1. I realized I had the accents on my ès backwards. I mentioned I don't know French, right? I may go back and fix them in the previous chapters, but don't hold your breath.

2. Remember the bit about this chapter being up really soon? Uh. Sorry. Never get a job, a life, or friends, people.

3. IvyZoe, why do you say that? Are you reading something I'm not?

Disclaimer: Andrea is mine, the X-men are mine. Wait, no. Strike that last one. They belong to Marvel, d'oh.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

A pair of green eyes regarded them coolly. "I told you to talk to her, Remy, not bring her home."

"Didn' have a lot of choice, Rogue chère," he said, brushing past the woman in the doorway. Andrea stood on the porch, shocked. She barely even listened as Gambit described himself heroically thwarting her attackers – twice! As he spoke, he wandered around the red living room, dropping things as he went. His coat fell on a chair, keys on a table, the staff against the wall.

The woman in the doorway was her Mystery Woman from that afternoon.

"Come on in," Mystery Woman said, her voice warming up as she shot a glance at Gambit as he disappeared into the next room. "Don't you be standing out here on the porch all night." She led Andrea inside and motioned for her to sit down at one of the high stools in the adjoining kitchen.

Up close, the woman was even more beautiful than she'd appeared earlier. Besides the clear green eyes, obscured by sunglasses that afternoon, the front locks of her hair were pure white. Andrea wondered if it was natural or an affectation. Either way, it was striking. She'd abandoned her retro glamour outfit for black yoga pants and a t-shirt. As she began to putter around the kitchen, she slipped on a pair of thin black elbow-length gloves, Andrea noticed. She wondered if she had some kind of germ phobia.

"I'm sorry," Andrea said cautiously. "I didn't catch your name." She isn't really called…

"Rogue." She confirmed. "And you're Andrea?"

"Yeah. Um. Thank you for having me with, uh, such short notice." What the hell kind of name is that?

"You ain't a Southerner, are you?" Rogue asked with a smile.

"No." Andrea shook her head. "I'm from LA. Er, the other one, in California."

"Well, they don't call it Southern hospitality for nothing. You eat supper?"

"Uh…yeah." She'd eaten at the café, right? Yes, definitely.

"You want tea? Water? Milk?"

"Tea sounds…"

"No beer?" Gambit asked, reappearing in black sweats and t-shirt. The two of them now looked a matched pair, both making soft, shapeless lounging clothes look far better than it had any right to.

"You may have beer. For Andrea, I don't think so."

"Merci, chère. I am touched by your magnamity."

Rogue swatted him lightly on the arm. "Tea, then? Okay, we have-" she let out a yelp as Gambit grabbed her gloved wrist as she tried to move past him.

"Remy, let me go." He just grinned. "Remy, let me go or I will make you let me go."

"Aw, chère, your methods wouldn' mess up my nice tidy house now, would they?"

"It's not impossible." Andrea wasn't sure if Rogue was serious or not. She wondered if Rogue was a mutant too. She probably was, she decided. What was her power? Remy could blow things up by touching them, but he seemed to take her threat at least semi-seriously, so it had to be something pretty good.

"Mais, I guess you can go, then." Before he released her, though, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the base of her palm. It was a startlingly intimate gesture. Andrea wondered if she should look away. He let her hand go free and bent down to kiss the top of her head. Rogue smiled up at him then brushed past to put some water on to boil.

"Anything else you need, Andrea?" she asked, tucking a loose white strand of hair behind her ear. "Chamomile okay?"

"Oh, uh, Tylenol, or Advil…or something like that. That would be nice. Chamomile sounds really good." The pain in her head had subsided to a dull throb, but the ache in her left side caused her to sit hunched with pain.

"Lord, of course. Remy, do we have anything like that?"

"Medicine closet." He'd settled down on the sofa and was looking under cushions, apparently hunting for the remote control.

"Some help would be nice," she informed him.

"On my way, chère," he said immediately. Andrea found the exchange enormously amusing in its mundanity. Superheroes at home.

"By the way, sugar, what did you say to Logan yesterday?"

Gambit paused in the bathroom doorway, Advil bottle in his hand.

"Say t' Logan? Nothing. Why?"

Rogue poured boiling water into a tea pot as she spoke. "Jean called. She wanted to know what you said to Logan."

Gambit shrugged and set the painkillers down by Andrea's elbow as he sat down on the next stool. Rogue, standing on the opposite side of the tiled kitchen counter, rested her gloved hands on the top of the hot tea pot. "Nothing. He called t'say Cyke was pissed at us. Which he thinks is funny, but we ought to get back anyway."

"What'd you tell him?"

"Oh, just told him about how nice it is to be home. How New York is a nice place and all, but you never stop missin' the place you're from."

"Huh. Well, apparently he took that to heart. Jean says he up and disappeared this morning. They didn't even realize he was gone til he called Jubilee to say he was in Canada and that you're not as dumb as you look."

"You're kidding!" Gambit began to laugh.

"That I am not. He told Jean that you'd made a good point and walked out the door. She didn't know what he was talking about and thought he'd be back later, but he called this evening to say he'd be back when he was ready."

"What'd Cyke say?"

Rogue winced as she poured a cup of tea into a big yellow mug. "Jean didn't tell me. I'm not sure I want to know. She did say that Alex is furious, though. Maybe we should just stay away from Westchester for awhile."

"You don' see me in a hurry to get back, do you?"

"Westchester!" Andrea exclaimed. She dropped the two Advil she'd been about to put in her mouth. "Isn't that…are you something to do with the X-Men?" The mutant vigilantes were famous and mysterious in equal amounts. Occasionally an amateur video of them battling would show up on CNN. Their leader was a bald telepathic guy, Charles Xavier, that much she knew, and they were based in Westchester, a suburb of New York City. That, and that they claimed to be good guys but most people were suspicious of their motives.

"You didn't know that?" Gambit asked, surprised.

"No," Andrea said, shaking her head. Which hurt. Everything was fuzzy. She had the feeling she ought to be asking them questions. X-Men! In New Orleans! That would be a good story, if she could find her pen and notebook. Were they still in her bag? Where was her bag? James had told her that Gambit was a thief, could he have taken it? Her phone…she should call her mom, tell her she would be late for dinner…no, mom was back in LA, wasn't she?

The room spun.

"I think I need to lie down," Andrea said faintly.

Everything went dark.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Next time: time to play detective!

XXOO

Thirteen