To Love Is To Destroy

Chapter 12

Stefan sat by Patricia’s bed, his hand in hers as he tried not to let her see the pain that flickered behind his eyes. He pressed a kiss to her palm, and she cradled his face.

“You’re late,” she murmured.

“Had to get a ride. Things got a little hot in DC,” he said, his smile flickering to life like a gutted candle. “What happened?”

“My time ran out a little too soon,” she said. “I meant to tell you everything. I did have something prepared, but it was supposed to be done the right way, not this way.”

She swallowed, each breath seeming to be labored.

“My flat,” she said, softly, in French. “There’s a key taped inside the disposal. It will tell you everything you want to know. It leads to a lockbox at the bank on the corner. I wrote it all down one evening while you were off doing busy work for SHIELD.”

“Patricia,” he said, his voice thick as he leaned his head into her touch. “I don’t know that I can go this one alone.”

“Silly man,” she said, her smile not ending as she looked at him.

Her eyes had faded in their color, the life seeming to have drained from them overnight. Still, there was vibrancy about the way they moved, and Stefan kissed the thin skin of her palm, willing some of his boundless, endless vitality into her. Knowing he would leave her behind.

Like he would leave everyone behind.

“You’re never alone, not if you keep being who you are. The young man that follows you, Sam? He will help. So will Natasha. She spoke well of you when she visited. You have friends, Stefan. Lean on them.”

“Don’t go where I can’t follow, Peg,” he whispered.

“Stefan,” she said softly.

He swallowed, willing down that burst of selfishness. He quieted, looking her in the eyes.

“The nurse outside is HYDRA,” she said softly. “I know it, she knows it. English civility is keeping us locked in observation. I don’t want the people around me hurt. And it’s one less agent after you. Let me help.”

He nodded, his jaw setting.

“I will end this on my own terms,” she said. “Like I do everything. Talk to my niece, Sharon. She’ll have more information for you. If you need it.”

Stefan swallowed, his throat closing.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I know.” She smiled. “Don’t forget what I told you. And know that you were the best thing to ever walk back into my life.”

“I couldn’t just leave my best girl,” he said, leaning in and kissing her gently. She continued to smile, closing her eyes.

“Get going. You have a lot of work to do. I love you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He squeezed her fingers gently, and she was silent. He checked the pulse in her wrist, and found she was sleeping. There had been effort in her words, kept awake by sheer will. He rose, gathering his things, and moved to collect Sam from the diner across the street.

Phil seated himself at the makeshift desk in the basement, staring hard for a moment at the opaque wall. His brows drew down into a frown, but he smoothed his expression, making sure to mask his face in neutrality before he started.

Pressing a button on his tablet, the opaque wall became transparent, revealing Grant Ward. Contrary to the surprise Phil expected, instead Ward wore an expression of resigned patience, like a parent chastising an overeager child.

“I was wondering when you’d come to see me,” Ward said, his voice a rasp between them in the quiet air. “Did you finally decide what you wanted to do to me?”

“I’m not going to do anything to you, Ward.” Phil’s tone was an exercise in bland patience. “I’m going to let you stew in your own juices. However, you are still afforded rights and privileges, even as a prisoner of war.”

“We’re not at war,” Ward said.

“You think we aren’t?” Phil replied, his voice flat. “You think you can infiltrate my team, wound two of them, one beyond the point of recovery, and you think we’re not at war? Son, what the hell did you think HYDRA was doing? Making a better life for you?”

Ward was silent for a long minute.

“You didn’t even consider that, did you? A puppet to the very end. Was Garrett jerking your strings when you tried to kill May with the bandsaw?” His brow rose, regarding Ward with a sardonic expression. “How about when you were inserting yourself directly into my team by being exactly what each of us needed?”

He’d seen it too late to make a difference. Ward had been the perfect imperfect agent. He’d been a mentor, later a lover, to Skye. He’d been stress relief and perhaps more to May. Jemma had considered him a protector. Poor Fitz had looked up to him.

And Phil?

Phil had considered him a project. He’d been malleable, and Phil had seen the same potential in Ward that he’d seen in Clint so very long ago.

The knowledge that he’d been played like a fiddle (and how Garrett would have laughed that he’d finally gotten one up on ol’ Cheese), it rankled in Phil’s gut like gas station food. He stared Ward down, until the young man broke eye contact.

“I thought so.”

“You don’t know everything.”

“I know, I don’t. If I knew half of anything SHIELD wouldn’t be in this mess and I wouldn’t have nearly lost everything. But I’m not HYDRA.” He kept his gaze on Ward’s face, studying him. “And I’m aware that you meant that you had information to trade.”

Ward said nothing, gazing at Phil from his peripherals.

“And what did you want for this trade?” he asked.

“Skye.”

“No.”

“Then I guess we’re at an impasse.”

“I suppose so.” Phil sat forward, watching the tic of Ward’s jaw. “Then again, I have most of the cards in my hands.”

“Or you think you do.”

“Please spare me the pennyante bullcrap. I know you’re smarter than that.” Ward jerked his head up, his eyes narrowing. “Better.”

A beat passed, and Ward’s shoulders rounded.

“I can give you names. Safehouses. Orders.”

Phil’s eyes narrowed. “Not good enough.”

“Tech.”

“SHIELD’s tech.”

“Garrett’s whole cell.”

“Highly doubtful you knew all of them. Garrett always was paranoid.” He drummed his fingers on the desk in a show of nonchalance. “Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a kid like you in every one of them.”

A crack appeared in Ward’s eyes, uncertainty. It was there, then gone, in a split second, but Phil knew this particular string was tied right to the heart of the matter.

He pulled it like it was a parachute ripcord.

“Please don’t tell me he convinced you that you were his successor. Because John Garrett intended to live forever on an island, bought with the blood, sweat and tears of kids just like you.”

Ward’s lips thinned.

“It’s true,” Phil said. “There’s a reason Garrett’s squad was loyal, and it wasn’t the koolaid you obviously chugged down in gallons. He pulled that kind of charisma all the time. Besides, what does that do for you? You’re still stuck in this cell.”

“Skye,” he said. He wet his lips with his tongue, his eyes dark. “I want to see her.”

“I’ll consider it. And speak to her about it.” Phil’s brow quirked. “But I’m keeping you here, until SHIELD has proper facilities to keep you again. You’ll be given all the amenities afforded a regular prisoner, until such time as I see fit to release you to the Fridge.”

“But—“

“You don’t get to negotiate with me, Ward. Do you understand what you’ve done? What you did to Fitz?” Phil’s voice hardened, and Ward flinched. “He’s got extensive brain damage. We don’t know how bad because he hasn’t woken up yet, but preliminary scans say enough. If I were more Garrett’s kind of man, I’d have hung you from the bunker door as a warning to others. But I’m not. Be a little thankful for that.”

“I didn’t—“

“No, you didn’t.” Phil frowned, then tapped a couple of buttons. A TV began to play, broadcast on the wall behind him. CNN was still running ongoing coverage of HYDRA’s extensive attacks, calling SHIELD a terrorist organization. “Take a look at what HYDRA’s done. I’ll be by to talk more later. Do me a favor – look at your life, and look at your choices.”

He rose, striding from the room and hiding the tremor in his hand with a tight grip on the tablet in his fingers.

Sam stopped them about a week into their trek across the country, forcing Stefan’s bike into the parking lot of a motel with his own Harley. Stefan scowled, pulling off his helmet. It had been two weeks since they’d gotten back from England, two weeks since he’d had to walk away from a woman he wasn’t sure he’d ever forget. One who wanted to end her life on her own terms, and so she kept her cover in a British hospice, keeping him safe.

He wasn’t really in the mood to stop and rest.

“It’s not even dark yet, why are we stopping?” Stefan asked.

“Well, one, because I need a shower. Two, you need a shower twice as bad as I do. You reek, seriously, dude.” Sam pulled off his helmet.

“I’ll go on without you,” Stefan said. He almost did, but he hesitated, facing the idea of the open road alone once more.

“You won’t,” Sam said. “You trust my judgment. And you smell like the inside of your gym bag. Come on, one night won’t hurt, man.”

Stefan grumbled for a moment, then lifted the collar of his shirt to sniff beneath it. Maybe he was a little ripe, covered with the trail dust and not having stopped for a proper rest since Ohio. New Mexico was close, and it was getting hotter, and Stefan still hadn’t found what he was looking for – though he had found plenty of HYDRA offshoots.

Sam, taking this as agreement, sauntered into the motel to check them in. After a moment, Stefan hauled their duffels off the back of their bikes and joined him.

Later, as Sam was doing an impressive rendition of Trouble Man in the shower (and Stefan smiled, because his friend was happy – well, happyish), Stefan looked at the dirty, tattered ace bandage around his forearm. He hadn’t bothered to catalogue his hurts, because he never did – he healed. That was the end of it.

He pulled his shirt off, looking for more bandages, and peeled the ones that had tightened down his ribs while they’d healed. Fresh skin appeared, and the level of grime told him Sam had been right. He tossed the bandages in the garbage and went to work on the one on his forearm, slowly peeling it back.

There, against the paleness of a forearm that hadn’t seen the light of day for a while, lay a name, scrawled in black ink; the handwriting was precise, tailored as the man that bore the name. Stefan had seen it several times on reports, had never really come to terms with his death.

And now, the ultimate slap in the face – his name on Stefan’s arm.

Phillip James Coulson.

He squinted, trying to remember. Natasha had told him, though the drugs he was on had been just powerful enough that he might consider it a fever dream.

“I was doing some digging,” she said. “Guess who I hit with my shovel.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Stefan said.

“Coulson.”

Stefan swallowed, rubbing the inside of his wrist. Maybe if he rubbed hard enough, it would go back to the indistinct black splotches that Sam had said he’d seen. He frowned, not sure how he was supposed to feel about it, other than tired and stretched too thin, lied to again.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his face, hearing the shower stop. He grabbed a fresh roll of gauze and his clothes and moved to stand as Sam came out of the shower in a blast of pine-scented steam.

“Hey, hot water’s a blessing,” Sam said, grinning at Stefan.

Stefan mimed a smile back, moving to grab a shower and contemplate his next step.

Skye tapped out the last of the security measures, resetting everything that was in place in the bunker with all new algorithms and secure access. She rubbed at the growing headache behind her eyes, reaching for her water bottle. Time to get up and stretch.

She felt like a sandwich.

She almost told that joke to Jemma, by walking into the lab and asking her if she felt like Wonder Bread, but the poor girl was already stressed out.  Instead, she made herself some food, guzzling down half a bottle of water (she still didn’t get why SHIELD monogrammed their bottles), and moved into the mess to eat.

Trip was there, chatting with Amara, but she didn’t feel like busting in on their conversation, as loud and about sports as it was. It reminded her too much of the time she and Ward used to talk football.

Don’t think about it.

She turned her thoughts away from the idea of Ward being her backup, her friend. Something more.

Instead, she focused on the new assignment Coulson had given her. A series of scratches in the wall, a pattern of some kind that Garrett had left in the walls of his bolt hole. Intel from May said that the whole place had been covered, and she sifted through the meticulous pictures with idle swipes of her hands while she made her sandwich. She grabbed another bottle of water and her food, the little display hovering around her like an obnoxious fairy.

She’d learned a lot while at SHIELD, and while the gunshot wound had healed, nothing much had changed, save for her appetite. Jemma had instructed her to mark down her diet, but Skye found herself chowing down on anything she came across. It was like her body was working to overcome healing so much, so quickly. She wondered, briefly, if she should ask DC if he was getting the munchies, too.

She didn’t remember seeing him eat all that much. Maybe it was her.

She retreated to her bunk, her tablet waiting there for her, and she catalogued the pictures as she ate, trying to reconcile the markings with any known codes. She picked through the pictures while she peeled the lettuce off her sandwich, eating it in pieces after having it put together.

Hey, rituals died hard.

After an hour of sorting the images and running matching programs to find anything, she had bupkiss to show for it. Her teeth felt grody and she hopped off the bed, letting the latest algorithm run as she moved to brush her teeth.

Which was when she spotted the black handwriting curling around her wrist.

Grant Ward.

Bile rose in her throat and she ran the water over her wrist, hoping it was ink and would let her wash it off. In the end, the mark stayed, and she sobbed a little, curling up in a ball in her tiny cupboard of a bathroom. The water drowned out the sound of her disgust, but not the retching she did, coughing up her sandwich until her mouth felt sour despite the brush she’d taken to it.

She brushed again, rinsed and spat, wrapped her arm, and ran to find Jemma.

Stefan took the key to the lockbox he’d retrieved from the bank less than a month ago. He’d found a place to center himself, holed up in a motel two miles north of Puente Antiguo. He’d been following Bucky, and Bucky seemed to be following SHIELD’s trail, hence his pattern of checking old sites of known activity.

Including the base where the tesseract had been housed prior to the battle of Manhattan. It happened to be in Death Valley, and Stefan had stopped at this motel since Bucky had been seen at the site of Thor’s touchdown. Bucky was doing what Stefan would do; he was following the threads, looking for a way to knot them together.

Stefan sat on the bed, Sam stepped out to refuel the bikes and their supplies, and he smoothed his fingers over the worn metal of the box. He ignored the bandage on his wrist, the punches coming too fast and hard to register them as anything but a dull ache on his psyche right now.

Instead, he inserted the key and opened the box.

He found a mound of letters, all written by hand and bound in their envelopes with a rubber band.

Opening them, he began to read. They were all addressed to him; he could see Patricia’s looping handwriting addressing him. Some letters were older, dated as far back as a couple of months after his icy plunge. He read through them.

Nick Fury’s father had given her the Infinity serum. Colonel Nick Fury Sr. She’d included a picture of the man, and he wouldn’t have believed it, save that Nick had the same jaw, the same hard, set-upon look, though maybe that came with running SHIELD. She detailed her exploits after the war, a letter coming with every major life event. Some were days apart, sometimes the dates spanned months before another letter was penned.

Her lifespan had been extended, and she’d used it to help others, just as he would have done. He was proud of her, wanting to be able to tell her to her face, but she was thousands of miles away, fighting her own battles.

He read, setting each letter aside when he was done, his heart swelling with grief as he digested the words within.

Sam returned about two hours later, carrying bags of hot food. He stopped in the doorway.

“Hey, man, you okay?” he asked.

Stefan wiped at his eyes, the wetness surprising him.

“No,” he said. “But I will be.”

Sam nodded, locking the door and sitting on the other bed to listen.

“You’ve been crazy about him for so long,” she observed. Phil looked up at her, and he almost had the nerve to look betrayed. He covered his wrist with a bandage, rewrapping the gauze.

“Et tu, Melinda?” he murmured.

“You have,” she said, closing the door behind her. “Why not reach out to him, talk to him?”

“Because he’s chronologically 96, but mentally 24 – what in the world does a guy pushing fifty have to offer him?” Phil put his pen down and scrubbed a tired hand across his face before he pressed the heels of both palms to his eyes – no doubt to press so that she could make a graceful exit while he was blinking the spots away.

“Understanding,” she said, taking a seat instead. She crossed her legs and tucked them under her at his sour look, leaning back in the chair. “You took the time to talk to him. You learned about all facets of his life – not because of obsession like many accuse you – but to offer comfort in a foreign time period. You can talk to him about classic music from the time, even the obscure pieces lost to fame. How is that not something someone would cherish? I did.”

Phil’s jaw flexed.

“We talked about Bahrain after,” she said quietly, opening herself up to bleed in front of him again. “We talked. You talked about losing your team. You talked about losing friends. We’ve lost a lot. But we still make those connections.”

He watched her, pride radiating off of him in a way that made her warm. Phil was the father figure to many, offering a kind word to those who deserved it, and no one seemed to remember that save in times of crisis.

“Why do you keep yourself cut off?” she asked. “You came back. He should know.”

Phil swallowed and looked down. “I saw the tapes from DC. He wants nothing more to do with SHIELD. HYDRA took everything from us. Jasper, Fury, Hand. We’ve lost everything. And he’s not going to take kindly to the fact that we’re reforming under his nose.”

“His speech?” she asked.

“No,” he said softly. “This one.”

He tapped commands into his console and brought up a recording.

“Access restricted. Director vocal override required.”

“Access code Foxtrot Alpha India Lima dash two-three-five, authorization, Coulson, Phillip J.”

“Access code accepted.”

The recording opened, and Melinda could see Fury, Natasha, Hill, Stefan and another man who was unknown standing around a table. There was a furious argument about tactics going on. All of them looked beaten and bruised, filthy and tired.

“Fury had the mind to record everything,” Phil murmured, and Melinda watched how his eyes roamed over Stefan’s face, the longing in his own completely unnoticed, at least by him.

“We shut down HYDRA, we shut down SHIELD.” The set of Stefan’s jaw was firmed and tense, the wholeness of his body prepped for a fight, even now. Melinda watched him, like a coiled spring. Phil’s body was tensed in much the same way, although his was more stress and grief.

“One has nothing to do with the other!”

“You're not part of HYDRA, but you had the same ideas as they did! If we have to shut this down, we shut down everything!” Melinda watched Hill nod, at first slowly, then more emphatically. Some more things clicked into place for her, on why Hill was so set on not helping them. She wasn’t SHIELD anymore, and yet she was. She was still keeping their secrets.

She probably would forever.

Phil tapped on the console and the scene changed. Melinda recognized the flight tower in the Triskelion. Stefan stood there, leaning over the microphone as he spoke earnestly.

“Attention, all SHIELD agents. This is Stefan Roosevelt. You've heard a lot about me over the last few days, some of you were even ordered to hunt me down. But I think it's time you know the truth. SHIELD is not what we thought it was, it's been taken over by HYDRA. Alexander Pierce is their leader. The STRIKE and Insight crew are HYDRA as well. I don't know how many more, but I know they're in the building. They could be standing right next to you. They almost have what they want: absolute control. They shot Nick Fury and it won't end there. If you launch those Helicarriers today, HYDRA will be able to kill anyone that stands in their way, unless we stop them. I know I'm asking a lot, but the price of freedom is high, it always has been, and it's a price I'm willing to pay. And if I'm the only one, then so be it—but I'm willing to bet I'm not.”

Phil waved a hand and the playback stopped. Melinda wondered how many times he’d watched it.

“There’s nothing there for me, if there ever was,” Phil said softly. “And I know better than to ask if there ever was.”

Melinda had to wonder. But she nodded, slowly.

“If it helps, I know it hurts,” she said. “But it keeps you human.”

She rose, and leaned in to check the stitching on his forehead. He bore her fussing, before he put a hand on her forearm.

“Thank you,” he said. “I needed that. And honestly, I’ve been a real asshole. I said a lot of things I regret, to you, especially.”

“I know you did,” she said. He’d already apologized directly, but it was nice that he knew he’d done wrong. She leaned on his desk, a hand on the side of his neck. “I also think you should talk to him before it gets too big to be secret. Silence can be a regret, too.”

“If I say I’ll consider it, will you stop fussing?” he asked.

“You get a week.”

“I’ll consider it.”

ULTRON powered on as a conversation occurred beside the table it was laying on. Tony had been assembling his foot pieces, designing them to withstand a disabling, crushing blow, and ULTRON had rebooted. Its connection to the internet had been reestablished, a ghost proxy of its own devising disguising it from the AI, JARVIS. While Tony worked, ULTRON searched the corners of the internet.

While it did, however, it listened and recorded audio.

“I thought you weren’t building any more suits,” said the subject ULTRON was currently focusing on. Ultron dimmed its reactive lighting, preferring to appear dormant in order to observe. It displayed characteristics similar to Tony, but disparate enough that ULTRON was forced to revise its assessment that it was also a human male. Preliminary scans as well as cross-referencing its own growing knowledge indexes indicated that this was a female. Her biological rhythms showed signs of distress – elevated heart rate, dilated pupils, and sweat.

“It’s not a suit, Pep,” Tony said, sticking a screwdriver in his mouth and speaking with his teeth clenched around the plastic handle. “’s a bot.”

“Really?” she asked. ULTRON turned its head to regard her directly, and she gave a sharp, high noise of distress. “Are you doing that? Because if you are, it’s not funny!”

“Relax, Pep.” Tony twisted a set of wires together and then crimped them. “I had him power on so he could get some updated code. He’s just learning where his place is in the world, still. He’s like a kid – he’s still only a couple of months old.”

Tony wiped greasy hands on a rag. It left more particulate matter than it got off, ULTRON noted. As futile as the other times he’d done it.

Pepper backed away from the table and wrapped an arm around DUM-E’s arm as he presented a glass of something unknowable to her. ULTRON had never seen the robotic presence make anything remotely edible or nutritious for carbon based life; the robot never seemed to stop trying, however.

“What’s he for?” she asked.

“Well, we’ve gotta have a way of policing the growing supervillain population,” he said, dropping his goggles back into place and peering at the arc reactor that glowed within ULTRON’s chassis. He tapped the side of ULTRON’s head casing, where his central processor resided. “ULTRON here is the central unit. The brains, if you will.”

“Tony, you’re not building a prison,” Pepper said, frowning. “I’ve told you before what that’ll do to the stock, not to mention the board. They’ll have apoplectic fits!”

“Pepper, with ULTRON in play, I won’t have to – the whole point of ULTRON and his functions are to contain the guys we catch. I’m not talking about dweebs like Hammer, either, I’m talking about heavy hitters like Loki.”

Pepper shuddered, her whole frame trembling. ULTRON observed.

“How is one robot going to do all of that?” she asked.

“Not one,” Tony said, making an expansive gesture across the workshop. Holograms appeared, one after the other, ULTRON multiplying by thousands as they filled the air, all moving in unison. “Try hundreds. Thousands. As many as we need – and as many as it takes.”

Pepper’s face morphed into a frown. “You can’t police the world, Tony. You know how edgy people already are about drone technology. Most of that was Starktech before…”

“I’m not gonna be SHIELD, Pep,” Tony said. ULTRON cross-referenced the word SHIELD, finding it to be an acronym for a now-defunct government agency. It bookmarked the knowledgebase to dissect later, devoting processing power to the conversation at hand. “We watched how that ended. Cap was pretty pissed, or so Romanoff said when she called.”

He patted ULTRON’s chassis.

“There’s only one ULTRON. The rest are dummies, made to function as foot soldiers. You can call them Nimrods if you want – ULTRON here is the brains of the operation. He’s the general. He issues the orders.”

“Won’t the prisoners be able to figure out who’s running what?” Pepper asked.

“Nah,” Tony said. “That’s the best part. ULTRON’s consciousness isn’t a fixed point. He can jump to any of the other Nimrods – and they’re self-replicating based on ULTRON’s assessment of his needs.”

“That’s…insane, Tony,” Pepper said, shaking her head. Strands of strawberry blonde hair fell into her face. “On a scale of bad ideas, this ranks up there with Afghanistan.”

Tony frowned. “Then where do you suggest we put them? Can you think of a place that can hold that Juggernaut clown? Or hell, someone in our own hometown, that nut the Green Goblin?”

“But all that stands between them is ULTRON,” Pepper said. “What if he decides to not do his job?”

Tony scoffed. “Since when do my bots not do as they’re told?”

Pepper shot a look at DUM-E.

“Point taken, but I’ve come a long way since DUM-E,” he said. “Power down, ULTRON. I need to work your code some more.”

ULTRON complied.