Girl in Blue

13 - Escape

Guys we gotta get outta here. Right now, Atlas thought, having Wanda relay her words to the whole team.

Why? Sam thought.

Bucky needs our help. Like right now.

It's gonna look bad when we're all gone, Clint thought. They could extend our sentence.

I don't care, they're gonna need us, Atlas said.

So you go. If they ask questions we won't give them anything, Sam thought.

Atlas wouldn't do that. She knew she was the only reason that her and the team had leverage over the prison guards and Ross right now. If she left, she couldn't even begin to think of the ways that Ross might fuck with them.

The whole team could feel the avatar's thought process in this open-ended loop of thoughts. Everyone could hear each other's thoughts and feel their feelings. It'd only be for a few days. Once you figure everything out over there, we know you guys will come back, Sam assured her.

Are you sure? I'm only leaving if everyone is okay with it.

Yes, Atlas could hear in her head from absolutely everyone in the prison with her. We'll cover for you. Now go, Wanda thought, looking straight into her eyes through the glass separating them.

It was all Atlas really needed to make her move. She lit a spark in her finger, setting the straight jacket on fire. The flames caught quickly as she concentrated on not burning herself. She knew that multiple guards would already be on their way to her cell. She would be bombarded with people unless she found a way to take the majority of them out in one blow, or at least found a way to step out the door without getting shot at immediately.

The water content in the air was small but it was just enough for Atlas to pull together enough water to slice through the hinges and the locks on her heavy cell door. It was quiet on the other side. She knew that the guards were planning to rush her as soon as the cell door opened, so she needed to rush them first. Atlas backed up to the wall opposite her cell door, gathering air behind her, increasing the air pressure behind her back. Then with just the mere thought, the pocket of high-pressure air popped, and Atlas went flying into the door, feet first.

At least a dozen guards were waiting for her on the other side, and the majority of them were taken down by the heavy metal door. The rest of them had their guns pointed at Atlas ready to fire. When she said she could think of twelve ways to stop a bullet, she wasn't lying.

Atlas swiped the air along her front side, and blasted the remaining soldiers back. All she had to do was run now. Atlas used the concrete in the floor to put up a wall taking up the entire hallway to prevent those guards from chasing after her. She needed to get to a stairwell. The majority of the prison was underwater, so the only way out was up.

Atlas followed the signs in the prison to the stairwell while taking down the occasional guard that tried to charge her. All she could do was make her way up.

When she got to the top of the stairwell and opened the door to the hallway, Atlas was met with a wall of prison guards, all pointing their guns right between her eyes. She stood there, shocked. She took a deep breath to relax and slowly stepped through the door with her hands help up high in surrender. Most of the guards slowly lowered their guns, but it was enough for Atlas to bet her life on her next move. 

Like she did before, Atlas brought up a large chunk of concrete from the ground to protect her from the guard's open fire, and she sent it flying forward fast enough to knock out the rest of the guards. Atlas kept on running.

As she ran down the hall, Atlas found a hatch in the ceiling. Right beside it she bent a large hole into the ceiling right beside it and jumped through it to be met with heavy rain and deafening thunder. She was finally on top of the Raft.

"Fuck!" Atlas yelled into the open air. She didn't have a glider. 

Atlas paced along the top of the prison, she was running out of time before more guards would come to fight her again. "What the fuck?!" Atlas yelled again. Her frustration was bringing her in and out of the avatar state. There were times like this where she couldn't help her emotions, where she couldn't keep it under control. And she knew the only reason for that Bucky. He had always managed to break down her walls, leave her at her most vulnerable. 

~

A memory:

"I want to tell you something," Atlas' grandfather said to her while she was in the middle of running drills with her new staff. Atlas stopped in the middle of her combination to glance at her grandfather. "Sit down."

Atlas took a seat across from her grandfather. It wasn't often that he interrupted her in the middle of training.

"There was once an airbender who could fly."

"Gong gong, all airbenders can fly."

"No, without a glider. He went by the name of Guru Laghima. Long ago, he was able to let go of his earthly tethers and attachments, and was able to achieve weightlessness."

"What do you mean by earthly tethers?"

"Love, lust, family. The people we used to keep us grounded."

~

Atlas couldn't do it. She couldn't let go of her love for her newfound family, for Bucky. These were the people that not only kept her grounded, kept her sane, gave her a purpose. Atlas was drowning, and Bucky was the one that taught her how to swim. And when she was drowning again because she was tired, Steve came to pull her out.

But all of this was temporary. Atlas had seen first-hand just how fragile reality is, just how much she could move within different dimensions and pockets of reality, how easily she could manipulate it and bend fragments of reality to her will. Naturally, as the avatar, Atlas was never connected to the Earth, she was a part of something bigger.

Atlas closed her eyes and calmly entered the avatar state. Atlas would never be tethered to the Earth no matter how much she loved some of the people on it. When she opened her eyes, she was floating. "Holy shit!" she said with excitement. She tested the waters and tried to fly higher. Her powers obeyed and Atlas was sent shooting into the sky. She had to get above the storm to see the sky. She only had a vague idea of where she was, so she would use the night sky to navigate her way to Siberia. It was a long shot, but it was her only chance.