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Once More With Feeling: Ava (Tamara Braun) and Harris (Steve Burton) have a bittersweet parting.
On Days of our Lives, Ava returns to Salem and confides to Roman that she only came back to find out where things stand with Harris.
“She is very concerned about the status of their relationship,” begins Tamara Braun (Ava). “She loves Harris deeply and doesn’t want it to be over, but fears it is.”
Those fears stem from the fact that Harris saw Ava pointing a gun at Clyde, prepared to kill him — and Ava witnessing the honorable former Navy SEAL’s reaction to it. “Ava doesn’t regret that,” explains Braun about her character’s decision to take the scoundrel out. “I think she regrets not getting rid of Clyde, because in her mind that was the solution. She comes from a mob family. In her mind, that would have ended the problems with Clyde for good. I think she regrets being caught… not thinking things through better, planning better.”
However, posits Braun, “She regrets that Harris saw her, for sure, because she fears that changed how he sees her and now she will lose him.”
Roman informs Ava that Harris hasn’t come home from Montana and urges her to take a day to rest and think things through before making any hasty decisions. Later, Ava is in Harris’s room when he returns.
“She figures he’s there to break up with her,” says Braun. “It’s that hard part of wanting to run into someone’s arms you love, but the intense fear that you will be rejected. So she treads lightly.”
Ava is surprised when Harris announces he’s leaving town to follow up on a lead to find Megan Hathaway. He goes on to tell Ava that if they have any hope for a future together, they would need time to work on their issues.
“She hears the words he is saying, but because Ava hasn’t been so lucky in love she doesn’t really believe that they will find their way back to each other,” Braun says. “He’s leaving. It can be in the guise of needing to find Megan, but at the end of the day he is leaving, and therefore leaving her and their chance of being able to be together. So it doesn’t matter if they are different kinds of people or not.”
After Ava and Harris make love one last time, they part on a bittersweet note. “This is a common thing that happens among couples,” points Braun. “You hold on as tight as you can before you let go. You try to feel everything real, good and intimate, and you cry and you say good-bye. It’s sad.”
These scenes marked Braun’s final on-screen interaction with Steve Burton (ex-Harris) as he wrapped up his time on the show after the pair, who first worked together on GH as Jason and Carly, spent months developing their characters’ romance. “Of course, I was sad to see Steve leave,” she acknowledges. “I enjoyed working with him again and building this relationship between Ava and Harris. It seemed the powers-that-be were invested in the characters, so it was a bummer that he left because the couple couldn’t continue. But Steve needed to go. He’s back at GH where he wants to be and that’s important for him. I want people to be happy. Life is short.”
