Untimely

- intermission -

Mara breathed in as much she could. The midnight summer air. The soft breeze hitting her face. The tender buzz of the city bustle surrounding her, and the mellow lights glowing in the distance.

She loved every bit of it.

The midnight hour on the rooftop was the only place Mara ever felt a sense of freedom. It was her room to breathe, her time to think over just how much longer her life would be strung to this place.

It has been a year since her time in the ice, but she could still feel the frost hanging off the tips of fingers and the edges of her eyelashes. She could still remember the way her cheeks stung with every swift breeze as if she was going to crumble at any given moment.

It took her months before she could be free from the stiff movements that her body had gotten used to, and never in her years had she felt so vulnerable. So violated and robbed of her life.

Mara stared at the intricate design of her glove. It was a gift from her father just a few months ago, but she doubted it was from out of the kindness of his heart. It had been made clear to her that everything he did played a part in service for him and nothing more. What he had done to her was enough to prove that.

His wish to harness her gift had been granted, and the gloves reminded her everyday of the chain around her neck. It terrorized her whole being and even she doesn't know the extent of her powers.

A week ago, she had sent a man to the asylum on a mission.

The Sparrows had just defended a bank from a group of robbers, and they were helping the hostages up to their feet. Mara was to assist a bank worker out to the paramedics, but the issue of her condition had slipped her mind and she held his bare arm ungloved.

The man threw himself to the wall, yelling how he didn't want to drown in the pits. He seized another hostage, an elderly woman, and dragged her down with him before moving on to grab a taser gun from a nearby officer and threatened anyone near him.

Mara had to be pried away from the man to the far end of the hall by Alvi as the rest of her brothers tried to detain him, eventually leading to Jesper freezing his legs and Matthew to knock him unconscious.

When the press got word of it and questioned Hargreeves, he merely ruled the man's state as a direct reaction to trauma.

By the time they came back to the Academy, his façade to the outside world had melted into what the Sparrows only knew about him. 

The man yanked her away from her brothers, who could only stare powerlessly, and locked her in a less extreme version of the ice box. "Think of your fallacies." he had said before he left her there overnight knowing full well about the night terrors she suffered from it.

Thinking about it now, she could still see the harrowing depictions of his fear. She could still feel the vivid sensation of water filling her lungs as she sunk to the bottom, the light above her growing smaller and smaller until all she could see was the endless night.

Mara had only wanted to help, but she ended up robbing him of a life instead.

A creak from the window behind snapped her from her thoughts, and saw Jesper poke his head out. The blond man gave her a toothy grin before he proceeded to climb out through the hole.

"What are you doing out here?" Mara pulled the cardigan tighter around her. She still wasn't used to the older, more  rugged, faces of her brothers. They can just as much be strangers with the amount of new habits they have developed along with unknown past events that have changed them almost entirely.