There are many ways to say, 'she was crying'. They try not to use those exact words, though.

No, they say something about the twin silver streaks on her cheeks. They say something about the moonlight spilling onto her through the open window, the light breeze playing with the gauzy white curtains.

They pretty it up a little. And we try to convince ourselves that there can be something beautiful about pain.

There is nothing beautiful about pain. There is nothing pretty about the tears and snot mixing on your face because you ran out of tissues hours ago.

You hold your head up high at the funeral, not because of pride or courage, but because you know you've finished with both those things. You can't bring yourself to care about your rumpled dress, lack of makeup, or your puffy bloodshot eyes. You don't care if you break down and start sobbing (again). You know word has already spread of the hours you have spent locked in your room.

You know they're saying he didn't doesn't deserve your grief. That he isn't worth it. But you can feel him in the back of our mind. You know he was searching for acceptance. He was searching for a chance. A chance to be better then he was. You know he only wanted a chance to make things right. He didn't let himself hope for anything more.

You know he deserved more then the bullet in his skull the Assassins gave him. You feel a twisted amusement at the thought. You can feel him agree with you.

I deserved to be tortured for hours and burned at the stake like the soulless devil I am.

A pang of regret hits you as you realize you feel that more as an emotion then as a voice in your head. He's fading from there as well. Soon all you will have left is your memories.

You feel the tears trickling down your face again. Someone offers you tissues, but you ignore them. Wiping away the tears doesn't wipe away the pain. It just means they don't have to see it. And they should see that he was worth grieving for.

Someone stood up to talk. You can hear phrases like, 'an asset to the team' and 'a man that found humor in anything'. You know by the last sentence that they're trying to tell you that he would want you to enjoy life, not spend it grieving.

But you know the humor covered up hurt. You know that the jokes were a way of hiding the pain he felt at the fact that the X-Men were not offering him the chance to make something of himself. They were offering another way to fail at proving himself.

And you know that you also offered him no chances. You rejected his love, and your own love for him. You told him that you didn't care about him, when you were really trying to tell yourself that.

You look at the headstone you had chosen, with the message you had chosen. You know it is something more the team disapproves of. But as they failed to acknowledge him worthy in his life, there was no reason they would come to see it in his death.

Remy LeBeau

Loved more then he knew.

And you think of the phrase that should have followed that.

Loved less then he deserved.

You break down sobbing yet again, and know that there is nothing beautiful about pain.