3| Diamond [Pietro M.]

16. Shockwaves

Iris, you have malignant lung cancer.

Those words keep ringing through my mind. Those few words have completely rattled me to my core. They've turned my world upside down.

Cancer. It's a word everybody fears. It's something you pray you'll never have to deal with. It sends shockwaves through you as realization quickly dawns on you like a new day.

I knew that one day there would be consequences for what HYDRA had done to me. I just never expected it to be so soon. I'm only twenty-one and facing the scariest threat to my life ever. I've faced some frightening, gut-twisting things in my short life, but nothing like this. This situation is a new breed of fear-inducing.

I close my eyes, press my lips together to prevent them from trembling. I force my lungs to expand in three deep inhales and exhales. I don't feel any different. I feel fine. I've never struggled to breathe...

Carter's.

My heart clenches. I take it back. The first real tango I've had with difficulty breathing was after the Sokovia accident. The fall. The lake. We'd thought it was pneumonia. But that was the time the first clinical signs began. Difficulty breathing. Wheezing at night. Coughing. A cough that still sometimes surfaced. All of it, right after I had used my energy manipulation overabundantly. I didn't have a care in the world. It's no wonder now. My abilities were like playing with fire, a delicate balance between helpful and harmful, get too close and you'll burn alive.

All the time I spent using my gifts, for what I believed was good, had come back to bite me. Thinking about it now, I understand. I know I must've created exuberant internal radiation levels which affected my cells. My lungs seemed to be only the place it manifested. Shuri had run more tests once we got back here to the lab. There was no metastasis beyond my airway. No invasion of other parts of my body. It was mainly concentrated in my lungs, particularly my right lung. We had no idea why.

There was no cure for cancer. And even if there was, like Shuri said, I'm a walking self-contained nuclear plant. It'd recur. Cancer was like a festering parasite, taking and taking and taking until there wasn't anything left to steal or destroy.

I was conflicted. With my abilities repressed, the levels of radiation were receding. I could prevent it from getting worse. All I had to do was abandon the energy manipulation. But that also meant I'd lose contact with the part of me I'd finally learned to accept. A part I'd begun to embrace...to help others. The part of me designed to harm, which I'd turned to help people. Or so I thought.

In the long run, it didn't matter. There was no real choice. If I wanted to keep living, if I wanted to prevent the furthering of this cancer, I'd give that part of me up. I'd go back to being an ordinary person. I wouldn't be a hero as I had been before.

I've fought so hard to accept myself. And now? Now I had to fight hard to let that part go. I wasn't one for change. I wasn't going to lie to myself. This was going to be hard. Oh, it was going to be so hard. But I knew I'd have to do it. I had too many people I cared about now to just wither away so early in my time with them.

"I might be able to figure something out, Iris." Shuri softly says from behind me. I slowly open my eyes, gazing out at the hollow mountain filled with Vibranium.

"I appreciate it, Shuri." I turn and look at her in my peripheral vision sadly. "Is there anything else you'd like to test out today?" Now I turn fully to face her. I can see the hidden sadness in her eyes. I know she must hate to have to be the one to deliver the news to me. But I'm thankful she did. Now I can plan my course of action accordingly.

"I think I have all I need to further my research about you." We stand in a timid silence, staring anywhere in the lab but each other.

"Shuri?"