fucking crazy, but it makes sense. For a long time I thought Sinister was just yanking my chain, trying to get me all riled up. I hoped it wasn't true. Here's the kicker: I can't even say I fully blame him."
Gambit gave a shrug and took another sip. Logan arched a brow in confusion.
"Despite all of his evil-for-the-sake-of-being-evil bullshit, he was a grieving parent who wanted his son back. The way he went about it was fucked up, but it was the only way he knew how. I don't know why he chose to send his boy's things, though. I can't figure out if he's messing with me or if he insanely believes I somehow retained Adam's memories?"
"Don't tell me ya got sympathy fer the devil? That asshole manipulated ya into some of the darkest times of yer life."
"Or something like it. Still should have had better sense."
Logan took another drink, nursing his near-lukewarm beer. "Tsk. You'd blame disease and world hunger on yerself if it were possible."
"There's always tomorrow," Remy cracked a grin, "How 'bout a toast?"
They raised their bottles. Remy slipped back into his speech patterns like a comfortable pair of slippers.
"T' bein' ye' anot'er leaf to da convolu'ed Summers family tree and t' havin' daddy issues."
"Maybe it's a good thing I can't remember mine. At least you had Jean-Luc."
Remy nodded. "Yeah. He be one o' da best t'ings in dis t'ief's life." He gave the first genuine smile of the night.
They clanked bottles and drank. A comfortable silence settled again. Remy's metabolism worked to quickly to purge the alcohol from his system, effectively killing the buzz.
He held up his bottle with less than a shot, lamenting his waning feelings Jim Beam gave him. His deadened emotions began to return. And his memories didn't fade.
"Merde."
"Hmm?"
"Gambit didn' ge' hisself drunk enough. 'e still remembers. Mebbe it be a good t'ing. " The catharsis wasn't lost on him. At least he no longer felt like he would explode with the teddy bear in the same room. "An' mebbe someday I say t' Sinny I'm no' Adam an' stop bein' so fuckin' creepy, non?"
Logan snorted.
"'Ey. T'anks fo' listenin'."
Logan picked up the toy and scrunched his face at it.
"What're ya gonna do about the bear? It's seen better days."
"Dere's un petite in Heaven missin' 'is teddy. Got a job in Englan' nex' mont'. I'll give it back. Mebbe it put 'is soul t' rest, non?"
Logan nodded, pleased with the answer.
"But fo' now…" Remy tossed the remote to Logan. He changed the channel to the game. "Yo' t'ink mebbe da Kings win da Stanley Cup dis year?"
Remy laughed and left the room.
"Hey! Don't jinx it," Logan jokingly hollered after him.