Because Raina (part 14)
Disclaimer: see previous chapters.
Note: this chapters features characters from the Runaways©…
"So. How are things at your end?" Melinda May asked Andrew few days later. "How are your new patients?"
"I got regular clients, I got regular pay, I got you, and I still can do lectures from time to time," Andrew replied brightly. "Overall, it's like the last 7 years never happened. True, I am working more intensely with S.H.I.E.L.D. than I would've liked, but it is a different S.H.I.E.L.D. now, so I'm handling it better than I would've expected."
"This is unexpected," Melinda blinked, as she felt honestly flat-footed by her partner's statement. "I mean, you got Grant and Daisy, you got Bobbi and Mack, and I'm not sure about Phil and the Ms.-"
"Grant and Daisy are simple. Technically, they're newlyweds who are worried about how their married life together, they have to face something new together, and lately they tend to be pessimists, so they don't know a positive thing if it fell into their laps. Plus, when faced with a problem, Grant tends to wonder if he can kill it first; Daisy – if she can outrun it, or leave behind, and right now, they know that they cannot/won't do this, so it scares them too…"
"You make it sound so easy, and wait what?" Melinda blinked. "Daisy wouldn't do that-"
"-as an agent? No. As a person, a wife? This is different," Andrew didn't back down. "They're in it for the long haul, they know this, and they're scared about it. All I need to do with them is to talk to them from our experience, and it works. If you would join us it would be even better-"
"I once gave training seminars in S.H.I.E.L.D.," Melinda confessed. "I'm not sure if this is the right thing for me-"
Andrew gave her a look. "Fine, I'll think about it, but only because Daisy's involved," Melinda said crossly. "Mack and Bobbi?"
"Coming to grips to who they are, as well as to the fact that the old S.H.I.E.L.D is very different from this new version," Andrew looked askance. "Identity crises, in short, and it is especially bad with agent Morse. I really want to contact Victoria Hand, if she is alive, or whatever, and give her a piece of her mind. Yes, S.H.I.E.L.D. was a spy agency, but some lines in the sand had to be made-"
Melinda, who had done some background checking on Morse (and Hunter) of her own, especially with ARC-7, held her tongue – as a couple, Hunter and Morse seemed to attract trouble or to generate it on their own, but-
-but that was them as a couple, and that was clearly off the table for now. Neither Lance nor Kara cared to come onto the radar too often, though they did keep in touch with HQ, and told Coulson (and May), that unless a mission came up, they will be staying off the radar for the next few weeks; Grant, who appeared to keep in touch with them, (primarily Kara) by his own means, added that Suzy Therese says 'hi' to him and the others and will be coming to meet them, eventually. Otherwise? Neither Hunter nor Palamas sought to make a splash, which was rather OOC, especially for Hunter…
"Um, agent May?" Grant, (speak of the devil), had actually startled the older agent, having approached her and Andrew softly. Daisy was besides and behind him, looking…looking rather like Skye, when the hacktivist turned agent had been up to some trick.
"Yes, Grant?" Melinda responded, sounding more wary than hostile. "What is it?"
"Your parents took S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new mascot for a walk, and there seems to be some trouble with the police, and they, apparently, don't understand English all over sudden," Grant replied, his own face blank and carefully controlled. "Daisy's Chinese isn't very good, and neither is mine, and we don't really want to prod agent Morse, who does know it-"
"We're going," Andrew brightly told the older couple.
"We?" Melinda gave Andrew a Cavalry-like look, who returned it. "Fine. We. Let's see what shenanigans the eldest generation is up to."
And so all four of them went.
/
The suburbs of San Francisco were nice; the golf course in question was green and moist, and adjacent to a small park that even had a lake of some sort in it. The crowd that had gathered in the course, sadly, was not nice, nor was it about golf, period.
"Hey, boss!" the (self-proclaimed) 'agent V' approached Grant and the others, alongside Dr. Powers and his team. "We heard from Ms. Palamas-"
Grant half-turned around and gave the man a look. Although the latter was just as wide as Grant himself across the shoulders, heavier, but that weight was still muscle, all muscle, he blanched and moved backwards.
"What he means," Dr. Powers quickly moved between the two: whatever feelings she had towards 'agent V', she didn't want him to be on the receiving end of Grant's sore mood, "is that you should look over there-"
Grant looked. So did Daisy. So did Melinda and Andrew, for that matter.
"Are those dinosaurs screwing each other?" Melinda blinked. "Come to think of it, where did the second raptor come from?"
"Oh, it's ours," a little girl tugged on Melinda's jacket. "She's Old Lace!"
/
There was a pause, and then agent May turned to Grant and Daisy. "I and Andrew are going to rescue the cops from my parents," she told them in a manner not unlike that used by Daisy earlier, "and you deal with the children over here!" and she rapidly walked over to her parents, followed by Andrew.
"So," Daisy decided to be the outgoing one in this relationship once more, "who are you, and where did you get the dinosaur? We got ours in Greece!"
"Really? Where's that? And we're the Runaways!" the girl said in a friendly style, one that only children her age could get away with. "I'm Molly! That is Chase and Gert and our dinosaur is called Old Lace. What's your dinosaur called?"
"Oh, it may be technically our mascot, but you see the aged couple over there? It's really their dinosaur, and we're not quite sure what they're calling it, 'cause our Chinese isn't that good," Daisy smiled apologetically. "Plus, we're S.H.I.E.L.D. so our names tend to be a bit oogey."
"Oh, S.H.I.E.L.D.," the older girl – Gert – spoke curtly. "We heard of you."
"And we heard of you," Grant shrugged. "Your parents were Pride…but you're not your parents, are you."
"No."
"So, what were you doing here? Agent May's parents had taken their dinosaur for a walk. And you?"
"Oh, we were searching for a magical horsey!" the younger girl – Molly – spoke excitedly, "and we found it, but then she saw Old Lace, and the old people came over with their dinosaur, and dinosaurs don't like magical horseys, so now it is in a tree while the dinosaurs are doing the nasty!"
"Say what now?" Daisy blinked and looked around. Sure enough, a horse of indeterminate breed was huddling high in a tree not far away from where the two dinosaurs were mating…and looking askance at the equine, clearly having not forgotten about it even in all the other excitement.
"Ah, I see." Unlike Daisy Grant didn't appear to be too flustered. "You're right, Miss Molly – magical horseys like this one don't like other animals… Agent V? Can you please get the magical horsey down?"
"Ok, but what about the dinos? I don't want to hurt them…considering who their owners are, I really don't want to hurt them," the other man pointed out.
Grant whistled. The bear-dog, who was something of a mascot for his team, for his and Kara's team, trotted over to them and sat between the dinosaurs and the tree with the magical horsey. The dinosaurs gave the mammal stink-eye. The bear-dog remained unmoved.
"Right. My turn then," 'agent V' nodded without any surprise (to Daisy's surprise), walked over to the tree, walked behind the tree, and shifted in a very, very big wild boar, easily 4 m long and weighing even more. The tusks, which appeared to combining the better qualities of sabres and axes, added even more gravitas to the swine, who lowered his head, clearly intend on upturning the tree by its roots.
The magical horsey clearly didn't like this: it jumped off the tree and tried to run for the lake – but 'agent V' shapeshifted once more, this time into a more hybrid form, rather than a human or an animal one, and grabbed the horsey by the back leg.
The horsey liked this even less: it twitched around and made a sound, revealing – briefly – not very horse-like teeth.
"Mm-hmm," Grant moved over to the struggling combatants. "That's what I thought." He looked in the horsey's eye. The horsey looked back and stopped struggling.
"Please don't hurt it, mister agent!" Molly yelled as she stomped over to the group. "It's just a magical horsey!"
"We're not hurting it, kid," Dr. Powers spoke before Grant could. "Now, why were you looking for it?"
"It's a magical horsey, duh!" Molly shouted. Dr. Powers gave her a look.
"What Molly means," Chase and Gert decided that some interpreting was in order, "that something weird was going on around here…and it's because of the horsey here, right?"
"Yeah, pretty much," Dr. Powers shrugged. "Magical horseys tend to live in water, and they don't like people very much either…but, my point is that unless you got a horse-sized aquarium back at your home-"
"We do!" Molly said brightly, "it's not like the Hostel, but still awesome!"
"Aha," Gert looked far less enthusiastic than the younger girl did. "Now what did you say magical horseys did eat?"
"Why, the same thing that raptors and similar dinosaurs do," Dr. Powers smiled without any humor herself. "Where did you get it from? InGen™?"
"I don't know," Gert confessed. "My parents, our parents, yes, they weren't the nicest people, but they had been rich and I think I remember the names of Mr. Masrani and Mr. Hoskins as part of their business transactions, before we ran away. Maybe they got Old Lace from there, it's certainly is possible. Considering, however, that my folks were time travellers-"
"You think that it is an original dinosaur, not a modern one?" Daisy finally joined the conversation.
"Yes!" Gert said enthusiastically, before dimming down once more. "Not that it is terribly important, of course, they're still supervillains and all, but yeah…" She looked at the horsey. "We're taking it with us, aren't we?"
"Yes," Molly said emphatically. The horsey wasn't so sure; it inhaled – and then it caught Grant's look and exhaled, clearly deciding that this was a better choice.
And so it was settled.
…As the three Runaways (and Old Lace) took the magical horsey with them, Melinda and the rest of her family moved over to Grant, Daisy, and the rest of Grant's people.
"My parents want to talk to you," she told Grant.
"My Chinese is worse than Daisy's is," Grant replied equally face-on. "Can you interpret between us?"
"It can wait until we get back to the HQ," Melinda honestly thought it over. "Does our dinosaur come from InGen™?"
"No, we told you what we know – just as the bear-dog over here comes from Egypt, so the dinosaur is from Greece, not Italy or some other country."
"I see," Melinda made some mental calculations of her own. "Well, shall we get back to our HQ?"
"And the police?"
"We resolved the conflict with them, honest!" May did her best to channel her own inner Skye. The result was disturbing, so Daisy herself, Grant and the others complied.
/
The ride back home began in an awkward fashion.
"So-o, what do you want to talk about?" Grant asked the elderly couple.
"What's with that 'agent V' character?" Melinda's father asked immediately.
"You know that one of Daisy's people is a werewolf?" Grant countered. "V is like that, only he transforms into a boar instead; he's gifted, basically."
"Ok, and that horsey thing, it was also gifted?"
"No, it was a kelpie; it's what the International Watchers' Council classifies as a subterrestrial, only the kelpie is more aquatic than anything else. Something tells me that the Runaways will be able to handle it, however."
"Who are they?"
"Children of Pride, who were a group of supervillains who practically ran L.A. the same way that Fisk used to run NYC," Grant shrugged. "His powers crumpled after the alien invasion – director Coulson can tell you more about it; Pride…I don't know what happened to them…"
"Um, excuse me, sir," Daisy began: she always felt slightly unsure before Melinda's parents. "But-"
"Don't interrupt!" Melinda's mother said somewhat shrilly. "Men are talking!"
"You enjoyed trolling these cops, haven't you?" Grant said flatly.
"Buh! Cops? What cops! Here were we, taking our pet for his walk, and there were these children, trying to ride a wild horse, when their pet felt envious and chased the horse up a tree! And then they began to fuck each other, just as unneutered dogs do – and the cops, they did nothing! Bah! Probably in the pocket of Wolfram & Hart, those bastards! How do you know about the lycanthropes and the like?" the older man shifted his topic effortlessly.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. has run into subterrestrials before; John might've been my S.O., but he hadn't had many problems in loaning me over to Hand, who ran the Index and who dealt with such beings," Grant shrugged. "Plus, if you go out into the field long enough, you may run into anything in the long run, pun not intended."
"You're an honest man," Grant's interlocutor gave him a piercing stare. "How did you end up working for Hydra?"
"I worked for John. My S.O. …he was the sort of man who'd work for anything and anyone to get what he wanted. He was my S.O. though, in many ways he was my father the way that my father wasn't."
"He was still bad."
"Roderick Ward was worse, and I'm…not a carbon copy of either, I…am trying to figure out who I am, and probably will for the rest of my life," Grant shrugged. "Where are you going with this?"
"You want to marry Daisy?" the older man didn't back down. "Make peace with her family!"
"Excuse me!" Daisy got onto her feet. "May, can I talk to you, in private?"
"Great idea," Melinda tugged the older woman – her own mother. "We need to have a feminine family meeting." The three women trotted off, with Melinda grasping firmly both Daisy and her mother by their sleeves.
"…Would you believe me that I had no idea of this," Andrew carefully told the younger man.
"I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt," Grant told him flatly, before softening his tone of voice. "Now, do you have any questions for me? Professional ones, preferably?"
"Well," Andrew gave his own father-in-law a look. "Maybe you want something to tell me?"
"You're helping them, you do?" the latter asked, simply.
"Yes," Andrew nodded. "In some ways, Grant and Daisy are unconventional, but in the ones that count? They're a young couple who are in love with each other and want to make it work. They know that they can live with other people, they just want to live with each other, regardless."
"That's love, sure enough," Andrew's father in law nodded. "A family, my boy, is a very tricky thing. Love makes it easier, sure enough, but what is love? No one knows, though the sages have ideas, each sage their own. You cared for this Ms. Palamas woman, I could see it, my wife could see it, but it's different with our granddaughter, isn't it?"
"Yes it is, but as you said just now, what is love? It's different in every case," Grant gave the elderly man a look of his own. "Coulson once called my love an obsession. Maybe he is right. I don't know about that. What I do know is that I do love her, I know that she isn't perfect, but I still want to make it with her, have a family. After all, I mean, as far as people go, I'm not perfect either-"
"Is there any other criteria?"
"Yeah. Agents," Grant told him flatly.
"Ah, so you figured out what my wife and daughter took twice as long in doing," the elderly gentleman nodded. "Good for you! My daughter…she had a thing for director Coulson…yes…it isn't pretty. What do you know about the Price woman?"
"I didn't research her and have no intention of doing so," Grant shrugged. "I do remember seeing her photo once – both John and Sunil Bakshi had been involved, so I know that Hydra was involved with her somehow."
"Yet you claim not to be Hydra."
"Not anymore, no," Grant said simply. "Not after I saw what Hydra does to people like Kara. Sir, I don't know you, but I wouldn't wish brainwashing on anyone, stranger or otherwise. It's bad. And the physical abuse, which is a regular thing there too, is bad also."
…It was at times like these that Andrew regretted having never really learned Chinese: for all of their national pride, his in-laws, as well as his wife, were as patriotic towards America as…well, Phil Coulson, for example, and never really pressed on anything ethnically Chinese onto him, or his parents, back when they were alive, so his grasp of that language was nowhere as good as one could assume. Take for example the current situation, where his father-in-law was muttering something under his breath, and Andrew couldn't really follow, though he tried.
"…So!" Daisy said simply as she sat down next to Andrew. "I've been honorably adopted. Yay!" she got up and sat next to Grant instead. "I'm grateful, really, I am. I'm just – overwhelmed. The timing…yeah, it sucks," Daisy muttered. "How are you holding up?"
"I've talked to Dr. Powers and the others, after the whole mess with the magical horsey," Grant said nonchalantly. "Kara and Lance are coming over to HQ – with Suzy Therese and a few friends on an S.H.I.E.L.D. tour – you know, to show the children what the grown-up agents do."
"Oh," Skye said nonchalantly.
"She – and Hunter – want to talk to me, Raina and Campbell in private. She told me that you can come too. She doesn't like you very much yet, I'm afraid."
"What is the relationship between the two of you?" Daisy's new grandfather asked, quietly.
"We never interacted sexually," Grant shook his head. "Kara had been abused, as I told you, so her mind wasn't into it, to put it lightly, and I never pushed it. We did plan to marry, Suzy Therese…I do not really know where to go from there…and when May and Daisy and Mack picked us in the national park, Raina told Kara that Kara would have to make a choice in the future. I guess that Kara made it." He paused. "And if you want to know about Kara and Hunter, ask May – she was there too."
"She was and she did tell us about this," Melinda's mother nodded. "It's a sad story. Agent Morse – she is a sad woman, adrift without landmarks. You," she jabbed her finger at Grant, "have made mistakes and have paid for them, and have moral landmarks. You went against yourself and paid for it, rightfully, at least to a point. Those poor FitzSimmons! But Morse – she got no landmarks, she constantly tries to jump the right way-"
"Bobbi's loyalty to S.H.I.E.L.D.," Skye said quietly, "is unquestionable."
"And this makes it ok what she did to the others?" the older woman shook her head. "Fury was a good man, but for him it was all the great game with no end in sight. The game of thrones, the game of shadows, whatever it is. His people were like him, but no one could be truly like him, so they all sunk. Coulson…yes, he's Coulson. I've heard Raina. She might be onto something-" the elderly lady caught Grant's look, caught Daisy's glare, and returned to her original topic. "He got landmarks, he got lines in the sand, as you do, as we do…even Andrew." Andrew just gave his mother-in-law a look. "So now agent Morse's got to figure out how to live…with moral landmarks. Agent Mack can help her with this, right?"
"Yes, I think he wants to, and so does agent Morse," Andrew replied. "However, with her, it's much like Grant and Kara – for her, Hunter was the first person outside of her S.O. for whom she genuinely had feelings for, so now she's confused – seriously, how she feels about him, Mack, Mason-"
"Mason is her son?"
"Yes. Lovely boy, according to all the records," Andrew nodded. "Looks like Bobbi, looks like his father, too. Under these circumstances, however-"
"Mack's first girlfriend was Anglo-American, so don't be so pessimistic," Grant shrugged.
"Mack has a girlfriend? Really?" Daisy half-turned around to face her…significant other.
"He had a girlfriend. She was one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on the Iliad. 2-3 years before the Bus, S.H.I.E.L.D. was helping the king of Wakanda to defeat his enemies, the White Ape Cult. It was a general, military action, more suited to WSC than to S.H.I.E.L.D. It didn't matter, but I was part of the team who used the Iliad as the aviacarrier. It was then that I met Mack, Morse, and the others. Mack's girlfriend was agent Fay – she was about your age," he turned to Daisy, "but she and Mack got along well enough. Then she met a son of one of Wakanda's politicians and chose him over Mack. The rest is history. There were agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in Wakanda, Fury ensured that, but…no one of them came out of the woodwork after Coulson began to rebuild it," Grant shrugged. "The rest is history, really."
"Fair enough, and Mack always did seem to have a soft spot for Barbara," May nodded. "Of course, he was often slightly lonely among us, so yeah."
"Well, I do remember him mentioning about a younger brother during one of the sessions, but he isn't in S.H.I.E.L.D. so Mack and he probably got some differences to work out, and he doesn't know about Mack's transformation either," Andrew admitted. "Mack has changed his stance on gifted people, but his own transformation…well-"
"Bobbi is helping him," Daisy muttered. "The FitzSimmons told me." She actually saw glimpses of it herself, but because Bobbi and 'Alphie' began to frequent the lab, which nowadays contained not just the FitzSimmons, but also Lincoln and Raina, Daisy started to avoid it: she saw Raina's eyes whenever the she and Raina were in the same room that Lincoln was, and she didn't like what she saw – a very feminine version of fear. Daisy had certainly become bad-ass, but recently she was beginning to understand the downside of it. "They got this weird thing going on-"
"Because Raina told them that they are going to have a daughter, who looks like Jemma, but with Leo's colors, and a son," Grant misunderstood Daisy, maybe deliberately. "Apparently, there may be two more children, but a daughter and a son for sure. So now the FitzSimmons are figuring out if they want to get married first or what. Raina did love to wind people up before Li Shi, but now she has largely stopped and I think that her vision of the little FitzSimmons, the next generation, was genuine."
There was a pause as the others thought about it. "Leo and Jemma will have children. Hah," May thought it over. "This is a good idea. It certainly explains why Jemma had been screeching out 'Fitz!' very shrilly last night from their room."
"You sure it wasn't us?" her mother asked with an innocent look upon her face.
"Excuse me," Alisha, who had been actually flying the jet in question, entered the main chamber. "But we've landed. Grant, can we go and get debriefed now?"
And this was what they did.
TBC