It's not about living forever, it's about living with yourself forever.
|| book one of one ||
An original and alternate MCU story that incorporates parts of Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Marvel movie references throughout...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE teaming up with the Avengers, I wondered if I really was better off on my own. Knowing what I know now, I wondered if I ever really had been.
The never ending stream of questions that used to live inside my head were no longer there. Bucky had answered almost all of them, relieving me of this metaphorical weight I had carried for almost seventy years. It made room for other thoughts. Thoughts about my future. Thoughts about Bucky.
But for now, all I wanted to think about was getting back to how things were before Hydra. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and wrapped my towel around my body. A shower was enough to temporarily soothe me, but on the inside I still felt dirty. The constant feeling of remorse and anger over things that were out of my control was slowly eating me alive. Would I feel this way forever? If so, it was going to be a very long eternity for me.
I glanced up at my reflection in the mirror and stiffened at the figure staring back. It had been a long time since I'd seen myself and I could barely recognize the woman staring back at me. It was as if I had never seen myself before this moment, and in some ways it still felt like Hydra owned me. I began to question the reflection in the mirror. Was it really me? How could I be sure?
It stirred a whirlwind of confusion and fascination in the pit of my stomach. Her skin was a chalky pale and porcelain, like she was carved out of marble stone. She had dark shadows under her eyes—purplish, bruise-like shadows. Her eyes were black, just a hint of ruby around the edges.
I tilted my head to the left and she followed. She mimicked every movement, mirrored it. Uncomprehending, I raised my hand and reached to touch her. But where our fingers should have met, it was just cold glass.
That was me. My reflection in the mirror— pale, broken and exhausted.
I was still me, only something was missing. There was a look of absence in my eyes but I couldn't pin point exactly what I was missing. Maybe that part of me would always belong to Hydra. Maybe I had to let go of it in order to move on.
Having forgotten that merely hours ago my arm had been detached from my body, my focus diverted to my shoulder, but there was nothing but a faint white scar that wrapped all the way around. How I had managed to survive that was still a mystery to me.
