The Ante - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Lucia de’Medici
Last updated: 05/11/2007 10:19:38 PM

Chapter 14

Eleven fifty-two on a Thursday night in New Orleans is occasion for good business. Prime market time. The city watches, eyes heavy-lidded, though never somnolent. It watches, lurking just beyond the peripheral vision of those who remain unaware or untrained.

It watches. It hears every footfall. It notes every heavy breath. It can smell the tears beneath the steady patter of rain.

The girl kept her head bowed against the downpour; her makeup was running in a steady stream of black that she didn’t bother swiping at. She glowered at anyone who passed and gave her a second look.

There were two blocks worth of unseeing steps before she would cross over. The divide had been set for years, distinguished by those familiar with it by the in-built tracks that cut across the wide expanse of Canal Street - the St. Charles streetcar line.

One half the city for them; one half the city for the others.

Like Montagues and Capulets, their exchanges possessed the frequent, violent brevity that their treaties afforded. Peace is a commodity that can sometimes be bought, but more often than not, it can be revoked with the simplest of gestures, most often by the foolhardy and the impulsive.

That rare pact had been destroyed for many months now; those responsible had been punished accordingly. Evidently, it had not been enough.

"Follow her."

The words, spoken in a calm soprano, were noted by those present and agreed upon with little more than the calm assent of masks being pulled across skin.

They did.

---

"Shadowcat, do you have confirmation?"

"Negative," Kitty replied, her fingers drumming a steady rhythm over the laptop’s keyboard. Before her, a raised LCD display flickered rapidly - the images changing at the speed of her keystrokes. She adjusted the hanging prompt; its extension arm sagged a little so that the two screens bumped together whenever the jet hit turbulence.

"What’s the hold up?" Logan groused, leaning out of his seat to peer over her shoulder across the aisle. The flashing numeric codes, to him, were absolute gibberish, and after a moment he gave up, sinking back into his chair.

"Buckle up, Wolverine," Cyclops muttered from the cockpit, flicking several overhead switches. Beside him, Storm eased the jet into a gentle arc over the city of New Orleans.

Logan growled, rumbling an oath low in the back of his throat.

"I can get tossed out of this plane at this height and still live to tell the tale about the freefall, bub."

"Yes, but then Scott would feel responsible, and you know how much he loves cleaning. He’d make it his personal prerogative to scrape you off the street himself." Jean smiled, tapping him lightly on the shoulder.

"And he’d probably bring you home in a doggy bag," Iceman chimed in from beside her.

"Hey!" Scott complained from the front. "Do you mind? Control? Control! Over!" he shouted into his headset, pressing the microphone closer to his ear as he strained to hear.

Begrudgingly, Logan complied. "Just because you put it so nicely, Red," he tossed over his shoulder. "And knowing you, Popsicle, with your appetite? You’d mistake me for beef."

Bobby grimaced. "Loganburger, adamantium on the side."

Below, beneath the misty cover of rain, the city lights flickered dimly - creating an illuminated grid of moving automobiles across the network of roads. With the sentient, stationary presence of the surrounding buildings and residences the only landmarks visible though the haze, their descent would be difficult, especially if Louis Armstrong International didn’t give them clearance to land.

"Half-Pint?" Logan asked again, and Kitty looked up, blinking absently a moment before realizing she was being spoken to.

"Rogue hasn’t used her powers recently. Without a clear signature, I can’t get a lock on her," Kitty said, her face cast in the dull blue gleam of the computer screen propped on her lap. She adjusted the extended controls at eye-level, tugging on the floating monitor that protruded from the jet’s wall. Her eyes flicked between the two terminals intermittently, and her ponytail bobbed in time with her movements.

"Rogue hasn’t used her powers in a helluva long time, kid. Not willingly," he growled, referring to the Cajun’s indiscretion from a few days before. Somehow, he’d managed to get himself absorbed by Rogue — probably against Rogue’s better judgment, too, Logan concluded. "Doesn’t this heap have a better tracking device? Genetic signature, maybe?"

Cyclops harrumphed.

"In a city of this size, attempting to narrow in on one warm body is a near-impossibility. Cerebro’s mainframe is the most secure resource we have at this point," Storm murmured. "As it were, Cerebro’s tracking system is limited without something definitive to lock in on. The best we can gauge is that Rogue is within an area of approximately one hundred and fifty miles. She is here, Logan. It is just a matter of determining where."

"That’s at least half the city, Storm," Logan grumbled irritably.

"Can’t you, like, use your nose, Mr. Logan?" Kitty asked, looking up from the computers while her fingers kept working steadily over the keyboard. It was slightly disconcerting.

"Leave it to the resident bloodhound," he rumbled. "With this rain? There’s too much water on the ground. It wipes the trail clean. We’d be running into the sewers trying to sort out which way she went."

"What about..." Kurt began.

"Mystique?" Wolverine answered for him. "She has no scent. None at all. Can’t afford to waste time trying to track her."

"No mistakes," Scott agreed, flicking on the com radio and connecting with the airport. He winced, static filling the headset. "While I get through to these guys, you think you can take care of this, Storm?" he asked, squinting a little through the darkness.

"It would be my pleasure," she murmured in reply, her eyes shifting from a neutral brown into a swift, blizzard white in a matter of seconds.

Before them, the clouds cleared, parting like two heavy, velvet curtains. Grey thunderheads rolled backwards, elephantine and sluggish, to reveal a sky whose stars were smothered by light pollution from the city below.

"Mein gott." Kurt swallowed, his face pressed to the window. "I’d forgotten how busy it is, and it’s not even Mardi Gras."

"It is very beautiful," Colossus nodded, leaning over Kurt to share his view of the city.

"You’ve never been here before, Petey?" Kitty asked over her shoulder, her fingers still working furiously. "Not even, like, you know - when you were working with Gambit?"

"You mean, vhen I vos vorking for Magneto, do you not?"

Kitty ducked a little in her seat to hide her blush, her shoulders hunching.

"Yeah, I guess," she said, a little higher pitched than usual.

"There vos no need," he said simply. "Gambit has many connections in the city. He did not venture here himself during that time."

"But he has now," Logan grumbled. "Can you do a cross-search for Gumbo, kid?"

"Huh?" Kitty said, distractedly.

"Great time to think of your stomach," Bobby snickered, covering his face with his palm to squash the sound before Logan could round on him.

"I believe he means Gambit, Katja." Piotr smiled a little. In response, Kitty hunched lower in her seat, and blushed a furious shade of crimson.

"Umm, yeah. Ok. Fine. Gambit. Sure," she stammered.

"Keety?" Nightcrawler asked, frowning.

"I’m fine," she squeaked.

Next to her, Logan rolled his eyes.

"How did he communicate with his ’connections’?" he asked, leaning on his armrest and turning to Piotr, who was behind him and across the aisle from Jean and Bobby. He tugged at the fastenings on his harness irritably, though the sympathetic look Jean favored him with stilled his struggle a little.

"In the vay that ve do, I vould imagine. Telephone. Internet. Satellite broadcast."

"Secure lines." Kitty nodded. "I could hack the nearest databank," she offered.

"And risk an inter-state incident?" Scott snapped. "Not a chance. Hello? Control? This is aircraft X-eye-tango-niner. Requesting clearance to land. Over."

"He vos very private. Ve did not discuss such things openly," Colossus continued. "Such information creates... liabilities," he said stiffly.

Kitty swiveled in her seat, her mouth opened partially to console him, but Jean beat her to the punch.

"How is your sister, Piotr?" she asked, smiling politely.

"Illyana is vell," he replied, turning his attention back to the window. At the window, Nightcrawler’s expression darkened at the mention of family.

"Enough with the chit chat," Logan groused. "What do we know about Gambit? The guy’s gotta have a track record a mile long. Can he be traced?"

"It’s totally the same deal. Unless Cerebro picks up his bio signature when he, like, exerts himself -"

"Blows something up," Bobby supplied.

"Yeah - and well, he hasn’t really. There’s no way Cerebro could miss him if he did," Kitty answered.

"If you find one, you’ll find the other. Monitor them both, Shadowcat," Jean said. "In the meantime, maybe there’s something already on file that we can use to narrow the search area. Can we patch through to the mansion and get Tabby to transfer Gambit’s file?"

"Tabby?" Bobby squawked, sitting bolt upright in his seat. "Why not Amara, or Jubes, or... heck, even Jamie!"

"Tabitha is more than competent to handle a simple file transfer," Jean chastised lightly, patting Bobby on the wrist.

"You don’t have to deal with her, though," he answered. "Her attention span is totally non-existent. The last time I had to get her on a live link, she nuked half the War Room because I wasn’t responding to her quickly enough. It wasn’t even my fault that there’s a thirty-second delay with the satellite transmission!"

"Control? Hello, do you read?" Cyclops yelled into his headset. "Damnit!"

"Shall I continue circling the area?" Storm asked archly, raising an eyebrow.

"We are not touching down until we get clearance," Scott muttered. "The paperwork’ll be hell if we do."

At the back of the plane, Bobby groaned.

"Hey, Icecube."

"Here we go," Bobby rolled his eyes, already regretting his muffled sound of protest.

"Get a visual with Boom Boom," Logan grinned, an almost feral gleam in his eyes. "I bet she misses you already."

---

Her footfalls had faded; drowned out beneath the steady rush of water into the sewers, the seemingly endless rainfall, and the distant sound of passing cars. Remy heard her turn a corner, muffling a sob, but he did not follow. Not yet.

He stood before the ruins of the collapsed Voodoo Botanical, his hands slipped into the pockets of his trench coat, running his fingers absently over a pack of cards that offered him little comfort.

This was wrong.

This was all very, very wrong.

He should have known something was amiss the instant Tante Mattie had questioned him about their destination. He’d been too hasty, brushing it off as idle banter and turning the conversation in a direction that would pacify the healer, while trying to incite a reaction from Rogue.

"Stupide," he muttered absently, pushing the image of her clad in nothing but his boxers and a too-big tee shirt roughly from his mind. He could go back to the safe house and bury his face into those clothes, and he’d probably still smell her on them.

"De fuck would y’ do dat for, LeBeau?" he asked himself aloud.

He wanted to slap himself. He wanted her to slap him. That’d be easier, he reasoned; it’d be much easier to bear than the cold stare, the hollow expression, and the crinkle to her chin that indicated she was about to cry.

Remy had made hundreds of girls cry in his lifetime. He had watched even more fall into the circle of his arms, sobbing, and had used it to his advantage on more occasions than he could remember. Yet, the prospect of Rogue walking through the rain, alone, and mourning her own condition in her own particular way made his stomach take a downward plummet in the direction of his boots.

He sighed, pushing irritably at the hair hanging limply in his eyes. Small rivulets of water ran down the planes of his face, but he didn’t mind. The natural, constant heat of his mutation kept him comfortable despite the muggy weather.

As comfortable as could be, given the situation, he thought.

Tante had left him the note not more than a month ago, telling him specifically where to go, and he’d done so - not questioning in the slightest how or why she’d become privy to the information.

She’d looked out for him ever since Jean Luc had first taken him in. There had been no reason to question her about it as she only wished him the best, and like his usual, impetuous self, he’d gone right ahead and done it.

As if to prove the results, Remy flicked a card from beneath the cuff of his jacket, charged it, and sent it arcing over the ruins. It flared brightly a moment, a beacon that cast spindly shadows over the fallen timbers, and exploded - bathing the area in light.

Nothing left.

Especially not the stone - not under that wreckage.

"Absolument stupide," he said again, still not entirely reconciling the fact that he had made a horrible oversight.

His nerves prompted him to pull out his pack of cigarettes, one of which he popped into his mouth, lighting the tip and hunching over it as to not let the rain soak it through.

Tobacco tasted terrible when it got wet, though not nearly as bad as the bitter taint of guilt settling on his pallet.

Had he done this?

He didn’t remember. Ironic, really, since it seemed to be one of the few good things that had happened to him in the past year. He’d woken the morning after in his own bed, with Tante bustling about in the kitchen, nattering about Jean Luc’s latest petty irritancies. Remy remembered the sensation; his body humming contently - filled with the thrum of latent energy, but by no means aching as it once would have. The need for release was a secondary consideration. After he’d experimentally blown up one of Tante’s potted plants, painting the balcony of the Guild safe house with chlorophyll, he had come to realize that there may have been more to it than the old woman had promised. He had felt like a king, and that day the city had been his domain to rule over. The Guilds couldn’t touch him, though they were certainly doing a number on themselves.

Remy sighed, taking a drag and grimacing at the cold, mushy filter.

He hadn’t returned to the Botanica since. He had just assumed...

"Merde," he muttered, dashing the half-burnt, soggy cigarette to the ground.

This was his fault. Partially.

Just like it was her fault. Partially.

She’d been the first thing he’d thought of.

His mouth set in a thin line, Remy hunched his shoulders, stalking into the remains of the Botanica without concern for his safety. There was a chance, after all, that the safe remained intact. If that was the case, all he’d need to do was pop the combination and then find Rogue.

Rogue.

He stilled, a foot propped on the low ledge of brick that had once been the front wall, his spatial recognition working quickly. She hadn’t gone far, for which he was grateful. He’d track her easily after leaving her to her own thoughts for a while.

It wasn’t his style to chase after women. Best that she walked into him, he reasoned; chance meetings always proved more interesting. Remy smirked, though the expression faded just as quickly.

He wouldn’t take amusement in this at the expense of her feelings.

He owed her that much. The ironic thing was, seeing the destruction before him, he was almost compelled to go one step further than simply settling the debt and finishing the job. Almost, but what could he offer her? Himself? Absurd. He was worthless in comparison.

She’d be done with him the instant she had control.

That was why she’d shunned his advances, he mused. A slight twinge of bitterness laced the thought, making Remy grimace.

No reason to get attached. No reason to put any more on the table than there already was.

"Never bet more den y’ willing t’ lose," he repeated to himself, echoing the exact words he had told Rogue at the diner the day before. "Gambit’d do good t’ remember dat."

Remy peered around him, surveying the wreckage and instantly growing impatient with the inefficiency of his search. With a wan smile, he tapped two bare fingers against the wall that blocked his way further into the building - sending a sizzle of kinetic charge down its length and stepping to the side nimbly as it detonated.

"Not bad. A lil’ on de small side, but it’ll have t’ do," he murmured appreciatively, peering at the cleared path before him into the remains of the building. "As dey say," he hummed, gliding with protean grace through the debris, "it ain’t de size dat counts."

---

Her head down, hands fisted at her sides, Rogue stalked through the crowds from one street to another, barely mindful of the direction she took through the city.

She evaded other pedestrians automatically, skirting around both tourists and natives to the metropolis alike, entirely unapologetic when she cut them off. Each dodge, sidestep, and insincere, "excuse me" only served to anger her further.

The rain had calmed the smell somewhat, but the scent of stale beer and garbage clung to the corners, and beneath that, closer to her and stubbornly refusing to wash away with the steady downpour, the fading warmth of him.

Rogue walked faster, as if her quickened pace would not only serve to put Gambit behind her but the thought of his betrayal as well.

She didn’t know where she was going, and she didn’t care so long as he wasn’t within ten feet of her.

Rogue sniffed, sucking a rattling breath into her lungs and stepping in front of a car that was preparing to roll through the intersection. She ignored the blare of its horn and the subsequent curses that followed from the driver as he rolled down his window. She was crossing at a red light, and she didn’t care in the slightest if she got hit. A small part of her wished for exactly that - a brilliant, bright red and sticky end to her miserable existence.

They wouldn’t be able to revive her corpse if they brought her into a hospital. She’d put the first nurse who dared touch her skin into a coma.

Wouldn’t that be poetic justice?

There were no saviors for the likes of her. Whether she was living or dead, she was destined to fend for herself - and the instant she stopped fighting?

Rogue blew out a breath, walking even faster and crossing the wide expanse of Canal Street.

When she gave in to that stupid, craven desire to be something closer to normal? That idiotic idealism that somehow things would someday be all right, or that there would be someone else who had a genuine interest to help her without wanting something in return?

"Shit like this happens," she said to herself, wiping her wet hair back off her face and earning an odd look from a couple huddled beneath an umbrella a few feet away.

She had believed him. Worse, she had cautioned herself against it, and yet, here she was, soaked to the bone and climbing the wooden steps to the St. Charles streetcar doing the exact thing she’d been named for. Funny, she thought, how sometimes you can forget yourself so easily with the right distractions.

Gambit had certainly seen to that, she concluded with a resentful grimace.

Rogue did not notice the sky clearing rapidly overhead as she slumped into one of the damp trolley seats. The windows, steamed from the inside and dotted with rain on the outside, blocked her view of the street. Unfortunately, the streetcar’s clanging bell, or the rumble of the wheels over the tracks couldn’t drown out the sequence of thoughts in her head.

Had he deliberately kept that part of his memories from her? Had it been a set up? A ruse to bring her out this far for something else?

Remy had done it once before, and Rogue could not put it past him that he’d do it again.

She blamed herself for being naïve, but she blamed him for making her hope.

---

"Criss."

"Don’t swear so much, Emil."

"Eh bien, you see dat?"

"Oui. Je connais cette idiote n’importe où."

"What’s he doin’?"

"No idea. But y’ know Remy; whatever it is, it prolly ain’t good. He’s on dere side as is."

"Y’ see a girl anywhere?"

"Quoi?"

"When he got here yesterday, dere was a girl on de back of his bike. Y’ see her?"

"..."

"Henri?"

"Y’ eyes are younger den mine, Lapin. Look y’self."

"I don’t see - oh! Regarde! T’ree blocks down in de trench coat -"

"Eh! Y’ didn’t have t’ hit me! Mercy gonna see dat bruise an’ she’d gonna t’ink I was getting roughed up again by de Assassins, an’ y’ know what her temper’s like -"

"She be all like, ’Henri, if y’ wanted bruises like dem, all y’ had t’ do was ask me!’"

"Don’t make fun of m’ wife."

"She gonna chase after y’ wit’ a spoon again, too? Mercy’s turnin’ more inta Tante each day dat goes by, mon ami."

"Emil."

"Quoi?"

"Is dere a point t’ dis?"

"Ah - oui. ’Scuse. Look over dere - see de fille wit’ de hair like a moufette?"

"She’s got skunk hair?"

"White stripe. She look like a drowned skunk right now."

"Oui, I see her."

"Y’ tell m’ somet’in’, Henri: What’s Remy doin’ over dere, when dat girl’s over dere wit’ t’ree shadows?"

"Merde."

"Y’ see dem at least, y’ old fart old man."

"Lessgo."

"But what about Remy?"

"Dis between de Guilds."

"An’ he’s not part of dat?"

"Non, Emil. Jean Luc can’t have not’ing t’ do wit’ him. Remy’s on his own, a free agent. No implications, no more trouble."

"But -"

"Lessgo."

"But he’s family, Henri!"

"An’ dats why we gonna take care o’ dem t’ree Assassins followin’ de skirt wit’out Remy findin’ out."

"Oh."

"Quoi?"

"I just don’ see why -"

"Dey don’t want her, Emil! If dey know dat Remy’s back, an’ she’s with him, de Assassins won’t go straight f’ him. Whaddya t’ink Belle would do? She take out de knees before taking off de head."

"She’d do dat?"

"..."

"Mmm. Yeah. Belle would. Lessgo, old man."

---

The St. Charles Streetcar ground and clattered to a halt, old iron rattling against old iron in the midst of an avenue where grasses grew between the fissures in the pavement. The air inside the car, as it settled, carried with it the heady bouquet and regal splendor of the Garden District’s nocturnal perfume, dampened with the rain-soaked humidity.

Rogue slid from the worn wooden bench before the thick scent of bougainvillea and night-blooming jasmine from outside could infiltrate the sodden-smelling streetcar.

This was the end of the line, in more ways than one. She wanted to enjoy the silence, punctuated only by the hesitant warble of cicadas, before she left the city.

She would leave, she decided, and soon. There was nothing for her here except the reminder that Gambit had not changed in the year that he hadn’t darkened her doorstep.

She shut her eyes briefly, trying to crush the accompanying sadness that came with her resolve.

"Are you getting off, or what?" the conductor called. Rogue couldn’t even muster the disdainfulness to scowl at him properly.

Resignedly, she stood, stalking to the back of the car, and dismounted, her feet moving of their own accord while the rest of her body followed without thought.

Another time, under different circumstances, she would have enjoyed the walk through the old neighborhood. The surrounding mansions, their gardens bursting with thick, waxen leaves and their walls strong beneath the onslaught of creepers and ivy, stood stoically against the backdrop of a clear night sky. The Spanish, Italianate, and Victorian villas were nothing compared to the Institute; but nonetheless, they possessed their own distinctive, elegant flavor that even she could appreciate.

Those houses were fit for the stuff of novels. Smiling sadly, she turned on the spot, looking for some indicator of where she was. At the corner, she could barely see the ironwork of a street sign declaring that she was at the corner of Third and St. Charles.

Rogue nearly chuckled as she began walking, grateful for the distraction, no matter how small.

When she was younger, and Anne Rice had still held some appeal, she had read the stories that revolved around a mansion in this area. The house on First Street had been the setting for a haunting, unraveling around characters who had been deceived by their own blood. The Mayfair witches had been cursed, and for that she empathized with them instantly. Their world was their own, though they walked with others who couldn’t possibly begin to understand them.

It had stopped raining, she noted absently.

She stepped lightly over the roots of the ancient oak trees that surged upwards through the sidewalk, breaking the concrete in messy hillocks. Idly trailing her gloved fingers across the imperfections in their faces, Rogue tried to imagine the feel of them - the damp, gnarled bark taunting her with each light press of her fingers.

She no longer wanted to touch them, she thought listlessly, not for real.

If you didn’t want something so bad, it couldn’t hurt you when you didn’t get it.

It was easier to feign indifference, to be scornful, turn up her nose and sniff at such an innocent, self-indulgent past time. She didn’t need to touch. She didn’t need to feel. She was the Rogue, and she would always be the same: dangerous.

Turning the corner of Washington, Rogue’s path ended abruptly. At least half the block ahead of her had been barred with police tape that read, "Police Line - Do Not Cross." The flimsy, yellow ribbon cordoned off a massive Victorian mansion and most of the street surrounding it.

Officers stood sentry around the perimeter, keeping a small crowd of gathered onlookers at a safe distance to prevent contaminating any possible evidence that could be found.

Rogue suspected the crime, whatever it was, had to be serious to warrant a half-dozen police cars and twice the number in special skills units bustling over the property.

"Keep moving, missy," a particularly fat, balding policeman cautioned her. Rogue noticed his thick fingers, the hairy knuckle of his thumb sticking into a belt loop, and the one meaty palm resting on his nightstick.

"What happened?" she asked, despite his warning.

The officer’s expression remained placid as he approached her, the polished tips of his shoes glinting beneath the golden gleam of the streetlights. He sniffed. "Girl like you shouldn’t be concerned."

His gaze wavered, flickered almost. Shifty old man with prematurely clogged arteries, she wagered.

"Ah’m not," she retorted.

"Then move along," he growled, muttering under his breath, "Kids these days."

Slowly, Rogue curled her lip at him in disdain. Debating whether she could flip him off and still walk away unscathed, she stalked off in the opposite direction.

Casting one last glance over her shoulder, she paused. Strange, she thought, casting one last look at the officer before he turned his back to her. Perhaps it had only been a trick of the light; it was probably the light reflecting off his bald head, she thought maliciously.

For a moment, she thought she had seen a strange, yellow cast to his eyes.

---

Perched atop a building tall enough to see the expanse of the city, Gambit surveyed the streets below with a grin that nearly split his face.

He rubbed his jaw, watching with interest as the streetcar turned a corner from Canal onto St. Charles, continuing its direct path into the well-to-do part of the city.

Chuckling to himself, he leaned an arm across a bent knee - his foot propped up against the lip of the complex’s concrete roof.

Overhead, the clouds had receded far too quickly to be natural. There was only one explanation that he could think of, which meant he needed to find Rogue and tuck her away someplace safe for the night.

The cavalry had arrived.

Half of it, anyway.

Finally, he thought as he tossed himself soundly from the roof and plummeted to the next ledge with the litheness of a falcon diving for its prey, things were turning in his favor.

One less problem to deal with was one less headache.

He landed nimbly, bouncing off the balls of his feet and strolling to the next ledge. He leapt once again - twisting mid-air so that when his feet touched the ground for the second time, Gambit was already sprinting towards his bike.

---

Rogue sucked in a breath, finally taking in her surroundings. Her feet had led her to this place without direction, and so, trailing her gloved fingers over the crumbling exterior of the whitewashed perimeter wall, she finally came to stand before the iron gates.

The words, "Lafayette no. 1" decorated the archway of the old cemetery. Beyond, only the heavy, peaked roofs of the aboveground crypts loomed - silent and watchful, nearly skeletal in their various states of ruin. Row upon row they stood; they were houses for the dead, the place of spirits, a sanctuary for the haunted.

Rogue smiled, hesitating only a moment before gripping the padlocked, iron bars of the gate and vaulting over. She landed with a muted thud on the other side, her coat brushing, but not catching, the spiked tops of the ironwork.

Overhead the moon illuminated the tombs, but only just. Of the squat mausoleums, only the older, battered, bone-white structures cast some luminance with the amber glow of the streetlights beyond the overhanging oak trees that bordered the cemetery. Many had fallen to ruin over the years — the burial places of Civil War soldiers and wealthy aristocrats offering their pristine splendor so easily to the elements.

Still, the long shadows between the rows of leaning sanctuaries bestowed to the city of the dead its ethereal romance.

Rogue smiled a little; Remy was right. She was just a little bit morbid when it came to appreciating certain things.

Around her, the sepulchers loomed, large and silent, leaning against one another in the places where their foundations could no longer support their bulk. Twisting in labyrinthine rows that conferred little direction, Rogue moved silently among them, appreciating their chilled welcome. The stooped and pitted ornamental statuary gazed back at her forlornly, though no cherubim moved, and she recognized no name on the markers. Soon, she gave up looking at all and simply walked among the tombs, thankful for their indifferent acceptance of her presence.

"S’ beautiful, non?"

Rogue snapped her head around, searching for the man to go with the disembodied voice.

"Don’t come out here much anymore," Gambit continued. "Dese cemeteries are good f’ training de younger members of de Guild, but f’ Master T’ieves? Gets a lil’ old."

"Where are ya?" Rogue snapped, turning on the spot. Nothing moved from the shadows, and the narrow enclaves between the mausoleums did not reveal the telltale gleam of red that would identify where he stood.

"De tourists, dey t’ink dese places are haunted, so dey come out here alone wit’ fat wallets and expensive cameras and dere candles and dey try t’ commune wit’ de dead." He sighed, and Rogue looked up. She barely made out the shape of his boots, crossed at the ankles, from where Gambit lay comfortably atop a nearby tomb. He appeared to be looking at the stars. "S’ funny, if de tilling’s good - if de apprentice’s quiet enough - de tourists leave t’inking dey’ve been robbed by ghosts." He chuckled.

"So Ah take it ya can disappear just as quickly as ya show up?" she snapped.

"Chérie," he murmured, "y’ don’t want m’ t’ leave so soon. S’ not safe out here."

"Ah can take care of myself," she snarled, marching up to the tomb and grabbing onto the hem of his trench coat that hung over the wall. With one forceful yank, she pulled him over the side.

Remy, twisting around to land on his feet and hands, peered up at her through his fringe, a small smile playing around his mouth.

Rogue towered over him, fists clenching and unclenching at her sides. "Ah’m done," she hissed. "This," she gestured between them, "is done."

"I understand that y’ upset," he began, but Rogue cut him off.

"Ya don’t understand anything," she said in a low, even tone. "Whatever ya think ya know about me, whatever ya learned, whatever ya saw don’t mean shit. There was one important detail ya neglected all this time, Remy - and it’s real simple, so let me see if Ah can get it lodged into that thick skull of yours."

He stood to full height, and Rogue had to yank him bank down to her level by his lapels. She hissed into his face, "Ya can break my trust, but ya can’t break me."

Gingerly, Remy slipped his hands around her wrists, and up the back of her hands, his fingers lacing over hers.

"Rogue," he murmured, taking a calm step closer so that her elbows were the only things separating them.

Rogue pulled back quickly as if scalded by the tender gesture.

"Not again," she said warningly. "It’s done. Ya done enough." She shook her head. "Ya lost it, Cajun." Laughing bitterly, she added, "Ya blew it up for heaven’s sake!"

"I didn’t know -" he said calmly.

"Bullshit!" she yelled. "Ya so full of it that Ah bet ya can’t even tell when what yo’ sayin’ is one of yo’ half-baked, glossed-over lies or the truth anymore, and don’t even consider trying ta tell me ya don’t remember what happened." She tapped her temple viciously. "It’s all up here. It cuts off right at the most important part, don’t it?" She sneered. "How fitting."

"Dere’s not’ing after. I blacked out," he tried to reason.

"Right, and Ah’m the Queen of England."

"Y’ de Queen o’ somet’ing all right," he returned slyly, pulling out his pack of cards. He drew his knuckles across them, halving the deck and brandishing two Queens with a flourish. The rest of them disappeared with little more than a whisper. "De question is, which one would y’ rather be?"

Rogue looked between the Queen of Spades in his left hand and the Queen of Hearts in his right, a small, sardonic smile curving her lips.

"Neither."

With that, Rogue turned, stalking away down the row.

"Sometimes y’ don’t get de choice, Rogue," he called after her. Rogue took a corner, turning down another path that led into the deeper shadows of the cemetery. "Sometimes all y’ get is chance - y’ either take it or y’ don’t. Y’ live wit’ de consequences."

"And we all know exactly what yo’ about, don’t we?" she muttered under her breath.

"Non," he said from her left, leaning against a tomb nonchalantly. How had he gotten there so quickly? "Why don’t y’ tell m’?"

"Ya tried ta play me again! Ya planted that memory so Ah’d think that maybe Ah had a ’chance’ - that maybe whatever ya gone and done to yo’self would work for me too," she spat accusingly.

"Y’ absorbed me all on y’ own," he shot back. "I didn’t force y’ t’ come out here."

"It was damned close, though. Turning on the charm without telling me that was part of your mutation? What the hell, Remy? That’s coercion!" she cried.

"Y’ took m’ hand because y’ wanted t’," he countered. "Didn’t have nothin’ t’ do with dat."

"Then ya worked the angles and exploited the one thing Ah really want and can’t ever have!" She froze, horrified at the admission. "Leave me alone," she said coldly, turning on her heel and walking away from him once again.

"Dat de only t’ing dat’s bothering y’?" He laughed. He laughed. Rogue fought back the sudden desire to kick something. "Y’ lying t’ y’self, den, because y’ and I both know that there are a few t’ings y’ want dat y’ aren’t fessin’ up t’. More importantly, y’ have it, Rogue - s’ all yours. Y’ just gotta take it."

"You are so presumptuous!" she bellowed behind her, turning and finding the spot he’d been standing in empty. "Shit!" she snapped, pivoting.

"Saying de t’ings you can’t isn’t presumption," he murmured from overhead. Rogue swiveled, looking up into the red gleam of his gaze. He’d taken to the tops of the tombs again, crouching just over her like a large gargoyle would on the eaves of a church. "S’ accurate observation."

Rogue bristled.

"Observe this, swamp rat." Grinning sarcastically, she held up a fist, extending her middle finger.

"S’ dat an invitation?" he called as Rogue slid into the narrow space offered by two large, badly beaten mausoleums. She padded over the uneven slabs of marble separating the two, and emerged on the other side.

"It’s an invitation only if ya feel like making a home for yo’self in one of these crypts," she muttered, a twinge of resentment bubbling to the surface which she swallowed down.

"I checked it out, Rogue - de Botanica," he called from somewhere behind her.

"Ah don’t care!" she yelled, quickening her step.

"Y’ know, even wit’ dat memory, y’ shoulda known dat it’s not like I stole de stone. De rock was kept in a safe, inside a cabinet, in de Botanica by Maman Brigitte. I woke up in m’ apartment de next day not remembering a damn t’ing. Y’ know why?"

"Maybe cause it doesn’t exist! Maybe yo’ stupid, vivid imagination messed with my head when Ah absorbed ya!" she yelled. "Maybe ya been playin’ tricks on me since the very beginning, just like ya play with those damned cards!"

"Non, chére - de stone exists."

Rogue stopped dead, turning and scouring the shadows for his face. He didn’t emerge, and for a moment, it seemed as if Gambit’s hushed voice came from everywhere - sliding around her, sinuous and melodic in the gloom.

Her stomach plummeted, and the sense of loss settled on her once again.

"Ah saw the building, Remy," she said, defeated, certain he’d hear her anyway. "Ah was standing right next ta ya."

"I asked f’ a little faith. Y’ shoulda waited... f’ me." He sounded strained.

"Ah did," Rogue replied heavily, moving to the nearest stone entablature and resting her shoulders against it. With Remy cloaked in the surrounding darkness, if anyone were to see her at that moment, it’d appear very much as if she were speaking with a phantom. She smiled a little at that, sadly. "Ah waited a year."

Silence returned to her, heavy and uncomfortable. Rogue closed her eyes, too ashamed to even think of the implications of what she’d just told him.

"An’ two minutes more woulda killed y’?"

Rogue smiled sadly, feeling the warmth of his breath against the shell of her ear as he slid next to her.

Gently, with the lightest touch, his fingers pressed into the palm of her hand.

"We gonna need dat," he said after a moment, his fingers slipping away from her reluctantly. "De safe was empty."

Slowly, Rogue opened her eyes, looking down at the card cupped tremulously between her knuckles.

The Queen of Hearts.

---

Post Script:

- Graveyard Shift: (Gambling, general) One of the three shifts in a 24-hour card room or casino, the shift between swing and day. Graveyard shift usually starts anywhere between midnight and 2 am and ends eight hours later.

- The First Street House (Brevard House - 1857): Referencing the "Lives of the Mayfair Witches" and "The Vampire Chronicles" by Anne Rice. It’s Greek Revival-Italianate, and the former home of the writer. (It’s also achingly gorgeous.)

Translations:

Fille: girl

Oui. Je connais cette idiote n’importe où.: Yes. I’d know that idiot anywhere.

Merde: shit

Mon ami: My friend

Moufette: skunk

Quoi: What

Regarde: Look

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