Destiny

Twenty two .1

Caitlin P0V
Caitlin heard a thump from down the hall, it kept repeating. Thump, thump, thump, hitting the floor. She made her way down the hall to the door the sound was coming from. The thumping stopped when a floorboard squeaked under her foot at the door. Standing quietly in front of the door, Caitlin placed her hand on the doorknob. She felt something odd, something pulling her.

Turning the doorknob she pushed the door open, and quickly her uncle ran to her.

"Cait what are you doing?" He said.

"Who are you?" She asked the person in the room.
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Caitlin looked at the person in the room. He was a tall young looking man, mid-twenties maybe, wearing similar ragged clothes as her uncle. He has similar hair color as Caitlin, some of his facial features nearly identicals to hers and her father.

He sat on the low, cheap bed, holding a soccer ball which he then dropped to the ground causing it to thump.

"Cait," Uncle Thomas said, "this is your brother. Charlie."
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"I have a brother!" Caitlin yelled pacing around the room.

"Yes?...," Charlie replied quietly, unsure of how to act. He seemed unsurprised meeting his long lost sister, but also hazily. 

"When were you going to tell me?! Does my mother even know? How about my dad?" Caitlin began blurting out questions.

"Caity, calm down..." Thomas said, trying to calm his niece down.

"Why should I!" Caitlin yelled, aggressively stepping towards her uncle. She slammed her foot down, clenching her hand, she didn't seem to notice the shift in temperature in the room.

"Your eyes...," Thomas said, "you have powers. Just like your father..."

"Wait, what?" Caitlin restrained herself. "What do you mean."

"Dad wasn't who you thought he was," Charlie intervened, "Our father, he was like us. Well, rather we are like him." 

"What? You mean you have cryogenic powers too?" Caitlin asked. Her brain was pulsating from all of this news, the lie she's been living in for so long. 

"Yes," Charlie began snapping out of his haze. He stood up to talk to Caitlin and held up his hand showing Caitlin his palm. Forming an ice crystal in his hand, his eyes turned a similar shade of blue and his short auburn hair white. "Dad also gave us the trait of decelerated aging." 

"This is so much," Caitlin sighed, exasperated sitting down on the bed. 

"I'll give you two time to talk," Thomas said walking out the room. 

"Why did I not know this, why did I not know I had an older brother," Caitlin asked.

"When I was born, about five and a half years before you, Dad saw that I had similar DNA like his, traced with dark matter. He had been alive for at least eighty years then but didn't look a day over 35 thanks to his powers. So he posed as one for the final decades of his life. His ALS Caitlin, that was his suppressed aging hitting him all at once. His grave may say he lived till 42, but he was born on January 1st, 1900. For those fifty years before Mom, Dad was someone else. He researched medical, of course. But he was more than a doctor, he didn't know where his powers came from either. He managed to replicate the dark matter in our DNA into vaccines. For a short time, he worked for a company in Gotham New York, but the partnership broke off for some reason. But he never knew were his, our powers came from. Except that they were genetic. When Dad met our mom, he knew he only had a few decades left, he wanted to settle. He wanted a normal, life with her and didn't want her involved with all the crap he was involved in. So when he found out I had powers, he set it up so Mom thought I was stillborn. It killed him. He didn't want to give me away, so he sent me to a few friends on the East Coast. After a while, I was sent to live with Uncle Thomas. If you can guess, isn't really our biological uncle, he's dad's science partner and best friend. But, I guess he works..." Charlie then joked. 

"Heard that," Thomas called out from the hallway.

"I really wanted to meet you, talk to you, be your older brother Caitlin," Charlie added, "but I knew it was for the best if i stayed in the shadows. Before the whole particle accelerator mess i heard about, metas were not the most loved." 

"Wait, I have powers too. Why were you kept such a secret?" Caitlin wondered. 

"When Mom got over the grief of having a stillborn, about five and a half years..." Charlie started. 

"Her sessions of grief were always long..." Caitlin sighed. 

"Dad finally managed to convince her to try again, he wanted her to have something before he passed. But also didn't want the same thing to happen again. Uncle Thomas was more than just a pharmacist. He concocted the drugs and vaccines Dad worked with. One of them being a subtle fizzy, disovable, tablet, Mom drank thinking it helped with morning sickness. It was really something that would hopefully prevent you from having powers," he continued.

"And it didn't work..." Caitlin said.

"It only suppressed your powers in the womb rather than get rid of it. After you were born, the dark matter in your DNA slowly came back over the years. And one day... you got into a car crash...," Charlie said.

"And how do I not remember?" Caitlin asked. 

Charlie sighed and sat up to go into his closet and bring out a small cardboard box. "To protect you, Dad took your, and when he needed to Mom's, memories. He loved you, Caitlin. He just wanted the best for you." 

"This is too much," Caitlin finally said, standing up. "I need some air." 

"No wait," Charlie stopped her amidst running out. 

Caitlin stopped abruptly on the verge of tears, "What?" 

"Take the box at least," Charlie handed it to her before she left without saying another word. 

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