IT’S ONLY WHEN I HIT THE GROUND IT CAUSES ALL THE GRIEF



In Storm’s office, they learn that the next mission will be to guard Hank on a diplomatic visit to Tokyo, in preparation for an upcoming conference in Japan.

And she freezes at the word Tokyo, at the word Japan. Without realizing it, she finds herself staring at Logan. Seeing Harada through his eyes, feeling her knuckles hum—but there is nothing there to hum. Feeling rage and confusion and despair surge up through her body, up from her toes to her fingers—but it is not her rage and confusion and despair.

And then Logan feels her staring, and glances over at her, and she thinks she is quick enough to look away.

But then she can feel Gambit staring at her, now, and she knows that he knows just what she is thinking about.

Storm assigns the mission to Kitty, Bobby and Kurt—and she is at once extremely relieved and sharply disappointed. Which one relieves her and which one disappoints her, she doesn’t know: that Logan isn’t going; that she isn’t going.

She wants to leave as soon as possible; she is almost certain that Logan will try and talk to her, it is written in his entire tensed body.

And as expected, he grabs her arm just before she can walk out the door. So close, she thinks. But she is already prepared to lie and smile.

“You okay,” he asks. He is looking at her closely, carefully.

“Sure,” she replies, then regrets the word—it’s just a touch too perky, and she sees on his face that he isn’t buying it; that he had been waiting for her to lie, to give him the excuse to press her on the matter.

And he does, not letting go of her arm and leaning in even more closely, asking, “You sure?”

She can feel the breath on her face; her nose and eyelashes, and it is so warm she thinks he might have touched her, so she steps back, so fast she nearly trips over herself. And when she looks at him again, he is staring across the new distance between them, still holding onto her arm.

She looks at him and sees Kenichiro, Mariko—a man named Oyama Kenji, a woman named Oyama Yuriko—things he had to do—

No, it’s not her seeing them. And she’s not seeing them, at all. She’s just looking at Logan; it’s just Logan.

But the look on her face must be alarming, because his fingers loosen around her arm and he says, “Hey,” softly and worriedly, about to step closer—

From the hallway, she can hear Gambit call, “Minette.”

And both the word and the voice send a current of memory down her neck, through her chest, into her belly, and she feels her cheeks flush. To hear that word, knowing what it means now—and to hear Gambit’s voice speaking it, low and rasping and not-a-little fierce, makes her shiver, as if the current of memory is physical, is inside her body. Along with a tiny flash of embarrassment that deepens the flush in her cheeks.

But before her, Logan looks entirely confused, and not-a-little pissed off at being interrupted by a word he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t even look in Gambit’s direction, but keeps staring at her.

Gambit is still talking: “You coming to lunch, yeah?”

And the sentence jolts her out of her daze; she remembers to smile at Logan, brightly again, and shakes her arm from his now-weakened grasp and strides over to meet Gambit, confirming his invitation.

To gather her thoughts again, to calm herself back down, she makes a show of admonishing him for the pet name: “Didn’t we say you couldn’t call me that in public? Bad swamp rat.”

He looks back at her, but it is not only lust in his face when he says, “Then you better punish this swamp rat, eh.”


*


After lunch, Gambit follows her to her room, knowing neither of them have class in the afternoon. And normally they would fuck, but she has a feeling that is not what they are going to do, this time.

And she knows him well—the realization surprises her—because the minute he closes the door behind them, he asks, “You gonna go to Japan, then.”

She stares at him. “No, Storm didn’t assign me to the mission.”

“Not this one,” he says. “The one that’s coming up. In Kyoto.”

She flinches. He does keep informed, doesn’t he. He has a way of knowing things before she has said them, even to herself; before she has thought them, even to herself.

He says, “Gambit know Yashida headquarters is in Kyoto. Harada Kenichiro lives there.”

She sits down on the bed, says nothing.

“What are you doing, minou,” he murmurs. “What are you doing.”

Still she says nothing—she has no answer.

He leans against the table in front of her bed, and it is just like in Manhattan, in the hotel, only he doesn’t have his staff with him now.

“Then I go with you,” he says, suddenly.

“No,” she snaps, so quickly she can see the anger and hurt around his eyes, before he hides it again. “No. Definitely not. Not after what happened in Madrid. You’re not doing anything like that.”

“What you planning to do, go off on your own and find him?” he demands. “Then what, kill him? You’ll never find him—or worse, he finds out Dr. McCoy’s bodyguard’s the same girl who almost killed him in Manhattan, and he kills you. Or gets one of his guys to kill you. Fin. If he’s even there at all.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “He’ll be there.” She looks up at him, and exhales at the question in his eyes.

“He’s a security advisor for the Japanese ambassador to the U.N.,” she explains softly. “He’ll be there, at the conference. Probably. Especially since it’s taking place in Japan. He often goes, just to supervise and evaluate the bodyguards.”

He stares at her, jaw agape. “How you know that?” Then he mutters, more to admonish himself, “Wait, why didn’t I see him in Ma—” Then he frowns, remembers. “Japan wasn’t at that conference.”

He looks at her again. “So how you know that?”

She sighs, points to her mouth. “When I absorbed him in Manhattan, I learned new things.”

Things she hasn’t even let herself think about yet, she thinks. Let alone say. Like this.

Gambit bends over, holding his knees, groaning. “Merde,” he mutters to himself.

Then he stands back up. “Minou, you can’t do this. Listen to me,” he says, coming forward to kneel between her knees. “You gonna get yourself hurt.”

“I’m strong,” she snaps.

“It’s not your fight,” he says, and now his voice is just below shouting. “You don’t have to avenge nobody. Why you gonna do this?”

“I just have to,” she says.

“No, you think you have to, ‘cause he’s in your head, and he would have to, he would want to—”

She throws her hands up. “Yes, maybe—”

“And,” Gambit says, still kneeling. “And you love him.”

She pushes him backwards, but he doesn’t budge. “That’s not it,” she states, firmly.

“Yes,” Gambit says, just as firmly. “Been in love with him since he first touched you. Maybe before.”

“No,” she says, shaking his head. “Okay—maybe I was in love with him back then—a little bit—but that’s not what this is. It’s just something I have to do—I have to confront Harada—I have to know.”

“Have to know what?” Gambit asks. “Why?”

“Everything!” she cries. “Because it’s all in my head, and none of it makes sense, and I tried to forget about it all, but I can’t—I’m going crazy. It’s in me. It’s in me.”

He says, “You mean, he’s in you.”

“Stop it,” she says. “That’s not what this is.”

“Gambit told you, you don’t kill for just anyone,” he says. “And now you wanna go to Kyoto to kill Harada Kenichiro.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t want to kill him.” Though she is not sure that is the truth.

She says, “I know he has something to do with Logan’s skeleton—with what happened to him, with the Weapon X program.”

He is silent for a moment, at that. “Weapon X,” he repeats.

“It’s—”

“Gambit know what it is,” he cuts in.

She looks down at her knees. “I just want answers.”

He is still silent. Then he says, “Why. Why you need answers? It’s not your past. Are those answers for you? No.”

She doesn’t say anything, and Gambit’s face shifts, then pales below his stubble.

“Ah,” he says. “You wanna tell him.”

“No,” she says abruptly.

“Yes,” he says, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. “You wanna give him back all the memories he lost. You wanna do that for him.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head.

But he might be right; in the heart she has closed, even to herself, it might be what she wants most. But she knows she could never do it—she knows she isn’t brave enough to stand in front of Logan and lay out everything she has inadvertently taken from him. Giving it all back, with interest.

But then, why is Gambit right. Indeed, she had been planning to go to Kyoto, somehow. And if Logan had been assigned to the mission, also, or instead of her, well—she would have asked Storm to take him off of it. Would have shielded him from whatever might have been waiting for him there, in Japan—

Gambit is still kneeling in front of her. “Minou, don’t do this,” he says. “If you love him, then just tell him everything; everything you know, already, messy, just like that. Don’t go this far. If you love him—”

“I don’t,” she cries, pushing against his chest again.

“Enough,” he barks. “Enough. Gambit don’t like this thing you do. Where you think it’s honest enough to say only part of the truth and keep silent on the rest. Like telling me you maybe used to be in love with him, long time ago. Thinking if you reveal something big enough, people leave the rest alone. But you still holding all the important cards in your sleeve.”

She shakes her head, again and again. “No—you don’t understand. It’s just because he was inside my head—so I think I have a connection to him—but it’s not right—it’s not real—”

“Ça, c’est de la merde,” he says, nearly spitting; his accent thickening, fast, in his anger. “He’s part of you. He’s in you like your blood. He gave you his life so you would come back from the dead. That’s not nothing. You think that’s all there is, so it mean it’s not the real thing. But you’re wrong.”

He puts his hands on her knees. “You love him in the real way; love him like anybody can love anybody. Simple and stupid.” His hands grip her knees, tighter. “You don’t want it, but you love him.”

“No,” she says, lowering her head, letting her hair fall into her face.

He nods. “Yes,” he says, pulling the hair away. “Yes.”

Her eyes closed, she says, “Why are you pushing me on this so hard.” Then mutters, “Aren’t you supposed to be ‘a little bit’ in love with me, too.”

“No,” he says, and she opens her eyes to look at him. The black and red eyes are just inches away from hers.

Gambit says, without moving, without breaking his gaze: “Not a little bit. All the way, now.”

She looks at him in horror; opens her mouth to speak, cannot speak.

He smiles faintly. “You know this already, minou.”

She shakes her head, frantically. “No, I—”

“Yes,” he says. “You know this already. But you never want to know the things you know.”

Her face crumples. “Then why, why are you—”

“Gambit don’t think making someone yours is love,” he says. “Though this old thief kinda want it. All that old-time stuff. Making you be mine, all of that.” He frowns. “But mine’s the kind of love that mean loving everything. And the you Gambit loves, loves him.”

“What, all because you saw me coming on someone’s face in the Danger Room?” she sneers, hoping to shake the calm from his face, but failing.

“Yeah,” he admits. “It start like that. Gambit saw the look on your face when you’re alone and real and living life how you want. I liked that look. I don’t want to take that look from you. But this old thief would take it, if I tried to ‘win’ you, or make you ‘choose,’ or some fool thing like that.”

He declares, with conviction: “This is real, minou. Ain’t been a Romeo since I was thirteen. Gambit loves you. The you that loves the Wolverine. The you you.”

“Shut up already,” she cries out, pressing her gloved hand over his mouth; but he shakes himself free.

“What you think love is for,” he demands. “Tie you down, make you someone you not, want only one part of you?”

He stares at her. “You think you can love him—not wanting to take nothing from him, not wanting to break nothing in him—but you don’t think you can be loved like that, too?”

“Shut up,” she whispers, burying her head in her hands. She can feel his own gloved hand finding its way into her hair, against her neck. Can feel his bare face against the backs of her own gloves.

“Minou,” he says, again and again, into her hands. “Minou, minou.”

And every word is full of a tenderness she has felt from him since Manhattan, nameless until now.

But she pushes him away. “Go away,” she says. “Just leave.”

He looks at her. “You really want that,” he says, slowly.

“Yes,” she says, still covering her face. “Out.”

Gambit exhales, pulls his hands from her neck and face. Then he rocks back onto his heels, standing back up. Looking down at her, he says, “Gambit leave you alone for a little bit. But we ain’t done here.”

She shakes her head, covers her eyes. She can feel his hand on the top of her head. “Minou,” she hears him say again.

She can see only blackness behind her hands, behind her eyelids, and then she feels his hand lift from her head, can feel his body retreating from hers, until the electricity of his body in the room fades, fades, and she hears the door open, and close.

Only then does she remove the hands from her face, and see herself alone in the room. She falls backwards onto the bed, exhausted as if she has been running for hours and hours, for days and days. She doesn’t notice herself falling asleep.


*


She half-dreams, half-thinks of the moment before Logan left the mansion for Alkali Lake, alone. His skittish, evasive, “Not really,” when she asked him if he was running again.

How in love with him she had been, then. The passion of a somewhat-precocious-for-her-age teenage girl. Knowing he was leaving to look for clues about his past—trying to keep him there, with her, anyway. A teenager, selfishly in love, saying, “I don’t want you to go.” Sensing immediately how he was both anxious and pleased by her words; nervously happy to feel someone exact a hold on him; to hear someone ask him to stay somewhere, anywhere.

She had been delighted to know that she could make him nervous; that he didn’t quite know how to behave around her. She saw that he thought of her as different, singular, without yet knowing why.

All of this now feels like memories from distant childhood. The only thing that remains present, still accurate, is the uneasiness that always accompanies pleasure, with Logan: in his voice when they joke with each other, in his body after sex. It has always disarmed her, that quality of his; any other person could have fallen in love with him for that quality, alone.

She can still hear it in his voice, as if he is speaking to her now. As if he is lulling her to sleep, while in the meantime, sleep eludes him.


*


Simple and stupid. There’s nothing simple and stupid about any of it.


*


When she awakens and glances at her alarm clock, it is already the middle of the night; she has slept straight through dinner.

She hears the noise of water running in her bathroom. She closes her eyes, already knowing who it is. She wants to fall back asleep, to pretend she is still dreaming. But the water stops running, and she can hear the soft splashing sound, as the water is parted by a body.

She groans, rolls out of bed, looks down at herself. Still fully dressed. She kicks her shoes off, closes her eyes again. Now the water is still, there is no more noise. If she closes her eyes, it is as if no one is there.

But there are already enough people behind the place where her eyes close, for her to know that she isn’t alone there, either. She opens her eyes again.

She stands, walks towards the bathroom, and opens it, already looking for Gambit, who is sitting in the full tub, his ankles crossed over the rim, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Only his eyes move to look at her, and they crinkle as his lips smile around the cigarette.

“Voilà la belle au bois dormant,” he says, cheerfully, as if their last conversation had never happened. “Here she is, the beauty of the sleeping forest.”

“How’d you get back in here,” she demands. Why does it feel like they are always having significant encounters in bathrooms.

He grins. “Like a good thief,” he says.

“You mean a burglar,” she mutters. Then looking at the cigarette, says, “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“Don’t,” he says. “Gambit quit a while ago.” He smiles wryly. “Lately I been thinking ‘bout starting again, though.”

“Not in my bathroom,” she says.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says, taking the cigarette out his mouth and placing it on the rim, next to her shampoos, then turning back to her. “You sleep good?”

She shrugs. He beckons her over, holding his bare hand out to hers. “Come here, minou.”

She hesitates, but comes, taking his hand. He pulls her hand, forcefully, and she has to brace herself against the tile wall above the tub to keep from falling in. “Watch out,” she says. “I’m gonna fall in.”

“That’s the idea,” he says, bringing her gloved hand to his mouth. She realizes for the first time that they haven’t fucked since he came back from Madrid; not even once.

She breathes out, and lets him tug her again, so that she climbs into the bathtub, still in her clothes and gloves, sloshing water over the rim and everywhere onto the floor. She seats herself somewhat awkwardly between his legs. She looks at him: the naked body, surrounding her; the hair on his legs, the pubic hair framing his crotch, his half-erect cock.

The two scars that were not there before. On his chest, on his stomach.

He says, “Don’t look like that, minou.”

“Like what,” she says, lifting her head again.

He replies, “Like you gonna cry again.” He points to the scars. “Everything heal up just fine. Good as new.”

“Not good as new,” she says, touching the one on his chest, then the one on his stomach; that one makes him shiver. “Tickles,” he mutters.

He looks down at her hand as it moves over the scars, touching them, feeling their shape—as if the hand wants to know how they happened, how the bullet had entered him, how it had moved aside the flesh of his body, forever.

He takes her gloved finger, presses it down hard on one scar, and says, severely, “Gambit don’t want this to happen to you.”

She looks at him. Saying nothing, she reaches down, takes his cock in her hands, begins to stroke him, cupping his balls. He jumps a little, surprised, says, “Minou—”

“I want to,” she says, before he can say anything.

He laughs, his eyes half-closed now, says, “Wasn’t really gonna stop you.”

She makes him come, a little too quickly, with a raspy cry that comes from somewhere deep in his stomach. Near his wound, she thinks. He must have been under pressure; he comes as if he has been needing to, for a long time.

He opens his eyes and smiles, a little weakly, at her, and she sees his unconscious face in the medbay again; too bearded, too pale—

And she feels something near the terror she felt then, when she realizes he might have been pent up because he hasn’t fucking anyone else.

“Let’s go to the room,” he says, opening his eyes.

And she remembers his voice, just before he left for his first mission, with Logan. Wearing his mission-ready clothes in the shower, touching her with his gloved hands, then murmuring, Let’s go to the room. Where they fucked, soaking, on the bed, and he closed his eyes and never said a word.

She thinks, Already then.

“Okay,” she says, and stands up. He stands up after her, more water crashing over the rim and only adding to the minor ocean on the floor. She steps out of the tub, taking his hand, and he follows her, out the door, to the bed, where he sits down first and starts to remove her skirt.

“Wait,” she says. “I’ll do it. You don’t have gloves.” She is already reaching for the drawer with her tights, so she can change into an altered pair; she is still wearing a normal one.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Gambit be careful.”

And before she can protest, his bare hands are on the waistband of her skirt, unzipping it and tugging its waterlogged shape off. Then his hands stretch the elastic of the tights, inches from her skin, so he can tug the tights down.

She does not breathe, does not move—a single move, and he will touch her skin; she has to control it, control it so she only gets powers, just in case—but is that what she wants; powers or thoughts. And she thinks: Powers, definitely powers.

But he reaches her ankles without incident, and she has to lift her leg, just slightly, so he can slip the stocking off one foot, then the other. Then he tosses the tights to the side, lifts himself back up, and smiles. “See? Easy.”

With shaking hands, she opens the drawer, fumbles for a new pair of tights, a condom, a scarf. And he says, “Gambit put this one on, too.”

And he does, again, the same way—and again she is frozen, clutching the scarf in her hand, watching his hands that are careful, but not that careful. Bringing the dry tights over her still damp legs, letting the waistband bounce into place with a little snap against the flesh on her hips.

“This thief got some talent at this,” he says, happily.

She doesn’t say anything, but lifts the scarf up to kiss him. She doesn’t close her eyes, and neither does he; and she remembers a time when these eyes only badly aroused her. That time seems far, far away.

He leans back, then lowers that scarf to her sex, stroking her through it with his still bare hand. She has to put a gloved hand on his shoulder for balance, closes her eyes.

“Gambit won’t say it too much for now,” she hears him say—and she knew it was too good to be true, him not having mentioned the subject all this time.

“You still too scared for it,” he murmurs.

“I’m not scared,” she snaps, bringing her head up—but he is too close, still staring, and she leans back, but his other hand comes up to hold her thigh in place, while his stroking hand doesn’t stop, and she buckles forward again, her hand on his shoulder.

“Every time Gambit say minou, you’ll hear it,” he says, leaning forward underneath her arm, to kiss the hip covered by black nylon. “Eh, minou. Minou. Minou.”

And she shakes her head, but she is already coming, and she digs into his shoulder with her nails, even through the gloves.

Later, when they are fucking, she grumbles, looking down at him, “We keep soaking my damn bed.”

“It’s worth it, no?” he says, punctuating the words with a little thrust. “Eh, minou? Minou—minou—”

“Aren’t you just saying you love my pussy,” she taunts.

He shrugs. “So what, that’s true, too,” he says, and she smacks him, laughing, as he says it again, again, again. And then she is not laughing anymore. For too many reasons, now.


*


During a demonstration in class, she is teaching a judo throw to a tall young boy who has been looking at her with hearts in his eyes since they have started sparring.

To the side, she sees Logan staring at her, silent as ever. She thinks about Kyoto; about souvenirs.

Then she thinks about Gambit’s words—Not wanting to take nothing, not wanting to break nothing.

And the thought bothers her so much, so sharply, that she throws the boy to the ground, a little more roughly than she had been planning to. But the boy looks up at her, and now the hearts in his eyes are ringed with pink sparkles; and she can already see his growing hard-on beneath her.

And she thinks of Gambit putting her tights on for her; of Logan asking her to go see a movie.

And when she says, “Yikes—this is just a judo lesson, big guy. Don’t go falling in love with me,” she is not talking only to the boy.


*


She goes to Storm’s office. She somewhat expects her to be arguing on the phone with Hank, or crying to herself. But she is doing neither, simply going through papers, wearing a pair of reading glasses.

When she sees Rogue outside her door, her face warms into a smile and says, “Come on in, honey. What can I do for you.”

Rogue says, without preamble, “I’d like to be on the Kyoto mission.”

Storm looks startled. “I haven’t assigned it yet.”

“I know,” she says. “But I’d like to volunteer.”

“Why?” Storm asks.

Rogue looks down. “I just want to go on this one,” she replies. “I think I’m well-equipped for it.”

“Does it have something to do with Gambit?” Storm asks. “Or Logan?”

Rogue’s head pops up, eyes wide. “I, I—”

Storm smiles, holds up a hand to calm her. “The last thing you’re getting from me is judgment, honey,” she says, gently. “Just asking.”

Rogue looks back down at Storm’s desk. Xavier’s old round paperweight still on it.

“I’d like you not to ask Logan on the mission,” she whispers, answering without answering.

Storm looks at her over the stack of papers, still smiling. “Well-equipped, huh,” she murmurs, and Rogue cringes at the knowing in her eyes.

Then she says, “Well, you and Logan have similar things to bring to the table, combat-wise, so if I wanted a close-combat person, I’d probably be choosing between the two of you, anyway.”

Rogue takes a deep breath. “If you’re choosing between us,” she says, “please choose me.”

Storm folds her hands on top of her desk. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she replies.

Rogue nods, clenches and unclenches her fist. “Okay,” she says, standing to get up. “Thanks.”


*


Two days later, Storm calls Rogue, Jubilee, Piotr and Kurt into her office and announces that they have been chosen to guard Hank at the U.N. Disarmament Conference taking place in Kyoto, which will take about five days total; three days for the conference itself, and one day on either side, for arrival and departure.

And while she is telling them the news, Storm manages not to give her a single special look; but afterwards, as the four of them are leaving, she gives Rogue a small smile of trust and affection that makes the younger woman’s heart soar like an adolescent’s in love.


*


Gambit is waiting for her, leaning against her door, when she comes back from Storm’s meeting.

“So you really gonna do this,” he says, and there is no question about what “this” is referring to.

“How’d you know that?” she asks, genuinely shocked. “I just got told, myself.”

“Eavesdropped, then came over here to wait for you,” he says.

She rolls her eyes. “Assassin, thief and spy,” she mutters.

“Gambit don’t like it,” he pronounces. “Don’t like it, don’t agree with it.”

“That’s not your call,” she says.

“I know,” he says. “You have class later?”

She shakes her head. “No, not today.”

He pushes himself off of the door with his shoulder. “Okay. Let’s go then.”

“Where?” she asks.

“Come on,” he says, and starts walking. She follows him into the elevator.

Inside, he does not talk to her, does not rub up against her, does not whisper a filthy invitation too close to her ear, like he normally would. She realizes, suddenly, that he is angry—that this is what he is like when he is angry at her.

The elevator stops at the medbay level. “Medbay?” she asks, but he shakes his head.

They continue walking through the silver corridors, past the medbay, then into a corridor where she has never been before. Then through a side door, into a small room that is almost entirely unfurnished. Only two mats, and a small lamp on the floor in the center of the room, between the mats.

“What’s this,” she says.

“Meditation room,” Gambit replies. “Think Jean Grey and the professor used to use it.”

Her eyes widen, and she says, “Should we be in here?”

He shrugs. “Nobody come in here no more.” And that stings, the truth of it. Looking down at the two clean, long-uncreased mats.

She glances over at him. “So how’d you find it?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Gambit’s a thief, minou. No place in the mansion Gambit don’t know about.” He moves into the room, ahead of her. “Okay, sit down,” he says.

She asks, “What are we doing?” She snorts. “New place to fuck?”

“Gambit gonna teach you how to do hypnosis,” he replies.

She stares at him. That, she hadn’t expected. “What?”

He is already taking off his trench coat, folding it into a pile in a corner of the room. “If you want answers from Harada Kenichiro and you don’t want to kill him, it’ll help.”

She still has not moved from her place in the doorframe. He looks at her; he is already sitting cross legged on one of the mats. “Sit down, here.”

“Why are you trying to help,” she says, staring at him. “You don’t agree with it. And you’re mad at me.”

“It’s because Gambit don’t agree with it,” he says.

As in the bath, he points to the place on his chest where one of the scars is located.

Gambit says, “You come back on a stretcher, this thief takes somebody’s head. You know that, yeah.”

She smiles a little. “Yeah,” she says.

“Good,” he says, lowering his hand from his chest, and then looking at her again.

“But stretcher or no—you come back,” he says. And it is not a question, not a request. His voice is low, shaking only slightly.

“Yeah,” she says softly.

He nods. “Good,” he says. “Sit down.”

She sits down. He takes off his glove to reveal his naked hand. “First, you touch me.”

She jumps back to her feet. “What the hell?”

He looks at her, still calm. “Gambit gonna give you some of my power, so you can get the charming.”

Her mouth drops. “Are you insane?” she asks.

“You said you can control it so you just take powers,” he says, as if he is asking her to breakfast. “So touch me and take some.”

“No,” she hisses, and makes her way to the door—but when she opens it and looks down the silver hallway and realizes she has no idea how to get back to the elevator. She turns back to glare at him.

Still sitting there with his hand outstretched, he says, “Gambit’s gonna control it, too. With my mind. I’ll close it down as much as I can, so you won’t get no thoughts or memories.”

“How are you going to do that? You’re not telepathic,” she demands. “Are you?”

He shrugs. “No, but I ain’t totally without shields up there. Otherwise Gambit’d be blowing everything he see, up all the time.”

He looks at her, still holding out the bare hand. “Trust me.”

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter, it won’t last long enough to make it to Kyoto anyway. And if I touch you long enough to take it permanently, I’ll kill you.”

“You don’t need to keep it permanently,” he says. “It’s ain’t totally part of my mutation; it’s more like a spirit energy type thing.”

Her brow furrows. “What, like voodoo?” she asks, every stereotype about Louisiana jumping into her head.

He shrugs. “Kinda,” he replies. “My power’s about energy: moving it, making it, doing things to it. Usually that means charging things, making them explode. But there’s other things you can do with it.

“Some people, they talk about things called chakras, energy centers, pathways, things like that. Gambit’s more sensitive to all that stuff, that’s why I heal a little bit faster and can jump around so much. But normal people see it too, even humans. Gurus and healers and stuff.

“Same thing for the charming. With me it works just like my charging, but gentler. You see the other person’s energy, use yours to mold it, draw it, make it do what you want, make it bend to you, so the other person feels like he’s in your spell.”

He shrugs. “You won’t be able to charge nothing, but I’ll teach you regular hypnosis so you can do something with the energy you see.”

She stares at him. “I don’t get it.”

He sighs. “It’s hard to explain, eh. That’s why if you touch me, you feel it first hand, you’ll see how it works, then you can remember it from there. If you get it in your head once, probably you know how to get to it later. It ain’t a genetic thing, it’s just a power; you gotta learn to see it, the energy in things.”

“So what, I’ll be able to charm people forever, if I can figure out how?” she asks.

“Maybe,” he says. “Not me.”

Then he frowns. “But you’d be able to charm Harada Kenichiro. And then you wouldn’t have to touch him to get answers.”

She realizes, with a start—he is trying to give her a way to not have yet another person’s ghosts in her head.

She looks at him, then looks down at her hand. “You can really shield your mind?” she asks quietly.

He puts the bare hand back on his chest. “Thief’s honor, Gambit try his best. Can’t promise nothing, but I think it can done.”

She comes back into the room, sits down across from him. Staring at his hand. The truth is, she wants to try it; she wants to do the thing she did to John, back at Bobby’s house in Boston—to see if she can just take powers, not thoughts and memories, without significantly hurting the other person.

“Anything happen, we got the medbay right next door, we say it was a sex accident,” he says, and she manages to laugh. He holds his hand out. “Come on,” he says. “Trust me.”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you to trust me?” she jokes.

“Gambit already do,” he says. “Come on.”

And she takes a deep breath. She removes her glove, looks down at the hand again, then back up at Gambit. He is looking at her, calmly and steadily. His hand—callused where he grips the staff, she sees for the first time, though she has felt the calluses against her body—held out to her. Then, with the tips of her fingers, she touches his palm.

She doesn’t feel much of anything at first; then the pull begins, and she concentrates her mind, the way she did with John, looking for the thread in the connection that is only about power; about that specific energy that makes mutation—and she realizes for the first time that her power might be a bit similar to the rat’s. He makes and manipulates energy, she absorbs and assimilates it.

She can feel it, coming into her body, like a glowing red filament: the charging power, the vision of everything trembling with its own latent forces. And it’s already enough; she can see the channels of energy running through his body, through her body, vibrating off the floor, the mats, the lamp in between them, the door—and so she pulls her hand away.

Gambit falls forward a little bit, he has to grab onto the mat with his one gloved hand.

“Sorry!” she cries. “Was it too much?”

His head is lowered so she cannot see his face. Breathing hard, he rasps out, “Apology three—you going soft.”

She scowls, about to hit him; then he shakes his head, quickly, like a dog shaking off water, and looks back up at her.

“It work?” he asks.

She nods. She can see pathways everywhere, can feel her hand humming; she thinks if she touched her glove right now and thought about it, it would burn.

“What about.” He gestures to his head. “No thoughts?”

Her eyes widen, and she nods, realizing. “No thoughts,” she says.

Nothing, not even an inkling. Just the signature of his energy within her.

The realization hits her body like a blow: the time with John wasn’t a fluke. She can do this. She can really do this. She can control some part of it; even in this small way. She starts to smile, like an idiot, looking down at her own hand like it is something she has never seen before, something she is only now beginning to get to know.

Gambit exhales, and then smiles. “Good,” he says, but doesn’t say anything else. Then he puts his glove back on. “Now let’s begin.”


*


Much to her dismay, he hypnotizes her multiple times over the first and second days, before she protests, “I thought that wouldn’t work on me anymore, since you told me about it!”

He says, “The charm power don’t have no effect on you. So it mean it ain’t certain to work on you. Doesn’t mean Gambit can’t still hypnotize you if I’m good at it.” He snorts. “And I’m good at it.”

“Cocky Cajun,” she mutters.

“Actually,” he says, “Gambit think my charm power could still work on people who already know it, if they actually wanna be charmed. The reason it don’t work after someone knows is ‘cause people change their energy when they know about it, put up defenses, aren’t relaxed anymore; then I can’t mold their energy the same way without forcing it. And then it might become an explosion. If you let me use it on you, Gambit think he could still do it.”

“Wanna try?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Why not?” she asks.

“Too risky,” he says.

“And what we just did wasn’t?” she counters.

He gazes at her, says, “You have a reason for what you doing. Gambit don’t have no reason to take that kinda risk on you, minou.”

He says “minou” for the first time since they have seen each other today, out of habit, and she realizes he must have been trying to avoid using it.

His face softens. And now, just as he had predicted, she hears something else in the word—but then he is back to business, his voice hardening again. “Now concentrate.”


*


During the sessions, Gambit says hypnosis isn’t about lulling someone to sleep, or to dream; it’s about making the body relaxed, while the mind becomes even more attentive and receptive. He talks about other things, too, that she doesn’t totally understand; about feeling energy moving through her, and being able to sense another person’s energy, and know whether or not the hypnosis is working; or even just know when another person is starting to get nervous and erratic.

He tells her that what he’s teaching her is some mixture of hypnosis and something called reiki, which he says is a kind of energy healing. He tells her things about stillness; about being attuned; about energy being intelligent, about how, when she sees another person, she will just know how to ask the question, what to say, to draw the person in.

And it’s true; even when his power dissipates from her body, she finds it surprisingly easy to find the threads of energy in things again, if she concentrates the right way; as if a light has been turned on inside her eyes.

She thinks about things she didn’t know and didn’t expect—Logan teaching his students tai chi, Gambit and chakras.

And on the third day, she hypnotizes him for the first time. When he breaks out of it, he looks a little startled, but still proud.

“I hypnotized you!” she exclaims.

“Gambit just got distracted by your pretty face,” he mumbles.

But she does it several more times during that day, and he looks less and less disgruntled, more and more amazed. “You’re good at it,” he observes. “A natural.” A natural at feeling someone else’s energy, pulling it towards her, bending it. She had never known there were other ways to do that.

The next day, he tells her, “Your eye fixation is good. You’re good with verbal suggestion. But the talking is best when it’s not that gentle, but more firm. Some people are better hypnotists when they speak gentle; you’re better if it’s like an order.”

He grumbles to himself, “Why ain’t Gambit surprised,” and she kicks him.

Then he adds, “It’s good if you add some physical contact, too. It don’t have to be skin-on-skin. You can wear gloves. It’s just about the nearness. If you’re in contact with his body, you feel the energy better. Hold him like you hold a bird; not too tight, not too gentle. So it’s like you’re part of him.”

“Okay,” she says. And it’s true; when she puts her gloved hand on his shoulder and speaks, she can feel his energy bowing to her, as his eyes become vague and distant.

Gambit trains her like that for a week. The time they usually spend for fucking is cut nearly in half. And when they do fuck, he is still different; quieter, tenser. Thinking.

Still angry, she thinks to herself. Though he has a weird way of showing it.


*


She barely sees Logan at all that week, spending nearly all her time teaching class, training with Gambit, or going over mission details and logistics with the other team members. She tells him, when he asks where she’s been, that the preparation for this mission is more complicated—he still looks suspicious.

The night before the mission, she goes to Gambit’s room. When he opens the door, he is surprised, saying, “Gambit was just coming to your room. Come in.”

Though she has been here countless times, she feels as though she is seeing this room for the first time. How things are neat, but messy, a kind of devoted disorder; how it now smells of cigarettes, and she knows he must have been smoking, though she has never smelled it on his breath. How things look worn, cared for, long-loved. An old trench coat, tons of yellowed playing cards, a metal staff laid across a chair.

Looking at the tenderness of this room, she thinks about a thirteen-year-old boy in love; then an eighteen-year-old boy in love, on the day of his wedding, exploding a gun with his mind.

“You’ll do good,” he says, behind her. “Don’t you worry.”

She turns around, comes close to him, presses her bare face to his chest. She asks, “So you want me to be naked, or you?”

He smiles, brings a gloved hand up to her mouth. “Let’s not do nothing today, minou,” he says—and she hears minou, hears something else—but he continues, “You need your rest. And your concentration.”

“You’re still mad at me,” she says, frowning.

“Yep,” he says, easily, honestly, the way he always says it, the way he said it after she accused him of just wanting to fuck her, in Manhattan.

“Then maybe I should leave,” she threatens, crossing her arms.

He doesn’t reach for her, to try to stop her, but pulls away and climbs into his own bed.

“You can sleep here,” he says. “You can still be naked if you want. Gambit be clothed.” He lifts a gloved hand, to show her.

She looks down at her clothes. She takes off her skirt only, then steps forward to climb into his bed. It is the only the second time she has ever slept next to him. And strangely, both times, they haven’t had sex. It feels strange to be here, again, like that; not about to fuck, not even close.

“You’re still mad at me,” she says.

“Yep,” he says again. Then smiles. “Nothing for you to worry about. Go sleep now.”

“You really don’t want to do anything?” she asks, resting her head on her elbow. Now that she is horizontal, she can feel how good sleep already sounds, feels.

Gambit laughs. “Gambit wanna do lots,” he says. “But we’re not gonna do nothing tonight.”

“Why not,” she mumbles, already half-asleep.

He gazes down at her. “‘Cause it would feel like it’s the last time,” he says, and she opens her eyes to meet his eyes. “And Gambit don’t like that.”

She stares at him. Hearing: Not a little bit. All the way, now.

Still looking at her, he adds, quietly, “You come back, yeah.” She can only nod.

“Good,” he says. “You go sleep now, minou.” Once again, the same words he had said, before leaving her room in Manhattan.

And as she is falling asleep, she can feel him watching her. He doesn’t touch her; but he doesn’t have to.


*


Early the next morning, he is next to her, not touching her, still asleep—or pretending to be asleep, she doesn’t know. She thinks he doesn’t want to say a good-bye, either. So she just pinches his nose with her gloved fingers. “Later, rat,” she whispers. He doesn’t stir.

She slips out of the room, goes back to her room, and showers. Not so much time until she has to go to the jet; the mission begins early.

She is glad she won’t have time to see Logan before she goes. Seeing him, now, knowing what she is planning to do in Kyoto—though, does she really know what she is planning to do in Kyoto?—would throw her off, mess with her concentration, and she doesn’t need that. Having Gambit teach her hypnosis all week has helped to keep herself out of Logan’s way, besides giving her a skill that she not only might actually need, but seems to be naturally good at. The knowledge pleases her.

But she isn’t glad for long, because not ten minutes before she is about to leave her room for the jet, the knock comes.

She thinks it is one of the team members, so she opens the door; and when she sees his face, scolds herself inwardly for not predicting that it would be Logan.

“I don’t have much time,” she warns him, and it is the truth.

He watches her as she finishes the final preparations on her bag, begins to slip her feet into her shoes. He seems to be trying to calculate something, or figure out something, but she doesn’t look at his face closely enough to tell exactly what. Finally, she does look at him, and sees that his brow is lined with worry.

Unable to keep herself from thinking of Gambit’s words:

The real way. Like anybody to anybody. Simple and stupid.

“So almost a week, huh,” Logan says, trying to hide his anxiety and failing.

“Yup,” she says, zipping her bag closed, trying to sound confident and breezy so the lines in his face will disappear.

“So say hi to Storm and your right hand for me.” She laughs, rethinking. “And Westchester County.”

And the voice seems to work, because the lines do, now, disappear from his face. But now he just looks lonely, tentative; the way he looks after class, as his students run off to find their friends; as he folds up training mats by himself.

She thinks of the way he looked after they had sex in her room, the first time—and his hands had trembled and trembled. Of the uncertainty in his face when he asked her, after the second time, if they could continue doing it.

He says, “Bring me back a souvenir.”

The word cuts through her all her hard-won calm and concentration—and all of a sudden, she thinks of Remy the bull, and Madrid, and Harada, and ghosts, and souvenirs; of the things we bring back, the things we give to others—and what is she going to do in Kyoto, what the hell does she think she’s really going to do—

And in less than a second, his hand is on her arm, too tightly, and he says, so fiercely she can feel his spit on her cheek, “What is that.”

She realizes she must have shown something of her anguish on her face, so she makes an exaggerated show of laughing. All while trying to extricate her arm from his vice-like grip.

“What? You want to have some fun before I leave? I guess I have two minutes—”

But the grip is indeed vice-like, because she can’t budge him; it’s like an adamantium handcuff around her arm. He says, “What the hell is with that look on your face every time someone mentions something related to Japan.”

And fuck. She shuts her entire body down; all motion, all emotion. He can’t know. If he knows even an inkling of what she is thinking, why she is going to Kyoto—she doesn’t even want to know how he will react.

He would stop her, she knows. But she has to do this. Not only for him. For herself: to exorcise the body she is living in, of at least some of the ghosts she has acquired.

“Nothing,” she says only. “Let go.”

“No,” he says, and once again he is looking at her the way he did in Storm’s office, after they had been informed about the Tokyo mission. “Tell me.”

“Logan, let go,” she says, and pulls, using as much of her strength as she dares to, not wanting to hurt him.

But he isn’t budging at all, and he is even closing his fist even harder and harder around her arm. And the fierce look in his eyes looks too similar to the look in Gambit’s when he was asking her what she thought love was—

And she is sixteen again, dead, and Logan’s life is there in her body before her own—

She cries, with the voice of that girl in her throat, “Fucking let go!” and pushes against his chest with nearly the full force of her powers.

Apparently, she is pretty strong, because she sends him through her front door, into the hallway, and through Kurt’s door, into his room. Thank god Kurt is probably already on the jet.

Logan stares back at her, covered in pieces of door.

She looks back at him, breathing hard. She is only distantly aware that her fists are clenched, that her entire body is shaking. And now there is a look on his face that she has never seen; that reminds her of no other look.

But now she has to go; the jet is waiting. She turns away from the look.

Then she steps forward, crossing the debris she has made, and mutters, “Get this fuckin’ mess fixed before we’re back from the mission.” But she is not sure if she is talking to him, or to herself.