HADES // T. STARK DAUGHTER // MARVEL I.I

6 ~ SISTER ~ 6

** EDITED **

There is a part of my past that I've kept dead and buried. I blocked it from my mind and nearly forget about it- about him. Harry.

My mom was never meant to be a mom, I've said that a million times and I'll say it a million more. But I wasn't the reason she became a mother. I wasn't the first. That was my half-brother, Harry. He was older by twelve years, and as soon as he turned 18, he left, disappeared. Without me.

I hated myself for a long time because of him. Nobody found, or probably even looked for Harry after I moved in with Tony. I never said a word about him and nobody else did either. To me, it was safer that way. If nobody knew about him, nobody could drag him back.

For a while, I convinced myself I had just imagined having a brother, like some strange coping mechanism for the days spent alone. I knew deep down in my head he wasn't, he couldn't have been. Of course, he was real, I still had his ratty old sweatshirt hidden in the back of my closet in Miami. There was a crumpled picture of the two of us stuffed in a drawer of my desk. That Harry was real.

But, this version of him, mocking me, that person wasn't real. My Harry would have wiped the dirt off my face and picked me up from the ground. He would have stormed this damned compound and rescued me, no matter what. This wasn't my Harry. Not this boy with the hollow voice and that awful, evil smirk. With those sunken eyes that once matched mine and those arms scarred by cigarettes and shards of glass.

The girls didn't know about him, and they never would. They didn't get to, not when they tried to kill me every day. Not when every chance I had to sleep, they would whisper on the other side of the cell, keeping me separate.

Maybe I was going insane. Maybe it was the hunger. They fed us, but it was just enough that we could function, and it was always fought over. I had forgotten what it was like to be full. I could feel my extremities become sharp, strong and tensed despite the weakness suffocating me whenever I tried to form a word with more than three syllables. Always tired, always moving.

Jab.

Kick.

Punch.

Repeat.

I was the winner today, it seemed. My nose was bleeding, dark red dripping off my chin, but Zeus was on the ground and hurt far more than me, Hermes already passed out, leaving just Ares and me. I was on the attack, throwing strikes faster than she could take them as her energy failed her. I still had yet to see Ares abilities, but she seemed to refuse to use them. A small act of rebellion, one I could respect. If I had any, I would probably do the same thing.

"Стоп." (Stop.) One of the voices called as I aimed a final blow at Ares's head. I stiffened and stood straight, looking at the guard who had called off the fight. I felt a tug on my arm, a calloused arm grabbing me, holding me back.

"They're probably tired of you. Tired of how weak you are," Harry. Always Harry rattling through my head, taunting me. "They'll kill you, Ray. Kill them first."

No. I'm still valuable. I'm still safe.

Without a single warning, the guard who had called us raised his gun. I tensed when the gunshot rang through the air. Both Zeus and Hermes snapped out of their injured states, diving towards her. Ares.

The girl, a mirror image of the others- of me -fell to her knees, eyes wide and arms limp. He had shot her. Killed. . . he had just killed her. And he didn't even blink.

I felt numb. I didn't know this girl, I never would now, I suppose. Yet, the normal reaction would be crying, screaming, something. I just stared, my mouth slightly agape, as my clone crumpled to the ground, the life leaving her eyes. Something had to be wrong with me, because I felt nothing. No sympathy, no guilt, not even the same need to puke I got when I heard my father had been kidnapped. Nothing.

And at my side, grinning, was Harry. "You were right, Harley. It wasn't you. This time."