RED WHITE AND BULLSHIT(!)
SHE KNOWS THE SECOND SHE PARKS HER CAR THAT SOMETHING IS OFF. The needle on her watch is moving too wildly for comfort, and the Prius parked three spaces down is familiar in the worst way. She recognizes the scratch along the side— mostly because she was there when it was created.
But that’s okay. She was expecting this.
She checks the ammo in her stolen gun again, making a mental note to count her shots, and then gets out. And for a moment, everything is silent.
She takes this as her cue to continue, swiping her card and walking directly in through the automatic gate. She looks perfectly calm, but her eyes are flickering through every possible angle of attack.
“It’ll take more than an obvious trap to keep me away,” she drawls aloud, turning her head to the left. “So you can go ahead and come out.”
As expected, Dagger slinks out from behind one of the storage containers, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.
“Never could pull one over on you,” he muses. “How’d you know where I was?”
He’s distressingly predictable— he almost always favors turning to the left. Besides, his shoe is half-untied and the end of the lace was barely visible, if one knew what to look for. Which she did.
“Of course your tricks don’t work on me,” she replies instead, raising her eyebrows. “I’m the one who taught them to you.” He shakes his head.
“You didn’t teach me everything,” he counters. “Some things, I just… picked up on my own. For instance?” Olivia hears the click of a gun behind her.
“No, you’re right,” she sighs, unimpressed by his show. “I certainly didn’t teach you to talk this much.” Instead of disappearing completely like last time, her body flickers for a moment, and suddenly the stranger behind her has his arm twisted behind his back, his gun clattering to the floor.
“What, do you think I’m going to fall for that again?” Dagger scoffs— she can’t see his face, but he sounds borderline offended. “Your little disappearing trick is nice and all, but you really should have killed me while you had the chance.”
Olivia realizes, glancing at her watch, that the needle is flicking from one spot to the next, all around her in a circle. Her brows furrow, and she looks around with narrowed eyes.
“Up,” he suggests, and she swears at herself— God, she used to know better than to only look up once. Maybe two years out really has made her soft.
Regardless, she glances up, seeing that she’s surrounded. One of them fires, taking out the card reader that activates the exit. She could climb over the gate without much issue, but that would be asking to get shot.
To be fair, so would waiting for it to open.
For a second, it seems like she’s got no way out— but then she remembers that she has something that Dagger doesn’t.
A brain.
“Wow,” she remarks, breezing through all of these realizations in less than two seconds flat. “That’s impressive. Really.” She can’t see his face, but she picture a guy who looks like a jerk, making the dumbest proud smirk she can imagine. But she continues, “I didn’t know it was possible to get even dumber than you already were.”
“You—,” he starts angrily, but she cuts him off by twisting the guy she’s got, breaking his arm, and then vanishing. The so-called “snipers” on top of the storage units tense.
A gunshot rings through the air, and one of them drops. One, two, three more. The fifth sees the gun on the ground vanish, and shoots at the general area, hoping he’ll hit something if he just casts a wide enough net.
His answer is falling, just like the others, and leaving Olivia and Dagger alone again. He bristles, drawing his gun and listening intently for the invisible woman.
Her footsteps approach, and he raises his weapon, taking aim for her general direction. His shot breezes past her, sinking into a storage unit on the other side. Her time runs out, and she appears in front of him, slamming his arm towards the ground and twisting, undoubtedly breaking his wrist. He holds in his hiss of pain, his gun clattering to the ground.
“Dagger,” she hums. “I know you. I trained you. I know you’re doing your job. And if anyone knows how little choice there is there, it’s me. But I’m telling you now— you come after me again? I will kill you next time.” Dagger’s breath stutters.
She lets go of his wrist though, leaning down to pick up his gun and starting to walk away.
“The boss is cleaning house, y’know,” he says, turning towards her. “Got some kind of message this morning, made him real excited. He’s tying up loose ends, and there’s no end looser than you. Even if I go home, he’s never gonna just let you go. More will come.”
Olivia sighs, glancing back at him with serious eyes.
“That’s my problem,” she replies. “You just focus on getting home to your sister.” Even with a mask on, she doesn’t miss the way he goes absolutely still.
She takes the rare opportunity of speechlessness to walk away, leaving Dagger behind her with a broken wrist and too many questions.
***
Accessing her storage compartment is the easiest part of Olivia’s day by miles. Pushing open the door, she’s relieved to find that everything she put inside it is still there. That is to say, weapons. A lot of them.
Once upon a time, when Olivia still worked for… them, she was tasked with hunting down a stolen weapons shipment. When she got there, the poor idiot who took them had already sold half of them to the highest bidder. Even then, she wasn’t stupid.
She needed to protect herself, and it was stupidly easy to simply report back that he still had one less crate than he really did. So, she took the smaller parts out and hid them in her home, and left the rest of that crate here.
Of course, she had to take those smaller parts back here when she moved into the Tower for a while, and hasn’t gotten the chance to take them back.
She supposes it’s more efficient this way.
“Olivia?” a new voice inquires from her right. She whirls around, gun at the ready, but is tremendously surprised to see Natasha and Steve.
“…what the fuck are you guys doing here?” she wonders, deciding not to trust them out of hand. Natasha steps up to the plate.
“Us? What are you doing here?” she interrogates. Olivia is careful not to glance at her storage unit, narrowing her eyes at the two.
“Here to grab some shit from storage. Didn’t know you had a unit around here,” she states. Steve leans over to peer suspiciously into her unit.
“…where did you get those?” he wonders, his eyebrows shooting up. “And why do you need them?” She watches the cogs in his head turn. “…are you with HYDRA?” Olivia blinks.
“Who the fuck is Hydra?” she wonders, bewildered. “I’ve got some… old enemies on my ass. I’m just here to grab some shit to keep me alive.”
“The Masks?” Natasha guesses. Olivia does a double take.
“The what,” is all she can think to say. Natasha crosses her arms.
“The Masks,” she repeats. “You used to work for them, right?” Olivia blinks slowly, and then bursts out laughing.
“The Masks?” she repeats, losing her shit a little. “You think— you think I worked for the fucking Masks? Holy shit, Nat, I feel like I should be offended! Hon, the Masks are a joke; the Masks might as well have worked for me. Jesus. For an intelligence officer, that was the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You— wait, aren’t the Masks a gang? You used to be a criminal?” Steve wonders, looking completely lost now.
“What? But you were Fox. If you didn’t work for the Masks, then who did you work for?” Natasha presses. Olivia shakes her head.
“Look, as much as I’d hate to explain every detail of my past to you two, if I hang around here you’re going to find out who they are the hard way,” she replies. “I’m headed to stay with Tony again for a while, so I won’t be hard to track down for a bit. I can talk your ears off later.”
“She’s right,” Natasha sighs. “We’re short on time, too. Come on; we’ve gotta get going.” Steve hesitates, looking over at Olivia like she’s a stranger, but then nods, deciding to follow Natasha to wherever she’s taking him.
“Have fun with your Hydras or whatever the hell you’re doing,” Olivia shrugs as they vanish around the corner. She sighs, shaking her head as she refocuses on her weapons.
“So bizarre.”