Ava Anatalya Orlova (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
krasnaya_vdova) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
riverviewlogs2018-04-04 12:15 pm
krasnaya_vdova) wrote in riverviewlogs2018-04-04 12:15 pm
When Everything Falls Apart [OPEN]
who: Ava and OPEN
what: She's back in Riverview
when: Early April
where: Around quarantine and the abandoned city
warnings: Possible suicide idealization in specific threads, will warn/update if needed.
I. For Bucky
[Ava doesn't move into the communal housing. She made that mistake once, and even if she wasn't worried about hurting people, she just can't handle being surrounded by so many people all the time. Not now. So instead, she settles into one of the SkyTram trains. It's easily defensible, given her powers. Mobile, and not yet tied to any of main lines she'd been working on repairing puts it far away from the flow of people; the fact that from the outside it still looks broken just adds to the. It's small but it's enough for what she needs.
She does wander into the City, though. She gets a sleeping bag, enough food for a few days, other odds and ends that aren't in the duffle bag she still keeps. She's almost back to her little bolthole, when she feels that sense of being watched. It's subtle, hard to catch, but if anything, Ava's even more on-edge than before.]
Are you mad at me?
[Her voice is soft, but if it's who she thinks it is, she knows that he'll be able to catch it.]
II. Closed to MCU Steve
[She doesn't quite know how to approach him, but she wants to. Maybe even needs to, really. Someone that hadn't been caught up in the mess of everything that went down in the world the portal had brought her to. Someone that still feels safe, and okay. She could text him, like she has a few other people, but that seems a little... impersonal. So instead, one morning before dawn, she finds her way to the route they used to run in the mornings, and waits to see if he shows. If not, she'll eventually go knock on his door, quiet, subdued, sharper around the edges.
But either way, she does smile when she sees him. It's a small thing, a fragment of the warmth that used to be there. Things have happened, she's changed. But she's still glad to see him. Glad that he's still here.]
III. Open
[She might not be staying in the city, but she does come into the city with some regularity. She's working on the SkyTram lines under a dispensation from the Government, so she does swing by City Hall on occasion. She stops by the market here and there, since she prefers to not entirely live off of non-perishables. She does, however, avoid the festival pretty much completely, turning down any offer of flowers, and doing her best to avoid the parties that stem out from it.
Ava swings by the same coffee shop she used to like, just after dawn. But she doesn't practice in the city anymore, keeps it mostly to working with Loki or out in clearings outside the the city. The flooding isn't optimal, but she's light, sometimes moves through the trees, shadows people that seem like they could maybe use someone to keep an eye on them.
She does, however, sometimes head into the city late at night. Dark clothes, keeping to the shadows. Not everyone in quarantine plays by the rules, and while Ava no longer sees herself as a hero, she still... wants to make a difference. Do something. It's an outlet, if nothing else. She doesn't really have a costume anymore; her white bodysuit feels wrong. Too attention-grabbing, too flashy. So she's just in something form-sitting; shades of grey with black boots.
Maybe you just catch a glimpse of the blue light, or maybe you're some unsuspecting civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time.]
IV. Previous CR
[And after a few days, once she can focus a bit better, when the world stops spinning, and this feels a bit more real than it did at first. Like maybe she does get someplace where she can breathe, where the loneliness isn't quite so crushing, she reaches out to the people she knows that she hasn't run into already.
A text message, from the username avreya. The exact phrasing differs, but it's short, to the point: she's back. Sorry for leaving.]
V. Wildcard!
[Gimme whatever and I'll roll with it. I'm on Plurk at![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
natalia_vdova if you wanna plot something!]
what: She's back in Riverview
when: Early April
where: Around quarantine and the abandoned city
warnings: Possible suicide idealization in specific threads, will warn/update if needed.
I. For Bucky
[Ava doesn't move into the communal housing. She made that mistake once, and even if she wasn't worried about hurting people, she just can't handle being surrounded by so many people all the time. Not now. So instead, she settles into one of the SkyTram trains. It's easily defensible, given her powers. Mobile, and not yet tied to any of main lines she'd been working on repairing puts it far away from the flow of people; the fact that from the outside it still looks broken just adds to the. It's small but it's enough for what she needs.
She does wander into the City, though. She gets a sleeping bag, enough food for a few days, other odds and ends that aren't in the duffle bag she still keeps. She's almost back to her little bolthole, when she feels that sense of being watched. It's subtle, hard to catch, but if anything, Ava's even more on-edge than before.]
Are you mad at me?
[Her voice is soft, but if it's who she thinks it is, she knows that he'll be able to catch it.]
II. Closed to MCU Steve
[She doesn't quite know how to approach him, but she wants to. Maybe even needs to, really. Someone that hadn't been caught up in the mess of everything that went down in the world the portal had brought her to. Someone that still feels safe, and okay. She could text him, like she has a few other people, but that seems a little... impersonal. So instead, one morning before dawn, she finds her way to the route they used to run in the mornings, and waits to see if he shows. If not, she'll eventually go knock on his door, quiet, subdued, sharper around the edges.
But either way, she does smile when she sees him. It's a small thing, a fragment of the warmth that used to be there. Things have happened, she's changed. But she's still glad to see him. Glad that he's still here.]
III. Open
[She might not be staying in the city, but she does come into the city with some regularity. She's working on the SkyTram lines under a dispensation from the Government, so she does swing by City Hall on occasion. She stops by the market here and there, since she prefers to not entirely live off of non-perishables. She does, however, avoid the festival pretty much completely, turning down any offer of flowers, and doing her best to avoid the parties that stem out from it.
Ava swings by the same coffee shop she used to like, just after dawn. But she doesn't practice in the city anymore, keeps it mostly to working with Loki or out in clearings outside the the city. The flooding isn't optimal, but she's light, sometimes moves through the trees, shadows people that seem like they could maybe use someone to keep an eye on them.
She does, however, sometimes head into the city late at night. Dark clothes, keeping to the shadows. Not everyone in quarantine plays by the rules, and while Ava no longer sees herself as a hero, she still... wants to make a difference. Do something. It's an outlet, if nothing else. She doesn't really have a costume anymore; her white bodysuit feels wrong. Too attention-grabbing, too flashy. So she's just in something form-sitting; shades of grey with black boots.
Maybe you just catch a glimpse of the blue light, or maybe you're some unsuspecting civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time.]
IV. Previous CR
[And after a few days, once she can focus a bit better, when the world stops spinning, and this feels a bit more real than it did at first. Like maybe she does get someplace where she can breathe, where the loneliness isn't quite so crushing, she reaches out to the people she knows that she hasn't run into already.
A text message, from the username avreya. The exact phrasing differs, but it's short, to the point: she's back. Sorry for leaving.]
V. Wildcard!
[Gimme whatever and I'll roll with it. I'm on Plurk at
no subject
Before she left she would have been angry. Now, she's just-- It's different. She looks at him, even, still, quiet for a long moment as she lets his words hang in the air.]
When you talked to him, did he tell you why I left? Because he knew. Did he tell he about the tech?
[It's slightly calculated. Not manipulative; but she makes a snap judgement off what she knows, which at the moment is just that Pierce has clearly been misrepresenting her to Bucky. And in line with that, she imagines he probably skipped the part about brainwashing tech.
Saying he's lying felt too cheap, so instead she tries to prove it, as best as she can.]
no subject
[He's not stupid enough to have believed everything Pierce told him verbatim, he knows things will have been missed out or twisted, but the basic facts? Those he believes, because Pierce doesn't usually outright lie to him, it's what makes him so dangerous to talk to.]
But he told me you danced for him, and played chess with him, and visited him a lot just to talk.
[His voice is still very deliberately level, careful.]
Is that true?
no subject
It's a complicated question, and she doesn't answer yes or no because it would mean either confirming his fears or lying to him.]
I was alone practicing ballet when he showed up at the room in the studio I used. He tracked me down there and was- trying to pick me apart, I think. Get in my head. [There had been knives there; in the words between them, in her dance. Pierce was complicated for her in ways she didn't like to talk about. He was the villain, she knew this, couldn't forget it. But from the time she was nine until she was fourteen she'd been raised by STRIKE, and there were chinks in her armor, murky lines that Pierce was trying to get his hooks into, that he pushed at. She hadn't known what they were when she was a girl with a past she couldn't hold onto, instead clinging to the lies they told her about rescuing her from the Russian Mafia.
She's not angry that he believed Pierce because she knows how good he is at this. She knew that she'd given him more rope than she ever should have. But the idea that they were ever friends just isn't the truth, or at least not her truth.]
I was part of an experiment they called the OPUS project. There was a machine they used to link us, control us. The idea behind the project was to make distance irrelevant. It showed up here, and they handed it over to Prometheus Labs. I didn't-- I didn't know what to do. I was--
[There's a pause, she's trying to find the words, her eyes a little too bright, her breath coming fast.] --scared.
[These days, she hides her vulnerability deeper, that fear that if she touches it then every hurt she's suffered since will all come boiling out. But she manages to catch herself, to push it down.] I tried to stay away from people, from everyone. And the only person that reached out to me was Pierce. So yes, I took a chess board when I went to see if he was planning on ripping away who I am, and we played two games. We talked. And then I fried the machine. But he let me and I still don't understand why, and I'm still afraid there's something I missed.
[Her shoulders slump and she quiets, her gaze finally falling from him to the ground, blinking her eyes.] So, yes. It's true. And if you're mad at me for getting in over my head, letting him push me away from everyone, you're not wrong. But it wasn't like that.
no subject
That's not something he can forgive easily.]
Why didn't you come to me?
[He thought that he'd made it clear that even if he was hiding, he still cared about what happened to her. Perhaps he hadn't, perhaps this was a failing on his part too.]
You didn't even tell me that you were speaking to him. Him. And you know what he was, what he can do.
[He pauses a moment, breathing out steadily through his teeth to get his control back in place. He turns his back on her, voice hard.]
Forget it. Welcome back.
[And unless she stops him, he'll start to walk away.]
no subject
[Her voice is soft and quiet, but there's steel to it, too. Something sharper than she's ever been before, but more brittle.]
I told you about the first time I went to see him, and after he approached me at the ball. You told me to leave him alone, so I did my best. I told you I couldn't guarantee that he couldn't-- And that's the only reason I went to see him. Because if we were face to face I at least knew his finger wasn't on the trigger. You told me to make friends, get close to people, and I tried, but I'm not good at it. I don't really have anyone, and that's not what anything with Pierce was about, but I didn't know how to talk to people about it.
[Except him, clearly.] And when this all happened... Any attempt I made to reach out to you would have potentially put you at risk, depending on how the tech worked. And I would--
[Her voice cracks, like she's unused to talking this much, but there's also emotion there, closer to the surface, rougher and tempestuous.] I would never do that to you. I trusted that anything I knew you'd have ditched by then. But if I reached out to you? If Pierce was able to get to you because of me? I just couldn't risk it. So I risked myself instead. Maybe that was the wrong choice, but it was the only one I knew how to make.
[She turns to the side, dragging the back of her hand against her eyes, unable to modulate both everything that happened with Sana, and then the fact of feeling like she'd fucked up here despite her every best intention. Her shoulders slump and she takes a breath.] Don't go. Please.
[She won't force him to stay, but she wants him to. She has so little left now that the idea of losing him too- even if it was only this nebulous thing that might have almost been close to friendship once or twice- it hurts.]
no subject
He didn't ask to be protected.]
Yeah, it was the wrong choice.
[Perhaps that's harsh, but it's true. He barely trusts anyone and he had started to trust her, finding out she'd kept all of this from him is enough to shatter that trust.
He doesn't go, though.]
What do you want from me?
no subject
I know. Running was the wrong choice, too; I had a year to figure that all out.
[She sighs a little at the question, because it's hard. Harder to put words too, especially when that means acknowledging that it's selfish. That what she wants is probably something she doesn't deserve. She doesn't want to be alone, even if staying out here probably looks a lot like isolation.]
I just- I understand if you're mad at me, you have every right to be. I've lost so much. I just want a chance, I guess. I'm not even saying I deserve it, I know I don't.
[Ava's a lot sadder than she was when she left, a darkness that curls brighter, closer to the surface.]
no subject
But he's made some bad choices too, even if they aren't ones that have impacted her, and he knows what it's like to have thought you were acting for the best. Does she deserve another chance? Probably. Can he trust her enough not to go running back to Pierce? That's the one he's much less sure on.]
Another chance for what?
[To avoid him again and run to someone else?]
no subject
--To do better.
[She's not sure if it's the right answer or not. She can't really defend running to Pierce in anything aside from her state at the time. She'd been scared, and Pierce had the trigger, the power, so when he reached out to her she'd followed, even if she knew better. She'd felt so alone. If anything she feels even more alone now, but she's more aware of it, of the reasons why. And that makes it less dangerous. And there are people; Loki and Steve.
Maybe Bucky, too, if she hasn't entirely burned that bridge.]
no subject
But he nods all the same.]
Fine.
[Another chance, a way to repair a damaged bridge.]
Just give me time, a few days.
no subject
Take your time. Find me when you want to talk.
[She'll give him the space he needs, however long it takes. She knows he can find her, and given that she's planning on living in her abandoned tram car, it won't be too hard to track her down anyway.]
no subject
A small nod is all she'll get in response, his expression carefully neutral, before he continues trying to walk away.]