Pipes

By: AndiKaneUnderwood

Okay, so not only is this an Alpha/Beta/Omega A/U this is also an A/U where there is a specific gene that is activated. It is activated young and very few people have it, it gives you characteristics of animals. Each of the team (and Yo-Yo but you knew that) has one. But no one else at SHIELD does (barring the Avengers).

Phil Coulson: Bear

Melinda May: Panther

Bobbi Morse: Fox

Alphonso MacKenzie: Gorilla

Lincoln Campbell: Lion

Yo-Yo Rodriguez: Gazelle

Lance Hunter: Mongoose

Daisy Johnson: Butterfly

Jemma Simmons: Tiger

Leo Fitz: Wolf

AoS~AoS~AoS

Fitz woke up that morning with the undeniable feeling that something was going to go very wrong, very soon.

He sat up in his bunk and stretched his arms up with a yawn. Looking around, he noticed that Simmons wasn't in the room.

She must have already gone down to the lab. He thought, standing to get dressed, still half asleep.

When he was completely awake, he went to join Simmons down in the lab, mentally noting that Daisy was still asleep as well.

Fitz yawned again, feeling the effects of staying up late taking their toll. It wasn't technically his fault, Simmons had needed his input and by the time they'd gotten finished, it was well past three thirty.

He was paged through their Bond.

Sorry, Fitz, but we're needed upstairs. Simmons's voice spiraled around the Bond, filling it with apologetic sympathy. It was going to be a bad one, Fitz could already tell.

Oh, this would be fun.

I'm on my way, Simmons. Fitz replied, changing trajectory from the lab to the upstairs mini bar/briefing room.

Wake Daisy too, won't you? Mack refuses to go down there. Simmons sounded rather upset, and Fitz couldn't blame her. They'd planned to break open the more recent robot today, not go on a mission.

He taped lightly on Daisy's door. With good reason, last time he tried to wake Daisy up, she nearly quaked his spinal cord in half. "Daisy? You need to get up, we have a mission." Fitz called into the room.

There was a sleepy grunt, then a hazy affirmative. The door opened up a crack and Fitz waved.

"A mission?" Daisy asked, blinking in the early light.

"Yes." Fitz replied.

The reply was spoken through a yawn. "Okay, I'll be out in a minute."

Fitz nodded and walked back to the briefing room. He slid up next to Simmons and kissed her cheek in greeting. A simple, casual encounter that wasn't against the regulations.

Simmons hummed and smiled at her Omega briefly, then focused back on Coulson, who was talking with May and Mack.

Daisy came up shortly after with Lincoln, Bobbi, and Hunter following her.

Once everyone was settled around the table, Coulson began.

A quick flash caught Fitz's eye and he looked down at the table he was leaning on. A face blinked back up at him and he scrunched his nose briefly as his mind memorized every last detail.

Once he'd memorized the face, he looked back up at Coulson. Fitz could worry about the name of this man later.

AoS~AoS~AoS

The landing was a little rough due to turbulence.

Fitz was strapped into the seats in the Bus with Simmons at his side. Fitz never really like landing in a plane, so this was nothing new, but the light grip on the hand Simmons held was.

When they did land, it was with a jerk and all of them pitched forward a little. Mack looked at Fitz as he unstrapped himself and stood, hand drifting slowly from Simmons'. "Ready to go, Turbo?" He asked.

Fitz nodded, letting an unsteady breath pass his lips. "I'm ready."

AoS~AoS~AoS

"There's way to much space for us to go through all of this in the three hours we've bought ourselves." Daisy huffed, holding her gun on the man she'd just taken down.

He looked Russian in the low light, but he could've easily have been Arabic in another light, so Fitz let the man's ethnicity be, noting simply that he was European.

"You're right." Coulson replied. "FitzSimmons, stick with me. Mack, Daisy, go that way with May." He ordered, putting away his gun and nodding to May.

May nodded back and the European man was rendered unconscious by a swift kick in the head.

Fitz winced at the sound, still not liking how... Brutal it was. He followed Simmons as she reached for his hand again. The tunnel was dark and she didn't like dark places.

Fitz was more than happy to be her anchor and offer her what comfort he could.

AoS~AoS~AoS

"You two head in there." Coulson said, gesturing to the slightly opened door with two fingers.

Fitz looked at the ash wood door, wary because of the creepy atmosphere. It creaked slightly as Simmons pushed it open further.

"Spooky." Simmons murmured, handing Fitz her pad for the Dwarves and kneeling down to look at a spot of dried red liquid on the floor.

Fitz shuddered as a cold wind blew by. "Okay. Stay together?" He asked.

"No, we'll get more done if we split up." Simmons replied. "I'll stay towards the front of the room. Will you check the back?"

Fitz nodded and carefully stepped around the red spot and headed towards the back of the room.

For whatever reason, the back of the room was covered in pipes. The floor and walls and ceiling where all covered in pipes of all shapes and sizes.

Inside the room with all the pipes, there was a blue box. It wasn't a box to carry anything in, it was far too small. It almost looked like a box to hold a wedding ring. The box sat on top of a black leather briefcase next to a pair of green, wire framed glasses.

There weren't any lenses that Fitz could see and the young Omega was fairly confused.

As a person who used to wear glasses himself, he didn't know why someone would leave their glasses behind.

There was a flash of a shadow in his peripheral vision and his spine snapped straight in an instant, ears pulling up into alert position.

Someone was in there with him.

AoS~AoS~AoS

Simmons was in the process of collecting the last of the Dwarfs when she heard it.

Her sharp, striped ears flicked, standing up straight when she heard the footsteps pass her and her gun followed the movements of her hearing as she listened for more of the steps.

As she moved, scanning the room, she gave little through to the whirring of the Dwarfs or the sound of air passing though the room above her.

When she heard nothing else that alerted her to danger, Simmons's thoughts came back to the Dwarfs and putting them away.

She quickly regretted it when she heard a scream.

"Fitz!" She gasped and abandoned her task completely, gun in her hand and hair on end.

She headed to the back in a flurry of brown and black and orange.

When Jemma finally got to the room her Mate was in, she was horrified by what she saw.

"Simmons! Jemma!" Yelled Coulson, but she couldn't hear him.

Not when her Mate lay on the floor in a rapidly expanding pool of his own blood.

The blood came from a wound in his side made by a thin pipe shoved cleanly through his side.

He lay on the floor gasping with wide crystal eyes and flattened ears. Shock hadn't set in yet and he could clearly still feel the pain, it was evident in his face.

He stared up into the ceiling, clearly not really seeing it, all his focus being at the metal rod that had been shoved into his body.

Jemma snapped into action, looking at Coulson, then kneeling down next to her Omega.

"Leo!" She cried, feeling for his pulse and gripping the rod simultaneously.

"J-Jemma." His voice was soft, not even a whisper, but she heard it.

Jemma looked at Coulson again as Leo's heartbeat started to slow. "Help me!" She cried, voice hard and cold.

Coulson knelt down next to her and took the rod. "Be ready to stem the bleeding." He told her and she ripped of her jacket, then her blouse, leaving on the tank top underneath, and started tearing it into strips.

Coulson gripped the rod tightly in both hands and looked at Jemma, then Leo. "I'm going to pull it out, Fitz. It's going to hurt."

Leo gave no indication he heard, but his eyes misted over and Coulson took that as a bad sign.

Jemma held up her tattered blouse and nodded to Coulson.

The bear-hybrid heaved in a breath, then gripped the rod tighter and pulled it out in one swift movement.

The pipe flashed in the minimal light and Leo screamed again, yelling turning into unintelligible words slipping quickly, like a waterfall, past his lips.

Jemma's eyes watered as he screamed and another voice joined the air, heading right for them. Coulson looked at Jemma and how hard she pressed her torn blouse over the wound.

He nodded to her. "Take care of him, I've got this." He pulled out his gun and moved back into the normal room with no piping lining the walls.

He hid right beside the door, the best place to avoid immediate detection.

The second someone walked through the door, he hit them fast and hard.

They dropped to the ground with a cry of pain and Coulson was on them in an instant. "Who are you?" He snapped.

"Coulson, chill! It's me!" Shouted Mack's voice.

Coulson startled and they looked closer. The body below him had almost glossy, close cropped black hair and his eyes flashed a bright green that faded to brown.

It was Mack. No doubt. He would recognize the gorilla-hybrid anywhere.

Coulson helped him up.

"I'm losing him! I'm losing him, Coulson!" Jemma shouted and Coulson was immediately back by Leo's side.

"Fitz." He mumbled as he was followed by May, Mack, and Daisy.

"One... Two... Three... Four... Five... Breath, Leo! Please!" Jemma cried, preforming CPR.

"Fitz!" Daisy breathed, voice urgent and sharp and small.

Jemma breathed in, tilting Leo's chin up and giving the breath to her Mate then continuing to preform CPR.

Coulson put two fingers on Leo's neck as Jemma called for something to restart his heart.

May raced off and found the device, bringing it back in record time.

Jemma wiped away her tears as she charged the device while Mack pulled open Leo's shirt. "Everyone back up!" She called, looking down the body. "Clear!" She discharged the device into Leo's body, putting the paddles on his bare chest.

"Nothing." Coulson said, checking for a pulse.

"Again." Jemma demanded and the device recharged while Daisy took over CPR. "Everyone back up." A quick check. "Clear!" And the paddles discharged again.

Coulson checked his pulse and Daisy began CPR once more.

"Pulse?" Jemma asked, preparing to recharge the device.

Coulson looked at them, face grim and Jemma's eyes filled with tears as he shook his head.

She prepared to charge the device again, but May took her wrist and guided it away.

She sobbed as Daisy gave her a huge hug, holding Jemma tightly against her body with Jemma's arms pinned against her chest.

"I'm so sorry." She whispered and she was completely understanding, having lost her own Mate once before (then regaining him when he regained a pulse) and knowing how it felt.

Lincoln and Yo-Yo (from the command center back in the Bus) both looked at each other and tears slipped silently down Yo-Yo's face, welling up in Lincoln's eyes.

Mack, Daisy, and May all let tears of grief fall, May and Daisy having known Fitz since the beginning of the Team and gotten to know him personally, Mack because he connected with Fitz through engineering and mechanical fix-ups.

Coulson looked down at Fitz's body with shock written on his face. He'd promised himself he'd never lose another teammate. He'd promised. But it looked like this was another promise broken.

They got him back to medical and Daisy didn't leave Jemma's side.

The doctors did what they could, but nothing obviously worked.

Until, Jemma's ears (which had been pressed flat against her hair) flickered, then shot up as her head snapped to attention.

"Jemma?" Daisy asked, looking at her curiously.

"Shh!" Jemma flapped a hand and all of them looked up, falling silent.

There it was again! Jemma shot off her seat and went running towards the basement where the deceased patients where kept.

Daisy looked at the rest of them, then her wings fluttered and she lifted off the ground to follow the biochemist.

AoS~AoS~AoS

Jemma threw open the doors and looked around for the source of the thumping noise her instincts told her to find.

She carefully listened, filing all the noises she heard away until she found the right one.

She looked at a metal bed, feeling energy hum beneath her skin as she ripped open the door.

Out slid the metal tray housing her Mate. His skin was cool, but not pale. Jemma put her ear to his chest right above his heart.

There! She thought, face lighting up as she heard it.

It was faint, and unclear, but she heard it clear as day.

A heartbeat. She closed her eyes as she listened for it and her eyes watered up again, spilling over with the tears that came.

He coughed as his eyes fluttered open. "J-Jemma?" He asked and Jemma's eyes flew open.

"Leo." She breathed and hugged him tightly, feeling the steady ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum of his heart.

AoS~AoS~AoS

Pipes. That's all Leopold remembered about that night.

Pipes. Pipes. Pipes. Pipes everywhere.

"Do you remember the briefing?" Pipes. A flash, maybe a screen? No, too dull. Holoboard? Perhaps. A face?

"No, I don't."

"Do you remember the landing?" Pipes. A jerk, Mack's face. "Ready to go, Turbo?"

"No, I don't."

"Do you remember splitting up?" Pipes. "FitzSimmons, stick with me. Mack, Daisy, go that way with May."

"No, I don't."

"Do you remember what you where there for?" Pipes. A box, blue. What is it? Maybe a carrier of some sort? No, too small. Briefcase, glasses. A desk. Someone was there.

"No, I don't."

"Do you remember being hurt?" Pipes. A scream. A flash. Burning pain. "Fitz!" "Leo!" "One... Two... Three... Breath, Leo! Please!" "Clear!"

"No, I don't."

"Do you remember anything?" (Pipes.) Stop. Wait. (Pipes.) Look around. What's here? (Pipes.) Where am I?

"I remember the pipes."