1nn0c3nt

---Friday 23rd August 2019---

I wish I could say I didn't dream last night. But, I did. I dreamed I was standing in the middle of a ring made by a careless crowd, lost in their chatter and feeling generally ok. Suddenly the chatter cuts out at the click of a gun, and I then see some of the people being brutally murdered while their loved ones yell and scream, getting the blood of their loved one all over their clothes. I tried to reach out, to protect them- but I was trapped. Held back by an invisible force I couldn't control. Blood splatters around me, forming little droplets on my invisible dome. I hear the screams grow louder, more rebellious. I feel the pulse of a hundred people's anger, and I watch as they rise up against the police. They try to shoot them, stab them, anything to make the pain go away. But the police were indefinitely alive. They weren't going to die, and they continue to kill the people as I bang on the invisible dome, screaming, yelling, trying to get out. But I'm nothing more than a spectator, and no-one even spares me a look. I sink to my knees, trying to cover my ears and eyes so as to not be there anymore, be invisible. I woke up, the residual pulse raging through my veins. I got up with such force I almost fell back over again. I run my hands through my dark hair and try to rub the dream out of my eyes. "Time to go to school, hun. We let you sleep in a bit. Come on, let's get you ready!" she can't know about this. They'll be on her trail, the scary thought creeps into my mind, and I feel so trapped, not able to get this dream out, to get it out of my memory for good. I shake my head. "Coming,"

When I get to school, it's the same consistent flow of teases. "Oh, Jakaranda, did you go camping with your family on the weekend? Because I did!" one smirks. "Yeah, I had a real nice time with my parents too." one adds. "Go away," I whisper, feeling an uncontrollable pulse. I've never felt this way before; but it seemed primal, natural. "Oh, I'm sorry, are you going to go cry to your mummy? Oh, right, you don't have one!" the pulse takes over and I feel my eyes flash a foreign colour. I exit my body as if forcibly removed, and watch as the pulse turns me into some kind of human morphed into a wolf. Electric blue sparks flow over my skin, and then my body loses consciousness. From outside me I see people kicking me, not because they care about me, just so they have an excuse to kick me. I feel no pain. One of the kicks to my arm jolts my bracelet to life, and it begins buzzing. Three sharp buzzes; an SOS message. People join in, punching and kicking my lifeless body, for around fifteen minutes until Peter arrives. He bursts through the door, in normal clothes, and runs over to my body, clearing out all the other people. The one who teased me blocks Peter's way. "Ooh, are you Jakaranda's little boyfriend?" Peter looks up at him from me, sighing and shaking his head. "You'd wish you were. Now, get out of my way." Peter retaliates. "Make me." I see Peter sigh as though he's trying to say, Oh, I'd make you move if I could right now. He pushes past the one who teased me. Save me from them, please, make them stop, I think to myself. Sure enough he picks me up and I lose all sight of everything. I feel a jolt, my mind returning to my body, and all I see is black. I'm unconscious, yet I know it- the black engulfs me, my senselessness numbing me. I succumb to the darkness and let myself sleep.

When I wake, I'm not at home- I'm at the compound, in a medbay bed, sensors and IVs decorating my upper half. Morgan sits at the side of my bed, holding my hand tight. My eyes open slowly, the fluorescent ceiling lights creeping into my eyes like warmth into my cold body. "Jakaranda-" she gasps. She gets up and runs outside yelling to Peter. Peter and Shuri run to my bedside, eyes wide. "You're alive," they said in unison. I look at my arms. "I guess I am." I reply, my voice a dull, hoarse whisper. I look again at my arms, taken aback by the black and blue covering what used to be tan peach-coloured skin. How am I still alive? Why am I still alive? I think angrily. "I- what happened? Did I hurt anyone? Please, tell me no one got hurt," I say desperately. "No one was hurt, Jakaranda, apart from you. What worries me is the way blue static ran around on your skin when I found you. It kinda reminded me of Thor actually." I look back down at my arms. Wouldn't I have felt static electricity on my skin? No, you weren't in your body. You were somewhere else. "Where did I go?" A confused look flits across everyone's faces. "Where- where did you go? You went somewhere?" Shuri asks, eyes wide. I nod slowly. "Yeah- I wasn't in my body. I- I could see everything from outside, like how the Ancient one can split mind from body. I watched myself get beaten up." I say, head hurting. I raise a hand to my temples, but Pepper holds my arm down. "Moving will make you feel worse," Pepper says. I just put my head back onto the pillow and sigh. "If I may be of any help," Stephen Strange walks in. Everyone looks at him as if to say, where'd you come from? "She was separated from her body. This I know for a fact- but her power, it's not enough to drive her consciousness on it's own. Yet, that is. Clearly she is hiding something far beyond the simple hawk or eagle," he says, placing his hand on my forehead. He pulls his hand back as if he'd been burnt.

"And that's not normal either. What did she look like, when she collapsed?" he asks Peter. "Uh, well- she had blue sparks running up and down her arms, like static." Stephen looks at Peter in a way that can only be described as halfway between you're not serious and god, why didn't you tell me earlier? I could read his expression. My heart rate begins to beep loudly and quickly on the monitors. I'm about to collapse again. This time I can't fight the dark, and no matter how hard I shake my head, it won't go away. I see Stephen hit himself before I leave my body, confused until I see him in front of me, a ghostly apparition. I look down at my arms and see I'm an apparition too. But no one can see me, and all the others outside try to wake me up. "Jakaranda, I see something in you far greater than a hawk. And- oh my-" he stops as my apparition changes form into a wolf. "A direwolf," he gasps before they wake me up. He returns to his body, shocked. He stumbles backwards, but Sam catches him. "Woah there, buddy," Sam says. "You're- You're a Mythic," Stephen gasps when he regains his strength. "A Mythic?" Shuri shoots Stephen a sidelong look. He nods. "She's a direwolf shapeshifter," he says. "The blue you saw was its energy trying to take over." he stops talking. "You sound like you have a problem with Mythics?" Shuri questions. Stephen shakes his head. "I have no problem with the creatures, no offense Jakaranda, but many people have. There were once rumours that the all-too-well-known Skrulls were Mythics too. I've never heard of a human Mythic however."

"How are you here, Peter, I thought you were going on a holiday?" Peter nods. "Happy's flying me back tonight. It'll be as if I never left. And Ned knows about Jakaranda, so she's safe too." Pepper looks at him, somewhat sadly. "We should let her get some sleep." Stephen looks at me. "I- I'll stay with her. Just in case she collapses again. Go, Peter, tell Happy it's ok now. Have a good time, Peter. Seriously." everyone leaves the room except for Stephen. He places his hand on my forehead, and some of the blue courses from my skin to his. It burns him, but he makes it seem as though he couldn't care less. The electricity runs up his arms to his head. He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. "It's stronger now. It can't drive you, but it's fighting. I need some background." he says softly. "My mum," I sniffle. "My mum. She was a shapeshifter. I don't know if she was a Mythic. Killed on the account that she was just another thing you could kill and because she was what she was. My dad was human." Stephen looks at me, confused, and I can see him adding everything up- Human father, shapeshifter mother- Then it looks like he's had a breakthrough. "That direwolf," he says. "You might have created it when your father was killed." I shudder. "What, why? Why would I want something like that stealing my conscience?" I ask, scared. "A coping mechanism. Your grief became a form you could change into." I look down at my hands. "That- that can't be right- direwolves don't even exist now! How can I channel the DNA of an animal that's extinct?" He shrugs. "It's a mythical creature now. It can exist anywhere it chooses now. Why you were born with the direwolf continues to confuse me."

I press my head back into my pillow, closing my eyes. "You need rest. Go to sleep, if you fall again I will be there." I fall asleep like a trap door's been opened beneath me. Knocked out cold, I get swallowed by the dark.