"Surrender now, and you won't have to get hurt," Coulson deadlines, Icer staring at the creases between its target's furrowed brows.
He was a petite man of stocky build, waves of muscles rippling down the length of his arms. A smug smirk stretched lazily across his rosy face, sending chills down Coulson's spine. This man radiated creepiness.
"Oh my, my. Do be patient, I don't attend to run. Trust me." At this, his smirk broke out into a full out grin of crooked teeth. Jagged criss crossed lines danced across the corners of his eyes as they crimped up in pure ecstasy.
Coulson hesitated, his finger cartwheeling on fate's borders as it brushed against the trigger. Something was wrong,very very wrong.
"And! Just to prove I surrender to your gracious mercy with no could intentions, I offer you a gift, a rather useless one, I might add, but nonetheless, a gift. You don't have to accept, no pressure, it is pretty disgusting." Wrinkles folded over themselves on the small folds of his nose as his look of sadistic joy was replaced by one of disgust.
"What are you talking about?" He could feel the eyes of his team burning into his skull, their anxiety and eagerness nipping at his heels like a pack of crazed dogs. They had only attended to raid the hydra base he had been anonymously tipped off of. This was turning into something far darker and creepier than the determined apathy packed in each of their internal hard drives had the ability to deal with.
"Why I don't I go fetch it for you?" And before he had time to so much as even blink, the man tore off down the hall.
"Something's not right with him. I mean, I even for a hydra loon," Skye quipped, her words digesting the tense silence in a crumbly display of desperation.
"Agreed, and what did he mean by-"
His sentiment was cut off by Mack's booming drawl, " Bobbi, what's wrong?"
Bobbi was staring off ahead, a blurry mix of deep concentration and internalized distance swirling wistfully in her eyes. Slowly, she seemed to come back to reality, with what appeared to be a great struggle, only to confront six pairs eyes watching her.
"You okay, Bobbi?" Skye asked hesitantly.
"Huh? Oh, um. Yes. Yeah, I'm just fine. It's just... the way he talked about this, this 'gift,' he almost made it sound like... like a person," she chewed her bottom lip anxiously, a nervous tick she only ever did when every sense within her screamed off warning bells. The pit of her stomach felt hollowed and raw. Yes, something wasn't right at all.
Skye laughed a small, pitiful mockery of a laugh. "A person? That's a bit of a huge stretch from gift, don't you think?" Hope and denial intertwined with one another with the grace and ease of the winds roaring their presence on the outside as Skye attempted to grasp the implications of what Bobbi had suggested. She seemed to be trapped in the waves of her own horror before continuing, "besides, who would he want to... give to us anyway?"
All of a sudden, a monster of a thought clawed its way into the vacancy of Bobbi's mind, leaving vicious scratches of blood in its wake. A thought so horrible, so unspeakably horrifying, she found herself unconsciously gripping her stomach, as if the action could somehow manage to fend of this demon and all of the terror that lurked with it.
Just then everyone was unanimously yanked from their thoughts as the door was kicked open with loud thud and groan pain. Their creepy friend had returned, it had seemed, dragging with him a lifeless body, except for the occasional grunt or twitch.
She arched her neck, straining to get a better look at the body being dumped rather unceremoniously beneath them-
And that's when her entrails lurched, tangling together in painfully tight knots as she found her self crumbling to the stone floor, vomiting and sputtering and shivering like a shriveled up leaf dangling by a lone thread to the tree and roots that gave it life, teetering on the edge of being blown away, somewhere far, far away where she could simply lie down and sob, because she knew that lifeless body. She knew that beautiful face and suddenly she was free falling, spiralling into a never ending dark and eternal hopelessness, everyone she knew and loved became nothing more than faded faces, empty shouts as she just kept falling falling falling, unable to escape the twisted reality that choked the every last breath from her.
And then just as quickly as she began her relentless somersault into despair, she was pulled out by a single word, voiced in nothing more than a small, wobbly whisper.
"Bobbi?"
Her head snapped up from the view of the chunky green slime she had just propelled from her stomach.
He was staring at her, wide saucer pan eyes illuminated by circles of deep purple and a deathly grey pigment held up open miles of distrust and hurt and betrayal and joy. Tears were streaming in a slow steady down the shallow gauntness of his face.
That's all it took to end her stupor, seeing this once proud man gaze at from a piled heap on the floor with such raw, conflicted emotions and pain. He didn't need her sobbing and retching, he needed her help, badly.
Compartmentalizing Her Everest of current feelings, she darted over to his shivering form. Upon closer expectation, she gasped: his body had become a canvas of injuries, splotchy shades of ghastly yellow and blistering, lines of shallow and deep alike oozed a rich red, staining the skin breathless it trudged to an alarming puddle on the ground, various degrees of grotesque burns shaped themselves around the jagged scars licking any trace of bare skin off, all painting an illustration of pain and misery.
She shunned all of the outside world out until the background noise became nothing but a buzz of whispers. Coulson had shot the man with the Icer immediately upon the morbid train of thought they had all boarded, and was currently in the grueling process of singlehandedly dragging his mass back to the Bus.
Mack stood dormant, eyes glazed and mouth slightly slacking. His every muscle was shaking uncontrollably. He seemed paralyzed on the spot, as if moving would confirm that this was actually reality, and not a mortifying dream like they all longed for it to be.
Skye stood over to the side, a poster face for horror. Her hand covered her mouth while streams of salty tears rushed down her paled face,
"B-b-b-ob."
His voice again, this one interrupted by the rage of a coughing fit that racked through his limp body, propelling phlegm and gooey chunks of blood splatters in the process.
She knelt beside him, placing a comforting on his head. It took all of her will power not to yank it immediately off in shock. He was burning in a heat she had never in her life , beads of sweat swelling through his peers and clinging to her skin.
It was clear as the baby blue skies boasting its beauties the day before, when everyone was still right in the world and she wasn't crumbling bit by bit Nina matter of seconds while her fair shook her back in forth in a rushed motion of anger, and before the storms that dictated them today took over.
Lance Hunter, was dying in her arms.
She whipped her head around in a fluid motion of unleashed determination and rage like she'd never felt before.
"Don't just stand there! Can't you see he needs help?! Go get a stretcher, and tell Fitzsimmons to prepare the med wing!" She yelled at neither Skye nor Mack in particular. They both jumped before staring guilty at each other and running off.
She turned back to the injured man in front of her and felt the life being yanked from her soul like a tooth tied to a door handle.
For in front of her, Lance Hunter lie completely still, as his chest rose one final time, and then nothing.