The Wrong Choice

Grant Ward/Kitty Pryde

ShadowSpecialist

Theme song:

Jonah's Road – Long Gone (an obscure Aussie band but this song is perfect, it's on YouTube – check it out!)

WARNING: Ward isn't going to get a happy ending. Again. Sorry. (Kitty will be fine, though, promise).

Prompted by .kawaii, who wanted a fic where Ward is still hung up on Kara and/or Skye, and doesn't give his soulmate the chance she deserves. Hope this is what you were hoping for!

For those of you not familiar with the comic X-Men, Piotr Rasputin (Colossus) has a sister named Illyana, who is one of Kitty's closest friends.

"He's cuuute," Jubilee nudged Kitty in the ribs. "Go on. Go introduce yourself, I dare you."

Rogue chuckled. "Yah've done it now, Jubes, Kitty can never resist a dare!"

Illyana, on her other side, was unusually silent, but Kitty had already had a few drinks and was feeling bold. They'd all been eyeing the tall, exceedingly handsome dark-haired man ever since he walked into the upscale hotel bar where they were holding their girls' night out and ordered himself a drink.

He gave no apparent notice to the four young women eyeing him and giggling together, but Kitty had the definite feeling that he'd taken in and noted every detail about everyone in the room. There was something tragic about him, about the grim lines of his face, the hollows beneath his sharply carved cheekbones, the dark circles under his eyes that spoke of sleepless nights. She wanted, suddenly, to comfort him, to hold his head to her breast and stroke her fingers through his dark hair, croon soft words until he slept peacefully in her arms.

"Oh, what the hell." She downed her drink. "Worst he can do is shoot me down in flames, huh?"

Rogue and Jubilee both laughed. Illyana snorted disparagingly.

"He could be a serial killer, Katya."

"Well that's why I have friends to watch my back!" Kitty giggled, patted Illyana's shoulder. "Stop being so gloomy and Russian!" She got up and walked across the bar, concentrating on keeping her steps steady.

"You're too handsome to drink alone," she said cheerfully, sliding onto the barstool beside Mr Tall Dark Sex God.

He blinked unfairly long black eyelashes at her. Wasted on a man, Kitty thought disgustedly. She waited, heart in her mouth, for him to speak. Please be the one. Please.

At first glance, Grant had thought the tiny brunette was a child. A second unobtrusive look had told him she was probably the same age as the other young women she was drinking with, twenty-two or three, and certainly this hotel wouldn't be risking their liquor licence serving anyone under-age, they'd have carded her carefully. So, she was just tiny. A scant five foot if that, he assessed as she got up and walked a bit unsteadily across the floor towards him. Can't take her liquor. Unsurprising with a body weight of about eighty pounds, really.

And then she opened her mouth and said his soulmark words, making him blink with surprise.

"I prefer to drink alone," he said at last, hoping that she would show no sign of recognition. He'd probably given himself away with his own surprised glance, but really – he didn't want his soulmate. His soul was stained black and anyone who shared the other half of it – either they would be someone equally dark and irredeemable, or they would be the match for the decent person he could have been if his family and Garrett hadn't corrupted him, in which case they were most definitely better off without him.

"Oh my God, it's you!" Kitty squealed, hands going to her mouth in amazed delight. "Do you have any idea how many random guys I've approached in bars because of you?"

Unwillingly, he felt his lips twitch up in a smile. She was a cute little thing, even if not his preferred type – her hair was too light and too short in that pixie cut, her eyes green-brown, not so dark as to be almost black. "Sorry."

"It's okay, I only turned twenty-one a couple of years ago, but of course you know that," Kitty chattered happily, "and Logan would have had a heart attack if I had a fake ID before that, so it hasn't been too many times. Wow, you're really handsome." She leaned her chin on her hand and gazed at him. "I feel super lucky. I'm Kitty, by the way. Kitty Pryde."

Grant said nothing. What could he possibly say? She was young and sweet and he absolutely couldn't have anything to do with her. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, "but – I can't."

Kitty stared at him. At the genuine pain on his face. "What is it?" she asked gently, compassionately.

He just shook his head. "You don't want me, Kitty. I'm not a good person."

"You could choose to be," Kitty reached out unconsciously, putting her fingers atop his, where they rested on the bar. "I could help you. Please. Let me…"

"No!" He pulled his hand away. "I'm sorry," he said again, standing up. Tossing a few bills on the bar to pay for his drink, he headed for the door.

Shocked, Kitty didn't hesitate. Darting around in front of him, she put a hand to his chest, looking up into his dark eyes across the more than a foot of height difference between them. "Don't go. Please."

"You don't know what you're asking." He stepped around her, walked out, headed for the hotel elevator.

Kitty's friends were crowding around her, asking what was wrong. She dashed angry, frustrated tears from her eyes. "Not now, guys!"

Dashing after him, she saw the elevator doors closing.

Grant hadn't thought much could shock him anymore, but the sight of Kitty walking through the closed elevator doors just before the car started to move made his jaw drop inelegantly. "What the fuck?"

"You won't get rid of me that easily." Kitty folded her arms and stared up at him. "Now what's your name?"

"Grant Ward," he said, too stunned to lie or dissemble. "How did you…?"

"I'm X-gene." She smirked at him. "And I'm very persistent."

He regrouped, shook his head at her. "Look, Kitty – you're young, I get that you've still got all these romantic dreams about soulmates and how it's Meant To Be and all that shit. But you don't want me. I've fucked up too much shit in my life. Made too many mistakes."

"Maybe I'm meant to help you fix them. Didja think of that, Grant?" She cocked her head pertly.

"I shot my last girlfriend twice in the stomach," he said flatly. "She died in my arms, drowning as her lungs filled up with her own blood."

Kitty shrank back against the elevator wall, her eyes wide with horror.

"Some things can't be fixed, Kitty." He shook his head at her. "I've got too many enemies. They'd destroy my soulmate if they found out I had one. And if they don't, I would. I destroy everything I touch."

There was utter silence for a moment. And then the elevator doors pinged and slid open. Ward hit the ground floor button and walked out without a backward glance.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

The doors opened again and Kitty stumbled out into the waiting arms of her friends. Her tears blinded her, wrenching sobs wracking her tiny frame.

Rogue, unable to touch Kitty to comfort her, shared a look with Illyana over Kitty's head and pulled out her phone as Illyana and Jubilee gently guided Kitty to a couch in a dark corner of the hotel lobby and sat her down, arms around her as she sobbed out her heartbreak.

"Oh, Katya," a deep voice rumbled finally, strong arms lifted her tenderly, and she curled against a broad chest, the familiar, comforting scent of her friend surrounding her. "Hush now. You're safe now, kotyonok moi. I have you safe."

It wasn't until Jean touched her mind and drove her down into sleep that the sobs finally stopped, though.

"Will she be all right?" Piotr stood over the bed in the mansion's medical centre, arms folded across his chest. His sister stood beside him, her expression concerned.

"Eventually," Jean looked up at Piotr. "She's young. She still believes that finding one's soulmate inevitably leads to happily ever after." Her lovely face was sorrowful. "Her soulmate did the only decent thing he could, sending her away. He's not a good man, and he knows it." Patting Kitty's lax hand on the sheet gently, she said, "She will need someone to love her unconditionally."

"You know already that I do!"

"Everyone knows that you do, except Katya herself," Illyana said with a snort.

"I have no soulmark, Illyana, and Kitty does! I'm not so selfish as to try to take for myself that which is meant for another…"

"It isn't any more," Jean said quietly. "He rejected her. Her mark will fade, in time."

Piotr stilled. And then he slowly unfolded his arms and reached for a chair, sat down beside the bed. "Then I will wait. As long as I must."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Kitty woke with sore, hurting eyes and a bruised heart. Cracking her eyes open a fraction she saw Piotr sitting by her bed, reading a book.

"Piotr," she whispered, and immediately he dropped the book and leaned over her.

"Katya!" His huge hand hovered uncertainly over hers. "Oh, kotyonok moi." His brown eyes were gentle. "I am so sorry."

She began to cry again and he gathered her in his arms, holding her close, and rocked her gently until she quieted.

All her friends stepped warily around Kitty. None of them quite seemed to know what to say to her. Only Piotr treated her as he had always done, even when in her pain and misery she snapped at him harshly. He only took her hand in his and squeezed it gently.

"Why do you put up with me?" she said in despair one day. "I've been such a bitch."

He smiled in his quiet way. "Don't you know, Katya?"

She shied away from thinking about what he meant.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

"It's fading," Kitty said quietly to Illyana one day a few weeks later, as the two of them sat together in the mansion's magnificent gardens, enjoying the sunshine.

Illyana looked at her friend's forearm, at the once-black lettering which was now a misty grey.

"Will you wait until it is gone completely?" the Russian girl asked dryly.

"Wait for what?" Kitty stared at her, puzzled.

"To see what is right in front of your eyes, Katya!" Illyana rolled her eyes, exasperated.

Kitty's frown deepened, and Illyana's temper snapped.

"My brother has been in love with you since the day he first laid eyes on you, idiot! He eats his heart out over you and all you do is cry on his shoulder!" Getting up, she flounced off towards the mansion, waving her hands and talking to herself in voluble Russian.

Kitty sat, open-mouthed and stunned. A quiet rustle behind her made her turn around, and she saw Rogue standing there. The Southern girl looked at her for a few moments before coming to sit beside her.

"Did you know?" Kitty asked after a couple of minutes of silence.

"Ah think yah're the only person in the mansion who didn't." Rogue's green eyes were sympathetic.

"But," Kitty said, finally getting over her shock, "he's Piotr."

"Yes?" Rogue raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"I mean, look at him! He's – he could have anyone he wanted!"

Rogue said nothing.

"Really?" Kitty said eventually, her voice wondering.

"Really. Now what're yah gonna do 'bout it? Bearing in mind that Illyana will kill yah if yah break his heart."

"I wouldn't, I…" Kitty trailed off. "I've been breaking his heart for years, haven't I," she said in a small voice.

"Yah can't blame yahself for that. Not your fault. There's no shame in holdin' out for yahr soulmate, Piotr understood that." Rogue tapped a gloved finger on the fading grey words on Kitty's arm. "It's what yah do now that counts."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Grant Ward stood outside the church, eyes trained on the door. He felt numb, sick. Two years. She hadn't even waited two years. He watched as the giant groom lifted his tiny, joyously laughing bride in his arms to the cheers of the watching guests, carried her to the waiting limousine, kissed her before joining her inside.

She was his. She was meant to be his. Grant's fists clenched at his sides – and something cold and very sharp pricked the side of his neck.

Turning his head slowly, he looked along the length of three gleaming adamantium blades into hard dark eyes.

"The Wolverine, I presume?" he said, careful to keep his voice level.

"Correct. And allow me to introduce Gambit, Deadpool, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Iceman, Rogue and Jean Grey. And Illyana Rasputin," Logan nodded towards the icily beautiful blonde in the bridesmaid's dress. "Sister of the groom. A very powerful sorceress."

Grant's eyes flickered over the assembled group. He'd heard of all of them. They were all staring at him from hard eyes, their expressions ranging from disapproving to enraged.

"What are you doing here?" It was Illyana who spoke. "Katya's mark faded. You rejected her."

Faded. Her mark faded. The words thundered inside his head, and Grant realised just how big a mistake he'd made. Mouth dry, he said "I was just leaving."

"Yes," Logan growled. "You were."

"If I ever see you near my brother or Katya again," Illyana said softly, "I will kill you."

He didn't doubt her.

"You're being kind, Illyana," Logan growled. "If I ever see you again, I'll kill you. Better start running, Grant Ward. I'm givin' you one hour and then I'm comin' after you."

He took a step back, away from those piercing eyes, those viciously sharp blades. Looked around at the others, pausing at Storm and Jean Grey; he'd heard they were among the X-Men's leaders. But they both looked at him with hard, pitiless eyes, and then Storm's eyes turned white and thunder rumbled in the distance.

Grant Ward whirled around and ran for his life.

kotyonok moi – my kitten

You BETTER run, Ward. Logan will turn you to mincemeat if he catches up with you.

It's probably bad that I find that thought extremely satisfying, isn't it?

I PROMISE I WILL write Ward a HEA soon. PROMISE. I'm thinking Wanda. And maybe a badguys fic pairing him and dark!Rumlow…