Amusement Park Interlude (2p! Italy)

(Rewrite) Part Eight

"I see you took my advice," Casey chucked, flicking the hickey on Ava's neck as she walked by.

Ava's cheeks flushed. Her shirt was hiding the rest of them but of course, Casey had walked in when her hair wasn't hiding her neck. It wasn't actually a big deal if Casey knew, but a little embarrassing for marks to be seen nonetheless.

"It escalated before I knew it..." she muttered.

Casey sat down on the couch with her. Ava was currently on her laptop, working on a course to review some of her nursing skills. Casey would never say it, but she thought it was an act of futility. The skills being reviewed were all hospital based care. As long as she obeyed Feliciano and the others, she would never practice nursing in a hospital setting.

"You know I'm not judging you. It's about time you got some. Was it good?"

She sighed but nodded. "He's practically good at everything, so of course it was..."

"You've got it bad," Casey chuckled. "I love it."

"I forgot to tell you. He decided he wanted...our relationship to be official..."

"So he's your boyfriend now?" She grinned.

"Yeah..."

"You don't seem very excited..."

"I'm happy...It's just that everything is so complicated now. I'm living a double life. We're a couple on Sundays but every other day of the week I have to act like his enemy and run when he tries to capture me. And with Feliciano and the others...I've started noticing little things. Sometimes it just annoys me a little bit, like Feli trying to answer my phone and realizing there are no boundaries because of it. Other times one of them says something crazy, like Gilbert saying I usually behave so it's fine to cut me slack when I do something they think is bad. Which was answering that phone call during a break in our meeting, by the way. It's just little things like that that keep compounding. I never used to notice those things. Or they didn't bother me if I did..."

"They really annoy me..." Casey shook her head. "You're finally opening your eyes to how things really are. I'm proud of you for that, but I know it's hard to see, so I'm sorry..."

"It's okay," Ava smiled. "Like you said, it's been going on for a long time...It's about time I saw the big picture. Luciano, how they really are...all of it."

"Hell yeah," Casey grinned.

Later that day, Ava got a call from Arthur. Oliver was wreaking havoc in his territory. As usual, he was using poison and a large knife as his weapons of choice. Some of the others had come to back him up, and now it had escalated into a large fight between them, Alfred, Allen, Matthew, Matt, Francois, Francis, Yao, Zao, Ivan, and Viktor. Brian was on his way to help, and Arthur had asked him to pick Ava up on his way. She was slightly annoyed that she was being told that Brian would be picking her up instead of being asked if that was okay, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. With it being such a big fight and poison being involved, she absolutely had to be there.

Arthur had tried to get the fight away from the city, so they had wound up in the middle of the forest in his territory. Brian chose a secluded spot a good distance away from the fight for Ava to set up. There was a large tree trunk she could take cover behind.

"You've been pretty quiet this whole time," Brian said. "Is something wrong?"

Leave it to him to notice...I guess I need to snap out of it and get better at pretending everything is fine.

"No, nothing really," she shook her head. "Just lost in thought, I guess."

He eyed her carefully but had no choice but to accept that answer. "Alright then...Stay safe. Luciano isn't here, so I'm going to help fight. Send out an S.O.S. if you need help."