Because Raina (part 11)

Disclaimer: see previous chapters.

Note: just think of Ms. Garner as an aged version of Belinda Stewart-Wilson.

Phil Coulson was concerned. In a tiny, little way – but still concerned. He had faced Loki, Hydra, the InHumans and a host of other threats too, but never before had he experienced someone he was about to meet now – a potential (surrogate?) mother-in-law. True, Roz was not an orphan, she had her own family, (supposedly), but- but so had Phil himself – but then there had been Nick Fury, who had been someone else in his life, and so, Coulson suspected, was Helen Garner in the life of Rosalind.

…Of course, Phil was aware that he and Roz had been two different people, that is Helen is nothing like Nick Fury is, but still. Um. He is not going to explain that to Roz, not now and here, not after she took him on a very private and considering shopping trip, and um, he is beginning to realize how a normal relationship works (say the one between Melinda and Andrew, for example. This also means… he is not sure what it means, but Roz is nervous, Phil is nervous by osmosis of some sort, and there is something in the air now, suggesting that director of S.H.I.E.L.D. or not, Coulson is in for a tough time. Yay. Alternatively, possibly – not…no, he is in for a tough time altogether.

"Rose, come in," a woman's voice spoke from the inside. "Ah, and that must director Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Please, sir, come in too!"

…For some reason this did not sound encouraging to Coulson. Judging by Rosalind's face, she shared his sentiment, but – they went in all the same. A woman of maybe their age, maybe older, but clearly weathered and tanned to a point where it was hard to tell her age (maybe 40, maybe 60, maybe more) met them.

"Ms. Garner!" Rosalind exclaimed brightly. "So nice to see you. Did Harper and Cavanaugh talk to you already?"

"Of course," Ms. Garner nodded simply. "Ms. Price," she paused and stopped, thinking over. "Director Coulson. Is it true that S.H.I.E.L.D. is working together with ATCU in an official capacity?"

"Yes," Coulson blurted, aware that the truth was more ambiguous than this: the paperwork was still unfinished, and the relationship between the two organizations could go either way still – but this was not something to bring up, especially with Rosalind in the vicinity. "It is, at least on our end. Ms. Price?"

"Yes," Rosalind nodded, giving Phil a look that was nothing short of grateful. "It is. Ms. Garner-"

"Rose, stop," the U.S. official spoke and Rosalind immediately fell silent. "Cavanaugh and Harper have already filled me in. This was genuinely unexpected – Gideon Malick was not the sort of man to take personal risks, he usually got other people to do it." Another pause. "Director Coulson, what are you planning to do about him?"

"We're working on his - him already, stripping down his power base," Coulson said, sounding more uncertain than he would have liked. "The progress is slow, but-"

"Director Coulson, I am not a crocodile. Nor a shark, a giant seal, a whale, anything that must be treated with soft gloves as Rosalind here seems to have told you," Helen shook her head. "Please, don't treat me as some sort of a monster or a high-maintenance witch that should be treated as one."

"That's not the impression you gave back in 2007," Phil said quietly. "I wasn't involved in this personally, Fury was, but I did keep an eye on things."

"Perhaps, but then you should know that I have adjusted my attitudes since then…maybe," Ms. Garner smiled widely, warmly, in a manner that was reminiscent of a crocodile (or perhaps, a giant, crocodile-sized toad) for some reason. "But this isn't about me – it's about Gideon Malick. The man gets around, and his Gothic industries are an important part of the U.S. financial world. Recently, however, their output has fallen by 10%, which is not good – director Coulson, time is working against you. You are working in the shadows, it seems, while Malick is not. Put otherwise, the two of you are doing two very different games, and I am afraid that the U.S. will be the loser here. I am not an American fully, I have been born in Great Britain, but this does not matter. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes ma'am," Coulson nodded in acknowledgement. "Are we dismissed?"

"Largely – yes," Ms. Garner nodded, toning her former attitude somewhat. "I am impressed with the breakthroughs that you've done regarding the entire alien-human hybrid situation, and even more so – with what happened in California, and I will be contacting Mr. Stark and the others in regards to the financial situation, but you will still have to do your part." She paused. "Now you are dismissed. You can leave." She smiled another smile, this one tiny, but still rather predatory and cold-blooded.

Rosalind turned red, then a shade of an almost blue color, but said nothing. "Ms. Garner," Coulson's own voice was carefully controlled and bland. "Thank you for your time. I- We really appreciate it." He squeezed back Rosalind's hand in a supportive way (she has taken his hand in the process of the discussion), and the two of them left.

/

"Hey, what's up," Lance spoke to Kara Lynn as the latter was sitting some distance away from Grant and Melinda (who were interviewing Yo-Yo about the rest of her team and her Hydra knowledge), and he himself was emerging from the gym after a recent workout. "Shouldn't you be in there, helping with translations and all-"

Quietly, Kara Lynn shifted around, and Lance realized that he had really put his foot in, somehow, and he did not even know how. "Sorry," he tried to backpedal quickly, "it's just that-"

"I'm Latino?" the former agent 33 replied with a small, sad and humorless smile on her face. "I'm not."

"Could've fooled me."

"I know," Kara Lynn did not appear to be angry, just sad, still. "My mother was Latino, but she moved to Great Britain when she was the FitzSimmons' age, maybe a bit older, in search of a better life. There she had me. Until I joined S.H.I.E.L.D., I have never been in Central or South America ever. I didn't really know Spanish, and my Catholicism was more of a Scottish than a Spanish version, to put in general terms."

"Um," Lance blinked, as he realized that the woman was bonding with him, sort of, no matter how strange it was. "This is-"

"My father," Kara Lynn continued, clearly with a head full of steam or a similar substance, "wasn't Latino too. He was…Afro-British? Is this the right term? I do not know, nor do I care, nor do I know him – I have never met him: I am a girl, you see, so he had abandoned my mother as soon as he had learned it, this fact. My mother…she never forgave me for this…she treated me like rot…"

"Sorry about this," Lance said awkwardly, as he equally awkwardly sat down to him. "My family was no prize either; my father wasn't abusive, he was just – uncaring; he cared more about his social standing and public image than of anything else; my mother had an affair with her sports' instructor, and when I caught her, after I caught her, she begged me not to tell my father; the first time he spoke to me – a week later after that event – I spilled everything. I never saw my mother again."

"I hear your pain," Kara Lynn nodded in the same, mechanical, manner. "Now Yo-Yo – her name is Elena, apparently – she has known Ward for a while, because she'd been in Garrett's team for a while, because her father Horton had known Garrett for a while, and so she is part of the reason why Grant is so good with Spanish – he had to talk to her, in Spanish, on a regular basis, in the past." She paused and added. "And then, after we've met after Puerto Rico, he made the same assumption as you have, and he taught me Spanish, thinking that I had forgotten it after the whole brainwashing event…" she snorted, bitterly, humorlessly. "I never really knew it before, in truth – but after I learned it, I have even developed an accent, similar to what my mother and grandmother had. Go me."

"Well, don't worry – I'm sure that Grant really understands," Lance said, sounding odd to himself for some reason. "Yeah?"

"Yup, and besides – Hydra has to be stopped," Kara Lynn nodded, giving Lance a strange look – she apparently had noticed the odd note in his voice too. "I am going to help Grant, agent May and the others with it – next time, I know this. You? Are you going to help them?"

"Of course I am," Lance replied, defensively. "You're the one sitting here, looking as bloated as an overweight mouse-" he paused, belatedly remembering, that this wasn't Bobbi, meaning that witty banter wasn't her thing, probably, not with him…

Kara Lynn did not appear too upset; she just gave him an odd, enigmatic glance. "I know," she told him in a different voice now – carefully controlled, tightly even. "I won't do this again," she twitched, as she clearly was struggling to keep her sadness and misery now under control. "It's just that Raina…when we were coming here from the national park, she told me that she saw me making a choice in the future. She could not give me any details, so it is frustrating – how can I chose anything, when I do not know what I am choosing-"

"Kara?" Grant interrupted the woman's rant, as he (and May, and Skye, who was walking some distance away from the two of them) emerged onto the scene. "What's up?"

Kara abruptly stopped speaking, turned around, trotted over to Grant and began to speak to him – in Spanish. Lance's Spanish wasn't very good, plus Kara was speaking quietly now, so he couldn't really follow her – but the look that Grant gave him wasn't very friendly, so he decided to leave and go to the kitchen instead, as it'd been planned by him initially, before he got distracted…

/

…When Lance Hunter came to the kitchen, however, it was already occupied – by Lincoln and Raina of all people, as the two of them were sipping tea… and Lance was quite sure that the two of them were holding hands under the table too. Seeing him, however, the two quickly moved apart and shifted around so that they could face him directly.

"Hello," Lincoln said in a neutral tone. "What's up?"

"Hey," Lance grunted, before he sat down across from them. "I could ask you the same thing. What's up?"

"We're doing fine," Raina shrugged. "You, on the other hand, seem to have come across something that you cannot get a grip on. Care to share?"

"What is going on with Kara and Grant?" Lance decided to go for the obvious. "I've seen them interact, even right now. They are genuinely fond of each other, yes, but there is no passion between them, no sexual energy per se-"

"So? You're telling us about this because-?" Raina gave Lance a flat, cold, gold glare. "If you're going to badmouth them, shouldn't you be talking to someone else? For example-"

"No, no, that's not it," Lance twitched as his frustration with himself struggled to get out of control. "I just want to know what is going on with them? I see the two of you – I see a couple in love, kind of like the FitzSimmons, or maybe the director and Ms. Price. The two of them – I do not see it; I do not know what I see it, and it confuses me. I don't like being confused."

"The two of them have a complicated relationship," Raina said flatly. "The two of them have a lot of baggage in the past which cannot be resolved quickly, even if they wanted to. Considering that both of them would rather do it thoroughly…yeah, the two of them will be at it for a long time."

"Yeah? What's about your words about a choice in her future?" Lance challenged. "How do your powers even work?"

"Firstly, the Diviner has reshaped me, it gave me even a differently-shaped brain, just as it did with Daisy, but differently so," Raina did not back down either. "If I concentrate, I can generate what will happen – but takes a lot of energy for me, and the visions are never too specific. Ms. Palamas is coming to a crossroads in her life, fast, and it is up to her to decide where to go." She paused and added, in an unhappier voice. "Well, not just to her, of course – she isn't living in isolation, after all, but the choice, in the end, is hers. Since you're so interested in her, Hunter, don't forget it."

"I see," Hunter was regretting his choice already. He was in a strange mood, he was lashing out at the others, and the closest friends of Grant and Kara were not the best people for that from the start. "So what are you seeing in my future?"

"Well now, my dear, gild my hands and we will talk," Raina spoke in a completely new tone of voice as she pulled out a pack of Tarot cards out of her pocket. "The cards never lie, you know?"

"You're a diviner yourself?" Lance stared. "Or just a con artist, a fraud?"

Raina's smile – now purely mocking – did not waver off her face. "Gild the hands," she repeated brightly, "and we will learn, Lance Hunter, what your future holds. Will you find your true love or will you fail? Will you recover what you lost or not? Doesn't this knowledge cost appropriately?" she wiggled her eyebrows in an enticing sort of way – considering that she still did not look fully human (and probably never would, not without fish pills getting involved once more), the result was more bizarre than anything else. "Well?"

Lance twitched as he had a very strange, but an understandable urge to reach for his wallet – whether because she was an InHuman or not, Raina's sales pitch seemed to be working on him…

"Hey, what are we missing here?" Coulson, followed by Rosalind, chose this moment to work in.

"Nothing," Lance said quickly and fled – he had enough weirdness for the moment.

Raina pouted at his retreating back for a moment and then turned to face Lincoln. "I think that we should go ourselves too," she told her partner. "Coulson and Ms. Price need some time to themselves, I think."

"Fair enough and I want to talk to you too," Lincoln agreed. "Director, Mrs., there's some tea left. If you want to, it is yours," and the two InHumans left.

There was a pause as Rosalind looked anywhere but at Coulson. "They do know that we're not married?" she asked him; the word 'yet' was not spoken aloud, but Coulson, who had his own problems at looking at Rosalind, did not need to hear it either.

"Yes, well, let's cross that bridge when we come to it," he told Rosalind instead, "and, uh, tea? I should warn you – Raina, Lincoln, and their friends make their own tea: it's some sort of an herbal mix, not a proper tea at all… The FitzSimmons seem to like it, though, so maybe we should try it? There's more traditional green and Earl Grey™ tea bags too, if you want, instead…"

"Phil," Rosalind spoke from her position, "please sit."

"…Okay," Coulson nodded and sat across his…new love. "Roz?"

"…Thank you for sticking up for me and with me back at Ms. Garner's. I really appreciate it. I know that this is not S.H.I.E.L.D.'s style, so thank you for going an extra mile for me too. I just, I just I do not know. Do you really like me this much?"

"…Not S.H.I.E.L.D.'s style? What are you talking about?" Coulson decided to focus on a safer part of the conversation first.

"Glen Talbot. The man is who he is, he was never a likable man and he's gotten worse with age, but you did treat him slightly as if he was the sheriff of Nottingham, and you – Robin Hood," Roz smiled slightly, before sobering up once more. "Between this and the mess with Christian Ward S.H.I.E.L.D. still isn't considered very trustworthy in D.C. and otherwise. There are some people who do want to trust you, senator Oliphant comes to mind, but they are in minority. In any case, I admit that I did not expect you to treat me any better than how you treat Talbot, but, well, things went differently, I guess. Thank you for that."

There was a good, long, insightful silence from Coulson, which he broke at last.

"I deserve that," he finally made a decision. "After the mess with Hydra I began to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. and we took to the shadows. It worked, but yes, maybe not in all the right ways. I never wanted to be the director, I'm not sure how to be the director, but I had to."

"Considering that you got people like Daisy Johnson and Grant Ward working for you I think that you're doing something right," Rosalind pointed-out, reasonably. "What's the story with him and his people, anyways?"

"It's a part of the mess that happened with Christian Ward," Coulson decided to steer clear of the topic for now, "and yes, about Ms. Garner-"

"Look, I know that she's just an official and all, which makes it rather silly by your standards and all-"

"It's not," Coulson shook his head. "This is different from what we had in California, but still important, and it is connected to California, thanks to Malick-"

"Is he Hydra?"

"Either that or he is just a mad man who decided to fuse with an alien monster, so it's really something of a choice between rotten apples," Coulson shrugged. "Back to you – what you've been doing is just as important as anything that Daisy and her people were doing, plus Raina and Lincoln and their friends came to you first. S.H.I.E.L.D. got a reputation among the gifted people – they, too, don't consider S.H.I.E.L.D. to be fully trustworthy, you see."

"Phil. ATCU became important only when we began to associate with you people."

"Roz. S.H.I.E.L.D. is many things, and Fury has run it differently from me, but I, but I believe in helping people," Coulson looked away from Rosalind – and, unfortunately, right onto her cleavage. "Um, I didn't mean to do that?"

"Oh Phil," Rosalind laughed – and stopped abruptly: apparently, she was not used to laughing in public, though she still was not as bad as the Cavalry used to be. "You are such a man, it seems!" she blushed and looked away, (though still not concealing her cleavage). "So, how about that tea?"

"I thought that you never ask!"

/

"Hey, Daisy," Lance approached the InHuman woman. "Did you see Bobbi anywhere?"

"Yeah, she and Mack left on a scouting mission earlier – you must've missed them."

"…Why Mack? Why not me?"

"For the same reason why not me-"

"No, you've been busy with Melinda and the others working with the Rodriguez woman, I saw you," Lance shook his head. "Since it is a part of your project-"

"It's May's project as much as it is mine," Daisy gave the Englishman a look, "so tone down the attitude, would you? However, as for my point – it still stands. I was busy, you were-"

"I was in the gym," Lance said sourly. "I do, on occasion, toot my own horn, but Bobbi knew about this; plus she's Bobbi. She knows me-"

"Well, Morse is acting weird ever since Ward had agreed to work with us, as did his people; no, actually, it started earlier, back when Lincoln and Raina were selling us their invention, and Alisha and the others had their adventure with the Avengers. Ever since then, Bobbi was acting kind of weird – miserable, even. Hunter, did she want to be an Avenger?"

"I know that she wanted to be something – the best S.H.I.E.L.D. agent ever, maybe even better than the Black Widow and Hawkeye were," Lance admitted, growing genuinely thoughtful. "And then, few years before all of this, she stopped. I do not know what happened to her, not really, though I heard that the Ghost Rider was involved somehow, but after this, yeah, Morse has changed. She stopped sparkling on the inside, you know, and we did get marrying, the first time around. Make no mistake, I love her, she is a wonderful wife, but it just does not seem to work out time after time – for reasons like this one. Did she have to go without not telling me?"

"Well, excuse me, the Great White Hunter of the Year if your little woman has to go off without you-"

"Don't mention it, Skye," Hunter matched Daisy tone for tone, "it's not your fault, you're just single, when you get a man – or a woman, I guess – of your own, you'll understand. Anyways, where did they go?"

Daisy gave Hunter a piercing look. "On a mission," she growled out. "Look, what is your problem today? First you harass Kara – I don't like her very much, true, but you don't have to go out of her way to upset her-"

"I did not!" Lance snapped. "Kara is feeling under the weather because of her own past. Her mother was an immigrant, Kara's a British citizen, only nowadays no one is treating her like that because she's Kara Palamas, you know, not Windsor, and now there's your metal-bending protégé, and the werewolf, and the human bullet, who are actually from the south countries beyond the U.S., and she's got issues about them and where she fits." He exhaled sharply. "And now I got to apologize to her and Grant for winding her up, or helping her to wind herself up, and Grant just might hit me for the obvious reasons. I certainly feel like hitting myself right now. Excuse me, Daisy, I need to go and apologize."

He turned around and left.

"What has just happened?" Daisy asked herself, and then looked down at the tablet. She paused, thought something over, and followed Lance – just out of idle curiosity, nothing more.

/

Luck being what it was on this day, Lance Hunter did find Kara first – right alongside Grant, Raina, Lincoln, and, surprisingly, the FitzSimmons. "What do you want?" Kara told him, without too much hostility, (but with plenty of sullenness) as she peeked from behind Grant.

"To apologize? I shouldn't egged you on back earlier," Lance winced, before shifting his attention over to Grant. "So, don't punch me in the face? I don't want it damaged."

"Your face? Isn't it your magic penis that you should be worried about?" Grant sighed. "Kara?"

"…Firstly, I was talking to Daisy in the back. Secondly, thank you," Kara gave Lance a small and sad smile. "And thirdly, Grant-" Kara switched in Spanish and she and Grant began some sort of a lively argument: apparently, whatever it was that had been bothering Kara before was gone now, sort of.

"…You know, we could ask you guys the same question," Daisy said brightly to the FitzSimmons. "What are you doing here?"

"Meh, Grant had misplaced his teapot – one that he makes tea in – and he and Kara went looking for it. Jemma and I remembered that Lincoln and Raina had it, they remembered leaving it in the kitchen, and now Coulson and Ms. Price have locked it up – the kitchen, I mean," Fitz began to explain, but Daisy carefully reached out with her vibrations...

"Oh yeah, they're very busy in there," she muttered, blushing in embarrassment. "People, don't go in there – they will never forgive you, and you won't be able to live it down, to forget it, either."

"To forget what?" Melinda joined the impromptu meeting before the closed kitchen. "What's going on here? Is everyone ok?"

"The director and the Mrs. are busy in the kitchen," Raina shrugged, "and we're recovering here. Thank you for asking. What's up with you?"

Melinda gave the younger woman a look. Raina twitched but held her ground.

"So, Phil and Rosalind are in there? Very well," the Chinese agent decided. "And Mack and Morse?"

"On Coulson's mission," Daisy piped up. "Now what?"

"I'm going to order pizza," Melinda decided. "Everyone is invited. It has been a slow day. Elario Carcavera had been mentioned. This calls for pizza."

Moreover, as the others just blinked and thought this over, how Melinda May seemed to be acting OOC here and now, the latter did just that – and everyone was invited.

TBC…