Giyera lifted his sidearm up to eye level to concentrate better on taking nervous inventory of its parts.

He spotted the release through the grim red lighting, and in an instant the magazine had come free, and all eight standard-issue 9mm rounds were spiraling around the barrel. In another instant, the handgun had re-assembled itself with a satisfying series of clicks and lowered itself into its owner's hands. The hands that hadn't moved until that moment.

His mind was another story. Giyera resisted the urge to force the submarine bulkhead open, calculating the odds of winning the upcoming fight. He was loyal, serving with highest distinction. Yet he found himself still needing the motivation of knowing that should he try to escape, he would be crushed by dark, cold, uncaring Antarctic sea.

The motivations of the rest of the submarine's occupants were not particularly comforting either.

Giyera hadn't been lying when he had his outburst to Hive. HYDRA, for all its influence, had yet to thrive outside the shadows. Fighting in the light was costly, and General Hale had not been easy to convince to part with half her hand-picked airmen. And to lose them! But a brainwashed powered individual, considered dead to world governments, was easily worth the full team and then some. Hale was an excellent agent. She'd amass a new squadron soon enough.

But Hive had demanded, and Malick needed, a powered force now.

So Giyera found himself onboard Anton Ivanov's submarine with a force of Watchdogs only a thin, steel wall away. Giyera felt that given their...prejudices, it was best that he not flaunt his powers in front of them. He hoped when the fighting started they'd focus on the Inhumans in front of them, rather than the one hidden in their midst.

Daisy's side was a bloody frozen mess. Steel shrapnel from the fragmentation grenade had found its way through many of her body suit layers, and in the case of her left side, into her skin. For better or worse, she couldn't tell how deep with the cold numbing her to anything other than the desire to quake something apart.

"Stay still. This could get hot." Joey crouched over Daisy's grimacing figure.

Lincoln was supporting her head off the frozen ground. Between them, they were very sure this was their best hope beyond evacuating. If they even could. The moment the first clouds from the once-distant storm rolled over their position, Daisy's laptop lost all broadcasting capability outside of combat range. The only way out was through.

And they weren't getting through with their best fighter out of commission.

Lincoln's hands drifted to his holster, his eyes to Joey, "Should we tranquilize her?"

"You're the doctor." Joey was unsure of his own role, much less the role of others.

"If you draw that ICER, I'll draw your ass into the ice again," Daisy squeezed out, "the point of this is to have me awake after."

Lincoln took a long look at the face in his hands, at the dark brown hair underneath the steadily growing cover of snowflakes. Then let go, stood, and fired once into his crush's leg in one fluid motion.

Daisy's eyes were closed before her head had settled into the ground.

"The point is to have everyone alive after," Lincoln muttered, and for the sake of Joey's incredulous face, ran a spark across his fingertips, "Normally, I'd treat a patient's shock as a doctor first, and shock as an Inhuman second. But I can't do anything here if her body decides to shut down. I'll jolt her awake once she's bandaged."

Seeing her in pain hurt him far more than it was supposed to. He had just disobeyed a direct order, and he'd answer for it later.

Joey took a deep, slicing breath. "Right. Okay. Let's do this."

His powers could melt metal, but Joey knew that, subconsciously at least, he could change that temperature. When he had body blocked bullets, if they had truly been at their melting point of nearly 900 degrees fahrenheit, at a velocity faster than sound, liquified, he would perhaps have only increased their lethality for himself and anyone in the splash zone.

The trick, maybe, was to think of molding the metal rather than removing its form. If his snow mobile's runners had heated up significantly when he had been toying around with them, he hadn't been able to tell. At the carbide steel's melting point, over 5,000 degrees fahrenheit, Joey would have been found himself traveling in water rather than on ice.

His rumination was broken when Lincoln's charred glove moved in front of his chest, coming to rest on Daisy's leg.

"Practice here," Lincoln implored, "but quickly, it'll take time to wake her up and bunker through the storm. And we're losing what light we have."

Zephyr One hadn't been designed for water landings. But then again, it hadn't been designed for a lot of things May had put the craft up to.

A short, unauthorized intrusion from Fitz into the NOAA's buoy data later, and autopilot was perfectly calibrated to maintain an inch of clearance between the underbelly of the plane and the two-story waves below while repairs were underway and they had disembarked.

Simmons had made strong headway into calculating an Extremis-inspired emergency thawing agent. She'd been on board the Maribel del Mar when Donnie Gill had tried to make his show of force. The people unable to escape had been frozen solid, civilian and spy alike. He was thorough. And there was no saving cell death on that scale. But maybe her solution would be enough if administered before the frost reached the brain.

It was entirely theoretical, and she'd need access to one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s larger labs in order to finish it. After seeing the temperature discrepancy on the sensors, she knew she'd have to. Extracting her work so far into a USB flash drive, she made her way to the now-open loading bay.

May spotted the approaching vessel first, and let go of a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

Coulson had fumbled with his wrist for a moment, finding the magnetic grip, before stepping onto the escort craft and he was glad he did. The generals, Talbot and Hale, seemed to hold themselves upright with force of sheer will, while even the crew were pushed somewhat off their balance with the bigger waves.

It took a minute to get the amphibious assault craft steady underneath the Zephyr's loading ramp, and in seconds May, FitzSimmons, and Coulson broke into a warm reunion. There was still work to be done. But they'd do it together.

A/N: It's been over three years, and for that I sincerely apologize. I am beyond grateful for everyone who left messages and asked for updates.

Writing this brought back a lot of unexpected, and maybe ironic given this story's theme, warm feelings. For a long time, storytelling was a shared space between my ex and I, and it's taken until now to feel up for reclaiming it as mine.

Comments and critiques are, as always, greatly appreciated, and I can promise the next update will be faster *insert the heart that formatting won't let me*