Did this after devouring the series, I have no plans of extending this past a one-shot. It takes place at the end of the series, probably after the parade.

A Renegades Story

Nova made her way up the rickety stairs. It felt strange, being back in the place where it had all started. She could still hear the echoing BANGBANGBANG of the gun; she suspected she always would.

Suddenly here she was, standing in front of their old apartment. She'd had to knock Charlie out to get past him, but she'd never much liked him anyway; not with the constant, low level of fear he'd always brought to her parents. "Charlie's kicked people out for less than a crying baby." She gritted her teeth and turned the handle.

She opened the door and found the apartment nearly devoid of the things that had once been theirs. She hadn't expected after ten years there might still have been something left behind but she'd maybe hoped, a little, that there would be. The only thing that remained of her childhood in this place was the bed where she had fallen asleep cuddling Evie before everything had gone so wrong.

She stepped inside, feeling at once so small, so fragile and yet somehow too big for the space. This was where Uncle Ace had dropped the shopping bag. Where Evie's medicine had rolled away as Nova stood there, a gun clutched in her little hand, an unconscious man on the floor between them. She would never forgive Uncle Ace for what he had done.

She scrubbed at the phantom spots of blood she could feel on her face. She continued inside and heard a gasp and the clattering of something dropped on the bare wood floor. She ran around the corner, reaching out to grab the intruder by the elbow.

"Get offa me!" the surprisingly tiny interloper cried, twisting and yanking.

"Stop! What are you doing here?" Nova demanded, shaking the girl's arm.

"ME? What about YOU? Get offa me, you freak!"

All at once Nova recognized the voice: Maggie. Ten-year-old Maggie who had picked countless pockets and nabbed Nova's bracelet more than once, "Magpie? What are you doing in my apartment?"

"It's not yours! It's mine! I live here!"

"I spoke to Charlie, no one's lived here in ten years! Not since my parents and my baby sister were murdered here!"

Maggie froze. "You…you lived here?"

"Yeah."

"I was… I was found here."

"That's what happens when you trespass!"

"I wasn't trespassing! I lived here!"

"What do you mean you lived here? When?"

Maggie's lips pressed tightly together.

"I'll let you go if you promise not to run away. Got it?" Nova said sternly. She'd never much liked Maggie, but there was something fishy going on and she wanted to know what it was. Maggie glared, but nodded and Nova let go. "You said that bullet you carry gave you your powers, what did you mean?"

Reluctantly, sourly, Maggie answered, "I was a baby and somebody tried to kill me. The landlord heard me screaming and found me clutching the bullet. My parents were dead, my sister was gone; she left me here." Resentment and sadness mingled in her tone and she wouldn't look anywhere but at her feet.

"Ten years ago my parents were murdered here," Nova admitted quietly. "Papà told me to run, so I did. I ran and I hid until I realized my sister was still asleep on the bed. This bed," she said, nudging it with the toe of her boot. She could still see the bloodstains on the mattress. "I was on my way to get her when I heard him shoot her just like he'd shot them. He was going to kill me but I knocked him out. That's when Uncle Ace came."

"Wait. Are you saying you think I'm your sister?!" Maggie cried in disbelief. She laughed suddenly, "You really are a freak, you know that?" Maggie scampered out the window and down the fire escape but she didn't stop thinking about what Nova had said, just like Nova didn't stop thinking about the way Maggie had been found.

Was it possible? Was Maggie—annoying, bratty, thieving Maggie—really her baby sister? No, it couldn't be. She'd read the Captain's report and Evie was dead. This was just a coincidence.

…Right?

At HQ, if Nova entered a room, Maggie left. Until the day she didn't. "Hey… Freak?"

"I wish you wouldn't call me that."

"Whatever," Maggie scoffed. "But… what was her name? Your sister."

"Evie."

Maggie glanced at Nova out of the corner of her eye before leaving. Dark, curly hair, brown skin, blue eyes. Even Maggie had to admit she and Nova bore at least a passing resemblance to each other. But, no this was just too crazy!

The next time, before Maggie could run away, Nova asked, "When they found you, do you remember if they said you were sick?"

Maggie stiffened. "Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"Evie was sick that night. A fever. Uncle Ace was coming with medicine." Her face twisted as she remembered the farce, the charade he had let her believe for ten years. The memory of that medicine bottle rolling across the floor when he was the one who had ordered her family killed. Thinking about it made her blood boil.

"They never said," Maggie murmured before recovering her usual haughty air. "It doesn't matter because I'm not her! I'm not." She spun on her heel and walked away.

"Wouldn't it be nice if you were?" Nova whispered, not meaning to be heard.

Maggie heard anyway and she stopped, looking at the back of Nova's head. She bit her bottom lip and then slipped out. She'd spent so much of her life waiting for some big sister to come in and save her from the children's home and when she finally gives up, Nova shows up? The idea that Nova might be the sister she'd been dreaming of all of her life filled her with an emotion she couldn't name.

"Wouldn't it be nice if you were?" Nova whispered again, her head tipped back to stare at ceiling as silent tears ran down her cheeks.

Maybe Maggie was Evie, maybe she wasn't. And maybe they'd never be the sisters they could have been, if she was. But for the second time since Max put on her uncle's helmet, Nova had hope.