A Marvellous Christmas | mcu actors

December 1ˢᵗ

The jitters were real. They were completely real and completely present, turning her stomach into a batch of butterflies, flying away and bumping into the walls. Her hands were shaking, her head felt like cotton candy and for some reason, she was seeing everything blurry even though Viola knew she didn't need glasses -or only to work on her laptop since the blue light emaning from the screen gave her migraines. It felt like she had too much energy in her body, like an electric current trying to find a way out and igniting every nerve in her small body as it searched for an escape. It wasn't a new feeling, she had had it for as long as she remembered being alive. Nervosity, anxiety, name it as you'd like but Viola wasn't unknown to it. She hated it, in fact. It kept reminding her that she was weak and that she was socially unable to do things. As long as she could remember, she'd always had jitters at important times of her life. Or at small moments when she felt like she couldn't do certain things. It mostly implied talking to other people, whether it was a flesh-and-bone-moment or talking to the phone. Even sending an e-mail felt sometimes like a greater task than it really was. Social anxiety was just a part of her days and how miserable they could get. Symptoms weren't always dialed to an eleven but today, it could make it to a twelve.

Last time she felt like that was precisely why she was now. Internet was kind of a safe place to her, where she could browse in peace without any sales person to ask her if they could help her. She could buy her groceries and have them delivered to her door so the only person she'd see would be the delivery guy. She could travel to incredible places without having to suffer through the checking-in and the security checks at airports. She could watch movies without having to sit with a hundred other people. But that day, when she had seen the most amazing job offer she could imagine for herself, she had sent a mail with clammy palms and an extremely painful and fast beating heart. Without really expecting an answer back, she had received a mail, asking her to set up a meeting in the offices and she had agreed, even though her entire mind told her not to. She had met with Joss and Jed Whedon, as well as Maurissa Tancharoen, for a possible writing job for their television series. Viola had worked her entire life to get to this, to a a job that would allow her to live off of her passion that was writing so that day had been a real hell to go through, as she really wanted the job but also really feared not being good enough. She wanted the job even more as soon as she knew that it was a Marvel series and she happened to love Marvel's stuff. With her whole body shaking and trembling, she had made it to an office in Los Angeles, after driving for a solid seven hours. She didn't live in Los Angeles and she wasn't really interested in moving out of her small one-bedroom flat in San Francisco, so she expected to be commuting a lot or to find a small and cheap motel when she really had to stay in Los Angeles. Then she realised that she was starting to plan her life with this job and her mood suddenly became gloomy. She wouldn't get the job, anyway, because she wasn't enough: not interesting enough, not skilled enough, not talented enough..

Of course, she had spent a solid hour and a half trying to avoid eye contact, looking at the table between her and the three producers, blushing everytime they'd compliment her and stuttering her way through as they spoke about her work, trying to decipher if she was a good fit or not. She wasn't much of a brag, in fact, she hadn't got one proud bone in her body, but her shy modesty charmed the trio and her work was what they wanted to see for their show. She would work with them as a writer as well as a couple of others that she would exchange ideas with to create the episodes. When she signed the contract, she was ecstatic but on the drive back, she realised what "a team of writers" meant and how her work was going to be scrutinised by Marvel fans who would have her head on a stick if she dared make a mistake. Evidently, she had to follow Marvel's rules and frames: she couldn't put a Superman reference to an episode, for example. She had to make sure every reference had a solid base of facts and thank God, they had a specialist from the company who would review everything before they'd get beheaded.