Author's note: I don't own Marvel. I watched the season two finale of Agents of Shield and I was blown away. I'd love to hear what you guys and girls thought about the finale. Leave reviews :). And as always enjoy.

Chapter 10

Clara's POV

"Well I think we found them!" Fitz shouted.

"No body move!" Agent May ordered.

"Not a problem." I yelled back, though I silently hoped we didn't have to stay crouched behind these rocks for long, my thighs were starting to cramp. "Anybody else have a problem?"

Jemma peeked her head out from behind the rock where she was huddled with Agent Trip. "Nope, I'm good."

My gaze moved from Jemma to Phil and I saw him studying the gun turret intently. "Phil, what are you thinking?"

"This is a S.H.I.E.L.D. Facility." He said turning his head to face me.

"Shoot first, ask questions later? Doesn't sound like S.H.I.E.L.D. to me." Trip shouted across to Phil.

"It's not Hydra." Phil began to rise on his feet.

Before he could get stand to high so as to put him outside the protection of the rock I grabbed his arm. "What are you doing?" I hissed.

Phil patted my hand where it was on his arm and gently pried off my grip. "This is Fury reaching out."

"There's no way to know that for sure." May glared at Phil and looked as if she was about to lunge out from behind her rock and drag Phil kicking back to the plane.

"There's one way." And Phil quickly stood up the rest of the way and bolted out faster than either I or Bucky could grab him.

My heart lurched in my chest with every step Phil took from safety. I jumped to my feet and had one leg swung over the top of the rock we were hiding behind when Bucky grabbed me and pulled my back.

"Clara stay there." Phil ordered as he came completely out into the open.

"Phil don't." May scrambled on her knees to catch Phil as he passed her but he easily sidestepped her.

"Hey! No... Phil!" Skye made to follow him but Fitz wrapped his arms around her waist to keep her in place.

The gun turret whirred as it swung around to point at Phil. "Oh God. This is going to turn out badly." I whispered as Bucky caught my gaze. "He's going to get himself killed."

"Stay here." Bucky said under his breath and ran to catch up to Phil.

Phil watched Bucky with suspicion as he ran up to his side. "What are you...?"

"Stay behind me sir." Bucky ordered while placing himself between Phil and the big and scary gun.

Shock mixed with gratitude flashed over Phil's face. That man wore his heart on his sleeve. I could feel the other's eyes moving back and forth between where Bucky had paced himself in the line of fire for Phil and me. I looked over and saw Agents May and Trip's questioning gazes. I gave them a smirk that said, "I told you so."

Everyone was too afraid to speak or move lest anything set off the guns and the mission, if that was what we could call this, would end in disaster.

"Identify yourself." A computerized voice suddenly spoke from the gun turret.

"I'm Phil Coulson, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." Phil answered.

The gun swung around and for a second I feared it was about to open fire when it instead folded back down into its hiding placed. The ground rumbled slightly and the side of the biggest rock in the clearing split vertically revealing a spartan, militaristic tunnel leading far down into the ground.

"Welcome, Agent Coulson." The voice spoke again. "We've been expecting you."

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The team slowly came out from their hiding places was walked down into the tunnel. Fitz-Simmons were the first into the tunnel just after Phil and they moaned in pleasure at the immediate rise in temperature. Must be nice, I caught myself thinking. Walking into the tunnel I felt no change in temperature whatsoever. Everything now felt lukewarm to me.

Bucky remained standing where he had been even after Phil moved around him and went inside. As I passed him I took his hand and in mine and pulled him along. "That was brave of you." He smiled down at me. And I lightly punched him on the arm with my free hand. "And stupid." He opened his mouth to speak but I didn't give him the chance as I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek, "But brave. Thank you."

"What is this place?" Phil's voice echoed down the tunnel where he was way ahead of me and Bucky.

We ran to catch up and made it in time to see a man come waltzing out from a side room. Bucky tensed and his free hand instinctively reached for a sidearm that was no longer there.

"One of Fury's secret bases." Now that I had a clear view I saw that the newcomer was a stout and round man, and though he tried to look intimidating I saw that his face was actually very kind. He was in no way a threat, at least I hoped.

He cleared his throat and met the looks the team were giving him which ranged from mildly curious, Fitz, to downright hostile, Agent May. "Uh, I call it Providence, although technically it doesn't have a name because, technically, it doesn't exist, it being a secret base and all." His face crinkled into a smile and he let out a laugh. "If everyone would follow me." He waved his arm and gestured for everyone to follow him into the room he had just excited. Once inside what looked like a mini mess hall he did a spin with his arms held out proudly. "Pretty cool, huh?"

Phil was obviously thrown off by how bright and chipper this man was acting. Given recent events it was hard to believe anyone could be in such a good mood. "I'm sorry. Who are you, exactly?"

He smiled and held out a lanyard with the SHIELD logo that was around his neck. "Eric Koenig, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., level 6."

"Phil Coulson." My uncle held out his hand for the other man to shake.

Agent Koenig's smile got even bigger and he latched on to Phil's hand and shook it vigorously. "I know. I know. It is an honor to meet you, Agent Coulson." The way Koenig was acting reminded me of how it had been when Phil first met Captain America. Basically barely suppressed hero worship. "I apologize for the kerfuffle outside."

"Kerfuffle?" Bucky whispered so only I heard. I shrugged.

Koenig continued. "The precision remote system was designed to destroy any rapidly moving metallic object." He shrugged his shoulders sheepishly.

"It was my badge." Phil said deadpanned.

Koenig's eyebrows shot up into his hair. "It was...um oh phm shpmt your badge? Okay. That's gonna be...tough to replace. But very soon, you're going to be issued your very own lanyard." He held up his own lanyard proudly to Phil. However when he caught everyone else eying his lanyard he dropped it and crossed his arms. "Lanyards for others will be distributed on a case-by-case basis."

"What happened to Director Fury?" Phil cut in hopefully. "Is he alive?"

Koenig's shoulders fell and I already knew the answer. "Fury... did not make it out of D.C."

Bucky cringed in guilt. His face flushed red and he unzipped and shrugged out of his winter jacket and rolled the sleeves up on the jacket we'd found in the lab. I guess it was hot in here. He placed the other jacket on one of the tables where some of the rest of the team had dumped their gear as they had walked past.

Koenig's eyes went wide and I saw him reach inside his suit jacket for what was undoubtedly a hidden gun. "Is that?!"

"It's okay he's with us." Phil quickly stepped in front of Bucky.

"The Winter Soldier is okay to be here because he's with you?" Koenig asked incredulously. "Its been a rough few days and that last thing we need is a HYDRA asset in Fury's secret base. Everything is already shaken up, especially now that the Fridge has fallen."

There was a collective gasp, the Fridge held any and all types of criminals imaginable. From your run of the mill psycho-killers, to the Abomination that had fought the Hulk in Harlem a few years back. If the Fridge had fallen then they were all likely loose and SHIELD had failed the world yet again.

"Who is she calling?" Koenig's demand snapped me out of my internal freak out.

He was pointing at a teary eyed Skye who was fumbling with her flip phone.

"We had a man at the Fridge." Phil answered solemnly.

"Who?" I leaned over and asked Fitz.

"Our specialist Ward." He whispered back just as Skye got through.

"Ward?" Her voice wavered while she hugged herself. "Oh thank God!"

"Can I speak to you in private?!" Koenig asked Phil and he lead Phil into what looked like an office and he shut the door promptly behind them.

Skye also left the room though the hall we had just come though so her call could be more private.

May watched the door Phil had left through wistfully before slamming down her jacket on the table holding our gear and storming out.

"Well that was tense." Fitz broke the silence. "Now what?"

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Jemma placed the sixth electrode on my forehead while Fitz drew another vial of blood. The second he removed the needle the little pinprick point on my forearm glowed orange for a second and erased the evidence that it had ever been stuck with a needle. Fitz gapped at the spot that just healed and grabbed my elbow, pulling it to his face for closer examination.

"This is fascinating this is." He tugged and pulled at my skin.

"Is all of this necessary?" I groaned and tugged at one of the electrode cords that fell into my eyes. The infirmary was understandably small but it still had the advanced SHIELD tech that would put all other hospitals to shame. However the bland steel, well everything was steel, gave the room a somber tone.

"Well given that you just healed again, not to mention the little incident in the woods on our way to this base it is." Jemma inputted her observations in her tablet and then reached across me and adjusted the settings on the computer monitoring my brain activity. "It really is quite fascinating. This strain of extremis is different from all the others we've encountered so far. It's not the original strain Mr. Stark encountered in the Mandarin incident and it's not the same as the strain Mr. Peterson and the other centipede soldiers were injected with. Tell me, do you remember anything from when you were injected."

A shiver ran down my spine thinking back to the cell in Hydra's bunker, not just because of what happened to me, but also because it was where Bucky had his mind wiped and Agent Fisher went missing. "Um, well it was after Buc… Sergeant Barnes was taken away for the mission at the Triskelion. Two doctors, one was from SHIELD, I don't know his name and the other I think was named White…"

"Doctor Whitehall." Bucky's deep voice boomed from the entrance of the room making the three of us jump. For such a big guy he was sure stealthy, then again he had over sixty years to perfect his skills. A person could go crazy thinking about that.

"Yes." I confirmed his guess, my voice was suddenly very small. "That's who it was."

Bucky's blue eyes darkened dangerously. "He was a new Hydra doctor, he'd only been there for a few days before you were brought in. He's a monster. If I'd known it'd been him who did this I would have…"

"What?" I asked, the way he was acting was scaring me. "The place was empty by the time you found me. And I'm find now."

"No you're not." He cut in.

My fingers dug into the edge of the examination table and I lowered my eyes hating how weak I was feeling. He was right. I was pretending, and I was usually good at it. Only thing was he saw right through it. If I lied about what happened down in that bunker he would see right through that lie. I just needed to come right out with what happened.

I nodded slowly, my gaze not leaving the floor. "You're right, I'm not. In the bunker right after you left I heard the doctors coming. They were talking about a new serum they needed to try. Whitehall suggested they use it on me, if it worked great, if it killed me then it was no loss to them." I wanted to stop right there and no say anymore, but I also wanted to get off my chest what happened so someone then than me would know. "I tried to fight them but they had their soldiers hold me down and…"

"They injected you?" Jemma questioned and I nodded. "What happened?"

I raised my head, my eyes locking on to Bucky's. "It hurt, a lot."

"I'm sorry… for everything." Jemma said and I knew she was apologizing for more than just what happened to me.

"It's okay." I told her as she took my hand.

Bucky glared at a chair across the room, and I was sure if looks could kill the chair would be incinerated.

"Bucky?" I asked to catch his attention. You could practically see the gears fueling his rage turning on his face.

"What?" He tried to play innocent by leaning up against the wall but winced slightly when his flesh shoulder was jarred.

"You're hurt." I pointed out, deftly steering the conversation away from my issues.

"I'm fine."

"Now who's lying?" I asked.

"It's my shoulder." He admitted and moved to unzip his jacket but he couldn't quite shrug the thing off.

I pulled the electrodes off my head and jumped off the bed. Jemma made to protest but I held up my finger to stop her. She sighed in resignment.

"What happened to you?" Jemma asked while Fitz and I helped Bucky slip the rest of the way out of the jacket and revealed the full extent of the bruising that resulted from his dislocated shoulder. Though it was obvious that his healing was quite accelerated, most of his shoulder was covered in light purple splotches. His torso and chest also bore countless scars.

Fitz gulped at the sight of him, eyeing where Bucky's metal arm attached to his body. It was the first time I'd gotten a good look at it. It was cruelly welded onto the joint and the skin around it was crisscrossed in dozens of healed incision marks.

"Steve dislocated my shoulder while we were fighting." Bucky pointedly left out an explanation about his other injuries.

Jemma's eyes widened. "Steve? Oh! Captain America wow! I mean not wow because I mean it's not good that he dislocated your, but it's oh I'm stopping now." She was babbling.

"It would have been worse if Clara hadn't set it."

"How'd you learn to do that?" Fitz asked.

"Steve taught me." I shrugged.

"So Captain America injured you." Fitz pointed at Bucky then to me, "and taught you to fix it. This is crazy." He laughed nervously and slapped Bucky's back. When Bucky winced Fitz drew his hands away quickly. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright. Clara fixed it up just fine." Bucky nodded at Fitz and gave him a tentative smile.

"It was nothing." I said.

"No it wasn't, thank you." Bucky's eyes bore into mine while Jemma and Fitz set to work in his shoulder.

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Jemma and Fitz were just finishing up bandaging Bucky when Phil stuck his head into the infirmary's door. The sight of the Winter Soldier shirtless made him pause for a second. He got over the small shock quickly and went straight into business.

"We've got a mission." He announced coming the rest of the way into the infirmary. Phil came right over to me, is expression silently asking if I was okay. I nodded. He sighed in relief and kissed the top of my head.

"Sir. Have we received word from a SHIELD base?" Fitz asked. He was attempting to push the unused bandaged into a bin on the top of a cabinet. The bin began to slip off the cabinet and would have hit Fitz in the face had it not been for Bucky's quick reflexes. He easily caught the bin and lift it into place. "You mock me with your tallness." Fitz grumbled at Bucky. Bucky's only response was a smirk.

"To answer your question no. There is no SHIELD command. We're doing this because it's right. Ward just got back, he and Skye will remain here and monitor the Hydra situation. Which reminds me, Jemma, you need to head down to the bus, Ward was pretty beat up from the Fridge's fall. He did say he killed Garret, so that's one less thing to worry about."

"Good." Fitz crossed his arms. "He deserved it." It was a frightening thing to heard Fitz be glad someone was dead.

"But what about the mission?" Jemma was reluctant to leave.

"I'll have Fitz fill you in. Go on."

"Yes sir." Jemma picked up the first aid kit on the way out.

"So what is our mission?" I asked and Phil handed me a tablet with a criminal profile displayed on it. "It this who I think it is?"

"Yes. Marcus Daniels. Before he was picked up by SHIELD he was on a research team working with something called Darkforce."

"Nothing good ever happens when you work with something called Darkforce." Fitz peered over my shoulder to get a closer look at the profile. I handed it over to him, I already knew everything there was to know about this case.

"There was an explosion at his lab and he was exposed. He gained the ability to absorb energy. All types."

"Well, the human brain, the heart, run on electrical impulses. So that means…" Fitz put forth.

"Exactly." Phil agreed. "He can kill with one touch."

"And I'm guessing he likes to. Do we need to put a bullet in him?" Bucky asked.

Phil shook his head. "Unfortunately, it's not that simple. He can absorb the energy of most conventional weapons. Last time, we managed to capture him by overloading his system with pure light. Exposing him to more energy than he could absorb at once."

"I'm sure we could engineer some sort of delivery mechanism en route." Fitz put forth.

"That's what I was hoping you were gonna say." He strode up to Bucky not at all intimated by how Bucky towered over him. That's my uncle I thought smiling inwardly. "It's not going to be an easy mission and I want you on my team."

"With all due respect sir, I don't know if that's a good idea."

"I've seen footage of the damage you can do." Phil spoke candidly. Bucky looked to the ground shamefully. "I can use a man with your skills. I'd like to see what you can do now that you're on our side."

Bucky opened his mouth but Phil held up his hand. "You saved my little girl, you deserve a chance from me and I'm going to give you one." Then Phil's expression turned stern. "But let me be clear if you turn on us there won't be a warning, I'm just going to shoot you. Understood?"

Bucky nodded curtly. "Yes sir."

Phil's expression softened and he smiled. "Good. Go suit up son. You have ninety minutes until your loyalty test."

"Loyalty test?" Fitz asked, a hint of fear in his voice.

"It's just a simple lie detector test. Koenig insisted on it before we leave. Fitz, you're up first head on down."

"Yes sir." And Fitz headed out of the room.

"With your permission. I'd like to go get ready." Bucky asked, hovering halfway between us and the door.

"Of course." Phil said and Bucky left.

Once he was gone I turned to Phil. "Son? He's like fifty years older than you."

Phil tried to suppress his smile. "Habit."