Free Falling

"What happened is, you need to leave," I gritted out, pressing my hands over my knee, attempting to slow the bleeding. After realizing it wasn't going to slow anytime soon, I spat into my hand then covered my knee once more.

"That doesn't explain anything," Matt answered back, annoyed. I felt Matts eyes travel down to my knee, blood still trickling out of the slowly healing wound. He went to stop the blood flow, making me catch his hand. “Please don’t touch it. I don’t want you hurt,” I whispered.

“How would it hurt me?” Matt asked, not believing me. “It’s just blood.”

I shook my head, “My blood is 90% acid and 10% natural human blood.”

“How is that even possible?” I heard Zacky ask in wonder, as the Avenged guys walked over.

I shrugged, “It’s whatever they injected me with.”

“Who’s they?” Matt asked, concern and anger in his eyes, making me bit my lip.

“The White Coats, at The School,” I replied not looking at him. Not sure how far into explanations I wanted to get tonight.

“White Coats?” Brian asked. I could feel all their confusion cascade over me like a wave. “Like doctors or scientists?”

I nodded tensing up, as Karla moved me to the center of the room, then coaxed one of my wings to spread out. She then started to calm me down by preening my feathers, Alex soon followed suit by starting on my other wing. “That’s how you got those,” Brian pointed at my wings, making me feel self-conscious. I nodded once more, starting to feel judged.

I looked up to see my mom dancing nervously behind the guys. Looking down, I saw my knee was becoming agitated. It was bleeding a little more, making it drip off my leg and onto the carpet. This meant it was soon going to make it to the wood floors. My parents had spent a lot of money on their wood floors, so any scratches or damages made them furious. I spit into my hand once more, then slapped my spit onto my knee, wincing slightly, as it healed faster. After a minute I took my hand away, to see that the wound was gone.

“Magic spit,” Jimmy laughed, which also made me smile.

“Can you tell us why those things were after you?” Matt asked, a concerned expression on his face.

I bit my lip, debating. “If I tell you too much, they’ll kill you guys. Nobodies supposed to know this kind of experimenting is going on,” I whispered.

Matt glanced at his band members, who all gave him a small nod, “We’re willing to take that risk.”

This response ended with Karla smacking me in the back of the head. “You will not put Johnny in danger.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” I rolled my eyes. “Johnny’s a big boy, he can take care of himself, but this does bring up a good point,” I directed my attention to Johnny. “I don’t care how long you guys stay here, but Johnny you will never, let me repeat myself, never be in a room alone with Karla. Like, ever. She will rape you for your babies, and I’m not about to let that happen as of right now.” This statement got another slap to the back of the head with a quiet utterance of “Bitch.” I turned my attention back to Matt. “No explanations tonight, I want to keep my feathers.” I tilted my head towards Karla, who was preening a little harder then she needed to, making me wince.

“What are they doing?” Zacky asked, trying to get a better look.

“Preening my feathers. Birds do it to help maintain their flight feathers, and to keep clean,” I gave a weak smile, as Karla yanked on another feather. “Okay, enough of that,” I flapped my wings a little knocking Karla and Alex over, as I stood up.

“Bitch,” Karla and Alex uttered in annoyance, as they stood up with me.

“Well, you two shouldn’t have pulled. That hurt,” I whined, stretching then situating my wings so they rested comfortably on my back. “I’m going to bed, we can talk more tomorrow.” I directed my attention towards Matt, who agreed.

I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed, I tried to remember the dream I had had before waking up. I stood then stretched my wings. Looking into Hazel’s crib, which was across my room, I smiled to see she was still asleep. Perfect, uninterrupted breakfast I thought gleefully. I dreamt that Avenged Sevenfold came to my house and that Matt was actually my biological father. I shook my head, knowing that it was complete nonsense. The White Coats would’ve made a bigger deal about DNA tests not matching if that was true.

Walking into the hallway I noticed the door to the dining room was closed, which was actually kind of weird. Opening the door, I tripped a couple steps into the room, my wings flying out in an attempt to catch myself. This didn't happen, so I fell in a crumpled heap of feathers. I got up groaning a little.

Looking over, I saw I had tripped over Jimmy, who had rolled over as I walked in. Causing me to fall onto Brian, who was lying on the floor, looking at me scared. Damn! It wasn't a dream. I had probably scared him when my wings flew out. "Sorry," I whispered, getting up again, and walked towards the kitchen. I now felt a little self-conscious in my grey Coca-Cola sweatpants and white tank top that I wore to bed.

Arriving in the kitchen I saw Karla with a fireball in her hand and Alex holding a ball of electricity. “And what exactly are you two fighting about?” I asked in a harsh whisper, hands on my hips.

“I called dibs on the toaster, and she took the toast when it popped,” Alex pointed an accusing finger at Karla. I glanced at Karla, who was just finishing off a piece of toast.

Rolling my eyes I got out a fry pan, a slice of bread, an egg and a cookie cutter. "What would you have done if it wasn’t me who walked in?” I scolded, before starting to make over easy eggs with toast. The two looked at me for a couple seconds then shrugged. The fire and electricity balls disappearing.

Johnny walked in a few moment later only to get bombarded by Karla, startling him. "So," Karla started out rocking back and forth, bashfully. Look at the love-struck schoolgirl I thought, making Alex snicker, and Karla punch me in the arm. "Sorry for not having my fan girl moment last night." Karla continued giving her full attention back to Johnny. "So here we go...Oh my God! It's Johnny Fucking Christ! I'm your biggest fan! I absolutely love you, and I mean love you."

At hearing Karla gush to a rock star like this Alex and I began cracking up, making Karla blush all the more. "I thought you told me that if you ever met them you wouldn’t get all fan girly,” I teased her.

Karla walked over to me and sat on the floor, staring at me. Alex following suit soon after. "Quit staring at me or I'll eat your breakfast," I growled after a couple minutes of this, making them avert their eyes, giggling.

Next I saw Matt walk into the kitchen, sniffing the air. "Something smells good," he smiled showing his dimples. Karla saw this and jumped up, getting ready to have another "fan girl moment".

"Heel, Karla!" I scolded, flipping the eggs over, making sure to keep it intact while doing so. Karla dejectedly sat back down on the floor as she looked up at me, pouting. I rolled my eyes then looked up to see Matt looking at me. Probably wondering why I hadn't introduced my friends yet. I nodded towards him. "I don’t remember if I introduced you to my friends. The short, Johnny-Psycho is Karla, and the other one is Alex,”

"I'm not short," Karla pouted, crossing her arms. "I'm fun-sized," She perked up upon saying this, making Johnny give a small smile.

“How come she gets cool nicknames and I don’t?” Alex whined, as Karla gave a triumphant laugh.

I rolled my eyes as the rest of the guys came into the kitchen, "Who else wants food?" The guys all grumbled some form of yes, still half asleep. I saw Karla's eyes light up as she saw the rest of the guys up close. "Heel," I commanded making her pout once again. "Don't scare them yet; you want Johnny to stick around don't you?" I teased.

“Mommy,” I heard a tired voice call from the kitchen door. I turned to see a small figure standing in the doorway with blonde curly hair. Her little, grey-speckled white wings spread out slightly. She eyed the Avenged guys as she clung to a Twilight Sparkle plush toy.

“Well, good morning Sleepy Head,” I smiled, addressing my daughter.

Hazel edged towards me, walking along the cabinets. "You're okay, they're not going to hurt you," I picked her up, then turned back to the stovetop.

"Who's that?" Matt asked, nodding towards Hazel. "I thought you only had one sister."

"I do only have one sister." I pursed my lips for a second, then looked towards him. "If you truly are my father, then she would be your granddaughter." I explained. Hazel caught sight of Johnny, then pointed at him, “Nonny!”

“Yes,” I laughed. “That is Johnny.”

Hazel looked over the guys again and then saw Matt. She giggled, jumping in my arms and pointing, “Puppy!”

“What?” Matt laughed, surprised, while all the other guys laughed their heads off.

“Funny story about that,” Karla started. “Ann has a background on her computer of Matt sneaking up on Johnny. Hazel would point to you two, and ask who it was. So Ann would tell her your names.”

“And for whatever reason,” I cut Karla off, rolling my eyes. “She would get Johnny’s name right, but she’d always call Matt, Puppy.”

“I’m calling you puppy from now on,” Brian laughed, as he walked to the dining room, with the plate of eggs I handed him.

“Oh…speaking of puppies,” I went off on a tangent. “Miss Hazel, you got a package in the mail for your birthday.”

I ran to my room to grab the package, and brought it back out so Hazel could “open” it. She squealed in delight upon finding a dog shaped guitar. Which not only played electric and acoustic guitar, but would also “howl” the notes.

“I’m jealous,” I heard Brian whisper to Zacky, who nodded his head in agreement, smiling. After Hazel, played with her new guitar for a couple minutes, everyone sat at the table to eat. “Is now a good time to talk about last night?” Matt asked, glancing at Hazel, thinking she’d be sensitive towards what I would be telling them.

“I don’t know,” I replied, looking at Karla. “When do you go to work Karla?”

Karla looked at the clock, then back at me, “An hour ago.”

“How do you still have a job,” I groaned, looking at her, smiling a little. At that moment Karla’s phone rang.

“Hi!” Karla said into the phone happily. A pause as the other person talked on the other line. “Yeah, I was just about to call you, I’m going to be late today.” Another pause. “The hot dogs are third shelf from the top.” An even longer pause. “Okay, bye!”

“Who was that?” I asked, teasing her.

“My manager, asking where I was,” she replied, making me roll my eyes.

I looked towards the Avenged guys, contemplating on how I wanted to go about this. "Would you guys be okay with me projecting images in your heads?"

"What do you mean?" Matt asked, an eyebrow raised. He was taking all of this better then I had thought he would.

"I'm a psychic, if we don't want to go into a whole lot of details," I explained. "So I can project images in your head, or thoughts. That's what I tend to do when I'm with the White Coats, since they think I still can't talk."

"Why is that?" Johnny asked.

I sighed, pointing to my neck to show scars, "They transplanted bird vocal chords near my own. They were hoping I'd be able to do specific calls to call 'the other two'. But it didn't work out. I ended up losing my voice. I couldn't talk for years," Tears were at the edges of my eyes, as I remembered those horrible years for me.

"How did you get your voice back?" Matt asked, as someone else asked what I meant by the other two.

I sighed, this was going to take longer then I had originally planned. "The other two are two other experiments they made a few months after I was deemed a success. We stuck together because we had some things in common, and soon they had us doing things together." I glanced around at the men, seeing how they were processing everything. "As for my voice, I never actually got it back. This is a synthetic voice." The guys looked at me in shock. "I happened to run into Tony Stark, when I was in New York one time, and he took pity on me. He built a chip to go by my vocal chords that would help me process my voice, and here we are."

"Well, that explains why we thought it was your actual voice," Brian mused, making me give a small laugh.

"The White Coats never attempted to get my voice back. They considered it unsuccessful and moved onto the next thing." I shrugged. "I just learned to work around it."

"You keep saying White Coats," Brian stated. "Are you talking about scientists?"

I nodded, "That's what a lot of the experiments called them. A lot of them didn't know the terms doctors and scientists. They just knew that they always wore white coats and called them that." The room fell silent for a moment, as everyone took in the new information. "But getting back to why we're sitting here," Ann brought everyone's attention back. "Would it be okay if I projected images into your heads? It's a lot easier to show then to try and explain everything."