Chapter 16
Wanda and Ashley had stayed awake for a large portion of the night, talking quietly amongst themselves so as not to welcome any super soldier eavesdroppers. Wanda had asked Ashley all sorts of questions about her powers and what kind of things she had done. Ashley had been happy to answer, feeling more and more at ease as she shared with Wanda. It felt like the crushing weight that had been pushing down on her chest had been lifted slightly and she could finally breathe easier.
It was somewhere around two in the morning when Wanda finally fell asleep. Ashley was content to just lay there next to her with one of Wanda's arms draped over her protectively. She thought about the words Spider-Man had spoken to her on their last meeting and the story Wanda told her about her brother, Pietro. If she stopped going out would Karito stop looking for her? No, probably not. If she went out at night, would they find her faster? Yes, probably. If she stayed hidden away in her tent every night, would she be able to help her friends if they got hurt? No, definitely not.
She lay in bed that night beside her new friend and confidant and made three lists in her mind.
Things that were certain:
- Regardless of where she was or what she was doing, Karito would keep looking for her.
- If she hides away, she can’t help anyone.
- She can’t hide in a tent forever more.
Things that were probable:
- Karito would find her and capture her, regardless of whether she was hiding or not.
- People she cared about would get hurt.
- Matt would be angry at her if she went out.
Things that were never going to happen:
- Karito would give up the search.
- She would just sit and watch her friends get hurt.
- Matt would hold a grudge against her for longer than a week.
That night Ashley probably got a decent two, maybe three hours of uninterrupted sleep. It was probably the best night’s sleep she had had since Matt’s questionable sleeping pills. She was wide awake around five on Saturday morning, Wanda still fast asleep beside her. She quietly got out of the bed and took a quick shower, borrowing Wanda’s shampoo and soap again. The strawberry scent of the shampoo was so much better than Matt’s coconut one, so she might have indulged herself a little and took a longer shower than she had planned. It didn’t really matter as Wanda was still asleep when she left the bathroom, fully dressed in jeans and Matt’s Columbia hoodie.
Ashley decided to take a walk after her shower and made her way to the penthouse floor. She didn’t expect anyone else to be awake, but it was still a very strange feeling to her when the elevator doors opened, and she was greeted by silence. There was usually some kind of noise going on – whether it was Tony and Peter trying out new gadgets for Spider-Man and the Avengers, or Pepper trying to corral a highly caffeinated Tony or Bruce to bed, or Natasha and Clint sparring in the middle of the living room surrounded by the Avengers who had all made bets. (Anyone who is smart bets on Natasha of course.) She silently padded along down the corridor to the lab, which was also empty. She had just sat down and turned on her laptop when a voice startled her.
“Good morning Miss Sampson,” FRIDAY greeted over the speakers. Ashley probably should have been used to the AI by now, but she still jumped in her seat.
“Good morning FRIDAY,” Ashley replied. “Please just call me Ashley, though.”
“Of course, Miss Ashley. Alternatively, Boss has selected the nickname ‘Munchkin’ for you, if you prefer.”
Ashley raised her eyebrows, giving the ceiling a questioning look. “No. No I do not prefer. Thanks FRIDAY.”
“You’re welcome. My clock indicates that the time is now five thirty-four am. According to the Sleep-Walking Protocol, I will need to tell Boss and Lady Boss that you are working in the lab at this time.”
“Why?” Ashley asked, heaving a deep sigh.
“It is my understanding that you are supposed to be asleep in bed and that Boss and Lady Boss both care that their kids get the required eight hours of sleep a night.” There was the slightest hint of sarcasm to FRIDAY’s tone, which suggested to Ashley that maybe Tony made his AIs too smart…
Ashley decided against replying to FRIDAY and opened up the programming she had been working on. Out of her desk drawer, she pulled out a sleek black watch. It was thin – the width no wider than her finger and it wrapped snugly around her wrist. The strap was a combination of vibranium and plastic – the vibranium for durability and the plastic for comfort as it sat on the inside of her wrist. It had an LED display in the centre, which lit up with her heart rate in purple numbers as she secured the watch round her wrist. So far she had programmed the prototype watch to record heart rate and breathing patterns, measure blood flow and scan for injuries. She was now working on the AI in the watch being able to detect and treat anxiety and panic attacks.
She plugged the watch into the computer and spent the next two hours writing up the code and testing out the various functions she was trying to create. She tried to simulate a panic attack using the laptop and the watch’s AI responded with some of the responses she had programmed in.
She had run the simulation for the fifth time that morning when Tony came in, looking very refreshed for half past seven in the morning. He watched silently from the doorway to see what would happen as the simulation begun.
The watch responded almost instantly. “It looks like you are having a panic attack. Contacting your designated person now.” The AI’s voice was soft – just above a whisper, but low enough that it wouldn’t spook someone who was having a panic attack – or a sensory overload, Tony’s brain added helpfully, thinking about Peter. “Close your eyes and tell me what you can hear.” There was a long pause as Ashley pushed a few more buttons on the laptop, jumping to the next part of the simulation. “That’s really good. Can you tell me what you can feel?” Again the room was silent for a few beats except for the tapping of keys. “Great work. Keep breathing slowly for me. Take in a deep breath and hold it for as long as you can before you let it go. Now can you tell me a happy memory?” Ashley smiled as she tapped away at the laptop and made notes on the notepad beside it. “Your breathing is back to normal and your heart rate is steady. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No, thank you EMMA,” Ashley answered and unplugged the watch. Tony decided then to step further into the lab.
“EMMA?” Tony asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“Emotional and Medical Monitoring Assistant.”
Tony grinned widely. “EMMA… I like it. It’s come a long way since a rough sketch in your notebook.” Tony picked up the watch and examined it carefully.
“It seems to be running through the simulations successfully, but it needs to be trialled for real.”
Tony nodded in agreement. “Maybe you should try it? It might help if you come across any loud noises or if you sprain an ankle again.”
Ashley blushed under Tony’s gaze. Her eyes dropped to the watch as she took it back, securing it back in her desk drawer. “It was one time…” Ashley mumbled.
“Well, it’s your baby. You’re the only one who’s going to know if it’s working exactly the way you want it to.”
“That’s true,” Ashley agreed. “I’ll need to make a second one to test the full capabilities, so that EMMA can link up with a trusted person. Although, I can probably link her to FRIDAY, that’s not the main purpose of EMMA.”
“Well, I expect we’ve got a couple of hours until breakfast, so maybe we can work on it together?”
Ashley nodded, a wide smile growing on her face, which drew out a similar grin from Tony. Tony dragged Peter’s chair over and sat on the other side of the table. Ashley showed him the blueprints and the pair started working together on building a new watch.
“So, who are you going to give the second watch to?” Tony asked as he screwed the circuit board in for the watch face.
Ashley thought for a moment before settling on her answer. “Wanda.”
Tony just nodded in response. A part of him was hoping to be trusted with the second watch, but he knew that Ashley and Wanda had grown rather close in the last few weeks. “FRIDAY tells me you’ve been in here since five-thirty. Couldn’t sleep?” Ashley simply shook her head as she poured over her code, making a few minor tweaks. “Wanna tell me about it? I can be a good listener when I choose to be.”
Ashley snorted in laughter. “I don’t know if Ms Potts would agree with you,” she remarked, a sly grin spreading across her face. Tony just shot her one of his wicked grins in return. There was a long pause before Ashley decided to speak again, answering Tony as honestly as she could. “I’m worried about my friends. There might be something I could do to help them, but it might put me in a difficult position.”
Tony pondered over her words. This was the most she had opened up to him, so he took a moment to consider his reply, desperate not to ruin it. “It’s difficult to know what the right thing to do is. I always want to help and protect the people I care about and that usually puts me in harm’s way. And sometimes that’s necessary, but sometimes – quite a lot of the time actually – the people I’m protecting are more than capable of taking care of themselves. In fact, most of them are more capable of it than I am. Pepper tells me I should trust people more, so that’s what I’m trying to do, and I’m trying to let Cap and the others take care of themselves because I don’t need to and if I step in then I’ll just end up getting hurt when I didn’t need to.”
“How do you know when the right time to step in is?” Ashley asked. Her eyes were glued to her laptop screen, refusing to meet Tony’s serious gaze.
“Normally you don’t until it’s too late. Try talking to these friends of yours, see where their heads are at and that will help you make your decision.”
“What if one of them is a pig-headed, self-sacrificing, walking death-wish?”
It was Tony’s turn to snort then. The noise was rather undignified, and he tried to cover it up with a cough, but Ashley’s giggling signalled that it didn’t work. Tony didn’t think he had ever heard a more accurate description of Daredevil, not that he could tell her that. “C’mon, Pete’s not that bad!” Tony joked.
The two fell into a comfortable rhythm after that, busying themselves with the watch and making jokes or chatting idly. Around eight-thirty, Tony turned his music on, figuring if it disturbed anyone it was tough. Eight o’clock is a normal time for people to wake up, and if anyone (read Peter) was still in bed at this time, they were lazy. Tony put his playlist on and was mildly surprised when Ashley started bopping her head along with the music and singing the odd lyric here and there.
“You’ve got good taste kid.”
Ashley hummed in response, head nodding along to the tune of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by Guns n’ Roses. “My dad was really into this kind of music. My mum was more into Genesis, Queen and Floyd.”
A frown creased Tony’s face as he listened to Ashley. Her use of tense being particularly interesting. (Although, he couldn’t lie and say the mention of Genesis didn’t make him cringe.) Her parents were into those bands… Not her parents are. He gazed over at Ashley, who had now dropped her head low, so she was mostly obscured by the laptop screen, clearly trying to hide from her slip up. Before Tony could challenge her about it, Pepper stepped into the lab, dressed in a pair of skinny jeans and a loose-fitting black tank top. She had a fond, yet exasperated smile on her face as she watched the pair of them.
“You two have been busy bees this morning. So, which one of you has been in here since half-five?” Ashley shyly raised a hand, her eyes not meeting Pepper’s. Pepper’s gaze then fell to Tony. “Which means you’ve been here since half seven and you’ve been indulging this behaviour…”
Tony shot Pepper a look, his eyebrows raised in a command to leave it alone. Pepper rolled her eyes in return and stepped towards their table to see what the pair had been working on. Ashley and Tony held up the two completed watches, which were now synced up to each other. Tony sat back in his chair as he listened to Ashley describe the watches’ functions to Pepper, who was looking steadily more impressed as she went on.
“That’s phenomenal work! SI could really market this on a large scale to the general public. It could revolutionise medical care.” Tony couldn’t help the grin when he saw how excited Pepper was about it. This woman just continued to amaze him every day. She also frustrated him though – especially when she announced she was kicking them out of the lab, and it would be shut until after lunch. Pepper all but dragged Tony and Ashley from the lab and into the spacious living area, where the other Avengers were either cooking, or patiently waiting for breakfast. Tony pouted when FRIDAY announced behind them that the lab was now locked under ‘Lady Boss’s’ orders.
Ashley took a seat at the large dining table between Wanda and Bucky, while Pepper dashed into the kitchen to save Steve from burning the bacon. Clint was once again on toast-duty under the watchful eyes of Vision, and Sam was grilling enough sausages and cooking hash browns to feed an army – or two super soldiers, an enhanced teenager, two assassins and everyone else at the table.
“Morning,” Bucky greeted. He was flicking through a newspaper beside her, hair still damp from the shower he had after his morning run.
“Good morning,” Ashley replied. She reached for the jug of orange juice on the table and poured herself a glass, before tuning into Wanda and Natasha’s conversation on her other side.
“I want to up your training. Your gifts kick ass in the field, but you need to be prepared for every eventuality, which means you need to be able to kick ass blindfolded with both arms tied behind your back.” Wanda simply nodded her head along to Natasha’s words. “Sessions will now be five days a week for three to four hours at a time. Pepper, Tony and Clint will be joining us. So will Spider-Man when he can.”
Bucky leaned in beside Ashley to add to the conversation. “Eat a big meal beforehand because you’re going to work it all off.” His grin was positively wicked.
Ashley bit her lip nervously as her thoughts started to reel. She had learnt a lot from Matt, but most of that had been based on boxing moves and training her senses. The thought of learning self-defence from the likes of Natasha and Bucky was really appealing to Ashley and could definitely come in useful if she were planning on resuming her usual activities.
“N-Nat?” She started timidly. She had almost the whole table’s attention at that, which didn’t help calm her nerves at the prospect of asking an assassin/avenger to train her in self-defence. “Could you m-maybe teach me some self-defence moves some time? Only if you’ve got t-time.”
Natasha cocked an eyebrow in response, a slow smile breaking out across her face. There was a glint in her eyes as she replied. “Of course, Маленький ангел.”
“Маленький ангел?” Bucky echoed questioningly.
“What does that mean?” Ashley asked as she looked between the pair. At that point, Pepper, Sam, Clint and Vision started bringing the food to the table, and everyone was soon distracted by that prospect.
“It’s just a nickname. I’ll be happy to teach you a few things,” Nat spoke as she started filling up her plate. “We can get started after breakfast if you want?”
After breakfast, Wanda lent Ashley a pair of black leggings and a red vest top for her to change into. FRIDAY took Ashley down to the gym floor (floor seventy-three), which was empty when she got there. The space was vast; filled with mats, various gym equipment, a boxing ring and a large climbing wall. In one corner, there were several rings hanging from the high ceiling over a foam pit, which looked really appeasing to the childish side of her. She decided to get a warm-up in while she waited for Natasha and moved towards the punching bags towards the far wall, passing the boxing ring on the way. She leaned against the ropes for a second, recalling the nights she had spent with Matt at Fogwell’s gym fondly. Ashley took a couple of hair bands from round her wrist and tied her hair up in a messy bun to keep it out the way. She wrapped up her hands and started attacking one of the punching bags.
As she punched, a voice eerily similar to Matt’s filled her head, critiquing her posture, footwork and technique. ‘Bend your knees more… squeeze your fist as your hit lands… drop your elbows!’ Ashley was probably going at the bag for a solid ten minutes before she was interrupted.
“You know how to punch,” Nat commented. She had been standing in the boxing ring with Bucky for the last five minutes watching Ashley’s form. Her technique was a little sloppy in some places, but it was still better than Peter and Wanda when Nat had first started training them. There was a thin layer of sweat clinging to Ashley’s forehead as she stopped the bag where it was swinging on its hook. “Who taught you to box?”
“A friend,” Ashley answered, wiping an arm across her forehead. Bucky tossed her a water bottle, which Ashley caught one-handed and gratefully took a long gulp.
“Your technique needs work. What exactly is it you want me to teach you?”
“New York is a dangerous city. I just want to be prepared for the worst.” Ashley answered, scratching her arms nervously.
Natasha nodded and signalled for Ashley to join her and Bucky in the ring. “Bucky’s going to be your partner. He’s going to put you in some holds and I’m going to teach you how to get out of them.”
Almost immediately, Bucky had tackled Ashley to the ground and pinned both her hands above her head. Although there was a weight above her chest, Bucky was holding most of his weight off her, which Ashley was immensely grateful for. Being crushed by a super soldier did not sound like a nice way to go. Natasha started dictating to her how to get out of Bucky’s grip, encasing one of Bucky’s arms and his head between her calves and using her legs to pull herself up, while simultaneously pushing Bucky to the ground. With a little bit of guidance, Ashley soon had her legs squeezing Bucky’s metal arm into his neck, cutting off his air slightly and thus forcing Bucky to let go of her wrists.
“Good,” Natasha commented. “It took Wanda a couple of weeks to get the hang of that one.”
The next couple of hours went by with Ashley wrestling Bucky off of her in various ways. By the end of the session, Ashely was drenched in sweat, chest heaving but feeling pretty pleased with herself. There was some light bruising around her wrists and ankles from where Bucky had grabbed her (albeit gently) with his metal arm, but they didn’t really hurt all that much.
“That was really good, kid.” Bucky commented as they walked over to the elevator together. Natasha was staying behind to train a little bit herself. “Maybe you should join us more often. I’ll give you fair warning – I reckon there’s absolutely no way the others haven’t been live streaming this upstairs.” Bucky winked mischievously as the doors opened to the penthouse, where sure enough, Tony, Pepper, Steve, Sam, Wanda, Vision and Clint were all gathered around the large screen, varying degrees of shock on their faces as they watched Ashley repeatedly take down the super soldier. Admittedly, Bucky wasn’t even using half his strength, but it still looked impressive on screen.
As Bucky stalked off to the kitchenette to grab a snack, Ashley approached the group gathered on the sofas. Six heads snapped to her as she approached, which was slightly unnerving. Nobody said anything, so Ashley spoke first, addressing Wanda.
“Is it okay if I use your shower again?” Wanda nodded and stood up, leading Ashley away from the gob-smacked Avengers and back down to her room.
Once in the elevator, Wanda turned to Ashley. “You should tell them.” When Ashley didn’t acknowledge Wanda’s words, she continued. “I know why you want to learn to fight. Maybe if you tell Tony, you won’t need to. He can help. All of the Avengers can.”
“I’m guessing asking you to forget I told you isn’t an option,” was Ashley’s response. Wanda shook her head, a serious look on her face. “I don’t want to put anyone else in danger. I was tired last night, and I didn’t want to keep lying.”
“I was ninety-nine point nine percent certain you were Pegasus anyway. So, if you had lied, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
Ashley left the conversation there and had a quick shower to freshen up. She walked out of the bathroom, back in her jeans and Matt’s hoodie and pulled a familiar black watch out of the large pocket, handing it to Wanda. She showed Wanda her own watch, which she fastened around her wrist, her AI greeting her as she did so.
“Good morning, Ashley. Can I be of assistance today?”
“Good morning EMMA. No, I’m fine thank you,” Ashley responded.
Wanda watched her with a hawk-like gaze before putting on her watch. She was also greeted in a similar fashion. “What’s EMMA?” Wanda asked.
“EMMA is the AI I created – Emotional and Medical Monitoring Assistant. I’m taking her for a trial run, but I needed another watch to sync up to. If something goes wrong, like a bad injury or a panic attack, EMMA will alert you through your watch.”
“Wow, that’s awesome.” Wanda stared at the watch in wonder. “Why me though?”
Ashley shrugged. “You were the first person to come to mind.”
Wanda pulled Ashley into a tight hug, palms resting on the younger’s back and chin resting on top of her head. There was a slight pause before Ashley’s arms locked around Wanda’s waist, retuning the gesture. The younger buried her face against her friend’s collarbone and sighed in contentment. They stayed like that for a few minutes before Ashley’s phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Matty: Are you still at the tower? I can meet you nearby. 12:07pm
Ashley pulled away from Wanda and fired back a quick reply, assuring Matt that she would be on her way soon. The pair returned to the penthouse so that Ashley could say goodbye to everyone. As she stepped back into the elevator for the final time that day, her gaze caught Wanda’s and she smiled brightly when the older tapped her watch with a wide grin on her face. Slumping back against the elevator as it descended the tower, Ashley basked in the warm feeling in her chest. She was happy. She could think clearly for what felt like the first time in weeks and things just seemed to be going well for her.
Hopefully, the good feeling would last just a little bit longer before the world turned to shit.