Chapter Three: It's Not Just a Matter of Cashing Out

Rogue had made up her mind the moment they had gotten back to their hotel suite. Having been treated like nothing less than the pawn that she so clearly was for the past several hours, and having had quite enough of Remy's oh-so-smug attitude to last her a lifetime, she decided that she was going to escape. As soon as possible.

The Gambit calmly removed his coat and tossed it onto the ornate sofa after he had locked the door behind him. Rogue watched intently as he pocketed the keys.

"Don't even think about it," was all he had to say to her.

She scowled as he walked past her and went into the bedroom. The way he acted, she may as well have been a wad of gum stuck to his shoe. What was up with that, anyway? Rogue knew that Remy LeBeau was a scoundrel, plain and simple. But usually he was much more charming, much more...talkative. That was when it hit her that Remy hadn't said much of anything to her in about an hour.

Frowning, she got up and followed him into the bedroom. Remy was shuffling his deck, not even sparing Rogue a glance as she edged closer. Feeling a stab of annoyance, she sank down on to the bed next to him, watching him turning over cards in an irritatingly absent-minded manner.

What's with him?

"Is there a problem, Rogue?"

She just blinked at him. "Yeah," she said. "There's a problem. You."

He looked up at her, and Rogue noticed for the first time the traces of weariness in his face. Back in the casino he had made a point to seem confident, yet carefree. Now, it was like he just didn't give a damn. Maybe because there wasn't anybody he was trying to fool...or anyone worth fooling. He simply stared at Rogue as though to say, and your point is?

"Well...say something."

"Like what?"

"Why are you being so weird? What's wrong with you?"

That blank look was really starting to unnerve her. It made her think back to what he had told her earlier, about how he had been drunk when he showed up at the Institute. To her best of knowledge, Remy wasn't in the habit of drinking himself stupid and half-blind--which he had to have been if he was dumb enough to kidnap her in the first place. So what had made him do it?

Then there was this so-called heist. So far he hadn't told her a single detail about it. The only thing they had accomplished all day was spending a whole lot of money that they didn't need to spend in the first place. He didn't even try to pick anybody's pocket.

It was as though his heart just wasn't in it anymore. Since when was Remy LeBeau this jaded...?

"Nothing is wrong," Remy replied. "Go to bed."

"I can't. You're sitting on it."

Rogue had half-expected him to make some witty and somewhat provokative comeback. But all he did was move over to the chair. He didn't stop shuffling his deck. It worried her to see him turning the cards so quickly, as though searching for something that he had lost. Those cards may as well have been blank for all it mattered.

"Remy..."

He looked up at her. "Cherie?"

"Why did you really bring me here?"

There was a long silence.

"Remy, what's going on? Why won't you tell me?"

There was now a fierce note a frustration in her voice. Remy was surprised to hear any hint of concern out of her, considering her general attitude about him since she had woken up this morning. But that wasn't what was bothering him--oh, it bothered him, but it wasn't the main thing pressing against his mind, haunting his thoughts when he wasn't distracting himself with the redhead beside him.

"It's nothing you need to get involved in. I shouldn't have brought you here, anyway."

"Well, it's too late for that, you jerk. I'm here now. We're married. So fess up. What's going on?"

He winced. Damn, she was stubborn, but why did she have to sound so reasonable at the same time? With a sign, he realized that someone had to give. And it wasn't going to be Rogue, that much was obvious.

"Tough times, Cherie. But that's nothing you need to get mixed up in. I will tell you that family relations haven't been so good, lately. My old man finally kicked the bucket, and the Thieves Guild has been…divided in their opinions towards me."

Rogue didn't know if she should be sympathetic or not. "Jean-Luc is dead?"

"Undeniably."

"How'd he die?"

There was only a split-second's hesitation.

"The way most thieves die, Rogue. They either get caught or they get stabbed in the back by one of their own. Considering how…close our family is, and how there isn't a single honest man in the Thieves Guild, it's a miracle he didn't die sooner."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. He got what he deserved."

Neither of them said anything for a long time.

"You know," said Rogue. "That's kind of what I told myself about Mystique after I pushed her off of that cliff. I knew she never really cared about me and that the only thing that made her my mother was DNA. But that didn't make it hurt any less when she betrayed me…or when I betrayed her."

Remy didn't say anything. He just watched her with cautious eyes, as though trying to figure something out about what she said. "Shrewd," he finally muttered. "I guess there's something to that isn't there?"

He got up and made to go into the next room. But something Rogue said made him stop dead in his tracks.

"Is that why you had been drinking that night?"

Remy stiffened. "I assume you mean the night I brought you here."

"Yeah."

"It's none of your business."

Rogue bristled at that. "None of my business? Remy, I woke up in Vegas this morning. You have a flying fuck of a lot of nerve telling me that it's none of my business...!"

"Rogue--"

"I can't believe that you would even say something like that to me! After everything I've ever done to help you! Haven't you gotten it through your thick head that I--"

"Just leave it alone," Remy snapped in a voice she had never heard him use before.

He sounded so cold, so brittle that it actually cowed her for a moment or two. She couldn't believe that the man in front of her was the same person who had strolled with her down the sidewalks of New Orleans, the same man who bought her trust with a plate of jambalaya and some shtick about freedom. The same man who flirted shamelessly with her, the man she had dared to call a friend. This was Remy LeBeau?

No way.

Disgusted, Rogue strode over to him and glared right up into his scarlet eyes. "Give me one good reason why I should leave it alone."

"Like I said, it's none of your business."

"It is my business, you stupid jerk! We're friends, aren't we?"

He looked at her solemnly. "Are we, Rogue?"

Rogue couldn't believe any of this. She couldn't believe that he was being so stubborn, so distant, so freaking close-lipped! In New Orleans, they couldn't run out of things to talk about, but now...he just wasn't talking at all. What had changed? Why did it hurt so much?

Blinking back tears that she only just noticed were stinging her eyes, she did the only thing that popped in her head. She felt so angry, so confused and bewildered by the situation, she simply slapped Remy across the face.

Rogue only realized she wasn't wearing gloves after she felt the overwhelming mind lurch that accompanied her absorption abilities. And considering the fact that Remy was supposed to be immune to said abilities, she was VERY surprised, indeed, when the man dropped like a ton of bricks.

But she only half-saw it. She was too riveted by the images flashing through her brain to understand what had happened.

Two men faced each other, and one of them obviously was Remy. The other was the slouchy, leering Jean-Luc, calmly staring his adopted son in the eyes as he yelled at him. Rogue couldn't hear a word Remy was saying, but he seemed livid. She barely saw the flash of pain and desperation in his scarlet eyes before the scene changed again.

Remy, sitting in an empty boxcar of a train, staring blankly at the deck of cards in his hands. Rogue saw rust-colored splotches on his clothes, that his characteristically steady hands were shaking. The thief swore venomously in the darkness of the night and reached into his pocket for a cigarette. As he lit it up, the deck slipped out of his hands and scattered around on the floor of the boxcar. Staring him in the face was the Queen of Hearts.

Then, all of a sudden, Rogue was watching Remy watching her through her window. She could feel what Remy was feeling--displaced anger, grief, confusion, and longing. She knew now how lost and empty he felt in the pit of his stomach. Something terrible had happened, and somehow he had expected the sight of his Cherie to somehow give him respite from his inner turmoil. Seeing her usually gave him answers. Everytime he learned something about Rogue, he learned something about himself, it seemed. But all he felt as he stared at the sleeping girl was distance. He belonged to a world separate from hers, a world of lies and theft, of discord and murder.

He needed a drink.

Rogue staggered backwards, gasping for breath as the tide thinned. The images were fading now, and she could see Remy slumped over on the floor of the hotel, unconscious. But she could barely make out his blurry form because the tears made it hard to see him. She sank to her knees, biting back her panic as she tried to figure out what had happened. It took her a minute to remember who she was and where she was.

"What...?" she murmured, clutching her head, which was starting to pound with questions. She remembered with a start that Remy supposedly knew a way around her powers. It was the whole reason why she hadn't simply knocked him out from the get-go and made a run for it. He should not have been absorbed. So...why? Why did it happen?

Why did it have to happen now?

Rogue tried, and failed, to figure out what it was about now that was different from this morning? Had she changed? Or had Remy? Try as she might, the answer continued to elude her. But that seemed to pale in comparison to the jarring realization that now--right now--she could escape if she wanted to.

Remy was dead to the world. He would not notice if she took the hotel keys out of his pocket. If she hurried, she could be packed and in a cab to the nearest airport within fifteen minutes...maybe less. By the time he woke up, she would be long gone from here. She could go home, and Remy...Remy would be all alone again.

Wasn't that what she wanted?

Rogue had called herself his friend. She wasn't about to deny that she was worried about him, especially in the wake of all his strange behavior. Up until now, she had assumed that Remy was just being an asshole when he took her away. She had assumed that he was using her for some stupid plan to get rich, and that when it was over he would simply dump her back at the Institute with another batch of memories she wish she could have forgotten in the wake of his absence. Not once did it ever occur to her that Remy never had a plan. Not once did she think that Remy LeBeau could ever be desperate, lost, or uncertain about anything.

Not once did Rogue suspect that the reason Remy brought her along with him was because he needed her...not until now. But why? What had happened?

After two minutes had passed, she still couldn't make sense of what she had seen in his head. But she suspected that a lot of what was going on had to do with the late Jean-Luc. Remy might just be stumbling in the wake of grief. He might not even want to acknowledge that he was grieving, and was acting out in this bizarre way. Could Rogue really just abandon him at a time like this?

Well, considering what he put her through so far...

No. Rogue was still feeling conflicted. But her gaze shifted to the nightstand and caught sight of the hotel phone sitting there, innocently. She bit her lip, realizing that if she was going to do something, she had better do it now.

She knew nothing about time zones, but that didn't stop her from wondering if Logan was still awake...maybe he'd have some answers for her.

"So Rogue was…kidnapped?"

The question was put forth tentatively by Jean. The entire X-Men team had gathered in the Cerebro room immediately after school let out, having been alarmed by Kitty's claims that something had "happened" to Rogue. However, once the Professor had gotten around to explaining just where she had wound up and, more importantly, who had taken her, they were…to say the least, skeptical.

Logan sighed. He knew that this was going to happen.

"Gambit came in through her window in the middle of the night. Rogue's gone, and she didn't take anything with her. There were signs of a struggle. So, yes, I'm pretty sure she was kidnapped."

The telepath blushed. She quickly exchanged a knowing look with Scott. "Sorry," she said. "It's just that…well…"

Logan stared the redhead down. "What?"

Jean didn't seem to be able to find the right words, but fortunately she didn't have to. Scott put a hand on her shoulder and scowled challengingly at Wolverine. "Come on, Logan," he snapped. "You know how Rogue feels about Gambit. Leave Jean alone."

Kurt, from the side, scowled in annoyance. He wasn't happy about Gambit leaving town with his sister, whether he had her consent or not. After Remy had kidnapped her the first time, he was all prepared to punch his face in if Logan hadn't got to him first. And only an idiot would have missed the heated interaction between them—Remy's blatant flirtations and Rogue's no-but-I-mean-yes response.

A good brother would have pushed the man back into the swamp and let the gators have at him. But Kurt had hesitated, his underlying fear of upsetting Rogue tainting his common sense. And then it was too late. Remy was striding off into the foggy night, leaving her to stare after him with only the faintest hints of stars in her eyes. She wouldn't stop studying the Queen of Hearts in her hands—and what was up with that, anyway?

Kurt remembered better than anyone how long it took for her to put that card down. Weeks had passed with no word from the smooth-talking thief, and Rogue's expression became increasingly jaded. If it weren't for Apocalypse eating up her attention, she probably would have realized the truth sooner. Remy LeBeau had played her; not once, but twice.

At least, that was how Kurt saw it.

"Look, if you're saying that they eloped or something, then you're crazy," he told Scott. "Rogue may have liked Gambit once, but she's not stupid. Do you really think she'd willingly go with him after he walked out on her?"

"Either way," Logan cut in as Scott opened his mouth to reply, "Rogue is in very dangerous territory. We need to get her back before something happens to her."

That distracted Kurt for a moment. "What's so dangerous about Las Vegas?" he asked.

"A lot of things that you kids would be better off not knowing about. And let me make this clear to you right now. This is not a vacation. We're on a rescue mission. If I think for a second that any of you will break ranks or cause problems, I'm sending your butts home immediately."

Logan glared at them all in turn. He hadn't wanted to take a team with him. He had simply wanted to ride in, find Rogue, and get the hell out of town. But Charles just had to tell those damn kids what was going on. And now none of them were going to let him leave them behind. If he so much as tried to go off on his own, he knew that they would just follow in the X-Jet, make a huge scene, and ruin everything.

Fan-freaking-tastic.

"Now, because there are so many of you, taking one of the vans is out of the option," said Hank, stepping forward. "It would also take too long to reach the city. However, since stealth is our objective, we can't just take the X-Jet. So you'll be flying commercially..."

Logan winced. Another reason why he had wanted to go alone. The thought of being on a public airplane with these oddballs for some number of hours was about as appealing as a trip to the dentist knowing you were going to get a tooth pulled. And taking the X-Jet would have been bad enough. Since they were relying on public transportation, it meant that the large blue furry Beast would have to remain behind.

"Now, don't worry, Logan," Hank said comfortingly. "Ororo said she'd be coming along."

Not that this was much better. Logan privately thought that Storm was too soft on the kids. Hell, she was too soft on everyone. Just the other day he had tried—and failed—to convince her to let him install poison gas in the ventilation shafts to beef up security, and she had just given him this look.

Logan would have thought that Ororo would have wanted the little monsters to be safe. He would have thought that she would have wanted the intruders eliminated quickly and humanely rather than having to deal with the messy aftermath that would inevitably follow if he had to get involved. But nooooooooo.

Maybe if the poison gas had been installed, he wouldn't be dealing with this crap right now. Instead, he'd be dumping Gambit's body in the trash compactor. He'd have a word with Storm later.

Kitty's voice cut into Logan's internal rant. "Um…like, why are you guys so worried about not being seen, anyway? Gambit's bound to know that we'll come after him."

"It's not Gambit I'm worried about," Logan growled. As far as he was concerned, Gumbo was as good as fish bait once he got his hands on him. "Like I said, Las Vegas is a dangerous place for mutants. There have been some nasty rumors about human trafficking over the last ten years. Considering all the anti-mutant propaganda lately, it's no surprise that many mutants flocked to anyplace they thought they could blend in. And let's just say that there are some powerful people in Las Vegas who were willing to take advantage of that."

"And he took my sister there?" Kurt exclaimed in horror. "That son of a…"

"Ahem," Hank coughed. "We have no reason to believe that Rogue is in any danger yet. Possibly, no one knows that she's even in the city. But if the X-Men are seen flying into town, it's going to raise a few questions."

"So public transportation it is," Logan concluded grimly. "Pack your things. We leave in two hours."

Everyone started murmuring to each other, but no one wanted to risk the wrath of the clearly irate Wolverine by lingering to gossip. Kurt let Kitty drag him away, scowling darkly and muttering under his breath in German.

"Kurt, it's, like, Las Vegas. Chances are Rogue probably did elope with Remy. I think it's cute."

The teleporting mutant stopped muttering and gave Kitty an incredulous look. "It is not cute! I'm telling you, she's in grave danger…!"

"The elf is right," Logan snapped. "The chances of Stripes marrying Gumbo are slim to none."

Suddenly, the cell phone in Wolverine's pocket began to vibrate. Heaving a frustrated sigh, he plucked out the gadget and checked the caller I.D. Then, he did a double-take. The area code was from another state.

"Hold on a sec'," he barked at the gawking duo. Savagely, he flipped open the phone. "Hello?"

"Logan?"

"Rogue? Is that you?"

Kurt and Kitty exchanged significant glances as Logan turned his back on them. He was listening intently to the girl's voice on the other end of the extension. Occasionally he cut in to ask curt questions, but Rogue seemed to be in a bad mood. She just kept going on and on.

Then, she must have told Logan something he didn't like because he cursed like a sailor.

"What do you mean you're married…?" he snarled quietly.

"Told you," said Kitty triumphantly, leaving a dumbfounded Kurt behind as she headed off towards her room. She couldn't wait to tell the others.

Logan, on the other hand, was fuming.

"You were what? Drunk? How the hell—?"

Kurt shook his head from side to side, as though he were trying to shake water out of his pointed ears. He couldn't have heard that correctly. But Logan was not deaf, and he doubted the phone reception was that bad.

"I can't believe it…" he murmured. The world as he knew it had ceased to exist, plain and simple.

A/N: A much shorter chapter, I know, and not much humor here. But considering everything we find out, it may as well be ten pages long, right? A lot of plot bunnies to keep you guys guessing about what will happen next. Will Rogue leave Remy? What will Logan say in the wake of his...um...unexpected discovery of Rogue's marriage? What will happen when the X-Men try to get through airport security? All of this and more in the next chapter. Hopefully it will be much more fluffy than this was.

Did you guys like this? Is Remy's behavior more plausible now that we see part of what's bothering him? Review, please, and I will be a very happy mongoose. ^-^