Chapter Text
“Gambit see your bet… And raise it!”
He ran towards the Sentinel, his whole body thumping with pent-up energy that slipped off his fingers and into his staff, sending him high into the air.
Gambit had a plan. It was a shitty plan, but if it worked, this all would be over. People would be saved. Rogue would stay alive. It was all that mattered.
He didn’t have it in him to regret any of his choices, not at the moment. And later, well… If everything worked, there wouldn’t be any later. So, there would be no regrets.
Gambit grinned in the face of the danger, just like he always did.
“Cause de cards always be in my favor!-”
The pain shot through him with a sickening crunch. He didn’t move his head, not at first. His whole body sagged and twisted, caught by the momentum of his jump. He didn’t cry, didn’t yell. As the monster dragged him through the air to take a good look at the inconvenience he was and declared with a thundering “MUTANT INTRUDER NEUTRALIZED”, he just smiled.
He grabbed the metal tentacle that impaled his shoulder, just shy above going into his chest, instead.
“The name’s Gambit, mon ami.”
All the energy that thumped and roared in him, finally had something to latch on - and he let it.
It ain’t you killing me.
It spilled from the very core of him, pouring into metal and wires and everything in between, setting it alight with magenta glow. He felt blood run down his body, glimmering in the light.
It me killin’ me.
He looked up like a man who had made his choice. Wasn’t a choice he wanted to make. Wasn’t a choice he hoped for. But it was his.
“Remember it.”
As the charge went off, he didn’t see or hear anything anymore. A ball of flames engulfed him.
He never felt hitting the ground.
***
First came the noise.
He hated the noise.
It was high-pitched and bore straight into his brain in repetitive fashion, like a nail that methodically was slammed into his skull.
When he winced, came the pain.
It wasn’t that bad at first. Just tension across his face, pull of his muscles he didn’t even notice he tensed. But it grew and didn’t stop growing. It burned through all of him, skin, flesh and bone, face, body, limbs…
The noise quickened. He hated it so much. He wanted it to stop.
He heard a rumble of voices but couldn’t make out who it was and what was happening. It just hurt. It hurt so much.
Then relief came. And with it, came the merciful darkness.
***
Second time around, the thing that woke him was the smell.
Sterile, clinical smell that stuck to him like a shroud, heavy in his lungs. It felt like it was clinging to his skin, marking him as something in need of cleaning, fixing, stripping off everything that made him him.
He tried to open his eyes. The sound came again, just as terrible as the last time. It felt like an endless loop, and suddenly he wasn’t sure if it was his second time waking up.
Someone was by his side. Someone spoke, quiet and gentle. Something hovered just out of reach, next to him, never touching.
He fell back into the darkness as his lips took the shape of her name.
***
When Gambit finally opened his eyes, it was bright. He closed them again, winced, felt something foreign on his face. Something covered the side of his head, something pulled and rubbed as he tried to stir and roll his shoulders.
“Don’t do that.”
Gambit looked to the side, his eyes growing wide and incredulous as he saw who sat there.
“Stormy?..”
His voice came out weak and hoarse, his throat raw. She smiled softly at him, and Gambit couldn’t understand. She wasn’t in Genosha. He had no idea where she was at all. And yet, there she was. He had no idea where he was, for that matter.
“Where?..”
“Don’t speak,” she stopped him again, took a bottle that stood on the side table next to her, picked up the straw and helped him get a drink. Just a little. The water tasted like copper. “You’re badly hurt. It’s a miracle you survived, Gambit.”
He swallowed the lump in his throat that felt like a shard of glass. Looked up at her, eyes searching, brows furrowed despite the pain that clung to him.
“How many?.. Who?..”
Storm took a deep breath, her eyelids fluttering.
“Rogue is safe,” she said quiet, soft. “She’s helping the others at the moment. She was getting too restless sitting by your side. Scott sent her to clear her head a little.”
sitting by his side.
Gambit blinked. He half-remembered the voice, the eyes, the softness of her almost-touch. He was sure he dreamed it. Still wasn’t convinced he didn’t.
“How many?” he asked again, voice a little more steady. It was easier to give his mind something to work with, something to ponder over aside from implications of the fact that was still breathing.
“Thousands,” Storm’s voice broke a little, grief for the dream that never came to be. “So many we knew. Banshee, Moira, Calisto…”
She took a deep breath again.
“Magneto.”
Gambit didn’t flinch. Not externally, at least. He remembered what it was like, locked up in a metal cage that had no lock for him to pick, restrained by powers he could never compete against. And right by his side, a woman he loved had her heart torn out of her chest as the one she chose disintegrated in front of her eyes.
Storm watched him with calm exhaustion that didn’t ask any questions. She simply was there.
“How bad is it?” he asked finally after a solid five minutes of silence. Ororo blinked, and he felt her sorrow even without raising his eyes.
“You’re alive,” she said. “That’s enough.”
He didn’t have it in him to disagree. When he closed his eyes, his own fatigue claimed him again like death didn’t want him to leave for long.
***
She cried when he opened his eyes again.
It was a familiar sight, people crying when he looked up at them. This was not familiar. This was something else, something that made his heart clench in his chest.
“Hi, sugah,” Rogue whispered in broken tone as she smiled at him, a quivering and broken curl of her beautiful lips that looked more like a grimace of pain. He wanted to raise his hand, wanted to wipe them away. He knew he couldn’t, his arm must’ve been covered with burns judging how badly it hurt, but maybe if there was gauze of bandages he could…
He reached up. And then he froze.
Rogue sobbed still, wiping at her face as she tried to say something but no coherent words made it out. She just clung to the sheets at his side, those that covered him from feet to chest, white and clean and slippery. He was in a medical gown. White bandages underneath the nearly sheer fabric. Skin that burned beneath them, pain that had its teeth deep to his very bones.
His arm was glowing. It pulsed with energy, like a live wire he poured his powers into, brought it to the point of searing just by looking at it. The same energy that escaped him, the same energy that must’ve ended it all and didn’t. It still coursed through him, still glowed without lighting up a thing.
“...and your arm,” Rogue sobbed, and Gambit looked up at her, cutting her short as he whispered.
“You see it?..” he asked, barely a whisper, eyes wide and scared. “What wrong with me?..”
She knitted her brows and her lip trembled. When she reached to brush the very tips of her fingers over the bandages on his head, those that covered the half of his face, like she was afraid of touching him, more than usual, she sobbed again.
“Ah’m so, so sorry, Remy. It’s gone.”
“Non,” he breathed out, confused. “Non, it right here, an’ it-”
He managed to look down at his shoulder. Right where his arm was ought to connect to his body, was an empty sleeve of his medical down, cutting right through the thumping energy like it wasn’t there.
He could hear his heart skip a beat on a monitor.
***
Every time he woke up again, Rogue was there by his side. He couldn’t piece why, though.
She was there when they replaced the bandages on his head, and he stopped breathing for a whole minute when he asked for a mirror to see for himself how bad it was.
Half of his hair was gone. The rest was not better. His skin glistened with burns and medicine applied to them, angry red and painful and ugly.
“It will grow back,” Rogue told him softly as he stared at the reflection, shoulders tensed, mirror shaking in what they told him was his now only hand. It wasn’t. His other one was just, apparently, a hallucination that burned him relentlessly, even when he was out cold high on pain-killers that could knock out Captain America.
He swallowed as he let the mirror slip from his fingers and fall down to the white sheets. Rogue’s hand hovered a hairsbreadth away from landing on his back, her fingers trembling too, and she couldn’t bring herself to touch him. He felt it.
He wouldn’t want to touch him too.
Finally, his outside matched the ugliness that he carried deep within ever since he was born. He couldn’t hide it anymore, because it wasn’t just in his eyes, it was all of him. Burned, broken, ruined, horrible.
Useless. Completely and utterly useless.
No charms would ever conceal that amount of damage. His hair would not grow back where there was barely any skin left to cover his skull. His arm was gone and what was left was the manifestation of his powers echoing through him with each beat of his heart that shouldn’t be there.
What did he ever have to give? His devilish smile and flick of wrist that opened any door and hazed minds. He had none of it now. Gave it away as a token to get to the other side and still denied entrance. This was worse than death.
It coiled and twisted and made him wish that metal rod impaled him right in the heart instead.
What was he now? A burned wreck, bearing consequences of his own decisions on his blistering skin. A breathing reminder of horrors that had befallen Genosha.
A survivor they called him.
A corpse that failed to die he thought of himself.
“Remy,” Rogue whispered his name, careful and tender. She was still by his side, that angel, that woman who always claimed she only hurt people around her, blind to how those people were touched not by her poisonous skin but by her giant heart. Locked into the box with so much love to give, convinced that she could only take. He had tried to pick the lock on that box, more times when he could count - once just for the struggle of it, then out of love of his own. Love of a scoundrel, love of a thief… All he could offer that wasn’t painted with blood and regret and hate. All he could give her without dragging her into the darkness that was the place that made him, spit him out into the night with eyes burning like hellfire, a forever mark of sin.
Whose?
His parents’, maybe. His city’s. His own, yet to be committed. Sin nonetheless.
“Don’ look at Gambit like that, chère,” he said, quiet.
Don’t look at me like there’s still something to look at.
She pursed her lips and fingers trembled as she took his hand in both hers. It wasn’t burned, not as badly as the side of him that took the blast from within. Rogue brought his hand up, careful as she pressed her lips to the back of her own gloved hand, her eyes watering again.
He didn’t have it in him to cry. Maybe all that was left was blood, mistakes and pain.
He looked up at her, and his arm, one that was not really there, moved. She didn’t notice. Of course she didn’t. It was his own broken mind playing tricks on him, it wasn’t real. Hurt felt pretty real, though.
As Rogue lowered their hands again and let out a quiet sniffle, he raised his own burning one and reached up to her. His fingers were hesitant, trembling like there still were nerves under the skin, like there were still muscles clinging to the bone in timid anticipation.
His breath caught short as his hand cupped her cheek. He could almost feel the softness of her skin, a sensation stitched together from memories, fantasies, hopes. He ran his knuckles over her cheekbone, trying to wipe away the tears that streamed down her face, failing.
She looked up at him, eyes bright and red-rimmed.
“Some things are deeper than skin, remember?”
He held her for a little longer, hungry, selfish in this quiet need that no one knew about. It didn’t hurt when he touched her, didn’t burn. But it was still a reminder. She had made her choice and he was spoken for death. Or worse - painful existence as a burden that did nothing but waste space. Horrific and incomplete, a failure of his own making.
He lowered his arm that wasn’t there and looked away.
“Not this.”
***
Being in one place made him itchy. His every feeling was muffled by the medicine because when it wasn’t it hurt so much he was a step away from going into shock just from stirring in his bed.
It wasn’t his bed. It was a bed he occupied, one he stole from someone else who needed help.
Thief to the very end.
Jean and Hank declared he was suffering from phantom limb syndrome. His arm was not a phantom. It was a burning glowing thing that made it clear he was not supposed to be alive.
When Forge offered to make him a prosthetic, he hissed and refused.
It wouldn’t be nearly as skilled as his own fingers once were. And if he would charge it without thinking, he could hurt more than just himself.
So the sleeve on his side stayed empty even as he held the glowing hand in front of his face. They took the bandages off so his skin would heal a little faster, a little less painful. Pain was everything he had left. He couldn’t even shuffle his deck normally. It didn’t feel right when he did it with just one hand, and every time he forgot himself and tried to use them both, cards flew straight out of his fingers and to the floor, through the glow and burning energy which only use was to burn him constantly.
Jubilee brought him his cards. He was thankful she wasn’t let into the room. She didn’t need to see him like this. None of them did.
He didn’t want them to see him like this.
He was a better memory than he was a living thing.
And worst of all, that Rogue was still clinging to him. She slept in the chair by his bed when he would wake up in the night, all curled up and undoubtedly aching. She was driving herself into a grave that didn’t take him with all that worry.
He was sure she was merely distracting herself from her other grief.
A queen of his heart that left for the other kingdom only for it to be pried from her hands with fire, screams and death. What did she have aside from settling for what already proved to not be enough?
He looked away each time she tried to talk to him, made sure she always saw the side of him that wasn’t horrible. He kept his hands to himself even when she tried to hold him, sliding his fingers away and whispering that it hurt. It did, but in a different way.
Because she had more than him. She had better things than him. She had her brother and the team, she had people who would follow her, especially now when there was no one to follow. She could reach her goal, she could do great things, she could find someone who didn’t stick to her like a rock dragging her to the bottom.
All her doubts be damned, Rogue was meant to fly. And he kept her tethered to the ground like a chain.
“You should go, chérie,” he whispered one day, hoping she would just take it and run. “Must be other places you gotta be at than at dis ol’ wreck’s bed.”
She took a breath like he hit her in the ribs.
“Remy,” she started, voice even and low, as she lowered her hand next to his on the sheets. He looked at her from the corner of his eye, but didn’t turn his face. Didn’t want her to see those burns again. “There ain’t nowhere else Ah’d rather be.”
His eyes drifted away again. Her gloved hand slowly reached for his face, gentle like a whisper as she made him look at her.
She held him like something fragile, like a crust of ice that breaks at the slightest touch. And yet here he was, still breathing. Not because he was strong but because under all of her strength and walls and powers she was soft and tender and caring.
Her fingers fell off his cheek as soon as she was sure he was looking. He tried to catch them with the arm that wasn't there. Failed.
“I didn't tell you before,” she whispered, lashes fluttering as if her eyes hurt. He watched her silently, indulging in his last pleasure he let himself have, but didn't deserve. “But the choice I made that night…”
“Lead your people into better life,” he replied, quiet, before she could finish. “Gambit know, Rogue. I been dere.”
For a moment, she pursed her lips and blinked hard. Then she shook her head and looked up at him again.
“No,” she said, fingers curling into the sheets. “No, not that. Remy, it's not like that.”
“You made your choice, chère, Gambit respected it,” he said, lips pulling into a leer that hurt to feel on his face. Must've been hurtful to look at too. He turned his face away. “Gambit know you mean well, but I don't need your pity.”
“That's not pity, Remy,” she insisted, her hand finally grabbing his. He winced and she weakened the grip. Didn't let go. “What you said to me, you were right. And Ah was a fool. Still am, maybe. But I'm here not because I pity you. Not because I have nowhere else to go. Ah want to be here.”
“Why?”
The question fell off his lips like a drop of blood. He wouldn't stay at his own side. Wouldn't waste his resources on himself. Rogue did because she was Rogue. X-men did because they were X-men.
He wasn't an X-man anymore. Had nothing to put on the table and didn't want to bring the ship down with himself.
He was just another mutant hurt in the catastrophe. Once he was clear to leave, he would.
“Because it's you,” she said, quiet and desperate. Her fingers trembled around his. “Because it's my fault.”
“Ain't yours,” he cut her off again, clipped and certain. It wasn't her fault he tugged along, wasn't her fault he had wanted something that was never his to have. Certainly wasn't her fault he played the hand that seared him. “If you wanna punish yourself by lookin’ at me, don't. It ain't no good for either of us.”
Because she was hurting worse than he could.
“No, that's not why I'm… Remy, please,” she held him tighter again and he closed his eyes.
Don't say it.
“I love you.”
He felt the skin on his face scrunch as he furrowed his brows. It must've looked awful, all that red and white and purple. He wished she'd look away. He wished she didn't hurt herself by looking at him.
“I don't want ta be your compromise,” he whispered, angry and broken. Almost felt her bite her tongue as she leaned closer.
“Ya’re not,” Rogue said, searching his face frantically. “Remy, I love you. And Ah was wrong and I'm so, so sorry.”
“You still can't touch me,” he bit back. She flinched, her eyes growing wide. “And now you won't even look at me de same way. You gonna look at me an’ see all de things dat made me like this. All de things you lost. Everyone you lost.”
“Remy, that's not true!” she flared up, tears shining in her eyes, fire behind them. She always got fired up when she was hurt. It was easier to burn than to let it wash over you.
He should know. He never stopped burning.
“Give it time,” he bared his teeth, looked at her with those devil eyes of his, glowing and heated. “You gonna hate me. Maybe not for something I am, but for everything I'm not.”
“Stop talking like that!” she demanded, angry tears falling from her lashes, fury on her face. “Stop it! Stop!”
“Leave,” he ground out, low and hoarse, tearing his hand away from hers. She didn't see it, but the arm that wasn't there still clung to her. He let himself have this small mercy before pulling away too.
It was the closest he would ever be to her. A ghost of a tragedy. A reminder of something that tore her life apart. A second option she didn't choose when she could.
She shot to her legs, fists trembling at her sides.
“Who do you think Ah am, Remy?!” she demanded, furious and beautiful, like a burning wildfire. Her accent thickened, trembling with rage, mighty waters of Mississippi that he had always wanted to drown in. “Ah know what Ah feel! And Ah know that you, Remy LeBeau, are being a terrible ass right now!”
He didn't disagree. He knew he was.
“You're hurting, Remy, Ah know,” she said softer, but still angry, tears still glistening on her cheeks. “But that don't give you any right to act like that!”
He felt the grin splitting his face like a knife carving him open. His head tilted backwards and to the side, rolling over his shoulder, one that he still had intact.
“You hate me already,” he said, smooth and smug, relishing in the thought of his being right. It was an easy mask, a familiar one. “So do us both a favor, chère, an’ leave.”
Please, leave before I ruin the last memory of whatever good you ever saw in me.
She still stood there, feet planted, fists trembling, face flushed with tears and rage and determination.
“You ain’t makin’ that choice for me,” she hissed, narrowing her eyes. Then she sniffled and clenched her hands tighter. “But Ah want to be sure in yours.”
He scowled at her, eyes burning against the skin that knew how it felt on the receiving end of his powers. She swallowed and straightened, tilting her chin up in defiance.
“You been there for me when Ah needed someone who wasn’t afraid of me,” Rogue said, resolute and fierce. “You kept trying when every reason told you not to do that. You said you loved me and proved it a thousand little ways even when Ah was too blind to notice. You gave me a choice I made wrong and respected it anyways. That’s how Ah know.”
He wasn’t sure if his heart was still beating as he watched her, blazing with strength and sorrow.
“Do you really want me ta leave?” she asked, lower than before, a glint of hurt in her green eyes. She stood there, as breathtaking as she was when he first saw her, her heart on her sleeve, her thoughts on her tongue.
He loved her too much to tell her the truth.
“Yes.”
He saw how the fight left her eyes, leaving her defeated and hurt. He looked away. It was better to hurt her once and let her heal on her own than keep hurting her every day by being a burden. She would carry him, he knew, she wouldn’t let go because she was stubborn like that, his chère.
He had to cut the cord before it suffocated her.
“Okay,” Rogue said, barely a whisper, her shoulder slumping. “Okay, sugah. Ah hear you.”
He didn’t look at her as she walked past him. His arm that wasn’t there shot after her, his fingers reaching for something that could stop the burning, for relief and peace that she always brought along with a stutter of his heart and urge to make her blush. She didn’t know he wished, a desperate, cruel feeling, that she would see it, that energy coiled into the shape of his arm, that she would catch his hand and hold him and refuse to let go.
She stopped at the door and looked back at him.
“But don’t think we’re through.”
His heart dropped as the door clicked close behind her.
He sat in silence for who knows how long, wondering what had he done. Blaming himself. Loathing himself. Wishing he wasn’t a coward that couldn’t end it once and for all.
When the door opened, he shot his eyes up, a flutter of something in his chest rising only to be crushed as he saw who it was.
Storm stood at the door, eyes stern and scolding him silently. In her arms, she had his coat.
“You’re not acting like yourself,” she told him, coming over to his bed. “Hurting people you care about. I don’t recognize you, Remy.”
“You lookin’ at de wrong side,” he sneered, looking away. “Dat one be all burns.”
The gust of wind slapped him in the face and he yelped, trying to press a hand to his injuries. Of course, he felt nothing but static of the energy as it went through him. Others couldn’t feel even that. He was the only one able to touch it.
“Don’t sass me, Gambit,” Storm’s voice rumbled like thunder. He didn’t look at her, his lips pressed into a thin line, his form tensed. A goddess’ wrath was the last thing a nuisance like him deserved. He was way not important enough for that. The wrath of his friend, though… Yeah, he deserved that plenty. “What have you told her?”
He leaned lower, curling into himself.
“Remy LeBeau, what have you told her?”
“T’leave. I told her t’leave,” he said, his voice hoarse and quiet. “Don’t judge me for dat, Stormy.”
“Explain why shouldn’t I judge you for breaking the heart of my friend and woman who hasn’t left your side ever since you got here,” Storm demanded with regal authority he couldn’t ever compete against, all his thievery status be damned. It amused her when he tried, and he used to shoot her charming grins like a rascal. This wasn’t it. This was cold and serious, and he could feel whatever hair was there on his body stand up at the feeling of static.
He bared his teeth, his eyes burning.
“Because she deserve more den a barely alive cripple, ugly as devil himself, wit’ nothin’ to his name. She deserve ta heal and be happy and she won’t let herself be if she stay here.”
Because that’s just who she is. Never giving up on people except on herself.
“Don’t judge me for lettin’ go of my heart,” he forced out of his mouth, tears burning on his face. “Don’t judge me for tryin’ t’set her free.”
For a moment, there was no response. The room was quiet aside from his heavy breathing and quiet sobs. He hated it, being this weak, this pathetic. With anyone else, he couldn’t be. But as Storm stood next to him, he just crumbled.
He gasped and flinched as the leather duster, heavy and familiar, sank to his shoulders. He scrambled, pulling it tighter, trying to hide in it, lowering even further. His one arm ran through the sleeve effortlessly, his fingers brushing over hidden pockets out of instinct.
His other arm went through the sleeve and the leather hit his side.
For a moment, he stared at the burning energy that resembled his hand, confused. The realization hit him with another wave of loathing as he clutched his fingers. He gripped the shoulder where bandages were tight and endless, and hunched on the bed, his coat shaking as heaving sobs tore through him.
The touch of Ororo’s hand was kind as she rubbed his back. He wished it wasn’t.
***
When Prime Sentinels came, he could barely walk. Others got him out, protected him as he stared around with wide eyes and trembling limbs. He hated it.
And when Magneto showed up, he hated all of it even more.
And when Rogue left with him, he had nothing left to hate but himself.
He gave her all the reasons to leave. He told her to leave. It wasn’t her fault some stupid part of him hoped she wouldn’t despite his best reasons.
He didn’t hear what she said to Magneto as he asked why she came. Didn’t see her eyes blaze with rage in his name, a promise of vengeance for him. Didn’t suspect she wanted to protect him more than to hurt whoever made him suffer.
He stayed with Forge because he wasn’t good nowhere else. He wasn’t good in general.
And when the skies exploded, when the light blinded him and Forge stood there, shocked and motionless as he stared at the “NO SIGNAL” panel…
He disappeared into the shadows, trying not to hear Jubilee’s cries.
Stayed hidden as time went by. Pickpocketing with one hand was an easy task. Stealing meds to calm his pain was a harder one. Sleep was a luxury he got through exhaustion.
He wished he’d died that day in Genosha. Didn’t have the guts to bring the wish to reality.
So when Apocalypse showed up…
It wasn’t much of a choice.
“I GIVE YOU BACK WHAT YOU HAVE LOST. YOU SERVE ME.”
He looked up, glaring and burning with fires of hell that his eyes blazed with. He wasn’t doing it for himself, not really. Who he had lost were far more important than what. If he could bring them back, if he could make sure no one was lost again…
Maybe, just maybe. There was some part of him still worth living.
“Shudda been dead anyway. Might as well take de name.”