Chapter Ninety-One:
"Ah hate him."
Remy LeBeau sat perched on the edge of the bed, watching it all with amusement.
"Ah hate him, Ah hate him," Rogue muttered under her breath.
His wife was pacing the length of the bedroom they had been given in the staff dormitory wing of the Westchester Academy for the duration of their stay at the mansion, far more irritable than he could recall seeing her in quite some time, and if the look on her face was any indication, he should be grateful it wasn't being directed at him.
After all, Rogue was moody enough as it was, with hormones added to the mix she was a walking time bomb.
Better not let her hear y' say dat, he thought to himself with a silent chuckle.
"Ah hate him," Rogue declared again, more vehemently this time. "Ah hate, hate, hate him!"
"No y' don'," Remy told her lightly.
"Yes, Ah do," Rogue insisted, clenching a fist as her emerald eyes narrowed fiercely. "Ah really, truly, deeply loathe an' despise Scott Summers!"
To punctuate those words, she slammed said fist into the wall, causing the plaster to crack audibly.
"Feel better now, chere?" Remy asked, trying not to laugh.
"Yes."
"Bon," he said, nodding as his lips curled up into a smirk of their own will. "Den de hole y' jus' put in de Professor's wall be worth it."
Startled, Rogue drew her hand away from the wall, and sure enough, there was a hole in the reinforced wall, which was designed out of a flexible metal of some kind, the size of her petite little fist. She blinked, staring at the hole for a long moment, and then groaned.
"Ugh, this is all Scott's fault," she accused bitterly. "He knew this would throw me off-balance, he knew that it would torment me! He... he manipulated me!"
"Dat he did, chere," Remy agreed in amusement. "Dat he did."
"Scott Summers manipulated me!" Rogue seethed, and he bit his lip as she continued to rant. "Ah'm gonna kill him, Ah'm gonna use him fo' a punchin' bad an' then let Bobby freeze his mouth shut an' Tabby blow off his legs! Then Kurt can port his remains over the Artic Ocean an' dump him!"
"Okay, somebody needs a nap," Remy decided, and lifted his hands when his wife sent a glare in his direction. "What? M' jus' sayin', dose hormones are makin' y' even mo' fou dan normal."
"This comin' from the man who once took a swan dive off o' One Shell Square?" Rogue retorted incredulously.
Remy shrugged casually. "Knew dat y' be there t' catch me, beb."
The look she sent him made it clear that the sentiment was hardly appreciated at the moment.
Not that he was surprised, of course, she had been like this ever since they'd retired up to their room from dinner, a scowl on her face and emerald eyes blazing furiously once they had some privacy for the first time since her return earlier in the evening.
At first, he'd thought that something had happened during her visit with Carol's family out in California, that maybe the Danvers hadn't been nearly as forgiving as their daughter about what had happened to Carol at Rogue's hands back in Area 51, but thankfully that hadn't been the case.
The Danvers, Rogue had informed him, had been the most wonderful people she'd ever met.
And seeing Carol reunited with her parents had been worth everything that Rogue had endured because of Area 51, the months of insanity as two psyches warred for control of her body, the voices in her head, the guilt and pain... with the Danver's forgiveness, on top of Carol's, Rogue had finally been able to lay that chapter of her past to rest.
Then just when she'd felt like her life was finally settling down, becoming less complex, Scott had blindsided her.
An' left Remy t' deal wit' de hormones, he thought with a grunt.
"He jus' had t' go an' drop this on me," Rogue muttered, irritably brushing a loose strand of hair from her eyes as she plopped down on the edge of the bed next to him miserably.
"Mebbe he had a good reason," Remy pointed out. "De homme said dat he t'inks dat y' got what it takes t' do de job, an' I t'ink dat he be right."
"Ya'll are all crazy, then," Rogue declared dispassionately.
"Arrêt," Remy told her, gently but with firmness behind the word. "Yo' mo' dan capable o' doin' de job, an' y' know dat, chere. So let's cut it wit' all de crap 'bout how y' not be de right man-"
Rogue arched an eyebrow.
"-woman," Remy corrected smoothly, without missing a beat. "An' why don' we try t' figure out what de answer yo' gon' give t' Cyclops is gonna be."
Rogue sighed and rubbed her temples wearily. "Shouldn' we call Tessa an' Lucas up, sugah? They should be here fo' this."
"No need fo' dat," Remy told her with a faint smile. "De trois o' us talked 'bout dis already, an' dey said dat whatever we decide, dey be dere wit' us."
"Ya'll knew b'fore Ah did that Scott was gonna ask me t' be a team leader?" Rogue demanded.
Recognizing the dangerous gleam in her emerald eyes, the smoldering anger he knew all too well, Remy's smile fell away immediately. "Non," he assured her quickly, putting emphasis behind it given the nastiness of mood swings as of late. "Didn' know a t'ing 'bout dat until y' brought me up here an' tol' me, chere. We jus' talked 'bout whether or not y' were gonna want t' stay on wit' de X-men now dat y' found dem again, dat's all."
"Oh," Rogue muttered, anger draining away as her shoulders relaxed. "Sorry."
"Not'ing t' be sorry fo', Marie," Remy replied, reaching over to take her slim hand in his and lifting it to his lips in order to press a tender kiss against her knuckles. "Dis isn't easy fo' y, dat's understandable."
"It's not fair," Rogue groaned, allowing herself to fall back so she was laying on the bed with her legs dangling off over the edge. "Who would have thought that Scott Summers o' all people would resort t' emotional blackmail? He's the poster boy fo' a good li'l X-man."
"An' like a 'good li'l X-man', he's doin' whatever it takes t' try an' convince a former teammate t' come back," Remy pointed out.
Rogue glared up at him halfheartedly. "Jus' whose side are ya on anyway, swamp rat?"
"Yo' side, always," Remy replied with a smirk. "M' jus' tryin' t' figure out exactly what side dat's on. 'Cause at de moment, chere, it ain't exactly clear where y' stand, comprenez?"
"Oui," Rogue sighed, closing her eyes.
Giving her a few moments to compose her thoughts, Remy took the opportunity to study her, as he did everyday, for any changes brought on by her pregnancy. She wasn't yet showing, although she claimed she was getting fat at least once every other day now, but she'd changed out of the clothes she'd worn to visit the Danvers family immediately after dinner, exchanging them for a pair of loose yoga pants and one of his old hooded sweatshirts that was entirely too big for her slender frame.
Her long, glorious hair had been pulled back into a high ponytail at the crown of her head, with the white streaks left free to frame her face, just the way he liked it, and he absently reached out to finger the ends of her hair affectionately.
There was something about her hair, maybe it was the shocking contrast of white against dark brown, but he just couldn't get enough of it. He loved to just lay in bed with her in the mornings, running his fingers through her silky tresses, letting the warm sunshine spill in through the window as the bustling sounds of the French Quarter poured into their bedroom.
Of course now, more than ever, he was uncertain when he would be seeing his hometown again.
"Ah jus' don' know what t' do," Rogue murmured, eyes still closed.
"Wouldn' be an important decision if y' did yet, chere," Remy replied, laying back so that he was stretched out beside her on the bed. "De real question, though, is what yo' heart wants. Dat's what y' gotta listen t' here."
"An' if mah heart doesn' know what it wants?"
"Den we jus' gon' hafta help it make up its mind, oui?"
"But how, Remy?" Rogue asked in frustration, emerald eyes snapping open as she turned her head to look at him. "How am Ah s'posed t' make this decision? T' pick one home over the other, one family over the other?"
"Don' look at it dat way, chere," Remy told her.
"How else am Ah s'posed t' look at it?" she demanded. "Whatever Ah choose, it's gonna hurt someone, and we're gonna miss someone, an' how do Ah know what the hell the right answer is?"
"Sometimes," Remy said slowly. "Dere is no right answer, p'tite."
"Ah don' wan' t' leave mah family so soon after Ah jus' found them again," Rogue whispered. "It killed me, Remy, all those years that Ah thought they were dead... an' now Ah know they were sufferin' the same way, thinkin' Ah'd been killed. Ah can' jus' turn an' walk away from them again, Ah can' do that t' mah mother an' Kurt an' Logan."
"Remy t'ink dat as long as dey know yo' safe an' happy, yo' family's gonna accept whatever y' decide, p'tite," Remy told her evenly.
"Ah know they will," Rogue murmured. "But Ah also don' wanna turn mah back on the X-men. The dream matters, Remy, it's what's gonna make the future a better place for our son-"
"Y' mean our daughter," Remy cut in with a cheeky grin.
"Or daughter," she conceded, gnawing on her lower lip in agitation, and he realized she was truly torn on what to do, if she was admitting there was a chance their child was going to be a girl. "Ah started out on the wrong side, but when Ah joined the X-men, Ah found somethin' t' believe in, somethin' worth fightin' fo', ya know?"
"Oui, chere," Remy said softly, brushing the back of his hand against her cheek. "I know."
"What Ah went through in Area 51... Ah don' ever wanna see that happen t' anyone again, 'specially not our baby," Rogue said thickly, voice choked with undercurrents of emotion. "Ah know that Trask is in jail an' Operation Wideawake has been terminated, but there's still gonna be prejudice out there, Remy. An' there will always be people who see our kind as a plague, who want t' wipe us out."
"Dat dere will be," Remy agreed sadly.
"The X-men, an' people like us, are all that's standin' in their way," she sighed.
"An' y' wan' t' stand in de way wit' dem," Remy concluded, more of an observation than a question.
"Part o' me does, yeah," Rogue replied, but she didn't need to, he could see the answer in the swirling depths of her emerald eyes, and that was all he needed to know.
"So we stay on," he declared.
"An' leave our family" Rogue cried, sitting up sharply. "Miss out on watchin' Jacques grow up an' seein' baby Etienne born? On lettin' our son grow up wit' his cousins?"
Back t' de son, Remy noted with a silent chuckle. Guess she's still got some fire in her, after all.
"If we stay, we miss out on their lives," Rogue argued sternly. "Not a chance in hell, swamp rat."
"Den we go," Remy retorted with a casual shrug, and she blanched, her eyes betraying her. "Ah, but den y' gon' miss out on yo' family an' de X-men's lives. Not an easy choice t' make, p'tite."
"Ah hate Scott Summers," Rogue muttered darkly, for the hundredth time in the past hour.
"Would have been a hard decision even wit'out de offer t' tempt y', Marie," Remy pointed out evenly. "Yo' an X-man at heart, an' yo' always gonna feel dat pull, dat callin', t' be a part o' dem."
"Ah'm also a LeBeau," Rogue replied, her eyes shining with a sheen of tears. "An' Ah'm always gonna feel a pull t' be wit' our family."
Our family.
How many times had he heard those words over the years since he'd brought her home to New Orleans after the Sentinel attack?
And yet it had never meant more than at this moment.
It reassured him that his wife really and truly missed his family as fiercely as he did, that she longed to be back in the warm sunshine of New Orleans, with jazz music echoing through the air as they sat in the courtyard of the family estate having lunch with Henri and Mercy while little Jacques chased a butterfly in the bushes.
He loved her all the more for it.
"Y' know, chere," Remy began slowly. "We don' hafta make dis decision now."
"We don'?" Rogue echoed skeptically.
"Non, we don'," he replied confidently. "Look, Remy's got dis all figured out, oui? Once de bebe is born, den we make de big call. Dere's no rush, 'specially when yo' not gon' be in field condition fo' a while anyhow."
"An' until the baby's born?"
"Till den, we stay here, p'tite," Remy answered, touching his hand to her hand gently. "Give y' some time t' spend wit' yo' family, I t'ink dat Mystique an' Wolverine an' de Fuzzball, dey like dat. An' it's better dat we stay here fo' now anyway, where y' got a doctor around de clock dat not only knows about our mutations, he's also got a très bien bedside manner, so de rumor is."
For a long moment Rogue stared back at him, her eyes searching his, and then she surprised him and burst into tears.
"Chere?" Remy asked anxiously, getting ready to roll away if necessary. "Is dis a good cry, or a cry that means yo' 'bout to hit me?"
"Ah love ya, Remy LeBeau," Rogue replied tearfully, leaning over to kiss him. "God help me, Ah don' deserve ya, but Ah love ya wit' all mah heart."
"Remy loves y', too, chere," Remy told her with a chuckle, pulling her close so that she could rest her head on his shoulder, and kissed her hair. "Has from de moment he first laid eyes on y' all dose years ago."
They laid there like that for several long minutes, just enjoying the rare moment of peace in their chaotic lives, basking in the warmth of one another's presence. It was always the two of them in the end, whether they had friends and family at their side or not.
But soon, we be trois, Remy thought with a smile, letting one hand move to his wife's stomach.
"Ah feel selfish," Rogue sighed at last. "Ah don' wanna hafta chose, Ah wanna keep them both."
"So we do both den," Remy replied lightly. "We be de rovin' X-men team, goin' back an' forth b'tween N'awlins an' Westchester. We go where be needed, when we be needed, an' go where we like de rest o' de time. Remy even steal y' de X-jet if y' wan' it, den we jus' hop on de plan an' zoon, we dere."
"Ah can' believe yo' actually considerin' that," Rogue laughed.
"What?" Remy asked wryly. "Commutin' o' stealin' de plane?"
"Both," his wife retorted.
"What can Remy say?" he shrugged. "Love makes a man do crazy t'ings, non?"
"Ah'll say," Rogue snorted.
Silence fell between them again for a comfortable moment, and Remy let his eyes fall closed, with his wife snuggled up in his arms, her warm breath spilling softly against the crook of his neck as her chest gently rose and fell.
"Remy?" he heard her ask.
"Hmm, chere?"
"Make it the Blackbird instead of the X-jet, an' ya got you'self a deal," Rogue murmured. "Ah wanna see the look on Scott's face when he realizes his precious jet is missing."
Translations:
bon- good
fou- crazy
homme- man
arrêt- stop
trois- three
comprenez- understand
bebe- baby
très bien- very good
A/N: I am so sorry about the dry spell, guys! Life got kind of chaotic with law finals and the holidays, I've barely had any time to even think about writing. I'm hoping since I have a few weeks off for Christmas that I'll be able to get a few posts written, to ensure you guys aren't left hanging like this again.