IF KATHARINE'S LIFE WAS A MOVIE, she would have been dead by now.

In her twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight, years of living, she had managed to escape roughly one-hundred and sixty-five near-death or high-risk encounters. And that was only while on the job.

But never had she been in a situation as high-risk as this one. No, in this situation, she had so much more to lose than just her life. In this situation, one wrong move could mean the end of the line for her best friend, Nina Hayes, as well.

Katharine figured the only way for her and Nina to make it out of this was to find out what Erika wanted. Her abilities wouldn't help her here, not when Erika came prepared.

But luckily it didn't take Katharine long to figure out why Erika was doing this.

Erika Manning, twenty-eight years old, had been rejected from the Academy twice. The first time was when she had applied for Operations right out of high school. Most commonly known as the most rigorous and the toughest to get into, eighteen-year-old Erika Manning figured she'd go big or go home.

At the end of the day, she was forced to go home.

The second time she applied was through Communications. It was the easiest way into SHIELD and unlike Operations or SciTech, the prerequisite wasn't as difficult to meet. All you needed was a pass on a psych evaluation and experience in data analysis.

It didn't take Katharine long to figure out that it was the psych eval Erika Manning had failed.

So, Katharine figured, Erika had decided that if SHIELD wouldn't take her in, then she'd have to take their agents out.

"Fourteen pairs," Erika had boasted. "They never even saw me coming and your little agency is still none the wiser."

Katharine felt a wave of anger rush over her. That was twenty-eight retired agents that Erika had managed to track down and kill and if Katharine wasn't careful, she and Nina could become lucky numbers twenty-nine and thirty.

So with her gun trained between Spencer Reid's eyes, she tried her best to keep her cool.

"Erika," she tried, stance unwavering. If she couldn't protect Nina, she could at least stand in between her and Spencer. "If you let my friends go, I'll bring you directly to the director of SHIELD himself."

"You're lying," Erika insisted, "you don't even work for SHIELD anymore! You're lying!"

Katharine heard Nina whimper out in pain from behind her. She did everything in her power not to turn around. Her compliance was the only thing between Nina and a bullet to her head.

"You're right," Katharine said, her voice shaking ever so slightly. "I don't work for SHIELD anymore, at least not officially."

Spencer looked at her in confusion.

Trust me, she mouthed, and he did.

Katharine slowly reached for her back pocket and took out a black leather wallet, similar to the FBI wallet badges that they carried. She flipped it open to reveal a yellow identification card paired with the SHIELD crest. She turned the badge around slowly so that Erika could see.

"SHIELD level blue," Katharine said. "Emergency field operative and specialist. In my pocket, there's a cell phone that I used to call the Director. It's an unsaved number, under Aaron Hotchner's call."

Katharine wished she thought of it sooner, but if Erika wanted to be an agent of SHIELD so badly, there was one other way for her to achieve her goal.

There was a third way into SHIELD that didn't require having at least one PhD or a passed psych evaluation. It was how Katharine had been able to get into the field so quickly after being recruited and it was the reason Nina had been able to graduate from SciTech a year earlier than most.

A direct bypass from the Director. It would make anyone a SHIELD agent no matter the qualifications required.

"Slide it over here," Erika ordered. "The phone."

Katharine dropped her SHIELD badge and drew Detective Santiago's stolen cell. She looked Spencer in the eye and motioned downward with her head, telling him to move with her.

As she bent down to the floor, Spencer followed her movements. Katharine slid the phone behind her and stood back up.

Katharine listened as Erika picked up the phone and called the number. The entire room seemed to hold its breath as they waited for someone, anyone, to pick up the call on the other end.

And then, finally, someone answered. "Coulson."

"What happened to Director Fury?" Erika demanded. "Katharine, turn around!"

Katharine turned, her own weapon still in her hand. Erika's gun pressed harder into Nina's temple before she decided to point it at the light-skinned woman.

"Do you really think I'm an idiot?" she raged. "Drop your gun!"

"Director Fury died in January," Katharine insisted, clicking the safety back onto her weapon and letting it drop to the floor next to her SHIELD badge. "He was shot by the Winter Soldier in Captain America's apartment."

"No!" Erika raged. "Don't turn around! I know you're lying! Director Fury isn't dead--!"

Quicker than Katharine could compute, Spencer had whipped out his weapon and shot the raging lunatic and two gunshots rang out before a singular body dropped to the floor.

Nina sobbed as she was released, stumbling out of the way as Erika dropped her own smoking weapon and fell backward into the floor.

Katharine drew her hand away from her stomach, suddenly aware of the excruciating pain she felt emanating from just above her belly button. She dropped to her knees, using the doorway as a crutch.

Shoot first, ask later, she guessed before letting the familiar darkness consume her.

WHEN KATHARINE CAME TO SEVEN HOURS LATER, her first instinct was to panic. She tried to sit up but was greeted with a paralyzing pain in her lower abdomen. After rediscovering that she had been shot, she figured she should stay put.

Katharine groaned, settling back in the bed before taking the time to observe her surroundings. As far as she could tell, she was in a regular hospital room and not one of the insanely sterile and high-tech medbay rooms that SHIELD often utilized. That was a good sign in itself.

The curtain on the window was drawn, which wasn't an unusual sight. The first thing she did as a SHIELD agent in a non-SHIELD hospital was to draw the curtains but seeing as she was the only SHIELD agent allowed near the BAU that she knew, it was concerning.

The next thing she noticed was her actual inability to see, which didn't help her as much when the door opened and a blonde woman entered. The darkness of the hospital room compared with her genetic nearsightedness hid the woman's identity from Katharine's view.

"Who are you?" Katharine asked, squinting slightly. She tried to make out the woman but came up with nothing as the blob-like figure moved just out of her range of visibility.

"Did they take your contacts out?" the blonde woman asked, coming to her side. She stepped into the light, into Katharine's field of view and her image became that much clearer.

Her features sharpened, came into focus, in front of Katharine even if she had to blink a few more times. Despite the astonishing lack of red, she recognized the woman immediately.

"Natasha?" Katharine asked in disbelief. "But Coulson... Coulson lied when he said you were coming. I-I don't--"

"Coulson didn't call me in," the newly-dyed blonde revealed. "Your team did."

Katharine furrowed her eyebrows. Her team? But she didn't have Natasha's number saved anywhere. In order for them to get that number, they would have had to hack into her computer's safe files and, oh...

"Garcia," Katharine breathed out in relief. She hadn't fucked up after all.

Natasha nodded, a smile on her face. "You know, you have a very dedicated boyfriend out there. He stayed when the rest of your team decided to go home. Outlasted your cousin even."

Katharine frowned. "Do you have my glasses? And my boyfriend? I don't have a boyfriend."

"How are you feeling?" Natasha asked, ignoring Katharine's questions and passing the curly-haired girl her glasses.

Katharine slid her frames back onto her face, blinking a few times to allow her eyes to readjust to being able to properly see. It was nice being able to distinguish all the blobs in the room from each other.

"Like I got shot," Katharine replied to Natasha's question. She laughed slightly causing the pain to flare up once again. "Fuck, did you tell the doctors to up my pain meds? I can practically feel my body burning through the morphine."

Natasha pursed her lips. "I'll ask them to up the dosage in a second, but really. How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine, Tash. I've been shot before. I'll live." Katharine rolled her eyes at the woman's overbearing personality. She attempted crossing her arms over her chest before realizing that it hurt to move just about anything. "How's Nina?"

"She got off luckier than you did," Natasha said, resting a hand on top of Katharine's. "And Erika was shot with an ICER. Your team took care of her but you and Nina might have to show up to testify in court."

Katharine tried to sit up in the hospital bed once more, gritting her teeth as pain shot through her body. Out of all the times, she'd been shot, her stomach was not one of them. She wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Natasha arranged her pillows behind her to make the position a little more comfortable.

"She confessed to me that she killed fourteen other partners. That's twenty-eight retired agents," Katharine turned her head slightly. "Do you think it would've been better if I just stayed a SHIELD agent?"

"I think you left the agency for a reason," Natasha sighed, "and that you've got a new team full of remarkable and dedicated people that care about you more than any team of SHIELD agents ever have."

"More than you?" Katharine asked, a small smile on her face. "Admit it, Romanoff. You care for me. That's why you came when my team called."

Natasha reached up and ruffled her hair slightly, contributing to the rat's nest she knew sat up there. It would be a pain to brush out later and Katharine was not looking forward to it.

"I have to go, but I'll get your boyfriend in here," Natasha teased, leaning in and pressing a kiss to Katharine's forehead.

Katharine laughed slightly. "I don't have a boyfriend, but go ahead. Will you call?"

"With a new number as always, Songbird," Natasha said, letting go of Katharine's hand and stepping away from her hospital bed.

Katharine watched as the older woman left her room gracefully and after a few minutes, a taller figure appeared in the doorway.

"Katharine," the man breathed out in what she would categorize as relief. He closed the door behind him before walking to her side and grabbing onto one of her hands. "How are you feeling?"

Katharine leaned back further into the stack of pillows behind her. She sighed.

"I'm fine," she repeated the same answer she gave Natasha. "This isn't the first time I've been shot."

Spencer raised her hand to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to her knuckles. She couldn't help but wonder what it would feel like to have his lips pressed up against something else.

"I know you, Kat," he said lowly. "Please don't lie to me."

Katharine squeezed his hand slightly. She looked up at him and was instantly drawn to his eyes. The same eyes that she noticed on the first day she met him, on the day she had to leave him, and the day she was finally able to return to him.

"I'm not fine," she admitted, looking away from him in a mixture of shame and embarrassment. "But I will be."

Her heart grew heavy in her chest when she came to that realization. She wasn't fine, she wasn't okay but she would have to be. And she would be, eventually.

"I'll be here," Spencer decided. He sat on the edge of her hospital bed easily and brought a hand up to her face, caressing her cheek with his unusually soft hands.

Katharine felt the tears well up behind her eyes and before she knew it, she was crying. Spencer gently took her glasses off her face and settled them onto the rolling hospital table. He pulled her into his chest and let her cry, stroking her back and muttering out words of assurance.

If Spencer held her like that forever, she would have been okay with it.

"You're okay," he said, holding her even closer than she realized humanly possible. It was like he was making a promise to her, letting her know he wasn't going to allow her to slip through his fingers ever. It was comforting, being wanted like he wanted her.

"I'm here, you'll be okay," he continued to reassure her through her sobs. "Everything will be okay."

And she believed him.