A/N: Again, if you are at all triggered by blood or torture this chapter may not be for you. If you would rather skip it I would be happy to give you a trigger-free synopsis, just leave a comment of drop me a message. Otherwise, enjoy!

Kyler
I'm not proud of it, but eventually my body betrayed me. For nearly three hours I played Ashby's little games until the invitation of dark and deep unconsciousness became too much.

Suddenly I was six years old, standing in the hallway with my dance bag in hand, looking through the open door of my parents' room. Mom was wearing jeans and a black tank top that revealed a shiny white scar on her shoulder. Daddy walked over to her from somewhere out of view, tucking a stray bit of hair behind her ear before his attention fell on the scar. A look passed between them, one that said a thousand things that I couldn't understand. They looked…tired.

"I should have been there."

"We both know that wasn't possible." She said. What happened next surprised me: Daddy leaned down and pressed a kiss to her scarred shoulder. My parents were rarely openly affectionate, so the blatant display captivated me.

"Hey, Birdy. You ready for dance class?" Daddy asked, noticing me in the doorway. I nodded and he swung me up into his arms. I waved to Mom as he carried me to the elevator.

"Daddy, why is Mommy so sad?"

He pressed the button for the garage. "What do you mean, sweetie?"

"You kissed Mommy's owie and it didn't get better. Is that why she looks sad?"

"Mommy was just remembering something sad. She's okay now."

"Oh. Why are you sad?"

"I'm not sad."

"Yeah you are. You looked sad when you looked at Mommy's owie."

"Well, Mommy's owie made me sad."

"Why?"

"You're very inquisitive today, aren't you?" He said. I just smiled and nodded. "Well, one time Mommy had to go somewhere and I couldn't be there and she got hurt. I was sad because I couldn't protect her."

"Because you love her?"

"Because I love her very much."

"Do you love me very much?" The scene grew blurry as the elevator chimed and the doors opened. Suddenly I was standing on my own two feet, holding a champagne flute instead of the little dance bag.

"I'm afraid," Nolan said, stepping into the elevator "that I love you entirely too much."

"You don't mean that."

"You know that I do." He insisted. "It's okay to be afraid."

"I'm not afraid of anything." I lied, glancing down at the champagne flute in my hand.

It was filled to the brim with blood.

"Nolan?" I looked back up, hoping he would come through with an explanation, but his eyes were glued to the wall behind me. "What are you looking at?" I asked.

When I turned around all I saw was red. Red blood, streaming from red rope-bound wrists, spilling onto red hair, and dripping over a red dress. And then I saw blue-the silvery blue of my sister's dead eyes- and the sound of shattering glass filled my ears.

I jolted awake, eyes flying open as the doors in front of me slid open and Oryek came storming in. For a brief moment I could hear shouting and a series of loud bangs before the doors slid closed. Something was very wrong.

"You're going to start talking." She said through gritted teeth.

My blank stare was met with a firm slap to the face and I could taste the blood as it seeped around my teeth. Why was my mouth bleeding? I grasped at the disjunct memories of what had happened before I passed out. I remembered the jolt of electricity as it seized my body, the sting of a knife against my skin, and the pinch of a needle. I had no idea what order those memories went in, and none of them explained the metallic warmth that was washing over my tongue.

"If you want to leave this building alive, you're going to start talking." She repeated. I realized for the first time that there was a gun in her hand.

"It's too late." I said, tilting my head so the blood trickling down my face would slide away from my eye. When had that started? Overhead, dull light forced its way through the grimy glass and I guessed that it was sometime in the late afternoon, although the sun wouldn't be setting for several hours. "They're coming for me."

She was losing her control rapidly, which told me that the situation outside the doors was deteriorating rapidly. I was a loose end, and she had come to tie me up. "Nobody can get to you in here. Not SHIELD, not the CIA or the FBI. Whoever you think is coming for you will leave with your limp, pathetic little body."

I managed to laugh through all the blood in my mouth. "You haven't met my sister."

Sasha
It didn't take long to climb onto the roof and stash the bow I had used. "I have eyes on Mourning Dove." I said, peering through the filthy glass of the skylight. Down below I could make out Kyler strapped to a chair in the center of the room. She looked unconscious and I couldn't see anyone else.

Over the comms unit in my ear I could hear Sophie saying that Strike Team Kappa had breached the main doors of the building. "Phoenix, Jaeger, and Legacy are clear to enter." She said. "Proceed with caution."

No sooner had she said the words, than a woman came storming into the room below. "Legacy, are you in position?" I asked urgently as she approached my sister.

"Almost there." Liam said.

"Jaeger?" I tried.

"Ready." Nolan confirmed as Liam repeated himself.

Down below me the woman drew a gun. "I'm going in!" I said, pulling out my Glock.

I could hear protests from Liam and Nolan, but I was already plummeting through the glass.

Kyler
Apparently Oryek wasn't going to leave anything to chance. Almost before the sentence had finished, she had drawn her gun. "I don't intend to." She spat.

Then suddenly it was raining glass as the skylight shattered overhead and Sasha dropped from the sky looking like an avenging angel, all black clothes and fiery hair. My captor went reeling backwards, only to fall to the ground as my sister rolled into a standing position.

Oryek scrambled to grab the gun that had fallen from her hand and Sasha was on top of her in seconds. I almost couldn't process quickly enough the way my sister leapt at her, pinning her to the ground and drawing a knife at the same time. "You're very lucky I'm under strict orders not to kill you." Sasha said, leveling the blade in her hand with the spot where the woman's throat stood exposed.

"You don't have what it takes." She jeered and I could sense the tension of doubt that seized my sister's shoulders.

Then, Elva Oryek made a terrible mistake. She went for her gun, and suddenly the knife was gone from her throat and protruding from her hand with a sickening crunch.

Instantly the room erupted into chaos. Oryek's screams rang in my ears as a huge blast shook the doors open and two people came bursting in. In my delirious and bloody state it took me a moment to realize that it wasn't Uncle Tony and Uncle Steve. Liam was holding his Smith & Wesson in one hand and a very familiar shield in the other, and I realized that Nolan had blasted the doors down with a repulsor blast from the crimson gauntlet that encased his left hand.

Liam rushed over to Sasha, lifting her off of Oryek while Nolan worked on my bindings.

I don't think I'll ever be able to explain it, but as he knelt in front of me, I was suddenly very self-conscious. "I must look like shit." I mumbled and a little bit of blood trickled out of my mouth.

He lifted up the hand that wasn't making use of a lethal weapon and used it to swipe at the blood that was making its way down my cheek. "I think you might be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." He said before turning to Liam and Sasha. "Tell medical to start moving in."

"What do we do about her?" Liam asked, nodding at the woman who lay whimpering on the ground.

"You two get Ky to the rendezvous point. I'll catch up once I've delivered our little friend here to the Strike Team." Sasha decided, pulling a pair of handcuffs from her belt. She knelt over and yanked the knife upwards in one swift motion, and this time Oryek's screams were ear-shattering.

"My hand!" She screeched. "You bitch!"

Sasha rolled her eyes, paying no attention to the steady flow of blood that had started pouring from the wound as she bound the woman's hands behind her back. "Calm down. It's just a couple broken bones. Seriously, you'll live."

Nolan tried to help me stand, but the world seemed to be spinning around me and I couldn't stay upright for long. Luckily, Liam managed so sweep me up in his arms before I hit the floor. "Hey Dove. You gave us a hell of a scare."

"Nice shield." I said, as Nolan pulled out his Glock and prepared to lead us to the rendezvous point.

"We thought it would be a good idea to bring out the big guns." He said.

I think I nodded. At least, I tried to nod before everything went black again. The last thing I heard was the sound of a gun going off, and the little bit of my brain that could focus on it hoped it wasn't aimed at us.

Nolan
"How's she doing?" I called over my shoulder as we forced our way towards the exit. Chaos had erupted around us and our progress through the fray was slow.

"In and out." Liam replied. I risked a brief glance back to see that he was protecting her head with the shield in his hand. I didn't like the grayish pallor of her skin, or the fact that she seemed to be bleeding from a new spot every time I looked at her.

Most of the people in the building had submitted to the control of the Strike Team, but a handful of the mercenaries in the building weren't going to come quietly, and they really didn't want us to leave with their prisoner.

The first one that had come at us had been a bulky, graceless mass. A quick repulsor blast had taken him out for the count, and I had eft the next one on the floor and bleeding from his thigh.

Now a third merc was barreling towards us and before I even had the chance to decide on a plan of attack, a streak of auburn hair and black leather had pounced on him like a tiger.

"Keep moving." Sasha warned, lighting up the sides of his neck with the widow's bites on her wrists. "SHIELD already has Ashby and Legarde. Now that Oryek's in custody the rest are bound to run."

Sure enough, as we rounded the corner of the hallway another black-clad meathead came lunging towards us. Sasha didn't hesitate as she matched him blow for blow, ducking under and around his large limbs with the grace of a leaf on the wind. With the redhead distracting our latest attacker, Liam and I were able to make it the last few yards to the exit.

I breathed a sigh of relief when a big, black sedan pulled up in front of us. Andrew yielded the driver's seat to me and helped Liam ease Kyler into the back of the vehicle where Isabelle was already waiting. As soon as Sasha caught up with us and slid into the back we were off. Liam sat in the passenger's seat, giving directions as I steered towards the nearest hospital.

In the back I could hear Isabelle saying things like "dehydration" and "blood loss" and "electrical burns" but I tried to block it out and focus on the road.

Through the comms unit in my ear I could hear Sophie saying that a trauma specialist was standing by, and the words sent a chill through my spine. Kyler had been physically traumatized, and there was no telling what kind of mental effects that was going to have.

It seemed like an eternity before we pulled up in front of the hospital and Kyler was wheeled away on a gurney with Isabelle and Andrew following along to spout facts about her condition.

Liam, Sasha and I stood on the sidewalk gazing after them. "We actually did it." Liam said with awe written all over his face.

"We really did." Sasha confirmed. "Now it's up to her."

Two Hours Later
Sasha
It felt like we had been in the waiting room for days.

I had been steadily working the adrenaline out my system for the past hour, walking random patterns around the waiting room while Nolan bounced his leg uncontrollably. I couldn't figure out what could be taking so long.

"You have to stop pacing." Liam said from his chair in the corner. He had been unbelievably calm since we'd arrived. Typical really, because there's no point in having a perfect opposite if they can't be calm when you're losing your mind. The way he sat still in his chair taking deep breaths and following me with his eyes was almost calming, and I realized suddenly that I needed him. He was the calm to my chaos, good in all the places where I was bad.

I was about to ask what on earth was keeping him so patient when the door opened and the three of us all flew to our feet.

It was Andrew and Izzy, both looking a bit tired but .

"How is she?" I asked before the door had even finished closing.

"She's recovering well." Isabelle assured me. "She's become more alert, but she still needs lots of rest and attention. Have you heard from anyone yet?"

"I talked to my parents about an hour ago." I said. "They should be home tonight."

"That's good. We were going to go back home and get showered and changed out of these clothes." Andrew said, motioning to blood speckled shirts they where both wearing. "Did any of you want to come with?"

All three of us turned down the invitation. "Can I see her?" I asked.

Izzy nodded. "The doctors have said that she can have someone in the room with her for now, but only one visitor at a time. She's in room 183."

I couldn't help but feel nervous as I followed the hallway, the numbers on the doors growing closer and closer to 183 as I went. It was silly, but I didn't know what to expect when I opened the door and it was making me more uneasy than it should have. So for some stupid reason I stood outside the door labeled 183 and braced myself for the worst imaginable scene.

It wasn't nearly as bad as I had pictured, and yet somehow it was still horrible.

Wires and machines seemed to be connected to every exposed piece of skin, beeping rhythmically and dripping artificial nutrients into her bloodstream. I was happy to see that she was breathing on her own, but there were at least two machines focused on monitoring her heart.

"You should work on your poker face, little sister." She teased.

I rolled my eyes and let some of the tension melt away from my shoulders. "Seven minutes younger than you and I'm never going to hear the end of it, am I?"

"Not as long as I'm around."

"That better be for a damn long time." I said.

She smirked. "You and I both know I won't go down easily."

I sat down in the chair next to her bed, tucking my legs up underneath me. "I think you've definitely proven that."

I told her that our parents would be home soon, and tried to keep her mind off the pain. She smiled when I told her about Andrew and Izzy. "It took long enough. They deserve to be happy."

She seemed a little unfocused after that, so I told her she should try to sleep. It wasn't long before her eyes closed and the cocktail of drugs in her system pulled her under.

After almost an hour the symphony of beeps and clicks and deep breaths was interrupted by a knock on the door.

"Izzy brought dinner and a change of clothes if you want it." Nolan said, popping his head in. "I can stay with her for a while."

I motioned for him to come in and gave him my seat. If I could trust my sister with anyone it was him.

Kyler
When I woke again I could see that night had fallen outside my window.

"Hey Birdy, how are you feeling?"

My eyes flew open at the sound of his voice. "Daddy, you're home!"

He smiled down at me with the same silvery blue eyes my sister did. "Maria practically shut down traffic to get us here." He told me. "You had us scared to death. And for good reason I see."

"I'm fine." I tried to protest.

"You know, you and your mom say that the same way. And I can tell when it's not true." He picked up the clipboard at the end of my bed and started reading off the list of . "Bruised ribs, electrical burns, a large collection of cuts, a missing molar, and you were injected with a mixture of ketamine and LSD."

"Oh." I said lamely. "Well, I'm fine now."

He sighed, looking down at the ground. "Look, I know I can't convince you to give up a life with SHIELD, not if you've got your mind set on it, but there are other ways you can go about it. When you're better, Maria wants to have you reevaluated as an asset of SHIELD. I don't know exactly where she wants you to go from here, but I think you should consider all of your options before you jump headfirst into becoming an agent."

"Mom's out in the hallway having this same conversation with Sasha, isn't she?"

"Not exactly the same." He insisted.

"Daddy, I know this isn't a path you would have chosen for me, especially given the way that you and Mom got on it, but I believe that this is what I'm meant to do. What happened these last couple of days has only made me more sure."

He sat down next to me and picked up my hand. "All of you kids have always been so passionate about helping people, Andrew does it with psychology, Isabelle does it with medicine, Nolan does it with machines, and you and your sister do it with fists. But you have a lot of other talents too, and I don't want you to look back and regret wasting them." I opened my mouth to reassure him that I was certain of what I wanted, but he cut me off. "All I'm saying is that when Maria presents you with your options, you should consider carefully."

"Okay, I promise I will."

He smiled and squeezed my hand before rising from the chair again. "Get some more sleep okay?" He said, heading for the door. He stopped suddenly with his fingers still on the handle. "Oh, and you should know I'm not mad about the tattoo." He grinned.

"Well, they would have found out eventually, super spies or not." I consoled myself after the door had closed. Parents were like that.

A/N: Just an epilogue and then this story will officially be done! If have anything you'd like to say, please do leave a comment or message me, and as usual there's a link to the Q&A blog (tlosad . tumblr . com) on my bio page where you can ask questions to these characters to your heart's content. Thanks to everyone who's stuck wit this story, and I'll see you on the next chapter!