A/N: I know I should really be starting my next chapter in Everyone's worth Saving, but I really like this story and this chapter has been bugging me for days now. So I had to put it up. I hope you like it.
The war seemed to rage all around us. A continuation of what we had always believed would never occur, at least not in our life time. But here, behind these metal walls of steel, it was as if the war was happening to someone else. Everything and everyone moved with a fluidity that was almost mechanical in its movements. Nothing seemed to faze anyone here. Not death, not war, not even famine or pestilence could disturb the people that milled about this tomb, like ants in a glass case.
"You're up," I said to the man that sat across from me as I swallowed down some of the last of the whiskey that remained in this country.
"Now don't go rushing Gambit mon ami it'll ruin da affect." The man, Gambit now turned horseman, Death, said to me with a cigarette hanging out of the left side of his mouth.
"Sure Gumbo go ahead, make a show, your good at that," I say to him not looking up into his devil like eyes.
The year I've been here hasn't changed the fact that I still hate the bastard. Not for becoming a horseman and being a traitor to the American people. No, I hate him for what he's doing to Rogue. He's never told me why he traded sides nor why he's got Bobby, Jubilee and I held up in his personal wing of the building instead of being held down in the holding yards like everyone else. But then again I never asked and neither have the others. I've heard rumors of what goes on down there, down in the holding yards, and come hell or high water will I let Bobby and Jubilee experience any of that.
"Three of a kind, ace high," Gambit says with a flourish as he lays down his hand. I swear the man cheats.
"Damn," I mutter as I toss my own hand down on the table and light another cigar.
"Ya would dink dat ya would get better at playin' cards Wolverine seein' as how dats all we be doin' now-a-days," he says as he artfully shuffles the cards with practiced ease.
"Rumor has it that they're bringing in a new shipment today," I say as I take my cards, they're nothing special two low spades and a queen and jack of diamonds.
He looks at me over his hand, his eyes peering at me from behind his sunglasses. He knows exactly what I am talking about.
"How is it dat ya know so much Wolverine? Cause Remy swear sometimes ya know more dan him and he be about as high as ya can get in dis circus," he says to me and I just smile at him.
"You've got your secrets and I've got mine and the moment you start telling me your secrets, I'll start telling you mine. So is that shipment coming today or what?"
"Oui, it be here in about an hour or so. Why are ya so curious Wolverine? Expectin' someone special?" He asks me and I almost want to gut him.
"Sorry if I want to see if the next load of husks you bring in here has one of my friends on it," I grunt out.
"If it does everyone here knows dat day are supposed to be brought up here. Ya even know dat," he says to me as he takes a swig from his own whiskey glass.
"Still," I say setting my cards down. It's getting almost too hard to do this. To live like a lap dog while my friends and family are out there fighting the good fight.
"Who ya waitin' for mon ami?" He asks me as I lean back in my chair, the card game clearly forgotten.
"The same person you are."
He doesn't say anything for a heart beats worth as he sets his cards down onto the table to join mine. His eyes won't even look up from the half empty glass in front of him as he answers me.
"She won't becomin' here," he says with a force I hadn't seen in him in awhile, "she's too stubborn to get caught."
We sit again in comfortable silence for what feels like an eternity this time. Both of us are sipping on our whiskeys or smoking. Neither of us wanting to say what Rogue being here would mean to all of us. A beginning to an end I suppose. But it's a thought I would rather not think about.
"So," I begin to say not really sure of where to start off but it's a question that really needs answering, "Why did you do it anyways?"
"Do what?" He asks tapping the end of his cigarette on to the ashtray that sits between us.
"Become a horseman, keep all the X-Men locked up here, break her heart," I say the last one more out of spite than anything else. Gotta keep my kicks in before something happens and it's too late. But then again it's too late for anything now.
"Why do you care?" He asks not really looking at me but at his gloved hands.
He never takes them off, those ratter looking gloves, they're the same pair Rogue got him two or three Christmas' ago. And for a moment, as I stare at those gloves, I wonder if I am really just fooling myself in thinking that there is something bigger going on here or this whole mess that were in is all about some girl. But then again this is Rogue we're talking about here and by no means is she just some girl.
"Don't really. But as I see it we're both going to die one way or another in this place so whatever it is, the reasons why you did the things you did, don't really mean that much if you know what I mean," I say to him with a shrug and another long drag from my cigar as I pretend to not notice him staring at a pair of gloves that mean more than what he's letting on.
"What you still think I volunteered for this shit?" He asks me looking all around us with an almost hysterical look on his face.
"No," I say but know for a moment way back when I did. But not now, not when he looks the way he does, there's no mistaking it now. He didn't do any of this freely.
"Don't lie Logan," he says my name for the first time in a year. I realize then that his accent is all but gone. He no longer speaks in his famous third person speech either.
"I did, but not anymore."
He sighs and doesn't say anything for a long while. The silence seems to creep up on us like an old friend as we sit here in his room. I shift almost uncomfortably in my metal chair as I wait for him to tell me why he left us, left her.
"It was summer," he begins to say; "we had just gotten back from that vacation we all took to that private island in the Bahamas for mutants. Cyclopes had just asked Jean to marry him and Jubilee had gotten accepted in to college. We were all surprised by that."
I smile slightly at the memory. Who would have thought yellow would get into college? Or that Jean would say yes to Scott Fucking Summers.
"After we had gotten back and decided to play mutant football in the back I had gone back inside to get more water remember?" He says and I remember that day clearly. It was our last good day together, before this whole world went to shit. Rogue had thought it would be oh so hilarious to dump our entire cooler of water on top of me when I had tackled her to the ground and thus gotten a touchdown.
"The threat of Apocalypse had been on our minds before we even left for that trip. Rumors were flying around the underground that he was going to rise again and this time Rogue wouldn't be able to stop him," he pauses before continuing, "When I was on my way back from the mansion I noticed something on the outskirts of the property. I thought it was a deer or something. So I went over the edge where the woods meet the lawn."
I can make the scene out perfectly. I can remember finding the water about an hour or so later warming on the porch. Gambit hadn't returned to the game. He hadn't even returned to the mansion.
"I went out to the woods and instead of a deer I found Sinister waiting for me. You know about my relationship with the man. He helped me control my mutation when no one else could. But I had paid my debt to him in full. I couldn't figure out why he would be back barking up my door again.
"He tells me Apocalypse has risen and is coming for us. He'll be at our gates before night fall and he'll kill us all. He told me that there was no way to stop him this time that he had gained immunity to Rogue's mutation. He said that he would make her kill me; make her absorb every last memory from my body until I consumed her.
"I would have laughed at him if he had been anybody but Sinister. Because we both know that Sinister doesn't make any jokes. He told me that if I became a horseman the X-Men would be spared at all costs. They wouldn't hunt them, they wouldn't kill them if they were caught, and they would be taken into my custody the moment they were found. We would all live to see another day."
He stops and gives a shaky breath and I can't do or say anything to him but stare at him. I hadn't realized the depth of the situation.
"You could have told us," I say to him through clenched teeth.
"And you would have talked me out of it and you, Bobby and Jubilee would already be dead or worse," he retorts as he takes a long drink from his whiskey glass. He's right and I know it. But I hate to admit it. "None of you were here in the beginning when the slaughters began, when they tested you relentlessly seeing if you could become a solider for Apocalypses army. It made me realize how right Sinister was. I couldn't ever back out of this deal. Never trade sides again, because the fate you all would be sharing was worse than my abandonment, more than my betrayal."
"She would barely talk to anyone," I confess to him, thinking he should know something's about her even if those things were a year old.
"She does that when she's upset," he says looking out at nothing, yet everything all at once.
"She killed that first War Horseman you know. Drained her dry like Sinister said he would make her do to you," I continue to confess to the kid. I could see Gambit's hands curl into them, his nails digging into the leather of his gloves.
"She went a little insane there for awhile, but Jean was able to get her somewhat under control. Her accent changes sometimes from Southern Mississippi to Northern Massachusetts, so does her eyes from green to blue," I sigh as I talk about her, the only person in this world I claim as family.
"They never told me how Danvers died," Gambit says not looking up at me. His forearms I can tell are coiled under his trench coat.
"Yeah, Rogue's got a nasty left hook now," I say with a chuckle remembering the first time she slugged me. But my laugh seems to die on death ears because Gambit isn't looking at me, or paying any attention to me. He's thinking about her and the life they had once shared together.
"She doesn't hate you," I finally confess to him as I chew on the end of my cigar.
"I bet," he says unbelieving.
"I think she still even loves you a little."
Gambit doesn't say anything to that. He just sits there trying from what I can tell to not lose it on me. The man might be a lot of things, that's for sure, but a weak man he wasn't. And in this moment as he leans his head down away from me, not looking me in the eye as I remind him of the life he left behind, I am strangely proud of him. I am proud that he placed himself in the line of fire, knowing he would be hated for his actions, to save us. If only to save us long enough to make a difference.
It makes me wonder what else in this world I had gotten wrong.