Disclaimer: I do not own any characters other than ones I obviously created myself, nor do I own The Incredibles, nor do I own the song with the same name as the title.
Empty is a string of dirty days
Held together by some rain.
And the cold winds drumming at the trees again.
-"Empty Is", by Frank Sinatra
3rd Person POV
A young woman woke up from her shallow nap with a jerk when the bus she was on stopped moving, causing her head to slam into the glass window she had previously been leaning on. Still tired and not quite aware of where she was yet, she scowled at the window as if it had decided to hit her. As she rubbed the side of her head, gradually becoming more focused, she realized how ridiculous she was being. Still, she made one last face at the poor pane of glass and the traffic outside it before she sighed and let her attention shift to something else. That something else, of course, being that the man sitting next to her was snoring loudly enough that she was certain his parents had been vacuum cleaners, or perhaps lawnmowers. How she had slept through it the first time, she had no clue, but she was sure there was zero chance of her nodding off again.
The lights in the bus were off, most likely at the request of the multitude of people around her who were, like she had been, sleeping through the rocks-in-a-blender sound of Mr. Hoover. In fact, several people were contributing to the wonderful orchestra. Not everyone was sleeping, however. A scan of the seats around her showed at least a dozen faces lit up by blue light from their technology of choice, whether it be the rather impressive and seemingly new Mac of the business man behind her, or the handheld gaming device of the fat kid who had whined nonstop to his mother the first hour of the trip for it and was apparently still on it almost nine hours later. It honestly reminded her of her little brother, whose parting words to her as she had left had been "Don't forget to buy me a new game for my birthday, it's only a few months away". She rolled her eyes at the memory. It was no wonder she had left, honestly.
Now bored with nothing to do, she pulled out her sketchbook and flipped through the pages, remembering what had influenced each one. There were random ears on one page, eyes on another. There was her old cat, she had copied a photograph of him shortly after he died. Not exactly a masterpiece, but it didn't have to be. Cartoon characters in arguments littered this group of pages, while this next one showed them kissing. She blushed and quickly flipped past the one sexual drawing, from when she had been dared to draw hentai in class a few months before graduation. There was a jumbled Rubix cube, and an impossible triangle. A leprechaun eating a potato, and immediately after it, a potato eating a leprechaun. Landing on a blank page, she used a pen to write down a list.
Things To Do When You Arrive
1. Get a motel room for the night.
2. In the morning, search for an apartment.
3. Find employment.
Leaving it there, she sighed and looked at her watch. It was somewhere between 1:00 and 1:15 in the morning, meaning that she still had almost a full day left of her drive. Sure, maybe moving to California was a bit of a radical choice after living on the east coast her entire life, but sometimes radical was good. She had needed a change in her life, otherwise she would have driven herself into the ground. After spending a decade pretending to be something she wasn't, she felt that she deserved this.
With that in mind, she though back over what she had been dreaming of before she had been awakened. It wasn't really a dream, she couldn't remember a time when she had actually dreamed. No, it was a memory.
"Addie, do you know what Supers are?"
"Yes! It's people who have superpowers!"
"That's right, Addie. Now, can you keep a secret? It's a very important secret, so you can't tell anyone. Not your friends, not the ice cream man, not even your teachers."
"Not even my teachers? Okay, Mommy, I promise."
"Pinky promise?"
"Uh huh!"
"Addy, it's time you found out the truth about our family. Do you remember that day when you found your Grandma in the garden talking to the foxgloves?"
"Uh huh. Is Grandma crazy?"
"No, sweetie. Your Grandma isn't crazy. Now remember, you can't repeat what I'm going to tell you to anybody."
That had been years ago, shortly before she learned the secret that was going to define the rest of her life. She had been six years old at the time, just starting first grade. She had realized, of course that her older sister spent more time with her mom's side of the family than she did, but being a little kid she hadn't been able to understand why such favoritism was happening. She had just thought that it was because she was little. When her female cousins laughed behind her back, calling her a weirdo, she thought it was because of her disproportionately large teeth.
The truth hurt so much worse.
Still, she recovered. She started spending less time with her mom's side of the family, walling them off like they weren't a part of her life. When she was forced to spend time with them, she would bring a book, and lose herself in the pages. The girls might make fun of Addison, their freak cousin, but they wouldn't dare make fun of the Dark Lord Addison, Destroyer of Worlds, or Consulting Detective Addison, or the Good Knight Addison. With each book there was a new universe, a new Addison to be created, and when the book ended, to be sent on further adventures that she made up herself. The books gave her a way out of the monotony of her everyday life.
And although her mom was uncertain about allowing her to continue creating worlds in her head, she did nothing to stop it.
Her dad, on the other hand, openly encouraged it. In the afternoons, when he got home from work and she from school, they would sit on the couch together in silence for hours at a time, and when she couldn't stand the quiet any longer she would put down her book and talk about what was happening, and who her favorite character was, and why she did/didn't want to go live in the world of the book. When given the right topic to talk about, the silent girl would go through a metamorphosis and become this creature that could talk non-stop until interrupted, and books were always the right topic.
To Addison, he wasn't just her father. He was her best friend, her captivated audience, her mentor, her librarian. Oh, was he her librarian. When she finished a book series, he suggested a new one. When she couldn't find a book she had borrowed from the library because she was so small and the pile of books so large, he would help her put them all back on the shelves until they found it. When there was a word she didn't understand, he would toss a dictionary to her and teach her how to use it.
So when The Divorce happened, and the court gave her to her mom, it crushed her just a bit inside. When they moved away, and she was surrounded on all sides by the same family members who had always looked down on her, she was crushed just a bit more. She sank gradually into depression that year, feeling tired all the time and not having the willpower to do anything. Her homework was never finished, she didn't read chapters for school, she would fall asleep during lessons. Her grades dropped from straight A's to C's and D's. When her mother noticed, she criticized her for not doing better, and compared her to her older sister who had recently earned a full scholarship to college. The foggy haze that surrounded Addison darkened and thickened.
When soccer season started, she threw herself into the practices. She would leave scratched and bruised and bleeding with the biggest grin on her face anyone had ever seen, and a glint in her green eyes that suggested that she was the one who had dealt out a beating, rather than taking one herself. "Suicidal" her teammates would whisper when they thought she couldn't hear, after one particularly violent practice where she was hit in the face several times and then slammed into the goalpost. She had the same grin on her face the entire time. This was when she was fourteen.
Now, four years later, she was a new person. She had long since overcome her depression on her own, and her grades had risen high enough for her to graduate with a reasonable GPA. And now she was leaving the past behind her for good. She had no family in California, no one who would know her or have expectations for her.
Taking a steadying breath, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her bus ticket, glancing once more at the destination. "Metroville..." She whispered.
And there we have it. Let me know what you think, please, it's been a long time since I've written fanfiction. I'm still working on further chapters, but by the time i pull together the guts to upload this I'll probably at least have two and three finished. I don't know if this will end up being more than a thing I do when I'm up at 2 am and no one wants to talk to me, so I'm not putting up any definite upload times. The timeline, by the way, for this story is about a year after the events of the movie. There will therefore be no shipping of my OC with any of the Parr kiddies. Sorry. Alright, that's me done yapping. If you're reading this in the distant future and there are more chapters to read, then by all means please hit that 'Next Chapter' button. If not, and you genuinely like this thingy, keep an eye out for updates. If I lose inspiration for this I'll make sure to let you know. The next chapter will be in Addison's point of view, and it will probably shift a bit from chapter to chapter. And as we switch to first person, expect to hear some, well, looser language.
