FOILS 2

"So, Ava, how have you been adjusting to life at S.H.I.E.L.D.?"


Emma sat next to the long couch in the therapy room. Ava was sitting on it, staring back at her. They had tried to get her to lie down on it, but she had refused point blank.


"I thought Doctor Banner said I wouldn't be having therapy until he was back?"


Emma smiled.


"well, since we don't know when he will be coming back we decided it was important to have as normal a schedule as we could. Besides, the doctors that checked you this morning found that your stitches and any marks from the surgery have basically disappeared. They cleared you. So, how are you?"


"Fine."


Emma shook her head, bouncing her hair around in a fizzing manner.


"You are far from fine, my dear friend, you have still to make an emotional connection of any kind!"


Emma saw it for a second, the hint of a frown, the passage of a disturbance from behind the eyes.


This would be the day, she could feel it.


(you wanna be Emma? You can put in a tape from her past and i could make it all emotionable and go from there?)
 
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(oh shoot I forgot I was supposed to be her)


In the time of a younger Emma, where days sleeplessly merged into days, time soaked in bookish research and all those eight-point-font documents and that burning smell after an 80-page stack had just finished printing, she forgot she wasn't just a floating brain on a stick. She forgot about her heart, that used to warm in the face of a coming Autumn. So, when all this effort into being a faux psychiatrist came to this white-haired winter child melting and cracking like frozen-over pondwater, Emma felt pride in herself, and it was painful. She wasn't used to feeling. Yeah, she could feel the heat through a tea mug, and she could feel how soft a pillow was, and she could feel the bite of new shoes on the backs of her ankles, but she had guarded herself thoroughly against contentment, jealousy, fear, and anger. By baring the most primitive four emotions, she could shield herself against all of them. Well, no- protect is a better word.


Emma crossed her legs. "I think we've come a long way from where we were two months ago, Ava. But there's still so much more to do with you, and time runs out quickly. I need you to want to work with me."


------


Sarah Delini remembered this one time, back in pre-med, when one of the boys from the other dorm building broke into the girls' wing shirtless, high as a kite, and spilling three bottles' worth of Sam Adams all over the hotel-worthy carpeted floor. Bruce Renolds or Raynolds or something. He had had dark brown, curly hair and pinchable cheeks; Sarah remembered having a crush on him. He'd always lugged himself and his tired, biochemical engineering-majoring butt around campus like the last of his life energy was found within his thermos of coffee. That one crazy night had been a release for him, even though it got him arrested.


Now, seven years later, Sarah wondered if she was looking at Shirtless BioChem Wonder, All-Grown-Up, standing, rather fatherly, behind Carrot Top. He was wearing a white button-town shirt under a stained plaid jacket, with a scowl that really complimented those bags under his eyes. Just like college.


He stepped beside Carrot Top, who shimmied away from the hand he tried to lay on her shoulder.


Woah, creep-o.


"Look, I can only let family members in," Sarah said.


Carrot Top blushed and frowned. "I'm as family as you can get! I'm his daughter!"


Sarah made a hmph sound, checking Graham, William's ID photo in the hospital's database. Carrot Top had a sharp chin always up in the air, a pin-needle nose, wild red hair, and tennis-ball-green eyes, not to mention ears she could probably play Lacrosse with. William Graham's photo was grainy, but he definitely looked nothing like this (metaphorically) little girl playing dubstep on the counter with nervous fingers.


"Can I have some ID?"


The guy sneered. "I wasn't aware we were at a nightclub. You make a good bouncer, though."
 
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Ava stared at the woman before her, just as she had every day for the past two months.


" I do not know what you wish to accomlish. I am uncappable of human emotions. I am not fully human."


A knock at the door startled Ava and put her on high alert. She had let her guard down. She could have been dead.


"I have the footage you wanted Ma'am." A shield officer crossed the floor, staring at Emma and handed her the tape, and looked away from Ava deliberatley as he walked out.


Must have seen some of that footage.


Over the past few months, and five hundred years, of observing humanity, Ava had noticed a few things.


People have very few basic reactions.


Some, when they see something broken, look away and go on as if it didn't exist.


Others, like Clint, try to help, even if it's broken for good.


Then there were some like Emma, with a smile painted on their identical doll faces, and emotions in tune just enough to look real, but to the real observer.


Emma seemed like a doll imagining her humanity. Like Ava she didn't truly feel.


Unlike Ava she didn't admit it.


Which of us should really be on this couch?





Emma took the tape without a word and the frightened messenger scurried off, obviously relieved the task had gone over so well. Emma placed the tape on the table, label facing outward.


"December 7, 1892" was written in her fathers neat scrawl. Under it just two words, "experiment failure", written in the same neat hand writing that made Ava wish, for some odd reason, that Clint was here instead of this fake woman sitting before her with a painted on smile.
 
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(I want a music video with clips of ava set to I'm Only Human. do you ever listen to a song very fitting of one of your characters, and imagine scenes to go along with the song?)


"Of course you're human, Ava," chided Emma. "We haven't gotten the DNA results back from the lab, but my educated guess is that you're at least 50% human."


She waited for Ava's response.


-----------------------------------------------------


As Carrot Top's face fell, Sarah smirked. Yeah, you brat.


The other guy reminiscent of Bruce Something pulled a driver's liscence out of his wallet, taking his time but clearly tense. Sarah's brow furrowed. Was he impatient? Mad that his friend Carrot Top couldn't see this patient? Tired? Or was he just always like this? Hillbillies mostly occupied the upstate New York areas, so an abnormally stressed out forty-something wasn't common, but he could be from the city.


Sarah squinted at the card, which turned out not to be a liscence but a sleek access card. Bruce Banner, SHIELD opperative.


Sarah mouthd the boldes titled, blinked, then stared at him. "Really?"
 
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(sorry stuff happened. wait, did you take into accunt that emma just got a film about ava? imma switch devices brb)
 
(yeah, im gonna wait a sec for emma to show her the film. maybe ava can notice the label on the disc and know what shes about to see, which gives her foreboding anxiety? also is everything okay?)
 
"It's a matter of national security," said the bitter, bossy man.


Carrot Top frowned. 'Yeah, and I'm Tinkerbell,' Sarah practically heard her thinking.


Sarah's brow crinkled, but she let the two up to the hospital room.
 
"50 percent may be a bit generous." Ava said still looking at the film. There had been so so many failures of experiments over the long years, yet why did this date sound so...familiar? So foreboding?


It was as if a door to her past had started to freak open, no matter how hard to push it closed. She didn't want to see that tape. She didn't want anyone to see that tape. Nothing good would come from it.
 
"Do you want to see this tape, Ava?" said Emma, waving it, teasing her. She crossed the room to put it in the TV. "I do. It's important to get through this. Too many repressed emotions aren't healthy."


Emma put her hand on Ava's shoulder. "You think you're strong. But you don't have to be. We have to lay everything out on the table so you can get better, okay?"
 
Ava didn't say anything, but watched as Emma out the tape in and pressed play.


The image started as static for a moment, then it cleared onto the familiar features of her Father.


"Experiment number 102 has been one of the largest failures yet, but I am certain with time I can break its spirit. Experiment number 15 and it shall be tested together. My greatest success and my greatest failure. I am sure it will try to appeal to 15's 'humanity ' and I am curious as to what I willdiscover. It has been a long time since her last trip to the pit."


The image shook again, and now Ava was strapping down a young boy, probably eleven or twelve to a table. He had dirty red hair, made redder by streaks of dried blood, his face was as pale as milk and freckled. His clothes were old and torn, a white collared shirt and brown pants. He yelled and struggled as Ava easily strapped him to the table.


"Please miss! Please let me go! I want my mother please!"


Ava was shaking in her chair slightly as she watched her past self tie him down. Why did that boy look so, so familiar?


"You have become not only a failure, but a nuisancetomy Father. You are not worth the space you inhabit, or the time that was put into experimenting on you number 102." Past Ava said in a stiff monotone.


"All that remains," past Ava said quietly,"is to test your pain endurance levels."


Ava sucked in a sharp breath.


Past Ava took out a scalple and the boys eyes widened.


"Please...please..." He whimpered, tears creating a river amongst his freckles. Past Ava cocked her head slightly, and turned and faced the camera. Ava stared herself in the eye and watched as she turned around, and began her work.


"Turn it off." She whispered to the ground.
 
Ava stared at the screen and watched herself unleash everything on this poor, poor boy. She caused him enough pain to be on the brink of losing consciousness, but always relented for a moment before she went too far, making the torture long, painful every second, and intimate.


After an hour his screams turned to gurgles in his throat, blood and saliva foamed and ran down his mouth as he panted in and out, searching for a breath without pain. His eyes were raw and bleeding, but he managed to bring them up to where Ava stood, staring down at him on his left.


"P-please...end it...end this..."


Past Ava could have ended it then. It would have been easy.


But that wasn't what she was ordered. She was ordered to find the extent of his pain endurance.


By the third hour he had stopped talking, screaming. Pleading. Only small moans escaped his lips, and one, small word.


"...monster..."


Ava watched as past Ava paused and nodded, looking at the boy for what seemed like the first time. She gently wiped the blood off his eyes and turned his head so they were looking at each other again.


"Now, you understand."


Then she put both hands lightly on his chin, and twisted his head sharply, letting go after the audible crack.


Ava took another breath in and was surprised to find her eyes were stinging.


Father came back on the screen and shook his head, sighing.


"Clearly number 15 needs to go back into the pit. I thought maybe she was free from her merciful human side, but it seems prolonged exposure to the creatures brings out the weaker side in her DNA. I'll put her in as she is for, oh, about five, ten years, and see where that gets us. Maybe I'll send down creatures to torment her occasionally, then I can see how good her grasp on reality really is. Today was a failure for both of my experiments, so I'll put them both in the out, together." Her father smiled. "Hopefully this time she will learn her lesson."


The tape cut to a clip of past ava, still covered in blood, in a tiny pit, made even smaller since the body of 102 was in there with her. She stared at the camera as her Father closed the hatch, it would be twelve years before she got out again.


Present day Ava was shaking. She remembered it all now. The twelve years with only Richard for company. That had been his name. He had been eleven when she'd stolen him from his family at the park one day. She hadn't thought about it much, but he reminded her of someone Clint had shown her. A woman with red hair...


Ava couldn't stop shaking. The screams were running in her ears, vibrating her body. She jumped out of the chair and threw up in the garbage can in the corner.
 
"So."


"So."


Angela paused with one foot on the steps. Banner looked at the elevator, but Angela whined.


"I wanna take the stairs," she insisted.


"I'm an old man. I don't want to take the stairs."


"Banner...."


Banner hesitated, then drifted to the elevator, leaving her behind. He waited for her as the doors closed; footsteps, the her hand shot out and caught the doors, and she slipped inside with him.


She kept one hand on the wall as they rose. Will was on one of the top floors-- probably watching an Adams Family rerun, or something, or working on another article for a pennysworth periodical. Banner poked her head.


"Why are you scared of the elevator?" he asked.


"I'm not scared!"


He poked her again.


"Stahp." But it was clear being in the space was unnerving.


----


Emma turned the TV off once the tape ended.


"So, Ava. How does that make you feel?"


She lept her back to Ava. Ava couldnt see her smiling.


 
"You went a little crazy there... with that boy. Did you know him personally?"
 
"No, I did not. I did not know him personally at the time but he did become my only companion for twelve years. I did not get to know him personally then because he was incapable of speech,because he was dead, and his throat was probably cut off when his neck was broken."
 
( I knew I was going to have work tonight. I could feel it. okay, I need to get off in like fourteen minutes.)


Emma wanted to ball her fists up and yell. This wasn't apathy. This was an entire different level of phsycotic conditioning.


"Do you have any friends, besides me and Bruce and Clint and Angela?"
 
Ava raised her eyebrow cooly.


"I am not quite certain what friends are, and was therefore unaware I had any to speak of."


(0k that stinks!)
 
Emma thought for a moment, then sat down right next to Ava. She put her hand on Ava's shoulder, and looked at her warmly.


"Friends are people you give everything for," she said. "Friends can be people you've just met. Friends can be people you've known for years. Friends can be from high school and still be your friend twenty years later at the reunion. Friends can be through Facebook, even though you've never seen their face. Friends are people you love for their quirks. Friends are people who look out for you. I don't know if you and Angela are friends. I don't really like Angela," Emma added, a little off topic. "Don't tell her I said that though. That's between the two of us. See? We're friends. We keep each other's secrets."
 
Ava paled s bit.


"I, I am friends with...Clint Barton, for he has looked after my well being. I will not tell AngelA of your comment, so we are friends. However, does that mean...I am friends with my Father? For I kept his secrets for 500 years, and have still told you nothing."


Ava felt sick.


"I do not wish to have Clint Barton in the same category as my Father."
 
"At the core of you, you're the same. You're messed up, just like everyone else. About sixty percent of my patients have daddy issues." Emma was surprised at how brash she just made that sound. It didn't really bother her. It was just out of character for a therapist.


She continued. "Everyone else is about to break apart. They're squishy, and need to be babied. Otherwise, they break. I don't have to baby you. You've already been broken several times over. You're smart enough to know who you are. The thing is, you were- knowingly or not- trained to be a miniature version of your father." Emma pointed at the TV. "I mean look at you. You're doing to that boy exactly what your father did to you. Experimentation, manipulation. Look at your fingers. They were made to hold delicate instruments. Like scalpels. All your life, you've been conditioned to be like him, so there's no room for Ava in the midst of all that Father Jr. So, the question for you is... why we're here... who do you think you are, Ava? Who's side is Ava on? And, regardless of who's side you think you're on, can you fight your instincts enough to stay on the good guy's side? On Clint's side?"
 
Ava stared at the dark screen and saw herself looking back at her.


She was so much older now than she was back then. She had seen so much more, suffered so much more.


For the first time she felt it, the tired aching feeling of her own slavery. The remorse for what she had become.


The girl she saw in the reflection looked tired and old. Pale skin stretched across a thin face, ready to break, but fuller than it had been. Hair drooped in front of her eyes, and she didn't move it away. She could wear it any way she wanted now.


But...could she?


Could she really get over her training and rebel that much?


Ava looked away from the screen and down at her hands.


"I do not know."
 
"That's the different between you and us," Emma said, formal, a little nastily. "That's why Clint's wrong when he think's you're human. That's why Angela's just proving that she's a stupid little girl when she ogles over you, like you're a sideshow attraction, someone worthy of an action figure. We are humans. We want to do the right thing. You're not. You purposefully hurt people."


Emma stood up. She had been sitting on her haunches, and her knees made little popping sounds as she straightened. "Clint has a lot of faith in you. I, however, do not think any amount of therapy in the world can keep you safe from becoming the girl you used to be in the videos."


Emma walked out, very un-professional, locking the door behind her. Ava could just break through it if she wanted to, but Emma was going for the dramatic exit taken by people who know they have the upper hand.
 
Ava sat in her chair as Emma walked out, her mask up to protect herself.


She walked out, locked the door.


Her eyes were wide as she stared into the vast nothingness of her life, trying to process the effect of a few short sentences.


Maybe she is correct. Clint is wrong to put faith in me. AngelA is a foolish child. I have never tried to do the right thing...not once have I been like a human.


The boy was right.


Ava inhaled sharply as she felt something warm come from her eyes and trickle down her cheeks. Blood? How?


She touched the liquid and looked at it on her fingers.


Water. How strange.


She was shaking. That was unexpected since she was neither cold nor in pain.


The boy was right.


I am a monster.


It's been long enough.


Clint started the walk over to Emma's office. She had had her hour with Ava, and gone far over. It had been nearly three hours, and Clint was bored. He knocked on the door, noticing it was locked from the outside.


"Emma, Ava? Sorry to intrude."


He opened the door and saw Ava sitting all alone.


She really looked tiny in that chair, crying all by herself. Her ice blue eyes were wide open and seemed to be melting all cross her face.


"Ava."


Clint came over and grabbed her elbows lightly, bending down so that she was above him.


"Hey, hey honey, it's ok, you're okay. Ava, look at me sweetie."


Ava didn't respond, but started taking little inhales of air and shaking more. Clint seemed to be shaking too, and felt the blood rushing to his face in an angry flush.


"C'mere."


He pulled Ava into his arms and held her tightly, stroking her hair.


"It's all right, shhh, it's okay sweetheart."
 
Emma clicked-clicked-clicked her high heels away from the therapy room. She had heard Clint entering the room and console Ava, and she knew she would hear it later. But her job was almost done. She really thought she made a breakthrough. Ava herself had the seed of doubt in her mind. It would be easy, now.


Easy.


(I really don't know wher to go from here(
 
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