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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
 
 
 

If Ever - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Painted Eyes
Last updated: 01/02/2007 02:01:11 AM

Chapter 1

"Oh ..." Jean stopped right in the middle of the dance floor and Logan jolted to a halt beside her, recognizing the distant look, the vertical line between her delicate brows. Something, someone, had caught her psychic attention.

** Chaos, darkness, a resolution that took her breath away ... pain old and new combining into an irriesistable force, limits being reached and overwhelmed ... A fierce and calmly hysterical need to end it ** gone in a flare of uncertainty.

"Gumbo ticklin' yer skull, Red?" Powerful arms steadying her easily, glad of the opportunity.

Her wan smile was all the answer he needed and he shook his head with a snort. "Good at that, ain't he? 'nother thing nobody ever knew 'bout him. Chh - " A wry glance took in his team-mates scattered around the bar, "Lookit 'em, everybody tryin' so hard to forget about 'im they can't think of nothin' else."

"And he's broadcasting, I never knew he could at this distance ... " She sighed, leaned closer into his casual embrace and let him move her back into the dance, still bothered enough by the mental glimpse that Logan figured meant Gambit had to be pretty miserable about now.

"I never thought I'd see the day ..." She sighed.

"Yeah, you've said that plenty the last few months ... none of us ever thought th' Cajun'd been tangled up with Sinister for so long, either, or had anything t'do with the Morlock massacre ..."

No condemnation in his gravely voice, she noted, only a sort of gruff disappointment not to have been trusted when he, among them all, had made no bones about liking Gambit.

To Logan's way of thinking, that the Cajun had secrets and was evasive or outright refused to explain his wheres or whys was not enough reason for mistrust, they were his habits as well and he respected another's right to them. Boy had a fearlessly balls-out way of fighting Logan appreciated, and a healthy as well as durable gusto for pleasures both high and low, they'd closed more than one bar together in some very out of the way places; kid could hold his own anywhere. Hell, he'd survived the Antarctic without much more than the pants covering his ass!

"They don't understand why the Professor allowed him back." Jean's luminous green eyes betrayed a similar confusion.

"And I bet he ain't explainin' it, either." Jean smelled like a woman should and Logan inhaled appreciatively.

"No, not really." Disturbed by that herself. "Scott was so sure the Professor wouldn't want to risk having him at the mansion that he'd already made arrangements to place him in a local rehabilitation facility. Imagine his consternation when the Professor was so insistent that Gambit stay; my poor husband nearly tore his hair out trying to stay calm on the phone."

"Consternation ... yeh, that's how I'd describe it." A chesty rumble dismissed Scott's anger and even enjoyed it, but Jean knew her mate's angry bewilderment was genuine, and his concerns both justified and unanimously shared. Gambit was more than the traitorous organizer of the Morlock Massacre, he was a world-renowned and admittedly amoral Master Thief, to say nothing of being a dangerously volatile alpha class mutant harboring unrevealed powers. His association with Sinister could only endanger them and their cause.

He'd come back to them comatose, emaciated and brutalized but brought out of the frozen land by a research team with one member who had recognized him and sympathized with their cause. The Professor had insisted he be taken in, cajoled them into a sort of truce that involved a litany of sins forgiven among them and a host of unknowns, including the fact that Gambit's dealings with Sinister, for all Rogue had revealed, had taken place long before he'd become an X-Man. Gambit had worked diligently and effectively as a member of their team, and Xavier would not allow any of them to be abandoned or cast based out on evidence - this had infuriated Rogue beyond endurance - rendered suspect by frustrated passions. They could not be precipitous, he demanded of them, but must weigh and consider for at least three months before any tribunal would be convened.

What Xavier had not revealed was that Sinister had been a breath behind Gambit all the way back to Westchester, having gone to Antarctica after his 'property' with an unholy dedication that intimated his work was suffering the lack of something only the Acadian could provide. Surely Sinister was furious to have been beaten to the punch by meddling mortals, thwarted in his scheme to get Gambit back in such a sorry state that he could be rendered obedient without risk. The last time he'd tried to 'reclaim' him, Gambit had been at peak strength and had destroyed most of a very large complex and years of Sinister's experimental work in irreplaceable equipment and caches of genetic material.

Although Cerebro now rendered Sinister's tesseracts useless on the mansion grounds, Xavier sensed Sinister or his minions monitoring the estate, awaiting any chance to get his hands on Gambit. *That* Xavier intended to avoid at all costs; Sinister's attentions only made him more certain that their enigmatic and mercurial Cajun possessed resources more profound than perhaps even he knew himself. Xavier wished he could be as certain of what he would have to do if Gambit proved to be Sinister's irrevocably, he'd never been able to penetrate his mind and wasn't sure which of them would break first if he made an all-out attempt.

Rogue had fled that same day, and Cerebro had lost her for a month until she called to say she would not be returning as long as the traitor remained, and that she'd found a very changed Magneto - now Joseph.

This unlikely pairing still worried Jean; Rogue and Remy had finally been able to express the physical passion they'd been so long denied and, by Henry's memories from that night, they had done so long and with great abandon. But that once might be all they would ever have, and that could only make Rogue's sense of grief and betrayal even more profound. Rogue did not love lightly, it had taken Gambit a very long time to woo and wheedle his way into her heart, and the loss of that hard-won trust now was overwhelming to her. The Professor had tried to help in the days after the trial when Rogue had been locked in a strange mute madness of fury and inconsolable sorrow, but Gambit's memories in her mind were maniacally incomplete and chaotic, keeping her in a state of panicked flux Jean couldn't bear to feel for long. Memories washing up that were not hers, cruelties suffered and inflicted that she had never perpetrated herself but suffered for, longings too painful ...

The first month Gambit had been back it had been easy to go along with the Professor's insistent command because their outlaw thief had been unconscious and confined to the MedLab. Hank was the only one who saw him other than the Professor and Gambit didn't talk, when he could, even to him. Gambit had stolen out of the MedLab the moment he could get out under his own power undetected, and then kept to his room and the shadows, first because he was afraid of their reactions and then because this fear was validated as most of them cornered him at one time or another to voice their low opinions and warnings. Even Jean had done so, and he'd never looked at her or said a word, only stood with his head down and his eyes closed taking every word like blows he had coming. For the last six weeks he'd been seen only late at night, but they could still all feel him like a constant irritant in the air itself.

She glanced at her husband, at her teammates scattered around Harry's, still early and just beginning to relax. The arguments had not abated, half the team was still as ready as Scott was to throw him out and only Hank's strangely subdued defense of his duties as a doctor prevented it - his patient needed care and that was all his oath and his duty required. Gambit had always been an enigma to Henry, an impossibly frustrating patient, but having seen the Cajun's peculiar introverted courage time and again, he couldn't bring himself to condemn with the certainty so many of the others did. Jean sensed that their attitudes, and his own, confused him, and that still confused her.

Logan snorted, "Red, half of them don't understand why Chuck let him join the team in the first place, 'cept Ro wouldn't be parted from him."

"I know. I admit to being among that half, he's been divisive from the first. Arrogant and unreliable, insufferably smug ... to say nothing of making most of the women feel like they were naked half the time, how can someone so young be so thoroughly lecherous?"

Logan laughed and shook his head; the Cajun had an honest craving for pleasures - particularly women - that nothing would ever cure, loved 'em in every shape and size and color and style. This, to Logan's way of thinking, made his choice of Rogue uncharacteristically masochistic, but he'd come to be convinced of his sincerity.

"Chuck told you to look past the obvious, didn't he?"

She flushed hotly to realize the Professor's sardonic advice indeed reiterated Logan's, if in more elegant terms: "Pay attention to the true dynamics rather than your emotional responses to it." But she hadn't been able to do that when her husband was being driven to distraction by the constant irritant Gambit so loved to be. Coming and going whenever he liked without a word of permission or excuse, showing up late if at all, pursuing debauchery with a dedication Scott wished he'd apply to training, hung over and scoffing at Scott's lectures, insolent in posture and smart-ass mouth and reckless deed until all of them periodically wanted to strangle him as badly as Scott did.

"I asked the Professor how Scott could be an effective leader when Gambit remained so unpredictable." She'd felt as childish in his serene regard as she did now in Logan's.

"Lemme guess what 'e said - conflict ain't predictable n' a leader has t'be able to adjust for it to advantage. Yer link with Scott is so strong that his feelin's sometimes become yours n' Brainiac knows that, too." One shaggy eyebrow tilted, "But me, I think you like Gambit."

Grudgingly, Jean had to admit that she did, in an exasperated and slightly maternal way. Well, not entirely maternal, she wasn't immune to his roguish charm nor did her married status stop him from flirting outrageously with her, though she suspected he did it just to fluster her and infuriate Scott. She slanted a searching look at her old friend, sensing not for the first time how much more Logan comprehended in his rough primal way about them, about Professor Xavier, than he ever let on.

One knotted shoulder rolled at her unasked question, "Always said the boy was way more than anybody knew. Way moren' he ever let anybody see. Figgered Chuckie had t'know that, too, observant guy that he is."

"You said he was way more *dangerous* than anybody knew, Logan, that's what you said."

"Yeah, that's what I said. But I'm an evolvin' critter ..." With a toothy half-grin in rueful reference to his ongoing battle with his more feral nature. "Learnt t'stop myself before I gutted th'little shit n' noticed some things after awhile. Like how especially annoyin' he always managed t'be when everybody was really uptight, like before an op."

"An unfortunate tendency, yes, he can be particularly irritating before battle. I attribute it to nerves."

"Yeah, nerves - but not his, he don't care." About dying, and Jean felt a cold nervousness to know how in harmony with that Logan was.

"But Logan, you have a healing factor and Gambit does not."

His dark eyes were significant but he didn't voice the obvious answer that made her shiver.

"Bein' an ... over-energized sort myself, I understand how much good blowin' off a little steam can do for a soldier. Clears the head, y'know? Lets ya focus on the job and not the jitters. If that pretty boy scarred, he'd've been wearin' some I gave 'im myself in my more pissy moods, n' he never seemed t'hold a grudge. Never noticed how often he ends up timely feuding with one half of a two-party mad?" A dark sparkle in his eye narrowed around the smoke from the stub of cigar in his big white teeth, regarding her with that look he got when he was thinking how dense telepaths could be.

"Most times they end up madder at him than each other ... " Leading her until her lovely eyes widened incredulously, following him.

"You mean you think he lets us use him as a vent for our negative emotions and stresses? Deflects our anger at each other to himself?"

"Ah, the light dawns; you sensitive types can be pretty slow. Hypes the team before battle n' reinforces it sort of at his own expense, but nobody can seem to hold a mad at him, so ..."

"I thought he did it just to deflect us from questioning him, protecting his secrets ..." That there had been an unselfish motive had never occurred to Jean and it started things shifting in her mind.

"Works that way too." Logan admitted, "Gumbo c'n drive a saint to violence if they try t'pry where he don't want nobody t'go. Don't get me wrong, sometimes he just gets a charge outta pissin' us off, individually or all together. Cranks 'im, twisted little prick, got a nasty streak a mile wide." But with a smile that was almost affectionate.

"Well, why didn't you ever say anything about this? Why did you let us keep on thinking he was the most self-involved little putz in the world for picking fights at the worst possible times?"

"Cause maybe it wouldna worked no more if I had. And because I got no idea if he knows he's doin' it, darlin', never struck me as bein' particularly altruistic. Might just be the empathy thing pickin' up on feelings getting too explosive to do anyone any good and just naturally providin' a blowhole - us bein' in better fightin' trim keeps his pretty ass alive, too..."

Did Gambit, indeed, distract with annoyance and anger the same way he distracted with sensuality? A reverse empathy? Before Antarctica, he'd never seemed to care what bad feelings or blame came his way, who was pissed at him or how much, and truthfully Logan was right, until recently no one really stayed mad at him for long, it just sort of ... got forgotten - as Gambit knew it would?

Jean's telepathic powers required more of her than simple acceptance of the possibilities Logan raised, and her mind raced on to a compelling and wholly logical extrapolation of these new factors on the psychic level - especially if Gambit himself was unaware of it. The possibility that there might be a reverse manifestation of the charm power he had so little control over put all recent history in an entirely new light. Pieces of the puzzle she'd been subconsciously worrying at for weeks re-shuffled into a most disturbing configuration.

Logan studied her classically beautiful face, not interrupting, enjoying her lissome body against him in as platonic a way as he could.

Jean examined her memories ... Gambit was immature, reckless, selfish, moody, infuriating, a prideful libertine ... but he could make her laugh and his antics could warm her heart. More than once she'd been grateful to be reminded in his boyish appetites for life's ephemeral pleasures that there -was- life outside struggle and loss, pleasures he made it sinful to ignore. Moments came to her as if breaking free of some suppressive instinct - the child-like glee to have pulled off a clever trick on someone, the ferocity of his joy over things so simple as the wind through his hair on that impossibly fast Harley, or teasing a smile out of an unhappy woman, being elbow deep in a mess of crawfish on a picnic table. Once, she'd found him ruining the newly-waxed dining room floor by sliding across it in his stocking feet with a cigarette clenched in his teeth and a beer bottle in one upraised hand slopping suds as he went, the world his playpen.

Just as it occurred to her to wonder how she had forgotten these things, another errant sending came ... the rooftop ... the rooftop ...

"My God ..." Murmured like blood between her lips and she stopped again, stiffly this time, paling with a certainty she could neither ignore nor share. She let her hand rest on Logan's broad burly shoulder, so strong, so solidly in this world, and drew strength from him as she always had. Anxious eyes looked to Scott and Warren at the pool table, Betsy seemingly oblivious to the psychic touch that had just jolted Jean, laughing as they did not laugh at home anymore. Jubilee bopping on the other side of the floor with Bobby, all so willing to believe the worst of Gambit, all eager to shed him from our lives. Too eager? Too willing?

 

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