Second Chances: Chapter One
Legalese: none of the X-Men are my property, they all belong to Marvel.
A/N: this is a little ditty I found in one of my notebooks, half-finished. I finally spat out a sort of ending for it, though if you guys like it I'm starting to get inspiration for more chapters. So let me know if ya want more!
The lone man stood as still as stone at the end of the long wooden pier; the mists from the moonlit lake swirled at his ankles like long scraggly fingers trying to pull him down to the dank depths below. A lit cigarette hung from his lips, every so often a chunk of ash would break off and float down to the waters surface. The New York summer night was not cold by anyone's standards, but the warm breeze coming up from the South was not enough to stop the lean body from shivering. The man crossed his arms against his chill; he knew but did not respond to the fac that the coldness he felt came from within, and no amount of fleece pullovers or down-filled blankets could ease it. Despite the fact that there were few places in the open fields surounding the lake that someone could hide, he felt open, exposed, and entirely too vulnerable to his enemies, who at that point were everyone. Including himself. The sight of the night's stars reflected in the water did not quiet his mind or sooth his soul like in the past. He knew this was not because the bright pinpoints of light had dulled. They failed to lull him because he had gone to far; he was beyond being reached.
Remy LeBeau sighed as he dropped the burnt filter of the cigarette onto the dock, and crushed it beneath the heel of his boot. Never in all his twenty five years had he given in to the paralyzing thoughts of self doubt and self pity. And he had been given plenty of chances. But, he thought with a barely perceptible shrug, there's a first time for everything. It had been too easy to doubt himself after the events of the past year. His past, his intentions, his secrets...All had come under close scrutiny by himself and others, people he had once called teammates. While his words and actions of reparation seemed to have satisfied the most powerful of the others, his sub-conscious had not been appeased. Every time he closed his eyes for sleep or otherwise, he was returned with a flash to his own personal hell; endless blinding white snowdrifts, bitter and howling winds. But that wasn't even the worst of it. Thoughts of hatred, revenge, pity, betrayel; always piercing his carefully erected defensive walls like bullets from a gun, and ensuring he never got a moment's peace, or forgot what he had done. It was the worst kind of punishment possible, but Remy didn't want it to end. To live in peace would mean that what he had done was forgivable.
His head inclinded slightly to the right suddenly, as the low-pitch buzz of a well-shielded mind rubbed up against his senses. His brow creased in concentration. Although no sound of footsteps reached his ears, he listened intently, so to speak, to the snippets of emotions that reached him. He sensed immediately a deep rooted concern combined with a much harder to distinguish wariness. The corners of Remy's mouth turned up slightly. So the kind hearted doctor had decided to pay him a visit. He wondered briefly what the occasion was, what was so important that he had to come out in this weather.
Remy closed his red on black eyes softly, concentrating on another of his more useful mutagenic abilities, his keen sense of movement. He didn't want anyone to think they could sneak up on Gambit, professional thief who could steal the Crown Jewels right from underneath the Queen Mother's upturned little nose. He waited another half second, then without warning, threw himself into a well-formed back flip. He could sense the surprise of his visitor, as he dropped to the ground upon landing and swung his right leg out. Unfortunately, they had trained together for years, and his opponent knew all of Remy's little tricks. The other jumped lightly over the leg sweep, and in an incredible feat of agility, somersaulted over Remy's six-foot-two-inch frame, landing lightly behind him. A well placed but relatively gentle kick to the middle of his back sent Remy sprawling forward, crashing down onto the wooden dockboards. The impromptu sparring session, combined with his earlier cigarettes, proved to be too much for his still healing body. The rotten case of pneumonia he had been struggling to rid himself of came back with a vengence, and he dissolved into wet, chest rattling coughs. He gasped for breath as his body curled in on itself, heaving to clear his lungs of the sticky substance that plagued his every intake of air. Tears sprang automatically to his eyes; his fists clenched and reopened in a show of outright denial to give in. Though after several minutes of struggle, he was beginning to consider the idea of death by suffocation when he felt a soft pressure on his lower back. A kind hand, suspicously hairy feeling, took one of his fists, forcing it open. Although he could't make out any exact words, he could feel the warm breath on his cheek, the stiff whiskers tickling his ear, as a well cultured, accentless voice spoke soothingly to him. After several long seconds, during which the edges of his vision began to blur, his chest began to relax. Sweet, delicious oxygen rushed into him, and for an immeasurable amount of time, he simply lay there on the dock, a splinter of wood biting angrily into his cheek as he relished his breath. He opened his eyes eventually, and sat up slowly.
"Well, my young Cajun friend, it appears as though you have pushed yourself too hard."
Remy stared incredulously into the blue furred smiling face of Dr. Hank McCoy, kneeling beside him with one hand still on his back. He snorted, and rose gracelessly to his feet, swaying just slightly before regaining his balance.
"You be de one dat kicked me, Bete,"he said, brushing the imagined speck of dirt off the front of his duster.
Hank's smiled was all teeth and sharp canines. "Well, I never can give up the chance to knock one of you whippersnappers down a peg."
Remy rolled his eyes. "Whippersnapper? I'm not dat much younger den you." He grimaced as he rubbed his hand across the chest, breathing was still mildly difficult, and the ache in his lungs didn't make it any easier. "So what brings you down here at dis time, Hank, in dis weather?"
The doctor shot him a deadpan look. "Right,"Remy said quietly. "You t'ink Remy need a babysitter. He be down here at dis time, in dis weat'er, so you be down here too. Well, in case you didn' get de memo, Remy a grown man. He take care of himself jus' fine."
He turned sharply on his heel, and with his leather duster whipping around his lean body, stalked back towards the mansion. The angry gracefullness he was trying to pull was difficult with knees that felt like rubber, but he managed to be mildly successful despite certain setbacks. When Hank didn't follow immediately behind, Remy thought he had gotten through to the older man, and was finally going to be left alone. He should be so lucky.
"Remy, my friend, I'm not trying to babysit you." Apparently having recovered from whatever had rooted him in place, he caught up. The Cajun was selfishly satisfied to see Hank struggle to keep pace with his long stride. "I am simply worried by your health. It is what friends do."
That exclamation brought pause to Remy's steps, but he was able to reclaim his rythm with little difficulty. He was generally unaccustomed to the blatant acknowledgements of friendship and closeness that some of the X-Men were likely to give. He'd had few relationships in the past that weren't selfish in nature. "Friends also listen to each ot'er, don't dey, Bete?" It was a low handed tactic, he knew. But at that point, he was a little desperate for some quality alone-time. "Remy be fine, but de minute he feel like crying in his bourbon, you be first to know, eh?"
He reached the mansion, and swung open the sidedoor that led directly into the kitchen, which was thankfully empty. He'd only been back at the mansion for a week, and had miraculously managed to keep the confrontations to a minumum. Most of the residents were content to let him to his own devices; a sort of "you don't bother me and I don't bother you" kind of mentality that suited Remy just fine. There were a few, however, that had been perfectly comfortable voicing their disgust and hatred of him openly with no that for tact. It was that sort of treatment that Remy was more used to.
Although he could still not hear footsteps on the tiled floor, Hank's presence was as noticeable as a fly buzzing around his head. Irritating as hell, but there was very little that could be done without serious harm to the offending 'buzzer.' The doctor followed Remy out into the mahogony panelled hall, still assumedly thinking of his next approach. Remy didn't plan on being around to hear it, but a feeling he caught wind of from further down the hall stopped him so suddenly in his getaway tracks that Hank slammed into his back.
"Remy! Perhaps an indication of some kind would've-"
He stopped mid-sentence when he noticed the pinched look on the Cajun's face. A muscle in the right side of his jaw twitched. The hallway was dark, but through moonlight cast in by the uncovered windows, Hank could make out the silhouette of a tall, broad man with great feathered wings like an angel. Warren Worthington the Third. Undoubedly the reason for Remy's abrupt stop, and the look that he had just sucked on a lemon. The two had never really been close, and since learning of Remy's involvement in the Morlocke Massacre, Warren had found new ways and new reasons to hate Gambit.
By all appearances, Warren had been standing in the hallway with the sole purpose of confronting Remy. Hank wouldn't put such a thing past him.
"'Ello, Ange,"the Cajun said softly, nodding his head in acknowledgement. Although part of him enjoyed the tension and fights that their hatred of each other caused, a tiny, irrational part of him just wanted peace. After a life of conflict and difficulty, sometimes he ached for the easy comraderie that most of the team enjoyed. It had not existed before his secrets had come to light, though. He saw now reason for it to exist now. Of course, he would shave his head before he would divulge any of these thoughts to anyone living in the X-Mansion.
"Traitor,"Warren replied, in a casual, almost friendly tone. His gaze shifted to Hank for a beat, then narrowed menacingly on Remy. "Killed any innocents lately?"
The corners of Remy's lips turned up in what could only be described as a snarl. "Not lately, non. What about you? Teamed up with any mass murderers for a pair of wings in the past week?"
Warren's negative response was obvious and immediate. In this type of battle arena, Remy had the far greater advantage. He'd had a lifetime of experience pretending not be phased by insults, and coming up with suitable comebacks on the fly, if not for his mutantcy than for his low place in society. Warren, though, had only been doing it since his wings had sprouted. His high class life had shielded him from the worst society had to offer, whereas Gambit had seen and experienced most of it. Warren was unable to hide the flash anger behind a face made of stone as Remy had.
The New Orleans native nodded to himself. Winning one of their little spats was hardly fullfilling, but he did receive a strange kind of satisfaction from knocking Warren off his high horse. He spared Hank no glance as he brushed past a positively livid Warren on his way to the East stairwell. Remy heard the two conversing quietly and energetically behind him, undeniabley Hank pleading for some kind of peace between them. Hank had become a surprise advocate for Gambit since learning of his past, and generally argued on his side in any disagreements that cropped up. Even more surprising had been Logan. What he had given Remy couldn't quite be considered support, but the fact that that Cajun was still standing with all his vital organs safely encased in his body instead of spilling out a non-existent gash in his middle could only mean that on some level, the Wolverine understood what Remy had gone through. To know that a man like Logan wasn't an enemy was almost as good as knowing he was a friend.
Remy pushed open the metal door at the end of the hallway that led to the three story stairwell. He used to take those steps three at a time, arriving at the top slightly red faced but no worse for wear. With his current case of pneumonia, however, he'd be lucky to get up one flight without needing a break. By resting in the middle of each flight, and again on every landing, he managed to get to the third floor without spots clouding his vision.
His room was the first on the left, and he gratefully slipped inside, wincing at the loud creak that erupted from the unoiled hinges. Such an amatuer trick as keeping W-D40 away from his bedroom door surely wouldn't stop a professional, and it provided little peace of mind, but Remy indulged himself nonetheless. With the door safely shut and locked behind him, he slipped out of his duster and slung it on the leather wingback chair under the window. His room was dark and empty; just the way he liked it. An inky blackness that would've made a normal man blind, but provided perfect sight for Remy. About six months before his banishment in Antarctica, he'd finally convinced Xavier to spring for a pair of black velvet curtains. They blocked the light better than an eclipse, which was beneficial when a match gave off enough light to blind Remy for a minute or two.
So when he collapsed on his bed, still dressed in jeans and long sleeve black t-shirt, it looked as if the night was perfectly black, without a single star to brighten its sky. After his thoughts while down on the dock, it was a welcome vision. Sleep came easily, despite the threatening images nightmares he knew were on their way. He couldn't outrun them anymore than he could go without rest, and he was doomed to relive the mistakes of his past or at least six hours.