august 2016

JACQUELINE KINGSTON FELT her shoulders lift as she walked away from Tony, having given the excuse of needing a bathroom break before darting to a place where she wouldn't be bothered.

Unironically, that place happened to actually be a bathroom in the corner of the fancy bar they'd been at for the last few hours. She shoved her body into the door, full force, and grunted when the door took a moment to budge open. A surprised, "Shit!" sounded from the other side, and Jacqueline furrowed her eyebrows, pushing harder until she toppled over herself and stumbled into the bathroom.

It was surprisingly clean for a public bathroom, but she assumed that since Tony Stark was the owner of the club, he'd want all its different pieces to be as clean and organized as his life obviously wasn't.

To her left stood a rather disheveled woman that looked to be in her early thirties, her curled hair cascading over her shoulders, falling out of her carefully-executed up-do. Her eyes were wide as she stared at Jacqueline, as if she was surprised that someone else had found the bathroom.

Behind the woman, the same unkempt look about him, stood a man, seemingly several years younger than her. His dark hair looked freshly raked through, the locks standing on end and flopping messily around his head. His cheeks burned bright red as he noticed Jack standing there, staring right back at them. "I thought you said you locked the door," he hissed to his partner in crime.

The woman shook her head and scowled. "No, that was your job."

It was then that Jack looked down and understood why the scene was so mortifying—for the two strangers, at least. The woman's dress was rolled up to her hips, her slender and golden tan thighs showing in the bathroom light. Her underwear hung around her ankles. Oh.

Jack wasn't the one that made the connection. It was the ghost inside of her that did; it had much more experience with this sort of thing than she did. Sexual intimacies were things that, if need be, were used on missions to gather information. But it was nothing that Jacqueline Kingston knew about.

An image flashed in her mind as she looked at the distraught couple. She saw herself on the bathroom counter top, her eyes fluttering closed in absolute bliss, with her legs wrapped tightly around the waist of a lightly bearded man who pressed his lips to her neck and let his hands wander down her arms to rest at her waist, where her own dress was bunched up, revealing her entire lower body—

Jacqueline inhaled sharply. "Je regrette," she hissed an apology, the French syllables rolling off her tongue smoother than water. Turning back to the bathroom door, she pushed her way back into the hallway and found her way back to the bar, where Tony was waiting for her.

He obviously had no clue the nature of her thoughts only a few seconds ago, but she could only stare at his lips that had been so close to hers a few minutes ago, that were latched onto her neck in her head, that were so full and pink and—

"I'm tired," he announced sharply, interrupting her thoughts, "let's go." Without one sparing glance at her, Tony downed the last of his drink and turned on his heel, stalking toward the front door of the club. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and stepped out into the cooling night air, his head swiveling on an axis as he waited for Happy to roll up with the car.

Following closely behind him, Jack tried to keep all thoughts of his lips against hers out of her head, but it seemed the harder she tried, the clearer the images became. It suffocated her the whole way home, making her unable to look at Tony in the eyes without the distinct feeling that he could see into her mind, see what her head was making her see.

He was silent in the car, only answering Happy's small questions with short, snapping responses. The driver soon realized that Tony wasn't going to talk, so he kept quiet and focused on driving back to the tower.

Even as he opened the door for her, he didn't look at her, his jaw clenched as he looked somewhere beyond her shoulder. He simply led her up to the penthouse, leading her like a parent leads their unsuspecting child. When they reached their living space, Jack went immediately to the couch and sank into the cushions, savoring the way her brain didn't yell at her for giving into such material pleasures.

Meeting Tony's eyes as he stood across from her cast a shockingly cold blast through her chest; he merely stared at her with something in his eyes that made her blood turn to an icy slush. It was nothing like the usual warmth that he had in them when he looked at her before. It was different. He was looking at her like he didn't even know her.

"What?" She asked, brushing the wrinkles out of her dress as he sat down. "You're acting kind of funny, Tony."

He scowled. "I'm acting funny?" His hands shook as he continued to speak in his lowering tone, clasping them together in his lap to keep from showing his anxiety. "You wish you didn't have to kill me, huh?"

Jack stopped all movement and widened her eyes. "How—"

Tony stood up and paced around the room. "How'd I find out? Right, Latin is a lost language, so how'd I find out? Well, Miss Kingston, if you forgot, I have a magnificent piece of artificial intelligence in my head that answers my every command."

"Friday," she mumbled under her breath, cursing her ignorance. Of course the hardware was with them all the time. Tony had probably asked for a translation immediately after she left to go to the bathroom.

Her mission's target sighed and shoved his hands through his hair, messing up the perfectly styled look. "I had her look through your room, Jack—"

"You went through my things?" What did he find what did he find what did he find—

Tony scoffed. "You mentioned having to kill me, of course I went through your things!" He heaved in a heavy breath and turned around to gather himself. When he faced her again, the icy fire in his eyes had her wishing she could just disappear.

You're going soft, 53, a voice in her head snarled. You're letting this mission slip out of your fingers, your superiors won't be happy when they find out you've failed them. She fought the urge to rip her hair out at the follicle. Get out of my head!

"I found some suspicious green pills that say something about cryofreeze substitution—"

"I stopped taking those," she interrupted, hoping to whoever might be listening to get her out of this horrible situation. Everything was shattering, falling apart at the seams, all because she slipped up, became human, let that weakness show.

Tony ignored her and kept going. "Oh, and there's a foot-long knife in your bed stand, you want to tell me what that's all about?" He stopped pacing and instead went straight to the bar, reaching for a half-empty bottle of spirits and took a large swig.

Jack stood up and tried to get closer to him to make him see that she wasn't going to kill him(maybe), she wasn't dangerous, but he held up a hand and took a staggering step back, eyes widening in...fear? "I...I hate that thing," she admitted, latching onto the tingly feeling in her chest that told her to fight, to fight for this man that was suddenly afraid of her, to show him that she could be everything he needed. "I didn't bring it with me tonight. It was just the two of us, I promise." She held up her hands in front of her, reaching for him.

He just cowered away from her, though he tried to keep his head and chest high, refusing to be seen as a weak man. "Oh, that's better," he sneered, but his eyes didn't carry the same cutting fury. "You decided you didn't want to gut me on the dance floor, no, you thought you'd kill me once you got me back in bed, huh? We'd be in the heat of the moment and you'd slit my throat open, is that it?"

Her cheeks flush red at the thought of being so intimately close with him, but she shakes her head to clear it. "No," she insisted, "Tony, I don't want to kill you, that's what I just said, I wish I didn't have to—"

He swore under his breath and brushed a hand across his face. "But you have to. That's the deal, isn't it? So you can keep on living? Kill me and get brainwashed again?"

"No—"

"You're Hydra, aren't you?" It was more like a statement than a question.

Jacqueline jerked her head back like she'd been punched in the face. "What?"

Tony could have taken advantage of her shock, but he just stood there in the dark living room and stared at her, eyes empty. "Hydra. You're one of their...soldiers. Their experiments."

"I..." She wasn't sure how to respond to that. She knew what he wanted, she knew he was looking for her to launch herself into tears and profess her unconditional love for him, because then that would make him want to forget about everything he'd found. She knew he wanted her to be the reason he didn't die, but she knew that she was the reason he would die.

Even though she knew this, Tony didn't show any of it. He was too smart to let himself go like that. But she was smarter, she knew everything he didn't want her to. It was how she operated. She knew everything that everyone wanted no one to know.

"When we were dancing," she spoke softly, unsure of the sudden emotion that flooded her voice, "when I almost..." kissed you, "that was real. That was Jacqueline."

His throat bobbed as he swallowed back a sob. "Then why'd you stop?" His voice was almost a whisper.

Jacqueline Kingston looked him in the eye and knew what she had to say. She knew what she wanted to say, but that was something she could never say. It would make it real, and the only thing she knew was real was pain. So she fed the pain that grew in her stomach as she said, "Because my head was telling me...it was telling me that was the moment you would die by my hand."

He stumbled back and let out a shaky breath, drawing a hand up to his mouth. His eyes shone in the moonlight and Jacqueline felt herself sinking to the floor as the usual, cold voice took over in her head. You are gaining control again, it praised her, do whatever you must, and kill Tony Stark. Complete your assignment, and you will be rewarded.

Any reward she would get from killing this man, she knew, would be nowhere near worth that crushing feeling she would experience after it was done, that shattering in her chest that would remain there for as long as she was cursed to live on this earth.

Happy rushed into the living room with a phone in his hand and his eyes wide. "Tony, we have to go. Secretary Ross is on the phone and he's...he's not happy. You only have a few hours to get Rogers to cooperate. We need to go," he stumbled over his words, taking note of the crumbling scene in front of him. "What do you want to do with her?"

Tony squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. When he opened them and met Jacqueline's eyes, she didn't recognize him. He was detached, a foreign stranger. "Alright," he said to Happy, "I'm coming." He held his eyes to Jack's as he told Friday, "Lock down the building after we've left. Endgame protocol, you know the drill."

Friday's mechanically female voice responded affirmatively, and all Jack could do was sink to her knees in her expensive dress that she didn't pay for, and watch as the man she—

No.

The man she lo—

NO. The voice in her head squeezed her brain and stuffed her back into the corner of her head that she'd stayed in for so long.

Jacqueline Kingston was shattering in the penthouse of Avengers Tower, and the only man that could save her was walking away.

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hiiiiiiii thanks for reading! i hope you loved/hated it! this is so heartbreaking, but like when have i ever written a happy ending in the last three years? haha never.

to infinitycaps who wanted to be tagged and starksromanova and CATACLYSMIC- and maybemarvel who probably didn't, here's to you guys. i hope you finish reading this story(when i finally finish it lol).

only one more chapter and an epilogue! we can do it!!

love, lola

published on: june 24, 2019