Author's note: Time frame - this takes place sometime after the end of Season 1, but the events in season 2 haven't happened yet, so you could say it's in an AU of season 2. This is mostly told from Lily's point of view (my OC), but of the AoS characters, Ward and FitzSimmons get the most screen time in the story, followed by Coulson, Skye, and May.
The entire story is written (roughly 27,000 words), and there will be 5 chapters.
Chapter One
Lily vigorously shook out the rug and tossed it back onto the floor. The splash of the color in the dusty room made her smile. Converting the old office space on the upper level of the warehouse into living quarters had been a challenge - was a challenge - but one she enjoyed immensely. She and Aiden had searched hard to find a place like this where he could work. With enough space for his projects, where the two of them could be alone.
She stepped out of the makeshift kitchen toward the landing that looked down on the warehouse below. The cavernous space yawned empty and dim, as Aiden had left hours earlier on a business trip. She missed him already, but eagerly hoped to have the living area cozy and bright by the time he returned.
A shadow moved past one of the lower windows. Lily frowned. A visitor, all the way out here? Or perhaps a trick of the morning light. She shrugged and turned back toward the kitchen and the many boxes that needed unpacking.
She had barely taken a step when a masked man dressed all in black crashed through the dining area window.
Lily screamed.
Ten minutes later, Lily found herself in the middle of the warehouse floor, surrounded by agents from some federal agency she couldn't remember the name of as they combed through every square inch of the place. She slouched down into the chair they'd told her to sit in.
"Lily Nicholson," the lead agent, Coulson, said as he stood in front of her. He tapped the driver's license he held in his hand. "Says you're from Los Angeles, California. So what are you doing all the way out here?"
Lily crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the floor.
"Do you know where Aiden Churchill is?
She studied her shoes.
"From the look of the state of the upstairs, it's clear you two were planning on living here. You have some relationship with him. So where is he?"
There was no way she was going to tell him that. She actually didn't know exactly where Aiden had gone, but these agents were the type of people Aiden had warned her about.
They don't understand us, Lily. They don't care about the good we can do.
"Miss Nicholson, am I boring you? I'm sorry that issues of national security are inconveniencing you. I'm sorry that our search to stop a very bad guy is ruining your day."
That made her look up at him. "Aiden is a good man. A great man. You shouldn't talk about someone you know nothing about."
Agent Coulson studied her for a few moments. "Then tell me about him," he said quietly. "What has he been doing?"
She shook her head. "I'm not telling you that. He warned me about people like you."
"People like me? An agent from SHIELD?"
Lily gestured vaguely with one hand. "And others. You don't care about what Aiden can do. You only want to bring him down. He warned me about this. Aiden is the most brilliant man I've ever known, and he's kind and gentle and he only wants to help the world." As she spoke, she felt the familiar golden glow whenever she was around Aiden. She loved him dearly, and believed in him so much. It hurt to be apart from him.
Agent Coulson didn't respond right away. Instead he stepped back to confer with another agent, a woman with long dark hair. Agent May, Lily thought was her name. She was the one who had searched Lily's belongings to find her ID.
Lily looked around. Many agents still rooted through the boxes upstairs. Very few remained downstairs, in the warehouse portion, because it was empty, although some seemed to be looking for trap doors. Three other agents stood closer by, two with British accents who animatedly discussed something on the screen of a tablet held by another female agent.
"Miss Nicholson, are you aware that the lease on this building is held by an LLC?"
Lily turned back to look at Agent May, who had asked the question.
"And that that LLC is owned by another corporation," May continued, "which is in turned owned by a third corporation."
"And on and on," Coulson added. "It took us weeks to unravel all the layers of this onion, to find Aiden Churchill at the center of it."
Lily raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"By your reaction, I see that you were unaware," Coulson said.
"What does it matter," Lily said, although slightly hesitantly. "Who cares who owns it or how we pay the rent?"
"You're right," Coulson admitted. "Who owns a building, particularly a seemingly empty one in the middle of nowhere, by itself isn't important. But it's what Aiden has been doing otherwise that caught our attention."
"And what is that?" Lily asked before she could stop herself.
"He's been ordering a large amount of specialized equipment," Agent May said. "Under various aliases."
"So what?" Lily asked. "He's an inventor. An engineer. He has projects that he hopes will solve problems to help people all over the world."
"We think he's building weapons," Coulson said.
Lily stared at him for a moment. Then she snorted. "No way. You people are off your rockers."
Coulson sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Okay, I think we're done here. May, let's leave a team here to keep searching and the rest of us can head back to the Bus and figure out our next move." He gestured to Lily. "You're coming with us."
"I'm not going anywhere with you," Lily said. "I'm not going to help you in your crusade against Aiden."
"You're a material witness to possible terrorist activity, at best," Coulson replied, "and a willing accomplice at worst. So you can come with us voluntarily and continue answering our questions, or we can make you."
She remembered how one of their tactical agents, after crashing through the window, had tackled her to the floor before determining she wasn't a physical threat. There wasn't a choice, really.
"Fine," Lily said curtly, and rose from her chair.
They guided her outside and into a large black SUV. The British agents slid into the far back seat, with Agent Coulson and May up front; Coulson drove. Lily took the seat behind Agent May, and the other young agent sat beside her.
Lily braced for more questioning as they drove away, but the agents pulled out their tablets or papers and studied them. So Lily studied the passing landscape instead. It wasn't long before they had cleared the limits of the small, dusty town and were speeding past the open scenery of high desert. She smiled slightly; she and Aiden had seen so much of the west recently, as he hunted for places for his work. She loved the vastness and never minded a road trip.
"I think I got another one," the young female agent sitting beside her said. Lily looked over to see her tapping avidly on her screen. "I'm sending you more parts from another shipping manifest." The agent looked over her shoulder at the pair of agents in the back.
"Got it," the British male agent said. "Thanks, Skye."
The British woman next to him leaned over to look at the tablet he held in his hand. "Those really are unusual materials. Can you put together what he was building?"
"Maybe, Jemma. When we get back to the Bus I might be able to create a program that can analyze and theorize what the parts would best be used for together."
Lily listened quietly, hoping to hear more information in case it would be useful to Aiden to know how he'd gotten on some sort of government watchlist. She shook her head. It was all so ridiculous. Wasn't it?
After several more miles flew by, with no sign the agents were approaching a destination, Lily broke through the silence to ask, "How long is this drive? I thought you said we were going to take a bus?"
"Oh," Skye said, looking up from her tablet with a smile. "That's what we call her - our mobile headquarters. The Bus is actually a plane."
Lily's heart skipped a beat. "A plane?" she asked softly.
"A pretty big one," Skye added.
"I'm … not so good with planes," Lily said. There had been a reason she and Aiden had logged thousands of miles in vehicles over the past year. Lily hadn't stepped foot in an airport since she was a child.
"If you answer our questions satisfactorily, there probably won't be a reason to fly with us," Coulson said, drawing Lily's gaze toward the front. He had tilted the rearview mirror so he could see her. "Did you look at the equipment that Aiden had shipped to that warehouse?"
"No," she answered honestly, because she never opened his packages.
"What happened to the boxes?" Coulson asked. "We know there was a large delivery two days ago."
"He took them with him on his business trip," Lily said, then bit her lip, wondering if that was too much information.
"Where did he go?" Agent May asked.
Lily didn't answer.
"Does he ever do his work with you present?" Coulson asked. "Or is it only when he's away?"
"When he's away," Lily said. "He calls me his inspiration, but I'm a distraction when he has to actually get down to work." She smiled in remembrance of the first time he'd charmingly told her that. "I didn't want to get in his way. I know he's brilliant and needed time away to work on how he's going to change the world." She wished Aiden were here to explain it like he had to her; she felt so safe and comfortable around him, so inspired by his drive to help people. Lily sensed she was a poor surrogate to relay his message to others.
"How?" May asked, turning around in her seat to look at her. "Can you tell us specifically what his plans are?"
Lily opened her mouth, then closed it. Not because she didn't want to answer, but because she couldn't. "I … don't actually know the specifics."
"You've been dating a man who's been ordering tens of thousands of dollars of unusual and dangerous equipment, and you have no idea what he plans to do with it?"
"I never needed to ask," Lily said, growing heated. "I love him. I trust him."
"Trust him enough to have your name on some of the LLC's he's begun?" May asked.
Lily frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"We've come across your name before in our investigation," Coulson said. "In various companies he used to buy products, on leases for buildings. We thought it was just another alias he used, until we met you in the flesh."
"What does it matter?" Lily echoed her defense from earlier, though her voice trembled slightly.
"It matters because someone doesn't go through that amount of deception if they're on the level."
"He must have done it because people like you -" Lily broke off, her heart racing, unable to finish her thought due to her cresting anger and unease. Just ahead she saw a sign for a rest stop. "Can we pull over? Please?"
Thankfully, Coulson directed the car off the freeway without interrogating her further.
Before the car was fully stopped, she threw open the door and marched away from the vehicle, instantly enjoying the sensation of the warm sun and fresh breeze.
"Hey!" Coulson's voice called sharply to her.
"We'll keep an eye on her," said one of the other agents.
Lily rolled her eyes. There wasn't anywhere for her to try to escape. The rest area was in the midst of unbroken wilderness. The only other car nearby was a van that slowly trundled down the exit ramp toward them.
The other agents - Jemma, Skye, and May - followed her into the restroom. Despite knowing there was nowhere to run, Lily was slightly disappointed that there was just a row of stalls with no other exit. Even the ventilation windows near the ceiling didn't look big enough to crawl through, not that she would have tried.
She entered a stall and slammed the door, then rested her head against it while trying to steady herself. Confusion roiled her; she felt like she was betraying Aiden by not being loyal enough, not only in giving up information about him but also in the doubts that had entered her mind.
After several minutes of deep breathing, Lily exited the stall, not wanting to press the agents' patience. The women waited for her by the sinks.
"We're not trying to make your life difficult," Skye said as Lily turned on the faucet. Lily met her gaze in the mirror. "We just need to be thorough in our investigation."
"I get the feeling that the government just wants to put people in jail," Lily said. It was something Aiden had stressed to her often enough. They won't understand how the world can change for the better, Lily. They'll resist me, at first.
"That's not why we do what we do," Jemma said. "That's not what SHIELD is about. We're trying to stop people from getting hurt. If Aiden did get mixed up in something over his head, we want to help him before he does something he may regret."
Lily hated how reasonable she sounded. "Maybe so." She shut off the faucet and turned toward the dryer. Before it could activate, the dryer exploded.
No, that wasn't quite right, but something did explode. The world, perhaps.
Lily found herself on her knees, chunks of the ceiling and wall around her. She stared blankly, not sure where they could have come from. It seemed her ears were full of cotton, too.
The agents nearest her were on the ground. Moving slowly, but seemingly more stunned than she was.
Someone moved fast toward her, from the back of the bathroom. And that's when she saw the daylight. That hadn't been there before, had it? Hadn't there been a wall there?
Oh. That's what was on the floor.
She found herself sliding toward the new opening - being dragged back. She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to get her feet to do something other than just numbly support her weight and go along with whatever this new person wanted.
What was happening? Was this a rescue?
Shouts. Screams. Pops. Another explosion, this time far behind her because now she was flying across a lawn, half-carried in strong arms, and then the darkness of a van closed around her.
The van's tires squealed as the driver took off, sending her flying. The man who'd been dragging her reached over and supported her, keeping her head from hitting the side of the van.
She tried to sit up. They were now on the freeway, or they had to be, and landscape blew past the front windshield at a terrifying speed.
"Who?" she tried. "What." Her mouth didn't want to work very well yet. She thought the cotton might have gotten inside her mouth, just as it had her ears. And her head. "Where?" That was a good question, wasn't it?
"My name is Grant Ward, and I have some business with Aiden Churchill." The tall man who was in the back with her stared at her intently. "You are Lily Nicholson, correct?"
"Yes," she said, and immediately regretted it. Why did everyone want Aiden?
"Look," he said, seeming to read her expression. "I only want to talk with him. He owes me part of a deal. I thought we could work together."
"Aiden works alone," Lily mumbled. "And I work with him."
Ward sat back against the side of the van. He looked a lot more comfortable than he had a right to be. Perhaps he spent a lot of time in the back of utility vans, abducting the girlfriends of his business enemies. "Well, we can just turn around and drop you back off in SHIELD's custody. And let Coulson eventually find Aiden."
Her head was finally starting to clear of fog, and she frowned. She knew she definitely didn't want Coulson finding Aiden. Even if Skye and Jemma had been right in that they were only seeking the truth, they still wanted to capture Aiden, and Lily wasn't going to allow that. Aiden was a good man, she was sure of it, and she knew she had to make sure he had the right to continue his research. The government, and whomever this new dude was, could go screw themselves if they thought she would help them stop Aiden.
"If you want Aiden, you can go find him yourself," Lily grumbled. "I'm not going to help you, either."
"Oh, I don't really need help finding him," Ward said. "I can contact him. I just need a little incentive to get him to keep his part of the bargain."
"And I'm the incentive?" she asked.
He just shrugged. "Are you going to work with me?"
She gave him the finger in response, which made him laugh, which only made her angrier.
"You're going to help me whether you want to or not. Just let me know how easy you want this experience to be."
She ignored the threat. It wasn't like she had much of an option at the moment, not with his henchman driver speeding the vehicle down the freeway at over a hundred miles an hour. She wasn't about to jump out.
So she settled in, deciding to wait to throw a figurative punch when a better chance came.
And she wondered what the hell Aiden was doing that had gotten him this much interest from this many people. She loved him so much. She knew he had a big heart and was dedicated to helping the world. She just hoped that everyone would be able to see him the way she did. But for now, he had to stay hidden and safe until the scrutiny died down.
The van continued for what seemed an hour, although she couldn't see the dashboard clock from her vantage point. She could only see a little out the front windows, which was a blessing because it seemed there was nothing that was interesting to see - desert, and high desert, then chaparral, then more desert. Normally she liked scenic drives, but that had been with Aiden by her side.
How she missed him.
She nodded off, settling down to rest her head on her arms.
The van jerking to a stop is what woke her. She pushed herself up, groggy and disoriented, but the strong grip on her arm dragged her back into reality.
Ward pulled her out of the van. They'd driven into some sort of warehouse or garage, similar to Aiden's set up, but much smaller. This one was filled with random piles of crates and pallets and metal equipment she didn't recognize. Much of it looked old and rusted from disuse. The large bay door was shut. There were side doors, but even from there she could see they were deadbolted.
He directed her toward the front of the garage, which soon blossomed into either the neatest or the saddest bachelor pad ever. A decent kitchen - fridge, a stove, counter space - and a couch-filled seating area opened up in front of her. Toward the left, a short hallway led to some rooms. Despite its niceness, there was no sense of permanence to it all, as if it could be abandoned on a moment's notice.
Aiden's place had felt like that, too, although they had looked forward to making it theirs.
She wondered, now that Aiden had attracted the attention of the government and criminals alike, if they would ever be able to settle down anywhere. The thought made her both wistful and sad.
Ward pushed her into one of the armchairs. She looked up at him as he pulled out a phone and tapped it against his chin. "I don't suppose you would be willing to share the location of where Aiden's been working recently."
Lily just stared back at him.
"Didn't think so." Ward thumbed the phone on and scrolled, then placed it to his ear.
Lily narrowed her eyes. He had to be bluffing. Aiden rarely gave out his number to anyone. How could this man have gotten his contact information? One of Aiden's older channels? How far back did they go? She'd always respected Aiden's past. He'd told her he'd made some mistakes when he was younger, and he seemed ashamed of it. It was why she thought he was so dedicated to his current projects that he felt would help the world. She loved him for that growth and passion.
"Aiden Churchill," Ward said. "It's your old buddy, Grant Ward."
Lily raised her eyebrows. She could hear a voice, but it was too faint to tell whether it was Aiden's for sure.
"You owe me," Ward said. "No, don't try to feed me that. We go too far back for me to fall for that sort of thing these days. But I'm willing to work with you. I have an incentive for you. Would you like to hear it?"
He held the phone out toward Lily, his face expectant. When Lily remained silent, he mouthed, "Say your name."
Lily sighed. "Aiden, it's Lily."
The phone crackled. "Lily, sweetheart. What are you doing there?"
"She wants you to help me out, Aiden," Ward said. "Surely you understand what I mean by that."
Lily pursed her lips. So he really was going to threaten her, with Aiden on the line?
"Ward," Aiden said, his voice tight even over the crackling line, "be reasonable now."
"See, I was hoping you might become reasonable," Ward said. "You know what I'm capable of." Lily's heart began to race a little. She didn't know this man at all. What would he really do? If he had been bold enough to abduct her from SHIELD custody, would he actually be willing to kill her as a threat to Aiden? As revenge?
"Ward," Aiden said. There was a very long pause. "Your position is immovable on this?"
"Intractable."
"Okay," Aiden said. "Then my answer is no."
"I'm sorry?" Ward said.
"I'm not giving you what you want."
"I have Lily, right in front of me. Do you understand?"
"I understand perfectly. Can she still hear me?"
"Aiden," Lily said. "What are you doing, honey?"
"I am sorry, Lily," Aiden said. "But I am a businessman first, and I am committed to my ideals. Everything else comes second."
Something cold began to settle in Lily's heart. "You can't - you don't mean that."
"I do mean it, and I'm only sorry because you seemed like such a nice girl. Convenient, though, as I needed someone's name on some leases so that the government couldn't track me as easily. It'll be difficult to lose that advantage, but now you've become a liability, as Ward has so amply illustrated."
The cold settled in full in her heart, froze it, then shattered it.
"So, Ward," Aiden continued, his tone as flippant as it had been a moment earlier when speaking to her, "I think this conversation is through. I'm sorry your attempt to control me didn't pan out. I'm committed to my research first and foremost. Take care of her, if you like. She'll need a ride, as she refuses to fly. One of those quirks you have to put up with."
The crackling sound ended as he hung up, but Lily's head continued to buzz. He had just … abandoned her. Forsaken her. Betrayed her. All the love she had given him, all the loyalty in the face of Coulson's questions - none of it had mattered. He had chosen his work over her. Had he ever cared about her in the first place?
Slowly, everything she had known about him and done in the past several months began to reshape itself. Reality began to reset. It hurt.
Ward slowly put the phone away into a pocket. "I - I'm sorry," he said. "I know that doesn't sound like much, but I wasn't actually going to …" He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I thought he was dedicated to you. I thought the threat would be enough. I never imagined that …"
Lily closed her eyes. She wasn't sure she wanted his apology, or his sympathy. She just wanted her own pain, to feel justified in that. And what would she do now? Find Coulson again, and tell him everything she knew? Had Aiden been playing her this whole time with the reason he'd been doing the research, too? It hardly seemed right that he would care about improving the world if he couldn't care about the woman who loved him.
She opened her eyes. "I know where his research facility was," she said.
"What?"
"I know where he was going, if you're interested. I mean, I don't have an address, but I know where he would drive off to for so many of his long weekends he said he was doing work."
Ward didn't answer for a moment. "Why are you willing to give me this information?"
She looked up at him. "I have nothing else to give. I don't particularly distrust SHIELD, and I don't particularly trust you, but I know you and he are rivals, so if you want the information, you can have it. Do with it what you want."
He studied her carefully. She didn't look away.
"Okay," he said finally. "As long as you understand that you can't undo this. If you have regrets later on, it might be too late, and I'm not going to stop what I'm doing once I get the information I want."
She didn't hesitate. "Agreed."
So they'd be working together.
