7/365

The wheelchair squealed as mom rolled me down the hallway, her footsteps like the seconds hand on a clock. Slow. Repetitive. There. I'd asked her to take her time—to push nice and slow—so I could keep looking outside of the windows, because this place was eerily gorgeous. All I could see were rolling hills of trees, the kind reserved for brochures and the internet and places Harper would visit and gloat about. The sky was a shade of blue I wasn't used to. New Olympus had this tint, a little gray, very dull, more often than not colorless. This was different. This was what I figured Earth was always meant to look like. And that wind—Gods, I kept rubbing my arms and massaging my cheeks, wanting it to soak into my pores even deeper. Mom must've thought I was going a little bit stir crazy.

"Where are we?" I asked her quietly. More squeaking and squealing. All the other rooms were open and empty. The entire place stank of disinfectant and mundane days and nights. Lived-in. Warm. A little bit stuffy, too.

"Oregon," mom said, her bare feet quietly slapping the tiles. "A government research facility."

"Should I be surprised that we're not even in a hospital, but at some research facility?"

Like I'm still this weird, amazing little thing they just want to cut open and dig through.

Mom was silent for a second. I glanced over my shoulder at her. She was staring straight ahead, holding so hard onto the handles that her knuckles were turning white. "It's…complicated," she said softly. "I'm not sure if—"

I leaned back in the chair. "If I'm gonna get back out there, I'll need some info, Ronnie."

She sighed and glanced down at me. "Do you ever give yourself time to rest?"

I shrugged one shoulder, then had to bite back a loud groan of pain as hot agony shot through the bones and ligaments that had been shattered and torn apart. I felt woozy for a second. So dizzy I nearly puked. Mom slowed to a stop in front of a window warm with sunlight. I shut my eyes and held my shoulder, waiting for the pain to ease off. I counted to forty before I could lean back again without having shards of icy fire dig through my skin. A flash of emotion crossed my mind, so hot and violent my mouth was suddenly bitter. But I let it die out. Let it sink into the depths of my brain until we were rolling again, this time a little slower, making the sun warmer.

"Government facility," I said quietly, massaging my shoulder. "Remind me why I'm here again?"

She hesitated, but only for a second. "Oregon's been a wellness retreat for government supes for a while, almost ever since Peacemaker was marching around with stripes and spangles on his big blue cape. But ever since… Well, they've had to make a few changes. It's as much a research facility as Lower Olympus is a bustling industrial district. In some ways, sure, but in the majority of ways, it isn't. Besides, this is the place that made sure Lucas didn't die after Zeus' fight, and the same place the Olympians used to come after their villain fights. In a lot of ways, Ry…this place is a lot more than the government can ever let on. I guess it was a matter of time until you visited." Her words were clipped, as if she'd been told to pitch it this way to me by some official. "How's the pain?"

"There, definitely there," I muttered, kneading my neck. "But it'll be fine after some sunlight."

It took a moment until I realized mom was slowing down, and it took a few seconds longer to notice that she was massaging her eyes, one hand still grabbing on tight to the handles. I opened my mouth to speak, but just like that, she was blinking profusely and pushing me forward again, the redness in her eyes forgotten just as fast.

We continued in silence. Very long, very stubborn silence.

The kind of silence we're both so used to, because it's the Addams' brand of stubborn silence, when both of us have something to say, but it's so painfully obvious that neither of us is gonna say a single thing about it.

"Do you still want to go to college?" mom whispered, then cleared her throat and asked it again.

"I dunno," I muttered. "Should I? I'm on the fence. On the one hand, Bianca's there—"

"That's…definetly one reason, sure," mom said.

"But on the other hand, am I gonna be any good at it?" I asked. "Sometimes I look at people my age with their normal relationships and normal lives and normal, boring homework and normal deadlines, and I think, 'wow, that must be pretty awesome that some principal is your biggest problem,' and then…" I sigh and drum my fingers against the arm rests. "And then I wonder if I'd even be able to get into that routine again. How am I supposed to take detention seriously when I've nearly died several times over? Calculus just isn't that important to me now."

"The only reason anything is important to anyone is because we put value to it," mom said. "Some people won't see the value in college, and that's fine, but some people love it so much that it changes them. I can't stand here and tell you that you have to take university seriously, because how are you supposed to?" Mom stopped again and put a gentle hand on my shoulder. She squeezed and smiled, both soft. "And I know it's important to you, Ry, because you take so many things to heart, and you just can't let them go. It'll be as important as you let it be."

I raised an eyebrow. "You're saying that I'm emotional? I'm, like, the chillest person ever."

Mom started pushing me again. "I don't think that gene runs in our family."

We stayed silent the rest of the way down the corridor, passing empty rooms with neatly made beds, past picture frames on the wall of Capes I vaguely knew about and ones I'd never seen before. Some in wheelchairs. Most of them with casts and bandages, all trying to grin at the cameras. Nothing about this place felt cold and brand new concrete, like how the Olympiad felt or most of the Upper West. The tiles were worn down. Wall edges were chipped from years of getting accidentally knocked into. The doorhandles were dull. Windows slightly smudged. I liked it. It made me feel this strange sense of comfort that I hadn't felt in years, like life had hit the pause button for me now.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

I settled into the wheelchair and shut my eyes. I still felt drowsy, a little exhausted. Mom said the meds I was put on could probably send a normal person into a coma, but the longer I was awake, the faster my body would work to get it out of my system. According to her, I had about an hour before the pain started to settle in my bones.

So the most obvious thing I could do in this precious, sun-lit hour, was ask mom to leave me outside on an empty walkway that split apart the grassy lawns. We stopped beside an apple tree, the fruits picked clean off the old branches, its bark moss-covered and its leaves rusting in the wind. I breathed in deep and exhaled slowly, wanting to trap the air inside of my lungs for as long as possible. In front of me—nothing. Hills. Trees. The edge of the sun as it hid partially behind an old brick building. I listened to the insects. Even heard the butterflies nestling inside of flowers and bushes. One of them rode an easy tide of wind, carrying it around my head before it vanished into the treeline far in front of me. I expected my finger to start tapping, or my foot to start bouncing, or my gut to tighten.

Right about now, something bad happened, and my day (days, probably) would be ruined.

For a solid minute, I nearly didn't breathe. Mom stood beside me, bare feet on the grass, hair lifted by the wind. She took off her glasses and slid them into her shirt pocket, reached for a packet of cigarettes, then paused.

Mom pocketed those, too, and watched the sun slowly slide through the sky with me.

"I'm gay," I said. Wind rolled past us. I kept staring at the puffy white clouds. Mom blinked. I saw her glance at me, hands tucked into her pockets. "I've liked girls for a while. I had a crush on Em once. But she's just a jerk a lot of the time. And Harper, too. But I guess everyone falls for the cheerleader a little, right?" I nodded slowly. Smelt the flowers and listened to the bees not too far away, nestled somewhere in the woods. "I think I like girls."

I sat in silence. Mom stood in silence. Trees whispered, as if they were gossiping and muttering.

"Are you not gonna say anything, or…"

"Ry," mom said. "You're a half-alien superhero who's lifted a building, fistfought the devil, saved your alien cousin and her friends, became friends with the devil's daughter, all in the past year." Mom finally took out her crushed pack of cigarettes, lit one, and sighed smoke out of her mouth. "That's the most normal thing I've heard since I was in college." She sucked on it some more, made the end glow. "Besides," she said. "I figured that out."

"I didn't make it all that hard to piece together, huh?"

"I once watched you skip home after the bus dropped you from school, all because Bianca hugged you."

For the record, I didn't skip, Ok? I walked like a very normal and average teenager. Mom's just crazy.

"It's…weird, you know?" I said, moving a little in the chair, trying to get pressure off my shoulder and spine. "People on this planet are sometimes so strict with who they love. Arkathians are dicks, but they don't care."

Mom shrugged one shoulder. "Just the way of things, I guess. But… Rylee, you haven't thought that—"

"—the thing inside of Bianca is making me attracted to her so I can get closer to it?" I whispered.

She nodded, eyes on me, sickly-sweet smoke spilling out of her nose.

"Yeah," I said. "Sure, I have. But I liked her way before any of this."

"Are you willing to take that risk, being close to something that might hurt you?"

"Love's a bitch, right?" I said, giving her a short smile. "You can't have it without being a little afraid that you might lose it, and I guess that's what's pretty awesome about it. You kinda have to hold and enjoy the ride and hope that whatever happens turns out pretty good, or else you're just gonna be miserable and alone all the time."

Mom tilted her head. "Never thought I'd hear you be so…positive."

"When you kicked me out, I thought life couldn't get any shittier, and then it did. Again. And again. And at some point, I hated being myself, I hated putting on my costume. I think the reason I kept changing it was 'cause I didn't wanna be myself anymore because I kept screwing things up. When Gayne came, I realized that, well, no. Life wasn't done with me yet. And life might not have been great, but oh, man, can it get a lot worse if the Empire takes Earth. So…" I almost shrugged, then stopped myself. "I can be doom and gloom, but that doesn't work, so I'm gonna have to give being positive a try. If that also doesn't work, then… I dunno. I'll retire and write comic books."

Mom chuckled and shook her head. "Maybe in another life, I would've been a teacher, and you would've sat in the back and scribbled superheroes onto your desk all lesson long, and life would have been much simpler."

"Yeah," I muttered, as warm sunlight washed over my skin. "Maybe in some other life."

Maybe in the next one.

Mom yawned a few minutes later. I didn't even realize that I'd partially fallen asleep until I heard the sound of her shoulders popping when she stretched. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, and stifled my own yawn. The sun had just about slid behind the hill, bruising the sky purple and leaving the air a little colder. I glanced at her.

She wasn't wearing her labcoat. That was draped over my chest. She stood there, eyes ringed with dark circles, cigarette nub between her fingers, and for the first time in a while, I saw how old she'd gotten. It was in her hair, how the blonde wasn't so bright anymore. The new wrinkles around her eyes and lips. The way her eyes were a little grayer and squinted without her glasses. I swallowed stale saliva and looked away, pushing myself upright.

If there's one thing you can do, it's make sure she gets to see life without being so hurt by it.

I kept my promises, and at the end of the day, I'd die for some of them.

That was one.

"We should head back," I said, stretching as much as I could. "You need the rest."

"I'd argue with you, but I think you're right." She steps on the cigarette and walks over. "And if you don't mind, just for one night, I'll stay over at the visitor's wing. It's been a while since I slept in a real bed and showers meant more than just washing my face." She slowly pulled me away from the trees. "I'll be a phone call away, Ry."

"Thanks, mom," I whispered. I stopped myself from choking on sudden, thick emotions.

"Don't mention it," she said softly. Her hand gently squeezed my shoulder.

We said nothing to one another the entire way back to the hospital room. Nothing when she helped me back onto the bed. Nothing as she gently helped me stretch the stiffness out of my joints. And then a hug, just before she left, tight enough to say a million things without saying anything, loose enough to make me want to hold onto her and ask for her to stay one more night in the room with me. She kissed my forehead for the first time in years, held my smile until she was halfway out of the door, and wished me goodnight before she finally left.

I stared at the ceiling for an hour, letting my eyes get wet, letting the tears spill into my ears. It wasn't loud, it wasn't shuddering. I lay there, fingers threaded over my aching stomach, blinking salty liquid down the side of my face. I knuckled them away, but they kept coming back—some shitty villain they were, no motives, just continuous harassment for the sake of it. I mean, no backstory? Nothing to— I swallowed. Shut my eyes. Breathed. I put my arm over my eyes and shakily sighed, then shook my head and quietly laughed, because just look at me.

Sleep came for me eventually, ruthless, suffocating, and didn't let up until I heard birds the next morning, and the sound of quiet snoring beside me. Mom, on the mattress on the floor, back facing me, peacefully asleep.

I shut my eyes again as early morning sunlight streaked through the window.

"Thanks, mom," I whispered again.

The snoring paused. I glanced at her.

"My little girl can fly," she murmured into the throw pillow. "How… How amazing is that?"

Yeah, I thought, a smile on my lips. That's pretty freaking amazing.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.