Thief of Spirits by Eternity's Voice
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Chapter 5: Hell of an Entrance, Ma Petite
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Rogue stared quietly around her husband's back to take in the soft lights of New Orleans. Out of the windows of homes and small shops leaked a gentle glow that mixed with tiny sparks of lamp light. It was all packed so close together, the glitter almost seemed one solid light. As the city crept towards the horizon, the buildings grew tall and modern. The occasional worker staying late had a light on in the massive scrapers, but most of the endless panes of glass looked into dark, empty offices. Instead, the wash of illumination from the smaller buildings reflected off the skyscrapers back onto the streets.
She could barely make out bits of river from behind the colossal structures. The water flowed slowly; starlight brightening its surface. She searched for gaps in the giant offices to see the loveliness. If Rogue looked to either side of the parked motorcycle, however, it seemed there was only water. Country had given way to swamp as Remy took her south. The bayous imprisoned the city within themselves. New Orleans was a light in the heart of darkness. She supposed there was a beauty to the scenery but all she saw was murky bog caging her in. Still, the water reflected the city's glow somewhat and seemed less forbidding.
'It's all right now, but how will it look under tha sun? How fine will this new home seem come daybreak?' With a slight shake, she drove the thoughts from her head. Things were never what they seemed and were never the same thing twice. She could only admire the beauty, bear with the hideous, and keep an eye out for trouble. She stifled a yawn and closed her eyes briefly.
"You still awake, Cherie?" Rogue snapped her eyes open and she rolled them at the question. Since when was she automatically asleep if she didn't maintain a death grip on the driver?
"Of course I'm awake. An' what's your care? For God's sake, Remy, we aren't even movin'!" They were suddenly moving at fifty miles an hour and she clung to him. Rogue waited for his belly to soften with an exhalation and jammed her thumb into his upper gut. It couldn't hurt too much, but it was something.
Remy winced at the small pain in his chest as the muscles complained of the sharp pressure. "Why you do a thing like dat, ma Petite?"
"Why did you race off like that again? I told yah to give me fair warnin'!"
He startled in surprise. "Remy thought he did. Said to tighten yo' grip an' everyt'ing, just like a right gentleman."
There was an indignant snort from behind him, "You only asked if I was awake. How you can pull "tighten yo' grip" out of that I have no clue"
Remy wondered just how many of his words she had missed when she apparently dozed off for a minute. 'Most likely all but the last sentence.' He shook his head. "Well Chere," he continued out loud, "since you missed dat part, Remy 'pologize, but you need to hear what he said before dat. Remy been nice an' normal for you today, but he can't be like dat all de time in N'Awlins. He gotta talk like dis an' act like dis and he canna' drop de mask almos' a'tall." His accent thickened to the point of ridiculousness as Remy grew reacquainted with his mask. "Jus' somet'in' Remy forced te do. Don' take et person'l, ma..."
Rogue's fist jumped up and punched his jaw shut. She kept it there, digging the knuckles into his voice box. "Don' even think about talkin' ta me with that poor excuse for English. You gotta speak in third person, fine. Just make it understandable. You can even practice your comprehensible English when you explain why tha Hell you hafta speak in gibberish in tha first place." She released his throat and went back to holding on for dear life with both hands.
"Sorry, Chere. Dat is a long story and Remy don't have time to tell." They entered the city limits. "He do have a feeling you'll find out soon enough though."
New Orleans was not the place it had seemed from afar. It was like the bayous. There was beauty in there somewhere, but the narrow dark alleys off the bright main streets made her too edgy to see it properly. It was too quiet. She repeated the thought aloud to fill the eerie silence. Remy's quiet voice came back to her. It seemed to echo off everything and came to her ears with a haunted quality.
"It's quiet 'cause no one wants to be on de streets. De only places wit' noise are de bars and de hospitals. Sensible people are at home. De stupid ones are in de bars an' clubs. Even some of dose are smart enough to be goin' home soon, but not many. You can't tell now, but in a few hours all dose idiots will spill onto de streets and de problems will begin. A few of dem won' make it home a'tall. An' don't call Remy cruel again; it's just de sad truth." He turned off into one of the alleys. Rogue saw why he drove a bike instead of a car. It would never fit through any of the crazy routes he took.
She growled, "Mah beau, I don't care if yah drive through this death trap, just slow down! Mah stomach won' take much more of this." A set of large iron doors set into the left alley wall opened and Remy veered into the opening. He coasted to a stop in an enormous garage.
"Dis slow enough, ma Petite?" he murmured as he killed the engine. "Just do yo'self a favor an' follow Remy's act. Don' talk for a while." He managed to get the bike and offer his hand to her as if they were a knight and his lady dismounting his horse after their long journey to his castle. Something about the way Remy had said to play along made her actually follow the advice. She looked around curiously as the Cajun greeted what she assumed were old friends. Every sort of vehicle she could have imagined to exist –and some that she didn't- were neatly ordered in a sort of parking lot to the left of the open area where they stood. The heavy doors to the street, now closed, lay on her right and an open door in front of her led away to some carpeted area.
Turning her attention back to the lively conversation, Rogue noticed something strange. The two men working in the garage had the utmost respect for her husband, but said nothing to her. They didn't even acknowledge her existence until Remy introduced her as his wife. When he did, she was nearly overpowered by reverence. From that moment on, Remy's Petite -Rogue LeBeau- was born.
She accepted their courteous greetings with a gentle smile. The taller, dark haired attendant kissed her gloved hand. Some stray locks of hair brushed the bare skin of her wrist and she quickly waved him off with a shy gesture. When she saw he was unharmed, she realized that he had murmured "my lady." It felt wrong. She didn't like the royalty feeling the smaller man's slight bow gave her either and shook her head slightly with a small, kind laugh. She would refuse to act imperially no matter what strange circumstances came up. Assuming she would see more of the two, she wanted them to treat her as a friend.
As Rogue and Remy walked away, she heard the smaller man say in an awed voice, "...just like Lilly LeBeau said...is she is ze one?" She looked back at the two. The short Frenchman looked like he had seen a saint and the one who kissed her hand wobbled slightly. Rogue sent a questioning look at the Cajun and he made a quiet shushing noise. She quirked an eyebrow but obeyed. They walked into a plush setting and descended down into a labyrinth of hallways and doors. After a few minutes, she realized just how far the underground level must extend.
Remy noticed and smiled. "N'Awlin's been built on top of itself over de years, like Paris an' de old cities of Europe. Dese catacombs just been bettah preserved. A little cement an'..."
Rogue stopped suddenly at an intersection in the hallway. Her ears pricked up, literally. Some instinct tensed the muscles around her ears, raising them up on the head about a centimeter and the turning the lobes into a slightly more curved shape. Remy blinked. Were those ears slightly pointed? Her head whipped towards the connecting corridor and she bared her teeth in a feral way. Rogue loped in that direction. Remy blinked rapidly before sprinting after her receding form. 'Where de Hell did she get wolf blood?' he silently demanded to any listening spirits or demons. She still gained distance on the Cajun. He dropped into an all-out dash. As he shortened the gap between them, he saw that his wife ran low to ground. Her body was nearly a straight line head to toe, but her head was less than three feet off the floor. Logic said she should fall and smash her face on the wooden floor, but she maintained that severe angle with ease. Rogue ran on her toes, taking each step as a leap. She pushed off, sailed horizontally through the air a few feet, and then pushed off with the next foot, delaying her collision with the ground for another step. She took several of those strides in a second. Her arms moved in a runner's form, balancing her twisting body somewhat. Remy could easily imagine her placing them on the ground to run like a wolf.
'Wolf...Leo had a papa dat was a purebred lycanthrope, didn' he? He did seem a little weak in de knees after he kissed her. Leo's hair, dat unruly mop, must have touched her. But dat don' explain de ears, Remy sure dey were pointed. Grandmama called Rogue de T'ief of Spirits, but does ma Petite take more den memories and energy? Does she take de blood, what gives Remy demon eyes and makes Leo a wolf on de full moon?'
Remy heard a soft sound and slowed. His Petite had stopped entirely. He looked a few feet up the hall and saw Kenneth, his father's personal muscle, nearly break the arm of a young boy.
A soft growl escaped from Rogue's lips. The brute didn't hear. She didn't know how she could speak to the monster, but somehow she managed. "What are you doing?" Her voice refused to take on the tone of a threat or of superiority. The enormous man paused for a moment and his piercing gaze immediately settled on her neck. He seemed disappointed to find Remy's chain there. To cover that, he snarled, "Go back to yo' Homme, child." She stung at the remark but didn't show it. Fear rolled off the small chocolate skinned boy only to be sucked up by his captor. Rogue didn't know why she could see the movement of emotion, but whatever the cause, it felt natural as breathing.
She inhaled and the air brought her the scent of many people in the area who were identical to the man who held the poor child in a death grip. Their sour emotions filled her lungs and threatened to choke her. Rogue could not allow them to continue their evil. It was a cliché word but she knew no better term for what she sensed in their hearts. She would make the bully her example.
"Let go of him." It sounded like a simple request, but he stared at her like she had ordered him to cut off his head.
She raised her voice and walked up to the bodyguard on steroids. "I said to let him go." She removed a glove.
He responded that time. He laughed as if it were all some joke or if she were a naïve child. She smiled that strange smile of hers that showed both hate, compassion, and pity all at once. Darkly, she said, "Wrong answer!" Her voice was a shout that reverberated through the halls as she shot her hand to clutch at his neck. It was a stretch to reach at first, but his legs collapsed and then it was only a matter of holding the man she now knew as Martin aloft. The man was taking a long time to fall unconscious, but the strength and general invincibility flowing into her veins explained it. Her faint awareness of emotion expanded and she felt everything. 'So this is Martin's power,' she mused. 'This is what he was doing to that poor boy.' She latched onto her victim's fear and fed. As the seconds went by, her muscles grew and she shot up at least a foot and a half while the man's own size dwindled. Martin's habit of degrading those he considered weak leaked into her system. "When a person is told ta let go of someone, they let go," she stated coldly. "Tell me to let go an' I will." She lifted him up higher, crushing his windpipe so he could barely breathe, let alone talk.
Martin would be smiling mercilessly at his victim at that point, but she wasn't him. Her face was a grim mask of serenity as she watched him struggle uselessly. The man finally fell into a coma and she gently put him onto the floor. With his fear of her gone, her body began to shrink without its food source. Rogue could have willed it to keep its enormous size and power, but she urged it to leave. There were three reasons. The first was that her clothes stopped threatening to rip off of her body when it shrank. The second was that her new strength had been bought at another's expense. The final reason was a little boy against the wall who was trying to shrink himself into a ball roughly the size of a basketball.
Rogue replaced her glove and went to the boy. She knelt and pulled him into her arms. Stroking his curls, she felt a faint something come out of him and enter her core. It was hard to pin down what exactly the feeling was. It was neither love nor respect nor hope nor awe nor sympathy. It definitely wasn't fear or hate. He looked up at her suddenly and she recognized his emotion shining through his eyes. It was simply relief. The poor thing collapsed and she rocked him gently. That little insignificant emotion gave her more power than the every combined negative emotion of the small crowd around her had combined. She looked at Martin in faint disgust. He had so utterly missed the point of his gift, and in his case the strange power within was actually a gift. He had perverted it...no that was wrong. As a child, he was nothing like the monster he had become. Something had perverted him, had turned his ability to feel and feed off emotion into a weapon. It had been so long since Martin had been allowed to feed off compassion or love, or any of those good feelings that he had forgotten their strength and could no longer digest them.
As she had fed from him, she had felt faint traces of confusion in him. She had tasted her own pity and compassion coming from him. It could only be assumed his body had attempted to save itself by feeding off her emotions, no matter how pure. Rogue looked at the man. She could only hope that taste of good would be enough to resurrect the child her new memories told her about. She wanted to save both Martin and the boy in her arms.
Rogue LeBeau's eyes flicked to the next greatest source of negative emotion in the area. A handsome older man with Remy's features regarded her coolly. She returned the favor. The memories implanted in her mind told her much about Knave LeBeau, the King of Thieves. She didn't like any of it. Rogue instinctively knew this was the man who essentially destroyed Martin. It wasn't hard to figure out that he was also responsible for Remy's split personality problem. His majesty had created the persona of Gambit LeBeau. She could imagine a large mold like the ones used to make wax figurines. The King's mold was made to create the hard prince. Only instead of wax, the Knave had thrown Remy into it as a soft young child, and then shut the door. Parts of the boy had not fit and been severed from him for eternity. The boy had not been large enough to fill the entire space of the mold but the father forced him to copy the given shape perfectly. Because of that, Remy's outside shell was flawless, but the inside was hollow.
To compensate for the emptiness, the Prince of Thieves created Remy, a childish being that only served to fill the hollow space with playfulness and the occasional tantrum. He unconsciously called it Remy because he was trying unsuccessfully to replace the child Remy that his father had stolen. To Rogue, both creations were incredibly botched jobs and Knave LeBeau was responsible for both. It sickened her to think he was her father-in-law. She looked into his eyes and found a tiny fear there. Martin had only known his King to fear one other thing in all his servitude, which made it very likely she was the first thing to scare the Bastard in a little over eight years. She felt proud of herself. The only other person to frighten him was Lilly LeBeau. Martin didn't know why, but she was going to find out.
After a moment, she stood to shake the King's hand. She didn't allow herself to smile at his terror as he seemed to boldly kiss the back of her glove. His short hair didn't come close to her skin and she was glad. Rogue didn't want to ever feel his touch. She would most likely puke if she did. The Mademoiselle –she was thankful not to be referred to as Madame or Mrs. – locked eyes with the King the entire time and ignored most of the extensive introductions. Through Martin, she knew quite a bit of the organization. It wouldn't do to let Knave know that, but it was helpful. For instance, she knew the tall dark haired man whom she had met in the garage was Leo, the son of a werewolf. It certainly explained how strange she had felt after his hair brushed her skin. It had only been a minor absorption, giving her only heightened senses and a few instincts. It already had begun to fade, which brought no great relief to the girl. Spending her full moons in fur was not appealing. Remy handed the sleeping boy, who no one seemed to know the name of, to Leo to protect and take home when possible.
With that, Remy and she continued down the halls, climbed up a few stairs, and walked into a quite ordinary if spacious apartment. This was home. Remy walked around the rooms, touching objects at random. There were tiny pops and little puffs of smoke rose. Rogue knew that Knave enjoyed using cameras and other spy equipment, but the sheer number in the apartment amazed her. Finally, her Homme returned and laughed quietly.
"You know how to make a Hell of an entrance, ma Petite. Made me right proud."
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Ewelina: Are you happy now? I wrote a long one just for you ('cause I sure don't do these on purpose)
Hitomi Lei: Thanks for the information. It was really useful in this chapter
LotusPen: Does this story have a plot formed out? Ohhhhhhhh YES! This entire section has been a bit of a prologue to it. In fact, the prologue has a little ways to go yet to get things where I want it. For me, the time isn't in actually writing the story, but in filling in the little details between the big ideas.
To explain, I've hit three ideas in this fic and they still haven't been resolved the way I want. They, of course, are: [1] the bona fide married status of Rogue and Remy, [2] Remy's volatile nature (and it's all Knave's fault!), and [3] Lilly LeBeaus' prophecy and what it actually means. When these three ideas are concrete, the rate that I add chapters to the story will increase greatly (and I'm sure anybody who follows this fic will leapt for joy when that happens...except for the writer, that is...yawn...nighty...night...zzzzzzzzzzzzz).
