"Haylock!"
Hearing her name, Imogen stopped in her tracks and turned warily to face the three other junior agents that had been following her since she left the mess hall ten minutes ago. The one that had called her name, Eliot Walters, was the first to reach her, stopping just short of her fists with a smug grin that she itched to wipe off his face. His followers, Burchett and McCarthy, stayed back, trying to look tough and impressive (it was all an act though – she'd beaten them before, and she could beat them again).
"What do you want, Eliot?" she asked, crossing her arms to avoid doing something she'd regret.
He shrugged. "Just wanted to tell you what a nice job you did in training today. Twenty missed shots – gotta be a record for wasted bullets or something." He glanced back at his friends, laughing along with them.
"Better than the money your mother wasted putting you through school," she shot back. "It was fourteen, not twenty. How'd you ever get into SHIELD when you can't even count properly?"
He stopped laughing. "At least I got parents," he spat. "I hear you needed a sympathy vote from your brother to get into training."
Her hands curled into fists. She'd been strictly told, there would be no more fighting, but the urge to punch him was a strong one. They were just so good at riling her up – Eliot in particular – and they always forgot that she wasn't afraid of starting a fight. It was because they always underestimated her, because she was small and blonde and cursed with a soft face that made her scowl look more like a pout, right up until her fists started flying. Then they would remember…and then one or both of them would end up in Medical and she'd take the blame for it again. She'd been barely scraping by for weeks now; SHIELD was the only thing she had, and she'd be damned if she was going to let some good-for-nothing kids take it away from her.
With that in mind, she turned her back on them and tried to walk away.
Eliot, ever the idiot, grabbed her shoulder, stopping her from escaping. "Aw, Haylock, come on. We're just playing around. We're all friends, aren't we?"
Her self-control never was the best. The words had barely left his mouth when she turned around and clocked him square in the jaw as hard as she could, trying her best to break something. As she punched him, her heel found the curve between his foot and ankle and stepped down hard. He stumbled backwards with a surprised yelp, clutching his face and favouring one leg, staring at her like she was insane. His friends were at his side in an instant, steadying him before he could fall over, trying to pull him away before she could do more damage.
"Haylock!" a new voice called, and all her satisfaction turned to dread.
The deep, commanding voice of her handler rang through the cold hallway as he rounded the same corner the boys had come around just moments before, face as dark as a thunderstorm. His steps echoed with his voice, heavy and confident, carrying him to the scene of the crime in mere seconds.
"What's up, chief?" she asked bravely as he reached them, eyes as cold and hard as the concrete walls around them.
"Don't play around, Haylock," Donoghue growled in response, towering over her and giving her a murderous look that would have any other agent trembling in their boots. "What have I told you about starting fights?"
"He was asking for it."
He shook his head. "When you're involved, no one is asking for it."
They stood there, eye to eye, and stared each other down as Eliot limped past them, arms thrown over the shoulders of the other boys. "You'll pay for this," he spat at her as they passed. She spared him a look of absolute contempt, but did not deign to answer.
"Imogen," the handler said, once the hall was empty. "You're off training."
She stared at him for a moment, stunned into silence. The anger returned within seconds, rushing through her until she was itching to hit something again. "You can't do that!" she protested loudly. "I've barely done anything wrong! You can't kick me out for teaching some stupid kid a lesson!"
'That 'stupid kid' will be missing out on his first mission because of you!" Donoghue thundered. "And he's the third one you've injured this week alone! Three young agents, all more promising than you, out of action for several weeks because you couldn't keep your temper."
"It's not that bad," she replied sullenly. "They could have just as easily been injured in training."
The handler stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath to calm himself. His face was beet red, like a cartoon character who was about to explode. "I want you to leave," he said finally. "You're out of control, and until you learn to stop throwing punches and work with your team, I don't want to see you anywhere near them." She opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off before she could even begin with a sharp, "Quiet!" Her mouth snapped closed again, and silence fell over them.
"It's not just that, Imogen," he continued, when he was sure she wasn't going to interrupt. "You're at the bottom of every kind of training we're giving you, and I can't see you making any reasonable effort to improve your scores in the future. I let you into this team because I knew you struggled at the Academy, and I thought you might do better in a less structured environment, but it's been almost a year now and I've seen no improvement in your attitude at all."
"I didn't need your pity vote," she spat pettily. "If you didn't want me here, you shouldn't have asked for me."
"I didn't include you in my team out of pity. And I didn't expect you to behave like this when given this sort of opportunity." He dragged a hand down his face, more tired than angry now. "I want you off base by dusk. Go to another base, a safe house, a hotel down the road, I don't care; just get out of my sight and stay out of it until I tell you otherwise."
Her mouth snapped shut. She'd heard of agents being discharged, or retiring, or being thrown in the brig for disobedience, but never banned from their base. Granted, most agents had been on missions and had identities that would be at risk if they were just thrown out into the world without any warning or protection. She was a nobody, on or off base, civilian or otherwise. And her only enemies, funnily enough, were the ones she'd made inside SHIELD.
She stumbled back two steps, waiting for him to call her back and tell her more things she didn't want to hear. When he remained silent she turned and fled as fast as she could, back towards the bunks where the junior agents she hadn't put in the infirmary recently were probably waiting to watch her pack. Maybe she'd put them all there before she left, just to prove her point.
She barely even made it into the next hallway before her phone went off, stopping her dead in her tracks. Half hoping it was her brother, back from whatever mission he'd been on the last couple of days, she dug it out of her pocket and unlocked it, glancing down at the text that had just come through.
It wasn't Will. Instead, it was from some sort of private number that didn't look like it belonged anywhere near the USA. It was composed of only two words:
HAIL HYDRA.
The alarm went off as she read it, the base plunging into darkness for a second before red strips of emergency lighting kicked in. Her heart leapt into her throat at the sudden change in environment – suddenly, the utilitarian concrete walls seemed much more imposing. Shoving her phone back in her pocket, she tried to plan – if this was happening, if HYDRA were here and taking the base (which was likely, considering the loss of power and the loud alarm making her ears ring), there would be bloodshed, and it would reach her soon. She could go to her sleeping quarters, which weren't far but were probably full of junior agents that may or may not be on her side. Or, she could try to escape, though she was a long way from any doors that led above ground. The armoury was out of the question too; over the other side of the base, closer to mission control which was undoubted where the fighting would start. If she wanted a weapon, she was going to have to take one from someone else.
A startled cry from behind her turned her back the way she came. Donoghue, she remembered suddenly; he was still close by, and alone, and as one of the commanding officers of the base was probably armed. But which side was he on?
Unable to help herself, she crept slowly back towards Donoghue, pressing her back to the wall at the corner and turning just enough to see around. The handler was there, fighting hand to hand with an agent Imogen had seen around but didn't know the name of. His previously spotless suit was stained with blood, just like the knife in his hand, and one man already lay lifeless on the floor, blood pooling around him. As she watched, Donoghue ducked under the man's fists, kicked his leg out from under him and buried the knife in his throat, all in one smooth movement. Choking loudly, his opponent fell to the ground. Donoghue staggered backwards, knife still clutched in his hand.
Her breath caught in her throat, and she flattened herself against the wall again, willing herself to breathe, to move before he caught her and killed her too. She pushed off the wall just as Donoghue rounded the corner, limping and clutching a gaping wound in his shoulder.
"Haylock?" he asked with wide eyes, reaching out towards her with the hand that had previously been holding his shoulder together. She took a step backwards, far out of his reach. "No, no girl," he wheezed, from lungs that weren't quite drawing in the air he needed. "I'm not going to hurt you. Come here."
"What, like you didn't hurt them?" she asked, pointing back towards the men he'd just killed.
He shook his head. "They're HYDRA agents," he explained. "You know SHIELD history?" She nodded dumbly, and he stumbled forwards to pat her on the shoulder. "Knew you knew something, Haylock. No time for that now. Have you got a weapon?"
"No," she told him, her voice shaking.
The hand on her shoulder slipped down to her wrist, raising it, and before she knew it, he was pressing the handle of his knife into her palm, and wrapping her fingers around it. "You take this one," he said firmly, letting her hand go. His fingers left a trail of blood on hers. "You run now," he continued, leaning down a little to look her straight in the eye. His hand landed heavily on her shoulder again. "You've got guts, kid. Take that, and get out of here, and you keep running until they can't find you."
"But I can stay," she protested. "I can fight. I've beaten these guys before."
"That's an order, Haylock," he said, glancing over his shoulder. She heard what he had heard a moment later; footsteps, lots of them, echoing down the hallway. "Just for once in your life, do what I tell you."
The owners of the footsteps rounded the corner, all five of them, fully armed and dressed for a fight. Donoghue turned to face them, shoving her behind him. Five rifles focused their sights on him.
"What side are you on?" their leader demanded, shouting over the alarm. "What side?"
"I think you know what side I'm on," Donoghue replied darkly. "You HYDRA scumbags."
Her mind moved fast. These were HYDRA soldiers. Donoghue had openly sided with SHIELD, and while she was with him they would assume she was too. They might not even give her a chance to decide for herself. She was far outnumbered in this fight, even she could see that; five of them with guns, and all she had was one little knife.
Panicking, she did the one thing she knew she could do. She stepped to the side, pulled Donoghue around to face her, and stuck the knife right where she knew his heart would be.
For several seconds, they both seemed to freeze. Stuttering, his hand clutched at hers on the handle of the knife, and his eyes stared at her with the same, wild expression he'd had when he'd first come around the corner. Time slowed down as she watched him slip to the ground, pulling the knife out himself as he went. By the time his head hit the concrete, he was unconscious or dead or close to both, and she was left standing there, his blood painting her hands.
"Which side?" someone asked to her left, and the world sped up again as the warm barrel of his gun pressed against her temple.
"HYDRA," she replied, dropping the knife. It clattered loudly to the floor at her feet. "Hail HYDRA!"
"Wait," another voice said, further away than the one with a gun pressed to her head. "Wait! That's the Haylock girl. Will's sister. I know her."
"You going to vouch for her, Sanchez?" the first one asked. His gun did not relax.
"Yeah," the second voice said slowly. "Yeah, she's good. Her brother's a good agent. Parents were too. We can trust her."
Finally, the gun moved away and the guy stepped back to get a good look at her. She turned to face him, unable to look at Donoghue anymore. "You're here on training, aren't you?" he asked. "Part of Donoghue's little project group from the Academy."
"What's it to you?" she managed to spit out, sounding a lot braver than she felt.
His head tilted to one side, considering something. "Aren't you the one who's been sending all those kids to medical?"
She shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. "Does that matter?"
He shrugged. "Maybe not to some people. But I heard you've been picking on my brother this morning."
"Adrian," Sanchez interrupted. "This is not the time. We're supposed to be cleaning out the base, remember?"
He stepped backwards, and suddenly Imogen felt like she had room to breathe properly. "We'll circle back to it," he told her with a smile that would be more in place on a crocodile. "You get yourself somewhere safe, Haylock." They filed past her, only Sanchez giving her a smile as they did. Suddenly, she was alone in the hallway with Donoghue, staring glassy-eyed at her boots.
She tried not to look at him as she picked up the knife and retreated towards the bunks.
ooooo
A few hours later, as what would usually be dinner time approached, there was a knock on the door to her quarters – now completely hers, with the removal of the seven other junior agents she had previously shared with. There was a large blood stain on the wall she was trying not to think about.
Imogen opened the door to find a nervous-looking young agent standing in the hallway beyond, shuffling his feet nervously. "What?" she asked in no uncertain terms, ready to shut the door in his face if he took too long in answering.
He seemed to sense this, swallowing hard and scrambling for his given message. "Agent Rockwell would like to see you in mission control," he said hurriedly.
"I'll be there in a minute," she replied, and with a tight nod, the boy turned and scurried away as fast as his short legs could carry him. She watched him go, wondering what on earth had made SHIELD – or even HYDRA – choose him for service, then grabbed a jacket and followed him, grimacing at the SHIELD logo on her shoulder. She'd have to get rid of the jacket, she supposed, even though it was by far her favourite.
There were several people waiting for her at mission control, though only one was of immediate interest to her. Agent Rockwell was standing at the head of the room, watching over the few tech crew that remained, and turned to her as she approached. She recognised him as soon as she saw his face – the guy that had held a gun to her head earlier, of course, because her run of bad luck today wasn't quite over.
"Haylock," he said warmly, turning to greet her. His eyes were cold as stones. "So nice of you to join us. Presumably you're enjoying having all the bunks to yourself, seeing as you've disposed of every other agent that might have slept there?"
"Your men killed the others," she pointed out bluntly, deciding that she didn't like this man any more than she liked his brother.
He waved it away. "I don't need to know the details. What I do need to know-" He paused to step down from the small platform at the front of the room, to her level. "-is how loyal you are to HYDRA's noble cause."
She steeled herself and looked him dead in the eye, refusing to waver. To look away, to stutter or stumble, would be to let him win, and she'd be damned if she'd let Eliot's brother beat her, even if her heart did skip nervously at the thought that he might be about to kill her. He certainly hadn't hesitated during the bloodletting earlier in the day – nor had he bothered to clean up, leaving the blood to dry in dark stains on the concrete around the base.
"Just as loyal as you are," she replied, throwing the challenge back to him.
He laughed, undaunted. "I doubt that," he mocked, glancing at the armed men about the room, who smirked their response. "Our orders were to wipe out every part of SHIELD as quickly and efficiently as we can. How many of their scum did you kill?"
"One," she claimed boldly, though an icy hand clutched at her throat at the memory of Donoghue's wide eyes, in the seconds before he died. Try as she might, they would not leave her mind.
"One," he scoffed, and there was a murmur of laughter from around the room. "If we left the job to you, it would never be done. And don't think I don't know about you and the rest of your troop – Sanchez here saw you cowering around the corner when he went to finish them off."
Scowling, her eyes found Sanchez, standing back in the shadows. His face was blank – the only one not jeering and laughing at her. He'd vouched for her, she remembered, when she'd killed Donoghue. He knew her brother. "I wasn't cowering," she claimed angrily, tearing her eyes away from her betrayer and back to Rockwell. "I would have finished them, if your man hadn't beaten me to it."
Rockwell sobered quickly. "You'll be glad of a chance to prove yourself properly, then, I presume."
Imogen forced herself to shrug nonchalantly. "I'll do whatever HYDRA need me to do." Her voice wavered on the last few words and inwardly, she berated herself for her lack of courage. Now that her anger had faded, anxiety had taken over; what would he have her do, when his brother's bruises were so fresh in his mind? He would be looking for retribution, surely – HYDRA was not the place to make enemies, not if you wanted to stay alive long. Not that she'd ever heeded that warning, kept safe by the comforts of SHIELD regulations. HYDRA was not so soft an organisation.
"No," Rockwell decided. "You'll do more than that." He turned, and gestured to one of the tech guys behind him, who rose to hand him a plain brown file. "Here's your first mission. Congratulations on becoming a proper agent of something."
She opened the file, and scanned the first page. "Clint Barton?" she read, frowning. She'd heard the name before somewhere, but she couldn't remember where. It mustn't have seemed important to her at the time. Whether or not she knew who he was though, the list of successful missions on the next page was extensive and highly impressive – whoever he was, it was no wonder HYDRA wanted him dead.
"You want me to kill a guy with over thirty highly classified missions next to his name?" she asked in disbelief. That he would even think of sending a junior agent, fresh picked from the Academy, was sheer madness. But then she remembered what she'd done to his brother, and saw the petty smirk on his face, and it didn't seem so ridiculous after all.
"You doubt the sense of a HYDRA commander?" he replied, taunting her. "If you want to refuse, I'll be happy to report you as a deserter, and send someone else in your place. Though surely you wouldn't refuse, when you claim you're so loyal to the cause."
It wasn't hard to imagine what HYDRA would do to deserters. Another lesson drilled into her, but this was a warning she had heeded. "I'll do it," she said bullishly, and tried to ignore the victorious smile that spread across his vile face.
"His location is in your briefing," Rockwell informed her, gesturing towards the folder in her hands. "Some old SHIELD safe house, I'm told. You might want to hurry – a snake like that won't stay in one place forever." He turned away, wandering back towards the head of the room, and she realised that that was all she was going to get. No backup, no extraction, no weapon. Just a few sheets of paper and the jeering eyes of his soldiers as she left the room.
ooooo
In the end, they did give her one thing to help her on her mission – a cyanide pill, stuck firmly to a tooth in the back of her mouth just in case Barton captured and decided to torture her for information. The real reason for it, she thought privately, was probably Rockwell hoping that she would accidentally break it and kill herself for him. That would make a very neat solution for all his problems.
The address in her briefing led her to a large family home on the outskirts of a sleepy town, several hours away from her base. It was entering the early hours of the morning when she finally stopped the car she'd borrowed from the base several streets away, parking innocuously on the side of the road. The sedan was all black and blended in without a second thought with the other cars sitting in neat rows outside houses on in driveways, but still, she'd rather walk the couple of blocks to get to the safe house than leave it any closer and risking Barton recognising it for what it was – a SHIELD car, so well designed to blend in that to the right eyes, it stood out like a sore thumb.
It was cold outside, she discovered as she climbed from the car and a biting wind snapped at her face and hands. Dark, too, the moon and stars obscured by heavy clouds overhead, and the streetlights of this quiet suburban area placed just a little too far apart for the pools of light to reach. The street between them, the one that would lead her to Barton, wasn't even lit at all, as no houses faced onto it until much further down. Someone had arranged this town in a perfect grid, it seemed, for she hadn't seen a flower or road marker out of place on the streets she'd driven down. It would have been eerie, except that she wasn't easily spooked by things that went bump in the night, or neighbourhoods filled with obsessively neat people.
Shivering, she pulled her bag from the passenger seat and pushed the door shut as quietly as she could, locking the car after her. She ditched the key in the nearest flowerbed as she passed, hauling her bag over one shoulder. It wasn't very full, containing just the few clothes she had decided she would need before she got around to killing this guy, the gun and knife and a few other useful items she'd secreted away from the base when no one was looking too closely at the storage room, and a toothbrush, the only other thing she owned that she cared enough to bring with her. She wasn't particularly attached to any of her possessions, given that most of them had come from SHIELD or her brother and were of practical use rather than sentimental. There was nothing left of her parents for her to carry around, and her brother, Will, was with her more through her phone than any silly gift, and there wasn't much that would kill him.
She'd texted him earlier, to assure him that she was alive and to reassure herself that he was alive too. He was overseas somewhere now, finishing up a job, but he had told her that not only had he survived, but that he would be returning within the week to save her from Rockwell's petty disagreements with her. She hadn't told him about the mission. If he knew, he'd probably jump straight on a quinjet and come to do it for her, and then she would lose the opportunity to rub her victory in Rockwell's smug face.
Barton couldn't be that lethal, she'd managed to convince herself on the way there. As she walked, she ran the argument through her head again. HYDRA may be cruel and ruthless (as is everything that rose to the top of the food chain, Will would say), but they were smart too, and they would not waste valuable loyal agents so soon chasing high-profile targets that would only kill them and avoid capture. Even Rockwell, though he was dumb, couldn't possibly be that petty – he knew the blow would have crippled SHIELD but not eliminated them, and that they would need every man and woman in the following months to finish the job. She was difficult and unexperienced, but she was still a fighter, still useful – and everyone knew there would be hell to pay if her brother found out she'd been sent to her death on purpose.
Not that her plan involved dying. She'd decided she would wait a day or two, and beg shelter and pretend to be on his side. If it was a safe house, as Rockwell had suggested, then it would have been known to a few SHIELD agents, and it would be easy to pretend that she was one of those few. If he trusted her, he would turn his back, and if he turned his back, it would be easier for her to kill him without having to fight him.
And if he decided to leave before she could make him trust her? Well, she'd have to improvise. She wasn't that good at planning.
The house stood right in the middle of one of the dark spots between streetlights, with nothing to give any sign of it being occupied. Heavy black-out curtains were drawn tight over the windows, the garden was neat but unattended, several wilting flowers just visible in the dark of night, and the door, when she tried it, was locked. For all appearances, it looked like it had been locked up for some time, like perhaps its owner had gone on a long vacation and forgotten to ask someone to mind the front yard while they were gone. Who cut the grass and kept the flowers from dying off properly, she wondered as she dug through her bag for the set of lock picks she'd filched from a dead boy's drawers in her room. Dylan, she recalled. He'd thought having them would make him cool, and it had worked for about five minutes, until the others had realised he didn't actually know how to use them. Dylan hadn't much skill for lock picking.
She'd never told Dylan, or any of the others who had struggled to figure the picks out, that she had a particular inclination for the art of lock picking. You wouldn't know it, if you knew her, since picking locks required patience and discipline that she usually lacked, but it was the one thing she could sit still to do, even if it took her over half an hour, as she realised this one was going to. The lock on this door was as complex as the ones on the doors at the Academy, where she'd practised her craft with a diligence that had escaped her during her actual lessons. It was a sort of deadbolt and normal lock all in one, and occasionally was combined with an alarm system, or a small explosion with enough power behind it to blast your hands clean off. Neither of those security measures were attached to this lock, thankfully, but still she found herself having to grit her teeth and hold her hands steady in the cold as she teased the tumblers into place.
Finally, what felt like hours later, the final piece moved aside and the lock clicked softly as it disengaged. She was too cold to feel relief, teeth chattering and whole body shivering, and she packed the lock picks away in record time, shoving the whole box carelessly into her bag. The doorhandle turned quietly enough, but the door itself creaked loud enough to wake the dead as she opened it, making her freeze and wait for someone to pounce at her. Surely, whoever was in the house would know she was here now, if they hadn't heard her picking at the lock. Nothing came for her though, nothing but the warm light coming from the first room on the left, which spilled over the doorframe to entice her inside.
She stepped through the doorway slowly, leaving the door open behind her in case she needed a quick exit. There was no way any decent SHIELD agent wouldn't have heard it creak. It was warm inside the house, a welcome relief from the freezing night air just outside, and dark except for two lights – the one to the left, and another in a kitchen at the end of the hall. It was quiet too, only the low muttering of a TV breaking the silence. That was where her mark was, she guessed, though he couldn't be much of an agent if he could be caught watching TV.
Softly, she dropped her backpack to the ground and crept towards the living room, peeking around the corner. She only caught a glimpse of the face of her mark before jerking away from the doorway, a knife spinning through the air just centimetres from her face. Flattening herself against the wall, she took a deep breath in an attempt to calm her racing heart and then gathered herself, shifting away from the door and back towards her bag for the knife she'd stowed in a side pocket. The gun was towards the bottom of the bag, harder to reach – she didn't want to appear well armed, and she wasn't so good at shooting anyway. Not that the knife would help her, if the knife stuck firmly in the wall across from her was any indication of this guy's skill with ranged weapons.
She couldn't really afford to fight him, Imogen was slowly beginning to realise. She'd already knew that, but still, here she was armed with one knife and a significant amount of stupidity. Her plan had been to just walk in and befriend him? He was an agent on the run from an organisation he'd worked for a few hours ago, and was currently being pursued by numerous people trying to kill him. And even if he wasn't, she wasn't any good at making friends.
She took another deep breath, steeling herself. "Hello?" she called experimentally, back pressed firmly to the wall again. There was silence; then, the groan of a couch and the shuffling of feet across the worn carpet. A moment later, a man appeared in the gloomy hallway, several years her senior but no doubt just as capable as any younger agent. Fierce, storm-grey eyes met hers, testing her, and she glared right back with just the right amount of hostility.
"Who are you?" he demanded after a moment. There was a gun in his hand, but he didn't raise it, just fixed his eyes on her and waited for an answer.
"Imogen," she blurted out, and then collected herself. "Imogen Haylock. SHIELD Agent."
"SHIELD?" The gun in his hand twitched. "Dangerous name to be throwing around right now."
She shrugged, but the movement felt stiff and false. "Could be more dangerous to say HYDRA."
"Depends which side you're on." He eyed her speculatively, and she squirmed under his gaze. "How do I know you're not HYDRA coming to kill me? How do you know I'm not HYDRA, waiting to kill you?"
Imogen wanted to roll her eyes. "If you want to think like that, we'll be here all day. I don't have time for that."
"Well, I'm not HYDRA," he informed her stiffly. "I'm gonna need more proof that you aren't though."
"I thought this was a safe house for everyone," she protested half-hearted.
"I was here first," he replied. "My safe house, my rules. Proof of being a good guy, please."
"Here, then." She crouched down slowly next to her bag, one eye tracking the gun in his hand as she rummaged through it for her old SHIELD badge. Her hand closed around the edge of the leather case and she pulled it out, offering it to him.
He took it and flipped the case open, studying it for a second. "This has no meaning anymore," he said bitterly, tossing it back.
"Would I have kept it, if I was with HYDRA?" she challenged. "I think ritual badge burning might be one of their first orders of business; and it would be pretty suspicious for a HYDRA agent to be walking around with a SHIELD badge still on them."
He mulled it over, eyes staring over her head to the open doorway behind her, searching the night for something. "You're kind of young," he said eventually. "For a SHIELD agent."
"You're kind of old," she shot back.
A playful light lit up his eyes. "More experienced, don't you mean?"
Her response was flat. "I mean old."
He laughed, and the sound was so unexpected that it made her jump a little. "Alright kid, you can stay. Only one night though." He jerked his thumb towards the hall. "Rooms are that way."
"I'm not a kid," she grumbled, shouldering her bag and pushing past him. One eye remained on the gun in his hand until she was past, and then she was forced to turn her back and hope he wouldn't shoot her then and there. No gunshots rang through the hall though, just the shuffling of his feet again and the creaking of the door as he shut and locked it behind her.
Inexplicably, she found herself smiling as she walked away, though she hadn't meant to. It had been a while since she'd gone toe-to-toe with someone and walked away unscathed – or without scathing them.
The smile faded as she realised that soon, she'd have to kill him.
