Chapter Twenty Four

Snowflakes

"It was one of the many things we had worried about when we'd decided to do this. More than anything we were worried that something would trigger your memories and you'd start asking questions, but you were fine, and when you got in a fight with a girl at school because you had kissed her, it was the perfect excuse to get out of San Diego and as far from there as possible. We told you that it would be better for you to be near someone who would understand your feelings for girls, but we really just wanted the memory of the Institute as far from us as possible. If Dr. Alder had died, we would have told you everything," my mother said. "I know it wouldn't have been anything like getting them back. I guess it would have been... exactly like this." I nodded. I could see it being that way as well. What other way could there have been? I looked down at my hands in thought, wondering what 'Avie' looked like and I tried so desperately to conjure up an image of him. I was about to ask for one from the adults in front of me. I swallowed as a tear fell. I knew that this had to have been the one I had cried for on Thanksgiving day.

"Gabby..." My mother was crouched in front of me and was brushing hair away from my face with her fingers. then she wiped away the stray tear.

"Where is he, Mom?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" She was confused, but determined to answer my questions.

"Where's Avery? He's not buried near Grandma Cook. I kind of remember once going to her gravesite, but never did I see a headstone for an Avery Andrews."

"You wouldn't, sweetie. Not by Grandma Cook. We had him placed on the other side of the cemetery for that reason."

"What about U- um, Mark?" I wondered, looking at Uncle Leonard. He shrugged, but answered my question as if it meant nothing to him. It was a lie though, and I felt it sting.

"I found out he was a part of some of the tests you were given when your father was there. We fought about it, and I refused to be with him while he worked in the Institute. He didn't want to leave his job there despite what had happened to you because he believed that the Institute did more good than harm to metahuman children. I didn't believe him, so we got a divorce, or shall I say the equivalence of. I turned the empty spaces of the Dark Horse Bar into two apartments, and the rest, as they say, is history."

I looked around at them. My mother, who was still crouched in front of me, got to her feet with a groan and a mutter about getting old with bad knees. Then she sat back down next to my father. I linked my hands together in my lap and looked down again. My mind, not for the first nor last time, went crazy with thoughts. I could almost see these bits of my past being fitted together like a crazy game of Tetris, but still there were small gaps in my memory. The mystery was solved, but still gaps remained. The three adults in front of me waited for me to speak. I had a feeling, as I opened my mouth many times with nothing coming out, that they'd be waiting for a while. I felt that it got a little harder to swallow because my mouth was dry, and I busied my hands with filling my glass with water and drinking it. Then I slowly stood up as they all watched me, wondering loudly what I was doing.

Finally, I said, "I think... I think I'll go for a walk. I need to- to think..." I refused to look anyone in the eye. I didn't wait for a reply, but I heard a couple of 'okay's from my parents as I retreated to my room to get warmer clothes. As I put on my boots, I felt a presence in the doorway and looked up to see my mother. She was wondering if I hated them now, and the truthful answer was that I had no clue. About anything.

"I understand that you've got a lot to think about, but it is cold out there tonight. Don't be out too long, and take your cell phone with you. Keep it on so you can hear it if we call." Numbly, I nodded, just so she knew that I heard her. My mother didn't seem to know what else to say, so she left, and after I got my scarf and hat on, I followed her movements out to the living room, grabbing my cell phone off of the charger on my way out.

"I'll be back in an hour or so," I said to them.

"Okay, be careful," my dad said, and my uncle nodded and put his hand up in the air in a half wave. I turned and opened the door. The air wasn't as cold as I thought it would have been, but I was glad I bundled up. The sky dropped large, but delicate snowflakes, and the wind picked up just enough to force them against my cheeks and nose. I walked the three blocks to the high school, curious about its progress. The bottom windows we replaced, but the windows on the top floor weren't yet. I went up to the new windows and looked inside. The floor looked cleaned up, but the spray-paint was still everywhere. Who knew what 'Soscudadika' meant. Maybe the person who left the odd message had, but if they'd looked upon that word the morning after they wrote it, would they have known its meaning?

I took a right after that at the main sidewalk, and walked almost a mile towards the southeast entrance of New Gorham Park. the whole time I walked, I felt strange, watched almost. From what I know about Helena, I would have heard her thoughts before I even felt her presence, but I didn't know who was following me then. The wind picked up, but it wasn't blowing in my face once I had changed directions in my walking. I followed the small trail and got to the playground. Slowly, I brushed snow from the first swing in front of me and sat down. It was cold on my rear, but I let it warm up. It was on the swing that I thought about what I was told. Was that everything? What more could there possibly be? My life went from being average and almost boring to that of a TV show heroine in the course of days. People I barely or didn't know existed played a major role in my past, present and future. I had a brother- a brother I apparently loved more than anything, yet I had no memory of him. I didn't even know what he looked like. Did we look a like? Did he, too, take on my father's features, or did he look more like my mother? I slowly used my knees to rock myself back and forth on the swing as I thought. I could hear the tiny creeking sound the swing made with my movements, and the wind whispered past me in various directions. I didn't know how long I was there, really. I know I promised to be back in an hour, but I didn't even know what time I left the house. I still felt watched, but whoever it was wasn't out to hurt me, as I had been a sitting duck (literally) for quite a while, and they could have easily hurt me. It was still slightly creepy, in the moments I tuned into my surroundings before going back into heavy thought, to know someone was just there, watching me with me not knowing why. I just knew it wasn't the Huntress, nor Dinah, and that may have been the thing that creeped me out the most.

There was the sound of footsteps, and to me, they sounded deliberate. I looked up to see Dinah there, the darkest figure in all the white. I stood up as she approached me. She had on a long trench coat, jeans, boots, a black cap, and what looked like ski gloves, but they were mostly buried in her pockets. "Helena and I are on sweeps. In this weather, anyone walking around alone seemed suspicious, so Helena followed you. She's convinced someone else is here with you, and she went looking for them, but I came here. Are you okay? You look dazed. What happened?" I didn't know how to answer that, really. I know I should have been a little worse off than I was, but to be honest, to me it sounded like a bedtime story. 'Once upon a time, there was a princess named Gabby who had a brother, but the brother died, and Gabby was so distressed, that she cried and cried. One day the king and queen said, 'I can't stand her crying so, we must do something'. So they took her to a great wizard who magically took her brother's memory away, and she was happy again...' I felt bad for the characters, but there was no real attachment. I knew I should have felt worse. A lot worse. I mean, my brother is dead. The thing was, though I had guessed already about Avery's existence, it was still hard to think that I even had a brother, since I went ten years thinking I was an only child. I looked away from Dinah, then slowly sat back on the swing.

"My parents got back tonight," I told her, leaning to my left where the other swing that wasn't for babies was. I busied myself with the task of brushing the snow away from that swing, then gestured for Dinah to sit down, which she did.

"So they're okay?" she asked, not exactly sure where I was going with the conversation.

"Yeah, they're fine." I turned my head to look at her. She was watching me closely, and I closed my eyes to focus on my door. I opened it a little. '-she doesn't get sick out here.' "They told me everything."

"They did?" I nodded. "Wow, so what did you learn?"

"I did have a brother. His name was Avery Jason Andrews."

Dinah stayed silent while I retold her the story. It felt good to talk to Dinah about this. She was a good listener. In her mind, I knew she connected the dots in all of the places I had, but never showed much on her face, which made telling her a lot easier. Only when I told her about having to leave the house to think it all over did she speak.

"Wow," she said, "and I thought mine and Helena's pasts were interesting." She placed her left hand over my right, which was rested on my knee, and I flipped my hand over long enough to intertwine our fingers. "So," she started to say, sounding a little flustered, "what are you going to do now? Go to this Institute?"

"I'd like to " I replied slowly, "but my father had destroyed one of the lab rooms in San Diego. Surely that would have pissed them off a little."

"I don't know. Why would they have called him specifically for a check up for you if they just wanted to get back at him?"

"Good point," I said, but thought about it a little bit. "If I were an organization such as the Institute, and I had invested so much time into it- even as an," I put my fingers up in quotation mark gesture, " 'employee'... and some angry guy comes along and destroys part of it, I highly doubt I would be inviting him over for a cup of coffee five years later." I lowered my voice to sound like an overly jolly guy, " 'Yeah, we almost killed his daughter and he destroyed my life's work, so I guess we're even now. HA HA HA!' "

Dinah shook her head with a smile that clearly said she thought I was nuts. I frowned in thought. I looked over at my friend after a while, then to our linked hands, wondering if I should still consider her a friend. I felt better with her there. I stared at the side of Dinah's face before she looked at me, and our eyes met. There was ice in her eyes, which had melted as soon as she saw that I was watching her. She was thinking about the possibility of the phone call being some sort of trap for both me and my father, but I had a feeling that they weren't even concerned with him. Just me.

"Come on," she said. "It's getting colder now. I'll walk you home." Our hands still linked, she stood up, pulling me with her.

"But I live almost a mile away." Dinah gave me an almost blank look that said, 'So?'. "You might get stuck in this." I tried again. Her look didn't falter. I sighed, which made her smile. I decided then that I wasn't getting anywhere with this, so I started walking in the direction of the entrance/exit of the park. We were silent as we walked along the sidewalk towards my house. After that first block, I felt contentment from Dinah, as if her life finally felt at peace. Walking hand in hand with Dinah down the quiet sidewalk, I felt at peace as well.

As we walked up the steps to my house, Dinah slipped her fingers away from mine, and I reluctantly let go. "Would you like to come in for something to warm you up before you go home?" I asked her, feeling somewhat shy now. Dinah smiled, but shook her head slowly.

"It's late. You should rest on things, and I should go before the weather gets any worse." I nodded and pulled her into a hug.

"Thank you for being here tonight."

"Anytime," she replied softly. I released her, but only long enough to put my hand on the back of her neck and bring her head towards mine in a kiss. This kiss held no passion- okay, that was a lie, but there were no promises in my kiss. It said little more than 'thank you' and 'goodnight'. I felt her longing and pulled away before I could respond to that longing by deepening the kiss and making things worse. We stared into each other's eyes, and I felt the static of her abilities, which told me that her emotions were high. I didn't mean to do that to her. "Uh- Godnight, Gabby," she said, and her voice was low, almost a grumble from the far depths of her throat. It was hot.

"Goodnight, Dinah. Be safe," I said. I watched her walk down the street a little ways, and a figure emerged from almost out of nowhere. They walked together a few steps, and I heard that words were exchanged between them before the figure bumped into Dinah purposely. Dinah playfully hit the figure on the arm. I smiled at Helena and Dinah's snowball fight before I heard the door open behind me.

"I thought I saw Kyle down the street," Uncle Leonard said. I nodded. He wanted to ask me if I was okay, but as I watched the 'sisters', I had to laugh. Helena had kicked a tree with her mighty leg, and snow tumbled down on both of them. I could hear their giggling almost a block and a half away. "Come inside," my uncle said, and I took one long look at the two fading figures laughing and throwing snow at each other, before I did as I was told. Seeing them together, it seemed as if they'd been in each other's lives for years, not a couple of months. For one such as Helena who was used to growing up an only child, she seemed to have taken to the 'older sister' role well. I couldn't tell that they still had a hard time adjusting to each other sometimes, especially after the attack on their home. At the same time, I knew that Helena's used the cover of 'adopted sister' enough that it had started to grow on her. I knew Dinah's grown on her.

I felt the warmth of the house immediately. Without a word, Uncle Leonard went to the cabinets above the refrigerator and got out two packets of ramen noodles, and a pot of water. About ten minutes later, my coat, hat, scarf, boots, and gloves were off and bundled almost neatly in a chair next to me. Both of us had a bowl of instant noodles in front of us. My mother said once that she hated the smell of them, but I could live off of them if nutrition wasn't an issue. I smiled. 'When in doubt, make soup' must have been my uncle's motto. Between us, we passed back and forth a bag of Goldfish crackers, which Uncle Leonard dumped into his broth one at a time, the fished (ha-ha) them out with his spoon. I watched him closely, not only because it was sort of odd to see a grown man doing this, but also because it seemed familiar to me. As if to sense my confusion, he said, "Avery never was interested in eating the soup. He would rather eat the crackers, and play with everything else, while you devoured your Top Ramen. I see that hasn't changed." I smiled.

"Some things never should," I added in agreement. We were companionable as we finished off both the Top Ramen and later the Goldfish crackers during our third round of Uno. I think the more Uncle Leonard had stayed with me, the more comfortable I had become, and it felt to me that he had known this all along. He never tried to get me to talk, but a few times, he'd put in comments like, "Avery once beat 'Mario 3' in about six hours without skipping any of the levels, even the hidden ones," or "I think Avery was a little bit in love with Janet Jackson," and then, "Once Avery had to read The Phantom Tollbooth for school, but you wouldn't leave him alone long enough to let him read it, so he started to read it out loud to you. I don't know how he had done it, but you two were sitting on the couch all afternoon, and you were quiet the whole time except for when there was this part- something about moving grains of sand with a pair of tweezers..." I looked up at this part. I remembered reading the Phantom Tollbooth for school as well, and I remembered being amazed by that part then, too, for some reason.

"I remember that part of the book," I said.

"Yeah." Not long after our fifth round of Uno, which was the tie breaker between us (he won, although I just know he cheated), I excused myself, gave my uncle a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then went to my room and got ready for bed.

I look at my new husband, then back at the two children who walk in front of us in the toy store in the mall. Avery has a hold of Gabby's hand and they are both drooling over a toy boat. Gabby tries to get her hand from Avery's but he wouldn't let go. "Avie, lemme go."

"I'm holding your hand until we get back to the car so you don't get lost like you did last time. You scared me."

"I won't wander off this time. Promise, Avie, promise." Gabby says, but the little boy only shakes his head and his sister frowns. "Promise!"

"I can't let you go wandering off, Gab-thing. I'll have to keep holding your hand. Tell me what you want to look at and we'll look at it together, okay?" Gabby's frown doesn't go away, but Avery pretends not to notice. "Look Gabby, this boat has a motor on it, and can be controlled like my remote control truck." Avery says.

"Avie?"

"Hmm?"

"I don't need you to hold my hand all the time. I am a big girl." Gabby says, and I could tell that this hurt Avery's feelings.

"I know. I just want to protect you-"

"I don't need to be protected." Gabby tries again to get her hand back from Avery, but his grasp is still firm.

"That isn't the point. Dad said you must always protect the ones you love no matter what, so because I love you, I will always be there to protect you until the day I die- no, even after I die."

Gabby stays silent as we walk down to the next group of Tonka toys. She doesn't try to be independent from Avery again.

"Avie?"

"Yeah?" Avery asks looking down at her. They are silent for a second, and Avery's head turns to the side as he watches her, almost as if she were whispering in his ear.

"Do you really love me?"

"Yes, I really really love you."

"Better than cheese crackers?"

"Yes, I love you better than cheese crackers."

"Better than army man toys?"

"Even better than that."

"Better than birthday cake and ice cream?"

"Better than a thousand birthday cakes and a million billion ba-jillion scoops of ice cream," Avery says, and Gabby's eyes widen of thoughts of all that ice cream.

"Wow," she says after a while.

"Yeah," Avery agrees. As they look at the Ken dolls, it is quiet between them.

"Avie," Gabby says in a whisper, looking around. Avery leans in to hear her better.

"What Gabby?"

She plant a kiss on the cheek and says, "I love you better than all those things too." I look at Leonard and see him give me a smile and a wink that clearly said 'ditto'-

This is her now? Has to be. Looks practically the same.

Happier though. Have they told her? Has she gotten her powers back? Will she ever? If she has, she'll know I'm here. She'll have some sort of memory, if the power is the same as it used to be. Hopefully she's gotten a good memory from me-