Author's Note- I love Daphne. She is my favorite Heroes girl, and I'm sad to realize that there's hardly anything written about her on this site. Hopefully we can fix that. I'm starting a community for Daphne, so if you want to write a fic and contribute, let me know!

--*Racing Hummingbirds*--

My mother was a track star. When she was in high school, she was a state champion both in the 800 metre relay and the 1500 metre solo. She continued running in college and branched out into cross-country racing. She eventually went professional, and if it weren't for a torn Achilles tendon, she probably would have gone to the Olympics. As it was, she settled for returning to Lawrence, where she met my father.

For the first few years of my life, all I can remember is people saying that I was sure to be a runner, just like her. Everyone. My father would say it when I would follow him around our farm, running as fast as my chubby little legs could carry me just to keep up with him. My mother's family, my parents' friends, the people around the small town of Lawrence... everyone but my mother herself. But every time someone would make their sage predictions for the future, the tiniest smile would cross her face, and I knew that there was nothing she would love better. My mother was my best friend, my role model, my hero. I would have given anything to make her dream for me come true.

When I was five, I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

Cerebral palsy is a result of damage to the cortex and the cerebrum. In almost eighty-five percent of cases, that damage occurs during pregnancy or childbirth, and the symptoms present by age one. Maybe if I'd been in that eighty-five percent, it wouldn't have been so bad. I wouldn't have known anything else, because no one would have given me dreams.

But I was in that fifteen percent in which the damage occurs between birth and age three. Lucky me.

Who knows what exactly it was that caused it? Growing up on a farm can be dangerous; maybe I hit my head. Maybe some childhood illness caused the damage. I'll probably never know. Either way, by the time I was old enough to actually have hopes and dreams, I was just about primed to have them crushed.

I remember sitting on the table in the pediatric neuro-specialist's office, listening to him talk to my parents about my "condition." A few particular phrases stuck with me from that conversation. Spastic diplegia. Hypertonia. Orthoses (especially that, once I realized that it basically meant leg braces). But that might be because I would hear them so many times in the coming months. The only thing that I really recall vividly from that day was the look on my mother's face the entire time the man was droning on. Her fingers were twiddling absently with the ends of her blonde hair, and her sparkling green eyes- eyes that I had always wished I had inherited- were dull with unshed tears.

The next few years were probably the worst, maybe because I hadn't yet learned to be bitter about it, and still felt every shock of my difference and disappointment. My long, beautiful hair was all cut off: it would be easier for me to take care of. Because of my "condition," I didn't start school a year late. As a result, I was not only the freak with braces, I had to be the freak with braces who was a year older than everyone else. And still managed, because of my stunted growth, to be much smaller than the other kids.

By the time I was fifteen, my skin had thickened and I'd gotten used to the fact that I was never going to be anything but a burden to my parents. That was the year Dad bought the hummingbird feeder.

"I thought I'd hang this outside the kitchen window," he said gruffly when he gave it to me. "Be a nice distraction when you're trying to do your homework, huh?"

I shrugged noncommittally. "I guess."

He rubbed his stubbled chin, maybe frustrated by my perennial disinterest. "Aw, come on, Daph. You'll love seeing more hummingbirds around."

This was their sixth attempt this week to get me to care about something, and I'd had enough. "No, Dad, I won't!" I burst out, lurching to my feet awkwardly. "I don't wanna see the damn birds, okay? Why don't you buy me a plane ticket to Paris and just get me out of your lives like you obviously want to do! Then everybody'd be happy!" Storming out was hard to do with braces on your legs, but I somehow managed.

He hung the feeder anyway.

And I did love seeing the birds. I'd never have admitted it to him, but the seeing hummingbirds every day was my favorite part about the months they were in Kansas. Sometimes I'd close my eyes and imagine I was a hummingbird. So fast and free... it must be an amazing thing, I decided. Able to go wherever you wanted, and even when you were standing still, you could still be gone so fast, no one could possibly catch you and drag you down with their disappointment. There were no cages for hummingbirds.

Here's something a lot of people don't know about hummers. They're feisty. No, not even feisty. Extremely violent and territorial is a better description. They don't get along with each other, and they don't like anybody coming near their feeder. And they're not shy about showing it. Believe me, I know.

One day, when I was twenty, the feeder was empty, and no one was around to fill it up. Silly me, I thought maybe I could actually do something for myself and change it. When I went outside, the pair of ruby-throated hummingbirds who had been flitting around the empty feeder dive-bombed me, swiping so close to my face I swear I felt the breeze from their wings. I ducked and upset my balance. When I fell, one of my braces snapped and I wasn't able to stand up again. I must have lain out there for hours before anyone arrived to help me inside.

I hated that. I hated that feeling of helplessness, of being so utterly dependent on other people for everything. Some people with disabilities become stronger for it. They become fighters. I'm not some heroine in an uplifting Hallmark Channel movie or some crap like that. Instead of growing, I shrank away. I shut myself off. I didn't need anyone or anything, and they couldn't make me admit any differently. When my mother begged me to do my stretching exercises to loosen my tight muscles, I would ignore her. I was already a disappointment to her; why keep her hopes up? Mine had been destroyed long ago. The sooner she figured out that I was never going to walk, let alone run, the better.

When I was twenty-four, she developed cancer. Melanoma, rapid onset. My biggest regret in this life is that I didn't show her more sympathy. After all, I had spent my whole life being almost entirely dependent on everyone. I knew what it was like. Why didn't I talk to her? Make it easier for her... somehow? But I didn't. And I can't change that now.

The day she died, I screamed at her.

I don't remember what it was about. Some trivial thing she'd said that pissed me off, I guess. Dad told me to leave. The next time I saw her, she was gone. And within a week, my whole world changed in a thousand different ways. It was autumn, and the hummingbirds were leaving. That's the thing I remember most about the days before the funeral. People brought over casseroles and flowers and things and I spent all my time in the kitchen, staring at the dwindling population of hummingbirds while they traipsed in and out of the house and said how dreadful it all was. I could have punched every last one of them.

After the funeral, Dad had the family over to the farmhouse. Someone, some great-aunt I'd maybe met once, tried to hug me and called me "you poor dear." And I just snapped. I don't remember what I said. It's not important. I ran- or at least, I did the tottering fast walk that was all my stiff muscles would allow- from the house and out into the cornfields. And again, I fell. I was too far from the house to be seen or for anyone to hear me yelling for help, and I guess after awhile I fell asleep.

When I woke up the sky was dark, but it wasn't night. It was a total solar eclipse. I remembered reading something about it in the paper that morning. I decided to make one last attempt to stand up... and to my amazement, I was back on my feet. The hypertonia that had been my cage for the last twenty years of my life was fading away as quickly as thinking. My hands shook as I pulled back the straps that held the braces to my legs, and they fell away.

A hummingbird flitted past me, then doubled back to hover in front of me, watching me with tiny bright eyes. Her wings were a blur. Her emerald back gleamed iridescent, and her white belly appeared dusky blue in the dim light. As often happens with these cheeky little birds, she almost seemed to be challenging me. And I guess I accepted, because when she spun around and zipped away again, I gave chase.

She was fast, but I was faster. My feet barely touched the ground, and I was flying too. The wind rushed past me, around me, through me. All my life, I had been too solid, too utterly bound to my fragile reality. Now I was free, with hummingbird wings instead of feet, and despite the absolute technicolor vividness of this moment, somehow I felt transparent. Light. Or maybe it was the world that wasn't real, and I was a solid mass hurtling at light speed through nothing.

It started with chasing a hummingbird through a cornfield under an eclipsed sun. I've been racing hummingbirds ever since, and never looked back.