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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 10

A sudden slicing vision of Remy's long dark form draped intimately across her own body jolted Jean from her reverie, from a dark distance seeing them at the back of the chamber. Remy's jeans-clad leg over and between hers, a dizzying cut to one dark long-fingered hand fanned over her bare hip under the open waist of her skirt and unmistakable marks marring her perfect skin - who? Then only a blinding redness.

Scott did not hear her protesting cry or feel her mind leaping to him in the rage combusting his every sense, he had eyes only for Remy LeBeau's sinuous torso and big boned limbs overlaying the pale soft grace of his wife, Remy LeBeau's thieving hands touching her with an intimacy no one but him had a right to. Remy LeBeau, traitor, seducer ... A fistful of long hair at the back of his head ripped the surprised Cajun off her, dragged him upright stumbling backwards on his heels and slammed him into the metal wall so hard it audibly knocked the breath out of him.

"Oh, isn't this a pretty sight ..."

Psylocke's cold drawl and a sweeping glance at the intent in all their eyes iced Jean's blood, she lifted her arm to free it from Psylocke's grasp and startlement turned to alarm as she sensed someone else not in the room yet powerfully among them. Before she could intercede and shield Remy or voice a single word of explanation, Psylocke struck and Jean cried out at the sharp invasion of the psychic knife, not mortal but plainly meant to incapacitate. Faintly she heard Remy's voice raised in protest, cut off short as the joint of Warren's wing smashed into his chest and sent him hard back into the wall he'd come off of in her defense. Darkness threatened, helplessness, Jean twitched at Psylocke's feet fighting to remain conscious at least ...

Remy felt the dull grind of something giving way in his chest at the impact of Warren's wing, and in the same moment he saw Jean fall, in the same moment he felt ...* wha' dat? *

He had no time to wonder further, too off-balanced by surprise and exhaustion to stop Scott and no will to, either, grateful he hadn't hit him with his optic blasts and was settling for his fists. One of which smashed into his temple with blinding force, his arms jerked up defensively, hands glowing softly. All he had on was his jeans and the room was bare admantium, too resistant to charging and nothing else at hand - if he even could. God he didn't want to hurt them! But Remy LeBeau was what he was, hard to catch and harder to hold even taken unaware, and with his peculiar graceful agility he rip-slithered out of Scott's grip and vaulted over his head to get behind them. Against the far wall he steadied himself defensively low, frantic to see whether Jean was alright and then discover what had driven them here in so angry a mood ... it couldn't be him, he was nearly at peace and couldn't be projecting this... something at work other than him, then and even to consider it frightened him like nothing else could. There would never be a moment that the thought of being in Sinister's hands wouldn't unman him. If he could make the door ...

"Scott!" Neither ears nor heart heard his wife imploring him to reason, unsteady, but her mind growing more and more certain of what was provoking this madness. Remy was exerting every bit of influence he could and it only made them pause, glaring and hands fisted, every one.

Remy was edging toward the door consciously deploying his charm to soothe the blazing tempers until he could find a way to either get out of the room or defend himself. Psylocke had only incapacitated Jean, and though the urge to fry the beautiful Ninja to a cinder where she stood for it was strong, both he and Jean were dressed and no one could know for sure that they'd been intimate - which meant there was still an out for a silver-tongued devil if he could only settle them enough ...

"Don't you try that with us!" Psylocke snarled suddenly, repelling the delicate tendrils of his persuasion with enough force to make him gasp and clutch his head, tasting copper in the back of his throat. *Somet'in be wrong here ...*

"I could make you forget how to breathe, worm..." Her voice like silk rending over a honed edge; "And I will if you ever touch me again." Deadly willing and he did not doubt her. "You've betrayed us at every turn - " Her look encompassed her companions, urging them. "It's time for us to shed this parasite!" They all started to move at once.

Remy bolted for the door and had his feet taken out from under him on a skin of ice Bobby sent slithering after him, but he was quicker and more agile than that and regained both feet and direction. Flechettes from Warren's wings spiked into the wall by his head, nicking him in the side, in the face, sliced deep across one palm as he flung his hands up to protect himself. Seven of them buried themselves an inch from his face when he finally stopped short, took a swinging lock of his hair neat as a razor. *Okay. Can't run, one option down. * Their expressions were grimly determined and he shook his head to clear the blood from a cut through one eyebrow, a quick touch told him his nose was bleeding too ... Not pullin' any punches here, were they. He had no choice but to risk the vulnerable moment it took to focus his spatial sense out from this room and the building, out after what he urgently had to know and yet dreaded knowing ... he actually straightened up and turned his head toward Sinister's hiding place in the forest beyond as if he expected to see him and every nerve went electric with fear. Waiting like a cat at a mousehole. Only Jean noticed how white he suddenly got, and only she felt the terror that turned his bones to boiling water.

"You're a small-time hood, LeBeau, a two-bit penny-ante mobster!" Bobby cried, "You don't deserve to breathe the same air we do, you sure as hell don't deserve Rogue! We're gonna make sure you're history around here." Meaning it.

"F'someone want Remy gone so bad, frere froid, you sorta keepin' 'im from d'door ..."

The irony was lost on them, and then he knew with a cold sick dread that logic could not reach them where Sinister had placed them, and the door was not freedom. There was no way out.

"But the Professor ..." Jean gasped, unable to counter the effects of whatever was influencing them, unable to even pinpoint what it was, though Remy ...

Scott dismissed the argument with a chop of his hand, "Sometimes the Professor can't see the truth, Jean, noble men often miss corruption - but we don't. And we don't want you here anymore LeBeau ..."

"We intend to make damned sure you're on the road before the hour's up, Gumbo, your time among the X-Men is over." Bobby was enjoying giving Remy the shakes by chilling the air around him, knowing how vulnerable he was to cold, but Warren's face was hard with a more mortal animosity.

"You've never been our friend, Gambit, but now you have the privilege of counting yourself among our enemies. You'd best run far and fast, because the next time we meet I won't stop myself from killing you."

But the rest of the furious chorus that followed that quiet promise went unheard, he propped himself shakily against the wall with one hand and looked for Jean, staring white-faced at her husband, tried to read whether she felt it too ... because if she didn't, she would never understand what he was about to do. Oh God ... he so didn't want to do this ...

They meant to throw him out and get their licks in first, they meant him to be out of the mansion tonight, right now, delivering him right into Sinister's grasp in no shape to escape or defend himself. Merde. There was no deciding to do, he could not let Sinister have him, never become so deadly to them. He was more certain than ever that he would be if he came under that influence again, Sinister was expending resources to get him and he didn't do that without cause. Well, Remy LeBeau had always been a contrary creature.

Jean's startled blue eyes turned to find him across the room, became frightened in knowing what dangers he felt in his own unknowns, her head slowly shaking in denial of both her husband's murderous rage and Remy's intention ... she reached and found him expecting her.

*Y'know who it is, Jeannie, n' why ...*

*It isn't them, Remy, he's manipulating them somehow!*

*'N you gotta know why. Coulda all been his, Jean, d' trial, 'dis pushin', ev't'ing. Can' be used 'dis way, me. Gon' shove 'dis, * meaning the slumbering unknown he so feared and whatever he'd done to the X-Men to put them on the attack, *up 'is ass even if it's not his* Softly, his expression determined. He would not die fleeing his life, but he would, gladly, die for the X-Men, to protect them from the mortal weapon he would be in Sinister's hands, and he'd use Sinister's influence to do it. Let it be ended by people he owed, let at least this debt be paid.

She felt his acceptance as wholesome no matter how fiercely he loved living - that was because of her, even now the bloody chevron of his crooked smile thanked her, a soft push out of his mind, his head already turning away.

Remy shuddered, coughed and wished he hadn't for the sharp twinge in his chest, locked up against the powerful urge to flee before he could use this part of what he, or someone, had hidden even from himself. Morbid as it was, he had to appreciate the irony of turning Sinister's weapons against him.

"Scott, my God please hear me! It's Sinister! Sinister! He's provoking you against Remy, he wants him back!"

But when Scott paused and she had a brief surge of hope, when his face momentarily untwisted, Remy staggered to his feet and threw himself at him, arms clutching over his shoulders, hands catching at his face and pressing their heads close as lovers.

She despaired as he gathered the empath power and for the first time consciously reversed it ... pushed it.

"This can't be the only way!" Grief-stricken and sobbing to know what he was doing, what he begged her even now to forgive him for. Then he gave himself to provoking his own murder. *Dis gon' hurt*

He punched his thoughts into Scott's mind, dug his bloody fingers into his face and felt the husband's struggles end at the sense of his wife's smooth skin under another man's hands, the taste of his wife in another man's mouth, his wife's moan as her body accepted ... With every shred of will Remy remembered it, how intensely delicious she was, how tight and hot and eager - how it felt to slide into her mind as Scott could not ... it was enough to drown out Jean, to drown out all reason.

Scott Summers, decent man of intellect and mercy, of ideals lofty and noble, punched Remy solidly in the face. Kept him from falling by grabbing a fistful of hair that he then used to yank him down into his knee as it came up into the Cajun's stomach. One vicious twist further put him hard onto the floor and he was on him with fists like vengeful hammers. In quick order he broke the fine aquiline line of Remy's nose and drove his teeth through his lower lip, ruthlessly struck as at a pestilence he must kill and only Jean noticed, screaming and protesting in Psylocke's restraining grasp, that Gambit made no effort to fight back.

Remy heard her screaming, though, and remembered in the jarring roar that all had to be in it, not just Scott. Couldn't burden Jean's husband with the indisputable fact of his death, must be shared, no one would live with the ultimate responsibility. Dumbly his fingers scrabbled for the sleeve of Scott's jacket and started charging so Scott had to let him go to get it off before it exploded. Remy took it with him as he went skidding across the floor into a ragged crouch, dragging up an infuriating grin that hurt something broken in his face as he threw the glowing garment snake-bite quick at them. It went up with a satisfying boom, but Warren's metal wings protected them from the impact. Again he pushed, to incite and provoke, wide as he could, wide enough to hit them all, spitting blood defiantly onto the floor and letting his eyes go into a hellish glow. If he had t'do this, he wanted it quick. That merciful he could be to himself, and deliberately he incited their fury.

"Eh Bobby, you 'tink Gambit bein' gone'll get you Rogue, neh? She'll come all cry'n t'ya f'comfort n' one t'ing lead t'nother - in yer wet dreams, popsicle! Won' nev' happen! Y'ain't man enough, y'got nothin' but a piddly power compared to ev'body else 'round here n' you know it! Can't even control what little y'got, y' a loser!" Bobby's face twisted and Remy shattered the ice-lance that he sent his way with a kick that probably broke his ankle. Didn't slow him down a whit. They hesitated in the unexpected face of his willingness to take them all on and that wasn't what he wanted.

"Well c'mon, boyos, gonna let th' least o' you have the mos' fun? Birdie - flex 'dem shiny wings, show Gambit 'how much y'liked y'vacation 'mongst th'Morlocks! Make 'dat bloodt'irsty whore of yours smile, neh? Bettah hurry, though, b'fo Scottie figgers out 'is wife's been fucked by someone knows how - what 'e goin' do when she won' be satisfied after?! C'mon, y' bunch a chickenshit gangsters, t'ree t'one n' Gambit still not 'fraid o' you!"

Inflaming the anger Sinister had induced, flicking sparks off his fingers that made little explosions on the floor, and when they came at him, all three, flechettes chiming against the walls, those that missed him, ice splintering around him and upon him, he let them have him and invited their worst. Only Scott did not use his powers against him, his anger too fundamentally human for anything but fists.

Remy's hands snapped out as he went down under their concerted rush, stinging punches that did nothing but feed their provocation, and he did not try to hurt them even as Warren's boot slipped a kick into ribs already broken, driving hot spikes of broken shards to places he didn't care to imagine. It was full-scale war against every instinct, but he didn't strike back, though they hurt him with a stunning intensity. He did not strike back because they were his friends and Jean would tell them so when it was done. Because it seemed so merciful not to have it be true enemies or strangers who killed him.

His left arm, trapped in an icy tube binding it to the floor as he was knocked in the opposite direction, snapped above the elbow and that made him scream like an animal. Fine bones in the wrist and fingers of the other hand followed as he bashed frantically on the tube to get loose, but he didn't beg them to stop, had no time to struggle against them in struggling against himself. Red rage boiling up inside him, a wide endless river of it and he couldn't let it loose no matter how cruelly it tested the furthest reaches of his control. He forced himself to focus on pushing them to hurry before he could no longer contain what struggled so rabidly to survive, Dieu me sauvre (God save me), it was a deep fearsome thing and hard as Satan himself to hold away from its will ...

Jean's voice shrieked at a roaring distance and he was so sorry to hear it, only she knew how much more was happening than this transient insanity, too weak to shield him and he managed to keep her from doing so, desperate for the strength not to fight this good death.

"You'll kill him, he wants you to! He WANTS you to, so Sinister won't have him!"

Remy overrode her with gasped insults he didn't know where he found the voice for, teeth bared in the bloody mess of his face grinning like a demon daring them to take their best shot. A spray of blood streaked the wall as he was tossed and tumbled in a tangle of limbs through the hurricane of their wrath, cut and broken and pushing as hard as he could to keep their decent hearts from realizing what they were doing. That their fists and feet and metal edges and icy spikes were breaking his bones, bleeding him out, driving all breath from his lungs ... he wanted to be breathless and broken and dead and no threat to anyone he loved ever again.

By the time his right thighbone broke he could no more than moan, praying with what fragments of consciousness he had left just to die and get it over with. *seemed d'God d' Monsieur said wahn't mine deems me owin' ev'ry second of sin 'fore I go ... wherever Remy LeBeau be goin' * But it was falling back in him, that terrible thing, dying even as he was, so they were safe.

Didn't feel the disjointed unhinging of his body, didn't know or care that Scott's hands wrapped around his throat as he bore his weight up the wall like it was nothing. Laughed, though no one outside his head knew it, as he felt death rushing in wishing he could see Sinister's face now.

 

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