Façade

Charlie wondered why and how she got herself into this situation, all she was doing was walking her tired butt home from a long exhausting day, but the universe had other options for her. She continued to stare at the male who hid his face behind a red mask, their silence continued until a cold breeze blew over them. "Are you okay," the male asked flatly as if he was forced to; 'Obviously she's okay,' Charlie heard a groggy and tight voice in her head which freaked her out a bit, but she kept it cool or at least tried to. While keeping it ''cool", she continued to listen to this male's thoughts, out of all that wasn't about at least her appearance one stood out from all the rest, 'I wonder if she knows me.'

Charlie arched a brow, she scoffed as she rolled her eyes, she knew if she walked away without answering his question, he wouldn't leave her alone, so she made it easy on herself to respond. She just hoped he would go away, "I'm fine." Her eyes were on him like a hawk as her mind continued to go on and on about why and more why's.

'Ugh, I just wish he would go away and leave me alone.' She thought loudly in her head, "You want me to go away?' The male responded to her loud thought.

"What?"

"You said-" She cut him off immediately, "I didn't speak!" She was becoming defensive as her breathing hitched, her thoughts ringing loudly into her head as she blared out curses. Charlie watched the male strike a pose, him crossing his arms over his chest, looking to the side. She could tell what he was thinking because she could hear him think; his questions turning into simple realizations of why she became defensive so quickly. 'If she can-' Charlie walked away from the situation before he could even figure it out, figure her out.

***

When Charlie made it home, she huffed out a reassured sigh. Leaning on the back of her door, she closed her eyes for a solid minute, her mind hooked with curiosity of what the male or shall she'll call hero was about to unravel. After all these years from hiding from these heroes and their stupid untrusting organization, Charlie couldn't believe that she slipped and let her emotions get to her like that. It was risky to even talk to the hero and could barely create a whole conversation with him.

Heroes were something more of a cause and effect situation, for an example; you save people, you get praise, you continue to play hero, the pressure is on you. Charlie couldn't handle the pressure that came with becoming a hero or at least helping people, hell she couldn't even handle her mother's death or her powers even if she tried which made sense. There were days where heroes would even encourage people to get out there and help people, but like always people want an award for what came with helping out people, their fellow comrades. What was the price of that?

Charlie never looked back at her childhood memories or considered to ever think that she had a childhood. Growing up was hard for her, mostly because she didn't have a mother figure to take care of her, that was supposedly her mother's job or her big sister's job, well she didn't know because she couldn't tell. Both her sister and her mother acted the same, doing the same iconic things, but at least her big sister was still "there"; "there" meant she was at home shooting up in the living room with her friends before having an orgy with all her friends. Just thinking about those days made Charlie shiver in disgust. Such things must be forgotten and unforgiven, but to Charlie, it was at least the best of memories because she was left alone all by herself.

Not even picking up her feet, she removed herself from the door and trudged to her room. Kicking off her clothes and changing into something casual which was usually a tracksuit. Her tracksuit was the only thing she owned...kinda. Charlie stopped caring for the things that a normal human would care for which was mostly clothes, a roof over their head, and the biggest television that had to be on sale at Best Buy. After dressing herself in her casual, Charlie made her way out of her room which was pretty empty to her bed--bed meant that it was the living room couch. Charlie couldn't encourage herself to go back and sleep in her bedroom because it caused her nightmares, nightmares that seemed too real to tear apart to be an actual nightmare.

The couch or "bed" was decorated with a knitted quilt navy blanket. Charlie got it from her aunt last Christmas, saying it was her mother's. When Charlie got it, she wouldn't dare touch the damn thing until last Tuesday night. Last Tuesday night was like a breeze, a tiring pained agony breeze because it was the anniversary of her mother's death which was the last thing that Charlie needed. To be reminded of a woman who wasn't there, who lied and said she would be better for her, for Charlie. When the funeral occurred, Charlie resented it and never gone to it, she didn't even want to know where she was buried, but she found out anyway when her big sister came to visit her in juvenile detention, screaming her brains out towards the glass, pointing her sharp acrylic nail at Charlie asking the question their mother will always sweetly hiss at her for.

'When are you gonna grow the hell up?'

Charlie remembered her hiss loud and clear, but she didn't care at the time until it was that Tuesday. The breezy tiring Tuesday, she unconsciously decided to internally also randomly forgive her mother and stopped being stubborn for once in her life. She made a wistful yawn before plopping herself down on her bed, pulling the blanket from beneath her, she also pulled out her remote. Clicking on the power button, she turned on her television which was a small flat screen. Surprisingly her Aunt's cafe paid well for her, so she brought herself things to keep herself busy. Flipping channels, she stopped on channel 29, only static was on that channel, she didn't know why she stopped flipping when she always came across this channel, the static and the buzzing noise that came with it was always like it was sending some kind of message. After just seconds of staring at the buzzing static, Charlie flipped to another channel, the news channel.