The Widow's Daughter ✔︎

Chapter Forty-Two

The first shot was fired from behind me. Everybody whipped around, my hands springing into a defensive position, to see Nick Fury standing on the chair, a smoking gun in his hands, which had the handcuffs ripped off, revealing a raw red layer of skin.

Looking around in shock to see where the bullet had gone, it didn't take long for me to see Agnelsson standing in front of Holly in shock, his face slackened to that of pure confusion. At first I just thought that his face was stuck that way because he was a weirdo, but, looking again, I saw that his features were twisted and contorted into a grimace of pain. A dark red splotch bloomed across his chest, his hands trembling as he looked down at the wound. Agnelsson turned around slowly, his panicked dark eyes fixing on Holly as he breathed staggeringly, "I did it all for you."

And then he crumpled to the ground, and didn't move again.

For five seconds, there was a complete silence.

And then Holly rushed forwards, crying out, tears streaming down from her eyelids. She dropped to the ground, next to Agnelsson's limp body, and placed her head onto his unmoving chest, sticky red blood soaking from his damp clothes into her hair. "No," she muttered, pressing her hands to his wound, trying in vain to stop the bleeding, but the damage was done. Agnelsson's eyes were wide open and glassy, dried blood at the corner of his mouth. "NO!"

Nobody moved as Holly wailed her anguish to the sky. Her black dress was soaked with blood, tear tracks snaking down her dirty cheeks. "Come back," my sister whispered, stroking Agnelsson's dark hair away from his forehead. "Come back, Dad."

I felt a cold hand grasp mine. It was Nat. She was trembling slightly, her beautiful features caught halfway between wanting to comfort Holly or stay here. I squeezed her hand back, too shocked to do anything else.

Holly's sobs cut through the silence like a knife through butter. For a few seconds, nobody did anything, not even Ivan, who looked equally stunned as the rest of us. And then Nick Fury stepped down from the chair and put the gun into his holster. "S.H.I.E.L.D will be here in exactly four minutes," he said. "Let's go."

"Oh, I don't think so," snarled Ivan, moving towards us. "You just murdered my friend, Fury, and if you think that I'll just let you walk away, then you're clearly mistaken." He pulled a gun out of his nowhere and shot a bullet aimed for my heart, but Steve intercepted the shot with his shield. 

We all leapt forwards into attack position as Ivan came at us with his machine gun, bullets flying in a spiral of sharp metal and certain death. Steve covered us, his shield taking the brunt of most of the impact, but I heard Peter yelp as a bullet grazed him in the thigh. "You okay?" I yelled, cowering behind Cap. 

"No!" Peter yelled back, clutching the wound.

At least he was being honest.

Ivan kept on coming, the bullets rebounding off the shield and spraying in every possible direction. Once he was close enough, Ivan pulled out a second machine gun and shot even more bullets, but he wasn't the only one. Coming from high up on the balcony, bullets spraying everywhere, were ten agents, sunglasses covering their eyes. Holly stayed in the middle of it all, weeping over Agnelsson's body.

"We can't stay like this," Nat panted. "Rogers? You gonna do something, or is that up to me?"

"I'm kinda occupied, Romanoff," said Steve through gritted teeth, his shoulder pressed firmly against the cold metal. "Think of something!"

Nat rolled her eyes. "It's always up to me," she smirked. "Fury, cover the kid. I'm going after Ivan."

Before she could leap out of the cover of the shield, I beat her to it. Using all of my super strength, I jumped onto Steve's back and propelled myself out into the open, bullets flying around me in slow motion. I heard Nat call out my name, but I didn't turn back. I landed on my feet, using my speed as a surprise attack against Ivan, who looked shocked as I leapt onto him, knocking the machine guns out of his hands. Bullets from the agents still spraying onto the shield, Ivan and I began to fight, my punches and kicks coming at him from every angle.