Chapter Eight: In For a Penny (In For a Pound)
Seventeen days. Skye was definitely not counting how long it had been, but if she were, she would say it had been around seventeen days since her most recent strange encounter with "Zach". She had replayed the moments over and over in her head. She mulled over her choices and kicked herself over them. She was going crazy.
It did not help that the dreams had not stopped. She did not get them every night, but enough that it was starting to bother her. She had dragged Simmons out to a bar a week ago with the sole mission of finding a nice, stress-relieving one night stand. They had spent three hours nursing stale beers without any success. Skye cringed as she remembered how that went.
"Oh, how about him?" Simmons said excitedly. Skye turned to see a handsome blond leaning up against the bar.
Skye scrunched up her face in disapproval. "Looks like an douchebag."
"What about the man over there, by the corner?" Simmons indicated with less subtlety than Skye would have liked. Skye glanced over and saw an attractive, well-dressed guy laughing uproariously among friends.
"Not worth approaching with his little gang."
Abruptly Simmons slammed her hand down on the table and caught Skye's attention. "Are you going to tell me what's this about?"
Surprised, Skye blurted out confusedly, "I told you, I just want to find someone to let off some steam with. I thought you were okay with helping me."
"Yes," Simmons nodded empathetically, "I understood. It's completely healthy for a woman of our age to indulge in such impulses. But that still doesn't explain why you've disregarded all twenty-nine of my suggestions and made none of your own. You just gave superficial explanations for why you were uninterested in all my candidates. You did not even bother to speak to one of them."
Skye blinked. She knew she was being choosy, but she had not realized it was that bad. Skye grimaced as she looked down at her glass, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to waste your time."
"That's not it at all, Skye." Simmons voice had taken on a strangely sympathetic quality that made Skye return her focus to her friend. "It's just… Is there someone else you might already have in mind?"
"What?" Skye questioned. Images of her dreams came back to her in a rush, and she flushed. "Why would you say that?"
Simmons' lips turned down slightly. "It just appears to me as though you don't want any of the options I proposed because you have someone specific that you would prefer."
Skye shook her head and ignored the doubt in the pit of her stomach. "No, there's no one else."
They paid their tab and left. Simmons never said another word on the subject.
Skye trusted Simmons implicitly and knew she would never say anything about the trip- except maybe to Fitz. Skye frowned to herself. They did share everything, and Simmons was terrible at keeping secrets.
That being said, Skye wondered if Simmons had forgotten the conversation. It had never come up again, and Skye thought maybe Simmons had just assumed she was wrong. That was probably wishful thinking on her part. Simmons did not do wrong. Skye drummed the steering wheel in her hands with her fingers as she thought it over.
Skye and Fitzsimmons were returning to base after a routine check on what was believed to be dangerous alien weaponry being sold on the black market. In reality, it was just a really desperate thug who wanted to pull one over on someone gullible and make some fast cash.
Coulson had sent Skye and Fitzsimmons out to check it out anyway. Fitzsimmons had not been in the field since they were kidnapped, but SHIELD really could not afford to keep them out of it completely with their limited manpower. Besides, they had been training ever since. Not like Skye's training or anything hardcore, but they were learning how to handle a sidearm. Fitz was shaky, but Simmons was picking it up pretty quickly.
The two of them were giggling amongst themselves about something so science-y that Skye knew she did not have a hope of following. She was driving the car to the extraction point, but they still had hours to go. It was not a big deal though, Skye used to live in a van. She knew how to do long car rides.
Fitzsimmons' preoccupation also allowed her mind to wander back to where all her thoughts seemed to lead recently.
All her meetings with Zach so far had been completely random. He had been the agent to track the obelisk, but he had also been involved in the search for information on GH-325. That made it unpredictable when it came to getting a feel for who he was or where he would turn up next. Skye had to admit she had looked into both.
SHIELD did possess an image-scanning program that could search files for an identification match just with a description of the person, but Skye did not run it. She could access it if she wanted, but then she would have to explain why she had committed this face into her memory in the first place.
There was another part of her that was starting to not want to get the answer to that question either. If she had his name, she could research him. Someone that skilled working for Hydra probably had a serious past and criminal history. If Skye were being honest, she was afraid to know the truth. Skye highly doubted that he was that bad compared to the Hydra usual, his interactions with her gave her a sense of his character that was hardly on par with people like John Garrett, Grant Ward, Daniel Whitehall, or any of higher-ups she had been warned about.
Still, it was easy to forget he was Hydra at all. Skye did not want to see the undeniable proof of that he was.
Skye briefly wondered if he were a mercenary like Hunter hired by Hydra. That would explain a few things like why he let her go with the obelisk during their first encounter and why he was so at odds with the usual Hydra goon. But Fitzsimmons made it seem like he was a leader to some of the lower level Hydra agents when they were kidnapped. Skye really wished she could find a way to ask them about it. All her attempts at prying had led her nowhere with him. They never mentioned him.
A call broke her out of her daze. She flipped the phone on speaker and passed it one-handedly back to Fitz to hold while she drove.
"Skye, Fitzsimmons, do you copy?" It was Coulson's voice.
"Yes, sir. We're here," Simmons answered for the group. Skye glanced back at them in her rearview mirror to see the two huddled around the phone. They sat forward enough that she could turn and speak into the outstretched phone as well.
"We just got a report of a Hydra sighting in your area. Not fifteen minutes out. It appears that they're trying to get their hands on a real piece of alien technology that was being housed in a warehouse owned by a company called Futurepharm Corporation. Skye, you know anything on it?"
"No, but normally I hear of it first and then pick it apart to find all the dirty secrets," Skye teased despite the situation.
"We have to assume that they're civilians then," Coulson concluded grimly. "We did a brief search and found nothing indicating otherwise, and we don't have anymore time."
"I'm sending coordinates to you now," May spoke up.
"Futurepharm is biotechnical research institution that probably just naively got ahold of alien tech. I always say nothing good comes of anything alien in human hands," Coulson continued. "Reports indicate it's just a two-man team infiltrating the facility. Fitzsimmons, Skye, you're in a good position to stop them. They likely won't be expecting any resistance."
Skye made eye contact with Fitz and then Simmons in her mirror as she altered her course to follow the coordinates they had been given. Coulson was right. It was so close that they probably could easily get the jump on Hydra. She sped up.
"It's a good chance to contain the alien technology ourselves. It seems to be a Chitauri gun leftover from New York. All of them were supposed to have been recollected," Coulson said wryly, "But Jasper Sitwell had been in charge of that mission. It's probably why Hydra knows about it to begin with." He paused. "Where are you now?"
"Five minutes out," Skye replied as she executed a turn that was not quite as safe as a complaining Fitz would have liked.
"We can't let Hydra take control of it. Chitauri weaponry is powerful and dangerous even in the right hands." Coulson hesitated before adding, "But remember that your safety is the priority. Don't take the risk if it's too much. I wouldn't send you three if I had any other options and backup is already on the way. Just do reconnaissance if you must. Don't engage if you judge the threat level to be above your abilities."
"Got it," Skye confirmed, but she was planning on going to go in regardless. Like Coulson said, they could not let Hydra get their hands on it.
"Are you done yet?" The impatient voice was just loud enough for Grant to hear over the heavy gunfire. Kara took a moment to throw him a look over her shoulder that was meant to convey just how tired she was on being on the defensive.
"Almost," he replied while fiddling with a couple of wires.
"For an explosives expert, you're taking a while to finish." The gunfire had died down. Kara had eliminated all of the guards, but they both knew more would be coming soon. "Whitehall said he needed this as soon as possible."
Whitehall could go to hell as far as Ward was concerned, but he held his tongue. It made no difference if he received his precious alien technology within the next fifteen minutes or hour. It hardly mattered anyway since he was probably just going to tear the whole thing apart in the name of supposed scientific experimentation anyway. Seemed like a waste to Ward, but he did not care enough to say so.
"You can leave now," Grant suggested to reassure her. She always became frantic at the thought of disappointing Whitehall. It was yet another reason why he was almost certain she was brainwashed.
"And leave you?" Kara asked slightly skeptically. He supposed to her their easy camaraderie extended to disapproval of leaving him on his own. It was a bit surprising to know that. Ward could not recall a single other time that someone refused to abandon him. John's policy was always those who fall behind, get left behind. It was up to the person, and no one else, to ensure their own survival. Reliance on others was how someone got killed.
Ward snorted and hid any indications of his surprise. "I can handle myself. It will only be another two minutes for me. You can take the package and report back to Whitehall."
Kara would stop worrying. Whitehall would be appeased. It was the best option tactically. Ward considered the possibility that he came up with the new plan to ease Kara and roughly shook off those thoughts. Emotions were always complications, but emotions on missions were weaknesses he could never afford- not while John still needed him.
"I'll meet you at the rendezvous position in 0100 hours," Kara said without any hint of the previous hesitation.
Ward just nodded and listened to her fading footsteps as she made her escape with the alien tech. He was almost done anyway. It would take a few moments for the next round of guards to come. By then, he would be finished, and they would be no match for him.
Sure enough, he completed his task and was running out of the facility before any resistance was mobilized. He shot three guards that were in his path but was for the most part left alone.
He turned the corner and into the hallway that led to the exit when he stopped abruptly.
Blocking his path out were three SHIELD agents that he hoped for his sanity he would never see again. In his shock, he just stared incomprehensibly for a moment. There was a rustle of movement from behind him, but before he could turn around and face the threat, Agent Skye executed a perfect shot over his shoulder. The blast glowed blue and did not appear to be standard gun. Ward remembered vaguely hearing about the weapon SHIELD used. It utilized some form of chemical compound to render enemies unconscious. It had some stupid name, too, like Dum Dum Gun or something that Grant had forgotten.
His would-be assailant fell to the ground in an ungraceful heap. "Watch your six," Skye said cheekily.
There was a brief pause where no one, including Skye, seemed to know how to respond to what just happened. It appeared she remembered belatedly that he was her enemy, and she just protected him in front of her colleagues. Both of her scientist friends were staring at her strangely. Since they had been just looking at him that way, he was glad for their distraction.
"Where's the Chitauri weapon?" Skye asked, suddenly all business as if to compensate for her mistake.
She still had her weapon out, and it was vaguely pointed at him, but Grant was unconcerned. Neither scientist had bothered to draw a weapon yet. He was confident that he could neutralize them should the situation escalate.
"I don't have it," Ward told them honestly. None of them looked like they believed him. "It's pretty big. If I had it, you'd know." Ward decided it was best to put on an arrogant act. It usually irritated Skye. With a careless shrug, he continued, "Sorry kids, you're too late. My partner already escaped with the package. I'm just the cleanup crew."
That reminded him. He risked a glance at his watch. He needed to leave soon or he was not going to clear the minimum safe distance radius. Grant did not plan on dying anytime soon, but if he did, there was no way it was going to be because he accidentally blew himself up.
All three of them reacted predictably to being referred to as a "kid". "You hardly look any older than us," Skye protested. Then she looked at the engineer, "Okay, maybe you have a point with Fitz." The man in question complained loudly about how they would soon be jealous of that.
Ward decided he had wasted enough time. He started walking towards the exit, which led him straight past the three of them. The scientists finally drew their weapons and pointed at him. Grant was completely unconcerned. He was confident he would be able to read the intention to shoot on their face and react accordingly if need be. Somehow he doubted any of them would shoot him. The scientists were not field agents, they did not have the same training that would tell them to attack and shoot first in these situations. As for Skye, well, she was a different matter entirely.
The three of them seemed to have decided to let him go without fighting since he made no moves to engage any of them. He passed them without any issue, which would have been ideal. He could make his escape easily now and be out of range when the blast went off. It should have been perfect, but there was one problem.
"Where are you going?" Ward found himself asking without meaning to. "I told you the weapon is gone." All three of them had started walking forward and into the building. It was none of his concern. Ward decided if they ignored him, he would just walk out. It really was not any of his business. Of course, he knew they would not.
Skye and the others turned to face him. He had one hand on the door ready, but his attention was facing them.
"Not to be rude, Zach," Skye sneered the fake name at him. He was a little surprised she had not learned his real one yet. Maybe she was just trying to goad him. "But we don't trust your word. We're going to look for ourselves and help the innocent people you attacked."
Innocent was not the word Ward would use to describe AIM, but SHIELD agents could act very superior when they wanted to. "You need to leave," Grant told them firmly.
"We don't take orders from you," the biochemist spoke up. She was the one out of the three with the least friendly look on her face.
They were not going to listen to him, Ward realized. If only because Skye would not want to act strangely in front of her friends again, and the biochemist's well-founded distrust, there was no way they were going to follow his advice. That left one option.
"The building is set to explode in," Ward glanced at his watch, "Three minutes," Grant concluded bluntly.
All three of them froze for a split second before reacting. It was hard to tell what they were saying as they all spoke over one another, but Ward gathered that they were now even more insistent that they needed to go into the building. To try and save the AIM employees. He should have known better than to assume a SHIELD agent would make a rational, survival choice.
"There's no time. You have to leave," Ward all but growled at them irritably.
"If we can find the bomb, we can stop before it goes off," Skye suggested, ignoring him. "Right, Fitz?"
The engineer- Fitz, he should probably just start referring to them by their names- looked hesitant. "Explosives aren't my specialty-"
"And the types and models vary so much-" The biochemist, Dr. Simmons he reminded himself, continued.
"That we have no way of predicting the capability-"
"Not to mention the amount of time to locate the explosive-"
"Guys, stop!" Skye cut in finally. She looked at him, "Do you know anything about bombs?"
Grant glared at her disbelievingly, "Yes, I'm a expert. That's why I was put in charge of rigging the building to blow in two minutes." He put as much emphasis on the time constraint as possible.
"You were the one who set them up?" Skye asked in muted shock. Like the idea that he did his job was some huge surprise.
"You know what else I know about bombs?" Grant continued without acknowledging her question, "They blow people stupid enough to be near them up. We have to go."
He should just walk out and leave them to their idiocy. But he knew if he did, they would definitely die. His indecision kept him in place.
"He's right," Dr. Simmons chimed in practically albeit reluctantly. "We don't have time and the variables are too great."
"We can't leave these people to die!" Skye countered. "Who knows how many are in the building?"
"Are a bunch of AIM employees really worth your life?" Ward finally exclaimed incredulously.
"AIM? Advanced Idea Mechanics?" Fitz asked surprised. "This is their building?" The two scientists were looking at each other and nodding decisively in some form of unspoken conversation. Skye still looked lost as if she somehow had never heard of AIM even as a SHIELD agent.
Ward glared at them all. "You came in here so completely uninformed that you didn't even know whose building you were infiltrating?"
It seemed like the biochemist was going to defend that absurd level of unpreparedness, but Ward was done. Wordlessly, he grabbed Skye's arm and dragged her to the entrance. In her surprise and confusion, she did not fight him at all. He was running, confident that the scientists at least would have enough self-preservation to follow now that they knew the facility was AIM's.
Skye was sprinting alongside him now, but he did not let go of her arm. Part of him wanted reassurance that she did not turn around the first chance she had to martyr herself for AIM. That was stupid though, so Grant ignored those thoughts.
How many times was he going to stick his neck out to help her? His actions were irrational, and he needed to stop. He needed to push her away or kill her or at least stop keeping her secrets. It had gone too far already, and Grant knew it could still go a lot farther if he did not stop it now. But he was not sure he knew how. He tightened his grip on her arm.
They were not going to avoid the blast, Ward realized with sudden clarity. The timer said that only a minute remained. He waited too long like an idiot, and now all that he was going to accomplish was getting himself killed along with them.
Kara was going to laugh when she heard that he managed to mess up so badly that he got caught in the radius of his own bomb. Or maybe she would not laugh at all, that would be worse. John was going to be so disappointed. Grant would have let him down. He needed him, and Ward was abandoning him because he was just so weak.
Skye twisted in his grasp, and he felt her pull backwards in the direction of the building. With a glance behind him, he saw why. Grant was in great shape, and Skye was, too. With him propelling her even more, they covered enough distance to be on the border of the safe distance. Unfortunately, Sci-Tech did not emphasize the importance of physical fitness. The scientists were far better than most, but they were not field agent fast.
"Don't you dare," Grant growled at her as she tried to go back for them. She ignored him and yanked herself out of his grasp and raced back into the danger zone again. Ward remembered the image of the three of them after he kidnapped the scientists, he recalled thinking that they were clearly close…
Ward swore and followed her back. He could not think of another moment in recent history where he had been this stupid. She had gotten to where the scientists were and reached the same conclusion that he had made when she first turned back. There was no way she alone could add enough force to get all three of them out quickly enough. She pulled on the biochemist and managed to move them forward again.
Ward grabbed the engineer's arm as he had done with Skye. Between the two of them, they were moving as rapidly as they could. He was fast on his feet, and only a second behind her. This was a situation where a second made all the difference though.
Weak.
His watch's timer went off with an innocuous little beeping noise. "Get down!" Ward yelled. He moved without thought.
The building exploded behind him and the world erupted in fire.
Skye woke up slowly. It felt like she was fighting against a current trying to fight off her unconsciousness. She was confused, everything ached. Something had happened. She knew there was something she was forgetting. It was on the edge of her grasp, just out of her mind's reach
She kept her eyes closed to assess her surroundings while appearing still asleep as May taught her whenever she woke up in a strange place.
She could hear cars in the distance. Faint shouting. There was a heavy pressure on her back. She was lying on her front on something gravelly and cold. Her cheek was pressed harshly into what felt like a rock.
She was reasonably sure there were no enemies nearby, so she opened her eyes. She could see a feebly groaning Simmons and Fitz on the ground. There was debris on their back. That was right, they got caught in the explosion with Zach.
Skye realized what was the weight on her and why she was the only one awake.
Zach's body was like a dead weight, which made it hard for her to move. She could not help but idly think that when she fantasized about him on top of her, it was very different from this reality.
Joking aside, she tried to focus. Zach had grabbed her at the last second and threw her to the ground. His back had taken the brunt of the detonation as a result. She shifted as much as she could and frantically felt for a pulse. It was there. It did not feel weak to her either, but Skye was not a medic by any stretch of the imagination.
His face was right by hers looking impossibly peaceful for what she knew of him. She wriggled a hand out from under him and softly touched his face. To check for a reaction, of course. He was usually so harsh and abrupt that seeing his expression smoothed over was startlingly in itself. So was the fact that he had covered her, but she could not afford to think on that now.
"Zach," she hissed trying to get a response. She shook him and slapped his cheek lightly but he was dead to the world. It was better than being dead dead though, so Skye let that go. She twisted towards Fitzsimmons.
"Simmons! Fitz!" Her voice sounded hoarse and was not all that loud. Neither of them reacted to her either. Simmons was still moaning softly though, and Skye could tell Fitz's chest was rising and falling with his breaths.
She needed to get up. She had never heard of AIM, but the way Fitzsimmons reacted, it appeared that the "innocent civilians" were not so innocent and not so civilian-y either. Even without that knowledge, the blast must have alerted people. She had to get them out of there.
Even as she thought that, she realized that there was nothing to be done. The cars she heard pulled up around them, and she found herself surrounded by assault rifles pointing directly at her.
So, cliffhangers, they suck, right? I hope people like this chapter. It's a little more action-oriented than others, which I wanted. But at the same time, I thought it had some good Skyeward and Ward/Skye/Fitz/Simmons moments as well. Am I doing alright with the characterization? Is the plot/AU interesting to people?
Thanks everyone who reviewed. I've just learned you can respond to non-guest reviews (I'm new at this, can you tell?) so I'll now be responding. I hope if you're interested, you'll let me know.
