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Opening her eyes reveals nothing but an all consuming darkness, that Ava's not convinced her eyes are open even as she blinks and squints through the pitch black.
The Void?
She chokes down the swell of fear.
Ava's not even certain where the ground is, when she goes to push herself up. There's nothing below her to make contact with, fingers swiping through nothingness. She's uncertain of her orientation at all, if she's laying or standing, which way is up as she twists, suspended, without any sense of gravity. It feels like what she'd imagine floating out in space to be, except there're no stars nor crushing suffocation.
Which reminds her to finally breathe out, unsteadily, like she's the one disrupting the peace. Ava brings her fingertips to her own face, to confirm that she's here at all… that she hasn't fully and spontaneously disintegrated and this isn't what lurked for her on the other side of tangibility.
Nothing feels real, though. Nothing feels at all.
"John?" she calls out, the sound swallowed up into the expanse of nothingness. "John!" she tries again, but no matter which way she tries to move, she doesn't get closer nor further from anything.
And then there's a crackle of static, like a speaker switched on. Or several speakers, all at once. Ava's body tenses up in anticipation, hands barely able to cover her ears before she's blasted by the familiar high-pitched frequency from the Vault. No matter how hard she presses her palms, they don't help much to muffle the way the soundwaves pierces through her body, vibrating every molecule out of alignment.
"STOP!" The plea is drowned out, but eventually it does cut off. Ava's left shivering, curled up on herself with her ears still ringing, every nerve strained and raw. She sucks out another breath, and tries not to cry.
—
John opens his own eyes to darkness, though not one so all-encompassing. There's a faint glow of red that blurs at the edges of his vision that brings shape to his surroundings, and an alarm immediately starts blaring before he can fully come to his senses.
On reflex, he jumps to his feet. Ready.
"Two minutes," Yelena's voice announces. Except a quick turn of this way then that reveals there is no Yelena. It's the Vault, materializing piece by piece around him like it was waiting for his acknowledgment to exist. There's no Bob either. And no Ava.
"Ava!" he yells out, because they had just been together a moment before. In the park, atop the gazebo, underneath the stars. The crispness of the night air still clings to his skin and inside his lungs.
But it's rapidly heating up around him.
"Do you feel that?" Ava answers, from nowhere. "The temperature rising, dramatically? As if heat was involved?"
And he does, can feel the sweat prickling around the collar of his shirt, dripping at the back of his neck, beading along his creased brow and plastering the short strands along his hairline to his forehead. He's not dressed as he was in the Vault for this to be an exact memory, despite the disembodied quotes of his teammates echoing back the scene. Just another detail that's not quite adding up as his brain struggles to piece together what's happening.
The Void?
"Shit." John unzips his heavy winter coat to shrug out of, pulls his fleece sweater off too, up over his head. Even in his undershirt, every inch of his skin is uncomfortably flushed as the heat continues to rise, far more than he remembers from the incinerator before the blast.
Like somehow the details are more real and intense than reality itself was.
The timer steadily blinks down his remaining seconds, and he's not in denial this time of what's meant to happen. Though he doubts it's Valentina behind the plot this time, he's more focused on the objective of survival. There's nobody else scrambling with him for a way out as the alarm continues to blare and his vision burns red with all the warnings of danger. John strains to lift the edge of the emergency door, and of course it doesn't budge.
Where's Ava?
–
The sparks of pain behind her eyes begin to flicker together, brighter, until Ava realizes it's something coming into focus within her actual field of vision. In front of her is a large, flat screen, and right on display is a grainy closeup of John's strained expression as he struggles with a door. Everything is washed out in red. There's an ominous countdown above the security feed, 00:57 left and decreasing as Ava tries to identify what's going on. Though she has an itching feeling she already knows.
As John backs up from the security feed's view, she's able to confirm his surroundings as the Vault. It becomes clear what he's racing against as he takes a futile swing at the armored door with a metal beam, not even denting it. He doesn't even have his shield on him. 00:12.
Other than the screen in front of her, there's no exit for her to race to. No emergency button to press to release him before it all goes up in flames. "You think she's coming back?" she hears Bob's whisper crackle through the speakers, though she sees no evidence of him. 00:05
He's not there. Not with her, not with John.
Ava takes a chance at the only option available, and presses her hand to the screen, through the screen. She feels warmth on the other side. 00:02 and she pushes herself through, everything growing hotter.
–
00:00
Bursting through the ceiling vents, the flames consume everything around John, and he scrambles back but there's no escape. He scrambles and falls and finds himself tangled in flannel sheets that twist and bind him in place. He's in bed. One that's far too small now for his larger frame, long since outgrown.
He's choking on smoke as he takes in the sight of his childhood bedroom burning away, charred wallpaper and movie posters peeling from the walls, bookshelf only accelerating the spread with stories he'll never read again.
A silhouette appears in the doorway, rushing in, and for a moment there's relief. "Help!" Somebody's come for him, maybe it's Ava.
It's his sister, a swirl of pigtails and panic, as she reaches out through the smoke. John desperately reaches back, but hers grasp at a doll instead of for him. The prized doll's glassy eyes glint back at him through the smoldering remains of his memories of watching his sister abandon him to burn. He hears his mother's frantic shouts for "Kate! Hurry! I told you not to go back!" and he tastes ash and bile build up in his throat.
There's nobody coming for him.
"I should have seen this coming," a recording of his own voice echoes through the flames, though he hasn't uttered a word of it himself.
–
Ava falls through the field of pixelation and hits the floor of the Vault hard, her scraped palms the only thing preventing her face from busting against it. Through her daze she notices boots, leading up to legs, though at her angle she can't fully confirm whose prone corpse they're attached to. But given the context, she can only guess that it's Taskmaster.
She closes her eyes, pushing down that wave of guilt that she's never bothered to process, for what little good any of it would do. And moves to sit up. "John?" She calls out, twisted away from the body.
"You're too late," answers her. Through the wide open exit strolls Taskmaster, casually twirling her sword in hand.
But if that's… Ava turns to finally glimpse at the body on the floor, and it's John face down in a pool of dark blood. There's a stab wound clear through his back, that Ava rushes to cover with her palms. Except it's true, she's too late. All the blood has seeped out, and there's not even a breath or a beat of his heart left. Her own seizes up in her chest.
Taskmaster tracks bootprints through the puddle, and more and more of the room feels stained with blood rather than the eerie red glow. She's towering over Ava, stopping next to where she's knelt, and yet Ava's attention remains fully on trying to miraculously shake John back into life.
The edge of the blade presses against the side of her face, smearing the still warm blood across her cheek in a sharp streak. "Still ignoring me, Ghost?" she asks. "Can't even bring yourself to look into my face?"
Ava clenches her teeth, and lifts her gaze to stare back. Defiant. There's not even a face to look at, just a skull mask with a bullet hole straight through. "You're dead. You're dead and therefore you no longer matter."
She's met with a short laugh. "That's how it goes in this business, doesn't it? We've each killed hundreds between us, you don't see me wasting my tears over any of them."
"Exactly," Ava agrees, stiffly. "It wasn't anything personal."
"No, but it could've been." She retracts her mask to reveal a scarred face, features carefully blank in a way Ava never managed to learn how to achieve with her own. "We could've been friends, isn't that the worst part of this all?" Antonia pokes right into the bullet wound without even a wince. "All the what ifs that you-"
"No," Ava interrupts firmly, despite the fact that it's a lie. Hadn't Valentina suggested something along the same line? How much they'd have in common. Back during Halloween, right before they had been attacked. By the imposter.
The same imposter she suspects responsible for this now. How he's trapped them within the Void is another question entirely.
Either way, she shouldn't be sitting here, being haunted. She has to get through this.
"I don't waste my time wondering about such things. No offense, but worrying about the past does absolutely nothing to change it." This isn't real. Taskmaster isn't alive, therefore John can't be dead. She clutches at that logic as tightly as she clutches to his lifeless arm.
Antonia bends just enough to pluck a gun from his side holster, smirking at Ava's weak protest. "What, he wanted me to have it," in a poor imitation of John's accent. "Just like you kept my sword, didn't you? So don't lie." The sword dips again, to Ava's right shoulder and then to her left, in mockery of a knighting ceremony. "A sweet memento to remember me so fondly by? Or the trophy of a killer who has been misbranded as a hero?"
Ava weakly slaps it away. It's true. The same blade still rests in the bottom drawer in her room at the Watchtower. Some twisted sentiment prevents her from disposing of it. "It's useful," she says instead.
"And so was I. So were you. Until we weren't, wasn't it? Now you're working for the same bitch that-"
"Don't be a hypocrite," Ava snaps. "You'd have done just the same, you don't get to blame me just because you're a sore loser." And then quieter, "I didn't know, alright?" If she had, she wouldn't have pulled that trigger. Would have given the other woman the same chance at redemption as the rest of them.
And it's because of that none of it feels deserved.
Antonia's boot nudges roughly against John's side. "Bet you get a lot of mileage out of that excuse, don't you?" Except instead of the woman's rough Russian accent, it comes out as the scrambled tone of a voice modulator. One similar to what's built into her own mask.
Or that of: "Imposter," Ava accuses, immediately on her feet in confrontation. The sword is thrust at her, impaling straight through her middle. There's no blood, no pain, only static of two objects phasing through each other in a defiance of physical law. Ava pushes forward upon it, two steps until she's up face to face with the imitation of Taskmaster. "Where is he? Where's John?"
–
John's being hauled out of the fire, and his faltering awareness is punctuated by the misplaced sounds of gunfire and sporadic explosions. Instead of his brother tossing him down into their front yard, it's Lemar shoving him behind a barricade. Instead of ash, he tastes sand, and somehow everything feels just as hot as he gasps for breath. Eyes wide, he can't tear them away. "Lemar…"
"We were ambushed," Lemar tells him urgently, checking around the corner of their cover. John remembers this moment far too well as the context slides into place with another burst of shrapnel narrowly missing where they're hiding. Somehow their communications were compromised, intercepted.
"Don't worry," Lemar's voice interrupts the spray of bullets. "We'll make it out alive." More screams, cut short by the thuds of bodies hitting the ground. The horror is still seared into his brain. "Maybe not the others." He gives a playful punch to John's shoulder.
"That's not-" John's brain is swirling, disoriented and distracted by seeing Lemar again– up close, blinking and breathing and speaking. Even if he knows otherwise, that this is just another cruel vision he's being dragged through, he longs for it to be real. And yet. The wrongness of Lemar's words is enough to shake him out of the stunned reverence. "You didn't say that," John grunts out, reaching to inspect the wound in his side that's meant to be there, he still has the scar to show for it. But there's no blood. Confirmation, this isn't real. This isn't real.
"You'll earn your third Medal of Honor," Lemar continues, following a script that's entirely diverged from the chaos of battle. "A lot of good men died today, for you to go down in history as a real hero, right?"
"We had orders, a mission-"
"They awarded you with that uniform and shield. And what did you do with the stolen valor, soldier boy?" Lemar mocks.
"You agreed we were doing the right thing!" John's fists clench. He knows it's not actually Lemar that he's fighting against, perhaps it's his own guilty conscience manifesting itself in his form. Or however the twisted psychology of the Void works. He tries to remember the sessions with his therapist, her advice about grounding himself through the PSTD. "You chose to fight by my side, and if I had known that it would get you-"
"Killed, John. You got me killed. And you didn't even learn your lesson, did you? Went ahead and picked up a half dozen more sidekicks for fodder."
"They're not fodder, neither were you." John grabs at Lemar, arms around him in a tight protective hold, not wanting to let go. Wanting to squeeze out even a last ounce of affection for his dead friend, rather than succumb to the weight of the accusations. This isn't how he wants to remember him. "It wasn't you that was supposed to die, they were after me." John pauses, breathing unsteady. The sounds of bullets have calmed. No more explosions. An eerie silence takes over. Lemar's too still. Dead in his arms. "It should've been me…"
"We can arrange that," a staticky voice offers. John stiffens, glancing up. The fake Ghost floats above, observing the scene with a slow steady clap. They had suspected his powers were like Ava's, but somehow the bastard could fly too? Something about that makes him angrier.
"What the hell do you want, you cheap knockoff?"
"Has nothing to do with what I want, Captain Walker. It's trying to figure out what she possibly wants with you. You weren't meant to be here."
"Where's Ava?" he shouts, standing. He may not be able to save Lemar, not with all the guilt in the world eating him up over it, but Ava's still out there. And he remembers what this creep did to her last time.
"I can't seem to figure it out. For somebody who 'tested off the charts,' you're really below standard."
"Where. Is. She?" John demands.
"Catch!"
John turns just in time to catch a soccer ball that would have otherwise smacked him square in the face, as the scene shifts around him. He looks up, and the villain has once again vanished. In front of him is a young boy, grinning wide despite missing teeth. John looks down at the ball in his too small hands, and realizes he isn't much older.
"Come on, kick it back!" Another kid cheers. It's in Spanish, but somehow he understands it perfectly despite how rusty his own language skills are. He's somehow gotten caught up in the middle of some sort of impromptu sports game. Because there isn't any official looking field, no uniforms. Just a group of scrappy looking kids running about in a patch of poorly maintained grass and dirt in front of a small church. John kicks the ball with easy athleticism built into his gangly frame, and there's a rush of laughing and running that he automatically finds himself joining in. Like he's not really in control, just playing out a role in a scene.
This isn't his own memory. There's something vaguely familiar about it that he can't place. Despite the laughter, which feels increasingly distant and muffled while in the midst of it. Despite the fun and games that he's been drawn into like his body is on some autopilot, there's a strange melancholy weighing heavily over. The sky is bright and sunny, yet there's a foggy lens he's viewing it through. John looks around, confused, and sees a small girl peering out from the window. Her palms pressed to the glass.
"Ava," he pulls himself out of the trance, stepping in the direction of the church.
A hand finds his shoulder to stop him. "The phantom," the missing-toothed boy whispers. "She'll steal your soul."
"That's not true," John defends, shoving away from the hold. But other kids have gathered around, blocking his path.
"It's true, I heard Mother Lucía say so," a girl joins in. "She's cursed."
"I heard she died in that explosion, but even the Devil himself didn't want her." "I bet she's contagious, that's why they keep her separated." "She'll possess your body if you-"
"Hi," a small, timid voice interrupts. Ava bends to pick up the forgotten ball, but her hands go straight through it. She tries again, no luck. "Can I play too?"
"Aaah! The phantom!" "Run! Before she gets you!" The other children scatter, leaving only John behind.
Ava's shoulders are shaking, and she wipes roughly at her face, giving up on trying to pick up the ball. John approaches, and picks it up for her. "I'll play with you," he offers.
Ava looks at him like she doesn't recognize him at all. And then quietly, "You don't belong here." Her hand reaches straight into his chest, and twists.
"Hey! Walker! Catch!"
John blinks, confused and panicked, and catches the ball that's flying right for his face. This time it's a football. A proper one, more familiar, and how long has it been since he's held one in his hands? How long has it been since his life was this simple, that success was measured in points on a scoreboard instead of his face plastered on magazines because of some coverup lie?
"Walker!" His coach blows the whistle at him. He's in his practice uniform, out on the field. "Are you paying attention? Stop daydreaming, and go run five laps!"
His teammates are staring at him, and they look so much younger than he remembered. Back then they had felt like men, bright future ahead, winning championships-
The whistle blows again, and John takes off just to escape it. To find Ava.
He thinks he sees her, up ahead on the bleachers, and jogs over. Except the closer he gets, he realizes that's Olivia waiting for him, and a weird guilt twists in his stomach that she's not the woman he's wanting to see. When for most of his life, she was his everything, his priority, and he couldn't have pictured them lasting anything but forever. She waves in greeting, smiling like she has no idea she's going to be demanding a divorce in a few decades.
His pace slows, he's not really looking forward to this, if it goes the way the rest of these confrontations have gone.
Olivia seems to have picked up on that hesitation, the way her smile tightens and doesn't quite reach her eyes. "Looking for your new side piece?"
"Don't refer to her that way," John counters. This isn't really Olivia. There's no point rising to the bait.
"Do you think she's prettier than me?" Olivia asks, innocently, twisting a perfect curl around her manicured finger. "Or is it that you haven't ruined her life yet that makes her so fresh and appealing? Because you haven't worn her down with your-"
"Shut up!" Ava interrupts, spitting dirt, crawling up through the ground right between them. She's wearing a version of her Ghost suit, though in a washed out grey. It shows every speck of dirt and smear of blood, and with the way she's scuffed up, John's not sure how much of it is her own versus whoever else has gotten in her way.
He reaches a hand down to help her up, and ignores the glaring audience from the bleachers as much as he can. But he hears their baby crying, now cradled in Olivia's arms. His mother on one side of her, disapproving and tutting about how he's so much like his father. Lemar dead-eyed on the other, shaking his head. He squeezes Ava's hand tighter, grounding himself to her presence. She's real, unlike the rest of this.
"John, we need to get out of this- for fuck's sake!" Ava kicks at the ground, as more hands burst through it, trying to grab at her legs. They emerge like B-horror movie zombies, broken and twisted limbs pulling out of the earth. All their eyes blank and lifeless, mouths slack-jawed and groaning.
"Ghost," one hisses. "You did this," another follows. He's pretty sure one looks like Taskmaster, and he winces at how grotesque these half-rotted corpses look. John stomps down on an arm with a sickly crunch, and they take off running across the field. His coach blows the whistle, but neither of them pay it any mind.
"What's going on?" he asks, hoping Ava's been able to figure out more than he has.
"I don't think this is the Void," Ava replies. "That doppelganger that stole my powers somehow, he's done something."
"I saw him," John confirms. "He told me-" he cuts himself short.
"Told you what?"
John pulls her into the locker room, shutting out the shambling hoard of Ava's past victims. They bang insistently against the door, against the window, loudly bemoaning her crimes against them. "Just that he doesn't see what you see in me," he answers, looking around for something to better secure the door with.
"What? Why," Ava wrinkles her nose, not seeing the relevance at all.
"I think he's obsessed with you."
"Ew, no."
"He stole your gimmick, dresses up like you. Targeted you on Halloween, and now interrupted our date and kidnapped us in this weird… pseudo-Void. And clearly was trying to keep us apart."
The floor tilts dangerously. "I didn't steal anything." Ava grabs for John, John grabs for a shelving unit full of sporting equipment that topples over and slides with them. There's nothing to hold onto because it all slips and and tumbles into the darkness below.
"Only what's rightfully mine."
They land in a dark room, full of faintly blinking LEDs. It looks like some sort of data farm, with rows and rows of servers hooked up. "Great. Somebody mining bitcoin," John mutters. There's the sound of footsteps a row or two over, barely audible above the low hum of machines, and Ava presses her finger over John's mouth to keep him hushed. He swallows down his question, if this is a place she recognizes, and follows her lead.
Ava sneaks down one row, peering around the corner. And gasps, ducking back. John peeks out to see what earned such a reaction, but only catches the faint glimmer of somebody vanishing through the machines.
"The impost-" he begins, and Ava shakes her head.
"No, that's me."
"What are you doing here?" he asks, and then realizing how that sounds… "What mission?"
She knew what he meant, but sighs out. "I don't know. There were a lot similar to this, they all sort of blur together after awhile. Maybe I was stealing something? Intel." Most likely.
"Destroying intel," a timid voice responds. They turn to see a thin, bespeckled man cowering behind one of the computers. "Don't let her know I'm here."
The computers that Ghost had vanished into spark and whir and give out, as she emerges with a handful of broken wires and cords in her fist.
"Ah, yes. I remember this one," she frowns. "Probably one of my first? Pretty quick and easy, in and out. SHIELD sent me after this data center saying it had compromising research stored, that they were doing some sort of illegal, proprietary-"
"Cutting edge technological advancements!" the cowering man interrupts, and then shrinks under both their gazes. Honestly, Ava had forgotten he was even there. Most of the 'people' encountered within these memory fragments really weren't there at all, only to taunt and distract them.
Ava frowns. "I don't remember you."
"Ignore him, Ava, we have to find that imposter."
"Of course you wouldn't remember me," the man adjusts his glasses. He's pasty even in the glow of the LEDs, like he's spent most of his life here amongst the machines. Ava knows what that's like.
"I took out the guards," Ava recalls. "There wasn't supposed to be anyone else here. No witnesses."
"I was working late," he stands, wobbly. He's wearing a nametag, clipped askew to his ill-fitting cardigan. But when Ava tries to read it, the text is blurred out. Censored. That's odd. "Trying to get this project completed."
"What was the project?" John asks, poking at a few of the buttons boredly.
Ava shrugs. "Wasn't considered relevant for me to know."
"Ironic that they didn't even bother to inform you, considering it was based off of you," the man smirks knowingly.
"What do all these computers have to do with her?" John demands. The smirk fades, the man looking quite annoyed by John's presence.
"I wouldn't expect some thick-headed jock like you to understand."
"Then you better start explaining yourself, or we'll find just how thin your skull really is when I-"
"John, hush." Ava steps forward, hands up. "We're just trying to make sense of all this."
Another row of computers spark and crackle, as the version of her continues the mission. The man winces.
"Back when SHIELD brought you, an anomaly of a little girl, into its labs. There was all sorts of excitement about the possibilities."
"To use me."
"No, before that. Quantum research was still so theoretical. But to have a living model of-"
"Cut the crap, creep. Get to the point," John steps forward, not liking the way the guy is staring at Ava with such an obsessive glint. Like somebody else has discovered John's favorite work of art, and has completely misinterpreted it.
"They were experimenting on ways to apply her unique properties to other things," he continues, arms crossed.
"They were testing on rats and rabbits, trying to make them like me," Ava bites out. "None of them survived."
"Which was cruel and unethical," the man agrees. "But I-"
"You worked for SHIELD?" John interrupts again, unimpressed.
"Briefly!" he responds defensively, as Ava grits her teeth. "As an intern. I wasn't involved in the biological aspect of the project, that was below my talents. No, I saw potential in applying your quantum abilities to technology. To computing." He gestures to the room, just as more servers are disabled, going dark. "But then they decided it wasn't working, not worth the resources and time invested. They were more interested in weaponizing you, twisting the beauty of your-"
"Careful with what you say next," John warns.
"Wasting her on something as primitive as stealing and killing. Taking an innovative and groundbreaking advancement in human existence, and reducing it to the crudest form of humanity there is."
Ava huffs. "Well I wasn't happy about it either, but I didn't have much choice."
"Bet you get a lot of mileage out of that excuse, don't you?" he echoes his previous sentiment.
"YOU!" Ava puts together, slamming the man up against the machines.
"Took you long enough to figure out the obvious. Maybe I have overestimated you," his voice crackles with the familiar static.
Ava's about to shove her fist into his throat, when the entire tower of servers topples over, atop them. She braces for the crushing impact, but doesn't feel anything. Maybe John stopped it? But no, there's a familiar flickering surrounding her. A buzzing of energy of phased matter.
"These were the Ghost programs you were meant to destroy, the quantum computers that defied the limitations of the material world. You trapped me in them, when you pushed them over. For three days- three days I was fused inside the servers. My mind becoming one with the data streams. Opened my mind up to all sorts of things nobody ever believed possible."
Ava's own mind is flooded with digital information, flickering flashbacks of him building his own Ghost suit, years of experimentation in abandoned warehouses, of stalking her from afar…
"Ugh, you were obsessed with me," Ava complains, because she hates that John called that out, trying to shove away from the wires entangling her.
John manages to pull her out from the glitching mess of smashed machinery, and she shivers from the unpleasant tingling of being disconnected. "Look, pal. We get it. You want revenge for being turned into a freak."
"Hey," Ava protests, because she's the same brand of freak. John gives her an apologetic look, but gestures insistently.
"Sure, for those first couple days that was all I could think of. Surviving so I could track down the one responsible for ruining my tireless research. Except I reached enlightenment, that I fulfilled the true potential of myself once I escaped the physical realm. What the Ghost did was actually a blessing." He arises from wreckage, back in his own Ghost form, floating above the trashed computers. "I rebuilt, grew stronger, expanded my resources."
"Sounds great, turning your trauma into a success story. Happens to the worst of us. Still not sure what that has to do with me, unless you're looking for some sponsorship campaign deal." Ava's far more wary than she's trying to come off. Revenge felt simple and predictable. Whatever he must want instead feels way worse.
"For the next phase, hah, pun intended," both Ava and John look unimpressed. "Of the project, I realized that I needed you here with me, your abilities have yet to be fully unlocked. Nobody else can do the things you do, not in the way you do. Ghost, join me-"
"No," John interrupts, not willing to entertain this proposal to even allow it to play all the way out. "No, you don't get to play Phantom of the Opera with my girlfriend."
Wait, hold up. Ava opens her mouth, ready to protest one man's entire misconstruing of the situation, and now that? That's not at all how she expected their relationship status to be made official.
"Girlfriend?" Ghost 2.0 scoffs before she can utter a word. Which just adds to the pile of things for Ava to be irritated with. "You go on one cliched stargazing picnic in the park and-"
"You're questioning my dating technique, you basement-dwelling geek? When's the last time you've had relations with more than-"
"I'll have you know I had a girlfriend, one that-"
"Then why are you so obsessed with-"
The surroundings are beginning to glitch around them, the details rendering in lower resolutions that make her increasingly uneasy. "Oh my god, will you both shut the hell up?" Ava interrupts loudly. "This is not at all a conversation that involves you," she gestures to Ghost. "I don't owe you any explanation for my attraction to John. And even if I wasn't involved with him, or anyone, even if I had no team nor friends left in this godforsaken world, I wouldn't agree to stay with you in whatever this horrific nightmare is."
Everything fades away in a flash of blinding white, and Ava shields her eyes with her arm. When she peers out again, she's surprised to find herself immersed in the scenic array of waterfalls. The water rushing, the misty spray against her skin, the sparkling of the soft sunlight all fills her senses.
She knows this place, but only from a postcard. "Iguazu Falls," Ava breathes out, confused. She was supposed to come here with her parents for her next birthday, until the accident prevented her parents from fulfilling the promise. She had used to long to see this place in person, and it's just as awe-inspiring as she imagined.
But it's not real, she reminds herself. Even as perfectly detailed it's all rendered. "It doesn't have to be a nightmare," Ghost ruins the moment by fading in beside her. "You didn't allow me to finish explaining. What it is I'm trying to accomplish, your role in it all."
"It's some digital world you've created," Ava guesses. "And you think my powers can… what, power it? But I'm not interested in being trapped and used anymore, so you're not convincing me with some cheap tricks."
Ghost's shoulders sag a bit, in what she hopes is defeat and acceptance. "You're still not seeing the larger picture," he insists. "This isn't just a world. It's a simultaneous simulation of all the realities that could be, right at your fingertips. It's not trapping you, it's freeing you from the constraints of a singular physical existence. Your body longs to exist across multitudes, not one inferior version."
"But it's the real version," Ava frowns. "Not some fantasy."
"Then I've listened to your Dr. Foster's lectures more than you have."
"Don't you dare bring Bill's work into this. Yes, I'm well aware of parallel universes. But I'm not trying to escape-"
"Just like we promised, Ava," she hears a man speak from right beside her, with no awareness of when he suddenly came into existence. She turns, to confirm it's her father. Elihas. With her mother right on his other side, smiling at her with a polaroid camera.
"Come on, smile dearest," she prompts.
"Stop doing this," Ava demands, turning back to Ghost. It's hard, not turning back to steal another look. And yet standing her ground would be even more difficult if she gave in to such temptations. "Stop trying to manipulate me!"
"This isn't my doing," Ghost puts his hands up in surrender. "This is all you, you can control this. The possibilities are limitless."
"Then why can't I get you to go away? And where's John?" Ava knows she has to stay focused, not get distracted by all the scene changes and emotional bait. The objective has remained the same: get out.
"He was annoying me, so I disconnected him from the server," Ghost responds dismissively. "Stop worrying about him, he doesn't belong here, he isn't built for a place like this. I don't know how he managed to get in at all. He must have somehow piggybacked off your energy signature."
Ava freezes. Is it possible that there's still a trace of the quantum entanglement leftover, that would have allowed John's consciousness to accidentally follow her into this digital hellscape?
Which means…
Ava slowly reaches up for her ear. "That's not going to work," Ghost cuts in.
"What isn't?" she asks innocently.
"Don't think I don't know about your little birthday gifts from your teammates," he warns.
"Oh, you're even more invasively creepy than I imagined," Ava wrinkles her nose, and squeezes the trigger of her earring.
Nothing happens.
"I really thought you were smarter than that, Ava," Ghost shakes his head. "Haven't you figured it out? You're not physically, actually here. So your cute little trinkets aren't going to work."
The scene shifts around them, and this time it's a cozy little kitchen that looks straight out of some old black and white family sitcom. Her mother is pulling a pie out of the oven, her father reading a newspaper at the table. "Is this what you'd prefer instead? Some make believe family that you thought got stolen away from you?"
"My parents were never like this," Ava responds, frowning. Maybe her plan wasn't going to work after all. But if there's any chance of it working at all, she has to keep Ghost distracted. Even if it means indulging in his game.
"But what if they were?" Ghost asks. "What if instead of obsessing over his work at the expense of his family, he actually bothered being a father? Didn't endanger you? You can live out that life here, if you want."
"Come on, Twinkle Starr," Elihas reaches over and pulls out the chair next to him. "You can help me finish this crossword." Ava's fingers twitch, and she purses her lips tightly as she tries to suppress a smile.
"Oh Elihas, you know she doesn't know the name of any of those old sports players," Catherine playfully chides, serving a slice of pie for the both of them.
Ava takes a reluctant seat at the table, still fiddling with her earring. She's in a much smaller body now, feet that don't quite meet the floor as she dangles them from the chair.
Ghost opens the door, and there's Bill too, giving everyone a warm greeting. Ava feels transfixed as the scene plays out around her, letting herself briefly indulge in the longing for a lifetime of this.
And then all at once it all cuts out.
John's leaning above her, squeezing at her earlobe. Ava blinks rapidly through the dark, grabbing for the front of his coat as she gasps for air. It's a strange sensation, being thrown into reality all at once.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" Ghost charges at John, but it's a rather pitiful attempt at a fight. With his suit's powers knocked offline, none of his phasing seems to work to evade John knocking him out with one swift blow to the head. It's over quickly, and Ghost crumples to the floor in a heap of scrawny limbs. He really didn't stand a chance.
Ava rubs at her own forehead, feeling like all the energy has been zapped out of her. "Wasn't sure if you got my signal," she mutters, scooting to the side of the table she was laying out on. She rips off the electrode pads from her arms and forehead one by one before hopping back to the ground. "Jesus, my head hurts," she complains, just as John comes up close to her side to support her weight.
"Took me a few minutes of recovering from the disorientation and trying to figure out where you even were. Creepo here had me bound up in some storage closet."
Ava stares down at his body, and then at the machine he had her hooked up to. "He really wanted to use me as some power source, huh. Not even sure what he was actually trying to accomplish." Because she knows his methods were mostly just convincing her to give in, but what his actual end goal was... well, they didn't get that far.
"He'll have to answer to some good old fashioned interrogation, when we get back to the Tower. I alerted Mel of our coordinates and they're on the way." He holds up his phone, and then realizes the EMP fried it too and shrugs.
"Sure you can wait that long for the fingernail peeling or needles in the eyeball-"
"Geez, what kind of interrogation methods were you taught?" John looks equally horrified and amused, as he rubs at one of the inflamed spots on Ava's forehead.
"What. Expected better from… your girlfriend, was it?" Ava challenges with a pout.
"You seem less annoyed by it now than you did back there. I really wasn't thinking when I-"
Ava leans up to kiss him, short but intense. Her lips linger against his as she continues, "Guess I didn't want the first time I heard it to be used as an insult against some weirdo. But then again, I guess that's fitting for us."
John gives a short exhale of amusement. "Then if it's okay with you." He sounds hopeful, and yet braced for the possibility of rejection. Maybe he's feeling a bit raw from the encounters with his ex.
"It's probably fine. I just…" Ghost stirs on the floor, and Ava swiftly kicks to knock him out again. "Well, I don't really know what the expectations are, that come with such a term. How much it changes things between us, if I'm able to fulfill any of those things you want. Or need."
"If I was looking for something or someone that wasn't you, then you wouldn't be the one I just got abducted with. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out."
"On our next date," Ava decides, smiling tentatively. Of course she's still nervous about it all, messing things up without knowing quite what she's doing and decades of inexperience to try making up for. But she doesn't need some simulation to show her all the different what ifs that she's missing out in life. She just needs to take chances in her own life for once, instead of turning and running the other direction the moment anything gets too stressful to deal with. More than ever she feels the urge to embrace the reality that's in front of her and make the best of it.
And she wants that with him.
"On our next date," John agrees.