Title: The Ante
Chapter 2: Shuffling
Fandom: X-Men: Evolution
Author: Kira Coffin
Summary: When Gambit left Rogue on the shores of Blood Moon Bayou, he slipped a playing card into her hand. More than a conciliatory gesture, it signaled the start of something that carried the understanding: Never bet more than you are willing to lose.
Rating: Teen/Mature
Pairing: Rogue/Remy

The Ante
Chapter II: Shuffling

...

"If a car leaves New York traveling at fifty miles per hour and the distance to Louisiana is thirteen hundred and fifty miles, assuming the driver takes no more than three pit stops per each eight hours of road time — and allocating a reasonable amount of time for rest each night — how long will it take to reach his destination?"

Rogue slumped a little lower in her seat, her elbow skidding across the desk where her sleeve refused to grip the pitted wood. She propped her head up in her hand, using her hair as a shield against the teacher's inquiry.

The problem, scrawled in white on black on the chalkboard, continued waiting for an answer.

Someone across the room raised his hand.

"Is the driver a mutant?"

Rogue closed her eyes, trying to tune out the accompanying snickers that followed the question.

"If the driver was a mutie, he probably wouldn't be using a car, dumbass!" someone hissed in response. "Some of those freaks can fly!"

Rogue's fingers flexed involuntarily, nails digging ruts into her scalp.

Louisiana.

Maybe she'd misheard, her ears playing tricks on her. There hadn't been time for a cup of coffee that morning, and the whole ordeal with Gambit's card left her nursing a number of ideas, none of which she wanted to contemplate for long.

"But if it's a mutant doing the traveling, then maybe there'd be velocity too — the coordinates would get all whacked, and you'd have to calculate the triangulation and —"

"Thank you Dennis. For simplicity's sake, let's assume the driver is normal."

With a sharp inhalation, she forced herself to let the teacher's comment slide. Mutant baiting was practically commonplace these days, but in a classroom? That was just plain poor taste.

Several heads swivelled in her direction as if anticipating a reaction. She shot a disparaging look at a blonde girl at the front of the class, who scowled back. With the tips of her ears growing hot from the attention, Rogue snapped her gaze to the large windows lining the far side of the room. Escape, they beckoned; freedom from this unending torture.

Once, not so long ago, Risty would have been waiting for her beyond those panes of glass; sitting cross-legged on a picnic table, waving invitation while Rogue scrambled to get a hall pass and make a break for it.

That was before the illusion broke down. The ghost of her imaginary best friend haunted the hallways of Bayville High even with Mystique long gone.

The deception brought with it the whisper of something else: not of Mystique, but...

Louisiana. A cigarette hanging off his smirk.

Rogue's cheek sagged against the bare knuckles of her exposed hand, now tucked close where no one would brush her accidentally. Her gloved fingers tapped a loosely held pencil against the tabletop, drumming an anxious staccato.

Everything else was a muted roar in the background; life carrying on around her.

It was probably a good thing that Kitty left the Institute without her that morning, she mused. If Katherine Pryde — the prodigy, the busybody, and Rogue's de-facto best friend — had known with absolute certainty that Rogue left without a glove? One ridiculous little article of clothing? The whole place would have probably been put on orange alert.

She liked Shadowcat, though admitting it out loud would probably result in a mall crawl and several hours of gossiping that Rogue could otherwise live without.

Still, the vengeful voice of Rogue's sense of self-preservation (which, incidentally, sounded a whole heck of a lot like Kitty) was currently berating her for taking off without the damnable thing anyhow. When it came to her skin and everything it represented, one simple article of clothing could mean a coma for someone else stupid enough to touch her, which meant a future career as a stripper was out of the question, but also, leaving the house without protecting absolutely everyone else around her from her became her absolute responsibility. Absolutely.

Rogue glanced at the clock, muffling a sound of contempt.

If Shadowcat's psyche had stuck around in the aftermath of Egypt last year, she'd probably be doing a number on her head too. Apocalypse saw to that, purging her of each and every spectre who once inhabited her mindspace.

Rogue's own conscience nagged in her own gravelly southern drawl: no glove meant high risk for contact. Even an X-Man who was slicker than owl shit and wearing twice as much eye-liner got rattled once in a while: She'd spent the better part of the morning with her hand crammed into a pocket, thinking about the stupid card in her top drawer.

The pencil snapped.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Rogue inhaled deeply, trying to centre herself. No sense getting worked up with forty five left on the clock. She was stuck as a duck in a dry pond. She folded the pieces of wood together.

This was better than winding up with another absence from trig, at least. Why trig was so important in the greater scheme of things… that left room for debate. Unless, of course, she was trying to measure the distance from where she sat to one particular former adversary who'd disappeared the year before into the swamps of Louisiana.

Obstinately, Rogue mentally declared that she was definitely not doing that.

She peered at the clock again, doleful.

Forty-three minutes, and twelve seconds until lunch. Eleven seconds. Ten seconds. Nine… Her eyelids drooped, and she hummed, slipping into the familiar, comfortable headspace that was conducive only to the illusion that you looked like you were still taking notes. In actuality, you were enjoying the refreshment of a light nap.

How long will it take to reach Louisiana?

The teacher droned on. There were more pressing things to deal with than the innermost workings of her mucked up brain, she decided; like how fast the grass grew or whether the group of kids ditching class behind the bleachers were about to get nailed by the school's custodian while doing his late morning rounds.

She made a half-hearted attempt to focus on the neatly trimmed grass of Bayville High proper outside; the bike racks lined haphazardly against the main walkway and the parking lot beyond. Just another day in this quaint suburban hell.

Rogue let her eyelids close, and the memories rose with absurd ease even though she'd done her best for the better part of a year to repress them:


The bayou smells nothing like any other body of water she's been near before. It's a thriving microcosm, heady and heavy-lidded with the perfume of wet cypress trees; their roots splayed and anchoring them into the silted bottoms of the swamp. Here and there, tiny white blossoms cling to the shadows, strangled by dry bits of lichen and tangled vines.

She brushes aside the sagging Spanish moss that catches in her hair. It's humid and dark, and the trees are tinged with the green-black ache of the water where the light catches the reflections cast from their meagre torchlight.

She doesn't need to see where they're going; the directions have been implanted into her mind alongside the flurry of Julien Boudreaux's memories. They make her temples throb, but she doesn't want him to know that.

Gambit is seated at the stern of the small skiff, gently guiding the rudder where she directs him, and Rogue keeps herself pointed stubbornly forwards at the prow. It's easier like this. He can't see her straining to rein in Julien's psyche.

She feels his eyes on her anyway, two smoldering points of red in the dark; they make the back of her neck burn. They make her blush to the tips of her ears, and she forces herself to sit still. Forces herself not to hunch or duck under the attention.

"Nice," he murmurs in appraisal, and Rogue feels the heat rise to her face.

Something sizzles, pops, and flares. The light illuminates the glossy surface of the water momentarily, and she swivels to find the cause of the disturbance. Her heart hammers madly in her chest.

Gambit has pulled from his pocket a handful of Mardi Gras confetti, sparkling over the water's surface with kinetic charge. They're like fireworks: beautiful. Ephemeral. When they disappear, the shadows grow longer between the trees.

Gambit smiles, satisfied that he's captured her attention. He watches her expression morph between embarrassment, to wonder, and back into that guarded scowl that hardens the planes of her face.

"So." Rogue clears her throat, trying the squash the unease with her usual, tepid grosgrain. Small talk is not her strong suit, and it comes out sounding forced. "All this trouble and Ah thought ya didn't like your father."

"I don't. Just because someone adopts you, it doesn't make them a parent."

"Yeah," she murmurs, disconcerted by the familiarity of his statement.

"Mystique? You mean it wasn't her motherly instincts that led her t' take you in?"

She can hear the grin in his voice; he's mocking her, subtly, but nonetheless... Its playful, rather than vindictive. It throws her only a little, and she recovers quickly.

"Let's just say it was my powers she wanted to nurture," she deadpans.

He pauses. She can hear him inhale sharply, and she knows with full confidence that he's studying her from behind. How often has he done this? How many times had she not known that Gambit had been in the shadows prior to this moment, dogging her footsteps, taking in everything about her?

How much does he know?

Rogue shivers, though the air is warm and the humidity from the swamp is making her shirt cling to the sweat on her back.

She thinks she already knows the answer.

"You and I, we could write a book about it. Been down th' same roads." He trails off, letting the thought hang, gestating into something dark and delicate; a fragile proposition that doesn't really lead anywhere, but trembles with potential. It shivers, that idea; it rests on the 'we' in Gambit's contemplation. Not 'I', nor 'you'...

A pause lengthens between them, stretching to the point of becoming awkward. He'd been so darned cocky on the train, telling her how he'd known she was awful lonely, that it'd be a good feeling to know that someone was watching out for her.

He'd been the one doing the watching out, not Mystique. The way things ought to have been hardly work out that way.

She didn't need the extra care, and she definitely didn't deserve it.

"Difference is, you're here trying to save your father. It's more than Ah did."

Much more.

Gambit probably knew that, too, and yet, he'd looked past it.

Rogue sucks her lower lip into her mouth, feigning to see through the murk ahead. Her thoughts have not yet found purchase elsewhere; rather, she lingers on the feel of warped wood beneath her gloves, her damp jeans, the humid chill of swamp mist, and the smell of leather, bourbon, and cayenne spice.

It's beautiful, she thinks, her conscience suddenly lighter than it has been in days:

The bayou is beautiful at this time of night.


"Rogue! Rogue!"

"Go 'way! M' sleepin'," Rogue said into the crook of her arm.

"Keetty, Rogue's not wearing a glove!" Shock and awe. Typical: Kurt stating the obvious, Rogue groaned to herself.

"Rogue, wake up. Come on, seriously! We need to get you out of here, like, yesterday!"

She pawed at the indentations left on her cheek from the notebook's spiral binding.

With a wince, she managed, "Where…? Oh."

The lunch bell must have rung while she'd been resting her eyes. Kitty and Kurt stood over her, both managing to look suitably fretful, though the rest of the class had long cleared off.

"You fell asleep," Kurt said, exchanging an uncertain glance with Kitty. "When you didn't turn up for lunch, we thought…"

"You've got to get back to the mansion," Kitty cut him off. "Your arm was like, hanging half off the desk. Anyone could have brushed past you, and then there'd be…" She wrung her hands. "Oh my gosh! There'd be someone in a coma on the floor and you'd be asleep and like -"

"Or worse," Kurt interjected.

"Or worse!" Kitty trilled. "I totally thought you were joking this morning. I mean, like, I know how seriously you take things some times, but honestly — How could you leave the house like that?"

"Seriously stupid," Kurt added.

"Mega crazy." Kitty's ponytail bobbed along to add emphasis.

"Mega hyper nuts-oid."

"You know?" She flailed. "Ohmygosh! Like -"

Blinking at the smear of pale foundation left on the opened page before her, Rogue clapped a hand to her face and winced at the sensation of bare skin lanced through with pins and needles. She'd fallen asleep on her arm, and her circulation was paying the price. Not to mention her eardrums, but that was mostly due to Kitty's shrieking.

"You actually left this morning without both your gloves!" Kitty hissed at her.

Kurt, at least, had the decency to throw a nervous look over his shoulder. "Well, one is better than none..."

"Kurt, that's not helping!"

A wisp of her dream returned to Rogue then; the sensate quality of wet wood, coated by strips of peeling paint beneath her gloved hands, the dampness clinging to her fingers though she didn't actually touch the boat herself.

It faded altogether too quickly, along with the warmth of his grin, the scent of him.

She bristled beneath her friends' twin gazes of reprimand.

That wasn't fair. She'd had other things on her mind. She would have been late. Again. Rogue snapped, "Like Ah had any other choice. You all left without me. Ah had to run to school." She shoved away from the desk, her chair skreeing to a violent stop into the wall behind her. "Some of us," she threw a deliberate glower at her brother, "if ya forgot, aren't blessed with teleportation."

"But, Rogue, what if someone touched you by accident?" Kurt asked, stealing a damning glance at Kitty.

Rogue threw a wry look at him as she gathered her things and dropped them into the opened bag at her feet. "It's not like anyone'd come within ten feet of me anyway," she retaliated. "Everyone in this school skirts around me like Ah've got the plague to begin with."

Kitty bristled, clearly not having forgotten their spat from earlier. "Well," she began in an overly patient, reasonable tone — like she was talking to one of the New Mutants rather than a senior teammate. "Maybe if you didn't dress like death incarnate they wouldn't be so worried. Its all posturing, Rogue. Don't act like we don't know you any better."

Kurt shrank.

Rogue rose from her seat, muscles coiled. She sneered. "Claws out, huh? Short on the catnip this time of the month?" Rogue bit back. "Or is it that Lance ain't hangin' around for ya anymore, Kitty? Did he get sick of being your scratching post?"

Kitty's blushed deepened to a rich red, the double entendre plain.

"Are you volunteering to fill in for him? Maybe I could scrape some of that clown makeup off while I'm at it!" she shot back.

Rogue dropped her bag. To hell with the consequences; Kitty always balked before the moment of contact anyhow. Sometimes, it was worth it just to see the spark of fear sliver through her friend's eyes when Rogue drew her fist back to strike.

"Damen!" Kurt near-yelled, sliding between them. He chuckled, his hands held defensively before him, although the only thing that would really save him if they got going was a quick 'port to the basketball court. "No scratching! No power-sucking! Let's leave this little disagreement for the Danger Room, ja?"

"Ah do not look like a clown," Rogue ground out.

"You're a menace!" Kitty shouted.

"At least Ah'm not cuh-razy!"

"No, you're just dangerous!" she spat.

Between them, Kurt jerked. It took a moment, their collective breaths held, to let that echo between them. Kitty, it seemed, was taking that moment to crumble at the edges a little, as if realizing the magnitude of what she'd said. It must have registered on Rogue's face - the sharp intake of breath and a flinch of hurt. Lordy, this place was turning her soft.

"Oh," Kitty said, covering her mouth. "Oh, Rogue, I didn't mean -"

It felt like a punch in the gut; the sort originating from a hand with three adamantium claws built-in. Rogue snatched up her bag. "Whatever."

She didn't care that Kitty's lip twitched into a tremor. She busied herself, adjusting the straps of her bag, slinging it over one shoulder, and slouching with as much disdain as she could muster.

"You're in my way," Rogue informed her, not making eye contact.

More high-pitched than normal, Kitty managed, "Fine. I have a chem lab." She lingered anyway.

"Well?" Rogue demanded, glowering at Kurt, who was still occupying the role of ineffectual middleman.

"Fine," Kitty said again.

Her ponytail whipped Kurt in the face as she made her exit.

He sighed, rubbing his cheek. "Come on, Rogue. I'll teleport you back to the Institute," he offered, casting a look at Kitty's retreating flounce. He added in an undertone that was loud enough that they both could hear, "I left my second lunch in the fridge anyway."

She felt the embarrassed flush before she could prevent it. Intent on squashing out the unsettled sensation in her stomach that wasn't due to Kitty being the slightest bit right, she forced back the lingering impression of Blood Moon Bayou. New Orleans. She thought she could smell the swamp still. Those little flowers. It was better a dream than a memory that dulled when she woke up.

"Just get me outta here," she muttered.

"Hey, Rogue?" Kurt began tentatively, plucking her bag from where she'd slung it over a shoulder. It was heavy, and it was nice that he'd carry it for her. No one else did that sort of thing. No one had the gall to try.

Kurt took her arm gently, holding her by the elbow. Conspiratorially, he whispered, "Did you know that your accent gets heavier the madder you are?"

"Git!" She scowled, lifting her bare hand menacingly.

Kurt grinned, the hint of two extended incisors apparent at the corners of his mouth.

"You wouldn't hurt your own brother, would you?" He gave her arm a playful squeeze, before Rogue felt the sudden lurch of Kurt's mutant power yanking them out of one location, and depositing them in another with a loud, BAMF!

Sulphurous smoke cleared, Rogue hastening its progress by waving her hand in front of her face.

"Only if he was askin' for it," she said, defiance marred by the sudden urge to cough.

Kurt chuckled. "You can't hit what you can't see!"

"What if Ah just swing blindly? Ah'm sure ta hit somethin' -"

Kurt's teleportation haze lifted, revealing the second exact person she didn't want to deal with.

All too suddenly, Rogue wished the cloud of rotten egg-smelling smoke would linger a little longer. It stank, and as much as she hated insulting Kurt, she couldn't help but dislike the fact that his mutation offended the nostrils. That, however, wasn't as awful as being greeted at the door by a psychic.

Jean probably saw the whole fight too.

Peachy. Freaking. Keene.

"You're home early," she said.

"Hi, Jean," Kurt mumbled, sheepish. "Forgot my lunch." He cast a sidelong glance at Rogue. "I mean, the second one. I ate the first one already."

"Kurt." Rogue said his name like a warning.

"Okay!" he said brightly. "Bye now!" With that, Kurt ditched her. The residual plume of teleportation was an afterthought.

"Are you okay?" Jean asked, the unmistakable look of perfected concern shaping her features into something beatific. Rogue tried not to scowl.

In response, she held up a bare hand. "You know already, don't you?" she asked, her tone flat.

"Where –?"

"Don't ask," Rogue cut her off.

"Are you going –"

"No."

Rogue's clipped returns didn't seem to phase her. Jean had perched herself atop one of the mansion's stone banisters, an ankle caught behind her shapely calf. It was the perfect place; sunny in the morning and shaded in the afternoon. At lunch hour, she could frequently be found sipping a coffee on the steps and enjoying the view over the grounds since she'd graduated Bayville High the year before.

It's not like she had anything better to do either; what with the Professor training her to become permanent staff at the institute like Ororo and Logan, and her correspondence course in genetics being far less of a challenge than any of the mansion's residents had expected. Jean's natural aptitude for study had been bolstered, of course, what with Henry McCoy still in residence, and the Professor himself having a degree in the field.

"You shouldn't be cutting class so close to graduation, you know."

She'd almost forgotten, Rogue thought to herself: Jean had taken to nagging - the second best sport besides soccer.

Jean's breezy smile twisted into a pinched purse.

"I'm not 'nagging' you, Rogue."

"Didn't say ya were, and don't read my mind. Is the Professor in?" she asked, trying to steady herself enough to cover the surprise of having her thoughts probed by the psychic.

Jean was picking up every little projection these days. It was if her telepathy had been cranked up to the most sensitive setting. Frankly, Rogue thought it was making her a little more tetchy than usual.

With a wince, she offered an, "I didn't mean to," instead of an apology.

Rogue glowered at her.

Defeated, Jean confessed, "He's in his office."

Rogue ducked her head and trudged past. She didn't bother saying thank you; Jean was already staring off into the distance of the mansion's grounds.

"Your missing glove is in the hamper mixed in with Piotr's uniform," Jean called over her shoulder, a half-hearted attempt to smooth over her blunder.

Not wanting to linger on the idea of Piotr Rasputin's leotard in such close proximity to the garment that usually fit snugly around her fingers, Rogue beat it past Jean as if she could outrun the very idea.

Once in the clear, she slowed to a tramping death march, letting her boots drag on the hardwood floors. They left faint scuff marks in her wake. She didn't care, and the Professor tolerated it.

Frankly, the man tolerated a helluva lot, all things considered. There weren't a lot of guys pushing seventy who were still willing to share their homes with twenty-odd hormonal mutant teenagers.

At this time of day, the mansion was vacated save for the senior staff. Beast was probably working in his laboratory, Logan wouldn't be in from happy hour for a stretch, and Piotr would more than likely be tinkering with the jet.

Cyclops had been toiling for the past week reprogramming the Danger Room to ensure that their nightly training sessions were tripled in difficulty — something about slacking on their sessions — or maybe the stick up his butt had lodged itself in further since being appointed to Team Leader in Chief.

Not that Rogue minded Scott's rigidity when it came to their training sessions: he preferred structure, dedication, diligence, ad nauseum. All fine traits to be had by such a model X-Man, and while she'd be hard-pressed to admit it, she'd learned a lot since Scott had taken the initiative to push them harder. It had furthered the illusion that Rogue was still managing to hold her own in the aftermath of the previous year.

The last thing she wanted was to be singled out as a victim of Apocalypse. She wasn't a charity case, and she definitely would not let the others tread around her gingerly. It took one particularly gruelling session, a concussed Berserker and a demolished simulation projector, but Rogue had reinserted herself back into the relative normalcy of routine. They had pretty much left her to her own devices since, and she was just fine with that.

It didn't make walking the Institute's corridors feel any less strange when the mansion was this empty.

Save for the Professor's omnipresence, Rogue was alone. She hugged her arms close, and kept walking.

The midday sun warmed the oak-paneled corridors, casting its light through the large windows of the common areas. Slowly, she made her way towards the girls' wing, to the room she and Kitty had shared for the better part of four years.

Knowing that the Professor would have sensed her presence by now and would probably summon her telepathically, she dropped her bag off and slogged onwards. The estate felt different without everyone bustling about: In the evening, the halls rang with chattering, laughter, and the blare of stereos and television sets. Every so often, someone's powers would manifest themselves loudly, making the sublevels of the school shake.

It seemed to Rogue that for once, with the floating particles of dust caught in the sunlight and the ringing silence around her, she felt a little closer to the place she called her home. It didn't help any that the only reason she could convince herself of the emotional tie was because the empty mansion reflected her own isolation.

She really shouldn't have threatened Kitty like that, she thought. Out of everyone, even her adopted brother Kurt, Kitty was a constant in Rogue's life for as long as she'd lived at the Institute. She accepted every snide comment, rude retort, and disdainful brush-off. The exact look on Kitty's face when she decided Rogue's coldness towards her hurt — the wide, wet eyes, and the petulant pout — Rogue committed to memory.

The refresher course was unnecessary.

She meant well, Rogue reasoned. She just didn't quite get it.

No one, in fact, ever really got it.

Well, there had been one person, she reflected, who had 'gotten it'…

Rogue looked up into the stairwell, hesitating. The card in her drawer could have been a star going supernova. It's presence was a light that drew her out and held her captive like a moth to a lightbulb. Stupid, really - that a playing card could have that effect on her. She crumpled and chucked it like trash; treating it the way she felt in the year since she'd returned to the X-Men and he'd stayed behind in the bayou. Like he'd just forgotten about her entirely. Like it just hadn't been a thing.

That damned card was all she had left to remember him by.

A heart's beat pause, and then, suddenly afraid that she'd done more damage than she'd wanted to it that morning before class, she ran.

Taking the steps two at a time, she sprinted down the corridor with her pack slapping harshly against her legs. Rogue took full advantage of the desolate upper halls. The bag's weight stung where the corner of her Geometry text collided with her shin as she collided with her door. She forced the knob, throwing herself into the room, dropped her bag, and vaulted over Kitty's bed to the dresser.

His voice lingered like the wisp of a psyche that had long been purged from her mind. Still she could recall the exact sensation — the warm rush that spread like bourbon in her stomach when he spoke to her:

"So what now?"

Hesitating. She was always hesitating around him, even when she'd said goodbye and she couldn't have mistaken that slight expectancy as he murmured those words - like he would've invited her to stay with him if she'd had the choice.

Rogue swallowed hard, pulling off her remaining glove. She touched her temple with her bare fingers and realized with sudden horror that her hands were trembling. Damnit, why today of all days? Hadn't she put that night behind her?

"Ah'm going back with the X-Men. Ah don't care what you do."

Hadn't she put him behind her?

"Ah don't care," she announced to the empty room, to the… to the thing inside her dresser. She winced at the loudness of her voice. It was a hollow sound, laced with uncertainty.

"Sure, y' don't."

Rogue shut her eyes. She was being stupid:

It was a piece of paper, for mercy's sake. It was nothing to get all worked up over, and nothing to cling to so stubbornly...

Then why had she kept it this long?

Because he'd given it to her, because he'd gotten "it" — lord knew how — but he'd understood at least partially. The Queen of Hearts was some sort of symbolic talisman; he'd passed his good luck charm on to her.

Or had it had meant something more?

Embarrassed that she could entertain the idea for even a second, she squashed the thought and yanked the drawer open.

In a wadded, partially-crumpled ball, the Queen remained at the bottom amidst a retinue of Rogue's dainties. She seemed to wink with one regal eye from between the folds of black silk and lace.

Rogue let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

She could remember the exact perfume of Blood Moon Bayou; the chill from the water that soaked her clothes, and the sodden, squelchy feeling of the swamp in her boots. She remembered, with the acute bittersweetness of the forsaken, how warm he felt standing mere inches behind her, before he pressed his hand into hers, and he'd slipped away.

Before she'd let him go.

"Y' will be fine, chérie. You've got people watchin' for you."

Her breathing hitched, and though she reached out for the abused playing card, she did not touch it. It was as if the Queen had developed a life of its own from the time she'd found it that morning, to the moment where she fisted her hand above it.

It was as if by touching it she'd be able to absorb whatever traces of him he'd left behind, and that, she knew, was one great big stinking lie.

Rogue withdrew her arm, her heart rate escalating, and relishing the sure-as-anything bubble of adrenaline as it hit her bloodstream.

For all that she remembered in vivid detail from that night in New Orleans, there had been one thing she'd neglected to dredge back up to the surface: In the end, he'd left her alone.

He'd had a choice too, after all.

Eyes narrowed, she appraised the small token of Gambit's misplaced affections with renewed understanding: It was nothing more than a parting gift, no more special than anything else handed off to any other girl in any other town with that sly half-grin he'd become notorious for.

Ignoring the treacherous twinge deep in her belly, she reburied the crumpled trinket beneath her underwear.

She was careful not to touch it with naked fingers, just in case.

Closing the drawer, Rogue was struck with a sudden and desperate urgency: She wanted her gloves - both of them - badly.


If a mutant on a motorbike leaves New Orleans traveling at a hundred and fifty miles an hour on a souped-up Harley, and assuming the driver makes no rest stops (save one in North Carolina at four o'clock in the morning for a half hour to stretch his legs and throw back a quick cup of coffee), it would take a little over twenty-six hours to reach the outskirts of New York state.

It didn't mean he'd be feeling particularly pleasant after the journey, but nonetheless, he'd arrived in one piece, barring several welts from insects that had crashed into his chest while using his torso like a windshield.

Remy scrubbed at his chin with the heel of his hand, grateful for the cover of darkness. It was a little past ten, Monday evening, and the sun had long since slipped behind the ramshackle roof of the Brotherhood house. It left behind only the straining, winking stars overhead, and one lonely streetlight guttering half-heartedly at the corner.

He'd tucked Jean Luc's Harley around the side of the garage, out of sight and out of the way of the large oil stain on the driveway; it looked like Avalanche had yet to part from the old, battered up Jeep he'd driven in high school.

Remy smirked.

"Th' more things change," he murmured to himself, slipping around the side of the house and avoiding the dilapidated porch altogether.

His fingers traced the first ledge he came to. Surprisingly, the windowpanes were intact, but it really wouldn't make too much a difference were he to knock them out with his fists.

Still, one had to respect the codes of breaking and entering: If you didn't do it with style, you didn't do it at all. No matter how shitty the venue.

"Th' more they stay the same," he concluded wryly, scanning the darkened interior of the Brotherhood's great room: a quick appraisal revealed broken furniture, cracks in the ceiling, and patches in the walls that had been blackened with... scorch marks?

He chuckled, slipping a card from one of the many spare packs in his pockets, and wedged it under the window latch.

"St. John," he mused, only half-surprised at his good luck finding the place where the Australian had holed up. "Been wonderin' where that fool had gotten to."

The card warmed beneath his fingers, tingling with kinetic current as it glowed red momentarily, and the lock popped with a dull, whump!

Remy slid the window up and waited for a sign that anyone was home. When only silence returned to him, he vaulted over the chest-high barrier and landed on the threadbare rug. The only sound he made was the soft brush of his trench coat clearing the window ledge.

He strolled over to the couch, swept his jacket out from underneath him, and made himself comfortable.

All he needed to do now was wait.


"Get off me now, Toad."

"But baby cakes…!"

"Don'ttouchmysisterslimeball."

"Or what? What're you gonna do, huh, speedy? Make me dizzy?"

"Could you two just knock it off – hey!"

A clatter, several loud yells, and a snarled oath.

"What the hell, mate? Hit the light switch, already."

"Pyro! That's not the light switch!"

"Well then... was it as good for you as it was for me?"

"Guys!"

"Someone squished my Twinkie."

"What the hell?"

"Hey!"

"GUYS! GUYS!"

"Shut up, Toad -"

"GUYS! We're not alone."

In the darkness of the Brotherhood's living room, two red eyes gleamed with unsettling brightness.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

A card flashed, restrained from full charge between dexterous index and middle fingers. It illuminated only a small portion of the room, bathing Gambit's features in deep scarlet and black.

Slowly, with his free hand, he traced the line of his lapel, extracting a small, bound bundle from his coat that he dropped unceremoniously on the coffee table. It made a hollow thunk as it hit the gouged surface, clunking to its side awkwardly.

"I'm here t' make you an offer you can't refuse, mes amis," he said with a grin that could make even the Devil reconsider his claim to a man's soul.