Duality
Summary: His misery was the gasoline poised to set the world ablaze. Her love was the only thing that could suffocate the embers of his rage. They are both light and darkness and when put together they are balance. Double SI-OC.
Chapter Two
Madame Masque
Afghanistan
December 24th 2007
A six-teen wheeler was ten miles outside Kabul when a tire popped leaving the men inside stuck in the edge of civilization as the cold night air of the desert filtered into the stationary vehicle.
The driver of the truck turned to his passenger and cursed at him in Arabic before pointing his rifle directly at the other man and demanding him to step out of the car to fix the tire. The other man stood and complied, getting out of the car and heading around back to grab the spare tire from the bed of the trailer.
A thud sounded from the back of the truck as footsteps grew closer to the driver and then the sound of the wheel rolling down the trailer. The sound of the tire hitting the ground would be the last sound heard by the driver until the door swung open and the passenger took his seat about five minutes later.
"Is everything fine?"
"Yes, the wheel is fixed. Continue on."
The driver angled his gun directly at his passenger and spoke again.
"You didn't put the tools back."
"I did. Now go, time is running out."
"Your accent betrays you.Now who the hell are you?"
His passenger turned his head to face him, his beard and facial features looked exactly like the man seated next to him, but he knew that accent did not belong to the other man. "Are you some sort of devil?" his gun remained trained on the other man.
Before the driver could shoot, a blade slid tactically out the sleeve of his passenger's shirt and in one swift slash the other man's throat was slit and one last gargle escaped his ravaged vocal cords before falling dead.
The passenger shoved the dead driver out of the truck before slipping into the driver's seat. His hands gripped the steering wheel and continued down the road for several miles until turning into what looked like a vacant building. When he parked the truck a bright storm light turned on and directly shined into the face of the Passenger.
A man tapped the butt end of a rifle against the door and the Passenger stepped out. He was tall and well built with a grim expression clinging to his features. His skin was a fair bit darker than average for a man around here. His voice was deep and stern when he asked the question in Arabic;
"Where is Amir? I was told this was a two man delivery team. Where is the other man?"
"Amir was sick. I had to drop him to make the delivery. It might be a while before his wives let him leave his house."
The man with the rifle looked to the back, "Is everything in the back?" the passenger nodded before stepping towards the trunk but the man raised his voice, "Stop, my men will check!" he gestured to the rest of his men who poured out of the abandoned building. There were about twelve men with old out-dated weapons that lingered from the Soviet-Afghan war. They pulled up the back of the truck and all twelve stepped inside.
The man with the rifle, whom the passenger now assumed was the leader of the group gestured for him to follow. "Come, while my men check the weapons we will talk about your payment of your job." the leader began to walk towards the building.
Inside of the building there was a small stairwell that looked like it was about to cave in at any moment as the steel trembled from the weight of their footsteps. They approached a line door with a men standing with rifle in hand outside the door. The leader opened the door up and stepped inside and just as the Passenger followed suit, he felt the butt of a rifle dig into the side of his skull.
The Passenger fell to the ground and by the time he raised his focus, a pistol was in the hand of the leader, pointed right in the Passenger's face. The man standing behind him hoisted him up to stand face to face with the infuriated leader who clicked off the safety of his gun.
"Who the fuck are you? Some American pig? Speak before I cover thewalls with your infidel brains. Do you know what country and people you stand with? Your filthy western accent taints the beautiful language of Islam you wretch!"
"Your mother is...a whore!Damn her spirit to the lowest depths of hell where her soul-"
The Leader pulled the trigger of the gun and expected to feel the cool shower of blood burst from the brains of the infidel to cover his face, but instead the sound of a metallic 'clink' sounded and all of a sudden the Leader began to stumble back as blood rushed from his own bullet reflecting off the mask directly into his gut.
The form of the Passenger warped as the well built man thinned into a lithe woman wearing a golden mask as shoulder length black hair fell down from her head-dress. Her clothing became loose and the man gripping her arms lost a hold of her smaller arms for only a second, but that was all the woman needed before she slipped loose and landed an elbow into the chest of the larger man. The woman picked the pistol up from the ground and trained it on the man who was currently reaching for his rifle on the ground.
"Don't fucking touch it!"
The Woman yelled to the man who grabbed the handle of the gun despite her warning. The Woman pulled the trigger and shot the man directly in the head as he fell back, slumped against the door.
The Woman shifted her attention to the Leader who was bleeding all over from the bullet wound in his gut. She tapped on her ear piece, "Move on the building, now! Priority target is down and in urgent condition. Aid needed in office on second floor." she turned the com off and pressed down on the wound.
"We are about to engage, keep him breathing for five minutes."
The voice of Natasha Romanov came over the earpiece.
The Woman knew that would be far too long with the current condition of the Leader. By the time they would arrive it would be too little to late. The Woman was unsure that the necessary information would be present on any type of digital records so it was imperative that she kept this man alive at all costs.
She needed something to cauterize the wound and she needed to do it fast. Immediately she turned back to the rifle on the ground. She grabbed it by the barrel and removed the magazine before tapping her wristband and inputting the command for her gloves to intensify the gravitational field around the barrel of the gun to the point where the metal collapsed in on itself and the metal of the barrel scraped against itself, creating friction. After a half minute the heat became almost unbearable and the Woman shifted her grip of the gun to the handle before angling the searing hot metal right into the wound.
The Leader cried out in agony for a second before the Woman pulled the broken barrel from the wound. This proved to be mostly successful as the bleeding looked to have almost completely stopped as the man lie with his body shaking as shock and adrenaline coursed through his veins.
In four minutes the door to the office swung open and Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov stood on the other end. Clint's eyes shifted down to the injured terrorist on the ground and he hurriedly began to take in his condition. "Shit it looks like this guy lost a lot of blood, Natasha come help me lift him up!" the red headed assassin complied and gripped the man by the feet before Clint hoisted him up by his shoulders.
Clint turned to the Woman and spoke, "Mia are you good to walk out of here on your own? You look a little dazed." Mia pulled the mask off her face to reveal her natural short curly brown hair and soft pale white skin that is marred by a rather large scar that starts where her cheek ends of the left side of her face going all the way up to just under the eye lid. Sweat dribbled down Mia's forehead for a moment before she nodded to Barton, "N-Need to work on my Arabic, I have a bad accent." Clint accepted Mia's response before carefully moving towards the door while Romanov backed out of the door.
Mia stood a little shell shocked but not too much worse for wear. Actually, that would be a bit of an understatement because her head hurt like hell. Before Fury gave her this mission she hadn't had thought that her life would be nearly taken twice because of a damn bad accent. This meant a lot of time listening, mimicking, researching proper pronunciations, also known as a very annoying process.
But for now Mia had to focus on finishing this shit show of a mission. A lone computer sat on the desk in the back of the office and Mia slipped into the small seat right in front of the terminal and plugged in a flash drive. Once she bypassed the password and got into the Tor browser installment she went onto the dark web to the encrypted chat room that had SHIELD had pinged originating from this location. She opened the program stored in the flash drive and pulled up old chat logs. Her eyes scanned the page for a few moments before finding and saving the logs to her drive.
Once the necessary information was taken from the computer, Mia crushed the CPU and monitor, leaving no trace of the machine and left the building. Once she got out front she was greeted with two black trucks. Out of one of the cars came Maria Hill from the passenger side seat and Phil Coulson circled around to meet her.
Mia briefed the pair on on what was inside the building and the two walked in together. Out of the third car stepped Nick Fury. The man's one eye told her that he was anything but pleased with her. Honestly though, Mia was probably too tired to care what Nick thought of her performance as the job got done.
"Are you hurt?"
Mia was shocked to say the least, "What?" her mouth formed the words without thinking and this seemed to agitate Nick.
"Are you injured? Shot, beaten, concussed? Any injury because this nearly went from a stealth op to a shoot out! For someone who deals in deception that was a lot more gunfire than we were expecting!"
"Look Nick! They heard my accent, all right? I would like to see you not only learn a language in two weeks but also be able to use the right regional dialect."
Fury scoffed. "Let's cut the bullshit, Stark. It's obvious you're all right if you can still argue like a petulant teenager. Now get in the car, we need to talk."
Mia knew there was no room to argue and got in the passenger seat of the car and Nick went back a round to the driver's seat and got in the car. Nick locked the doors and spoke, "Audio recording off." and the car's system turned on, "Audio Recording Turned off." it stated in a monotone voice before leaving a small moment of silence between Nick and Mia before the Director of SHIELD spoke.
"So what did you find in there?"
"Chat logs that detailed the exact route taken by unit 107, our suspicion was correct; the origin of this info leak was from our own building. Now we have proof that SHIELD is compromised."
"Well I actually believe you now, which is a good start. There was a good chance if you were wrong about this that I would have you committed to a state asylum for delusional schizophrenia."
Mia felt exasperated by Nick's reluctance to trust her, "Really? I thought we were past this by now when I told you about your little trip during the 90's with details that only you know." her arms crossed her chest in indignation.
"A broken clock is still right twice a day. I've heard people crazier than you who are right about what happened on the dark side of the moon, but that's not what's important right now. If anything you just told me is true then I have a really big motherfucking update for you. My old friend Alexander Pierce just convinced Captain America to sign up to work for STRIKE."
Mia's eyes widened at the revelation. "Fury, that division is the most rotten egg in the entire HYDRA slash SHIELD carton. How did this happen? News of what happened to the 107 shouldn't be public yet! Why the hell is he switching divisions?"
"The Captain shot two of his own men to death a week ago in a village about ten miles west of here. I don't feel too bad for them considering the vile shit they were doing but the WSC thought that it was a good idea to ensure that Carter didn't cause an international incident by grounding him in SHIELD."
Mia knew this was bad news. The existence of Captain James Carter had confounded her ever since his face came across her television as he was declared the new Cap. There was no other Cap than Steve Rogers in the movies that Mia recalled from her other life and the rest of her memories were accurate. HYDRA getting their hands on another super soldier could be catastrophic and shift the time line completely and then she would be blind just like everyone else to the future.
Nick spoke up. "So tell me, how does this end? Is Carter a threat or ally?"
"I don't know...he didn't exist in the timeline I remember. There was only one Captain America and that was Steve Rogers Sr and he shouldn't be awake for another four years when you find him frozen in the Valkyrie by Greenland. All I know is that STRIKE is HYDRA's main force within SHIELD. I don't know the new Cap's moral code or what HYDRA has let him know but Pierce could definitely exploit having the symbol of America as his henchmen whether he sided with them or if he gets turned into another Winter Soldier."
"So you don't know? Shit Stark! I'm out here completely off the record and the off the record of things happening off the record because of your so called visions of the future. If you can't tell me that Captain America is or is not a threat that is a big goddamn problem!"
Mia had dreaded this conversation ever since she decided to let Nick know a few aspects of the future such as the HYDRA infestation and the rise of the Avengers and the coming battle with Thanos. She mostly dreaded talking about the differences because in a way it invalidated everything that she knew about this Universe because of the butterfly effect that likely began when she was born.
Before Mia could respond. Nick raised a hand and shushed her. "Look, your information has been helpful so far, but gaps in your knowledge makes it hard to trust you. I know that may not be big deal to you since I'm pretty sure you know what happened the last time I trusted someone, but I can't afford to have my judgement to be altered by you so you're gonna have to stop telling me about the future unless we can start patching the holes. Starting with finding out anything you can about Captain Carter, we can get you close but you need to make sure that he comes to trust you enough to air dirty laundry or shoot your ass. Either works. This will be a full time Op off the books, and this is gonna keep you on American soil for however long it takes for you to figure out Carter's allegiance and how deep HYDRA goes."
Mia stuck her tongue out at him like a defiant child." Of course you want him to shoot me! I bet you want me to get hit in the eye too so you don't have to feel alone being blind. Sorry Nicky but not everyone is lucky enough to get their eye clawed out by a little kitty."
"Okay first off it was a goddamn Flerken which is one of the deadliest creatures in the galaxy and second do you ever know when to shut your damn mouth?"
For the first time in weeks Mia laughed. "Yes I'm sure the kitty was the scourge of the Universe that the brave Agent Fury stopped from destroying the planet at the cost of his eye. You're the real hero here."
It was at that point Hill and Coulson stepped out from the abandoned building with boxes of documents. Coulson nodded to Nick who then began to drive back towards the dirt road.
After a couple minutes Fury spoke up once more, "We're gonna interrogate this guy to see if he knows anything that isn't stored on paper or on hardware. Though I'd say odds are that HYDRA was using the proxy of a proxy to deal with them. The real question is what is gained by HYDRA to blow up a truckload of soldiers, especially the 107? My money is it has something to do with their Captain..." he paused for a moment before continuing. "This future shit really messes with your head, doesn't it? A year ago I would have taken a bullet for Alexander Pierce and now I can't think of anything else Id rather do than walk into his office and end this shit once and for all. I really mean it when I say that I want to trust you, because if I can't then you have information in your mind that could be sold to fucked up people that could destroy our society while you are at home playing house with a depressed Alcoholic brother..."
"You know he won't always be that way." Mia attempted to stand up for Tony. Her brother was confused and hurt now in ways that only Pepper, Rhodey, and herself could truly understand. In a few years Tony would save them all. It was their job to give him something worth fighting for. And it was Mia's job to make sure Tony ended up alive this time around to have his happy ending with his real family.
Without a girl masquerading around in the flesh of his sister pretending to be something she's not. That was the only way Mia could ever repay Tony for all that she took from him by replacing his sister in this timeline. For hiding all the things she knew about his parents murder. For being afraid to say the words that could have saved their lives.
Nick responded, breaking her negative chain of thought, "Until proven otherwise I'll just have to take your word for it." they pulled up to a small portable facility where med staff was rushing about tending to their captive. Nick turned to her one last time before stepping out of the car. "We'll have this all down by this time tomorrow but we do have a tent set up somewhere near here. Stay the night and tomorrow you'll be on a plane back to D.C. Then you can get started on your mission, and be extra careful around Carter, Stark, every report or test that man has taken ever since he was a child indicates that he is very smart so don't try and fool him with a shitty accent. He also inherited his grandfather's charisma and can be quite inspirational too when he gets talking, don't fall for his charm like a goddamn school girl."
Nick stepped out of the car, "Good evening, Madame Masque." he held his hand out to her and Mia gave him the flash drive. Then moments later Mia was left alone to ponder her future.
She slept well into the morning.
James Carter
New York, 7 AM, December 25th 2007
James stood in front of his soldier's hospital room with great apprehension. The funerals would be five days from now and he was supposed to be on a plane an hour after the funeral ended. He wondered if John would wake up alone and hate him for not being there or if him being there would make him mad because he abandoned his men...because he abandoned him.
It took him a few seconds before he unconsciously gripped the handle of the door and stepped into Westrich's room. His body was covered from head to toe in gauze that was tinted red by the blood of his soldier. His breathing was entirely regulated by machinery that stood off to the side of his bed.
They told James that John would be in a medically induced coma until his body was strong enough to survive an operation on his brain. This would likely make it so Westrich would wake up and he would be on a mission with a new team across the world while the last member of the 107 came to alone in the hospital.
John Westrich was an orphan who grew up in an orphanage until he was eighteen and then he took up with the military to find his place in the world. Now he was just a burnt up husk of a man who would likely need assisted living in a world in which he had nobody besides him.
All they have now is each other.
Briefly James remembered a kiss that never should have been.
Then he left John just like he always did.
Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of an update. I've just started a new job and finished off school forthe semester so time's been scarce. I hope next chapter can come out a lot sooner.
Next chapter will focus on fleshing out James and then creating contact between James and Mia.
Note James is Biin case of confusion but the main relationship willbe JamesXMia.
Thanks for the support and if you would like to share your thoughts drop a review.