Wish. If u give me a Part 2 of your Gambit fic with ❛ we'll just have to make do. ❜ where they both make it out of the Void together I will kiss u on the mouth rn I PROMISE u. Or a hug. Whichever works. PLS I JUST NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM🙏🏼😫
♧ ⎯ ‘LIMBO LOSERS’ CLUB
summ. The TVA extends an olive branch. Wade’s Universe becomes home. Above all, you’re just thankful you’re not alone in this Multiversal mess.
pairing. Void!Gambit x f!Anomaly!reader (established in #WELUCKYFEW)
w.count. 1.6k
a/n. Shirtless Channing + romantic hand tension. That's it. That's the tweet. ( Continuation of this imagine! )
YOU SURVIVE ALIOTH.
That’s the first surprise.
The second?
The Time Variance Authority want to help, now.
( Granted, it’d mostly been Wade who did the gruntwork of sending Elektra and Blade back to their Universes, but he had hit a wall when it came to you and Gambit considering you two were— according to him: “A coked up version of being homeless. Universe-less.” )
So here you are, a stray of the Multiverse, standing on the platform of a mid-century aestheticised monitor room somewhere outside the constraints of time, trying not to double over from the vertiginous aftermath of being thrown through Wade’s weird orange warbling door of space.
TemPad, he’d called the device. Or… something. You’re half-sure you have a concussion, to be honest.
Alioth had done a number on you.
Remy’s concerned.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Wade says, mask rolled up to his nose. (There’s a spoon and plate of key lime pie in his hands. You’re not even sure where he got it from.) “Where did Gambit come from? How come he just spawned into the MCU’s metaphysical Backrooms?”
“Candidly, he is a unique case.”
Remy pulls his gaze from you to Hunter B-15.
“You, Mr. LeBeau, are the prime example of a Variant that’s borne from a timeline decaying just as quickly as it was formed. A rare type that fades instantly without unnatural interference, because an Anchor failed to develop.”
One of the CRT screens zip to a retro rubber-hose animated diagram: rapidly branching roots, ominous red flashing, and then an immediate blink into nothing. Talk about dramatic effect.
“Your Universe falls in the rare category of those that never managed to come into fruition; but sometimes— incredibly rarely— remnants just like you manage to slip through, and instead of ceasing to exist… Well, you automatically end up getting spit into the Void.”
A pause.
Then, from behind, Wade bursts into a cackle.
“Ha! Wow, she basically called you a discontinued fucking nobody,” he wheezes. “You’re quite literally the equivalent of a failed movie pitch that’s been forgotten on the floor of Feige’s writers’ room.”
Screens flicker.
Your breath hitches.
Versions of different Gambit’s play out in the monitor-wall, all alike and yet different in their individual realities. Some have black eyes. Some have top-hats (“Ah, that’s 2009 Origins,” Wade muses. “Do all Variants of you just have a beautiful face? I mean, it’s kinda unfair—”).
Some look like identical copies.
[EARTH-TRN2922].
It’s… your timeline.
Your friends in the Mutant war. Your Remy whose cards are scattered on the floor, blood in his hands, with you crumbling as you reach ou—
The Nine of Hearts in your pocket is impossibly heavy. You turn away to steel yourself.
( “Yeah, okay, enough lore recap. Jesus, you guys are more of a dick than I am; Read the room and turn that shit off,” Wade chides a passing agent. He gets it. He’d lost Vanessa once, too, and he’s not quite sure even he can relive that pain. )
“Mais non, y’not makin’ no sense t’me,” Remy says, confused, “I’ve got memories; means I’ve got history jus’ like my Variants. How y’gon’ explain that?”
“Gaps of memories you have— knowledge of places, people, events— that comes from fixed synchronicities shared in your Temporal Aura across all your Multiversal Variants.”
She’s met with slow, owlish blinks. Wade waves his hand in lazy dismissal.
“Forgive them. They didn’t watch Loki Season One or Two. Not that it matters, anyway. People barely understood what was going on.”
A sigh. “There’s no way to put this gently, Mr LeBeau,” B-15 concludes, tone dipping into something sympathetic. “But what I’m trying to say is that: you don’t have a Universe to go back to, because it never existed.”
She purses her lips as she catches his torn gaze. “I’m sorry.”
And that— That pisses you off.
“I’m… sorry?” you parrot, stepping forward. “That’s all you can say after everything that’s happened to us? His existence began with the Void, and my Universe was pruned by your agents. Innocent lives gone because your people decided they wanted to play God once upon a damn time—!”
“Pump the hate breaks, you stray,” Wade calls. "Why'd you think I brought the both of you here?"
You reluctantly withdraw.
“I can’t bring you home,” B-15 supplies, matter-of-fact. “But I can find a compatible timeline for you. For both of you. A safe do-over, if you will.”
Wade’s smile is coy.
The ‘Merc with a mouth’ has a home surprisingly… cozy.
Albeit a little tumbledown and messy with its wallpaper-torn brick walls and creaking hardwood floors— but, it’s charming. Lived in. He has a life here in this rickety two-bedroom apartment; framed photographs of friends and snatches of livelihood sit across dressers and are pasted against his magnet-crowded refrigerator.
Reminds you abit of your home, too.
“Listen,” chirps Wade’s voice, somewhere down the short hall to his room. “My advice? Save yourself the identity crisis and brain aneurysm. All this multiversal horse-crap was created just so that Marvel can write themselves out of any corner. Just sit there and be sexy for the readers, okay, Magic Mike?”
You’re halfway towards them when the doorbell rings.
“Ooh! That must be the pizza I ordered. Or Blind Al. Or Logan.” Wade pops out to sidle past you with a wink and a whispered: “Who knows, really? This is just the part of the story where I conveniently disappear so you and Cajun Tatum here can share a moment.”
You don’t quite understand— but you’ve learned to not bother attempting when it comes to him.
Your knock is soft against the doorframe.
“Hey.”
Beside a lone corner of the bed, Remy turns to look over his shoulder.
He’s fresh out the shower— faded towel tied around his waist, brown hair still damp and dripping water down his bare chest. His old clothes have been draped over a desk chair.
You try not to stare, but—
But.
He’s handsome. Devilishly so, with the bruises sweeping across the flex of all his stupidly lean, corded muscles.
You always had a thing for roguish-looking men.
“Hi,” he says, knowingly. ( It’s a dulcet croon, if anything. Cheeky bastard. ) “Y’okay? Got y’self cleaned up.”
Remy watches you gather yourself with a quick clear of your throat, pull at the sleeves of the scratchy hoodie you’re now wearing that’s practically swallowing you whole.
You look rested. At ease.
…Pretty.
“Yeah. Showered. We don’t smell like ass anymore, that’s for sure,” you say, making a face.
And then you’re nodding over to the black-and-blue contusions blooming over his skin. “You know, I’m sure there’s something frozen in the icebox for that.”
“Icebox?”
You smile. “Yeah, that’s what you guys call it in Louisiana, right?”
“That we do, chèr,” he laughs. But it’s ducked down, quiet. Thin. “ ‘Least, I think so.”
You follow his downcast eyes to a small stack of folders— TVA files he easily thieved (unsurprisingly) from under their noses the moment he stepped foot into the room.
He’d skimmed the manila dossiers: Absolute Points. Anchor Beings. Variant Anomalies. Some names he’d recognised and some he didn’t, most stamped or blacklisted.
Pietro Maximoff. Edward Brock. Loki Laufeyson.
Remy LeBeau.
Some part of you crumples. It’s one thing to not be able to return to a Universe, and another to not have even had one.
“S’funny,” he chuckles dryly, picking his casefile up with a distant look, “My memories… I thought I’d done gon’ left a whole life behind me the entire time I been stuck in the Void— Friends. Family. An’ turns out the Void’s all I had.”
“Feels like…” he shrugs. Tries to piece his unmoored thoughts into something more cohesive. He’s never felt so horrifically adrift his entire life— whatever ‘entire life’ could mean for him now, anyway— not even when he'd been marooned in the barren wastelands of the Void.
“Feels like I ain’t real. Hell, I don’t know what is real, anymore, chèr. I don’t— I just don’t know. I don't know anythin'."
You shake your head in disagreement nigh instantly.
“No, no.” Pushing off the doorway, you cross the threshold with gentle admonishment lanced over your features. “You’re here. You are real.”
The room is small. The distance you share is… close. Just enough that you catch the scent of peppermint toothpaste and coconut shampoo; Just enough that you can slide the documents out of his hands.
His fingers brush against yours.
He wonders if you’d felt the kinetic trill of energy run through him at the contact.
“Can I be honest, Remy?”
You look up at him.
“Mais oui, chèr. Y’can always be honest wit’ Gambit.”
You wave your hand at the TVA files. “I’m scared as shit being in a new Universe,” you blurt, truthfully. “This second chance means… a new life. New path. New everything. I don’t know what that’s like either and frankly, I am not prepared for this at all.”
You pause for a breath. “But for what it’s worth? I’m glad that you’re here. That’s… That’s about the only thing that I know.”
Then, as if dwarfed by the sheer vulnerability in your words, you take an awkward step back as you shrug. “And if you don’t feel the same, well. You and I, we’ll just have to make do, regardless.”
The sudden retreat is painfully endearing. Has him letting out a bright laugh that warms something nestled deep in your ribs.
“I’m glad I got you too, chèr,” he grins.
“Yeah?” You flash a smile, having found your way back to the door.
Remy’s eyes fall to your face— tarrying. He follows the flutter of your lashes, the slope of your cheek, the curl of your lips.
“…Yeah.”
Your idling, fond gaze sears him like a low-grade fever.
The thrum buzzes in hands, again.
Your Gambit really was blind, he thinks, just as you slip away and disappear around the corner.
His palm flexes open, and shut.
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I love dates in the tf2 lore. I love knowing exactly when stuff happened. Which makes THIS THING I JUST FOUND a BEAUTIFUL MIRACLE
You've seen this image before, but have you noticed the dates on the prison card thingies? Presumably this is written the American Way (the writers are so american they make Scout and Sniper both call their mothers "mom" despite preferring "ma" and "mum" respectively, as shown previously SEVERal times), so Spy and Scout were arrested on
The 7th of September, 1972.
We can do a lot with this information.
Mann Co was taken over by Grey and Olivia half a month before this: roughly the 23rd of August
Contrary to popular belief, most of the comics have to take place in 1973! Seeing as 6 months after late August is late February.
This also means Scout had to have been born in 1946/7. Not sure about Sniper, I have yet to overanalyse the New Zealand timeline paragraph. I'll get to it eventually.
Medic implies in comic 6 that our mercs have worked together for "at least eight years", while talking about the lore breaking Demo eyeball halloween thing. Assuming the "at least" confusion is over the 1972 Halloween they missed while not working together, the Teufort Nine were hired in 1964.
(I've almost mentally rationalised the lore breaking eyeball as a thing they do at like 4am after regular Scream Fortress shenanigans. Almost.)
Scout claims he has known Ms Pauling for six years. During the War! update, Demoman is unfamiliar with Ms Pauling (he knows she works for the administrator, but thats it), so we can assume that is the point she started working more closely with the mercs, and also 1966/7
I really need to go back to actively working on my timeline instead of passively wondering at 11pm "hey what time of year is it in the comics" and going down a rabbit hole.
Uh if you want to build off this, feel free to, but tell society twas I, the great and nobel Jevil_Owo, who first conceptualised all this.
UPDATE! This post seems to be picking up reblog steam again, so now is a good time to say I was WRONG about the mercs being hired around 1964.
This blog post from 2009 claims the WAR update took place in 1962, meaning the mercs have to have been hired in early 1962 at the latest.
Seeing as Scout would have been 15/16 in 1962, and as that's kind of the youngest one can be hired for just about anything, I'd assume it actually is 1962 they were hired. Ok thats enough I just felt it was my duty as Person Timelining to update people on this Discovery.
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