AN - so, this isn't actually a prompt, but i felt a bit angsty tonight and I thought these two needed some time together. This will probably only be small, around five hundred to around a thousand words maybe. don't know when this could be sent so it's sorta off to the side from Caim and Volatile. anyways enjoy.


[ fragments ]

Prompt: This isn't actually a prompt, I was just feeling temp and ava having some bonding time.

Genre: Angst/hurt and comfort - AKA, please read at your own risk

Involved: Tempest, White Tiger.

Word count: 1,117 (without the above line break)


Ava Ayala is not good at putting people back together.

Ava Ayala, for all her academic success and strategic crime fighting as White Tiger, is prone to clumsy hands and mis-matched words on a tongue that's not used to putting people back together. She's embedded with the need to tuck away her own fears until she can release them through strikes or push them down far enough that they become insignificant. So she's at an utter disadvantage when curfew strikes and she's ordered to find Tempest, hidden somewhere in the folds of the Triskellion.

The roof was her first bet - Tempest could be found teetering on the edge, arms flung wide like a child on a tight-rope and her crescent-moon smile pulling the corners of her mouth up in laughter. She was prepared to find the same thing, to huff a mock-motherly sigh at the shorter brunette and corral her back inside. Tempest was famous for missing curfew by a few minutes, and even if it annoyed Ava sometimes that she was usually always the one that had to get her, she'd never say a bad word about it.

But there are no words in her throat when she pushes through the door to the roof. The wind is harsh, throwing crown locks like dolls hands and the soft, scared pants into shredded whispers on it's currents. Ice slips with the wind, and Ava feels the cold creep through her uniform like wandering fingers, and she bristles against it. Vaguely, she remembers winter's on it's way.

Her eyes narrow behind the mask, when sat with her legs hanging over the Tempest, hair flying widely like a corkscrew tornado is wrapped only around her, is Tempest. Her mask and hero shirt are both off, replaced by a t-shirt miles to big for her weakened frame. But when she moves closer, she can see wary brown eyes staring off of the edge with her legs tucked up, so tight it almost looks like she tipping -

"Tempest!" Ava darts forwards, power sliding harshly into her legs and she hooks her elbows beneath Tempest's curled up arms. But just as she drags her from the edge, to sit squarely on the graveled rooftop, Tempest snaps back to life and sudden screaming fills the rooftop. It shudders Ava's fear further into her bones when, with unseeing eyes, Tempest lashes out at her, feet kicking and fists punching.

She doesn't see Ava, doesn't see the way she rears back in shock and tries to grab her wrist as she claws at her own skin, muttering about needles and bruises that aren't there. And when the Latina tries to hook her back into reality, she has to anchor her arms around her waist and pull her to her chest, pressing her nose into the nape of her hair as Tempest, lost in another life, begins to cry.

"Please, P-Please - I didn't - you can't do this, I'm - oh god, oh god, I'm gonna die here, I'm -"

"Temp! T-Tempest! Stop. It's okay! It's okay," slowly, the fight ebbs out of her, like rivers through mud and Ava sinks to the ground, knees bent to prop the brown-eyed girl against her chest. Her breathing was turned on it's side, crackling in a way that sounded to sickly for her, chest rising and falling like concave rocks. Ava murmured something low in her ear, telling her to calm down and ease her breathing.

But she didn't seem to be listening or couldn't hear her, so Ava led by example; she placed Tempest's hand over her chest and slowly inhaled and exhaled. Gently, surely, Tempest began to match the pace and her own breathing evened out, almost as if she were asleep. But Ava knew. So, as she wiped the tears from wide eyes, the shorter girl peered up.

It was so hard to watch Tempest cry. In the first few months of knowing her, the girl had been solemn and silent; she still was to an extent. And yes, she sniffled at old movies or when she didn't get the ending in a book that Ava borrowed her, but it was so disarming to watch such a tough child cry. So when her fingers curled around Ava's she leaned in further, squeezing them in reassurance.

"A-Ava," her voice tastes sour, a stuttering, static thing that shouldn't be possible and she can only think of calling it a panic attack that had done this to her soft friend. "Ava, wha' happened?"

"You were hallucinating," she says softly, coaxing the girl to slump against her more comfortably. Her legs curl up like lazy springs, and when Ava tries to awkwardly pull her arms around her, she flinches. "And then i think you ahd a panic attack."

"W-What's a panic attack?"

Ah, her element - the facts of the problem. "A panic attack," she starts, "is a sudden overwhelming feeling of acute and disabling anxiety."

Tempest nods at the definition that's probably been pulled from a dictionary, and there's a pause before something rattles, something breaks in her chest. Uncharacteristically clingy, like a child whose gone to long without a mother, the shorter buries herself into Ava's neck and sobs rock her shoulders. Taken aback, Ava awkwardly pats her back, unsure of what to say.

"It's so hard..."

"What is?"

"To know...that I'm not unique, that I'm made from the fragments of someone else," she says into her shirt, stained with tears and Ava feels her heart clench fiercely when her hands curl tighter at the fabric around her waist. 2"I-I'm not even a real person."

And Ava Ayala, for all her academic success and strategic crime fighting, is prone to having clumsy hands with even clumsier hearts. So she sits mutely, afraid to speak, and lets Tempest cry until she can coax her back to the bunk-room and into her bed. And the next day, though she'd never admit it, she talks to Coulson about a possible psychologist interview for SHIELD, and a few more breaks for the girl.

And, she'd never admit it, but Ava would take the next hit, the next tear, the next hundred of Tempest's breakdowns so she doesn't have to move around furniture in her heart to cope with the fear by herself any longer. So Ava hopes, that she forgives her when she's called for a psych eval a week later.