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【 reseda, 2018 】
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━━ She never understood the point of the beach, nor why people seemed to like it so much.
She hated the feeling of sand slipping into every crevice of her skin. The salt in the air tasted so unfamiliar, so wrong. She found the beach to be her antithesis. The warm air and her cold heart did not mix well. The welcome feeling opposed the bitterness that encompassed her soul.
Despite the nature that so openly opposed the core of her being, Stevie could admit that the quiet was a welcome change to the constant noise that Los Angeles drowned itself in. School had been long over as her hair and skin mingled with the sand. Her feet were just barely skimming the tide, but she buried her toes in the damp shore all the same.
Tonight was one of those nights where she allowed herself to accept her lack of understanding of anything regarding the beach. The puffy pink clouds stood out starkly against the dimming indigo sky; the wisps of smoke that strayed from her pursed lips and nostrils had blended into a haze above her.
Stevie very rarely indulged in the blunts she had received from her time at Goldfinger's. She often stuck with a pack of Lucky Strikes that she pockets during her trips to the bodega, but she thought today was a day where she had earned a proper high. She found that any talk of her parents ( outside of her usual bullshit responses ) put her over the edge in a way nothing else could.
She wasn't entirely sure if the words she shouted at the counselor were words of truth, if she was being honest. She had vague memories of a life before the Red Room, but faces were never something that appeared. The closest thing to lullabies was the haunted humming of Tili Tili Bom, when one of her peers was about to die. Her bedtime stories were more of a biographical depiction of Baba Yaga rather than legends, for the fearsome Madame V was the modern iteration of the monster.
Her stance on her parents was dependent on whose voice was echoing louder in her head.
If Madame B ( her first handler ) was present, Stevie saw dead parents. A young couple who was shot in an uncomfortable bed, and weighed down to the ocean floor. Her life in exchange for their deaths. Their freedom in place of her captivity.
If she were to believe the words of Madame V, one of the few Black Widows who lived long enough to perpetuate the cycle of abuse, her mommy and daddy left her to rot. Their love for their daughter had a price tag that General Dreykov was willing to pay.
