Well, you did bribe me often enough. Figured I should pay at least a little attention.
[Which isn't the reason at all. The real explanation has to do with the things that she's been through since then. Getting to live on her own, have her own life in the streets of Brooklyn for a few years, getting to meet Sana, and be someone other than their prisoner. The trauma she'd suffered, was still suffering with, but coming out the other side of it in one fashion or another. She keeps putting wood on the fire, but when he brings up SHIELD she exhales with a slight shake of her head, and she shifts, sitting back on her heels as she settles near to him, looking up at him, back to the wall.]
SHIELD isn't a good thing.
[It's the first time that she's ever said it outloud in that sort of context- general, not personal- and she shrugs her shoulders a little bit helplessly.] I know what they did to me, how they stripped my memories away. That night wasn't an accident. SHIELD had contacts in either the remnants of the KGB or the Russian military that extended into the Red Room. But--
[She pauses then, cups her hands together, and then opens them slowly, revealing a small sphere of electric blue light that she lets slide over her fingers, like some light show, her blue eyes glinting brighter.] I have powers. And I'm sure you know how SHIELD feels about people with abilities. So, I had a choice. I either work for them, or they put my name on a list, and I spend the rest of my life trying to outrun them because we all know I would never have played their games of mandatory check-ins and geotracking. And if they caught me? Being sent back to a place like that again?
[Ava smiles then, wry, and a little bitter, her lips thinning. She'd almost done it anyway: run. Kept running. But Natasha had asked her, had actually shown feelings, and it had been enough to tip those uncertainties.] I'm a survivor, Rumlow. I don't have to like them to work for them. I'd just rather be a jailer than a prisoner.
[She might not know the words HYDRA but with knowing that they'd wiped Alexei, replaced his memories with lies and given him a family of SHIELD agents, that they'd wiped Natasha, and everything else that she'd uncovered during the mess with Ivan, she knew what sort of colors they wore. But then she smiles, letting the light dissipate as she tilts her head back, her hair slightly damp as it falls down her back.] Well, then maybe you can give me the tour. I've been on ice for a while, and I hear things have been busy.
no subject
[Which isn't the reason at all. The real explanation has to do with the things that she's been through since then. Getting to live on her own, have her own life in the streets of Brooklyn for a few years, getting to meet Sana, and be someone other than their prisoner. The trauma she'd suffered, was still suffering with, but coming out the other side of it in one fashion or another. She keeps putting wood on the fire, but when he brings up SHIELD she exhales with a slight shake of her head, and she shifts, sitting back on her heels as she settles near to him, looking up at him, back to the wall.]
SHIELD isn't a good thing.
[It's the first time that she's ever said it outloud in that sort of context- general, not personal- and she shrugs her shoulders a little bit helplessly.] I know what they did to me, how they stripped my memories away. That night wasn't an accident. SHIELD had contacts in either the remnants of the KGB or the Russian military that extended into the Red Room. But--
[She pauses then, cups her hands together, and then opens them slowly, revealing a small sphere of electric blue light that she lets slide over her fingers, like some light show, her blue eyes glinting brighter.] I have powers. And I'm sure you know how SHIELD feels about people with abilities. So, I had a choice. I either work for them, or they put my name on a list, and I spend the rest of my life trying to outrun them because we all know I would never have played their games of mandatory check-ins and geotracking. And if they caught me? Being sent back to a place like that again?
[Ava smiles then, wry, and a little bitter, her lips thinning. She'd almost done it anyway: run. Kept running. But Natasha had asked her, had actually shown feelings, and it had been enough to tip those uncertainties.] I'm a survivor, Rumlow. I don't have to like them to work for them. I'd just rather be a jailer than a prisoner.
[She might not know the words HYDRA but with knowing that they'd wiped Alexei, replaced his memories with lies and given him a family of SHIELD agents, that they'd wiped Natasha, and everything else that she'd uncovered during the mess with Ivan, she knew what sort of colors they wore. But then she smiles, letting the light dissipate as she tilts her head back, her hair slightly damp as it falls down her back.] Well, then maybe you can give me the tour. I've been on ice for a while, and I hear things have been busy.