[Her voice is soft, but this isn't a deflection, but a fact. Even now Ava hasn't been able to completely untangle all of the pieces. Herself, Natasha, Alexei, Ivan, SHIELD-- there was so much, and some of it were things she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to put together. And even if she could, it wouldn't make Alexei's death make sense. It's a truth, but one that is still hard for her. She hasn't found him in stasis, but she refuses to look.
It takes her a moment to elaborate, because there's so many threads it's hard to know which one to start with. The Red Room, or you were in my head, or a dozen other pieces of how their stories wound together.]
You rescued me, when I was nine years old.
[This is what she settles on, in the end. That night, when they'd first met, first touched, not the whys and the shadows that overlaid it, the sinister machinations that neither of them had seen at the time. She tries to keep it as neutral as she can, but it's hard.]
When I was eight I was pulled from the Red Room and put into a program that ended up on SHIELD's radar. It was orchestrated by a man-- Ivan Somodorov. Red Room trainer and ex-KGB military dog, as he liked to call himself. You got me out as everything exploded around us.
[There's a wry sort of smile there, something to cover over the fact that there's nothing as terrifying as telling her the truth. But Natasha's a better liar than she is, and better at reading people. So she doesn't lie, not really, even if she skips some of the details, the worse parts of the story, the more personal ones.
I called you sestra and you said I was like you. You said you'd come if I needed you. She thinks quietly, that this time Natasha actually kept her promise.]
So yeah, we've met. And if you don't remember-- it's this place. Things don't always line up right, somehow.
no subject
[Her voice is soft, but this isn't a deflection, but a fact. Even now Ava hasn't been able to completely untangle all of the pieces. Herself, Natasha, Alexei, Ivan, SHIELD-- there was so much, and some of it were things she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to put together. And even if she could, it wouldn't make Alexei's death make sense. It's a truth, but one that is still hard for her. She hasn't found him in stasis, but she refuses to look.
It takes her a moment to elaborate, because there's so many threads it's hard to know which one to start with. The Red Room, or you were in my head, or a dozen other pieces of how their stories wound together.]
You rescued me, when I was nine years old.
[This is what she settles on, in the end. That night, when they'd first met, first touched, not the whys and the shadows that overlaid it, the sinister machinations that neither of them had seen at the time. She tries to keep it as neutral as she can, but it's hard.]
When I was eight I was pulled from the Red Room and put into a program that ended up on SHIELD's radar. It was orchestrated by a man-- Ivan Somodorov. Red Room trainer and ex-KGB military dog, as he liked to call himself. You got me out as everything exploded around us.
[There's a wry sort of smile there, something to cover over the fact that there's nothing as terrifying as telling her the truth. But Natasha's a better liar than she is, and better at reading people. So she doesn't lie, not really, even if she skips some of the details, the worse parts of the story, the more personal ones.
I called you sestra and you said I was like you. You said you'd come if I needed you. She thinks quietly, that this time Natasha actually kept her promise.]
So yeah, we've met. And if you don't remember-- it's this place. Things don't always line up right, somehow.