Agent Felix Blake (felixblake) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2014-07-16 20:23:00 |
|
|||
As Anne’s mind began to bubble back to consciousness she took immediate note of just how foggy her mind was. At first this created a moment of disorganized panic. Where was she? What had they done? The last few memories she had were scattered and hazy and not at all easy to declare as real. The pain that seemed to have become as much a reality as her own breath was now an amorphous ache that ebbed throughout. Light danced through her lashes as she slowly opened her eyes to take stock in her current surroundings. There was a television. She had not seen a television in what must have been weeks. Cheap Hotel decor, furniture made of fake wood that looked almost real. It was nothing like the cell she had been held in since being taken by HYDRA. If she turned her head she could even see sunlight filtering in from the window. Now it was possible that HYDRA had changed their tactics but it seemed quite a sudden shift. That was until she heard the door open. Quickly Anne pretended to be asleep, watching through mostly closed eyes as a man walked into the room. A man she knew all too well and seeing the outline of Felix Blake had the last few hours of memory fall immediately back into place. Tad slipping her the key, escaping and taking down her guard and stealing his phone, the rescue that had come far sooner than she expected. Anne immediately tried to sit up, far too fast and she knew it but she had to get up. “Where’s Tad, is he- oh” the sudden dizziness of pain mixed with medication proved to be too much and Anne fell back against the pillows. "He's staying with Agent Shaw." Felix didn't even have to wait for her to finish to know what she was asking. Anne Weaver was a damn fine division head because she kept an eye on her team. Blake had fought for her when Sitwell got his promotion to head of R&D, but Fury had done whatever Nick Fury pleased, like he always did. A lot of good that had done them. Felix rued those thoughts, but then pretty much every fact of the past month was some form of regret. "And he's fine." Familiar as they were, the past month had changed things for anyone who managed to make it through to the other side. He wouldn't say they were lucky. Some wore it outwardly, Felix had lost weight and gained a cane. Anne looked like she'd met the wrong end of a bat or two. But the physical wounds weren't the real ones. They'd heal. The losses, the betrayals, the shattering of identities as agents who traded in secrets were forced to confront their truths: those were what was rocking SHIELD to its core. Felix tossed the bucket of ice on the bedside able. You never noticed how much you used your abdomen to walk or do basic movements until it was torn open by a robot. Felix was recovering--slowly--but he was pushing himself to get their agents back and he was hurting. But looking at Anne Weaver sitting in the hospital bed after three weeks missing, presumed dead, he had to think it was worth the pain. That was what an agent of SHIELD was. He sank into a chair pulled up by the bed and took a moment to adjust himself. They were a pair. "I'm not going to say thanks to you because that suggests this was anything but a half-cocked idea." Anne visibly relaxed, her eyes comfortably closed for a moment longer than a blink to mull over this new information. Tad was safe, his gambit had paid off for the both of them. It was a kind of duplicity that SHIELD had cultivated in its agents, perhaps a little too well. But it seemed that HYDRA had not expected it to be used against them. For now it meant Tad was safe, the last remaining student that she had managed to get out of whatever crater likely occupied where the Academy had been. So many promising lives lost. They would need an entire new memorial simply for that incident let alone all the other agents who had lost their lives in the betrayal that had shook the world. But if Anne let herself fall too quickly into that spiral of thought she might never pull herself back out. Instead it was best to focus on the present. Tad was alive, Felix was alive, and so was she. HYDRA had not managed to wipe all of them out yet which meant there was still a fighting chance, still good people that would stand up against them. She had to hold onto that because without that belief all of it would become far too much. There had to have been some good in what they all had done, it could not have all been HYDRA. So instead Anne looked up at Felix and took him in. He looked older. Which was strange to think, she had gone to see him while he was in his coma and that could have only been a few weeks. Even so he looked very much alive, grumpy and begrudgingly happy at the same time. “You always manage to get me out of my best half-cocked ideas.” Anne reached out, offering her hand up to him with a smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy to see you.” "I normally don't have to take on outside consultants." Felix reached over and rested his hand on top of hers, patting it gently. It was good to see her. It was good to see any agent they thought they'd lost when there were so many it wasn't even possible to shortly name the teams unaccounted for, much less the men and women comprising them. But Felix had known Anne for ages, brought her into the agency even. He wasn't a man who made too much room in his life for more than agents and the occasional lover, but Anne was a friend and if he'd had few before, he had fewer now. "We didn't think you'd made it. It's good to see you too, Anne." “I didn’t know if you had.” The last she had seen Felix Blake it had been touch and go. The fact that he was walking about, that he was around to have even pulled in outside consultants, it was almost too good to be true given the circumstances. Anne had only the beginnings of ideas of what had happened to the rest of SHIELD when HYDRA came out into the light and she imagined that the reality of it was far worse than she could ever imagine. Turning her hand, Anne threaded their fingers together to squeeze their hands together. It was more effort than she thought it should have taken but then again there had been too many injuries for her to keep track of. It was worth it though, having him as a tether. Despite all the flaws others might see in Felix, Anne saw a man who had never let her down. Perhaps he might not be a kind man but he was an impeccable agent that put the work before himself. “But you were the only one I trusted to not be one of them.” Anne said with a soft, sad sigh. "That's not too far from the truth." Felix had worried when Anne contacted him, that she might have been HYDRA too. Not because he ever suspected she would be, but because he hadn't suspected so many others--and Felix was one of the more paranoid of the senior agents given his standing in IA. Sitwell and Garrett had been HYDRA. Ward had been HYDRA. Fucking Alexander Pierce had been HYDRA and his wife of nearly seven years had been HYDRA. Felix couldn't even imagine what the situation overseas were. Most major hubs had been sparsely reported if at all. There had to be more high ranking agents defecting internationally. And then it had come down to convenience. It was far easier to believe in betrayal than miracles. They'd not any miracles lately. But they'd seen some damn fine ingeniuty. They had that conversation looming. Felix wasn't sure now was the time to have it. He'd made Sharon go through it at least three times with all the meds and lapsing in and out of consciousness he had done. And it wasn't one that got easier with retelling. So he'd ask first. "How are you feeling?" Anne had far too much experience to lie to herself about her own condition. Luck was on her side purely for the fact that she did not seem to be suffering from internal bleeding. How much longer she would have lasted was anyone’s guess. Her body was not as easy to heal as it once was. As for the psychological damage, well, she had no way of accurately assessing. Even physically it was hard to tell with the drugs coursing through her. The tally she had cataloged in her head did not readily appear. It was strange the things that kept one sane. Anne had taken to diagnosing her own injuries as a way to keep her wits in check. The moment her nose broke, when her right shoulder had been dislocated, each injured carefully made note of through the pain to establish it in reality. And now after all of that it seemed too much to readily share. The question was one that was not easily answered. There was no way to quantify it. There was too much information she needed to know for her to be entirely truthful. But Felix would know just how much of a lie it was as well, there was no hiding her condition. “Lucid.” she settled on, despite the fact that they both knew it was not entirely true. The drugs would steal most of this memory and she would likely need to hear again, despite the pain such a task would cause. But just as they both knew it was a lie they knew she could not just sit back and let herself be coddled. “Tell me what’s happened.” Felix's gaze followed Anne's arm up to the IV drip hanging at her bedside. They lingered a beat too long. Felix pressed his lips together in silence. Crusher, and SHIELD before her, had access to strong pain meds that helped with the sort of pain its agents all too frequently managed to find for themselves. They also helped with the pain no weapon could cause. Though he still had the port in his own arm, Beverly had been weaning him off painkillers. Anne seemed lucid. Her eyes were sharper than most even when they were dulled by narcotics. Felix was becoming cognizant, a whole new world of pain beyond muscle aches and healing. He shifted slightly, propping his elbow against the side of his chair and thought of where to best begin. Records showed Anne had been in contact with SHIELD on the 13th of June though Felix had been out of commission since the 11th and couldn't verify, and he knew Science Academy had fallen on the 17th. So he decided to start back before it all started. "A lot. What reports did you get after Fury was assassinated?" Of course he would ask her for recall. Despite the front Anne put up her head was fuzzy with medication. It was unavoidable, a simple fact that needed to be acknowledged with her situation. However that did not mean that despite all rationality she was not still annoyed with the fact that her memory slipped as she tried to focus. She was quiet for a long moment, the furrows between her brow deepening as she tasked her mind through the paces of when the world made marginally more sense. “We weren’t given much information. Sitwell had been in contact to give updates on the situation with Captain America. Not that our academy was a high ranking target for the Captain, but there was a security increase.” Her train of thought paused and a frown pulled at the corner of her mouth. “They weren’t security. They were, their paperwork and credentials checked out. One of them, I think I had gone into the field with him before. He had been terrible at cards.” HYDRA. They had all been HYDRA. Or at least any that weren’t had been executed first before they began to cut down any students that they could not capture. "Sitwell sent them?" Well that would explain what had happened to Science Academy. Still, it seemed a man like Jasper Sitwell would have wanted those students for HYDRA. He had certainly peacocked over them enough in the Hub. But Felix didn't have the mind to understand traitors, and Sitwell had been one of the highest among them. "That means they were HYDRA then" Blake paused a moment, Anne wasn't dumb, but he clarified for the drugs' sake. "Like Sitwell was." "He was killed when Rogers and Romanoff were trying to get to Pierce. Pierce was also HYDRA." It was a lot to take on the singular betrayals, but if he each the time to sink in, they'd be here all night. Still, there were fewer before the helicarriers went down, and they'd have to get through that first. "Most of our STRIKE teams. That was Pierce's initiative. And a lot of the Triskellion staff." Felix didn't really want to say the next part, but it was bound to come up. He withdrew his hand from Anne's and placed it thoughtfully over his lips. It was a constraining gesture, he knew what he was going to say, he just had to say it right. "Shelley was HYDRA too." There was a cold chill that ran through Anne’s spine as Felix began to list out who betrayed them. While Sitwell and Anne had occasionally disagreed on the direction of SHIELD’s science division it had never crossed her mind that he could have been anything but loyal. And Pierce, the man seemed to bleed SHIELD blue as much as any of them. The deception was so maddeningly perfect. But it was the last revelation that tipped over the edge. When he pulled away Anne knew it had to be something that he wanted to hide. There were any number of things that could have happened, their entire world had been shaken to its very core. But Shelley was not the name she expected next. For a moment she felt a bit paler, the tingling of the blood draining from her face mixing with the numbness of the drugs. There were too many things to say and none of them truly mattered or helped the situation. Except one. “Annie’s safe?” she asked, unable to keep that quiver of fear out of her voice even with years of training. She was simply too numb to keep that much of a mask. "She's at a camp upstate for now." There wasn't an easy yes or no to answer that question. Annie had made it through the immediate storm, though her father's injuries and her mother's crimes were hard truths for the 13 year old to confront. But Rogers had outed a lot of truths that made Felix's (and any SHIELD agent's) life complicated. Certainly, before SHIELD he had made enemies: the Maggia capo that killed his family, the financiers he had defrauded, but twenty years in SHIELD had made him a different class of enemy--triads in southeast Asia, Yakuza in Japan, drug cartels in Europe, since Stark 'got out of' the weapons game, arms dealers seemed to be amping up as a group, and then there were the ones he had helped put in storage like the Fridge a decade ago. They would not be anywhere near safe again. There was a good reason Felix hadn't been back to his apartment since his attack. "But there's more--much much more. Were you aware of Project Insight? It was Sitwell’s new project in DC." Camp, camp seemed as if it was safe enough. But Anne had no idea what had happened in the past couple weeks in the world. How had SHIELD managed to limp on with so many key members dead or revealed as their true enemy? Had Hill taken control in the fallout from Pierce? Was this an offsite SHIELD medical facility? Grant Anne had been in stranger rooms that had been controlled by SHIELD but a hotel room did seem a bit strange for medical. Then again a fake name and tell housekeeping to stay away and perhaps it was more perfect than she initially thought. “Some. They recruited students from our comp sci and weapons divisions. A few of my brightest in the past three years were supposed to be stationed as on board support.” Whether or not Anne had agreed with Insight was not really for her to say. With the influx of refugees, supervillains, and other worlds, it was not entirely wrong to want to stop threats before they progressed. "If Roger's deposition to Congress is to be believed. It was HYDRA's attempt to hold the world hostage. It launched on the 17th. And Hill, Romanoff, and Rogers somehow turned the helicarriers on one another and crashed them into the Triskellion and the Potomac." Anne might have seen that. It was what they had watched in abject horror (though a little awe) at the Hub before the signal and the secrets broke. But it had all happened so fast, Felix wasn't sure what even happened first. Even pulling depositions from SHIELD's Senate clerk and post debriefing debriefs. "Insight was being directed by Arnim Zola who--had made himself a computer. I've got the deposition transcripts on that computer, maybe you can make more sense. But apparently, HYDRA had been in SHIELD since the beginning." There was a flatness to his tone like one picked up reporting heavy casualties in battle. It was seeking detachment or professionalism but too involved to manage. But he'd told this story enough that it was becoming routine if not easy. "Rogers decided the only way to handle HYDRA was to air their secrets to the internet. They release ours too. Covers. Personnel data. Records. Ops. Pretty much everything." "We are entirely made" Anne remained silent as Felix began to lay out just how entirely fucked they all were. Panic would do no good, even if she felt it rising a bit in her throat. It was quickly followed by despair, desperation, anger, and complete and utter hopelessness. Their entire world had been constructed out of a lie. The good they had done, that she had thought they were doing, had it really been that at all? She searched Felix’s eyes even though she knew that there was no reason for him to lie to her. If anything he was more honest with her than anyone else in his life and Anne could easily say the same in return. As much as there was a false hope that somehow it was all a trick she knew better. Rogers had forced HYDRA into the light but he had also destroyed SHIELD. He had effectively destroyed everything they had built, casting them into the harsh light that those who worked in the intelligence industry could ill afford. “I see.” The words were forced and Anne had trouble swallowing back the anguish this news brought. While she did not regret the work she had done some of it was left to a grey area that most people would not understand. And Felix... “That doesn’t leave us many moves to continue onward, does it?” "It didn't, then HYDRA activated their sleeper agents." Felix continued grimly. "We're talking global chaos. You saw Science Academy, Comms went the same way. Operations Academy's dark. It's like that globally. There was a war and it's still raging." "Garrett, and Coulson's man Ward were HYDRA. Leadership at the Sandbox, Chrysanthemum, and Sidewinder were too. Teams were split, comms went down, extracts were fucked. We have so many missing agents we barely know where to start. About 60 are still in some form of contact, stranded. Others might be HYDRA, might be dead, hopefully might have self-extracted and gone to ground. We've only managed to pull 19 out--20 if you count Stark getting Barton out of prison in Taiwan." "Hand is dead, Hill is out, Coulson left with his team, and has since gone dark. The Farm, the Tiger's Eye, and the Waterfall are the only bases worldwide I know still in SHIELD hands. The others fell to HYDRA or were seized by local governments and militaries. We had the Hub, and the Sidewinder, but the US Military took them both and declared us terrorists. HYDRA's got most other bases." "We've all been arraigned or debriefed. SWORD has cut a deal with the Military, there may be an in there. Hill cut one with Stark. SHIELD is officially over, but we can't leave our teams like this. Essentially this hotel room is our hospital, hub, and home until our tails decide to arrest us or we run dry. We're operating out of pocket or with resources we managed to take before the Hub was taken. The last extract I paid for with frequent flyer miles." It was a lot to take on. But it was easier to rip a bandaid off in one go than answer questions with it cards still hidden. That had been how SHIELD had always worked, and that had been how HYDRA infiltrated. Now compartmentalization did no favors. Felix felt old, he could see Anne age too over the brief but heavy conversation. He sat back and crossed his arms. "But until we move again, there is a free continental breakfast." There was really no silver lining. The information poured out faster than Anne’s mind could keep up with it. For one irrational moment she was tempted to scream or rip out the IV, or do something other than just sit there and accept what reality was handing her. But rage and panic helped no one, least of all her when she needed to recover before she could be of use to anyone. “I have several stashes I kept operational from my field days. They can be dug up to help. And I’ve contacts that I can leverage for medical supplies.” Rubbing her forehead gently, she closed her eyes and tried to formulate at least something to remain useful. “I can provide a list of the students I managed to get past HYDRA when they attacked, at least to have them. Do you have paper and pen?” |