Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
NINE | WAIT A MINUTE!
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE PASSING OF TIME WAS SUCH A BIZARRE CONCEPT TO DAHLIA MCDEEN. The fact that it never stopped, never waiting for you to catch up. Since the dawn of time it consistently kept chugging along at its rapid pace. A coma patient, for example, could wake up frozen in time except time hadn't frozen for them in return. It freaked her out a little that every single second mattered and she'd already wasted so many with bitterness and poor decisions. She was a fully fledged Avenger now—someone that kids could look up to and expect to save them—and someone's girlfriend. She wasn't used to either title just yet even if it had been eleven months now since Sokovia. She could open any website and see her face, whether it be advertisement, articles, fan edits, songs dedicated to her (god, those were a doozy) or paintings. The world cared about her now.
Sometimes she wished she could disappear back into obscurity, back into her bitter corner of the universe. But alas, she's afraid the media would always find her now. (And the benefits were too good to give up.)
Slowly, combat was becoming somewhat second nature to her. It had to be, as Natasha Romanoff had told her once. She needed to be ready to fight off any possible threat—with or without her powers (which, at the moment, was still the former option). The former Russian assassin seemed to be quite impressed with the younger girls progress and how quickly she picked up the things she was showing her. Dahlia was far ahead of Wanda in her training which Natasha didn't hold against her (probably because Wanda had superpowers that actually worked).
Like she'd said before, it had been months and not a single drop of power had shown itself (at least, nothing usually had). Everyone had told her to give it time but she'd given it plenty. She wasn't getting any younger waiting around for them to magically come back one day. All the tests they'd run had confused her more—all her vitals were pointing towards magical mutation yet she couldn't even light a fire anymore. No one ever said it out loud but bringing back seemed to have drained everything from the girls powers.
When no one was around, she'd turn off the lights in her room and stare at an unlit candle for hours trying to make it do something. She'd sit in the garden in hopes that she could still rip chunks of earth out the ground but nothing. She'd lay submerged in her bath tub trying to bend the water. At night, she'd lay in her bed trying to make her fan spin. What was the point of everything she went through if her powers were just going to evaporate?
