The 0-8-4 and the Avengers

by FemSanzo291

Summary:

Alea Carter knew there was a reason behind her knowing those bloody symbols, but why was it? She helps Coulson rebuild both SHIELD and the Helicarrier. She also tries to help Fitz with his brain damage. Then she takes a break to see the Barton-Coulson kids and runs into the Avengers. Can her luck get any worse?

Chapter 1: January 19 - May 29, 2014: The Inbetween

Over the next three months, Alea helps Coulson rebuild SHIELD. Clint went back to the Avengers after a few days, but had brought up a few agents that he was pretty sure wasn’t Hydra. Alea checked most of them and agreed, but they were hiding something, but Alea wasn’t going to force them to reveal it as long as they weren’t Hydra.

Fitz woke after being out cold for days. Alea went into his mind to assess what exactly was wrong, other than the apparent aphasia. There was a part of his brain that would need to be reconnected to the rest. She would have to work with him on it. It would probably lessen the effects of the aphasia along with the loss of fine motor control on the one side. 

Alea spent the first week of helping Fitz with him fighting against her. It got worse after Simmons decided to go undercover and Alea was done with his fighting. “Leopold James Fitz, I’m trying to help you, so let me. I know what it’s like to be betrayed by your body! Hell, I still take shoots quarterly, I have a device implanted in my back that allows me to walk and metal arm! So, are you going to let me help or not?” Fitz nods.

Alea spends most of the next three months helping Fitz rewire his brain the long hard way. For his speech, there wasn’t much other than helping him find the word. With the motor skills, she started with both Duplo and video games. He eventually graduated to Lego before even getting to do some Lego Technic sets. He was starting to do much better, still having to take a few seconds to find his words sometimes, but it was better. His fine motor control was much better.

One day near the start of May Coulson found some information buried in the Toolbox that even Alea hadn’t seen. It was about the Helicarrier used during the Battle of New York. It was stored away at another base in the States guarded by another Koenig. They decide to go together to see if they can’t figure out if they could get it working again.

Chapter 2: May 30 - June 3, 2014: Shadows & Heavy is the Head

Alea was hanging from the underside of the Helicarrier working on repairing one of the holes in the hull. She had a welding torch in her left hand and goggles on instead of her glasses. She started slightly at the sound of her phone going off in her pocket. Alea flipped herself upright as she turned the torch off. As she pulled it out she recognized the wave sounds as Coulson’s ringtone. She answers her phone. “What do you need, Coulson?”

 

“What do you know about the original 0-8-4?” Coulson sounded tense.

 

“Not much. My mother followed it though to a Hydra base after the war by following the bodies. So, I’d suggest that they don’t touch it at all. I’ll look into what else was found at that base.” 

 

“Thanks.”  Coulson hangs up. 

 

“Edwin, can you see if you can’t find what else was found with SSR Item numbered 0-8-4 in 1945?” 

 

“Right away, My dear.”  Alea nods and flips back over and gets back to work. Alea moves after fixing the hole to working on updating the programming. This allowed her to add in the stuff for the lifeboats that Coulson had suggested. She’d been working on that for close to five hours when she got another call, again from Coulson.

 

“What is it?” She shoves the phone between her shoulder and ear to continue to work on the programming.

 

“Your quinjet doesn’t have functional cloaking, why is that?”

 

“Because I got lazy. I ended up integrating Edwin before cloaking. Also, I only flew it between Your place, New York, the Trisk, and the Hub. Never really used it for ops. Though I think Talbot has at least one of the quins with cloaking at the base that he's keeping all the SHIELD stuff.” Alea switches ears before asking, “How’s Fitz doing?”

 

“Alright. You said that you were worried about him talking to himself right?” 

 

“Yes, his type of injury could lead to a lot of unforeseen things if he starts to spiral.”

 

“We haven’t seen anything like that.”

 

“Good. I’ll see you after I get them started on this stuff. It should take about another handful of days. Also, remember any times with the wall get May to document.” Alea doesn’t get an answer, just a dial tone. She gets back to work and manages to get the coding done before falling asleep.

---

After twenty-four hours of working on the Helicarrier Alea could say that it was already looking better. She decided to work in the turbines to see why they weren’t spinning up right while waiting on word from Coulson. She was also waiting on the full list from Edwin at what the hell had been found at that Hydra base with it. She had moved to work on the third turbine when Edwin spoke,  “My dear, I have found something interesting.”

 

She plugged in her headphones before speaking, “What is it, Ed?”

 

“There were 86 more items recovered there. The numbers range from 0-3-0 through 1-1-6. One such item was the Kree body used to recover Agents Coulson and Skye. It was number 0-8-3. There were other artifacts found, mostly uninteresting things, but there were a few other items that seemed to be in the same class as the 0-8-4. There was also some Tesseract powered weaponry.”

 

“What class is that, Ed?”

 

“Alien. Howard Stark went through most of it right after it was recovered. Items numbered 0-3-0 through 0-6-0 and 0-8-5 through 1-1-6, seemed to be normal artifacts and some had been donated to museums. Items 0-6-1 through 0-8-4 were either Tesseract weaponry or other such things of unknown origin. It seems that 0-8-4 was never examined by Howard Stark. Neither was the Kree body from what I can find. It was numbered 0-8-3 and moved to the Guest House and never moved again.”

 

Alea moved to inspect the rotors on the third turbine and wondered how the bloody hell Stark had managed to get out of the thing alive. There were Iron Man-sized dents in most of the blades. Mostly along the bottom, but still it was a wonder.

 

“Alright, that all, Ed?”

 

“So far. You have an incoming call from Agent Coulson.”

 

“Put him through.” Alea started to work on the dents.   “What did you find?”

 

“A quinjet and something about those symbols.”  Alea could hear the sound of the Toolbox being used in the background.

 

“What about them?” 

 

“The 0-8-4 had those symbols on it when Hartly touched it. Just before she started to turn into stone. I wonder if your father happened to do something with it when you were a child.” 

 

“Possible. I’ll look into it. On that matter, the GH body was found at the same time as the 0-8-4 in ‘45. So that answers some of the questions, it must have been something embedded in the blood. Or possibly in the DNA.” Alea got the one blade straightened out and started on the next. “Also the Helicarrier is going well. You know Stark did some good damage to the turbine when he restarted the bloody thing.” 

 

“I got to go. You said that you’d be back by the fourth right?”

 

“I should be. Inform me if you get Talbot off our asses. I want to go see my mother.” 

 

“Will do.”  Coulson hung up the phone. 

 

Alea got back to work on the turbine. It had been a long few weeks and not being able to talk to her mother was starting to get annoying. The link that she had with her had started to degrade past the point of her being able to talk with her that way like she used to on missions. So when three days later Coulson messaged her that he’d made a deal with Talbot she headed on the next plane to DC.

 

Chapter 3: January 8 - 9, 2015: Face My Enemy

Alea was working on the Helicarrier’s lifeboats when Sam came up to her. He handed her a paper file that she glanced at to see that it had to deal with the bloody writing. It was a painting from the fifteenth century. “Does Coulson want me back?”

 

“He does.”

 

“Did he give you a reason behind him not calling me himself?”

 

“He gave this to Billy to give to me to give to you. Apparently, the team is being a bit paranoid when he’s been on the phone with you for hours.” 

 

“Well, at least they are paranoid. It’ll keep them alive.” Alea glances through the rest of the file. It was going to be a fun infiltration op. It could work with a team of her and Coulson or Coulson and May. The others wouldn’t have the skills needed for this. She needed to get her quinjet ready to leave. The best thing about Talbot not actively hunting them down is the fact that she could use her quinjet to go places instead of the commercial flights.

 

It took a few hours for her to finish up what she was doing with the lifeboats before getting on her quinjet and heading to Miami. She docked with the Bus before heading down into the Bus. She ducked into Coulson’s office before anyone saw her. Coulson was sitting at his desk and looked up when the door opened. 

 

“Alea, how’s the work going?” 

 

“Good, now this mission, I’m guessing none of them know exactly why we want it?” 

 

“Only May knows all of it. The others know about the writings to some extent, but not the carving.”

 

Alea nods. “Who’s going in?”

 

“Originally me and May only, but you’d be useful in getting information to me quickly. So what do you want to do?”

 

“We’d have to pull that father-daughter card, cause no-one will believe that I’m not sixteen at the oldest. Though this will be one of the easiest times that we’ve had to do it.” 

 

“Don’t remind me.” Coulson stands as Alea giggles. 

 

There was a knock on the door and whoever it was didn't wait before opening the door. It was May. She shuts the door behind her as she steps into the room. She levels a glare at Coulson. “Have you decided on who’s going in with you?”

 

“Alea will. She knows about everything you do, so it will be fine.”

 

“Which way are you going to spin the relationship?” 

 

“Father-daughter, like every other time we had to go undercover after a while. It works well. Much better than the time he and Simmons tried.” Alea didn’t shrink under the glare that May gave her. “Any way I can get into people’s minds, if there happens to be any Hydra agents there it will be easier for me to tell at first then it would be for you or Phil.”

 

“She’s got a point there. We used to do a lot with her abilities.” 

 

“I still can’t believe that you kept the fact that you could read minds from most of SHIELD for so long.” 

 

Alea shrugged and headed out of the office. She walked down to the command center to see Hunter, Mackenzie, Triplett, and Skye. The only person missing was Fitz, but Alea wasn’t all that worried when it involved a lot of talking he tended to retreat. They need to work on it, but it would be fine for now. 

 

“Skye, have you made the ID for Coulson yet?” 

 

“Yes, I’m working on May’s now.” Skye looks up from her laptop.

 

“Don’t bother. I’m going with him. Use a picture of me without my glasses.”

 

Skye looks like she was about to protest, but Coulson comes down the steps and stops her. Skye nods and gets to work. “Name?” 

 

“Antonia. Use whatever last name that Coulson is.” Alea hears odd sounds from Hunter and Skye.

 

“Don’t you two look too far apart in age to be husband and wife?” Hunter sounded surprised. Alea tried to remember that he hadn't seen the two of them run an undercover op.

 

“We’ll be going as father and daughter. We’ve done this ploy about two dozen times over the years.” Coulson glares at Hunter. Coulson heads back up to his office with May following. Alea stays.

 

“How much of an age difference is there between you and Coulson?” Mackenzie leans over the side of the table at Alea.

 

“Four years. I’m the elder. I don’t age due to something close to the super-soldier serum being injected into me when I was fourteen.” Alea turns to look at the busted windows. “Skye put the birthday as January 28, 1998.” 

 

“Can you have your AI send me an image that has you without your glasses?” Skye asks after a few seconds of looking in her files.

 

Alea pulls out her phone and starts to look through her pictures to see if she had one. She comes up empty. “Ed, do you have any headshots of me without glasses and with natural hair color?” 

 

“Not that I can find. There are a few with your glasses. I have your most recent SHIELD ID photo though it isn’t a good one.” 

 

“Show it to me.” 

 

A headshot of Alea comes up on her phone and she sighs. It was her, but it was pixelated. It wouldn’t do for an ID. “Alright then. Mackenzie, come take a headshot.” Alea hands her phone to Mackenzie. She takes off her glasses and tucks them into her pocket. She stands with her back to the broken window as Mackenzie takes the picture. It takes Edwin seconds to change the background to the traditional DMV blue and send it to Skye. She replaces her glasses.

 

“Why did you want one without your glasses anyway?” Hunter asked.

 

“Fewer inconsistencies. I won’t be wearing my glasses when we go in and while contacts are always an option for people, I don’t want questions.” Alea puts her glasses back on.

 

Eventually, they end up talking about other things and Alea ends up asleep on the table. Coulson comes down and takes a picture and sends it to Clint before carrying Alea up to his room.

---

The next morning Alea walked down into the main part of the command center in a dark purple dress. It had a slit that started about midthigh and ended at her knees. It had long sleeves and Alea’s hair and make-up had already been done. They almost didn’t recognize her without her glasses.

 

“Wow, you look good, Carter.” Hunter leans over the side. 

 

“Shouldn’t you already be on the way to get that flash drive?” Hunter nods and heads out of the Bus.

 

“I don’t think that I’ve ever seen her in a dress.” May comes over.

 

Coulson comes down the steps and says, “This is the third time I’ve ever seen her in a dress, so don’t expect to see it again any time soon.”

 

“Fourth, Phil, don’t you remember that time in Toronto where both me and Clint were in dresses?” Alea slips on a matching pair of short heels. They were only an inch in height, but any taller Alea was worried that she’d do something to her feet.

 

“I remember Clint in a dress, but not you.” 

 

Alea giggles. “We both were. For some reason, Nat wasn’t with us and we needed to go undercover. Both of us decided that you just don’t look right in a dress, so Clint wore one along with me.” Alea pulled Coulson with her to the ramp. Mackenzie follows them down and so does Skye.

 

They get ready to leave. Skye takes the moped off to get the flash drive from Hunter so they can be added into the guest list that way without having to pay. It was too expensive for them to want to pay. After a little while, they left in a vintage Rolls Royce. Alea shutters as she slides in and forces down the memories of the last time she’d been in one with her father. When Coulson slides in next to her he notices the shaking. He pulls Alea to his side and starts to talk about the op. About halfway there she stops shaking.

 

“I forgot how many times I’d been in a Royce with my father,” Alea mutters into Coulson’s shoulder.

 

“I figured.” He ran his hand through Alea’s hair and Mackenzie could see the father-daughter aspect come into play. If you didn’t know that there was only a four years age difference, in reality, you’d believe that they were father and daughter. 

 

They made it to the location just as Skye made it back to the Bus with the drive. There were several cars in front of them that gave Skye a little bit of time to have them added. By the time they got up to the counter and Coulson handed over both of their IDs they hoped they’d been added. It went through and they were allowed inside. 

 

“Dad, when are they going to bring out the painting?” Alea looked up at Coulson with pleading eyes.

 

“Later, tonight after people have donated, Toni.” Alea nods and walks off to see what the others had to say. She doesn’t stay anywhere long and soon Coulson calls her back over.

 

“What is it, Dad?” 

 

“Let’s dance.” Coulson holds out his hand. Alea takes it. “We’re going dark to case the security.” Coulson puts his finger to the com in his ear and turns it off. Alea follows suit before they start to dance. Alea bounces between people’s heads to see if their thoughts were about Hydra while Coulson whispered about the security measures. As she bounced around she saw Talbot, but no-one that she could get into was looking straight at him. 

 

“Talbot’s here.” Alea pulled herself back to her own mind. She held Coulson as they turned. She caught sight of Talbot’s eyes and entered his head. 

 

The first thing that Alea saw inside Talbot’s head clued her in to the fact this wasn’t Talbot. It was of a Hydra agent. He was commanding them. Talbot for as much of an ass the man could be he wasn’t Hydra. Alea pulled free of ‘Talbot’s’ mind before she got caught.

 

Alea hadn’t noticed the fact that her flesh hand was shaking, but Coulson certainly had. “What’s wrong, Toni?” 

 

“It’s not Talbot, just someone using a prosthetic veil. Not sure who ‘cause not wandering around a Hydra mind willy-nilly.” Alea focused on getting her body-centered and what little shaking under control. 

 

Coulson nods and turns back on his com before turning on Alea’s for her. Alea heard Skye saying something about how they shouldn’t go dark again. Alea shook her head at it, but it grounded her better than she thought it would. “Dear, I’ll be back in a little while. Be good.”

 

“Yes, father.” Alea walked around and found Soto and started to talk to him about the painting. He seemed just as interested as she was pretending to be about the actual painting instead of the carvings on the back. Though she brought that up as well. Coulson came up to them with a slightly defeated look on his face. 

 

“Dad, you should take a picture of me and Mr. Soto! My friends won't believe that I met him otherwise!” Alea pulls Soto a bit closer to herself as Coulson pulls out his phone. Alea knows that she has to keep Soto looking at the camera so they can get his eye scans. “Dad, am I going to have to show you how to use a camera again?” 

 

“No, Toni. I’ve got it.” 

 

Alea gives a little smile to Soto. “My father isn’t the best with technology, sometimes I wonder just how he manages to do anything on his phone.” 

 

It takes a few more seconds to get the image. Coulson put the phone down and pulled Alea to him. “Toni, we need to get going now. It was nice meeting you Mr.Soto.” That’s when Alea spots the fake Talbot talking to security. “We need to get the painting, now.” Coulson hissed into her ear. Alea nodded and they headed down to the basement. Coulson gets the door to the safe open with the retina scans. Alea didn’t stop when they came across the hall with what was definitely lasers, but there was no reason to be stealthy when they knew that they were here. 

 

The alarms went off as Coulson followed her into the main safe. They looked around, but they couldn't find the painting. "Is there another safe?"

 

"No, that's the only one. It should be-" Skye took a breath before continuing, "The US Government has it. A military accusation just showed up."

 

"Great." Alea shakes her head. They make their way out of the mansion. It was a complex root, but they did manage it. They were sitting in the bushes as the guards ran by. They got up to leave but were stopped by the fake Talbot. Coulson managed to talk him into giving them the location; the Hotel La Ona. Coulson orders for May to go check it out. Alea and Coulson make it back to the Rolls Royce and Mackenzie drives them back to the Bus. Once they are back at the Bus, Alea heads up to Coulson’s room to change.

 

She walks downstairs to the command center. Skye scots over so Alea can look over the paperwork from Talbot. She scans over it and notices a few things that were off. Mostly that it wasn’t quite right for the fact that it would have been an Air Force appropriation. She’s seen all of them at one point or another. Also, the signature wasn’t right. They knew that it wasn’t Talbot, but they didn’t know who it was instead. 

 

Coulson came up to talk to them about the mission. It was just the fact that he was going to go with May to talk to Talbot as soon as she got back. May came into the lounge as she was about to say something about it to Coulson. She pulled Coulson off into the command area. Alea looked back down at the file and they soon left. 

 

“So that was odd, even for May.” Skye looked over at Alea.

 

“I agree about that. May might be a secretive person, but we all knew that Talbot was the one that had the painting. So why do that?” She wanted to see if the team would catch onto what Alea already thought. Which was that May might not have been the real May. 

 

Hunter looked like he was going to answer when suddenly the lights went out. After a second the red emergency lights came on. “Edwin, report!” After a few seconds without any response Alea cursed. Something was attacking the electrical system and Fitz found what it was first. A small disk that had been attached to the access panel. 

 

“It’s going through the electrical systems, it will take out everything with the last thing being the wing systems.” Alea stops to see if any of the others would catch on to what that meant. 

 

“We go . . . “ Fitz moved his hands in the same motion of the sign of explosion as he made the sound. 

 

Alea nodded. “We need to bring back up the systems. Fitz take Hunter with you to Avionics while we work to get the other systems back up.” They all nod and start to work. Alea reaches for her link with Coulson and sends a single thing down the link. It was that the May he was with wasn’t the real one. Alea doesn’t stay in her mind though. She gets to work trying to bring back up comms and Edwin. It was working when the lights came back on. 

 

She continued to work with Skye and the others to get the plane in working order so they could take off when Coulson and May got back. About the time she got Edwin back up Coulson came up to her. “Get us in the air.” Alea nodded and headed to the cockpit. She got them in the air and headed back to the Playground not long after. Once they were there Alea headed up to her house to sleep. It had been a long two days and she knew that it would be a couple of hours before the analysis of the painting came back.

 

When she was woken by Edwin less then two hours later she glared at the inset screen that was showing the results of the painting. While the actual painting was five hundred years old, the carvings were new. “Ed, start looking for the other TAHITI patients.”

 

“Yes, my dear.”

 

Alea goes back to sleep, knowing that things are only going to get worse before they get better.

Chapter 4: March 16 & 17, 2015: The Writing on the Wall

Alea was looking over the medical files of the TAHITI patients while Coulson was carving the Kree Gryphs into the wall of his office. She was lamenting the fact that with the government against them in several ways she had to be more careful with what exactly she had Edwin doing. Cause if Edwin was caught in a system she could not just pay them off like her brother probably did if JARVIS was in a system that he wasn’t supposed to. She saw Skye come into the office and let her go over to the record player. They watched him for a while longer till he broke the pocket knife he was using. Skye turned off the record player.

 

“Have you found anything?” Coulson goes over the table to pick up another pocket knife.

 

“Not yet. It’s all connected somehow I just don’t know how yet. Ward, my father, and this writing. On that matter, how long have you been carving?” 

 

Alea sat up. “I got back from New York five hours ago, he’s been carving since not long after that.”

 

Skye looks at Coulson with wide eyes. “Do you sleep?”

 

“No, the compulsion is too strong. It used to be only once or twice a month and then once a week, now every day and night.” Coulson explains. “The worse thing is that I have no clue what the hell they mean.” 

 

Skye turns back to Alea. “Isn’t this a bad thing?” 

 

“It is, but he’s still, well, himself when he’s not carving and from what I could find in the files for TAHITI is a good thing.” Alea stands as May’s commlink comes up on the table behind her. 

 

“Coulson, they’ve found Ward.” 

 

Coulson nods and leaves the room to get dressed. Alea drops the screen and pacts up the tool kit. Skye leaves to go back into the research. Alea gives May the update on Coulson before following Skye. By the time she gets there with Skye, she seems interested in something. 

 

“What’s up?” Alea plops down on the seat next to her. 

 

Skye pushes the tablet over to her and Alea looks at it. There had been the carvings found painted at a place near New York. “Go show this to Coulson. He’ll want to see it.” 

 

After a while she sees Skye and Coulson leave, but decides to stay behind. She goes to help Fitz with his hand to eye coordination. After a while, they come back and ask about getting a body. Mack says that he knows a way and takes Fitz with him. Alea goes to look at what they had figured out. On the floor of Coulson’s office, there were both the pictures of the carvings along with images of the paintings that the woman must have done. There were overlapping sections that they hadn’t noticed before. Alea turned when she heard the door open. 

 

“Skye, you look mad. What is it?” Alea stood up.

 

“What do you know of the TAHITI Project?” 

 

“More than Coulson, but I never actually knew any of the agents' names. I had their medical files on Ed’s servers, but I had Coulson blackout any names. I don’t know them. Why?” 

 

“Because we need to talk Coulson out of using the memory machine from the desert.” 

 

Alea didn’t answer Skye before running from the room. She dashed down the steps and to the lab in record time. Once she got there she saw Simmons prepping him to be put in the machine. 

 

“Phillip James Coulson! You idiot! You think that using that god damned machine when you have someone that you trust with the exact same abilities is safe?! What were you thinking?!?” 

 

“I was worried that you’d say no.” Coulson looked at her and she could feel him probing at the link. Alea went down it. 

 

“You know something about TAHITI. You know what was done back then. My involvement. You’ve kept it from me, why?” 

 

“Because, Phil, I needed to keep it from you. I know what happened to the TAHITI patents. Clint can’t lose you again. I can’t lose you. You’re one of three people alive that know who I really am. That knows the secret that I have kept for four decades. I can’t lose you. I need to know just as much as you do about the writings. We saw them during the time we were with the TAHITI patients, and when Ward impersonated Amador, but I’ve seen them before either of those times. When I was a child, but you know that if I’ve forced my memories away there is no way to bring them back. So all I have is the confusion that I didn’t want you to go through.”

 

There were tears flowing from Alea’s face, and a grinding sound as her left hand clenched tight. Coulson reached out and grabbed Alea’s right hand. He pulled it away after a moment and touched his fingertips to the palm of his other hand swiping them across it twice. He then pointed at himself before placing his right hand on his chest and moving it in a clockwise motion. Alea nodded and hugged him.

 

"So, we're doing my way then?" Alea talks just loud enough for Coulson to hear. He just nods.

 

Alea pulls away and notices that Skye had finally caught up with her. "Alright. Skye, you are going to do the same thing that you would have if we were going to use the memory machine. I will be probing his mind to release the memories. Simmons, while this shouldn't be as stressful as using the memory machine we'll need to keep a close eye on his vitals."

 

They both nod and Alea pulls off her glasses and places them next to Coulson on the bed of the machine. She allows herself to go into Coulson’s head and float around freely so she can be pulled by his thoughts. 

 

“We’re good on my end.” Alea allows the other two to see her eyes. She steps from in front of Coulson so that Skye can show him the picture. 

 

“Think back to Rebecca Stevens. She’s the entry point.” Skye shows the standard SHIELD mugshot. 

 

Alea watched as thoughts flew around her. Memories of Peter, Clint, and Cooper. Of her and Natasha and Laura. Of the farmhouse and SHIELD bases. The Bed-Stuy apartment, the Parker’s, and Alea’s as well. Then a few of Agent Stevens before hitting a wall. Alea took a few seconds to bust through the wall before they ended up in the integration room at the Guest House. Alea saw herself standing to one side with Coulson looking at a file. 

 

“Alea.”  The Coulson from the memories closed the file.

 

“Yeah?” 

 

“Why don’t you want to know their names?” 

 

Alea turned to face him.  “Because the less I know the better. Unlike you, I can’t wipe my own memories.” 

 

“Do you really think this will end that badly?”

 

“Possibly. I don’t know.”

 

Another wall shows up. Alea knocks a hole in this one as well. She moves on to the next memory. This one Alea wasn’t in, but there was someone else there. 

 

“How do you feel today, Agent Stevens?”  Coulson looked up from the file.

 

“Great.”

 

The memory quickly switched to one of a man sitting there. Then three more men and then another woman. All six of the TAHITI patients. 

 

“Do you have any more names?” Skye had her tablet in hand ready to get any names.

 

The six faces flashed again. This time though it was definitely after the agents had started to go insane. Coulson's thoughts stopped on one person though. He seemed like he had yet to fall to the compulsion, but Alea knew better. He was the one that had carved it into his own arm. Alea watched as Coulson opened the file on the desk.

 

"Lewis Seaver."

 

Alea heard the frantic typing as Skye put the name in. "His body was found at the Church in Miami."

 

Another file popped up on the table and Coulson opened it.

 

"Cameron Kline."

 

Skye replied with, "Lives not far from here."

 

Then one last file lands on the desk. Alea recognized it as one of the older black ops files. Coulson opened it.

 

"Sebastian Derik. He was black ops before SHIELD. He never was like any of the other patients.” 

 

Alea pulled herself together and stopped the free-floating. It was unlikely that the other two were still alive. She remembers Derik’s face, he was the one that Goodman had complained was why they were doing this. The one that hadn’t seemed to go insane, but in the end was just like the rest.

 

Alea spent several more moments working on the wall that had blocked those memories. In the end, there was a doorway that his memories could more freely go through. Alea then pulled free of his head. 

 

Alea grabs her glasses before collapsing onto the side of the machine. She waves the others away. “Coulson, you and I both know that you cannot be cleared to go talk to either of them. Skye and I will go.” Alea pulls herself into a standing position and says, “Don’t make me put you in Vault D.”

 

Alea watches as Coulson shifts on the table. He was antsy and Alea knew she’d have to make good on the threat. She looks over at Skye and enters her mind.  “Take him down to Vault D. He isn’t going to stay here willingly.”  Alea pulls free and leaves the room so that she can get ready to leave. She meanders her way up to her house. She takes note of Goose sitting on the table and wonders when she'd gotten there but dismissed it quickly because she needed to get ready. 

 

She got dressed in a black pair of cargo pants, a white t-shirt, and a black canvas jacket. She tucked several throwing knives into one pocket of the jacket before putting an ICER gun in the other. She made sure that the arm sleeve that she'd put on was still alright before heading back down. 

 

She made it down to the lounge room to see Mack and Fitz playing Halo. She looked around for Skye and didn't see her. Alea turned her head towards the CCTV feeds from Vault D to see Skye in it and no Coulson.

 

"Shit." Alea dashes down to the Vault. She tripped on the second stair and only saved herself from face planting by the flip that she did once she was in the air. It was quite graceful, but she landed on her butt rather than her feet. "How does Clint make that look so easy," she mutters as she stands and makes her way over to the tablet to turn off the barrier.

 

As soon as she does so Skye hisses, "Took you long enough."

 

"Don't blame me. I was at my house changing. Blame the other three that are still upstairs. They were the ones not to notice." 

 

They head back upstairs. Alea sees that Simmons had joined Fitz and Mack at the TV. "Mack, you're coming with us. Let's go." Alea continues to the garage. She grabs her motorcycle helmet as she walks through the door.

 

"You guys take the SUV. I'm going to ride ahead of you on my bike." Alea walks over to her motorcycle.

 

"Shouldn't we stay together?" 

 

"I know where I'm going, and I know the most about TAHITI. I will be fine." Alea mounts the motorcycle and puts on the helmet. She rides off without another word. The doors automatically opened to let her out. She had Edwin give her the directions in her helmet as she sped down the highway. She knew that Coulson wasn't in the best frame of mind when he left, and that worried her. All of STRIKE Team Delta tended to be a bit reckless when it comes down to the things that are close to them.

 

For Alea that meant any small children or her friends or her brother. Natasha young girls. Clint, anything living and helpless. Phil anything and everything that caused him confusion, and young children. The number of times a small child had derailed a STRIKE Team Delta mission was innumerable. 

 

Alea took a harsh corner into a driveway that had what looked to be two extra cars. "Ed, is this the place?"

 

"It is my dear."

 

"Where exactly is Phil's tracker reading from?"

 

"About two-hundred feet behind the house."

 

Alea pulls off the helmet as she walks around the house. She spots a barn and figures that's where Coulson was. She was glad that she'd gotten around to replacing the tracker after SHIELD fell. As she approached the barn she could just barely hear a single voice. She knew it wasn't Coulson, but it definitely was a male. It had to be one of the other two TAHITI patients.  

 

As she leaned against the wall and waited for the right moment she listened to that same voice rant on and on about them being the same and that he wanted to know what the symbols meant. After a few seconds a scuffle breaks out and Alea opens the door. What she sees inside doesn’t faze her. Coulson is getting out of some rope ties and who she assumed was Thompson was escorting a woman and child out of the barn. Derik, who was covered in tattoos, was standing next to a giant train set. "Derik put down the knife." Alea drew the action to herself.

 

Derek looked at her with cold eyes. He threw a knife at her. "You were one of the scientists that did this to us!" Alea grabbed the knife out of the air with her left hand. 

 

Coulson grabbed a piece of rope and caught it around Derik's neck. He started to drag him up the steps to the loft area. Alea pulled out one of her own knives and followed Coulson. She held it steady as Coulson pulled Derik over to the railing and looked over it himself. 

 

“What the hell are you doing, Phil.” 

 

“I noticed something about the train tracks, Carter.” 

 

Alea looks over the edge to see the Kree Carvings in 3D. It was then that Mack and Skye burst through the doors with their guns drawn. Alea helps Coulson lift Derik up so he could he for himself.

 

"Put him down!" Skye yells. She has her gun pointed directly at Alea. Alea filters out all of the sounds around her and focuses on keeping Derik where he was. Soon he stops fighting and Alea let's go of him. Alea puts her hands up as Coulson does the same. She hears Coulson tell Skye to look over the railing and when she does she gasps.  

 

Alea makes her way off the loft and back up to where she'd left her motorcycle. She plops down on it and waits for the others to come back up. Coulson is the first and he just sits behind her on the motorcycle with his back against hers.

 

"Lea."

 

"Phil?"

 

"I don't feel the compulsion to carve anymore."

 

"Good." Alea shifts back and lets her head rest against his. It had been a long day. And the adrenalin was starting to bleed out of her system.

 

Alea turns at the sounds of footsteps as Skye, Mack, and Derik come back up to the house. She notes with some part of her mind that there are police sirens coming closer, but it still startles her when the flashing blue lights enter her line of sight. 

 

Coulson stands to talk to them about Derik and Skye comes over to her. 

 

"Carter, you alright there?"

 

Alea just looks up at her. "I'm suffering from two separate adrenaline crashes that were back to back. Not doing the best, but today ended better than I thought it would." Skye nodded in agreement.

 

Soon Coulson came back with Kline following him. Alea tuned out the conversation. After several minutes Kline went over to the SUV and got in. Skye had already got in and Mack followed suit. When Coulson got back on her bike behind her she shook her head before properly putting on her helmet and following the SUV back to the Playground. She just about passes out and she feels Coulson reach around her to put his hands over hers on the handlebars. She knows that Coulson will make her eat and sleep when they get back before sitting her down and grilling her on asking if she's been taking care of herself.

 

Once they made it back Alea slipped off to find somewhere to sleep. She’d let Coulson deal with the fallout and hopefully, she’d be allowed to sleep without interruptions. She made it to the couch in the lounge area before face planting and passing out.

---

When Alea next woke up she was alone in the room. She pulled out her phone to see that she had one unread message and that it was around noon the next day. “Ed, can you tell me where the others are?” 

 

“They are in the lab going over the carvings.” 

 

Alea nods and tucks her phone back into her pocket. She makes her way to the lab to see the wireframe of a city. She comes up and stands next to Coulson. She flicks her hand to spin the wireframe so she can see it all laid out from a top-down perspective. She looks over it before tracing some points in her head that the others must have done, but she doesn’t know why they were causing thoughts of her childhood to come up. 

 

“Carter, you’re thinking about something over there.” Morse moves into Alea’s line of sight.

 

“I don’t know how many of you know how long I’d been a part of SHIELD when it fell, but something about this pattern reminds me of something from my time at SHIELD.” Alea looks over the group and lets her eyes settle on Mack and Morse who are the only two to look at her suspiciously. 

 

“Just how long have you been a part of SHIELD?” Hunter draws her attention.

 

“Officially? Since I was fifteen. Unofficially? Since the day I was born. I grew up in SHIELD facilities. So there is a lot of time to cover there. I just hope it wasn’t something Hydra related.” 

 

All but May and Coulson look at her with wide eyes. “What do you mean by that?” 

 

“Just what I said, I was a kid running around SHIELD bases. You guys do realize my last name is Carter, like the first director of SHIELD, Peggy Carter?” 

 

“She’s your mother?” Hunter looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm.

 

Alea nods and leaves the room to find something to eat. Hopefully, here soon they’ll end the question of why those patterns look familiar to her. 

Chapter 5: March 29: The Things We Bury

Alea watched Morse as she interrogated Bakshi. If they could just get a name or something they would be good. The only thing that Bakshi mentions is the fact that Whitehall knew the Red Skull. Which doesn’t make sense. Whitehall wasn't that old. And Red Skull had been dead for seventy years.

Soon Morse came back out without any real information. Alea joined her as she headed to one of the open gyms. She watched as she pulled out her battle staves. She started to spin them.

"Whitehall is most concerned with the original 0-8-4, right?” 

“Yes, why?” 

“Because, while this place is a SHIELD base now it started as an SSR one. There are many files that most wouldn’t think of being here.” Alea turns and heads towards Coulson's office. She goes over to the corner and pulls out a box. The box is labeled with Spring 1945. 

"So this box has the complete records of the raid on the Hydra base that the 0-8-4 was found at. I've only ever cataloged the items and never really paid attention to who was arrested there." Alea pulls out the first file and opens it.

"Wouldn't that have been counterproductive?" 

Alea shakes her head. "Not really. You got to remember I joined SHIELD in 1975. By then if any of the Hydra agents that would have been mentioned would have been dead, in jail, or for a few of them part of SHIELD." Alea flips open the file. "These would have been the first files I digitized."

Simmons opens the door. Alea waves her over to them. "Simmons, we need to find the original 0-8-4 file. Not sure if it got moved or not." Alea digs through the box and finds several other files. None of them labeled 0-8-4 though.

"Coulson put it in his desk, I think." 

Alea nods and makes her way around the desk. She pulls open the second drawer and there it was. She flips it open on the desk and has to stop for a second when her mother's handwriting registers. She shakes her head before scanning the file.

"Ah, so this is why Reinhardt was in the Rat." Alea’s muttering draws the attention of the other two.

“Who was Reinhardt?” 

“Werner Reinhardt. He was Hydra. He was released from the Rat for good behavior in 1989.” Alea places the file on the desk. “Though if we want anymore from this we’re going to have to go somewhere else.” 

Simmons looks at her with wide eyes. “What do you mean?” 

“Not all of the SSR records were kept on the main level. Some of them were kept in Vault B. Why do you think that Vault D is named as such?” Alea goes over to the wall of the office and opens a hatch. It has several keys hanging in it. Alea pulls one out and heads out of the office. 

They hurry to catch up to Alea. She was headed in the direction of her home. They watched her take a corner that they hadn’t been down much since getting to the Playground. The opens a hidden access panel and slides the key into it. “This is where anything sensitive ended up being stored when the Trisk was completed.” Alea leads them down into the room that was full of cobwebs. 

“What type of things are stored down here?” Simmons makes her way to the closest box of files. 

“Anything really. I think there is a vita-ray detector down here if I remembered to put the box back after getting something out of Roger’s original file. Of course, I think there are a ton of Stark Industry designs that Director Carter had said that Howard Stark wasn’t allowed to keep down here as well. Then you have the files that are scattered about. Those range from the start of the SSR to about three weeks before the Fall of SHIELD.” Alea makes her way back into where the writing on the boxes changes. These had been labeled decades before Alea had been born.

Alea pulled one that had RAT-1945 on it and carefully put it down on the nearby table. She opened the box just as carefully to avoid being assaulted by the dust. She starts to dig around in the file and finds Reinhart’s file. She comes back over to the others and places the file on the table before opening it. On the top of the left part was his picture from when he was imprisoned in 1945, and on the other side was Peggy Carter’s elevation of him.

Simmons takes in a deep breath when she sees the picture and Alea notices that Morse stiffens. “Morse, Simmons, what is it?” 

“Whitehall, he looks exactly like Reinhart.” Bobbie answers. 

“What do you mean by exactly? Cause I was always under the impression that there isn’t a way to reverse aging. Seeing as this,” Alea pointed at the picture, “was taken when he was imprisoned in the Rat in ‘45.” Alea pulls the picture free of the file and lets the other two look at it more closely.  

“No, this is definitely what Whitehall looks like.” Bobbie answers. 

Alea puts the picture back while nodding. “Then we need to talk to Bakshi again with this information. Morse, you’ll go down alone with the file, but I’ll be waiting at the top of the stairs with a full medical kit in case something goes wrong.” 

“He’s restrained, what could he do?” Simmons’s face was scrunched up in confusion. 

“Some members of Hydra have cyanide tablets embedded in their jaws. He bangs his head on the table hard enough he could crack it.” 

Alea takes the photo back and tucks it back into the file before handing the file to Morse. They head to Vault D and Alea takes a short detour to grab one of the medkits from one of the hidey holes. She lets the door to Vault D close behind Morse but watches on the video feed at the top of the steps to make sure it was going well. This one didn't have any sound, so Alea wasn’t one hundred percent sure what was being said. After a few moments, Bakshi slammed his head onto the table. Alea was halfway down the steps before his head hit the table. By the time he was sliding into the floor, she was laying out supplies as Morse straightened him out. 

“Morse, you remember the cyanide protocols?” Alea moved and slid on a pair of gloves before laying him on his side. Alea took a surge full of distilled water and squirted it into his mouth and forced his mouth closed for several seconds before allowing the water back out. Morse lifted him and carried him out of the vault. Alea stayed behind to clean up the mess.

Mack comes down the stairs with May following. “So Whitehall and Reinhart are one and the same?” 

“Apparently, but I know what Reinhart looked like when he was released from the Rat and that was an old man. How he managed to de-age himself is another matter entirely. One that I want an answer for.” 

“Couldn’t something like the supersoldier serum do that?”

"As far as I know? No. Rogers at best has slowed aging, Banner ages, and I don't. Though I don't age because my body basically always wants to be in the same condition as the day I was injected with the serum." Alea pacts up the medkit. 

“Really?” 

“Yep, I still have a scar across my chest from when I was seven, but I was shot when I was thirty and no longer have that scar.” Alea stands with the medkit in hand. She makes her way out of the vault. She takes the medkit to be resupplied before putting it back where she got it. She went to Coulson’s office. Sitting down in his chair she lets her mind wander. When a short burst of fear shot through her link with Coulson she went down it.

Alea navigated Coulson’s mind easily finding his visual cortex and looking at what he was. Which was Skye’s father and a very injured Tripp. She pulled away and left Coulson’s mind. He needed to concentrate on saving Tripp and her presence could distract him. 

Instead, she pulled out her phone and texted him to get a hold of her when he had the time. There was no more to process than she wished there was. Whitehall and Reinhart were one and the same and they had to deal with the 0-8-4. This year was looking to be as bad as the last. 

Chapter 6: April 2-4 : Aftershocks

Alea paced the hanger at the Playground waiting for Coulson and the others to make it back. She knew Simmons was still in San Juan and that Trip died there, but Mack and Skye both were exposed to something and if the recordings that she had from Skye’s talk with Raina were correct it was Kree related. Not surprising seeing as Alea already knew the writings were Kree, but it was a bit reassuring that she was on the right track. Coulson had also been badly injured, but he hadn't been exposed like the other two.

 

"If only I didn't have to deal with the US Government. Then some of this might have been avoided. Goddamn, you Talbot and wanting to talk to me." Alea spun on her heel before looking up at the hanger doors. Thankfully it was already dark out and she wasn’t blinded by the hangar doors opening, with the Bus landing not a minute later. 

 

Alea runs up to the Bus as soon as the cargo door opens. She makes note of everyone looking like shit. "If you are injured please let me know, I'll heal you after I get done with Coulson. The quarantine area has already been set up in the lab." 

 

Alea bodily drags Coulson to his office. Knowing that some of the other agents had been requested to set up the quarantine area for Mack and Skye. She knew Coulson wouldn't sit down for a few days if she didn't make him. He wasn’t fighting like he normally would telling her that he was more injured than he looked. Once they were in the office Alea solved him onto the couch and ordered him to strip off his shirt. 

 

Coulson sits up a little so he can tug it off after unbuttoning it. Once it was off and Alea could take a good look at the bruising she gasped. His whole chest was a light purple that promised to get darker before it got any lighter. “What the hell did you run into in San Juan?”

 

“Skye’s father and whatever possessed Mackinzie.” Coulson’s eyes followed the ring on Alea’s metal hand as she placed it flat on his chest. He’d never really asked about it, but he wondered where the hell she’d gotten it. 

 

“Two broken ribs, three cracked ones, bruising, and lacerations. You know you got off light with your injuries, right?” Coulson nods as Alea places her flesh had to replace the metal one on his chest. She starts to heal him and as the broken ribs mind, Coulson starts to breathe easier. After a few seconds, she pulls away before placing her hand on his cheek and heeling the damage there.

 

Once she is done she pulls her hand away. “Call Clint. Get some rest. I’m going to go down to the lab.” Coulson nods as Alea leaves.

 

Once Alea makes it to the lab the only ones in there are Skye and Mackenzie in their containment areas. She walks over to Skye’s first to see her looking forlorn at the floor.

 

"Skye, I'm going to have Simmons send me a breakdown of the pieces of Trip. I don’t think that whatever either of you was exposed to was contagious." Alea then walks over to Mack and says the same thing. She then gets dressed in the biohazard suit and takes a draw of Skye’s blood. “What are you going to do with that?”

 

“I have a theory. I’m not going to share any of it unless you want me to?” Skye shakes her head. Alea nods and then goes to do the same for Mack’s blood. She sets up Mack's blood test, up in the lab before heading up to her home lab. 

 

She sets it up the same way that she had downstairs, but with different parameters. She had Mack's set to match to his old blood sample, but Skye’s she set to see if the GH.325 was still present. It had been a Kree artifact that had killed Trip, if it had taken out the GH.325 in Skye's system then there would be less worry about what exactly had happened to Skye.

 

"Edwin, inform me when this is done."

 

"Yes, my dear. Anything else that you want checked?"

 

"No, just this for now. I'll deal with anything else to do with Skye’s DNA later."

 

Alea went back down to the Playground and found Coulson sitting next to Skye’s containment pod. Both seemed asleep. She went over to the computer that had Mack’s blood running. It was normal. No GH.325, nothing changed about it. She then ran the DNA. Not all changes that could affect the DNA affect the blood. Her own DNA attests to that. Seeing as her DNA is changed from when she was a child after she had her arm implanted. Though for a time her blood was also changed by the radiation, though that had faded after a while.

 

Alea made her way over to Coulson and shook him awake. “Mack’s parliamentary blood test has come back normal. I’m running the full DNA scan now.”

 

Coulson nods before pointing at Skye. “I have Skye’s running up at my house. I didn’t want cross-contamination of any sort.” Coulson nods again. Alea pulled a chair over and leaned against Coulson. “How did your call to Clint go?”

 

“He and the kids are doing well. When we figure this out with Skye and Mack I’m going to take the Howling Commandos gear back to Trip’s mother. Along with anything else of Trip’s, that’s still here. Then I’m going home for a few nights.”

 

“Sounds good. Do you want me to come with you or stay here?” 

 

“Do you want to come with me?” 

 

“Of course. I know that you and Clint had talked about having Laura be a surrogate again. Also, it’s been a while since I’ve seen Coop and Lila.” 

 

Coulson wraps his arm around Alea. He knew that she was drained from all that she’d been dealing with Talbot and now this. They all were. Alea had always found small children to be a breath of fresh air, so it makes sense that she’d want to go. “Alright then, we’ll go together. I’ll leave May in charge while we’re gone.” Alea nods sluggishly. He sighed and allowed Alea to fall asleep leaning against him. Coulson watched Skye sleep before nodding back off himself.

---

When Alea woke six hours later she was still leaning against Coulson who now had his tablet in his hand. Skye was also awake and the two were talking softly. Mack's pod was empty.

 

"Mack was cleared wasn’t he?" Alea sat up.

 

Coulson nodded. "Edwin set off your alarm about three hours ago. I muted it and let you sleep."

 

Alea glared at him before pulling her phone out. Skye’s blood still had the GH.325 in it. Which meant that either Skye wasn’t affected by the 0-8-4 by something in her DNA. “Skye, I’m going to take another sample of your blood to run some other tests on it.” 

 

Alea gets suited up and does another blood draw. After taking the suit off she heads back up to her house knowing that Edwin can run the tests for her and that they can be kept a secret until it was needed from those other than Coulson. Once she gets it started she informs Edwin, “Do not send me the results of this one. I’ll come back up in a few hours to look at it.” 

 

“Yes, my dear.” 

 

Alea heads back down to talk to Skye about what happened. Only to see that everyone had gathered together in the lab. She walked up to them to hear them bickering about something. Then suddenly the room was shaking. After a few seconds, Morse raises her voice and gets everyone to calm down. The trimmers stop as well. No-one other than Skye seemed to realize that anything had happened and she wonders what had caused them. Alea walks over to Skye as the rest of the team leaves. 

 

“Skye, I want to talk to you in private.” Alea sits down in what had been Coulson’s seat and takes off her glasses.

 

“Sure.” Skye looks her in the eye and Alea enters her mind.

 

Alea sees what had happened to Trip the moment that she enters Skye’s head. Him roundhouse kicking what had been inside of the 0-8-4. Mist escaping it. Him being impaled by it before turning to stone. Both of them reaching out and turning to stone. 

 

“Holy shit. I was right to run your DNA.” Alea moves away from the memory and further into Skye’s head. 

 

“I think I caused the earthquake that destroyed the underground city. The things in my cantonment pod were shaking just a little bit ago.” 

 

“I know. If, and I do mean if, anything comes from me running your DNA I’m only telling Coulson. I don’t think you are contagious.”

 

“How can you know?”

 

Alea looks around Skye’s head, not really looking for anything other than the 0-8-4. “Because it takes a lot to be contagious when it’s something in your DNA. I mean you have to be extremely sick with radiation posing just to affect someone else. I’m going to have them run all the radiation tests on you when I get done.” 

 

Skye nods. “What are you looking for?” 

 

“When you and Rania went onto the temple.” Alea looks over at Skye as she nods again. Then the memory surrounds the two of them. Alea watches as Rania places the 0-8-4 on the pedestal. The same symbols that Coulson had been carving glowing orange on the body of it. 

 

Alea suddenly pulls herself from Skye's head but doesn’t surface in her mind, but Coulson’s. She now knew why she knew those symbols. She had seen the 0-8-4 once when she was four. 

 

“Alea, what’s up?” Coulson appears in front of her in his mind.

 

“You know how we’d, no I’d been trying to figure out why I know those symbols that you were carving?” Alea’s voice shook as she spoke.

 

“Alea were you just in Skye’s head?” 

 

Alea nods. She takes a deep breath. “The symbols glowed orange on the 0-8-4. I had seen it once when I was four being held by a lab tech that got fired not long after that incident. It wasn’t my father who exposed me to it, but someone else.” Coulson nods and they talk for a little bit longer before Alea goes back to her head. 

 

Alea comes back to herself and walks out of the lab pulling one of the techs aside to tell them to run all types of radiation tests on Skye. They nod and Alea goes to find out if there were any records down in Vault B from that day.

 

She found the box from 1964 and without a care for the dust she dropped it into the floor. She started to go through it looking for anything that looked off from them. Her name wouldn't be on them, but hopefully, the fact that it had to deal with the 0-8-4 it would still be in the records. After a while, she found one from June of that year that looked promising. She pulled it out and started to read it. 

Jacob Campbell was fired for opening the containment unit of the original 0-8-4. Though there were curious effects to him touching it, instead of turning to stone like everyone else we have known to have touched it, it glowed orange. This is from another agent that was in the room when he touched it. The 0-8-4 has been placed back into its containment and will be moved to a more secure location as soon as possible.

 

Alea shut the file and knew that she didn’t have the personal file there in Vault B. Personal records had been kept in Vault A, but most had been digitized and so Alea headed back up to the lab to see how Skye was doing before going home to talk to Edwin. 

 

When Alea made it up to the lab she could see Simmons talking to Coulson and May about something. She walks up to them. “Those with this DNA change could be a plague. We need to find Raina and deal with her.”

 

“Altered DNA cannot be passed from person to person. Just ask Banner, Rogers, or well me.” Alea buts in. “Otherwise there would be more people with a raging monster inside of them.”

 

“What do you mean your DNA is changed?” Coulson looked over at her. She forgets that because he knew her only after she’d had a time of trying to figure that oddity out.

 

“My DNA won’t even pull up a partial match to my parents without a lot of work being put in due to what’s been done to me over the years.” Coulson’s eyes settle on Alea and she rubs the back of her head. “Edwin, pull up my DNA from the records.” She cackles as she turns to the computers.

 

There was no answer from the AI, just one of the computers coming to life and showing quite the mess of altered DNA. Not only did it have a few extra molecules but it was rearranged from what normal DNA would be. “If you wanted to match that to my parents you would find only about ten percent matches instead of the close to fifty percent that it should. To my younger brother, only about forty percent of the DNA changes match. It used to match closer before what happened to me at fourteen with thirty-eight to my parents and eighty-eight to my brother, but never has it fully matched due to the experiments done on me as a child.” Alea closes her DNA panel and walks over to Skye.

 

“But still we don’t know what could have happened with the Obelisk! It is alien!” Simmons grabbed the back of Alea’s jacket. 

 

Alea shook her off, “DNA mutations can only be passed from parent to child, and even then it mutates. Or have you forgotten highschool science?” Alea’s voice was icy. Simmons took a step back before leaving. 

 

After a few moments, Alea felt Coulson come up beside her. “I think that Simmons is just worried. Trip's death has made her worried.” 

 

“For nothing, I think. At least in this type of case, now if there are other Obelisks then we do have problems, but once a change has been made to DNA we probably don’t have any problem with a plague as Simmons put it.” Alea turns and leaves. 

 

As she makes it to the doorway she feels Coulson pressing at their links. Alea opens it up and she lets him enter. She continues on her way out and back up to her house.

 

“So that’s why you weren’t afraid that someone would figure out that you were a Stark.” 

 

“Yep, DNA matching is less than they would expect for siblings or even parents to children. So I’ve never really had to worry about a DNA match.” Alea pushes Coulson out of her head and closes the link.

 

When she opened the door to her home lab she saw that there was a significant change to her DNA down there. She sat down and had Edwin pull up Raina’s from the lab. As she looked over the two side by side there weren't many of the same changes on both of them. Meaning that whatever happened down there with the mist that the 0-8-4 put off was what changed their DNA. 

 

“Edwin.” 

 

“Yes, my dear?”

 

“The earthquake earlier today, how localized was it?” 

 

“My sensors just picked it up radiating out from Skye’s cantonment cell.”

 

Alea tapped her chin. “And the one in San Juan? Does it match what would have been four explosions?” 

 

“Less accurate data, but it also seemed to be localized at the temple.”

 

“Do we have enough data to suggest earthquake or at least powers that suggest something to do with vibrating things?” Alea spun in her chair.

 

“No, My Dear. At least three more data points needed.”

 

“Alright let's go talk to Skye.”

 

On her way to the lab, Coulson grabbed her and pulled her to his office. “Alea, will you be coming with us tomorrow to take out Hydra’s current heads using Bakshi?” 

 

“I can. I’m guessing we have a plan to infiltrate their ranks with, let me guess Hunter?”

 

Coulson nods and shows her the bit of script that he had written up. It doesn’t take long for her to read it. She hands it back after she is done reading it. “I think I’ll stay here.” Alea leaned up and punched in the number to lockdown Coulson’s office. As the glass went dark and the locking bolt for the top of the door slid in place Alea relaxed.

 

“What’s wrong, Lea?” 

 

“Skye’s tests came back.” Alea pulled out her phone and pulled up the test results before locking the phone back and handing it over. Coulson unlocked it again and looked over the results.

 

“This true?” Coulson sits the now locked phone back on the desk.

 

Alea nodded. He slid the phone over to Alea who grabbed it. “Do we know what it means?”

 

“No, but I don’t think it’s anything worse than the GH.325 on contagion. Past that until I look more into it I have no clue.” 

 

Coulson nods and punches in the code to release the lockdown and goes back to work. Taking note of the fact that the sun had long since set as she left she decided to leave the questions for tomorrow and went to bed.

---

Alea made it down to the lab the next morning much later than she wanted to because she had to deal with Goose who while normally not a big nuisance, decided to be one that morning. There was no way that she was going to take the Flerkin down into the Playground because the team was tenser than she’d like. Also, Goose tended to eat people that made her mad. 

 

So when she made it down there to see that someone had knocked over the lamp in Skye’s pod. Skye was bent over trying to pick it up when Alea walked over and knocked on the glass. Skye jumped and blood started to flow. 

 

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Alea grabbed a pack of gauze from the table behind her and put it in the little cubby that Skye had access to. “Use that to stem the blood flow. I’m going to go put on a suit.” Skye nodded and took the gauze. 

 

Alea walked over to the corner to put on the hazmat suit. Just as she was pulling on the pants May and Simmons came into the room. They walk over to Skye and start to question her about what had happened as Fitz came flying back into the room. He starts to ramble about how he was the one that knocked over the lamp when he took Skye’s blood and that it was better for her to try and pick it up than him. Which is fair he could have damaged himself worse due to the shaking his hands do. It was then that he stated what Alea knew was a blatant lie, but one that she was going to back up. “Skye’s DNA is unchanged. I’m going to go ahead and go help her clean up.” 

 

Fitz walked into the contaminant pod. May and Simmons smile before they both walk off. Both heading in opposite directions once out of the lab. Alea walks over to the pod and walks inside as well. “You’re getting good at lying, Fitz.”

 

Both of them look at her with fear. Alea takes off her glasses before linking her mind with both of theirs. 

 

“I know that Skye’s DNA is drastically changed, so does Coulson. I’ll tell him when we leave this afternoon to keep it to himself. I don’t like Simmons’ attitude toward this right now.” 

 

Both nod and her and Fitz get both Skye and the cantonment pod cleaned up. “Go take a good shower, Skye.” Skye nods and makes her way out of the lab. Alea grabs Fitz before he could make his way out. 

 

“Which computer did you run Sky’s tests on?” Fitz leads her to it and she wipes any trace of the test that says that there was a change in Skye’s DNA off of it. Simmons was on a warpath and they didn’t need any of the others to do the same. She stays and talks to Fitz until Coulson comes around with the Howling Commandos case in hand. 

 

Both of them leave in Alea’s quinjet with Alea’s motorcycle loaded as well. When they make it out to LA Alea lands the quin in an empty field outside of city limits and they rig the case up so that they could both ride on the motorcycle and have the case. Edwin reads out the directions to Mrs. Triplett's.

 

Once they make it there Coulson knocks on the door as Alea holds the case. When Mrs. Triplett opens the door and takes in the two of them and the case and breaks down crying. Coulson walks up and hugs her. Both Coulson and Alea’s eyes settle on the photo on the wall of the Howling Commandos. 

 

When Mrs.Triplett pulls away from Coulson Alea hands over the case. “Antoine Triplett served his country just as well as his grandfather did. All of us at SHIELD are sorry to see him go.” Alea rose her hand in a salute to the photo and held it for several seconds. When she dropped her hand she then turned to Mrs. Triplett. “I’m sorry, but due to how he died we cannot currently give you the body for burial. But should you want to do a funeral for him anyway please let me know if you need any help.”

 

Mrs. Triplett nodded before wrapping Alea in a hug. When Alea wrapped her arms around her. Mrs. Triplett stiffened slightly before saying, “You are Peggy Carter’s daughter are you not?” 

 

Alea nodded. “I am. I mean what I said too. If you want to do a funeral and need any help with it just call me.” Alea pulls back and pulls out a business card from her wallet. “Your son was a very good agent and all of us at SHIELD would like to thank you for allowing him to serve.” 

 

Mrs. Triplett nodded. They stood and talked for a few more minutes before they left. As soon as they were out of the building Coulson grabbed her by the flesh arm. “I didn’t know that you knew the Tripletts’.” 

 

“Of course I did. I knew all of the original Howling Commandos along with some of the later ones as well. Let’s remember who I learned to fight from at age four. Mrs.Triplett is Gabe Jones’ only kid. She was closest to me in age and we played together some. But he moved out here when she was seven or eight. I came out here some to talk to Jones when he was dying and Trip was seven or eight though.” Alea got on her motorcycle and Coulson followed suit. 

 

Once back at the quin they took off towards the Barton-Colson homestead for a few days.

Chapter 7: April 9: Who You Really Are

As the Bus took off Alea leaned back into the co-pilot's seat. “Alea why are you up here?” May glanced over at Alea.

 

Alea doesn’t look at May as she answers, “Because the rest of the seats with buckles are full.” As soon as the Bus got to cruising altitude Alea left to find Coulson. 

 

“If Lady Sif is here she must be following something alien.” 

 

"Yes, and I'm a little worried about what that is."

 

“I was just on the phone with the police that has custody of Sif.” 

 

“What did they have to say?” Alea sat down in the only other chair in the office. 

 

“That she doesn’t seem to know anything other than the word ‘Kava’, not her own name.” 

 

“Well on our planet Kava is a plant extract. Though if that’s not any Earth language I have no clue.” Alea leans up and Coulson hands over the tablet. It doesn’t take long for her to read everything that their contact had informed them of. 

 

“Phil,” Alea places the tablet on the edge of the desk. She waited until Coulson was looking at her before continuing, “Skye’s DNA changes. Fitz and I have been going over them and we still don’t know exactly what type of powers other than she can cause things to shake. If she can keep a level head, and her work with May is helping with that, I might be able to help her figure them out.” Coulson nods and Alea stands. “Me, you, Skye, and Fitz are the only ones that know, and I’d like to keep it that way.” 

 

“I’ll keep that in mind, Alea. Though if it comes down to the safety of the team, I will tell them.” Alea nods and leaves the office. She goes down to the lab and talks to FitzSimmons as they get ready to do what could be needed. 

 

When they land Alea goes with Coulson and May to pick up Sif. When they get her in their custody they realize that she has no memories. Alea has her look at her as she tries to find anything personal in her mind, not just what would be considered basics. There was nothing, not even a wall that they were hidden behind. 

 

“No memories, hopefully, Skye has found something.” Alea slides her glasses back on and they don’t have to wait long for May to come back with a tablet. On it was a video that Skye had dug up from Twitter. The four of them watched it before spitting up. Alea went back to the Bus to be ready to process anything from the scene while the rest split up. 

 

It took a little while for anything to come in, but when it did it was Nitrogen, not blood like they had thought. Alea listened over the comms as Sif explained that there weren't any bipedal alien species that required heightened levels of Nitrogen to breathe. Alea immediately remembered something that Wendy Lawson had told her a long time ago. That the Kree could change the color of their skin using various elements. 

 

Alea reached up and turned on her comm. “What about ones that would use it to disguise themselves?” 

 

“Many, but we’d need to know what color his skin is naturally.” 

 

Alea had Edwin pull up nearby hospitals. “Skye, Morose, I’m sending you two the address of a nearby hospital. It’s the closest place to the scene that would be using liquid nitrogen.” 

 

Alea turns back off her comm as she goes up to the command center on the main floor. It wasn’t long before Coulson, Sif and May arrived back at the Bus with the science team were still looking into something. After a while longer their comms crackled to life with Skye’s voice coming in short gasps.  “He was blue. He used the nitrogen to turn his skin pink.” 

 

“What happened Skye?” Coulson moves to have Mack and Hunter go collect the girls when he finds out that both of them have been out. Alea just looks over at Sif to see if she’d figured out what Alea had. Kava having been the Kree word for Keys, seeing as that seemed to be what they were dealing with. Alea started to look in the nearby areas for anything from the SHIELD records that might point to where the hell he was going. 

 

It wasn’t long after they had Skye and Morose on the Bus before Sif was pointing out that Kava was the Kree work for keys, but she had no idea of what the Kree would want on Earth. 

 

“You guys, I think he’s headed to Chaves, which means keys in Portuguese, fun fact.” Alea pulls up Whitehall’s file and looks through it, “It is also where Whitehall did his excavation during the war.” 

 

“Alea, get the coordinates of the dig site. Compare it to what you have already found.” Alea nods and gets to work. After several moments of calculating trajectory, Alea knew that the exact dig site is where he was going. Alea stays behind when they go to collect him and gets the Cage ready to hold the Kree. After that, she goes up to Coulson’s office and pulls off her glasses, and places them on his desk. She then goes down to the cargo hold to wait on the team to make it back. 

 

As the Team unloaded the Kree he looked over at her and Alea entered his head before closing her eyes. As soon as she could tell that they had gone up to the second floor Alea followed them. She leaned against the wall outside of the Cage so that she could get in there if needed.

 

Alea stayed to the edges of his mind. She didn’t want him to realize that she was there. This also meant that while she could look at the memories floating in his head she’d need to be careful about going into them. As she wandered around she saw him fighting alongside many other Kree.

 

Suddenly a memory came in front of her that had Danvers in it. He was fighting alongside her in some type of battle. Danvers didn’t look all that different from the memories that she’d seen in Fury’s head. Though it seemed like this should have been before Danvers came back to Earth. 

 

She decided to look around some more and found more moments of him fighting. Mostly using his truncheon as his primary weapon rather than the energy guns that she’d seen in Lawson’s memories. He could erase and return memories using it. Which was interesting, because the truncheon must be holding the memories instead of just blocking them. As Alea wondered some more she saw other faces that she recognized including Lawson herself. 

 

Not long after she came across his visual cortex and could see Sif and Coulson leaning over the Kree. Coulson soon told Sif to leave before following and Alea decided it was time to pull free. 

 

As soon as Alea was back in her own mind she went to find Skye. She found Skye sitting in what had once been her bunk. Alea slid the door closed as she sat down on the floor. “Skye, you alright?” 

 

Skye shakes her head and Alea could see the full body tremors. “You’ll get control of your powers in time. It will happen.” 

 

“But, what if I can’t?” 

 

“You can. Do you want to hear about when I first had my powers? The only person who knew for a very long time was my childhood best friend. That first day that looked anyone in the eye I went into their head. It continued to be an issue up until I joined SHIELD. It’s why I created the glasses. It didn’t matter if I was in a heightened emotional state or not.” Alea joined Skye on the bed and hugged her tight. “It took until I was over thirty before I could reliably go without the glasses and at this point, I wear them so that those who know about my powers know if I can get into their heads or not.” 

 

Skye manages to calm herself down and pulls away from Alea as they land. They join Coulson and Sif in escorting the Kree into the base. When they got to the big main room they went in and stood in a circle. Coulson had gained the Kree’s truncheon at some point. Eventually, he got tired of trying to negotiate its return and just kicked it out of Coulson’s grip with a flip that landed it in his hand. He struck Sif with it before dropping it to the floor and raising his hands above his head. 

 

Sif manages to explain why she was on Earth and again asks the Kree what he was doing on earth. 

 

“I received a signal that someone underwent Terragenesis. I came here before the less savory of people realized that it happened,” He explained. 

 

“Kree have never been on Midgard.” This statement from Sif makes Alea laugh. 

 

“Oh, they have in recent history too. I worked with one in the dying days of the Kree-Skrull War in what would have been the Earth years of 1988 and 1989. Then at the end of the Kree-Skrull War, a group I think was called the Starforce came to get a single human who kicked their asses, and sent them packing. Her name was Carol Danvers who had the Kree name of Vers. That was in 1995.” Everyone was looking at Alea with wide eyes. Some even had mouths open in disbelief. 

 

“The Kree that came earlier was her name Mar-Vell?” Alea nodded and the Kree dropped to the floor. Alea looked over at Coulson to see him come back together and Alea could see where the details that he never got came together with what he had. 

 

“They were here twice before and didn’t cause a war?” Sif asked.

 

“Not with humans. Very few people were injured. An agent of SHIELD lost his eye, a few Skrull were killed and a few Kree were killed as well. Past that Earth didn’t know that there had been aliens on it.” Alea kneeled to look at the Kree. “So if you didn’t know about those two incidents when exactly were Kree here?” Alea’s eyes were hard and the Kree scooted back a little at the harshness of her voice. 

 

“A long time ago, a faction of the Kree wanted to create weapons. It was a genetic experiment.” 

 

Sif cut in before he could continue, “Asgard knew of that. It didn’t work.” 

 

“It worked on humans. Made them too powerful to control. The project was shut down when those higher up found out. The abominations change when they come into contact with the Terrigen Mist. Become weapons. When it was shut down the crate was left and if those in charge now found out they’d likely restart it.” 

 

“How many Diviners were in the box?” Coulson spoke up for the first time.

 

“Enough to create an army.”

 

Alea stood as the comm in her ear sparked to life with Simmons’ voice,  “Sir, the box is empty.” 

 

The Kree’s eyes widened as he seemed to slump further “Shit.” Alea sifted so that she could be ready to tackle either the Kree or Sif.

 

“We’ll just have to go off the fact they were all taken in the forties.” Coulson put the tablet down. “Though the City was destroyed.The one that was used to activate them.” 

 

“It was?” 

 

Coulson nodded and turned towards Skye, “Skye was in the temple when the Diviner was activated. We know who changed and we have what is needed to track her.”

 

Lea felt the floor start to shake and focused both on Skye and the Kree instead of the words flying around. As it started to shake worse he Kree attempted to get up, but Alea pinned him to the floor, wrapping her metal arm around his neck. He started to struggle against her, and Alea was dimly aware of the glass windows shattering, but she kept her grip strong against him. She pressed hard enough against his neck to cut off his air supply and eventually he stopped struggling. Not long after the shaking stopped and Alea’s heart dropped.

 

After a while, Coulson came back with a subdued Sif. “What happened?” 

 

“Skye shot herself with May’s ICER rounds.” Alea stood and made sure that the Kree’s truncheon was far away from him. 

 

They worked out that it would be best to wait until daylight for them to find a suitable place for the Bifrost to be activated. Alea with Mack’s help put the Kree in Vault D. As they were making their way back to the others Alea’s phone let out an ear-splitting squeal. Alea pulled out her phone as she made a mad dash to the database room. The sound stopped as soon as she had unlocked the phone.

 

“Edwin, report.” Alea sat down in the chair that was in front of the accessing computer.

 

“The Index was hacked. I have shut down the server, but whoever did this already has the full list of currently indeed individuals.” 

 

“Shit.” Alea rubbed her hand through her hair. “Do we have any idea on the origin of the hack?” 

 

“I am currently running it, but not right now.”  

 

“Continue to run it. I’ll start rebuilding the security later. Right now, I’m going to find Coulson.”

 

Alea took her phone and dashed off to find Coulson. She had checked his office and his room before detouring to Skye’s bunk. When she didn’t find him there she headed up to her house. When she opened the door to the house she found him leaned against the purple wall. 

 

“What happened?” Coulson started to go to the living room. Alea followed him.

 

“The server that held the Index was hacked. Edwin has already shut it down, but they already had the full list. He’s working on backtracking the hack.” Coulson looked at her with wide eyes for the second time that day before forcing her to sit down. 

 

“So someone has the full Index. I wonder how that happened because they didn’t trip anything with Edwin did they?” 

 

Alea hummed in agreement before saying, “Not until they were already through it. I know that Skye has to go on the Index and I’ll bring back up the server once we know what the hell is going on.” 

 

Coulson nods and wraps his arm around her shoulders. “It’ll work itself out in the end. What level of encryption are you going to use this time?” 

 

“Top-level done in SIC1. I used SIC3 and SIC4 when building the server originally. There is a big difference between every version of Stark Industries Code platforms. I’m kinda surprised that this even happened in the first place seeing as the last time four was even used Tony was four or five.”

 

“Go get some rest. I don’t want you working on this until we have some idea of who was doing this.” 

 

“Phil, as soon as this calms down again, I’m going to show Fitz and Skye how to remove and replace my arm.” 

 

“You trust them that much?” 

 

Alea nods and makes her way up to her room to see Goose sitting in the middle of the bed. She pets the Flerkin before changing and laying down next to it. Surprisingly it doesn’t take long at all for her to fall asleep. Alea allowed herself to fall deeply asleep knowing that May and Coulson along with Sif would be able to deal with the Kree the next day.

 

Chapter 8: April 11: Interlude

After close to a day of rebuilding the Index server Alea stood and stretched. While she hadn't reconnected it to the network just yet it was ready to be once they figured out who hacked the thing. 

 

“Ed, any update on the origin of the hack?” Alea stretched her arms above her head causing her sleeves to slide back and allow light to glance off the metal of her left arm. When she drops her arms she picks up her glasses from the table and slides them on.

 

“No, my dear. I’m hard at work, but they routed through about two dozen offshore servers.” 

 

“Alright, continue to work on it. I’m going to go take a break.” Alea picked up the trash from around her desk and tossed it in the trashcan before leaving the room. Alea made her way back up out of the server part of the Playground before making her way up to her house. She makes her way to the little workshop on the first floor. There were many things just tossed on the worktops around the room. Most of it looked to be in the veins of prosthetics. She walks to the back of the room and pulls out a drawer and pulls out a small toolbox and a satchel that has something of considerable weight in it. 

 

As she makes her way to the Lab she connects her head to Coulson’s. 

 

“Meet me on the Bus in Ten. I’m going to go get Fitz so I can show them how to take off my arm.”

 

“Will do.” 

 

Alea leaves his head as she reaches the lab. She sticks her head into the lab and yells, “Fitz come here!” before pulling her head back out of the room. She leans against the wall and waits for Fitz to appear. It takes almost a minute for him to appear in front of her and when he does Alea just starts walking. She turns when she doesn't hear Fitz following and sees him just standing just outside of the lab.

 

“Come on! I have something to show you!” Alea raises her left hand and as it reflects the dim light it causes Fitz to snap out of whatever mood he was in. He hurried to catch up with her.

 

“Are you going to let me take apart your arm?” Fitz asks, noticing the large satchel that she had. 

 

“Nope. You and Skye are going to learn how to detach and reattach my arm.” 

 

As they make it to the hangar Alea scans her badge to get the doors to open and Fitz also scans his. They walked out to the Bus and Coulson was standing there on the ramp. Alea doesn’t stop moving, just diverting around Coulson before heading up the steps to the Cage.

 

"Skye, you alright for us to come in?" Alea nocks on the door.

 

"Who all is with you?" Skye’s voice was surprisingly steady.

 

"Coulson and Fitz."

 

"You can come in."

 

Alea pushed open the door and allowed the other two to go before she shut the door back behind her. "Edwin, lock down the video from the cage. Only access is access code 80."

 

"Understood. Lockdown initiated."  Came from Alea's jacket pocket.

 

“Why are you locking down the video?” Fitz wrung his hands. 

 

“Because what I’m about to have Coulson show you is something that I only show those I trust the most. And currently, I only trust the two of you.” Alea places the bag on the table before sitting down. Alea then pulls off her black jacket to reveal a thin long-sleeved shirt. She pulls that over her head. She had on a sports bra and both Fitz and Skye's eyes were drawn to the scar that ran from her left shoulder down across her chest to her right hip. Even Coulson’s eyes lingered there for a little bit.

 

Alea follows their eyes to the scaring. She runs her hand down the last third of it. “I forget that I normally cover that with the same stuff used to cover my arm.” 

 

“Why would you do that? All SHIELD agents have scars.” Skye tilts her head trying to figure out why she didn’t like the scar. It didn’t look all that bad, it was barely even pink in color. 

 

“This one doesn’t fade. It’s the worst of the ones like that. It gets hard to explain why I have had a scar since the ’60s that never looks any better. So most of the time it gets covered up.” Alea looks over at Coulson. “Anyway, what both of you are about to learn is how to take off and replace my arm. Coulson is the only one on the team that knows and if I end up unconscious it might have to come off.”

 

They both nod. Alea pulls out the little toolkit and lays down. Coulson sits down next to her and opens it up. “Skye, Fitz, what you have to understand is that you start at the elbow and work your way up to the shoulder.” Coulson points to the small access point right below the bend of the elbow.

 

"You start here and disconnect the nerves." Coulson inserts the smallest of the allen wrenches into it and turns it to the left. "You should see the hand go into the position that it is now in. Relaxed, but the fingers are not flat.” They both nod.

 

Coulson then changes to the next size up allen wrench. He points to the two bolts just above the elbow and on opposite sides. “Then you undo these two bolts.” He takes the two bolts out. He placed them into the lid of the toolkit. They were long for where they were in her arm. “Next you do the four bolts at her shoulder.” 

 

Alea and Coulson move her arm so that it is far enough away from her side to get at the one under her armpit. “I normally start with the one on the top of her shoulder and go around ending at the one on her back.” Coulson takes out the three bolts that are accessible before dropping them in the lid. Alea then rolls so that she is laying on her right side with a little help from Coulson. Luckily neither are paying attention to the device in her lower back. He then takes out the last bolt. “When you go to slide the arm off, have one hand at the shoulder and one at the elbow.” He then does so.

 

Coulson places the arm to the side. Fitz and Skye’s eyes settle on the stump, neither having seen it before. It was oddly toned for the fact that she wore something over it most of the time. It was also very pale. 

 

“Alea, did you bring the other model of arm?” 

 

“Yes, it’s in the bag.” Alea points to the shoulder bag that she’d brought. Fitz hands it over to Coulson who opens it and pulls out the much shorter arm. It only went up to the elbow with two small parts that go up a little further. 

 

Alea sits up properly. “The difference between the two models is that my main arm just pulls straight off and most of my spares, as I like to call them twists after taking out the screws.”

 

Coulson hands the arm over to Alea who lays it across her lap. She moves the top of it in such a way that it looked unnatural before sliding into her port. She then twists the arm ninety degrees. “That’s the only difference between my two types of arms. Otherwise, they are the same procedure with fewer screws.” Alea grabs the bolts from the lid and starts placing them into their holes on her arm, including the four that went in her shoulder on the other model. 

 

“If you have to keep her arm off somewhere that isn’t a SHIELD base you probably want to put them back into her, seeing as a few points in her shoulder aren’t as stable without them.” Both nod and Alea has both of them turn off the nerves before allowing them to take off the short arm and put it back on. Afterward, Alea leaves on the short arm and gets dressed. She tucks the full arm in the bag.

 

"I'm going to go. I've got to check in a few things. Just remember I don't just show anyone how to take off my arm so don’t go around telling any of the others." Alea left the Cage and headed back to her house. She dropped the arm on her workbench and started to tear it down to work on it. As she pulled out a few screws and a few of the upper plates came off Edwin altered her to something.

 

"What is it, Ed?" Alea continued to tear down the arm.

 

"I have traced the hack back to Arizona. Not quite sure where, but I am closer."

 

Alea put down the tools and leaned back. "Were there any SHIELD members or assets out there?" 

 

"One Index member was, but he had been outfitted with a chip much like Skye’s bracelet was back before she was an agent." 

 

Alea looked back down at her work before answering, "Keep looking. If there is any trace I know you can find it, Ed."

 

"You put too much faith in me, my dear."

 

"No, I built you and helped you grow. I put as much faith in you as I do my brother and nephew." Alea continued to work on her arm well into the night knowing that Skye and Fitz knew that someone was on their side.

Chapter 9: April 12: One of Us

Coulson made his way up to Alea’s little workshop in her house from the Playground. As he entered the room he saw Alea hunched over a worktop. He scuffed his shoes against the floor to not startle her. Alea looked up at Coulson as he came to a stop next to her. She had been working on tweaking a few things on her main arm. “What is it, Phil?”

 

“Morse and I are headed to Brynmore Psychiatric Hospital.” 

 

“You want me to come with?” Alea put her tools down to lean back and straighten out her back.

 

“No, but you’ll probably want to be on standby.” He glances over at a cabinet on the far sidewall. Alea follows his line of sight and stands. She makes her way over to the cabinet and pulls open the door. It was full of drawers and a few larger pieces of sheet metal. She pulls open a drawer about halfway down to reveal that it was full with a dozen or so sets of what looked to be in the ear hearing aids, each labeled with different letters below them.

 

“Here’s your set of frequency blockers. Do you think my spare pair or Natasha’s pair would fit Morse best?” Alea hands a set of the blockers that had been labeled PJC. 

 

“I don’t know. Hand me both and I’ll have her test them.” 

 

Alea nods and picks up two pairs of them. One set that had come from the label AECS was black and the other pair were red. Alea put the other set from the first label in her pocket along with dropping several sets into bags with the matching labels into bags before putting them in her pocket. 

 

“Has May gotten back with Garner?” 

 

“She has. If you want to go play buffer after he gets out of what’s probably going to be a disastrous session with Skye go ahead.” Alea nodded and made her way to the Bus. Just as she made it there Garner was leaving the Cage. She heard Morse and Coulson take off in the smaller of the two quinjets. 

 

“I’m guessing Skye was cager then Clint was that time you had to do his psych eval wasn’t she?” Garner just sighs without looking at her.

 

“Sadly yes. I only got her to talk after mentioning the fact that I was married to Malinda.” Garner makes his way for the Playground’s kitchen. Alea follows him back that way. “Though you were also one just as bad as her.” He looks back at the look of shock on her face.

 

“Oh, come on! You were the first psychologist that my mom made me talk to after the disaster that was the one that I had as a child. You cannot blame me for not talking.” Alea shivered before continuing, “At least those two only had to talk to the overworked state workers instead of the rich ass that was my first psychologist.”

 

“Alea,” Garner turned and grabbed Alea’s flesh shoulder.

 

“Don’t you start. My childhood sucked, you know this. I talked to one of the best child psychologists when I first joined SHIELD. It didn’t go well. He just made my fears worse, not better. You were fresh out of the academy and a fresh graduate in psychology. You were the only one that I ever talked to, you know that, right?” 

 

Garner shook his head. “No, I hadn’t. Is that why Director Carter used you as a test for me?” 

 

“Yeah, it was. My mom had been trying to find me a psychologist that I would even talk to. All of the ones that came into SHIELD had tried to get me to talk, but most of them were a lot older than me, I never talked to them and the ones closer to my age were young and dumb. Didn’t think I could be as damaged as I was. You were the first brought in that was even near my age. You weren’t creeped out about my abilities and even allowed that to be used in my sessions.” Alea was grateful that it was a quiet hallway. Some of this hadn’t ever been voiced, but it felt good to do so. 

 

Garner thought back to when he first met Alea, she had been sitting in what would become his office, and while it was true that she hadn’t grown any since then she did stand taller, and who could fault him for thinking that she was just a kid when she looked like one. After talking to her for about half an hour he knew that she was a genius and older than him by just over a year. She was one of the only patients that he’d had at SHIELD that he hadn’t dreaded. 

 

They continued on their way to the kitchen as soon as they made it they saw May also enter. She looked over at Garner and Carter before going over to the coffee maker. “Carter, you know that everything on base is recorded.” 

 

“Shut it, May. Of course, I know, but also nothing can be gained from that video for any of the agents except maybe Hunter. Seeing as he wasn’t an agent when SHIELD fell.” Alea moved to grab a water bottle. Alea turned back to the two and for a second she could see what would have been a common scene when Strike Team Delta was required to seek counseling after the bad cases. All of them standing in the corner of her lab with Garner and May talking to Natasha. Clint and Coulson standing next to each other and Alea leaned against the wall waiting for her turn to be taken back to Garner’s office. It was just a second, but it hurt more than anything that it had been that long since those days, those days that everyone looked to the side about the looks Clint and Coulson gave each other and the team pulse a select few joined her in her lab after particularly bad missions. 

 

Alea shook her head. She drank about half the bottle before pulling herself fully from her mind. She watched as the two at least didn't go at each other's throats. Clint and Morse had after they had dated, but then again Garner and May parted on much more amenable circumstances. Suddenly the alarms on Skye went off and they all went running. Alea leading the way with her ID already out for the scanner on hanger doors. Alea let Garner be the first one up into the Bus and up the spiral staircase. Alea takes a tumble back down the stairs as the shaking picks up. 

 

“Got to get used to the balance of the alternate arm.” Alea picks herself off the floor as her phone goes off. She pulls it out and answers it.

 

“Hello?” 

 

“Alea, it was Skye’s father who hacked the Index and broke into Brynmore. He left a message there that was only two words, and I can’t seem to figure it out.”

 

Alea sighs as the shaking stops. Grateful that Garner and May managed to get Skye calmed back down. “What was it?” 

 

“‘Fight on.’ That’s all it said.”

 

It only took Alea a few seconds to put things together. “Wasn’t that the catchphrase of the high school that your father worked at? I know that you didn’t go there, but it seems that Skye’s father has something against you and that is public records.” 

 

“You’re right. Thanks.”

 

“Welcome. Want any backup?” 

 

“Yes, that would be good.” 

 

“I’ll meet you there.” Alea hung up the phone and saw May standing on the catwalk above her. 

 

“Coulson wants backup; he's headed to Manitowoc, Wisconsin.” May nodes before going back into the main part of the Bus. Alea goes to follow her, but before she could reach the cockpit May and already started the liftoff process. 

 

Alea pushes open the cockpit door and plops down in the copilot’s chair. “You know that we have another quinjet, right? Cause us taking the Bus isn’t the brightest idea right now.” May gives her a side-eye and Alea shrinks back. “Just sayn’.”

 

After a few moments, the cockpit door opened again and Garner poked his head in. Alea looked back at him with an 'I tried,' look. He shook his head and softened his look at Alea before looking over at May. 

 

"When were you going to tell us that we were taking off?" 

 

Alea watched as May’s face went harder than stone before she answered, "When we reached cruising altitude. You were with a patient and I didn't want to interrupt."

 

"May," it was Garner’s disapproving voice, which Alea hadn’t heard since he was a SHIELD agent, "Skye isn't fit for fieldwork and you are taking us straight there."

 

Alea felt the tensions rise and if it weren't for the fact that Garner was blocking her only way out she would have left. With her only exit blocked she focused on the controls of the plane and hoped to hell that May would just get up and allow her to pilot. After a few seconds, May looked over at her before saying, “Come back once we’re at cruising altitude.” 

 

Alea nodded and focused on the flight controls. May got up and she shut the cockpit door as she left the room. Alea reveling in the fact that she had been left alone for the time being. It wasn’t her fault that May had decided to take the Bus instead of her quinjet, that while still missing cloaking was still perfectly useful. 

 

It was another three minutes before they were up at cruising altitude and Alea set the autopilot. She stood and listened for yelling as she opened the cockpit door. There was none and she headed out to the main meeting area. Garner and May were just staring at one another. 

 

“Alea, I’m assuming that you know more about what Phil was getting himself into than May?” 

 

“Yeah. We’d gotten a call about Brynmore having been broke into. Phil and Morse headed to deal with it and after they got there they knew who had broken into it. It was Skye’s father. I’m just guessing here, but he didn’t mention anything about Angar, and when Phil leaves something like that out it typically means that they weren’t able to secure it.” 

 

Alea heard a gasp and turned to see Skye. “I’m coming with you.”

 

“No.” The three others said at the same time.

 

“It’s my dad, I’m the reason that you have to deal with him.” Skye joined the three at the table.

 

“You’re not stable, Skye. I know it sucks to be on the injured list, but no.” Alea pulled the frequency blockers out of her pocket. She placed them on the table and pulled out hers and a pair labeled MM. She handed the second pair over to May. 

 

“I can control it, I’m expecting some of the most distressing emotions, and look no shaking!” 

 

Alea turned to Skye, grabbed her arm with her left, and let her ring touch the skin, and get the readout. Alea’s glasses lens filled with an unending list of injuries. “You are only suppressing, not controlling. Your arms are filled with microfractures. You are injured, you are not going into the field.”

 

“You can heal me!” Skye yelled.

 

“I could, you’re right about that, but it would cost a lot of energy to heal you due to the damage, and frankly right now May and I need to focus on dealing with a group of very deranged psychopaths. Not healing you.” Alea turned back to the table. “Now go back to the cage before I knock you out and put you there myself.” Skye huffed and walked off.

 

Alea repocketed the leftover frequency blockers. She pulled out her phone and pulled up an app. “May, go ahead and put them in. I want to make sure they’re still working. Garner, I’d cover your ears.” Both tuck the frequency blockers in and Alea goes to press a button on the app and a long low tone plays before changing to a much higher and louder one. Garner winces at the sound but the two women don’t react at all.

 

Alea pulls out the blockers and May follows suit. “They work.” 

 

“How do those even work?” Garner asks.

 

“The frequency blockers work by finding whatever long tone is playing and canceling it out like a pair of noise-canceling headphones do. I actually heard both tones before they were canceled out, but May probably didn’t because all within a fifty or so-mile radius is set to the same block once one of them picks it up. I came up with this when we were first dealing with Angar.” Garner nods.

 

It was another thirty or so minutes of planning before they had a working plan. Alea headed back to the cockpit and took over flight controls. Alea landed them near the quinjet and she and May went running as soon as they had landed. Alea left her glasses behind in the cockpit. Garner stayed behind to watch Skye.

 

As they headed to the high school's football field Alea started to feel like something odd was going to happen. When they made it around the edge of the football field they could see Coulson and Angar. Zabo was also there on the field. Alea signaled to May that she was going to walk out, allowing May to take to the shadows near the stands. 

 

“Zabo!” Alea yells as she gets to the edge of the field. He turns to her. Alea focuses on those eyes and attempts to enter his mind, but is blocked. 

 

Zebo lets out an inhuman growl and charges at Alea. Alea stands her ground and readies herself for an impact that never happened. Instead, a blue transparent bubble showed up around Zebo up right before someone appeared right next to Zebo. Alea couldn’t hear what Zebo was shouting, but the two disappeared just as quickly as the second had appeared. 

 

Alea and the rest shook it off and went after the four Index members. Alea went after Levi as he started to run. Knowing the others would take out whoever they were closest to. As she got close to him he went to jump the fence and she grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled. He fell to the ground and curled up onto a ball. Alea sent a clean hit to his head to knock him out before turning back to the others. 

 

When she turned back to the others she saw that all the others had been cleanly taken down as well. Alea drug Levi back to where Coulson had knocked out Angar. They dealt with how they were going to transport them before dragging their buts back to the two jets. Soon they were up in the air. They dealt with the four rouges before heading back to the Playground, once they did Alea sat down with Skye. 

 

“I’m going to heal your arms. I had Ed send the data to Simmons so that she could work on something to contain your powers, but I will heal them when necessary, for now.” Alea placed her hand on Skye’s shoulder and started to heal the fractures. After about five minutes Alea started to shake before she let go of Skye. She then stumbled over to the closest seat and dropped into it before leaning back and seeming to pass out. 

 

When Coulson came over fifteen or so minutes later he sighed before leaning over to pick her up and take her to her bunk in the Playground. He stayed to watch over her and thought back to the first time that she’d passed out healing someone that he’d known about. It had been Clint not long after Peter had been born and that was the only reason they made it out alive. Alea had drained herself patching up where Clint had taken a bullet for her. It was hard to believe that he’d even been hit in the long run, not even a scar remained after that incident. Though Alea did say that that was the only time she’d healed so much that there wasn’t any scar tissue left. 

 

After a while, Coulson made sure that the heat was left where he knew she liked it before leaving her to sleep. They would need to figure out what to do with Skye and what had happened to her father, but that could wait until Alea was no longer on the verge of passing out. 

 

Chapter 10: April 14: Skye’s Powers (and Kidnapping?)

Notes:

Based off Episodes 14 and 15 of season 2 of Agents of SHIELD.

Alea watched as Coulson paced his office. "Alea, what do you think about Garner’s recommendations?" 

“She needs time to figure out exactly how to control her powers. We have places that we can take her to get used to her powers. We need to be able to find out exactly what her powers are, and we can’t do it here.” 

Coulson nodded. “Be ready to leave in a few hours. Assuming that you want to help Skye?” 

“Of course.” Alea leaves and packs a bag. She heads down to the hanger with the bag and goes over to her motorcycle. She pulls it out of the corner next to Lola and over to the jets. May was down there and pointed to the one that they were going to use. She loads up her stuff and locks down her motorcycle. 

She sits down and waits for Skye and Coulson to join her. It didn’t take long for the two to do so and they placed several large bags onto the floor before strapping into the harnesses. “What are you doing here Carter?” May has them in the air not long after that. 

Alea huffs. “I’m going to try and help you understand those powers of yours.” 

“How? We don’t know anything about them.” Skye was agitated but not enough to start to shake the jet.

Alea laughed. “That might be true, but I had to figure out my own abilities much younger than you. I’ve heard some good stories about Rogers trying to get used to being enhanced. How your powers came about is no different in the long run than mine. Also, Edwin has been pulling the readings and has compiled them, giving me a good approximation of what your powers maybe.”

Coulson leaned over and pulled out a twizzler for each of them. Alea took hers with a grin. Twizzlers had been a long-standing candy that Strike Team Delta took on missions. It had started with Clint always bringing a pack with him during the early days and never stopped. “Got nostalgic while shopping, Phil?” Coulson shrugged and smiled. It was quiet for the rest of the trip there. 

Once May landed them near the Retreat Alea makes sure to get all her stuff before heading down the ramp. She parks her motorcycle next to the building before following Skye and Coulson inside. She drops her bag down next to the door and watches Coulson and Skye interact. Most wouldn’t see what Alea did between the two, especially because most hadn’t seen Coulson with his kids. 

Coulson went over to the case on the table and showed Skye the gloves that Simmons had made with input from Alea. He told her about the fact that they may help her heal, she was still causing microfractures daily, and that there were side effects. Then he left the two of them alone. 

“So what do you want to do?” Skye looked over at Alea with hopeful eyes.

Alea looked out the window to the water. “I want to walk you through a few exercises to see if I can’t get an understanding of your powers. You want to do that inside or outside?” 

“Inside. What kind of exercises?”

“Verbal ones. So take a seat.” Alea points to the couch. She sits on one and Skye sits on the other. “What do your powers feel like when you use them?” 

Skye takes a moment to think. “Like bees swarming inside me, trying to get out.” 

“I wonder. Skye, did you know that everything in the world is vibrating on a microscopic level? Everything from the air that we breathe to us to the unmoving metal that my arm’s made of. All of them at different frequencies. I wonder if you can control that.” Alea starts to think and Skye just waits. Eventually, Alea looks back at Skye.

“Why would it break my bones then?” 

Alea takes a deep breath. “It could be because of something like a drawback. My ability to connect to people’s minds comes with one if I overtax myself mentally. I can get ‘locked’ inside my mind unable to come back. It’s kinda like blacking out, but I’m still conscious. Most of the time you can tell that it’s happened because my eyes turn purple.” 

“It hasn’t happened recently has it?” 

“Phil told me that it happened while I was on the Bus after you’d been shot. Which seems about right. Before that, it hadn’t happened since before the Battle of New York.” Alea leans back and looks at the ceiling. 

“What do you think would be the easiest thing to manipulate then?” Skye’s voice had an edge of excitement and worry in it.

“Water.” Alea answers. Skye runs over to the sink and turns it on. Alea jumps up and follows her. “Now, I don’t know if this will help you or not, but when I enter someone’s head I focus on their eyes and want to go into their head. With my healing, I focus on what I’m trying to fix and the knowledge on how to fix it.”

Skye nods and holds out her hands on each side of the flow of water. It takes several seconds for her to be able to do anything. But once she is, dramatic changes happen in the water’s flow. “That’s it, Skye!” 

Skye continues to manipulate the water for several more seconds before letting it go. Skye looks over at Alea who smiles. “So, got any idea of what I could use this ability for?” 

Alea thinks for a second before answering, “I mean you could probably manipulate the air around us to attack or defend, but until we know more, not really.” Alea heads back over to the couches. Skye joins her and the two talk about various things. 

Not long after sundown Alea gets up and makes something for the two to eat. They sit down and start to eat Skye asks about the Retreat. “Who exactly made this place so far out in the woods?” 

“Banner. This place is made with the same stuff that the cage is. Same way too. We brought you up here because it’s the one place that you probably can’t destroy with your powers when you’re not in control.” Alea explains. Soon after Alea heads to bed and Skye stays up to think about things. 

---

The next thing Alea knew she was being shaken awake by Skye. She looked up at her panicked face and jumped from the bed. “What’s up, Skye?” 

Skye sits down on the bed. “I let someone in that knew that I had powers. Told me that there were others like me.” 

Alea files away the fact that Skye let someone inside of the Retreat for something to go over later, but addresses the second part. “Skye, did they specifically say others like you, in that they are genetically linked powers?” Skye nodded and Alea continued, “Was it a man? Had no eyes?” That had been a detail that Alea had missed when she saw the man that took Skye’s father, but not one that she missed when she had to erase security footage. 

Skye nodded again. “Why have you seen him before?” 

Alea looked at Skye. “Yes, when your father was in Manitowoc. He was the one that took him away. Did he threaten you at all?” 

Skye shook her head. “No, told me a few things that we had already figured out about my powers. Says that there are people that can help me, but he wasn’t going to take me there by force.”

Alea sat down next to Skye. It was always a hard decision to do what was right for yourself because often you don’t know what’s right for yourself until after it’s been done. Alea knew that well. Knew it so well because she once had to decide to leave home at fourteen and still wondered if leaving earlier would have been better. Those types of decisions hunt you. 

Alea wrapped her arms around Skye and told her so. Allowing her to think for a minute, Alea allowed herself to drift in her head. Suddenly she could feel Coulson desperately trying to reach her. Alea went down the link. 

“What is it, Phil?” 

“SHIELD's been taken over. Morse and Mackenzie are part of a splinter faction of SHIELD led by Gonzales. I think that they’re coming your way.” Coulson’s mental voice was worried and Alea couldn't blame him. 

“Alright. I’ll take Skye and go. I have my bike, we’ll be fine.”  Alea leaves Coulson’s head. She grabs Skye’s wrist and pulls her up off the bed.

“We’ve got to go. A faction of SHIELD that is against us is headed this way.” Just as Alea stopped talking the power cut and Alea cursed. She pulled Skye to her feet and tugged her through the house. Alea pushed her way out the front door and picked up a helmet before handing one to Skye. “Get on.”

They both put on helmets and Alea got it going before revving the engine. Alea starts them out of there and Skye’s arm tightens around her. It takes three minutes to reach the laser barrier, and Alea was about to pass through it when a bullet hit the back tire and sent them flying. Alea maneuvers them so that she lands first, with her metal arm taking the brunt of the impact. They both quickly got up and turned to face the shooters. There were two, Morse and a bald man that Alea only slightly recognized. Alea figured there might have been more hiding out in the trees, but wasn’t certain.

“You know, I’ve never liked you, Carter.” The male raised his gun, aimed at Alea’s chest, and shot. Skye raised her hand and let out a shock wave that pulverized the nearby trees. Morse and the man hit were both tossed backward. A shard of one of the trees striking the man in the chest. Alea grabbed hold of Skye to help keep her balance. 

As the shaking stopped Skye whispered, “Gordan, help.” It was just moments later that a blue bubble surrounded them. He grabbed both of them after looking at Alea for a few seconds. The feeling that washes over Alea make her feel like she’s being sucked through a straw. Before they get to the other end Alea passes out, just hoping they weren’t trading one imprisonment for another.

Chapter 11: April 15-19: Afterlife (As a Place, Not a State of Being)

Notes:

Welp, 'nother chapter down. This one covers part of episode 2.16.

Alea came to awareness slowly. When it did she was glad that she had yet to open her eyes. If someone was watching they would have known she was awake. Alea started to work through the state of her body. The first thing that she noticed was that she was laying on her back and couldn’t feel her metal arm against her side or around her arm. She shifted her left arm just enough to know that someone had detached the arm. So she started to work through the rest of her limbs, flexing each joint slightly and seeing if anything was wrong. She decided that there was something wrapped around her feet, but past that nothing.

 

Alea opened her eyes and looked around. The walls were white with red accents. There was a large set of double doors that had something inlaid in them. The only other thing in the room was a table and chair. She sat up and looked at her feet to see white bandages wrapped around them.

 

Alea examines the bandages. “Guess I did go running without putting on shoes.” Alea then reaches up and checks her stump. Her fingers sliding into the bolt holes on her shoulder. She sighs and lays back down. Hopefully whoever came in here next would agree to get her port screws. Alea thought about how she hadn’t had a weapon on herself and was glad for it. She could act like her visible age and wouldn’t be questioned. 

 

It could have been ten minutes or an hour after Alea laid down that the doors opened. Alea looked over as two people entered, the eyeless man that got them away and a younger man. He was probably close in age to Skye and FitzSimmons. The blind one spoke first.

 

“What can you tell us about Skye?” 

 

Alea sat up. “What do I gain? She’s a close friend of mine. I won’t betray her trust even though you guys saved us.” Alea made eye contact with the younger and entered his head. As soon as she had established the connection she closed her eyes. She kicked her legs out like a little kid that they probably thought she was. 

 

The younger’s surface thoughts showed: Skye laying with needles sticking in her; The outside terrain, pointing to an Asain-inspired mountainous region; and an Asian woman with scars all across her face. 

 

“What do you want?” The blind asked.

 

“I dunno? Maybe my arm bolts back. It’s kinda uncomfortable without them in place?” Alea’s voice was half an octave higher than normal and exuded an innocence that she hadn’t had since she was four or so. 

 

“Alright, we’ll return the bolts. What can you tell us about Skye?” The younger spoke up.

 

Alea leaned onto her one arm and looked up at the ceiling and acted like she was thinking. “She called for you, Mr. Blind man, which means she saved me. I guess that means that she at least kinda likes me?” 

 

The thoughts changed, he was now thinking about how Alea reminded him of the little kids that he’s worked with within medical school. Alea allowed her metal form to smirk before pulling out of his head. 

 

“I think so. Anything else?” The blind man asked again.

 

Alea looked at the two of them before shrugging. “No, but who are you guys and where am I?” 

 

“I’m Lincoln and this is my friend Gordan. You’re at Lai Shi.” The younger man pointed at himself before pointing at the blind man. Alea does the mental translation of the Chinese to ‘Afterlife’.

 

“I’m Lea, nice to meet you!” Alea gave a big smile as she leaned forward. Those acting classes that Clint had taken her to were paying off. 

 

“Alright. I’ll go get those bolts for you. Gordan is going to stay here and watch you.” Alea smiled and nodded. Lincoln left and Alea kept up the act. It was unlikely that Gordan could tell that they had met before, but Alea wouldn’t know without knowing exactly what his powers are.

 

“You know, you might have Lincoln fooled but it’s going to take more than a little act to fool me. I know you were there when I picked up Zebo.” Alea was sure that if Gordan had eyes he would be glaring at her. 

 

“What do you mean? Who’s Zebo?” Alea knew that she only had to keep up the act long enough for Lincoln to come back.

 

Gordon sighs and gives up as the doors open again. Lincoln comes in with the bolts and the little toolbox that doesn’t leave her side. He hands them to her and she puts all of them in. 

 

Lincoln smiles at Alea. “Is there anything else you want to tell us about Skye?” 

 

Alea shakes her head. Lincoln has someone bring in a plate of food for her before leaving her alone.

 

This is how the next few days go. Lincoln will come in sometimes with or without Gordon. He’ll ask her about Skye and anything else. Alea will give vague, childish answers and enter his head and look around. She finds out quite a bit about this Afterlife place while in his head. She was kinda sad about the fact that Gordon didn’t have eyes because she was pretty sure that he had a lot of inside knowledge. Food was brought in three times a day and Alea went ahead and ate it. It would do her no good to be weak. She lamented the fact that something about this place kept her from talking to Phil with their links. 

 

On the fourth day when Lincoln normally came in it was the woman that she’d seen in his head instead. Alea kept up the act and it went well for about three minutes before things started to fall apart. 

 

“Hello, Lea, I’m Jiaying it’s nice to meet you.” Jiaying’s voice was kind, almost motherly. 

 

“Hi, I’m Lea.” Alea met her eyes and went into her head, closing her eyes as soon as she was inside.

 

Alea didn’t go far in Jiaying’s mind before finding out what her abilities were. She could absorb the lifeforce of others to heal herself and reverse aging. Alea went deeper into her head to see if she could find anything else because there was no doubt in her mind that Jiaying was way older than she looked now that she knew what her abilities were. It was while there that she got the sickening answer of how Whitehall had returned to youth: by using Jiaying’s ability. Alea gagged and ran away from that and back into her head.

 

What Alea hadn’t realized was that her physical form had also gagged. Jiaying was looking at her trying to figure out what was wrong with her. “I’m fine. I just forgot how to breathe for a second.” In her haste to get the excuse out Alea had forgotten to pitch her voice as she had been. When she’d realized what she’d done she cussed. 

 

Jiaying grabbed her by the back of her shirt and hissed, “Who the hell are you?” 

 

“Alea Carter. Not told a lie to your people. I was just acting to get more information, it was more instinctive than anything else.” Alea felt a weird feeling wash over her where Jiaying’s hand touched her skin. 

 

“Are you sure, because if you have I can kill you.” 

 

“I haven’t, I consider Skye a close friend and I was there trying to help her get used to her abilities.” Jiaying lets go of Alea and she scoots away from her. 

 

“If that is the case I want to know exactly what caused you to gag.” Alea heard the threat in her voice. 

 

Alea thought for a second before shrugging. “I can read minds. I can see your thoughts and memories. It’s why I have my glasses, they prevent me from being able to enter people’s heads without me wanting to. I saw what happened to you, what Werner Reinhardt did to you in what I guess was 1989?” Alea kept to the absolute bare minimum of the truth. It had been a long shot to guess the year, but if she was right Skye was related to Jiaying, they shared some facial features, and knowing who her father was made it make sense. 

 

Jiaying looked intrigued. “Yes, it was 1989. Are you another Inhuman that went through terrigenesis with Skye?” 

 

“I’m not an Inhuman? I gained my powers through several injections when I was a little kid. It almost killed me. Nothing like what happened with Skye.” 

 

“Your wording implies that you aren’t a kid anymore. You look like you are still one.” 

 

Alea chuckles. “I’m not, I'm closer in age to Gordon than Lincoln from what I can tell. I was born in 1960. I was injected with something close to super-soldier serum when I was fourteen.” 

 

Jiaying looked curious and Alea continued to explain. “I was born sickly and weak. My birth father, a well-known scientist within SHIELD, decided that he was going to fix me. He did so, but that wasn’t the end of the injections. Those didn’t stop until I was ten. Ended up with the mental power sometime around when I turned seven.” Alea leaned back and cast her eyes up to the ceiling. “So, I don’t age and can read people's minds. All because my father decided I would be the perfect guinea pig.” Alea stood and walked over to the wall before turning back to Jiaying. 

 

“You mean something human-made, from someone possibly in Hydra, did that to you. Kept you young and gave you powers?” 

 

“For all the faults that my father had he wasn’t Hydra. He didn’t know that I gained powers, only that I stopped aging. The number of agents in SHIELD that knew I had powers numbers even now in single digits, back then it was even lower. The aging part was obvious, and the experiment was tried again, but it killed that person. So it was buried. I am the only one that is even close to what I am.” Alea leaned back against the wall. 

 

Jiajing seemed to be shocked about this information. “I was under the expectation that all of you were unable to keep a secret.” 

 

“Misjudged us, not surprising. Anyway, I just want to see Skye and then leave, is that going to be possible?” It had been days since she’d seen the sun and she was ready to go home.

 

“I’ll have to see if she wants to see you. She’s not been awake very long.” Alea nods and allows her to leave. 

 

It was only a few minutes before Gordon came and collected her. “Skye will see you now.” Alea nodded and allowed him to teleport her to Skye. The room that they arrived in looked like a normal room, not the cell that Alea had been kept in. 

 

“Alea! I’m so glad you’re safe!” Skye ran up and hugged Alea. 

 

Alea returned the hug and murmured, “Right back at you.” Alea pulled away from the hug. “Are you doing alright?” 

 

Skye nodded. “Yeah, Lincoln said that they could teach me about my powers."

 

“I’m sure they can. Are you alright with staying here by yourself? I’ve convinced the head of this place to let me leave, I don’t like how weak my powers are here.” 

 

“I guess? Are you sure that I’ll be fine on my own?” 

 

Alea patted Skye on the shoulder. “I am. I’m sure that if you asked they would let you leave.”

 

“Then go. I’m sure that things are going crazy back at SHIELD.” Alea nodded and put her hand in her pants pocket before pulling it back out. In her hand was a small plush owl. Alea met Skye’s eyes as she looked at her with a confused face. 

 

“It has a GPS locator in it. Don’t lose it. If you squeeze it will let me know exactly where you are. Understood?” 

 

Skye’s metal form nodded and Alea quickly left Skye’s head. 

 

She turned back to Gordon who had come back with a bag of Alea’s stuff. “Where would you like to go?” 

 

“Can you take me where you picked me and Skye up from?” Alea asked.

 

Gordon nodded but looked at her oddly. “I can, but why back there?” 

 

“I know that they would have left by now. I have things that you probably left there that I need to pick up.” 

 

Gordon hands her the bag and she slings it up onto her shoulder before he takes her away. When they arrive Gordan lets go of her before leaving again. Alea sighs and starts her way back to the Retreat after glancing at her motorcycle and noticing that it was destroyed. When she makes it back to the cabin she stands at the door and uses her link with Phil to have him come open the door. He wraps her in a hug as soon as he sees her and they get to talking about what happened as soon as the door closes. 

Chapter 12: April 20-26: Two SHIELDs Become One

Notes:

Covers episodes 2.16-2.19.
Stuff between asterisks comes from episode 2.19.

This is a very long chapter that took me a long time to work out, but it's done now!

As plans go, just calling for the men that were hunting you wasn’t normally the best, but when they had something you needed and it was the only way to get it? Well in that case a bit better of a plan, but still something to think hard and long about before doing it. Though Hunter may claim that they didn’t have a plan, Alea knew who their ‘backup’ was and was fine with it. It would be fun to see what he thought of Peterson anyway.

 

Though Alea would have liked the plan better had he been able to track Peterson’s path to the Retreat, but Edwin had been down since the EMP blast at the Playground for reasons that Alea thought she was going to have to reevaluate when she got back. Alea had hidden, now with arm and glasses back on, with the other two, but in such a way that her heat signature wouldn’t be able to be picked up.

 

When the SHIELD team broke through the door, Alea shot two of them in quick succession with ICERs. They went down as Hunter and Coulson worked on knocking out the rest. Hunter and Coulson took the uniforms from two of the men close to their height. Alea couldn’t find anyone with the proper build and so they acted like she was a prisoner. Handcuffs loose around her wrists and Coulson socked her hard enough to leave a bruise on her cheek. Then they made their way back to the clearing where they would have left a quinjet.

 

Before Hunter could start complaining about how the plan sucked, Alea stomped on his foot. “Don’t even start. You’ll give us away if they left anyone back at the quinjets.” Hunter glares at her but they keep on moving. 

 

When they make it to where the one quinjet was parked Coulson starts to talk to the other people left there. It was going well before three more quinjets removed their cloaking. They gave up then and there. They were loaded onto one of the quinjet and were being strapped into the seats. Just as the ramp was closing someone grabbed it and forced it open. It was Peterson. Alea jumped up and kneed the agent in front of her. Coulson also started to fight back, but Hunter stood there in shock. Peterson shot the agent that was flying with a mini rocket launcher that was embedded into his arm gear. 

 

The fight was over in seconds and Alea took the pilot's seat. She turns off the camera system by pulling it out. “Agent Peterson, have you found out anything interesting?” 

 

“Dr. List, he’s looking into powered people.” Peterson sits down next to her. 

 

Alea sighs. She gets them into the air and looks back at Coulson. “Where are we going?” 

 

“We need someone who’s been on both SHIELD and Hydra that we could give motivation for.” 

 

Alea gals at him. “Phil, don’t try to be cryptic. It doesn't work when I know who you're talking about. So Ward then? Though like I said last night Skye is relatively safe where she’s at.” 

 

“Ward doesn’t have to know that.” Alea nods and sets off for the last known location of Grant Ward.

---

The next morning, Alea was laying on the floor of the quinjet with her arm digging around in the internals of it. Peterson was sitting in one of the seats along the walls. “What are you even doing?”

 

Alea pulls something out before sitting up and showing him. “Taking out the main tracker. It also acts as a speed limiter. Normally I’d have my AI overload it, but he’s still down and we need this gone now.” 

 

Peterson takes the part from her and crushes it. “How did you know where this was?” 

 

Alea put the access panel back. “I guess you wouldn’t know. I built the quinjets, all of them built before SHIELD fell were built to my specs.” 

 

Hunter and Coulson came running onto the quinjet. “Get us in the air. We’re picking up Fitz.” Alea nods and does what he asked for. Coulson gives her the coordinates and Alea warns them all to buckle up. Alea makes it to where Fitz was to meet them in record time. She cloaks the quin as she lands it. They open the ramp and wait for Fitz to make it to them. 

 

Once Fitz does, Alea starts the flight procedures and soon has them headed back to Tijuana. Alea listens as Coulson explains their plans to Fitz. “Why do we need Ward? He stabbed us in the back last time.” Fitz was upset and after Ward had dropped them from the Bus Alea couldn’t blame him. 

 

Alea lets Peterson take over flight controls before she gets up. She moves to kneel in front of Fitz. “We need someone that has had some connection to Hydra. Ward is the only person that we know that has. We need to figure out what Strucker and List have up their sleeves before it bites us in the ass. We already missed the fact that there was a whole nother fraction of SHIELD, we don’t need to let Hydra do the same.” 

 

“Couldn’t it be anyone else?” 

 

Fitz was shaking so hard from the fear, and Alea couldn’t blame him. “We’re going to hope that we can use the fact that Skye’s the one that would be hunted to get him to cooperate. I don’t think any of us like that to do so. Though Skye is relatively safe where she’s at.” 

 

“What do you mean?” Fitz looks at her curiously. His shaking was abating.

 

Alea moves to sit next to Coulson. “I was taken to that place as well. It is a place where all of the people there have the possibility of abilities that are like Skye’s. I’m pretty sure her mother heads the place.” 

 

“Wait really? I thought you were joking.” Hunter exclaimed. 

 

“I’m not. I woke up three or four days before I came back. I spent that time trying to figure things out about that place. Frankly, as long as Skye stays where she’s at she will be safe. I want to know if Strucker and List want to try to remake what Whitehall did.” 

 

"What did Whitehall do?" Hunter looks over at Alea.

 

Alea gives a little shudder before answering, "Let's just say his de-aging came with taking various tissues and organs from someone with powers that came from the same Kree experiment as Skye's." 

 

Everyone looked as grossed out as she had the first time. Alea stands back up and goes back to the pilot's chair. Alea feels Coulson pushing at her link and goes down it. 

 

“How certain are you about that? About what Whitehall did?” 

 

“Very, I was in the head of the person that it happened to. They could heal themselves along with reversing aging when they did it.” 

 

“Why didn’t you tell the rest about that?” 

 

“Because it’s not my thing to tell who they are, and it could cause them to jump to conclusions that I wouldn’t want them to come to.”

 

“Those are?” 

 

“Death is unavoidable for most, but what if you could keep yourself young with willing sacrifices of other people’s years, what would you call that? A god? A normal person who, like all of us, is afraid of death? Or a monster stealing other people’s lives?”

 

Coulson nods. “Which do you think it is?”

 

“The second. Someone afraid of death. I don’t think their intentions were malicious.” 

 

Coulson nods and Alea pulls away from the link. 

 

“Alea, I hope you’re right.” Alea nodded in agreement before going back to her head. 

 

Alea lands them and they head to the place that Agent 33’s mom said she was staying at. They had gotten lucky that her real name had been in the Toolbox and that Alea was able to figure out exactly who she was, but it hadn’t been hard, not when she looked further into it. Kara Palamas had been trained by her when she was still a new agent. Hell, Alea had cracked her collar bone in three places. Coulson and Peterson went in to apprehend her while Hunter and her took up positions outside. Fitz stayed with the quinjet. 

 

Alea watched as Ward entered the small restaurant before going to enter. She signaled to Hunter to stay where he was at. She came up behind Palamas and held her in her seat. “You know you could try and imitate me, but that wouldn’t go well for you. Do you remember me, Agent Palamas?” 

 

Palamas shook her head. Alea moved her left hand to rest on Palamas collar bone where she had broken it all those years ago. She tightened her hand just enough to cause pain. By the look on Peterson’s face, he was surprised by what Alea was doing. 

 

Alea gave a small smile and lightened her grip by just a fraction. “Do you remember me now?” 

 

“Only flashes. You helped train me in fighting.” 

 

“I did. Then you remember what I can do if you or Ward betray us?” Palamas nods and Alea lets her go. By that time Coulson was done and he and Ward were joining them in the front. 

 

“We’ll need to go pick something up.” Ward looks at Alea and she stands taller.

 

“Peterson’s going with you. He’ll be the one to lead you back to the quinjet.” Ward nods and they split up. Alea, Coulson, and Hunter go back to the quinjet and Ward, Palamas, and Peterson to pick up whatever it was Ward needed.

---

Alea looked at Coulson as they loaded Bakshi into the quinjet. Coulson didn’t seem very surprised to see Bakshi and Alea glared. He just shrugged and whispered, “It’s been a recent discovery. Talbot told me about it at least.” Alea nodded.

 

Alea got them into the air and listened to the plans. It sounded good, with the only thing that she worried about was how well the brainwashing had worked. But at this point, it was trust and trust only to get to List and Strucker so they could be taken out.

 

They landed near where List’s plane was and Bakshi and Peterson left. They quickly made it to List’s plane and the plan was underway. Alea sat listening to the feed and got worried as it went along. List and Strucker were using Gordon to find powered people like Jiaying. They were either trying to figure out why they could develop powers or take them as their own. 

 

When Bakshi starts to go off script and offers Peterson as payment for the secrets and Peterson starts to activate his launcher, Coulson pulls his gun on Ward. Pamalas grabs Fitz and holds him hostage. Hunter pulls his gun and points it at Ward as well. Alea grabs Pamalas around her neck with her metal arm.

 

Ward explains that it was the only way to get List to believe them and Coulson drops his gun and orders for Alea to let go of Pamalas and Hunter to drop his. Pamalas lets go of Fitz and he goes over to type in the command not to shoot. Alea sits back down and listens as List continues to talk. 

 

Suddenly there is a commotion on List’s plane as a woman speaks up. Saying that there was another one of the energy signals. Alea gets ready to take off, and as soon as List is in the air she is following. Not long after she was in the air her phone went off in her pocket. She pulls it out to see that it is a GPS location. It was the stuffed animal that she had given Skye. The bad thing was that they were headed in that direction. Alea keeps it to herself for the time being and allows for those in the back to draw their conclusions. 

 

Soon List’s plane was landing. Alea kept track of where he was going instead of landing near where he did. Alea’s phone went off again and she checked it again to see slightly different coordinates. Coulson came up beside her and asked, “What are those coordinates too?”

 

“Skye. I’d given her one of my side projects. I hadn’t re-routed it though Edwin and so it’s still going through the old system.”

 

Coulson catches her attention before fingerspelling, “T-H-I-N-G F-O-R L-I-L-A A-N-D C-O-O-P-E-R?” Alea nods. 

 

They get ready to land and Coulson splits up the team. Alea would be going with Coulson and Ward to find Skye. Hunter and Pamalas were tasked with taking out Hydra agents and Fitz was the coordinator. 

 

As soon as they touched down on top of the building where Hydra had gone, the two teams scattered. Alea, Coulson, and Ward deep into the building, where Fitz says Peterson’s tracking information is coming from. They head down taking out Hydra agents with extreme prejudice. Alea takes some slight pleasure in getting to knock heads in, it allows her to decompress in ways that just shooting someone doesn’t allow. Just a little twisted, but all agents of SHIELD were.

 

They find Peterson and the boy that she had met at the Afterlife, Lincoln. They were fighting and Alea wasn’t going to get any closer to the two with Lincoln apparently being able to manipulate electricity. Peterson points them in the direction of Skye and they head that way. When they get down there Skye looks over at them with hope in her eyes. She starts to run to them, but Gordan arrives. Gordon almost got away before Zebo ran at him and got in contact with him. They were gone in a flash of blue. Over the comms, they hear about Hunter being shot, and incoming SHIELD agents. 

 

Alea asks if they still had a connection with Peterson. Fitz replied, “No, his eye is offline. A pulse grenade was detonated and he and the man he was fighting with were caught up in it.” 

 

Coulson activates his comm. “Pull out. I repeat my team pull out. I’m going to stay behind and surrender to the SHIELD team. Follow them. I’ll call if it’s clear for you to come in.” Alea nods and she and Ward head back to the quinjet. There wasn’t any Hydra resistance on the way back and when they got up there everyone else was already seated. Alea went to the controls and took off, cloaking the quinjet and finding the SHIELD trackers. The only one that responded was the one for SHIELD 6-1-6. 

 

“Ward, you think you can follow the Bus and not kill us?” Alea turns her head to look at the man. He nods and she changes places with him. 

 

She heads over to Hunter. “Was it through and through?” Hunter shakes his head. Alea goes over to the overhead for the small medkit and pulls out the tweezers. “Pull up your shirt and let me get it out so I can heal you.” Hunter pulls up his shirt and Alea kneels in front of him. Alea pulls out the bullet before pulling out her flashlight and checking for anything else left in the wound. There was a piece of his shirt and she pulled that out too. She then places her hand over the bullet wound, healing him slowly but surely. Alea focused on making sure that the bleeding stopped and the muscles healed. 

 

Fitz came over and watched, probably to distract himself from what was going on between Pamalas and Ward. Alea couldn’t blame him, they were sickeningly sweet to each other. Especially when you knew that one was a psychopath and the other had been brainwashed. Soon all that was left to do was heal the skin and then she was done. Bullet wounds had become an easy thing for her to do years before as long as they didn’t involve massive internal injuries. 

 

“You’re good to go. I’m going to go take control of this quinjet before Ward gets too distracted.” Alea goes to the controls and glares at Ward. “Alright, lovebirds get out of my cockpit.” Ward glares back at Alea but she doesn’t waver. “Don’t even start with how you’re a better pilot, I’ve been flying longer than you’ve been alive.” Ward relents and gets up and Alea takes back over flight controls. 

 

Tailing the Bus wasn’t hard, but staying in the right part of its wake was. There was only a small gap in the radar that allowed for them to stay hidden. It was just luck that the Bus’s dead zone was the same size as a quinjet. It wasn’t long before Hunter’s phone rang and he answered. Alea got ready to pull out to dock with the Bus. “We’re in the green!”

 

Alea nods and pulls out to approach from the top. Picking up the headset she coordinates the landing with the pilot of the Bus. Once docked they head inside Alea’s eyes not straying from Pamalas and Ward’s forms. Coulson comes to stand next to her and lays a hand on her shoulder. 

 

“Ward, Pamalas you two are going to spend the trip in the Cage. Please don’t resist.” Coulson orders. They nod and luckily head there willingly. Alea starts to relax as soon as she hears the door to the cage lock shut. 

 

“Carter, I didn’t think you’d stay with SHIELD after all that’s happened.” Alea turns to look at Gonzales. Alea could remember Gonzales when he was a fresh-faced SHIELD agent. Back when he’d first joined SHIELD in the late seventies. They’d both changed immensely since then. 

 

“Gonzales, SHIELD is my home. I’ll do what I have to protect it. I’ve done it in the past and I’ll continue to.” Alea knew Gonzales didn’t like her being here. She’d been in SHIELD longer than he’d been. The only one other than Fury, and Gonzales still thought he was dead. 

 

“Siding with Coulson? Then again you were one of Fury’s attack dogs.” 

 

Alea clenches her fists and growls. “Attack dog? Me, no, not even close. Hell, none of those that were on Strike Team Delta or Coulson’s Team ever were. I never blindly followed Fury. I don’t blindly follow. I make informed decisions based on what I know. You want to know what I do know?” Gonzales tilts his head back before waving for her to go on. Alea does, “SHIELD fell, Fury is dead, Hand was killed, I was dropped into the ocean from this very plane by a Hydra sleeper agent. Once I made it home I checked for any distress signals and never saw one from the Iliad. We tried to get the agents back that had sent out distress signals." Alea took a deep breath. 

 

Coulson grabbed her shoulder and Gonzales tried to say something, but Alea spoke first. "I also spent weeks altering every SHIELD agents' file so that their families were redacted, making sure that they were safe. I had that uploaded and the original files pulled as soon as I knew Fury was dead. Do not say we didn't try to help the agents stranded by the fall of SHIELD." Alea turned and left the second floor. She made her way down to the avionics bay and plopped down. 

 

It wasn’t long before Coulson joined her. He sat down next to her and wrapped his arms around her. “When did you last see Gonzales?” 

 

Alea leaned into him. It took a minute for her to answer, “I think it was right after he’d come back. Fury called me into a meeting not long after Iron Man first showed up on the scene and Gonzales was there. He said that people like Stark and I shouldn't be trying to save the world, we only destroy it. If we have to deal with people like Skye, don’t let him go.” Coulson tightens his grip on her. 

 

Alea hadn’t chosen this life. One where she was eternally fourteen with the ability to heal people and read their minds. Even at times, the metal arm was a bane. Most people thought she’d willingly volunteered for the experiments that were done on her. Coulson knew better than that though; knew that if she could she would go back and change things. That she wished that she had been born a Carter instead of a Stark. They stayed there until they could feel the plane landing. 

 

Once the plane was on the ground they headed to join the rest in the cargo hold. As the ramp dropped they could see May and Simmons waiting for them. Morse was there as well as several agents that were going to be watching Ward and Pamalas. Alea left to head to the server room to see if she could restart Edwin. 

 

When she got down there she saw a hole in the far wall, near where Edwin’s servers were. With any luck, nothing had been damaged, but it was unlikely. She sighs and gets to work. She pulls out the top rack and immediately knows that she will have to pull and replace all of the hard drives with the ones in the backup server. She goes to the computer that interfaces with the servers and remotes into the one that Edwin logs his backups to. She opens the file and reads the last few lines. They read:

 

 

Last successful backup completed on 14/04/2015 at 18:52:20 to BC03.

Restart failed at 19:39:34 from BC03.

Shutting down. Manual restart will be required. Time of shutdown is 19:40:10 on 14/04/2015.

 

Alea sighed again and left the room to come back with a large cart that was outfitted with large wheels. She started to pull each hard drive and label them as they came out. It would take her several days to complete it. Fitz joined her at one point two days into the task.

 

“What are you going to do with all of these hard drives anyway?” 

 

“I’ve got a cold setup and hopefully a warm backup at a secondary location. These will go into the cold setup and I’ll bring them back here once that has been done. I’ve talked to Mackenzie and he’ll get someone to clean up this mess so I can reload the racks when I get back.” 

 

It was then that Coulson came and told them to get ready to go get Peterson and the powered man. They nodded. Alea headed up to her house and grabbed her cold-weather bag. She dropped her glasses on her nightstand, not needing to lose another pair. She also grabbed two quick transfer flash drives. She then went to meet the others on the Bus. 

 

Just as the ramp closed a sound came from the upper floor and bags were dropped and guns were drawn. All of them pointing at Ward. Then Skye comes through the door to the balcony. It had been Gordon dropping her off.

 

*“This is great. We finally got the team back together.”* Ward comments and Alea suppresses the urge to punch him. They get settled for the flight to the arctic circle. Alea sat down next to Skye and was glad that she had left her glasses behind at the Playground. It allowed her to talk to Skye and FitzSimmons without involving Ward.

 

Eventually, Coulson called for a mission debrief. That which Alea could place in the top ten of the most hilarious mission debriefs she's sat through. That includes the one where Clint fell through the ceiling and broke the wooden table. The whole of the team saying that they'd rather have Grant Ward dead than alive and him attempting to apologize for everything he did, priceless. They get on with the mission debrief and there wasn’t much about the build that surprised Alea. Another Hydra base built almost exactly the same as others. So as things go not going to be all that hard to figure out where they need to go. 

 

Alea leans back knowing that she was to act as a medium between the two groups while they were separated. Coulson leading one and Skye the other. They got ready for the approach to the base, with all of them bracing for the run to the quinjet. May gives the signal and they run. Alea takes the copilot's seat and straps in. She preps the disengagement.

 

As soon as May sits down next to her she presses the button and they are just attached to the Bus by the front hook. The missiles hit the bus and Alea pulls them free before killing the engines. They had entered free fall and weren't exiting it until the last second. 

 

She reaches forward and gets ready to start the engines. At May’s signal, she pulls the start lever all the way down as hard as she could. They level out and Alea leans back as May reports in. They unstrap and kill the engines for a second time. Alea turns on the heater in her suit and drops the ramp. They head out.

 

Once they make it to the base and inside Bakshi joins them. Alea connects her made to Coulson’s and just lets the link sit. Then they split up, Bakshi leading the way to the cells. He pushes the code into the door and a firefight ensues. Alea ducks behind a table and pokes her head out to shoot. 

 

It doesn’t take long to clear the room and they head further into the room to see Peterson on a gurney without a guard. Simmons goes in and he sits up and starts to talk to her. He wasn’t too injured, and he said Lincoln was worse off so Alea left with Skye to find him.

 

After another firefight and a close call where she was with a bullet in the left arm, they had found him. He was way worse off and flatlined. Alea was about to jump up and start compressions when Skye stepped up with her hands' inches from his chest. It took a few seconds before she did anything, but then sparks arched from him to her and after a second the monitor reflected the return of his heartbeat. Alea pulled the leads free of his chest and placed her left hand down on his chest as she kicked the lock off. 

 

“We’ve got everything on our end. What about you?” Alea asks down the link.

 

“Almost there. One more file.”

 

“Alright hurry then.”

 

Alea and Skye get the move on with Lincoln’s gurney. They meet up with Ward and Simmons moving Peterson, but no Bakshi. Alea doesn’t question it and they leave. They make it back to the quinjet and sometime between Alea strapping down the two beds and Coulson, May, and Fitz showing up, Ward disappears. She doesn’t mind not taking him back and just gets to work on healing Lincoln as they take off. He doesn’t have a lot of physical damage and she starts to heal it, but after a few seconds he starts to flail and Alea pulls back. 

 

“Skye, what’s his power?” 

 

“He controls electricity. He told me that each of his cells has a different charge.” 

 

Alea shakes her head and goes over to Peterson. “Then till I know more I can’t heal him. I’ll have to watch how his body does it itself.” Alea starts to work on Peterson. It wasn’t long before they were landing back at the Playground and Alea looked over at Coulson. 

 

“I’ve got to meet with Gonzales and hold up my side of the deal I made. I’ll come to find you after that, alright?” Alea nods and heads back to the server room. It had been cleaned up and the wall patched. Mackenzie was looking at one of the racks that she had used. 

 

“Thank you for cleaning this up.” 

 

“No problem. I’m sorry that your AI was damaged in the process.” 

 

Alea shrugs. “It’s not the biggest deal. The thing that I’m worried about is the fact that Edwin failed to restart from the remote server I have.” 

 

Mackenzie clasped her shoulder, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” 

 

Alea nods and is about to speak again when Coulson speaks through the still open link, “Come meet me in your house.” 

 

Alea says her goodbyes to Mackenzie and heads to her house. When she gets there Coulson is waiting for her on the couch. “The Avengers are about to be sent out on a mission to get Loki’s scepter from a Hydra base.” 

 

“Alright. I need to go to your house so I can see what’s wrong with Edwin. I’m already ready to go, and I’ll probably have to be gone for a week or so.”

 

Coulson nods. “Alright. Say hi to the kids for me?” 

 

“Record something for them and I’ll show it to them when I get there. I’ve got to move the hard drives onto my quinjet. It’ll take a little while to do that.” Alea hands him her phone before going back into the house. She grabs the cart and loads the hard drives into a box that had slots in it for the hard drives. It takes her a little bit for her to do it. Then she changes out of the mission clothes into some casual clothes before grabbing the box and passing by Coulson. He hands the phone back and says, “I texted Clint and Laura that you were headed that way.” 

 

“Thanks, see you in a week!” Alea heads down and loads up her quinjet and takes off headed to the Barton-Coulson homestead for the first time in a while.

Chapter 13: April 27 - May 5: A Break and The Avengers

Notes:

Alright this chapter has one of the moments that I have had in mind for this series since near the beginning. This chapter covers all but the battle of Sokovia from Age of ULTRON.

Edit 4/1/2022: Text messages made using CodenameCarrot and La_Temperanza's workskin turoial that can be found here. I have made some edits in the case of colors but the base is from there.

Alea landed in the woods far off from the Barton-Coulson homestead and walked up to the house while looking through the recent worldwide news. Sokovia was recovering well and it was looking good for the previously war-torn nation.

 

Alea walked up the steps to the porch and knocked on the door. She could see Cooper come up to the door and move the blinds out of the way. After a second he opened the door and tackled her.

 

"Aunt Alea! Aunt Laura, Aunt Alea is here!" Cooper went running back into the house leaving Alea standing in the doorway. Alea just chuckled before entering the house and shutting the door. Laura came around the corner leading from the kitchen. 

 

"I was wondering when you'd show up." 

 

Alea headed into the living room, “Was Edwin really that loud when he went off?” 

 

“No, but you know how bad the internet gets out here when the system downstairs goes down. Also, Phil texted last night.” Laura sat down in one of the chairs. Alea sits down on the couch and nods. She saw Lila creep into the room out of the corner of her eye and looked over at her. “What’s up, Lila?” 

 

“Why didn’t papa come too?” Lila looked over at the single picture that was of Strike Team Delta dressed in formal wear. It was one of a few pictures of Coulson that was up in his own house. 

 

“He’s got work to do, just like your dad. Go get your brother, I have a video for you from him, though.” Lila smiled and ran off. 

 

Laura caught Alea’s attention and she turned back to her. “Phil gave you a video for the kids?” 

 

Alea nodded. “He couldn’t come and I knew that taking a call would be suspicious. The team only knows that he’s married to Clint, not that they have two kids. Hell, the Avengers don’t even know that Clint’s married, let alone married to Phil. Well, other than Nat, and she still believes Phil is dead.”

 

Laura nods as the two kids come running into the room. Alea sets up the video and leaves the room. She didn’t need to hear what Coulson had said to the two kids. Instead, she goes back out to the quinjet and grabs the box of hard drives. She goes downstairs and through the side door. There were four server racks in the room. She sits the box down next to the rack labeled 2 and goes over to the rack labeled 4 and opens it. She makes sure the last computer is on before going over to the monitor mounted on the wall. Alea pulls up the log using the screen and reads through it.

 

After a few minutes, she shakes her head and goes over to the last few lines before sighing. She goes over to the rack labeled one and pulls out a few racks and starts to put the drives she brought into it. After a while, she hears light footsteps on the stairs. She looks to the stairs to see Lila at the bottom with her phone gripped in her hand.

 

"You can come in, Lila." Alea leans back from the server. Lila runs over and holds out the phone. Alea takes it and places it in her pants pockets.

 

Lila looks around for a little bit before speaking. "Whatcha doing down here?" 

 

Alea picked Lila up and put her into her lap. She started to explain what she was doing and why she was doing it. Lila sat there listening and watched as Alea’s hands went through the motions of putting the hard drives into the server before letting her do it once or twice.

 

Once all the drives were in the servers she places them back into the rack and lets Lila turn them on. Alea watches as the error codes come up from the servers and sighs. She puts her head in her hands and just stands there. It had been too long since she’d had to rebuild Edwin, but it looked like she would be doing it now.

---

After just under a week of working on Edwin, she had him back up. It had required the rebuilding of two drives and overall frustration with the code. Now she was sitting between Cooper and Lila telling them some child-friendly stories about their dads. It was one of the many stories that had Phil chasing Clint through the vents, when suddenly her phone went off before saying,  "Attack detected, shutting down."

 

Alea ran downstairs to access the server. When she did she found that there was a full-screen alert. She started reading it and after a few seconds, she knew it wasn’t a malicious attack, or at least she hoped it wasn’t. She went upstairs and told Laura that they wouldn’t have internet while she tried to figure out what was going on. She then disconnected the servers from the ethernet before disconnecting them from each other. Once that was done she started Edwin back up and saw why he'd shut himself down, parts of what was JARVIS was now sitting on her server. 

 

Alea grabbed the headset and tossed it on. “Edwin, can you get through to JARVIS?” 

 

“Going to attempt once now.”  Alea waited for a few seconds to see if Edwin could get through to him. After just over a minute Edwin reported back.  “There is enough of JARVIS to rebuild it, but it looks like he was attacked by something that Tony Stark was referring to as ULTRON.”

 

“Great, my brother created an evil AI. Alright, start rebuilding JARVIS, I'm going to keep you offline for the moment and try to get in contact with Sam."

 

Alea pulled her phone from her pocket as she retreated to the far corner of the basement. She dialed a number and when it wasn’t picked up she left a message. "SK, have H ready to go. Might need it in a few days, M out."

 

Alea shook her head and texted Coulson.

 

Me: Be ready for something big.
PC: What did you do this time?
Me: Not me, my brother. I’m sure you shared that intel with MH, and well AS might have created an evil AI?
PC: What?
Me: Yeah, J found safe place in E. Caused local sd and E got the info once I had it back up. I told SK to get H ready to go if we need it. Going to attempt to get into contact with C, but he tends to just shut off the link.
PC: Keep me posted, and keep safe.
Me: You 2. 

 

Alea went back upstairs to help put the kids down. After that, she did attempt to get into contact with Clint via their mental link, but she’d been right, Clint had already closed off his link. She'd watch the news for anything related to the Avengers over the next few days. That was all she could do for now.

---

Two days later Alea was helping Laura get breakfast ready as the news switched over to a fight in Johannesburg. Alea listened to the report about the Avengers being involved in it, Stark and Banner creating quite the mess. Alea turned to watch a bit before turning back to mixing up the eggs. Laura reached over and turned off the news as heavy feet made their way down the steps. Soon Cooper was sitting at the table waiting.

 

“My brother is alright isn’t he?” Laura leaned over Alea’s shoulder keeping the question from reaching Cooper. Alea nodded and she stepped back to talk to Cooper about keeping the TV off the news for the day. It was there in the quiet in between Cooper and Laura's voices that Alea heard the sound of quinjet landing. At first, Alea doesn’t think anything of it, Coulson could have been there to get something or even Clint seeing as he kept a quinjet here to go back to the Avengers. 

 

It’s only when Clint was the one to yell, “Honey, I'm home!” that Alea panicked. Alea put down the things that she had in her hand and made a run for the door that led out of the back of the house. She trips over her own feet and her left arm makes contact with the door frame and makes a nice loud thud. She doesn’t really stop though knowing that Clint or Laura would be able to come up with something. 

 

She darts across the backyard and to the barn before really stopping. She slides open the barn door to see Fury sitting there. She slides the barn door back shut before turning on Fury. “What the hell are you doing here?” 

 

“Is the Helicarrier ready?” Fury stands.

 

“Of course, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t you know that. We need the bloody thing for SHIELD.” Alea stocks up to him and says, “I ask you again, why the hell are you here?” 

 

“I’m sure I’m here for the same reason that Barton brought the Avengers here. To hide, almost everyone that knows of this place is here,” Fury answers.

 

“Fine, I’ll give you that.” Alea runs her hand through her hair and watches as Fury pulls out his phone.

 

“If you are going to be calling any of the Avengers out here, other than Clint or Nat, tell me now please.”

 

“Then go find yourself a place to hide.” Fury answers.

 

Alea nods and heads out the back door of the barn. She makes a mad dash to the play fort that they had put up the summer before for Cooper and Lila. Alea leaned against the wall and fell asleep. She woke hours later to see stars in the sky. She stood and looked up to the house to see most of the lights were out, the only rooms that still had lights on were the rooms that Natasha normally stayed in and the master bedroom. Alea makes her way back to the house and uses the porch railing to get onto the roof. She makes her way over to the master bedroom and opens the window before sticking her head into the room. 

 

“Barton, you’re coming with me, right now!” Alea whisper yells. Clint gets off the bed and follows Alea back out to the play fort. Once they make it out there Alea pushes Clint against the wall. 

 

“I’m sure you noticed that I was here when you got here with the Avengers. Phil told you I was coming here last week! You should have called, or had Nat call, or texted, or emailed, or bloody hell a telegram would have sufficed!” Alea takes two steps away from Clint and punches the wall of the play fort with her right fist. Clint hears the sickening crunch as some of the bones in her fist give out. He knew that he had to get her to calm down before she did permanent damage to her flesh arm or even worse her legs.

 

“Really you need to get over the fact that you don’t want the rest of them to know about you. I’m getting tired of lying all the damn time. I’ve almost told Stark twice about my ears, and I’m pretty sure when Nat or Stark find out about the fact that I know that Phil is alive I’m going to be punched. I brought them here so I didn’t have to continue lying about the fact that I have a family, and I knew that you would be here, you are my family, too, Lea. I don’t want to keep lying about you.” Clint approaches Alea slowly, like you would a wounded animal, before wrapping her in his arms. 

 

It’s then that the fury that Alea had been building up since before she’d fallen asleep melted away. She went lax in Clint’s arms before she started to cry. Clint picked her up and carried her back to the house. Clint made it back up to the house and laid her down on the couch before making his way to the bathroom to get the first aid kit. When he came back out of the bathroom, both Banner and Natasha were standing in the living room looking at Alea.

 

“Who’s this?” Banner asks, taking notice of the broken skin on her knuckles.

 

“Alea, she was part of SHIELD before it fell. She’s a good friend of mine. She comes out here to get away.” Clint walks up to Alea, suddenly very glad that she almost constantly wears her arm covering. He starts to treat her fingers knowing that Natasha was glaring at him.

 

“Did you know her when you were in SHIELD, Natasha?” Banner asks. 

 

“Yes, she was a good friend of Coulson’s as well. She tended to stay away from most others though.” Natasha answers.

 

There was a noise from upstairs just before Lila came running down the stairs. She only stops long enough that she sees Alea before running up to her and Clint. 

 

“What’s wrong, baby?” Clint asks as she attaches herself to him.

 

"I had a bad dream." Lila whimpered. Clint ran his hand through her hair. After a few minutes, Alea shifted on the couch before letting out a gasp of pain. She rolled up onto her side and opened her eyes. She looked at Clint and saw Lila sitting in his arms.

 

"Did you have a bad dream, Lila?"

 

Lila nods and launches herself into Alea's arms. Alea wraps her arms around Lila and sits up. She allows Clint to continue to treat her hand and after it was completely bandaged she put Lila back in her father's arms.

 

"I'll clean up. It was my fault that you had to make this mess. Go take care of Lila." Alea says as she starts to pick up the trash.

 

Clint nods and carries Lila back up to her bedroom. It was then that Alea noticed both Banner and Natasha.

 

"Nat, are you just going to stand there?" Alea says standing to throw the trash away.

 

"Sure because it looks like you did something stupid and broke your fingers." 

 

Alea turns and sticks her tongue out at her before tossing the trash in the trash can. She moves back to the couch and starts to pack back up the first aid kit. She doesn't struggle much with it even though she couldn't use her right hand. 

 

“You’re used to doing things without an arm.” Banner walked over to her and helped her get some of it situated back in the first aid kit. 

 

“Yep, Had to get used to doing things with one hand occupied over the years.” Alea takes the kit from Banner once they get it closed up and takes it back to the bathroom. Alea tucks it back underneath the sink and then makes her way back to the two awake Avengers. “I’d try to get some sleep if I were you. The kids will be up at the crack of dawn and no one will get to sleep after they wake up.” Alea heads down to the basement and reconnects Edwin’s servers to the net. It doesn’t take long for the response to come back that he was up and helping to fight ULTRON actively.

 

Alea then makes her way up to her bedroom. When she opens the door and lets the hall light illuminate her room she could just make out the outline of Cooper asleep in her bed. She shuts the door back and then grabs a change of clothes before walking over to the bathroom and changing. She tosses her clothes in the hamper before joining Cooper on the bed. As she gets situated she feels Cooper wrapping his arms around her before settling back down. She falls asleep not long after that.

---

Alea wakes covered in sweat and breathing heavily. She detangles herself from both the blankets and Cooper. She goes downstairs and sits on the couch. She allows herself to fall over and starts to drift back to sleep. The nightmare kept creeping back into her thoughts and kept her awake. She knew that time had passed due to the sunlight starting to come in through the windows. She heard someone on the steps, but she didn’t move. 

 

It was all of the Avengers except for Natasha and Clint. Tony was the first to spot Alea on the couch and walked over to the dazed SHIELD agent. She seemed to be asleep to Tony who took a good look over Alea. He turned to Clint who was just making his way down the steps. “Who’s this little girl, Legolas? Got a-” Tony was cut off by Alea’s left fist meeting his jaw. There was a cracking sound as Tony’s jaw was broken by the impact. Tony, dazed by the impact, fell backward onto the coffee table.

 

Clint raced down the rest of the steps as Alea folded in on herself. He didn't stop to inspect the damages before pulling Alea up off the couch and into the kitchen. Alea didn't fight him and that was worrying. It seemed to take her several more minutes before she came back to herself. “Clint, who did I just punch? Cause while it looked like my father it couldn't have been.” She was shaking and Clint just held her.

 

“Tony, I’m pretty sure that you just broke his jaw.”

 

"Shit."

 

Clint shook his head. "Just heal him. It will be fine." 

 

Alea shook herself and made her way back into the living room. "Sorry about that, Stark. My sorry ass father used to call me that and you caught me after a nightmare. I'll heal that jaw for you if you want me to." 

 

"Do you have healing powers?" Rogers asked.

 

"Yeah, exposed to the Tesseract and a lot of other shit that by all means should have killed me. All it did was give me healing powers." Alea waved her broken hand. "Though I can't use them on myself." Alea placed her fingertips on Tony’s rapidly bruising cheek and focused on healing the jaw. 

 

“Avengers, this is Alea. She used to be part of Strike Team Delta back in the day with me and Nat.” Clint introduced Alea. 

 

"Why would SHIELD allow a little kid to go on missions?" Rogers looked confused about Alea’s apparent age.

 

Alea and Clint both laughed. Alea answered with, "Not a kid. I'm a decade older than Stark here. I just don't physically age at all."

 

“You don’t?” Stark’s jaw was healed enough so that he could talk. 

 

“Nope, looked like I was fourteen since June of 1974. Not aged a day in forty-one years. Like I said I was exposed to things that should have killed me but didn’t. You’re all healed up Stark.” 

 

He rubbed at his jaw and noticed that there wasn’t any pain left. “Wow, you’re pretty good at that healing thing.” 

 

Alea blushed and turned away from Tony as her phone went off. She pulled it out and looked at the screen to see a message from Fury to meet him at the Theta Protocol facility. She messaged back that she would as soon as possible but she would be able to find them if they took off. “Clint, I need to get something out of the basement and I’m going to say goodbye to the kids. I need to go do something.” 

 

Clint looks over at her and nods when she shakes her phone. “I’ll go wake the kids then. Any clue where Cooper went last night?” 

 

“My room. I’ll be downstairs.” Alea heads down to the basement and grabs the box of hard drives that Edwin’s server had been rebuilt onto so that she could take them back to the Playground. As she came back up both Lila and Cooper were standing there looking sad. She put the box on the ground and hugged the two close. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry about it. Hopefully, it will be with your Papa in tow.” Both nod and Alea lets them go. When she straightened up Laura was standing there. 

 

Laura gathered her into a hug and whispered, "Be safe. Watch over my idiot brother."

 

"I'll be as safe as I can. See you when I next get free time." Alea pulled away and gathered the box. She headed out to her quinjet and saw Clint standing there. His arms are crossed in front of him.

 

Alea placed the box in a cubby hole on the jet and grabbed a few bungee cords to hold it in. “What’s up?” 

 

Clint uncrossed his arms. “Got a set of my hearing aid comms on here?” 

 

Alea hummed before heading over to where there was a medkit strapped to the wall. She opens a little hatch below the kit to show two vials and two small cases. One which was in a deep purple. “My only question is why do you need these? Is it because the ones you're using right now don’t fit right?” 

 

Clint shook his head. “No. When he had to deal with what caused the Johannesburg battle? I hadn’t had them in the right place in my ears after dealing with a hypnotized Nat. When we were headed back I dropped one out of my ears and they don’t work without having the other of a matched set.” 

 

“Did they fall out cause you put them in wrong or what?” 

 

“I had thought that I had them in good, but I haven’t gotten new in-ear comms since before my last earmolds. My last molded aids still fit well.”

 

Alea nods and hands the case over. “These are made using your last ear molds so they should fit better than your last ones then.” He nods in thanks and heads of the quinjet. 

 

Alea waited until he was almost back to the house before taking off. “Ed, the Helicarrier still on the ground?”

 

“Yes, my dear. I shall inform you if it does take off.” 

 

“Don’t take up to many of your limited resources, Ed. Or have you went to NEXUS Hub to smooch of their servers?” 

 

“Both me and JARVIS, or more accurately parts of JARVIS, are there working against ULTRON.”  Alea smiles and lets her mind wander as she flys. It didn’t take her long to reach the facility and she puts on the headset and calls down there and they open the hanger and she lands on the Helicarrier. Once she had docked so it wouldn’t go flying off she grabbed the box and headed down into the facility. 

 

“Sam, did the server stored here go down last month?” She asked as she ran into the man.

 

He nodded. “I couldn’t get it to come back up. You want to double-check before you leave with Fury?” 

 

Alea nodded and headed to the server room. After ten seconds of looking over what had happened when the main backup went down, she knew what the problem was, it just needed her password and the syce code and then he would be back up from there. She got it up in less than ten minutes and didn’t even have to pull out a hard drive. She headed back to the Helicarrier and got ready to go. It would be a long wait to see where they were needed but they were soon taking off. 

 

As Alea walked through the bridge she overheard Hill talking to Rhodes and having him meet them mid-flight. She heard Hill say where they were at and smiled. She would wait to inform Rhodes that she was there until he was landing on the deck, mostly so she could see his reaction to seeing her. He wouldn’t be able to meet them until early the next day but that was expected at this point. 

Chapter 14: May 6: A Reunion and The Battle of Sokovia

Alea woke up and checked her fingers to notice that they weren’t still broken. “Enhanced healing for the win.” She mumbled as she tore off the banging. Then she started to make sure everything was still functioning correctly after being in the air for about twelve hours. Everything looked good and she started up to head for the bridge and talk to Hill. “When is Colonel Rhodes to join us?” 

 

“Soon. He said that he was about to take off. Can you get a hold of Barton or Romanoff about where they are going? ” Alea nods and heads out onto the landing pad. They weren’t high enough to need oxygen and so she just walked out. She allows herself to sink into her mind only just enough to link to Clint.

 

“Clint, where are you guys right now?” 

 

“Sokovia, why?”

 

“Let’s just say there will be a surprise here in about an hour.” 

 

“Good, cause the city is full of ULTRON’s bots.” 

 

“See you soon.” Alea only stayed in Clint’s mind long enough to hear him hum in agreement. 

 

Alea activated her comm. “Hawkeye just said that they're in Sokovia if you didn’t already know.” 

 

“Thank you, Mind.” Hill’s voice came over the comms.

 

Alea was about to retort about Hill having used her old codename when she heard thrusters coming towards her. She looked in the direction that the sound was coming from to see the War Machine armor. Alea’s face broke out into a big smile and she waved. He must have caught sight of her because he landed right in front of her. 

 

As soon as he was on the Helicarrier he raised his hands and signed, “Hello, Alea. Long time no see.” Had anyone else been looking at the signs it wouldn't have made any sense for the signs that Rhodes had used was those that they had made up in childhood. A language that only the two of them completely understood, even now. 

 

Alea raised her hands and replied, “It has. Almost too long, Rhodey.”  

 

Rhodes stepped out of the armor and embraced Alea. She hugged him right back. Alea knew that most of their conversations would have to take place with either their sign or in their minds, but that wasn’t any different than how they talked in middle school and what little of high school they went to together. Alea pulled back after a little while. 

 

"We'll meet up with the Avengers in a few hours at most. You should come in and rest for a bit." Rhodes nodded and followed Alea’s lead. They waved to Hill as they passed, but Alea kept moving down to the lab. She had Edwin lock out the audio-video feed before signing, “How Ed?” with non-conventional signs.

 

Rhodes answers in a set of more covenantal signs, “Alright. He’s stopped drinking completely. The Team good for him.” 

 

Alea nods, a little smile on her face. “When you learn more ASL?” This was all in conventional sign then the gibberish that they had been using.

 

“Wanted to. Some people deployed with loss hearing. I learned then. When you?” 

 

“Shouldn’t tell you. Will anyway. Don’t tell anyone else. Clint deaf. He why.” Alea uses Clint’s name sign of c followed by the sign for archer. 

 

“B-A-R-T-O-N?” Rhodey fingerspells. Alea nods before doing Clint’s name sign again. Rhodey copies it.

 

Alea meets his eyes and removes her glasses. He nods in consent to her being in his head. Alea focuses and drops herself into his head.

 

Alea keeps her eyes away from his memories, knowing that they would just make her hurt. She waited the few seconds that it took Rhodes to join her sliding back on her glasses in the real world. Once he had joined her the memories stopped swirling around.

 

"Lea, I can still feel the old link. So I guess that those will never go away?"

 

"They won't. Not unless you have brain damage. My mo- Aunt Peggy's link has deteriorated to the point of being unusable. But not because I hadn’t used the links have any of them left. Now death they will break apart and left me in agony, but otherwise no."

 

Rhodes shifted and looked over her shoulder. She turned to see a memory of Tony. The first Iron Man armor around him in the desert. "Did you know back then?"

 

"Uh, no. I didn't know until Phil Coulson died on this very Helicarrier in '12." Alea turned to Rhodes. "I haven't used his link with me. Cause I don't want to break his mental wall, so I had no clue." Alea scratched at her head. Rhodey nodded. 

 

Rhodey’s memories loathed back to when they were kids. It eventually settled into her and Rhodey along with Peggy and Daniel. They were up at the summer house and all of them were signing. “You know, calling Peggy Carter your mother is not a thing you have to hide from me. Your birth mother never bothered to learn anything to help you when your birth father deafened you. The Carter-Sousa's were definitely more your parents than anyone other than maybe Edwin and Ana Jarvis.”

 

Suddenly an announcement came over Alea’s com. “We’re approaching Sokovia now. Carter be ready for the injured. I’m assuming Colonel Rhodes is with you, tell him to get back to the War Machine armor.”  

 

Alea reached up to her comm and responded in kind and then told Rhodey what had come over the comms. He nodded and they headed back up to the air deck. Alea watched as Rhodes took out some drone that had been following Stark. She then headed back into the bridge and saw the main medic on board. “What are we going to do with the injured Agent Carter?” 

 

“I’m about to announce that. Get the first team ready on the main deck and the second team on the second deck.” He nods and heads off.

 

Alea switched her comm over to the frequency that was used with the Avengers as she went over to the PA system on the Helicarrier. “All heavily injured should be directed to the main deck of the Helicarrier. I will be there with a small team of medics to deal with those. Minor injuries should be directed to the second deck, a medic team will be there. Uninjured to the third deck.” 

 

Alea turned her comm back to listing mode and headed to the main deck. She gets there just in time to see the lifeboats disconnect. She sat and listened as the Avengers fought ULTRON. It wasn’t going too well, but it did sound like Stark had a plan.

 

It wasn’t long before the first lifeboat came back, full to the brim with people. They started to direct them down where they wanted. Lucky none were critically injured. It wasn’t the same when the second one came back. Alea got to work healing the injured and didn’t resurface from that task until she heard that the last lifeboat was coming back. 

 

She went to the only empty lifeboat bay and waited for it to dock. As soon as the main door opens she steps on it. She was about to call out and ask if there were any injuries when she saw Clint. He was lying across several seats, a probable dead body lying on the floor below him. She went over and confirmed the fact that the man was dead. 

 

“Hawkeye, are you injured?” Alea leans over Barton to get his attention. He looks at her with dead eyes. He eventually raises his hands in an attempt to sign but ends up having to lower them after grimacing. “Then that’s a yes. Can you get up?” Clint was successful in pushing himself into the sitting position. Alea led him off to the side so he didn’t step on the dead body. Clint stumbled as soon as he was on his feet and Alea wrapped her arm around him. They made it into the main part of the Helicarrier and Alea laid him down. She worked to heal him and listened to the chatter over the comms as she worked. “Who was that that you were laying above?” 

 

“Pietro Maximoff. He and his sister allowed Strucker to experiment on them. He saved me and a little kid.” Alea ignores the tears that were running down his face. It wasn’t long before Alea was feeling a tug at her links. She went down it and saw that it was Coulson.

 

“What do you need, Phil?” 

 

“You to come back here. Also, I want to talk to Clint. I can feel his distress." Alea nods and connects Clint to them. They all talk for a little bit about nothing before Coulson asks what had happened. 

 

Clint starts explaining about Pietro Maximoff and how he was frustrated with his own emotions. “Clint my darling-“ Alea blocks out what Phil was saying.

 

Alea starts to move to where she left her quinjet and gets on it. Leaving the link between the three of them open, but not listening to what the two of them were saying to each other. It had been a long time since the two of them were able to talk in private . 

 

“I want to remind you two that talking about sex is something I don’t allow in my mental links. Got that?” 

 

Phil nods and Clint smiles like the Cheshire cat. Alea sighs and gets to flying back to the playground.

Chapter 15: May 7 & 8: Meeting with Jaiying

As Alea headed back through the Playground she could tell that something had happened. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she headed to the server room she needed to get the last of Edwin’s servers back up so that she could use him fully without him living in Nexus. Though if she had to guess her AI might just have a place in JARVIS’s servers. 

 

She had just gotten the last of the drives back into the bays when Fitz came into the room. “What is it, Fitz?” 

 

“Coulson wants you in his office. Gonzales is with him.” Alea thanked Fitz and headed up to the office after turning on the server. She handed her glasses to Fitz as she passed and told him to keep them safe till she came back for them. When she got there she knocked on the door and was allowed inside. She glared at Gonzales and the rest of the people standing on that side of the room as she went to stand next to Coulson. 

 

“What do you want?” Alea was half tempted to enter Gonzales’ mind then and there. Only restraining herself because Gonzales didn’t know that she could read minds. 

 

“I want to know where you have been.” 

 

Alea had seen the look that Gonzales was giving her once before, and that alone caused her pause. He was hiding something, but what was it? The itch to get into his head was even stronger now. 

 

"I was on the Helicarrier, helping the Avengers." Alea gave the others in the room a look over before turning to the screen. It showed a location that she didn't have any questions about; it was the location of Afterlife.

 

Alea bounced into Coulson’s head to converse with Coulson.  "If you want to go with their plan I'll agree, but anyone other than Gonzales should go." 

 

Coulson doesn't show any outward sign of her thoughts to him, but Alea goes ahead and pulls out of his mind. Alea turns back to the others gathered and Weaver gives her that look that means that she knew that something had happened, but wasn’t sure what it was. Alea was thankful that May was the only one that would be slightly on Gonzales’ side who knew that she could read minds. 

 

Alea listens as they bicker over the fact that the Inhumans were dangerous and how to get along with them. May looks her in the eye and inclines her head. Alea clears her throat and all eyes turn toward her. “I wouldn’ suggest raiding the Inhumans’ home. Not if you want to make it out alive.” 

 

“What do you mean Carter?” Wever looked at her with wide eyes, and she could tell that the rest wanted to ask the same thing.

 

“I’m surprised that Agent Mose hadn’t told you, but that night that you tried to take in Skye from the retreat, I was there. Gordon, for that, is the name of the man that can teleport. He took me with him when he left with Skye. I’ve been to that location and fun fact: some of them are definitely dangerous, but most, most of them just want to be left in peace.” Alea knew what that felt like, having spent so much of her childhood at her father’s hands, and that was without him even knowing she had powers. She shivered at the thought of her father knowing all of her abilities, it was bad enough when she stopped aging. 

 

“You sure about that?” Oliver asked from his position against the windows. 

 

Alea resists crossing her arms, “As sure as I can be, but you know seeing as I have abilities as well that I don’t like being hunted down ‘cause of it. Frankly, none of you have the right temperament to talk to them anyway.” 

 

Gonzales looked like he was about to pop a vessel, and Alea smirked. It was something that Alea knew for certain that Gonzales wouldn’t like, seeing as he’d been the one most against the Avenger’s Initiative. 

 

“Then who do you suggest?” Weaver asked. 

 

“May, Coulson, or I.” 

 

“Coulson is a no-go because he has already shown that he cannot be impartial when it comes to Skye and it seems like their leader is Skye’s mother,” Gonzales said. Alea shrugged and looked over at Coulson. He shrugged and Alea took that to mean that yes, as far as Skye knew Jiajing was her mother. It was likely the truth. 

 

“Fair enough, but you Gonzales have shown a prejudice against those with abilities, so I think we're at an impasse.” Alea hated having to deal with the politics, she always had, but she was good at it due to having watched her mother do so for so long. As long as her temper didn’t get the best of her.

 

Gonzales looked like he wanted to strangle her and Alea knew that he was about to try lying to her. “You do not know what I’m like. You haven’t had a conversion with me in years.” 

 

Alea snorted. “No knowledge? That’s a joke, Gonzales. You haven’t changed your ways since I joined SHIELD. Back in the days of the Avengers Initiative being spun up, you said that you wouldn’t support people with powers. Citing both me and Tony Stark as those who would destroy it.” 

 

Gonzales growled and probably would have tried to jump her had he been a younger man, or at least if he didn’t have the limp. "Carter, that's going too far!"

 

Alea smirked, "And let us remember that my power isn't even combat-oriented, I heal. And yeah alright I could choose not to heal you but you were probably already dead if I did that. So tell me, are you really going to fight against someone that could save your life someday?" 

 

“Then what do you suggest?” Wever asked.

 

“I go with you, Gonzales. I follow you through and listen to the conversation while you guys are at Afterlife. That agreeable?” 

 

They looked at each other and after a while, a few of them nodded. They got ready to go and Alea headed up to her house to change into something more appropriate for meeting with the Inhumans than her normal long sleeve shirt and jeans. The full-body combat gear always felt odd to have on, but it left her with very little skin showing which would be good if this came to blows with Jaiying. No need for her to have easy access to skin to suck away her lifeforce. 

 

She headed down to the hanger and once there got the main quinjet ready to go. She pulled out her phone and typed something in and then sent it off to someone. She listened as the gates opened and sat down to start the engines. As the engines got to full speed Gonzales and May joined her on the jet. She looked over her shoulder at the two and pointed to the co-pilot's chair. May shook her head and took the seat. 

 

“You know normally I’m the one that flies.” 

 

Alea looks over at her. “Yes, but I’ve been flying at least thirty years longer than you,” May smirked and called over the headset to see if the rest were ready for takeoff. All answered back with an affirmative. Alea got them into the air and headed off. 

 

There was idle chatter behind her as she flew. It wasn’t long before they were landing near the outskirts of Afterlife. As soon as they are on the ground Alea gets up and looks at Gonzales. 

 

"I'm going to ask you to turn over your gun. I know you have it on you." Alea holds out her left hand waiting. Gonzales looks scandalized and seems to hold back. Alea hardens her glare and he hands over the gun. Alea hands the gun to May before following Gonzales off the quinjet. They are led through the compound and to Jaiying. 

 

Alea makes eye contact with Skye as Zebo moves. Alea was surprised when Zebo was given up as a show of faith. Even more so when Skye was the one to escort him to the quinjets instead of her. 

 

“Agent Carter. I think it will be best if you wait outside.” Gonzales says. Alea nods and heads out the door. She stands outside and listens to what was going on inside. She shakes her head at Gonzales’ attempt at sympathizing but does hand it to the man about his pitch about the Index. It was quiet for a few moments before something that sounded like glass broke inside the room. 

Notes:

One more chapter after this one to finish this part off.

Chapter 16: May 8 - 16: S.O.S

Alea strained to hear what was going on in the room for a minute, but when she couldn’t she rushed into the room. What Alea saw when she got into the room made her eyes widen. Gonzalez had been turned into stone, and Jiaying was standing over him. 

 

Alea let out a growl and reached up and turned on her com. “What the hell did you do, Jaiying?”

 

“He had the audacity to compare his scars to mine!” Jiaying charged at Alea, but Alea dogged her knowing that she shouldn’t allow for skin-to-skin contact. 

 

Alea felt for one of the modified widow’s bites that she had in her pants and tossed it at Jiaying. It lands on Jiaying’s shoulder and immediately Alea dashes for the exit to try and get back to the quinjets. She makes it back to the quinjets as one takes off. It hovered for just a second over Afterlife before flying off. 

 

Alea goes up to the announcement system and orders all SHIELD agents at Afterlife to retreat. It takes a while for some of them to come back, and May was brought back and placed on a stretcher on the floor. 

 

“Where’s Skye?” Alea looked between Simmons and May. Simmons shook her head and told her to take off. “Skye’s staying behind?” Simmons nods. Alea sighs, but issues the takeoff order and they are soon in the sky. 

 

Simmons video calls Phil and the others that had stayed back at the base to tell them what had happened. They had Zebo which was the only good thing. They make it back just in time for the team to be split up again, apparently, Pamalas wasn’t on their side at all. She and Bobbie were now in the wind and well it was a trap, but two could play that game. May and Hunter took a small team to try and get her back and make Ward pay for what he’d done. 

 

Alea moved Zebo into lockup and then went to talk to Phil. “So what are we going to do?” 

 

“There isn’t much that we can do. Not right now. I want you to look into why that quinjet took off before the others though.” Alea nods and disappears to the server room so she can have some peace and quiet while on base. It doesn’t take her long to pull up the right data and when she does it shows Gordon and another person taking over the quinjet. 

 

Alea finds her link to Phil and goes down it.  “Phil, it was Jiaying who ordered that quinjet to take off. Gordon and one other are on video taking off and I’m pretty sure trying to bomb the place.” 

 

“Why weren’t they able to do so?” 

 

“Before we left I set all the quinjets to verification first. They wouldn’t have been able to attack using the quinjets. I didn’t want one of us to be blamed for an attack on Afterlife, looks like she was going to do it anyway.” 

 

“Then why didn’t you get a verification request?” 

 

Alea pauses, “Only me and May know what that screen means, and when I was talking to some of the others I realized that none of them really like to interact with Edwin. None of us that knew what that request even would look remotely like weren’t on the quinjets. That’s why.” 

 

Phil nods and tells her about the fact that he was about to go question Zebo. 

 

“Have fun. Call me if you need backup.” 

 

“Where are you going?” 

 

“Fitz mentioned something about wanting a way to capture Gordon. I’m going to help him with that.” 

 

Alea pulls from his head and goes up to the lab. Fitz was working on some panels and Alea helped with them. It was starting to get late, but if Jiaying was looking for a war, she’d get one. Alea sees her glasses sitting nearby and picks them up and sides them on her face as they get working. Alea continues to work even after Zebo gets out from Vault D, mostly because if they wanted a leg up over Gordon they were going to need it.

 

As Alea heard that Zebo had had a heart attack she saw an emergency call come through from the Iliad. They bring Zebo in as she silences the alarm. Simmons slams an EpiPen into his chest and then Zebo is up like a demented zombie. 

 

As Zebo rolls off the table Alea shoves it back towards him. He just gives an evil grin and shoves it back. Alea stops its movement easily as she hears the guns being drawn behind her. When the guns start to go off with the zip sound of the ICER rounds Alea has hope that he would go down. But all the ICER rounds do is slow him down a little. 

 

“Holy crap. Run!” Alea turns and runs off to the hanger. Clearing it of anyone. She can tell that FitzSimmons and Coulson are following and at a much slower pace is Zebo. She watches Phil’s hand singles and understands that he wants someone to take one of the SUVs and ram into him when he comes. So Alea gets into the closest one and waits. When Zebo is in line with the SUV she puts the pedal to the floor and rams Zebo into the wall. She hears FitzSimmons putting the battering ram up against the car when Zebo starts to move it. 

 

Alea watches as Coulson talks Zebo down from whatever he was by using the fact that Skye was in very real danger. It was very surreal to have to trap him with a car and one of the battering rams, but it worked. 

 

“My dear, the distress signal has spread to all available SHIELD channels. Do you want me to ask them to fall back?”  Edwin comes on over the loudspeakers.

 

“Phil?” 

 

“Tell them to wait for my order.” 

 

“Understood.”

 

Alea joins Phil as they get ready to head to the Iliad. It doesn’t take them all that long, but May and Hunter do come back with a very injured Bobbie. Alea places her hand with her ring touching Bobbie’s skin and almost gags at the readout that comes across on her glasses. 

 

“Phil, I’m staying here!” Alea places her flesh hand on Bobbie’s skin and pushes for Bobbie’s bone marrow to create new blood cells. 

 

“Alright. We’re headed out.” Alea nods and focuses on the medical team to stabilize Bobbie. 

 

It takes a long time with each wound has to be cleaned before Alea can start to heal. Some of the deepest wounds she only heals halfway, mostly to leave her with some energy to continue to heal her. As they get her stabilized Edwin announces that Phil and the others are back. 

 

All the team made it back, with the only major injury being the fact that Phil lost his hand due to being very reckless. All Alea can do is giggle when she sees it because it was also his left hand. 

 

“I guess that you’re going to have to start wearing your wedding ring on your right hand for the next little while?” 

 

Phil shrugs. They had to do some drastic things to his arm because of the bleeding and Alea looks at it and sighs. “You know we’ll have you back with both hands in no time.” Phil nods and they get everything wrapped up. 

 

In the end, Jiaying was killed and Skye’s father goes through the TAHITI Protocol with his memory being wiped and given veterinary practice. She also tells them that she wants to start going by Daisy after that. Alea and Fitz start to work on two things, a prosthetic arm for Phil and a new airplane for them to use. Things had calmed down until Simmons was absorbed by the damn rock that Jiaying had been trying to get. With no clue as to what happened after that, they have to leave it be. 

Notes:

This is the end of this part. Next up will be a little two(?) part section before going into season 3 of AoS. Also if you didn't read A Trip to St. Agnes then you missed the fact that yes the Netflix shows ill be added from here on out.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 24 of Keeping Secrets