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Entry tags:
Agents of SHIELD - Vagrancy
Title: Vagrancy
Genre: Gen, AU
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~9,000 words
Warnings: Passing mention of torture and deaths (off screen, OC)
Spoilers: Set post-Agents of SHIELD Season 1/Captain America: The Winter Soldier, AU from there.
Synopsis: Hydra had won, officially or not. That didn't mean that the few remaining resistance cells couldn't make their lives a living hell, if they could manage to not kill each other in the process.
Author's Notes: For the "loss of home/shelter" square at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo. Now that the new season started, it's not nearly as AU as I had thought.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
Okay, so that wasn't the brightest thing she could have done. The use of real hot running water no one would fault her for, especially given the timeline. The rifling through the closets and dressers to augment her clothing was mildly questionable. The swiping of jewelry to pawn was just her being bitter, and she totally checked it to make sure it wasn't wired or sending off any sort of signal that could be tracked. It was the falling asleep that was dumb.
Ridiculously high thread count sheets in a spare bedroom at the back of a place best described as a mansion, the thin layer of dust behind the framed stock photos showing it was rarely used - it was all just too tempting. So she had laid down, just to enjoy a real down pillow for even a moment, only to wake up when the proximity alarm she had set went off roughly two hours later.
The trigger had been on the far side of the house near the main entrance, and so she figured she still had a good head start. The chances of the homeowner choosing this one particular room at random out of the dozen of others was slim to none, but she had learned that statistics lie - especially if you want them to - and knew she needed to make her escape.
She heard the shuffling and general unawareness of the party or parties downstairs, and glanced out the windows. Story and a half drop if she hung from the balcony attached to the room, she could hit the grass and roll, avoid the sidewalk if she were lucky. A second glance, this one at her tablet that showed the power signatures and that the security system hadn't been keyed up to its highest setting yet, and she had a plan.
She waited until the noise faded slightly, hoping it was a sign whoever it was had wandered closer to the kitchen and away from her brief sanctuary, and then made the jump. Tuck, roll, don't curse out loud at the ankle that protested the landing, and head for the impressive shrubbery that formed a false barrier before the real one of the fence. Weak point in the far western corner, dug slowly over the course of weeks by multiple cohorts, just wide enough to slide under if she didn't wear her pack.
She was free, hand still on the strap to tug it to her, when the fence flashed the initiation sequence. She yanked the bag to her and clambered to her feet, worn boots sliding slightly in the loose dirt. Of course a clump had to be kicked towards the fence, and of course it was just as the fence itself was activated, the ear piercing screech of a siren declaring her position.
She ran anyways. Hung close to property lines, took lefts when she knew she should have taken rights, headed away from the major transit lines and deeper into enemy territory knowing they would expect the exact opposite. She only slowed when she was away from the monstrosities of mansions and in the midst of the smaller, more reasonable homes. There, she tried to blend in with the few locals that strolled about. The high end clothing she had stolen helped with that, even if there were a few streaks of dirt had anyone cared to look close enough. A flash of stolen bling at her ears mixed with a smarmy smile was enough to keep anyone from looking too closely, and she called it a win.
She wandered with make believe purpose, even though she had no real reason to be there. It made the patrols less likely to stop her though, especially if they saw the shiny. Shiny meant money, money meant power, power meant people left you alone for fear of retribution. As long as no one had caught a shot of her leaving, and as long as no one had hacked through her own hack of her supposed criminal record and found a pretty damn ancient warrant, she should be good to go.
And so she went. Her stomach rumbled and she was very tempted to spend some of her hard earned and stolen cash. Her fear was that she wouldn't know what went with what around here. They liked the fancy stuff, brûlées and roulettes and crap she couldn't pronounce let alone keep down. About three hours in she found a coffee shop, and knew she could at least fake that well enough from remembering what they were like before. She got a mocha, waved her hand when they asked about the extras and pretended to be talking on her phone, hair covering all but the edge of it to hide the model, a flash of shiny on her finger. She pointed to what she hoped was a pastry of some sort and had that added to her purchase, paid with a larger bill because cards were both more traceable and more passé and had to remember not to tip the barista because that would have been a red flag in this part of society.
She didn't dare sit and eat it there, her manners and her hunger less than passing to say the least. She continued the farce on her phone as she wandered away, trying not to drool at the smell of her goodies. The farce ended and she damn near jumped when her phone beeped for real. A message coded in some fake social media account told her where the meet up would be and when, as well as possible safehouses in the area if she couldn't get to one of her own.
She found a park and let the pollen and leaves and such tickle her nose as she hid in a slight alcove and shoved the pastry into her mouth in a series of inelegant bites. She swiped the back of her hand across her mouth to rid herself of the crumbs of something she knew she should have appreciated more, and washed it down with a gulp of painfully sweet beverage. Hoping against hope that it would stay down, she began less of a wander and more of a determined search for a place to hide for the night because there was no way she was making it out of the quadrant until morning.
The faintest smear of grease on a window was like a beacon to her. Swiped upwards like a wave, like a sort of a stylistic wing or the rise of a tide, it was a symbol known to very few and oh so welcome to them when they found it. She had barely paused in front of the walkway to the back door when it flew open, a elderly woman with a round face and rounder body waving once in casual greeting while her hand flicked the sign that meant she was to hurry if she was not to be caught.
She was met with a hug and a whispered, "Miriam, if they ask. Hurry and it shouldn't be a problem." The woman didn't ask her own name, not willing to put herself at risk that way.
A hand at the small of her back all but physically pushed her inwards, towards the heavy brick fireplace in the old stone home. The brick swung open to reveal a narrow and winding staircase that led upwards, and she was forced to reevaluate the age of the home, guessing it had been used in the Underground Railroad centuries ago, and being used for a similar purpose now.
"I'll try to scrape together some food," Miriam told her. "It'll be harder with three of you, rations being what they are, but I'll do my best. Patrol is due in two days time and the shield generator is on the fritz. You and any trace of you will have to be gone by then."
She nodded and headed up the circling stone, a task made harder when the door clicked shut behind her and left her in bitter darkness. She felt her way upwards, caught sight of the generator in question when it flickered in the slight light from a heavily curtained window and promised herself to take a look at it later, and then finally, finally breathed again when she exited into the small attic room.
"ID?" a decidedly male voice asked before she could even enjoy that breath. The room was mainly black with hints of lighter gray and a thin line of light from where the curtains failed. He was crouched in the far corner, further protected by the shadows, and meant absolutely nothing to her as he had nothing to give her in exchange.
"Fuck off," she replied. Another form, smaller and slighter and probably female, sat perched on the single actual bed on the room. There were pallets and cushions lining the small area though, so she claimed one as her own and dumped her gear, plopping down with the sigh of the truly exhausted. A two hour nap after three days on the run and now not being granted anything more than a slight doze for the night because she wasn't alone was both not cutting it and something she wasn't looking forward to.
"Fair enough," the man replied. His breath was slightly uneven and there was the stench of antiseptic to the room mixed with something she knew too well to be blood.
"Are you SHIELD or Rising Tide?" the other occupant asked, confirming her suspicion that it was a female.
"Yes," she replied. She dug through her bag and tried not to outwardly wince at the condition of her gear. She'd need replacements, and soon, but most of the materials alone were tagged by Hydra as suspicious, let alone the finished product. Maybe May had been successful in her raid. Her comm had been broken for the better part of a week, so there was no way of knowing until she got back to the hovel of a bunker currently serving as their base. Her burner phone worked, as did her tablet, but they were usually traced after four or five calls and she had already used it three times to contact the Tide.
"Which one are you?" the man asked. He sounded annoyed. She didn't really care.
"Both," their companion answered before she could herself. Tide-affiliated safehouse but she herself being out in the open, it made sense that she made the connection.
She pushed her long hair away from her face, her stolen bling getting caught in a tangle. She tore it off and stashed it in a bio-locked container, happy to be done playing Snakehead and back to being plain old Skye again. She leaned against the wall and tried not to bang her head against it. "Look, you share with me, I share with you. That's how it works. I don't know you from Adam or whatever the latest Nazi wannabe is called, and I sure as hell don't trust you just because you're hiding in the same bolthole as me. We can either form an admittedly brief relationship of not killing each other, or maybe possibly gain actual intel that helps our respective cells."
"Now that sounds familiar," the man mused. Good, it was a knockoff of one of Coulson's speeches which meant, if they knew it, they at least knew others who used it. SHIELD then, or at least most likely.
He flipped up a small device that she knew far too well and spoke into it, a long and rambling authorization code which in and of itself probably would have been enough for her to be convinced of his loyalties, especially given her current state of running on her last reserves. The screen lit up with the SHIELD logo, something that had been faked more than once and she knew it, but more importantly also held that week's correct color sequence across the bottom. The woman did the same and got the same results, then held it out to her. As if she should have to prove herself to them. As if she didn't have her own little device tucked away in the bottom of her pack.
She played the game though and recited what was needed. Some colors and a logo later, and the guy seemed to relax a notch, so at least there was that. Then again, if he was injured, he might have feared she was sent to finish the job. Because Hydra was so well known for sending dirty faux rich kids as hit men.
"What do you need?" the woman asked. She leaned forward slightly on her perch, not enough to get a clear glimpse of her face, but enough to see a single strand of red hair escaping the hooded jacket she wore. She was clearly still hiding her identity, even in a supposed safe place. Either she was overcautious, or more wanted than Skye herself. Then again, she could just be pretending to make herself seem more important. It wouldn't be the first time.
Skye scoffed. "This entire Hydra occupation to be a bad dream?" she tried. A nasal snort of breath served as a reply hinting at the unlikelihood of that happening any time soon. "More than two hours of sleep at any given time would be nice, but I'd settle for a penlight."
"Small, won't give off enough of a signature to be read," the woman mused. "Plan on IDing us by it?"
She shook her head. She could care less what they looked like, really. No need to have a face to go with the nonexistent name. "I plan on trying to fix the generator so a random patrol won't find three extra heat signatures tucked away where the blueprints say it's wood beams and mice," she corrected.
"You good enough to do it?" the man asked doubtingly.
"Depends on what's wrong with it," she hedged. Fitz and Simmons had taught her a lot, but she also knew the inert workings of all sorts of machines just from spending time alone with them. You take apart the broken ones and put them back together. Next one you come across with a a different problem and you put the pieces back in a way to match the first. So on and so on and eventually you learn what a whole one looks like.
A clink served as a signal of something landing flush with her leg on the pallet. Penlight. Decent one too. She grabbed the miniature tool kit she had learned to keep with her at damn near all times, and locked the rest of her gear to her signature only. Might not stop them if they were any good, but it would at least be a delay should they try anything. Took Ward six tries and a permanently scarred finger before he had made it, and that was only once.
She tossed a watch cap back to the woman because you don't get without giving and promised, "It's my own and I swear I don't have lice. Might help hide you better than that hood." It also didn't have any stray hairs for DNA analysis should the matter arise, but she didn't feel the need to mention that part.
The woman didn't seemed surprised but she also didn't seem completely trusting, feeling around the edges of the thing for tells before she offered a truncated, "Thanks."
Skye didn't bother actually standing as she'd probably just hit her head on the beam she barely missed with her entrance anyway, so she crawled the short distance over to the steps and to the generator that sat two worn risers down from the floor. She poked at it a bit, found it was overused and not in generally good repair. Probably kept on even when it wasn't needed just so no curious patrol noticed that sometimes Ms. Miriam had an attic with a few extra dimensions and sometimes she didn't. If she was to guess, it had probably been cycled to full use slowly as to not show a sudden spike in energy usage for the area. It being down was possibly just as dangerous as it being up at this point.
A rough edge caught her finger and she swore. She swore again to find the woman right next to her, arrived without a sound, cap tugged on beneath her hood while Skye had been otherwise occupied and couldn't get a clearer look at just who she was. "Here," the woman said, pushing a wipe of some kind into her hand. "Get the finger and the metal, don't leave any DNA behind for them to find." After the wipe came a bandage that she saw come from a small and mostly empty pack and made her question just how bad off the other two guests were. She pocketed her trash, not willing to leave it behind and not willing to risk her supposed new found bestie using it against her.
Med tape was placed over the edge to prevent further mishaps, and she worked in relative silence for a other forty minutes or so, the woman never leaving her side. As much as she'd like to know her story, she knew it wasn't her place. Not knowing was a protection for them both. She couldn't name the redhead if she was ever caught, and the redhead might afford her the same courtesy if she were lucky.
"Where'd you get the shiny?" the woman asked after a while.
It took Skye a moment to realize she still had a piece on. "Stole it. Thought it might be worth a trade later. Why, you looking to rob me?" The bracelet was worth about a grand in the stores, but she might get a couple hundred from it in a pinch.
The woman waved her hand and a pair of earrings that put the ones she had stolen to shame appeared. "Got my own, thanks," she said drily. "Might be a good idea to keep it though, helps you blend in better around here. That alone can be of more worth than the money you could get from it."
Skye didn't roll her eyes, but it was a near thing. "Yeah, talk to me when you haven't eaten for two days and someone's offering you fifty for it," she muttered instead. The woman tilted her head to the side as though considering the validity of her words, but left it at that.
Another thirty minutes and a handful of various tidbits from her bag and the generator was powering up while Skye herself was running on fumes. Caffeine and sugar could only last so long, and she had burned through it long before she had stumbled up the steps. She knew she wasn't safe yet though, not with two unknowns and a generator that had already crashed as her companions, so she returned to the pallet she had claimed earlier and tried her best to stay awake.
The guy pulled out some doohickey that looked like one of Fitz's toys and nodded approvingly. "Nice work," he commented before he pocketed it again. "The attic is just a cramped empty space again, at least as far as the patrols should be concerned."
Of course, the generator chose that moment to sputter and die. The woman kicked it once, hard, and it soared back to life though, with the added bonus of Skye not needing to haul herself over there again. She settled back against the cold wall and dug in her pack for something to keep her occupied. She still didn't trust them enough to sleep, and morning was far off. They'd leave before sunrise most likely, close enough to curfew times to either blend in or beg it off as a mistake in an attempt to get to a needy boss. She grabbed her most recent find and started to poke at it.
"You stole a router?" the redhead asked dubiously. "You risked your life for that?"
She shrugged. "I risked my life to upload a virus that should be taking apart several supposedly secured files and broadcasting them to my team," she corrected. Then, with a smile, "The router was just a bonus. If it's offline they can't trace the source as quickly, which should help slow them down and give us more time." She didn't mention that the router itself wouldn't be needed for the broadcast as multiple sources, including the local authorized news station, would be serving that purpose.
"They'll kill you for that," the guy warned.
"They'll interrogate you, then dissect you while you're still alive for that," the woman amended.
Skye looked up from her new toy. She could almost make out their faces now, if she wanted to. It was still probably safer if she didn't, but she had a niggling feeling that they were people she should know. Not that she thought they were double agents for Hydra, those could never act this well for this long and always slipped sooner rather than later, usually when it came to basic human kindness which these two had shone in spades. An up and coming cell maybe, one either looking to make a name for themselves or looking to worm their way into one of the more notorious ones. It would explain the hood and shadows act, more show than substance.
"They already have enough reasons to want to do that, what's one more?" she asked with a frown. "Seriously, I think our group ranks just below the actual Avengers on their hit list, or at least close, especially after M-, after a certain someone managed to apply extreme force and power tools to the Clairvoyant's favorite pet." She stretched, her wound and her muscles aching as one. Walking on her ankle in the morning was going to be a bitch, especially after all she had done that afternoon. She caught the way they watched her, and the way they exchanged a glance without actually exchanging one. "If you're going to turn me in, do it now, will you? The cash should help with whatever your current cause is and one way or another I might actually finally get to stop running, you know? Maybe even catch a nap in the truck to the detention center?"
"We're not going to turn you in," the guy promised with a grunt. The woman went to help as he shifted, and she caught sight of several bandages that were less than white. She wondered if perhaps they had already experienced Hydra's preferred interrogation methods. She also spared a thought to the chance Hydra had upped their game and had moved on to hurting their own spies to make them more believable. She kind of doubted it though; there was no need to change decades worth of MO when it worked so well for them and they had always been more reward-based/kill the opposition outright than anything else. Plus, they just weren't that imaginative.
"You'll understand if I don't take you at your word though, right?" she snarked because she could.
"And you'll understand if we don't take you at yours," the woman countered.
They sat in their pseudo-standoff, pseudo-strained silence for a good hour or so more before Miriam dropped off their meal. She also dropped off two combs and a brush, some hand towels, and a container of something that was scented faintly of some fancy soap or another. A look at the guy, and she came back with a small kit of additional bandages, some of which the two obvious teammates used and some they pocketed for later. There was apparently a small toilet and sink hidden in one of the shadows that Skye seriously could have used a long time before. Then again, who knew what else was hidden back there, and she never did like scurrying furry little things circling around her butt while she tried to pee if given the choice.
The food was good, as in indecently so. If that's what someone who supposedly swore themselves to Hydra got as rations, she could see the temptation. Simple, hardy, filling, and none of the massive spicing or sweetness that tended to make her stomach turn. Her companions seemed to agree, at least if the way their portions disappeared sooner rather than later was any sign.
"Where are you headed after this?" the guy asked after the dishes were stacked and all three of them had used the penlight to find the pseudo-bathroom. Skye rewarded him with a look of incredulity. There was no way she was sharing that, and anyone worth their name in this business should have known better.
The redhead sighed and shook her head. "He's not that dumb, I swear," she promised after some hand jive mojo with him. They had been doing that off and on since her arrival. "I think he was asking if you or your group had ties to New York yet, or if you wanted a possible contact there."
She knew they were watching her, but it was damned hard not to show an outward reaction to that. New York was one of the last places not to fall to Hydra or their various puppet government agencies. About half of Canada was still good, she knew that for a fact, large swaths of Central and South America, parts of Africa and the Northern area of what was once Russia, but they were all less than populated with plenty of nature running wild to cover your tracks. New York, Washington, and Southern California were the last major holdouts of the United States. Everywhere else or near enough to it was rampant with Hydra or those loyal to them. Governments were corrupt even if they didn't outwardly show their true colors, far too many members sworn to their "higher" purpose. It was how so many laws had been passed with minimal opposition. It was how everyone knew without knowing who was actually in charge.
"Don't trust the first person who tells you he can get you there," she warned. At least seven cells that she knew of had fallen to that. Coulson's group had never tried, but that was because AC didn't believe in centralizing the targets. Don't put all the chicks in one basket, he had said. Even with Stark's sway and shielding, there was the chance Hydra was building something bigger and better, and she knew they would have no problem burning millions to ashes if it meant an assured victory over one of the last pockets of holdouts. That was, of course, if anyone actually succeeded in getting there without having their throats cut or secrets handed over along the way. Hydra bought their loyalty, and that was something the resistance just couldn't afford. Even the best of people could be tempted by riches and out and out cash, especially when the alternative was living in near squalor.
Stark was known not to be loyal to Hydra, but he was also known to never be caught breaking any law that they had passed to try to catch him. Gone was the red metal suit he flew around in, and in its place were drones that they'd open to find empty at best, and rigged to blow at worst. He wasn't precisely underground, but he wasn't dumb enough to be out in the open either. The team he had gathered, the one first formed by SHIELD itself, were the best of the best and yet to be caught. But the rumor was there had been some damned close calls and anyone who tried to join them was usually found sooner rather than later, either in a gutter or with their picture projected larger than life on one of the data screens, wanted if lucky and being taken to detainment if they were not.
"We have our own access, not buying our way," the woman assured her. She sounded serious enough, but there was the faintest hint of humor to her tone, like she was amused someone like Skye would try to scare her off.
"Still a dumb choice," she muttered. Part of it was Coulson and her loyalty to him, and she knew this. He had insisted time and time again that they shouldn't go there, that they were better off in the shadows taking down targets one by one. Part of it was seeing so many people paraded across the feeds with declarations of victory against the insurgents overwriting their images. Mackenzie had been a friend, or the closest thing to it outside of her team. Aaronsen was a douche, but made damn good cocktails out of the crappiest of liquors. She watched that one, burned the image of him flayed and begging into her mind so that she'd never be tempted to follow a crazyass whim based upon beyond limited intel.
"We need people outside of the hubs," the woman agreed easily enough. "You find a safe space and can get trapped there, too trusting and skills too rusty. It goes and you go with it. Spreading out is safest, like you say, but we still need a central comm line beyond coded messages that may or may not get to their targets and may or may not be intercepted along the way. If we can't plan together, if we can't warn each other, what's the point of claiming to be on the same team?"
"We need to communicate with as many cells as possible," the man cut in. He waved a hand, a strange glove fit over some of his fingers - tech or splints, she couldn't tell. "Before you say it, yeah, it puts everyone at risk if it's hacked or if someone turns. Giant red flag, or white because we might as well surrender if the Snakeheads locate the signals. But if T-, if someone could build something more secure, or just plain better, wouldn't it at least help?"
"Nice dream," Skye said, but not quite as harshly as she had intended. "You know what I dream about?" She didn't wait for a response, which was fine because they just let her go anyway. "Not living off rations. Not being stopped and scanned in the middle of the street and being taken in for questioning because I might look like someone who might know something about some minor little detail some asshole deems important. Not running. Not fearing for my life because I don't fit the new trusted norm, because I have brown eyes instead of blue or because like computers instead of dresses. Not having to watch the bodies of people I trusted, people I dared to call friends, be paraded around like prizes and pretend I'm proud of the achievement when inside I don't know if I'm going to make it to the next corner to hurl." She gulped and ignored the slightly shaky feeling that threatened to overwhelm her, steadied her hands by gripping the router that much tighter. Exhaustion had brought her emotions far closer to the surface than she had thought. Either that, or the fact Mackenzie had been lost exactly one month ago to the day was playing a role.
"Or you could just go home," the redhead suggested, not unkindly. "You don't have to fight, you don't have to put yourself at risk like this if you don't want to."
"You don't have to join the propaganda parade," the guy agreed. "But plenty of people have managed to find a way to survive until we can win this and have a semi-civil world again. If you want to go home, no one's going to blame you. You've obviously already done a hell of a lot for the cause."
Skye resisted the urge to throw the router, not willing to waste decent tech like that. "I don't have a home," she gritted out, and it was true. Random village to orphanage, foster home to foster home, even her damn van - they were all gone, if she could even consider them to fall within the category in the first place. The only constant, the only thing that wound its way through her life enough to have meaning, even if she hadn't realized it until it was damn near too late, was a shadowy organization that tried to do the right thing, even as it stood on the brink of disaster. "SHIELD is my home, or as close to it as I've ever had. I'll be damned if I let them take that away too," she told them.
Her movements were harsh and jerky now, mind and body too raw, and the snap of the case opening was almost enough to drown out the joint response of a vague promise to try to save the few surviving pieces of her makeshift home for her. Almost.
She was glad for the dark because her eyes were suspiciously watery now. She could blink in silence and keep her breath relatively even so as to not give away her true state. So long as she didn't swipe at her eyes, she should be fine, her two roomies would never know.
Or maybe they would, she corrected when a small square of cloth was handed to her by a suddenly close companion. "I know what it's like to grow up in less than prime circumstances," the redhead confided. "Believe it or not, but the idiot over there does as well. I think SHIELD attracts those looking for a little stability and a higher cause, despite the hardships we might go through to achieve it."
"When life gives you lemons and all that?" Skye asked sarcastically.
"I'd take lemons over the shit life's given us lately," the man snorted. "We're talking the need for industrial grade shovels at this point..."
"Eloquent as always," the woman sighed, but Skye could hear the thread of fondness to her tone. She was beginning to suspect these two had been paired up for longer than she first suspected.
The man shrugged, a shadow shifting in the dark. "It's true," he said unapologetically. "To find out that there was something else right under your nose the whole time? Shifting and controlling and leading you to X when you thought you were going for Y? It sucks."
"Not always," Skye whispered, finding it a damn good analogy for a certain agency's role in her life. "I never knew SHIELD was looking out for me until right before it fell. Agents serving as families that I hated, keeping me on the move and away from anything stable, and now I work right along side them. Well, not the same agents, but you know what I mean." She pushed an annoying strand of hair out of her face, looked over to his corner of secrecy and added, "Sometimes the shadows serve a purpose." SHIELD. Rising Tide. They worked in corners, in the spaces between the day to day normalcy to protect and reveal and to be that which people needed, whether they knew they needed it or not. At one point, she had thought SHIELD was the enemy, now she saw there were far worse things out there than an ambivalent agency. She'd take ambivalence over pure evil any day.
Any further discussion was cut short by a distinct change in both light and the world around them as a whole. The tiny sliver of the outside world had changed from the grayish blue of night to the red and blue rotations of a patrol. The man was on his feet before she could even put down her erstwhile toy, still mostly in shadow as he peered out to find what fresh hell had found them this time. She caught a much clearer outline of his face now, despite his companion moving just to to step into and across her line of sight. He was familiar in a way she knew he shouldn't be, in a way she knew she should recognize, in a way that she found almost a comfort versus the liability she had thought him to be thus far. Then again, she could now see just a bit clearer just how badly he was injured, and it wasn't pretty.
"How many?" she asked. Extraneous gear was packed and away, Fitz and Simmons' weapon of choice in hand as she had run out of bullets longer ago than she wanted to admit.
The redhead eyed the Night-Night gun with a cock of her head. "That's new," she commented, but seemed to pay it no more mind as her own pistols were unlocked and clearly loaded.
"Standard team of six per side, armament is more than usual but that could mean either they know we're here or they've upgraded in general," the man replied. He looked across to her now, eyes highlighted a eerie blue before flickering to an almost purple from the patrol car. "Guess we find out just how good a job you did on that generator."
The comment was pointed, yet expected. If it failed, they would suspect her a traitor and she would never leave the attic alive. If it held and the patrols "left" only to catch up to them first thing when they made their own escape, same thing only with the bonus of likely being hunted down. She knew she did her best, but she also knew it was rickety, outdated equipment held together with spit and wires by someone not specifically trained to work on such machines. She was just proud that it hadn't started broadcasting their location with screaming announcements of "Check here! Up here! Just shoot us now!" Anything else was just a bonus.
The redhead pulled the guy away from the window despite his protests of needing to see what was going on, a wise move because the generator might hide heat signatures, but who knew what it would would happen if someone gazed up at the supposedly empty attic and saw the shadow of a man lurking about. After that, they all stayed very, very quiet and very, very still as the patrol had reached the safehouse and their host was being treated to Hydra hospitality below them, which was to say having her stuff riffled through, walls knocked on, and threats subtle and not tossed in her direction.
After what seemed to be an eternity and a half, they heard the door close and Skye felt like she could breathe again. She felt her shoulders slump and wanted desperately to let the wall prop her up for an hour or two because her legs weren't going to hold her much longer, but the guy shook his head, the edges of spiky hair catching in the thin line of light. "They still need to check the neighbors and will probably make one last run through here since their transport is parked out front," he advised in the faintest of voices.
"If this Miriam doesn't have refreshments or some other bribe by then, they'll ransack the place just for the practice," the redhead agreed, voice just as much a whisper as her colleague.
And so they stayed as they were, weapons at the ready, bodies aching from exhaustion and holding still for so long or maybe that was just Skye. When the door slammed shut one last time and finally, finally the lights disappeared, she was allowed to sink down onto her pallet.
Her companions seemed to have some sort of silent conversation, which ended when the woman sank down next to her and assured her, "You did good." She didn't get the chance to respond, even if she had found the words to say this wasn't her first rodeo, before she felt a sharp prick at the side of her neck and then she felt nothing at all.
She awoke to a groggy head and a ray of bright light cutting a swath across the dark attic. The very empty attic. The attic that showed no signs of her companions from the night before save for a slightly rumpled blanket on the bed and the dried droplets of what she knew to be blood in the far corner where the man had spent the majority of his time. She cursed herself and then them and eventually pawed at her neck until she found the sensitive skin where the needle had entered.
They had drugged her. She had saved their necks, and they had drugged her. A glance at her watch showed that she had slept for a solid eight hours, nearly to the minute, and while she couldn't remember the last time she had done that, she also couldn't remember the last time someone had left her or her belongings unscathed after even half that amount.
A check showed her gun still at her side, though a single round was missing. The rest of her gear was still bio-locked at her side with absolutely no sign of tampering and the chronometer showing nothing had been opened since she had set the damn thing herself. Not that she trusted it, or them, at this point. She dug through it, half expecting it to blow, and found nothing out of place and everything down to the mints she had stolen from the bedside of her last mission still accounted for.
It wasn't until she lifted her bag that she found something amiss. Or maybe she should just say found something in general. It was a flash drive, shiny and gray with the distinctive logo of her alliance of choice inscribed on one side. On the other was a different logo all together, and one she hadn't seen before. It bore two equilateral triangles joined together at the center tip, or they would be if there wasn't a straight line drawn right through the meeting point. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't quite a line so much as a ray, clearly pointed at one end while the other was a little less distinct, ending in what she would call a blur save for that etchings didn't blur and there seemed to be an equal number of tiny scratches on either side of the line.
She made a mental note to ask Coulson about the meaning. She also made a mental note to run the device though a scan at one of the burn locations before she dared to even mention it to him, especially when she saw the scrap of a note attached to it. "Tell Phil that Strike Team Delta stands ready to assist." For whatever that was worth.
Again, no comm meant no communique until she could risk it. She wasn't dumb enough to try yet, not here, not when their host damn near got caught last night. The woman both aided them and didn't rat them out when given the chance; Skye was not about to reward her efforts with a possible screamer that would alert the patrols that were still undoubtedly in the area.
She also didn't leave the device behind, despite her better judgement telling her to do so. They knew AC on a first name basis. Possibly. She knew she hadn't given anything up about him, and she knew he was one of the last unknowns out there as far as Hydra was concerned. Most of the world thought he was dead and those who didn't figured he was in hiding. Aside from the most immediate of teams, no one knew his true role. He'd want to know what this "strike team" thought they knew about him, and he'd send someone out to get the drive if she didn't test it and bring it in herself. Even if it was crap, even if it truly was a screamer, it would at least provide a clue as to who she had spent the past however many hours with, and just what side they were on.
She placed the drive in a container that should make any signals it broadcasted inert and then pocketed it in a way she could ditch fast if needed, and in a way that would no way allow any direct contact with her own tech. She thanked Miriam for her hospitality and readily accepted the weird sandwich-thing she gave her for the road. Soon enough, she was on said road again, this time headed for the warehouse district, where raids were common enough to keep Hydra busy and allow those who knew the tricks to sneak through to places few if any knew about. Plus, if one of the buildings happened to explode or catch fire or any of the other things unknown tech might happen to do when faced with a FitzSimmons scan, no one really noticed until you were long gone.
It was a fire that caught her attention, or at least the signs of one. Thick black smoke rose from the district, seemingly encompassing the area as a whole. She found a shadow to tuck herself within to try to wait it out, to watch for signs of what was truly going on versus what was being faked. Nearly an hour passed without any definitive information, and she was beginning to get restless, not to mention worried.
Those two emotions were replaced with an entirely different one when the seemingly solid tree trunk she was leaning up against shivered with the silent thunk of an impact. Didn't seem right for a bullet or a tracer, but she prepared herself to run anyway, right up until she found the slim shaft of what appeared to be an arrow of all things embedded beside her. It was smooth and vaguely metallic, and had a slip of actual paper wrapped around it.
She pulled it off carefully, having received odder communiques in the recent past as supplies dwindled and tech became scarce. It was a number and the words "call asap" written in a handwriting she recognized from only hours before. Beneath it, on the shaft itself, was etched the same symbol as before.
She knew she only had maybe one call left on the burner phone anyway and had been preparing to leave it behind soon enough. If it was traced now, it would be solely to an area already clearly ripe with activity.
With a sigh and the thoughts of hopefully earning a comfy cell in whatever dungeon she was about to be tossed into, she dialed. She was rewarded with the gruff yet familiar voice of the man from the attic. He skipped pretty much all preliminaries and said, "Look, I know you have no reason to trust us, but you need to get the hell out of there, and fast. They are torching the entire district and rounding up anyone smart enough not to want to burn alive."
"And you know nothing about this, right?" she asked, unable to keep the bitterness from her tone.
"I know that our contact was there and that they preserved enough of him to parade around on the evening news, but not much more," the man said, not unsympathetic. "If your team was there, hope they got out. If your home was there, I'm sorry."
She breathed out slowly through her nose, thought of the small space in the old paper factory that had a cupboard full of canned goods, a working microwave, a relatively soft couch, and the last vestiges of a T-1 line. "I told you, I have no home," she replied. She hung up before he did something dumb enough like to offer apologies and tossed the phone to the bushes. She snapped a pic of the arrow with a separate device to send to AC, but left it and any potential trackers it held behind as she hit the road to somewhere with hopefully relative safety.
A day an a half later found her beginning the preliminary scans to pass through what appeared to be a solid brick wall. It slid to the side without a sound and she stepped into the small vestibule on the other side. She closed her eyes against the brightness of the scan, and opened them when they died away to find the dingy white on the other side slide away to reveal a friendly face.
"Am I clean?" she asked, tiredness and hopefulness coloring her tone.
Antoine leaned close and made a show of sniffing her before pulling back with a smile. "Not even close, sweetheart."
She flipped him off because she could, but let him take her gear. She pulled out an image of the drive in its protective case and waved it at him as he led her through the series of hallways and stairwells, only some of which actually led anywhere. The drive itself was safely tucked elsewhere, untraceable should someone capture her, and safe from tracking just where she headed for a hideout. "Pressie from someone who might be an ally and might be an enemy," she explained. "Can you hook me up with a FitzSimmons Special?"
He changed direction mid-stride and she followed easily. "I can do one better," he told her. "They're here and can do it themselves."
She felt the strain across her shoulders ease at the knowledge that they were safe and sound, and a thread of anticipation that they were close - they always did get into the best kinds of trouble together. "The warehouse?" she asked.
"Leo got a little singed and Jemma got some soot artfully smeared across her face, but that was about it," he assured her. "Most of the tech survived by sheer force of their will I think, and they are happily determining which Hydra server to topple next." He paused outside of a doorway and cocked his head slightly to the side to ask, "Why take the risk of not ditching the drive entirely?"
Now it was her turn to shrug. "Warehouse was down and the guys who gave me this also warned me away. I spent a night in their tender care and they didn't even try to slit my throat."
"And they had that little extra something that told you that you could trust them?" he guessed.
She nodded. "They knew AC. Called themselves Strike Team Delta, for whatever that means." She keyed in her passcode to open the door and found her friends waiting on the other side of the room, bent over something undoubtedly important. Trip let her step through, but not get much further than that.
He turned slow and sure in the way that usually meant she had just said something important that she knew absolutely nothing about. He didn't take the image from her hand, but did turn It slightly so that he could completely see the etching on both sides. His eyebrows raised and he called out, "Hey, kids, wash behind your ears because daddy's coming home."
She didn't try to hide the doubt on her face when she asked, "That important?"
He nodded with exaggerated slowness, but managed not to mock her so she was fine with it. "Whether this is the real deal and you met the real team, or if a Hydra cell found them and figured out to use them against us? Either way this is big news," he assured her.
They would still run their scans and they would still make sure nothing blew up in their face literally or figuratively, but she felt no small comfort at the words. They needed a lead like sometime last year and had been floundering about, trying to do their best since. The floundering was made even more ineffective by the need to talk anyway but directly to anyone she actually cared about and trusted. If Trip was right though, her team would be whole again, even if it was just for just a day or two. If they were lucky, it would prove to be even longer.
He started the process of calling Coulson and she accepted the round of hugs that might have gone on a little longer than technically justified. Later, if AC approved it, she's grab the drive from where she hid it and they'd all have a little look. Later still, whether he approved it officially or not, they'd all share something from one of the many glass bottles that were still readily a available amongst the downtrodden because even Hydra wasn't dumb enough to try to take booze away. They might even abuse their stash of junk food that was either long past its expiration date or proof of what science could achieve if given the right chemicals.
For now though, she propped herself up against the counter and waved her less than secret hand jive at May to see how their two erstwhile leaders were doing for real while Coulson pretended not to see a thing. It was the closest the team had gotten to being in the same room in months, and she fully planned on enjoying it while she could.
Hydra was still out there, but apparently so were all sorts of resistance teams that even she barely knew about. If one couldn't take them down, another would. Bonus points if they managed to work together and show a united front for a change. They were a family of sorts, a mismatched family of orphans and reprobates and worse, driven together by consequences out of their control, but a family all the same. They may not have a home with a fireplace and pictures on the mantle or anything as ridiculous as that, but that made her appreciate what they did have even more: each other.
End.
Feedback is always welcomed.
Genre: Gen, AU
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~9,000 words
Warnings: Passing mention of torture and deaths (off screen, OC)
Spoilers: Set post-Agents of SHIELD Season 1/Captain America: The Winter Soldier, AU from there.
Synopsis: Hydra had won, officially or not. That didn't mean that the few remaining resistance cells couldn't make their lives a living hell, if they could manage to not kill each other in the process.
Author's Notes: For the "loss of home/shelter" square at
hc_bingo. Now that the new season started, it's not nearly as AU as I had thought.Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
Okay, so that wasn't the brightest thing she could have done. The use of real hot running water no one would fault her for, especially given the timeline. The rifling through the closets and dressers to augment her clothing was mildly questionable. The swiping of jewelry to pawn was just her being bitter, and she totally checked it to make sure it wasn't wired or sending off any sort of signal that could be tracked. It was the falling asleep that was dumb.
Ridiculously high thread count sheets in a spare bedroom at the back of a place best described as a mansion, the thin layer of dust behind the framed stock photos showing it was rarely used - it was all just too tempting. So she had laid down, just to enjoy a real down pillow for even a moment, only to wake up when the proximity alarm she had set went off roughly two hours later.
The trigger had been on the far side of the house near the main entrance, and so she figured she still had a good head start. The chances of the homeowner choosing this one particular room at random out of the dozen of others was slim to none, but she had learned that statistics lie - especially if you want them to - and knew she needed to make her escape.
She heard the shuffling and general unawareness of the party or parties downstairs, and glanced out the windows. Story and a half drop if she hung from the balcony attached to the room, she could hit the grass and roll, avoid the sidewalk if she were lucky. A second glance, this one at her tablet that showed the power signatures and that the security system hadn't been keyed up to its highest setting yet, and she had a plan.
She waited until the noise faded slightly, hoping it was a sign whoever it was had wandered closer to the kitchen and away from her brief sanctuary, and then made the jump. Tuck, roll, don't curse out loud at the ankle that protested the landing, and head for the impressive shrubbery that formed a false barrier before the real one of the fence. Weak point in the far western corner, dug slowly over the course of weeks by multiple cohorts, just wide enough to slide under if she didn't wear her pack.
She was free, hand still on the strap to tug it to her, when the fence flashed the initiation sequence. She yanked the bag to her and clambered to her feet, worn boots sliding slightly in the loose dirt. Of course a clump had to be kicked towards the fence, and of course it was just as the fence itself was activated, the ear piercing screech of a siren declaring her position.
She ran anyways. Hung close to property lines, took lefts when she knew she should have taken rights, headed away from the major transit lines and deeper into enemy territory knowing they would expect the exact opposite. She only slowed when she was away from the monstrosities of mansions and in the midst of the smaller, more reasonable homes. There, she tried to blend in with the few locals that strolled about. The high end clothing she had stolen helped with that, even if there were a few streaks of dirt had anyone cared to look close enough. A flash of stolen bling at her ears mixed with a smarmy smile was enough to keep anyone from looking too closely, and she called it a win.
She wandered with make believe purpose, even though she had no real reason to be there. It made the patrols less likely to stop her though, especially if they saw the shiny. Shiny meant money, money meant power, power meant people left you alone for fear of retribution. As long as no one had caught a shot of her leaving, and as long as no one had hacked through her own hack of her supposed criminal record and found a pretty damn ancient warrant, she should be good to go.
And so she went. Her stomach rumbled and she was very tempted to spend some of her hard earned and stolen cash. Her fear was that she wouldn't know what went with what around here. They liked the fancy stuff, brûlées and roulettes and crap she couldn't pronounce let alone keep down. About three hours in she found a coffee shop, and knew she could at least fake that well enough from remembering what they were like before. She got a mocha, waved her hand when they asked about the extras and pretended to be talking on her phone, hair covering all but the edge of it to hide the model, a flash of shiny on her finger. She pointed to what she hoped was a pastry of some sort and had that added to her purchase, paid with a larger bill because cards were both more traceable and more passé and had to remember not to tip the barista because that would have been a red flag in this part of society.
She didn't dare sit and eat it there, her manners and her hunger less than passing to say the least. She continued the farce on her phone as she wandered away, trying not to drool at the smell of her goodies. The farce ended and she damn near jumped when her phone beeped for real. A message coded in some fake social media account told her where the meet up would be and when, as well as possible safehouses in the area if she couldn't get to one of her own.
She found a park and let the pollen and leaves and such tickle her nose as she hid in a slight alcove and shoved the pastry into her mouth in a series of inelegant bites. She swiped the back of her hand across her mouth to rid herself of the crumbs of something she knew she should have appreciated more, and washed it down with a gulp of painfully sweet beverage. Hoping against hope that it would stay down, she began less of a wander and more of a determined search for a place to hide for the night because there was no way she was making it out of the quadrant until morning.
The faintest smear of grease on a window was like a beacon to her. Swiped upwards like a wave, like a sort of a stylistic wing or the rise of a tide, it was a symbol known to very few and oh so welcome to them when they found it. She had barely paused in front of the walkway to the back door when it flew open, a elderly woman with a round face and rounder body waving once in casual greeting while her hand flicked the sign that meant she was to hurry if she was not to be caught.
She was met with a hug and a whispered, "Miriam, if they ask. Hurry and it shouldn't be a problem." The woman didn't ask her own name, not willing to put herself at risk that way.
A hand at the small of her back all but physically pushed her inwards, towards the heavy brick fireplace in the old stone home. The brick swung open to reveal a narrow and winding staircase that led upwards, and she was forced to reevaluate the age of the home, guessing it had been used in the Underground Railroad centuries ago, and being used for a similar purpose now.
"I'll try to scrape together some food," Miriam told her. "It'll be harder with three of you, rations being what they are, but I'll do my best. Patrol is due in two days time and the shield generator is on the fritz. You and any trace of you will have to be gone by then."
She nodded and headed up the circling stone, a task made harder when the door clicked shut behind her and left her in bitter darkness. She felt her way upwards, caught sight of the generator in question when it flickered in the slight light from a heavily curtained window and promised herself to take a look at it later, and then finally, finally breathed again when she exited into the small attic room.
"ID?" a decidedly male voice asked before she could even enjoy that breath. The room was mainly black with hints of lighter gray and a thin line of light from where the curtains failed. He was crouched in the far corner, further protected by the shadows, and meant absolutely nothing to her as he had nothing to give her in exchange.
"Fuck off," she replied. Another form, smaller and slighter and probably female, sat perched on the single actual bed on the room. There were pallets and cushions lining the small area though, so she claimed one as her own and dumped her gear, plopping down with the sigh of the truly exhausted. A two hour nap after three days on the run and now not being granted anything more than a slight doze for the night because she wasn't alone was both not cutting it and something she wasn't looking forward to.
"Fair enough," the man replied. His breath was slightly uneven and there was the stench of antiseptic to the room mixed with something she knew too well to be blood.
"Are you SHIELD or Rising Tide?" the other occupant asked, confirming her suspicion that it was a female.
"Yes," she replied. She dug through her bag and tried not to outwardly wince at the condition of her gear. She'd need replacements, and soon, but most of the materials alone were tagged by Hydra as suspicious, let alone the finished product. Maybe May had been successful in her raid. Her comm had been broken for the better part of a week, so there was no way of knowing until she got back to the hovel of a bunker currently serving as their base. Her burner phone worked, as did her tablet, but they were usually traced after four or five calls and she had already used it three times to contact the Tide.
"Which one are you?" the man asked. He sounded annoyed. She didn't really care.
"Both," their companion answered before she could herself. Tide-affiliated safehouse but she herself being out in the open, it made sense that she made the connection.
She pushed her long hair away from her face, her stolen bling getting caught in a tangle. She tore it off and stashed it in a bio-locked container, happy to be done playing Snakehead and back to being plain old Skye again. She leaned against the wall and tried not to bang her head against it. "Look, you share with me, I share with you. That's how it works. I don't know you from Adam or whatever the latest Nazi wannabe is called, and I sure as hell don't trust you just because you're hiding in the same bolthole as me. We can either form an admittedly brief relationship of not killing each other, or maybe possibly gain actual intel that helps our respective cells."
"Now that sounds familiar," the man mused. Good, it was a knockoff of one of Coulson's speeches which meant, if they knew it, they at least knew others who used it. SHIELD then, or at least most likely.
He flipped up a small device that she knew far too well and spoke into it, a long and rambling authorization code which in and of itself probably would have been enough for her to be convinced of his loyalties, especially given her current state of running on her last reserves. The screen lit up with the SHIELD logo, something that had been faked more than once and she knew it, but more importantly also held that week's correct color sequence across the bottom. The woman did the same and got the same results, then held it out to her. As if she should have to prove herself to them. As if she didn't have her own little device tucked away in the bottom of her pack.
She played the game though and recited what was needed. Some colors and a logo later, and the guy seemed to relax a notch, so at least there was that. Then again, if he was injured, he might have feared she was sent to finish the job. Because Hydra was so well known for sending dirty faux rich kids as hit men.
"What do you need?" the woman asked. She leaned forward slightly on her perch, not enough to get a clear glimpse of her face, but enough to see a single strand of red hair escaping the hooded jacket she wore. She was clearly still hiding her identity, even in a supposed safe place. Either she was overcautious, or more wanted than Skye herself. Then again, she could just be pretending to make herself seem more important. It wouldn't be the first time.
Skye scoffed. "This entire Hydra occupation to be a bad dream?" she tried. A nasal snort of breath served as a reply hinting at the unlikelihood of that happening any time soon. "More than two hours of sleep at any given time would be nice, but I'd settle for a penlight."
"Small, won't give off enough of a signature to be read," the woman mused. "Plan on IDing us by it?"
She shook her head. She could care less what they looked like, really. No need to have a face to go with the nonexistent name. "I plan on trying to fix the generator so a random patrol won't find three extra heat signatures tucked away where the blueprints say it's wood beams and mice," she corrected.
"You good enough to do it?" the man asked doubtingly.
"Depends on what's wrong with it," she hedged. Fitz and Simmons had taught her a lot, but she also knew the inert workings of all sorts of machines just from spending time alone with them. You take apart the broken ones and put them back together. Next one you come across with a a different problem and you put the pieces back in a way to match the first. So on and so on and eventually you learn what a whole one looks like.
A clink served as a signal of something landing flush with her leg on the pallet. Penlight. Decent one too. She grabbed the miniature tool kit she had learned to keep with her at damn near all times, and locked the rest of her gear to her signature only. Might not stop them if they were any good, but it would at least be a delay should they try anything. Took Ward six tries and a permanently scarred finger before he had made it, and that was only once.
She tossed a watch cap back to the woman because you don't get without giving and promised, "It's my own and I swear I don't have lice. Might help hide you better than that hood." It also didn't have any stray hairs for DNA analysis should the matter arise, but she didn't feel the need to mention that part.
The woman didn't seemed surprised but she also didn't seem completely trusting, feeling around the edges of the thing for tells before she offered a truncated, "Thanks."
Skye didn't bother actually standing as she'd probably just hit her head on the beam she barely missed with her entrance anyway, so she crawled the short distance over to the steps and to the generator that sat two worn risers down from the floor. She poked at it a bit, found it was overused and not in generally good repair. Probably kept on even when it wasn't needed just so no curious patrol noticed that sometimes Ms. Miriam had an attic with a few extra dimensions and sometimes she didn't. If she was to guess, it had probably been cycled to full use slowly as to not show a sudden spike in energy usage for the area. It being down was possibly just as dangerous as it being up at this point.
A rough edge caught her finger and she swore. She swore again to find the woman right next to her, arrived without a sound, cap tugged on beneath her hood while Skye had been otherwise occupied and couldn't get a clearer look at just who she was. "Here," the woman said, pushing a wipe of some kind into her hand. "Get the finger and the metal, don't leave any DNA behind for them to find." After the wipe came a bandage that she saw come from a small and mostly empty pack and made her question just how bad off the other two guests were. She pocketed her trash, not willing to leave it behind and not willing to risk her supposed new found bestie using it against her.
Med tape was placed over the edge to prevent further mishaps, and she worked in relative silence for a other forty minutes or so, the woman never leaving her side. As much as she'd like to know her story, she knew it wasn't her place. Not knowing was a protection for them both. She couldn't name the redhead if she was ever caught, and the redhead might afford her the same courtesy if she were lucky.
"Where'd you get the shiny?" the woman asked after a while.
It took Skye a moment to realize she still had a piece on. "Stole it. Thought it might be worth a trade later. Why, you looking to rob me?" The bracelet was worth about a grand in the stores, but she might get a couple hundred from it in a pinch.
The woman waved her hand and a pair of earrings that put the ones she had stolen to shame appeared. "Got my own, thanks," she said drily. "Might be a good idea to keep it though, helps you blend in better around here. That alone can be of more worth than the money you could get from it."
Skye didn't roll her eyes, but it was a near thing. "Yeah, talk to me when you haven't eaten for two days and someone's offering you fifty for it," she muttered instead. The woman tilted her head to the side as though considering the validity of her words, but left it at that.
Another thirty minutes and a handful of various tidbits from her bag and the generator was powering up while Skye herself was running on fumes. Caffeine and sugar could only last so long, and she had burned through it long before she had stumbled up the steps. She knew she wasn't safe yet though, not with two unknowns and a generator that had already crashed as her companions, so she returned to the pallet she had claimed earlier and tried her best to stay awake.
The guy pulled out some doohickey that looked like one of Fitz's toys and nodded approvingly. "Nice work," he commented before he pocketed it again. "The attic is just a cramped empty space again, at least as far as the patrols should be concerned."
Of course, the generator chose that moment to sputter and die. The woman kicked it once, hard, and it soared back to life though, with the added bonus of Skye not needing to haul herself over there again. She settled back against the cold wall and dug in her pack for something to keep her occupied. She still didn't trust them enough to sleep, and morning was far off. They'd leave before sunrise most likely, close enough to curfew times to either blend in or beg it off as a mistake in an attempt to get to a needy boss. She grabbed her most recent find and started to poke at it.
"You stole a router?" the redhead asked dubiously. "You risked your life for that?"
She shrugged. "I risked my life to upload a virus that should be taking apart several supposedly secured files and broadcasting them to my team," she corrected. Then, with a smile, "The router was just a bonus. If it's offline they can't trace the source as quickly, which should help slow them down and give us more time." She didn't mention that the router itself wouldn't be needed for the broadcast as multiple sources, including the local authorized news station, would be serving that purpose.
"They'll kill you for that," the guy warned.
"They'll interrogate you, then dissect you while you're still alive for that," the woman amended.
Skye looked up from her new toy. She could almost make out their faces now, if she wanted to. It was still probably safer if she didn't, but she had a niggling feeling that they were people she should know. Not that she thought they were double agents for Hydra, those could never act this well for this long and always slipped sooner rather than later, usually when it came to basic human kindness which these two had shone in spades. An up and coming cell maybe, one either looking to make a name for themselves or looking to worm their way into one of the more notorious ones. It would explain the hood and shadows act, more show than substance.
"They already have enough reasons to want to do that, what's one more?" she asked with a frown. "Seriously, I think our group ranks just below the actual Avengers on their hit list, or at least close, especially after M-, after a certain someone managed to apply extreme force and power tools to the Clairvoyant's favorite pet." She stretched, her wound and her muscles aching as one. Walking on her ankle in the morning was going to be a bitch, especially after all she had done that afternoon. She caught the way they watched her, and the way they exchanged a glance without actually exchanging one. "If you're going to turn me in, do it now, will you? The cash should help with whatever your current cause is and one way or another I might actually finally get to stop running, you know? Maybe even catch a nap in the truck to the detention center?"
"We're not going to turn you in," the guy promised with a grunt. The woman went to help as he shifted, and she caught sight of several bandages that were less than white. She wondered if perhaps they had already experienced Hydra's preferred interrogation methods. She also spared a thought to the chance Hydra had upped their game and had moved on to hurting their own spies to make them more believable. She kind of doubted it though; there was no need to change decades worth of MO when it worked so well for them and they had always been more reward-based/kill the opposition outright than anything else. Plus, they just weren't that imaginative.
"You'll understand if I don't take you at your word though, right?" she snarked because she could.
"And you'll understand if we don't take you at yours," the woman countered.
They sat in their pseudo-standoff, pseudo-strained silence for a good hour or so more before Miriam dropped off their meal. She also dropped off two combs and a brush, some hand towels, and a container of something that was scented faintly of some fancy soap or another. A look at the guy, and she came back with a small kit of additional bandages, some of which the two obvious teammates used and some they pocketed for later. There was apparently a small toilet and sink hidden in one of the shadows that Skye seriously could have used a long time before. Then again, who knew what else was hidden back there, and she never did like scurrying furry little things circling around her butt while she tried to pee if given the choice.
The food was good, as in indecently so. If that's what someone who supposedly swore themselves to Hydra got as rations, she could see the temptation. Simple, hardy, filling, and none of the massive spicing or sweetness that tended to make her stomach turn. Her companions seemed to agree, at least if the way their portions disappeared sooner rather than later was any sign.
"Where are you headed after this?" the guy asked after the dishes were stacked and all three of them had used the penlight to find the pseudo-bathroom. Skye rewarded him with a look of incredulity. There was no way she was sharing that, and anyone worth their name in this business should have known better.
The redhead sighed and shook her head. "He's not that dumb, I swear," she promised after some hand jive mojo with him. They had been doing that off and on since her arrival. "I think he was asking if you or your group had ties to New York yet, or if you wanted a possible contact there."
She knew they were watching her, but it was damned hard not to show an outward reaction to that. New York was one of the last places not to fall to Hydra or their various puppet government agencies. About half of Canada was still good, she knew that for a fact, large swaths of Central and South America, parts of Africa and the Northern area of what was once Russia, but they were all less than populated with plenty of nature running wild to cover your tracks. New York, Washington, and Southern California were the last major holdouts of the United States. Everywhere else or near enough to it was rampant with Hydra or those loyal to them. Governments were corrupt even if they didn't outwardly show their true colors, far too many members sworn to their "higher" purpose. It was how so many laws had been passed with minimal opposition. It was how everyone knew without knowing who was actually in charge.
"Don't trust the first person who tells you he can get you there," she warned. At least seven cells that she knew of had fallen to that. Coulson's group had never tried, but that was because AC didn't believe in centralizing the targets. Don't put all the chicks in one basket, he had said. Even with Stark's sway and shielding, there was the chance Hydra was building something bigger and better, and she knew they would have no problem burning millions to ashes if it meant an assured victory over one of the last pockets of holdouts. That was, of course, if anyone actually succeeded in getting there without having their throats cut or secrets handed over along the way. Hydra bought their loyalty, and that was something the resistance just couldn't afford. Even the best of people could be tempted by riches and out and out cash, especially when the alternative was living in near squalor.
Stark was known not to be loyal to Hydra, but he was also known to never be caught breaking any law that they had passed to try to catch him. Gone was the red metal suit he flew around in, and in its place were drones that they'd open to find empty at best, and rigged to blow at worst. He wasn't precisely underground, but he wasn't dumb enough to be out in the open either. The team he had gathered, the one first formed by SHIELD itself, were the best of the best and yet to be caught. But the rumor was there had been some damned close calls and anyone who tried to join them was usually found sooner rather than later, either in a gutter or with their picture projected larger than life on one of the data screens, wanted if lucky and being taken to detainment if they were not.
"We have our own access, not buying our way," the woman assured her. She sounded serious enough, but there was the faintest hint of humor to her tone, like she was amused someone like Skye would try to scare her off.
"Still a dumb choice," she muttered. Part of it was Coulson and her loyalty to him, and she knew this. He had insisted time and time again that they shouldn't go there, that they were better off in the shadows taking down targets one by one. Part of it was seeing so many people paraded across the feeds with declarations of victory against the insurgents overwriting their images. Mackenzie had been a friend, or the closest thing to it outside of her team. Aaronsen was a douche, but made damn good cocktails out of the crappiest of liquors. She watched that one, burned the image of him flayed and begging into her mind so that she'd never be tempted to follow a crazyass whim based upon beyond limited intel.
"We need people outside of the hubs," the woman agreed easily enough. "You find a safe space and can get trapped there, too trusting and skills too rusty. It goes and you go with it. Spreading out is safest, like you say, but we still need a central comm line beyond coded messages that may or may not get to their targets and may or may not be intercepted along the way. If we can't plan together, if we can't warn each other, what's the point of claiming to be on the same team?"
"We need to communicate with as many cells as possible," the man cut in. He waved a hand, a strange glove fit over some of his fingers - tech or splints, she couldn't tell. "Before you say it, yeah, it puts everyone at risk if it's hacked or if someone turns. Giant red flag, or white because we might as well surrender if the Snakeheads locate the signals. But if T-, if someone could build something more secure, or just plain better, wouldn't it at least help?"
"Nice dream," Skye said, but not quite as harshly as she had intended. "You know what I dream about?" She didn't wait for a response, which was fine because they just let her go anyway. "Not living off rations. Not being stopped and scanned in the middle of the street and being taken in for questioning because I might look like someone who might know something about some minor little detail some asshole deems important. Not running. Not fearing for my life because I don't fit the new trusted norm, because I have brown eyes instead of blue or because like computers instead of dresses. Not having to watch the bodies of people I trusted, people I dared to call friends, be paraded around like prizes and pretend I'm proud of the achievement when inside I don't know if I'm going to make it to the next corner to hurl." She gulped and ignored the slightly shaky feeling that threatened to overwhelm her, steadied her hands by gripping the router that much tighter. Exhaustion had brought her emotions far closer to the surface than she had thought. Either that, or the fact Mackenzie had been lost exactly one month ago to the day was playing a role.
"Or you could just go home," the redhead suggested, not unkindly. "You don't have to fight, you don't have to put yourself at risk like this if you don't want to."
"You don't have to join the propaganda parade," the guy agreed. "But plenty of people have managed to find a way to survive until we can win this and have a semi-civil world again. If you want to go home, no one's going to blame you. You've obviously already done a hell of a lot for the cause."
Skye resisted the urge to throw the router, not willing to waste decent tech like that. "I don't have a home," she gritted out, and it was true. Random village to orphanage, foster home to foster home, even her damn van - they were all gone, if she could even consider them to fall within the category in the first place. The only constant, the only thing that wound its way through her life enough to have meaning, even if she hadn't realized it until it was damn near too late, was a shadowy organization that tried to do the right thing, even as it stood on the brink of disaster. "SHIELD is my home, or as close to it as I've ever had. I'll be damned if I let them take that away too," she told them.
Her movements were harsh and jerky now, mind and body too raw, and the snap of the case opening was almost enough to drown out the joint response of a vague promise to try to save the few surviving pieces of her makeshift home for her. Almost.
She was glad for the dark because her eyes were suspiciously watery now. She could blink in silence and keep her breath relatively even so as to not give away her true state. So long as she didn't swipe at her eyes, she should be fine, her two roomies would never know.
Or maybe they would, she corrected when a small square of cloth was handed to her by a suddenly close companion. "I know what it's like to grow up in less than prime circumstances," the redhead confided. "Believe it or not, but the idiot over there does as well. I think SHIELD attracts those looking for a little stability and a higher cause, despite the hardships we might go through to achieve it."
"When life gives you lemons and all that?" Skye asked sarcastically.
"I'd take lemons over the shit life's given us lately," the man snorted. "We're talking the need for industrial grade shovels at this point..."
"Eloquent as always," the woman sighed, but Skye could hear the thread of fondness to her tone. She was beginning to suspect these two had been paired up for longer than she first suspected.
The man shrugged, a shadow shifting in the dark. "It's true," he said unapologetically. "To find out that there was something else right under your nose the whole time? Shifting and controlling and leading you to X when you thought you were going for Y? It sucks."
"Not always," Skye whispered, finding it a damn good analogy for a certain agency's role in her life. "I never knew SHIELD was looking out for me until right before it fell. Agents serving as families that I hated, keeping me on the move and away from anything stable, and now I work right along side them. Well, not the same agents, but you know what I mean." She pushed an annoying strand of hair out of her face, looked over to his corner of secrecy and added, "Sometimes the shadows serve a purpose." SHIELD. Rising Tide. They worked in corners, in the spaces between the day to day normalcy to protect and reveal and to be that which people needed, whether they knew they needed it or not. At one point, she had thought SHIELD was the enemy, now she saw there were far worse things out there than an ambivalent agency. She'd take ambivalence over pure evil any day.
Any further discussion was cut short by a distinct change in both light and the world around them as a whole. The tiny sliver of the outside world had changed from the grayish blue of night to the red and blue rotations of a patrol. The man was on his feet before she could even put down her erstwhile toy, still mostly in shadow as he peered out to find what fresh hell had found them this time. She caught a much clearer outline of his face now, despite his companion moving just to to step into and across her line of sight. He was familiar in a way she knew he shouldn't be, in a way she knew she should recognize, in a way that she found almost a comfort versus the liability she had thought him to be thus far. Then again, she could now see just a bit clearer just how badly he was injured, and it wasn't pretty.
"How many?" she asked. Extraneous gear was packed and away, Fitz and Simmons' weapon of choice in hand as she had run out of bullets longer ago than she wanted to admit.
The redhead eyed the Night-Night gun with a cock of her head. "That's new," she commented, but seemed to pay it no more mind as her own pistols were unlocked and clearly loaded.
"Standard team of six per side, armament is more than usual but that could mean either they know we're here or they've upgraded in general," the man replied. He looked across to her now, eyes highlighted a eerie blue before flickering to an almost purple from the patrol car. "Guess we find out just how good a job you did on that generator."
The comment was pointed, yet expected. If it failed, they would suspect her a traitor and she would never leave the attic alive. If it held and the patrols "left" only to catch up to them first thing when they made their own escape, same thing only with the bonus of likely being hunted down. She knew she did her best, but she also knew it was rickety, outdated equipment held together with spit and wires by someone not specifically trained to work on such machines. She was just proud that it hadn't started broadcasting their location with screaming announcements of "Check here! Up here! Just shoot us now!" Anything else was just a bonus.
The redhead pulled the guy away from the window despite his protests of needing to see what was going on, a wise move because the generator might hide heat signatures, but who knew what it would would happen if someone gazed up at the supposedly empty attic and saw the shadow of a man lurking about. After that, they all stayed very, very quiet and very, very still as the patrol had reached the safehouse and their host was being treated to Hydra hospitality below them, which was to say having her stuff riffled through, walls knocked on, and threats subtle and not tossed in her direction.
After what seemed to be an eternity and a half, they heard the door close and Skye felt like she could breathe again. She felt her shoulders slump and wanted desperately to let the wall prop her up for an hour or two because her legs weren't going to hold her much longer, but the guy shook his head, the edges of spiky hair catching in the thin line of light. "They still need to check the neighbors and will probably make one last run through here since their transport is parked out front," he advised in the faintest of voices.
"If this Miriam doesn't have refreshments or some other bribe by then, they'll ransack the place just for the practice," the redhead agreed, voice just as much a whisper as her colleague.
And so they stayed as they were, weapons at the ready, bodies aching from exhaustion and holding still for so long or maybe that was just Skye. When the door slammed shut one last time and finally, finally the lights disappeared, she was allowed to sink down onto her pallet.
Her companions seemed to have some sort of silent conversation, which ended when the woman sank down next to her and assured her, "You did good." She didn't get the chance to respond, even if she had found the words to say this wasn't her first rodeo, before she felt a sharp prick at the side of her neck and then she felt nothing at all.
She awoke to a groggy head and a ray of bright light cutting a swath across the dark attic. The very empty attic. The attic that showed no signs of her companions from the night before save for a slightly rumpled blanket on the bed and the dried droplets of what she knew to be blood in the far corner where the man had spent the majority of his time. She cursed herself and then them and eventually pawed at her neck until she found the sensitive skin where the needle had entered.
They had drugged her. She had saved their necks, and they had drugged her. A glance at her watch showed that she had slept for a solid eight hours, nearly to the minute, and while she couldn't remember the last time she had done that, she also couldn't remember the last time someone had left her or her belongings unscathed after even half that amount.
A check showed her gun still at her side, though a single round was missing. The rest of her gear was still bio-locked at her side with absolutely no sign of tampering and the chronometer showing nothing had been opened since she had set the damn thing herself. Not that she trusted it, or them, at this point. She dug through it, half expecting it to blow, and found nothing out of place and everything down to the mints she had stolen from the bedside of her last mission still accounted for.
It wasn't until she lifted her bag that she found something amiss. Or maybe she should just say found something in general. It was a flash drive, shiny and gray with the distinctive logo of her alliance of choice inscribed on one side. On the other was a different logo all together, and one she hadn't seen before. It bore two equilateral triangles joined together at the center tip, or they would be if there wasn't a straight line drawn right through the meeting point. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't quite a line so much as a ray, clearly pointed at one end while the other was a little less distinct, ending in what she would call a blur save for that etchings didn't blur and there seemed to be an equal number of tiny scratches on either side of the line.
She made a mental note to ask Coulson about the meaning. She also made a mental note to run the device though a scan at one of the burn locations before she dared to even mention it to him, especially when she saw the scrap of a note attached to it. "Tell Phil that Strike Team Delta stands ready to assist." For whatever that was worth.
Again, no comm meant no communique until she could risk it. She wasn't dumb enough to try yet, not here, not when their host damn near got caught last night. The woman both aided them and didn't rat them out when given the chance; Skye was not about to reward her efforts with a possible screamer that would alert the patrols that were still undoubtedly in the area.
She also didn't leave the device behind, despite her better judgement telling her to do so. They knew AC on a first name basis. Possibly. She knew she hadn't given anything up about him, and she knew he was one of the last unknowns out there as far as Hydra was concerned. Most of the world thought he was dead and those who didn't figured he was in hiding. Aside from the most immediate of teams, no one knew his true role. He'd want to know what this "strike team" thought they knew about him, and he'd send someone out to get the drive if she didn't test it and bring it in herself. Even if it was crap, even if it truly was a screamer, it would at least provide a clue as to who she had spent the past however many hours with, and just what side they were on.
She placed the drive in a container that should make any signals it broadcasted inert and then pocketed it in a way she could ditch fast if needed, and in a way that would no way allow any direct contact with her own tech. She thanked Miriam for her hospitality and readily accepted the weird sandwich-thing she gave her for the road. Soon enough, she was on said road again, this time headed for the warehouse district, where raids were common enough to keep Hydra busy and allow those who knew the tricks to sneak through to places few if any knew about. Plus, if one of the buildings happened to explode or catch fire or any of the other things unknown tech might happen to do when faced with a FitzSimmons scan, no one really noticed until you were long gone.
It was a fire that caught her attention, or at least the signs of one. Thick black smoke rose from the district, seemingly encompassing the area as a whole. She found a shadow to tuck herself within to try to wait it out, to watch for signs of what was truly going on versus what was being faked. Nearly an hour passed without any definitive information, and she was beginning to get restless, not to mention worried.
Those two emotions were replaced with an entirely different one when the seemingly solid tree trunk she was leaning up against shivered with the silent thunk of an impact. Didn't seem right for a bullet or a tracer, but she prepared herself to run anyway, right up until she found the slim shaft of what appeared to be an arrow of all things embedded beside her. It was smooth and vaguely metallic, and had a slip of actual paper wrapped around it.
She pulled it off carefully, having received odder communiques in the recent past as supplies dwindled and tech became scarce. It was a number and the words "call asap" written in a handwriting she recognized from only hours before. Beneath it, on the shaft itself, was etched the same symbol as before.
She knew she only had maybe one call left on the burner phone anyway and had been preparing to leave it behind soon enough. If it was traced now, it would be solely to an area already clearly ripe with activity.
With a sigh and the thoughts of hopefully earning a comfy cell in whatever dungeon she was about to be tossed into, she dialed. She was rewarded with the gruff yet familiar voice of the man from the attic. He skipped pretty much all preliminaries and said, "Look, I know you have no reason to trust us, but you need to get the hell out of there, and fast. They are torching the entire district and rounding up anyone smart enough not to want to burn alive."
"And you know nothing about this, right?" she asked, unable to keep the bitterness from her tone.
"I know that our contact was there and that they preserved enough of him to parade around on the evening news, but not much more," the man said, not unsympathetic. "If your team was there, hope they got out. If your home was there, I'm sorry."
She breathed out slowly through her nose, thought of the small space in the old paper factory that had a cupboard full of canned goods, a working microwave, a relatively soft couch, and the last vestiges of a T-1 line. "I told you, I have no home," she replied. She hung up before he did something dumb enough like to offer apologies and tossed the phone to the bushes. She snapped a pic of the arrow with a separate device to send to AC, but left it and any potential trackers it held behind as she hit the road to somewhere with hopefully relative safety.
A day an a half later found her beginning the preliminary scans to pass through what appeared to be a solid brick wall. It slid to the side without a sound and she stepped into the small vestibule on the other side. She closed her eyes against the brightness of the scan, and opened them when they died away to find the dingy white on the other side slide away to reveal a friendly face.
"Am I clean?" she asked, tiredness and hopefulness coloring her tone.
Antoine leaned close and made a show of sniffing her before pulling back with a smile. "Not even close, sweetheart."
She flipped him off because she could, but let him take her gear. She pulled out an image of the drive in its protective case and waved it at him as he led her through the series of hallways and stairwells, only some of which actually led anywhere. The drive itself was safely tucked elsewhere, untraceable should someone capture her, and safe from tracking just where she headed for a hideout. "Pressie from someone who might be an ally and might be an enemy," she explained. "Can you hook me up with a FitzSimmons Special?"
He changed direction mid-stride and she followed easily. "I can do one better," he told her. "They're here and can do it themselves."
She felt the strain across her shoulders ease at the knowledge that they were safe and sound, and a thread of anticipation that they were close - they always did get into the best kinds of trouble together. "The warehouse?" she asked.
"Leo got a little singed and Jemma got some soot artfully smeared across her face, but that was about it," he assured her. "Most of the tech survived by sheer force of their will I think, and they are happily determining which Hydra server to topple next." He paused outside of a doorway and cocked his head slightly to the side to ask, "Why take the risk of not ditching the drive entirely?"
Now it was her turn to shrug. "Warehouse was down and the guys who gave me this also warned me away. I spent a night in their tender care and they didn't even try to slit my throat."
"And they had that little extra something that told you that you could trust them?" he guessed.
She nodded. "They knew AC. Called themselves Strike Team Delta, for whatever that means." She keyed in her passcode to open the door and found her friends waiting on the other side of the room, bent over something undoubtedly important. Trip let her step through, but not get much further than that.
He turned slow and sure in the way that usually meant she had just said something important that she knew absolutely nothing about. He didn't take the image from her hand, but did turn It slightly so that he could completely see the etching on both sides. His eyebrows raised and he called out, "Hey, kids, wash behind your ears because daddy's coming home."
She didn't try to hide the doubt on her face when she asked, "That important?"
He nodded with exaggerated slowness, but managed not to mock her so she was fine with it. "Whether this is the real deal and you met the real team, or if a Hydra cell found them and figured out to use them against us? Either way this is big news," he assured her.
They would still run their scans and they would still make sure nothing blew up in their face literally or figuratively, but she felt no small comfort at the words. They needed a lead like sometime last year and had been floundering about, trying to do their best since. The floundering was made even more ineffective by the need to talk anyway but directly to anyone she actually cared about and trusted. If Trip was right though, her team would be whole again, even if it was just for just a day or two. If they were lucky, it would prove to be even longer.
He started the process of calling Coulson and she accepted the round of hugs that might have gone on a little longer than technically justified. Later, if AC approved it, she's grab the drive from where she hid it and they'd all have a little look. Later still, whether he approved it officially or not, they'd all share something from one of the many glass bottles that were still readily a available amongst the downtrodden because even Hydra wasn't dumb enough to try to take booze away. They might even abuse their stash of junk food that was either long past its expiration date or proof of what science could achieve if given the right chemicals.
For now though, she propped herself up against the counter and waved her less than secret hand jive at May to see how their two erstwhile leaders were doing for real while Coulson pretended not to see a thing. It was the closest the team had gotten to being in the same room in months, and she fully planned on enjoying it while she could.
Hydra was still out there, but apparently so were all sorts of resistance teams that even she barely knew about. If one couldn't take them down, another would. Bonus points if they managed to work together and show a united front for a change. They were a family of sorts, a mismatched family of orphans and reprobates and worse, driven together by consequences out of their control, but a family all the same. They may not have a home with a fireplace and pictures on the mantle or anything as ridiculous as that, but that made her appreciate what they did have even more: each other.
End.
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