AN: trigger warnings include: abuse, rape, abortion, drug abuse
She is four years old the first time she asks why she doesn't have any parents
She's playing at the park with the other children when she sees a mother and child walking with ice cream. Something clicks in her mind then, and she runs up to Sister Catherine and asks why she doesn't get a mommy and daddy like the little girl over there. Sister Catherine just smiles sadly and leans down and says maybe it was gods will. It's not the answer she wanted, but she smiles and thanks the woman anyway.
That night she wonders if god even knows she's there.
…
She's seven years old the day she goes to her first foster home.
It lasts a week.
They have another little girl, but the girl won't share her toys so she gets mad a bites her. The parents just drop her of at the orphanage on the way to school. They don't look back. She walks up and knocks on the door. That night, she sits outside the office while the Sister talks to her foster parents on the phone. After, they take her to her old bed in the orphanage.
That night she promises she will always be good.
…
She's nine years old the first time she gets hit.
Sure, the Sisters at the orphanage could do a number on your knuckles with a ruler, but none of them ever hit any of the children.
She drops a plate. It doesn't break, but it cracks down the middle and when the mother sees the crack she turns and swings her arm at her face. She falls to the ground, clutching her cheek while the mother yells insults at her.
The day she is dropped back the orphanage with a black eye.
…
She's ten the first time she ends up in the hospital.
Her older foster brother pushed her out of a tree because she had eaten the last cookie. She had a broken arm, a mild concussion and a gash on her leg. The parents call the orphanage and leave to the dark room alone.
The next day, it's Sister Catherine who picks her up from the hospital, and she never sees that family again.
…
She's thirteen years old the first time she says "no" but a man still says "yes".
It's her sixth foster father, and it's all she can do to not scream and to block out everything.
She throws up afterward, doesn't eat for a week.
She's dropped off at the orphanage ten pounds lighter.
…
She's fourteen when she runs away.
Children do it all the time.
No one comes looking for her.
She lives out of alleyways, digging through trashcans.
She finds a way to survive.
…
She's fifteen years old the first time she sees a plus sign show up on a little white stick.
Three hours later, she walks out of a free clinic and throws up on the front steps.
She curls up on a park bench and cries.
She can't feel guilty, she tells herself.
She can't resign her child to the same fate as her own.
…
She's sixteen the first time she shoots up. Heroin.
It feels like heaven.
She's sixteen the first time she overdoses.
She winds up in a hospital hooked up to a machine. She rips out the cords and runs before they can get her name.
Who is she kidding, she doesn't even have a name anymore.
…
She's seventeen the first time she watches someone overdose.
It's her boyfriend, and it would have been more tragic except for the fact that she was twitching in the alley right beside him.
She wakes up in a rehab center.
Her boyfriend never wakes up.
She stays there for six months.
The first week she's in withdrawal, but unlike the other girls she doesn't scream about bugs or cry.
She just clenches her fist and closes her eyes and wishes she were dead.
Her sponsor's name is Abby.
Abby always asks how she's feeling.
She hates Abby.
Abby is happy, bright, cheerful.
She leaves six months later, clean.
She still wants to die.
Three weeks later, she's cornered by a man in an alley.
She closes her eyes and prays for death.
After, she shoots up again for the first time since rehab.
Then she shoots up again. And again. And again.
The last thing she sees is a man coming to save and she thinks, "please no, let me die."
…
She's eighteen and she wakes up back at the rehab center.
Laying on the cot going through withdrawal again, something inside her breaks.
She cries, she screams, she begs someone to kill her.
She wakes up after to Abby at her side.
She realizes she doesn't hate Abby.
Everyone on the street, she thinks, they want you to be strong against the drug.
Abby only wants to know how she feels.
Alive, she tells Abby, the day she leaves the rehab center, I feel alive.
The man who brought her there, his name is Miles, he offers her a job.
She takes it.
…
She is nineteen years old the day she parks her van behind the diner.
She had taken up gambling, which, she reminded herself, was also an addiction, but Abby had said that might happen. It was good to replace one addiction with a healthier one that was easier to escape from.
(Abby probably wouldn't have approved of gambling, though.)
But she had stopped gambling, after she had won the van and the laptop, and gone on her merry way. She drove two hundred miles and parked it behind a diner.
The rising tide pays well for each job she does, and she stays in her van behind that diner for a long time. She thinks she may have found her family.
But she is still never always happy.
Abby had said that the day you choose to live for yourself is the day you know you're fully cured.
She still doesn't feel that way.
…
She is twenty-two the first timer she hacks the FBI.
Twenty-three the first time she hacks the CIA and NSA.
Twenty-four the day she hacks S.H.I.E.L.D for the rising tide, hoping to get an in.
The day after, men in black suits show up.
…
She's twenty-four when she gets shot for the first time.
Twice in the stomach, and she's lying on the cold floor.
God I want to live, she thinks.
When she wakes up after almost seeing the light, she realizes what she had thought.
I want to live, she thinks again.
I want to live for myself, she thinks. She smiles.
She made her choice.
She wants to live.
She's going to live.
She lives.