Chapter 13

Scott allowed himself a second to reel with shock, to wish that Kitty, Gambit, Jean, Kurt, that any of his friends could be here to stay with him through this. No such luck. He went on alone from here.

The office he'd arrived in was empty, but the door was open, and across the room outside was another door through which he could see lights and hear voices. He took a deep breath, switched his visor back to the less-conspicuous sunglasses, and walked forward, slipping himself discreetly into the back of the crowded and brightly lit White House press room.

It was smaller than it looked on tv. There was barely room for the small presenter's stage, a few rows of chairs, and the large camera rigs at the back. Reporters with notepads and photographers with cameras were squished in along the walls. Scott shouldered his way in, not making eye contact with anyone. Mutant in the White House, people. Surprise.

Flashbulbs started flicking, and Scott repressed a surge of panic that they were photographing him. No—he was still unnoticed. Senator Creed was stepping up to the podium. Hopefully all the lights in his eyes would keep him from wondering where he'd seen the guy in the sunglasses before.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the senator began, glancing down at his notes, "this morning, at approximately two thirty-three a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, a task force comprised of units from the U.S. Army, U.S. Marines, and New York National Guard initiated a strike at the Xavier Institute for the Gifted in Bayville, New York. They had warrants for the arrest of all students, on the charge of failing to register as carriers of the X-gene, and for Professor Charles Xavier on charges of aiding and abetting. When these warrants were served, the occupants of the house responded violently. Seven members of the task force were killed, and another fourteen were injured. All the mutants of the Xavier Institute are currently at large, as is Professor Xavier himself. I will now take questions."

Seven. One of the soldiers in critical didn't make it.

There was a wave of sound as everybody in the room raised a hand and yelled "Senator Creed!" in hopes of being the first to get a question in. Scott shot his hand up, but a female reporter in the front row of chairs was called on instead. "Senator, is there reason to believe that any of these mutants might still be in the country?"

"At this point, that's not looking likely. They fled the scene in two private aircraft, headed east over the Atlantic. They might have doubled back, but supposition at the moment is that they have taken refuge elsewhere . . . possibly in a country such as Liberia or North Korea, where extradition would be difficult. But if they're still on U.S. soil, we'll find them."

"Senator Creed! Senator Creed!"

"George."

"How many mutants were present inside the Institute building at the time of the raid?"

"The school's records indicate sixteen mutants—most with extremely dangerous powers, as has been tragically shown in the deaths of our servicemen."

Scott felt himself flinch involuntarily, and behind his eyelids the library flickered in and out, like a clip from a bad, blood-and-guts horror movie. American servicemen . . . who were just doing what their commanders had told them to, because this man had told their commanders to kill Charles Xavier's students. Behind his eyes, his powers and his anger burned. And before the wave of sound could rise up again, he'd yelled out. "Senator Creed!"

His voice was so loud and abrupt that it cut through the clamor, and he plowed on, not giving the Senator a second to remember that he'd seen him before. "Isn't it true, Senator, that everything you just said about warrants was a complete pack of lies?"

Every head whipped in his direction. A couple of cameras, too. "Isn't it true, Senator Creed, that the students of the Xavier Institute were given no chance to surrender? That they were assaulted with deadly force whether they resisted or not? Is it not also true that the school had publicly declared that they would submit peacefully to legal arrest?"

"Who are you?" Senator Creed demanded.

"My name is Scott Summers. I'm a student at the Xavier Institute and commander of the X-Men. You, Senator, ordered an unprovoked attack on my team, authorized lethal force on women and children, and as good as murdered those seven American soldiers, and if you'd have the decency to arrest me, I'd swear to it in a court of law."

Silence.

Pandemonium.

For a few moments, so many people were intent on taking his picture that nobody thought to actually arrest him. Every reporter in the room was shouting; flashbulbs were blazing like six lightning storms at once. A bodyguard tackled Senator Creed, forcing him to take cover behind the podium. Scott just stood still and let the chaos rage, until finally someone—from the weight and force of impact, he'd guess Secret Service, unless the major U.S. news carriers were recruiting ex-linebackers—slammed into his back, knocking the wind out of him and pinning him to the carpet. His glasses jostled loose; he squeezed his eyes shut and shoved his face back into them. Both his arms were wrenched back behind him, and he felt cold metal cuffs click snug around his wrists.

"You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent."

"Don't take my glasses," Scott gasped, struggling to get enough air back into his system.

"Get him out of here!"

"Mr. Summers, did you come here to assassinate Senator Creed?"

"Mr. Summers, the accusations you've made—"

"Mr. Summers, over here!"

"You have the right to a lawyer."

"Mr. Summers—"

"If you cannot afford a lawyer—"

And in the midst of the shouting, shoving crowd, Scott Summers, Cyclops of the X-Men, was hauled to his feet and led away in chains.

"Afternoon," Jean chimed as she pushed open the door of the small convenience store. Overt friendliness was always her knee-jerk reaction when she felt uncomfortable, and wandering into a shop in her training uniform was about as uncomfortable as coming to school in her pajamas.

"Be right with you," said a man's voice from the back of the store.

"You get water," Logan told her. "Much as you can carry."

"Water," Jean repeated. She grabbed a shopping basket from the stack next to the door and started loading water bottles into it, two at a time, from the glass-doored cooler.

The storekeeper . . . probably the owner, too; he was an older man with the steady confidence of someone in his own space . . . emerged from the back room, carrying a box of paper towels that was just about as big as he could manage. "Hey there," his voice said, his face hidden behind the box. "Finding everything all right?"

"Yep, no problems," Jean answered.

There was a step stool that he seemed to be aiming for, to place the box on the highest shelf, where it would be out of the way until it was needed. Jean paused in her water-gathering work to watch his progress. He mounted the stool, muscling the box up over his head until it had one edge onto the shelf. But he'd miscalculated on his balance: under his feet, the step stool tipped backward on two legs. He yelled, his weight throwing him forward under the teetering box.

It was reflex. Jean reached out and grabbed box, man, and stool in one powerful sweep of TK. The strain of their weight pressed back on her, and she braced one foot behind herself, dropping her basket and pushing up with both hands to steady her control.

She could feel him catching his breath, his ribs pressing out against the grip she had on him. Another second and he'd be panicking. "I'm sorry," she gasped. "Just hold on. I've got you." Using her hands to steer her powers, she pushed the box up into place, steadied the stool back onto four legs, and lowered the man carefully to the ground.

"Please don't be upset," she pleaded, letting go of the last of her TK control. "I just didn't want you to fall."

"You did that?" he asked, leaning warily away from her.

"I did," Jean acknowledged gently. "You don't have to be scared. My name is Jean, and I'm a telekinetic alpha mutant. I can . . . move things with my mind."

The man's eyes shot from Jean to somewhere over her shoulder. She glanced back, just to let her eyes confirm what she already knew: Logan was behind her, hovering, waiting, watching like a hawk for this guy to start something.

"This is my friend Logan," Jean offered, trying to diffuse the tension that she could feel building both in front of and behind her.

"Mutant," the store owner repeated. He licked his lips, then said, "I always sorta figured mutants had horns, or something."

Jean smiled. "We don't. Well . . . one of my friends does, but he's the only one I know. See?" She nodded her head forward and combed her hand through her thick red hair. "Nothing. Except grease. I haven't had a shower in a while." She shook her hair back off her face, then twisted and touched the red and black X logo emblazoned at her shoulder. "See this? If you ever see this mark, then you can know that the person wearing it is an Xavier mutant, an X-Man, and you can ask them for help if you need it."

The shopkeeper shot another glance at Logan, probably not missing the matching logo emblazoned on the front of his left shoulder. Logan's glares were not helping their PR.

"Xavier," the man repeated thoughtfully. "So the young man on the news . . . is he one of yours?"

Jean felt the whole world, with very little fuss or fanfare, stop dead around her. "What young man?"

"The one that was just arrested in the White House."

Her blank, uncomprehending stare seemed to persuade him that she didn't have any idea what he was talking about.

"Just heard it on the radio in the back," he muttered, turning back to the checkout counter. "Here." There was a tv mounted high up in the corner, which he turned on by means of a broom handle.

And there it was on the tv screen, exactly what she wanted to see least in the world, crushing all her hopes that the 'young man' was some other poor idiot, or even some other member of the team . . . Gambit would do something stupid like sneak into the White House, though he wouldn't get caught, and Bobby would get caught though he wouldn't know how to get in, or even Kurt, she'd be less upset about Kurt . . . but no, of course not, of course the 'young man' she saw on the television screen being forcibly removed from the White House briefing room was none other than her very own boyfriend.

What. Did. He. Do?

"Excuse me," she requested, astonished at how calm she could make her voice sound. She turned around and left the store, marching out into the cold air of early March on the Canadian border.

She opened her mind and reached out . . . she knew Scott's mind better than any other person's, and even across the country it was easy to find. Her head started throbbing, protesting the distance she was trying to traverse, but she tamped down on it with the absent coordination of driving a manual transmission, as though she'd been doing it for years. SCOTT CHRISTOPHER SUMMERS!

His voice echoed back. Kind of busy; I can't talk right now . . .

What do you THINK you are DOING?

Right now? Getting fingerprinted.

How could you do this? All by yourself—I should be there—

No, you shouldn't. You need to help Logan. Don't worry—I'm going to have a nice, legal trial and this will all blow over and we can go home. No fighting, and no one gets hurt.

Have they taken your glasses?

Yes.

Oh, Scott . . .

It's okay. I can manage. Are you all right?

Yes, I'm fine, but—

Then we're okay. I've got to go—I love you—

SCOTT!

Too late. He couldn't close his mind to her, but he could withdraw his attention, which seemed to be easy enough—he had enough to focus on there. She was left alone, standing in the cold street of a tiny Montana town, angry because she was frightened for the people she loved.

Her control slipped, and the headache pounded back. She flinched, her head bowing forward as she recoiled from the light, and suddenly there was a supportive hand resting on her back.

"Take it easy," Logan instructed, his rough voice low and steady. "He's okay. They won't hurt him."

"I know . . ." she murmured, swallowing hard. "I overdid it. My head's gonna split open."

"You can handle it. You know how."

She took a breath and pushed gently back on the headache. It eased off, then vanished.

"Okay?" he asked.

She nodded, raising her head and opening her eyes. Logan took his hand off her back, but his eyes didn't leave her face, watching the color come back into her cheeks. "Yes," she confirmed, seeing concern still lingering in the set of his mouth. "I'm okay now."

"Good." He handed her one of the packs, heavy with water. "Because I'm not carrying both of these."

She lugged the strap over her shoulder and snaked her other arm into the pack. "So our credit is still good, then?"

"Nope." He pulled his own load onto his back. "Card's dead. I used the emergency cash, and he said not to worry about the rest. You made an impression, Red."

"That was nice of him."

"No credit to him. You bring out the nice in people."

Jean humphed. "If that were true, you wouldn't have given me so much of the water to carry."

"If that weren't true, you'd be carrying all of it, since you're the one that's going to be drinking it." He started off, heading for a side street that intersected the main road.

"What are you going to drink?"

"Snow. Better save your breath—I want to put a good few miles between us and town before dark, just in case he changes his mind about calling the cops on us."

Jean saved her breath as instructed, and was soon glad she had, because Logan set a murderous pace over the steep terrain. She kept up, but it took all her reserves and a measure of grim determination, the kind she sometimes forgot she had. By the time they stopped for a rest and a drink, she was exhausted.

When she took a seat on a fallen tree and opened her pack to pull out a bottle of water, she found a bright red package of Skittles tucked inside.

Kitty had dropped off into a dead sleep somewhere in New Jersey, as darkness settled thick and heavy around the car. Gambit flicked the headlights on and kept driving, thumb and two fingers casually gripping the bottom of the steering wheel, the speedometer hovering a polite five miles an hour above the speed limit. For the first hour or so, he'd listened to the radio, where reporters, commentators, and disc jockeys had debated endless circles about Scott's arrest and its implications, but he'd grown tired of it miles back and switched it off. He needed time to think, alone in the dark, with the noise of the engine and the tires on the road numbing him into some kind of clarity.

The farther he drove, the less the gall of their unjust situation stung at him, and the more his thoughts circled like vultures around the sight of Rogue, her bruised face turned away from him and something like fear in her eyes. She'd looked so small, so cold, with nothing between her and the world but the form-fitting dark gray fabric of her Institute uniform. In the past year, she'd worn her old olive green Korean war army jacket day in and day out—she'd looked bigger in it, tougher, less fragile. The Rogue he'd seen today looked more like the girl he'd first met, years ago: lonely and haunted, abrasive and defiant. One against the world, with no one to trust or rely on. He'd hurt her. He'd scared her. And he'd made himself the enemy all over again.

This was insane. Was he, Remy Etienne LeBeau, Gambit of the X-Men, actually waiting on the political machinations of Xavier, Magneto, and the U.S. Court System to tell him if he could or could not reconcile with his own girlfriend? Pathetic.

But what would he do, when Scott was fed to the wolves, when Magneto moved to start the fight Remy was so aching to get his fists into? He wanted to fight . . . not against Magneto, but against the soldiers who'd shot Bobby, the man that had hidden behind the kitchen table, the one that had pried his staff out of his hand, the one who'd launched the patriot, Senator Creed and his snobbish blonde secretary, everyone who'd voted and funded and lobbied this chain of events into motion, against the unstoppable wave of not fair that they'd unleashed on him. They'd stolen from him. He wanted to make them pay, to lash back, to balance the scales. Maybe Scott could surrender to their judgment and justice after all they'd done, but Gambit couldn't. Scott was a hero. Remy was just a survivor.

But survival meant Rogue. He needed Rogue. And Rogue was a hero, too.

He couldn't have the image of his girlfriend shivering in her own embrace, turning her back to him, circling through his head forever. He'd go crazy.

He had to get her jacket back to her.

Maybe this wasn't a rational, well-thought out solution. But it was an urgent, sudden, gut-level need. He had to get that jacket, to wrap her up in it and see by her wearing it that they were still connected to one another, whatever else might be happening. And he was on his way to the house where they'd left it. Handy.

Not handy, warned the voice in his head that he always regretted not listening to. He was on a job, with a specific target. Adding another target was a bad idea, particularly when there were guns involved.

It was a lesson he'd had lashed into the skin of his back when he was thirteen years old. His father had just pronounced his sons old enough to come along on jobs, and so on privileged occasions they'd follow him, like wolf pups watching their parents hunt, to learn how to thieve.

They were in a private house, waiting, while Jean-Luc's safe-cracker, Lucas, applied his stethoscope and grease pencil to the wall-mounted safe in the next room. There had been a china dish on the coffee table, filled almost to overflowing with round red-and-white-striped peppermint discs.

Remy, almost without thinking, had snagged two of the welcoming little candies and tossed one to Bobby. They both knew better than to eat on the job, so they tucked the treats away in their pockets.

Remy'd unwrapped his on the way home. And his father had seen.

The candy, and Bobby's, were thrown in the bayou where they'd never be seen or heard from again. And when they got home, both boys were subjected to corporal punishment the likes of which they had never felt before or since. Jean-Luc was not a cruel man—not physically cruel, anyway—and he didn't arbitrarily beat his sons. When he laid violent hand on them, it was with a specific objective in mind, and was only as long or as harsh as was necessary to make that objective absolutely impossible to forget.

On this particular evening, the blows only stopped when Christine, who never spoke up against her husband, cried out "Jean-Luc, for the love of God!" Remy, who'd stayed on his feet through the whole thing on pride alone, collapsed onto all fours and shook. He could still see the pattern of the tiles in the kitchen floor, spattered with his and Bobby's blood, and taste the bile in his mouth.

"You boys listen to me good," Jean-Luc instructed. "And you never, never forget dis. Better t'ieves dan de pair'a you been brought low by what you just done. When you go on a job, you go in wid one target. Just one. An' you steal what you came for. I don' care what else you find. I don't care if you see Marilyn Monroe can-can dancing in a string bikini an'de crown jewels. You steal what you came for, an' nothing else. Not one thing. Ever."

Remy'd never been able to eat peppermint discs again.

But, he reasoned to himself, this wasn't like that, really. This wasn't a snap last-second decision. There were still at least three hours of driving between them and the house; it was plenty of time to think the job out. And there were two of them. Two thieves, two targets. In and out. No problem. He could do it. And he'd have the comfort and the satisfaction of seeing Rogue wrapped up safe in the jacket Delphine had given her—to see it, at least, hold her while he couldn't. The payoff was worth the risk.

And besides . . . he spared a glance for Kitty, sleeping uncomfortably in the passenger seat. He was going in with Shadowcat. That was such a blatant cheat that it made the excursion hardly count as a job at all. If they'd had the necessary time to put together a real job, he would never have agreed to take her in the first place. But with Kitty along, the whole process was going to be a cakewalk. He could even stop in at his own room and pick up his CDs if he wanted.

He settled back in the driver's seat and started to plan.

Author's Notes:

No notes to this chapter except read and review, quick, because the next chapter's dang exciting and I can't wait to get it posted!