This is a Call to Arms

[krasnaya_vdova]

Ava ran when SHIELD came crumbling down. It was maybe not the bravest, most-superhero thing to do, but as the SHIELD Academy went to pieces and she didn't know who to trust, disappearing seemed the best option. She grabbed the bag she kept stashed in her dorm room and she vanished. She'd been told she was safe, that she didn't need it, but being proven right isn't anywhere near as vindicating as one might think. She does what she can, but when a few agents show up and it's down to the cleanup, she's just a name listed as missing in action.

She has enough money stashed for a round-about way out of the country. She doesn't have anywhere in particular she's going, but she doesn't need one. The idea is just to survive. To get away from places where Hydra or SHIELD or the military or anyone else might look and just blend into the city streets. Ava spent three years penniless on the streets of Brooklyn-- she's good at surviving, fitting into the cracks and living off the bottom-rungs. It's a life she fits herself back into, living day by day for months as she keeps herself moving. The uniform she'd put together back when she was almost a SHIELD agent is stuffed at the bottom of her duffel bag as a not-forgotten memory. That she could be something, that she was still the Red Widow.

Instead, she's in a hoodie underneath an over-sized green jacket that looks like it might have come from some flavor of army surplus store. Even with her bright red hair, copper by the sunlight, she hardly sticks out. She keeps her head down, her clothes over-sized to draw even less attention to her body, and usually it works. Usually she's just an unremarkable girl like any other. But her skills are remarkable, and while she doesn't usually have cause to put them on display, even actively tries to avoid confrontations, a few men make the mistake of trying to steal her bag off her shoulder as she stops by the news stall, taking in the headlines and keeping her eyes down. Ava makes a point of giving people as little reason to remember her as possible and as little of her features to describe.

But when that hand goes for the strap of her bag, she's moving in reflex. Immediately in over-drive, twisting him by the wrist, slamming him on his back on the ground, and then it's a fight. Two on one; unfair odds for them. Part of her is honestly a little bit incredulous. Afterall, what sort of thieves target street rats like her? What sort of men care that much about a duffel bag on a young woman who still doesn't really live further out than tomorrow? She doesn't even carry much money on her. But they're concerns for later. And for a few moments she's all graceful movement and brutal efficiency. She moves like a Red Room girl, one of Ivan's special girls, the best of the best. But it's even more than that: she moves like Natasha.

The problem she recognizes all too late is the reminder that fights draw spectators: people watching, people who will remember the red-haired girl, and three men only too eager to complain to anyone who will listen. There's no proof that there's anyone out looking for her, but she doesn't want to risk it. She's been imprisoned before. The SHIELD Academy had been worth it when there'd been a reason, when there were people behind her, but with the chaos that seems to have followed the helicarrier's fall, she feels safer like this.

Ava's good at disappearing, slipping into the crowd, one moment a figure on the sidewalk, and then she's gone. Stepping into the shadows, melting down an alley, trying to let the world pass her by as she gathers her thoughts, decides what to do next -- she'd be hard to trace if someone didn't know the tricks she used, and people like that are very rare indeed. She's only still for a moment or two, planning her course back to the neglected warehouse she's been living in, away from the crowd and then circling back around, just to be on the safe side.

Comments

[disassembling]

When HYDRA fell, his world expanded its borders to such an extreme degree that it might have been overwhelming if it wasn't a silent freedom that he had been craving for so many long years. He walked away from it all without a backwards glance, though one could say that he was always looking over his shoulder because that's what people like him did. They disappeared, but they were also always looking for those people that were just like them, the ones that lived half in the shadows, that hid who they were in order to avoid detection and too many prying eyes.

In three years, he learned to live a life, to be just friendly enough to earn politeness in return, to be social enough to have common greetings but nothing more than that. He had no friends, no family, no handlers and no students; he lived for himself and the pain that came with trying to regain what he had lost so long ago. After confirming his identity, he left North America to disappear into Europe where few would feel the need to look for him. There it was easier to gather the facts, to dig for clues, to search up agents that knew a thing or two about him and more, to eliminate those that had no idea he was there in the first place. He wanted a quiet life but that involved building it around himself while seeking information to all the rising clues to his identity and the lives that he had lived.

His need for confirming his own identity and gathering more of the pieces took him back to Brooklyn. By now, the Avengers had taken on enough threats that HYDRA was a quiet evil in the back of people's minds. They weren't looking for the lost assassin anymore, which was a measure of relief as he began to search all the places where he had once lived a very old life, only to find that it had disappeared. New housing, new shops, new people and very little the same. The number of street gangs and unsavoury individuals had increased as well, which wasn't so much sad as curious. It was the way of the world; he had no opinion one way or another.

It was by chance that he caught sight of the red-head in the baggy clothes. Her appearance wasn't particularly striking from where he made his own way, but how well she hid herself, blended in was a skill that he immediately could recognize. Even at a simple walk, her grace and suppleness was clear to him. She moved like one of the trainees from a long, long time ago. It was subtle and only one who had both trained and knew the extensive background of the Red Room could probably see it. She reminded him of a much younger Natalia, who he knew to be wandering around with the Avengers.

He couldn't trust 'hunches' only, so he hired three men to rob her of the little that she owned. If his 'hunch' was correct, he would be able to confirm the merit of her skill, and she did not let him down. She moved like Natalia, skilled and sharp with the ability to take out an opponent without having to consciously think about it. She was a Red Room trainee, but that made no sense? Hadn't they all been disbanded? It wasn't like he could simply fly to Russia and ask; it wasn't as if he would be handed any answers even if he did. That was one place he knew he needed to avoid in case word got back to HYDRA that he was on such a loose leash. No, any answers to her training would have to come from her or not at all.

The Soldier... no Bucky Barnes (that was his name, he continually reminded himself) eased through the crowd casually, as if the whole scene had lost interest even if people were whispering about the ordeal. She was good at slipping the crowd, but he was better; he had been doing it for seventy years, had trained them how to do it along with perfecting their American English. So he knew how to follow her, to haunt her steps and let her think she had eased away from the prying eyes of by-standers. He doubted that she knew he had set the whole scenario up simply to drive her to hiding where he could find her.

He let her lead him to where she lived, keeping his distance, letting her have just enough space to keep him off of her radar. He slipped into the warehouse that was clearly her abode and settled down in a shadow, letting her come inside far enough that he could block any of her exit strategies.

"Part of being close to a perfect operative is to know when and where to be completely normal," he called out to her. "You gave yourself away and with how social media works, you could have your face plastered across the internet. That's a dangerous game; you should have let them take the bag and hunted them down instead."