The Courtship Chronicles
Disclaimer: I don't own Ben 10 and/or Ben 10: Alien Force and/or Ben 10: Ultimate Alien and/or any and/or all concepts and/or characters. They are copyrighted to Man of Action and Cartoon Network Studios. I am a mere Fanfiction author. With far too much time on her hands and no social life.
Rated: T
Prologue: Resolve
Kevin Levin had agonized over the decision for what seemed like years but was really only days. He really loved Gwen Tennyson; they had been dating for a couple years and already he knew he wanted to be with her as long as he lived; hell he had known this since the day they had all met up that second time. He wanted to move forward in this, to make it official.
Only he knew he severely limited her. She should have gone off to Harvard or Yale or some other Ivy League university but she had stayed behind in little backwater Bellwood and got her teaching degree at the local university. She claimed that she was needed in Bellwood with their little team, by the Plumbers. After all, she balanced the hotheadedness of the ex-street rat and the cockiness of the wielder of the Ultramatrix quite well by being the one who thought before swinging. Even though that was a character merit to a flaw at times. But he knew better; she had stayed behind because of him. Because he wasn't good enough to go to any college, he didn't have his GED. He had money, a lot of it, from his illegal technology brokering in his teenage years and his Plumbers checks were pretty decent so he could provide for her, let her live like a goddess for a good few hundred years. But money was all he had, that and his badge, and so he didn't try deluding himself that that made him good enough for her. But he also knew that he couldn't live without her; at least not without going completely sociopathic and making Hitler look like a small time crook. Even while he had her, even while she was his, he always knew that he might lose her to another man. He had given her enough time to realize her mistake and leave him, seven hundred and thirty days to be exact, and she hadn't yet so…
But what if she said yes, accepted his ring, signed the papers, and then months later changed her mind? He doubted he had the self-discipline needed to make himself sign the papers that would free her from him…scratch that, he knew he didn't have the self-discipline. He wouldn't force himself onto her physically but he would keep her captive by legal means. But…what if, by some miracle, she stayed happy with him? What if she stayed in such a legal union willingly? He knew how slim the chances were but they were still possible. And so he had decided to chance things, go for broke.
He began putting together a to-do list; he couldn't try this half-cocked.