The docks in Cuba were packed tight with smaller fishing boats and were bordered in colorful buildings and streets dressed up with a few old cars. Time stood still in Havana, and it had been that way for a little more than half a century. Tool stood out on the dock with his hands on his hips as he took in the island scene, the water lapping against the old docks like a drummer keeping a steady beat. The rhythm of life went on around them and followed along with the waves; a group of older fishermen glanced their way but didn't say anything directly to them, a young man on a bike rode by without noticing them at all, and a Cuban flag caught the wind and beat against the sky, a melody.

"A man could get used to this," Tool said, looking around and taking in the sights. "It's nice. I'd have to learn how to speak Spanish, but I wouldn't mind opening a little shop in the city. You know, get a vintage sign and hang it outside, Tool's Tattoos."

Gunner looked up at him as he tied the small boat they'd paid off the Mexican fishermen for and snorted.

"Okay Ricky Ricardo," he said.

Tool pressed his lips together and shot him a look, but he didn't see it as he stood and stretched out his spine. The fishermen a few docks down watched as he stood to his full height and muttered a few comments to each other, all of which were too low and quick for Tool to hear or understand.

"Anyway," he said, heading off the dock and towards land. "We're gonna have to find that cargo ship. It can't be hard to miss."

Gunner was about to open his mouth to speak when Tool's phone started ringing loud and took him by surprise. After a little over a week of silence, the sudden noise came as a bit of a shock.

"Shit," Tool mumbled, stuffing his hands into his pockets to try and find which one he'd dumped his phone into. A few bullets fell out of his pants and bounced on the old wood until they rolled off into the harbor. Gunner raised a brow and adjusted his heavy backpack over his shoulder.

He finally pulled the phone out from his back pocket and squinted down at the caller-id to try and see it in the glare of the tropical afternoon sun. He pressed answer and held it to his ear.

"Yeah, Tool," he said.

He pulled the phone back from his ear when the yelling started.

—-

Barney was sitting with his feet up on Tool's desk, his chair balanced on the back legs so he could rock himself slowly back and forth. He was chewing on the end of a pencil he'd found amongst Tool's things and was looking up at Sammy's art again. There were others strewn about the room, some asleep and snoring while others typed away on laptops or whispered about potential leads. Images of Conrad standing across from him in Mexico flashed in his eyes and he tried to blink them away, but the darkness of his eyelids only made them worse. He rubbed at his eyes and then reached for his phone, hoping for a new notification to pop up that he had missed.

He huffed out a long breath and a few tufts of his hair caught it and perked up for a second. When they settled down, they shagged over his forehead and the greying strands caught the light. He decided he'd try to call Tool again. He was trying less and less as time went on, but he didn't know what else he could do. Without the Major, Conrad's trail had gone cold. It was like he was dead again, or like he had never even lived to begin with. There was nothing on him anywhere. Bee didn't have much to say, either. Barney didn't find her very talkative.

The phone rang a few times and Barney was about to give up when he heard a click and a bit of static, and then suddenly there was a voice. He dropped his feet back to the ground with a heavy thump and stood, the phone in one hand while his other twisted up into a tight, impatient fist.

"Yeah, Tool."

"Where the fuck have you been?" Barney yelled, hands nearly shaking from the force of his anger. "We have been calling you for over a week trying to figure out what the hell happened, but you were completely underground-"

"Woah, woah, calm down, brother," Tool tried on the other end. His voice was a bit garbled but it came through clear enough to understand.

"Don't tell me to calm down!" Barney bellowed, and he turned around to see that everyone was watching him, alert and confused. "Where the hell are you?"

"Cuba," he said.

Barney waited a second, brows drawn in tight as he tried to put things together.

"Cuba?" He asked.

"That's what I said," Tool said.

"What are you- why- couldn't you at least have left a damn note-"

"A note? What are you, my mother?" Tool sniped.

"Conrad Stonebanks is alive," Barney blurted, the anger bubbling in his throat.

"Yeah, I know," Tool said.

"You- you know?" Barney asked, and everyone else furrowed their brows as well.

"Yeah. Saw him myself."

Barney swallowed and ran his fingers through his hair.

"What do you mean you saw him yourself?" Barney asked, emphasizing each word carefully, his teeth barring together as he tried to keep himself from bursting out.

"In Mexico," Tool said.

"In-" Barney started, turning his head up to the ceiling. "Why the hell were you in Mexico?"

"Long story," Tool said. "Doesn't matter right now. What does matter is that we're in Cuba, and we've been tailing the cargo ship they stuffed Sammy into in Mexico."

Barney blinked. "We?" He asked.

"Me and Gunner," Tool said.

"Gunner?" Barney asked, and his veins felt hot against his skin. He squeezed the phone in his hand.

"Yeah, brother," Tool said.

Barney opened his mouth to speak but there was nothing he could formulate into a cohesive sentence. He scrubbed at the bags under his eyes and tried to make sense of what he was hearing.

"We'll be there. Wheels up in thirty," he said.

"Now wait a minute, Barns," Tool hurried, raising his voice on the other end. "As far as we know, they don't know we've been following them. If you just show up here out of nowhere it's gonna scare them off and we might never get our girl back."

"Are you telling us to stay damn put?" Barney nearly yelled, his face bright red and burning hot with his anger.

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Tool grunted over the line. "If they know you guys have any idea of where they are, they'll disappear."

Barney dropped back into his chair and let his head hang, his thumb and forefinger rubbing hard against his forehead. He sighed.

"You find the other girl?" Tool asked after a second.

"Yeah," Barney said. "Got her here with us."

"That's good," Tool said. "Listen, I gotta go, but we got this brother. We're gonna bring her home."

"It's not a long flight to Cuba. You call us the second-"

"We got it, brother," Tool said, his voice crackling slightly. They stayed on the line for another few seconds in silence until it went dead, and Barney sat there listening to the dial tone for a minute until he clicked off his phone and let his hand fall from his ear.

"What the hell just happened?" Cap asked, staring at Barney with sharp, deadly eyes.

Barney sighed and covered his face with both hands. It had been a very, very long week.

—-

Lee was sitting in the hallway across from the door that lead to where they were keeping Bee. He watched it like it might burst open at any minute, his head pressed back against the wall and arms resting on his knees. He spun a throwing blade in his fingers mindlessly. He was wearing the same clothes he had been for the last few days and his beard was much more grown in than he ever preferred for it to be. All he could think about was the life he had missed out on, that he had gotten so close to having. He kept a folded up picture of Sammy in his wallet but he couldn't bear to look at it- it was weighing him down, though. He felt it with him with every tick of the clock, with every move he made or breath he took.

He knew Bee was behind that door, and that, to some extent, this entire situation had to do with her- maybe he couldn't pin the blame on her in good conscience, but a big part of him wanted to. He just wanted a simple answer for his messy grief. He stopped spinning the throwing blade for a second and look down at the sharp edge. He'd taken those edges for granted in the past. He ran his thumb along the angled curve lightly enough to not draw blood, but hard enough that he felt it trying. He wanted to know what was so special about the woman in the room across from him that Sammy was willing to die for her. He couldn't figure it out from what he'd seen so far.

In one fell swoop he threw the blade hard into the door. He was already reaching for the handle when it thumped and stuck into place in the wood. He shoved the door open and held onto the handle as he looked into the room, his jaw twitching as he breathed and swallowed passed his aching, pounding heart. Bee was looking up at him from the chair by the window, her hair brushed back into two braids and her red freckled cheeks catching the bright blue afternoon light. His chest was heaving with each breath he took, but as he watched her, he felt his anger start to quell. He loosened his grip on the door and closed it behind himself, leaving him alone in the room with Bee.

They watched each other, like two dogs meeting for the first time in a park; uncertain, eager, and slightly territorial. He could feel the proverbial tug of the leash on his neck as he cycled through his bitter thoughts. He swallowed and gave in to the distance between them.

His heart felt like it was beating in parts, split throughout his body. There was a part in his ear, loud and quick and uncertain, a part in his chest that was sporadic and hollow and strong, and parts in either of his hands that were faded and thick and desperate. She looked up at him, unmoving, and he took note of her stagnant green eyes and the downwards angle of the corners of her lips. She had lines on her forehead and at the outer corners of her eyes that made her look a bit older than she was. She was tiny and thin and a bit sunken in on herself, probably from her refusal to eat much of anything. There was a tray on an old desk near the door with a little over half of her breakfast left on it.

Lee worked his jaw and tried to come up with something to say, but nothing was coming to his mind. He felt deeply and profoundly empty as he stared over at her. Maybe a part of him thought that he'd slam through the door and somehow Sammy would be on the other side. That going into that room would make things right. He felt a burning behind his eyes and held his breath.

Bee watched him, blank and unafraid. She remembered him running at the pickup truck back in Mexico, but they hadn't let him near her then. They didn't seem to want to hurt her, if actions were anything to go off of. They didn't even threaten it. Even though she had seen him spilling over with rage and had sensed his anger when he barged into the room, for some reason, she knew he wouldn't hurt her. They searched and scanned each other, both tired and unwell. They seemed to be at a stalemate, even though their battle had barely even begun. Lee sucked in a breath as though to talk, but after a second, he meaninglessly deflated and scratched the back of his head.

How was he supposed to like and forgive a person that played a part in taking away his last good thing? Even if that person meant the world to his good thing, it still felt wrong to talk to her like a friend. To look her in the eyes and try to see the humanity behind them instead of blocking it all out.

Bee watched as he jumped through the mental hoops to justify whatever he was trying to do. She'd been questioned multiple times a day, everyday, by most of the team. She hadn't seen Lee yet, though. She was glad for that, because a part of her that was still clinging to her pre-training life remembered Sammy's stories about him. She remembered that he had hurt her by not saying goodbye, but she also remembered that Sammy loved him. Sometimes, she thought, loving somebody must mean forgiveness. From the struggle written all over Lee's face in that moment, Bee began to wonder if he had ever forgiven himself for the things he had done wrong; if forgiveness was even a skill he had. He seemed like the type to hold a grudge.

She decided that speaking first, at the very least, would give her a temporary advantage in this conversation. She really needed the upper-hand, too. She needed to find out where the line between real and fake was. She needed to know what was true.

"You're Lee," she said, shifting in her chair so that she was hugging one knee to her chest. She waited patiently for his eyes to find hers again. His shoulders sunk down into his back and his chest seemed to loosen.

"That's me," he said, the words slurring together under the weight of his uncertainty and his accent, which only got heavier and harder to understand when he was upset.

"Are you guys going to let me go?" She asked. She figured getting right to the point wouldn't hurt. Her head was reeling from trying to decode a million different things, not to mention how exhausting it was not knowing who to trust. She was always on guard. Also watching her own back.

Lee felt his fingers spasm as a surge of anger peaked within him. He chewed on the inside of his cheek and tried to breathe through his thoughts before he spoke.

"Not until we have her back," he said matter-of-factly.

Bee shook her head.

"What?" He asked, looking her up and down. She was smaller than Sammy- shorter, more petite.

"They don't care about her," she said with a shrug. "She's just a means to an end."

"Like you were?" Lee said, the words burning his lips like acid as they spewed into the air. He swallowed.

"According to you all, sure," she said.

"They really brainwashed you, didn't they?" He asked.

It was Bee's turn to look him up and down. She tried to ignore the spinning in her head at his question. It was much easier to just pick a side and accept it as the truth. Grey areas made her nauseous, and all she really wanted was to go home.

Lee let out a breathy, exhausted laugh and shook his head. "They tell you that we were the bad guys? That Sammy was there at training on some sort of job, and that was why she got pulled out so suddenly? That for some reason, we were gonna go after you next, so to protect yourself and everyone you loved you had to fake your death and go with them?"

Bee tensed as he spoke. He pressed his lips together and nodded, understanding.

"They probably even had evidence. Photos, videos, soundbites maybe. They put it all together and created the perfect villain. And you believed it," he said, stretching his fingers in and out from the center of his palms. "All this time, she was willing to die for you, and you believed that she was the villain."

"I had to," Bee said softly, diverting her gaze for a moment.

"You had to, or it was easy to?" He asked.

"How do you even really know who is good and who is bad?" She asked, her head tilted down to the floor. "All I wanted to do was keep my family safe."

Lee turned his face away so he could hide the irritation forming on it. He pressed his knuckle to his lips and frowned.

"Sammy is never the bad guy," he said, words muffled by his hand. "She makes mistakes, but we all do. We're human."

"Mistakes and murder are two different things," Bee snapped. She thought back suddenly to when the Major had woken her from her bunk in the middle of the night and pulled her off into a dark SUV under the stars. He'd shown her footage of Sammy and her group hurting and killing people.

Lee scoffed and shook his head. "She loved you," he spat, pointing a finger out at her. "Like a sister, she loved you. Do you even know what that means for her?"

Bee bit her tongue. She waited.

"She has been broken and hurt by loving people so many times before, and yet she still does it. She still loves with her entire heart and she fights for people- for the people she loves. She ran away from all of us just so she could go find proof that you were alive."

She pulled her knee in closer to her chest and rested her face against it. She squeezed her eyes shut.

"Do you even-" Lee yelled, reaching out to knock the tray off the desk so that it clattered and spilled all over the floor. "Do you even care? Do you even realize that somebody loved you?"

Bee hugged herself tightly.

"You had something good. Somebody really loved you, enough to run away from everything else that they had, just for a chance- a chance."

Lee felt tears welling in his eyes too late to stop them from coming. He felt one skip down his cheek and drip from his chin, heavy and warm. He scowled.

"You just don't want to let yourself see how bad you fucked up," Lee said, voice thick with emotion. "Because that's too hard to face."

Bee pushed her chair back and exploded up. It was the first time she had moved so much and so quickly all week, and it sent a rush to her head, but she fought through it and focused on Lee.

"Of course I loved her," she snapped back, eyes red and spilling over. "And then one day she was just gone. She disappeared. No note, no goodbye, nothing. And I was mad- I was so mad- because I knew that she had felt that before. She knew how it felt. Because-" she stepped towards Lee and jammed a finger into his chest as she looked up at him, "because you had done it to her first."

Lee locked his jaw. His nostrils flared and his fingers itched to cause pain. He didn't want to hurt her- he just wanted to scare her. He wanted to punch a hole through a wall or throw a chair out the damn window.

"You think you know someone," she said, tears bubbling over her eyes, "until one day they up and walk out of your life with no explanation. And then someone else comes along and tries to explain it, so you just believe it. Sometimes even the most ridiculous lie is easier to believe than the truth."

Lee breathed against her finger, and he could feel her shaking against his chest.

"What she was apart of was bigger than you," Lee said.

"That doesn't mean it hurt any less," she snapped, tears pooling at her chin. Her lips turned down and stretched into a tortured frown.

"So you were just bitter? You were bitter so you went along with all of this?" Lee asked, pushing her hand away from his chest.

"I don't know what the hell is real or not!" She yelled. "What was I supposed to think then? What am I supposed to think now?"

"That she loved you and trusted you and you let her down," he said, his voice raised louder than hers. He wasn't sure if he was talking to her or himself or both anymore. Another tear slipped from his eye as he spoke.

"You've all killed people," she said.

"That's rich coming from a soldier," he said.

"I've never killed anyone," she said.

"Not with your own hand, but her blood- that is on your hands-" he said, his voice breaking.

She lurched forward and slammed her palms flat into his chest to knock him back. Barney knocked the door open as she ran at him and hurried to grab her and pull her back- it was easy enough since she was so much smaller than him and too weak to put up a good fight.

"I didn't kill her!" She shouted, slapping at Barney to let her go. Lee took a step towards her but Bones reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder.

"She loved you," he growled.

"Lee," Barney barked, pulling Bee back still.

"If they killed her then it's her own fault," Bee said desperately, her voice breaking into sobs. "They said she deserved it. They said you all deserved it- They made me leave-"

Barney caught her as she fell in on herself and she clung to his sleeves as she cried. Lee felt more tears break from his eyes and tried to swallow past them. He twitched towards her again but Bones tightened her grip on his arm.

"You never turn on the people you love," Lee spat, his tears falling around his words. They were suddenly more bitter than he had the energy for.

"Lee- out- now-" Barney said, the words bubbling atop his anger.

Lee glared at him for a moment before he turned and whipped the door back so hard that it slammed into the wall and bounced back to slam shut again. Bones sighed and looked after him, uncertain.

"It's alright," Barney said, looking down at Bee as she clung to him and cried. "Tell me what I need to know and we can end this for good."

She pressed her eyes closed tight once again and gripped the cloth of his shirt in her fists. Nothing felt right anymore. Nothing felt safe. What did it matter whose side she was on?

When she thought about it, the Major never seemed as involved as Lee and Barney or any of the rest of them. He never seemed to care quite as much. He definitely never tried to comfort her, and even though Barney's grip was crude and awkward, it was still that much more human. She sunk into him and sighed.

"I don't know their plan," she said quietly. "They told me they were keeping me safe from her, from you. That if they found you all, it was shoot on sight."

Barney looked up at Bones and nodded. She turned and left.

"That helps," he said. "We'll get you back to your family. It'll be alright."

He guided her to the bed and helped her balance as she reached over to lay down. He watched her for a few more seconds, uncertain, and then turned to leave.

One thing was for sure: he couldn't wait to have this entire messed cleaned up. It had been going on for far too long, and too many people had gotten hurt in his place. He would find Stonebanks and take him out- for real- and make sure he could never escape with his life. Maybe then, the war he was stuck in would finally end.

—-

Lee went down the stairs fast and headed for the door immediately. The others looked up and watched as he knocked open the door and stomped out, and then as Bones hurried after him a few seconds later. Cap and Angel shared a nervous look, but neither of them moved from their spots.

He was climbing onto his bike and putting on his helmet when Bones burst through the door and yelled after him. He ignored her.

"Lee!" She shouted, jogging up to his side and knocking on his shoulder. "Lee, stop. Come back inside."

He shrugged her away from him and kicked up the bike stand so he could start it up and get away. She rolled her eyes and grabbed him again.

"Lee, listen to me-"

He revved the engine and she had no choice but to let go unless she wanted her feet to get run over. She figured she had no other choice as he began to move out of the spot where he had parked.

"We found her," she yelled over the bikes deadly purr. "Lee, we found Sammy."

He stopped suddenly, hands closed tight over the handles and the visor on his helmet not yet down. He dropped both of his feet back to the ground so he could balance the bike between his legs. He turned slowly back to Bones, who was waiting expectantly, annoyed. He kicked the stand back down and turned the bike off where it was.

"What?" He asked, unsure if he wanted to know more.

"We found her," she said again. He reached up and pulled off the helmet, still staring.

Bones watched as he contemplated asking his next question. His face was wrinkled and lined with stress and the remnants of regret and she knew he didn't want to break whatever temporary spell was cast on him with the news. Then he did it anyway.

"Is she alive?" He asked.

Bones swallowed and shrugged, her hands slapping against her thighs with an off-beat thud.

"We don't know," she said.

Lee nodded and rested his weight on the seat of his bike. He suddenly felt bad for his outburst at Bee, but he didn't know what else he could say to her. His chest still ached, and every heartbeat just seemed to be another question with Sammy's name in it.

"Where?" He asked, clearing his throat to cover the moisture there.

"Cuba," Bones said. "Come back inside. Let's all get together and talk about this."

Lee waited a second before he exhaled and climbed off his bike and placed his helmet down. He still wanted to run away, but his feet were carrying him back to the shop, to the Expendables, to the mess they all had made and were trying to clean up.

Bones watched as he walked quietly by her with his hands stuffed down into his pockets and his head hanging between his shoulders. She looked down at her feet on the sidewalk and wondered what she would do if it had been Angel and her instead of Sammy and Lee. She glanced over her shoulder towards the door and her hands longed for Angel's skin. She wanted to feel her breathe. She wanted to hear her heartbeat under her ear. She wanted to tell her the truth and pull her close and say that life was too short to hide her feelings, too messy to let them slip away.

She turned and followed Lee back into the shop.

—-

Tool and Gunner were standing on the sidewalk in the shadow of a building with bright, peeling paint. There was an old faded sign on it that identified it as a barber shop, but it looked like it hadn't been used in years. Gunner had his eyes on the ship as it drifted towards the harbor. Tool was chewing on a piece of hay he'd snagged from a small farmers market not far back. He had run out of tobacco a while ago.

"Guys seemed pretty pissed," Gunner said under his breath. He wiped his bandana along his face to clear it of the sweat that was pooling on his hairline and around his eyes.

"Yeah, well, at least we're almost done here," Tool mumbled, checking the signal on his phone again. It was in and out, and the battery was running low anyway. "Hopefully they don't blow our chance by flying in here like superheroes."

Gunner grunted. He was trying to work out a plan to get on the ship, but all he could think of was just climbing right on and taking out whoever got in their way. They'd have a lot of ground to cover, and chances were that they wouldn't find Sammy right away. He thought they could try some sort of distraction, but from what he'd heard and seen of Stonebanks, he imagined that any disturbance would just drive him further underground with Sammy under his arm. They had to figure out where they were keeping her if they wanted a fighting chance of getting her back.

"There's a lot going on in that big brain of yours," Tool said, looking out at the ship. "I can feel the steam coming out of your ears from here."

Gunner shifted and shook his head.

"I'm trying to figure out a plan," he said.

"I've been thinking," Tool tried, eyes set on the ship as it bobbed on the waves. "Conrad has been baiting us with people we care about. He wants Barney, so maybe we lure him out. We plant the big guy somewhere. Use his own tricks against him."

"It might be suspicious," Gunner tried.

"It's the best I've got," Tool said.

"If he gets spooked and runs away with Sammy, we might never find her again," Gunner said. The words felt wrong in his mouth, even just saying them.

"If we sit here watching and do nothing, we might lose her anyway," Tool said. "I'd rather die trying than sitting still."

"It's better to hit them in the early morning," Gunner said after a beat, voice low and fixed. "If he wants Barney that bad, maybe seeing them coming towards Cuba will be too good to resist."

"We can hope," Tool said. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his recent calls. He found Barney's name and pressed it.