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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 23

Bobby heard the distinctive whine of the Blackbird engines with a sense of overwhelming relief. The X-Men would be able to help Remy. Michael couldn't possibly defeat them all. He desperately wished that he could see what was going on outside the destroyed apartment building, but all of his energy was tied up in maintaining the sphere of cold and the ice woman who lay content in his arms. What little attention he could spare from those was maintaining the supports that kept the building from collapsing on top of them. As much as Bobby wanted to go to his master, he knew he had to finish what he'd begun with Diedre first.

Closing his eyes, he concentrated on Diedre. He stretched his awareness back into the ice that formed their joined body, and began the painstaking process of changing her back into living flesh.

Cyclops had the ramp down before the Blackbird's weight had completely settled on its landing gear. He felt stunned as he followed the rest of his team out of the aircraft. This couldn't be happening. He had always maintained that Gambit's recklessness would eventually get him killed, but to see it. . .

Scott stared at the scene in the street, absorbing it. The air was filled with a smoky haze-partly from the small fires that dotted the street and partly from the fine dust that continued to fall from the building that Gambit had blown up. The street was covered in debris. The weakened sunlight shimmered in the glass fragments that littered the ground, and the live wires from a fallen electric pole

hissed and sparked. The ruined building loomed over the rest of the destruction, it's top floors listing to one side and threatening to fall. Long fingers of ice were wrapped around the top of the building, holding the upper floors in their precarious position, and he realized with dismay that Iceman had to be inside somewhere.

The man that Gambit had been fighting lay on the street on his back in a spreading pool of blood. His eyes were open, his expression oddly surprised. The bullet hole in his forehead seemed very small, and only a trickle of blood ran from it. In contrast, his chest was a single huge red stain against the white suit shirt. Scott could see the holes in the cloth, and, almost unwillingly, he counted them. Eight. Gambit was lying on his side a short ways away, the handgun still loosely clasped in his fingers. The slide was locked back, indicating that the weapon was empty. He, too, was surrounded by a dark stain of blood.

*Scott, he's still alive.*

The moment of observation shattered as Scott forced himself into motion. Jean and Hank were already kneeling at Gambit's side, examining him. Storm stood behind them, her expression filled with fear, and Scott touched her elbow lightly as he stepped up beside her.

"Storm, take Cannonball with you and go find Bobby." He indicated the ice-capped building. "Make sure he's all right."

Storm's gaze lingered on Gambit's still form for a moment before nodding. "Of course." She turned, gesturing to Sam, and the two of them rose into the air. Scott tracked their progress for a moment before turning back to the two crouched over the injured X-Man.

"Quickly, Jean, let's get him into the Blackbird." Hank said, standing as Jean lifted Gambit in a telekinetic bubble. Together they moved toward the airplane.

Scott knew he couldn't help them, so he stayed where he was and swept his gaze once more around the street. How could this have happened? Something silver caught his eye and he stooped to retrieve it. After a moment, he recognized the cylinder as a piece of Gambit's staff, and, scanning the area, he spied the rest of it. He recovered the second half and held the pieces in his hands, frowning. At least Bobby had had the sense to use his powers to protect people from the falling building, but what could have set this conflict off in the first place?

The growing wails of the approaching emergency vehicles was his only answer, and he knew they were running out of time. They needed to collect Bobby and get out of there, fast. He was reaching for his comm badge to warn Storm when she re-emerged from the shattered upper floors. Cannonball darted out behind her, followed by Iceman. To Scott's surprise, a woman clung to the ice slide behind Bobby as he arced toward the Blackbird, and as they touched down, he realized that her dress was also stained with blood though she didn't appear to be injured.

Bobby's slide deposited himself and the woman on the street next to the Blackbird. Even from the short distance, Scott could see the sick fear in his face.

"Where's Remy?!" he demanded stridently as he crossed the distance to where Scott stood. His gaze flicked between the body of the dead man and the second blood stain on the concrete. "What happened? Is he all right?!"

"He's alive, though that's about all," Scott replied tersely. He was suddenly furious that any of his team could have done something so stupid and possibly gotten themselves killed, not to mention the dead man lying in the street. . . "What in the world happened here, Bobby?" he demanded angrily.

Bobby shook his head. He seemed like he was about to say something when his attention was distracted by the woman. She had moved several paces away, and was standing beside the dead man, staring down at him, her face pained. After a moment, she dropped slowly to her knees and bowed her head over him, though she didn't touch him. Bobby's expression shaded into a kind of mute horror as she began to cry.

"Diedre. . ."

Bobby walked over to where the woman knelt and stopped behind her. He seemed like he wanted to comfort her, but couldn't decide what to do. Scott stayed a little ways back so as not to interfere as Bobby finally knelt down and took the sobbing woman in his arms. She resisted only for a moment, and then clung to him with desperate strength.

The first police car turned the corner at the end of the block, lights flashing and siren wailing.

"Bobby, we have to go," he told the young man as gently as he could manage.

Bobby nodded in response and urged the woman to her feet. Her tears were diminishing now and she rubbed her face to try to clear them.

Scott caught Bobby's eye. "Do we need to take him with us?" he asked in an undertone, indicating the dead man with a jerk of his head. He didn't want to just leave him to the authorities if it was going to be a source of anguish for the young woman.

The woman looked up at him with her reddened eyes, and Scott was surprised by the determined expression he saw there. "No." She pressed her lips together and glanced back at the body. "Leave him."

"Are you sure?" Bobby asked, her expression intense.

She nodded, and quietly reached over and pulled a ring from her left hand. The gold band winked dully in the poor light as she held it in her hand, her expression thoughtful. Then she turned and tossed it toward the dead man lying in the street.

"I don't want to take anything of Michael's with me," she told Bobby in a voice that was hardly above a whisper.

Scott stared at the two of them, wondering what he should be seeing. He was dreadfully certain that he wouldn't like the answer, no matter what it was, but he also knew that it would have to wait until they got back to the mansion.

Bobby clung to the edge of the medi-unit as the Blackbird banked sharply, turning them back toward Westchester. He felt sick inside. Remy was dying. He could see it in Hank's face-that closely guarded expression that told Bobby that he was steeling himself against the loss.

Jean stood at Remy's head, her fingers light on his temples and her brow furrowed in concentration. After a moment, she opened her eyes and Bobby could see the glimmer of frustrated tears.

"There's nothing I can do. He won't let me in."

"What do you mean?" Bobby found it almost a relief to look at Jean instead of the devastated form on the table in front of him. Remy's wounds were as bad as anything he'd ever seen with the X- Men, and he would have found it difficult even if he weren't one of the closest friends Bobby had.

Jean shrugged helplessly. "His shields are solid. I can't enter his mind-not even to help."

Hank looked up from the readings on the medi-unit. "Distasteful though it might be, in the interest of saving a life, you might consider forcing your way in."

She shook her head. "That wouldn't work. His shields are will- based. If I broke them, I'd be destroying the one thing that's keeping him alive." She looked back down at Remy's face. "All I can do is keep calling to him in the hopes that he'll answer."

In a flash of certainty, Bobby realized that that wasn't going to happen. Whatever was going on inside Remy's mind, he knew that he wasn't going to let a first class telepath inside his head under any circumstance. He had too many secrets to keep. Too many questions whose answers would be dangerous for the X-Men to know. Too many mutants whose existence would be compromised. And even if Bobby knew in his heart that Jean would never betray that confidence, he also knew that Remy didn't trust her that much. But maybe, just maybe, he might have come to trust Bobby that much.

"Jean, can you take me with you? Into Remy's mind?"

She cocked her head, regarding him through narrowed eyes. "Do you think he'd listen to you?"

Bobby's breath caught in his throat. "Maybe."

She stared at him for a bare moment more before nodding. "All right. Brace yourself."

The world lurched sideways as Jean pulled him onto the astral plane. Bobby found himself standing in a gray place, facing an impossibly tall black wall. Jean stood beside him, hands on hips as she stared at the empty black face.

"Is this. . .?"

She nodded. "His shields. Gambit is downright paranoid about telepaths. His mind is like this anytime I'm around him." Bobby though he heard a faint note of hurt in her voice.

Bobby reached out to touch the black surface. It was smooth and chill beneath his fingertips. "It's not paranoia," he reassured her, his thoughts falling back through the past months. "It's prudence."

Jean gave him an odd look, which Bobby ignored. His attention was on the black wall that separated Remy from the person who could help keep him alive. Experimentally, he pounded on it with his fist, eliciting a dull, booming sound.

"Remy! Remy, I know you're in there!" He had an absurd image of himself standing outside Gambit's door in the mansion, pounding away. "Remy, it's Bobby! Please, let me in!"

There was no response that he could see. He glanced at Jean, who shook her head. Her lips were pressed together in a painfully thin line. "Hank says the medi-unit is maxed out, just like it did with Wolverine. . ."

Bobby stared at her. The mission to Avalon, where Magneto had nearly killed Wolverine, was the only time the Shi'ar medi-unit had been unable to cope with an X-Man's injuries. His stomach knotted painfully. Until now.

He went back to pounding on the wall, yelling at Remy to let them in, but it did no good. After a while, he felt Jean's hand close on his shoulder.

"I'm so sorry, Bobby," she said gently. "I know you two were close."

Bobby felt the burn of tears in his eyes as he looked up at the black wall. "He's not dead!" he snarled at Jean.

She shook her head sadly. "Not yet, but we're still four minutes away from touchdown, plus the time to transfer him to the infirmary. He's already lost too much blood for his heart to even continue beating-there's nothing left for it to push around." Her hand fell away from his shoulder. "Hank doesn't think he'll make it that far."

Bobby fought the sobs that would rob him of speech. "If I can get you inside, can you hold onto him? Keep him alive long enough to get to the infirmary?"

Her expression said that she thought it hopeless, but she nodded. "Maybe."

Bobby turned away from her, back toward the featureless black wall. There was one thing he could try, one thing that no X-Man would know to do, that might make Remy listen. He drew himself up to his full height and placed both palms against the wall.

"Master Thief LeBeau," he said quietly, in the formal cadence of the Guild. "As is my right as blood member of the Guild, I call you to account for the murder of Guildmaster Tyre. Present yourself before the Guild, or it will be known that you are without honor."

Bobby had learned the rituals, and he knew that any guildmember could call another to account for any crime that was witnessed, no matter the ranks involved. And since they were on the astral plane, Bobby was the sole Guild representative around, which meant that Remy had to come to him or forfeit his reputation and rank within the Guild.

Jean was staring at him, wide eyed, as the wall began to crumble. It collapsed with a roar, but left no rubble behind. On the far side stood Remy, his red eyes glowing with suppressed rage.

"How *dare* you. . ."

Bobby met those glowing eyes without fear. He understood now that doing what was necessary wasn't always doing what was honorable.

"Jean," he said quietly and watched as she moved past him, toward Remy. Once inside the heavy shields, Bobby knew, even Remy had no defense against a telepath of Jean's caliber. But if anyone could keep him alive, it was her. And if Remy's friendship, his trust and respect, were the price Bobby paid for preserving his life, he would pay it, though not without regret.

Bobby's arms tightened instinctively around Diedre as Scott and Jean walked into the War Room. It had always struck Bobby as a strange place to wait in such circumstances, but it was the closest room to the infirmary with chairs, and invariably it was where the X-Men gathered to await news of an injured comrade.

"So what's the word?" Logan asked, his slouched posture so casual that Bobby wanted to jump up and down for him.

"He's stabilized." Scott answered, his face inscrutable behind the visor. "Hank says that's the best we can hope for at the moment. He'll be able to tell us more in the morning."

Ororo breathed a soft sigh and sank onto the corner of the table while Logan reached over to pat her knee in encouragement.

The knot of terror in Bobby's stomach loosened a notch at the words and he pulled Diedre to him in a hug. Scott's gaze fastened on them, his intensity causing the hairs on the back of Bobby's neck to bristle in warning.

"So I believe you have some explaining to do." Bobby could see the clenched muscles in his jaw, and his stomach tightened again in apprehension. "Two people were killed in that blast, and I want to know what happened. Now."

Bobby closed his eyes, overwhelmed, as understanding hit him. Two innocent people were dead, and it was his fault. Remy would never have let Michael maneuver him into that kind of duel in a public place if it hadn't been for Bobby. Perhaps it would have come to blood eventually without Bobby's involvement, but he knew that it was his own love for Diedre that had lit the fuse between deadly enemies and brought these events about. Once it had started, he realized, it could not have ended any other way. Politically, neither could have afforded to leave the other alive, but Bobby knew that Remy would never have started this himself. He was too smart and too careful to take such a risk.

Slowly, he opened his eyes. "If you're going to blame anyone, it's me you should be blaming. Remy only got involved because *I* got . . . involved." He squeezed Diedre's shoulder apologetically. "He was trying to protect us."

"That doesn't excuse murder."

Bobby stiffened angrily. "It was self-defense and you know it."

"Putting nine slugs in somebody is not an act of self-defense." Scott crossed his arms. "Jean couldn't read very much from his during the fight, but she could tell that he was determined to kill that man, without thought for the consequences."

Bobby shot Jean an accusing look, but she only shrugged. He looked back at Scott. *. . . survive, no matter what, so long as the first two are kept safe,* he thought. Killing Michael was about survival, no matter how it appeared to an outsider. But there was no way for him to explain that to Scott. Not without sacrificing everything Remy had been working for the last three years.

"I'm sorry, Scott," he said with as much fortitude as he could muster, "but I can't give you any better explanation than that." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Logan pause, an expression of pure surprise on his face that disappeared almost instantly.

Scott was staring at him. "Excuse me?"

Bobby took a shaky breath. "You heard me. I told you what happened. If you don't want to believe me, that's your business, but I've said as much as the X-Men need to know. The rest is personal."

"Personal?! Three people are dead, Bobby!" Scott's face was red.

Bobby desperately wanted to run away from the older man's anger, but he knew he couldn't. "That's something that I'm going to have to live with." He could count the price of his love for Diedre in the lives that it had cost. He wasn't certain yet how he felt about that. Taking Diedre's hand, he turned to leave.

"Where are you going? We aren't finished with this yet, mister," Scott snapped behind him.

The last of Bobby's patience evaporated at the militant tone and he whirled to face the man he had once idolized. He felt too much remorse and guilt to be truly angry, but he had no intention of betraying Gambit to people who would never understand. "Yes, we are," he said flatly.

Scott was stunned into silence as Bobby turned away. The other X-Men had watched the exchange in silence, but he fancied he saw a note of approval in Logan's eyes as he passed. But even if that wasn't true, it didn't matter. When he became a thief, Bobby had accepted the fact that he would forever be walking in the shadows and that the choices he made would sometimes carry a heavy price in the coin of the soul. It was a price he had agreed to pay, but that had not prepared him for how much it would hurt.

 

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