Marvel Imagines ;)

steve - haunted

You had a list.

It was crumpled, stained with blood and whiskey. You held it in one hand, a dagger dripping with gore in the other, as you stood before the man you were sent to kill.

His name was Paul Lambert. You wondered briefly what he had done to your master. What foolish decision had he made that led him to this? Then you remembered you didn't care. You hadn't in a long time.

The man rolled over in what could only have been silken sheets, the lines on his face smoothed over with sleep. He reached across the bed for his wife.

Her body was already cooling in the hallway.

You took a step towards him. The floorboards groaned beneath your feet. Within moments, Paul Lambert had sprung out of bed, and was brandishing a small, pitiful knife between you.

Unfortunate, you thought dully. You were hoping to kill him swiftly in his sleep. It would have been better for him; this was a fight he could never win. No one ever had.

"Please..." he croaked, chest rising and falling rapidly. "I don't want to hurt you."

A broken chuckle tore from you as you took another step towards him. He stumbled back – right into the wall. "I wouldn't worry about that, Mr. Lambert."

"Paul," he breathed. "My name is Paul. I have two sons, Ben and Tommy, and... and I have a wife!" His eyes lit up, as though he was remembering something. "Nora! Nora, run!" he yelled, his voice echoing throughout the apartment.

"There's no need for that," you said, voice low and gritty. "Nora is dead. Your two sons have already been transported to another home, under the care of another family. One who will put their safety before their own selfish gain."

"N-no..." The man sagged. "Nora," he whispered, a broken plea. He almost seemed to mourn her. Almost enough to make you feel something – to make you hesitate. Because the names on the list... They were all bad people. Your master had told you as such. They were sex traffickers, men who took what they wanted and thought they were invincible. They were the names of those who deserved their fate. And yet...

The man began to beg for his life once more. He didn't even take a minute to mourn his wife. Her body hadn't even gone cold.

You didn't hear him. Not a single word. It had gotten easier and easier to drown out their pleas, you had learned. Even if their names still haunted your every step.

It was fast; it was clean.

The blood dribbled out from his throat – sliced from ear to ear – onto the wooden floorboards. He swayed and fell, dead before his corpse even met the ground. It always mesmerized you, that pause in time. The moment when a person was no longer a person, just a body.

You took up a pen from the mans desk, scratching off another name from the list.

The state of your hands caught your attention. Dirty things. The nails were jagged and broken from scaling buildings not meant to be scaled, and they were crusted with blood that you could never wash away. They weren't what girl's hands were supposed to look like. Your hands had been soft once. Pretty, even. Not like they were now: dry and scarred and bleeding from years fighting someone else's war. You used to paint the nails pretty shades of blue and purple and striking silver when you were in a particularly flashy mood. But those days were behind you. The memories of a life before the pain were smudged, as though your mind was a drawing made from charcoal, and someone had rubbed at it until you couldn't see the picture anymore, just the shadows of what it used to be. Now, there was only the future, and finally, after all these years, earning your god-damned freedom. That was the only thing that mattered. That was all you had left.

There was only one last name on the list.

You looked at it, the rise and fall of the messy scrawl of your master. The dips and the turns and the loops that created something so simple – yet detrimental. For it was just a name, and yet it was so much more: the name of the final life you would claim to earn your freedom.

You didn't know why the name made you pause.

Perhaps it was because all of the others had been people who could disappear easily, barely leaving a trace of them behind. But this name... There would be no erasing it. It would be, very much, a public assassination. That is, if you could even pull it off.

You cleaned your dagger using Paul Lambert's bed sheets (it wasn't as if he were alive to groan about it, anyways), then climbed through the window, dropping soundlessly onto the streets below. 

It would take time, to come up with a plan as elaborate as the one you were going to need to kill an Avenger. And patience. Both of which you happened to be running short on. Your master wanted the list to be taken care of by the end of the week.

Your breath clouded in front of you as you made your way through the dilapidated streets of Hell's Kitchen. The good news was, you didn't need to worry about travel taking up what little time you had left. The Avengers, from what you had heard, were holed up at their Headquarters cowering in the aftermath of Sokovia.

You let yourself smile a little as a plan began to take form in that wicked head of yours.

Steve Rogers didn't stand a chance.

A/N
I feel like it's been forever since I've seen you! Sorry for the slow updates y'all. School and the crushing weight of graduation are taking up a lot of my time. But I feel this story's gonna be good, and I have another update ready for tomorrow. Also, if I haven't said it already, thanks for 4K ;)

AND YES STEVE IS BEARDED IN THIS FIC BECAUSE WHY THE HELL NOT