INDY

I felt like I’d been tenderized. And roasted. And buried. I needed a burger the size of the Avengers’ Tower and a nap that vaguely resembled a coma. Kate held her arm around my shoulder while I leaned on her and stared blankly ahead into the darkness of recently fallen night. Every other second, red and blue would flash over the area from the cars of responding police Fury had called in.

The man himself was speaking with his main correspondent in the NYPD while Kate, Bucky, Sam, and I sat on the fringes of things and awaited orders.

Yelena and John had stayed behind to wrap things up with the rest of the task force in Wisconsin, but Sam had taken off as backup as soon as he heard where Bucky and Kate had run off to, pushing the limits of his wings. If any of them had hesitated for even a moment, they wouldn’t have made it in time, and I’d be in the clutches of whoever had ordered my kidnapping.

I killed two men tonight.

I flinched and Kate frowned, tightening her protective hold on me where we sat on a rubber-coated picnic table. That thought just kept sneaking in between all the other normal ones. It was necessary. They could have killed me. If I’d managed to take out all of them, I’d never have been taken in the first place.

It didn’t matter. The guilt was still there.

Fury turned away from his conversation and joined our group, glancing between the four of us. After a moment, he pointed to Sam and Kate. “You two. Help the others clear this mess up. We’ll talk after. I need to speak with Strathos and Barnes.”

Kate gave me a quick squeeze and a small smile before walking away with Sam, who put a gentle hand on my shoulder as he passed. Bucky stepped up next to me, arms crossed tightly and face indecipherable as always.

“Agent Strathos,” Fury said slowly, looking me up and down. “You look like hell, kid.”

“I feel hell, sir,” I deadpanned, running my bloodied fingers through my plaster-dusted hair.

He chuckled once. It sounded forced. I glanced up at him more keenly and his face softened a bit, becoming almost apologetic.

“It’s time. If they’re targeting you, they either already know about your little side project-”

I stiffened, pulling my side painfully, though I didn’t pay it much attention just then. How had he known about that? I could feel Bucky eyeing me curiously from the side.

Fury gave me a sly smirk. “-or it’s only a matter of time before they learn about it. Then they’ll really be after you. I’m ordering you into hiding, Indy.”

“But, sir-” I stood from the table and tried to take a step toward him, but stumbled. The heavy bruising of my ribs made it hard to walk normally. Bucky stepped forward and held an arm out, grabbing me around the front of my shoulders before I could fall to the pavement. Not the image I wanted to have while pleading for my job.

“No ‘buts’ this time, Agent Strathos. You may have a window of time where the compound is still safe for you to go back and grab some emergency supplies, weapons, passports, whatever you’ll need to disappear for a while. The rest of the team and I will be working to figure out how this happened.”

“You think there’s a mole,” Bucky stated, giving Fury a speculative look.

For the first time, Fury looked at Bucky. He stared at him for a moment, and I was hoping he wasn’t about to accuse Bucky of something. Finally, he spoke again.

“I think someone knew Indy would be alone on the fourth floor this evening and took advantage of that. She’s the gatekeeper for a lot of vital information. They take her down, and we are vulnerable. Which is why I’m also ordering you into hiding with her.”

I’d expected shouting, gesticulating, glaring… really, any resistance from Bucky. He’d spent so long doing the on-the-run thing. This couldn’t have been a comfortable ask for him. But he lifted his head and nodded dutifully.

“It’s your job to keep her alive. Indy. You know what to do.”

I sighed tiredly and slumped, nodding. “Yes, sir.”

Fury stepped forward and put a gloved hand on my shoulder. His one eye held something like pride. “You have done well here, Agent Strathos. Stark picked the right person for the job.”

He removed his hand and walked away before I could start crying, thank God.

“Have fun on vacation,” he called behind him as he walked back to the crowd of policemen hauling away our two remaining hostage-takers.

“We don’t have long.” I turned and looked up at Bucky. “Are you sure you’re going to be alright with this?”

He gave me a patient look. “Well, I’m not letting you go alone.”

I sighed, guilt twisting my gut. “Let’s let Sam and Kate know. Might be the last time we see them for a while.”

I was usually so good about not crying in front of people. But after the day I’d had, the goodbyes I had to say now just felt cruel. I hugged Kate and Sam both extra hard and asked them to hurry with their investigation so Bucky and I could come back to the team. We asked them to tell Yelena and John goodbye for us. Sam and Bucky spoke privately for a moment, then I was hopping onto the back of Bucky’s bike and we were speeding back toward the compound for what could be the last time.

My tears stung in the wind as we raced down the dark streets.

BUCKY

I tried to talk Indy into stopping by the medical wing on the off-chance medical personnel had returned to their posts before we attempted picking through the remainder of the fourth floor.

She gave me a hollow, “Nothing’s broken. I’ll be fine.”

She was oddly sullen, her eyebrows drawn in and her face angled down. It made me uneasy.

“At least let me help you patch yourself up,” I protested as we mounted the stairs.

She sighed weakly and nodded, like she didn’t have the energy to argue against it.

The fourth floor was in the same disarray as the last time I’d come through, walls, floor, and ceiling all hardly discernable from one another. We shined the flashlight from my phone on the surrounding space since the lights had been knocked out in the attack. The explosion had really only damaged the main living areas; the hallway with our bedrooms seemed practically untouched. Indy’s room had been closest to the blast, but peeking inside showed only a little damage to the side wall.

“Go get your stuff,” I said, looking down at her desolate expression. “Then come to my room and we’ll get ready to leave.”

I stood by the doorway, watching as she dragged out an already mostly-packed duffel from beneath her bed. We’d all developed some occupational habits. A tiny smile hitched the corners of my mouth up.

Good girl.

My room, one of the farthest back, had been completely unscathed aside from a stock picture that had been here when I’d moved in falling from the wall. I pulled out a worn backpack and a duffel bag similar to Indy’s, shoving in last-minute stuff like extra clothes, the few weapons I had lying around, emergency cash, a framed picture of the team that sat on my bedside table.

A soft knock on my door drew my attention up. Indy stood there looking like a corpse someone had dug up. It killed me.

“C’mere,” I murmured, nodding my head toward the door to my bathroom.

She dumped her duffel bag next to mine and followed without a word, her dark-rimmed eyes seeing straight through the floor they were aimed at. She leaned back against the sink while I pulled out a kit of medical supplies.

I took her hand and lifted it slowly. She let me. Didn’t look up. I frowned and used a wet washcloth to clean dirt away from the torn skin of her knuckles, the bent and chipped edges of her fingernails. Her fingers shook lightly in mine. I wound bandaging around her hands, then stood in front of her, tipping her chin up gently. Just so she’d look at me and I’d know she was still in there.

“You hurt anywhere else?”

She shook her head. “Just my ribs.”

“Take the shirt off.”

She had no reaction. My heart thudded hard. She grabbed the bottom of her T-shirt and started lifting, but winced and almost bent double just as the light glinted off the stud in her belly button.

“Here.” I replaced her hands with my own, ignoring the way her skin felt, bare brushes of it against the edges of my fingertips. “Just… lift your arms.”

She complied, and I tugged the shirt gently upward, setting it on the edge of the sink before turning to her. She stood there, in a white bra and jeans, bruised and battered. And I couldn’t stop worrying over the lost look in her eye.

I reached out and brushed my cool vibranium knuckles softly over the large purple splotch over her ribcage, then pressed my palm against it slowly. She tensed, grabbing my right arm to steady herself as she swayed, then relaxed, slumping forward to lean her forehead against my shoulder.

“If it weren’t for the fact that Fury gave us those orders, I’d be marching you downstairs to the doctor right now.”

“Who? Rhonston?” Indy snorted quietly. “He was fired for negligence.”

I started in surprise, unaware that the fingers of my right hand were just… ghosting across her side. I was fighting very hard not to notice all the ways we were touching, all the ways she was so close right now. Looking straight down over her shoulder, I could see her flower tattoo in the center of her back. A water lily.

“Besides,” she continued, not moving her head from my shoulder, or her hands from my arm. “The EMT said they weren’t fractured. I’ll be alright in 4 to 6 weeks as long as no one else tries to blow me up.”

I frowned tightly and brought my hand up to cup the back of her head, looking up into my eyes in the mirror. “No one’s getting anywhere near you again. When I saw your office, I-”

She gasped, suddenly rigid in my hold. Then she was ducking below my arm and moving as quick as she could manage back up the hall to the wasteland of the fourth floor residence. I followed, but she was smaller and able to maneuver through everything quicker.

When I caught up, she was staring in horror at her destroyed office. I faltered a few steps behind her as she turned to her desk, broken drawers dangling at awkward angles. Her mangled computer was strewn across the whole east side of the office. They must have dragged her out before they went nuts trashing the place.

“All of my work.” Her voice was a whisper I nearly missed.

She turned despondently to her bookshelves, splintered and smashed. Pain contorted her face as she looked down, tear-limned eyes searching for something. She dropped to her knees, using bandaged hands to lift something from the debris. The picture of Indy and Tony. The book I’d given her sat beside it, the leather cover crumpled and the edges of the pages somewhat damaged. She gathered both to her nearly bare chest and turned her head frantically from side to side as tears dribbled down her chin, still searching.

I found it before she did. It was hidden beneath a pile of broken glass from both its frame and a nearby smashed snow globe. She’d never explained the picture, or its sudden appearance in her office after Christmas. But it was obvious enough to me. Indy, no more than probably 7, stood in the circle of what could only be her father’s arms. Her face was smaller, younger, with much less sadness in it than the woman who sat in the shambles of her career in front of me.

I held it out to her silently, and she looked up at me the way I was always looking at her; like I was the only thing holding her together. So I dropped down next to her as she took it from me with her shaking, injured hands and pulled her to my chest, letting her sob into the leather of my suit while I worked my fingers through her hair.

O o 0 o O

Once Indy had pulled herself together enough to return to my room, we finished fixing up the other small cuts and scrapes on her face and arms. She felt… nebulous. Wispy and intangible as I worked on her. Like if I wasn’t careful, she could disappear into whatever space she was staring into as we prepared to flee into the night. It sounded a lot more romantic than it felt.

We took our bags and headed down to the abandoned garage. I lingered glumly near my motorcycle for a moment, tossing the keys in my hand hesitantly and wishing I had time for a decent goodbye.

“Buck,” Indy said through a throat that sounded as scratched up as the rest of her. She stood next to a big black four-door, keys already fished out and unlocking the driver’s door. “My SUV has a tow hitch. You can bring it with us. Who knows, me may need it.”

Well, that’s one thing, at least.

Indy loaded our bags into the SUV, throwing a few cases of emergency weapons below the backseats. I hitched the motorcycle up to the back of the SUV and was turning to the front when the jangle of a set of keys flying toward me made me stop. I caught them easily, looking up at Indy, who was leaning against the vehicle.

“You can drive.” As if I’d have let her behind the wheel in her state.

And then we were pulling away from the compound, Indy watching it grow smaller in the side-view.

“Where are we headed?” I asked as we pulled out into the city.

“Upstate,” she mumbled, leaning her head against the window in the passenger’s seat. “We need to see someone before we leave.”