Chapter 14

When there was no answer to his knock, Henri let himself into Rogue and Gambit's room. There was a suitcase open on the bed, already half full with clothes. Beside the suitcase there was another pile of clothes, all with their hangers still attached.

"Go away, Henri," Rogue said, her voice almost a growl as she threw another bundle of clothes on the bed.

"Remy's on his way home," Henri said, feeling awkward. "He –"

"Good for him," she snarled, turning her back and storming back into the walk-in-wardrobe.

"Look, I'm not entirely certain what happened," Henri said, "but I do know he didn't cheat on you."

Rogue made a rude noise.

"Oh come on Rogue, you can't be serious?" Henri demanded. "Remy loves you. He has no interest in straying."

"You don't know that," Rogue snapped at him, emerging from the wardrobe with another bundle of clothes on their hangers. "Just stay out of it."

"Look," Henri said, not wanting to be in the middle of this in the first place, "he'll be here in a few hours. Can't you just wait until he gets here?"

"By the time he gets here, I won't be."

Henri did have to give Gambit credit; he picked Rogue was going to bolt, and she was. Henri stayed there, saying everything he could think of to persuade her to stay, even going so far as to stand in the doorway when she tried to leave. He was standing on very thin ice and he knew it, but he also knew that Rogue could use her powers at any time to get by him, so either she was too angry to consider it, or she wanted to be talked out of leaving.

"Rogue," Tante Mattie's voice cut in through the yelling from behind Henri in the hallway, "the races are going to start in about an hour."

Henri turned just enough to see that with Tante Mattie was also Mercy, and Gris Gris wasn't too far away either, watching curiously. The silence was palpable.

"You know what?" Rogue said. "That's a good idea."

She pulled back into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. Henri looked at Tante Mattie.

"Are you sure –" he began.

"She needs to blow off some steam," Tante Mattie replied calmly. "And she can't do it here."

"What about... rogue Assassins?" Henri asked, his eyes flickering to Gris Gris.

"I have a feeling if anyone decides to cause her any trouble tonight," Tante Mattie said, "they'll find out why she calls herself 'Rogue'."

Rogue was relieved to find the hallway empty once she had changed into her motorcycle gear. The way to the garage was unobstructed and Rogue was able to leave on her Ducati without any interference.

She had only ever been to the illegal motorcycle racing here once, and only as a spectator just a week before she found out she was pregnant. Tonight she would be racing.

Rogue made her way through the throngs of people to the notice board where all the races were listed, and beside it was the booth for signing up and paying over the entry fee. After reading through the races they'd be running that night, she walked over to the booth. There were two men; one was busy with another racer, and the other looked Rogue over skeptically as she approached.

"What can I do for you, toots?"

"First, you can stop calling me 'toots' before I shove your head up your ass," Rogue snapped at him. "Second, you can take my entry fee for the –"

"You've got to be kidding me," he said scornfully. "You don't seriously think you can race?"

"You really don't want to piss me off tonight."

"Oh I'm so scared," he sneered as his partner turned around to look. "This is a man's sport, girlie. It's no place for the likes of you. Go back to the kitchen."

His partner cut in front of him, then, laughing nervously.

"Don't listen to Gerry," he said. "He's a misogynist. We'd love to have you... Rogue... May I call you Rogue?"

"That's fine," Rogue replied tersely.

"Good, good... so, ahh, which race did you want to enter?"

He was quite quick and efficient about signing her up for the race, indicting where the bookies were in case she wanted to bet, and making sure she knew how the course worked (which she appreciated, as it had been some time since she'd last been here). As she turned and walked away, she heard Gerry tell him off:

"You didn't need to fawn all over her like that."

"You're an idiot," he scolded Gerry, and Rogue couldn't resist the urge to pull out Logan's psyche and utilise his enhanced senses to hear the rest of the conversation: "Do you have any idea who that was?"

"Some chick named Rogue," Gerry replied dismissingly.

"Moron! She's Thieves Guild! You just insulted Rogue LeBeau."

Rogue grinned despite herself at Gerry's horrified swearing. On the one hand, she rather wanted to forget about being a LeBeau right about now. On the other hand, it was kind of nice to be able to inspire fear in others.

She did place a bet on herself in the end, but more for the fun of it than any great need to win the money. The odds on her weren't too bad; just above 'insulting', and Rogue suspected 'newbie' had been countered with 'Guild'.

It was quite some wait until her race was to begin, and she ended up gravitating towards her fellow Thieves. She fell into an easy camaraderie with them, reminiscent of the one she had with Frank, Joss and the others when she'd been racing all the time.

Finally her race came up. That familiar thrill of just being alive kicked in as she took off after the flag fell. She zoomed down the road at high speed like all of hell was after her.

She loved every moment of it.

Rogue's chief disappointment was that the race was over far too soon. Before she knew it, she had crossed the finish line. It was only a minor disappointment that she came in second, but she'd been there for the thrill, not for the money.

She entered a second race – a sprint – before the night was over, but it wasn't really the same. The companionship kept her for the duration.

Rogue got back home in the wee hours of the morning. She stopped briefly to look in on the spare bedroom on the other side of Olivier's, but the bed wasn't even made up and she decided she was feeling too tired to worry about it right now. She trudged into her bedroom, stripped off what she needed to and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Aside from the necessary travelling time to the airport in Rome, Gambit also had to wait a few hours for the next flight and then there was the necessary flight time before he finally got to the airport. He wasted no time getting to the Guild Hall, although by that point, rushing seemed a little redundant. All those hours waiting gave him a lot of time to go over all of Rogue's possible reactions and figure out how he was going to deal with this.

He couldn't believe this was even happening.

It was a little anti-climatic by the time he got back and found Rogue asleep in bed, although his slight smile faded when he spotted her packed suitcase by the side of the door. He put down his own bag, pulled off his shoes and coat, and laid on the bed beside her. He reached out his hand and gently stroked her cheek. She didn't stir at first, but after a minute she opened her eyes.

"Morning," he said softly.

"Morning," she replied.

Then the expression on her face hardened as she remembered what had happened the night before. She sat up and pulled away from him, glaring at him.

"You've got a lot of nerve," she snapped.

"I never cheated on you, Rogue," Gambit replied firmly.

["Remy? What are you doing up?"] Rogue said with a rough French accent in a mocking imitation of Viviana's voice. ["Come back to bed and make love to me again."]

"What are you saying?" asked Gambit. "That you're taking Viviana's word over mine? You only met her once and she doesn't even like you. I love you, and the last time I slept with that vixen was years before you and I even met."

"Yeah right," Rogue snorted, pushing herself off the bed and turning her back on him.

"Why is it so easy to believe I'd cheat?" Gambit demanded, getting off the bed as well as she walked over to the door. "And don't start giving me your lines about how 'everyone always betrays you'. I never have. Never. And I've never given you any reason to believe I'd stab you in the back."

"You... I just..." Rogue said tightly, having trouble forming words as she picked up her suitcase. "I just... can't deal with this right now. Just –"

"So that's it?" Gambit said angrily, closing the distance between them and putting his hands on her shoulders so she was forced to look at him. "You're just going to leave? Run away again?"

"I'm not running away," Rogue snapped. "I have a responsibility to Olivier and I'm part of this Guild, oh... and yes, I seem to recall some vows I made to you a year ago. I keep my promises, Remy. But just because I vowed to be faithful to you, doesn't mean I have to sleep in the same room!"

"Hey, I made those vows too, Rogue –"

"Oh really? Because you seem to have forgotten!"

"Why do you trust Viviana more than me?"

"I... I don't trust her..."

"But you trust her more than me!"

"N-no..."

"Well, you must," Gambit insisted, "because you're choosing to believe her story over mine."

Rogue was lost for words, her face the picture of helpless rage and despair.

"Do you trust me?" he asked her gently.

"I..." she stammered and her eyes shifted to the side.

"It's not a hard question, Rogue. Do you trust me?"

"I... I want to."

Gambit closed his eyes.

"Yes or no, Rogue," he said firmly. "You either trust me or you don't. Which is it?"

Rogue swallowed hard. A long silence followed. Finally Gambit opened his eyes again and she avoided his gaze.

"If you can't trust me, Rogue, the man who loves you more than anyone else in the world, you will never be able to trust anyone. Do you understand me? You will go through the rest of your life unable to trust a soul. You won't even trust Olivier, and one day he will get tired of it, and he will leave you."

Rogue squeezed her eyes shut, swallowing hard as Gambit let her go. He felt like crap as he opened the door and let himself out, shutting the door gently behind him. She wished he'd slammed it.

"So," said Henri into the awkward silence in Jean-Luc's office, "we got a call from Italy this morning."

Gambit, sitting with his arms folded in his usual chair, said nothing. His face was grim.

"And?" Jean-Luc prompted when the silence grew too long.

"Giuseppe is fuming about Gambit not completing the job. He's also called Gambit's competency as a Thief, and, umm, as a Patriarch into question, as well as the N'Orleans Guild in general," Henri reported uncomfortably.

"Mmmhmm," Jean-Luc said thoughtfully, leaning his chin on his hands. "Remy? How would you reply to this?"

Gambit was silent for a moment, keeping back what he really wanted to say about the matter.

"Viviana has no respect for the sanctity of marriage," he said finally. "Therefore, I cannot respect her when she continues to disregard my intentions to remain faithful to my wife. In fact, I find her attitude disgraceful, insulting, and what she insinuated to Rogue was downright offensive. I can only assume that she's been keeping some bad company because I've always known Giuseppe to be quite courteous."

Henri snickered. "I like it."

"You can add that I would be happy to work with any other member of the Italy Thieves Guild," Gambit said.

"It'll do, I suppose," Jean-Luc said slowly. "You are aware that your relationship with the Italy Thieves Guild is now going to be forever stained, Remy."

"That was inevitable," Gambit replied. "Sooner or later we would both be the leaders of our respective Guilds. If I had realised at the time that my exile was going to be lifted, I never would have dated her –"

"Ha! That's why it's called 'hindsight', Remy," Henri said, smirking at him. "And you still would have slept with her."

"Ahem," Jean-Luc cut in. "What's done is done. We will simply have to try to salvage the situation –"

"I didn't do anything wrong," Gambit said. "I'm not apologising to anyone."

"- so that our relationships with the other Guilds are not hindered."

"What would they care?" asked Gambit. "They're not involved."

"As they say, actions speak louder than words," Jean-Luc said solemnly. "Your actions reflect upon you and your Guild, Remy, whether you feel they should or not. And the other Guilds should be our friends, not our rivals. The whole point of maintaining good relations with them is to ensure that. Hopefully, what will come out of this is that they will see you as a man of honour, rather than a man who is unreliable."

"Now I have to start caring about what people think of me?" Gambit asked. "This job sucks."

"Speaking of which, if I may change the subject," Henri said, a gleeful smile appearing on his face. "Père and I were discussing who we should ask to be Santa Claus at the Christmas party this year."

"Oh yeah? Who's that?" Gambit asked.

His father and brother looked at him with matching smiles. Gambit groaned and banged his head on the edge of Jean-Luc's desk.

When Gambit returned to his bedroom later that day, there was no sign of Rogue. Gris Gris was at his desk playing World of Warcraft (Gambit couldn't help but grin). Olivier wasn't in his room, but Gambit wasn't worried as he had seen him in Tante Mattie's care on his way through. Rogue wasn't in their bedroom either. Her things looked largely undisturbed though, which he took as a good sign.

Just as Gambit was considering going back to Tante Mattie and asking if she knew where Rogue was, he spotted a note of his side table. He sat down on the edge of the bed and picked it up.

Remy,

Gone to rob a bank with Zoe and the guys.

There should be plenty of breast milk in the fridge and freezer for Olivier.

Rogue

Gambit sighed. He didn't know whether to be frustrated that she'd effectively run away again, or admire the fact that she'd found a legitimate way of doing it that he couldn't really complain about.

He hated this. He hated the whole thing. Perhaps average people shouldn't trust him, but Rogue was his wife, they had a child together; she wasn't average by any means. He wasn't Mystique or Bobby, nor had he ever given her any reason to think that she couldn't trust him. He was trying not to take it personally, but it hurt.

It hurt a lot.