Chapter Eight: Comprehension
Jean Grey-Summers nibbled on the inside of her cheek as she levitated Psylocke's unconscious body onto the medbay bed for Hank. Her eyes darted from him to Betsy and back again. She tasted the thin, copper taint of blood on her tongue and suspected that she'd have a nice ulcer on the inside lip when she was done.
Across the medbay Bishop was sitting on the side of a bed rubbing his head over the bandages encasing his skull. To the say the atmosphere in the medbay was tense was quite the understatement.
'Jean - what the hell happened?'
Scott strode into the medbay and even though his eyes were, as always, shielded from view by the visor, she knew that his keen gaze was sweeping over both X-men on the beds with Hank hovering between them as he checked them for the most severe injuries.
Jean knew she had waited too long to reply when Scott turned his face directly to her and gently prodded on his side of their psychic rapport. He knew she was shielding from him but, the truth was, they both did that from time to time. It was just not practical to remain in constant psychic contact all the time. There was such a thing as privacy after all.
Jean?
She winced; It's a real snafu Scott. I can't explain now. I need to find out what damage Betsy suffered first.
Hank glanced over to her then, his expression eloquent without words. Jean nodded and moved forward. 'What do you need, Hank?'
He smiled briefly, 'If you would be so kind as to triage our dear resident Ninja's minor wounds? I need to check on the developing cranial x-rays. Psylocke seems to have a rather impressive contusion to the side of her cranium. I dare say caused by a blunt metallic object, much in the same nature as a adamantium bo-staff.'
He shook his head ruefully but Jean could see the simmering anger hidden beneath the bluff words. Hank was a healer; a peaceful man. He detested violence and simply could not countenance how two people supposedly on the same side could do this to each other. Jean also knew that Hank could not guess at what could have possessed Gambit to leave Betsy unconscious and bleeding and injure another teammate in his flight from the mansion. He met Jean's eyes and his own were tired. 'I fear she may have a skull fracture.'
Jean floated towards her some gauze, padding and disinfectant, 'Leave it to me, Hank.'
She was not trained in anything more advanced than field first aid, but her powers made her invaluable to Hank as a medical assistant. She could sense when patients were regaining consciousness, and in the case of some of her teammates with particularly volatile powers and temperaments, her powers could contain theirs if they happened to wake up in rambunctious mood.
Scott drifted over and watched over her shoulder, helping her cut the gauze strips as she began the work of cleaning Betsy up so she could decide what needed to be patched up and what didn't.
'Fuck, what were they trying to do, kill each other?'
Scott rarely cursed but Jean decided that cursing was acceptable at this time. In fact she could think of a number of choice words much more appropriate that were just dying to trip off her own tongue. Of course she kept them to herself; she had a reputation as a nice, polite middle class den mother to maintain after all.
'I don't know Scott. Sometimes I think that everyone in this mansion has gone mad. We all seem to be at each others throats constantly.'
They had all seen the security recording of the entire fight in the Danger Room. Although the audio had been switched off so they lacked a narrative to explain how what seemed to have started as a sparring match had turned into a battle for blood. Jean tightened her lips on her own anxiety and confusion.
Betsy didn't look too bad once Jean had cleaned the dried blood from her face; her worst injury looked to be the head wound. In fact, in the recording of the fight it had seemed like Gambit had been mostly fighting defensively – at least in the beginning.
'You're thinking too hard Jean. What's your read on this situation?' Scott asked her quietly. He had always valued her input, even before they became a couple. That was one of the reasons she had been attracted to him in the first place.
'I saw those tapes honey, despite what Warren says, Psylocke was goading Gambit. Even without the audio that was clear; she was the instigator and she seemed to be deliberately trying to make him lose control in the fight.' He added and his voice was thick with frustration.
'I think….I think Betsy was trying to make him so angry his psi-shields would weaken. He needs to concentrate to maintain them and high emotion tends to make him project more than he might realise.'
Jean admitted carefully, knowing that she was very limited in what she could say without breaking the promise she had made to Charles.
Despite everything, despite what Onslaught had done to destroy the trust she had given to Charles all these years, she still loved and respected the man. A man who, despite being flawed as all humans were had done his best for her since she was ten years old. She wasn't sure she would ever be able to grant him the blind trust she once had but Jean still honoured the promises she had made to the professor. Especially when it came to the secrets he had learned about other team members.
Scott frowned and Jean could feel the snap and crackle of his thoughts as he tried to think things through; analysing and interpreting all the available facts to find the answers. She smiled; she loved the spark and friction of his thoughts.
'So you think her objective was to breach his shields?' he asked finally. 'Still, why would doing that have knocked her out? We all saw the tapes; she collapsed after she'd penetrated his mind with her psi-blade.'
'Charles warned me once not to try Gambit's shields. Apparently his mutation doesn't just make him difficult to read, it makes any in-depth telepathic contact painful for both him and the telepath. I think Betsy ended up hit by the backlash – that and Gambit smacked her with his staff.' Jean added flippantly. 'You know how hard he hits with that thing.'
She let out a breath and only then realised how angry she was. She began to fuss with Betsy's cuts and bruises again as a means of distraction. Scott handed her another band-aid as she cleaned the grazes on Betsy's knuckles. He didn't interfere with her slightly frustrated mothering. He knew she needed to work through things in her own way and would patiently wait it out with her.
'I didn't think it was possible to break Gambit's shields?' Scott queried after a while.
'It's possible Scott. I could do it if I really wanted to.' Jean admitted, 'But it would be the same as what Charles did to Magneto aboard Avalon. It would be like ripping into his mind and trying to tear his psyche in half.' She sighed, 'I can't imagine why Betsy would ever dream of doing something like this.'
'Really?'
Scott latched onto this admission as a possible clue to Gambit's behaviour after he had regained consciousness. 'Is it possible Gambit wasn't thinking rationally when he ran? Could the breaking of his shields have made him attack Bishop?'
Jean hesitated; she didn't know what to say. It was incredibly frustrating that the audio feed had been silenced on the tapes. If only they could find out what the two had said to each other, they might then know what had happened!
When Jean had seen the simulacrum of the Morlock Tunnels in the tapes her stomach had taken a nose dive to her knees, and she didn't think she would ever forget the look of sickened horror that painted Gambit's features. Jean had always thought of Gambit as a jaded and emotionally stunted man; why would the massacre, an event he had no part in, bring forth such a reaction from him – and why had Betsy used it in the fight?
'What aren't you telling me, Jean?'
Scott asked her quietly, resting his hands on her shoulders and pressing a kiss to her head. The gesture told her that he wasn't hurt that she was keeping things from him but that he expected a good answer as to why. Sadly she wasn't sure she had one to give.
Rogue stood in the empty room and shivered; the sense of loss, of grief, she felt actually surprised her. In the last four months since she'd returned to the X-men she had made it her bloody-minded mission to excise all consideration of his existence from her mind. She'd done her best to act like he was nothing and no one and she didn't care a whit if he lived or died or disappeared tomorrow.
Now he had it felt like the foundation of her soul had just been torn loose and the emptiness in her heart seemed to echo throughout the room.
Rogue had been in this bedroom plenty of times in the past; she'd poked into all the nooks and all the crannies and she'd made a point of regularly checking to make sure the small collection of pot plants Ororo had given to Remy remained alive and mostly healthy. Lord knew Remy wasn't capable of supervising the healthy growing of a cactus without careful nagging.
Walking over to the book shelf where the plants were lined up it didn't surprise her to find them brown, withered and wilting. The soil in the pots was bone dry and in one case a cobweb spread over the dirt like a film of silken grey. She shook her head ruefully; she had no doubt in her mind that Ororo would just replenish the plants and try again like she had so many times in the past.
Rogue sucked in a sharp breath as she realised that 'Ro wouldn't be doing that anymore because Remy wasn't coming home. He was gone and already the void he'd left ached inside her. She'd pushed him away for months; she'd deliberately done all she could to make him hate her because then she'd feel justified in hurting him, but all the while she'd clung to the faintest hope that one day, somehow, he'd fix it all and they could go back to the way they had been.
Remy wasn't going to be fixing anything now; that was clear. He was done with them and he'd burned his bridges when he left Betsy bleeding on the Danger Room floor. Wrapping her arms around herself Rogue looked at the gaping window, the method of escape, and the messy pile of torn and blood stained clothing abandoned on the floor.
The duffle bag from under the bed was gone; both she and Storm had checked that first. Henri Lebeau's antique pocket watch and Remy's collection of Rosary beads were also gone. Of all the things in this room Remy would never leave that watch and those beads unless he had planned to return; they were gone which meant he was gone – for good.
Rogue sat on the bed and inhaled the faint aroma of stale tobacco (Remy smoked in his room but he did so by leaning out of the window – it wasn't foolproof but even Hank had had to accept that he could not stop Remy smoking in his own room). There was still that strange air of sadness in the room that had always been there. Rogue was reminded that, back when she had first joined this team and the New Mutant's had lived in the mansion, this room had belonged to the teenaged Illyana Rasputin, and there were few more tragic figures than her.
The décor didn't help matters either; Remy had lived and slept in this room for three years, and by his own admission his stay in the mansion was the longest time he'd spent in one place since his family ousted him from New Orleans. Still the walls were tired magnolia; neutral and impersonal. The furniture was serviceable but came out of a kit; easy to assemble and easy to disassemble. The same with the shelving he'd put up to house his art history books and the foreign language novels in Chinese and Arabic that she wasn't even going to guess at.
Everything in the room was designed and placed to be easy to remove if need be; it was transient and unassuming almost as if he'd always known he'd make a quick exit one day and the room would go to someone else.
Rogue reconsidered; the room wasn't sad because of the ghost of Illyana. No, it was sad because of the man who had lived in it like a squatter and never dared to call the space his own.
Her eyes were drawn once more to the scrawled message daubed in permanent marker across those sterile walls. She stared for a long time at the bloody handprint impressed upon the paint just below the words, where Remy had propped himself up to write his message. The handprint and the message spoke volumes but Rogue wondered if any X-man in the mansion would really take it to heart.
The message wasn't for them though; in fact Rogue was pretty damn sure it was meant for her alone or at least part of it was.
You do not have the right to judge me; walk a thousand miles in my shoes and you'll only go backwards. You will never know how my garden grows.
The judgement part she figured was a pretty darn clear fuck you message to her and everyone else in this house that had ever looked down on him; but she didn't understand the last part.
'What garden sugar?' She asked in a low voice as the shade slipped into the room and leaned against the wall beside the cryptic message. 'Am ah supposed ta know what that means?'
He shrugged arms crossed and shades over his eyes. He was wearing his trench coat over his dark suit today and the diamond on his forehead was more pronounced.
Rogue's fists curled in frustration. He'd been giving her the silent treatment all day; there was nothing worse than being haunted by a ghost who wouldn't speak a damn word and instead just looked at her like she shouldn't need to ask.
'Ah'm tryin' sugar but how can ah listen ta what ya have ta say if ya ain't sayin' anything?' She demanded and the shade just smirked at her and turned to walk out of the room.
Rogue was about to call out to him when she stopped herself; no one else could see him. If she started yelling after a man the whole mansion knew was gone she'd have everyone thinking she was nuts.
Getting up Rogue decided the best thing to do was follow him; maybe he wanted to show and not tell; whatever the case Rogue didn't want to be in this room surrounded by the evidence of Gambit's absence a moment longer. She drifted after the illusion as he led her deep into the sub basements of the mansion.
Jean gnawed on her inside cheek again, 'I can't tell you Scott. It's privileged information.'
Scott twisted her about by the shoulders and she let him, even though if she didn't want to move no one could make her. She looked calmly up into his face and could feel the thoughts sliding through his mind.
'You know what it is, don't you?' he asked her sounding more surprised than anything else, 'You know what Gambit's big bad secret is.'
It wasn't a question because he just knew her too well. Still he was wrong on this occasion; at least partly. All the same she knew more than she felt she could say. She had known more about Gambit than she felt able to tell her husband for over a year now.
She shook her head carefully, 'I only know what Charles told me.' She couldn't quite meet his eyes.
'Charles…?' Scott hesitated and then tried again, 'Then the Professor knew what Gambit was hiding from the rest of us?'
Jean slipped from his grasp and went around to the other side of the medbed from her husband. She concentrated on stripping off Psylocke's blood stained uniform so she could see what injuries might be lurking underneath. Scott backed off to give Betsy privacy and it gave Jean a few minutes respite to think about how much she could safely admit to.
Scott might be her husband and the leader of this team, but it was Jean Charles had trusted with the team's secrets. Sometimes she hated the professor for that. It was a responsibility she took seriously but one she had never wanted; especially when it put her in a position like this one.
'Jean….' Scott didn't need to say anything more. Jean's fingers tensed as they tracked over Betsy's ribs checking for breaks. She chewed on her cheek savagely. She hated lying; she was just so bad at it.
Satisfied that she had done all she could for Betsy, at least for the moment, she pulled the sheet over her sleeping form and crossed the room to her husband.
'Scott it took Charles two years to convince Gambit that he could be trusted with the truth, and even then Gambit wouldn't allow any kind of mind probe. All I know is what Charles told me and most of that I'm not allowed to tell you.'
'Allowed?' Scott was startled, 'Why are you keeping Gambit's secrets for him – and at a time like this? He just assaulted two teammates!'
Jean sighed. She wondered how to answer his angry questions honestly without making the situation ten times worse. What was she to say? She couldn't tell him the truth without telling him everything and she really wasn't sure that was a good idea.
'I don't know his secret!' she shot back, 'and even if I did and I kept it from you, it would be because that was what Charles wanted.' She pressed her lips tightly together and felt the ripple of Scott's reaction through their link.
She looked up at him fiercely, 'Scott, listen to me; Charles black boxed Gambit's file. He locked up the truth about Gambit inside Cerebro's memory banks. I'm not even sure I could access them, and no one who isn't an Alpha telepath can get near the black box files. Charles believed that Gambit's secret was worth keeping. That's all I know.'
As Scott was trying to process this revelation Hank pushed politely forward having returned with the x-rays and catching the tail end of the conversation, 'Oh my stars and garters. This is quite the intrigue.'
Despite his jovial tone Jean knew, because she could hear the echo of his thoughts, that he was shocked. All the original five, plus Ororo, knew what the Cerebro black box was. It was where Charles had kept his 'Xavier protocols' among other things. The protocols were a manual on how to destroy each one of them should that ever become necessary, and the rest of the contents of the black box were equally ominous.
The team had only found out about the protocols in the wake of Onslaught. Jean knew that now the two men before her were each wondering if Gambit's secret was of the same magnitude and gravity as that. Already the faint residue distrust they both harboured towards Gambit at least subconsciously intensified. They were now wondering if Gambit posed a serious threat to them all.
Jean wasn't sure what she could say to reassure them. Charles had insisted that Gambit himself was not a threat and Jean had reluctantly agreed that he must be sincere in his desire to fight with the X-men. Still, Gambit had now hurt two members of the team before absconding and she was forced to wonder if the professor had been wrong - or if perhaps something more sinister was going on.
Scott pursed his lips, 'Jean, I understand privacy. I respect Charles' wishes. But Charles isn't here and now Gambit's gone who knows where and is potentially very dangerous. We don't know if he's even in his right mind right now.'
He glanced at Hank for a moment and some unspoken understanding seemed to pass between them, it wasn't telepathic though so she couldn't decipher it.
'You need to tell me what you know.'
Something inside Rogue quelled when she realised where they were headed and she almost turned back and fled back to the anxiety rife chaos upstairs. Listening to Warren call Remy all the names under the sun and accuse him of all kinds of awful things would be better than this; better than finding the confirmation of much of what Worthington had to say.
The shade glanced at her over his shoulder and she noticed then that there was blood on the hem of his trench coat, his shades were gone, and his face was spattered in gore; his eyes seemed to burn with an intensity of pain that Rogue had never known. She stared into those eyes and knew that if she turned back now the shade would never bother her again; Remy would be gone just like she'd wanted him to be, gone for good.
Rogue pulled at a clump of curls rolling down from her head savagely as she hesitated, caught between a desire to just finally know once and for all and the fear that came from realising she already did know. She knew why he was leading her to the Morlock graves at the edge of the mansion sublevel tunnels and she didn't want to be confronted with the truth he wanted to show her.
Those red eyes, steady and patient as the grave, told her she could go if she wanted and he would not blame her; he'd never wanted her to see what he had seen, or know the horror he had known after all. He would never call her coward for running from what had never been her cross to bear. He would never blame her for judging him and condemning him outright because that was easier than truly tasting and testing the depth of his guilt and weighing his crimes honestly.
He would never blame her, but she would.
Rogue stepped forward, 'Ah'm listenin' sugar; Ah'm really listening now.' She whispered as the first tears fell.
The shade turned around then to face her fully and Rogue recoiled in horror; hands fluttering close to her mouth to smother a scream she did not have the breath to utter.
The shade opened his arms away from his body and his trench coat fell open. He was drenched in blood; it was so thick it looked like tar and it coated his face and his clothes and clotted in the loose strands of his hair as if he'd stood under the sluices in an abattoir. His red eyes burned into her and the runnels of his tears scored through the mask of blood.
'Dey killed de chillen first.'
All around and from nowhere and everywhere at once she heard it; like a wall of sound, a distorted fractured roaring beast of pain and terror. A thousand screams merged into one soul destroying echo. The peaceful memorial of flat stones laid out neatly in the grass Ororo so carefully tended eroded before her eyes. She saw fire and blood and the sightless eyes of butchered bodies gaping at her; too surprised to be afraid as their lives were torn to literal pieces.
'De coulda got in on dere own, de Marauders, but most o' de Morlock's woulda escaped dat way when de killings started; Essex din't want dat. He needed someone dat had earned de Morlocks trust to bring dem all to one central place. Dat way most o' dem would be dead in de openin' salvo; dey died in less'n five minutes.'
The trench coat slipped off the shoulders of the revenant before her and Rogue pressed her own hands to her abdomen as she saw, brilliant and lurid as the worst kind of horror movie, the huge tears in his flesh and armour; the mark of Sabretooth. The claw marks had ripped open his torso and torn at his neck; he bled from multiple points and his blood mingled at his feet with the blood of the Morlocks running like a river into the sewer waters.
'Do you know what it feels like to be de key dat opens de door to evil?'
The ghost asked her voice flat and empty but somehow riding the echo of the all the screams Rogue could still hear. The eyes watched her dully from a pallid face.
'I ran; found one lil' girl, wit' bones stickin' every which way outta her. Dat was all; couldn save anyone else, dey all died so quick…..all dose people an' dey not'ing but spoiled meat in less time den it take to tell o' it.'
He shook his head and it was only when his knees hit the ground that Rogue realised that she too was keening on the floor, arms wrapped around her body as she shuddered with the memory; the taste and the touch of death all around her.
'He tol' me he wanted samples; he tol' me he wanted to snatch dem and study dem. Essex lied, de devil lied, but you can't blame de gator for bein' a gator, non? Dis is my crime an' only mine.'
Rogue threw up; vomit scorching up her throat and scolding her aching lungs. She choked on sickness as she tried to force the memories away. She felt the blood and the death and the putrid scent of offal and opened bowels leeching into her pores, filling her up. She was a piece of this horror, this monstrousness; she breathed it, she tasted it, there was no divide between where this terror ended and she began. Blood coated her fingers and grew sticky and hard over her face. All she saw was red and black; all she heard was the inarticulate roar of carnage.
'Nonononono!'
Rogue fell onto her side and clapped her hands over her ears trying to drown out the sounds. She held her breath but death had crept into her lungs and her tongue was coated with putrid. She squeezed her eyes closed and saw the bodies staring back at her.
As an X-man Rogue had seen battle; she had seen warfare and she had suffered both for her genetics and her belief in the Dream. As a woman she had done wrong and known what it was to carry the guilt of misdeeds as a constant stigma. If she had never actually killed with her powers when she followed her mama Mystique it was more luck than restraint on her part; in her heart she knew that innocence was not something she could lay claim to.
Deep down Rogue had always known that she had meant to kill Carol and she had wanted to kill Dazzler; not because her powers were uncontrollable but because of her own hate and jealousy. She despised and ran from that truth everyday; an X-man should be better than that – she should be better than that. Still nothing Rogue had ever done, or wanted to do, could compare to the slaughter in the tunnels.
Rogue was not guilty of the crimes Remy was; she did not have the blood on her hands that steeped Remy's very soul. She looked up into those dead red eyes and the mutilated body that was more real than the perfect package he had shown her these last three years and she shuddered with total revulsion.
Rogue picked herself up; hands curled into shaking fists. She knew what she had to do. She knew the truth now and she knew what he had done. The Remy shade watched her leave the tunnels without uttering a word. She left him there, in the filth and the terror of his guilt without a backward glance.
She knew what she had to do now.
Jean recognised the tone of voice Scott used. It was Cyclops' voice, not Scott her husband. Still she shook her head; she was not the sort of woman to back down simply due to a tone of voice.
'I don't know anything concrete Scott – Charles kept Remy's confidence, he only told me what he thought I should know as another psi.'
She didn't know what to do! The situation was too precarious and saying the wrong thing could have drastic consequences……but saying nothing at all could be so much worse.
'Jean,' Scott sighed, 'In two days Gambit had planned to leave this team. I need to know if that was just a smokescreen or whether his choice to leave was completely coincidental to Betsy's decision to break his shields…'
Jean's shocked gasp cut him off. She pressed a hand to her mouth. Hank was also looking askance towards him; clearly Hank had been unaware of this as well.
'And, why pray tell, was I not informed of this development? Really Scott, after our conversation of a month ago what could have convinced you to acquiesce to his request? Gambit is not well; this action could be further evidence of his emotional degradation.'
Scott shrugged almost diffidently, 'I tried to talk him out of it, Hank. In fact I told him he couldn't quit, but instead I'd give him a supervised leave of absence. Logan tried to get him to reconsider. Hell, Ororo only managed to talk him into staying on for the month; he wouldn't even give her more than that - and Gambit always gives in to Storm.'
'He can't leave the team Scott.' Jean could feel her pulse in her head; she was cold all over. 'He knows that! Charles told him that he couldn't leave the team without his express permission. It isn't safe for him to leave.'
Jean closed her eyes and took a deep breath. 'What were you thinking Remy?' she whispered heatedly.
Jean's feelings towards Gambit were decidedly mixed at the best of times. She thought his relationship with Rogue was a mistake for both of them. She thought his friendship with Ororo spoke better of his character than any other single facet of his nature he had ever shown to the rest of the team. She thought he was probably a dreadfully lonely, unhappy man under his constant façade. She found him charming and knew he had a wickedly sharp sense of humour when he wanted to. She also thought he was inherently dishonest, untrustworthy, and had a very ambiguous moral centre. She liked him but she didn't trust him one iota.
In short he drove her up the wall and she often wanted to telekinetically punt him head first into Spuyten Dyvil Cove and hold him there until he begged for mercy.
Scott surprised her from her thoughts by putting his arms around her waist and nuzzling her neck in a rare show of public affection. He could feel her distress through the link they shared.
'Redd come on. What's going on? I need to know. Gambit could have walked out of here in two days time if this hadn't happened and I wouldn't have known I was supposed to stop him. Now as it stands he's AWOL and Betsy's hurt.'
Jean closed her eyes and tilted her head back against his shoulder, settling into his embrace. 'I know, it's just…..' she trailed off.
Bishop had moved like a shadow from his perch on the bed to join them; despite his size the man could move soundlessly and now stood listening intently.
'You do not know what Lebeau is capable of; I have seen what his madness can do. If you truly fear he is irrational then we must apprehend him; talk of motive is futile, we can discover the why after we have found him.' The man intoned solemnly.
Jean could not sense any real anger towards the man who had attacked him from Bishop's thoughts. Instead there was a strange sense of sadness and anxiety; both for Gambit and in response to what he might do without inhibition or conscience to stop him. She thought furiously over what she must do and what she should say.
Gambit had broken the agreement with the professor first. He'd tried to leave when he knew Charles wasn't here to stop him and Scott didn't know he should stop him. Remy had to have known what he was doing, and that infraction against the rules justified her own in Jean's mind. The situation had changed and in ways Charles had not prepared her for; she had to react to the present as the old rules no longer applied.
'It's Sinister Scott.'
She felt her husband's breath catch at the mention of the man who had caused them both so much pain, and who remained one of the X-men's greatest threats.
'That's all Charles would tell me. Gambit's secret, the thing he's scared of,' she took a deep breath and blew it out noisily, ruffling loose tendrils of her own hair off her forehead as she did so. 'It has to do with Sinister and what he did to Gambit before he came to the team.'
No one said a word for the longest moment but the three men's thoughts were deafening to Jean. She stood firm in the face of the maelstrom however and waited. Scott spoke up first, as she had expected.
'What did Sinister do to Gambit?' He asked very levelly. He was angry, partly because Sinister affected him in that way and partly because he was shocked to his core.
Jean shook her head, 'I don't know; Charles didn't know everything though he had suspicions. God Scott, Charles didn't think Gambit really knew what Sinister did to his powers….'
'His powers?' Hank interrupted, voice and expression keen, 'Oh my stars and garters.' He whipped off his spectacles, 'Oh my yes! Why oh why did I not see it myself? The evidence was rudimentary and yet I failed to draw the obvious conclusions.'
He clapped his furred hands together delightedly, 'It all makes perfect sense now!'
