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When Gambit sees Wolverine on the table, he knows he's going to have to break his promise to his wife. He’d rather be divorced than a widower. The man’s breathing bubbles of blood, his arms flayed to adamantium bones, his eye sockets dark and empty in his skull. Sarah Gaunt took a trophy, then.
He hears Jubilee’s breath hitch beside him, and he places a steadying hand on her shoulder, “He’ll live, petite. See? He’s already starting to mend.”
He points to where Wolverine's muscles are already knitting back together around his ulna and radius, but his mind is already moving past the table and the man on it into the damp and heavy darkness of the bayou. Once Nightcrawler comes back from talking to the kids, he’ll sweet talk him into taking him back to where he left Anna. It won't be hard. Kurt loves her too. Their Rogue, too brave and stubborn to know when she may be beat.
She made him a promise too before God and their friends, and he intends to help her keep it.
He doesn’t know what he’ll do what he gets there. Maybe he’ll use the eye he pinched off the dragon. Maybe he’ll need to pray that he still has part of Death within him. Maybe he'll open that door in his own mind that he worked with Chuck to shut and barricade ever since he got shot in the head at Pace. Maybe, he thinks grimly, he’ll need to do all three, and damn the consequences. He refuses to let it be Anna on the table, blood soaking the wood, fighting for each gurgling breath. He refuses to acknowledge that may be the best outcome he gets.
Jubilee sniffs and scrubs at her eyes, stands up straighter, “Go to her already, Remy. No-one’s getting to Logan while I’m here.”
“Try not to burn down this nice family's house, chere.”
Fists popping sparks, “No promises.”
Kurt enters the room trailed by Marcus St. Juniors and the kids. His thief’s eyes take in their reactions. Jitter scans Logan's wounds as if wondering whether one minute of field surgeon would be enough. Calico blanches and turns away, chews her bottom lip. Ransom postures up for a fight. And Deathdream, well, Deathdream looks utterly delighted.
“I’ll get the first aid kit,” Marcus says, “Normally, I’d say we take him to the ER, but it’d ,be a waste of an ambulance ride in your friend's case.”
Kurt nods, “Ja, he can heal himself better than any doctor. He only needs time.”
“We can give him that,” Remy begins, but his phone buzzes in his pocket. Anna? Calling to tell him she’s won and the monster is dead? No, it's a restricted number. It's either government or the worst timed spam call.
He holds up a finger and presses the phone to his ear.
A woman’s voice, cool and impersonal as official forms, says, “Mr. LeBeau. Gambit. My name is Dr. Corina Ellis.”
He listens numbly as she explains that Sarah doesn't care about his wife, that she wants to kill the mutant kids and is sending an army to finish a job. Because, goddamnit, he knows that he won't be going to Rogue now, that he has to stay and fight. He brought Anna and Logan to Haven, and a monster followed them as one always does. Genosha, Utopia, Krakoa. He can’t let it destroy this place or the kind people who took him in when he was a scared kid who couldn't go home.
He closes his eyes against the memories.
Etienne’s white and bloated body on a metal table in a Granada morgue. Jean-Luc inhaling sharply as he lifted the sheet and saying “Oui, that’s my nephew.” The guilt that throbbed more painfully than his dislocated knee or broken ribs. If he’d only been faster, better, smarter…. Well, he didn't want to be extraordinary any more if it meant he was responsible for more of his kin dying. He was done with being le Diable Blanc; he just wanted to be Remy. Take a paper bag lunch to high school, sit in the back of class and pass notes to pretty girls, help Alice in the kitchen and Marcus in the fields. For five glorious months, he had been normal and then Jean-Luc had come to take him back to New Orleans.
“Well. That got me feeling some kind of way,” he says, though he's not sure how he feels. He thinks again of Anna alone out in the darkness, and prays she's stronger than she believes. She sounded scared on the phone, her voice taut as a wire about to snap. You will stay there. Promise me on our marriage, Remy. I got - I got a chore to finish. Everything within him wants to go to her, fight alongside her, hold her tight when it's all done, and yet …
He has his chore too now. His hand goes into his pocket and closes around the Eye. It thrums with the promise of power. He will get them through the night, and hope that there's a morning on the other side for him.