riverviewlogs | For all the wrongs that you defend [closed-ish]

[He decides to wait until their next meet-up for running and sparring to talk to her about the document pages he had received. The fact that he doesn't know where they came from or who sent them doesn't sit right with him. But someone had wanted him to see them. While reading through he had begun to suspect who the 'asset' was they were speaking of. After all, it's hard to escape the things about her appearance that resemble Natasha. He'd even seen it during their sparring matches, the way her movements and attacks would be so similar to his teammate's. And then he'd been given a name and what he thought had become a reality.

There are other widows besides Natasha. Something SHIELD must have been keeping very quiet about. But Coulson had known. And Natasha. Fury, definitely. His first thought had been to reach out to Natasha, after all, despite the subject matter, these are her documents. But something Ava had said to him when they met had stopped him. Something about him and the others not remembering her. Initially he had thought she must come from a different universe, but now he's not so sure. Either way, he determined it would be best to get answers straight from the source.

He stands in their usual meeting spot, outside of the community housing, with two thermoses of freshly brewed coffee, one of which he hands over to her when she arrives.]

I received something about a day ago that I think might interest you. [He watches her closely.] About the Red Widow. [The name had stood out to him because of her former username. It must mean something to her.]

[Ava doesn't know about the files, so she's just expecting an early morning run and one of their sparring matches afterwards. She's missed it, the routine, having someone to practice with, to throw herself against, and not worry too much about if they can take it. He doesn't use his shield, and she doesn't use her powers, it's just strength against agility, the way that he pushes her hard enough to make her grin. And more and more that's something that she needs in her life.

She smiles, a wave as she approaches, sees him waiting outside and she comes to a stop just in front of him. He hands her a thermos of coffee which she steals a drink of. She's always liked coffee, even if her body burns off the caffeine too quickly, there's that momentary feeling of it. And part of it is just the ritual, the fact that she'd grown up on the instant coffee packets that came with MREs, and that every soup kitchen in Brooklyn had a station with carafes of black coffee and packets of sugar and powdered creamer.

Coffee was good on cold nights; kept your hands warm. Almost like comfort food. At that name she tenses a little, a sharpening of her blue eyes as she looks up at him, recapping the thermos and there's a slight sigh. He knows enough to ask the question, and she smiles a little wryly.] That's me. It was... one of my codenames with SHIELD.

[There's a pause and she lifts an eyebrow.] I came up with it when I was a kid. Based on Natasha, of course. But I wanted to be different than her. I wanted to be a hero. I had all these American history lessons, origins of SHIELD, and apparently there had been this guy back in WW2 that seemed to want to... protect people. I wanted to be that. Not an agent or a soldier, but someone that did the right thing.

[There's a curl of her lips as she looks at him for a moment. Gee, wonder who she's talking about? But then her expression turns to shadows and she frowns, nervous, trying not to fidget. She hadn't always managed it, even if she tries. And sometimes there were casualties.] What did you find?

[He hadn't known what to expect by approaching her so openly. They had sparred together several times, enough that he had felt like he knew her pretty well. Until he'd seen the pages. The pages have made him second guess things, like why she had never told him herself that she had been trained to be another Natasha. That she had been a part of SHIELD too. He'd been hoping that she would trust him enough to give him the truth, but he hadn't been certain. But apparently, he didn't have to worry.]

How young did they recruit you? [He has never questioned Natasha much about her past, but he's gleamed enough to know that it hadn't been pretty. And the idea that SHIELD would have tried training Ava in the same way makes his stomach lurch.

The thinly veiled compliment, while sweet, is not enough to distract him from the rest of it. He's honored to be someone's inspiration, but that's not why he had enlisted.]

Would you like to see for yourself?

[Ava might have a connection to Natasha that was hard to explain to most people, but she didn't have that taste for deception. That way that ambiguity and misdirection were as easy and necessary as breathing. She understood it, but that wasn't her.

At the question she sighs, shrugs her shoulders.] My parents were Soviet scientists. It's complicated, a little. [She lets that hang for a moment as she tries to figure out how to phrase it. She looks around, checks for anyone watching, people listening, even this early in the morning and she sighs.]

I guess I was sort of born for it. I was six when they put me into the program, then when I was nine Nat showed up, blew things up and pulled me out. I got handed over to STRIKE and I spent the next five years in a bunker in Washington, DC where they trained me. Ran away to Brooklyn when I was fourteen. A few years later the Chitauri Invasion happened. Eventually things got messy and Natasha found me and talked me into going to the SHIELD Academy.

[There's a few points in there that she buries by not resting on it, but one is sharper than the others. A bunker in Washington, DC. She doesn't lie, but there are some stories that are hard to tell unless they're necessary. And she feels a little too exposed out here to tell that one.

She sighs and nods, looks up at him with a sideways smile.] Sure, probably not a bad idea. If you want to know something-- you can ask.

[With Pierce and everything else, there's just a lot that's been going on. And it makes it hard to volunteer pieces of herself.]

[The connection between her parents being scientists and her being "born for it" doesn't slip his notice. But there's no good way to ask someone if their parents had experimented on them to turn them into a child spy. The fact that this is where his mind immediately jumps to makes him a little sick, but he's seen first hand how dangerous and unnerving the Soviet science is. And that's leaving HYDRA and their sick experiments out.

But other details of her story catch his notice and he tries to put the pieces together. Like the bunker in Washington, DC. And the fact that she'd been given over to STRIKE for training. From her story, she'd already been years gone from DC before he re-located there. ]

The person responsible for your training...was it Brock Rumlow?

[The papers where inside, Steve not trusting enough to carry something so important on his person. But he has another reason for wanting to have this conversation inside. Less of an audience for one. And the fact that his space is the only space he can guarantee privacy.]

Let's carry this over inside then. [He moves to the door of the Community Housing building and pulls it open, holding it for her.]

[Steve doesn't bother asking the nice questions, and she nods, looking at him as her lips thin.]

Not exclusively. But he was one of them, yeah.

[There are questions about her story she doesn't know the entirety of, and most people seem to manage to not ask the questions that make those holes visible, but Steve's already edging toward that point. How the Soviet and SHIELD parts of her story connect. He'd done it last time, too. Asking about the way emotions worked for her and Nat.]

Probably a good idea.

[She smiles a little thinly, stepping through the door as he holds it open, and stepping inside. She lets him mostly lead the way, but she does know where he stays. She keeps tabs on everyone she knows, mostly out of concern.]

And the others?

[Rumlow was far from the only HYDRA double agent working from within SHIELD. He likely wasn't even the only one within STRIKE. But Rumlow had been the most prominent. And if he'd had his sights on Ava to join him...that didn't bode well.

He waits until they've entered the first apartment, leading the way to his own room, before he speaks again. He closes the door behind them, as he couldn't be sure which of his roommates were still around, and takes a seat at his desk, spinning the chair around so he's facing the rest of the room. He motions for her to take a seat at the foot of the bed before opening a desk drawer and pulling several pages out. These he offers to her.]

How did you escape? [He can count on one hand the number of people he knows that can successfully evade SHIELD custody. Himself included.]

[She sighs softly, looks at him a little sideways, waiting until he leads the way into the apartment, into his room. She sits on the foot of the bed, taking the pages from him and softly flipping through them, her expression curling into a frown.]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they were all HYDRA.

[Which she assumes is the question he was actually asking. She quiets for a moment, then looks up at him a tilt of her head as he asks how she escaped.]

They were training me, I still don't quite know what for. But I had access to all sorts of SHIELD spytech. My first couple attempts didn't go well, but I was able to figure out what security measures they had, so I used their own toys against them. Then when they tried to send me back when I was 17, I escaped by punching my way out from the 11th floor of the Triskelion.

[There's a wry look there, a twitch of her lips, but then her face settles into something sad and quiet, and she doesn't quite meet his eyes. It's a dangerous topic, but it's probably better to tell him than not.] --I saw him once, when they had me there. Bucky. But I didn't know who he was, not back then.

[He stiffens at the mention of HYDRA, a reaction that he can't quite control. Their shadow has enveloped him and followed him into the present. Hell, they've even followed him here in the form of Pierce. Just when he thinks it's over. Cut off one head and two more take its place. Right.]

Can't say I'm surprised. Do you think they were behind your rescue?

[Or they could have seen her as an asset once Natasha had brought her into SHIELD's custody and maneuvered her into their grasp. Either way doesn't really matter, it all comes down to the same thing.]

They wanted a Widow of their own.

[Not quite a question. He's pretty sure of the answer already. For all the bad she's done in the past Natasha wouldn't be turned easily. Her loyalty is to Nick Fury.]

Did you now? [There's a tug on his lips as his otherwise serious expression warms up with a bit of humor. He can tell she's a fighter. He knew when they had first met, even before their first sparring match. And clever too.

But the amusement fades at the mention of Bucky, his lips pressing together in a firm line. His gaze drops from hers.] When he was in stasis?

Yeah. They wanted to put me and Natasha together. Someone with enough pull in SHIELD to recommend agents to Fury, and with deep contacts in Soviet Military experiments sent them to get me and made sure Natasha was only lead agent, with STRIKE on-site mostly for cleanup.

[And then Steve says it- that Hydra wanted a Widow of their own, and all she can do is sigh and nod.]

Yeah.

[It's nothing she's ever talked about with anyone before, because it's not something she likes to think about. What sort of person would they have made out of her in the next five years? Would she have been there when the helicarriers came down if she hadn't run?

She flashes him a smile, at that question, the touch of humor. It hadn't been humorous at the time, it'd been desperate, but there were bits of it in hindsight.] Stripped their assault rifles and left them in a pile by the front door.

[She's a fighter. She has pieces of Natasha, but she's not a copy of her. Natasha would have used stealth, maybe threatened someone, maybe used the comms to fake an emergency somewhere else. Ava just hit things and left piles of unconscious SHIELD agents like breadcrumbs. But then there's the subject of Bucky, and she quiets.]

Not quite.

[Her voice is quiet, hushed, but it wavers.] They made me-- He was just back from a mission, I guess. I'd tried to run a couple days earlier. They made me watch what they did to him. I guess they wanted me to know- what they could make out of me. I didn't know who he was until later, and no one would tell me what happened to him after that.

[He nods, not particularly surprised by the details. Now that he has most of the pieces, it's easy to put things together. Seeking confirmation just makes it more real. But on the subject of Natasha...]

Have you ever spoken to Natasha about any of this? Here?

[He has a feeling he could guess the correct answer to that as well, but he wants to hear it from her.

Stripping the assault rifles, now that's not a very elegant plan. Or a very stealthy one. But it makes him grin because it sounds close to what he would do. Strip the weapons, hit the targets. Rinse and repeat. He's never had much patience for anything more complicated than that.]

I'm sure they didn't even know what hit them.

[And that...he's not expecting. But he should have. In fact he wouldn't have even expected HYDRA to warn her of the brainwashing, but to force it on her eventually. And why didn't they once they learned she was trying to escape? Did they really think they could bring her up to be a loyal agent by taking advantage of her youth?

His eyes fall closed, teeth gritted together against the images his mind tries to supply him of Bucky being strapped down and in so much pain.]

Did they....ever try to do that to you?

No, but I haven't talked to her much. We ran into each other when there was a fire here, and I think she ended up in my memories once. But the last time I talked to her was close to six months ago.

[He's right, but part of it isn't just a discomfort with the subject but just that she doesn't see her much.] I've talked to the other Natasha a bit more, but it's still- hard.

[Everyone expected her to be like Natasha, but she wasn't. She understood the reasons behind why Natasha worked the way that she did, the situational awareness, the battlemath, the ability to turn a situation into numbers and angles and body position. But Ava and Natasha do very different things with that information. Which is to say that Ava generally uses stealth as a means to an end: sneak in and then hit them in the face. She didn't have the temperament. She was, in the end, someone else.

She quiets, lets him process her words, watches him like she's not entirely sure of how he'll react. At his question, she stills and her lips thin. She nods, looks off to the side like it's hard to own it, to admit to it.]

I don't know how many times. They'd been- They lied, told me that they'd saved me from the Russian Mafia. There were specific things they didn't want me to remember. The Red Room, the experiments.

[Six months. That's a long time to be out of touch with someone trapped with you inside the confines of the Quarantine. Unless you're actively avoiding someone. But who would be avoiding who? He's not sure. But there's also the fact that he's been here for almost a month and a half and he hasn't heard a word from Natasha. He's thought about reaching out...but her silence has made him hesitate.

But still. He knows a bit about sharing a history with someone that they don't remember. How hard it is at times.]

Ended up in your memories? [He pauses, looking bemused. Is this more weird Quarantine stuff?]

But you remember them now?

[The question comes after a long pause. He knows from Bucky's situation that the mind control is limited as far as wiping memories goes. With enough time and distance, pieces will start to come back. It's only a matter of when.]

[After receiving the document, Steve goes looking for Ava. He knows she's already on edge and doesn't want to push her too much, but this is directly concerning her and she has a right to know about it. He searches the places he's used to finding her, approaching cautiously so he doesn't look too overbearing. He's at least aware at this point how he can appear.]

Ava. Can I talk to you?

[With a real question and everything.]

Of course.

[It's an easy answer, from the redhead standing on the roof, leaning against the railing. Her sketchpad is with her, but she'd set it aside a while ago; she couldn't focus. Her head was all fuzzy and that just wasn't conducive to drawing these days. She could break down structures, people, movement into shapes and lines and gestures, but focusing on a single thing was hard when she felt like this.

So she's honestly almost relieved at the sound of his voice, lips curling into a not-quite smile. She rubs her bare arms more out of nerves than anything, as she doesn't really get cold. If not for the weight to his tone, she might have cut him off, asked if they could spar instead.]

Is it the sort of talk that we can have while sparring?

[It's a valid question. She's just fidgety, has trouble sitting still, but also doesn't know what to do, and that's never sat well with her. She wants a name or a place or a plan, and she doesn't have anything, and that just makes her irritable.]

Of course.

[Sparring is something to concentrate on. It's a way, perhaps, they can both mitigate that oppressive feeling hanging over them. The paranoia and threat that Ava must be feeling and the awkward realization of truth Steve is carrying with him now that he knows about it. With sparring, at least they can focus on something physical. A connection between them that they can both understand when the words fail.

He steps up, still dressed in his plain clothes, letting himself fall into stance for her.]

Something happened recently. I don't want to get too personal with you, but I think this is important. And I want you to know you can trust me.

[It didn't take him long to work out what this was, found in one of his bolt holes, and he can only assume that Ava has left it for him. He doesn't understand why, it seems a risk to leave a piece of her past on display, a bigger risk than he thinks she would take now.

But if she didn't leave it, then who? Pierce? Perhaps.

Either way, he needs to get in contact with her, so he leaves her a note somewhere that she's sure to be in the next few days. It's in Russian and it just says FIND ME.]

[Ava has a very short list of people, and when it came to those that would leave her vague notes in Russian, she knew just who was looking for her. She goes after him all but immediately.

She expects he'll actually be the one to approach her, but she gives him the opportunity to do so. She has tried to keep track of him, as much as she can, anyway. A couple of his old boltholes, the general areas where he seems to lurk.

She's worried. The fact that he's actually contacting her? That doesn't seem like a good thing. But she tries to not make any assumptions until she knows more.]

[He watches when he sees her, just to make absolutely certain that she's alone and there's nobody else in the vicinity, before he steps into view with a page held out in front of him.]

You didn't send me this.

[It's not a question.

Even though this is about her, he's come to the conclusion that she's too private and too cautious to send this stuff through the mail even if she wanted him to know.]

No, I didn't.

[There's a chill to her voice, tight-lipped and a little uncomfortable, but not shocked. Not surprised as she looks at the paper that he holds out to her. She sighs, shakes her head. It's getting to her in a way she doesn't really know how to explain. They're all pages she'd never seen before, and there's always this fear that there's going to be something there that she can't explain, because she's never known the whole story.

Bucky is honestly the easiest of all of them so far. She'd offered to tell him her story once, and she'd meant it. The discomfort comes not from what he knows, but from not being allowed to tell it. Not being allowed to give it to him in her own way. This is all happening without her consent.]

What-- Will you show me?

It's yours, you have the right to it.

[He'll hand it off to her if she wants to take it. He won't pretend that he didn't read it, even if it was a violation. She'd probably understand, knowledge is power even to those you trust, if she found information on the Winter Soldier then she'd probably read it even before she gave it to him.]

I found it in one of my safe houses.

[Was it Pierce, is the implied question there.]

[She takes it carefully, not like she wants to take the knowledge from him, like this is something she wishes she could hide from the light of day. Not from him, at least. Her eyes slide over the cover page and her frown deepens.]

It's from my SHIELD file.

[SHIELD file, HYDRA records. She's honestly not quite sure where the difference is, but even looking at the cover page she knows what this is.]

I don't know who's doing this. [But her tone says that she's considered that same point, and the answer is a heavily weighted possibility. There are too many options for why Pierce could be doing this: prove he can get to her, press that point of how unsure she is of her own story, give people pieces she would have to answer for, unearth old stories she doesn't want to tell. With Bucky those points are less jagged.]

[He can't imagine what he'd do if the Winter Soldier files found themselves public record... well, actually he can, considering that Romanoff had made all HYDRA files public before he fled. But that's not here, where he can't flee effectively or hide from what he is.]

It might be him.

[The petty manipulation seems right up his alley, but there are problems with that theory too.]

But I don't know. If he knew where to find me to leave this, he'd have handed it to me in person to prove that he could. And why leave it for me? Seems pointless.

I've wondered if it might be.

[She admits, when Bucky puts the suggestion on the air. Pierce could do something like this, he's cruel enough for it. But there are doubts, too. Reasons why it's not perfect. She nods as Bucky mentions them, and her lips thin.

She doesn't know why, but she's not fully sure just what sort of pages are out there, either.]

Is there anything-- I offered to tell you my story before. So if you have questions.

[Her wording is rough, but making the offer itself is easier for him than with anyone else. She's fairly sure he wont push, and that makes it safer.]

I don't mind.

I don't have questions.

[That's not entirely true, he has questions about everyone, but he it's true enough to make his point.]

Tell me things if you want to, don't if you don't.

[That's the safest way for it to be between them, an open exchange but always on their own terms, it's the only way for them to ever build trust.]

[It is safer, but it's harder. Her life is such a mess that it's all tied together, makes it hard to know where to start, what to tell. Especially with him, where he probably understands the horror and the danger better than most people.]

We were more or less supposed to be human harddrives. Puppets designed to access classified information. My parents made the tech, and I was one of the first test subjects. It's not something I was ever in control of and the link was only ever with Natasha. It doesn't even seem to work here, anyway.

[There's an emphasis there, like she wants him to know that it's not something that could affect him. She's dangerous but not because of that.]

[How in the hell would that even work, unless they also had access to Romanoff? Some kind of bizarre psychic technology is really not something he wants to be dealing with, so it's a relief that it doesn't work here.]

Does she know?

[The one here, he means.]

I've only met her once, and that was about six months ago, during the fire. I think she saw some of my memories once, but it wasn't- that.

[Which is a no, but she feels the need to make the point that it's not a conversation she's unwilling to have, albeit very carefully. She just doesn't really have any contact with her.]

I've talked to the other one a little but more, but still-

[She shrugs. It's hard for her to actually go looking for Nat, either of them. There's so much history and emotion and bitterness. Things had been getting better, but then things had gone to hell, and Ava ran, because there was nothing to fight, and running was safe.

She knows Bucky better than she does Nat in this place.]

[He can understand wanting to run from the person you actually have history with, even if they're supposedly on the side of the good guys. Hell, he's run from Steve more times than he wants to count, and he keeps doing it now even if he's trying to get a bit better about it.]

You should talk to her.

[Kind of hypocritical, maybe, but it's still the right thing to do.]

Running only helps temporarily. Trust me.

I know. I just-- she gets to choose here, and she didn't back home. She gets to choose if she wants to know me, if that whole messy story is something that matters. I don't want to force that on her. I wont lie to her, I'll tell her if she asks, but- I just don't want to force my way into her life. It wasn't like it worked out so well the first time.

[Hypocritical, maybe. She had no real problem leaning on Bucky, after all. But it was different. Things were always more complicated with Natasha. And part of her can't help blaming herself for some of Natasha's pain.]

Maybe it's selfish.

[She flips through the pages because perversely that seems easier. But that's chilling too, hard to read the way they talk about it all like something clinical and routine.]

[He shrugs, he doesn't have the right to judge if that's a selfish stance or not, not when he doesn't know the whole story.

Besides, she's right, it's all about choice. Romanoff's choice to be involved or not, and Ava's choice whether she wants to bring all that up to someone who might not even remember what she's talking about.]

I guess that makes sense.

[Obviously it makes sense, but that's just his bland way of telling her that he won't push the issue any more. He understands that it's her choice and he'll respect that.]

[It's not hard to figure out who the pages pertain to, and for a few days, Sam keeps quiet about them. Not that he'd tell anyone else anyway; Ava's secrets are her own to keep. But he's not sure whether to bring it up to Ava. In the end, it's finding out about Pierce that makes him decide - if nothing else, he needs to give the papers back to her, so she can do what she wants with them. So he texts her:]

I got something of yours that you might want back. Drop by my house later?

Yeah. Gimme about an hour.

[After Steve she has a sinking suspicion of just what this might be in regards to, but she doesn't run from it, stubborn as she is. She knocks on his door, and she brought coffee -- remembered his order from the time before, and she offers the sub with a slightly sheepish smile.]

So. What is it?

[She manages to look rather unbothered, but there's a slight tension in her shoulders, and her hands are curled loosely, like she almost wishes there was something she could punch.]

I do like presents.

[Ava goes on patrols at night, sometimes. It's a mix of an honest protective urge, a desire to do what she can for others, as well as a desire to just do something that stews in her body more often than not lately. Help the people that she can even if it's just from being mugged as they walk home late at night.

Her first mission her, she wore a superhero costume, emblem on her chest and everything, but what she wears now is much less overt. Mostly just a white zip-up bodysuit with a hood, a utility belt and red boots. Easy to spot, identifiable, but it saved her from the way everyone looked at her. Like she wasn't worth it, like she didn't deserve it. Part of what pushes her out here is the files that people have been getting. This gives her some space, some time by herself to think, to feel-- and the possibility of a target that she can hit. Which is maybe a bad idea, but it's cathartic.

For the moment, she's just standing on the edge of an apartment building, watching for a few breaths, the slow scan of her eyes over the world below. She's graceful as she moves, deadly, fluid in motion. Stopped like this she's perfectly still save for how the wind rustles her hair. It takes her a bit to realize, dangerously close before she places that she's not alone- but her lips curling into a quiet smile is the only outward sign.]

I didn't know this rooftop was so popular.

For all the wrongs that you defend [closed-ish]

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For (616) Natasha