Well, I was inspired by reading a book of love letters and decided toexperiment a bit with style. So tell me what you think <pretty please, big gooey eyes>

Disclaimer: They belong to Marvel (though with the way they're treating these characters they should be forced to give them up). Anyway, I'm making no profit from this - just having a little fun.

Warren

My angel.

I have always longed for wings.

Does that seem strange to you? Maybe it does, for I do not speak of the things I long for where others can hear. I have learned to put away my hopes, my dreams - to put them into little boxes in my head, where no-one can touch them and only in the dead of night do I take out my dreams and twist them so they sparkle. And then the morning comes and I put them back into the little boxes and go out into the light - unknown, mysterious, enigmatic. Betsy - who lives in shadows, who wants the dark, who hides from the prying gaze of others.

But to you I say: I have always longed for wings.

I was once a butterfly.

Now I am a knife.

The butterfly flew in my head, flew over the world, bright and light and pretty, a girl who danced in the meadows in summertime and laughed and smiled and flew.

They took away my butterfly. They took away my eyes. They took away mybody. They took away my mind.

They broke me into little pieces and scattered me across the earth andacross the skies, until I had to piece myself together, bit by bit, until I could gather together the shards and shape them into something that was almost me again.

But the butterfly was dead.

The broken shards were sharp and cruel, and I cut my fingers when I tried to piece the butterfly back together and deep in the night I would weep for myself and what I should have been and I cut myself again and again on what I was. In the end I put all my pieces back together, but the only wings I ever flew on were gone and there was only the knife, sharp-edged, glittering, untouchable. No-one came near me, for they feared my bright, sharp edges, they feared the pain that came from trying to touch me.

They did not know the pieces were just as sharp on the inside.

And so I bled away inside my cage of knives, alone in the midst of family, desperate in my loneliness, wondering always who I was and where the girl that once had floated so delicately above the world had gone. I cried for the wings I once had.

But you saw. You watched. Somewhere in the shattered shards of the woman I was, you saw that I longed for wings.

You offered me yours.

You too had felt the pain that came when someone took away your wings. You too had been - reconstructed. You too had put the pieces back together. You too - were left with knives.

We should have scraped and grated, metal on metal, sharp edge running past sharp edge like blade on blade. But somehow you slipped past the knives, somehow you slid within my defences. You touched upon the core of the woman who thought she could never be touched again - who was afraid to feel because she feared it would all be shattered into pieces again - and your touch re-woke me. You brought me passion, true, but more than that, my angel, you brought me understanding.

And in the night you offered me your wings, your sharp-edged metal wings, those wings you were so ashamed of, and because you had allowed me inside them, because you had let me touch the living man, I took up your offer and wrapped your wings around me. You became my shield, my living, loving shield. Inside the circle of your wings, no-one could harm me, nothing could touch me and I could let go the shattered pieces of myself and become the butterfly again.

With you, I was able to fly.

I began to feel the butterfly again, as if the shards of me had been acocoon, as if I would emerge from my chrysalis and be Betsy again, free to live and love and laugh. I let myself be softened.

And sharp claws ripped through my softness, tore me into little piecesuntil I bled great gouts of myself across the floor and even as I knew that I was dying I vowed that I should never be soft again.

But you, my angel, my guardian angel, you who did not know of my vow, you tried to save me, you gave of yourself, you proved your love by having enough of me inside you to give to the Crimson Dawn. As I lay dying on my blood-soaked sheets, you tore out part of your own soul to save me.

You saved me.

You condemned me.

I know the price you paid for me, my love, do not think that I do not. But I had made my vow, and I was sharp and brittle when you returned. And inside me grew the Crimson Dawn - dark and terrible and overwhelming, until what you had saved was not the woman you loved but a thing made of the Dawn, a thing that was not Betsy any more.

I sometimes wonder if there is anything left of Betsy at all.

And whilst I was dissolving into the shadows, whilst I was breaking into little pieces once again, you were being set free. Your metal wings, your knives, the shards of the broken you, they fell away and you were re-born, made whole and flesh. And you wondered why I did not tell you what was happening to me.

But we fought, we fought together, we fought apart to find that which was Betsy in the dark thing that had formed around me. Sometimes, when I was wrapped in that cloak of darkness I thought how unfair it was - that you had sold your soul, but it was I who paid the price. But in the end, you paid your price, too, and I was freed and I was someone like Betsy again.

But the butterfly did not come back from the Dawn.

The butterfly was lost and I did not know how to fly. You offered me your wings, but I was so afraid to let someone touch me, to let myself be soft again, that I refused you, turned myself from you. I know that you hurt, that you wailed and gnashed at me inside your ever-polite facade, that you longed to know what was going on inside my head.

Did it ever occur to you that I did not know either?

I had been someone else again, someone less and more than Betsy Braddock, someone dark and evil. I did not know who was me any more. That is no surprise, though. I am surprised there is any me left at all.

But in the end I found myself, found the core of my soul, and I found that I still longed to fly.

I know you thought me mad, that day I threw myself from the building. I was not mad, not insane. I was Betsy. I knew myself that day, I knew what was the essential me, and I knew I longed to fly. I hoped that you would give me your wings.

You gave me your wings. You allowed me to fly.

And then you put me on the ground and walked away. And without you I could not fly.

But I found myself that day, found Betsy, found the woman who was almost whole, almost free. And so it was with open eyes that I walked into the Shadow King's trap, that I paid the price, that I lost myself again, my essential self shattered in the landscape of his mind.

So I walk upon the ground, lessened, battered, beaten, shattered andrebuilt, broken and remade into an image, a person, that is almost me.

I will never fly on my own again.

The butterfly is dead.

And then, when I had given up all hope, when I had taught myself patience and resignation and hopelessness, you offered me your wings.

Your wings. You offered me the sky, the whole, wide, wondering, blue sky, the stars, the moon, the sun, the swoop and weave and lift of flight, the drunken madness of ecstasy and tears, of flying.

I have little to offer you in return, my angel. I am only little pieces of the woman I once was. I cannot read your mind, your emotions any more. I cannot know exactly what you want at any time. I cannot be the Betsy you fell in love with, because she is not here any more. All I can offer you, and it is cold and battered and frightened, sheltered deep and tentative inside me, so it will need to be coaxed into the light of laughter again, all I can offer you is my heart.

If you wrap me in your wings, your warm, soft, glorious white wings, make them my shield against the world, warm me and hold me and love me, maybe it will be enough.

If you take me into the sky and hold me tight as we dance across the face of the stars, free and wild and in love, maybe it will be enough.

I love you, my angel, my lover, my wings.

I love you.

Betsy

Note: I did this also because I think Marvel screwed up the getting ofthese two back together. I'd like to think something like this happened between - Betsy's going weird and Oh we're so in love.

Amanda