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katleeptAuthor: Pirate Turner
Rating: PG
Summary: Pete Wisdom reflects on why all women save one are petals and the greatest mistake he's made in his entire life.
Warnings: Het
Word Count: 972
Date Written: 23 November, 2010
Disclaimer: Pete Wisdom, Katheryne "Kitty" "Shadowcat" Pryde, any other characters mentioned within, Excalibur, and the X-Men are © & TM Marvel comics and Disney, neither of whom are the author; are used without permission; and may not be used without permission. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Women are petals, each one drifting off of the Tree of Life and into some miserable bloke's way, too often my own path, with their own sob stories and their own inner beauty. I'm not exactly sure when I came to realize that little fact about the fairer sex, but I know who made me come to terms with it. She's the only gel I'll never call a petal.
She's not a petal. She's the rose. The purest, most beautiful of them all, she shines brighter than anything I've ever seen in this ole, dark, and musty life of mine, but there's a lioness raging within the girl just waiting to wrap her claws around my heart again. She's not going to get that chance. I can't let her, because I know that that will be the end of me. I may be ready to die, but I'm still not going out that way. I won't let her have the pleasure of knowing how much she means to me or how completely she turned my world upside down when she betrayed me.
She's the most beautiful flower of them all, a raging lioness, and a hurricane. I know she's all that and far more, because I had the honor of loving her once. I loved her, and she whirled throughout my life and ripped my heart out of me. For the life of me, I can't figure out why it still beats, why it won't give up like I did for a long time until I realized that the world still needed me. And that, maybe, just maybe, in some bizarre and twisted way, by helping the world, I was helping her and still having an impact on her life.
There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about her. There's not a hour that passes that I don't wonder if I made the right decision the day I walked away from her, crying and begging me silently not to leave and throw away all that we'd shared, all the love I'd thought we had until she'd proved me wrong by kissing some jerk fresh off the street. There's not a minute that I don't think of her, not a single moment that I don't remember how sweet she tasted, how wonderful she felt, and how utterly, completely, and insanely much I loved her. I still do, and I know I always will.
She'd have me wrapped around her little finger again if she'd just look into my eyes only once and speak my name, but I'm not about to let her figure that out. A man's got to have some pride left, after all, to keep living. But she is my Pryde. She is my reason for continuing to struggle through this dark and lonely life.
She's no petal. She's my rose, my beauty to whom all others pale, my Tree of Life. She's my lioness, my hurricane, my warrioress. She's still the one I'd choose to have fighting by my side if the whole world was against us. She's my everything, and despite my name, I'm the dumbest guy who ever lived. I'm that idiot, because I let her slip through my fingers. I let her go. I walked away and let the greatest prize ever slip through my fingers when I could've kept her.
All I had to do was accept her apology, take her into my arms again, and tell her that everything was okay, but I didn't do any of it. I didn't save my life when I had the chance. I didn't save my beauty, my Queen, when I had the opportunity. I walked away like the idiot I am, because I thought I had to to keep my pride. And in so doing, I lost my Pryde, my Queen, the very best thing I'd ever had in my entire life. I lost all that mattered to me, not that I'd ever deserved any of it, any of her or her love, for even a second.
The world keeps spinning, and women keep walking by me, like petals drifting down from cherry blossom trees in a fine Spring rain. They can keep on going. They don't need to stop. I don't want them to stop. I don't want to waste a word or a look on them. All I want is her, and she'll never be a petal. She'll never come to me again through the rain. She'll never look at me again with anything more than mistrust, because though she broke my heart, I broke hers when I could have fixed everything.
I destroyed our world when I could have saved it. I lost my Pryde and my whole world, and so the petals can just keep drifting by and showing off their stuff. I hope some other guy's looking to help them, because it sure isn't this bloke. The only one I want isn't a petal. She's the Queen of my heart.
I'm lost without her. I'm going to stay lost, keep drowning in my own misery, because she's never going to drift my way again no matter how badly I want her to, how much I ache to hold her again and tell her the truth, how many times I'll keep crying myself to sleep at night, or even, and perhaps especially, how much I'll always love her alone until the day I take my last breath and even beyond then, if there's anything left of me. There will be. That's another thing she taught me. There'll be something left of me, because the petals will still be falling all around me, ready and waiting for me to catch them, and I'll still not want a bloody one of them because I'll always ever only want my beautiful, beloved Pryde.
