Worth (Sequel to Games of Deception)

Chapter 9 - Thoughts

-Jacqueline-

I didn't go back to the house for a long time.

It was cowardly of me, but I couldn't face Clint any more that night. I knew I had hurt him, and I was putting him in a bad position no matter what I did, now. But I had been honest with him. For him to know what I knew would mean he would only try to prevent it. And that would mean the end of both of us, and many others.

I wasn't letting anyone else get taken down with me. Especially not Clint.

"I can't lose you." The words filled me with a burning guilt, and it had taken every ounce of composure I'd had not to let the words completely break me. What choice did I have?

I'd have a lot of explaining to do before I'd be thrown through the gates of hell. And the list of topics was only growing.

Everyone thinks about dying at some point and most eventually learn to accept it, take it as a fact. But to know at whose hands you would take your last breaths was another thing entirely.

I had the first vision not long after Clint and I had returned to SHIELD, after the battle in New York. I'd gone through the process of becoming an official, authorized agent, and had been on my one of my first field missions. I was doing a security check on a small town with Evangeline. Nothing spectacular. All went as planned, and we headed back to SHIELD unscathed.

We were landing back onto base when I caught my first glimpse of what was to come.

At the time, I hadn't known Hydra was planning an uprising, but there was no doubt the people surrounding me in the tiny, dark room had worked with my parents in the past. I was surrounded, my arms restrained at the wrists with some sort of bind that prevented me from using my powers.

"Lead us to the files." They had commanded. I continued to refuse. A big mistake.

Pain that was near incomprehensible surged through me (or at least, my mind was telling me that was what I was feeling). It started in my head, then spread to every inch of my bloodied, exhausted body. I was asked once more, and I still refused. But I knew, somewhere out there, my stalling had given SHIELD enough time to reach their base, to destroy their work on the serum for good, and hopefully them along with it.

But by the time they would reach my body, slumped over against the back wall of the underground room, I would be nothing but a corpse.

Evangeline had tried to catch me when I collapsed, the sensation of what I'd seen too powerful for my senses. If I saw it, that meant it would happen.

That was when I first knew I would die.

I would continue to have similar visions, a little different but the end result was still the same. After the first one, I never saw what was happening, I only heard and felt it. I thought that maybe, somehow my mind was trying to protect me from knowing exactly how I would die, while my foresight abilities still wanted me to know that I would die.

Psychologists would have quite the party with what goes on in my head.

The point was, I didn't have much longer. I'd wanted a purpose in life, and I guess this was it. It was a situation I knew no one would understand enough to just let it happen. It's human nature. If anyone interfered, I was terrified it would be their end. No matter what, when Hydra's main base was found, I would be in the front lines of the battle. I had to be.

Since Clint and I had spoken to Fury, I had been outside in the middle of the open field with my guitar. I'd had the raging urge to consume what alcohol we had, all of it, make myself forget, but I knew that wouldn't help my case. And that night at Stark's was pretty blatant proof that I still didn't handle alcohol very well. Yet, I was itching for something, something to take my mind away from the present. So music it was.