Renegade Rising || Leo Fitz Book Two

Chapter Three

As Asia entered the garage of the new base, new gave Lola, the beautiful red corvette Coulson owned, a soft pat on the hood. A tall, well built man with soft mocha skin looked up from the wrench he was twisting on a bike nearby. Of course Mack was here. He was always here, working. As she started to quietly walk by, he straightened up. He was tall, at least half a foot taller than she was, and had arms like tree trunks. He could probably squish her head in his hand if he wanted. And Asia could tell he wasn't the biggest fan of her's.

"Welcome back, Agent Monroe. Or do you prefer I call you what the others do? The Renegade?" He said quietly and evenly, staring at her with his piercing, dark brown eyes. She knew he was friends with Fitz. Leo. Whichever. She tried to think of him only as Fitz now, to remove any attachment. He was the one helping Fitz try and use his words now, the words hypoxia had stolen away from him. The words that broke her apart.

Instantly, she was back in the hospital, she could see it all again so clearly. She could see herself sitting next to Leo's bed, holding his hand, his brows furrowed as he tried to speak. As he struggled to try and say he loved her, too, but all the words wouldn't quite form themselves in his brain. And it was all her fault. He was hurt and it was completely because of her. So she did what she had always done when things got too tough, too close. She ran. She had left that hospital and was too afraid to go back. She hid inside herself and put up walls and became the assassin that Coulson needed and made her vendetta to destroy every last living HYDRA member. It was easier that way. Her team could be safer that way. After all, everyone got hurt if they got close to her. If she stayed away, if she played Renegade for Coulson, no one could get hurt but herself.

She looked up at Mack and took a deep breath before speaking. "Is there something I can help you with?" she asked as softly as she could, trying to keep her voice from breaking.

Mack looked at her, this short, thin twig of a thing who had somehow been molded into a lethal killer, while he wiped oil off his hands with a once white rag. "I sure don't, but I can think of someone in the Lab who could sure use a helping hand," he replied pointedly, searching for some sort of recognition in her eyes.

Asia immediately broke their gaze, glancing off to the right, towards the doors which would lead her out to the rest of the base, towards freedom from the suffocation she was feeling right now. "There's plenty of SciTech agents in the Lab," she said slowly and evenly. "I'm an Ops agent, wouldn't bring any help to any one there. Just trouble." And with that she started walking as casually towards the set of doors as she could, even though every muscle in her body was tensed to run.

"You keep telling yourself that," Mack called out behind her, shaking his head in disappointment. Whatever had happened between Agent Fitz and Agent Monroe, he knew it was bad. He didn't know the details, but he knew that Fitz, or Turbo as Mack had coined him, was struggling with her disappearance. On top of the distance between those two, Jemma Simmons, Turbo's other best friend, had left the Lab. The whole thing left the poor, young agent in a tailspin and Mack didn't know how to make it end.

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When Asia exited the garage, she moved down the hall and entered a large room with vaulted ceilings. The team had turned it into a meeting room, a gathering space of sorts, and it was adjacent to the Lab. Asia moved as quickly as possible through the room, climbing the stairs that most people only used to get to Coulson's office. But she had other ideas.

When she reached the top step, she looked around to make sure no agents were watching. Standing on the railing, she grabbed onto a pipe that ran across the ceiling and swung herself forward, grabbint onto another pipe, and another, until she was in front of a large air vent opening. She had removed the cover long ago.