Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men. Don't sue me.

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Kitty's POV again.

Author's Note: This story is semi-AU, meaning it isn't completely alternate universe, but it doesn't really go along with the show completely either. Basically, it takes place after "Hex Factor," and ignores anything that may come after it. (Which it sort of has to, seeing as at this current time, the two part season finale has not yet aired.) Anyway, it diverges from what is sure to be the path the show takes by having Lance leave town following the battle in the mall between the Brotherhood and the X-Men. (I just don't see the writers doing that…)

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Dreaming of Something Beyond Perfect

By: Addie Logan

 

I thought after three years I wouldn't be dreaming of him anymore. I haven't as much as heard his voice since I was fifteen years old. I'm eighteen now. Legally, I'm an adult. I'm going to college in the fall—NYU on full scholarship. I've put my heart and soul into the X-Men, and I think I've become a vital part of the team. My life is as complete as it can be for someone my age. I even have a boyfriend. His name is Peter, and I tell him I love him.

I think I was first attracted to him because he reminded me of Lance. Like Lance, he'd started out as my enemy. It's such a cliché when you think about it—the good girl can't help but be attracted to the bad boys.

Even when Peter left Magneto to join the X-Men, I still saw him as having that bad boy edge. But unlike Lance, Peter was no longer my enemy. He was something I could have. Lance and I were always separated by the line that divides the heroes from the villains. With Peter, I could have a stable relationship and a bad boy all in one. Or at least that's what I thought.

Peter isn't Lance. I figured that out quickly, but I held on anyway. I found other things about him that attracted me to him the way Lance's torn jeans, shaggy hair, and brooding temperament had before.

With Peter, I found out that he wasn't the jaded man of the world I thought he was, and suddenly I became endeared to his farm boy innocence, his unyielding devotion to his family back home in Russia, even the way he always called me "Katya."

We've been together for over a year now. I spend almost every day with him, and everyone says we make the perfect couple. I guess we do—two people always wearing the smiles of those young and in love.

But I never dream about Peter. At night, it's Lance I love, Lance I'm with, Lance I hold, kiss, touch.

I'll never have Lance back. I came to grips with that a long time ago, and I moved on. I let Peter into my life, at first wanting a replacement for the bad boy I'd lost, but then finding something in the nice, sweet man with a gentle soul.

Sometimes nice gets boring, though.

I hate that I think like that. Peter is ideal for me in so many ways. I should be grateful for him, for what we have. But every night, I dream of Lance.  It's been three years, and he still haunts my dreams. I see him in my mind as clearly as he was standing right in front of me, staring at me with those deep brown eyes through his unruly hair.

It's always almost the same dream. Every time he calls me, begs me to tell him why he should come home, why he should be in Bayville. And this time, I give him the answer I should have when the dream was reality.

I give him a reason.

I tell him I want him.

I need him.

I love him.

Last night, when I woke up and found Peter's arms around me and not Lance's, I felt so empty. Suddenly I didn't want farm boy innocence. I didn't want anyone calling me Katya.

I wanted to be called Kitty by someone who knows what it is to be jaded. I wanted someone solid, someone deep. Someone in touch with the world enough to keep grounded.

And I knew then why I wanted Lance, why I'd always wanted Lance. He's everything I'm not, and in a sense, the other half of me. When we were together, I was whole. For that brief moment in time, I was complete. Lance made me stronger. Peter never will.

Peter woke to the sound of my tears. He wanted to know what was wrong with his little Katya. He held me like a treasured possession.

I only cried harder.

It makes me feel like such an ingrate. Peter offers me perfection. But I don't want perfection. I want a love that's rough around the edges. I want someone who can show me a passion that sweet and naïve never can. I want to see the proof that opposites attract.

I want Lance Alvers.

I know now what I should've said when he called, when he asked for a reason. I know a million things I should've said.

I only thought of them three years too late.

I wish I could remember that when I fall asleep at night…