Hollow Scars

Abandoned hallway after abandoned hallway was all that greeted Scarlett as she searched for the stairwell that would take her a level deeper into the Russian MedCo facility. The air in the room was eerie, like the moment in a Stephen King novel where the protagonist realized all was not what it seemed to be. Every footfall echoed on metal flooring, announcing her presence to the ghosts that surely haunted this place.

How many men and women had died, writhing in pain, tortured inside cells that lined the walls? What did their families think had happened to them? Were their faces on missing posters around the city? Scarlett knew that surely for every person lost, every life destroyed, there were a handful of people caught up in the aftermath. How difficult was it for them to pick up the pieces left behind?

Before this Scarlett wouldn’t have had anyone looking for her. If she hadn’t blown herself out of MedCo’s facility then no one would’ve noticed her absence. Not even the only person she thought would miss her. Scarlett had long ago cut ties with parents she’d never bonded with, left behind her first love, lost touch with college friends she’d partied with. She’d though Scott would be the one to miss her if anything had happened and in a weird way, she guessed that he was missing her.

If she had given into what MedCo wanted, no one would’ve missed her. If Tony hadn’t shown up in South Africa as Iron Man then she never would’ve gotten away in the first place. As much as she boasted independence and solidarity, like every other human being on the planet, sometimes Scarlett needed help. Now not only did she have Tony Stark trying to keep her safe, but she had Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton, neither of which she ever anticipated coming to her aid. Friends were suddenly popping out of the woodwork in the weirdest of places.

In a month’s time, Scarlett had gone from being a person that no one would’ve missed had she remained in MedCo’s clutches to someone who had a group of very powerful people willing to fight by her side, possibly until they met their end.

The lights flickered overhead, setting the solemn mood. Scarlett checked each of the cells at the end of the passageway just in case Tony was hidden in one of them, quiet and unconscious. That was of course the only way that Tony would’ve been quiet in any situation.

She didn't find anyone inside the prison cells and for that she was partially thankful. The remnants of what had transpired within them was no less disturbing than if she had found the prisoners themselves. Implements of torture hung on the walls behind metallic bars, a further design of torture by the sadists working for MedCo. Scarlett didn't linger longer than she needed to. Somewhere in the bowels of the expansive building Tony Stark was held captive and she knew that he was in trouble.

Scarlett was in no condition to play the hero but she couldn’t leave him to what MedCo surely had in store for him. Even if it meant the end of the road for her, she had to at least try to save Tony. For once she would be his knight in shining armor. The mental image eased her worries for a moment. Tony would make a pretty excellent damsel-in-distress.

Scott would be wherever Tony was, of that she was sure. And while she was positive that her mental state would suffer severely if she ended up having to kill him, she knew that she would be willing to do it in order to save Tony's life. He'd given himself up in an attempt to save her, so she was more than willing to do the same. But Scarlett didn't intend on handing herself over to Scott, MedCo or anyone else. She had every intention of freeing Tony and getting the hell out of there. Tony Stark was the most self obsessed person she knew and he had made the sacrifice play and for her at that. No one had ever done anything like that for her before, not in all her many years.

This would be a battle to be fought another day. There was no storming the castle, just a last ditch effort to escape. Realistically Scarlett knew that her Queen was badly wounded and she had run out of pawns to defend her. Sometime in the future she would return and when that day came she would be more than ready for the fight. But today was not that day and it was on the very long list of things that Scarlett wasn’t ready to think about. Once inside the stairwell, leaving the door propped open just a stitch, Scarlett stopped short.

The lights were flickering again, electricity seemingly drawn from them to power something much bigger. But something else seemed off. The entire feel of the building changed as she crept slowly down the stairs, holding her gun in sweaty palms. Her fingers on her left arm had begun to tingle and numb from the bullet wound and her subconscious rattled off what could be causing three of those fingers to be numb. Knowing what one of her problems was and how to potentially fix it brought her comfort.

Accompanying her footsteps on the metallic stairs was the annoying drip-drip-drip of blood from the wound on her arm. The numbed fingers had begun to twitch and she guessed that there had been more nerve damage than she’d once suspected. It was in Scarlett's nature to act like she was doing just fine even if she was wounded and now the physical toll was catching up to her. She'd stretched the wound open again during battle against Erick and her muscles seemed to be having some sort of fit every time the drops splattered on the ground nearby.

Halfway down the stairs the lights flickered back on as steady as they had once been. Something was definitely drawing power nearby and she could even hear the buzz of electricity in the bulbs overhead as though they would burst at any second. Was there a chance that more monsters like Erick had been created and were waiting for her in the cells below? It seemed that he'd caused some kind of electrical interference wherever he went and it was the only thing Scarlett could think of that fit the bill for the moment. If that was the case then she was doomed and would likely die in the next hallway.

Her mind had abandoned reason and jumped right to the impossible for explanations. How desperately she wanted nothing more than a strong glass of scotch and a cigar in her hand. When she closed her eyes she hoped to see a balcony overlooking a beachy sunset while somewhere in the distance Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers played the blues. But instead she saw Tony's face, torn apart, bloody and blaming her for the suffering that he’d undergone at the hands of MedCo.

"Can't even have my fantasies anymore, can I?" Scarlett stopped at the bottom of the stairs and leaned against the wall heavily. It wasn’t like her fantasies had been helping her at all in the last few weeks. In fact, her dreams were often worse than her reality. That was comforting, wasn’t it? Scarlett somehow didn’t feel comforted.

Her head was pounding and her chest was aching with every breath she took. Even her throat and ears were hurting now. No matter how much she coughed or how many times she cleared her throat the discomfort remained. Sinuses were a real bitch when they weren’t cooperating. Eyes burning from the fever that had managed to catch up with her now Scarlett wondered if the fever was from being sick or some terrible infection that was likely festering in the wound on her arm.

She couldn't help but laugh. The situation had become so desperate and terrible that it was almost comical. What else could she do but laugh it off? It said something about her personality that she was now leaning against the wall laughing to herself while she waited for the spinning behind her eyes to subside, she just wasn't sure if that something was positive or negative.

At long last, when she opened her eyes and could manage to focus on the door she moved away from the wall. There were no menacing sounds from up above or on the other side of the door. This should’ve eased her worried mind but instead made her uncomfortable. What if she never found Tony? Maybe he wasn’t being held there in Russia anymore. If she had been on the other side of this craziness, that would’ve been the first thing she did. Take what your victim wanted most, in this case Tony, and put as much distance between them as possible. MedCo had to realize by now that Scarlett was willing to go to any lengths in order to get what she wanted. It would’ve been foolhardy not to remove Tony from the facility.

Scarlett could only hope that those in charge of handling Tony were so aggravated with her that they weren’t thinking straight. Maybe Mikhail and Marcia were so mad at her that they were tempted to keep Tony close by so that they could use him either as a bargaining chip or another implement of torture. It was pitiful to think that this was the option she was hoping for.

Stumbling forward, she grabbed onto the door handle and gave it a swift tug. It squeaked just as the lights overhead began to flicker once again. Shivers went down her spine and her arms broke out in uncomfortable goose bumps.

"I am not Milla Jovovich, this is not Raccoon Cit. Everything's going to be okay," muttered Scarlett beneath her breath. Even her everlasting sense of humor wasn't enough to put her at ease. No, not even horror movie references could calm the tension she felt. "I need a thousand massages by one of those lathered up oily guys on the cover of romance novels," whimpered Scarlett as she double checked the hallway for resistance. Just like in the corridor above her it was deserted like a ghost town. The place had been evacuated and quickly at that. Where were MedCo's once formidable forces? Where were the men guarding the prisoners of this floor?

Scarlett hadn't been left without a guard, not once, during her imprisonment so what the hell made it fair that none of these prisoners had the same fate? Maybe none of the other prisoners had pissed MedCo off quite as terribly as she had managed to. But as she crept forward beneath the flickering lights she saw nothing but dancing shadows on the walls inside the cells. No one was guarding the doorways or waiting for her to arrive. No, it was just Scarlett and the shadows of her demons waltzing against the concrete.

Monsters formed in the corners of her vision, beckoning her forward, warning her of what was to come. But Scarlett was not one to back down from her demons, not even when they were quite possibly going to be the death of her.

This new hallway was nothing like the floor above. The floors were pristine and free of gore. Even the locks were new. No one had been held inside these cells, at least not recently. MedCo would've never had the time to do that sort of clean up during an evacuation. What made Hawkeye so sure that Tony would be held down there? What if he was wrong?

What if Tony was already dead?

Scarlett couldn't think like that.

Tony couldn't be dead.

No, he was too damn stubborn to die just like Scarlett was. He was the only hope she had that maybe someday her life could be somewhat… normal. While she knew it would never quite be normal in relation to the rest of the population, being with Tony made her feel... well, it made her feel whole. It was a terrible way to think, that without him surviving she could never be a whole person but Scarlett couldn't picture it any other way.

She'd spend the rest of her days broken and likely become the terrible vengeful person that Tony had once accused her of being. It wasn’t about needing him. In fact, Scarlett was having a very hard time explaining it even to herself. But she knew that her life was meant to be lived with Tony. He was the one person who had made her want to live for something more than the next job, the next bit of danger and she had a feeling that the feeling was quite mutual. Scarlett was terrible at this romance thing, maybe she’d take to learning about it a bit better after all was said and done.

Hurrying through the hallway, more determined than she had been in the stairwell, Scarlett kept her gun aimed toward the floor and peered into each cell as she passed. She had half a mind to ignore them and keep running until she heard any sign of Tony but the instincts she'd developed over the years wouldn't allow her to throw caution completely to the wind. It would do her no good if she managed to find Tony but was being pursued by whatever hellish monsters may have been held in any of those cells.

Further through the passage, the familiar layout began to change. The walls were white and freshly painted. They reminded her more of a hospital than of a prison. There had to have been medical procedures performed down here, Scarlett knew it. Every bit of the new décor screamed surgery. The path in front of her forked in several different directions and Scarlett stood confounded in between them.

Lights dimmed and buzzed loudly again, drawing her attention upward. Her radio buzzed with the sound of Natasha assuring her that her fears had been verified. The entire building was rigged to explode and judging by the worry in her friend's voice it was likely worse than they had expected it to be. That left Scarlett with a very small window in which to find Tony and get him out of the building and to safety. Was there any way she would be able to summon the Iron Man suit to take him away? And what if he wasn't in a right enough state to pilot it?

Scarlett was sure she could figure it out but she was nearly positive that the suits had been designed so that they would obey Tony and Tony alone. If she could get access to Jarvis, then she bet she could use the suit to get them both out of there with Tony simply protected beneath the armor. That would be her best bet of getting them both out of the building alive. It felt pretty risky leaving all of her faith in a computer system. But Jarvis wasn’t any computer system and Scarlett had to remind herself of that. He was a very charming, very loyal, computer system and she was sure that she could get him to help her. It was all about time now. If Scarlett couldn’t get to Tony before the building exploded, plans for an escape attempt would be rather silly.

None of the three hallways that branched off in different directions gave any indication of where Tony would be held, so Scarlett decided she'd search from left to right. She'd have to abandon checking every room and every cell as thoroughly as she had been now that her time was severely limited. Natasha hadn't yet gotten back to her with a countdown but she had the feeling that the timing was less than what they could have hoped for.

As she took a few steps forward and began her investigation anew, Scarlett heard something that made her jump nearly out of her skin. Thankfully jumping nearly out of Scarlett's skin mostly meant that she twitched a little. By now, there was very little that would really surprise her. The past few weeks had desensitized her quite a bit.

Edward Cullen could've floated down the hallway, glittering and holding a baseball bat while trying to explain to her that thunder was really the sound of vampires playing baseball and she wouldn't have batted an eyelash. Though she would've likely explained how stupid that sounded in general.

But the sound that echoed down the third and final hallway, the one that Scarlett would've chosen last, was one that she knew all too well.

It was the sound of Tony Stark.

He was screaming in pain.

It was then that Scarlett's haste felt renewed and she ran down the hallway toward the desperate cries. The lights flashed threateningly overhead and it all but dawned on her what was being done and why. All those times the lights flickered someone had been hurting Tony and she’d been foolish enough to think that the power shortage had been caused by monsters. They had been electrocuting him! What effect would this have on the arc reactor that was keeping the shrapnel from reaching his heart? Would it be able to handle the surge of power being sent through his body as a device to torture him? Scarlett didn’t know enough about arc reactor technology to repair the thing if it shorted out.

Just how many things could go wrong today? She’d lost count. Not that it’d matter since the fingers on one hand had gone numb enough that she wouldn’t be able to use them to keep track anyway. This joke finally eased a little of the stress hanging on her shoulders. It was a dumb one but she didn’t care.

"Faster... must go faster," whispered Scarlett under her breath as she ran as swiftly as her legs would carry her through the darkening halls of MedCo's building. The white faded into prison gray and she was once again surrounded by jail cells instead of hospital rooms. She ignored the rooms all around her despite what could've been hiding inside of them. The only thing that seemed to matter was the screams coming from Tony in one of the rooms. Her thoughts raced as she considered the pain he was in. All she could think about was putting a stop to that pain and getting him to safety.

But by the time she got to the source of the sound the lights had stopped flickering and the screaming had ceased. Scarlett stopped running when she realized she'd passed voices somewhere on the left. Hunching over she caught her breath and held her side where it ached from the beating she'd received from Scott. It was only a short moment that she rested before listening closely and walking as silently as she could through the hallway to pinpoint the location of the room in which Tony was being held. Someone was obviously hurting him and it was her guess that whoever it was wouldn't be alone in doing so. She’d learned from experience that if there was one asshole from MedCo around you could count on there being three more assholes from MedCo nearby.

"You better hope this doesn't cause me any serious nerve damage." She could hear Tony's voice, panting and pained though still thick with that snotty wit he had so charmed her with over weeks past. "I have... way too many pleasures waiting for me after this and if they’re numbed so help me god…" The lights flickered again and Tony screamed as he was punished for continuing to be a smart ass through his moments of torture. They were far more alike than Scarlett wanted to admit at times. Could he, like her, be unable to keep his attitude in check even in life or death situations?

Scarlett didn't waste time contemplating this further. She grabbed the handle of the door, turned it and then kicked the door so hard it crashed (bang!) against the wall behind it. All eyes turned toward the door in surprise and it gave Scarlett the opportunity her entrance had hoped it would afford her. There were three guards standing around the room waiting to assist Mikhail who was controlling the flow of electricity that was being sent straight into Tony via the electrodes strapped to his body.

Before the guards had even raised their arms to attack her, Scarlett had fired three shots and each lay dead on the ground or mortally wounded in such a way that they would be unable to get up or assist their leader if they tried. Mikhail made a move for the gun he had set down behind him but Scarlett pointed her handgun at him and practically snarled before he got the chance.

"Don't even think about it. One move and I will blow your brains out." Scarlett moistened her lips nervously. Her instincts hadn't failed her when it had mattered and she was feeling rather proud of herself for that. The guards who had fallen would've killed her or tortured her without a second thought, she felt no remorse for the lives she had to take in order to save Tony's. Tony was still twitching and gritting his teeth against the electricity.

"I can't say I'm very surprised to see you here." Mikhail's face betrayed him all but for a second before returning to the emotionless scowl she had forever remembered from the first time she had been treated like a prisoner at the MedCo facility in South Africa. He had told her that she was a pawn in their game of chess. She knew even then that she was a far more important piece in their little game. Little did she know just how deadly the game would become over time.

"Turn it off!" Scarlett ignored the attempt to taunt her. She didn't care much for Mikhail's opinion of her as much as she cared to see Tony no longer twitching in agony. He was dripping with sweat, his usually neat hair slick back against his head. Bruises could be seen along his neck and arms. Mikhail had been at it for some time. Why did she feel as though part of the torment that had been reserved for her had been thrust upon Tony instead? As if she didn't feel enough guilt. Mikhail stared at her then looked back to his gun. "Turn it off, or I'll turn you off and do it myself." Scarlett took a step closer and aimed the gun resolutely at Mikhail.

Her hand didn't shake and there must have been determination in her eyes because Mikhail at once complied. Tony leaned his head back against the chair and gathered deep breaths greedily. Scarlett was going to ask if he was alright, but then Tony did something very strange. He leaned his head up then hunched it against his shoulder oddly.

"Rhodes? Send in the artillery. I found Scarlett." He murmured to someone Scarlett couldn't see then leaned his head back against the chair once again. "Oh shit that hurt." Tony puffed his cheeks up with air then exhaled deeply. For a split second, Scarlett thought that Tony had gone mad but then realized he must have been wearing a wire and talking to someone on the outside of the building.

"Tony?" Scarlett turned her gaze quickly back to Mikhail who was staring at her expectantly. He half expected her to shoot him even after he’d turned off the electricity. Her gaze had been animalistic and murderous, something he never thought she would have been capable of.

"I'm okay, I'm okay..." He smiled and waved with one of the hands tied behind his back still. "Do your... do your ninja assassin 007 thing and get us out of here, okay? I will even buy you a damn Aston Martin if that’s what it takes." The billionaire had never been happier to see her before in his life and for more reasons than just the fact that her presence had stopped the torture and likely meant that he would be freed.

"You're such an idiot sometimes, you know that right?" Scarlett couldn't help but laugh as she spoke and Tony nodded his head.

"I'm a much bigger idiot than you think I am actually. I have no idea what you see in me. You know… other than my charm, wit, intelligence, ruggedly handsome good looks… okay so maybe I’m a catch." Tony smiled but then groaned in pain and closed his eyes.

He'd done it. He'd found Scarlett.

Or rather she had found him. Either way, Scarlett was alive and in one piece even if she did look like she'd been through hell. But he couldn't quite rejoice, not yet. They still had to get out of the building and there was much more to that than Tony could have guessed. Scarlett had Mikhail right where she needed him, but she wouldn't for long.

"Get up and walk slowly to the center of the room. Away from your men and away from mine." Scarlett nodded to Mikhail. She had every intention of tying him up and delivering him to S.H.I.E.L.D. with a bow on the packaging. He wasn't going to get away, not again. If he fought back she'd kill him. That's all there was to it. The adrenaline boost she'd received after finding Tony had done wonders for her psyche and her stamina. Every doubt possible had crossed her mind while she'd searched for him and while finding him with Mikhail, tortured and weak, wasn't exactly the best scenario she could hope for it was still better than any of the ones she had expected to be faced with.

"Did you think it would be that easy, Scarlett?" A voice from the doorway of the room drew her attention. In the split second it took for Scarlett to withdraw her second handgun and aim it at the voice, Mikhail made his move. He grabbed his gun and latched onto Tony in the chair before Scarlett could turn her attention back to him and fire a shot. Now he used Tony as a shield and pressed the gun to his neck threateningly.

Scarlett instead turned her attention to the voice that had distracted her. She'd nearly forgotten about Scott after all her success, but he wasn't forgettable now that he was standing with his gun aimed at her. She kept her gaze on Scott but a gun aimed in either direction. Neither option seemed ideal, not for Scarlett. If she shot Scott then Mikhail would shoot Tony. She'd be rid of Scott, or he would be incapacitated at the very least, but she would lose the one thing she had worth fighting for.

If she shot Mikhail then she would save Tony's life but Scott would be afforded the chance to shoot her or to run away. Scarlett had to make a choice. Either she saved Tony or she saved herself and got her revenge. If she let Scott get away wouldn't she lose Tony eventually anyway? MedCo would keep coming after her. Even if they didn't she knew that Scott had gone crazy enough that he would never let her live happily without him and eventually would come to kill her or Tony.

But if she got her revenge and her freedom from Scott now by killing him and then killing Mikhail then what would the fight have been for in the end? Tony would be dead and Scarlett would lose the humanity she'd slowly managed to regain. This was a decision Scarlett had been struggling with from the first moment she had felt the tug between her and Tony. From that first moment where they had danced to the Rat Pack at dinner and he had nearly kissed her, she'd been torn on whether or not she could change her life to be with someone as equally screwed up as she was.

There was no time left to muse over the outcome. Scarlett had to decide and it was made obvious to them all exactly what was going through her mind. Tony was looking to her hopefully but slowly trying to crane his neck away from the cold barrel of the gun. His chest was burning uncomfortably still from the heat the arc reactor had generated when filled with electricity. Thankfully the technology had held up to the torture and hadn’t failed him or they would be faced with far worse problems.

"What are you going to do, Scarlett?" Scott taunted, taking a step closer and drawing her attention away from Tony and Mikhail for another split second. "Once again you have to choose. You or him? It's simple, isn't it?"

"I didn't ask your opinion," muttered Scarlett but her blue eyes gave her away. Where once she had been able to hide the truth in them from anyone who looked her thoughts reflected even to Scott. She didn't know what to do. If it had been a year prior, before the torture, before MedCo, before Tony, she would've known exactly what to do. She would've shot Scott and then shot Mikhail and wrote Tony off as collateral damage. But now there was a battle raging in her heart and her mind and Scarlett had absolutely no idea who was going to win.

"We both know what you're going to do." Scott laughed, his gun trained toward her. "The way I see it... you can save his life and I'll take yours. Or you can try and shoot me but... we both know you won't. It's that damn subconscious of yours. You'll miss and... I know you don't miss, not often. You still care about me. Somewhere deep inside you still think I’m that sweet man you dated for years." His voice taunted her and Scarlett turned her gaze back to Tony. Would he forgive her if she gave her life for his? If the tables were turned she knew she’d never be able to live with the guilt or without him. Would he suffer the same fate?

"You don't know me, Scott. You never did." Scarlett finally responded. "You set me up. You... had me tortured for no reason. You said you loved me and then you let them nearly kill me because I didn’t fit into the vision of me in your head. Why shouldn't I kill you?"

"You can't kill me because I made you. Can't you see that? I did that for you! You call it torture? I call it reprogramming. I was fixing you!"

"Oh, come on really?" Tony could be heard mumbling beneath his breath and grunted when Mikhail pressed the gun harder against his throat purposely. Grabbing his hair, Mikhail pulled Tony's head back and placed the gun against the exposed flesh of his neck in an attempt to get him to shut up.

"You did it for you." Scarlett shook her head. “I’m not some machine waiting to be fixed! If you couldn’t love me and all my flaws, and there are plenty, then you never wanted me to begin with.”

"No you’re wrong! I did it for you! To make you better! You never listened... never! No matter how wrong you were, you ignored me and did whatever you thought was best! What choice did I have? You left me with none! Someone had to teach you, Scarlett. Someone had to show you that your actions would someday be paid for in spades. I did that for you. To save you I had to hurt you. Can’t you see how much love that took?" Scott spoke genuinely, showing how truly he believed in what he was doing.

"You're sick." Scarlett scowled, her heart beating in her ears. He wanted to reprogram her, even back then. Had Scott always been a twisted little shit or had he turned into that person somewhere along the line? If he had always been screwed up then maybe it wasn’t her fault that he’d traded his soul to become a monster. She’d make sure to tell that to the therapist she would surely be seeing after this.

"I made you! You can't kill me!" Scott yelled, his face now red with anger. He was more than tired of Scarlett defying him and refused to be taunted further.

"You're wrong!" Scarlett's lip curled in disapproval. "I made you! What money would you have without me and the ideas that you stole? You were nothing before we met! A mousy little scientist who could do no better than hope to be my assistant! I made you! Look at you! Even now, without me you're nothing more than an experiment... a failed experiment, Scott. You're so desperate to be more than what you are... you think that you're saving me but you're terrified of how worthless you are without me. Stop trying to fix me! I’m not fucking broken! You are, go fix yourself!" Scarlett looked over at Tony. She needed to make her decision. He was staring at her pleadingly. He had the utmost faith that she would do the right thing though he wasn't sure what the right thing was.

MedCo had to be stopped, Scott had to be stopped. Scarlett would never be okay knowing that Scott had made it out of there alive. If she saved his life then she would likely lose hers. His vision blurred but there was never a moment in his life that he would admit it was from tears.

"You don't have to do this alone, Scarlett." He finally spoke, offering her the weakest of smiles. Scarlett returned the sentiment and nodded her head. He wasn't sure and never would be of what that nod meant. Did she nod because she knew she didn't have to fight MedCo alone or did she nod to tell him that she had no choice but to do so on her own? Scott was laughing heartily at them now and threw his arm holding the gun wildly to the side. Even if Scarlett had fired the shot, Mikhail would've been able to take Tony out in the second it would take her to turn her gun toward him.

"You really think that is going to make any difference?" Scott was glaring at Tony now, malevolence sparkling behind his eyes. Tony could tell that he'd had some training with a gun and wondered how long Scott had been waiting for the moment he could try to destroy Scarlett and rebuild her into the woman he'd always wished she would be. But behind the mischief in his tone, both Tony and Scarlett could hear the rage that he'd been filled with. Scarlett's words had more of an effect on him than he would've been likely to admit.

"She's been fighting on her own for long enough." Tony spoke despite Mikhail shoving the gun harder against his throat. "Do you really think that's going to shut me up? Scarlett's been trying to get me to shut up for weeks and she's way prettier than you are Boris Badenov. Good luck with that." Rolling his eyes, Tony grunted again when Mikhail tugged harder at his hair to threaten him.

"I've been trying to help her for years. Do you think that... she will change without it? Can't you see that someone needs to fix her? She's positively ruined!" Scott laughed.

"I'm standing right here, you know." Scarlett cocked an eyebrow curiously.

"I don't see anything wrong with her except that her ex-boyfriend might be the biggest asshole I've ever met. And I’ve met some pretty colossal assholes." Tony spat. "I told you I didn't like him! I knew there was good reason besides my eternally green eyes."

"Enough." Scarlett exhaled deeply but Scott was nowhere near done.

"You can plead all you want Anthony Stark, but she will not relent. In the end Scarlett always chooses herself. It's in her nature and surely you understand that from what the rumors have told me. There is no room for sentiment in her cold dark heart."

"No room for sentiment?" Scarlett cocked her head to the side, growing weary of holding her wounded arm aimed toward Scott. It was shaking and trembling visibly but she kept the gun steady and aimed toward him. "I am perfectly capable of sentiment, Scott. It's not my fault that you were never enough." Scott's confident smile faded from his face.

"I am tired of your bickering." Mikhail spoke up at long last. "You with your petty desire for love and you with your indecision. I told you what you were a long time ago, do you remember, Scarlett?"

"Yeah, I remember." Scarlett turned her attention back to Mikhail. "I'm a pawn in a game of chess and you're going to use me as such. That didn't quite play out the way you wanted, did it?"

"As far as I see it, many more of your pieces have fallen to mine." Mikhail spoke confidently, his accent thick with anger.

"Scarlett, put down your arms and we'll spare his life." Scott yelled frantically, realizing he was losing the hold he'd managed to gain on her in the past months where he'd been making quiet moves in the background to manipulate her.

"No." Scarlett spoke at long last, turning her attention toward Scott. "I've already made my choice. You lose." Turning her attention back to Mikhail she fired her gun three times, the bullets ripping right through his forehead. He dropped the gun and fell backwards onto the ground dead. Scarlett shot him once again in the chest for good measure. Tony was wincing, one eye closed and blood spattered across his face from the shots Scarlett had fired. "Checkmate."

"You made the wrong choice, Scarlett!" Scott's hand was trembling with anger when he pulled the trigger of his weapon. He’d aimed the gun at Tony instead of at her, which was not something she had anticipated. But he’d hesitated long enough that Scarlett was able to move in the way of the shot. Better her than Tony.

The shot hit her right in the chest with such force that she flew immediately back onto the ground. Scott was yelling irrationally, screaming at her for messing up his plans and making him kill her. He cursed and stomped around like a child throwing a tantrum then turned away and grabbed his hair, sobbing hysterically as he hunched over her. Scott discarded his gun in a panic and looked down at the woman he’d caused nothing but misery.

"Scarlett! Scarlett, get up!" Tony was shouting, wiggling back and forth in his chair. He leaned his ear against his shoulder again. "Rhodey! Rhodey I need you in here right now! Now! Rhodey! Please! Rhodey!" His vision was blurred again as he desperately tried to break free of his bonds so he could run to her side. It was torture sitting idly by while she suffered, potentially dying, on the floor nearby. But his body was shaking and wounded from the torture he'd undergone thanks to Mikhail and the bonds he’d been steadied with were too strong.

"I made the right decision." Scarlett spoke weakly from the floor, staring at the ceiling. Her head had crashed against the floor and instinct made her close her eyes to properly deal with the pain she felt. Scott stared at her on the floor, the woman he'd tried desperately to make into his perfect little doll dead and gone. With one look at Tony, who paid him no mind, he could see that their relationship was far different than the one he'd ever had with Scarlett.

She never would've taken a bullet for him.

So turning on his heels, Scott ran out of the cell and down the hall, away from where Tony was taking turns screaming at Rhodey to send him help and get him out of there and screaming at Scarlett to get up because she wasn't supposed to do that.

She wasn’t supposed to save him, he was supposed to save her.