A/N: I am posting two chapters this week to align this story with another one I'm writing concurrently. I'm starting to weave them together starting with this chapter. If you are interested in the other story, it's Add it Up with Bruce Banner and Ruby Beaumont (OC). If not, don't worry, they can be read as stand-alone stories

Chapter 24

Frankie slumped over the table trying to find a comfortable position with her hands cuffed to the bar on the tabletop. She had no idea how long she had been waiting in the room since Clint and Bucky left her there, but it had felt like hours. She had dozed off and on but kept having disturbing dreams that kept her from feeling rested. In one of them, Rory was the one torturing her, which she knew wasn't true, but her mind was starting to blend the truth with fiction, and it was getting harder for her to tell the difference. If she could just get some real sleep, maybe they would stop. She needed to stay sharp if she was going to survive this and get back to the business of saving Rory from Hydra.

The door opened soundlessly, and her favorite SHIELD director walked in, taking the chair opposite from her.

She smiled crookedly at Fury, "so, are you the bad cop or the worse cop?"

"Do you think this is funny?" he asked.

"Not really but picturing you in frilly pink panties is helping."

The corner of his eye twitched, but he said nothing. Instead, he opened the file he had brought in and pulled out several pictures. Laying them on the table in front of her one at a time, he explained.

"This is Betty Rutherford. She was a grandmother of eight and only four years from retiring."

The picture was of nurse Evil laying on the floor of the infirmary, blood pooling from a ragged slash across her throat. Apparently, the warden had done some housecleaning after she left.

"This is Tim Nguyen," Fury laid the next picture down. "He had two small children who will now grow up without their father."

He laid out three more pictures of guards with various wounds, telling her their names and what they left behind. Those were followed by pictures of dead inmates. Only one of them caught her attention. It was Leena, but Fury identified her as Melissa Cho, just like the woman had assured her would happen.

"All of these people died during your escape from the prison along with a known Hydra operative, Leena Philip. Tell me why I shouldn't just hand you over to the feds and let them lock you away for the rest of your life?"

Frankie swallowed. She knew what would happen if she went back to prison. Rory had protected her but was she willing to take another chance? Her best hope was getting Fury to protect her until she could figure out a way to get back to Rory and take Glenda out of the picture.

"If I go back to prison," she said quietly, not looking up from the pictures, "I will be dead within a month."

Fury leaned back in his chair, "care to explain?"

"This," Frankie pointed at the pictures and lifted her eyes to his face, "was not a planned escape."

"No?" one of his eyebrows rose high on his forehead. "It certainly looks like one."

She shook her head, "it was an attempt to kill me by Hydra."

"Ok, I'll bite. Explain. Start from the beginning."

"I was never associated with Hydra before meeting Hawkeye at the bar."

"Then why did you try to kill him?"

"I already explained that to him," she sighed.

"Explain it again to me."

Frankie resigned herself to repeating the story. At least this part was true.

"I took a boy from the streets under my wing and raised him. He was about five years younger than me, so he was like my little brother. Taking responsibility for him in completely changed my life. Before that, I had been content living on the street or shacking up with whoever I could. I never had a job, I just hustled for what I needed. Once Rory came into my life, I settled down, got a real job and found a place for us to live off the streets. I got him into school, and he was doing amazing. He was getting ready to take his SAT test for college and had been studying for weeks."

She took a deep breath, "we were going out to one of his favorite places to eat when we got caught in the middle of a fight between Hawkeye and some men. He was so busy trying to kill them, that he didn't even notice Rory." She tried to keep her voice steady as she told how the car had crashed into the scaffolding and the façade of the building had collapsed on the him."

"He never noticed. Never looked back. If he had come back or if any Avenger had come back to help, maybe Rory wouldn't have…," she choked off the rest of it.

Fury had sat quietly, listening to her story. "So, you vowed to make him pay for it?"

She shook her head, "no. I figured I'd never see him again. But I hated him. God, I hated him. Because of him, all the joy was gone from my life. After that, everything was just on autopilot, you know."

She cleared her throat, "then he showed up at my bar."

"And you decided to do something about all that hate you'd been carrying around."

This time she nodded, "exactly. Only," she looked down at her hands, "it didn't help."

"Revenge is never the answer everyone thinks it will be."

Frankie laughed shakily, "right."

"So where does Hydra come into the picture?"

She shrugged, "I guess they were after your guys when they kidnapped me in Chicago. I mean, that's the first time I had any contact with them."

"Then why did they take you from the crash site and ignore my guys?"

She shrugged again, "I don't know. All I know is that I woke up in one of their facilities all stitched up. Hell, I didn't even know they were Hydra for days. Maybe they thought since I was being kidnapped by them, I would make a good asset? You know, 'the enemy of my enemy' thing. That's kind of how they put it to me later."

"Go on."

"What was I supposed to do? Technically, you were my enemy. Hawkeye killed my friend and then kidnapped me. The Avengers and SHIELD had never done anything for me except cause me grief. So, I just played along. After a trial period, they trained me to be an operative. They started trusting me."

She looked up and met Fury's eye, playing her ace in the hole, "I saw their spaceship."

That got his attention. He sat up straight in his chair, "you what?"

"I saw their spaceship," she repeated. "They built it out of parts of alien ships and technology left over from the battle for New York and the other one with the big ass spaceship."

"What do you know about it?" His eye never wavered from hers.

"Not much more than that, except I know it isn't working yet."

Fury leaned back in his chair and considered her for a moment before standing. Without another word, he went to the door and opened it to leave.

"Wait!" she called out to his back. "What about me?"

"What about you?" he turned around and looked at her quizzically.

"You're just going to leave me chained to this table?" She rattled her cuffs.

He snorted and left without answering.

"Bastard," Frankie hissed.


After another long wait, the door opened again. This time Clint Barton entered the room, not Fury as Frankie had expected.

"Aw, hell," she laid her head on her arms, "not you again."

Taking the seat across from her, he sighed, "we need to talk."

"Just go away," her voice was muffled so she raised her head to glare at him. "Or send Bucky in. I kind of like him. Well, at least I don't want to stab him."

"Frankie, I'm sorry," he said.

She blinked at him, not responding.

He wiped at his face and blew out a breath before continuing, "I'm sorry about what happened to Rory. And you're right, it was my fault." He looked down and frowned. "I was so wrapped up in my own pain and guilt, that I didn't care about anything but making it stop."

"What do you know about pain?" she bit out.

"More than you realize," he paused before continuing, choosing his words carefully. "The snap took away my entire family. My wife and my three children. And there was nothing I could do. Nothing. So, to bury that feeling of helplessness, I did what I could do: kill criminals."

"I can't say that maybe, if I had been different, if I had been in a better place mentally, that Rory would still be alive. Even if I had cared, criminals don't. No matter how hard we try, sometime people still end up dead. But I didn't try. And nothing I can say will ever make up for that loss to you. I'm so sorry."

Neither of them said anything when he was through. They both just looked down at their hands. Finally, Frankie raised her head. She needed to open the door a crack if they were ever going to trust her. Not too much, though. She didn't want to seem too eager.

"I don't know if I can ever forgive you, but I understand. It's kind of how I felt when I saw you at the bar. I didn't care about anything buy making you pay for what you'd done. I didn't care about the consequences either. It was kind of a scorched earth kind of thing. I wanted to burn your world down around you."

He nodded his understanding.

"Did you get them back?" she asked, curious.

He nodded again, but there was something about him that hinted all was not right. But she had her secrets too.


After Clint left, an agent brought her a soda and a sandwich. She hadn't realized how hungry and thirsty she was until she took a drink of the sugary beverage. Before she knew it, she had drained the can and scarfed the sandwich down. Shortly after that, the same agent escorted her to the bathroom to relieve herself. Once back in the room, she was left uncuffed, which was a relief to her shoulders and ribs.

She paced until her legs ached, then sat down again. She had no idea how much time had passed since she had arrived. Not even the trip to the bathroom gave any indication of what time of day it was. She tried dozing in the chair, then on the cold concrete floor, and finally on the table, but no matter how exhausted she was, sleep alluded her.

Jerking alert from on such attempt, she was startled to see Rory sitting across the table from her.

"I'm still asleep," she muttered.

"Are you?" he asked with his quirky smile and always signaled he was about to do something to get into trouble.

"Yes," she said more decisively. "There's no way you are actually here, so I'm either asleep or hallucinating."

"So, you might not be asleep. If I'm a hallucination."

"There's a lot wrong with me, but I'm not crazy," Frankie insisted.

"Are you sure?"

She hesitated just long enough for him to smile knowingly. Shoving back from the table, she bolted out of her chair.

"I'm not crazy!"

Rory nodded towards the two-way mirror, "you're putting on quite the show for them. Talking to someone who's not really here."

"No, I managed to finally fall asleep and I'm having another fucked up dream."

Rory pushed his chair back from the table and walked around it to her. She backed up against the wall as he approached but he followed her until she couldn't go any further. Looking up at him, she could see the concern in his eyes.

"Frankie, you need help. That's what I'm here for. I'm going to give you what you need."

He reached up and cupped her face, lowering his head to hers. Sighing, she rose to meet him, closing her eyes in anticipation for his kiss. His hands slipped from her face and wrapped around her neck. Her eyes flew open as they tightened. When she reached for them to pry them away, she couldn't move her hands. They were chained to the wall. So were her ankles. She was chained, spread-eagle against a rough wall, completely at his mercy as he choked the breath out of her.

As the world faded away, all she could see were his cold, merciless eyes as he watched the life drain from her.

Jerking awake, she flayed frantically and fell out of the chair, landing hard on the floor with a grunt and slamming her ribs against the overturned chair.

"Fuck," she cried, clutching her sides.

The door opened and Hawkeye came back in and knelt beside her.

"Frankie?"

When she didn't answer, he reached over and touched her shoulder, "Frankie?"

She looked up at him warily.

"What happened here?"

Her lip trembled, "I can't even sleep in peace. I keep having nightmares."

He nodded, "okay, let's get you out of here."

Standing up, he pulled her to her feet. She winced at the throbbing in her ribs and wrapped her arms around them again.

"What's wrong with your ribs?"

"Cracked. Maybe broke. I don't know," she said softly.

"I didn't do that did I?" he frowned.

"No," she grimaced, "but your tackle didn't help them."

Outside the cell, Clint argued with the agents on duty and finally had to get Fury involved before they would agree to let him move her. Fury insisted that she be cuffed until they reached their destination. Together he and the two agents escorted her through the building. She had no idea where she was going and didn't care as long as she was out of that miserable little room.

As they passed a closed office, movement in the window caught her eyes. Glancing over, she caught bright blue eyes peeking through the blinds like a child trying to catch a glimpse of something they're not supposed to see. That's right, she thought grimly, I'm not here. You never saw me.