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The Gambit Guild

Title: The Ante
Fandom: X-Men: Evolution
Author: Lucia de’Medici
Summary: Never bet more than you are willing to lose.
Extended Summary: When Remy LeBeau left Rogue on the shore of the Ripper’s bayou hideout, he slipped a solitary playing card into the palm of her hand. It was a conciliatory gesture — an offer for friendship, an unspoken apology, and the beginning of a less-than-friendly game between rivals. A year has passed, the stakes have been raised, and Remy is not a person who enjoys entertaining the idea of folding before the bluff gets called.
Rating: Teen/Mature
Pairing: Rogue/Remy
Secondary Pairings: (If only by mention) Lance/Kitty, Kitty/Piotr, Scott/Jean, Wanda/Pietro, Wanda/Pyro, Mystique/Destiny, others.
Warnings: A variety - noted at the beginning of each chapter.
Author's Notes: Thanks are extended to Lisa725 and Sionnain, my two brilliant betas.
Disclaimer: All characters and situations remain the property of their respective owners. Considering Marvel has not contacted me to write for them as of yet, I think it’s safe to say they ain’t mine.
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2939492/1/

This story... is huge. Hence the reason I'm posting a link to it and not the body of work itself (it recently broke the 200,000 word mark and 25 chapters).

What I will do, since summaries hardly do the blasted thing justice, is offer you an excerpt to wet the palette:

From Chapter Ten: Black Maria

Quote:

Chances.

In a man’s life, an ordinary man’s life, he is offered a handful at best: mercy, forgiveness, empathy, unconditional trust, a willing ear, and a guiding hand on the shoulder. For an ordinary man, these things suffice.

Remy fingered the instructions card, shucked into his palm from a new deck he’d found stashed away in one of his many coat pockets.

He wasn’t an ordinary man; never had been, never would be. Remy ran through his chances like he did his cards – fifty-two per fight, per hour, per day, per week – when needed, when bored, when at rest. Fifty-two chances offered graciously by the Bicycle Card Company whenever he needed them. A dollar in your pocket could buy you a lifetime of better odds.

Better days, however… those come at a higher price.

Remy LeBeau would know.

Beside him, the phone sat cooling in its cradle, warmed briefly by his ear where he’d kept it tucked between his shoulder and chin for a quick conversation with someone two states away. Someone with the ability to carry off a bout of histrionics that would distract a roomful of people long enough to slip a bogus payoff from the coffee table and ditch the damned thing in a mailbox for collection and disposal. St. John Allerdyce was the next best thing to an Ace up the sleeve as far as Remy was concerned – though Remy himself kept the Jokers under his cuffs.

Fitting, really.

Rogue, out of earshot, was talking to Xavier or Cyclops or one of the more “responsible” adults of the Institute.

Remy knew this because if it had been Wolvie, he’d have wrested the phone from her grasp just to taunt the old man. Remy knew this because Rogue’s gaze had flicked in his direction only once since the long-distance arguing had tapered off. Remy knew this because, as imperceptible as it would be to anyone else, Rogue had drawn a little closer to herself in the most subtle of ways.

He saw it in the roll of her shoulders, the petulant thrust of a hip where she tipped against the aluminum siding of the phone booth, and the nervous habit of folding her arms across her chest – gripping one elbow with a gloved hand. With her head bowed, the only part of her visible through her thick shock of hair was the lower half of her face. She chewed on the inside of her lower lip, and for a moment, Remy wanted nothing more than to smooth his thumb against that tense curve of pink.

The instructions card flared to life between his fingers – a dull bit of charge to remind him that the odds were still in favor.

They would come. Sooner or later, all of them would converge on the French Quarter – the X-Men, the Brotherhood, and the others when they realized he’d defied them and returned home.

For now, the game was played between him and Rogue. Priorities first, as they say.

Read it >>
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One card short of a deck.

As I haven't touched this thread in oh.... a few months, I figured I'd pop back in with the customary: "this story is not dead" post and leave a link to the most recent release, the first part (in three) of Chapter 28... and a preview to hopefully persuade a few strangers.

(Moo hoo ha ha!)

Excerpt from Chapter 28 - Mistigris - Part I:

Quote:

Lapin brushes a thumb against the left side of his nose and sniffs.

Remy blinks once, then twice.

Etienne looks between them, his hands wrapped around his elbows where he leans on the countertop, grinning openly. Behind him, wiping a dull spot into the stainless steel drip pan under the grill, Tante Mattie hums to herself and occasionally casts a withering glance at the clock on the microwave.

Remy shakes his head, pinches his earlobe, brushes the side of his nose on the right, blinks once, twice, and looks at Lapin expectantly across the island counter, the bowl of fruit between them.

Lapin pouts, his lower lip jutting in irritation.

Remy pinches his earlobe again, blinks once, twice, grits his teeth, waits for Emil to get the signal, and when it takes more than a half a second, he rolls his eyes and flips him off.

Recognition dawns on Lapin’s face.

“Y’ want that I should double back, use th’ drain t’ get to the roof, and create a distraction by droppin’ the explosive down the chimney!” he says proudly.

“Homme, you suck!” Etienne laughs.

If Père had expected any better of the three youngest Guild children, left to their own devices on a Saturday night when Henri was on his first run, his Tilling Harvest, Père was sorely mistaken. It was probably the reason why they’d wound up cemented to the island in the kitchen with Tante Mattie as a babysitter, their studies spread about them and still mostly neglected. Lapin is using his art history textbook as a coaster. A can of pop sits on the glaring head of Holofernes while Judith looks on above him, her triumph speckled with Grape Crush.

Remy shakes his head, exasperated. Picking up an orange from the fruit bowl, his thumbnail bites into the skin as he angles it at Emil just so, so that when the skin breaks, a small spurt of juice catches his cousin just below the eye.

Lapin swipes at it, temporarily distracted.

“One blink for yes, two for no, an earlobe pull for ‘you’re some kinda stupid’,” Remy instructs, repeating the same modifications they’d devised to their in-field working codes out of sheer boredom. “The nose brush on th’ left is for ‘the explosives have been set’, the nose brush on th’ right is for ‘the explosives have been set, and I just blew off an appendage by accident an’ I can’t scream because security’s ‘round th’ corner, please come save m’ sorry ass, Remy’.”

“Don’t cuss,” Tante Mattie chides absently.

“’Scuze,” they all respond, not at all chastised.

Eyebrows furrowing, Lapin asks, “What’s th’ middle finger stand for, then?”

Etienne barks outright. It takes a second for Lapin to get it, and he punches him in the arm.

Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2939492/28/The_Ante
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One card short of a deck.

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