Hmm. Let's call it half of one and fifty-percent of the other, yeah?
[There's something a little bit like humor at that, a slight quirk of her lips. She doesn't even bother claiming that he hadn't had a shot with her. They'd had sex in a shitty motel in Odessa, with Ava caught between the emotions from realizing what her mother had done to her and the sinking reality of how grim the path forward was starting to look. She'd needed to feel something. Nat had been off talking to Tony about algorithms for tracking down the other quantums. It was almost inevitable, really.]
He was still an idiot.
[But her voice is a little bit softer as she says it, and it's not really a criticism or an insult. It's hard to argue with Rumlow's idea that the only real choice here is to acknowledge his sacrifice, and grant him the respect of allowing him that. Coulson had his name put on the Wall they had at the SHIELD Academy, the names of people lost in the line of duty. Alexei would have liked that, she thinks.]
Maybe you're right. He sent me a letter later, trying to apologize and saying that he didn't believe it was my fault, but that if Alexei had never left with me that day he'd still be alive. And sometimes-- I wonder if Alexei really had a choice in that.
[These are questions she doesn't usually say outloud. They're things that come to her in the dark, and keep her awake. Finding out the truth of her origins leaves her with uncomfortable feelings, and the questions she can never entirely let herself push too deep, of how much of what she felt for Alexei was her own?]
no subject
[There's something a little bit like humor at that, a slight quirk of her lips. She doesn't even bother claiming that he hadn't had a shot with her. They'd had sex in a shitty motel in Odessa, with Ava caught between the emotions from realizing what her mother had done to her and the sinking reality of how grim the path forward was starting to look. She'd needed to feel something. Nat had been off talking to Tony about algorithms for tracking down the other quantums. It was almost inevitable, really.]
He was still an idiot.
[But her voice is a little bit softer as she says it, and it's not really a criticism or an insult. It's hard to argue with Rumlow's idea that the only real choice here is to acknowledge his sacrifice, and grant him the respect of allowing him that. Coulson had his name put on the Wall they had at the SHIELD Academy, the names of people lost in the line of duty. Alexei would have liked that, she thinks.]
Maybe you're right. He sent me a letter later, trying to apologize and saying that he didn't believe it was my fault, but that if Alexei had never left with me that day he'd still be alive. And sometimes-- I wonder if Alexei really had a choice in that.
[These are questions she doesn't usually say outloud. They're things that come to her in the dark, and keep her awake. Finding out the truth of her origins leaves her with uncomfortable feelings, and the questions she can never entirely let herself push too deep, of how much of what she felt for Alexei was her own?]