He realized belatedly that it had been over a week since he had actually set foot in direct sunlight, longer without his sunglasses. The sun could, apparently, be pretty damn bright. He cursed and raised an arm over his eyes for impromptu shade. On the far left of the lawn he noted Bishop trudging away from the greenhouse, looking like a man who had just failed on an important mission. His mind instantly catalogued it, noting he should probably speak with his Stormy later. Whatever was up with the pup lately, seemed 'Ro had become his new confidante, which could be a good thing or could be a very bad thing depending on what it was that weighed so heavily on Bishop's soul these days.

A light breeze stirred his hair, blowing some of it past his arm and into his face. Another mental note, he needed a haircut. He honestly didn't think his hair had been this long since he was about twelve when he had refused to cut it for a full year just to irk his pere. The thought sent a miniscule twinge through the part of him that he recognized as his soul, thoughts of Jean-Luc still somewhat too painful to bear. National disasters and other equally unanticipated passings had taken away Remy's chance and right to grieve and now it just seemed unreasonable to weep for a man who had been dead over a year.

He made his way slowly toward the dock, Spuyten Dyvil Cove being the obvious choice for his target to spend free time. The boat house still stood on the edge of the lake, in a way. Gaping charred holes in the walls laid bare testament to the fate of the former inhabitants. Remy could still replay the message he had received from Stormy that day, only days after his own father's death: "There has been a horrible accident." Personally, Remy wanted to tear the damn building down. It reminded him of how vulnerable they all were in the end. After everything they had all survived: being kidnapped by intergalactic terrorists, infected with life threatening illnesses by mad geneticists, attacked by bigoted supremacists (mutant and human), trapped by enormous robots and tortured by psychic entities on power trips all it really took to end it all was some punk kid trespassers, some gasoline and a match. Logan, however, wouldn't let it go. It still smelled like Jeanie underneath the soot, or so he claimed. The scent was all he had, all any of them had. There hadn't been any bodies left to bury.

"Yah can stop tryin' ta sneak up on me anytime now, Gumbo." Logan sat perched, as usual, on the dock. An empty beer bottle floated nearby where it had presumably landed after rolling into the water. "Yah gotta get out more, yer gettin' that sick smell of something that's been cooped up too long."

"Merci." Remy bit off the statement and plunked himself gracelessly down next to the Canuck on the dock, almost wishing he had a beer bottle in hand to match the one slowly floating away.

"Thought ya were workin' on that intel."

Remy shrugged, "Left Rogue with it. Can't make no sense outta anything on dose files. Don' speak de language."

Logan grunted, tipping his hat back so he could look Gambit full in the eyes. "Think that's smart, leavin' the kid ter figure it out."

"Dat's yer problem, Wolverine." Remy flashed one of his very own patented devil may care smiles, then turned to look out over the slowly lapping water. He let his voice go husky, a suggestive tone layering over the accent. The result, he was aware, bordered on indecent in the effect it was known to have on some, mostly of the opposite sex. "Roguey ain' been a 'kid' for some time now, mon ami."

The sound Logan released hovered somewhere between a snicker and a disgusted snort. "Ya gonna start this shit again? Don't either one of you know when to just quit?"

They sat in silence for a few minutes, the question hanging uncomfortably between them. Finally Remy turned slowly, eyeing the boathouse. "Should tear dis damn t'ing down. Ain't doin' nuttin' but causin' an eye sore."

"Point taken." Logan rolled his shoulders and tilted his head, letting off one loud 'pop'. "What I meant was, is it a smart idea lettin' her decipher all that info. You know how she gets about 'protectin' everybody. You sure she's gonna give it all up?"

"She will."

"What makes you so sure?"

Gambit shrugged. "If dose files say what I t'ink dey say, she gon' be too horrified not to tell me everyt'ing."

Logan nodded. "And if they don't?"

"Den Col. Fury cheated me. Which means Val Cooper an' I are gonna be havin' a nice little chat wit' de ole bastard."

A deep chuckle escaped Logan's throat and Remy joined in. "Gotta hand it to ya, Cajun. You sure know how to play them."

"Speakin' of playin' em, mon ami, you have dat little discussion wit' Raven?"

The snort sufficed for an answer. "She really don't like you, bub. That's fer damn sure."

"Well, I ain' exactly a card carryin' member of de Mystique fanclub dese days either. She playin' some fool game or I got worries, mon ami? Dat's all I need to know." Remy locked his elbows and leaned back on his arms, releasing some of the tension in his back. He watched Logan pull a cigar from his chest pocket and chomp the end. Something about the lines of his body right at that moment gave him an unsettled feeling, like waiting for something big to come over the horizon but not knowing what that something might be.

Logan shook his head, then looked Remy right in the eye. "If she's got something up 'er sleeve other than the usual bullshit I can't say. Neither can the Ninja." For the merest second Gambit saw red, but Logan held his hand up. "She came to me, I didn't pull Betts in on this one. You may not like her but the girl ain't stupid. She knows, well as I do, that if you go down the whole house of cards goes tumblin' down with ya." Dead silence sat heavy between them for the moment, leaving Logan to break it. "She knows there ain't no place fer people like us to go if that happens. She came to me, looking to check Blue, I let her think it was her own idea."

It was not ideal, but it was satisfactory. The history between Psylocke and Gambit was complicated in it's own way, something neither was comfortable with. Tolerance was the key to a maintained coexistence within the mansion for both. Remy refused to forgive the attempted mind rape while he had been in a rather pleasantly induced coma. Betsy refused to forgive the loss of Warren's first wings in a rather unpleasantly induced massacre. Meanwhile, Betsy could not ignore how Remy had gone out of his way to save her from Apocalypse. He could not ignore how she had defended him against the late and unlamented Victor Creed's slander. Add in the Crimson Dawn and Gambit's new position in the team hierarchy, it just made for an emotional mish-mash of confusion best left to stew untended.

He suddenly noticed Wolverine eying him rather awkwardly and realized he must have actually dozed off on the dock for a minute, mid conversation. "Merde." He shook himself slightly. "Dat's fine, Logan. Jus' try to keep de details between us."

"Sure, whatever you say, Cajun." Gambit was aware of how Logan was watching him as he lifted himself stiffly to his feet, like a hunter stalking wounded prey. "Do us all a favor, though, would ya."

"What's dat?"

"Kick Mississippi outta yer room and try to get at least four hours of shut eye." Gambit shot him a glare, which Logan intentionally misinterpreted. "Or don't kick 'er out. Not like you could do much in your condition anyway." He laughed. "You fall on your ass during a training session I ain't gonna waste my time pickin' you up. You don' do any of us any good unconscious."

"I'll keep dat in mind." He couldn't help but laugh himself, turning back toward the mansion. Of course, chances were he'd get back to his room to find that Rogue had either a) found something important in those files or b) gotten frustrated with the job and smashed something he had preferred in one piece. She had been given specific instructions that she could not smash the computer, but that meant everything else was fair game if the language barrier irked her temper, which was more than possible.


Amber liquid splashed over ice was a quiet way to relax after a fairly stressful 24 hours, or try to at least. The woman on the telescreen in front of him did nothing to detract from the tension he could feel throughout his body. Her pinched face and rather severe blond haircut did a lot to help maintain the no nonsense image she strove for. He sucked in the Scotch through his teeth and set the glass on his desk, returning the glare he was receiving with the one eye he could use to do so. "To what do I owe the pleasure of speaking with Ms. Valerie Cooper today?"

"Spare me the sarcasm, Fury. This is not my idea of a social call either. D.C. wants to know if the intel on our friend's project has been properly passed along."

Nick fury sat on his desk, stared at the screen for all of ten seconds, then started to laugh. "You kidding me, Val? After all the work we put in on this, your pals back home can't trust me to carry out my own plan."

The face on the screen snickered back. "I'm just doing my job, Colonel. I can't help it, we're getting a lot of heat and the media is starting to pick up on more than just what we're leaking. The NSA wants to be sure that the package was delivered and wants an ETA on when we can expect results."

Fury snorted into his scotch and took another pull. "You want me to hold their hands and leave a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow too?" He was so tired of the bureaucratic nightmare that had become his government, tired of the top secret documents that now needed to be filed in triplicate with the correct agencies to ensure their existence would be correctly denied. Most of it made no sense, and Valerie Cooper, his own personal liaison, seemed to have gone over to the dark side on him, and he couldn't figure out when or where or why. The burst of anger caused him to slam his glass down on the desk before he even truly registered doing it. "You're talking about giving a group of vigilante mercenaries top security clearance documents and hoping they do what we're not asking! You expect me to predict when a group of people barely above the level of terrorists are going to do something? And you want me to guarantee they'll behave?"

To her credit, Val didn't jump at the outburst. A finger appeared on the screen, attempting to either pierce Fury or pin him in place. It did neither effectively. "The X-Men are not terrorists. Government sanctioned, no, but not terrorists. And I'm not asking you to predict or guide, I'm asking you to use some god damned judgment and experience to tell me what to tell the people here in DC before they decide to pull the plug on this whole thing. We're trying to prevent a war, Colonel."

Fury suddenly felt very old, and out of place. It had been so much easier years ago: find the terrorists, interrogate them, dispose of them. Now, the lines between friend and foe were so blurred he felt punch drunk. Even he had to admit it was hard to look at somebody like Wolverine as an enemy, when in truth he'd probably feel more comfortable with Logan at his back in a battle than most of his own operatives. Hell, he'd even trust the double dealing Cajun before most of his own crew. It made things painfully difficult, trying to avoid letting emotions interfere with business, when in truth the 'mutant terrorists' you had been taught to fight really weren't that bad. He looked down at the floor and composed himself before looking back at the screen. "I gave them everything they need to start putting the pieces together. If I'd given much more Gambit would've gotten suspicious and aborted. This is an intelligent team, I have no doubt they will start piecing together the puzzle and we should start seeing results within a week, two at most. Tell the stiffs in DC to sit on it till then and lay low. You know as well as I do, if Gambit starts sniffing around like we want and we trail too close he'll know, he'll pull the plug and he'll lay low. If we're gonna kill two birds on this we have to let them work it out unimpeded. You tell Stryker that means to back the fuck off, if he screws this one up on me I will personally ensure his court marshal is long, slow and painfully personal."

Valerie snickered. "That will do for now. When do you plan on reporting in person?"

"When the shit starts to hit the fan, Val. I think you can live without me until then."

A silent nod and the screen went blank. Fury made his way back toward the wet bar on the side of his office, thankful he was here on the Heli-Carrier rather than sitting in DC. That would happen soon enough. For now he wanted to enjoy what little freedom he still had.