This story takes place before Gambit joins the X-Men.
Disclaimer: Remy LeBeau, Belladonna Beudreaux and Jean-Luc LeBeau belong the Marvel. Lizzie LeBeau belongs to herself, and Juliet DePray belongs to Lizzie. Raven Adams belongs to no one (because no one would want to claim her :+) and she has no money, so if you sue her, you'll end up with everything in her pockets (lint and a dryer sheet).

The Sun Will Shine Again
by Raven Adams
February 5, 1998

Chapter 1

The huge red and orange ball that was the sun rose over the bayou, setting the black swamp water ablaze. Alligators could be heard in the not too far distance, swishing their tails back and forth in the water looking for an early meal. Loons were wakening and the frogs were quiet now. The family of raccoons crawled back under the porch where, as they did every morning, father and daughter sat watching the sun.

She was standing, her arms around his neck, and her chin resting on his head, in her nightgown and bare feet. He was sitting on second to the top step of the porch only in a pare of hole ridden jeans. His hand was playing with her fingers that were laced together under his chin.

After the sun was up a little ways, and could barely be seen from behind the bayou's moss covered trees, he reached around behind him, grabbed hold of her legs and swung her around her sit in his lap.

"Pretty sun rise, eh, Petite Belle? We should do dis more often, non?" He asked smoothing her jet black hair away from her face.

Her eyes changed from a light blue to a bright green as she giggled. "Silly. We do dis every mornin'."

"Ah, so we do." He turned his head to gaze out over the yard, a distant look in his red on black eyes. She squirmed out of his arms to sit beside him, and studied his profile. He was worried. She could see it written all over his face. Maybe that was why Momma hadn't come and join them this morning like she usually did.

"Poppa?" She asked in her small nine-year-old voice. He turned his head and smiled sadly at her. A tear fell down his cheek and he quickly wiped it away, but not before she saw it. She had never seen her poppa cry, so she knew it was because of something bad.

Her eyes must have changed from the green to brown because he scooped her up in his arms again and rocked with her. "It okay, Lizzie. Poppa jus' li'le sad, dat's all. Do you know why?"

She nodded against his chest, tears starting to well up behind her eyes. Momma had sat her down and told her that Poppa wouldn't be able to stay with them as much any more. That he was going to get married to Belladonna Beudreaux of the Assassins' Guild, because Grandpere Jean-Luc wanted the two Guilds to be joined. Belle didn't like her too much, and she knew that once Poppa married Belle, that he wouldn't come to see her anymore at all. Belle had told her that. She loved her poppa, and she wanted him to stay with her. But she was also a child of the Thieves' Guild, and she knew why he had to marry Belle, but that didn't make her have to like the idea.

Remy LeBeau thought his heart was being torn out of his chest with every snuffle Lizzie made. His heart had belonged to her and only to her ever since the very first time he had held her in his arms, a little red wrinkly thing that would cry except for when he held her. He had looked past the red face and the little wrinkled flying hands that tried to grab his nose, to the beautiful girl he knew she would become. He had seen a piece of himself in her, and knew she would follow in his footsteps as a thief, and he knew she would be a heart stopper to all men who ever met her. He looked past the cloudy blue eyes that every baby had and saw that as much as he loved her, that she loved him back. She was his angel, his pride, his little beauty with the jet black hair she had inherited from her mother and her color changing eyes.

He pushed her away a little bit and lifted her chin with his hand. "I love you." He said trying to make all of his love come out with those three words, but it didn't seem like it was enough. Saints, how he wished he was a poet! "I always love you, from now 'til de end o' time. No matter wha' anyone say t' you in de Guild, you always be in my heart and I never goin' t' let you go." It sounded lame. It was the words he wanted to say, but all the feelings he wanted to come out didn't.

Lizzie threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. With those few words, all the poison Belle had put in her mind leaked out and she loved him more then ever.

Belle raised her eyebrows as the two walked back into the house.

So this was were Remy had hidden his mistress and that brat. Fine. She could play the game too. In fact, she had known how to play the game much longer then he, and she played it well. She knew all the twists and terns, and she knew just how to make the woman and her daughter bleed.

Juliet DePray smiled as the front screen door slammed shut and she could hear Lizzie's bare feet run down the hall to her room. She was standing over the sink peeling shrimp she would later be putting in the gumbo she was making for lunch. She was wearing a light green summer dress that she knew Remy liked, it showed off her figure and the color brought out the green in her eyes. Her black hair was pulled into a ponytail as she cooked.

Although he walked like a cat, she heard Remy walk into the kitchen behind her. "Coffee is on the stove, if you want it." She said without looking away from the shrimp in her hands.

"T'ank you, cherie." He said coming up behind her and slipping his arms around her waist. He kissed the back of her neck, and she leaned back against him. In her mind she knew she should never have fallen in love with this man. But sometimes your heart and your mind just didn't act on the same wavelength.

She had been singing in an illegal gambling hall. Her boss was an abusive man who had wanted to get her in bed at every chance he got, but so repulsed by the idea was she, that she had rather take his beatings then let him touch her. Remy had walked into her dressing room on one such beating, and had put a stop to it. He was her paladin; her Sir Lancelot in some evil, twisted King Arthur's court.

Sometimes she wandered what the past nine years would have been like if she never had met Remy LeBeau. She wandered if she would still be singing for that awful man, or if she would have hit her peck in her curer and become a famous singer.

But then she thought about Lizzie. Her daughter never would have been born if she hadn't met Remy, and without Lizzie her life wouldn't have meant as much as she use to think it would.

As if reading her thoughts, Remy gave her a squeeze and kissed her neck again. "It gonna be 'kay. You see." Then went off to pull three cups down from the cabinet, and filled two to the top with the hot Cajun coffee and filled the other only half the way, poring milk and sugar into the other half.

"Did ... um, did you talk to her?" Juliet asked without looking at him.

"Oui. We talk. 'Bout what was important."

Now what did that mean? She turned to look at him. He was sitting at the kitchen table pealing an orange and every once and a while taking sips of the spicy hot coffee. He looked troubled, sad, and she knew why. She didn't ask him the question.

Lizzie pulled a blue T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans on and walked out of the bathroom. As she walked by the front door, she got one of her funny feelings again. On that would start at the very tip of her toes and work it's way up to her mind telling her something wasn't right.

She opened the screen door and walked out onto the porch she and her father had just been sitting on. She looked around.

The warm breeze lifted strands of her hair and threw them into her eyes. The same breeze blew at the Spinach Beard hanging from the Cypress trees making shadows dance on the ground. Two ducks flew up from the water so suddenly that she jumped. But when she heard the splashing of an alligator and the dying quacks of the third duck, she knew why they had fled. It was the ways of the bayou. She looked around. Nothing was out of place. It looked just as it had when they had been out here a moment...

Was that something moving? Not an animal, it was too big to be something from the bayou, and the color of bright blue stood out too much. She squinted her eyes in that direction, and all at once, her funny feeling was gone. She shook her head, shrugged, then turned back to go inside again.

Later that night.

Belle stood over the girl's bed looking down at her peacefully sleeping form, and realized just how easy it would be to kill her here and now. But then she couldn't make the woman cry blood. She wanted the woman to see the girl die before her very eyes. She wanted her to know what real pain and suffering could be. But she, Belladonna Beudreaux, wouldn't be the one administering the toucher.

She slipped out of Lizzie's room and softly padded her way to Juliet's. She was curled on her side in the middle of the bed, a book laying beside her, and her reading glasses still on her nose. Belle's hands curled into fists angrily. How many nights had Remy spent in this bed? How many hours did he spend making love to this woman who wasn't her? She felt like shoving her hand into this woman's perfectly formed face and smashing every bone in it, but then she remembered that her real revenge would be much sweeter.

She pulled the letter from out of her pocket and set it down on the night stand. So far, so good.

Continued in Chapter 2

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