Avengers: Age of Ultron | Saviors | Not Real…
Avery's head keeps turning from side to side, her hearing peeled to its maximum in order to find the person she's looking for. James is still nowhere to be found and she knows they don't have much time left before the city finally starts to fall. It's just as she turns a corner to another street that she notices him. A sigh of relief leaves her mouth, her shoulders heaving down when she notices him completely okay.
But, that feeling doesn't last for long. As she watches him bend down to help a small boy out of a hole, her hearing picks up something else - something loud and heading their way. She's only a couple of meters away from the two but her head turns sidewards and what she sees strikes her to the core. A glider is heading towards the exact direction where James and the boy are - shooting continuously and striking anything that moves.
Her feet seem to carry themselves, her mind not fully registering what plan she's about to go through with but the instincts completely take over her. Somehow, and only in a few seconds, she suddenly feels multiple sharp points hit her and go right through. The next thing Ava knows - she's standing near James and the boy, a turned over car being used as a shield to cover them and her body appears to have several identical holes through it. One in particular - through her heart.
The last thing she sees are two soft blue eyes that are now filled with horror and the last words on the tip of her tongue will be her last. "I love you…"
After that, her whole world goes dark.
Avery's eyes snap open, almost as if someone has stuck her with something to wake her up. With a few seconds to adjust to her surroundings, it takes an extra moment to realize she has woken up in a dark room with a small patch of light streaming from a pair of blinds. Her hand reaches up to her face, wiping her eyes to fully calibrate herself to the new surroundings.
Slowly sitting up on the soft mattress she seems to have been laying on, she has a good look around the room. It's a bedroom, but it isn't one she's familiar with at all. It isn't her own back at the tower and it isn't Steve or James' either. It doesn't even look like any room the Barton's farm house has also.
Avery looks down at herself and her eyes widen, her eyesight more specifically looking towards her left arm. It's human. The one limb that was ripped off during her fall from the train looks completely fine - like it was never replaced by metal in the first place. She's wearing a white tight tank top and black shorts and her long hair is still the same. It looks more like her original hair color - the tone before the experiments.
Quickly getting out of the bed, she rushes over to the mirror that is hanging on the wall. When she looks at herself through it, the confirmation that she isn't seeing things hits her. She looks exactly like she did before Zola got his filthy hands on her and there are absolutely no scars anywhere on her body.
"What the hell…" she breathes to herself, her eyebrows furrowing, actually pinching herself to see if this is actually happening. The pinch hurts, so it must be real…but, this doesn't make any sense at all.
In the mirror, she catches something behind her, a row of photos frames. Slowly turning around, she walks over to them, never letting her eyes leave the spot. "This doesn't make any sense," she mutters to herself, shaking her head while picking one photo up in particular. Her heart constricts when she looks at it. It isn't real, something is messing with her mind. It won't be the first time some bastards had done that to her.
Yes, that has to be it.
In the photograph is her in 21st century; she's standing in the middle of Central Park, holding hands with a guy she's never seen before. There's a beam of happiness on both his lips and on hers. There's on thing she doesn't understand, there's a small little girl between them with dark hair and hazel eyes. This little girl looks exactly like her as a small child and this man is definitely not James - this guy has black hair and dark brown eyes, his attire full of plaid clothing and jeans.
The shrill of a phone ringing to the side makes her jump a little, her head sharply turning to it. She stares at the machine for a few seconds before picking up the receiver. "Hello?" She says cautiously into the receiver.
"Hun, you're awake," a surprised male's voice replies. "I thought you'd still be asleep."
Who the hell is this?
It takes a moment for Ava to even figure out how she's going to reply. "Uh, no. I, um…I just woke up…" Maybe this guy knows where she is? He seems to know her.
"Oh, good…listen, Mike's keeping me at the office for a few more hours so just make sure to take your meds-" Ava cuts him off.
"My meds?" She asks in a confused manner, her brows furrowing as she moves away from the row of pictures, placing the one in her head down flat-faced.
A sigh can be heard over the line. "They're beside you bed with a glass of water. Please, make sure to take them. You know the doctor specifically told you to." Ava looks over to the side of the bed she was lying on and sure enough, there's a tall glass of water and a bottle of prescription pills sitting next to it. She starts heading over to them the moment the mystery man continues talking, "Steve's going to br bringing Madison home today. She'll be home by three."
"Right…" Ava distantly mumbles out, missing the part about Steve as she stares down at the bottle of pills. Looking closer at the bottle's label, it reads, 'Sleep Hallucinations - one pill to be given after waking up and one before bed.'
"Okay, I gotta go before Mike bites my head off," the man says once again, sounding dismayed. "Make sure to take those meds, please…I love you, Av."
Avery just feels a little creeped out now that he said that - maybe it's the guy from the photos? This girl Madison must also be the kid from the picture. "Uh huh," she pretty much hums without expressing emotion, ending the call before another word from the man's mouth can be said. The phone drops from her hand alone with the pills, both objects making a noise when they hit the hardwood flooring underneath her feet. There is no way any of those pills are getting anywhere near her mouth. God knows who these people are because something weird is going on and she doesn't like it one bit.
She won't be surprised if Hydra has something to do with it.
…
Avery is walking down the house stairway after having gazed out of the bedroom window for a few minutes - it's clear that she's currently in a two-story building somewhere in town. Climbing down the stairs, there are more pictures hanging on the wall and they are basically from her whole fake life, or whatever is happening right now. All the way from being a baby with whom she can guess is Steve, but this Steve isn't tiny like he was before the serum. One photo that makes her looks away is her in a hospital, holding a small pink bundle in her arms, a small baby cocooned inside.
'This is just some weird dream,' she thinks to herself, knowing that photo, in particular, can't be real. She isn't able to have children, let alone carry one to full term. Hydra made sure of that many years ago. Besides, according to these pictures, the house and from what she sees outside - it's like she was born way after her actual birth date. In human years, she should probably be closer to the dying age rather than her thirty-year-old self.
She is now clothed in the normal attire she usually wore around Tony's building and from what she can see, everything around this place - other than the obvious - seems normal. Or what normal would be called for a small growing family with a completely standard human life. Looking deeper into the house earlier, she noticed no weapons, no uniforms and nothing that could insinuate that she's being locked in this place by outside means…or even inside means.
The thing that's been coming back to her is that before the way and everything else happened; this si the kind of life she wanted…the kind of life she longed for with James. But wherever she is, she can't find him anywhere. There are no pictures of him and no indication that he even exists - she even tried looking through one of those phone books but still…nothing.
Suddenly, the doorbell rings.
Ava's head snaps over to it and through the fogged glass on either side of the door, she notices two bold colors emanating from the other side, most likely from two different people. Curiously, she goes over to the door and opens it - and the person she sees standing there makes her heart lift with a little hope.
Steve.
"Mommy!" A little girl's voice cries with happiness and Ava instantly feels a small body colliding with her lower half - she's being hugged by a child - one that called her 'Mommy.' The confused soldier looks down at the girl and a swell of something warm appears in her chest, something that accumulates too quickly to stop. Being called 'Mommy' was an Avery Rogers dream she had with James.
Ava is stuck for a second - unsure of what to do. Maybe Steve knows what the hell is going on?
"Um…sweetheart," she starts saying, trying to imitate a mother which for her is a lot trickier than it sounds. "Why don't you go do your, uh…homework while I talk to your…uncle." He must be Madison's uncle from what she can gather. Especially if she's supposed to be the mother of this small child.
A small excited beam crosses the girl's lips when she pulls away from her mother. "Okay," she starts skipping away, the backpack bouncing around on her back as she goes. Madison disappears to a part of the house she hasn't even fully explored yet. "Bye, Uncle Steve!" Her voice echoes through the hallways as she vanishes.
As soon as Ava is alone with her brother, she can't help but hug him, making him actually stumble back on his feet. "Woah, there…" his voice chuckles in her ear, hugging back with the same tightness of grip. He's obviously surprised but it seems like he's happy too.
"You have no idea how glad I am to see you right now," she mumbles into his neck, shaking her head while the familiar smell of him eases her tensions. She pulls away from him, looking his body up and down. He looks exactly like her Steve but without the Captain America uniform. "Steve what the hell is going on?" She gets straight to the questioning - he must know what's going on, he's the only one either in person or through pictures that she's recognized.
Steve's features start to morph into a confused one, something she doesn't expect. "Av, what are you talking about?" He questions, a concerned frown lifting on his lips.
"Is this Hydra's going?" Passing his question with a demand, her voice getting mildly irritated as she continues. "I knew there could be a few of those weasels left but I didn't thing they'd do something this extreme to my head. And-and where's James?!" She's stopped by her brother's hands being placed on her shoulders with the strength to make her shut up for a second - his eyes connect with her own.
"Ava," he starts as if he's trying to get through to a deep part of her. "You haven't taken your meds today have you," he guesses with a correct assumption.
"Of course not!" She snaps, actually pushing off his hands, this isn't her brother - it definitely can't be. "This is just another one of Hydra's filthy tricks to break me." They've done similar things to her in the past but it's never been this vivid…everything feels so real.
"Hydra…?" Steve repeats and after a moment, a sigh leaves his lips, his own head shaking this time. "Avery, there is no Hydra. There's no one called James, there's no Avengers, there was no battle in Sokovia that either of us fought in and no one called Dr. Zola kidnapped you to experiment with." Ava looks at him with a stunned look. "Everything is in your head. Ever since the…incident, you've been having vivid hallucinations of these things and every time you've had an episode. That's what the meds are for. They're to keep you here in reality. But even then, sometimes they don't work."
There's a confliction growing in her. "What are you talking about…what incident?" Unsure if she really wants to hear what he's going to say next.
Steve places his hands on her shoulders again, rubbing them gently, almost like he's done this more than a couple times before today. "When you were eleven, there was an accident in dad's lab. You…you saw him die, Av, and that kind of trauma on a child along with being in the blast set you back. From what the doctors could tell, your mind wasn't able to fully deal with what happened so a part of you created another world where you had another life. One that lets you escape this on even if it's just for a short amount of time."
Everything he's saying sounds true and that's what's causing the confliction. She can't tell what is real and what's not. It's like she's fighting who she is between the Winter Soldier and Avery Rogers again.
But, even as he says all of these things, why doesn't she remember anything about this life or even anything around her. If the world where she's Avery Rogers aka The Winter Soldier is the fake, then why does she remember pretty much every single detail about that place when she knows jack about this one? Something isn't right…
"Right…" she finally speaks, seeing her brother waiting for an answer or at least some kind of response to what he has just said. She gives him a small fake laugh. Like she's realizing something that he initiated. "Right, of course, sorry, my head's just a bit…muddled this morning. I should really go take those pills before my head gets any messier," she jokes. "And, um, thanks for bringing Madison home, too." Hoping she got the right name. "I owe you one."
Steve waves a hand in the air, basically saying it isn't necessary. "No problem." Looking much happier now but knows he has to say his goodbyes. "Just call me if you need anything." He starts to walk back, still facing her but his direction is towards an old Ford Focus on the driveway. He drives that? This Steve has really bad taste in vehicles that it is almost embarrassing.
Avery gives him a nod, smiling, "Got it." She gives him a short wave before slipping back into the house, closing the door. Without turning around, she releases a deep breath she didn't even know she was holding, her head now resting against the door with her eyes shut. Her mind starts to fully process everything that's happened since 'waking up' and her mind reels.
Everything is so different from the world that she knew and that's what's really getting to her. It's what's making her realize that this place can't be real - there's no James Buchanan Barnes, and the person that looks like Steve - he may look, sound and smell like her Steve but it isn't him. It just doesn't feel right.
This alternate life isn't hers, maybe it is in another lifetime of another time stream if those things even exist, but it isn't hers and she needs to get back to her own. "This isn't real," she says loudly with a finality in her tone. The words being driven straight out of what she believes. There is no hesitation when she speaks - she believes her words with a full heart.
"It should've been me…" she hears James' voice fill the room loud and clear. Something is happening, something that makes her heart beat faster than it usually should. "I should be the one laying in that bed…"
Suddenly, a tingling sensation starts appearing through her body and a sharp pinch stabs the inside of her head. "This isn't real," she repeated and the pain suddenly becomes worse, so much so that her legs collapse under her, a burning sensation running through every part of her body. "This isn't real," she breathes, trying to catch her breath, her eyes not focusing. Whatever is happening to her, she feels something working. She hopes whatever is happening to her is working in her favor.
"Don't…" Steve's voice comes through this time, a grief-filled one that sounds a lot different from the one she just hugged outside. "Just, don't…"
A gasp leaves her lips, feeling a trickle of blood fall down her nose, dripping onto the ground. Little patches of blood start appearing over her body, it sinks into the material she wears within several specific spots. "This isn't real." Her vision starts to darken, embracing the pain as small holes start to appear on her skin now, a blinding pain jolting her nerves. "This isn't real," she says one last time and everything begins spinning, a sharp pierce appearing in her heart this time. She tries to speaks once again, but it feels like her mouth it filled with cotton balls - she can feel herself begin to gag and there's no ways he can feel movement through the better part of her body.
The darkness fully evades her senses before she blacks out - unsure of when she'll next wake up.