[She almost isn't expecting his answer, honestly. Natasha and Coulson have been trying to protect her ever since she lost Alexei, of course they do it by handling her with kid gloves, like she's live ammunition. It didn't help. They act like they want her to be something else, and she tries to pretend that she doesn't know the blood on Natasha's hands, not just from the KGB, but for SHIELD, too.
It's almost a mercy, honestly. As if he thinks she's strong enough to live with it. Ava doesn't like killing, but you put her in a situation where the only way out is to pull a trigger on someone else, and she will make that call. And she has had to. She sighs, pulling back a step and then leaning in sideways, bumping her shoulder to his, and she smiles at him, a little bit lop-sided. He doesn't treat her like she needs to be anyone other than who she is, doesn't seem like he thinks she's too delicate to be who and what like has made her.]
I don't think that doing ugly things makes either of us a bad person, not really. It's like you said- you make the call. To the best of your ability, and then you live with it. And in a place like this, how much of that even matters?
[She sighs, looks up with him with a slightly wry curl of her lips. She still hasn't quite figured out how she fits in here, what to do. There's no SHIELD, and while she has a lot of skills, she doesn't have the temperament like Natasha would to keep a low profile, find a noble to work for so she could pick up on the dynamics of the power structure, the personality conflicts. Ava doesn't apologize for pushing him, knows that she didn't really hurt him.]
I care about her, you know? Even if she doesn't really-- things were always hard with her. [Natasha was still a very complicated issue for her. Because Ava cared for her, and Natasha had been trying, but it was never quite the same. Not like she was with Clint's family. Tense, things unsaid. And now she was in cryo, and Ava had to figure out who she was supposed to be on her own.]
And it wasn't even just about Natasha. They were like me. So when the time came, they would just-- Teenaged spies and killers embedded with people in every major government and organization across the world. So we either brought it all down then and there, or the world fell apart. The only choice if we failed would be to eliminate them all to prevent a global catastrophe. And when SHIELD started systematically eliminating children with ties to world leaders, it would have started a war. It would have been chaos, and who knows what that leaves behind.
[Maybe Rumlow could see the sort of people that would benefit, but Ava still didn't have all the pieces. She didn't know what SHIELD was, not in the sense that came with a name and a history and a story.] The girl I killed would have killed me if I hadn't. That's how the Red Room filtered out the ones that weren't good enough. I don't enjoy it, either.
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It's almost a mercy, honestly. As if he thinks she's strong enough to live with it. Ava doesn't like killing, but you put her in a situation where the only way out is to pull a trigger on someone else, and she will make that call. And she has had to. She sighs, pulling back a step and then leaning in sideways, bumping her shoulder to his, and she smiles at him, a little bit lop-sided. He doesn't treat her like she needs to be anyone other than who she is, doesn't seem like he thinks she's too delicate to be who and what like has made her.]
I don't think that doing ugly things makes either of us a bad person, not really. It's like you said- you make the call. To the best of your ability, and then you live with it. And in a place like this, how much of that even matters?
[She sighs, looks up with him with a slightly wry curl of her lips. She still hasn't quite figured out how she fits in here, what to do. There's no SHIELD, and while she has a lot of skills, she doesn't have the temperament like Natasha would to keep a low profile, find a noble to work for so she could pick up on the dynamics of the power structure, the personality conflicts. Ava doesn't apologize for pushing him, knows that she didn't really hurt him.]
I care about her, you know? Even if she doesn't really-- things were always hard with her. [Natasha was still a very complicated issue for her. Because Ava cared for her, and Natasha had been trying, but it was never quite the same. Not like she was with Clint's family. Tense, things unsaid. And now she was in cryo, and Ava had to figure out who she was supposed to be on her own.]
And it wasn't even just about Natasha. They were like me. So when the time came, they would just-- Teenaged spies and killers embedded with people in every major government and organization across the world. So we either brought it all down then and there, or the world fell apart. The only choice if we failed would be to eliminate them all to prevent a global catastrophe. And when SHIELD started systematically eliminating children with ties to world leaders, it would have started a war. It would have been chaos, and who knows what that leaves behind.
[Maybe Rumlow could see the sort of people that would benefit, but Ava still didn't have all the pieces. She didn't know what SHIELD was, not in the sense that came with a name and a history and a story.] The girl I killed would have killed me if I hadn't. That's how the Red Room filtered out the ones that weren't good enough. I don't enjoy it, either.