The Price of Freedom

Chapter 3

   "What was he like?"

Echo swung her legs over the railing outside Elytra's bedroom, placing her hands on either side of her hips to keep her balance. Elytra gestured to the gold bands around her pale fingers.

"Alex was . . . everything. He has these beautiful brown eyes that would light up in the sun, and his hair was always messy no matter how hard he tried to tame it. We never spent more than thirty minutes away from each other. Alex worked from home and I took some online college courses and babysat his nephews every once in a while for some extra cash. We weren't rich, but we were happy." Echo took a minute to toss a handful of Goldfish into her mouth. "He wanted a family. We planned on adopting Blair in a few months, and maybe even having some of our own. We-"

Her voice hitched in her throat. Teardrops slipped down her cheeks and she wiped them away quickly before El could see them. "I-I love them . . . I love them more than anything."

Elytra reached for Echo's hand and held it, trying her best to comfort a girl with almost nothing left to lose.

After El had gone to bed, Echo sauntered down the empty hallways towards the room she had once called her own. The doorknob creaked with disuse as she set foot on the carpet. Her fingers skimmed the dark wood on the nightstand, picking up a thin layer of dust. It appeared no one had been in there since she left. Her backpack sat on the dark blue blanket, beside it a green army jacket, absent of blood stains.

Her eyes teared up as she hung the jacket on the coat hook beside the bathroom door. Shutting the door behind her, Echo had quickly ridden herself of the sticky clothing and tossed it in the trash. She stepped into the scalding hot water, not caring that her skin burned and turned red under the heat. Echo's knees buckled under her, and there was a loud thump as she hit the tile. She didn't notice the blood running into the drain or her bleeding knuckles or the dents in the shower walls until they were already there.

Echo didn't leave her room for three days. Bucky came in the following morning to bandage her hands. He had heard the battering from three floors below. When she stepped out of the room her feet headed straight for the training room. Echo didn't realize what she was doing, where she was going. She didn't really care. Her wrapped fists flew towards the punching bag faster than she could think, and when the sand poured out of the first, she moved on to the next. And the next, and the next.

Twenty-five tattered pieces of fabric and hundreds of pounds of sand littered the floor. Echo was curled up in the corner when a voice broke the silence. "What the hell."

Clint stepped out of the elevator, "Tony said you would be here." When she gave him a questionable look, he pointed to a black dot in the corner. "Security cams."

His eyes traveled to her hands and then to the chain around her neck with a man's engagement ring hanging from it. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

Echo shook her head, pushing herself to her feet. "Wanna spar?" She asked.

Her lips were tightened in concentration as she picked up two blunt swords from the rack. There was a permanent scar on her bottom lip from an arrow a nameless man had fired upon her. She was eleven. A second cicatrix jutted from just below her mouth down her jaw, linking with the scar tissue on her neck. They were more prominent than usual due to the redness in her cheeks. Clint attempted to ask about the marks to distract her, but she waved him off, swinging one of the blades inches from his neck. He chuckled, grabbing a bow and a quiver of arrows and adjusting the strap over his shoulder.

Echo let out a breath, eyes narrowing. She observed her opponent, the way he moved, strengths, and most importantly, possible weak points. After seeing him fight, Echo knew his preferred weapon was a bow and arrow but he also used guns. He rarely fought with blades and didn't have much experience defending himself against large swords, which is why she had chosen them as her weapons. Her knuckles turned white around the rubber handles and she took a fighting stance about twenty feet from him. Clint drew back the bowstring and loosed the rubber-tipped arrow aimed at her heart.

Echo had taken off in a sprint a few seconds before and used her momentum to push off the ground, grabbing the arrow as she flipped and throwing it back at him. Her hair whipped around as she landed and swung her swords around, but he was faster and caught one of her knives, sending it skittering across the floor.

Clint had secured the bow onto his back and punched the air where her jaw had been moments before. Echo aimed a fist at his jaw, and when he dodged it she brought her leg up behind him and swept his feet out from under him. When she let her guard down, he grabbed her foot and yanked it, causing her to topple. Clint had pinned her with a foot on her chest and just when he thought the fight was over, she kicked him between the legs and restrained him, pulling the other knife into her hand and holding them in a cross against his neck. "Alright kid, I give."

"I'm twenty-one, not a kid." She stuck her hand out, and Clint grabbed it. After they had placed the weapons back on the racks, he convinced her to eat something. She complied, only because he said El was making dinner.

After serving herself half a bowl of spaghetti, Echo made herself comfortable on the couch next to the kitchen and pulled pictures out of the pocket of her jacket. One of Alex on his twenty-first birthday, with his arm around her. She had one hand on her slightly-swollen stomach and another around his waist. Another was a picture of Echo and Ashton and Carter, Alex's two nephews, asleep on the couch. Echo continued to shuffle through the photographs as she ate forkfuls of pasta. Bucky sat down next to her, pointing to certain things and asking about them, trying to get her to open up in even the slightest. He was determined to get her to smile at least a little.

"Where did you meet?" He asked, pointing to Alex.

"A bridge in Ohio. He was going to college there, majoring in photography. He asked me if I would pose for him. Two years later, he proposed to me there."

She flipped through the photos until she found the one she was looking for. It was a large grey bridge with the silhouette of two people hugging in front of the sunset.

"I wanted to take him there this summer," Echo added. "But I never thought-"

She couldn't finish her sentence, stuffing the stack into her pocket and putting her bowl into the sink. He let her go, not wanting to upset her more.

When Echo reached her door, she pushed it shut and flipped the lock. She rummaged through the drawers in the desk until she found a box of pushpins. After adding El's photos to her own, Echo arranged them on her bed and then pinned them to the wall above her headboard, and then on the ceiling when she ran out of room.

Tony would be pissed she put holes in the wall, but she really didn't care anymore. She wished she had died in that house. But she hadn't. Laying down on the bed, Echo looked up at the photo of Alex with his arms around her stomach, beaming. She had never felt so much rage and anger towards a single person in her life, and he was going to pay for killing him. With the idea coursing through her mind, she pulled the sheets over her body, and with the absence of a body next to her, she fell asleep.