I, ASSASSIN

Chapter Fourteen

The rest of the hunting trip was spent mostly with Remy remaining uncomfortably silent, trying to ignore the tension between Bella Donna and her father. They hunted throughout the next again morning and afternoon, taking frequent breaks so that Marius could scout the area on his own (Remy felt this was more than likely an excuse to go relieve himself, still suffering with the effects of the laxatives he still knew nothing of). Remy was forced to leave two more deer for dead. Three kills he'd made needlessly and the guilt was getting unbearable.

He wanted to believe that they were after all only animals. But he already understood how symbolic these deaths were and so it was hard to put them out of his mind. On the car ride back to the Boudreaux mansion, he slept soundly, and it wasn't until the car was pulling down the oak lined drive of the estate did he awaken.

As he unloaded the back of the jeep, the blisters on his feet stung relentlessly, the ones on his heels had burst during the walk back to camp that afternoon, and there was a rather large one coming up on his big toe that was giving him great discomfort. Even the two pairs of socks he'd worn were doing nothing to ease the torment this time around.

Bella Donna's conduct with her father had been icy throughout the remainder of their trip, and Remy had done his best to ignore it and to keep out of it. He'd noticed her stomping around, giving her father those angry glares, the way she spoke to him only when absolutely necessary, her voice was thick with detest.

Remy supposed he couldn't blame the girl. Marius looked a little washed out, and Remy had noticed him more than once press his hand to his stomach as if he were in pain. Did she dose him with laxatives again? Remy wondered as he dropped Bella Donna's bag into the garage.

As Remy moved to the back of the Jeep to pick up his own bag and sling it over his shoulder, he noticed Marius looked off. He thought to mention it but felt it was probably best to keep his mouth shut. Marius did not like to show weakness and Remy wasn't about to let him know he could see it.

Marius paused as he stood there by the car, his face paled a little and he seemed to wince. He stilled himself quickly, seeming to immediately sense he was showing his weakness there. "Tomorrow, I think we may postpone your training, LeBeau."

"Oh?" Remy asked. He supposed he shouldn't have tried to question it, being that it meant he'd have time to let the blisters heal a little.

"Belle is right," Marius said coolly, which caused Bella Donna, who had been in the middle of grabbing her rifle from the back of the car, to glance up with a look of disbelief on her face. "You've worked hard for the past few weeks, and you've shown half-decent improvement. You could use the rest."

Remy thought it was more likely that Marius had realised he'd be spending the next day in and out of the bathroom, but was saving face. As Bella Donna breezed on by, carrying her rifle, Remy couldn't miss the vaguely smug expression on her face. Yes, she'd definitely been lacing her father's drink with the laxatives again. There was no other explanation for it.

After unloading everything from the car and putting the necessary equipment away, Remy kicked his terribly muddy boots off at the porch and went inside, heading up to the guest room where he was staying looking forward to a much needed day of rest. He noted a little watery blood had seeped through his white socks and as he pulled them off in the bathroom he noted a couple more of the blisters had burst and were weeping. He rolled up his pants legs and he sat at the edge of the bathtub, filled the tub up with cold water and sunk his feet slowly into it, hoping it would soothe the pain and help the healing process.

At least for the next day or so I'll have some time to rest and catch up on all the missed sleep, he tried to cheer himself up. In the bedroom, he heard the door opening and closing, and he craned his neck a little to glance through the open doorway of the en-suite to see Bella Donna crossing his bedroom.

"I'm in here," he called.

Bella Donna moved to the doorway and leaned there against the frame, her hair was wet from a shower, hanging in long thin wisps around her arms. Her face was slightly pink, her shoulders – revealed by the spaghetti strapped nightgown she was wearing – were almost bright red. "Sore feet?"

"Blisters," he responded.

"Why didn't you say during the trip?" she asked, folding her arms casually.

"Like you said, can't show weakness," he reminded.

"You have a point," she supposed.

"You shouldn't be in here," he sighed, he raised his left foot out of the water to examine the mess of it. The blister on his heel had left a pocket of skin, the one on the side of his foot had burst and the skin was hanging off a little. He supposed all he could do now was let the feet rest so they could heal.

"I know," she pushed herself away from the doorway and moved to the tub to sit upon the edge, facing away from him.

"So why are you?"

"My daddy wants me to marry some guy from the French guild..."

"I know," Remy responded, staring into the water as he sunk his foot back in slowly, wincing at the pain. "I was walkin' back to the clearin' when he told you. I heard every word."

"I ain't marryin' him."

"Do you have a choice?" Remy queried, he felt he already knew the answer.

"He says I don't," Bella Donna answered quietly, sounding quite unhappy, "this is all about money, and tryin' to strengthen the family bloodline," she explained. "But we don't need money...and I don't want to have babies with some stranger."

Remy turned to look at her, "what you gonna do?" he asked.

Bella Donna gave a shrug, "don't know yet..." she skimmed her fingers against the cold water absently, "we could run away together," she said after a moment.

With a sigh, Remy shook his head, "no. We can't. They'd find us. You know that. And besides...I have my family to think about. He'd see it as defiance, kill Jean-Luc and Henri...I can't have that happen."

"They ain't your blood, Remy. They're just the people who took you in is all," Bella Donna tried.

Remy took his feet out of the tub and swung his legs over and stepped onto the towel he'd put on the floor. "They're the only family I'm ever gonna have," he remarked icily to her, suddenly feeling very little tolerance for her company tonight. It was better to be cold towards her than let himself have the feelings he wanted to. It was better to deny his feelings than admit for just one small moment, he actually considered it, even if there was no guarantee it would ever work.

"You know what I mean."

"I know exactly what you mean. That you're so determined to have this your way that you'd be quite willing for me to make the sacrifice."

"I'd be sacrificin' too, chere," she reminded, her blue eyes followed him as he sat upon the toilet seat and bent over to dry his feet off carefully.

"All you'd be sacrificing is a goddamn inheritance. Not exactly a huge sacrifice when you run off with a professional thief. And besides...you even said it yourself, you don't need your father's money."

Bella Donna considered things for a moment, "me and you could live real good off somewhere on our own, we could travel...see the world."

"With all the things we know, we'd be a danger to the guild...I leave now and I'm a deserter, Assassins would have no reason not to kill me to maintain their secrets," he finished patting his feet dry and walked awkwardly to the room. He heard Bella Donna follow.

"What if we just...get married?" Bella Donna suggested.

He scoffed; the idea was just absolutely preposterous. "Us? Get married? You're sixteen."

She leaned against the door frame, "law says I can marry at sixteen," she reminded, "my cousin Beth got married at sixteen. My momma was married to my daddy at sixteen."

"Fine, the law says you can get married at sixteen. But you're forgettin' one small minute little detail. You gotta have parental consent, and your daddy ain't gonna fly with that."

Besides, I'm not sure I ever wanna be married, I'm not even sure I really want to be with her, he thought at himself. As much as he was starting to sincerely care for her, he wasn't sure falling for a born killer was a smart move. He'd always had a strange obsession with slightly dangerous women, but making that kind of commitment with Bella Donna was something else entirely.

Bella Donna thought about this for a moment, then pushed herself away from the door, "what if...it were a case of somethin' like...I don't know, pregnancy? Where it would be the right thing to get married?"

Remy shook his head, "no...we ain't goin' to that kind of extreme. Your daddy would rather break all his religious and moral beliefs about abortion than have you be pregnant with my half-breed bastard with no choice but to marry," he muttered. "Anyway, it's a little soon to be thinkin' that way, Belle. We don't know each other well enough for this..."

"We know each other plenty. And everythin' else we'd have the rest of our lives to learn about."

"Belle, we're not even sure it'd work..."

"I know it would work," Bella Donna assured, "everythin' in my gut tells me it would."

"That's just puppy love tellin' you that," Remy scoffed, he looked away.

"But love all the same," she said softly, she took a hold of the collar of his shirt and pulled him towards her, she pushed her lips against his jaw, it made him nearly weak at the knees. "We could start our own lil' family," she murmured near his ear, "Little house to ourselves...a little garden where I could grow tomatoes and you could laze about in the sun and tan...kids runnin' around by one of them blow up pools, splashin' and laughin'..."

It sounded too much like an ideal scene in a family movie, something out of a commercial for life insurance, something that was a far exaggeration of how family life was in his opinion. He closed his eyes and took a breath as her fingers slipped beneath his belt to pry it out of the pin, "Belle..." he sighed, not sure how to put it to her that this was not how he'd imagined his twenties would be spent. Life as a mutant was far too complicated, and being a mutant and a Thief with the new title of Assassin Initiate looming over him meant there were far too many complications to add possibilities of family and romance. "We're too young...you're still a child."

"We could travel for a few years first," Bella Donna yanked the belt free of the loops and dropped it to the floor, it made a soft chink on the rug. "See the world, go places we've always dreamed of...try new things...grow up a bit..."

Remy put his hands on her hips and tried to gather his thoughts but all he could think that the girl was living in a fairytale. In Bella Donna's world, she was a princess who wanted to be a queen, she lived in a palace and had everything she wanted, whatever she asked for was hers, designer clothes, expensive jewellery, he'd even heard Marius talk about getting her a Lexus if she passed the final tests and was fully initiated into the Guild.

However, Remy, unlike Bella Donna and her fairytale life, was far too much living in the real world. He didn't always get what he wanted, and on the rare instances he did it was something he had to fight tooth and nail for. In his world, he was just a pawn in a game of chess.

Pawn never marries the queen in a game of chess, does he? Remy thought dully, he looked down between them to see Bella Donna opening the fly on his pants. He realised things were going too far and too fast. He was too aware of how close her father was and how they could easily be caught in this situation.

"Your daddy could catch us," he took a hold of her hands and moved them away from him.

"Daddy is probably stuck in the bathroom in his room...he'll be shittin' through the eye of a needle, about now," Bella Donna gave a devilish little smirk, her eyes glittered like gemstones.

"Did you...?" he asked but dared not finish the question. He was almost positive she had laced her father's food or water with more of the laxative. Payback for his tellin' her about the marriage arrangement.

"You'll never know," she broke her hands away from him, "you sure you don't want to...?" she offered, she ran a finger lightly down the front of his shirt.

"I'm exhausted..." he confessed, it being the truth. There were times when Remy let his libido do the decision making, but right now, libido seemed to be lying dormant, the brain was in charge for today thankfully, and Remy supposed he was safer if he kept it that way for now. "You better get back to your bedroom. You get caught in here, you could jeopardize everythin' for me," he reminded. He decided to use this knowledge to his advantage, "if you want me to stick around here, best not let your daddy find out..."

"If you say so," Bella Donna left the room silently.

Remy sighed as he let himself collapse to the bed, exhaustion pouring over him like thick tar before he even had the energy to consider changing his clothes. It was barely moments later he was deeply sleeping.

End of Chapter Fourteen

Thanks to those who have reviewed and taken interest in the story so far. Hopefully a few more updates coming soonish. Hope everyone has a great week :)