Disclaimer: I do not own anything aside from a few OCs and am not making any money from writing this.
Warnings: Violence, premeditated murder, angst, swearing, heavily implied sexual content but no graphic descriptions.
Notes: A little AU, post Avengers, but before Iron Man 3. Trying very hard to keep this sue-free. :3
Being Beta'd by: lieselmax
Gravity
Don't mean too much to me
I'm who I've got to be
These pigs are after me, after you
Run away, like it was yesterday
I got a bulletproof heart
You got a hollow-point smile
Me and your runaway scars
Got a photograph dream on the getaway mile
Let's blow a hole in this town
And do our talking with a laser beam
Gunning out of this place in a bullet's embrace
Then we'll do it again
- From "Bulletproof Heart" by My Chemical Romance
Chapter 1: Sacrifice
Agent Hollie Steel tore through the busy streets of New York with a 360 semi-auto loaded and ready in her left hand. Snow fell lightly, blanketing the sidewalks beneath her feet, and adding a dusting of white to her skin-tight Kevlar bodysuit and tightly bound brunette hair. Beside her, the famous Macy's Christmas decorations in the enormous department store's windows barely caught her stormy grey eyes that were narrowed in concentration. All in all, it would have been a peaceful scene, the perfect depiction of a Christmas Eve afternoon in the city – if the street wasn't filled with frenzied, screaming New Yorkers running like startled rabbits in every which direction.
There had just been a shooting in the Macy's building. But unbeknownst to the public, law enforcement and the now swarming news crews, there was also a bomb – a bomb capable of not only leveling the Macy's building, but at least four city blocks surrounding it. Hollie was one of three SHIELD agents sent in to disable it, or in the worst case scenario do her best to evacuate the civilians.
She was running out of time. The gunmen, members of an American extremist terrorist group attempting to incite a new revolution against the government, had already gunned down the other agents. Hollie slaughtered them all with a single shot each and without batting an eyelash. She was a killer, born and bread. Hollie felt no remorse at taking a life. To her, it was necessary, and in a twisted way she relished having the honor of being the herald of doom. After all, everything dies at some point.
Hollie burst through the doors leading into the building and made a beeline for where the main Christmas display was. She had to get to the bomb; there was no telling when back-up would arrive and she wouldn't be able to evacuate a radius of at least four blocks by herself, in less than a half an hour.
Luckily, the store was deserted – as far as she could tell.
She found the bomb easily, and immediately set to work. It was hidden beneath the platform where they took those obnoxious pictures of screaming children with some fat old man pretending to be Santa. Sometimes, Hollie was glad for her upbringing that spared her the existence of embarrassing childhood photos. But in a moment of utter horror, she realized that it was a modified Stark weapon. ...Modified in the sense that it was impossible to disable. With some tinkering, she would be able to contain the blast to the Macy's building, but there was no way to stop it entirely. There's no one here, might as well go with that, Hollie thought to herself and made short work of splicing one of the wires and tampering with an electrical relay switch. The only thing to lose is a gaudy historic department store. To Hollie, it was child's play – even if detonation was still imminent and would now occur in about seventy seconds instead of half an hour.
Back on her feet, Hollie vaulted down one of the old wooden escalators that had been shut down after the shooting. Twenty seconds, she told herself as she the main doors came into sight - as a well as a young woman trying to comfort a scared child in the lobby, barely visible in the dim emergency lighting. Eight seconds, she thought as she ran toward them.
"Get outside – the place is going to blow!" Hollie shouted, but made no hesitation in grabbing both the woman and child and hurling them bodily through the glass doors after shooting them to pieces with her handguns that could easily penetrate bulletproof glass. Their interruption, however, cost Hollie valuable time.
Two seconds...
In sheer instinct, she threw her arms up to protect her face as the ground shook and the sound of the explosion rocked the building off its foundation. As if in slow motion, Hollie was blown off her feet in a cloud of bomb-propelled debris that wasn't at all unlike being hit by a frag grenade full of shrapnel.
She lost consciousness immediately, vaguely aware of the woman whose life she'd saved screaming in terror, and a blinding pain that utterly overwhelmed her as she collided hard with a solid surface.
"I told you this would happen! But no, you and your little goon squad are too good to take anything the great Tony Stark says seriously." The genius billionaire in question ranted, glaring at a very angry Nick Fury, who was sitting across from him in the meeting room on-board the SHIELD helicarrier. His one good eye was narrowed in irritation, and his lips were pursed as he obviously struggled not to shout insults at Tony that doubtlessly would have consisted of mostly 'mother fucker' and 'arrogant asshole'.
"There's a reason I don't make weapons anymore, which ironically is the same reason I'm pissed over SHIELD refusing to hand over my old weapons that you never should have gotten a hold of in the first place. Just in case, you know, your idiot council decides to blow up the civilian population, or some terrorists that are too smart for their own good raid your warehouses." Tony continued, drumming his fingers on the glass tabletop.
"Cool your tits, Stark. I've got a team on it." Fury hissed.
"You don't get it, do you Pop-Eye? This isn't about that. How much tech did they steal? How did they even get past your security protocols? You aren't seeing the big picture. You're underestimating your adversary. This is-"
"Sir, we have a problem. Agents Smith and Decker are dead, gunned down. Steel took care of the assailants but she can't disable the bomb. She's saying it was tampered with. She's modifying it so it'll only take out the Macy's, which she's pretty sure is clear." Agent Maria Hill told them, standing in the open doorway – disappearing as soon as spoke. Tony had to admit, she looked like shit. Maria had been working like an animal since the whole alien invasion thing. He stroked his goatee as he thought about the situation, and quickly settled on the same answer as Agent Steel.
"Assuming it was modified in the sense that I'm imagining, she's one smart cookie. That's the only way out of this if the bomb's already live." Tony said thoughtfully.
"She is one of our best." Fury admitted. "Ex-Mafia hitwoman; probably the only one of these idiots I call agents that can hold her own in sparring match with Romanov. She's usually reserved for covert ops and high profile assassinations, but she happened to be in the area." That made Tony raise his eyebrows. She must really be something if it took Natasha some effort to kick her ass. It really is too bad I have a personal policy about not sleeping with SHIELD agents, he thought to himself as he had Jarvis bring up footage from outside the Macy's on a hologram screen.
He kind of wished he didn't. The first thing they saw was a woman and child flying through the glass doors that shattered as they hit them. It was pretty obvious that someone had thrown them out of the building. Man, did he know that feeling. At least they didn't plummet from fifty floors up, and it looked like the glass was shattered with gunshots first. The next thing was the explosion, which could only possibly be described as spectacular. Tony winced as he saw a woman in a catsuit like Natasha's try to make a run for it, but she didn't make it and was blown clear into the side of another building. Luckily, the explosion only took out the Macy's building. The surrounding structures were damaged, but intact and no one on the streets had been close enough to get caught up in it – seeing as everyone was giving the place a wide birth after the shooting earlier. The woman covered the child's eyes when he turned to look for the Agent that got blown to kingdom come. That couldn't be a good sign.
"Sir." Maria butted in again. "We have detonation, and Steel's down. I don't know if she's dead, but she's definitely unconscious. I can't get her vitals online; there's too much interference from the bomb."
"Stark, get down there! You'll be there faster than a response team! Try to keep the media out. I'll get Rogers and Romanov to back you up as soon as they can." Fury barked, tearing his gaze away from the live feed. Tony swore, shaking his head and went to do as he was told – for once. Though, it wasn't because Fury told him to, because fuck that. The bomb had his name on it, and he always felt personally responsible about shit like this happening after the mess in Afghanistan. It didn't help much that he'd pretty much just watched a SHIELD agent get herself killed because she hesitated to save a couple civilians. That surprised him. Tony wouldn't put it past most of SHIELD to just say 'fuck it' and leave them there to save their own hide. Agent Steel had to be dead, though. There was just no way in hell that she'd survived the impact.
Well, maybe she did. If Steel wasn't dead, Tony was sure she would be in a few days from internal bleeding, judging from the cloud of debris that engulfed her and the sheer force that she hit the wall with. Kind of a shame really, if she had the brains to rewire one of his bombs, she sounded like someone worth trying to rope into helping the Avengers out. Tony tried not to think about it as he suited up. He had to secure the area and keep the civilians out in case the terrorists sent more of their lackeys in to finish the job, never mind the damned media.