Cherry || b.barnes

41 || About Identity

There's only so much you can do about feelings. Things like talking them down, distracting yourself with actions, with work or school, busying yourself with friends or tasks that were loaded onto your shoulders by teachers, parents, employers or by yourself. You can seek to replace feelings with new ones, new memories, go on trips or just keeping your distance from whatever evoked them in the first place. But there's only so much you can do, and there're rules meant to be followed should you search success.

Rule number one is probably self-explanatory; it only works in the beginning of their development. Shortly after their creation, really. Before they start to root in your heart, to spread inside you like a disease and hook their anchor into the depths of your consciousness, subconsciousness, and everything in between. The line between in-time and way-too-late, this deadline is very, very thin. Almost unrecognizable. It comes sneaking, comes slithering across the ground like a noiseless snake, and the lethal bite, a bite done by crescent teeth, will never be loosened anymore. Ones the fangs arched their way beneath your skin, you're done. No retreating. No medicine against the toxin. No solution. And even if one day there is someone to miraculously rip out the head of the snake, you'll forever wear the scar as a reminder.

My mother always used to say that you can't un-love someone. Once you start falling, there's no godly hand grasping you by the collar and yanking you up again. There's no one. Even the devil is unmighty; couldn't hold back Romeo and Juliette although neither of them had any reason to be judged like that.

It's just impossible. The only thing you can do is find someone you love more.

She also said that there's no place with love that is stripped of hatred. That their relationship is like yin and yang's.
Who would've thought it to take me so long to realize that what counts for love also counts for hatred?

Rationally, I am aware that Steven Rogers didn't kill my mother. That part, wherever it is located in my brain, also tells me he's not guilty for leaving me alone. That he's not guilty for this outcome. That he must've tried and tried to make life good for me, but his hands were bound. He was frozen before he had a chance to prove his love. So, logically spoken, it's not his fault.

That part is a part of me that probably loves him. Loves the idea of him in my mind that this maddening illusion produces. That produces the illusion of a caring, admireable father who would protect their child no matter what. Who would give their life for them without a second of thinking, without blinking.

I'm far from dangerously close to actually believe that.

However, it's Hydra's fault. That's what that part believes, too. At least, in some terms. They're to blame for they knew where my mother would be. They knew perfectly well who she is, obviously. They created their reason to kill her, kill us in the first place by injecting me with whatever, experimenting on me. Turning me into a monster that can suck up even the mightiest of witches's power like a vacuum cleaner does dust.

What they're not guilty for is my survival.

That's all on James.

I should be dead. If I was dead, all of this would never have happened. I wouldn't have fallen in love with him, I wouldn't have tried to shoot America's mascot, and I certainly wouldn't have stolen expensive liquor from Tony Stark. I wouldn't have lied on the street, helpless and stabbed. Wouldn't have to become a bounty hunter. Wouldn't have to cope with this damn serum.
Things would be easier if he just finished his job neatly, correctly, or if I had had the guts to say goodbye to this godsdamn planet back then. If I had them now.

Then again, he's not to blame for the misery happening after. He's not the reason for me to go all bad-bitch at the age of roughly eight and promising my mother I'd revenge her. He's not responsible for my fear of my mother's friend Lucia, causing me to never seek help at hers. He's not responsible for my bad conscience that denied me to go to any of my friends, which would mean they'd lost their tears of condolence for nothing, or rather, to have another burden weighing upon their shoulders. Even this early in my life, I knew that people around me tended to have less than me. Be it money, be it a loving mother, intellectual and physical skills. I wouldn't want any of them to divide their little money for one more mouth to fill. I wouldn't want to make anyone jealous or feel bad. Or to load somebody with the work that comes with the child of a super soldiers. It's worse than ADHD. Never still, sometimes zoned out because they hear something that isn't there for others. No school yard big enough for proper sports, and sometimes, going mad, screaming and clutching their hands against their head for the heightened senses are too much, threaten to burn my brain alive in the fire of a curse wrapped in the cover of a gift.