Life Is An Emotional Rollercoaster
Walking up to the door I regret not having Nat and Shuri to ease my fears. They would have kept the walk light and happy, filled with laughter. Instead, with each step, the walls seemed to get bigger and closer to me. I cannot bring myself to knock, yet I cannot bring myself to walk away and forget about it because I know that I need this.
I am startled out of my introspection by a laugh from behind me. Forgetting I am in a safe place, and not back home in the village where a sound like that meant trouble coming. Quickly, I react. Swinging around my fist connects with the face of the person as I duck down to the ground and ground sweeps their legs from under them. I land with my knee to their chest and a Knife to their throat before I can even think. A hand touches the back of my neck and I just react. Slamming the hand against the wall with the hand not holding the knife. I turn keeping my knee on the person's chest and kick the newcomer’s balls with my leg before grabbing them into a choke hold and placing the knife against the newcomer’s neck.
A clapping noise breaks through my clouded mind and I see Sam Wilson leaning against the wall, presumably having watched me take down who I now realize are Barnes and Rogers.
“You did well. You took them down clean and efficient without allowing yourself room for much damage to you. I would like to know where you learned how to do that though,” Sam says still leaning against the wall.
“This is not the first time I have had to defend myself. I learned in the village and had no one to teach me. Shuri helped refine my technique and Natasha has added different styles to what I have learned. We train two hours every day in different types of combat, environments, and situations. We prepare ourselves for the worst possible and have contingencies for every situation. Due to them, I am now proficient at firearms and rifles, archery, throwing knives, and stun batons. I keep at least four knives on me at all times and I am prepared to escape any situation I am placed in using any weakness I can find in any opponent.” I recite. There is no emotion in my voice and no light in my eyes. I have yet to release the men I have pinned. They could get out if they wanted to, but I think they don’t want to hurt me in order to do so.
“Well, it’s good that you are able to defend yourself. Why don’t you let Steve and Bucky up and you and I can go into my office and have our chat?” He asks. I can hear the placating tone in his voice. I know that he is slightly afraid that I will cut Barnes’ throat with the knife placed there. I can see his hand twitch to where I know a service weapon is hidden. I can feel Rogers breath hitch under my knee as he realizes that Sam is having to talk me down.
Without responding I release the men. Barnes reaching his hands out to stop his fall sighing in relief when my knife is hidden back up my sleeve and into its sheath. Rogers gets up off the floor and holds a hand out to Barnes. Barnes takes it, both staring at me in a mix of awe and fear at me.
Sam opens his office door holds it for me. Following him in I enter and watch as the door is shut on two men staring at me.
“Please, sit down, make yourself comfortable. Would you like anything to drink? I have water, tea, and apple juice,” he says. I know he is trying to distract me or snap me out of this weird mental state I seem to have found myself in.
“I am fine, I ate before I came. Thank you though.” I reply, sitting gracefully in an armchair with a view of the door and anywhere Sam would be in the room.
“Very well. Why don’t we start with why you attacked Steve and Bucky?” He says sitting on the couch in front of me.
“I was nervous about our appointment. Aside from last night, I had never spoken to you nor had I asked Shuri and Natasha their opinions of the matter. I hadn’t told them many of my feelings at all actually. The first time I let anyone know a semblance of what I was feeling was when I went off on Barnes and Rogers at dinner. While walking here the walls felt like they were suffocating me and closing in on all sides. I had been standing in front of your office door for several minutes unable to knock and see if you were there. I had been paralyzed with fear. A woman in my village always said that there were four ways of dealing with fear…Fight, Flight, Cowering, and Copulation. I have always cowered in the face of fear. When Rogers laughed behind me My body reacted in the way Natasha and Shuri had trained it to. I stopped thinking and my body fought to protect me. It was as simple as muscle memory. When Barnes tried to grab my neck, again I just reacted. My brain wasn’t thinking, my body just fought to subdue my attackers and either get them to leave me alone or hurt them enough not to chase after me if I ran. However, due to my previous mental state, I was unable to make such a decision and thus just held them there. I assume I disassociated, but I am not sure. I have only been researching mental health for a couple of weeks now.” I say, finally forcing my body to relax and bringing myself back to the forefront of my mind.
“That is understandable. From what I could tell it did seem like you were disassociating or at the very least hiding behind a mask of indifference. The fact that there is muscle memory to protect you is a good thing, I won’t argue that. Let’s talk about why you were nervous about our meeting.”
“For one, I have never actually met you. There was no proper introduction, no polite nods of heads in hallways and you are always with them. Plus you helped kidnap me. There are many reasons for which I could be scared of meeting you. I couldn’t trust you. I don’t trust you outside of what I know your oath requires of you. I don’t trust you not to throw me to the Dumbbutt twins hanging outside your door as soon as we are done here. I don’t trust you not to try to use these sessions to talk them up and try to get me to approach them. I don’t trust you to actually help me get into a better mental state rather than leaving me emotionally and mentally weakened so that the Dumbbutts can use that as a way to get me to trust them. In short, I don’t trust you, I have been given no reason to. However, I also recognize that you are the only person with enough previous knowledge in order to help me put my brain and emotions to rights.”
He thinks for a moment, I know he is digesting what I have said and thinking about his response very carefully. “I can understand your reasoning behind the nervousness. I know that words are not enough for you to put your trust in and that I am sure both Shuri and Natasha have proven themselves by actions to earn what trust they have. I would like to think that in time I will earn your trust, but I am willing to admit that you may never trust me, just as you may never trust any of us.”
“You stole me. I was content, not happy mind you, but content. I knew my place and what I had to do to survive. I did survive. I survived rape and abuse and harassment. I survived being a four-year-old left alone with no family in a village where smallpox breaks out every couple of years, where the flu kills people, where polio is a real and rational fear. I survived men in my village trying to force me into a marriage, trying to make me into a servant, and trying to just force themselves upon me. I was a survivor and had the grudging respect of my people. They may not have liked me but at least they left me alone. I hunted for my food and cooked for myself. I needed no one and no one needed me. You stole that. You and those two Dumbbutts and Natasha stole my life from me. My independence from me. I rely on Shuri for clothing and a place to stay. I rely on M’Jala to show me around the castle. I now have to rely on you to help fix what you helped to cause. I never asked to be here. I was never asked if I wanted to be here. This modern world says that they respect all people the same but when it came down to it you four went Neanderthal in order to give two of them a soulmate. Look how that turned out, They haven’t spoken a word to me and I held a knife to their throats.” By the end, I am yelling. Tears dripping down my face as I finally put into words half of what had been running around in my mind.
I continue, having taken a second to breathe, “I am terrified. I am terrified that I will like them. I am terrified that they will decide I am not for them. I am terrified that they won’t care if I want or love them but that they will take what they want. The stole me, what’s to say that they won’t take my body without my consent. What's to say that they don’t already regret not leaving me in that village to die of disease and malnutrition. More than all of that, I am terrified that I’ll go back. That I will be forced to have to run away and go back to my village. I am so scared that this new modern world I have been introduced to, will disappear. That when they don’t want me anymore, when I am too much trouble, I will be put back in cuffs, back in a car, and back to my people. I didn’t ask for this but I adapted very well, I learned an entirely new language in less than a week and can speak it with more proficiency than most college-educated adults. I can discuss the undertones of Shakespeare in children literature and entertainment. I have watched television and moves and learned about cultural trends like memes and vines. I can explain colour theory in commercials. I am terrified that this new knowledge that I have been given will disappear, but more than that, I am afraid I am losing myself the more I learn.
“My religion is based upon myths that recently have turned out to be true. I have learned so many things about so many events and people and places, that I can’t help but wonder, who am I. I am no longer the scared girl from the village in a big new world. I am no longer the devotee of Frigga. No longer do I offer her half of my meal or prayers. I am losing myself to this world around me and I am scared that the girl who was their soulmate is no longer me. I am so different than who I was a month ago, two weeks ago even. I enjoy pranks where before they would have gotten me flogged in the square. I enjoy leisure time where before I could not afford to take a day off or an hour off if I wanted to eat or have a place to sleep. I enjoy technology and faster ways of doing things that would take days, where before the rest of the world seemed so odd and wrong. Now I am odd and wrong. I am no longer me.”
He ponders for a long moment before finally speaking, “We did steal you, we took you from all that you have known. We were wrong to do so and for that I am sorry. I cannot imagine what you had thought while bound in the car as we crossed the continents, and I am sorry. I am sorry that we did not think long enough to consider an alternative. I am sorry that we did not ask you, that we did not consider how you would take all of this. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that can take back all of the pain and suffering we have caused you. I wish there was but there isn’t, and for that, I am sorry too. I know that sorry isn’t good enough for what you are going through. The fears you have are justified because we have given you no alternative way to think. There are better ways of going about what we did and we all should have known that. There is nothing that I can say to make this better. Most of what you have described to me only time will heal. Time and us proving that trust is something that we are worthy of.
“As for the Dumbbutts I believe you called them, they have to account for what they have done. From stealing you to making you feel unworthy and mocking you they need to make it right. How they will do that I don’t know. Let me ask you this, what do you want to happen about them?”
I pause. I had never thought about that. What do I want from them? “I have never thought of that before,” I say, “but now thinking about it, I want them to apologize for mocking me when the reason I was faced to do any of it was because of them. I want them to realize that their actions have consequences. I want them to say my words. I want them to make me want to try to have a relationship with them. The fates chose them for me, whether I believe in my religion or not, they were chosen for me. My words are etched across their skin marking them as mine. I am marked as theirs. There must be something that makes us compatible. Something that is redeemable about them. I want to not have been stolen for no reason, and you can tell them that.”
“Really?” He asks looking surprised, “You want me to tell them that you want them to speak with you, to get to know you?”
“Yes, I want to know if there is something there, or if I am nothing but a trophy to be kept in a castle and never touched.”
“I will tell them. Shall we meet again tomorrow?” He asks looking hopeful.
“Sure, but come over for dinner tonight in the lab, I making lasagna, and we are planning dumb and dumber’s demise.”
“I’ll be there, anything I should bring?”
“Just yourself, but if you want to bring dessert we wouldn’t be opposed. I can’t make desserts, and the other two are awful anywhere near a kitchen unless its preparing ingredients, and even then only with supervision.”
Sam laughs. It is a loud but soothing sound as if just his laughter could brighten any room.
“I’ll see you at six then,” he opens the door for me and the wonder twins quickly rise from the floor.
I wave goodbye to Sam and ignore the two others as I make my way down to the lab quite ready to see what dinner brought to the scheme.