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[i]"Papa? Why did you come back?"

The soft sound of the child's whisper reached Vivek's ears, drawing him away from his desk within the blink of an eye to kneel down on one knee in front of the couch his child had been laying on for Gods knew how long now. Placing his hand over the small lump underneath the blanket where he knew her hand to be, his dark, brown eyes scanned the frail, paled face of his daughter - the only part of her visible through the copious amount of blankets bundled around her to keep her warm though it seemed that even if he had a thousand blankets to cover her, she still wouldn't be able to warm up. She had said very little over the last few days, her sickness taking off in a sudden spike where even holding a conversation was draining for her. It was by far the hardest thing Vivek had to endure. He would have gone through the torture of those he had been captured by when serving in The Third Division a hundred, thousand times before watching his eight-year-old little girl slowly dying in front of him.

His thumb gently rubbed her hand through the thick blankets, trying to soften his eyes for the sake of his child as she struggled to keep her heavy lids open to look back up at him. It had been difficult to not be angry - with himself for leaving to America, with his girlfriend, Lela, who had abandoned their child to the streets when he had so much family that would have taken her in instead, and with the Gods who had yet to answer his many, many prayers on behalf of his little girl. But around her, around Gita, he pushed back his roiling anger and instead gave her a soft, flickering smile that turned up the very corner of his lips.

The subject of Lela, Gita's mother, came up very rarely since Vivek returned home to India to take over for the well being of his child. Even amongst family - his mother, even, who had found her by the luck and will of the Gods - the situation in which had been created was not spoken of whether it be by some unspoken grace that the trauma little Gita had been put through was already enough and didn't need any stirring, or if by not speaking of Lela, it would somehow preserve her image as a good mother to others. So Gita's question had Vivek refraining from pressing his brows together as he tried to think of the best way to answer in a way that would not disrupt either of the reasoning's they did not talk about or for him to start becoming angry again. Instead, he moved his hand from on top of hers and cupped the side of her face, brushing his thumb underneath the soft skin of her eye and looked down upon her with all the sincerity and love a father could manage for his child.

"Because I made a mistake, Gita. One that will never happen again. No matter what happens, I will not leave you. Not again."

His hand slid up from her cheek, moving to her forehead that was now out of habit for checking her temperature, though even still his touch was soft and endearing, bringing the small child a sense of comfort as she let her eyes slip back closed from lack of strength.

"Mama-" Gita stopped to cough. "-Mama said you... you left because-" Another cough. "-you were trying to make Marica a better place."

"America." Vivek corrected gently. "And not just America, Gita. The world. America was just where they needed me. But what we do, what I helped to do, was to help everywhere become a better place for you to grow into a beautiful woman in a world that is not so unkind."

Gita forced her eyelids to flutter back open to look up at her father once more, a trying smile splitting her lips a fraction to show off her pearly-white teeth.

"Like... like a superhero." she said. A statement, not a question. The word, however, had Vivek's stomach tying itself in knots for reasons he couldn't explain, or didn't know how to. No. He was no superhero. A superhero would never leave their child the way he did. A superhero would not have to stand by and watch helplessly as their child died before their very eyes - they would have found a way to fix it and try as he might, Vivek just couldn't. He opened his mouth to correct her, once more, unable to allow the falsified images his child now had on him to continue to grow making him out to be some sort of glorified person that he wasn't, but Gita, after a small coughing fit, beat him to it.

"Mama... Mama said that there aren't such things as superheros..." Vivek winced. Obviously, he was too late as it seemed that Gita had already a spoken conversation with Lela on the matter. "But... but she's wrong, Papa. She's wrong because I know. I know there is such thing. Because, Papa, I have a secret."

He couldn't help it. Not this time. His brows furrowed in confusion, tilting his head to the side slightly holding his daughter's gaze, silently urging her to continue.

"I know what you are, Papa." Another cough. "I've seen you. You... change things... Mama says I made it up, but I know. I know because..." Gita paused once, being thrust into another coughing fit. It became so bad, even, that Vivek began to rise from is position in front of the couch to fetch her a glass of water, but her frail, little hand slipped out from underneath the blanket and caught his wrist, tugging on him with a surprising amount of strength (though still weak) for her condition that held his attention on her for a moment longer.

"You're a superhero, Papa. But you came back for me, and you lost your fire. I can see it in your eyes"

Vivek shook his head lightly. This was getting out of hand. He had to stop this conversation, quickly, but in his heart he couldn't bring himself to do so. Not if that meant disappointing his daughter. This was the most alive she had seemed in months, how could he deprive her of that light?

"But it's okay, cuz Papa... I found it."

Letting go of his wrist, Gita held out her hand, palm facing up and dropped her eyes from her father to it, as if waiting for something to happen. Her eyes narrowed, a deep look of concentration on her features but finally, Vivek had enough. She was expelling too much energy. He wasn't sure what she was trying to prove, but he had to remember, her health came first. The doctors at the hospital all said the same thing - There was nothing they could do for her but to allow her to die in the comforts of her own home. A few weeks, maybe days... it was all too cryptic for Vivek to indulge his thoughts on.

"Gita-"

His words were immediately cut off as a flickering light caught his attention from out of the corner of his eye. Turning his head, he looked down into the open palm of his daughter and felt his jaw go slack for there, about the size of a walnut, was a small ball of flame, flickering on and off like a light bulb with a faulty wire.

Like a moth drawn to the flame, Vivek once more knelt down at his daughter's side, eyes glued to the small spectacle before him. His Gita... she was like him. He wasn't at all sure what to do with that information; unsure if he should be fearful for what sort of options that opened up for her, not sure whether to be proud, not even sure if he was surprised or not. He reached out his hand to hold the underside of hers, helping to keep it elevated as the strength in her arm began to waver.

"I want you to take it, Papa. Take back your fire. You need it more than I do. My superhero needs it more than I do."

Vivek's eyes moved back to his daughter, watching as her eyes fluttered back closed, a deep sense of pride then finally beginning to surface within him. At only eight years old and she held a wisdom within her that far surpassed his own. Though he doubted that she meant her words as metaphorically as he was taking them, it was exactly what he needed to hear. However, things quickly shifted when Gita let out a soft, long, exhale and the ball of fire within her hand dissipated into a quick whiff of smoke. Her hand fell limp, becoming cold to the touch gradually but enough for Vivek to know what had just happened. He quickly blinked away a few of the pooling tears he didn't know he had been holding back from the bottoms of his eyelids, falling from them to stain his cheeks.

Slowly, Vivek bowed his head towards his daughter, touching their foreheads together and keeping hold of her lifeless hand by pressing it into his chest over his quickening heart. His eyes closed softly, the sound of his own sobbing now the only thing to accompany him within the house that once was the home to three.[/i]

[hr]

Large, dark eyes opened rather suddenly, completely withdrawn from the reverie that the art of meditation was supposed to bring. To clear his mind. That had been his purpose. But every time his eyes closed for more than a moment or two, he saw her and for that split second, coming out from his once tranquil state, he could have swore that he could also [i]feel[/i] her. Five years later, and the memory still remained with him as vivid as the day itself. Her touch, her voice, even her smell... all engrained into his mind, never to allow him a moments peace.

Sighing, Vivek pushed himself up from his cross-legged position on the mat that had been brought out onto the balcony of his home in hopes that the cool, evening breeze would help to relax him. He took a moment to run his thumb and fourth finger though his hair, starting at the temples and pushing back the thick, black curls from his face before falling back through his fingertips again. Quietly, he made his way back inside, navigating the halls that eventually brought him to a staircase that then led him to the first level of his home. The house itself was much too large for a single man. Even when it had occupied three it was still on the large side, but with his salary as the Madras University Chemistry Professor, he could afford it and wanted nothing but the best for his family. Now, it was nothing more than an empty, hollow reminder of what could have been.

Upon arriving on the lower level, Vivek took an immediate turn and made his way down yet another hall, his eyes baring straight ahead having no drive to glance at the fine furnishings that decorated the rooms and walls, eyes only for the door right in front of him. Turning the knob, he pushed the door open and walked inside. Immediately, his senses were infiltrated with paper, ink, sandpaper and even dust; a familiar, yet welcomed reprieve to help detour his mind.

Walking with a small amount of reverence now in his step, Vivek approached the old, wooden artists desk within the corner of the room and flicked on the desk lamp with a quick switch on its base. The light immediately filtered through the musty air, landing on a large, sixteen-inch by twenty-two-inch paper, filled to the edges with varying shades of graphite and charcoal. It had been something Vivek brought himself to work on in small doses over the course of the last five years when he felt he had a strong grip of his emotions. So reaching over the desk and plucking a 4B graphite pencil from the container of varying types, Vivek  took a couple of moments to fill in a few shading areas before he stopped, stood back, and admired his [url=http://img06.deviantart.net/a4ae/i/2013/188/3/7/little_girl_with_wet_face__pencil_drawing__by_chaseroflight-d6cg72d.jpg]work[/url]. His Gita - at the prime of her life. Before death had slipped it's tendrils into her and began to suck her life away over the long, agonizing months he cared for her.

He wanted to do right by her. Gita's last words were for him to bring that fire back into him that he had lost. He wasn't sure exactly what she thought it was that she meant, but to Vivek, it was to get back out there and to keep making the world a better place. But he couldn't do it. Not even when the Alien War came to rise. Not even when they attacked and he was subjected to merely reading about it in the papers, learning about the fall of his kind, only to crumple it up and toss it away. That was a different life he led back then. Getting back into it would be... difficult. And he no longer had the strength. This was his life now. One hundred percent. The daily rinse-and-repeat in the life of a chemistry professor. It was comfortable. It was safe. But it was also lonely.

Setting the pencil aside, Vivek flipped the switch back off, turning off the desk lamp and quietly retreated from the art room, reverently closing the door behind him and forcing his way to the main living room area where a pile of student's research papers waited to be graded on the very same desk Vivek sat at moments before his Gita had passed on.