Writing…

Time passes in a sluggish drag of quiet, amniotic darkness. 

You wake and drop back into sleep at random, grasping bits and pieces of information but never wholly putting together a picture. Sometimes, a figure or two skulk around the room when you rouse, sitting on the edge of the bed and telling you things in low, smooth tones that you don’t recall during your next wake window, or else fussing about in other ways. Always, the pain. All encompassing, ever present. It makes you nauseous if you try to sit up, but so does sound or any kind of light. For a stretch of time, being alive is only bearable when you lay still and undisturbed in the silent, pitch black room. 

Your mental faculties and ability to stay awake for longer than a few minutes at a time come back to you slowly, a shade at a time. Before you can muster speech, you reacquire listening without unbearable pain. You learn that one of your skulking figures is actually your doctor, a short, plump woman with dark braids down to her waist named Dr. Tesfaye. You learn you are in Birnin Zana, in King T’Challa’s own palace. 

Sam is there to tell you all of this at the first hint of clarity in your eyes. He is a dark figure sitting at the edge of your bed, recognizable only through the familiar tenor of his voice and his hand, warm and solid, in your own. When you try to speak, the vibrations of your own vocal chords send a wave of sickening pain wracking through your body. Sam hushes you, and for once you acquiesce. 

“He’s alive. Joaquín is alive, kid,” he tells you, knowing exactly what you were trying to ask. “The bullet punctured a lung, but the Wakandans have been working their magic— he’s gonna make a full recovery. It’ll be a while, but he’s gonna be right as rain.” 

Relief surges through you like a rapidly changing tide. Your waking moments have been plagued by the image of Joaquín, paling and covered in so much blood, your hands desperately trying to hold the life inside of him. Your thoughts– when you’d actually been able to think– were of the worst case scenario: that when you finally emerge from the shadowed womb of this room, it would be into a world where Joaquín Torres is dead. 

You turn your hand over in Sam’s so that your palms are touching and squeeze his as hard as you can, hoping to convey how grateful you are for the news. Trying to convey a thousand other emotions, so many of which you wouldn’t be able to name or explain even if you had your voice. Sam squeezes your hand back, and you know he understands. 

“So now that you know, just focus on getting yourself right, okay? Listen to Dr. Tesfaye, she’s the best I’ve ever seen,” Sam instructs and you squeeze his hand again, softer this time. A yes. Yes, you will do what you’re told, if only to get well enough to leave this room as fast as you can so that you can see that Joaquín is alive for yourself. You know you won’t fully believe it until you confirm it with your own eyes. 

“What she needs is quiet,” another voice pipes up from the corner: Dr. Tesfaye. She comes closer and lays a hand on Sam’s shoulder, and you watch him nod. 

“You heard the good doctor. Get some sleep now,” Sam says, patting your hand in goodbye and standing to leave the room. Dr. Tesfaye files out behind him, shutting the door with the softest click. Left alone in your swallowing darkness, you’re asleep again in seconds. 

– 

It’s several more days, by your estimation at least, before Dr. Tesfaye clears you to rejoin society. By the time she gives you the all clear– a green light heavy with stipulations and a stern warning to take everything, even your exposure to sunlight, slow– you’re just about clawing at the walls from how stir crazy you’re feeling. Your concussion, Dr. Tesfaye told you early on, is one of the worst she has ever seen. No light, no sound, no music, no television, no reading, nothing at all for days on end until you hardly felt like a person anymore at all, and more like an amorphous blob slowly becoming another feature of the furniture in your sick room. 

Still, you do the best you can to pace yourself. Dr. Tesfaye made it very clear that you will land yourself in a world of hurt if you try barrelling right back into life as you’ve always lived it, and the last thing you want is to spend more time locked away in the dark by yourself. When you emerge from your room and into the palace’s medical wing, it is to pointedly dimmed hall lights and the patient, smiling faces of the staff of nurses that have been taking care of you since you arrived, and Sam and Bucky, looking at you with the kind of pride usually reserved for parents looking at a baby taking its first steps. 

“There she is,” Sam says, modulating his voice so that it’s carefully quiet for you— no doubt at the orders of your meticulous doctor. “How are you feeling?”

“Like a person again. I was finally able to stand long enough without getting dizzy to take a real shower,” you respond with a grin. Your voice is scratchy with disuse, but even so the pair seem to perk up even further with hearing it. 

“You look good as new,” Bucky says, and you both know he’s lying, but the relief at seeing you up and actively recovering is clear on his face and in his words. In a clean pair of cream linen pajamas, your hair damp and pulled away from your face, you’re sure you do look leagues better than you did the last time anyone saw you in full light, which, you assume, was when you all arrived in Wakanda from the facility where you had been held— not that you remember for yourself. But your fleeting look in the mirror before you got in the shower had also revealed the astonishing pallor of your skin, the scabbed over red line of a cut across your temple, the painfully cracked skin of your lips. You have a while to go before you look, and, especially, feel fully restored. 

“Don’t you start lying to me now, Barnes,” you joke, and Bucky’s lips quirk up in amusement. 

A beat of silence passes between you all before you finally ask the question that you’ve been dying to ask for days. “Can I see him?” 

“Sure, kid. He’s been asking after you a dozen times a day since he woke up,” Sam nods, his face taken over by that usual, stupid smirk of his. He points you towards Joaquín’s room before he and Bucky amble toward the medical wing’s exit. You appreciate their innate understanding that you’ll want some space for this. 

You make your way slowly to Joaquín’s room. Your body aches from injuries sustained in Eklund’s facility and aches a second time over from all the time you’ve spent convalescing in bed, and your steps are shaky, unused to walking as your body is now. When you reach his door, an irrational wave of anxiety washes over you, stilling your hand in the air as it reaches for the knob. You’ve been itching to see him for days now, and according to Sam, he’s been the same way— so why the apprehension? You can’t explain it even to yourself. 

Mustering some courage, you grasp the knob and push the door slowly open. Directly across from you, open arched windows cut into the sandstone wall let in the muted, fading light of sunset. The sheer, floor-to-ceiling drapes are half drawn and dancing in the warm breeze. To the right, in a mirror of your own room, the spacious bed is pushed against the wall. Your eyes pause at the foot of the bed, where the wine-red wool blanket bunches around Joaquín’s feet. Irrationally, again irrationally, you feel momentarily seized by fear at the thought of dragging your eyes upward and actually seeing him. 

The sound of your name from his mouth, bright and round with happiness, finally brings your eyes up to his face. Rooted in the doorway, you take stock of the damage: a bruise blooms plum and indigo across his right cheek and up his temple, cradling one of his dark eyes like an unwanted embrace; he sits shirtless in bed, you assume for the sake of ease in changing the thick swathe of bandages that swaddle the expanse of his tanned chest; his bottom lip is split and swollen, the cut bisecting it crusted over with scab, matching the gash across your temple. But for all the grimness to his look, there are so many things that all but stop your heart in your chest under the weight of your relief. The flush of his cheeks, the brightness of his eyes, the pleased smile on his face— all of it was overwhelmingly, perfectly alive. 

“Joaquín,” you murmur in response, and like a spell broken, the terror ebbs away and you can finally move your feet. You take a step towards his bed and then another, quicker, crossing the room as quick as you dare to go. There is a plush red armchair situated next to his bed, speaking to his ability to sustain longer visits than you’ve been allowed these last days, and gingerly, you lower yourself into it. 

“How…” How are you alive? You want to ask, but you push the question back. “How are you feeling?” 

Joaquín looks down at the bandages tight around his torso and back up at you with an apologetic smile, as if the sorry state of him is something akin to a messy room unfit for guests. “Like absolute shit, but better every day. Seriously, Wakandan medicine is crazy— they put something in here that’s stimulating my body to rapidly grow new, stronger lung tissue. They say I’ll be even better than I was before I got shot by the time they’re done with me.”

You smile, despite the sudden knot growing at the base of your throat. “Good. We all prefer you breathing.” 

You meant it to come out lightly, teasing, but the words carry every bit of the weight of what happened to the two of you in Eklund’s facility. The fact that he almost died, that you all almost lost him, is so tangible in the air between you that you feel as though you could reach out and grasp it. 

Wordlessly, Joaquín turns his hand over so that his palm is facing up, a silent invitation. You take it carefully, minding the IV port on the back of his hand. The weight of it, warm and solid, has you fighting off the sudden urge to sob in a way you don’t think you ever have in your entire life. 

“Thank you,” he says after a moment or two of silence. 

Your brow furrows, and you cock your head to the side. “For what?”

Joaquín shrugs and then winces. “You know, for not giving up on me in there. For trying to hold my blood in. For reminding me that help was coming, and giving me something to try to hold on for.” 

You blink, and blink again. It hits you then, as it has several times since you agreed to help out on this mission, just how unused you are to all this— the sentimental side of things. A team that cares about each other beyond the professional. It barely took a week for you to know that you would give your life for him– for Sam and Bucky, too– without a thought: an instinct. And not just because you are expected to give your life for a mission, or a cause. Not because of the kind of professional kamikaze instinct that so many had at SHIELD, like they were all vying to become a hero, a martyr, for glory they would never get to see. This is something else entirely. 

“Well, you know,” you shrug, an imitation of Joaquín’s faux casualness. “I’ve somehow become fond of your presence, constant bad jokes and all.” 

Joaquín huffs out a breath, the closest thing to a laugh that he can manage with the lung and the broken ribs. 

“Can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that,” he says. He’s grinning, and you can’t seem to take your eyes from the little crease at the corner of his mouth born from the action. 

The pain that has been plaguing your skull begins to creep back in between one breath and the next. You fight the urge to bring a hand up to your temple, but you can’t fully swallow your wince in time to keep Joaquín from seeing it. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks, thick brows drawn together suddenly in concern. 

“I’m sure they told you about my concussion,” you say and he nods. “The pain has entered a ‘comes and goes’ sort of phase, it seems.” Your tone is dismissive, like the whole thing is beneath his worry. Though, in the back of your mind lurks a memory from earlier in your royal hospital stay: Dr. Tesfaye, doing her best to keep you awake as she explains in her ever-gentle tones about the long term, possibly permanent, side effects of your concussion, and therefore the importance of you being a compliant patient. Even a great recovery, she explained, probably wouldn’t leave you the way you had been before. You’ve been thinking about that a lot, as your brain has gradually become capable of thinking again. 

“Know that I have definitely gone crazy and you need to put me down if I ever, under any other circumstances, try to send you away, but I think you need to get some rest,” Joaquín says. This tone of his, cut through in equal parts teasing and dead-serious concern, is beginning to become very familiar to you. It’s sweet, the way he worries, and even in doing so aims to make you smile. It’s a kindness you can’t ever remember knowing from anyone else, soft and bright as spring. 

You don’t want to go anywhere– you’ve barely been in the room for a few minutes– but even the last red, waning lights of dusk are starting to take a toll on your head. You sigh, and when you blink that hurts, too. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Hey, I’ll be right here when you feel up for another visit,” Joaquín says, squeezing your hand. “Literally. I’m not allowed to try to walk yet.” 

“That must make it much easier for Sam to keep track of you,” you observe sagely, and Joaquín gives another of his cautious wheezes, his free hand coming up to his chest to preemptively try to ward off the pain the action brings. 

“I’ll be giving him the runaround again soon enough, mark my words.” 

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll all rue the day,” you say, lips quirking up in something of a smile. “I’ll see you around, bird boy.” 

You’re nearly to the door when you hear Joaquín’s voice behind you, soft and seemingly filled with the same kind of contentment you feel at seeing for yourself that he’s alive. “Bye, mariposa.” 

It takes concentration to ensure your steps don’t stutter. You slip into the hall, the door clicking softly closed behind you, and begin the slow, pained amble down the hall to your own room; all the while Joaquín’s voice repeats in your head, layered soft and tender and relieved and calling you a nickname that he had chosen for you himself, like you mean something to him, like you’re important enough to him to warrant this small intimacy. It’s a completely foreign concept and frankly makes you dizzier than the concussion does. 

– 

It’s a day and a half before you leave your room again. You still have an ache waging artillery warfare in your skull when Bucky shows up at your door and asks if you can spare a few minutes for a debrief and update meeting. This, you know, really means ‘can you spare upwards of an hour while we ask a list of four hundred questions, half of which will have really very little bearing on anything at all’. You tell him yes, you can, because being stuck in this room is making you insane. And maybe if things get too tedious you can throw up on the meeting table and they’ll let you leave early. A girl can dream. 

“Dr. Tesfaye wants you using this today,” Bucky says, reaching around your half open bedroom door to pull a wheelchair into view. 

You level him with a stare, crossing your arms over your hospital pajamas. “Absolutely not.” 

“You have a brain injury and the meeting chamber is almost all the way across the palace,” Bucky informs you bluntly, hand still firmly planted on one of the wheelchair’s handles. 

“I am aware of the state of my brain, Barnes,” you huff. “But I didn’t lose function of my legs, last time I checked. I can handle walking halfway across a building.” 

You don’t like the way Bucky is looking at you, like he knows exactly what has brought on this wave of petulance. “If we leave here and you’re not sitting in this chair, Dr. Tesfaye is going to upbraid me somethin’ awful.” 

“Only if I fall,” you counter. “So just catch me if you see me going down.” 

Bucky’s answering sigh is long suffering, but he moves aside so that you can walk out of the room on your own all the same. Part of you– the weary, sore, half-dizzy and half-nauseous part of you, the part of you managing your gargantuan, eternal headache– longs to just sit in the chair and let Bucky push you to the meeting chamber. The rest of you would rather cut off your own feet and army crawl the rest of the way there. 

There’s a part of your brain that you’re never able to turn off: a little school uniform-clad tween, hair braided back away from her face, hands covered in blood. She watches every decision you make now with the merciless cruelty of her handlers, marveling at your unbelievable weakness every time you choose kindness, or mercy, or rest, or a hundred other forbidden things. If you were to sit in the wheelchair, you know she’d think the rest of your team should have cut their losses and left you for dead, if this is the kind of weakness you were going to bring back with you. 

Your aching body desperately wishes to shut her up, but she wins out this time and you proudly, slowly shuffle your way down one wide, opulent hall after another. Bucky walks just behind and to the left of you, pushing the wheelchair the whole way like he’s ready for you to change your mind. 

– 

When you reach the meeting chamber, it’s already filled with half a dozen people. At the head of the long stone table, Sam stands in uniform, deep in conversation with who you assume to be King T’Challa, based on the general air of royalty about him. General Ayo sits at King T’Challa’s right hand, and a few of her fellow Dora Milaje sit across from her, also in uniform. Nearest to the door, Joaquín is sitting in a wheelchair pulled up to the table. He wears a loose shirt over his corset of bandages today, and seems to be sitting up with a fraction less pain than the last time you saw him. 

When Sam spots the pair of you entering the room, a smile splits his face and he turns, halting his conversation with the king in order to greet you. “I was starting to wonder if you got lost!” 

“She wanted to walk herself,” Bucky says by way of explanation. 

“So the concussion hasn’t made you any less stubborn, then,” Sam says, and you feel yourself swell up with a weird kind of pride. 

“I made it, didn’t I? And anyway, I heard it’s chic to be fashionably late to things,” you quip and Sam laughs, shaking his head. 

Caught up in your easy banter with Sam, you don’t notice King T’Challa walking down the length of the table until he is right beside you. 

“Agent Swallowtail,” he greets, and you make a concentrated effort not to jump at his unexpected voice in your ear. “I am pleased both to meet you, and to see that your recovery is coming along well.” 

“It is an honor to meet you, Your Highness,” you reply, miraculously managing not to stutter. You are not feeling equipped to meet a king, exactly, and you desperately hope that you’re not making a fool out of yourself right now. Is Your Highness the right thing to say? “Thank you, truly, for your hospitality and your stellar care— I owe the entirety of my recovery to Dr. Tesfaye and the rest of your medical staff.” 

“Dr. Tesfaye is a miracle worker, indeed,” King T’Challa agrees warmly. “We are honored to host yourself and Mr. Torres through the remainder of your recoveries.” 

He saves you from entering a possibly neverending loop of gratitude by turning to the group at large and saying, “Shall we begin?”

You take the cue and settle yourself gingerly into the seat next to Joaquín. Bucky moves down the table to sit next to Sam, who has taken the seat on King T’Challa’s left. As you sit, Joaquín shoots you a grin and a small wave that almost draws a snort out of you from sheer childishness. 

“Hey,” he whispers, as King T’Challa walks back to the front of the room. “This is crazy, right?”

“What is?” you ask, feeling decidedly like a child passing notes behind the teacher’s back. 

“Hello? Being debriefed by a king? Like, of an actual country?” He returns in a much more zealous whisper, and you roll your eyes as if you had not just been thinking the very same thing. 

“Play it cool, bird boy, before you embarrass Sam and Bucky in front of their friends,” you say, tilting your head in the direction of the other half of your team. 

“They’ll have to forgive me, ‘cause I don’t think I can play it cool.”

Before you have the chance to respond, King T’Challa clears his throat and, surprising you, moves aside and yields the floor immediately to Sam. Sam thanks him, shifting awkwardly for a moment in front of the gathered room before launching right into what he needs to say. 

“Roughly a week ago, Bucky and myself, along with a detachment of Dora Milaje, extracted two of our team members from an underground facility on Cambodian soil, which is believed to be owned by a man named Carter Eklund,” Sam starts. You have a feeling most of this is for your and Joaquín’s benefit, considering you’ve been down for the count for most of the past week. The idea that you had been moved over international borders without being aware of it causes you to shift uncomfortably in your seat— just another thing to add to the tally of fucked up nonsense Eklund has managed to do to you and your team in a very short amount of time. 

“By the time we reached the facility, it was empty of personnel aside from a small contingency of guards. The second floor, where we found our people, was set up for a staff of scientists and researchers of at least two dozen, but able to accommodate more. The first floor consisted of twenty holding cells, several of which showed signs of being recently used or inhabited. We can assume a much larger staff of guards than what we encountered had also, at one point, been on hand,” Sam continues. “Basically, Eklund and his team had the capability to evacuate, and quickly. Everyone left behind was dead, and the guards injured in our firefight took themselves out via cyanide. These are people committed to keeping their secrets.”

Your head is beginning to swim by the time Sam is halfway through his debriefing. With more context and your slowly (god, agonizingly slowly) healing brain, you’re generating more questions than you can even keep up with. Really, it all boils down to one thing: what is Eklund’s aim— and what purpose did abducting you and Joaquín serve?

“They weren’t able to get away completely clean, though,” Sam’s voice cuts through your thoughts, and your head jerks up, surprised, sending a sharp shock of pain through your skull and down the back of your neck. “They wiped all their terminals, but someone careless left behind a cache of paper files. Better than that, they left behind a piece of tech–”

“The Aetos Device?” Joaquín blurts out, clearly unable to keep his questions to the end. 

“We weren’t that lucky,” Sam says, shaking his head curtly. “However, Princess Shuri– whose presence is greatly missed in this meeting– asked to take a crack at it herself when we got it back here. Her findings point to this device being able to alter an individual’s genetics in some way, much the same as the Aetos Device.”

“It alters genes in what way?” You ask, taking a cue from Joaquín. If your bruised brain is going to make sense of all this new information, you need to ask your questions as they come up. 

“We still aren’t sure. You can imagine Shuri and the other scientists and engineers who have looked at it are reluctant to test it on anything,” Sam answers. “But the simple fact of its existence– along with Eklund acquiring the Aetos Device– is starting to paint a picture of what he might be doing.” 

Several devices that can alter a person’s genetic makeup at the press of a button, a facility full of holding cells… the picture being painted for you is dark, indeed. 

“So, if Eklund disappeared before he could be apprehended or traced, what’s our next move?” You ask, grim determination to see this mission through feeling fully rejuvenated. 

“We’re chasing the one lead we do have,” Bucky cuts in. “The files left behind indicate that this is just one of several facilities across the world. The information was coded, of course, but we feel confident that we’ve cracked the locations of a few.” 

“With my blessing, General Ayo, the White Wolf, and Captain America will each lead a small team of Dora Milaje to these locations, for now strictly on reconnaissance. We need far more information than we have before we strike in a bigger way,” King T’Challa finally speaks up. 

Three teams, Bucky and Sam and the Dora Milaje, but…

“What is my assignment? Whose team am I going with?” you ask, looking between Sam and King T’Challa. 

“You’re not going anywhere, kid.” It’s Bucky who answers, and you turn a disbelieving gaze on him. 

“What do you mean? This is our mission. You asked me onto this mission— remember?” 

“You’re not cleared for field duty, and I can’t believe I have to tell you that,” he shoots back. “You need rest, and as it stands, your injury would make you a liability in the field.” 

Bucky has never been one to mince words, but the bluntness of being called a liability in the field still stings, even coming from him. You can feel little schoolgirl you behind your chair, glaring daggers into the back of your head. You turn away from him, trying instead to appeal to Sam. 

“I can hold my own in the field, Sam. I’m healed enough to do a recon mission,” you say, the insult of your insinuated weakness creeping into your voice. Defensive, vulnerable. Your skin crawls with the shame of it all. 

“This isn’t a punishment,” Sam says, leaning forward and splaying his hand on the table like he’s trying to get closer to you, to get through to you. He addresses you not with his Captain Leadership voice, but something gentler. It makes you want to scream. “If you want to recover as fully as possible, you need to stay here and do that. And, frankly, I’m not giving you a choice.”

“I didn’t realize that I signed away my autonomy when I agreed to join you on this mission,” you grind out, and you know it’s not a fair blow. Sam closes his eyes against the words, and you’d feel sorry if you didn’t feel so indignantly angry. 

“You and Joaquín are staying here, and that’s final.” 

You set your jaw and turn away, disengaging from the conversation. You know you’re acting breathtakingly infantile, but there are so many emotions coursing through you right now that you can hardly begin to parse through, and a clearer head is not prevailing. You feel laid bare, exposed and called out for being a weakness by the very teammates who are supposed to be able to rely on you. It feels like a failure, but there are undercurrents of something else, too. A fear makes itself known in the first question that springs to your mind after Bucky calls you a liability: what if they don’t want to work with me anymore?

And why should that matter? You told them when this all began that you would help for this mission, and that would be the end of it. You hardly wanted to work with them at all, in the first place. And now– god, now, some foolish part of you has gone and gotten used to having them around. The lonely part of you that you continuously suppressed in your solitary Prague life relishes in having a team again, people to bounce ideas off of, people to have your back. Knowing that you’re never alone in a fight. But the plan hasn’t changed; after this business with Eklund is wrapped up, you’ll go back to Prague and your work rescuing Widows, and the rest of them will go back to America, to keep on being heroes. How could it be any different, no matter what you might want? 

A ringing silence envelops the room for a few eternal moments after Sam’s words, and you sink into the discomfort of it all. You hope he feels bad for ordering you around like a child, though you know that’s not fair either. A lot of things aren’t fair, now and forever. 

Joaquín’s voice cuts through the silence, eventually. “When are the teams leaving?” 

“Approximately one hour,” Sam answers. “We wanted to bring the pair of you up to date before we leave, but we need to jump on these leads before they can disappear on us.”

Joaquín nods. “Can we stay in the loop on comms?” 

“On a need to know. You’re not supposed to sit around here waiting for news from us, you’re supposed to work at getting better while we’re gone,” Sam assents. 

“Getting better does involve a lot of sitting around, Cap,” Joaquín says, raising an eyebrow. 

Sam waves a hand. “We’ll keep you updated, kid, what did I say?” 

Within a minute or two, the meeting dissolves around you. Bucky pauses next to you when you stand, hand on the wheelchair and a stern look on his face. 

“Let me wheel you back before I go,” he says, all command and no question. 

“What makes you think I’d be more willing to do that now than I was twenty minutes ago?” You respond, making no move to get in the chair. 

“Kid, come on,” he sighs, and your first instinct is to shout I’m not a kid like you’re in some teenybopper movie. You manage to swallow it down. 

“We can get wheeled back together,” Joaquín says from beside you, voice oddly chipper inside of the weary tensions between you and Bucky. You look down at him, and he gives you an oversized smile, like he’s trying to convince you. 

You are tired, and your headache has been growing in size since the beginning of the meeting. And given how your entire team already, apparently, sees your weakness— well. Fine, what the hell. Wordlessly, you drop down into the wheelchair, missing Bucky’s small, triumphant smile behind your head. 

– 

You allow yourself the evening to wallow. Your room is dark, as usual, but Dr. Tesfaye has finally allowed you a radio: an old-school one, chunky and with a million dials and buttons, because she didn’t want you to be tempted by the screen of an iPod or a phone. It’s no great loss to you– you don’t keep any social media accounts for obvious reasons and only keep a phone in order to keep in touch with the spider web, who are used to people dropping off the face of the earth without explanation for days or weeks at a time. Besides, you can still only listen to the radio on a low volume without it sparking awfully in your head. 

Still, it’s nice to have a soundtrack to your wallowing. 

You lay in the dark, covers forsaken against the heat of the night, and feel angry. Indignant. Upset. Deeper down, sad and afraid. The anger, the upset, those are easy to dive into. You are a professional, and like everyone else in a field like superheroism– or, the shadier, not-so-heroic, not-so-beloved kind of thing you do– you’ve run ops with injuries worse than the one you’re contending with right now more than once. The idea that you have suddenly become useless to Sam and Bucky, that your spot on this team could so easily be usurped by the general and her Dora Milaje, burns. Even when you know Sam hadn’t done it out of any malicious intent, even when you know he did it out of care for you. 

And that leads you to the other, harder, more obfuscating feelings. The sadness sits heavy like a stone in the pit of your stomach, shifting and heavy and inescapable. Here these three are, bursting into your life, as unpredictable as a box of fireworks. Upending everything you’ve set up for yourself in Czechia without even trying. Because, before their arrival, you really had almost convinced yourself that the loneliness was manageable, that you were doing okay. That you didn’t need anyone else. The carefully structured stability of your life is gone now, felled with one blow like a hastily built stack of cards. 

There’s the fear, too. Fear that, after forcing you to confront that your life as it had been is not your life as you want it to be, they’ll leave you behind to pick up the pieces and figure it all out on your own. That, if they can leave you behind once, they can easily do it again. The logic doesn’t follow– they’ve left Joaquín back in the palace to convalesce as well, and you know they’ll be taking him back with them no matter what– but your tenuous position among their ranks doesn’t hold the kind of promise that Joaquín’s does. And god, but the shame of having to ask– the shame of wanting to ask– you think it might be too much to bear. 

Rolling over, you tug yourself into a fetal position. Knees tucked into your chest as tightly as you can comfortably manage, your own arms a solid weight around your body. The night sounds of the palace and, beyond it, Burnin Zana, drift in through your open windows and mingle with the low, soft notes emanating from the radio. You breathe in and out, deeply, slowly, the way Annika had taught you to once upon a time, back when the Red Room had still felt like a short-lived nightmare— anxiety inducing, horrible, but escapable, impermanent. Before it became apparent that being physically rid of the Red Room didn’t mean being rid of it entirely. Before it became apparent that the miles between you and that place don’t matter, not really, that the loneliness and uncertainty and paranoia they ground so deeply into you as a child is an iron-barred cage you will carry with you for the rest of your life. 

The first thing that comes to you is the buzzing of a lightbulb. Incessant, annoying, and the singular part of your surroundings that is breaking through what you quickly begin to suspect might be a concussion. Consciousness comes back to you in languid degrees. The buzzing bulb expands into the freezing temperature of the room, the soreness of your shoulders from your wrists being bound together behind the back of a metal chair. No gag in your mouth, so they must not be worried about your ability to scream. Doesn’t bode well. 

By the time your vision is reliably returning to you, you’re starting to wonder who ‘they’ are in the first place. 

The auction had been a trap for you and Joaquín. It had to be. And Eklund– whoever he is– wasn’t working alone. That woman’s voice, so frigid and self-assured as she stopped your lungs in your chest without so much as placing a finger on you… 

The bare, concrete wall across from you reflects the harsh, blue-white overhead lights back at you. The room is empty, save for you and the chair you’re bound to. There’s a drain in the middle of the floor and a steel-reinforced door to your left. 

You work hard to squash down the semi-delirious panic that wells up when you realize you have no idea where Joaquín is, or what has happened to him. Panicking won’t help you, and it sure as hell won’t help him. You try to construct a scenario in your head in which he cut his losses and got the hell out of that hotel after you dropped, but your head hurts too much to fill in the details, and anyway, you already know the stupid fool would die before abandoning you like that. 

You close your eyes and count to five, evening your breathing out into something steady. Your chest aches, as though your lungs themselves are sore inside your body from what that woman did to you. Your head hurts worse, in a way that’s making your vision fuzzy at the edges. You shift in the chair, and the scrape of metal against concrete floor sends your eyes rolling back up into your head. 

THE RED ROOM. 12 YEARS AGO.

Lady Sofiya’s office is cold. There are no windows, just an endless swathe of slate gray walls, concrete leaching away any human warmth that might have, at one time, existed in here. It’s only your second time ever having been in this room, the first being shortly after you arrived at the facility four years ago. You don’t remember much about those first days, except for a biting, constant fear and an ever present chill. You lie to yourself and say you are not afraid of her, or why you might have been called in before her. Widows are not afraid of anything. 

When she says your name, it is frigid but appraising, as though she is considering whether or not you are the choicest cut of meat at the butcher’s. 

“You are performing adequately in many ways,” she informs you. “Fluent in four languages. Consistently ranking first in combat training. Your strengths have become apparent to us.” 

You bow your head, half out of deference and half to avoid looking into her too-wide gray eyes. “Thank you, Lady Sofiya.” 

She regards you a moment, the silence stretching so long that you finally do look up into her face. Her blonde hair is pulled back into a bun so severe that the whole look is that of one of the bald, rubber training dummies come to life. Her eyes have narrowed in a very serious way, face drawing in on itself. You fight not to shrink back into your seat. 

“A widow ready for her first assignment is one who harbors no weaknesses,” she informs you. “And a widow who harbors weaknesses is no widow at all. Do you understand?” 

“Yes, Lady Sofiya,” you respond with a decisive nod. It didn’t take long for you to learn the truth of your life after being brought to the Red Room— become a widow, or die. There was no form of failing out of or leaving this program that didn’t end with a gun to the back of your head. You all knew it, from the terrified most recent recruits, to the hollow-eyed graduates. The minute they took you, you were living in anticipatory death. 

“Do you know what your weakness is?” she asks, and this time your name in her mouth is sharp enough to cut. 

“I have no weaknesses, Lady Sofiya,” you reply automatically, fiercely, but the panic is cloying as it wells up in every part of you. You scramble to think of what weakness she could be thinking of, but you’ve been so careful here. You are sharp in mind and body, you are their little killer coiled and ready for release. You want to live. 

Lady Sofiya smiles sardonically at your response, like she knows it’s the only one you could possibly give. “You can trust no one in life, zvezdochka,” Lady Sofiya says, leaning over her desk to bring her face closer to yours. “Your closest confidant would betray you to live another day. The classmate to your left is a traitor willing to take your life. You are nothing to them but a way to hoist themselves up the ladder. Do you understand?” 

“Yes, Lady Sofiya,” you assure her, though you don’t, not really. 

“Tell me about Annika,” Lady Sofiya says, leaning back into her chair. Your brows scrunch at the seemingly sudden change in subject. Annika, red-haired and cutthroat, brutal bared-teeth like a rabid dog. Annika, who hides a bright burning star of kindness beneath the blood and snarling, something this place hasn’t managed to snuff out of her. Annika, sleeping in the bed next to you in the dormitory. Annika, your only friend. 

You don’t want to tell her about Annika. 

“She bested me in combat royale two out of five times this week,” you say carefully. Maybe this is your weakness— that another girl could ever get the drop on you. But you’re promising, Lady Sofiya said so herself, and you can get stronger. You can bite harder. Maybe that is all this is. 

“I’m not interested in your battle royale statistics right now,” Lady Sofiya waves away the information. “I am interested in your fraternization.” 

“I… am not sure I understand,” you answer warily, judging that telling the truth about that might not end in a lashing for you this time. 

“You have what it takes to be a widow, malyshka. Some do not. Some– even those who bite for the taste of blood– are too soft. Malleable. Their brains are open to poisoning propaganda. Soft, malleable girls are a rot inside this place. They will try to take us down, they will use the skills they do have to attempt to deliver us to our enemies. But our girls, the ones who will graduate and change the world, they will do anything to keep this from happening, yes?” 

“Yes. Of course, Lady Sofiya,” you nod, trying to sound sure of yourself. But you still don’t understand. Propaganda and enemies, sure. But soft and malleable is what you would call every single one of you in the Red Room. You had to be soft and malleable, so they could splinter all your bones and build you back up in the way they wanted. 

“I will ask you again: tell me about Annika.”

And finally, you understand. You are a little star, a cold-blooded widow in the making, and Annika is a soft and malleable traitor that she wants you to send to the gun. And you do. 

NOW.

Someone is gripping your face tightly when you come to, squishing the soft flesh of your cheeks painfully into your teeth. You blink hard and fast, trying to chase down the elusive facts of your situation. 

The trap. The room. Joaquín missing. The pieces come back to you faster this time. 

You fight against the grip, and the fingers tighten like a vice. Someone– presumably whoever is attached to the hand– tuts condescendingly at you. “Now, now, Agent Swallowtail. It would do for you to behave.” 

You don’t recognize the voice, and you don’t think that it’s because of your concussion. It’s a masculine voice, caught awkwardly somewhere between deep and nasally. So, not Eklund’s politician-smooth tenor. He’s standing directly in front of you, head haloed in soft, buzzing light like an eclipse. All you can make out is the glint of his glasses, the sneer of his mouth as he talks. 

“Let me give you a little incentive,” he says, as though you’d mouthed off to him. His grip on your face prevents you from getting out any words at all. He lets go of your face so harshly that it knocks your head to the side and then grabs the chair behind both of your shoulders, wrenching you around. 

The movement makes you dizzy and sends your vision blacking around the edges again, and only in being spun like a top do you realize that you’re not in the previous room at all. The room is enormous and shadowy, a huge, dome-shaped space whose walls are sconced almost entirely in shadow. The floor beneath your bare feet– where did your heels go?– is made of metal grate, oddly and uncomfortably warm where it touches your skin. In the center of the room, a thick cylinder rises from the floor and meets the highest point of the ceiling, made of metal at the top and bottom. In the center, a murky blue liquid swirls behind glass like an oversized lava lamp, throwing off an unearthly glow. 

A few yards away from you, Joaquín lays slumped against the base of the cylinder. Thick shackles enclose his throat and wrists, anchored to the cylinder’s metal base. Your shoulders stiffen, and you fight the urge to start bucking like a wild horse until you free yourself from this chair or break your arms trying. 

Instead, you wrench your head back around, trying to get a good look at the mystery man. Furious red fills your vision, mixing with the fuzzy blackness now ever present at the edges. 

“What are you playing at?” You bite out, words slightly slurred. God, but this concussion might be worse than you thought. Troublesome. 

“What a predictable opening volley,” the man responds, patting you on the head like you’re a good little dog. You fight the urge to try to bite him, but only because the double vision that has been getting stronger the longer you keep your eyes open would make it hard to aim. “Do you know why I hitched myself to Carter Eklund’s cart?”

“I assume you’re going to tell me,” you deadpan, glaring up at him through a growing migraine. 

He gives you a patient, amphibian smile. “Carter Eklund is a man with a vision.”

He holds a hand up as if quelling imaginary protests from you. “I know, I know. How many dumb, misguided people across history have said the very same thing about a man they thought was greater than God? And how many of them turned out to be right? Well, I’m sure you know the number is low. But Eklund– something sets him apart from all the rest. Do you know what that is?”

You blink slowly at him, mouth set in a grim, unentertained line. You cannot believe you have honestly found yourself captive to a monologuing fucking henchman. This is the kind of shit that only happens to you when you get involved with Sam and Bucky’s nonsense. 

As he rambles on, you subtly glance around the room, trying to get a lay of the land. Though the room is cavernous, you, Joaquín, and this salamander parading around as a man seem to be the only people around. Or, no– the concussion is blinding you more than you thought. In your peripheral vision, you see at least two people in white lab coats standing in the shadows, facing a wall of screens and buttons, seemingly unfazed by the drama unfolding in the room with them entirely. Through the windows on the only doors in the room, you see the silhouettes of two guards. You assume they’re armed and make a note of it. 

“Not only does Eklund have a plan– a realistic, well thought out plan, not some vision of grandeur– but he’s already executed so many of the key steps. Right under the nose of every so-called hero on earth. You’re all already too late to do anything about it. So now here I am, firmly on the winning side of things, and I get to have some work-sanctioned fun.”

You straighten up at that last bit. There’s only so many things a scrawny, power-tripping creep like this guy could mean by ‘fun’, and none of them are good for a young woman currently tied to a chair and locked in a metal bowl. You square your shoulders and look him in the eyes. 

“Seems like what you got is a babysitting gig. They clearly think so highly of you,” you grind out. He looks at you, brows raised and mouth an ‘o’ of muted surprise, before his expression flattens. 

“Going right for antagonization, are we?” he asks, folding his arms over his chest. 

“You did enough of that by yourself.”

He packs a stronger right hook than you would imagine. Your cheek goes pins and needles for a minute before the pain sets in. The creep grabs you by the roots of your hair and forces your eyes back towards his. At your back, you hear the scrape of metal on metal– Joaquín’s shackles. He must be waking up. Hopefully, you think, he’s in better fighting shape than you are. You both need the leg up. 

Up this close, you finally catch a glimpse of a keycard hanging from the creep’s shirt pocket, complete with a photo of his ugly face and his name printed in block letters next to it: Dr. Anton Müller. You file the information away for later. 

Müller traces a finger across your cheekbone, admiring the flare of angry red his blow caused to blossom on your skin. You feel vaguely nauseous and completely furious under his scrutiny. 

And then Joaquín calls your name. 

His voice is raspy, dry, skipping over the center letters like a scratched record. You can read the confusion and panic in his tone from that one word alone. He’s hurt and he’s scared and the thought makes you seethe. 

“Get your fucking hands off her,” he commands, voice cut through with anger that overpowers its gravelly weakness. 

Müller turns a stomach-turning smirk on Joaquín, his fist tightening in your hair. His nails dig into your scalp in sharp crescent moons of pain. “Take stock of yourself, boy. There’s nothing you could do to stop me, shackled like a dog as you are.”

Disgust overpowers you at his words and you raise your chin and spit a glob of bloody saliva at him in response. It lands right below his eye with a wet smack, drawing out a furious yell. He twists his fist in your hair like he’s trying to pull your scalp off through sheer force. 

“You just made a huge mistake, little girl,” he whispers, bringing his face so close to yours that your noses almost touch. 

“No, you did.” Before he can absorb your words, you dart a leg out and kick him in the shin, full force channeled into the heel of your foot. He cries out, dropping to one knee, and you bring your leg up until your kneecap meets his crotch. It’s tricky, what with the possible TBI you’re nurturing, but you manage to gather your strength and pull yourself into a hunched over standing position. You whip around as fast as you can, and the creep takes a metal chair to the side of the head. He crumples faster than a wet cardboard box. 

Your chest heaves with labored breath, and you feel a little bit like you’re going to throw up from the exertion, but he is out like a light– you might’ve bought you and Joaquín some time. 

When you turn around, you see that Joaquín has pulled himself to his feet and come towards you as far as his shackles will allow. 

“Are you okay?” he asks urgently, hand outstretched toward you as much as he can manage. 

“That’s relative,” you grunt at first, hobbling over to him. Your entire body– most importantly your spine– screams in agony at the action, still contorted around the chair. When you look up, Joaquín’s dark eyes are flooded with fear and you soften. “I’m okay, I’ll be okay. And you?”

“Takes more than these fuckers to do me any real damage,” he says, and you oblige him with the smile that you know he’s trying to draw out. The distance and the darkness had hidden them, but up close you see a bruise already purpling across nearly half of his face. Similar shades are visible disappearing under the collar of his button down, and a cut bisects his bottom lip, crusted in blood. Your urge to reach out and touch him is denied by the cuffs holding both hands behind your back. 

“Do you know how to pick locks?” you ask instead. 

“Of course I do,” Joaquín says, somewhat indignant. 

“Grab a bobby pin out of my hair and get these fucking cuffs off me,” you instruct. Joaquín does as you say, freeing one of the bobby pins and making quick work of the cuffs. As they fall, your sore arms drop to your side, muscles screaming, and the chair clatters noisily to the floor. Immediately, you pull Joaquín down to the floor, putting a mess of collapsible plastic boxes and lab equipment between the pair of you and the door.

“What are you—?” Joaquín starts to ask, as you take the bobby pin from his hand and get to work on his own shackles. They are sturdier than your cuffs– you make a note to feel offended that they didn’t see you as as much of a threat as Joaquín later– and are taking you longer to pick than your own did. 

“There are guards outside the door. That noise is going to draw them in here, and they’re going to have guns,” you inform him, as the shackles on his hands fall to the floor. You get to work on the one clamped around his neck. 

Right on time, the doors burst open, two male voices calling for Müller. 

“Code purple! Code purple!” someone shrieks from the other side of the room. 

You roll your eyes as the thick metal collar falls to the floor. “Fuck, I forgot about the stupid lab assistants.”

You take ‘code purple’ to mean ‘dangerous captives have escaped’, because the guards start shooting almost the second they’re through the door. Sloppy. Around the curve of the giant lava lamp, you see the two terrified lab assistants duck beneath the cover of the console they were working at, covering their heads uselessly with their hands. At the first spray of bullets, Joaquín pulls you further down, positioning himself between you and the direction of danger. 

“You don’t happen to have a secret gun stashed somewhere in that dress?” Joaquín asks, glancing at you over his shoulder before going back to peeking around the boxes you’re hiding behind, trying to get a good look at what you’re up against. 

“Didn’t have enough pockets,” you answer distractedly. Though he’s joking, Joaquín is right– you need a weapon soon or you’re both going to be dead. You cast your eyes around the area, trying to find anything that could be even slightly construed as a weapon. You almost give it, and both of your lives, up as lost, when you sweep back over Müller’s prone form— and the holster at his hip. 

You lunge across the floor, keeping low to the ground in an army crawl over to Müller. A bullet flies over your head, lodging in the side of a plastic box. They’ve seen you, and their aim is going to get better on the next shot. When you reach Müller, you flatten yourself near completely to the floor, hoping to use him as a shield. You reach an arm over his body, ripping the gun clumsily from the holster. 

The headshot you aimed for is wide by several inches, ricocheting harmlessly off the metal wall. You’re starting to think this fucking concussion is going to cost you your life. Your movements are slow and sluggish– it’s an unbelievably frustrating thing, knowing that you are performing far below your usual capabilities and unable to do anything about it. Like being a prisoner in your own body. 

Laying beside the unconscious Müller, your body begs to just stop moving. To give in. Before you can muster the strength to deny this wish, the body besides you jerks with impact. You know before you look that the warmth spreading over your side is blood. Müller’s blood. A gut shot, blood darkening the fabric of his drab gray button down. Vaguely, through the woolen blanket of your concussion, you register Joaquín screaming your name. 

ZERMATT, SWITZERLAND. 9 YEARS AGO. 

Beyond the glossy wall of windows, dusk paints the sugar-dusted landscape of Zermatt soft and blue. The Matterhorn is still visible in the rapidly waning light, but only just. Down the sweeping valley, warm, yellow lights blink on inside picturesque chalets, a perfect storybook illustration. 

Inside, your hands are covered in blood. 

It wasn’t supposed to go this way; four months ago, the Red Room had placed you at Institut Le Rosey, one of the most highbrow, expensive boarding schools on the face of the planet. The job: befriend Perla Casamotti, get yourself invited on the Casamotti family’s winter holiday, and neutralize Perla’s father, a white collar criminal named Giorgio— more well-known as Verdetto, a man who trades in secrets and who finally came across the wrong one. 

It was supposed to be quick. You were supposed to take him out clean. 

You thought to catch him in his office alone one night, the man always working in that room when he was actually present at the chalet, in between his bouts of disappearing ‘on business’.  You had felt so smart only hours ago, devising your plan to enter under the guise of some simple question and incapacitate him. A shot of air between the first and second toe would simulate a heart attack and be virtually undetectable, unless someone really looks for it. Not the most creative way to neutralize a target, but the easiest one to get away with here. 

It was supposed to be a cinch, but then you’d shuffled into his office all shy and demure to ask if it might be alright if you got a midnight snack, and when you looked up through your eyelashes it was to see his leering face in front of you, his hands on you scalding hot through pajamas that matched with Perla’s, and–

Well. There are so many heavy, blunt objects in Verdetto’s office. 

He hadn’t expected you to be fast. Or strong. He hadn’t expected you to be cunning, for you to be anything other than shocked and overcome with fear and painfully, vulnerably thirteen years old in a stranger’s home. Your first hit was well placed, sending him tumbling to the floor like a bag of bricks. It may have even killed him, you’re not sure. The rest of your hits, frenzied and violent, certainly finished the job if it hadn’t. 

You are composed when you leave the office and walk down the stairs to the front door on silent feet. Bloody prints follow you across the hardwood, faded to partial and pink by the time you reach the snow. You walk five miles along the quiet edge of town and beyond, before one of Mother’s handlers appears, cold and appraising, on a snowmobile that reveals itself through a copse of trees. 

“It’s done?” Her voice is muffled through the helmet that she doesn’t bother to take off. 

His blood was hot and so plentiful, soaking into the shins of your pajama pants. You’d forgotten how to breathe for a moment or two, and the only thing that had filled the room was an awful, strangled, sucking kind of noise. You hadn’t even realized it was coming from you, at first. But it was gone as fast as it had come, slipping behind a mask of complete composure. You had to arrange your extraction, disappear from the house before Perla or anyone else saw you. Bigger fish to fry, and all that. 

You give her a short nod. 

“Get on,” she tells you, tossing you a helmet identical to hers. You catch it on reflex and shove it over your head, happy to have a reason to cover your face. She is steering the snowmobile back through the darkened trees before you’ve fully sat down. 

NOW. 

Blood is in your mouth, it’s everywhere, your hands dark and sticky with it, the warmth of it slick against the side of your face, down your neck. For a few delirious moments, you are thirteen again, dripping someone else’s blood in the snow, whatever shred of innocence you still had left behind in the house on the hill. 

And then you slam back into your body, your now body, which has evidently spent some time unconscious on top of the bleeding mass of Müller’s gut. Yet when your vision finally unblurs enough for you to see your surroundings, you are no longer next to Müller; a trail of blood glistens on the grate floor where Joaquín clearly dragged you back behind the boxes. 

You sit up, your back flush against the giant lava lamp, trying to blink away the dizziness at the movement. You have to fight very hard to not turn to the side and throw up through the grates. Joaquín’s back is to you, and he expertly uses the cover you have to protect himself while he picks off the guards. 

Joaquín notices your movement and ducks behind the boxes long enough to turn a reassuring look on you. 

“We just need to hold on a little longer,” he says, nodding as if to encourage the both of you. “They’re on their way. I know it.” 

“Who—? How could anyone be on their way?” you ask, one hand coming up to clutch your head. Your senses are getting sharper with every passing moment, but not fast enough. Your brain feels out of sync with the rest of your body. 

“Do you think Sam sent us into the auction without backup forms of communication? I had a panic button, you could call it, in the sleeve of my suit jacket. They never found it. I sent out an SOS some time before they brought you in here,” Joaquín explains, before ducking around the boxes again to take another shot. He’s been holding his own very well, you can see— the guards are pinned down at the door, unable to get around the lava lamp to where the two of you are vulnerable without getting lethally shot. They, of course, don’t realize that Joaquín would never shoot to kill. He’s as gallant and codebound as Sam. It’s only now that you notice he’s not using Müller’s pistol, but one of the guard’s rifles. He’s been busy while you were checked out. 

“Sam’s coming,” you say, the information taking longer to click through your concussion. 

“Sam’s coming,” Joaquín confirms. The thought of a rescue, of the broken and beaten pair of you not having to fight your way out of this place alone, has you reinvigorated. You rally all the strength and focus that you can muster and pick up the pistol abandoned on the grates in between you and Joaquín, willing your eyes to sharpen and focus just long enough to keep you alive to see Sam’s red, white, and blue ass come through that door. 

You duck and tumble across the floor to another nearby stack of boxes and half-unpacked lab equipment, hoping to give the pair of you an advantage with another angle to shoot from. You’re doing your best to only maim at the moment– hanging around all these deeply hero types while on this mission is evidently rubbing off on you– and you succeed in kneecapping a pair of guards as soon as they come through the door. They collapse in a twisted pile, cries of pain mixing with the incessant pelt of gunfire and shouts of command from the other guards. 

“Nice shots!” Joaquín shouts, turning to shoot a grin your way. You can’t help but return it, though it quickly drops. 

You watch what happens next trapped within the nightmarish manacles of being just observant enough to see what is about to happen without having enough time to try and stop it. 

Everything moves too fast: through the chaos, one observant guard notices your exchange and takes advantage of it; Joaquín, who should have been safe in his distracted praise of you, tucked as he is against the side of the giant lava lamp and mostly obscured by the boxes he has been ducked behind, suddenly becomes more vulnerable as the guard hurtles over his fallen comrades for a new vantage point. 

You see him moving, but he’s too fast for you to even yell out a warning before he takes aim and shoots Joaquín in the chest. 

The agonized wail that rips from your throat as you watch blood bloom across the rich white fabric of his button down is animalistic and not immediately recognizable to you as coming from your own body. Joaquín’s eyes widen, and the rifle falters in his grip as he clumsily brings a hand up to the wound. He lays it uselessly over his pectoral, blood waterfalling over the smooth brown skin of his hand. He slumps back against the cylinder, all the strength in his legs giving out, and all you can think is that you’re losing him, after the hell you’ve been through together this week, after he saved your life on that airfield an eternity ago and several times over since then, you’re losing him— 

You raise your pistol and shoot the guard in the head. 

He goes down quickly, dead before he’s even hit the floor. Three more follow suit as you put bullets between their eyes with ruthless, practiced efficiency. You put one of the guards you’d previously kneecapped out of his misery before you run out of bullets. Across the room, one of the lab assistants shouts, panicked, into a walkie. You shoot her, too. You feel nothing in the cavernous pit of your body except for a just, white-hot rage. 

In the lull between chaos, surrounded by dead bodies, hearing the tread of their replacements’ boots heavy and ever closer on the metal floor, you crawl across the grates to Joaquín. 

His lips are blue. You bring a hand up to his face, bearing the weight of his head, unable to draw your eyes away from the cadaverous color of his lips. 

“Joaquín,” you say, voice thick and choked with rage and expansive, drowning sorrow. “You’re gonna be okay, do you hear me? You’re gonna be okay. Sam’s coming— just hold on.” The urgency to do something– do anything– ratchets up your heart rate, but what is there to do? You bring your free hand to his wound, applying pressure that seemingly does little to staunch the blood flow. 

He blinks and drags in a shallow breath, the only signs of life. He opens his mouth to respond, but all that comes out is a thin trickle of blood, obscenely bright against his pallor. Instead, he lifts his hand with effort and brings it down on your wrist, grasping weakly. His blood is hot– burning– on your skin. 

The next wave of guards makes it to the door and you think that you and Joaquín will just die here, after all. Try as you might, you cannot bring yourself to remove your hands from Joaquín’s body in order to take up the rifle and defend yourself. You do have mind enough to make sure that both of you are fully obstructed by the stack of boxes, and you hunch further down over Joaquín’s prone body and wait for that protection to run out, too. 

But, though you hear the consistent fire of gunshots, the fact that you haven’t yet been shot means they are clearly being aimed at someone or something else. 

Only when a metal hand gently squeezes your shoulder and Bucky’s voice filters in through the ringing in your ear, saying “Kid, it’s over now,” do you realize why you haven’t been shot and that you are actually going to make it out of this fucking place alive. 

“Help him,” you demand, voice ragged. When you turn to face Bucky, his features are blurred by tears you didn’t know you were shedding. You can’t wipe them away without taking your hands off Joaquín’s wound or without letting his head drop to his chest. You won’t do it. 

Sam appears beside Bucky, more a shadow than anything in your vision. Whatever smartass little quip he was getting ready to deliver dies on his lips, and he grabs onto Bucky’s shoulder to steady himself at the sight of Joaquín. This way, all of you linked together by hands on shoulders, hands on bloody wounds, you hope that somehow you’re all channeling some life force into him. 

More people crowd around you, allies by the way nobody attacks each other, but you can’t recognize them— you can’t recognize anything beyond Joaquín’s rapidly paling face. 

I am going to live, you think. I am going to live and he isn’t. The injustice of the concept is unspeakable. 

“Please, Sam,” you croak. “He said– he said we just have to hold on until you get here.” 

You miss the way Sam’s heart absolutely shatters at your words. Bucky tugs you away from Joaquín, gently at first and then with more force as you resist him. 

“C’mon, kid, you gotta move if you want us to help,” he pleads, finally getting through to you. You let him tug you a few feet away, and a swarm of smartly dressed women with shaved heads descend upon him, working with urgent efficiency. 

“I think it’ll be fun!” Joaquín’s voice is far too chipper for the current situation. 

Sam had spent some time trying to convince the rest of you that the bridge ambush wasn’t a total wash once he and Bucky had realized that the briefcase did not, in fact, contain the Aetos Device. It hadn’t stuck. Sure, you’d liberated some other stolen something from a criminal arms dealer, but it was some kind of small time ray gun that could temporarily shift an object slightly out of phase with other physical matter. You don’t totally understand it, but Sam had called Dr. Banner about it, and he’d recognized it as an outdated piece of Pym tech. The gist: it was a stupid piece of nothing, and the device that has apocalyptic connotations you’ve been trying to chase down is still in the hands of a criminal outfit. 

So yes, in your book, still a total wash. 

“We’re not here for fun,” you remind him. The last thing on earth that you want to do right now is go to the Golden Diadem auction. For one, what a fucking hassle. The auction is a secretive, invitation-only event hidden inside the larger nest egg of an alleged charity gala that happens at the Black Opal hotel annually. The party is lavish, gatsbyian, and a total distraction from the real thing. A thing which you all absolutely would not have been able to infiltrate, especially at such short notice, if it hadn’t been for Mali. Her position as observer and occasional information broker who does little, if anything  to interfere in the affairs of Madripoor’s criminal underbelly affords her a certain level of respect among all of Madripoor’s players. They want her on their good side, and many of them end up owing her favors. 

She used one of said favors to procure two invitations to the auction for Matías Avila, a nouveau riche Colombian tech mogul and his inconsequential piece of eye candy fiancée, Patrice. The false identities were some that you and Joaquín already had proper paperwork for, and Mali made quick work of forging a little more of a paper trail that painted Avila as a prodigious genius with more money than he knows what to do with and a suspiciously obfuscated resume. Patrice Pascolat is an identity you had used back in your SHIELD days, a bratty heiress who had helped you infiltrate the Scandinavian socialite scene. You’d kept her papers the way you keep all of your identities, just in case they come in handy again. 

You resisted the idea of you and Joaquín going in alone, but the truth of it is that Sam and Bucky are too public of figures to do any kind of undercover work. Their presence would only sabotage the op and put you all at a greater risk of being killed. So just you and Joaquín then, posing as the most insufferable couple to ever grace the surface of the earth.  Going into the lion’s den alone. 

“Fun is allowed to happen on the job. Do you know that?” Joaquín asks, brows raised teasingly. 

You roll your eyes. “Fun leads to mistakes, bird boy. Do you know that? We’re walking into a very large, highly-guarded building filled with people who will be happy to summarily execute us if they get so much as an off-kilter vibe. We need to stay focused.”

“Hey, come on. Haven’t I proven to you that you can trust me in the field?” 

A smartass comment comes to your lips first, and you have to work to tamp it down when you get a look at the sincerity laid bare on Joaquín’s face. He’s right. You know he is. He has more than proven that he is a capable and worthy field partner over the last few days; hell, he’s probably the best field partner you’ve ever had, if only because he gives a damn about what happens to you out of more than professional duty. It’s more than you can say for most of the other field partners you’ve ever had. 

“Yes, Torres,” you say, voice a half weary sigh. “I do trust you in the field. I do, alright?” 

Joaquín studies you for a moment, and you work to hold his gaze under the scrutiny. You feel it again, that same feeling you had back in Prague, like he’s uncannily able to analyze the whole gory mess of you with that look alone. 

“I thought you didn’t get nervous anymore?” he asks finally. His voice is too soft to be fully teasing, undercut with a certain fragile hesitance. An invitation for you to be vulnerable. 

“I don’t. Now go and get ready before we’re late.” You turn and stalk off toward your room before he can respond. A muscle in your jaw ticks, and you take a second to just stand, eyes closed, once you shut yourself behind the door. You’re half heartedly pissed at Joaquín, which you know isn’t fair. He’s not responsible for the moth wing flutter of nerves beating beneath your ribcage. At least not directly, anyway. 

–

The dress you choose from the closet is actually one that you bought yourself, back when you were living in this apartment. The spider web includes a few pooled bank accounts that any liberated widows are allowed to use for any reason. Having just been freed from your conditioning, fragile as a bird’s egg and teetering precariously on the razor’s edge between sanity and something rather worse, your reason for spending two thousand American dollars on an evening gown had been simply because you wanted to look and feel good at some ostentatious party Mali was bringing you to as a plus one. You justified the purchase by telling yourself that the rest of your web could certainly get some good use out of the dress for a variety of reasons, and you’re feeling just a little vindicated in getting to use it for a real, serious op now. Also, a little bit grumpy about having to figure out how to conceal weapons in this thing. 

The gown spills down your body and to the floor in ripples of luxuriously thick gold fabric. The back is cut so low that making sure your underwear wasn’t on display had taken some finagling, and the halter top is secured around your neck with elegantly braided golden ropes that drop down the length of your spine. With a pair of strappy heels and a full face of makeup on for the first time in weeks, you feel… good. Sexy, even. Patrice’s languid, rich girl lilt gathers in the back of your throat, and you surprise yourself by feeling a little excited to inhabit her skin for the evening. 

In the end, you settle for strapping a tiny handgun and your vibranium knife to your thigh. They’ll be kind of a bitch to get to in a fight, but it’s the only feasible option, given how much of you is on display in this dress. You waste a few seconds wishing your undercover op included a disguise with at least one pocket, before stooping in front of the ancient wooden vanity pushed up against one wall and checking your makeup in the rust speckled mirror. You look expensive, and like you’re showing off. Exactly right for Miss Patrice Pascolat. 

Once again, Bucky is the only one present in the living area when you emerge from your room. You can hear Joaquín and Sam bickering about something behind the closed door of the other bedroom, and decide that he was probably right to remove himself from whatever the hell is going on in there. 

“I can’t believe he’s taking longer than I did to get ready,” you grouse, gesturing toward the aforementioned closed door. 

“They only just got back from buying his damn suit twenty minutes ago,” Bucky informs you, glancing up from the ancient looking paperback creased open in his hand. You arch an eyebrow at him, and he gives a look back, like, believe me, I know. “It’s what we get for sending the two of them alone to get it.” 

“Well, it’s probably best if we show up fashionably late, anyway. It’s what Avila and Patrice would do,” you sigh, dropping down into the wooden chair across the table from Bucky. Christ, but your feet are already hurting from these heels. You eye Bucky’s paperback, trying to read the title, but half the front cover is missing. “This what you’re doing with your night off?”

“What?” he asks, eyes flicking up to you, back down to his book, and then up again. “I’m not having a night off. Sam and I are still gonna be outside the building as backup.”

“Like I said, old man. Night off,” you say, snickering at the mix of annoyance and humor that flits across his face. 

“Don’t get cocky, kid.”

You open your mouth to reply, but before you can, the bedroom door bursts open and Sam empties out into the living area. 

“That boy is getting on my last damn nerve,” he says, throwing a scowl over his shoulder towards the bedroom. Bucky’s expression morphs more fondly amused as he looks up at him. 

“Don’t forget that it was your idea to bring him along,” Bucky tells him. 

“Yeah, well I’m regretting that a little right now!” Sam responds, raising his voice pointedly so Joaquín will hear. You stand from the table, rolling your shoulders and drifting your way toward the front door– with Sam busting out of the room, you assume Joaquín will follow suit and finally be reading to fucking leave. 

You tune out Sam’s annoyed, quiet venting to Bucky, allowing yourself a moment to totally zone out. It’s a neat trick you have, one of the better skills you honed in the Red Room. The ability to separate your mind from your body. There were long stretches of time where it was the only thing that ever granted you a little peace. 

And it’s not that you’re feeling particularly overwhelmed at the moment, not even with the evening you have planned looming over you. It’s not that this has been a particularly long or grueling mission, either– you’d had it much worse dozens of times before. Maybe it’s something about being plucked out of your home base without warning– even by people you trust– or the flying by the seat of your pants nature that this mission has taken on. You’re feeling out of control, and rusty too, and that’s the kind of thing that leads to fuck ups. So, you leave your body behind for a few precious seconds and imagine, briefly, all of your corporeal matter dispersing like mist into the humid night air. 

And then Joaquín’s voice cuts through the air, and you come crashing back into yourself. 

He comes out of the room with his head bent over his wrist, still adjusting a golden cufflink and arguing with Sam without looking up at him. His dark hair is pomaded back into a clean, vintage wave style, and even though he and Sam were clearly going for a somewhat ridiculous, new money look with the maroon suit, he still somehow makes it look kind of tasteful. 

“... so you can claim them as a work expense on your taxes, man,” Joaquín is saying. Whatever he’s going on about has made Sam roll his eyes twice in thirty seconds. “And you picked them out, anyway!” 

“Because golden fish shaped cufflinks are exactly the kind of thing your dumbass would buy, but that was before I realized they were eight hundred dollars!” Sam shoots back. 

“You mean they’d be perfect for my forged identity, right?”

“That’s what we were shopping for, wasn’t it?” 

“Can you guys argue about tax write offs later? If we don’t get a move on soon we won’t even be fashionably late anymore,” you cut in, anxious let’s get this over with energy making you springy on the balls of your feet. 

Only at the sound of your voice does Joaquín finally look up from his cufflink. His hand freezes halfway through the motion of dropping back down to his side, and his whole body is so still that you’re momentarily worried he has stopped breathing altogether, too. It takes a few seconds for a deeper flush of red to spread across the full expanse of his cheeks than you even knew he was capable of. You had thought it was funny when he flushed red at the sight of you before you went to the floating market, but this time– well, this time you don’t feel like laughing. 

“I called a limo service for you two. He’s been waiting down there,” Sam says, trying and mostly failing to hide the stupid smirk on his face as he claps Joaquín on the shoulder. 

“Waiting for us…” Joaquín repeats, a little dazed. Sam claps him on the back again, a little harder this time, and Joaquín seems to undergo some kind of factory reset. “Got it. Be hearing from you on the comms?” 

“We’ll be right behind you,” Bucky answers, hefting himself up out of his chair and reluctantly dropping his paperback on the table. 

“See you on the other side,” you say to the pair, offering them a two finger salute. 

Joaquín jerks forward in a few quick steps, grabbing the handle and pulling open the door before you can grab it. He stands to the side, half tucked behind the open door. “Uh– after you.” 

You nod your thanks to him and exit the flat. You’re impressing yourself with how well you’re managing the heels– highly impractical shoes do not have a place in your life, typically, so you’re out of practice– but you’re still a little wobbly. Wordlessly, Joaquín joins you on the landing and offers his arm. You take it gratefully and allow yourself to lean on him a little bit to get down the rickety wooden stairs. 

As promised, there is a limo waiting at the curb, looking highly out of place in the Lowtown neighborhood. You trust Sam to get you a driver you can also trust, even on notice as short as this, so you return the man’s polite greetings without much scrutiny. He moves to open the door for you, but Joaquín is ever faster and gets there first, pulling it open and ushering you inside. 

–

The mission should be simple tonight, for the first time since you agreed to work with these three. 

You’re not looking to take anything with you from the Black Opal– just reconnaissance this time. The Aetos Device will surely be sold at the auction before the night is up, and all you and Joaquín need to do is observe who buys it. Sam and Bucky spoke at length earlier in the day about bringing in backup, and who they might trust to do that. By the time you and Joaquín had left the flat, they still had seemingly not decided on anyone concrete, but no matter what, you expect this operation to grow after tonight. It would be too dangerous– and, you hate to admit it, pretty damn close to impossible– for you and Joaquín to try to locate and obtain the device and make it out of the building in one piece. Beyond that, you’ve come to expect no part of this mission to go as planned ever, seeing as nothing has so far, so you’re happy to hold off for some help. 

So. Getting information– all well and good. Actually, it hardly will take any effort from you and Joaquín at all: the comms that Sam had distributed to all of you back in Prague are some real science fiction level shit, essentially visually undetectable and with transcription capabilities. They’re all hooked up to Joaquín’s tech set up, so by the time you get back to the flat there should be an incredibly accurate transcription of everything said at the party within a ten meter radius of you. 

You’re not worried about that part. It’s the other part, though, that has you feeling… apprehensive. 

Joaquín can hardly seem to look at you. Throughout the entirety of the ride, you’ve kept to idle chatter, just in case the driver does end up being someone who will cause you problems later on down the line. Every once in a while he forgets himself and looks at you head on; it lasts for all of ten seconds before he quickly and unsubtly diverts his attention elsewhere. 

You’re really starting to wonder if the two of you are going to be able to pull off playing lovers for a few hours. 

You can tell when the limo pulls up to the Black Pearl because the entire plaza in front of it is washed in muted purple light. The hotel is forty stories and features a huge hologram of elegant purple fish swimming in languid loops over the full glass front of the building, as if you are looking at the surface of a koi pond from above. 

The limo has barely stopped moving before the driver is pulling open the door. You watch as, over the course of a few seconds, Joaquín’s entire body language changes. Gone is the nervous ball of poorly pent-up energy that you have become familiar with. His shoulders drop, entire body melting into devil may care repose. By the time the door is fully open, Matías Avila fully inhabits Joaquín’s body. He steps out onto the plaza and bends, offering a hand through the door to you. For the first time since you left the flat, he offers you a charmingly crooked smile and holds your eye contact without breaking. 

“Ready, mi amor?” 

–

Your invitations allow you to bypass the general party immediately, a nondescript man in a plain but clearly expensive suit chaperoning the two of you to the private auction. You cling to Joaquín’s arm tightly, heading bending in towards his as you ooh and ahh and comment on the beauty of the building and the city and the impressiveness of the hosts at appropriate intervals. For his part, Joaquín keeps a hand affectionately over your own that is resting on his arm, indulging your awe as only a smitten lover would, telling you that he will recreate anything you want in the home he is building for you, should only you ask. 

Truly, you’re impressed by how well he’s doing. He had not struck you as someone who would do so well with a secret identity, but you’re starting to think that maybe he had missed his calling in theatre. You keep up easily, of course– a huge bulk of your training and missions for the Red Room included some kind of new identity and fully believable acting– though it’s not your best work; you’re feeling distracted by Joaquín’s unexpected talent and the fact that the building is even more heavily guarded than you had originally expected.

Suit Guy shows you to a large pair of ornately carved wooden doors, completely at odds with the sleek, modern Hightown look of the rest of the place. Two workers in porcelain masks in feline face shapes step forwards and pull the doors open, revealing the auction room: a space with three storey tall ceilings and ringed with balconies like tiers of opulently decorated cake. The ceiling is completely blocked by yards and yards of wisteria dripping toward the floor in vibrant shades of purple, pink, and blue. At the far end of the room, a small stage and some overstuffed armchairs sit empty, presumably for the auction later in the night. The items that will be sold– some of them, at least, because a quick scan of the place reveals the Aetos Device to be nowhere in sight– sit beneath glass cases set atop grecian pedestals. A miniature orchestra plays rich music from the corner, and a raucous group plays poker at a green-topped poker table. Servants whisk around carrying trays laden heavily with several dozen different kinds of food and beverage. 

“Damn,” you mutter appreciatively. “They sure know how to throw a party.” 

“I’ve seen better,” Joaquín sighs, loud enough to draw the attention of a trio of women in hand beaded gowns standing near a tower of fragile champagne flutes. 

“Of course, baby,” you coo, stepping in front of him to smooth the lapels of his suit jacket. “Your twenty-fifth makes this seem… quaint.” 

“Just wait ‘til you see what I have planned for yours, cariño,” he answers, both hands coming to rest on your hips. The warm weight of them through your dress somehow grounds you and sends you even more off-kilter than before. Joaquín is remarkably good at balancing boasting and affection in the tone of his voice all at once. 

“Don’t spoil anything,” you warn him teasingly, before pulling an overly exaggerated pout. “I need a drink, baby.” 

“On it,” he promises, tugging you closer by your hips and planting a kiss on your forehead before departing in search of something for you. 

In his absence, you play the shy, solitary fiancée, backing up toward the fall just slightly. You pretend to be scanning the crowd for Joaquín, instead doing your best to take in as many faces as you can in as short a time as possible, attempting to determine who you recognize. There are a few obvious players here, well known names in the arms dealing underworld. Guys you went after with SHIELD, even. Several of them are very financially well-endowed, and are certainly here with enough money to purchase the device in the auction. There’s no single person who stands out as an obvious top contender, but you mark a few to watch more closely through the evening than others. It takes a few minutes for you to realize that comms are blocked in this room; you were so preoccupied with getting your bearings among all the players that you didn’t notice Sam and Bucky’s chattering falling silent for a while. But sure enough, it’s gone, and you know that they haven’t just fallen silent. Sam wouldn’t be able to stop talking even to save his life. 

Joaquín returns to your side a few minutes later, pressing a flute of something fizzing and purple into your hand. Judging by the minute frown on his face, you’re he’s noticed the lack of working comms as well. 

“What is this?” you ask, genuine amused curiosity peeking through the Patrice of it all. 

“Well, I don’t speak much Tagalog, but I think he said something about coconut,” Joaquín answers. He lifts his own flute of the same drink, and tacks on, “I figured I would try it with you.” 

“Cheers, Señor Avila,” you say, lifting your glass. 

“To our very successful and lore-filled relationship,” Joaquín says, clinking his glass to yours. 

“Lore-filled,” you snort, taking a sip. It’s really not bad, if a little sunscreen forward. 

“What?”

“Who calls a relationship lore-filled?” you ask, arching an eyebrow. “Nerd.” 

“Whatever, I’m not wrong. Any relationship is filled with lore,” Joaquín defends, waving a dismissive hand at you. 

“I believe people typically refer to those as memories,” you say, and Joaquín rolls his eyes. 

“Whatever you say, my beautiful perfect fiancée,” he says, and you’re sure the cheeky grin on his face is more Joaquín than it is Matías. 

“Exactly, I’m always right,” you affirm with a laugh that bubbles like your drink. 

“Of course,” Joaquín nods mock-sagely. 

It isn’t long before the orchestra is quieted and finely-suited men are herding all of you towards the seats by the stage. Joaquín takes your hand and leads you to a plush settee with ornate scrollwork. He sits beside you with that same Señor Avila air of ease he donned in the limo, one arm thrown over the back of the seat behind your shoulders, the other holding the small gold placard that he will presumably be using to bid on behalf of both of you. 

“Keep an eye on the hat over there,” Joaquín mutters in your ear. Your eyes drag over to your right, catching sight of an older, dark-haired woman with an incredibly large and busy hat sitting in one of the armchairs. You have to give it to the rich in Madripoor, always– they do not bend to any kind of old money aesthetics, regardless of their pedigree. Madripoor is much more of a go brash or go home kind of place. 

You give him a look, conveying your question without any words. 

“Overheard her saying something about the Bobcat when I went to get us drinks. Could be something.” 

You hum your agreement, turning your face back toward the stage as a man in an elegant damask suit climbs gracefully up to the center. He stops in front of a vintage silver microphone already adjusted perfectly to his height. He calls out a greeting in Tagalog first, and then addresses the modest crowd in English. 

“For sixty-three years, the Golden Diadem has brought both cutting edge and classic, storied technology and arms to the new and notable in our circles,” he says, his voice rich and smooth. “Objects such as Captain America’s original prototype shield and authentic Asgardian armor have passed through this room. Tonight, it is my pleasure to welcome you to this auspicious event. May your minds and placards be swift.” 

His last line is clearly an in-joke, and several people make a point of laughing overly loudly at it, as if to demonstrate that they are important enough to have attended in years prior. While you all had been herded to this spot and the man had been speaking, other workers had gathered up the various pieces on display around the room and brought them backstage. Damask Suit introduces the first piece, starting small with a set of Wakandan daggers. Joaquín manages to snag those for less than a thousand dollars, and a little bit of the tension loosens in your chest– you had only been able to scrape together about a thousand dollars between the four of you to use at the auction, and you know that it would look highly suspicious if the two of you didn’t buy anything at all. 

Throughout the rest of the auction, Joaquín makes game attempts at getting other pieces, but always allows someone more zealous to beat him out in the end. You whine about not getting the cool or pretty something or other to him, and he assures you that he’ll get you something twice as good after you leave this place with unearned bravado. 

The Aetos Device is saved for last. 

Damask Suit moves to the side of the stage with his microphone, voice a whisper that is almost reverent, as he tells your small gathering what, exactly, it does. 

“Don’t believe me, ladies and gentlemen?” The question seems like a dare. “Just watch.” 

A screen behind the stage comes to life with a bright flash, making more than one person in your cohort jump in surprise. In front of you is a warehouse, poorly lit and cold. Behind the camera, men laugh and speak lowly in a mix of different languages. You can hear Czech and Polish and an inconsequential amount of English. Nothing happens on screen for so long that you’re starting to get antsy. Or maybe you’re antsy because you already know what this is. You may have never seen it, but Sam and Bucky had told you about it back in Prague. 

Next to you, Joaquín’s entire body stiffens, and the arm slung lazily behind you curls tighter around your shoulders, as if he needs grounding. 

A young boy is thrown into the frame. His knees hit the dirty floor hard, dragging a rush of air out of his lungs. His hands are bound behind his back, his ankles held in shackles that give him a cruelly tantalizing amount of freedom of movement, but not enough to get anywhere. It takes you a second to realize that his entire map of veins is faintly glowing orange. 

“Proszę–czekać!” His voice is already hoarse from overuse. When he opens his mouth, you can see a sort of magma glow in the back of his throat. 

A man to the left of the camera laughs, and says something in grand, rapid-fire Finnish. You curse yourself for being able to recognize the language but not knowing it enough to know what he says. The Aetos Device slides up into view from the same side the voice is coming, held confidently and aimed directly at the Polish boy’s still begging face. 

You have the ridiculous urge to get up and do something, but what is there to do? You know what comes next, and that it has already been done. The most you can do for the boy now is bear witness to his final moments. 

The Finnish man pulls the trigger, and everything next happens so fast you almost miss it. 

Some sort of energy bursts out of the device, rather than any kind of projectile. It hits the Polish boy in the chest, and you glimpse a blinding blue glow spreading exceedingly fast from the point of contact before it fades from view. The boy tries to bring a hand up to clutch his chest, but the result is a jerky movement that sends him falling onto his side due to his hands being bound. He stares, dazed, at the group behind the camera, mouth slack, brows drawn together. 

Then he takes a ragged, choking gasp in and starts writhing on the floor. He seems desperate to escape his own body, so much so that he bloodies both ankles scraping the skin off as he tries to pull his feet up through the shackles. When he opens his mouth to scream, you see that the magma glow is gone. His veins have gone dark like a snuffed candle. He jerks around like a stringed marionette for a few seconds before falling to a limp heap on the ground. 

A man in a lab coat scurries forward and bends down in front of the body. His pink scalp shines under the swinging bulb that is providing the only overhead light. He grabs the boy’s wrist and checks his pulse, before decisively announcing that the boy is dead. 

Behind the camera, the group erupts into applause. You feel dizzy from all the blood rushing to your head. 

Damask Suit pauses the video at this point, the screen going dark and fading back into the wall. He takes his place just slightly stage right, next to the podium in the center that is displaying the device for all to see. 

“As you have seen, the Aetos Device allows one to wield power like nothing else. Well, like nothing else besides money, that is,” he says, throwing a wink out to the audience. “This is a one of a kind piece of technology. You will not find anything outside of this room that can do what it does. We’re starting the bidding at sixty million USD.” 

So, sixty million dollars is the starting price of genocide. Pain, power, fear and helplessness striking the hearts of millions worldwide. The thought would make you feel sick if it didn’t first make you so fucking infuriated. You sit through the device’s auction with a detached sort of numbness, struggling to reign in your focus and pay attention to the players vying to get their hands on it. 

Hat Lady is one of them, which doesn’t surprise you. A man with salt and pepper hair in the front whose entire being exudes old money is working his placard over time. A younger blond man built like a farmer is volleying both of their offers back at them, his demeanor disturbingly relaxed. 

At the end of the melee, it’s the blond that comes out on top. 

“Sold! For ninety-five million, to Mr. Carter Eklund,” Damask Suit announces with fervor. “Congratulations, young gentleman.”

As Eklund stands and makes for the stage, bowing graciously to Damask Suit before being presented with his acquisition, you rack your brain for any familiarity with his name or his face. Ultimately, you come up with nothing. Who can this man be, with nearly a hundred million dollars to throw around at an auction, and without any notable name at all? You study his face as much as you can without drawing his attention to you, filing every detail away for later. 

As Eklund accepts the device– now safely stored away in a sleek chrome case– the rest of the group applauds politely. You can feel the resentment roiling off of several of them, but no one more than the other two who had stuck out the final stretch of the race, and still found themselves not crossing the finish line first. Now that even the amount of people in this room know what the device can do in intimate detail, you’re sure no one will be able to rest easy in owning it. Someone will always be hunting Eklund. And when it’s inevitably not him, his successor will be hunted, too. 

Unless you can succeed in completely taking it out of the game. 

As soon as Eklund is off the stage, the miniature orchestra starts up again; something warm and lively, conjuring images of victory and encouraging everyone to dance. When you look over at Joaquín, he struggles to cover the haunted look on his face for a few long seconds. And then the Avila grin is widening his mouth. He stands, making a big show of opening the chrome case that holds the Wakandan daggers the two of you bought in the auction. 

“A gift for you, mi reina,” he says, chest puffed up with all the ego of a man showing the world that he can provide for his woman. He lifts out the daggers to reveal a leather sheath, designed to have one dagger hanging off of each of the wearer’s hips. You watch, mouth curved in a shy, pleased little smile as Joaquín fastens the sheath around your waist with a gentleness that you are sure is all him, not Matías. 

He proffers the daggers to you faux ceremonially and you lean into the playacting, accepting them as if accepting a serious responsibility. The craftsmanship on the weapons is finer than most you’ve ever handled, weighty and well-balanced, ornate enough to be beautiful to look at without becoming unwieldy. You slot them into their sheaths, and do a little twirl, as if showing off for him. 

“I look dangerous now, don’t I, darling?” you ask, preening. 

“You always look dangerous to me,” he says, pulling you close. The sheaths hang low enough that Joaquín can still easily rest his hands on your hips. He runs his fingers over the handle of one of the blades, eyebrows raising appreciatively at the quality. “Now, will you join me for a dance, mi amor?” 

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask all night,” you respond, inflating your own voice with Patrice’s half whining tone. You accept his hand, and allow him to tug you toward the dancefloor in the middle of the room. You settle easily into the posture of two people who are not particularly knowledgeable in dance. You sling your arms around Joaquín’s neck, pulling him closer as his hands find your hips. You sway back and forth like a pair of teenagers at prom, or else the perfect vision of a couple of new money drunken lovers who didn’t grow up taking mandatory ballroom lessons. Just a couple celebrating a tiny win at the auction. 

Joaquín leans his forehead against yours and you close your eyes, leaning into the touch the way you imagine Patrice would. 

“Is he familiar to you at all?” you ask, voice barely audible. 

“Not at all,” Joaquín answers with a sigh. You tamp down one of your own. 

“That’s… troubling.” 

“It raises a lot of questions,” Joaquín says, nodding against your forehead. “We stick around here a little while longer and then we’ll be good to go. Sam’s been listening, so I’m sure he’s already done a cursory search of the name. He’ll have something to tell us right away.” 

You hope he’s right. It doesn’t happen all that often, but every once in a while you come across a real ghost in your line of work. Someone with more money than god and a name that yields even less search results than your average high schooler’s. If this Eklund turns out to be one of those guys, then you’re all in trouble. There would be no skirting around calling in some bigger guns at that point. 

“Well, let’s enjoy the rest of our time at this party then, hm?” you respond after a moment, lifting your head to give Joaquín what you hope is a reassuring look. 

“Who knows when we’re gonna get to be fancy as all this shit again?” Joaquín asks in agreement. His dark eyes brighten with mischief, and before you can register what’s going on, he spins you out under his arm in a surprisingly elegant, fluid movement. You laugh– embarrassingly, you’d probably classify it more as an honest fucking giggle– half out of surprise and half out of sheer, unexpected delight, as he brings you back to face him, hands resettling on your hips. 

Joaquín’s face falls from one moment to the next, sending your giggle to a screeching halt. You keep your eyes on him, studying him as he studies something else over your shoulder. You almost don’t want to know what has caught his attention– you don’t want this little carefree moment to be ruined. But that was your first mistake, wasn’t it? You had told Joaquín just hours ago that you weren’t here for fun. 

Joaquín speeds up your dancing a little bit, swaying the two of you around until he is facing the opposite direction. Only then does he speak. 

“Someone recognizes us. At the poker table,” he informs you. You struggle to keep the carefree look on your face. Casually, you sweep your eyes around the room, as if you’re just trying to take in the revelry around you. As Joaquín said, there’s a man sitting at the poker table who is staring at the pair of you with the kind of intensity usually reserved for trying to set someone on fire with your mind. You slide your eyes over him without recognition, looking back at Joaquín. But you know that guy– or, rather, you know those eyes. It’s the escalade driver from the night before. His fury-stoked eyes through the rearview mirror. His hand reaching for his gun. 

God fucking damn it. 

“We need to get out of here. Now,” you say, unable to completely keep the urgency from your voice. If that man raises alarm bells now, the two of you will be in deep, deep shit. 

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Joaquín says, nodding. “Plan C is probably our fastest route?” 

“Yeah, alright. Let’s do this then.” You let your dancing go on for a minute more before you slow your feet, a something is really wrong look coming across your face.

“Baby? What’s wrong?” Joaquín asks, and you bring a hand to your stomach in response. “Patrice?” 

“I really… I don’t feel well,” you tell him, looking up at him with eyes wide in panic. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

Several people near you on the dancefloor cast their own panicked looks at you and move farther away. Good, people are hearing and buying your story. 

“Okay, let’s go find you a bathroom, yeah?” Joaquín asks, rubbing a hand comfortingly up and down your arm. 

“No,” you put on your best drunken petulance. “I jus’ wanna go home. Please?”

Joaquín frowns. “Okay, if you’re sure. Let’s get you down to the car.”  He wraps a protective arm around your shoulders and starts leading you toward the large double doors that you came in through. You press yourself into his side, taking unsteady steps, both of your arms wrapped around your middle. 

“And where do you think you’re going?”

You pause at the voice, authoritative and condescending. You don’t even have to look at the speaker to know that your cover is already blown. 

“The Falcon and Agent Swallowtail. You know, you needed only ask for an invitation. None of this cloak and dagger, secret identity nonsense was necessary.” 

You and Joaquín turn to find Carter Eklund standing on the other side of the dance floor, looking at you like he just successfully caught his dinner. 

“Is that so?” You ask at the same time that Joaquín shrugs next to you and says, “Well, now we know for next time!” 

“We have a little matter to discuss before you scurry off,” Eklund carries on without acknowledging either of your comments. The orchestra has fallen silent, and the patrons of the auction have cleared a wide, curious circle around the two of you. “You rather rudely threatened to kill one of my scientists last night.”

“One of your scientists?”you frown, the words coming out before you can stop them. The scientist that you had threatened in the escalade last night was part of the Golden Diadem’s convoy, and unless Eklund just purchased the Aetos Device from himself, you’re afraid you’re not entirely following. 

Eklund laughs as though he knows exactly what thoughts are running through your mind. “Things are always a little bit more complicated than they first appear, aren’t they?” 

Your eyes narrow. “What do you want from us, Eklund?”

“Oh, well that’s simple. You’ve seen our faces– and with last night’s disrespect on top of that– we can’t let you leave.” 

“Try to stop us,” you dare him, reaching for the Wakandan daggers sheathed at your hips. 

“What fun! I do love when they put up a fight,” Eklund says with genuine delight. He turns to look over his shoulder and calls out, “I want them alive.”

And suddenly every bodyguard and server alike has a gun drawn on the pair of you. Instinctively, you and Joaquín move back to back, your new daggers in hand and your eyes scanning the room. The doors aren’t that far, but even after that, you still have to make it out to the street. It only takes a second to realize that your best bet is not getting out of here at all– but if you can hold them off long enough to get out of the room and get back on the comms to Sam and Bucky, you have a chance. 

At Eklund’s request of taking you in alive, his goons seem reluctant to use their guns. A first wave comes at you and your mind goes blank, years of muscle memory taking over. The first guy comes in low, trying to tackle you at the waist, but your knee is in his sternum before he can make it. You drive the hilt of the dagger into the side of his head, dropping him at your feet. Behind you, Joaquín is only working with his fists, but he’s holding his own. 

The auction’s patrons are clearly not in on it, judging by the screams and the race to get out of the room. They bottleneck at the door, blocking each other from getting out, but more importantly blocking Joaquín and yourself from getting back out somewhere the comms work. A pair of Eklund’s goons come at you next and you lean on Joaquín’s half-bent over back, using him as a springboard for a high kick to the first one’s head. He goes toppling into the second and you land near them, sure-footed and ready to take them out with your daggers.

And then you’re not breathing.

You slap a hand to your chest, brows knitted in confusion. You manually tell your lungs to take a breath, but it’s as though your chest is paralyzed. 

“It’s interesting, isn’t it? All I had to do was tell your lungs to stop working, and they… did. I guess, at the end of the day, I hold the power over your body, not you.”