Chapter Text
The piece of rotting civilization. Here it is, wrapped in a net like a bitch in a sack. A tangled fish. Unfortunately, not by itself—out of stupidity and despair.
Even now in the world... especially now, there are still animal abusers. They drown cats that annoy them just by existing. The little mutant bodies want to live, and their agonizing death brings satisfaction to the onlookers. Because they've finally proven they are stronger.
True, where has that led the shards of a dying world...
Magneto knew the price of power. He considered putting the weak and helpless to death a matter of dishonor and defilement. In the reality of an Earth destroyed to its foundations, flooded with water, radiation, fear, and loathsome cruelty, the rules remained the same, stupid ones. No one bothered to think about morality or self-respect anymore.
Drown the mutants, because they are the great evil. Of course, it's their fault the surface is flooded with the corpses of the innocent...
The sense of justice that flared up in Lehnsherr's chest like a raging wave is unknown to those people who threw this body into the water. And how dare they, after everything, again and again destroy the only thing through which they could still prove their humanity?
Magneto furrowed his brows, gloomily watching the pier from the concrete support of the shore. The trio, laughing uproariously at the situation, was starting to wrap things up, and at that moment, remaining unnoticed, Erik extended his tense, rough, cold-chapped fingers. There must be metal in the nets... if the mutant hasn't managed to sink deeper to the bottom, then there's enough strength to pull him out.
Magneto wasn't going to admit that simply lifting the weight of a living person by the net hooks had become impossible for him. Despite his discipline, he hadn't managed to keep his body in the same condition as before the war – it had failed spectacularly: scars from frostbite, half his weight gone to nothing, he definitely can't fly now to save energy. But no matter the strain, it has an end goal, and it's worth it.
The wet body was slowly lifted out of the water onto the shore like a shaggy, slimy rag, and Erik immediately unhooked the barbs to remove the shackles. A man, in a torn windbreaker of an indistinct brown color, barefoot, with feet beaten bloody and dirt under his fingernails, his hands clad in gloves with the fingers cut off. Half his face, from the impact with the water, was covered in a bluish hematoma and bloody streaks, and Magneto couldn't immediately tell who it was; skin stretched over his skull like a transparent membrane on a dried corpse, expressive eyebrows, high cheekbones, a scraggly beard, flattened and indecently long chestnut hair matted into clumps...
He wasn't breathing. That was the main thing now.
Erik concentrated, cracked his knuckles, turned the body onto its side, and compressed the diaphragm; excess water mixed with crimson blood flowed from the nose and mouth, the throat spasmed with a gurgle, clearing the lungs. But his chest was so constricted he couldn't even inhale, so, gathering patience and forbearance, Magneto had to turn the man onto his back, pinch his nose, and force air into him through his mouth. Never mind the tissue between his lips, you can't lose a mutant over trifles.
Two rounds of chest compressions were enough for the corpse to come alive and start breathing, hoarsely, with convulsions throughout his entire skeleton. And then Erik saw his eyes, slightly open in a semi-conscious state...
To say he was stunned would be a disgraceful understatement. Because he would recognize that ruby-red iris on that alien black sclera anywhere. Damn Gambit.
You wouldn't wish such an enemy on anyone. Luckily, Magneto immediately justified it to himself by thinking that there were hardly any mutants left anyway, and he had done a good deed by preventing the death of another from a pitiful hundred, maybe less. True, not exactly the one he would have wanted. Either way, about five years ago, Erik rightfully wanted to cut the bastard's head off.
Now it was even prosaic that he, unknowingly, had saved someone he had always found repulsive... A shameless thief, womanizer, and morally gray person with a stupid accent... The one responsible for the Massacre... Of course, over time Magneto realized the Cajun had been used as a pawn more often than one might think, but the resentment remained.
He committed a crime against mutants not of his own free will and paid for it... yes, not with death, but it seems he's had enough. He's a hundred times worse off now than Lehnsherr himself.
"Hey. LeBeau," he struck him across the face with his palm with a dull thud because his cheek was sunken and his hand hit the protruding cheekbone.
The Cajun slowly blinked, breathing tremulously and coughing hoarsely. He looked at Magneto with a murky, wild gaze and grimaced from the irony and disgust.
"Merde..."
After a few seconds, without trying to get up, he hissed barely audibly, humbly and tiredly:
"... Thanks."
"Exactly," Erik rose from his knees and brushed himself off, his lungs still stinging as if scalded with boiling water. "You owe me, Gambit. After this."
"Bitch, just don' tell me y' gave me mouth-to-mouth..." Remy rustled, heavily closing his eyes to process the enormous amount of information that had crashed down on him like a mudslide.
Magneto remained silent, because saying it out loud seemed categorically wrong, like shouting obscenities in a train station. Just embarrassing himself, although this Southern youth, apparently, also didn't like the prospect of kissing him.
"I pulled you out, the rest isn't important."
"De great Magneto..." he coughed horribly, barely managing to turn on his side, a tenacious mockery slipping into his weakened voice, "stoopin' to dis?.."
"There are too few mutants left as it is. Your gratitude is enough, now go your own way," Erik simply didn't want to deal with the thief any further. An extra mouth on his shoulders was completely unnecessary right now; that way they'd both just drown in the viscous despair, emptiness, and hunger of existence. However, getting rid of him without consequences from what happened was unlikely to work...
Gambit wanted to make some snide remark and started to rise on his elbows, but fell back, breathing heavily; the veins on his arms bulged and began to glow, like hysterically burned-out light bulbs, with a crimson shimmer of kinetic energy. Erik had seen this with him before, more than once. When he's physically exhausted – his body taps into the last available resource, his own power, but there's never enough of it.
The Cajun was exhausted to the absolute limit.
A trickle of dark blood flowed from Remy's lips. He coughed it up imperceptibly, almost silently, wiping the mess with a trembling hand, leaving a dark streak on the damp fabric sleeve. Magneto watched his suffering for a few seconds and rumbled discontentedly:
"I just revived you, and you're going to die again? When was the last time you had anything in your stomach?"
"About three days ago..." Remy spat out more blood and got on all fours, his back shaking like a withdrawing junkie's; even from here, Erik could hear his frantic pulse, oppressively uneven and fast.
"You damn thief, can't you even get yourself food?.." Magneto raised his eyebrows in surprise, barely hearing what LeBeau was saying through his wheezing breaths and overall titanic weakness. It was unexpected that such a talented criminal couldn't just...
"Try stealin' anythin' in my condition, I'd like to see it..." Gambit explained aggressively, though barely moving, as if trying to hammer home the obvious. Of course, a person can't steal properly when he can barely stand.
The arteries connected to the veins in Remy's body, his pulse quickened even more, becoming a dense, continuous line, releasing him only for a second so he could think. This is exactly the moment when your own power turns against you and acts against you. Erik had been under the pressure of his own many times, but never so detrimentally.
Remy groaned, arching his back with an unpleasant crack of bones. It wasn't like a cry of struggle, but a wheeze of despair and pain, like a beaten dog that no longer believes it can survive.
But Magneto believed.
"What to do?" he came closer, squatting down opposite him with unexpected resolve, ready to reach out. Now, in a world burned almost to ashes, their enmity made no sense, and every life, even the most wretched, must be preserved.
"Water... lots... to trick my stomach... until I go into hibernation..." Gambit rasped, barely conscious, his eyes rolling back, though he was trying hard not to fall.
"How's that?.." Erik asked loudly, so Gambit could hear him over the nasty ringing in his ears. He was surprised by the concept of him falling asleep like a small rodent in winter. Lethargy? Was this some new ability for energy mutants to conserve energy? The Master of Magnetism didn't want to know, but he had to.
"Me... after dis... it knocks me out..." Gambit flinched as the large hands were placed on his shoulders, as if a huge concrete slab had been dropped on him, and finished with effort, scraping the ground with his broken nails and spitting blood that was now streaming even from his nose: "Energy builds up... to keep goin'..."
Gambit is an energy generator. To produce it, his body consumes its own resources. If you give him water, his body will immediately start absorbing it and converting it into energy, if not physical, then kinetic, which grants a few more heartbeats until real food appears. This realization made Lehnsherr feel sorry for pulling Remy out of the ocean for a second. There was already so little food, and now he was tied to a mutant who depended on it...
Erik took him under the arms and roughly dragged him towards a broken, rusty jeep standing nearby on a rubble-strewn parking lot surrounded by crooked trees barely awake after winter. There, he had stored fresh water, which he had obtained near the breakwater after standing on the shore for several hours like a statue, intently gazing at the restless sea.
Magneto leaned Remy against the wheel; his fingers burned as they touched his skin, crawling with a harsh crimson light. He had to act quickly but carefully. Erik opened the water container and, lacking any other smaller vessel, fashioned a thin spout from the nearest piece of metal, tightly fusing it into the plastic.
"I waited eight hours for this water, so try to swallow it all," the metal-kinetic slowly tilted the container, and Gambit clamped his teeth around it, swallowing greedily and quickly, but not choking, as if on command. He was clearly suffering from dehydration. For a moment, Magneto thought he'd drunk half the bottle before the light flashing over his body subsided and his pulse evened out into a quiet, but steady rhythm. And then slower... slower...
"Ya might think I died, but..." Remy whispered calmly, licking his lips, before unexpectedly dropping his head against the car door and falling asleep, as if by the flick of a switch.
Magneto sighed skeptically, looking at the lifeless body before him, then somehow managed to lift him in his arms. Light. Too light. As if he'd been gutted. His tragically protruding shoulder blades and vertebrae were palpable through his threadbare clothes. Erik's head tightened unmercifully, like red-hot pincers. Memories of those distant, horrible years, stinging like a dirty wound, flooded his entire being.
Thin people. Fire. Smoke. Bones.
Can't get distracted now. Need to get to the shelter.
He didn't know exactly when Gambit's reboot would end. He just hoped it wouldn't take too long, though days and nights had become subjective now. No matter how long Remy slept, in a world stagnating in agony, nothing would change.
Erik carried the remaining water in a canister slung over his shoulder on a rope, while the silent, ragdoll body dangled in his arms. They passed destroyed roads, riddled with cracks and black debris from houses and asphalt, dusty gray buildings imprisoning soulless death inside, abandoned swarms of cars with peeling paint, sinking in puddles of fuel oil and poisoned water.
In one of the intact buildings, where the water supply even worked and the roof hadn't caved in, Erik had made his small lair back in the winter. A relatively clean apartment, small but still retaining a hint of pre-war coziness, boxes of found or scavenged provisions in the kitchen, a couch piled with mismatched blankets, a homemade steel stove with a metal pipe tightly fitted into the kitchen exhaust vent.
A semblance of paradise amidst all the terrible purgatory they'd created here.
Magneto laid Remy on the couch, caught his breath, paced around, and shook his hands to get rid of the dull ache stubbornly embedded in his muscles from carrying the load. After that, he drank some water himself and lit a small blue flame in the stove, adding some dry old firewood. Notes of gentle warmth immediately awoke in the mustiness and dust.
Since Gambit's clothes resembled more slimy rags, Erik with difficulty but confidently pulled off the windbreaker and shirt, baring Remy to the waist. His skin was white to the point of gray, corpse-like transparency, stretched tight over his ribs, riddled with scars from bullets and blades, and an ugly bruise from hitting the water spread on his left side. Across his stomach and under his ribs were two medical incisions, already healed but crooked and ragged at the edges, clearly from doctors who, during the nuclear winter, tried to find a heat source in energy mutants, to trap and use it. Disgusting. A multitude of puncture wounds on his wrists, probably from tranquilizers or other chemicals. On his neck, an old ring-shaped burn, probably from an electric shock collar, a prototype inhibitor for suppressing superpowers.
Remy had been through a lot. And this rat had gotten out, he'd escape any trouble no problem... But who knows how hard it was for him to manage it.
Magneto threw the useless clothes aside and brushed off his hands, then sat back down on the edge of the couch, the springs creaking audibly. At a rough estimate, Remy weighed only about fifty kilos; given his considerable height, he was catastrophically underweight. No wonder he couldn't move further. Under his ribs lay a dense little bump of a water-filled stomach, the size of a small orange, considering how Gambit had stretched it from greed. Recovery would be long...
However, Magneto didn't want Remy to linger here. Wouldn't he survive alone?.. Probably. That was a fair point, because if the Cajun died as soon as he was back on the street, it would nullify all of Erik's efforts to save him.
So, he needed to survive. And he'd have to stay here. It was disgusting and humiliating, but... Magneto had sworn to himself to protect all mutants. Especially in times like these. And he would.
***
About twenty-four hours passed, and Gambit hadn't moved. He breathed so quietly that his chest didn't even rise; dried blood from his nose and mouth crusted in his scraggly beard, and his eyes were sunken into tired sockets. The only thing betraying life in him was the soft, constrained glow of his heart through his ribs. Rhythmic, with crimson sparks, sometimes dimly flowing through his body with each beat.
Magneto even found it beautiful, in a detached, physical sense. Every mutant, along with their ability, is unique and incredible. Maybe that was one reason Erik tolerated the criminal's presence in his home.
Remy woke up unnoticed, and his first move was to try to get up, without even really opening his eyes, groaning in agony as he propped himself up on his elbow, but he vomited blood onto the rug so suddenly that Erik didn't even have time to react, only managing to hold his chin so he wouldn't choke. Gambit's face drained to an ashen gray as he fought the spasms, curled into a ball of nerves and sweat.
"Shouldn' have gotten up..."
"Exactly," Magneto grumbled angrily and looked with distaste at the burgundy puddle on the floor. "Why the hell do you have blood in your stomach?..
"Micro-tears... when I... recharge," Gambit rasped, trying to slide off the couch and prove he was self-sufficient, but his body ached and wouldn't obey, like a drunkard's, so he couldn't even twitch a muscle.
Erik wanted to plead with anyone, why was he being punished with this horror, but he endured it. He'd been through worse conditions. But no one would wish for a problematic roommate in a near-death state.
Magneto dragged him to the bathroom and helped him pull off his pants, sitting on the edge of the tub. Only then did he adjust the water to a comfortable temperature and start filling the chipped cast-iron bathtub.
At first, he didn't notice something definitely missing, but then his gaze caught it. He couldn't help but notice the obviously strange anatomy. Because while Remy had the shaft of his penis, in place of his scrotum was a crooked longitudinal scar, pink and recent.
Erik clenched his jaw so hard that the metal in the room responded with a tense screech. He had been castrated. Definitely by humans. Just for being a mutant, so he couldn't reproduce. Like a sick stray dog.
Gambit had never been shy about his body, but now he turned his head away with a wounded sigh.
"Wha?.. Disgustin', non*?.."
"No," Magneto answered, surprising himself, as if the word had been scraped out of him with inhuman speed and shamelessly thrown in the Cajun's face.
There's nothing ugly about being tortured by those who hate you simply for existing. When you can't do anything about it.
Remy was pleasantly surprised and turned his head, his red eyes squinting at Lehnsherr, searching for a trick, which he didn't show.
"It's not your fault they were cut off," Erik explained firmly, with such thunderous insistence that it made you want to believe him. He moved to the shelves on the tiled wall and retrieved rubbing alcohol and some still-usable bandages. Gambit's savagely torn-up feet needed dressing.
Remy sat silently and breathed deeply, stoically, as Magneto treated the ulcers on his feet and used the blade of a small kitchen knife to cut the mats out of his hair. Luckily, there was a piece of soap nearby, intact, pre-war, almost indestructible, and the salty grime was scrubbed from the thief's body with a brush and forgotten. Gambit poured water over himself almost independently, slowly, awkwardly, but persistently.
Magneto respected his pain tolerance. That was something he truly valued in people, a sign of their unbreakable nature; in their dead, deranged world, it was more useful than emotions.
Erik carefully wrapped the now-clean, crookedly-haired Gambit, with his bandaged feet, in one of the blankets and carried him back to the couch, sitting down beside him to rest from the procedure.
"Want something to eat?"
"What kind of stupid question is dat," Gambit rasped quietly, relaxed by the hot water and basking in the cleanliness like a cat in the summer sun. Though his eyes were still mired in raw, unsettled suffering.
"I thought your stomach was damaged," Magneto reminded him, glancing at the spot on the floor where he'd cleaned up the blood.
"Come on... it heals fast, and anyway... I haven' eaten properly since de war started, and I jus' want to gorge myself on cold canned food and die happy," Remy mumbled and wrinkled his nose sadly when his stomach reminded him of itself with a rumbling growl.
"I won't give you much, it just won't fit, so you're stuck with me for a while. At least until your feet heal and you can finally hold your stick."
It hit Erik like a battering ram to the head that he'd have to nurse Remy like a stray kitten, because he couldn't even sit up on his own and spoke barely audibly, like someone already in a coffin. He would have to be rehabilitated for a long time, at least in terms of weight, until he could leave and defend himself...
"I didn' ask cha to fatten me up, jus' gimme a day to regain my strength and I'll leave... I can see ya don' need an extra mouth," Remy tensed up, as if a shotgun were pressed to the back of his neck, even stopping breathing for a second. He was lying, to himself too, hoping not without reason.
Oh, no. Unlikely.
How he hated accepting help, even when he was obviously crushed and non-viable... Maybe it was also the effect of them being fierce enemies, ready to tear each other's throats out, but shouldn't there be at least a drop of self-preservation and trust in that empty French head?
"You'll die the moment you step outside this house, if you can even stand," Erik countered what was already hanging in the air like hot, fragile glass, making the atmosphere stuffy and uncomfortable, but necessary. For the rational mind to work in this consciousness dying of hunger.
Gambit looked at Magneto for a few seconds from his prone position, wrapped in a blanket, barely keeping his eyes open. Logic finally struck him, unpleasantly, unfairly, but acceptance followed, bad from their mutual angry feelings, but acceptance nonetheless.
"I understand. Since ya... decided so... and I can't disagree... Bien," he gave in, exhaling defeatedly. "Bring what you have. A lot. Even raw millet. I don't want to linger; I need to gain weight."
Erik doubted Gambit's stomach could handle that, but nevertheless gathered from the boxes in the kitchen a couple of still-good cans of stew, canned bread, water, and some rice he had recently boiled and put out in the wet snow on the balcony. He had to warm everything by the stove before bringing it to Remy, who nodded gratefully and sat up slightly.
His hands trembled as he gripped the fork, but he held onto his chance to appear healthy and capable, so he ate without complaint. He finished one can fairly quickly, after a short rest a second, although it seemed it definitely wouldn't fit, then a plate of rice and half the bread, which was about the size of a small bun. When he paused, sweat had already broken out on his forehead, but he purposefully continued and finished everything brought to him. After that, Remy rested his head against the armrest of the couch and, breathing shallowly and contentedly, nodded, signaling he had managed.
It wasn't like Erik had asked him to eat it all, so he was impressed. However, hungry people can do worse, he knew from his own unfortunate experience, but even with that extra amount, Gambit didn't flinch. A habit developed over years? Possibly, given his appetite needs.
Returning to the room after washing the dishes, Magneto sat on the edge of the couch and, without asking, pulled back the blanket with interest. Of course, Remy's stomach was bloated like a drum, like a small rugby ball under his ribs.
"Hurt?.."
A stupid question. Just a flicker of empathy from completely understanding the situation...
"Yeah..." Gambit grimaced, placing a thin hand on his stomach, which mildly protested such crowding after so long without a single crumb inside.
"Do you always eat a lot?" Erik covered him back with the blanket, no longer allowing himself to violate someone else's personal space; he had already crossed the line back on the shore. Not that he ever really cared, but still... at least a modicum of respect was necessary, if only because they'd be sitting side-by-side here for a long time, trying not to kill each other.
Gambit closed his eyes and took a breath to, with tired pauses, share something intimate, which now, after the nuclear apocalypse, didn't matter, but between two personalities, even as morally distant as they were, it became possible to reveal:
"I have to. As a kid, I ate whatever was lyin' underfoot, was skinny as a rail... I starved like dat. Even though it's not our way, y' know... Later in de Guild... in my family, dey taught me dat no one leaves de table until dey're full to burstin'. I suddenly had a bunch of aunts who wouldn' let me go until I couldn' get up from de chair... So I got used to it; we Cajuns have iron stomachs, given our cuisine. Started cooking myself, so I'd always have somethin' on hand. Hungry years teach ya a lot, mon pote, and I wouldn' want to go back to dat... So a habit became a necessity, especially when my powers started growin' and eatin' me from de inside. Tradition played into my hands in every way. Since den, not a single scrap goes to waste with me."
Remy spoke of the past with obvious warmth that touchingly reached even Magneto's hardened heart. He understood what home, family, simple pleasures like tasty food meant. It had all been taken from them by war, hunger, cruelty, death, betrayal. And in that moment, Erik felt a kinship with the idiot-criminal with the stupid accent more than ever, for they had both swallowed their own box of nails, brought by the pain of the past and present.
"I see," Erik nodded understandingly, as if thanking him for the detailed answer. They shouldn't trust each other with such personal things, but now, in a world where, probably, no mutants were left except them, where people killed each other for fresh water, where the sky seemed eternally gray in the ash suspension stuck in the clouds from a civilization burning in agony... it no longer mattered.
Magneto sighed and smoothed his shaggy gray hair, as if thinking about what to insert into this pause. Actually, he already knew. He wasn't obligated, but he just wanted to. There was no one else to tell.
"When we moved to the ghetto, I stole bread, smuggled goods. By the sackful. So my family wouldn't starve. Mother scolded me, said it was dangerous and wrong, and I just watched how they, my parents, survived in a foreign city occupied by Nazis, trying to give their only child a decent life... And I wanted them to look like before. Happy, healthy. But they were shot, right on the street, and I still remember... the suffering on their faces until the very end. Exhaustion. Pain. And after their death, I saw it every day. You have no idea how tired I am..."
Erik was silent for a moment, rubbing the bridge of his nose so the nasty stinging sensation in his eyes would subside. He was Magneto. He must not cry. Especially after so many years, over that loss that remained a dead scar on his heart. It was no longer worth tears.
"Anger kept me going. I looked at those people, at those... bones covered in skin, at that blood on their clothes, under their nails, on their feet they'd beaten against the earth and stone... I didn't want that fate for them. For anyone. Ever. And my rage buried those who were guilty of it. Now I keep fighting. That's why even a nasty, cocky womanizer from the bay doesn't deserve to be slashed, starved, and drowned. And those who did this will pay."
His voice took on increasingly metallic, heavy tones, as if he were swearing on his own head and it pierced his brain like the blow of a crushing battering ram. Even his eyes faded, falling into the stupor that only comes when someone has seen too many deaths to give up.
"Answerin' cruelty with cruelty... wise," Remy raised one split eyebrow, catching the indomitable mutant's tone. However, there wasn't a gram of sincerity in the Cajun's voice, the standard condemnation, though not without a strange detached acceptance, as if he were trying hard to understand Magneto, overcoming his own worldview, sacrificially, seriously.
"Stop clowning," Erik rasped, copying his expression and reading Gambit's attitude completely, as he could, harshly analytically. Of course he's lying, especially to himself, and Remy confirmed it when he continued the conversation with a short sigh of unaccustomed resignation, bound hand and foot to the point of bloodshed.
"I'm not sayin' I always agreed with Xavier, peace be with him... but it seems peace is only possible if everyone around is perfectly good, and dat, y' know, isn't the case. Over time... from de position of an observer, I kind of shifted to yo point of view, though... less radical. Especially after de nuclear war. Let de guilty choke in deir blood, and de rest live without warheads hangin' over deir heads. So simple... honest."
Gambit's weak but confident voice rang out acridly in the thick silence, like a new truth. Strange for such an impulsive man as him. However, it could easily be chalked up to fatigue, but those demons in the depths of his dying embers of eyes danced too vividly. Realization.
"It took me almost seventy years to come to that," Lehnsherr looked at Remy incredulously, his heart contracting painfully, resisting accepting what he heard. From the mouth of the damn Ragin' Cajun. He couldn't be that broken... "But people tortured you, deprived you of your dignity, drowned you... and you don't generalize. You don't rage. You don't think all people are animals."
"'Cause I've seen good people, Erik. And y' haven'. Dat's de whole difference," Gambit whispered, a bit roughly in an attempt to hide the sorrow in his memories. "My stepbrothers were ordinary people. My aunts, almost all of 'em, too. My... first wife wasn't a mutant. My family. And not one of 'em ever tried to kill me for bein' different."
Magneto had to admit Remy was telling the truth. Their fates were too different. They were both cruel, both had survived torture and betrayal, but Erik could never recover from the evil that thousands of people had sown in him... they had taken pieces of his soul and thrown them away like rotten trash, and they couldn't be retrieved, only replaced with anger. Gambit was just as cynical and distrustful, but cautious in choosing his enemies, because he knew the value of those who had shown him even attempts at tenderness, love, and respect. He had seen more understanding. Much more.
They had traveled different paths, but in the end, they had returned to the same place, and Magneto liked that outcome. He even calmed down a bit, the tense furrow between his brows from carefully choosing words smoothed slightly.
"You're exaggerating, but I'll believe it."
"D'accord, mon pote," Remy nodded softly, as if he hadn't doubted Erik's relative wisdom. That he knew and wouldn't stand on the tracks in front of a freight train. It stirred hope that the cooperation wouldn't end in separation over trifles. Right now, that definitely wasn't in his interest.
Remy slowly moved his shoulders to get more comfortable and stifled a yawn, raising his hand to his eyes to shield them from the gray, blurred light from the window.
"We shouldn't have gotten into philosophy. You're already nodding off," Erik smirked, noticing that tired gesture. This conversation had acted like a gentle hand on a heart after monstrous stress and unresolved conflict, still stinging somewhere under the ribs like a stuck toothpick.
"Yeah... I'd sleep, very little energy..." Remy was silent for a few seconds, then added, his voice barely trembling with touching gratitude as he whispered: "Thanks for postponin' my death in sleep."
It sounded partly strained from an attempt not to reveal his true feelings about being saved. They were enemies, after all, if only because of old grievances... But Erik still believed the gratitude was sincere. Neither of them wanted to keep tearing at each other's throats.
***
They talked little, mainly because Remy was constantly in energy-saving mode. He refused help, however, despite the pain in his bandaged feet and weakness, hunching over and leaning against the wall, he walked around the apartment on his own.
Erik rationed the food so it would last them both at least two weeks, and Gambit accepted it, albeit with displeasure. However, for an energy mutant, the rations proved too small, and the Cajun hadn't gained a gram since Magneto pulled him from the water. Although it seemed that over a couple of weeks, something should have shifted.
The catastrophically low weight was hindering him. Remy – just by its existence, and it bothered Magneto, like a frosty blow to the back of his head every time. A chest like a cage of bars, protruding hip bones, sunken cheeks... unbearable for someone who had survived a hell consisting solely of hunger and suffering.
"You're not gaining any weight," Erik muttered for the first time in a long while, as he removed the old bandages from Remy's feet, which were stained with pinkish spots. He had been walking despite everything, so the wounds were healing uncomfortably slowly.
"What did cha expect... I need to eat about three times more dan a normal person," Gambit hissed painfully through the sleeve of some matted robe found in a closet. He endured the pain of the dressing removal stoically, not flinching once, breathing heavily like bellows.
"Never noticed that about you before."
"We didn' meet dat often before, y' know," Remy snorted sarcastically. "If I get a chance to eat, I never miss it. If Anna were 'ere, she'd confirm it."
Magneto furrowed his brow at the sound of the woman's... girl's name who had been a revelation to him in his time. Although his relationship with her was based on the debt she was perpetually paying him for the chance to feel normal. And with Gambit, Rogue was... free. Always. Despite being physically untouchable. Because their feelings, sick, shaky, but so profound in their passion and love, that it would be easier to kill them both than to break their bond.
Erik looked up at Remy. He was staring somewhere at the wall, gloomily, but without a hint of longing in his eyes, only a shadow betraying dark, nagging thoughts.
"Do you miss her?" The Master of Magnetism asked casually, so as not to provoke, probably, a nasty fit of self-deprecation in an already almost dying mutant. Erik himself had managed to preserve only an imprint of memory, without emotion or belonging, a pale spot against the background of others left in the past, before the war.
"Sometimes. I don' let myself get bogged down in sufferin' over 'er; dat's not a priority right now," Remy shook his head impassively, his face instantly darkening, as if a bottomless, subconsciously terrifying hole stood in its place, without a single emotion. Trauma had made him abstract himself so much that he had even forgotten her eyes...
They were silent. Although Erik tried to think of something, only a fiery, nervous emptiness whistled in his head.
"So what to do?.. You'll die faster than we can feed you."
"Go home," Gambit answered so simply, as if talking about the suit of a card, not a potentially impossible journey on foot of several thousand kilometers. Apparently, he was so tired of hopelessness that he blurted out the first thing that popped into his head, like a delusional, obsessive thought.
"Where?.." Magneto raised a skeptical eyebrow. Though, the question should have been "how?"...
"Louisiana. It's mostly flooded, but... it's warmer dere. And dere's more food in de countryside," the Cajun explained, his gaze immediately lost somewhere in the bright flashes of youth and something desperate, calling. It had to be said, there was logic in it, and good logic at that; if Erik could, he would move there himself, leaving this musty, cold lair where nothing living remained.
Remy himself wasn't exactly lively, because a second later he gasped for air, the blood drained from his face so that his skin turned to white wax, and his eyes flew open in panic, two black, oily marbles. He started breathing rapidly, shallowly, digging his bony fingers into the couch upholstery so it tore, despite his lack of strength.
Erik recognized the attack instantly, dropped to one knee before Gambit, and peered at his heart, barely flickering with dazed pink sparks through the robe. He leaned quickly towards Remy and took his frostbitten wrist, trying to feel the pulse through the cracked skin. Fast, racing, irregular. Not enough energy for stable function again...
After about two minutes, the man's breathing calmed; he closed his eyes in dismay and relaxed, his heart eased, but with terrible losses. Lehnsherr didn't let go of his wrist, counting until he stopped, sure that everything had normalized. For a second, Erik thought he actually cared about this swamp scum, but he harshly dismissed it, threw it out of his head. Just a check; it wasn't in his interest for another mutant to die, especially so stupidly, so soon after being saved...
"Everything alright?.."
"Alright..." Remy could barely open his mouth to rasp it out through a trembling trachea, his neck drenched in cold sweat. "Dis... confirms we need to leave 'ere."
"On foot from New York, the journey would take almost a month, considering your condition, and I'm not sure we'll have a steady supply of food on the road. Are you sure?" Magneto asked firmly, peering intently into Remy's face to see if he'd lost his mind, though he understood that such a decision in their position might not be the only correct one, but it was the right one. The possibility still existed, and it was better to use it for the survival of the race, although at the moment it consisted literally of two same-sex people.
They had to survive. By any means necessary.
"We'll make it. We've survived worse, ol' man," Gambit smiled, weakly and crookedly, but with that trademark slyness, that daring that made people never doubt him. He always knows what he's doing.
Magneto smirked approvingly, surprising himself. If they could endure and find that warm wellspring of resources, they could consider it a feat. Or rather, when they endure.
There was no other way.