Title: Rough Trade and the Thief
Author: Scorpio (scorpiofic@aol.com)
Website: no site, but all stories are listed at a friend's: http://members.tripod.com/sentinel-cat/Scorpio/
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Rough Trade and the Thief 5
By Scorpio
Slowly he began to drift up out of the darkness that had swallowed him up. Awareness came slowly to him and in bits and pieces. He could hear shuffling feet and the occasional solid thump mixed in with soft muttering voices. The scent of pizza and mildew battled for supremacy and he was thirsty. Very thirsty. Foggily, he tried to place where he was, but he was too confused. There had been too many cheap motels and low back street dives during his journey north from the Big Easy to recall...suddenly, a sharp memory of white hot pain rose up clear in his mind.
A blue-eyed boy with a sweet mouth.
A gang of thugs. Danger.
Pain.
With a gasp and a low cry, Gambit rolled off of the cot and flipped himself to his feet in a battle stance, feeling uncomfortably naked without his long trench coat and his playing cards. Instead of the sidewalk cafe' where he'd been fighting for his life, he found himself to be inside of what appeared to be a cave. There were a few more cots like the one he'd been laying on over to the side and some cheap shelving units along the far wall that held lots of boxes and things. On the other side of the room was a small card table where a blue skinned woman and two scruffy looking kids sat eating a pizza. They were staring at him in a mixture of curiosity and fear. Farther along the room was Ice. The young hustler was pulling out bottle after bottle of spring water from a battered duffle bag and was setting them up along one of the shelves even as he flashed his oh-so sexy smile.
"Hey! You're awake. Cool. I didn't think you'd wake up for a while yet. How do you feel?"
It took a brief moment for the words to seep down into Remy's confused mind, but when they did he realized that he felt good. Tired, but good. The burning pain that he had been expecting wasn't there. Pulling up out of his crouch, Remy reached behind himself to feel his back. No bandages. No stitches. No knife wound...well, there was what felt like a scar, but it seemed to be months old, not hours.
"Wha' de hell?"
Ice chuckled softly, drawing Remy's attention once more. With a shrug and a grin, Ice nodded his head towards the blue woman eating a slice of pizza.
"Healer does good work, huh? She's the one that patched you back together again after those Bull Dogs tried to kill you."
Remy ran his fingers over the scar once more and turned his gaze to the old woman sitting with the two children. He could feel his eyebrows raise up in amazement and was sure he looked totally gobsmacked.
"Choo did dis fo' Gambit?"
The blue woman nodded.
"How?"
Healer shrugged and frowned.
"I don't know how I do it, only that I can. How does Ice freeze things? How does Trance soothe ruffed feathers and calm heated tempers? How does Shadow hide the light? Why do your eyes burn with crimson fire?"
Remy considered all that and then answered the last question.
"Don' know why m' eyes are like dis. Jus' are."
Healer gave him a pointed look.
"Exactly."
Then suddenly Ice was there, handing him his trench coat and waving him towards the sheet covered entrance along the far wall. He slid the coat on and automatically began to riffle through his pockets to make certain that everything was there. Cigarettes, lighter, several packs of playing cards, pack of gum, couple sets of lock picks, some loose change. Everything but his keys.
"Where's m' keys, homme?"
His only answer was a soft chuckle and then a jingling sound as his keys flew through the air in a graceful arc towards him. He snatched them out of the air even as Ice turned to face the blue woman again.
"Thanks for everything Healer. I'm gonna take Gambit back up to the surface now. Unless there's an emergency or something weird happens, I'll probably be back in a week or two to visit."
Healer merely nodded, but the smaller of the two dirty children spoke up around a mouthful of pizza.
"Bring back one with pepperoni next time."
Ice just nodded and grinned.
"You got it, Trance. S'deal."
Then Ice turned and walked passed him, gesturing for him to follow. To be honest, Remy had no idea where he was and wouldn't have been surprised to find himself stepping out into a wooded forest, but he hadn't been expecting more dank tunnels. Especially one that was dimly lit by flickering electric lights.
"Eh...homme? Where we at?"
Ice shrugged and kept on walking.
"We're under the city. These tunnels are home to a lot of mutants."
Ice glanced back over his shoulder at Remy and made a vague gesture between the two of them.
"Me and you? We can get away with pretending to be human and live above ground in the human's world. But people like Healer and the boys? They'd be beaten to death before the week ended. Ya know?"
Unbidden, memories rose up in Remy's mind to remind him of what it had been like for him living on the streets of N'Awlins. His whole world had been defined by trying to get enough food to eat, finding a safe place to sleep and avoiding the roving gangs of older boys. The cries of 'Mutie Freak' still rang in his ears if he listened hard enough.
With a sigh of regret, he tried to push those memories back down into the darker corners of his mind. He didn't have to live that way anymore. He had skills and talents that he could ply that would allow him to live a much better life. Jean-Luc had seen to that.
"De more t'ings change, de more dey stay de same, oui? Down in de Big Easy, dere be all des folk scrappin' a livin' off de streets and den dere's de ones dat can' do dat hidin' out in de swamp. Once, twice a week or so dey go meet up an' trade fresh fish an' crawdads fo' clothin' an' medicine. Both ways is a hard life, oui?"
Ice merely nodded his head, seemingly lost in his own thoughts as they walked on through the twisting tunnels. Finally, they reached an area that shifted from rough stone to smooth concrete. The middle of the floor was covered in dirty water and a small narrow walkway ran along one side. Remy would bet they were now in the lower level of the city's sewer system. As they reached the first intersection, Ice called back over his shoulder.
"So, is that why you left your home and came to New York? Looking for an easier life? 'Cause, I gotta tell you Gambit, New York isn't as tolerant of mutants as you might have thought."
For a second Gambit wasn't going to answer, but then he figured that he owed it to Ice to tell the truth, or at least, the short version of it. It would be an effective test of the younger boy's trust, and besides, he could always deny it later.
"Naw. Had t' leave. Killed a man, me. Banished."
Ice's shoulders stiffened up and for a moment Remy thought that his confession would push the hustler away from him in fear, but then the tension seemed to drain out of the broad shouldered back in front of him and a soft sad sigh echoed off of the damp walls.
"Yeah. Me too. They were gonna sell me to some sort of twisted collector of mutant children. I didn't want any part of that and I lost control of my ice. Froze them solid."
A brief shrug that spoke eloquently of lots of sleepless nights that hadn't eased the pain. Remy could easily understand. Both the guilt of killing as well as the horror of being a slave. His earliest days had been spent as a member of a "collection" of mutant children owned by the Antiquary. He still had nightmares from that time period in his life. Ice's voice then yanked him out of the swirling thoughts of his past and he felt a brief flare of gratitude for it.
"Since then I've gotten better about freezing people to death...but it still happens. Sometimes."
A flash of memory rose up in his mind then. It was blurry and unfocused from intense pain and blood loss, but he could recall seeing the remaining members of the Bull Dogs being stuck inside of frozen blocks of solid ice. Oh. Oh! Yeah, Ice knew far too well what it was to kill in order to save your own life...or even the lives of others.
Then suddenly, Ice turned and walked through a doorway that led to a set of steps that went up. Silently, he followed the younger mutant as they made their way back up to the surface. After what was probably the equivalent of three stories worth of steps, they reached the ground floor of what looked like an old run down warehouse. Ice led him around a few rickety stacks of wooden crates and in between a set of rusty shelving units.
There were a lot of shadows there. For some reason, they didn't seem quite right to Remy's eyes, but he couldn't say why. His own eyes were sensitive to the dark, so he could see that his bike was parked inside of the shadows, but it was...obscured slightly.
"Ah...your bike is in that gloom somewhere. I asked Shadow to hide it so no one would steal it, but..."
Remy looked over to see that Ice was squinting into the gloom, a look of confusion on his face and grinned.
"Don' worry, mon cher folle. Gambit sees it."
Walking into the gloom, Remy threw his leg over his Harley Davidson and inserted the key. Starting it up, he shifted it off of the kickstand and walked the bike out of the shadows and into the light. He glanced over his shoulder at the younger mutant.
"Comin' cher? Least Gambit can do is offer choo a shower an' a hot meal."
Like the sun coming out, Ice smiled. It wasn't the same predatory gaze that he had seen back at the bar, but a real smile. Sexy as hell, but real all the same.
"Sure."