Author's note: Gambit's feelings about being dragged back from death's door and about the loss of his powers seemed a bit ambiguous in X-Treme X-Men 19, so I thought I'd have a go at working them out. It's my first fanfic (though not my first fiction...) so be gentle with me!
(Cheers to Becki for listening to me and helping me organise my thoughts!)
Redefinition
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One by one, Remy LeBeau sends the cards effortlessly tumbling end-over-end through the air to land with tiny splashes in the pool. Anyone passing through the garden would believe that he is merely marking time, waiting for something, or someone.
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For all his recent traumas, he's never been better at hiding his feelings. Behind the impassive mask he wears, a voice is growing louder and louder, more and more panicky. It should be so easy, simply to make the cards glow with pent-up energy, then explode in a blaze of fuchsia fire. It's his trademark, his signature move, it's what makes him him.
So why can't he do it any more?
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It hadn't occurred to him to test his powers before. He's been too busy recovering from having been stabbed straight through. Beast's done wonders, there's barely a scar there now, but there's an emptiness, a definite sense of something missing. He's only just noticed it, but now he thinks about it, it's been there since he woke up in that field hospital, Rogue holding his hand.
He's had his powers deactivated before, but they've always been there. Temporarily locked down and inaccessible, perhaps, but there. Never this total absence. His battened-down empathy, too, has totally disappeared. Experimentally, he lowers his barriers, waits for the flood of feelings from his teammates. Nothing. There is a lot of strong emotion in the air tonight; it's been a pretty intense evening. And he can't feel a thing. Scared and unnerved, and feeling terribly exposed, he slams the shields back into place. If his empathy is gone, it's a pretty good bet the psychic static that makes him all but impossible to read has disappeared too. The last thing he needs right now is Jean picking up on his distress. At least his self-taught shielding is still intact.
He's suddenly scared to push any further, to find out the true extent of the damage. For the first time in his life, Remy LeBeau is unwilling to look into the unknown, afraid of what he might find.
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He's not the only one to have lost his powers so suddenly. Recent events have left Rogue, too, bereft of her ability to absorb people's life-force through her skin. Her manifestations of the powers of others she has absorbed, which had been becoming dangerously out of control, have also abruptly disappeared.
If Rogue is having trouble with her new self, she's hiding it well. She's dealing with her fear of touch the only way she knows how, by jumping in with both feet and getting on with it. He should be following her example, recreating his life, instead of hiding his loss away from his friends. And of course he's waited longer than he can remember to be able to touch her without fear. It should be a dream come true, finally to hold her in his arms without at least one layer of clothing between them. But it's her fault that he's here, devoid of most of his defining features, and he's not sure he's ready to forgive her for that.
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His thoughts are shattered by the deep, rumbling bass of Hank McCoy, commenting on the splendour of Rogue's garden, asking Remy how he feels. Remy sidesteps the question, pointing out that his scar has almost vanished, and complimenting the Beast on the quality of his work. Hank unwittingly hits the nail on the head, pointing out that looking healed and being healed are two different things, as without warning he launches his considerable bulk at his startled teammate. Remy's well-honed reflexes kick in, and he pivots away, vaults over Beast's back to land in battle stance in front of him, three cards held ready in front of his face, taunting the Beast all the way.
"You call dat fast, Beast? I know old men you couldn't catch wit moves like dat."
Hank backs up, making conciliatory gestures and admitting that he was only testing Remy's reflexes, not looking to wreck the place. His teammate's alarm at the sight of the playing cards should surely encourage Remy, but it has the opposite effect, reminding him just how much of a sham his battle stance really is without his powers. Just a bluff and a reputation, empty of any real threat. He wonders what place a pair of ex-mutants can hold in Jean's idealistic vision of the future.
Remy flicks his hand over, and the cards are no longer held between his fingers. It's a sleight of hand he's practiced many times before, and the familiarity helps to calm his thoughts. The Beast's test was the last thing he'd expected.
Except that it wasn't. The last thing Remy had expected was to be swept into a bearhug by a jubilant Beast, whose professional interest and friendly concern have been fully convinced by Remy's performance that the mutant known as Gambit is fully recovered; as good as he ever was. Remy, crushed to the Beast's powerful chest, can't bring himself to tell him the truth, that he isn't even close. He finally allows himself to wonder if he ever will be 'as good as he was'. The X-Men are renowned for recovering from seemingly overwhelming odds; Hank himself described it at the dinner table as "a Magneto moment - the more certain the death, the more certain the guaranteed resurrection". But what about Betsy? What about Peter, and all the others who have fallen and not gotten up again? As far as Remy knows, there has never yet been a case of a mutant losing all his powers, so he has no odds on which to base his chances of recovery. Maybe his infamous luck has finally run out.
Hank eventually puts him down, saying something about returning to the table for some more cake, and not seeming surprised when Remy declines to accompany him. Remy is, after all, known for brooding at regular intervals. Hank's probably only surprised he isn't on the roof. Still, the roof's already occupied, if Neal and Heather are still up there. Remy wonders idly whether anything is going on between those two. Neal's seemed very protective towards Heather since they returned from Madripoor without her brother. Maybe he's found someone to take Betsy's place in his heart. Remy rather hopes so. Someone might as well manage to make a relationship out of this mess. It should have been him and Rogue, but Remy still can't make up his mind about that one. It's funny, if someone had told him at Christmas that a few months down the line all the obstacles to their relationship would be removed, he'd have been making plans the whole time. Except, of course, that a whole new set of obstacles has been placed in their way.
It's not just the loss of his powers that is bothering Remy. He had come close - very, very close - to dying of his injuries in Madripoor, and for the first and only time in his life he had felt truly ready to go. The powers that be were ready to accept him, his part in saving the world outweighing his past crimes, allowing him the state of grace he had been trying for so long to achieve. And Rogue dragged him back, refused to let him go no matter how much he tried to persuade her that it was his time, that he *wanted* to go. He supposes that by saving him she has finally atoned for leaving him to die in Antarctica, but in so doing she has given him something else to forgive her for. And he's still not sure he's ready or even able to do that.
The cards come back out, appearing in his hand as if by magic even without an audience. Again the familiarity of the years-old, self-taught sleight of hand is a small comfort. He begins to flip cards again, battling with himself. A part of him so wants to forgive Rogue, to love her as she deserves and to try to be the kind of man who deserves her. But he can't forget that brief vision of the Better Place, the whatever comes after, and how utterly he wanted to give himself to it. It was pure and beautiful and it felt like home, in a way that no other place ever had. It had hurt worse than Vargas' sword through his heart when she had finally managed to drag him away.
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The repetitive action of flipping the cards gradually lulls him into an almost peaceful state. He must have gotten through at least a pack and a half since he slipped away from the party. He doesn't care, isn't even bothered that they're getting waterlogged floating in the pool. It's not like he's got much use for them now, other than the odd hand of poker.
He's almost managed to quieten his thoughts when a hand catches his wrist mid-throw, and although he knows the touch, the determined grip, for a moment he does not recognise the hand, the bare wrist, without their habitual covering. Her soft Southern voice caresses his ears, bringing him back to himself, asking him if he's been tossing cards all evening.
He takes the first step towards whatever future he has left, admitting to her that his powers are gone. She tries to console him, cradles his head between her hands and tells him she knows how he feels, how different it is to be able to touch people, without gloves, without fear. She's missed the point, but he doesn't quite have the heart to explain.
"Your own fault, chere," he says instead. "You chose t'be de hero."
"With your life at stake, that's no choice at all," she says, and despite his uncertainty a tiny flare of warmth ignites inside him at the strength of her love for him.
She's tentatively trying to rebuild the bridges between them, suggesting that the loss of what makes them mutants could be a chance for a fresh start for them both, but it just doesn't sound right to him. "Can't change nature," he says. It wasn't their mutant powers that made them such a dysfunctional couple. The loss of those powers isn't going to turn them into the perfect pair overnight.
She takes the cards from him, sensing that he's about to transfer his attention from her back to his brooding. "We're alive," she says. "That makes us masters of our own destiny. Unless...this was all just a game. So long as I couldn't be touched, there was no risk. No real commitment."
He thinks it over. Perhaps she's right. Perhaps her powers did contribute to their on-again-off-again relationship. He's beginning to remember how much he loves her, to find his true feelings among the chaos in his heart. He's not sure it's something he wants to face up to right now, so he takes the easy way out, ducks the issue and asks her to dance. "Be a shame t'waste the moment," he says, flashing her his famous smile.
He stands, but she doesn't go to him straight away. She's about to open her heart out to him, really open it, with the biggest admission of her life so far, and she needs to do it with a clear head. Her head's been anything but clear these last few days, dizzy with the beautiful novelty of being able to touch him without fear of her powers swallowing him whole, or the knowledge that they could return to her at any time. So she hangs back, doesn't look directly at him, fixes her gaze on the floor.
"We've had our moments, Remy. They're not enough, they've made me greedy. Ah want a lifetime."
He's silent a moment, and she goes to him, her heart hammering. He takes her in his arms, they begin to dance, and just when she thinks he's not going to answer her at all, she's laid herself bare for nothing, he says, "Okay."
"Okay?" She can't quite believe it. She knows what he's been going through, more than she's let on. She's aware she needs a very big second chance. Or was that third chance? Or fourth? She's lost count.
"No promises. Not yet, anyway. We take t'ings day by day, we see where it leads, fair?"
Day by day, to work out where they now stand. To come to terms with their altered circumstances, and with each other. To redefine themselves, to discover what a true relationship can be. No promises, no, not yet. But eventually?
"It's a start," she says, her heart singing. The cards slip from her grasp as she reaches up and kisses him, ever so softly.
The confusion in his heart and his mind seems to ebb away, drained from him by her kiss, and he thinks that he's made the right decision. If he's got a lifetime left after all, could he really bear to live it without her? It feels right, but only time will truly tell.
Later, as they turn to leave the garden, he looks back at the pool, the scattering of cards around it, and notes with a small smile the pair floating face-up in the centre of the water. The Jack and Queen of Hearts, gazing up at the stars. Maybe it's time to start believing in signs.