OMG OMG OMG, this chapter is intense!
"Avenge Me" the prequel
I stumbled up the front steps, dragging my left leg behind me. I thought Coulson might at least get out of the car and help me inside, but he decided to giggle and park the car instead. I guess I deserved it. He told me that climbing the Chrysler building might end in disaster and, for the most part, he was wrong until the weirdo waiting at the top of it threw me off. A repelling arrow caught me half way, but I still rebounded off some scaffolding. I hit the ground eventually and there the smug SHIELD handler was with the bad guy tied up in the back of his convertible and a smile on his face. Some days I didn't know how Coulson beat me.
He offered to drive down to the Pop Tent on 86th street. I declined. The city had its benefits though I'd rather spend my time getting out of it when the opportunity provided itself. The hustle, bustle, crazy driving, thrumming life never appealed to me. I had enough of that in my day-to-day. Fury used to joke about buying me a farm one day. If he ever did, I might not leave it.
My hand reached out for the buzzer and depressed the button. The black out windows made it look like the place was abandoned for the night. The minute Jamiqua, or the alternate check in, Nurse Phyllis, opened the door all that peace and quiet changed. This clinic tended to be less busy than the others, despite its eight hour shift. I've been to some who were packed with wall-to-wall agents during busy seasons.
No one answered the first time. I hit the buzzer again and leaned into the window with my ear. I heard the thump of boots on the floor. Suddenly my agent half switched on before I even realized what happened. I scanned back to see where Coulson parked. He must have circled around back.
I grabbed the door handle and muscled it in, forgetting my possibly busted leg in the process. The door didn't give without a fight. I backed up, used the hand rail as a spring board and kicked my good leg against the lock. It took three attempts and finally, success. I burst into the front room and saw the virtual war zone almost instantly.
The dog scale on my left was covered in arterial spray. The three chairs along the side wall were thrown around the room. A body rested under two of them. I went there first, but the woman was already dead. On the right side of the front room were stacks of dog and cat food on white anchored shelves propped against the wall. Five chairs fit there, though today they too had been thrown around. A cork tack board above them had been ripped off and, I assumed, slammed against the back of another agent's head. Another dead body.
My heart sped up. Tonight Laura should be on shift. I knew that because I decided I liked her the last time I came through and we spent a romantic night and day together. I slept on her lap, she slept on my shoulder, I was covered in cortisone cream and hives, she hadn't showered in four days. I felt something click and, maybe she didn't think it did, because she laughed when I asked her out.
So maybe I knew when her shifts were, and maybe I only attneded this clinic since then, and maybe I came even for minor reasons, like the stubbed toe last week and the splinter four days before that. I think the constant being around made her warm up to me. I was still Agent Barton, that never changed, but she said it with less hostility than Jamiqua.
I wished I hadn't left my weapons in the car. I found a pen on the check-in counter which would serve for now. Jamiqua lay on the other side of the counter. I leaned over, moving the hair away from her neck to find a pulse, but instead discovered the ten inch knife wound that split her from ear to ear. It was precise, done by an expert, and severed both jugulars and carotids in a single swipe. She never had a chance.
I cursed and pulled back, wielding the Bic's ball point with the tip past my pinky and the rest in my palm. Anything could be a weapon in the right hands and I had an affinity for pens when there was nothing else. They had a balance to them, flew nicely through the air, and could cause considerable damage if used appropriately. I stalked up the hall, weapon in tow, and followed the sudden thunder of sounds emerging from the closest exam room.
There was a hard slap of hand meeting flesh followed by a choking scream. A body connected with something metallic, most likely the lift table, and a man began to shout.
"You better save him! I know you can! I don't care what they said, I don't care what you think! You don't do something you're dead! Got that?! Dead!"
I swallowed the spit forming in my mouth and slid up along the wall. The open door had a six inch crack which allowed me to peer inward at the scene playing out. I could only see two men. The one folded up at an odd angle on the floor and the one standing, covered in blood, and wielding a knife. As I watched, the knife wielder threw his fist out and connected with someone I couldn't see. The person hit the wall, glass shattered, and the door sprang open even more. I yanked back to avoid getting caught, but it was too late. .
I didn't recognize the agent, but I did know the doctor he threw around: Dr. Laura Smith.
Seeing me sent him on alert instantly. He grabbed the back of her white coat and yanked her up. Before I could stop him, her back squeezed against his chest and the bloody knife crossed her throat. Visions of seeing her end up like the nurse out front nearly made me blind with rage. Desperate, pleading eyes zeroed in on my. Laura was terrified.
"Drop it! Drop it or I'll kill her! I swear I will!" the agent screamed.
I held up my ball point. "Easy, man, it's a pen. It's just a pen. No big deal. I was just coming to sign in. Chill out for a second—"
"DROP IT!" he screamed, diving the knife into the flesh of her neck. Laura cried out in shock.
"Fine, fine, dropping it!" I said, letting my hand open.
"Don't play around with me. I know who you are! I know what you can do! Hawkeye, right? Hawkeye. The specialist. Secret agent man. No exit strategies. Nothing. Best SHIELD's got. What they send you here for? They say I cracked? They tell you that!"
Laura screamed again as the knife cut into her. I rolled forward on the balls of my feet, but the agent reeled back, dragging her with him. I vaguely wondered where exactly Coulson got off to, (I was later informed, he started a bidding war on some vintage Captain America trading cards on Ebay).
"Clint!" Laura choked on my first name. It was the first time I ever heard her use it. I held my hand out to her, hoping she understood. Stay still, trust me, don't move.
"Hey look man, I don't know you or what's going on here. Way I see it, some guy came in and shot up the place. Did you walk into this too? Your buddy there," I slowly eased inside again, trying not to show off how badly my leg held me back. "You find him like this? Laura, she's a great doctor. Pulled me out of a lot of worse jams. I can help, but I gotta get him on the table."
The suggested story I came up with resonated in the agent who desperately looked for a way out. He slowly nodded. "Ye-yeah. Yeah. I drove the car. Dropped him off. Walked in and this place was. He's not dead!" the voice escalated, nearly screaming again, "He ain't dead, got me!"
I held my hands a little higher, moved laterally along the exam table and stood over the body on the floor. The assailant moved with me, the opposite direction, yanking Laura backwards as he went.
"Hey, I get it. It's fine. Laura's the best doctor here. You know, she's done an extra four years of med stuff, right? Trying to be a board certified doc. Takes a lot of extra training. She's dealt with agents like us for over a year, She's got this. No one better to take your friend too. I'm just going to reach down here and turn him over. We need to get him on the table."
The man on the floor didn't move or breathe. From the .45 hole in the back of his head, I assumed he was also dead, despite what his buddy wanted to believe. Grief could drive men over the edge. I'd seen it happen time and time again in the field. Maybe one day it might happen to me, but it hadn't yet. I was lucky.
"Watch—watch his head, Hawkeye. Careful with him, he ain't good. He ain't dead."
"I know," I said gently, pandering to him. I could see in the reflection of the broken glass shards his hand slacken on the knife at Laura's throat. Taking the dead man's shoulder and thigh, I rolled him out from under the exam table. I placed my hand along his collar, and looked around the rest of him hoping I might find one of his firearms. I didn't. Desperately, I spun my head toward the living agent.
"He's alive!" I tried to sound shocked. "He's not breathing. We've got to get him up. Look, I got a busted leg, I can't lift him. You want him to live, help me!"
I shifted back, grabbed hold of the dead man's legs and made a big show of lifting. Franticly, the knife dropped from Laura's neck and he sprung toward me instead. The minute he took hold of the dead man's arms, I launched forward from the balls of my feet and tackled him. The man roared. He threw me sideways with amazing strength and came down at me with the blade. I grabbed his arm, deflecting it down and rammed my knee into his solar plexus. Air flew out of him with an "oof" of exhalation. At the same time, he grabbed me by the shirt front and wrestled me to my feet. We spun together like a couple of dancers and he cracked my back over the edge of the exam table. The knife came across my chest, separating a strip of flesh as it went. I cried out, wrapped my fingers around the table, and threw my body into his. We hit the wall together like two hammers colliding.
Clawing against his fingers to get the knife loose, I screamed at the stunned doctor. "RUN!"
Lithe as a deer, she bounded off without hesitation. At least she had good sense.
The agent clubbed me in the side of the head and I collapsed against the back of the lift table. The world spun around in jagged circles as my body fought to keep me alive. My good leg kicked out, connecting with his knee. His hand wrapped around my neck and together we went crashing into the floor tile. My face rebounded and blood gushed from a new cut under my eye. I'd sealed my hand around his wrist and twisted, turning it backward until I could hear the bone snap. He screamed and the knife hit the ground between us.
I clambered for it. His elbow came down on and swept my chin from the bottom up. My neck popped with the force of it and for a second time I felt too stunned to move. He was strong, I granted the guy that much. Natasha handled this one-on-one combat better than I did, though she taught me a lot about dirty fighting. I preferred to stay at a distance, sniper, and call shots. No reason to get my face busted up if I could just kill everyone from four hundred yards out.
I heard the scrape of the blade along the floor tile and knew he must have it again. Reflexively, I threw my hands up just in time to stop the downward progression of the knife searching out my left eye socket. I didn't have to hold out very long. Suddenly the man's hands slackened. His body heaved, pitched over to the side, and I heard three pop-pop-pops erupted in the enclosed space. Coulson. About time.
"Clint?! Clint, can you hear me?"
I could hear, but seeing became the problem. I forced my eyes to try and focus on the face swirling over mine. Two cold hands captured my ears and steadied me. I blinked.
"Laura?" I asked.
The hands were shaking. I smelled burnt gunpowder on them, saw the wide, expressive eyes, and the pale drawn face. She was scared out of her mind.
"I can't believe you did that! How did you know? Oh my God, you're bleeding!" The hands pulled away from my face to palpate over my chest. I could tell it wasn't too deep, but the line of shredded flesh did stretch from the middle of my right chest down to my left ninth rib. I tried to sit up, but she wouldn't have that and pushed me right back down.
"Is he dead?" I had to know. I'd never seen her shoot before so had no notion whether she'd even hit him.
Terrified, she looked over at the slumped assailant. Ignoring her pressure to keep me down, I got up on my elbows and rolled toward him. There were two bullet holes in the side of his face. The third was dangerously near to hitting me. She'd pitched the gun beneath the table.
"Hand me that." I instructed.
She eyed the weapon.
"It's not a good idea leaving a loaded, jacked, firearm there. Hand it to me." I told her. Carefully, she complied. I locked on the safety, ejected the bottom clip, and emptied the chamber. The bullet and clip, I chucked into the hallway should either of the dead men flanking me decide to come to life.
"Outside, red convertible. Agent Coulson. Get him." I instructed. Laura scrambled to her feet and left instantly. She never fought me on the decision to take off, a novel prospect. And she handled a gun fairly well for a newbie, which only aided in her attractiveness. I thought more about how much I wanted to just steal the woman off to Vegas and never come back than what I'd just walked into.
By the time she returned with Coulson, I had already made it to my feet. I sat on one of the exam room chairs and pressed a wet paper towel beneath my eye. A small smirk fired Coulson's way.
"Before you say anything, I didn't shoot anyone," I said wittily.
"Can I take you anywhere?" Phil asked.
Laura returned to me. She knelt down, spreading my shirt apart to look at the torn flesh beneath. Concerned, Coulson finished checking the bodies and went down beside her. I knew it wasn't bad.
"Well, ma'am, it's like this. I was in a fight with King Kong and I twisted my leg up in a pile of rebar I accidentally ran into after falling about fifteen floors off the Chrysler building. Then, you know, a guy slashed my chest, threw me against the floor, and I saved the day."
Laura looked up, her chocolate brown eyes diving into mine. "You big dummy!" she exclaimed. She leaned into me, pressing her lips into mine. It was the best form of pain meds I'd ever had. Like any good, first kiss it was over too fast. Shocked at what she'd done, where she'd done it, Laura pulled away from me. Doctor Smith returned, and suddenly I became the patient again. Our moment ended. Having any moment at all, gave me a little smidge of hope.
He is so cute:) I just love how hard he tries.
and what awesome action, right? Go Laura for finding a gun!
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