*A week after Ty's death*

I was watching the news, which was still buzzing about what had happened to Ty. After all, I wasn't the only one who had to watch Ty get shut in the head on live television. There was a story about two people who had been murdered, and I recognized them both immediately from watching footage from the cameras in the eyes of Ty's suit.

One of them was a prostitute, named May, who was working for Pip. She was forced to prostitute herself by Pip, and she was working with Ty, trying to take Pip down. The other person who had been murdered, was a guy by the name of Morton, who had had his arm chopped off by Pip for loosing in a fight against Ty a long time ago. He was also trying to help Ty, and had ended up giving him a lot of valuable information.

The bodies of May and Morton had been found with bullets in their chests, and white paint on their faces. The paint was Pip's logo, which was a long line going down the noses of the bodies, two lumps going around their eyes, and a white dot in the centures of their foreheads. It was meant to be two 'p's and an 'i' all in one. It was on everything that Pip owned, or was part of, including being tattooed on the wrists of all of Pip's workers. That's why, not only had May and Morton been shot in their chests, they also had the skin on their wrists, where the tattoos would have been, cut off.

It was Pip's way of telling the other people that worked for him, and everyone else, that they better not mess with him. He must have somehow found out that May and Morton had been helping Ty, so he killed them, and painted their faces so that his workers would know what happened. 

I sighed, knowing that it was unlikely for anyone else who worked for Pip to want to help me get them out after that. May and Morton were very brave for what they had done, and they didn't deserve what they got.

I barely blinked as I heard the door to my apartment close. I had been spending a lot of time on the couch, blankly watching the TV, my mind either completely empty, or plagued by the memory of watching Ty die. I wasn't dealing with grief very well, but then again, who would be doing well in my situation?

"Have you done anything at all today?" I heard my mom's angry voice ask, and I knew that she was standing over the back of the couch, looking down at me in disgust, but I didn't really care to much.

"No." I replied blandly, not even looking at me mom.

"Get off of my couch. You're not just going to bum around on the furniture that I paid for, and be lazy all day." Mom told me. I slowly rolled off of the couch, and walked to my room, shutting my bedroom door and locking it. I then flopped down on my bed, and pulled my phone out of my pocket, opening my text messages, and clicking on the first name on the list to text them. Warren.  

Can I come over?

Yeah, sure. Want me to pick you up?

No, I'll just use Ty's skateboard. I could use the trip to clear my mind.

Is everything ok?

Yeah. I'm on my way.

Ok.

I put my phone away, and got up off of my bed. I grabbed Ty's skateboard, which was given to me after he had died. Ty had broken his skateboard on some guys back when he caught the man trying to kidnap a little girl, so I used some money that I had saved up to buy him a new one. I costimized the bottom, so it had my name with a heart around it. It was decided that after Ty's death, the skateboard should go back to me.

I hopped out of my bedroom window, and started skating down the sidewalk, heading to Steven's house. We had gotten to work on my superhero training the day after Ty's funeral, which wasn't actually a bad thing. Warren had me learning how to fight, and doing things like lifting weights, beating up punching bags, and getting beat up by Warren were great ways to work through my emotions.

I apparently had the tendincy to carry around a lot of pent up rage that I didn't even know I had, until it all came out down in the weight room of Steven's house. I had ended up loosing a lot of weight too, which wasn't something that I was really trying to do, but something that was pretty much impossible to avoid amidst all of the superhero training.

I knocked on the door to Steven's house, and Warren answered it pretty quickly, with his usual comforting smile. Warren was a caring person by nature, and I think that's why he was Steven's only friend for a while. Steven was emotionally distant, and had low empathy levels. He threw himself into his work, and was kind of hard to be around sometimes. However, even though Steven wasn't really able to understand people that well, he did try to understand, and did care. Warren was able to see that pretty clearly, and so he was a good friend for Steven.

"Come on in. You look upset." Warren said, stepping to the side and closing the door behind me when I stepped inside.

"I'm not anymore upset than usual." I replied, and Warren nodded in understanding. He and Ty had gotten kind of close over time, and he blamed himself for Ty's death. He was grieving too.

Warren and I took the secret elevator by Steven's stairs, which was revealed by pushing a button on the banister of the stair case, down to Steven's secret lab, where he and Jess were working on making my suit, which was taking a while. Jess and Steven waved blandly at Warren and I as we passed through, walking through a door at that back of the lab that led to the weight room. I immediately went right to the punching bag, dropping down my skateboard, and the backpack that I had grabbed on my way out my window.

I began to punch the punching bag hard, slowly gaining more speed and power behind my punches. Warren walked around me, looking at me up and down, checking my form as I hit the bag. I thought I was doing pretty good, but Warren came up next to me, placed his hand on my shoulder, and pulled me away from the bag. I looked at Warren tiredly, wanting to know what he had to say about me punching the punching bag.

However, instead of saying something right away, Warren gently grabbed my hands, and turned them so my palms were facing down, and resting against Warren's palms. He looked at me in concern, so I looked down at my hands to see what Warren was doing. My knuckles were cut up, and bleeding a lot, which told me that I was really laying into the punching bag.

"Are you ok?" Warren asked, causing me to look back up at him, seeing that his face was even more concerned than before.

"I'm fine." I replied, slipping my hands out of Warren's hold, and raising them, turning to face the punching bag again. However, before I could punch the bag even once, Warren grabbed my hands again, harder this time, and turned me to face him once again. I sighed and rolled my eyes, honestly kind of wanting to be left alone, even though I knew that that was too much to ask for.

"I told you that I'm fine." I sighed.

"You don't seem fine. You don't look fine. You look like you haven't been sleeping, or eating, and you've been punching this bag so much that most of it's surface is covered by your blood. Stop telling me that you're fine." Warren told me seriously, and I pulled my hands roughly away from Warren, feeling that deep rooted anger bubbling to the surface.

"Well what am I supposed to tell you?" I practically yelled, startling Warren. "Am I supposed to tell you that every time I close my eyes, the image of Ty's brains shooting out the side of his head takes over my mind? Am I supposed to tell you that watching Pip torture Ty and knowing that there was nothing I could do about it traumatized me? Am I supposed to tell you that I'm terrified of what we're trying to do, because I am not brave, and I don't have a heart of gold like Ty did? Am I supposed to tell you that I frequently consider backing out of this whole superhero thing, because I am horrified by the thought of going out the same way Ty did, and that I feel so guilty about that thought that it sometimes literally makes me puke? Am I supposed to tell you that I haven't been eating, and I haven't been sleeping, because I just don't see the point anymore, because Ty was the only good thing in my life, and I watched him get killed? Am I supposed to tell you that one if the only reasons I come here, is because I just need to get out of my house, and away from my parents, and I don't have anywhere else to go? Because that's the truth."

By that point, I was crying. I couldn't have stopped the tears, or the words that had began spilling out if my mouth, even if I tried. However, I didn't try, because I really just didn't care anymore. Warren looked very, very concerned, as he watched me start to cry.

"Yes. If that's the truth, then yes. Do you need to talk about something? Is your home life ok?" Warren asked, looking worried.

"Not all the time, no." I replied, sniffling.

"Look, Gill, you can come over anytime you need to. We don't have to train or work on superhero stuff every time if you don't want to. We can set you up with your own room, and get you a house key, and you can come over anytime." Warren said.

"No. That's not necessary. All of this physical training has been helping."

"Then we'll get you a room and a key so you can come use the weight room anytime you want."

"You don't need to-"

"Gill. I want to help. We're both grieving, and we both could use some distractions, but I can't imagine having to go through what you have to go through, and I can't imagine how hard it must be to grieve when you don't have a family supporting you along the way."

I just nodded, at a loss for words. Warren that let me take a shower, showed me which room I could use, and then sat me down in the kitchen to bandage up my hands. Warren made me drink some hot tea, and made me go lay down in the room he showed me to take a nap. He told me to come out whenever I was ready. I was very grateful for all that Warren was doing for me.

I drifted off to sleep, exhaustion weighing me down as all of my sleepless nights hit me at once like a ton of bricks. I had been avoiding sleep for a while, because my dreams would often turn into nightmares about Ty, or about me suffering the same fate as he did, but I think I was able to sleep without a single dream that day in Steven's house, because both my mind and my body were too tired to do anything. It was like the more exhausted I was when I finally went to sleep, the less my brain worked, and the easier I slept.

I knew right then that I was going to fall headfirst into a life of wildly unhealthy sleeping habits that would ultimately ruin my life and well being even more.