Part Twenty-Seven



Remy was waiting for Logan when the latter returned to the safehouse. Hank and Jean were back upstairs with Tante Mattie,
who had, as promised, alerted them when Claude woke up crying in pain. So far, the rest of the injured guild members were
still asleep, and Remy knew Tante Mattie and his friends didn't need his help while they took care of Claude.

Logan grinned when he saw Remy sitting on the stairs, obviously waiting for his return. He paused briefly before speaking, his
keen hearing picking up on the muffled sounds coming from upstairs. "How they doin'?"

Remy sighed. "Not bad. Most of 'em are still sleepin', but Claude woke up a little while ago in quite a bit of pain. My question
is, what happened?"

"Nothin'. I had a nice little conversation with yer problem assassin and I think he's on the same page as the rest of ya now."

"What's dat mean?" Remy asked. "None of us has been able to make Gris-Gris see reason…"

"I'm the best there is at what I do, Cajun, remember?" Logan laughed. "In this case, what I did was intimidate him into thinking
that trying to make the unification work is a good thing."

"Dat's de best news I've heard in weeks." Tante Mattie's gentle voice commented from the top of the stairs. She motioned for
them to join her. When they did, she led the way back to the room where Jean and Hank were looking after Claude and the
others. Remy saw that Emil was awake and went over to speak to him, while Tante Mattie and Logan joined Jean and Hank
on the other side of the room.

Emil's blue eyes looked dull and tired when Remy looked at them. His voice was barely above a whisper when he spoke. "'Ey
Rem."

"Hey. How you feelin', bro?" Remy replied. He and Emil were cousins, but they had always been more like brothers. For Remy
to call Emil "bro" wasn't unusual.

Emil flinched in pain as he tried to sit up and realized he couldn't do that just yet. "Been worse." He whispered. "Dey back yet?"

"Logan is, yeah. He brought some good news for de unification." Remy told him.

"What's dat?"

Logan came over and answered Emil's question with a chuckle. "I simply forced him to realize that he's not the only bad-ass in
the world and if he doesn't agree to work with the rest of you towards a peaceful unification, he'll have me to deal with."

"And believe us, that won't be a fun thing for Gris, if he decides to go against Logan." Jean laughed. "Claude's doing better,
Remy. Tante wanted you to know."

"Good." Remy said and after giving Emil's red hair an affectionate ruffle, he went over and told Bella Donna and Theoren what
Logan had done. As the three of them discussed future strategies, Gris walked into the room, followed by Singer, Fifolet and
Questa.

Gris hadn't wanted to go into the room. Not while Logan was still there. The very idea of having a second embarrassing
confrontation with the stocky mutant was enough to fuel his lack of desire to see how everyone was doing. It took his friends to
make him go in anyway and deal with it.

"You never been a coward in your life, mon ami." Fifolet commented. "Don' let dis guy rattle you."

"Fifolet's right, Gris. You always hold tradition highly. We're assassins, we shouldn' let a silly little mutant from goodness knows
where change anythin' 'bout who we are." Questa agreed. Gris nodded.

"Tradition is important. I may end up actually doin' what I didn' wan' do in de first place, but it might be for de betterment of de
guild in de long run."

Singer smiled at the three men. "An' we know dat de prophecies do say de two guilds are meant to be unified. De least we can
do is be civilized in an attempt to fulfill dose prophecies."

"Right." The agreement was unanimous. Without further discussion, the four assassins entered the room to find that most of the
injured guild members were now awake. The mood in the room was hopeful, relieved and somewhat anticipant.

Gris decided to just make it official, with a slight glare at Logan. "If you been hearin' some kinda rumor dat I'm not gon' fight de
unification anymore, well, it's true. But dat don' mean I'm gon' like it."

"No one said de unification was gon' be easy, Gris." Bella Donna commented. "Lord knows we haven' had an easy time of it so
far. I don' t'ink de hard stuff is over, either, but at least now we're all goin' in de same direction."

Tante Mattie smiled at the rest of the people in the room. "Everyt'ing happens for a reason. De difficulties we've been havin' are
God's way of testin' our strength of character an' our ability to adapt to changes even if we don' like dem. I'm proud of every
one of you, an' none of what's been happenin' has been in vain. I feel certain of dat."

Late that night, Hank dimmed the lights in the room and paused at the door. Only two of the injured were still under his care.
Emil and Claude were still suffering from the severe injuries Gris had dealt them earlier in the day, and while all the others had
been allowed to go to their own rooms, Hank wanted to keep the two of them close to him. One of the spare rooms in the
safehouse was across from the room they were in, and Remy had told Hank he could sleep there so he could keep an ear open
for any problems during the night.

Gris appeared in the doorway behind Hank and remained silent until the blue man spoke. "I don't know if they'll want to see
you right now, Gris-Gris."

"Dey're awake?"

"Yes, they are for the moment. Is it possible that anything you wish to say to them can wait until the morning?"

Gris shook his head. "Non. But I won' keep 'em up late."

"Okay. Please leave the door open when you leave. I will be just across the hall and I want to make sure I can hear them if
something happens during the night to aggravate their injuries." Hank said.

When Hank left, Gris walked over, dreadlocks swinging around his face in a beaded frame, and sat down on a chair near the
two thieves. They both knew he was there, and while they didn't want to talk to him, they both opened their eyes and looked at
him in pained silence.

Claude finally broke the slightly tense silence. "Why're you here, Gris?"

"You two gon' be okay?" Gris asked, his voice quiet.

"I am, yeah." Claude nodded briefly. He looked at Emil and raised his eyebrows. Gris followed the look and sighed, knowing
that Emil's answer was going to be a mixed one.

Emil gasped in pain as he took a deeper breath than he had planned on, and then gave Gris a lopsided grin. "Physically, yeah I'll
be fine. We'll have to work on de other stuff, t'ough."

The large man nodded. "Oui. I can' actually come out an' 'pologize yet, but maybe we can work on dat too, huh?"

"Sounds like a plan to me. Dat's what dis unification is all about, right? Workin' out diff'rences, adaptin' to changes an' learnin'
how to be one fam'ly, not two." Emil agreed.

"Right." Claude smiled. "If we work together, we can make dis work, eventually. It's jus' a matter of stickin' it out an' not givin'
up."

"An' figurin' out how to deal wit' de stuff we hate, de stuff dat drives us crazy." Gris finished. "Well, I promised de doctor I
wouldn' keep you guys awake too long, so I'll actually do somethin' nice now an' keep dat promise. Dis ain' gon' be easy, but
someday we jus' might succeed."

After Gris left them to retire to his own bedroom, Claude and Emil looked at each other.

"Wow. What de hell was dat?" Emil was astounded.

"Dat was de effects of Logan on Gris. He must've really struck a cord wit' our resident grouchy killer. No way on earth would
Gris have ever done or said anythin' like dat on his own."

Emil shook his head. "Maybe. You t'ink it'll last?"

Claude sighed and closed his eyes. "For de sake of everyone we know…includin' ourselves an' Gris himself, I sure as hell hope
so."

"Me too. 'Night Claude."

"'Night kiddo."

(AUTHOR'S NOTE, February 5, 2002: I have decided to end this story right here for the time being. I have quite a few other stories on the go that need and deserve my attention without my having to worry about finishing this one as well. Someday, I'll write a sequel to it, but for now, this is it. I had a lot of fun writing it, shed a lot of tears too. It is definitely one of my favorites of the stories I've written. TTFN! ~Quinn)