Sana crossed her arms, leaning against the edge of the sink counter. “Say it.”
“Sana,” Ava said. She was getting seriously annoyed.
“What does he blame you for? What is everything?” Sana said. “Say his name.”
“Whatever. No. Stop being so weird. You know what I’m talking about.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Alexei. Say his name.”
“Sana,” Ava warned.
Sana grabbed her hands. “You never talk about him, Mysh. It’s like it never happened, like he never happened.”
Ava pulled her hands away. Sana might as well have slapped her. “That’s a horrible thing to say—and it’s not true.”
“And I know that’s not true, I saw the two of you together. I know how crushed you were when he—”
“Sana!”
Sana looked at her meaningfully. “When he died, Ava. Alexei died.”
“I know that. Of course I know that. What are you, insane?” Ava could feel the tears starting to come; they were prickling and bubbling up to the front of her eyes.
“No, Ava. I’m worried. The two of you lived in your own little world when you were together, and now you live in your own little world with his memory, because you’re apart.”
Is it true?
Ava was reeling. “I’m not alone,” she said. “I’ve been studying at the Academy. I’ve been with Natasha on the road. I’m almost never by myself, in fact.”
“You might as well be,” Sana said. Her mouth twisted, and for a moment she looked like she was about to start tearing up, too. “You’re my best friend, Ava. I’ve let you try to work it out by yourself for too long, and I swore to myself that when you came back, I’d help you find your way.”
“But what if I don’t want to find it?” Ava’s eyes were blurring now.
“You will. You have to.” Sana leaned in, dropping a hand gently to each of Ava’s shoulders. “But you can’t move on until you work through all this.”
“Fine with me, I never asked to move on,” Ava said, looking away. A tear rolled down her cheek and into her mouth; she tasted the salt on her lip.
“You have to, Mysh. You know you do. And I think that the boy waiting at our table might be the one person in the world who’s as messed up about it as you.”
All the more reason that we should stay away from each other.
“Okay? Are you okay?”
Ava wanted to tell her she was fine, that everything was okay, that she just didn’t understand. But the moment she opened her mouth, all she could do was cry.
Sana wrapped her arms around Ava, squeezing her into a fierce hug. “Just try. You might as well talk to him about it. Because I can’t fix this on my own, Mysh. I need that boy to help.”
Ava buried her face in Sana’s shoulder; her friend smelled like freshly ground coffee and cinnamon, and even that was only fleetingly comforting tonight.
“He knows what you lost—” Sana began.
Ava cut her off. “He doesn’t. Nobody does.”
Sana looked at Ava sadly. “Okay. But he knows who you lost, better than anyone else. And I’m sorry. I wish more than anything that I could be that person for you.”
“Stop. Just stop.” Ava pulled away. She tried to collect herself, nodding, rubbing her face. All the signs people give that they are fine. I’ll give you them all. Just let this conversation end. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”
“But you’re not,” Sana said.
“Let’s just get through this. We can talk about it later.” Ava pushed her way through the restroom doors and headed back toward their table. My eyes are swollen. My face is red. My nose is running. And Dante can see it all. He’s probably terrified—
Dante stood up as she approached. “I’ll go.” He reached for his fencing bag. “You two can stay and talk.” He couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Yeah. Terrified.
Ava looked at him, finally taking a deep breath. As she did she shuddered, like a toddler who was trying to stop crying after a tantrum. Accurate.
Then she looked at him. “Do you maybe just want to get out of here? Walk me back to the subway or something?”
He stared. “Are you sure?”
She shuddered again, and she realized this time it was from exhaustion. “Yeah. I’m kind of beat. I need to go home and crash.”
“I know the feeling,” Dante said. Seconds later, he was pushing the door open and following her into the cold night air.
They fell into the same pace within moments, walking in silence down Flatbush Avenue. “I’m sorry,” Ava finally said. “Really. I know I’ve been acting really strange tonight. I’m just—I don’t get out much.”
“I hear you,” Dante said. “Hey, my school’s bad enough, now.”
Without him. You can’t say it, either, can you?
He shrugged. “I can’t imagine what military school is like.” Military school. “What?” That’s what she had said. Now she remembered. Was it a lie? She was so tired of lies, of conspiracy and deception. On the other hand, was the Academy really all that different from military school?
I guess in a way it’s true.
Dante shifted his fencing bag to his other arm, and Ava changed the subject. “Oh, right. How’s fencing going for you?”
“Great. I mean, fine.” He shrugged.
“Yeah?” Ava smiled. “Which is it?”
Dante stopped walking and handed her his bag. She realized, the moment she took it, that there were no blades in it. The nylon case was so light she could carry it between two fingertips; when she lifted it, the thing deflated, almost folding itself in half. “Where’s your gear?”
He looked across the street to the traffic light. There were cars idling at the intersection. “Well, yeah. I quit.”
Ava was surprised. “But I saw you in Philly. You were so—”
“He was better,” Dante said, simply.
She stood perfectly still. “Everything was better,” she said. Then she reached out and took his cold hand in hers.
When he finally looked up, she could see his face in the streetlight, streaked with tears. His fingers tightened around hers—then he wiped his face on his sleeve, nodding. “I know. Nothing’s okay.”
There it was. The truth. The unbelievable awfulness of everything. It simply was—whether or not they wanted it.
“That’s why you couldn’t write,” Dante said.
Ava nodded. “Sometimes I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t catch my breath.”
“I couldn’t listen to people talk,” Dante said. “Like, I couldn’t sit by strangers who were talking in restaurants. I kept having to move. They all seemed so stupid. The whole world seemed so stupid.”
“I felt like I had my hand in the burner,” Ava said. “Right there in the flames. I’d wake up in the morning and think, ‘Is my hand still in the burner?’ And then I would feel it, always still there.”
They stood for a moment in silence. Alexei was gone and the world had fallen into a thousand awful pieces. Even the things that had survived were not the same.
Like us. We aren’t the same.
“We better keep walking if you ever want to get that train.” Dante cleared his throat, and Ava let go of his hand. He shoved it into his pocket, awkwardly, and they began to walk again.
He looked over at her. “What about you? You fence for your school? I know Army and Navy and Air Force all have really kicking teams.”
She shook her head. “The Academy isn’t—it’s more, like—” Like the only teams at S.H.I.E.L.D. are strike teams.
She tried to think of how to describe this Triskelion as a school. “It’s pretty military. So it’s more ropes and target practice and drills and obstacle courses. And, you know, outdoors stuff.” Yeah, outside as in denied area ops with snipers and grenades.
“So no fencing,” he said.
She almost smiled. “I do some fencing, but it’s more on my own.” And with an electric blade or two—
/>
“Is that how your face got all cut up?” He leaned his head, to try to see better in the streetlight.
Ava touched her forehead self-consciously. “Yeah, well. Kind of.” Actually, that happened when we were blowing ourselves up in Manaus. “You should see the other guys.”
“All right.” Dante smiled. “That’s pretty cool.”
Ava smiled back. “It’s sort of cool.”
They were only a block from the subway entrance now. Dante hesitated. “Hey, can you have visitors? We could come, you know, see you or something. Do they have, like, visiting day?”
Ava hesitated. There was no way to talk around that one. It’s a covert intelligence organization, so yeah, no. No visiting day. Not ever—
“Hello? Rude! What, were you just going to ditch me?” A figure appeared out of the shadows, just beyond the streetlight. “Group hug,” Sana called, plowing into both of them, arms everywhere. Ava leaned her head against Sana’s shoulder and Sana pulled Dante’s head close with one arm.
“Now. Are we going to get on the subway or just stand here and freeze our butts off?” Sana began to push Ava and Dante toward the stairs. “And that wasn’t really a question….”
They ran after each other. The streets were dark and the steps down to the subway platform full of dim yellow light. At the bottom of the stairs, Sana pulled out a MetroCard—probably her first, Ava thought. “That’s right,” Sana said. “I’m a legit Rude Brewista now. My turnstile-hopping days are over. In fact, I got you both.”
“Look who’s living large,” Ava said, quirking an eyebrow, moving through the turnstile and handing back the MetroCard.
“Well, you’re starving students.” Sana shrugged, handing Dante the card. “I don’t want to stress you out.”
“Awesome,” Dante said, shoving through the turnstile. “I got to get all the way back to Jersey. Nine-oh-eight train, almost every night.”
“What’s that about?” Sana pushed through after him.
Dante pointed to his Montclair Alliance Fencing Club jacket. “My parents think I’m at a fencing club in the city now.”
“You never told them you quit?” Ava asked. It had been so long since she’d had parents, she couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have to lie to the people you lived with. Yes, you can imagine it. You’re doing it right now. Natasha thinks you’re at home, and you’re off in Brooklyn wearing half her closet—
“It works,” Dante said. “I get a whole lot of lost time, and they don’t have to worry about where I am.”
“Ah, right. Cop dad,” Ava remembered.
“Cop dad? Good thing I didn’t jump the turnstiles.” Sana whistled. “I’ll bet you would have hauled me down to the precinct and turned me in to Daddy.”
“That’s Captain Daddy to you. And yeah, not tonight.” Dante smiled. “We don’t talk that much anymore. Like I said, lost time. It works out for everyone.”
They moved through the turnstiles and out to the edge of the platform. It smelled and looked like home, and Ava breathed deeply. “You know when you’re walking down the street and you step on one of those subway gratings and you get a big old blast of dirty New York City underground air?”
Sana wrinkled her nose. Dante laughed at her.
“Stop. Don’t laugh. I’m not kidding. That’s my favorite smell in the world,” Ava said.
“No, it’s not,” Sana answered.
“Really?” Dante shook his head.
Sana crooked her arm around Ava’s neck. “Baked apples with cinnamon. That’s your favorite smell. You’ve told me a thousand times.”
Ava smiled. “Maybe. I’ve been gone awhile, though. Maybe I miss different things now.”
She leaned against the tiled wall of the subway. At the far end of the platform, where the pools of yellow light dissolved into shadow and depth, two figures stood back in the darkness. Something was going on.
Then she felt Sana poke her in the waist. “Don’t look,” she murmured. They had both spent enough time on the street to know how to stay out of everyone’s business. This was either a drug deal or a mugging, and either way it was better not to see anything or anyone.
Ava nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Sana threaded her arm through Dante’s and slowly drifted with him, farther down the platform.
Ava found her hand dropping to one of her concealed blades. Before she could stop herself, she began to walk in the other direction, toward the magazine kiosk that hid the two guys from view.
“Where are you going?” Sana asked, sharply.
“Beyoncé.” Ava pointed, moving closer to the magazines.
“Ava,” Sana said. A warning.
“Just a minute.” Ava headed over to the kiosk. She picked up a magazine and pretended to leaf through it.
The guy behind the counter coughed. “You wanna read it, you gotta buy it, sweetheart.” He spoke without bothering to look up.
She ignored him, angling herself so that she could see over the magazine and into the shadows behind the farthest support pillar of the platform. She turned a page and snuck a better look.
There they were. The same two guys. One in a Nike jacket, one in a Yankees cap. Nike handed Yankees a roll of cash. Yankees pulled something out of his pocket in a wadded-up brown paper bag, shoving it into Nike’s hand. She could just see the edge of it, poking out of his pocket.
It was a head.
She turned the page and looked again. Her heart was beating so quickly now she thought she was going to pass out.
She knew what she was seeing: Jesus. The head of Jesus, anyways.
She was looking at a Cristo statuette, just like the ones she and Natasha had found yesterday in the hidden missile depot outside of Manaus.
Faith.
The Russian drug was here on the streets of her own Fort Greene.
S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY
CLEARANCE LEVEL X
SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES & INDIVIDUALS (SCI) INVESTIGATION
AGENT IN COMMAND (AIC): PHILLIP COULSON
RE: AGENT NATASHA ROMANOFF A.K.A. BLACK WIDOW
A.K.A. NATASHA ROMANOVA
AAA HEARING TRANSCRIPT
CC: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, SCI INQUIRY
COULSON: So Faith had arrived on the streets of New York City.
ROMANOFF: Before we had.
COULSON: Which means the shipment you found in the Amazon wasn’t the first.
ROMANOFF: Not if they’d already sold enough to buy five nukes.
COULSON: Yeah, that’s the thing about nuclear missiles. They’re almost never free.
ROMANOFF: Apparently.
COULSON: Tough call for Ava, that dealer in the subway. On the one hand, Faith. On the other, no backup.
ROMANOFF: It happens.
COULSON: Except this is the part where I remind you that she wasn’t like the rest of us.
ROMANOFF: I know.
COULSON: She was a rookie trainee with a few classes under her belt and almost zero experience.
ROMANOFF: I wouldn’t say zero. She had a direct line to my brain. Don’t forget that one.
COULSON: You’re saying she used the Quantum connection to fight the guy?
ROMANOFF: I’m just saying the guy didn’t know what hit him.
FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN
THE GREAT CITY OF NEW YORK
It was hard to see what was happening, from where I was standing on the platform.
All I could see was that, one minute, Ava—that’s my friend—she looked like she was reading a magazine alone by the newsstand, minding her own business—and the next, she was beating the crap out of two skeevy-looking low-life dudes.
I’m serious.
Wait—
With these crazy glowing, like, electric blades that looked more like lightsabers than épée blades.
I am not kidding, I swear.
The blades looked like they were made out of some kind of blue light, like the good Jedi, not the Sith.
And Ava—my friend, t
he girl—was attacking the low-life dudes with it, just like an advance on a fencing strip—only this time it was on a subway platform instead of a strip, and she had the two blades instead of one.
One short, one long. That’s what I remember.
Then she was standing on top of the bench in the center of the platform, okay? And she was screaming for them to hand it over, hand it over. And the guys were acting like they didn’t know what she was talking about.
But then the one guy, the one wearing a Nike shirt or something, began to shout at the other guy, the Yankees fan. You couldn’t really hear why, and then he tossed this paper bag at Ava.
That really ticked off Yankees fan, right? So Yankees fan told Nike guy to go jump in front of a train. Whatever.
But the thing was, the Nike guy?
He did it.
He jumped.
I’m serious.
He jumped in front of a train, right as it was pulling up to the platform.
I have no idea why.
Ava was screaming at him to stop, but he wouldn’t listen. And the whole platform was still rattling, because the train was coming.
So the dude fell, right in front of the train, and the Yankees fan bolted.
And my friend Sana—the other girl, there were two—Sana and I were just standing there, watching all this, thinking we were going to watch a man die.
Everything after that happened so fast I could hardly follow it, really. The train was pulling up, and Nike guy was screaming, and Ava was going nuts.
I saw those blue blades flashing like crazy again, and then I just heard them, because the lights went out across the whole platform—the electrical wiring failed or something.
And the trains all across the city had to stop. And the one pulling into our platform did, too, making this loud noise the whole time, screeching and sparking like crazy.
I couldn’t really see what happened after that, because the lights had gone out. But it sounded like the Nike guy started to freak out, because I heard all this yelling, and then I saw Ava pulling him up from the tracks.
Then he took off running, just like Yankee fan did.
And then there she was again, walking up to Sana and me like nothing had happened. Except she was still holding those two crazy blades, right? Yeah, so I just freaked out and ran for it.
Black Widow: Red Vengeance (A Marvel YA Novel) Page 17
