SANCTUM | Avengers

21

- 21 -

The bed is hard as I roll over onto my side. Stretching out my legs, rough fabric snags my pants and I freeze. Slowly opening my eyes, I'm greeted by the same grey wall I woke up to every morning for twenty-four years. 

The dormitory is exactly the same except for the empty beds. All of them. Empty. 

I pull off the covers and brace myself for the cold but there is nothing as I step onto the cement. I pad to the door in my bare feet, waiting to be reprimanded for being out of bed- for doing something wrong. 

"Hello?" I call out. There is not so much as a creak in response. 

I move silently down the staircase, each board under my feet as familiar as the lines on the back of my hands. 

The lights, usually dimmed or turned off to allow the grey light of day to seep through the fogged windows, are turned on and illuminating each crack and crevice of the entry way as I reach the bottom of the stairs and step onto the plush red carpet. 

I wander for what feels like hours, finding nobody and nothing. I pass the training rooms, the smell of the mats and hardwood enough to bring pain to my throat and strangled tears to my eyes. I don't miss it. I know I could never, but it's all so familiar. The only place I am not out of place.

Finally, I make my way back to the entryway. The oak doors dwarf me as I look up at them and place my hand along the grain. I press my palms flat against them and push. 

They're lighter than I thought they would be- than I had always dreamed they had been when I had spent every night in bed wondering what it would be like to push them open and step out of the prison of my life's creation. 

Snow covers the ground, making the grey stone steps and circular drive painfully bright in the day's light. Despite that, the air is not cold and even as I brace myself once again, nothing comes- no frost, no fogging breath, no biting chill. 

I don't have it in me to stop myself this time around. I take a step out the doors and suddenly cannot stop. My feet carry me one step at a time until I am running down the tree-lined driveway that seems to stretch into eternity as fast as I can. My lungs scream and my legs burn as I run and run, none of it coursing through me faster than the feeling of freedom filling my chest. 

It is all so unfamiliar now, the trees around me foreign giants staring and enveloping me in their arms. I no longer fear the gentle wave of their branches. No, now they seem to welcome me, inviting me home. 

The road turns as the forest meets the edge of a cliff, the trees and dense underbrush giving way to the stark rock and vastness of the world below. Rolling hills, free from the smoke of chimneys or the sound of those escaping a life no longer worth living. Instead, there are just trees, standing tall enough to tell everyone around that they aren't afraid of anything at all, either. 

As I approach the cliff, I see a figure standing by the far edge. I stop, for the first time since I awoke feeling something other than peace strike through me. I would recognize her anywhere. 

"Finally," Teacher says, her voice barely carrying over the wind. So strange, I wonder for only a moment. Usually her sharp words cut the skin across my face, leaving nothing in their wake. Now, though, they seemed to float along the wind towards me. 

"What do you see?" she asks. 

She is so still, not bothering to turn to me or look away from the hills below. He grey pantsuit is stark against the view- so harsh against the soft lines of nature.