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Nov. 26th, 2006 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steelartisanThere is a difference between making the wrong choice and walking away. He has to take a moment and think this through. Because something needs to change, he is proof of that. But what to do, he doesn't know. Not now.
When Kitty starts to disappear for hours, at first, he worries. He knows better, but he does. Face life and death for ten years, you learn to trust someone enough to risk their own life. He trusts her to come back. And he understands. He does. In his own way. He loves her and he walked away so many times. Sometimes, you owe someone your silence.
Doesn't make it any easier not to open the box she leaves out every time. To wonder what, if anything, she would leave him if she... Because he hadn't left her anything more than ashes and memories when he had.
So, he plays with Naomi and tries not to bend Jayne's weight set into shapes he can't undo.
***
The thing is, this has all happened before. That he has joined the wrong side, or watched friends and people he cares about do things that are wrong. He knows how this all feels far too well. (Illyana would try to hide her horns after some missions, and some days, he was almost grateful they never had the chance to talk about the time she thought she had enslaved his corpse.)
He has been here before, and that doesn't make it any easier.
***
When she isn't back by her usual time, he tells himself there is nothing to worry about.
After three hours, he takes her box and puts it on a chair, curls up in bed, and refuses to worry. She would be angry at him if he did that.
After eight hours, he opens her box.
***
The first thing that greets him when he arrives back in their New York is Kitty's face plastered on every television screen and newspapers' front page. Traitor. Terrorist. National Security threat.
He stands in front of an electronic store in Harlem for almost an hour, watching the news channels flip back and forth between text graphics of the "mutant problem" to live images of Kitty being transported into a detention center somewhere in Colorado; she is calm with her head held high in every frame.
He knows how he must look. He hasn't shaved, a dark hoodie pulled low over his face, mutering to himself in Russian. He is proud of himself when he moves down the street when the owner comes outside and starts sweeping with a broom in his general direction.
He didn't punch a wall, he didn't run in without some sort of plan or back-up. Kitty would have been very angry at him, if he had.
***
Their relationship is hard to understand.
Five years isn't that much now, but ten years ago, it was a huge difference. They didn't think the same, they didn't have that much in common. He didn't understand when she would explain some of the more complex computer binaries and hacking codes she liked, and she didn't like most of the more abstract postmodern art he liked to go see. They were both shy, shoved in spandex, and put in life and death situations. Some things just happen.
There were other people for both of them. Some they didn't understand about each other. (Rachel. Psylocke.) It wasn't young love any more. But ten years with someone, where you trust them to watch your back, keep you from dying, and to hold your hand when some else doesn't come back from a mission, it changes things. And then, there isn't any one else in the world that can understand you better.
He loved her. She was all the family he had left in the world. And when they talked, even before, when they were just friends, he could step out of the metal box he still felt caged in, some days. Kitty made it easier to be a man again.
***
There's a box she leaves out. It has recordings and letters in it, labelled neatly for various people.
The top one's for Piotr.
So I guess you've noticed I don't so much stay around, it starts. I've been going. and I've been doing things on the sideyou won't join me on that is not so much legal. And I guess something's happened, because I'm not back to take the box away.
But I love you.
And it's going to be okay.
When Kitty starts to disappear for hours, at first, he worries. He knows better, but he does. Face life and death for ten years, you learn to trust someone enough to risk their own life. He trusts her to come back. And he understands. He does. In his own way. He loves her and he walked away so many times. Sometimes, you owe someone your silence.
Doesn't make it any easier not to open the box she leaves out every time. To wonder what, if anything, she would leave him if she... Because he hadn't left her anything more than ashes and memories when he had.
So, he plays with Naomi and tries not to bend Jayne's weight set into shapes he can't undo.
***
The thing is, this has all happened before. That he has joined the wrong side, or watched friends and people he cares about do things that are wrong. He knows how this all feels far too well. (Illyana would try to hide her horns after some missions, and some days, he was almost grateful they never had the chance to talk about the time she thought she had enslaved his corpse.)
He has been here before, and that doesn't make it any easier.
***
When she isn't back by her usual time, he tells himself there is nothing to worry about.
After three hours, he takes her box and puts it on a chair, curls up in bed, and refuses to worry. She would be angry at him if he did that.
After eight hours, he opens her box.
***
The first thing that greets him when he arrives back in their New York is Kitty's face plastered on every television screen and newspapers' front page. Traitor. Terrorist. National Security threat.
He stands in front of an electronic store in Harlem for almost an hour, watching the news channels flip back and forth between text graphics of the "mutant problem" to live images of Kitty being transported into a detention center somewhere in Colorado; she is calm with her head held high in every frame.
He knows how he must look. He hasn't shaved, a dark hoodie pulled low over his face, mutering to himself in Russian. He is proud of himself when he moves down the street when the owner comes outside and starts sweeping with a broom in his general direction.
He didn't punch a wall, he didn't run in without some sort of plan or back-up. Kitty would have been very angry at him, if he had.
***
Their relationship is hard to understand.
Five years isn't that much now, but ten years ago, it was a huge difference. They didn't think the same, they didn't have that much in common. He didn't understand when she would explain some of the more complex computer binaries and hacking codes she liked, and she didn't like most of the more abstract postmodern art he liked to go see. They were both shy, shoved in spandex, and put in life and death situations. Some things just happen.
There were other people for both of them. Some they didn't understand about each other. (Rachel. Psylocke.) It wasn't young love any more. But ten years with someone, where you trust them to watch your back, keep you from dying, and to hold your hand when some else doesn't come back from a mission, it changes things. And then, there isn't any one else in the world that can understand you better.
He loved her. She was all the family he had left in the world. And when they talked, even before, when they were just friends, he could step out of the metal box he still felt caged in, some days. Kitty made it easier to be a man again.
***
There's a box she leaves out. It has recordings and letters in it, labelled neatly for various people.
The top one's for Piotr.
So I guess you've noticed I don't so much stay around, it starts. I've been going. and I've been doing things on the side
But I love you.
And it's going to be okay.
