i love you from here

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jake is cold, but he's sweating like he's in the desert. His hair is sticking to his forehead and the back of his neck. He's in a strange state of consciousness; he's aware of things, but only vaguely. He gets up and kills Charlie three or four different times in his head, truly believing that he was doing it each time.

Hours pass before he's conscious enough to realize that he's on the floor, locked in the bathroom, and shirtless. His wounds are stitched closed, too. Jake looks down at his abdomen. Three two-inch strips of stitches are scattered across his abs.

Huh. I thought there was only one.

Looking back, he can see how there was more than one.

The SHIELD agent lunges at the Soldier. The Soldier knocks the gun out of his hands and advances, despite the knife the agent is holding in a death grip.

The Soldier punches the guy in the side of the face. While he's trying to keep his balance, the Soldier punches him again.

The agent stares up at the Soldier. Blood drips from the agent's nose.

His name is Mark, and he has a fiancee waiting for him to come home.

The Soldier moves forward, and Mark meets him in the middle unexpectedly, knife close to his chest.

He stabs the Soldier once. That's all that the Soldier feels.

The Soldier rears back, ripping the knife out of himself. Mark lunges again. He's not going to be able to escape this unless he kills the Soldier.

The Soldier blocks out the pain and settles into assassin mode.

Mark is dead in the snow, his neck snapped close to his shoulders.

Jake sits up, wincing, and reaches for the doorknob. It's locked. Charlie saved his life and locked him in here. She didn't call the cops. She didn't shoot him in the head, like he would've done to her. There's a lot of things that Jake would do differently from Charlie. For one, if an assassin kept on breaking into his apartment, he would move and keep his new address private. Even then, he'd put locks on every possible entrance.

It's a wonder why Charlie hasn't done that yet.

Jake rubs his face with his hands. His head is pounding. Without any distractions, nothing to give him an adrenaline rush, he can't block the pain out effectively. He can try ignore it, though, and that'll do something. Not much, but something.

Charlie clumsily smacks her phone with her palm to turn off the alarm. She's barely awake, but rolls out of bed and stands until she's sure that she won't go back to sleep. There's no reason for her to get up this early- it's seven on a Saturday morning. It's not like she didn't sleep in, though. She gave herself fifteen extra minutes of sleep. If she sleeps in too late- even once or twice- she's found it'll take days for her to get back to waking up at a decent time. She needs to get her day started, anyway, and getting up late turns the rest of her day into an unproductive mess.

Down the hall, Jake tries getting the door open again. Why does the door lock from the outside? That doesn't even make sense for a bathroom door. He fumbles with the doorknob for another few moments before he gives up. His hands are shaking badly enough that picking the lock would take forever.

Charlie walks to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Then she remembers.

Oh, yeah, there's an assassin in my bathroom.

Charlie lightly knocks on the door. "Jake?" she says, a little louder.

"Did you lock me in here?" he demands through the door. "I'll bust the lock," he threatens. His voice isn't strong like it usually is; it's shaky and he's mumbling. He lost a lot of blood yesterday. Chances are he won't be able to break the lock, even if he tries. Blood loss makes you weak. It makes you cold, anxious, nauseous, dizzy. Jake is going to be in an awful mood.