The scorching summer heat did nothing to improve Helena's mood.

She walked the sidewalks, trying her hardest to not make skin-to-skin contact with strangers. Though her anger was at a low simmer, it didn't put strangers out of danger of being poisoned...or killed. She didn't deem herself safe, but she couldn't go back to that hotel. She couldn't face Wanda Maximoff.

That bitch.

"Hey, watch it!" Helena snapped as she knocked shoulders with someone. Ignorantly, the stranger moved on without a care in the world. Huffing, Helena continued her stormy journey ahead, no destination in mind.

I'm truly alone. My parents, gone. Rhett, gone. I can't even go to my siblings. I can't explain myself to them. They would never understand.

~*~

"Sweetheart, you gotta tell us what's wrong," said Mrs. Rowe. She and her husband sat before their middle child, Helena. She was trembling.

"I-I can't, y-you wouldn't understand," Helena mumbled the cliché teenager phrase. But the cliché was all too true for the girl; unless her parents were gifted and never told her, she bet they wouldn't believe her.

"Lena, you can tell us anything," said Mr. Rowe gently.

Helena slowly rose her head. "Something's...something's wrong. I don't...I don't feel like me."

"What do you mean? Do you feel sick? Do we need to run you to the hospital?"

Mrs. Rowe gasped. "Are you pregnant?"

Helena in turn gasped, gaping at her mother. "No! Rhett and I are saving for marriage!"

That didn't seem to settle Helena's parents any; they remained in their deep, concerned states of mind.

"Then what's wrong, Lena?" Mr. Rowe pressed his oldest daughter.

Helena's leg bounced. "I think I'm...I think I have abilities."

"Abilities?" Mrs. Rowe echoed. Helena nodded, unsure of her parents' reaction. "No...not possible. We're all Grade-A human. You can't be...gifted."

Helena winced at how her mother sneered the word "gifted". She wasn't fond of the Avengers. She found the Hulk the most disturbing of them all.

"Why do you think you have powers, Lena?" Mr. Rowe pressed gently. He gave his wife a scalding glare. He was more open-minded towards these kinds of things; it was the one thing Mrs. Rowe didn't like about her husband. His mind tended to encourage the idea of fantasies in the real world.

"I just...I don't feel like me. Something's changed."

"Honey, you've been undergoing puberty for a while now," Mrs. Rowe said.

"It's not puberty, Mom. It's something else."

Helena looked for guidance in her parents. Mrs. Rowe simply rose from the couch and sauntered into the kitchen. Helena deflated.

"You believe me, don't you, Dad?" Helena asked in a quiet whisper.

Mr. Rowe smiled warmly. "I do, sweetheart. You know how your mother is. Do you know what you can do?"

"It hasn't shown itself. But it doesn't mean that I don't realize that something's different about me. Something hasn't triggered it yet; I think it's waiting for the right time."

~*~

What shitty timing her power waited for.

Helena pushed her parents from her mind, her mother especially. That woman would sooner die with the belief that aliens didn't exist than admit it was part of her reality when that reality was shouting in a bullhorn at her face. She wasn't about myth and legends. As far as Helena was concerned, her mother held no creative mind.

I have no one. The one person I thought I had...

Helena pushed the tears down in her eyes. She refused to cry over the witch. It wasn't like they had grown to be friends, they had been acquaintances. Wanda, the girl with a hatred for the Avengers.

Helena mulled over what Wanda had shown her, what fragments she allowed anyhow. She'd glimpsed from the witch's mind many things, but nothing solid to really steer Helena from her pro-Avenger standpoint. She couldn't understand Wanda's hatred towards them.

The only way Helena would ever know that answer would require getting into Wanda's head. That was not in Helena's wheelhouse, nor did she really want to know much about the witch. She hadn't given off a good impression from that first creepy smile. Though when there was no creepy smile, the witch was mildly attractive.

Too bad I'm not gonna see her ever again.