Two Hearts

Mask

Warning: This book, AND this chapter, has implications of toxic/abusive households. Proceed at your own discretion.

You've always hated the way people in your hometown would fall quiet when they learned about your past. The awkward silence, the long stares, the pity they always seemed to hold in their eyes as they tried to formulate ways to console you - you hated it, you hated it all.

It was the pity, especially, that angered you the most. The way complete strangers had the audacity to pretend like they cared, like they understood, like they were suffering just as much. There was nothing more demeaning than false sorrow in the form of pity.

As you grew up, you learned to better hide your past to avoid confrontation. You fabricated a lie, a cover, a mask to hide behind. You learned how to fake courage even when you were terrified; how to smile even when you felt tears; how to stay calm even as anxiety crept in.

You learned how to reveal just enough of yourself to others to satisfy their expectations, without divulging too much and garnering their disgusting pity.

When you turned 18 and was old enough to finally leave the hell you once called home, you moved away to New York City without a second thoughts.

To start fresh.

To escape the past and never look back.

You loved the city - the fast pace environment, the people, and most of all, the freedom.

No one asked questions in New York. No one cared to.

Several years after you had moved to New York, you found yourself recruited by SHIELD. You weren't really sure why, or how, but one day you had simply opened the door to your apartment to find a lounging Natasha Romanoff on your living room sofa offering you a job.

Accepting the offer was the best decision of your life. You initially started at the bottom as a basic recruit, handling most of the grunt work reserved for civilian employee like yourself, but within a year, you were offered entrance into the agent programs. Excelling in field work, certainly helped by your perfect control over your emotions, you quickly rose among the ranks of agents with your quick wits and charming personality.

You were happy with your life, content in the way only you could. 

Nothing needed to be changed.

Then, you met Wanda Maximoff.

From your very first glance of the Sokovian, you knew that she would be trouble, a conclusion that was only further confirmed by the learning of her mind reading ability, an ability that just spelled trouble for someone like you. If it were have only been up to you, you wouldn't have stepped within a 5 meter radius of the woman.

But, unfortunately for you, as an agent of high clearance in SHIELD, you were often responsible for tasks involving The Avengers Initiative, and Fury, for whatever twisted reason, also seemed to had taken upon it himself to purposely assign you as many missions with the scarlet witchling as he humanely could.

And so day after day, you were forced to spend hours after hours with the mind reader. And week after week, you were in close contact with the one person who could see past all your mask and facade, right into your bare soul.  

You should've hated it - spending all that time with her - and you had hated it, with all your heart. But try as you may to avoid it, you soon found yourself inexplicably falling for the girl.

You appreciated the little things. How she never pried. Even after she accidentally learned of your troubled past. How she never once acted like she was owed your emotion and understanding like everyone else did, only accepting what you were willing to give. How she never pretended to understand your pain, even when she probably could.