GLADES Chapter 4: Waiting For A Light That Never Comes, a Glades + Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Crossover fanfic

G.L.A.D.E.S.

Disclaimer:
Y'all know the drill...

Rating:
T

Genre:
Romance/Hurt/Comfort

Pairings:
Coulsye
Shawkeye

Lyrics Used:
Linkin Park "A Light That Never Comes"

Waiting For A Light That Never Comes

(Oh) | 'Cause I know what it's like to test fate | Had my shoulders pressed with that weight | Stood up strong in spite of that hate

(Oh) | Night gets darkest right before dawn | What don't kill you makes you more strong | And, I been waiting for it so long

"That can't be." Jemma Simmons argued, struggling to wrap her mind around what her boss was trying to tell them. "What you're describing...It's medically impossible!"

"Except for the fact that I'm standing here." Phil interjected. "Proof that it's not impossible." He powered on, reaching for his file. "And, here's more proof. My file..." He informed the two science officers. "Describing how they brought me back...The doctors...the procedures...the drugs..."

Reading the cover of the file, Fitz realized that it was classified well above his and Simmons' clearance level. "Sir...It's against the law for us to read this."

"I don't care about your clearance level." Phil barked, in no mood to argue. "I'm ordering you to read it." He elaborated.

"Death and Recovery Report." Jemma Simmons read until Phil interrupted her.

"It was only recently that Director Fury gave me access to this." Phil conceded as Leo and Jemma continued digging through the file. "I've gone over it dozens of times. I need you to decipher the medical parts of it I didn't understand. Feel free to reach out to Dr. Streiten. He should be eager to answer any questions you may have."

"Yes." Jemma replied, looking over the information before her. "I'm sure I'm going to have quite a few."

"Sir..." Leo began, cautiously. "What about...'T.A.H.I.T.I.'?"

"Turns out..." Phil replied, sarcastically. "Not so magical...Just...false memories planted to cover up what was done..."

"Sir..." Jemma interjected carefully, looking up at Phil horrified. "It says, here, your heart was perforated...Torn in half..."

"That part of it, I understood." Phil replied. "And, yet...They managed to repair the damaged tissue completely. We need to understand how-"

"So we can do the same thing for Skye." Fitz added, finishing his boss's sentence for him.

"That's what I'm counting on..." Phil added, giving Fitzsimmons a look that drove home how important this was.

"We'll get right on it, sir." Jemma replied.

"Thank you." Coulson replied, sincerely.

"All right, that's enough." Barton interjected, breaking up the fight between Quinn and Shaelynn. "As truly soul-satisfying as it is for me to see Agent Longworth grind your pathetic ass into a bloody pulp...He growled as he replaced Quinn's chair and propped terrorist up in it. "You're really not worth our time."

"Agent Barton's right." Shaelynn conceded. "Tell ya what, Quinn...Since I'm such a generous person...I'll give you a choice..."

"Lemme guess..." Quinn quipped, hoarsely, spitting out a mouthful of blood. "Is one of 'em 'the easy way'?"

"Ho-oh..." Shaelynn laughed, evilly. "Oh, my not-so-good man...You should be so lucky..." She sneered. "Here are your options. Option A...You give up your boss...This...Clairvoyant coward-because, seriously...Who hides behind a nickname?! I know if I was psychic, I'd wanna be rich and famous..." Shaelynn taunted, casually twirling a rather large box knife in her hand. "But, I digress..." She hissed-slicing the blade across Quinn's back-the blade effortlessly gliding through the clothing and multiple layers of skin-thoroughly enjoying the way Quinn hissed against the searing pain. "You give up The Clairvoyant...And, I'll kill you right here, right now. I'll very mercifully leave Agent Barton to oh-so-skillfully put a bullet right between your eyes..." She finished with a murderous grin. As Quinn chanced a glance at Barton, what was left of his blood ran cold at the sight of the agent whistling lightly as he cleaned a magnum in his hands. "Or you can pick option B..." She taunted, with an almost sing-song quality in her voice. "Stick to this blind loyalty...Refuse to give us The Clairvoyant's name. In which case, I'll kill you anyway." She paused to lean directly into Quinn's face. "Oh so slowly...painfully...until I get bored of hearing you beg and plead for death..."

Something in the specialist's eyes was inhumanly feral as she curled her lips back, baring her teeth in an animalistic display. The whole thing left Quinn momentarily paralyzed by fear. Even Clint had to admit that the sight of his girlfriend in this interrogation gave him chills.

Watching the interrogation through the security camera feed, Jim physically shuddered as he watched his daughter morph into some sort of animal as she threatened Quinn. "Aw, Shae...What're ya doin'?!" He muttered to himself.

"She still in there with him?" Coulson asked, lightly, suddenly materializing at the detective's side, startling him somewhat.

"Yeah, but any confession she gets out of him's just gonna get thrown out, the way she's treating him." Jim pointed out, gesturing to the screen above him.

"This is S.H.I.E.L.D., Detective Longworth." Coulson shrugged, casually. "We play by our own rules. After what Quinn did-going after one of our own...He has no rights. Shaelynn's acting on my orders." Watching Agent Coulson commenting on the interrogation, Jim couldn't believe what he was seeing. "This man needs to die a slow, agonizing death. That's why I let Shae take over. She can give him that better than anyone I know."

"He says to the agent's homicide detective father." Jim mused, trying to make light of the fact that his own daughter was currently scaring the shit out of him far worse than any suspect he'd ever interrogated.

"I know my rights." Quinn insisted. "What would daddy have to say about you interrogating a suspect without offering him a lawyer? And with such excessive-"

Oh, that could not have been a worse call, dude. Barton thought to himself as Shae ripped Quinn out of his seat to shove him against the wall by his throat. "Listen here, you sack a shit..." Shaelynn snarled. "You have no rights. You're not leaving this room alive. Those are my orders." Releasing Quinn, Shaelynn watched as he fell to the floor in a slump. Crouching down, over him Shaelynn gripped him by the collar. "Your little Clairvoyant has left you to rot..."

"The Clairvoyant will have the last laugh." Quinn taunted.

"Well, that sounds to me like you've made your decision." Shaelynn shrugged, releasing her grip on Quinn and rising to her full height, towering over him, before turned to Clint. "Whaddo you think, Agent Barton?"

"I heard 'Option B', personally." Clint smiled, holding his hands up in a feigned surrender.

Turning back to Quinn, Shaelynn flashed the billionaire a menacing grin as she spoke. "Option B, it is, then." And, with that, she savored Quinn's pained cry as her boot collided with his face, shattering his nose, before flicked her knife open, once again. "Oh, this is gonna be fun..."

"I've never heard of half the drugs they gave Coulson." Jemma announced, combing through Coulson's file. "GH three twenty five? What about this robotic-assisted neuro-microsurgery they used to implant the 'Tahiti' memories? It all sounds so diabolical."

"I agree." Fitz mused. "But, we can't argue with results." He added, looking up at Jemma. "He's up and walking around."

Jemma shifted her gaze to the video feed of Skye's ICU pod. "Yeah...But, at what cost?" She wondered. Turning back to Fitz she argued. "You read the transcripts...He begged the doctors to let him die..."

"This is different." Leo argued, sharply. "Skye's still alive. We have to keep her that way."

Before Jemma could respond, she felt her phone began to vibrate in her pocket. "Oh! I've asked Dr. Streiten to advise us..." She explained, answering the call. "Hello? … Yes. …" Leo watched her face contort in confusion as she listened to the person on the other end of the line. "Are you sure? … That can't be..."

"I saw your interrogation tactics..." Jim greeted his daughter, walking into the common area, spotting Shaelynn at the bar, covered in Quinn's blood, casually sipping a bright, blood red, drink.

"Oh relax..." Shaelynn replied, dismissively. "It's just my signature cherry lime flip-cherry Skyye vodka, sprite and cherry syrup for sweetness..." She elaborated, drawing another sip. "It's my favorite way to celebrate a win."

"What win?" Jim asked, curiously, sliding onto the next bar stool. "He never did give up The Clairvoyant..." He pointed out, reaching for the bottle of tequila and pouring himself a shot.

"True." Shae conceded with another sip of her drink. "But, we did get vengeance for Skye. That's what Coulson wanted more than anything. To see the man suffer." Another sip. "Coulson wanted the gloves gone. They disappeared."

"You wanted to see me?"May greeted, joining Fitzsimmons in the lab.

"I just got off the phone with the trauma center in Bethesda." Jemma replied, urgently. "Dr. Streiten's gone off the grid."

"So, we'll find a different doctor who operated on Coulson." May offered, simply, shifting her gaze between the two science officers.

"That's the thing, actually..." Fitz replied, cautiously.

"Coulson was never treated there..." Jemma supplied.

"You're not making sense." May countered.

"None of this makes sense. The doctors listed, the operating room number, none of them exist..." The bio-chemist argued. "None of them are part of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Quinn shot Skye for nothing..." May informed Coulson in his office. "The Place where we're going, the doctors who treated you, they don't exist."

"Or maybe they exist somewhere else." Coulson offered, trying to make sense of the whole mess. "This is S.H.I.E.L.D. There are always secrets-"

"That's exactly my fear, sir." Jemma interjected, cautiously. "Your file is filled with secrets. Experimental drugs, unknown surgical procedures we've never even heard of..." Drawing a deep breath to replace her expended oxygen, Jemma continued. "...Frankly...Fitz and I only understood about seventy percent of what's in here..."

"Even if we do find where they treated you, and we were able to replicate the procedures...there's the other obvious question..." May supplied, heavily.

"Which is?" Coulson prompted.

"Whether we should..." Jemma replied, gently, causing Coulson to snap his eyes over to her. "What you experienced, sir...if this file is even partially accurate-"

"Nobody's suggesting we subject Skye to everything that I went through..." Coulson defended, gently. "But, if there's something in here..." He added, approaching Jemma and pointing to his file in her hands. "...a drug, a treatment that can save her...We need to find it..." He elaborated, almost desperately. "Figure it out." He ordered, gently.

"Yes, sir..." Jemma nodded, understanding that her boss could not be moved on the subject, as turned to leave the office, leaving the pilot and the agent alone.

"You disagree?" Coulson suggested.

"No..." May sighed. "I think we need to do everything humanly possible to save Skye..." She replied, honestly. "But, we need to acknowledge that doing so...Might just give The Clairvoyant exactly what he wants..." She warned, vehemently.

Shaking his head, Coulson replied "That's a risk we have to take..." He offered, helplessly. He could not and would not live without her. He categorically refused.

"How is she?" Leo asked, gently, standing next to Jemma at the window to Skye's ICU pod.

"Deteriorating." Jemma replied, curtly. "And, I don't know how to stop it..." She added, more desperately. "The only thing I've found remotely interesting is something called 'GH three-twenty-five..." She explained, pointing the named drug out in Coulson's file.

"Some kind of...drug..." Fitz deduced.

"Coulson was injected with it and literally minutes later, his injuries showed signs of cellular regeneration." Jemma explained, watching Skye, helplessly.

"'Regeneration'?" Fitz repeated, dumbfounded. "Is that even possible?"

"Even if this miracle drug does exist...We don't know where to find it..." Jemma argued. "We've no...coordinates, no logs of anyone's arrival or departure..."

"I think..." Fitz replied, carefully. "Maybe I can help with that..." He added, gesturing for Jemma to follow him.

"You set up the echo chamber!" Jemma observed, following Fitz into the gym area.

"Made a couple of calls..." The engineer began, booting up his simulation. "Buddy of mine works in the archives at the Triscaleon..." Setting his tablet aside, he approached the simulation. "Agreed to let us access it from here." Pointing to the small holographic cube in front of them, he added "It's hard to believe that this little cube holds all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s historical administrative data."

"But, if Agent Coulson's procedure didn't take place at any S.H.I.E.L.D. medical facility-" Jemma began only to be cut off.

"Then, I won't find any record of that, here, I know..." Fitz acknowledged. "But, this also contains all inter-departmental memos, travel arrangements, purchase orders...Maybe we can track the location through a virtual paper trail of some sort..." Bumping up the cube up. Fitz opened all the millions of folders within it.

"Okay..." Jemma stated, overwhelmed by all the data before her. "Well, let's start with the travel memorandum from the date Coulson got stabbed..." She decided, with a grand sweeping motion of her arms as she tossed all the unrelated files aside.

"Or...How about the date that Dr. Streiten disappeared from the Triscaleon, mabye they have something about that..." Fitz suggested, swiping through the multitude of data.

"Yeah." Jemma mused, watching as Leo tossed her a holographic file.

"Ready?" He asked, passing her the file as she opened it before her while he continued digging through the files. "Okay, this is interesting..." Leo pointed out.

"World War II bunker?" Jemma questioned, reading over the data before her.

"Collapsed bunker." Leo corrected, highlighting an excerpt. "Definitely not a sanctioned S.H.I.E.L.D. test facility."

"The 'Guest House'..." Jemma read, disbelievingly.

"Exactly..." Leo replied. "Guest. House. G. H." He added, slowly putting the pieces together. "GH three-twenty-five. Look at the file's access history."

"The only record of it ever being opened is by a Level Ten operative." Jemma read, turning back to Leo.

"Director Fury." The operatives both stated in unison.

"So, Fury's been to this place and he sanctioned the operations on Agent Coulson and why aren't you trying to find the file?!" She demanded, collapsing the data before them.

Swiping through the data, Leo opened another cube only to be met with a wall of encrypted numbers with the words 'UNRECOGNIZED DATA' in bold red lettering. "Damn. Encrypted."

"Skye could crack this..." Jemma observed, frustrated that the one person who could help them needed their help.

Staring at the numbers before him, Leo analyzed the situation before him. "What would she do?" He wondered aloud as his mind continued working on the puzzle. Throwing the wall backward to zoom in, the metaphorical light bulb went off. "It's not an encryption..." He realized as he rotated the image to reveal the shape of a landmark.

"So, what's this 'Skye's' deal, anyway?" Jim asked Shaelynn as they had moved from the bar to the lounge area.

"Whaddo you mean?" She asked, curiously.

"Well, I happened to notice her patient chart read 'Last Name: Unknown'..." Jim replied. "What's that all about?"

Sighing heavily, Shaelynn slumped back in her chair. "It means that...We don't know where she came from...She's an 0-8-4..."

"'0-8-4'?" Jim questioned. "What's that?"

"An object of unknown origins." Shaelynn replied, cryptically. "This is all highly classified, but, after everything that's happened...Protocol's out the window as far as I'm concerned..." She mused before getting back on topic. "Twenty-four years ago, the Chinese village where Skye was born was completely massacred...Wiped off the map...Along with a S.H.I.E.L.D. team..." Shaelynn began, recounting the story that Phil had confided to her about when seeking guidance as to whether to tell Skye or not. "After the dust cleared, Agent Linda Avery and her partner Agent Lumley, were sent in to investigate reports of an 0-8-4. When they got there, they found the poor thing so covered in blood and dirt, they thought she was dead, too, until they realized she was just asleep in a dead agent's arms..."

"Wait..." Jim interjected, pausing his daughter's story. "You mean that Skye-the baby-was the 0-8-4?!"

"First one in the history of the agency that's ever been a person..." Shaelynn mused before returning to her story. "Anyway, after they retrieved Skye, they brought her to the states with them which was when members of their team started being systematically picked off, one-by-one-"

"Executed?" Jim offered.

"Tortured, head's bashed in..." Shaelynn replied casually, as if she were reading off a grocery list. "The norm..." She shrugged. "Until Agents Avery and Lumley realized that the only way to keep Skye and themselves safe was to completely erase her from existence in order to protect her from whoever was searching for her."

"Can't look for something that doesn't exist..." Jim deduced.

"Exactly." Shaelynn agreed. "Then, Agent Avery used a senior agent's credentials to fake a Level Eight security clearance and took Skye to an orphanage with specific orders for the orphanage to continually shuffle her around so that she never spent more than a month or two with the same foster family...Poor thing never even knew it was S.H.I.E.L.D. watching her back all those years..." Shae mused.

"Does she now?" Jim asked, gently.

"Now, she does." Shaelynn replied. "A couple months after Coulson recruited her, Skye confided in him about her life-long search for her parents. After warning her that she may or may not like what she finds, Phil agreed to do whatever he could to help her. Couple of months ago, Coulson and May tracked Agent Lumley down to Mexico City-"

"Why not go straight to the source?" Jim questioned. "Why not talk to Agent Avery?"

"Kinda hard to question a dead woman." Shae deadpanned. "Agent Avery was murdered just a couple hours after dropping Skye off at the orphanage."

"She died trying to protect her." Jim deduced.

"Precisely." Shae replied, heavily. "Agent Lumley told Phil and Melinda everything. May tried to convince Coulson not to tell Skye about any of it-"

"Why not?!" The homicide detective demanded. "She has a right to know!"

"Agreed." Shaelynn replied, curtly. "But, Agent May was worried that the truth would devastate her. Not to mention jeopardizing not only Skye's safety but that of the whole team. Eventually, however, I convinced Phil to read Skye in. From what he told me, she took it mind-blowingly well." Shae recalled.

"Wow." Jim breathed. "She sounds like one hell of a young woman."

"She certainly is." Shae agreed. "Ya know what Coulson told me about her reaction? He said-and, I quote-'Here I am, telling her something that could...destroy her faith in humanity. And, yet, somehow, she manages to repair a little piece of mine...'..."

"Ya know..." Jim replied, as Shaelynn could almost literally see the gears turning in her father's head. "A young woman like that deserves a last name..."

Seeing where her dad was going, Shaelynn smiled, warmly as she rose from her seat to pat her father's shoulder. "I'll go make a call..." She stated, knowingly.

Author's Note:
Okay, so, how'd y'all like that little plot twist I just threw in there? All credit goes to my wonderful beta, kellz1pt5, for encouraging to go through with the idea when I brought it up! Enjoy! I'll try to keep this updated as quickly as possible!

~Skye Coulson