Dream Healer

By Nessie

He's a figure of stone, but smoother. Black marble, perhaps. And he gleams dimly in lightless tunnels. Water from various city drains drips on him and cools his fevered flesh. This is it. This is it.

There are others nearby but not within visual, and even though he stands alone with the exception of the lifeless bodies lying gracelessly at his booted feet, he understands that he is being watched.

"Do this," he had said, that madman had said, "and I will release you from your debt to me, Gambit."

He turns red-on-black eyes down to study the corpses. They are heavy weights on rusted steel and frigid stone, and their already-distorted bodies have been mangled further by his attacks. By him.

A little girl catches his eyes, and something within him twists. He doesn't remember seeing her. She must have been hiding behind the lanky, ugly woman that she had fallen on top of her and gotten caught in a kinetic blast. Or maybe it was because she didn't look normal, with her oversized hands and caved-in head, that he had just overlooked her.

He remembers being overlooked. Dozens of potential parents had come through the orphanage, but they had wanted the boy with the curly red hair or the one with the big dimples. Nobody wanted a son whom they would look at and see a devil in his eyes.

And in his hands, he thinks, drawing out a brand new deck of cards along with a cigarette. Gambit lights up and frowns. The floor is shaking. Everything is shaking.

He looks up and sees the ceiling beginning to crack. Sinister's other bastards have finally overdone it. He needs to move, but Morlock hands, dead Morlock hands, reach up and grab his legs, holding him in place.

The tunnel collapses. His cigarette goes black.

He hauls up in fears, cool sheet falling away his bare chest and his rears into a sitting position. He's at the Institute, he knows right away. The air feels full of New York rural and weirdo kids. There's no city smog around, and there's no faint spicy scent of jambalaya either. He may be safe, but he's not home.

It registers after his safety is confirmed that there is a hand on his cold and sweat-slicked arm.The size immediately tells him it's Rogue, and he jumps only to see that her fingers are gloved. Of course they are, he thinks and inwardly curses himself. He's the stupid one, not her.

Inhaling, he releases a breath that comes out trembling. "Chere… Je suis va aller fou si toi—"

"Sorry," she cuts into before he can accuse her of making him go crazy. Her green eyes glimmer like cut emerald in the moonlight that filters into his bedroom. "I heard you hollerin' up a storm from upstairs. You were dreamin,' sugah."

"Nightmarin'," he corrects her, sleep making his tongue slow. "Sorry, petite." He shot her tired but wry smile. "Looks like dis Cajun a bit too sleepy to take advantage of y'right now." Gambit eyes the hig-rising hem of the T-shirt she wore. "Come back in an hour."

She flicked him on the nose with a gloved finger and sits down. "I ain't goin' nowhere, swamp rat, 'til you tell me what you been nightmarin' 'bout."

He's so skilled at lying that he doesn't even have to think for a false reply. "N'awlins. Family shit. The same ol' horror story everyone be wantin' t'go away. Really, chere," he insists. His still damp hands curl around her covered ones. "Go back to bed and get dat beauty sleep ya don't need."

Rogue gives him a skeptical stare but relents. She stands up but leans close toward him. "I wanna know one day, Remy."

No you don't, chere.

She starts to leave and stops. "Sure ya can get to sleep alright?"

He nods, sends her the grin he knows will make her believe him. "Seein' you? Das about all I need for my dream to start gettin' healed."

When he's by himself again, the smile stays along with the terror still visible in the shine on his skin. And he knows it's true.

She's all he really needs.

The End