Remy Etienne LeBeau (_gumbo) wrote in marvel_prep, @ 2013-07-01 02:56:00 |
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It was the next morning, Rogue had slept through most of the night, but only after she made John and Remy promise that they were still going to be there when she got up. Once they had put some miles between them and the Ranch, Rogue made John stop the car so she could get out. The path that they were following had been carved around an inland lake and once Rogue saw it she just needed to get into it. It wasn't like she had time to clean herself up while they were fleeing with their live in the middle of the night and after her whole ordeal was in desperate need of a bath.
There were rocks and tall trees that bordered the waters edge. Rogue moved around the perimeter some distance away from the boys so that she could have some privacy while she disrobed and cleaned herself up. The transition from being naked to being in the water was quick, heralded only by a small splash.
The water felt heavenly on her burned back, cool and soothing. She dunked her head below the surface to wet her hair and brush through the tangles with her fingers and work out the dust and grit from the last few days. And then when she was finally clean, Rogue just floated a while, staring up at the sky obstructed by the trees up above, all their leaves outlined in gold from the sun.
Eventually she dragged herself out of the water to dry herself off in the sun along with her clothes, the mangled pair of coveralls from the Ranch. She was laying on the rocks in her skivvies, white boxer shorts and a black sports bra.
She still wasn't in the mood to rejoin the group and just wanted to be alone with her thoughts a little while longer.---
While Rogue went to swim and John kept an eye out, Remy had taken the car back into town and ‘acquired’ a few things. Namely, a new set of clothes for Rogue that didn’t make her look like a jailbird, and also several bottles of water for her to drink, some juice, fruits, anything he could grab that he thought would help her condition improve before they took the long drive back to New York.
He returned to their little hideout by the lake and wandered past a sleeping John with the clothes, water, and a chocolate shake in tow on his way out to see how Rogue was doing. Spotting her out by the shore, he slowed his steps and came to a stop some distance away, debating just leaving the items there for her to get on her own time, unsure if he should bother her.
“Hey petite,” Remy called finally, tipping his head a little, “I gotcha sometin.” Smirking, he lifted the chocolate shake.---
Rogue was lost in a thought. Namely what the hell had happened over the last two weeks and how she had gotten herself into this mess. How she got herself into any of her messes... This was the one thing she had been trying to avoid since leaving Mississippi to begin with—getting dragged back by her ear. And now here she was, back at square one. Less than, in fact. What was she going to do? How as she going to move forward from this? Should she leave? Should she return to New York? Did she even have a home there any more?
It was making her consider all sorts of things that she'd just rather not because the implications just made her too sad—why was she so disposable?
Rogue was staring off into space, rather intensely too, that when Remy wandered up and she looked at him he could see that the weight of the world on her shoulders. She turned slightly and ran her hand over her face to try and ease the expression that was creasing her forehead and then gave him a small, if not quiet smile. Rogue raised a hand in greeting but made no attempt to move. "You get that for me?" She asked. "Wanna come sit?"---
“Well yeah, got it for you.” Remy looked down at the milkshake and shrugged. “My nannan used to say dere ain’t a problem in de world a chocolate shake can’t fix.” He smirked and shifted his devil eyes back to Rogue, considering her second question carefully. They should really be getting on the road and heading back north before the police tracked them down. Remy didn’t trust that they were far enough away or that their ‘borrowed’ car hadn’t been seen somehow fleeing the scene of the facility.
But it was a hot summer day in southern Mississippi and Remy, for one, wasn’t going to risk life and limb to wake up the sleeping Pyro. And besides, the shake was melting. Finally, Remy moved closer to Rogue, his light steps crunching the gravel of the lake shore where the red earth was so dark and so very southern that even he felt more at home. He didn’t even mind the thick humidity in the air and how it could cling to the skin like moving through water.
Stopping a few paces away from her, Gambit crouched down and unloaded his armful of clothes and water off to one side, making sure the clothes didn’t land in the mud, at least, and reached out an arm to offer Rogue the shake with a smile. “Looking better,” he observed. Remy didn’t sit, but he remained crouched there, picking up a pebble to roll between his fingers before it flung out across the water.---
Rogue chortled quietly, though it lacked mirth. "Bet yer nannan never met someone with my luck..." Still, she moved to take the milkshake, sitting up from where she had just be laying prone. She took a sip. It was slightly melty, but otherwise the perfect consistency to be able to pass it through the straw. Not too malty, either. It was good. Her lip curled into a smirk next. "Though Ah'm surprised to hear you say that. Ah thought you came outta the womb like that."
She watched him as he set the stuff out that he brought for her, curious about the clothes wondering if they would fit. Her eyes were drawn back up to his face when he gave her his assessment that she looked better and Rogue turned her head. "How's my nose?" She asked. "It straight?" She lifted her chin to show off her profile. She had assumed that it had been broke when she took the butt of a rifle to the face, what gave her the two black eyes and cut the bridge of her nose. There had been some bleeding which is why she assumed that it was.
"What do you call a woman with two black eyes?" She asked. "A slow learner."
Rogue sobered after that, she knew it wasn't funny, not really, but she was trying to interject some levity into the situation. She set the milkshake down after that and looked away because she could feel her eyes well with tears. "Was this how you felt when Ah left you?" She wanted to know. “Disposable?” Rogue bit her lip. “Actually Ah take that back—how would Ah know what you were thinkin’? Ah never asked...”
She frowned and held her face tight, but despite that schooled expression the tears spilled down her cheeks all the same. If there was one thing that Rogue did well—better than anybody else—was guilt and no matter how bad she felt physically, no one beat her up the way she beat herself up.---
The reminder at how she had been treated, the anger that boiled up in response to it, it caused Remy’s fingers to curl and he didn’t look at her when she cracked a bad joke about women being abused. His eyes turned out across the water, scanning the ripples his tossed stone had caused across the calm surface and he listened to the chorus of insects as Rogue fell quiet for a moment. It gave Gambit time to let his anger cool again. Justice had been served, more or less. And Rogue was safe now. That was what mattered.
When she spoke again and Remy could hear the emotion in her voice, he looked at her and swallowed, fingers unclenching from his fists and instead closing around his forearms that were crossed over his bent knees. The Cajun had never seen Rogue cry. He’d seen her with a lot of emotions before, even some he didn’t think she’d shown to anyone else, particularly that time in someone’s car in the garage, but he’d never seen her cry. And he could tell, judging by the way she held her jaw and pressed her lips, that she didn’t want him to see.
“Ah hell, chere,” he said in a low voice, unfolding from his crouched position to move beside her, legs stretching out beside hers on the lake bed. Remy’s arm came around her shoulders, his skin covered by his jacket, and he tucked her against his side in a firm grip. “You ain’t disposable. You tink either Remy or your ami John gonna waste one minute down here to dis sweaty state to get sometin we just gonna toss out? Hell no.” Remy smirked a little, glancing down at her, the fingers not covered by his modified gloves coming dangerously close to touching her exposed skin. But he didn’t flinch.
“Maybe you ain’t got de best luck, belle. But you got friends. Not everyone got someone dey ken call on at a time like dat. You know every one of dem Hellions would've come leaping at de chance to help you out. Why you picked Remy, I don’t know. But I’m glad.” His smile softened and again he looked out over the water, not taking his arm off from around her.---
Rogue was rubbing her knuckle into her lip, not lightly, while she listened to what Remy had to say. When he was finished she gave her head a brief shake. "Ah've been lyin' to everyone since day one, tryin' to hide who Ah am. What Ah am..."
Her mind flashed to the boy in the bed back at the hospital, the one she had been trying to leave behind ever since she put him in that coma. All of the bad in her life she accepted as karmic retribution for that one singular event. It was her penance. Cody didn't deserve that, to be laying there like that. She did that to him. She put him there. And she carried him around with her wherever she went. Rogue swallowed her throat suddenly very dry. She could still hear him inside of her head.
"Well, it'd be more than Ah deserve. [...] Be careful," she whispered, when his arm snaked around her. But she had no energy to fight him and, really, right now she just wanted to be held.
To his question, she fell quiet. She was never one to be comfortable with her emotions, or talk in earnest about her feelings. Dr. Ward had helped her overcome some of that, how to communicate those things better , but even still it was difficult for Rogue to articulate. It wasn't just the words, the words she could say, it was it was all of the emotions behind them that she wasn't prepared to deal with.
"Ah asked you 'cause between you an' John, Ah knew you'd two get the job done." It was the whole Hellion philosophy, afterall—we don't like each other, but we work well together, so lets just do this thing, whatever it is, and kick everyone's ass. But that wasn't the whole truth. "...Ah knew when it mattered you wouldn't let me down." Rogues voice tapered off, feeling her breath get sucked out of her lungs. "Ah shouldn't have left you in New Orleans. Ah'm sorry. An' Ah know how much you make my friend happy an Ah'm sorry that Ah wanted more." Rogue clasped her hand over her eyes and hid.---
“Lying how, petite?” Remy studied her profile a moment, not heeding the warning about being careful, not that he ever had. “Everyone deserves to be cared for. It’s what keeps us from turning into monsters.” Maybe he’d been reading too much with Haroun lately, or his own inclination towards literature, especially old French poetry, was making his train of thought turn towards lines from his favorite authors, but Remy put the brakes on it and just shrugged. Now wasn’t a great time to be glib.
But then she had fallen quiet and he let her, simply holding her and letting the sounds of the southern woods surround them both. Remy picked a reed of grass from nearby and placed it between his lips, holding it with his teeth as a black bird landed nearby to inspect them and the things they had brought with them, looking for something shiny or tasty to snatch. Gambit smirked to himself. Speaking of poets, they’d had a field day with this.
When Rogue started talking again, Remy went still and listened, tipping his head to watch her as she struggled to get the words out and he didn’t interrupt. His heart took a few leaps and drops by the time she finished and when she hid behind her hand, Gambit pulled the piece of long grass out of his mouth and tossed it aside. “Well I ain’t,” he said definitively. “Sorry, dat is.” Unwrapping his arm from around Rogue’s shoulders, Remy leaned forward and braced his elbows across his bent knees, tipping his head back to look up at the trees.
“Remy ain’t sorry you left him in New Orleans. Told you before dat wasn’t your fault.” Gambit’s tone had taken more of a defensive note, like he was trying to make a point once and for all, and if it didn’t stick this time, he didn’t know if it ever would. “I ain’t sorry dat I’m wit Haroun. I love him.” It was a pretty obvious statement, if Rogue already knew, but he said it anyway just to preface his next statement, which he waited to say until she was looking at him as he glanced over his shoulder back at her. “And I ain’t sorry dat you wanted more. I did, too. And I ain’t never gonna stop caring about you, chere.”---
Rogue gave a light snort. “Everything.” Rogue fell quiet again after that, deciding on something—honesty. What was the definition of insanity? Trying to same thing but expecting a different result? Besides, it was time to come clean. “Ah’ve been tryin’ to hide who Ah am an’ where Ah come from... An’ look where it's gotten me. Anna Raven ain’t my real name.” She gave her head a quick little shake. “John doesn’t even know what it is. Carol Danvers ain’t the first person Ah put into a coma an’ truth is for a time if Mystique had come back Ah would have gone with her, no questions asked.” Rogue figured, if anything, that was enough to deserve everyone’s scorn and ire. She certainly wouldn’t hold it against them if they did.
When Remy released her from his embrace, Rogue mimicked the motion, and curled herself around her legs, now pulled up to her her chest, listening. “Told you before,” she murmured. “Slow learner.” Rogue gestured to her face to accentuate the point. “Maybe it wasn’t my fault, still Ah shouldn’t have left, way Ah see it.”
She took in a sharp breath with what he said next and pressed her lips together tight. It made her feel so many things that she wasn’t prepared to deal with or even how to quantify. She hated the way how Haroun had tried to pass Remy off on her because she liked him, instead of being honest with her. In the end it only had caused everyone a lot of heartache and grief. Rogue was used to being denied the things she wanted. She was quite good at in fact. But when there was a little glimmer of hope that she could have something more than just a platonic relationship with someone, someone she actually might have feelings for, she didn’t know how to react. Did she hold on too tight? Not enough? She was pretty sure that everything could go wrong did go wrong; Rogue had made every mistake in the book.
Rogue let out a grievous sigh. “Ah’m glad,” she said. “Because if you break his heart, Ah might have to put you in traction.” Rogue would do anything for Haroun and if this is what he wanted, she’d figure out a way to just make it work.
“But don’t. Please...” Rogue shook her head. “Because Ah’ll never stop wanting more.”
Rogue stood then, a little shaky on her feet still and inspected the clothes he had brought her turning from him while she did. She lifted up the short pants and brought them up to her hips to see if they’d fit, before stepping into them. She tucked in her boxer shorts and zipped them up. They were a little big on her and hung low on her hips. She stepped into her boots next which she forgoed tying, just tucking the laces inside, and pulled on the oversize band t-shirt. There were also sunglasses and gloves there, which she was grateful for. Rogue tucked the gloves into her back pocket for now and flicked the sunglasses on over her face to conceal her black eyes. That was helpful.
"Feelin' better already," she said quietly, standing again to smooth out the new digs over her body. She was already rail thin to begin with, but her time at the ranch hadn't done her any favors in that department.
"Its Marie by the way."---
Gambit let out a breath and sank his fingers into his hair, bowing his head a moment as Rogue told him some of her darker secrets. Told him what she thought would make him hate her. But he couldn’t. He came from a family of thieves and dealt with assassins all his life. Whatever Mystique was like, whatever she had done with Rogue, it must have been worthy of the girl’s respect and Remy could appreciate that, even if Mystique was a mutant terrorist. He knew the kind. While other people might look down on Rogue for her past and what she had done and what she might do if given the opportunity, to Gambit, it was just another day and, if anything, it made him understand her more. Like her more. She wasn’t all that different from him, all things considered. But there were things he didn’t share with her, didn’t share with Haroun, didn’t share with anyone. Even Shaw, he doubted, with as deep as the manipulator’s contacts went into his past, could know everything. So maybe Rogue would never know how similar they were.
Unlike most people with shady backgrounds, though, Gambit was the kind of person to keep it there, in the background. He didn’t let it get him down until it came up to bite him in the ass. Rogue’s had bitten her in the ass big time and he turned his head to watch her, feeling a pang that she had to be hurt, that she couldn’t just be left alone and be happy and just be.
It was the guilt she held onto, he realized. That she wouldn’t let go of the New Orleans thing was indication enough. But not just that. She’d put someone else besides Carol in a coma, for starters. Everything Rogue had done that she knew was bad was riding on her conscience like a disease and Remy could see more and more clearly that it was affecting her everyday decisions, her everyday interactions with people. While he could rise above the influence of his dark past, she was dragged down by it. In that, they were nothing alike. He didn’t know if every buoy in the world could help her navigate those dark waters. But he had to hand it to her. She was trying.
He stood when she was done dressing, running an appreciative look over the clothes and rather proud of himself that they fit and that she hadn’t outright rejected them. “Guess it’s time to go wake de beast, den. And head back.” he smirked, stooping down to pick up the water and stepped closer to put it in her hands.
“Marie.” Saying her name, her given name, Remy didn’t relinquish the water when her hand closed on it to take it from him. He met her eyes, reaching up with a free hand to pull the sunglasses up, back into her white streaked hair, to view those green fields more clearly. As his hand came down again, one gloved finger traced against the bruised cheek bone of her face. He tisked softly and tipped his head to the side, “Don’t be telling Remy what not to do wid his heart.” There was a soft expression in Remy’s eyes before he smirked again and tugged the glasses back down onto her nose, letting the water go and letting Rogue go, too, turning to head back to where they’d left John and the car.---
Clothes were clothes were clothes were clothes, was the way she saw it. And so long as they fit, what more could a person ask for? Although, to be fair, she wouldn't have picked out that exact t-shirt for herself... But so be it. Beggars couldn't be choosers and it was either that or nothing. "Ah'll pay you back," she muttered when he glanced over her. Somehow. But then he stopped her and pressed the water bottle into her hand. Rogue looked down at his fingers curled around the bottle when he didn't immediately let go and then back up at his face, just in time for him to snag her glasses up, revealing her eyes to him.
Rogue didn't flinch when he used her real name no more than she did when he traced a leather clad digit over the contour of her cheek. No, she just looked him straight in the eye. But no sooner had they locked eyes and exchanged a look the moment was past and Remy was bringing her sunglasses back down and was walking away. She smirked despite herself and hung back to shake her head and push her glasses up the bridge of her nose. She breathed a small chuckle through her nose and raked her hand back through her hair. Message received, loud and clear.
She bent down to snag the milkshake and moved towards the car with determined footsteps. She set both the shake and the water bottle on top of the roof while she ducked into the driver side window to see the keys dangling there. Good.
"C'mon, we're getting the fuck out of here."