Disclaimer: I don't own anything Marvel. I just own Anna.

Chapter 14

The Writing on the Walls

Dear Bucky,

Things around here have been really crazy. I don't know if you know this, but after everything that happened in DC with the fall of SHIELD, a group of good SHIELD agents have come together to try and keep the organization going. When the organization fell, I was lost. I didn't know what I was going to do with myself for the first time ever. It was always just expected of me to continue on with SHIELD, as it's all I've known. I was born into it. And until it was gone I didn't know what else there was for me.

But it made me really think about things I never really forced myself to think about before. And in the end, I knew that this path was really the one that I wanted, and needed, to continue with.

But there are still things from the last organization that are coming up, and it bring such hatred to me. You working for Hydra was against your will. But for the majority of Hydra members did so willingly. One man that I considered a friend, a man that my brother respected, betrayed us and was Hydra. He recently escaped custody after we transferred him from our care to his brother that works for the government. He's currently still missing. His brother covered it up so we are currently the only ones looking for this dangerous man.

On top of that, we have a dead body with these strange alien writings on it that I'm currently trying to help with. But only about four of us Agents know why, and what the real reason is. I was hoping the days of these secrets would be over, but I guess that was ignorant of me.

But the tip of the iceberg is the fact that the man that really raised me wants me to kill him is he goes insane from one of treatments he went to save his life after I killed him under mind control. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I'm the reason he's in this situation in the first place, so I should, technically, do whatever he tells me. But I can't be the reason he dies again. I can't be the one to do it.

This was just me rambling about things that don't really pertain to you, so I apologize for that. I guess it's just me trying to tell you about my day.

Forever yours,

Anna

Anna knocked on the office door before she let herself in. Phil and Skye both stood up cautiously when she walked in, though visibly relaxed once they saw it was only her. Skye sat back down with her laptop to continue her research, while Phil knelt back down to the ground with a pile of photographs he was spreading out to help put together pieces of their puzzle.

"Should probably keep that locked," Anna said, doing so after closing it. "Sorry I couldn't make it to the house search. Steve called with an update on a lead for Bucky."
"Anything come of it?" Phil asked, looking up at her when he heard what exactly she had been doing. It was not only important information as the Director of SHIELD, but also because it was Anna's husband. It was pretty much his son-in-law.

"No, it fell through, but he had to let me know, at least," Anna said. Anna knelt down next to Phil, examining the layout of photos from his work and from the mystery woman's paintings. "You know, this is kinda cool looking," she admitted, handing Phil the last photo he had to place. "Aggravating that we don't know what it is, but kinda beautiful in it's own way."

"There's a lot of overlap. We were definitely working on the same design, but she has some pieces I was missing," Phil said.

"How does the carving we found in Miami fit into this?" Skye asked.

Though Anna hadn't been present during this mission, he was familiar with the details. There had been a church fire, and miraculously, the only thing that had survived was a painting with the same markings carved on the back of the wooden surface. Phil and May had gone undercover to retrieve it, but things had gone south with Hydra pretending to be people they weren't, and May getting kidnapped. Things worked out in the end for the most part, but it was a whole mess Anna had been thankful not to have been apart of.

Phil sighed and shook his head. "Whoever did it was on our wavelength." He stood up and sighed once again, looking down at the work in front of him. "There's just a few pieces missing. It's almost there."

"You were right," Skye piped up.

"On what?" Anna asked, moving to stand behind Skye to see what she was doing.

"She's SHIELD agent," Skye clarified. "Agent Rebecca Stevens. Level six."

"I wasn't working with her," Anna said, trying to see if she recognized the woman. "I was primarily in New York until I moved down here after Manhattan. You were there with me until…" She cleared her throat awkwardly and moved on past the topic her and Phil were still very uncomfortable to talk about. "Well, it had to have been before you started mentoring me. I didn't see her at all there. Then again, the place was huge."

"She was stationed at the Triskelion," Skye clarified.

"That's probably where I saw her," Phil said.

"Not recently, you didn't," Skye corrected. "According to this, she died five years ago from cancer. How is that possible?"

"Could be a number of things," Anna said. "Loki's died a couple times. Phil died. Steve was frozen. Thor kinda died and was revived when he touch his hammer again. Weather, science, magic…"

"We won't know until we perform an autopsy," Phil said.

"Don't you need a body for that?"

The body of the woman that had been murdered was brought in by Fitz and Mack. They heaved the black body bag onto the exam table, while Phil, Anna, and Skye stood on the other side watching them do so. Anna had been called in shortly after Phil got word that the two agents were on their way back from the morgue with the body, so she threw the rest of her lunch away and Rey hopped up on her shoulder to tag along with her. The two hadn't spent too much time together as of late, so it was nice to finally send some time together, even if it was while working.

"This body looks delicious," Rey told her.

Anna's face morphed to disgust. Ew.

Once the body was on the table, Skye finally addressed the two men across from the table. "How did you two manage to acquire a body?" Skye asked.

"You haven't been on a body run yet?" Anna asked, genuinely surprised. "Hm."

"Corpsey Diem," Fitz replied. "Seize the dead." The only one that seemed to find this amusing was Anna, who snorted.

"Like I told my man here, you want something in life, you gotta grab something and walk out like you own it," Mack said.

"That is actually really accurate to espionage work," Anna admitted.

"Is that all it takes?" Simmons asked from behind the two. She was working with a couple of the other scientists, but turned to give her full attention to them. "Really? Because I always thought that if you wanted something in life, you had to work hard and earn it." She stepped away from the lab bench and to the autopsy table. "Give me some room, please."

Simmons set down the bone saw she had in her hands and started to unzip the black body bag. She only unzipped it to just below the woman, Rebecca's, chin, to reveal the carvings of circles and lines on her forehead. Jemma and Skye were the two that looked most visibly affected by the sight before them.

For Anna, it was a sad sight to see, but she'd seen so many dead people, even so many by her own hand, that this woman was just another body. She didn't deserve what happened to her, but Anna didn't know her, so she didn't allow herself to mourn the woman. There was just too much to do for her to feel sorry for the woman before her. It wasn't going to do anybody any good to do so.

"Does she have any family?" Simmons asked.

Skye shook her head. "No one. No relatives. No kids."

"She didn't deserve this," Phil said. Anna placed her hand on Phil's back to try and comfort him. She rubbed gentle clockwise circles slowly to try and keep him grounded.

"Is anything coming back to you?" Skye asked.

"She was level six," Phil sid. "It should all be in my head, but it's not."

Rey jumped off Anna's shoulder and stood on the thing edge of the table where the body wasn't resting. He put one paw on the body and leaned up closer to look at the face, his little nose twitching as he sniffed. Anna gave the group an apologetic look and quickly scooped Rey up off the table and placed him back on her shoulder. Inappropriate, Rey.

"We're going to need blood and tissue samples," Simmons told the lab tech at the station behind her. "Full CBC, and multi-element analysis. Would anybody like to leave before we get started?"

One by one, the group members raised their hand. First was Mack, then Fitz, and Skye. Lastly Phil said, "We'll stay out of your way."

"I'll let you know when I'm finished," Simmons said. The four left, leaving Anna there with Simmons.
"I'll help in anyway I can," she offered.

There was too much at stake for Anna to get a little queasy from a little blood. There was too many horrors that really bothered her too much now. After all, she dragged a body through the forests in winter in WWII while getting shot at and chased by Hydra.

"May I eat these remains?"

Anna's face morphed into disgust again. "No, you may not eat her!" Anna harshly whispered back to Rey.

"But I am hungry, an-"

"No!"

"After the work is done, may I eat her then?"

"Oh for the love of…" Anna grumbled. "Sorry Jemma. I'll be back later."

Taking Rey away from the lab, Anna was left with some odd looks from Simmons and the rest of the science department.

It wasn't too long before Simmons called the team back into the lab after she'd concluded the autopsy on Agent Rebecca Stevens. Much like before, Anna, Skye, and Phil were standing on one side of the table while Dr. Simmons was on the other side ready to inform them of her findings. There were only two differences this time: Mack and Fitz weren't present, and Stevens was now resting on her stomach, showing more of the carvings drawn into her body.

"The cuts were all quite deep, but the cause of death was cardiac arrest. She died due to shock from due to the pain, not from the wounds. Very common in of type of ritualistic murders," Simmons explained.

"Ritualistic?" Skye asked.

"It has all the characteristics. The cuts are very precise, and the killer continued to carve on her long after she died, as if there was some need to complete the work. My hunch is that it wasn't the first time either. It's also not the first time we've seen these carvings. They're the same ones Garrett was making, correct?"

Just hearing Garrett's name boiled Anna's blood. Had she meet him after the fall of SHIELD before Phil took him out, she would've done so for them. Just like she wanted to do with her traitorous teammate in lockup, and like she wanted to do with Ward. Just how he could pretend to care about her, and her family, and Phil, was absolutely disgusting. It must've been how Tony felt when he found out about Anna. Hurt, betrayed, beyond furious. The only difference here was that Anna really had cared about Tony.

"Dr. Simmons, here are the reports you requested," a lab tech said, handing over a tablet with the information. While she looked those over, the group shared a knowing look, hoping Jemma wouldn't figure too much out about what was really going on.

"It's the analysis from the subjects," Simmons said.

"Subjects? Plural?" Phil asked.

"We found blood and tissue samples from a secondary source under her nails," Simmons explained. "She put up a fight." She started to look at the tablet in her hands, and her face dropped. "Oh, no. Just as I suspected. She had GH-325 in her blood."

"A Tahiti patient."

"Whoever killed her also had GH-325 in their blood."

"That's the name of what you guys have in you, right?" Anna asked. She was familiar with the fact they'd both had alien blood in them, but not all the specifics. She didn't know that the actual serum was called GH-325. And she hadn't intended for her question to be interpreted as an accusation that they were the ones responsible for what was going on.

"Don't look at me, I didn't do it," Skye said.

"No, of course, but both of you had GH-325 injections. Hypergraphia was one of the side effects they tried to treat with memory replacement. Garrett suffered from it. Apparently do does out, and they both turned into dangerous psychopaths. Have either of you two been experiencing a compulsion to write or carve?" Simmons asked.

"We're fine," Phil said. "But somewhere out there is a Tahiti patient who may be targeting all the others. We need to find him."

"The patient files were all destroyed. How would anybody be able to locate them?" Simmons asked.

"I don't know."

"How many Tahiti patients were there?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think the killer will come after the two of you?"

"I don't know."

"If you don't know anything, how are we going to fine them?"

Phil pulled out a brick from the wall to reveal a ke pad. He typed in the passcode and the wall opened up to reveal a small room with a bed with what looked like a very miniature MRI machine where the head would go.

"You're going to have to torture it out of me."

To say that the three females were extremely uncomfortable with what they were currently prepping Phil for was an understatement. Perhaps their actions were a little extreme, but there was no way they were going to put Coulson in a compromising situation without preparing for the worst case scenario. If this was going to put his life in any sort of danger, they wanted to make sure they were ready to take care of him so they didn't lose him.

Anna had never seen that sort of machine before. From what she got from the others, it was a memory device.

"Agent Barnes, can I have a word with you for a moment?" Phil asked, leading her into the hallway so that they could have a moment of privacy.

"What's up?" Anna asked, crossing her arms as she let herself relax around him.

"I don't want you to take this the wrong way, like I don't want you to be here for this, but I think it'd be best if you weren't," Phil said. From the look on her face, he continued on before she could protest. "I worry that knowing you're there might bring me to other memories…"

Other memories. The way he said it, and with it involving her, there was only one particular memory he could've been implying. That was the night she'd shot him on the helicarrier.

"Oh."

"Skye'll be there to keep me focused on what I need to find, but I think knowing you're there will keep dragging me there. I'm not saying that's the only thing I think about when we're together. I'm not. But that machine is designed to bring memories forward, things that are sensitive, and things you don't always necessarily want in the forefront."

"N-No, I get it. Really," Anna said, shifting uncomfortably on her feet. "I'll just wait in my room, then. But if anything goes wrong, have them call me in immediately, got it?"

"You got it," Phil said, giving her a tender pat on the arm before her went back into the room.

Napping was for when one had the flu, or when one was injured. Napping was for sick people that needed it. Napping was for parents that get woken up multiple times in the middle of the night by their children. Napping was not for Anna Barnes. But she still found herself falling asleep while reading over some files Steve had sent her way a few days prior. She'd finally just gotten a moment to look them over, and while it was important information, it was highly dry information.

It wasn't until hours later that she was woken up by Phil coming into tell her the events that had happened that afternoon while she'd been asleep.

"So there were six others with the formula in their systems, plus you and Skye," Anna conclused. "And of those six, only two are alive. You went to find the innocent guy before the killer did, but long story short, you stopped him from killing him, and found out that the symbols aren't symbols, but a map of an alien city?"

"Pretty much," Phil said.

"And the compulsion is gone?"

"Completely."

"So you're okay? You're good?" Anna pressed.

"Yes, Anna, I'm fine," Phil said.

"So you were the head of this project? Project Tahiti? A way to bring an Avenger back to life if they died?" Anna went on. "And it was making everyone go insane and you still went with it? That really doesn't sound like you."

"I had it shut down," Phil said. "Gave all the people new memories so it wouldn't affect them like it was. Fury, on the other hand, decided to use it on me one last time after the Helicarrier."

"Well, it was meant to bring back an Avenger…" Anna said, giving him a pointed look.

"I'm not…"

"You are," Anna protested. "You were the glue for the Avengers, Phil. You'll just have to get use to that new title."

My favorite part of this was Rey wanting to eat the dead body. Is that weird? I guess...Oh well. lol Don't forget to let me know if there's anything you might want Anna to address in her letter's to Bucky.

IF ANYBODY HAS SEEN ENDGAME AND WANTS SOMEONE TO TALK TO ABOUT IT PLEASE PM ME. I HAVE NOBODY THAT'S A BIG FAN TO TALK TO ABOUT IT!

Thanks go to the following for their reviews on the previous chapter:

Jedi Jesla777 - Rey's precious. Kinda like having her own personal Rocket, or Groot for herself.