Bones (Part Five)
Written by RatMist.
She awoke to the cold of the Medlab a few hours later, but not any less tense for the extra sleep. She immediately scanned the area for any possible threats in the form of six very familiar bone claws, but found Wolverine had left.
Left at least two hours ago, if her nose told her correctly. One hour only if her nose was incorrect. But after relying on her instincts for so many years on The Hill, she did not think her instincts were wrong.
She had staked her life on it too many times. All the more reason to withdraw from every Upworlder and rely only upon herself. At least, in the cold of the Medlab, that is what she told herself.
She gingerly stretched her bones, noticing for the first time the tightness of her back. Slightly panicking, she reached behind her for her bone armory, but found nothing but air to grasp at. Rather comically, she tried to crane her head behind her to see the bones, but saw only the soft black leather of the Shi'ar stasis tube's mattress which had served as her bed as the machine had healed her backside. Her 'home-grown' armory was gone.
"Guess the Healers had to pull 'em cuz a' the Old Man's damage," she thought sourly. "Great. Means another good week 'fore I can have that...chat. That means Friday at the earliest."
She grinned. She could still taste the copper on her lips. Oh yes. A friendly chit-chat was definately in order. Her next week was already shaping up to be amusing at best, exhilarating at worst.
She did not care either way. It had been so long since she had had a decent sparring partner. Wolverine was perfect. With that thought, she swung her bare legs over the edge of the stasis tube and stood up.
The Healers were not in the lab. Perhaps they were eating in the (smirk) kitchen, she wondered aimlessly.
Regardless, she left the MedLab, naked as the day she was born, and the idea of modesty did not enter her mind once.
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Outside, less than a week later, Remy LeBeau, aka Gambit, stood smoking his rollup.
Storm called out from her ledge in the attic, "Remy, those are bad for you." Her beautiful white hair was like a flag of truce from a castle turret, waving in the breeze of the midday. He grinned.
"Really, Stormy? No one ever tol' old Gambit," he said with a smile, flirty even in this casual exchange. Ororo Munroe just laughed and shook her head, and Gambit tossed a friendly wave in her direction before heading back to the shade of the porch. The sun bothered his eyes, regardless of the sunglasses he always wore in the daytime.
"T'ings be too quiet," thought the Cajun, as he settled on the porch. Like the rest of the team, he had heard by word of mouth of the fight between Logan and Marrow. Depending on which X-Men one talked to, the incident was either 'Marrow's attack on Jean', 'Wolverine's attack on Marrow', or 'Marrow's attack on a cooking pot'. *snort*
Anyway, Logan had apparently won while the rest of the team had steered clear of the MedLab that day. But the incident had brought grave concerns to the entire team.
How could a team keep an angry Morlock on the grounds, and a dangerous one such as Sarah, and trust her as a team member? Especially when she seemed so bent on burning bridges before they were even formed? Cyclops was ready to deposit Sarah at the sewage systems known as the Morlock Tunnels himself, and even Jean's gentle touch could not sway his opinion. The Professor had curiously delayed his opinions yet, but it would take a majority vote from the team to evict Sarah from the team and subsequently their lives.
Gambit sighed. True, the X-Men were infamous for accepting rouges into their group. Literally. That thought brought a wry smile to his face.
"Ahh, chere," he thought, his mind wanting to go down that familiar and favorite path. He forced himself to think of his current situation.
The difference between Sarah and the more recalcitrant members of the team, such as himself, lay in the willingness everyone else had shown in becoming a true team member. Marrow's attack on one of the earliest members of the team, unprovoked as Jean had described it, seemed to suggest that Marrow's presence was better off elsewhere.
Like back in the Tunnels she seemed to want to rather live in anyway.
But Gambit was not so quick to dismiss her out on her bony rear. Remy LeBeau, the original shady character to the X-Men. He thought about the title...the X-Men. How long had he wanted a true family? He did not remember a time when he did not feel the ache.
"Feh," he thought dispassionately. "She aint gonna welcome me wit open arms, wit' or wit'out knowin' de truth," he brooded. But he already knew that this was one decision he had made a long, long time ago. Since the first time he had pulled her into his arms, little more than a pup himself.
She did not know it, but Gambit knew it was time to begin to pay his blood debts. In this case, he worried that it would be a quite literal exacting of blood. And if it came to that, well, Remy had felt like crap for so long over this particular part of his past that he would probably let her take her revenge and whatever else she wanted as payment.
Probably.
He took one more drag on his rollup and then tossed it in the general direction of the ground. It exploded with an audible poof, its ashes falling to the porch of the mansion. He headed back into the house, towards the direction of the basement.
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Continued in Part Six.