Title: The House of the Rising Sun, Prologue 2
Author: Goddess Evie
Date: October 15, 2002
Genre: Romance (Remy/Rogue, Scott/Jean, Lance/Kitty), Action, Drama, Angst, AU, heck, it's got it all…^_^
Rating: For this Prologue, it's only a G, and I really don't think this'll get above PG.
Summary: Here's where we first meet Remy, at least in my fic, and how his fortune and future come into play.
Disclaimer: I do NOT own X-men of any incarnation. I am but a poor, fanatical, poor, college student who much enjoys a show so that she writes extensive (and hopefully intriguing, enjoyable, and highly popular) fanfiction to feed her insatiable hunger for anything X-men. Also, the song lyric I use as the optional title doesn't belong to me either. I'm quoting the song "Clint Eastwood" from the band Gorillas. Listen to this group, they are FREAKIN' AWESOME!!! But I own nothing but the plot so don't sue me cause I can't even pay for college! WAAAAH!
Author's Note: Well, as the Genre line says, this is an AU. Although it's set primarily in the Evolution universe, I've definitely strayed from the Evolution storyline. Although, I have to admit, that wasn't very hard for me since I've only seen like three episodes (ACK!! KITTY ATTACK! *giggles*). For this story, though, I've done A LOT of research. I've visited Evo web sites, comic web sites, the original X-Men cartoon show websites, but mostly Rogue and Remy sites. Now, I have to give credit where credit is due, and the most helpful sites have been Gambit Guild ( http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/2159/ )and Southern Comfort ( http://scroguefanclub.org/ ). I suggest Rogue/Remy fans check them both out, especially the Gambit Guild. But back to the story, I've taken all my X-men knowledge, combined it together, balled it up into a small dense sphere of mass, and came up with THIS! I warn you that I've taken many liberties with my story. So, on with the story, and please EXPECT it to deviate from many of the other traditional/cannon X-Men storylines. Just a couple of notes, though, first. I did my best with ALL the accents, so it they're not right on or if you find you can't understand them, I'm sorry. Also, when writing this story, I just randomly picked a name for the random friend that I had planned to tell Remy he needed to go see the Guild Father. Later, while doing my intense research, I found out that I'd just happened to pick the same name as Remy's adopted brother/best-childhood-friend. Heheh, I must just have X-Men, intuition. Okay, NOW on with the story! ^_^
Prologue 2: Gambit's Fortune or "I feel useless, but not for long. The future is coming on."
New Orleans at the tail end of August was sweltering. The heat waves rising from the ground made everything look hazy and surreal. Everywhere people were sparsely dressed, men with their shirts off and women in tank tops and short shorts. Businessmen stuck in their stuffy suits sported sweat stains under their armpits; their sports jackets slung over one shoulder.
One young man, however, walked easily in the heat of the midday sun despite the ankle-length, brown trench coat he wore. And underneath the trench coat he had on a pair of black jeans, the frayed ends covering a pair of black, steel-toed boots, and a black t-shirt that fit over his lean torso quite well. His unshaven look gave him a kind of rough attractiveness that went well with his mass of brown hair, which fell into his eyes, red irises in a field of black.
People didn't like to look into Remy LeBeau's eyes. Only the people who had known Remy for a long time, or who knew the real Remy, would meet his gaze. Everyone else usually found some place else to look while they were speaking with him. He remembered when it used to bother him-depress him even, but he'd gotten used to it. And he'd found people who didn't let something as small as the color of his eyes hinder their view of him, especially since he had better traits to offer.
Remy LeBeau wasn't your average everyday teen-ager in more than one way. To begin with, he was part of an underground guild in New Orleans. A thief's guild to be more specific, a Mutant Thieves' Guild. For Remy's other secret was that he was a mutant. He didn't have any physical mutations, besides his eyes, to set him apart from the rest of the world. But he did have an ability that he knew no else had.
For instance, the small pebble that he bounced in one fingerless gloved hand. He smiled as he watched a woman stop by a trash receptacle on the corner of the street to finish an ice cream cone. As he neared the woman and the trashcan he focused his energies on the pebble for a moment before tossing it casually into the can. Just as he reached woman and wastebasket there was a small explosion that startled quite a few people in the immediate area and scared the wits out of the woman, causing her to drop her ice cream all over herself.
Remy took the opportunity to use the distraction to quickly pickpocket her wallet, slipping it into the deep pockets of his own trench coat as he crossed the street against the light. Before the woman even knew the wallet was gone he would already have slipped into the anonymity of the crowd on the other side of the street. The woman probably wouldn't even realize he'd ever been there.
Leaving the business district of the city with his spoils of the day-businessmen and women were such easy targets with their confidence and untouchable attitudes-he made his way into one of the poorer parts of New Orleans. Here lived the people that continued to give New Orleans its mysterious reputation. The voodoo witches, palm readers, fortunetellers, potion makers. Everything and anything that had to do with magic could be found here for anyone who wanted to know what was in his future, find a potion to change some aspect of his life, or pick up a good luck charm to give his chance a boost.
This was also the part of town where the bar that members of all three gangs of the Mutant Thieves' Guild tended to frequent could be found. It was a place of neutral ground where member's didn't worry about who belonged to which gang and anyone who tried to pick a fight found himself up against the whole bar no matter their alliance. Remy figured maybe he'd catch Belladonna, his betrothed, there and persuade her to accompany him on a moonlit tryst later that night. And if not, there'd be plenty of other fellow guild members to pal around with for an hour or two. They'd be more than grateful if he used his spoils of the day to buy the house at least one round, and he had plenty of spoils to do that.
"Une moment, young'un."
The weak, shaky voice caught Remy off guard, and at first he didn't realize that it was he the old woman was addressing. But she put a hand on his arm and forced him to stop and give her his attention, though she gave the appearance of a frail, senile old lady.
"What you wan', ol' woman?" Remy demanded, irritated at being interrupted in his quest for a nice, relaxing evening with some guild buddies.
"Yo' fortune be callin' out t'me t'be tol'," the ancient voodoo witch admitted to him.
"I ain't got time," Remy told her, trying to force his arm out of her grasp.
But the old witch only tightened her hold on Remy's arm, pulling him toward her shack where her fortune telling and voodoo magic shop was set up. Despite her stooped stature and seemingly frail nature, the witch had a tighter grip on his arm than the jaws of an alligator.
"D'ere always be time, young gambit, for da future," the witch assured him as she set him down in a chair and then pulled one up for herself to sit across from him in, somehow without actually letting go of him.
"How did you…" but Remy let the question go. Even he was smart enough to know not to tangle with supernatural forces when they revealed themselves. "A'ight, witch, you got Remy's attention. Now hurry up and say wha' y'got t'say. Remy got places t'be," he ordered her.
Already the woman's eyes had rolled back into her head and her face lifted up toward the heavens. Her hand was still locked on his upper arm in her death grip and she showed no signs of letting go anytime soon. Finally, after what seemed to Remy like a great deal of time, the voodoo woman spoke, her voice now stronger, more forceful.
"I see a journey in your future."
Now this was beginning to sound formulaic.
"And a woman…to steal your heart away."
Extremely formulaic.
"Believe me, dat ain't in my future," Remy muttered under his breath as thoughts of Belladonna wandered across his mind.
"Yes, a journey, a woman…and a betrayal."
"Eh, anyone who betrays Remy is gonna find demselves regrettin' it," the Cajun promised.
That must have been all the old witch had to say because her eyes suddenly returned to normal and she finally released her hold on Remy.
"Da spirits have spoken. Dat be all," as she said these words the old woman was already pushing him out of her small shop and on his way.
"Eh, what d'I owe da spirits for deir services?" Remy asked, half serious half joking.
The woman paused to look straight into his eyes when she answered him, and unlike most people who looked him in the eyes for the first time, she didn't turn away. "Da spirits don' charge nothin' when dey seek out a soul person'ly."
And the next thing Remy knew the old voodoo witch had disappeared into her shop and he was walking down the street, once again set on his destination, and not really certain as to what had just happened to him. And for that matter what had just happened to him?
"Remy!"
He knew that voice. Turning, Remy raised a hand in greeting to his closest friend and fellow Guild member, Henri. Henri returned the greeting without slowing his pace. Remy noticed that Henri seemed out of breath, nearly exhausted. He must have been running for quite a while to be so worn out.
"Wha's wrong, mon ami?" Remy asked when Henri finally reached him, hoping he didn't bring news of a rumble with one of the rival gangs.
"I been lookin' for you ev'where, Remy. The Guild Father's summoned you t'see him, tout de suite," Henri rushed out the message.
"Well, den, I guess Remy should be on his way. Merci, Henri," Remy thanked his friend before heading off in the direction of the Guild House.
The Guild House was located in the historical district where all the old houses and sites of Historic New Orleans could be found and Remy spent the whole trip wondering why the Guild Father would want to see him. Sure, his eventual marriage to Belladonna, one of the rival gang's leader's daughters, as an act of peace between the two gangs made him a semi-important member of the guild; however, the marriage was still at least a year off, if not more. Remy was only seventeen, Belladonna not much younger. Surely an event that was still quite a ways into the future wouldn't be cause for the Guild Father to want to see him in person.
And Remy couldn't think of any other reason the Guild Father would summon him for a face-to-face visit. He hadn't done anything to rile any of the other gangs, or get himself into trouble, at least not recently. The Cajun was seriously clueless as to the Guild Father's intentions. He would just have to wait and find out when he arrived.
With his mind so full of speculations concerning his summoning to see the Guild Father, it seemed to Remy that he had reached the Guild House in no time. He paused for a moment as he looked up the steps at the heavy, wooden, double doors carved with the insignia of the guild-a fox and a coyote, paws interlocked, with a raven flying overhead, talons reaching menacingly toward the rodents below, just touching their tangled paws-a riddle to anyone who didn't belong to the guild. To the unknowing passerby it might seem that the fox, coyote and raven were fighting. But in actuality, it was symbolic of the three founders, one animal to represent each, who had established the thieves' guild.
Remy belonged to the gang known unofficially as the Ravens and officially as The House of the Rising Sun, one of the three gangs that the animals were also used to symbolize. Remy wasn't sure how the Guild had been split, but somewhere in it's history there had been a dividing and the three gangs had been the result.
But Remy was taking too much time. He jogged up the steps and into the Guild House. The eerie quiet of the inside was a sharp contrast to the rowdy New Orleans night that was just beginning to settle over the city outside, and Remy felt it. He stood up straighter and walked with more dignity as he approached the woman reading a beauty magazine at the old fashioned desk in front of the entrance to the maze of halls that incorporated the house.
"Bonjour, chère," Remy greeted the woman with his most charming smile and seated himself on the edge of her desk.
"Don' be tryin' dat wit' me, Remy. Especially when da Guild Father be waitin' for ya," the woman replied with a no non-sense look as she lowered her magazine to look at him, accompanied by a slight smile of her own to take the edge off.
"Well, who'm I ta keep da Guild Father waitin'," Remy replied glibly, detracting himself from his perch and gliding past the woman towards the honeycomb of hallways.
"Nobody, dat's who," the woman laughed back, swatting his backside with the magazine she'd been reading as he passed her.
Remy chuckled to himself as he entered the hallway behind the woman, letting his pace slow just a bit. Although there were few times in his life that he'd been here, Remy did know the way to the Guild Father's suite. That was something you made sure you knew after the first time you were brought to him, because after that there wasn't going to be anybody to show you the way.
After walking the halls for a while, turning left here, right there, passing doors, some of which had occupants behind them still, some of which were already empty as the people who owned them had already left to enact their own part in the dusky Louisiana night, Remy finally found himself standing in front of the door of the Guild Father. There was no secretary; one merely knocked and waited for the Guild Father himself to allow you in.
Remy was never so scared as he was whenever he had to face the Guild Father. The last time Remy LeBeau had been here was when the Guild Father had informed him that he had arranged a marriage for Remy with Belladonna. It wasn't that the Guild Father was a frightening person; it was just that he had an impressive aura to him. No one Remy had ever talked to could quite explain why the man was so awe inspiring, but at least he did know he wasn't the only one the Guild Father had the same effect on.
Gathering his courage-and trying to look like this was an everyday occurrence for him-Remy knocked on the door. Immediately, the gruff voice of the Guild Father called for him to enter. Remy opened the door with little hesitation and growing fear, and entered. Closing the door behind himself, Remy turned toward the Guild Father sitting behind his grand desk and felt like he should snap to attention and salute.
"Remy LeBeau," the Guild Father acknowledged his presence and then addressed him again by his Guild name, "Gambit."
"Mon Pere," Remy replied with a bow of his head.
"You prob'bly wonderin' why I called you he'ya," the Father assumed.
"Oui, mon Pere," Remy confirmed.
"Well, the'ya's a favor I need t'ask o' you befo' you marry Bella."
A favor meaning that whatever the Guild Father asked, Remy would do.
"What d'ya need Gambit t'do, mon Pere?" Remy inquired dutifully.
"I been gettin' news from some o' my agents of the appearance of mutants up north of he'ya," the Father revealed to Remy. "What I want o' you is to go up the'ya an' fin' ou' if dey be o' any harm t'us."
I see a journey in your future.
"How d'ya wan' me t'do dat?" was Remy's next question.
"Unda'cova' infiltration," the Guild Father paused. "I wan' you to become one'ah dem fo' awhile, Remy. Fin' out what dey be plannin' an if it be dan'grous t'da Guild."
Remy nodded. "How soon d'ya want me t'leave?"
"Tout de suite," the Father said.
"Oui, mon Pere," Remy acknowledged.
"Charlene will give ya anymo' infah'mation y'need," that phrase had an air of finality to it and Remy turned to leave.
"Gambit," the Father's voice sounded once more just as Remy was opening the door.
Remy looked back over his shoulder at the Guild Father, his face expressionless.
"Bon chance, mon fils."
Remy smiled. "Merci, mon Pere."
And with that he slipped out the door and into his new life.