Andrea Dumont watched the muted television bolted to the hospital room wall with an idle attention, an indirect focus placed instead on the 5-year old cradled in her lap. Her daughter's cough seemed to have subsided with a bit of medication, and the tears had finally run out from the little tube a careful nurse had placed in a small vein of her arm.

The rest of the world may be asleep, maybe even the rest of the Pediatric wing, but she was still wide awake. Mab had needed another blanket. Needed another box of juice. Needed kisses, a story, another story, another story. Andrea had stopped rocking her when the child had fallen asleep, finally, but she held her upright against her chest, little legs dangled over the side of her lap, and listened to her daughter breathe.

Lots of tests had happened so fast when she'd rushed through the emergency room doors, Mab's lips slightly blue and coughing non-stop. She'd been so tired, so difficult to keep awake, almost unresponsive.

She'd smoothed back little hairs, kept her voice low and soft and soothing, I'm here, I'm here, I won't let anything hurt you, I'm here. Now she was waiting. She wasn't very good at waiting, but she was definitely getting her practice in. Little Mabling, soft and gentle and delicate, with a cough that couldn't quit, keeping her up at night and draining away her spark.

Andrea had done as much reading as she could, but her suggestions fell on deaf ears when the tests started. Reduced to a spectator for suffering, holding back tears as she restrained a thrashing child to be poked and prodded, signing papers when told to sign. Reduced to "mom". Not an expert in anything but her child, and even that was subject to scrutiny.

The door to the small pediatric room opened unexpectedly, and a doctor in a white coat entered in the process of reading something. It wasn't the doctor who had ordered all of Mab's tests, and Andrea opened her mouth to greet him but he beat her to it.

"Thank you for waiting, mom. I'm afraid Dr. March stepped out so I'm covering his patients." The doctor glanced around the room. "Are we waiting on dad, or…?"

"It's just us. What did you find?" Andrea asked, keeping her voice low and steady.

The doctor's voice was just a little louder than Andrea's, like someone who was used to speaking around sleeping children, but didn't have any of their own to set the best measures. "Well, it's still inconclusive, but your daughter would appear to have some kind of heart defect. We'd like to get another scan with the same machine, but it's been flagged for maintenance so we can't right now."

The doctor paused, as if waiting for Andrea to say something. She was silent, rolling the statements over in her hands like she would run her hands over silks, seeking minute defects with sensitive hands.

So the doctor continued. "But don't you worry, you're in the best hands." And then, with little else to go on for the night, he left.

The television mounted to the wall played on, silently, to no one.

Andrea listened to her daughter breathe. She wanted hairs to smooth out of place, but they had all been long-since tamed. She wanted food to cut to pieces, but it was early still. Little fingers clutched at hers, even in sleep.

Is this how it is now? Andrea thought. Is this how gravity changes? Tilts the world on its axis with only a breeze and a smile? And what was she supposed to do with such little information? Sleep? God forbid.

It was time to be steady. It was time for the practiced calm of mothers. If she could be calm, Mab would be calm. The little girl was already so clever; she saw everything in everyone with her father's eyes. Not quite as blue as Henry's, not quite; but just as sharp.

I will do whatever it takes, Andrea promised. There is no reduction here of great capabilities. The best thing I will ever do in my life is keep you safe. No great declarations or shifting of the heart, just a steady cadence of the music of her soul, in double-timed chorus in her arms.

Andrea chuffed a light laugh under her breath. Oxytocin is one hell of a drug, any mother would tell you. Beyond love, beyond words, a primal drive to embrace and protect. Once something terrifying, once beyond comprehension at the intensity of that love, Andrea could face the uncertainty calmly, with her daughter's little fingers wrapped around hers. The only gravity that mattered; orbiting the little star that slept in her arms.

Whatever it takes, my tiny love.

Mab could only remember fire. She felt heavier than she remembered and she remembered… fire. Opening her eyes took a few tries, and the room didn't seem quite right either. Her head lolled a bit to the side as she tried to look around, lifting up out of a haze with each passing moment.

She blinked, the motion clearer each time, and saw a figure hunched to her right. "Steve," she whispered, reaching for the blurry person sleeping at her bedside. She expected her throat to scratch as she tried to speak, but although her voice was quiet it was steady.

The figure unfolded, leapt for her side, "Mab! You're awake!" her uncle cried, his face sharpening now that he was closer.

"David?" she corrected herself. She licked her lips, suddenly thirsty. "What happened? Where am I?"

He babbled; "They transferred you here, said it would be better for your recovery, that-"

The door opened, a nurse likely summoned by the warning of Mab's confused heart. "Welcome back, Miss Dumont!" she rubbed some antiseptic between her hands and brushed David out of her way.

The nurse pressed a button and Mab's bed started to rise at the head, helping her sit up. She remembered fire, but didn't feel the cool hatred of burns, or see any bandages hiding their fury. David avoided Mab's confused glances, begging for answers.

"If I could ask," Mab said gently, carefully gathering the nurse's attention, "what hospital is this?"

A bemused smile twitched at the nurse's lips. "This is Stark Tower - well, Avengers Tower I suppose, but I've been here since it was just the Stark place so it'll always be that to me. How are you feeling?"

Mab licked her lips again. "I'd love some water."

"Any pain?"

Surprisingly, no. Not even her usual catch at the end of a breath. Not the ache to lie back, not the heaviness at the corners of her eyes. "No, none," Mab said.

The nurse seemed pleased. "That Cradle does some amazing things - I'll get your water and be right back, then we can chat a bit, okay?"

"David?" Mab asked as the nurse left, but she didn't know what question to ask first. It buzzed in a haze of confusion around her head, dimming only by degrees a surprisingly clear thought process. She felt like she had woken up from a long lie-in after a day at the beach; warm, rested, ready for a good meal, but overall refreshed. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so good, and it oddly frightened her.

"I think the doctors can probably explain it better," David said, but reached out a hand to settle on hers. "They said you'd wake up soon, but it almost seemed too good to be true. All of it, just too-" his voice choked with tears and he started to blubber. "Oh Mab, I'm so sorry-"

The nurse was back with her water and a doctor in tow; a friendly-looking woman in a crisp white coat. The large security badge clipped to her lapel confirmed she was a doctor at Avengers Tower. Mab half-expected to see Steve slip in behind the care team, to offer her a concerned smile, for his presence to fill the yearning in her chest.

"How are we feeling, Miss Dumont?" The doctor did a quick check of her vitals, making brief eye contact and smiling encouragingly.

"Pretty good," Mab replied, "I was hoping maybe someone could explain how I got here, though. I do have to say from what I remember, I shouldn't be feeling that great."

"Right," the doctor nodded, "mind if I sit?" Mab shuffled slightly so the doctor could perch on the edge of her bed. "Well here's the skinny of it; your hospital blew up while you were being treated for pneumonia, which is strangely the luckiest thing that could have happened to you."

"I… somehow find that hard to believe," Mab said.

"Well, your nurse carried you out of the building, got you loaded into an ambulance, and tried using your phone to contact your family. She got this building's AI instead, and since you were flagged as a VIP, you got rerouted here for care. I'm sure you can imagine the kind of medical equipment we have at our disposal."

Mab didn't think she could, actually, but a strange sense of hope washed over her. "Did…" she lifted a hand to touch her chest, not feeling an ache or bandages there. "Did I get a new heart?" she whispered, hoping beyond hope.

The doctor smiled. "That would be the lucky part; you don't need one. It's more legal nonsense than I can really explain, and your Uncle has the stack of paperwork he signed while you were out that lines up the finer points, but we were able to confirm that there's nothing wrong with your heart after all, and the Cradle weaned you off your medications, and repaired some of the cascade damage. I'm sorry you had to go through all those years of treatment for nothing, but I'm very proud to say that we were able to put a stop to it."

Mab's head felt heavier than her neck could support, tilting the axis of her perception. Her head bobbed slightly in something akin to a nod but more like instability. "So… what does that mean?"

The doctor hummed, considering the question. "Well, you probably won't ever be able to run a marathon, and I wouldn't recommend throwing your cane away, but you'll be able to live a relatively normal life."

Mab's mouth was so dry, and the room felt so small. She could barely feel her hands fisting in the crisp and perfect sheets, couldn't see her toes curling beneath comfortable blankets. She could only see the doctor's mild smile as she dared to ask, dared to hope; "Normal, like…?"

And the doctor's smile broadened, happy to be a messenger of good news. "Oh, you've got a lot of physical therapy ahead of you, but the settlement money from up top will more than cover you and your care for a couple of lifetimes. You'll be able to get married, have a few kids, complain about neighborhood children on your lawn in forty or so years…"

The doctor trailed off as Mab leaned over, put her face into her hands, and wept.

Two Years Ago

Andrea tapped a finger on the side of her mug, watching the tea leaves spin in steaming water, strange evidence to the frenzy of only a few minutes before. That horrible realization, silent tears, shaking hands that had torn the tea bag while trying to go through the motions of calm.

Had to keep going. Had to keep things level and normal, because there wasn't any other way. It was the only way to keep an even keel, to keep her daughter's too-clever eyes from seeing the truth. Oh Mab, Andrea thought, why couldn't you have been more foolish?

Her tea steeped in the silent kitchen, harmless and unhelpful. Andrea couldn't truly regret anything could only feel pride in her daughter's vast future - or, it could be vast. Or it could not.

Andrea would have to decide. Keeping the keel even on this tiny boat, keeping the bills paid as they joked about their collective disability, Andrea had come to realize it wasn't a sailboat in a storm, no. Their little boat was a life raft with room and supplies for only one.

Andrea flipped her old phone open and jabbed the keys, a few of them stuck halfway in place from age and use, and made her call. She sipped at her leafy tea as it rang, slipping into the will of a stronger person.

David picked up the phone, "Hey Andy, how are you? Treatment going okay?"

Andrea's eyes flicked to the pile of chemotherapy literature, cost estimates, and other depressive papers. "I've been better. Listen, I've got some news."

She kept it short. There was the reality. There was basic budgeting, basic money, the thumbscrews of disability. They could not afford to both be so chronically ill, even with all the support David had sent them - more than he could really afford, Andrea knew. "So," she stated calmly, "it's gonna be Mab."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not giving up, David. I'm just not doing anything… expensive. I'm gonna make sure she makes it, even if I'm not there to see it. So you promise me, David-"

"No-"

"Promise me you'll look after her! She's the best of me, the best, and I-" her composure slipped. "I wouldn't be able to live with myself if my treatment cost my daughter's life."

"Mab wouldn't want that, I'm sure; knowing her treatment cost yours?"

"I'm not going to tell her. And neither are you." And how could she? If she let any of this slip, if she seemed less than herself, less than the gladiators-in-arms battling death side-by-side, her daughter would see it. Mab could see through the universe with her father's eyes.

"Don't let her quit," Andrea ordered. "She can do anything, even if she doesn't believe in herself yet. I've seen it. I'm her mother so she'll never believe me, but she's going to be something amazing."

"She's really not like other girls," David said idly.

"No," Andrea said, but she wasn't agreeing. Mab was just like her. Mab was an ordinary woman, cursed by nature with some burden or other to put a brick wall in her path. Forced to climb, seeking footholds where none could be found, she would climb anyway.

And an ordinary woman would always reach the top. They would sit atop that wall and before even catching their breath they would reach a hand down to help the next woman climb. That was just the way an ordinary woman had to live their life. Extraordinary grit, made ordinary by collecting in each soul.

You could always see it in the eyes.

God should fear ordinary women.

"I'll be sending you some paperwork," Andrea said, trying to get back on track. "Hopefully… hopefully things work out and you don't need it."

"I'll look after her. I promise." Quiet, but resolved.

"We'll come by soon," Andrea promised in reply. "I love you, David."

"How familial of you," David answered, "I love you too."

Rain slipped down the wide expanse of windows in little rivers, washing away some of the city grime. Mab picked at the blanket on her lap, but the rich fiber refused to yield. The bed, inclined to let her sit up and see her surroundings, even eat a little food under close supervision, was more comfortable than her mattress at home. The medical opulence seemed so odd, compared to the rooms she was used to. Steve wouldn't have to break any part of this bed -

Steve. Where was he? "David, do you have my phone?" Mab asked, her eyes on the rain.

"Oh," he said from a chair next to the window, turning the page of his newspaper. "one of the Super-people took it back."

Mab physically recoiled a bit. Took it back? "Oh." What did that mean?

"Have I… have I had any other visitors? When I was still out, maybe?" Mab couldn't keep the hope from her voice. She couldn't keep her eyes from glancing to the door. He was coming to see her, right? This was the building where he worked, so it wasn't like he couldn't know she was there.

David tapped his fingers, folding the newspaper and thinking seriously. "Mariah sent some flowers to the house, but couldn't make it herself. Were you expecting someone else?"

"Oh." Her breath caught between two ribs, cracked, shattering bone at the center of her chest, piercing her heart. "I suppose not."

She'd been forgotten.

But why?

The heavy weight in her stomach grew cold.

She knew why.

Of course.

"Don't worry, we'll get you a new phone," David offered placatingly.

"No," Mab said, "don't worry about it. I'll just use the house phone if I need to make a call."

The story was always the same.

But Steve wasn't supposed to be the same.

Mab pressed a hand to her chest, trying to cover the crack in her heart. Inside it she was screaming, howling in pain, raging in fury and confusion and loneliness. But she covered it with her hand, pressed down on it to keep it all in, let the spring-loaded action snap shut again and trapped all that noise inside.

"Mab?" David asked, placing a comforting hand on her arm.

Mab smiled her best fake smile, but fatigue kept it small. "I'm fine. Just tired."

Too tired to lock away it all. Pouring out from her right and aching heart, words of promises and rain once sweet but now poison to the touch.

David nodded in understanding. "I'll let you get some rest; I'll be back tomorow."

"Okay," Mab replied, not really listening. She had to wait, had to keep it together while David collecting his things, tucked them away like Mab wanted to tuck away that pain. Keep it together, keep it together, just until he waved goodbye and the door to her room closed, door latched-

Click.

A gasping sob tore out of her, greater agony than she could contain for another moment.

Why? Why? Her bleeding heart cried as she rolled onto her side. Her perfect, lying heart, the cause of so much ruin and loneliness, had one last cruel trick to deliver from the universe.

She had always known he could and probably would be taken from her; that her stolen time wasn't owed.

But Steve was supposed to be different.

Had she misunderstood his kindness? She never dared for affection, but had thought maybe it had grown there on its own?

She had dared to hope, there lay her fault. There, the seeds of betrayal had grown, in her expectation that the universe may at least only feel indifferent, and not continue to delight in malice.

Tears slipped down a silent face. Her eyes burned and she blinked, more shame pouring down her cheeks. Shame. How could she have let this happen?

Hubris, pride, hope; fickle and dangerous feelings she had long since abandoned. But Steve had brought them back. Sunshine and color and a reason to laugh. And for what? She didn't understand.

He had secreted into her hospital room once, why not visit her now? What had changed? Had he seen what her future looked like and simply couldn't cope, like all the others before him?

Steve was supposed to be different.

He was supposed to call her when it rained.

But taking the phone back… that felt deliberate. Don't call me and I won't call you.

Mab pressed her eyes shut as if that could stop the tears pouring down her face. She clasped her hands over her mouth, strangling another sob.

She'd been so stupid. She'd thought - she'd thought -

A perfect and cruel voice had promised; I'm right where I need to be.

Mab didn't know heartbreak could feel so much like dying.

Eight Months Ago

"Read me another," Andrea asked, licking her lips in a feeble attempt to sate her thirst. Always thirsty. Always tired.

Tucked into her striped wheelchair, as close as she'd been able to roll the chair to Andrea's hospice bed, Mab turned the page in her notebook. "I'm still working on this one," she said.

At eight, I took a trip to the sea with my class
I was not allowed to swim for fear my weakness would overtake me
And I might drown
So I watched from the sand as my classmates laughed
And my teacher tried to explain what I already knew.

Teacher calls me different
When at the age of eight how am I to understand
That sticker doesn't come off clean
She doesn't mean it to be permanent or cruel
But it is.

When I run for the ocean
Teacher holds me back
I cannot even feel that salt on my hands
So she reminds me again.

The ocean will still drown me
With gloriously indifferent hands
of blue-green and silver
That cannot forgive
I am other

He daughter paused, eyes fixed on her notebook. Her gaze might have seemed cold to others, distant and harsh, but Andrea could see the ocean in it. "Keep going," she whispered.

Mab cleared her through, and Andrea could her the suppressed cough.

Pious preachings of someday's equality
Do not equity make.
They only reveal the fervor
With which you don a blindfold
And stuff cotton in your ears

We know that you fight the change
As viciously as you cheat death
To delay, to bargain, to ignore
That one day you too will be denied the ocean.

Time, money, medicine, circumstance, accident
eventually make other of us all
You are not special
You will someday be stopped at the sand.

Andrea couldn't keep her own cough from interrupting the reading; a wheezing rattle spurted from her mouth, tinged pink and sharp like pennies on her tongue. Mab rolled back as the cough continued into a battle to breathe, pushing the call button with a practiced calm.

Mab's breathing stayed steady and silent, and Andrea reached out a hand for her daughter. A nurse rushed in before she could grab for Mab's hand, before she could find a steadiness in her calm, in her oceans, in Henry's eyes.

She gasped, getting nothing, the room growing strangely dim, and the bed tilted back. Someone was talking, someone was asking her questions while she was gasping for air. How rude.

Keep going, she wanted to tell Mab. Keep going, to finish reading her poem. Or to keep writing it, if it wasn't ready yet.

Keep going, because this couldn't be the end. This couldn't be the last words they said to each other.

But it would be.

"Are you ready to go home?" David asked his niece. It was a little late to be asking, being that they were already technically leaving, Mab sitting in her wheelchair as David pulled her backward onto the elevator. After days and days of checks and paperwork and notices for rehab, it was almost over. He'd almost gotten her out, she was almost free of this place, and he was feeling the nerves escalate as he got her so close to the finish line.

Almost out of danger, he thought, punching the button for the lobby.

Mab nodded with a smile that should have lit up her face, but didn't. Her usually active hands sat at rest in her empty lap.

"Christine missed you," he tried, expecting - or hoping for - a witty reply. But Mab only made a mild hum of acknowledgement as the doors opened onto the lobby.

David hoped that the old wheelchair didn't leave any kind of marks on the white marble floor. He'd had to pull an old one from storage, since Mab's striped sport chair had been lost at Mount Sinai.

A broad man with a badge reading 'Head of Security' moved to stop them at the main entrance. "Miss Dumont, I've got a private car to take you-"

"That won't be necessary," David cut him off, "just hail us a cab at the curb, if you don't mind. We can do it ourselves if you're too busy."

The broad man glanced at Mab, expecting what he couldn't be certain. But Mab didn't turn her gaze to meet his, instead remaining focused on the traffic moving past the broad glass walls ahead.

Surprisingly, he complied. He stepped outside and waved a hail, and a taxi stopped in an instant, either recognizing the authority or just dumb luck, David would have guessed the former. He even held the doors open so David could push her out into the freezing winter winds.

David shuddered, wrapping his coat tighter, but Mab hardly seemed to notice as the wind ripped her scarf from around her neck, whipping it across the sidewalk and off into oblivion before anyone could even cry out.

"Where to?" the cabbie leaned over and yelled against the wind, distracting David from the thought of running after the scarf. Surely it would be better to bundle into the cab quickly than to chase a scarf down the street?

"Greenwich village! Sixth Ave and 19th Street!" David yelled as he locked Mab's wheels and offered her a hand in transferring to the cab. She moved smoothly, without complaint, taking what was offered. As David checked that Mab was fully in to the cab, shutting the door and walking around to the other side, a seed of doubt planted in his heart.

It would have been easy to understand a few days of adjustment, of the grief and anger that had washed over him as well at Andrea's unnecessary sacrifice and Mab's unnecessary suffering, and the acceptance that inevitably followed. Mab had a new life ahead of her, and he would have thought that she'd feel… something.

What have I done?

He struggled to close his cab door, the wind furiously pushing against his feeble grip. He managed it, slamming it too hard, but no one commented. The cab peeled away from the curb, headed South.

The strange silence lingered. Not tense, not angry or sad, but empty. A void sat behind Mab's eyes, an ocean pouring into nothing.

He wasn't a fool, but surely he also could only call himself blind. He had snuffed a candle and cut the wick in a moment of panic and misplaced fury. But he had lied, and thrown away the Stark phone, claiming it had been taken by one of the hero's people.

What have I done?

He had told the Avenger to keep his distance, but played dumb to his niece, as if she hadn't experienced enough loss and abandonment to make excruciating assumptions based on that absence. She would assume the worst as only the worst had ever happened. And David couldn't think of how to make it right.

He'd been so sure, and now he was so sure that he'd never been so wrong in all his life.

"Mab," David started, stopped, and gulped.

She turned her head, the empty dolls'-smile eerie in the tight space of the cab. "Did you say something, David?" she asked, her false peace as empty as her eyes.

He lost his nerve. "No, I was just thinking we could use something hot to drink when we get home."

Mab nodded idly, the perfect placid smile never moving. Painted perfection. A death mask.

If he waited, if he let her heal and begin that new life, would she blossom again?

Would they ever reconcile all the lies?

What have I done?

A/N: I was originally going to have it take some time for David to realize he muffed up, but I kind of like it being a faster thing. It was a snap judgement, and just a little time to cool down gave him the perspective to realize he really made a bad call.

So this is the only Andrea Dumont POV we're going to get, and honestly I love her so much. There's a little Barbenheimer in here if we're being honest, but that's not a bad thing. In the very very beginnings of my outlines there was going to be a Munchausen by proxy plot, but it felt so, so, so much more painful and angsty for it to be this way. The error was so long ago, by a company that no longer exists. There is no one left to blame, and nothing anyone could have done. Andrea sacrificed herself so Mab could go on, and she made it.