Title: The Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes
Fandom: X-Men Movieverse, post X3
Summary: The strange and complicated means by which Rogue met Remy LeBeau, a dark fairytale.
Pairing: Rogue/Gambit
Rating: Teen/Mature
Warnings: The standard fare.
Author’s Notes: Hi.

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Part II: All Ears
“Will you be able to tell me ‘sorry’ with a straight face...”
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Some people say that the paths we’re destined to walk unravel like a ball of yarn before us – too quickly, oftentimes, the length and breath of that thread slips and rolls out of reach. Sometimes, those fated cords become knotted. Other times, our threads tangle across those belonging to someone else.

On this night, perhaps, Remy LeBeau wasn’t counting on becoming ensnared.

But maybe that’s just the way the Fates work: someone, somewhere – likely something omnipotent – saw it either cruelly apt or downright amusing to land him in the middle of a Chuck Palahniuk film. With Tom Waits blaring on the tape deck – the tape deck, sacre dieu – and the kindling stoked for a brawl half-way across the room, he could only draw two conclusions:

One, the brunette pressing her breasts hopefully into his bicep smelled of cheap perfume masking a day-old sweat, and two, some kid trussed-up like Robin Hood was about to get his ass handed to him by the two lugs trying to manhandle him out of the bar. Fine establishment such as this, Remy thought with no shortage of sarcasm, it was the greater courtesy to throw the half-pint back out into the rain to cool off.

Scrawny little thing, Remy considered; still a damn shame to waste a half-empty glass of whiskey on someone who was clearly drunk from only sniffing at the bottle.

The brunette – Barbie, or Brenda, or Beatrice… whatever – was attempting to suggest none-too-subtly that he take her home. Ironic, perhaps, given that he had no place or property to rest his own head that night, and a warm bed and a warm body would otherwise have been appreciated, but a niggling thought at the back of his mind instructed him to knock back his shot at the precise moment when lug number two, a beefy homme weighing in at half the size of a baby elephant, saw fit to face plant not three feet from the scuffed toes of his motorcycle boots.

Remy placed his glass without looking on the exact ring of condensation left on the bar, and eyed the path cleared by three hundred and fifty pounds of pit-stained bulk with the sort of amused skepticism the Guild had tried to beat out of him from a time he barely remembered. It never caught.

Consequently, it was hardly reflexive that he lifted one eyebrow at the exact moment that the world stopped for a half-second, along with his heart.

Through the haze of smoke, and like the sound of a gunshot fired near the temple: Green eyes, glossy from too much drink. Sweat matting hair to the brow. The part of flushed lips. Satin gloves streaked with blood from cold-cocking a man three times her size…

“Be still m’ beatin’ heart.”

Then it kept right on spinning as a chair crashed into the bar, splintering to shards that caught and brought down bottles and put a crack into the mirror over the sink as the bar’s occupants suddenly sprang to life from their alcohol-induced comas.

And suddenly, strangely, the world really was spinning, and so much colder.

Betty was screaming, but it was barely audible over the din.

Remy heard it with the distant sort of clarity that comes from shock, though he didn’t know it then. He was reluctant to turn away from the face of an angel who was slowly, it seemed to him, floating over the fracas that convulsed upwards from the landing site of the fallen man. Reaching for him with her white, white hands smeared red.

“He’s been shot!”

Warmth seeped from his chest, and for a beautifully fractured moment, Remy thought to himself as he pressed his fingers to that softened, heated spot over his ribcage, that this must be what love feels like.

It was then that he realized, his fingers coming away wetly from his chest, that the vision with the green eyes and bee-stung lips wasn’t any old spirit…

It was the angel of death come to claim him.

Her lips moved, and to Remy it seemed that she smiled as she embraced him before he could slump to the floor.

Remy LeBeau’s last thought before the rushing darkness enfolded him was that he could find no better way to go than in the arms of a beautiful woman.

- to be continued -