Post by Gambit on Nov 28, 2006 13:51:10 GMT -5
Looking up at the mansion she had not seen for nearly twenty years, Wanda stepped across the lawn in a direct line to the front door.
Just inside the front door, a young man was standing at the telephone table, talking in fluent French to whoever was on the end of the phone. Clearly he was nearing the end of his conversation, because his expression was one of irritation and annoyance. Mere seconds later, the phone was slammed down with a declaration of "Merde!"
He glanced up as he caught movement at the front door, which was usually left open during the day, a legacy from Xavier's days when everyone and anyone was welcomed into the bosom of the Institute and his eyes lit up slightly at the sight of the rather attractive woman standing there. It took the edge off the brief conversation he had - well, attempted to have with Tante Mattie, who had cut him off abruptly, convinced that even one little phone call could give away his position.
"Bonjour, madamoiselle," he said, easily. "Y'here t'see someone?"
Stepping through the threshold after her eyes had traced the doorframe with some unknown intent, Wanda’s lips lit with the faintest of smiles and she looked around, heedless of the man who had just spoken to her. The sound of student’s laughter echoed through the foyer, and it may not have seemed entirely odd(there were, after all, students in all parts of the mansion at any given time) until the clattering of shoes running across the wood floor between herself and the young man hit their ears.
Her eyes turned to his. An icy breeze like winter shifted around them both, though it was late July. And around her head glittered a faint golden aura, like sunlight through snow, just illusory enough to make someone think their eyes had fooled them.
“I am looking for Lorna Dane.”
"Non, cherie," he said, taking a few steps towards her, then hesitating. There was something a little...peculiar about her - and Remy was no stranger to oddities for one reason or other. There was also something a little familiar about - not HER, exactly, but about the feeling he got from standing close to her. Unusually, it reminded him of Tante Mattie - but then, he'd just been on the phone to her. "Don't know nobody by tha...hang on."
Of course. Oh, man, was he supposed to break this sort of news to her?
"Ah, can't say as I ever met this 'Lorna' y'talkin' about, cherie, but as far as I know, she...ain't here right now." He was surprisingly diplomatic.
Wanda’s chin lifted a touch, a slow smile dawning on her perfect features. She carried herself like am empress, like someone who knew just what they were capable of. “She’s dead, you mean.” Nodding, her eyes moved around the foyer again. “But not gone. The spirit lingers.”
As he stepped closer to her, she felt some powering down of the chaos that usually surrounded her. And yet, it wasn’t the feeling she usually got when something regimented and orderly tried to force her energy into its tight little definitions. This was something else. A diversion.
Wanda stepped a bit closer to him, a look of curiousity on her face as her eyes narrowed. “Who –are- you?”
He nodded his head briefly and ran a hand through his rich, auburn mane of hair. "Oui. I'm sorry t'have t'be th' one t'tell you, cherie, but oui. Lorna's dead."
When she stepped closer to him and asked - no, not asked, demanded his name, he was momentarily left speechless by her imperious manner. Remy wasn't the kind of man to be thrown off his stride for long, though, and regained his considerable composure almost immediately.
"Remy LeBeau," he said, with a sweeping flourish of a bow. "Enchante, madamoiselle."
And the empress laughed.
Lifting a long-fingered hand to her mouth, the laugh was light and musical, one of genuine joy. It was nearly childish, and she swept her red cloak to the side, curtsying in return.
“Ah, so good to make your acquaintance, Monsieur LeBeau,” she smiled, straightening. “I am the Scarlet Witch. My given name is Wanda.”
With some sort of renewed energy, her eyes glittering and a look of excitement on her face, she stepped a bit towards a hallway. “It has been many years since I last was here… as a student.” She sighed, reminiscing a moment. Then she looked back at him. “Are you a student?”
Her laughter caused a smile to brighten the Cajun's face. "Now that's an impressive title," he said, approvingly. "Most folks round here jus' call me Gambit. An' if y'don't mind, I reckon as I'll call you Scarlet."
He winked at her laconically, drawing attention to his unusual eyes.
"I find it hard t'believe it's been years since you were a student, a young thing like yourself. An' no, I ain't a student. I...was, a couple years back, but this time, I'm jus' passin' through."
The sound of a waltz drifted through the room as she looked at him, that curiously skeptical look returning to her face. “Gambit. How lovely. I was always partial to a good intrigue.”
Looking down the hallway, and then back to him, she offered her hand out towards him. It was half the entreaty of a young girl, half the lofty offering of a lady. “Show me through the grounds then…”
"Ah, intrigue is what I do best, chere," he said, with a wickedly infectious grin. He briefly swivelled a finger in his ear, convinced he'd just heard music, specifically, a waltz. Mercy, his late brother's fiancee, had loved waltzes.
He snapped himself back to the here and now and rather gallantly held out his arm rather than take her hand.
"The pleasure, Scarlet, would be all mine," he said, his voice positively oozing charm.
‘Scarlet’ smiled, obviously pleased, and her arm followed her hand in twining around his. Oh my but he did smell nice. It had been a long time since she had stood so near to anyone.
Wanda was not prone to spending great lengths of time with anyone, as even those who weren’t frightened by the odd happenings around her eventually grew weary of them. She didn’t suspect she’d know this man for more than a day, and had no intentions of hanging about the castle like some wraith from times past. Charles Xavier had left, all her old friends were dead or gone from the mansion as well, with the exception of Storm, with whom she had never gotten along. The thought reminded her that she should pay the turbulent blonde a visit.
As they began down the hallway in no particular hurry- something about the both of them in the same space stopped time, and in fact the clock on the wall’s second hand forgot itself entirely, disappearing from the face- Wanda looked aside at him. “What is it you do, Monsieur?”
"What is it I do?" He laughed warmly. "Apart from escort beautiful women around stately homes, I work in - acquisitions. When I'm workin', of course. But if you mean what do I do...well, th' technical description of it is that I can tap th' latent kinetic energy in any inanimate object and release it with concussive force."
He waggled his eyebrows.
"I make things glow an' go 'boom'," he clarified. "Although guess it's more of a 'WA~CHOOM!' It's a difficult noise t'recreate, non?"
She gasped a little, her mouth opening before she grinned. “How –fascinating-. To multiply the inherent havoc of stodgy, material existence. Admirable. Exquisite.” She squeezed his arm. “You’ll show me, sometime?”
"I'd be delighted to," he said, and he sounded like he meant it most sincerely. He patted her hand with an easy, familiar gesture, unusual given that he'd literally just met her. But still, there was that strange sense of ... knowing her.
"So, what would you like t'see first in th' grounds?" he said, politely. "Or did you want t'go meet wit' Stormy an' sort yourself out wit' a room, freshen up, do whatever it is that women do when they go t'freshen up?"
Wanda laughed, waving the idea off. “I am unsure I will be welcome to stay. Your lady Storm and I never saw eye to eye. And I wouldn’t want to disturb the students. But I do thank you.”
She thought over the idea for a moment. “Show me your favourite place. On the grounds, within the mansion… wherever it is. And be truthful! I’ll know if you’re misleading me.” She smiled.
The feeling of slight discomfort he'd experienced when she'd first come in through the door seemed to have given way to a feeling of content familiarity with her. It was though he'd known her for a long time.
Idly, he wondered what her mutation actually was, but for some reason felt disinclined to ask.
"Ah, Stormy, she's like th' weather she controls - changeable an' unpredictable. Y'never know whether y'need suncream or an umbrella wit' her."
Remy was particularly fond of Storm. She'd always been amazingly patient with him and he respected that in anybody.
"My fav'rite place? Chere, that's a tough one. Lemme think..." The Cajun's face lit up warmly. "Oui, I know. Come wit' me."
He headed towards the perimeter of the woods that encircled the institute, leading her a little way inside the dense treeline and to a surprisingly secluded glade. "Reminds me a li'l bit of th' swamps back home," he said. "Without th' water, heat or mosquitoes, though."
Wanda looked about, her expression impossible to read. She let her arm fall slowly from his. As one red-booted foot touched the ground within the perimeter of Remy’s secret little glade, the grass beneath it withered and blackened, while beyond it a scattering of buttercups grew suddenly, opening their golden faces upward towards hers. Another step did the same, scarring black footprints into the green, leaving sprinkles of gold around her.
“You would choose nature over man’s creations, Monsieur LeBeau…” Something in her voice sounded distant, almost lyrical. She thought for a moment of creating a charm on the place, but considered it might set his beloved space on fire, and folded her hands together instead.
Looking at him once more, she considered him more carefully. “You have a blackness in your eyes. Like the abyss. Are you more god than man?” It was a strange question, but something in the way she said it made it the most natural thing to have asked.
Anxiety came into Remy's face as the prickle at the back of his neck flared into an almost full bells-clanging kind of danger warning. What the hell WAS this woman?
"Oui," he said, keeping his tone even. He may have been young, but he'd spent a long time keeping his emotions away from people. "Nature's a far more formidable force than a lot of people give Her credit for." He shrugged, an easy movement.
When she asked her question about whether he considered himself more god than man, he met her stare with ease. "I consider myself neither," he said, mildly. "Je suis Remy LeBeau. I am who I am. It's good enough for me, chere petite."
“At peace.” It was all she whispered.
He did give her a strange sense of peace- a quiet she rarely experienced. “It must be that peace with the ways of the world, like a ship at home on the ocean, that keeps me calm now.” Her eyes trailed around her, admiring the tree branches over head, the way the individual grass blades moved like flags in the light summer breeze, the way the sunlight beamed through the trees, reminding her of cathedral windows.
“I don’t wish to change this place.” She looked back at him. The sky suddenly began to darken, though in a strange illusions he could just barely see through if he looked hard enough through the trees around them. The stars shown so brightly through the branches overhead they looked like minute flashlights all pointing in their direction, blinking their morse code messages around a brilliant, crimson coloured moon. If he looked, he’d see an orb of red hexmarks whirling in her right hand, held close to her side as she kept her eyes on his handsome face.
The birds within the radius of her illusion reacted as they might at dusk, chirping their sunset songs while the crickets awoke to hum suddenly.
Did she frighten him? She half hoped so.
If he was frightened, by the gods he knew how to hide it - and he would have succeeded had it not been for the clear tension in his voice.
"I would be very grateful if y'didn't change this place, petite," he said. "I'm rather fond of it. An' with th' VERY greatest of respect, d'you mind not doin' whatever it is you're doin'? Y'makin' me uncomfortable - an' I don't react none too well t'that..."
She tilted her head- and some of her torso- in looking at him, her long dark red hair falling from her shoulder like a curtain. If she wasn’t careful, this illusion would backfire. She kept her mind even and the pattern whirling placidly in her hand. A nocturnal creature’s eyes shone from the bushes, unsure as to why it was suddenly nightfall.
“Truly? How is it you react. Shall we see?” It didn’t seem a taunt, though with how little they knew each other it may have been whether she intended it or not. This little exercise in sizing up her new companion was gleaning clearer results than she had expected. “What does the mighty vessel do when the ocean gale goes tumbling over its bow.”
"OK, lady, y'want t'play wit' Gambit? I can play." He was getting increasingly annoyed at this riddle-me-this turn of conversation. Again, he had sudden memories of Tante Mattie, and her cryptic way of speaking.
"The ship might rock and reel, but with good pilotin', it'll right itself an' carry on its course," he said, almost as though answering something he'd been asked before.
Wanda turned to face him, closing the distance between them until their bodies were nearly touching. Now her voice fell to a murmur and that taunt lay just beneath its surface, smooth, musical.
“Gooood…. Piloting. Yes, Monsieur, you keep your wits about you. So what is there to spook a man of potential explosion like yourself? You could live within a world of chaos, if you wanted it.”
She lifted her hand, the spinning orb of glowing red geometric patterns growing larger as she held it up to their faces. It lit the black in her eyes and for a moment, it looked as if there was fire within them.
“Placitude… and harmony with a riot of forces beyond mortal control. That is what makes us who we are.” She prepared the hex bolt to set the place alight, and with a bit of a heave in her arm, threw the red orb into the air. It sailed straight up, gaining energy and size as it rose quickly, ready to burst into chaos.
He felt helpless - and Remy LeBeau didn't like feeling helpless. Her power oozed from every pore, set his senses jangling, and worst of all, making him doubt his own ability to deal with her.
He should have asked her to stop, but somehow the word stuck in his throat and he could not even speak. Mesmerised by first her eyes and then by the glowing ball she held in her hand, the move of his hand to his pocket to take out a trademark playing card was totally unconscious and, he realised as he snapped back to awareness, totally pointless. What could he do against this sort of power.
He'd learned, a long time ago, to wait for as long as he could before striking.
So he waited, barely breathing.
As the orb had nothing to impact with, it reached its apex in the sky, and began to fall towards them, straight overhead. Wanda looked up a moment, knowing she as well would be effected by the fire that would erupt around them, but too wrapped up in her game to do a thing about it. Chaos worked both ways, after all.
Looking back at him, only fractions of seconds passed but somehow, they had long stretches of time to look into each other’s eyes. There in her expression was something unguarded, something pure beyond their chessgame of metaphors and challenges. Then she spoke, sound not synching with the movement of her lips.
“You have more power than you know,” she whispered to him.
"You," he said, between slightly clenched teeth, "are one crazy femme."
The withdrawal of the playing card, the subsequent charge and flight happened in one flawless, almost fluid movement. She caught the briefest sight of a pink glow in his hands, then his projectile hurtled upwards, towards the descending orb.
He had no idea what would happen. He was a creature of instinct and was doing what his senses told him to do.
The gambit was… she had no idea either.
As the card went shattering through the hex orb, a ripping sound erupted around them so loudly Wanda cried out softly in pain. Little red segments like shards of glass flew in every direction, exploding with sharp snapping sounds. Fire blazed on every surface they touched- the trees, the grass, the ground beneath their feet. Her hair began to burn, flame crawling up the hem of her red dress.
And with a great wooshing sound, the darkness lifted. The red moon blew away like smoke, the flashlight stars grew exponentially, eating away the flame, each burning ember becoming only the sunlight through the trees, the warmth of the late summer day replacing the heat of fire.
Wanda gasped, and lifted her hands to her mouth for a moment. After a moments, thought, she looked back at him, her eyes sparkling. “That was incredible!” She cheered, just as someone might call after their favourite team winning a goal. “That’s never happened before!”
Remy had rather ungracefully fallen over backwards.
"Merde," he swore, loudly, then let rip a torrent of French, a naturally defensive reaction to being convinced he'd been about to die. Finally he switched back to English.
"OK, what th' HELL jus' happened?"
He remained where he was, on the ground, staring suspiciously up at her. He didn't like being caught off guard. It was too dangerous with so many people after him. A thought flashed through his mind that maybe this woman was a Hunter.
Or Huntress.
The idea chilled him to the marrow.
Wanda laughed, and fell to her knees beside him. “You tore my magic to pieces, you reversed the hex, or rather… BURST it, from the INSIDE!” She took a deep breath, letting it out with a smile.
He was upset, angry with her. She waved it aside with a hand, deciding to explain. “I am chaos, I have been since my birth. It grows with each year that passes. Now… I have worked for years to gain the simplest control over it.” She gestured around them, looking into the perfect, undamaged trees. Only the black footprints and the flowers remained. “You have seen only an aspect of my power, and yet…”
She looked back at him, fascinated, slowly calming. She sounded almost flattered. “And yet you… you shot that card into the sky, and broke my magic. No one has ever been able to stop me, Monsieur LeBeau.”
“YOU… are magic.”
He stared at her as if she was crazy which, and this was being kind, she clearly was. Mad as a fish on a bicycle. Several lettuces short of an allotment. Two cans short of a six pack.
"I ain't magic," he said, some of his uncertainty dissipating, but his unease remaining at a constant level. "An' I have no idea what just happened, but I ain't dead. Which is always a good thing in my view."
He slowly regained some of his composure.
"You some sorta voodoo lady?"
The question was simple. He'd been raised around a practising voodoo woman - he recognised now that this was the sense of familiarity he'd felt around her.
Oh, she’d broken her new friend. Had she not predicted it before they’d even known each other’s names?
With a sigh and a soft smile, she got up, and shifted her long hair back over her shoulder.
“No,” She said easily. “I am the Scarlet Witch.”
Looking around, there was almost a lonely look on her face for a moment. She looked at the tips of her boots beneath the hem of her dress, then to him. “I know no others like me.”
“And I’ll take my leave of you.” She nodded to him, a shadowed reflection of a curtsy taken on less than an hour before. Smiling faintly at the trees, she stepped towards the path. “This is a good place.” She turned to go.
"Non, non, Scarlet, don't go. Y'jus'...took me by surprise is all. s'il vous plait, don't go. I'm sorry."
Why he reacted like that he didn't know. For a moment, even in the height of the chaos, there had been...a connection. Like nothing he'd ever known before. He didn't understand it- hell, he didn't even PROFESS to understand half the stuff that went on round here.
"Don't go," he repeated, and his tone was not pleading, but a gentle offer. "Stay here wit' me, jus' for a li'l while. Enjoy the glade. It's peaceful here. An' y'strike me as a lady who could do wit' a li'l peace, non?"
He almost sounded rushed. It turned her head.
Watching him sitting there on the ground, having forgotten even to stand, she watched him with a softened expression. There was something about him…
“You… wish me to stay?”
He smiled at her. It was a warm smile, a smile that promised no further questions.
"Jus' ... sit," he said. "An' enjoy th' afternoon. Take a load off."
A bigger smile.
"Relax, petite."
Just inside the front door, a young man was standing at the telephone table, talking in fluent French to whoever was on the end of the phone. Clearly he was nearing the end of his conversation, because his expression was one of irritation and annoyance. Mere seconds later, the phone was slammed down with a declaration of "Merde!"
He glanced up as he caught movement at the front door, which was usually left open during the day, a legacy from Xavier's days when everyone and anyone was welcomed into the bosom of the Institute and his eyes lit up slightly at the sight of the rather attractive woman standing there. It took the edge off the brief conversation he had - well, attempted to have with Tante Mattie, who had cut him off abruptly, convinced that even one little phone call could give away his position.
"Bonjour, madamoiselle," he said, easily. "Y'here t'see someone?"
Stepping through the threshold after her eyes had traced the doorframe with some unknown intent, Wanda’s lips lit with the faintest of smiles and she looked around, heedless of the man who had just spoken to her. The sound of student’s laughter echoed through the foyer, and it may not have seemed entirely odd(there were, after all, students in all parts of the mansion at any given time) until the clattering of shoes running across the wood floor between herself and the young man hit their ears.
Her eyes turned to his. An icy breeze like winter shifted around them both, though it was late July. And around her head glittered a faint golden aura, like sunlight through snow, just illusory enough to make someone think their eyes had fooled them.
“I am looking for Lorna Dane.”
"Non, cherie," he said, taking a few steps towards her, then hesitating. There was something a little...peculiar about her - and Remy was no stranger to oddities for one reason or other. There was also something a little familiar about - not HER, exactly, but about the feeling he got from standing close to her. Unusually, it reminded him of Tante Mattie - but then, he'd just been on the phone to her. "Don't know nobody by tha...hang on."
Of course. Oh, man, was he supposed to break this sort of news to her?
"Ah, can't say as I ever met this 'Lorna' y'talkin' about, cherie, but as far as I know, she...ain't here right now." He was surprisingly diplomatic.
Wanda’s chin lifted a touch, a slow smile dawning on her perfect features. She carried herself like am empress, like someone who knew just what they were capable of. “She’s dead, you mean.” Nodding, her eyes moved around the foyer again. “But not gone. The spirit lingers.”
As he stepped closer to her, she felt some powering down of the chaos that usually surrounded her. And yet, it wasn’t the feeling she usually got when something regimented and orderly tried to force her energy into its tight little definitions. This was something else. A diversion.
Wanda stepped a bit closer to him, a look of curiousity on her face as her eyes narrowed. “Who –are- you?”
He nodded his head briefly and ran a hand through his rich, auburn mane of hair. "Oui. I'm sorry t'have t'be th' one t'tell you, cherie, but oui. Lorna's dead."
When she stepped closer to him and asked - no, not asked, demanded his name, he was momentarily left speechless by her imperious manner. Remy wasn't the kind of man to be thrown off his stride for long, though, and regained his considerable composure almost immediately.
"Remy LeBeau," he said, with a sweeping flourish of a bow. "Enchante, madamoiselle."
And the empress laughed.
Lifting a long-fingered hand to her mouth, the laugh was light and musical, one of genuine joy. It was nearly childish, and she swept her red cloak to the side, curtsying in return.
“Ah, so good to make your acquaintance, Monsieur LeBeau,” she smiled, straightening. “I am the Scarlet Witch. My given name is Wanda.”
With some sort of renewed energy, her eyes glittering and a look of excitement on her face, she stepped a bit towards a hallway. “It has been many years since I last was here… as a student.” She sighed, reminiscing a moment. Then she looked back at him. “Are you a student?”
Her laughter caused a smile to brighten the Cajun's face. "Now that's an impressive title," he said, approvingly. "Most folks round here jus' call me Gambit. An' if y'don't mind, I reckon as I'll call you Scarlet."
He winked at her laconically, drawing attention to his unusual eyes.
"I find it hard t'believe it's been years since you were a student, a young thing like yourself. An' no, I ain't a student. I...was, a couple years back, but this time, I'm jus' passin' through."
The sound of a waltz drifted through the room as she looked at him, that curiously skeptical look returning to her face. “Gambit. How lovely. I was always partial to a good intrigue.”
Looking down the hallway, and then back to him, she offered her hand out towards him. It was half the entreaty of a young girl, half the lofty offering of a lady. “Show me through the grounds then…”
"Ah, intrigue is what I do best, chere," he said, with a wickedly infectious grin. He briefly swivelled a finger in his ear, convinced he'd just heard music, specifically, a waltz. Mercy, his late brother's fiancee, had loved waltzes.
He snapped himself back to the here and now and rather gallantly held out his arm rather than take her hand.
"The pleasure, Scarlet, would be all mine," he said, his voice positively oozing charm.
‘Scarlet’ smiled, obviously pleased, and her arm followed her hand in twining around his. Oh my but he did smell nice. It had been a long time since she had stood so near to anyone.
Wanda was not prone to spending great lengths of time with anyone, as even those who weren’t frightened by the odd happenings around her eventually grew weary of them. She didn’t suspect she’d know this man for more than a day, and had no intentions of hanging about the castle like some wraith from times past. Charles Xavier had left, all her old friends were dead or gone from the mansion as well, with the exception of Storm, with whom she had never gotten along. The thought reminded her that she should pay the turbulent blonde a visit.
As they began down the hallway in no particular hurry- something about the both of them in the same space stopped time, and in fact the clock on the wall’s second hand forgot itself entirely, disappearing from the face- Wanda looked aside at him. “What is it you do, Monsieur?”
"What is it I do?" He laughed warmly. "Apart from escort beautiful women around stately homes, I work in - acquisitions. When I'm workin', of course. But if you mean what do I do...well, th' technical description of it is that I can tap th' latent kinetic energy in any inanimate object and release it with concussive force."
He waggled his eyebrows.
"I make things glow an' go 'boom'," he clarified. "Although guess it's more of a 'WA~CHOOM!' It's a difficult noise t'recreate, non?"
She gasped a little, her mouth opening before she grinned. “How –fascinating-. To multiply the inherent havoc of stodgy, material existence. Admirable. Exquisite.” She squeezed his arm. “You’ll show me, sometime?”
"I'd be delighted to," he said, and he sounded like he meant it most sincerely. He patted her hand with an easy, familiar gesture, unusual given that he'd literally just met her. But still, there was that strange sense of ... knowing her.
"So, what would you like t'see first in th' grounds?" he said, politely. "Or did you want t'go meet wit' Stormy an' sort yourself out wit' a room, freshen up, do whatever it is that women do when they go t'freshen up?"
Wanda laughed, waving the idea off. “I am unsure I will be welcome to stay. Your lady Storm and I never saw eye to eye. And I wouldn’t want to disturb the students. But I do thank you.”
She thought over the idea for a moment. “Show me your favourite place. On the grounds, within the mansion… wherever it is. And be truthful! I’ll know if you’re misleading me.” She smiled.
The feeling of slight discomfort he'd experienced when she'd first come in through the door seemed to have given way to a feeling of content familiarity with her. It was though he'd known her for a long time.
Idly, he wondered what her mutation actually was, but for some reason felt disinclined to ask.
"Ah, Stormy, she's like th' weather she controls - changeable an' unpredictable. Y'never know whether y'need suncream or an umbrella wit' her."
Remy was particularly fond of Storm. She'd always been amazingly patient with him and he respected that in anybody.
"My fav'rite place? Chere, that's a tough one. Lemme think..." The Cajun's face lit up warmly. "Oui, I know. Come wit' me."
He headed towards the perimeter of the woods that encircled the institute, leading her a little way inside the dense treeline and to a surprisingly secluded glade. "Reminds me a li'l bit of th' swamps back home," he said. "Without th' water, heat or mosquitoes, though."
Wanda looked about, her expression impossible to read. She let her arm fall slowly from his. As one red-booted foot touched the ground within the perimeter of Remy’s secret little glade, the grass beneath it withered and blackened, while beyond it a scattering of buttercups grew suddenly, opening their golden faces upward towards hers. Another step did the same, scarring black footprints into the green, leaving sprinkles of gold around her.
“You would choose nature over man’s creations, Monsieur LeBeau…” Something in her voice sounded distant, almost lyrical. She thought for a moment of creating a charm on the place, but considered it might set his beloved space on fire, and folded her hands together instead.
Looking at him once more, she considered him more carefully. “You have a blackness in your eyes. Like the abyss. Are you more god than man?” It was a strange question, but something in the way she said it made it the most natural thing to have asked.
Anxiety came into Remy's face as the prickle at the back of his neck flared into an almost full bells-clanging kind of danger warning. What the hell WAS this woman?
"Oui," he said, keeping his tone even. He may have been young, but he'd spent a long time keeping his emotions away from people. "Nature's a far more formidable force than a lot of people give Her credit for." He shrugged, an easy movement.
When she asked her question about whether he considered himself more god than man, he met her stare with ease. "I consider myself neither," he said, mildly. "Je suis Remy LeBeau. I am who I am. It's good enough for me, chere petite."
“At peace.” It was all she whispered.
He did give her a strange sense of peace- a quiet she rarely experienced. “It must be that peace with the ways of the world, like a ship at home on the ocean, that keeps me calm now.” Her eyes trailed around her, admiring the tree branches over head, the way the individual grass blades moved like flags in the light summer breeze, the way the sunlight beamed through the trees, reminding her of cathedral windows.
“I don’t wish to change this place.” She looked back at him. The sky suddenly began to darken, though in a strange illusions he could just barely see through if he looked hard enough through the trees around them. The stars shown so brightly through the branches overhead they looked like minute flashlights all pointing in their direction, blinking their morse code messages around a brilliant, crimson coloured moon. If he looked, he’d see an orb of red hexmarks whirling in her right hand, held close to her side as she kept her eyes on his handsome face.
The birds within the radius of her illusion reacted as they might at dusk, chirping their sunset songs while the crickets awoke to hum suddenly.
Did she frighten him? She half hoped so.
If he was frightened, by the gods he knew how to hide it - and he would have succeeded had it not been for the clear tension in his voice.
"I would be very grateful if y'didn't change this place, petite," he said. "I'm rather fond of it. An' with th' VERY greatest of respect, d'you mind not doin' whatever it is you're doin'? Y'makin' me uncomfortable - an' I don't react none too well t'that..."
She tilted her head- and some of her torso- in looking at him, her long dark red hair falling from her shoulder like a curtain. If she wasn’t careful, this illusion would backfire. She kept her mind even and the pattern whirling placidly in her hand. A nocturnal creature’s eyes shone from the bushes, unsure as to why it was suddenly nightfall.
“Truly? How is it you react. Shall we see?” It didn’t seem a taunt, though with how little they knew each other it may have been whether she intended it or not. This little exercise in sizing up her new companion was gleaning clearer results than she had expected. “What does the mighty vessel do when the ocean gale goes tumbling over its bow.”
"OK, lady, y'want t'play wit' Gambit? I can play." He was getting increasingly annoyed at this riddle-me-this turn of conversation. Again, he had sudden memories of Tante Mattie, and her cryptic way of speaking.
"The ship might rock and reel, but with good pilotin', it'll right itself an' carry on its course," he said, almost as though answering something he'd been asked before.
Wanda turned to face him, closing the distance between them until their bodies were nearly touching. Now her voice fell to a murmur and that taunt lay just beneath its surface, smooth, musical.
“Gooood…. Piloting. Yes, Monsieur, you keep your wits about you. So what is there to spook a man of potential explosion like yourself? You could live within a world of chaos, if you wanted it.”
She lifted her hand, the spinning orb of glowing red geometric patterns growing larger as she held it up to their faces. It lit the black in her eyes and for a moment, it looked as if there was fire within them.
“Placitude… and harmony with a riot of forces beyond mortal control. That is what makes us who we are.” She prepared the hex bolt to set the place alight, and with a bit of a heave in her arm, threw the red orb into the air. It sailed straight up, gaining energy and size as it rose quickly, ready to burst into chaos.
He felt helpless - and Remy LeBeau didn't like feeling helpless. Her power oozed from every pore, set his senses jangling, and worst of all, making him doubt his own ability to deal with her.
He should have asked her to stop, but somehow the word stuck in his throat and he could not even speak. Mesmerised by first her eyes and then by the glowing ball she held in her hand, the move of his hand to his pocket to take out a trademark playing card was totally unconscious and, he realised as he snapped back to awareness, totally pointless. What could he do against this sort of power.
He'd learned, a long time ago, to wait for as long as he could before striking.
So he waited, barely breathing.
As the orb had nothing to impact with, it reached its apex in the sky, and began to fall towards them, straight overhead. Wanda looked up a moment, knowing she as well would be effected by the fire that would erupt around them, but too wrapped up in her game to do a thing about it. Chaos worked both ways, after all.
Looking back at him, only fractions of seconds passed but somehow, they had long stretches of time to look into each other’s eyes. There in her expression was something unguarded, something pure beyond their chessgame of metaphors and challenges. Then she spoke, sound not synching with the movement of her lips.
“You have more power than you know,” she whispered to him.
"You," he said, between slightly clenched teeth, "are one crazy femme."
The withdrawal of the playing card, the subsequent charge and flight happened in one flawless, almost fluid movement. She caught the briefest sight of a pink glow in his hands, then his projectile hurtled upwards, towards the descending orb.
He had no idea what would happen. He was a creature of instinct and was doing what his senses told him to do.
The gambit was… she had no idea either.
As the card went shattering through the hex orb, a ripping sound erupted around them so loudly Wanda cried out softly in pain. Little red segments like shards of glass flew in every direction, exploding with sharp snapping sounds. Fire blazed on every surface they touched- the trees, the grass, the ground beneath their feet. Her hair began to burn, flame crawling up the hem of her red dress.
And with a great wooshing sound, the darkness lifted. The red moon blew away like smoke, the flashlight stars grew exponentially, eating away the flame, each burning ember becoming only the sunlight through the trees, the warmth of the late summer day replacing the heat of fire.
Wanda gasped, and lifted her hands to her mouth for a moment. After a moments, thought, she looked back at him, her eyes sparkling. “That was incredible!” She cheered, just as someone might call after their favourite team winning a goal. “That’s never happened before!”
Remy had rather ungracefully fallen over backwards.
"Merde," he swore, loudly, then let rip a torrent of French, a naturally defensive reaction to being convinced he'd been about to die. Finally he switched back to English.
"OK, what th' HELL jus' happened?"
He remained where he was, on the ground, staring suspiciously up at her. He didn't like being caught off guard. It was too dangerous with so many people after him. A thought flashed through his mind that maybe this woman was a Hunter.
Or Huntress.
The idea chilled him to the marrow.
Wanda laughed, and fell to her knees beside him. “You tore my magic to pieces, you reversed the hex, or rather… BURST it, from the INSIDE!” She took a deep breath, letting it out with a smile.
He was upset, angry with her. She waved it aside with a hand, deciding to explain. “I am chaos, I have been since my birth. It grows with each year that passes. Now… I have worked for years to gain the simplest control over it.” She gestured around them, looking into the perfect, undamaged trees. Only the black footprints and the flowers remained. “You have seen only an aspect of my power, and yet…”
She looked back at him, fascinated, slowly calming. She sounded almost flattered. “And yet you… you shot that card into the sky, and broke my magic. No one has ever been able to stop me, Monsieur LeBeau.”
“YOU… are magic.”
He stared at her as if she was crazy which, and this was being kind, she clearly was. Mad as a fish on a bicycle. Several lettuces short of an allotment. Two cans short of a six pack.
"I ain't magic," he said, some of his uncertainty dissipating, but his unease remaining at a constant level. "An' I have no idea what just happened, but I ain't dead. Which is always a good thing in my view."
He slowly regained some of his composure.
"You some sorta voodoo lady?"
The question was simple. He'd been raised around a practising voodoo woman - he recognised now that this was the sense of familiarity he'd felt around her.
Oh, she’d broken her new friend. Had she not predicted it before they’d even known each other’s names?
With a sigh and a soft smile, she got up, and shifted her long hair back over her shoulder.
“No,” She said easily. “I am the Scarlet Witch.”
Looking around, there was almost a lonely look on her face for a moment. She looked at the tips of her boots beneath the hem of her dress, then to him. “I know no others like me.”
“And I’ll take my leave of you.” She nodded to him, a shadowed reflection of a curtsy taken on less than an hour before. Smiling faintly at the trees, she stepped towards the path. “This is a good place.” She turned to go.
"Non, non, Scarlet, don't go. Y'jus'...took me by surprise is all. s'il vous plait, don't go. I'm sorry."
Why he reacted like that he didn't know. For a moment, even in the height of the chaos, there had been...a connection. Like nothing he'd ever known before. He didn't understand it- hell, he didn't even PROFESS to understand half the stuff that went on round here.
"Don't go," he repeated, and his tone was not pleading, but a gentle offer. "Stay here wit' me, jus' for a li'l while. Enjoy the glade. It's peaceful here. An' y'strike me as a lady who could do wit' a li'l peace, non?"
He almost sounded rushed. It turned her head.
Watching him sitting there on the ground, having forgotten even to stand, she watched him with a softened expression. There was something about him…
“You… wish me to stay?”
He smiled at her. It was a warm smile, a smile that promised no further questions.
"Jus' ... sit," he said. "An' enjoy th' afternoon. Take a load off."
A bigger smile.
"Relax, petite."
