Hawk's eye - Chapter Four; Part 2/2 Scrapped

4/4/2014

This chapter has been scrapped, and the only reason I have left it up is to compare it to the re-written version.

Hawk hesitated. He knew this was an intrusion of privacy, but his curiosity was overwhelming his sense of right and wrong. Uncle Mason hadn't given him the permission to search through his things, had he? But if this had been something worth hiding, he wouldn't have left it here in all this junk, Hawk reasoned with himself. He flipped the album open, and nearly dropped it in surprise; his face was peering out at him from every page. There were pictures of him and his mother, Reine, a few months before she died; pictures of him as a baby, his green-gold eyes wide and innocent. Hawk had seen all of them before; Ann Bobby had them framed all over the house. Hawk flipped from page to page, his eyes earnestly searching for something new.

And that was when he saw it; the last photograph in the album. It showed three people, two of whom Hawk already knew. The child, of course, was him. He was sitting in his uncle's lap and couldn't have been more than a year old, chubby-faced and wide-eyed. His uncle was smiling, his black hair in disarray and sweeping over his bright blue eyes. He had been a tall man, so that the woman who sat next to him seemed to be dwarfed in comparison; she barely reached his shoulder.

It was the woman Hawk didn't recognize.

She was grim-faced, and her slanting black eyes had a deadened, haunting look to them. Even so, she still managed to look strikingly beautiful. She seemed to be close to his uncle, Hawk thought, because he had his arm draped around her shoulders. Somehow, she looked familiar to Hawk, and he felt like he had seen her somewhere before. But he couldn't put his finger on it…

Hawk slid the picture out from the album, and a piece of paper fell out as well, fluttering to the floor. Hawk picked it up and saw that it had one word scrawled on it; the name "Effie."

Was that the name of the woman in the picture? he wondered. It seemed to be a pretty plausible hypothesis. But who was she? As far as he knew, his uncle had never been married. But then again, Hawk had never known much about his uncle in the first place, save for the fact that he was now dead, what he had looked like when he was alive, and that they were related.

CRASH!

Hawk tensed suddenly, his eyes growing wide and fearful. He could hear someone grunting downstairs, and raised voices. Hastily, he stuffed the picture and the scrap of paper in his pocket. Then he edged towards the door, flicking off the light as he did so. Pulling the door open, he peered into the hall. There was a bang, like the sudden shot of a gun, and Hawk heard someone let out a cry of pain. Someone swore.

Hawk stayed silent, his heart pounding in his ears. Without thinking twice, he slipped down the hall, moving quickly but quietly, and soon losing his way in the darkness. He cursed himself for being so stupid. It would've been a better decision to jump out the window instead of being trapped in this accursed house where he was afraid of being jumped on by a faceless black figure. He stumbled over a something – he couldn't make out what it was – on the floor. He let out a muffled "umph," and grabbed onto something as he fell: a tablecloth.

That was his second mistake.

There was a sudden smash as the vase plummeted to the ground, breaking into a thousand fragments that flew through the air like shooting stars. Hawk's heart seemed to be clanging against his ribs as he pushed himself up, pulling a jagged piece of broken china from his palm. He wiped the blood carelessly on his jeans. The bleeding didn't bother him, although a numb sort of pain had settled itself in his palm. His hands felt hot, searing with rage and burning... fire.

And then Hawk slammed his palm into his forehead.

"I'm so stupid," he hissed to himself. "So dratted stupid."

The blood was trickling down his face from where he's smacked himself out of sheer exasperation. Muttering darkly, he snapped his fingers and was rewarded with a deep sense of satisfaction as the flames appeared. This time, he was the one in control. A reckless feeling surged through him. What was he so afraid of? A metallic object that pierced through paper bodies? Of a single movement, pressing down on a man-made trigger to blow people to bits within seconds? He didn't need to be afraid. He was an elemental catastrophe, and it was time to figure out how far his powers could take him.

And it was barely a second after this sudden epiphany that the ceiling gave way to a giant, metallic object that hurtled through the newly created hole above Hawk. Hawk didn't spare a moment to think, but threw himself against the wall. His head was pounding from the impact, and he felt as though a knife had ripped through the muscles in his left leg. His vision was blurry. Nothing was – making – any – sense.

Weakly, Hawk raised a hand to his hair, and then pulled it back out of shock. Blood. Lots of blood.

Enough to fill Lake Baikal, even, Hawk managed to think before the coherence of his thoughts gave way to vile, murky visions.

The world was veering out of control. He could see fireworks filling up his vision. A dragon that breathed fire. A mushroom cloud of broken hopes.

The last thing he saw before he blacked out was a disfigured motorbike among the wreckage, and a pair of black sunglasses that glinted at him.

And then the curtains fell.