Chapter Text
Ava felt that she might have actually died in that battle, she felt lost without a way to return home, or a family to return to. The navy had been her life, since she was a little girl, it’s always been her life. Now, now it’s come to bite her in the ass. She thinks of this as she adjusts her mask and hood, before stepping into the pub. She’s a few weeks out from All-port, which she was not really looking forward to going too, and she was incredibly irritated. Ava was as good a navigator as she was a captain, yet she couldn’t seem to get her hands on a certain Pirate captain. The last she saw Lizzie, she was blown up and nearly drowned at sea, so it’s safe to say she’d at least like to get a proper apology to her friend. But in her search for Captain Lizzie, she finds three posters, three posters and one of them is a familiar face, and an all too familiar name. She may have lost a way to return to her home and family, but they clearly never lost their way to her. It’d be easier if that was more of a real statement and not a metaphor, or something along the lines, because if Ava thought Lizzie was hard to track down, then Jay and her crew were damn near impossible. So, she walks in and sits at the bar, eyeing her surroundings, she’s changed quite a lot, she knows logically, no one could recognize her, but the fear never leaves.
Despite her redder hair, despite the number of white streaks in it, or the scars that disfigured her left arm and the left side of her neck, or the damaged vocal cords that made her voice sound raspier and her accent a little thicker, she could never be too safe. Especially this close to All-port, this close to HQ, it’s the loud part of her brain that screams she isn’t safe. She taps the table twice, two glasses of ale slide her way, she takes them with a nod. She needed to get to All-port for a better map, or at least find somewhere she can get hers fixed up and updated, she also needed to find out literally anything about where her sister may be headed, she lowers her mask but pulls her hood a little more over as she takes a swig. She goes through the plan in her head: one, find Jay and or Lizzie, two, see what they’ve found out about the navy’s plans and if it’s even possible to stop them, three… She furrows her brows, what was she supposed to do after that? She couldn’t be a spy anymore, and she’s certain everyone thinks she’s dead.
Which means it’s definitely going to be awkward to show up and what was she supposed to say? Hey! Sorry for, like, making you think I was dead! I also thought I was dead haha, yeah, that wasn’t fun! ??? Lizzie would probably make sure to finish the navy's job if she said that actually, hell, she’d probably do it the moment she recognized her, and honestly? Ava thinks it’d be deserved. She takes another swig, looking down at the ale, swishing it around and staring at the liquid, that’s the annoying part about living after you’re supposed to be dead. Everything was complicated, everything was awkward. You couldn’t just sit there and talk about it. Or at least, Ava felt like she couldn’t. Who would she tell? She throws the rest of her ale back before slamming the empty glass down on the table, eyes narrowing. She needed to find them first, she could think of a better explanation on the way.
The sea was familiar, the saltwater air, the familiar weather, the feeling of ropes in her hands. Ava loved being on the sea, when she closes her eyes, she can pretend she still has long brown hair and pride. She can pretend her biggest family related issue was rather or not Jayson was going to be particularly bitchy. She opens her eyes to the sea, hands gripping the helm, which was awkward at first without her left ring and pinky fingers. The nubs there didn’t have the greatest grip, it took a while to get the hang of it, sometimes she still struggles, but not this time. Not today, the weather had been nice, and the seas were calmer. The way to All-port had usually been nice, unless you came from the north or you’re the unlucky few to deal with those that reside within the waters. Ava huffs, the hard part about being by yourself on sea was that it was, in fact, lonely. It’d been really bad since she’d been looking for Jay. She thinks it must just be homesickness. Ava missed Featherbrook and Kiwi village, she missed her mother's tavern and the birds in it, she missed Jay’s loud voice and contagious laughter, she missed Jay’s little trinkets that she’d make, and their dad would always disapprove of the thing's jay wanted to make. The thought of her father turns her memories sour, she remembers arguments, screaming matches. Ava Ferin hadn’t been part Genasi, but she’d been just as hot headed regardless. And her father always pushed her buttons, rather it’d be his constant need to keep her in check when she was capable of taking care of herself, or a comment he made about Jay’s lack of strength and her keen eye and how little she was doing with it, or just the way his presence instilled some sort of anger in her.
As a girl, she’d been afraid of Jayson, but as she grew older, she stopped being scared, she was just angry. Angry that he was too stuck up his own fucking ass to focus on everything but the navy. Angry that he treated her better than Jay. Angry that he’d argue with their mother. She shakes her head and focuses on the sea; it didn’t do what she wanted it to. No, it does the opposite, in fact, and to add to it, it brings her back to a specific memory.
Ava had always been the kinda person to care about the people and less about whatever the navy had been doing... She didn’t like the increase of missions that were just taking resources from said people. The briefing she attended with her father was putting her on edge. The argument they had after, doesn’t help either. They were taking from the people, like they were preparing for active war time. She hated that. She hated that her father demanded she stayed out of the next briefing. She hated that she knew what they were doing regardless. She stared at the glass of whiskey and then eyes the tavern around her. She’d find anyone who’d listen, and that night it came in the form of a loud, possibly (very) drunk, pirate and her friend.
Ava cuts the memory off there; she doesn’t allow herself to think of that night or what happened after. How she lost her original crew, how she lost her family. How her father's gaze still angers her. She wonders if he mourned her, if he cried at all. She takes a deep breath, the salt water and the warm air. The feeling of the wood against her scarred hands. She takes another deep breath. She’s a few hours from All-Port, she can’t be all jittery and angry while she's there. It will throw her off. Ava huffs, opening her compass, she’s still on the right track, she knows this, but she needed the distraction. Thinking of the past never did her any good, especially any thoughts involving that warm tavern and familiar faces. She had too much to think about as is, she didn’t need more.
It takes another six hours before she's finally docking. As long as the journey has been, it is far from over, and Ava is far too awake. She steps off her ship, it’s getting dark out, there aren’t as many people out, she shifts her hood and mask anyways. As much as she loved All-Port, she hated how it's covered in navy. She walks a little further in, she’s been here many times, both alive and dead, but it never gets easier. She needs to find some place to rest, she knows that she’ll regret it in the morning, but she also wants to find out as much as she can about her sister's potential whereabouts. Ava stops for a moment, glancing around, thinking used to be easier… When she was alive, she could think up a storm, now it’s hard to make a decision… it’s hard to think… She keeps taking deep breaths, her mother once taught her that to keep her from getting all worked up, it barely works. Another deep breath, another… and another. She’s so tired. Ava looks around again, before walking to the nearest inn. She just needed to get out of this fucking cloak, and she needed to take a long bath to ride her body of the burning that has started to radiate from the burn scars across her body. Most importantly, she needed fucking rest. Rationality came easy still, so at least that stayed the same. She enters the nearest inn, it was about the same as the rest, she’s been to so many, it’s as familiar as the ocean at this point. At least the keepers were different.
In this one, there’s a sweet and older looking woman with a tired smile on her face. “Evenin’ dear! We have three rooms open tonight!” She says, Ava nods politely and walks over, “just one” she muttered. The woman seems startled by her voice, which Ava thinks is fair, but hands her a key nonetheless, “Three gold” She says, Ava nods, reaches into her pocket, and hands the woman her payment. Once she finds her room, after the directions from the keeper, she sits down on the bed. She should sleep, she should sleep then get up in the morning and do things. She has lots of work to do, she’s very busy, and she’s got people to find. Yet she sits there staring, eyeing the ground and resting her hands in her lap. She hadn’t removed her cloak, she hasn’t taken that long bath, she’s just… she can’t really move. While this would seem new, it really wasn’t, even before everything, she’d find herself staring at nothing, but thinking about everything, her mother had been concerned, her father annoyed. Ava was very aware of the seams on her clothes, the textures of her shirt and the fabric of her mouth cover, the feeling of her gloves and the way her sleeves suddenly felt like too much. She was also very aware of the hot tears falling down her face.
To be fair, it had been a rough couple of months. She was trying to start a movement, she was trying to find Lizzie, she was dealing with literally everything that came with being alive and horrifically injured… ok, so it’s been a rough couple of
years
but still. She doesn’t know why it’s all hitting now, maybe it had been just the idea of being so close to home but never being able to reach it, maybe it was that she was just really fucking exsauhsted. She forces her body to move, to remove the cloak around her shoulders and the mouth covering too. She takes her time to get her boots off and the padded leather arm guards, and the light chest plate, and the gloves she wore. With a heavy sigh she lays in her bed to stare at the ceiling like she did with the ground. She should sleep, then she could get up in the morning and get started with her day, get out there and scope out the area, get an idea of how many navy soldiers she’d have to avoid. Maybe she could read those reports and file out her own for the resistance up in Zero. Maybe she could ask around about her sister's whereabouts, under the guise of being a bounty hunter. But she has to sleep first, which you think would be easy considering all the travel and the state she was in right now, but no. No. Because being alive and feeling dead all the time, made everything messy and complicated. Nothing was easy, not that it had been before, but it was certainly easier than this. Ava scrubs her face with her hands, the texture of scarred tissue on smooth and scarred skin is grounding. With another sigh, she drops her hands and stares at the roof again till it becomes fuzzy. She shuts her eyes, and for the next hour, she’s asleep but awake, until finally, sleep uneasily takes her.