Wishing Well | Leo Fitz Book Four

Chapter FortySix

Pain. Her body radiated with pain. Even through all her training, her ability to shut down, to quiet her mind, a pain this deep rooted was nearly impossible to ignore. Two guards tossed her to the ground at Daisy's feet, the woman quickly scrambling over to her as soon as the guards backed off. Her mind was built of flashes, electricity, a wand hitting her in the most sensitive connections of bone and joint, a knife cutting in and pulling out...oh gods, it all hurt so badly. So badly. And to see Leo standing at the peripheral of all of it, guiding them all, telling the guards what to do, how exactly to hurt her the worst, broke her. That was the thing that did it. She knew her Leo was in there, somewhere, but he certainly wasn't here, not right now. She lay numbly on the floor, filled with pain and hurt, feeling Daisy pull her close, expecting her body for the damage it now displayed. Maybe she was always destined to be left in scars. Maybe her legacy was built on being broken.

"Gentlemen, thank you," she could hear Leo say from somewhere far away. She didn't want to come back down from her castle to see where, she didn't want to let herself feel everything around her just yet. She didn't know if she could bare it. "You are dismissed." And then she heard the footsteps - he was coming back in. But she didn't turn to look, instead she kept her gaze trained downward on the floor in front of her. She didn't want to look at him right now, not like this.

"Fitz, why are you doing this?" she heard Daisy ask, the woman still wrapped protectively over her. "You have to know this is wrong. Look at her."

"That's Dr. Fitz, to you," he corrected her with a sharp tone. "I just taught your friend that pretty well. But let me teach you something else. Unlike those men I just dismissed, I know about the truth. I know the truth about you, where you come from. You terrible excuse of a world."

"I think you mean our world, Fitz," Daisy corrected him, moving Asia's head off the floor and resting it in her lap. "You're from there, too."

"Ah, no, don't try that ploy with me, Johnson," Dr. Fitz corrected. From her new angle in Daisy's lap, she could see the toes of his shiny, black shoes. "I know you replaced the real Skye. I know your friend here had no intention of getting married yesterday."

"Replaced?" Daisy said, shaking her head and brushing back Asia's hair gently. "Is that what she told you then? Aida? Because she's full of lies, Fitz. I know you can't see that right now, but you will." Looking down at her friend, lying in a broken pile in her lap, she felt a sense of protective need. She had to make him see that he was wrong, for Asia's sake.

"Let me tell you more of I know, so you can stop hiding behind it," the way he punctuated his words was so unfamiliar to Asia, so unlike the Leo she had known and loved. It was odd to hear him speak and not recognize it, to not feel those familiar inflections in her heart. "Somehow, you managed to defeat Hydra in your world. And now you'd like to conquer ours." He pulled up a metal chair and sat in front of the two of them.

"You don't know as much as you think you do," Daisy replied quietly. "Because all I want. Is to get out of here."

"Tell me where the Patriot is," Leo said, ignoring her statement. "Your friend couldn't manage to get me the details. But maybe you'll be smarter than she was." She could see him reach down and rub a scuff off of his shoes. Asia had a brief moment of thought, wondering if it were her blood he was wiping away.

"I don't know," Daisy said. "I don't know where he is, and that's the honest truth. We got captured before we could even find out."

"Is he from your world, too, then?" Leo asked, finally done cleaning the tip of his black shoe. "I notice you didn't ask who he is."

"We all did, and that includes you, even if you don't want to admit it yet," Daisy spat back, giving him a glare that could probably burn a lesser man alive. "And back there, you are in love with this woman you just had beat to a pulp. So I guess all hope is lost, because if anyone could get you to snap out of whatever mind control your under, it would be her. Asia Monroe. I hope you think of her name every day in here, for the rest of the shitty numbered ones that we have. Look at her. She is a real person. Not some Hydra murder-bot pretending she's a real girl out here. Not some Pinocchio puppet of a person. She's the love of your life and-"