Click... Click... Click... Click...
Some things never change. Pyro's compulsive clicking of his lighter was one of them. He didn't know exactly why he did, only that he did. It was a sort of comfort thing Pyro supposed.
Of course he never really thought in any great detail about why he did it. He didn't really think in great detail about anything he did. That was the way to madness. Some people thought the fiery pyromaniac just leapt into things, acting first and thinking later but they were wrong. Pyro used to think about things, used to think about them a lot. He would think about people and things.
Often he would think about pausing before rushing into a situation. It never got further than thinking though. On Pyro's first day at the mansion he had somehow got labeled as 'Showoff, hot-head'. He wasn't really sure how it happened but something told him it was to do with the slight accident and subsequent fight he had with Cyclops that resulted in Pyro burning a large P in Scott's clothing, rather in the style of Zorro. It was just more simple to keep up the pretense of being someone who rushed in where angel's fear to tread.
Now though, he doesn't think much at all. Because all thoughts end up leading to her.
He hates her, he loves her. Hate. Love. Hate. Love. There was such a fine line. That's another reason why he doesn't think anymore. If he starts to think he may start sprouting philosophy and other such crap.
If he just acts without thinking then it's numb. Funny. If someone had asked Pyro a year or two ago wither or not he wanted to feel numb he would have laughed before setting their hair on fire. He would have said;
"Pyro loves the heat, the warmth, the passion."
Now Pyro didn't. Well, that wasn't true. He still loved the warmth of fire, the untouchable beauty - but there he was, thinking about her again. Sometimes on a long ride to there next mission with the brotherhood he would start thinking about the numbness that invaded his body. He usually gets as far in his thoughts as to wonder if this is how Bobby feels all the time before remembering that thinking is bad.
He faced Bobby in the last mission he went on. He doesn't like remembering that, the self righteous look on his one time best friends face as he prepared to fight. While the two battle, the powers evenly matched, just as Pyro knew they would be - she watched. Not obviously, she was fighting a member of the brotherhood at the time but all the same Pyro knew she was watching them.
Pyro wasn't stupid - despite what people thought. He knew that his fire power would cancel out anything Bobby threw at him and vice versa. He even knew that he could beat Bobby if he wanted to. Bobby was all technical no imagination, predictable. All Pyro had to do was use a move Bobby wasn't expecting and wham! One sleeping Popsicle. Not that he would do that - she wouldn't like it.
She.
The Rogue.
One of the few things Pyro doesn't know is which of the two she watches. Part of him hopes that she watches him, to make sure that he isn't hurt or simply to admire his body. Part of him tells the other part, that she's watching her boyfriend, of course, ready to spring into action if Pyro does break the unspoken rule.
The rule Bobby doesn't know about. He doesn't know that Pyro is in love with his girlfriend. He doesn't know that Pyro holds back when ever the two fight. He even doesn't know that Pyro saved Bobby's life a few weeks ago by telling Sabertooth to leave the battered body alone.
Sabertooth didn't like that. Pyro didn't care. It's not that he did it to save Drake's skin. He did it to keep her happy. She was the only one that knew about Pyro's unspoken rule outside of the brotherhood. All the brotherhood knew, after the Sabertooth incident. Only Magneto knew that it wasn't him Pyro was saving, it was her.
Though, it was a pretty good guess that The Professor knew about the rule. Pyro had a theory that Charles knew all about it, and that was why he always encouraged Bobby to fight Pyro. It was a way to keep all three of them safe.
Bobby called him evil the last time they met, called him a moronic bug that was too weak to stand up for what was right.
So after that comment which hurt him, Pyro sits and thinks about Bobby and how naive the ice user is, even as he tells himself that he's not thinking at all. What had Hamlet said?
'There is no good or evil; only thinking makes it so.'
That was it. That was why Bobby was wrong and naive. Bobby only saw the world as black or white, good or evil. Bobby wanted to destroy all evil. He didn't see the world as Pyro saw it, a world infused with all the shades of gray. Just because Pyro believed that Charles was wrong to think that mutants and humans would just accept each other without fighting. How did that make him the bad guy?
Pyro was all for the two races sharing the planet. He just thought that it couldn't be done peacefully. So he choose - not the other side - but a different view point. Besides if Bobby got his wish and destroyed all evil there would be nothing left in the world. For how can there be good without evil? He would have committed Armageddon. Which in its own way was evil. Making Bobby the very thing he hated. Hate. Another emotion that was classed as being 'evil'.
Which was a lot of bullshit to Pyro. Storm hated, it didn't make her evil. If anything it made her all the more good. The whole thing about good and evil, being one or the other sounded like rubbish to him.
He wasn't the bad guy. He also wasn't idiotic enough to believe he was some fucking hero like Bobby did. To be a true bad guy you had to do a lot worse than having a different view to the people you know and to be a hero you had to do a lot more than any pitiful act Ice Balls could do.
She didn't think he was evil. Pyro cared about that small fact. It was told to him in the tiny look she sent in his direction after she found Bobby's body after the Sabertooth incident. Pyro had just turned his back for a second and when he looked back Sabertooth had begun to fight Icey. So after Pyro stopped Sabertooth killing him, he had sent little sparks of fire in the air, to make the X-Men think he and Bobby were fighting in that direction so that they would come and help. Pyro was sure that once they found Bobby and healed him, he, Pyro, would be cast as - those horrible three words again - the bad guy.
Yet somehow Rogue had known. She had even known where he was hiding, waiting to make sure his old friend was discovered. And that small smile she had sent him told the boy more than words ever could.
That was twice in one day that Pyro allowed himself to call her by her name. It was a guilty pleasure for him and also the source of intense pain. To call her by her name somehow gives Pyro something over her. Almost as if he could call her 'His'. Yet it also gives him pain for she was so far away.
On even rarer times Pyro even allows himself the luxury of calling her by her human name. The name that Bobby never called her.
He was a third wheel to Bobby. Only that and nothing more. Sure, Bobby was supposed to be his friend but Bobby knew, he knew for God's sake how much Pyro had liked her when she first came to the school. Pyro never made a move like he did to any other girl. And only Bobby had known what it really was. She had thought that Pyro had made a fireball and Bobby turned it into a rose. It wasn't like that. Pyro had made a fireball and was turning it into a rose. Then the 'master of Ice' had frozen his attempt solid.
Only Pyro knew how much that hurt. It was true that Pyro had been known around the school as a bit of a ladies man, yet any girl that Bobby showed the slightest bit of interest in was off limits to Pyro as far as Pyro himself was concerned. Bobby didn't feel the same way about Pyro when it mattered.
Maybe Pyro shouldn't have stepped aside without so much as a fight. He only did that to keep her smiling and laughing, just as he only set that boy in the museum on fire because of the comments made about her, not as it was commonly thought because the boy had nicked his lighter and that Pyro was a hot headed fool.
Though Pyro was strong enough to give her to Bobby he couldn't let her go. So he attached himself to them on most of their dates, hung out with them and generally became a third wheel. She and Bobby were always too polite to say anything. Or maybe she enjoyed his company? There he was, second guessing every little thing that had happened between them. At this rate he really was going to go mad.
Kitty had been more than a little confused about Pyro's actions towards the couple. It was unlike him to stick to people like he stuck to them. But not even Kitty, with her active imagination and her less than complimentary take on him guessed the real reason. Pyro's courtship with the girl he loved had been so short that no one even knew he had tried.
The general opinion was that he was being a jerk. Which just reinforced the view that Pyro was an ignorant guy. Not that Pyro cared. He didn't care about anything by then, only her.
When Pyro left the X-Men he felt little regret. After all, why should he? All the teachers had branded him as a student who wasn't interested in school work and most of the pupils had him down as a show-off. The only regret he felt, was unsurprisingly aimed at the fact he was leaving her.
He had briefly toyed with the idea of trying to get her to come too, but dismissed it. Bobby would stop her and that would be that. So Pyro left them with little regret. At least, that is what he tells himself.
Even so he asked Magneto to wait high up in the clouds to make sure the X-Men got away safely. He even got Magneto to promise to lift the X-Men's plane if they couldn't get out in time. So Magneto did. That was something else they didn't know about Pyro. They thought Jean had saved them on her own, they had no idea that it was Magneto who had lifted the plane in the end, giving it a nudge to help her.
Pyro felt sad when Jean died. He had watched as the water had consumed her and felt sorry. She had thought he was a hopeless case true but it was her who lent him the books he had read late at night and it was her who had tried to save his love. So Pyro allowed himself to grieve. For Jean. But not even that can be kept clean from her, for all too soon the fire user's thoughts peel from the dead red head to the all too alive brunette.
Pyro would love to tell her how he feels, the heat in which he burns for her, but Bobby says that they are on opposite sides. And she would go along with that. Does it make the blindest bit of difference to Pyro's feelings towards her? The fact that he is a member of the Brotherhood and she is a member of the X-Men? Of course not, Pyro loves her all the same.
But Pyro is on a different side to her, the fire he longs for, the fire that keeps him warm. So he spends his afternoon's clicking his lighter and not thinking about Marie.
Click... Click... Click... Click...
Addiction: 1. a) Compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit- forming substance: a drug used in the treatment of heroin addiction.
b) An instance of this: a person with multiple chemical addictions.
2. a) The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.
b)An instance of this: had an addiction for fast cars.
That's what how my dictionary defines addiction. It's called "The American Heritage� Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.", so it should know what it's talking about. It makes addiction sound so clinical, so cold.
It doesn't describe the tingly feeling you get when you know you're about to get another dose. It doesn't describe the way your blood pumps round you as you are fulfilling your need, of the way all you can hear is your heart beat. Or of the amazing rush you feel, making you think anything is possible.
It doesn't describe the way the feel coming down off a high, the depressed feeling and utter helplessness. It doesn't describe the constant need to have more or the damage an addiction can do to you.
It doesn't describe John.
There. I said it. I am addicted to St. John Allerdyce. That wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for two things. One I already have a boyfriend, someone I love, Bobby. And two, being addicted to John is bad for my health.
John's here you know, all the time. He's here inside my head. As are Logan and Erik. Along with my first boyfriend, David and Bobby himself. They would all talk at once, chattering away, refusing to shut up. Erik would try and convince me to join with him, while Logan would try and protect me. My first boyfriend, David mostly hid in a corner in my mind, whimpering quietly to himself.
I really loved him, you know? Then my powers erupted and I drained most of his memories into me. And I found out something terrible. My boyfriend, the shy, sweet guy I thought I knew was planning to have sex with me then brag about it before dumping me.
Then I kissed Bobby. He lives in a small corner of my mind, not trying to interfere with the battles that go on in my head. He just sits on the sidelines. It's not that doesn't love me. It's just that he is neutral, and he doesn't want to fight, being a passive kind of guy.
Then I grabbed John's leg. And now, I understand him so much more. I understood why he was the way he was, why he flicked his lighter and why he attached himself to mine and Bobby's dates.
Before I touched John, I was in love with him. No love is too strong a word. I don't know how I would describe what I felt for John. It... it was like a keen sense that I was missing something in my life, that there was a void inside of me and somehow, John knew how to fill it.
I suppose you could say I was addicted to him even then. It wasn't a full blown addiction though, because I had never touched him, never tasted the forbidden fruit. Before I touched John he was just a strong longing. A desire to have something untouchable.
After I touched John, I knew why he loved his power so much, I knew why he fought against everything the mansion and Xavier stood for. The fire in him gave him power, the sense of being a leader. He could use his power to protect those he cared about.
Something he failed to do before his powers emerged. I saw his early life flash before me, I saw what his home was like. And then I knew. I felt something hit me inside, a warm, sickly feeling that seemed to encompass everything I knew. It was... love.
But not my love. Love for me. John loved me.
I almost let go of his leg in shock. He had never given me any indication that he was even mildly interested in me so to find out he was head over heels, completely in love with me was a shock to say the least. He is a much stronger mutant that people give him credit for. After all it took me longer to drain him than it did to drain Bobby.
It was then that I became truly addicted to John. I would have given anything to feel him again, to have the flame burn inside me. I would have given up Logan, Bobby and the X-Men to be with him. All he had to do was ask.
He was going to ask me. I knew when he left the jet that he wasn't going to come back. He looked at me and I just knew. I was going to say yes, but he simply gave a sad, small smile before turning around and walking out of my life as a friend.
John died that day. There was only Pyro left after that. Pyro would always attack Bobby when the X-Men. I didn't understand it at first, after all the John in my head never wanted to really fight Bobby because if Bobby got hurt, I would get upset.
It took a few battles for me to work out that was why Pyro fought Bobby, it was to keep him safe from the rest of the Brotherhood and to keep me happy.
But it's too late now, he's chosen that way and I have chosen the other way.
The way with Bobby.
Don't get me wrong, I love Bobby, I do. Bobby is everything you could want in a boyfriend. He's kind, considerate, gentle. He always says that is doesn't matter that we can't touch, we can still show each other out love in different ways.
It became almost a game to me, working out all sorts of ways Bobby and I could almost touch, using the thinnest scarves I had to kiss though.
But it wasn't the same as fire.
I had almost been glad when John had begun to attach himself on to our dates. It would irritate Bobby but of course, he was perfect so he would never come right out and say that John was starting to irritate him. Bobby tried to drop hints though.
John isn't as stupid as he looks. I'm sure he picked up on the hints, he just chose to ignore them.
I love Bobby. Bobby and Rogue forever. Rogue loves Bobby. Rogue & Bobby 4ever. Bobby loves Rogue. Rogue loves John.
No.
Ignore the last sentence. Just focus on the truth. I love Bobby. Bobby. Bobby. Bobby. Bobby.
John loves me.
He loves me and I am addicted to him. And now he's gone and I can't do anything to change it. He's the baddie. Bobby and I are the goodies. That's the way it is and that's the way it has to stay. I can't even tell what I feel.
Is it lust, addiction or even, dare I think it, love?
All I want is to feel him again. All I want is to feel the fire rushing through my veins, burning me, giving me life. I wish I had someone to tell me what to do, how to do it. I just wish I knew my own heart.
It's funny that. My mother used to say that the most important thing in the world was to know your own heart. She said that it was more important than money, than jobs. It was even more important than what your brain was telling you to do.
My mother trusted her heart all her life. She followed it blindly, letting it make all her important choices in her life. Maybe her life wasn't great, I mean she lost her only daughter to mutants (That's how she thinks of me) and she doesn't have a brilliant job. But... she's happy.
She's happy and in love.
I've always tried to follow my heart but most of the time my brain gets in the way.
You can't do that!
Come off it, you're the good girl!
You'll going to give yourself cancer smoking.
It was just one lousy cigarette. I'm supposed to be the good girl, the one everyone looks up to, the one people trust.
For some reason I lost my instinct to follow my heart and became known as the girl who follows her brain and I lost a lot of things because of it.
I lost John.
But I still have Bobby. And in the end, isn't that better? To have the person I love?
Do I love Bobby?
Heart, talk to me, tell me what to do.
Every time I see John I feel the urge to run over to him, to put my gloved arms around him and tell him it's okay. To tell him he doesn't have to fight anymore, that he doesn't have to hide. To tell him that I will be with him what ever he does. Even if it means joining the Brotherhood and helping the man that nearly killed me. Even if it means coming back to the mansion with John, and helping him fit back in.
Even if it means leaving both of those choices behind and going away on our own.
Is that my heart talking? Is it screaming at me, telling me what to do and I just refuse to see it? I seem to have a lot of questions and so few answers.
Bobby doesn't talk about John anymore, it's like he doesn't exist in his head. If he has to mention him, he calls him Pyro. It's as if John's dead and only Pyro is left. I suppose it made it easier for Bobby to come to terms with the fact his best friend betrayed him.
I can't run over to John, I can't put my arms around him and tell him it's okay, because it's not. I don't think it will ever be okay. I'm going to stay with Bobby. I'm going to forget John in the same way Bobby did. That way my heart can't scream at me to do something.
John is gone, he's as good as dead. Only Pyro is left. Pyro is evil.
I have a boyfriend who loves me and other friends who care about me. I don't need John, I don't need an unhealthily addiction.
Still...
I think I'll change that dictionary entry that describes addiction. If Bobby ever sees it, I can just tell him John must have done it as a joke before he left.
Addiction: 1. a) Compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit- forming substance: a drug used in the treatment of heroin addiction.
b) An instance of this: a person with multiple chemical addictions.
2. a) The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.
b)An instance of this: had/has an addiction for St. John Allerdyce.
If anyone of us mutants at the school was going to fall to the 'Dark Side', chances are it would have been Johnny. He was a rebel, didn't do his work and liked to use his powers at every chance he had. Most of the kids would have said he was destined to be the bad guy.
Looking back, that must have been hard on Johnny.
Not that any of us thought like that. We didn't seem to really care what we said about him - after all he didn't really care. He was Johnny, just Johnny, always ready to forget the last smart comment you made because it didn't matter. I think it did though. Matter I mean.
If it was anyone else someone would have stepped in to stop it. We didn't bully him or anything, after all Johnny would have burnt us to a crisp if anyone had even thought about bulling him. I suppose it was bulling in a way, a sort of mental bulling. We didn't know we were doing it, I swear. It was like we were hypnotizing him into thinking that he would end up evil no matter what.
But Johnny is dead. He was killed by Pyro. So now, I fight Pyro at every chance I get in the hope of avenging my best friend's death. It's my way of saying sorry... that sounds so messed up, but it's true. I fight Pyro to say sorry to Johnny, sorry for everything. Most of all, sorry that I got the girl and he didn't. And now, he never will, Johnny might have had a chance, but Pyro has no chance, Pyro is evil.
I'm not stupid or blind... I'm not oblivious.
I've seen the way he looked at Rogue, seen the way Pyro still does. Pyro lusts after her, he practically starts drooling at the sight of her. But I just ignore it, like I always have.
It's as if I'm wearing blinkers and I can't see to either side of me. It's as if - when it comes to Rogue - I can't see the bigger picture. All I can see is Rogue, not the fact that Pyro lusts after her or that she sometimes lusts after him when she thinks I'm not looking.
She fights it. I know she does... when ever it's just us, no one else, not even her precious Logan, she's sweetness itself. When ever she's fully in control of herself, she's mine and she wants to be mine. That's the important thing to remember, she wants to be my girlfriend. No-one else. She wants to be mine.
It's those few hours after we see Pyro that are the worst. She's a nervous bundle of energy, walking up and down, doing that little movement with her hands, that I've come to love so much. God, what I would give for her to act like that after seeing me. For her to think of me like that, for her to love me like that...
It's different to what me and her have, I don't think there is a name to what they have. If Johnny hadn't died when he did, she would have ended up with him. I know that, in my heart. It's a good thing he did die then isn't it?
It's a good thing my best friend died... because I get to keep my girlfriend.
Isn't it?
Rogue was becoming more weak, every day, she seemed to get more and more distant, less attached. She didn't even know she was doing it.
And they call me oblivious.
After he left she flung herself back into our relationship with renewed vigor. Yet something seemed... different. She seemed different. There was something in her that wasn't there before that day.
The day she kissed me for the first time. The day she absorbed Johnny's power for the first time. The day he died. The day everything changed.
That day.
At first I thought it was because she kissed me. That she had somehow had permanently been affected by our kiss. Then I realized that she wasn't colder or have any nifty ice powers and she didn't have any traits that she could have picked up from me.
So I decided it was because he died. Well, you would be different if one of your best friends died. But it didn't seem to cover it. She wasn't different in that way either, it was something else, something so small that you couldn't pick it up unless you were really looking for it and even then, you couldn't define it.
It took me a while to work it out. She was different, more reckless, more energy. How could I have not guessed?
She was more like Johnny.
She liked being like that as well. You could tell from the glow on her face that hadn't been there before. She liked it. She liked the feel of fire.
I don't mean she doesn't love me or that she is unfaithful to me. It's nothing like that. I know she loves me. I know she cares. She's not being selfish, she just doesn't seem to know what she's doing to me.
That or she just doesn't care.
No! She cares, she has to care, why else would she stay?
You wanna know the really funny thing? The really funny thing was during our dates - the dates Johnny tagged along on - I would sometimes feel like I was a third wheel. On a date with my own girlfriend. When I said funny, I didn't mean funny 'ha ha', I meant funny ironic.
Sometimes it really sucks to be me.
Even though I seem to have everything I've ever wanted. Seem being the operative word here. Everybody at the mansion was jealous of me, when I first came. I had a 'perfect' family. I had a family, which was a lot more than most people. They didn't know I was a mutant, which was different to most of the other kids here.
That crumbled all around me.
I have the 'perfect' girlfriend. Most people would think I would never have to be jealous or worried that she would cheat on me, after all she can't touch people. Huh, some joke. She doesn't need to cheat on me.
So that crumbled all around me as well.
Even if nobody sees the ruins at the moment and only see the facade of a perfect and a strong, loving couple, I know the truth. No matter how much I wish I didn't.
They say that ignorance is bliss. 'They' say a lot of things. Who would have thought that they would have been right? To be oblivious... to never have noticed the undercurrents between the two.
That would be bliss.
Don't misunderstand me - In a way I'm glad I know. They don't. That gives me some satisfaction at least. They don't even know that they love each other. I'm not going to tell them. Why should I? After all, she loves me and at the moment that's all that matters.
I know Rogue loves me and I love her. It's just... I don't think it's enough for her. She wants something more, something I can't give her.
She wants fire.
I'm not stupid or blind. I'm not oblivious... but I'll just keep pretending I am. How else can I keep her?
And even though I have her, there is a part of her I'll never really have. A part of her that will always belong to him, no matter how much she might say it isn't so. And that hurts.
It will always hurt.
Why can't I just be oblivious?
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