Chapter 8
Peter had always been an early riser. Farmers were like that. It was yet another 'Russian peasant' habit that Gambit liked to tease him about . . . when Gambit managed to be up that early himself.
He was the first of the X-Men to open his eyes. The room was dim with diffuse golden light; the window had developed a tint as the asteroid turned to catch the sun. His teammates lay scattered across the floor, still dead to the world. And Kitty was asleep on his chest, her hair bunched up under her head and her breathing deep and even.
He wasn't quite sure how she'd come to be there. They'd all been so tired . . . she'd practically passed out while still on her feet, and he'd caught her, intending to make her lie down somewhere, and . . . and somehow they'd both ended up here. Peter couldn't say he minded. The petite brunette was warm and soft, and he could catch the strawberry scent of her shampoo with every breath. As far as he was concerned, she could stay asleep as long as she pleased. He wouldn't have disturbed her for the world.
Beast sat in the window, keeping watch over the sleeping students. When he saw Peter's open eyes, he asked softly, "Did you sleep enough?"
Peter nodded.
"Then you're on watch. If anything happens, wake us up."
"Yes, sir."
Hank stretched out on the floor and closed his eyes.
Peter sat motionless for a long time, enjoying the quiet.
Gambit was the next to stir. He wasn't an early riser, but he didn't sleep well in the cold, and the temperature of the room was a good five degrees below comfortable. The red eyes dragged idly open, blinked, and focused on Peter. A smug smile drifted across Remy's sleepy face. "Havin' fun?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Peter stopped stroking Kitty's hair, wondering in annoyance when he'd started. Gambit's grin got wider. Peter had been given to understand that there was a financial arrangement between Gambit and Kurt whose outcome depended on whether or not Peter managed to kiss Kitty before the end of the school year. "She fell asleep," he hissed back, scowling.
"I kin see dat." Gambit carefully adjusted his position, wincing a little because of his injured shoulder, and settled his face against Rogue's hair. "She's a cute sleeper."
"Our home is crawling with soldiers and we're on a space station at the mercy of Magneto," Peter announced. "Is this really the time for you to be concerning yourself with my personal life?"
"No better time, mon ami," Gambit told him. "World's endin', y'know. Try kissin' her awake. Elles aiment ça, les filles."
"Mind your own affairs, you tiresome scoundrel."
Rogue shifted reluctantly and snuggled herself closer to Remy's chest, fighting her body's desire to wake up. Gambit smiled and let his eyes drift shut again, his hand playing idly with the fabric of her uniform over her stomach. "Yo' loss," he murmured, rather blatantly enjoying the presence of his sleeping girlfriend.
Peter sighed. He simply didn't understand Gambit most of the time. Flamboyant, dramatic, and incurably nosy, the Cajun was everything that Peter wasn't. And when Gambit wanted something, he didn't care who knew; he just went for it. In fact, the more attention he could drum up, the better. But Peter would sooner die than admit that he thought Kitty prettier than any of the other girls at the Institute. And the more Gambit teased him, the more seriously Peter thought about just where he'd have to whack the thief's head to cause some short-term memory loss.
Kitty made a vague, uncertain sound in the back of her throat and moved, rubbing her cheek against his chest in a half-conscious attempt to figure out what she was sleeping on. Peter froze. If he could have stopped his heart from beating so loudly, he would have.
It was no good. She reached up one uncoordinated hand to feel his chest and throat, and slowly her brain seemed to register that there was no way that could be a pillow. She blinked vaguely and raised her head, muttering something unintelligible.
Gambit opened his eyes and raised his eyebrows. Eh bien? his whole expression screamed. What are you waiting for?
Peter tried to ignore him.
Kitty looked up into his face and blinked. "La . . Peter?"
"Good morning," he murmured to her, a smile fighting to emerge onto his stoic face.
She gasped, and a blush rose in her cheeks. "Oh, my gosh . . . did I fall asleep like this? I'm so sorry! My gosh, how embarrassing . . ."
"Hush," Peter warned her. "The others are still asleep. It's truly all right. I didn't want to wake you."
"I'm so sorry," Kitty repeated.
"Please don't worry about it."
Across the floor, Gambit rolled his eyes in complete despair at his hopeless Russian friend and feigned unconsciousness once more.
Kitty sat up, ineffectually combing her hair out of her eyes and pulling out the elastic that was already half-out anyway. "What time is it?" she asked, looking at the wristwatch she wasn't wearing.
"I don't know. It's hard to tell in space."
This reminder of their circumstances seemed to turn her attention elsewhere. She looked across the room to where the Brotherhood had staked out a corner for themselves. "I should check on Lance. He was running a little bit of a fever . . ." She climbed to her feet and headed across the room, phasing through her sleeping teammates.
Lance. Lance Avalanche Alvers of the Brotherhood. Of all the mutants for Magneto to bring to his orbiting sanctuary . . . Piotr sighed and let his head fall back against the wall. His luck.
Gambit gave up any pretense of being asleep and carefully eased away from Rogue. When she stirred, he tucked the coat around her and kissed the side of her forehead. "Shh. Stay asleep, precièuse. Dream awhile longer. I won't be far off." He climbed to his feet. "Come on, Peter. Since y'ain't doin' much useful wid y'morning, come help me find a kitchen. C'est un matin des beignets."
Scott lurched gracelessly to his feet, still disoriented with exhaustion, and went limping out into the hall. He'd slept with his sunglasses on, and now had a welt running across his temple from where the bow had pressed into his head. And his leg was aching, but it wasn't as bad as it had been.
A vague echo of voices and clattering dishware led him through the complex and into a large, bare industrial kitchen. Everything in it was the same battleship-steel gray: the floor, the wall, the counter tops, the appliances, even the table and chairs. Peter stood at the stove, poking at an army pan full of hot oil, where several round things, some pale white, others golden brown, bobbed complacently. Kurt, who had the peculiar talent of finding some way to hang upside-down from absolutely anywhere, had hooked his legs over the fire extinguisher pipe that ran underneath the hood of the stove and was scrambling up a large, runny mess of eggs. Gambit was up to his elbows in a very large bowl of sticky-looking batter.
"What on earth are you guys doing?" Scott asked, reaching a hand under his glasses to rub the sleep out of his eyes.
Kurt waggled a chastising finger in Scott's direction. "You forgot . . . we're not on Earth anymore."
"Real funny, Kurt."
"We're makin des beignets," Gambit offered, holding up a handful of slowly dripping batter. He reached over the pan and squeezed his fist shut, forcing the dough to fall into the oil. "Specially reserved for really good mornin's and really bad mornin's. I saw a case of orange juice in de walk-in freezer over dere. You wanna mix it up?"
Scott did as he was told. On the field of combat, he made the decisions, but when it came to cooking, Gambit was boss, hands-down. Control of the kitchen was the only thing the Cajun and Jean ever fought about, and the fights always resulted in property damage. It was best to just stay out of his way.
The freezer was enormous, almost more meat locker than walk-in. It was packed tight with boxes of canned juice, frozen dough, meat, fruit . . . even five-gallon tubs of ice cream. Scott found the box of orange juice concentrate Gambit had been talking about, ripped the tape off it, and pulled out a few of the cans.
He'd just found some pitchers (also metal) in one of the cupboards when Rogue joined them. She was flying instead of walking, but not in the usual graceful swoops of movement that she indulged in when she decided to be airborne. She was drifting, keeping her body as still as possible. No wonder. Her face was polka-dotted with bruises, each one the size of a quarter, marking where a bullet had plowed into her skin.
"My gosh, Rogue!"
Gambit turned to look up at her. "Rogue . . ."
"Don't you dare touch me with slime all over your hands!" Rogue ordered, recoiling from his extended fingers. "Not when mah shower's on another planet."
Gambit grinned one of his evilest grins.
"Gambit, don't you . . . NO!"
Gambit jumped across the kitchen at her. Rogue dodged and tried to deliver the spin-kick-between-the-shoulder blades that had once been a trademark move of hers, but her injuries made her too stiff to execute the move correctly. Gambit ducked under it, rolled, shot back up with more-than-human speed, and jumped at Rogue again. In seconds, he had her pinned against the wall, one batter-covered hand planted against the gray steel surface on either side of her head.
"Ah hate you," Rogue announced, glaring defiantly up into his face.
"Countin' on it, chère."
"Seriously. Don't even."
"Leave her alone, man," Kurt ordered. "She's hurt."
"It's fun to watch her squirm," Gambit told him, not taking his eyes from Rogue's.
"I vill 'port you back to the planet if you don't back off my sister."
He grinned and backed off, his hands held up in surrender. "Hey . . . no harm, no foul. Voilà." He sent charge up through his hands, and the batter on them flared. When the light died, the sticky slime had dried to powder. When he flexed his fingers, it cracked and crumbled to the floor.
Rogue let out her breath, slumping in relief and wincing in pain. "Thank you."
"How are you feeling?" Scott asked her.
"Like roadkill," Rogue told him. One hand strayed up to her ribs; she pressed gently and hissed in pain. "Nothin's broke, Ah don't think, just real tender."
"You saved our butts last night."
Rogue grinned at him. "Well, it was worth it. They're pretty nice butts."
Scott half-smiled at her.
"Viens manger," Gambit told her, grinning at the compliment and Scott's discomfort, carefully taking her by the wrist and guiding her towards the table. "You kin have de first one."
Rogue snickered. "Very southern. The world's ended, so what do we do? Fry somethin' up and feed everybody."
"Never known a good meal t'do a body no harm," Gambit shrugged.
Peter, staying quietly out of the conflict, had by now removed four of the golden beignets and had laid them out on wire racks over paper towels to let the oil drain off them. He passed the coolest of them over to Rogue, who cracked it open and dug her teeth in with a groan of appreciation. "Ah love these."
Scott had never actually tried a beignet, though they smelled pretty good. Curious, he picked one up and took a bite. It burned the inside of his mouth—he'd momentarily forgotten that just because Rogue could skip blowing on something didn't mean that he could do the same. But through the burn, he could taste a whole mouthful of fried sugary goodness.
As soon as he managed to swallow, he agreed, "Wow, Gambit. She's right. These are great."
Gambit grinned. "World's best beignet recipe. Got it from a whore I know."
Scott just stared at him for a second, his mouth hanging a little slack around his second bite as he tried to remember whether STDs could be transmitted by beignet recipes. It was sometimes very hard to know when to take Gambit seriously. Behind him, Peter snorted in annoyed amusement.
There were footsteps in the hallway, accented with the sharp clack of metal on metal, like someone walking in tap shoes. Scott's head whipped up reflexively, his whole body flaring hot from the sudden rush of adrenalin into his blood.
Magneto strolled into the kitchen as though he owned the place—which, Scott had to admit, he did. His sharp blue eyes scanned over each of them in turn. Rogue turned away from his gaze, towards Kurt, whose face was strangely closed-off and blank. But Gambit and Peter both turned to him, standing up a little straighter as they did so.
"Mornin', Boss," said Gambit, with carefully restrained casualness.
"Good morning, sir," Peter echoed.
Scott fought the urge to scowl. His team was trapped on an asteroid a million miles from a home they couldn't go back to, at the mercy of their oldest enemy, and half his firepower had divided loyalties. Great. Absolutely freaking fantastic.
"Good morning, gentlemen," Magneto answered them soberly.
"Where's Professor Xavier?" Scott demanded.
"He's asleep. We were up rather late settling our plans. There's coffee, if you're interested."
No one had bothered to look for coffee. They were all too jittery from last night to really need the stimulation.
"We kin tend t'feedin' ourselves, sir," Gambit assured him. "You've pr'vided everythin' we need."
"I'm glad to know it. You're welcome to anything you can find, of course."
"Greatly appreciated."
Magneto turned his gaze to Rogue. Her back was to him, but her head was twisting, her need to keep him in her sights warring with her need to not acknowledge his presence. "If you are so afraid of me, Rogue, that you can't even look at me, you'd better take off that ring."
Rogue twisted, her gray-green eyes flashing with fury and her left hand curling into a fist. "Don't you tell me what Ah'd better do."
Still upside-down, Kurt wrapped one three-fingered hand around her shoulder. She reached up to grip it, holding onto her brother like he was her last lifeline.
Magneto only nodded. "As you choose." Without any other acknowledgment, he surrendered the room to them, the metal in the soles of his shoes tap-tap-tapping against the floor.
"Plans?" Scott demanded as soon as the sound became inaudible. "What plans? What were they planning?"
"If I thought dey took notes, I'd steal em for yeh," Gambit offered, "But I bet dey didn'. An I got my hands full wid breakfast, 'cuz Kurt's burnin' de eggs. Fuzzball, I know y'havin' a crisis over dere, but you gotta stir dem t'ings." He reached up to Rogue's face with his now-clean hand and brushed his fingertips across her bruised cheek. "Ça va, bébé?"
Rogue nodded. "Just so mad Ah could spit is all."
"Not in de food," Gambit ordered her. He bent down and kissed her, just at the corner of her eye where her ivory skin was unmarked. "Somebody better go wake up de team or everythin's gonna get cold."
A side effect of Logan's powers was the natural consequence of the Law of Conservation of Energy: the more he healed, the more he had to sleep and eat to make up for it. So he was annoyed, but not surprised, to find that he'd outslept most of the others. Only Amara and Jean were still out.
Jean had dark circles under her eyes. No surprise. At least it didn't look like she'd been hurt, and when he drew in a breath he caught no scent of her blood. Lots of his own, though. She'd gotten it on her hands, and the alcohol on the cleaning wipes had not erased the smell of himself that had been absorbed by her skin.
Most of the time she'd been in danger, he'd been wasted on morphine. And now, on Magneto's turf, he wasn't going to be much more useful. His every movement was subject to veto. Weapons wouldn't do him any good, but while nobody was watching him, he might be able to collect some information that could come in handy.
He stood, suppressing the snarl that rose in his throat in response to the pain in pretty much every muscle of his body. Not done regenerating yet. But he could walk. Probably fight. Another hour, maybe two, and he'd be back on his game . . . for all the good it would do anyone.
He left the room, checking as he went for the scent of anyone he didn't recognize—or anyone he did recognize and didn't like. The corridor was clean. Magneto hadn't been checking up on them while they slept.
Most of the team had turned left, following the inviting odor of breakfast. There was an older scent of Kitty running the other direction; she'd been scouting the terrain. Good girl. He followed her trail for a while, discovering what she had already seen: the lowest level of the complex, housing the aircraft hangar, several massive storage rooms, and the generator that powered the station. (Logan couldn't see what it was running on; Magneto probably charged the thing himself.) There were no locks on any of the doors.
Even on the door that led into the power enhancing machine.
Logan knew perfectly well what it looked like; he'd seen it on Asteroid M, all those years ago, when Scott and Jean were still high school underclassmen and he'd felt annoyed and put upon with only six students to herd. The huge, round, vault-like door was identical to what he remembered. Part radically experimental and dangerous DNA rewriter, part brainwashing device, all Magneto. He'd had the gall to re-build the thing and then bring them all up here to look at it.
Logan popped his claws and headed with calm deliberation for the control panel.
Don't, Logan. Charles's voice rumbled through his head, bringing him up short.
You seen what he's got down here?
I'm about to. I'm getting the grand tour. But don't demolish it. Not yet.
The claws retreated. His hands stung. He was used to it.
At the end of the corridor, he could hear the clack, clack, clack of Magneto's metal-soled shoes against the floor. Made sense, if you had magnetic powers and liked to float around, to fill your shoes with something you could work with. But it was also conditioning for everyone else. If they got used to the convenient, warning clicking sound, then they wouldn't be prepared for a Magneto who took the trouble to approach silently.
Magneto and Charles entered the room together. Magneto was still bare-headed. "So, Wolverine. You intend to repay my hospitality by demolishing some of my most valuable equipment."
"Not the hospitality," Logan shot back. "Just everything else."
"He has a right to be concerned," Charles interjected. "I don't like seeing this here, Eric. It rather undermines the promises you've made—having a mind-control device ready to hand."
"This isn't a mind-control device. It's only a power enhancer. A scaled-down model of what you saw before."
"Why the scaledown?" Logan asked, his voice heavy and twisted with irony. "Budget cuts?"
"Well, to be perfectly blunt, because the mind control didn't work very well." Had to give the man credit—at least he owned up to his history of creepy behavior and evil schemes. "But the enhancer itself is too intriguing a project to be abandoned entirely. And, as you saw with your Cyclops, it has the potential to help mutants who are struggling with control."
"Or to do the opposite, and enhance their powers past the point where they can be controlled," Charles pointed out. "I notice you haven't tested it on Wanda."
"I tested it on myself. Isn't that enough? I built it here as a resource, just like the medical bay and the training facilities. Because I expect that we'll have a lot of mutants up here very soon, and it may be useful."
Logan snorted. "The second one of our kids ends up in that thing without me knowing about it, you are a dead man walking."
"I tremble in fear and am thoroughly intimidated," Magneto informed him. "Your students will be serving up breakfast right about now, if you're hungry."
"Gotta check on 'em anyway," said Logan, acknowledging that he'd been dismissed but not liking it. He stalked out of the room. As long as Storm had that helmet, Charles had the upper hand against Magneto, and didn't need a bodyguard.
"You really shouldn't provoke him," he heard Charles's voice say from inside the room.
"He's a mad dog with a metal collar," Magneto answered dismissively. "Hardly a threat. I've never understood why you place such stock in him when he's probably the least powerful mutant in your household."
"What makes you say that?"
"Simple fact. A beta mutant, who can affect nothing outside his own body, is outclassed by an alpha mutant just as an alpha would be outclassed by us. And he has such a pacifistic power."
"I'm fairly sure that's the first time in my life I've ever heard anyone refer to Logan as pacifistic."
"Simple cell regeneration that doesn't even extend beyond his own skin. Even if he were an alpha, his power wouldn't have offensive, combat applications. He's a healer, a mutant medic. Nothing more. His military usefulness stems more from his masochism than from his powers."
He heard Professor Xavier sigh. "I've know a lot of people, over the years, who have underestimated Wolverine. And I state as a matter of simple fact that, now that I think about it, most of them are dead."
Xavier could hear his mind, and Magneto could hear his bones; he knew that they both knew he'd eavesdropped. No need to make a point about it. Logan continued up the hall, following the scent of fried food and scared, unwashed kids, headed up a flight of stairs, and found himself in the kitchen with at least half the team.
There was a rousing chorus of "Logan!" followed by a jumbled wave of "Are you all right?" "You okay, man?" "You're awake!" "My gosh, you're filthy!"
"Hey, guys, give him some space, okay?" Scott ordered. "You want protein? Gambit's got eggs."
"Thanks."
"Grab a plate," Gambit ordered. The army pan full of eggs had been turned down to the lowest heat setting. Logan grabbed a plate from the stack on the counter and offered it.
"Pile 'em on. I lost a lot of blood."
"Egg-based transfusion, comin' at ya." Gambit portioned over as much as the plate would hold. With his left hand.
Logan lowered his voice. "Pitchin' southpaw this morning?"
"Took a bullet through my shoulder."
"Need a top-off?"
"Wouldn't mind one."
Logan offered his free hand. Gambit set down the serving spoon and slapped his own hand into the callused palm.
"Logan, don't you dare!" Hank snapped. It was too late. Gambit's artificial, chemically simulated absorbing power felt different from Rogue's natural one, the icy burn of it deeper but not as sharp or intense. Logan felt blood rush out of his face and hands as he went into shock, and something started to burn and itch inside his abdomen as a few of the bullet holes re-opened.
Gambit snarled, his lips pulling back over his teeth the way Logan's did when he was in pain. The muscles of his arms twitched and clenched as he tried to let go of Logan's hand.
Hank grabbed one of them in each arm and pulled them apart. Turning on Gambit, he announced, "Just because you've seen Rogue do it doesn't mean you're ready to do it. She's trained for years to know how and when to let people go. She is better at it than you are. And you—" here he turned on Logan, "Just re-opened half your gunshot wounds, didn't you?"
"Just internal bleeding, I think," said Logan, pressing experimentally into his abs with the heel of his hand. "Gimme half an hour and I'll get Rogue fixed up, too."
"Not in a million years, Logan," Rogue called from the adjacent dining room. "Stop being stupid and eat your breakfast."
"Tabasco?" asked Gambit, proffering the bottle as though nothing had happened.
"Thanks."
French Lessons:
Gambit's now in a bit more relaxed mood, so we've got plenty this time around . . .
Elles aiment ça, les filles: Girls like that.
Precièuse: Yet another one of those terms of endearment; 'precious' would probably be the best translation.
C'est un matin des beignets: It's a beignet morning. (If you've never had a beignet, go have one. Seriously.)
Viens manger: Come eat.
Ça va, bébé? You okay, babe?
Thank you so much, wonderful and awesome reviewers! I know I've been a ditz getting back to you . . . I will do better, cross my heart. My brain was otherwise occupied with buying my first car this week. :) (Baby blue Chevy Aveo, if you were dying to know. Which of course you were.)