Work Text:
She’s never really given much regard to trauma before. The pain that’s always been a part of her, the things she’s done, the things that have been done to her—those were always just things, completely mundane and ordinary. Ava had never thought before to give any of it a specific title or allow it to take up real estate in her mind. They were all just things that happened to her or that she happened to.
After the team is assembled and they’re slapped with a shiny title—The New Avengers like they’re the stars of a hot new movie or a band poised to break through into the mainstream—she has a lot of time to sit and read between missions. There is a library in this glass—ivory—tower they now call home and she makes full use of it when she can. She’d never really been a voracious reader before, her mind always occupied—or tortured—with one thing or another. But with her pain less of a presence after learning how to manage it and control her phasing, she starts reading more books.
She finds that she likes collections of short stories the most, finding the brevity of the sections a mirror to her own experience. They say so much in an economy of words because they only have so much space, so much time to make their point. She likes that, finds it relatable. She also likes articles, finding the dry, academic tone familiar and comforting in a way.
John Walker tries to introduce her to comic books but she finds the storylines hard to follow; they stretch across multiple titles and have arcs that wind back years and years. The pictures are nice, though, she likes the pictures. She even manages to bite back a snarky comment about books with pictures being the only thing John is able to read. He’s tried to be nicer to her, so she figures she ought to return the sentiment at least some of the time.
Yelena drops a stack of old Russian poetry on the nightstand in her room one day, patting the topmost book on the pile and declaring, “Is time we get you some Russian culture.” Yelena’s reconnected a bit with her past the more time she spends with her adoptive father and a mysterious dark-haired woman who flits in and out of the tower when she seems to think no one—no one but Ava, apparently—is paying attention.
Bob doesn’t read much, but he shows Ava Tweets he finds interesting. He favors accounts that post images of cute, fluffy animals the most. Ava finds it endearing. Not enough to set up her own Twitter account, but enough to indulge Bob when he wants to show her pictures and clips of capybaras munching on leaves.
Bucky offers her long, multi-volume collections of military history, true crime, and—oddly enough—paperback romance novels. When she asks about the romances, he says “Everyone needs a little whimsy in their lives” and leaves it at that.
Ava likes to lose herself in words, in the feel of paper under her fingers. She finds that word—trauma—in one of those many books her new friends give her and a lot of things in her life suddenly make sense. Trauma is a wound, an injury to the soul and the mind, that needs healing as much as a broken bone or a cut. It makes so much sense, she almost can’t believe she never gave it much thought before.
They all have so much to heal from.
Ava leaves little blank books in everyone’s room, along with a freshly sharpened no. 2 pencil. She never asks them what they write in their books, but she sees them carrying them around the tower sometimes, or scribbling into them with their pencils.
One time, John rips a page out of his book and folds it, pressing the square into her hand, and Ava thinks this is it, we’re having a moment, we’re friends now. When she unfolds the piece of paper and flattens the creases against the dining room table, she has to choke back a laugh that threatens to interrupt Bucky’s outlining of their latest mission. It’s just a crude pencil sketch of Bucky with a speech bubble over a magnificent helmet of hair that says, “I talk to hear the sound of my own voice.” It’s not even that funny, but Ava still presses a hand over her mouth to hold the laughter back. When she looks up, John winks at her and she catches him sliding his little notebook into a pocket on his suit.
She’s given so much of herself to her missions, to her pain. It’s so nice to finally get something back.