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redfiona99Title: Running Till The Road Runs Out
Author: Red Fiona
Fandom: X-Men
Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine; they belong to the Marvel and for this particular iteration, Fox. No money is being made from this.
Characters: Remy LeBeau, OFC
Rating: PG-12 gen fic
Summary: Remy's a runner, till he can't run anymore.
Notes: I tried to imagine how Gambit at the end of Wolverine: Origins, where he was basically "I'm out of here" on the topic of fellow mutants, turned into the guy who'd been captured by Stryker in the Easter egg in X-Men 2. Comics gave me a possible answer so I wrote this to weld the canons.
~~~~
Remy'd come back more quickly this time, he was only gone for a few days, less than a week anyway. He looked healthier, compared to the last time, then he'd been nothing but skin, bone and bruises on his return. Tina'd tried not to let her relief show, because nothing drove Remy away faster than someone worrying about him.
"So, no riverboat cruise this time?"
"They weren't hiring." He turned away from the window to face her. He'd not bothered putting any clothes on when he’d gone to look out of the window, but it was late enough that no one was going to notice. "'Bout that, chère, it's looking like I'm going to have to go on another one for a while," well, it was a convenient lie that they could both agree on, "there's some people might come looking for Remy LeBeau, and it might be best you pretend you never knew him."
The next morning was the last time she'd see him for fifteen years. He'd not been wrong; they'd had people come looking for him. Mostly they got turned away before they reached her, but a few people got through. They'd been army people, judging by their uniforms, but she managed to convince them that she knew nothing. Remy'd left back in eighty-three, and if they caught up with him, send him her way because he owed her a twenty.
They gave up quickly after that. She kept an eye on the news, to see if he ever turned up, but there was nothing. She knew he was alive though. Sometimes she found extra money in her bank account, never a lot, and not often enough to be regular or get him caught. She assumed it was him, she couldn't think of anyone else who'd give her money for nothing.
Then there was the timing of the gifts, he had to be watching her, because it was those times when she was most desperate for cash that it appeared.
Also, and this was the rarest sign of all, she sometimes thought she saw him, a flash at the corner of her eye. Remy was out there somewhere, she knew it.
It was a wet June afternoon, the kind that said it was going to be sticky later on, when she met him again. She was working in the diner, just the regulars in, and one cook in the back.
She'd topped up someone's coffee, and went to take the order of the man in the far booth. "Hash browns and eggs over easy." She knew that voice. "You, Tina Jones, are a hard woman to find."
"You're a fine one to talk, Remy LeBeau."
"When do you get off work?"
"In a couple of hours."
"I can wait." So he did. He was conspicuously inconspicuous, had a few refills of coffee and read a newspaper while he waited.
Tina tried to watch him without him noticing. She doubted if she was succeeding, but she wanted to get a good look at him before anything else happened, to check that he was okay. He still wore his hair the same way, but there were streaks of grey in it. The clothes were also the same style, long coat, bootcut blue jeans fastened with a belt she didn't need to see to know it was there and a shirt just blue enough to be a masculine shade of purple. The hat was next to him, covering a stack of newspaper. She couldn't imagine him wearing anything different, and, if it wasn't for those grey hairs, she'd have thought he'd walked in from 1983 with no stopping in-between.
Ramona brought Natasha in with her when she started her shift. Ramona's own daughter was with her father that weekend, but Ramona still took care of Natasha while Tina was working. She was a stand-up friend that way.
Tina took her over when she picked up Remy.
"'Tasha, this is Remy LeBeau, he's an old friend of mine. Remy, this is Natasha ..."
"You don't have to tell me she's your daughter, why she's almost as pretty as her mama." Natasha smiled shyly, and was bashfully pleased.
Remy managed to get himself invited back for dinner, and was raiding the local supermarket for supplies. She knew he was buying too much stuff but knew he wouldn’t listen to her if she said that so, instead of getting in his way, she tried to figure out how she was going to store it all. There was no way all the vegetables would fit into the refrigerator.
While Remy was shopping, Natasha told him all about her school day, in the kind of detail Tina had learnt to filter out. Despite the unending talk about Bobby Johnson and his pierced ears, Remy showed every sign of listening.
He showed Tasha how to make gumbo, which he swore he'd learnt to make at his Tante's feet, and got her to eat celery, which Tina thought was impossible.
They talked over dinner, well Tasha did most of the talking, and Tina let her because most of the things she wanted to say to Remy weren't for young ears.
"What do you do for a job?" Remy looked at Tina, like he was asking her what he should tell Natasha. All Tina wanted was for him not to make it sound interesting; she wanted something better than their lives for her daughter.
"I work on the riverboats, mostly. I don't think you'd like it, there's no playing and no going out, because I'm asleep when my friends want to play and I'm working when they go out." Tina thought it was no more than half a lie, she didn't doubt that Remy still played cards, she couldn't imagine him without a set to hand, but she also couldn't see him still working the boats, or the card tables, at least not around here. Maybe if he'd moved to Europe or somewhere, then she could see him still sharping, but she didn't think he'd survive that far away from home.
Tasha tried to raise a fuss when she was sent to bed, her final attempt starting with 'but Mom, we have a guest'.
The guest took the initiative. "You listen to your mama. Guests ain't as important as a good night's sleep."
Tasha went to bed, unwillingly.
They waited a while, talked about unimportant things, the weather, her job, knowing that neither of them could have resisted listening at the keyhole in Tasha’s place.
When she’d judged that they’d waited long enough, Tina moved the conversation onto the things she expected he wanted to know and the things she definitely wanted to know, although she knew she’d never get half of the answers she wanted. “I’m not even going to bother asking what you’ve been doing for the past fifteen years.”
“I’ve been here, I’ve been there. Played some cards, played some pool. Done some good things, done some bad things, done a lot of worse things.” For Remy, that was practically revealing. “I’m gonna ask the obvious question.”
“’You ever meet Charlie Adams? Played bass in the bar band.”
“He must have been after my time.”
“He was the only man I ever met more charming than you.” At least Remy didn’t ask the next question, just nodded enquiringly. “He died of an overdose, four, maybe five years ago. I got clean when I was having Tasha, he didn’t, so I walked.”
“Sorry to hear that and sorry if my asking caused you any pain.”
“Don’t worry. It’s part of life, people come and they go, and people from the club seem to go more than most. I wouldn’t go looking for any of the old crew, not Cassie, Tam, Jose, Brandy, James, not any of them. It got to being a whole lot of funerals. ODs, AIDS, gunshots, drink and one traffic accident. A couple more people just plain fell off the radar. I think we’re the last of the old forty-seven gang. Hell, they even pulled the place down a couple of years back. Safety code violation they said.”
“Is that why you stopped dancing?”
“You can’t dance on tables at my age, not for decent money anyway.” And not without doing a few things on the side, and she'd stopped doing that when she'd had Tasha. "So I wait on tables instead. It pays the bills and the work's regular."
Then it was time for the million-dollar question, why'd he come back? Or rather why now? Except she knew he wouldn't answer if she asked him straight. "You staying for long, Remy?"
"No, this is just a flying visit. I'm leaving tomorrow."
"Anywhere good?"
"No. But I got to go anyway." There was something wrong there, something that he wasn't telling her, but she respected his boundaries, because the other option involved him never speaking to her again. "I don't mean to be mysterious, chère, but it's one of those things where it's better you don't know."
"There sure seem to be a lot of those." And he laughed, and she realised he was still the second most annoying man she ever fell in love with.
"If I get out of this, I promise you I'll come back and tell you."
"You swear?"
"I swear." He seemed to mean it too. 'Course that involved him coming back, and she could tell by his tone that he thought that had the same odds as a royal flush coming up.
She knew it wouldn't stop him, but she had to try. "This thing, you don't have to do it."
"I do, chère, yes, I do. I did a thing that I ain't ever gonna tell you about because I value your good opinion of me, it was so bad that it's gotta be made up for. Even this won't wipe the slate, I don't think anything ever will, but I've gotta try."
"'This got anything to do with the mutant thing on the news?" Tina asked.
"You knew?" Remy sounded shocked.
"The things you did with cards, they weren't just tricks, they went against law of gravity. I ain't stupid."
"Never would have said you were. Just, you didn't ever say anything." He still sounded shocked.
"What was I going to say? I didn't know that there were mutants then; I thought it was something else strange that you did. It was only later, when the news started being full of talk about mutants that I put it all together."
"And you don't care?"
"'Course I don't. Did you really think I would?”
"No." Remy paused. "Not you." Tina had no idea what had happened since the last time she'd met him, but there was something about the look in Remy's eyes. Someone had cared about that, and it had hurt Remy deeply.
"I was already running when I came here, you know," said Remy. Tina did, or if she didn't know, she’d guessed, no-one's that mysterious without them running from something. "Something else caught up with me, and then I ran again. Seeing what it was, I knew it was too dangerous to stay, and I ran back to the thing I ran from originally, like it might have improved in my absence. It hadn't, but it was good enough. And then,"
Tina moved to rest her hand on his. She squeezed his fingers gently. "You don't have to tell me. What was true then is true now. I trust you."
"You're still a marvel, you know." He squeezed her hand in return. "I need someone to know." He didn't think he was coming back from whatever this was. "Not to tell anyone, don't worry, I don't expect anything like that, I just need someone to know." He didn't let go of her hand. "Someone found out, about the mutant thing. When I was younger, well, no, I can't say he'd been a good man even then, but he'd changed for the worse, and he *told* people who didn't take it as well as you did." Remy took a deep breath, like the story was gonna get worse from here. "So I did what I've done all my life and ran again, like a fool. Ran and didn't care where I ended up, ran to something much worse than anything I'd ever run from, and I was part of it. I became the thing that people ran from." Maybe she ought to have been frightened of him, something in how he spoke told her about violence, not the everyday sort she'd been used to, they'd been used to, but something worse. That Remy couldn't speak about it even after what they'd gone through together told her not to ask. "Some people couldn't run quickly enough, God, I wish they had been able to. I want to say I was lied to, and that's why I did all of those bad things, but it wasn't so much lying as that I didn't care enough to check. That was the actual sin." She can tell that it might have been *the* sin but it wasn't the only one. "One day, I stopped being able to tell myself that what I did was okay, and that's the thing I've got to make up for."
He held her like he never wanted to let her go.
~~~~
Tina woke up way before her alarm. She'd never been a heavy sleeper and being a single mother made her wake when she heard unexpected noises.
Remy was fastening his shirt. He was looking out of the window, trying to hide behind the wooden window blinds, so he could see anyone waiting for him in the streets without them seeing him. Remy'd never been paranoid - when he'd got like this, it had been because someone was after him, although it was normally because someone thought he'd cheated at the card table not whatever this was.
It wouldn't be the first time he'd gone before she woke up, she'd have got over it and guessed what had happened even if he hadn't accidentally woken her up. Natasha would probably be more upset than Tina was about him leaving without saying anything, but it might also be easier this way, no long drawn-out goodbyes.
If Remy was worried there were people watching him, he’d be looking for the back way out. "There's a fire escape, if you turn right down the corridor," she told him.
"Thank you, chère." Not a word about the rest of it. She wondered sometimes if Remy got away with things because he never apologised. That and everything else about him.
Tina swallowed down the urge to tell him not to go, not because she wanted him to stay, although of course she did, but because she didn't want him hurt by whatever it was. The desire sat like a stone under her ribcage. She wouldn't ask him, because she knew nothing she said would stop him.
"'You get through this, you come back, you hear me. 'Doesn't matter if it's tomorrow, or a year's time or ten years. You come back." He'd said he would, but Tina felt the need to reassure him that there'd always be space for him here or wherever she’d be by then.
Remy didn't say anything, which might have been worse than any lie he'd chosen to tell her. "You keep me in your thoughts and prayers, and I'll be fine." He kissed her on the forehead and slipped out, quietly enough that she didn't hear the front door shut or the door to the fire escape swing open.
Tina hopes, because that's all she can do.
~~~~
Mystique had a specific mission to fulfill with this break-in. Get in, find the information on where and how they are holding Magneto, get out. Once that was done, she could break Magneto out. The first step was already completed because no one ever checks cleaning service staff if they look right and have the necessary swipe card, and the second step was under way.
Of course, when you hack a system, it's never only the file you're looking for that you find. There was so much more information there, information that the Brotherhood might be able to use later, but she couldn't let herself be distracted. Mission first.
When she copied the information about Magneto's prison, it was part of a whole file of places they were holding people that Stryker had captured. She saved that file too. They were fellow mutants, she recognised enough of the names to know that much. She might not have the chance to do anything about them when she broke Magneto out, she would if she could, but not if it prevented her from fulfilling her main goal, but at least she'd have the names. If the worst happened, she'd know the name of the martyrs that fell to save them all from whatever Stryker is planning.
~~~
End notes: While it's deliberately unclear in the fic, what I imagine happened is that Gambit runs away from the Thieves’ Guild, the Assassins’ Guild and all of that before the story starts, has lots of fun in New Orleans, gets captured by Stryker, escapes, heals up, gets dragged into Wolverine Origins, runs away again, back to the Guild nonsense. The duel happens, for slightly different reasons than in comics canon, Gambit runs away again and at some point runs into Mr. Sinister, the Mutant Massacre happens as in the comics and Gambit is trying to atone for that when he gets captured.
Author: Red Fiona
Fandom: X-Men
Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine; they belong to the Marvel and for this particular iteration, Fox. No money is being made from this.
Characters: Remy LeBeau, OFC
Rating: PG-12 gen fic
Summary: Remy's a runner, till he can't run anymore.
Notes: I tried to imagine how Gambit at the end of Wolverine: Origins, where he was basically "I'm out of here" on the topic of fellow mutants, turned into the guy who'd been captured by Stryker in the Easter egg in X-Men 2. Comics gave me a possible answer so I wrote this to weld the canons.
~~~~
Remy'd come back more quickly this time, he was only gone for a few days, less than a week anyway. He looked healthier, compared to the last time, then he'd been nothing but skin, bone and bruises on his return. Tina'd tried not to let her relief show, because nothing drove Remy away faster than someone worrying about him.
"So, no riverboat cruise this time?"
"They weren't hiring." He turned away from the window to face her. He'd not bothered putting any clothes on when he’d gone to look out of the window, but it was late enough that no one was going to notice. "'Bout that, chère, it's looking like I'm going to have to go on another one for a while," well, it was a convenient lie that they could both agree on, "there's some people might come looking for Remy LeBeau, and it might be best you pretend you never knew him."
The next morning was the last time she'd see him for fifteen years. He'd not been wrong; they'd had people come looking for him. Mostly they got turned away before they reached her, but a few people got through. They'd been army people, judging by their uniforms, but she managed to convince them that she knew nothing. Remy'd left back in eighty-three, and if they caught up with him, send him her way because he owed her a twenty.
They gave up quickly after that. She kept an eye on the news, to see if he ever turned up, but there was nothing. She knew he was alive though. Sometimes she found extra money in her bank account, never a lot, and not often enough to be regular or get him caught. She assumed it was him, she couldn't think of anyone else who'd give her money for nothing.
Then there was the timing of the gifts, he had to be watching her, because it was those times when she was most desperate for cash that it appeared.
Also, and this was the rarest sign of all, she sometimes thought she saw him, a flash at the corner of her eye. Remy was out there somewhere, she knew it.
It was a wet June afternoon, the kind that said it was going to be sticky later on, when she met him again. She was working in the diner, just the regulars in, and one cook in the back.
She'd topped up someone's coffee, and went to take the order of the man in the far booth. "Hash browns and eggs over easy." She knew that voice. "You, Tina Jones, are a hard woman to find."
"You're a fine one to talk, Remy LeBeau."
"When do you get off work?"
"In a couple of hours."
"I can wait." So he did. He was conspicuously inconspicuous, had a few refills of coffee and read a newspaper while he waited.
Tina tried to watch him without him noticing. She doubted if she was succeeding, but she wanted to get a good look at him before anything else happened, to check that he was okay. He still wore his hair the same way, but there were streaks of grey in it. The clothes were also the same style, long coat, bootcut blue jeans fastened with a belt she didn't need to see to know it was there and a shirt just blue enough to be a masculine shade of purple. The hat was next to him, covering a stack of newspaper. She couldn't imagine him wearing anything different, and, if it wasn't for those grey hairs, she'd have thought he'd walked in from 1983 with no stopping in-between.
Ramona brought Natasha in with her when she started her shift. Ramona's own daughter was with her father that weekend, but Ramona still took care of Natasha while Tina was working. She was a stand-up friend that way.
Tina took her over when she picked up Remy.
"'Tasha, this is Remy LeBeau, he's an old friend of mine. Remy, this is Natasha ..."
"You don't have to tell me she's your daughter, why she's almost as pretty as her mama." Natasha smiled shyly, and was bashfully pleased.
Remy managed to get himself invited back for dinner, and was raiding the local supermarket for supplies. She knew he was buying too much stuff but knew he wouldn’t listen to her if she said that so, instead of getting in his way, she tried to figure out how she was going to store it all. There was no way all the vegetables would fit into the refrigerator.
While Remy was shopping, Natasha told him all about her school day, in the kind of detail Tina had learnt to filter out. Despite the unending talk about Bobby Johnson and his pierced ears, Remy showed every sign of listening.
He showed Tasha how to make gumbo, which he swore he'd learnt to make at his Tante's feet, and got her to eat celery, which Tina thought was impossible.
They talked over dinner, well Tasha did most of the talking, and Tina let her because most of the things she wanted to say to Remy weren't for young ears.
"What do you do for a job?" Remy looked at Tina, like he was asking her what he should tell Natasha. All Tina wanted was for him not to make it sound interesting; she wanted something better than their lives for her daughter.
"I work on the riverboats, mostly. I don't think you'd like it, there's no playing and no going out, because I'm asleep when my friends want to play and I'm working when they go out." Tina thought it was no more than half a lie, she didn't doubt that Remy still played cards, she couldn't imagine him without a set to hand, but she also couldn't see him still working the boats, or the card tables, at least not around here. Maybe if he'd moved to Europe or somewhere, then she could see him still sharping, but she didn't think he'd survive that far away from home.
Tasha tried to raise a fuss when she was sent to bed, her final attempt starting with 'but Mom, we have a guest'.
The guest took the initiative. "You listen to your mama. Guests ain't as important as a good night's sleep."
Tasha went to bed, unwillingly.
They waited a while, talked about unimportant things, the weather, her job, knowing that neither of them could have resisted listening at the keyhole in Tasha’s place.
When she’d judged that they’d waited long enough, Tina moved the conversation onto the things she expected he wanted to know and the things she definitely wanted to know, although she knew she’d never get half of the answers she wanted. “I’m not even going to bother asking what you’ve been doing for the past fifteen years.”
“I’ve been here, I’ve been there. Played some cards, played some pool. Done some good things, done some bad things, done a lot of worse things.” For Remy, that was practically revealing. “I’m gonna ask the obvious question.”
“’You ever meet Charlie Adams? Played bass in the bar band.”
“He must have been after my time.”
“He was the only man I ever met more charming than you.” At least Remy didn’t ask the next question, just nodded enquiringly. “He died of an overdose, four, maybe five years ago. I got clean when I was having Tasha, he didn’t, so I walked.”
“Sorry to hear that and sorry if my asking caused you any pain.”
“Don’t worry. It’s part of life, people come and they go, and people from the club seem to go more than most. I wouldn’t go looking for any of the old crew, not Cassie, Tam, Jose, Brandy, James, not any of them. It got to being a whole lot of funerals. ODs, AIDS, gunshots, drink and one traffic accident. A couple more people just plain fell off the radar. I think we’re the last of the old forty-seven gang. Hell, they even pulled the place down a couple of years back. Safety code violation they said.”
“Is that why you stopped dancing?”
“You can’t dance on tables at my age, not for decent money anyway.” And not without doing a few things on the side, and she'd stopped doing that when she'd had Tasha. "So I wait on tables instead. It pays the bills and the work's regular."
Then it was time for the million-dollar question, why'd he come back? Or rather why now? Except she knew he wouldn't answer if she asked him straight. "You staying for long, Remy?"
"No, this is just a flying visit. I'm leaving tomorrow."
"Anywhere good?"
"No. But I got to go anyway." There was something wrong there, something that he wasn't telling her, but she respected his boundaries, because the other option involved him never speaking to her again. "I don't mean to be mysterious, chère, but it's one of those things where it's better you don't know."
"There sure seem to be a lot of those." And he laughed, and she realised he was still the second most annoying man she ever fell in love with.
"If I get out of this, I promise you I'll come back and tell you."
"You swear?"
"I swear." He seemed to mean it too. 'Course that involved him coming back, and she could tell by his tone that he thought that had the same odds as a royal flush coming up.
She knew it wouldn't stop him, but she had to try. "This thing, you don't have to do it."
"I do, chère, yes, I do. I did a thing that I ain't ever gonna tell you about because I value your good opinion of me, it was so bad that it's gotta be made up for. Even this won't wipe the slate, I don't think anything ever will, but I've gotta try."
"'This got anything to do with the mutant thing on the news?" Tina asked.
"You knew?" Remy sounded shocked.
"The things you did with cards, they weren't just tricks, they went against law of gravity. I ain't stupid."
"Never would have said you were. Just, you didn't ever say anything." He still sounded shocked.
"What was I going to say? I didn't know that there were mutants then; I thought it was something else strange that you did. It was only later, when the news started being full of talk about mutants that I put it all together."
"And you don't care?"
"'Course I don't. Did you really think I would?”
"No." Remy paused. "Not you." Tina had no idea what had happened since the last time she'd met him, but there was something about the look in Remy's eyes. Someone had cared about that, and it had hurt Remy deeply.
"I was already running when I came here, you know," said Remy. Tina did, or if she didn't know, she’d guessed, no-one's that mysterious without them running from something. "Something else caught up with me, and then I ran again. Seeing what it was, I knew it was too dangerous to stay, and I ran back to the thing I ran from originally, like it might have improved in my absence. It hadn't, but it was good enough. And then,"
Tina moved to rest her hand on his. She squeezed his fingers gently. "You don't have to tell me. What was true then is true now. I trust you."
"You're still a marvel, you know." He squeezed her hand in return. "I need someone to know." He didn't think he was coming back from whatever this was. "Not to tell anyone, don't worry, I don't expect anything like that, I just need someone to know." He didn't let go of her hand. "Someone found out, about the mutant thing. When I was younger, well, no, I can't say he'd been a good man even then, but he'd changed for the worse, and he *told* people who didn't take it as well as you did." Remy took a deep breath, like the story was gonna get worse from here. "So I did what I've done all my life and ran again, like a fool. Ran and didn't care where I ended up, ran to something much worse than anything I'd ever run from, and I was part of it. I became the thing that people ran from." Maybe she ought to have been frightened of him, something in how he spoke told her about violence, not the everyday sort she'd been used to, they'd been used to, but something worse. That Remy couldn't speak about it even after what they'd gone through together told her not to ask. "Some people couldn't run quickly enough, God, I wish they had been able to. I want to say I was lied to, and that's why I did all of those bad things, but it wasn't so much lying as that I didn't care enough to check. That was the actual sin." She can tell that it might have been *the* sin but it wasn't the only one. "One day, I stopped being able to tell myself that what I did was okay, and that's the thing I've got to make up for."
He held her like he never wanted to let her go.
~~~~
Tina woke up way before her alarm. She'd never been a heavy sleeper and being a single mother made her wake when she heard unexpected noises.
Remy was fastening his shirt. He was looking out of the window, trying to hide behind the wooden window blinds, so he could see anyone waiting for him in the streets without them seeing him. Remy'd never been paranoid - when he'd got like this, it had been because someone was after him, although it was normally because someone thought he'd cheated at the card table not whatever this was.
It wouldn't be the first time he'd gone before she woke up, she'd have got over it and guessed what had happened even if he hadn't accidentally woken her up. Natasha would probably be more upset than Tina was about him leaving without saying anything, but it might also be easier this way, no long drawn-out goodbyes.
If Remy was worried there were people watching him, he’d be looking for the back way out. "There's a fire escape, if you turn right down the corridor," she told him.
"Thank you, chère." Not a word about the rest of it. She wondered sometimes if Remy got away with things because he never apologised. That and everything else about him.
Tina swallowed down the urge to tell him not to go, not because she wanted him to stay, although of course she did, but because she didn't want him hurt by whatever it was. The desire sat like a stone under her ribcage. She wouldn't ask him, because she knew nothing she said would stop him.
"'You get through this, you come back, you hear me. 'Doesn't matter if it's tomorrow, or a year's time or ten years. You come back." He'd said he would, but Tina felt the need to reassure him that there'd always be space for him here or wherever she’d be by then.
Remy didn't say anything, which might have been worse than any lie he'd chosen to tell her. "You keep me in your thoughts and prayers, and I'll be fine." He kissed her on the forehead and slipped out, quietly enough that she didn't hear the front door shut or the door to the fire escape swing open.
Tina hopes, because that's all she can do.
~~~~
Mystique had a specific mission to fulfill with this break-in. Get in, find the information on where and how they are holding Magneto, get out. Once that was done, she could break Magneto out. The first step was already completed because no one ever checks cleaning service staff if they look right and have the necessary swipe card, and the second step was under way.
Of course, when you hack a system, it's never only the file you're looking for that you find. There was so much more information there, information that the Brotherhood might be able to use later, but she couldn't let herself be distracted. Mission first.
When she copied the information about Magneto's prison, it was part of a whole file of places they were holding people that Stryker had captured. She saved that file too. They were fellow mutants, she recognised enough of the names to know that much. She might not have the chance to do anything about them when she broke Magneto out, she would if she could, but not if it prevented her from fulfilling her main goal, but at least she'd have the names. If the worst happened, she'd know the name of the martyrs that fell to save them all from whatever Stryker is planning.
~~~
End notes: While it's deliberately unclear in the fic, what I imagine happened is that Gambit runs away from the Thieves’ Guild, the Assassins’ Guild and all of that before the story starts, has lots of fun in New Orleans, gets captured by Stryker, escapes, heals up, gets dragged into Wolverine Origins, runs away again, back to the Guild nonsense. The duel happens, for slightly different reasons than in comics canon, Gambit runs away again and at some point runs into Mr. Sinister, the Mutant Massacre happens as in the comics and Gambit is trying to atone for that when he gets captured.
