Poison.

I've never known pain like this before.

And I mean, pain and I go back. Way back, to when I first got my wings. Happened to Dad. Happened to Angel. Turns out the trigger for wings is trauma. And though Catalyst's presence helped, forcing bone bulges to grow beneath my skin, she just couldn't cut it. That meant four weeks of shocks and prods that didn't cut it either, but Dad had to try anyway, because that's how he got his wings he said, torture. The bulges broke into a relative wing-shape, but I still couldn't fly because I didn't have flight feathers.

I got my wings when my little cousin died.

This pain is different. It isn't the loss of her, it's a loss of freedom. If Dad locks me away—like he usually does—I'll be trapped for good. No more plots or ingenious schemes. No more flights to clear my head. Forget it. I'll never see the sun ever again.

There are five of us: me, at the head, Dad, at my side. Every click of his shoe sends another ache through my burnt wing. He puts an arm around me, but I squirm away. Cat—Jaylin—scowls. Her face flushed rosy, her dark eyes flitting from the floor to Heaven. Heaven, at my other side, gnawing her wrists. The cuffs rubbed them raw after Mathias bashed her arms free. She watches me out of the corner of her eye, suspicious. She should be. The other little girl, the blonde one with the sparkly silver mask, hangs behind her, peeking up at me shyly.

The wolf project whines and bats my shin. Heaven grimaces, propping a hand on a hip as our party scours the mall. The place has a terrible stench to it, and it's quiet. Friends glance at my wing and give me sympathetic looks and weak smiles, but none of them talk. They just bow to Fallout when they pass him. Even the Syndicate guys stay back. They smirk alright, but most of them have hands to pieces in their ears, listening to something. We're too weak to attack. Dad is tense. But when I look at them, I only feel another pain in my wing.

"You should've never split," Dad says with a shake of his head, "none of this would've happened if you hadn't chased after your brother."

I want to scream. Punch him, maybe. But I nod instead, even though he knows I'll chase that kid through Old Newport and back if I have to, and now that he's taken my flight, there's nothing he has to blackmail me with. "I-I'm sorry, sir." The whiteness and silence of the mall makes me feel uneasy, like someone is looking over my shoulder. Breathing down my neck.

Heaven swipes her forehead, blinking irritably. Her visor is gone. I watch her a few long seconds, taking in the blood mats in her hair, her shredded WWE shirt—stained and baggy—but the way she carries herself, the dignity in each clipped stride, you'd think her in a queen's robes. I don't know what I expected to see of her out of costume and out of school uniform. Maybe I thought she'd have some sort of secret girly side, wear a dress or carry a parisol or something. But no. Just the same tomboy Heaven who keeps her hair up in ponytails at school and thinks skirts are impractical because you can't fight ("run from" she said when she was talking to the student council, but we all know what she was thinking) supervillains in them. I dig my fingers into the insides of my hands, glace away toward my dad's guiding arm squeezing mine. He fixes me a stern look and I glare back. He knows what I can do. He should be glad about what I can do. I can make her loyal to our side for good. And she'd be happy.

"Let's backtrack." Both hands are on her hips now. "Maybe we don't need this Demeter guy—"

"His name is Ceres."

She tosses her head back, sighs. With a blink, she looks down for a second, squeezes her side. "Poison." The hero avoids my eyes, staring at my broken wing instead. It makes my chest go tight. My wing. "I want to save Starlight City. Owl intends to hurt people and we can't have that." Her tone is urging, her voice strong and smooth. She sounds like she's giving a speech, though she's only spoken a few sentences. 

Hearing her, my heart hurts. She could be mine. I could make her mine. It wouldn't hurt her, and she'd be a lot happier, a lot more at ease. At least I wouldn't betray her, anyway, not like her other boyfriend. What does she see in him that I can't give her, anyway?

"Let's just give up on your friend and go where she'd most likely attack," she says. "The capitol—"

"Or the super-museum," offers Cat-Jay. Unlikely, but that's perfectly Cat thing to say. Making trouble for everyone else.

"Maybe the observatory," the girl in silver says. She looks up, catches my eye, and slinks back. Her voice is high and chirpy, and opposite of the deepness and silk-smooth of Hev's. "You know, 'cause Starlight?"

Heaven grunts, pushes her thick curls out of her eyes. My wing tingles where the limb attaches to the blade. I shrug and offer a what-can-you-do grimace, a little fake sympathy thrown at her. "I'll find him, I'll, wait—there." At the edge of the corridor, the last shop down, there's a pillar, a dent bashed in and darkened with dry blood. My burnt wing drags behind me, a reminder that I can't fly. Can't fly. Trapped.  I quicken my strides. Heaven catches my line of sight and bounds up to the bashed in pillar. Smart girl. 

She examines it, then looks at the storefront, with its side crushed, cracks running up and down the yellowing concrete. There's a human-sized hole where I bowled Ceres through. Can't miss it. When I tip my head, it looks kind of like a giant mousehole, the wall bashed into a crumbling arch. Heaven runs her hands over the crushed stone, picking at a patch of cloth hanging from a chip in the concrete. Dad glares at me.

"I'm going to have to pay for that, aren't I?" he grunts, and his voice is so young and sneery it doesn't match him. Even his face is different. Younger. He looks a lot like Angelos and it makes me sick at the back of my throat.

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." I shrug away from him and follow Heaven. He looks over his shoulder, smoothing the tips of his hair. It shines like ink over his shoulders. The girls trail after, talking, and Heaven crawls through the room on her hands and knees. Each brush of my wing on the floor brings on another staple of pain between my shoulder and wing blade. I dive low, my fingers finding purchase in the ruts between the tile slabs as I scrabble after her. Jaylin grunts again. That's all she really does, grunts and growls like an angry little wolf. "Hev!"

She snaps her gaze to mine. Inside the store now, head swinging side to side. Clothing's thrown in heaps on crusty linoleum, the smell in the air a mix of mothballs and mouse droppings. Her eyes are empty and dark, the greenness in them from earlier extinguished like a smothered flame. She flicks them over me, too quick for me to capture. Her mouth curls into a frown. 

The room is greasy, the walls yellow and stained with mold, rows of steel racks pressed up against each other heavy with hanging clothes. And in the middle of the floor, Ceres and a girly friend, cross-legged with slurpees in hand. His black shirt and fatigues are frumpy, crumpled at the chest and waist. His mousy brown hair falls over his eye in sweaty, unkempt waves. His soft mask has fallen at his neck, a fading, yellow scar jagging his face like a lightning streak. And his eyes are squinted and angry. Dad enters through the door, the jangling of the tin can chime reminding me that of chains. "I'm going to have to pay for this aren't I?"

"Yep," says an old man in the corner from behind his magazine. Ceres takes one long slurp of from his emptied slurpee, until the straw shrieks from sucking up air at the bottom of the cup. He looks up at me, pauses to gulp, and glares.

"Hello, Kitty Kat." He flicks a finger at me, his sudden smile so sweet my stomach churns. Looking at his glowing eyes, goosebumps ripple up and down my skin. "Come to apologize?"

Heaven glances at me, at him, and sighs through her teeth. "We have a psychopath to catch. Owl is—"

"Owl, Owl, Owl." He shakes his head and rises to his feet with a low moan. Sunlight slants into the shop through a crack in the roof. It makes his hair look golden. He crushes his cup against his thigh and leans back, the girl I left him with scooting away from us. She backs against one of the racks and stares at me, a blush in her cheeks. I study the seams of Ceres' shirt instead, shooting pains twinging in my back and wing. He mews in his yawn, like a cat. "Owl this, Owl that. She isn't gonna do anything, girly."

"I'm not taking chances." Heaven lifts her chin. Curls of black hair trickle down to her back, and she plops her hands back where they usually go when she gets bossy, on her hips. "Poison tells me you have a tracker on Angel. Owl has Angel. If we can get a signal on him—"

Ceres jabs his thumb in my direction. "Naw, you got it wrong, dolly, Poison has it now." He says it so bitterly, looking at me like I killed his father. I rake my hands through my hair, sigh,  and try not to strangle myself.

"Look, Ceres, I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" He steps to me. He's at least an inch taller than me, all the muscles in his face tight, his nostrils flared. He snatches me by the shoulder. I jerk back bathe plants his foot on mine. "You humiliated me," he hisses. "The people here don't like me anyway, once a hero always a hero stuff. And you made it worse!" He crushes dents into my shoulders.  "Thanks a lot."

I grind my teeth. "It's your fault. I asked you—"

He snaps his head away, toward Heaven. She looks up at him, that same serious expression on her face. Real cute. "Is she..."

"Galaxy," she says, muttering the old superhero name with a resigned sigh. Her head hangs low. She pinches the bridge of her nose like she has a headache coming on. Ceres looks down, his eyes glittering. His frown morphs into a smirk.

"Ceres," I say.

"Ooh." He pitches his voice into a childish whine, the glee striking me as maniacal now. His jaw's ground down, his face gone pink. "Kitty Katris has a crush."

"Cat-tris." Heaven sounds the name out with a tiny smile. "Is that your actual name?"

"I didn't choose it!" Fallout shouts over his shoulder. He brushes his hair out of his face like a teen girl. "His mother did." He looks down at his shoes for a second, before resuming a conversation with the old man, which seems too serious to be about the damages in his shop now. I hate it when he talks about my mom. I hate it even more when he talks about me to other people like he actually cares. His words are rushed and clipped as he talks to the man, and then, in another shouted voice, "Ceres, give the kid the password to your phone."

Ceres huffs, still holding my shoulder. The bones in my shoulders crack under the pressure. I can hear them crunching, and I bite back a slew of cusses. Pain flares under his touch and subsides with a warm ebb of happy numbing chemicals. Pain is pretty useless when your body can regenerate any time it wants. All but the wings, which flounder and lay limp when they break. I chew the inside of my lip, my fists balling but my guard down. All we need is another fight. Dad will kill me. Possibly literally.

He smiles back at my dad, dips his head respectfully, smiling that sweet, creepy smile. "Of course, sir." Heaven glares at him, blinking irritably. Then he grips harder and shoves me back. I stumble on my heels and with a tilt of his head, he swings his knee to his chest and his boot into my stern. I bite back a scream and tumble back. One wing opens instinctively to whisk me up and out of danger, but the other collapses behind me, heavy baked feathers crinkling on the floor like dead leaves.

I hit the ground on my hip, jerked to one side like a paper plane with a creased corner. I flail to get up, hands grasping at the floor for something to hold. Ceres crouches down and pounces with a catty cry. I don't know what he thinks he is anymore, a cat, a dog, a free villain who doesn't have to answer to my dad. I roll, but he slams his knee in my burnt wing. And the pain is real. I can't answer for the thoughts in my head, they flash by so fast, colors, images, and sensations that burn and leave me gasping for air. All the burns on the wings' linings send the same signal: pain pain pAiN Oh God MaKe It StOp. I wheeze for breath.

"Ceres, stop. You're being a real pain." My fingers twitch, my shoulder muscles trembling where the wings connect. Cold sweat pours down my face and I force a laugh. Even supervillains can make puns, when the situation calls for them. The laugh, however, sounds more like a squeak, and Ceres takes it all in with a smirk. Tears blur my eyes. Just a biological response, is all. I strain and kick and cry out against him, all aware of Heaven. Heaven watching, her arms still crossed over her chest, her mouth open, like she means to say something but can't think of the right words.

 Ceres swipes his thumb under my eye, his thumbnail digging into the sensitive part where bags would be if beautiful supers could have bags under their eyes. I yelp. He chuckles, and his grin makes me scramble back, my head against the wall, my wing twisted at its odd angle. I shudder. The feathers stick up, crackling under Ceres' touch. There are holes in the mucus membrane, oblong and thin. My heart lodges in my throat, but I can't tear my eyes away. Panic, pure and primal, wells up from my chest. My wing is melting. Melting!

"Aww, Kitty Kat, are you crying?" He grins and swipes his phone from my breast pocket. So this is how it feels to know you're screwed. This wasn't supposed to happen. I writhe to stand, but he shifts his weight and sits criss-cross on my burnt wing. 

First, I see white. Then I feel a fizzle in my veins, like the blood's boiling inside. I pant. My nails scratch the floor and the white melts into a kaleidoscope of colors. Pain exlodes all over, and I scream. Little vestigial bones snap. The layer of skin keeping them bound together tears. All at once my hardy wings are reduced to baby ones, like Angel's, as fragile as if I cut them from paper. 

My nails catch Ceres' cheekbone. He whistles and plugs his password into his phone. Jaylin smirks. Heaven rubs her face. The corners of her frown deepen the longer she looks at me. I draw in a deep breath, the heat in my face and my body making me writhe with a sort of hollow rage. Maybe at Ceres, who takes in my torn and scorched wing with an empty face, his eyes as lifeless and unreadable as painted buttons. Maybe at Dad, who just looks away from my breaking wing, like that'll make it better. Just as long as he doesn't do the breaking himself. 

I squeeze crumples of feather until my fingers go white and the feathers crush into a fine black powder.

"Ceres—"

"Let him go. You're hurting him." Heaven whaps Ceres on the head with the crushed slurpee cup.  He snaps his head up and glares. I let out a breath, gasping as the pain courses me in a dull thud. She bounces from foot to foot, her fingers dancing around the syrup globs dripping down the cup. Red, cherry flavor. "And don't any of you understand? Owl's gonna take over Starlight City! Don't you even freaking care?"

Dad runs his finger over the shallow cut above his eyebrow, a curl of hair twisted around his knuckles. His black clothes rustle as they hang off him, dark like shadow. "You can't save everyone. You can try, but you just can't. Starlight City isn't our responsibility."

She shakes her head. Paces. "It's mine." Her voice is pitched at the point of breaking, her hands shaking as she runs them through her tangled hair. The slurpee cup lies in a crushed purple heap at her feet. "Ceres, tell me where Angel's headed, please."

Ceres screws up his face like when he looks at her he's looking at something visually repulsive and rubs blood off his cheek with an open palm. He glares at her, huffs, and stands to his feet, brushing smears of black powder off his jeans. A little bone crunches under his feet and strangling a yelp, I have to take stock. A broken hand, already half-healed, a burnt wing, filled with crushed bones and tears, and a tender face from earlier breaks.

"Listen, Galaxy, I don't take orders from you." The words are spat with venom, and by the time I'm on my feet, broken wing draped over my arm, he's swung at her. She ducks him and spins on one foot, ballerina-like, two kicks thrown in quick succession. Ceres dodges them with a painted smile that makes me a little sick. Against the wall, Jaylin takes in the whole scene, her arm squeezing the little blonde superhero around the waist. "You're no hero." His voice trembles. "You're just a kid with a god complex."

Heaven's eyes flash, the only sign she gives that the insult hit. The old man behind the corner desk grunts and throws a coil of rope at Dad. Most of the villains here keep something like that around, and after Dad gives him a nod he goes back to his book, a how-to issue of a magazine on killing supers. He sighs at it, sets it down, and replaces it with Jane Eyre, humming all the while. I clutch my wing, the bones cutting into my fingers, piercing the skin layer like felt. No blood. Just shriveled feathers and the scent of decay.

Ceres chases her, and the girls watch. Heaven ducks and dodges. A rack comes crashing down. She rolls through a shirt pile and pops up by the wall, crouched in a fighting stance. 

"Yeah," she says, wiping blood off her face with the back of her wrist, "maybe, sure. But can you blame a kid with a god complex for trying?" She presses herself against the wall, back flat. Her hands fly up. "I'm not gonna fight you." 

Her eyes flit up toward Dad, whose so light that Ceres doesn't even think to notice his shadow. She flicks her head and he pounces. Takes him around the neck and the guy sort of goes limp in his hands. Can't blame him. Not fun to get on Dad's bad side, and I know that from experience. Dad ties his hands quickly and throws him down. I watch, my breath caught in my chest, too wired even to blink. Ceres presses his chin on his knees and trembles. 

Every muscle in Dad's body quivers, his cheeks ruddy and flushed. But the anger fades with a few long blinks on his part, the paleness returning to his face "You had no right," Dad says gently, his voice soft, a sigh on his breath. It makes my heart clench to think of him. He's a dad to Ceres, the maniac, and he's a dad to Angelos, the wimp, but not to me. He shakes his head and pats him on the shoulder, crouched low to the scuffed floor. "She's on our side."

Heaven bites her lip when he says it, twisting a shred of her sleeve around her finger. Ceres shoots a dirty look in her direction and tosses his head back with a shaky laugh. "Hero," he hisses. "Some hero you are."

"I'm t-trying!" Her voice breaks and the whites of her eyes expand with a sort of animalistic panic. "But what am I supposed to do? I'm just trying to save people. I mean, I have powers, I'm supposed to use them, right? And I suck at it—"

"Oh, ho." Cat rolls her eyes and flings her hands in the air. It's still so strange to see her unmasked. Creepy. Like her skin's ripped off and I'm looking at the muscles bulging underneath. "Another existential crisis. That's all these kids go through." She smiles, and it makes my skin prickly. "Maybe it's 'cause they won't live long enough to see midlife."

"Huh?"

She frowns. "Crisis? Like, midlife crisis?" She's still such a small thing. Even the sleeves of her sweater are too big for her, puddling at the wrists. And she looks normal somehow, too. She wears tight blue jeans with girly little plastic gems on the front pockets. She looks so average Her lashes are thick and dark and I wonder if she's wearing makeup. Real cute. 

Ceres flushes pale, and I wonder if he's going to have another panic attack. He squeezes his hands behind him until his fingers go white. Heaven kneels next to him, her eyes darting back and forth, back and forth, like she's reading him.

"I was a superhero."

She arches an eyebrow, her expression blank, but her voice kind. "Oh?" She sounds like a Disney princess, her voice now lilting and young, something soft and innocent and sweet. My heart swells and throbs. Does she even know she's doing it? Or does she have so many voices in the cannon to hide her identity they just turn on without her even noticing?

He glares. Then leans back and smiles, the edges of his lips quivering. "I was a kid. And they took me like they're gonna take you. Right, Kitty Katris?" 

He shoots me a look, and all of me goes cold, thinking about him in that white room, crying and shaking and screaming like that. I smooth back my hair, shrug my dangling wing. Try to shake away the images.

Heaven's face is still blank, and she's frozen. What do you say to something like that? Dad's looking down at his watch, suddenly agitated, all the lines in his face drawn up with the intensest of concentration.

"You say you save people?" He looks up. Then he stares back down at the ground again, tears glinting on his face. "Why couldn't you save me?"