Unravel

The whole situation Elizabeth was in - hiding during the night but still having to go to work - kept feeding into her paranoia. Each and every sudden sound and clatter caused her to jump, so it was only natural that people kept sending her curious and concerned looks. Being able to talk to James - being able to ask someone for help if need be - had helped make her mind more easeful. But this part was miniscule in comparison to the panic bubbling up inside of her at every stupid pen falling to the floor. Even throughout the day in her busy office it didn’t seem to get better.

After having passed out the day before, Elizabeth was back in on the action, regretfully. The agents that had been added to the team were, in comparison to the ones that had been unsuccessfully scouring the city for a week by now (and some even longer), overly enthusiastic and were - more or less - getting on everyone’s nerves. Coffee was drunk in amounts that would have kept an elephant awake for days and the amount of junk food consumed equalled that of a football stadium’s audience. It didn’t seem to be to keep them awake but intended as comfort food. The amount had been upped even more since Elizabeth had fainted.

Finding James proved to be impossible and it was the only source of relief - besides the food - she had these days. At least someone was good at keeping himself invisible and untraceable.
Elizabeth tried to be as untraceable as him but there were only so many times she could change the taxi on her way to the hotel without losing a huge chunk of money and hours she could have used to sleep.

But whatever she worried about, nothing came quite as close to making her panic as the fact that she felt as if someone was watching her 24/7.

At times she tried to tell herself it was Clint. Other times she hoped it was James, although she guessed he probably kept away to avoid drawing more attention to her.
At the office she told herself it was Ewan who had taken to keeping a close eye on her. Maybe even Hawk who had started to - what she would almost call - patrolling the department.

In conclusion, there were many people she could blame her paranoia on but she knew that it definitely wouldn’t take too long until someone in Hydra caught up with her and tried to finish the job.

Stopping to repeatedly knock her pen against her mug, Elizabeth let out a deep breath and slowly sank back into her chair. There it was again, the prickle at her scalp, like someone kept staring at the back of her head. Closing her eyes for a second, she leaned forward again to keep working. Wallowing in this feeling wouldn’t benefit her in any way but it still kept nagging at the back of her mind.

“Hey, Liz,” Ewan’s cheery voice made her jerk, his head popping up over the wall of her cubicle.

“Yeah?” she asked almost absentmindedly, returning to her task and trying to open several files on her screen, closing error screens that popped up.

“Hawk called a meeting in thirty, want to get lunch real quick?”

“I need to finish this, can you give me five minutes?” she asked, her eyes not leaving the screen as another annoying error message popped up. “The system is giving me a hard time,” she told him as another new message popped up with angry bold letters proclaiming ‘access denied’. “Fuck. That’s it. I’m done for today, let’s get lunch,” she snapped and swivelled around in her chair with an angry huff.
“What’s wrong?” Ewan asked as Elizabeth stomped out of her cubicle to wait for him at his own.

“Well, apparently I’m not allowed to access the files I’ve been working on for the last few weeks,” Elizabeth huffed and turned to walk down the office besides Ewan. “I’m not even going to read into this.”

“Wait, are you saying this is some kind of ‘fate telling you to get on your lunch break’ or do you honestly think it’s been restricted on purpose?” Ewan asked confused, struggling to keep up with her.

Did she think it was on purpose? What kind of purpose would it serve, keeping her from information she had already been able to access for weeks on end? She couldn’t think of anything to explain it but by now she knew everything was possible. Because, let’s be honest, she was on their radar.

“Let’s talk about something else.”

///

Distracting herself from the problem at hand didn’t seem to work, even with Ewan chewing off her ear about this and that thing he had seen on the internet. Right now she couldn’t be less interested about a frog on a unicycle, whatever this meant. It was probably an allegory.

Still, the day had went by, even without any progress to show. Most of the agents seemed to be used to it by now. To them it was a lost cause anyway.

They kept speculating that Barnes had gone underground and wasn’t even in the US anymore.
Elizabeth wouldn’t even have been surprised if they were right.

But wherever he was hiding or tracking down another batch of Hydra agents, Elizabeth was still caught in New York, alone, trying to be as invisible as she could manage as to not draw any attention to herself. As if that had ever worked.

Saying goodbye to her fellow agents, Elizabeth made to leave, when she felt someone watching her again. She didn’t even know whether it was just her subconsciousness, the way one feels a phone vibrate when it isn’t even there but giving in to her curiosity she turned around anyway.

Looking back into the almost empty department, the only face she could make out was Hawk’s through his office’s window, sitting at his desk and staring into the desolate area. As soon as he noticed Elizabeth looking back, he went back to work, not looking up anymore.

Deciding not to think too much about it, Elizabeth went on to make her way home. It would take her over an hour, anyway, what with all the taxi hopping. She just needed something to eat first. The hotel’s kitchen just wasn’t going to do it.

///

After treating herself to chinese take out that she had already scarfed down on a park bench, Elizabeth didn’t even make it to the first taxi when she felt the hair on her neck stand up again. However, this time panic started to rise in her, too.

She was on her own now, not surrounded by fellow agents as she had been the rest of the day, and nobody knew where exactly she was. Hell, not even she knew exactly what street she would end up in if she had to start running now.

Typing out a prophylactic message on her phone, Elizabeth started walking. If something happened, all she would need to do was press send. If.

Taking a corner to be back on the busy streets, she breathed a little easier. People were around. Civil courage wasn’t dead. She knew that, since she had been working on picking up vigilantes’ messes for a few years now. Today she’d probably turn a blind eye to them.

However as Elizabeth kept weaving through the masses of people pouring into the street from Broadway, someone bumped into her shoulder, making her lose her balance. “Hey!” she yelled after the person but soon another two barreled into her back, making her stumble towards the small alley between the buildings’ walls. Standing there, Elizabeth gripped her phone even tighter, her finger hovering over the buttons.
New York was never, nor would it ever be, normal - this however; she couldn’t really classify this as a coincidence. Not now, with everything happening around her. They would want her to use the alley to escape, from there on it would be easy for them to get to her.

Taking a purposeful step back onto the street, Elizabeth started to shove her way through the masses of people coming her way.

When she saw the first man coming her way, his complete focus on her and determination written all over his face, she hesitated but then pressed send anyway and put her phone away. There was no way they would be going easy on her. They wanted something and she knew where it was, where he was. Just a pity she wasn’t going to go down without a fight, either. She wanted to care for others but this never meant she would completely forget about herself. If she went missing, she could at least cause a big commotion that passersby would remember.

Grabbing the hair tie from her ponytail, she quickly let her hair fall free - a ponytail would always be their first try for a tight grip and she wouldn’t give them that.

Taking a last deep breath, Elizabeth picked up speed and kept walking straight against the masses walking her way. If he tried to intimidate her by staring, she would act as if she hadn’t even seen him. There was no way she was going to show him that she was actually about to shit her pants.

The moment the man started reaching out for her, Elizabeth charged at him in full speed, ramming his shoulder in the process with as much force as she was able to build up in this short amount of distance. The man, caught completely of guard, stumbled backwards and was caught by several civilians while Elizabeth was already running down the street at full speed, her lungs struggling to get enough air into her body.
People kept turning to look at that strange, crazy woman knocking down innocent people. There was no chance she could know how many Hydra-people there were after her right this moment but at least someone had seen her face. This was more than she could have hoped for in the alley. She could have screamed but her voice had failed, so much to not acting scared.

Turning the corner into a small quiet alley to wave down a taxi, Elizabeth suddenly felt two sharp pains on her back, followed by electricity coursing through her body in short jolts.
It made her whole body lock up and she fell sideways like a rock, hitting her head on the tarmac and biting her tongue in the process. She wanted groan or cry out but was unable to.

Two men grabbed her stiff body deeper into the alley, accompanied by grunts but no talking.

Her whole body had locked up, she couldn’t even lift a finger, let alone speak or swallow. The only thing she could feel was the pain it all had caused and the blood slowly but steadily filling her mouth and running down the back of her throat. Elizabeth tried to gasp and cough but it only made the feeling worse.

“Shit,” she heard one of the men grumble, kneeling down beside her head and trying to pry open her mouth to release at least a little bit of the blood.

“Leave her,” the other man snapped, grabbing the other man’s shoulder harshly. “Alive or dead, remember?”

“Pretty sure the boss prefers alive, at least his footman does,” the other man grumbled into his beard. “What are we waiting for? She’s not gonna move for like, another five minutes. They said extraction was imminent.”

“I’m not gonna leave this bitch here on her own, are you fucking kidding me?” the second man seethed. “”Where’s your fucking head a-”

The man’s ranting was interrupted by screaming in the distance, followed by one, two gunshots. Elizabeth would have given a sigh of relief at the men’s faces. The confusion and concern at their mission going awry were etched into their faces. But with another look and nod to each other she knew that both of them had come to a decision regarding her. The determination etched into the first man’s face didn’t match the second man’s apprehension but she feared where this was going.

“No!” Elizabeth gasped out in fear but with another move the man had pulled his gun on her and pulled the trigger, leaving her to run off towards his other men while her pants, shirt and blazer soaked up more and more of her own blood.