Bigger and badder
Disclaimer: I own nothing; otherwise the mid-season finale would not end this way.
AN: this story contains spoilers for the Mid-S3 finale.
The planet is cold, cold and alien, save from the flickers of flame that emerge from one of the corpses lying to the still-fluctuating portal, even as something seems to be moving inside its skull, not a flame, but something else, less fiery and more varied, sometimes taking on one color, sometimes another.
The other corpse is more whole, save for the damaged chest – no human could survive this sort of thing. Yet this corpse is not fully a corpse, it seems to be still moving: twitchingly, it gets on its – or his? – feet, and stumbling, moves towards the first corpse, hands outstretched. Slowly, the flames reach out, licking its – or his? – hands, turning them black as anthracite, yet the second corpse itself seems to be growing stronger, haler, more alive.
Yet the flames are not the only thing that the second corpse (or person) is drawing out of the first: something small and round, like a peppercorn, flies out of the skull, (of the first corpse), and into the second: Hydra's InHuman. It is old, it is powerful, it is ruthless, and had been stealing human bodies for ages, growing truly great on the energy of the souls that it had consumed. An ordinary human, even in best of health, would've been no match for it – but what it had confronted now is no human – but is also an InHuman, something that the body-thief hadn't encountered in a long time, a sort of being that body-thief didn't have experience with dealing with for a long time.
The second corpse, the second InHuman is hurt and weak and is dying – his struggles should be a stalemate that would end with his death: the first InHuman, the body-thief, should wait just some more, and then the second mind will die, and he will have a new host body to inhabit. But at the moment, this is not the immediate concern of the body-thief – he would rather get off the planet – as would its potential host. For a moment, two minds think as one, and the second body – clearly not a corpse, makes a powerful leap and lands right in the Hydra portal, going through it, even as it closes, and ending up right in the middle of an explosion. There is debris, debris and flames everywhere, any human would die there, as many Hydra agents had. The InHuman, the second InHuman, does not. On the contrary, it, or rather – he, straightens up and begins to absorb the flames, growing even bigger, even more muscular than before. His old skin stretches and cracks, revealing a new skin, black as anthracite, crossed with red veins. His chest straightens out, as the damaged bones and organs repair themselves, and his mind pushes the body-thief out, for this is his home turf, not the body-thief's, and here, he is stronger.
Mercy, the body-thief hums in its disembodied form, mercy, cousin!
"Would you have shown me mercy?" the demon-like figure rumbles, his own InHumanity clearly evident among all the destruction. "I have met your kind before, I have fought and defeated your kind before, and I am no friend of your kind. Yet, I have shown mercy before, I have built an arrow bridge once and if you want mercy – then go. Go to the land of Australia; find the woman who owns the Victorious Opal Mind there, and stay there. The woman is your kin herself, and Australia is a wonderful place, very exotic, very different from the place we left behind. You can amuse yourself there – but stay out of my way for the rest of my life. Otherwise," he exhales a stream of flames, almost transparent from the heat.
The body-thief is the older of the two InHumans, under other circumstances it would be more powerful, but the flames are practically pure heat, burning away its very essence. I accept, it hums, I accept! Mercy!
"Then go," his opponent relents, and the body-thief flees, flying as far as it can, down south, away from this place. The second InHuman, left to his own devices, exhales and drops to his knees, muttering:
"I don't hate them anymore."
Then he gets up and goes to the nearest corpse of a Hydra agent, with the uniform more or less intact, and begins to strip it.
/
Several hours later...
..."I'll be!" Gideon Malick exclaimed, as he looked at Grant Ward, who stared at him blankly, with something moving beneath his skin. Gideon assumed that it was the alien InHuman, turned parasite. He was wrong. It was Grant's own InHuman organs, shifting into new positions, augmented by a nervous tick. It was a reasonable mistake to make, since Malick actually didn't have too much experience with InHumans outside of their containment boxes, but as Grant begin to grow even bigger, his old skin falling off in pieces, revealing a new face, a new person, a new InHuman, it was also going to be Gideon's last mistake...
The End?