Forbidden | Carol Danvers

Chapter 8: First Time High

23 years ago

I was walking with my mother in the crowd that had gathered on the market. 

The annual harvest market was organized every spring and every town had one. Our market was small, but that didn't stop every inhabitant of our town to try and get the best fresh fruits.

The weather was amazing today. The sun stood high in the sky and everyone was wearing colorful dresses. My mother had her straw hat on again. She clutched my hand tightly, not wanting to lose me here. In her other, she had a little basket which held our purchased products. So far, we had found some juicy pink grapes, yellow grapefruit and red banana's. 

But my mother still wanted to find some delicious purple apples. When ripe, they had almost the same color as our hair. 

I had asked her once why everyone on Atera had different hair and eye colors. She said they were the result of the mutations that gave us our powers. Children sometimes got the hair color from one of their parents, but not always. It was totally random. 

I loved how different it made everyone look. Blue, green, yellow, red, pink. Everyone looked different but beautiful. The same applied to everyone's eyes. They were all sorts of different colors and they would normally match the hair, but every once in a while, a baby was born with different eyes than their hair.

I was not one of those lucky ones. I had my mother's purple color, a rare color. People say it originally belonged to the first mutant and first queen of Atera, but I never saw myself as royalty. I was just me, Aayala.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now

Another one and a half years passed where I didn't see her again. You have to understand that HQ is a huge building. It was a whole city in itself. It took almost half an hour to cross the building from left to right so if you wanted to avoid people, you could.  

A perfect place for me. 

She was always on my mind however, even if I didn't see her. It was easy to ignore her lingering presence when I was working, but whenever I was alone, she would always pop back up. I didn't know how to react to my feelings, never having felt such strong ones for a person before. So I turned to what I knew best: anger.

I was angry at her for making me feel this way, for messing with my head. Somewhere I knew my anger towards her wasn't justifiable. It was just as much my fault as it was hers. I let her in, so maybe I was more angry with myself.

This is what went through my head whilst being alone, so I made sure I was never alone or always had some sort of distraction. I started drinking alcohol, something I normally never did. Not so much that I was drunk every night, just enough to take the edge off a little so I could sleep better. I took sleeping tabs every night too. However, I always woke up tired. 

The other Commanders threw worried glances my way and I was asked a lot if I was feeling okay. I always answered that I was just tired and didn't sleep well. After a while, they stopped asking. I did my job perfectly, so they had no reason to doubt me. 

I missed my parents more than ever, wanting someone to talk to about everything. I wanted some trustworthy advice from my father. He always knew the right words to say. But I couldn't talk with anyone about this. I didn't trust anyone and I knew they would report what I would tell them to the Intelligence. I would lose my job and that was the only thing keeping me going right now.