NOT HIS HANDS

Those hands were not his own. Curio frowned, staring down at the small, smooth hands. There was no evidence of the callouses he'd gained over the years, or the healed bubbled skin engulfing his right hand and climbing up to his forearm. His breathing hitched at the sight of his unmarred limb. That couldn't be his hand. This hand was too soft, too pure to be his. But his mind... his thoughts were attached to the body the hand was connected to. 

Silently, he commanded the hand to move. Obeying the order, the fingers splayed out. There, almost invisible to the unobservant eye was a fleck, the only imperfection he could find on these perfect hands. A mole.

A mole that matched the same one on his own hands.

His heart skipped a beat. Did Strange screw up, and somehow sent him back in time, or erased the years ageing his body? Panicked, he averted his gaze from the cause of his anxiety, eyes flickering up. 

His own chocolate eyes widened in the reflection. 

He was a boy again. 

It was in that moment he truly began to panic. His childhood had been something he had constantly blacked out, something he tossed to the back of his mind and only let loose in the deepest, darkest times of night. If he remembered correctly, he looked like this when the material of his nightmares sent his life into a spiral. 

"Hey honey, are you okay?" A sweet, melodic voice he'd forgotten hit his ears. The embodiment of an angel. It pulled him out of his thoughts, bringing him back to the harsh reality. He couldn't stop the thin film coating his eyes at the long gone voice, one that soon would cease to exist if he was right. 

A woman with a kind smile reached over, one hand resting on the wheel and the other touching his cheek. The sight of the wheel made all his senses heighten. Suddenly he could feel the rumble of the chair underneath him, and hear the gentle roar of the engine. The last dregs of the town blurred outside of the window, quickly replaced by a never ending stream of trees. 

He was in a car when it happened. 

Curio was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn't answer. He was too busy waging a conflict in his mind - should he look at the woman, his mother, and drink in the last details of her face one last time, or stay turned away and hope that he isn't reminded of her unconscious grace and beauty? 

"Honey?" The trees stopped moving. Everything came to a stand still. A click was heard in the quiet, the usual hum of the radio gone. When this happened the first time, he could remember the radio being a constant scream of horrific news - Thanos no longer faced opposition, and was planning on cleansing the planet. It said that he had a fair method of deciding who lived and died. Curio didn't think there was anything fair about death. The one thing that kept hope alive though was one fact - he didn't have all of the stones. At the time he thought it to be a blessing, believed that maybe, just maybe he wouldn't be able to fulfil his plan without them all. 

How naive he was. 

Nothing stopped the monster. He adapted. He found a messier, more brutal way of destroying half the population. 

And his mother was subject to that. 

Maybe because the radio wasn't on things might pan out differently. Maybe his mother lived. He wanted to laugh; all that came out was a strangled cry. All of his hope relied on mere chance. There was nothing more soul destroying than discovering a happy ending is just a probability. 

At the edge of his eye, a glint caught his attention. It would've gone unnoticed if Curio hadn't memorised every detail of this event, knowing it better than he knew his own hands. It didn't fit in. This wasn't right. A deep sense of uneasiness settled within him. 

This time he felt the weight of her hand on his shoulder. His mind screamed at him to turn away, to not look at her face, to not look at those features that held so much love and adoration for him. His heart bellowed for him to succumb to her touch, to wrap his arms around her neck one more time and remind himself of what she smelt like. 

He turned away from her, arms begging for him to reach for her warm, plump, welcoming body. He fought with the lock, fumbling to get the door open. Behind him, his mother was pleading for him to stay, to just turn towards her and embrace. 

But he couldn't do that. This wasn't his mother, just like his hands weren't his hands. They appeared to be his - but they were not. They were a carbon copy; they weren't in the environment they belonged in. 

He opened the door, throwing himself out of the car without a second thought, rushing towards the glint in the distance. All was eerily quiet. 

Apart from the resounding gunshot echoing throughout the silence. 

*

He snapped awake.

He was falling. His arms were flailing, legs spinning out of control. His heart had plummeted into his stomach, and adrenaline coursed through his body. Behind him, the trembling portal snapped shut, caging him in a reality he wasn't sure he would survive. He felt as though he was choking, the gunshot still ringing in his ears, prominent even with the wind smacking his body. No matter how many times he heard it, he never got used to it. 

Curio couldn't even scream, his breath stolen from him as he plummeted closer to the ground. It was rushing towards him faster by the minute, and giving in to instincts he clenched his eyes shut, trying to tug his body into himself before he slammed into the ground.

He barely had time to process what was happening. One minute he was soaring in the air, wind biting at his cheeks and stinging his eyes and the next his bones shattered. The agony was indescribable. He believed he had experienced torture when his skin melted off of his bones - how wrong he had been. This was worse. 

Slowly, he sank. Cool liquid splashed at his skin, the bitter cold sending goosebumps up his arms and tensing his body. More anguish was absorbed into his body. He was a broken doll, sinking in water he couldn't escape from. 

All he could do was keep his eyes closed and pray that death would be swift. 

-

hey guys! so this book has reached over 150 reads in a week which is mind blowing! along with that, two of my other marvel stories - dear agony and the language of silence - have both reached 2k reads! i want to do something to celebrate but i have no idea what, have you guys got any ideas? i was thinking maybe posting another chapter of this early, and maybe writing a little chapter/snippet with my characters from dear agony and the language of silence in infinity war. i could have a contest, a q&a, a shout out thing. you guys come up with an idea and comment it here or pm me and i'll see if i can do anything about it. 

i hope this wasn't too confusing - if it is, don't worry, all will be revealed soon. in this book the chapters will alternate each pov, so next chapter won't be curio but somebody else. you'll just have to wait and see who is next ;)

see you next time!

-thirdwheelchurchill