the archers war | kate bishop

the boy next door

"yo, alex. can i talk to you?" eli whispered as she walked into our apartment and stealing our food.

"why're you roaching on our food? you have food at your place."

"yeah, but you guys have better food than us. ruby keeps buying croissants, water, grapes, and soups. literally nothing else."

"fine. twice a week you can steal, but if kate thinks it's me, you confess your sins."

"well damn. i didn't know we were here to confess," she rolled her eyes with a smirk, "forgive me father for i have sinned."

"now, i know you're like a superhero or something."

"i'm not."

"yeah, but you helped with thanos, so technically yes. um there's a photo of you cruising along with the winter soldier and the new captain america. and there's one of you beating the hell out of that guy."

i furrowed my eyebrows and picked up the orange folder she handed me. i opened it and picked up the pictures.

there was one of me and kate and my face had a big x. the ones eli was talking about, and one of last week when i went to go see pepper and morgan.

on the back of the photo of morgan and pepper it read, "iron man is gone now. who will protect them?"

on the back of mine and kate's photos it said, "watch your back barton."

"holy fuck." i whispered covering my mouth.

"some motherfucker is on some 'the boy next door' type shit. look, if you need help i got my boys back in welding. they'd pop anyone if i asked, i'm like their little sister."

"where'd you get these?"

"i don't know. they were just on my door mat. you know anyone who would wanna hurt you?"

"a whole lot of people. oh shit. this is bad." i crouch down, running my hands down my face.

"all right, all right. you take a break go check on the starks, get them guards or something, and i'll figure out who sent this." eli stated with a confident nod.

"you can do that?"

"hell yeah. i know hella people who can lead me to this," she lifted the folder, "only problem is i don't know how long it'll take."

"no, no, that's fine. if you start know we can figure it out. thanks, eli. you're a life saver."

"anything you need? i got you," she trailed off looking around the apartment, "is... kate here?"

i shook my head and she nodded, "follow me."

when we got to her apartment she lifted up a ceiling tile in her bathroom and brought down a duffel bag.

"now if you need me to pop some shit, i got you." she cackled showing me a gun.

"jesus christ. does ruby know you have these?"

"yeah, she does."

"i can't put you through all this, eli. shit will go down at some point, and i can't ask you to do this." i shake my head and cross my arms.

"eh, it's fine. my whole life was never easy." she put everything back and took me to the couch.

"my parents were both addicted to drugs. i had to train myself to learn to fight due to the target they had on their backs with all the money and drugs they owed. they died when i was 14 and papa licho took me in."

"he, uh, he told me if i wanted to join his welding program, i'd have to learn myself. he said 'if you cheat you'll never learn.' so that's what i did. i learned to weld myself, he let me in and that's where i met ruby."