One Last Chance - Raina's recovery

by bhut

S3 AU (Canon-compatible). While on a mission, Skye and Lincoln find Raina in the woods - alive but barely. They save her. Now what? And how does Skye's ex-boyfriend Miles fit into this?

One last chance – Raina's recovery

Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Marvel™.

Note: this story goes before Opposites distract, but after One last chance. Reading these stories is helpful to understand what is going on.

Skye

The first time Raina meets Skye in her post-mortem existence (at least that is what she thinks), is when the other InHuman steps on her. In so many ways this is how their lives been ever since the two have become aware of each other: Raina works so hard to achieve something or other, and it just falls into Skye's lap instead, leaving Raina behind in the dust, trampled underfoot. It is annoying-

"Not dead yet," Raina wheezes, as Skye accidentally steps on her torso. "No, not!"

"Gah!" Skye yelps as she jumps into the air, probably 8 feet or more. "Raina, are you alive? What are you doing here?"

Raina tries to see Skye so that she could glare at her, but her neck hurts and she does not dare move it: Jiaying's blade has cut deep, and if Raina was a human with red blood, rather than a plant with amber sap, she would be dead-

"No, not plant," Raina desperately wheezes, frantically seeking human touch with her claws. "Human. Human! Please!"

"Oh Raina," she hears Skye mutter. "I don't know what you deserve, but this? This is too much even for you!"

"Skye?" another voice sounds, and Raina remembers the speaker, matching the voice to a face – Lincoln. One of the few members of Jiaying's crew who had been friendly to her – but then again, so was Gordon, the man had thought her to be beautiful, and look how that turned out. Who cares about Lincoln?

"...She recognizes me," Raina hears Lincoln speak. "Do you think she's working with-"

"Are you kidding?" Skye replies in an incredulous tone of voice. "Does she look like someone healthy or well? I am not sure how she got here-"

"She got carried here by the river – it meanders-"

"It what?"

"The river goes loopy here – she got deposited onto the bank, where we have found her."

"Sorry," Skye sounds rather apologetic, "I'm not thinking like myself. Let's get her back to our post and start anew."

"Agreed."

And Raina is lifted up and darkens out. A part of her feels like she should cry and fight and seek to return to her warm dark mother earth – but she bites down on that feeling.

Better to die a human than live a plant.

Leo Fitz

The first time Raina meets Leo Fitz in her post-mortem life is a few hours later (she hopes). She is no longer among plants, but rather – in a room. It is a dry, sunlit, airy room. There is a large window (probably unbreakable, but Raina does not try to break it) that lets in plenty of sunshine. There is a plain table, and a chair and simple bed. There are several potted plants in niches in the walls. There is a sink with water and a toilet. There are also several large jars, filled with earth, but no plants. Maybe there are seeds – Raina does not care. She has found herself in a room reminiscent to that of a greenhouse – and for personal reasons this scares the life out of her: this is just S.H.I.E.L.D. version of the green Hell that she almost was trapped in earlier.

Raina knows that she has no options – S.H.I.E.L.D. must have listed her as an enemy and she should feel lucky that she is not dead to begin with. She does not. She would rather die. This is not an improvement-

"Miss? Raina? Miss? Are you okay?"

The speaker is familiar and as Raina turns around – she did not realize that she had backed herself into a corner - she sees him. He is familiar – the young engineer who worked with agent Coulson and Skye.

"Fitz?" Raina says thickly, for her throat still hurts and she does not dare to speak long sentences – not yet, anyways.

"Oh, you remember me!" the scientist says in an almost pleased voice before turning more serious, and gentle, once more. "Anyways, Raina, hello. It is us. We're S.H.I.E.L.D." He pauses, realizing that he is not doing a very impressive job, but gamely continues on. "We're friends. I mean, yeah, you were never too friendly with us, but, uh, you did help Skye back there with her mother, and Skye and Lincoln have found you and brought you here-"

"Stop," Raina says quietly, forcing to ignore the stream of consciousness that the man was spouting. "The lab. Please. Must go there-"

"The lab?" Fitz is sounding genuinely confused. "But why would you want to go there?" He pauses. "Why do you want to go anywhere? We thought that you would be happy here, you did claim to like flowers-"

Raina cannot speak, for words do not come, and not just because her throat hurts. (Actually, it hurts less – she seems to have received some treatment for the wound, or perhaps her InHuman genes have kicked through.) She just stands there and weeps. Her tears are more watery and liquid than when she was human, but she cannot help it – she just weeps.

"Please don't cry," Fitz says, sounding more than slightly uncomfortable by this. "I'll take you to the lab if that'll make you happy."

And so off they go.

/

Paradoxically perhaps, (though not to her), once Raina is in the lab, her spirits lift up, and she begins to feel happy by just being in it... but that isn't just what she does. Rather, she takes few good sniffs, fires up more of her neutrons (brain cells), and gets to work.

"...What are you doing?" Leo Fitz finally speaks up when he realizes that Raina isn't going back to her sunlit little plant cell, and isn't just rummaging through the lab, but has a purpose.

"Hush. Please. Important. Must work," Raina rasps, as she presses one of her fingers to his lips (it is the side that does not have any spines.) "Please."

"Well, if it is important...okay," Leo relents. "How can I help?"

"Why?" Raina asks, genuinely startled this time.

"I, uh, don't know what you're doing, but you're not just messing things up and around," comes the reply. "You appear to know what you're doing, but are having problems doing it, with those, ah, long fingernails of yours. After, uh, Ward threw Jemma and me out of a plane, I had problems doing things too – Mack helped. Jemma too, when she came back. Now it is my turn to help others. Ok?"

Raina is not that proud to refuse help if it is offered freely. She accepts, and working together, with Fitz doing most of the delicate work, and Raina helping and explaining, they get the initial stages done in half the time that Raina has initially expected – and then it was time to go back outside.

Lincoln

The first time Raina meets Lincoln in her post-mortem existence, it's back in the woods. Once more the greenery is out there, whispering and calling out to her, claiming that she is one of them, but Leo Fitz is out there as well, constantly chatting and talking and asking, and it makes it easier. Yes, on occasions she has to reply something along the lines of "Yes, Leo", and "True, Leo", and "show you later, promise", but it makes it worthwhile. Listening to Leo Fitz helps Raina keep a grip upon her own humanity – in fact, this makes both of those elements (Raina's grip and Raina's humanity) stronger.

Furthermore, Raina had not devolved so much that she cannot multitask: she is listening to Leo Fitz, replying to him, and collecting the plants whose elements, compounds and chemicals she needs to do her latest trick at the same time. She is keeping an eye (and an ear – though with Leo Fitz around it is, admittedly, hard to do) on their surroundings too, and so, when the attack comes, it does not catch her by surprise.

It does catch Leo, or rather – she does. Even as she is handing over her latest clippings over to him, she suddenly pushes him both down and out of the way, and so the Ozark Werewolf (although they're still in China, in the vicinity of Li Shi, their attacker is clearly not Chinese or a part of Li Shi's community to begin with), but looks and smells like a stereotypical hillbilly, with a lot of lycanthropic features.

Raina had seen werewolves – in Cuba, who had been working as bodyguards for the island's leader, just before the latter kicked Garrett (and the rest of them) off the land. To be fair, he was justified – an old hard-line Communist, seeing Quinn kiss Garrett on both cheeks and all but proclaiming his love for him, and not the platonic variety either – yeah, his reaction was easy to predict. (Raina does not admit it, but she misses those days – even at his worst, Garrett was an easier man to get around than Zubo, yeah).

This, however, is irrelevant – what is relevant is that Leo is out of the fire and Raina is in and their attacker bites her instead. The result isn't unlike to the theoretical scenario of what would happen if the Coyote, aiming for the Roadrunner, took a good bite out of a cactus instead – the result is largely undamaged (and unhurt) cactus, the Roadrunner is long gone, and the Coyote is trying to get the needles out of his gums and tongue.

Only in this occasion the Coyote appears to be more of a hillbilly something – a Yeti (also known as the skunk ape), a werewolf, or even the Gollum from Tolkien's books as he still moves around, clearly in pain and confused, but not down for the count – at least until Skye and Lincoln arrive and hit him with a double dose of both lightning and thunder (well, vibrations technically, but Raina decides to call it thunder here and now). Then the new InHuman (though Raina doubts that – there is something about him that is clearly different from the inhabitants of Li Shi) is down for the count and Raina sees both Skye and Lincoln clearly for the first time.

"Fitz?" Skye says incredulously. "What are you doing here? Raina?"

Raina melancholically stares at her arm – the one that was bitten. She methodically pulls out bits of teeth out of her skin. They do not hurt, she cannot feel pain, but she is human and thus she has no intention of walking around with bits of someone else's teeth in her arms. "Hello. Hate you so much. Thank you," she tells Skye, before turning and facing Lincoln. "Hello again. Thank you."

And then there is awkward silence.

Director Coulson

The first time Raina meets director Coulson (not agent, not anymore), in her post-mortem existence, it is quite some time later after the incident in the woods. Once the foursome got back inside, Skye and Lincoln quickly took their quarry to a containment cell, with Leo following them...to talk about something, he told Raina (guiltily, but he still left with them).

Raina, surprisingly, did not mind. She told them that they could use her cell, for she did not mind, and walked back to the lab, where she quickly finished adding the components to her formula. As she did it, she had some second (and third, and fourth) thoughts, and changed the final compound in some small, yet significant ways.

But she still drank it.

/

That was then, and now Raina was busy deciphering the DNA code of the other new arrival – the one that had been running around the local woods recently, supposedly eating people (as Lincoln told her and Leo on the way back). True, the deciphering, or decoding, was done by a machine, but Raina was the one running the machine – apparently Leo, Skye and Lincoln forgot to do that in all of the excitement...and there was excitement on the base: Raina could hear people running around – not a lot of people, admittedly, but still.

She ignored it, or rather – did not participate, for one of the changes that her initial plan acquired was her skin color: she still was green, something that she had intended to fix, but now...

"Excuse me, miss," a cultured, and a rather friendly, voice spoke up. "But did you see a green woman around here?"

"Over there," Raina pointed to one of the mirrors hanging on the wall, which reflected her at the time.

"Excuse me?" the man (who was director Coulson, but Raina decided to jerk him slightly all the same) took a look at the mirror that reflected Raina, then at Raina herself, then at the mirror once more, and then at Raina – one last time. "Oh, I see."

There was a pause during which both parties stared at each other, clearly waiting for the other person to speak. The director, finally, spoke first.

"So, Raina, how are you doing?"

"Better, but then again, I was either dying or becoming a plant, so anything is probably better than what had been," Raina replied quietly.

"But didn't you like flowers?"

"As a person, yes, not as a fellow plant."

Another pause.

"So what are you doing?" Coulson asked, still quietly.

"Deciphering the DNA of the bloke who bit me," Raina said simply. "If he is more like me I can reverse engineer him easily enough, if he is like Thunder, or her partner, it'll be harder, and if he's something else, we'll just have to figure it out."

"Thunder...oh, you mean Skye," Coulson shook his head. "Raina, what do you want this time?"

"A new skin – I mean a fake one," Raina shook her head. "I may have figured out what Cal has been missing, research-wise, I am stable and no longer dying or turning into a plant, but I am still green. I cannot go around being green, can I? Being black was tricky enough, you know?"

"The Hulk is green," Coulson could not help but pointing out, despite his better judgement. "He walks around well enough."

"Yes, and he is also wears only pants," Raina pointed out acidly. "I mean, I can go around naked from waist up, but in this case can I have a written permit or something? This is one social experiment that I am not doing solo, you know? See?" And she opened her borrowed lab coat, revealing the torn and stained clothing beneath. Considering that now her body plan was much more human, one of her nipples was clearly visible.

"...Good point," Coulson finally spoke, when Raina had finally closed the lab coat. "This isn't how S.H.I.E.L.D. works, after all."

"Exactly," Raina agreed, "and secondly, whatever you do, I want to be treated a person, not as a plant, which means, no greenhouse rooms or anything like that. I do not know what will happen to me, but I will not be a plant – not a vegetable, nor a tree, a berry bush, no anything. No plant kingdom for me, no."

"And what do you think will happen to you?" Coulson asked, sounding genuinely curious for once.

"I have no idea, honestly," Raina shrugged. "I honestly saw myself dying, I genuinely expected to die – I didn't lie to Skye when I told her that I didn't expect to see her again. I truly do not have any plans, so I am improvising. You?"

"Me?"

"Plans?"

"Let us be honest with each other," the director faced his interlocutrix. "Raina, er-"

"Just Raina is fine for now-"

"Raina. You have been here, from the start, alongside Ward and Garrett. You were not S.H.I.E.L.D., but you clearly saw and knew what they were doing and participated in it, making you, well, a participant. You have no conscience, no compassion-"

"Yes, well, who do you think I am? Grant Ward? Now that man had compassion," Raina said sourly. "You killed his surrogate father, and so far? Rumor had it that he bent over backwards to raise a new leaf with you and did it work?"

There was a pause.

"No, honestly, did it work? Because I didn't hear about him for a while."

"We offered him a deal, once," Coulson said, clearly struggling. "He refused and has gone off the radar, for now."

"What sort of a deal?"

"It included T.A.H.I.T.I.," Coulson shrugged. "He could've lived a normal life, been a good man, you know? Instead..."

"Sir, no offence, but in worst case scenario, you're still talking to the only other person who knows that your machines can be beat," Raina did not back down. "I guess he just didn't want to go through trouble of beating in the first place." She paused and looked at the clock on the wall nearby before continuing. "I guess after all those years of being conditioned by Garrett he has finally begun to think for himself and be his own man."

"And that man just might be rotten to the core," Coulson did not back down either. "The jury is still out on you."

"Ok."

"Ok?"

"Yes. As long as you mean 'man' as human being in general, I have no problems with being called that," Raina nodded. "Go on."

For several long moments Coulson and Raina just stared at each other. "Raina," Coulson finally spoke. "What do you want? The new skin, the new life, where are you leading?"

"Nowhere, sir," Raina immediately replied. "I didn't expect to be anywhere other than an unmarked grave, and yet – here I am. Any suggestions?"

There was a ding.

"Excuse me," Raina looked away from Coulson for the first time and quickly began to print out the data. "Let's see who our new friend is, shall we?"

"Why do you care?" Coulson said, slowly.

"I do not care per se; I just want to escape the void of uncertainty that is my future," Raina snapped. "Hey, don't I know this man?"

"Let me see?" Coulson sounded quite curious himself; he took a look and stiffened. "Oh dear. Poor Skye. I need to talk to her about him." He reached for the printout, but Raina had deftly picked it off the printer first.

"Then let's go and talk to her," she said brightly, and the two of them were off.

Everybody

The first time Raina saw her new...she did not know who they were to her, exactly, but the first time she saw all of them together in her post-mortem existence was in front of the containment cell, which contained-

"Raina!" Skye exclaimed in something that sounded rather like relief. "You're ok." She paused, as she and the others took a good look at Raina's improved looks. "You're better than ok?" she finished in an uncertain tone of voice.

"I figured out the part that your father never did regarding his formula," Raina shrugged. "I'm not so much ok as stable, genetically speaking." A pause. "And before you say anything, Leo Fitz, I was in the lab all this time."

"I came back and took a look – you were gone," Leo shot back.

"No I wasn't – I was in the next room, deciphering the genes from the tooth. Director Coulson didn't have any trouble finding me, you know?"

"Oh, well, I guess, um," Fitz shook his head. "So, now what?"

Raina exhaled. "I don't like you," she told Skye, "as I didn't like your mother; your father's something else, of course. But what I did to you was wrong all the same. I shouldn't have pushed you into sacrificing your humanity for power as you didn't want to, and for that, again, I am genuinely sorry."

"Yes, well, it did work out in the end," Skye said awkwardly. "So no harm no foul – what do you say?"

"I have no idea. Why didn't you let me die? I don't like you and brought you nothing but misery, after all."

"Yes, well, I think you're beginning to change – as a person," Skye added quickly seeing the relatively hostile look in the green woman's eyes. "And hey, you got most of your old looks back, except for the skin color...um. Did this sound racist?"

"I don't understand you," Raina told the other woman flatly, "but I owe you my life and I will do my best to pay you back, somehow or other."

"...This isn't how S.H.I.E.L.D. works," Skye matched Raina tone for tone.

"Am I a part of S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Raina's reply was still just as flat.

"That is a very good question, actually," Skye admitted. "DC?"

"If she wasn't green, I would've recommended T.A.H.I.T.I.," Coulson admitted. "Maybe Cal could use an assistant-"

"Cal could use a personality transplant, one that isn't slavishly devoted to his wife and daughter!" Raina snapped. "And as for you, sir, can I tell you that I am a fast learner? You do not need to trick me with any carrots either! Just show me where the stick is and what it is and I will do my best to avoid it, promise – no treachery, no backstabbing, no nothing!"

"...Garrett has done quite a number on you, hadn't he?" Coulson said after a pause.

Raina shrugged.

"Sir, we could use her in the lab," Leo admitted. "We could use another person there...speaking of the lab, do you know who our new friend is?" He glared sourly at the captive in the cell, who was just sitting there, his tongue flickering in and out from behind a lot very inhuman-like teeth in an animalistic way.

"Yes," Coulson replied, looking even more depressed than before. "And Skye, I'm sorry-"

"For what?" Skye asked, confused, as she grabbed the printout and read it. "Oh God! Miles?"

There was a pause as Leo shifted to take a better look at their captive, (as did Raina). Coulson already could see him, and Lincoln looked just confused.

"Who's Miles?" he asked.

"Skye's ex-boyfriend – the one even before Ward," Leo explained.

"What did happen to him?" Lincoln still did not follow.

"Skye rejected him, just as she had rejected Ward – ex-boyfriend #2," Raina explained brightly. "You're really lucky in some ways, and not-so-lucky in others. Maybe you should talk to Cal – after all, you will be filling his shoes in the not-so-distant future."

Lincoln blinked and looked at Skye. "Maybe I should," he admitted to the green woman. "I mean, Jiaying was a wonderful tutor and person, but when it came to her and Cal? That was something else. Gordon used to tell stories how she and Cal had a sex-a-thon for 72 hours, and both of them came satisfied and sated at the end. That takes a lot of preparation and training – maybe we should start now?" he asked Skye.

There was a pause as Skye stared at Lincoln in a very blank way. "Firstly, I'm not my mother," she growled, before turning to Raina, "and secondly, Miles isn't in this state because of me, got it?"

"You mean, S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't do it?"

"No! Right?" Skye asked Coulson in a much more uncertain tone of voice than before.

"Of course not," Coulson asked sounded insulted here. "Miles...just got caught by PRC at a wrong time – they're currently embroiled in a serious street fight against Hong Kong's Triads and a foreigner, without a passport..."

"We get it," Raina nodded calmly. "And Thunder?" she turned to Skye.

"Don't call me that-"

"I can fix him back. I have seen this sort of thing. There are bonds that bind the human and animal DNA together – once I purge the animal DNA out of the system the human DNA will be able to regrow the missing parts, but-"

"But?"

"He had been like this for a while. Purging and regrowing might kill him instead," Raina shrugged. "I would like to have someone's permission to do that, on paper, before I proceed."

"You need written permission to save a life," Skye began, before she realized. "It can kill him instead? Really?"

"Yes, and I will need help of both you and Lightning in order to secure a better tissue sample with which to work the reverse cure," Raina nodded. "You cannot really get a good sample from a smattering of tooth pieces."

"Sounds like a plan!" Skye said in a happier tone of voice. "DC?"

"Let's make a deal," Coulson said slowly, "or rather – an arrangement. Skye, you are responsible for Raina for now, say for the next two weeks or so? If she can pull her weight and is not causing any problems, she will be put on a proper probationary period. If not, she will be dealt accordingly." He paused and looked at the green woman. "Of course, I do remember that you're doing this because you feel that you owe Skye. If you figure out sometime in the future that your debt is paid and you're done, just tell us, and we'll come to an arrangement that'll benefit you as well as us-"

"First get me my skin, sir and then I'll think about what you've said," Raina shot back. "Unless, of course, you want me to walk around as Banner has done? In just a pair of pants?"

"...Glad that we had this talk," Coulson twitched, before turning to Skye. "And Skye? Remember – you're responsible for her now." He got up. "And as for Miles...can you stick here for a while? With him too? We need to figure out if he's escaped from a private company or the government..."

"Will do," Skye nodded, before turning to Raina. "And let's write you your permission now. We've got a lot of work to do now."

"Agreed," the other woman bobbed her head in agreement. "Let's get started."

...And this was how Raina's new, post-mortem existence had found a new meaning.

End