12. The Hidden Truth
He was walking through the busy airport, when he suddenly heard someone call out his name behind him. He turned around and saw that a breathless Louis was running behind him. Therefore he stopped so Louis was able to reach him.
"Finally, I have been chasing you through the half of the airport. Didn't you hear me?"
Remy shook his head.
"Sorry, but I didn't expected to meet anyone here."
Louis smiled.
"Well, I figured that out after the first five minuets, but then you aren't here to say goodbye to me?"
Remy shook his head once more.
"I thought you already had left the country."
Louis shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, that was the plan, but I'm still waiting for my ride. What about you? I thought you said that you had some things, which you needed to take care of, so why are you here, if you didn't came to say goodbye."
Remy looked down.
"Well, let us just say, that the things felt down like a house of cards, so now I need to go back to Paris, but everything is sold out."
Louis smiled.
"You can come with me. There is always room for family. Beside I think you want to meet the person, who is picking me up."
"You sound like you hide a private jet in your pocket or something."
Louis smiled shortly, but then he became serious.
"What if I do? Besides I think its time for you to know the truth."
o-
Storm hesitated as she looked out over at the group of x-men, but a gesture from Xavier made her start. She typed something on the keyboard and the papers, which Louis had given Xavier, came up on the screen.
"Xavier asked me to send these documents, which Louis Dubois had given him, to a friend of mine, who specify in validate documents for the CIA."
She paused, but a look from Xavier made her continue.
"My friend found out that they were as real as they can be, but in the same time they are also false."
She looked out over the others and met Scott's eyes, where she could read the confusion over her words.
"What do you mean?"
For a second she held the eye contract, but then she turned her attention back to the screen again.
"If you don't know what to look for, then these papers look real enough, but if you know the signature, then it's easy to see that they are fake…"
She typed something on the keyboard and some red circles appeared on each document.
"… These are the only leads, which show that these are false documents. The rest of it is real enough."
She looked up and met Scott's eyes again.
"So "Louis Dubois" is bogus?"
She nodded.
"Then he isn't Gambit's brother?"
She shook her head lightly.
"Probably not, but even though "Louis Dubois" is fake, then there is still a chance that this man could be Gambit's brother. My friend had seen some work similarly to this before, so he could give me a name on who could have made these documents. He came up with the name Maximilien Arceneaux."
Scott shrugged his shoulders.
"How is that going to help us?"
She would have smiled if the situation hadn't been so serious. It just seemed too simple to be true. It was just a matter of connecting the dots together in the right way.
"The Arceneaux-family is known to only work for one of the greatest and most secretly crime syndicates in the world, which right now is lead by a man called Edmond de Bourbon-Orléans."
Jubilee broke in.
"Bourbon! Isn't that what some of the kings in France was called?"
Storm nodded.
"He is descendant of some of greatest kings in France, but his family line is considered ignominious by the rest of the family, so they have been wiped out of the family tree. Therefore very little is known about this family, but still it is known that Edmond years back got two children – two twin sons, which were named Louis and Philippe."
Jean, who quietly had listen to Storm, said something for the first time.
"In Louis's fake papers it says that his brother's name is Philippe. Do you think…?"
Storm nodded.
"There isn't much known about the two sons, but some of the sources say that one of them, Philippe, and the mother disappeared very shortly after the birth and have never since been seen."
o-
Louis took a sip from his cup of tea and smiled to Remy, who sat on the other side of the table.
"Just what I needed…"
He quickly became serious and lean closer to Remy.
"… The things, that I'm going to tell you now, can be a little hard to comprehend, so that is why I told you a little white lie to start with. I had to make sure, that you really was Philippe…"
He looked nervously around in the restaurant to make sure that no one could overhear them.
"… My name isn't Louis Dubois, but Louis de Bourbon-Orléans; Son of Edmond de Bourbon-Orléans; Brother to Philippe de Bourbon-Orléans… you…"
He looked Remy straight into his eyes.
"… and I didn't grew up in a children's home in France, but on some of the best boarding schools in the world. I…"
He was just about to say something, when suddenly his eyes caught the glimpse of something behind Remy. It made him stop and he stood up. He was just about to go, when he turned to Remy and smiled.
"Remy, meet Edmond de Bourbon-Orléans, our father."
Remy turned around, but froze in the movement as he saw the man, who came walking through the restaurant's front door. The man stopped, when he saw Louis and Remy together like he couldn't believe his own eyes, so Louis walked over to him and pulled him over to Remy.
"I finally found him, papa, meet Remy LeBeau,your second son."
Edmond walked closer to Remy and touched his shoulder lightly just to make sure that he really was there, but then he hugged Remy so tight that he almost squeezed the air out of him.