He watched her walk across the room, her focus on a table off to the side where Havok, the Russian, and the Asian girl sat, waving for her to join them. He would have to make time to remember their names. They weren’t bad people, really. Just a little too well behaved. He didn’t want to be accused of corrupting anyone while he was here.
She smiled tightly, acting a little too cheery to be real, as she took a seat next to the girl. They were all laughing and talking in no time. It was still too soon to tell.
Five minutes later, Logan sauntered in, now wearing a blue flannel shirt over a wife-beater. Remy held his breath as he waited for a sign. Logan scanned the dining room now filled with college students and staff looking for a place to sit. His eyes darkened as he met her gaze across the room. Her smile quickly disappeared, only to be replaced with a scowl. Logan huffed once, his shoulders hunching in anger. He then quickly proceeded to the other side of the room, opting to sit with the boy with wings. Remy found he was unable to hold back the smile that curled his lips at this turn of events. Obviously whatever happened in the woods had only made the gap between the two soul mates a bit bigger.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“I think I’m just going to go up to bed tonight, Jubes,” Rogue said, quickly turning and heading for the stairs as they departed the dining room. “It’s been a long day.”
“You want me to say anything to Kitty when I see her?” Jubilee asked sarcastically as she waved her friend off. “You know, like watch her back or something like that?”
“Just tell her…” Rogue paused, unsure of what to say. “Tell her not to put up with his shit.”
Jubilee smiled as she turned to catch up with Piotr and Alex. She would never understand how Rogue could be so forgiving, but after witnessing the way she had smacked Bobby around, Jubilee wasn’t sure that Rogue was the same girl anymore. Maybe it just took another way of being crossed.
Rogue slowly walked up the stairs, enjoying those few moments of quiet inside the mansion. As a boarding house for weary mutant children, it was near impossible to find a moment of silence before 10:00 pm, but the children had all been scarce and on their best behavior since her return. It wasn’t just her that frightened them, though - her team did too.
She couldn’t really blame them. If it had been her, she probably would have packed a bag and gone to live in a motel the minute she realized Victor Creed was staying here.
She smiled slightly, thinking of the man who had proven to be a good friend. He had shown her a loyalty that she hadn’t believed in since her mutation had manifested. Even when she had been thrown to him like a toy and with the collars on, he had never laid an inappropriate hand on her.
“Who you thinking about, chère?” She scowled abruptly, realizing that she had been followed up the stairs. She hadn’t caught his scent due to the AC blowing against her skin, and she hadn’t heard him because of his ability to be light on his feet.
“What the hell do you want, swamp rat?” Rogue demanded, turning quickly to stare him down.
He smiled seductively, moving closer until he was within arm’s reach. “Just wanted to know if you wanted some company is all, belle. Remy don’t mean no harm.”
“Well, I’m not interested in your company tonight,” Rogue retorted angrily. There was something about the way the devil mutant looked at her that made her want to gag. “Go find another girl to sweet talk into your bed tonight.”
“But Remy finds none of these girls as belle as you, cherie,” Remy answered quickly, reaching for her hand.
She growled quietly, taking another step back. She was beginning to feel a little threatened by his advances, and she wasn’t positive she would be able to control herself if he decided to come forward.
Weary of the animalistic look in her eyes and the way she took a stand, he watched her closely. She reminded him of a cat backed into a corner, ready to attack if provoked, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she would be the same way in bed. Maybe he could get her to purr.
“Get the fuck back, Cajun,” she snarled wildly. “I’m not too sure I want you in my head, but I’ll take the chance if I have to.”
Remy grinned casually, advancing slowly. “Come now, petite. Remy ain’t never had to work so hard to get a woman into bed before. Remy guarantees a good time. And now that you can touch, well…”
“Remy can go to hell and back,” Rogue snapped. “If you want to stay on this team and in this house, you’ll back the fuck off right now, Gambit. I’m not interested in anything you’re offering.”
Remy backed away, a little disenchanted by her reactions. “Alright then, cherie. Remy know what no means.”
“Then why didn’t you hear it the first time,” she asked angrily as he began to back away from her.
Remy shrugged lightly, innocently unsure of what was happening. “Remy just ain’t used to hearing it, that’s all.”
Rogue’s shoulders sagged a bit as she realized that he really was that naive. She could see why other women would easily fall for him. He did have a bad boy charm about him, and the looks to go with it. She was willing to admit that he would be very attractive, if not for the talking-in-third-person hang-up. But she just wasn’t interested. “Go find someone else to sooth your ego, swamp rat.”
“You sure you don’t want to at least mess around?” he asked slyly, flashing her another smile. “You might enjoy it, belle. And don’t nobody have to know about what we do.”
“Sugar,” Rogue began, shaking her head and crossing her arms over her chest, “the first thing you learn when you live in a school is that nothing is a secret - especially in a school full of mutants. Why don’t you go find Lorna and ask her about it?”
He smiled sheepishly, not realizing word had spread so quickly. He had met with the green-haired vixen just after lunch, sweeping her off her feet and into a storage closet where they had proceeded to make out like it was the only thing left for them in the world. He hadn’t realized they had been spotted. “How you know about that, chère?”
Rogue failed to hide her smirk. “She thinks it means you’re going to get married now.”
Remy looked at her in shock, his hand beginning to twitch. “Married? She can count Remy out. Tried that one before. And where does she get off, thinking Remy would marry her just for a little kiss?”
“You been married, swamp rat?” Rogue giggled, picturing the man in a tux with a frightened face. “I take it that one didn’t go too well?”
Remy shuddered at the memory of his ex-wife. “Non. Not too well at all. But if you ever change your mind, cherie, Remy might be able to help you get your wolverine.”
“I don’t need any help,” Rogue replied darkly. “I suggest you mind your own business.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
She wasn’t surprised to find someone waiting for her when she entered her room, but was definitely starting to get annoyed by the way everyone continued to follow her around like she needed a babysitter. Wasn’t she supposed to be the damn babysitter now? The only reason she hadn’t gone ahead and kicked him out yet was the twelve pack of beer sitting behind him on the desk.
“What’s the matter, Victor?” Rogue asked with a scowl, closing the door to her room softly. “I just want to get some sleep.”
Victor stood from his chair, her scent hitting him as he slowly opened the box sitting behind him. “What did the Cajun want?”
Rogue smirked again, knowing that she wasn’t going to get rid of him very easily. “Me on a platter. I told him to back off. What did Storm want?”
“You can smell her?” Victor asked incredulously, tossing her a can. “I didn’t even think she was that close to me when we were talking.”
Rogue shook her head, wondering as she sat down on the bed how he could fall for the bait. She took her time opening the cold can before speaking. “I caught her smell outside the door when I was coming in. My guess is that she stopped to knock… but since you talked to her, why don’t you explain to me what it was all about?”
Victor shrugged and sat back down in the desk chair while opening his own beer. “Nothing really. She wants to know what happened to the boy. And I think she’s trying to find out exactly what’s going on between you and Jimmy.”
“I really wish you would quit calling him that, it only aggravates him. And we both know damn well that you just being here is aggravating enough for him.” She smiled as she took a long swallow. “Plus, you don’t even know if that was his real name before you met him.”
“It’s the name he gave me, frail,” Victor replied with a shrug. “What is going on between the two of you, anyway? I saw you come back from the woods and fly into your window.”
“I really don’t think it’s any of your business,” Rogue replied quickly with a huff.
Victor let his smirk grow into a smile, watching her face turn three shades of red with embarrassment. “You realize that you’re never going to get over him, don’t you? The runt’s too damn important to you. You got too much history together.”
Rogue felt her exasperation grow with his questions as she took another drink, willing herself to calm down. “You don’t like him anyway. Why do you even care?”
“Because I owe him,” Victor replied somberly, his eyes shifting away from her and to the wall just behind her. “I might be a sadistic bastard, frail, but I always pay my debts. And there’s you. You’ve been through enough in your life; you deserve some happiness. And if the runt’s the one who can give you that happiness, then so be it.”
“What do you mean, you owe him?” Rogue asked, her temper decreasing as her curiosity grew.
Victor sighed, shaking his head. “If you want to know about that, then you’re going to have to go digging through your own head. It’s not really something that I want to talk about.”
They both grew quiet for a moment, pondering his motives. There were things in her past she wasn’t too proud of, either, and didn’t ever want to think about. She would leave his memories alone, and give him his privacy if that was what he wanted, but she would also be ready in case he felt the need to really talk.
“How long you planning on staying?” Victor asked slowly. “You understand that I can’t stay here forever. Quicksilver won’t be able to, either. His father hardly approves of him going good back in Vegas. If he finds out his only son is working with the X-Men, Magneto will have a fit.”
“Not too much longer. I’m starting to get the hang of this, and I need to get back, too. I still have something to take care of for Mystique.” She was the one who looked away this time, unsure of how much he knew.
Victor sighed, bringing her gaze back towards him. “I didn’t want to believe that he was mine at first. Not until I actually saw him. He was about two then, and he was full of energy and a lot of anger. But what do you expect when you’re being raised by Mystique?”
“Why did she keep him?” Rogue asked suspiciously, unsure of the shapeshifter’s motives. “Even back then, she wasn’t really living a lifestyle that had enough room for a child. Why didn’t she put him up for adoption?”
“She thought about it for a while. She knew that he had a good chance of being a mutant, too. And since she knew that I was the father, she figured that we would probably share the same mutation,” Victor explained slowly. “So when she was working, she left the boy with Destiny. After I accepted that he was mine, I would go and visit. Try to do what I could to make him a man. I was a little rough with him; I’ll admit that, too. Of course, Destiny knew that and did her best to shelter him. Graydon had a happy childhood, if not a normal one.”
Rogue was confused: none of what Victor had said added up to what she had learned about the man she was going after. “What happened to him, then? What sent him off the edge?”
Victor paused, running a taloned hand through his hair. “I wasn’t around when it first happened. He was probably about seventeen, and Mystique was beginning to suspect that he either didn’t carry the mutant gene, or that it was dormant. They both took it pretty hard, I guess.”
“And Destiny never saw what he could become?” Rogue questioned, needing more answers. “Isn’t she supposed to be a psychic?”
“That’s the strange thing about Destiny’s abilities,” Victor explained, his own voice full of uncertainty since his knowledge was also lacking. “She sees more blurs than anything, and nothing is set in stone. Sometimes the visions come true, sometimes they don’t. It’s all still chance. The only ones that have become a certainty are the ones that she got when her powers first emerged. She was about thirteen at the time and she spent three days locked in a room, filling diaries with all these images that wouldn’t stop flashing. She didn’t eat, sleep, nothing. Just wrote for three days straight. When the images finally stopped, she had filled a number of books. I’m not really sure how many. But they’re the most vivid she’s ever gotten and they’re the only ones that would be safe to bet on coming true.”
“What happened to Graydon when Mystique found out that he wasn’t a mutant? Did she abandon him?” Rogue asked solemnly, trying to understand just what she would be up against.
“From what I understand, it was the other way around. Mystique isn’t the most pristine person, but she was a good mother,” Victor explained quickly. “She loved Gray, mutant or not, and tried to give him a good life. If she went wrong anywhere, it was in filling his head with the idea that he was going to be a powerful mutant leader after his abilities came in. She would tell him that he was going to live forever and be influential in the fight against humanity. After seventeen years of this shit, the boy went insane when they realized that he wasn’t going to be a mutant. He decided that if he wasn’t going to be a powerful mutant leader, than he would lead the other side.”
“Where were you when this was happening?” Rogue asked, wondering how much pain Victor was in over all of this. “Why weren’t you around?”
Victor sighed, standing and pacing the room. “Working with the government. You have to remember, when it came to me and Mystique, well, we worked better together when we weren’t involved. I thought the boy was being taken care of. Both Mystique and Destiny were completely devoted to him. I didn’t think that he needed a dad like me, and I didn’t want to risk being to him what my father was to me.”
“What do you mean?” It was the first time Rogue could remember Victor being so open about his past. He usually only gave small insights to what he was thinking and had experienced, most of which were usually pretty straightforward.
“My father wasn’t the best role model in the world,” Victor replied slowly, turning his attention to the forgotten box of alcohol on the desk. He grabbed two more cans, tossing one to Rogue and opening the other for himself. He watched as she quickly drained her first before opening the second, trying to collect his thoughts. “Let’s just say that he made the term ‘child abuse’ an art form. The only time I was able to breathe and relax was when he would chain me to a stake in the basement in our little house before he took off on one of his hunting trips. He would leave some food and water out, and I would have to ration it out so I wouldn’t starve. There was no telling how long he would be gone.”
“So what happened after all this?” Rogue asked quietly. “How long was it until you found out?”
“Sixteen years,” Victor replied with a sigh. “During that first year, I was on assignments and my team was jumping from one place to another. After that, well, it was a while before I was able to have contact with the outside world again. I found out everything just before Mystique introduced me to Magneto and he sent me after you. And then, of course, I found myself locked up tight all over again.”
“Do you regret not being there for him when he was a boy?” Rogue wondered, unsure of his feelings.
“I don’t think about things like that, frail,” Victor replied with a bitter chuckle. “You get too caught up in the past, you forget to look towards the future. After a while, you either wake up and find out that you’ve missed some of the best things life can offer, or you find yourself stuck in a hole that you have no hope of digging yourself out of.”
He left then, silently and without any goodbye. She shook her head as she watched him walk away, wondering if he was speaking figuratively or literally. She promised herself that she would ask him one day.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Yeah!!!! Ok, so it was a because of both my beta reader and myself that this is up so late. I wasn't sure if this was the chapter I wanted to go with, but I reread it about five times before realizing that I like it. I told her that I wasn't going to wait to read it through because of this. Her reason is at the bottom.
Chapter End Notes:
(Crazy) Beta Notes:People, this chapter is late because Epic's beta was an idiot and didn't do her job in a timely manner. Then Epic was out of commission for a little while, but still tried to prod me into action by emailing me and asking if I had forgotten her and her story. I continued to blatantly neglect her and the needs of her fans, for which I am truly sorry. I humbly ask that you readers not track me down for the purposes of committing serious mayhem on my person :-) Thanks, BioHelixx
(Again, she is CRAZY!!!!! It's my fault, too!!! More really soon!
(Again, she is CRAZY!!!!! It's my fault, too!!! More really soon!