It was one month after the Battle of New York that the Avengers found me. I'd been living on the street, ragged and unable to speak. I didn't know when my last meal had been, but I was roaming the city. Helping where I could, hiding under bridges when I got into trouble, scavenging. I tried to sleep but the nightmares came for me every single night. My home had been destroyed along with my family. When I saw the blast of molten light approaching our small apartment, I reacted. The dreams were always, always, always the same.
I ran to my sister's room and scooped her out of her chair, ignoring her protests, and yelling to my mother and father to hurry and leave. My mother rushed into the doorway angrily, as I started pounding down the hall my chest aching.
"Rowen, you know I hate your silly games. I hate when you yell like that, you're going to disturb the neighbors!" She yelled at us, sternly. Her curly black hair was pinned back, and she wore an apron. She must have been making dinner.
Claire struggled in my arms, trying to get away from me.
"Mom, she's crazy. She ran into my room and just picked me up like a psycho." She said, pushing her hands to my chest to get away.
"Mom, we have to leave, we have to go now." I said, desperately. "We have to leave right now." My mother scoffed and turned away from me.
"Claire, come inside." She told my sister. Claire hit me in a particularly tender spot against my neck, and I dropped her, watching her walk away from me. What was I to do? I followed them back inside, and went to the window where I'd seen the light.
I wasn't surprised to find that there was nothing. I had episodes many times because of some illness my parents had seen fit to leave undiagnosed. I would grow out of it, my mother told me. But this left a bitter taste in my mouth, and when the governor announced a state of emergency and to evacuate as quickly as possible, I already had a bag packed for my sister and I.
She'd looked up at me with her large doe eyes full of fear, and I dragged her out of the house. This time, she didn't fight me.
"But mom and dad-" she began.
"Mom is at work, and dad is on his way to get her now. I put getaway bags in the back seat." I interrupted.
Down the hall while we awaited the elevator, our side of the building burst into flames after a loud crash.
"Rowen, I'm scared," she gasped, when the elevator call didn't work. I was scared too, petrified. We weren't going to make it if we waited. Would we make it at all? I crouched down to let her on my back.
"Claire, promise to trust me no matter what, okay?" I told her, looking forward into the flames. She got on hesitantly.
"Sis, what are you going to do?" She asked me and I didn't answer her, for fear that I would lose my nerve. I ran headlong towards the flames. The building was structurally unsound by this point, the only way out was to make it to a fire escape.
She struggled against me and tried to get off when she saw what I was doing.
"Be still!" I yelled at her. As I said the words, the world took on a deafening roar and around me, everything became frighteningly blue. The very flames that should have been burning my feet as I ran through, had stilled.
I couldn't take it in, I was still running and Claire had finally stopped struggling against me. Her little shoe was gone, I realized. I made a mental promise to get her a new one.
Standing on the edge of the window, staring down at the plummet below, I felt unbelievably cold tears begin to pour down my face. Behind us, the flames had begun to flicker again and I could hear the screams of terror around us once more and suddenly Claire was yelling, yelling into my ear again. I set her down, and held onto her shoulders, looking her in the eyes.
"I said promise to trust me!" I roared at her. She saw my tears and began to cry as well. I think that's when she realized we were going to die. When she was silent, and didn't say a word. Just reached out to hug me, and cry. We were both terrified in that moment. And when I saw another blast of light headed our way, I turned her back to it so she wouldn't see and kissed the top of her head, bracing us for impact.
We should have died. We were dead. I felt the burn of the impact as it began to tear us apart, limb by limb and drag us away from each other. Trust me, I thought, looking at our hands still connected as the world faded to black.
I don't know how I survived. But I dreaded sleep because I knew the dream would come, that it would always be the same, but never enough to tell me how I got where I was. But sometimes, I had no choice but to collapse. And then I would remember Claire, and how I let my baby sister die.
I awoke to a light being flashed in my eyes, and a foot on my chest. I couldn't see but I struggled against it, my eyes still full of tears at the memory of Claire. Her quiet gasps in between sobs. Her shudders as she prepared for what came next.
"We've got her," A disembodied voice said. I tried to twist the ankle of the foot on the ground but the only reaction was to give me swift boot to the head.
"It was much easier to find her than Tony said it would be,"
I heard a scoff, as the world faded to black.
"Stark says a lot of things, but she's just a little girl," The words stung. A little girl was my 14 year old sister, with her tiny hands holding onto my shoulders as I let her die. I was a monster, not a little girl.