The Kara factor
Disclaimer: no one of the characters belong to me.
…As Alistair Fitz did his best to choke her and she struggled to get her handgun into the right angle to fire, Jemma Simmons began to have an epiphany that every wise man, (or woman, in her case), had a fool in her pocket and she could begin to think through – if she survived this. Alistair Fitz was not an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., he was not even a field agent of Hydra, but he was bigger, heavier and proportionally stronger than she was, and she had underestimated him, and now-
There was a thud. Alistair Fitz collapsed.
"You know, I'm really beginning to be tired of you being in trouble almost always," a familiar voice spoke, sounding upset, (and reasonably so). "Seriously, you're back from your mission from Tripp already?"
"Shut up Ward," Jemma muttered, as she got onto her feet, breathing heavily. "Is he-?"
"Just stunned, May called online and said that you needed back-up; Burrows passed it onto me, so here we are," Ward said simply. "And, by the way? That gambit of Phil and Daisy have come to work, people are in revolt against Madame Hydra and her rule-"
"Yes, well," Jemma bit down on the ending – none of this was real – but she could see that Grant knew this bit by now. "I thought that you died?"
"Yes, no – when you left, people just began to wake up, they began to fight, and – everything, so now there are plenty of revolutionaries willing to fight with us," Grant replied. "Alistair Fitz as a hostage will do nicely too, however."
"This isn't about him being a hostage, this is about me using him to get to Leo," Jemma snapped. "And agent Burrows didn't tell us anything-"
"Gee, I wonder why? You winning personality, perhaps?" Grant's new companion asked, as she finished tying Alistair up, (he was already gagged and had a bag on his head as well). "BTW, have we met? I'm Kara, or, I suppose, agent 33-"
"Yes! Hello! Hi!" Jemma said brightly. "We have!"
"Oh? Are we friends?" the other woman did not sound very friendly or inviting herself, more like suspicious.
"Ah, no," Jemma looked away first. "We, uh, May kind of tricked Ward into killing you after you two kidnapped Bobbi and tortured her to get her apology…" she trailed away from the sheer killing intent that Grant began to emanate in her direction…and from the grip he had on her shirt: she was all but lifted from her feet by his strength and fury.
"Excuse me?" the man in question looked at Jemma with a new, cold rage in his eyes that the Brit had not seen there since they met in the framework. "I was tricked into killing Kara by May? And you say that she is S.H.I.E.L.D. out there? In addition, why would anyone want anything, any sort of an apology from Bobbi Morse? The woman has no alliances, no values, and no nothing. She is a fake plastic Barbie doll and nothing else."
"Um…" Jemma blanched as she finally realized that messing with Grant Ward just for fuck's sake could be very bad for one's health, uh-hu. "Squeak?"
"Grant, release her," Kara said gently, "and you," she added much less so, "answer him."
Now Jemma was in no danger of being strangled, (again), but instead Kara placed the edge of sharp, curving knife next to her cheek, right on the eye socket, and while Jemma wasn't big on knife-related knowledge, somehow she didn't doubt that the other woman could kill or mutilate her with one just good hit of the blade.
"You were Hydra," she told Grant, doing her best to sound brave. "You and your S.O., John Garrett. You betrayed us-"
"I wasn't asking about me," Grant replied calmly, "I figured this out awhile back, remember? We were talking about Kara."
"Um," Jemma twitched. "She was working with you, so she had to be evil? Um, somehow it sounded better before-"
"Oh – Simmons," Grant smiled gently and Jemma gulped: the last time he was smiling like this was when she tried to kill him in the Arctic and failed, and he…didn't kill her, actually. Um. There was something wrong with that statement, now Jemma could see this clearly, but-
"You just don't get it?" Grant continued, gently taking Kara's hand, and knife, away from Simmons' face. "Death is nowhere near the worst fate that a person can suffer, dishonor is far worse. You claim to be heroes? Then start acting like them. You are not heroes? Adjust your attitude appropriately. And remember – it's not about the other guy, it's about you."
"We're S.H.I.E.L.D. agents," Jemma growled out. "We cannot allow ourselves to be knights-"
"Trust an Anglo-Sax to use a knight analogy when driven into a corner," Kara shook her head as she sheathed her knife. "At least Bobbi was more honest about what she was… So was Lance, for that matter…" she looked away, and even through her new cloud of fear, (and shame, perhaps), Jemma could see that the older woman was absolutely miserable right now, in a very sad way. She could also see that whatever it was in Grant's eyes…scared her much more than any physical threat could, and so they made their way back to (framework) S.H.I.E.L.D. base in silence.
/ / /
When the trio arrived at the base, (Grant and Kara decided to keep Alistair safely stowed in another place, off the base, for the moment for safety's sake, and Jemma did not challenge them), the first person who met them was Daisy.
"Jemma! You're back!" she yelled enthusiastically, before noticing Jemma's overall misery, bad physical condition, and the other two people with her. "Um, hi, Ward. You are alive. And Kara. Hello too. Where have you been?"
"Yes, I and the rest of my force caught a lucky break, as you may've heard from some of the new arrivals," Grant nodded evenly, his voice neutral, perhaps – too neutral, "and sorry about the – everything. I, Kara and agent Simmons got caught in a frank, straightforward and personal exchange of opinions and views and it got too in our face for everyone's tastes. Our bad."
"That's okay," Daisy muttered, looking away. The presence of Kara Palamas in this universe did not change anything, really, but… "You, uh, were on a mission?" she muttered to the other woman. Somehow, learning that she was alive in this universe made everything even worse than before. "How it went?"
Kara gave the other woman an unreadable look, opened her mouth, and-
"Tripp! Your woman is here!" Grant yelled as loudly as he could – Daisy was almost blown by the sheer volume of the cry. "Get your arse over here now!"
Daisy shook her head, trying to clear her ears, when Tripp appeared ASAP, looking slightly out of breath. He took one good look at Kara, Kara looked back, and Daisy almost blinked and missed the moment when they crossed the distance between each other and hugged each other very, very tightly.
As the framework version of agent 33 burrowed her face in Tripp's chest, Daisy felt a pang of jealousy, loneliness, loss. Instinctively she looked around and saw a similar look on Grant's face. "I'm sorry," she muttered in a tiny voice. "Sorry for messing everything in here and Jemma just made things worse."
"Hey, you got things moving for the better," Grant muttered back. "You aren't bad, and Simmons is…just British. It's something that she has to live with."
"…There are many things that people have to live with," Daisy blinked. "I just didn't think that being British is one of them."
"Yes, well," Grant muttered, before he abruptly changed his attention. "Suzy Therese! Get out of here and say 'hi' properly!"
"Aw, Uncle Ward, you caught me again!" the girl, about Hope's age or younger muttered as she got from around the corner. "Hey, mom!"
"Hey, sweetheart," agent 33 smiled brightly at her younger version, before getting to her knees and giving the latter a hug of her own. "I'm so happy to see you again!"
"Mommy!" the mini-Kara said brightly.
"She's adorable," Daisy muttered to no one in particular. "She looks more like Kara than Tripp, though-"
"Yeah, the truth is a bit more complex," Grant muttered back, "I'll explain later, when we fly to your mission."
"I thought Tripp was going to fly us…" Daisy trailed away.
"He and Suzy hadn't been with Kara for months – let them have this moment," Grant looked away. "After all of you are gone, will we all just stop existing?"
"I don't know," Daisy muttered. "Jemma might, Leo might, but-"
"But both of them are fairly toxic so anything that they will say is naturally suspect, even if one of them wasn't Hydra and the other has her own issues," Grant replied flatly.
"…They're good people," Daisy replied just as flatly. "They have their own flaws and yes, they and their drama can be hard to endure sometimes – not so long ago I felt similarly and left S.H.I.E.L.D. for six months straight, but they are still my family. You can choose family, of course, but sometimes? It chooses you…"
"I know," Grant muttered, clearly lost in his own thoughts. "I hope for both your sake and mine that everything will be all right with the op."
'You've probably just jinxed us,' Daisy wanted to say, but… there was physical proximity, and she had plenty of her own mental baggage that she'd been carried around ever since she had a personal experience of what being brainwashed was like, of Lincoln's demise, (which was something else, in a bad way), so what she said instead was: "Um, quickie?"
Something broke free in Grant's gaze, something hot and passionate; he carefully scoped Daisy up and carried her into the quinjet…
/ / /
Meanwhile…
"They," Leopold Fitz, or rather – The Doctor – said with an icy fury that was not anything like how Fitz used to sound. "Have my father. They are going to pay."
"Of course they will, Doctor," Holden Radcliffe replied brightly from his position as he was busy making…something, (looking like a couple of matching metal cuffs of all things). "I've no doubt."
The Doctor gave the older man a look. Ever since Radcliffe got freed and made a deal – his former allies in exchange for freedom and eventual immortality – the man was growing increasingly insufferable and arrogant, busy inventing something in the process. He was almost supernaturally fast with whatever he was working on – supposedly on "to help you get closure, Doktor," the older man commented, as apparently the last part was said aloud. "Don't worry; I'm sure that you will be reunited with your father by the end of the day and all!"
The Doctor was not impressed. "You seem to have recovered nicely," he muttered. "Quickly too. Moreover, why so excited? They were your friends, after all!"
"I have no friends, not among the S.H.I.E.L.D. crowd" Radcliffe abruptly changed his vocal tone, his merriment vanishing in an instant. "I once…I once had someone who was almost like a son or a younger brother to me. It did not last – I opted for safety and obscurity, and he…did not. He had honor, you see, and honor is another one of those things, like love – you think that it makes it all better, but it is not. It is as Shakespeare has written-"
"Never knew the man, I'm guessing he's another pretentious jackass like yourself, and if you make another dig at Ophelia I'll stitch your mouth shut," The Doctor growled, as he shook the older man by his collar. "Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes!" the older man gave a look, and the sudden venom in Radcliffe's voice briefly startled even The Doctor. "I perfectly. Compliance will be rewarded?"
"Yes," The Doctor refused to be unsettled by his interlocutor's sudden but constant character changes. "And don't you ever forget it!" He straightened his collar and went to check on his other underlings.
Radcliffe was left once more only to his own devices – and creations. Consequently, he continued to work on them, just muttering once – "And the deal with the higher powers can be damned" – in a language that was not from Earth…
TBC