In Remy's dreams gentle hands touched his shoulder, moving on to rub soothing circles across his back, carefully avoiding the multitude of bruises covering his torso, "I'm sorry Rems, I hate hurtin' yo', but it's for yo' own good, petite. Don' yo' see that?" Richard said his voice was full of honest regret.

"Why you doin' this to me?" Remy pled, fighting back tears.

Richard lifted his slight body easily from the corner and sat him in front of the hotel room's dingy mirror; his hands firmly and irresistibly forced Remy's head up, making him stare into his own eyes. "Can' yo' see de devil in yo' eyes petite?" he asked.

Remy stared into the mirror, seeing blood covering half his face, seeing cheek bones that a few months ago hadn't looked half as sharp, seeing dirt and grim darkening his skin, seeing an almost entirely different person than the eleven year old who'd ran away from home a nearly a year ago, but his eyes hadn't changed. Coal black orbs relieved by twin embers, the eyes of a demon, not a human. That was all that Richard saw.

"It ain't m' fault, dey always been like dat," Remy tried to explain. "I didn' do nothin' bad. Why yo' punishin' me Rich, I t'ought yo' LIKED me?"

Richard sighed. He ruffled Remy's hair in an affectionate gesture. "I do like yo' Rems," he insisted. "I hear what dey all call yo'; Le Diable Blanc. Came lookin' for de Devil hisself and I find a petite chile. But yo' got de Devil's mark on yo' chile, yo' can see dat for y'self. Yo' ain't done nothin' yet, but yo' will. Dat's why I try so hard to get de demon out of yo'."

"It hurts so bad," Remy whimpered.

"I know it did and I won't hurt yo' no more petite. Nothin' I do works, yo' chile's innocence protects de demon from everyt'ing I do to exorcise it. I t'ought mebbe I could beat it out of yo', but I can' do dis. I ain't strong enough, I like yo' too much. If I wait till yo' be older mebbe it would work, but yo' soul won' be pure no more. So it's best dat I do it now," Richard said sadly. He rested his hands on Remy's shoulders, their eyes met in the mirror. "I want yo' to understand, I'm doing dis to save yo', nevah t'ink dis is a punishment. Don' fight me, it won' hurt much dat way."

And then Richard's hands closed around Remy's throat, choking him. Tear spilled down Remy's cheeks as he struggled helplessly against the larger man. Fire burned in his brain, in his limbs as his body screamed for the oxygen it was being deny. A dazed, almost high sensation swept through him, his hands fell away from Richard's to rest limply on the sink beneath the mirror and the fire in his body spilled over into the ceramic, causing it to glow with a lurid pink fire.

Richard hurtled them both back away from it a second before the sink exploded. The fall loosened his grip on the boy and Remy twisted free, throwing himself into the furthest corner of the room.

"It's startin' petite," Richard said staring at the blackened hole in the wall. "Yo' gotta let me finish dis now, or yo'll burn in hell for all eternity."

Remy's hands scrabbled across the floor, searching for something to defend himself with. "Jus' stay away, don' touch me!" he yelled.

"Can' do dat petite, I care too much 'bout yo'," Richard said grabbing Remy's ankle and hauling the struggling boy back toward him. Remy's fingers brushed a discarded bottle of holy water and once again the fire surged through him. He twisted in Richard's grasp and through the glowing bottle into the man's face. It took half of Richard's head with it when it exploded.

Blood and brains splattered across the room. For a moment the corpse remained standing. Remy tugged his foot free of its grasp and it toppled forward on to him.

"Don' touch me! Don' touch me!" Remy shrieked. Panic made his movements clumsy, made it even harder to push the dead thing off him. And then he fell on the floor, waking himself from the dream.

Remy stared wildly around his room in Westchester, trying to shake the memory of the dead weight on top of him and the smell of scorched brain-matter. "Dat be a long time 'go," Remy reminded himself. "Yo' power come, it save yo' from dat crazy an' all de others dat came after."

Except Essex, he couldn't help but think. Essex had found him three days after Richard's death, still huddled in that filthy little hotel room, still glowing with the barely containable fires of his new powers, with the hotel manager's body laying a few feet from Richard's, rotting in the humid New Orleans' summer. He'd been lucky, it wasn't the sort of neighborhood where anyone called the cops about missing persons. No one cared about the sounds of explosions in the small room. Remy had know it couldn't last much longer, eventually the police would come and then they'd keep coming until they'd finished what Richard started, he couldn't help but wonder if that wasn't for the best, if maybe Richard had been right about him. Then Essex had come, Essex had promised him a safe place to learn to control his new powers.

"Out of de fryin' pan..." Remy whispered to himself, wondering when he'd learn. Once he'd believed he was safe, he'd thought he could tell about people. He'd seen the sickness and evil eating away at the ones that preyed on runaways like himself and had been able to avoid them. He'd known which ones were telling the truth and honestly wanted to help.

And then there'd been Richard, who lied with his heart not just with his words. Richard hadn't set off Remy's inner warning system even once. Then there was Essex, who had simply been empty of all feelings, who was evil beyond all belief beneath the dispassionate exterior. There was no way to tell what horrors lurked beneath people's surface, yet here he was, liking, beginning to trust these X-men, because they felt right.

Telling Mia he'd stay here, letting himself depend on them.

"Stupid!" Remy hissed. "Don' yo' learn? Yo' WANT to be hurt 'gain?"

Remy stood, cautiously letting his sprained ankle take his weight. There wasn't even a twinge of pain.

"Been making excuses to stay yo' idiot," he chastised himself. "Lettin' y'self want dis, even dough yo' know it be a lie. No more."

Remy dressed in the uniform Xavier had given him, reasoning that if it could hide his mutant signature form things like the Sentinels then maybe it could hide him from Sinister as well.

Checking that his pockets were all full of cards he pulled on his coat and climbed out the window then slid into the night, planning to hotwire a car from one of neighboring houses rather than risking Logan's enhanced senses being altered if he tried to take on the school's vehicles.

Several minutes after leaving the mansion grounds a lithesome shadow rose up in Remy's path and his perception of the world twisted into chaos.

Collapsing to his knees Remy pulled a handful of cards from his duster then a hand clamped down on his shoulder and the warm glow of his power went cold, leaving the cards nothing more than useless cardboard in his hands.

"You've been an embarrassment boy," Scramble hissed, shoving Remy into the ground. "But not any longer."

"I need to get the shackles on him," Scalphunter announced. "Even when he's not using his powers he's a slippery little bastard."

Remy's attention turned inward, searching for the power that had protected him without fail for so long, finding not even a trace of his unique talent.

Scramble grinned nastily, "That's what I do boy. I turn other mutant powers against their owners. Looks like yours just turns off when I've got you. We're going to be spending a whole lot of time together, pretty much the rest of your life boy. What do you think of that?"

Remy stared up at the other man, his eyes wide and scared. He started struggling wildly, trying to pull free.

Scalphunter pinned Remy to the ground with a knee in the center of his back pulling Remy's arms behind him back and locking them in place then hobbling his legs. "Harpooner, get over here," Scalphunter called. "Help get the kid in the van."

"There isn't going to be any breakfast left if Remy doesn't get his butt out of bed soon," Jean commented.

"I'll wake him," Ororo volunteered rising from the table.

"Rise and shine!" Ororo yelled, banging on Remy's door. "Or I'll conjure up a rain cloud of your very own."

Ororo waited a few minutes then began pounding again. "Remy?"

She considered picking the lock, then decided that wouldn't be helpful in building trust with the notably skittish boy.

"Just remember I tried to get you there in time for breakfast, if you miss out it's your own fault." Ororo called through the door as she headed back to the kitchen.

Scalphunter turned away from the van's comm. unit. "Boss is in the middle of an experiment. Pick-up's not for another forty-eight hours."

Vertigo and Arclight shared a glance, "There's a shopping center not two blocks from where we're parked," Vertigo said.

"Better than being cooped up in here the whole time," Arclight agreed.

The two women reached for the doors. "You can't just take off whenever you feel like it," Scalphunter protested.

"Mission accomplished, we're off the clock," Vertigo replied.

"I'm getting something to eat," Harpooner said. "I mean look at the kid, he's bound and gagged, what's he going to do? We don't all need to sit here watching him."

"Unless Scrambler's still scared of the little boy," Arclight suggested nastily, glancing back to where the mundane looking mutant sat on the floor in the back of the van, his presence keeping their prisoner's abilities repressed. Remy lay face down on the floor, his arms bound behind his back. Scrambler's hand, tangled in his hair, tightened into a fist at Arclight's jibe, pulling Remy's head up at a painful angle. "I told you people, I can't deal with ranged abilities. It wasn't my fault he got away in Chicago."

"He's gotten away from all of us," Harpooner said shrugging. "The interesting part of Chicago was you shrieking like a girl."

"You should rephrase that," Arclight said watching Scrambler's scowl darken. "None of the girls shrieked."

"Give it a rest," Scramble snapped. "It was my first damn assignment. Pick up some kid, I didn't expect him to try to kill me."

"You know what Sinister's going to do with him," Scalphunter said. "Did you expect him to come willingly?"

"I expected you guys to give me the back-up I need," Scrambler growled. "I said get me close to him, and look at him now, helpless as a kitten. You do your jobs and I can do mine!"

"Yep, you do your job, keep him helpless. We're going to go celebrate," Vertigo said and she, Arclight and Harpooner got out of the van, slamming the doors behind them.

Scalphunter began fidgeting boredly after another ten minutes.

"Look, I've got everything under control here," Scrambler said. "Dump me and the kid at a hotel and go join the others, nothings going to happen."

"The boss'll kill us if Gambit gets away again," Scalphunter pointed out.

"I can handle him! He won't get away," Scrambler insisted.

Twenty minutes later Scalphunter had Remy and Scrambler installed in a hotel room and was on his way to more interesting locales.

"Alone at last, huh kid," Scrambler said conversationally as he hauled Remy up on the bed so he was sitting against the headboard. "You really made me look bad you know. They think I'm a coward. I guess they never bothered to watch the tapes from when Sinister first brought you in. Jumping at shadows, curling up in corner whimpering. He had to keep you in an adamantium lined cell for months until you calmed down enough to not blow up half the base the first time the floor creaked. You remember what you were always yelling back then?"

Scrambler slowly ran his hand down Remy's chest. "Oh yeah, I remember: 'Don't touch me.' Wonder what could of made you act like that."

Scrambler grinned at the heightened terror in Remy's eyes.

"Course you were, what? Twelve, thirteen back then. The others might not think that counts." Scrambler continued loosening the gag in Remy's mouth. "But I bet I can get you screaming like that again."

"Get de hell 'way from me!" Remy demanded.

"Make me," Scrambler replied, straddling Remy's legs. "Not that you can. Not while I'm blocking that nifty little charge of yours."

Scrambler forced Remy's head back staring down into his face. "You're not really my type. I mean I can see the attraction, but you're looks just don't get me turned on." Scrambler kissed Remy bruisingly hard, digging his fingers into Remy's jaw until the boy's mouth was forced open, then raping Remy's mouth with his tongue.

After a long moment Scrambler sat back. "But don't let that make you think I won't go through with it. This isn't about sex, this is about the fact that I can do anything I want to you and I can't think of anything you'd want less."