Any Kinda Breath

by Kaylee

He was wearing more clothing than he'd thought he could fit on his body; bundled to the teeth, and thickly. Winter sat cold and unfriendly over the grounds with no Ororo returned to ease its weight. Today he felt good, however, and in the last three months there had been perhaps as many days when that had been the case, so he was going to enjoy this, damnit, even if it meant slogging miserably through the numbing morass of wet New York snowfall. No way he'd miss it. Not when he was about to sign over yet another series of seemingly endless weeks to a third round of chemotherapy.

"Have you made any attempt to contact Ororo?" Beside him walked Henri, far less bedecked in clothing than he, strolling with the stride of a man who was determined to enjoy such a rare moment of wintry sunshine in the holiday season. His concession to the Christmas spirit was a floppy Santa hat he'd been wearing nearly every day since December 1. Remy was determined to steal it and stuff the tin bell at the tip with cotton before the day was out.

"Enh." His half-shrug was buried beneath fabric. Lots of fabric. Pointedly not festively colored fabric. "Be hard t' get in touch wit' her..."

"That's the voice of a man dissembling. With your connections I'm certain it wouldn't be too difficult."

His breath turned to mist. God, he wanted a cigarette, even now. "I ain' usin' my... 'connections.' Right now."

"Oh?"

He shrugged more brusquely and declined to answer.

Henri's head bowed briefly, gaze dropping to the ground in front of them. "Isolating yourself may prove detrimental, Remy," he said almost casually, not pushing.

"Just givin' m'self a li'l time t' get better, Henri." He'd seen to it personally that the most news regarding him that went out of this mansion was the offhand reference that he'd been sick, but underwent treatment. Let the teams think what they would. Being a spectacle wasn't something any thief worth a cheap take could stomach.

On a deeper level, the thought of having his vulnerabilities displayed... disturbed him, fundamentally. For rational reasons as well as instinctual ones. There were plenty of people out there who'd love nothing more than to facilitate an end to Remy LeBeau's life. Letting word of his current weakened state get out would be painting a neon sign saying "Good Eats" above his head.

He had a habit of falling out of contact with everyone around the holidays anyway. This shouldn't surprise any of the people he usually kept in touch with.

"Very well." Henri tipped his face back up, sunlight caressing blue fur and making it glow softly. The bell tinkled with tinny cheer. "I know how little you're looking forward to this, but in the vernacular... I'm afraid you'll have to suck it up. No matter what feelings you may have for past experiences, you at least have the assurance that you've endured worse."

"Understatement," Remy murmured. "Tell me again why we're doin' all this...?"

Henri's step hesitated, continued. "You're perfectly aware of the rationale."

"Am I? Y' friend Niles cut out the cancer. Why y' keep pumpin' that shit into me, Henri?"

"I've already explained to you," Henri began with a voice of infinite patience. "There's a possibility that the surgery failed to expunge all the carcinoma from your body."

"Possibility," he echoed. "Chance."

"Yes."

He pondered that a moment, then nodded with sarcastic comprehension. "Y're poisoning me on a chance."

Henri sighed deeply, steamy breath spreading in a diffusing cloud. "In all likelihood there is no cancer left inside you. As far as anyone can tell at the moment, the lobectomy was sufficient independently."

He was cold -- it felt as if the snow were seeping through his clothing, clinging to him wetly, biting. He was exhausted. He was bitter. "Funny how y' never put it quite like that b'fore." Before the treatment it had always been referred to as 'necessary.' It was only after he'd agreed to let them introduce harmful chemicals to his bloodstream that he'd come to understand that the doctors' definition of 'necessary' didn't exactly match his.

"The dilemma is that there is a possibility that we missed some of the cancer cells. We're unable to detect the disease on such a small scale, at least for now, I'm sorry to say. It doesn't take much for cancer to acquire a foothold."

"Y' t'ink y' got it all, but y're gon' make me go t'rough all dis again just in case." He nodded sagely. "I gotcha."

"Essentially... yes. That's correct." A gentler tone: "But regardless of how it sounds, we wouldn't be asking you to submit to this without compelling reason."

Silence for a bit as they walked. Remy shivered and tucked his hood higher. The chemo had thinned his blood, he decided. Made him that much more prey to the chill in the air. Facing these current challenges had made it easy to slide the memory of Antarctica to a distant corner of his thoughts, but the experience never quite faded entirely.

Eventually-- "Last one got... pretty bad, Henri." He'd taken the first two-week session well enough, then spent another two weeks recuperating before beginning the second course. That one hadn't been tolerated nearly as well. He'd lost weight with a rapidity that had caused Bobby to ply him with caloric foods at just about any time that he wasn't kneeling over a toilet or basin and emptying his stomach. Found bed too tempting, ended up dozing in chairs instead when he refused to give in and lie down. His clothes had stopped fitting properly. He wouldn't buy more for an intermediary stage, however, so made good use of belts with extra holes punched.

Only now was he even beginning to feel vaguely human again, so predictably it was time to hook back up to the poisons. Merry Christmas, Remy. Ha ha ho.

"Your body's actually handling the chemotherapy extremely well," Henri said unflappably. "The nausea is affecting your overall health, but the Compazine eased that somewhat and you're not suffering many of the prototypical reactions to the treatment."

Reflexively Remy slid a hand into his hood and ran fingers through his auburn hair. He hadn't admitted to anyone just how much trepidation he'd faced the idea of losing his hair with. "Lucky me," he muttered. "What happens if I say I don' wan' do the next treatment?"

"If you insist on being so self-destructively stubborn, no one can force you to acquiesce."

A humorless chuckle. "Li'l late, innit? Be a bitch if I quit now an' the cancer comes back." Be a worse bitch if he kept going and the cancer came back, he thought, but that pretty much went without saying. Besides... once he decided to fight, Remy LeBeau was no quitter. Jean-Luc raised him better than that, even if he'd lost sight of that for a time.

Even if some part of him still thought...

Words flashed through his mind involuntarily... words and an image he'd never forget... 'You don't have a right to reach out to him. Not after what you did. And... and you can't justify that. You can't. He may not see that, but I do, and I'm not gonna let--'

Bobby. He almost smiled even now. After finding him out in the yard with Rogue they hadn't discussed it... hadn't even mentioned the scene. Once he'd settled his stomach he'd carefully crawled into bed and, though he wouldn't admit the label, huddled beneath the covers in a disconsolate ball. It would've been an appallingly dismal afternoon if not for Bobby's utter fascination with the healing aspect of his powers that he'd inadvertently discovered. Remy had spent hours watching his lover inflict tiny little damages on himself -- a pinprick or a scratch, accompanied or sometimes even preceded by an "Ow!" and a quick transformation to ice, then a shift back to flesh and a delighted exclamation when the injury was "just gone, can you believe that? Cool...!"

The distraction had been entirely welcome. Between chemo-induced nausea and much more welcome amusement at Bobby's experimentation, Remy hadn't known what to think, then or since. The taboo subject had been breached, without his presence or permission, but entirely in his defense; a defense which he didn't allow himself, but...

... but... some part of him had to respond to what he'd heard, if only a little. The outside perspective, heedless of his own recrimination, couldn't help but skew his view. It didn't bear much thinking about -- he wasn't ready to consider letting go of his self-disgust entirely -- but it warmed him regardless.

Henri had been silent, not responding to the last, but now he glanced at his watch. "The afternoon seems determined to abscond. Are you prepared?"

He gazed across the yard at a magnolia tree that hadn't quite lost its splendor to the clawing cold. The blossoms had long since fallen and faded away. It didn't look festive either, but rather fatigued, it's strong branches bowed beneath the oppressive weight of snow.

Those blossoms could have been plucked, he reminded himself. Plucked and handed off in hopeful, uncertain gestures of affection. Attraction? He didn't want to muddle through figuring out which came first.

Magnolia blossoms. Funny, the things that stuck in the mind the most.

"Prepared?" He made himself smile with cocky self-assurance that he in no way felt. "Two more weeks. Piece a cake." With a last glance that he wouldn't allow to be wistful over the sun-dappled snow, he turned and bobbed his head at Henri. "Whatcha waitin' for? Sooner we get started, sooner we'll be done."

Henri gave a bemused smile and fell into step with him, that horrible bell tinkling, somehow still restraining that characteristic bound and matching his stride again. From anyone else that would have been one more reminder to his battered ego that he wasn't quite the man he'd been. He couldn't remember a time when Henri hadn't had to shorten his gait for anyone, however, so that at least he could let go. "For the record, my friend, in my opinion you've made the right decision."

"Didn' know there really was a decision at this point, Henri." But he swallowed the terseness that tried to twist his voice. "Still... merci, mon ami."

"Thank me by muscling through this. I'm growing weary of having my medical encyclopedias pilfered by Bobby. The sooner you're healthy again, the sooner my library is safeguarded."

"D'accord," Remy agreed, looking ahead to the mansion and the brightly lit tree that filled the closest visible window. "That's a deal."

***

"... sure you've been having no reoccurrence of nausea? Dizziness?"

"Non." A tiny, very tightly suppressed grin had been fixed on Remy's face for the past several minutes.

Niles was stubbornly refusing to respond to his grin even a little. "Your blood pressure's come down since the last time I saw you. Henry tells me it's back to your pre-treatment norm."

"Oh?" The smile was trying to get away from him. Remy shifted his seat on the examining table and played with the deck of cards in his hands, shuffling and reshuffling expertly. He hadn't played much with the cards these past months. He'd missed the cards.

"Ye-es." Niles' mouth quirked, then firmed again. "Your status reports have been excellent, actually. As I'm sure you're well aware."

"Moi?" He flipped a card up at random. Seemingly at random. Ace of Clubs. Still had the touch.

"Oui, toi," the doctor answered dryly. He dropped his nut-brown eyes to the papers in hand, flipping through them busily as Remy fought the sudden impish urge to swing his feet back and forth like a child. "You're not gaining weight as fast as I'd like, however."

"Fast metabolism," Remy informed him cheerfully. "Once I get some good Cajun cookin' I'm gon' bulk up again real quick."

"I'm sure. We'll see about removing the port in a few weeks, unless it's giving you any problems...?"

"Soon as possible. Not today."

Niles made no comment at that, let the papers lay flat on the clipboard again and gave him a brief once-over glance as if he hadn't already done the basic physical. "How about your breathing? Any pain?"

"Non. Still get a li'l short a breath if I push it hard, but it's gettin' better."

A sharp look. "What exactly constitutes pushing it hard?"

Remy flashed the grin. "I ain' out runnin' yet. Too much walkin', too many stairs... that sorta t'ing."

"Mm hm." The eyes were assessing, but after a moment Niles snorted faintly and shook his head. "All right. You've been over all this with Henry exhaustively already. Do you have any questions for me?"

"Nope."

"No?" Eyebrows raised. "You're three weeks out of chemotherapy, just starting to kick again, and you have no questions whatsoever?"

"Right." He flipped up another card. Jack of Hearts. Grinned like a loon and ignored the absolutely puzzled look Niles was giving him.

"Am I keeping you from an appointment?" the man asked with a wry twist to his mouth. "Something more important than verifying your health?"

"Not 'xactly."

"'Not exactly'?"

"You seen Bobby?"

Niles stared at him a moment, then actually chuckled in sudden comprehension. "Well. I'd say your recovery is... ahead of schedule." A half-smile, very knowing, with just a glint of white teeth between dark lips. "If you really have no questions, we're through here."

"Bon!" Remy hopped off the table and reached for his shirt. The thinness of his arm would've been an embarrassment if he wasn't in such an extraordinarily good and anticipatory mood, he reflected cheerfully. He slipped the loose thing on and tugged it this way and that for a moment before shrugging and grinning simultaneously at the doctor's frankly amused look. "Not much point, eh?"

Niles' smile warmed just a little, just for a moment. "I don't think he'll mind."

Tucking cards in a pocket, Remy took his leave with a jaunty nod.

He took the stairs because he could. Lots of stairs, but he was getting good at pacing himself and already looking forward to the pleasurable misery of getting back in shape again. No time to start like the present...

A month ago Guthrie had found him on these very stairs, halfway up and sagging there with too much stubborn stupidity to turn around and make his way down. Humiliating as that had been, he could nearly laugh at it now. Good ol' Sam. Great kid, really. So calm and polite: 'Let me give you a hand there, sir... pretty good hike up these stairs, innit?' Remy had given in, resigned, all the while wishing with a mix of bitterness and wistfulness that he was in the right kind of shape to teach the kid some of the Capoeira moves he'd learned in the back streets of Rio de Janeiro.

But the way things were going, in a couple of months he might well be able to do that again. Then, he thought, he might just spend a while showing every teammate those moves, just for practice. And maybe he'd take another stab at knocking Logan on his ass... he'd done it before... see who could claim the title...

He took a breath and didn't even grimace at the lingering soreness in his chest. Today was the first day in what seemed like ages that he'd woken up and felt good. Naturally that had to happen on a morning when he had an early appointment in the medlab with Niles. Irritating as that had been he was now free, energetic, and wanting little more than to take advantage of this renewed vigor...

... by finding Bobby as soon as humanly possible.

Jean started down the stairs from above; saw him and grinned. "So it went well."

He slowed down a little to spare breath for words. "Oui. Can' stop now, though... Doc Niles is gon' be chewin' t'rough dem ropes any minute."

Her laughter was bells. "I wanted a word with Hank. I won't keep you."

"Franchement, la," he informed her. "Damn straight you won't." He gave a wicked smile, hardly caring if it looked out of place on him now. It wouldn't for much longer if he could help it.

He hit the landing. Heard Scott's voice somewhere below and quickened his pace a bit, determined to not be sidetracked by a single other person before reaching his goal. Ducked around the corner leading into their wing and only avoided slamming into Logan because the other man sidestepped quickly.

"Allo," he said, barely glancing. "In a hurry, can' talk now."

Logan snorted, said something about "Kids," and vanished around the corner without anything more risqué than that.

And then he was at the door, reaching for the doorknob, still wearing that grin...

He hesitated.

Four and a half months. Eighteen weeks. One hundred and twenty-six days, give or take a few. It was quite possibly the longest period he'd gone without since he was sixteen.

The grin faded.

What was this? He couldn't... he couldn't be getting performance anxiety, could he? It hadn't been that long, and he was Remy LeBeau, and waiting in that room was Bobby, who really had developed a sheer talent for creative application of the knowledge gleaned from those books of his...

The door opened under his still hand. Blue eyes in a worried face met him, searched his. "Okay, I waited like you asked... now how did it go?"

All by itself, aided and abetted by the ridiculous giddiness flooding through his very blood, the smile came through again. He let his hands have free rein; they caught Bobby's face between them, holding him there as Remy stepped close, curved his neck, found parted lips and tasted them. That was not a tremble in his fingers. There was no rock sitting in his throat. His heart couldn't be pounding so fiercely from nothing but the lightest of kisses.

Bobby's hands went to his arms and he pulled away a little, searching Remy's face. The visit with Niles had been more formality than anything, but it was just like Bobby to be certain that he'd missed some single vital word by not being there. "What'd he say?"

"He said what Henri's been sayin'." Not easily deterred, he pressed another kiss to those warm lips as he nudged Bobby back into the room and let the door swing shut behind them. "He said my blood pressure's good." The door clicked. Remy freed a hand to lock it. "He said my lungs're good." And then he had that face in his hands again and was kissing those lips; light, urgent brushes. "He said my heart's good." Bobby was giving up the reservation, beginning to press against him, lips starting to move with his insistently while hands went from holding his arms to gripping, letting some of that nerve-thrumming tension bleed through to mingle with Remy's own. "He said that if there's anyt'ing there, they can' find it."

Words came raggedly: "Did he say... anything about... exercise...?"

"Doctor's orders," he breathed into Bobby's ear. "Bed-bound f' t'ree days. Lotsa exercise. No excuses."

Bobby's laughter sounded nothing like bells, but was warm and ecstatic and tickled his skin time and again, all throughout the afternoon.

***

"OOF!"

"Shoulda seen that one comin', cher."

"Remy, when... when you're out here... getting your butt kicked... then you can say that!" Bobby rubbed said posterior, grimacing, breathing in uneven gasps. There were many, many things a person could say about Logan, but no one could ever claim that the hairball wasn't a thorough instructor. Thorough enough that Bobby thought he'd been sure to bruise every single muscle group in his aching body.

Logan stood there unflustered, ten feet away, barely even breathing hard. "Get up."

"Gimme a... second... I think you broke my butt..."

From his comfortable seat against the wall of the Danger Room, Remy observed, "Y' don' get up soon he's gon' do worse."

Bobby sent a mild glare his way. "Aren't you supposed to be... my cheering section?"

A flash of teeth. "I'm jus' here t' admire the view, joli."

Joli. Another French word Remy had taken to using on him lately, and one that Bobby filed away to look up later. It couldn't be anything too risqué -- Logan hadn't so much as batted an eyelash at it, and he knew French. On the other hand, Logan could match profanities with the likes of Victor Creed and worse without batting an eyelash, so that wasn't necessarily a guarantee.

Bobby nobly restrained the groan and found his feet again. Three weeks into intense hand-to-hand training with Logan, and so far the only progress he could see was that Logan was actually sweating a little after whipping his tail from one end of the Danger Room to the other. At this rate I might be able to lay a finger on him in, oh, a decade. It came to Bobby repeatedly that he probably looked like ten different kinds of dorks out here. If not for the fact that both his tutor and his personal critic were so... professional... when they actually got around to explaining what he'd done wrong, he was fairly certain that his effort to be a more 'well-rounded X-Man' would've ended after the first lesson.

Today's session finished ten minutes later on a higher note than the last several had. Instead of leaving Bobby in a panting puddle on the floor, Logan let him quit when he was still wavering on unsteady feet and counting twinkly things as they flashed across his vision. "Blocks," the short man said briefly. "Work on 'em. Next time we'll turn it up a notch."

Bobby waved weakly. "Right. Up a notch. No... sweat."

Logan snorted. Grabbed a towel, flung it around his shoulders, and walked out with only that, meaning that Bobby couldn't have been doing too badly. Remy said something to him with the bantering tone of ego-flashing, to which Logan answered with words sounding suspiciously like a challenge. Probably a comment on how soon Remy would be looking to get himself bruised and battered again. Now that he was feeling human again he was already making noises about getting back to working out with the team. Hank responded to those with the expected dire threats.

Remy found his feet and leaned back against the wall casually, waiting. Three months out of chemo had seen some definite improvement in his condition, but he still looked half-starved, and that wasn't even Bobby being overly critical. Weight was slow in returning. Sometimes he still got out of breath even with mundane life details.

"Y' gotta get more aggressive," Remy said while Bobby sucked in breaths. "Y're holdin' back too much an' waitin' f' him t' make the first move all the time."

"That's 'cause... when I make the first move... he hurts me!"

What sounded like a laugh, but quickly turned to something else. Bobby straightened abruptly and paid close attention when Remy pressed a forearm over his mouth and smothered--

"--coughing? When did you start--"

"A cold," Remy cut quickly, covering the coughs with a chuckle. "Jus' started, an' it ain' bad. Look around. Everyone's got it 'cept you an' Logan an' Rogue."

Bobby's brow furrowed in a frown and he walked over, dashing sweat from his forehead with a forearm, taking the towel Remy offered almost as an afterthought as he peered at his lover's face. Skin color looked good, uniquely exotic eyes were alert and bright. "Still, just in case, maybe we should--"

A pleasant, but very implacable smile. "How 'bout we don't? It's not enough t' bug Henri wit'."

Bobby tried to force a teasing grin, but it fell a little flat. "Aw, I've been going easy on him lately. He needs to be pestered. He's not happy if he's not pestered."

The smile faded. "No." Remy pushed off the wall and walked to the door. "I gotta get a few t'ings done. See y' later."

With a sigh and a resigned wave, Bobby leaned back against the wall Remy had vacated. There was a difference between irritated and genuinely mad, and he was pretty sure Remy hadn't crossed the line into the latter, but it was often hard to tell when the Cajun decided to go closemouthed on him. There were so many layers to the man...

Still musing, Bobby shifted briefly to ice, reveling in the immediate and soothing cold, then transformed back in a slow and languorous wave from feet to head. In the wake of the ice his muscles were cool, relaxed, without a strain or tear to ache later. He was beginning to understand how Logan could take all the training he subjected himself to.

Now if only he could do something about not being hit...

Some hours later Bobby sprawled crosswise on the bed in their room, paging with marginal interest through a book Logan had shoved at him with a grunt that had sounded like, "You need this." It was called 'Karate-Do' and was, as near as Bobby could tell, written A Very Long Time Ago. An interest in learning how to defend himself sans powers hadn't yet truly translated into an interest in the history and development of the martial arts, but he was giving it a shot before shelving the text. He feared his teammate's response if he did otherwise. Logan didn't often give advice, so it was occasionally worth listening when he bothered to.

He was almost getting just a little bit absorbed in the diagrams when Remy finally came in, but his attention shifted abruptly at the greeting: "Allo."

He sat up and swung his legs off the bed. "When did you start getting hoarse?"

Remy stopped in his tracks; rolled his eyes, not without amusement this time. "Ah cher, stop worrying," he said in that somewhat husky voice. "Just got that li'l cough, 'at's all." He qualified quickly, "A real li'l cough."

"Have you had Hank look at your throat?" Bobby stood, that earlier frown returning easily. "You haven't, have you?"

"Bobby."

He flushed a little crimson, having just enough awareness of how much he sometimes overreacted to feel a tad sheepish, but not quite enough to stop the worry in its tracks. "It's just to be on the safe side."

A calculatedly slow grin... the kind that he found it so hard to not respond to, no matter the situation. Remy caught him by the shoulders and pulled him into a full-length hug, which was another thing he found it very hard to not respond to, damn that smug Cajun...

But the words he murmured into Bobby's hair weren't teasing despite the setup. "I know it's been a long year, cher."

"Six months, three weeks," Bobby corrected automatically, settling into the embrace more comfortably, not letting himself think too much about how thin Remy still was. "But who's counting?"

A little huff of breath that might have been a laugh. "Well, a long six months, three weeks. An' in case I ain' made this clear a t'ousand ways... y' been wonderful. I mean..." And he faltered here, sounding uncharacteristically awkward. "I wouldn'... I couldn' have... asked you..."

Bobby started to draw back, wanting to see his face, but Remy's arms were too snug and didn't seem intent on loosening anytime soon. He tried to tell himself that the gesture was simply affection, not liking the desperation he thought he felt in it, the fumbling words that weren't being said to his face. "Hey," he said, muffled into a thin shoulder. "Hey, c'mon, it's... y'know, that whole 'loving you' thing..." It was probably a good thing his face was buried in Remy's shirt, considering how hot it felt. Even after all this time the blush loved to appear at those words. "You didn't have to ask..."

A tremble through the too thin body that almost had Bobby really concerned until it resolved itself into quiet laughter by his ear. Tickling laughter. "Yeah," Remy agreed in that rusty voice, and didn't seem to have anything else to say.

So Bobby did pull back after a moment, putting on as stern a look as he could manage. Remy might very well brush this off as he so often did -- Bobby's growing competence with the technical medical jargon no longer made much of an impact after months of frequent reference -- but he was determined to give it a shot anyway. "But the American Cancer Institute website says that hoarseness can be an early warning sign of a recurrence of lung cancer, caused by a growth in the lung putting pressure on the recurrent laryngeal nerve, and that means--"

Remy kissed him. Thoroughly. Slowly. And almost succeeded entirely in chasing the words from Bobby's head by the time those achingly fierce and tender lips drew back.

Almost. "You should at least have Hank look at your throat," he continued stubbornly as soon as he was able.

"Bobby. I. Am. Fine." Remy let him go entirely and walked over to the closet, pushing Bobby's clothes aside and grabbing for one of his leather dusters. "Everyone's got a cold now, right?"

"But not everyone had lung cancer."

A wry look from red-black eyes. "Give it a while b'fore y' sign my death warrant."

"Remy!"

"Ah, merde, I didn' mean that..." A long sigh as he slid into the duster one sleeve at a time. "Jus' don' go borrowin' trouble, eh? I spent enough time t'inkin' 'bout bein' sick when I was sick."

Guilt tap-tapped at Bobby's chest. At three months out of chemo Remy was just beginning to really feel like himself again. It wasn't the time to jump at shadows.

Remy left again, stopping briefly to kiss him again in wordless reconciliation. Bobby responded, said nothing, watched him head out. Then he flopped down on the bed with a grunt and a sigh and stared at the ceiling, debating just how to rewire thought processes he'd been establishing for six months, three weeks.

And two days and nineteen hours, but who really was counting?

It was hard to let go of emotion that had been such a part of him for so long, though. For the longest six months, three weeks of his life he'd been exhaustively mindful of restless sleep in his partner, any irregular breaths, every hacking cough as lungs tried to repair themselves from the damage of more than a decade of smoking. A tremor, a hiss of pain, a hollow cast to features that had only just started to regain the visage of health. He'd noiselessly drawn blankets up around Remy's unconscious form countless times when he'd walked in to find him passed out in a chair or on the sofa in their room. He'd helplessly crouched there, hands resting uselessly on a spasming body while his lover heaved over a basin, over a toilet, out on the grounds...

But that had only continued for a couple of weeks after the chemotherapy ended. For more than two months Remy had been well on his way back to health. If Bobby kept clinging to that nebulous specter of future maybes...

'I spent enough time t'inkin' 'bout bein' sick when I was sick.'

No. Adding that burden of constant anxiety wasn't helping Remy at all.

A cold. It was the season for them. Jean had been battling the sniffles unsuccessfully for a week, actually. Even Scott had taken to popping the occasional throat lozenges.

Remy was recovering from everything almost stunningly well, and amazingly fast. Maybe it was time to put a little faith back into chance and fortune again. Just be grateful for Remy's life, and that he himself had found the strength to last through it, and that it was over.

It was over.

And he continued to tell himself that very earnestly, every day, until three nights of restless sleep on Remy's part turned into a fourth night during which Bobby woke to feel too much warmth radiating off of the sheet-tangled body beside him.

He blinked blearily at the clock as he came out of sleep. Just after five AM. He hadn't even been the sort to get out of bed at five AM when he'd been pushing himself to do something with that accounting degree. The only times he could recall seeing five AM prior to the last six months, three weeks, six days and... no, it was seven days and some hours now, which meant that it was officially seven months, not six... but he still couldn't remember seeing five AM before that unless he was seeing it before turning in for the night, and frankly, his social life hadn't been fast enough to cause that to happen often.

The back his arm was flung over had a light sheen of sweat dampening skin. Remy's forehead rested on a forearm, the pillow having found its way to the floor sometime during the past hours. His breathing was deep but a little more rapid than Bobby liked.

"Remy," he said tiredly, nudging him a little as he drew his arm away. "Hey. Wake up."

A protesting murmur as that face buried itself in the circle of arm.

"C'mon." He nudged a little more firmly against ribs. "We've gotta take your temperature."

"mmhmm... mmas'eep..."

Bobby closed his eyes and sighed, then opened them and leaned over decisively. "Remy," he murmured into a slightly turned up ear.

"... mmph...?"

Grinning a little despite the circumstances, Bobby dropped his lips lower until they just grazed the sensitive lobe. "I need you to wake up, Remy."

Stillness, though breath had shallowed too much for sleep. "Mmm..."

He nuzzled his partner's ear and whispered, "I need you."

Much shallower breath. "Hmm... cher..."

"Wake up, Remy." The tiniest of kisses on the sensitive skin just below the ear, evoking a rather pleased murmur. "Wake up..."

Remy rolled over, blinking sleepily but smiling, and started to reach arms around him. Bobby sat up and turned on the light.

"Hey!" Remy's arm went over his face briefly, and red irises glared out at Bobby from beneath its shelter.

With a winning smile Bobby waved the thermometer he'd taken to keeping in the bedside stand months ago. "Open your mouth."

"That was low," Remy grumbled in a rare display of petulance.

"Open," Bobby repeated firmly.

"I don' wanna."

The bedsprings creaked softly as Bobby shifted closer, then closer, then straddled his partner's outstretched legs and sat lightly on his thighs. Remy eyed him warily with a firmly stubborn expression. The expression didn't change much when Bobby let an exploratory hand wander into rich auburn hair, running the sleep-tousled mass through combing fingers.

"Please?" Bobby said in his absolute best imploring tone, throwing in The Eyes that he'd figured out a few months ago were his best weapon.

Remy scowled a little too fiercely for it to be genuine and crossed his arms over his chest. "No."

Bobby leaned in and whispered against The Spot at the juncture of neck and shoulder, "Pretty please?"

The shiver pretty much betokened fading resistance, but still there was another obstinate, "No."

Bobby nibbled up the neck to the scruffy jawline and nipped lightly. "Pretty please with sugar on top?"

A long moment of silence, during which Bobby devoted more attention to the set jaw and let his hand slip down to rub rhythmically at his partner's neck.

"Okay," Remy said after a minute.

With a victorious smile Bobby straightened and offered the thermometer. Remy glared with low voltage and accepted it, then mumbled, "Ain' fair."

"What's not?"

"Y're gettin' 'wiles.'"

"Women get wiles. I'm getting cunning." He unstraddled Remy and planted an unrepentant kiss on his cheek as he curled up beside him with a jaw-cracking yawn. "And stop talking. You know it messes up the reading when you talk."

"Hmph."

The sky outside their window was lightening even as they watched, the dark gray taking on the rose cast of the coming sunrise. Looked like rain today. He could feel on the corner of his awareness the heaviness of moisture hanging in the sky over the grounds. He loved rain. It made him feel connected with everything from the mud on the ground to the clouds in the sky.

An arm settled around his shoulders. He glanced to find Remy gazing silently out the window as well, back to blinking tiredly but having let the scowl fade.

When he checked the thermometer a moment later he felt the first real tinge of disquietude start to form in his chest.

"What is it?" Remy asked in a mostly disinterested tone.

"One hundred point two."

"Don' sound too bad..."

"It's not all that high, but..." No. No chances. "I'm gonna call Hank, okay?"

An elegant hand gestured at the clock. "Nah, don' call him this early..."

But Bobby was already reaching for the phone. "He'll be up. Well, he'll be hitting the snooze button, but he's usually out of bed by five-thirty on weekdays."

Remy reached out swiftly, put a hand over the arm he'd stretched for the phone. When he met the red-on-black eyes Bobby felt another chill. A deeper one. He hadn't seen that glint of uneasiness in those eyes in a while. "Bobby, don't..."

Gently he freed his arm, kissed the back of the hand that'd held it, and picked up the phone.

***

"So how do you want to present this?"

Marcus ignored the underlying inflection to that level question from his old friend and colleague. "I'll present the facts and the treatment options." He was staring thoughtfully at the handful of magazines Henry had left on the countertop beside the stainless steel sink, lost in contemplation of attack and counterattack. "LeBeau is an intelligent man, and it's my impression that he won't want us to sugarcoat this."

"Marcus..." That inflection was stronger now. Henry's baritone voice carried subtleties well. "Perhaps we should also present... alternative options. Just as possibilities to be aware of."

"Alternative options, Henry?" Marcus' voice wasn't so deep, but also carried nuances quite well. He raised an eyebrow at his blue-furred companion in quiet challenge.

Hank's gaze didn't falter. "Pain management, Marcus. If he decides to refuse treatment."

If he decided to refuse treatment. If he only focused on the uncomfortable meaning behind the semantics Marcus would be explaining the situation with: The treatment will be worse this time, and the chance of survival tremendously less.

"Nonsense."

"'Nonsense'? On the contrary... it's a very likely potentiality. You saw the toll the last round of chemotherapy took on his resources. And that was a relatively mild chemo. With the evidence we have that this may have gone systemic we would have to consider a much more aggressive class of chemicals."

Marcus stood from the tall stool and walked to the small fridge Henry kept down here. In between a few foods that a doctor probably shouldn't actually consider ingesting, including cold Twinkies of all things, were a couple of bottles of sparkling water. He helped himself to one, closed the fridge and leaned against the wall. Didn't bother meeting that steady gaze. "Yes. Obviously we didn't push it hard enough last time. If we had the cancer wouldn't have recurred."

"And so you believe it's in Remy's best interest to attack it more aggressively."

"Of course. If we don't we might as well sign off on him." He took a drink of the sparkling water, swallowing the coolness down a tight throat, then said, "I'm not in the habit of giving up, Henry."

"I'm very aware of that." And the inflection was stronger. "Hell would freeze over before Marcus G. Niles surrendered to cancer."

He answered flatly, "Sarcasm has no place here."

"Sarcasm? I believe I was merely presenting a statement of fact." An equally flat tone: "How did Time put it? 'He's waging a war, and his patients make up the battleground.'"

"That was a pretentious exaggeration." Attack. Counterattack. "I'm a doctor. It's my job to exhaust every avenue of treatment available. 'I will follow that regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patient.'"

Hank finished the line bluntly: "'... and abstain from whatever is deleterious.' I took the Hippocratic Oath as well, Marcus."

The dark-skinned jaw tightened. "Are you questioning my competence to assess this situation or my motives?"

With a snort Hank told him mildly, "No one who's seen your results would argue your competence. The question I'm presenting is... are we going to be asking this young man to go through a grueling treatment that will ultimately accomplish nothing?"

"I thought this 'young man' was your friend, Henry."

"He is," Hank said simply, blue eyes still unflinching. "And it's because of that fact that I'm loath to see him suffer needlessly."

Marcus slipped the water bottle to his right hand and tapped it rhythmically against his left, ticking off what they knew. "The examination of the lymph nodes indicated metastasis, but that's no guarantee that it's gone systemic. The PET-scan only revealed a relatively small mass in the left lung." And he would not ask just how Hank came to have in his possession a Positron Emission Tomography scanner when relatively few hospitals around the world maintained the expensive and highly advanced technology. Some things he'd learned not to question. "There was no sign of carcinoma anywhere else in the body that we could detect." He took another quick swallow of sparkling water and stared at nothing in particular. "If we remove the rest of the lung and the affected lymph nodes and put him on a stronger chemo, he still has a chance."

Silence was his answer for nearly half a minute, and then Hank cleared his throat. "As I've said numerous times, Marcus... I have the utmost respect for your skill and experience. I cannot argue with your results. However... I suggest that you consider the difference between 'time' and 'quality time' in this evaluation." Heaviness in that voice. Sadness. An emotion Marcus knew well. "We've both seen the worst case scenarios of long-term illnesses. We both know what pressure that inflicts on the patient and the patient's loved ones."

Marcus stared with great absorption at the water bottle. Hank was asking him for a judgment call based on his years of experience battling this disease. They were both aware of the current situation; both knew that the cancer was aggressive, and any future treatment countering it would have to be equally so. The pneumonectomy -- the removal of the lung -- was the first necessary step if such treatment were to be pursued. After that would have to come chemotherapy that would tax every remaining resource the young man had. Marcus wasn't in the habit of quitting, but he also wasn't in the habit of torturing patients who had no real chance.

The fact that, with sixteen years of practical experience, he had to deliberately ask himself that question about the man's chances was not an encouraging sign.

"What was the first thing you told me about LeBeau when you called me in to consult, Henry?"

He heard the rustle of fur and glanced to find Hank rubbing tiredly at his face, glasses in hand. "I told you that Remy is a fighter."

"Why did you tell me that?"

A quiet snort that didn't sound particularly amused. Hank gave him a wry look as he placed his glasses back over his eyes. "Because I'm fully aware that you're as demanding of your patients as you are of yourself, and I believed that you wouldn't take the case otherwise."

Marcus nodded once. "You're right. I wouldn't have. I have enough demands on my time as it is."

"Yet you did accept the case."

"I did, and I don't intend to let it go." He'd been... disturbed, with the response LeBeau had shown to the testing. The man had displayed a certain resentful passivity... an almost sullen acceptance of the necessity of the procedures, disclaiming their purpose while making no real argument against them. Marcus had seen many, many patients over the years, and this attitude had in his experience often accompanied the beginning of resignation. Fatalism. "Give me the benefit of my years in the field, Henry. Let me present this to him as I see fit." He finally fixed the other doctor with a very direct look. "You know I can't make any promises. If he makes it through this, for the rest of his life he'll have to be aware that there's still a possibility of recurrence. I can offer him a shot and that's all. The question is whether or not that's enough for this man." He paused, reluctant to offer such a qualitative judgment of a man with whom he'd had only limited dealings, but feeling the assessment valid regardless. "From what I've seen of him... and from what I can assume based on the scarring in his lungs indicating that he's survived under extreme circumstances previously... I have to believe that it will be enough."

Hank stared at him for another interminable period, then sighed all the way from the bottom of that enlarged chest and nodded acceptance. "As long as Remy is made altogether aware of what he's in for should he undergo this treatment, I'm in agreement with your decision."

With a 'thwap' Marcus set the water bottle down on the counter. "Well then. What are we waiting for?"

"Lead the way, Pyrrhus," Hank told him with a wave of the hand.

Marcus tensed. He knew Greco-Roman history as well as the next educated man, and he was aware of the significance of the name. Pyrrhus had won countless battles, but always at great cost in the lives of his soldiers. A Pyrrhic victory was one in which the cost of the battle outweighed the worth of the victory.

He'd never believed in Pyrrhic victories in his field, and he didn't intend to start now.

The look he gave Henry was too expressionless to be considered rebuking, but the blue-furred doctor sighed in concession to the inappropriateness of the remark, hand gesturing in wordless apology. Marcus hesitated, then nodded acceptance. He glanced toward the door, the waiting room beyond in which LeBeau and his lover sat awaiting the verdict. "Shall we?"

Hank rubbed his forehead briefly, eyes closed, then stood with that agile grace Marcus couldn't help admiring. "I would sooner endure a root canal without anesthesia." He straightened his glasses and lifted his chin a little. "Let's go."

***

He was barely aware of the quiet buzz of excitement running through the mansion; preparation for the arrival of old friends. The news that Warren and Elizabeth were returning from overseas hadn't made much of a dent on his awareness. He had... other things... on his mind. Things that scared him.

Yes, he thought he could use that word without flinching now. 'Scared.' It fit frighteningly well, didn't it?

The cancer was back, and this time they wanted to remove his entire lung to try to get rid of it. To try.

Niles was as encouraging as he'd been seven months ago, with his own unique brand of insistence. 'Here's what we're going to do,' he'd said as if there were no questions whatsoever. And then he'd gone on to spell out procedures that Remy could barely listen to without paling, with a mostly quiet Henri giving infrequent nods of support. It had been all Remy could do to keep his composure while Bobby sat there hearing the news with him; if he were to crack in front of his lover he might as well have intentionally set out to hurt him, badly, because any response Remy showed Bobby would take worse to a factor of ten.

But... his entire lung. Recovery from that operation, then three more months during which he'd undergo chemo, worse chemo than before. And all on what? On a maybe? Niles had presented the information as a given, taking his acceptance as assured, but even he had admitted that statistically Remy's longterm chances had halved. How easy would it be for the man to make the decision if it were him who'd be going through this?

Remy reached for the coat he kept by the door, pausing momentarily as he caught sight of his own outstretched arm. Before, when he'd first come 'home' from Antarctica, he'd made some effort to hide his thinness. Concealing vulnerabilities was a habit he'd learned young and never let go of. When had that come to matter so little? Why was it less important to hide his emaciated condition now than it had been those too-short years ago?

For the period during and immediately following the chemotherapy he had no answer. Whatever his reasons had been, they weren't within easy grasp. Today, though, looking back, it seemed as if it had never been more than a useless gesture and a wasted effort. Now more than ever he was tired. And somehow the fight just didn't seem worth it anymore.

***

The first glimpse had come as enough of a shock to actually cause Warren to stumble in his steps. He hadn't seen LeBeau since before he'd been called to take a more active role in Worthington Enterprises overseas the better part of a year ago, and since that time his communication with the team and his old friends had been unintentionally sporadic. Betsy, still reeling from the forced loss of her telepathy all those months ago, had shown even less desire to keep a line open back to the old homefront.

Somewhere in his memory he could dimly recall having received word in passing that LeBeau was sick. 'Sick' in his mind had meant the flu. 'Sick' had perhaps indicated a bad virus. It hadn't been put in a context that set off any alarms, and after sending a general politic message wishing for LeBeau's health he hadn't thought about it at all. It hadn't occurred to him that his old teammates were being particularly closemouthed about the issue simply because he hadn't had any reason to question.

He hadn't had any reason to wonder if when they said 'sick,' they really meant 'dying.'

LeBeau passed through the foyer like a slow, stilted ghost, and Warren watched him from the upstairs landing and thought he could count the man's bones beneath his shirt. When the Cajun reached out, hesitated, then grabbed and donned a long coat Warren walked quietly to the top of the stairs and waited until Remy had gone out to descend and exit through a side entrance. He took to the air immediately outside, beating his way upward with powerful wingstrokes, then took a look over the yard with his eagle's-eye perspective.

Only by focusing on each individual movement he made was he able to keep the fury in check.

When LeBeau merely wandered with seeming aimlessness around the perimeter of the house Warren swooped down, arced up, settled lightly to his feet with a few more flaps of giant wings no more than three strides from the other man.

LeBeau stared at him with blank, flat eyes, not looking in the least surprised at his arrival. "Wings," he said in a voice that sounded rough and hoarse. "Long time no see."

Warren took in the gauntness of the tall frame, the hollowness of cheeks, and remembered where he'd seen similar distinct features. "You son of a bitch."

The Cajun smiled slowly, not pleasantly, with a look of twisted satisfaction. "Still mad 'bout that li'l spat we had, huh? Damn, homme, y' do know how t' hold a grudge."

How dare he? How dare he talk about trivialities when... "How could you do this to him? You... you just..." Oh God, please, let Bobby be safe. "Did you infect him? Did you?"

LeBeau stared at him with an expression of absolute stillness for a moment. Warren found a desire to take that coldly reserved façade and tear it to see what was beneath it, but at the same time wasn't sure he wanted to know. The antipathy he and LeBeau shared wasn't something that need ever be explored; they'd both more or less agreed to that throughout their more unpleasant dealings.

But never in his worst imaginings had Warren pictured this and the danger it presented to an old friend. It was all he could do to stay here to get the story instead of racing off to find someone and get every detail he could. Why hadn't anyone told him? He could perhaps understand the reluctance to say anything when he was so far away, but now? Had he been missing obvious signs? Why hadn't Jean or Scott said something?

Bobby... God, worse than he'd ever feared... so much worse...

"Infect him." LeBeau seemed to think about the words, watching him coldly and clinically. Coat waving about too-thin legs, he stood braced, staring, sickly. "Y' figure t'ings out quick, don'tcha? Shoulda been a detective. I t'ink y' got a gift."

Warren took in an unsteady breath, eyes closing briefly. The Cajun had to be baiting him... even he couldn't talk so casually about giving Bobby AIDS... "Tell me," he said gratingly as he opened his eyes to glare, "tell me that Bobby's okay."

Remy's mouth twisted into something like a leer. "'Okay'? Bobby's the best. Bobby's the greatest fuck I've had since--"

And then Warren was at him, ignoring déjà vu, feeling the jolt through the skinny body as Remy's back met the outer wall of the mansion forcefully. There was a grunt and then a sharp expletive from the man in his grasp, and a quickly aborted struggle.

Warren's throat was tight and he had to swallow hard to get words through. "Bastard! Manipulative bastard! You told him you loved him! You, you told him that you wouldn't hurt him! How could you?!" A sound came from his throat that couldn't decide if it wanted to be a furious growl or a vocalization of desperate denial. He knew LeBeau was scum, but somehow... somehow he'd almost believed...

"I bet," the man gasped out, "betcher glad I turned y' down, neh? 'Cause the man that... that fucks Remy LeBeau... gets fucked, don' he...?"

And this time the sound was a strained cry of denial. "I swear to Christ, if you've given him this..."

"What he has," said a nearby voice, "he can't give me."

Warren turned so fast that the suddenly freed Cajun staggered. He hadn't heard Bobby approach. Hadn't heard anything at all except...

Bobby's eyes were narrowed, but otherwise his expression was a fierce muddle. "If you were almost anyone else I'd freeze the blood in your veins right now." A pause, blue eyes flickering past him, then a flash of teeth. Warren hadn't seen that expression on his friend's face often; that consideration followed by burning resolution. "And if he's bleeding under there from the stunt you just pulled I might do it anyway."

Remy, panting against the wall, ground out, "I got dis, Bobby."

"Bobby," Warren said falteringly, "I was just... you're okay..." And... and threatening him? What was going on here? "What do you mean, he can't give it to you? 'Bleeding under there'? What...?"

"I mean exactly what I said," he answered flatly. He walked toward them with carefully measured steps. How long had he been out here? "He just had surgery, Warren."

"I said go, Bobby!" Remy spat.

Warren looked from one to the other. "I don't understand... what... what surgery...?"

"Don' say--"

"A test to see if the cancer's spread," Bobby told him with whatever was beyond 'fury' in his eyes and voice. "Can you get that through your head, or do you wanna beat it out of him?"

Cancer.

He faced Remy sharply and took a breath to say... to say something, but all he could really see was that haggard face and the pain that he'd just put there in his rage, and God, this wasn't possible, how could he have made such a mistake?

The Cajun had a hand braced against the wall and looked as if he were trying and failing to stand straight. "Don' look at me like that," he growled, panting, glaring out of those hot-coal eyes.

Hearing the waver in the man's voice, Warren's eyes went wide. The barest edge of comprehension began to sink in. "Oh my God, Remy, I'm--"

Remy's face twisted. His teeth bared and his fist flashed out simultaneously, so that Warren couldn't even tell which came first. He didn't even have time to think 'dodge' before the fist connected.

And... it barely even rocked him. Barely even stung. And when he shook his head and looked back at LeBeau, blinking under the assault of too much new information at once, he saw a flash of mirroring shock, dawning horror, in the other man's face.

LeBeau turned too quickly, grabbed the wall for balance. Bobby was there suddenly and reaching for an arm, saying something quiet, face transformed from fury to concern in just a heartbeat. Warren could only take a step back, tucking his wings tightly against his back in unconscious and undesired sympathy to the feel of pure vulnerability pouring off the other man, watching in frozen silence while he waited for his thoughts to stop reeling.

Remy shrugged Bobby's hands off sharply, spat something too low and vicious to be heard, and half-lurched away, walking very fast and very unsteadily. Bobby stared after him for an instant, motionless.

"Bobby...?" Warren began hesitantly.

Bobby's voice was toneless, and not like anything he could ever remember hearing from his friend. "You thought it was AIDS. Didn't you."

"I... just thought..."

"You thought that because we're men and we fuck each other it had to be that. Because AIDS is a 'gay disease,' isn't it? We just get it by osmosis, don't we? Spontaneously generate it, maybe?"

"No, I--"

The sky-blue eyes were blazing when they fixed on him. "Wake the hell up, Warren. Considering your lifestyle, you're more likely to get HIV than I am." He didn't even wait for the impact of that statement to ease before curling his lip and saying, "And if you ever try to justify acting like that with such a pathetic excuse again, I won't bother warning you first."

Warren's eyes dropped. He opened blue-skinned hands, staring at them in something akin to dismay. "Bobby, I'm sorry. I didn't know. I... my history with him..."

"This isn't about your history with him. This is about me."

The winged man could only stare. He'd known Bobby since the younger man was a shivering huddle staring miserably at a frozen sandwich in his hands, his stomach growling in loud dissatisfaction and his eyes close to tearing. The evolution from that scared boy into the class clown had seemed natural, and class clown into team prankster hadn't surprised him. But in all this time, for all that ice, Bobby had never addressed him this coldly. Never seemed so foreign. Not even when he'd first admitted his sexual preferences. Warren was staring at a stranger, and he didn't have a clue what to say.

But he tried. "I was worried... I know I overreacted, but can't you understand why...?"

"Warren, do me a favor," Bobby said in a voice that sounded almost reasonable.

"What?"

"Stay out of my sight."

Warren said, "Bobby," but it was only to the man's departing back.

***

His chest was so tight that he could barely force breath into it and there was a roaring in his ears that he didn't try to identify. Shrunken muscles in his chest ached from the operation they'd done to check his lymph nodes. Weak, wasted. He wasn't anywhere near the man he used to be.

He'd never be that man again.

He didn't see anyone on the way down to the medlab; which, all things considered, was probably for the best. His breathing was rapid and shallow by the time he shoved open the double doors and nearly stumbled his way through them. Red-black eyes found their target immediately.

"No," he choked out hoarsely. "I ain' doin' it again."

Niles turned swiftly from the scan he'd been studying. "What?"

"Je ne puis pas prendre ceci encore. Pas encore." The words came on their own and he let them ramble. "Regarde-moi! Regarde ce qui est arrivé à moi!"

"Mr. LeBeau, if you'd just--"

"C'est ce pass a rien! Si je vais morire, ca va etre comme je veut... pas entrapper dans ce lit, faire vomir... et que Bobby peut m'observe... des que je dépérir! Je suis fini!"

"Assez!" Niles suddenly thundered. "Quitte!"

Panting too much to continue anyway, Remy stopped, a hand going to the long, dark-tiled counter to keep himself steady, eyes still blazing with his furious intent.

"What happened?" the doctor asked flatly when he had silence.

That was none of his business. "Look at me," Remy growled more slowly, in English this time. "Look at me." He held open his free arm to indicate his skinny frame, his pale skin. So proud he'd been of the smattering of weight he'd put back on after the chemo ended. So easy it was to believe there was a point. "I can' take it again. I won't."

Niles laid the scan on the counter with a very precise motion. "You're overwrought. Perhaps we should discuss this when you've calmed down."

"I know what I'm sayin'!" He had to clear his throat twice to get more words past the painful rock lodged there. "Y' tol' me what y' wan' do, an' it ain' the way I wan' spend the rest a my life, Docteur. If I only got a li'l time left I want it t' be good time, y'hear me? I wan'... I wanna..." But there were only images in his head, undefinable, each asking 'why can't I be?' when they glanced across his mind. Words couldn't capture them. Words couldn't even begin to touch them.

The doctor walked toward him as he trailed off, and then the tall man stood over him, stared down at him, and Remy didn't see a hint of compromise in the dark face or eyes.

"Come with me," Dr. Niles told him; a command rather than a request. "There's something you need to see."

Then he passed Remy without a backward glance and pushed through the double doors, swinging them open far harder than was necessary. When he'd vanished through them Remy was left staring as the doors swung back, forth, back, in an ever-decreasing arc with a whisper-shoop, whisper-shoop each time.

He swore and pushed away from the countertop to follow.

Niles was waiting for him in the elevator, one large hand holding the door open expectantly. Remy walked in and stood beside him, wordless, and they rode up to the main level in complete silence. They passed Elizabeth on the way out the front door. She offered no greeting and didn't seem surprised when none was offered in return, but her violet eyes saw too much. Remy thought they always saw too much.

Niles gestured him into the passenger seat of the black Porsche parked out front. The interior of the car was as pristine as the exterior except for a single drained coffee cup in the cupholder between the front seats. The doctor hardly waited for him to fasten his seatbelt before revving the motor and taking off.

Remy didn't ask where they were going, or why, or how long it would take. All the way down the long access road and for twenty minutes on the highway he stayed trapped in his own mind, staring out the passenger window and seeing nothing that raced past his vision. His chest still hurt, his lungs still felt too small, and neither of those things mattered as much as the smothering hopelessness wrapping increasingly tighter around him. Hopelessness and helplessness, trapping him in floodwaters too strong to swim.

Niles shifted gears on the Porsche aggressively, as if each motion was a definitive act of war. Every abrupt motion of the car jarred a body sore from the surgical procedure, until he gritted his teeth and ground out, "Y' don' like me very much, do you?"

"Ninety percent of all lung cancers are caused by cigarette smoking," Niles informed him emotionlessly, as if the answer were obvious and suited the question perfectly.

Silence. Another five minutes passed, the Porsche's engine roaring when Niles floored the accelerator to pass another car.

"I didn' choose this," Remy said eventually.

"You chose it every time you picked up a cigarette."

"I didn'--"

"'Didn't know'? Of course. You and all the other smokers somehow didn't notice the biggest public health reform in US history."

Remy closed his eyes. Rested his head back against the seat. "So why do y' do it? Why don' y' just sit back an' leave us t' our 'fate'?"

"Ask me that again later."

"Quoi?"

"I said ask me that again later."

And then more silence, thicker, unwilling to be breached. Remy pulled his sunglasses from his jacket pocket, settled them over his eyes and stared straight ahead.

Remy had never been to the cancer ward at Harper General Hospital. Everything from diagnosis to treatment had happened for him in a single convenient room at an isolated mansion with no eyes peering at him that he didn't know. He hadn't had any cause to realize how unique that situation was before now.

The cancer floor was the seventh. Remy only knew this because he glanced at the display outside the elevator before they got in and his trained thief's mind jumped to and held the entry of greatest interest to him currently: Oncology. It came as no surprise at all when Niles pushed that button, still wordless. The doors slid shut and the elevator carried them upward.

There was an odor to the cancer floor that Remy noticed immediately. It wasn't overpowering, but rather pervasive; medicine and illness, antiseptic sterility fighting waste and all the byproducts of failing bodies. The moment he stepped off the elevator and took a breath of the recycled air he knew without question:

People died here.

A small blonde woman in a white uniform seated behind the huge spread of counter directly in front of the elevators looked up and smiled a polite smile. "Good afternoon, Dr. Niles."

"Hello, Anne," he said in a distracted voice. "Is Jim still in 713?"

"Yes, sir, he is."

"Good." His eyes flicked to Remy. "Stay here. I'll be back in a moment."

Remy nodded. Watched him walk off. The blonde gave him a briefly curious look, but he wasn't in the mood to say much and strolled as casually as he was able to fake around the corner to the left, hoping for a waiting room. The nonchalant pace faltered completely to a stop and he found himself staring openly instead. There was a large aquarium imbedded in the left side of the wall, well tended, with what looked like an eclectic mix of bright tropical fish swimming slowly within. Standing in front of the aquarium was a woman with half-shorn, half-balding red hair, one of her pale hands clutching an IV-pole, the other firmly held by the younger, shorter woman beside her. The balding woman didn't seem to notice his appraisal. She spoke in a low, gentle, almost dreamlike voice, saying something about a large fish that she called 'PuffPuff,' telling the girl that was probably her daughter that at night, when there was no one to talk to, she sometimes walked down here to watch the fish. Her voice droned on, rising and falling, and the girl made encouraging noises even as she looked sharply away. Looked at him. A jaw that appeared habitually set was trembling and her eyes were glistening brightly, reflecting every light in the hall behind him. She cleared her throat. Talked to the woman: "Which one does PuffPuff chase, Mom?" Offered him a quick, embarrassed, tremulous smile. Somehow he managed to return the expression. There was a quiver in his own smile, too, though he wasn't sure why.

"Mr. LeBeau."

He turned to Niles. Followed when the man gestured. They passed several rooms with doors halfway or all the way open, bodies lying on beds in each one, the blare of a television here, a phlegmy snore there... Remy looked straight ahead. His peripheral vision told him plenty, though. More than he ever wanted to know.

At the room with the placard reading '713' Niles stopped and motioned for him to step to the doorway. His heart beat loudly in his ears as he did so. The odors in this room were stronger, telling more of the illness than the treatment. The still form on the bed was small enough to be swallowed by the thin mattress.

"His name is James Cohen," Niles told him quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping boy. "When I first met him he offered me his hand and said 'call me Jim.' That was three years ago. He was eleven years old."

Remy breathed as quietly as he was able, slowly, and refused to hold his breath to shut out the scents.

"The children's ward is full. Jim volunteered to be relocated up here. He said that it didn't really matter if he was surrounded by other kids if he couldn't get out of bed to play with them, did it?"

"He's just a kid," Remy whispered. "How'd he...?"

Even at a murmur, Niles could make his voice sound as hard as stone and as sharp as razors. "His parents chose it for him."

"What?"

"His mother smoked when she was pregnant with him and both of his parents continued smoking around him all throughout his childhood. They're fine. They both even quit smoking." A significant pause. "After he was diagnosed with a very aggressive, diffuse form of squamous cell carcinoma. Statistically worse than what you have. It's been a long road for him. Not long ago his parents picked out his casket and made his funeral arrangements."

His chest got even tighter. "Why... why're y' showin' me this... why are you...?"

"Because he's in remission, Mr. LeBeau."

"... he..."

Finally a crackle of passion in that cold voice. "He beat it, Remy. No, there's no guarantee that's it's gone for good, but right at this moment that boy is sleeping in there knowing that he won. For now and maybe... maybe forever."

The boy was still unmoving on the bed. His completely bald head was turned sideways on the pillow, barely making a dent in the fabric. "Y' said t' ask you later why y' do this," Remy said distantly. "Why?"

A small gesture, somehow taking in the whole floor and everything that could be inferred by that indication. "Because the price of stupidity shouldn't be this," he answered simply. A step back out of Remy's peripheral vision. "Meet me by the elevators when you're ready to leave."

And then he was gone. As if sensing his departure the boy turned his head, opened his eyes, looked directly toward the doorway and its occupant. Remy felt a shiver pass from his head to his toes. Those simple brown eyes, sunken deep into a pale-fleshed skull, didn't belong in the face of a fourteen-year-old boy. They were the eyes of a human pared down to the essence, everything superfluous stripped away and leaving only whatever was vital and needed to keep a body going. A great, overwhelming fatigue showed in the lassitude of his slow, slow head-turn, but the gaze smoldered with something that the exhaustion didn't touch. Instinctually Remy recognized what he saw there.

With no mask, no camouflage, those were the stark eyes of a survivor.

Standing there in the sterile hallway with a nose full of disease and a chest full of pain, Remy wondered if he were to look in a mirror if he would ever find those same eyes staring back at him.

He thought that maybe... maybe it was time he found out.

***

End Part 2.

Notes from Kaylee: Yes, there's a part 3. No, it's not written. No, I don't know how long it will take to be written. Yes, I still like feedback. Thank you.

French stuff (rough translations -- experts out there, don't be too picky) -- Many abject overwhelming thanks go out to Abyss and to Shai for helping:

*Salut. -- Hello.

*mon amour/m'amour -- my love

*mon dieu -- my god

*cher -- dear (masculine -- pronounced the same as the feminine version, "chere")

*Je t'aime. -- I love you.

*Va te faire foudre. -- Go fuck yourself.

*Tu ne m'aide pas. -- You're not helping (me).

*maudite -- damn

*Arretez-donc. -- Stop that.

*Ferme ta guelle! -- Shut your mouth!

*Merci, mon ami. -- Thank you, my friend.

*D'accord. -- Okay.

*Moi? -- Me?

*Oui, toi. -- Yes, you.

*Bon! -- Good!

*Franchement, la. -- That's for sure.

*Allo. -- Hello.

*joli -- handsome

*homme -- man

*Je ne puis pas prendre ceci encore. Pas encore. -- I can't do this again. Not again.

*Regarde-moi! Regarde ce qui est arrivé à moi! -- Look at me! Look at what's happened to me!

*C'est ce pass a rien! Si je vais morire, ca va etre comme je veut... pas entrapper dans ce lit, faire vomir... et que Bobby peut m'observe... des que je dépérir! Je suis fini! -- It's not worth it! If I'm going to die, I'm going to die my way... not stuck in bed and vomiting and watching...watching Bobby watch me go downhill! I'm (dead) finished!

*Assez! -- Enough!

*Quitte! -- Stop!

*Docteur -- Doctor

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