Manhattan, New York — February 2010

Mateo hadn't made it. The doctor had come to tell her an hour ago, but it had barely registered in Lita's mind. Her eyes were still bloodshot. Her blood felt like acid. Every breath felt like a stab to the heart. Even the lights stung her eyes so bad that only the tears dripping down were able to protect them a little as she forced herself to keep them open. Lita felt like she was drowning in a lake of fire and razor sharps nails and yet, she felt cold—the cold touch of death.

Lita clenched her jaw. Pain rushed through her head immediately, raising her heartbeat and worrying the nurses. All of her training had been useless. She'd been taught to get through the death of a soldier, a comrade, even a family member. And no matter how much she'd told herself that when the time came she'd be all right, no one truly knew what it was like until it happened. However, this had happened before. The first time Lita had lost someone close to her, she'd lost Ven, and it tore her apart from the inside out. Somehow, she thought that the second time would be different. And it was. But the pain was worse this time. It turned her into a shell that wanted absolutely nothing more than to burn the helmet and suit that had kept her alive, to throw away the food sitting at the end of her bed, to flush the cups of painkillers on her bedside down the toilet, to punch herself in the chest so hard that her broken ribs punctured her heart and lungs. Lying there, without a single family member left, Lita wanted nothing more than to let herself bleed to death.

"H-Hello?"

Lita slowly tore her gaze from the ceiling and looked toward the source of the quiet voice. She blinked the tears away and, when her vision cleared, her eyes fell upon the boy she'd seen earlier, standing in the doorway. His brown eyes were wide with worry and he kept glancing around worriedly as if he'd get in trouble for being there. Seeing him there brought more tears to Lita's eyes.

"Hey—" Lita cleared her throat of its hoarseness—"Hey, kid. How're your hands?"

The boy held proudly held up his bandaged hands. Lita's bottom lip quivered again as he approached with a smile on his face—it was so similar to Joaquín's lopsided smile.

"They're fine. Just a few scrapes," he said. "The nurse said that I was very brave for doing what I did."
"Yeah, you totally were and you really helped me out back there."
"I did?"
"Yeah, the doctors said that my head barely got hurt at all," Lita lied, trying to give the boy her best smile. She glanced behind him at the door. "Did you just come back from seeing the nurse?"

The boy nodded and began fiddling with some tweezers he found on a nearby table.

"Are you here with a parent or something? Shouldn't you be with them?"
"My aunt is somewhere," the boy said. "I wanted to see if you were okay so I wandered around until I found you. What about your family?"

He'd said it so innocently that it almost hadn't been a stab to the heart. But despite the strange calm that she was feeling around this kid, Lita couldn't help but let a few tears slide down her cheeks. The boy gave her a sad smile.

"I'm sorry."

The fact that he knew without her saying anything seemed to hurt more than the question, and when he gently grabbed her hand with this own, the floodgates opened. Tears came as if Lita's pain had once again condensed into a deluge of rain.

"Hey, I know you're just a kid and you don't know who I am and all that," Lita said between sobs, "but do you think you can stick around until you're aunt finds you? I'd like the company."
"That was the plan," the boy said with a single nod of his head. "Can I tell you about this aeroplane I built?"
"Yeah, sure."

Lita listened to the boy ramble on about his model aeroplanes long enough for her tears to subside. He mimed himself flying the planes as well as one unfortunate incident where one of them crashed into a dump truck, and when he wasn't miming his bandaged fingers were wrapped around Lita's hand.

It wouldn't be until several overhead announcements and two security guards over the span of a half-hour that a woman would burst into the room, looking for him. She seemed terrified and aggravated at the same time, and as she was about to tell him off, she spotted Lita and her bloodshot eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

"Oh, hello," the woman said. "I'm sorry, is he bothering you?"
"No, he's not," Lita said, her voice hoarse. "I'm the one who should be apologising. I told him that I wanted the company."
"She's the lady I told you about, Aunt May," the boy said, looking over to the woman.
"Oh! Oh... I—"
"Don't, it's—" Lita cut herself off. "I'm all right. Peter made it all better. Isn't that right, kiddo?"

The boy nodded enthusiastically.

"I told her all about my planes! Cheered her right up!"

Lita gave the boy a teary-eyed smile. May came into the room and ushered Peter outside. Lita waved goodbye, eyes once again glazing over with tears. As May was about to leave and thank Lita for keeping Peter safe, she came back in and sat down on the chair.

"I doubt that Peter's planes made it all better," May said gently.
"No, but I'd rather let him believe that he did," Lita chuckled. There was no humour behind the sound.
"You've just gone through so much and you're worried about hurting a nine-year-old's feelings?"
"Is that how old he is?"

May saw Lita's bottom lip quiver.

"That's how old my youngest brother is." Lita let out a sad sigh. "Was."
"What was his name?"
"Gabriel."
"That's a nice name," May said gently. She was silent for a moment. "Do you have anywhere to stay when you get out of the hospital?"
"Yeah. I can stay at my mom's apartment."
"On your own?"

Lita nodded. A look of sadness or pity crossed May's features and Lita almost got angry. She didn't need pity. Then again, she supposed she was quite a pitiful sight.

"I'm sorry for being as nosy as Peter but... why don't you stay with us until you're all right to be on your own?"
"No, it's all right, really," Lita insisted. "I'll be all right. Thank you though, for the offer."
"Okay... Well, here," May began. She rummaged through her purse and pulled out a card, then handed it to Lita. "If you change your mind, give me a call. I'll do anything I can to help."

Manhattan, New York – One Week Later

Lita had been getting worse by the day and the doctors couldn't explain it.

Her wounds had been healing normally—if not a little quicker than what doctors usually saw—and the symptoms of concussion had all but abated. However, Lita's bloodwork was coming back all over the place, she was in a perpetual state of fever that all medications seemed unable to control, and her body still felt like it was on fire. The doctors were confused and worried, constantly asking about symptom changes, and family illnesses they should know about and insisting that it wasn't in her best interest to lie to them. And while Lita kept denying that something was wrong with her, she knew it wasn't true.

The Force Sickness was something Lita always dreaded. It was like going through acute drug withdrawal, as if all the good things in her body had suddenly vanished, leaving nothing but an immunocompromised shell behind. Every day Lita wasn't connected to the Nova Force, the more symptoms for the doctors to worry about appeared: dizziness, nausea, headaches, fever, aches, vomiting, a suspicious twitch of her right hand—every one of them getting worse by the hour. Eventually, all would return to normal but, until then, Lita was falling apart quickly.

Against the medical advice of her doctors, Lita demanded to be discharged. They argued with her, but eventually, they had no choice but to bring all the discharge paperwork for her to sign. She dotted all her t's and i's and picked up the bag of clothes left in the corner. Her shirt was in the best condition, with only a few holes, dirt stains and a spattering of blood, but her pants had huge rips in them from when she skidded across the pavement. Her left pant leg was soaked in dry blood, as was the silver chain they recovered, which was shattered and missing many links. When she took her suit canister out of the bag, Lita was almost tempted to chuck it into the bin, but another wave of nausea ran through her body and she decided it was best she kept it.

The doctors watched her as she left through the emergency doors she'd come through a week prior, and one of the nurses watched her go across the parking lot before returning to work, in case she fell and needed help. When Lita was certain no one was near and after she checked for cameras, she ducked into an alleyway and put on her suit. All her symptoms were alleviated in an instant, and as she kicked off the ground to fly under the cover of rainy, grey skies, she felt better than she had all week. But Lita had gone too long without wearing the suit once her symptoms presented, and no amount of contact with the Nova Force was going to stop the return of her symptoms. When she landed in the back alley of her mother's apartment, another wave of nausea hit her so hard that she almost fell forward.

After taking the keys from Ricardo, she let herself into the apartment and was taken off-guard with how much the place still smelled like Juan's baking. Lita stood with her back against the doorway for a long time, trying to pick out all the scents in the apartment—sugar, cinnamon, toasted bread, that funky cheese Mateo loved, pineapple, her mother's perfume. She didn't dare turn on the lights for fear that her eyes would burn again, but she slowly peeled herself from the door and began wandering around the apartment. The dishes from that day were still on the drying rack. Gabriel's and Joaquín's toys hadn't been put away and they were scattered about the living room carpet. The dozens of plants that Isabél kept were slowly shrivelling up. Juan's cookbooks were all out of order in the bookcase. The bathroom was like someone had used it that day, with hair brushes and toothpaste tubes strewn about the counter. All of their beds had been made, except Mateo's, because he'd read somewhere that it let the sheets breathe.

A wave of nausea forced Lita to run to the bathroom and she lifted the lid to the toilet just in time. Lita lurched more times than she cared to count and when her muscles were sore from all the vomiting, her nausea went away. She took a few squares of toilet roll and wiped her mouth, dropped it in the toilet and flushed. Exhausted, Lita fell back and lay on the bathroom mat, breathing heavily, and the more she lied there in silence the harder it was to keep her emotions in check. Even in the bathroom, with the faint smell of toilet water and sick, Lita could smell her mother's hair products, Juan's aftershave, and Gabriel and Joaquín's cinnamon toothpaste. Tears began to pool in her eyes again and when they became too full, the salty water raced down the sides of her head and soaked the bath mat.

As the tears kept falling, Lita pulled out a crumpled piece of cardboard from her pocket. She stared at May's name and number for several long minutes, sniffling and hiccuping enough that it made pain shoot through her sore body. After a while, Lita rolled off the floor and went to the kitchen. She pulled the phone off its receiver and listened to the dial tone for a moment, trying to get herself to calm down. Lita pressed a few buttons and listened to the phone ring. She almost hung up when May's voice appeared on the other side.

"This is the Parker residence. May speaking."
"Um, hi," Lita muttered. She cleared her throat. "It's Lita. You gave me your card at the hospital."
"Hi, Lita," May said softly. "Do you need to stay with us?"

A small teary whimper escaped Lita's lips.

"Yeah... Yeah, I do."