Skye closed the door behind her with a soft click, then turned around to find Ward...smiling at her. "Hey," he greeted her quietly. "You've looked better."

"You should see the other guy," Skye countered with a nervous chuckle.

"I wish I could," added Ward. "But it's not like Coulson would stoop to giving me a mirror or anything..."

Skye had to fight from letting her jaw drop to the floor. "I...you're not angry with me?"

Ward frowned at Skye's question, thinking for a moment before giving an answer that seemed to surprise him. "No. I feel like I should be, I feel like I have every right to be...but I'm not. Should I be?"

Skye sighed wearily, collapsing into a seated lump on the floor as guilt and wariness washed over her in equal measure. Where's the bitterness? The anger? This whole nice guy thing...is this an act? Is he doing it because he wants something from me? Does...does he *know*?

"Hey," Ward called over to Skye, breaking through her thoughts. "What's going on? Are they...?"

Skye shook her head. "No, Coulson's not here. Fitz is outside watching us, but that's it."

That may have been the last name Ward expected to hear. "Fitz?"

Skye nodded. "He's lost one of his best friends. I think he's still in denial about it."

You know who she's talking about, right?

Ward's eyes flew wide as a second woman appeared in the room with them, looking to be a carbon copy of the one she was sitting next to. "What is going on here?!" he exclaimed, scrambling back from the space in front of Skye. "Who the hell are you?!"

Skye frowned, worried by the sudden switch in Ward's behavior. "Ward?" the real Skye asked tentatively. "It's me, Skye. You okay?"

I'm Skye, too, the other woman replied. But I'm *your* Skye.

"My Skye?" asked Ward.

Oh great, Garrett groaned, rolling his eyes. Now there's *two* of them...

Ward gasped at the sudden appearance of his mentor on the opposite side of the 'real' Skye. "Garrett?!" he exclaimed. "They...they told me you were dead!"

Garrett chuckled. I am, sport, he replied. Which means that I now get to haunt you for the rest of your miserable life...

The 'real' Skye continued to study ward with increasing concern. "Ward?" she asked, scooting up to get closer to the subject of her worry. "Garrett is dead. Are you...are you still seeing him? In this room, with us?"

Ward's eyes darted between Garrett, real Skye and 'his' Skye in a wild-eyed, confused panic. He closed his eyes and pressed the heeled of his hands into his closed eyelids. "This isn't real," he insisted, shaking his head. "This...this isn't real. You can't be real..."

Skye took a couple of deep breaths to center herself, then connected with Ward's mind. It's okay, she soothed...

Ward removed his hands from his eyes, awestruck by the familiar sensation. Real-Skye and Head-Skye merged before him, his mind once again reeling as the combination of his true memories and his 'fake' memories hit him full force. "No!" he exclaimed, fighting a losing battle in the tug-of-war between the two sets of memories. "No! None of this is real! It...it can't be!"

Skye reached over and forcefully grabbed Ward's hands. "You feel my hands, right?" she asked Ward. Ward weakly nodded. This is real, Grant. I promise. I am real.

Memories of an earlier conversation flew to the front of Ward's mind. "You...you weren't talking to me then, were you?" he asked Skye. Skye shook her head, and a thousand disparate ideas clicked into place at once. Ward caressed Skye's cheek like he was holding a diamond in his hands. "Oh my God...you came into your powers, didn't you?" he asked her. "The disappearing act, the mind control, the two sets of memories in my head...this was all you?"

It became Skye's turn to gawk at Ward in disbelief. "Wait...you knew? About what I can do, you knew this whole time?" Ward nodded. "How?!"

"We didn't know, conclusively. Just suspicions, rumors, that kind of thing," Ward replied. "The Clairvoyant found out about your father, but your grandfather got to him first. When he found out your mom was pregnant with you..."

"The raid on my village," Skye gasped.

Ward nodded. "When Quinn started working for HYDRA he didn't ask for any payment. He gave them anything they wanted with only one condition: that they find you. He told HYDRA about your father and what he suspected you were capable of."

Skye's face paled. She backed away from Ward as the implications of his words sunk in. "HYDRA knew about my father?!" she exclaimed. Skye jumped up when Ward nodded. Her mind was consumed with only one truth as she headed for the door...a truth that scared her to the very core of her beinng. "That means HYDRA might know about the Guardians..."

#

It would have felt like time was standing still...were it not for the mind-numbing exhaustion. Raina had been pacing the room for hours, staring at the walls as if hoping that the writings would inscribe their truths on her brain just by studying them. She pinched and rubbed the bridge of her nose to try and ease her eye strain. "This is ridiculous," she declared to the empty room. "I'm not going to get anywhere just staring at this."

The breath of inspiration knocked the wind out of her. Of course! she thought. If I'm now tied in to the divine, I have the gods' wisdom available to me! All I have to do is call upon it...

Raina moved to the room and opened her arms to the heavens in a gesture of prayer. "I CALL UPON THE DIVINE COLLECTIVE WISDOM," she exclaimed, screaming the words with every fiber of her being. "FILL ME WITH YOUR KNOWLEDGE, THAT I MAY BE ABLE TO INTERPRET THESE PLANS AND RE-MAKE THE WORLD IN YOUR IMAGE!"

Black tendrils of smoke started to creep in under the doors. Raina gasped, the human animal's instinct telling her to avoid the burning danger...until she got closer to those doors and felt no heat coming in from the other side. She returned to the center of the room, gawking as the black gas continued to roll in. The gas, though, didn't rise to the ceiling as a gas should have done. It simply slowly crept ever closer to her, building on itself until it filled the room and found its target. Raina breathed in that black smoke, letting it fill her mouth, her nose, and her lungs. But once she tasted that smoke...she never struggled, never panicked. Instead, she relaxed in the gas' calming embrace, welcoming it in even as it consumed her...

The darkness vanished, leaving Raina in the center of the room. She didn't gasp for air. She no longer needed air to breathe. Raina simply stood up, her eyes now as black as the fog that now consumed her. "Oh yes," she declared with a satisfied smile. "I understand everything now."

#

Bucky watched Alexis' hands, stunned and fascinated by the golf-ball sized fireball she was floating in a straight-lined vertical pattern. "Let me see if I've got this straight," he began. "You're a wizard. A spell-casting, lightning-throwing wizard like Merlin and those guys." Alexis nodded. "And your dad's a wizard, too...but he's part of this team of super-powered people called the Guardians of Shangri La."

"That's right," agreed Alexis.

"And one of these...Guardians is a healer who worked with Doc Banner to fix me up."

"She's not the only one," Steve chimed in. When Alexis fired a curious glare in his direction, Steve explained, "Bucky had some massive quantities of nanotechnology running through his system. I think they must have brought your dad in to burn the tech out of his bloodstream."

While Alexis took Steve's theory in stride, Bucky stared at his best friend in wide-eyed amazement. "Can you do that, too?"

Alexis shook her head. "Only the Guardians can do something like that. Takes too much finesse. I pitch in on the big stuff but..."

Bucky studied the expressions on Alexis and Stephanie's faces carefully. "Wait, you guys aren't Guardians?" Stephanie and Alexis both shook their heads. "So how many Guardians are there?"

"Five," said Esposito.

The group looked up to see two of the Guardians standing in the doorway. "Master Xiānzhī?" asked Steve.

Bucky turned to his newest friend. "Master who?" he asked Stephanie.

Ryan answered Bucky's question. "It's Chinese," he commented with a smile. "You'll get used to it."

"So you guys are Guardians?" asked Bucky.

Ryan and Esposito both nodded. "Agent Esposito," Esposito introduced himself before his partner. "Agent Ryan."

This only served to confuse Bucky further. "I thought you guys weren't SHIELD," he countered with a frown.

"Technically we're Homeland Security," replied Ryan. He turned to Steve. "I take it you haven't gotten to that part yet?" Steve shook his head.

"You guys know we were talking about you?" asked Bucky.

"That's right," agreed Ryan.

"What, you guys have superhearing or something?"

Ryan shook his head. "That's our other teammate," he replied.

"Agent Ryan here was my mentor," Stephanie chimed in. "Taught me everything I know about how to handle reading minds."

Bucky mouthed a silent 'oh'. "So that's how you knew. You can read minds." When Ryan nodded, Bucky turned his attention to Esposito. "And what do you do?"

"That's what I'm here to talk to you about," Esposito replied. He pulled up a chair next to Bucky's hospital bed. "I read memories, Mr. Barnes. And with your permission, I'd like to read yours."

Bucky frowned. "Shouldn't I buy you dinner first?"

Esposito smiled and chuckled. "I can promise you, Mr..."

"Please," Bucky insisted, cutting Esposito off, "my friends call me Bucky."

"Okay," agreed Esposito. "Bucky, we may not be SHIELD, but we've joined the fight against HYDRA. And you know more about them than any of us. Now, we could just ask you questions for weeks on end..."

Bucky caught on immediately. "But, your gift allows you guys to shortcut all that nonsense."

Esposito nodded, pushing himself to the edge of his chair and leaning forward. "Bucky, I have hundreds of people rattling around in here. I can promise you, there's not a lot you can show me that I haven't seen before."

"Really?" Bucky asked quickly, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

Esposito was unfazed by the skepticism. "Ever face something with the head of a wolf, legs of a cheetah, claws like a wolverine and a body twice the size of a grizzly bear?"

Bucky replied with a quiet chuckle. "No, I can't say that I have."

When Bucky opened his mouth, Esposito added, "and did I mention that I've read your buddy over there? More than once?" Surprised, Bucky turned to Steve, who nodded. Bucky then turned back to Esposito, who finished his explanation. "Look, I'm not at all interested in who you had a crush on in fifth grade. All I want is what you know about HYDRA. The rest will get locked away, never to be spoken of...at least not by me. Ever."

Still hesitant, Bucky turned to the one person in the room he trusted implicitly. "Is he for real?" Bucky asked Stephanie.

Stephanie nodded. "Master Xiānzhī's head is Fort Knox," she replied. "I've never heard him talk about anyone's memories that didn't pertain to a case. Ever."

"Really?" Bucky repeated, surprised by Stephanie's confidence in her statement. When Stephanie nodded a second time, Bucky decided to trust his friend. He turned back to Esposito. "What do you need me to do?"

"Give me your hand," replied Esposito. When Bucky offered him his metal hand with a mischievous glint, Esposito was in no mood for the joke. "Your other hand," he insisted.

"Sorry," Bucky apologized. "Figured it was worth a shot."

Steve's smile threatened to split his face in half as he marveled at the fact that his friend felt well enough to be playful for what was probably the first time in decades.

Esposito, on the other hand, was unfazed and unamused. "Your non-metal hand, please," he patiently instructed Bucky.

Bucky moved his hand across his body to get it within Esposito's reach. When their hands touched, Esposito instantly jerked back from the shock of the connection.

Ryan reached into his partner's mind as soon as he noticed the problem. "Javi?" he asked his friend warily. "Talk to me, man."

Esposito didn't respond right away; he collapsed, disoriented, face first on the edge of the bed nearest to him, then jumped up almost as quickly once his brain had processed the jumbled mess of information he had gotten from the man once known as the "Winter Soldier". "Steve?"

"Yeah?" asked Steve.

"You got a suit here?" Esposito demanded urgently.

Steve nodded. "What's going on?"

"Suit up. I know where Doctor Foster's friends are being held."