Chapter Eleven
Rogue didn't need to wonder what the weight on her waist was this morning and she smiled as she turned to face him.
"You're making quite a habit of taking liberties with my person, Cajun."
"Sorry." He looked anything but.
"You shouldn't do it all the time though," she said, turning serious. "It's dangerous."
"I'm fine so far."
"But our luck can't last."
"I took precautions," he assured her, pulling the quilt up from the bottom of the bed and raising a leg so that she could see his feet. "I even wore socks to bed, do have any idea what that information would do to my reputation?"
Rogue laughed, despite herself.
"Damn you, Remy. Why is it that you can just push your way through all my objections? You turn me into some kind of foolish girl who can't think for herself."
Though her words had been in jest, they sobered him.
"I don't mean to change you, Rogue. I..." He couldn't finish that sentence. He wasn't even sure he wanted to.
"I'm just joshing with ya, Gambit."
"I know," he said, finding a smile from somewhere. "Well, I'd better get ready I guess. I don't want to keep the professor and Jean waiting."
"Speaking of, how did it go yesterday, I didn't get a chance to ask."
"Boring," he confessed. "But they finally got the blocks down. Today we're starting to rebuild them, so I get to be a little involved."
"Have fun."
The day was actually a lot more interesting than the day before. This time he was on the astral plain with them and had to visualise a lot of things. First he had to visualise the different aspects of his power, the healing factor, his bio-kinetic charge, his kinetic-psychic field, his empathy and his hypnotic charm. Once that was done, he had to visualise the different levels of his bio-kinetic charge.
Remy pictured fuel sources, ranging from matches to coal (light charges), to a bike and car engine, coal and gas power stations, and all the way up to a nuclear reactor. With that done, he and Jean then set about erecting mental barriers around the largest and most dangerous levels of his power, while the professor advised them.
Over the next three days they locked away the three highest levels of his bio-kinetic charge, first individually, behind three different mental barriers, then together. For different levels, Remy visualised huge steel doors, 5 meter thick concrete walls and locks that even he would have trouble picking.
Each barrier was linked to an important memory and it didn't escape Jeans notice that of the four, two memories were about Rogue. The other two were of his family, the day they had found him and taken him in, and the day he had finally felt that they loved him.
At the end of the first day, once the professor had left and Remy and Jean were back on solid ground, Remy got up to leave when Jean took hold of hid arm.
"Remy, I know this is a terrible invasion of privacy, and rest assured, no one else will ever know what I saw in your mind, but I have to speak to you about Rogue."
"What about her?"
"You love her."
Remy shrugged. "Don't change anything."
"Just because you can't touch, doesn't mean that you can't be together."
Remy gave her a wry smile. "That'd be one mockery of a marriage though, wouldn't it?"
"Marriage isn't just about procreation, Remy, it's a union between two people, for better or worse. Like it or not, you and Rogue are already united, and denying that is just hurting you both."
Remy looked away, uncomfortable. "Maybe what I feel isn't love."
"Remy, everyone sees it, not just me because I've been in your head. It's... I don't know, it's like your orbit yourselves around each other, you're constantly acting and reacting to each other, gravitating towards one another. I don't think you can be within five feet of her and not reach out to touch her."
"That's just the way I am, petite," he turned his charm on. "I can't help touching a belle femme."
"We know you're a flirt, Remy, but not like you are with Rogue. You'll give us a kiss in the hand or put an arm around our shoulders, or give us a playful wink, but when is the last time you pulled me onto you lap, or put your hands around my waist, or spent an evening stroking my arm because I just happen to sit next to you?"
"Your boyfriend shoots laser beams from his eyes, chèr. I ain't stupid."
"Then why don't you ever do that with Storm, or Kitty? You know that you treat Rogue differently and deep down, she does too. Have you noticed that she shies away from everyone else's touch, and when she does touch someone, it's minimal, a few seconds before she pulls away. But not with you, never with you."
"She used to pull away plenty," he assured her. "Maybe you people just give up too easy."
"Or maybe we don't love her in the same way you do."
"I'm no good for a girl like her." Remy said, hanging his head. "I'm a ticking time bomb, in more ways than one."
"You were a ticking time bomb, maybe, but not any more. You aren't who you think you are, you know? You don't see yourself very clearly at all."
"I think I'm the only one who sees me clearly. You all are just too good to see the truth, you want to believe that there's good in everyone."
"Remy, we are good people, and we do trust you but there are other people out there, people who you can't claim are innocent or naive, that love you too. They took you in when the rest of the world turned you away and even more remarkably, they aren't even mutants."
"You leave my family out of this."
"I can't. I think you need to stop focusing on who created you and start thinking about who moulded you."
"It ain't that simple."
"It never is." Jean smiled sadly. "Life is rarely black and white, but just because we're born one way, doesn't mean that we have to follow that path. Satan was once God's favourite angel."
Remy looked up surprised, but then should have knows that she'd see his families faith in his head.
"If the devil is a fallen angel, Remy, then maybe the 'white devil' can become an angel."
Having said her piece, she left him to his thoughts.
Jean's words reverberated around Remy's head for the next two days, whenever he wasn't working on locking his powers away. Was there a chance that he could turn his life around? Atone for all those sins? His family believed in redemption, not that thieves were exactly a good example of morality in most peoples book. Most people were wrong though.
The thieves did have a code of ethics. They never stole from the poor, or even the not very well off. They also gave ten percent of their earnings to the church, and never scrimped or lied about their earnings before God. Individual members also supported charities and his father alone must give away close to a million every year. And that was nothing compared to what the guild had contributed to things like the Hurricane Katrina relief fund. In many ways they were the Robin Hoods of the modern age.
Not that they gave everything away, by far, but the point was that illegal wasn't always the same as bad or evil.
Slowly he was starting to believe that idea could also be applied to him. Just because he had done evil things, didn't have to mean that he was evil.
He was finished with his mental shields on the forth day, and thoughts of redemption were driven from his mind for a while, because now they had to make sure it had worked.
Remy walked to a secluded area of the grounds, with strict orders to remove the collar once there and create the biggest explosion that he could. Remy supposed that at least this time, no one would be hurt if it all went wrong. The X-Men who couldn't fly were watching from an ice platform that Bobby had created close to the house, though it was almost twice the height of the mansion.
Remy saw a boulder which would make a good bomb, so he removed his collar and placed it in his pocket. He and bent over the stone, pressing his hands to the rock and charging it with as much kinetic energy as he could muster. This was different to when the theatre had exploded, because he hadn't tried to charge that, in fact he had tried not to, so he already knew that he had control of his power. Now he just had to check that he didn't have access to the higher levels of charge.
He had some control over how long it would take an object to blow and as he ran, he did his best to hold onto the charge, so it wouldn't detonate until he was safe. He threw himself behind a large tree just as the blast went off.
He looked out from behind the to see that the crater was around twenty feet across and about half that in depth. Not a bad explosion, he supposed, but certainly not what he had once been capable of.
It had worked. With a smile on his face, he headed back to the mansion. Rogue was just reaching the bottom of Bobby's ice slide as he arrived and she threw herself into his arms.
"You did it, Remy, it worked!"
The others crowded around to congratulate him too and the cheerful atmosphere remained through the evening.
As Remy settled into his own bed that night though, reality intruded once again.
It wasn't over yet.
"Why are you packing?" Rogue said from his bedroom doorway.
"I thought you had a danger room session?" Remy said, upset that he had been discovered.
"There's a malfunction with the sensors, Forge need to fix it before we can continue but that's not the point. You're leaving?"
"I have to."
"So what?" She asked. "You used us to get your powers under control, and now it's sayonara?"
He turned, looking hurt that she could think that.
"No, Rogue, but there's really is only one way to find out if it's worked," he said with a nonchalant shrug.
"That's madness!" she cried as she realised what he intended.
"No, cher, madness would be dragging you all into this. Madness is waiting until we're in the heat of the battle to see if he can undo what Jean and the Professor did. This is my fight, I won't drag anyone else into it."
Rogue could kind of see the logic in what he was saying, either Jean's barriers would hold, in which case he was a free man, or they wouldn't, in which case he was a walking dead man with only the illusion of freedom, and the ever present doubt at the back of his mind.
"Okay," she said with a sigh.
"Okay?" She was so stubborn that he had been expecting the argument to last for hours, which was why he had hoped to slip away, leaving her a note by way of an explanation. "Just like that, you're gonna let me walk out of here?"
"No, not 'just like that'. I'm going with you."
"Did you hear what I said about not dragging you into this? It's you more than anyone else that I want to protect."
"Don't you get it, Remy, I'm already in this. I've been in it from the moment you stole my heart back in New Orleans and whether I go with you or not, this is make or break for me too."
"Cher-"
"No, I don't want to hear it," she said, closing the space between them.
Though both were tense at the moment, the embrace was inevitable once they got close. She looked up at him, her eyes blazing with sincerity as she spoke softly.
"Besides, if this doesn't work, I still have a promise to keep."
"I'd never ask you to-"
"You don't have to ask, Remy. One way or another, you will be free, I'm determined about that."
Remy pressed her head against his chest and rested his chin on hers.
"I don't deserve you."
"I don't think love has anything to do with deserving, Remy. Love just is."
He wanted to tell her that he loved her, that he would do anything for her, but still the words wouldn't come.
Sinister's base was an old factory and to Rogue's surprise, Remy walked straight up to it. She was used to scoping places out before she entered, but she supposed that Remy had been here before and he was used to just walking right in the front door.
This wasn't where Jean and Scott had been taken to though, and she suddenly wished that they had told the others where they were going before they left. She knew the others would have stopped them though, and they both also knew that Remy needed to do this.
There was no one about so once inside, Remy headed for where he knew the lab to be.
"Remy, how good to see you," Sinister said, without turning to face them. He was about twelve feet away, bent over a microscope. "I see you've brought me a present."
Remy didn't answer and finally Sinister turned to them.
"I ain't here for that," Remy kept his voice even somehow, showing no fear.
He got a small glass container from his pocked and placed it on the table beside him. Sinister's eyes widened as he saw that his tracker was inside.
"I'm here to resign. You can no longer afford my services."
"I'm impressed that you found it." Sinister sounded smug. "You are a credit to your father."
"Yes I am. Goodbye, Sinister."
Before he could turn away, they heard the hiss of gas and saw Sinister placing a gas mask over his face. Remy lunged at him, hoping to tear the mask away for their use, but he was too far away and the gas was too potent. He collapsed to his knees, feeling as though he had no strength.
Remy had a high metabolism, so drugs didn't work well on him. Rogue however, was already unconscious and Remy crawled back over to her, taking her hand and gripping it with all his strength, which unfortunately wasn't much.
Sinister came to stand over them, looking triumphant even though most of his face was covered by the mask.
"Don't even think about undoing your psychic surgery!" Remy snapped, worried for Rogue. What if he'd gone through all this only to lose her. "A telepath a thousand times stronger than you took your block down and put up an impenetrable wall. I will never be at your mercy again!"
He saw the Marauders come in, blocking the exits but making no further move.
"I'd advise you to let us go, Sinister. If you do anything to us, the X-Men will come down in your like a ton of bricks." His words were slurred but he hoped he'd got his point across.
He could see Sinister's anger rising, and it both thrilled and frightened Remy.
"You dare defy me? I AM YOUR FATHER, I WILL NOT BE DISOBEYED!"
Remy actually laughed. "You sound like Darth Vader, pops. But you ain't my father, the only father I acknowledge is Jean-Luc LeBeau."
Sinister roared but Remy was having trouble clinging to consciousness. He realised that he had been foolish to come here, and even more foolish to allow Rogue to come with him, but the desire to see if he truly was free was so powerful.
"Rogue!" he cried, though it came out as little more than a whisper as his vision turned black.
