Work Text:
It started with a call, as usual. The call came from a rooftop in Lisbon, a detail Ava learned later. At the moment, all she knew was Scott’s voice, tinny and breathless through her phone, cutting through the comfortable quiet of Bill’s living room.
"—a little bit of a situation," he was saying, his words punctuated by the sound of distant sirens. "Not a bad situation! A good situation, superhero-wise. A bad situation, scheduling-wise."
Ava lowered her book, her thumb marking the page. She didn’t tense up at the sound of trouble anymore. Scott’s life was a constant stream of low-grade chaos; she’d learned to just let it wash over her. "What did you do, Scott?"
"Me? Nothing! Okay, not nothing. Look, Maggie’s stuck in a deposition, Jim’s got a mandatory training thing, Hank and Janet are still on vacation, and Hope and I are… well, we’re in Europe."
A long pause. Ava could picture him perfectly, pacing in his suit, running a hand through his hair.
"Okay?" she prompted.
"Okay, so, Cassie gets out of school in forty-five minutes and there’s literally no one on the continent to get her. Except you. And Bill, but he’s teaching a class until six, he just told me."
Ava stared at the wall. The request hung in the air, simple and heavy. A few months ago, the idea would have been unthinkable. A non-starter. Now, it was just an inconvenience. A complicated, nerve-wracking inconvenience, but not an impossibility.
"Please, Ava?" Scott’s voice was softer now, all the frantic energy gone, replaced by genuine appeal. "I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. She’ll be waiting. I already told the school office you have permission to pick her up."
He had? The presumption of it should have irritated her. It should have felt like a violation of her carefully guarded space. Instead, a strange, fluttery feeling surfaced in her chest. It feels weird to be trusted.
She let out a long, slow breath. "I don’t have a car."
The relief in Scott’s voice was a physical presence, even from thousands of miles away. "I know! Keys to the van are in the ceramic ant by the door. The big one. Not the little one, that’s where I keep spare change. Thank you, thank you, thank you, you’re the best, seriously, I owe you one—"
"Scott," Ava cut him off, her voice flat but not unkind. "Go save the world."
"Right. On it. Be safe!"
The line went dead. Ava sat in the silence, her book forgotten in her lap. She was going to have to drive the van. And go to a middle school. During dismissal. A fresh wave of apprehension washed over her. It wasn’t the gut-twisting fear of her past, but a low, humming anxiety, the kind normal people probably felt before a job interview, not that she knew what that felt. She stood up, smoothing down her dark jeans. It was for Cassie. That, she was discovering, was a reason powerful enough to make her do a lot of stupid things.
The van handled like a boat. Ava drove with both hands on the wheel, her eyes scanning the road. She hated it. But she got there.
The school was even worse than she’d imagined.
Brookemont Elementary School was a hive. A frantic, churning mass of life that spilled out of the front doors and flooded the sidewalks. The air was filled with a wall of noise: shouting, laughing, the screech of sneakers on pavement, the rumble of school buses. Kids moved in packs, a confusing tide of brightly colored backpacks and loud opinions. Ava parked across the street, watching the chaos from the relative safety of the van. This was where Cassie spent her days. It was a world away from the quiet stillness Ava craved, a completely alien ecosystem.
She checked her phone. It was ten minutes past dismissal. Time to go in.
Taking a deep breath, she got out of the van. The moment her feet hit the sidewalk, she felt a dozen pairs of eyes on her. She was used to being invisible, a ghost slipping through the cracks of the world. Standing here, in her plain black jacket and gray t-shirt, she felt more exposed than if she’d been standing in the middle of a room. Parents stood in clusters, chatting and laughing, their faces open and relaxed. She felt like a different species. She kept her expression neutral, her gaze fixed on the double doors of the school, and walked.
The school office was a small pocket of relative calm. A woman with kind eyes and aggressively pink glasses looked up from her computer. "Can I help you, dear?"
"I’m here for Cassie Lang," Ava said, her voice quiet.
"Ah, yes! Ava Starr, right?" The woman smiled, tapping a few keys. "Scott called. Said you were a family friend." She slid a clipboard across the counter. "Just need you to sign her out right here."
Family friend. The words felt strange on her tongue, like a language she was just learning to speak. She scrawled her name. As she finished, the door behind her burst open and Cassie was there, her face lit up like a Roman candle.
"Ava!"
All the awkwardness, all the eyes on her, it all just melted away in the face of Cassie’s unfiltered joy. Cassie didn’t seem to notice the strange setting or the weirdness of the situation. She just saw her friend. She dropped her backpack on the floor and threw her arms around Ava’s middle in a hug that was quick and fierce and smelled faintly of pencil shavings.
"I can’t believe you’re here!" Cassie said, pulling back, her eyes sparkling. "Did daddy get stuck in a volcano again?"
"Europe," Ava corrected.
"Come on," Cassie shouldered her backpack. "Madison is going to flip when she sees my cool sister."
Cassie pulled her by the hand, leading her out of the office and back into the throng. She waved cheerfully to the woman at the desk. "Bye, Mrs. Peterson!"
As they walked down the crowded hallway, a girl with a curtain of blonde hair and a skeptical expression stopped them.
"Madison, this is Ava. Ava, this is Madison," Cassie said breezily. "Ava’s my sister. She’s picking me up today."
Madison’s eyes swept over Ava, taking in the dark clothes, the quiet intensity, the faint scars peeking out from her sleeves. Ava met her gaze without flinching, her expression unreadable.
"Hi," Madison said, her voice a little uncertain.
Ava just nodded.
"Okay, well, see you tomorrow, Cass!" Madison said, scurrying off to join another group of friends, already whispering.
Cassie rolled her eyes. "Don’t mind her. She thinks she's better than everyone just because her dad owns the froyo shop a few blocks away." She leaned in closer as they pushed through the front doors into the afternoon sun. "Did you see her face, though? She was totally impressed. And a little scared. It was awesome."
Ava wasn’t sure ‘awesome’ was the word she would have chosen, but seeing the proud, happy grin on Cassie’s face, she couldn’t bring herself to disagree. They crossed the street to the van, and Cassie’s eyes lit up.
"So can we get milkshakes?" She hopped into the passenger seat, throwing her backpack into the back. "Daddy always says no because I might ruin my appetite for dinner, but he’s not here, and you’re in charge."
Ava buckled her seatbelt, the familiar motion grounding her. She looked over at Cassie, who was practically vibrating with hope. A milkshake. It was such a simple, normal, after-school thing to do.
"Fine," Ava said. "But you’re telling your dad it was your idea."
"Deal!" Cassie beamed. "This is the best pickup ever."
They found a small diner a few miles from the school, the kind of place with red vinyl booths and a jukebox in the corner that only played songs from thirty years ago. It was mostly empty, save for a couple of old men drinking coffee at the counter.
They slid into a booth by the window, the worn vinyl cool against Ava’s back. A waitress came over and Cassie ordered a chocolate milkshake with extra whipped cream and two cherries. Ava, after studying the menu for a long, silent moment, just ordered tea.
When the drinks arrived, Cassie plunged her straw into the milkshake with gusto. Ava wrapped her hands around the warm, heavy ceramic of her mug. The heat seeped into her palms, a pleasant, solid feeling.
"So," Cassie began, her voice bubbly around a mouthful of milkshake. "Guess what happened in history today? Mr. Davison gave us a pop quiz, and Omar, you remember Omar, he didn’t study at all, so he was trying to see my answers, but he wasn’t being subtle about it at all, he was like a giraffe."
Ava listened, taking small sips of the tea. She didn’t have to say much. Cassie’s stories were self-contained universes, full of vivid characters and intricate plots. Ava was just the audience, a silent, steady presence for Cassie to bounce her energy off of. It was a role she was growing comfortable with.
After the dramatic tale of the pop quiz was finished, Cassie looked at Ava, a more serious expression on her face. "Was your school like that?"
The question was gentle, curious. Ava looked down into her mug, at her own reflection rippling in the warm liquid. She thought of the cold, sterile rooms. The instructors were scientists and tacticians. There were no pop quizzes, no silly gossip, no friends.
"No," she said, her voice very quiet. "My school was different."
She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to. Cassie seemed to understand. She just nodded, taking a long, noisy sip of her milkshake. She knew there were parts of Ava’s life that were like deep water, dark and scary places you didn’t just jump into.
To Ava’s surprise, Cassie reached across the table and put her hand over Ava’s for just a second. Her fingers were cold and a little sticky from the milkshake.
The brief, simple touch, and the easy way Cassie had steered them back into the light, meant more to Ava than a thousand probing questions or expressions of sympathy
She took another sip of her tea, the taste sharp on her tongue. A small, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips.
By the time they got back to Scott’s house, the sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows across the street. The house was empty, just as they’d left it. Captain Fin the goldfish, who had miraculously survived and now lived in a proper tank on the kitchen counter, swam in lazy circles to greet them.
"Okay, homework time," Cassie announced, dropping her backpack onto the kitchen table with a heavy thud. "I have to write a poem for English class. It has to be about an emotion." She slumped into a chair. "How do you write a poem about an emotion?"
Ava leaned against the counter, watching her. "What’s the emotion?"
"He didn’t assign one. We have to pick. I was gonna do ‘happy’ but everyone’s gonna do ‘happy.’ It’s boring." Cassie tapped her pencil on the table. "What’s another one?"
Ava thought for a moment. She knew a lot about emotions. Fear. Pain. Rage. Loneliness. They had been the four walls of her life for so long. But those weren’t things you wrote a middle school poem about. She thought about the last few months. The pillow fort. The fair. The quiet comfort of the diner.
"What about… relief?" Ava suggested, the word feeling new in her mouth.
Cassie looked up, her expression thoughtful. "Relief. Like, ‘phew, I didn’t get caught passing that note.’ Or ‘phew, the world didn’t end today.’" She grinned at Ava. "Yeah. I like that. Relief."
For the next hour, a comfortable quiet settled over the kitchen. Cassie hunched over her notebook, chewing on the end of her pencil and occasionally muttering lines of poetry to herself. Ava, finding she had nothing else to do, started making them a snack. She found bread, cheese, and butter in the fridge. The butter sizzled in the hot pan. These hands, which had been trained to phase through walls and fight for her life, were now carefully flipping a sandwich, making sure the cheese was perfectly melted.
She placed a plate with a diagonally cut sandwich in front of Cassie, who looked up from her poem with a grateful smile. They ate in silence, the only sounds the crunch of the toasted bread and the scratching of Cassie’s pencil.
They were finishing the last bites when they heard a key in the lock. A moment later, Scott and Hope walked in, looking tired but happy, covered in soot. Hope had a few strands of her hair fall off from her ponytail.
"We’re home!" Scott called out. "Smells like victory. Oohh… and grilled cheese."
His eyes landed on the scene in the kitchen—the two girls at the table, the near empty plates, the homework spread out. A wide, fond smile broke across his face. He looked at Ava, his expression full of a gratitude so deep it needed no words.
"Hey, kiddo," he said to Cassie, ruffling her hair. "Thanks for getting her, Ava. Seriously."
"It was fine," Ava said, and she was surprised to find that she meant it.
Hope gave Ava a small, knowing smile. "I see you survived the after-school rush."
"Barely," Ava replied, and the corner of her mouth quirked up.
As Cassie packed up her things, chattering to her dad about her day, about the milkshake loophole and her poem about relief, Ava quietly cleared their plates and put them in the sink.
"Thanks again, Ava," Scott said. " For everything."
"See you Friday for movie night?" Cassie called over from the table as Ava walked towards the door.
"See you," Ava replied, and with a wave, she was gone.