Hand to Hand Hand to Mouth Chapter 14
Title: Hand to Hand, Hand to Mouth
Fandom: X-Men Comicverse
Rating: R
Warnings: While it is a post-House of M story, it diverges rather sharply from canon. There's quite a bit of violence and a little bit of low-key lovin' and, as always, more swearing than a dock full of sailors on leave.
Characters: Jubilee. Nick Fury. Wolverine. Black Widow. Elektra. Captain America. A supporting cast of original characters.
Summary: Jubilation Lee lives life on her own terms. It's just that sometimes she doesn't know exactly what those terms are.
To contact the Helicarrier, I had to go back out through the fog again to the transport. Going out was harder than coming in--for me, anyway. There was a lurching, sinking feeling that left me feeling lonely and low. I liked to think it was the house’s way of saying that it would miss me.
Once I was in the jet, I checked the time. It was just past eight. If the Helicarrier was where I had left it, put it a little bit past eight o’clock at night. Early enough that the Nick was probably still working. I sat down at the console and propped my feet up on the workstation. Dialing into the communications link to the Helicarrier, I said my serial number and the connection I was looking for and waited for the voice recognition software to patch me through to the Colonel.
I was right about Nick still working. When he came up on the screen, I could see his private office behind him. Sitting in a chair, he was angled away from the camera, working on the touch panel to his right. He looked totally tense.
“Colonel,” I chirped in greeting.
“Agent Pigpen,” he replied and turned his eyes to the camera. He was smirking.
“What’d I do now?” I asked, making a pouty face.
“That was quite a mess you left on the Expressway.”
A smaller image came up in the corner of the screen. Images of the disarray that was left on the road and the hazmat-suited team cleaning it up clicked by.
I put my hands up defensively. “Okay, that was so not my fault.”
Nick ignored me. “Electro-pulse did a real number on the surrounding area.”
The images continued to flash in the corner. Close-ups of fried bodies, now. A tremor shook my chest, making my breath ragged.
“Oh, please. It wasn’t that bad.” I forcefully made my voice bright and cheerful.
“Housekeeping wants your head on a platter,” he replied with a teasing tilt of his head.
“Well, they can get in line,” I said, a little more stridently than I had really intended. Fucking Housekeeping.
Nick grimaced, the teasing look totally gone. “Talk to me, Lee. What’s going on out there?”
I sighed. “Well, to begin with, I have a burned MI-6 operative in my custody.”
“Contact?”
I nodded. “She’s the reason for the crispy critters on the road. There were some seriously bad news bears on her tail.”
I went into more detail about everything that happened the night before. When I mentioned what Monica had said about her mark, Nick frowned and went back to the panel.
“We got some intel on a Ukrainian diplomat found dead yesterday in Beijing. Take a look.”
The file appeared in the corner of the screen. I found myself looking at a moderately handsome, middle-aged man. Fadeyushka Melnik. Ukrainian diplomat to Madripoor.
Madripoor. Fantastic.
I skimmed the file quickly. Melnik was murdered, execution-style. His body was dumped near the river, not all that far away from where we were last night. Coincidence? Maybe. Monica had said that she terminated the raven. She didn’t mention the diplomat. We were going to have to have a long chat, Monica and I.
When I reached the photographs at the end of the file, my stomach lurched.
“They cut his eyes out,” I said aloud. “Why would they cut his eyes out?”
“Saw something he shouldn’t have?” Nick mused.
I shuddered. “Gross.”
“You think your contact had something to do with that?”
I decided to skip the rest of the stills. Closing the file, I looked at Nick again. “Don’t know. Even if she didn’t, I think it’s probably best that she doesn’t go home just yet.”
Nick nodded. “I’ll send out a transport to pick her up and bring her back here.”
“Actually, I suggest we keep her here. She’ll be as safe and secure here as she would be on board.”
The Colonel raised an eyebrow. He had never visited Huairou with me, though I had invited him. It was too hard for him to get away from work. He knew it was tough to get to the Siheyuan, but he didn’t know exactly how safe it could be.
“You sure?” he asked skeptically.
“Yeah, I am. Plus, she doesn’t exactly have a boner for SHIELD personnel. Particularly not for you--no offence, sir.”
He shrugged. “MI-6 ain’t never been that pleased to see us coming.”
I made a noncommittal noise. Thinking about the previous night and the blind Ukrainian, I tapped my fingers on the console with one hand while I chewed the thumbnail of the other.
Nick interrupted my reverie. “Further observations, Agent Lee?”
I stopped worrying my thumb and looked up at the monitor. “Those guys last night? They were way badass, Colonel. If Logan hadn’t been with me, I would have been in some seriously deep shit.”
The Colonel was quiet at that, lost in thought, himself. I waited, nibbling on my nail again.
“You two talk much?” he finally asked.
I frowned. “Some.”
“About anything in particular?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked worried. That was silly, though. What could be bad enough that Nick would worry about me talking to Logan too much? It was something I would have to ponder later on.
I shrugged. “Not really. Old times, mostly.”
Nick didn’t reply to that. His brow furrowed, he turned back to the panel. “Unless you come up with something more substantial in China, you should look at Madripoor next.”
Aw, crap. I gave a heavy sigh. “Fine.”
“And this is my ears only from here on, Lee. We’re overlapping on another agency here. I ain’t interested in dealing with a bunch of pissed-off Brits.”
“Good,” I said and nodded. It must have been a little bit over-enthusiastic because Nick’s head jerked back to the screen.
“You ain’t telling me something,” he said. “What’s the problem?”
I shrugged half-heartedly and spoke hesitantly. “It’s just that, last night, something wasn’t...right.”
I stopped and looked down from the screen. I fought the urge to cross my arms over my chest--a sure giveaway of how unsure and defensive I was feeling. Nick picked up on it anyway.
“Why is that, Jubilation?” he asked, the sudden softness of his voice betraying his concern.
Picking at my nail for a moment, I thought about how I should tell him my suspicions. Would he think I was crazy? Would he insist I come home? Would he send someone to get me?
“I think...,” I paused and took a breath. “I don’t know how it could be, but I think it might be Jia Li.”
I said the last bit in a rush and then waited for his response. My breath held, I watched his face on the screen.
The Colonel was passive and still. He didn’t look like he thought I was crazy. He didn’t even look surprised. I mean, Nick never looked surprised. But I knew him well enough to know when he really was surprised and when he...
“Already knew,” I said aloud. “You already knew, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Nick’s poker face didn’t waiver.
“When I got the assignment, you knew. You knew all about this. You knew it might be her.”
“Yes.”
“And you sent me in, anyway. Knowing everything you do, you sent me in.”
“Yes.”
I sat up straight, my feet hitting the floor. The Colonel was inert, surely watching me on his own monitor, as I was watching him. He was waiting for me to react. My jaw tightened.
“Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” I asked through teeth I couldn’t unclench.
There was a moment of silence, exacerbated by the slight communications relay delay.
“No,” Nick finally replied, staring passively out of the monitor at me.
I swear, my heart stopped. Nick lied. He lied. Nick was lying to me. Even with just his face on a screen, I could tell that he was. He answered me with textbook perfection--the exacting precision of a well-trained, well-practiced faker. I couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t ever lied to before, not directly, anyway. I was suddenly totally certain of that fact. That’s the problem with sharing your life with another spook. It doesn’t matter how good you are--if you start out with honesty, it’s almost impossible to pull off a fake-out.
Or maybe I just knew him well enough to recognize it. I had heard him shout my name in anger, in passion, in fear. I had known him in the most brutally honest and open times people experience. He couldn’t straight-up lie to me. I doubted that I could get away with really lying to him. He had, after all, witnessed me in every possible situation. The man had seen me die. I couldn’t slip one by someone who had watched me breathe my last and then brought me back.
I swallowed hard and watched his face on the screen. He knew he hadn’t fooled me. I knew I hadn’t fooled him. We were mutually un-fooled and we both knew it.
But there wasn’t any point in calling him on it, either.
“Alright,” I finally answered.
Nick looked as uneasy as I felt.
Every other time, in every other situation, he had just said that he couldn’t tell me and we had left it at that. I understood clearance issues. I understood procedure. I didn’t understand why he was lying.
The tenuous peace I had felt with Logan in the mountain temple was gone. That warm glow of knowing that something was actually right in the world had disappeared. It was like I had traded Nick for Logan and my life was totally out of control again. Only, this time, I couldn’t even work myself up into anger or indignation or even irritation.
This time, I was just scared.
Fandom: X-Men Comicverse
Rating: R
Warnings: While it is a post-House of M story, it diverges rather sharply from canon. There's quite a bit of violence and a little bit of low-key lovin' and, as always, more swearing than a dock full of sailors on leave.
Characters: Jubilee. Nick Fury. Wolverine. Black Widow. Elektra. Captain America. A supporting cast of original characters.
Summary: Jubilation Lee lives life on her own terms. It's just that sometimes she doesn't know exactly what those terms are.
To contact the Helicarrier, I had to go back out through the fog again to the transport. Going out was harder than coming in--for me, anyway. There was a lurching, sinking feeling that left me feeling lonely and low. I liked to think it was the house’s way of saying that it would miss me.
Once I was in the jet, I checked the time. It was just past eight. If the Helicarrier was where I had left it, put it a little bit past eight o’clock at night. Early enough that the Nick was probably still working. I sat down at the console and propped my feet up on the workstation. Dialing into the communications link to the Helicarrier, I said my serial number and the connection I was looking for and waited for the voice recognition software to patch me through to the Colonel.
I was right about Nick still working. When he came up on the screen, I could see his private office behind him. Sitting in a chair, he was angled away from the camera, working on the touch panel to his right. He looked totally tense.
“Colonel,” I chirped in greeting.
“Agent Pigpen,” he replied and turned his eyes to the camera. He was smirking.
“What’d I do now?” I asked, making a pouty face.
“That was quite a mess you left on the Expressway.”
A smaller image came up in the corner of the screen. Images of the disarray that was left on the road and the hazmat-suited team cleaning it up clicked by.
I put my hands up defensively. “Okay, that was so not my fault.”
Nick ignored me. “Electro-pulse did a real number on the surrounding area.”
The images continued to flash in the corner. Close-ups of fried bodies, now. A tremor shook my chest, making my breath ragged.
“Oh, please. It wasn’t that bad.” I forcefully made my voice bright and cheerful.
“Housekeeping wants your head on a platter,” he replied with a teasing tilt of his head.
“Well, they can get in line,” I said, a little more stridently than I had really intended. Fucking Housekeeping.
Nick grimaced, the teasing look totally gone. “Talk to me, Lee. What’s going on out there?”
I sighed. “Well, to begin with, I have a burned MI-6 operative in my custody.”
“Contact?”
I nodded. “She’s the reason for the crispy critters on the road. There were some seriously bad news bears on her tail.”
I went into more detail about everything that happened the night before. When I mentioned what Monica had said about her mark, Nick frowned and went back to the panel.
“We got some intel on a Ukrainian diplomat found dead yesterday in Beijing. Take a look.”
The file appeared in the corner of the screen. I found myself looking at a moderately handsome, middle-aged man. Fadeyushka Melnik. Ukrainian diplomat to Madripoor.
Madripoor. Fantastic.
I skimmed the file quickly. Melnik was murdered, execution-style. His body was dumped near the river, not all that far away from where we were last night. Coincidence? Maybe. Monica had said that she terminated the raven. She didn’t mention the diplomat. We were going to have to have a long chat, Monica and I.
When I reached the photographs at the end of the file, my stomach lurched.
“They cut his eyes out,” I said aloud. “Why would they cut his eyes out?”
“Saw something he shouldn’t have?” Nick mused.
I shuddered. “Gross.”
“You think your contact had something to do with that?”
I decided to skip the rest of the stills. Closing the file, I looked at Nick again. “Don’t know. Even if she didn’t, I think it’s probably best that she doesn’t go home just yet.”
Nick nodded. “I’ll send out a transport to pick her up and bring her back here.”
“Actually, I suggest we keep her here. She’ll be as safe and secure here as she would be on board.”
The Colonel raised an eyebrow. He had never visited Huairou with me, though I had invited him. It was too hard for him to get away from work. He knew it was tough to get to the Siheyuan, but he didn’t know exactly how safe it could be.
“You sure?” he asked skeptically.
“Yeah, I am. Plus, she doesn’t exactly have a boner for SHIELD personnel. Particularly not for you--no offence, sir.”
He shrugged. “MI-6 ain’t never been that pleased to see us coming.”
I made a noncommittal noise. Thinking about the previous night and the blind Ukrainian, I tapped my fingers on the console with one hand while I chewed the thumbnail of the other.
Nick interrupted my reverie. “Further observations, Agent Lee?”
I stopped worrying my thumb and looked up at the monitor. “Those guys last night? They were way badass, Colonel. If Logan hadn’t been with me, I would have been in some seriously deep shit.”
The Colonel was quiet at that, lost in thought, himself. I waited, nibbling on my nail again.
“You two talk much?” he finally asked.
I frowned. “Some.”
“About anything in particular?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked worried. That was silly, though. What could be bad enough that Nick would worry about me talking to Logan too much? It was something I would have to ponder later on.
I shrugged. “Not really. Old times, mostly.”
Nick didn’t reply to that. His brow furrowed, he turned back to the panel. “Unless you come up with something more substantial in China, you should look at Madripoor next.”
Aw, crap. I gave a heavy sigh. “Fine.”
“And this is my ears only from here on, Lee. We’re overlapping on another agency here. I ain’t interested in dealing with a bunch of pissed-off Brits.”
“Good,” I said and nodded. It must have been a little bit over-enthusiastic because Nick’s head jerked back to the screen.
“You ain’t telling me something,” he said. “What’s the problem?”
I shrugged half-heartedly and spoke hesitantly. “It’s just that, last night, something wasn’t...right.”
I stopped and looked down from the screen. I fought the urge to cross my arms over my chest--a sure giveaway of how unsure and defensive I was feeling. Nick picked up on it anyway.
“Why is that, Jubilation?” he asked, the sudden softness of his voice betraying his concern.
Picking at my nail for a moment, I thought about how I should tell him my suspicions. Would he think I was crazy? Would he insist I come home? Would he send someone to get me?
“I think...,” I paused and took a breath. “I don’t know how it could be, but I think it might be Jia Li.”
I said the last bit in a rush and then waited for his response. My breath held, I watched his face on the screen.
The Colonel was passive and still. He didn’t look like he thought I was crazy. He didn’t even look surprised. I mean, Nick never looked surprised. But I knew him well enough to know when he really was surprised and when he...
“Already knew,” I said aloud. “You already knew, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Nick’s poker face didn’t waiver.
“When I got the assignment, you knew. You knew all about this. You knew it might be her.”
“Yes.”
“And you sent me in, anyway. Knowing everything you do, you sent me in.”
“Yes.”
I sat up straight, my feet hitting the floor. The Colonel was inert, surely watching me on his own monitor, as I was watching him. He was waiting for me to react. My jaw tightened.
“Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” I asked through teeth I couldn’t unclench.
There was a moment of silence, exacerbated by the slight communications relay delay.
“No,” Nick finally replied, staring passively out of the monitor at me.
I swear, my heart stopped. Nick lied. He lied. Nick was lying to me. Even with just his face on a screen, I could tell that he was. He answered me with textbook perfection--the exacting precision of a well-trained, well-practiced faker. I couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t ever lied to before, not directly, anyway. I was suddenly totally certain of that fact. That’s the problem with sharing your life with another spook. It doesn’t matter how good you are--if you start out with honesty, it’s almost impossible to pull off a fake-out.
Or maybe I just knew him well enough to recognize it. I had heard him shout my name in anger, in passion, in fear. I had known him in the most brutally honest and open times people experience. He couldn’t straight-up lie to me. I doubted that I could get away with really lying to him. He had, after all, witnessed me in every possible situation. The man had seen me die. I couldn’t slip one by someone who had watched me breathe my last and then brought me back.
I swallowed hard and watched his face on the screen. He knew he hadn’t fooled me. I knew I hadn’t fooled him. We were mutually un-fooled and we both knew it.
But there wasn’t any point in calling him on it, either.
“Alright,” I finally answered.
Nick looked as uneasy as I felt.
Every other time, in every other situation, he had just said that he couldn’t tell me and we had left it at that. I understood clearance issues. I understood procedure. I didn’t understand why he was lying.
The tenuous peace I had felt with Logan in the mountain temple was gone. That warm glow of knowing that something was actually right in the world had disappeared. It was like I had traded Nick for Logan and my life was totally out of control again. Only, this time, I couldn’t even work myself up into anger or indignation or even irritation.
This time, I was just scared.