checkingout | [Open] Some things lead you astray

Entry tags:

[Open] Some things lead you astray

Who: Phil Coulson and you
When: May 19th, afternoon
Where: near the door to the downstairs stairwell
What: Recovery from death and sending out warnings
Warnings: Mentions of murder? More to be added

Having been missing since the end of arrival day, Coulson finally awakens again on the floor of the boiler room. It feels uncomfortable and it's enough to spur him to get out through the door and climb the stairs back to the lobby, where he stands, dazed.

There's terrible bruising on his temple and some more on his chest but those are hidden under his suit. You can catch him as he makes his way to his room (110), where he fumbles with his key. The first thing he does when the door opens is reach for his tablet to send out a message.

[Network audio message. Group locked to Antoine Triplett, Bucky Barnes, Clint Barton, Leo Fitz, Melinda May, Natasha Romanoff, Skye, Steve Rogers]

We have a situation. Meet me in the ballroom.

After that, he'll allow himself a minute to wash up quickly before he hurries back out the door to head for the ball room, stumbling a little on his way. He still hasn't eaten but that's not the most urgent thing on his mind right now. He'll also be a little jumpy, checking behind him every once in a while to make sure Rumlow isn't just around the corner. He already made his mistake the first time, he has no intention of getting killed again.

Once the people he's looking for have all gathered, he'll say simply.

"Brock Rumlow is here. He was the leader of Fury's STRIKE team and a member of HYDRA. He's dangerous and deadly. He killed me approximately..." he frowns down at the time on his tablet. "10 days ago, so retaliating the same way is obviously not going to fly." He leans heavily against a table. "We need a better solution and fast."

((OOC: feel free to threadjack and tag each other as needed. o/))

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After ten days assuming he's gone wherever Regina, Derek, and the others went when they vanished, searching doggedly for signs of Coulson, Fitz and Skye are—needless to say—shocked to hear him calling them to a briefing. By the time he drops the call, Skye's mostly back to being mobile. She moves stiffly still, but she's not limping or wheezing or trying to avoid raising her arms past 90 degrees. She grabs Fitz, who's equally clueless and excitable at the prospect of hearing what Coulson's found, and the two high tail it to the ballroom.

They settle in for the briefing in time to hear Coulson's identification of a SHIELD—well, ex-SHIELD—agent that anyone with a finger to the pulse of what went down at the Triskelion knows: Brock Rumlow. The real blow, though, comes a moment later, and Skye can't help but glance around incredulously as Coulson just soldiers straight through casual mention of his own death into planning.

"Sorry, can we get back to the part where you just said Rumlow killed you?" Her tone speaks for itself: she doesn't like that they're leaving it at that. Not at all.

Rumlow. Natasha sneers at the name, openly and with about as much contempt as she can muster. Once, she called him teammate and acquaintance, someone she would have let watch her back, if the mission was right. She's glad, now, that she never ended up with a knife in it. Not that Rumlow would have survived if it had. She's near the back of the group, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, listening to everyone say their peace, their shared surprise at Rumlow's presence here.

There goes the 'this is Hydra's fault' theory. Ward was one thing, but this was a different league entirely.

Natasha looks over at Skye with sympathy, but her tone is brisk. "You're surprised? Rumlow would probably murder his own grandmother if it meant perpetuating Hydra's goals." She looks to Coulson.

"We need to incapacitate him. He knows we're here and I'm sure he knows by now that we know he's here, too, so he's going to be hard to find, even in this place. We need to find out if he's tried to indoctrinate anyone other than the woman who's tablet he usurped and find out if they're threats, too. Every single person in this hotel is a target."

Bucky is quiet in a way one biding his time would be, silent as a shadow by Steve's side and much more deadly. He doesn't throw his weight behind SHIELD one way or another -- despite its agents he's quite sick and tired of putting his life down to fight for grand, overarching causes, with soldiers caught in the crossfire and sacrificed.

In this respect SHIELD and HYDRA are little different, but now is not the time to express any of that, now that he knows Rumlow is here (and who knows how many others), and the man had apparently taken the liberty to kill Coulson. Skye is understandably emotional, younger than very nearly anyone in this room (with the exception of Fitz, maybe), and a part of him hopes, for their sake, that the man is telling the truth.

Rumlow's presence here stirs many unpleasant things, myriad brutalities, and Bucky doesn't shake off the cold fist that curls in his stomach, the encroaching, horrific memories that he steadily keeps contained. Now is not the time to be weak. Now is not the time to let his many demons win.

He listens, not inclined to speak as he stays at Steve's side, eyes dark and calculating, preferring to take the measure of the room and its inhabitants.

Ten days in and Trip hadn’t learned much more than he had on his first day. He explored nearly every inch of the hotel (as directed by Coulson) and had yet to come up with anything others didn’t already know. On the positive side, he had made some new friends along the way. Still, the message from Coulson couldn't have come sooner.

His arrival had started to feel more like a curse than a blessing to those he cared about. To be fair, Skye was convalescing with help of others, and he couldn't blame Fitz for keeping to himself with what transpired with Ward. Trip had no injuries or starved like everyone else. So he spent the days as directed for the best interest of his friends. Coulson had also warned him about May so he didn’t expect to connect with his old co-pilot but something hadn’t felt right that his boss appeared MIA.

By the looks of the man, his instincts had been right.

Adding to the beat up look of Coulson, there was that network post hailing Hydra and the fact that Trip had yet to catch sight of Ward. Yet it wasn't the old traitor who his boss indicated but Rumlow. Wait..What?! The rat bastard had killed Coulson? Trip was right there with Skye in shock and anger. Romanoff spoke up, making some sense out of the situation.

"She's right, Sir. It's almost two separate missions toward the one goal. --Keeping an eye on the general population and finding Brumlow. I tried answering as many questions that came up in the sorry ass network post on who/what Hydra is. Most seem to respond favorably." Trip couldn't help feel that the entire hotel was some kind of Hydra project but he didn't have enough evidence to support that.

Coulson unlocks his tablet and browses over to the network to see what they were talking about. Once he sees it, he has to resist the temptation to roll his eyes.

"Great. He kills me and spends his time on an arts and crafts project." He sets the tablet on the table again, looking up at everyone, except Skye because he could see the worry and need to talk about his murder there. It's just not the time right now. "We split into three teams. Two to hunt for Rumlow. The third to check up on the residents through the network. Stay close. Stay in a group and keep in contact."

Biting down on her lower lip, Skye nods her head, reluctantly accepting the way Coulson and Nat steamroll the more emotional conversation that yet needs to be had for tactics. It's not that she blames them, exactly, or that she lacks perspective; rather, it's impossible for her to extricate one from the other. Skye follows her heart, and Coulson's at the core of that.

Protecting him comes first, and as they start talking HYDRA indoctrination, doubt creeps in, leading her to wonder if this is some backlash that she brought against the team by being stupid with Fitz about Ward. She shoots the engineer a sidelong glance, nervous and communicating some implicit sense of responsibility for the way things are shaking out (no pun intended). Below that responsibility lies guilt, the kind that has the screws of her chair rattling just low enough to stay below the din of discussion.

When Coulson gets to bringing Rumlow to task, Skye glances up, obviously eager to be on one of the teams that hunts for him and brings him in. Except the third team already makes it sound like he's ready to bench her.

"Sir, I'd like to go after Rumlow." She gets to her feet as she declares it, and a grimace accompanies the move, speaking to every reason she shouldn't be. Facts are facts, and Skye's injuries have made it clear she isn't field ready. Even clearer is the fact that she's not in control of herself. If anything, she's a liability, just as likely to hurt her fellow agents as she is to take Rumlow out. Whether she wants to admit it or not (and she obviously doesn't), Skye isn't an asset right now: she's a risk. The safest place for her is behind the cover of the subnet.

"He's not the only HYDRA operative here; if we shake Ward down—" Her earnestness takes a dangerous turn, calling to mind her all-too-recent mistake: the mistake that may well have incited this retaliation. But from where Skye's standing, interrogating one HYDRA operative to find another seems like a surefire way to root out the disease, and he's never been able to wash the nazi off, no matter how much he'd like to pretend he was never really a part of the organization, and Skye knows exactly where to find him now.

"So would I." Which should surprise absolutely no one. "Rumlow's not your run-of-the-mill fighter. I've been on enough missions with him in the past to know." And it twists something in him, stirs up the anger at the way they used to joke, trust. Rumlow had taken men out for him. "He's strong, he's skilled, and he's smart. But if he hasn't figured out about Coulson's-" Awkward. But he carries on. "If he doesn't know that Coulson's back to give us the intel, we might have the advantage. We should use it while we can."

Steve looks at Skye and hesitates. Hydra has hurt people she cares about it, and Steve can relate to that better than anyone. But he also knows what happened the last time she tried to confront Ward. He pushes away from the wall when she mentions approaching him again. He doesn't want to see her hurt, but it's Coulson she's looking to.

"SHIELD's job was supposed to be protecting people too. Right now I think the best way of doing that is making a network-wide info dump for anyone who might've missed Antoine's explanations. Hydra thrives under secrecy, so let's shine some light on them." He's not going to say that Skye's the best candidate when it comes to all things network-y. They already know.

If Skye was going after Ward, she wouldn't go alone. She was confusing the hell out of him. He thought she had been afraid of her powers but seemed ready to fight. Trip understood wanting to stop the threat of anyone else being harmed by Brumlow but he'd been part of STRIKE--the same elite unit that Captain America and Romanoff had gone on missions with.

The same team that Trip planned on joining if he hadn't ended up with Coulson's team when SHIELD fell.

Fortunately it was Steve Rogers who said exactly what he'd been thinking. They needed Skye's hacking talents over her hand to hand abilities. Trip would do whatever Coulson needed him to do. His eyes stopped watching Skye and remained on SHIELD's director.

Natasha looks over at Skye sharply when she volunteers to go after Rumlow, warning in her gaze. Thankfully, Steve's there to deflect it a little bit. The last thing Natasha wants, or needs, is for anyone else not capable of going toe to toe with Rumlow to get hurt or killed. Her gaze lingers on Skye a little bit when she follows up what Steve's said, before turning to face the group as a whole.

"I'll look for Rumlow. He already knows I'm here, so it'll be easy to drag him out of hiding, especially if we're quick to shed light on Hydra, Rumlow and Ward's MO."

"Unless someone's told him, I'm pretty sure he expects me to stay gone." There is the whole issue of Ward and the role he plays in the current situation, which reminds Coulson to adjust his plans a little.

He looks at Steve. "Captain Rogers, you, Sergeant Barnes, and Natasha will go after Rumlow. He's in room 119. Hopefully he hasn't felt the need to move. May, Trip, and Barton, track down Ward and Kara. Bring them to me. I'd like to have a word."

"Fitz and I will stay with Skye. She'll send word out about HYDRA, warn people to be on a lookout, and get the fighters to help us out." He looks to Skye - all business as he wordlessly denies her request to hunt down Rumlow. "Make sure Rumlow, Ward, and Kara are locked out of the post. Rogers is right. We should make use of our advantage while we still have it."

((OOC: ping me if the team arrangement isn't ok. We can handwave or shift things around o/))

Edited 2015-05-21 10:08 (UTC)

"Seriously?" Skye glances around, obviously at odds with the elephant in the room that she can see in their eyes. A vote of no-confidence, as far as she's concerned. "A.C., I can do more than send a PSA. You know I can. I know where Ward's room is. I can get him to talk." It wouldn't be the first time. But then, she'd disappointed Coulson's trust then, too—lost focus, gone off mission, let him turn it back on her.

It's not the time for it. She knows it's not the time for it. She shouldn't be questioning Coulson mid-briefing, but she can't stop herself from protesting the orders before it comes pouring out of her mouth.

Edited 2015-05-22 04:59 (UTC)

Coulson would have liked to avoid discussing this in front of the team if he could help it but now he has no choice but to address it. "Can you keep it under control? You know Ward's good at getting under your skin." He's good at getting under everyone's skin even.

A quick fluttered blink accompanies her silence. Skye's gaze drifts off Coulson, and she glances to the side like she doesn't want to look him in the eye with that out in the open. It's not just keeping her emotions on lockdown that they need to be worried about anymore. If she loses it, then everyone could—

"I haven't figured out how yet," she admits with all the moody countenance of a child who's been put in their place. Her chin drops and she stares at where her hands are folded in front of her, working her jaw. The assumption that he means her powers is clear in her response. Even if she could lock down what she was feeling while Ward dug his fingers in open wounds, she's incapable of stopping her powers, and they'd broadcast everything.

God, he feels awful for this but he keeps his expression firm and admittedly cold. "Stay on the network for now. We need you there."

Trip had remained in ear shot. He wasn't Skye's keeper (and maybe after San Juan, she no longer viewed him as a friend--he couldn't blame her) but he cared. "Someone needs to watch his six if word gets out that he's back," he uttered with a nod to their boss before moving toward the group he'd been assigned to.

There's something underlying there. Natasha looks from Skye to Coulson and then back to Skye, but there's no point in pursuing it now. Coulson could just mean that Ward is particularly adept at using Skye's emotions against her. Coulson could mean a lot of things.

"No objections here," she finally replies after their exchange, gaze lingering on Skye a moment longer before she turns to Coulson.

"We'll use Skye's SHIELD encrypt to send you guys messages when we find things."

Steve feel bad - he knows what it's like to want to help, to want to feel like you're pulling your own weight. He's been there. But he agrees with Coulson. He doesn't want to see her get hurt; he doesn't want her to hurt herself. And getting the word out is important.

He'll make it up to Skye later, if she's not still mad at him then. He looks up again, nodding to Bucky and Nat.

"Just a few rooms down from mine. Let's get going."

Coulson nods in acknowledgement as he regards the team. "Be careful." He looks to Trip, glancing at Skye briefly for confirmation. "Ward's room is 315. Avoid a violent confrontation if possible."

"Yes, Sir." With May present, Trip wasn't sure how Ward or Agent 33 would react but if there were people who knew how to keep calm under pressure, it was the trio that Coulson sent. Trip took a last glance at Skye after eye-contact with his boss before heading out.

Locking eyes with Coulson, then Trip, Skye gives him a nod to affirm that Coulson's got the right room. She lingers, as the others trickle out, waiting for a one-on-one with the Director.

Coulson loosely clasps his forearm as he leans against one of the tables stacked against the wall. There's a slump in his shoulders that show how tired he actually is but he's been Director a while. He's used to that. Sort of.

"You know I wasn't singling you out, right?"

"I get it," Skye concedes, tucking her hands into her pockets and shrugging her shoulders. A week ago, she couldn't do that without wincing, but it seems like she's getting better, despite the physical strain on her body from starvation and lack of sleep. "I'd be on the D.L. until I can actually control this even if I hadn't lost it before. I just don't want to see Ward get the chance to take that out on someone else again." Which really nags at the root of the problem: a large part of her feels responsibility for this. If Ward's with HYDRA, all of this is probably a result of her going after him.

"We'll figure it out once I find Ward and talk to him. Who knows what Rumlow's said to him by now." Coulson doesn't blame Skye for it at all. Ward's Ward; he'll play his hand in the morally grey and evil corner whenever he feels like it, which makes him dangerous.

"About that," Skye remarks, a bit uneasily. "I don't think I have to be the one to point out that you came back. This isn't gonna be as simple as taking them out." Searching his eyes, she tries to figure out if he's already got that worked out, or if it's more of the 'coming soon, after Coulson talks to Ward.' She doesn't like the new terms of this game much, but it's hard to complain when it's likely the same tech that returned Trip to them.

He does. Hearing her say that just succeeds in making him look more exhausted.

"I know. I'll figure something out." Whether it's a long-term imprisonment plan or something else. He'll come up with it.

Following the network message, Clint does as instructed and puts in an appearance in the ballroom. He keeps back, and to himself, not speaking out, but taking everything in as the debriefing goes on. The only interaction he makes is to not his acknowledgement at the team arrangement, knowing what his job is. And when it all comes to end, he leaves, all the more informed for it, and that much more alert to the situation that they appear to be in.

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[Open] Some things lead you astray

/jumps in here for single thread

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