^^I absolutely looped 'Darkest Part' while writing this chapter, but I understand there's only so much angst the human mind can take, and this chapter consumed with that song may simply overload the angst defense mechanism. But I thought I'd include it anyway, y'know, in case you're interested. 

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Gats.

"So you're a superhero?" Shiro asks, collecting his hair in a ponytail. It races down his back like ink, so black it shimmers blue in the golden glow of the living room fixture.

I pace with my hands clasped behind my back, wishing I could calm the race of blood under my skin, to silence the roar of it behind my ears. June and Storm are talking under the petalled white fluff of a chandelier over a notebook they're sliding across the dining room table, back and forth, back and forth, like kids.

"No." I tug the brim of my ball cap lower so it casts a shadow over my eyes. There's gravel in my voice, the word forced out of a throat packed with uncoughed snot. And there's lump back there, too, growing bigger and bigger as I try to swallow it back.

"So you're not like... Catman or something? Catsby?"

I kick open the TV console door, a frosty, delicate blue glass, snatch up a VHS of Dirty Dancing, and whip around with the case held over my head like a throwing weapon. The boy is so pale he might as well be porcelain, and he's so small he looks like I could shatter him with one lucky hit. "I SWEAR TO STARLIGHT—"

"I'm sorry!" Shiro flies to his feet, his eyes big and bulging in a pale, babyface "That was insensitive of me. I don't know why I said that—I...it's just... I've never met a super before."

Dirty Dancing is still trembling in the air while I eye the kid. He doesn't mean to agitate me, and I don't hate him, but I'm all nerves. "Super?" I laugh. It's a dry, raspy sound that rattles me to my ribcage. "No. I'm no super. Shiro, I killed someone."

Shiro blinks a few times, but his chin is jutted out as if to say I don't scare him. Great. I don't scare a quivering freshman who comes up to my collarbone. "A supervillain?"

"Well, yeah, but..." But she was my best friend's mother. But she was still human, still breathing, still a precious functioning being, until I stole that breath from her. Sweat breaks on my brow. 

"Where I come from, back in Spiral City, we have vampires." He frowns, pale face darkening with a scowl. "You can kill 'em if they hurt you."

"You sound crazy," I say, the curve of my spine going straight as I try to shake away the memories. The blood. Her cry. The heat of the sword, slim and smooth in my hands. 

He lifts his eyes, snapping the zipper of his duffel bag closed. "Could you put that down?"

Dirty Dancing sails across the room, missing Shiro's ponytail by a quarter inch. The kid yelps and sinks back into the couch, his head stuffed back into the cushions. His mouth is pressed into a tight, wavering line.

"Gatsby!" June rises to her feet. She offers a tired sigh, and I hate her, hate her for how mothering her tone becomes, so sweet and soft. "I know you've—"

 "You don't know anything about me." My fists curl at my sides. "Everything that's happened to me is your fault!" 

June runs her hands over her face, pinches the bridge of her nose. Her eyes are darkened with gray circles, sunken in and haunted-looking. Her face long, her chin and cheekbones sharp and jaunty, pushing at her skin. Storm lifts his head, still scribbling in his notebook. "Go to your room," he says, lock-jawed.

"It is, isn't it?" I lean up on tiptoes to make myself as imposing I can, 5'4 and part cat and all. 

June grips the dining room chair until her knuckles go bone-white. Storm rises, offering Shiro a smile. All the blood has drained from his face, so it matches the color of his braid. "He normally isn't like this. Go to your room, Gatsby."

I don't want to back down. It's true. She destroyed me, who I am, what I am. But reined by instinct, I throw up my hands and stalk across the carpet into the kitchen. My stomach is growling. "I'm getting food," I say, flinging open the chipped white cupboards. Without Angel's warming presence, the kitchen feels even narrower than usual. A half-open box of Ritz crackers tumbles onto the counter, spilling crumbs all over the floor. The distinct scents of salt and stale grain are mouthwatering enough to my starved self that I tuck it under my arm and step out into the living room where Shiro watches me with his lip pulled over his teeth, his arms cradling his chest. I want to offer him an apology, but I'm still glaring in his direction when the front door flies open with a gust of wind that swishes a shock of white hair over my eyes.

Heaven's cussing, her back humped over, Angel's sleeve clenched in her left hand and Jay's collar in her right. Storm wheels to his feet. "Are they dead?" he asks, and his voice is eerily calm. Like he's a child staring at two broken-spined rodents in a mousetrap. Curiosity. A morbid note of detachment.

Heaven shakes her head, tossing her curls down the back of her neck. She smells of sweat and sugar, and her eyes are glassy, like she's been crying. "Fallout's guys cut the elevator cord. Drugged 'em."

June flexes her shoulders, exposing columns of red ink over the collar of her rumpled tee shirt. She's wearing it over her silk dress. You can see hints of the rich blue fabric at the tears at the ribs. "I can handle that." She crosses the room in short strides without bothering me a glance. Heaven lifts the kids and flings into the couch cushions. Shiro's eyes bulge. And I get it. Watching the slim girl throw Angel—a kid who's over six feet and made of muscle, scar tissue, and wing mass—one-handed sort of breaks the mind when you're unused to seeing such feats in the everyday life. I've become desensitized to her as a walking miracle. Her Galaxy-ness has become pedestrian, almost. All I really know is that she's mad at me.

Shiro collapses into a milk-white bean-bag, eyes like coals in his pale face. "She's a—he has wings!"

The back of Angel's shirt is torn into strips, exposing accordioned wings and thick black feathers. His purple veins glug with bubbles, mapping out the scarred limbs and scoring them into triangles. Heaven raises her head, blinking droopy eyelids. "Who are you?"

Storm steps over, placing his hands on the boy's shoulders. Shiro tenses in the man's grasp, his fists snapping up to protect his face in a boxer's guard like we're taught at the academy.

I suddenly like this kid.

"This is Shiro. He's staying with us."

Heaven raises an eyebrow, though she nods curtly. "Hey, Shir.' I'm Hev."

"Are you a super?" he asks, his voice a whisper. She wipes the sweat from her brow, her eyes darting from him to June. The woman's already bent over Angel and Jay, checking their breathing by leveling an ear to their lungs, tapping fingers to their pulse, laying a hand on their heads for temperature. The hero pushes a dark curl off her forehead and sighs. It's an oddly resigned sound for Heaven.

"Yes."

"A superhero?"

She rubs her eyes. "Yeah."

I dig my hand into the Ritz box and feed myself a fistful of crushed cracker.  They taste like sand going down and I choke back a cough. "I'm going to my room," I say. Heaven glances back at me. The blue curtains are drawn, casting a low, milky gleam of light across her features. Her wounds have healed, but you can tell she's been hurt because she has Owl's eyes, so dark their color lends a deepness to them, like you're staring into two black holes. They flick over my body and harden. Her mouth curls into a frown and she snaps her gaze back over to Angel, his arm slung limply over the back of the couch as he snores softly.

"Go, then," she says, and her eyes narrow. It makes a heart that I thought was numb crack with fresh pain. Pain that ricochets, deeper than the ache that followed the wound in my face, more encompassing than the roil of hunger pangs. She's mad at me. And it's my fault. I hurt her.

I shuffle over the carpet, leaving a trail of crumbs at my heels as I crunch crackers with my mouth open. I don't say a word to her, don't cast another glance at Angel and his snoring crackpot of a girlfriend, don't bother Shiro with an apology for nearly taking his head off with an American classic. I tip the box, force the sandpaper-dry dust down my throat, and pad through the hall into my room.

There's a wolf snuggled in my pillows. She's the first thing I notice. A slinky, spike-furred creature with its limbs spread across the bedsheets, nose buried in the thick, black comforter. Her tail beats the headboard, a whine on her jaws as she surveys me.

"Kepler?" I say her name dryly. "Aren't you Angel's stray? Why don't you go to his room?"

She lifts her head and sighs, golden eyes drilling into mine. Chills flow up spine, filling my veins with ice. There's a wild canine creature taking up my bed, covering my sheets in her drool. She has pointy yellow teeth and could tear my flesh to kibbles n' bits in maybe a minute flat.

But Angel likes her. Fingers of sunlight stir the velvet-black drapes, drawing soft white stripes across the carpet. Looking at the now-locked window puts a lump in my throat. Makes my knees wobble, like they're all pudding. "No?" I kick the door shut behind me. The lock clicks and I slide down till I'm flat on the floor, cupping my face in my hands. I'm exhausted of crying, but whenever I close my eyes, I see Heaven's sputtering, broken form, feel the hot splatter of Owl's blood on my skin, the chill of caging bars, the spearing pain in my face down my newest scar. I press my face into my arms and stuff my collar into my mouth to muffle my sobs. It's pathetic. I'm a pathetic lump, curled into myself, and my own hatred of brings the tears flowing down my cheeks quicker.

Minutes pass, marked by the slow ticks of the Mickey Mouse alarm clock I keep at my bedside. I'm drawn out of my mumbling state by the brush of scratchy fur on my feet. When I lift my head, the wolf's snout is pressed to my knee, eyes on mine. I lay a hand on her slimy nose, sighing through the tears. So we sit like that for a while, me with my back bent and my knees trembling while I choke back the crooked sounds threatening to rise from the back of my throat. Her, curled over my feet, eying me calmly. I scratch her behind the ears, finding an odd comfort in the canine's presence. For a creature that's supposed to be feline, she doesn't threaten me. With her, I'm warm and protected, so I bury my face into her shoulder blades to muffle the sobs.

Another few minutes pass, and I feed her fistfuls of Ritz crackers. "We'll be okay," I say, but the words are shaky and low from the back of my throat. Hardly whispers. "I'll be okay." When I say it, I snort up a fluff of what I've been choking down. I don't know if I'll be okay. I don't know if I'll ever be the same again.

There's a knock on the door. I jump to my feet, just missing Kepler's snout by a hair when my legs kicking. "Coming!" I throw open the door with another click of the brass knob and race to the bathroom. In three seconds, I have the faucet running, the cabinets flung open, and my cosmetics flung into the sink bowl. Glossy tubes and lacquer cylinders, lids half-unscrewed and labels peeling from use. They smell of mint and talcum powder. I don't bother with brushes. In another six seconds I have my eyes rinsed of tears and pale concealer spread over the red rings beneath them. A pop of pink in the face to make my features healthier. Perhaps I'm the only sixteen-year-old boy in the known universe who uses makeup the way I do. Every day, not as a way to express me, but as a way to hide. The handsome, collected being in the mirror is not me. I've squeezed myself into his shape, and as I paste on a smirk, I find I'm beginning to hate the masquerade almost as much as I hate myself.

Heaven stands behind me. I catch the glimmer of her tired eyes in the bathroom mirror, her face held up squarely to meet mine. She's clutching blue armor to her chest and my pulse ratchets behind my ears.

"Gatsby," she says.

I turn around slowly. I'm taking in every detail of her before I let my eyes lock on hers. The way she leans all her weight on one hip, her gray hoodie slicked to her body with rain water. How small curls of her dark hair hang against the nape of her neck, tangled and dirty. There's a small cut above her cheekbone, swollen. I draw in every curve of her otherwise smooth, scarless skin, soft and dark, her face sharp angles, high cheekbones, drawn neatly to an angled chin. The girl could not have been designed more perfect, "Did you steal this?" On her, the smell of sweat and blood and that familiar wisp of vanilla. Gooseflesh ripples down my arms at the sound of her silky voice.

She gestures her chin at the creaking metal plates over her arms.

I blink at the armor. It's Nebula's, jagged with cracks and scraped silver at the shoulders, assumedly from blades that just glanced off. I shrug. "Just because I'm a cat, doesn't make me a cat burg—"

"You're the only one who knows my identity and breaks into the Room of Love every other freaking night." Her tone is cold. I must flinch, because she sighs and her expression softens. She steps back and flings the armor onto my dresser. Clunk-clunk-clunk! Shakes her head, and her face is blank.

"Hev—"

"Forget it. Come here."

I step past her. She catches my wrist. Kepler whines at my feet and I squirm to escape the girl's hold, but she won't let go. It scares me when she does that, now. When she holds me so I can't get away. I turn my eyes back to the bathroom mirror. I'm supposed to apologize, for breaking her trust and betraying her. But her proximity, like her grip, scares me. I want to get away from her, and I know I'm being irrational. Heaven's touch should not bring thoughts of Owl brandishing a dagger at me. But it does. And I'm frozen, stiff and smiling at my wavering reflection.

"Gats." She drops my wrist, and in the mirror, her expression is pleading. "What happened? What did Owl do to you?"

I turn to meet her eyes, drop my gaze, and brush past her. But she won't have it. She curls an arm around my hips, another hand clutching at the small of my back. And in a second flat, she has me hoisted over her shoulder and is carting me over to my bed. Muscle memory kicks in and I punch her thrice in the shoulder screaming blood memory. I hear her hiss through her teeth before I'm dumped gasping onto my pillows. "Talk to me," she says.

I snap up into a sitting position, pushing off the headboard for support. Kepler snarls at the base of the bed. "You can't do this! I get, I get, you're pushy. You're violent. That's who you are, but I can't deal with it!" I'm so frustrated, so achy on the inside, that I tear my eyes from her and stare at the pillows. 

My shoulders are quivering. I hate myself. I hate this thing I've become and I hate the thing I've pretended to be. I hate that between the two, I'm nothing. I don't even a name. Gatsby Blackwell? Felix Fibbs? This gnarled, broken creature, who betrayed his own friends, who's scared of honesty with the people closest to him, scared to be alone with himself, whose stretched and flexed his shape to please so many people he can't recognize the mottled thing that looks back at him. Heaven has seen the darkest part of me. And I'm ashamed. "I hate you," I say to bite back a sob. This time I meet her eyes, dark and soft, and I spit venom. "You want to know why I betrayed you?" My voice wavers. "I hate you!"

I'm so scared, I want to tell her, stay with me, I don't want to go to sleep. Heaven raises an eyebrow, and I decide that's another tic of hers I didn't notice. She places a gentle hand on mine. I squirm away, biting my lip so hard I draw blood, just so she won't notice it quiver.

"I'm sorry," she says, drawing a finger over the scar on my wrist, shuddering at the pink, broken skin she touches. "I was supposed to protect you and I failed. You have every right to hate me."
She leans in, her nose just brushing mine. I jerk out of her grasp, bang my knee on the edge of the bed, and scurry out of the room. I kick over the box of Ritz on my way out and Kepler snuffs up the crackers in a few bites, crunching contently behind me.

Over in the other room, Angel yelps. His bedroom door creeps open, and June wipes her hands on her shirt, a hypodermic needle wadded in tissues stuffed in her other fist. She glances down at me, brings a finger to her chewed lips, and is speeding out the door. I don't bother to ask her where Storm and Shiro are, but she says so anyway on her way out. "We're coming back—"

"Don't bother," I say, slipping into Angel's bedroom. He's stretched across his bed, head tucked into his bruised brown arms. He blinks groggily at me, wings spread, leaving a pile of black feathers across his sheets. His breathing slow, his lips pursed. I crawl up onto the mattress and lay my head near his.

"Hey," he says, his voice a rasp.

"Hey," I say.

"I feel like I've been hit by a truck," he groans. "Where's Jaylin?"

"With Storm, I guess."

He nods, and I let my eyes fall shut. Right now, I'd rather stay with Angelos than with Heaven. At least he's seen the darkest part of me, I tell myself, at least I know he's just at bad, and at least he hates me at least partially as much as I hate myself.

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Alrightys, it looks like I've got myself a schedule. Monday updates. Apologies for taking so long with that, but now I've got a plot underway and as soon as this month of three-hour rehearsals end, I should be able to switch to biweekly updates. Hope to hear from you guys in the comments.