Pray For Me ➳ T'Challa Udaku

FORTY FOUR

I craved sleep, but it never came. Not the way I wanted to. For a week straight I experienced nothing but night terrors. I would burst out screaming in the middle of the night with either my Dad or Alec rushing into the room. When I was aware of my surroundings I assured them that it was just a dream.

And tonight was no different.

I woke up bursting up from my bed position and screamed shaking in fear, feeling some shadow ready to take me away just like how it had taken my  friend Tony, sister Natasha, my unborn, and my Mother.

The door slammed open with my Dad in sleep attire. He stared at me worried that he turned on the lights. I saw that he didn't have his eyepatch on.

I deeply breathed in and out shaking my head, ashamed,"I'm sorry, I'm fine. Please go back to sleep" I pleaded, no longer caring if I sounded weak. In the morning I'd be back to normal, putting my mask of strength that everyone knew of. I just needed to take a minute to step back.

"Nova, admit it, you're not okay" my Dad said, causing me to look up from my sheets. He was sitting in front of me that he looked at me concerned.

"You're nightmares, I know you've been having them for the longest of time. At first it scared your mother and I. She would pray over and over to God that you'd stop having nightmares of someone trying to kill you with all these strange creatures. But praying did nothing for you. I realized that what you needed was more than some miracle" he began to confess,"So I left you and your mom and went off to fight off anything that would become a threat to this family. I would sing you that song to help calm you down and it worked. But now I notice you don't bother even singing a note of that song. Whatever game you have in your head is messing with you real deep Nov. It's making you lose because it's having you believe that your strength are actually your weakness's."

I raised my eyebrow at his last words. I wanted to argue with my Dad telling him it wasn't true, there was no game in my head, that my emotions weren't unstable, and my scars and bruises had healed up, but despite being able to keep up some act and strength around everyone else, my family, Natasha, Clint, and my parents were the only people I could crack open to my true broken self.

And my Dad was right. I wasn't okay, and I was caught up in a game that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to win or get out of.

"I'm losing myself Dad. I can feel my soul slithering away to a pit of emptiness" I admitted, as I didn't sound terrified or angry which was what made me feel sick to my bones.

It was like I was already beginning to accept whatever was thrown at me.

"I don't know how much longer I can keep going. " I admitted to him, that I met his eye not realizing a thick tear had escaped the corner of my eye til it rolled down to my lip with my tongue tasting the saltiness of it,"I'm starting to think I'm going mad, Dad. I wake up screaming every night and I don't even remember what my dreams are about. I just know that each and everyone of them it's something no living thing would be able to stand."

My Dad weakly smiled, that he brushed his thumb over my eyelid with his hand going up to my forehead almost as if he was checking my temperature,"We're all a little crazy Nov. The best ones are the maddest of them all."

I couldn't help but smile at that,"Don't try to stop yourself because you feel out of the ordinary. You'll survive. Why? Because you're a survivor. The world may try to tear us down again and again but it won't get in your way of your spark that's inspired everyone. The world isn't stopping you from rising up from the ground. It's you, you won't find yourself til you remember who you really are."

I had to pause, taking in every word my Dad had thrown at me. That the spark in me was dying not because of the deaths that have broken me to pieces but because I had not picked them back up and was letting my own self be broken more and more.

I slowly nodded, watching as my Dad walked to the door,"Who am I Dad?" I asked, wanting to hear what his answer was to that. When he had stopped at the door he slightly turned to me with a look that held such confidence,"Your my daughter, Nova Fury." Then he had closed the door, that it left me surprised enough that I had looked over at the clock.

It was two in the morning.

I examined the clocks arms moving every second. Hearing my Dads words be repeated over and over that I had felt my hand reach for my phone knowing what I had to do.

If that spark that I had supposedly felt die in me five years ago was still in me then I needed to do this. I'm his daughter, Nova Fury, a girl who has lost too much that it almost feels like pretend. I was only going to get by my crashing mind game if I finally stepped down and finally surrendered, confessing everything once and for all.

I reached for my phone and dialed a face that I knew would be able to help achieve my sudden plan.

Even if it was all mad.