A/N: So, hey! This is from a prompt based on the promo for 2x19, and it'll probably be something like a two- or three-shot AU. I was bored and had access to my mum's laptop for a while, I thought I'd get onto this :) Currently, it's 1:17am here in NZ, so if I don't reply quickly, assume I'm asleep. :P
DISCLAIMER: I don't even own this story, all credit goes to Serenity Shadowstar for coming up with the idea! (I have a lot of prompts from her, so it might be those ones coming out soon, depending on how my dear PC fares.)
Reviews make me happy! :3 Enjoy!
Well. Kara Lynn Palamas thought to herself as she watched Bobbi Morse and Lance Hunter bicker constantly as they went about making their lunches, Mack chipping in every now and then. I can see why Grant cares for them.
She sat at one of the tables in the rec room, feet propped up on the edge and swinging back a little on the chair she was seated in. Munching on the egg salad sandwich she'd been waiting all day for, she nearly choked as Bobbi made a particularly witty response.
Mack, on the other hand, winced. "Hey, Bobbi, come on! Take it easy." Bobbi turned to look at him, not happy that he wasn't backing her up. Kara thought she'd step in and see how much they took to newcomers.
"Well I thought it was funny."
The rest of the room looked at her, mouths opening in surprise. Bobbi, on the other hand, morphed hers into a delighted grin. "Thanks, Kara! You boys are just too sensitive." With a wink, she went back to her lunch.
Mack and Hunter grumbled, knowing neither of them would win when the women teamed up.
"It was still in poor taste." Hunter mumbled, wanting to get the last word in. Bobbi just snorted.
"Can't be, Kara liked it." She finished with the cutting board, added the last layers to her sandwich and joined Kara at the table. "So! What's Ward really like behind all the masks?"
Kara blinked at her. "Ah…do you really want to open with that?"
"We're all one big family here. Limited privacy, nosy gossip, the whole shebang." Bobbi waved her sandwich around, nearly losing the contents. "You're part of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the fight against Hydra? You're part of the family. So. I'll ask again. What's the deal with Ward?"
Kara had a smile that grew wider as Bobbi continued speaking. How can they accept me so easily? "He's…nice. Sweet. Thoughtful. Somewhat impulsive. Has a bit of a temper that he often tries to rein in."
"Ah. The Berserker Staff." Bobbi nodded, saying the words around a mouthful of food.
"Hey, Bobbi, do you mind not doing that?" Mack complained from the other end of the table. His face held an expression of disgust at her lack of manners. "Wait 'til you've finished what you got in your mouth."
"What? I'm hungry."
"Yeah, well, so are the rest of us, love. And we'd rather not lose our appetites." Hunter chimed in as he sat down next to Mack. "Kara agrees with us, right?" he stated, then checked to ensure he had his information right.
She just shrugged. "Didn't bother me. Grant's worse."
Bobbi, her mouth now empty of food, laughed loudly. "Oh, I am so telling Skye that one." She continued to chuckle at the thought of Skye causing mischief with that information. Kara's face fell a little, and Bobbi was instantly on alert. "You okay with that?"
"Yeah, yeah, you can tell her. It's just the way he eats." Kara replied moodily, misinterpreting what the blonde agent was meaning.
"No, I meant mentioning Skye. I'm gonna tell her that anyway."
Kara sighed. "It's just that I don't get why he's still trying to help her after she shot him the last time he did that."
"Maybe it's because he has a clearer idea of what constitutes 'helping'."
"Though his call to not shoot us out of the sky was greatly appreciated." Hunter added. "I distinctly remember the Koenigs calling him out on killing their brother."
"And then he saved their asses." Mack finished for him. "Doesn't sound like an all-round bad guy to me."
"Speaking of the Koenigs, where are they?" Kara asked, wanting to move on with the conversation. They're taking his side. I'm sure he'd appreciate that, but it sounds like they want him to be with Skye.
"Dunno." Hunter answered her, frowning in thought. "Haven't seen them since the week after Puerto Rico."
"Coulson probably had them on some mission since then." Bobbi said. "We couldn't even find them, so maybe it had something to do with the Theta Protocol?"
"What is the Theta Protocol? You're all making it sound like some devastating secret."
"Well, if it isn't devastating, then why was it kept from May?"
"I don't know, you tell me!" Hunter started raising his voice. "You're the one who knows so much about it!"
"We don't!" she snapped back. "It's what we're trying to find out!"
"Guys!" Kara shouted to get their attention. "Keep the domestics to a minimum, would you?"
Mack's booming laugh gained everyone's attention easily. "You'll soon find out that is their minimum."
Kara looked from one ex-spouse to the other, then back at Mack. "So where's the popcorn?"
Fitz typed away furiously on the holocomm, Simmons offering her help every now and then. They were both pretty tense in their postures, glancing suspiciously at the man relaxing on the couch. Ward, the culprit of their distress, was casually reading a book. Or at least, he was pretending to do so. He was in fact, eavesdropping in on the scientists' discussion on how to find Skye.
"Jemma, please stop, I can do this on my own!" Fitz hissed, frustrated when he was getting nowhere.
"Can you, Fitz? You're struggling as much as anyone. I'm afraid that the only person who could possibly find Skye like this is Skye herself." She countered, and Ward looked up with a frown.
"Is that really the best attitude to go with right now, Simmons?" he said, breaking his hour-long silence with the question. Simmons looked up while Fitz froze.
"You're most certainly not one to talk about best attitudes, Ward." She replied furiously. "And if you can't find a way to find Skye that doesn't involve being caught up with Hydra, then I suggest you keep your mouth shut." She turned back to the holocomm, expecting him to go back to his book.
On the contrary, the mention of 'Hydra' in the context of the question sparked a thought in Ward's head. "Actually…" he started to say. Both Fitz and Simmons looked at him now, eyebrows raised in synchronisation. He looked up at them in thoughtful consideration, like he was trying to put his idea into words. "S.H.I.E.L.D. got a read on the teleporter's quantum signature, right?"
"Yes…" Simmons said slowly, as thought she was speaking to a child. Fitz, on the other hand, furrowed his brows as he started to follow the path that Ward had taken.
"And the S.H.I.E.L.D. satellites are functioning again?" he placed his book down on the coffee table and slowly made his way over to them.
"Yes!" she snapped in arrogant exasperation, not really wanting to hear him speak. However, her desperation to find Skye before Hydra did won out. "What is your point?"
"So send out the information to the satellites and you should get a read on his location fairly quickly. He took Skye, so it's only logical that she'd be where he is."
"Yeah…" Fitz mused. "Yeah, that should work." He began opening up the files in the Index.
Simmons was equally impressed. Why did I not figure this out? "Are there any locations we can rule out? It'd make getting the information back a lot quicker."
"If wherever he took her was in North America, then List would've found him before now. Likewise with Strucker in Europe." Ward replied, leaning against the open frame at a reasonably comfortable distance for the scientists.
Simmons huffed. "Are you sure you're not still Hydra? With all that information you've got on them." In contrast to her accusatory statements, however, she wasn't looking at him while she said them. A fact that did not go unnoticed by Ward.
"We got that through Mike's eye." Fitz informed her. "When we sent him in to watch over Bakshi."
"So, Africa, Asia, Oceania. It's still a lot of area to cover."
"Don't forget Antarctica."
"Och, Fitz, I don't think that she'll be there."
"Perhaps you could try focusing on China first." Ward urged. Both pairs of eyes fell on him.
"China?"
"Why China, specifically?" Fitz chimed in, at almost exactly the same time as when Simmons spoke.
"Skye's history started in the Hunan Province. From what Cal said, there's a whole race of powered people, but he wasn't one of them."
"Skye mentioned her mother wasn't supposed to age."
Ward inclined his head. "Right. So, I would imagine that there would be some sort of sanctuary in the area for said powered people to learn to control what they get."
Simmons looked confused. "But the Kree temple was in Puerto Rico! Why would they base themselves halfway around the world?"
"They've probably found other ways of triggering the change. I mean, they've had these abilities for hundreds, perhaps thousands of generations. The temple looked pretty empty when you searched it, right?"
"Aside from Raina. But we didn't find anyone else in those tunnels, and the only population down there right now would be marine life. It's a pity we have this Hydra mess to clean up, or I would've stayed down there just studying it."
It was Ward's turn to look confused. "You had the potential to learn about alien biology and tech, and you just flooded the place? Don't you think it would have helped you figure out what happened in the temple that Skye wasn't telling you?"
Simmons was not happy with his outburst. "Honestly, I was terrified about what could happen. That alien biology and tech cause Trip to crumble and Mack to be controlled."
"And wouldn't understanding it help to counter its effects? S.H.I.E.L.D. tampered round with barely understood alien DNA before, and we all know how well that turned out." He finished with a grimace.
"Can we table this discussion for a later date?" Coulson's voice sounded from the other end of the briefing room. "You have a lead?" FitzSimmons nodded. "Good. Follow it up."