Once Upon an Us

There Exists A Hypocrite Among Us (And Tony Might Kill Him)

“So you see, Fritz,”  Thea said, her quiet voice the only sound in the room.  “While Hoffman may have told you we worked for the Reich, you should remember who you were talking to and take his words with a grain of salt.”

Fritz glanced up at Thea from where he’d been staring at the ground while she talked.  She was staring at him as if she hadn’t moved since he looked away, eyes narrowed and silently daring him to accuse her of still working for the Reich.  Instead, he just nodded and stepped away from the front of his cell. He didn’t miss the glare Tony sent his way as Thea turned and limped back to the bench in their cell.  He sat on his own bed and stared at the wall in front of him.

“You good?”  Tony asked Thea quietly, sitting beside her on the bench.  She’d pulled her ankle back into her lap and was rubbing it gently, frowning.  She nodded.

“It’s just fractured,”  she murmured. She kept her foot in her lap and leaned back against the wall.  “I’ll be fine. In the meantime, I need you to tell me what happened with Pengin.”

Tony knew she was trying to direct his attention away from her injuries and as much as he wanted to brush off her attempts and push her to tell him what was wrong, he didn’t.  For all he knew, she could have internal bleeding or just surface bruises. They couldn’t do anything about it right now, though, so he supposed it was better not to get caught up in what he couldn’t help.

“Right,”  Tony agreed, telling her exactly what had gone down from the moment they lost their comms until she and Marie had appeared and killed six guards in nearly that many seconds.

When Hoffman finally decided to show his face again, Tony had to admire him.  He’d seen better days, that was for sure, and based on Marie’s smirk, she’d been the one to personally break his nose and eye socket.  Tony glanced at Thea who just gave him a sly smile and a shrug, neither confirming nor denying whether she’d played a part in busting up Hoffman’s face.  Aside from his nose and eye socket, though, he looked normal. Considering he wasn’t limping, neither Thea nor Marie had managed to take away his ability to reproduce (an unfortunate decision on their part, if Tony did say so himself).

“What happened, Hoff?”  Tony asked with amusement, leaning against the wall at the back of his cell.  “Did God finally decide you needed a lesson in humility?”

“Your sister is neither God nor humble enough to teach humility,”  Hoffman growled, glaring at Thea. Tony just shrugged. Let Hoffman ignore the facts of the situation; if Tony knew Thea, she’d make it her mission to let him know just how wrong he was.

“Aw, come on, Erich,”  Thea hummed, leaning forward from where she sat on a bench.  She grinned at him as he continued to scowl. “You know you love me.”

“I would love nothing more than to kill you where you sit,”  Hoffman hissed, gingerly fingering his broken nose. Tony’s amused look was replaced with one of warning and Hoffman smiled.  “You do not scare me, Rossi,” he said, directing it at Tony. He glanced at Thea and said, “And you, the lesser of the two evils, hand over the gun and key ring or I will shoot your pathetic little friend.”  He raised a gun and aimed it towards Carol’s cell, causing her to yelp and shrink further back to avoid the threatening weapon.  

“Why do you want us here, Hoffman?”  Thea asked, pulling out the gun she’d taken from one of the many dead officers.  She limped over to the cell door and handed it over to Hoffman who passed it to the officer beside him.  “I understand us two, but the others,” she inquired, handing him the key ring next. “What do you have against them?”

“Bayer?  Nothing,”  he shrugged, lowering his gun from her cell.  Jude nodded at Thea, reassuring her that Carol was alright.  “Brannon and Langley once worked for the OSS, you remember that yes?  Gelfand, well, everyone’s a little suspicious when they join forces with ex-OSS agents and you can’t find a damn file with their name on it.”

“Ever considered maybe you’re lookin’ for the wrong name?”  Fritz mused. Hoffman turned his head and looked at Fritz, not turning his back on Thea or Tony.  “Got false information or somethin’ from your boss.” Hoffman narrowed his eyes at Fritz.

“You are very annoying,”  he said. Fritz frowned as Hoffman turned back to face Thea.  He stared at her for a moment, receiving a blank look in return.  After a short moment, he turned and left the room.

Thea waited until the door had slammed shut and she was certain he really had walked away before pulling the keyring from behind her back.  Tony scoffed and rolled his eyes, watching as she grinned and unlocked their cell. Jude just chuckled drily, watching as Thea handed the keyring to Tony to finish getting everyone out while she looted through the dead guards’ bodies in hopes of finding more guns.  Hoffman had made a mistake by not moving the bodies out of the room. Didn’t he know he’d basically helped them escape by leaving them lying around?

“How did you even get those back?”  Fritz asked, stepping out of his cell as Tony moved to the next one.

“Hoffman never has been very good at keeping things out of my reach,”  Thea told him, tossing a gun to Marie. “Besides, you distracted him long enough for me to get it back.  A little more and I could have grabbed my gun, but I’ll get over it.”

Carol stepped out of her cell, happily reassuring Tony she was completely fine aside from the black eye and bruised ribs she’d gotten when she first arrived.  Tony had figured if she was fine enough to risk hugging Thea happily, she was fine enough to run through a secure Nazi compound.

“Who can shoot without being a waste of ammo?”  Thea asked, looking around as she tossed Jude a gun.  She didn’t need him to answer that before tossing a gun at him.  He was one of the best shots she’d ever met.

“I can,”  Fritz grumbled.  Thea raised an eyebrow at him before tossing a gun at him.  She stuffed two smaller guns in the waistband of her pants then pulled a larger one off the back of a guard.  She handed the bigger gun to Tony then grabbed another for herself.

“Think you can follow directions long enough to get out of here, Gelfand?”  Thea asked. Fritz just rolled his eyes, nodding when he realized she wanted an actual answer.  She gave a short nod in return then she and Marie led them out of the first door.

Pengin couldn’t understand why the cameras still weren't working.  He’d returned to the spot he and Tony had been hiding earlier to try and disable anything that could be messing with their equipment, but he didn’t find anything.  He’d been working with Hoffman’s tech-guy for the better part of the past ten hours and they hadn’t found anything more than the software Tony had designed to hack and monitor the cameras.  He didn’t even have his email set up on the device. As badly as Pengin wanted to smash Tony’s face in for it, he had to admire just how thorough Tony was when it came to keeping his tech from getting into anyone else’s hands.  He clearly had all his bases covered.

“You said they had a hide-out in Bayer's Bar?”  an agent asked, looking up at Pengin as they watched their computer engineers struggle to pinpoint what was screwing with their cameras.

“Yeah.”

“Take us there,”  the agent told him, standing up.  He walked out of the room, pausing in the doorway until Pengin started after him.  Four more agents followed him and they made their way down the long compound halls.

Pengin followed the agent into the elevator and stood in front of him as it ascended from the lower levels.  They were halfway to the ground floor when the elevator came to an abrupt halt. A split second later, an alarm went off somewhere in the compound and Pengin cursed.  He knew Hoffman was too confident for his own good when it came to captures. Pengin punched the door of the elevator as the agent behind him watched silently.

“How do we get out of here?”  Pengin demanded, spinning on his heel and looking at the agents.

“We cannot,”  the first agent told him.  Pengin yelled again, punching the wall of the elevator and making an agent nearby flinch.  “If you want to get out before the emergency procedures are completed, be our guest.” The agent motioned above him and Pengin looked up to see a hatch in the elevator.  He grumbled as he reached up and unlatched the hatch.

“I should warn you about--”

“Oh, go warn Hoffman he’s about to lose his people,”  Pengin snapped, cutting off the agent and pushing the hatch open.  The agent pursed his lips and the others watched as Pengin lifted himself out through the hatch and on top of the elevator.

The shaft was dark, but once his eyes adjusted, Pengin could see the doors to the level above just a meter over his head.  He used the wires holding up the elevator as a rope ladder, pulling himself up to the doors then stretching forward for the emergency release button.  Instead of opening the doors like he’d expected, a small device appeared from the wall in front of him. He frowned as the device twisted around and pointed its nose at him.

“What are you?”  Pengin mumbled, frowning as a red light blinked twice on the device.  Before Pengin could process what was happening, the device had fired two shots at his chest.  He dropped from the wire rope and landed on top of the elevator with a hard thud.  The impact caused the bullets in his chest to jostle and he groaned, coughing up blood a few seconds later.  The device blinked once more, moving so it was aimed down at Pengin then released one last bullet into his chest, killing him instantly.

Thea didn’t have to voice her worry to Marie as they left their cell floor unhindered.  They shared a look and c****d their guns at the same time, prepared to come across a Nazi soon.  Thea was a little surprised the alarms weren’t already sounding after their escape. Either they wanted to loll them into a false sense of security or something was wrong with their cameras.  She was considering turning to ask Tony about it when a shot was fired from around the corner. Carol yelped and Tony promptly covered her mouth as Thea peered around the corner to see three officers, guns raised and advancing on them.  Marie shot them all before Thea could even raise her gun. When Thea gave her an irritated look, Marie just shrugged.

“You got the most kills last time,”  she said as if that explained her eagerness to kill three men in cold blood.  “’Sides, you hesitated.”

Marie smirked as she led the group around the corner, keeping her gun raised.  Thea’s jaw dropped in offense and she hurried to fall in line with Marie.

“I never hesitate,”  she said. She didn’t even turn to look as she raised her gun and shot two guards as they stepped out of the elevator.  Marie rolled her eyes. Before they could continue, they heard a gun going off behind them. “What in--”

Thea turned around to see Fritz, gun raised as he shot at the seven guards running toward them.  She nodded, mildly impressed when he’d shot them all down in only eleven shots. When he turned back to face the group and caught her approved gaze, he just shrugged and pushed the group forward.

“I worked STRIKE before realizing the Reich was just a bunch of bullshit,”  he explained shortly. Tony narrowed his eyes, but Thea had grabbed his wrist and was pulling him down the hall before he could explode at Fritz about being a hypocrite.  He muttered angrily, pulling his wrist out of Thea’s grip, but thankfully didn’t attack Fritz.

They came to a screeching halt when the hall hit a dead end, their only options to either turn right or backtrack.  When an alarm sounded above them, Marie lurched to the right and they raced down the hall. Thea’s ankle throbbed with each step, slowing her down but not enough to be a hindrance.  Marie was a few steps ahead of her, being the first to raise her gun and shoot the force of officers storming their direction. Tony and Carol pressed against the wall while Marie, Thea, Jude, and Fritz fired at their attackers.  Jude grunted, his left hand flying up to his right arm as blood began to trickle down to his wrist. Fritz and Marie took care of the remaining guards while Thea and Tony ripped the sleeve off Jude’s shirt to act as a temporary tourniquet.

“Keep moving,”  Thea told Marie when she glanced back at them.  She nodded and she and Fritz led them forward while Thea finished tying the sleeve around Jude’s arm.  He nodded his thanks at her and they continued running down the hall.

“Take this left!”  Tony yelled from the back.  He remembered watching Thea and Marie take the wrong turn earlier, recognizing the area they were now in.

Marie did as Tony instructed only to jump back around the corner as an array of bullets flew at them.  Once again, Thea and Jude pushed to the front and helped Fritz and Marie shoot down the guards. There were more this time and they kept coming around the hall ahead, preventing them from moving forward.  Thea looked around for an exit. Her eyes landed on the dead guards down the hall and she left the corner to run back and grab one. She drug the body over then grabbed two more, Tony hot on her heels as he realized what she was doing.

“Their bulletproof vests should add as extra protection,”  Thea said, lifting a body up and holding it in front of her own.  Marie, Fritz, Jude, and Tony followed suit. Carol ducked behind Tony, grumbling about not getting her own body.  Before Tony could say anything, the four gunmen of the group ran forward, guns reaching around their body shields and shooting wildly.

“That’s our cue,”  Tony said. He hoisted the body up, grunting only briefly before racing after the others.  Carol stayed close behind, making sure not to step too far left or right and risk getting shot.  They were halfway down the hall and making good time when Tony stumbled, nearly dropping the body.  He righted the dead man in his arms, but during his moment of struggle, Carol took the body from him and led the way.  Tony stared after her in amazement before darting behind her and the body as a bullet flew too close to his head for comfort.

When they reached the stairwell they were heading toward, Marie led the way while Fritz and Thea continued to shoot.  Once everyone was running up the stairwell, dead officer bodies left at the bottom, Fritz and Thea followed suit. Thea pulled the heavy door shut after she ducked inside.  There wasn’t any way to lock it, so she focused on hurrying up the stairs instead of worrying about keeping the door closed. Fritz stayed behind her, helping her to her feet when her ankle shot a sharp pain up her leg and she stumbled.

“Almost there, Rossi,”  he muttered, pulling her arm around his shoulder and helping her the rest of the way up the stairs.

When they burst through the door at the top of the stairwell, they were met with an admittedly smaller than expected army of officers charging at them.  Tony and Carol sprinted down the hall that would lead them out of the compound while Fritz, Marie, and Thea shot at the guards. Jude worked on shooting officers that tried to follow them up the stairs, not stopping until Marie grabbed his collar and pulled him out of the way of a rain of bullets.

“I almost had it,”  he grumbled, spinning and shooting the last guard standing in front of them.  Thea glared at him, turning her gun on him to grumble about taking away her shot.  Jude just knocked the gun out of his face and hurried after Tony and Carol. They had maybe ten seconds before they were going to be shooting at another influx of officers if they didn’t move.

Tony and Carol were waiting anxiously outside the compound for them, breaking into a dead sprint when the last four surfaced outside.  Tony raced to the car he, Pengin, Thea, and Marie had used to get there, hot wiring it while Carol dove into the passenger seat.

Fritz had his arm under Thea’s shoulders, helping her limp quickly to the car.  When the compound door flew open, he picked her up entirely. She leaned over his shoulder, grabbing a pistol from her waistband and shooting at the guards as they ran out of the compound.  They fell in the doorway, making it more difficult for the others to get around them. Fritz barely remembered to crouch lower than usual when getting in the backseat of the small car acting as their get-away vehicle.

“Go,”  Thea demanded, pounding on Tony’s seat as she slammed her door shut.  She continued shooting out the window as they sped away.