Danse Macabre

Clint Barton felt like he was living a nightmare. He couldn’t believe anything anyone was saying and, more importantly, he didn’t want to. 

Because how? How in the world was he supposed to? How is this even possible? How—

His thoughts were interrupted as he violently crashed against another agent whilst running at full speed, two bodies flung back from the force. The archer groaned in pain as he felt around his head, sitting up from hitting the ground. 

“I’m sorry.” He stood, offering a hand to the poor agent that was in his way. Before the agent could thank him or reprimand him, Clint ran straight off after helping him up.

Instincts took his feet to an even faster speed, going down the familiar hallway before it opened up into a large command centre. 

His hawk-vision spotted Director Fury and Agent Hill at the centre of the organized chaos of real-time updates, coordination of teams and lists of commands. 

If the Director noticed his presence—which he definitely did because that man is literally omniscient—he didn’t make any move to acknowledge it. And that was enough to send Clint’s nerve into overdrive. 

“Sir.” He called out, breath uneven from his sprint. 

This time for sure, Fury was ignoring him, opting to command Hill to deploy teams to set up checkpoints. 

“Sir.” Clint tried again, but Fury simply shifted away—literally turning a blind eye to the archer. 

He could clearly hear the moment his patience snapped, as he whipped forwards and imposed himself unto the Director’s vision.

“Sir!” There was a hopeful glint in his eyes, one that Fury refused to look straight at. “Is it true?”

Sighing, the one-eyed man glared at his subordinate’s insolence. “What does it look like I’m doing if it isn’t true?”

Certainly, the command centre was in a riot. Agents in panic and distress because of the utter disbelief they had as they handled this ridiculous and painful situation. They didn’t know how to feel. If these agents, who were only colleagues in relation to their new enemy, didn’t know how to react—then how was Clint supposed to?

After all, he was one of his closest friends. 

Family, if he dared say.

“There has to be a mistake.” The skilled marksman shook his head, trying his best to turn this whole thing into a joke. “He wouldn’t do that. You know he wouldn’t do that.”

Agent Maria Hill couldn’t bare to look at his slow descent into madness, steeling her nerves to scold the truth into him. “There’s no mistaking the bodies we received—his entire team and the agents in partnership with them are all dead. And the two that did survive are heavily injured—Agent Ryder’s in surgery, fighting for his life. Agent Ward is barely conscious.”

The two commanders could see the moment when Clint’s hope flickered. His face blanched and his eyes wide with grief, but hope is a fickle thing in which it lives on even with nothing to hold on to. 

“But there’s no proof he did it. Just because he’s missing, it doesn’t mean anything. He could be captured by the enemy—“ 

“Their targets were found dead along with our team.” Hill shut down his hypothesis before it could go anywhere. 

Clint swallowed a bile in his throat. “Still, that doesn’t mean Stiles betrayed us!”

As if the world was begging to differ, one agent came barreling straight to them with a report in his hands. “Ballistics just came through. The bullets matched to a gun in our system—it’s Agent Stilinski’s, Sir.”

There was a moment of silence in the bustling command centre. A heavy silence that rang loudly in everyone’s ears, one filled with shock, disappointment and sadness. An emotion built up in Clint’s stomach and he didn’t want to put a label on it. But something else stewed in that complicated pile, one that he could identify very clearly—doubt.

Fury gave one heavy sigh before clapping his hands to grab everyone’s attention. “That’s all the proof we need.” He turned back to overlooking the command centre, effectively shutting down the rest of Clint’s debate. “Wipe that shock off your faces and get back to work. I want Stiles Stilinski found.”

***

Steve Rogers was dragged out of his usual routine of training with a frantic agent informing him to urgently report to the Director’s office. Seeing as he was the unofficial director of the Avenger’s Initiative, Steve rarely had any business to do with the official operations of SHIELD. Initially, Coulson made a whole deal about Avengers being a separate organization completely independent from SHIELD, but Fury refused to accept that, so this was the compromise. 

By that summoning order alone, he got a bad feeling. It got worse as he saw Natasha, waiting for him by the double doors. 

“What’s this about?”

The assassin shrugged, signalling her lack of knowledge. Both of them swiftly entered the room, finding Clint stewing quietly in the corner.

“Rogers. Romanoff.” Nick Fury greeted them behind his desk, clad in his usual leather coat and menacing with his eyepatch glare.

“Fury.” Steve nodded back, worriedly glancing to their miserable archer. 

Before he could inquire about anything, Fury pulled out a thick folder from his drawer and tossed it on the table. Steve caught the file before it could slip, gripped it in his hands. 

“Your next mission.” Fury explained. “I’m tasking you personally to deal with this, and Natasha as your second. All resources are open to you, but you have to report directly to me.” He waved his hands as a gesture of shirking off details. “Your responsibilities as head of the Avengers Initiative and its ongoing operations can be handled by Falcon while you’re on this case, indefinitely.”

The frown that pulled his eyebrows down appeared instantly. This was absurd. Steve was ready to complain but he wasn’t one to voice out indignantly, so he opened the case file.

The words ripped out from his mouth faster than a bullet. “What?”

Natasha saw the disbelief painted across America’s national treasure, and couldn’t help but peek over his shoulder to see their new target. The instant she saw the name and the familiar face in the profile, her eyes went wide and snapped towards Clint.

Her best friend failed to meet her gaze and that said enough. 

“Sir, what is this?” Steve shook the shock out of his system. He didn’t know Stiles personally, only saw him in casual passing, but he knew Clint was fond of the boy and Natasha was friends with him. 

“He’s gone rogue, killed his entire team and took off with a case keeping something you don’t need to know about. All that matters is that he’s a fugitive and a threat to national security. Do not mistake him as a fellow Agent.” Despite having a way with words, Fury’s wording was slick and clean-cut—straight to the point.

Steve took a moment to process what he heard, then another to look at his teammate growling softly in his nook, and then turned back to the Director. All he could do was give the superior a stiff nod. 

When it looked like Fury no longer had anything to say, Steve retreated with Natasha following in his steps. Clint begrudgingly went with them. They reached the door before the man spoke up, this time to a silent recipient.

“Agent Barton.” 

Clint scowled at the calling and forced out a reply. “Sir.”

Fury eyed him for a second before glaring the agent into silent submission. “If you can’t keep your emotions in check, I’m pulling you out of the mission—do you understand?”

Steve could tell by the tension in his muscles that Clint was taking everything he had in him to not scream at the stoic one-eyed man. 

“Do you understand.” The Director of SHIELD emphasized his words with a strong suppressing tone, bubbling in silent anger. 

That’s when Steve realized, Stiles Stilinski was somewhat like Fury’s personal apprentice—he picked him up, trained him and watched his prodigy flourished under him. There was no way this wouldn’t affect the otherwise emotionless unaffected man.

“I’ll find the truth, sir.” Clint stated his promise with a mocking bow, before storming out with a new resolve.

This was going to be excruciating, both to execute and to watch. Steve sighed, resigning himself to the unavoidable train wreck.

***

Loss was a concept that Stiles was overly familiar with. He’d gone through it multiple times; when his mother died of a sickness, when his father died on duty, when Derek’s family perished in a fire, there were too many to count at this point. 

Death was a friend he seeked in his darkest hour, and one he made contracts with to deal onto other people. When he got recruited to SHIELD in his second year of MIT, his professor warned him of the life he was jumping into. 

You’re going to suffer, he said. You’re diving in a world of torment, as both the exactor and the victim. He was awfully blind, stupidly naive, and drunk on the adrenaline of youth. He didn’t understand what his professor meant, and passed it off as words to scare him from leading an adventurous life. A meaningful life. 

Or so he thought.

And now his professor’s last word to him rang in his head like the toll of a bell, ringing a final warning:

For he who kills, will be repaid in a pain far worse than death. 

It seemed like a simple enough lesson. Stiles thought he knew the consequences and the dangers of what he’s doing. But never like this.

But now he felt the weight of that statement finally settling in.

Because he felt it. A pain worse than anything, worse than death. A pain that words can’t even begin to describe, that sounds can’t even begin to convey, no matter how wretched or how loud and broken he screamed. Nothing could take away from that rabid spreading hollow darkness, eating at him, ravaging him from inside out. 

It was like crying rivers of blood from your eyes, like breathing with a pierced lung, like being wholly awake whilst your heart was being torn out of your ribcage—slowly, painfully, excruciatingly. Alike, but so, so much worse. 

Stiles crashed into his apartment, taking refuge from the harrowing cold soaking into his bones from the rain. He doesn’t even bother locking the doors behind him because he knew he was never going to come back here. He knew he didn’t have much time. In less than 10 minutes, maybe 15 if he was lucky, agents were going to swarm this place and tear it inside out for clues, for evidence, for anything and everything that will incriminate him. 

For a second, Stiles saw hope—his apartment was clean of any evidence, since he was innocent. But that didn’t matter. Since they had people on the inside, they could just plant false evidence. 

He took a minute to breathe. But everywhere he looked he was reminded of his loss. Since this was his home, the home he built with the man he thought he was going to be with for the rest of his life. With the man he loved with every breath in his soul. 

With the man who was brutally ripped from his life. 

He was everywhere. They were everywhere. Remnants, memories, all the little things. Scott’s favourite pillow on their couch, his games scattered near the TV for their competitive video-gaming tournaments. Lydia’s manicure sets and magazines stacked neatly on the coffee table. Allison’s many potted plants and decorations that she forcefully hanged and placed in their living room “as a gift”. 

And the photographs. Hanged, framed, in magnets, on walls, on tables and multiple albums. 

And Derek. 

Derek.

Stiles felt the longing like a punch in his gut. A sob tore out of his lips and he bit the insides of his cheeks to stop from breaking down completely. 

He felt his knees hit the ground and his body crumpled over, as he soundless scream ripped from his throat. He hated this. He hated everything. He hated the scent of his home enveloping him, he hated the pictures, he hated the memories, he hated the feeling of the rug he and Derek had a civil war from choosing, he hated the muted green color of the walls they painted after a hefty debate, he hated his home. 

Because it reminded him of something he lost, something he will never have. A taste of false heaven. A broken paradise.

It felt like the end.

But he wasn’t done. He can’t be done. For everything he’s lost, he’s going to make sure everyone felt the pain he’s feeling. 

A flood of blood overwhelmed his taste buds as he realized he bit his cheeks too hard, reopening the wound he bit previously. And that was the wake-up call he needed. 

Stiles got to work. He stood up and took the medical kit they stored in the cabinets. Leaning against the counter of the kitchen island, he dumped all the contents of the kit on the table. He lifted his shirt and scrunched it up into his mouth—for access and something to bite down to for the pain.

Grabbing the disinfectant, Stiles haphazardly poured it all over his midriff, his teeth clenching down on the fabric of his shirt as he fought through the stinging pain. He ditched the bottle for a pair of tweezers and took a deep breath before he dug into the wound. 

“Fucking hell!” He cursed, as he twisted the tweezers in his flesh, trying to find the bullet lodged in there somewhere. 

Jesus, if he was going to get shot, the least he wanted was for the shooter to be skilled enough for the bullet to actually go through and save him the trouble of this unnecessary butchering. 

A twist and two turns later, he got the bullet out. He made no waste in bandaging it and swallowing a handful of pain meds to keep himself going. 

He knows it’s unhealthy but fuck if it is. As the fast-acting pain meds kicked into his system, he could feel the instant relief of not only his physical pain, but his mental state. It numbed it down, not so much that he didn’t feel like he wanted to tear his brain out to stop his loss from destroying him anymore, but enough so that he had strength to keep himself in check. 

If there was anything you learn in training as field and specialist agents, it was to compartmentalize like a fucking cabinet. 

And Stiles? Right now he was the sturdiest fireproof triple locked steel cabinet to ever cabinet. 

There was a lot of precautions that came with their job, especially with a reputation as infamous as the Delta STRIKE Team. Stiles, with his position as a leader, had a fail-safe plan in case something went wrong. He had long set up a protocol in case he needed to go off-grid and hide, or in this case, run. But that was for a later time. 

He had other immediate plans hidden in places more accessible, one of which is obviously in his own home. Stiles moved the pictures hanging on the walls with no caution, before he grabbed the sturdy metal floor lamp and braced. With one hard swing, he smashed the wall. 

Getting rid of the debris, small vacant space he had hollowed out behind the wall appeared in full view. Inside was a duffel bag. Stiles quickly checked the duffel bag to see everything was in place: two fake passports, three unactivated cell phones, a couple of USB drives, a small leatherbound notebook, $500,000 in bundles of untraceable hundred dollar bills, and a standard Glock 17 with loaded ammunition and a few 15-round magazines.

Stiles quickly changed out of his bloodied and ruined combat uniform, ditching it for a T-shirt, hooded windbreaker jacket and pants. He grabbed the Glock, sliding it into his hidden belt-carry and slid two magazines into his back pocket.

Taking the pile of his battered clothing, he pulled an object out of one of the pockets, staring at it intently. He held it in his hand with extreme caution, like it was going to explode on him. 

Maybe it will who knows? He placed the object inside his duffel bag before zipping it up and slinging it onto his shoulder. Stiles hasn’t got the first clue as to what this thing does, but he knew in his gut that this was the thing that was going to decide his fate in this war he’s about to enter. 

His trump card. 

Grabbing a baseball cap off the coat rack, he placed it on his head and tucked the tip down. Reaching towards the door, he forced himself not to look back—to not remember every single detail of his home he was leaving behind—and left. 

***

Grant Ward stood with a pained expression, a hidden hint of smugness shining in his eyes. When he was first roped into the mission, he thought it wouldn’t be that hard. Granted it was the famous Delta team, but they had the element of surprise. Thus, he definitely did not expect it to be the shitshow catastrophe they barely pulled off. 

He also didn’t expect to be so badly injured, by a woman at that. Lydia Martin. The agent grit his teeth as he spat at her name, taking great pleasure at being her killer. 

That woman was too stuck up, too arrogant, thinking the world was under her fingers. She was high up on Ward’s death list. 

But the first, and only throne, of that list belonged to the cockroach by the name of Stiles fucking Stilinski. The mere thought of him boils his blood. 

At first, he was overjoyed at being assigned to the mission, thinking he could finally exact his justice onto that arrogant son of a bitch. To think that the vermin would actually survive.  

The door opened, stopping his thoughts from rambling on, and in walks Captain America, Blackwidow and Hawkeye. Ward instantly gathered himself, putting on his mask seamlessly.

“Agent Ward.” Steve greeted the injured soldier. 

“Captain.” Ward politely greeted back with a slight nod. 

They were in the locker room, where Agent Ward was sorting his things after getting treated. Steve offered for the agent to sit seeing that he was injured. 

“You okay to answer some questions?” Steve asked him once he was seated down.

Grant Ward wasted no time to nod, purposefully hesitating and putting on an act. He thought he would earn some brownie points if he acted like he was betrayed by a comrade. 

Sympathy was a weapon easily manipulated. 

Steve took a seat on the bench opposite of the agent, with Natasha behind him and Clint leaning against a farther locker. There was something about the way Clint Barton was looking at him that made his nerves stand on end. 

“Tell us what happened.” Steve jumped right into it. 

Agent Ward was a master manipulator, if anything. A double spy of a double spy, a face within many faces and a trained chameleon. He could make up a back story at the drop of a hat, getting the necessary emotions in his voice and facial features like picking toppings at a sundae bar. 

It started with a gulp, loud and edible—nervous and choked up. “It happened so fast. One minute we were eliminating our target and the guards, while Stiles was securing the case. Then he went out and shot the CIA agents, and then Ryder and most of his team—he stabbed Agent Martin before shooting her,” details, details, details, it spins a lie into truth, “and then he went off with the case.” 

Steve nodded for him to go on, his eyes telling him that he’s got the Captain’s attention. Natasha was harder to feel, but the woman’s a trained russian assassin and the best damn liar alive—as long as she didn’t outright call him out or kill him, Ward will just assume he has her in the bag as well. Clint, though, he was stoic, but his gaze—it was too intrusive. 

“We chased after him, me and Agent Hale.” Taking a deep breath and making sure to wince for that added pain factor, Ward closed his eyes. “He somehow dodged us and managed to get behind us before he shot Hale.” 

With that line, Clint finally blinked and shifted. 

Agent Ward hid a smirk into a grimace, thinking he had Clint in the bag as well. Now all that’s left is a garnish of emotions—make it personal, so that they won’t have a reason to doubt you. Make it shocking, so that they would question motives instead of action. Because if they looked into the action too much, they would see how much of it was fabricated. 

“Hale fell from his bike. And by that point, I lost him.” Heaving, closing his eyes, as if trying to hold back his tears. “I just can’t believe. Stilinski and Hale—they were lovers, weren’t they? Wasn’t his team really close? I don’t know—I can’t imagine—I wasn’t his close friend or anything, but at the very least I thought I knew him.”

And for the nail in the coffin, he let out a small pitiful chuckle. “Sorry, Captain. That was unprofessional.” 

Steve nodded in understanding. “It’s not your fault. You were betrayed by a trusted ally.” Sighing, the Captain shared a look with Natasha, who then looked at her best friend unmoved from his position against the locker. They didn’t know how Clint was taking this, knowing well that Clint Barton knew their target personally. 

Ward was no longer skeptical of the archer. Maybe the man was just too shocked by the ‘facts’. But even if he was still doubtful, with the planted evidence and his testimony and the bodies, there’s nothing much Clint could do about it. 

Natasha spoke up, grabbing Agent Ward’s attention. “So the case, it’s with him?” 

Dangerous question, Ward remarked to himself but outwardly giving a small nod. 

“What’s in it? Did you see it?” 

Another dangerous question. Ward couldn’t help but compliment the woman in his mind, she was asking all the right questions—the Russians really did it right with their assassins. “I’m not sure I can enclose the details of that information without clearance.” 

Natasha gave him a simple narrowing of her eyes. 

Steve piped up before she could retaliate. “I’ve been authorized all clearance and all resources. We could find the information if we needed it, but it’s better to directly ask you.” 

A lie. Agent Ward knew it was a lie, despite how Steve was effortlessly bluffing, he was trained to see a lie a mile away. Except for Natasha, nobody managed to fool him. But, he’s not going to show he knows it’s a lie. 

Rather, he’s going to take advantage of it. 

“Our mission brief said it was a sensitive document of some sort, and that the case was biometrically locked.” Ward lied through his teeth, but technically it was the truth on paper, so what’s the difference? 

At the very least, they’d never find out what was inside that case. And the answer was satisfactory enough to logically urge Cap’s team to apprehend Stiles without asking too many questions. 

“Thankyou for cooperating. Rest up, and don’t beat yourself up too much. Remember none of this was your fault.” Steve patted his shoulder once in comfort before leaving with his team. 

And if Captain America bought the narrative, then who would deny him? 

Once the doors closed behind the Avengers, Ward stood up from his bench and opened his locker. Huffing out a smile, he pulled out the case from his locker. Hiding the case with his suit, Ward walked out of the locker room. He discreetly made his way to the meeting-point set beforehand. 

His superior was already there waiting for him when he opened the door. Ward instinctively bowed to greet him, “Sir.” 

The man nodded, acknowledging his greeting before placing his hand out. “The case.” 

Ward obediently presented the case on his outstretched hands before moving back to stand, like a dog waiting for an order. 

“I’m sorry Stilinski escaped, sir. I will make sure to kill him before Captain Steve Rogers grab a hold of him.” 

“How are you going to find him before the Avengers does?” The man mocked him, his hands working a device to open the case. “Even if they catch him, Stilinski is doomed to take the fall no matter what he says. As long as he ends up dead at one point, there won’t be a complication.” He smirked as the case clicked open. “Of course, it would be better to kill him sooner than later to tie up loose ends.” 

‘But I’m not expecting much’ was the end of that sentence that hung in the air without being said. Agent Ward could only clench his jaw in acceptance. 

Despite being a loyal servant to their cause, Agent Ward knew he was more of a lap-dog than a soldier. But that was okay. He had a plan. To rise up the ranks, build trust and loyalty, one mission at a time.

And he knew his success in this mission boosted him up quite high. 

“What?” 

Agent Ward blinked up at the unexpected shock in his superior’s voice. He was met with a furious glare. 

“You worthless idiot!” The man screamed at him. 

Blinking once more, Agent Ward was at a loss. Why was he cursing him? “Sir? What’s wrong?” 

“What’s wrong?” The man raged, flipping the open case around to reveal absolutely nothing. “It’s gone, that’s what’s wrong!” 

There was an indentation of a square on both platforms of the opened case, indicating the missing object that was supposed to fit there. 

“What?!” For the first time, Ward panicked. “How is this possible?”

Agent Grant Ward always prided himself as a man who could predict any and all outcomes, to prepare for appropriate back-up. But this was an outcome so incredulously impossible that he didn’t even think about, let alone factor it in. 

A million thoughts raced by: How could the case be empty? What does it mean? Did the object never existed in the first place? Was the object that their whole directive was centered around just a fake ruse? But that’s absurd. 

Unless. 

“Son of a bitch.” 

His superior’s glare worsened at his curse, thinking it was directed towards him, his voice a silent indignant anger. “Excuse me?”

“Stilinski, sir.” Ward grumbled, irritated and furious. He was played. Out-smarted by the man he hated most in the world. “He has it.”

***

His plan was simple. Simple may be an oversell, because he simply had no plan. But Stiles wasn’t the least bit bothered by that. His tactic towards every mission he’s completed was always without a clear plan—since he’s long far learned that having plans was just a jinx for disaster, because something always goes wrong. 

Thus, having no plan was really the best plan. 

One step at a time. The first being the cursed object in his duffel bag. 

Although taking it was a split-second decision, it turned out to be the smartest move he’s made in that entire god-forsaken day. The black cube was the size of a rubix cube, but with hard shiny dark planes and solid ridges. It seemed like a glass—a high-end, strong and scratch-resistant type of glass—cube solid cube with no opening, no button, nothing special whatsoever, but that can’t possibly be all that there is to it. 

Since he couldn’t figure out what the cube is, he decided to take another approach. The suitcase. 

Stiles ducked into the descending staircase entrance of a secret underground internet cafe—the kind which no one questions why you’re there, and provides a secure connection and completely untraceable. He paid for a private booth, and settled in. 

He remembered the design of the suitcase vividly—and he had an idea of what tech was used in the built. More importantly, he had an inkling of which tech company made it. Even though it wasn’t labelled unlike most of their products, Stiles could never mistake the intricate design and innovative technology. 

Stiles got to work in record time, fingers flying as he hacked into the company’s servers. Even though he was nowhere near close to what Lydia can do, he was still better than most. After all, they had attended MIT for two years together, sharing their intelligence in their different degrees before they uprooted to SHIELD. 

Still, he was hacking into one of the most secure servers in the world, considering the progenitor of the firewalls and security, how could it not be? He barely got past the firewalls undetected, successfully accessing their servers. He filed through their blueprint designs, see if any of them matches the suitcase he encountered. But no matter what he couldn’t find it. 

He bit his lips in frustration, looking at his watch to keep time. Stiles knew the longer he was stuck in one place, the faster they were going to find him and the faster he was going to get noticed hacking into the company’s server. 

Blueprint’s aren’t often placed in servers, especially sensitive projects. But there needs to be a data trail somewhere, or at least a vague description list of the design in the listed projects. Stiles continued searching for his needle in the digital haystack before coming across a file description of a suitcase technology fitting the make of the one he encountered. 

The moment he clicked on it, he was met with a warning pop-up.

[ Unauthorized access. Locked by Howard Stark, accessible by private archives in—]

Oh, hell no.

[—Stark Industries. ]