Oh, something I forgot to mention in Chapter One, the idea from this fic came from the current Gambit book, where it's clear that some people – maybe particularly kids, who'd dig that sort of thing, and other mutants – are aware of Gambit's existence and his presence in New Orleans, but it's not as though he's terribly well-known to everyone. Of course, Rogue hasn't been in New Orleans in that book, but let's pretend she has, okay? It's fun to pretend. (Besides, I expect she will be soon enough. Have you read the newest issue? Hehehe. Remy giving a lecture on the evils of thievery? What on earth was Kitty thinking?)
Disclaimer:
Story is mine, Andy is mine, everything else is Marvel's. Except the city of New Orleans, I expect it belongs to its residents.
OOOOOOO
Moving was tough. Her left side would be a mass of bruising in the morning and her head…well, it felt like someone had slammed it into a hard surface. She touched her right hand to the back of her scalp. No blood. She sighed in relief.
As they made their way from the dark alley to a well-lit main street, Andrea looked up at her rescuer. Even in her dazed state, she had to admit that Lauren was right. He was hot. In the unnaturally yellow lighting, it was difficult to discern the color of his hair, but his features were nearly perfect. His eyes, glowing red, were his only flaw. He had arranged her left arm over his shoulder and carefully held his right arm around her waist.
"How you feelin'?" he asked, suddenly. It was the first thing he'd said since he'd helped her get up.
"Not good," Andrea said, trying to laugh. It came out as a sniffle.
"Gambit get you to a hospital, okay?"
"Hospital?"
"Oui, hospital. Where the doctors are? You have a concussion, chére?"
"No…I don't want to go to a hospital. I want to go home." Andrea began to panic. If she needed medical attention, that meant she was really injured. That someone had truly attacked her. She didn't want to believe it had happened. She imagined herself describing it to a policeman…no. No doctors, no policemen, no nothing. Just home and bed. Her breathing grew ragged.
"Chére, I think you need to see a doctor."
"No!" it was louder than she'd intended. A drunk girl – she was swaying where she stood – waiting for a cab on the opposite side of the street looked up and waved. "No," she repeated, more quietly. "I don't need a doctor."
"What if you have bleeding on the inside?"
"I don't! I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine!" As if repeating it enough would make it so.
He sighed. "Okay, I help you get home then, oui?"
"Uh, oui. Yeah. Okay." He hailed a passing cab, and helped her climb in. Once sitting, she rested her elbows on her knees, her throbbing head in her hand. Looking at her feet, she gave the cabbie her address.
"What's your name?"
"I'm Andrea."
He said something in French.
Andrea stared up at him blankly. "I took Spanish," she admitted.
"Jus' sayin' nice to meet you, Andrea. I'm Gambit."
"I figured that out," she said dryly. "It's a giveaway when you talk in the third person."
"Ooh, sarcasm. Y'gonna be jus' fine, Andrea chére," he said with a laugh. She gave him a wan smile and realized something.
"I never said thank you. Thank you."
"My pleasure. Can't let anyone hurt the belles filles of New Orleans, can I?"
She tried to smile again, but her head hurt too much. She turned to face the window, watching the streetlights blur by.
Ten silent minutes later, Gambit gently helped Andrea out of the cab in front of her apartment. She breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing that the quiet residential street was empty. She hobbled over to the stoop, clutching her left side with her left hand. With her right hand, she fumbled for the keys in her bag. The tall man with the red eyes stood protectively over her, rather to her chagrin. She'd hoped he'd go away with the cab. She hated thinking that she needed protection. Who would want to hurt Andrea Feldman?
She had finally found the keys – under a packets of gum, some grocery receipts from a months ago, and a pair of sunglasses with a missing arm – when Gambit stiffened and pulled a small rod out of one of the pockets on his trench coat. He made a quick, curious gesture and it extended into the staff she'd seen him use before.
"What are—" she started in a high-pitched voice. She fell silent as she heard what he'd heard: footsteps in the alley running adjacent to her house. A kid, she told herself. Someone taking a shortcut. Then she remembered her street ended a block down. There was no place to take a shortcut to.
Out of the dark alleyway, a figure appeared. Andrea collapsed on the bottom step of her narrow porch with a thump, attempting to hide in the shadow.
"Too late," the figure said. A man. "I saw you, little girl."
"What you want wit' her," Gambit asked calmly. Good question, Andrea thought, moving out of the corner of the stoop to watch him. Now kick his ass!
But neither men moved. "Not your business, mutie," the man said with disdain. He was short and muscular, with thin fair hair. He had a Southern, not New Orleans, accent. Andrea could see Gambit narrowing his eyes. He looked…sinister. The man laughed. And pulled out a gun, which he pointed at Gambit, who didn't react. Andrea whimpered.
"Don't you try that devil act with me, Gambit. I can't believe that idiot ran away just because you're a freak with freak eyes. I know who you are. Muties die same as humans."
"S'true I'm just a mutant," Gambit acknowledged. He still didn't seem to notice that he had a gun pointed at him. "But I think you'll find I ain't that easy to kill." He glanced over at Andrea, hugging her knees on the stoop. "Right, Andrea chére?"
The armed man's eyes followed Gambit's for an instant, his head turning slightly to glance at her. An instant was all he needed. Before Andrea could blink, two small glowing pink objects were hurtling through the air with a slight whistling noise.
"Shit!" the armed man yelled as they exploded. He swatted his arms frantically as a third and fourth glowing pink object hit him. His gun fell to the ground. Gambit casually leaned down to pick it up with his right hand as he sidearmed another glowing thing at the would-be attacker, who fell to his knees. He tucked the gun into a pocket, turned to the stranger and jabbed him in the chest with the end of the staff.
"Who sent you?" he asked gruffly.
"I ain't talking," the man said angrily. His hair fell in his eyes and he blew a puff of air to push it out of the way.
"The Assassins find out you workin' on their turf, you'll be glad it was just me caught you. What's your name and who you workin' for?"
"The Assassins, I'm working for them," the man said hastily. "Name's Daniel McCall."
"You ain't workin' for them, Danny, don' lie," Gambit said with an easy laugh. Andrea had started at the mention of assassins. Here? In New Orleans? Thieves were one thing, but assassins? "We ain't dead, are we? Tell me who you workin' for." He punctuated his last sentence with a shove of the staff.
"Name's Jay," he said sulkily. "I don't know more than that. He's working for someone too, though, but I don't know who. He just promised me and Dave – he's the one who roughed up your girlfriend before –fifty thousand dollars each if we could take out the girl. Little Chinese girl, seemed easy enough," he said bitterly.
Gambit paused.
"I'm not Chinese," Andrea said. "I'm Korean-American." She couldn't think of anything else to say. A hundred thousand dollars to kill her? The world had turned upside down. Her head hurt and her side hurt and now someone wanted to kill her?
"You want your gun back?" Gambit asked softly.
Daniel McCall looked at him sullenly and said nothing.
Gambit took the gun from his pocket and for the first time Andrea saw it clearly. That the small explosives were weapons of some sort was obvious, but she hadn't realized the source of their combustability. To her astonishment, as the gun lay in Gambit's hand, it began to emit a pink glow.
"Here you go, ami," he said, lightly tossing the sizzling gun at its owner. McCall ducked, the gun landing behind him with a loud explosion. He prostrated himself, his arms covering his head. Andrea stared at Gambit, incredulous. She wondered what it would be like to be able to blow something up with a touch. She shivered.
"Daniel McCall, I wan' you do to me a favor. Yeah?"
McCall looked up, his eyes wide. He nodded.
"You go back and find this Jay character and you tell him that he made a mistake when he thought to mess wit' Mademoiselle Andrea here." He narrowed his eyes again, this time with the intended effect. McCall leaped to his feet and ran down the street.
Gambit turned to Andrea. "You get some t'ings, chére, Gambit wait for you here."
Andrea stared at him. "What?" she asked, confused.
"You comin' wit' me. They know you live here, and they'd find you in a hotel. So you comin' wit' me."
"What?" she asked again. "I am not! No one's going to scare me out of my own home! I'm not going home with some stranger on his say-so! Besides, you scared them away."
"Andrea., some guy is willing to spend a hundred t'ousand dollars to kill you, he ain't givin' up that easy. Gambit'd feel real bad if he succeeded. So you comin' wit' me."
Still wondering if this was really a good idea, Andrea unclenched her fist – which still held the house key – and unlocked the door. It took her ten minutes to throw some random clothes, her toothbrush, glasses, and contact lens case into a backpack and return to where Gambit stood, guarding her door.
"Ready, chére?" he asked.
"I guess," she muttered. "Just don't tell my mom I went home with a guy I hardly know, though, okay?"
He laughed. She smiled weakly at her own joke.
Getting a cab was slightly harder this time, but within ten minutes they were once again sitting silently in the backseat. Gambit had given the cabbie an address she didn't recognize, but soon enough they were pulling up in front of an attractive gingerbread Victorian that appeared to have been converted into a couple of apartments.
Andrea reached for her bag, but Gambit grabbed it first. "I got it, Andrea. Come on, chére." Paying the cabbie, he led her up the stairs to the second floor apartment. Before he could reach for the doorknob, someone inside jerked it open.
OOOOOOO
Okay, Ch. 2 was getting ridiculously long, so I had to cut it at kind of a funny point. The good news is, Ch. 3 will be up very, very soon, as it's almost completely finished. Whew!
Oh, and before anyone gets on my case for saying that Remy's eyes are a physical flaw, put yourself in Andrea's shoes. She just thinks they're kind of freaky.
Gambitlover21, thanks for your review. Seriously! It meant a lot.