#tiet evil

[thestorycontinues]

For Love

He didn't even know what had happened. The week had started out as normally as any week at SHIELD ever did, but within hours, it was agent against agent, friend against friend, and the entirety of the base was locked down by... he didn't want to think about that.

And he was alone, now. Hill and Barton and Romanoff lay in the room beyond him, faces covered. They weren't just his colleagues. (He won't let himself think the word "family".) They had stood beside him during this last siege, and now? Now he was the only one left standing, and he didn't expect to be standing for too much longer.

He knew who was coming after him, and he knew he wasn't going to survive it. But he knew something they didn't: that they weren't going to walk away, either.

Not only that, but the fallout was probably going to take down not just most of the building, but a sizeable chunk of the city street above them, which was... regrettable, but sometimes collateral damage was unavoidable. It would also be very difficult to explain away, which was part of his motivation.

He hears gunshots in the corridor outside, and he starts the countdown. Fifteen seconds, and it's all over.

The Director would be here soon, after all, and it would be rude not to be ready.

[thestorycontinues]

For Gain

Hunters don't live long; everyone knows that. Sooner or later, you're either outgunned, outsmarted, or you make a mistake, or you trust the wrong person, or whatever-- sooner or later, it's done, and she's perfectly aware of all that, thanks.

But what she doesn't understand is, why more of them don't take advantage of their unique skill set to enjoy what time they do get. Yeah, most of them indulge in petty theft-- a coat taken from Salvation Army, some over the counter drugs out of a Wal-Mart-- but not too many of them are savvy enough to go for the big game.

She figures, if she's going to be dead before she hits her forties, she's going to pamper herself as much as possible. So she hits a bank, and uses a little magic to put the blame elsewhere; and she does a little B&E into some upper-upper income houses, and helps herself to whatever's prettiest.

And yeah, maybe a few "innocents" (nobody's really innocent, though, are they?) get hurt, or worse, but with all the lives she's saved, she feels like it's... well, it's just not that big a deal. The world won't come to an end because a bank teller gets shot in the head, or a slumlord accidentally strangles himself with his own belt.

And if she gets her own card punched sometime? Well, that's just how it goes. Hunters don't live long; everyone knows that.

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For Grief

He still can't believe they're gone, not really, even though he saw the bodies himself at the morgue. At least it was painless, the medical examiner had said, at least it was quick.

He still doesn't remember punching the man. He doesn't remember breaking his arm in four places. But that's what the official reprimand said, so he supposes it must be true. It isn't as if the IMF would ever lie about something to one of their own-- oh, dear, no, of course not. They certainly hadn't given bad intel to the team, then refused to accept responsibility. Of course not.

Blowing their headquarters up would be satisfying, watching it go up in flames and smoke. But he hasn't got that kind of knowledge.

What he has, is the ability to make IMF's entire database open to the public-- or at least, to their enemies-- and while they'll be able to lock it down again, they won't be able to do it quickly. The fallout in the political and intelligence worlds will be a thing of beauty.

He knows that this is not what his team would have wanted. He knows very well that people will die-- not just agents, but civilians-- but the important thing is, IMF will almost certainly not recover from this.

And if his team is dead, then IMF will be, too.

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For Vengeance

Thirty-two people in the lab. Twenty-three dead, six more dying, one begging for death, two more bound, gagged, and waiting their turn.

"You shouldn't have made me what I am, if you weren't ready to handle the consequences," he says mildly. It's only the truth. He's been walking the earth for nearly two hundred years now, and not only has he endured more pain than any human being should have to, he's watched everyone he's ever loved die-- and he's done with it, not just with the sorrow and the pain, but with the living part of it.

But he isn't going out alone. Every scientist, every doctor, every admin, everyone in IMF who's taken advantage of what he is-- every one of them is dead. The body count so far is in the triple digits.

Some of them, unfortunately, were people who didn't actually know what he was, what IMF had done to him-- they were just in his way.

He doesn't care. He knows he should, but he doesn't. So he's killed a few more innocents. So what?

None of it matters, anyway.

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For Vengeance

She isn't a biologist for nothing; she hasn't studied biochemistry and xenobiology and learned nothing. She knows things about the human body that doctors with twenty years' experience can't even begin to imagine.

And she's going to use that knowledge, and god help anyone who gets in her way. SHIELD has procedures, fine, sure, no problem, she gets that, she understands that, but those were her friends, her colleagues who died, and she's not going to wait for the paperwork to be finished. She's not going to wait for the papers to be stamped, the assignments to be handed out, the policies and procedures to be followed, she's going to go out there and do what needs doing.

(But part of her is screaming at her about the danger of what she's doing. Part of her is saying that the virus she's getting ready to use isn't going to stop at the guilty. But that same virus has already taken root in her own brain, and the sane part is rapidly dying.)

Yes, she's going to avenge the deaths of her team. That's what SHIELD does, right? They're avengers. She's an Avenger.

Around her, the lights spark and flare, dim and pulse. She doesn't notice.

She has a mission.

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For Grief

She doesn't cry, not because she doesn't hurt, but because she doesn't have the time. If she wasn't on a very, very tight schedule, she might very well be curled up in a ball under a bed, sobbing until her throat was raw, her chest aching, her head pounding.

But right now, all she feels is rage. She doesn't even notice the pain from the stitches in her side; even when she was doing the sewing herself, the anger was so great it overwhelmed everything else.

And now she's connecting the last few circuits (she's so glad her allies were willing to teach her the basics of circuitry and demolition), and the C4 is already placed, and in minutes, the whole goddamned City Hall is going to fall in on itself, and with any luck, every person in it will be dead, as dead as the people she loved.

Gotham wanted to crack down on crime? Fine.

She'd crack down on them.

[thestorycontinues]

For Good Intentions

Okay. Okay. She can do this. She can do this.

It's only going to take a few more minutes; it's amazing how easy it was to hack into the flight tower and start making tiny adjustments to the data being sent to one of the planes currently in the air, scheduled to land in eleven minutes.

But she can do this. She can totally do this.

There are 237 passengers on the plane she's targeting. Forty-four of them are incredibly dangerous, and if they're allowed to land, they're going to do things, and those things will result in casualties in the thousands.

Landing in seven minutes.

But she can't just target those forty-four. It's the whole plane, or nothing.

She can't be too obvious, or it'll draw the attention of the flight crew, or the tower. She makes the smallest of changes, just enough that the pilots won't notice until-- until-- until.

Landing in three minutes. Two minutes.

Two hundred and thirty seven passengers.

(When it's all over, she prints out their names, and carries them with her for the rest of her life.)

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For Power

It hadn't been easy. He had needed to eliminate literally dozens of rivals. Rivals and sometimes their gangs, or their allies. Sometimes a family member or two.

That had bothered him at first: killing someone's wife or child, brother or parent. After a while he got used to it, though; and soon, he had enough money and power to hire people to do it for him.

And now, almost nobody in the entire country knew who he was; and yet, he was one of the wealthiest, most powerful men. Of course, he had more than a few people out to get him. The most recent assassination attempt had been just a few days ago, in fact. The assassin had given up the names of his employer after a little... persuasion.

Jean lounged back in his chair, enjoying a glass of rare wine in his luxurious study, in front of a warm fire. Priceless paintings decorated the walls.

No, becoming the head of the Mafia hadn't been easy.

But it had been worth it.