Liar

Her breath hissed out between her teeth quickly, her chest heaving as beads of sweat soaked her skin. Her vision was fuzzy at the edges from pain. She ground her teeth together and squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, she saw stars.

Warm blood trickled over the skin of her abdomen, chilling her skin where it touched. She could taste it in her mouth from where she’d bitten her lip and the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming. It had worked, some what. Her throat hurt, partially because of where he’d choked her.

“Son of a bitch,” she snarled before flinching as the blood-slicked steel was pressed to her abdomen again.

He just laughed. She felt the knife lift until only the point was on her skin. Slowly, he dragged it across her abdomen so that it just barely scratched her stomach. Kennedy trembled, flinching away from it until he shifted and let his weight bear down on the arm pinned beneath his boot. She couldn’t help but scream.

“Kylie?”

She flinched, jerking away from Steve as his hand rested lightly on her shoulder. Blinking once or twice, she twisted her neck and looked over at him. His brows were furrowed in concern but he said nothing as they crossed the street. She jammed her trembling hands into her pockets and clenched them into tight fists for a few moments.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked once they were on the sidewalk again.

“Why wouldn’t I be fine?” Kennedy returned, brows arching in his direction.

“No reason,” he shrugged, his own hands resting in the pockets of his jacket, “other than the fact that you were about to lose your lunch.”

“I was not about to puke,” she sniffed disdainfully.

He just gave her a look that she could only equate with ‘bitch please’. She made her face innocent in response, blue eyes meeting his gaze before looking to make sure someone wasn’t about to walk into her. Her hands stayed in her pockets though they were no longer clenched into fists. She could feel her fingers still trembling though.

“I met this guy once, back during the war. He was one of ours, a guy that had been in Europe for months, probably. Real nice fellow, got along with everyone,” Steve said, looking around as he walked. “I sat and talked to him for a few minutes one day. He just looked so small and he had this far off look in his eyes. He was just sitting there, staring at nothing when I came across him. At first, I thought he was just thinking and then I started noticing things.

“It looked like he was paralyzed but he wasn’t. I mean, you could smell the fear just radiating off of him. His hands were shaking,” her hands contracted in her pockets, “and they were just sitting there in his lap. Whatever he’d seen, it wasn’t…it stuck with him. After a few minutes, he shook it off but you could tell it still bothered him. Things happen to people in war; they see things that no person should ever see. There wasn’t really a term for it back then, you just got called yellow.”

“PTSD,” Kennedy supplied without meaning to.

Steve looked over at her, one eyebrow lifting in question. “What?”

“PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder,” she explained without removing her hands from her pockets. “That’s what they call it. Mental disorder. You get drugs and therapy for it now. Number one cause of military deaths is suicide caused by PTSD.”

In the corner of her eye, she could see Steve nodding as he processed the information. Her blue, contact-lensed eyes glanced towards the sidewalk passing beneath her feet before she rolled her shoulders back slowly. She felt the joints pop as she did so.

“So, do you want to talk about it?” Steve asked.

“Talk about what?” Kennedy asked, feigning ignorance towards what he meant.

“You were pretty adamant that I shouldn’t lie to you,” he said, looking at her, “and that you wouldn’t be happy if I did. Whatever you tell me doesn’t go down in your file, you know. Besides, you’re supposed to trust me. You’re my friend, aren’t you?”

“I never said I didn’t trust you,” she muttered and gave a shrug. “I just don’t have anything to tell you.”

“No, you just like being beaten up,” Steve replied.

Kennedy stopped short, her blue eyes looking at him as he walked a few more steps before realizing she wasn’t at his side. He turned to look at her, his blue eyes comfortingly blank. Her throat worked, and ached, while she stood there. The few scratches and bruises from the other night had mostly healed and faded by now. Any other injuries that she had were covered so that he couldn’t see them.

The area where the brunette had carved the ‘W’ and ‘S’ into her skin throbbed from walking but she didn’t draw any attention to it. Her cut hand was bandaged and hidden inside of a glove. The bruising on her neck had been covered by careful make-up work. The sore, bruised parts of her body weren’t on display.

“You can’t say anything to me about that,” she forced out, trying to make her voice light. “You’ve been in more fights than I have, even more so when you were getting your ass handed to you.”

“I don’t like bullies,” Steve shrugged, “and I never have. You’re not like me in that sense.”

“Then what am I like?” she asked, her voice evening out into a challenging tone.

He looked at her, his gaze assessing her as she stood there. A breeze caught her short hair and tugged it, made her eyes water so that they narrowed. Her hands were stilled fisted in her pockets, the pressure making her cut hand throb. Her jaw worked, the muscle jumping from how tightly clenched her teeth were.

“You feel like you have to prove that you’re as tough as everybody else, even when you’re not,” Steve said. “You don’t know when to back down from a fight. But whereas I did it for a reason, you do it to prove to yourself that you can play ball with everyone else.”

“It still doesn’t mean that I’m going to tell you whether or not something happened,” Kennedy muttered before taking a few quick strides to catch up with him.

“So what about the other guy?” he asked once they were walking again.

“What about him?” she returned, glancing at him almost warily.

“You don’t seem like the type to let someone work you over without getting a few licks in there yourself.”

“I never said anything about getting worked over.”

Before she could move out of range, Steve reached over and ran his finger along the collar of her leather jacket. He withdrew and rubbed his fingers together. A small amount of concealer was smudged there. She looked at it before adjusting her jacket roughly.

Her blue eyes focused on the sidewalk in front of her as she cut through a crowd of people. Steve was big enough that he could just walk on through on his own. She didn’t attempt to mask the slight hostility that was radiating from her. It helped the people she was walking through decide to side-step her more quickly.

His long legs helped him keep up with her shorter, faster ones though. She didn’t slow down though, just kept walking. She would keep walking until she’d managed to calm down. Or until she could find out why she was suddenly so upset over what he’d said. It wasn't like any of it was a lie.

Somehow, she managed to lose Steve. When she turned around to see where he was, he wasn’t there anymore. Kennedy swallowed and began scanning every face in the crowd. How hard was it to lose Captain America in New York?

When she couldn’t find him after five minutes, she pulled her phone out. Her fingers slid across the screen, unlocking it as she keyed in her passcode.

“Lose something?”

Instead of startling, she froze. Her thumb hovered over the last digit of Steve’s number and began tremble. A gloved hand reached over her shoulder and plucked her phone from her grasp. She didn’t even react as it was slipped back into the pocket of her leather jacket.

“Did you miss me?” the brunette Russian asked as he stepped in front of her.

Her mouth opened and shut two or three times, too dry for any words to actually tumble out. Her tongue felt like a block of lead in her mouth. Swallowing, she ran it over her chapped, bitten and dried lips slowly.

“What do you want?”

Kennedy couldn’t keep the ice out of her voice anymore than she could keep the waver out. He just smiled, lips almost splitting over his teeth but not quite. His dark eyes still wore the animalistic look that made chills race down her spine.

“I asked you a question first, I believe,” he replied before gesturing that she should start walking.

“I’m waiting on someone. He’ll be here in a minute,” Kennedy lied, hoping that Steve might materialize out of nowhere within the next instant.

The Russian’s head drew back, his gaze narrowing slightly. For a moment, she almost thought that he might punch her. Instead, he turned around slowly. It took a moment for her to realize that he was mocking her. He knew she was lying.

“I don’t like it when people lie to me, Kennedy,” he said before gesturing again, “or is it Kylie?”

Kennedy slowly turned and began walking. He fell into step beside her and she was well aware of his hand at her back. Her own shoulders were drawn in tight, her spine ramrod straight. Her teeth bit at the tender flesh on the inside of her cheeks.

“Black hair is Kennedy. This is Kylie,” she muttered tensely, flinching when he let his hand actually rest on her hip. “Don’t touch me.”

“You have all the ferocity of a small lap dog,” he mocked. “I believe I’ve seen lap dogs more ferocious than you.”

Before she could stop herself, she drove her elbow into his side and pushed him away. Her blue eyes were wide instead of narrowed, lips mashed into a thin line as her teeth ground together. Her breath came through her nose in short bursts. This time, she did think he’d actually punch her right there on the street. A few people in passing shot them curious glances.

Instead, he only smiled as he turned to look at her. It was the kind of smile that looked innocent, that looked completely harmless on the surface. Beneath it though, she could imagine that he was maybe two seconds from snapping her throat. She jammed her trembling hands into her pockets so that she wouldn’t have to see them in her peripheral vision.

His arm extended towards her and it took all of her self-restraint not to flinch away. After a moment of eyeballing the gloved hand and then meeting his gaze, she let her own arm wrap around his. A sickening feeling settled into the pit of her stomach before seeping down to her toes. It felt like she had fifty pound weights strapped around her ankles.

They made it to the next alley without saying anything before he turned her towards it. She balked, her entire body tensing even more until the metal arm linked with her own flexed. The bones in her forearm grated and she dug her teeth into her lip to keep from making a sound. Beads of blood welled up as the skin split again.

Kennedy saw stars as her skull connected with the wall. Her back was pressed up against the wall, palms flat to it. Her hands had started trembling again and there wasn’t anything she could do to stop it. Stomach churning, she pressed back against the wall as far as she could while looking at the brunette.

“You make this too easy,” he smiled, hands braced on either side of her head. “Getting inside your head…it’s not complicated. It almost takes all the fun of it.”

She shrank back as he leaned in, fingers curling until her nails were scratching against the brick. With her back flat to the wall and his body so close to hers, there wasn’t anywhere that she could go. Her muscles were tensed, her subconscious bordering on the line between fight-or-flight.

“Almost,” the smile stayed, “but not quite.”

When his hand lifted from the wall and she thought it moved towards her, her mind made itself up. Without hesitation, she twisted her neck and snapped her jaws shut around his hand. Luckily for her, it wasn’t his metal hand. Unluckily, it left his metal hand free to use in retaliation.

The skin trapped between her teeth split as he grasped her by the neck with his free hand. She was jerked from the wall and slammed back into it. The gun tucked into the waist band of her pants jutted painfully into her lower back as she connected with the wall. His hand slid around her throat to grasp her short hair and yank her head back to free his hand.

Some of his blood stained her split lower lip and smudged the skin just beneath her lip. She teetered on her toes, breath coming in and out quickly through her nose, as his grip on her hair tightened. The murderous look in his eyes made a borderline-hysterical half-laugh, half-whimper slip out of her mouth.

“I’ll remember that,” he hissed before letting go.

Her hand swiped across her mouth to wipe away any blood that still remained. The feel of her phone vibrating in her pocket distracted her from his retreating form. She reached into her pocket and withdrew the device to find Steve’s name glowing on the screen. For a minute, she contemplated answering it and then not answering it.

Finally, the phone stopped vibrating and she leaned back against the wall. Her eyes closed, head tilting back for a second as her hands started trembling again. This time she didn’t try to stop them even as she began to dial Steve’s number again. It took two rings before he picked it up.

She told him where she was and hung up without letting the conversation continue. Her head rested against the wall with her eyes closed once more. Her hands sat in her lap, aimlessly turning the slender phone over and over again.

Soon enough, Kennedy heard boots approaching. She peeked open one eye just to reassure herself before letting it close again. After a moment, Steve crouched down beside her. Her blue eyes opened, looking at him as he regarded concernedly.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked quietly.

“Yeah,” she laughed softly, the sound wavering, “yeah…you should see the other guy.”