The Walk Down the Aisle
by
Addie Logan
DISCLAIMERS: I don't own any of these characters and I'm making no money off their exploitation.
NOTES: Okay, I'm not exactly a Kitty fan, to say the least, so I'm not sure how much this will fit in with canon. Honestly, I'm not sure why I wrote this. It just sorta came to me and I had to write it. It's not supposed to be much more than short fluff by a writer that usually writes much longer, more in depth stuff. Let me know if it's good, but go ahead and flame me if it's bad.
I took a deep breath as I started what promised to be the longest walk of my life. I was walking towards what I guess had always been my destiny, my unavoidable fate--a man I'd loved in one way or another since the moment I'd met him.
When I was still no more than a child really, I thought I'd fallen in love. He was older than me, but still possessed so many charming, boyish qualities. I fell for him so quickly, still young and nanve enough to believe there was such a thing as love at first site. I planned out our whole lives together, never considering the thought of how quickly one's life can end--ignoring the fact that we were young and still capable of meeting someone else. And that's what he did. He fell in love with someone else. He pushed me aside, forgetting everything I'd sacrificed for him, letting go of everything we felt for each other, for someone who he'd only known a short while, who's language he didn't even speak. For a woman who was already dead before he even returned to me.
I wondered then if he'd ever loved me, or if it had all been in my mind. If the sound of undying devotion in his voice whenever he called me "his Katya" was only something I'd imagined, something I'd wished for so hard that I saw it as true. I thought I'd never be able to love again after that, thought that at such a young age I'd already know all life had to offer. I never fathomed that it was merely a childhood crush, and that I was still yet to meet the man that would become the true love of my life.
But I did meet him, although this time it was far from love at first sight. No, it was anything but love then. He was rude, cocky, unkempt, and smelled like whiskey and stale tobacco smoke. He was older than me, too, but he could be described as anything but boyish. Although they bore a near-identical first name, this man was nothing like the one before.
I fell for him, hard and deep. It wasn't the childish crush I'd known before, the kind that makes you giddy. It was the true, adult love that makes you weak in the knees. He knew just how to touch me, mind, body, and soul. Everyone told me he was bad for me, that I'd only wind up hurt, but I never once listened. I loved him, and didn't care if they understood or not. It was just impossible that a love like that could ever cause me pain. Somehow, even with all its imperfections, it was everything a love could be.
Then it turned out that all the naysayers had been right, that the pain did come, but not in a way that anyone had ever suspected. I'd gotten scared, and I'd driven him away, causing us both more heartache than I'd ever known to be possible. I'd fooled myself into thinking it was better that way, that I didn't love him as much as my heart told me I did.
Some people thought I should go back to the man I'd loved in my early adolescence, and I'd be lying if I said the thought never crossed my mind. But I knew real love, love like I'd had with the man after him, would never be possible. With that man, the one with the boyish charm, I'd always be kept on a pedestal, never being a real live, flesh-and-blood person in his eyes. I'd be a treasure, not an equal; never a partner. I didn't think I could ever go back to the life I'd wanted so badly before. I was determined to find real love again, to know what I had known with the peculiar British man who had once held my soul in his hands, but I didn't think I wanted it from him.
Then the day came when I discovered that my first real, adult love was also meant to be my last. It was the day I discovered the meaning of the phrase you don't know what you have until it's gone. It was the day I heard that the rude man I'd disliked so much at the start, the man who drank too much--smoked even more--and said what should've remained unspoken, was dead. Part of me died along with him that day, although I'd never admit it to anyone but myself. I knew then that I had found my true love, and I'd let it slip away. I resigned myself to never feeling that way ever again.
The man I'd loved in childhood came back to me then, although I guess he never truly went away. He asked for me to put aside what had happened between us in the past and try to recapture that spark that had once lived between us. I had no reason to refuse him. The only man I'd ever be able to love was gone forever and I did not want to spend my life alone, although I knew it was what I most likely deserved. And when he asked me with that honest grin and those wide, sincere eyes of his to marry him, I very logically said yes.
I'm walking down the aisle towards him now. My friends, my family, are gathered around, and they are watching what they always knew would happen, what was only delayed by inconsequential events such as the meeting of an alien woman or an ill-mannered British man. They all see me as that child, so in love with the boy that worshiped his Katya. I can show them that girl. I can marry the man I loved once, so early in life and seem to everyone around that I am truly happy. Part of me will even love him in a way. But it will never be with the passion I once knew, with an intensity that can never be matched.
When I reach the end of the aisle and take his hand, I am dead inside.
All references to characters belonging to the X-Men Universe are (c) and TM the Marvel Comics Group, 20th Century Fox and all related entities. All rights reserved. Any reproduction, duplication or distribution of these materials in any form is expressly prohibited. No money is being made from this archive. All images are also (c) and TM the Marvel Comics Group, 20th Century Fox and all related entities; they are not mine. This website, its operators and any content used on this site relating to the X-Men are not authorized by Marvel, Fox, etc. I am not, nor do I claim to be affiliated with any of these entities in any way.