Unravel

Trying to get back into the swing of everything proved to be more difficult than Elizabeth had anticipated. Not only had it been hard for her to leave so early in the morning when she had been able to spend almost every morning in bed during the last few weeks, there were also her fellow agents whose scrutinizing looks she hadn’t been able to evade ever since she set foot into her department again.

She was still sitting in her cubicle three hours later with nothing to work on as the Director still had not had the time to talk to her and without having talked to him at first, no one would involve her in any ongoing investigations. Not even Ewan, who kept sending her pitiful looks whenever he passed her, could involve her in his ongoing assignment.

She understood the protocol her apartment had to follow, why it had been put into place. But she couldn’t help but feel aggravated by unnecessity in her case. Well, unnecessary didn’t quite fit the bill. She did harbor a fugitive but no one knew about that as far as she understood.

“Moore!” someone hollered from the other end of the office and Elizabeth shot up from her seat immediately and hurried towards the director’s office, eager the get it over with.

The door had been left open, so before she entered Elizabeth quickly pulled down her skirt, straightened her blouse and tucked a strand of her brown hair that had come loose while she had waited behind her ear.

“Director,” she greeted but was met with a stern glance and stony facial features.

“Sit down,” he told her and nodded towards the chair standing next to her. Elizabeth had no other choice but to comply, even if she felt like a child being scolded by a parent. After looking her over for a few seconds, he sighed and continued. “My agents have found no evidence to prove that you have been working for another organization or even for your own benefit,” he started and Elizabeth exhaled. “But you knew that already. However, the testimonies from your fellow agents indicate something different.”

Fellow agents? Apart from Ewan, who was her partner, there were a total of three people Elizabeth talked to regularly. “Which is..?” Elizabeth asked and tried her hardest to keep her face neutral.

“That you have been looking into files and ongoing investigations that do not concern you. Mario Perkins from the achi-”

“It’s Marc,” Elizabeth found herself suddenly interrupting but scolded herself the moment the words left her mouth. Director Hawk sent her a look of sheer disbelief. “Sorry,” she mumbled and let him continue.

“Mister Perez from the archive informed us that you took a particular interest in the Winter Soldier investigations,” he said and nudged a file on his desk towards her. Elizabeth leaned forward to grab it but her hand froze mid air. The moment she saw the picture pinned to the cover of the manila folder she felt her heart stop beating.
There on the cover was a picture of James. And not just any old surveillance camera picture in black and white, pixelated beyond belief. No, this was quite sharp and colourful and most certainly a newer one, him being dressed in a very modern sweatshirt and baseball cap.

“Oh,” Elizabeth let the expression escape her lips before she could grasp the whole weight of the situation.

“Given your family history this might be excusable.But how long have you known and why didn’t you inform the team actually working on this case?”

“I thought this was already known,” she lied and looked directly at the director. She knew he wouldn’t believe her if she said that she didn’t know. Her family background kind of made that answer impossible to believe.

Director Hawk clicked his tongue and pulled the file towards him again, flicking through the pages. “See, that’s where I start having trouble believing you. My team only found out two weeks ago and as soon as they knew, the whole department knew. So you cannot possibly think of me as this dense.”

“I don-,” Elizabeth started but was promptly interrupted by Director Hawk.

“What did you do with the information you gained from the file?” he asked, apparently not even expecting an answer to his last statement.

“I didn’t do anything with it,” she told him. Lie. “I was- It was merely me trying to make sense of what happened back then that made him turn into that.” She couldn’t really tell him that she started because he was getting on her nerves and somehow ended up being one of her grandfather’s oldest friends.

“And did you? Make sense, that is?” he asked curiously, folding his hands in front of his chest.

“I-. No,” she told him. “I don’t know any more than we did before we knew who he really is. Only that- I believe he’s more of a victim than a criminal,” she told him truthfully. She couldn’t quite believe she heard herself say that. But she found that she did feel that way.

Director Hawk nodded thoughtfully and cleared his throat before starting to talk again. “One last question: Did you seek personal contact?”

“I did,” she told him. He knew her father well enough to know that his daughter wouldn’t be all too different from him. “But he keeps himself hidden rather well.”

He acknowledged her statement and straightened up. “You know this isn’t over yet, do you? You’ll be regularly called in for questioning from now on. We take accusations very seriously.”

“I understand,” Elizabeth answered. “I just have one more question,” she started, moving to stand up from her seat but motioned towards the picture pinned to the folder. “Who took the picture?”

“This one? I did.”

///

Three days.

It took exactly three days for something unusual to happen again.

Elizabeth hadn’t even been able to fully work her way into her new assignment when everything around her started to act up again. This time however, it was big enough to send most of the intelligence agencies into an uproar almost as big as the one during and after the battle of Washington D.C.

The moment the department started to become loud and turbulent, Elizabeth’s heart sank, heavy with fear of what had happened now, leading her thoughts to run wild with possibilities.

She jumped up from her chair, looking over the sea of cubicles only to find Ewan, transfixed on the screen mounted on the wall.

“What’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked dreadfully, trying to filter out any useful information from the screen. The reporter was standing in front of what seemed to be a park in the west village and she was surrounded by even more reporters. Only when Elizabeth caught the words ‘murdered’ and ‘Interior Secretary’ did she snap back into action. “Shit.”

“How come reporters are always there first? Shouldn’t we be the first to know?” Ewan complained bitterly, as he grabbed his stuff and headed towards the main area of the commotion in their department.

“Listen up everyone!” Elizabeth heard Director Hawk from the middle of the commotion and hurried to catch up to Ewan. “We have already received all the information the police could gather in this short amount of time. It’s true. The Interior Secretary has been murdered and so have been his wife and child.”
The noise grew steadily louder after that with people asking for evidence and possible suspects. “There has been an awful crime. Right now it seems that they have been tortured to death. But there is one thing we have. We have an eyewitness. The main suspect is Hydra with the Winter Soldier as the perpetrator.” Then the noise grew unbearable.

Elizabeth didn’t know whether it was actually this loud or whether it was the blood rushing inside of her. No matter what she was hearing at the moment, she had frozen in place. They had searched for him before. But with this - even if the Interior Secretary turned out to be a Hydra sympathizer or even part of Hydra himself - this would end up as a manhunt.

Ewan shook her shoulder and Elizabeth could make out the last few words of Director Hawk over the roar of outraged chatter.. “-Moore, Donovan, Clarke, Wu and Zimmerman with me.”

“Come on,” Ewan mumbled and grabbed her arm, pulling her along towards the office the director and the rest of the agents had disappeared in, which Elizabeth was grateful for. She didn’t think she could purposefully move an inch if her life depended on it.

Once inside, Ewan closed the door and nudged Elizabeth with his elbow, shooting her a worried glance.

“I’m okay,” she told him silently and flinched when she heard a heavy file being slapped onto the metal table.

“This investigation has been rather slack during these last few months. Since the only people that have been killed by Barnes were Hydra, there didn’t seem to be a threat to the rest of the population. However-”

“Who’s to say Secretary Winslow was not also part of Hydra?” Elizabeth heard someone interrupt. “No one thought Secretary Pierce to be part of it, either,” the agent continued and Elizabeth silently thanked him for saying what she had been thinking of since the start.

“Good question,” Director Hawk acknowledged. “This you will hopefully find out during your investigation.”

“Wait, our investigation?” Ewan piped up, confused.

“The Winter Soldier investigation will be expanded. With you,” he addressed all of them but halted when his eyes found Elizabeth’s. “You wanted to help, didn’t you? Now’s your chance.”

“But why now?” Elizabeth heard Agent Clarke interject. “I mean this is what, the 55th murder that we’re mostly sure has been committed by him? Why act now and not sooner?”

“See, no one cares about the Hydra goons being strangled. They found three lying dead in an alley by one of the busiest streets in New York City and it didn’t even make the news. If you want to talk to the press about how their Secretary of Interior and his family have been strangled with their own intestines and the FBI won’t do anything about it, go ahead.”

“Jesus,” Elizabeth muttered at the mental picture and took a deep breath. “So when do we start?” she asked.

“Now,” he told all of them. “Get to work. You’ll be given access to the information the police has provided in the next 10 minutes. There’s also three vans down in the garage reserved for you, if you need them. And you should need them. We want this over and done with in a matter of days,” he hastily told them, while trying to make his way towards the door. “Now get on with it!”
And with that he left the group of confused and agitated agents in the room.

///

Elizabeth didn’t think her anxiety could rise any higher. But she was now presented with the fact that it, indeed, could.

Now, with all of the intelligence agencies on a manhunt for the fugitive living in her apartment and not being able to reach him to tell him to get the hell out, Elizabeth was presented with two choices.

One: working with the agencies and act as if she didn’t know anything about anyone, not benefiting their search but definitely not hindering it either.

or

Two: working against the agencies within the FBI and bringing them off track without making herself look suspicious.

But no matter the times she mulled it over during the minutes she was allowed to herself, she always came back to option number two.

Even if she had had Captain Rogers’ number saved in her phone (which she didn’t) to help him get James out of her apartment, out of New York or even out of the US, not only would any of the agencies probably end up at her doorstep, it would lead to someone mostly innocent being imprisoned.

So by the time Ewan and her were seated in one of the FBI’s vans with two fellow agents, she had already made a decision: successfully sabotaging the good guys.
And she hated herself for it.

///

The eyewitness turned out to be the maid, a young woman of romanian descent, with a heavy accent, that somehow acted not quite as shocked as Elizabeth would have expected someone to be had they found their employers the way the Secretary and his family been mutilated.

So while Ewan questioned the woman, Elizabeth kept an eye on her reactions and the continuity of her account. Apparently she had wandered into the hall when “the metal man” was in the middle of stringing up the secretary, who had then still been alive. But her account noticeably didn’t add up.

“Wait, hold on. Sorry. So did he threaten you before he ran out of the hall or didn’t he?” Ewan asked the woman, looking through his notes again with a frown on his face.

“He did,” the woman answered, nodding vigorously.

“You didn’t say that before,” Elizabeth reminded her and Ewan glanced up at her with a knowing look.

“I forgot, da?” the woman told them with a small smile and a shrug, her accent thick and noticeable.

Whether she had been threatened or not didn’t really bear too much of a difference to the case. But neither Elizabeth nor Ewan believed that she would forget being threatened by an assassin, not any time soon anyway.

“Thank you, we’ll keep in touch,” Ewan told her with a nod and subtly grabbed Elizabeth’s arm, pulling her with him into a corner of the secretary’s estate. “Please tell me I’m not paranoid but that whole…thing… doesn’t add up.”

“No, you’re right, it doesn’t. But why would she lie? It’s not like we would think she’d be strong enough to hang even one of them,” Elizabeth said, glancing at the woman. “No one’s even questioning who did it. It’s just the reason why.”

“Liz, no..-,” Ewan kept talking but Elizabeth didn’t look away from the woman. She was pretty, dark, black hair, gathered into a knot at the back of her head and a rather pretty face, too. However, the woman seemed to notice Elizabeth looking at her, and when she did look at her, too, she sent a smirk her way that seemed to be anything but benign.

“Oh god,” Elizabeth concluded.

“I know, right?” Ewan went on, not understanding that the expression wasn’t meant as an answer to whatever he had been talking about.

“Let’s get the others and start searching. I propose we start with Manhattan since most of the murders happened there.” She just hoped James wasn’t anywhere near there.

///

The moment she was able to break away from her team for a few hours to get some rest she tried not to run back to her own apartment. Whatever had happened today, or whatever was in the works right now, it wasn’t good in any way or form, for anyone.

Forcefully opening the door, she barged into her own apartment, upset like she hadn’t been in a long time.

Finding James in the living room with Vito, she stormed by angrily, to get the phone number that had been pinned to her fridge for almost a week by then.

Typing the digits into her phone, she was interrupted by James standing in the doorway to her kitchen. “What are you doing?”

“You need to get out of here,” she told him and tried to squeeze through the space between him and her doorframe, when suddenly she came to a halt due to his arm blocking her. The way his eyebrows furrowed gave away his confusion and Elizabeth tried to keep a neutral face. “You need to get out of here. Now,” she repeated. “Do you want to know who the suspect for Secretary Winslow’s murder is? I think you do. And I need to get you out of here.”

Elizabeth could sense the way his body tensed, making his arm just that much more unmovable. “I didn’t do it.”

“I know,” she assured him, truthfully. “They’re trying to frame you. You need to get out.”

“I can go on my own,” he said and went to turn around, towards his room.

“No!” Elizabeth said forcefully and grabbed his arm. “There’s close to a hundred agents out there looking for you. They weren’t on your ass as much before because you killed the bad guys. But now you apparently killed a high-ranking government official and they’ll hunt you down for that! They know who you are, where you lived and what happened to you. And I’m not even taking Hydra into that equation! You’re good, I’ll give you that. But you’re not that good. You can’t just go out of here and think you’ll be just fine on your own. I’m out of options here,” Elizabeth told him and held the tiny purple note aloft. “I know you don’t want to do this, but apart from going back to living in an abandoned building and stealing people’s food, you’re out of options, too.”

James scrutinized the note and without letting his façade crumble, he grabbed both the note and the phone. “What do I tell him?”

“As far as I know, you gave him a place to stay when he needed it. Now it’s his turn.”

///

Elizabeth had never met anyone that hated waiting more than her. That is, until she saw the way James unsuccessfully tried to mask his agitation, and it only seemed to grow with the minutes that passed as they sat in her living room, together and in silence.

She couldn’t possibly understand what was going on in his head.

“You okay?” she tried but was only rewarded with a very cold and emotionless glance her way. It had been a stupid thing to ask, she had to admit.

“Sor-,” she started to say but was interrupted by three sharp knocks on her door. The moment the first knock had rung through her apartment, James shoulders had visibly tensed and Vito had perked up, too, but other than that he didn’t move even one inch.
Sighing, Elizabeth stood up to walk towards the door, patting James on the shoulder in the process.

Even she hesitated when it came to opening the door. She hadn’t talked to anyone and had no idea what or who to expect. It could as well be agents, having followed the traces to her door. Even if it was 2 am in the morning, that was quite as well a possibility. But she had never imagined that, after looking through the spyhole of her door, she would feel relief at seeing the familiar face of a person she knew better from pictures and stories than from anything else.

“Captain,” she greeted rather unsure and stepped aside to let him enter.

“M’am,” he retorted and apprehensively stepped inside. It seemed not only James was nervous about this encounter and Elizabeth felt a wave of sadness wash over her. They had once been best friends and were now nervous when it came to even seeing each other.

“Call me- You can call me Liz,” she told him and he retorted with a simple ‘Steve’, obviously thankful for leaving formalities out of this situation. “He’s-.”

“Can we just- Sorry,” he interrupted and Elizabeth urged him to go on. “What happened? We didn’t know about any details surrounding the murder.”

“Hydra probably figured they couldn’t get him back as an asset and are now trying to get him imprisoned by the feds,” she told him after closing the door and leading him further into her apartment. “All I know for sure is that you need to get him out of here,” she said and waved him into the living room. “Pretty sure this was just the beginning.”

Steve nodded and breathed in audibly. He probably hadn’t anticipated anything of this sort today, either.

“Buck,” he said and nodded towards James, who returned the gesture. “Let’s go.”

James slowly stood up, apprehension in every move he made. Elizabeth felt bad for being this bossy and making him go but she did want the best for him.

When Steve was out of her door, James turned around to look at Elizabeth again.

“Thank you,” he told her. Elizabeth couldn’t hold herself back and quickly moved to hug him, just for a second.

“Don’t worry about it,” she told him and patted him on his back. With another nod he was out of her apartment and Elizabeth was left to her own devices.