Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.
- Revelation 2:10
Gambit wasn't afraid of heights, and it was a good thing because at the moment he was most of the way up an eighty-foot cliff with no climbing gear to help hold him to the rock. He glanced down at Rogue to see how she was doing, then returned his attention to not falling. Just because he wasn't afraid didn't mean he was stupid.
A flicker of purple at the top of the cliff - a slightly different shade than the black sky - had caught his attention as the X-Men had entered the tomb, and seeing as how he was less interested in getting pounded by Apocalypse than he was in getting even with Mesmero, he'd quietly abandoned the group. Why Rogue had decided to come with him was a mystery; he wanted to think it was because she liked him, but more probably it was because she'd had that pointless "team unity" thing programmed into her.
"This is the dumbest idea..." she said now, the words drifting up to him along with the distinctive scritch of boots on rock.
He tested a handhold before pulling himself up another few feet, and looked down at her again. "Relax, chere. Just think of it as a real 'xcitin' date."
She made a disgusted noise. "Oh, yeah, that'll be such a comfort when I fall and die. And for the last time, stop callin' me that! Sounds like the singer, and I hate her."
Remy allowed himself to smirk. She was going to be a lot of fun, she was, maybe more so than Belle. Not that he didn't miss Belle, and miss her badly - it was just hard to focus on those bittersweet memories when he had a firebrand like Rogue right there to keep him entertained.
"If that's what you want, Roguey," he said, hauling himself - finally - over the top of the cliff.
"Shut up," she snapped. "Just shut up. For five whole minutes. I dare you."
He knelt and extended his hand to her, giving her his most charming grin at the same time. "Never, chere."
She ignored his hand and pulled herself up. Now that was like Belle - independent to a fault and twice as stubborn. "You're a big fat jerk, you know that?" she told him, brushing off her gloved hands. "So where's Mesmero?"
He scanned the ground, looking for the traces of footsteps, and found an imprint a yard away, its raised edges shining pale in the starlight. There were more prints leading away from the cliff, into an area filled with boulders and towering rock outcrops; Remy wasn't a tracker by anyone's standards - though he could follow a money trail pretty good - but even he could see where Mesmero had gone. "Settin' him up a little ambush, I think. Stay close."
She nodded, looking around the place and shivering just a bit. He started walking. In a way, it was good that Rogue was the one who'd come with him. She'd been up close and personal with Mesmero already, and probably wouldn't let herself get hypnotized. As for himself, Mesmero had tried to sucker him once, in Paris, but you can't con a con man, and so Remy had escape with his free will intact. He thought it was because of one of his own abilities - something he couldn't really describe, except as a kind of aural hypnosis: all he had to do was talk the right way and people fell for it. He'd been trying not to do that with Rogue. Took all the fun out of life.
The sand gave way to barren rocks, and with it went the footprints. They were far from the cliff now, and well into the boulder field. Gambit stopped, uneasy and conflicted about what to do next. Every instinct he had was screaming trouble. Every instinct he had was also telling him to move it before Mesmero disappeared again.
In the end, it was Rogue who ended the dilemma. She pushed past him and yelled, "Get your ugly face out here, Mesmero! Or are you too scared to fight a couple of kids?"
"Remy was tryin' to sneak up on him?" he reminded her, rolling his eyes.
"I've got other teammates to help," she snapped, hands on hips and surveying the outcrops. "I don't feel like wastin' any more time than necessary on this loser."
Definitely the team-unity thing. He ignored the unexpectedly strong twinge of disappointment that brought him, and pulled out his bo-staff from its place in his coat, offering up a challenge of his own to the mindbender: "Ya, cochon, I got somet'in to settle wit' you!"
A low laugh snaked its way around the boulders and outcrops. Gambit couldn't pinpoint the direction of the sound, which didn't make him feel any better about the blown ambush. Maybe he should've done this solo after all.
The laughter trailed off, ending with a malevolent chuckle. "Be careful what you ask for, children..."
Silence descended on the desert for the space of a heartbeat. Gambit tensed, ready to move - and move he did, flinging himself to one side in a smooth tuck-and-roll as a hail of blue lasers sliced down from the rocks. Rogue jumped backwards with a surprised shout. "He's still got that stupid gun!"
"Ain't gonna do him no good," Gambit said, coming up from his roll with four cards in hand. Another burst of lasers gave him an idea of Mesmero's location - high up on a rock outcropping - and he flung the cards with every bit of accuracy he could manage. The cards cut a glowing swath through the night air and exploded against the rock, sending a shower of pebbles and dust raining back down on the young man who'd thrown them.
"You pathetic children!" Mesmero shouted somewhere, and Gambit looked around quickly, trying to figure out where the mindbender was now.
Behind him, Rogue cried out again, and he spun to see Mesmero standing over her with the rifle raised in his hands. She was kneeling on the ground, clutching the back of her head and obviously in agony, and Gambit suddenly remembered that she'd gotten a head injury once already tonight. Ouch.
"So much for havin' help," he said to himself, under his breath, and threw the better part of a deck at Mesmero. "Shame on ya - hittin' a girl - you got no manners at all!"
Mesmero dodged the cards, moving with surprising speed and agility, but Gambit had never intended to hit him with the cards anyway. While the older mutant was distracted, he closed the distance between them and knocked the rifle away with a flip of his bo, then leapt back, out of reach. "Evens th' field a little, no?"
"The field will never be even, genetrash, not between the superior and the weak, and the strong will always triumph. Your brother was unfit," Mesmero said, a dark smirk sliding across his face. "Watching him die was... amusing."
White-hot fury crackled through every cell of his body, and Remy could feel the energy flare from his eyes, warm against his skin in the cold of the night.
Mesmero laughed, teeth flashing white. "Yes, little boy, be angry. Try to avenge him."
Gambit finally found his voice, and, much calmer than he felt, told him, "You're going to die."
"One who serves Apocalypse can never die!" Mesmero shouted, throwing his arms wide in a gesture of exaltation.
"Lessee 'bout that," Gambit said, and charged the other mutant.
Mesmero was ready for him, of course, because a more telegraphed move there had never been, and the next minutes devolved into a blur of punches, kicks, and half-dodged blows. Remy was an accomplished fighter, skilled in hand-to-hand combat and not afraid to fight dirty, but Mesmero was being fueled by a creature of unthinkable power, and the rage burning within him eventually, inevitably, made Gambit miscalculate.
His bo went spinning, torn from his hand by a lucky shot on Mesmero's part. Like a fool, Remy turned slightly to see where it had gone, and before he could refocus his attention on his opponent, Mesmero landed a solid punch to his jaw.
Dazed, he staggered backward, shaking his head to clear it. This was not good, not good - he had to get this back under control. Mesmero advanced on him, the movement visible even with the stars dancing in front of his eyes, and Gambit lashed out with a high kick that caught the mindbender in the ribs.
It barely made Mesmero blink, but it cost Gambit his balance, and he fell heavily to the ground.
Mesmero smiled and bent to retrieve the fallen bo. Before his fingers finished closing around it, a figure slammed into him, knocking him against a boulder face-first.
Rogue. Okay, so there was something to that team-unity idea.
Gambit scrambled to his feet and felt for a card, frantically, as Mesmero backhanded Rogue across her face. She hit the dirt hard and groaned, but didn't get back up.
"Fool," Mesmero snarled at her, wiping a line of blood from his mouth. "You'll pay for this indignity!"
"Big talk from someone bleedin' all over the desert!" Gambit flipped a card in his face, forcing him to step away from Rogue, and followed it up with a good punch to his ugly tattooed face. Bone crunched, blood spurted, and Mesmero howled.
And before Gambit could press this advantage, Mesmero dove at him with eyes wide and wild, and he was just a fraction of a second too slow in blocking the attack, and the other mutant's hands clamped down around his neck, forcing him to the ground.
Mesmero was a lot stronger than he looked. Gambit got his own hands on Mesmero's chest and pushed as hard as he could, to no avail; the fingers around his neck tightened even further. Black spots began to dance at the edges of his vision.
"I have seen the future," Mesmero told him, red eyes blazing with a twisted inner fire, "and you are not in it."
"Great," Remy managed to get out, promptly cursing himself for wasting the breath. His blood was pounding in his ears, in his face, and he kicked at Mesmero with the desperate strength of a dying man. Nothing happened.
The spots coalesced into a single black curtain, blocking out everything but the triumphant sneer of the man he was supposed to be killing.
"Such will be the fate of all who dare stand in the way of the dread lord," Mesmero hissed. "You are but the first. Soon the entire world will feel the power of En Sabah Nur! There is no hope - there is no chance of salvation - you will all die at my master's hands!"
Gambit tried one more time to pry the mindbender's fingers from his throat, but it was no use. Now there was only a pinprick of dim light in the midst of the blackness, and even with his sluggish mind, he knew that he didn't have the strength to fight any more. He was going to die, and in this last moment before the blackness swallowed him forever, he wished he'd paid more attention at Mass. How did it go - "Mon Dieu, je regrette..."
His voice sounding strangely distant, Mesmero crowed, "Death to all who oppose the might of Apoc-"
There was a sudden meaty thunk! and the pressure on his neck vanished. Gambit immediately sucked down a lungful of air and shoved Mesmero's unconscious body off his chest, coughing all the while, and looked up to see how his deliverance had come about.
Standing above him, uniform torn and stained, face dirty, hair a mess, a grapefruit-sized rock in her hand, was Rogue. And at that moment, choking on precious oxygen, he thought she was, without a doubt, the most beautiful sight in the world.
He coughed some more and, voice hoarse, managed to say, "Thanks, chere."
She dropped the rock and dusted off her hands before hauling him to his feet. "I was just tryin' t'get one of you to shut up."
"Oh, I'm fine, comment ça va?" he muttered, rubbing his neck gingerly.
She rolled her eyes, then poked at Mesmero's shoulder with the toe of her boot. "Okay, we got him. Now what?"
Instead of answering her, he reached inside his duster, removing a single card - another ace of spades, saved special for Mesmero - and with a thought, it began to fill with energy. It was too bad; he'd wanted the villain to be awake when he delivered the final blow. Ah well. C'est la vie and all that - revenge was still revenge.
He could feel the card was nearly full, so he drew back his arm, preparing to throw it right into the black lines of Mesmero's face. Finally, after all the days and weeks of chasing, after all the promises and oaths, he was going to exact the retribution his brother's soul demanded, and then he was going home to stop the Assassins. With a flick of his wrist, the world would snap back to normal. It was right. It was tradition.
Eye for an eye, and Mesmero was past due.
Remy LeBeau gave the other mutant a last, hateful look. "Now it's time t'say goodbye, cochon..." he started, but in the split-second before he sent the card flying, Rogue stepped in front of him and effectively blocked the fallen mindbender with her body.
"Stop!" she said, holding up a hand. "Don't do this."
"Why not?" he asked - demanded - without lowering the card. "Why not?"
"Because X-Men don't kill," she said, simple and determined.
He wanted to laugh at the innocence, the blindness, the total unthinking confidence with which she'd said it. He wanted to knock her aside, get her the hell out of his way so he could finish what he'd started. And he wanted to kiss her for everything and for nothing.
What he actually did, though, was giver her a bitter smile. " 'Sokay, chere, I think my membership was temp'rary anyway."
"Then -" She closed the distance between them until she was less than a foot away, and put a hand on his arm. "Because two wrongs just make a bigger wrong," she said, searching his eyes. "And you know it."
He looked away, fighting down a surge of frustration. "I have to do this."
"No you don't. There's always another way." Her fingers, warm through her gloves, wrapped over his, and he knew that she was going to try to take the card away. Part of him was screaming it's tradition, it's the way you have to do things, Henri must be avenged, and another part of him was terrified that the soft, trusting look in Rogue's eyes would vanish forever is he killed Mesmero like he was honorbound to do. Mon Dieu, he thought wildly, do I really have it that bad?
"We can find that way, I know we can. Just don't do this." She tugged slightly on the card, and all of a sudden he felt himself give up, felt himself surrender a hundred generations of Guild tradition to a pretty girl with pleading eyes, and he knew he would never forgive himself for letting Henri and the Guild down in this moment.
Rogue tossed the card away. It exploded somewhere in the dark behind them without sending even a sprinkle of sand their way. Then she pulled him into a hug, wrapping her arms around him and letting all that warmth soak into his chilled, guilty soul. "Welcome to the team, Remy."
"C'est bien," he said after a moment, hugging her back and lying through his teeth. "C'est bien. You know how t'work the 'bird's radio?"