Chapter 16
Gris Gris took one look at the photo Henri showed him on his phone and said: "That's not Questa."
"You know just like that, do you?" Henri asked with raised eyebrows.
"Oui," Gris Gris replied. "When was this taken?"
"Just a few minutes ago," Henri said coolly, "in Remy's bedroom. After he tried to kill him while posing as Rogue."
"That's not Questa," Gris Gris repeated firmly.
"How do you know?" Henri asked.
"Trade secret," Gris Gris snapped. "You can't honestly believe that Bella Donna has anything to gain by assassinating Gambit."
"Maybe not Bella Donna," Henri replied calmly.
Gris Gris narrowed his eyes. "Listen, just because the Thieves are willing to sell out their own mothers -"
"I really don't think now is the best time to call the loyalty of our Guild members into question," Henri cut in. "After all, it's the Assassins, not the Thieves, who are having a loyalty problem at the moment. But... as it happens, you're right. I'm not inclined to believe that you've set us up. I'm sure you can't blame me for thinking it, though."
Gris Gris relaxed only slightly.
"Questa's the only shape-shifter we have in the Guild, unless someone's been hiding something from the rest of us," Gris Gris said. "So either our rogue, erm, mutinous Assassins hired this shape-shifter when Gambit stopped going out after Rogue was shot, or it's someone else altogether, impersonating Questa for their own reasons."
"Either way, we can't let him see you," Henri said. "You'll be guarded while we question him. Her. Whichever it is."
"I don't need your protection," Gris Gris replied.
"Sure you do," Henri answered cheekily. "You play WoW don't you? Clearly you need protection from yourself."
"Hey," Gris Gris objected. "I get enough of that crap at home without getting it here too. Besides, Gambit plays it too."
"Yeah, and I give him crap about it too," Henri said. "You're not special. It's only for a few hours anyway. We've got someone very... talented... coming in to do the questioning."
"Aww, I don't get to sit in on your interrogation?" Gris Gris asked, grinning. "I'd love to see how you Thieves do these things."
Henri grinned back at him. "Trade secret."
The Thieves that Henri organised to aid them were the five that had apprehended Gris Gris the night of his arrival. One Thief joined Gambit, two stood guard outside his door, and the other two stood in the living room while Gris Gris went back to playing World of Warcraft (he really didn't have a whole lot to do). Since the shape-shifter was so neatly trussed up (and uncomfortable) where he was, the Thieves let him stay there. The shape-shifter did make numerous attempts to escape of course, but no one went near him and all kept a close eye on him.
Gambit's head shot up as the bedroom door flew open. Rogue stalked in, her eyes narrowed and a dark expression on her face that gave Gambit the impression she had been stewing on the attempted murder all the way home. Henri was behind her, trying - and failing - to hide a big grin while the other Thieves looked startled.
"You!" Rogue declared, pointing at the shape-shifter and storming over. "You filthy, slimey, scum-sucking fishbait!"
Gambit hid his smile as Rogue slammed her fist across the shape-shifter's face. A moment later, Rogue began the absorption and the shape-shifter changed once more; into Mystique.
"You pissing off the mother-in-law, Remy?" asked Henri.
"Apparently," Gambit replied. "It does explain her interest in Olivier. Remind me to get Mercy something really special as a thank you, by the way."
"Oh, I will."
At last Rogue let go and Mystique slumped to the ground. Rogue closed her eyes.
"Rogue?" Gambit asked when the silence dragged out.
"She was hired by Pierre Thomas," Rogue said finally, "because he knew with her abilities she'd be able to get in here where he couldn't."
"Pierre Thomas?" asked the other Thief. "Isn't he the last First Kill?"
"Oui," Henri said. "Rogue? Anything else?"
"She took the job because she hates Remy - for dubious reasons, I might add," Rogue replied dourly. "Thomas told her she was to give the impression of Assassin Guild involvement, which was why she chose Questa's form. I got nothing else relevant to this incident from her."
"Alright then," Henri said. "I guess now it's just a matter of deciding what to do with her."
Silence followed.
"Can't let her leave," Henri went on when no one said anything, "not while her job's incomplete. Can't keep her here either – we just don't have the facilities for that kind of thing."
There was another silence, and then the other Thief piped up awkwardly: "Well we do have a... a friend in the next room."
"I'm going to let her go," Rogue said as she pulled out a pen and paper.
"Oh, you are, are you?" Henri challenged her.
"Yes," Rogue replied and Gambit raised his eyebrow at the shake in her voice. "She's going to be far too busy securing her property to bother reporting her failure to Thomas, or to make another attempt."
"And you know that because?" Henri asked.
"Because," Rogue said as she wrote on the paper, "she's going to know that I know where all her bank accounts, safe houses and other stashes are. It took her three months to relocate everything last time I absorbed her and I didn't even go looking for that information. It will be much easier for me to destroy her fortune than it will be for her to save it."
"If she tries to cause any more trouble, she doesn't know that you won't go after her property in retaliation," Gambit said slowly. "And this could all be over in three months."
"It's a big risk," Henri said hesitantly. "I'm almost inclined to –"
"It makes us even," Rogue said tightly. "I'll never give her another chance after this."
They got nothing else out of Rogue after that. She finished writing her note, a list of different bank accounts and locations of value to Mystique, and placed it on her person. The Thieves undid the handcuffs that bound Mystique and carried her comatose body out, planning to dump her outside of the Louisiana border.
Gambit closed the door after them, leaving him alone with his wife. He turned back to look at Rogue, who was standing by one of the windows and leaning on the frame.
"What do you mean, 'now you're even'?" he asked her. "If I recall correctly, Mystique abandoned you, conspired to kill you and then tried to kill me. Not to mention paying an unsolicited visit to Olivier."
Rogue was quiet for a moment.
"My Aunt Irene was a precog," she replied finally. "She had a vision that if I stayed with them and joined the Brotherhood when my powers manifested, that I wouldn't live to see my eighteenth birthday."
"You believe that?" Gambit asked slowly.
Rogue gave a short, hysterical laugh.
"But don't you see, Remy? She was right!" Rogue said, choking back a sob. "If they hadn't abandoned me, I never would have been disowned by my foster parents, and I never would have met Logan. Magneto still would have used me in his machine, but even if the X-men had been there to stop him, Logan wouldn't have had any reason to be there, and couldn't have saved my life."
Gambit made his way over to her and carefully wrapped his arms around her.
"Rogue," he said softly. "She could have done a better job if she hadn't sold you out at all."
"What? And seen Magneto die instead?" Rogue asked. "The way things turned out, she got to keep two people she cared about, which is more than I can say for Aunt Irene, who died four years ago, and I had no idea until just a few minutes ago! All this time I thought she'd turned her back on me and I wanted to hate her and all this time she was just trying to protect me and I can't even... I can't even go back and..."
All efforts to hold back the tears failed and Rogue dissolved into a flood, soaking Gambit's shirt as he held her close. He rubbed her back gently.
"Well," he said when her sobs started to subside, "you did say Aunt Irene was a precog, right? So I'm guessing she already knew how you'd feel right about now."
The sound that emerged from Rogue's lips was half sob, half laugh. Gambit allowed himself a smile and lifted her head with one hand while the other ran through her hair.
"I think it's good that you finally know why they left you," he said softly. "I also think that... that there's a certain discussion that you and I need to have, that's been put off for two weeks now."
Rogue pushed away.
"I really don't want to talk about that right now," she said, turning her back on him and looking out the window.
"So, when are you going to want to talk about it?" Gambit demanded. "Tomorrow? Next week? A month? A year? No, Rogue. The subject is already open now, and we're talking about it now. I don't want this cloud hanging over us any longer."
"I was wrong about Viviana," Rogue said, half turning her head back towards him. "I'm sorry. There. End of –"
"No, it's not the end!" Gambit objected, slamming the side of his fist into the wall. "You think I'm capable of cheating on you. Worse, you married me thinking I was capable of doing that."
"Well I'm sorry if I've gotten used to the people I love up and leaving me," Rogue snapped back at him, glaring furiously at the window.
"You want to know what I was thinking when we got married? I was thinking it was too soon."
Rogue froze.
"Looks like I was right, huh?" Gambit went on angrily, moving around in front of her and holding her arms so she couldn't turn her back on him again. "We did get married too soon. Worrying that I'm going to leave you while we're dating is... okay. But it's definitely not okay while we're married. We should have worked through that before we tied the knot, but we didn't and now look at us! One compromising position, not of my making, and you've taken flight. I am not going to go through the rest of my life wondering if today is going to be the day you're going to leave me, because of something someone else did."
"I'm not going to do that again," Rogue said irritably, still glaring out the window. "I promise that should you ever get caught in a compromising position again, I'm going to wait until I've had a chance to talk to you before deciding to pack my bags. Happy now?"
"I'd be happier if you looked at me," Gambit snapped at her. "I'd be happier if you trusted me."
Rogue sighed and closed her eyes.
"I do trust you, Remy," she said softly. "But I also trusted Mystique and Aunt Irene, my foster parents, Kitty and Bobby and Logan. And in the end, every one of them left me. So you'll excuse me if loving you this much scares me. I don't want to be abandoned again."
Gambit sighed.
"I'm not any of those people, Rogue," he said as she finally met his eyes. "And I don't deserve to be treated that way."
"I know," she said, sniffled loudly and walked away to get a tissue. "I know and I want so much to be able to say that I trust you completely. Hell, until this whole thing with Viviana, I thought I did!"
She blew her nose, and wiped it.
"And I know it's not what you want to hear," she went on, "but I'm going to need time, okay? I need to... to... to find some way of training out this expectation that everyone I love is going to betray me. And to be honest, I don't even know where to start, but I'm going to try, okay?"
"Yeah, it's definitely not what I want to hear," Gambit said, "but it's the truth, I suppose, so I guess I'll settle for that."
Rogue let out a small laugh despite herself. "You'd prefer me to lie to you, sugar?"
Gambit cracked a smile. "Well, it might make me feel better..."
"Hmph. I know plenty of ways of making you feel better without stooping to lying to you," Rogue replied with a dismissing wave of her hand. "And changing the subject completely, how's Olivier?"
"He's good. He's with Mercy at the moment, but - and I could be biased here – I think he's been missing his Mama," Gambit replied, once again closing the distance between them.
"None the worse for wear for Mystique's visit?"
"Don't think so. And actually, I think I'm a little relieved it turned out to be Mystique and not someone else," he said thoughtfully. "At least with Mystique, I can imagine she wanted to spend some time with her grandson."
"Hmph," Rogue sniffed. "If she comes near you, or Oli, or any siblings he might have in the future, I'm going to kick her ass three ways to Tuesday."
"Is Oli going to have a problem bringing home girlfriends?" Gambit asked mischievously. "Are you going to worry about them stealing him away from you?"
"No," Rogue replied firmly. "I'm not going to turn into Mystique."
"Oh?"
"That's why she hates you, Remy," Rogue said with a nod. "She thinks you've stolen me away from her and corrupted me."
"Hmm, I see she's cottoned onto my little scheme," Gambit said, rubbing his chin.
Rogue laughed and threw her snotty tissue at him.
"Pierre Thomas hired her?" Gris Gris repeated.
He was meeting with Henri, Jean-Luc and Gambit in the living room. Rogue was in Olivier's room, busy playing with her son for the first time in two weeks.
"Oui," Gambit replied.
"Hmph," Gris Gris snorted. "I don't suppose you got an address did you?"
"An address? No..." Gambit replied, frowning.
Gris Gris grinned at them.
"We've pretty much suspected Thomas the whole time, Mostly because his parting words to us the day he... retired was that he was going to fix all of Bella Donna's mistakes, and that the Guild was nothing without him."
"Heh," Gambit said with a smirk, "I can just imagine Belle's reaction to that."
"So, yeah, Thomas being involved? No big surprise. What's irritating is that we know he's got people working for him inside the Guild," Gris Gris went on. "We don't know who, though. Any member of the Thomas clan is suspect – which is one reason why we haven't verbalised our suspicions to the Guild at large – but he's got plenty of friends in other clans."
"Of course," Jean-Luc agreed. "It may only be a couple of members of the Thomas clan that are guilty."
"Exactly. We were hoping we could track down Thomas, find out where he's living and who he's meeting with but... well, that's the problem with trying to hunt down one of our own," Gris Gris said in annoyance, "he knows how to lose us. Only clue we have is his car; couldn't help being a little self-indulgent in his 'retirement' and bought himself a Maserati GranCabrio. We tried tracking the rego number, but..."
Gris Gris shrugged and the Thieves nodded knowingly. Gambit frowned slightly, there was something familiar about a GranCabrio but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
"Speaking about this trap," said Henri, "it's been three weeks. Aren't they ever going to step into it?"
"Soon, soon," Gris Gris replied with a smirk. "They're doing what we always do; waiting for a lull in the security. See that's the difference between Thieves and Assassins; you're materialistic, and we're 'people' people."
"I cannot believe I'm running an Assassin through BRD," Gambit muttered.
He was in the living room with Rogue and Gris Gris playing World of Warcraft, all three wearing headsets. His level 80 hunter and his pet wolf "Mipet" were in the Blackrock Depth prisons, with Rogue's level 55 mage and Gris Gris' level 50 rogue. Rogue made her mage wolf-whistle at Gris Gris' avatar as his armour disappeared, leaving a 'naked' Orc to run into the nearest mobs and let them kill him.
"Very funny," Gris Gris said. "Don't you have to go get the Shadowforge key too?"
"Nope," Rogue replied cheerfully. "I got it last time Remy ran me through BRD. Why? You wanted to see a naked Blood Elf?"
"Eh, you can see naked Blood Elves any time," Gambit dismissed.
Gris Gris snickered as his avatar ran back to the instance from the graveyard. "I hate this run."
"Just don't forget to talk to the ghost again after you accept the quest," Rogue said. "Otherwise you'll have to die and do the run again to talk to him a second time before you get the real key quest."
"I hate this run," Gris Gris repeated.
Rogue laughed.
"I like naked Blood Elves," said John. "Especially when their name is 'Wanda'."
"Stop sucking up," Gambit teased.
"What's this 'their'?" Wanda asked.
"Didn't work anyway," John said with a snicker, and then added quickly: "Of course, there's only one Wanda in my life..."
"Better."
"So, question," Rogue said slyly. "Do you two take Warcraft into the bedroom? Because as far as I know, Warcraft is the only place you can get Blood Elves..."
"Sure they do," Gambit said before John or Wanda could reply. "They have the Blood Elf nights where they have to be told how gorgeous and sexy they are, and the Troll nights where things get kinky –"
"Why do the Trolls get kinky?" asked Gris Gris.
"Well, they're the ones with bones through their noses," Gambit pointed out.
"Well, not all of them, but yeah," Gris Gris conceded. "They all have tucks though. I imagine that would make oral –"
"Ugh! No! Shut up!" Wanda practically shouted through the speakers. "I do not want to think about that!"
"I'm thinking that the Taurens like it vanilla," Gambit mused.
"Or doggy style," John piped up gleefully.
"John!" Wanda objected.
"And the Orcs are probably into fighting for dominance in the bedroom," Gris Gris said. "That could be hot."
"Yeah, that's always fun," Gambit agreed.
"Anna! Make them stop!" Wanda demanded. "If I wanted my WoW to be sexualised, I'd join a RP server and start ERPing."
There was a pause and then Rogue said: "Well, I think it's pretty obvious that the Forsaken are into necrophilia..."
"Argh!" Wanda exploded while Gambit, Gris Gris and John dissolved into laughter.
AN:
RP = Role Playing
ERP = Erotic Role Playing
The "Forsaken" are undead, which I've probably mentioned before, but for those who may have forgotten, there you go. Hence Rogue's... joke... heh.
I just like seeing Gambit and Gris Gris getting along.