A RED SMILE (!)
FOX DOESN’T SHY AWAY FROM BLOOD. Not anymore— she’s seen too much of it to get squeamish now. Some nights she thinks the stuff is worn into the fibers of her gloves. If not the blood itself, then maybe the smell, at least.
If not her gloves, then her mind.
Sometimes she’ll smell blood just walking around her apartment. Sometimes she’ll have to do a double-take because some stranger on the street was wearing a red shirt or holding a red bag. Sometimes no matter what she cooks, she can never get the iron aftertaste quite out of her mouth.
It hardly even registers anymore.
But this?
This is harsh, even for her. This is ugly, even for this room— God only knows what horrors this room has seen. Interrogation room one.
The blood is everywhere; there’s an eye on the table, in full view of its owner. Its living, writhing owner. He’s missing more than an eye, but those pieces are gone, or at least out of view. The woman in the wolf mask glances back at Fox, her head tilting a little. Her mouth— the only part of her face that Fox can see— is stretched into a wide, bloody grin.
“Occupied~,” she damn near sings, sounding delighted. The man strapped to the chair (if he can even still be called that anymore, mutilated as he is) can’t speak, but he lets out a strangled noise that could be a scream.
Olivia slams the door shut, turning back to Dagger. His whole body has locked up in fear. He’s not good at hiding his emotions yet, not after the barest two months of training. She tries to center herself.
“Let’s see if two is empty,” she suggests, and her voice comes out more evenly than she expects. He looks between her and the door.
“What, is that— is that normal around here? Is that just— do you do that?” he demands, and she hears the wobble in his voice. It grounds her instantly.
“If you were going to get squeamish, you picked the wrong career,” she snaps, forcing herself to ignore that he had even less of a choice than she did. “Just be glad you’re not in the chair, and focus on staying out of it.”
“Answer me,” he decides, planting his feet even as she tries to brush past him and move on to interrogation room two. She grabs him harshly by the front of his shirt.
“You,” she advises him, her voice a low snarl, “do not give the orders here. You follow them. Never forget that again. I won’t be so nice about it the second time.” His breath catches, and he nods once. She releases him, continuing on towards the room. He follows, after only a moment’s hesitation, staying a few feet back.
“…yes,” she tells him quietly after they round their second corner. “But not like that.”
He doesn’t say anything, but she knows he heard her because he’s suddenly hurrying to follow behind her more closely, like he usually does.
They don’t talk about it again.
***
After a cursory visit in the dead of night to determine which apartment is Wolf’s and a long discussion with Bruce about boundaries, Olivia is finally ready to carry out the plan.
Unfortunately, she forgot a key step:
Telling Loki.
That’s how she got here, sitting in Wolf’s apartment with Loki lounging in one of the dining room chairs. He showed up at the worst time— he has a talent for that. Now, he’s going to be sitting in on this woman’s torture and eventual murder.
Needless to say, Olivia hates this plan.
One of its very few benefits is that here, in this extremely secure apartment, with the curtains drawn, he is free to be himself for the first time since Dagger broke into her home. Of course, that’s far outweighed by every other aspect of the situation.
Her gloves feel constricting with his eyes on her, and her mask seems to reveal more of herself than she’s willing to show. Olivia keeps herself busy, inspecting the apartment and checking her watch. She makes special note of all the potential weaponry (conventional and unconventional), even as Loki’s gaze peels into her skin.
“You look uncomfortable,” he notes lazily, watching her scan the apartment with raised eyebrows. She frowns, but very pointedly does not touch her white Expendable mask.
“I’m wearing a mask,” she reminds him in a convincingly flat drawl. “I don’t look like much of anything.” His eyebrows raise even more, somehow.
“Does that particular deception fool many, or were you hoping I’d be the first?” he jabs, his lips whirling up in vague amusement. Olivia rolls her eyes.
“You are the only person I have ever met that’s so insistent that I’m a bad liar,” she advises him, checking her watch again. Wolf should be home soon, if the needle is any indication (which it very specifically is).
“Don’t stall,” he chides. “What’s really the matter?” Olivia glances at him, then back down at her hands— or maybe the knife in them. Loki has been tasked with the very important job of holding the gun for her.
“I’m not exactly happy to be doing this again,” she replies, half-sarcastic. He watches her silently, his stare analytical.
“Allow me to take a guess?” he prompts. Of course, it wasn’t a question, and he continues without waiting for an answer. “You dislike that I’m here. You worry what I’ll think of you, after seeing you torture and kill.”
A small smile forms on her face, bitter though it may be.
“Well, good to know you can’t see through me like glass,” she muses. “I dislike that you’re here, but I’m not worried what you’ll think. Now shut up, she’s entering range.” He shoots her an irritated look, but falls silent anyways as Olivia moves to stand next to the doorway and vanishes before his eyes.
He takes the cue to disappear as well.
The door swings open, and a woman strides in, scanning the apartment as she enters. She stops, her eyes lingering on something, and shuts the door behind her.
Olivia moves; she doesn’t even reappear until her knife is against Wolf’s throat. She stops, and Olivia’s face is impassive.
“Hello, Charlotte,” she drawls lowly. Wolf— Charlotte, maybe— moves fast, her foot shooting back to kick Olivia directly under her shin. In the brief moment of confusion, she slips out of her grasp, shooting off towards the kitchen.
Olivia doesn’t waste a second before bolting after her, throwing the knife towards the woman’s calf. Wolf dodges at the last second, but it still carves a red line into the side of her calf, matching the thin one on her throat.
She yanks open a drawer, but before she can even see that the gun has been removed from it, Olivia’s fist slams into the side of her face. It drives her head into the counter, and she crumples.
Olivia sighs, picking the knife up off the floor.
“Fucking enforcers—,” she starts, a sighed complaint, but Wolf’s hand suddenly bolts out, yanking on Olivia’s leg and knocking her to the ground. Wolf scrambles to grab one of the kitchen knives, but Olivia is quicker, rolling over to stab the knife through her foot.
Charlotte shouts, scrambling to take weight off it, but starts to topple. She would have managed to brace herself on the counter if Olivia hadn’t yanked her down by the wrist. She aims an elbow at Olivia’s face on the way down, and Olivia has to roll out of the way so she doesn’t get hit.
Wolf lands painfully on her elbow, and Olivia takes advantage of the moment of confusion to pin her down by her wrists.
“Tell me what MEDUSA is planning,” she commands the older woman, voice somehow calm despite the sheer effort she’s exerting. “Tell me, and you can die quick instead of slow.” Wolf smiles a bloody smile.
“I’d rather kill you,” she hisses, grabbing Olivia’s wrists and overpowering her, flipping their positions to drive a knee into the brunette’s stomach. Olivia groans, but muscle memory takes over, having her slam a foot directly into Wolf’s leg injury, not releasing her vice grip on her wrists.
Yank, twist, crack. Wolf hisses through her teeth, but there’s no telling how much of that is anger and how much is pain. In the moment her grip slackens, Olivia tears away, reaching for her knife.
She slams back into the ground, a powerful grip on her ankle, and all she can think is ‘no’.
Then suddenly, Olivia’s vision whirls, and Wolf’s leg has a knife through it. She barely remembers moving, but her hand is wrapped around the hilt, and hell if she doesn’t take advantage.
Olivia scrambles past Wolf, bolting out of her movement range, and swipes the gun off of the table. She whirls back around, the safety clicking off, and Charlotte stills from her new place on the carpet.
“Plans,” she commands, her voice still chillingly calm. “Tell me what MEDUSA is up to. Or better yet: what their connection to HYDRA is.”
Wolf has the audacity to laugh.
“HYDRA? What do you know about HYDRA, kit?” she hisses, a strangely gleeful smile crossing her face. “Do yourself a favor and stay in your lane, little girl.” Olivia hums.
“I came here to send a message,” she hums. “Now, I can send that message the clean way, or the messy way.”
“Fuck you,” Wolf hisses angrily, rolling over like a flash to grab for the gun taped beneath her table. Her hand meets wood instead of steel, and her brains splatter the floor.
“Ah well,” Olivia sighs, easily dropping the gun she stole from that very table. “The messy way it is.”
“Would you have let her live?” Loki wonders idly, reappearing in his chair. Olivia glances back at him, taking off the mask so he can see her expression. There isn’t a single line of sympathy on it.
“No.”