Fic: Better Than Before (X-23, Gambit, Jubilee, Wolverine) - R
Title: Better Than Before
Author: eva_roisin
Characters: X-23, Gambit, Jubilee, Wolverine
Rating: R
Summary: Laura has memories of her own, but few she wants to share.
Warnings: self-harm, implied non-con (m/m)
A/N: This story takes place after the “Collision” story arc (the Daken issues) and during the “Touching Darkness” story arc (the Jubilee issues). Special thanks to mozzarellarosesfor a wonderful beta job.
Previous
3.
When Laura changes into her old X-Force uniform, she feels no wistfulness, no regret. Outside, the sun is slipping from the sky and the streets are busy with tourists. Night means that Jubilee doesn’t have to hide anymore. Night means that they can go find the trigger scent under the cover of darkness.
In the room she’s been sharing with Logan, she pulls on her gloves and unsheathes her left-hand claws. Everything still fits. Not that it wouldn’t. She’s had no growth spurt since she left the facility all those years ago, no pressing need to get new clothes or shoes, despite what Jubilee might think. Her height and weight are locked in. She’s stagnant, dormant, turned off-maybe because of what the facility did to her (radiation treatments and everything)-but probably because of genetics. Logan obviously didn’t have many growth spurts either.
There’s a knock at the door. Logan enters and closes the door behind him.
“Oh wow. You’re ready,” he says. He’s staring at her again-probably he came in here to make sure she wasn’t cutting herself. During the last few days, she’s rarely been alone. Gambit knocks on the bathroom door if he thinks she’s been in there for too long and says he needs to borrow a razor. Even Jubilee dropped by her room late that afternoon. She smiled and then handed Laura her iPod. “I’m worried that you’re going to think my favorite songs are cheesy, but oh well. This is what I always listen to before a mission. I thought maybe it would get your mind off everything.”
Now Logan sits on the bed, his hands bracing against his knees. He looks up at her, watches as she adjusts her gloves and boots. “Kid,” he says. “You don’t have to come tonight.”
You don’t have to come, Laura thinks. Not to be confused with you’re not coming. Not an order. (He’s not giving her orders anymore.) She stoops to adjust her other boot buckle. “How much trigger scent do you think they have?”
He pauses. “I don’t know. A lot, maybe.”
“Then you need me. It’s not a choice. Gambit and Jubilee are skilled, proficient fighters. But I am better.” She’s not bragging, just stating the facts.
“Laura.”
She straightens. It’s been a while since he used her real first name.
“What happened in Madripoor? With Daken?”
She adjusts her belt. “Haven’t you talked to Gambit about it?”
“I’m talking to you.”
So Gambit had not told Logan anything. He was still keeping Madripoor a secret.
“It’s as Gambit told you. Daken captured me for Malcolm Colcord. I was held prisoner, but then Daken facilitated my escape. He also had my file. Colcord destroyed his own lab, killing himself in the process. Daken escaped, but I don’t know what happened to him.”
Logan seems unfazed by the summary. He continues to stare at her. “Did Daken hurt you?”
She puts her hands on her hips briefly, and then crosses them in front of her chest. How had Daken not hurt her? Of course he had hurt her-hurt her so much. She remembers walking away from the fire, her clothes and skin burned away, her singed hair giving off the most terrible odor.
Then she understands what Logan is asking. He means did Daken hurt her. “Why would you ask me that?”
A long pause. “It wouldn’t be your fault if he did.”
“Has he hurt you?”
Logan gets up from the bed but doesn’t look at her. He rubs the back of his neck.
“I’m going to kill him.”
He settles on her for a moment but seems unsurprised. “What?”
“I’m going to kill him.” She hugs her arms to her chest to keep her body from taking over.
He shakes his head and turns away, mildly annoyed: his way of saying that the conversation is over. “You’re not gonna kill him.”
“You should have stopped him,” she says. Almost desperate to keep this going, to keep him from walking away. “You had the chance. You wasted it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Last year. Last year, you told me that you were able to disarm him, to cut the muramasa blades from his arms. If you were able to do such a thing, then you should have just put him down-”
“Hey!” Logan says. “Watch what you say.” His tone is direct, Laura thinks, but not shocked. He doesn’t grab her, doesn’t get in her face.
She glances out the window. “Daken should have been stopped, and you’re the one who could have stopped him.”
“A lot people feel that way. A lot of people have awfully strong opinions, apparently. But I thought that I could count on you to see the grey areas.” He pauses. “Daken’s family.”
“He’s your child, not mine. And moreover, our relationship to him is beside the point. He is too dangerous. It’s only a matter of time before he-” If you had just done it last year, she thinks. She pauses and decides to say what she wants, what she’s wanted to say all along: “I am not you, and if you won’t put him down, then I will.”
Logan’s scent changes instantly; his anger becomes too big for them, for the room. (Why is it always like this between them?) Now he takes her by the arm. “That’s what you still think you are, huh? All these months and it’s still this bullshit? Look at me.”
She wrenches away from him.
“Look at me,” he says again, but this time he doesn’t grab her.
She leans away from him but looks up.
“A lot of people have told me I should put Daken down. And a lot of those people said the same thing about you.”
This statement doesn’t have the effect he intends it to have-it doesn’t shock her. She’s always known that people questioned her right to exist; at certain times she may have even agreed with them.
“I worked with you,” Logan continues. “We all did. We got you to a better place. We owe the same to-look, as long as Daken’s alive . . .” He can’t bring himself to finish the thought. “I know that you and Daken aren’t in the same boat when it comes to this shit, and I know that hoping for him to turn around might be a total fuckin’ waste of time. But kill my own son? Or let you do it?” He drops his hand to his side. “Grow up.”
“You’re right,” Laura says. “Hoping for Daken is a total fucking waste of time.”
He reaches again for her arm; she slips past him and heads for the door. Flings it open and runs right into Gambit. His hands are tucked under his arms. He’s heard the entire exchange.
“X!” Logan says, lunging for the door. “X, get back here-” And then: “You got something you wanna add, Gumbo?”
She slips down the spiral staircase without listening to what Gambit and Logan are saying. She knows that Gambit will calm Logan down, but after that he won’t do anything. He won’t take sides, won’t stand up for her. He’ll smooth over the unpleasantness, all Gambit-like, so that this fight will be just a footnote in their grand Parisian adventure-not the center of everything.
Jubilee sits at the kitchen table, reading a magazine. She looks up when Laura walks in, and her expression is sympathetic. But she doesn’t pry, doesn’t say anything, and for this Laura is grateful. She looks down at the magazine and turns the page.
***
Logan seems content to let their last conversation go-at least for the time being.
X wishes for something more. She’s usually not one of those girls who likes to talk it out, who likes to clear the air. That’s Jubilee. But right now, she wishes she were more demonstrative, someone who could go up to Logan and say, I didn’t mean that-even if that’s a lie.
She meant everything. She wants to kill Daken someday, and she’ll do it. Cut off his head. Drown him. Just as there are ways to kill her, there are ways to kill him.
But right now it might be too late for that. They’re on the hill, overlooking Paris-they’re about to strike. She’s wearing her X-Force uniform and what she wants to say to Logan isn’t I’m sorry, but this is who I am. But she can’t say that, not now, not when it’s almost over. This is her life at its most honest: the hungry moment before their attack, when it’s always almost too late.
***
Daken left her in the mud. After he walked away from her, his skin knitting itself back together, she turned to find Gambit and Tyger beside her. Before she could speak, Tyger had wrapped Gambit’s trench coat around her.
“Christ, you’re burning up,” Tyger said, and she held Laura tighter, as though she was worried she might slip away. “Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Come on, let’s get you out of here.” Tyger spoke softly into her ear-as if she was telling her a secret.
Gambit was behind them; Laura sensed his reticence. He seemed to hang back. Like they needed privacy.
“How did you find me?” Laura said. She tried to turn to look at Gambit. But the question, she knew, was irrelevant. They hadn’t really found her-not until it was almost too late. As always, she’d had to save herself.
Tyger pulled Laura along. She didn’t loosen her embrace as she led her to a waiting car. “Let’s just say that I’ve still got friends in this city. Here, here we are.”
Back at the safe house, Tyger drew her a warm bath. Her skin had healed by this time, and it was new and soft, but her hair was rank and grimy. She soaked in the tub and thought, struggling to process everything, to piece things together. I survived, she thought. I survived Daken. He didn’t kill me. We stopped Colcord. Colcord can’t hurt children anymore. She knew this, but knowing it didn’t make it true. Daken had left her with a kill list and more questions than answers. She had always wondered about him-wondered if looking at him would be looking at another version of herself, a version she secretly despised. But it hadn’t been that simple.
In the bathtub, she unsheathed a claw and drew it across the soft skin of her inner forearm. When her blood dripped into the water, it swirled and stained the water crimson before fading to a nice deep pink.
“Laura?” Tyger said. There was a knock on the door. “Laura, I’m coming in to bring you a towel. I won’t look.”
Laura sat up and searched for a shower curtain to draw across the bathtub. There was none. Before she could tell Tyger to give her a minute, the door had already swung open.
Tyger set the towel down on the sink and glanced at Laura out of the corner of her eye. “I’ll get you some fresh clothes-oh my God, are you okay?”
She searched Tyger’s face. “I’m alright. I’m just-” She lowered her voice. “I’m just bleeding.”
“Oh. Oh.” Now Tyger looked more relieved than unnerved. “I’ll get you something.”
A few minutes later, she came back and left Laura a set of fresh clothes, some socks, a hair brush, and an unopened box of tampons. She came and left without saying anything. Immediately Laura wondered if she’d wasted an opportunity. What if she’d just told Tyger the truth about what she did to herself? Maybe the cutting would have horrified Tyger-but probably not. Perhaps Tyger would have been sympathetic and helpful. But now Laura would never know.
***
When she and Gambit left Madripoor, Laura was at first glad for the monotony of water. She sat on the sailboat and watched the waves. Then she looked for dolphins and sharks.
Gambit had been quiet. Once in a while he said things like, “Bet you’re glad that’s behind you,” or “Can’t wait for all that French cuisine.” But mostly he just looked at the waves and felt, all of a sudden, like someone she barely knew. Who are you? she wondered, almost disoriented at times.
She had rarely felt so disoriented after her X-Force missions. She remembered how James and Josh would shake from the adrenaline rush for hours afterward, how James even used to vomit sometimes. Dom would cast Laura an amused, knowing glance. “Some people,” she’d say. “Some people are just so delicate. Not like you and me, X. You want a beer?”
On the boat, Gambit was quiet and calm. He didn’t seem disoriented at all.
Laura tried to keep her leg from twitching. She counted backwards, trying not to think about the details of the last few days. Chewing on a hangnail, she looked down at her lap. Finally cleared her throat. “What are you and Tyger Tiger to each other?”
Gambit waited a beat. “Oh, we go back far.” He chuckled. “Old girl and I have some history.”
“What is she to Logan?”
Another pause. And then, quieter: “Friends, maybe. They also go back far. You’d have to ask him, though. Why, she say somethin’?”
Laura shook her head.
“Yeah.” Gambit stretched his legs out and made like he was going to get up.
“Gambit?” She stared at him. Who are you? “How did you find me?”
He shrugged. “It’s like Tyger said. She got an anonymous tip from an informant.”
“So you think there’s a mole in Daken’s organization?” She tried not to take a deep, gulping breath.
He shrugged again and pulled himself to his feet. “It’s possible. Anything’s possible. Starving, though. Gonna go down below and boil up a can of soup. You want?”
“If there is a mole in Daken’s organization, then that person risked his or her life to save me. And they might still be in danger. Daken leaves no stone unturned.”
“Hmm,” Gambit said. He nodded at her and then slipped below deck.
A minute later, she went below deck too. He was already flipping on the stove. “Chicken an’ stars.” He held up a can of soup and waved his hand in front of it like he was on a cooking show. Then he turned around again, his back facing her. “Yum, can’t wait.”
She stood behind him. “There is another possibility. Daken might have phoned in the anonymous tip.”
“Oh?”
“That would be very much like him. To keep control of the situation. Besides, he didn’t want me dead. He could have killed me easily. But instead . . .”
“It’s not worth thinking about. Don’t obsess so much.” Gambit popped the lid off the can and poured its contents into the saucepan. “Could easily microwave this shit,” he said, “but I always liked it better over the stove. Even if it’s kind of a bitch to clean up.”
In the dim light, she could see that he looked much older than he usually did. There were slight creases around his eyes. She wondered how old he really was-he told her thirty-three, but he always made a joke about it, saying that since Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead at thirty-three, he wanted to be that age forever.
Laura crossed her arms and tried not to dig her fingernails into her skin. “Gambit, Daken would not have killed me. I am certain of this.”
“Like I said, you shouldn’t even waste your time on thinking about him, Laura. Trying to apply some kind of rhyme or reason-ain’t worth it.”
“His attachment to me was not sentimental. He used me as some kind of leverage. To get something from Colcord.” She paused. “Maybe to get something from Tyger and you as well.”
He kept stirring his soup and didn’t turn around.
There was a long moment of silence. Laura rubbed her knuckles together and thought of things she might say next. Then she said something she hadn’t planned at all. “You smelled like him. I didn’t think about it at the time, but when you and Tyger found me, you smelled-”
Gambit straightened and set the spoon down on the counter with a soft clink. But he didn’t turn around. His shoulders tightened.
She swallowed. Tried to think. She could not remember if Daken had smelled like Gambit-at the time she wouldn’t have been able to take stock of his scent because too much was happening, too many other people were around them. She remembered, then, how Daken had looked-so sure of himself, so imposing. She imagined him hovering over Gambit, his hands on his neck, the space between them closing-
“I know what happened,” she said, and as she said that, she felt as though she was lowering herself into a hole that would be impossible to climb out of.
“You don’t.” He glanced over his shoulder. Then he picked up the spoon again.
Just leave it, she told herself, but the words would not stop coming: “What did you do for him?”
Gambit’s shoulders tensed. He turned to face her, and his skin was flushed. “Nothing.”
“You went to him.” As soon as she said this, she wanted to take it back. She could see that she was hurting Gambit-and the worst thing was that she could not stop. His face was tense, his eyes focused on the ground or at the wall-at anything but her. “Why did you go to him?”
He lurched forward, threw up his hands. “For Christ’s sake-why do you think? If you know, then why are you asking? You’re worse than Wolverine sometimes, you know that?” He turned around again, and his hand grazed the metal saucepan. “Fuck,” he gasped, jerking his hand away. He picked up the saucepan and shoved it into the sink.
He took a deep breath and braced himself against the counter. When his voice came, it was low and wounded. “Why are you asking me this, Laura?”
They stood like that for a long time. Finally Laura broke the silence, and when she did, she hated herself for asking the most detached of all questions. “How did you find him?”
A long pause. “He called us,” Gambit said to the counter. He tapped the counter nervously-a former smoker looking for a fix. “Asked for me. Said he wanted to talk terms. Said he’d give you back and lay off the city if one of us went to meet him-and it had to be either me or Tyger. And I didn’t want it to be Tyger.” Another pause. “So I went. And then voilà, in comes an anonymous tip detailing your whereabouts. Guess he keeps his word, if nothin’ else.” He took another deep, visible breath and picked up a towel next to the stove. “I thought he wanted me to work for him. Thought he’d want to use my skills for his master plan. Never thought he’d want something so straightforward. But I guess people surprise you sometimes.”
“He has a way of making you do what he wants.”
Gambit pushed himself away from the counter and turned. Gave her a look as if to say that he did not believe her ignorance. “Laura. I have a way of making people do what I want.”
She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to hear what he was saying: I went willingly.
“When you live as long as I have, you learn what’s important. You learn to make sacrifices. Laura . . . I just did what I do.”
She looked at up him, felt her chin quiver. Didn’t want to follow his reasoning to its logical conclusion: that he had done this for her, this thing. That he had let Daken do something to him. For her. For her. Because if he honestly felt that she was someone he needed to make sacrifices for, then he didn’t really know her at all.
“A body is nothing,” he said. Then his face crumbled. “A body is nothing. But a promise is all I got. You don’t understand this ‘cause you’re young.” He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Gambit.”
“A promise is all I got. You’re all I got. And-” His tears quickened. He reached out and touched a strand of her hair.
“Gambit,” she said again. Her mouth was so dry it hurt to swallow. She couldn’t speak.
“I just really don’t wanna talk about it.” He wiped his eyes again. His nose. A soft sob caught in his throat like a hiccup. “I just don’t wanna talk about it anymore-”
He pushed past her and went into the bathroom. Closed the door behind him.
***
So, the truth. It was more terrible than she’d imagined. Gambit filled in the gaps later-that he’d been injured when she’d been kidnapped, that he’d slipped away from the safe house, that Tyger didn’t know the exact details of what he’d done-but he wasn’t specific about what Daken had done to him. The details, she knew, would remain unarticulated.
But she could fill in the details easily enough. Gambit was half right, half wrong. He had been alive longer than she had, sure. But she had taken more lives. And when you take so many lives, the dead stay inside you, make you older, make you able to see past yourself and into others. She knew what Daken had done to Gambit; she could imagine. She could hear his voice in her head. She understood how he must have taunted Gambit, made fun of his accent. Stood over him and grinned. And maybe he was nice once he got what he wanted, almost tender, just because he wanted to be. Touched his hair. Made Gambit feel that he had made the choice to be with him, even if had hadn’t made any choice at all. Because that was how you made people churn.
The bones of her face: Daken’s. She continued to cut herself as they traveled, more frequently, more intensely. If you asked her why she did it, she would have told you that she hated herself for killing so many people. But that was only half true. The whole truth was more complicated: If she hadn’t been here, hadn’t been alive, then perhaps no one would have been hurt. Least of all Gambit.
After Gambit shut himself in the bathroom, she stood in the middle of the room for a long time. Then she went to make sure the boat was still on course.
It was difficult to know what to do next-how to act or feel. I will kill Daken, she thought. She wanted to climb up to the deck and shout it at the open sky. Instead stood just there, arms at her sides, and waited for Gambit to emerge. “Gambit--” she said plainly, but she knew he’d never hear her above the engine. She walked over to the bathroom and turned the doorknob to find the door unlocked. Without announcing her presence, she opened the door.
He was standing there. As if he’d been waiting for her. He looked down at her, and he was crying. He dropped his hands to his sides. She held her arms out. He collapsed against her and sobbed into her shoulder, his hands pressed against the straightness of her hair.
4.
Someone is touching her shoulder. Someone is shaking her awake. She opens her eyes. Logan’s face is a few inches from hers.
“Hey,” he whispers hoarsely.
She lifts her head. The room is grainy and dim. It’s too early to get up.
“Come on,” he whispers, gesturing for her to follow him out of the room.
She rolls over to see Jubilee sprawled beside her. After a moment of disorientation, she remembers everything: the fight at the subway platform, the woman. The hours of conversation she and Jubilee logged afterwards. They’d fallen asleep in bed together, their shoulders touching. Jubilee had drifted off in mid-sentence and Laura had fallen asleep soon after. She doesn’t know if Logan looked in on them; in any case, he found somewhere else to sleep.
She slips out of the bed, careful not to wake Jubilee. Then she looks to make sure that the blinds are closed tightly. Then she goes into the hallway to see what Logan wants.
“Here,” he whispers, handing over her shoes and jacket.
She takes them in both hands. “Where are we going?”
A smile spreads across his face. “Breakfast, of course.”
She almost says something about Jubilee and Gambit, and then she realizes that this time is just for the two of them.
Outside it’s still dark, but the sky and cityscape seem like they’re poised and waiting for the sun to come up. Laura can see her breath. She wants to ask Logan why she’s here with him, why they’re out so early, but the streets are so quiet that talking seems indecorous. Occasionally a car passes by. Occasionally someone walks past them, someone who is going to work early or coming home late.
Laura thinks about last night. After she and Jubilee visited the Eiffel Tower, they saw as much of the city center as they could. They watched people. They watched a man sing on a street corner. They stopped to buy food from a street vendor. “I’m not hungry,” Laura said, even though she was starving.
“Sure you are,” Jubilee said. “Don’t starve yourself on my account. I won’t think you’re rude or anything.” She smiled. “To be honest, I don’t miss real food. I don’t even remember what it tasted like.”
Laura couldn’t tell whether or not Jubilee was telling the truth. That was the problem with knowing a vampire-her scent shifted quickly. But one thing she did know about Jubilee: she was hungry too.
She looked at Jubilee. Gestured to her own neck. “I can-”
“No, Laura.” Jubilee took her by the arm and led her into a nearby alley. “Look, I was willing to keep your secret, to let this entire thing go. But if you keep doing this, I’m going to have to tell Logan.” She paused. “I thought you said you didn’t want to die.”
Laura looked up. “I don’t. I just-” She thought for a moment. “I don’t mind. I would survive. And you wouldn’t be hungry anymore. It is similar to what Logan does for you.”
“No it’s not, X.” Jubilee set one hand on her arm. She no longer seemed angry. “I need to practice self-control. Besides, I don’t want us to be like that.”
Laura wasn’t sure what Jubilee meant. “Okay.”
“I don’t want us to always be exchanging things. Depending on-I don’t want that.” She steps closer to X, the red flecks of her eyes glinting in the city lights. “It’s bad enough that I’m with Logan because I have to be. But with you? I want to be with you because I want to be.”
“Okay,” Laura said again, and followed Jubilee back to the street.
In front of a small café, Logan stops and glances back at her. “Guess we’re too early,” he says, shrugging at the dark windows. Someone is inside the shop getting things ready, but the place won’t open for a little while.
“Should we go back to the hotel?”
“Nah.” Logan walks over and sits on a brick ledge connected to the café. He pats the space next to him.
She sits down, tucking her hands under her legs. So Logan wants to talk. This surprises her; usually their talks aren’t so premeditated. When she was in X-Force, he’d come up to her after a mission and tell her she did a good job and what to work on next time. His tone was sometimes casual, sometimes curt, but he never seemed to put a great deal of thought into what he said to her.
The morning sky slowly turns from twilight to early dawn. The sun is about to come up.
“I hear you, X,” Logan says. “I hear what you’re saying about Daken.”
She squeezes her arms against her sides.
“I know he’s bad. I know there’s no hope for him. I know all these things. I’ve struggled to come to terms with this over the past year.” He rubs his hands together and cracks his knuckles. “But I love him. He’s my son. And that means that all logic is out the window.” He sniffs. “I don’t expect you to understand that. But someday you will. Someday you’ll fall in love with somebody, have kids.”
She won’t, though. Of this she’s certain. She wonders if Logan is just telling her this to keep her pacified.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“I know.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Logan says. “I failed to protect you from Daken. I failed to contain him, and he hurt you. Oh, kid. There’s nothing I can say. It’s just . . . so shitty.”
Laura doesn’t say I understand. She doesn’t think that Logan wants to be understood. She counts the long seconds that tick by. “Daken’s mother. You loved her.”
He nods. “I did.”
“And she was the love of your life?”
He peers at her-the question amuses him-and then nods.
“She was your soul mate?”
“In a sense.”
“What does that mean?” Laura says. “Yes or no?”
He stares at her, understanding that she’s not letting him off so easily. “Yes,” he says. “But it’s complicated. I-I’ve loved a lot of women and I wouldn’t say that any of them wasn’t a soul mate.” He pauses uncomfortably. “But she was special. We were together for such a short period of time and she was very young. But yet, she was-she was my soul mate.”
If Laura tries hard enough, she can picture this woman. She always imagines her in rustic, untamed scenery, inaccurate as that may be. Daken’s mother. The love of Wolverine’s life. Laura is obsessed with “soul mates,” with the love of one’s life. She wonders if Daken’s mother believed, when she met Logan, that everything would be alright, and that she would never have to worry about anything again.
“Then it’s not enough,” Laura says.
Logan looks at her.
“You can love somebody and it doesn’t really matter,” Laura explains. “You can meet the love of your life and things can still turn out bad.”
“Hey.” He turns and grabs her arm, but not roughly. Holds on. “Things didn’t turn bad. Look at me, kid. Things didn’t turn bad.”
She doesn’t believe him.
He shifts toward her but doesn’t take his hand away. “Maybe there was a way things coulda gone differently. Maybe if Daken’s mom hadn’t died I’d have lived this nice life in Japan. And maybe Daken would’ve turned out good. Or maybe not. But you know what?” He waits a beat. “Instead, things went a different way, and I did what I did, and the things that happened to me happened, and that was how you came along. And I wouldn’t wanna live in a reality where you don’t exist.”
She can’t bring herself to make eye contact anymore. He’s never said anything like that to her. She’s so flattered that she’s nervous. Worried he’s not serious-even though she knows he is-worried she’ll say or do something to wreck the moment.
“All of that is to say that I wish you wouldn’t hurt yourself. Forget about Daken. He’s not your responsibility-he’s mine. I don’t want you to get back into that old mentality again. You’re a good kid, better than that. And besides, I didn’t come here to talk about him but to find out how you were doing. I want you to think about good things.”
Her leg twitches. “Is that why you and Gambit always talk about good memories?” She says this to distract Logan-and maybe herself-from the cutting. She’s not sure that she can promise to stop hurting herself. All she can do is try to get a little better.
“Gumbo’s sentimental,” Logan says. “A big old sap. I guess I am too. It’s an old-person thing.” He clears his throat and right away his mood shifts. “Poor Gumbo. He asked me yesterday if he thought we’d ever have good times again. Y’know, I think you should stay with him.”
“You’re leaving again?” And you’re taking Jubilee with you?
“You can come with us if you want,” he says. But she realizes that his offer is ceremonial.
Right away she pictures traveling with them. They’ll have to keep their journey confined to dark, cloudy countries. She and Logan will fight again. They can’t not fight-all their good moments are just temporary truces. And then Jubilee will be caught in the middle. She’ll have to choose sides.
The shopkeeper comes outside and begins sweeping the sidewalk.
“Logan?” she says. She has one more question. “So what you’re saying is that you can have more than one soul mate?”
“Of course. What’s all this talk about soul mates?”
She looks at the café. The windows blink on. “It’s opening.”
“Wait,” he says. He sets his hand on her arm and nods at the street. “Look.” Suddenly it’s light. The world has turned just enough to bring them back to day. The streets have color again.
She looks at Logan, and he looks at their surroundings. She understands he hasn’t shared a sunrise with anyone in a long time.
***
This is the last day they will all spend together in Paris, and Laura tries to pay attention so that she can remember. It’s really not a special day-they stay inside because it’s sunny and because Gambit is recovering from his injuries-but Laura doesn’t want it to end.
Gambit lies on the sofa and throws ripe observations in Logan’s direction. Sometimes he talks about Logan in third person. “He’s awfully impatient today,” he says to no one in particular. “He’s like a border collie. Needs to be challenged.”
And Logan, who doesn’t seem any more impatient than usual, just looks up from the newspaper. “What the fuck are you talkin’ about? You’re hungover.”
“You saw to that,” Gambit says, leaning back on the sofa and closing his eyes with a great groan. “Petite,” he says, his eyes flapping open when Laura stands over him. He focuses on her and his pupils are dilated. She understands that he took something for the pain-maybe Logan gave him something-and she worries that he’ll blurt out something he doesn’t want the others to know. But no, that’s not him. If anything, Gambit will just talk about happier times, better memories. When he’s inebriated or woozy he gets chummy, not sad, not brutally honest.
“Can’t wait to show you Brussels,” he says to her. “You ever been?”
“Hey Remy,” Jubilee says. “Tell Laura about the time you tried to go skiing.”
Gambit smiles slowly. “That’s not nice. Not a nice thing to bring up when a man’s hurtin’.”
Upstairs in the bedroom, she and Jubilee talk for a while. Jubilee takes a magazine quiz and then asks Laura the same questions. Then she reads the results in the end. “‘You’re funny and sometimes neurotic. You always put your best foot forward and like to make others feel at ease.’”
“You must have added wrong,” Laura says.
Jubilee looks down at the magazine again. Laughs and then gently thumps Laura on the shoulder. “Just go with it, X.”
The things she talks about with Jubilee are no different from the things she sometimes discussed with other girls she’s known-her friends from New York, from her time with the X-Men. But Jubilee is different. She focuses. She doesn’t bring up things you haven’t lived through, or people you don’t know. She makes you feel like you’re the only person, not simply a way to pass time before the next big event.
“You think you’ll keep traveling with Remy?” she asks.
Laura wants to find the circled names on her kill list. She wishes she could be the sort of person who doesn’t crave so much structure, or who doesn’t have to know what’s going to happen next. “I suppose.”
Jubilee tucks her knees to her chest and looks thoughtful. “With Remy, you’ll really see a lot.”
And Laura knows what Jubilee is really saying: that despite everything, she’s very lucky.
When darkness falls, they change their clothes and get ready to go out.
“Oh look, here they come,” Gambit says when they descend the stairs. “All dressed up and ready to go. All ready to prowl for men.”
“Are you jealous?” Jubilee says.
“Of you or the men?”
“Don’t be creepy.”
Logan looks up from a book. “Lotta poor unsuspecting bastards out there.”
Gambit’s looking better. Not as pale. He gets to his feet and reaches for Laura, taking her by the hands. He twirls her around. “You need your cards read. Here, sit down.” He leads her to the sofa. On the coffee table he’s got a deck of tarot cards. Usually he uses ordinary playing cards, but every once in a while he uses these special ones, the names of things printed in French.
“She doesn’t need her cards read,” Jubilee says. “Besides, those things don’t tell you anything. It’s like reading a horoscope, and X and I already did that today. Apparently we’re both going to meet new people this month. And then we might or might not visit an old friend. And romance could happen.”
“Romance can always happen,” Gambit says. He sits down and hands Laura the deck. But he knows he’s already shuffled it his way. “Maybe tonight you’ll meet the man of your dreams.”
Laura sits down next to him and shuffles. Their shoulders touch. He’s warm and breathing and alive. Tomorrow they’ll be alone again; that’s the closest thing to normal she knows. Being with Gambit is like going back to normal after a long vacation-even if that normalcy means chasing pirates or counting cards in Vegas. Gumbo asked me if we’d ever have good times again. She remembers the night he told her about Daken, how afterwards he’d climbed to the deck and lay outside under the sky. She brought him a blanket and sat next to him. He reached for her hand.
That past is hidden now-something just for them. He smiles. “You’re next, Jubilee. Mon Dieu, you don’t need a boyfriend. You need a paramour.”
“Jesus Christ,” Logan says, not amused, but no one’s listening.
Gambit takes the top three cards from the deck and places them face down. But Laura already knows how this is going to end. This is what Gambit does: he shuffles the cards so that only the good ones end up in your spread. He’ll keep the fool for himself and make sure the devil doesn’t cross your path. He’ll give you the sun. And the lovers. And then the world.
Author: eva_roisin
Characters: X-23, Gambit, Jubilee, Wolverine
Rating: R
Summary: Laura has memories of her own, but few she wants to share.
Warnings: self-harm, implied non-con (m/m)
A/N: This story takes place after the “Collision” story arc (the Daken issues) and during the “Touching Darkness” story arc (the Jubilee issues). Special thanks to mozzarellarosesfor a wonderful beta job.
Previous
3.
When Laura changes into her old X-Force uniform, she feels no wistfulness, no regret. Outside, the sun is slipping from the sky and the streets are busy with tourists. Night means that Jubilee doesn’t have to hide anymore. Night means that they can go find the trigger scent under the cover of darkness.
In the room she’s been sharing with Logan, she pulls on her gloves and unsheathes her left-hand claws. Everything still fits. Not that it wouldn’t. She’s had no growth spurt since she left the facility all those years ago, no pressing need to get new clothes or shoes, despite what Jubilee might think. Her height and weight are locked in. She’s stagnant, dormant, turned off-maybe because of what the facility did to her (radiation treatments and everything)-but probably because of genetics. Logan obviously didn’t have many growth spurts either.
There’s a knock at the door. Logan enters and closes the door behind him.
“Oh wow. You’re ready,” he says. He’s staring at her again-probably he came in here to make sure she wasn’t cutting herself. During the last few days, she’s rarely been alone. Gambit knocks on the bathroom door if he thinks she’s been in there for too long and says he needs to borrow a razor. Even Jubilee dropped by her room late that afternoon. She smiled and then handed Laura her iPod. “I’m worried that you’re going to think my favorite songs are cheesy, but oh well. This is what I always listen to before a mission. I thought maybe it would get your mind off everything.”
Now Logan sits on the bed, his hands bracing against his knees. He looks up at her, watches as she adjusts her gloves and boots. “Kid,” he says. “You don’t have to come tonight.”
You don’t have to come, Laura thinks. Not to be confused with you’re not coming. Not an order. (He’s not giving her orders anymore.) She stoops to adjust her other boot buckle. “How much trigger scent do you think they have?”
He pauses. “I don’t know. A lot, maybe.”
“Then you need me. It’s not a choice. Gambit and Jubilee are skilled, proficient fighters. But I am better.” She’s not bragging, just stating the facts.
“Laura.”
She straightens. It’s been a while since he used her real first name.
“What happened in Madripoor? With Daken?”
She adjusts her belt. “Haven’t you talked to Gambit about it?”
“I’m talking to you.”
So Gambit had not told Logan anything. He was still keeping Madripoor a secret.
“It’s as Gambit told you. Daken captured me for Malcolm Colcord. I was held prisoner, but then Daken facilitated my escape. He also had my file. Colcord destroyed his own lab, killing himself in the process. Daken escaped, but I don’t know what happened to him.”
Logan seems unfazed by the summary. He continues to stare at her. “Did Daken hurt you?”
She puts her hands on her hips briefly, and then crosses them in front of her chest. How had Daken not hurt her? Of course he had hurt her-hurt her so much. She remembers walking away from the fire, her clothes and skin burned away, her singed hair giving off the most terrible odor.
Then she understands what Logan is asking. He means did Daken hurt her. “Why would you ask me that?”
A long pause. “It wouldn’t be your fault if he did.”
“Has he hurt you?”
Logan gets up from the bed but doesn’t look at her. He rubs the back of his neck.
“I’m going to kill him.”
He settles on her for a moment but seems unsurprised. “What?”
“I’m going to kill him.” She hugs her arms to her chest to keep her body from taking over.
He shakes his head and turns away, mildly annoyed: his way of saying that the conversation is over. “You’re not gonna kill him.”
“You should have stopped him,” she says. Almost desperate to keep this going, to keep him from walking away. “You had the chance. You wasted it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Last year. Last year, you told me that you were able to disarm him, to cut the muramasa blades from his arms. If you were able to do such a thing, then you should have just put him down-”
“Hey!” Logan says. “Watch what you say.” His tone is direct, Laura thinks, but not shocked. He doesn’t grab her, doesn’t get in her face.
She glances out the window. “Daken should have been stopped, and you’re the one who could have stopped him.”
“A lot people feel that way. A lot of people have awfully strong opinions, apparently. But I thought that I could count on you to see the grey areas.” He pauses. “Daken’s family.”
“He’s your child, not mine. And moreover, our relationship to him is beside the point. He is too dangerous. It’s only a matter of time before he-” If you had just done it last year, she thinks. She pauses and decides to say what she wants, what she’s wanted to say all along: “I am not you, and if you won’t put him down, then I will.”
Logan’s scent changes instantly; his anger becomes too big for them, for the room. (Why is it always like this between them?) Now he takes her by the arm. “That’s what you still think you are, huh? All these months and it’s still this bullshit? Look at me.”
She wrenches away from him.
“Look at me,” he says again, but this time he doesn’t grab her.
She leans away from him but looks up.
“A lot of people have told me I should put Daken down. And a lot of those people said the same thing about you.”
This statement doesn’t have the effect he intends it to have-it doesn’t shock her. She’s always known that people questioned her right to exist; at certain times she may have even agreed with them.
“I worked with you,” Logan continues. “We all did. We got you to a better place. We owe the same to-look, as long as Daken’s alive . . .” He can’t bring himself to finish the thought. “I know that you and Daken aren’t in the same boat when it comes to this shit, and I know that hoping for him to turn around might be a total fuckin’ waste of time. But kill my own son? Or let you do it?” He drops his hand to his side. “Grow up.”
“You’re right,” Laura says. “Hoping for Daken is a total fucking waste of time.”
He reaches again for her arm; she slips past him and heads for the door. Flings it open and runs right into Gambit. His hands are tucked under his arms. He’s heard the entire exchange.
“X!” Logan says, lunging for the door. “X, get back here-” And then: “You got something you wanna add, Gumbo?”
She slips down the spiral staircase without listening to what Gambit and Logan are saying. She knows that Gambit will calm Logan down, but after that he won’t do anything. He won’t take sides, won’t stand up for her. He’ll smooth over the unpleasantness, all Gambit-like, so that this fight will be just a footnote in their grand Parisian adventure-not the center of everything.
Jubilee sits at the kitchen table, reading a magazine. She looks up when Laura walks in, and her expression is sympathetic. But she doesn’t pry, doesn’t say anything, and for this Laura is grateful. She looks down at the magazine and turns the page.
***
Logan seems content to let their last conversation go-at least for the time being.
X wishes for something more. She’s usually not one of those girls who likes to talk it out, who likes to clear the air. That’s Jubilee. But right now, she wishes she were more demonstrative, someone who could go up to Logan and say, I didn’t mean that-even if that’s a lie.
She meant everything. She wants to kill Daken someday, and she’ll do it. Cut off his head. Drown him. Just as there are ways to kill her, there are ways to kill him.
But right now it might be too late for that. They’re on the hill, overlooking Paris-they’re about to strike. She’s wearing her X-Force uniform and what she wants to say to Logan isn’t I’m sorry, but this is who I am. But she can’t say that, not now, not when it’s almost over. This is her life at its most honest: the hungry moment before their attack, when it’s always almost too late.
***
Daken left her in the mud. After he walked away from her, his skin knitting itself back together, she turned to find Gambit and Tyger beside her. Before she could speak, Tyger had wrapped Gambit’s trench coat around her.
“Christ, you’re burning up,” Tyger said, and she held Laura tighter, as though she was worried she might slip away. “Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Come on, let’s get you out of here.” Tyger spoke softly into her ear-as if she was telling her a secret.
Gambit was behind them; Laura sensed his reticence. He seemed to hang back. Like they needed privacy.
“How did you find me?” Laura said. She tried to turn to look at Gambit. But the question, she knew, was irrelevant. They hadn’t really found her-not until it was almost too late. As always, she’d had to save herself.
Tyger pulled Laura along. She didn’t loosen her embrace as she led her to a waiting car. “Let’s just say that I’ve still got friends in this city. Here, here we are.”
Back at the safe house, Tyger drew her a warm bath. Her skin had healed by this time, and it was new and soft, but her hair was rank and grimy. She soaked in the tub and thought, struggling to process everything, to piece things together. I survived, she thought. I survived Daken. He didn’t kill me. We stopped Colcord. Colcord can’t hurt children anymore. She knew this, but knowing it didn’t make it true. Daken had left her with a kill list and more questions than answers. She had always wondered about him-wondered if looking at him would be looking at another version of herself, a version she secretly despised. But it hadn’t been that simple.
In the bathtub, she unsheathed a claw and drew it across the soft skin of her inner forearm. When her blood dripped into the water, it swirled and stained the water crimson before fading to a nice deep pink.
“Laura?” Tyger said. There was a knock on the door. “Laura, I’m coming in to bring you a towel. I won’t look.”
Laura sat up and searched for a shower curtain to draw across the bathtub. There was none. Before she could tell Tyger to give her a minute, the door had already swung open.
Tyger set the towel down on the sink and glanced at Laura out of the corner of her eye. “I’ll get you some fresh clothes-oh my God, are you okay?”
She searched Tyger’s face. “I’m alright. I’m just-” She lowered her voice. “I’m just bleeding.”
“Oh. Oh.” Now Tyger looked more relieved than unnerved. “I’ll get you something.”
A few minutes later, she came back and left Laura a set of fresh clothes, some socks, a hair brush, and an unopened box of tampons. She came and left without saying anything. Immediately Laura wondered if she’d wasted an opportunity. What if she’d just told Tyger the truth about what she did to herself? Maybe the cutting would have horrified Tyger-but probably not. Perhaps Tyger would have been sympathetic and helpful. But now Laura would never know.
***
When she and Gambit left Madripoor, Laura was at first glad for the monotony of water. She sat on the sailboat and watched the waves. Then she looked for dolphins and sharks.
Gambit had been quiet. Once in a while he said things like, “Bet you’re glad that’s behind you,” or “Can’t wait for all that French cuisine.” But mostly he just looked at the waves and felt, all of a sudden, like someone she barely knew. Who are you? she wondered, almost disoriented at times.
She had rarely felt so disoriented after her X-Force missions. She remembered how James and Josh would shake from the adrenaline rush for hours afterward, how James even used to vomit sometimes. Dom would cast Laura an amused, knowing glance. “Some people,” she’d say. “Some people are just so delicate. Not like you and me, X. You want a beer?”
On the boat, Gambit was quiet and calm. He didn’t seem disoriented at all.
Laura tried to keep her leg from twitching. She counted backwards, trying not to think about the details of the last few days. Chewing on a hangnail, she looked down at her lap. Finally cleared her throat. “What are you and Tyger Tiger to each other?”
Gambit waited a beat. “Oh, we go back far.” He chuckled. “Old girl and I have some history.”
“What is she to Logan?”
Another pause. And then, quieter: “Friends, maybe. They also go back far. You’d have to ask him, though. Why, she say somethin’?”
Laura shook her head.
“Yeah.” Gambit stretched his legs out and made like he was going to get up.
“Gambit?” She stared at him. Who are you? “How did you find me?”
He shrugged. “It’s like Tyger said. She got an anonymous tip from an informant.”
“So you think there’s a mole in Daken’s organization?” She tried not to take a deep, gulping breath.
He shrugged again and pulled himself to his feet. “It’s possible. Anything’s possible. Starving, though. Gonna go down below and boil up a can of soup. You want?”
“If there is a mole in Daken’s organization, then that person risked his or her life to save me. And they might still be in danger. Daken leaves no stone unturned.”
“Hmm,” Gambit said. He nodded at her and then slipped below deck.
A minute later, she went below deck too. He was already flipping on the stove. “Chicken an’ stars.” He held up a can of soup and waved his hand in front of it like he was on a cooking show. Then he turned around again, his back facing her. “Yum, can’t wait.”
She stood behind him. “There is another possibility. Daken might have phoned in the anonymous tip.”
“Oh?”
“That would be very much like him. To keep control of the situation. Besides, he didn’t want me dead. He could have killed me easily. But instead . . .”
“It’s not worth thinking about. Don’t obsess so much.” Gambit popped the lid off the can and poured its contents into the saucepan. “Could easily microwave this shit,” he said, “but I always liked it better over the stove. Even if it’s kind of a bitch to clean up.”
In the dim light, she could see that he looked much older than he usually did. There were slight creases around his eyes. She wondered how old he really was-he told her thirty-three, but he always made a joke about it, saying that since Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead at thirty-three, he wanted to be that age forever.
Laura crossed her arms and tried not to dig her fingernails into her skin. “Gambit, Daken would not have killed me. I am certain of this.”
“Like I said, you shouldn’t even waste your time on thinking about him, Laura. Trying to apply some kind of rhyme or reason-ain’t worth it.”
“His attachment to me was not sentimental. He used me as some kind of leverage. To get something from Colcord.” She paused. “Maybe to get something from Tyger and you as well.”
He kept stirring his soup and didn’t turn around.
There was a long moment of silence. Laura rubbed her knuckles together and thought of things she might say next. Then she said something she hadn’t planned at all. “You smelled like him. I didn’t think about it at the time, but when you and Tyger found me, you smelled-”
Gambit straightened and set the spoon down on the counter with a soft clink. But he didn’t turn around. His shoulders tightened.
She swallowed. Tried to think. She could not remember if Daken had smelled like Gambit-at the time she wouldn’t have been able to take stock of his scent because too much was happening, too many other people were around them. She remembered, then, how Daken had looked-so sure of himself, so imposing. She imagined him hovering over Gambit, his hands on his neck, the space between them closing-
“I know what happened,” she said, and as she said that, she felt as though she was lowering herself into a hole that would be impossible to climb out of.
“You don’t.” He glanced over his shoulder. Then he picked up the spoon again.
Just leave it, she told herself, but the words would not stop coming: “What did you do for him?”
Gambit’s shoulders tensed. He turned to face her, and his skin was flushed. “Nothing.”
“You went to him.” As soon as she said this, she wanted to take it back. She could see that she was hurting Gambit-and the worst thing was that she could not stop. His face was tense, his eyes focused on the ground or at the wall-at anything but her. “Why did you go to him?”
He lurched forward, threw up his hands. “For Christ’s sake-why do you think? If you know, then why are you asking? You’re worse than Wolverine sometimes, you know that?” He turned around again, and his hand grazed the metal saucepan. “Fuck,” he gasped, jerking his hand away. He picked up the saucepan and shoved it into the sink.
He took a deep breath and braced himself against the counter. When his voice came, it was low and wounded. “Why are you asking me this, Laura?”
They stood like that for a long time. Finally Laura broke the silence, and when she did, she hated herself for asking the most detached of all questions. “How did you find him?”
A long pause. “He called us,” Gambit said to the counter. He tapped the counter nervously-a former smoker looking for a fix. “Asked for me. Said he wanted to talk terms. Said he’d give you back and lay off the city if one of us went to meet him-and it had to be either me or Tyger. And I didn’t want it to be Tyger.” Another pause. “So I went. And then voilà, in comes an anonymous tip detailing your whereabouts. Guess he keeps his word, if nothin’ else.” He took another deep, visible breath and picked up a towel next to the stove. “I thought he wanted me to work for him. Thought he’d want to use my skills for his master plan. Never thought he’d want something so straightforward. But I guess people surprise you sometimes.”
“He has a way of making you do what he wants.”
Gambit pushed himself away from the counter and turned. Gave her a look as if to say that he did not believe her ignorance. “Laura. I have a way of making people do what I want.”
She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to hear what he was saying: I went willingly.
“When you live as long as I have, you learn what’s important. You learn to make sacrifices. Laura . . . I just did what I do.”
She looked at up him, felt her chin quiver. Didn’t want to follow his reasoning to its logical conclusion: that he had done this for her, this thing. That he had let Daken do something to him. For her. For her. Because if he honestly felt that she was someone he needed to make sacrifices for, then he didn’t really know her at all.
“A body is nothing,” he said. Then his face crumbled. “A body is nothing. But a promise is all I got. You don’t understand this ‘cause you’re young.” He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Gambit.”
“A promise is all I got. You’re all I got. And-” His tears quickened. He reached out and touched a strand of her hair.
“Gambit,” she said again. Her mouth was so dry it hurt to swallow. She couldn’t speak.
“I just really don’t wanna talk about it.” He wiped his eyes again. His nose. A soft sob caught in his throat like a hiccup. “I just don’t wanna talk about it anymore-”
He pushed past her and went into the bathroom. Closed the door behind him.
***
So, the truth. It was more terrible than she’d imagined. Gambit filled in the gaps later-that he’d been injured when she’d been kidnapped, that he’d slipped away from the safe house, that Tyger didn’t know the exact details of what he’d done-but he wasn’t specific about what Daken had done to him. The details, she knew, would remain unarticulated.
But she could fill in the details easily enough. Gambit was half right, half wrong. He had been alive longer than she had, sure. But she had taken more lives. And when you take so many lives, the dead stay inside you, make you older, make you able to see past yourself and into others. She knew what Daken had done to Gambit; she could imagine. She could hear his voice in her head. She understood how he must have taunted Gambit, made fun of his accent. Stood over him and grinned. And maybe he was nice once he got what he wanted, almost tender, just because he wanted to be. Touched his hair. Made Gambit feel that he had made the choice to be with him, even if had hadn’t made any choice at all. Because that was how you made people churn.
The bones of her face: Daken’s. She continued to cut herself as they traveled, more frequently, more intensely. If you asked her why she did it, she would have told you that she hated herself for killing so many people. But that was only half true. The whole truth was more complicated: If she hadn’t been here, hadn’t been alive, then perhaps no one would have been hurt. Least of all Gambit.
After Gambit shut himself in the bathroom, she stood in the middle of the room for a long time. Then she went to make sure the boat was still on course.
It was difficult to know what to do next-how to act or feel. I will kill Daken, she thought. She wanted to climb up to the deck and shout it at the open sky. Instead stood just there, arms at her sides, and waited for Gambit to emerge. “Gambit--” she said plainly, but she knew he’d never hear her above the engine. She walked over to the bathroom and turned the doorknob to find the door unlocked. Without announcing her presence, she opened the door.
He was standing there. As if he’d been waiting for her. He looked down at her, and he was crying. He dropped his hands to his sides. She held her arms out. He collapsed against her and sobbed into her shoulder, his hands pressed against the straightness of her hair.
4.
Someone is touching her shoulder. Someone is shaking her awake. She opens her eyes. Logan’s face is a few inches from hers.
“Hey,” he whispers hoarsely.
She lifts her head. The room is grainy and dim. It’s too early to get up.
“Come on,” he whispers, gesturing for her to follow him out of the room.
She rolls over to see Jubilee sprawled beside her. After a moment of disorientation, she remembers everything: the fight at the subway platform, the woman. The hours of conversation she and Jubilee logged afterwards. They’d fallen asleep in bed together, their shoulders touching. Jubilee had drifted off in mid-sentence and Laura had fallen asleep soon after. She doesn’t know if Logan looked in on them; in any case, he found somewhere else to sleep.
She slips out of the bed, careful not to wake Jubilee. Then she looks to make sure that the blinds are closed tightly. Then she goes into the hallway to see what Logan wants.
“Here,” he whispers, handing over her shoes and jacket.
She takes them in both hands. “Where are we going?”
A smile spreads across his face. “Breakfast, of course.”
She almost says something about Jubilee and Gambit, and then she realizes that this time is just for the two of them.
Outside it’s still dark, but the sky and cityscape seem like they’re poised and waiting for the sun to come up. Laura can see her breath. She wants to ask Logan why she’s here with him, why they’re out so early, but the streets are so quiet that talking seems indecorous. Occasionally a car passes by. Occasionally someone walks past them, someone who is going to work early or coming home late.
Laura thinks about last night. After she and Jubilee visited the Eiffel Tower, they saw as much of the city center as they could. They watched people. They watched a man sing on a street corner. They stopped to buy food from a street vendor. “I’m not hungry,” Laura said, even though she was starving.
“Sure you are,” Jubilee said. “Don’t starve yourself on my account. I won’t think you’re rude or anything.” She smiled. “To be honest, I don’t miss real food. I don’t even remember what it tasted like.”
Laura couldn’t tell whether or not Jubilee was telling the truth. That was the problem with knowing a vampire-her scent shifted quickly. But one thing she did know about Jubilee: she was hungry too.
She looked at Jubilee. Gestured to her own neck. “I can-”
“No, Laura.” Jubilee took her by the arm and led her into a nearby alley. “Look, I was willing to keep your secret, to let this entire thing go. But if you keep doing this, I’m going to have to tell Logan.” She paused. “I thought you said you didn’t want to die.”
Laura looked up. “I don’t. I just-” She thought for a moment. “I don’t mind. I would survive. And you wouldn’t be hungry anymore. It is similar to what Logan does for you.”
“No it’s not, X.” Jubilee set one hand on her arm. She no longer seemed angry. “I need to practice self-control. Besides, I don’t want us to be like that.”
Laura wasn’t sure what Jubilee meant. “Okay.”
“I don’t want us to always be exchanging things. Depending on-I don’t want that.” She steps closer to X, the red flecks of her eyes glinting in the city lights. “It’s bad enough that I’m with Logan because I have to be. But with you? I want to be with you because I want to be.”
“Okay,” Laura said again, and followed Jubilee back to the street.
In front of a small café, Logan stops and glances back at her. “Guess we’re too early,” he says, shrugging at the dark windows. Someone is inside the shop getting things ready, but the place won’t open for a little while.
“Should we go back to the hotel?”
“Nah.” Logan walks over and sits on a brick ledge connected to the café. He pats the space next to him.
She sits down, tucking her hands under her legs. So Logan wants to talk. This surprises her; usually their talks aren’t so premeditated. When she was in X-Force, he’d come up to her after a mission and tell her she did a good job and what to work on next time. His tone was sometimes casual, sometimes curt, but he never seemed to put a great deal of thought into what he said to her.
The morning sky slowly turns from twilight to early dawn. The sun is about to come up.
“I hear you, X,” Logan says. “I hear what you’re saying about Daken.”
She squeezes her arms against her sides.
“I know he’s bad. I know there’s no hope for him. I know all these things. I’ve struggled to come to terms with this over the past year.” He rubs his hands together and cracks his knuckles. “But I love him. He’s my son. And that means that all logic is out the window.” He sniffs. “I don’t expect you to understand that. But someday you will. Someday you’ll fall in love with somebody, have kids.”
She won’t, though. Of this she’s certain. She wonders if Logan is just telling her this to keep her pacified.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“I know.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Logan says. “I failed to protect you from Daken. I failed to contain him, and he hurt you. Oh, kid. There’s nothing I can say. It’s just . . . so shitty.”
Laura doesn’t say I understand. She doesn’t think that Logan wants to be understood. She counts the long seconds that tick by. “Daken’s mother. You loved her.”
He nods. “I did.”
“And she was the love of your life?”
He peers at her-the question amuses him-and then nods.
“She was your soul mate?”
“In a sense.”
“What does that mean?” Laura says. “Yes or no?”
He stares at her, understanding that she’s not letting him off so easily. “Yes,” he says. “But it’s complicated. I-I’ve loved a lot of women and I wouldn’t say that any of them wasn’t a soul mate.” He pauses uncomfortably. “But she was special. We were together for such a short period of time and she was very young. But yet, she was-she was my soul mate.”
If Laura tries hard enough, she can picture this woman. She always imagines her in rustic, untamed scenery, inaccurate as that may be. Daken’s mother. The love of Wolverine’s life. Laura is obsessed with “soul mates,” with the love of one’s life. She wonders if Daken’s mother believed, when she met Logan, that everything would be alright, and that she would never have to worry about anything again.
“Then it’s not enough,” Laura says.
Logan looks at her.
“You can love somebody and it doesn’t really matter,” Laura explains. “You can meet the love of your life and things can still turn out bad.”
“Hey.” He turns and grabs her arm, but not roughly. Holds on. “Things didn’t turn bad. Look at me, kid. Things didn’t turn bad.”
She doesn’t believe him.
He shifts toward her but doesn’t take his hand away. “Maybe there was a way things coulda gone differently. Maybe if Daken’s mom hadn’t died I’d have lived this nice life in Japan. And maybe Daken would’ve turned out good. Or maybe not. But you know what?” He waits a beat. “Instead, things went a different way, and I did what I did, and the things that happened to me happened, and that was how you came along. And I wouldn’t wanna live in a reality where you don’t exist.”
She can’t bring herself to make eye contact anymore. He’s never said anything like that to her. She’s so flattered that she’s nervous. Worried he’s not serious-even though she knows he is-worried she’ll say or do something to wreck the moment.
“All of that is to say that I wish you wouldn’t hurt yourself. Forget about Daken. He’s not your responsibility-he’s mine. I don’t want you to get back into that old mentality again. You’re a good kid, better than that. And besides, I didn’t come here to talk about him but to find out how you were doing. I want you to think about good things.”
Her leg twitches. “Is that why you and Gambit always talk about good memories?” She says this to distract Logan-and maybe herself-from the cutting. She’s not sure that she can promise to stop hurting herself. All she can do is try to get a little better.
“Gumbo’s sentimental,” Logan says. “A big old sap. I guess I am too. It’s an old-person thing.” He clears his throat and right away his mood shifts. “Poor Gumbo. He asked me yesterday if he thought we’d ever have good times again. Y’know, I think you should stay with him.”
“You’re leaving again?” And you’re taking Jubilee with you?
“You can come with us if you want,” he says. But she realizes that his offer is ceremonial.
Right away she pictures traveling with them. They’ll have to keep their journey confined to dark, cloudy countries. She and Logan will fight again. They can’t not fight-all their good moments are just temporary truces. And then Jubilee will be caught in the middle. She’ll have to choose sides.
The shopkeeper comes outside and begins sweeping the sidewalk.
“Logan?” she says. She has one more question. “So what you’re saying is that you can have more than one soul mate?”
“Of course. What’s all this talk about soul mates?”
She looks at the café. The windows blink on. “It’s opening.”
“Wait,” he says. He sets his hand on her arm and nods at the street. “Look.” Suddenly it’s light. The world has turned just enough to bring them back to day. The streets have color again.
She looks at Logan, and he looks at their surroundings. She understands he hasn’t shared a sunrise with anyone in a long time.
***
This is the last day they will all spend together in Paris, and Laura tries to pay attention so that she can remember. It’s really not a special day-they stay inside because it’s sunny and because Gambit is recovering from his injuries-but Laura doesn’t want it to end.
Gambit lies on the sofa and throws ripe observations in Logan’s direction. Sometimes he talks about Logan in third person. “He’s awfully impatient today,” he says to no one in particular. “He’s like a border collie. Needs to be challenged.”
And Logan, who doesn’t seem any more impatient than usual, just looks up from the newspaper. “What the fuck are you talkin’ about? You’re hungover.”
“You saw to that,” Gambit says, leaning back on the sofa and closing his eyes with a great groan. “Petite,” he says, his eyes flapping open when Laura stands over him. He focuses on her and his pupils are dilated. She understands that he took something for the pain-maybe Logan gave him something-and she worries that he’ll blurt out something he doesn’t want the others to know. But no, that’s not him. If anything, Gambit will just talk about happier times, better memories. When he’s inebriated or woozy he gets chummy, not sad, not brutally honest.
“Can’t wait to show you Brussels,” he says to her. “You ever been?”
“Hey Remy,” Jubilee says. “Tell Laura about the time you tried to go skiing.”
Gambit smiles slowly. “That’s not nice. Not a nice thing to bring up when a man’s hurtin’.”
Upstairs in the bedroom, she and Jubilee talk for a while. Jubilee takes a magazine quiz and then asks Laura the same questions. Then she reads the results in the end. “‘You’re funny and sometimes neurotic. You always put your best foot forward and like to make others feel at ease.’”
“You must have added wrong,” Laura says.
Jubilee looks down at the magazine again. Laughs and then gently thumps Laura on the shoulder. “Just go with it, X.”
The things she talks about with Jubilee are no different from the things she sometimes discussed with other girls she’s known-her friends from New York, from her time with the X-Men. But Jubilee is different. She focuses. She doesn’t bring up things you haven’t lived through, or people you don’t know. She makes you feel like you’re the only person, not simply a way to pass time before the next big event.
“You think you’ll keep traveling with Remy?” she asks.
Laura wants to find the circled names on her kill list. She wishes she could be the sort of person who doesn’t crave so much structure, or who doesn’t have to know what’s going to happen next. “I suppose.”
Jubilee tucks her knees to her chest and looks thoughtful. “With Remy, you’ll really see a lot.”
And Laura knows what Jubilee is really saying: that despite everything, she’s very lucky.
When darkness falls, they change their clothes and get ready to go out.
“Oh look, here they come,” Gambit says when they descend the stairs. “All dressed up and ready to go. All ready to prowl for men.”
“Are you jealous?” Jubilee says.
“Of you or the men?”
“Don’t be creepy.”
Logan looks up from a book. “Lotta poor unsuspecting bastards out there.”
Gambit’s looking better. Not as pale. He gets to his feet and reaches for Laura, taking her by the hands. He twirls her around. “You need your cards read. Here, sit down.” He leads her to the sofa. On the coffee table he’s got a deck of tarot cards. Usually he uses ordinary playing cards, but every once in a while he uses these special ones, the names of things printed in French.
“She doesn’t need her cards read,” Jubilee says. “Besides, those things don’t tell you anything. It’s like reading a horoscope, and X and I already did that today. Apparently we’re both going to meet new people this month. And then we might or might not visit an old friend. And romance could happen.”
“Romance can always happen,” Gambit says. He sits down and hands Laura the deck. But he knows he’s already shuffled it his way. “Maybe tonight you’ll meet the man of your dreams.”
Laura sits down next to him and shuffles. Their shoulders touch. He’s warm and breathing and alive. Tomorrow they’ll be alone again; that’s the closest thing to normal she knows. Being with Gambit is like going back to normal after a long vacation-even if that normalcy means chasing pirates or counting cards in Vegas. Gumbo asked me if we’d ever have good times again. She remembers the night he told her about Daken, how afterwards he’d climbed to the deck and lay outside under the sky. She brought him a blanket and sat next to him. He reached for her hand.
That past is hidden now-something just for them. He smiles. “You’re next, Jubilee. Mon Dieu, you don’t need a boyfriend. You need a paramour.”
“Jesus Christ,” Logan says, not amused, but no one’s listening.
Gambit takes the top three cards from the deck and places them face down. But Laura already knows how this is going to end. This is what Gambit does: he shuffles the cards so that only the good ones end up in your spread. He’ll keep the fool for himself and make sure the devil doesn’t cross your path. He’ll give you the sun. And the lovers. And then the world.