Chapter Text
Ava startles awake for the first time by a guttural, agonized scream of true terror and pain. Her eyes burst open in alarm, wondering which of the children in her chamber is having a nightmare.
A faint feeling in the back of her mind leads her to assume this isn’t the first instance of one of the kids having such a horrific dream; a rite of passage for living in an orphanage at such a young age. In her state, Ava wouldn’t be able to help them calm down, but it causes her anxiety, nonetheless.
The next thing she registers is falling to the ground in a panic, only to find herself alone in a small, enclosed room.
When the noise doesn’t cease, it takes Ava a good five seconds to realize that the screaming she hears is coming from her own throat. With that, her exhale dies, and the prolonged shriek finally stops.
Ava gasps, on the verge of hyperventilating as she glances around the dark, unfamiliar room and discovers there is no bed to fall from. Or any furniture at all for that matter.
But she could have sworn she fell from something, didn’t she?
Ava blinks as she becomes more aware, shakily pushing her body up and standing on her feet for the first time since she was a little girl.
“My name is Ava Silva. I live in an orphanage. I am quadriplegic, but I’m…” She wiggles her fingers. She wiggles her toes. “Not?”
As she calms down more and takes in her surroundings, she concludes definitively that she has no idea where she is. Because even though Ava’s condition prohibited her from exploring all of the orphanage, she knows for a fact that it did not have a room like this.
Her first step is a hesitant one, nearly falling over after years of disuse, but the next ones she takes are much more confident, which surprises Ava.
Why isn’t she having more trouble? Why can she move at all?
The room she is in is quite bare. The walls are decorated by a floral wallpaper that makes Ava cringe, and the floor is covered by a grayish-blue carpet. Ava frowns down at her feet and wiggles her toes again, finding that she can’t feel the texture of the carpet.
“Huh,” she says out loud. “Must take a while for sensations to reboot, then.”
She assumes it’s not much different from before - when she was unable to feel the sheets on her legs - but at least now she gets to walk again.
In front of her is a window to the outside world; its shutters pulled down to prevent the heat of the sun. To her right, Ava finds a small closet, left open and void of any items. When she looks behind her, she finds the exit and almost whimpers in relief.
She’s not trapped. She’s not alone. Someone from the orphanage probably just brought her here for a few minutes and forgot about her.
Just a silly little mistake that makes Ava’s chest tighten, her muscles giving away the fact that this situation is something Ava fears, though she has no memory to pin the feeling to.
But who would have forgotten about her? Who would have left her behind?
Ava presses her memory as she stumbles to the door, but all she can remember is…
“My name is Ava Silva, I live in an orphanage, I was quadriplegic… Why was I quadriplegic? What… What happened to me?”
Once she’s close enough to the door, she stops walking and reaches for the knob. In her attempt to lean forward, however, she greatly overestimates her balance, and plummets face first into the door.
Instead of hitting solid wood, Ava’s eyes widen as she falls straight through it, landing once again on her stomach and smacking her nose on the ground.
Ava groans in frustration as she flips onto her back, amending her previous statement. “What is happening to me?”
After reaching up to touch her perfectly aligned nose and finding no blood flowing from it, Ava pushes herself off of the ground for the second time in a matter of minutes. This time, she finds herself in the hallway of the house.
As she haltingly makes her way through the building, Ava finds that there is nothing special about the house she occupies.
It is a small, distinctly un-orphanage one story house with two bedrooms, one bathroom and a kitchen that opens directly into the living room. The floral wallpaper is the same on every wall and the grayish-blue carpet covers all the floors except for the tiled kitchen and bathroom.
With the complete lack of furniture and other appliances, the house is just a shell. And it is empty of all life.
There are no kids, no nuns, and no sign of the orphanage she used to live in.
Ava is, in fact, alone.
With tears in her eyes, she runs to the front door and attempts to grab the handle. Instead, she punches the wood, her hand passing right through the doorknob, like the house is a metal box she can’t escape.
She throws her shoulder into the wood, but unlike the door of the room she woke up in, she doesn’t fall through.
She’s stuck.
“No, no, not again, I can’t be alone again!” She exclaims, not quite understanding why she’s so scared.
Tears stream down her face and her ears start to ring as she backs into the hallway that connects to the living room.
Ava brings her hands up to her ears and closes her eyes tightly as she stumbles backward until a feeling of calmness overcomes her, ceasing her movement. Suddenly, the ringing stops and Ava opens her eyes, slowly bringing her hands away from her head.
Her confusion is overtaken by wonder as she looks to the ceiling and finds a cord attached to a trap door that leads to an unexplored attic space. A strong urge to go up there comes over her and, with nothing else to do, she reaches for the cord.
Ava scoffs at herself as the cord travels through her hand. Of course it wouldn’t work, how could she forget?
She brings her hand to her side and frowns at the door to the attic.
“Let me up there.” Ava says with determination. She closes her eyes and clenches her fist. “I want to go into the attic.”
When she opens her eyes, the ladder is pulled down and Ava breathes a sigh of relief. Not wanting to think too hard about exactly how it happened, she goes through the hatch.
It is dark in the attic; darker than the room she woke up in.
Squinting through the blackness, she can make out three cardboard boxes piled together. The more she stares at them, the more a sensation of visceral dread overcomes her.
Ava shivers. “Okay, don’t open the boxes, then. Got it.”
Still following the urge to be in the attic, she walks closer to the boxes, only for a faint glow of blue light to catch her eye. Ava bends down and the light grows brighter, illuminating a gold cross necklace with blue trim that seems to be reacting to her.
She reaches out but doesn’t touch. The necklace is burning hot, and Ava frowns. This is the first time she’s been able to feel… anything. She withdraws her hand, somehow understanding that it’s not time yet.
However, she pulls away too late, and her eyes droop as energy is sucked out of her. Before she can stop it, Ava slips into a deep sleep.
Her body falls limp right next to the sealed boxes, her fingers mere inches away from the still glowing necklace.
~~~~
For the third time, Ava wakes up.
It’s calmer than the first time; curled up by the boxes in the attic, but she still wonders where exactly she is and why she’s stuck here.
“My name is Ava Silva. I lived in an orphanage. I used to be quadriplegic.” This is the mantra she repeats to herself every time she wakes up from her eternal slumber.
Because for as long as she can remember, Ava has been alone. If she doesn’t repeat what she knows out loud, she’ll lose it, just like all of the memories from before. From her life.
Ava knows she’s dead, how else would she explain the fact that she can’t interact directly with objects, or why she can’t leave this house?
Because she’s tried and failed. Multiple times.
The second time she woke up, she spent hours walking the inside perimeter of the house’s four outer walls, ignoring the inner walls as they ignored her. She felt nothing as her hand traced the solid barricade; the inner walls passing right through her intangible body.
How else, besides death, could that possibly be explained?
When her energy returns to her, she explores every inch of the house. Her house.
It’s empty, like it was the first and second time, but unlike before, her house is now furnished, with other signs of life occupying the space.
A couch, a chair and a small table decorate the living room, a lamp stands in the corner, and a few plants are soaking up sunlight in the window. The cabinets in the kitchen are painted differently and the faucet drips periodically.
Fortunately, the new tenant of her house removed the wallpaper, replacing it with light pink paint. Ava can’t tell if she likes it more or less than the ugly floral wallpaper.
The bathroom has kept its wallpaper, but now has a pink porcelain toilet, sink and bathtub instead of the white porcelain of the previous two times she was awake. This change, at least, gives the house a needed bit of character.
Walking down the hallway, Ava looks at the pictures hanging on the wall and concludes that an old woman lives here with her son, neither of which are home at the moment.
She walks the perimeter of the house, humming a thoughtless toon that her brain remembers but she can’t quite place until the tenants come home.
As an immeasurable amount of time passes, Ava observes the house’s other inhabitants, unseen and unheard by the old woman and her son, until they pack up their belongings and leave the house for the last time.
With nothing more to do, Ava follows the urge tugging her back to the small attic space. She makes her way over to the cardboard boxes she instinctively stays out of and crouches down.
The cross casts a comforting blue glow at Ava’s approach and she reaches to touch it. Although its burn is less intense than the times before, something reminds her it’s not time yet, so she doesn’t make contact.
Exhaustion overtakes her once again and, to pass the time, she falls asleep next to the unopened boxes, nearly touching the glowing cross necklace.
~~~~
Ava wakes up prematurely from her fourth eternal slumber to the intrusive sound of barking.
Barking? Ava doesn’t remember having a dog.
“My name is Ava Silva. I lived in an orphanage. I used to be quadriplegic.” She says softly.
Before Ava can gather herself, the hatch to the attic creaks open, allowing the barking to grow louder and a light to protrude from the ground floor.
“Quiet, Koda.” A man orders as he climbs into the attic. The barking doesn’t slow.
Ava stiffens as the man looks around, the unforgiving LED of a flashlight illuminating the space.
As expected, he ignores her presence and a familiar tightness squeezes in her chest. Even though she doesn’t remember why, people not acknowledging her existence hurts.
“Hey, Barbara, there are boxes up here!” He yells, and Ava can hear the muffled reply from somewhere below.
“Don’t touch them.” Ava warns his unhearing ears. “Listen to me!”
She doesn’t know what she’ll do - what she can do - if he does touch them, but she cannot let this man enter the boxes.
The man shivers, but continues his advance and Ava, for reasons beyond her comprehension, grows increasingly angry.
The flashlight starts to flicker, and he taps it a few times, cursing at it to stay on. When he gets close enough, the man reaches for the box on top of the stack.
“I said don’t!” Ava yells and the man’s eyes widen as he falls backwards. Ava looks down at him, stunned and suddenly exhausted.
Did she do that?
“Wh-who’s there?” The man quavers, flashing the light confusedly around the attic. “I saw you! Who’s there?”
The dog is still barking as a feminine voice calls up to the man. “Everything alright up there Adam?”
“Yes, I’m alright,” he answers as he stands up. “I just thought I saw something.”
Spooked, the man leaves the boxes untouched and climbs back down the ladder, closing Ava in the attic.
She floats through the floor - an ability she discovered while exploring the house her second time awake - and comes face to face with a golden retriever, who growls at her.
“Oh,” Ava says, hesitantly holding up her hand. “Hi, doggy…”
The dog stops growling for a second and perks his ears. When Ava approaches, he takes a step back.
“So, you can see me, huh?” She asks. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you, you know.”
But the dog continues to growl at her, not allowing her to get too close.
“What has gotten into him?” The woman asks, watching the dog.
“I think it’s this house,” the man replies. “I don’t know what it is, but I have a bad feeling about it.”
For the rest of the couple’s stay, Ava opts to keep to herself in the attic, guarding the boxes in the soft glow emanating from the necklace. It doesn’t take long for them to move out, leaving Ava alone once again.
She can finally relax.
With a sigh of relief, Ava reaches towards the hot metal of the cross. She gets the closest she’s ever dared, barely grazing its surface before she relents.
It’s not time yet.
As her exhaustion becomes unbearable, she takes her position curled up near the dusty, unopened boxes and falls into a deep sleep as her fingers brush the glowing cross.
~~~~
When she falls through the ceiling onto the ground floor, she wakes from her eternal slumber. For the sixth time, Ava thinks.
At first glance, Ava realizes her house has changed a little bit more.
“My name is Ava Silva. I lived in an orphanage. I used to be quadriplegic.” She repeats lowly as she walks through the familiar yet different house.
The floral wallpaper is gone from the bathroom (thank goodness) and the leak in the kitchen sink has finally been fixed.
The walls have all been painted over, a beige color this time, and there is a strange device protruding from the wall in the salon that wasn’t there the last time she was awake.
“What year is it? How long was I asleep for?”
Ava watches as a woman crosses from the kitchen into the living room and sits on the unfamiliar couch. She grabs a stick with buttons on it and points it at the device mounted on the wall.
To Ava’s absolute horror, the device wakes up and it takes everything in Ava not to scream. No one can hear her of course, but she has learned over time that her energy can manipulate objects, and that device looks very… malleable.
Instead, Ava watches in wonder as the woman presses buttons on the magic stick and the newly awakened device makes soft noises as she flicks between different colored boxes.
She can’t help but feel a kinship with the device. She would make happy sounds when she woke up too if someone would pay attention to her like that.
The woman clicks on a box that says ‘Disney+’ and although Ava doesn’t know what that means, she is incredibly intrigued.
“Lucas, the television is on, let’s watch a movie!” The woman calls and Ava can hear the patter of footsteps running down the hall.
“Television?” Ava asks, her face scrunched up in confusion. Nothing about this model of television is familiar to her.
The woman on the couch pays her questioning gaze no mind.
“Yay!” A little boy, about four years old, yells gleefully, looking at Ava as he passes.
He reminds her of someone, she thinks, she just can’t place who. Ava frowns, following the boy to the couch.
“Do you want to watch Bluey?”
“No Mama, I wanna watch Ant-Man!” He exclaims, and the woman chuckles as she shuffles through titles Ava has never seen.
She looks back at the boy, who is now entranced by the television, and crouches in front of him. “Can you see me?”
The little boy nods, looking her in the eyes briefly before turning back to the television. For the first time in ages, Ava’s face lights up in a genuine smile.
“I’m Ava,” she says.
“Wanna watch Ant-Man?” He asks.
“Sure,” Ava says as she sits down beside him. “But what is an ant man?”
“Yes, honey. We can watch Ant-Man,” the woman answers.
Ava spends the first hour watching the movie until Lucas shifts into his mother’s side as she pulls him close. Then, Ava spends the rest of the time wondering if she ever had a mother to watch movies with.
When the woman gets up and moves to the kitchen, Ava follows her.
“Do you want some mac and cheese?” She asks, looking past Ava into the living room. Ava follows her gaze back to Lucas just as he nods his head.
Once a pot of water is set on the stove, the boy’s mother moves down the hallway to the back of the house, telling him she’ll be right back.
This time, Ava doesn’t follow. She can’t help but be drawn to the slowly heating water.
Unhurried, Ava walks over to it and watches as the water begins to bubble. In a trance, she lifts her hand and places it in the water.
She feels nothing. No heat, no water flowing around her skin, no bubbles.
Ava frowns as her experiment fails. She just wants to feel something.
“Ava!” She hears someone say.
She removes her hand from the pot and spins around to face a terrified Lucas.
“What’s the matter?” She asks.
“You’re not supposed to touch that, it’s hot! Mama says that’s how you get boo boos.”
“Hey,” Ava says, crossing the room and crouching to his level. “No, look. I’m fine.”
She holds out her completely unmarred hand and gives him a gentle smile.
“I’m fine,” she repeats. “I can’t feel anything.”
Lucas pouts. “But, when I burn my finger, it hurts a lot.”
Ava smiles at him. “Yes, you shouldn’t do what I just did. Ever, okay? But I’m different. I haven’t felt pain in a long time, even when I was…” alive, she almost says before shaking the thought away. “Just, don’t worry about me.”
Lucas sighs and looks into her eyes. “Please don’t do that again. If I can’t do it, I don’t want you to.”
Ava frowns slightly. “Okay, I won’t.”
Lucas’ shoulders slump in relief as she stands back up. “Hey, Ava?”
“Yeah?”
“Why can’t you feel pain?” He asks hesitantly. “Are you a superhero? Like Ant-Man?”
Ava laughs. She definitely wouldn’t describe her situation as ‘super’.
“Sure,” she says instead. “Something like that.”
For a time, Ava stays out of the attic. This is the first instance where a person has been able to see her - to talk to her - and she doesn’t want to give it up just yet.
Plus, she takes much more joy in playing with Lucas, manipulating his toys while his mother doesn’t watch, than she would sitting alone in the attic. She wishes she could touch things, feel things, but her ability to levitate them is enough, especially when Lucas calls it her superpower.
The only issue with this is that his mother thinks she’s imaginary.
Ava sees it. Every time Lucas utters her name, the woman smiles softly and acknowledges his imagination.
Despite her efforts, it upsets Ava a little. Just because she’s invisible doesn’t negate her realness, but she can’t figure out how to prove her existence, so she moves past it.
Like all the other joys she finds in this house, her fun had to end at some point.
The day Lucas turns five, he doesn’t reply when Ava wishes him a happy birthday. In fact, he doesn’t reply to anything she says.
At first, she thinks he’s ignoring her, which makes her panic. Then, she realizes that he can’t see her anymore, and that makes her panic even more.
The urge to let her control slip, however, is overpowered by the unceasing pull of the attic. So, with no reason to stay anymore, she lets Lucas go and makes her way back into the loft.
Before she gets too tired, she kneels down and holds her hand above the golden cross necklace with the slight blue glow. It doesn’t give off immediate heat, a sign that it’s almost time.
When she holds it gently in her hand, the cross doesn’t burn her. With a triumphant exhale and a smile, she lays down next to the untouched boxes.
As she falls asleep, the cross burns into her tightly clasped palm and a tear of relief streams down her face.
~~~~
Ava wakes up from her eternal slumber for the seventh time, a slight tingle running through her arm. Groggy, her eyes flutter until a shock of electricity causes her hold on the cross necklace to lessen enough for it to fall to the ground.
“My name is Ava Silva. I lived in an orphanage. I used to be quadriplegic.” She says through a yawn.
She sits in the quiet attic and stares at the glowing cross, wondering why it shocked her awake.
What could possibly be so urgent?
Ava looks at her hand curiously, only to find that the burning sensation left no mark on her palm. She didn’t imagine it; she knows what she felt was real.
When Ava floats through the ceiling, she starts her routine checkup on her house. She wanders the interior and monitors the changes.
All the walls are painted an off-white color, and the cupboards and carpets have been replaced. The rooms are empty of furniture and the television is gone from the wall. She also notices, with a lot of displeasure, that the bathroom facilities are no longer pink.
So far, though, there’s nothing that would indicate the house is being lived in.
Why is she awake?
The sound of the front door opening breaks Ava out of her staring contest with the toilet and her head immediately whips towards the sound.
She darts to the end of the hallway and into the living area, eager to meet the new caretaker of her house before she stops short, her eyes catching on the woman who just stepped inside.
Strong hands hold the box she’s carrying, her dark hair is pulled into a neat bun at the nape of her neck with strands falling out where it’s too short. She has freckles littered across her face and a slight blush from the heat.
Ava blinks, unable to take her eyes off of the stranger (or close her mouth) as she places the box on the ground and looks around what she can see of the house so far, hands on her hips and a small smile tugging at her lips.
“Oh, please tell me you’re the new owner of this house,” Ava hopes.
“Home, sweet home.” The woman announces softly, an accent Ava recognizes to be British curving around each word.
Although Ava has virtually no memory from before she died, she can say with utmost certainty that she’s never seen anyone this beautiful in her entire life.