Author's Note: This is shorter than I intended, and yes though it doesn't seem it, the plot is winding its way to a close. There are some important elements that I'm trying to really string together into a woven masterpiece without loose threads ruining the look of the finished product. Remember, patience is indeed a virtue. :) Also, this chapter holds my first TRUE attempt at an action scene. I've never done one before and felt the need to truly talent my internal movie theater so that I could try and get the whole thing JUST right. While I'm sure it is not to my exacting standards, I hope that it also is not weak and lifeless, since out of necessity there will be plenty more. That all being said, enjoy.
The world could be crumbling around them and in the end it didn't matter one bit to the electric company. Remy wondered momentarily if he could somehow argue with the utility companies that they, in all actuality, probably owed the team thanks for their very existence, which he would gladly accept in the form of waivers. He snorted audibly at the imagined awkwardness of that conversation.
Leaning back on both his arms, the Cajun stretched his lower back muscles allowing his gaze to travel past the stack of bills piled next to him on the floor to the windows along the far wall of his rooms. Autumn sunshine weakly shone through the glass, gilding the oak floors with its teasing fingertips and he fantasized about climbing out those windows up to the safety of the roof. The one place that years ago a person could almost guarantee to find a sulking wayward Remy LeBeau was now the one place that he could not seem to find the time for.
Muscles temporarily loosened, he pulled himself to a stand and dodged checkbooks and ledgers in a cautious dance until he had grasped the handle of the nearest window and inhaling deeply, pulled it up. A chill blast assaulted him, raising the skin under his worn T-shirt as an unconscious protest and he shut the window as quickly as he had opened it, settling for simply banging his forehead against the cool glass in a gentle rhythm.
"Never did I hope to see the day that Remy LeBeau became a prisoner." The voice caused him to jump away from the promise of freedom that shone through double paned glass instinctively before his mind could register the owner's identity.
"Eh, ain' no prisoner me, Stormy." Gambit shrugged and leaned nonchalantly against the wall, attempting to mask his frustrations from moments before. "Jus' doin' what needs to be done's all."
Without a word, Storm strode over toward him and grasped his chin in one hand, examining him like a mother would her child. She yanked his face down so that they stood directly eye to eye, barely a breath apart. Had it been any other femme, Remy would've sworn it was an attempt at seduction, not deduction. "You are not happy. You are restless." It was stated as firmly as if she had said the sky was blue. She released his face and leaned back, allowing him a trifle of personal space. He shifted out of her reach, about to respond, but Storm stopped him, placing a hand solidly on his chest. "Do not lie to me, Remy. I know you too well to believe anything you are about to say." She smiled faintly, turning the accusation into a jest.
He smiled back and settled more of his weight against the wall. "S'true."
"What is true?" Storm stepped back further, tracing his frame with her gaze slowly.
Pushing off the wall, Gambit returned to his piles of papers on the floor, neatly avoiding making contact or meeting Storm's measuring gaze. "All o' it I guess, chere." He flipped open another check book and grabbed another sheet of paper off the top of the pile. "I doin' what I gotta do t' keep eveyt'ing runnin'. I ain' happy bout it. I am restless. An' I do feel like a prisoner to dese damn bills." The more he spoke, the more he realized how miserable he truly was becoming. This realization only made Remy feel more desperate to escape and more miserable about the fact that he could not. The responsibilities of leading the team had become his own damned albatross that he could not and would not shake. The weight of the hand that settled lightly on his shoulder barely registered past the tension that he could not work out of his shoulders.
"Oh Remy." Arms encircled him from behind and he felt a chin come to rest on his shoulder. "You really are out of your element, aren't you?"
"T'ieves ain' accountants, chere."
Storm's laugh was like tinkling bells in his ears. "No, they are not." She reached over his shoulder and deftly removed the bill from his motionless in his hands. "Neither are leaders." She whispered ever so softly in his ear.
He turned and caught a ghost of a smile gracing her lips and watched her slowly wink one icy blue eye. The only thing he could offer was a confused gaze in return.
"Remy." Storm stated sternly, moving from behind him so that she stood fully in his view. She crossed her arms over her chest sternly. "Who in this mansion is an accountant?"
He felt his eyebrows crease together in confusion, looking at her blankly. "Yah mean, Cyke didn't balance de checkbook…."
"I highly doubt he was ever aware of how much money was actually in the accounts." He continued to stare at her, for once unsure of how to proceed. An exasperated huff, that was so utterly un-Stormlike that it almost made him uneasy saved him from having to construct a response. "If you ask, nicely, I am fairly sure that Robert would gladly accept his job of balancing the school books back. He was rather chagrined that you had taken it away from him to begin with, albeit innocently unknowningly." She smirked and nearly laughed at the shock he was certain was painted all over his face. "There are two words I would have never guessed would apply so appropriately to our resident Master Thief."
Staring momentarily at the water bill that graced the top of the nearest pile, Remy ignored the jest and threw the bill up in the air to allow it to flutter down somewhere amid the heap of paperwork he had surrounded himself with. "Why didn' he say anyt'ing sooner?"
"When have you ever known Bobby to volunteer for anything if he didn't have to?"
Uncoiling quickly, Remy rose to stand eye to eye with his long time best friend. "Why didn' you say anyt'ing sooner?" He asked, glaring playfully at his long time friend, jabbing her solidly in the shoulder with a single index finger.
He watched Storm sigh and turn her eyes back down to the floor briefly before again meeting his gaze. "Because you, my friend, have a talent for making it look like you have everything under control. And in my own selfishness I yearned to believe it so. There had been so much upheaval, change….loss." Her eyes begged an unspoken forgiveness of him that he knew he would grant her in a heartbeat. "Since it seemed you were in control of everything, I was perfectly willing to believe it was so." She gently grasped his left hand in her own two. "I am sorry that I let you bear this burden alone for this long, my friend."
Slowly Remy wrapped her in his arms and squeezed, feeling Storm's own muscles relax under his grip. "Y'know I could never get mad at you fer somet'in silly like dis Storm. Y' gotta remember, dis 'Master T'ief' only knows how ta do t'ings de way he been taught."
A smile had returned to Storm's face. "I had not realized until very recently how similar the way you were running the X-Men was to the way that you had run the Guild." Silently she shook her head. "Had I paid more attention I would have realized sooner how much you were running yourself into the ground. I believe all of us are to blame."
"No blamin', Stormy. Jus' fixin' an' movin' on's all." He turned back and began gathering up all the bills and books and other paraphernalia from the floor. He had just grabbed the last checkbook when a thunder clap startled him into dropping a good portion of it. "What in de hell was dat for?" He laughed, turning back to see Storm retreating out of his doorway.
"I have told you time and again, do not call me that."
Chuckling he regained control of all the various and sundry bills and made his way to the door only to find a sticky note hanging from the jamb: "Oh and Remy," it read, "Hank would appreciate if you would forward all the individual read outs from Danger Room sessions to him so that they can be filed correctly. Kitty has expressed concerns that you have not been sending her the computer system upgrade reports to process. I have taken the liberty of setting Cerebro to forward all team performance reports to my e-mail. Lastly, please allow Bishop to manage the security system readouts and updates, he has been getting very hard to live with. Peace, Ororo."
"Peace indeed Stormy, looks like I might just be gettin' some peace an' quiet after all." A truly genuine smile gracing his lips, Remy LeBeau went off in search of some of his team members to inform them that their off duty tasks (that he had been woefully unaware of) were officially assigned back to them. Maybe, just maybe, leadership wasn't so bad after all.
The saying supposedly went along the lines that "misery loves having company around," or something to that effect. Whoever penned that line, in her personal opinion, should be shot. Especially if the author had anything to do with encouraging this particular pathetic bookworm of a mutant to follow her around like an untrained security detail. Frustration was knowing that she couldn't simply garrote the loser and be rid of him. Instead she was forced to at least play 'nice nice' so that she didn't find herself in a worse predicament, a la her Neanderthal of an ex-lover, than the current status quo. Brief thoughts of the torment Creed went through with that chip lodged in his brain during his final days enabled her to clench her teeth into a painful expression that only those who knew her well could translate as a smile.
Even though he didn't know her well, or hardly at all, the bared teeth did nothing to dissuade Ricochet from tailing her along the edges of the mansion lawns. The pressure within her entire system continued to build as the annoyance became overwhelming. Slowing her steps just enough that she allowed him to gain ground, Mystique stepped and instantly shifted her balance as easily as she typically did her shape, coming around with a round house kick aimed directly for his head. It was the only way she knew to tell him that she had had enough.
Mere millimeters from connecting, she watched him duck and roll to avoid the impact to his jaw. However, unlike what her assassin training would have had her do, he rolled wide to avoid her. Blood pumped through her body, making her limbs and soul sing for the first time in months. There would be blood today, finally! Using the momentum from the roundhouse she planted her foot and sprung before he had fully regained his footing.
Instantly she sensed more than saw the handful of gravel released from his hand. More beast than human, Mystique twisted herself mid air to avoid taking the flying shrapnel to the face, stretching herself out feet together in the lead in anticipation of using her speed and body weight to crush his sternum.
In what appeared to be a last ditch effort on his part, Nick leaned to the left and darted his right arm out, successfully grabbing hold of her ankle. She felt him pull her down, her momentum at that point working against her, his action forced her into a spin, nose diving into the now hardened earth. He leaned over her prone form and she lunged up for his throat, grabbing hold of soft tissue and laryngeal cartilage in a pincer grasp of brilliant death.
He swung out, landing two blows to her nose before forcing her to let go simply by grabbing her around the throat in a mirrored grasp and pulling her away from him. His arms were simply longer than hers. Mystique felt a tingle run through her trunk and felt it come bubbling out of her swiftly closing airway, distantly she recognized her own laughter over the pounding of her pulse in her ears.
Bringing a leg up she connected solidly with his jaw, which emitted a wet pop on impact, indicating dislocation or fracture. If she were having a good day possibly both, she thought idly. Right foot resting on his shoulder she began buffeting the side of his head with her steel boots, making contact with his left ear at least five times. Still she felt the grip around her throat. Pulling back the leg one more time, she feinted and lashed out with the left instead, connecting with his genitals in a solid crippling blow.
Almost simultaneously she felt herself inhale as her body crashed to the ground, now released from where he had held her, hanging mid air. Regaining her footing in seconds, Mystique toed Ricochet's body over to one side and lifted her left foot one last time, allowing the thin solid line of her stiletto heel to hover directly above his left eye. "You," she stated, lowering the point until she knew he felt moderate discomfort not yet bordering on pain. "You are obnoxious. You've done nothing but hover and pester me since you arrived here. What game are you looking to play boy?"
Watching his expression, Mystique noticed the instant and unmistakable change in the fire behind his one still open eye. It was something she recognized from a lifetime of viewing her own reflection in the mirror. This boy on the ground below her was no boy, and most certainly was no X-Man. Curiosity and an eager, almost impulsive urge to brew chaos among the mansion's inhabitants burst to life, engulfing her very soul for a moment in a bonfire of greed and insanity. Though still silent on the ground, Mystique removed her foot and hauled him to stand before her. "You will tell me."
Rather than the defiant stare or shameless explanation that she expected, Ricochet looked at her and laughed. There was a moment of blind red fury, that only years of experience caging her own inner lunatic enabled her to get past. Without a word, Mystique locked gazes with him, and reached for her hip holster. Silently she raised the weapon, one arm still supporting the majority of his body weight. Using her teeth, Mystique pulled back on the action of her custom .22 and chambered round, then leveled the muzzle directly between his eyebrows.
She grudgingly gave him credit for not flinching as the titanium barrel pressed firmly into his flesh. He seemed almost to consider what to tell her for a moment before opening his mouth and using his swollen, and apparently broken after all, jaw to the best of his ability. He quietly stated, "wheh you ah eddy to no, ah'll thell you." (When you are ready to know, I'll tell you.)
"Bull shit," she spat at him. "Who the fuck do you think you're dealing with punk?"
The smile that he managed to produce looked painful, and Mystique relished in it. "Noh yeh, uh thoon. Thoon youw ee eddy. Ith ahwoth thie."(Not yet, but soon. Soon you'll be ready. It's almost time.)
