Life in HQ during the next week was going pretty much okay. It almost sounded like any other household.
"Nate, have you seen my particle accelerator?"
"How could I have seen it? You know I don't go in your lab, Daga."
"Stop, yelling guys! Seriously! I'm trying to track NASA's radio frequency!"
"Teddy, why the fuck would you wanna do that?"
"Because, BLONDIE, I'm trying to do something productive instead of just trying to destroy the place with pranks and shit."
"You've ruined my concentration! Thanks a lot, guys!"
"Are you still into that yoga shit, Gan? Isn't that for chicks?"
"It's not yoga, Blondie!"
Almost.
Everybody had already been signed off for weekly chores and were almost happy to have half a normal life again. Though the week they had to recover from the stress of Academy had almost passed and it was time for work again.
~Sunday~
The Meeting Hall. A room seemingly no different from any other in the gigantic building of HQ. Though, often looks deceive. Just as every other, it had inox grey walls with carved swirls of cobalt blue to give it the majestic smell of future. Just like every other, it was dimmly lit with the blue lighting coming from the suspended ceiling. Though unlike any other it had a oval-shaped floor-to-ceiling touch wall. On Sunday, 5th January at sharply 13:00, the wall came to life.
On the huge piece of technology flashed images of victims, footages caught on security cameras, a few text files and more. The squad had been previously called at the Hall. It seemed strange to them to be pulled out of their activities by the synthetic female voice ordering them to 'Follow the lights'. At that time every other light in the building had slowly faded until the only ones led the way from the location of every member of the team straight to the Meeting Hall.
The young soldiers definitely weren't expecting this. Maybe they had anticipated that the Director would come again explain his shit and all. But in a way they were relieved that it didn't happen, Dagmara the most.
Their mission had included a few mysterious missing aristocratic ladies from the modern monarchies. England, Denmark, Belgium, Brutah and Liechtenstein. The case mainly took a day of preparation, for Daga had figured it out almost immediately and needed only a few more hours to clear out the details.
It turned out being just an ambitious psycho who wanted to get married to a princess. How very disappointing. A week later the ladies extracted and put in the safety of their homes. Mild injuries, a few scratches and broken nails but nothing more. The man might have been mentally unstable but he knew how to treat royalty.
This was how their first mission started and ended. That was the beggining of a different future.
~2011(23)~
The squad had established a way of living quicker than they'd thought. As previously said, chores had been distributed the first week of their life together. At first it had seemed completely impossible but after a few fights, some bruises and a whole lot of wasted bandage, things clicked to place just the way they should have. Now life in the HQ could be mostly compares to a college campus. Mostly.
For the past three years the grop had more or less turned into a real team. They knew everything about each other, talked about anything with each other, did everything together and became the closest thing to family they'll ever experience.
They needed to remember they weren't there to be a part of a chick-flick and such things as affection and friendly jokes were most times an obstacle when it came to the field. Still, some times having a good laugh at the end of the tiring day filled with stress, noise, and most of the times blood, was all you need. Saving people, being the nameless hero has never been an easy job. As missions, injuries and years passed they became a closed society of silent superheroes.
They learned to appreciate every moment of piece and quite and to despise every individual task they had to complete. Just like the one Daga had to finish just a week before new year. The events that needed her attention were a few missing majors of the American Government. At least she thought so.
~ New Orleans,Louisiana ~
14th December 2011
15:45
The Director was finally having that meeting with the CIA operative, he'd promised him a while back. It wasn't much, just a friendly get-together with a cup of coffee, biscuits and everything you'd expect from two ladies gossiping about the neighbor's new wife.
They were solely discussing the new development of The Board of National Security when the door of the Directors office opened slowly and there before than stood a young girl, no older than 25, but her youth was not what caught their attention. The girl was bathed in fresh blood and sweat from head to toe, dust and sand covering her hands and feet, and a furious look on her face. She looked straight at Director John Parker, the most American name in her opinion, forgetting the other man in the room.
"Yuzhvin, aren't you supposed to be in Syria? What are you doing here looking like you came out of World War III?" he exclaimed dramatically as if afraid that she will stain his new white sofa.
"Sorry to bother you, Director, but it seems to me that you've forgotten to mention a few details about my latest task." She tried to sound calm just in the sake of her own health though it made her look even more gravely and like the main character of Stephen King's Carrie. "You've missed out the part where there were children in this non-state property and how there were about... uhm, what was it? More than 2500 people held hostage by a terrorist group with twice as many gunsman." Her voice got louder and louder her face more like the one of a killer.
He seemed unimpressed with her behavior but knew better than anyone not to anger her, otherwise she will have his head. Maybe that's half the reason why he secretly held his thumb on the panic button of the ring on his middle finger. Any time she lashed out he could just press it and his guards in the other room would rush in and save his life. He knew, though, that it didn't give him any actual escape. She was clever, more than he needed her to be, killed with grace, she was lethal.
"I simply thought you'd figure it out."
"Oh, you thought I'd figure it out, huh?" The girl's eyes flickered around the room as if looking at him one more time will make her explode , her head was nodding slowly, only emphasizing her anger. Then John noticed the little tremble of her left eye, an angry tick she had which meant he's already a dead man walking. "Well, I may have figured it out... if you... didn't hide... half the data and evidence... about the case." Her eyes suddenly shut, her thin eyebrows furrowed and she began talking slowly as if talking to an idiot though he knew that she was trying to calm her nerves before she killed him. "Also it would have been nice if you hadn't forgotten to warn the Government about our little party so I didn't have to be looked at as if I'm the criminal. The civil, of course, refused to give me a room in any of the local hotels, inns, villas so I had to start on my way home immediately after I gave up."
"Yuzhvin, if you have nothing more to say than I'll have to ask you to leave."
"So I guess those 2500 human lives are quite unimportant to you then." Her spiteful tone was scaring his life away but he refused to admit that he was afraid of a girl half his age and size.
"Of course they do matter? " He exclaimed offendedly.
"Really? Because you were ready to send me off without asking whether the mission was successful or not." And with this the girl covered in blood left the overly posh room and later the office building, leaving a tense silence and the smell of death behind.
"What do you think I am? A monster?"he yelled after her.
"You said it, not me."
, who by far had only been a silent observer, finally found his voice and casually started a new conversation.
"You know her?"
~6 hours later~
"So, where did that bastard send you?" Nate asked curiously.
"Syria. 'An outsider organization is causing trouble.' Almost believed you." Dagmara was fuming about the almost-failure of her mission in Syria. "He just wanted to show off his power again. Does he not care about the lives he put at stake?" She huffed angrily as she removed her gear, placing it on the table in the Equipment room to be cleaned later.
Все, что мне нужно, это теплый душ ! she thought as she marched stiffly down the halls leaving bloody stains on the floor behind herself. At the time she didn't even notice but an hour later her OCD would be obsessing over the 'gigantic' bloody puddles on the floor.
What intrigued her was the other man in the room with Parker. He had just as much confidence and arrogance in his code, told by his posture. Daga decided she didn't need to send her brain into an overdrive once more. It had been a long week, she needed the rest.
It took her 40 minutes to scrub off the blood, grime and greese off her skin and another 20 to finally relax her aching muscles. It seemed that the stress and all the combat strategies washed off with the dirt in the water. Still, the image of the Director's sadistically satisfied smile nagged at her mind and drove her adrenaline up again. She needed an outlet for all the anger that had gathered up in her mind and she needed it soon.
As soon as she left the bathroom she threw a sports bra with the project logo and bootie-shorts on and walked down the stairs to the Training Unit. Strange for many, she wasn't worried about the boys seeing her in training attire. To her nakedness has never been inappropriate and she has never understood the fuss about walking in your underwear in front of your teammates. They got used to it as well and eventually realized they didn't really mind.
Hours passed of her beating that God-forsaken punching bag and letting her anger and stress out until one of her last and most powerful blows broke the chain holding the piece of training equipment up broke and it fell to the ground with a shakingly loud thud. Just then she realized how much emotion she had poured into that training dummy.
Something about the arrogant way John Parker looked at her when she barged into his office had her nerves raging. Dagmara Yuzhvin had met hatred along every path she's walked in her life. She didn't mind people misjudging her, considering she was just another misfit and continuing with their life. But the way the Director has been throwing sand in her eyes ever since they first met drove her adrenaline up and she didn't exactly know why. The thing with her father was one side of the story but everything else he's ever done led her to believe there must be more.
"Daga? What happened?" She knew the voice, she didn't need to turn to know. Soon after a hand took hers. "Is there anything broken? How are you? Daga?" Nate tried desperately to get her attention, but it was pointless. She continued staring at the punching bag wondering when exactly did she start letting people's hatred sway her.
She silently followed him to the Infirmary as he held tightly onto her wrist never stopping his lecture on how her anger would kill her some day. And he didn't realize how exactly right he was. She sat silently on one of the beds in the static grey room and stared at the floor lost in her own logical and strictly set little world while he took care of her almost fractured knuckles and finally payed attention to the huge bloody gash on her calf. It was swollen and black and he hasn't noticed it the first time he saw her after the mission as her uniform was in the way.
Nate stopped talking awhile after he realized he wasn't getting anything through that thick pretty head of hers. And he hasn't figured it out before but he definitely did when he saw her walking around bloody, dirty and drained: he needed to take care of her as she didn't consider her life important enough to keep it. He needed to, not only for her, but for himself too, if something happens to her he wouldn't be able to live with it.
Touching her made his mind race with inappropriate thoughts and he almost lost it when she let a small simper run from her lips. He was wishing it wasn't just to fix her injuries but for the moment that would suffice.
For years he had been stuck with the blinding fantasy of him and Dagmara together and for a while that's all it was - a fantasy. Though, when he finally left the Academy and arrived at the HQ he was enormously surprised that he met her there. Thinking about it later he figured he shouldn't have been that surprised, after all, according to him, she was good at everything she did.
Stilinski thought that maybe now that they had developed some kind of a bond he would have maybe the slightest chance of making her fall for him. Even though, every time he tried to flirt with her or at least be nice, her answer to his courage was either a nod or the dry 'Thank you!'.
He still hasn't lost hope but he didn't know how much longer it could last. 7 and a half years were a lot more than a crush lasts and he was desperate to either meet some reply or get rid of the mania he has developed. The worst part of it all was that she was completely oblivious to everything concerning human relations. It's not like she had rejected him or was too shy to admit that she reciprocates his feelings. Completely the opposite. For God's sake, she walked around almost naked while she lived with four men.
So, there they were. The both of them sitting in the infirmary, minding their own business while unconsciously staring at each other.