A/N: leave a review so I know you're reading? ;)

oooooooooo

10 - Bonds That Are Broken

Imogen was walking the streets of Queens when she felt the familiar rush of air that meant Pietro had found her.

Sure enough, he appeared in front of her with a lazy grin, making her stop in her tracks lest she run into him. She considered trying to elbow him aside, but knew it would never work and settled for glowering at him instead.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. It was a fair question, considering she'd specifically not told him she was coming here.

"Looking for you," he replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"And you just happened to come looking in Queens?" she questioned. "Are you psychic as well as fast?"

She'd meant it sarcastically, but he was completely serious when he said, "No, that is Wanda." Clearly, his sense of humour was lacking. "I went to your house, but you were not there, so I asked the griesti, and she says you are here."

She gave him an annoyed look. "What's a griesti?"

"The woman," he explained unhelpfully, gesturing towards the sky. "In Stark's tower."

"Oh, FRIDAY?" she said in disbelief.

"Ja," he crowed triumphantly. "FRIDAY, that one." He said it as a wild mess of syllable that only vaguely made sense, like his tongue just wasn't capable of saying FRIDAY properly.

"How do you not know her name by now?" Imogen asked.

"It is hard to say," he replied defensively.

"How?"

"Es nezinu! Just is." He looked vaguely annoyed at her now, and she couldn't help but feel a little satisfied at breaking his cool façade. Maybe now he would leave her alone, she thought as she ducked around him, getting too close for her own comfort, and continued on her way.

He was too quick to shake, falling in beside her just a few steps later. "Why are you here anyway?"

Imogen considered lying to him, going somewhere else and coming back later without him, but there was no point; no matter what she did, he seemed determinded to keep following her around, like there was nothing else to do in New York. "I'm looking for Ruby," she told him, once she'd made up her mind.

"You think she is here?" he asked dubiously, looking around.

Imogen shrugged. "She has an apartment here, I might as well check if she came back to it or not."

"But HYDRA will have found it, no?"

"There's only one way to find out," she said resolutely, and stopped in front of Ruby's building. It was a big, cold complex, a few stories higher than Imogen's home and containing way more than eight apartments. There were no barbeques on the roof here, she was willing to bet. This was the sort of place where you barely know the name of the person across the hall, let alone everything about them.

"What if they are here?" Pietro continued, not one to give up. "You will fight them on you own?" There was a challenge in his voice, one she didn't like.

"I don't need you," she snapped back as they entered the building. Second floor, FRIDAY had said, first on the left. She headed for the stairs.

"Everywhere you go you are in a fight," he pointed out unhelpfully, ignoring the way she stomped up the stairs in an effort to drown him out. "I think you need all the help you will get."

"Well you're no help at all, so feel free to leave any time you want."

His eyes narrowed. "You just say that," he claimed. "You don't mean it."

"Don't I?"

She didn't hear his response because they reached the top of the stairs, and then right there was Ruby's apartment. It wasn't very inviting – the number had fallen off the door, leaving only a vague imprint where it had once hung, and someone had replaced the flimsy standard lock with a fat, complicated-looking deadlock. It stuck out like a sore thumb, all shiny metal in the midst of faded wallpaper and peeling paint. Ruby would have almost been better off sticking to a crappy lock like all the other doors in the building.

"Do we knock?" Pietro asked, when she didn't immediately move from the top of the stairs.

Imogen shrugged. "Don't know what else we're going to do," she said, and pushed herself forward to knock on the door before he could say anything else.

The knock echoed loudly down the hallway and then faded to nothing. For a long time, not a sound answered, not even a neighbour come to see who was knocking and why they were here. It wasn't weird, Imogen told herself as she knocked a second time. This happened in her own building, visitors getting lost or knocking on the doors of empty apartments accidentally. Everyone usually ignored them too, unless Clint was there to care.

"Maybe we should just break in?" Pietro suggested as they stood in the silence again.

"I don't think that lock is breakable," Imogen replied, nodding towards the deadlock.

"I could break it," he claimed, just as someone walked up the stairs behind them. They gave him a weird look as they passed, and Imogen glared at them in response until they averted their eyes and disappeared up the next flight of stairs.

"Feel free to try," she said as soon as they were alone again. Pietro took a step towards the door but didn't get any further, as a scraping and then several clicks sounded from the other side of it. The door opened a crack, and Ruby appeared in the gap, staring at them.

"D-don't break my door," she said, eyes on Pietro, who she'd picked as the primary offender.

Pietro threw his hands in the air and backed away. "I am not breaking anything," he claimed. Ruby didn't look convinced.

"Ruby?" Imogen said in disbelief. "You really did escape?"

"They were g-going to send me to INTEL," the other girl said. "And you w-weren't coming, a-and I remembered that man, the night they found us…"

"I was coming," Imogen interrupted. "I've been looking everywhere, but I couldn't find you."

"N-no." Ruby shook her head and opened the door a little bit wider. "You were t-there the night I left. I saw y-you run away."

Imogen stopped short. Surely Ruby meant the night that she'd come face to face with the silent, homeless-looking guy in the HYDRA base, the one who had almost blown her brains out. She hadn't seen Ruby anywhere that night; unless she'd missed her in her panic and the darkness…

"Y-you didn't know," Ruby guessed, and nodded to herself. "I-I was there in the shadows. I c-called out, but you left."

"There was a man-" Imogen began, and Ruby's face turned dark.

"I know. He s-saved me after you left. A-and then he followed me."

"He almost killed me," Imogen tried again. "I had to go. I didn't know you were still there, or if you were there at all, and I couldn't fight HYDRA on my own-" She didn't like the pleading tone to her voice, or being on the backfoot while Ruby accused her of all the things she had done wrong the past few weeks. She didn't like the way Ruby was looking at her either, like this was a battle and she was the enemy, and Ruby would throw her across the hallway at any second.

"You broke your promise," Ruby spat, and that was the accusation that hurt the monst. "You said if I helped you I'd n-never be their prisoner again, that you'd save me. A-and you left me there to save yourself and didn't come back."

That was unfair, Imogen decided. "I tried," she snapped angrily. "Do you want me to die failing to save you? I didn't realise asking you for help was a life debt."

Ruby shrunk back in on herself. "I-it wasn't – I-I-" She was struggling to find a better way to get her point across; or to find any words at all. "Y-you were right there," she whispered finally, voice shaking. "Y-you couldn't s-see me."

"Maybe I would have if you ever came out of the shadows," Imogen replied, and her voice was hard and unsympathetic.

Ruby curled away at the force of her voice, knuckles turning white from the strength of her grip on the door. "G-get out," she said, as forcefully as she could with a voice that trembled with fear. "I-I can't help you anymore. Don't c-come back here again, o-or I'll make you regret it."

"Yeah, I bet you will," Imogen threw at her immediately. Ruby glared at her, but didn't answer other than to slam the door in their faces. As soon as she was gone, Imogen turned to the stairs, not caring if Pietro was following or not.

"What was that?" Pietro asked, appearing at her side within seconds, as usual.

"Nothing," Imogen huffed and stomped down the stairs.

"No," he pressed. "Something. Why did you fight with her?"

"What else was I supposed to do?" Imogen demanded. "Obviously she doesn't want my help anymore, and she wasn't going to listen to me."

"So what do we do now?"

Imogen shrugged. "Find INTEL another way."

"You don't want to go after HYDRA anymore?" Pietro asked. They stepped out onto the street, back into the late afternoon. Imogen turned to glance back up at the windows that would belong to Ruby's apartment.

"No," she said, but the rest of her argument was lost as she just spotted the other girl in one window, half hidden by a curtain. Ruby wasn't looking down to make sure they were leaving though; her eyes were on the building across the street. It was another apartment building, almost exactly the same as Ruby's except for the high fence and danger signs that surrounded it. The windows were burnt out and brick walls were crumbling; either a victim of the New York alien attack, or just a very unlucky building. Imogen scanned its windows, looking for whatever had caught Ruby's attention.

"What is it?" Pietro asked beside her, his frown just visible in her peripheral vision.

There. On the second floor, she was sure she saw movement in one window. "Didn't Ruby say the man who attacked HYDRA followed her out of the base?" she asked Pietro, who still looked confused.

"Ja," he replied. "Why?"

"I think I found our next lead," she said. Without waiting for him to reply, she marched across the street towards the building, leaving him to follow in her wake.

oooooooooo

Will was almost asleep in the back of the van when his earpiece beeped loud enough to blow his ears out. Jumping, he ripped it away from his ear, and then woke up enough to realise that turning down the volume would make it stop. It beeped again as he replaced it, much quieter now, and this time he answered the call.

"Will?" Nora's voice filtered through the ringing in his ear, and he sighed and stretched back out on the back seat he was using as a bed.

"What's up, Nora?" he asked.

"I just got a message from home back," Nora said. In the background, he could hear the tapping of her fingers on a keyboard and the low rumble of a car's engine. If he sat up, he'd probably be able to see the front of the other van, the one she and Murphy were riding in. "Grace Weber turned herself in."

He frowned, trying to remember which one of their targets was Grace Weber. "Is that the one from Idaho?" he asked. "Small, blonde, runs a Twitter account or something."

"Everyone has a Twitter account," Nora replied. "But yes, the one from Idaho. A team is going to pick her up now."

"One less job for us to do then." The van hit a bump in the road, and he had to reach up to grab the back of the seat he was lying on to stop himself from falling. A moment later, he heard something fall on Nora's end of the line as they hit the same bump. "How far away are we from the other one?"

"About to pull up, actually." As she said it, the van dropped speed and turned a sharp corner, continuing on only a little further before drawing to a halt. Sighing, Will sat up and stretched, and then climbed through to open the door and lead his small team out.

He stepped out of the van to find himself in the midst of the slums of Chicago, in a cold, wet night. Nora was already waiting for him, standing under the only streetlight that didn't flicker and struggle to light the road. She was busy talking to Murphy, who was leaning out the door of the van that held all his tech. He handed her a gun as Will approached, which she tucked into the back of her jeans.

"Ready?" he asked when he reached them. Their conversation stopped abruptly.

"As we'll ever be," she replied, calmer than she had ever been before a mission. She was hiding her nerves under it, he knew; it was what hadn't made her cut out for SHIELD work, and a problem she was still working through. He ignored it for now. If Nora froze, there were plenty of other agents to pick up the slack. It wasn't like they were on a particularly difficult mission or anything.

"What are we looking at here?" he asked, glancing around. It wasn't much of a neighbourhood, just a street full of rundown or boarded up old houses. The one right in front of them had a front yard full of junk, from a mouldy, sagging sofa, to a rusted oven, to an old car with a crumpled hood and no wheels.

Murphy poked his head out a little further to point at a house with peeling blue paint and a front fence that was held together by bits of wire two doors down. "Three people live there, the girl and her parents. Her dad thinks he's a real tough guy, and he's not going to be happy about this." He withdrew back to his computer inside the van.

"I don't care if he's happy about it or not," Will replied, eyes on the house. "Have you got the teams ready?"

"They're moving into place now," Nora replied. "We should get moving."

"Good luck," Murphy called from the dark van, and then slid the door closed. Nora started off towards the house without a second thought, probably because if she gave it any thought she'd never go, and Will followed, one hand close to his gun just in case. Hanson was waiting for them outside, crouched down behind the front fence. Will motioned for him to join them, and one by one they vaulted almost soundlessly over the gate and crept up a garden path of cracked concrete and wilted lawn. What a girl with such interesting powers as this one held was doing living in a place like this, he would never understand. From what Nora had told him, Christina Paterson was a powerful telepath capable of invading minds and planting thoughts. She should be living in a castle, with everything she could ever want around her, but apparently using her talent for exploitation had never occurred to her.

Nora picked the lock on the front door easily, and pushed it open just enough for Burnett to slide inside. It creaked as she opened it so she didn't dare open it any further, or close it behind her.

"Stay here, Nora," Will murmured to her, and gestured for her to guard the door. The rest of their information on the girl indicated that she was likely to try and run if she had half a chance. She had not left INTEL on a good note.

As Nora took up her position, the sound of fighting broke out unexpectedly in the next room, a grunt and a small crash, and then the smack of something heavy colliding with human flesh. Will pulled out his gun and picked his way through the dark living room, Hanson hot on his heels.

He reached the door into a kitchen just in time to spot a baseball bat flying towards his face, and ducked and rolled ungracefully away from it, hitting the wall and the floor hard. Hanson went barrelling past him to tackle his attacker, a tall, heavily built man with twice as much muscle as anyone on their team. The man barely budged under Hanson's attack, but instead dropped his baseball bat to better utilise his fists.

With a grunt of effort, Will picked himself up off the floor and raised his gun, just as the man dropped Hanson. "Stop," he demanded. The man jumped back in surprise, and his hands shot into the air.

From somewhere else in the house, there was a short scream. Will resisted the urge to glance towards it. "Please don't hurt her," the man said, his eyes locked on the wall through which the sound must have come. "She hasn't done anythin' wrong. Hasn't broken any of the rules. She's just a girl."

"This isn't about any rules," Will replied. "More of a job offer."

"She's not doin' anything for you," the man said, and now he was firm, like he had any say at all in the matter. "She won't do those…things with her mind you keep tryin' to use her for. I forbid it."

"You forbid it?" Will laughed. "Sorry, but no. This ends two ways – either you step away and your daughter comes to work with us for a while, or I move you out of the way, and take her forever. Your choice."

The man eyed the gun, and Will tensed in preparation for him to try and go after it. "I ain't movin'," the man said and then lunged, driving at Will with all of his weight.

Will pulled the trigger as they went down, and the gun went off with a bang that sounded twice as loud as usual in the quiet night air. He landed flat on his back with the other man on top of him, bleeding out of a hole in his chest, and pushed him off as fast as he could, sitting up just as Nora burst into the room.

"It's alright," he said quickly, before she could do anything dramatic. "Just dealing with a problem. He might even live if his wife decides to call an ambulance instead of the police."

Nora breathed a visible sigh of relief. "They've got the girl," she informed him. "We should go before anyone comes to investigate."

Will climbed to his feet and followed her. He didn't cast a look back to the man on the ground, struggling to breathe through a collapsed lung. He didn't stick around to see the girl's anguish as she was marched past her father either, or to hear the cry of his wife as she fell to her knees beside him. Will's job here was done.