Chapter 53 - Matters of Family

This chapter is NSFW.

Skye woke with Brock's head between her legs, his tongue caressing her slowly. At some point during the night he'd obviously removed her clothes to make her more comfortable - and to give himself better access. She smiled, put her hand on his head, caressed his thick black hair, relaxed into his loving touch.

Brock hummed softly against Skye, letting the vibrations travel through his lips onto her clit, felt her shiver against him, her fingers tightening in his hair. She moaned softly when he did it again, sharing through the bond what he made her feel but just allowing him to do as he wished with her. She was more than happy to let him go slow, for the moment anyway.

She moaned again as he continued to lick and suck lightly, motions teasing and slow as he built her up gently. Watching through half-closed eyes, she reveled in both the outward and inward demonstration of his love for her. Whispered his name like a caress.

Their bond was wide open, emotion and sensation freely flowing between them. He knew exactly what she needed, and she felt his desire to give her precisely that. No games this time; she didn't even have to ask. Two thick fingers slid into her tight passage and stroked her g-spot as he sucked softly on her clit, and all of a sudden the climax that had been steadily building washed over her. She moaned his name again and he just smiled.

"I've got you, baby," he whispered, his stubble rasping lightly over her thighs as he pressed gentle kisses on her tender skin. "I'll always be here. No matter what."

Skye reached out to him and he moved up over her, slid into her gently, loving her as tenderly as he could, pressing his forehead to hers as he rocked his hips slowly, exulting in the pure, unfettered joy he felt from her in these moments they shared, when the rest of their problematic world fell away and it was just the two of them.

"I love you," he said it aloud, despite knowing that she certainly didn't need the spoken words to know it. Skye's smile lit up his world, though. "I don't like to think about where I'd be now if I hadn't met you…"

"Shh," she touched her finger to his lips. "We can't dwell on the past, Brock. Neither one of us. We can't change it now. Don't think about the what-ifs. Just about the what-nows."

He grinned at that. "What now is I make you scream my name, beautiful."

"Excellent plan, ohhhh," Skye gasped as he shifted, changed the rhythm of his strokes to long, deep thrusts, hooking a hand under her knee and pulling it up to his side to improve the angle so that the tip of his cock rubbed right over her g-spot with every thrust. "That's it, just there, oh Brock OH BROCK!" She could feel his own end approaching, the tingle at the base of his spine that heralded his climax, along with the heat rapidly building in her own body, the fine tremors beginning to ripple through her.

"Skye," he groaned as she clenched around him, screaming his name again. "Love you, love you so much."

They lay clinging together for several long minutes afterwards, basking in the mutual afterglow, before Brock sighed and pushed himself slowly up. "Unfortunately we can't hide away in here forever, love. Much though I'd like to."

Skye mock-pouted for a moment at him, smiling when he laughed. "I suppose we can't. But we might be in for some down-time while everyone heals. So at least that's something."

"True," he looked down at her, nude and flushed from their lovemaking, grinned and held out his hand. "Let's save water and time, take a shower together."

Skye laughed, seeing his cock already beginning to thicken and lengthen again. "Glad to know that your motives are so altruistic, darling." Accepting his hand, she let him help her up and lead her into the bathroom.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

They checked in at the medical centre first, finding Bobbi in a deep sleep and Hunter passed out in the chair beside her. Jemma wasn't there, having been convinced to go to bed in the early hours of the morning, Mack told them. He was keeping an eye on things in her absence, because Lincoln had turned up and begged to use his medical expertise. Mack saw no reason why not, and the big mechanic and the young Inhuman were talking peaceably as they kept an eye on the patients.

"How's Coulson?" Skye asked quietly, moving over to the next room and peering in the window. "Where is Coulson?"

"He woke up a couple of hours ago and flatly refused to stay in bed," Mack replied with a sigh. "Said he felt fine."

"Which is totally the morphine talking," Lincoln added dryly, "but short of cuffing him to the bed we really couldn't keep him down. And I don't think SHIELD's director would look on me too favourably if my first ever action as an potential associated ally was to cuff him to the bed."

Brock grinned at that. "You might be surprised. Coulson's surprisingly forgiving provided he understands your good intentions. All right. Where is he?"

"His office, with May," Mack supplied. "We convinced him into a wheelchair, and May promised not to let him overtire himself."

"Well, we'd better go see him," Skye murmured, looking at Bobbi again. "She's going to be all right, isn't she?" She turned pleading eyes on Lincoln.

"Eventually," Lincoln said with a nod. "It'll take some time. I read her notes and I think Agent Simmons is right, she'll need a replacement knee joint, but yes, eventually I think Agent Morse will be back as good as new, or close enough you won't tell the difference."

"Good," Skye murmured, "that's really good." She gave Mack a smile, and he smiled broadly back, a little to Brock's surprise, patted her on the shoulder with one massive hand. He hadn't thought the big mechanic had ever particularly warmed to Skye, but obviously in the disaster that had been the battle on the Iliad they'd found a mutual common ground.

Brock and Skye headed for Coulson's office, knocked and were granted admission. Skye ran straight to Coulson, falling to her knees by his wheelchair and embracing him. Coulson smiled wryly and put his good arm around her comfortingly.

"I'm all right, Skye. I'm fine."

"Lincoln was right, that is the morphine talking," Brock commented dryly to May, who nodded and smiled.

"I know, but he's woken up with all these plans and needed to talk about them to somebody."

"Ah?" Brock raised his eyebrows. "Are they up for sharing?"

"Certainly." Phil patted Skye's shoulder, gently encouraged her to get up. "Take a seat, you two. Some of this stuff is going to require your approval as well as co-operation."

They listened intently as Phil outlined plans for Project Caterpillar, a semi-autonomous team operating within SHIELD's purview, with SHIELD resources, but ostensibly independent.

"You're talking about something like an Undercover Avengers," Brock said thoughtfully after Phil had finished his surprisingly coherent summary of the plan. "I can see us coming into conflict with the actual Avengers somewhere down the line, if they don't know about us, and I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you."

"Which is why I want you and Skye to make contact with them," Phil agreed. "Wilson and Rogers know you well, trust you. Romanoff too, as much as she trusts anyone. Go to them and tell them what's happened, that you and Skye have developed powers, and that SHIELD are planning to work with powered people in the ranks. The Maximoffs will be well-disposed to listen as well, I believe." He gave a slightly secretive little smile.

Skye took a deep breath as the room went quiet briefly. "What about my father?"

Phil's arms moved slightly before he grimaced and dropped his good hand back to his lap. "Skye - you have to see that we can't just let him walk away. And he's too unstable to bring into the fold, either."

She nodded, tears welling in her eyes, reached blindly for Brock's hand. He took it and gripped it lightly, trying to soothe her with soft, loving thoughts. He could tell Coulson had a plan for this, too.

"On the other hand, without his help, you'd be dead. For that, we owe him better than a prison cell," Phil continued. "Cal's suffered too much. Having to kill Jiaying - I can't imagine how terrible that must have been for him. So, if he agrees, I'm going to make him the same offer I made Ward. I'm going to offer him a fresh start with the TAHITI Protocol."

Skye's tears fell more freely down her cheeks. "He won't know me," she choked out.

"I know." Phil fell silent, looked at May as Brock gave up on any idea of trying to appear professional and detached and gathered Skye into his lap, rocking her gently.

"Do you think he should?" she whispered against his neck finally.

"If it's the choice of life imprisonment or the chance to start over with a clean slate, do some good in the world? What do you think, baby?" he asked her gently. "If he went to prison, yes, he'd still be your dad, but… I don't think he'd do well there. It wouldn't help his mental state. By all rights I should be in prison because of things I did when I was with HYDRA, but Coulson offered me a fresh chance, a shot at redeeming myself, because I can be useful here with SHIELD, and he knows that I'd never betray or risk you. You know Cal's not stable enough for that, so - yeah, I think this would probably be the kindest, fairest option."

Skye was silent for a while, holding onto his shoulders, until at last she turned to look at Coulson. "I'll talk to him. See what he says."

"It's his choice, Skye," Coulson told her with a sigh. "But if you make the offer, I think he'll take it."

She nodded. "You could be right."

"Would you be willing to give him some time before the procedure, if he accepts?" Brock asked suddenly.

Coulson blinked, not so quick on the uptake as usual due to the painkillers. "Why?"

Brock slanted a glance at Skye and she met his eyes as she picked up on the thought. "For me," she said softly. "Because this will be the only chance I ever have of learning more about my family before all that knowledge is lost."

May's expression softened slightly and she shared a long look with Phil. "I think that can be arranged. He'll have to stay here, of course."

Skye nodded. "I understand. If he takes the offer, we can work something out. Thank you."

"So, what else are you considering going forward?" Brock asked, changing the subject again.

"I wanted to talk to you both, anyway," Skye said, looking from Coulson to May. "I was talking with Lincoln earlier, and if we really want to work with the Inhumans we're going to need a better system than the current Index…"

May and Coulson listened intently, nodding approvingly at regular intervals without interrupting, and Skye could feel Brock's warm approval of her ideas as well.

"We'll need to thrash out the details," Coulson agreed finally, "talk to Weaver, too, and re-train those who are going to be doing the Indexing. Talking of which." He leaned back in his wheelchair, weary blue eyes flickering from Skye to Brock, "what can you two tell me about the self-cloning redheaded ninja lady currently locked up in Vault D?"

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

They began easing Lincoln, who seemed to be getting more comfortable with SHIELD by the minute, into the idea of joining SHIELD. He'd already befriended Hunter and the Brit was telling him increasingly more outlandish stories of his exploits with the SAS by the time Brock wheeled a protesting Coulson back into the medical suite.

"You're going back to bed, Coulson," Skye told him sternly.

"You're not the boss of me," Phil attempted to fold his arms over his chest and looked almost comically disappointed to realise he only had one forearm.

"I'm not sure if it's the drugs kicking in or that he needs more drugs," Skye told Lincoln, failing to suppress her giggles.

"More drugs," Lincoln said with a grin, "he's going loopy from the pain. Come on, Director, back to bed with you."

"You're a nice boy," Phil said vaguely as Lincoln and Brock helped him back into bed and Lincoln plugged the IV back into the back of his right hand. "Remind me of Audrey. Eyes like hers…"

Lincoln blinked as Coulson passed out. "Audrey?"

"His ex-girlfriend," Brock said, grinning.

"Oh, Lord. Should I be worried?" Lincoln grinned, though, and Brock liked the kid all the more for his ability to take a joke.

"Not about that. Though we do need your help," Skye said. "With Alisha."

Lincoln sobered, glanced at the sleeping Phil and drew them both outside. "Where is she?"

"Secured in a cell she can't get out of. We need to know more about her, Lincoln; I only exchanged a few words with her, and so did Brock. Did she believe - was she like you, did she not know what Mo- what Jiaying had planned?"

Lincoln frowned, leaning against the wall and closing his arms. "I can't believe she did. Alisha has training as a nurse, we worked together a lot - we were basically Afterlife's medical staff. She's a healer; I can't see her wanting to kill hundreds of people. But on the other hand - she and Jiaying were really close. Alisha didn't talk about her family, but I had the impression that she practically grew up in Afterlife, that she looked on Jiaying as like a foster mom or something."

That made Skye blink, glancing at Brock. Jiaying never mentioned it, he caught her thought, surprised and a little worried.

"Will you come down with us to talk to her?" Brock requested. "I have orders from the Director that although the Index will be changed to limit access, she still has to be put on it. It'll be easier with her co-operation, but…" he left the sentence hanging, and Lincoln nodded, his expression a little grim.

"I'll come with you."

Alisha was sitting cross-legged on the bed in the vault. She stood up and glared at them as they walked in, Brock carrying a tray with wrapped sandwiches and a water bottle. "You're working with them, Lincoln? I expected better of you," she snapped coldly.

"Well, I didn't expect Jiaying to turn out to be a, a, a…" Lincoln stalled on finding the right words.

"A mass-murdering racial supremacist," Skye supplied quietly.

"A eugenecist," Lincoln said.

Alisha flinched, her eyes going wide. "What? That's not…"

"What else can you call it? She intended to murder everyone on board that ship who didn't carry the Inhuman gene." Lincoln stepped closer to the barrier, stared hard at Alisha. "Did you know? Tell me that you didn't. You're a nurse, Alisha; tell me that you weren't party to a plan to murder hundreds of people!"

"I - I…" all the fight seemed to go out of Alisha at once. She sagged like a punctured balloon, collapsing to sit back down on the bed. "She said only a few would die," she mumbled.

"She lied." Brock tapped the panel to open the pass-through port, slid the tray through it. "I'm sorry, Alisha. Truly. I know what it's like to realise that the cause you thought would lead to a better world was leading instead down a ghastly blood-soaked road to hell, believe me."

Alisha stared at him, and then slowly, unwillingly, she nodded. "I heard that you used to be HYDRA."

"Almost every legitimate grievance that the Inhumans had with SHIELD can truly be laid at HYDRA's door," Brock said gently. "I can point you to the information, if you want. It's all out there on the 'net in the files the Black Widow dumped, though it's hard to sift through if you don't know exactly what you're looking for."

Alisha looked at the three of them, her eyes lingering longest on Skye. At last, she got off the bed, picked up a bottle of water, uncapped it and took a drink. "So what happens now?"

"You decide if you're an ally or an enemy," Brock said steadily. "Either way, you will be put on SHIELD's Asset Index - but the Index is changing. Access to it will be severely restricted, not even held on computers attached to any kind of network. At least, if you're an ally. Enemies of SHIELD won't get the same privacy privileges."

"The Index," Alisha's mouth twisted as though she'd tasted something bad.

"I'm on it," Lincoln said. "So are both Brock and Skye. And I'm not afraid."

He was lying about that, Brock thought, but he was damned convincing. "We know that the Index was used by people in Afterlife as a kind of bogeyman, Alisha," Brock said lightly. "'Don't get involved with SHIELD, they'll put you on the Index.' It's an effective deterrent, given that none of you had any experience with us and the experience that Jiaying thought she had was actually with HYDRA. They didn't Index her, by the way. SHIELD doesn't have her in their records at all, and we had nothing to do with Whitehall's disgusting experiments."

"But…" Alisha seemed at a loss for words, though she watched Brock for any signs of deception. There were none.

"He wanted to try it on me, too, you know," Skye said softly. "I got kidnapped and taken to HYDRA by a traitor who thought he knew what was best for me. If I hadn't wound up in that Kree temple, I would've been used just like… like Jiaying." Alisha blanched, though she remained silent as she listened to Skye. "But I wouldn't have survived it."

Brock wrapped a supportive arm around her and she sent him a silent reassurance that she was okay for the moment. She kept her eyes on Alisha, trying to puzzle out the other woman's reactions towards her.

"They need our help, Alisha," Lincoln said, trying to provoke a reaction as moments passed in silence.

"Whatever for?" she asked, surprise evident.

"We have no intention of forcing our people to join SHIELD," Skye answered, "but we would like to be on friendly terms. We'd like both groups to know more about each other's capabilities, and perhaps form some working relationships."

"So what do you need from me?"

"We took care of all the medical needs at Afterlife, including record keeping," Lincoln explained. "They would like us to work with the medical team here to share data and assess our people as necessary."

"We also need a blood sample from you," Brock added while Alisha was processing that. "And trust me when I say that we'll get it, but it doesn't have to be the hard way."

Alisha glared at Brock. "I'll do it myself," she snapped. "Just give me a syringe." She was a little surprised when Skye pulled a box out of her pocket, containing a couple of vials and the rest of the tools she'd need - noticeably still in a bag indicating that they'd been sterilized. Alisha stepped back as the port was opened and the box slid through.

Alisha sighed and nodded, doubling herself to perform the procedure. It didn't take long before she set the box back down on her side and pushed it through when the opening appeared again. "There, happy?" she asked sullenly.

"We appreciate your cooperation, Alisha," Skye said gently. "We really don't want to hurt you, you know. I want to trust you; I really do. But you must see how it looks from our perspective. If you and… and Jiaying had succeeded, all the people who I consider family would've been killed on that ship."

"But you would've had your real family. Your parents, your people," Alisha answered in a soft tone. "And now you can hardly even say her name."

"You're right, it's hard. She tried… tried to kill me on that ship. Because I was in the way, trying to stop her. My dad had to-to kill her before she could kill me," Skye looked at Alisha through the barrier, pain and grief in her dark eyes. "My SHIELD team, my friends and family here… they may have done all the wrong things after my transformation. They may have been afraid of what I've become. But they still tried to help me when I needed it regardless of whether or not they agreed with my actions. And that's why I couldn't let them be killed."

Alisha looked away, overwhelmed by the intensity in Skye's eyes and the emotion in her voice. "I… I'll think about it."

"That's all we can ask for," Brock said quietly. "If you want to talk to someone, just look up at the camera and ask. Otherwise we'll get back to you after this has been processed." He took the blood samples and passed them to Lincoln before tenderly guiding Skye up out of the Vault. She was never going to have good memories of this place, even if they did get through to Alisha. It was best to get her out before her emotions got the best of her.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

A few hours later, Brock got a call to head to Medical.

"Should I come too?" Skye asked lightly. She was much more relaxed; they'd been working on some preliminary plans for Project Caterpillar and she'd been able to set aside troubling emotions as they worked.

"You can if you like," he answered with a shrug. "You know I don't keep much from you, sweetheart."

"Oh, I know. But still." She set aside her tablet and stretched her arms over her head before getting to her feet. "Come on, let's go see what the sciencey folk want."

When they arrived, Jemma and Lincoln looked at Brock with peculiar expressions. "Thank you for coming," Jemma began. "We thought you should see this. As a matter of course we ran Alisha's DNA results against our databases, looking for matches - crimes committed, that sort of thing. The database automatically throws up close relatives, too." She handed him a tablet with a pair of gene sequences highlighted. The two had several similarities tagged.

"Okay, what am I looking at?" he asked after a moment.

"This one is your new Inhuman DNA results," Jemma pointed to the first one. "And this one is Alisha's." She paused, then continued gently, "It would appear that the two of you are related, Brock."

He blinked at her incredulously. "What?" was all he could find to say.

"Fairly closely," Lincoln put in. "As in - it looks like you share a parent. These groups here, here, and here… you've got several complete chromosomes in common, too many for it to be just a grandparent you share…"

Both Lincoln and Jemma started babbling science-speak. Ordinarily Brock could have followed along quite well, but he was too stunned. Skye slipped her hand into his, squeezing lightly.

"How old is Alisha?" she asked.

"Couple of years older than me, I think - I'm twenty-six," Lincoln said.

"My mom was long gone by the time she was born. It has to be my father," Brock mused, felt Skye looking at him curiously. He'd still never discussed his family with her, though he'd been forced to tell Jiaying and Gordon. "That makes sense, I suppose. I was the result of a fling. My mom was a hippie; she met my father in Kathmandu. That's the only thing I know about him."

Lincoln's eyes widened. "Kathmandu," he said quietly. "Well."

"That was Jiaying's reaction too. What does that mean?" Brock pushed.

"I told you guys I didn't know exactly where Afterlife was, and that's true. But I do know that it was in Nepal. And not all that far away from Kathmandu. There was a mailing address there which I know was serviced regularly."

"That makes sense," Brock mused quietly. "I knew Gordon couldn't be the only way in or out of that place."

Lincoln looked a little embarrassed. "We - transitioners, that is - had orders to tell new people that. You're correct, though. There was a way down off the mountain and a village not that far away. The Inhumans kept a house there, and vehicles. The roads are pretty rough, but it was only a few hours' drive to Kathmandu."

"What are you thinking, Rumlow?" Jemma asked curiously.

"I'm thinking my father was a horndog who liked to go down to town and find a bit of light relief with pretty hippie girls in an ashram," Brock said with a wry smile, making the other three laugh, "but - I should probably go and ask Alisha. She might actually know who he was."

"If she doesn't, Afterlife has complete DNA records on file for the last twenty years," Lincoln offered. "If he was alive until '95 or later, we could identify him from records when we go back there."

"Thank you," Brock said sincerely, "but I don't think just a name will help me much."

Skye smiled a bit. "Well, why don't you and Lincoln go down and talk to her? At the very least, Lincoln should be less suspect of making this stuff up to gain her cooperation. I need to go talk to Dad anyway."

"Are you sure you don't want company while you see him?" Brock asked solicitously.

She shrugged. "I don't think he's going to even try to hurt me, if that's what you're worried about. You know I'll tell you about it later, anyway." She smiled up at him. "So go. Talk to Alisha. Maybe learn something about your family while I learn about mine."

"You should learn a lot, Skye," Brock said, gently encouraging. "Ask him about meeting and falling in love with your mother. Remember, he knew her before Whitehall got his hands on her. Ask him what she was like then. Ask him about your grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. Don't be afraid to ask him anything you've ever wanted to know about. You'll never get another chance, baby. I don't want you to spend the rest of your life wondering."

Skye blinked back tears and nodded. "I will. I promise."

I really hope Skye got this chance on the show, too. That Phil thought to give her and Cal that much, at least.

Now, some really awesome news for fans of this story!

We finished writing it!

There are 67 chapters total, including the Epilogue, and it tops out at just over 200,000 words. And, as we promised a while back, once we finished writing it, we will up the posting rate. So as of this week, instead of posting on Monday and Thursday afternoons (US time), we will be posting 3 times a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons. 14 more posts and a little over a month to go.

And yes, it DOES have to finish some time. At over 200,000 words it's longer than a good many novels - longer than the Da Vinci Code, for example! But I promise we're already planning new RumSkye stories together and you won't be deprived for long. If at all. We might have something new ready to start posting by the time this one finishes, who knows ;-)