Chapter Twenty-Eight: Recrimination

A fork of blue white brilliant lightning scorched through the charged atmosphere and was only narrowly deflected and dispersed by Polaris' magnetic shield. Ororo Munroe's eyes burned pure white and her hair whipped like a Medusa's mane around her head.

'Where did they go?' the words were chillingly précised as the co-leader of the X-men stalked toward Alex and Lorna.

'Storm calm down,' Phoenix interposed herself between Polaris' shield and the advancing force of nature her friend was rapidly becoming. 'This isn't helping.' She added under her breath.

Creed snickered at the tableau, 'Bunch o' Primadonna's, the whole lotta yer.' He sneered. The piece of Sinister flesh in his hands seemed to have congealed now into a flaccid cold scrap, reminiscent of fish skin but without the scales. Wolverine snarled at him, claws extended and pointed at him.

'Hand it over Creed, before I come over there and take it.'

'Take what?' Cyclops turned his closed eyes towards the place where he thought Creed stood.

Creed tightened his grip on his bounty and took a cautionary step towards Dane and the younger Summers; with his back to his nominal allies he did not see the very slight, rather cruel, smile that arced up one side of Havok's mouth. Lorna's eyes were fixed very firmly on Creed's back as if focused on an invisible target.

'Piece of Sinister that got blown off him when yer fired at him Cyke,' Logan told the X-men leader as he watched Sabretooth intently, crouched low and ready to spring into action. 'I'm thinkin' that the plan was to get a piece of Sinister all along. The rest o' it was just Gumbo blowing smoke to distract us.'

Creed grinned, 'Awwww, did yer figure that all out on yer own?'

'What's so special about a piece of Sinister skin?' Iceman's attention was still split between Creed, Lorna, and Alex on the one hand and Warren on the other. Archangel was seriously pissed off and even though Gambit and Sinister were both gone without a trace, Bobby was worried about what his friend was going to do. Warren didn't cope with anger very well.

'I get it,' Iceman was not the only one who was surprised when Archangel brushed off the pieces of ice from the melting ice lasso that had restrained him in the fight and stood up. He flexed his wings as a way of working the tension and cold from his limbs. Warren looked from the X-men to the pound of flesh in Creed's grip.

'Didn't you hear Gambit talk about insurance?' Warren's golden eyebrows flicked up in his sky blue face, 'It's classic hardball negotiation tactics; he's setting up a blackmail play.'

'Blackmail?' Phoenix frowned, moving back to her husband's side. Ororo remained standing right where the portal had disappeared. She had herself under control for the moment but her emotional state was precarious.

'Blackmail,' Warren confirmed moving forward to stand by Wolverine, 'The only two things we know for sure about Sinister is that he was transformed by Apocalypse and he's vulnerable to Scott's blast but shit-all else.' He glanced at Alex, 'We don't even know for sure if Havok's powers work against the man.'

Alex smiled caustically, 'They don't,' he said simply with a shrug, 'at least not like Scott's; that's why Gambit needed Scott here and me to act as a charger. Apparently the fact that I produce plasma and Scott's powers are concussive makes all the difference.'

Alex paused a moment, smile keen, 'I got all that from the Dark Beast by the way; he and Sinister were tight back in his home-world.' There was a weight to his words despite his feigned casualness that made this statement seem more significant than it appeared to be.

Scott moved forward with Jean's help to guide him over or around any obstacles littering the ground. 'Gambit's planning to blackmail Sinister?'

Creed barked a harsh laugh, 'Fuck yer losers are stupid; Gumbo's with Sinister and we're the ones holding the goods.' He hefted the piece of flesh. 'Don't know why the punk thought all this shit was necessary to trick yer. Yer X-men couldn't tell yer elbows from yer assholes.'

Wolverine growled and moved forward. It was Archangel who pulled him back. 'Just ignore him.'

Wolverine shook off the other man's grip but conceded the point. He pointed one claw at Creed, 'This ain't over bub.'

Creed flipped him off negligently. Archangel cleared his throat and spoke before violence could erupt yet again.

'With a sample of Sinister's DNA and the right know how it might be possible to find a weapon against Sinister. If enough people knew how to hurt him Sinister would lose his edge.'

Warren looked from Creed to Polaris, 'It's not smart to face off against Sinister without some kind of advantage. You're going to keep the flesh aren't you? Use it as leverage so that Sinister doesn't come after you again?'

A ripple of surprise ran through the other X-men. It had often been discussed that the key to defeating Sinister lay in discovering the exact nature of his transformation. Unfortunately Sinister also knew this and he was so hard to harm that the opportunity to study any part of his genetic makeup had never emerged – until now.

Wolverine snorted sourly, 'Trust the Cajun to come up with a play like this.' He murmured under his breath. It was hard to tell if he was grudgingly impressed or just disgusted.

Polaris was still maintaining her magnetic shield but she dropped it then. 'Basically,' she agreed, 'In fact….' her mouth curved into a malicious smile and she reached out a hand towards Creed. 'I think I'll take that from you Creed, just for safe keeping.'

'Hey!' Creed snarled.

Polaris used her powers to lock onto the odd metallic component of Sinister's flesh and she pulled the sample from Sabretooth's grasp before wrapping it into a magnetic bubble floating between her palms. Lorna's eyes were hard as emerald chips as she spoke the next words, 'Wouldn't want the sample to get burned, after all.'

'Burned?' Sabretooth only had time to sense his immediate danger before Alex Summers shifted, stepped forward and raised one hand.

'Thanks for the help Creed, but we can handle things from here.'

Sabretooth moved, readying his muscles to leap, but he was not quite fast enough. In mid-lunge Havok's full force concentric plasma blast smashed into Victor Creed in a wave of almost invisible rippling heat.

Sabretooth screamed.


'Aaagghh! This is an outrage; have you forgotten that you are a hero!'

The Dark Beast howled pitifully as Bishop suspended him upside down by his ankles using a piece of prehensile metal cable from the still intact stairwell of the Beta-Star facility. The unconscious and beaten Fatale lay hog-tied and bound on the landing beside Bishop's feet.

'I forget nothing.' Bishop rumbled unperturbed by the injured and piteous mutant evil genius currently at his mercy. 'I would be more disposed to lenience if you began talking however.'

Henry McCoy peered up at the man who dangled him upside down and decided that due prudence would suggest that now was a good time for to engage in the art form of information exchange. The blood rushing to his head and his numerous injuries were an added incentive in favour of a sudden burst of loquaciousness on his part.

'What would you like to know?'

Bishop glared. He had fastened the metallic cord around the railing of the stair-rail and his fingers' drummed on the metal in discordant rhythm.

'What did you tell Lebeau?'

The Dark Beast had the gumption to grin, but soon thought better of that act of bravado as Bishop's hand's hovered with intent over the ropes keeping him suspended to the stairs; the look in the huge dark man's eyes made it clear that he did not believe in empty threats. Henry McCoy cleared his throat and decided that answering the large, aggressive man's questions might not be such a bad idea after all.

'Gambit? Why, I did not tell him anything at all.'

McCoy attempted to look scathing but it was somewhat hard to do when dangling upside over a stairwell. Nevertheless he gave it the old college try, all the same.

'I would think that that fact should be immediately evident from my less than pristine appearance and the unfortunate but salient point that I am in this pitiable situation in the first place' McCoy scoffed dismissively. 'It is primarily because your disagreeable comrade at arms stabbed me and then proceeded to bring the ceiling down on my head that I am in this predicament; of course I told him nothing.'

Bishop reached down and jerked the taut line of the metallic cable. The Dark Beast began to sway on the end of the line like the weight on the end of pendulum. Squawks of outrage echoed up and down the stairwell.

'Cease and desist immediately; this is no way to treat a prisoner of war. Have you no concept of the Geneva Convention? The Bill of Rights? Release me at once you philistine!'

Bishop waited until the man had exhausted himself before he spoke once more. 'What did Lebeau wish to know?'

'Ack…..very well – I'll tell you; just kindly stop the swinging!' The Dark Beast was beginning to sound rather nauseous. Bishop reached out and stilled the cord, hauling McCoy upwards a little as a slight reward and incentive for further good behaviour.

The Dark Beast seemed to appreciate the greater security of being hoisted up against the stair-rails and offered a little more information.

'It would appear that the Acadian ruffian has decided to investigate his lineage. He posed a query over a mutual acquaintance of ours, and that gentleman's genetic research. When I regretfully declined to give him the information he requested he became most disagreeable.'

'Sinister? He asked you about Sinister?'

Bishop curled one large hand around the cord and let power course through his hand and down the cable. The Dark Beast hissed; he had already experienced the unpleasantness of being made into a forced conduit for another mutant's energy based powers. He hadn't enjoyed it with Gambit and he suspected he would enjoy it even less with Bishop.

'Yessss,' McCoy sneered, 'He wished to know about the Garden.'

Bishop reacted to the last word violently, with two hands he hauled on the cable and pulled the Dark Beast back over the stairs like a landed fish from a line. Before the other mutant could sufficiently recover Bishop threw him, still bound up in metallic cable around the legs, against the wall.

Wrapping one large hand around the Dark Beast's muscular neck he hefted the man up off his feet one handed and held his other fist, glowing with yellow-black power, poised to smash McCoy's shaggy blue-grey head to pieces.

'What did you tell Gambit?' Bishop repeated calmly.

''Uuuuk…..nothing! I told him nothing about the Garden.' Bedraggled, injured and suffering from blood loss, McCoy was unable to do much to defend himself. He choked helplessly and Bishop released his grip and let the mangy bag of fur slide down the wall boneless as a dead fish.

The Dark Beast coughed and sucked in air like a landed fish, mouth gaping open and closed. Bishop, quietly and with little fanfare, grabbed hold of the end of the cable still tied around McCoy's ankles and jerked on it. The Dark Beast was wrenched across the landing floor and ended up tumbling down the first few steps of the stairway. Before he could fall all the way down the stairs, Bishop wrapped the loose cord around one thickly muscled forearm and wrenched the Dark Beast back up the stairs once more.

Snarling and clawing like a huge dog the Dark Beast snapped at Bishop as the large man moved forward and promptly pushed one large booted foot down onto McCoy's windpipe. The hairy scientist could do nothing but stare up at the time lost X-man he had once tried to kill to keep his anonymity. Bishop bore down on the other man's delicate throat almost absently as he spoke.

'You called me a hero.' Bishop's deep voice held a lilt of something unusual and meditative, 'But you are mistaken. In my time I was an officer of the X.S.E. I was a hunter and a protector, a guardian of long forgotten dreams and ideals, but I was also an executioner. I was never a hero; that was not what I was raised to be.'

'Ack…….fascinating……' the Dark Beast squirmed and received only more crushing pressure on his windpipe for his troubles, '……I recline corrected…….'

Bishop removed his boot and crouched swiftly beside the gasping McCoy. Grabbing the doppelganger's head by a fistful of fur he wrenched the man's head back at the same instant his other hand curled around the thick column of the blue furred throat once more.

'The man who raised me, the man who made me what I am today, was the custodian of the Garden of Knowledge; the most complete and powerful archive of mutant lore in existence. He was a man of immense power and he was insane. That man's name was Lebeau.'

Almost without conscious thought Bishop began to throttle the life out of the Dark Beast; his eyes were very far away, his thoughts in a past that was many, many years yet to come.

'If I find out that you had any part in making Gambit that man, either through your evasions or more direct manipulation, I will kill you for it.' Bishop's dark eyes were hard as rock as he focused on McCoy, 'And I will show you then that I am no hero.'


'Havok - no!'

Phoenix cried out as the heat from Alex Summer's plasma blast rippled through the air like waves.

Creed's screams were lost under the liquid roar of power. The force of the blast knocked him back twenty feet into the twisted trunk of Polaris's metallic tree. Creed was a blackened, cowed lump through the searing white heat of the blast. He made no attempts to defend himself or move. He might have already been dead. Calmly Havok added another fist to the first and doubled the intensity of the blast directed on Creed. He was trying to melt the feral mutant's flesh right off his bones.

Phoenix lashed out with a telekinetic buffer; the X-men may despise Sabretooth but they weren't about to stand around and watch one of their own murder him in cold blood. The shield absorbed and deflected Havok's blast. Wolverine lunged forward towards Lorna and Alex as Warren took wing and flew towards the downed Sabretooth. Iceman iced up and created an ice slide to reach Creed's smoking, charred body.

'Time to go,' Lorna murmured curling her arms around her ex-lover's back and drawing them both into the air before the furious Wolverine could reach them; the piece of Sinister flesh remained encapsulated in the magnetic bubble Lorna had created.

Without hanging around to give the stunned X-men time to react Lorna dragged a large piece of metal shrapnel from the shattered Blackbird underneath her and Alex's feet creating a platform for them to stand on as she rocketed them upwards into the sky.

'Alex!' Cyclops called after his brother; he hadn't seen his own little brother turn on a supposed ally in cold blood but he had heard it, and smelt the burning heat of his brother's powers all the same.

'Bye Scott; I'll call you.' He heard his brother's cheerful parting over the crackle of lightning and the rumble of thunder. It nearly broke his heart. There was no remorse in Alex Summer's voice for what he had done.

'I will try and slow their departure!'

Storm rose on the winds and flew after the green streak of fire that was Lorna's flight trail. Even with her powers and command of the elements Storm could not keep up with the departing duo. She gave up after about twenty miles when Polaris reached altitudes Storm was not comfortable broaching without the benefit of a shield like Polaris' own.

The sky reflected her frustration and roiling emotion, bubbling under with lightning and thunder; the winds whipping over the burnt grasses of the Illinois countryside and hissing through the distant trees.

She dropped back down into the foreground of the Beta-Star facility as the other X-men were examining Creed's monstrously burned body.

'Jesus Christ,' Iceman hissed, 'the bastard's still alive. I can't believe he's still alive.'

'Yeah,' Logan looked from the charred meat stink of Creed to his claws thoughtfully, 'I can fix that.' He darted forward claws extended. He hated Creed but this was beyond torture; he'd give the bastard a quick death whether he deserved it or not.

'No Wolverine.' Cyclops sounded tired more than angry, 'X-men don't kill.' He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, 'even if some of us seem to have forgotten that fact.'

Wolverine hesitated looking from Creed, whose eyes had popped and melted in sticky runnels down his blackened cheeks and then back to Cyclops, he curled his lip but didn't have the energy to make a comment. He walked a few steps away from the crackling, hot fat stink of burning meat; the stench made him sick to his stomach.

'Yeah right,' Iceman scoffed, 'I may not like the bastard but this is really sick; might be kinder to just kill Creed. I'm not sure even his healing factor can recover from a Havok Fricassee Special.'

'X-men don't kill,' Cyclops repeated a worrying dullness in his voice. Jean frowned and moved closer to her husband's side. His mind was shut up tight but she could feel the simmering tension underneath his shields.

Iceman stepped back from Creed and created a faint mist of cold, not quite a frost and not quite water, to cover Creed's raw and oozing flesh. He shook his head and gratefully retreated from the horrid sight made all the worse by the fact that Sabretooth kept trying to move and speak.

Pasting a smile he didn't feel over his face he looked at his teammates. 'Looks like the dark side bug is spreading: first Gambit goes wacko, then Lorna and now Alex……although I guess technically Alex has been evil for a while, right?' Bobby frowned, 'Ah hell, does anyone else think we've missed a trick here? Like maybe we should just go homicidal postal worker ourselves and join the club?'

'Shut up Bobby,' Warren spoke tiredly. He looked at Cyclops, Storm and Jean, 'We need a plan. Creed needs medical attention and we've got no means of transportation.'

Cyclops frowned, 'Where's Bishop?' in all the excitement he had only just noticed the large man's absence.

Logan snorted. He was standing a good few feet away from the burned Creed but his nose was still twitching, reacting to the horrendous smell, 'Went after the Dark Beast; Cajun told him where to look.'

Cyclops frowned, fists opening and closing spasmodically, 'Iceman?'

'Yeah?' Bobby did not like the look on their Fearless Leader's face one bit. Nope even Storm's thunderstorm looked tame in comparison. A vein pulsed against the paleness of Scott's temple.

'Go find Bishop.'

'Um…..okay-dokey; you can count on me boss-man.'

Iceman left without further comment responding to the heavy undertone of strained patience and barely leashed anger he could hear in Scott's voice. Cyclops was getting ready to blow and Bobby didn't want to be anywhere near ground zero when he did.


'You did what wit' my brain tissue?'

Gambit whirled around to stare at Sinister who sat in, of all things, a leather and chrome wingback armchair, watching him with a blandly indifferent expression. The mad geneticist steepled his fingers together and bobbed one foot as he settled back cross-legged in the chair.

'I used the brain tissue I harvested from you during your surgery six years ago to augment the tesseract capacity of my site-to-site transportation devices. I also incorporated an amalgam of your neurological signatures into some of my security systems and synthesised an artificial version of your bio-kinetic charge.'

The other man regarded Gambit with cold dead red eyes. 'Your powers operate by manipulating molecules on an atomic scale. It was relatively easy to calibrate that potential within the remit of breaking the barrier between time and space to create my tesseract technology.'

Gambit pushed away from the far wall where he had been examining a rather good Cezanne mounted to the wall of this small suite of rooms that might possible form Sinister's actual living space. He had been trying to work out if the painting was an original or a very good forgery, now however such concerns fled his mind.

'You used my brain to make your tesseracts?' Gambit demanded.

He crossed the plush plum coloured carpeting and stepped onto the beautifully woven rug in the centre of the room. He glowered down at the seated and unmoved Sinister, the lights from the Tiffany lamps all around the room casting rainbow shadows completely at odds with the sterility and coldness of the rest of this strange place.

'You had no right to do dat.' Gambit balled his hands into fists.

He didn't know why it angered and unnerved him so much to realise that pieces of his own brain had been spliced into all Sinister's machines and do-hickeys, but it did enrage him. It was just incredibly creepy on a scale of magnitude that Gambit did not want to deal with and he found himself wishing that Sinister had never told him.

If Sinister's machines were made from his brain did they therefore think with a Cajun accent? More pertinently had he actually just thought something that ridiculous? Mon dieu, he was in deep shit here and no mistake.

Sinister arched one brow, 'It was of no use to you and the tissue had been damaged to such a degree that it was not sufficient for the purposes of cloning.' He pointed out mildly as if that explained everything. Essex then gestured towards the cheese board on the ornate glass and cherry wood coffee table.

'Sit and eat Lebeau. You are under fed and it is affecting your cognizant processes; I will require you at maximum efficiency soon enough.' Essex nodded to the array of cheeses, and biscuits on display, alongside chunks of fresh apple and clementine's waiting to be peeled.

Gambit eyed the selection suspiciously but eventually slumped into one of the waiting chairs facing Essex. He poked petulantly at some sort of cheddar with the end of the cheese knife. He glared up at Essex deeply suspicious. The century and change sociopathic genius simply awarded him a witheringly look of contempt.

'Really Lebeau, do you truly believe I would go to this amount of effort to acquire you once and for all simply to poison you with a chunk of Red Leicester?'

Gambit cocked his head to the side. When put in so many words it did seem somewhat foolish, and he was hungry, what with all the betrayals, back stabbing, and double-dealing he hadn't eaten in something like forty-eight hours or maybe longer. He shrugged a little sheepishly and flicked a red eyed look at Sinister before muttering under his breath.

'Who knows what you be capable of homme.'

He carved off a slice of the red hued cheese and nudged it onto one of the Sesame seeded biscuits. The rich, full flavour of the cheese filled his mouth and throat as he swallowed down his mouthful. Essex was watching him when Gambit looked up with an almost expectant expression.

'Well?' Essex's red diamond forehead flashed.

Gambit licked his lips awkwardly; he was almost drowning in a sense of the surreal. He wondered if this was all some bizarre out of body experience or delirium and he was in reality dead or lying insensate on one of Sinister's operating tables; he was by no means sure which would be worse.

'Umm, merci; c'est tres bien,' Gambit swallowed the last of the biscuit, 'Could do wit' some wine mebbe, or somet'ing to drink? De food a petit bit dry, non?'

Sinister nodded and gestured to a cabinet in the far corner of the room. Feeling as though he had stepped into a bizarre parallel universe and expecting the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter to drop by at any minute Gambit walked over to the drinks cabinet.

'I had the 1812 brought up from storage. The vintage is reasonable.'

'Is dat so?' Gambit blinked his eyes dazedly from Sinister who was actually eating the cheese to the incredibly valuable bottle of red wine in his hands.

Ah oui, parallel universe, that was the only explanation. Finding a bottle opener in one of the beautifully carved and polished drawers of the cabinet Gambit plucked two crystal glasses from the rack behind the stain glassed doors of the cabinet and walked back to the table.

'You sure 'bout dis?' he asked warily holding up the bottle as he placed the glittering crystal glasses onto the table top, 'Dis bottle could make a body some nice pocket change in de right market.'

'Money is of no interest to me.' Essex waved for him to go ahead and pour two glasses.

Gambit shrugged, 'Your funeral homme.' He popped the cork on the bottle. Sinister bared his teeth.

'Hardly.'

After that a strained but oddly civil silence, punctuated by the rhythmic ticking of Sinister's grandfather clock across the room, pervaded. Gambit found himself nibbling nervously on a biscuit while his eyes darted around the room, documenting with a professional eye all the priceless period pieces of Victoriana on display.

'You must realise now, of course, the nature of our relationship?' Essex asked him eventually around a sip of wine; the dull fire of the red diamond matching the dark ruby of the wine in the multi-faceted crystal glass.

Gambit paused in the process of cutting more cheese for them both with the cheese wire built into the board. He glared at the other man, 'Don' you say it homme; you ain't Darth Vader, an' dis sure as hell ain't a George Lucas movie.'

To Gambit's immense shock the tiny smile that twitched the edge of Essex's mouth on the right side suggested that Apocalypse's renegade understudy in wickedness actually understood the inference. The thought of Sinister settling down to watch Star Wars was enough to knock his brain permanently off-line and therefore Gambit wrenched his thoughts away from that whole topic. Some things were just too weird.

Sinister replaced his glass onto the coffee table and took up his china plate of cheese and apple slices, 'I am not your biological father.'

Gambit slumped a little in relief. 'Merci dieu,' He muttered in heartfelt manner before picking up his own glass of wine. Essex watched him keenly.

'Indeed, in actual fact I am your grandfather.'

Gambit choked, a mouthful of wine going down the wrong way. Sinister offered him a lace bordered handkerchief from God only knew where to wipe himself down. The geneticist's pallid face and empty expression did not waver but it was palpably obvious he had spoken deliberately to get that very reaction from Remy. Gambit glared daggers at him.

'I confess to having no idea who your biological father might have been, or if that individual even still lives. In truth it is of little concern to me.'

Essex watched him with the patience of a snake, 'Your mother was one of only two of the Black Womb children with any genetic merit; I believe in time you will be a credit to her memory and to my aims.'

'My mother?' It was a whisper.

All his life Remy Lebeau had done just fine without a mother but that did not mean he hadn't wondered about the woman who had abandoned him at birth – or at least had allegedly abandoned him at birth. He stared at Sinister for the longest time as the grandfather clock's pendulum sliced up time with steady monotony.

'What was her name?' The question was forced up his throat and passed his cold lips almost painfully. He had to know, he had to know her name at least, even though he hated that the answers would come from this most hated of men.

Essex nodded quietly well understanding what it cost Gambit to ask.

'Rebecca. Her name was Rebecca.'


Storm watched Iceman's rapid departure on an ice slide before turning back to Cyclops.

'I believe attacking Creed was designed to pose as a distraction,' she said grimly but with admirable calm. Only the raging winds howling through the debris of the sentinel battle belied that seeming calm composure.

Cyclops nodded lips pursed into a thin white line, 'To make me angry enough that I'd decide going after Lorna and Alex should be the team's priority; that way Gambit could do whatever he's planning to do to Sinister without our intervention.'

Storm nodded without any visible emotion upon her face; the sky lit up behind her head with sheet lightning throwing the whole field into harsh black and white relief and leeching the colour from the world for a second, 'I believe so.'

Jean squeezed Scott's arm, 'Honey?'

Cyclops shook off her grip and rebuffed the gentle brush against his mind. His actions were not overly harsh; nevertheless it was a demonstration of just how upset he was. As much as he might wish otherwise right now he just couldn't afford to allow himself to be comforted. If he did he thought he might start screaming and not stop. He took a breath before blindly facing the rest of the team.

'Alex and Lorna are not the main problem.'

He took another breath struggling to swallow down his feelings. He might not have Wolverine's senses but the stench of burned meat and the soft rasping of Creed's agonised breaths were more than he wanted to bear. The idea that Alex had done this to another living being, one that wasn't even a threat to him at the time, made him want to scream himself hoarse.

Scott's brows dipped into the furrow over his nose and it was an effort to keep his eyes firmly closed. His hands curled into fists at his sides.

'This is Gambit's fault.' He said heatedly; as soon as the accusation was off his tongue it felt like his mind had lit with a taper. This was all that lying, cheating, fucking bastard Cajun's fault.

'Gambit planned this; he used our weaknesses against us and manipulated all of us, including Alex, Lorna, and Creed to get what he wanted.'

Jean reached for him both in body and mind, 'Scott….'

'No damn it,' his voice cracked as he let himself shout. All the X-men turned to stare at him. It was incredibly rare for Cyclops to let his emotions get the better of him.

'No,' He said more calmly taking a step away to try and gain some control. 'He used my little brother against me, Jean. I can't forgive that.'

Scott shook his head and focused his voice on the rest of the team, 'Christ, he made it seem easy. Whatever team of X-men came after him Gambit was ready for them. He's learned how to manipulate our weaknesses because we let him in.'

Scott turned blindly towards his wife once more, 'We let him into our home, our team, our lives, and he used that to betray all the trust we ever put in him.'

Silence, except for the steady biting beat of hail falling from the sleet tossed skies, answered Scott Summers as he tried to pull the control and neutrality of Cyclops back over his thoughts like a protective shield. The depth and breadth of the sense of betrayal he felt surprised him.

Fucking Cajun; no wonder Sinister had singled him out. They were perfect for each other. No, Scott tried to marshal his thoughts; he needed to be rational about this. He needed to think over the ramifications…..he needed…….

How could Gambit use Alex against him like this? What had Scott ever done to Gambit to warrant that exploitation? There was no justification for this.

Cyclops knew that he and Gambit weren't friends, they weren't family; their relationship had always been strictly professional. Yet they had lived under the same roof, eaten at the same table, shed the same blood, sweat, and tears for the same purpose for three years. There was a weight of trust implicit with that sort of intimacy and it hurt Scott Summers to realise how little any of that had mattered to Gambit. He hadn't known the other man was really that cold blooded.

Or was he missing something here? A cooler still rational part of Cyclops mind asked quietly. Was he making assumptions based on faulty logic? It wasn't as though he really knew the first thing about Gambit, or what the man cared about – hell it was looking doubtful Gambit cared about anything at all, least of all himself.

He felt a cool graceful hand touch his arm and knew without seeing that it was Ororo who touched him. 'You are wrong Cyclops.' He marvelled at how she could sound so calm when he could hear the clash of thunder and the shrieking of her grief and hurt in the wind.

'Are you still defending him Storm?' Archangel didn't sound angry or condescending just coldly curious. 'Gambit's betrayal hurts you the most.'

'I know,' Ororo did not remove her hand from Scott's arm even as she turned to face Warren with a cool, serene calm like a wall barricading her true feelings from view, 'That is not what I meant.'

She looked from Scott's angry blindness to Jean's worried face and then to Warren's cold vindication. Wolverine met her gaze with blue eyes that were sharp but strangely emotionless; his feelings on the matter not on show for public consumption.

Storm sighed, 'He has betrayed us, but I am not sure that he knows it.'

She took a breath and raised a hand to silence Warren's instant retort, 'Listen to me.' She demanded quietly, her words enforced by the roil of sheet lightning rippling through the black-purple clouds. The pelting tingle of pellets of hail rained down on the twists of metal and fallen sentinels like the staccato rapport of icy bullets.

'A person can only betray a trust when trust has been given and accepted,' Ororo raised one shoulder in a gesture too remote to be a shrug, 'You can only break covenant when you have made a commitment and there are people there who expect you to uphold that commitment.'

Cyclops frowned, 'He was on the team for three years he….'

'He quit Cyke,' It was Wolverine's voice that interrupted him, tone dry as dust.

The older man shook hail from the wild tufts of his hair and pulled his cowl up over his head before continuing. There was a caustic curl to his lips.

'Gumbo had it planned from the start,' Logan chuffed a laugh, 'fuck the man even told me that he was going to settle some scores but I wasn't listenin' good enough.'

Wolverine shook his head ruefully, 'Gumbo's too good at playin' harmless; makes it easy to forget that he ain't a babe in the woods.'

'What are you saying Wolverine?' Cyclops was struggling to hold onto his patience but he was determined to listen. The only way to deal with this sense of betrayal was to try and understand the circumstances; if only he could get his mind around why Gambit had taken this action he could begin to judge things sensibly.

Wolverine shrugged as he tried to light a cigar in the bellowing gales. He looked up at the almost preternaturally still Ororo with an almost gentle smile. 'Yer mind layin' off the storm, darlin'?'

The old Canadian turned back to Cyclops and Phoenix as Ororo tried to calm her emotions and therefore the raging rain lashed winds.

'Gumbo ain't never goin' to ask for help. Mostly 'cus he don't think he deserves it an' 'cus he ain't one to trust anyone to do his dirty work for him.' Wolverine shrugged, 'Can't say I blame him for that; got a similar philosophy myself.' The keen blue eyes raked over the X-men.

'Gumbo's real sensitive to being called a traitor – but yer can't betray a team yer already turned yer back on officially.' Wolverine nodded to Cyclops, 'He tol' yer straight Cyke that he was givin' the X-men up completely; far as he's concerned all debts are paid and we ain't his people anymore – that way what he's doin' now ain't got a thing to do with betrayal; it's just business.'

Cyclops pursed his lips like he'd tasted something foul, 'That's ridiculous. The X-men are a family we…..' Ororo interrupted him.

'You are forgetting Scott that Remy has been cast out and discarded by one family already.' Storm pointed out sadly.

A look of trepidation passed over her grave visage as the lessening rain painted tears down her cheeks, 'Perhaps Remy simply decided to discard us before we could do the same to him as did the Thieves Guild?'

Cyclops shook his head in agitated fashion. That kind of cold minded pragmatism, not to mention petulance, flew in the face of everything the X-men had always stood for. A flame of pure rage burned inside Scott's chest. It seemed obvious now that Gambit had never assimilated into the X-men at all; he'd held onto his own distrustful, bitter, and callous beliefs while paying false lip service to the Professor's ideals.

Scott could feel a headache developing behind his eyes. He should have argued with Charles when the professor allowed the thief to stay on at the mansion. He should never have expected loyalty and fidelity from a thief in the first place. More than any of the revelations about Gambit's past, all of which could be dealt with in time, it was Gambit's contempt for the X-men family that Scott found unforgivable.

'If he quit then we don't owe him any consideration.' Warren spoke up still coldly resolute. As far as he was concerned Gambit's actions justified every negative impression he had ever held about the thief. The man was scum; pure and simple.

'He's proved he's dangerous, hostile, and doesn't care who he hurts to get what he wants. We need to treat him and Sinister as a package deal and we need to deal with the both of them once and for all.'

It was telling that in the silence that followed that heated statement no one offered objection. Not even Storm, who stood quietly, face calm but eyes swirling with hidden storms of emotion mimicked by the weather and the storm laden, weeping sky.

Jean Grey Summers had said nothing this whole time. It had seemed to her that the team needed to vent their anguish, Scott especially, and she couldn't deny that she wasn't immune to her own sense of hurt and anger towards Gambit. Still she had insight the others didn't.

'That's exactly what he wants Warren,' she said quietly looking directly at Archangel. She broadened her scope to include all the X-men as she reached out to twine her fingers with her husband's. She could sympathise with his feelings, in fact she shared them, but that didn't change what she had sensed from Gambit and finally made sense of in her own mind.

'Gambit was expecting the X-men to have condemned him outright by the time we came here; I read that clearly from his thoughts,' She said carefully. 'Whatever Betsy gained from his mind he expected it to turn us against him totally. He wants us to make him the villain, Warren. He wants you to judge and condemn him.'

She met her old friend and former paramour in the eyes, 'Are you going to give him the satisfaction?' she demanded almost snidely.

Are we going to play judge, jury, and executioner now? Is that what the X-men have become? Or are you channelling Apocalypse's old programming Warren? Are you still playing Death? She added silently for Warren's ears only.

The thoughts Archangel did not even know he was broadcasting helped Jean keep her own perspective. Without Warren's almost knee-jerk vilification of Gambit as a counterpoint Jean wasn't sure she'd be able to keep herself from reacting in aggression and hurt feelings just like Scott.

It would be so easy to simply turn her back and blame Gambit for being an inveterate liar and pathologically unable to trust. So easy to believe, like Warren did, that those deep, destructive character flaws had been created in a vacuum that had nothing whatsoever to do with her, and therefore do away with any need to try and understand and rationalise his motives. Sometimes Jean hated being a telepath; it made it so hard to take comfort in one's own prejudices.

Warren frowned a little disconcerted both by her words and the thoughts she sent to him privately, 'I didn't think you could read him?'

Jean shook her head, the red flame of her hair falling around her shoulders damply in the soft deluge of the rain.

'Not well, but better now his shields are ruined,' she said shortly before turning away from Warren.

She squeezed Scott's hand tightly. 'He's burning his bridges Scott; all of them. As far as he's concerned he's already lost his second family and he'd sooner we hate him completely than be stuck in the same limbo of hurt feelings and loneliness he feels towards his family in New Orleans.'

Jean met Ororo's eyes next and found that her best friend had already come to the same conclusions. The hurt Storm felt was obvious and blazed in her mind like a raw ache of disappointment. Jean could feel the reflected bite of betrayal; Ororo could not understand why Gambit had not trusted their friendship enough to at least attempt honesty with her. There was fury and anger under the surface of Ororo's thoughts as well but they were secondary at the moment; later perhaps they would eclipse the hurt in Storm's mind completely but right now Ororo's spirit was weeping for the loss of a dear friend.

'Throwing the Sentinel head at us, refusing to acknowledge Storm, coming up with a plan that would confirm all our bad impressions of him…..it was all designed to have this result. I don't know why, but Gambit wants us to hate him. I kept hearing that screaming in his thoughts. He wants to be hated.' Jean finished finally.

'Why?' Cyclops could not fathom it. Jean would not answer him either with words or thoughts. A crackle of lightning shimmered through the air and although Scott could not see it he could taste the static on his tongue. Ororo's breath trembled as she prepared to speak.

'It is simple,' she whispered her voice merging with the mournful music of the gales, 'One does not mourn for those she hates and Remy does not want anyone to weep for him when he too dies.'