[2] An Executioner's Requiem | Leo Fitz

36

Weaver only looked at her, turning back to the scientists as Simmons spoke while Nina rolled her eyes at all the guards that had no plan to remove her from gunpoint. She dramatically raised her hands as she moved to lean against a counter, dropping them back down to her side once she did.

"I went to the Academy to look for you, but you weren't there," she told her, "we didn't even know if you were alive."

"If it weren't for Agent Calderon I wouldn't be. He co-opted a squadron of Quinjets to come to the Academy. He saved us," Weaver responded, "if it weren't for him, we would have lost even more... young, talented minds that day."

"Well then, why are you-" Fitz was cut off by Simmons asking the question he was about to in a more aggressive tone.

"Why are you betraying SHIELD?"

"Phil Coulson has no right to call this SHIELD," she scoffed and that was enough to enlist Nina to speak again.

"And what right do you have to say that?" She asked, her tone the same as the one Weaver had used, "bases all around the world were affected when Hydra resurfaced, do you think you're the only person who lost people that day? Do you think you're the only one who went through something traumatic!?"

"That's not what I'm saying-"

"That's exactly what you're implying," Nina spat back, "I died last year, the three of us were sent to the bottom of the freaking ocean, agents everywhere were hit with a reality they weren't ready for yet you don't see them belittling the organisation we all swore our lives to."

"Coulson is running a circus," Weaver spoke, her voice was soft but everyone could hear the annoyance behind her words, "we are doing what we must."

"Bullshit!" Nina hissed and Fitz gulped nervously when he noticed her hands balled into fists. He looked around the lab, focusing on the shadows created by objects around them and sighed in relief when none of them were moving, "you should be focusing on your real enemies, Hydra is still very much out there. You wanna avenge the young, talented minds you lost? Then find them!"

"And then what? Murder them? Cut off their heads, trade blood for more blood?" Weaver questioned and Nina found herself gritting her teeth at the obvious call out, "go insane like you did, Executioner?"

"Don't call me that!" Nina snapped immediately, she went to approach Weaver but the sound of safety being clicked off guns stopped her. She missed the rise in both FitzSimmons' eyebrows at her words as this was the first time, since her death, that Nina didn't claim the branding and instead refuted it.

"We're here to bring SHIELD to the standard it deserves and then bring justice to the fallen."

"You can say whatever you want about me but at least I know, and have always known, where my loyalties lie," Nina spoke, her voice tainted with venom, "this is the legacy Director Fury has passed down and you have zero right to come in here and try to strip Coulson of it just because you need someone to blame for the bloodshed."

Nina's blue eyes bore into Weaver's as she spoke and for the first time since they'd begun conversing, Weaver was forced to remember who she was talking to. It didn't matter that the guns trained on the younger agent gave Weaver a safety net as the darkness in Nina's eyes screamed warning and painted a picture of what she was capable of.

"It is obvious I cannot change your mind, and I am smart enough to not waste my time trying," she decided to say after a moment, breaking their eye contact and turning to face Simmons. The biochemist had been watching the tense encounter with worry as had Fitz, though with both parties the worry was not for what could become of Weaver, "we obviously have a lot to discuss Jemma, but right now I need your help."