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Shattered Like Glass: Scene 13"What did you tell 'em Bub?" Logan snarled, leading the small posse of X-Men towards the errant Cajun. "How many of these kid's lives do you reckon your rotten skin is worth?"
"What you talkin' 'bout eh Wolverine? I not tell nobody nothin'." The Cajun seemed genuinely offended at the suggestion.
"I know what I saw through Cerebro Gambit." The Professor informed him calmly. Gambit's eyes narrowed suspiciously as he stepped past Blaze to look each X-Man in the eye in turn. The Professor, Logan, Scott, Ilehana… All were bristling at the Professor's accusation. He met Storm's eyes last, but she couldn't hold the contact.
"I'm sorry Gambit." She apologised sincerely. "I never should have left you on your own. You never should have been put in this situation."
"Save it Storm." Remy spat, "Don't none of you trust Gambit?" The only response to his question was averted eyes and hard expressions. Gambit turned unceremoniously to go back down the drive. "Then Gambit don't need nobody."
Blaze took one last look at the mansion that had been her home, sighed, and fell in step behind her friend. Remy neither acknowledged her nor drove off without her as he picked up the fallen bike and started the stalled engine. Whatever information he had collected, Xavier belatedly realised, was about to ride off into the sunset with the thieves. Perhaps a truce was in order.
#Wait Gambit. # Gambit stopped the bike.
#Come back. We need to talk about this; about what information you may have for us. # Gambit couldn't tell if Xavier's telepathic presence made him climb back off the bike and turn to face the Professor, or if it was just the way the words were conveyed. Blaze's confused expression and muttered curses as he left her sat on the bike didn't help. But he'd not come back here as a traitor. He'd come back to help, not leave the X-Men to struggle against the inevitable alone. For out of all of them, Xavier included, Gambit was the only one who knew just how bad the future was going to be.
Gambit didn't stop the talk to Logan or the others on his way past. Xavier had already started back to the subbasement levels. Remy followed at a semi-respectful distance, aware that Blaze and the rest were trailing along behind.
"Blaze will you let me look at your shoulder?" Ilehana asked as Blaze passed the X-Men and blanked them. The redhead was rubbing a point on the curve of her neck, just where the force of Gambit stopping her punch would have hit. "It its sore…"
"Its fine." Blaze closed the conversation before it had even begun. She strode on ahead and looped Gambit's arm around her neck. The rebuke hung heavily on the air like the fragrance of something rotting. Scott and Ilehana exchanged glances whilst Remy and Blaze put their heads together, mumbling rapidly in French. Gambit's fingers explored the knot he'd caused in Blaze's muscle, kneading it gently.
The way Gambit was acting, Blaze too in fact, made it seem as though they were the ones being betrayed. They raised barriers to the X-Men physically with folded arms and tense shoulders, and emotionally with blank face and brooding eyes. They even raised barriers to Ilehana and her father's telepathic abilities, subconsciously as that may have been. In turn as the group re-entered the briefing room, it was into an icy frost that would have rivalled the last ice age.
Humans are creatures of habit, and no mutant was exception to that. Habit dictated that during a briefing, the X-Men sat in the same seats and next to the same comrades at the large Arthurian style round table. It didn't really matter; nobody would lose out if people sat in different places. But when today Gambit sat not only on the first seat he came to, Ilehana's, but also turned the chair the wrong way round to sit on it with his trench coat handing smoothly behind him, it got on everyone's nerves.
Blaze didn't bother to sit at all. Ceding her place to the dislodged metamorph, she loitered at the back. But by hugging the wall as though she was a catalogue model posing for a rather moody photograph, she didn't exactly ease irritations.
"I don't know what you t'ought you overheard Professor." Gambit had at least retained some respect in his tone for the X-Men's founder. In return for that boon, Charles gave Remy his undivided attention and didn't attempt to defend himself. "But I didn't tell those scum nothin'."
"Then how come you're here, not to mention in one piece?" Scott didn't appreciate that his comments would annoy the Cajun.
"I bin screwin' folk all my life Cyclops," Remy snapped nastily, "You t'ink I ain't got damn good at it by now?" Blaze had to bite her bottom lip to keep from somewhat inappropriate laughter at Gambit's statement and Scott's resulting expression.
"I ain't told 'em nothin' they don't already know." Gambit continued, talking straight to the Professor and blanking everyone else. "But they know more than I t'ink any of us t'ought they did. I could've told 'em the Professor's shirt size an' it wouldn't have come as no surprise. This place ain't safe no more. They'll be comin' for all of us, and they prepared."