Disclaimer: Owner: Marvel. Money: none. Suing: useless.
Rating: M for graphic violence. See the first chapter for summary and stuff.
A/N: Sorry this was a bit late. I caught a logical flaw and had to do some last-minute rewriting. Damn action scenes.

The Apologist
Chapter Three -
Gatecrashing

"Home is de hunter" he murmured as the keys slid soundlessly into their catch. The Mansion had never been a welcoming house, with its dark wooden panels and ornate furniture, and its vast entrance seemed to swallow him whole as he closed the door behind and headed for the kitchen.
The corridor was silent and dim and when he reached for the switch the lights stayed off. The emergency lamps, which should have kicked in by then, were dead as well. Quietly, he unsheathed the staff from the thigh holster and swung it open to half-length.
He took a roundabout route to a service staircase. Attacking the X-Men in their den was an exercise in creative suicide; intruders smart enough to break inside the Mansion would be targeting either tech or intel, and both were located underground. The elevator and the stairs were compulsory passageways and easy to survey, so he headed for the first floor and the laundry chute. It was the fastest route to the lower stories, and didn't show on cadastral maps.

He was halfway through the corridor when the world swung off from under his feet and the tiles surged eager to meet him in the flesh. He raised both hands to protect his face and dropped the staff; he saw it fall, swirling and swirling and swirling, as if into a bottomless chasm. His shoulder impacted hard; he lost balance, fell, and realized he had swung himself onto the wall.

Vertigo.

With eyes clenched shut, his insides churning, he staggered, feeling for the staff - Marauders! - and crawled away, as slow as an old man - Marauders in the Mansion! - picturing himself, dazed and sluggish, into the crosshairs of a thousand snipers. But no shot came.

Alone now?

He took cover, flattening against the wall. Vertigo's power was dimmed now that she couldn't see him; that helped the nausea a bit - now he knew he was standing still, even though his spinning head wouldn't have it. And he had her position, on the landing, behind the column, give or take a yard or two. Now, a bit of luck was all that he asked for.

Ears ringing, he drew a new deck from his pocket. The cards were flat and glossy, and slided well against each other. He charged them until they sizzled against his fingers like Roman candles. He dove headfirst from behind the corner and skidded on the floor. The moment he went past the corner, the room capsized, his body tried to follow, and his throw went wide off the mark.
Never mind. The cards spread like a swarm of locusts as they left his hand, crackling with energy. The balcony collapsed and the stairs erupted in a crimson conflagration, catching the landing between them like a pair of pinces. He couldn't hear the scream through the hysterical humming that was making his head implode, and only knew he'd scored when the room gave a last unsettling eddy and then stopped. It took a bit more for all the splinters to come down.
He felt for his staff, pulled up, and spoke to the settling dust.

"Girl, you sure make a man's head spin".

He shook the dizziness from his head and went on, leaping and crawling among the wreckage of the stair like a giant sider-wolf. Vertigo's job was to make sure no witness was left; the real killers were way ahead, doing their worst. Early morning... some of the X-Men would be caught still in their sleep.

He stole a look into the men's wing: a body lay in the corridor, wearing only half of a gold-and-blue uniform. The fair hair and lanky build gave him away; his neck was twisted at an impossible angle, and Gambit lost no time checking for a pulse.
The door to Rogue's suite, busted, hung at an angle from broken hinges, and his back straightened with relief. Rogue was not the one to indulge in subtleties like a locked door when lifes were at stake. But the ladies' wing was quiet, meaning that the fight had moved on.

The second body was quite a piece of loganwork, and recent, too.
It also explained why Vertigo had been left without a support. Dark blood was still pooling in Scalphunter's open chest, and his exposed innards flowed in a cascade of shiny greens and purples from his slashed belly onto the floor; the home team had evened the score. He suppressed the smirk that was fighting for a place on his mouth.

Stay in motion. Dey need y' farther on.

Speed was life, speed was everything. There was no sense in taking off the sweepers if Arclight and Sabretooth went on with their business just a few meters ahead, no points from his victory if it let him the only one standing upon a heap of corpses.
He ran, following the signs of the battle, expecting an ambush behind every corner, but there was no rearguard left. He passed the Z'noxx chamber on the way to the hangar and something, a premonition, made him cast a glance inside.

It looked like the room had been knocked over; all the heavy machinery was piled and compacted against the far wall. Trapped behind a 5-ton condenser, features contorted with pain, mouth still open in a scream that would never be ended, there was Rogue.

He ignored the high-pitched shriek inside his head, ignored his brain that was fighting for shutdown, and reluctantly worked out the events. This was Scrambler's doing; Joseph must have been affected first, turned into a living magnet for anything metallic in the room. Rogue had tried to shield him with her own body, until a second pass from the Marauder had taken out her invulnerability. All that could be seen of Joseph was blood trickling from underneath the heap and pooling in a corner.

There was nothing he could do, so he made to move and found himself unable to; forced himself to picture a world that went on without her and found no desire to be in it. He felt robbed, empty, unfinished. There had to be more to the end of their road than just this silent screaming.
In a sense, it made everything easier. No reason for being cautious, no need to show a decent veneer however thin... nothing to make him falter if it came to throw himself down the line. She was past caring; all his secrecy had come to nothing. But there were others...

Move on. Move on. Go to pieces on y' own time.

The thought pried him away from the door just in time. Something unsubstantial whisked behind him, and he recoiled with the instinct of a lifetime. His backbone sprained, but the punch that was to bash his head broke against the door frame; a snowfall of plaster came down from the ceiling.
Gambit turned, grinning among the tears. It took swiftness to catch him by surprise, and Arclight was a rough bitch with the grace of a spastic hog. He told her that, and worse, parrying and dodging and caroming across the disheveled room as she charged after him, bellowing with increasing fury the closer she got, until she lost the last shred of caution and came within reach of his staff. He caught her backhand, right above the collarbone, crushing her windpipe, and that was that. Right wrist dislocated from the recoil, but it was worth it. He left her gargling on the floor, paid one last look at the dead and dashed across the corridor.

After that, he barely noticed the bodies. Warren, a single wing still pointing towards the sky; Scrambler, beyond his vengeance now, wrung out like a rag; Prizm, no more than a layer of crystal dust on the floor, shining like castor sugar; Betsy, a bloody deja vù writhing on the floor, her eyes dull, too weak to keep her guts from jutting out with every breath.

He skidded on the icy floor on his way down, and nearly piled up against the hangar doors. The X-Men had mounted a last resistance around the carcass of the Blackbird, turning a trap into a stronghold; Stormy was hovering in the eye of a catabatic snowstorm, battering the Marauders with a 170mph gale. The intruders had been forced to fall back and were now crawling for cover - all except Harpoon.
Driving sleet and icy winds couldn't hold back the Eskimo; although bare-armed and buried halfway in the snow, he had a harpoon in his hand and a spare one ready at his side. Soon as the gale subsided, he would take his chance.

Gambit acted first; fair warning was never an option. His footsteps muffled by the snow, he slid behind him, grabbed the spare harpoon with the good arm and skewered the Marauder, powering up as he went. There was a shudder and a sharp intake of breath as charged steel went through Harpoon's armor and ribcage.
"Ever wondered what dose whales felt?" Gambit grunted. The answer was lost in the shrapnel of bone shards.

Now, for the last ones. Storm had burnt herself out; the remnants of the tempest she had summoned were swept away and he could see two surviving Marauders peer out from their dens. Blockbuster was on the far side of the hangar, Riptide sneaking among the battered hulk of the maintenance crane, getting into position above an unsuspecting Cyclops. Gambit threw caution to the wind: he shouted a warning and ran, goofily, in the knee-deep snow. Riptide fell, hit dead-center by an optical blast. The snipers were all down, any Marauder left would need to get close and personal to do him harm, so it was safe to...

He was midway there when everything went misty red. Something warm and tacky sprayed his neck, the air in his lungs was punched out, he flew several feet and landed in a heap like a stringless puppet.
"Merde..." he wheezed, writhing on the floor. His whole head was ringing, his arms wouldn't prop him up, and everything south of his chest was a smoldering dead weight. Oblivious to all this, a part of his brain that had been keeping tally of downed Marauders was wondering why it didn't add up.
Screams and booms echoing in his ears. The fight was going on without him. Perhaps if the X-Men were hitting back he could crawl out of sight... He told his legs to push him forward, but the message never reached; he was upturned like a turtle and screwed just as much.
A growl, nearby. He turned; Sabretooth, walking on all fours like the beast he was. Creed bared a hedge of fangs and went for the jugular; with arms like wet cement, Gambit dug both hands into the pockets of his duster, and pulled them out full of glowing change. From this close, they made a sizzling sound, like frying bacon.

"Bite me, pussy" he whispered right into Creed's left ear as the jaws clenched on his throat.

The wail of the ending siren found him lying on the floor. He took his time before rising from the vanadium laced tiles, a little confused, as always, at the sight of himself and his battle dress in pristine condition, not battered and bloodied. He leaned onto the staff and drew a long sigh. The outcome had not changed - apparently, it never would. Too many Marauders and spread over too large an area. Several X-Men would be buried that day; he would be one of them. And this was one of the best times - he had managed to get Creed.

Much of dat.

The mission score appeared on the far wall in large red capitals, while the aural interface delivered a summary of his dismal performance.
"Property damage, 5 penalty points. Engagement in unfavorable conditions, 5 penalty points. Belated or absent backup request, 10 penalty points. Poor teamwork, 15 penalty points. Lethal use of powers (3x), 300 penalty points. Self-destructive use of powers..."

"Shuddup. An' shuddown." Easy, in hindsight; easier still for a computer. Then again, what did Cerebro know? The simulation, designed after mission logs from the Massacre, was not 100 correct. The real Harpoon was left-handed, Scrambler was taller, Blockbuster would cuss left, right and centre as he fought. And then, of course, the greatest inaccuracy.
The number of Marauders had been misreported.

He picked up the cards he had dropped on the floor, anticipating a hot shower. It didn't matter whether it was real or simulated; the stench of blood always made him sick to his guts. But first, a trip to the Control Room, because he was really curious to know who had managed to take him by surprise like that.
His blood froze when the door cycled open and he found himself face to face with the man inside. Cyclops swung in the chair and stared at him for a full second.
"Excellent performance, Remy... Or terrible. Depends."

Merde.

"How long you been in de Control Room?" Gambit asked, wondering whether the red flares always pulsated beneath the visor like that. No, maybe it was the dim light.
Or maybe that was Cyclops' way of looking daggers.

"Since you took out Arclight." Scott sat up and made to leave. "Marauders in the Mansion... The sim you can't win. I wondered who was running the damned scenario over and over and over."

For an instant, Gambit toyed with the idea of telling the truth. But his lips refused to form the words.
"Sometimes y' can learn more 'bout a man by de way he loses" he offered instead, lowering his head. The door had closed behind him, and he couldn't distance himself enough from Summers in the cramped space.

"Like the Kobayashi Maru test?"

The Cajun produced a strained smirk. "Funny, Scott, Y' never struck me as a Trekker. No, Gambit was thinkin' real life."

"All things considered... I think you did fine." The last words were muttered in a barely-audible tone.
Gambit frowned, like he couldn't believe his ears. He had just received Field Leader's congrats for a mission in which he had been killed.

Scott's lips were strangely curled when he spoke again, as if he'd caught him cutting himself, or drowning kittens. "The standard win conditions hardly apply to this scenario. However, Gambit... isn't it a bit... I don't know... morbid?"

It was all the Cajun could do not to clam up again; the previous acknowledgment had left him unsettled. He knew he owed the man an explanation, but words could not express what he was feeling: that the Danger Room was nothing but fun and games unless one acted out his fears, faced them, gauged...
"Need an extreme situation... just have to know. Can I watch de log?"

"Help yourself" Cyke conceded, beckoning towards the chair. But Gambit didn't bother with sitting; he was already typing at the consolle, selecting cameras and frames. After a minute, he was staring at the screens with his mouth dry.
The face of his assailant was never in light, but it didn't matter. If the red glowing eyes hadn't given him away, the glowing cards in his right hand surely would.
"You've changed parameters" he said.

Scott nodded slowly. "An extreme situation, like you said." Behind the ruby quartz mask, his expression was inscrutable.

Gambit straightened and brandished his bo staff with white-knuckled hands, the previous appreciation vanished. Nothing would be sweeter than beating Summers to a pulp. Right. Fucking. Now.
"You put Gambit in de Red Force..." he hissed, his voice coarse.
Cyclops held his ground, staring back. There was a lot going on behind those ruby lenses that he couldn't make out. Anger, disappointment, even... regret?

"I thought we were way past dat shit" the Cajun pressed on.

"I did, too. Until Psylocke came out of... whatever you did to her."

Psylocke? Oh, no, no...
Cyclops stood up and left the room, passing unpunished by a very crestfallen Gambit.
"Meet me in the War Room in an hour."

There was no one else in the locker room, but he chose the farthest stall, facing the wall all the time. As a rule, he avoided the communal showers, no matter whether Hank and Logan turned up their sensitive noses at the Cajun sneaking away after a Danger Room workout, sweaty and smelling.

He didn't want them to see the scar. It had healed well, and was thin and faint, so faint that it took all his concentration to discern the shallow discolored ridges, and just because he knew they were there. Somewhere in his head he acknowledged he was just being paranoid: maybe they would never see it, probably they would never ask him. After all, they had never asked about many things. But he preferred to avoid the subject, rather than telling yet one more lie.

One more lie?
Like getting caught blindsided by Stormy like an apprentice, concocting the lamest story ever, and see her gather all her will to pretend she believed it?
Like charming Psylocke into forgetting what she had seen in his mind, forgetting she had ever been in there, and lose everything as his spell retorted against him?

He scrubbed himself again and again under the hot water jet. But the scar wouldn't go away.

Next: Truth or consequences.