Honor Among Thieves

Arriving in New Orleans, Nomad has gotten a job through the local Undergrounders chapter. It takes him out to the middle of a bayou to recover some stolen property. On his way to a swamp-side shack he is attacked by two armed men hiding in the water. Luckily for Jack, he is a lot stronger and wins the fight.

Inside the house he finds an two old people inside. The woman is laying in bed with the man by her side. He old man accuses Jack of being with the Assassins Guild and figures he’s come to kill the old woman, whom he calls Spring Song. Monroe explains that he has only come to reclaim some stolen property for his client and doesn’t intend to kill anybody. That stolen item turns out to be a very old framed photograph taken in the 1800s. Jack has a lot of questions about this but decides that it’s probably better not knowing.

Returning to the city, Jack finds his Undergrounder contact — Bluenote — talking with their client Antóine Cereste. Jack turns over the photograph and Cereste makes a comment about the woman in the old photo possibly being his mother. Monroe still doesn’t want to know and after he receives payment he expresses his dislike of being attacked in the swamps. Antóine takes this as an insult and tries to attack Nomad, but he quickly puts him down and leave. Nothing about this job makes any sense to Jack, like how a woman in an impossibly old photo be the mother of Antóine Cereste, a young man still in the prime of his life.[1] He puts it out of his mind once again and takes his payment to buy some medication at the local pharmacy, little knowing that he is being followed by the X-Man known as Gambit, aka Remy LeBeau. There, Jack is shocked by how much the medication costs, but without health insurance and even with an Undergrounders discount, it is the best that the pharmacist can do.[2]

On his way back outside, Nomad is tripped by Gambit’s bo staff and when he turns to face his attacker is shocked that it is somehow the same killer he fought recently at the Los Angeles airport.[3] Gambit has no idea what he is talking about as he never met Jack before. He also removes Bucky from Nomad’s back carrier. When his cajon charm works on Bucky, Remy quips that he can’t be dead if the little girl is taking a shine to him. Jack lunges at Gambit to get Bucky back, but the mutant is fast on his feet and can evade his attacks while also landing blows with his staff. Gambit says he doesn’t want to fight because it’ll harm the baby, and says all he wants from Nomad is assistance in stealing back the photo he took earlier.

Meanwhile, in the French Quarter, Bluenote is being chased down the street by a woman. She gets him to stop running by shooting him. She then puts a knife to his throat and demands that he tell her everything he knows about Jack Monroe.[4]

Simultaneously, Gambit takes Nomad to the Cereste estate. Along the way he explains that Jack stole from the D’Fontes family. The two are members of two rival organizations called the Thieves and Assassins Guilds respectively. The two families were excommunicated for intermarrying over a century earlier. Gambit says that he is getting involved because he has a soft spot for people who break the rules for love.[5] They are soon discovered by the Cereste family and are attacked. Gambit and Nomad defend themselves until the elder Cerest — the old many Jack saw earlier — orders everyone to stop. He tells the gathered Thieves that there has been too much death in the name of love and that it needs to stop now that his beloved Janin D’Fonte is dying.

Jack finds this all ludicrous and chastises themselves for creating a system that intentionally makes them miserable. He cannot fathom people who have extended their lives like the elder Cerese and Janine D’Fontes would make themselves more miserable. He then points to the other Thieves who have not benefited from an extended life span and tells them how every moment of their lives of precious and they’re just wasting it making themselves miserable like this. Admittedly, the elder Cerese admits that he doesn’t know anymore. The fighting stops and Cerese goes back inside to be with his beloved Janine until she dies. After a moment of silence, Cerese tells his followers that the old photo that was the heart of this conflict is going to be buried with his beloved as a token of their eternal love. With everything over, Jack asks if this will finally end the violence between the Thieves and Assassins. Gambit doesn’t think so, saying that people can only know what they are taught, that’s how society works.

This gives Jack a lot to think about and when he returns to his hotel room he has renewed sense of family with Bucky. He promises that no matter what he will make sure that nobody hurts them. Little does he know how soon he is going to have to test this belief as Bucky’s mother is now standing outside his hotel room window.

Recurring Characters

Nomad, Gambit, Bucky, Undergrounders (Crayfish), Bucky’s Mother

Continuity Notes

1. Members of the Thieves and Assassins Guilds have been granted extended life spans thanks to the Elixier of Life given to them via paying tithes to the External mutant known as Candra. See Gambit #1-4 for more on all of that.

2. It is implied last issue that either Jack or Bucky were infected with an autoimmune illness (See my summary from last issue for all the complicated details regarding that plot line). Long story short, this is the last hint that one of them has the virus as this premise was quickly quashed by Marvel editorial of the time due to the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS during the time of publication.

3. Nomad actually didn’t fight Gambit, but a evil doppelganger created by the Magus circa Infinity War #1. Nomad fought the impostor to the death in Nomad (vol. 2) #7. Jack can be forgiven for mistaken the two since the only thing different about the Gambit doppelganger was that he had fangs.

4. This woman is Bucky’s mother. Jack too Bucky away from her in Nomad #3 because he thought that a drug addicted prostitute was unfit to raise a child. She was then found by Giscard Epurer, the favor broker, in Nomad (vol. 2) #9. He got her to kick her addiction and trained her into being an assassin so she could eliminate Jack. She is unnamed here. As of this writing in October, 2022, her name has yet to be revealed.

5. This is alluding to the fact that Gambit — a former member of the Thieves Guild — was in love with Bella Donna Boudreaux a member of the Assassins Guild. See X-Men (vol. 2) #6, 9, Ghost Rider (vol. 3) #26, and Gambit #1-4.

Topical References

• The drama between the Cerest and D’Fonte families is stated to have lasted over 100 years. Given the style of a photograph that Jack stole the narrative intention here is that the drama started in the 1800s. As such, the measurement of time (100 years) should be considered topical due to the fact that the Sliding Timescale will make the gulf of time between those events and the Modern Age will continue to grow over time much in the same way as the length of time between Captain America going missing in 1945 and being revived in the present will also continue to change. If you like math, I provide a formula for computing that stuff here.

• When complaining about the cost of drugs at the pharmacy, Jack says “It’s up to Hilary now, I guess.” This is in reference to Hillary Clinton who, at the time of this story, was First Lady of the United States. One of her duties was to champion the Clinton administration health care plan of 1993. If you’re American and are still paying for medicine then you probably know that this attempt at creating socialized health care in America was killed in the Senate because America can’t have nice things. As you might guess, this reference should be considered topical.