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A trail of blood drips from your chin. Head tilted down, you manage to keep the carnage hidden away from the hotel maid as she passes by—chattering with her coworker as she pushes the squeaky linens cart. The musty hall reeks of mildew and old cigar smoke that's sunken into the burgundy carpeting. The combination of odors has your head practically spinning. Your heightened sense of smell leads you down the hall towards your room: your nose registers Steve Roger's masculine natural perfume from thirteen doors down.
Your knuckles, chapped and raw, knock three consecutive times against the door. Your sharp ears catch onto the pattern of Sam Wilson's steps from inside.
"What took you so long...? Jesus Christ," Sam interrupts himself with a gasp. "You look like shit!"
Steve, who was lingering behind the opened bathroom door, steps into the room when he hears your arrival. His arms cross at his chest. The words he speaks leave his forehead wrinkled with worry. "Is that blood?"
You wipe your face with the end of your sweatshirt sleeve. "No?"
Steve huffs, "That's not a question that should be answered with another question, Y/N."
You shrug and walk farther into the cheap hotel room. "I ran into a problem."
"We're supposed to be lying low, Y/N: not stirring up trouble."
"I wasn't stirring," you point out dryly. A glance in the mirror shows the whole lower part of your mouth drenched in the gooey red stuff. You huff and reach for a bath towel to try soaking it all up. "I was solving."
"What else could you expect, Steve? You invited Hellhound on a sting operation. She's still not all the way trained," Sam jokingly refers to your alter-ego superhero name. He tries to pat you on the head for effect but you pull back your lips in a faux-growl. He chuckles and backs away. "Easy, girl."
"Would you two stop messing around?" Steve sounds exhausted—absolutely annoyed.
"You haven't even asked what I was doing," you say. You wring out the wet towel in the grimy sink—watching the light pink liquid rush down the corroded drain.
Steve leans into the bathroom doorway. Sam's sitting on the edge of the bed just behind him. "What were you doing, Y/N?"
"I was on my way back from the bus stop you sent me to scout, and I saw some random creep following a girl. Didn't take long to realize that he had no intention to leave her alone, so I decided to convince him."
"What'd you do?" Sam chuckles. "Bite him?" He laughs some more until your stoic face and slight smirk has him shutting up real quick. He leans closer to you with his elbows propped on his knees. "Wait—you really bite people? Like... for real?" You open your mouth to answer and he gets a quick peek at your sharp canines. "Never mind—I don't wanna know."
Your smile is stained ruby red.
"Back on subject," Steve switches topics. "I know you're new to the team, Y/N, but going off script isn't allowed." The man leans in the doorframe with a towel rung up between his big, blister-knuckled hands. His eyebrows are furrowed as he speaks firmly to you.
"Allowed? What am I? A child?" You push away from the sink having cleaned up your cheeks. "Listen Rogers," you pause in the doorway with a hand on Steve's shoulder. He glares down at your fingers pressed there against his pec but you refuse to move. "I appreciate what you're trying to do here: be a leader and all. But I'm not one for chains, so don't try to boss me around." You smile as if relaying something nice. "My bark is much sweeter than my bite." You push around him towards the rest of the suite. You close yourself off into the master bedroom, door shutting behind you, but you still manage to hear what Sam says.
"Damn. I thought Nat was the scariest one on the team. I think Y/N has her beat, though."
Then, Steve huffs, "Two months and she still refuses to work with me."
"I don't think she's one to play nice," Sam responds, "Or maybe she just doesn't like you. I'd pay money though to say it's a combination of the two."
Steve's sigh is quiet but rings out loud in your mind. "I don't know, Wilson. I'm trying here. I really am. I don't know what else to do to get through to her."
You turn away from the door in hopes to distance yourself from the conversation on the other side. Their voices travel through your ears despite how hard you fight to relax into the bedding. It all reeks of cheap laundry detergent and old sex. Tired, you resort to staring emptily at the ceiling the rest of the night.
The next day you're awoken by a loud crash outside. Bolting upright, your head whips towards the daylight stricken window. You must've fallen asleep at some point, then. Now a garbage truck down the block has broken your dreaming.
You run your fingers through your hair and sigh. There have been so many drawbacks—countless consequences—to having been a mutated teenager. You'd only been sixteen when you were first experimented on in the mountains of Mother Russia. Now, ten years later, you're still living with the side effects that turned you into some sort of superwoman. It comes as no surprise that you've been pegged with the nickname "Hellhound". The mad scientists that tore you apart did use a few stray canines as inspiration for your traits. You even learned to fight by being paired in cages with huge, mutated dog-beasts with foaming mouths and red-stained eyes.
You really shouldn't hold so much animosity for Captain Rogers. He was the one who saved you from that nightmarish place, after all. It was his team that blew up the lab where you were locked inside for years. After spending four years in a rehabilitation center set up by SHIELD you've been recruited onto the superhuman team that saved you all those moons ago.
You pull yourself off of the bed and onto two feet. The floor is eerily cold beneath your bare toes.
Quietly, to not wake your roommates, you sneak out of your room. The two soldiers shared the main room—one on the bed and the other stuffed onto the couch. While it would've made much more sense to put the bigger-bodied Steve on the mattress, he clearly volunteered to suffer on the stiff sofa. You nearly smile at the sight of his body squished there uncomfortably. It's not a nasty sort of smile, either. It's an endearing, humorous sight that brings on the same genre of smile.
Steve must have a weird sixth-sense that registers your staring. His blue eyes, lined with faded smile lines from long ago, blink open tiredly. For a moment you're frozen there above him a few feet away while he stares right back at you. You don't say a word, not even trying to hide your smile from before, and then turn back to the path you'd originally set upon before for the bathroom.
You're brushing your teeth when you first hear noises out in the quiet hall. At first you assume it's a maid or manager walking up and down, but then the footsteps conveniently stop just outside the door. You stiffen—spitting into the sink and rushing back into the main room. Steve catches sight of your hurried, worried state and opens his mouth to say something—maybe ask what's going on.
You silence him with a hand over his mouth. He stiffens as he sits up on with your manicure pressing into his lips and your mouth brushing his ear. "They found us," you whisper through his locks of blond hair. "Be quiet."
You let go of him and start to gather your most important things. Steve manages to wake up Sam quietly—relaying the point of escape without a spoken word. Then the three of you are climbing out of the window and down the fire escape in your pajamas. Thankfully none of you sleep in the nude.
You're the first to land gracefully on the cement. You turn back to offer Sam a hand. After he's settled and jogging ahead you pause in reaching out for Steve. Ultimately, you do. And Steve—even though plenty capable enough to get down on his own—takes your olive branch-like arm, maybe as a hopeful sign that both of you could get along someday.
That day is probably not today.
"Where the hell are you going?" you hiss at Steve. He's started off in one direction and you in the other. "We need to get the hell out of town. Our car is..." You start to lead the group before Steve's grabbing your arm and stopping you abruptly.
"If they found us, they found our car. It's probably how they tracked us in the first place," Steve points out. He glances back up at the open window of the hotel room. "Right now, we just need to make it out of here without causing any sort of scene." He narrows his pretty blue eyes at you skeptically. "No biting anyone today, okay?"
You scoff and jerk your arm out of his grasp, "No promises, Soldier Boy."
Following Sam, you and Steve jog down the street. It's seemingly too early for pedestrians, yet for some odd reason they seem to be scattered all around. It's mainly school children and parents you see walking north. There must be a primary school somewhere near here. Your eyes flick from the nearest crossing guard to Steve. He gives you a tight lipped, nervous head shake that tells you he's on the same page: no scenes here. Not today, not with so many innocents around. Just because your innocence was destroyed, doesn't mean you're willing to stand to see anyone else's ripped away. In fact, it makes you more hell-bent on keeping the innocence of the rest of the world safe.
You three escapees travel farther east down the road towards where you know the subway lies. That's when you first hear screeching tires in the distance—not too far away, but far enough for Steve and Sam to be too deaf to hear. You immediately stop in the street and look backwards.
A block backwards on your path is the crosswalk. And it's crowded with oblivious, giggling children.
When you start running backwards Sam and Steve whip around to question where you've gone. Your feet pound the ground as you race as fast as your mutated body can physically take you. You're a blur, a streak—a marred thing—racing down the empty road.
Slowly, the herd of toddling kids make their way across the street. Since no cars are around they take their time and the crossing guard doesn't bother to hurry them.
"Run! Get onto the sidewalk!" you try shouting to them. The group looks to you, not all but some, and the ones who do look appear clueless.
Of course—you're in Italy. Your fast, heavy-breathing English makes no sense to them.
"Correre!" You're too busy to remember the proper conjugation of the verb now. All that matters is the babbling babes get your message and hustle to the sidewalk. So you keep screaming it, as threateningly as you can, until they've all heard you—squealing and rushing to safety. Even the crossing guard makes it across. You think you're good to turn back and resume your hasty escape just as the big black van screeches around the corner and appears at the end of the street. The tires leave tracks in the pavement. Smoke billows up around the rubber.
And a little girl stands frozen with fear in the middle of the street.
"Fuck," you grumble beneath your breath. You kick it into high gear and head straight for her. It's been a long time since your feet have screamed at you to slow down. You don't remember having run this fast for something so important in your whole life.
The girl in the blue school uniform looks no older than five. She has white bows in her hair and a Little Mermaid lunchbox dangling in her languid grasp. The wind tosses her pigtails around while the van catapults towards her with no intention of slowing down.
By the time you reach the little girl it's nearing too late to do anything. You hardly manage to throw your arms around her waist and cocoon your body around hers for safety before you hear the car engine vibrating through your skull.
What happens next all happens in a fraction of an instant.
You reach the girl, almost in slow motion, as the car comes less than a yard from impact. You squeeze your eyes shut to brace for impact before hearing a deafening blast radiate from the air. It shakes the earth and sends metallic, smoky shrapnel towards the sky in an instant. The heat is palpable but confusing.
You open your eyes. An arm is wrapped around you and the little girl. Sitting crouched down onto the ground just in front of where you kneel is Steve—holding his shield out ahead of you. The smoke that suffocates the freshness of the summer morning air comes from the smoldering van that a mechanical bird robot has just shot down from the sky. It twinkles its red eyes and then zips back down the sidewalk towards Sam who stands guard of the huddled schoolchildren beneath a store balcony.
Your ears hear nothing but ringing—clashing and clanging—when Steve turns his head back towards you. You feel his arm loosen around your shoulders as the girl breaks out of your grasp and runs screaming back towards her peers.
Now you realize that she wasn't the one shaking with fear. It's you.
Steve's lips move in a way that forms your name. He's still in his pajamas crouched in front of you. He lets down the shield and now you get a proper look of the mess you've made.
Your eyes dart away from the scene to Steve. You expect to see the same mad, annoyed expression he wears around you day-to-day. But instead... you see a bit of proudness. Relief. Pity. A small, small smile.
"...Okay...?" Steve's voice is finally starting to register in your ringing ears. You nod at his question and steady yourself on his arm that he keeps wrapped around you as he helps you to your feet.
"I thought we were supposed to be keeping a low profile," you cough between words as the smoke settles into your lungs.
Steve shrugs. "I was wrong."
You raise an eyebrow. A sly smile spreads on your lips. "So that means I'm right."
Steve chuckles. It's the first time you've ever heard him laugh at something you've said. "Don't push it, Hellhound."
"Are you two done over there?" Sam's voice comes echoing out from the other side of the street.
It's in this moment that you realize how close you're standing to Steve. It wouldn't be wrong to say you're standing in his embrace now. His arm is still wrapped around you to keep you steady, but you haven't really needed it there.
Quickly the two of you push away.
"Let's go back and get our ride. We'll cut back on time that way," you say. Steve nods and you turn to take the lead.
You hear Sam mutter to Steve behind you, "If I didn't know any better I'd say you two were lookin' pretty cuddly back there behind that shield..." He giggles.
Steve scoffs. "You clearly don't know any better, then," he mumbles beneath his breath. "She can hardly stand me."
The three of you walk in the building shadows until the parked car is spotted just outside of your hotel. Steve goes to hop into the driver's seat before you're tugging him out of your way. He retreats, not wanting to argue when there's no real argument to be had, and lets you drive and push him into the passenger seat. Sam takes up the rear and stays on lookout—neck craned to keep an eye on the road that flows behind.
Your fingers tighten and loosen rhythmically around the wheel as you carefully maneuver down the tight cobblestone street. Glancing over at Steve, you see he's checking his phone. Something inside of you propels your mouth to say, "I don't hate you, you know."
Steve peers up at you curiously. He blinks—not saying a word.
"I find you utterly disagreeable sometimes," you admit with eyes back on the road. You shift in your seat. "But I admire what you do: what you stand for." You glance towards him for a pause in speech. "I admire you."
Sam, rooted in the back seat between you, has his mouth dropped open and his eyes wide in anticipation as to what Steve's going to say.
"That's... that's humbling of you to say," Steve slowly lets out as if he can't believe what you've just admitted. He truly does look flattered: bashfully so. His cheeks are flushed and long eyelashes fluttery as he smiles sideways in your direction. "I admire you, too. You've had a lot go down in your life, and you've turned around real fast and done a lot of good here. There are not a lot of people that would've thrown themselves in front of that van."
"You did it," you deflect. You turn the car down a side street.
Steve appears unsure of how to respond before a small grin stretches his lips. "Maybe we aren't so different after all, Hellhound."
You smile back. "Maybe not, Soldier Boy." Steve keeps your eye contact for a brief pause in time before you're forced to look back to the road again. You can hear him take a stiff swallow before he forces his eyes back onto the very same outdoor scene.
From the backseat, you hear Sam gasp, "Oh my god: I ship it."