Chapter 42
Rogue saw it all in a flash of nauseating clarity. Of course. Of course Magneto would send Gambit to lie in wait here for Senator Creed. With the Professor watching from Avalon, there was no one else Magneto could send.
They stood toe to toe, the silver staff trembling between them from the force of their grips. Part of Rogue's brain noted, irrelevantly, that the metal hadn't given way under the pressure of her fingers. Adamantium. Precious stuff. Sell-your-soul precious.
The rest of her brain was absorbed in every detail of Remy's face. It had been so long since she'd seen him . . . He had dark circles under his eyes. He hadn't been sleeping. Of course he hadn't. It was cold on Avalon, and he couldn't sleep in the cold.
The strength of his arm pressed through the staff into the palm of her hand. He was strong. Not as strong as she was. He was quicker, but not faster once she got in the air. She could do it now. She had to do it now. Now!
She couldn't get her fingers to let go of the staff. Her left arm hung numb at her side. It felt like trying to talk herself into jumping off a cliff, back before she could fly. She had to make the leap . . . Now! . . . but her body kept recoiling as the command made it to her muscles.
It had already been too long, this suspended moment, staring at one another. It was already well past the point of embarrassment.
Remy broke it. With a snort of something between resignation and annoyance, he turned his eyes away from her and pulled the staff out of her hand. "Well, y'better come in, I guess."
Complacent if not enthused, Rogue followed him into the house and shut the door behind her. "Here tuh kill Creed?" she asked, her voice strangely calm and conversational, as she slipped her arms free of the backpack's straps and let it slide to the floor.
"Here t'stop me?" asked he, just as rhetorically.
Rogue said nothing.
Remy collapsed his staff and tossed it on the huge brown leather sofa that graced Senator Creed's front room. "Truth t'tell, I ain't got no idea why I'm here."
"Just wandered in?" she asked, following him into the living room.
"Creed done spent a quarter mill on dis security system last year. Don' nobody jus' wander in here."
"Ah just did."
"Y'welcome." Gambit threw himself down on the sofa, put his boots on the coffee table next to a glass dish full of cellophane-wrapped peppermint candies.
Rogue sat down on the opposite sofa, gingerly, as though it would bite her. Inconvenient things were happening inside her brain and her body. It was getting very hard to think about anything but how long it had been since she'd seen him, touched him, made him smile. She'd been missing him for weeks, when he was so far from her they weren't even on the same planet . . . and now here they sat, in the same room, and she could do nothing but miss him even more. It hurt.
She wanted it to stop hurting.
What did she say? Should she say anything? Or should she just get her glove off as quickly and quietly as she could and knock him out and have it over with? It would at least end this awful silence . . .
"You okay?" Gambit asked. Though his eyes were still down, his voice was tender and almost hesitant; it reminded her of whispered conversations in his bed at night, in that mythic ancient time when she'd trusted him absolutely and told him every shadowy secret of her heart without fear.
She nodded. "Ah ain't hurt, or nothin'. A little, y'know . . . and stir-crazy, 'cuz every time Ah try to fly any kinda distance Ah get tailed bah the freakin' Air Force, but . . . they never laid a finger on me."
"De Air Force? Y'too tiny t'be spotted by de Air Force."
"Tell them that. They ran me so tight to ground Ah had tuh hit your memere up for a plane ticket tuh New Orleans. A plane ticket. On an airplane."
He gave a bit of a snort and a twitch that might have been the stillborn shadow of a laugh. "How are de mighty fallen. An' flyin' commercial."
"How 'bout you?" Rogue asked hesitantly. "Your shoulder?"
"It's fine. Pas de problème."
"New staff?"
This seemed to jerk him out of his reverie. "Uh . . . yeah." He picked up the collapsed weapon and tossed it absently in the air, letting it flip end-over-end before catching it again. "Back wages from Magneto."
He glanced at her, warily assessing her, then pressed his thumb into the catch in the middle of the staff. The answering snap of the extending ends was familiar, but then Remy rocked his thumb back and wicked, crescent-shaped blades flipped out.
They looked so sharp Rogue was almost surprised the air around them wasn't bleeding.
She tried to speak, but found she had to peel her tongue off the roof of her dry mouth first. A blade like that could kill even her.
"Heck'a back wages," she managed at last. "You could buy a country with that thing."
Gambit didn't answer.
"Or a life," she murmured, almost to herself. "That's it, ain't it? He's already paid you."
"De staff's mine," Gambit snapped at her. "Mine outright. I earned it, an' he paid me. Dere's an end."
"No, there isn't. He overpaid you on purpose. So you'd be beholden to him. So you'd do this."
"So I'd consider it, I guess."
"And here y'are."
"An' here I is."
She was supposed to be moving behind him. She'd planned on this, rehearsed it a dozen times in her head. She'd slip up behind him and put him to sleep, and he'd never become a killer and she'd never have to stop loving him.
Instead, she found herself sagging down into the sofa cushions and staring into the bowl of candies to keep herself from looking at him. His voice was so . . . thin. So strained. So doubt-filled. She couldn't attack a creature with a voice like that. Not yet. That was all right. There was no rush. She could take a minute to work up her nerve.
"Considered a lotta things," Gambit continued, still talking to the ceiling fan. "I know what de Professor wants outta dis crazy world. I know what Magneto wants. What I don'know is what de hell I want."
Rogue scowled. "Well, since Ah'm your girlfriend an' all, ain't that supposed to be me?" She tried to keep her tone flippant, but it stung.
"Yeah," Gambit agreed.
Silence pressed almost painfully against Rogue's eardrums.
Yeah. Just yeah, and then nothing. Probably because he was too discreet to say yeah, but . . . It was supposed to be her. It wasn't.
"Qu'est-ce que je veux?" Remy asked, rhetorically. "Et qu'est-ce que tu dois faire?"
Rogue snorted, gritting her teeth against a sudden, psychosomatic but fierce pain in her chest. "Those're always the big questions, ain't they?" she responded with a bitter smile. "What do you want, and what should Ah do."
"Dat's what y'get fo' bein' a hero."
"Ah ain't a hero."
"And Creed ain't a mutant-hating scumbag." Remy's voice was twisted with sarcasm. "Course y'a hero, chère. Dey ain't notion' else y'kin be. It's in y'bones."
Rogue put her feet up on the coffee table, making the little dish of peppermint candies rattle. "So what does a hero do?"
"What's right." Remy spat the word out like it was an insult. "De greatest damn good for de greatest damn number."
"You talkin' about me now, or you?"
"Je n'sais pas. I know I ain't no hero. Never wanted to be."
"Then you picked a lousy address."
"You t'ink I came to de Institute t'get myself made into a hero? Cain't be done. T'ief's a t'ief. I got only one reason t'go anywhere."
"Tuh steal somethin'."
"T'steal somet'in'."
Rogue thought she might puke. She hazarded a guess. "Cerebro?"
"Huh?" Remy snapped out of whatever reverie of introspective self-pity he'd been lost in. "No, not Cerebro! You, y'half-brain!"
Rogue opened her mouth, realized that her brain wasn't supplying anything for it to say, and closed it again. She repeated this cycle a couple of times before making any progress. Finally, without her conscious permission, her mouth said, "If you thought that was gonna be romantic or some crap, you did a lousy job! Particularly for you!"
"So I'm off my game. Been a rough couple'a weeks."
"Poor you!"
Remy's eyes flared for a moment, glowing with temper, and Rogue tried to hold her glare and not think about what those red-on-black eyes did to her pulse and her temperature.
Then he started to laugh.
And before Rogue knew it, she was laughing, too.
It didn't solve anything, or make the world snap back into its rightful order, or loosen the knot of fear in the bottom of her stomach, but it felt so good. She'd missed him so much. She hated to admit it, because it didn't make anything any easier, but if she could have him back, just for these few seconds . . .
There were tears running down the sides of her nose and into her mouth. Dang.
"You cryin'?" Remy asked.
"You kin shut up, is what you kin do," Rogue informed him, wiping the inconvenient salt water off her face with her absorbent cotton gloves.
He smiled . . . that sweet, secret, heart-stopping smile. "Missed you."
"Ah missed you, too." After a moment, to check the rampant sentimentality, she added, "Ya brain-dead klepto."
He nodded. "Brain-dead klepto. C'est ça."
He sat up and shrugged out of his coat . . . out of both his coats; he'd been wearing another layered inside. He pulled the shorter coat out from the sleeves of his duster and tossed it at her. "Gotcha a present."
Even before she got a good look at it, the texture and scent of the fabric told her what it was. "Mah Army coat Ah got from Delphine! This got left at the house . . ."
"Stole it for y'." He hesitated, then plowed on. "Went back into the house wid Kitty t'get the security camera records. I got stupid an' decided I could grab dat, too. Nearly got de petite killed."
"She okay?"
"Yeah. Feds nabbed her, we nabbed her back. She's, um . . ." He gestured to his head. "She got shaved bald as a billiard ball."
"Serious?"
He nodded. "Been eaten' me up. I done stole her scarves an' pins in every color of de rainbow t'make up for it, but it don't make it any better. I shouldn't'a got stupid. Madder'n hell at de feds dat done it an' Creed dat sent 'em, but . . ."
He didn't finish, and didn't need to. Rogue knew the incessant pain of eating yourself up for a foolish decision and trying to take it out on somebody else. She slipped her arms into the jacket and pulled it close around her, pressing the collar to her face and quietly inhaling. It smelled like him.
"Ah'll have tuh tell Delphine Ah got it back."
"You been t'see Delphine?"
"Yeah. Your Bobby set up a meeting at her place so Ah could talk tuh Belle."
"Ah." He hesitated, not sure of how safe it was to proceed, then hazarded, "An' what happened?"
"Oh, all three of us ladies had a hair-pullin' eye-gougin' catfight over you. Ah won."
Remy laughed again. Hearing him laugh felt like flying. "You get video?"
Rogue stuck her tongue out at him. "Belle's fine. She seemed real calm, put-together. But she told me she's been haven' dreams of somebody lookin' for her, so she might not be as okay as she claimed. She was still walkin' free, though."
"Belle havin' nightmares? Sacré. Nothin' scares dat woman."
"Some things scare everybody."
Silence fell as they both remembered the looming list of things that everyone was scared of.
"Thanks for the coat," Rogue muttered.
"T'anks for de photo. An' Belle."
"You're welcome."
More silence. Rogue could hear the birds outside.
"So what do we do now?" she asked at last. "Do we fight, or what?"
"You wanna fight?"
"You gonna kill Creed?"
"You gonna try an' stop me?"
She nodded, around the lump in her throat. "That's . . . that was the plan. Ah didn't figure on . . . y'know, today, but . . ."
"But?"
"But Ah gotta . . . Ah mean, Ah made you. You're my responsibility."
"How'd'yeh figure?"
"If Ah hadn't'uh invited you to the Institute, we wouldn't'uh . . ." She gestured futilely at the air between them.
"Fallen in love?" Remy offered.
Rogue let him be the one brave enough to say it . . . again . . . and plowed on. "An' you'd never have gone after Sinister's research, and gone an' shot yourself up with mah powers, an' gotten all . . . Omega. You could rip the world apart, and it'd be mah fault." She picked up a peppermint candy, fiddled it between her fingers, and dropped it back into the bowl.
"You t'ink I'd rip de world apart?" Remy asked.
"Right now, Ah'm so angry about this whole thing, Ah ain't sure Ah wouldn't rip the world apart. An' that scares me, 'cuz Ah know Ah could. If Ah wanted to. And what should Ah do, and what do Ah want, an' . . . an' Ah want Creed dead, Ah want him bleedin' and dead at mah feet, an' Ah just wanna go home, Remy, Ah wanna go home, an' if you're fightin' with Magneto then Ah ain't got no home tuh go to . . ."
"So Magneto an' de Prof get t'decide," Remy deadpanned. "If we aimants or enemies. If we live or die."
"Ah guess so."
"An' you're okay wid dat?"
Mutely, Rogue shook her head. "But Ah dunno how else to go. Ah'm an X-Man. Ah fight. There ain't nothin' else Ah kin do."
"Yes, dere is."
Rogue looked up at him. "Huh?"
"You know how else t'go. So do I. We just never let ourselves t'ink about it. We been t'inkin' Magneto or Professor, X-Men or bad guys. Gotta pick a team; gotta pick a side. But what happens if I say my team is you?"
"So . . . what? Ah go back to the Professor, and you just come with me?"
"Well, Ah wouldn't go dat far. Ah'd go about as far as fightin' wid you about it. Ah mean . . . wid words, an' maybe some thrown stuff if we really get frisky."
Rogue laughed in spite of herself.
"But not dat fight-to-de-death nonsense. Not so two old men kin use us as dey own personal rock'em-sock'em robots. We fight until we figure out a plan. Our plan. Cause I'd rather fight wid' you till my last breath den rule de world widout y'."
Rogue felt her eyes start to sting again. Pressing her lips tight together to keep the feeling under control, she snipped, "Y'know y'sound completely ridiculous when yeh try tuh get all mushy an' stuff . . ." Oh, crap, here it came. Her throat was seizing up and the stinging was worse and her chest . . .
He stood up, skirted the coffee table, and came to take her by the shoulders, guiding her up onto her feet until she was eye-to-eye with him. The smell of Avalon station clung to his clothes, but underneath he still smelled like himself, and the scent made her feel safe with every breath.
"Hey," he told her, his voice low and gentle. "Hey, hey, hey. Deep breaths."
"Ah know how tuh breathe. Ya don't gotta give me instructions." She mock-glared at him, the sarcastic words letting her save face while she got herself under control.
He grinned. "We okay now, toi et moi?"
She took another few deliberate breaths, trying to evaluate whether okay was an accurate description of her state right now. She wanted to run away, wanted to cry, wanted to laugh, wanted to hit him, wanted to kiss him. She could see herself reflected in the red of his eyes.
She could look him in the eye. That was something, at least.
"Ah dunno if we're okay," she ventured at last, "but we ain't licked yet."
Gambit grinned. "C'est vrai. We ain' licked yet."
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, look at the young man before you. He is a mutant. He wields a power that is difficult to control and can be terrifically destructive. The only thing that prevents him from smashing this courtroom into splinters is a piece of cloth . . . a piece of cloth he tied around his own head. Mr. Summers has not opened his eyes in over two weeks. This young man is denying himself the ability to see because he might accidentally hurt someone. He is sitting in this courtroom of his own free will because he believes that he and all those like him can still obtain justice in this country. Is he wrong?
"You've seen his house's security records. Every test we know how to run shows these records to be entirely accurate. The prosecution would like you to become paranoid, imagining mutants who can rewrite computer files with such precision that they could fool even our best experts. Maybe there are such mutants out there. But even in this new world of incredible powers and breathtaking evolution, there are things that cannot be faked. Conviction. Self-discipline. Conscience. Look at this young man. He has been sitting for nearly three weeks in a prison he could leave at any time. Is this the conduct of the sort of person who would murder Marines in cold blood? Is it even the conduct of someone who would panic when placed under arrest, accidentally harming military personnel? Absolutely not. The Scott Summers you have come to know in this room is not a man who would harm another human being . . . unless he knew that other innocent lives were in danger.
"You all saw what happened on those tapes. You saw an unprovoked, unannounced, absolutely illegal attack on a school full of sleeping children. You saw armed military personnel use lethal force on fleeing citizens of their own country. The man who ordered that attack, and who is responsible for the deaths of those Marines, is sitting in this courtroom today . . . but he is not at the defense table. If we need to punish someone, punish him. But let Scott Summers and all of his friends go home. It is the only just thing to do."
Aimants: lovers.