Chapter Text
The Xavier Institute of Mutant Outreach and Education, Central Park.
Danger Room.
‘New player entering” the speaker rings, “Codename: Gambit’
Well, so much for thinking my problems weren’t big enough, she thinks, fighting a wave of irritation that was not there mere moments ago, even if she’s split a sentinel apart with her bare hands. “This is a closed session!” she booms, picking up speed.
“Tell it to the control room,” he shrugs, unfazed by her protests. “Chère.”
“Storm?” She’s sure she’s in no mood to let him ‘chére’ her.
“You said you wanted something unexpected,” she can almost hear the smile in Ororo’s voice. “Ask and you shall receive.”
“Me and my big dumb mouth.”
“I won’t stand for you insulting that mouth, Rogue.”
“Well, won’t you,” she dejectedly mutters to herself. “If you’re in, Gambit, get in.”
“I was sorta waitin’ on a formal invite,” he strikes one of the sentinels with a flurry of cards and the flare that’s so characteristic of him. “You know how I am with politeness and things of that nature.”
“Oh, yes, you and politeness.” she bites back. “The first two words I’d put together.”
She’s irritated, yes. And sounding like a whiny ex-girlfriend who takes offense at every little thing her ex does, a tiny voice inside her head insists. But, honest to god, she’s not in the mood to deal with Remy because… what? Why? Thinking about ‘why’ is ridiculous, because there are so many things. Too many things, small and big. And, in retrospect, she should’ve taken it to heart, because thinking about that in a training session just made her get clobbered by a sentinel like a darn beginner.
God damn it, she thinks as she’s shoved to the ground. God darn danm it, because she damn well knows what comes next.
“Rogue!” He shouts, and the fist pinning her on the ground is blasted to hell and back, but not her clothes.
“I had it under control,” she sneers.
“Sure,” he says, flashing her - them all - a dazzling trademark Gambit smile. “But it’s more fun ‘dis way, no?”
And there it is. What she knew that was going to happen the minute he set foot into this damn training session. He’s right above her, rescuing his damsel in distress in front of the impressionable rookies and Psylocke, who are now ogling them as they are the new hot thing to feed the x-grapevine with. Psylocke is already giving the girls morsels about the picnic gate, and all of a sudden, the most painful bits of her love life become issues to be talked about, all over again. Over and over.
Everything she did not want, that’s for sure.
“You picked the training program, didn’t ya, petite?” He whispers, and he knows exactly what he’s doing. “Seems to me maybe you’re yearning for the past a bit.”
“A–a simple time, maybe. Not the past,” she shoves him, hard. Maybe too hard, but she pays him no mind as she leaves the Danger room.
He’s done it so many times, with so many people, talking them into doing what he wants, so he got her, them all, hook, line and sinker. She knows he wants her, will always want her, so sure he is that she wants him, too.
She does, oh, she does.
But this was never the problem, was it?
“Rogue,” his voice almost spooks her soul out of her body.
“One of those days,” she hisses at him, now visible in the shadows of the hallways, “imma put a bell on you, swear to god.”
“Won’t do you any good,” he shrugs.
“Okay,” she squares up, deciding to take the bull by the horns. “What’s your deal?”
“What?”
“Your deal,” she repeats. “How do you want me to tell you ‘I’m not interested’ in going out with you this time?”
“You think I’m talking to you jus’ to land a pick-up line?” His face changes, hardens a bit. “Not to jus’ talk to who used to be my best friend over a dinner or something?”
“It’s never just dinner with you,” she sneers. “And I just think it’s not a good idea.”
“You don’t think it’s a good idea,” he repeats, pausing the words. “Why?”
“Why, what?” She positively doesn’t understand the question. “Why don’t I think this, us” she gestures at the two of them, “is a good idea? Because it isn’t.”
It’s the truth, she thinks to herself. She’s lost control of her powers again. She’s always losing control of something, one way or the other. He will tell her he doesn’t care about it, she will fall for it, they will dance around each other for a little longer, and for how long? How long, until they both realize all of this is just not worth the hassle? How long until he realizes all of this and walks out the door, so she's left with nothing?
“It isn’t a good idea, Remy,” she states. “Not right now, it isn't.”
“Not right now,” he repeats, muttering to himself. The look on his face is not different from other serious talks they have ever had about this, or even arguments. So she knows what comes next, the ever-present question of when, if ever, it will be a good time. She is the first to admit it's a tricky question.
She can give him a million reasons about the problems regarding them now. There is, however, a tiny little part of her that wants him to goad her in, to push a bit harder, to try and give her reasons to fight a little longer. So she said what she said, now it isn't a good idea, and she stands for it because it's the simple, plain truth there is to it. But her feet stay in place, and she faces him, waiting for his next line, the next step in their never-ending dance in which she pushes, and he pulls.
It never comes.
The silence comes as a pit in her stomach.
“Rogue,” Kitty’s voice comes from the speakers and it’s a godsend. “Can you please see me in my office?”
“I’m on it,” she says aloud, preparing to bolt, but his fingers close around her arms.
“I gotta speak to Kitty first,” he says. “Before you do.”
“No,” it comes out pretty much in a knee-jerk reaction, but he just goes past her. “Remy, wait, Kitty-”
“Sorry, Rogue.” He spins and squares up to her, and there’s something in his voice. A charm, a suggestion, and it glues her into place. “I got to speak to her first, vrai? Then you go.”
“Why?” she asks aloud, but he leaves her behind. She sprints after him some moments later, but it’s too late, the door is already closing behind him. She eyes the handle, she eyes the lock, and she wants to barge in, ‘Kitty wanted to talk to me’, but she’s aware it will look and sound petty and childish. Yet she’s still thinking about it, still pondering possibilities, but the door opens and Remy leaves, walking past her, not giving her even a chance to ask what the hell that was. Kitty is right behind him, standing in her office, dismay plain in her face.
“Hey,” she nods, but Kitty just snorts. “You rang?”
“I did,” Kitty goes to her desk. “But it’s… there’s no more need for it.”
“What? Why?” she frowns. “You called me-”
“I did, it was a recon mission I was going to need you on, but… It’s not going to work out anymore.”
“Why?”
“...Gambit just bailed out.” Kitty looks at a bunch of papers. Something about a retreat of sorts. “Said he ‘forgot’ about some other obligations he did have with the Guild. Moreover, he mentioned something about his ID, that won’t be… cleared?”
“That's a lot of bullhockey,” she calls out, and she knows that Gambit’s bullshit is a subject she has a fair authority about.
“Yet he’s not coming, I’m afraid.” Kitty sighs and turns to face the window. “Well, maybe it’s for the best, I think you were not going to like it, anyway.”
Kitty’s distraction allows her to pick up a folder from her papers. Paraíso Island, she reads out loud. An incredible experience in a… A couple’s counseling retreat.
“You gotta be kidding me,” she hisses at Kitty, branding the folder in her hand. “You called Gambit into a mission with me to couple’s therapy? To “work out our problems”?”
“In my defense, you were the only ones who could get past the screening process. Mutants, complicated relationship status, literal mountains of emotional baggage.” Kitty has the nerve to shrug. “Unless you guys are off for good. Are you,” she frowns, “off for good?”
The question takes her by surprise. Her standard answer is ‘no’, as it is always no. She has to admit: even though she's always been the one to list all the reasons to say yes, they are over, there's no way to salvage anything from their history together… she never has. Not officially. The closest to a proper ending for them came from him, back in Utopia, when he told her he was her home and harbor, not a station along the way. She has to admit it hit harder, much harder than she anticipated.
“Anyway,” Kitty tilts her head and snaps her out of her reverie. “I think he ended up deciding for us all, right?”
It comes like a punch in her gut, the moment she realizes it.
Remy didn’t say no. He bailed out. He said yes - as he would, he always says yes. But then they talked, he spun on his wheels, came around and said no.
“...Maybe he’s right,” that’s all she says to Kitty after more than a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, Kitty eyes on her. “...It’s for the best.”
Kitty says nothing, she just nods. The look in her eyes, however, is boring a hole in her soul. It's like she knows what it is, what it truly is. All of a sudden, she can't stand it anymore.
“...I better go.”
So she does.
*****
The Avengers Headquarters, New York.
Press Hall
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, after the world is saved and all the heroes quiet down, she wonders if the juice was worth the squeeze. It’s supposed to be, right? The most relevant missions, the biggest team of superheroes in the world, being an A-lister among the A-listers. However, on days like this, in which being an Avenger becomes a sort of deal with the Devil, she really does long for simpler times. For the Past.
And what a fine piece of irony this is.
Right now, she’s facing an ocean of cameras, her head and face sheepishly hidden behind her hoodie, wishing she could be anywhere but there, in the middle of a PR nightmare after a massive scoop delves the Stark’s heavily sponsored Avengers Team into the dangerously dubious, too-corporate-for-comfort territory. The Captain is doing his best, bless his soul, but sometimes even his golden boy persona can lose its sheen when the press finds out who’s been getting Stark weaponry, at what cost and what price, and why that suddenly sounds like a huge conflict of interest, especially for the mutants in the team, like herself.
The perks of working for billionaires, Remy would say. Which, to some degree, she does, right? Yes. It’s having, albeit indirectly, too many fingers in too many cakes, one of them is bound to be made of shit and your hands get dirty before you even know it.
Who’s having the last laugh now, huh?
She invited Remy to her team. Offered him a position to be an avenger. It was not her best idea, granted, because it was straight up her necessity to have him close, to have him around somehow, talking in her stead. That would never work, of course, and it didn’t.
But the reason it didn’t, though.
She’s trembling when the press release is disbanded. Feeling raw, distraught, because for a good chunk of the time, she wanted to yell to them all she didn’t know jack shit about wetworks CIA teams operating to overthrow democratically elected governments around the world using Stark armament, or even FOH getting their hands into patented Stark technology, even though the whistleblower leaked to the media that the Stark’s Board did have intel about it, so Stark himself was bound to know even though he swears over his dead father he knew nothing about it. ‘It’s just so hard to keep track of details when dealing with such an amount of money’, she can almost hear Remy faking the board director’s voice at the press release, as if it’s not the lamest excuse among all lame excuses in the face of the Earth when dirty cash is involved.
The best part? Remy would rob them blind in the aftermath. Tony Stark would have a fit over losing a billion of his hundred billions, but she would love Remy for that - especially for that.
Her phone is in her hands now, Remy’s picture on her contacts screen stares back at her. She clicks into it, hoping this might be a good reason to say hello after so many months. You practically told him to disappear on you, her own voice sneers to her, and then with Storm’s, ‘ask and you shall receive’. That was the last day Remy ever talked to her.
‘Hey you,’ she types, but her thumb hesitates on the ‘send’ button. What is she going to say to him? Hey, you, I know I told you we were a bad idea and it’s not like I changed my mind or anything, but it’s just that I thought my life was not going to turn out so lonely and so miserable now that you’re no longer in it? I want to know where you are, what you’re doing, or I just miss the sound of your voice, or the comfort of knowing that I have you at a chat’s distance? That I know I don’t have the strength to play ‘just friends’ just as much as you do, but it really hurts that you’re no longer trying?
‘This place sucks,’ is what she types in the next line. ‘This place sucks and I miss you, I miss talking to you because right now I know for a fact you would call a spade a spade and I would love you for that.’
Why isn’t he here with the Avengers, her own voice in her head asks her. Care to tell yourself why, Rogue?
That’s right, girl. You did this. You wrote that evaluation down, a diss letter disguised as your own unbiased professional opinion. You thought yourself so smart, right? No one would ever know about that, right? Until the Thieves Guild hacked the shit out of Stark’s system through Fence’s firmware Remy stole for him(1), so he, of all people, got to take a good look at that report. The worst part? He didn’t fight her, didn’t confront her, didn’t call her a two-faced asshole like she surely would do if the roles were reversed. He got the hit with the flare and the gallantry he’s always taken all the hits he’s been dealt all his life, especially when coming from her. And now that all was said and done and her ‘professional evaluation’ came out to become ‘famous last words’, she has no one else to blame, and to be mad about, but her own lonesome.
She can’t help but wonder, is he watching her on the TV while she’s being steamrolled like this because some asshole up the company's board thinks ‘it’s hard to keep track of so much money’ even if she would never stand for any of this? Wouldn’t it be, if not a proper spanking, at least a love tap?
She deletes the unsent message as the PR team ushers her out of the press hall.
*****
The Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning
New York
There’s a jitter dancing around her nerves, pooling in her gut, despite the festiveness of the occasion. A strange sense of anticipation because she knows that everybody is supposed to be here, so he is supposed to be here - it will be the first time they see each other in person after that day in Danger Room halls.
They’ve spent time apart before, “off-again”. It’s no novelty, nor the worst time they spent away from each other. God, she once believed he was dead because she left him to die. But despite those times, this one feels… different, somehow. Maybe it’s because it’s the first time he truly walked away from you, her own treacherous mind provides, the moment she lays eyes on him.
He looks stunning - of course he looks stunning.
See, that’s the hard part of falling in love with Remy LeBeau. He’s beautiful as sin, he knows it, and he’s not afraid of wield it to his advantage. And he’s doing it when he comes to greet her, leaving an oh-so-respectful peck on her cheek while he wittily remarks compliments about her dress and her hairdo. It’s charming and polite, as it should be. Also, it’s not lost on her that even Bobby’s advances could pose more harm than this. Not a single innuendo, not a flirt, not even a suggestive look that could at least suggest he's tempted.
Her smile feels a bit stiff on her face, but she keeps it on. “Come on, girl,” she mutters to herself. “You’re marrying Kitty off.”
The venue is beautiful. Kurt is supposed to be the celebrant, and he’s positively gleaming. She’s happy he’s happy. She’s happy Kitty’s happy, and Peter. Yet she can’t shake the feeling there’s something missing, something important, and it multiplies every time her eyes drift back to Remy, sitting across a couple tables with Ororo, who’s glued to him like they’re siamese twins. Then Cece comes, sits at their table, and Remy flashes her a smile.
She makes a point to not look.
“You should talk to him,” Illyanna says, sitting by her side while Bobby and Kurt discuss something she lost track long ago. “At least to come back to proper speaking terms.”
“We didn’t fight,” she remarks, and that's what, at some point, is the worst of it. There wasn't a fight or a clear boundary this time. He just walked away, and now that he's seen her again, that's the ground he stood for.
Illy shrugs, unfazed by the ‘none of your business in her tone as she sips a flute of champagne. “But that girl,” she eyes Cece. “If it’s not her, it will be another,” another sip. “When you want it to be you.”
“No I don’t,” she scoffs, holding her ground despite knowing it’s pointless to lie to the former ruler of Limbo. It’s not exactly a lie, though. It’s an impossibility, and the sooner she understands it, the less she will suffer.
“It can’t be me,” she says, almost as a justification to herself. She’s aware of how she may sound, but it doesn’t seem to mellow Illyana in the slightest. She still looks at her as if she’s an idiot - but, then again, Illyanna looks at everyone like that.
“Well,” Illy finishes off her flute in a go. “I offered you some good advice. You should follow it.” She stands up, takes another champagne flute in her hand. “Now, if you allow me, I’m going to do the same somewhere else. But think about it.”
“...Huh,” she scoffs again as Illyanna leaves, probably up to no good.
“...What was that about?” Bobby comes closer and whispers in her ear.
“Beats me,” she shrugs. “Illy sucks as a love adviser.”
Bobby chortles on that. “But seriously,” he says, still in a low voice but nowhere as discreet as he believes he is. “You know why things don’t work out if not for good ol’ cajun there?” She feels her cheeks turn pink as Bobby unceremoniously points at him. “Guys feel intimidated. Because you see, that man was with everyone and their mothers. And you've been with him, so, the comparison-”
“Bobby, are you drunk?! You can’t be drunk.” She’s sure her cheeks are bright red. “Sweet Jesus, Kurt, please do something.”
Kurt steps in, bless his pure and unblemished soul, but she decides to go for a walk. Not only because Bobby’s insufferable - and by the almighty lord above, he is insufferable - but because her eyes can’t stop wandering to Ororo’s table, to Remy, her and Cece talking and smiling while she’s out of it.
She’s not used to it, she must admit. She’s used to being chased by Remy, sometimes aggressively so, and play the game of chasing him away even when she doesn't want to, not really. Above all things, she’s not used to seeing him flirting and smiling with other women - something he’s done a lot, by his own account, but never in her presence. Because her presence used to be the center of his gravity, the one constant she could always count on. Now that’s gone, and she can’t help but feel adrift, and it’s awful.
“So much for home and harbor,” she scoffs to herself, hoping to find the waiter with the champagne.
*****
She comes home, feet aching and head heavy, kicking away her shoes as she goes for her dress’s zipper. The wedding didn’t go through, and not in the good old X-men way - some supervillain crashes the party and blow it up to smithereens. Oh no. Kitty bailed out, stood Pete on the aisle.
And people want her to believe in love and Relationships. Hah. A waste of a nice dress and good hairdo, that’s what it was.
You sound cynical, her own voice in her head remarks. She does, and it’s nasty. She feels nasty. Despite feeling bad for Kitty and Pete, there’s this nagging feeling she can’t shake off. Couldn’t, the entire time. She’s mad - mad at life, mad at Remy, mad that he gave her this big speech about home and harbor, him being her final destination, just to walk away at the end of the day. But isn’t that life, she thinks to herself, Pete’s forlorn expression as he realized Kitty wouldn’t go through the marriage, Kitty's mortified face as she realized that no, no, she didn’t want it, not really. Isn’t it life, making mistakes, hurting feelings, until we finally get it right?
“That’s what I’m doing,” she mutters to herself, taking hairpin after hairpin out of her hair. And it is. She’s trying, God knows she is. She's just trying to figure things out. It's not fair to be punished for that, right?
This isn't punishment, she hears her own voice reasoning within her head, and she knows it's true. There's no punishment here. Just life…
It still hurts like a bitch.
*****