((BEFORE YOU READ THIS: Be warned that it is a lot of stuff in a little article. I found it while leitura through some old documents, and realized I haven't really posted anything on Bella before she joins The Team and becomes Mercy. So if you want mais on her pre-superhero life, let me know! KISSES!))

October 31st, 2011
Gotham, USA

There isn't much I remember about the accident. It all happened so quickly.
There was blood- a lot of blood. It was on the windows and the airbags and our clothes.
And there was screaming, but it wasn't coming from my mouth, or Gavin's. Gavin wasn't even moving. He just laid there, slumped over in his seat.
I remember yelling at him, telling him to wake up, to tell me what just happened, to do something- anything.
My head hurt. I assume I had slammed it against the window when it happened.
Their car had driven into the driver's side of our car.
The airbags had gone off, but they didn't do much. The windows seguinte to Gavin were all shattered and the shards went everywhere.
Then I heard sirens. There was so much noise. The screaming and the crying and the sirens. It made my head hurt.
I couldn't move, so I just kept talking to Gavin. I told him that everything would be okay. That the ambulances would come and help him and that I wouldn't let him die.

My head hurt so much. The screaming and the sirens and the lights. I closed my eyes and didn't open them until the car had been removed from around me and I could breathe.

I was sitting on the back end of the ambulância when they told me that Gavin was gone. That I had lied to myself and him. I lied to him.
You never want to hear something like that. That your best friend in the world is gone and not coming back. And at that moment, what was left of our car burst into flames. It was probably my fault, too. Things like that tend to happen when I hear bad news. I can't control it.

Amelia and E had found me a couple minutos later. They were at the party four blocks up the street. The party Gavin and I had just left.
E just hugged me and cried while Amelia tried to figure out what happened. I got blood on his dress shirt.
The people in the car that had hit us? They didn't see the red light. They had all survived and Gavin didn't.

The funeral was small. Gavin only had Amelia, E, and me. The headstone was ordered to say "Gavin J. Hayes: Son, Brother, Friend." Those words meant nothing. He was so much mais than three words.

The last piece of what I called childhood was gone.
He was just a few apartment doors down when I got adopted. He was there to show me the way out when the building caught on fire. He was there when I first discovered what I could do.
He was there when I wanted to leave the party early.
If I had only waited the extra hora for it to end. It was my fault.

How can you expect someone to resume normal life after that? You can't.
In the weeks after losing Gavin, E had become a robot. Every moment of his life was meticulously planned out. He had become hyper-focused on the family's company, sitting in on meetings and doing everything he could to make sure his mind didn't have a segundo to wander.
I like to believe I took a similar path. I spent my days nose-deep in research instead of going to my lessons, and I spent my nights sneaking out of the apartment and roaming the streets.
There wasn't a moment in my life after the accident where I would dare to stop. To stop would be to allow myself to think. And I couldn't let myself think- not about Gavin, not about the guilt, not about what would've happened if I had just been patient.
I had to do something with my life. To combat loss with life seemed the best path, right? The girl with superpowers and zero fighting experience would infiltrate a gang and take them down to prevent them from hurting innocent people. I could do it. And if I couldn't, if I died in the process? To be perfectly honest, I didn't care.