Recruited (backdated) [for Emma]

[takethegamble]

He wasn't a part of this world any more, the old houses with gingerbread lattices and brightly painted shutters, the brownstones crowding street corners and their small front yards decorated with faded statuary to patron saints and hoodoo loas, the dive bars spilling jazz and blues and billie rock into the dusty streets. There were entire cities dedicated to the dead here, fistfuls of cemeteries stuffed with cracked marble mausoleums and angels that would never fly.

No flowers would ever be put on white marble steps for Remy LeBeau. No one would light incense and whisper a prayer to Saint Gertrude or Michael for his damned soul.

Not in this city.

It was getting late and the tall old-fashioned street lamps lit on the high walls of the Lafayette Cemetery didn't do much about keeping the coming dark away. There were deep bruises of shadow in the narrow grassy aisles between marble houses that made the perfect cover for thieves and killers. Remy should know--he used to be one of them. Tonight he wasn't worried. Tonight the city, and he in it but no longer a part of it, was mourning.

Remy knelt in the grass in front of the imposing bulk of the Bourdeaux mausoleum, his trench coat fanned out around him and the damp ground soaking the knees of his jeans. He laid on the steps a single white trumpeter lilly, uncaring that it was just one in a landside of flowers that created a riot of color in the mostly otherwise dull winter landscape of the cemetery.

Bella wouldn't have cared if it had been one or a million, only that he had brought it.

"Didn' even steal it, mon amour," Remy said, smiling. "Thought you'd appreciate dat."

Around the thick stem of the lily a thin gold band caught the wavering yellow light from the walls shone for a moment. Behind sunglasses, Remy's eyes moved from the freshly engraved name of his wife (Bourdeaux, she had been buried as, not LeBeau) to his wedding band. It felt only appropriate that it stay here, since here was where his heart was.

Remy wrung his cold-chapped hands in preparation of what he was going to do. He did not plan on letting any looters take his last gift to Bella Donna.

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[ms-emma-frost.insanejournal.com]

Taking the cigarette, her smile welcoming as he continued his little paranoid ritual, Emma took a drag, enjoying the exhale before handing the cigarette back.

"I think we both know that you're a lot more than flash and bang, dear." Emma said pointedly. It wasn't about the current state of things, simply what could be. The potential in him, the learning curve, that chance at greatness. Emma wasn't likely to over look that.

"The Hellions is a training squad. Training for bigger and better things." She sipped her own drink, bending slightly at the waist and turning her head to look into those marvellously different eyes. "A stepping stone into the future."