Fortunate Misfortune
Prologue-
"Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned" - Buddha
"Fire at will." Barton's command came through her earpiece.
Kat looked through her scope, the crosshairs finding the back of a balding head. She pulled the trigger without hesitation. The soft sound of the tranquilizer shooting from the gun was all that was heard. The next second, the man in her scope crumpled to the floor.
"Target is down," Kat whispered, "I repeat: the target is down."
"Advance with caution." Barton replied.
Kat motioned for her fellow agents to stay put as she lept stealthily down from the tree she was hidden in. She landed on the balls of her feet, shifting her weight towards her toes as she landed; no sound was made as she crouched low. She carefully slung her rifle over her back, drawing her pistol instead, as she crept towards the run-down house. As she crept closer to the house Barton spoke again.
"Any signs of movement, Agent Waters?"
Kat peered cautiously through the window, it had one hole where her tranquilizer had gone through, and shook her head, "No. It's just him in there, Agent Barton."
"Good. You may proceed inside the house."
She crept to the wooden door to her left and darted inside the seemingly unimportant house. Her eyes shifted around the room; taking it all in. There were countless machines lining the walls that she would never have any hopes of understanding or working. There was a wall of cabinets to her left, one of the doors was open, and she could see numerous containers of a mysterious liquid inside. In the middle of the room was a chair that had, what, to her, looked like a rather large laser, pointing to it. Her eyes finally settled on the balding man laying face-down on the floor in the center of the room beside the chair.
She eased out of her defensive stance, and hurried over to him. She pressed two glove-less fingers to his throat; feeling satisfied at the steady pulse beneath her finger-pads. Kat set down her pistol to lift up the man by his underarms. She had dragged him just out of the doorway, when a small beeping sound caught her attention. Kat furrowed her brow, and dropped the balding man unceremoniously in the dirt. She crept back inside the house-turned-laboratory, and searched for the sound.
"Agent Waters, what are you doing?" Barton's annoyed voice drifted through her ears.
"I hear something." She hushed him.
"Agent, whatever it is, it's none of our concern. Gather the target, and report back to-"
Kat reached up and jerked the earpiece out, silencing his nagging voice. Her eyes swept the room once more, and she crouched down to pick up her pistol. She spun in a slow circle in the middle of the room, ignoring the laser pointed in her direction. What the hell was making that beeping sound. If it was a bomb, she needed to deactivate it immediately so as not to draw attention to the house from the surrounding neighborhood.
She straightened out of her stance, her eyes sweeping ever corner of the lab. That's when she saw it: a device that was similar in shape to an alarm clock, but the numbers on it didn't tell the time. She furrowed her brow for a moment at the numbers that were counting down on the device.
Her fingers hastily shoved her earpiece back in her ear as she spoke, "Barton! I think I found something!"
She watched as the numbers counted slowly down from five minutes. Was it a bomb?
"What, Agent?"
"Uhm- I'm not sure," she edged closer to the device, picking it up in her hands, "Maybe a bomb?"
"Well, deactivate it!"
She flipped the device over in her hands, and saw an opening. She dug her finger into the crack, and opened the back of the device. Wires upon wires tumbled out of the back, and she huffed impatiently. The numbers on the front now at four minutes.
"There's a bunch of wires, Agent Barton. What do I do?"
There was a moment of tense silence, as she peered at the multi-colored wires before her.
"Cut the green one." Fury's calm voice sounded in her ear.
She stiffened slightly, having not been aware that Director Fury was on this mission. She shook it off, and returned her attention to the box. Kat's hands were eerily calm as she pulled a knife out of her utility belt, and spread the green wire taut. The numbers on the front read three minutes.
Kat sliced the green wire.
She caught one last glimpse of the numbers on the front dropping rapidly to 0:00 before the laser in front of her went off. Her eyes shot up in surprise, and the bright green light of the laser was the last thing she saw before her world went black.
FIVE YEARS LATER
The raven-haired woman sat in the farthest corner of the beaten-up bus, drawing no attention to herself. Her clothes were baggy and dull, her hair long and ratty, and her face covered by an old baseball cap. She remained perfectly still as the bus bounced and shuddered across the barren road. The other passengers paid her no attention. She was merely part of the background, their eyes skimmed over her as if she wasn't even there.
If anyone had actually taken the time to look, they would have thought she was asleep: the perfect picture of serenity. Her head was propped against the cool window of the bus, her eyes closed, and her body seemed relaxed. They wouldn't have noticed the way her fists were clenched a little too tightly around the bag in her lap, or the uneven way her chest fell up and down. She was very much awake and aware of her surroundings.
She held her eyes shut as she focused on breathing: in, out, in, out. The bus swayed again, her head banging rather roughly against the window. A minor flash of irritation shot through her, but it became magnified to a feeling of rage. She gripped her bag tightly, her nails cutting into her palms. In, out, in, out. Her chest began to rise and fall more unevenly.
"Happy thoughts." She mumbled bitterly to herself.
An image of Peter Pan flashed through her mind, and she scoffed at her own childishness. But any thought was better than angry thoughts. She grasped onto the image of Peter Pan. His cartoon features, the russet color of his hair, the impish smirk, his little fairy, the green clothes. The green clothes. The green of Peter's shirt morphed into the piercing green ray of a laser, and she flinched violently backwards into her seat.
Her eyes snapped open, her dilated pupils contracting wildly as sunlight hit her face. She let out a shaky breath, and wiped her sweaty palms on her baggy, dirty jeans. Now was not the time for a flashback. She bit her lip as she realized how even her own head was full of dangerous triggers. She cast her gaze around the bus. The wrinkled old men to her right playing chess with clearly overused pieces, the irritated mother in front of her clutching a whining baby to her chest, the group of tired, over-worked men at the front, and the few individuals in between.
Her gaze rested for a second on the tired men at the front, eyeing their dirty, tattered clothes, and the premature wrinkles around their eyes. Their skin was tan and leathery from working outside all the time. Her eyes dropped to her own skin that, was usually fair, had been burned to an ugly shade of red. She noticed the few patches of tanned skin that speckled her arms: a sign that her sunburn was healing, and a tan setting in instead.
That's good, she thought to herself, a tan would help her blend in more easily in India.
The bus finally came to a shuddering stop, the engine wheezing a bit as it did so, and the woman snapped her attention to the window. The sight of her designated city drew her to her feet. She slung her bag over her back, and kept her head low as she exited the bus. She kept her eyes trained on her beat-up sneakers as the bus slowly pulled away, before glancing up anxiously at the city before her.
The streets were filled with cars that were foreign to her, the dirty roads lined with vendors and colorful buildings, and the streets thronged with countless people. The sound of beeping horns, loud voices, and barking dogs filled the street. She glanced to her left at the sign that marked the city.
Calcutta
She turned her head downwards, her hair falling like a curtain around her face, and a small smirk graced her lips as she took her first step into the new city.
AN-
So I noticed the lack of Bruce/OC fanfics out there, which upset me because I LOVE Bruce. I've always been a huge fan of the Hulk, and so yea, I decided to make my own fanfic. Sorry for any errors: I didn't check over it before posting.
Please leave a review. They inspire me to write more.
-Ranny