DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters depicted, I am only writing this one to have some fun and do not earn any money on it. Consider it the most honest form of flattery...imitation.

The ride home was not a very pleasant one, each of them absorbed in his or her own dark thought while the biting winds whipped the helicopter this and that way. The need to keep Remy at a temperature that wouldn't start thawing him up and thus induce a heart attack made the ride even more unpleasant.

But finally the passengers got to their goal and could unload the frozen body of their friend as well as their own only slightly less frozen bodies. The only one not seriously distraught by the cold seemed to be Harpoon, who no doubt had seen worse before...or at the least was trying to give that impression.

The boy was frozen stiff before the boss started working his particularly dark strain of technological magic on him. But of course, Nathan Essex is the greatest medical genius ever. I look down at the creature we took from the lands of driving snow and whipping winds...Gambit. Once I used to hate him; he led Sinister to me and then Essex made me into what I am today. But today...I can do nothing but pity the Cajun. After all, there is a reckoning to meet. For his insolence, for his betrayal...for his running away. But I doubt that the boss will really hurt him. After all, he is the favorite, the one that always got away with things that would have spelled certain doom for the rest of us. I know that he can't feel it or hear me, but before I leave the room I squeeze his hand gently and whisper: "Get well bro, we need you."

The door closes behind me.

Yet still I can not let go of the train of thoughts this short encounter has started...thoughts of the man I was before. Yeah, I used to be a criminal but at the time I was only smalltime game -- or to be more exact, I used to be a smalltime poacher. I had this gift for guns and ranged weapons even then, though it was much weaker before the devil decided to make me dance in my bones.

I still wonder at times, as I do now, if I hadn't been happier if I had stayed the smalltime poacher and never had to kill anyone...but I know that there is no use dreaming. And besides, I've found that I like the killing, though I'm certainly better at hiding it than Sabretooth ever was.

So the Cajun is back where he belongs. I wonder if they just grew tired of him or if they finally found out about his secret? I don't really care; he is back among us as fate meant us to be. And god help me, even my own twisted heart clenches at the thought of him dying. I don't really know what has happened to deliver him back into our waiting arms, but I sure know that I do appreciate it. After all, it isn't every day you get your lover back...

Still I don't really know what to feel when it comes to my former love. Yes, I did love him, and yes, he betrayed us. But still...I can't help but thinking that he might have been right to run away and that maybe, just maybe I should have gone with him as he asked me.

I'm cold, but my hands and feet are aflame with pain. But I'm still alive, I guess; that means that they came back for me. I knew it -- I knew it all along that she was just trying to scare me, punish me for not saying anything. I knew that my family wouldn't abandon me to die like that. Even though I can't open my eyes I know that all will be well now that I am at home.

I feel sorry for all the harsh words I thought about them and all the curses I layered upon the X-Men's heads as I knew that I couldn't walk any further in the cold. But still I can't open my mouth to tell them how very sorry I am for not telling them before and that I'm sorry for almost hating them.

But as I reach out it isn't the gloved hand I'd expect that grasps mine. It is a hand almost as powerful and feminine, but without the gloves. Then and only then do I understand what has happened and I scream and scream.

I don't really know how to feel. I guess that I feel both rejected, sad and angry. I surely can't stop the tears from falling at the thought of how much we used to mean to each other...and what I've come to mean to him nowadays.

I get to my feet and rush out of the room without any thought but to get as far away from him as possible within the confines of the base.

Guess that Arclight will be happy now. Her sweetheart back and all -- well, unless Sinister decides to finish him off nice and proper like. At the least he is more useful than Scrambler. And a damn sight more appetizing too. But I sure do wonder what he did to make the heroes try to kill him...?

Wonder if he'll betray us again? Wonder if we can stop him in time if he does? And damn...what happened to make the heroes try and kill him off? I thought that they where the good guys. Maybe he told them about us, that he used to be one of us...yeah, that might be it. Well, if he's with us, things are looking up to be a bit more fun around here...

Damn him! The bastard is back and it seems as if most of the team will accept him back without any compunctions at all. With no issue, the bloody bastard betrayed us. He turned coat and went to the other side and everyone around here seems to ignore it full-time. Well, fuck him. I still think that we should just extract whatever information we could from him, preferably with a dull object or maybe a corkscrew, and then dump the corpse where we found him.

Sinister looks up from the readings on Remy's life signs. "I see that you are awake, good, you will live then."

"I won't serve you again. I'll never betray the X-Men." His voice is hoarse and broken by the frost and by crying.

"You mean like you betrayed you friends and...lovers here, my boy? Am I to believe that you don't want any form of revenge for them killing you? Am I to believe that you value your former comrades over your family?"

"Killing me? No, they would 'ave come back for me, they wouldn' 'ave left Gambit to die like d'hat!" The desperation and the doubt both battle for control of his voice even as he fights to keep himself under control.

"Are you quite sure of that, boy? As far as we've observed, there has been no rescue attempt on their part for the last twenty-four hours while you were unconscious. Face the facts, LeBeau: they left you to die and only the loyalty of the friends you once betrayed saved your life." Sinister stabs the fact home like a vicious dagger of ice.

"..."

"Don't tell me that you don't resent how they've treated you? They wanted you to risk your life for them, yet they never fully trusted you. They wanted you to give them the truth, a truth that you could hardly handle yourself, without giving their own hidden truths to you. You fought alongside them, you bled for their causes, and in the end they leave you to die for what you were before you came to them? Don't you feel any resentment at all, Remy?" Sinister's voice is like a caress of silk and boosted with just a fragment of his awesome mental powers.

"If someone had told me about love, Remy, if someone had told me that all that mattered was love and then tried to kill me, I wouldn't trust that person. It would be betrayal, son. It would be an object for revenge. Don't you see? That they haven't launched a rescue yet shows that they all condone what your beloved lady chose for you." The pinprick flow of psionics stab deeper into the Cajun's mind, stapling the words deep into his subconscious.

In the end it all comes down to this. I am back where I started, back with the Marauders and Sinister. The experiments on my body finished, refining my powers to the point where it is enough to look at something to blow it up. And...perhaps I'm just imagining things, but the Marauders feel like family. They even missed me. Of course, Essex was rather pissed at this little Cajun for running away, but what else could I do? I couldn't stand the killing and the blood around me, it sickened me and made me feel dirty. I wanted to become something else, a hero for a change. Perhaps that could have saved my soul. I know better now. The heroes are no better than we are, and we at the least do not kill our own. A twinge of rage burns through me at this point. ~Sweet god, did I ever have such a temper before?~

So comes the order...ATTACK.

The X-Men used to place bets on when and by whom the mansion would be blown up next...My bet is NOW and by Revenant. The ghost from their past once known as Gambit...

The battle is short but furious. The Revenant's powers make it easy to both charge and blow up the mansion. Most of its inhabitants are caught inside and the few that make it out from under the debris are dispatched with ease. After all, the X-Men at full strength always found the Marauders a tough match. A few scattered remnants are no match for them with the information given by LeBeau. Even Wolverine falls in the end, but not without getting himself a kill and a good look upon Gambit's face. A sharp pang of regret flashes over the Cajun's handsome face as the look of betrayal and regret in Logan's face. Then Scalphunter fires a killing round, a bullet made to bounce on hard surfaces. It enters from underside Wolverine's neck through the same channel the spinal cord enters and then goes into the brain.

They find Rogue just as her hands clear the debris. Always a gentleman, Scrambler takes her hand, rendering her powers completely useless. Now she hangs on to the debris with merely the strength of a mortal woman -- far below awaits the floor of the Blackbird's hangar.

"All yours, Cajun. Hope you enjoy her." Scrambler's tone is filled with venom.

"Look 'ere, cherie, dis is whad true love looks like..." And with those words the Revenant turns towards Arclight and gives her a very thorough kiss. Trying to block the vision from her eyes, Rogue doesn't see how Arclight lifts a huge piece of debris and drops it on her.

There is a short scream followed by a damp thud as she strikes the floor.