Chapter Text
Name: Ava Bates
Age: 24
Height: 64 inches
Birthday: July 27th
Specialty: Veterinarian – think field surgery, survival biology, triage, and basic pharmacology
Background occupation: Foreign intelligence for Britain when shit went down. Now stuck in this situation, undercover. Mission status: unknown. For now, it’s tabled. All communications are down, and for all intents and purposes, the agency doesn’t exist. She’s in deep cover, stuck like everyone else.
Traits: Exceptional intuition & night vision (due to surgical enhancements and field ops training).
Current place of residence: Lighthouse church in Iowa
Relationships: Living with a handful of survivors. Closest to Aspen and then Isadora.
Backstory: Ava was born in Cork, Ireland, as the only child of a single mother who worked double shifts as a nurse to keep them afloat. Sometimes, her mother didn’t come home at night, though it was only later that she found out why. Rent came late. Power came in spurts. Violence was commonplace and everyone was used to it. Ava learned early on to rely on her instincts, to lie, and to steal – to do whatever was necessary to help them survive.
By 10, she was ferrying messages, cash, and…other things…for people who didn’t use last names. She had to – they were struggling in a community of people who were also struggling. Eventually, she was recruited as a runner for Neil Donnelly, a mid-tier fixer with a silver tongue (and blade) and a bloody temper. He worked for the Kinahan Organised Crime Group (KOCG), but by the time she found out, it was too late.
Ava didn’t choose this – she survived it. What else could she have done? As her mother’s health worsened and the bills rose, she forced herself to dive deeper, take more risks, and rise in the organization.
It came crashing down on her at the young age of 17, when she had a brush with the law. She wasn’t formally arrested, but she saw the inside of a holding cell, and that made everything real.
They moved to London. Her mother hoped the distance would give them a clean start, away from the ties that bound Ava to a life of crime.
It didn’t work. Ava couldn’t forget all the rules she internalized throughout her career, and London’s underground was just as present. She fell back into old habits. The KOCG, it seemed to her, operated everywhere. London was no escape.
She didn’t stop because of the threat of the law. She didn’t stop because of her mother. She stopped because of a car.
At the tender age of 19, Ava crossed the street without looking, exhausted. A car hit her, nearly fatally. She woke up in the hospital alone. Her mother visited at the start of her recovery, but her visits petered out. A few months in, the staff informed her mother was dead. They said it was a suicide. Ava didn’t quite believe it – not after everything she was involved in.
The enforced break provided something she hadn’t had in years – a chance to stop, a chance to reflect. She didn’t like who she was becoming – someone who was going to be just like Donnelly. She didn’t want to become the type of person to recruit a desperate 10 year old to run items for her. She didn’t want to continue on that path.
Eventually, she turned to Christianity – specifically, the Catholic Church. Not for answers – she didn’t believe God would interfere – but for discipline. Structure. It wouldn’t – couldn’t – change on her abruptly, wouldn’t leave her adrift without any way to go.
During the late stages of her recovery, she was approached by a government-backed youth program. Her file had made the rounds. The program was a front for recruitment, and she accepted. She didn’t know how to be anything but herself – rough around the edges with a violent streak – but maybe she could be useful for something good. MI6 trained her to be better. Sharper. Less emotional. She ended up specializing in stealth, infiltration, and deception underneath the cover of veterinary study. She didn’t want to use guns, or engage in all-out violence, or throw herself into fights. Not anymore.
Her missions were small – surveillance, persuasion, and…once, something worse. She didn’t like to think about that one.
One of her first missions took her to California. She was deep undercover as a veterinary student, trying to find another plant. It was a long-term assignment. She found a good friend here – Isadora – but they had a huge fight right before Ava finished. Keeping contact wouldn’t have been feasible, but Ava wished it had ended differently.
Her last mission went wrong. Something – someone – happened, and she lost people, control, and her security.
They sent her to Iowa. She moved to Iowa, seeking to escape her mother’s ghost. Officially, she was a deep cover vet, monitoring agricultural bio-threats. Unofficially, she was off the grid.
She lived alone, helped animals, flirted with the grocer, and performed street tricks for little kids. She tried to forget. She was happy, now, wasn’t she? She had friends – Aspen especially. It almost felt like those happy months at university. Then the sun changed, and everything ended.
Ava doesn’t want to be who she was again – never, ever, again, she had told herself – but the stress of survival may force her to be that person once more. She doesn’t want to alienate Aspen or any of her friends who knew her as bright and cheerful Ava. It’ll take everything she has not to crack.
Weapons: Dual butterfly knives (balanced for close combat – quiet, silent, and concealed), garrote wire (disguised as a braided hair tie), a spring-loaded wrist blade (agency issued & well-worn), toxic agent capsules (carried in a false bottom of her med bag), and occasional scavenged firearms.
Appearance: Ava is short, blond, and has blue eyes. Her hair is always a mess, unless she braids it. Usually, it’s on pigtails. She really likes sneakers. They’re easy to move in, and laces have a surprising amount of uses.
Religion: During her recovery, Ava turned to Latin Catholicism for structure and discipline. She doesn’t truly believe God would interfere – where was he during her youth? – but she liked the idea of something better after life. It was something stable that couldn’t crumble under her feet.
Inventory: Medical field kit, modified headlamp, lockpicks sewn into the backpack’s hem, wire, hooks, razorline, a rosary, an old MI6 coin communicator – broken, painkillers, and a photo of her mother. She also tries to take all her weapons along whenever possible, in the interest of safety.
Personality: Ava smiles with all her teeth. She’s bubbly, cheerful, and always moving – tapping, fidgeting, and working with her hands. This is a remnant of her experience as a young child, where she always had to be alert. This is also a product of her heavy-duty training. Her optimism is omnipresent and deliberate. Ava cares deeply, and her roots have never gone away. Hurt someone she cares about? It’s over. She knows how to end things quickly. She tries to be happy – she really does – but sometimes, she cannot help but be 14 again and helping Donnelly carry out a heist, or 15 and be assigned to monitor a rival gang. Make no mistake – her happiness is real, but it’s also a front. Ava is rough around the edges, but those edges aren’t very visible. Ava flirts a lot – both for entertainment and to disarm. She watches everything.
Accent: Ava uses a typical American accent for the Iowa area, but occasionally may lapse into a mixture of her early Irish accent and the learned British accent. She’s multilingual and is an excellent actor.
Hobbies: She finds flirting fun. It’s a good way to disconcert people. She prays, sometimes, when no one is looking. She also pickpockets occasionally, mostly as jokes on her fellow survivors. Sometimes, she’ll engage in fieldcraft journaling – documenting the behavior of anything she can find.
Skills: deception, stealth, good under pressure. She’s good at charming people.