"I WAS BORN WITH MY HEART ON MY SLEEVE, FIRE IN MY SOUL, AND A MOUTH I CAN'T CONTROL."
In which only one of the Cunningham sisters will make it out alive.
|Stunning cover by @MarvelousCommunity |
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5 Y E A R S L A T E R
The streets of New York City were quiet and empty.
At first, when Iris moved back into the city that never slept, it was unnerving, like something out of a nightmare. After three years, however, she'd gotten used to it, but it had taken a while.
When she'd left the Avengers Compound three years prior, giving Nat the best of wishes, and promising she would return, she believed it was time to re-visit her home city, she found the streets desolate and near dead quiet.
She'd dropped in from the sky, flying in being her best option for transportation. Straightening in the middle of the street, all she could see was trash, blowing in the slight wind down the sidewalks.
"Hello?" She called out, half hoping for an answer, half not. No one did, so Iris turned around to face her demolished apartment.
It was still wrecked from the fight before Titan, the brick wall crumbling halfway into the street.
Iris walked closer, picking up one of the bricks and holding it in her hand for a moment, before setting it down again on the pile. The apartment was unsalvagable, that was for sure. She wasn't going to be able to move back in without someone who knew what they were doing.
She'd known it, sure, but seeing it in person again sort of finalized it.
The next stop she needed to get too was her parents' house on the outskirts of the city.
It was only a few minutes flight, and when Iris landed in her childhood home's front lawn, tears unexpectedly began to prick behind her eyes.
The front door was locked, but Iris knew where her parents had kept a spare key: in a fake rock in the garden. Counting three rocks from the porch, Iris picked up the fourth and turned it over, opening the compartment on the bottom and pulling out a familiar looking key.
A quick turn in the lock and the door to the home she'd lived in for nineteen years creaked open.
The lights were off, and even though it was only six in the afternoon, the rooms were dark. Almost every inch of the place was covered in dust and the occasional cobweb. Iris left footprints in it when she walked through the kitchen and dining room, letting her eyes swim over the pictures hanging on the wall.
"Mom?" She called out. "Dad? Hello?" Even though they hadn't responded to any texts or calls and hadn't been seen since the snap Iris had hoped that there was still some possibility they were still alive, just in hiding, as much of the rest of the remaining world.
