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Everything was wrong now, though nothing had ever been right. For a lifetime, Ava had been the one caught in cell-shredding wrongness, bowled over by otherworldly pain. It was Ava’s hair that’d been… well, not falling out, but its ends were scorched blonde and brittle by the phase-shifts that ripped her body apart, the sickness that left her unable to leave the house without the containment suit, incapable of existing outside of her chamber for long. Intangible, yet tethered hopelessly to this building. Tied to the whims of a scientist who could, at any point, decide her cure wasn’t worth his focus, who could leave her to rot like the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. had.
Bill never did that.
Back then, the fruit would stain the chopping board reddish as Bill sliced it. Massive orange-skinned citrus — “most refreshing thing you’ll ever find,” as he parted the halves to reveal the sparkling pink of it — the sort he’d gravitated toward in his youth. “Testing those suits took a lot out of me, and I was pushing their limits on purpose,” he’d always say. “The body’s not made for that. Nor for what’s happening to you. Here, try.”
A pristine slice of grapefruit. Juicy enough to splash down her chin as she bit, sweet and cold and with a bitter edge. Ava lacked the same nostalgia for it that Bill had, and she couldn’t even begin to fathom why he would put himself through that project he spoke of, and citrus didn’t do shit for her own fatigue, but she accepted the gift all the same.
Bill couldn’t have grapefruit anymore. Interfered with the medication. He never said he missed it, but Ava saw his face when he was told this. Ava knew.
He missed a lot of things. Ava had never had such an expansive life to miss, not for long, it was all so quickly taken from her, nothing but a distant half-remembered childhood she’d long since grown out of. Bill had a whole life outside of this house that he didn’t get to have anymore.
Grapefruit. His office. The blackboards on the walls, which were permanently covered in his writing, the rows of seats in his regular lecture halls, all eyes on him — how he could stand that, much less enjoy it, was a mystery to Ava, but she could tell he did, because now that he was on leave from that position at Berkeley, he just moped around and slept all the time, and his eyes would go so, so dull and empty whenever they were open. Blank, like the blackboards were left when they packed up his things.
Hank Pym visited, when he found out, uninvited. It was perhaps the most uncomfortable interaction Ava had ever witnessed. Bill, reclined in an armchair, likely hurting, likely nauseous (increasingly so, Ava figured, with Hank in the room) and Hank being downright pleasant to him. All stiff-faced condolences and “if you need anything…” and it devolved into Bill, with agonizing effort, sitting straight up in the chair to jab a finger at him and pick a fight over something stupid until Hank left. That had always been their ordinary, but now Hank refused to return the verbal blows, and it left Bill seething and humiliated. “Next time,” he wheezed, as Ava shut the door behind Hank, “next time don’t let him in, okay? Piece of shit.” He threw up on the carpet a second later.
He couldn’t keep anything down. It was worse than the worst Ava’s unreliable appetite had ever been. Then, she’d had Bill’s cooking to rely on, Bill’s fresh-sliced grapefruit, Bill’s grilled cheese and tomato soup, Bill’s instant noodle packages — pre-packaged ramen and pho, when he was too absorbed in the work to make a proper meal. The work. Doing everything he could to cure her. God knows she couldn’t cure him, and her own cooking was terrible, and Bill made it known. He never outright said anything, would just leave the plates of dry toast untouched, but Ava knew.
He was losing so much weight it terrified Ava. It didn’t even look like Bill anymore, it was wrong, everything was wrong. All her life, she’d been the dying one. She didn’t know how to be the one that stood there and watched.
That had always been Bill, stoic beside her as she withered, but now Ava was planted firm on the physical plane. Ava was strong, and when she cut her hair, the colourless blonde-bleached ends wisped to the floor, and her curls remained the deep brunette they were supposed to be, and Bill’s hair was falling out in silvery clumps and patches. Ava could spend a full day upright and solid, no chamber required, only occasional alternations in and out of the new suit. Bill needed to lie down all the time.
Bill’s mind was going, that was the most unnerving part of all of this, because Dr. Foster was the most intelligent person Ava knew (some childish inner voice always whispered that it was a betrayal to her father, to think that, but she thought it nonetheless) and he needed Ava’s help to remember which pills to take and when. He, splayed sideways on the sofa, held a stack of paper (Bill printed everything, made his students hand in physical copies, when he still had students) and it shook in his hand and his eyes staggered over the lines and he hurled the papers in frustration. The clip holding them together snapped off and the sheets slipped in every direction over the floor. Bill didn’t move. Ava found him staring at the mess.
She’d taken to reading. Ava would sit down beside him, make sure he was as comfortable as he could be — not very — and Ava would read.
Quantum mechanics, new developments in the field he loved so much, abstract after abstract after abstract. Ava would read Bill the abstracts, so that he could close his eyes (no glasses, now) and sluggishly absorb the big-picture findings, and sometimes on good days he would slowly nod and wave a hand and ask, in his way, for the full article. Even then, Ava was never sure of how much he was actually processing. She wasn’t retaining much of anything, herself. In truth, she was actively trying to let the words flow from her without grasping them, without thinking, because God was she sick of labs, of scientists and their studies and their jargon, but Ava’s scientist was sick and he missed this research and the sound of it in her voice was one of few things that seemed to bring him comfort, these days.
And then Ava would head off to her own job, which she had the privilege of being well enough to reliably attend. She’d been at it for just shy of two months, not long, but it wasn’t as if any of this was new to her.
If anything, it was all much easier. All the targets’ vital organs remained in all the same places. Ava’s body did too, now, flickering only when commanded, hers to control. Molecular equilibrium. It didn’t hurt like it used to. It didn’t hurt Ava like it used to. Hearts and spines, sets of lungs, she could feel them squelch in high definition, unblurred by pain. Lifesaving funds clattered into her account. What would tumours feel like, if she reached beneath the skin and felt them? Spongy misshapen blobs of flesh, gorging themselves. She kicked a man in the stomach and ripped the gun from his hand, pulled the trigger. Bam. Done.
Ava took to that, taking weapons, from then on. It was cleaner. She never brought her own, never needed to, knew that she was the weapon and anything else she needed would be there waiting for her. Black coffee, soft murmured words, threadbare blanket draped over bony shoulders before she left. Everyone Valentina ever sent her after had a gun. Everyone loved to shoot, it seemed, but Ava marched through bullets like they were nothing, like she was nothing, the spray of lead passed through her every time. “You’re not the one who’s about to fade away into nothing, Bill, I am!” she’d snarled once, but she hadn’t faded, she never would, and Bill wouldn’t either, she wouldn’t let him.
Bill would hate this. Ava wasn’t sure how much he knew. Possibly most of it. He would hate her work. It was okay. She’d never understood his, either.
The body crumpled. The job was done. Ava tossed the gun aside. She ached. She could use some water, some— God, she was starving, some fruit wouldn’t sound bad, right about now. She buried the thought, trudged homeward.