Claire was having another one of her nightmares. It was a horribly vivid and realistic one too.
Everything in her life was going wrong. The world was in chaos, every single civilian was screaming at the top of their lungs, running as far as they can. There were dinosaur-like monsters everywhere, attacking from every angle. She fought them off as long as she could, some of them managing to scratch her or make her bleed slightly, but she always shook the pain off, slamming the offender away and killing it.
The chaos was all her fault.
No, she wasn't being a self-deprecating and self-hating little girl again, this was very true. And she didn't even tell her Pops that she was the real bad guy.
Loki, that evil scoundrel, tried to make a deal with her. He slipped inside her training room, complimenting her as he let his eyes scan her sweaty tank topped and shorts covered form, and told her he would hold back the attack, make all the damage he did disappear, under one condition: come with him and join his cause to conquer different realms.
The offer made her sick to her stomach, made her pale and faint, it made her want to puke all over him just so he knew how she felt about the proposal. Then, she thought about it. Everyone she loved, knew and cared about would be out of harm's way. But she couldn't do it. She just couldn't.
I'm too selfish, she thought to herself in disgust as she denied the offer with a shake of her blond head.
Now that she saw a lot of people die, she regretted not taking the offer, and as time went on, she felt her own self hate grow tremendously, the amount of demon like creatures growing by each second.
She slammed a shield into the face of one, only to have one of the things bite onto her arm. She felt its teeth sink in as she let out a shout of pain, arching her arm and throwing the thing into a wall as hard as she could. She nursed her wound, blood gushing through the little bite marks, an unexpected silver color mixed into her blood. She felt a stabbing pain and she fell to her knees, crying out as the pain flowed into other parts of her body. The creatures seemed to have forgotten that she was there as soon as Black Widow back flipped passed her, too preoccupied to notice the pained blond on the floor.
With every minute, the pain grew stronger, throbbing in her veins as she hissed in pain, withering on the ground as black spots started to appear in her vision.
Grinding her teeth together; she pulled herself up, standing up painfully and shaking her head. She pushed herself; tears welling up at the sides of her eyes, but she clenched her fists, projecting her translucent shield and continued fighting, the poison in her veins slowing her down slightly.
Someone screamed her father's name, the voice terribly hysterical and loud, almost a screech, making Claire turn around, only to scream his name as well.
Captain America fell to the ground, a loud thud as Loki himself pulled out his now bloody scepter. Everything seemed to slow down for Claire, everything around her blurred slightly as she ran towards him, panicking as she ran with the venom of the monster embedded into her very blood.
Her father, her best friend, her hero, her savior, her angel, was left on the ground, bloody, lifeless, and utterly gone. She couldn't breathe, she almost couldn't see through her haze of tears, and she pulled him over to her lap, her mouth sobbing his name, her useless and still very painful arm ignored as she held her dying father.
"Oh-oh Lord." She sobbed, pulling his head to her chest, "Pops, don't go, oh God almighty, please don't take him yet. Why? Why?" she couldn't help but shriek, screaming at the sky, at nothing in particular, but it was directed at a lot of people. At herself for letting this happen, at the Avengers team for not keeping their promise of protecting him, of Loki for causing such chaos and stabbing her own father, and at God, who she never screamed at, she never started to hate, even when she was being tortured. But now, after seeing a father of hers die in front of her eyes again, she couldn't help the hate that was building up in her chest. Why did he let this happen? Why did he let any of this happen?
And soon the nightmare melted into more scenes of ways people she loved or remotely cared about die in the most horrible ways.
When her father never came home from a mission and then finding out through a talk with Agent Coulson, a talk that ended with her lunging at him at first to clutch at his collar and to threaten him for lying, and then to latch onto him, crying and sobbing into his shoulder.
Then of Zanen, a vampire she had secretly fallen in love with. She couldn't take it, watching him being burned alive, and she herself was chained to the wall as she was forced to watch it happen. Then of him being stabbed in the heart with a stake, and it was her who stabbed him. She couldn't breathe as she saw the betrayal in his eyes, the way he glared at her with a burning hate. It made her want to stab herself instead of him, but her body was moving of its own accord, and soon enough, the stake was embedded into his heart.
All of them were full of her feeling hopeless, powerless, completely in the control of someone else. And soon she woke up sobbing into her pillow, feeling like her heart was ripped open as she remembered all the loved ones she lost in her dreams. She couldn't breathe properly through her haze of hysteria, her eyes too puffy to really see through as she tried to calm her own breathing. After a while of staring up at the ceiling with red eyes, she turned on the lamp on her side desk, taking her sketch pad shakily as reached for a pencil as well.
Gulping slightly, she flipped it open to a blank page, unable to go on with the pictures in her mind, she had to release it, and that meant she had to draw it.
Her hand drew across the page, gaining a kind of rhythm as she continued on. The ways the fire and chaos and horror was painted across the page vividly, the details scarily real as she added the look of horror across a certain civilian's face, then a shadow of the lying body of her father, his hand clutching the stab wound, the blood splattered onto the ground added in with a shaky hand.
Suddenly, she was done, and she stared at her drawing. The horrors, the mayhem, it was perfectly portrayed, the shadows, the way the monsters looked horrible. Everything looked alive and real. Even the body of her dead father.
She let out a choked sob as she stared at her father's drawn figure, slamming her hand on it and angrily crumpling it in her hand. Letting out a snarl, she threw it at the wall, throwing her sketch pad as well as tears started to run down her face again. Everything was too real, too scary, and too realistic that it took over her mind, made her think 'What if it was real? What would I do then?'
And the fact that her father, and most of the people she cared about, weren't normal people who just had a normal office job. No, these people always had a risk every time they woke up in the morning. It made a cold sensation seep into her bones; making her knees give in and making her sob into her arm, resting it on the bed.
She hated this feeling. This awful feeling, like everyone she cared about would be gone again. Just like her parents, just like Steve, momentarily at least and just like every friend she unknowingly repelled all of a sudden. They were probably tired of her. Of her world of angst, her moments of blacking out, her flashbacks that left her immobile and sobbing, her moments of lying to them and deceiving them of her Liberty Belle moments.
But no matter how much she hated it, she just couldn't bring herself to do anything to fix it.
She didn't even try to go back sleep, and even if she did she wouldn't be able to. It was only when the sun came up that she managed to get out of her room and do her daily morning routine, before she went out to train. When she got the training grounds, Steve was already there pounding the punching bag as he waited for her. Her horrible nightmare would have to be her horrible secret. And with that thought she plastered on a fake smile, greeting her father with a cheery 'hello'.