Title: The Ante
Chapter 26: Glimmers
Fandom: X-Men: Evolution
Author: Lucia de'Medici
Summary: When Remy LeBeau left Rogue on the shore of the Ripper's bayou hideout, he slipped a solitary playing card into the palm of her hand. It was a conciliatory gesture — an offer for friendship, an unspoken apology, and the beginning of a less-than-friendly game between rivals. A year has passed. The stakes have been raised, and Remy is not a person who enjoys entertaining the idea of folding before the bluff gets called.
Rating: Teen/Mature
Pairing: Rogue/Remy
Secondary Pairings: implied Gambit/Genny (Genevieve Darceneaux), implied Mystique/Destiny
Warnings: Language, angst, violence, potty humor, holy cow UST, and dark stuff abounds
Author's Notes: In which Lucia sneers, Rogue manifests selective personality quirks courtesy of Remy, Mystique is her bad self and Pyro gets smacked around a bit. Sorry for the delay. Finals, man. They're murder (Pun!) I warn you, this is a heavy, heavy chapter in terms of plot, motivation and literary devices – brownie points will be awarded generously to anyone who picks up the threads that weave through each scene, that create continuity, that tie together the finer workings of the plot up until this point. (There are loads.) Thanks are extended to Lisa725 for the beta.

---
The Ante
Chapter XXVI: Glimmers
---

Tell me about Paris.

A dead man walks like any other man – no shambling gait, no lurching movements, just the resigned acceptance of what's been done. And what's been done is the condemnation that'll send a soul packing for a holiday in torrid climates.

The ninth circle of hell must be like a sunny spring in northern France.

Sourly, Remy forced the tension to ease from his shoulders, though his injury twanged like a bad note on an off key piano, and Rogue's detached interest was a blanketing burden that ran a trail of fire up his back where he kept himself turned from her.

Blinking to smear the images that she evoked with those four words, he shook his head and laughed.

He could remember the stain of blood on the cobbled street before Notre Dame Cathedral; its wide buttresses arched outwards, bracing the megalith against the night sky when he himself shook with the weight of his decision. It was a choice that was not a choice, but a trade off, a feeble and passive outcry at the very last moment that spared Henri his life but made a victim of another.

He recalled the feeling of his brother shaking in his arms, straining against the gag in his mouth, and Remy, forgetting himself and fumbling with the ropes that bound him as he half-dragged and half-carried Henri to the girl's broken body.

Remy laughed at the irony that he should stand in judgment before Rogue for things he had never had control over. Yet, he could still see Genevieve as clear as anything, offering him forgiveness though he had never really cared at all for her. She was just a means to an end.

The metallic tang of blood and body fluids from a broken frame filled his memory, amplified tenfold by the laughter ringing around those horrid gargoyles with their gnarled faces, as Creed mocked him from his perch in their midst.

Dead man walking, although he did not stagger as he turned to study Rogue's expression, a cold smile twisting his features with the sheer paradox of wanting something so bad that it turned out to be the very thing he needed it to be; it was bitter medicine that still couldn't cure the parts of the self that had long since withered.

He deserved her. This was his penitence: a girl he couldn't touch but who could know his sins so well that she could cast him down to the furthest reaches and leave him there to wallow in the gore of his own creation.

Remy laughed because there was nothing else left for him to do.

---

A cold war, but a war nonetheless, is a strange thing. The very phrase should be enough to raise the hairs on the back of the neck, but seated at Jean Luc's desk, fingers splayed lightly over the blotter and grazing the edges of the tome, Mystique felt little more than the irritating twinge of having to wear the very figure that was responsible for a legacy of sapien stupidity.

It was disgraceful, the disguise, but the book more than compensated for the trouble.

Reverently, she slid her clipped nails beneath the beaten leather cover. Square, calloused finger pads lifted the temperamental velum paper, conversing with her in the hushed and fragile crackle of the centuries. It smelled faintly of must and disuse – much like the other volumes she had acquired recently.

The thirteenth was hers now, surely as Irene had meant for it to be. One slotted space on the bookshelf in the grand Victorian mansion in the Garden District, arranged carefully so that the tracks of dust were absent, and a trail of blood to follow were clear indicators of what Destiny's intentions had been.

"Clever, Irene," she hummed in a voice that was not hers, and at her leisure, Mystique admired the tight, hasty scrawl that fit snugly around the illustrations. Of these, there were many – variant futures of things she had seen before, futures Destiny had transcribed in a flurry of desperation before her world succumbed to the dark, and her eyesight finally failed. That had been many years ago.

Mystique bowed her head respectfully, her ponytail swinging forwards to drape over shoulder as she placed her fingers against the book – sullied by sapien hands, kept hostage in this sapien home – words, images, and futures at the disposal of such filth. Irene, whose very soul had been poured into the pages before her, this last aspect of an abstract that documented the many futures of mutant kind, had guided her well. Such a thing would never be wrested from her custody again, not to suit the dalliances of these mere humans who had stolen it to orchestrate their own ends. Each niche and nook, each incision into the fragile paper made by a frantic pen was sacrosanct. She traced the writing in the attempt to gather what warmth she could from the words Irene had left behind as her legacy.

It was hers now (and rightfully so), and because of this, Irene would not be mourned. Her death, Mystique had decided, was an act of self-sacrifice that should be celebrated. The Assassins, a foolish band of bandits who fancied themselves royalty by lording their power over a city that was little more than a fetid cesspool of sapien depravity – filled with whores and thieves and murderers – had only just begun to pay back their debt. The two impertinent men who had agreed to take Destiny's life, and...

Mystique paused, her fingers hovering over a page that drew forth a thin-lipped smile.

Their father, their duke, their leader; she mused, examining the sprawled figure of a man in a grey business suit turned black with his lifeblood. Amidst the rushed shading, a darkened form stood over him, yellow eyes gleaming in crosshatched mottle of black.

Marius Boudreaux, for a patriarch, had been far too uninteresting as he died. Returning home to his daughter from business, only to be killed on the outskirts of his own property. Pathetic.

These fools had no conception of a true war. They saw a little blood spilled and called it a tragedy with such ungodly politeness that she could not bear them for what they were, livestock reigning over their silly fiefdoms.

Such a kingdom, in the dispossessed state it was in, deserved little thought.

Mystique turned the page.

It was not the existence of the thing, not the rift created by warring parties that left it rent with silent conflict, baseline crimes, and baseline concerns, but the potential that it possessed.

It was the potential that drew Mystique to many a thing. Destiny knew as much, had told her as much, and it was Destiny, even beyond her death, who helped her realize that potential. Suffused with the urgency of delivering her vengeance, she had magnanimously drawn together the very elements that would service a revolution for mutant kind.

Such a kingdom could grow, expanding over many territories, but it was of little use to anyone if dominion remained in the hands of those foolish enough to assume they were still the dominant species.

Such a kingdom, Mystique knew, could not be ruled by swine.

Below the pedestal desk, an ostentatious eighteenth century monstrosity, the toe of her shoe brushed one such animal, and she pressed her lips together unpleasantly. She ignored the body's presence; the blank, rolled whites of the eyes staring vacantly and the pencil-thin moustache pressed against the modesty panel that covered her knees and feet from anyone entering the room. She continued her examination of Irene's diary with little thought for the corpse.

How the Thieves had come into the book's ownership was inconsequential. What Jean Luc LeBeau had inferred from Destiny's prophecies… Well.

It was for that troublesome inquest that her investigation required thoroughness, a critical eye, and absolute uninterrupted study for the duration that she occupied the man's office. Needless to say, Jean Luc had been something of a distraction himself.

The toe of her shoe brushed the body again, and Mystique delivered it a swift kick, sending it crumpling beneath the desk with a muffled whump!

The blood of the Guild leaders merely oiled the churning mechanisms of her ambition, she thought dispassionately.

She turned a page and inhaled sharply.

This was not a war.

This was the means to an end.

Mystique stilled her hand, hovering steadily over the image before her.

---

His footfalls muffled though his steps were leaden, Remy padded across the room, shutting the door with a muted click and turning to the nearest source of blunted pleasure he could suckle at without feeling guilty.

Tell me about Paris.

Out of every flossy bit of his sordid history, Rogue went and pulled that particular memory. He should have known; trouble comes in threes: first Belladonna, then Etienne, and now Genevieve.

Merveilleux, he thought snidely. And he'd been having a good day… at least, as good as it could get getting caught in his own game. What with Mystique probably skulking around the plantation house, Theoren comatose, Henri having fits over his inability to put two and two together, and a few dead Assassins, all he was missing was the partridge in a pear tree.

Getting absorbed by Rogue was the icing on the cake. Raking his fingers through his hair idly, he offered her a casual half-grin.

Dead man walking.

Rogue remained silent, watchful but nonchalant, one hand on her hip, the other toying with the hem of her tank top.

"How'd y' t'ink t' find dem t'ings, chérie?" he asked lightly, nodding to her new gloves and crossing in front of her. He felt her stare prickle along the back of his neck. Was it redundant to ask questions he already knew the answer to? Or did he just want to hear her say it?

Soundlessly, he collected two bar tumblers, the bottle of bourbon and slunk over to the table affectionately referred to by Lapin as, The Sacred Octagon. He slumped bonelessly into a chair as far away from Rogue as possible, not that it did much good. With his back to the door, his senses stuttering, Remy forced himself to relax, to pour without slopping liquor everywhere, and to nudge over an equally measured glass that he doubted she'd accept anyway.

This was all too cordial, Remy thought bitterly, swallowing back the bile in his throat and chasing it with a shot. He shuddered, but the images painted across the insides of his eyelids were steadfast, and the server room with its jarring, harsh light was unfriendly. Here, there was no subtlety of darkness and no protective cover to cloak himself with. It made him feel exposed.

Despite his assumptions, Rogue took the damned glass anyway, sipping at it and shrugging. She licked her lips slowly, appraising him as she swirled the amber liquid around, coating the sides of the tumbler.

Her only response was, "Spare a smoke, cher?"

Dead man doing the cancan over the graves of those he'd done wrong.

Remy sighed inwardly, waiting for the heat to rise in her face, waiting for her eyes to return to their natural shade of green.

Fuelling the empty weight in his stomach, Rogue's expression remained coy. Red on black eyes stared back at him – just like his own, just like the dark mirror she was – seeing things the way he saw them. Seeing himself as he saw himself. Merde.

He muttered, "Fresh out."

"Ya not gonna tell me, are ya?" she asked lightly, slinking around the table and propping herself up on the edge, one bare foot curling around the back of her knee. "'Bout Paris? 'Bout anything more than ya willing ta let slip? It's nearly enough ta drive a gal crazy."

Remy pursed his lips and tipped back the rest of the glass.

"Ya know, ya did eventually spill the beans 'bout yo' wife," she said idly. Remy matched her stare; his face was a careful, neutral, and pleasant mask – much like Rogue's own. She'd taken a dose of him with that kiss, he decided, enough to create a serious problem if she could mimic his movements and expression so easily.

"Ex-wife," he corrected, reaching past her hip for the bottle. He gave himself a refill.

"And Etienne," she added in a thoughtful undertone.

"Y' didn't want t' hear about Et," he countered, fixing his gaze on the small rack of poker chips on the table and then glancing up at her through his fringe only briefly, to find her arching her back and shaking her hair off her shoulders.

"That's where yo' wrong, Cajun. Ah want ta know ya, and part of knowin' someone means sharing even the parts of themselves they don't like lookin' at. These things find a way ta surface when ya got powers like mine," she hummed, offering him a small, secretive smile that should have sent him bolting from the room.

"It's funny, ain't it?" she continued. "That after everythin' ya done ta bring us this far, yo' the one who's afraid of me now that Ah'm not. Hate ta tell ya, cher – but Ah told ya so."

The curve of her back, flattering the long line of her throat and the subtle thrust to her chest, the shaded cleft below the modest cut of the tank top, and that tender inch of skin displayed just over her waistband kept him rooted to his chair.

For one unwholesome instant, he wanted to know what the flat of her stomach tasted like where her shirt rode up.

That would decidedly be a bad idea.

"Good t' see y' back in black, chérie," he returned easily, feigning nonchalance. His heart hammered erratically for a moment, though outwardly, he matched her – coy look for coy look.

Rogue extended her arm, rolling her wrist. "Thank ya for these," she hummed, flexing her newly gloved fingers. The black satin shone beneath the lights as she turned her arm, offering him her palm. "They're nice."

Dieu, she was toying with him. Watching the delicate movement of her fingers opening, petal-like and inviting, was enough to prompt him into downing another shot. He would not contemplate what her hands would feel like in those gloves against his skin while thoughts of what he'd done to Genevieve lingered in the periphery. He'd drown himself in the liquor bottle first. Damnit, why wasn't she yelling? Why didn't she bolt from the room, or slap him, or do something other than make his blood pound in his veins?

"S' just packaging. It's what's underneath that counts," he said, swallowing.

Smiling at him shrewdly, she murmured a knowing, "Uh huh," and slipped off the table. Her glass whispered against the green felt top where she set it down, but it was the smoothness of the movement that caught his attention. The brush of her baggy sweatpants against his knee as she slid past him sent a ripple of sensation up his leg. She was close enough for Remy to catch the lingering waft of her scent, close enough to forcibly restrain himself from giving into the impulse to grab her wrist and pull her into his lap, bury his face into her bare neck, and drown it all in the sweet satin dark of oblivion.

The thought made his heart stutter. Rogue's mutation offered him true reckoning now that his powers had failed him.

True finality.

"Ya know what's underneath, Remy," she purred, padding behind him, hips swaying lightly. Remy remained staring stolidly forwards, clutching the bottle of bourbon and contemplating the pattern on the back of the sealed deck of playing cards in front of him. He chose to ignore the fact that his kinesthetic awareness was thrumming stubbornly back to life in agonizingly small increments.

"The problem is, when ya invite something for so long, when ya make that offer – ya can't take it back if Ah take ya up on it. Ah took ya up on it, didn't Ah?" Rogue murmured.

"Sure did," he managed, bracing himself against the heat of her breath so close to his ear, against the voice that sounded like sugar and sassafras and made his mouth water.

The urge to tear out from the conversation came on strong enough to make his entire body tense.

He would not subject himself to her scrutiny like this. He would not offer himself up for judgment so easily. That wasn't the plan. That's not what he wanted.

Merde, she really could have drained him dry. She could have killed him if her powers were negating his own like he thought they were. The problem was that this… this femme… Well, merde! Remy snorted out loud, throwing back another shot to steady the slight tremor that had started in his hands.

He hadn't been willing to die for Bella Donna when he'd been given the opportunity, and just because Rogue offered up the same sort of thrill, it didn't mean he was willing to do it for her either. Was he? Or was this just another means to an end?

Stubbornly, his subconscious supplied its own two cents: A means to an end… Just like Genny.

Some sacrifices just weren't worth it, he assured himself weakly. He might as well find the nearest voodooienne still practicing human sacrifices and offer up his raw and bleeding heart. The effect would be the same.

"Then why are ya so angry?" Rogue asked quietly, her voice teasing.

He bristled, hitching a smirk firmly onto his face.

"M' not," he assured her. How could he be when he'd brought it on himself? "But why don't y' tell m' what m' problem is. Seems like y' got it all figured out, Rogue."

Silence returned to him, thick enough to make the air in the server room hum with the buzz of the electronics lining the walls. He waited, sipping his drink and wishing for a cigarette.

Relieved when Rogue didn't respond, he continued, "Dat's what I thought. Some t'ings are better left buried, chére, an' I suppose dat Paris is one of 'em. As it were, we got worse t'ings t' worry about. F' example, de fact dat…" he hesitated, unsure how to tell her about Mystique, doubting if he even wanted to.

He strained, forcibly trying to sense the space around him and dragging the moment out to brittle silence. In stretching his awareness far enough to reach Jean Luc's office, it did nothing but give him a headache.

"…De fact dat y' t'ink y' know what it means t' be part of dis family," he said instead, mentally making a note of the awkwardness and measuring Rogue's responding silence.

The subject change was quicker than lightening. Did she know? Was she baiting him to see if he'd break before she admitted that she'd taken that memory? That was the sort of thing he would do – try to coax out the information without letting on too much. Merde. She'd even appropriated his poker face!

Damnit, LeBeau, you mautadite coyoon, think!

Like most other circumstances, Remy found himself talking before fully processing the gravity of the situation or a feasible way out of it.

"Dere are t'ings we have t' do sometimes – jobs, contracts, whatever – t'ings y'll dream about f' years t' come because de choices forced on y' only gave y' a split second t' t'ink about," he said with calculated candor. "T'ings we're not proud of and dat no one else should see. Don't ask m' about Paris, Rogue. Don't ask m' about making decisions dat never really offered me much choice at all."

Exhaling, Remy shut his eyes for a moment, grateful that she was listening for once and not arguing outright. "You, of all people, will be de last person who I stand before in judgment for m' mistakes."

Her only response was the teasing prickle of cool air against the back of his neck.

"Rogue?" he asked, staring blankly at the bottom of his glass, contemplating whether or not he could stomach another refill this early in the evening. He was already getting loose-lipped. He whispered, "I can't be de person y' t'ink I am."

"That's where yo' wrong, Remy," she said softly, little more than a hush that ruffled the down on the back of his neck teasingly. "Ah don't think, Ah know."

"When m' powers wear off, when y' go t' sleep t'night and y' dream and y' wake knowing more den y' bargained for – when y' wake up and y' finally hate m' – I won't be dere, chére. I can't."

"Ya mean ya won't," she said coolly.

"Semantics."

"What if Ah want ya to?" she asked, her voice hitching for the first time they'd begun this conversation.

He heard the strained note of the question, the veiled meaning. She wanted him as much as he needed her, but where her reasoning was whole and pure, his was already suffering the patina of past transgressions.

Remy shut his eyes tightly and shook his head. It hurt to keep his eyes open, but shutting them didn't stop the burn of betrayal either.

"What y' want and what y' need are two very different t'ings, aren't dey, chérie?" Laughing humorlessly, his fist slackening around his glass, Remy slouched in his chair. With his head against the backrest, feeling the first numbing tendrils of the drink warming his gut, he hummed.

"Don't," she whispered. He heard as much as felt the shift of air as Rogue moved to stand in front of him, close enough to feel the brush of her knees, close enough to raise the hair on the back of his arms. She stood near enough to hurt when he stilled his sluggish limbs from reaching out to wrap around her waist. Remy wanted to bury his face into her stomach, wanted to feel her tearing at his hair again.

He deserved worse. But even what little they'd bartered in a kiss wasn't worth it.

Hell, if he were honest with himself, he'd wager it'd never be worth it, but damned if he didn't want it. Didn't yearn for it. Didn't understand the craven necessity of it.

Remy wasn't feeling lucky enough to roll again so soon.

Smiling as he raised his glass, Remy peered through his fringe at her. It was a careful, watchful glance that served to dampen the burn he felt for her by stealing glances. It warded off the subsequent cold when he forced himself to remain unfulfilled.

Even at the height of irony, when Rogue willingly offered herself, her friendship, her care so easily – he couldn't take it.

It was the linchpin in the greater working cog of fate – to have something so precious so close, and not be able to claim it for yourself. Dieu, he had never felt more stupid in his life.

"Isn't dat what y' said?" he asked, dragging his gaze over her features and trying not to feel what the soft downturn of her mouth was doing to the pit of his belly.

"Ya taught me otherwise," she whispered, disbelieving.

"Den I done somet'ing right f' once," he replied idly. "Good f' y'."

"Don't do this, Remy," she said again. "Don't push me away, because lord knows ya can't. Not now."

Watch me, he thought to himself vindictively.

It must have showed on his face, his perfect composure twisting into a flash of something cruel, because for a split-second, the raw hurt she showed him grazed over the softer, more vulnerable places that made his chest ache. He fought it back valiantly, hitching a smirk on his face and remaining silent.

"Everything ya said ta me was a lie," she said quietly, condemning. "Everything ya did ta convince me that Ah needed ta take control of my life again… so I wouldn't be a victim, it's all because ya could change the things in me ya couldn't change in yo'self. Ah know that much is true."

Remy shook his head, staring at a point on the wall just past her left shoulder.

"Ah'm not yo' salvation," she continued when he didn't respond. "Helping me won't set things straight for ya anymore than luring out the Brotherhood and my friends. Hell, they're all my friends, Remy – and ya planned on taking advantage of their good graces. Ya brought everyone inta the midst of a war that they had nothin' ta do with. There's no excuse for that… not when ya could have just asked." Rogue took a breath, and watching her intently, unwilling to shy away from her accusations as she laid it all bare before him, Remy maintained an air of discreet silence that accepted her words, but offered nothing in return. "Ya never ask; ya just take what ya want."

She was wrong, he assured himself. She didn't know; she'd never lived it, never had to sacrifice herself for the things that were important…

"You never had ta do any of this alone," she murmured sadly. "Gawd, why can't ya practice what ya preach? Why is that so hard for ya?"

Remy shut his eyes, rolling his neck back to work out the kinks. A moment later, he felt the light glide of her fingers settling on his shoulders, thumbs finding the exact place where he needed two ounces of pressure to loosen the knots. He hadn't even heard her move.

Damnit, why wouldn't she give up on him?

Everyone else already had.

Dieu, her hands felt good.

"I can't touch y'," he said, his teeth gritting together as he tried to fight against the warm, sinking lull of her touch. It was so easy to crave something so simple, so genuine – and that hardened him.

Nothing that felt so good had a shred of permanence to it. To lose himself in the sensation, the fleeting, ephemeral desire to believe her when Rogue said she'd stand by him through thick and thin, Remy thought, would be to forfeit himself.

Bella Donna had nearly undone him once with the same promises.

"But Remy," Rogue whispered, her voice smoky and sad, "ya already did."

Frowning, he peered at her retracting hands as Rogue took a small, imbalanced step backwards. Like a drowning man, missing the contact and the warmth, missing the way his heart rate kicked up another two beats per second being close to her, he swallowed hard.

Knotting her fingers together, Remy looked up a few more inches, examining the light blush over Rogue's collarbone, her throat working as she swallowed nervously.

He saw her wet her lips, fumbling to untangle her fingers and press a hand against her heart.

"Right here. Ya touched me already – right here."

Finally meeting her gaze, Remy barely caught the words in his mouth before they could tumble out. Rogue's eyes had bled back to green. There wasn't a trace of him to be found; there was only a girl standing before him, clutching at a breaking heart as he tried to push her away.

Salvation skirted the ragged edge of oblivion.

And just as that shaded eddy called to him, opened its arms in welcome, inviting him to take one further step towards its embrace – he knew then and there that it'd have him, too.

If he let her.

---

"That was bloody brilliant!" Pyro managed, wincing at his searing tailbone, bruised by the angle from where Blob had dumped him unceremoniously on the hard concrete.

"Quiet!" Wanda snarled, stalking past the huddle of thicker shadows that cloaked them all in the dingy alleyway.

She peered around the side of the building, its redbrick and tacky mortar shielding her from sight of the major thoroughfare.

Materializing out of the darkness from just beyond Wanda's elbow, Lance hissed, "Did we lose them?"

"How the hell do you lose fifty operatives?" Pietro bit back, his faced bathed in the green-grey wash of guttering, tacky neon from the Calle. "You don't! You run like your ass is on fire and hope to god that theydon'tseethetrailofsmoke!"

Toad chuckled, little more than a disembodied crow from where he sat, perched atop a nearby dumpster. "Wanda, that was slick, yo'."

"Who knew the shiela had it in her?" Pyro quipped through grit teeth. He fidgeted, his heels scraping against the filthy ground as he tried to twist to the side to give his backside a reprieve.

"Would you all just shut up?" she growled. "At this point, we're just rats in the alley. So long as those imbeciles keep thinking that, we're fine."

Beneath the stale bog stink of the swamp, and the sickly, cloying smell of pavement graced by monumental heaps of garbage from nearby restaurants, the Brotherhood swabbed at sweaty foreheads, caught their breath, and waited as Wanda stood watch. The alley behind was littered with squashy green and black bags, some shredded, others acting as makeshift squat-mounds for the dispossessed and disenfranchised.

The Quarter thrummed with life around them, but beneath the throngs of tourists, the line of foreigners snapping off cameras in near-practiced succession, sharp eyes scanned the crowds for the telltale marks of authority.

"S.H.I.E.L.D.," Wanda stated grimly, ruminating aloud, but sharply aware of their surroundings.

"Could be worse," Lance muttered. "Could be H.Y.D.R.A."

"Could be the C.I.A. for all I care," she returned, her eyes narrowed to mean slits.

"Stopitwiththestupidacronyms!" Pietro snapped.

Freddie blinked at him a moment, but Quicksilver merely gesticulated exasperatedly.

"Screw this," he spat. "I'm checking out the roof. Those agents are probably scattering themselves all over the place just itching to jump down on our heads."

"Saving yeh own sorry hide, more like," Pyro grumbled. It earned him a swat to the face too quick to be seen by human eyes. The red welt left behind was enough to earn a small, satisfied smirk from Wanda, who turned around at the sharp sound to find the alley devoid of her brother, but with Pyro blinking dazedly. He wagged his head as if to clear it and winced, muttering something about intolerable cruelty below his breath.

Lance eyed her, a gleam to his eyes despite the tired smudges beneath them.

"That thing you did with the train –" he trailed off, shaking his head and chuckling as he folded his arms across his chest. "That was pretty smooth."

"Crunched it like a tin can, she did – chucked it like one too," Pyro mused aloud. "Never seen that before in me life."

Wanda bristled, but Lance tipped himself off the wall to block a direct route to the battered Australian. He shook his head once, slowly, his gaze intent. Lip curling, Wanda gave him a brief glare that indicated Avalanche was stepping between her and her prey. He ignored it, raising an eyebrow as if daring her to try and best him to get to their resident Iscariot.

Slowly, Wanda drew around to peer down at the slumped and bound form of St. John Allerdyce, legs akimbo from where he sat propped against the dumpster – a fat, red ridge puffing up along the arch of his left cheekbone.

Pyro swallowed, smiling up at her feebly. "And I'll wager I probably won't see the like again, right, love?"

"Keep talking, jackass," she hissed around Lance's shoulder. "The more your tongue wags, the more I consider tearing it out to be a generous service to mutantkind."

"Huh," he scoffed. "Guess you lot don't need me so bad after all. Fine." He puffed himself up a notch, sticking out his lower lip petulantly. "Find the blasted stone yesselves, then."

Visibly gritting her teeth, Wanda swept past Lance's bulk – sending him crush against the wall with reinforced hex to the shoulder. "You know where to find it?" she breathed, bearing down on Pyro in a blur of matted red. "You mean to tell me that after all that – the television cameras, the tear gas, those stupid S.H.I.E.L.D. agents blocking the way into the city – you've known all this time where it is?" she snarled.

"Here I thought you were just keeping me around for entertainment purposes," he groused, adjusting his position once more.

"You are about as interesting as watching house plants grow," Wanda spat.

"Then it turns out I really am bloody useful." He sniffed peevishly.

Behind John, Fred shifted – little more than an audible scrape of scuffed trainers brushing the cast off dotting the ground. The alley was barely large enough to fit the stout boy's gut amidst the teeming mounds of fetid refuse. He stepped gingerly to the side, edging away from Pyro as Wanda approached, his heel squelching into a puddle of slick grease that sent him skittering into the bin on which Toad was perched, and to which John was shackled to.

"Hey, man! Watch it!" Todd groused as the dumpster rattled from the impact.

Wanda ignored them both, shrugging off Lance's hand as he tried to hold her back from stepping over Pyro. John, however, continued to smile crookedly up at her.

"G'day, love," he cooed, his eyes narrowing.

Wanda crouched, her tone venomous. "Tell me everything. Now."

"Leave it, Wanda, he's just trying to piss you off," Lance cautioned.

With a flick of her wrist, Lance fell silent, hands scrabbling at his throat as two twining cords of electric blue light wrapped around his lower jaw. They seeped into his mouth like prying fingers, locking around his tongue hard enough to turn the tip white from the loss of circulation.

Lance made a retching noise, dry and sudden from the back of his throat.

Pyro glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, his tongue flicking out to wet his split lip distractedly. Wanda continued to peer at Pyro, though she released the makeshift gag around Lance's mouth with a twirl of two fingers a moment later.

Avalanche coughed, spluttering an obscenity.

"Yo," Toad murmured, lengthening the solitary syllable to the point where it became a throaty hum of appreciation. "I didn't know you could do that, sweetums. I thought all you could do was throw things around."

Pyro sniggered uneasily. "Full of surprises, aren't we?"

With a tip of her head, Wanda dropped to an elegant crouch between John's splayed legs. "Probability is a funny thing," she murmured darkly. "You never know what'll happen."

Though he remained stock-still, Pyro watched her intently.

"Not –" Hyuk! "Cool!" Lance rasped.

"It wasn't real," Pyro managed a moment later, his gaze flittering over her face with a mingled mixture of curiosity, dread and keenness that lit his eyes with renewed interest. "The Gem, that is; it was a fake, a lure, a reasonable facsimile. Wouldn't have done a blasted thing for you lot even if you had it. Fact is, Gambit never had the real stone to begin with, and if he did, he wouldn't have bloody well likely handed it over. The man's mind works in mysterious ways, love – but if it's simple enough for me to understand, you lot should have picked up on it ages ago."

"The X-Men," Wanda growled. "He talked us into fighting them in exchange for the Gem, then when we get back, the Gem's gone, Gambit's gone, and the X-Men are –"

"Properly pissed off, but keep going. You're getting warmer." He smirked.

"He knew we'd follow him to get the stone back, but if there was no stone, then why drag us all the way out here?"

"Same reason he'd bait the X-Geeks," Pietro muttered. Behind him, a cloud of dry leaves, plastic bags, and dust settled. "Roof's clear," he added absently. "Not a S.H.I.E.L.D. squad for five blocks in every direction."

"We fight them on our own terms," Wanda countered, turning back to Pyro. "Usually."

"He wanted Rogue. That was the bargain. Get Rogue away from everyone else," Pietro supplied dryly. "If Gambit took off with her, the rest of them are probably already here looking for her. Great."

"This isn't about you and them," Pyro snickered. "This is Gambit's business… the whole sorry, sordid nine yards of it."

"How much do you know about it, John?" Wanda asked, measuring her words carefully.

"This is pointless, Wanda," Lance rasped. "You can't trust anything that comes out of his mouth."

Overhead, Todd made a shushing gesture. Fred gulped audibly, peeling at his tee shirt. It clung stubbornly to his belly, creating an M of dark grey where his perspiration had soaked through the cotton at the neckline and armpits. A spreading donut was turning the dry spot nearest his bellybutton into a sticky pool. Casting another nervous look at Lance, he took a careful, shuffling step further back. Pietro merely glared over his sister's shoulder.

Wanda and Pyro continued their staring contest, as a slow, devilish grin twisted John's features up with impish delight. He whispered, "What lengths would you go to for your family?"

Wanda glowered, throwing a narrow glare to her left at Blob, who flinched, upwards at Toad, and to her right at Avalanche, still glowering, and over her shoulder to her brother. Her gaze lingered there a moment longer than the rest.

Pietro cocked an eyebrow.

"Pyro can't be helped if he has the intellectual range of a breath mint," she returned to Lance, her attention squared on John before her once again, her expression turning steely once again.

"But I'll wager I'm just as bloody tasty," he returned, leaning forwards in challenge. "Lick me and find out for yesself," he added in a heated undertone.

The dumpster clanged as Wanda shoved him backwards into it, grinning fiercely as coils of blue-white current siphoned off her spread fingers – pinioning Pyro by the neck.

Though the sound was staunched, he chuckled. "Cor, she does believe me. Bloody wonderful!"

"What I want to know is why bring us into it," she hissed. "What's so important about his family that Gambit couldn't handle it without luring us out here?"

Pyro blinked, his eyes bulging a little against the strain at his neck. Croaking, he opened and closed his mouth a few times until Wanda loosened her hold slightly.

"That's the selfless bit," he croaked, his eyes rolling upwards as he gasped for breath. "Good man."

"Explain," Wanda snarled.

"The thrill of a proper fight, mates," he wheezed, reaching for his neck with his tie-wrapped hands and rubbing at the newfound sore spot. "We're in for one."

---

The words Libris Veritatus appear once, only, on each of the thirteen leather-bound books. Beneath her fingers as Mystique cupped the spine of the diary, settling back with the volume curled against her stomach, she felt the incised lettering and the peeling gold foil of the roman numeral XIII just above.

"What truths, my dear," Mystique hummed to the large tome before her, to its author who heard the musing only in memory, if not in spirit. The images blotted out all sound and sense of her immediate surroundings. "What truths you did inscribe here," she whispered.

Over two pages, a spread nearly twenty inches across, the same figures repeated themselves. Clustered, furiously shaded creatures whose limbs blurred into one another – men, women, hooded, cloaked, divided and simultaneously unified by a lone figure who stood with his arms raised to both sides, imploring.

Both families were in profile, an assortment of aquiline noses and veiled eyes, all with weapons lowered. The ground, complemented by the dark shadows that loomed on the edges of the page, was spattered in scarlet. It was if Irene had thrown a loaded quill violently at the paper, covering the drawing's feet in fine droplets. There were so many, such a fine, haphazard dotting of colour nearly blotting out the figure on the ground.

In their midst, that lone man – his head bowed, palms raised in a gesture of servitude or martyrdom, whichever – he kept their weapons at bay and bid them draw near to him, to the body before him.

It could have been anywhere.

Were it not for the colour of his eyes, the clearest, crudest red highlighted with shabby pen strokes, he could have been anyone.

"Ah," she murmured, as if the scene surprised her.

It did not. Irene had provided many variations of the same prophecies, similar images with small, nuanced details that offered a host of markedly different outcomes. This, however, was merely a stage – merely one possibility siphoned from many. This, like many others, had a price conveniently attached.

Mystique turned the page, her mouth twisting briefly in response to the crumpled figure at the man's feet.

There was no mistaking the vacant, pale green of those eyes staring forever forwards, the white stripes of hair covered in a speckling of rich scarlet.

Like rubies, Mystique thought furiously. Would that Gambit had her daughter for sacrifice to serve the union of the New Orleans Guilds, Rogue's blood would be the colour of rubies when it touched those filthy streets.

Mystique exhaled, her immediate fury uncoiling outwards as she settled on the following pages.

"What truths, indeed," she purred at length, settling on a similar scene; the same trifurcate of power, the same compounded reasoning for Jean Luc's interest in the diary, but where there had been black on the previous pages, the darkened areas glowed vibrant cinnabar.

The problem with the future, thought she, was the infinitesimal array of possibilities at her disposal.

Yet, only one could be forced into reality.

That had been Destiny's difficulty: Irene had presumed that for each prediction, only one would be nearer the truth and only one could be followed. Staring at the spread of caricatures across two pages, pentagram-like, with Rogue crouched at the centre beneath two watchful, yellow-cast eyes, Mystique knew that it was not a matter of following these guidelines at all.

It was simply a matter of choice.

"Select the path," she purred, tracing a finger over the broken body at Rogue's feet. "And the results of such efforts will present themselves accordingly."

With their positions reversed, the red stone in the girl's fist saturating the figure in the hue of fresh blood, Mystique smiled serenely. Her nail gouged a rough line through Gambit's trench coat, like a check mark, or an X crossing out the problematic component of a carefully planned plot.

She preferred this future far better.

A knock sounded through the heavy door to Jean Luc's office, and without a sound, it swung inward several inches. A man, barely in his early twenties with a shock of fierce orange hair, peered around the door.

"Eh, Jean Luc?"

Mystique raised an eyebrow, lounging backwards in the chair with the book folded in her lap and out of sight, much like the body of the patriarch the Thief addressed.

"Have you seen Tante?" Emil asked. Emil. Yes, that was his name. Emil Lapin, a cousin by marriage, but little more. Dispensable, by all means. They all were.

Mystique pursed her lips.

"Je suis désolé. I know y' busy," he continued to jabber. "But Theoren, vous savez –"

"I have not seen her," she replied, her tone smooth, but brusque. "Et c'est vrai que vous me dérange, Emil. S'il-vous-plait, close de door on y' way out."

This was not a war.

This was victory made manifest.

Emil dipped his head, and from her vantage point, seated behind Jean Luc's desk, Mystique watched as the young man's Adam's apple bobbed nervously.

"'Scuze," he mumbled, preparing to duck out of the room. Pitiful.

"Emil," she called, her inflection even, laced with the barest hint of Cajun French. How she despised it.

"Oui?" he said, sticking his head further into the room.

"De Assassins Guild are plannin' an attack for de deaths of two of dere own," she said levelly. "Tomorrow night."

"C'est pas possible, de treaty is fragile enough as it is –" he began fretfully, taking the opportunity to slide further into the room. "Dey wouldn't –"

"Dey can and dey will," she said firmly. "See to it dat Remy is nowhere near de mansion tomorrow evenin'. He needn't know of dere plans. He needn't get involved."

"But –"

"M' son will leave dis city unharmed," she continued firmly, her eyes downcast as if demonstrating fatherly burden with the decision. "We will defend ourselves as we always have."

"What m' I supposed t' tell him?"

Mystique turned measuring eyes to the boy and remained silent.

Emil swallowed, still babbling even as he pulled the door closed behind him. "Certainement, Jean Luc. I – I'll figure somet'ing out."

"Bon."

Mystique turned the page.

---

Pyro squinted. "Think maybe we can all go for a drink now?" he asked hopefully.

Grimly, the Brotherhood exchanged looks.

"We'd best scarper, before those S.H.I.E.L.D. duffers do turn up and we're all caught sniffing at our backsides trying to decide how to torment the Aussie bugger next," he added.

With her elbows on her knees, her fingers folded together beneath her chin where she crouched in front of him, Wanda continued to peer at Pyro shrewdly.

"That is interesting," she commented, ignoring his proposal entirely. "I never thought Gambit was one to buy into metaphysical nonsense."

"I wouldn't say that too loud," Pyro chortled. "The city has ears, love. You're sitting in the voodoo capital of America… Cor, I could use a pint."

"A prophecy, huh?" Lance asked.

"A bloody good one, I'd wager," Pyro added. "If yeh knew Gambit, yeh'd know that when he gets his mind set on something it's all business."

"You sound pretty sure of yourself, Allerdyce," Lance rumbled.

"He's my mate!" Pyro said defensively. "I worked with the bloody tosser for plenty longer than any of you sods."

"So…" Fred interrupted, his forehead scrunched with the effort of thinking too hard. "There is a real stone?"

Pietro scoffed, pausing in his pacing to twirl around and snap, "Of course there is. Father had it at one point."

Pyro blinked owlishly a moment. "Crikey," he breathed. "You're not still on about that are you?"

"I remember," Lance muttered bitterly, ignoring him. "Asteroid M. We were so close."

"But Gambit never meant for us to get our hands on it – wherever it is, he was saving it for Rogue," Pietro continued, casting an uneasy glance at his sister.

"Before you got out, shnookums," Todd added, scanning the top of the dumpster for a snack. "Of the… you know. Man, Rogue took me out hard that time. Remember, Pietro?"

"What?" Wanda shot up at him. "What are you talking about?"

"Nothing!" Pietro said quickly.

"That wasn't cool," Todd added, his tongue flicking out to capture a fly hovering nearby. He slurped it back and pulled a face.

"What's not cool is that we've got half of S.H.I.E.L.D. on our asses right about now because of that stunt we pulled with the train, and what are the odds that we'll run into the X-dorks before long?" Pietro said hastily, glowering at Todd over Wanda's head where she couldn't see his expression or the fervent gesticulation to shut up about his sister's stint in the mental institution. That particular incident had been conveniently wiped from her mind some time ago.

"Not to mention these Ass-pirates John mentioned," Lance muttered bitterly. "I don't believe this sh–"

"Assassins." Pietro snorted out loud, nervously beginning to pace again while shooting hostile looks at Todd for the slip. "What is this, the middle ages?"

"And he expects us to fight them?" Wanda asked John. Pyro merely shrugged, attempting to appear as innocent as possible, given the circumstances.

"I think they're a territorial bunch, yeh see," Pyro added, pointedly craning his neck to make eye contact with Pietro. Cocking an eyebrow, a broad grin graced his features as realization dawned on him. Pietro had never told Wanda about Mastermind wiping her memories at their father's behest.

"And we're on their turf," Wanda supplied, snapping her fingers in front of St. John's face to keep his attention.

He beamed wickedly. "That's the rub of it."

Wanda paused, chewing her lower lip and contemplating Pyro's confession thoughtfully. After a stretch, she asked, "What was in it for you?"

---

A heart's beat pause, and the silence stretched thin between them.

Rogue dropped her hand from her chest, feeling foolish and understanding the sudden, bereft uncertainty of being left vulnerable.

At the periphery of her mind, darkness gathered – its thickness measured only by the depths of the shades that skittered near, only to strain further backwards and out of reach each second Remy didn't respond.

Fragile, ephemeral things – Remy's memories – beat at the edges of her consciousness like strong, dark wings. Enfolded at the centre, Rogue struggled to keep her attention focused on the man before her. She brushed the thoughts away, though they struggled to become more distinct, less fluid.

They could not. She wouldn't let them.

There were old, and with age, their strength became a hazed mottle of indistinguishable features – ghosts of their former selves that Remy carried within him.

Rogue merely had their reasonable facsimiles trapped yet again in the confines of her mental prison.

They were, however, persistent.

She sucked her lower lip into her mouth, chewing absently and rubbing at her satin covered elbows. They felt foreign, too glamorous, and too soft for the likes of her. The taste of the bourbon was stale on her tongue, and though her throat was dry, she felt as if another sip of the god-awful drink would have her retching hopelessly in a corner.

Remy remained silent, watchful, his fingers splayed lightly over the rim of the half-empty glass.

He didn't care, she thought suddenly.

The tumult in her mind rose an octave, a collective of gathering shades that threatened to turn to substance. She fought them back, struggling to keep calm in the face of the stony expression Remy wore.

It didn't matter to him what she felt for him, because it had never been his goal to win her affections. Not seriously. He wasn't playing for keeps.

She barked a dry laugh as one of his more persistent memories slipped by her defenses and floated to the surface.

It was a half-formed thing, significant from the rest in that it took on a distinctive character despite her efforts to make sense of it, responding to her whirring thoughts as if on call.

She shoved the memory to the fore with a mental brush of indistinct fingers, driving the others backward with sheer force of will. The strain of the cerebral effort had her slumping heavily into the chair across the table from Remy. He turned away, his expression as unreadable as ever now that the last vestiges of his personality had dimmed. While his lack of reaction weighed on her heart, Rogue held her breath, straining to make sense of the dim image in her mind's eye.

A conversation, a dull echo of words that ended in a hollow threat on the part of Jean Luc. It was recent, too fresh, and too significant to be rid of entirely.

"Y' destiny, m' boy. A prophecy t' unite de families dat falls on de shoulders of de man wit' red eyes."

He'd bartered their way out of the city, he'd handed over to Jean Luc her file, but in exchange, he'd wanted something.

"Dere ain't any more y' need t' know den dat… other den de fact dat de book dat tells of it is in m' possession."

Rogue shook her head as if to clear it.

What book?

"Not another Paris, hein?"

Jean Luc's voice was pure phantasmagoria. In sympathy, mimicking Remy's emotions, Rogue sensed the exact moment when the adrenaline hit her bloodstream and her troubled, tattered trail of memories meshed in perfect synchronicity with Remy's.

It trembled a moment, struggling to clarity, before breaking apart once again into a haphazard assortment of shimmering voices and visuals that became incongruous and agonizing.

Paris.

Something about Paris. Remy's emotions shrouded his recollections of the city; that, Rogue understood. Despair. Defeat. Death.

Someone had died at Remy's expense, and like Etienne, like Julien, Remy blamed himself entirely.

And his reticence? Rogue shut her eyes briefly, trying to count to ten to slow the sudden pounding in her ears.

She had taunted him.

"Ah…" Rogue croaked. "Oh gawd, Ah'm sorry."

Fingers twisting together, her shoulders curving inwards as she pulled back into herself awkwardly, Rogue found herself standing. The sudden movement brought on a wash of dizziness that left her teetering. For a moment, her vision darkened, and the whisper of voices from Remy's memories struggled to wash over her.

She held them back, but only just.

"Chére?" Remy asked, his voice growing distant.

Rogue blinked away the spots in her vision, her limbs prickling with a brush of fine numbness, leaving the tips of her fingers tingling.

The table came back into focus in front of her, though the beat of shadowed wings was persistent in her ears. His memories drew her attention, but Rogue persisted.

If she'd absorbed his psyche this time, Remy could influence her mind and body. Like Theoren. Like the others from so long ago.

The thought left her cold – not that it was the threat of Remy in her mind, but that she should relinquish control over herself so easily.

Not again, Rogue thought viciously.

The sudden desire to run was an all-engulfing trench. It was him, she thought feebly, it was Remy's knee-jerk reaction to a bad situation.

Bolt.

Get the hell out as quickly as possible.

Even as she took an imbalanced step backwards, her backside knocking into the chair and sending it clattering to the ground, Remy was keeping himself from going to her.

Grimly, Rogue decided she preferred fending for herself.

She saw the clenched whites of his knuckles around the liquor glass; she saw the battle of emotions – the instinctive desire to escape and the inexplicable fear of wanting to dive across the table.

He wanted to.

The liar! He wanted her too!

Rogue half-laughed, half-wailed, choking the sound down. For a moment, she was afraid that he'd give in to his instincts and leave her there, or that with his influence, she'd do the same to him.

Remy managed to look harassed despite it.

She'd violated him, sat before him while trying to psychoanalyze his memories, and she'd slammed him with something guarded to unsettle him, to return the favor for every time he'd taken a step into her personal space and she'd taken one backwards.

Paris.

Lord knew she didn't have the dimmest idea what it meant other than it hurt him bad to bring it up. In that moment, slinging the question carelessly at him, she'd been just as crass as Jean Luc.

It came at her in a wave of loathing so strong that her knees nearly buckled. Straining, she sifted through the funnel of Remy's emotions. Gawd, he hated him – hated the fact that no matter what he'd done for the family, Jean Luc had always valued what he could do to benefit the Guild before appreciating Remy himself.

Remy knew this, and so Rogue knew it.

What she understood in the most cluttered, roundabout way was that Jean Luc had lorded things over his head to keep him near at hand, and Remy, begrudgingly had complied all this time, believing that someday, all would be made clear. The chips would fall, and he'd walk away the winner.

Duty and honor were indoctrinated, but the immediate need to save oneself when the opportunity arose ran contrary to that. It was a Thief's way: Never get caught.

Ironically, the Thieves Guild had its own sort of twisted entrapment, and despite his best efforts, Remy could never protect himself from the obligations to his family.

They needed him like he needed them.

But for what?

The prophecy.

His repentance. A payment of his debts to the family. His freedom.

The answers flew at her in a rush; thoughts that were not her own echoed hollowly, and again, Rogue's vision darkened.

They were coming, she thought. She'd have to ride it through. Still, she fought against the tide and grasped against what she could. Still, Remy stood by, unwilling to reach out to her again.

Rogue swallowed, her breath coming in quickening bursts. Dimly, she recognized that she was about to hyperventilate, but it no longer mattered.

Instead, she blurted, "It was Theoren – he… Ah don't even know… Ah don't… Ah did it willingly. Remy, Ah absorbed ya. Ah didn't… oh gawd, Ah did… I did meant ta do it… But Ah…"

"Rogue, stop," he said sternly.

"Ah liked it," she said in a small, tremulous voice. Horrified, she stared back at him.

It was the truth. Somehow, that made it worse. More terrible still was the expression Remy wore: A placid, unconcerned intensity had stolen across his features, and while it seemed as if he wasn't at all concerned with the fact that Rogue was half-crazed with the sudden afterglow of his absorption, Rogue herself knew better.

"Ah can't stand ta be powerless anymore than you," she whispered feverishly, urging him silently to understand.

Slowly, he nodded.

"But lordy, Cajun," she sniffed, chuckling without humor as she fought for lucidity, "if my knees weren't wobbling as hard as they are right now, Ah swear Ah'd take a page out of yo' own book and be runnin' for the door."

He stood, finally, as Rogue slumped to brace herself heavily on the edge of the table. With the cautious, predatory precision of a large cat, Remy eased around the table. Rogue, unable to look directly at him for what she might see in his face, what might swell to the surface of her mind, kept her attention fixed on the dull outline of his shadow cast from the overheads.

She'd felt like this before, though not as strongly. After she'd kissed him at the cemetery, and she'd been getting out of the boat at the edge of the Guild's property. She'd brushed off the sudden dizzy spell as quickly dispensed vertigo. The change between the river current and solid land too sudden. Remy had caught her then, regardless of how he'd felt towards her – towards himself for being drawn to her. Now, she knew better. Now, his memories would have her.

"You –" she tried again, noting out of the corner of her eye that Remy still kept himself at a safe distance. Good, she thought. That was good. "Ya musta made a deal with the devil, LeBeau. Ah never known a soul who'd willingly get himself so stuck in a rut for something so crazy, but –" Rogue hesitated, chancing a glance at him.

Remy hovered two feet away, his hands slack at his sides, measuring her to see if she'd hold.

Rogue swiped at her upper lip, surprised to find that her glove came away damp with sweat. She chuckled. The darkness swelled.

"But nonetheless, Ah think Ah owe ya a thank you in the very least."

"F' what?" he asked guardedly.

"Thirteen books, only one of which concerns de Guilds. One of which we have, dat y' never seen, Remy. An' I suppose dat f' dis trifle coquette of a girl who can take de information we need is worth all dat?"

To Remy, Rogue's safety was worth sacrificing everything he'd ever wanted. His past. His future. The prophecy.

"For helpin' me realize that we make our own destiny," she replied, a wan smile pulling her mouth up at the corners, as finally, Remy's memories engulfed her.

This time, like that moment in the bayou, hands slid around Rogue's waist as her knees buckled, unmindful of the bared skin there, and caught her before she could spill to the floor.

---

"Someone ought to ship you back to that penal colony you call a country," Wanda murmured to Pyro.

"Snuckums, you can do that?" Toad peered down at her admiringly.

"I don't know." Wanda hummed, her attention unwavering. "Never tried."

"Don't give her any ideas, mate," Pyro muttered, rolling his eyes upwards. "She might splinch me arse en route. Savvy?"

Lance scoffed, "I don't believe it. He's a Harry Potter freak."

"Whatever," Wanda brushed him off, her fists crackling with energy. "There's only one way to find out –"

"Wait!" Pyro croaked. "Now wait just a stinking minute! Don't I get a fair trial, here?"

Wanda sneered. "Fair? You think helping Gambit lure us out here for the price of a new flamethrower was fair?"

"Wanda, love – all you lot can think of is how some stupid rock could bolster yeh powers. I'm sitting with –" he counted heads, mouthing the numbers soundlessly as he glanced uneasily between them. "Five mutants – two of which, I might remind you, are class four already. What exactly do ya think it could possibly do for yeh? Hmm?"

Wanda paused, lowering her hands a fraction. "How do you know that?" she asked warily.

"It bloody well won't do anything for you, love," Pyro continued, ignoring her. "Not like yeh need it, considering how yeh plan on crunching me bones inta paste soon enough. Kids!" he exclaimed to himself. "Always taking the easy way out." He snorted to himself. "Well, get on with it, then. Always hoped I'd go out in a blaze of glory, so if yeh could make my untimely demise a little sparkly at least – I'd appreciate it muchly."

"Answer my question, John," she ground out.

"Which bit, love?" he asked, shifting to better position himself to peer up at her. With Wanda practically straddling him, it wasn't difficult. The already frayed knees of his jeans were pinned by her boots, and John had very few places to look that weren't outright lewd.

In response, Wanda crouched, her fists wrapping into his prized Van Halen tee shirt and yanking him forwards to snarl into his face, "I don't even know how strong I am. What makes you think I'll believe you when you say you do?"

Pyro raised his eyebrows, peering down his nose at Wanda's shorn-gloves below his chin, and slanted a glance at her brother who stood just behind and to her left.

"Er?" he managed, breaking into a wide grin as Pietro's confident expression fell. "Why don't you ask your dear brother, love? Keep it in the family, as it were…"

"Ohshutthefuckup," Pietro said in one disbelieving breath, his eyes widening to almost comical proportions.

"What?" Wanda snarled, yanking Pyro to the side as her head snapped around.

"Who's your daddy?" he offered innocently, smacking his lips at Pietro, though Pyro now found himself off-kilter with his face gradually inching closer to filthy pavement. Quicksilver grimaced, muttering a multi-syllabic string of profanities in less time than it took for St. John to feel the sting in his shoulder where he bit into the asphalt. Wanda had dropped him.

"Pietro?" Wanda asked bracingly, standing to her full height. Five foot six really wasn't imposing, but Pyro had recently seen her in full-blown Scarlet Bitch mode, and it was a hard image to shake.

"Father had… father had files on all the X-Men at one point. Mystique had supplied a lot of information, since she'd always been good with recon –"

"That was Gambit's specialty, actually –" Pyro interjected. "Both of them," he sighed almost wistfully while trying to wriggle his legs out from beneath Wanda. "They would have made quite a team if Mystique hadn't buggered off when she did. Never liked us for some reason – Mystique. Never really sorted out why, myself. Fortunately, Gamby pamby always had me around ta liven things up a notch…"

"What aren't you telling me?" Wanda directed at her brother coolly. "Father had the X-Men on file, so he had intel on us too?"

"Most people don't know it," Pyro grimaced, rolling his shoulder in his socket, "but I'm a right shade more delicate than ya'd think. All this bunging around devalues the merchandise, shiela."

"Shut up," she snapped. "Pietro?"

"I – I – I don't know what he's talking about," he stammered.

"See," St. John continued, "the only reason Speedy would know anything about it, would be from first-hand experience. Isn't that right, mate? Me? I know how it went down – I was recruited!" he declared proudly, scrabbling to hoist himself into a seated position. "I saw the files. I know more about the five of you than you know yehselves. And you lot had the audacity to call me stupid," he chortled proudly. "Least I cover my tracks!"

"If there's something you should tell me, Pietro, now would be the time," Wanda said menacingly.

"Oh? What? That?" He laughed uneasily, too quick, too sharp. "Father had files on all of us, you know – wanted to keep records to see how we'd progressed. Standard stuff."

"But how do you know that, mate? Far as your sister knows – yeh been one big, happy family for as long as she remembers. Problem is, yeh don't remember anything about the Gem, do yeh, love?"

"No," Wanda replied, her voice pitched low – a hairsbreadth away from resonating with true, silent fury.

"So naturally, if Wanda doesn't remember the whole incident at Asteroid M, where was she, exactly?" Pyro paused, stretching his neck to better see the rapidly spreading look of panic on Pietro's face.

"Why can't I remember, Pietro?" Wanda pressed. "Why is there an unnaturally large blank of white static where I should remember something as important as father having the Gem of Cyttorak in his possession?"

"Oops!" Pyro sniggered.

"Youshutup!" he snapped. "Wanda," Pietro said guardedly, taking a guilty step backwards, "it was before Apocalypse, okay? And things have been better since then…"

"What he's trying ta say is that if anyone deserves ta get splinched, it'd be him," Pyro supplied. "Me and ol' Rems? We busted arse to collect what information we could, but your father – whooo! Now there was a codger who knew how to wipe a hard drive."

"Wipe?"

"Sure!" St. John continued gleefully, squirming to get a better look at Pietro's face as his sister advanced on him. "Can't protect the information you collect unless yeh can get rid of it proper… when necessary, that is."

"Pyro." Wanda's voice was pitched so low that Fred nearly missed his cue to step backwards as the first sizzling lick of electric current dripped to the ground from her clenched fists. Lance had already taken two paces backwards and positioned himself nearest the mouth of the alley, ready to lunge out of the way if necessary.

Pietro, however, backed up against the far wall, had no place to run.

"Oi, shiela!" St. John returned, barely able to contain the bubble of hysterical laughter in his throat when he caught Quicksilver's panicked expression.

"I'll buy the first round if you tell me what these idiots haven't."

Pyro didn't have the chance the reply, as a flare of light bathed the alley with the near-nuclear glare of a star going supernova.

When St. John blinked away the last of the pretty blue, purple and green dots obscuring his vision, Pietro was gone, and the only indication that he'd been standing against the opposite wall was a silhouetted smear of black in the rough shape of an eighteen year old mutant.

---

Translations:
Et c'est vrai que vous me dérange, Emil. S'il-vous-plait, close de door on y' way out. : And it's true that you're bothering me, Emil. Please, close de door on y' way out.
Je suis désolé,: I am sorry
Mautadite coyoon: damned idiot
Merde: shit
Vous savez: You know

Post Script:
- Glimmers: A cheating device, a mirror or other shiny object, such as a highly-polished cigarette lighter, placed apparently innocently on the table, used to read the reflected faces of the cards while they are being dealt. Also, gaper, shiner, reflector.
- Bonus points will be granted to those who know who the Ninth Circle of Hell is reserved for. (Dante's Inferno reference. Probably more obvious for the literati, but I'll put it out there just the same.)
- Libris Veritatus: "Books of Truth." My references here are being drawn from X-Men: the End #3 and X-Treme #1 (and a few others.) Nothing direct, but supporting canon evidence is being shoved beneath your nose for examination. My love, my affections, here and now, extended to Katjen who sparked the idea for this, and indeed the entirety of this story, a long time ago with her comments on the Libris Veritatus in "Bad Touch."