Cherry || b.barnes

40 || Breathing, but Unalive

The door leading to Stark's Tower has never been so heavy. Sun shining brightly, mockingly, its reflections blend me from every direction of the horizon when I wait in the elevator, completely ignorant of all the strange looks thrown at me like camera flashings on a celebrity walking across the red carpet.

The ride up takes much too long. Much too long and much too loud with the box being pulled up along the metallic strings by mechanics. The sneeze of a middle-aged man in one level that I pass, the printer on another and the stalking of a woman in way too high high-heels almost gives me the rest, almost motivates me enough to break through the transparent doors, take off her damn shoes and pierce her heart with it. Or her eyes. Or both.

I still feel dizzy, start to feel kind of dirty, actually. And that pisses me off even more than I already am, combined to the fact that the comfortable numbness starts to leave my body second by second. Fuck you, Erskine.

It was hard enough to find something that would knock me out. The common little helpers don't work with me; I can forget about alcohol or the sweet kind of drugs kid's sell on schoolyards these days. Not even combos would do all too much.
When I just needed to have one day off. One day of vacation from my life. Roughly two weeks have passed, a little more or less, and the icy silence between Barnes, Rogers and me all but melted. It grew worse. It grew darker. It grew like an infection, cell for cell and piece by piece. Crawling along my insides, choking me with its tendrils. Fed by myself, because hell, did these snakes try to get onto me.

I don't know exactly how long this one day has been, but surely, it did last longer than twenty-four hours.
I don't know either why precisely it is I came back. The shackles they threw around me again to not do something stupid while they're gone on search for Natasha were shrugged off easier the angrier I became, until I eventually headed out and sought to hide myself in the shadows, become one again. Don't know how much time has passed, since. A week, maybe two.

But who am I lying to? I came back because of Natasha. And because Fury had the audacity to snatch away my file and after I searched the whole tower; records, their rooms, Fury's office and even the secret levels, I found nothing. Thought I should give it a shot again.

Can't go on without knowing what I'm capable of. What I can do against him. Them. Whoever.

That's too much thought for a head that's stinging like a bitch. Eyes that haven't fully adjusted to daylight again. Legs that welcomed a few hot guys and a brain that could think of no other meanwhile.

The ding of the doors is way too loud as they open, and I groan quietly as I move along the corridor. They got me up to Wanda's and Nat's, what happens to be close to the place that originally should have turned my life into paradise, not into misery.

I was so close. I had his blood spilled. And then Romanoff chimed in like a scarlet angel.

Urgh, I should stop thinking. It hurts in more than the usual way.

The last drop of hope to get into the room without anyone noticing vaporizes when I hear the indistinct chatter coming from the living room subside. I can't even tell whose voices I hear, whose footsteps are thrumming through the ground, it vibrating enough that I think I might lose my balance. My head isn't all too clear these days.

God, I'm way too tired and riled right now for any type of conversation.

»Sia?« it comes from the other side of the bright corridor, way too loud to be comprehensible but that nickname is burned into my soul like the devil's mark anyways.

A deep sigh leaves my mouth while I roll my eyes, now actually losing a little of my balance and supporting myself on the cool, raw wall. Another pair of footsteps follows, and another, and stupid enough I have to get past the living area to get to the room they declared as mine. Another golden cage it is, really.