Hollow Scars

There were birds chirping. Annoying birds chirping.

Her head spun in agony and her body ached with soreness deep in her muscles. Had she been in some kind of car accident? Scarlett’s thoughts were muddled by sleep to properly recall what had put her in such a foul state. The throbbing in her head considerably but she was too fatigued to make sense of why it was in such pain. Wherever she was lying was comfortable enough that she considered not moving. If it weren’t for those damned birds she would remain sleeping. Or at least she would’ve until she her memory properly returned to her and she became increasingly aware of the danger she could potentially be in.

Like a dam had burst, Scarlett was crushed by the waves of reality as water rolled over her feet. She’d washed up on the shore after falling overboard. Chills ran down Scarlett’s spine and her stomach momentarily lurched. Her fever had returned overnight; she could feel it, strangely enough, behind her eyes that were now burning. Where she’d smacked her head against the railing of the boat when Frankenstein’s monster had disrupted her fall she could feel the wound throbbing. Sitting up instantly, awake and alert, Scarlett reached for the handgun in her holster beneath her arm and checked the area around her. She’d half expected to wake up in a laboratory with MedCo doctors surrounding her or in a prison cell with similar attendants but was instead surprised to find she was alone on a sandy beach. The amount of chaos Scarlett has caused must have been sufficient enough to keep those bastards at MedCo from searching for her. Either that or she’d washed up so far away from the sight that the area hadn’t been searched yet.

Getting hurriedly onto her knees while checking her gun to make sure it was loaded, Scarlett turned around and searched for any signs of foul play but found none. About a hundred feet away the sandy shore became treacherous rocks. She’d washed up onto the beach in a pretty lucky spot considering she could’ve very well been crushed or drowned by nature. Shivering from the fever that had returned but still remaining on her guard, Scarlett limped through the sand to get further away from the shore. Wiping her hand over her face to free her skin of the tiny bits of earth on her skin she could feel every bit of her body trembling with anxiety.

What the hell happened on that boat? Had she really seen some undead creature? Was MedCo about to start the Zombie Apocalypse? Scarlett was pretty sure she wasn’t prepared to be party to that. Though if anyone could survive that it’d be her and Tony. Maybe Erick hadn’t been dead when she’d left him in the basement of that building. It was the only thing that had made sense. But she’d shot him in the head. That wasn’t easily survived.

Why hadn’t he followed her into the water? Formidable was an understatement for what she’d been up against. Had she finally managed to kill him on the boat during her last stand? She’d only cut off his arm and fired more than a dozen shots into him then set him on fire, so she could hope that was the true. Her gut told her differently. If she’d learned anything from playing too much Xbox during her recovery it was that those things should’ve worked. And yet he’d chased her and had nearly gotten the best of her. If it hadn’t been for her quick thinking then she would’ve become every one of those things Erick had threatened. His hubris had gotten in the way of his ultimate goal. Erick’s lust for wanting to torture Scarlett rather than kill her had given her the chance to escape.

Once sure that no one was coming at her with guns blazing from behind the rocks, Scarlett ditched her gun in the ocean along with her holster and patted down her pockets to make sure she hadn’t lost her evidence in the water. Without her jacket, the gun was in plain sight and it wasn’t registered anywhere so it was just easier to ditch it than it was to keep it. Plus people tended to trust someone carrying a gun less than someone without. Right now Scarlett wanted to seem trustworthy.

The sun was shining brightly overhead and the pounding in her head became considerably worse. It was very likely she had a concussion but Scarlett thankfully knew how to care for that. Between working such a dangerous job for years and having spent time engineering medical equipment she’d learned a few tricks of the trade. Scarlett was nothing if not resourceful. Years of tending to her own wounds had finally come in handy.

She’d lost the remaining clips of ammunitions she’d taken in the water but the bag with her phone in it was still intact and hadn’t leaked. Pulling the phone free and discarding the bag in the nearest trash can as she slowly made her way onto solid ground, Scarlett felt flooded with relief. The evidence she’d gathered would be more than enough to hand over to S.H.I.E.L.D. to launch a full scale investigation on MedCo’s darker dealings. She would have to talk to her contact and get copies of the shipping manifests to turn it over with, but even alone it was pretty compelling evidence against them. It didn’t matter what country she was in, experiments of that nature were never considered legal.

Managing to finally get the stiffness out of her legs, Scarlett stopped limping and walked casually away from the shore. She had no idea where she was and as she pushed buttons on her phone to bring it to life she recalled how it had drained unnaturally in the ship. The Ghost Hunters would have gotten one hell of a kick out of what she’d been through. There was little Scarlett could do out on the beach in bloodied and soaking wet clothing and half covered in sand so she did the only thing she could think to do.

Scarlett found a shitty looking diner near the shore and stepped inside. Sure, it wasn’t the brightest idea in broad daylight in her condition but most people didn’t ask a person like her questions. And Scarlett was damn hungry. Ordering the largest coffee they would bring her and an omelet, Scarlett considered what she’d discovered with one hand on her head as she munched on her food. It could’ve been dehydration and hunger talking, but she was sure that was the best damn breakfast she’d ever eaten in her life.

Tony would have very much enjoyed it. Maybe someday she’d bring him there.

Spinning her phone on the table after getting a refill on her coffee Scarlett pushed her sandy hair out of her face and pursed her lips. Her contact had warned her against going to the ship but something felt off about that. It had felt off in the first place but it still nagged at her. There had never been an occasion where he’d warned her against taking a job. When had he become so emotionally attached to her? She couldn’t remember why or when it had started but it didn’t seem right. It was his job to deal with people like her and not become attached.

Maybe it’d been nothing more than a clever ruse. Scarlett hated thinking that the one man she’d trusted for years could’ve been playing her but she it was inevitable. There had been too many conveniences in the past week for her to ignore them. He’d found information on MedCo that even Tony hadn’t been able to find and she was sure that there wasn’t a person on the planet who rivaled Tony Stark’s computer skills. As arrogant as he was about how fantastic he was at everything apparently, Scarlett had seen firsthand just how capable he was with technology. So how had this man, working for an underfunded underground base in India, managed to find original shipping manifests from a company as careful and dastardly as MedCo? How had he managed to find those three cities that he’d given her coordinates for earlier in the week without raising alarms?

Sure, the manifest could’ve been made easy to find in order to lure Scarlett in but she never would’ve found it without her contact calling her. It saddened her to think that he was setting her up for a fall, but she had this feeling that something was off with his intelligence that she couldn’t shake. And as stupid as it seemed to some people, Scarlett was learning never to ignore her gut instincts. She’d felt that MedCo wasn’t worthy of trust from the very beginning and while she’d been so incredibly wrong about Stark Industries and its CEO even that had come with feelings she’d ignored.

She’d chalked off her doubts about Tony Stark to post traumatic stress and hormones. It still hurt her brain to think how only a month ago she’d wanted to make him beg for mercy. If she had just listened to her gut about Tony in the first place then she would’ve saved them both a considerable amount of suffering. Shoving a cracker in her mouth, Scarlett was sure she could’ve eaten three more delicious omelets but resisted the urge.

It was time to track down the man who should’ve been impossible to find. When Scarlett put her mind to it she could do some major harm with a keyboard. Right now all she would need is proof to settle her uneasy mind.

And a shower. Possibly the longest, hottest shower she’d ever taken. There was sand in places that Scarlett didn’t know sand could make its way to and only scalding hot water would do.

After paying for her meal and leaving a generous tip, Scarlett bought a coffee for the road and then started the trek back to her hotel. She’d asked for directions from the waitress who had suddenly become friendly upon seeing just what kind of tip she was receiving for being discreet. The docks that Scarlett had torched the night before were a mile to the east and she could easily make that journey in a short amount of time. It took about an hour but she managed to make her way to the hotel. Fever or not, Scarlett was feeling particularly determined.

She could’ve sworn she coughed up a lung on the way there. Was it ocean water in her chest causing her to cough or maybe whatever had made her sick beforehand? Surely laying on the shore freezing cold for hours after a blow to the head would set her recovery back a few days at least. Still, Scarlett felt better than she’d felt in Milan so she couldn’t complain. Plugging her dead phone into charge so that she could use it later to trace the numbers that had contacted her in the past week, Scarlett abandoned it on the nightstand of the hotel and then took the shower she so sorely desired.

The more she thought about it the more it made sense that her contact had been tainted by someone, even if it wasn’t MedCo. Everything from the incident at the docks the night before to the job that had gone badly in Afghanistan could be explained away by him setting her up. But then why would he have helped her so much in between? He’d paid for her hospital bills after she’d made her way out of the country at that horrible time of her life. Why would he do that? To retain her trust? It was sick, but people did sickening things. It was the sad truth of humanity that people were capable of despicable acts and sometimes for no other reason than some sick and twisted pleasure.

As much as Scarlett didn’t want it to be true of the man she’d trusted her career in the hands of for the longer than she could remember, she couldn’t discount it without investigation either. The only person she trusted completely now was Tony and while that was cynical of her considering the situation, Scarlett felt she was being on the safe side. And the only reason she trusted Tony as much as she did was because he had earned that trust. She knew what he was capable of, what an asshole he was and how volatile he could be but he never pretended to be anything but that. Even when they’d been testing each other out, he’d made constant sexual advances, bragged about his prowess every chance he got, and never lied.

Tony had worked hard to earn her trust and even then Scarlett had rejected the notion until she’d found proof of his honesty on her own. Scarlett knew that Tony was trustworthy because despite everything that she’d done to him and how terribly she’d deceived him he still trusted her and loved her. At least she thought he trusted her. As she toweled off she considered that he might not trust her entirely and she couldn’t blame him for that either. If he had done to her what she had done to him than she wouldn’t have trusted him either.

But that was the least of Scarlett’s worries. If there was one person Scarlett didn’t have to worry about betraying her it was Tony Stark. This only reaffirmed that she would have to do a thorough check on the Indian man she’d been speaking to for years. If he was working with MedCo and had anything to do with putting the gears in motion for their plan in the last year she would find him and put a bullet in his head.

She’d put two bullets in his head because if anyone she killed came back as a zombie monster like Erick had ever again, then Scarlett would be so mad.

Wrapping the towel around her body, Scarlett sat on the edge of the hotel bed and stared into the mirrored closet door at her reflection. She’d lost weight again, and not in a good way. Her muscle mass had continued to diminish over time. It wasn’t like she had much time to get to the gym since she’d escaped from MedCo. The deplorable conditions she’d been held in there had done a number on her physical stature but as soon as she could, Scarlett would get back into working order.

Being sick had killed her appetite. When was the last time she’d really eaten more than scraps and nibbles here or there just so that she could take some sort of drug? She couldn’t recall. Maybe that was why the omelet had tasted so wonderful. In the same mirror she’d studied her reflection, Scarlett attended to the wound on her head that had rendered her unconscious and had almost been the cause of her death the night before. It wasn’t as bad as she expected it to be. She probably should have gotten stitches but the wound had now closed on its own and had even survived her showering. To her relief, she had not suffered the concussion she had suspected.

After tending to her wound, getting dressed, and collecting her things, Scarlett unplugged her now charged phone and saw the messages and missed calls waiting for her. Tony was either regretting his decision to leave her in Milan, was bored out of his mind, or worried about her. Scarlett left the hotel, phone in hand, and traveled to the nearest café where she then borrowed a computer from someone sitting nearby. It wasn’t hard to get a favor, considering her looks. The head wound certainly didn’t help her case but most of it was now hidden by her rebellious, and now sand free, hair. Thankfully she was still pretty enough to garner favors when she wanted to and having a bit of charm and sass helped her case too.

After promising the man she’d borrowed the computer from she wouldn’t be long, he left her alone while he ran some errands. Scarlett was lucky she looked trustworthy at first glance even if she’d never understood why. She wouldn’t trust herself in a dark alley that was for sure. But once she was sure she wasn’t being watched, Scarlett plugged her phone into the computer. It wouldn’t take her long to trace the true source of the numbers that had been calling her and the ones she’d used to contact the Indian man.

But it was far more complicated than she had expected it to be. People in her line of business always took extra precautions but it was particularly difficult for Scarlett to narrow down the man’s location. She knew that anyone looking for her would go through the same difficulties, except for apparently Tony, who managed to find her no matter where she tried to disappear to even before he had bugged her phone. Each phone number she traced led her to a dead end and this frustrated Scarlett beyond words.

Worse than that, her inability to trace the source only confirmed that she’d been had and probably for a long time at that. This man she thought that was worthy of her trust was nothing more than a manipulative asshole working at the hands of MedCo. How long had he been a puppet for them? How much information had he fed them about her? Was that why they had sought her out and asked her so many times to take a job with them before Scott had finally convinced her to take it? They knew her history and how valuable an asset she could be to them. Short of kidnapping Tony Stark, Scarlett was the next best bet in engineering and technology. Only the world would notice when Tony went missing. The only person who would notice she went missing now would be Tony.

Popping an aspirin in her mouth and chasing it with yet another coffee, Scarlett rubbed her temples in frustration. Her head was pounding and every lead she followed led her nowhere. The calls had been sent through various towers in strange places around the world which meant that the man calling her had been routing his calls through servers which was very peculiar for anyone who wasn’t up to something nasty. Scarlett knew that what he did wasn’t exactly legal but it wasn’t akin to what Scarlett did either.

She had enemies. When jobs went wrong people blamed her, not the man who had tipped her off to the job.

It was her life that had always been in danger, so why was he taking such desperate measures to go into hiding? Still the nagging voice in Scarlett’s head reminded her of how he had looked out for her and taken care of her over time. But what if the people Scarlett had trusted to keep her safe weren’t at all who she had thought they were? Scott was obviously not the weak man she’d thought he was or the loving and supportive boyfriend she had claimed him to be for so long. So why was she still hesitating to think that a man she had never met face to face could betray her? It would’ve been easy.

She wondered what the price was for her life.

How much was she worth to him? How much had she been worth to MedCo? Scarlett caught herself as she squeezed her cardboard cup of coffee just before she would’ve crushed it. She didn’t much feel like taking another shower due to coffee related accidents.

The amount Scarlett wanted a vacation was astounding.

Considering she had never before taken a vacation, that was saying something. Scarlett brought up the text message on her computer that had contained the coordinates to the three towns in various countries that she’d been provided with the week prior. Why had she avoided the town outside of Istanbul? Was it her instincts or had she really just been avoiding old work colleagues as she had convinced herself? She’d considered doing a drive by after checking on the ship in South Africa but now that she suspected the man who had provided her with such information was no longer on the level she didn’t think it was worth it. Going to Istanbul could leave her dead or worse. Scarlett really didn’t like to think about the “or worse” part.

The texts yielded more information than the phone calls had. They traced back to a computer system and while it took some digging Scarlett managed to retain the original IP address. At first it hadn’t meant much of anything other than the Indian man did in fact live in India as he had previously mentioned when trying to offer her a way out, but the more Scarlett dug the more she found.

The routing system he’d used for his phone calls and IP address was privatized. The only companies that used privatized systems that advanced were definitely not terrorist organizations. Now Scarlett was confused. If he wasn’t a terrorist then what the hell was he? This clever and dastardly man not only had he been deceiving her, but the lengths he’d gone through to hide it were astounding.

Scarlett decided it was now or never and hacked into the servers that were being used to reroute the phone calls she made to the Indian man. She disguised her attempts so that they would look like a call from a computer rather than an invasive search from a foreign country. Depending on how sophisticated the system was, Scarlett would have a limited amount of time to find the owner of the server.

Scarlett’s phone buzzed and made her jump a mile in her seat. Several people turned to look at her. Pushing aside her cup of coffee she decided that maybe the fourth cup had been too much for the day and instead acknowledged her phone. It was yet another message from Tony. She hadn’t bothered yet to read any of them because she knew that once she did she would get caught up talking to Tony and then distracted by him. There would be plenty of time for that once she’d finished digging up information on the man who had betrayed her.

If he had betrayed her. Scarlett didn’t know who to trust or what to think anymore. Mysteries wrapped in riddles and bathed in enigmas were too much for someone with as big a bump on their head as Scarlett had.

Checking the messages at long last so the buzzing would stop, Scarlett actually smiled when she saw them. Tony was worried about her. He’d even outright said he was worried about her. She’d never had anyone worry about her like that before and it was a strange feeling. Even her parents had never worried about her well being. They’d only worried about her tarnishing their reputation. And Scott had never been so much worried as he had been annoyed that he had to deal with her shenanigans. It might have been worry during the first few weeks of their relationship but once the novelty of being with her had worn off, so had the worry.

Quickly she sent a message back to Tony letting him know that she was okay but her phone battery had died while she was doing something important and she hadn’t gotten a chance to charge it. She then quickly added in a snide remark about him acting like a needy girlfriend. Part of her knew she should tell him the real reason she hadn’t charged her phone but she didn’t need him to worry anymore than he already was. To be honest, she was worried about him too but it was pretty likely she wasn’t going to admit that.

Scarlett ignored the remaining messages again and instead continued to search for the source of the private system she’d discovered. When she found it after a few more minutes of digging, she actually leaned back in her chair and placed her hands behind her head, fingers entangled together.

It definitely wasn’t what she had been expecting to find.

“Well then.” Scarlett cleared her throat and looked about the café. Just as she was about to sign out of the system, it locked her out and threw up warnings about the system being hacked and compromised. Calmly, Scarlett closed the system down on the computer, forced it to shut down, wiped her fingerprints off of the keys and removed her phone and any trace of it on the computer. After that she pocketed her phone, got up just in time for the computer’s owner to return and thanked him for his generous offer of lunch which she then declined claiming she was over full from breakfast, which wasn’t really a lie.

Then Scarlett threw away her coffee cup and walked out of the café with a wave to the man behind the computer who seemed to still be enamored with her despite being turned down for a date.

Scarlett’s phone buzzed again with a response from Jarvis rather than from Tony, scolding her for not responding sooner. She couldn’t help but smile again but ignored the comments instead of responding. There were bigger things on her mind than Tony and Jarvis though she couldn’t deny she was thinking about one of them more than she was willing to say out loud.

The man she’d trusted for years to help her find jobs and keep her safe from the law was working for the law. He was working for S.H.I.E.L.D. as a matter of fact.

If that was the case then why didn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. have more information on the jobs that she’d done? Her file had been impressive but was only a quarter of what she’d actually done over the years. And if he worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. then why the hell had he sent her into the lion’s den a number of times in the past week alone? Did this mean that Scarlett worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. without realizing it?

She was sure that S.H.I.E.L.D. had many contacts throughout the globe that worked with people like her and Natasha and sent them to clean up the messes that they couldn’t legally clean up. But Natasha knew she’d been working for the anti-terror organization so why didn’t Scarlett?

She was guessing that was because she didn’t really work for them otherwise they wouldn’t be pursuing her so desperately. The Indian man worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. but it didn’t mean he had given any of the information out on his clients. Maybe he’d approached S.H.I.E.L.D. after he’d already known Scarlett and been in business with her. Her guess was that he had no idea that S.H.I.E.L.D. was even communicating with her or at least trying to.

But still she wondered why had an anti-terror organization sent her bad information on numerous occasions? It would at least explain how the information was obtained when she hadn’t been able to locate it on her own. He was likely one of the less than reputable channels that S.H.I.E.L.D. used to communicate with agents around the globe, if that was what he did at all. She had many a question for him and she would have her answers one way or another.

Scarlett was done screwing around with S.H.I.E.L.D. and done screwing around with MedCo. She was going to tell S.H.I.E.L.D. where to shove their secrecy bullshit and then break someone’s face at MedCo for what they’d put her through. She might even throttle a few people at S.H.I.E.L.D. if they gave her the run around any longer. More than anything Scarlett hated being manipulated and after realizing the potential for how long the agency had been doing so she was worse than angry.

She was livid.

Returning to the hotel she’d been staying in Scarlett packed her things and prepared to head out for the night. There was some running around she wanted to do under the cover of darkness, including checking out the docks to see what had become of the inferno she’d left behind after being pursued by Erick. The next morning she would have a bone to pick with S.H.I.E.L.D. but for now she had bigger fish to fry. Digging through the files that she’d stolen what seemed like ages ago from the female agent who had tried in vain to stop her one morning in Egypt, Scarlett flipped through until she found the agent’s information at the very back of the pile.

Agent Michelangela Pierce was going to have a very interesting morning if Scarlett had anything to say about it. On her way out of the hotel Scarlett picked up her phone and broke again into S.H.I.E.L.D.’s private servers to reroute her call so it would remain untraceable to them.

She was met with an automated service announcing who she was calling and how to contact someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters unless they knew the extension they were trying to reach. A few seconds after listening to the message she was met with an answering machine that would record her message if she was unsure how to reach her party.

“Listen close. Tomorrow morning at the outdoor café near the water at the Cape Grace Hotel Agent Michelangela Pierce will meet with me. If she shows up with anyone other than herself I will not show up so I recommend you play fair. It’s about damn time someone does. Meeting takes place at 0800 and she’s paying for breakfast.” Scarlett hung up the phone without giving further information. She was sure that her voice was on file somewhere with the corporation so she didn’t bother leaving any further information. They wouldn’t be able to trace her phone back so there was no reason Scarlett couldn’t stay somewhere nice for the night under an assumed name. Naturally she wouldn’t be staying at the hotel she was using for the meeting but she had decided to stay at one equally as nice.

If being with Tony had changed one thing about Scarlett it was that she realized that she should finally be allowed to enjoy some luxury. While it wouldn’t be the same without him in a nice hotel room she would make sure to at least enjoy the comfort of a five start bed and a decent dinner. Even though the room would feel empty and she would be hopelessly alone, it was better than feeling alone in a negative four star shit hole.

So Scarlett took a cab and texted back and forth with Jarvis to let him know that she was alright since Tony seemed to be busy and unresponsive. In the morning everything would change and she wasn’t sure when she’d get to talk to Tony again after that. At the hotel she’d try to call him and if not she’d send him a picture as proof of life and probably to remind him what he was not sharing a bed with.

Before she went to sleep, Scarlett thought of how that day had been the first victory she’d had in a very long time. It had been months since Scarlett had anything remotely close to a victory on her tally board and she was far from done winning.