Never in a Million Years |N.R|

|12| What's going on with you?

I was breathless when I crashed through the door to my room, slamming it shut behind me and leaning all of my weight against it. No doubt someone would come looking for me after that little performance, and I didn't want anyone to see me like this. The rising panic was squeezing my throat, just as it had after that day at the shooting range. But the difference now was that I was reliving my reality, back then I had been simply fighting feelings. Feelings could be suppressed, but memories were hard to deny.

As I buried my head between my knees, covering my ears with my hands and rocking my body gently, I wanted nothing more than for someone to comfort me. But I quickly scolded myself for wishing for that. I should be able to look after myself, I always had, and these people had either given me too much already or didn't care about my wellbeing at all. All in all, I needed to just deal with this on my own.

It took even longer than last night to calm myself, although my breaths remained a little short and my heart still thumped in my chest. For the first time I'd wished someone would wipe my memories, make me a zombie again. I was tired of feeling, of not knowing what to do with these emotions that seemed to grow everyday. Feeling nothing at all was sometimes better than feeling everything, and this was one of those times.

Just as expected, I heard someone quietly approach my door before knocking. In an effort to remain silent I slapped my hand over my mouth to muffle my still heavy breaths. After knocking a few times they decided to speak up. "Y/N it's Natasha. Are you okay?" I had to actively fight myself from swinging that door open and grabbing her into a hug. I was so desperate for such a comfort, but I just couldn't. So when she gave up and I heard her own door open and close, I let my hand fall and breathed again. Why couldn't I just let myself trust her?

I didn't leave my room for the rest of the day, quite literally just lying on my bed staring out the window at the changing sky and the birds that hung so weightlessly in the air. I envied such a weightlessness. Natasha knocked a couple more times but she never opened my door when I failed to, respecting my privacy and need for space. That was proof enough that she cared about me, even if it was just a little, but I just couldn't let myself to believe that. How could anybody care about me at all?

(-)

For the next week I spent every night awake, maybe getting two hours of sleep every other day at the most. So when Monday came around I looked and felt awful. My body ached from tiredness, I was suffering from a days long headache, my skin was pale, I was cold and my face was certainly one of exhaustion. Dark bags hung beneath my eyes and they were bloodshot. I looked like someone who hadn't slept in days, certainly a lot worse than when Natasha had last seen me on Friday as training was called off for the weekend for some reason, something I was extremely grateful for. She would no doubt notice my exhaustion today. I had a meeting in about twenty minutes, one with the whole team, and then I was meant to head straight to training.

As I dragged my body out of bed it recoiled in the cold, so I quickly changed into leggings and a T-shirt before pulling on a thick hoodie. The weather had been good recently but that didn't matter, exhaustion meant I was freezing no matter what. I didn't have the energy to cover the bags under my eyes like I had been doing, which would certainly add to my shock factor. My nails and the skin around them were also in tatters. I'd been chewing at them relentlessly, it helped focus my mind when it started racing.

By the time I was changed and I'd fixed my hair it was time to head to the meeting room. I traipsed out of my room, head hung to avoid the fluorescent lights that hung above me. My eyes ached along with my whole head. When I arrived everyone else was already there, but most were engrossed in conversation so I moved to the back of the room and took a seat without really being noticed.