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seepingoutwriting · 2 years

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There's Blood in the Water

Note: I had zero intention of writing anything else relating to "Don't Drink the Water" but, like that story, this popped into my head and wouldn't go away.

Story under the cut

Kate was missing.

She had gone on a recon mission, HQ's tech had detected massive electrical activity at a facility just outside of Pittsburg and Kate had drawn the short straw to do the initial observation. Peter had appeareances to keep up, support was trying to discover who owned the facility and what kind of official records they could pull, and Yelena had been been on call for another unit.

She frowned as she remembered Kate voicing her displeasure at the assignment.

"I'm Initiative! Why can't they send a standard field agent?"

Yelena smiled, chuckling lightly. "You need to be trained in basics. It is not always going to be 'save the world' work."

"But staring at a giant warehouse all day?"

"It is excercise in patience, and you will not be staring, you will be observing. Guard numbers and routes, delivery paths and frequencies, personnel movements."

Kate pouted. "You're supposed to be on my side."

Yelena leaned over, pressing a gentle kiss to her lips. "I am on your side, always, and I am on the side of you becoming better at all aspects of this job. The more skills you have, the better your chances in missions."

Kate paused, expression dropping briefly. "I'm sorry about that. I never wanted to scare you."

Yelena smiled, kissing her wife again. "I know, it was not your fault, no one could have predicted what happened." She leaned forward, resting her forehead on the brunette's. "You may see everything 'Hawkeye' but that does not mean you process and understand everything you see. That is why these missions are important too."

"Why can't you join me? You could give me pointers."

"It is too far, you know this. And you are too easily distracted by me."

Kate's grin widened. "Me? Distracted by my hot wife? Never."

She stared out the front window of the quinjet. She was glad Hill was in the pilot's seat. The other woman was focused, competent, and experienced. She was also terrified by the fact that it was Hill. The Assistant Director's presence meant analysis suspected the worst and they wanted Yelena's companion to be someone she wouldn't kill in a rage. No one had said anything, but she was pretty sure there were other cloaked aircraft in formation behind them.

"Massive electrical surge and Hawkeye's comms went down" was all she'd been given before they'd headed out. She hadn't needed anything more and they hadn't insulted her by trying to ask her to stay behind.

They didn't know what they were heading into. Kate hadn't been asked to report her observations in real time, it was a low risk, low priority observation. They'd expected to be able to debrief her after the shift change with the agent who was going to be watching at night.

That agent had been awakened and gone to the facility to see what they could figure out. They'd reported in shortly after the quinjet had taken off. All quiet, no activity at all. No movement of people, vehicles, or equipment. Power appeared to still be on but otherwise nothing. Radiation levels were normal, observable frequencies had nothing but the normal background static.

It almost made things worse. If there was a rush of guards, a scramble to secure the facility, vehicles going in or out, that meant Kate was probably still alive and simply captured. But for even the basic activity their satelites had recorded to simply cease? They lived in a world of gods and cosmic stones and pathways across galaxies. Nothing meant it could be anything.

She felt Hill's gaze shift her way and she nodded as the quinjet began to descend. If there were other quinjets, SOP was they would remain aloft, circle the facility, and await orders all the while sending data back to HQ. Fury's eyes.

She unbuckled herself, pushing out of the seat. She'd already been suited up and had double and triple checked her equipment as they'd taken off. She felt the minute shudder that accompanied decloaking just before the loading bay door began opening.

She ran forward, dropping into a slide and slipping through the narrow opening, quickly rolling into an upright position and running towards the building, straining to hear anything over the sounds of the quinjet door closing and the aircraft rising back up. Their element of surprise was likely only seconds given they'd been unable to get close to the roof, the antennae and dishes leaving no safe place for her to drop in.

But she heard nothing, saw nothing. The skin on the back of her neck wasn't crawling the way it did when eyes were on her.

She shot out the keypad on the door she was rushing towards and barreled through, pulling her second pistol out and bringing it to bear. But nobody was in the loading dock. No staff, no guards, just a large room with stacked boxes, hanging clipboards, safety signage, and an abandoned forklift.

She slowed down, doing a full sweep of the space. Nothing.

There was no keypad on the next door she went through and she was greeted with an office, computer still on, spreadsheet displayed on the screen, but no one working on it.

The next door was a breakroom. Soda bottles and cups of water sat on one of the tables, but there were no other signs of occupancy. The far wall had a map hanging on it and she moved closer, studying it. It was an evacuation plan detailing paths through the building and muster spots outside. Sections of the building schematic were just grey blocks, mostly the center of the structure. Whatever was going on, it was likely happening in the grey area, and that was most likely where Kate would be. She had to be there.

She quickly moved through the hallways, using the doorcracker device she'd been issued to get through the increasingly complex keypad secured doors.

She was solidly in the grey areas now, the doorcracker taking longer and longer to work each time. She still hadn't seen anyone. The only motion at all was air pumping through the vents.

Finally the door before her opened and she stepped through.

It felt like she had exited her own body. It stepped forward again but she felt frozen as she stared. She vaguely registered that she was in some kind of observation room but her focus was centered on the scene on the other side of the glass.

It was a large circular room with some kind of device in the ceiling, straps hanging down. And in those straps was Kate. Two Kates.

One Kate was dead. Her blood sluggishly seeping out her pores and dripping down the straps onto the other Kate who was moving ever so slightly.

Kate, her Kate, never wore her wedding ring on missions. She'd gotten punched in the chest once when she still wore it on a cord around her neck and tucked under her jacket, and the circular bruise had been all she'd needed to stop that practice. But even without that the nausea churning in her gut was a good indicator of what she refused to believe. Kate, her Kate, was not the one still moving.

She gasped and it was like she had been sucked back into her body again. A vise was tightening around her chest, blood roared in her ears, and she started shaking. She'd been trained out of such dangerous physical reactions in the Red Room, but Dreykov had never meant for them to feel for others, her instructors had never expected for them to react to anything so strongly.

She screamed, hands grasping for anything they could reach, throwing, tearing, pounding at everything they came in contact with.

She knew Hill could hear her, Fury could hear her. Her comms had been transmitting everything from the moment she stood up in the quinjet. Everyone in the command center could probably hear her. She didn't care.

A chair impacted the observation window and bounced back, knocking her legs and causing her to step back. The physical impact jarred her back into the moment. She was still in enemy territory and there was still a Kate to help.

She blinked, wiping at her face, surprised when her fingers came away dry. She pushed back out of the room.

Maybe, maybe she had it wrong, maybe her Kate was the living one. She'd never been an optimist or religious, but she hoped and she prayed that maybe, maybe she'd made a mistake.

It took longer than she'd expected to get into that large room. She spent the long minutes waiting on the doorcracker swinging wildly between hope and devestation.

Finally the device beeped and she swung the door open.

She looked up and their eyes met and she knew she'd been right. The living Kate was not her wife. "Let's get you down." She moved forward, pulling out a knife.

Up close the differences were more obvious. The small facial scars were in the wrong places, the uniform more athletic wear than agent wear, her hair not quite as long.

The other woman passed out while she worked but came to when her legs dropped as they were released. It was lucky they were so close to the floor.

The other woman was boneless, leaning almost completely against her, and barely pretending to walk under her own power. It wasn't a surprise, hanging like that would have caused her limbs to go numb.

They'd just gotten through the door when the other woman spoke.

Her brain was still catching up and it took a moment for the words to register, as well as the desperation on that expressive face.

Helping not-her-Kate into the bathroom brought back memories of their honeymoon and her very drunk new bride needing similar assistance and she sagged against the hallway wall as she struggled to regain control of herself.

Kate exited the bathroom under her own power, her hands washed clean of some of the blood, Yelena's wife's blood.

The rest of their exit she was on autopilot. Her memory of the paths she'd taken in and the map leading them to the loading dock quickly. She didn't acknowledge Hill's voice in her ear telling her she was landing the quinjet.

This Kate had clearly never been in one, stumbling on the ramp much as her Kate had her first time, feet catching on the semi-hidden latch points.

She ignored Hill's hard stare. Hill had heard her breakdown, knew what it had meant, the only thing it could mean. She had no answers for how Kate was here, alive, now. No way to explain how she had known that this Kate was not her Kate.

Kate smiled past her, having noticed the other woman no doubt, and then passed out again. This Kate had no visible injuries but the glaze to her eyes indicated something was going on with her.

She finished buckling in the unconcious woman and then joined Hill on the cockpit, securing herself into her own seat.

"Yelena."

"Kate is dead."

"Then who..."

"I don't have any answers for you."

Mercifully, the other woman didn't speak for the rest of the flight.

---

She sat outside the medbay, not sure what she was going to do. Fury had taken her word on things, supported no doubt by the follow up team that had gone in immediately after and swept the full facility as well as recovering Kate's body for autopsy and burial.

She was sure that there were now legions of scientists crawling all through the center room and the observation deck, IT specialists combing through the computer systems. All trying to figure out what had happened.

She didn't care. Her tether to SHIELD, to the world, was dead. Seeing the other Kate was agony, but she couldn't leave. The doctors had said Kate was expected to wake up soon and she wanted, she needed to be here when it happened.

For a big guy Fury moved pretty quietly, but not silently, and she looked up as he approached.

"We're still not sure what they were trying to do." He sighed and sat in the chair across from her. "But we have a theory about what they did do. We got past the security to access their video files of the room with the unknown device. There's a lot of video of bright flashes but not much else happening. The last video shows the same bright flash but suddenly Agent Bishop appeared floating beneath the device. Then it kept flashing repeatedly and the other Kate Bishop was ... she was somehow pulled through or out of Agent Bishop. The straps they ended up suspended by were from their uniforms."

"Which means?"

"Initial theory was some kind of duplication, but as stated in your debrief there are some differences. DNA is a match but this Kate Bishop doesn't have some of the injuries, scars are different, uniform was different. There's also what else happened."

She glanced up. Fury liked his dramatic pauses but this felt different. "What else happened?"

"There was audio commentary, from the scientists running the experiments with the device. When Agent Bishop appeared they panicked. I don't think they were expecting it. Guards were summoned but before they got there, everything went quiet. Their badge tracking system says there should have been about fifty people on site. We haven't found any trace of them and satelite footage shows no one left from the time of the incident until you and Hill arrived. It also shows a bright flash engulfing most of the facility at the time Agent Bishop's comms went dead."

"So what happened?"

"Current theory is multiversal travel. Whatever they were doing pulled another Kate Bishop through ours and may have sent everyone else there to wherever she came from."

"So, they didn't..."

Fury shook his head. "Whatever went wrong, she was ..."

"Collateral damage." She hated that term. She'd hated Kate when she said those words, sitting in a burned out loft, having just accused Yelena of trying to kill her and mounting a poor defense of her mentor. They'd gotten past that moment quickly, but those two words could hurt her more than any others. And they had once again.

"Take as much time as you need. Whatever I can do, just let me know. Agent Bishop, Kate, will receive full honours. I know, that doesn't mean much..."

"Thank you Director."

He looked about to say something else but decided against it and stood.

She buried her face in her hands and fought to remain in control. Thankfully he took the hint and left.

She didn't know how long she sat there, her internal clock fritzed by the emotional turmoil, but she straightened as something changed. It took a moment to realize what it was, the monitors' noises had shifted, Kate was awake.

She took a deep breath and stood.

#tv: hawkeye #kate x yelena #au

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