#slasher gambit

He didn’t love you like that.

Love to Remy LeBeau wasn’t a pretty thing tied in a perfect bow and placed on the fireplace for you to find. Love wasn’t something he found as a thing he had to keep alive because everything and everyone around him would die or leave. Learning love from his home, from the thrives, the long nights of trainings and fights was what he imaged his love to be. It was all he ever knew for a long time until he got addicted to his cards, addicted to how they would cut flesh so easily.

He loved the stunned faces his victims made when a card cut deep into their hearts and ever-so lightly under the neck, drawing a thin line of red. The Jack cards cut the deepest, he found out after experimenting one night with a fat bureaucrat caught in his metal webs and deep bayou mud. He had to know what card to throw away and what to keep just like a river in Vas. Stealing the crown, being who he was, being who he is, Remy Lebeau also took a gamble, took a bet on his next canvas and sculptor. It was a beautiful thing to set up the cards on his people. He would give the highest honored cards to people he admired but had to go away.

The bartender who found out who he was, for example, had to go. Remy made sure the kill was fast and clean, promising the whole way through that he would never forget him. He headed his light with a King of Cups, which represented flow and power balance. The police found the dead bartender surrounded by rows and rows of bell flowers and lilacs, which were his favorite. It pained Remy when he had to say goodbye to, but saying it and meaning it are two different things.

Once the coffin was buried in the soil, Remy never used the King of Cups ever again on another person. Matter of fact, he only used tarot cards on those who need it, those he loved.

There it is again, love.

Such a foreign concept but such a wild feeling when the cards are felt right. He cursed his heart when it fluttered, and he wanted to rip it out whenever he was reminded of home, reminded of you. You were the front porch light that beckoned him home, drawing him back like a moth to a funeral flame.

What made you so special that made him go mad? What was that made him so intoxicated with you? He wanted to love and hate you at the same time, but he couldn’t find the strength. He didn’t used his Heart cards on anyone. They didn’t deserve his heart.

But you?

You.

You were in every card he drew when he hurt your boss for overlooking your work. You were in every dazzling ray of purple and pink when he killed your ex, hanging them high from the quarter square with a 3 of Diamonds tucked in their shirt. You were driving him wild in your old work place as he set it ablaze with his powers, charging everything he could get his hands on, and every bone he could touch. They didn’t deserve your time and effort.

Catching his eyes under his mask, catching his heartstrings in your eyes and voice, he would give it all just to see you bloom and blossom into the perfect person he knew you could be. His little love, his Queen of Hearts.

He loved you in every way that never mattered.

He saw how high you were, and he had to keep you up so high that the clouds covered your beautiful gaze. Even when the steamer from the coffee pot casted a rainbow over your eyes. Mask on or off, he could never let his eyes wander over you too long but he knows every curve.

So, when he saw the bandaged wrapped around your arm, he froze and let his coffee grow cold. He couldn’t keep his eyes off it. The red in his eyes studied the bandage and how you wrapped it with care and tears, and he wanted to rip it apart to see what caused it. The coffee shop down the French Quarter was slowing down from its evening rush, which is a good time for him to go and think of the next person to use, was his haven and was his harbor because that’s where you’re at. So, seeing you hurt was like a steak knife driving through his heart.

The steam from the espresso machine rises up past your eyes, causing you to look in his direction. The tension in his shoulders, the way he gripped the countertop to show white knuckles and veins, his jaw clinching tight, you didn’t know what to make of it.

“Mr. LeBeau?” His name from your lips was enough to snap him out of it. “You okay?”

He blinked twice and cleared his throat, pushing unholy thoughts back. “‘M okay.” He then nods towards your arm, asking, “May I ask what happened?” His voice was smooth like whiskey and soft as silk whenever he talked to you. A gentleman like him should talk to someone like you in a higher and clearer respectful tone.

“Oh, my arm,” he didn’t like how you glanced down and pulled your jacket sleeve on your jacket down. The weather is too nice to have a jacket, and it’s too warm behind the coffee pots to have one. Let the last bits of sunlight kiss your freckles goodnight. “I fell.”

“How?”

“Down the steps?”

“Why is it a question, mon ami?” Remy lifts his brow, and there was a hint of warning in his gaze. “Tel’me what really happened. Won’t get mad.”

A sad look crossed your eyes. “Yes, yes you will.” And that was that. He didn’t press anymore when the light in your eyes told him to be quiet. As much as he wanted to press, to know more, he’ll only get more and more irritated.

He’ll find them, catch them in his web and mud, cut them down until they’re nothing but forgotten. Then he’ll turn around and brighten your day with roses and his beignets with a mixture of powered sugar and brown sugar on top. He’ll do that just to see you brighten and smile. He’ll do it just to feel heart flutter and bloom, and he’ll even call it love.

His love for you was a mixture of blood, death, cards, and beignets in a little basket. It wasn’t like the rest, like how others would love you, but it worked. It worked for him. He’ll protect the world, be an X-Men, killer and savor each blood dripping card, and fall deeper and deeper in love with you.

However, it’s only a matter of time before you find out about him. It’s only a matter of time before you find the hidden room in the back of his mind and unlock the memories and death. When you do, he’ll be ready.

Remy Lebeau is always ready.

Remy had done it.

He killed your ex.

It wasn’t easy, the tracking and the pattern remembering, but Gambit is good at remembering things. He’ll remember that pig’s face forever even if he hates that portion. Still, he took pride in making sure your ex wouldn’t forget this moment. How dare they hurt you, his pearl, his muse!? How could anyone hurt you?

The other day at the cafe, you smiled brightly when he came in, and you already had his black coffee with two sugars ready next to a wrapped banana muffin. By everything, he hates banana muffins, but he ate it as if it were a blessing from you while on call. He marveled that you made it for him. Just him.

Even his powers seemed to have an extra kick with every charge and explosion, and it only drove him to come back near the end of your shift with a small thing of flowers…but it was ruined when your ex showed up. They were talking to you, trying to get you to look at them, and Remy snapped.

You smiled at your ex.

You smiled?

Why?

What did they say to make you smile like that? What joke? Remy’s funny! He’s made you laugh and smile, but this smile seems more brighter! This one seems so much better! He felt his hand crumpled the little flowers in his hands, the blue flowers you once had in your hair last summer, and he let them fall. That smile is his.

It’s like how your light touch was his when your hands brushed against the coffee makers whenever you made his cup. It’s like how he hugged you after you got into medical school and you hugged him so tightly that he thought he’d die. Every little heart you drew on his to-go cup, the deck of tarot cards you’ve touch, his ace of hearts—everything. You are is lighthouse.

Gambit does not share your smile.

So, he started stalking. He started looking, tracking, and found something out: they were seeing another. They lied to you about being single again. They lied about wanting you and only you. They lied to you! They wanted to be greedy and steal your smile from the world, Remy’s world! You were not a side piece. You were the whole work of art. You were the whole piece of a marble block of some goddess. You deserve more than lies from this filth! Gambit wasn’t going to let this slide. He wasn’t going to let your ex lie to you. You were his. Only his!

He finally got to the point to kidnap your ex and took them to the old motor factory. It was so easy that it almost made him laugh! All he had to do was send a text from your phone when you left it out, and he blocked his number for you to cover the evidence. He’ll never have you take his fall. Never.

He took off their hood, and pushed them to the ground. Gambit’s robotic face mask lights up in a dangerous purple. His dark brown coat was cut and worn, and his x-men symbol was obvious on the collar of his jacket. He wanted them to see that even mutants had a breaking point when it came to their love. And he was damn well down to take back your smile!

“Run,” he growls, his voice static from the robotic filter. Flashes of your smile filled him along with your perfume, intoxicating him to the brim of madness. “Run, you sonofabitch.”

He gave chase to your ex, hunting them like a wolf and toying with his prey. The first card that sliced and the blood that spattered was enough to get the race on. He wished he recorded the show for you to watch as proof of his devotion to you. He wanted you to see the way his eyes gleamed when he took a spade and cut. He didn’t stop. He wasn’t going to stop. He took his time, naming each bone he shattered and laughed whenever they begged to be let go, but his mind numbed with a field of those blue flowers and you in the center. He saw you free and happy; why couldn’t he?

Your smile broke him completely that he didn’t notice that he had cut himself. He hissed in pain, which only made him madder and ripped your ex apart with the whole suit of spades, leaving nothing of them left. He left behind his jack of diamonds for the police as he does and leaves, hiding back toward his apartment, and it wasn’t a pretty sights.

Organs thrown all over, their heart exploded and on the ceiling and broke wall. Their skull was caved in from an exploded card, and their bone bits scattered around the battered body in a shape of a web. Remy made sure to stick the card with a spider design on the back near the broke lower spinal cord. In a way, it’s as if he was letting them know that his victim was apart of a web of lies and Gambit was the spider who caught them. Honestly, it was almost his best work! So good that he took a picture with his pocket polaroid camera. 

Each step felt heavy and dragged, but echoes of your laughter led him back home. He held his injured arm close to his chest, hiding it from the world and his neighbors as he slipped back. He’ll throw away the jacket and get rid of the bloody shirt, but he’ll keep the two of spades that dealt the final blow. It was redden and beautifully you.

Maybe he’ll give it to you after they find your ex’s body spun up in a bloody web with the picture he took? He’ll want to see your face and be the one to comfort you from the horror. Oh, the horror he’ll cause just to hold you tight and comfort you! Then you’ll smile at him through your tears as he promises to keep you safe from this “madman”, and that smile would be his.