Cain and Remy, Wednesday morning.

[x-juggernaut.livejournal.com]

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"Homme, I don't want to seem ungrateful, but de butter is supposed to go in de fridge." Remy held the dish out accusingly, as Cain craned his head around from the couch and made a disgusted noise.

"For starters, that's margarine," Cain shot back, "it don't spoil, so it can go in the cupboard. You want the fancy butter, you go eat in the fancy house." Returning his attention to the TV, Cain listened to his new housemate rummage through the kitchen with an occasional creole epithet. "And don't go bitching about the pickles. It's dill or buy-your-own."

"Look," Remy slammed his hand down on the counter. "Just cuase you can't get de food poisoning does not mean de rest of use can't. Look at dis. What de hell is a pork rind in de first place, and why does puffed pig fat go in de cupboard?"

Without even looking over, Cain raised a middle finger and waved lazily at the vicinity of the kitchen. "You want fancy-schmancy crap, go shopping. Pretty sure no one at the supermarket's got a hit out on you."

"Cold, Cain. Even for you, homme." Remy built his sandwich with what was available, restraining his comments avout the lack of selection. In the mansion, Lorna had run the shopping lists with her flair for fine cuisine. In the boathouse, Cain was apparently looking to replicate MRE's with a single minded intensity. "So, what's on de television?" Remy asked from bored interest.

Cain continued his flipping through the channels. "Shit. The goddamn game ain't on until this evening, and who the hell needs six damn news channels?" With a sigh, he paused on the Weather Channel, mouthed "Weather Channel?" silently, then tossed the remote onto the couch as he lumbered over to his drafting desk.

"Watch whatever you've got a mind to," he mumbled, rolling out the floor plans that he and Nathan had gone over. In his mind, he tried to map out the old paths he'd taken exploring the mansion grounds onto the newly-redesigned hallways and additional wings. "This is gonna take some work," he sighed.

"Dat's de mansion." Remy said, only to earn a bareful glare from Cainover the vast stupidity of the comment. "Didn't think you where de type to read over de plans, Cain. Figured more to the bashing away bits dat got in de way." Remy said, leaning over and taking in the plans himself, unlike Cain, he was looking for security holes and modes of entry.

"For the record," Cain drawled, "I got an architecture degree from NYU, and I know this place like the back of my hand. See here?" he pointed out a thickly outlined section, "That's where the old dumbwaiter system went to the original kitchen, where the motorcycle garage is now. They use the shafts to run all the electronics and fiber optics through now, and Mr. Lee had mesh grates installed so ain't no one bigger than a mouse crawling through 'em. But here-" he laid an older set of prints next to the drawing, "-here we got those stove vents that used to come out from there. Can't close 'em up because the garage needs the ventilation, but can't do much about securing 'em either." Cain suddenly paused, realizing that he was outlining a blatant security hole in the mansion's interior to someone who'd already been through it, more than likely.

"Okay, wiseass," he said, tilting the table over towards Remy, "show me how you got out of the medlab."

"You know, dose holes can be used as false entries." Remy said, his finger stabbing here and there on the plans. "You put de infrared trip lines along de axis tied to a passive response system and you can lock off dose areas in case of a breach." Cain gave him a long look, and Remy shrank back, a touch embaressed. "At least, Remy thinks so."

"Bullshit," Cain accused, "both Nathan and Chuck gave me the rundown on you. Now I don't give a damn who you were or what you done, but there's a load of folks who'd lynch you soon as look at you. You ask me, you don't owe them a goddamn thing." Cain tapped the blueprints roughly, "But you got in and out of this place without raising so much of a blink on some really expensive machines. And if you can do it, someone else is bound to. And that happens, people are gonna die. Now," Cain leaned in to look long and hard at Remy, "I ain't gonna shit you. These ain't my people. They sure as hell ain't your people. But some of 'em like Chuck are giving you a second chance. Now, you wanna earn it, quit the fucking innocent act and level with me."

Remy looked long and hard at Cain, more than enough to make Cain suddenly wonder if the Cajun had hit on him without him knowing before Remy pointed to the plans. "De problem is operational security. Dis is a school, which means dat anyone looking to make an entrance does so while de school is in progress and de place isn't locked down. Dat's Xavier's worry. After dat, you got all kinds of issues across de quad to secure de place."

"Ain't so much securing it, can't do that without turning the place into a prison." Cain tapped the end of his pencil against red lines he'd marked along the edges of the blueprints. "The idea's to get the students somewhere out of harm's way the next time shit hits the fan. Like the old air raid drills. Trouble's figuring out routes that you can get a dozen or so kids through at once without hitting the kill zones," Cain tapped a number of open areas on the map.

"It's a fucking puzzle, ain't it?" he asked, former animosity to Remy vanishing beneath the veneer of work.

"True. De sewers is where I'd put de backups. Good suppression, plus de confirmed kill range. Well," Remy stopped for a moment, and Cain looked over at him for a moment as Remy scowled, his fingers tightening against the table. The moment passed, and Remy seemed to shake off whatever had been the issue. "Dere are barriers to psionic detection. if you're looking at hidden shelters, you should have dem installed."

Cain shook his head. "I read up on those, talked it over with a few folks. Too many folks on the grounds that get headaches from those things. Hell, I'm for blasting those tunnels closed first chance I get." Cain pointed out areas he'd outlined in black and gold. "Here you've got easy concealed fire alleys, you can get to 'em from a few places. The idea's that if shit comes in, get the civilians into shelters," Cain tapped a few points on the map, "and get Chuck's little A-Teams coming up here to do their shit. Once I figure out a fucking plan, it'll be clockwork."

"Dangerous to settle on one plan, homme. If de children are going out one direction, get two or thee back ups." Remy said, sitting down. "De plans for dis house are registered, oui? Dat means anyone coming in is going t' look at dat same possible ways out if dere after dem."

Cain laughed. "You'd be surprised at the shit I had to go through to get new rain gutters for the place, much less remodel the new wing. Fucking historic building zoning laws." Cain grabbed a handful of official-looking correspondence and shook it defiantly before slam-dunking it into a nearby trash bin. "All the below-ground stuff's off public record. But Nate and Pete figure that it's safest to assume everyone gets caught pants-down. You know, like they always do 'round here."

Cain pondered a moment, then circled a few areas in the sub-basement halls. "Here's where I figure the line's drawn. Someone gets to here, everyone's screwed. Means either the X-Men got themselves whacked, or we've got the entire fucking Red Army at the doorstep. Summers tells me they've got contingencies and shit, but you ask me, that little lapdog's got the tactical sense of wet Kleenex."

Cain handed the pencil over to Remy. "You want to grab some folks who're holed up down here, how're they gonna stop you?"
"Dey need to stop me here." Remy circled an access tube that was less than the size of Cain's fist, and Marko allowed himself a laugh.

"You ain't that skinney, Cajun." He said, dismissing the idea.

"That point leads to de power plant. You put one charge down dere, and dat basement goes dark. De emergancy system kick in, but dat means dat your IR sensors and tripwires are cycling, so no passive systems. I could put a team into de under system through de access ways before anyone was aware dat any thing had happened."

"Charge in the..." Cain rolled his eyes back, trying to remember where he'd read that. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers. "It's the damn Cu Chi tunnels! They always kept one clear for air to get through. You could always figure out which one it was, because the grass was dead around it. We'd drop willie-petes down those, worked like a charm..." Cain ruffled through documents until he pulled out one marked "Temperature Differentials". He pondered a moment.

"Put some insulation around it, that'll cut the heat down, make it look like just another electric conduit. Might want to talk to Lee about refitting the security to work under those conditions, too." After a moment of silence, Cain rolled up the blueprints, shoving them into a cardboard tube.

"Shit," he said, "I've spent too much time on these, starting to sound like fucking Wisdom. I need a beer." Halfway to the fridge, he called over his shoulder, "Want one?"

"Sound like a plan. Cain, you really want to lock down dose tunnels? Put two inches of water in each one. De usual penetration mines dey put on de systems have less den an inch clearance. Put one of dem in a storm drain, and in twenty feet, you have an expensive paperweight." Remy snatched a beer from the air as Cain lobbed one at him. "Better dem any other system you could put down dere."

Cain shook his head. "Damn if you don't sound like an old engineer I knew. Yeah, that'd make the place safe. It'd also mean living on top of a war zone." Cracking his beer, Cain kicked back on the couch, taking a long pull before settling in comfortably. "Suppose you ain't used to seeing it this way, but to most folks, that's a home over there. Don't need to go making it into a fortress. S'why I figure, train these kids to hunker down and not do anything stupid, and let what passes for pros around here handle the nasty crap."

"Dat makes sense." Remy put his beer on the coffee table, his elbows on his knees. He looked over at Cain, who rolled his eyes at the obvious beginning of some kind of angst fest. "You were in de jungles, Marko. You saw things, right?" Remy plowed out without waiting for acknowledgement. "How do you deal wit' it?"

Slowly, Cain closed his eyes, trying to stem the inevitable flood of images when he thought of Vietnam. While he had kept a tight lid on his past, he figured the Cajun had already gone through any locked drawers he had in the boathouse, so trying to maintain a facade around Remy was a waste of time. "Put somethin' else there instead. Hell, I spent long enough on my own, some days it was all I could think of. I seen enough guys who can't get that shit out of their head. Burns 'em out, eats their lives. Ain't gonna be long before one of Chuck's X-Men winds up that way." Cain drained the last of his beer and crushed the can against his chest. "How do I deal? I ain't got to." With a smirk, Cain tapped the chunk of metal against his temple. "I just gotta make sure what's up here ain't gonna cause trouble for them what's out there."

"De things-" Remy pulled up short, finally looking Cain in the eyes. "I used to kill people in de worst ways possible because I thought it was funny. Is dere a way past dat?" He said simply. Something about Marko defused the normal angst. This was simply dealing with what was, and no bullshit emotion was going to be the point. It was not how he felt but who he was, and even past the Professor, Remy looked at Cain and felt his first honest answer would come from him.

"Back in the 'Nam," Cain remarked, seemingly lost in memory, "there was thing some guys had. Takin' trophies like some kind of Indians with scalps. Real gruesome shit. Fact was, a lot of 'em did it to try and cover up that they were scared shitless. Laughing past the graveyard, all that." Cain's eyes glassed over for a moment, then he shuddered as if shaking away a particularly graphic memory. "Some guys, though - they got off on that shit. Like something was broke inside 'em. Whatever makes a man, well, they didn't have it."

Cain pointed at Remy, aiming his finger like a pistol. "Men like that, they don't want to be fixed. They like bein' the monster, and trust me, down the line every one of 'em dies like one. Most of 'em offed themselves before coming back to the world. But this here?" Cain swept his hand around, indicating the school at large, "You came back here. Coulda gone anywhere, but you came here. Chuck says you'd've given yourself up if he thought you were a problem." When Remy nodded, Cain just nodded back.

"There you go. Man owns up to what he's done. Plain as that."

"Doesn't make it any easier, Cain." Remy said, and did not expect Cain's laugh to follow it.

"You figured it would be easy?"

"Non, but-" Remy said, and stopped. There was a long moment before LeBeau finally shrugged. "Guess dat I'm making dey memories an excuse too, vrai?"

Cain let out a quick bark of laughter. "Damn right it's hard. And it ought to be. Way I hear it, you're one fucked-up cookie. But you ain't the worst come through here. Chuck loves giving chances out to anyone." Pulling a pillow behind his head, Cain lounged back into the overstuffed sofa.

"Ain't what you've done, the doc tells me, but what you do. So long as you don't go round killing people," Cain offered, "I figure ain't no one got reason to fuck with you. You got some big wish to make right what you done, I don't know. Keep some of these kids from turning into the monsters. Don't let folks like them what grabbed you get them." Cain motioned to the rolled-up blueprints. "You want a cause, I suppose that ain't a bad one."

"Dat not de most heroic speech Remy heard, but I guess it have t' do." LeBeau nodded, finishing the last of his beer. The cat had already jumped up on the couch and was nudging Remy's hand to scratch him. "Tell me something, Cain. You grew up wit' Xavier. Did he has spots; run around after de ugly girls before he got all dream obsessed?"

Cain snorted, closing his eyes and leaning back into the couch. "Chuck? Kid spent all his time with ... in the lab. Be a shock if he ever got laid." Another quick bark of laughter. "Might explain why he dresses up kids a third his age in leather and has them jump around in a big gym for him."

"Heh. Dat mean dat Remy's first joke was right?" Remy laughed. There was just something wrong about Papa Xavier and his leather brigade sitting on his lap to hear the dream. "Stiil, dat got to be something to grow up wit'."

"One thing, Lebeau." Cain's voice was suddenly devoid of any emotion. "Don't take much to piss me off, but you're tap-dancing on the thinnest bit of the ice right there. Some stuff ain't no one's business."

"Got it." Remy said, backing off. The look in Marko's eyes did not brook any humour. "Sorry 'bout dat."

Cain just nodded, reaching over to absently toss his crushed beer can into the rubbish bin. "You want some real food," he remarked offhandedly, "make me a list and I'll see what I can have Lorna scrounge up. Ain't promisin' any Chateau Neuf de Pape, but if pork rinds and pretzels ain't fitting your diet - to each their own."

Cain settled back in with one of the technical manuals on the security system, leaving Remy to peruse the morning's newspaper in silence.