The mug that was in Christine's hand had shattered. She could feel the ceramic shards embed into her skin, but she didn't care.She welcomed the pain, as it was the only thing that felt real to her. Her sister's death was replaying in her head, frame by frame. From the knife sinking into her back to the vacant look in her eyes as she died in her arms.
"Christine!"
She blinked away the memories and gazed at the woman in front of her. Natasha looked back at her with concern. She had been calling out to her since the mug she was holding broke. She reached out and unfurled Christine's fists. The blood covered her palms completely and even began to drip down her arms. The cuts were not enough for stitches, but they still needed to be dressed.She threw Clint an apologetic look, but he shrugged it off. She looked around the room to see everyone staring at her, concern on their face. She maintained the longest eye contact with Steve, who was frowning at her. She looked away in shame.
"I'm gonna go clean her up."
The team all nodded as Natasha guided Christine into the other room.
Fury waited for them to clear the room before he broke the silence.
"That woman is a hero for the sacrifice she made."
"Sacrifice?" Steve questioned. "That sacrifice was her sister. Have some respect!"
Fury sighed before rubbing his head. His hand continued its path and rubbed at his tired face. He took a beat and then responded. "You know what I mean."
"I'm sure she really appreciates that."
Glares were exchanged across the table. Neither of the men wanted to back down.
Maria waved a hand between the men and drew their attention back towards the matter at hand. Not before throwing a final glare at each other.
"What he means to say is that, Christine has kept her past hidden for many reasons, but it wasn't to deceive you. After Amilla's funeral, Christine quit. She demanded that any trace of Amilla and her affiliation with S.H.I.E.L.D. be destroyed."
"Which you didn't."
"Which I didn't. The footage was in a file in the S.H.I.E.L.D. database, which was released when S.H.I.E.L.D. fell. Ultron must have gotten ahold of it."
"So what do we do now?" Bruce spoke up.
"Ultron is multiplying faster than a catholic rabbit."
"Is he still going after launch codes?"
He gave an affirming nod. "He's not making any headway, though."
"He seems to be fixating on missiles."
"Launch codes are always being changed"
"By whom?"
"Parties unknown. The conversation with the pentagon was short and sweet. They wouldn't provide any further information." Nick replied.
"Even if there is a murderous robot out there?"
"Do we have an ally?" Natasha saunters in on her way to the trash can. In her hand are the glass shards that must have been extracted from Christine. When Steve rose an eyebrow, she shrugged her shoulder.
"Ultron has an enemy, that is not the same thing."
"Well this is good times boss, I was hoping when I saw you you would have more than that."
"I do, I have you."
"Awe, how sweet."
"Back in the day, I had eyes everywhere, ears everywhere else." He sighs. "Now all we have is our wit and the will to survive. Ultron believes that the only thing standing in the way of his mission are the Avengers. So stand!"
"So what does Ultron want more than anything?" Bruce inquired.
Something clicked in Tony's mind and he grabbed Bruce's arm. "To become better than us, he keeps building bodies for a reason. He wants to evolve."
~
After Natasha left her in the adjacent room, Christine decided to take a stroll around the farm. To ensure that she would be alone, she cloaked herself in darkness.
The back door shut silently behind her.
In the distance she could see a barn. As she approached it, she could see that there were no animals in it, although it looked like it could have housed some. The tan structure was missing a few shingles on the roof and some panels on the sides. Christine reaches for one of the abandoned panels and smiled. Upon further inspection, there were some carvings on the piece of wood.
C + L
She ran her hands over each engraving in the wood and imagined what it would be like to have done something as trivial as carving her name into wood.
To be that happy.
She imagined what it would be like to have fallen in love with the person of her dreams and to have a family. In this fantasy nobody knew about her traumatic past because it wouldn't exist. Her sister would be alive and she would have been happy with Maria. Her eyes scanned over the rolling hills and back to the house. Her sister and her would have been happy in a place like this.It was quiet and she could learn to control her powers.
"Sometimes I talk to her, you know? When I'm just laying in bed or when something happens that I think she would have laughed at."
"You sound crazy." Christine's voice was scratchy from holding in her tears for the past couple hours.
"I guess." Maria replied. "The floating piece of wood gave you away."
Christine dropped her cloak and set the plank back where it came from. "I figured."
They both fell into a silence.
"I had to leave, they kept giving me that look."
Maria seemed confused for a minute before Christine showed her the look. It was the look that she received at the funeral and for many days afterward. The look that kept her hidden in her room for days at a time, only leaving when she needed to get something to eat. The look that is reserved for grieving family members and spouses.Not for murderers.Maria got the look a lot at the funeral, but not as much as she did. Every time she received it a pang of guilt would hit her and she needed to break eye contact. Eventually she ended up having to leave the funeral early to get to the burial site earlier than the others. She sat by the tree that was next to the burial site and waited for the others to catch up. When they did, she was given ugly looks and met with whispers about her.
S.H.I.E.L.D. managed to spin the story to say that Amilla was overseas on a mission trip and she was killed in a terrorist attack. Nobody would believe the real story anyway. If they did they wouldn't be looking at her the same way.
"I don't deserve that look."
"Christine-"
"I don't deserve pity, I deserve to be punished."
"For what? Stopping someone from killing hundreds—no, thousands of people?"
Christine voice became wobbly."At what cost? My sanity? Your fiancé? My sister?"
Maria ignored her comment. "Amilla was long gone before you killed her."
Christine swallowed the lump on her throat, refusing to cry once more.the words resonated in her. She thought back to a time where Amilla wouldn't even imagine hurting someone. Then she orchestrated multiple terrorist attacks and killed hundreds of people in six weeks. The Amilla they both grew to know and love was dead the minute S.H.I.E.L.D. came into her life.
"How would you have done it?"
"Done what?"
"Earlier you said that you thought about killing me?" She heard shuffling and faced Maria. "How?"
Maria pretended to mull the thought over before answering with a straight face. "I would have smothered you in your sleep."
"Oh, scorned housewife style?"
Maria nodded.
Christine chuckled before reaching over and wrapping her arms around Maria. She was taken aback by the affection, but wasted no time in hugging her back.
"If I had known that all I had to do to get a hug was to reveal my plot to kill you, I would have done this years ago."
By the time they had made it back to the house, the team had retired for the night. Maria has gone upstairs to her room, but not without one last hug from Christine. Christine stayed outside on the porch with another cup of tea. Clint had jokingly gave her a travel mug instead of a ceramic one, so that she didn't have anymore accidents. He handed her the cup with a pay on the shoulder before adjourning to his room.
Footsteps behind her alerted her of his presence before she saw him. He knocked on the door jamb to announce his presence.
"Hey."
"Hey." Steve took a seat next to her on the porch swing. "How you holding up?"
"No better than I have for the last five years."
He hummed in thought.
"How about you?"
"Me?"
"The mind control." She replied.
"Ah. Like you said, no better than I have for the past seventy years."
She smirked and sipped her black tea.
"Before I was frozen, my best friend died in the war.He sacrificed himself for this country and that's how I remember him. A hero."
"A couple of years ago, I found out that he was alive after all these years. Instead of being frozen in the Arctic like me, he had been experimented on and tortured by Hydra all these years. They have been using him as their personal assassin; He was sent to kill us and aided in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fall. Somehow He recognized me though, he didn't remember me, but he recognized me. It must have snapped him out of whatever trance he was in because he ended up saving my life."
"You belong here" She gave him a look. "Saving the world, you've been doing it before most of the people on this team. You were apart of the initiative long before anyone else was because Fury saw something in you that he didn't see in anyone else. You made the hardest decision of your life when you stopped your sister. Nobody can even begin to understand what that means unless they have been through it themselves."
Christine swiped at the tears that had gathered in her eyes.Steve rested his hand on her knee and she held onto his hand. Her other hand held onto the cup for dear life, she was grateful that she was given this cup when she began to squeeze it.
"That's the thing, it wasn't the hardest decision. I viewed her as a Villain that needed to be stopped, by any means necessary. When I was in that house with her, I saw her planning other attacks on innocent people. She killed four S.H.I.E.L.D agents in front of me.Killing her was the easy part, it's living with myself that's the hardest."
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