Chapter Text
Outside the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago, glowing orange in the early evening sun, was a rather dusty pick-up truck with a fridge tied to the back of it. Kate had had less trouble driving with it, not only because she was uninebriated this time, but also because people tended to expect bad driving from trucks, so other cars had naturally steered clear. She had practically fallen out of the door in her haste to remove herself from another motorised vehicle, and there had been a horrible moment when the ground had become the cliffside outside Justin Hammer’s Mansion – but it was nothing but a flicker of fear. She dismissed it, crossed the road hurriedly, and entered the hotel.
Kate had no plan. Something must have gone wrong with the meeting, and she had to find out what, but she had no plan to do that. Her one remaining thread was knowing that Yelena, the only good thing that had come out of this whole messed up adventure, was still at the Ambassador. So that’s where she went. The hotel was older than the New York Plaza, or at least decorated to appear so, all wood and carpets in style – but it was still a hotel, with a nondescriptness baked right into the core. Designed to be a home for a night, and then to be forgotten.
“Hello,” said Kate to the man behind the desk, a tad nervously – the mackintosh had perished in the fire, so her disguise to prevent people recognising her was exactly zip. Not to mention that her suit was now not only slightly wrinkled, bloodstained and scratched, but also covered in a layer of dust from the Illinoisian prairie.
“Can I help you, sir– miss?” said the receptionist (Kate was losing track of all of them that she had encountered in recent days), correcting himself quickly as he looked up.
“Yes, I… I’m looking for Yelena Belova, she’s staying here – but I’ve completely forgotten the room number.”
“Give me a moment, I’ll look that up for you.” He retreated to a room behind the desk.
Kate amused herself by glancing around the lobby. A few people were milling about, but not many, as it was about dinner time. Her stomach growled warningly. Maybe Yelena, who was crossing the lobby to the elevators and had not yet seen Kate, would get her something to snack on—
Yelena! thought Kate, doing a classic sitcom double-take. She’s here! She opened her mouth to call out, but Yelena disappeared into the elevator before she could.
“Well, miss,” said receptionist no. 3, returning, “Miss Belova is in room 412. Would you like me to send a message?”
“Hm? Oh, no, thank you,” blurted Kate. “I should go up myself.”
“As you like, miss,” said the receptionist, “can I help you in any other capacity?”
“No–oh, wait, yes!” She leant forward onto the desk, frightening the receptionist something awful, with her mind going a mile a minute. What if C. Barton left a message here for me? If something went wrong and he couldn’t get to the meeting spot or something? “Did a … Mister Barton leave any messages here if someone should ask?”
“Mr. Clint Barton?” said the receptionists, rifling through the big book of names that hotel desks always seem to have.
“Yes,” said Kate, wondering who would be cruel enough to name their child Clint.
“I’m afraid not, madam – he checked out at eight o’clock this morning.”
“Oh, right. Well, thanks anyw– wait, did you say eight ?”
“Er … yes?”
But that’s hours before Yelena was talking on the phone with him! thought Kate.
Or rather, said a more cynical thought, when Yelena said she was talking with him.
No! She couldn’t have … could she?
—
Yelena sat on her bed, watching the phone. She was in an evening dress, but everything else about her body language implied that she would rather sit there like a statue. Once, she went into her handbag and brought out a little pistol with a fancy handle, carefully checked that it was loaded, then returned to its place. But mostly, she just sat there.
She was trying very hard not to think about Kate Bishop, whom she had sent to her death.
Don’t think about it .
She watched the phone, and waited for the phone to ring.
But it was the door that knocked.
“Just a moment,” she called, standing up to answer it. The door swung open dramatically, and if Yelena had been holding anything she would surely have dropped it.
Kate stood there, rather awkwardly, in what was increasingly becoming the rattiest grey suit you ever did see. “Hello,” she said.
There passed a long moment, filled with some strange kind of tension that had not been there yesterday. Yelena blinked, and wordlessly stood aside for Kate to enter. And then, once the door was closed, as though she could no longer contain herself – she threw herself upon Kate and wrapped her in a hug that many, including Kate, would have described as bone-crunching .
But the embrace lasted a second or less, and Yelena withdrew as though she had been hugging a thorn bush.
What, thought Kate helpfully, without any exclamation mark. “Surprised?” she said, out loud.
“Yes,” retorted Yelena, as if they had been arguing.
Did she set me up? thought Kate. She couldn’t have been talking to Barton, he checked out – so she either lied, or was deceived. Which was it? But I can’t just come right out and ask that, in either scenario. Just… keep the conversation innocuous, for now.
“I need a drink,” she said.
“I have some bourbon–” began Yelena.
Bourbon. Blue Mercedez. Cliffs. The sea…
“No! I mean, no, thanks, just … just some water, please.”
Yelena gave her a funny look. “Vodka is better, в любом случае,” she allowed, turning away. “ How did it go today ?”
It was the way she said it that was wrong. Kate recognised it as the voice she had used yesterday, in the dining car – all heat and no warmth. The voice Yelena used to disarm. Too casual by far for the question she was asking.
“The meeting with Barton?” said Kate, as Yelena filled a small glass with water at the ensuite bathroom’s sink. It was a very nice bathroom, with gold-coloured taps – the Ambassador was a swanky hotel.
“Да, what else would I be talking about, Kate Bishop?” She pressed the glass into Kate’s hand with more force than was necessary.
Be cautious. Be casual. “He … didn’t show up,” said Kate.
“Oh?” said Yelena, calmly.
Fine, then. I’ll bite.
“Funny, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“After all those very specific instructions you gave me?”
“Along with a yellow raincoat, that you have lost.”
“It got set on fire. Don’t change the subject. Barton gave you very specific instructions, why would he go back on them?”
“Perhaps I copied them down wrong.”
Kate shook her head. “I don’t think you did. I think you sent me to exactly the right place.”
Yelena regarded her coolly.
“Well, why not call him again?” she said.
“He checked out. No idea where he is.”
“О, нет. Then…” Yelena tilted her head to the side, and the artificial glowing voice – the sales-pitch voice – disappeared momentarily. “...What will you do now, Kate?”
“No idea,” said Kate. “But, Yelena, it may depend on you.”
“On me?”
“On you.” Kate blinked. Perhaps this was coming on too strongly as an accusation. “We’re a team, right? A right pair of Laurel and Hardys?”
“Bonnie and Clyde seems … more apt, не так ли? To your health.” Yelena held up her own drink, some alcoholic affair with mountains of ice, and clinked it against Kate’s water before downing it in one go.
“To partnership,” said Kate, sipping the water cautiously. She hasn’t commented on the scorch marks or the dust. She was surprised at my being here, and sad to see me go this morning. She betrayed me. Why? And to who? Not-Hammer? Surely the police would have been easier. Wow, this stings a lot, I’ve only known her for like a day. Yikes, get a grip, Bishop. “Meaning I think it would be safer if I didn’t let you out of my sight for a while,” she continued, out loud.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to, Kate Bishop,” simmered Yelena, “because I have dinner plans and you are wearing the side of a road.”
Kate patted her jacket sympathetically, as one pets an old dog when it is called old. The jacket let out a small cloud of dust. “I could change,” she conceded.
“You are in all the papers, мой дорогой. Wanted for murder?”
“Right,” said Kate. Darn it. “Well, I could at least shower.”
“I don’t think that would help, Kate Bishop, but you are welcome to use it anyway.” Yelena picked a piece of straw out of Kate’s hair. “In fact, I insist upon it.”
“Alright,” said Kate, smiling, trying to look as though she believed Yelena wasn’t about to betray her again.
—
Showers used to be loud , in the old days. They still are, to an extent, but they used to essentially be a hosepipe and an oversized bucket for you to stand in. In a fancy establishment like the Ambassador, that bucket would be patterned enamel, and the water might be tepid rather than freezing cold. Not that Kate could tell the water’s temperature. Because she was leant against the bathroom door, peering through the crack at Yelena.
She was singing Midnight, the stars and you as one would in a shower to better sell the illusion.
But for a while, Yelena didn’t do anything whatsoever. She just sat on the bed and stared at her phone. Which, in its way, was far more suspicious than if she had been cleaning a knife or something like that.
What are you doing? thought Kate, singing the chorus in a wobbly vibrato, as the shower roared behind her. What are you waiting for?
And then the telephone rang.
Yelena picked it up before it finished the first chime. “I’m here,” she said, serious-faced.
“Yes … No, hold on a moment, I’m” – she glanced nervously at the bathroom door – Kate resisted the urge to flinch away from the crack; the movement of the light would be far more noticeable – “I’m not dressed yet,” Yelena lied.
Someone spoke on the other end of the phone, and she visibly relaxed, if only a little.
Who is she so afraid of? thought Kate.
“I’ll meet you there,” continued Yelena. “What’s the address?” She copied something down on a pad of paper, then ripped off the top sheet, stuffing it in her handbag. “Alright … goodbye.” She hung up. Then she started towards the bathroom.
Shit, thought Kate, who had become so engrossed in the proceedings that she had neglected to continue the second verse of Midnight, the Stars and You. She flinched away from the bathroom door … but it did not burst open, as she’d been expecting it to. Instead, Yelena called through it:
“Kate Bishop?”
Kate turned down the shower a little, pretending she couldn’t have heard the conversation on the phone – and soaking her sleeve in the process. This suit is going in the trash as soon as I have a change of clothes. “Yes?” she answered, belatedly.
“I’m going now. If you are hungry, you are welcome to order anything you like with room service.” Yelena paused, and it wasn’t a pause of not knowing what to say next, but one of not knowing how to say it. “When I come back … When I come back, in a few hours, you will not be here . You will go, and you will stay gone. Find some … незаметный, I don’t know the word, but that kind of job, not well known, in a small town, and wait for the world to forget about you. Stay far away from me. I am not going to get involved. You are not going to get involved. Leave Barton and Hammer and everything to someone else.”
“Yelena, I– You know I can’t do that.” Kate leant against the door, and imagined that Yelena was doing the same on the other side. She knew that Yelena had betrayed, as much as she was trying not to think about it, she knew – but here Yelena was, giving her a chance of survival, if admittedly an unhappy ending. “Last night, I – Couldn’t we … couldn’t we go to the small town together?”
“Last night was last night, and that’s all there is,” lied Yelena. “So just leave. Goodbye and good luck, but no conversation. Just leave.”
Do you feel bad? thought Kate, putting together the dots. The only person who would want me dead is Not-Hammer, so you must’ve betrayed me to him. Did you want to? Or did you have to?
Did you feel bad when you didn’t have to watch? Or do you only feel bad now that you can see the aftermath?
But she didn’t say any of it. Instead, she said, in a wobbly voice that wasn’t acting:
“Fine. I’ll be gone. Thank you for … everything, Yelena.”
Kate heard her move away from the door, and for a moment she thought Yelena was going to leave with saying anything. But, a second later…
“Goodbye, Kate Bishop.”
And then, with the slamming of the hotel room’s door, Yelena Belova was gone.
Kate waited for exactly five seconds before she burst out of the hotel bathroom, to the pad of paper. Yelena had left the pencil behind.
Here’s a trick you can use, kids – you’ve probably seen it in the movies. When someone writes on a pad of paper, especially if they have a firm hand, then it leaves a little indentation of the words on the piece of paper below. If you gently shade all around the indents with a pencil, then the words written on the paper previously should show up as white writing within grey pencil shading. Kate had not actually seen it in a film, because most of them hadn’t been made yet, but the skill had still become part of her repertoire of amateur spying via Eleanor’s overbearing parenting.
1212 N. Michigan, said what Yelena had written, 8.00pm.
What else could Kate do but follow? Disappear like Yelena had said? Not a chance. When you kill someone at the U.N, they don’t just forget about you.
And, if Kate was really being honest with herself, she wanted to know why. Why Yelena had betrayed her. She deserved that much at least, surely. So, after waiting a couple of minutes to make sure Yelena didn’t see her leave, Kate left the hotel by a back entrance, and disappeared into the oncoming night.
—
In the window of an elegant art gallery, at 1212 N. Michigan, was a sign handwritten, or rather painted, by someone who had clearly been paid to do so. Auction tonight, it said , 8pm, Furniture, Artworks, Eccentricities and More from the famous collection of Alexander Pierce.
Kate found this to be … somewhat unexpected for what she had presumed to be a secret spy meeting, especially given that by the number of people streaming through the door, this was a rather popular event. She checked the sketch of Yelena’s note.
It was indeed the right address. Nevertheless, she checked it a second time before she believed it.
What now? she thought. There were far too many people to just walk in – she would be recognised. Then again…
“What on Earth are you doing, Kate?” Eleanor Bishop had asked one morning.
“Reading the newspaper?” Kate had replied genuinely baffled. Eleanor tutted.
“We are The Bishops, Kate,” she said. She said it with a capital on “The.” “We do not read the news; if it is important, it will find its way to us .”
Kate thought that this advice was idiotic, and had simply taken to reading the newspaper in her room rather than at the breakfast table, but gradually, over the years, she had realised that many of Manhattan's upper class shared her mother’s viewpoint. They were so wrapped up in their own petty dramas – whose son had married a waitress, whose daughter had gotten drunk at the Hamptons – that they completely neglected the drama of the world at large.
Here’s hoping the Chicago Elite feel the same way , thought Kate, and she joined the throng of people.
Not one of them looked at her twice.
The inside of the building was decorated by two opposing forces; one of whom was going for a Jane Austen, Regency style, and the other of whom thought Regency was best complemented by colours that would not be repeated until fast food restaurants in the 1990s. It was rather garish, to be completely honest. But someone – Alexander Pierce, presumably – had paid a pretty penny to make this a worthwhile event, with someone to take coats, people serving drinks, and a professional auctioneer talking very quickly to a crowd of rich folk sitting on and standing around seats in what Kate presumed to be a ballroom:
“. ..thank you sir, four thousand five hundred is bid in the second row, do I hear five thousand, going once, I hear five thousand, that’s five thousand bid for the Hans Gude landscape, do I hear five thousand five hundred… ”
Talk in that mode bubbled out of the auctioneer at a constant rate, as new antiquities were wheeled out onto the little stage at the front of the ballroom. Paintings, statuettes, once a live albino deer.
The mammal in question went for almost a quarter of a million dollars.
But Kate did not pay the actual auction any mind. She scanned the bidders, letting her eyes roam over an old lady with a peacock feather hat, several bankers, someone who looked uncannily like Humphrey Bogart only with a moustache, a bald man with one eye and finally – near the front, on the edge –
The fat man. The octopus-haired lady. And Yelena.
Not-Hammer’s hand was gripped on the back of Yelena’s seat, and Kate’s stomach twisted. There was something … grabby about the way he did so. Like a dragon that leaves its coils untwisted on its piles of gold, as some kind of proof of ownership.
And suddenly, Kate was angry, and not the red kind of angry, but the tired kind. She just wanted this to be over and done with, she wanted to be back home, to have a bath. When was the last time she showered? Forget that, when was the last time she changed her underwear?
Her legs rushed her forward before her brain had any say in the matter, and her mouth followed suit, and suddenly she was standing in front of the trio and exclaiming:
“The three of you together! Why, that’s a picture only Charles Addams could draw!”
For a single moment, the fat man’s face hinted at an expression that bordered on surprise, and Kate felt some brief satisfaction. Then it fled.
“Kate–” started Yelena, but she was silenced by the other two’s very aura. Neither of them raised a hand or interrupted her, but their beings screamed stop talking. So Yelena did.
“Miss Barton,” said the fat man, smiling courteously, “a very good evening to you.”
“That’s not my name, and you jolly well know it,” said Kate. “Then again,” she added with a hint of sarcasm, “I don’t seem to know yours.”
Liv chuckled in surprise. “Really?”
“Not even an inkling?” the fat man continued in the same vein. “My, my, Miss Barton, and here I thought you were playing the sleuth.”
“It’s playing sleuth ,” corrected Kate automatically, “and who went and told you a thing like that?”
The fat man’s hand tightened on the back of Yelena’s chair, who went very still, and continued to stare straight ahead. “Our mutual friend, here.”
“... do I hear three hundred, three hundred is bid, do I hear three fifty, three fifty going once, going twice, that’s three fifty ladies and gentlemen, do I hear four hundred… ”
“Quite frankly, I’m a little disappointed, Miss Barton,” said the fat man.
“I was about to say the same thing,” Kate shot at Yelena, who flinched. The fat man continued as though neither of them had done anything.
“I always held you in my mind as one of the true Talents, so to speak, in our line of work.”
“Agreed,” chimed in Liv.
“And yet here you are, blundering into the territory of the, ah, enemy, with nary a plan nor a plot. What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?” He laughed cruelly. “Not a sudden predisposition for Art, I hope?” He gestured at the painting being auctioned at that moment.
“The art of survival, maybe,” said Kate, but her mind wasn’t in the words – something in the mans laugh had reminded her of something. She had heard it before. Where… “You were at Jack’s show.”
“What?” The fat man looked genuinely puzzled.
“Jack Duquense’s memory show,” said Kate. “Right at the beginning of all this.” Had she thought of this before, and forgotten again? He had been there, she was sure. Just before she went to the plaza.
“I do not recall,” said the fat man, and it so perfectly truthful in tone that Kate thought he had to be lying.
“You shouldn’t have followed me, Kate Bishop,” said Yelena suddenly, in a very small voice. “You should’ve stayed in the hotel room.”
“For tweedledee and tweedledum to find me? Not a chance.” Kate didn’t care if she hurt Yelena’s feelings with distrust. She wanted it, a little bit. “Although, tweedledum may have taken a trip to wonderland after all,” she added with a sick satisfaction. Kazi’s burning form flitted through her mind’s eye.
The fat man sighed.
“Well, there’s the answer to that,” he said, nodding at Liv. “Five bucks to you, was it?”
“Nevermind the bet right now, Maya’s watching,” said Liv, smiling forcefully. “It’ll upset her.”
Maya? Tweedledee was here? Kate looked around. Sure enough, Maya was standing at the entrance of the ballroom, looking menacing. She locked eyes with Kate, who shivered.
“... sixty for the ornate safe, going once… ”
“This is the one,” said the fat man. Liv put up her hand.
“... I hear sixty five, do I hear seventy, ” said the auctioneer, pointing at her, “ sixty five going once…”
Kate looked at what they were bidding on. It was a small, very secure looking safe. It had a few cursory ringlets of metal to make it look fancy, but mostly it just looked indestructible.
He wants it , she thought. Why?
And she put up her hand.
“ ...I hear seventy from the young lady in row three, that’s seventy ladies and gentlemen… ”
“What,” said the fat man, with teeth so gritted that it robbed the sentence of its question mark, “do you think you are doing. ”
“I like the look of that box,” said Kate innocently. “Can’t a girl buy a weird looking box every once in a while?”
Yelena stared at her with a mix of terror and wonderment, and Kate tried not to glow slightly. Dammit, she was still supposed to be angry at her.
“Seventy five,” called out Liv.
“... I hear seventy five, that’s seventy five thousand dollars, do I hear one hundred, one hundred thousand dollars, going once for seventy five… ”
Kate put her hand up again.
“... I hear one hundred, do I hear one twenty five, one twenty five anyone… ”
“Don’t do this, Miss Barton,” said the fat man, with a blood-chilling hint of kindness. “Do not buy a box you cannot afford with contents you can't understand for a supposed retaliation you will not hold on to. We will pry it from your dead fingers, and I guarantee it will not be painless.” He put up his hand.
“... One twenty five, do I hear one fifty, one fifty, that’s one twenty five going once… ”
Kate remained silent.
“ ...going twice…sold, to Mister Wilson Fisk of New York! ”
The audience gave a customary smattering of applause as the next item was brought on.
“Mr. Fisk, eh?” muttered Kate. Well, that was something at least. “Yelena Belova, Wilson Fisk, and Liv …?”
“Nope,” said Liv, fiddling absently with a bracelet.
“You told her your real name?” asked the fat ma– Fisk, pointedly, to Yelena. It was not so much a question as a scolding.
“She didn’t know it was my real name until you said that,” Yelena said.
“Yes, I did,” said Kate.
“No, you didn’t.”
“You don’t lie that well.”
“I do, слон, and you know it. I lied with every word I spoke to you.”
“No, you didn’t, Yelena, you can’t have. Don’t start lying now .”
“You should’ve left. You should’ve gone and stayed gone.”
“Why? Why open yourself up, only to shut me out?” Kate surprised herself with how much she was saying, out loud, in a public space, but once she had started, she couldn’t really stop. “Did – on the train, did you only … tell me about your feelings because you knew I was going to die the day after?”
Yelena froze as though she had been hit.
“... that’s fifty thousand for the gold-rimmed teapot, fifty thousand, do I hear seventy five… ”
And Fisk laughed.
“Miss Barton, has anyone ever told you that you rather overplay your many parts? First, you are the outraged manhattanite who claims she has been mistaken for someone else, then the fugitive from justice, trying to clear her name of a crime she didn’t commit, and now you are the peevish lover, stung by betrayal.” He smiled like a shark, in the sense that sharks don’t smile but merely show their teeth in a crescent shape. “Seems to me that the agency hasn’t trained you as much as an acting workshop has.”
“I suppose the only performance that will satisfy you will be when I play dead,” Kate spat at him.
“Your very next role,” replied Fisk, “you’ll be quite convincing, I assure you.” He nodded at Liv, who stood up and moved towards Maya to make the arrangements necessary for such a role.
“The drunk car thingy was very clever,” said Kate, suddenly bursting with the need to make conversation, because if he was focused on conversing with her, he couldn’t focus on killing her, keep talking keep talking if you’re talking you’re alive, “how will you do it this time? Falling off a building? Buried in concrete? All seems a bit contrived.”
Fisk sighed. “Really, Miss Barton, you say the silliest things–”
“Contrived,” said Kate, and her thoughts were too quick for her tongue but it moved anyway, “when you could’ve just alerted the police as soon as you saw me – I’m wanted for murder after all. But instead, you have Yelena send me out into the middle of nowhere to die with no witnesses. You don’t want me talking to the police. Why? There’s something I know, something I might tell them? What? What do I know?”
“Nothing at all, it seems,” said Fisk. “Yelena, we’re leaving. If you come quietly, Miss Barton, I may endeavour to make your end painless.”
“Thanks,” said Kate sarcastically, “but I’ll take my chances with the police. Better chance of survival, I think.”
“Do as you will.” Fisk stood and walked away. He didn’t even glance in Yelena’s direction, but she seemed to be pulled as if by an invisible string.
“I…” she began. “I really am sorry, Kate Bishop. Truly. I… didn’t… well. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” replied Kate, and it wasn’t quite as sarcastic as she hoped this time.
And then Yelena was gone, following Fisk and Liv out of the door … leaving only Maya, standing there, a statue against the milling people, as various patrons from an old woman in furs to a bald man with an eyepatch pushed past her to use the exit, the cloakroom, and the phones.
Try and leave, Maya’s expression seemed to say, try and leave, I dare you, and I’ll put a knife in your back just like I did to Justin Hammer.
Kate grimaced, and sat down in an empty chair. Right then. She was stuck in here.
“... I have two thousand, do I hear twenty five hundred, twenty five hundred… ”
Could she wait Maya out? Would she leave eventually? Kate thought not, but maybe… she swung round in her chair, locked eyes with Maya, and tapped her wrist where she was(n’t) wearing a watch.
It’s getting late, she said with her eyebrows.
So? answered Maya with a gesture. I’ve got all night.
Worth a shot. Kate turned back to the auctioneer. A lovely oil painting of a winter’s night was currently being sold.
Ding! Idea. She could always …
make a scene.
“... twenty five hundred going twice…last call… ”
“Fifteen hundred!” yelled out Kate.
Silence is always made far more potent when more people are contributing. Nevertheless, this one was very brief and judgemental.
“... The bid is already up to twenty five hundred, madam, ” said the auctioneer.
“I still say fifteen hundred,” said Kate stubbornly.
“Twenty seven hundred,” called out someone else, and the auctioneer jumped at the escape.
“ Twenty seven hundred is bid, that’s twenty seven hundred, going once, going twice… ”
“Twelve hundred,” shouted Kate, and there was a brief spurt of laughter. Maya stared at the proceedings with much the same expression as a cat wears when the mouse it is chasing disappears.
“ Sold, for two thousand seven hundred dollars, ” said the auctioneer sternly, ignoring Kate.
“Two thousand for that chromo?” she yelled out again, gesturing at the lovely oil painting that was definitely not a chromo, reproduction, or otherwise fake of any kind. You could practically smell the artist’s brush.
“ Our next item, ” said the auctioneer, who was slowly growing more and more scarlet. A fancy looking chaise longue was brought out. “ This piece, carved for Louis the Fifteenth, has a beautiful moulded frame, and fluted, tapering legs. The bidding starts at seven hundred and fifty dollars. ”
“How do we know it’s not a fake? It looks like a fake.”
An old woman that reminded Kate of her great aunt turned around in her seat and said angrily, “At least you’re no fake – you’re a genuine idiot.”
“Thank you, madam,” said Kate, deadpan.
“ If I may respectfully ask the lady to get into the spirit of our proceedings here, ” said the auctioneer exhaustedly.
“Alright,” she said magnanimously, “I’ll start the bidding at eight.”
The auctioneer sighed with relief.
“ Thank you. Eight hundred dollars is bid, do I hear – nine hundred is bid, do I hear ten, I hear ten, ten hundred dollars going once…”
“Eleven!” called out Kate. Eleanor has taken her to enough auctions when she was little, she knew how this worked.
“... eleven is bid, do I hear twelve… ”
“Twelve!” called out someone.”
“... twelve is bid, do I hear thirteen, that’s twelve going once, going twice… ”
“Thirteen dollars!” Kate said. There was an unmistakable burst of laughter, and for a moment she felt like she was a stand-up comedian.
“ You mean thirteen hundred surely, madam? ”
“No, I mean thirteen dollars. That’s more than it’s worth.” Kate turned and grinned at Maya, as if to say, what are you gonna do about this?
Maya was having a lot of trouble following the various conversations with mere lipreading, and was growing increasingly concerned that whatever Barton was doing – for clearly she was doing something – was working.
“... I still have twelve hundred. ” Every word the auctioneer was saying now sounded like a sigh. “ Do I hear fifteen hundred? Any advance on twelve hundred?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars!” yelled Kate.
“ Madam– ”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand!”
An angry murmur was beginning to perpetuate itself through the room. Mutters of she needs to leave were being repeated on every lip.
“ Twelve hundred is bid! ”
“I said two hundred and fifty grand! My money’s as good as anybody’s!”
By now, only one member of the audience was still laughing; the bald man with an eyepatch by the exit was grinning from ear to ear. Every other face was a scowl.
“... twelve hundred, last call … sold, for twelve hundred. ”
“This is an outrage!” shouted Kate, standing up dramatically and channelling her inner Eleanor Bishop. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!”
The auctioneer sighed like an empty sack.
“... Mason, would you please… ” Gesture.
‘Mason’ turned out to be a rather scrawny looking security guard, who walked forward and took Kate by the arm.
“Ma’am, please allow me to escort you outside.”
Nope, Maya would kill her the second she was left alone. Had to be police. Alright, then, let's escalate the situation.
“Sorry about this,” Kate said genuinely to Mason, and then she decked him in the face.
There was instant pandemonium.
Several bystanders took it upon themselves to restrain her, the auctioneer took his cue sheet and tossed it with a sort of absent disappointment, and the bald man burst out into open guffaws, before leaving. Maya was nonplussed, fiddling with her knife in her pocket no longer with menace but with slight panic.
After a few minutes, during which the chaos of a large room full of angry rich pricks did not dilute one bit, the police arrived, and promptly arrested Kate. The two officers took her under the arms and practically dragged her out, which was unnecessary, as she would’ve cooperated.
“Sorry, old girl, keep trying,” grinned Kate as they dragged her past Maya, out of the building, and into the (relative) safety of the police car that waited on the roadside.
—
“I’d like to thank you for saving my life,” said Kate, who could not quite shake the grin that came from continued survival. Adrenaline, some call it. Idiocy, answer others.
“Save it for the station, bub,” said Police Officer One, who was driving, without a hint of smiling.
“Come on, lighten up! You two are about to be heroes!” She paused. “Don’t you know who you’ve arrested?”
“We will soon as we book you for bein’ drunk an’ disorderly,” said Police Officer Two, who was chewing gum with occasional smackin’ noises.
“Drunk and disorderly?” Kate was almost insulted, which was slightly confusing from an emotional standpoint. “Chicken feed. You’ve hit the jackpot! Hero Cops Catch Manhattan Murderess !” she recited out, like a salesman.
There was a brief silence. Then Police Officer Two flailed around under his seat and grabbed a newspaper, rifling through it like it was trying to escape.
“Jesus,” he swore, jabbing his finger at the picture of Kate that accompanied an article about the murder of Justin Hammer at the U.N., “it’s her!”
“Eyes on the road,” Kate suggested to Police Officer One, who was staring between the picture and her with saucer eyes.
“I’d better call headquarters,” he said, slightly distantly. He picked up the car phone, and waited for the dial tone. The other two only heard one side of the conversation. “Yeah, this is one oh five five,” said Police Officer One. “We’ve got a woman here answering to–” he glanced at Kate.
“Kate Bishop,” Kate said politely.
“–Kate Bishop, matching the description thereof. Wanted for murder … yeah … we’re on Michigan avenue, proceeding towards the precinct headquarters … what? Come again? …” His face was strange, a mixture of disappointment and confusion. “... well, if you say so. Changing route.” He hung up the phone, and swung the car in a diverging direction
“Hey! This ain’t the way to headquarters!” said Police Officer Two, almost swallowing his gum in surprise at the turn.
“We’re going to the airport,” said Police Officer One dejectedly. “Some higher-up thing.”
“Damn.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” said Kate, “I don’t want to go to the airport, I want to go to the police station! Why do you think I sent for you fellows?”
“You, send for us – that’s rich.”
“Take me to headquarters! I’m a deranged killer on the loose!”
“Shut it,” said Police Officer Number 2, mostly because retreating into hostility was his go to move when he didn’t know what was going on.
—
The three of them – Kate, Police Officer One and Police Officer Two – all stood at the Chicago Airport Information Desk (trademark pending) for quite some time.
Kate was strangely annoyed that she hadn’t been handcuffed. She wasn’t sure why; they would have been uncomfortable and restricted, but it was a little dismissive to avoid such precautions entirely.
Tiredness was hitting her in waves. She’d been on the train with Yelena this morning. Then the plane in the fields, then the hotel, then the auction house, then here… it never ended.
“Can I please sit down?” she asked for the third time. “My feet are killing me.”
“The supervisor said to stand by the information desk, so we’re standing by the information desk,” said Police Officer Number One. He was grumpy. He hadn’t had a smoke in three hours.
“Who are we waiting for again?” said Number Two. One sighed.
And then the bald man with the eyepatch walked in. No one else paid him any particular attention – he appeared to be just another traveller, complete with a coat and hat under his arm and a suitcase in his hand. But Police Officer Number One gave a little motion of relief at a wait that has ended, and Kate knew this was who they were waiting for.
As the man held up some kind of identification with practised surreptitiousness, she realised, belatedly, that she recognised him – he had been at the auction house. Did he work for Fisk?
“Sorry for being so late,” said the man, “I’m getting too old for this kind of work.” He didn’t seem out of breath, though. Kate looked him up and down. Was he an assassin, and all this unassuming appearance an act? Like the train– like it had been with Yelena?
“It’s alright, sir,” said Police Officer One, seemingly fighting the urge to salute. “We’ll be off, then.”
“What? We’re just leaving the murderer with him?” said Two, following him towards the door.
“No questions asked,” shrugged One, already reaching into his pocket for a cigarette.
And then they were gone.
Kate stared at the one eyed man. He stared back.
“This way, Miss Bishop,” he then said, walking towards a door marked Staff Only .
Kate followed. What else was there to do?
Wait. He called me Bishop. “You said Miss Bishop?”
The man pushed the door, revealing a rather drab looking corridor. They walked down it.
“I did.”
“Not Barton.”
The man chuckled, from some private joke with himself. “No, not Barton.”
“All of Fisk’s people think I’m Barton. You don’t. Do you … not work for Fisk?”
“Correct. You might call us adversaries, Miss Bishop.”
Kate ought to have felt relieved at the lack of an impending death on her part, but she had been in this crazy business for too long now to remember what relief felt like.
“I don’t think I caught your name,” she said.
“I don’t think I threw it,” he said with a smile, but he followed up with a name anyway. “Call me Fury.”
“Fury?”
“Yes.”
“As in, Mr. Fury?”
“Exactly. Do you find my name amusing?”
“It’s very … melodramatic.”
“Alright, enough with that.”
He pushed through another door, and suddenly they were walking alongside the building, towards the taxiway. The plane engines meant that Kate had to talk very loud to be heard.
“If you don’t work for Fisk, are you with the police? F.B.I.? C.I.A.?”
“We are in the alphabet soup, certainly,” said Mr. Fury.
“Well, you can put this in your alphabet soup: I had nothing to do with the U.N. killing.”
“We know that.”
Kate paused. “You do? Then why didn’t you stop the police from chasing me all over the damn country?”
“We never interfere with the police until it becomes absolutely, positively necessary.” Mr. Fury turned to her dramatically, and Kate silently conceded that the melodramaticism of his name was not undeserved. “It has become necessary.”
“Does this mean you’re going to clear my name?” said Kate.
Mr. Fury didn’t answer her.
“Would you please walk faster, Miss Bishop? We’re going to miss our plane.”
“Plane? What plane? Where are we going?”
“New York.”
“Why?” said Kate suspiciously.
“It’s got the Empire State Building,” said Mr. Fury
“The Empire State– I've already seen the Empire State Building! I live there! I see it every day!”
“It’s where Fisk is going.”
The name, new though it was, dropped like some great death knell.
“What can you tell me about him?” asked Kate. “All I know is he’s trying to kill me.”
Mr. Fury smiled humourlessly. “He’s what you might call an … importer-exporter.”
“Of what? Dried herring?”
“Government secrets.”
Kate blinked. “Is that what the weird box thing he got at the auction tonight was?”
“What?”
“He bought some weirdly ornate safe at the auction. I thought it weird because it was the only thing he bought, and why would he go to an auction if he’s in some illegal smuggling ring?”
Mr. Fury was silent for a moment. The engines of planes roared all around them.
“Yes,” he said eventually, “the Box has government secrets in it. And we need them back.”
“Then why don’t you just arrest him?”
“We still don’t know enough about his organisation. We don’t even know what it’s called . In fact, the only thing we do know is that he’s leaving the country from New York.”
“C. Barton didn’t tell you anything?” said Kate, genuinely confused. Barton had seemed to be as illusive as a ghost when she was looking for them – surely that meant they were a skilled spy?
But Mr. Fury just laughed.
“Miss Bishop, I thought you would have figured it out by now.
There is no such person as C. Barton .”
…
What?
“What.”
“C. Barton is an invented decoy agent who doesn’t really exist.”
“But–but– they had a hotel room! And phone calls!”
“I’m afraid not.”
Kate was spiralling. The shadow she’d been chasing, the spy she’d been mistaken for – it had all been made up. The whole reason she was on this stupid tiring dangerous adventure, if you could still call it that, was nonexistent. She was here because of nothing.
“...why?” she said, when she could speak again. “Why make up a whole person?”
“To distract from our real agent, of course. And we would like you to keep on making our fake decoy a real one for the time being.”
“What?!” Kate went very red in the face. “I almost died! About eleven times!”
“Not for long, you understand,” said Mr. Fury. “Just until we can get the Box back.”
“Absolutely not! It may surprise you, but I actually do not want to die any time soon, so my answer is absolutely, empirically no .”
“Is that your final answer?”
“Yes.” She folded her arms. Mr. Fury sighed.
“Oh dear. Well, if there had been any hope of changing I would have talked about Miss Belova, but as it is–”
Kate stopped walking, in the middle of the taxiway. Red and white lights reflected off of the slightly damp tarmac.
“What do you mean?” Her mouth felt very dry. Was he threatening Yelena? Surely not. But then what? Was she in danger? And why do you care? said her thoughts. She betrayed you.
“What did you think the decoy of C. Barton was for?” said Mr. Fury. “To protect our real agent, of course. Working right under Fisk’s nose.”
Real agent? But who … oh.
“Yelena,” breathed Kate.
“Exactly.”
“And she sold me out because if she hadn’t they would’ve realised she was a spy and probably tortured and killed her and I need to apologise right now–”
“In the middle of this airport?”
“Will Yelena be going to New York too?” said Kate, rounding on Mr. Fury. He smiled.
“I take it that C. Barton is clocking in for work?”
“Yes, alright, fine . What do you want me to do?”