Author's Note: This takes place several years after the conclusion of the show, and a few weeks after the events of Part 2, and about a month or a month and a half after the events of Part 1. It isn't necessary to read the other parts first, but a few things might make more sense if you do. Rogue is about 29 and Remy is about 31 years old.

Please excuse any mistakes in French grammar.

I would love to hear what you think. So, leave a review if you would like to. Thanks for reading.

Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel, X-Men Evolution, or any recognizable characters.

All truly masterful thieves learned to recognize the subtle signs and moments that revealed something life-changing was about to happen. It was in the shift in the air and wary glances between people that told of when a job was about to go off the rails, when one was about to be double-crossed, or quite simply when the merde was about to hit the fan. These warning signs could save a person's life, and Remy LeBeau, ex-Master Thief had learned better than anyone how to identify them.

From a young age, he had been sensitive to that little voice in his head that seemed to grasp the danger he would soon be in before it happened. That early warning system had discerned the nervous, almost compulsive glances an anxious partner had sent to the closest exit right before said partner had betrayed him. It had dutifully noted when a tiny, almost indiscernible, blinking red light had flashed on when he had entered a bank vault, and he had known he had to make his getaway in less than five minutes lest that silent alarm beckoned the police. It had given him just the edge he had needed to survive when it discerned the flexing fists and bloodthirsty glances the Marauders had sent to each other right before they had attacked him. Even in his time with the X-men for the past several years, his quick wits and attuned senses had saved his and his teammates' lives on more than one occasion.

No matter the situation, Gambit prided himself on being able to recognize warning signs. Therefore, as soon as he slipped inside, he became aware of the unspoken tension in the air and braced himself for the oncoming danger he was sure he was about to experience.

"Papa!" The little ball of energy that resembled a miniature tornado cried happily as it slammed into his legs. A delighted laugh escaped his throat as he scooped up his two, (almost-three-year-old as she persistently reminded him every chance she got) daughter and peppered her face in kisses. She squealed and squirmed before settling in his arms.

"Bonjour, petite," he greeted, pointedly keeping his eyes on his daughter and not letting them drift to the looming presence of his wife in the kitchen doorway. Until he knew exactly what he was up against, better to delay as much as possible. "Did you have a good day?"

His daughter nodded her head vigorously, sending her auburn curls bouncing up and down in a motion Remy couldn't help but find adorable.

"Momma made me Mac' n cheese," she grinned. She said it with all the pride of someone who had discovered a new species.

"Did she? Well, that was nice of her. Did you thank Momma?" he asked. Reminding his daughter of her manners could buy him a few moments.

Again, the vigorous nod.

"Becca, dear, why don't you go play until dinner is ready?" Rogue's voice was sweeter than sugar, and Remy gulped as he released his wriggling daughter, and she scampered off to her room.

Remy gathered his courage enough to dare to look at the woman who was the love of his life. She was smiling at him. Merde! He was most definitely in danger! A smile like that made his fight-or-flight instincts come alive more intensely than if he heard a dozen bank alarms going off.

Because that was most decidedly not how Rogue normally smiled. His wife was a Southern spitfire, all sass and strength and warmth dipped in honey, and wrapped in an enticing package of long legs, dark auburn hair with white stripes, and entrancing emerald eyes that he had fallen head over heels for. In all his years of loving her, he had become attuned to all her subtle body language and facial expressions that revealed what was really going on inside that beautiful head of hers. And, as such, he had learned every one of her smiles and what they meant. Her rehearsed, brittle, barely-there grin was reserved for when she felt uncomfortable or felt she needed to be polite. When she was at peace and content with everything around her, her face smoothed and glowed with a soft warmth like a light from a candle. The moments she was teasing someone, normally him, there was always a mischievousness lurking in her green eyes, and her lips tilted just at the corners in a way that he had never been able to resist. And, when she was truly happy, her whole face lit up, her eyes dancing with joy, and her mouth curved and opened to display her even white teeth as if she were always on the verge of a laugh.

Her smile was only this sweet when she was well and truly pissed off.

Remy was, unfortunately, just as aware of the way she processed anger as he was of the way she processed joy. Rogue could yell with the best of them and bluster until she was red in the face over a mild inconvenience. When something genuinely bothered her, she could enter such a deafening, stony silence as to make even Buddhist monks jealous. But it was that smile, all feral saccharine sweetness that never left her face that made Remy's hairs at the back of his neck stand on end and was a pretty good warning sign that Rogue intended to murder someone.

"Hello, darling," she purred, and it made a shiver of dread race down his spine. She never called him "darling."

Sugah and Swamp Rat and Crazy Cajun and Hun were her nicknames of choice. Never "darling". He was in more trouble than he had thought.

"Would you be a dear and help me in the kitchen with the rest of dinner?" she drawled, her voice as smooth and as rich as molasses, but it might as well have been a blaring klaxon alarm for the terror it sent through his system. And, as much as she may have phrased it as a question, it was clear it wasn't a request.

The kitchen? Where there were razor-sharp knives and heavy marble rolling pins and boiling hot water? All of which would provide an excellent means to inflict severe bodily harm. No, thank you!

Then, Remy realized he was being ridiculous.

After all, if Rogue truly desired to kill, or at her most merciful, seriously maim him, she would hardly need to resort to such crude measures. His wife was imbued with all the powers of Ms. Marvel, and as such had the super strength needed to physically rip him limb from limb with her bare hands if she so desired. And, if the expression on her face was anything to go by, he would bet that she did so desire.

While he was debating the pros and cons of following her, he kept his silence. Rogue evidently had noticed and had raised an elegant eyebrow in disapproval. Apparently, he was taking far too long to answer her very simple and reasonable command.

Well, Remy LeBeau had never considered himself a coward, and he damn well wasn't going to start now. Into the fire.

"D'accord, mon amour," he replied smoothly, proud his voice didn't even waver, even as he felt the noose tightening around his neck. He supposed there truly was something to be said for an excellent poker face, after all.

He dutifully followed Rogue into his doom, er the kitchen, where she gave him the simple task of ensuring the spaghetti sauce that was on the stove didn't boil over while she began preparing some pasta to go along with it. As soon as her water came to a boil, she took some spaghetti noodles and broke the whole batch in half with her hands. Remy tightened his group on his ladle and forced himself to continue stirring to prevent himself from flinching at the crack! Crack! Crack! sound it made. He could well imagine his spine making the same sound as she broke him in half. The pot was plenty big enough to fit the full-sized pasta, but Rogue had made a habit of breaking it in half ever since their daughter had expressed an interest in 'spetti' to give Becca an easier time handling it while eating. Remy had never before considered the action threatening, but now was a different story. They continued to work in silence for the next few minutes, that damned Cheshire smile never once leaving her face whenever he dared to glance at her.

A less discerning man with fewer brain cells might have been led to believe that he had overreacted, or even misread the situation entirely. That his wife really did want nothing more than her husband's company and a little help finishing up preparing their supper. But Remy had lived too long, experienced too much, and knew Rogue far too well to fall into the snare of complacency, especially with that little instinct in his head still sending out regular SOS signals.

Each tortuously slow moment that continued to tick by made Remy grit his teeth as if preparing for impact. Every self-preservation instinct that he had ever acquired was screaming at him to run away as fast as possible and to escape with his life if he possibly could.

And, yet he stayed. For Rogue, he would always stay.

After a few more tense moments that continued to twist his stomach into impossible knots, Rogue finally broke the silence by politely asking, "How was your day?"

What kind of devious question was that? Remy's mind warned him it could most definitely be a trap, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out how it was laid, or more importantly how to avoid it.

He considered every way Rogue could possibly want him to answer and what she would do with the information he presented, but he still couldn't figure out what she was aiming for. Therefore, when he did speak, he made sure his voice matched her previous casual politeness, "Oh, nothing special. Storm blackmailed me into helping her replant some things in her greenhouse. Logan threatened me when I took the last helping of lunch. Gave a few sparring sessions to some of the younger students in the Danger Room. You know, the usual."

"That's very nice," she replied automatically, and Remy felt she would have responded in such a way even if he had said he had fought a race of hostile invading aliens or had been thrown through time to an alternate future. (Though to be fair, as an X-Man, those seemed to be occupational hazards.)

Unable to read her thoughts with that too-sweet smile still on her face, he redirected his attention back to the pot of bubbling tomato sauce. The aroma that wafted up along with the steam tickled his nose and smelled incredible, but he couldn't even imagine stomaching a single bite with all the tension that still hung in the air.

An annoyed scoff came from beside him. "Well, aren't you going to ask about my day?" Rogue asked, her voice as innocent as a child's, even as Remy mentally signed his own death warrant.

"Of course, mon amour, how remiss of me," he said smoothly, using his best suave gentleman voice in an effort to minimize the effect of her inevitable anger.

His mind was working faster than one of Ororo's lightning bolts trying to figure out her angle. What could have happened during her day? For the past few days, she had been battling a stomach bug that had been going around the Institute, and thus she had stayed home taking care of their daughter every day for the past week instead of swapping out every other day as they normally did. Had her illness gotten worse? He surreptitiously glanced at her. She didn't seem any worse besides the dark circles under her eyes which told of her poor sleep. Though to be fair, with a toddler around, it was extremely rare either of them got a full night of sleep. Still, she didn't seem terribly upset about that. He continued gallantly, "How was your day, my amazing, belle femme who is the love of my life and with whom I cannot possibly live without?

Even Remy knew the attempt had been nothing more than a desperate attempt by a man backed into a corner, so he was not surprised when the flattery had no effect on softening Rogue's countenance in the least. In fact, it seemed as if he had poked the proverbial bear because her green eyes seemed to glow with the displeasure she was starting to feel.

Still, her voice rolled over the syllables of her answer with the same amount of strained pleasantness that had marked their entire conversation thus far, "Mostly ordinary."

He wasn't stupid enough to fall for that. His keen senses told him there was a "but" coming.

"But," Rogue continued, and he would have had to have been deaf not to hear the dangerous edge to her voice now, "your daughter certainly had an interesting day."

The warning signs might as well have been an air raid siren for how loud they were. It was funny, really. Rogue always referred to Becca as their daughter, except when she was in trouble, and it was clear that Remy had influenced it somehow. Then, Rebecca LeBeau was somehow, miraculously, only his daughter.

But, Remy did not believe in going out without a fight. Even if he truly was going to die today, there was nothing shameful in at least trying to delay the inevitable.

"Yes, she said she enjoyed your yummy mac 'n cheese earlier," he babbled. Not his best defense, but it was all he could think of at the moment.

Rogue turned fully to face him, the false sweetness finally melting away from her features to be replaced with the wrath of an avenging goddess come to wreak vengeance, as she said sharply, "She managed to lock herself inside our bedroom today. No matter what I said, she couldn't figure out how to turn the lock again. I thought I was going to have to take the hinges off the door or fly in through the window."

Warning! Warning!

"Aww, my poor baby," he said, his voice taking on the genuine sympathy it always conveyed whenever Becca was scared or hurt. Recognizing the perfect opportunity to escape his fate, he added, "She must have been so frightened. She probably needs some cuddles from her péré. I'll go check on her."

He managed to make two swift strides toward the door before Rogue's voice, as sharp as a knife, and her accent as thick as mud due to her anger assaulted him, "You stop right there, Swamp Rat!"

He wasn't suicidal enough to try to continue his flight after that tone, and so obediently, he stopped, though he could not gather his courage enough to turn back to face his wife.

"First of all, she wasn't scared. She thought it was funny. I could hear her giggling through the door. Secondly, it turns out, there was no need for any dramatic heroics on my part because she managed to get herself out. Would you care to take a guess as to how?"

Damn! He knew exactly where this was going, and it was going to end up with his blood all over the floor. Well, he supposed he had lived a pretty good life so far, but he still would have liked to be around to see Becca grow up. With slow precision, he deliberately turned back to Rogue.

He put on a grin that was meant to be disarming, and that he knew she usually loved, as he replied humorously, as if they were both in on a good joke, "She spontaneously developed Kitty's mutant ability to walk through walls?"

Well, that was immediately the wrong thing to say! As her green eyes lit with fire, and she bunched her hands into angry fists on her hips, it was clear she was in no mood for jokes.

She grit out, "No! She picked the lock. Now, I just wonder, where on earth could my two-year-old have picked up such a skill?"

Oh, he was in so much trouble! A nervous chuckle sounded from his mouth. Mon dieu! What happened to keeping his cool under pressure? Whatever she had in store for him was enough to make him completely lose all sense of suave complacency he normally conjured in life-or-death situations. It was probably this that led him to stupidly say, "Well, you know, dere is somethin' to be said for raw talent and good genes. Maybe she is just a natural."

"Cajun!" Rogue growled.

Remy held up his hands in a gesture of complete surrender, and a plea for supplication as he admitted, "Alright, chéré, you've caught me out. You know how I try to keep up my skills. Well, one day Becca saw me working on an old lock and asked me what I was doing, and I told her. Then, she asked if I could show her how to do it."

"Ugh! I knew it!" she seethed, as if there could have really been any other explanation. "And, of course, you didn't say no to her!"

Remy had the decency to look sheepish as he shrugged helplessly. His inability to say no to their daughter was a forgone conclusion at this point. One look at her big, green eyes, and he was a goner. This wasn't the first, and if Rogue didn't murder him on the spot, likely wouldn't be the last time he had been in hot water because of it.

Rogue let out a frustrated sigh, physically trying to coerce her body into some semblance of calmness. She even tried closing her eyes and rubbing the bridge of her nose, as if she could ward away the headache that was her husband. But, despite these surefire remedies, when her eyes opened, it was clear she was battling to keep her famous temper in check.

"Remy, we agreed," she said slowly and deliberately, drawing a deep ragged sigh from within before continuing as if she were speaking to a naughty, stupid child, "We both agreed that you wouldn't train her in any thieving skills until she was a bit older, at least seven. Remy, you promised!"

Ah, now he got to the real reason that she was so upset. He hadn't meant to violate the agreement. Learning to trust each other had been one of the biggest hurdles they had both had to overcome in order to really pursue their relationship, an issue even bigger than her mutation. It had taken a long time, but they eventually learned how to open up and be vulnerable to each other, and they were all the better and stronger for it. He hated that she felt he had broken a little of her trust in not keeping the small promise just because he couldn't resist Becca's pleading green eyes.

"Desolé, chéré, but I don't see any real harm in it."

He was surprised and admittedly just a little proud Becca had even managed to do it in the first place since she hadn't made any successful attempts during their little training session.

Rogue rolled her eyes in a familiar, exasperated way that told Remy perhaps she wouldn't really kill him, at least not as painfully and slowly as the earlier warning signs would have suggested.

"She's a toddler, Remy," she sighed and did his ears deceive him, or was that a quaver in her voice? "An intelligent and curious one at that. You know how she is, always getting into everything. What happens when we turn our backs for two seconds, and she picks the lock on the front door? Then, she goes out all by herself and gets hit by a car, or snatched up by mutant haters, or kidnapped by some psycho freak who thinks she makes a perfect lab experiment, or, or, or…"

The secondary mutation of empathy that he had developed in recent years went into overdrive, and the panic and rage that was flooding her system and clear in her voice became as real to him as if they were his own feelings. The very idea of something happening to Becca made him feel physically sick. There was a definite quaver in her voice now, her breath coming fast and shaky as if she were on the verge of tears. Without another moment's hesitation, he crossed the kitchen and gathered his clearly distressed wife into his comforting, only slightly trembling arms. Now, she was getting him all worked up.

Well, when she put it that way. When she leaned into his embrace, he became 71% sure she didn't still want to kill him. Well, 64%, but still. Progress was progress. He could understand why she was getting so worked up, even if it wasn't like her, and he wanted nothing more than to reassure her and put her fears immediately to rest.

"It'll be OK, chéré. So, we put a bolt on the door that is far too high for her to reach. Den, she can't get out, even if she does pick the lock."

It was a simple and easy solution, and Rogue huffed out an annoyed breath. Remy wasn't sure if it was at him for fixing it without blood being shed or at herself for not thinking of it earlier. Regardless, she allowed him to place a feather-light kiss against her forehead. She even went so far as to cuddle deeper into the embrace. He carefully moved his hands up and down in soothing strokes along her spine until he felt the tension in her muscles which had likely been knotted there since their little girl had locked herself behind the door, slowly ease. Now that she had calmed down somewhat, and his death no longer seemed imminent, he could more greatly appreciate having her in his arms.

Dieu! but he loved this woman! Of course, she wouldn't be the woman he had fallen spades over aces for if she didn't have to have the last word.

So, he wasn't all that surprised when she felt obligated to add, just to prove she hadn't completely forgiven him for all the turmoil he had put her through today, her voice slightly mumbled by the fabric of his shirt that she was still pressed up against, "You still shouldn't have taught her to pick a lock."

"Desolé, chéré," he said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

He was sorry he had upset her and made her worry, and that he had broken a promise. But, if he was being honest with himself, he wasn't entirely sorry he had taught Becca one of his tricks.

"Not much we can do about it, now." He could tell Becca not to do it again, but that would be about as effective as telling Wolverine not to beat someone up. He supposed he could always teach his daughter the wrong way to pick a lock, but every thieving instinct in his body rebelled against that blasphemy, so he didn't even bother mentioning it. Then, he added jokingly, "I'll do better on the next kid."

Rogue's demeanor changed as she pulled away enough to look at him and bit her lower lip and a rosy blush suffused her apple-blossom cheeks. He had always enjoyed making her blush, but he normally knew the reason behind it. Now, he had no idea, but he found it very becoming, nonetheless. She smiled at him. It was nothing like that awful saccharine smile that had been a veiled threat she had greeted him with. Rather, it was soft and shy, and pleased, and it gave her such a warm, appealing look, that Remy was moments away from kissing her senseless. She tucked a stray white lock of hair behind her ear in a nervous gesture more reminiscent of her insecure teenage years than now more than a decade later.

"Um, actually, Remy, about that. There was one small thing I forgot to mention about my day," she said, and then purposefully guided his hand down to rest against her abdomen.

Remy blinked slowly, uncomprehending for a moment, his gaze going back and forth between her face and the hand on her stomach. Then, his scarlet and raven eyes widened in unadulterated shock as the reality of the situation finally caught up to him. He let out a breathless laugh and stumbled back, his legs suddenly unwilling and unable to support him, a flustered "Mon dieu!" passing from his lips.

Rogue chuckled as she caught him by his shirt and then pulled his lips to hers.

And later, after he had fulfilled his mental promise to kiss her absolutely senseless, he would look back over the past few days, and Remy LeBeau would realize there were some warning signs that he had definitely missed. And honestly he couldn't have been happier.

The End