Chapter 1

 

It was a beautiful night at Salem Center and most people were enjoying the brief respite from the recent chaos that entered their lives: Onslaught, Zero Tolerance, but one lost soul was in agony.

 

In an upstairs bedroom, a young man was sleeping the nightmares of the damned.

 

Pain, coldness enveloping like a blanket, so cold that it burned. A glowing glyph on a brand. Dark Angel. Fallen from grace, alone, abandoned, lost. A light? Seralyn!!

 

Red on black eyes suddenly flew open and Remy sat up in a cold sweat, breathing hard. Relieved that it was only a dream, Remy wiped his forehead and looked at the cold sweat on his hand. It was red? Gingerly, he sniffed and smelled the familiar taint of blood. “Mon Dieu.”

 

“God won’t help you now.”

 

Remy leapt to his feet and cautiously eyed the stranger, wondering why his spatial awareness didn’t warn him.

The stranger was a man with devil-like wings dressed in black. A black triangle tattoo adorned his face which was surrounded by short blonde hair. Black eyes slowly ran down Remy’s body and the man smiled. “Lovely, Dark Angel. Then again, you were also so enchanting to look at. What’s it like being human?”

 

“What?” Remy backed away from the man slowly, danger senses warning him to get the hell out of him. “Remy not know you.”

 

The man laughed. “Oh, yes you do. I lead the party that captured you at Tiras, I broke you myself and gave your soul to the Dark Ones, I made you a Shade, a fallen angel, and unleashed you upon the Host. Then he approached Remy slowly. “Remember my teachings, my voice,” His hand gently stroked Remy’s cheek. He whispered, “My touch.”

 

At that touch, a memory settled in his mind and Remy whispered, “Wrath.” Frightened, he backed away from Wrath before feeling an intense pain in his mind. He collapsed to the floor, clutching his forehead. Painful images and unfamiliar memories flashed through his mind. Remy whimpered, “Michael? Rayne? Lucifer?” Then briefly he lifted his head and looked at the stranger. “Kai.” It all went black.

 

“NO!” Remy sat up quickly in bed and realized that he was indeed in the mansion, in his room. He extended his senses and made sure that only the X-Men were there. His thoughts lightly brushed over Bishop patrolling the grounds, over Warren and Betsy sleeping down the hall, over Jean and Scott in the boathouse, over Logan, Bobby, Ororo, Sarah, Cecelia, and Rogue. All were accounted for, so what was wrong?

 

He looked bleary eyed at the clock and groaned. It was barely four in the morning, only crazy time travelers and former mass murderers were awake at this time. But he didn’t want to go back to sleep, back to the dreams. Remy dragged his sorry carcass out of bed and slinked into the bathroom for a hot shower.

 

Bishop finally went back into the mansion after one final patrol. He passed by the kitchen absentmindedly then suddenly stopped in the hallway. He frowned and peeked back inside the kitchen. Gambit, a man notorious for refusing to get up before noon, a man who had to be dragged out of bed in the morning, was up at four-thirty in the morning drinking coffee.

 

Remy’s stance and expression didn’t change when he said, “Pup, thought you’d be on patrol still.”

 

“I was just turning in. what are you doing up this early?” Bishop asked suspiciously. After all, it might be a shapeshifter, one of the Phalanx, or a Gambit from an alternate reality.

 

Remy took a quick sip of his coffee. “Couldn’t sleep, nightmare.”

 

Bishop raised an eyebrow. “About what, Sinister?” Seeing Remy wince, he asked the one question plaguing the minds of the X-Men since the trial. “Why the hell were you working for him!?” Bishop demanded, not really expecting an answer.

 

Remy seemed to weigh certain pros and cons before answering the former X.S.E. officer. “Have a seat, pup ‘n I’ll tell you.”

 

The answer took Bishop by surprise, but he sat down in front of Gambit, curious. The expression on Remy’s face was one that Bishop often saw on the Witness’s face. It was set and determined, as if he was going to take on a difficult job. Perhaps, to Remy, telling the whole truth was the same thing.

 

Gambit looked into the coffee cup at his reflection for a few minutes. “It happened after Nawleans, after I killed Julien. A friend had written to be about a concert she was giving. Her name was Deborah, and she was a mutant. Her mutant power was dat she could touch a person’s soul by singing a song. One song could reduce a man to tears or make him feel as if he was on top of the world. I later found out that it was a projective empathy, similar to my own charm powers.”

 

Bishop caught that slip, Remy had never come out and said that he had a charm power or that he was an empath.

 

“I went t’ de theatre, de first act was … breathtaking, dere’s no world dat could describe it. It wasn’t until de last act dat t’ings got out of control.”

 

TBC