Chapter Text
“Amazing, thank you so much,” Ava says, leaving the office of her guidance counsellor. “Have a nice day!” She smiles as she closes the door, does a little jump and a pirouette and then grounds herself by running both hands over her carefully crafted bun. Yes, Ava Sharpe is one of those people. She likes college. Not the part with the huge friend groups, the loud music and the underage drinking - in fact, Ava doesn’t participate in any of that. No, Ava likes college. She likes lectures and she likes textbooks and she likes, for the first time in her life, feeling like she’s not only studying for a high GPA, but for her future. For her life, and maybe someday for that of others.
She’s highly ambitious, that’s not up for debate. And right now, she’s ecstatic. She’s ecstatic over the fact that after semesters of planning and organising she has managed to be approved for a double-major. As of ten minutes ago, she has effectively doubled her workload and she could not be happier. Classes start next week, and finally, Ava will be able to take additional history courses on top of her astrophysics programme. Now all she has to do is finalise her schedule and email her professors, so she can get a headstart on her assigned readings.
Ava pulls her phone out of her back pocket and sends a text to her parents, informing them of the good news, and then to Gary, telling him it all worked out in her favour.
Just as she turns around to head back to her dorm, she almost bumps into a small blonde girl who’s in a conversation with her friend. Sara Lance stops in her tracks, looks Ava up and down and then gives the guy next to her, Nate, an encouraging nod. She’s around the corner before Ava can say hello.
Not that she particularly wanted to have a conversation with her. Ava doesn’t like Sara very much, but she’d rather be talking to her than to Nate, who’s still standing next to her.
Sara is annoying. She’s the one with the friends and the parties and the alcohol, and while Ava has no problem with other people living their lives as they please, there’s something about Sara that makes her impossible not to take issue with. Everyone has something to say about Sara Lance, good or bad. About which concert she went to, who she’s been spotted making out with and how drunk she got last weekend.
She’s a people person, which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but Ava is not a fan of people who constantly need to be surrounded by other people just so that they don’t lose their sense of identity. Sara is the kind of girl who talks too loud in the library when others are trying to study, she’s the one you turn to when you want an invite to the next party. She regularly shows up to class drunk. (Okay, it happened twice. But as far as Ava is concerned, that is twice too much.) And even more of a scandal, she had a very public affair with her sister’s boyfriend last semester, which resulted in this huge drama. Ava doesn’t like drama. And she doesn’t like Sara.
But even more than Sara, she dislikes the presence of Nate without a buffer between them. Nate has a crush on her. And maybe that’s vain, accusing other people of having a crush on you when they’ve never directly confirmed it, but in Nate’s case it’s not much of a mystery. Ava isn’t big on social skills, but even she can recognize that the way Nate is repeatedly looking over at her during lunch is far from platonic, even she knows it means something that his friends go quiet when she walks past.
Nate’s crush on her is a problem she’s been dying to solve. He’s nice enough, handsome, even, for a guy. But he is a guy. Even if Ava did well with dating, and that’s a big if, she would not be dating a man. Though as it appears neither her pantsuit habit nor the rainbow sticker on her backpack are obvious enough.
“Hi Ava,” he says, running his hand through his perfectly messy hair, “Haven’t seen you around in a while.”
“Yeah.” Ava replies. She doesn’t mention that that’s because she had been putting in her best efforts to avoid him. That she usually walks the other way when she sees him in the hallway. “Nice to see you,” she adds in an attempt to appear polite.
But then Nate starts fumbling with his sweater and Ava knows where this is going. “So, I was wondering, …” Nate begins, and Ava, out of options, decides to take the only mature and reasonable way out of the situation.
In the second it takes him to gather his thoughts, she swiftly pulls her phone out of her pocket, pretends to receive an important text, overdramatically clasps a hand in front of her mouth and starts apologising profusely. “Oh I am so sorry Nate, it’s my friend, it’s really important, I’m so sorry. I need to go see him now, or in fact, I should call him, I am really sorry.”
“See you, Nate,” she shouts over her shoulder as she hurries away, holding the phone to her ear and praying that no moron would give her a call right now. As soon as she rounds the corner she makes a run for it and leaves him standing in the hallway by himself.
Poor Nate, he’s a decent guy. But Ava is not in the mood for rejecting somebody today. She spends the rest of the day in the history department of the library, confident he won’t go looking for her there, as the news of her double-major cannot have made the rounds yet.
-
A week later Ava is rushing down the same hallway in a hurry. Her calculus lecture ends at 9AM, and her history seminar starts at the same time. Too bad the departments are on opposite ends of the campus. And Ava is fast, she did track in high school for a while, but even she can’t time-travel, and so she finds that sprinting from building complex A to building complex F takes her three and a half minutes. If you ask her, three and a half minutes after the start of the class is at least four minutes too late.
Arriving at the door she takes a second to collect her breath, then silently opens the door and shoots the professor an apologetic look. Ava had emailed her about her schedule already, and the professor had told her not to worry, as long as she didn’t disturb the class, so Ava promised to be as little of a distraction as possible. She’s planning to make up for it by performing well in any class discussions and group projects there might be, and she has found that teachers are seldom cross with the few students that actually listen and contribute.
Scanning the room she finds there are only two seats left, both at the very back of the room. She’d rather pull a chair up front, but quickly lets go of the idea. Ava likes sitting in the front row, but she also likes not having twenty students watch her as she carries a chair through the entirety of the room, so she quietly takes the seat closest to the entrance.
The professor is talking about the portrayal of Iuno in the Aeneid, and Ava is instantly captivated by the topic. She is more familiar with the Greek version of the goddess, so most of the information is new to her, but she already has a basic understanding that she can use to better memorise the professor’s input.
She angles her folder out of her backpack and turns to the second section that’s a lighter shade. The headline is noted down in cursive with a dark blue sharpie, the subheadline is black and the notes are in blue ink. Next to her folder she places her colour-coded tabs. Red is for need-to-know, orange for everything she can relate to other classes, and yellow for the information she technically isn’t required to memorise, but took notes on anyway.
Just as Ava has written down the Latin adjectives Iuno is often associated with in this particular text and is putting a yellow sticky note next to it, the door opens again. Ava rolls her eyes slightly, doubting that whoever else is running late has an excuse as good as hers. The person doesn’t apologise, though, and Ava doesn’t think of herself as judgy (okay, she is, but that’s beside the point), but that is just rude. You can’t arrive late and not say you’re sorry!
It is only then that she looks up from her notes, and really, she should not have been surprised by the bad manners. None other than Sara Lance has entered the room. “Hey,” she says loudly, and Ava catches the professor shooting her a disapproving look out of the corner of her eye. Sara does not seem the slightest bit bothered by the bad first impression she just left on the person responsible for her grade this semester. Instead she heads right towards Ava and lets herself sink into the seat next to her.
Great. Just great. Ava cannot believe her luck. Not only is she stuck in the last row, no, she’s stuck in the last row next to stupid Sara Lance whose whole life revolves around being the cool kid. When she left high school, Ava thought she would also escape the mentality of popularity contests. And for the most part she did. It’s not like people were all of a sudden rushing to be friends with her, but they were nice to her as long as she was nice to them and nobody has made fun of her for caring about her education in months. At least not to her face, and that was everything Ava was asking for.
But Sara? She’s the kind of kid that seems to only be in college for the infamous college experience. To be fair, Ava doesn’t know the grades Sara is getting and she doesn’t care, but considering that her favourite hobby is getting drunk with her obnoxious friends while their abominable music is playing at a completely inappropriate volume, Ava thinks it’s safe to assume they’re not great.
“Do you happen to have a pen for me?,” Sara asks, turning over to Ava before she has even opened her bag. “I lost mine.”
Ava wordlessly hands her one of hers. The image she has of Sara solidifies. Yes, definitely the type of student that scrapes by through semesters and only barely receives passing grades. Ava would bet her left foot on the fact that at least once before, Sara has started a term paper on the day it was due. Probably forgot about it, got distracted by sleeping with some guy under the influence, typed the entire paper up in one go, hungover and without proofreading, just to proceed to brag about still having passed the course with minimal effort.
“A sheet of paper, too?” Ava glares at Sara despite her best efforts not to, then rips one out from her notepad and puts it in front of the other girl, willing her to shut up and stop talking to her, so she can finally pay her undivided attention to the class again.
Thankfully Sara is finished then, and immediately starts scribbling on the paper. Ava puts a red tab into her folder, marking the general historical context of the Aeneid’s creation. The author, Virgil, wrote it to establish Rome, and its current emperor, Augustus, as legitimised by and descended from the gods themselves. A bit pretentious, if you ask Ava. But very typical for the Romans. Just another piece of evidence that goes on her list of how the writing of history is always influenced by those in positions of power.
She turns to the first section of her folder, the one that is dedicated to every tidbit of information she comes across that she can use for her bachelor thesis on Cecilia Payne’s contribution to modern astrophysics. In Ava’s head the information connects like puzzle pieces, of course the dismissive reactions to her work, especially the research about the elementary composition of stars can be juxtaposed to the way Augustus proceeded against anyone opposed to his regime, to his version of truth. Ava notes it down.
She sees Sara smirk over at her, and it’s irritating. Sara, who has barely written two sentences since the lecture began half an hour ago, is judging her for her dedication to her work. Yes, maybe it’s a bit odd to be preparing for her thesis this early, but careful preparation has gotten her to where she is now, and Ava is not about to give up on her most valuable tool on her way to success.
Ava turns back to the second section just in time for the professor to announce a group discussion, which she excitedly takes on. They have to compare Iuno’s initial scenes with Aeneas, the main character, to her behaviour towards Iupitter. Ava loves class discussion, because she’s smart, and she knows a lot, and she always has an opinion on everything. (No, really, she’s the kind of person who thinks there’s a right way to clean pans and a wrong way to google search for research articles). And also, she’s pretty much always right. And Ava enjoys being right.
“Before we move on to a class discussion, I want you all to collect your ideas in groups of two,” the professor says then, effectively killing Ava’s motivation. How is she supposed to have a meaningful conversation about the Aeneid with Sara of all people, when she doesn’t even take proper notes?
She takes a deep breath through her nose, turns her chair in Sara’s direction, and forces a polite smile. “So,” she says. “Any starting points?”
“Well, Iuno is kind of a bitch, isn’t she?” Sara asks casually. She appears to be hoping for any kind of conversation that doesn’t actually require her to use her brain, but she has made that calculation without taking into account the person opposite her.
Ava rolls her eyes. “She’s referred to as vengeful. Can we stick to the proper terms please?”
“What is the proper term for the stick up your ass?” Sara asks sweetly.
Ava decides to ignore her. Sara is even worse than she imagined. “She has an extremely antagonistic relationship with Aeneas. And in the beginning it seems like she is the main force in the epic, so when she then …”
“She’s being a bitch. Like I said.”
“Can you stay on topic?” If Ava was any less of a responsible student, she’d be thinking about dropping the course right about now so as to avoid having to have one more conversation with Sara.
“Okay you want to know my superior academic opinion on it? Iuno is not the active perpetrator of Aeneas’ fate at all, she’s not even in charge of her own fate or her own actions. She has to maintain her status among the other Gods, and Aeneas just happened to be the unfortunate bastard son of her nemesis. It’s not about her. And it’s not about him. Iuno is a slave to her fate. She’s confined by it. She has no agency. Is that proper enough for Miss Future Nobel Prize?”
There’s not much Ava can say to that. She’d be impressed if she wasn’t so irritated. Sara obviously has at least some sort of understanding of the topic, so wouldn’t it have been easier to draw on it than to mock Ava for wanting to have a productive discussion?
At that moment the professor starts having people summarise their points and Sara is silent again. At least everyone had been too busy with the assignment to overhear their fight, that would have been Ava’s last straw today. She’s glad she only has one more lecture today, and especially glad that it’s a physics course, so she won’t run the risk of crossing paths with Sara again.
Ava contributes to the class discussion. While she is making an elaborate point about Iuno’s change of attitude towards Aeneas later on in the epic, she sees Sara leave class even though there are still five minutes left in the period. For the life of her Ava can’t figure out what is wrong with that girl. But at least, without Sara’s presence she can concentrate. She uses the extra brain capacities she gained by the empty seat next to her to continue arguing her point, and when the professor smiles at her and tells her it’s a good point, Ava is back to her regularly scheduled programme. Take notes, get participation points, study hard. That’s her deal. Sara really has to try harder to prevent her from pursuing it.
On her way to physics class she spots Nate in the hallway, so she does the mature and rational thing, turns around, and takes the longer route to the lecture hall. Today is not the day. If he tries to ask her out again, she might actually bite his head off, and that wouldn’t be fair to him. Nate is a nice guy. Just very much not Ava’s type. So he shouldn’t have to suffer Ava’s wrath just because he has the bad habit of being friends with people like Sara.
Ava reaches the room ten minutes early, but the door is already unlocked, so she lets herself in. Pleased to see that the room is still as good as empty, she makes her way to the good places at the front of the class. She waves at Ray, a sophomore, who is currently trying to explain the basics of aerodynamic flow control to the poor girl who didn’t pass last semester’s test by half a point off.
She takes a seat in the first row, placing her bag on the table that already has Ray’s jacket lying on it. If you can pick your partners for projects, he is who you want on your team. He’s the combination of smart and well-liked that Ava couldn’t get close to if she wanted to. Contrary to her, he always has an open ear for his fellow students, no matter how much their ignorance is their own fault. And Ava’s no monster, she, too, is ready to help out the person struggling in the course, but if someone doesn’t show up to class, doesn’t even attempt to finish their assignments and then comes crawling the week of the exam to ask for Ava’s notes when they’ve never even spared her a glance before? Well, some people simply don’t deserve to pass a class, and Ava won’t encourage that kind of behaviour.
Ray on the other hand has a soft spot for the kids that are struggling to stay on top of their work. He lends out notes, explains certain concepts again and again and never gets tired of maintaining his chippy attitude. When Ava thinks about it, he should be a teacher. He’s nothing short of a genius when it comes to physics, she won’t undermine that, but there are many people who are talented in that area. Teaching though, that would suit him.
Ava has never asked him about his career goals, but she’s assuming he’s planning to go into research, like her. Or maybe he’s going to go for a professor title, who knows.
The class goes by without any mentionable occurrences, which Ava is grateful for.
That afternoon she’s meeting Gary for coffee in the little café across the street. He’s only arrived back at college this morning, so she is eager to finally see him after the break. She can’t wait to hear about his holidays. He went to Aruba with his aunt and uncle, and as Ava has seen from his snaps, he met John Constantine at the beach one time.
Gary has had a thing for Constantine for a while now, but despite Ava’s advice he hasn’t told him. To be fair, it would most likely not lead to anything serious, because Constantine and relationships don’t exactly go together. He’s with a new guy or girl every other week and none of it seems to stick. For a moment Ava wonders if he has gotten with Sara yet. She’s definitely his type, and while Ava doesn’t know what Sara’s type is, she can’t imagine Constantine not fitting right in. So if they haven’t yet, it’s only a matter of time. Then she pushes the thought out of her mind. Since when does she care who Sara’s type is?
When Ava arrives at the coffee place, Gary is already sitting at their table in the corner. She quickly ruffles his hair as a greeting, upon which he protests, but doesn’t stop her. They both know that Ava’s not big on physical affection, but she makes an effort for Gary.
“How have you been?,” she asks excitedly, waiting for Gary to spill.
Which, he does. He says he’s great, his break was really fun, because he hadn’t seen his aunt and uncle in a while and now he’s gotten to spend a lot of time with them. Then he immediately starts talking about Constantine.
“He was right there, Ava. On the same beach! Can you believe it?” His eyes go wide, and while Ava can absolutely believe it, after all, where else would you expect to find him if not at some private beach, Gary is still a bit out of it.
“Oh, I absolutely cannot!” She’s being overdramatic, for Gary’s sake. “What did you do?”
“Well,” Gary says, and he’s blushing. “He was just standing there, and then he looked at me and waved at me”
“And then?”
“He left”
“You didn’t go up to him to say hi?”
“I got nervous, okay?”
Ava laughs at him. “Gary, he waved at you. Constantine is great at ignoring people he doesn’t want to speak to.” She remembers how he used to pretend she wasn’t even there that one time she was bugging him about a census form she was responsible for in her department, and then adds, “Trust me on that.”
“Anyway it doesn’t matter, because he was with some girl.” Gary averts his gaze.
“He’s always with some girl.”
“I know.”
“Listen, we both know your chances with him aren’t that high. Sorry Gary, no offence. But you won’t know for sure until you try it.”
After Gary has repeatedly mentioned how nice Constantine’s hair looked, and how charming his crooked smile was, he changes the topic. “So tell me about your history classes.”
“Gary, you don’t give a crap about history.” Ava smiles. She knows Gary is only asking because she wants to talk about it.
“But I give a crap about you. And I know you, Ava, all you’ve wanted for weeks was that major, so I know you want to geek out about your lectures. Let it out, I’m listening.”
Fifteen minutes later Ava is pretty sure Gary is wishing he hadn’t asked. She’s halfway through summarising her first lecture on the cold war, when she remembers she still needs to mention her anthropology course, and also she should really tell him about all the known instances in which the black death was used as an early form of biological warfare.
“And then there’s this seminar on Greek and Roman mythology and it’s so cool you have no idea! I get to do a presentation about Athena for a class, Gary, that is awesome! I will actually get a grade for researching Athena!”
Ava can barely stop herself, she just goes on and on until Gary interrupts her: “Is there anything you don’t love this semester?”
It slips out before she can stop it: “Sara.”
“Who’s Sara?” Gary leans forward in his seat. Contrary to Ava, he is always keen on the latest gossip and drama. So if his best friend has her differences with another student, he wants to be in on the action.
“Sara Lance, the one who got with Olliver last year? Her sister’s boyfriend.”
“Oh. Her.”
“She’s sleazy, that’s what she is.” Ava looks around her, checking that the cafe is empty. She might strongly dislike Sara, but she doesn’t want to talk bad about someone and have people who know her overhear.
“She was late, she didn’t come prepared, and then she has the nerve to make fun of me for actually trying to learn something. Like, I know I’m not exactly what people describe as fun, but that whole ‘I’m better than you because I spend more time committing misdemeanours than going to class schtick’? Doesn’t make her any more likeable”
Gary tries to stay diplomatic. He certainly isn’t as outraged at Sara’s behaviour as Ava thinks one has ought to be, but that’s fine.
He listens to Ava's complaints and nods at the right parts. "Well, " he says, “the two of you definitely don’t mix.”
“Yeah,” Ava lets out a dry laugh, “agreed.”