[Ava Starr]
Ava wakes up cold and alone. It's how she wakes up everyday now, with Bill being gone. She's on the last of the particles the Pym-Van Dynes had gathered for her. She's gotten a little bit better since Janet did whatever she did, but she finds herself phasing more often than not these days.
It had been normal day, with her and Bill were quietly sipping some tea, while waiting for a shipment of particles from Janet. It never came. One moment, he was raising the cup to his lips, the next it was shattering onto the floor.
S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't allow her to be sentimental most of the time, but she hadn't the heart to clean up the shards, the liquid long since evaporated.
Another unlikely sentiment of hers were the Langs. During those first days of getting used to not being an assassin or running for her life, Scott had invited her over one night to (properly) meet his daughter, and she had initially declined.
He hadn't questioned her when she showed up at 1:30 in the morning, a little bloody and worse for wear.
He hadn't a question when she showed up the next day. Or the next. Or when she stayed over more days than she spent at that house in the woods.
Scott and herself had originally been concerned about her sleeping without her chamber, but was quickly solved when he pulled some shrinking and enlarging disks out of storage and asked how good her aim was.
It was probably why she found herself outside the Lang household an hour after what the news was calling the 'Decimation.'
She phased through the door, only to find a pile of ash, a horrified Luis, and a big, ignorant, ant playing the drums. It wasn't hard to guess who had been dusted.
The deduction went something like this: 1) Scott was still out gathering healing particles for her. 2) Luis had been here for some reason. 3) Cassie Lang didn't deserve this.
She repeated it over and over again: Cassie Lang didn't deserve this. Cassie Lang didn't deserve this. Cassie Lang didn't deserve this.
Luis looked at her in utter shock, like he still hadn't had the impact of what had just happened hit him. The TV in the background buzzed with neon lights declaring a 'national state of emergency.'
She spoke first. "We have to find the others." her voice rasped like old papyrus scrolls. Luis nodded his head mutely and carefully stepped around what had once been Cassie Lang.
When they stepped outside to world of quiet chaos, Luis quietly mumbled, "We need to go check his ex-wife's house."
Ava looked up in surprise, as she had assumed he would have wanted to find his best friend first, but then understood when she knew he would have wanted to tell Maggie what had happened.
When they arrived at the annoyingly happy house, they entered with only a knock as warning.
The sight that greeted them was not happy.
Paxton sat on the floor of his living room, grasping at dust.
He, too, sat in a state of shock, much like Luis had.
Ava was used to death. She had killed many, many, people. She knew now that some of them were innocent. But death on this scale? It disgusted even a monster like her.
Meanwhile, Luis and Paxton seemed to exchange a series of nods that conveyed what Paxton had feared. Cassie didn't deserve this.
And for a minute, it seemed as if the world stopped turning.