Absolute Gravity

I’d found the kitten on the side of the road on my way home from the bus stop. It was a tiny thing sitting in a discarded box, squealing for food from an absent mother. I didn’t even stop long enough to think about why it would have been thrown to the side of the road. I only wondered who was cruel enough to do such a thing. I saw a creature in need—a tiny, innocent little thing with big yellow eyes and a small, malnourished body. I would take it home. I would care for it and nurse it back to health. And maybe this time, if I cleaned it well enough, my dad wouldn’t have allergies. Maybe he’d let me keep it long enough for it to get better. If all else failed, we could find it a good home.

It almost worked. I’d snuck the skeletal thing into the house, rushed right up the stairs, and scrubbed it free of fleas and grime in the bathroom sink. The water swirled brown and filthy, but the rush of it was loud enough to drown out the sound of the kitten’s cries. My mother was too busy downstairs to notice it. So I got it dried off, made it a little bed, and snuck some milk from the kitchen to feed it.

It ate happily. Slept peacefully. And my sister and I vowed to keep it a secret for as long as we could. She offered to pick up some kitten food from the grocery store on her way back from her job at my dad’s auto repair shop. She even rode her bike home so he wouldn’t see it. But the kitten didn’t eat the food. We left it another bowl of milk and hoped it would be enough.

We thought we’d gotten away with it when our dad came home and made no comment about dander or showed any signs of allergies beyond a good loud sneeze at the dinner table. But first thing in the morning, he woke with his eyes swollen shut. He knew from experience that this likely meant I’d snuck another animal into the house.

He came into our room and woke us both up, demanding to see where we’d stored it. But all his anger evaporated when he opened the closet. He reached down and gently lifted the box with the tiny, dead kitten inside.

They said I could bury it in the backyard. I spent all morning crying and making the box pretty for the pet I’d only had for a few hours. I could hear my parents talking to each other from the other side of the yard when I was digging. Whispering about how it had probably been sick to begin with, and that was why it had been abandoned on the side of the road.

I sniffled and wiped the tears from my cheeks as I reached for the box. I set it inside the hole and put my hand on the lid. I felt my mom approach me from the side. She knelt down and placed her hand on my back.

“Don’t cry, Johanna,” she said as I sniffled. “I know this is your first experience with death. But you know it won’t be your last.”

I looked up at her, a little confused. I remembered this moment. It was my first experience with death. It was scarred into my mind even after it began to unravel and come apart. This was our first meeting, me and Death. The first time we said hello in passing before getting to know each other more intimately.

But my mom had never said that to me. I remembered how she comforted me, assured me the kitten was in a better place, and she’d try to find me a pet we could have that wouldn’t make my dad sick. I told her it wouldn’t be the same. She helped me bury it. And then she took me inside and made me a cup of tea.

But now, she was looking down at me with her dark curls still brown and not gray. There was something off about her. Something slightly shifted in her dark eyes and her vacant expression. I had the overwhelming sensation of falseness. Not emptiness. But a lie nonetheless. This wasn’t really my mother. And she knew what I was thinking as if she could see into my mind. She smiled, dipping me further into the sensation of an uncanny valley.

“It’s almost time to wake up, Jo,” she said.

And I did. She commanded it, and it happened. I woke with a start, a gasp. And it only took a few seconds for me to recognize where I was. In one of Tony’s private jets. On my way from New York to Malibu. Tony was sitting across from me, working on his tablet and not paying much attention to me until I made a noise. My aunt Dana was asleep in the other chair, mouth open and oblivious to my distress. But Tony glanced up.

“Bad dream?” he asked. I nodded and pushed myself upright.

“Something like that. Are we almost there?” He looked at his watch.

“About forty-five minutes.” I got up to stretch my legs and headed to the back of the cabin to get something to drink.

The dreams were coming more and more consistently. First, just here and there. Memories of things I’d already lived. They were always hyperreal. Even when they were false. I had nightmares like anyone would after seeing what I’d seen. But more recently, they began to morph. No longer dreams and relived memories. Sometimes I was aware that it was in the past. Something that had already happened. And sometimes, I was aware that I wasn’t viewing these memories alone. Sometimes they spilled out into my reality. I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

The people in my memories would feel slightly off, not like memories being relived. But like they were empty mannequins designed to look exactly as those people had in those moments. They would act the event out. Almost to perfection. And for the most part, I wouldn’t notice it was wrong until one of them inevitably did or said something I knew was wrong. Like they’d gone off-script. People in the background, watching me when I knew they really hadn’t. Unnatural smiles, the absence of a heartbeat where there should have been one. And shadows that stretched just a little too long.

Tony thought I was losing my grip on reality. He didn’t say it in so many words. But he’d learned that my emotions and heart rate played a role in how the Darkness stirred in me. It reacted to my moods. Even when I wasn’t the one causing them. When I’d fall asleep and relive something. Only to wake up and discover that it had lashed out without me knowing.

At first, I was comforted by the fact that I’d only ever killed people who threatened me. I killed scientists who worked for Hydra. I killed a man on a bus who’d put his hands on me without my consent. I almost killed Bucky. But somehow, I was able to bring it back. I controlled it for just long enough to spare him.

Tony brought me to the compound to study it with the aid of all the brilliant doctors he had on speed dial. They’d run tests until it aggravated the Darkness enough that it lashed out. I woke with what felt like the world’s worst hangover to discover I’d killed one of them. After that, Tony locked me in a cell and began designing me a more permanent home.

It was getting worse. Getting stronger. Not just in dreams but in actions. The second death hadn’t even been an attempt to protect me. No one had insulted me or said or done anything at all. I simply woke in a pool of my own blood to find I’d killed two of Dr. Cho’s assistants in the middle of a routine scan. A scan that required nothing of me other than making me stand while Friday scanned my body. It was starting to flare up independent of my own fear. Stirring when there was nothing to trigger it.

Some days were harder than others. Some nightmares worse than others.

Tony thought it would be best to get me out of New York and into a more permanent cell. He had it designed in weeks. It took just as long to get it built. I didn’t ask how much money it cost him. Or why he was making an effort. I’d only made one comment about launching me into the vacuum of space, but he’d thrown that out of the window immediately and decided he would force me to live even if it killed me. Or others, too, from the way things were going.

He promised the cell was not a cell and more of an apartment. It was going to feel like a vacation. I’d have my own space that was more private than the cell he locked me in at the compound. And I’d have a view of the ocean, palm trees, and sunshine. I’d even have my own kitchen and a living room that was cut down the middle with a thick slab of plexiglass that he thought might keep me from killing any visitors. And he promised I could have visitors. For now. Until the thing inside me grew too out of control to be contained, that is.

Vision said it was like my body was trying to contain a dying star. Eventually, it would go super-nova. And it didn’t matter how strong I was or how strong Tony’s cell was; it would be catastrophic. So all I could do was hold on for as long as possible and hope that Tony found a cure. It was a little challenging to do when the thing he was trying to cure killed anyone who got too close.

The cell was just supposed to make me believe I was living in a luxury apartment on the beach. Even though it had large bay windows over the ocean and a bed made of marshmallows, I recognized it for what it really was. A glorified prison cell. But what was I going to do? Argue? Put up a fight and kill Tony too?

It wasn’t home. Not in the way my little house in DC was. And definitely not the way my place in Bucharest was. It did come with perks, though, but it represented something I wasn’t ready to face just yet. It was not temporary. It was not going away. It was here to stay, and I was exchanging my freedom for a cure I couldn’t guarantee would ever come. I was a project Tony could tinker with when he didn’t have more important things to worry about. I’d be less likely to fulfill Hydra’s plans if I was across the country and out of reach of all of the Avengers. Current, missing, or otherwise.

Tony was optimistic, though, as always. He said he was starting to understand how to monitor it. So even though he didn’t know what the hell it was or how to get rid of it, he might be able to build an early warning system. And if I could learn to keep my emotions in check, I might learn how to reel it in like I did the day it tried to kill the only person I’d ever romantically loved.

I wasn’t as optimistic. I was just the Vessel of the collapsing star. And it wouldn’t be contained forever. I wasn’t going to have control forever. And we had no idea how much damage it would do when it finally broke free of the confines of my body. Would it wipe out a whole city? A whole state? The whole planet? We all agreed on one thing regardless of how or when it happened. I was going to be casualty number one.

So I was being sent away. Sent to a place where I could do the least amount of damage. Tony was just trying to make me feel better about the situation by disguising it as a luxury getaway in Malibu. As if I’d ever been the type of person who wanted to stay locked indoors while vacationing on the beach. Never allowed to go outside to just breathe and be. Or have any kind of meaningful existence beyond being a puzzle for Tony Stark to work out.

And he was still mad at me. So he didn’t offer much for conversation besides the occasional cold remark about how I’d run away to shack up with his parents’ murderer in Romania. We spent the next forty-five minutes avoiding eye contact with one another as the city came into view. Then I was allowed my last moment of freedom and fresh air on the trip from the tarmac to the car.

The cell was definitely an upgrade, though. It looked and smelled like an unfamiliar and sterile hotel room. The ocean was vast and green on the other side of the large floor-to-ceiling windows. Palm trees swayed in the wind, casting spidery shadows on the beige carpets and pale walls. There was a big, expensive bed to sleep in with plush blankets and TVs that were bigger than any TV needed to be. There was a small kitchen and a bathroom. And around the corner from my bedroom was a fake living room, complete with soft couches, potted plants, warm lamps, and that thick slab of glass sliced right down the middle.

But it was just so—empty.

I’d learned to live without luxuries. I hadn’t been born into an upper-class family like Tony. I learned to adapt to whatever environment I was forced to live in. So even though it was nice to have machines that washed all my dishes and started my coffee before I even got up in the morning, I still would have preferred that tiny, old apartment in Bucharest. A mattress on the floor. One small couch with a broken spring. A fridge that couldn’t hold very much. Newspapers that blocked out all the light and prying eyes. Water and heat that went out intermittently.

It had never been much. But there was life in it. A home. It was full of things we’d chosen for ourselves. Things that had once belonged to other people were given new life with us. Things with stories and personalities and meaning.

Of course, at the end of the day, it wasn’t the building or the objects that made it home. I hated it when the sinks backed up, and we were forced to wash dishes in the shower until we got them fixed. Or when the toilet leaked and sprayed so much water onto the bathroom floor it soaked into the living room carpet. I hated when the heat went out and ice would develop on the windows. We’d be so cold we’d have to bundle up just to go to the bathroom.

But I loved the comradery of trying to get the dishes done in the shower. He’d splash me just to get me to laugh, and we made a game of it. I loved hearing him grumbling in the other room as he tried to fix the toilet while I soaked the water in every towel we owned. I loved when it got so cold we’d use it as an excuse to cuddle together beneath the sleeping bags. He’d pull me to his chest and let me steal his warmth.

It didn’t matter how tough things got. He was always there. Always willing to get to the root of the problem to fix it. In the apartment and our relationship and everything else. There were memories and companionship—no loneliness in a place like that.

And now I didn’t know if he was safe or happy or if he missed me as much as I missed him. I didn’t know if I’d even get to see him again. Not knowing weighed more on me than the emptiness.

The apartment was empty. And I was alone. And the shadows were far too dark.