An Impervious Few // KateLena Apocalypse AU

Widow's Web

  "Jesus fucking Christ," Kate huffed as she stood to her full height, knife drawn and chest heaving. Her knee ached as she waited anxiously for the other woman to make a move, lunge at her, shoot her, but upon closer inspection, the intruder lay limp, bleeding from a gash on her jaw.

Worried she had somehow killed the woman, Kate checked her neck for a pulse, thankfully finding one. This created an entirely new problem, though, as Kate was not one to kill an unarmed, possibly innocent person as she slept. Gritting her teeth, Kate hurriedly bound the woman's hands with a few spare zip ties before propping her upright against the trunk of a pine.

Cursing and out of breath, Kate took a moment to collect herself, gulping down chilly midnight air to slow her racing heart. Hands on her knees as she inhaled, the archer shut her eyes, straining her ears for anything unusual in the black abyss of pine and maple. Fortunately, all that sounded was the typical cacophony of owls, beetles, and the occasional coyote howl, though she always kept a paranoid ear out.

With one final breath, Kate stood, stretched out her bad knee, and lugged the woman's black duffel bag over to her stump. As she rummaged through the bag, Kate glanced intermittently up at the woman, and in the low light of her lanterns, got a good look at her for the first time.

She was bulkier than Kate expected, short but well built. She was clad in all black- boots, cargo pants, long sleeve thermal shirt. Her jacket, black leather with red patches on the upper arm, nearly made Kate recoil backwards off her tree stump. The badges, stars and hourglasses, were marks of Widows, and this stranger was highly decorated. Every hair on Kate's body stood on end, and she gripped the hilt of her knife tighter.

If this really was a Black Widow, then Kate was in deeper shit than she thought. This could be a scout team leader, or the beginning of an ambush. The prudent action would be to kill the girl and flee with her sack of supplies, but as Kate studied her face, her braided golden hair and her copper freckles, she could not bring herself to draw blood, to end a life as it slumbered.

Now, all she could do was wait.

Kate's hands shook throughout the excruciatingly quiet night. Twirling her blade, she sat facing the blonde, startling at any whisper of a noise in the forest. It did not help that the other woman mumbled incoherently in her sleep, repeating what sounded like a name over and over. She twitched and sniffed but stayed unconscious as the moon dipped lower in the sky, and with no other Widow making her presence known, Kate wondered what the deal really was with this person.

Perhaps she was not a member of the gang at all. Perhaps she had slain a lone Widow and stolen her things, or perhaps... she was a defector, a runaway, a rebel. That would make sense with the bag of supplies, the guns, the clothes, the food...

Now, Kate spared the woman more out of curiosity than ethics. Few betrayed the fearsome Black Widows and lived to tell the tale.

Resigned to spare the woman, this left the question of what to do when she inevitably awoke. Best case, they go their separate ways with no further strife. Worst case, the blonde escapes, robs her, leaves her body cold and rotting to become the dirt from whence she came. Kate kept her fingers crossed for option one.

The fight to stay lucid magnified in difficulty as the hours passed. Adrenaline from the encounter wore off, and the lingering exhaustion from her hunt threatened to tug Kate into a much needed but dangerously timed slumber.

  The archer tried everything- tracking constellations, whittling a crude wooden arrowhead, but eventually, under dim yellow moonlight and the rhythm of cricket chirps and the occasional owl hoot, Kate Bishop fell asleep, hand still clutching her knife.