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correctbaby · 23 days ago

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I am cooking away at part 3 (which may end up being part 3 AND 4 because word counts always run away from me) BUT to thank everyone who commented here is a sneak peek <3 I wouldn't have the motivation to finish if not for your kind words! It's still rough, fair warning

“Cut the bullshit,” John muttered. “You’re still in pain.”

Ava laughed humourlessly, eyes rolling back in delirium. “M’always in pain.”

“Are you on drugs?”

There was no answer. He waited for her eyes to roll back down, but they never did. All he could see were the whites.

“Ava?” Any tension left in her sagged, and she promptly passed out. “Shit! Hey—hey, stay with me, Ava, come on…”

He shook her roughly with his free hand and she gasped awake, jerking as if trying to sit up. And she shouldn’t look like that, eyes wild with fear. And John shouldn’t feel so fucking helpless. Before she could fade again, he gripped her shoulder even tighter.

“Just—fucking—get over yourself already and tell me what you need!”

“Suit—off.”

“Pardon me?” John choked.

“Suit—off.”

Why did Yelena have to be away tonight of all nights. Why.

“I can’t…” Her hands passed through her own chest, as if to demonstrate. “It’s—hhh—my head.”

John noticed for the first time the suit she was wearing. It was white and lightweight, but peeking through the joints, there was something familiar. A blue, gel-filled material like an ice pack.

“Did Valentina give you this?”

“Mm…” She nodded.

Her delirium suddenly made more sense. John remembered the arm bands she had him test weeks ago, to “help” him sleep through the night. Even with the serum in his veins it had taken him an hour to come down from that spinning high. And it looked like Ava’s suit was lined with the stuff.

As if taking his hesitation for refusal, her expression turned desperate—so before she could do something so vile as to plead with him, John started propping pillows up behind her. “I’m doing it—I’m doing it, relax.”

GhostWalker WIP

I haven’t posted fic in years, much less incomplete ones (this is 2/3 chapters) but given the lack of content for this ship I figured I’d take one for the team <3 This is incredibly whumpy and self indulgent! Also includes some speculation for how Ava managed during the snap. Enjoy!

Ava was too stubborn to die.

Truth being, she was too scared to face the ghosts lined up behind her. She felt their breath on the back of her neck sometimes, when she woke from fitful sleep to a whip’s crack of pain arcing through her cells.

Nights like tonight.

Her hands groped her nightstand in the dark, cursing as the quantum regulator passed through her fingers before she could get a hold of it. It was a crude harness made from trial, error, many cashed in favours, and a bit of blood under the table. Five years without access to quantum experts, and she’d had to get crafty.

Truth being, she’d given up hope the pain would ever go away. Janet had given her the briefest glimpse of freedom, and then it had been ripped away. She wished she had never felt that relief. Had never known. It hurt too sharply, returning to how things were.

Ava crawled to freedom herself. She built better gear. She honed her mind. She learned to generate her own quantum energy, a truly minuscule amount but enough to keep her alive in a pinch. There were even days her pain would settle to a low hum, and she could come up for air. Her survival tasted like battery acid, but it was hers.

Tonight, it tasted like kerosine. Pins and needles spread from her scalp down her arms, down her chest—filling her veins with a deep discomfort. Then, like a match strike, she felt herself rip open.

A liquid fire spread across her nerve endings. She had to get her backup regulator on quick—or she’d be in for a fun night clinging to the mortal coil with both hands.

Truth being, she couldn’t be in her suit constantly. That worked as a kid, when SHIELD would sanitize her like a dirty towel run through a steam cycle. Now, as an adult, cohabitating with a tower full of people, she had to take care of herself. At least enough to keep them from looking closely. Which meant, among other agonizing tasks, allowing her suit to be taken for dry cleaning.

Valentina saw it as an “organic opportunity for technological development”. Meaning, while Ava was forced to go without her suit, she could test whatever prototype Val’s team of scientists had cobbled together that week. In theory, the blue jumpsuit that took too long to put on should help with this flare up. The lining of it felt peculiar in some areas, cool like gel under an ultrasound.

Ava gathered all her focus, planted herself firmly in time and space, reached out— and her hands passed uselessly through the regulator.

Alarm bells started ringing in her head. She shouldn’t be struggling to keep her hands solid—she’d trained herself out of those slips years ago, during the dark years when she’d had nothing to keep herself together but her own mind. She shouldn’t still be woozy and slow. She never even slept soundly to begin with.

A memory cut through her mental static. What was it Valentina had said when delivering this new suit?

“It’s our most comfortable one yet! You’ll sleep right through those pesky flare ups, I guarantee it.”

Ava was going to kill her.

There was a force unnaturally pushing at her mind- willing her to sleep, to relax, to let go. There was also a force, timeless and all-powerful, causing so much carnage to her body that rest was impossible. And then there was Ava, caught in the middle of familiar pain and unfamiliar mental fog, completely powerless.

Panic started to boil in her chest. Or maybe that was the feeling of her ribs disassembling, the lining of her lungs tearing open. Again and again and again and again—

Don’t think about it. Keep yourself together. Here and now. Breathe when you can.

Her focus had been taken from her. She couldn’t get the suit off- it was a mess of buckles and zippers she’d dutifully fastened like the lab rat she was. She couldn’t get to her backup regulator. Instead she was being battered in the winds of agony with no way to keep her footing.

And truth being, she was scared.

—

John was tired of being the only normal one on his team.

The responsibility of it chafed at him. It forced him into positions he’d much rather delegate. Unfortunately, everyone else around him was an unstable liability, never around when you needed them, or both, so John had to step up.

Which is why he found himself knocking on Ava’s door at 2am.

John had his room’s noise-cancelling feature off by default—if something was happening in the tower, he didn’t want to rely on Valentina’s sensors to inform him. As a result, he was intimately familiar with the sleeping habits (or lack thereof) of his teammates. At least once a night, he’d bolt upright in bed, jolted awake by someone on their floor hollering from a nightmare.

Ava was no different, but she was uniquely unsettling. She never yelled. The first time she woke him up, it was with the sound of a drawn-out, heaving inhale that brought him right back to the night his newborn son choked on his own spit-up. He’d run straight into her room with his blankets still caught around his legs, and then stood there, utterly disoriented, as she screamed at him to “get the fuck out!”

“Why don’t you lock your door?” he’d asked, half-asleep and still trying to figure out why he wasn’t in his son’s nursery.

Ava had, understandably, shoved him back into the hallway and slammed the door in his face.

She didn’t lock it. He still didn’t know why.

When Ava would wake him up after that, he’d sometimes catch himself in his own doorway—or even out in the hallway—before he remembered where he was. But he never crossed the threshold into her room again.

After her gasping usually came a beeping noise, followed by an odd mechanical whirring. More mysteries he tried not to dwell on. Maybe she had a CPAP machine, or an industrial-grade oil diffuser. It made no difference to him.

But, tonight. Tonight had been a double whammy. First, Bucky screaming into the night (his noises were both the shortest and the loudest). Then, just as John’s nerves had calmed enough for sleep to pull at him again, his Next-Door-Ghost decided to forget how to breathe.

Hearing it while fully awake was worse. It sounded like a sucking chest wound, like the whooping part of a whooping cough, like his baby turning blue. John massaged his temples and waited for the beeping to start.

And waited.

The sounds of unknown machinery never came. Instead, he was treated to a host of new noises— gritted curses flung like knives and keening groans that settled under his skin uncomfortably.

There was no way she could be injured, but John had to check regardless. He quickly found the team logs on his tablet. Yelena and Alexei had been sent on a mission that morning, and they wouldn’t be back for another forty-eight hours at least. Ghost had been in the tower all day. He’d seen her that evening, when the staff came to collect laundry. Ava always looked strange out of her suit, but she seemed fine.

She gasped for air again, and John’s jaw clenched so tight it nearly cramped. Ghost, he reasoned, was a grown woman who could handle her own baggage, a woman who had made it crystal clear his help was not welcome. So he shoved his misplaced concern aside—this was not his son—and turned on the noise-cancelling feature in his suite.

The silence felt louder, somehow.

He rolled onto his back. Pulled the covers up to his chin. Closed his eyes. And was perfectly fucking comfortable. He was lying on the highest quality mattress and sheets he’d ever owned. The temperature was just-right, down to the slight breeze coming from a faux-open window.

And John was so on edge you’d think he was defusing a bomb.

Anything could be happening in the tower, and he wouldn’t even know it. An assassin could disable their security and make it in through the penthouse. Bob could be going Void any second, and Yelena wasn’t around to keep an eye on him. There could be a fire. Or an attack on the street below. Someone could be calling for help.

Ava…

Thirty minutes went by like molasses, willing, begging, pleading with himself to sleep. It was no use.

“God— damn it!” John slammed his fists down on the mattress. He was tired, so tired and frustrated his throat felt tight and his eyes prickled with heat. He grabbed his tablet and turned off the noise-cancelling in his room.

Ava was crying.

He sat up abruptly. No, not possible. Maybe she was watching a movie? Or laughing at something? But then he heard a string of muffled curses, followed by a sob, and it was undeniable. It was the delirium that brought John to his feet. The sleep deprivation, the clock blinking 1:59, nothing else. Except the fact that Ava, who held herself like ice wrapped barbed wire, should not… fucking… sound like that.

John grabbed his robe, and padded out into the hallway. Of course, of all nights, Yelena chose this one to be away. On a mission he would’ve been just as capable of heading, mind you. It was up to him to step up once again. Of course it was.

John knocked on Ava’s door.

When he didn’t get a response, he called out, “Ghost? You alright in there?” He had no idea if she should even hear him. Would the noise-cancelling be bypassed if someone was at your door? Would someone that didn’t lock their door even turn it on?

He listened closely, but all he could hear was that awful, grating, crying that set every bit of him off kilter. He barked louder now, “Ava, answer me or I’m coming in.”

John waited until his misplaced concern couldn’t take it anymore, and then he opened the door to Ava’s room for the second time.

#ghostwalker #johnava #ava starr #john walker #wip

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