Meant to Be

Dressed in warm, flannel pajamas, Chick stood at the stove, swaying to music and stirring a pot of soup.

She rarely had the chance to be lazy and today, finally, she was free. There was no work to be done. No one to shmooze. Nowhere to be. No need to talk about the growing IEA problem. She had grabbed groceries in the morning, went to the pharmacy and the dry-cleaners, and even did a load of laundry. At lunch, she took her time making real food. She made her father’s tomato soup and grilled cheese.

It was hard to believe that this time yesterday, Chick had met with her superiors about her department in the United Nations, where Chick worked, about the possibility of closing the department. Her department was in charge of the relations between Individuals of Enhanced Ability and humans in the United States. They were having enough trouble with diplomacy between both sides without bloated politicians trying to become involved, but recently the people had been moving for more control over IEAs. Politicians were beginning to take a stand for those afraid for their lives. The president was trying to please the angry people who had been affected by IEAs, and in turn, there had been more attempts to nullify her department, and extract IEAs from the public altogether. Fear made it more difficult to keep the peace.

Chick shifted her prosthetic to itch at the tight scars along the bottom of her amputation. Standing for any length of time was difficult, still, but she had gotten very good at hiding her discomfort. She circled her hips, stretching he sore muscles. The painkillers helped the pain, but there was always a dull throb that she felt in her thigh. Sometimes, the throbbing affected her hips and back and caused severe pain. If she didn’t have the Vicodin, she wouldn’t be able to function.

At this thought, Chick moved to her bedside table, popping another pill before going back to the stove to finish up her cooking.

After the Accords failed a few years previously, the people were trying to make sense of their role in the fight that went on between IEAs. Too many people were getting caught in the cross-fire. Whether a deed was good or bad was becoming an irrelevant detail, and nowadays the people seemed to be angry no matter who was causing damage. The Avengers, the X-men, they were all seen as dangerous vigilantes who encouraged criminal behavior. Of course, after what Chick had been through, she could understand both sides of the argument, which is why she was so good at her job.

In D.C, before she lost her leg, Chick was a cop- and she was good at it. She loved helping people; saving people; making a difference. After S.H.I.E.L.D fell and she lost her leg, she lost sight of what made her love public service. She felt hopeless, helpless, and useless. She quit her job and isolated herself from her friends and her father. She didn’t know how to fight the depression that came with the pain.

Chick served herself lunch, moving over to her kitchen island to eat. She slid off her prosthetic leg and set it carefully on the chair next to her, leaving just the sleeve around her thigh and sat down in the tall chair. She scratched at her skin that crawled beneath the sleeve and shivered at the ugly sensation. She decided to remove it as well. Her left leg swung comfortably back and forth with her right thigh tucked underneath the left. She sighed contentedly and pulled out her phone from her pants pocket. She took a picture of her meal and sent it to her father.

‘Love you, Dad,’ she wrote. She knew that he would probably be asleep so she decided against calling him, beginning to eat, instead. Her music continued to play on the stereo in the kitchen. She picked up the newspaper on the other side of the counter and read as she ate.

Her father still lived back in Washington. He was a firefighter and worked nearly 24/7. Whenever she wanted to see him, she would have to go to him, but not just because of his work schedule.

‘WANTED MUTANT CRIMINALS CAUGHT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT - VICTORY FOR NYPD’

“Great,” Chick sighed disheartedly. More negative press meant more push from the politicians. More evidence of poor character. Her department was going to have to fight back.

Chick closed the newspaper quickly.

“Day off, day off, day off,” she reminded herself. She didn’t want to think about backlash and the complications that she would have to face on Monday. She couldn’t do anything about it until then, anyway.

She finished up her lunch, grabbed her prosthetic and sleeve, and hopped over to bed, leaving her dishes on the counter for later. She heaved herself onto her bed, bouncing childishly and spreading out over her covers. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

Sirens sang outside in the city.

She screamed, and the sirens screamed back louder.

Death to false gods!

She felt a shock in her right thigh. She winced, opened her eyes, and sat up to look at her leg. The scar ran the vertical length of the thigh, both on top and underneath, starting from her bottom and her hip to the end of the amputation, where it ran horizontally to close the incision. The remaining bone had been reinforced with metal rods, but the rest of the leg had died by the time she made it to the hospital and they couldn’t save it. Amputation was the only option. The scars were puckered in some places, where they didn’t heal quite right, making her leg look like an ugly, alien thing. It was her biggest embarrassment; her greatest insecurity; her mutation.

She heard a helicopter approaching her block. It was close to the ground and it shook the whole building. Her bed vibrated. She glanced towards the window on the other wall, but saw nothing. She couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed again. She didn’t want to put the fake leg back on, and she didn’t want to hop around like a crazy person. She laid back down, pulling one of her blankets over herself. The helicopter’s whirring grew louder. It was so deep and loud she could practically feel it in her heart, disturbing its peaceful beating.

When the glass window shattered, she thought she was hallucinating. She didn’t have time to react with more than a scream before it shattered twice more, accompanied now by the sounds of gunshots. The helicopter continued to whir violently outside, as if it was right outside her window. She finally got herself to an upright position, and struggled to put her prosthetic on with shaking hands. Adrenaline jolted through her body and made her vision crisp and clear. Shots rattled her bones, one after the other in rapid fire.

Chick was finally able to spring from her bed, still tangled in sheets, to the far side of the room, in the kitchen, far away from the window. As she reached the island, she tripped over the blanket, her prosthetic slipping out from under her, and she fell headfirst towards the ground. Her head beat against the island counter before she hit the hard tile floor, twisting her onto her back and knocking her into a blinding stupor.

So stupid, she thought. Survived everything else to bang your brains against the counter. So stupid.

Her body couldn’t move. She couldn’t open her eyes. Her ears rang loudly but, she heard in the distance the continuation of gun fire. Finally, she heard a terrific crash, and suddenly it felt like she was held down by a heavy weight. Her breathing was labored.

She was disoriented when she could finally open her blurry eyes. She groaned hoarsely as waves of pain coursed through her body.

I thought I took my Vicodin last night, she thought, as if she was getting up for the first time that day. It didn’t feel like she was in bed, but it felt like she had gotten a good night’s sleep, apart from the pain. As her vision started to clear, she found that she was in her kitchen, on the floor. On her chest, stomach, and arm were books and dishes from the countertop above her. She let out another painful moan and shoved everything off of herself. Pain shocked her once again as she tried to piece together what happened to her. Outside, she head screams of panic.

She screamed, and the sirens screamed back louder.

Death to false gods!

The gunshots, the helicopter, the sirens, her leg.

She looked around slowly from her spot on the ground, wincing at her stiff neck. She pulled herself to look past the island to scan her room. Her leg had landed behind the counter, snapped in half into two pieces. Her bed was covered in debris. The wall was smashed above the bed and along the window which was knocked out completely. Chick’s mind whirred like the helicopter and she had to close her eyes. She let her head fall back onto the ground.

When she opened her eyes moments later, she had to reorient herself. Her memory had once again reset and she tried to understand what happened to her. Only this time, a figure stood in the light of the hole in the wall.