Chapter Text
Chapter 25: End of the Beginning
Melinda gazed at the photo frame in her hands. Inside the frame was a picture from the day that Tian Kong was born. Hua had been brought to the hospital by Edwin to visit and met her new baby sister. Her eldest daughter was on the bed beside her while her youngest was cradled in her arms. Both her younger self and Hua had been smiling brightly at the camera, which had been held by Edwin. She remembered how happy she had been that day with her family.
She also remembered how devastated she had been two months later, and then again after Bahrain.
There were too many days that she wished she had acted sooner. If she had just done it, her daughters would have been okay. Tian Kong- Skye would have grown up with her mother. Hua would still be alive. There would be no Bahrain, no hearing from her ex that he had killed their children.
Someone rapped on her door. Melinda rose to her feet and set the picture back in the box next to Hua’s stuffed horse. Once it was back in the box, she walked over to the door and opened it. It didn’t surprise her to see Phil standing in front of her. If anything, she had practically expecting him to drop by at some point.
“How are you holding up?” he asked once she let him in and closed the door behind them.
“Fine. How about you?”
Phil shrugged. “It’s been a lot to take in. Simmons being a mole, the Doctor, you being Skye’s mother.”
Melinda sighed and sat back down on the bed. Her fingers traced the edge of the box absentmindedly.
“We only planned for one child,” she murmured aloud, not sure why she was telling him this. “I wasn’t sure I wanted a second when I found out I was pregnant again. But as time went on, I started to look forward the new baby. Maybe it was Hua drawing all those pictures of us and the new baby. She covered her whole room with them.”
Phil chuckled beside her, and Melinda found herself smiling at the memory.
“And when the day finally came where she was born, I couldn’t remember why I had been so scared about having a second baby. Skye, although she was Tian Kong then, was so perfect, just like her sister. I swore that I was always going to protect her and Hua no matter what. But I failed there.”
“You told me Edwin took the girls. It was not your fault, Melinda. You didn’t know he was going to disappear with them.”
“I thought they were dead,” whispered Melinda in a tight voice. She pulled out Hua’s horse, remembering how she had found it in the rubble of the base she had blown up in Bahrain. “I spent years clinging to the hope that they were still alive. I looked for clues everywhere, but I couldn’t find anything. I finally managed to track Edwin to Bahrain. He was the one controlling people, although technically he had a girl he had enhanced doing the controlling. But I knew he was behind it. I had to go after him, to stop him and find out what had happened to Hua and Tian Kong.”
“That’s why you went in alone,” Phil muttered as realization dawned in his eyes. “The civilian girl, did you think…”
“I was hoping she would be Hua or Tian Kong,” Melinda sighed. “But it wasn’t. Still, I couldn’t just sit by and let Darwin destroy more lives!”
“So you brought the whole place down? With him inside?”
“I thought it was the only solution, the only way to stop him and get out a final confession about my daughters,” she spat. “And he told me they were dead. The worst part was that I believed him.”
Her freed hand clenched the duvet cover angrily. Phil put his own hand over it, and she looked up.
“We’re going to find Skye,” he told her. “And we’re going to find out what happened to Hua and where she is if she is still alive. I promise you, we will do everything we can to find them.”
“And we’re stopping Edwin too,” she reminded him.
“Absolutely. We’ll figure this out, Melinda. I swear to you, I will not let you down.”
“So, Grant Ward.”
Grant straightened up in the chair, keeping his silence. Across the desk, the man who called himself Darwin in addition to the Doctor leaned back in his seat. Grant could feel the other man studying him carefully. The action was mutual though.
“Agent Simmons tells me that you’re interested in joining us,” Darwin said, nodding over to where Simmons stood over by the door. “And I must say, you’ve had an impressive resume. Hydra sleeper inside SHIELD who was thrown into prison. Now you’re here. Why?”
Grant knew this had been coming. Coulson had warned him that he might have to go through multiple tests to prove he was interested in the Doctor’s cause. He’d already been through this sort of thing before too, when he had first gone into SHIELD. The skills he used then were going to need to come back into play now.
“Purpose,” he answered.
Darwin raised an eyebrow. “Go on?”
“I’m willing to bet that Simmons was the one who told you about my history,” Grant said evenly, earning a nod from Darwin. “You know I worked for Hydra within SHIELD. I had a purpose then- helping my SO. When he died, I lost purpose. I didn’t have anything to work towards, nothing to fight for. SHIELD tried to see if they could get me back on their side by letting me out so I could give them information on Hydra and the person who attacked me in my cell. But they’ve been using me for that purpose and nothing else. Simmons said she could give me a new purpose if I came with her. For someone who has been in the darkness for so long, I will gladly walk towards any light a friend can give to me.”
“Did she tell you our purpose exactly?”
Grant shook his head.
Darwin smiled. “We’re going to bring about a new age of man. We are creating a whole new world. A better one. Tell me, is that something you’d like to be part of? A legacy that shall be remembered for generations to come?”
Grant nodded. Internally, he couldn’t believe Simmons thought this nutcase was a genius. He clearly wasn’t the first person to want this dream, but something about him gave Grant the feeling that Darwin was willing to do anything to get to his goal. “That is exactly what I am looking for.”
Darwin stood up and held his hand out to Grant. “Then welcome, Agent Ward.”
“Thank you, sir,” Grant replied, standing up and shaking the man’s hand.
He was now in the belly of the beast, and it had accepted him. Now everything from here on out was crucial. Grant would have to make sure he kept his cover, but also needed to do whatever he could to weaken this man. And he couldn’t let his cover spin out of control like it had in SHIELD. He would learn from his mistakes, and no one would know who he really was.
Idaho stumbled down the corridor of the Playground to the kitchen sleepily. Last night’s events had been insane, what with pretending to die so a former traitor could prove himself and escape with another traitor so the first traitor could spy on this one’s boss. It had taken him ages to sleep when the whole deal was done. Right now, he just wanted to grab some breakfast and some peace and quiet before the next crazy thing hit them.
“Ah, just who we’ve been looking for!” someone announced when he entered the kitchen.
Idaho raised his head groggily in the direction of the voice. It had come from Hunter, who was turned around in his seat with a mug of something in his hand. Mack was over by the coffee machine, and Bobbi had just grabbed a banana. All of them seemed to have their full attention on Idaho. It was beginning to feel a little unnerving.
“Hey,” he greeted with a weak chuckle. “Crazy night last night, huh?”
Hunter stood up from the table. Mack and Bobbi came to stand on either side of him, their arms crossed. Hunter reached around his back. When his hand reappeared, there was a gun in it. He raised it so the barrel was pointed at Idaho’s chest.
“Hunter, what are you doing?!”
His friend pulled the trigger.
Idaho shouted as something hit him in the chest, stinging him a little bit.
Gaping at his friend, he looked down at his chest. There was a bright purple splatter of paint on his undershirt.
Hunter had just shot him with a paintball gun.
“Don’t ever scare us like that again, pretending to die and all,” Hunter warned, coming in close and giving him a hug. “I thought you were a goner.”
“You weren’t trying to kill me,” Idaho sighed in relief. “Oh, thank god.”
“You scared us all,” Bobbi told him, giving him a light punch in the shoulder. “I get it, it was top secret and classified and all that good stuff. But we still thought you were gone.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry, because I am going nowhere except to the showers and then my room,” he grumbled, grabbing an apple on his way out.
“So what’s our next play?”
Skye looked up from her empty plate at Leo. After another day in the ruined village, the two had decided to hike back to find civilization again. They’d made it to a small town the previous evening, camping out in the forest on the edge for the night before entering the town and getting a ride to the city where they’d arrived almost a week previously with Hua. Now they were grabbing lunch for what Skye believed would be the last time for them for a long while.
She traced her utensil over one of the flowers painted on the plate. Another subtle reminder of her sister. It had been a few days, and her grief had only lessened slightly after her talk with Leo. She still couldn’t help feeling guilty. They’d gone back to the wreckage after leaving the village at her insistence to see if they could find a body to bury, but nothing had turned up, and the tunnels were too dangerous to even attempt to explore now. Skye had eventually come to the assumption that her sister had drowned, and her body had been washed downstream in the opposite direction they were going.
“Skye?” Leo’s voice was gentle, but it called her back to reality.
“Yeah, just fine,” she replied, putting on a smile the best she could. “You were asking about what to do next?”
“Uh-huh.”
Skye bit her lip and pulled her backpack up onto her lap. Unzipping it, she withdrew her file that they had recovered from the last base, flipping it open to the page she had discovered the previous night. Leo had been asleep, and after she had found it, she half contemplated leaving him with the other half of her money that was in her bag along with a note. But it wouldn’t have been fair to him. Skye couldn’t allow herself to leave her best friend like that.
“This is a records sheet,” she explained, turning it so Leo could read it. “Every base that I was ever taken to before SHIELD found me in that village is listed on this sheet.”
“Do you think the other bases will have your files there too? Maybe even some that haven’t had all their information redacted?”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” Skye replied, putting the papers back in the file and then back into her backpack.
“Great,” Leo grinned as they stood up and returned their plates at the back, heading for the door. “So where do we want to go first?”
They had just stepped outside when he said this. Skye froze when he said the word ‘we’. That’s what the two of them had been since he had woken up from his coma. They trained together, went on missions together, and even pranked together. Both of them had been captured together, escaped with Hua together, and survived the nightmare of the last base together while her sister didn’t. It had been ‘we’ for months, and soon she wouldn’t have him.
“Skye?”
Reaching into her pocket, Skye handed him the half of her money. Leo frowned and looked down at it. “What’s all this?”
“There’s a bus leaving for Beijing in twenty minutes,” she explained, wrapping his hand around the money. “This should be enough for you to buy a ticket and get there. Once you do, find a disposable cell, find a safe place, and call the number for Coulson’s emergency phone. Once you have him, tell him that you need a lift out. When you get that, tell him everything that has happened. Tell him about Simmons and make sure she gets put in a prison cell like we did with Ward. Tell him about my father and his experiments. And you make sure you tell him about Hua. Make sure Coulson and May and Trip know who she really was and why she did what she had to do, and that she died saving us. Can you do that for me?”
“You’re saying this like you’re not coming along with me.”
Skye chewed her lip. She couldn’t look at him right now.
“You’re not coming with me,” he realized. “You’re going to go after the files by yourself, aren’t you?”
She nodded as they started walking again. “Yep.”
“You don’t have to,” Leo told her. “We can go together to Beijing, get SHIELD to help out with this.”
“No,” Skye shook her head. “All I could ever find on myself from SHIELD was that I’m an 084. This file and everything my sister ever told me was the most I’ve ever had on my past.”
“Maybe SHIELD can build up on what you know. You have new information, maybe you can find new connections.”
“And put the people I care about into danger?” Skye snapped. “I can’t do that to them. I’ve already lost Hua to this. I can’t lose Coulson or May or Trip either. And I could never ever forgive myself if you stayed with me and…”
She stopped, looking up at the sky before back at Leo. “There was nothing that was ever taken from you or done to you that involved Darwin, Leo. You don’t have anything you need to know from him. You can go back to SHIELD, go back to what constituted our regular lives.”
Leo went pale, his eyes clouding over. “You’re wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
He couldn’t met her eyes. Skye put her hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. Just tell me what happened.”
“There’s something I need to tell you, Skye,” Leo inhaled shakily. “And I should have told you this when I first found out.”
Something was wrong. Skye could see it in his eyes, and it scared her. Leo was all she had right now, and the potential things he could say made her worry.
“I didn’t wake up from the coma on my own,” he confessed, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I thought I did, I believed that I did. But Simmons-”
“What did she do?” Skye demanded, her fists curling up at the mention of the woman who had betrayed them.
Leo sighed heavily. “She got a drug from Darwin. It was what woke me up. She injected something into me because he told her it would wake me up. I found out during the week we were imprisoned. She brought me up to offer me a chance to join her, and I found out when we were arguing. And ever since she told me that, I’ve been scared.”
“Why?”
“You told me about Coulson and the writing thing that happened when I was in the coma,” he continued. “I’m afraid something like that might happen to me one day. I know there haven’t been any side effects that I’ve noticed, but what if they’re coming? What if I become like one of those monsters we saw in the pit?”
Skye grasped his hand loosely. Leo didn’t respond in any way. This was serious stuff he had been holding in, and it had clearly been taking a toll on him. His eyes looked so broken, and a tear was falling down his cheek.
“Because of Simmons, I’ve become involved in this,” Leo said after a long minute. “We’ve both become involved in this. I’m coming with you, Skye, for two reasons. The second is because I want to see if there’s anything this drug could do to me at any time.”
Skye frowned. “So the first reason is?”
“You,” Leo replied, cracking a weak smile. “You’re my best friend, Skye, and you must be crazy to think that I’m going to let you do this alone.”
“But you could die!” Skye protested.
“So could you. But you won’t if you have someone to have your back.”
Skye snorted. “You’re aren’t going to take no for an answer, are you?”
“Absolutely not,” Leo chuckled, shaking his head. “Not for this. You don’t have to be alone, Skye.”
Skye leaned forward and gave him a hug, trying not to cry. Over a year ago, she had been almost completely alone. Now, she had met people who cared about her, and one who was willing to pass up safety so he could help her. She never thought she would have this much, and after losing Hua, she was going to make sure nothing bad happened to the other people she cared about.
“I don’t deserve a friend like you,” she whispered, hugging him a little tighter.
“Skye, I am exactly what you deserve,” he told her as they broke apart. “You’ve gone through so many horrible things. No one should ever have to go through that much. And if you are doubting that I would willingly go back to SHIELD without you, then you’re wrong.”
“So you really are okay going with me?”
“Definitely,” Leo nodded.
Skye smiled weakly and pulled her bag off of her shoulder to pull out the file. “Where do you want to start then?”