seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Maldives
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from China
⟪ @helxncho ⟫
❝I know, I know, it doesn’t look like I’m fine, but I promise, I’ve been through a helluva lot worse,❞ giving a weak smile, Riley scratched at his shoulder, trying to avoid getting himself into a mess of a situation where he had to explain why his entire back was covered in burn scars. ❝Thanks for bein’ concerned, though. Really, I appreciate it.❞
[ Helping Hands || Closed ]
@helxncho hit the ♥! || accepting
Jane has spent the past three weeks hitchhiking and freight hopping around the Mid-Atlantic, taking out HYDRA’s bases and safe houses as she finds them, staying on the move so she’ll be harder to track.
Right now she’s in a bunker in Albany, staring down at the blood-covered man who’s cowering in front of her, his hands raised in front of his face as though he has a hope in Hell of warding her off if she decides to attack.
“Please,” he whimpers, his eyes flicking towards the corpses that are sprawled around the room, all that’s left of his coworkers. “Please, don’t hurt me. I’ll tell you everything. Everything!”
“You’d better,” Jane says. Her voice and eyes are flat and cold, and her hand is steady as she keeps her pistol aimed at his head. Truthfully, she probably doesn’t need to. The man won’t run. He can’t; she’d shattered both his kneecaps only a few minutes ago. But she’s found that the threat of imminent death is a good way to stop people from trying to play the hero.
He talks for nearly twenty minutes, but for the most part his information isn’t worth much, just a jumble of things she already knows and things she can’t use. It’s only toward the end of his terrified confession that he says something that catches her attention.
“No one’s managed to find you, but they found the woman,” he says, his voice shaking. “The one you met with in New York.”
A woman in New York? It takes Jane a moment to figure out what he means, but when she does, her blood runs cold. The woman she crashed into, the one who bought her coffee and a bowl of soup. Helen Cho.
“Helen Cho,” the man says, unknowingly echoing Jane’s thoughts. “They know where she works. They think she knows where you are. Please, that’s all I know. Don’t hurt me.” Lowering his hands, he looks up at her beseechingly.
Jane considers him in silence for a moment. Then, without a word, she shoots him through the head. Stepping over his body, she fishes a flash drive out of her jacket. She’ll have to move quickly to find Helen in time, but she needs to see what’s on these servers, too.
Once she’s downloaded the relevant files, she plants her explosive charges around the room, lights the fuse, and leaves for New York City.
"Ten feet ahead of you, Jeff.” His superior’s voice is tinny in Agent Jeffrey Grubb's earpiece, but he spots the slim, dark-haired woman approaching and mutters, “I see her.” As Helen passes by, he bumps against her, grabs the wallet from her purse, and takes off at a run.
“Miss!” one of the other passersby yells. “Miss! That man! He has your wallet!”
Two of Grubb’s fellow HYDRA agents are lingering nearby, disguised as police. One dashes after him, tackles him to the ground, and begins to read him his rights while handcuffing him. It’s all staged, of course, just an excuse to get Helen to go with the third agent.
As Grubb is bundled into the car, the fake policewoman approaches Helen and returns her wallet. “I need to take a report from you, miss,” she says. “Will you come to the station with us, please?”
@helxncho
Going on missions with the Avengers came with its fair share of injury, but she was usually able to avoid being stuck at the medical wing. This time, however, she was hit with an energy blast on her lower back and because Doctor Helen Cho happened to be on site, Angel was ordered to see her.
“My mutation will take care of it sooner or later.” She pointed out after greeting the woman. Her abilities didn’t compare to Deadpool’s or Wolverine’s, but it still got the job done. “You don’t have to waste your resources on me, Doctor.”
[ Helping Hands ]
with @helxncho-archived
murder-popsicle:
Jane has spent the past three weeks hitchhiking and freight hopping around the Mid-Atlantic, taking out HYDRA’s bases and safe houses as she finds them, staying on the move so she’ll be harder to track.
Right now she’s in a bunker in Albany, staring down at the blood-covered man who’s cowering in front of her, his hands raised in front of his face as though he has a hope in Hell of warding her off if she decides to attack.
“Please,” he whimpers, his eyes flicking towards the corpses that are sprawled around the room, all that’s left of his coworkers. “Please, don’t hurt me. I’ll tell you everything. Everything!”
“You’d better,” Jane says. Her voice and eyes are flat and cold, and her hand is steady as she keeps her pistol aimed at his head. Truthfully, she probably doesn’t need to. The man won’t run. He can’t; she’d shattered both his kneecaps only a few minutes ago. But she’s found that the threat of imminent death is a good way to stop people from trying to play the hero.
He talks for nearly twenty minutes, but for the most part his information isn’t worth much, just a jumble of things she already knows and things she can’t use. It’s only toward the end of his terrified confession that he says something that catches her attention.
“No one’s managed to find you, but they found the woman,” he says, his voice shaking. “The one you met with in New York.”
A woman in New York? It takes Jane a moment to figure out what he means, but when she does, her blood runs cold. The woman she crashed into, the one who bought her coffee and a bowl of soup. Helen Cho.
“Helen Cho,” the man says, unknowingly echoing Jane’s thoughts. “They know where she works. They think she knows where you are. Please, that’s all I know. Don’t hurt me.” Lowering his hands, he looks up at her beseechingly.
Jane considers him in silence for a moment. Then, without a word, she shoots him through the head. Stepping over his body, she fishes a flash drive out of her jacket. She’ll have to move quickly to find Helen in time, but she needs to see what’s on these servers, too.
Once she’s downloaded the relevant files, she plants her explosive charges around the room, lights the fuse, and leaves for New York City.
~*~*~*~*~
“Ten feet ahead of you, Jeff.” His superior’s voice is tinny in Agent Jeffrey Grubb’s earpiece, but he spots the slim, dark-haired woman approaching and mutters, “I see her.” As Helen passes by, he bumps against her, grabs the wallet from her purse, and takes off at a run.
“Miss!” one of the other passersby yells. “Miss! That man! He has your wallet!”
Two of Grubb’s fellow HYDRA agents are lingering nearby, disguised as police. One dashes after him, tackles him to the ground, and begins to read him his rights while handcuffing him. It’s all staged, of course, just an excuse to get Helen to go with the third agent.
As Grubb is bundled into the car, the fake policewoman approaches Helen and returns her wallet. “I need to take a report from you, miss,” she says. “Will you come to the station with us, please?”
helxncho:
It had been such a nice day.
One, for starters, the weather is the best it can be right now: sunny, soothingly warm, and cooled with a gentle breeze that makes the edge of Helen’s skirt flow and tickle her legs. Someone brought in coconut cake at work, she gets to go home early, and she got a free berry smoothie ( in large too! ) from the cute barista at that new cafe at Ninth Avenue. Today’s the definition of a good day — until Helen’s luck does that thing where it crashes faster than a car with a brick on the gas pedal.
It happens so fast. One moment, she’s on her phone, walking and minding her own business - until someone bumps into her. Her mind flashes back to that night she collided with that woman -Jane- but no such luck; it’s not her. It’d be too much of a coincidence to stumble into that poor woman twice.
“Sorry—” Except, no, she’s so not sorry once it kicks in that he’s stealing her wallet. Can she take apologies back? “Hey!” Believe it or not, she could be the only person in New York who hasn’t ever gotten robbed until this very unfortunate moment, and god help that man because she intends on clinging onto that title. Someone shouts something ( ‘Miss! Miss!’ ) that’s drowned out in the thumping between her ears as she starts to hurry, heart dropping with sheer relief when a couple of blue uniforms come to her wallet’s rescue. Thank god - forget the crumpled, tatty twenty dollar bill in it, forget the credit card; she wouldn’t know what the hell to do if her SHIELD access card has slipped out of her hands and into a criminal’s. —- Especially with how they could trust no one these days.
The second the wallet is safe back in her hand, Helen stuffs it into her handbag, right into a snug inner pocket that she can zip up to satisfy her newfound paranoia. Even if that aspiring robber can’t see her, she glares at the police car anyway, hoping that he could at least feel an ounce of ire from her steely gaze alone. “I’d love to,” she tells the policewoman, turning her attention back to her. Oh, she’s going to report him to hell. With her grip knuckle-white tight on the ropey strap of her bag, she starts to follow wherever the policewoman leads her. Hopefully to another police car, so she doesn’t have to look at that robber’s damn face – or hopefully to the same car, so she can stare at said damn face and watch as he squirms in his handcuffs. Either way, this day doesn’t seem so bad after all.
“Take me wherever you need me to go, officer.”
murder-popsicle:
The woman ushers Helen into the same car as the other two agents, relieved that their target is being so cooperative, and then climbs into the front passenger seat. No one spares the car a glance as they drive off; it’s New York City, after all, and the people walking down the sidewalks have seen similar sights dozens of times before.
They aren’t actually headed to the station, but they don’t give Helen time to notice that. Grubb quickly pops off the handcuffs, which weren’t actually fastened, and lunges at Helen. With one arm he pins her against the seat, and with the other he pulls a chloroform-soaked cloth from his pocket and presses it over her mouth and nose. It’ll be better for everyone if she doesn’t see the route the car is taking.
Within a few moments, Helen is slumped against the driver’s side window. “Thank God,” the driver says, glancing back in the rear view mirror. “That was easier than I expected.”
“Don’t get too complacent,” his partner warns, her voice stern. “This woman’s supposed to be some kind of genius. We have to make sure she has no chances to escape, or call for help. I’ll search her when we get to Brownsville.”
Helen is still unconscious when the agents reach the remote abandoned warehouse that they plan to use for their interrogation. They manhandle her out of the car and into the building, where the fake policewoman takes away her bag and pats her down, removing everything from Helen’s pockets.
Then they tie her to a chair and wait for her to wake.
~*~*~*~*~
Jane is in Manhattan, eyeing Helen’s workplace, but when she doesn’t see Helen after 45 minutes of waiting, she decides it’s time to try a different method to locate the woman. She still has Helen’s business card, which means she has her cell number, and with the tech she’s stolen from HYDRA, she can track that.
The signal is moving at a steady speed, crossing the 59th Street Bridge into Brooklyn, and Jane frowns. She’s not sure where Helen is headed, or why, or even whether HYDRA has found her already, but she knows she’ll have to move quickly if she wants to catch up.
helxncho:
The second Helen climbs into the police car, something feels… off, not that she can exactly put her finger on the exact reasons why. The way the driver glances at her with those steely, mirthless eyes could make anyone tense to the bone, and yet Helen does nothing but stare back with a facade of serenity. Who knows? Maybe he’s just the type to pretend he’s the bad cop.
Utter silence isn’t what she expected throughout the journey to the station - but then again, it’s not like she knows a lot about how arrests go. Maybe they’ll start talking more once they arrive at their destination? Surely, they could start asking questions now though, with the memory fresh in her head —-
“What-- ?!” Her heart lurches with pure, piercing panic when someone grabs at her and forces something -a cloth, smashed hard against her open mouth- onto her face. Struggling doesn’t help; she ends up gasping in more lungfuls of that nauseatingly sweet, pungent smell that’s only distinctive to one thing: chloroform. Oh no.
The lights are blinding. They’re blindingly white, cutting through the haziness of the world around her until it’s all one bright blur to her bleary eyes. “Where…?” she croaks out, tongue bitter and dry in her equally parched mouth. She coughs, throat itching from the very bottom of it. How long was she out? How did she even get knocked out?
Why is she here?
The same sickening panic wells up from the pit of her gut as she lolls her head around, staring at bleak, stone walls and unfamiliar figures around her. Not a station. Her brain might be beyond groggy and her sight might still be eaten away by dark blurs around the corners, but it’s still horribly easy to put together that she’s captured. Dread immediately sinks in her stomach like an anchor. “I–” She coughs again, the sound painfully rough, and her eyes prickle when her head aches bitterly from the smallest shake. “I need to know where I am.”
murder-popsicle:
“No, you don’t,” says the female agent, looking down at Helen with callous eyes. She’s standing a little strangely, with one hand hidden behind her back. “The only thing you need to know is that if you cooperate with us, you’ll make it home tonight. If you don’t cooperate…” She shrugs, and reveals a CIA badge in her hand – fake, of course, but a convincing fake. “Maybe you won’t make it home at all,” she says. “We have places where we put terrorists, you know.”
Behind her, Grubb resists the urge to roll his eyes. Sofia is always so dramatic when it comes to this sort of thing. But the three of them have to show Helen a united front; any hint of a crack could be easily exploited.
“A few weeks ago, you had dinner at a coffee shop with a woman you met on the street,” Grubb says. It’s definitely not a question. “You gave her your business card. No one has seen her since.” He crosses his arms and says, “She’s a HYDRA operative, wanted in multiple countries, and the CIA has been tracking her for weeks. Thanks to you, we’ve lost her. You’ve aided and abetted a dangerous criminal, Ms. Cho.”
“What is your connection with the organization known as HYDRA?” the third agent asks, speaking to Helen for the first time. “How long have you been a double agent?”
The tactic was Sofia’s idea. Initially, Grubb had just planned to break Helen’s bones, one by one, until she finally talked. But he has to admit, his colleague’s idea is better. Put Helen on the defensive, make her think that she’s in trouble with a legitimate organization and that the woman she helped is the real danger, and hopefully she’ll be easier to crack.
helxncho:
The CIA? No, no, it couldn’t be —– except the badge confirms Helen’s fears as she blearily stares at it, watching the light glint menacingly over the immaculate gold plating. It’s so small, so harmless, and yet the mere sight of it has her heart racing a mile a minute within the confines of her ribcage.
Whatever the CIA wants from her, it won’t make sense. Whatever they say definitely doesn’t make sense now; they’re talking too fast to follow, rattling too much information and too little at the same time. Through the drowsy fog in her mind, she manages to pick up just enough puzzle pieces to catch on that they’re talking about… About Jane?
Sickening, ice-cold dread sinks down to the bottom of her chest, making it hard to not hyperventilate at the very spot. They want Jane. No, no, they want to capture Jane. Jane, the homeless, friendly soldier who lamented over fighting terrorism tooth and nail overseas - only to have all the good and purpose of her work tainted with doubt, thanks to HYDRA’s uprising. By pure will or exhaustion -perhaps both?- she manages to rein in the brunt of her anger by the delicate skin of her teeth. “You have the wrong idea,” she insists immediately. For an organisation that prided itself on gathering the right intel from all over the nation, they’re so wrong on this assumption. They’re all so laughably, unbelievably, stupidly wrong.
It nearly does make her laugh outright, but the chloroform has her throat so parched that just breathing makes her eyes water. Weakly, she licks her chapped lips and shakes her head. “Ja—- that woman, your ‘dangerous criminal’, is not HYDRA,” she insists, quietly desperate to convince the agents looming over her. Her dark eyes flicker up and stare past a stray lock of her equally dark hair, steady gaze locking onto the last agent who spoke. “And neither am I. Search me, test me, ask everyone I know - but I am no double agent, especially for a group of criminals like them. Wherever you got your intel from – whoever you got it from is lying.”
murder-popsicle:
“We already know Jane’s name,” Grubb says coolly. “We also have photos and surveillance footage of her carrying out multiple assassinations that we now know were ordered by HYDRA. Assassinations, Ms. Cho. Not killing enemy combatants in warfare. These were cold-blooded political murders.”
It’s true; they have a mountain of evidence that Jane has assassinated people for HYDRA. They can even produce some for Helen if needed, because they’re the ones who forced Jane on those missions in the first place.
“Your silence won’t protect her,” the third agent says, “and it will only get you into even worse trouble than you’re already in. Cooperate with us, and we can make sure you’re treated leniently.”
~*~*~*~*~
Brownsville, Jane thinks. Why the Hell is Dr. Helen Cho headed to a rough neighborhood like Brownsville? The woman has to have been captured already. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.
Jane had stopped off at one of her caches on the way, and she’s now armed to the teeth, though her weapons are hidden by the baggy, rumpled coat that she’d scavenged the day before. The tracker in her hand is leading her to a row of empty, dilapidated apartment buildings, and she can feel the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Anything could be hidden behind those boarded-up windows – a bomb, a sniper, a video camera…
Faking a shiver, she pulls the hood of the coat up as though to warm herself. Really, she’s trying to hide her face from anyone who might be watching. The signal from Helen’s phone is still coming through, so she keeps walking towards it, stopping only when the device says that she should be right on top of Helen. But there’s no one around, and no sign of the phone lying anywhere.
HYDRA must be keeping Helen underground, which means that Jane is going to have to enter one of the buildings to search for her. She doesn’t want to do it; every instinct in her is screaming that this is a trap, that if she goes inside she’ll never walk back out. But she owes Helen better than that. The woman helped her, and now her life is in danger because of it.
Jane circles the buildings, eyes fixed on the tracker in her hand, until she thinks she knows which basement Helen is in – or at least, which basement Helen’s phone is in. There’s definitely a chance that this is a false lead and that Helen is somewhere else in the city. She might even already be dead.
That thought is what finally pushes Jane into action. She tests a few of the building’s windows until she finds a board that’s come loose, and then silently eases herself inside.
helxncho:
“Firstly, it’s Doctor Cho,” Helen grits out, each syllable clipped and sharp through her teeth. Losing patience isn’t an occurrence that happens often ( thankfully ) but the doubt is welling up rapidly from the pit of her stomach, threatening to gnaw into the calm she’s desperately clinging onto. Could Jane really be…?
Her mind flickers back to the day she literally ran into Jane, how she stooped down to help gather up the notes that fell in a papery flurry all over the cracked concrete under their shoes. She remembers the thick pair of gloves she was wearing, the sight odd in the lazy, smouldering heat of late June. She remembers the little ghost of a smile on her lips —- how she looked ( and was ) kind yet so, so tired. She remembers the hollow, dejected lilt of her voice when they were talking about the newfound horror that has swept through the nation like a wildfire —- how she feared that the same horror had been controlling her gun from the second she enlisted.
“You have the wrong person. She’s not who you’re looking for - she can’t be. Tell your boss that this isn’t right,” she insists. How many times does she have to repeat that? Does she have to yell and struggle and scream to get it into their skulls that no, Jane cannot be an assassin - she could not be HYDRA. There simply isn’t enough concrete proof to sway Helen’s mind.
“Who told you that anyway?” she demands. Whoever is feeding the CIA this sort of ‘intel’ had to be plotting against Jane – but why? When they met, Jane didn’t seem any more politically remarkable than a soldier who put her heart and body on the line for this sorry excuse of a country, just like thousands of others. With a nugget of doubt lodged uncomfortably deep in her chest, she drops her stare down, because it’s easier to stare at the miserable grey stone of the ground than it is to meet them in their vulture-like eyes. This is it, isn’t it? This is where they kill her, lock her away in a prison, or worse.
Jane, don’t you dare come here.
murder-popsicle:
Upstairs, Jane sheds her coat while perched on the windowsill. Lowering herself carefully to the floor, she begins to crawl on her stomach, spreading her weight out to keep the floorboards from creaking.
The wood has been warped by months upon months of rain, humidity, and neglect, and the boards have buckled and swelled to the point that there are gaps wide enough for Jane see through. Better yet, some of the ceiling tiles in the basement have fallen in. From where she is, she has a clear view of what’s going on downstairs.
They have Helen.
The doctor is tied to a chair, with her head bowed and her hair in her eyes. She looks absolutely miserable, but Jane can’t see any signs of physical injury, and she reflexively thanks the God she isn’t even sure she believes in.
There are three people – three HYDRA agents – standing around Helen in a semicircle. The two men are unfamiliar, but Jane recognizes the woman’s face. Whoever she is, she worked with the Winter Soldier at least once.
“–evidence,” one of the men is saying. He turns to the woman and says, “Give me the photos.”
As the woman bends over to pull something from the briefcase beside her, Jane draws her pistol, takes aim, and fires.
~*~*~*~*~
Sofia’s hands have just closed on a manila folder when a sudden, deafening bang echoes off the basement walls. The woman drops like a stone, falling face-first onto the damp concrete with enough force that her front teeth are knocked loose. But she’s past caring; the back of her skull is now a mess of blood and shattered bone, and Jane’s bullet has turned her brain to so much neuron soup. She was dead before she even hit the ground.
“Sofia!” Grubb yells, rushing towards her, while the other man looks wildly around the room to find the source of the bullet.
“Up there!” he cries, pointing to the hole in the ceiling. But he’s too late; Jane has already fired a second time. She hits him squarely at center mass, and he falls bleeding to the floor with a pained groan.
Grubb moves faster than even he knew he could, and in the blink of an eye he’s beside Helen with his gun pressed to her temple. “Disarm and come down here with your hands up!” he shouts at the ceiling. “Otherwise I’ll shoot!”
His tone may be firm and forceful, but it’s belied by his shaking hands, ashen skin, and the sweat beading on his upper lip. He’s an intelligence operative, not trained for serious combat. Hostage or no, if the shooter is who he thinks it is…
Jesus, he doesn’t stand a chance.
helxncho:
This must be all a trick. One long, elaborate, sick trick that must’ve been founded upon paranoia and so, so much misinformation. How much longer does Helen have to yield and resist and stand her ground until these government goons finally believe that Jane, that sweet woman who was just doing her damnedest to scrape by, couldn’t be the nation’s deadliest assassin?
However… Her faith is shaken at the mention of photos, concrete evidence that couldn’t be waved away as an anomaly or a laughably ludicrous mistake ( which seems to be a running theme in these agents’ claims ). If the photos are genuine, if it really is Jane’s face that’d be splayed all over them… “Show me,” she demands, voice much stiller than her trembling fingers are. “Show me what you have—”
The sharp crack! of a gunshot has her reeling, panic bursting through every ounce of her body like a heart-stopping surge of electricity. This is it. She’s shot. She could be shot, she could be killed, maybe she’s already headed on the way to her demise -oh god, exsanguination is never the ideal way to go out- and no one is going to even hear her last words — or cries for aid, more realistically.
Is this how it’ll all end?
There’s another terrifying bang, the unmistakable clap of a bullet bursting out of whatever gun its from, and Helen’s lungs seize up. She can’t suck in a modicum of air; her heart’s pounding and frozen in place at the same time; her nails are digging so hard into her palms that there’ll be crimson half-moon crescents broken into the skin - and… and she can’t feel. She can’t feel the searing, burning agony that ought to come with not one, but two gunshots.
The one sensation that pierces through the fear swarming her world is the steely, cold muzzle of the agent’s handgun digging into her temple – and now, now is really the end, isn’t it? A single shot to the brain will be an instant guarantee to her demise, her end, the grand finishing to life as she knows and loves.
( With death just a hair’s breadth away, so close that she can taste it on her teeth, the one thought that looms over all the others in her mind is that there has to be an afterlife. Please, please, let there be be an afterlife; let there be something. )
When she stops squeezing her eyes shut and looks up to suck in one last shuddering breath, her eyes land on… on a glimpse of Jane? No. No, it couldn’t be—“Jane,” she chokes out, voice barely above a whisper only for her to hear. “Jane - you can’t be here. What are you doing here?”
murder-popsicle:
[ New York ]
with @helxncho-archived
helxncho:
— What’s one of the most admirable things about New York?
It has been over a week since the Potomac disaster in DC, yet that does nothing to stop the bustling cities dotted all over the States from continuing on with business. After the mass panic and the flurry of news headlines, each one more grim than the last, New York is clumsily ( but steadily! ) recovering from the bone-chilling shock — even when every screen is still plastered with grainy, trembling footage of the colossal monstrosities -Helicarriers, she later learned- smoking and crashing into DC’s beloved Potomac.
New York doesn’t stop for anything.
The street is moderately crowded tonight, with throngs of pedestrians making their way home from work. Helen is one of them, briskly walking as she’s talking to her phone, making a shopping list in her head, and making an actual chores list on her notebook. Usually, she can navigate the concrete jungle like a pro – but obviously not today, since she runs into someone and sends her notebook, along with all the paper-clipped notes kept inside, flying like a papery storm. “Shit, sorry!” She stumbles back and grabs at her shoulder, where it felt like she collided with a hunk of metal instead of a jacket sleeve. “I’m sorry - you’re okay, right? God, you came out of nowhere like a ghost.”
murder-popsicle:
It’s been over a week since the spectacular collapse of Project Insight and the former Winter Soldier’s flight from HYDRA, and the woman still isn’t sure what to call herself.
She knows her name, or at least knows the name she once had, thanks to the Smithsonian exhibit, but the idea of calling herself Bucky makes her recoil. That nickname is knotted up with too many things she doesn’t remember, not to mention too many things she wishes she couldn’t remember.
It may have been her name once, but she isn’t that woman. Not anymore.
Barnes doesn’t seem to fit either, nor does Jane, but Jane is the most innocuous of her options, so that’s what she’s been using on the occasions when she’s had to give someone a name. Those occasions are few and far between, though; she knows how to blend in, knows that in a city like this, to look poor or homeless is to be a ghost. To most people she’s invisible, and the few who do see her quickly look away.
That’s why she nearly jumps out of her skin when someone crashes into her and a hand closes on her arm. Her mind immediately leaps to the fear that the stranger is with HYDRA, and it takes all her self-control not to draw one of her knives and drive it into the woman’s stomach.
“I’m okay,” she manages to gasp out, her voice hoarse. Then, because she knows that it’s what a normal person would do, she bends down and starts gathering up some of the woman’s scattered notes in her gloved hands. “Sorry,” she adds, handing the papers over. “I wasn’t lookin’ where I was goin’.”
helxncho:
“If anyone wasn’t looking, it was me,” Helen reassures the stranger. “I was trying to do a hundred things at once again - while walking, no less.” At least this woman seems nicer than about eighty percent of the people here; Helen doesn’t think she ever met someone who apologised after they had someone crash into them and spill a book’s worth of paper onto them.
Oh no. Now she’s picking up said paper too? “Oh, you don’t have to—” Helen crouches down too and picks up as many pages as she can too. The thought of letting this complete stranger help so much feels way, way too foreign and kind to sit comfortably with Helen’s conscience right now. As they gather up the papers before they get blown away ( or trampled on, but it’s already too late for some pages ), she can’t keep herself from glancing over at the gloves that the stranger is wearing. Not that she’s ever one to judge fashion choices - but gloves in summer? That’s… new.
“Thank you,” she says with a tired -but genuine- smile when the stranger hands over the notes. Now that she can get a good look at her face, it’s pretty obvious that this woman could be homeless - and god, now Helen really can’t walk away without feeling guilty. “… Hey,” she says suddenly. This could either be a really bad idea - but what’s the worst that could happen? “Let me buy you a cup of coffee as an apology.” She glances up at the cafe they’re stood outside of, which is conveniently open even at this hour - and even more conveniently, one of her favourite places to get a pick-me-up. “This place makes the best mocha. Trust me.”
murder-popsicle:
“I’ve never been in,” she admits as she hands over the last few pages. The stranger seems honest, and her face isn’t setting off any alarm bells in Jane’s head. If she was part of HYDRA, she’d be more likely to try to get Jane away from other people, not take her into a crowded business. Jane’s gut says that she’s exactly what she looks like – a busy but decent woman.
She thinks she’ll risk accepting the offer, and she says, “That’d be real nice of you, but don’t feel like you gotta. Accidents can happen to anybody, ‘specially when you got a lot to do.”
Buying drinks or fresh food hasn’t been a priority; Jane is just as short on money as she looks. If someone else is paying, though, she can’t deny that something hot would be nice. She’s been too skittish to try visiting a soup kitchen, so she hasn’t eaten anything lately besides the stash of HYDRA’s specially-formulated nutrient bars that she’d found at the first base she’d raided.
The place the stranger is pointing to looks expensive, but Jane thinks they’ll probably let her in anyway. She’d managed to scrounge up enough quarters to hit the laundromat the day before, and she’d washed her hair in the public library’s bathroom sink this morning. She may not look great, but at least she’s clean enough to be getting on with.
helxncho:
“Never went in? Let’s fix that.” A sudden visit to the cafe isn’t what Helen expected to be part of her schedule, but hey, it’s not like she’s about to complain over any opportunity to get some coffee. Maybe she could grab a bite to eat too - and even coax this woman to pick something out for dinner. She definitely looks like she needs it – not that Helen’s about to say that out loud. Even she’s not that tactless.
After stuffing her notebook and phone into her cluttered handbag, she gives the stranger a smile and beckons her along into the cafe. “I know I don’t have to,” she replies, quick to reassure. Of course she has to though; no way she could walk away from this woman after she had been nothing but painfully nice, even when Helen just crashed into her and that ridiculously tough shoulder of hers. Honestly, is it completely made of bone? Or was that just remarkably tough muscle?
The cafe is refreshingly cool when she walks in. It’s the best hour of the day too; the place isn’t packed with grouchy people demanding for their low-fat soy milk latte with one shot of espresso, unlike their usual mornings. “One iced coffee, please – and one almond croissant, if you still have any?” Helen orders once she’s at the counter. Making sure that her new acquaintance isn’t forgotten, she nudges at her side. “And what are you having? Want something to eat too?”
murder-popsicle:
“Just a cup of coffee?” Jane asks the barista, feeling a little bewildered by the myriad options listed on the menu board hanging from the ceiling behind the counter. Cappuccino, frappuccino, macchiato… She recognizes Italian when she sees it, but she doesn’t know what any of those words mean.
Something on the board does catch her eye though. “Tomato soup, too, please. If that’s okay,” she adds, looking over at Helen. She hopes it’s okay. It may be warm out, but she’s felt chilled down to her bones these past few days. Most likely it’s just whatever drugs HYDRA had her on wearing off, but it’s still unpleasant.
Once Helen has paid and they’ve been given their order, Jane follows the other woman to an open table. Blessedly, it’s in a corner, so she’s able to sit with her back to the wall and keep a clear view of the other people in the room. Any one of them could be a part of HYDRA, and her eyes sweep the room nervously before she picks up her spoon.
“Thank you,” she says to Helen, before taking a mouthful of soup. It’s delicious, and she has to remind herself to eat it slowly. “This is real nice. I’m Jane, by the way.”
helxncho:
What are the chances that Helen’s favourite spot in this place is unoccupied? Closest to the AC, nicely lit, and there’s an electricity socket to charge up her phone with. Pleased, she sits down and places her coffee down on the table, deciding to let the ice set in and cool it up to the perfect chilliness first. In the meantime, with her chin comfortably propped up by her hand, she watches the woman -Jane, her name turns out to be- and smiles at the ‘thank you’ for such a simple meal.
“No worries,” Helen reassures her. Her dark eyes linger on Jane’s eyes - not in a malicious or creepy way ( hopefully ). There’s just… something, about her stance, the shoulders, that remind her of someone she has seen before - yet no one she personally knows.
Perhaps a witness on TV? Maybe they passed by each other already?
“My name’s Helen,” she remembers to add in after a moment. “Helen Cho. It’s nice to meet you.” Nice, but a little unnerving. She takes her croissant and bites into one golden end of it, buttery flakes crunching under her teeth. “Have I seen you around before?” she asks curiously after a moment. “I feel like… like I’ve seen you somewhere. Maybe on TV?”
murder-popsicle:
“Me? On TV?” Jane’s lips quirk into a slightly self-mocking smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on TV in my life. Not even in the crowd at a ball game.”
She looks down at her bowl, idly stirring the spoon through the soup. It’s more about having something to do with her hands than the soup being too hot, and about getting away from Helen’s slightly unnerving gaze.
“I been away a few years,” she says after a moment, her eyes fixed on the thick red liquid. “Overseas. Army.”
It’s a good excuse; with American troops starting to pull out of Afghanistan, returning vets are a dime a dozen. And it’s only half a lie. She was in the Army. She was in Afghanistan for several years, too. The two events just didn’t happen to be at the same time.
She glances briefly up at Helen before flicking her eyes away again, still a little disconcerted by the woman’s intense focus. “I’m back four days, and Captain America brings the whole US intelligence system crashin’ into the Potomac,” she says, shaking her head. “S’posedly the reason I was over there was to fight terrorists, but then it turns out the terrorists’ve been over here pullin’ the strings the whole time. It’s wild. I can barely believe it.”
helxncho:
Oh. This woman is a part of the military — or was, given that she’s back on American soil. A surge of irritation surges through Helen, not at Jane; rather, she’s simply disappointed with how little care the States give to veterans after they get their use out of them. People like Jane -like Steve, like Sam and countless others- would risk every ounce of their lives and limbs to serve for a country that hardly lifts a finger to reward them once they’re home ( that is, if they have a proper place to call home ).
There isn’t a lot that gets under Helen’s skin, but apathy is one of them.
The instant Jane mentions the Potomac crash, Helen’s dark eyes light up with recognition. “I know. It’s crazy,” she agreed. “The news say that it could take weeks to clean up the destruction and they’re still looking for any missing people.” Hopefully they’re just missing – nothing worse. “Steve– Captain America just left the hospital. I was requested to have him brought here so I could treat him and have him recover more quickly,” she told the woman, shaking her head. “I’m a doctor, you see. I actually work around the Avengers, especially on treating them. However, they decided to keep him at DC since travelling is risky right now, what with that terrorist group coming out of everywhere. Can you believe it? The news say that this organisation is huge - much more older and dangerous than any of us could’ve prepared for.”
murder-popsicle:
Her body freezes up when Helen mentions the Avengers, and she has to fight the urge to drop her spoon and bolt. The Avengers are up there with the CIA and the FBI on the list of organizations she wants to avoid, and if this woman works with them…
But no. If Helen had recognized her, they wouldn’t be sitting here drinking coffee together. Besides, Jane had been masked for her attack on Nick Fury, and for most of her fight with Steve Captain America on the causeway. And watching the news, she’d found that most people were assuming that the Winter Soldier was a man.
She doesn’t need to run. Helen doesn’t know who she is. Helen is just a kind woman reaching out to someone who seems in need of help.
“It’s awful, is what it is,” Jane says, forcing her mind back to the conversation at hand. “I mean, I was already startin’ to think that maybe not all the people I was shootin’ at over there needed to get shot, but now…”
She shook her head. “If these HYDRA people were pullin’ the strings at SHIELD, then they were probably doin’ it in the army, too,” she says, her voice soft and a little hollow. “Makes me wonder how many people I killed for ‘em without realizin’ I was doin’ it.”
helxncho:
HYDRA would’ve definitely latched onto the military with its claws, along with other bodies that keep the States running. Given what snippets of information that Helen has picked up from coworkers and the news, either in the form of rumours or blatant fear-mongering, it seems that HYDRA has been rooted itself deeply into the depths of the States for decades upon decades. Isn’t that a terrifying thought? That the country Helen has lived in for years -has worked and studied in and admired for years- isn’t anything that it appeared to be just last month.
( If Helen is going to be honest, she’s… scared. Scared, because there is so too much to find out about this new killer organisation – and at the same time, there is a plethora of new horrible intel dumped onto the internet, detailing all the monstrosities that they are capable of. She’s scared, because HYDRA has been ingrained into the belly of SHIELD since forever, and she could’ve walked past one of those terrorists everyday and not even know it. She’s terrified, because they’re everywhere and invisible at the same time — watching, listening, with their fingers on the trigger.
By the hollowness of Jane’s voice, Helen could tell that she must be just as affected by this emerging catastrophe – if not more. )
“When you think you’re doing the right thing, that it’s the only thing to do, of course you’re doing to do it,” she reminds Jane, wanting to reassure her. She’s anti-war, but that doesn’t mean she’s anti-soldier. There’s a brief, fleeting moment of silence before she reaches out towards Jane’s free hand, giving it the lightest of squeezes. The hand is drawn back as quickly as it had reached out. “Your heart can always be in the right place, even with crazy terrorist people trying to control you left and right.” The corner of her lips quirk into a humourless smile. “Sorry to get all Captain America on you just now.”
murder-popsicle:
“Dead is dead,” Jane says, tensing a little when Helen’s fingers close on her hand. She’s not really used to being touched – at least, not like that, not with the intent to comfort. “I don’t see how where my heart was at makes any difference. That’s not gonna bring ‘em back to life, or make the people left behind hurt any less.”
She takes another spoonful of soup and then, more quietly, says, “Sorry. I barely even know you and I’m dumpin’ all my problems in your hands. It’s not your worry.” Twirling the spoon through the soup once more, she continues, “It’s just– it’s frightening. I read some of those files, the ones the Black Widow put online. These people are everywhere, and they wanna control everyone, and they don’t give a damn who they hurt so long as they get their way. I dunno who any of us can trust anymore.”
She gestures to Helen and says, “You, for example. You been real nice, and you work with the Avengers, and two weeks ago I wouldn’t’ve blinked an eye at you, but now…” She shook her head. “I’m not sayin’ you’re HYDRA, ‘cause I don’t think you are, but I can’t know. Not for sure. You, the Avengers, the guys in the Army, the woman who works the pretzel stand outside the Met – any one of you could be part of this group of terrorist maniacs. Hell, you can’t know that I’m not one of ‘em.”
helxncho:
It’s more than a little insulting, being hypothesised as a HYDRA agent — but then again, in all fairness, doesn’t that apply to everyone now? Colleagues at the laboratory could be HYDRA scientists. The entirety of the White House could consist of HYDRA goons, meeting every day to plot and scheme on how to achieve world domination by next week. For goodness’ sake, the barista who just iced her coffee could secretly have a second job as a HYDRA killer ( after all, the job market is pretty tough nowadays ).
Suspicion prickles lightly down her back like a shiver when Jane becomes a new suspect to that list. Could she be? No, right? There’s nothing but raw, aching honesty to Helen’s eye, coupled with that hollowness to Jane’s voice that resonates down to her own quiet despair. No… She couldn’t be. No member of HYDRA could carry a pain as deeply rooted as this.
They’re just two women watching the country they love collapse, wild and aflame.
Misery hits her like an anchor, and suddenly she doesn’t even have the appetite for iced coffee anymore. It’s left to sit and sweat on the table as she props her chin up with a hand, dark eyes downcast. “… How many do you think there are?” she wonders out loud, a question to both Jane and herself. It’s a mystery that they might never be even close to determining; there isn’t even a rough estimate of how many HYDRA members or bases there are in the country, let alone the world. “When the news first broke out, I didn’t think HYDRA could be more than a little gang of crazy people who think they could take over the city by scaring everyone. Now… Now, it feels like every other person I see is HYDRA, everywhere I go, and their fear tactic might be working. From what I’ve read on the internet and heard from work… There has to be at least a million on this side of the country.”
murder-popsicle:
“Gotta be,” Jane agrees. “ I mean, they had the secretary of the World Security Council on their side, not to mention what sounds like about half of SHIELD. And if they had SHIELD, then they gotta have had the military, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA… Hell, probably even the damn US Postal Service.”
She doesn’t actually know about that last one, but what’s she’s saying about the other organizations and agencies is absolutely true, even if she can’t come right out and say that to Helen with giving herself away. HYDRA is everywhere.
Part of her feels funny about deceiving Helen – almost guilty. The woman has been nothing but kind and open, spilling out her worries to a woman who she doesn’t even realize is part of the very organization that has her so frightened.
No, Jane reminds herself, not is – was. She isn’t HYDRA’s pet killer anymore, and if it’s up to her, she never will be again.
She’s drawn a map of New York on the wall of the abandoned building where she’s squatting, with dots of colored pen marking the bases she’s located so far. There are over two dozen. If she can, she’ll burn them all to the ground. It’s what she did in DC, and it’s what she plans to do to every single other base that she can find, inside the US or out of it.
They hurt her. They spent decades hurting her. Now she’s finally in a position where she can hurt them back.
