Liar

Kennedy lifted her head slowly, blinking several times to fix her blurry contacts. Shifting, she carefully slid off of Steve’s body and out of bed. She continuously watched him as she moved, making sure that he didn’t wake up as she pulled on her underwear and the first shirt she came across. It was Steve’s shirt.

With a yawn, she quietly slipped from the bedroom and through the apartment to the kitchen. She tugged open the fridge and pulled a beer out before taking a long, long drink. The chilled liquid felt good on the way down.

She caught a glimpse of her ruffled hair and made a face. Somewhere in the apartment she heard the buzzing sound of a phone vibrating. It was probably one of her phones. Walking into the living room, she dug her non-SHIELD phone out of her bag and glanced at the unfamiliar number on the screen. Frowning, she hit the ‘talk’ button after glancing at the time. 2:45 a.m.

“Meet me on the rooftop in five minutes.” Kennedy almost choked on her beer. “And don’t make me come find you, sweetheart.”

The dial tone buzzed in her ear for a solid minute before she could silence it and get to her feet. She left the beer bottle sitting on the coffee table as she quietly slipped into the bedroom and grabbed the sweatpants that she’d shoved into a bag early yesterday afternoon. Slipping them on, she pulled on her socks and just as quietly slipped out of the apartment.

She took the elevator to the top floor of the building before taking the stairs to the roof access. Her fingers combed through her messy faux hawk as she pushed the door open. The darkness of the night was slightly pushed back by the glowing lights of the city that never slept. And, because it was a holiday, the celebrations were still going on down on the streets despite it being almost three a.m.

Slowly, Kennedy walked out of the doorway and onto the rooftop. Her socks absorbed the cold from the chilled cement as she shuffled her way across it. The Russian was perched on the ledge of the building, one booted foot on the rooftop and the other on the ledge. The wind tugged at his dark brunette hair, ruffling it as his eyes watched the scene below him.

The thought of how easy it would be to push him over the edge occurred to her. It would be easy to just rush him, to send them both over the edge. She didn’t particularly feel like plummeting six or seven stories to her death though. Instead, her fingers curled into fists as she sidled closer to where he was sitting.

“I do so hope you enjoyed spending time with the Captain,” he drawled, finally looking at her.

The animalistic edge to his eyes was muted but she could see it lurking, waiting to spring free. The fingers of his human hand twitched against his leg as his dark eyes took her appearance in. Her own blue eyes narrowed slightly in response.

“How’d you know it was me who answered?”

“Call it a lucky guess,” he smiled before climbing off the ledge. “And don’t even worry about how I got that number.”

The only way that he could have gotten her personal number was through her records, which she doubted, or Rocko and Kolby. One of those two was more likely, but she liked to think that neither of them would sell her out like that. She knew that she could trust them, which meant that he’d gotten her number through some means of deception.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Kennedy muttered as she took a step back. “What do you want? I have sleep to catch up on.”

He just smiled again and clasped his hands behind his back. It was still fairly warm out, though a bit chilly because of where they were, and he wore a leather jacket. The jacket wasn’t thin and sleek like most now, but heavier and bulkier. His shirt was either dark gray or black; Kennedy couldn’t tell. For some reason, she half-expected him to wear some a spandex-y Russian version of Steve’s own uniform. The image almost made her smile.

Almost.

“Did you call me up here to just leer at me?” she asked irritably. “If that’s the case, I’m leaving.”

She started to turn and hesitated enough to see his eyebrows lift in smug amusement. Setting her jaw, she turned completely and began walking back across the rooftop.

“She’s got lovely skin, your friend.” Kennedy slowed, trying to think of who he could be talking of. “Her little girl too, those big brown eyes and that rich caramel skin. Adorable and so even-tempered for such a sickly little thing.”

Kolby and Rose. Kennedy swallowed thickly and her blue eyes closed. She hadn’t mentioned the Russian, James, to Kolby. She had no reason to. There was no need to involve Kolby, or Rose especially.

Kennedy had known the little girl since Rose had been born. She’d babysat for Kolby before, even if kids weren’t particularly her thing. Rose had always been sick though; healthy one week, ill and practically bed-ridden the next. Kennedy had kept her distance from Kolby’s small family because of the fact that she didn’t want her employers using the two, especially Rose, as leverage against Kennedy. That had turned out spectacularly.

“Oh…I think I struck a nerve,” he chuckled, most likely smiling to himself.

“What do you want?” she asked, turning back to face him.

“A little birdie says that you’re hightailing it to England after tonight,” the Russian shrugged and pulled a cigarette out.

He didn’t bring it to his lips but extended it in her direction. Kennedy just stared at it for several seconds before looking at him. Her brow furrowed as she realized that her hand was trembling. She crossed her arms over her stomach and knotted her trembling fingers in Steve’s shirt.

With a shrug, he lifted the cigarette to his lips and lit it. “Suit yourself.”

“What does me leaving the country have anything to do with you?”

“You’re not of any use to me in England,” he replied after exhaling. “I need you here.”

“SHIELD will have me in a cell before I’ll be of any use to you,” Kennedy shrugged now, watching as his cheeks hollowed out on the inhale.

“You don’t give me enough credit, sweetheart,” the brunette laughed, smiling. “I’m very good at what you do.”

She snorted, blue eyes narrowing. “Killing people is easy, especially when you’re a sniper. You don’t get up close and personal.”

No sooner had the last word left her lips did the animalistic light burst into flame in his eyes. The smile that split his lips was wicked and deadly, hungry for blood. Kennedy shifted, her arms uncrossing as the muscles in her legs tensed. She had ten feet to the door, which she hadn’t shut. She wished that she had her gun.

“You don’t think that I can’t kill everyone in that apartment building with my bare hands in the next few hours?” he asked, eyes glinting hungrily. “And that includes your patriotic friend, darling.”

The light flicked off before she could answer and his head drew back, a smirk stretching his lips. He brought the cigarette to his lips and inhaled before exhaling the gray plume of smoke slowly. All the while Kennedy’s gaze never broke with his and her muscles remained tensed, ready to flee at moment’s notice.

“Just remember, sweetheart, that you’re not of any use to me in England,” was all he said next. “And that you should really get a colder heart.”

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

Kennedy leaned against the wall of the Helicarrier, mismatched eyes watching as Rocko and Kolby finished readying themselves. Her eyes continuously flicked to where Kolby was standing and loading bullets into a magazine. She felt like she should sense something different about her friend now but she was getting nothing.

Shifting impatiently, Kennedy crossed her arms and stared at the floor below her feet. She’d gotten little-to-no sleep after her early morning rooftop rendezvous. When she had gotten back to the apartment, Steve had still been sound asleep. She had finished discarded her beer and crawled back into the bed only to lay wide-awake while Steve slept.

She had wanted to go and reread the file Steve had, the file of his supposedly dead best friend. She didn’t know what to call the Russian and she didn’t feel right even using his first name. She never addressed him by a name or title anyways. It was all just directed at him because there was never anyone else around to otherwise be included.

Lifting her head, Kennedy snuck a glance at Kolby again. The slightly older woman was turning a silver coin over and over in her hand. The ridges on the coin had been worn smooth by the action having been repeated for so long. The rosary and the single dogtag hanging from Kennedy’s throat were warm against her skin, her ‘good luck’ charms.

Her eyes glanced towards the nearby QuinJet parked in the lowest hangar bay. Their tech guy was sat in that jet, working on the Helicarrier’s system. After a moment longer, the mike in her ear quietly hummed as he began to speak.

“Security cameras are on loop. Your path is unobstructed and I’ll keep you updated on any changes or anything suspicious.”

“Alright, let’s go,” Kennedy muttered as she pushed off the wall.

She led the way out, green and hazel eyes sweeping the halls for any surprises. It didn’t matter that she had someone who could alert her; she liked to stay on her toes. Staying on your toes had kept her alive this part. She wasn’t planning on that changing any time soon.

“ The elevator at the end of the next hall can get you to the floor you need quickly. I’ll mute any sounds.”

Having someone manipulate the system to their advantage made Kennedy’s frayed nerves even more sensitive. She liked having an advantage and she liked winning. Things going as easily as taking candy from a baby made her nervous. But they couldn’t afford any costly mistakes. They had a small window of opportunity; a playing field loaded in their favor was what they needed.

Licking her lips, Kennedy slowed at a corner and peered around. A SHIELD agent walked out of intersecting corridor as the warning came up in her ear. Narrowing her eyes slightly, Kennedy waited to see what he would do. If he took the elevator, they could take the corridor he had just occupied and a flight of stairs. They would only set them off the main course by about five minutes.

Once the agent had disappeared into the elevator, Kennedy, Kolby and Rocko disappeared down the intersecting corridor. They moved quickly and she could feel her adrenaline building already. After her encounters with the Russian, she wanted to hit something. She wanted to fight. She wanted to destroy someone because of everything that she had been forced through.

Her opportunity came soon enough.

The agent was standing at his post and not leaving anytime soon. They could backtrack and waste more time or they could do something about it. Kennedy preferred doing something about it. She just had to make sure that he didn’t have time to raise an alert.

Signaling for Kolby and Rocko to wait, Kennedy slipped around the corner. She was careful to tread as silently as she could, shifting her weight just right so that the leather of her boots didn’t creak. Licking her lips, Kennedy clenched her fingers into fists as she came up behind the agent.

Her knee connected with the back of his thigh, deadening the muscle on impact. Before he could drop too low, her fist connected with his kidney and then she moved in front of him. Kennedy punched him in the ear, drove her knee into his chest and then into his face. She felt the bone of his nose crunch as her kneecap connected with it.

The agent slipped to the floor, turning onto his back and his eyes rolling back into his skull. Rocko and Kolby rounded the corner, glancing at the unconscious body as Kennedy grabbed the cuffs from his belt. She yanked them tight around his wrists before tying his ankles together.

“Shut down the elevator on this floor,” Kennedy said as she checked the agent for a mike or radio. “Don’t let it go anywhere.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Rocko help me get his body into that elevator,” Kennedy nodded as the doors slid open.

Rocko grasped the man’s shoulders as Kennedy lifted his feet. Together, they lifted him and carried him into the elevator. That was where they left him after Kennedy made a makeshift gag for his mouth. Without a word, she walked back out of the elevator and Rocko followed. The doors slid shut after him.

"Let’s get a move on,” Kolby said, glancing down the next corridor. “Two more left turns, some magic, a helluva lot of skill and we’re home free.”

“If we’re lucky, we’ll be home before the sun goes up,” Kennedy replied as they moved.

When they reached the room where the staff was locked up, Kennedy and Rocko stood watch. Kolby was in the room, working her magic. For now, Kennedy had yet to draw her gun. She had no reason to draw any attention. Rocko stood across from her, barehanded for now as well. If they had to, they would draw their guns.

“Shit.”

“What’s going on?” Kennedy hissed, ducking into the room.

The case where the staff should have been locked up was wide open in front of Kolby. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the case was empty. The staff wasn’t there.

“You’ve got a former comrade heading your way with an ETA of two minutes.”

“Mother fucker,” Kennedy snarled before darting back out with Kolby following. “Let’s go.”

Kennedy took the front with Kolby following her and Rocko bringing up the rear. She jogged, listening to the tech voice in her head until it went silent. A bright red light flashed on and Kennedy slowed to a stop, turning a slow circle as she did. The red lights had flashed on in front of and behind them.

A scuff from behind her made her hand slip down to where her gun was strapped to her thigh. She trusted her Beretta first and foremost. Her line of defense went from her Beretta to the sawed-off shotgun strapped to her back to the knife on her opposite thigh and finally to herself.

“Here goes nothing,” Kennedy muttered and drew her gun.

Without hesitation she turned and fired off two quick shots. The first shot caught the SHIELD agent in the forehead and dropped him like a stone. The alarms started screeching and then they were running.

The lower hangar bay was out of the question. And if they couldn’t find an available QuinJet soon, they were screwed. Getting off the Helicarrier in one piece was the only thing she cared about right now.

An agent popped ahead of her and Kennedy fired off a shot, catching him in the throat. She skirted the body and pool of blood while digging in her pocket for her second earpiece. As she ran, Kennedy managed to wiggle the SHIELD earpiece into place and turned it on. The slight advantage that it gave her was something that Kennedy was willing to take.

Behind her, gunfire echoed sharply. She couldn’t risk glancing back, not with the risk of getting shot herself. Instead, she made sure the mikes were muted on her end.

“Everybody okay?” she yelled as another burst of gunfire echoed.

“We’re good!” Rocko yelled back and the burst of gunfire was much closer this time. “That was mine!”

Nodding to herself, Kennedy cued herself into the voices in her ears. From the sounds of it, SHIELD was herding them somewhere. And Romanoff was getting closer, which she didn’t like.

“Rock, please tell me that you came up with an escape route!”

“Switch spots with me!”

Kennedy stopped running long enough to let Rocko slip to the front. She fell in behind Kolby, her gun drawn as she glanced over her shoulder. An agent peered around the corner and she fired off a warning shot. The agent disappeared and Kennedy just snorted loudly but didn’t stop running.

She hung a sharp left, keeping Kolby in her line of sight. Rocko was keeping the route as erratic as possible, which was benefitting them. According to the voices in her ear, SHIELD wasn’t quite sure what to do. She heard Kolby shout something but it didn't process until she was tackled into the wall of the Helicarrier.

Kennedy's booted feet scrabbled against the floor as an agent dug his shoulder into her ribcage and slammed her against the wall. She grunted and struggled to hide a grimace before driving her elbow into his back. Kneeing him in the stomach did no good with the heavy bulletproof vest. She drove her foot down and into his kneecap instead.

Wheezing slightly, Kennedy slid out of his grasp before turning to bury her fist into his cheekbone. He ducked and tackled her to the floor. She lunged upwards, headbutting him in the face before he could hit her. Blood spurted across her forehead from where her forehead connected with his nose. Grimacing, Kennedy wormed her way loose before a pair of muscular arms wrapped around her and pinned her arms to her side.

She kicked her legs and thrashed, twisting and turning in an attempt to break herself free. She didn't know where Kolby and Rocko had gone; they probably hadn't noticed that she was gone. Swearing to herself, Kennedy looked up as another agent approached. Her mismatched eyes watched him warily as she lashed out with a vicious kick at the man holding her.

The agent with the broken nose was getting to his feet as the third agent moved closer. Kennedy stopped thrashing, her chest rising and falling quickly as she blinked to keep the blood out of her eyes. The muscles in her body tensed, waiting for the first movement. She had a feeling that their orders were to bring her in. She figured as long as she was alive, nothing else mattered to SHIELD.

The newest agent lunged forward first and she kicked out with her booted feet to catch him in the knee. He dropped and she kicked him in the chin before he could hit the floor. She missed the bloody-faced agent approaching until his fist connected with hers. Grimacing, Kennedy coughed and spat blood out of her mouth. Her head lifted, eyes narrowing before she jerked the knife on her thigh loose and jammed it into the thigh of her captor.

Throwing her head back, Kennedy's felt her skull connect with his face and his grip on her dropped. Darting forward, Kennedy jumped and planted her feet against the agent's chest. She was back up in an instant, driving her foot into his stomach before stomping on his sternum. Dropping to her knee, Kennedy stared down at him through the blood with a feral smile on her face.

"No hard feelings?"

Gripping his face, Kennedy slammed it against the floor of the Helicarrier twice before getting to her feet. She turned to find that the agent who had been holding her was slumped over, his neck twisted to a weird angle. Kolby stood over him, dark eyes watching as Kennedy scooped up her dropped gun and fired a shot into the skull of the third agent. They left then, Kennedy following Kolby to an elevator. Rocko was inside, fingers sliding across the screen of the tablet. The doors closed after them.

"They're herding us somewhere,” Kennedy muttered as she leaned against the elevator wall, a hand on her ribs.

“I realized that,” Rocko replied without looking up. "I'm working on it."

“Don’t say anything else out loud if it deals with how we’re getting out of here,” she nodded before looking up as the elevator changed direction.

Kolby snapped a magazine into her gun and armed it. “You picked a hell of mission for your last one.”

“Well, you know me,” Kennedy smiled and readied herself as the elevator slowed, “can’t ever take the simple way out.”

The elevator slowed and she steeled herself while waiting for the doors to open. It felt as if a lifetime had passed between when the elevator stopped and when the doors slid open. When they did, she had to make herself peer around the corner before firing off a shot.

“It’s a trap…” Kolby muttered in a slight sing-song tone when silence met them.

The SHIELD mike had gone dead long ago. “We can risk it or we can stay here like sitting ducks.”

To prove her point, she pushed the doors button and waited. After about ten seconds, the doors remained open. A cold sweat had pooled at the base of her spine by now. Her left hand was started to trembling and she curled her fingers to hide it.

“Kid, we gotta talk about you and your risk-taking habits,” Kolby muttered before stepping out of the elevator.

Kennedy didn’t even get the warning out before she heard the gun go off. There was a burst of red mist and Kolby fell back into the elevator.

“Jesus Christ…”

She heard Rocko’s whispered words but they didn’t make sense at first. All she could see was Kolby’s body, brown eyes staring up at the ceiling and a perfect round hole between her eyes. The bullet had hit just the right trajectory. Blood was already pooling beneath her head.

Kennedy wasn’t even aware of what she was doing until she felt the kick of the shotgun in her hands. The all-too-familiar sound of the shotgun being racked was loud and abrasive to her ears as she fired off another shot. Not satisfied, she snatched up her abandoned handgun and fired again, and again and again.

The doors slid shut when she was reloading and she felt the elevator begin to drop. The bullets slipped from her shaking hands, skittering across the floor and into Kolby’s blood. She just dropped the gun and stared at it as her hands trembled and her muscles tensed.

“Kennedy…”

She flinched at the rough sound of Rocko’s voice. Lifting her head, she had to close her eyes so that she didn’t see Kolby’s body. She didn’t open them again until she was sure that Kolby’s body wasn’t in her direct line of sight.

“You couldn’t know.”

Kennedy tugged the earpiece out and crushed it beneath her boot. “She shouldn’t have walked out first.”

The doors opened and Kennedy scrabbled for any kind of weapon. Instead, they were met with silence and she stilled. Rocko climbed to his feet and quickly began gathering their belongings.

He held up five fingers to indicate how many minutes they had and Kennedy began to move as if on autopilot. The QuinJet in the hangar bay was ready to go. Moving Kolby took the most time and it made Kennedy’s stomach clench but she wasn’t going to leave her behind. She wouldn’t let herself leave Kolby behind.

SHIELD let them get away, Kennedy knew that, as they left the Helicarrier without opposition. Her throat worked and the knuckles of her fist dug into the sides of her thigh. The short nails on her fingers dug crescents into her palms as she sat there.

All she could see was the red of Kolby’s blood and the short bob of red hair at the end of the corridor. She could see Kolby falling back into the elevator and she could see the redhead ducking out of the way before Kennedy’s first shot could be fired.

But all she could imagine was putting the bullet in Romanoff’s skull.