One Last Chance - Opposites Distract
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Marvel™.
Note: this is sort of a sequel to an earlier story, One Last Chance. Reading it is not required, but it helps.
Leo Fitz does not like Raina Underwood. The relationship between the S.H.I.E.L.D. team members and the girl with the flowers has been always strained – the damned woman has always appeared to be just slightly too comfortable and familiar with S.H.I.E.L.D. procedures and ops, almost as if she could've been one of them, if she had just made an effort and tried...
For S.H.I.E.L.D. there is no 'try'. There is either 'do' or 'do not'. You are either an agent on the payroll or not. True, the 'not' category is very big, very varied, and for many people it is probably more comfortable than the 'agent' category – so what is Raina doing in the lab?
Filling up for Simmons' absence, that is what, apparently. Due to the terrigenic mist, the girl with the flowers became a literal flower girl (if the flower in question is a cactus, or some sort of a Venus flytrap, perhaps) but now she is back to normal, it seems. No quills, claws or visions of the future. (Her eyes, too, are back normal, though sometimes Leo is certain that he can see glimmers of gold in their depths.) Just unruly, curly black hair, long, delicate hands and fingers, intelligent and well-wrought facial features and a very impressive knowledge of biochemistry, biology and similar life sciences that are probably as good as Jemma's were – plus, as an added bonus, there's a taste and knowledge of clothing too.
Leo does not like Raina, but there is something strange about her – she is not as smart as she thinks she is (though she is very intelligent, let us give her that), but she is also more beautiful than she thinks: she tends to overplay her intelligence, but she underplays her appearance. It is distracting; Leo does not like it – he would rather have her act, as a beautiful woman should - vain (or rightfully proud) about her looks, not about her mind. This reversal thing? It is not right. This was Simmons' role.
Of course, Raina does not try to fill-in Jemma's niche, not really. Skye and Lincoln (or as Raina calls them, Thunder and Lightning) have run into her in Canada, when they were chasing an InHuman there. Turns out, it was Skye's old ex-boyfriend – and no, not Grant Ward (this man seems to have gone off the radar again), but an even older one than he – Miles...and boy, had he changed. He once was a hacker, a pseudo-intellectual (Ward called him that, Leo hates to do that, but in this case, he has to agree with Ward, his former friend), but now? He looks like some sort of a werewolf, behaves as Gollum did in PJ's movies and is not genetically human anymore.
No, Miles is not an InHuman as Skye and Lincoln are – rather, he is an escaped subject from some secret government lab, his DNA artificially spliced with genes of a dog (or a similar animal) and possibly a bat too. According to Coulson (he and May aren't on speaking terms at the moment), the government of PRC – People's Republic of China – has been known to do that, though they usually prefer to use genes of a brown rat instead, but Miles was unlucky, PRC's secret police caught him while experiencing a setback against Hong Kong's Triads, and used him as a scapegoat or a consolation prize: it doesn't matter, the result is still the same – Miles isn't really human anymore, and no one is sure that curing him won't kill him instead.
Skye, of course, is devastated – and Raina is not helping: as far as she is concerned, if Skye's first ex-boyfriend became a monster after he was dumped, and the second – joined Hydra for real, there is something wrong with her or with men she likes (cough Lincoln cough). Leo does not buy it; hopefully, neither does Lincoln.
Jemma would've helped, but Raina isn't Jemma; of course, according to her, she isn't really Raina either; she claims to have no connection to the girl with the flowers or the flower girl; she is just Raina Underwood, a former member of InGen, who jumped ship after the entire JW fiasco, and who claims to have no former knowledge of S.H.I.E.L.D. The story seems to withstand casual scrutiny, and Coulson plays along (certainly he cannot believe her?) with this latest ploy of Raina.
Of course, Raina is intelligent, and as an asset (rather than an agent) she can be quite useful to S.H.I.E.L.D. – she has figured out how to heal those, who had been altered by the escaped terrigenic mist contaminants and who have an unfortunate reaction to it (say, they just go crazy). Considering that the Secret Warriors (and here we go, fighting other agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. who had gone rogue instead of the true enemy – i.e. Hydra) tend to just throw rogue InHumans and similar beings into the new version of the Fridge, Raina's option actually makes more sense – to Coulson and Skye, Lincoln and, yes, Leo, and Leo doesn't like it. Jemma should have done that, Jemma, who did not like InHumans and similar deviants, and who would have been persuaded to accept Leo's view and been won over and they would have been happy together – but Jemma is gone. Leo is sharing the lab with Raina instead, Raina who does not have any particular problem with the InHumans in general, and who sees working with S.H.I.E.L.D. (or in it) as some sort of opportunity instead.
Leo does not like it. He does not like Raina either. The old Raina had been a weak-willed, selfish, cowardly manipulator, but the last time Skye saw her during her 'green phase', Raina had died in order to help Skye see the truth – and that is enough for Skye, and Lincoln, and Coulson to give Raina a chance here, which she took eagerly enough, and now here she is, working in place of Jemma.
It would have been simpler if she had tried to be Jemma, Leo thinks. He has to give her that – she had not. Rather, she is trying to be herself, or perhaps – someone else, but not Jemma. Seeing this 'familiar stranger' in Jemma's place in the lab just makes Leo sad. He realizes now that Coulson's loving father act is just that – an act, and he honestly doesn't care who gets to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. as long as they're useful, never mind what their moral values are. Considering that Leo has ended-up in his current predicament because he had followed Coulson's lead – onto Bus controlled by Garrett, over the offers made by Gonzales and his crew, etc – this is depressing for it means that Leo had ruined his life for nothing and lost Jemma because of it.
But perhaps this situation can change?
/
Raina Underwood does not dislike Leo Fitz – she feels sorry for him. Poor little idealist, having followed bigger, wiser heads and ended-up with nothing, nothing than what he been given, doing his engineering parts while staring forlornly at the places where his girlfriend had been and angrily at her.
Raina is used at people being angry with her, especially white Anglo-Americans...or their European counterparts. Her biological father had f- buggered her Afro-American mother just because he could, and washed his hands clean off her and Raina, but then along came grandma Dot...
Raina loved her grandma, as did both of her brothers, the only ones, aside from her grandma, who actually cared for her. Her biological father, Roderick, simply did not care about her, for Raina was wrong in both color and gender, so no part of his family she was. Grandma Dot made her family – made her an Underwood and Raina had sworn a long time before this that she will make grandma proud of her, as grandma Dot stared down from above.
Raina's only surviving brother (the other one was lost or at least isn't a part of this world, and Raina admits this isn't a bad thing) doesn't share Raina's view on this – he is more of a Hinduist (tries not to it beef if possible, doesn't really like pork either), so he feels that grandma Dot was already reincarnated into her new life, whatever it is. Raina's does not mind – her bro-bro also believes that grandma Dot has found happiness in her next life/afterlife and that what matters.
She, (and her brother), however, have still to deal with this life, such as it is. Raina's life, as an example, had had more downs than ups, but Raina does not mind. More precisely, she does not mind leaving S.H.I.E.L.D. behind the first time around, in the past – her brother may have eaten S.H.I.E.L.D. PR with a spoon, (in large part because he too hated their father and wanted to be the opposite of the man that Roderick had been, and S.H.I.E.L.D. had given him the opportunity to do that), but Raina... just knew that it wasn't for her. She wanted to matter on her own merit, to show her biological family just what a half-white half-black Underwood could do, and S.H.I.E.L.D., for all of its perks, for all of its powers of persuasion, just couldn't deliver that – so she decided not to take its oath, not to commit perjury, and left.
Her brother did not like that. He asked his S.O. – a man whom he had respected and loved as a father – to talk to Raina. That is when their troubles started; unlike her brother, Raina recognized the man for what he was, a hollow fraud, but rather than reveal him for that to her former superiors (possibly springboarding back into S.H.I.E.L.D.), she actually took the road less travelled – and it took her into some very dark places, but also given her some very dark, obscure knowledge, knowledge that was almost enough for her to beat Skye-Mary-Sue Poots – almost. In the world they live in, the stakes often include one's head, and Raina fully intended to lose it when she confronted Skye's mother on that bridge, ironically, she honestly intended to die – but she did not. It seems that being part plant, having not red blood, but amber sap in one's veins could be useful when one is stabbed in the neck and is thrown off a bridge into water...
Things got very dark after that, actually, but Raina's brother came through to her once more – all hail the mystical power of the Path of Dreams – and she was back. She was herself once again, and she knew who she was at last. This was more than what director Coulson had, and that was why this man, this formidable, intelligent, unconventionally handsome, clever, and perfectly proportionate man was unhappy – and his little entourage was unhappy. Perhaps Raina would reveal one day to him why he was unhappy (cough Mrs. Phil Coulson cough), and help him to become happy – or perhaps not. Bro-bro is right; people are not puppets to be jerked on strings, and perhaps someday the crew of S.H.I.E.L.D. will realize just who exactly their glorious is-
This brings Raina to Leo Fitz. Not unlike director Coulson, Leo Fitz is an easy man to underestimate or misjudge, which is what her brother did – once. Ever since he has made an effort not to do that again – more woes to Dr. Fitz, perhaps, for when Raina's brother judges you correctly, you often find yourself in a casket or a coffin built precisely according to your measurements, for you are dead.
Unlike in case of director Coulson, Raina does not think that the death of Leo Fitz would make the world a poorer place, but she does not want him to die either. Hell, she does not want Miss Skye to die, not anymore. She wouldn't mind if she suffered, but die? No, not really. She can be magnanimous like that, truly, in case of Skye – or as she began to call her (because Skye finds it annoying) Thunder.
In Fitz's case, she doesn't need to be magnanimous – he really is adorable, like some sort of a Be-My-Valentine doll, and she just wants to hug him, and to play with his hair, and his little boyish member, and just see if she cannot get a boy-toy as one of her perks, because not unlike director Coulson, he is also proportionate, and Raina likes proportionate people – but she has no intention of becoming her biological mother, (who she barely remembers), and so it's first ring on the finger, and then it's off to the bed.
Leo Fitz is adorable and intelligent. He is also in love with someone else, and frankly, he does not fit Raina's type, not really. If he actually got his head out of his ass and started thinking for himself...maybe.
Only that is apparently when he is beginning to do lately. Raina knows director Coulson by now, she had recognized him for who he really is, but director Coulson himself does not. He still believes that he is who he thinks he is, he does not know himself, and that is his undoing. All hype must end, all salesmen dreams disappear, and not unlike grenades, when these illusions explode, people get hurt.
It seems now that this is what happening, at least in case of Leo Fitz – his illusion is beginning to crumble, he is beginning to realize what kind of world he is living in, and he is not happy. All Raina has to do in order to achieve that – is to be herself. She does not need to manipulate Leo into liking her; she does not need to lie or to spin tall tales – all she has to do is to be herself – a (half) Afro-American woman who also happens to be a genius and not Leo's girlfriend, and the poor little man (honestly, he wears thick-sole shoes) will become unhappy enough and realistic enough to start thinking for himself...and then what?
Both Raina and her brother have a complex relationship with S.H.I.E.L.D., and their initial plan was to keep S.H.I.E.L.D. at a distance, but that didn't really work – not with Skye's original ex-boyfriend running around possibly eating people (he was eating live animals and birds, for real) and stirring trouble as a random crazy factor: Raina had to help, unfortunately, and that had actually gotten her an unexpected opening to S.H.I.E.L.D. (of course, her acting skills played a role too) so she took it, and for the moment her brother would rather have S.H.I.E.L.D. (or at least Coulson's branch of it, perhaps other parts too) floating around for his own reasons and of course – his own idealism. Raina is not as gung-ho as he is about that, but she can certainly agree that a world without S.H.I.E.L.D. is not necessarily a good thing. And if Leo Fitz – Dr. Leo Fitz (does he really think that pronouncing his rank and title would make him more intimidating? How adorable!) being a part of it is what requires to keep this part of S.H.I.E.L.D. running, then maybe she will do it.
After all, Leo Fitz may not be the man that director Coulson is, but who cares? Raina is still going to win the latter's heart (or some other body part, she is adaptable with her plans), but if being 'friends' with Leo Fitz is part of this process, then why not be friends? It might even be fun.
Besides, if she can remain respectful and semi-friendly with Skye and Lincoln, (or rather – Thunder and Lightning as prefers to call them, for it annoys them – especially Skye), surely she can be friendly with Fitz? And if it does not work – well, she will still score points with the rest of the crew, and that, for the moment, what matters.
End