A/N: I'm sure there are some of you out there who are surprised I updated. To be completely honest, I'm a little surprised myself.
This chapter is a lot heavier than any previous ones, and deals with adult situations. If that kind of thing isn't your bag, baby, then I suggest you find some different fan fiction.
Enjoy!
The hole in the ceiling, next to the wall with the breeding mildew, appears to be growing.
Remy will have to move soon, or risk drowning in a sudden downpour should the roof cave in. He frowns, crosses his arms underneath his head, and considers his choices. There's an abandoned office building over on Barracks Road that he might be able to find some room in. And last he heard, St. Anne Street had some available real estate for the not so monetarily inclined. The basement of an apartment building with a broken hinge on one of the windows, if he remembers correctly. Or there's that school in upstate New York; a double bed with a great view of the lake might be just what he needed.
And just like that, his train of thought returns to its original course. A life off the streets, in a school no less, with steady food and clean clothes and running water…it seems too good to be true. And that's the trick, isn't it? Suppose he gets all the way up there, and it isn't half of what it was reported to be. Now he's stuck in another state, with no way to get home, and a worse life than the one he left. To his pessimistic way of seeing things, it's a lose-lose situation.
But no matter what he decides, he needs to do it soon. Xavier said he could take all the time he wants, but Remy doesn't really like the idea of four grown adults waiting around for a seventeen year old kid to make up his mind. He tries to remember, but he doesn't think anyone's ever asked him what he wanted to do. Even if he had an option available to him, life has always had a way of forcing his hand.
He knows he has to get out of this hellish situation. Living hand to mouth is not the way for anyone to go, but up until now, he had never allowed himself to consider the idea that his life might be different. He knows better than to wallow in pity. He's seen a lot of people head down really destructive paths that way.
His stomach growls loudly, and he lays a hand on it, grimacing at the sharp hunger pains. Seven hours since he met the Professor, four since he had lunch, and his body is desperate for more. He sits up slowly on his cot, reaches into the pouch of his sweatshirt to count the bills left there. Of the original ninety-three dollars he swiped this morning, he has eighty-seven dollars and seventy-three cents left over. There's more than enough there for a proper dinner, late though it is.
Despite the fact that the sun is setting on the other side of the city, he replaces his newly stolen sunglasses on his face and heads out through the hole in the wall.
The streets are unrecognizable in twilight when compared to the bustling activity of midday. Remy knows better than most the perils of the city after dark. Only the stupidest and most ill-informed tourists brave the pickpockets and petty thugs that hide out during the day. Locals are all but unheard of after the dinner hour, save for those unlucky enough to have jobs that keep them out past dark.
Remy moves confidently, but quickly, with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He is better equipped to protect himself than the average citizen, but that can mean little if luck is not on his side.
He picked up another two decks of cards after meeting with the Professor, swiped from the tabletop of a street vendor, and the weight in his back pockets is a comfortable one.
"Eh, you got de time?"
He jumps a little at the sudden voice, whirls around on his heels and tries, albeit a little too late, to appear nonchalant. A man who couldn't be more than five or ten years older than Remy himself is standing just outside the circle of light created by a street light. A quick glance overhead tells Remy that the light he is standing under has burned out. His stomach flips over.
The man takes a step closer, and Remy can see that he is wearing a pair of plain black pants in similar repair to Remy's jeans. Unlike Remy, this man is only wearing a wife beater.
Remy shrugs his shoulders simply. "Don' have a watch. Sorry, homme."
The man takes another step forward, and when Remy move back an answering distance, he runs into the warm strength of another man's chest. Before it even occurs to him he's in a bad spot, a pair of arms snake out from behind him. One pins his arms to sides, the other hand covers his mouth before he can call out for help that he knows won't come.
He doesn't have time to consider his avenues of action before panic fully ensconces his mind. He begins to thrash, but before he can get loose the first man hurries over and traps his legs. The hand that covers his mouth smells strongly of alcohol, and something vaguely biological that he doesn't want to consider. The hot breath against his ear nearly triggers his gag reflex before he manages to tramp it down.
They carry his writhing and desperate form into an alleyway between two old style brick buildings. There, behind an old dumpster filled with rotten, forgotten garbage, they throw him down on the pavement.
"Y'don' wanna do dis," Remy says, scrambling backwards until his back comes up against the wall. His fingers scrabble to reach his cards, now underneath him and still in his pocket, but before he can, the man in the wifebeater grabs him by the ankles and pulls him back into reach.
"You bet your hot little ass we do," the man says. He pins Remy's legs beneath his hands, and holds him there with all of his weight. The second man snags his wrists, and pins those on either side of his hips before a third man comes out of the shadows.
Even if he hadn't heard the stories, and seen the aftermath first-hand, Remy would know what's going to happen. His muscles tense under the restraining hands, he gathers all his available strength and bucks up against them, managing to free one foot. Before he can do anything other than scrabble against the slick pavement, they grab his ankle again, and push down hard enough to grind the bones painfully together.
"You better hold still, boy." The man in the wifebeater is close enough to Remy's face that the teen can feel the spittle caused by the hushed whisper hitting his cheek.
"You got him down?" The third man speaks up from somewhere outside Remy's sphere of vision; the jangling of his belt buckle that accompanies his words is the loudest sound in the world to the young New Orleans' native.
The two men pinning Remy exchange glances, then simultaneously move to flip Remy over. His face is pressed into the slick concrete, his arm twisted against his back until he can feel the bones pop and has to bite his lip hard enough to bleed to muffle the scream.
"Please don't do this," he whispers. His eyes are squeezed shut, his harsh breathing echoes in the comparative silence of the alleyway. He tries to move again, but someone's weight is pressing down against the small of his back, and the agony from his broken arm is making the corners of his vision blacken and blur.
A hand reaches underneath him, tries to get to his belt buckle pushed to the ground by the combined weight of his own body and the man on top of him. His eyes snap open at the sensation of cold, slimy fingers against the soft skin of his abdomen. He needs to get out of here. More than anything, he needs to get out. His frantic gaze searches the garbage piled around the alley, looking for something that is both within his range, and can be charged easily enough to turn into a weapon.
A small pile of pebbles gathered about a foot from his head seems to be his best option, provided he can get his arm free. He takes a deep breath, feels the air expanding his lungs and focuses on that rather than the fingers beneath him still trying to undo his belt.
Someone makes a frustrated noise from above his shoulder, and he hears the sound of a switchblade being opened. /Oh God/ The weight holding his body in place is not dislodged by the surge of adrenaline that comes as a response to that sound, and a sob bursts from his lips before he can bite it down. He feels the bite of the blade against his hipbone, but it's nothing more than a scratch and an instant later his belt is loosened.
"Got it," one of the men shouts in triumph, and Remy is certain that if he does not get himself free in the next few seconds he might as well stop trying. He eyes the pile of pebbles, quickly judges the distance from his arm, and the time it would take to reach them. Taking a deep breath and holding it, he prepares himself for the resulting pain, then before he can back out, wrenches his good arm out of its restraint. A startled and angry noise above him, and his head his slammed into the ground as his fingers close around the pebbles.
"Uhhhh…" He moans without realizing it, but refuses to let himself fall into the blackness encroaching at the corners of his vision. He knows if he allows himself to lose consciousness, he won't be returning to it.
The pebbles in his hand grow warm as he transmits as strong a charge as he dares to them. Without allowing himself to think about the consequences should one miss its target, he whips them over his shoulder, praying to a god he doesn't believe in that they find their mark. A score of surprised noises sound in the alleyway, and the weight against his back shifts just slightly. He doesn't wait for another opportunity.
Pain flares through his arm, and up to his shoulder as he wrenches himself to his feet, throwing off his attackers with a strength born of desperation. He doesn't look back as he holds his broken arm tightly against his chest, and starts to run.
Above him, the heavy clouds open and it begins to rain. He can't help but think it's fitting.
Logan feels in his bones that this is a bad idea. Worse than any others the Professor or Fearless Leader concocted. He understands where they are coming from; if given the chance, he would like to help all the kids condemned to lives on the street. But Logan is not the reason they are there, and neither is the Professor, or Scott, or Jean. It's not their responsibility to make sure those kids are taken care of. Their responsibility lies with those already living at the mansion; the kids who are there because they want help. Logan thinks they should consider the effect this Remy person would have on all those kids before inviting him to live with them. Of course, Logan knows better than most that once Chuck and Jean get an idea into their head, there's no changing their mind.
He takes another pull at the half-empty beer bottle, and sneers at the television. He'd heard the Saints played a decent game of football, but he's far from impressed. If he wanted to watch fumbles, bad calls, and intercepted passes he would've stayed in New York.
He isn't even entirely sure why he came on this trip. So far he had done nothing but intimidate the kid. Logan didn't really have anything to contribute to convincing him that he should come to New York. But if he is honest with himself, he would admit it is kind of nice to have a room all to himself, without noisy kids or noisy teammates on either side, even if it is only until Scott, Chuck and Jean get back from dinner.
Another sneer at the television, and he turns it off, tossing the remote onto the bed. It started raining a half hour ago, and the volume of it had been steadily increasing since that time. It is now coming down in sheets, drenching anyone unlucky enough to be caught in it.
As if to prove his point, a knock sounds at the door.
He pulls it open without peering through the sissy eyehole, and his bushy eyebrows nearly disappear beneath his hairline. If he had thought they would be seeing him again so soon, he would have insisted Jean stay behind.
The kid looks like a drowned rat; the heavy downpour has plastered his hair against his head, changing the auburn to a dark brown. His clothes are in similar shape, the gray of his t-shirt is made nearly black, but it's not so dark that Logan misses the smudge of heavy dirt across the front. Intermixed with the scent of blood, rain, and garbage Logan can detect a hint of salt, and knows that the kid is barely hanging on to whatever fragile control he might have over his emotions. He sticks his head outside the door, glancing around the tiny parking lot, then grabs him by the front of his sweatshirt and pulls him inside.
"What the hell happened?" he asks, pushing Remy into the armchair and hurrying to grab a stack of towels from the bathroom. The kid is trembling, droplets of water are falling from his hair and clothes and are pooling onto the floor beneath him. He has no answer for Logan, can only open and close his mouth like some twisted parody of a fish. Logan sits on the edge of the bed after draping a towel around Remy's shoulders, and tries to assess his injuries without actually touching him.
The most obvious is the rather nasty gash on his forehead, just above his left eyebrow. Surely the source of the metallic smell Logan detected only seconds ago, blood from it is running down Remy's face, mixing with the rain and dripping off the line of his jaw. Logan grabs a wash cloth from the stack of dry towels, and holds it on there despite the kid's wince, instructing him to put pressure on it.
Remy is holding his right arm tightly against his chest, and though Logan does not try to confirm, he supposes it's strained badly, if not broken. He leans back on the bed, thinking it was probably just a standard mugging, when he notices the belt, cut cleanly on the left side of Remy's hip and hanging uselessly from those belt loops. It's still buckled in front.
Logan's not an idiot. Contrary to Scott's muttered curses, he can put two and two together, and is smarter than the average grizzly bear. He knows what happens tonight, and when he glances at the kid's pale face, and remembers how much he wanted to leave this kid on his own, he feels sick to his stomach. He is not by any means an innocent or naïve man, but despite what he has seen, and what he himself as done, he is sometimes startled by humans' capacity for cruelty against one another.
He feels Jean's questioning touch on his mind, and knows that he must have been projecting. Normally his mind is locked down tighter than Fort Knox, but in this case, he considers it a blessing that Jean has been alerted. He tries to project a sense of urgency, and hopes that she interprets it correctly.
"You should dry yourself off," he says gruffly, dropping the remainder of the towels to Remy's feet. "You're gonna get sick."
Remy makes no move to pick them up. He is trembling so badly Logan thinks he might shake himself right out of that chair, and is starting to entertain the thought of shock when the door to the motel room flies open.
Remy reacts instantly, leaping out of the chair as though it were on fire, and scrambles over the bed to the other side of the room. Jean stands in the doorway, drenched in rain despite the fact she was only across the street. She watches in horror as a terrified Remy grabs the lamp off the bedside table, and rips the cord out of the wall. It begins to grow pink in his grasp.
"Remy, my God, what happened? What are you doing?" She eyes the puddle of water on the floor in front of the armchair, the discarded bloodstained washcloth. The gash on his forehead is bleeding again, heavier than before without the rain to wash it away.
Logan, keeping a careful eye on Remy and yet hesitant to get too close, lest he startle the young man and get blown up for his struggles, answers for him. "He was attacked. Showed up on the doorstep like this. But the assholes who did it, they're not here, kid."
Wide, glowing red eyes focus on Logan. His chest is heaving with desperate panicked breaths, and the hand that is not holding the lamp by its neck is opening and closing rapidly.
"Remy, honey, nobody is going to hurt you. You need to put the lamp down."
Jean feels her husband's questioning presence at her back, but stubbornly maintains that he and the Professor should wait outside, underneath the umbrella until they can diffuse the situation.
"Kid, your head's bleeding pretty badly. Jean's a doctor; let her have a look at it and you'll be right as rain before you know it."
Remy's fiery gaze flickers back and forth between Jean and Logan; the lamp stops glowing, but his crackling nervous energy does not change.
Logan glances back at Jean. He knows that with her telekinetic powers, she could pluck that lamp from Remy's fingers easier than he could reach over and grab it. But he understands the importance of talking this kid down, of convincing him to make the decision himself rather than forcing it on him.
"I…dey, uh, dey cut m'belt," Remy says sadly, and the lamp slips from his suddenly limp fingers and breaks on the floor. He bites his lip hard, hard enough to draw blood yet again, and the portion of Jean's mind dedicated to mothering reacts instantly.
"Oh, sweetie," she says, coming forward and touching his shoulder gently. "We can get you another one." She kicks the remains of the lamp under the bed with the toe of her sneaker. "Here, sit down on the bed and let me have a look at you." She maneuvers him carefully to the queen-sized, and he collapses boneless onto the edge of it, hunched forward on himself with his arm still held against his chest.
He's trembling, whether it's from fear, or the soaked clothes he's still wearing, Jean doesn't know. Logan tosses the pile of towels onto the bed next to her, and she wraps one tightly around Remy's shoulders.
"This gash is going to need a good cleaning, and probably some stitches." She picks the second washcloth out of the pile, and puts it against his forehead. "Hold this here, sweetie."
He complies, holding the terrycloth to his head with bloodied, shaking fingers.
"I need to have a look at your arm, Remy."
"I, uh, it's broken." He's speaking with exaggerated care, and the colour is beginning to return to his cheeks, so Jean is no longer worried he will collapse. "Um, at least, I t'ink it's broken. It made a, a popping noise."
He reluctantly moves his arm, allows Jean to hold him lightly at the hand, and elbow. There is no bruising, but it's beginning to swell, and the adrenaline is receding fast enough that it's also starting to hurt. "I think you're right," she says, ghosting her fingers along his skin. "Either way, you're definitely going to need x-rays."
She looks up at Logan, whose standing over the pair of them with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. "Can you get in touch with Hank? Let him know we're on our way back and we'll need his help when we get there."
"Sure I will. As soon as the kid tells me it's what he wants."
Jean is surprised. "Of course. I just assumed that since he was here…" She trails off, visibly disappointed with herself for making such an ignorant assumption.
"I'm comin' wit' you," he says, speaking suddenly and with a depth of intensity that surprises both of them. "Dere ain't not'in' fer me here. Let's get de hell outta here."
Logan studies the kid's face, trying to gauge the motivation behind his decision. A choice made in such strong emotions is not really a choice at all; Logan knows this better than most. He also knows that if the kid makes his decision for the wrong reasons, he will come to regret it.
But the fear from earlier is no longer present in Remy's face; his hands are now steady and sure where they rest on his knees. Logan shrugs. "If that's what you want. I'll go call McCoy, tell him to expect us within the hour."
He leaves without benefit of an umbrella, and as the door closes behind him, Remy drops his chin to his chest. The pain in his arm is rapidly becoming unbearable, and a part of him is wondering how he managed to make it this far.
But his life on the street has taught him, among other things, that he is nothing if not a survivor. He knows there is very little he wouldn't do to live another day, though sometimes he wonders if the tenacity is a survival instinct, or simply a habit. His decision to go with these people is born of that instinct/habit, and if he made a show of trying to decide, he had to know deep within himself that ultimately, he would choose to live. And if the attack earlier proved anything, it is that his survival cannot be guaranteed if he stays here any longer. So he will put his faith in these people, in New York, and the chance for a better life. If it doesn't turn out the way he expected it to, well, then he can just add it to the long list of disappointments that already exists.