vikingprincess (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} vikingprincess) wrote,@ 2009-08-03 17:54:00 |
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FIC - Sunset in his Eyes - 3/6 (Teen, Xmen, Rogue/Gambit)
Title: Sunset in his Eyes: Ten and Seventeen (3/6)
Author:vikingprincess
Fandom: X-men (Rogue and Remy’s 616 comic origins, plus X1, X2, X3, and XMO: W.)
Characters: Rogue/Gambit, eventually ensemble
Ratings/Warnings: Teen/PG13 (language, off-screen character death)
Spoilers: For all four movies, as well as the fate of Rogue’s biological mother and Remy’s childhood and unfortunate first romance.
Comments: Yes, please.
PLEASE DO NOT ARCHIVE.
All parts may be found here.
Summary: Year after year, Anna-Marie can count one only one thing in her life… the boy with sunset in his eyes.
__________
Ten and Seventeen
“Y’all stay in the backyard now, Anna-Marie,” Step-mama Carrie called as the boyish figure of her disappeared sister’s little gal disappeared out the back door of their small home into the thick humid heat of a Mississippi summer. She was sprouting like the proverbial weed, skinny as a sapling and outgrowing her clothes even faster than her tomboyish ways put holes in them, though her hair was still a long, thick, curling banner of rich red-brown, currently restrained in two sloppy, tangled pigtails that dangled nearly to her waist.
“And don’t let that screen door—“ A solid thump and clatter interrupted her caution, and Carrie finished her sentence on a sigh, “—bang on the way out. And stay in the back yard this time, hear me?”
“Yes, Mama,” Anna-Marie called back over her shoulder, already knowing that she would be using the letter of that law to outwit the spirit of it. The clearing where she always met Remy was back of the house, and it wasn’t like her family had a fence to mark a border between back yard and unclaimed Mississippi mud and undergrowth, so… if a body wanted to get technical, she would still be in the back yard, even down by the banks of Old Muddy. ‘Cause she was going to be behind the house. Real far behind, but still. Back. Yard.
Giggling to herself, Anna-Marie ran like a young deer, her movement more expressive of enthusiasm and speed than grace. She ran through the undergrowth and ancient live oaks, ducked Spanish moss and low-hanging branches, leaped fallen logs redolent with the scents of decay and new growth, and took pure pleasure in the chase of nothing at all and the thuds of her bare feet on the damp ground. Daddy’d be real upset with her –if he found out about it—for disobeying Mama Carrie’s wishes when she knew good and well what her stepmama had actually meant, but it’d be worth whatever punishment he came up with. It always was.
‘Sides, if she wanted to see her best friend, she just had to go down by the riverside. Remy wasn’t much for visiting other folks’ homes, she knew. Leastways, not as a guest!
*
He’d agreed. He’d actually agreed. What had he been thinking?
Remy felt as though his brain might explode, and not merely like the cards which he filled with power and then flipped out across the river to die in spectacular, fuschia-sparking slaps of harmless noise and color, leaving after-swirls of light reflecting in the water and in his eyes like pretty shadows of destruction.
Non, his brain was going to explode in the life-destroying way that said that in a bit less than three short years, he’d never again be able to flirt with a pretty girl without risking her life, and his. In the way that frantically tried to deny the reality which had come to pass, when he’d believed it never would; he had only allowed himself to be further trapped because it had seemed to be the least of the evil choices he’d been offered at the grief-drenched time of his cousin’s death two years earlier. In the way that argued, yes, there were most certainly things in life that were a great deal worse than dying, and that he had willingly entered into one of those things.
Not only that, but this worse-than-death thing might also entail death, either of the instantaneously brutal or the long drawn-out, torturous varieties, if he put so much as a toe over a line which he couldn’t even entirely see. A line that was likely to shift based upon nothing at all which he could predict, and for which he could make almost no contingency plans.
The line that the undeniably desirable and definitely dangerous Belladonna Boudreaux of the Assassins’ Guild would be drawing tight as a noose about the neck of one adopted, abused, abhorred and necessary child of destiny, otherwise known as Remy LeBeau of the Thieves’ Guild.
As his wife.
He swallowed hard, and even the loosened knot of his tie wasn’t enough to allow him the breath that he so desperately needed. Officially engaged. The horror of such a connection could not possibly be adequately expressed. His fingers, delicate, swift, and sure even when his emotions were a rushing river of dangerous rapids and dangerous falls, released the knot and whipped the tie from about his neck, this time charging luxurious fabric rather than cheap laminated cardstock, and sending it to die spectacularly above the slowly roiling waters of the wide brown river at his feet.
That still wasn’t enough, and even as he was undoing the buttons of his fine Italian shirt to get more breath, then shedding it to gain some illusion of coolness and air against his skin and in his lungs, the sound of bare feet pounding through the heavy green forest had him turning with a welcoming expression that in no way reflected the despair that had held him in its thrall for so much of the day.
“Anna-Marie,” he called, teeth flashing in a smile, and his arms opened as she flung herself through the air at the end of her run to thump lightly against his bare chest, still on the skinny side, but layered in lean hard muscle that gave silent promise of future power into which he would grow. Of all the people inhabiting his increasingly complicated and circumscribed world, she was the only one whom he never minded seeing, and whom he counted as a true friend.
“Remy,” she squealed, and wrapped her skinny arms and legs around him in a fierce hug of delight. His arms held her even more tightly, and for a long moment, he hid his face in the tangle of one of her pigtails, eyes tightly closed and expressive mouth falling into the shape of despair.
“Chere,” he murmured into her rich red-brown hair, and Remy vowed all over again that never, never would he allow either his adopted family or his soon-to-be family by marriage to discover Anna-Marie’s existence. Neither one would ever have the opportunity to blight the bright and shining spirit of his little friend. No matter what it might cost him.
She laughed, and gave him a smacking kiss on his lean brown cheek. “Ah’m glad to see y’all!” Leaning back a little, she added, “But why are y’ so dressed up?” Anna-Marie couldn’t remember ever having seen Remy in anything but cutoffs and battered sneakers, sometimes with a t-shirt and sometimes not.
“It was a family thing, chere,” Remy replied, raising his head to meet the shiningly innocent green jewels of her eyes.
Anna-Marie gasped at the sight of his eyes, their normally soft brown irises gone all the shades of fire. The colors and their strangeness had never frightened her; she thought they were pretty. But they also meant that her best friend was upset. One grubby little hand came up to pet the side of his face gently. “Did someone make y’all mad or sad, Remy?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating hard on getting himself under control, and then realized that his petite ami had never demanded anything of him but that he be himself, and her friend, and gave the effort up as a useless one. Nothing would change the fate to which he had foolishly tied himself, and Anna-Marie, of all people, would understand. Somehow, she always did. “Oui, petite.
Her hug grew fierce again, her skinny arms and legs both wrapping his torso, and she said sternly, “Then y’all have to tell me all about it. Because that’s what best friends do, Remy.” Head tipped to the side, she told him seriously, “Sharing makes it hurt less.”
Despite himself, Remy grinned. “Dat is does, chere. Dat it does.” He carted her over to a fallen log and took a seat there, settling her on the ancient wood beside him, one arm still around her skinny little shoulders.
“It’s not because someone made y’all dress up, is it?” Trustingly, Anna-Marie leaned against Remy.
“Maybe juste un peu,” he admitted. “Dey’re related. Dis one had t’ get fancy fo’ a meetin’ t’day, chere. Was real important to Daddy.”
Anna-Marie’s eyes narrowed, a look almost too shrewd for her still-round, sweet, soft baby face. He choked down a chuckle at the contrast between that face and her frowning rose-bud mouth, and the ever-increasing lankiness of her arms and legs. His petite ami was growing up, though she hadn’t yet realized how cruel the world could be, despite having lost her real mother so long ago. He almost wished he could keep her just as she was; as Belladonna proved every day, grown-up little girls were nothing but trouble! Well, almost nothing….
Delicately, she asked, “Is this here some family business, Remy?” She’d long since known that his Daddy wasn’t the nicest of men, and that Remy himself was a thief, but she hadn’t yet become cynical enough to judge him. He hoped she never would.
“Oui, chere. M’ family, and another one besides. Dem and us, we been feudin’ for a long time… only now dat feud’s over.” He looked down at the ground, and kicked his leg idly as he unconsciously tightened his arm around her, protective even at the oblique mention of the Assassins’ Guild.
Anna-Marie was confused. Shouldn’t that be a good thing, if fighting were stopped and people were to get along? “But y’all’re sad because there ain’t fightin’ no more? How’s that make any sense, Remy?” She slipped one skinny arm behind his back, and cuddled closer, trying to comfort him.
“Non, petite,” he corrected her. “Dat ain’t what’s got dis one bothered. It’s de how of it dat he don’ much like.” She huffed out an impatient breath, and he chuckled as he stroked a bit of stray hair off of her forehead. “Got t’ get married, chere Marie, to de daughter o’ dis other famille.”
“Oh,” she replied, and thought for a moment. “Well, is she ugly?”
That made him laugh right out loud, and the release from tension was marvelous indeed. Anna-Marie wasn’t sure why he was laughing, but she smiled too, and then giggled. They leaned on one another and laughed until Remy was breathless, when she scrambled into his lap again. “Is she?” Her best friend was too pretty to have to marry an ugly girl!
“Non, mon petit bien-aimé,” he smiled down at her. She was certainly that, the sweetest heart he’d ever known. “Belle’s pretty as a fairy-tale princess, chere. But dis one… don’ love her.” His smile faded. Truth be told, since Etienne’s death, Remy had loved no one, not his adopted father, not his adopted family… not even himself. Only this little girl in his arms. His only friend.
“Then you shouldn’t have to marry her,” Anna-Marie said forthrightly. “Y’ should marry someone else so y’ don’t have to marry her, Remy.”
“Ain’ so simple as all dat, chere,” he told her.
“Ah could marry y’all an’ keep y’ safe,” she offered, hesitantly. “But Ah guess they’d just keep on fightin’, then, wouldn’t they? ‘Sides, Ah’m only ten. Ah can’t be gettin’ married for years ‘n years ‘n years.”
“Got a few years yet before de vows have t’ be spoken,” Remy said, trying to console himself as much as her. “But dis one surely do appreciate de offer, chere. Since ya think boys’re icky.” He tugged on one of her tangled pigtails teasingly.
Anna-Marie looked shocked and even offended. “Y’all ain’t a boy, Remy!”
He snickered. “If dis one’s no’ a boy, what is he? Surely no’ a belle fille!”
“Well, no,” she admitted. “But boys are icky, and y’all’re not, so y’ can’t be a boy. Hear me, Remy?”
“Dis one notices y’ ain’t answerin’ de question, chere….” He tugged her pigtail again, and she stuck out her tongue at him, then pulled his hair, neatly back in a ponytail instead of falling loose, for once, in retaliation.
“Getting married better not mean y’all stop comin’ down here,” she said grouchily. “And stop pullin’ my hair!” Her lower lip went out in an adorable pout, and she added, “Guess y’ may be a boy after all… but y’ still my best friend, Remy. Don’t stop visitin’ me, please?”
“Never would do dat,” he promised her, and kissed her forehead. “Chere… you dis one’s best friend too. Havin’ a wife won’t change dat. Even a pretty one.”
“Better not,” she said, somehow drawing the regal air of a queen around her skinny little castoffs-clad body.
“It’s a promise,” he assured her, and even though nothing he faced had changed in the slightest, Remy still felt better than he could have imagined feeling an hour earlier.
__________
Eight and Fifteen - Fourteen and Twenty One
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Title: Sunset in his Eyes: Ten and Seventeen (3/6)
Author:
vikingprincessFandom: X-men (Rogue and Remy’s 616 comic origins, plus X1, X2, X3, and XMO: W.)
Characters: Rogue/Gambit, eventually ensemble
Ratings/Warnings: Teen/PG13 (language, off-screen character death)
Spoilers: For all four movies, as well as the fate of Rogue’s biological mother and Remy’s childhood and unfortunate first romance.
Comments: Yes, please.
PLEASE DO NOT ARCHIVE.
All parts may be found here.
Summary: Year after year, Anna-Marie can count one only one thing in her life… the boy with sunset in his eyes.
__________
Ten and Seventeen
“Y’all stay in the backyard now, Anna-Marie,” Step-mama Carrie called as the boyish figure of her disappeared sister’s little gal disappeared out the back door of their small home into the thick humid heat of a Mississippi summer. She was sprouting like the proverbial weed, skinny as a sapling and outgrowing her clothes even faster than her tomboyish ways put holes in them, though her hair was still a long, thick, curling banner of rich red-brown, currently restrained in two sloppy, tangled pigtails that dangled nearly to her waist.
“And don’t let that screen door—“ A solid thump and clatter interrupted her caution, and Carrie finished her sentence on a sigh, “—bang on the way out. And stay in the back yard this time, hear me?”
“Yes, Mama,” Anna-Marie called back over her shoulder, already knowing that she would be using the letter of that law to outwit the spirit of it. The clearing where she always met Remy was back of the house, and it wasn’t like her family had a fence to mark a border between back yard and unclaimed Mississippi mud and undergrowth, so… if a body wanted to get technical, she would still be in the back yard, even down by the banks of Old Muddy. ‘Cause she was going to be behind the house. Real far behind, but still. Back. Yard.
Giggling to herself, Anna-Marie ran like a young deer, her movement more expressive of enthusiasm and speed than grace. She ran through the undergrowth and ancient live oaks, ducked Spanish moss and low-hanging branches, leaped fallen logs redolent with the scents of decay and new growth, and took pure pleasure in the chase of nothing at all and the thuds of her bare feet on the damp ground. Daddy’d be real upset with her –if he found out about it—for disobeying Mama Carrie’s wishes when she knew good and well what her stepmama had actually meant, but it’d be worth whatever punishment he came up with. It always was.
‘Sides, if she wanted to see her best friend, she just had to go down by the riverside. Remy wasn’t much for visiting other folks’ homes, she knew. Leastways, not as a guest!
*
He’d agreed. He’d actually agreed. What had he been thinking?
Remy felt as though his brain might explode, and not merely like the cards which he filled with power and then flipped out across the river to die in spectacular, fuschia-sparking slaps of harmless noise and color, leaving after-swirls of light reflecting in the water and in his eyes like pretty shadows of destruction.
Non, his brain was going to explode in the life-destroying way that said that in a bit less than three short years, he’d never again be able to flirt with a pretty girl without risking her life, and his. In the way that frantically tried to deny the reality which had come to pass, when he’d believed it never would; he had only allowed himself to be further trapped because it had seemed to be the least of the evil choices he’d been offered at the grief-drenched time of his cousin’s death two years earlier. In the way that argued, yes, there were most certainly things in life that were a great deal worse than dying, and that he had willingly entered into one of those things.
Not only that, but this worse-than-death thing might also entail death, either of the instantaneously brutal or the long drawn-out, torturous varieties, if he put so much as a toe over a line which he couldn’t even entirely see. A line that was likely to shift based upon nothing at all which he could predict, and for which he could make almost no contingency plans.
The line that the undeniably desirable and definitely dangerous Belladonna Boudreaux of the Assassins’ Guild would be drawing tight as a noose about the neck of one adopted, abused, abhorred and necessary child of destiny, otherwise known as Remy LeBeau of the Thieves’ Guild.
As his wife.
He swallowed hard, and even the loosened knot of his tie wasn’t enough to allow him the breath that he so desperately needed. Officially engaged. The horror of such a connection could not possibly be adequately expressed. His fingers, delicate, swift, and sure even when his emotions were a rushing river of dangerous rapids and dangerous falls, released the knot and whipped the tie from about his neck, this time charging luxurious fabric rather than cheap laminated cardstock, and sending it to die spectacularly above the slowly roiling waters of the wide brown river at his feet.
That still wasn’t enough, and even as he was undoing the buttons of his fine Italian shirt to get more breath, then shedding it to gain some illusion of coolness and air against his skin and in his lungs, the sound of bare feet pounding through the heavy green forest had him turning with a welcoming expression that in no way reflected the despair that had held him in its thrall for so much of the day.
“Anna-Marie,” he called, teeth flashing in a smile, and his arms opened as she flung herself through the air at the end of her run to thump lightly against his bare chest, still on the skinny side, but layered in lean hard muscle that gave silent promise of future power into which he would grow. Of all the people inhabiting his increasingly complicated and circumscribed world, she was the only one whom he never minded seeing, and whom he counted as a true friend.
“Remy,” she squealed, and wrapped her skinny arms and legs around him in a fierce hug of delight. His arms held her even more tightly, and for a long moment, he hid his face in the tangle of one of her pigtails, eyes tightly closed and expressive mouth falling into the shape of despair.
“Chere,” he murmured into her rich red-brown hair, and Remy vowed all over again that never, never would he allow either his adopted family or his soon-to-be family by marriage to discover Anna-Marie’s existence. Neither one would ever have the opportunity to blight the bright and shining spirit of his little friend. No matter what it might cost him.
She laughed, and gave him a smacking kiss on his lean brown cheek. “Ah’m glad to see y’all!” Leaning back a little, she added, “But why are y’ so dressed up?” Anna-Marie couldn’t remember ever having seen Remy in anything but cutoffs and battered sneakers, sometimes with a t-shirt and sometimes not.
“It was a family thing, chere,” Remy replied, raising his head to meet the shiningly innocent green jewels of her eyes.
Anna-Marie gasped at the sight of his eyes, their normally soft brown irises gone all the shades of fire. The colors and their strangeness had never frightened her; she thought they were pretty. But they also meant that her best friend was upset. One grubby little hand came up to pet the side of his face gently. “Did someone make y’all mad or sad, Remy?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating hard on getting himself under control, and then realized that his petite ami had never demanded anything of him but that he be himself, and her friend, and gave the effort up as a useless one. Nothing would change the fate to which he had foolishly tied himself, and Anna-Marie, of all people, would understand. Somehow, she always did. “Oui, petite.
Her hug grew fierce again, her skinny arms and legs both wrapping his torso, and she said sternly, “Then y’all have to tell me all about it. Because that’s what best friends do, Remy.” Head tipped to the side, she told him seriously, “Sharing makes it hurt less.”
Despite himself, Remy grinned. “Dat is does, chere. Dat it does.” He carted her over to a fallen log and took a seat there, settling her on the ancient wood beside him, one arm still around her skinny little shoulders.
“It’s not because someone made y’all dress up, is it?” Trustingly, Anna-Marie leaned against Remy.
“Maybe juste un peu,” he admitted. “Dey’re related. Dis one had t’ get fancy fo’ a meetin’ t’day, chere. Was real important to Daddy.”
Anna-Marie’s eyes narrowed, a look almost too shrewd for her still-round, sweet, soft baby face. He choked down a chuckle at the contrast between that face and her frowning rose-bud mouth, and the ever-increasing lankiness of her arms and legs. His petite ami was growing up, though she hadn’t yet realized how cruel the world could be, despite having lost her real mother so long ago. He almost wished he could keep her just as she was; as Belladonna proved every day, grown-up little girls were nothing but trouble! Well, almost nothing….
Delicately, she asked, “Is this here some family business, Remy?” She’d long since known that his Daddy wasn’t the nicest of men, and that Remy himself was a thief, but she hadn’t yet become cynical enough to judge him. He hoped she never would.
“Oui, chere. M’ family, and another one besides. Dem and us, we been feudin’ for a long time… only now dat feud’s over.” He looked down at the ground, and kicked his leg idly as he unconsciously tightened his arm around her, protective even at the oblique mention of the Assassins’ Guild.
Anna-Marie was confused. Shouldn’t that be a good thing, if fighting were stopped and people were to get along? “But y’all’re sad because there ain’t fightin’ no more? How’s that make any sense, Remy?” She slipped one skinny arm behind his back, and cuddled closer, trying to comfort him.
“Non, petite,” he corrected her. “Dat ain’t what’s got dis one bothered. It’s de how of it dat he don’ much like.” She huffed out an impatient breath, and he chuckled as he stroked a bit of stray hair off of her forehead. “Got t’ get married, chere Marie, to de daughter o’ dis other famille.”
“Oh,” she replied, and thought for a moment. “Well, is she ugly?”
That made him laugh right out loud, and the release from tension was marvelous indeed. Anna-Marie wasn’t sure why he was laughing, but she smiled too, and then giggled. They leaned on one another and laughed until Remy was breathless, when she scrambled into his lap again. “Is she?” Her best friend was too pretty to have to marry an ugly girl!
“Non, mon petit bien-aimé,” he smiled down at her. She was certainly that, the sweetest heart he’d ever known. “Belle’s pretty as a fairy-tale princess, chere. But dis one… don’ love her.” His smile faded. Truth be told, since Etienne’s death, Remy had loved no one, not his adopted father, not his adopted family… not even himself. Only this little girl in his arms. His only friend.
“Then you shouldn’t have to marry her,” Anna-Marie said forthrightly. “Y’ should marry someone else so y’ don’t have to marry her, Remy.”
“Ain’ so simple as all dat, chere,” he told her.
“Ah could marry y’all an’ keep y’ safe,” she offered, hesitantly. “But Ah guess they’d just keep on fightin’, then, wouldn’t they? ‘Sides, Ah’m only ten. Ah can’t be gettin’ married for years ‘n years ‘n years.”
“Got a few years yet before de vows have t’ be spoken,” Remy said, trying to console himself as much as her. “But dis one surely do appreciate de offer, chere. Since ya think boys’re icky.” He tugged on one of her tangled pigtails teasingly.
Anna-Marie looked shocked and even offended. “Y’all ain’t a boy, Remy!”
He snickered. “If dis one’s no’ a boy, what is he? Surely no’ a belle fille!”
“Well, no,” she admitted. “But boys are icky, and y’all’re not, so y’ can’t be a boy. Hear me, Remy?”
“Dis one notices y’ ain’t answerin’ de question, chere….” He tugged her pigtail again, and she stuck out her tongue at him, then pulled his hair, neatly back in a ponytail instead of falling loose, for once, in retaliation.
“Getting married better not mean y’all stop comin’ down here,” she said grouchily. “And stop pullin’ my hair!” Her lower lip went out in an adorable pout, and she added, “Guess y’ may be a boy after all… but y’ still my best friend, Remy. Don’t stop visitin’ me, please?”
“Never would do dat,” he promised her, and kissed her forehead. “Chere… you dis one’s best friend too. Havin’ a wife won’t change dat. Even a pretty one.”
“Better not,” she said, somehow drawing the regal air of a queen around her skinny little castoffs-clad body.
“It’s a promise,” he assured her, and even though nothing he faced had changed in the slightest, Remy still felt better than he could have imagined feeling an hour earlier.
__________
Eight and Fifteen - Fourteen and Twenty One
Want more? Visit my X-men Fan Fiction Writings Index!
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