[open]

[krasnaya_vdova]

who: Ava Orlova & Other People
what: Memories
when: Memshare Event
where: Dreamscapes
warnings: Emotions, shitty familial relationships, violence, Red Room type trauma, child murder, child torture, I'll update as needed.

[ooc: All memshares are dreamscapes unless your name is Natasha Romanoff. If we didn't plot something, feel free to tag-in and get something random, or PM me or hit me up at natalia_vdova for any and all plotting needs.]


For Tony

The darkness bleeds into familiar sounds, hushed voices almost drowned out by the soft drone of the engines of a departing quinjet. Ava watches her own memories, doesn't notice that she's not alone at first as three people approach what's clearly the SHIELD Triskelion. There's Ava' looking a little younger, but also a little pale, a bottle of water clutched deathly tight in one hand. There's a dark-haired boy walking next to her, holding her hand, and then there's a rather sour looking Natasha Romanoff. The similarity between Ava and Nat is more obvious when they're standing so close together. They approach the security door, and as it slides open, there's a familiar face: Tony's face. Briefcase in hand, three-piece suit that probably costs as much as a low-end car.

The boy stops dead in his tracks, wide-eyed as Ava stops too. "Is that--?" He asks, like he's seen a ghost. Or, you know, an Avenger.

Natasha just shrugs, a touch of a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. "Like I told you. I have friends in low places." Friends. That's Natasha's word for Tony.

"Agent Romanoff, what are you doing here? Or do you just happen to be stopping by to submit your proprietary plan for alternative energy subsidies, too?" He grins, teasing lightly.

"Not so much," Natasha says, crossing the distance and pulling him in for a brief but easy hug. "I was hoping you'd be here, actually."

"First Saturday of the month. Where else would I be?" Tony points out, a cock of his head to the side. "I thought you were off hunting bad guys in Bahrain?" It's friendly, the easy conversation of two people that keep in touch enough to know each others' schedules, including what part of the world she's in shooting at people.

"Turns out the bad guys are hunting me. Surprise." Natasha quips with an easy shrug as she pulls back a step. The two teens just watching quietly for the moment; the boy in shock and Ava's a little pale, like she's maybe not having the best day.


For Bucky (616)

Ava doesn't sleep easily, even now that she has her own room. Nightmares and memories, but tonight it feels different. She's there, watching her memories, like some kind of ghostly observer. Less visceral. The world fades into being, two teenagers in a room in the Triskelion; all grey walls, perfunctory bunk beds that seemed like they'd fit better in a prison, blue lights on the door lock. Ava's clearly younger, but only by a few years, maybe seventeen. The boy seems about the same age; short dark brown hair, brown eyes, broad shoulders. He looks at Ava like she puts oxygen in the room, though Ava seems distracted by something else, a tension as she moves. She lets go of his hand, pulling her backpack over her shoulder and getting ready to open the door, sparing a conspiratorial look back at him.

He nods, "You go left, I'll go right."

But Ava shakes her head. "I've got a better idea." She murmurs, opening the door. "Hey," she calls, getting the attention of the SHIELD agents patrolling near the door. She puts her hands up, a charming smile, brown eyes guileless. Just a girl, not a threat. "It's just me. Can I ask you for a favor?"

She holds up a roughed-up iPod, and manages to talk one of the agents into letting her use his comm to test the speaker, drawing him in when he reaches to retrieve it. It takes them a few seconds to put down the agents; Ava slams the door into his skull hard, though the sound thuds more than rings. She steps into the room as his partner charges, and the boy grabs him and slams his head into the frame of the bunkbed.

In a matter of seconds they've dragged the bodies out of immediate view, stolen the agents' earpieces, key cards, and sidearms, though the commlink the boy takes seems to be broken. It takes them twelve seconds after that to make it to the elevator. He's about to press the keycard to the panel, but Ava grabs his hand, touching a finger to her ear.

Instead, they slip down the hall to an alcove where the stairwell is; another two agents. Ava grins as she looks over at him, magnetic. "Now you take left, I'll take right."

Comments

[latrodectus]

"That's what your Natasha did— she saved you from this program. This Ivan." There are things it reminds Natasha of, of course, Recluse, for one, the aborted 2R scheme, several years back. She's been on a lot of missions for SHIELD since she first defected— and quite a few not for personal reasons. But never this, never an Ivan, never an Ava. She would remember if she had. Wouldn't she?

"The trouble with ghosts is that they don't really die." Everything in the shadow world grew back, no matter how many times you set fire to the roots. "I hope you stopped…"

But her voice drifts off as the landscape changes. It's Natasha's memory, now, of a man clad all in red, with a single white star on his chest. He is charging at another Natasha, with shorter hair— though this was many years ago, her face is still the same.

"Alexei," Natasha whispers.

He is wearing a mask. His face cannot be seen.

[krasnaya_vdova]

"It's complicated, but yes. She was the one that got me out of there." She's quiet for a moment, unsure what else to say. "I called her sestra, and she said I was just like her." Her words are soft, a little nostalgic, a little sad. It clearly hadn't been as easy as that. Like she'd said-- it was complicated.

There's something about how she talks about ghosts that almost sounds familiar. There's something she's about to ask, but then there's a man in red, a white star on his chest, Natasha with shorter hair, though she looks largely the same. That name on the air, and it sharpens her focus as she watches. Not her Alexei, but it doesn't make it matter less.

There's a tension that settles in her shoulders, that slow fascination.

[latrodectus]

The mask melts off— the Alexei underneath is cleanshaven, blonde, with hard but regular features.

Natasha runs toward him, "Is it true? Is it really you?"

The man takes her by the arms, grabbing the suitcase in her hand. "Of course it is, Natasha. Who else could it be?" Then something snaps.

"Alexei? The briefcase— the detonator? What are you?" He twists her hand.

Behind them, someone else speaks. "Good work, Dr. Kiev. The golem's grip crushed the briefcase detonator before it could explode. The microchip is ours."

"The Chilovyek Machina is not a golem comrade. Please do not demean a decade of Soviet cybernetic research with such supernatural euphemisms." And it suddenly becomes obvious— wires grow from around the Red Guardian's neck, now, like a puppet's strings. He's hunched over, silent. But only for the moment. The voice of the scientist continues, his face indistinct behind his glasses. "Project Red Guardian IV is finally complete. Using the bio-pattern of the original Red Guardian and the Matrix microchip, we have created the most powerful man-made construct in the world."

"'Tasha, I'm sorry," someone else stands behind her, a tall man with a thick Russian accent. He speaks English, and Natasha responds in kind.

"I'm not, Ivan. I had to be sure." Her face is like glass that does not reflect.

"We've played this farce long enough. Red Guardian— kill them." A woman barks the orders in Russian. And sure enough, the thing that had been Alexei a few moments ago charges her, turning over a car in the middle of the square.

"You were a fool to return, Natalia Alianovna Romanova. But how could it have been otherwise? A Russian woman is always ruled by her heart. Even one who hides hers beneath a sheath of ice."

Outside of the memory, Natasha looks at Ava. "You see what I mean. You can't bury a ghost."

[krasnaya_vdova]

Ava watches with rapt attention-- putting together the pieces of the scene that plays out here. Alexei, Natasha's Alexei, a briefcase and a detonator. When she picks out the wires, it makes the truth that much more obvious, even as they start to explain about Project Red Guardian IV.

There's a man that stands behind her, thick Russian accent. She calls him Ivan, but it's not her Ivan. Not the man that caused her and the Natasha of her world so much pain and misery. Not the man that had taken a bullet through the jaw.

The words they say about her, though, that rings familiar. She's heard that sentiment before, even if the words are different.

"No, I guess you can't," she admits softly, sympathy for having to go through that. She's not sure how she'd have handled it.

"Ivan came back once, I'm always afraid it'll happen again. And I don't know how to let go of Alexei. Before I came here, I was still having dreams about him." She says it softly, a little shy, because she hadn't told anyone that, not even her own Natasha. She knows it doesn't mean anything more than her mind's attempt to create experiences they'll never get to have. But they feel real, and she's not sure if that's worse or better.

[latrodectus]

She was still having dreams about Alexei, by the look of it. A large part of Natasha is angry she'd been trapped in this revelatory dreamscape. It's really her least favorite thing. But she swallows that frustration, or tries to, because she knows this isn't Ava's fault.

"It doesn't happen all at once," she says, "letting go. And it is not such a bad thing, to have memories."

Eventually they hurt less. Most of them. The scene around them turns to liquid, begins to change.

[krasnaya_vdova]

Ava understands the anger, honestly, because she can't entirely avoid it herself. Secrets given away, not even just being forced to tell them, but to show them. Having them picked from her mind- it hurts a little less with Natasha, because at least there's precedent. She understands it in ways she hasn't told Natasha about.

When Natasha's memory swirls into liquid dark, it coalesces into one of Ava's. She's there, walking with Coulson and Maria Hill, wearing a SHIELD uniform, red hair pulled back into a ponytail as they walk through the halls. It's Coulson who speaks-- "There's something I thought you might want to see," he offers, leading her over to a memorial wall.

There's the SHIELD crest, surrounded by the words S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy of Operations. At the top it read The Wall of Valor, beneath which was a dedication 'In honor of the members of S.H.I.E.L.D. who gave their lives in the service of humanity', and 'Wars may be fought with weapons, but are won or lost by men. -- Gen. George S. Patton'. Each section has a date at the top, 1941 - 1965, 1966 - 1990, and 1991 - with a blank space for the ending date.

And there are names beneath symbols, that all seem to largely be reminiscent of the SHIELD insignia. They start on the top left with names like Dr. Abraham Erksine and Sgt. James 'Bucky' Barnes. Ava, however, after taking it in for a moment, moves all the way to the right, having to lean down and perch on her heels down to drag fingers over the most recent name: ALEXEI ROMANOFF.

Ava's face doesn't change, even as her fingers touch his name embossed in the metal. "Alexei," she says quietly.

Coulson reaches down to put a hand on her shoulder. "Take a minute," he offers, with a look that tries to be kind.

But Ava shakes it off, pushes herself up onto her feet, turning to face them. She refuses to be soft. "No. Let's go."

Watching outside of the memory, Ava stays quiet, still. Watches that name and feels it cut. She knows that she should say something to Natasha, but she can't find the words. Everything in her life is so interconnected it's hard to know where to start. And this isn't Natasha's loss.

[latrodectus]

Natasha recognizes some of the names— she can't help but notice a few, burned as they are in her memory, despite attempts to scrape them out. (Had James ever been a sergeant? She doesn't know.)

The name Alexei Romanoff makes her think of the dead Tsarevich, Alexei Nikolaevich, the one whose blood ran too thin. The old spelling, like something in a Cold War textbook. She'd gone undercover as a schoolteacher, once, in upstate New York. It's a silly thing to remember, in this river of pasts.

But it cannot be that Alexei Romanoff, she realizes. This is Ava's Alexei— she can feel Ava's stillness, next to her, matching her own. There is something she's missing here, a line she doesn't draw, and all she finds herself thinking is that she took Alexei's name, and not the other way around.

[krasnaya_vdova]

Ava's honestly tempted to just let it go, let it lie. Let the threads, tangled as they are, and on display only in pieces that don't quite tell the whole story lay quiet, but she can't quite let it be. The words when she speaks are a whisper.

"He was-- her younger brother."

There's nothing else to say, nothing else she can say, because Ava's left this buried, refused to dig it up and look at the bones and how all the whole tangled web of it comes together. What it had all meant. She doesn't know how to digest everything that happened when Alexei's still dead.

The memory is just Ava walking with them, chin high, into a room of other recruits-- people older and taller than her. That same black bodysuit that Ava wears. But then there's a flicker of the light, like a mirror of the image, and Ava's outfit is white now, more clearly reminiscent of Natasha's instead of the regulation SHIELD uniform. That symbol on her chest of two red hourglasses, and red bracelets on her wrists that looks like the silver ones Natasha wears. There are three recruits coming at her and Ava moves, deadly grace, a turn that could almost have been a pirouette as she kicks one of them into the other two ending in a pile of three bodies tangled on the floor. She looks up, and there's a glimpse of Natasha standing with Maria and Coulson, and Ava nods at her, holding her head high as the memory swirls into darkness again, fading out on a whisper of something that had almost been.

Standing beside Natasha, Ava's still quiet, silent, like the moment is still too tense to breathe.