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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 17

It took six days more before Remy finally dredged up the wherewithal to break himself out of the locked MedLab, override Cerebro's controls on the doors and elevator conspiring to keep him there, and crawl to his own room without getting caught. Kind as Beast was, time in MedLab was time in hell, skin-crawling panic-attack hell, and maybe nobody'd ever understand it, but getting out was a single-minded campaign. Once in his own bed he refused being returned to MedLab to the point of violence and insisted that if Hank wanted to treat him, he'd do it in his room or not at all. Didn't need no doctors anyway, just somebody to bring him stuff.

Beast simply moved what equipment he needed into Remy's room, knowing better than anyone how much LeBeau still did need a doctor. The fact was, however, that Beast had also realized Remy didn't rest in MedLab, and exhaustion only slowed his recovery and exacerbated his nightmares, he was tired of re-suturing this and that all the time.

Remy slept for eight hours straight the first night out and that was good enough for Hank, he was singularly unimpressed by the consternation of some of the mansion's occupants, and made no comment as they either left or adjusted themselves out of the immediate vicinity of Gambit's room. No one mentioned that Rogue had come back and was discreetly ensconced with Joseph in the boat house, Jean shielded him from their thoughts to ostensibly aid his recovery, and Remy was content to let them think he was being cooperative by staying in bed. Truth was he hadn't the strength to do anything else and it worried him, usually a fast healer. Worried him more that he felt cold all the time and sort of ... numb, a new hollowness in the emptiness he'd already lived so long with. He hadn't thought it could get worse.

"If he is ever to be whole he has to take control of the powers he is so afraid of - Jean, I must be honest - they're unprecedented, probably Omega Class." Unspoken how many of that elite order ended up early dead or insane, the mutation too much for what was physiologically mortal to survive. He was young to have come so close to both already. The remains of a light lunch sat on the coffee table, Ororo was sitting back thoughtfully as Jean and the Professor explored their options with the problematic enigma that was Remy.

"It's either control it or die, and perhaps unleash enormous destruction in so doing. You know this as well as I do, Jean - better for having experienced it yourself." Xavier was still a little uneasy that Jean had declined to share all of her experience in Remy's mind, but the sense of an allegiance forged between them improved LeBeau's standing in his own mind, Jean did not bestow true friendship lightly. Of course he understood and agreed with her rationale, keeping private what made Remy most vulnerable was crucial if he was ever to trust anyone again, and Remy's trust was vital if the Professor was ever to gain access to that mind himself. With no way in but Remy's willingness, Xavier would have to be allowed to explore what lay so guardedly coiled in the shadowed depths glimpsed in Jean's sharing. Power that even second-hand stirred him, mysteries that urgently needed to be understood and used for the survival of this world and probably the sanity of the man who so uneasily harbored it.

"It must be now, if ever. He must trust himself ..."

"That is not easy for him given his history, his choices haven't been ... wise."

"But his choices haven't been malicious, either."

Jean smiled to know Xavier realized this as well, they were all Remy's friends in this room. "No." she confirmed, "But somehow just about every decent urge he's ever had has ended in tragedy for someone. Maybe too much faith in the wrong people, maybe just from being on his own since he was a toddler, adrift without any real attachments or guidance."

"It's worse than adrift, Jean." Xavier said, "The detachment he feels is the reason he makes those mistakes in judgement. Gambit is fighting all the time for something that at his heart he doesn't believe truly belongs to him, not comfort or love or peace. Remy believes he is inherently evil, corrupted beyond redemption no matter that he somehow still manages to hope otherwise."

Jean stared at him, knowing it was true, even where the danger lay in Remy... the deep unasked darknesses she hadn't dared, the faceless numbness that drove him to mad excesses.

Xavier watched her thinking about it, the changeable colors of her gentle blue eyes revealing her concern. Her sorrow. Ororo did not disagree, and he sensed she shared that sadness and a deeper understanding.

"He has no faith in himself as a human being." He said quietly.

"He has no God." Ororo interjected in a quiet voice laden with sorrowful certainty, looking away out the window and her laced fingers loosely dangling between her knees. "He has no God." Turning to Xavier and Jean this time, knowing it was the central question of Remy LeBeau and hoping there would also be an answer. She did not see one in them, but her white eyebrows lofted suddenly as a piece of the dichotomous puzzle her old friend still was to her fit into place.

"The only peace he ever knew was the Guild and the Church, and the Church is a big part of Cajun tradition in a ... flexible sort of way."

Jean picked up her train of thought with a spark of excitement, "And when his powers manifested, he lost both ..."

"And never regained his equilibrium." The women spoke to one another now, connected through their differing yet equally intimate knowledge of the needs that drove Remy. Xavier's mind ran to catch up; women were so much more intuitive to the male psyche.

"Both highly ritualistic societies heavy on ceremony ... "

Xavier's eyes widened as he grasped their inspired direction.

"To an empath - oh ..." Jean's mouth softened as if she felt it herself ... "Can you imagine what it must have felt like for someone so disconnected to experience an emotional focus as cohesive as that? To be embraced by all those souls?" A spirit so wounded and lonely and suspicious drawn into, welcomed into, the warmth of human communion.

"There was a priest ... " Jean's brow furrowed to remember it from Remy's mind, profoundly painful, "Father Mones..."

"Anybody kibbutz int' 'dis 'lil hen party?" Twin embers glowed at an aggressive slant from the darkness of the doorway where Gambit leaned against the jamb, arms crossed over his chest. A light neutral tone and his fine-boned face as he moved into the room was blank as an icon, but the bruises made him look subtly menacing, and he carried himself with the gingerly care of things still hurting. Glances among them wondered how long he'd been there and he answered them flatly and without apology,

"All. Guess you gon' talk 'bout Gambit behin' his back, he gon' evesdrop t'even d'score, neh?" He stopped in the middle of the room, battered and unsteady, and searched their faces intently, letting them feel the displeasure of a very private man to find them discussing him so intimately. But he couldn't bring himself to be truly angry in light of the concern he clearly sensed under their defensiveness. It felt good, and that made him anxious.

He walked over to the window and absently walked a coin they hadn't seen him take out of his pocket across the pale fingers of the recently uncasted hand. It fumbled and dropped onto the sill halfway across and he just looked at it lying there for an accusing moment.

When he finally turned back to them, his eyes burned in the haggard stillness of his face, and it was Xavier he pinned with his gaze. Soft, his voice, and deadly serious.

"Don' trus' whatever it is in 'dere, Xavier, 'dat you be so curious about. Tellin' 'dat true from d'bones, me, wasn't jus' not sayin' anyt'ing about it." He leaned forward across the desk, long slender fingers spidering on it's gleaming surface. "Don' know it wan't Sinister put it 'dere, don' know it won' take me ovah or crisp me or ev'body else 't'cinders do it be waked. Don' know if tryin' t'suss it out'll trigger somet'in maybe nobody but Sinister wants set off." He let these blunt and dangerous facts settle a moment into Xavier's stunned silence before he straightened, and delivered the final blow soft as a razor. "N' 'dere's nobody I trus' enough t'get in 'dere 'n be enough t'handle what 'dey might find, not where Remy don' even go 'imself."

When Xavier opened his mouth to offer his help Gambit's palm flashed, the eyes sharpened. "Don' trus' you nei'der, Xavier, you're too much like 'im."

Xavier's cheeks flushed, "There's no call to be insulting, Remy ..."

"Mais non, 'dat not what I meant, y'a good man, Remy know 'dat,. But y'got d'same kind of drive, 'dis cause, n' it important enough f'the ends t'justify d'means. Know 'dat too, even agree wit'y in 'de basics, if not d'details. But men wit causes scare me, hehn? Homme like me wit' somet'in bot' want ..." Long elegant hands spread low, a slight but impossibly eloquent shrug ... "gits run ovah ..."

Xavier had the grace to flush, but his earnest eyes did not shy away. It was true he had used the young man's exceptional criminalities to serve the greater good, had sent him on covert operations of espionage and sabotage and even lent him to Pentagon black ops twice, but he had always known there was no other way and it had always distressed him to ask, he had never ordered him. To be on a par with Sinister in Remy's mind was very disturbing and surprisingly hurtful.

"But 'dat's how it be." Exotic red and black eyes bleak and old as if he read these thoughts and Xavier sat back to realize not only that he could, but that he wasn't hiding it. Separate from the world he longed for, even deadly to it and to all he dared love. So young. With another pang of self-recrimination he knew he'd never, in all his need of Remy's unique skills, considered how young. The Professor could not offer any hope to answer the yearning he felt so strongly from Remy as he looked at him across the desk, no balm for the heart so impossibly optimistic that he half believed telling the truth would be rewarded by solutions. When none were forthcoming, Remy smiled with another expressively desolate shrug,

"Dat's jus' how 'tis, ain' nobody's fault ... mebbe not even mine, eh?"

 

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