#avaanna

Well, not hitman, per se, more like hitwoman. Hitperson? Whatever. Semantics. The point is, she kills people for a living. People pay her to kill other people. And she’s damn good at it too. Generally she can get in, kill people, and then get out and that’s it, but there are other times where her approach needs to be a little more involved.

That’s where Anna comes in. Ava met her working a case in the Balkans. Back then, Anna was working under some curly headed do gooder with a chip on his shoulder who wanted to take out some big insurance company and hired a bunch or criminals to help him do his dirty work. Their case led them to the same hotel where Ava was sent to take out a Russian arms dealer named Ari Tasarov.

Tasarov had two very well known weaknesses: women and alcohol. So Ava’s plan was a simple one. She was going to pick him up at the bar, get him to invite her up to his room, and take him out there. The only problem was he met some girl at customs and instead of heading straight to the hotel, he and his convoy took a detour so he could go back to her place. Ava decided to have a drink at the bar anyway. Tasarov would likely not be back until late, if he showed up that day at all, so she had some time to kill.

While sitting at the bar, Ava was accosted by some greasy haired, thin mustached prick. She wanted to avoid making a scene at the hotel before she even had the chance to take out Tasarov, so she avoided throttling the guy. It was a close call though. The guy started getting a little handsy, and Ava was about to pull her gun on him when she felt a hand - not mustache guy’s - settle between her shoulder blades.

“Hey, honey, sorry I’m late.” Ava looked up to see a sweetly smiling redhead and smiled back at her.

“No worries. You know I’m a patient gal.”

It shocked the guy enough to get his hand off of Ava’s thigh, but it also brought a sickening smile to his face. “I did not know you had girlfriend,” he said in heavily accented English.

“Actually,” the redhead told him, raising her left hand to show a tasteful diamond ring. “Fiancee.” The sweet smile turned poisonous as she looked at him and said something to him in a language that Ava didn’t speak. Whatever it was she said worked though because mustache looked terrified before grabbing his drink and getting the hell out of dodge.

The redhead settled into the seat next to Ava, that same sweet smile back on her face. “Sorry about that. Looked like that guy was making you uncomfortable.”

“That’s one way to put it...”

“I’m Anna,” she declared, holding her hand out.

Ava took her hand and couldn’t help but smile back. “Ava.”

--

That was only the first of many times where Anna posed as Ava’s fiancee (or girlfriend or wife), sometimes because they happen to run into each other while working jobs, sometimes because one of them asks the other. Eventually Ava came to expect to run into Anna while on the job. Not on every job, but it comes as no surprise when she does see her.

What does surprise her though is when she starts wishing they weren’t just playing pretend. She knows she can’t have a real, normal relationship in her line of work. But Anna knows the game. She knows the risks, she knows what Ava has to do to get the job done. Maybe the two of them really could make it work.

Anna heads to the Deveraux Mine and meets up with Dean, an old friend of hers, who happens to be the foreman at the mine, and he introduces her to some of the men that will be going down with them. She has a digital recorder with her, which she uses to record the answers they give to the questions she asks them, and she’s grateful for it. Her mind keeps wandering back to Ava laying quiet and despondent in bed earlier in the morning. She never meant to hurt Ava. Things have just been...different, since Ava’s father died. Ava likes to pretend like nothing’s wrong, but Anna has definitely noticed a change in her.

After Dean’s made the rounds introducing her to everyone, he goes over the safety precautions with Anna: required safety equipment, what not to do in the mine, what to do and where to go in case of a cave in. She makes note of it all, both for her own safety, and for her article.

--

Ava’s not sure how long it’s been since Anna left, but eventually she gets out of bed. She needs to do something. Take her mind off of last night. Her plan is to go out and see Jake and Andy, tell them the proposal didn’t happen, and then maybe get day drunk and maybe watch something extra gory. Maybe watching people die on screen will make her feel better.

She only makes it as far as the lobby when it happens. There’s loud noises and a bright flash of light, and she moves toward the window to get a better look. As she watches the city fall, all she can think of is Anna. How far out of the city did she say the mine was? Is she okay? Is she safe?

Suddenly there’s a hand on her shoulder and someone’s turning her around and pulling her away from the window, toward the stairs to the basement. She thinks she hears a “Come on, we have to go,” but her mind is still elsewhere, and regardless, it’s hard to hear anything above the people screaming and stampeding to some vestige of safety.

Once they reach the basement, she sees someone heave open a heavy metal door, and the person pulling her along leads her down another set of stairs, metal and rusted, and she’s a little more than halfway down when she hears the door clang shut, and a sound like gears turning before a lock settles into place. It’s the sound of the lock that brings her fully back to her senses. She gets to the bottom of the steps, pulling her hand free, and turns to look back up at the door, but all she can see is darkness now that the door is closed.

“Someone turn on the lights,” she hears someone say from a few feet behind her. A few lights shine in the darkness, illuminating a few spots in the room as people pull out their cell phones. A few moments later, the lights flicker on. Once her eyes adjust, she sees a few faces she recognizes: Kim and her daughter from upstairs, Rufus, the building’s super, and Ephraim, the guy from down the hall, who she’s reasonably certain is the one that pulled her down here with him.

There’s been a muffled banging against the door this whole time, but no one’s said anything until Benny - the short order cook from the eighth floor who Ava only recognizes because Anna will stop to chat with him if they run into each other in the lobby or the elevator - storms over to Rufus, asking “Why the hell would you leave all those people out there?”

Benny is barely through asking the question when Rufus says sternly “Because I don’t even want you people in here. I’ve only got so much food and water down here, and in case you haven’t noticed, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to make a grocery run any time soon.”

While Rufus and her fellow tenants fight, Ava has a look around; she has no interest in quarreling with the people she’ll be stuck down here with for God knows how long. They seem to be in a bunker under the basement of the building. The basement itself is underground, and they’re below that, so there are no windows. The walls, which, based on the rest of the building, should be concrete, are steel, with lines of rivets every few feet to affix them to the concrete behind. There’s a hallway at the far end of the large room they’re in, that is currently unlit. The room is furnished with a couple of old couches, rickety tables, and even a pool table, most of which she thinks were re-purposed after tenants decided to get rid of them.

Either Rufus decided he needed a man cave outside of the apartment he already has in the building, or he’s even more paranoid than she thought, and this was all prepared in case something like this were to happen.

--

Dean shows Anna to the mine’s safe room - a pre-built structure meant to protect miners and provide them with breathable air in the event of an emergency - and further explains emergency procedures, while explaining that, in all his years working at the mine, there’s yet to be an incident where the safe room is needed. That’s when they hear the explosion.

They’re not entirely sure what made the sound - it’s dulled and obscured because of how far underground they are - but whatever it is, it causes the lights to flicker and dust to fall from the ceiling of the mine. They step out of the safe room to investigate, and see miners running toward them, a thick cloud of dust and smoke following them, and Anna and Dean think it best to head back inside the safe room before they get bowled over.

The last of the miners shuts the door behind him, and Anna waits until the lot of them have seemed to catch their breath before asking “What was that?”

“Something went off above ground,” one of the miners supplies.

Someone else speaks up. “A bomb. Could have been the Koreans.”

Another person scoffs. “The Koreans? Seriously? It could have just been a gas main explosion.”

The comments turn into chatter, then full on bickering, until Dean raises his voice. “Quiet! All of you, quiet.” A hush falls over them. “Whatever happened, it seems like it might have caused a cave in. Anybody notice if the entrance is blocked?”

The first miner nods. “The tunnel collapsed. There’s no way we can get out the way we came in.”

Dean doesn’t look too pleased about that answer. “Okay, listen up,” he tells them, and Anna can’t help but think she’s glad that, of anyone, she’s glad to be down here with him. He’s still cool and collected, even in the face of something like this. “Until help comes, we’re trapped down here. We’ve got food, water, and oxygen enough to last us a little while, but we’re going to have to ration things and take it easy. There’s no way of knowing how long we’ll be down here for.”

Everyone seems more calm, though still afraid, when Dean’s done telling them what to do. Unfortunately, there’s not much they can do, stuck in here, other than wait and talk. Dean and Anna fill the silence, sitting in the corner of the safe room, speaking softly about what happened between Anna and Ava, and about the first thing each of them wants to do once they get back topside.

--

The hours tick on and thoughts of Anna constantly run through Ava’s mind. She’s kept to herself, splitting her time between reading from a book about the Kennedy assassination she found laying around, and napping on some old flimsy beat up mattress that’s been sitting in the corner for God knows how long. She’s pretty sure she heard Benny say earlier, when Kim’s daughter had asked, that it’d been just short of twenty four hours, and that was a few chapters and one REM cycle ago.

It’s been about a day. A full day without Anna. Without knowing whether she’s alive or dead. This is the longest they’ve gone without some form of communication in ages, and Ava feels a real, physical ache at the absence.

She’s going over the last words she said to Anna in her head when someone slides a box over to her with their foot. 

“This is yours.” It’s Ephraim, and she cranes her head back, looking at him upside down. “We rationed all the food we could find while you were asleep. Wanted to wait until you were awake to bring it over to you.”

Ava turns over onto her stomach and props herself up on her elbows as he sits down near the mattress, and she mutters a quiet “Thanks.”

“No problem.” He offers her a small smile, and she tries to return it, but her attempt falls flat. When she says nothing in response, he clears his throat - a nervous habit of his that she’s picked up on during their occasional conversations. “If you want to talk about...About what’s going on...Just let me know.”

“There was a giant explosion and now the city is in ruins. Unless you know why it happened, there’s not much to talk about.”

“I didn’t mean about the bombs.” He gets back to his feet and turns to start walking away again.

Then Anna. What else could he mean? “Wait...” She calls out to his retreating back.

He turns to face her again. “Yeah?”

“What about...What about your boyfriend?” As long as she’s known Ephraim, he’s been living with his boyfriend, Chuck. He’s a short, neurotic bearded guy who occasionally talks Vonnegut or swap recipes with Anna. They’re almost nauseatingly cute sometimes, and Ava doubts that Ephraim would have left Chuck up there if he had a choice.

A soft, bittersweet smile crosses Ephraim’s face. “He’s on a trip. Left two days ago.”

“But he could be...” Ava trails off, not wanting to say the words because she fears the same thing about Anna. “We don’t know if this is localized, or if other places have been hit too.”

“He’s okay.”

“But how do you know?”

“I just do,” he says simply. “If he were hurt or worse...I would know. I would feel it. I know in my heart that he’s okay.”

Ava doesn’t respond, but she thinks to herself it must be nice to be so sure.

--

The next day (The day after? Ava isn’t too sure about the time, and has no interest in asking anyone else) Ava finds herself sitting on the stairs, away from the rest of the group. She had been reading some Russian novel that she knows Anna likes, but lost interest part way through, and has been spending her time occasionally eaves dropping on what she can hear of other people’s conversations, but mostly thinking about Anna. They have no way of contacting each other, no way of knowing if the other is alive, and Ava doesn’t know how much more she can take.

She looks up when she hears a soft and cautious “Hey” from in front of her, and sees Ephraim, looking about as exhausted as she feels.

“Hey. Have you been getting much sleep?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Not really. It’s been a long time since I’ve slept without another person next to me.”

“Me too,” she responds. “Though by the looks of it, I’ve done a better job of coping with that than you have.”

Ephraim chuckles softly. “Yeah, looks like. So hey, Benny’s got a card game going. Even if you're not into cards, it’s worth it to listen to him and Rufus bicker.”

“Thanks, but I think I’m good here.” She tries to give him a convincing smile but, just like before, it misses the mark. She always thought she was a decent liar. The past few days have been proving that might not be so accurate.

Ephraim thinks for a few moments before he finally speaks. “I know it’s hard, I know it hurts, but you have to have faith that she’s still...That she’s alright.”

Ava’s expression turns cold. “Have faith? What has faith ever done for anyone? Faith didn’t do me any good growing up with an evil son of a bitch for a father. Faith didn’t do me any good when my mother was slowly dying. Or when I decided I wanted to settle down and have a life with Anna. All that I’ve ever been able to rely on is her. I don’t...” Her anger wanes like a smothered fire and her hands are shaking. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if she’s...”

When Ava doesn’t continue, Ephraim speaks up, his voice gentle but sure. “When we get out of here, I’ll help you find her.”

If we get out, Ava thinks.

--

Anna and Dean don’t talk much - wanting to conserve as much oxygen as they can - but they do talk a little. They err away from discussion about what it is they’re facing, and talk about lighter subjects. Subjects like the plans they had for this week that are clearly cancelled now, or like Dean’s budding crush on a guy who happens to live in Anna’s building, or about whether Anna thinks she has enough material for a decent article. (That last bit gets a chuckle out of Anna when Dean asks.)

It been about three days, as far as Dean and Anna can tell, and the miners are starting to get a little restless. Not knowing what happened, not knowing when help will come...It’s not making things any easier on any of them. The men seem dead set on believing that what happened wasn’t a normal cave in. That something happened topside, and that help isn’t coming. If someone doesn’t act quickly, they’ll incite a panic, and even if that doesn’t happen, they’re going to run out of food, water, and oxygen eventually.

There’s not much in the way of privacy in the safe room, but at about mid morning on the fourth day, Dean pulls Anna aside, making sure none of the miners are listening before whispering to her, telling her that along with the provisions and oxygen tanks, the safe room is equipped with protective suits, designed to help them breathe and protect them against the elements. He says it’s not exactly standard procedure, but Frank, the guy that owns the mine, is a paranoid bastard and thought they might come in handy some day.

“Why are you only mentioning this now?” She asks softly.

“Because...I’m starting to think maybe they’re right. Maybe no one’s coming.”

“Yeah, maybe. But why are we whispering?”

Dean glances around at the others. “I wanted to tell you first. They seem a little hostile.”

Seeing as they can’t very well sneak out unnoticed, Anna and Dean tell the miners about the suits. It causes a small uproar, but once again, Dean manages to quiet them all down, and continues telling them his plan. There’s only two suits: Dean will take one, and someone else is welcome to volunteer to go with him, then the two of them will make their way through the tunnels to see if there’s a way out, see what’s going on topside, and try to come back with help.

“If there’s any volunteers, now’s the time to speak up.” To Anna’s surprise, Dean is met with silence. She figured that the men would jump at the chance to not be stuck down here, but now they all look nervous. Scared. But she understands. There’s no way of knowing what’s up there, or what they’ll be met with upon leaving the safe room. At least if they stay there, they’re guaranteed several more days of oxygen, food, and water. Leaving could mean any number of dangers.

When she’s sure no one is going to speak up, Anna declares “I’ll go.”

Dean’s face is a mixture of concern and pride, and she shrugs at him. “Someone has to protect your ass.”

--

They get suited up, and after making sure everything’s connected properly and that they have any other supplies they might need, they head out. Dean leads the way, more comfortable with navigating the mines, Anna pulling out a flare to light the way through the dark tunnels.

There are several forks and dead ends, and after a while, it seems like they’ll be stuck down here forever, taking turn after turn with no end in sight.

Anna’s growing more and more discouraged with each dead end, but after a while of searching, she hears something. “What was that?”

Dean glances back at her, and based on the look on his face, he has no idea what she’s talking about.

“I heard something...” She mutters. That’s when she hears it again. A faint whistling, like a brisk wind. The suit muffles the sound, but she’s sure she hears it, and heads off in that direction, Dean following after.

“Dean!” She calls out behind her once she finds the source of the sound. “I think I found a way out!”

Dean rushes over to see what she found. In front of them, several feet up, there’s a light, shining through an opening in the wall of the mine. In front of it, there lays a large pile of dirt, rocks, and other debris. As they get a closer look, they see that some of that debris appears to be human remains.

They exchange a cautious, concerned look before Anna puts down the flare and steps toward the debris pile. Dean reaches out, grabbing her arm.

"Wait, Anna...It doesn’t seem safe.”

“No matter what, we’re not safe. But I’d rather risk death out there and have a chance to find Ava, and find someone to help those men down there, than starve to death in that room.”

Without another word, she continues her ascent, Dean following behind her.

--