Disclaimer
I do not own most of them, bar the Arcenaux, Trahan and Dartheville. I am just messing with them, for no profit and with no intent to infringe on Marvel's ownership.
Author's Note
I don't really hate them, honest. I just can't help where my mind takes me.
Enjoy.
From the Ashes
“J’taime Bel,” Remy whispered, unable to summon the energy to be any louder after their night together. Not that he needed to be any louder as the object of his affections, Belladonna Boudreaux his fiancée, was cuddled close to him in his bed at his father’s house. By the end of the next day they would be married and there would be peace between the warring Guilds, although as Remy drifted into sleep none of the politics mattered. All that mattered was that he had his Bel and he couldn’t be happier. He was eighteen years old, his whole life stretched before him, and most of it involved Bel.
“J’taime Remy,” she whispered back, her heart not really in the words, not that he noticed where he had fallen into an exhausted sleep. ‘Tonight is the night,’ she thought to herself, and when she was sure that Remy was in a deep enough sleep that he wouldn’t notice, slipped out of his arms and out of the bed. Pulling her clothes back on she moved silently out of Remy’s room and into the house itself.
The rest of the household had gone to bed well over an hour ago and although she hadn’t seen them retire to their rooms, being too busy with Remy at the time, she knew that they would also be deeply asleep by now, much like he was. Smiling slightly to herself she slipped into Jean-Luc’s room, the older man sleeping soundly as she’d thought, and moved around to his side of the big double bed, cautious so as not to wake him.
In one quick motion she bought her hand down over Jean-Luc’s mouth at the same time as she slammed her knife into his chest and through his heart. The Patriarch of the Thieves Guild opened his eyes in shock, which turned to betrayed recognition as he caught sight of Belladonna, but with her hand over his mouth there was no way for him to raise an alarm. She smiled as she watched the light fade from his eyes, the first part of her job completed successfully.
Her orders had been to take Remy out first, but a part of her wanted to save him for last, a part she had convinced herself was because of revenge and not because she had fallen in love with him. ‘Besides,’ she thought to herself as she headed towards Henri’s room, ‘it will make the kill that much sweeter to be able to tell him that the rest of his precious adopted family is already dead.’
Silent and sombre once again she infiltrated the room, every inch the cold Assassin that she had been trained to be. This night was going to be her Guild’s crowning glory and she was proud to be doing her part, even if a tiny part of her was crying out against it. She squashed that part more ruthlessly than before and moved on. Henri was also asleep, his snores providing her with some cover to her motions, and in once quick, efficient movement she slit his throat and watched as he died. There would be no mercy tonight, not for any of them.
“Bel, what’re…?” Mercy LeBeau’s voice cut off as she turned, revealing to the shocked women that her hands were soaked in blood. Belladonna cursed the fact that she’d let her guard down for even an instant. She hadn’t expected Mercy to be in tonight. She should have been out on a pinch, otherwise she would have done things differently. No matter, it would still be another notch on her belt when she took the female thief down.
Motion following thought she sent the knife in her hand flying towards Mercy, drawing the longer one from its sheath in her boot. Mercy yelped in pain as the dagger struck home, although it was in the hand that had been raised to ward it off rather than the throat that it had been intended for. Cursing under her breath Belladonna moved forward to finish the kill, Mercy in her thin nightdress and unarmed clearly not a threat to her.
Remy was woken up by the sound of a female yelping and, as he found that Belladonna was no longer in his arms, his assumption was that it had been her. Wondering what his fiancée had done to injure herself this time he struggled into full wakefulness and clambered out of bed to find her. There was no sound of any movement from anywhere in the house, except his brother’s room, and slightly puzzled he headed for it.
The first thing he saw was Mercy, cradling her bloody hand to her chest, but the second thing he saw stopped him dead. There, by the side of Henri’s bed was Belladonna, knife in her hand and blood across her cheek where she had brushed her hair away from her face. “Bel, what de hell,” he muttered, and her attention shifted to him, revealing nothing but death in her cold eyes.
She moved slightly toward him, knife held ready to attack, and that was all the distraction Mercy needed. Still holding the water glass that had taken her out of the room, and saved her life, she flung it at Belladonna. The glass shattered on impact, showering the Assassin, both soaking her and blinding her temporarily.
Remy was heading for her, still unable to believe what he was seeing, when her watch alarm bleeped once. Still half-blinded she cursed quietly and two quick steps took her up to the open window, which she threw herself out of. “Mon Dieu,” he whispered in shock, wondering what the hell had just happened and more importantly whose blood had been on his beloved’s cheek.
The frenzied sobs from Mercy answered that question, and even in the minimal light provided from the lamps outside he could tell that his brother was dead, a second smile opened in his throat. Numbly he watched Mercy where she was clinging to the body of her husband, begging with a voice hoarse from tears for it not to be true. The he thought of his father, and the fact that Jean-Luc had not coming running when the glass shattered. He should have come running.
“Stay here,” he said to the still weeping Mercy, although he wasn’t sure if she could hear him through her grief, and he grabbed Henri’s bo before heading out into the corridor. Moving quickly he headed to Jean-Luc’s room, fearing the worst. He found his father lying on his back, still apparently sound asleep. Remy put his hand on Jean-Luc’s chest to wake him, and pulled it back a second later, wet and sticky with his father’s blood. He leant in and shook him, “Wake up Papa, please. Wake up. I need you.”
He wasn’t sure how long he spent shaking his father, trying desperately to wake him and unaware of the tears that were running down his face, but the crossbow bolt that imbedded itself a hands-width above his head pulled him back to reality. The dull explosion, clearly from another part of the city, focused him as Remy realised that this was probably bigger than just him, than just his family.
Grabbing the knives from his father’s bedside table, and still clutching Henri’s bo, he dodged the hail of bolts and made it back into the hallway unharmed. Taking a deep breath, momentarily unsure of what to do next, he finally understood why his instincts had been trying to tell him that something was wrong as he tried to wake his father. He could smell smoke, and there was never smoke without fire.
At a run he headed towards Henri’s room, unsurprised to find Mercy about to start down the corridor in his direction. She had bandaged her hand with something and was clutching a photo frame to her chest with it. In the other hand she held a radio handset.
“We’ve got t’ get out o’ here,” they said in unison, and together headed towards the kitchen basement, moving through ever thickening smoke and increasing heat. Normally it would make no sense to head down towards the fire, but the Assassin presence outside promised a far quicker and more brutal death, and there was every chance that they could get to the old tunnels without being caught in the flames.
Hauling the trapdoor open Remy pushed Mercy in ahead of him, the heat and the smoke filling this level of the house almost unbearable and causing them both to cough and try to wipe the tears from their eyes. He pulled it shut behind him and heard Mercy lifting the bottom from the cupboard that served as the entrance to the tunnels with some difficulty. Once again making her go first Remy took one last look at his ancestral home, only heading down the narrow ladder when the trapdoor collapsed in on itself in a rush of flames and debris.
Remy splashed slightly as he hit the ground, the water level having risen slightly in the past few months, and was thankful that he could see in the dark as the second bottom to the hatch snapped shut behind him and plunged them into darkness. He made his way over to Mercy and they clung to each other for a time, sobbing numbly for those they had just lost.
“Do y’ t’ink we’re de only ones?” he asked when he was able to think around the grief, surprised at the harshness of his voice. Mercy shrugged and handed him the radio that she had tucked into her bandage to free her hand, before stooping to retrieve the emergency torch at the foot of the ladder. He tried not to notice the still wet blood on it.
“Why don’ y’ find out Remy,” she whispered, grief, tears and smoke having reduced her voice to gravel, and he nodded, keying the radio to the emergency frequency that all the Thieves used. He only hoped that there was someone out there listening to it.
“Dis is,” he coughed, his throat more raw than he had thought, “dis is de Ragin’ Cajun. Is dere anybody out dere?” He thumbed the radio off and waited, hoping that somebody, anybody, was out there listening. He shivered, his state of undress finally catching up to him, and thanked his training for the fact that he never slept naked, even after an evening with Bel.
“Remy,” the radio crackled to life, the young and scared voice of Emil Lapin coming over it. “Remy, dat you?”
“Oui Emil, where are y’?” he hoped that his cousin and the rest of the Lapin were alright, and that it was just paranoia and shock that had him thinking that it was anything more than an isolated attack on Clan LeBeau.
“I’m de only one left,” Emil’s voice was broken and hollow, a far cry from its normal hyperactive pitch. “Dere all dead, and I’m de only one left,” it came out in a rush, the sob cut off as his cousin released the talk button.
“Where are y’ Emil,” he repeated his question a little firmer, hating the fact that he sounded so callous towards his cousin’s losses, but he needed to know where Emil was and if he was in immediate danger. He needed to know that at least part of his family was safe.
“I’m in de old tunnels, de house is burnin’ above me an’ it’s wet down here,” his cousin’s voice was plaintiff and sounded so much younger than his 17 years. Remy struggled to think of somewhere safe that they could meet up, his shocked mind unable to cope with the magnitude of what was going on and coming up with nothing but blanks. Eventually Mercy tapped him on the shoulder gently.
“Under de Grey Dove, it’s on slightly higher ground,” she suggested, clearly understanding his dilemma, “an’ we can get dere through de tunnels.” He nodded his thanks and instructed his cousin to meet them there, before sending out a coded Guild wide broadcast to the same effect. He knew that there could be Assassins listening in, but they had never been able to break Thieves cant yet. Then he and Mercy headed out through the tunnels to make the rendezvous site, Remy praying that the two of them and his cousin weren’t all that was left.
The tunnels were the remnants of the streets and houses that had been there before the residents of New Orleans had realised that they were below water level and had built above them. The Guild had cleared pathways and escape routes through them, but they were poorly maintained and so it was hard going to get from the LeBeau entrance to below the abandoned Grey Dove Theatre. Remy and Mercy made it there however and as they entered the old store room, filled with surprisingly un-rusted shelving units, they figured they were the only ones there.
That was until a small, raw voice whispered “Remy” from the darkness, followed by the figure of Emil Lapin. He cousin was a mess, he realised, his plain white t-shirt and grey boxers as covered in soot as his skin was and his face ashen beneath it. Then again Remy knew that he and Mercy also looked like extras from a disaster movie, the pair of them spattered in the blood of loved-ones and ash. “Mon Dieu, y’ made it,” Emil said, throwing himself into Remy’s arms.
“Oui Emil, it’s alright,” he said, knowing in his heart that it was not. “Now tell me what happened.”
“Didn’ have dinner wit’ de family, I was too busy workin’ on de latest project for de Guild. An’ de next t’ing I know de house is on fire an’ none of dem would wake up. I couldn’ move any of dem, I didn’ have time t’ search for de ones I could,” his cousin burst into tears, the salty water droplets retracing the clear path in the soot that their predecessors had made.
“Its not just de Lapin and de LeBeau either,” another voice came out of the darkness, and a battered, bruised and bloody Anton Dartheville limped into the small circle of light cast by the torch supporting one of his younger brothers. Remy wasn’t too familiar with Dartheville as a whole, but he thought he recognised the boy as Louis, the second youngest. “Dey attack us too, and de Trahan,” his cultured voice was ragged with grief, something Remy realised he would be hearing more of in the coming hours.
Putting his brother down on one of the steel shelves Anton continued, “Dey would have gotten me too, but Marc,” his voice broke, tears making their way down his face.
There was only one Marc that Remy knew of, Marc Trahan, and he knew that the man would have given his life for his lover. “Dis is a wholesale attack,” he rasped, before settling himself down on another of the shelves. He sunk his head into his hands and began to cry properly, allowing himself to grieve now that his brother was safe. Mercy moved over to him from where she had been checking on his brother and put a comforting arm around him.
“What about Tante…” Emil began, and then trailed off, and Remy found himself wondering about his surrogate mother. “Surely de Assassin’s wouldn’t attack her, she is as much theirs as ours,” his cousin finally continued, echoing Remy’s thoughts on the matter out loud.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine Lapin…” Remy trailed off as a sudden pressure filled his ears, like the air had thickened to near impenetrability, and then it popped with the sound of a child’s wail. Without needing any proof he knew that at that moment the impossible had come to pass. Tante was dead by the Assassin’s hands. Looking at the few survivors in the room, their tear filled eyes mirroring his own, Remy knew that they had felt it too.
“Non, dis can’ be happenin’,” Remy found himself saying out loud, without really meaning to, and instantly regretted the words. Despite everything he was heir apparent to the Patriarchy, and remembering his father’s blood on his hands he amended his thoughts. He was Patriarch and they were looking towards him for strength and guidance.
“What do we do now, Remy,” Emil spoke up again, using his cousin’s name rather than any of the normal nicknames as if it were the only thing anchoring him to reality. Although he hoped and prayed that it wasn’t true, as one of the last members of the LeBeau/Lapin line, even if not by blood, he probably was all that was anchoring his cousin. Taking a deep breath he tried desperately to pull his thoughts together.
“We wait Emil, we give any other survivors,” and although he struggled to get the last word out he managed, “a chance t’ get here. We aren’ de only ones,” he managed to sound a little less defeated as he finished speaking, even though he didn’t feel it and he hoped that it afforded his cousin some measure of comfort. “F’ now I need you an’ Anton t’ scout out de area an’ see if y’ can’ find any blankets, clothes an’ de like. Get de feelin’ we’re goin’ t’ be needin’ dem.”
The two men nodded, obeying him despite the fact that they looked fit to pass out where they stood, and headed out of the room. Although these tunnels had been abandoned for years there was still the occasional cache of things that had either survived all this time or had been left by other people. That was something that Remy was counting on.
He didn’t know how much time had passed, himself pacing and Mercy sat comforting Louis Dartheville, before a sound in the dark startled him. Without even thinking Remy extended the Bo in his hand, Henri’s Bo, knowing that he would defend his little group of survivors to the death if needs be.
A male figure stumbled into the torch light, two crossbow bolts embedded in him, one in his shoulder and the other in his chest. When he looked up Remy recognised the startling blue eyes of the Arcenaux and he realised that under all of the grime and blood was Richard, the head of the clan. As he rushed to help him, Bo dropping to the floor forgotten, Richard thrust the bundle that he had been cradling protectively into Remy’s hands, dropping to the floor seconds later.
“Dieu,” Richard’s voice grated, a faint bubbling accompanying it, “didn’ t’ink I was goin’ t’ find y’ in time. My daughter, look after her. Tante gave her life so we could escape. My hope,” he coughed hard, blood foaming at his lips, and then was still. Mercy, from where she too had hurried to see if there was anything she could do to help, looked up at Remy and shook her head. He was dead. As if on cue the bundle in Remy’s arms began to wail, a thin, piteous sound in the near silence of the room. Looking at it he saw a newborn girl, the blue eyes of her father staring up at him.
“Give me de chile Remy,” Mercy said, rising from her position by the body on the floor, “I can look after de petite better than y’ can.” He nodded, dumb struck at all of the nights events, and handed the child over to Mercy, unsurprised when she started humming an old Creole lullaby at her. She had always wanted a child with Henri. “We’ll call y’ Hope,” she muttered between stanzas, just loud enough for him to hear.
Sighing Remy bent down and closed Richard’s eyes, and then lifted him onto one of the low shelving units. He was almost certain that before the night was over there would be more bodies in the makeshift mortuary. “Remy, look at what we found,” the slight hint of his old bounce in Emil’s voice was a welcome balm to Remy, and he turned to see the even more welcome sight of his cousin and Anton carrying bundles of clothes and blankets. “Looks like we missed a lot,” Emil’s tone was sombre again as he caught sight of the fresh corpse.
“Oui Emil, but dere was nothin’ t’ be done f’ him. We’ve got t’ look t’ de livin’ now,” he nodded to the child in Mercy’s arms. “M’ glad y’ managed t’ find somet’ing,” he finished, aware that there should have been more to say. Wordlessly he accepted the old shirt and trousers that Emil handed him, glad to be able to get warm finally.
Time lost all sense of meaning for the little group, at least until the first of the survivors started to arrive, and then they were too busy seeing to the physical wounds to wonder how long they had been down there. Not one of the Guild members who managed to find their way to the safety of the Grey Dove had managed to escape injury or the loss of a major part of their family, and Remy could feel himself becoming more and more swamped.
There were almost 30 survivors, all under 21, all huddled under blankets and all mourning quietly, when the first serious injury came in. It was another member of the Arcenaux family, and Remy found himself amazed at how resilient that family seemed to be, as this boy who couldn’t be older than Emil had managed to make his way to safety with a gashed throat and nicked artery.
Despite all of his resilience he was bleeding out now though and there was nothing that any of them, with their meagre medical training, could do besides put pressure on the wound and pray. Remy found himself wishing for Tante and her healing hands, but Tante was dead and there was no hope unless one of the few functioning thieves he had sent out to look for survivors returned with one of her apprentices. He resigned himself to watching another thief die.
A faint glow coming from the doorway dispelled some of the gloom and Remy sighed in relief, knowing that one of his thieves had made it back safe. He was surprised when the glow brightened and a pair of luminescent hands moved his from where they were putting pressure on Joseph Arcenaux’s neck. Looking up in shock he came face-to-face with Liszt Arcenaux, one of Tante’s apprentices.
“It’s alright Remy, I’ve got him now homme,” although the voice was Liszt’s he could hear the same faintly world-weary tone in it that Tante had always had and he knew somehow that she was Tante’s successor, with all the power to heal his thieves. Remy could have wept with joy, especially when the wound in Joseph’s throat closed after a prayer from Liszt, but a fresh wave of survivors drew his attention before he could say anything to her.
It didn’t take long after that for the search parties to stop finding survivors and not much after that the last of the stragglers arrived. When there was no sign of anyone new after what Remy estimated was an hour he resigned himself to the fact that this was it. There were probably some thieves who had been out of the city when the attack happened but with the majority of the Guild present for the wedding that was supposed to bring peace, Remy had to accept that those who were here, now, were probably the only living members of the Guild left.
Looking around he felt a fresh wave of despair hit him hard. There were almost no adults, a deliberate move by the Assassin’s no doubt, and of the fifty or so survivors he estimated that only two or three were over twenty-one, the majority of them between thirteen and seventeen. There weren’t even that many children, most of them not having the skill or the stamina to escape and survive. Fifty of them left, of a Guild that had numbered over four hundred.
“What now?” Emil asked quietly, not wanting to disturb the many sleeping thieves. Remy wished he knew the answer to that question and so many others that were plaguing him, and that any of the options they had could have a good outcome. “We can’ stay down here f’ ever.”
He nodded, going over the options once again in his mind. They could leave New Orleans and claim sanctuary from one of the other branches of the Guild, but there was no way they would all be taken in and so he would have to split them up somehow. They could go above ground and deliver themselves to the Assassins and hope that the end was quick and painless. Or they could rebuild the Guild, but that would involve staying several steps ahead of the Assassins and that was not something that would be easy with so many young and half-trained thieves.
“Why can’ we stay down here,” Anton’s voice cut into Remy’s thoughts as the other man joined in the conversation from where he had been helping Liszt see to the wounded. “It’s safe, ‘m sure we can bring down what we need gradually, it’s mostly dry an’ de Assassins wouldn’t think of us livin’ down here. We keep our heads down long enough, they end up t’inkin’ we’re long gone. Doubt dey’re gonna count the bodies in between celebrating.”
Emil frowned. “Could probably get some power down here, get de lights workin’ an’ some heatin’ set up,” he said thoughtfully, and Remy saw the cogs turning in his cousin’s head. He knew Emil was a prodigy with computers and technical systems, and if he said that he could get power then Remy wasn’t going to contradict him.
A plan started to form in his mind, a tiny seed of hope in the ashes of everything they’d lost, as he listened to his cousin and Anton discuss what they could get hold of and he nodded again. It would take years for the Guild to re-establish itself, especially here underground, and it would take even longer for it to be what it had once been, but it was doable.
“Y’ wan’ t’ know what we do now Lapin,” he said, voice catching the attention of everyone who was still awake, from Mercy who was rocking Hope gently to Liszt who was tending the wounded and the few thieves who couldn’t sleep. “We rebuild, dats what we do. We tain’t never goin’ t’ be what we were, but de Assassins aren’t goin’ t’ break us dat easily an’ dey better watch out f’ us once we go above ground again.”
They nodded, their pale faces still mourning and hurt in the minimal light, but that seed had spread and he watched as a few of them smiled slightly. They would rebuild, and then there would be a reckoning.
_________________
And I sit, endlessly watching the people as they walk below me, knowing that I will never walk among them, knowing I will never live as they have lived and loving them for it.
Bang mon ami, you dead!
God loves Tante, he's too scared to do otherwise. |
