it always hurts.

test test 

test test

MAKE MY MUSE UNCOMFORTABLE !

“I’m not sure anyone would want to be my roommate indefinitely, but... Hope, if she could stand it.” @ofhopevandyne

✉️ ➡️ Ava): You know that I’m down for it. Whatever happens.  (✉️ ➡️ Ava): I’ll do just that.  (✉️ ➡️ Ava): Who is it? 

(✉️ ➡️ Ava): Let’s get them.  (✉️ ➡️ Ava): Send me the details and I’ll get a location.  (✉️ ➡️ Ava): Is it going to be as messy as last time? If so, I’ll wear a jacket I don’t like this time. 

TEXT MESSAGE MEME FOR @ofdemonsandmagic

TEXT MESSAGE MEME FOR @ofblxckwidows

          Well look at that, maybe Dick was rubbing off on him a bit. Being a secret ‘Wayne’ certainly had it’s perks, being able to not crawl away screaming while he put on a social mask. At least staying a ‘Drake’ for now kept him out of the limelight. Getting that kind of reaction made him beam a little too much on the inside, and he had to scold himself for letting his internal guard down as much as he just did. “Agreed, easier to see them as news headlines rather than… gods and monsters.” Which one was he? Certainly not a headline, he kept an even lower profile than his mentor, and not a God by any means of the definition. Did that make him one of the monsters? Maybe so, maybe so.

          His own smile got a little smaller, getting lost again in his own reasoning and thought. Remember, you have company. Unannounced company, the best kind according to some. You brought this on yourself, weirdo. “I certainly can’t. Pretty sure meta’s and the like started popping up when I was in my single digits. I can’t remember when I wasn’t-” An abrupt stop. What, couldn’t remember when he wasn’t swinging over dusk-lit rooftops? Couldn’t remember when the weight of Kevlar and other tactical fabrics weren’t weighing him down? “It’s… Never mind.” He could feel the mask of Tim Drake fading,  bringing a hand up instinctively to his cheekbones to feel for the domino the cowl that wasn’t there. “Sorry for the mini-therapy session.”

Gods or monsters. If she was included in the overarching category of ‘powered people,’ Ava didn’t have to wonder which word better applied to her. Her abilities had never made her feel godlike, not when they were tearing her apart atom by atom and certainly not when she was using them to hurt people. Monster, though... That felt more like her. She hadn’t been a news headline, either, not until she’d gone against Scott and Hope. Even then, the articles had been vague, uncertain. It was hard to properly write about a ghost, after all. “And people certainly like easier, don’t they?” She smiled, shrugging a shoulder. It was a fact of life, something simple. People liked easy, and they’d go to great lengths to find it. She had.

Something cut him off, made him stop talking before he could say something he didn’t want her to hear. Again, it was difficult not to analyze it. It was hard to keep herself from pushing, from poking, from prodding. It was also hard not to relate. Heroes had been around most of her life. In the beginning, it had made her feel a little better. Her parents were gone, she was in pain, but she had power. She told herself that meant she could be a hero, something like Captain America, but that had never been in the cards for her. It had never been in her nature. She’d always been something closer to a villain, deep down. She smiled at the apology, waving it off once again. “Everyone needs to vent sometimes, right? It’s fine.”

JT found working for SHIELD, there were plenty of people who’d long since learned they didn’t deserve the basic kindness that he’d gotten most of his life. Every time he met with Ava, he saw it, the way their handlers and masters would speak to her and him. It was something that always upset him to no end, Ava wasn’t some weapon they could just pull out and send into the field. She was a bright, intelligence girl with feelings and emotions, yet that part always seemed lost to their bosses, something he was sure never to forget when he worked with partners. He would always go out of his way, to make ties even If it cost him when they return to their home base.

JT smiled softly, he knew to be this open didn’t come easy to her, but he never pushed or gave her too much to where she felt uncomfortable. He just wanted to go at her pace and hoped she enjoyed the little random things they did together. He smirked and laughed “If I am insufferable than you love it since you know you can’t rid of me” he replied before moving to walk back down the stairs, their next place wasn’t too far from here and it was starting to become lunchtime. “You will be blown away again I just know it, also at the next stop let me know if you’re getting hungry, there are some great food stops nearby.”

JT, too, had suffered at SHIELD’s hands far more than he deserved. When she’d been working with them, it had been almost a comfort to see another enhanced individual treated like a thing instead of a person. She’d felt guilty for the feeling, but she’d felt it all the same. Misery loved company, after all, and Ava had never been selfless enough to be content suffering alone. If someone else was there, if someone else was sharing in the pain, it made it a little more manageable. It made it less stifling, less suffocating. It made it feel as though she could breathe. And JT had added to that with his kindness. He hadn’t just been another tortured soul, he’d been a friend. Ava had never had many of those.

She huffed a quiet laugh, something that had seemed impossible for most of her life but felt simple now. “I guess I must,” she agreed with a shake of her head, not bothering to hide her smile. She followed behind him with a quiet hum, nodding her head. “I’m looking forward to seeing you try,” she said, teasing note back in her voice. “And I’ll keep that in mind, too.”

JT found himself almost glad he’d fallen under SHIELD’s thumb most of the people he’d met were tied to the organization in some way. They were all broken things at one time that SHIELD didn’t even bother trying to put back together. He was never one to enjoy the torture of the idea of the fact that to someone he was nothing more than a weapon. Yet he never felt that way with Ava, in her eyes they were so similar both taken and pushed into being something they were not. But when they were together, the world seemed to fade away, throughout their missions and Ava’s silent cries of pain he found a person worth fighting for. A person he’d do absolutely anything for just to see her have a good happy life, one free from pain and masters who barely cared if you lived or died.

So when he’d learned that not only her pain had been taken away but that she was going to live. He knew how hard it must have been for her at first, learning that you could have a resemblance of a normal life without fear of SHIELD coming to take you away. He wanted her life to be filled with smiles and laughter “Well I can honestly say they certainly have taken on a much funnier content matter about them.” he replied chuckling softly before smirking slightly, he’d promised to dazzle her and he’d done it on their first stop, he worked hard on this plan, wanting Ava to experience New York in all its beauty. “What was that? have you just admitted to being dazzled by something I planned?” He chuckled before continuing “ Well this is only the beginning, I still have some tricks up my shelve to properly spoil you. Are you ready for the next spot?” 

Few people within SHIELD had treated her with the kindness JT had. Few people within SHIELD had ever even viewed her as a person instead of a weapon. To most SHIELD agents, she was a tool. Something they could use to make their missions more effective, something that was at their disposal just as much as the guns in their holsters or the cars in their garages. To JT, she was only ever Ava. Not Ghost, not Agent Starr, just Ava. She owed him for that, owed him far more than she could ever hope to repay.

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t try, of course. She wasn’t sure how to begin, but she was going to try all the same. She wanted to do for him what he’d done for her, wanted to make it a little easier for him to breathe. It was easier said than done, but Ava had never been one to back down from a challenge. “They have,” she nodded. She groaned when he continued, rolling her eyes. “I take it back. You’re insufferable,” she teased. “Lead the way, JT. I look forward to seeing what you have planned next.”

“That’s up to you” Nora replied as she turned to look at Ava “but I definitely wouldn’t mind your company” she told her. Normally Nora liked being alone but she liked Ava and wouldn’t mind spending some more time with her.

Ava paused for a moment, considering. Part of her wanted to stay, wanted to get to know Nora better because she was interesting, but she knew she ought to get going. After a moment, she took a napkin from the bar and scribbled her number onto it. “I should get going,” she said, pushing the napkin over to Nora, “but that’s my number. We can do this again sometime.”

JT had lived more life then some he found working at SHIELD, of course back then it was almost easy being part of the secret warriors there wasn’t really anyone outside of Fury to report to. Even if he was the biggest pain, he had his friend and family around him, they each did things that made their missions almost fly by. But even he knew what it was like to be forced to do what was necessary just to live or make the pain stop. The tests and the prodding when he was along still in a sense haunted him to the point he often wished he could just disappear as Ava could.

He chuckled shaking his head “A toothpaste commercial I shouldn’t be a surprise some of those commercials are turning all philosophical lately.” He replied smiling softly, it was amazing to see Ava like this, opening up and joking there was a time he could remember her huddled in a corner in agonizing pain as he tried everything, he could to take her mind from it. “Me biased? I think your just making things up now” He chuckled smiling looking over their city as the sun hit just the right height. Everything seemed to make things seem earthy up here, no pain no hatred only beauty. “I’ll always spoil you,” He replied softly before looking at her face change to wonder at the sight before them, which made all his research more than worth it in his opinion. “It is, told you I was going to dazzle you”

SHIELD had always been ruthless. When they found something --- or someone, more often, that they thought might be useful, they dug their claws in and refused to let go. They made sure the weapon they were building couldn’t leave. Sometimes, they put them in a cage, kept them locked away. Ava was almost envious of the ones that SHIELD had been so upfront with, the ones who had known they were prisoners all the while. What the agency had done to her, it was crueler. They kept her prisoner with false hope, made her want to help them with beautiful lies and promises they’d never intended to keep. They had made her want to impress her captors, made her want to make her jailers happy. There were few things more terrible than that.

But, in this moment, it didn’t matter. In this moment, there was no weight on her back, no crushing sense of dread above her. “They are, aren’t they? It’s the strangest thing. I don’t even think most people pay attention to commercials.” She did, of course, but she was a SHIELD agent. She paid attention to everything, took in every detail and filed it away no matter how insignificant it was. She’d never been able to afford to do otherwise. “I would never make things up,” she scoffed playfully. Her smile softened at his words, and as much as she wanted to tell him she didn’t deserve it, she kept it to herself. He’d only disagree, after all. For whatever reason, he thought she was worth all this, and Ava was too selfish to tell him otherwise. “Well, you’ve kept your promise. I’m dazzled.” 

          “Superfans? I know a few,” Tim sighed, pushing himself back from the railing to look back into his open window, daring a look at his own charting on the walls… settling only to grab his coffee. It got a little lukewarm sitting out on his computer table, but he didn’t mind. He’d have his caffeine any way he could. “You could probably call me one, maybe a former one. Little kid me was wild about superheroes. Now I just laugh at ‘em through their online forums.” Opinion articles were particularly interesting to read the comments on. Things tended to go from zero to one hundred real quick.

          He took a long, almost thoughtful swig before he settled back down on the railing, looking up at the barely visible sky. “You’re right about that,” he mused. “Makes living a little more bearable sometimes, honestly… Woah, sorry.” He put up his free hand, shaking his head enough that his unruly hair got into his eyes. “Got too deep there for a hot second.”

Superfans. Ava snorted at the word, looking a little amused. “They’re not exactly rare these days, I suppose.” Plenty of SHIELD agents had been huge fans of superheroes, though Ava thought part of it may have come with working alongside them. She’d never gotten into it herself. Working for SHIELD, knowing that there were heroes roaming the halls of the same agency that was torturing her and doing nothing about it... it made it hard to look at them with stars in her eyes. It wasn’t fair to hold them to that standard, of course, they hadn’t known what was being done to her, but emotion rarely followed logic. Still, it wasn’t entirely difficult to see this boy as someone who’d idolized them once. “It is a bit harder to be that passionate about them as an adult,” she agreed, though she knew many adults still were.

There was something in his voice at that, something Ava found herself relating to. In a lot of ways, the strangeness of the world did make it a little more bearable to live in, but in others... In other ways, that strangeness only ever hurt. She huffed a quiet laugh at his apology, shaking her head. “No, you don’t have to apologize. You’re right, you know. I’m not sure any of us remember how to live in a normal world.”

Let’s Play: This or That, give My Muse two scenarios and they’ll pick which they would rather do. Can be anything

“My parents,” Ava said softly, looking down at her hands and letting them phase for a moment. “They might not like what I’ve become, but... They deserved a chance at a full life. They deserved to grow old. They deserve that far more than I deserve to be free of this. And... If they were willing to take me, I would love having them around again.” Even if that was far from what she deserved. 

It had been a long time since Scott had last seen Ava - since she’d come into the city and they’d interacted, if briefly. He wasn’t sure how he felt about her, still rather conflicted. Scott could hold a grudge for a surprisingly long time for someone who tended to be easy going - he didn’t like to do so, but a feeling of distrust still tugged at him after all this time.

Taking a sip of his drink, Scott didn’t take his eyes off of her, More accurately, he watched her hands, wondering just how much their ‘cure’ of her abilities had worked. Could she drink? Could she eat? Did things pass through her? Although he didn’t trust her, the scientific side of him that was always curious wanted to know how they worked. Did food simply pass through her body? Did the suit help at all, and did she still wear it? So many questions would race through his mind, not to mention that the sight of her attacking him and trying to kill Janet were both far too fresh, even though it had been nearly a year. 

Shrugging, he set it down and turned around on his stool, looking at the casino teaming with life. “What’s your verdict?”

It was wrong to ever expect things with Scott not to be tense. Ava had done terrible things to him, to the people he loved, all in the name of helping herself, and there was no taking it back. Hope had forgiven her, Janet had helped her, but she could hardly expect such kindness. She hadn’t earned it, at any rate. He was well within his rights to keep an eye on her, to treat her with a wariness she’d earned when she’d tied him to a chair and threatened to hurt him.

She gripped her glass so tightly she almost worried it might break. It was a problem she’d never had before. For all the terrible things she’d done, breaking things wasn’t one of her habits. That sort of destruction required touch, and for most of her life, Ava hadn’t been capable of that. When she destroyed things, she did it with more subtlety. Shoving her arm through someone and solidifying it, twisting their neck until they fell, shooting them before they knew she was there at all... Ava’s type of destruction had never involved shattering glass beneath her hands, but right now, with Scott looking at her and her hands gripping her cup so tightly they shook with the force of it, it seemed a plausible concern to have. She set the glass on the bar, wringing her hands together to give them something to do.

Glancing around the casino, she offered a shrug in response to his inquiry. “It’s crowded,” she replied, a hint of nervousness to the words. “But... It’s not bad. I didn’t think it was your sort of place, though.”