A/N: Thanks to unwittingcatalyst for betareading. :)
Ava goes home for the first time after the truth about her origins is revealed.
She goes home to Fresno. She smiles, she hugs her parents : doesn't tell them she knows. She can see they wonder, their discomfort showing through, passed off as the surprise she's come home unexpectedly – they never liked that and now she knows why.
She likes to pretend. To eat the snicker-doodles. To sleep in her old bed that feels like exactly what it is no matter why it was manufactured. The lie is so carefully constructed – from the faded postcard on the pin-board sent by her best friend who moved away when she was 13, to the My Little Pony she knows is in a box in the top of the closet that would now be collectible if not for the bite mark from the neighbors dog, and the quilt spread over the bed with patches of her old clothes sewn in - she doesn't want to tear the fabrication down yet because she has nothing to replace it with.
This is the one part of her life that feels stable. It's a lie but it's a comfort she can't give up immediately. She pulls the covers tighter around her and listens to the sound of the suburbs, the chink of drinks downstairs, her parents having a nightcap. Some part of her wonders what they really think of her, if they think she should have known, if they know she does. They go on playing the part though, probably because they are still being paid. Now Ava knows she's found the anomaly in the budget, traced it through several shell corporations with the reluctant help of a scared Bureau accountant who a different Director swore to secrecy. Most people don't know the cost of their childhood, she knows the cost of her whole identity, down to the cent.