Sidelined (an Avengers Story)

Chapter 1: I'm Okay

Pietro Maximoff

The blackest hours are the ones right before waking.

Dreams are an eternity of black and white still-life portraits with no sound or smell. Beautiful because time is frozen, nothing ages or changes beyond recognition; the moment is forever captured. Horrible because life should never be still; it should explode with noise, scent and other sensations. The world should change and evolve.

And it does.

It just doesn't include me.

I stare at the frozen form of my sister as she sits in a café chair, fingers stretched toward a bowl-sized cup of coffee. Sharon Carter sits across from her, mouth open in a laugh that makes the corners of her eyes crinkle. They've been like this for hours, days, weeks. Sometimes I can't tell, because sometimes I forget it's a dream-because sometimes I'm not asleep when this happens.

My coffee cup is empty. It's been empty for hours, days, weeks. I drank it a long time ago, or maybe it was minutes ago. It feels like forever ago. When I touch the rim of the cup, it's neutral. I don't feel hot or cold in these dreams. I don't feel anything really.

I slide out of my chair and leave the café, stepping out onto the sidewalk where there are statue-like people holding cell phones and shopping bags. The cars in the street seem parked. Wanda and Sharon won't notice I'm gone. I've left thousands of times and been gone for hours-maybe days-and come back to find them in the same positions as before. I refill my own coffee and wait. Sometimes, I think I see Wanda's hand come a little closer to her drink.

I've given up talking to them. My words echo around the room, but affect nothing.

I don't matter, because I'm not really here, am I? Not since I died.

I walk down the street, whistling and staring up at the unchanging sky-forever noon, forever cloudy overcast. A gut-wrenching pain in my stomach brings me to my knees as my head swims. Colors bleed back into the world, sound crashes down on me. My arms and legs weigh more than Thor's hammer. My face hits the ground as I'm sucked back into the land of the living-again.

I jump out of bed, heart hammering, gasping. Oh God, oh God, oh God. I stare at the clock on the wall. The second hand ticks: one...two...three... Calm down. Slow down. You're okay-I'm okay. I bend over, clutching my knees, trying to breathe normally as my head pounds in time with my pulse.

One...two... three.

I'm okay.

I fall back on my ass and sit there, half-sprawled, staring at the clock. One...two...three. A normal minute passes, and then another. I concentrate on the deep blue color Wanda and I had painted the dorm room. I inhale the scent of laundry past its due date shoved in a far corner. I hear the rock music playing from the iHeart Radio station I always leave on.

Wetness on my upper lip. My hand shakes as I bring it up to wipe my mouth and stare at the blood on my fingers. Great, another nose bleed.

I stagger to my feet, grab a couple of Kleenex off the night stand and plug my nose. Then I shuffle to the tiny kitchenette area. I rustle though my mini-fridge for ice, milk, yogurt, and bags of diced carrots and peeled, sliced apples. Digging a banana out of the wooden fruit basket Wanda had put on top of the fridge, I rig up my Ninja. I eat the banana as I dump smoothie ingredients into the fancy blender and get it going.