Liar

Kennedy walked across the living room, fingers ruffling through her short, damp hair. She made sure to flick a few drops of water in Loki’s direction, which earned her a look that nailed right between her shoulders. She just smirked to herself but said nothing as she reached the door.

Flipping the locks out of place, Kennedy tugged the door open and stepped into the gap between the frame and the door. The last thing she needed was for someone from SHIELD to have decided to drop in on her apartment right now. If it was SHIELD, she could worm her way out into the hallway. If it wasn’t SHIELD, it would be Rocko and Kolby.

“You wanna open the door?” Rocko asked, one eyebrow lifting.

“Naw, we’re gonna do this in the hallway,” Kennedy snorted before stepping back.

Rocko exhaled the air in his lung through his nose in a silent laugh. With a roll of her eyes, Kennedy glanced back to the hallway to see Kolby standing there. The woman’s dark eyes were locked firmly onto the uncovered bruises on Kennedy’s bare throat.

Self-consciously, Kennedy reached up and ran a hand over the bruises. They were fading, slowly, but most were still purple and blue. When they were covered up, she forgot about them. It wasn’t until someone pointed them out, as Kolby had done, that Kennedy actually remembered she had them.

“What the hell happened to you?” Kolby demanded, eyes still narrowed.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” Kennedy shrugged and braced a shoulder against the doorframe. “I’ll be fine.”

“Uh huh…” the slightly older woman scoffed, eyes still narrowed, “and I’m the next fucking queen of England.”

“I’m not a damn kid, Kolby,” she hissed back as her own eyes narrowed, “okay? I know what I’m doing. If I couldn’t handle it, I’d find a way out of it.”

They eyeballed each other in frosty silence before Kolby just snorted, loudly. Kolby gave her another long glance, her eyes lingering across Kennedy’s bruised throat for a moment too long. Kennedy fought the urge to fidget and self-consciously cover her throat as she stood there.

“You’re fucking crazy, completely loco,” Kolby muttered. “Now, can we get this show on the road?”

Kennedy stepped out of the way so that Kolby could slip inside the apartment. She had the door closed and the locks flicked back into place within seconds. It was only slight paranoia of several things on her part that made her do that. The locks made her feel safe enough.

She turned to find both Kolby and Rocko regarding Loki warily. Loki was more intrigued in his latest book than the two looking at him. He didn’t glance at them; he only flipped to the next page and resumed his reading. Kennedy glanced between her friends and Loki before reaching up and pushing her hair from her face.

“My boss,” was all she offered in explanation.

“If you continue to look at me like I am some form of alien-like creature, you might regret doing so,” Loki sighed as he turned to a new page.

She shrugged before walking around the couch to sit down on the opposite end from Loki. Kolby and Rocko took up places on the loveseat and chair. As they settled in, Kennedy glanced at the various guns strewn over the coffee table. She’d been in the process of cleaning them before she’d moved her laptop and everything else that she’d needed into the living room as well.

Her fingers danced across the keys, typing in the password quickly. As she opened the SHIELD database, Kennedy lifted her own gun from the end table. She ran a cloth over it’s outsides slowly before setting it back down. The SHIELD logo glowed on her screen.

“I’ve been working for Loki for a few weeks now. He was the reason for all the ‘chaos’ with the aliens, or whatever. SHIELD has something of his and I need help in getting it back.”

“You want to put this…guy back out on a free leash?” Kolby asked, dark eyes flicking over Loki.

“It’s my job.”

Kennedy watched out the corner of her eye as Loki lifted his head from his book. She was well aware of the green-eyed stare that he leveled on Kolby. Kolby shifted but returned the look with cool indifference. Kennedy could remember when she had responded like that and wondered how it could have only been just a few weeks ago that this had all begun. Now, she was terrified of her own shadow it seemed.

“So what do you need us to do?” Kolby asked, purposely turning from Loki to look at Kennedy.

“We have to get on the Helicarrier and find this,” Kennedy replied with a glance between the Kolby and Rocko.

She opened an image of Loki’s scepter before turning the laptop around. Rocko leaned forward, blue eyes studying it before leaning back. Kolby’s eyes skimmed over it from a difference before looking back at Kennedy.

“What kind of lock and key is it under?”

“SHIELD is very high-tech, very well-protected. They’re probably using something Stark related. So it’s tricky enough that will take you between five and ten minutes,” Kennedy nodded, mismatched eyes watching the smirk cross Kolby’s lips.

“Feel like making a belt?” Kolby smiled wolfishly.

“I don’t get paid enough to make a bet with you,” Kennedy snorted.

Kolby was, by far, the best safecracker that Kennedy had ever met. And safecracker was the most generalized, basic term for what Kolby actually was. If it could be broken into or stolen, Kolby could do it. She had a natural talent for taking what others wanted locked up. No one could do what Kolby could do under the pressure that she was put under.

“Well that’s all fine and dandy but none of it means jack if you can’t get to it,” Rocko cut in. “But I’m assuming that you have a plan for that as well, sugar.”

“I have a plan for everything, don’t I?” she replied smugly, eyebrows lifting.

“It remains to be seen whether those plans are always well thought out,” Rocko smirked as he fiddled with something on the laptop.

“You’ve made it out alive every time, haven’t you?” Kennedy fired back.

Kolby just laughed softly from her seat as she watched. Kennedy shot her a look but said nothing as Rocko continued to fiddle with her computer. If she was thinking along the right line, Rocko was looking up the blueprints of the Helicarrier. He’d figure out the quickest ways in and out of the place while Kennedy mapped out the main route.

“I can get us on the Helicarrier. I haven’t been busting my ass at playing double agent for no reason at all,” she shrugged, arms crossing. “I have enough access to get us as close as we can before we have to start playing secret agent.”

“And no one’s going to be curious that Kylie Anderson is working her way through the Helicarrier in the middle of the night? Or the fact that Kennedy Cross is the one running around causing mayhem?” Rocko asked, looking up.

“The security system will be taken care of. I’ll figure out everything else so that I don’t show up where I’m not at.”

“Are you sure that you want to break your low profile?”

Kennedy smiled, lips splitting over her white teeth.

“I am very tired of being a good girl.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“You are aware that this is a suicide mission,” Loki said as she cleaned one of her guns, “as you humans are so fond of calling it.”

“It’s only a suicide mission if we get caught,” Kennedy replied with a shrug. “I don’t intend on getting caught.”

She continued cleaning her gun until she was satisfied. After reassembling it, she laid it amongst the others on the coffee table. The rest of her guns that had yet to be cleaned were the ones that she wouldn’t need for Thursday night. She would clean those when she was safe and sound and far away from New York City.

“Is there any particular reason as to why you are so determined to run away from your problem?”

Kennedy slowly turned to look at Loki. For once, he didn’t have his face implanted in a book. In fact, his book was resting in his lap with the pages facing the floor. His cool, green eyes watched her without blinking and completely blank. A chill crawled it’s way down her spine but she did her best not to let it show.

“I’m not running away. I’m biding my time. And putting as many miles between myself and the league of do-gooders that SHIELD is employing,” Kennedy said indifferently. “I don’t leave loose ends behind.”

“And what of your Russian friend?” Loki returned, brows lifting. “He seems very…determined to remain invested in your life at the moment.”

“I’ll take care of that loose end when the time comes.”

Pushing up from the couch, Kennedy walked into the kitchen. She stretched onto her toes, fingers brushing the top of the fridge before wrapping around a bottle. She pulled the vodka bottle down before twisting the top off and taking a long drink. It burned on the way down and she liked the feeling.

Kennedy closed her eyes and took another long drink. Her fingers were wrapped tight around the neck of the bottle, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles were white. She had pushed back thoughts of the Russian until now, thanks to Loki. Thinking of him only made her body ache and her paranoia creep up uncontrollably.

She was lying if she said that she didn’t need help. She needed more help than she was willing to ask for. She needed a therapist and cocktail of medications for anxiety and sleeping. She needed his blood on her hands and her bullet lodged in his eye. As of right now, she had none of that.

It wouldn’t be hard to walk into SHIELD, to walk into any of their psychiatrist’s offices and begin to talk. It wouldn’t be hard to walk into Fury’s office and tell him everything. For her, it was next to impossible.

Walking into SHIELD to get help for this problem meant removing the wool that she had wrapped about their eyes. It meant that the game was over and she’d be locked up in a cell somewhere. A new lie wouldn’t be hard to think up, not for her. Keeping up with yet another lie was what would get her in the end.

She took another long drink from the vodka bottle, eyes opening as her head tilted back. The alcohol burned it’s fiery path down to simmer in her belly. The off and on shaking of her hands had stilled now. She hated that her hands shook every moment of the day now. Just the slightest reminder would set them off and they wouldn’t stop for hours.

Somehow, Kennedy had let the Russian inside her head. She had let him worm his way in and settle in for the long haul. When her eyes closed, she could see him. She could hear him if things were quiet enough. The cuts above her hip would scar over and remain there. He would always be there.

As she sucked down another mouthful of vodka, Kennedy shuffled from the kitchen to her bedroom. Once this job was taken care of, she was going to be gone. He would find her, she knew, but she wasn’t going to hide under a rock. She’d do what she had to do. And she’d put a bullet in the Russian’s brain if it was the last thing she had to do.