[She doesn't quite understand the feeling, she hadn't had to watch Natasha seeing her memories, just knew it was happening. But she can still sympathize, imagine what this must feel like for him. But she doesn't look away, either. She doesn't flinch from it, because she doesn't want him to think that she judges him for it, that despite her words either that when she has it thrown in her face she can't bear the weight of it. She can. Because she understands, has been through things like this, people like this.
She knows what it is to question the necessity of brutality and be punished by having it turned on you. Order in pain. It was a thread that connected Hydra and the Red Room, perhaps it should have made those Soviet Hydra and old Leviathan roots more obvious, but Ava had never known, never understood. Any tension in her body isn't because of him, not really. It's because she knows how places like this shape you, and it's so very easy to see Ivan in the man that yells at Rumlow, and that makes something curl in her chest.
Something about the way the man calls him a feral street boy that feels familiar, even if those exact words had never been hers, the tone of them is. That coo, low and soft, and yet she knows enough to predict the violence and aggression that follows. From the moment she saw that flicker on Rumlow's face, she knew what would follow.
He touches her on the arm, and her other hand comes up to brush against his fingers.] I know.
[It's all she can say, but some of the kinship she feels filters into her voice. The kind that says she understands this sort of lesson, that says that they taught her this too. Turning away might be kinder, might be what she should do, but she doesn't. Wont flinch from this truth, and the fact is that she understood it from the moment she saw that flicker on his face, so the least she can do is ride through it with him.]
no subject
She knows what it is to question the necessity of brutality and be punished by having it turned on you. Order in pain. It was a thread that connected Hydra and the Red Room, perhaps it should have made those Soviet Hydra and old Leviathan roots more obvious, but Ava had never known, never understood. Any tension in her body isn't because of him, not really. It's because she knows how places like this shape you, and it's so very easy to see Ivan in the man that yells at Rumlow, and that makes something curl in her chest.
Something about the way the man calls him a feral street boy that feels familiar, even if those exact words had never been hers, the tone of them is. That coo, low and soft, and yet she knows enough to predict the violence and aggression that follows. From the moment she saw that flicker on Rumlow's face, she knew what would follow.
He touches her on the arm, and her other hand comes up to brush against his fingers.] I know.
[It's all she can say, but some of the kinship she feels filters into her voice. The kind that says she understands this sort of lesson, that says that they taught her this too. Turning away might be kinder, might be what she should do, but she doesn't. Wont flinch from this truth, and the fact is that she understood it from the moment she saw that flicker on his face, so the least she can do is ride through it with him.]