Chapter 11

When the phone rang, Storm was the closest to the handset. She picked it up and hit Talk. "Xavier Institute, Ororo speaking."

"Salut, Orage. Good t'hear y'voice."

"Gambit?" Storm switched the phone to her other ear and called out to the Professor inside her head. Professor, Gambit is on the phone, if you'd like to speak to him. "It's good to hear from you, my friend. Are you all right?"

"Oh, yeah. Peachy keen." In the privacy of the Center's den, Gambit allowed himself a grimace. Everything was just fine, sure . . . except for the refrigerator of drugs that contained everything but what he wanted. "Had some close calls, but it's all in good fun."

Storm chuckled. "You are incorrigible."

"It makes me endearin'."

"If you say so."

In his bedroom upstairs, Scott looked up when his cell phone rang. He grabbed it out of its charger and studied the screen. He didn't recognize the number.

"Hello?"

An artificially cheerful woman's voice at the other end of the line announced, "You have received an international collect call from . . ."

"Rogue," broke in Rogue's voice, crackly with interference.

"If you wish to accept the charges," continued the perky voice, "say 'yes' now, or press one."

"Yes! Yes, yes, yes!" Scott practically shouted into the phone.

"One moment, please, while we connect your call."

A few seconds later, he heard Rogue ask, "Scott?"

"Rogue! Oh, my gosh . . ." Scott's free hand reached up to comb his hair off his forehead, as he couldn't help doing when he was stressed or relieved. "Are you okay? Is Logan with you? Where are you?"

Rogue started to laugh. "Man, it's great to hear you, Scott. Ah miss you a ton."

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, yeah. We're just fine, both of us. Just . . . wanted to check in."

Scott slumped back in his desk chair. "Well, I appreciate that. Although calling in like mid-June wouldn't have been bad either."

"We've kinda been out of phone service range," Rogue admitted. "And sorry about the collect call to your cell . . . the house line is busy."

The door of Scott's bedroom swung open, and Jean poked her head in. At the sight of the phone, she pulled back, but Scott shook his head frantically and beckoned her in. It's Rogue, he practically shouted at her across their psychic link. She's okay.

"Oh, my gosh!"

"What?" Kitty demanded, pausing on the main staircase and looking around for what had startled Jean. "What happened?"

"Rogue's on the phone!"

"Oh, my gosh!" Kitty sprinted down the last few stairs, headed for the Professor's office. "Professor Xavier!"

"What is it, Kitty?" Professor Xavier had just left his office, and was crossing the front hall to the kitchen, from which Storm had just emerged with the phone held between her shoulder and her ear.

"It's Rogue! She called! She's on the phone with Scott!"

The phone Storm was holding exploded with noise. Storm grabbed it and held it away from her ear. "I think he heard you."

"Who did?"

"Gambit."

"Storm!" Remy was yelling through the phone line now, but she seemed to be deliberately ignoring him. "Storm, let me talk t'her! Come on! Storm!"

"Calm down and be patient, please," Storm ordered him. "Which phone did she call, Kitty?"

"Scott's cell, I think."

"Vhat is going on down zere?" Kurt demanded, leaning over the railing of the upper landing.

"Gambit called!" Kitty told him.

"Gambit?"

"Wait a minute," Jean demanded, rounding the corner of the boys' wing. "What about Gambit?"

"He's on ze phone downstairs!"

"You're kidding. Gambit called now?"

She said it loud enough that Rogue heard it. "Gambit?" she demanded. "He called? Is he okay? Lemme talk tuh him, Scott!"

"Wait a minute; hang on," Scott ordered, heading out onto the landing with his thumb over the microphone. "What's going on?"

"Gambit called," Storm informed him. She was now holding the phone by its antenna, her arm loose at her side, pointedly ignoring Gambit's perfectly audible efforts to get her attention.

"Is he still on the phone?" Rogue demanded. Scott half-expected the phone to jump out of his hand and go tumbling down the stairs. "Scott, you gotta let me talk tuh him. Come on, Scott! Please!"

"Just hold on," Scott told her again, for all the good it did him.

"What are we supposed to do?" Kitty demanded. "Just hold the phones up next to each other? It's not like we have a switchboard in here."

Scott thought very fast. "Kurt, go get Forge," he ordered.

"On it, man." Kurt was gone a second later, leaving a curling question mark of sulfuric gray smoke where he'd been standing. Less than a minute later, he was back, with a very disoriented Forge coughing next to him.

Scott explained the problem in very few words, but before he'd gotten half way through, Forge already had that manic gleam in his eye. He snatched the cell phone from Scott and spoke to Rogue. "Rogue? Hey, good to hear from you. I'm gonna hook up the phones, so just sit tight. Somebody go get me a really small phillips head screwdriver!"

"Forge, you're a genius!" Rogue cheered. "Ah'll owe you forever." She was familiar with the miracles Forge could perform when armed with a really small phillips head screwdriver.

Logan, leaning against the outside of the phone booth, chuckled at her. The sun was just starting to think about coming up, and the very air seemed to be dark gray. "You are gonna remember that I need to talk to Charles, right?"

Rogue covered the receiver. "Keep your shirt on, will yeh? It's a collect call. We can stay on all day."

She could hear Forge muttering to himself as he did something with the phones. She twisted the metal-encased cord through her fingers, being very careful to not yank it out of the phone box.

"Okay, Rogue," he announced at last. "You're hooked up. Go ahead."

Rogue seized the receiver in both hands. "Gambit?"

"Salut, ma chère."

Rogue sagged against the side of the phone booth, shaking with relief. "Oh, Remy. Oh, mah gosh. Oh, mah gosh."

"You all right?" he demanded. "'Bout scared me to death, you crazy girl." She could hear his voice shaking with laughter. "What'd you think you were doin', runnin' off like dat? You have any idea how worried I been?"

"Ah'm okay, really. Ah was just goin' so nuts waitin' around for you, not knowin' if you were in prison or shot or what. Ah guess Ah just went kinda crazy. But Logan's been keepin' an eye on me."

"Keepin' you on de right side of de law an' all?"

"Um . . . Ah guess." She pulled the phone away and asked, "Logan, is it illegal to fistfight for money?"

"Sure is, the way we did it."

Gambit had to dab away tears of laughter with his sleeve. "You're kiddin' me."

"Ah wish."

"D'you know how much money I'd've paid t'see dat?"

Rogue laughed. "Well, when you've got a day off, Ah know this great place in Ketchican . . ."

"You crazy, crazy girl." Remy sat back in his chair, closing his eyes and imagining her. "Sainte ciel, I missed you. You got no idea."

"Wanna bet?"

"No way. Where's your hair these days?"

"Um . . ." Rogue pinched a bunch of it between her fingers and drew it straight down. "Bottom of my shoulder blades, looks like. Looks shorter 'cause it's curling everywhere now."

Long. Long and curly. If he concentrated very hard, he could almost feel it.

"Yours?" she asked.

"Handspan ponytail. Good for workin'."

"Ah'm glad. You look so goshawful with short hair."

"Ouch. Did you mean t'break my heart in two just now, or was it just an accident?"

Rogue laughed, overjoyed that he was teasing her, thrilled just to hear his voice no matter what he was saying. "You know me, Remy. You know me."

Of course he did. He'd been her. And it was crazy to think, but that moment of supreme understanding, the deep and abiding connection that they would always share, had been the result of Sinister's drugs.

Sinister's drugs, in Moira's cooler.

Sinister's permanent potion that he'd mixed up for himself, to make himself a second Rogue.

"Remy?" Rogue's hesitant inquiry made him realize that he'd been silent for too long. "Still there?"

"Rogue, you know you more t'me dan my own life, n'est-ce pas?"

There was a long silence at the other end of the line, but it was somehow a full silence, warm with Rogue's happiness. "Ah know."

"And I'd do anyt'in' in dis world t'make you happy."

"Ah know."

A peculiar sound resonated over the phone connection . . . a sort of suppressed whimper, the kind teenage girls made when watching the last five minutes of a romantic comedy, followed almost immediately by a sharp hiss.

Rogue stood bolt upright in her phone booth. "Kitty?"

There was a roar of gasps and laughter. It sounded like the entire Institute.

Gambit roared with laughter. "Dey put us on de speaker!"

"Kitty, why couldn't you just shut up for thirty more seconds?" demanded Amara.

"You're such a blabbermouth!"

"I'm sorry! I couldn't help it!"

"FORGE!" Rogue shrieked. "Forge, Ah'm gonna kill you! Ah am flyin' home right now and Ah am tearin' off every one of your fingers one at a time, you lyin' no-good glorified mechanic!"

"Okay, okay, calm down, I'm sorry." Forge was obviously not that sorry, because he could hardly talk through his laughter. "I'll shut it off."

The extra sound abruptly died.

Rogue hesitated. "How do we know he really did it?"

"Easy," Remy told her. "All I gotta do is announce dat Kitty wrote de name "Katherine Pryde Alvers" on de inside of her science notebook fifteen times in pink pen."

There was silence. "Dat woulda got her if she was still listening," Remy affirmed. "Dey hung up."

Rogue sighed. "Ah'm gonna kill 'em all."

"No harm done. We didn't tell 'em anythin' dey didn't already know."

Her sigh turned to resigned laughter. "Ah guess not."

A relationship in the Xavier Institute never did manage to stay very private for long. Just a fact of life. Gambit sighed, too, and slouched back in his chair with his head flopped back. "Ma chère, ma Rogue, ma bien aimée. I needed t'hear your voice."

"Bad day?" she asked gently.

"Un peu, ouais. I got . . . a big risk, starin' me in de face. I think I need t'take it, but . . . I just wish y'could be here t'back me up."

He could swear he felt her heart stop. "You be careful, y'hear me?" Rogue ordered, her voice fierce with fear. "Ah know you got your risks yeh need tuh take, but don't you dare let yourself get hurt."

"Don't you worry. One way or another, I'm comin' home t'you. I promise. I swear."

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"You tremblin'?" Remy asked.

"Yeah," Rogue admitted. "Gosh, Remy, Ah wish Ah could see you. It's gettin' worse every day. There's so much Ah wanna tell you . . ."

"Tell me."

"Nah. Not like this. It's gotta wait 'till Ah kin see you again."

See you again. We'll be together. You know me.

He had the drug made up for himself.

Dyin' an' goin' t'heaven would be second best to dat.

If any money, any skill, any treasure in dis world could buy you freedom . . .

He had the drug made up for himself.

"Where are you?" Remy demanded, sitting forward again.

Rogue hesitated. "Ah dunno if Ah should tell you. Logan's been pretty careful about coverin' our tracks."

"I'm comin' t'get you, Rogue. I got a present for you, and I gotta be dere t'see de look on your face. I gotta see you. Tell me where y'are, and I'll come."

"Are you kiddin'?"

"I wouldn't kid about dis."

He heard her sigh and her disbelieving laughter. "Remy, you crazy."

"Ouais."

"Don't you got work t'do?"

"Dis is more important."

She laughed outright. "Ah'm in Japan. Hokkaido island. Start in Matsumae and go up the mountain, and you'll find me."

"Hokkaido. Matsumae," Remy repeated. "I'm comin'. Wait for me."

A click sounded across the line. Hesitantly, Rogue asked, "Remy?"

"Rogue?" Forge's voice answered. "Looks like he hung up."

"Yeah, he did." Rogue took a deep breath to compose herself and come back down to earth. "Okay, Forge. Logan needs tuh talk to Professor Xavier, so kin you give him the phone?"

"Sure thing."

Rogue let the handset dangle on its cord and stepped out of the phone booth. Logan had retreated to the other side of the street, quietly smoking a cigarette to pass the time. "Your turn," she offered, blushing a little. She was not embarrassed enough to forgo taking his cigarette and snuffing it out against her wrist. She knew that tobacco could neither addict nor hurt him, but it was the principle of the thing.

Remy was coming. He was coming here. Her heart raced at the thought, and she felt dizzy with excitement and weak with happiness. He was coming here. And she would kiss him when he came, if determination could make it happen.

Remy dropped the handset on the side table and took the stairs three at a time as he sprinted back upstairs.

The others were eating dinner. Gambit generally knew better than to interrupt a meal—Cajuns took food very seriously—but right now he was simply too worked up to care. "Moira!"

"Was she home?" Betsy asked, setting down her fork.

Gambit ignored her. "Dat vial in de lab, de one Sinister was makin' t'inject himself wid."

"What about it?" Moira pushed back from the table, worry etched across her face.

"You said it was ready t'use?"

"Reasonably so . . . he was planning to run a few more trials, but—"

"Great. Let's go."

"Go do what?"

"Get de drug!" Remy found his right hand undoing the button of his left cuff. "I need dat stuff."

Moira stood straight up, knocking over her chair. "Are ye daft?" she demanded. "Yeh can't possibly be serious!"

"Mais si. Regardez. Sinister once gave me a pop of de short-term serum. And while I was on it, I could touch Rogue. It was pretty intense, but we didn'git hurt. So if her suppressant is twenty years away, den at least I kin take de permanent serum, an' we kin be together. It ain't perfect, but it's enough. And in twenty years, y'kin cure us both."

Piotr stared at him, rising from the table as well. "Gambit, you are crazy," he announced, with all the weighty finality of a determined Russian who could cover himself in steel. "I know Rogue's power. I have suffered its effects. But I have also seen how much she suffers in the bearing of it. You wish me to believe, my friend, that you would not regret restricting yourself to the touch of one woman for all your life?"

"People do it all de time," Gambit pointed out. "Most'a de time dey don't gotta use drugs t'enforce it, but most'a de time dey ain't mutants wid complicated powers, either."

"It's hardly a decision to be made on the spur'a the moment, lad," Sean warned him.

"It's not his decision to make at all," Moira contradicted. "That serum's in my charge, and I refuse. I absolutely refuse."

"He is paying the bills right now," Betsy pointed out, ever practical.

"He can take back every penny. No one must have that serum."

"I kin handle it," Gambit insisted. "I know de risks, an'de sacrifices."

"Good heavens, my friend," Piotr moaned. "How badly could you possibly want to sleep with this girl?"

Remy reached across the table and slugged Piotr in the face. Questioning his motives was one thing. Even being impertinent was hardly something to come to blows over. But insulting Rogue set off all sorts of alarms in Remy's brain, filling his field of vision with fire and shutting off his better judgment. So he hit Piotr, knowing perfectly well that the Russian could hit back a lot harder.

Before Piotr's counterpunch could land, both of them were knocked sprawling on the floor by one blast of Sean's powerful voice.

"Calm down, both of ye, and stop actin' like children," Moira snapped as she bent to pick up her chair. "And Gambit, don't talk nonsense about what you can and cannot handle." She stormed out of the dining room, and returned a few seconds later with a file in her hand. "Just look."

She spread the file out on the table, and pointed to the top of the first sheet. "This one is Rogue. When Sinister first sampled her, a year and a half ago, he classified her as a 1-Alpha mutant. Just one power: absorption, alpha-class because it can significantly affect forces outside her own body. Then a few months later he upgraded her to 4-Alpha. She'd absorbed three new A powers: strength, flight, and invulnerability. 4As are incredibly rare and tremendously powerful. But look at the update he made just a few months before his death."

Remy looked at the scribble that her finger indicated. The 4A had been scribbled out, and next to it was written one letter: O.

"An Omega mutant," Moira explained, her voice flat with artificial calm, "Is one with a power strong enough to affect the entire globe. The only Omega I've ever personally met is Charles Xavier. But Magneto was Omega, too, and Rogue absorbed him as easily as she would have anyone else."

Remy shot Piotr a dirty look. The blabbermouth had been telling MacTaggart everything. Gambit had hoped that the shared title of 'Acolyte' would mean a little more than that. Not much, maybe, but a little more.

"If Rogue can absorb Omega mutants, then she's an Omega herself. A world-ender. And though her absorption is her own and she's been responsible with it, I can't go handing it out. It's not for me to decide who should have that kind of power."

Gambit took a split second to evaluate his position and reorganize his thoughts. First: Moira was on strong moral ground; she had a case, and she wasn't about to be talked out of it.

Second: he didn't give a curse how right she thought she was, because he was taking that drug. He didn't care if it was dangerous. He didn't care if it was unethical. He didn't care that he'd been raised better than to steal from someone who had offered him hospitality. Right now, he didn't even care that stealing that drug would be a blatant violation of his bargain with Professor Xavier—he hadn't been sent out into the world to steal things simply because he wanted them, no matter how much he wanted them. But he didn't care, didn't care, didn't care. He was a thief. If he wanted it, he would take it.

Third: the direct approach wasn't going to work very well. Besides Moira, whom he couldn't, in good conscience, hurt, there was Betsy, who could kick his trash; Sean, who could knock him out cold from thirty feet away; and Piotr, the human tank. Three Alpha mutants who would happily beat him to a pulp to prevent him from coming anywhere near that cooler. Time to try a new strategy.

He cast his eyes down, avoiding meeting anyone's gaze, trying to communicate frustration, disappointment, and resentment with his body language. "Your decision," he allowed.

"I'm sorry, Gambit," Moira told him. "I wish you hadn't got your hopes up."

"If you want to take back the money you've given the Center, that's your right," Sean admitted.

Gambit shook his head. "I don't take back my gifts. Especially not when they're for helpin' people who need help. But circumstances bein' what dey suddenly is, it might be best if I didn't take advantage of y'hospitality no more. I'll get my things."

After Gambit left the room, there was silence for fully thirty seconds.

Finally Sean observed, "He took that well."

"He did nothing of the kind," Piotr announced. "Remy LeBeau does not give up so easily." He pushed his chair into the table and headed for the door, organic steel plates springing into existence along his arms and across his face. "If anyone needs me, I will be standing guard in the lab."

Piotr did not show up at breakfast the next morning. Moira found him in the lab, sprawled on the floor, unconscious.

There was a note stuck to the refrigerator door. I truly am sorry for this. It was signed with Remy's insignia. And, of course, the compound was gone.

Author's Notes:

Well, we sure made up for last chapter's lack of linguistic shenanigans.

Orage is the French for 'Storm.' That it is so similar to her real name is just handy. And salut, of course, is 'hi'.

Sainte ciel: Holy heaven.

N'est-ce pas? Isn't that right?

Ma bien aimée: my well beloved.

Un peu: a bit.

Mais si. Regardez: Oh, yes. Look.