Chapter Twenty-Two: 404
"And besides, what's another bruise?" -Amber Dawn
January 22, 2013 - Avengers Tower Labs - Manhattan, NY
Audrey's first thought as she watched the Hulk raise his massive green fist above her wasn't that she was going to die in a biochemistry lab, at the hands of the reason her relationship status was it's complicated, all while he was being puppet-mastered by a brainwashed teenager. No. That was her second thought.
Audrey's first thought was, Bruce is going to survive this, which was humiliating on several dozen different levels. Bruce is going to survive this, even if I don't.
That was probably something to unpack in her next appointment with Isabel.
If she lived to see next Wednesday, that was.
Audrey rolled up into a ball and braced her arms above her head for impact, but it didn't arrive. Was death really that easy? She winked one eye open to find the Hulk peering down at her, quizzically. She could still see traces of Bruce, but his body had been stretched out mostly beyond recognition. She watched him grin down at her, though oddly enough, it wasn't malicious. It was just...curious.
"Hulk," said the Hulk. He patted himself on the chest. Was that...an introduction?
Audrey nodded slowly. "Audrey," she replied, pointing to herself. "Friend."
"Banner's friend."
He spat out Bruce's name with some air of disgust. Audrey hadn't expected that, but she probably should've. Bruce spent a significant amount of time trash-talking the Hulk, and if she had to share a body with someone who spoke so openly about resenting her, she'd probably be angry too. Then again—Bruce was a part of him; the Hulk didn't want to die, and keeping Bruce alive was part of that deal. She could use that.
"You know me?" she asked, hesitant.
"I see his dreams," the Hulk answered.
Behind the Hulk, she saw Tony open his mouth, and she shot him a glare before he could say anything. He promptly dropped it and went to sit back down. Thank god. She needed to figure out where she stood with him before Tony one-linered them into a corner.
"Can we be friends?" she asked.
"No friends," the Hulk insisted. "Only me."
"Okay," she conceded. "No friends, only Hulk. But I...can you not smash?"
"Smash."
"No."
"Why not?" he whined, petulant like a toddler.
Audrey squinted, trying to discern how best to reason with the Hulk, who was possibly the least reasonable being she'd ever encountered. She couldn't bribe him, she couldn't blackmail him. And she couldn't stop him, either. The problem was that Bruce was the only person, to date, who had ever managed to control the Hulk, and he was currently knocked out from a gunshot. Audrey needed to reach him. And if she couldn't talk directly to him, then she needed to come up with a Plan B.
"Because...there are no bad guys who need smashing. Right now."
"Girl."
"You can't smash her." He harumphed, crossing his arms. "Can you do me a favor? Please? Can you deliver a message to Banner."
The Hulk was several tons of raw, unbridled anger. Audrey was two-hundred pounds of muscle and bravado. If he took her down, she knew she would go down swinging.
"Banner hates me. Won't listen."
Okay. So she needed to say something that would get his attention. "Can you hear him?" she asked.
Hulk paused, and Audrey was filled with something closer to awe than terror. He was, by all counts, a miracle. Bruce should've been killed when the radiation experiments went wrong, but instead of dying, something else had been created. Something gargantuan and fascinating, standing almost completely still, three feet away from her. "Yes," he said finally. "Quiet."
"But you can hear him?"
He groaned, irritated.
"Sorry. What is he saying?"
"Angry."
"What else?"
"Scared. Doesn't like girl."
Didn't like Oksana? Yeah, no kidding.
The Hulk hissed and flinched, two huge hands flying to his temples and squeezing his skull. "Loud!" he complained. "Loud. Loud." He began to stumble, and Audrey took a step back, her eyes widening and her face twisting up as he grew another foot taller in front of her. She needed to stop him. She needed to stop Oksana. She needed to figure out a plan.
"I can make him be quiet," Audrey offered, even though she had no idea how the hell she was going to go about that. "But we need to make a deal."
"No deal," Hulk said. "Only Hulk."
"Deliver a message for me," Audrey said. "Please. If he doesn't listen, you can do whatever you want. And if—if he does—"
"Hulk sleeps," Hulk interrupted. "Banner wakes and keeps Hulk asleep." As if realizing the implications of his own words, he swiped an elaborate beaker apparatus off of the table, sending it flying into the wall, where it shattered and sent shards of glass flying. He lifted his fists up above the lab table, preparing to destroy it.
This was bad. Really, really bad. Audrey panicked. "I'll bring you back!" she blurted out, before she'd thought it through. "If you let me talk to Bruce right now, I promise I will bring you back and let you smash whatever you want, later, and nobody will stop you." She was making promises she wasn't even sure if she could keep. From where he'd been fiddling with the door's electrical panel, Tony looked horrified, and Audrey didn't blame him. If the Hulk didn't agree to her terms, he'd probably throw her through the window and send her swan-diving down to Broadway.
She watched him consider it, dropping his arms to his side. It felt unnatural to see him hesitate with anything, especially the opportunity to destroy.
"Banner stops."
"No," Audrey disagreed. "I won't let him. He'll listen to me."
"Uh, Aud—" Tony started, and Audrey shot him a glare. "Okay. Right."
"Why?" the Hulk asked.
"Why will he listen to me?" Audrey asked. The Hulk nodded. "We're friends. Friends listen."
He chuffed. "Not my friend. Lie."
"I'm not lying," Audrey insisted. "I like you. I told Bruce that you were good, after you helped us stop Loki."
At the demigod's name, the Hulk lifted his face into something almost a smile. More menacing than it needed to be, though.
"Will you please give him a message?" Audrey pleaded. "I promise I think you're a hero, I just—I need to talk to Bruce right now."
He narrowed his eyes, but nodded once in agreement. Thank God.
She took a deep breath. This was going to be extraordinarily humiliating at best, and disastrous at worse. "Bruce," she began, very intentionally avoiding Tony's eyes. "I've been, um." Come on. "I've been in love with you for months, and I've only been avoiding you because I made a fool of myself, and it's making me miserable."
For one long, horrifying moment, absolutely nothing changed, except the clattering of Tony's screwdriver to the ground. Audrey was acutely aware of her own pulse, racing faster and faster, as the Hulk took one slow exhale. She chanced a look at Tony, whose jaw was practically on the floor as his eyes flitted back and forth between her and the Hulk. Despite it all, her cheeks flushed bright red, and she quickly refocused on the issue at hand.
In front of her, the Hulk began shrinking, his large muscles contracting and his skin paling, until Bruce was taking his place, the bullet wound gone as he collapsed onto the floor.
Tony picked up the screwdriver and jammed it into the door's electrical panel once more, and it beeped and slid open. "We're talking about this," he vowed.
"Help Bruce and stay here," she ordered, already collecting the knife that Oksana had left her with and sprinting through the lab doors. Even as she told herself that the hurried departure was to hunt down the murderous ballerina roaming the Tower, she knew that she was, again, running from her problems. The murderous ballerina just happened to be a really, really good excuse.
January 22, 2013 - Prince George Station - British Columbia, Canada
Natasha had always been good at hiding. Clint had always been good at finding her. So it shouldn't have surprised her as much as it did when she found him waiting for her at the Prince George train station, dressed in a floral, tourist shirt and a heavy coat.
"Are you my Uber?" she asked, navigating through the crowd of passengers and Canadian authorities swarming the platform.
"Shut up," Clint replied, wrapping her in a hug. "The kid got me worried."
"No need to worry," Natasha insisted, her cheek still smushed up against Clint's chest. She liked this, even if she wouldn't admit it. "I have a pesky habit of surviving."
He put two, steady hands on her shoulders and pushed her back to observe. "Your nose looks terrible."
Natasha socked him in the shoulder. The rings from the cuffs were still locked around her wrists, but she'd managed to hassle the train's conductor into giving her a set of bolt cutters to snap the chain with. The look she was left with was less than fashionable, but infinitely more practical, at the very least.
"I think the Red Room may be mad at me," she mused, thinking back to the crunch of Tatiana's body under the heavy train. Before, when she was younger, killing had come easy. She hadn't hesitated now, but it made her feel sick in a way she wasn't familiar with. Clint's hand found hers and he started pulling her towards the station's exit.
"Oh yeah?" he mumbled. "What makes you say that?"
Natasha shrugged. "Oh, you know. Little things. They sent an assassin after me. Two assassins, actually." And promised to kill you in front of me. Tatiana's vows still rang in her ears. Icepick Protocol. She knew it from somewhere. She'd recognized it. But she couldn't quite place it.
Clint nudged her with his shoulder. "Three if you count Yelena."
"Split the difference. Two and a half."
"That would make for a hell of a sitcom," he remarked, holding the door open for her.
In the parking lot, a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicopter was waiting, looking extremely conspicuous. For a secret agency, they had done a remarkably bad job of keeping their existence under wraps. Nobody knew exactly what S.H.I.E.L.D. did, but they certainly knew it was real. In Natasha's opinion, it was only a matter of time, but Fury tended not to take security advice from subordinates.
Clint's phone buzzed, and he reached into his pocket for it. "Hawkeye," he answered, casting a sideways look at Natasha, who rolled her eyes. She never picked up the phone as Widow; nobody called her that except her enemies, the press, and Clint's contact entry for her—which, technically, wasn't Widow, it was just the spider emoji and the gun emoji.
As they headed for the helicopter, Natasha found herself waving at Agent Eric Koenig. The stout man always bore a cheerful smile, and even given the grim circumstances, her mood lifted a bit.
"Hulk?" Clint said from beside her. "Oh, so like—he was, but not anymore?"
"Agent Romanoff," Eric greeted.
"Agent Koenig," she replied, sticking her hand out to shake his.
Beside her, Clint was still shouting into his phone. "Just stall...yeah. Like...fight her...well, do you have any other ideas?"
Koenig pulled the door to the chopper open. "There's a fresh change of clothes for you in the back. When we get to the Playground, we'll debrief."
"Uh, yeah," Clint interrupted, pocketing his phone. "About that."
Natasha scowled, and he visibly winced.
"We gotta make a stop at the Tower. That was Audrey. Oksana shot Bruce, he had a Code Green—I think it's fine now, but she's still there, and with the stuff Tony's been working on recently—"
"We have to make sure she doesn't start meddling with his weapons," Natasha filled in.
"...Yeah," Clint conceded.
"Seems like I'm never off the clock," she muttered, climbing into the helicopter and accepting the headset that Agent Carmichael passed her from the pilot's seat.
"You know," Clint said, putting on his own headset and buckling in. "If you wanted an office job, all you had to do was ask."
January 22, 2013 - Avengers Tower - Manhattan, NY
Audrey respected Clint immensely as an agent, but as a commanding officer? She was less than pleased.
The lights overhead had gone out, replaced by the blinking glow of the red backups, and Audrey's steps echoed miserably against the concrete walls of the stairwell, but she found herself climbing the steps nonetheless. As far as her ideas went, she would rate this one as bad—fighting, unarmed, against a Red Room agent who had outsmarted her several times now despite being a teenager. No backup, no weapons, no clue what her plan was.
At least Natasha was safe. And Bruce, and Tony. And really, all things considered, Audrey was the most expendable of the Avengers. She wasn't a genius, she wasn't a god. She didn't have the same unshakeable morals as her father or the same experience and training as Clint and Natasha. If anyone was going to be acting like this much of a clown in the middle of a showdown between two Red Room assassins, it may as well be her.
"Oksana?" she called out. What did she have to lose?
Audrey hadn't expected to summon the girl quite so quickly. One moment, the light overhead was flickering, and the next, a shadowy figure haloed by the red emergency lights was flinging herself over the railing and kicking Audrey square in the chest with both feet. As she flew back into the wall, she tried to make sense of what she was looking at.
Before her, Oksana stood with a large kitchen knife in her hand. "You rang?" she asked, before swiping at Audrey with the blade.
Throwing herself to the ground, Audrey narrowly missed the knife. Oksana swung again, and Audrey panicked, reaching for her wrist and catching it. "I'm not going to hurt you," she tried.
Oksana dropped the knife and caught it with her other hand, pointing the blade into Audrey's throat. "But I'm going to hurt you."
"Why—" she started, cutting herself off when Oksana pressed the blade harder into Audrey's throat. "Okay."
"This is my graduation ceremony," Oksana said.
"Congratulations?"
"Thank you." Oksana swung her leg, kicking Audrey hard in the kneecap. Jesus Christ. She held still, knowing that any movement would draw the point of the knife across her throat. The dull pain radiated out in waves, slow-moving and heavy. Oksana seized Audrey's left wrist, lifting it up for inspection. In the red light, her tattoo seemed to glow against her skin. "You thought you could cover this up?"
"That was the goal."
Oksana shook her head. "You should accept that you were chosen to fulfill a higher purpose. This is a gift."
Higher purpose? Gift? Of course Oksana was brainwashed, but Audrey hadn't realized that it was to this great of an extent. She made a face. "Not really," she disagreed.
"Department X made you to be a ritual sacrifice and a legend."
What in the world was she talking about? Audrey leaned away from the knife and kicked out her foot as gently as she could while still getting the weapon away from her neck. Oksana stumbled back, and Audrey slammed her fist into Oksana's hand, sending the knife clattering down the stairwell.
For a moment, neither moved, just making panicked eye contact before casting their gazes down at the knife. Audrey moved first, taking off down the stairs, but Oksana was quick to follow, throwing herself at Audrey and wrapping both arms around her neck. Audrey stumbled, grunting as they toppled down the stairs together. Sticking out her arms, she tried to put some distance between Oksana and her, but Oksana headbutted her before she could.
"Ow!" Audrey hissed. She threw Oksana off of her, forgetting her own strength until she watched the girl crumple against the staircase. "Oh—uh, sorry." She picked up the knife and shouted at the ceiling, "JARVIS!"
No response. Dammit.
Oksana seemed to be unconscious, or if she was awake, she wasn't moving. Audrey watched for a moment until she knew for sure that her chest was rising and falling with shallow breaths. At least she was alive. Fishing her cell phone out of her pocket, she dialed Clint's phone number.
"Hawkeye?" he answered.
"She is...subdued," Audrey reported. "What do I do with her now?"
"We're gonna be there in thirty," Clint shouted, his voice nearly drowned out by the distinct sound of a Quinjet engine. "Tasha can take care of it. Did you call for backup?"
"Um," Audrey said, glancing down at Oksana's small body, splayed out across the steps. "No. That felt excessive."
"But she's—" Clint began, before Natasha cut him off.
"Good call," she agreed. "We don't need her to be gunned down."
Audrey felt a swell of pride at her approval. "What are we gonna do with her, then?"
"She needs help," Natasha insisted. "Not an execution."
"Okay," Audrey said. "I'll just...lock her in one of the labs until you get here."
October 25, 2005 - Teatro Nacional de São Carlos - Lisbon, Portugal
Clint liked Portugal. He liked the food—especially because there was no good Caldo Verde near the base or his apartment. He liked jobs like this, where he was stationed up high in the rafters in the dark. The quiet of a kill from a distance. Most things considered, this job should've been easy—fire an arrow, call the cleanup team, go out for dinner, fly home.
Except—the circumstances of the job were a lot more pressing than usual. For months, he'd been chasing a Russian assassin around Europe, and Coulson was growing ever more impatient with how long the mission was taking. He was the Hawkeye; the best marksman in S.H.I.E.L.D. history, and he was losing a chase against a girl.
Woman. Whatever. Gender aside, he'd never been this humiliated by a mark before.
Their intel on her was scattered. She was basically a ghost, with a dozen different names and the stories to match. Red Death, Slavic Shadow, Black Widow. All they knew was that she was KGB, she'd recently burned down a hospital in Sao Paulo, and that over a dozen kills had been credited to her in the past three years.
Also, she was due to kill Martim Osvaldo tonight. Clint couldn't blame her—he was a weasel of a businessman, embezzling from most of his ventures and trusted by nobody. But for once, he was ahead of her, and he wasn't going to let her get away again.
When he first laid eyes on her, he almost dismissed it. The woman on Osvaldo's arm looked barely old enough to drink, a shy smile playing on her lips as she laughed at something he said. Maybe it was the age difference between her and the man she stood next to, who was wrinkling up like a prune, in the late, late autumn of his life. But even when Clint shifted his binoculars away from Osvaldo and towards the woman, he found himself struggling to process the facts before him. Fifteen kills in three years—all high-powered politicians or wealthy businessmen—virtually untraced, and had evaded him for months? And she looked like she would get carded buying booze at 7/11.
Unbelievable.
He lifted his bow, the arrow already notched, and waited. If he hit Osvaldo, he would still be happy with himself; Coulson and Fury, decidedly less so. The assassin led Osvaldo up the stairs, and by some miracle, the crowd parted, giving Clint a clear shot at her neck.
"I've got a clean shot," he told HQ.
"Take it," Coulson instructed.
This was his chance. He exhaled slowly, as he always did before releasing an arrow, and then stopped short. The woman had turned, looking over her shoulder, and the expression on her face was one Clint was all too familiar with.
Before S.H.I.E.L.D. had been the circus. Clint knew hesitation when he saw it. The flinch.
If she was that young and that dangerous, she would be useful. And if she was hesitating—maybe they could get her on their side.
"Barton?" Coulson asked. "Barton, status."
"Lost it," he mumbled, replacing the arrow in his quiver and folding his bow back up. "Gonna get closer."
"That's not your job," Coulson reminded him. "Barton."
He was gonna have hell to pay for it at the debrief, but instead of answering, Barton switched his comms off. He began descent down the stage's rafters, careful and measured so as not to disturb the man giving a speech beneath him. Once he was on the ground, he dodged partygoers and caterers, hurrying to follow the path that the assassin and Osvaldo had taken. They'd ascended the marble staircase up to the offices on the higher level, and he found himself narrowly avoiding slamming into a platter of shrimp as he rushed after them. Coulson was going to be furious with him, probably. Hell, even Fury might get called in. But he trusted his gut enough to know that this was probably a good decision.
Probably.
When he reached the office level, he paused, listening for an indication towards where they had headed. Osvaldo's rumbly voice was murmuring down the hallway, and Clint pressed his back against the wall as he took careful steps towards them.
"Such a pretty lady…" he mumbled in Portuguese. "You must have many men chasing you."
"You're too kind," the woman responded. "I've just never...found the man I'm looking for."
"Could I be him?"
Clint waited. No answer. Then, a quiet pop. He rushed around the corner. "Hey!" he called, before he could help himself.
The woman turned, her bright red hair flying over her shoulder. At her feet, Osvaldo was crumpled in a pile on the ground with a bullet hole in his forehead. "Now's not a good time," she retorted, lifting her gun and pointing it at him.
"Whoa," he said immediately, holding his hands up.
The woman narrowed her eyes, as if weighing the pros and cons of shooting him. And then, she whirled around, shot a hole in the window, and jumped.
"Aw—" Clint started, knowing that he had no choice but to follow.
The glass scraped his arms as he sailed out the window after her, landing on top of her on the ground. She kicked him between the legs and he howled in pain, rolling off of her and giving her the chance to take off running.
Clint reached over his shoulder for an arrow, nocking it and aiming straight at the retreating woman's neck. "If you don't want to get shot in the neck, stop running!" he ordered.
She slowed, reluctantly, to a stop, and carelessly threw him a sly smile over her shoulder. "Whatever you say, Robin Hood."
He would've called it a victory, until she lifted her gun and started firing. "Would you stop that?" he complained, throwing himself onto the ground to avoid the bullets. "I'm not even here to kill you. I mean—I was, but then I made the decision not to."
"You're kind of dumb," she mused.
"I'm fully dumb," he corrected. "I'm with S.H.I.E.L.D."
"I know. You're the one who's been chasing me."
"Uh," he stuttered. He hadn't been prepared for her to be that onto him, but he hadn't prepared for most of the curveballs she'd thrown at him. Now that they were closer together, he could inspect her more closely. Red hair, early twenties, green eyes. She looked both thrilled and panicked, horrified and confident. "Yes…" he admitted. "Clint Barton."
He stuck his hand out. Risky move. Stupid move. Still, she humored him, shaking it with her own. "Natalia Romanova."
"It's nice to meet you," he said, and even though he knew it should've been a lie, it didn't feel like one. "Do you, by chance, want a job?"
January 23, 2013 - The Hub - Manhattan, NY
By the time Natasha and Clint had landed at the Tower, Oksana had regained consciousness and nearly destroyed Bruce's lab in an attempt to escape. Now, it was 3 in the morning, and Audrey was exhausted, and the last place she wanted to be was at the Hub with Maria Hill for a debriefing.
Under the table, her text was still unanswered.
[2:51 am] Audrey Carter Rogers: SOS. NEED TO SEE YOU.
"What's gonna happen to her?" Audrey asked. She pointed through the interrogation room's one-way glass, where Natasha sat across from a cuffed Oksana.
"Natasha wants us to recruit her." Maria tilted her head, almost fondly. "It's funny how circular some things are. When she got back with Barton, it was almost the same scene."
Audrey watched, straining to make out what Natasha was saying. While Oksana looked miserable, the redhead appeared rather calm, her hands steepled on the table before her as she spoke. The muffled Russian didn't make much sense to her, but she caught bits and pieces. "She was saying some really weird stuff," Audrey said.
Even after everything that had happened this evening, Audrey hadn't been able to get her mind off of Oksana's words. Department X made you a ritual sacrifice and a legend.
"Who?" Hill asked. "Romanoff?"
"No," Audrey replied. "Oksana."
Her phone chimed in her hands.
"What kind of stuff?" Hill asked.
[3:23 am] Nicholas Fury: You better have a damn good reason. Volcano in the Hudson in 10.
Audrey put her phone back into her pocket and looked up at Hill. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the remaining sting of Oksana's double-crossing, or the paranoia leftover from those deleted files, but she found herself struggling to find the words. S.H.I.E.L.D. had a mole in its higher ups. It probably wasn't Maria—but Audrey couldn't be certain.
"Just...the stuff I was telling you about," Audrey lied. "With Bruce, and Tony. Just—that weird stuff. Um, I'm sorry. I just got a text from my sister, she wants me to call her."
"Tell her I said hi," Maria responded, raising her hand in a half wave.
Taking that as all the dismissal she needed, Audrey booked it out of the observation room and down the hallway. Volcano in the Hudson meant the pharmacy six blocks south, and she only had ten minutes to get there. She needed to hurry.
Outside, the wind chilled her to her bones. January in the city was brutal, the gusts rushing in from the Hudson frigid and cruel. The sprinting didn't do much to help, her face just burned pins and needles.
Inside was mostly empty, except for a rowdy group of kids in ESU hoodies, reeking of vodka and pot. She dodged them, heading for the pharmacy's book aisle, where Nick Fury was waiting for her in a pair of sweatpants and a heavy black coat. His eyepatch was gone, but he kept his face shielded by a Mets cap and a pair of wire reading glasses.
"Miss Jill," he greeted.
"Jack," she replied.
"You wanna explain why you've got me up at this goddamn hour?" he muttered, tone polite, as he flipped through a romance novel with a shirtless cowboy on the cover.
"We have a mole," she replied, equally cheery. From the shelf, she picked up a copy of The Knot. "Bunch of Red Room intel deleted a month ago—by my mother."
Fury put the book down and selected a magazine—on the cover, JANE FOSTER HUMILIATED AS THOR LEAVES HER FOR MYSTERY ASGARDIAN HOTTIE. Dear god. As far as she knew, Thor had taken her to Asgard for the week to meet his parents, and she doubted Us Weekly had paparazzi on that side of the Bifrost. "How sure are you?"
"My mother can barely remember how to check her email, I doubt she's hacking into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s encrypted data systems in the computer lab of her senior home."
"Who else knows?" Fury asked.
She cast a look over her shoulder, where the ESU kids were stumbling past, each holding a bottle or two of liquor. "You and me."
"Can I buy you that?" he asked, pointing to her hands. Audrey blinked, dumbly, before realizing that she was still holding the magazine.
"Oh," she said. "Yeah, sure."
"Great." He plucked the magazine out of her arms and grabbed another Avengers themed tabloid from the shelf, this one boasting about Pepper and Tony's secret wedding. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
Fury started heading down the aisle, picking up a pack of Sharpies and heading to the counter. She waited for him quietly as he paid, purposely ducking to avoid eye contact with the cashier. Even if he did see her, he seemed too out of it to say anything. On a personal level, she was worried for him. On a security level, though, she was grateful for his apparent distraction.
He shoved the pile of magazines into her hands as he tore open the pack of markers, pocketing all but one. Outside the store, still sheltered by the doorway from the chill, he leaned against the wall. "This dress is nice," he remarked, pointing to the cover model of The Knot and taking it in his hands. "I can see you with more of a mermaid cut, though."
"Thanks," she muttered. "I'll keep it in mind."
"You should check these out," he said, flipping through and circling different things. Audrey kept lookout, shifting her weight back and forth to ensure that nobody approached them. It was dangerous to be out this time of night for everyone, them included—just not for the usual reasons. "It was good to catch up."
He handed the magazine back to her, his finger splitting the pages. Carefully, she accepted, making sure not to lose his spot. "What about the rest of them?" she asked, gesturing to the Us Weekly and People magazines he was holding onto.
"These are mine," he said. "You know I like to keep up with the news." Fury rolled up the magazines and stuck them into his pockets. "It was good to catch up. Good luck on the wedding."
Before she could say anything back to him, Fury had turned and started walking down the street, leaving Audrey behind with nothing but…
What You Need to Know for Having Bridesmen and Groomswomen - Carrie Anton
Most traditions are no longer a must when planning your wedding, and that certainly applies to who makes the cut in your wedding party. Gone are the days of men on one side and ladies on the other. By mixing things up with a coed wedding party, the bride and groom can have their favorite people—regardless of gender—standing next to them in support.
"You get to be surrounded by the ones you want to be by your side," says Alex Chalk, senior planner for Taylor'd Events. "It becomes a truly personalized experience that you can look back on and feel thankful you chose what felt right to you."
Nothing but this message. TRUST NO ONE. STAY LOCAL.
Oh, hell.
A/N: thank you so much for reading! and thank you to Daddy's LiL HeartBreaker, EleanorJames, sofiarose613, and ocfairygodmother for reviewing! I really appreciate all the feedback and I hope you will all let me know what you think of this chapter as well :)
Full disclosure the last article is a real article from The Knot written by Carrie Anton, I did not write it.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Like Real People Do
"About what I said," Audrey started.
Bruce looked breathtakingly uncomfortable from his spot across the table. "Look, it's okay, you don't have to pretend—"
"I meant it," Audrey interrupted. "When I said I was in love with you. I meant it."