EPILOGUE: LA RITOURNELLE



“Love is to share; mine is for you—”

“La Ritournelle,” Sébastien Tellier.


*



She still never sees him anywhere; nothing more than a flicker in a corridor, every now and then.

Storm tells her that the information she obtained from the assassin on the Alcatraz Bridge has given them everything they need, to find the evidence they have been looking for. She tells her that soon, they will infiltrate one of the several locations that Rogue’s memory had revealed to them.

She says that it is meant to be a long-term, solo espionage mission, the objective of which will be the recovery of enough incriminating information to bring certain executives and senior U.S. officials to trial.

Rogue asks, already knowing: “So who are you sending.”

Storm smiles slightly. “We have someone who’s good at stealing.”


*


On the day she knows he is going to leave, she knocks on his door. It takes him a long moment to open it, and when he does, he is already in his armor, his shin guards, his knee guards. Only his trench coat and bag are still on the bed.

His eyes widen for a brief moment—then he smiles easily, says, “Ah—long time no see, eh,” as if he has not been faithfully and determinedly avoiding her all this time.

He turns around, and she can see him swallow, quickly, to himself. “You catching me at a bad time, chère; in the middle of packing.”

She enters the room after his retreating figure. The entire room now smells profoundly of tobacco. She sees an ashtray on his nightstand, with three or four crushed ends in it.

She leans against his desk, watching him carefully place things into a duffel bag. His staff is laid on the chair in front of the desk, so she picks it up and holds it, tossing it gently between her palms. He sees the movement out of the corner of his eyes, and looks a little alarmed.

“Eh, eh, eh,” he says, pointing at the staff. “You be careful with that.”

She smirks, but doesn’t say anything.

Then he turns his back to her and continues packing. “So you all—healed up, then?”

His voice is calm, even; perfectly casual. But it’s the perfection that gives away the casual.

“Yeah,” she replies. “Wanna see the scars?”

She can see the back of his neck shake as he laughs. “A little bit,” he says. “But I got a place to be.”

He still doesn’t turn around to face her.

She pauses, then adds, “I even saved a busload of people, right behind us.”

She sees his back and shoulders tense.

“That so,” she hears him say. “Told you you could do a lot of good on the team with those powers.”

Sorting through the pile of clothes, files, cigarette packets, two cell phones, an old-fashioned looking bottle of aftershave, toiletries, playing cards. All strewn on his bed; some things carefully folded, some things messily tossed to one side. A devoted disorder. Silence in the room.

She asks, “So how did Remy Picard die, in 1995?”

She sees his back freeze; hears his breathing shift.

“It said ‘MORTALITY’,” she adds, to clarify.

His back is still motionless. “In an explosion,” he answers finally, starting to resume packing again.

Still without looking at her, he adds, “Big, fake explosion.”

She is silent, waiting for him to continue talking. After a long pause, he says, “When they was drugging me, I found out I could use the charming, the energy healing thing, on myself. On my own brain. Short-circuit what they was doing. So sometimes they wasn’t always mind-controlling me.”

He puts a stack of black shirts, black pants in the bag.

“After what happened in Lebanon, I came back, blew up an empty wing of the underground bunker. Made everyone think me and one of my friends on the team got killed, practicing our powers.”

He adds, “He wasn’t totally mind-controlled, neither; he has a thing where he can talk to his cells, make ‘em do what he wants.”

Jacob, she thinks.

“So then we got the hell outta there.” She can see his back shake as he chuckles, “Not before stealing everything we could, though, making ‘em think it all got lost in the explosion.”

She is still playing with the staff; passing it from palm to palm, warming it with her hands.

“So that means all this time I’ve been fucking a dead guy,” she muses.

She hears him snort. “Yep,” he says.

The blunt way he always says it, has always said it. The way he told her he wanted to fuck her more, in Manhattan.

“But now you just fucking a hundred-year-old guy,” he adds, only lightness in his voice.

His back still turned to her. She watches his left hand put a tube of toothpaste in his bag.

“Think that’s better, though,” she hears him say. “Even the oldest homme in the world is better than a dead homme, no?”

Then he turns his head, just slightly, to glance at her. “Gambit’s happy for you, chère. Really. Truly.”

She doesn’t say anything. Only gazes at him.

He turns back around. She watches his back; his surprisingly slender neck; the slightly too-long hair tied back in a short half-ponytail; the stubble on his chin she can see every time he turns his face slightly to survey the state of the items on his bed.

She thinks about the way he said to her, in Manhattan: You can live any way you want.

Then he zips up the bag with a swift motion. He takes up his trench coat, slipping one arm into one armhole; the other arm into the other armhole. Shrugging the coat over his shoulders.

She remembers watching him before he left for Madrid; pious gestures, like in a holy ritual. Now, just by watching his back, she can see him take a deep breath, and make another brief sign of the cross.

She says, “Still a believer, huh?”

He still doesn’t turn around. “Just a habit,” he responds.

He picks up the bag, slings it over his shoulder. “Okay,” he says to himself. “Think that’s it. Ready to go.”

Then, finally, he turns around. Facing her, but his eyes are just south of meeting hers.

“Staff, s’il te plait,” he says, smiling the same smile he had greeted her with, stretching out his arm. A smile, easy as always.

She keeps the staff in her hand, looking at him. Looking at him.

The smile falters, almost imperceptibly; if she had been someone else, she wouldn’t have seen it. But she isn’t someone else.

“Got something on my face?” he asks, chuckling. “What you looking at so hard?”

She extends the staff to him, tapping his chest with it. “You,” she declares. “I’m looking at you.”

His face freezes. But then he clears his throat, lifts his hand, and takes hold of the staff with his right hand. He tries to pull it back from her, but she doesn’t let it go.

“Uh, uh, play nice,” he says. “Don’t break it.”

“Thought you said in Manhattan that you could get others,” she says, grinning. “Thief.”

“Chère, let go,” he says, a little roughly, pulling hard.

She gazes at him across the staff, then finally releases it into his tense hands, causing him to stumble back slightly.

He pulls the staff back towards his body, sliding his hand down so he is gripping it in the middle, securely, again.

Gazing at him, she says: “Don’t call me chère.”

He freezes again, then turns back around quickly, as if looking for his bag. Then he seems to realize it is already on his shoulder. He adjusts the bag’s strap over the epaulets on his coat’s shouders, once, twice, three times.

“No?” he says offhandedly. “Chère’s a very nice way to call a woman.”

She says, “Not me.”

He laughs again. “What you saying,” he says, perfectly casually.

She doesn’t reply. The hand around his staff is clenched so tightly she can see his knuckles whitening.

“What,” he jokes, still avoiding her eyes. “You fall in love with this old thief or something?”

She looks at him, and says, “Yep.”


*


And the staff falls to the floor.






























SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE



In bed, after sex, she asks Logan, “Hey, maybe we could—”

“No,” he says, far too quickly.


*


On the phone, after sex, she asks Gambit, “Hey, maybe we could—”

“No,” he says, far too quickly.