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Chapters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
 
 
 

Thick as Thieves - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Valerie Jones and Lori McDonald
Last updated: 01/02/2007 02:01:11 AM

Chapter 6

Over aeons, ice crept across the planet, crushing everything below it in a sheet of frozen water a mile thick. Animals and protohumans fled before it or died, or adapted, learning the tricks of warm fur, hot blood, or fire. Evolution forced into action by the threat of a permanent, icy grave.

In the Danger Room, the ice age came much faster.

With a shriek of grinding ice, Bobby grew a tree of frozen moisture in the center of the Danger Room. It sprung up in its artificial spring, growing up towards the ceiling and branching out, dropping frozen fruit that set down their own roots and grew themselves until the entire room was a forest of cold, or perhaps a cave with its stalagtites and stalagmites of white.

Bobby stared at the cave he'd created for a moment, then forced the screaming ice into new shapes. Into a castle complete with ramparts and flags, into an alien landscape, into the visages of his teammates. Frowning, he looked at them. Betsy stood closest, with her straight hair and almond shaped eyes. Almost without thinking, he lengthened the hair and reshaped the face, to be rounder and thinner with larger, sadder eyes. Diedre's face stared out at him. He glanced at Rogue beside her and did the same to her face. Storm was next, then Jean. Soon, all the X-Women wore Diedre's face and he sighed.

I gotta see her, he thought. I don't care what it takes. He glanced to his right and started.

He'd created the male X-Men as well and Gambit stood only a few meters away from him. But the Cajun wasn't quite right. In a setting filled with jewels he was stealing while the formless owners pleaded with him, he wore Bobby's face.

"Hi, Storm. Whatcha making?"

Ororo looked up as Bobby wandered into the room, his hands shoved into his pockets and his blond hair, badly in need of a trim, falling across his eyes.

"I am making some tea. Would you like some?"

"Sure, thanks." Bobby seated himself at the table and watched her pour two cups of the dark tea. Taking a bowl of honey, she put a teaspoon of the gold in her cup and looked at him with an eyebrow raised.

"Three, please."

She smiled as she put the honey in. "Having some tea with your honey, I see," she teased.

"Hey, I like it sweet," he protested. Picking up the cup, he sniffed the warm, steaming drink, and froze it until ice crusted the top. Breaking it with the honey spoon, he took a sip. "Ah, that's the stuff."

Storm shook her head, but didn't say anything. She was used to seeing Bobby freeze his food before eating. "Bobby, I have always been curious." He looked at her. "If you always eat your food cold, why do you bother to cook it?"

He shrugged. "It affects the taste. Cold cooked food tastes different from cold raw food. Besides, I want to make sure any little germs are killed first."

"True. That is a prudent course of action." She sipped her tea, savouring the taste. "How are your studies going with your powers?" She asked. She'd started assigning him solo training sessions to, as she put it, 'encourage independent development'. If Bobby hadn't known her so well, he would have thought she wanted to get away from him.

"Not too bad." He thought of the dozen Diedres he'd made. "I think I'm getting better at small details."

"Excellent. You do not look very happy though."

He shrugged and swallowed. "I guess I'm just tired." He paused. "Ororo, there's something I've always been meaning to ask you."

A single eyebrow rose. "Yes?"

He leaned back in his chair, trying to look nonchalant. "Why did you stop being a thief?"

She blinked for a moment. "Why?"

"Yeah. I mean, you've always said how good you were. Even Gambit admits you're a better pickpocket than he is. Why stop?"

She smiled and sipped her tea. "I needed to become a thief, but I did not need to stop being one. When my master found me, I was starving and penniless. I would have died without him and I loved him for giving me my life, as well as his teachings and his love. I became the finest pickpocket in Cairo for him.

"But I only stole for him. For myself, there was nothing. A bit of satisfaction in escaping with what I took, but very little that lasted for long. It was a quick fix, actually. And I was finding as I grew older that I very much came to dislike what I did. I could see my marks, after all, and I came to sympathize with them. When I reached my thirteenth year, I decided that I had had enough and left. I remembered my mother telling me of her people in Kenya and so I went to find them. I discovered my powers along the way and they made me a Goddess." She smiled. "Quite a step away from being a thief, but at least they made it so I did not have to steal again." Her look turned thoughtful. "Or perhaps I merely stole in a different way."

Bobby forgot his tea and leaned his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand. "What about Gambit? He doesn't think stealing is wrong even now."

She laughed. "I doubt Remy will ever feel that stealing is completely wrong. He is far too addicted to the pinch for that." Her expression was briefly sad. "But he recognizes the rights of his marks in his own way. When I lived in New Orleans with him, we only stole from criminals."

Bobby blinked. "I didn't know that."

"Oh, yes." The smile returned with the memory. "We would only steal from criminals. From drug dealers and bookies and gangs. Remy had a certain philosophy. Family is inviolate, even if they are criminals. As are people he saw as being innocent. Ordinary people such as we X-Men protect. And then there were those who harmed the innocent without being family. Those were his targets."

Bobby shook his head. "But he lets his family get away with stealing."

She nodded. "True. But do not forget all the times the X-Men have broken the rules of society. And Remy has put his past behind him. He does not, after all, steal any more."

Bobby looked down and sipped his tea, wondering if convincing Gambit to teach him to steal had been the wrong thing to do, not for what it would do to him, but for what it would do to Remy.

Wearily, Bobby climbed up the stairs to the men's wing. It had gotten late while he thought and he wanted to get some sleep before the morning, when Scott had one of his early hour Danger Room sessions planned. The man seemed to think everyone was as much of a morning person as he was, no matter how much they all tried to convince him otherwise.

Yawning, he walked into his room, flicked on his light and almost swallowed his tongue. Gambit stood in the center of the room, dressed in ordinary street clothing. Red on black eyes pierced his and he tossed him his jacket.

"Get dressed," he ordered. "Y' first lesson be t'night."

An hour later, they arrived at a seedy building deep in the Bronx. Remy had ridden his bike into the city, Bobby hanging desperately onto the back as he peeled around turns at high speed, but he'd left it behind blocks ago. They'd walked the rest of the way, taking such a roundabout route that Bobby had no idea where they were.

"Are you trying to make sure I can't find my way back here?" Bobby snapped.

"Nope. Makin' sure we ain' bein' followed."

Suddenly nervous, the young man looked behind him.

"Don' worry, homme. It safe."

Turning into an alley beside the building, Remy sauntered by a homeless person and hopped onto an especially battered dumpster. From there, he leaped up and caught the end of a fire escape ladder and pulled it down so they both could use it. With Bobby following uncertainly, he climbed up to the roof. Bobby came much more slowly, not entirely sure he wanted to touch the ladder. He'd never seen anything so filthy.

The roof was even worse. Covered in soot and filth, with little piles of human and bird shit, there was garbage everywhere. Bobby stepped over a bunch of broken beer bottles and hopped back away from several used needles and a couple of condoms. He looked in disgust at Gambit, who was sitting down calmly with his back against a vent.

"You gotta be kidding me. Why are we here?!"

The Cajun glanced at him. "First lesson. Don' question me. Jus' sit down an' wait."

Diedre. Think of Diedre...

Carefully, Bobby made his way over to him and cleared a patch of ground with his foot. Sitting down, he tried to relax.

"Okay, what now?"

"I tol' you. Wait."

Grumbling, Bobby did as he was told and the minutes crawled by. He glanced over at one point and saw that Gambit was leaning back with his eyes closed. He was about to make some comment about how he didn't come all this way to watch him sleep when the Cajun winced and he realized he'd been feeling his bruised ribs.

"Those aren't going to heal if you keep doing that," he told him.

Gambit smiled. "Don' worry. Dey heal pretty fast. Bruises ain' much t' worry 'bout."

Bobby glanced away at some grafitti, blushed and looked back at him. "How did you get those? I mean, I've seen you take on Magneto without getting a scratch."

"Does it matter?"

He frowned. "It matters if I go home with the same bruises."

Gambit chuckled. "Don' worry, Bobby. I not dat bad a teacher. I not take you anyplace dat I don' t'ink y' c'n handle."

Bobby turned away, embarrassed by the compassion he heard in his voice. "Sure," he muttered. "You just take me to a junkie's paradise in the middle of downtown Bronx at 2 am."

"Jus' wait, Bobby."

With nothing to do, Bobby leaned forward and fiddled his thumbs, left over right, right over left, back and forth. He thought of his lessons with Storm and how there was no way he was ever going to be able to stay awake for that morning's Danger Room session. Most of all, he thought of Diedre.

Never went to this much trouble for a woman before. He smiled. But it's worth it. He heard a scream. Then again... He looked at Gambit. "Are we going to do anything about that?"

The Cajun had been sitting up straight, eyes unfocused as he concentrated. Then he relaxed. "Non. She got away."

Bobby hesitated, not sure that letting her attackers go free was the right thing to do. "How can you be so sure?"

Remy hesitated, then tapped his temple. "I can sense her runnin'. It's one a my powers."

"But..."

"Wait, Bobby."

"Wait, yeah, sure. All I ever do is wait."

More time passed and the hour creeped to one o'clock, then one fifteen, and finally one thirty. At one fourty five, Gambit looked at him. "Well?"

Bobby had been dozing off listening to the music from a club several blocks away. He started awake. "What?"

"Y' learn anyt'ing?"

He blinked. "What's to learn?"

Gambit grinned. "Why y' t'ink we been out here? I don' like t' sit on dis roof any more dan you."

Bobby huffed. "Well, what am I supposed to learn? Patience?"

"Nope. T' listen."

"Listen?"

The Cajun nodded, serious again. "Oui. Listen."

Confused, Bobby listened.

"What y' hear, homme?"

"Uh..." he concentrated. "I hear cars, and music from a club."

Gambit was relentless. "What else?"

The sounds of the music and cars fading into his subconscious, and then under that, a low rumble, growing louder, then fainter as a subway car passed them at the nearest point in its course.

"I can hear the subway."

"Closer."

Beneath the mechanical sounds, human movements. Someone's footsteps on the pavement. The rhythmic slap slap slap of a young teen's tennis shoes. Occasionally scuffling. A sloppy sound. That was how he knew it was a teen, he realized. Then, as the footsteps disappeared into the distance, the uneven burr of the bum snoring beneath them, along with maybe a paper rustle as he turned over on his bed of torn grocery sacks.

He focused, harder than he ever had before. He'd never been so aware of sound. "I hear someone walking down the sidewalk, and that bum snoring in the alley."

"Closer dan dat."

Bobby sighed in frustration. "I don't know!"

He searches for more to hear, finds nothing.

"Yes y' do. Find it or dis de last time I try t' teach you."

Bobby glared at him. "That's not fair!"

Gambit raised both eyebrows. "I be teachin' y' t' be a t'ief, boy. If y' can' pick up even de simplest t'ings, den dere ain' no point in tryin', neh?"

Bobby cursed and tried again, remembering things Storm has been teaching him. To be still and concentrate. To listen to the sounds of nature and to her Goddess. Then he began to hear the wind...

The wind. He could hear the wind. Softly blowing, rustling the newspapers scattered over the roof, whistling in the vent, making something bang down below them on the side of the building. He frowned, his brow furrowing in deeper concentration. "I hear something."

"What is it?"

"I... I'm not sure."

"Listen t' it, Bobby. Forget everyt'ing else and just listen t' dat one sound."

Bobby did, listening to the soft, intermittent banging.

"Listen t' de sound."

It was wood.

"Ignore everyt'ing else."

Heavy wood, banging softly on wood.

"It right below you..."

Wood against wood, knocking at the whim of the wind, right below them on the side of the building.

"You know what it be."

"It's a window," he said at last. He was surprised to discover he was covered in sweat. He normally never sweated, his powers keeping him cool. "It's an open window, banging against the frame when the wind hits it."

Remy grinned, looking inordinantly pleased. "Oui, it is. An' it's our way in."

They climbed down the edge of the building to get to the window, using a drain pipe to reach it.

"Why don't I just use my powers to get us down there?" Bobby called.

"Non! Y' never use ya powers on a job! Dat's de rule of the Guilds. Y' use y' powers an' y' put out a neon sign t' anybody on how t' identify y' an' to watch f' other mutant t'ieves."

"But, I thought the only mutant Guild was in New Orleans."

"Ain't talkin' just 'bout New Orleans."

Bobby chewed on that enigmatic statement as Gambit checked the window and hallway beyond, then slipped in. Nervously, he followed. This wasn't like one of his usual assignments. He didn't have the power of the X-Men if something went wrong this time, just one mysterious Cajun.

The hall inside the building wasn't much better than the roof. The walls below the single working bulb were dingy and grey, strewn with graffiti and dents. The floor was linoleum that sucked at their every step, cluttered with paper and garbage. Bobby looked down at a headless doll and shuddered.

"Hard to believe people actually live here."

"Sometimes y' got no choice. Sometimes y' t'ink y' got none." Remy flipped up the collar of his duster and walked down the hall. "Come on, de contact be waitin' f' us."

"Contact? Who?"

"Somebody I need t' talk t' t'night. He lives here."

Bobby heard a rat skuttle through the shadows and shuddered. A baby wailed plaintively in the distance. "What do I do?"

Remy stopped by a door midway down the hall. "You wait out here an' keep y' eyes open f' trouble. Dis guy not gonna be wantin' t' talk in front of a stranger. An' remember, no powers." He handed him something cold and heavy. "Use dis if y' have to. But yell f' me first."

Bobby looked down at the squat black gun he'd handed him. He'd only ever used one in the practices Cyclops insisted they all take. He'd never thought he'd ever have to carry one for real. "I didn't know you carried a gun."

The Cajun chuckled. "I carry two. I still got de ot'er one on me. Now be careful. Dis place ain' safe."

He knocked on the door three times, waited a moment, then knocked twice and stood back so whoever was inside could see him through the peephole. A few seconds later, the door opened and he vanished inside.

It was immediately a lot darker in the hall without him there and Bobby had to resist the urge to coat himself in a nice safe layer of ice. "Dis place ain' safe," he mimicked. "No shit, Sherlock."

Gambit was gone for only ten minutes. Ten minutes that seemed to last forever as the young mutant shivered in the hall and tried to think of Diedre. Anything that would keep him from getting out of there now. Maybe it was his imagination, but there was a malevolence in that place that he could almost feel. Did feel in fact. It was something evil and it was in the room with Gambit.

I knew he was nuts.

Finally, the door opened again and the Cajun reemerged. Bobby had a brief glimpse inside of a smoky room filled with shadows, but Gambit closed it before he could get a good look. Leaning back against the door, he lit a cigarette and puffed heavily on it.

"What happened in there?" Bobby asked uncertainly. The Cajun looked the same as always, but Bobby has the nagging suspicion that he was very disturbed by something. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what by though.

Gambit shrugged. "I asked some questions an' got some answers. Dat's all y' need t' know." He pushed away from the door and started heading back to the window.

"But-" Bobby gestured at the door. "Whoever you were talking to wasn't human, was it?"

The Cajun gave a dry laugh. "No more dan us an' probably less." He sat on the window and looked at him calmly. "Y' got any more questions?"

"Yeah. Why did we wait so long for a ten minute interview? Just to teach me to listen?"

"Dat's de way I learned it, homme." He ducked out the window.

Not wanting to be left alone there for even a moment, Bobby hurried after him. Why do I get the feeling that's not all of it? The more he thought about it though, the more he thought that the wait on the roof wasn't just to give him a lesson in listening.

It was for Remy to work up his nerve to go inside.

Once away from the building, the Cajun's step began to slow and he walked quietly by Bobby's side, smoking his cigarette.

"So," Bobby asked nonchalantly. "When are you planning to go back to the club?"

Remy grinned. "Y' mean, when am I plannin' t' take you?"

"Well, yeah. I've been working really hard, you know."

"Oui, dat's true. I take you soon, I promise." He wandered over to the side of the street, where two men were drinking beer and laughing. "But not t'night."

Without warning, he lashed out, driving his fist into the face of the first of the two men. He went down spitting teeth as Remy spun and roundhouse kicked the second as hard as he could.

"Jesus!" Bobby yelped. "What are you doing?!"

Remy left the two unconscious men and walked back to his side, continuing down the sidewalk as though nothing had happened. "Remember de woman we heard scream?"

"Yeah."

Well, dose were de two guys dat tried t' jump her."

Bobby gaped at him. "How do you know that?"

The same grin appeared on his face he always wore when he was being enigmatic. "Easy. I listened."

 

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