#but MMMMM MMMMM that New Orleans flavour

[aftergloom]

Just dropping in to ask about a little nugget in your pinned post under the WIP/Unreleased header called "Second Line." Aka a Gambit/Rogue Ante-adjacent AU. Whaaaat where when how 😱😱 Can you share a summary?

Tell you what I know: there ain’t no such thing as luck. Those who make an’ shake enough to get their chips lined up in such a way that it seems like fortune favours ‘em — well. They make it look easy enough, but I’ll tell you: anyone claiming as much gotta be one of the best liars I ever met, else my name ain’t Emil Lapin. I’ll tell you — Sometimes you can’t leave it to fate: sometimes you gotta stack the deck yourself.

Corner of Toulouse and Royal, February 16th. It’s a Tuesday. 

The location and the date are written across the face of a playing card; the invitation so ostentatious she almost didn’t make the trip. 

King of Hearts.

Sonofagun.

Rogue turns the little scrap of paper over once more, hugging the sign post as if it makes any difference: she could stand in the middle of the street and she wouldn’t be able to avoid the crowd, despite being one street over from the parade route. To that ends, she ducks away from a group of kids from Tulane, too loud already even before sunset, their go cup daiquiris and half-empty hand grenade cups swinging. Double fisting. 

One of them wears a chef’s hat. Bare chested. Little chef’s apron over shorts. 

It’s February and it’s a warm one, but not that warm. Least that’s what she tells herself: old habits, and all. She’s learned to ignore how the sweat collects in the small of her back when she’s wearing full fleece. If she tells herself enough times that she’s alright in her hoodie and skinny jeans — eventually she’ll believe it too.

(Hands folded around the invitation in her kangaroo pocket. Hood up.)

That kid’s showing too much skin.

She assesses the risk out of habit: the way he’s careening towards her, like he wants to say hi sloppily, and Rogue takes a moment to consider that the getup should turn him into a half-naked Swedish Chef. He doesn’t look it. He looks like a flasher who’s had too much to drink. He looks like a distraction.

She tips her head back, shaking her hair out of her hood when she feels the pull as it happens —

And turning, the sensation of almost getting goosed is a little like chasing a ghost.

You wouldn’t know you were getting your pocket picked unless you knew who ruled New Orleans’ streets, and you wouldn’t know why unless they invited you directly. 

Old habits, and all that.

She bites back a grin, letting a streak of white fall across her vision. Raking it back with a sigh, she searches for the weighted sensation of someone’s attention on her as if it might feel familiar: prickling across the skin like so many nights spent alone back in Bayville but not really, staring into the suburban dark while knowing there was more out there, but never really knowing just how close it was. Waiting for something to happen.

She touches her left back pocket, rolling her eyes. It’s empty. Of course.

“Looks like someone couldn’t do without Lady Luck after all,” she says to herself, biting back a grin.

Rogue chews the inside of her mouth, anticipation bubbling in her chest.

Alright, she decides. Let’s play.

Laughter carries through the crowd —

It doesn’t belong to anyone she recognizes, but she knows he’s out there, waiting for her to return his opener because if either of them make a misstep, the other always falls back in time; the other catches on the drop. Shuffling. Fifty-two card pickup. 

Rogue tips her head, flashing a smile at the chef-guy who’s only a bystander anyway, and draws from the reserves she’s got tucked away in the back of her mind: it’s like a playbook. She knows how this goes. She knows this town because he does too, and that knowledge sits tucked away someplace deep in her prefrontal cortex.

Her brain’s a bit like a library, and she’s got an all-access pass to every book that’s ever been checked in. Remy’s pages rustle a little like a whisper when she touches on that guidebook to the Big Easy he’d got stored in there, and just like that, Rogue knows these old haunts.

She knows, too, that there’s a problem with the invite. 

She replaces her stolen property with the King of Hearts, looking for her cue:

One distinctive face in the crowd. Or perhaps —

Rogue turns her gaze to the sunset falling over Royal street, the wrought iron balconies packed with krewe members and partygoers, revellers hoping to forget themselves for the last night before lent. So many wear masks. Costumes. Face paint. Disguises. She feels for a moment a little like Alice staring down the prospect of a entering another world.

Rogue takes it all in, thinking that this must have been a deliberate choice after all:

Everyone here can let themselves go for just one night.

But she’s never felt more like herself when she turns left, slipping through the throng of people at the startled expression beneath a shock of orange hair:

She flashes teeth — an apex predator sighting prey — and next thing Rogue knows, she’s given chase. 

Follow the white rabbit, she thinks —

Tacky strands of beads fall from overhead, caught by outstretched hands. 

But Rogue only has eyes for one thing:

He’s bolting, shimmying up a drainpipe and heading for the nearest rooftop in a display of dexterity that would put even Nightcrawler to shame. A flash of teeth. A wink. And he vanishes. 

Her heart gives a leap.

Rogue ducks through a gaggle of girls, dodging them, touching no one, and shoots past to the nearest alley. A fire escape. It clatters and groans as she lunges for the lowest rung, swinging and vaulting herself upwards.

She hears Emil’s bark of laughter, and she knows he’s watching her progress.

“Ah knew it was you,” she calls over.

That gives him pause. “How’s that?”

Rogue juts her chin, pausing in her climb. “Remy doesn’t favour the King of Hearts.”

Just the Queen, she thinks wryly.

This slows Lapin a hair, but just as quickly, he dances around the misstep. 

Rogue fights not to roll her eyes. “The King stabs himself in the head with his own sword,” she explains. As if that should be a given. 

Remy’s identifies with the death card:

The Ace of Spades.

Even his psyche chuckles at Emil’s misunderstanding.

Remy’s far too deprecating for the King. No matter how much he flirts. A little tension leaves Rogue’s shoulders, to be replaced with just a touch of rueful disappointment. Remy probably doesn’t even know she’s here.

Emil raises his eyebrows. “Thought I was being romantic or some—“

“Ah want that card back, Emil,” she warns, hauling herself topside to find him dancing at the very edge of the rooftop opposite. 

He waggles his fingers and the faded, softened-from-use Queen of Hearts flashes over his knuckles. It vanishes into thin air. A thief working a magic trick. 

Lapin bounces on the balls of his feet. He shrugs. Recovered. “Gotta catch me first, Rogue,” he calls back.

Someone ought to shove him back in the silk hat he popped out of.

She can see the rigging that he’s fastened to his belt and harness. A Thief’s trick. Emil’s got the city covered in cables — they used to run the rooftops like a gauntlet to keep themselves fit. 

Rogue doesn’t wonder about the other Guild. 

She doesn’t worry about them anymore.

It’s almost worth the shock of surprise on Emil’s face when she steps to the very edge of the roof, hands on her lips, smiling a half-grin that’s mostly self-deprecation anyway.

It’s been a long time since he’s seen his dumb face.

Maybe she even missed it a bit.

Rogue lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug. “Suit yourself, sugar.”

She’s grinning as her toes lift off the roof: a mere three inches, her ankles tucking together as she hovers, muscles taut with control. Jean would be proud: Rogue’s form is damn near immaculate.

She flattens her palms against a bed of humid air that gathers her up, lifting her higher as the wind off the canal rolls through the Quarter, blowing her hair around her face and filling her with an airy lightness that makes her heart beat fast and hard against her ribcage.

She grins. 

Heart fit to bursting, Rogue realizes by the look on Emil’s face that she must look like a gosh darn superhero, and my oh my, what a change that must be for a Guild Thief who’s beat on her was a tracked SIM. Surprise, sugar! she wants to call down.

Lapin mouths a cuss word in French.

Rogue’s grin turns predatory.

“You best skedaddle.” He’s not going to get another warning.

Lapin vanishes off the rooftop — a two-scoot and dash, if she ever saw one. 

— And Rogue?

Rogue shoots down on him like a thunderbolt.