Chapter 1
Once upon a time, when Grant Ward and Kara Palamas (deceased, read – retired) characters of AoS were drinking tea and planning their greater future, now that Hive have taken over for Grant officially, there was a knock on the door.
“Now who could that be?” Kara, for once, was genuinely surprised. “The FitzSimmons tend to come later in the evening, and I don’t think Coulson will come over any time soon – he is really busy with Price. Anyone else…not very likely…”
“Point,” Grant agreed. “Our show has a bit of a reputation, though the folks over at Blindspot seem nice. Ditto for our ‘compatriots’ over at the Netflix crowd.” He paused, thought over some more, and opened the door.
“Surprise!” Lance Hunter and Bobbi Morse said with an overly enthusiastic cheer. “Our actors have officially left the show and are in suspension in regards to their spin-off. We are out! Can we crash?”
“Absolutely not!” Kara shot them a look. “We already promised the guest room for the FitzSimmons – we think that their actors are having some sort of personal feud – lately Elizabeth appears with some producer, not Iain-“ she trailed away at the utterly crashed expressions on the HuntingBird’s faces. “Grant?”
“You can stay at my place now that I’m with Kara,” Grant shrugged. “Mind you, Coulson has the spare keys, in case his bachelor pad isn’t good enough for his lady friends, so I cannot promise you anything fancy-“
“Grant, it’s us,” Hunter said brightly, “we’re not picky.” He dimmed down a bit and said with genuine gratitude: “Thanks.”
“Come on it,” Kara shrugged. “You might as well tell us how and what your actors did – usually the ac-tors just seem to go away, as Ian Quinn’s and the Koenigs’ did, leaving the audience wondering, WTF? You?”
“Sacrificed our positions in S.H.I.E.L.D. for the sake of the greater good,” Lance said brightly, as he and his wife carefully walked inside. “What? You should hear May talk about this sort of thing; you should hear our actors speak it aloud. It was only a matter of time until we had to do something or lose our selves.”
Bobbi looked away. The S2 finale proved to be a bad one for her; for everyone, actually, new characters and old; so much opportunity wasted…
“Fair enough,” Grant replied, quietly – but then again, now that Grant is not acted out by his actor, he tends to be on a quiet side, if you don’t push him enough…something that Lance (and Bobbi) is really good at, actually… “So what are your plans, now that you’re semi-retired? It already took a couple of years for your actors’ spin-off to get off the ground, now it might take who knows how much time to get on air.”
“True,” Hunter agreed, as he and Bobbi sat down, and Kara served them tea (with lemon). Since it was still cold out, (even though it was the middle of spring), the tea was not iced, but hot. “So, what are you two doing? Please do not tell me that you will join the brownshirt crowd for real-“
“Of course not,” Grant says flatly, “not after what they’d done to Kara. We are just private citizens. It will not work for you, for you two are Lance and Bobbi, you need to be in the spotlight, you need to shine. You need action. Me? I’m for the moment happy to be a homeopath, and Kara’s a gynecologist.”
“Need a sexy secretary?” Bobbi asks cheerfully. “Lance will be happy to do that.”
“Just because I made eyes at the Tomb Raider – God, she even sounds as Jolie when Jolie was younger-“ Lance begins, but stops, as Kara makes a small, happy, genuine chuckle. It startles even her, but when she sees Grant smiling happily at her, she becomes less startled and more blushing:
“God, I missed you guys on a regular basis,” she tells the HuntingBird. “I and Grant are too quiet by ourselves. And the FitzSimmons – they’re only truly loud when they’re having sex.”
“…Say what now?” Lance blinked. “The FitzSimmons are loud?”
“Like a pair of cats,” Kara nodded. “Especially Jemma. They need it, since the official script has them doing less interactions than before, when Jemma was ‘kidnapped’ by the Monolith.”
“…Thank God we got out,” Bobbi finally managed. “Ever since Carter and her people found their standing, AoS is getting progressively dark, and this Hive? He sounds worse than Malick is. Course, Malick is rumored to be about to be pimping his daughter to Hive, so it’s negotiable who is worse.”
“Malick has a daughter?” Grant blinked.
“You’ve seen her around town – a younger, brattier version of Bobbi with none of the original’s re-deeming features,” Kara shrugged. “Maybe we should introduce her to Hand?”
“…Sounds awful,” Bobbi shrugged.
“What, Stephanie herself or her introduction to Hand?”
“Both,” Bobbi shivered. “But maybe I should talk to her instead? Maybe, behind the scenes, she isn’t bad?”
“She is just a piece of malice, wrapped in haute-couture,” Kara said flatly. “Good luck with that – I’ll be behind you as back-up if you need it.”
“…Wouldn’t that be me?” Hunter carefully asked: this was the first time for Kara to offer to be working with Bobbi, so some confusion was in order.
“You’ll be way back, being the sexy secretary,” Kara smiled. “Maybe alongside Grant?”
There was a pause and Bobbi snorted. “God, I missed you.”
“Missed you too.”
“So, once tonight’s episode is aired and all the others are freed you want to go and see what Stephanie Malick is like?”
“Do I?” Bobbi said brightly.
“Hey, what about me and Leo?” asked Jemma Simmons, as the two English agents/characters had arrived too late to hear anything else other than the final accords of the plot. “We want to hear more! Is it about us?”
“Not exactly,” Bobbi confessed and told the FitzSimmons about the plot.
“Sounds like fun,” Leo nodded. “Lately, with you two gone, Kara gone, Grant gone and replaced by Hive, things are getting way too dark – and we’re afraid that Coulson may find a way to leave too. This isn’t right, he hasn’t been this messed-up ever since he got kicked out of the Avengers’ movie franchise.”
There was a pause. “This is the longest you ever spoke without doing the twin thing with Jemma that you always been fond of,” Grant finally responded. “Admittedly. Anyways, this is not an intervention – Bobbi is just going to meet her and we will see where we are going from there. Well, Bobbi and Kara mostly-“
“He is cute when he is rumbling, isn’t he?” Jemma brightly told the other women. “Anyways, what’s the other plan?”
As Bobbi and Kara enthusiastically told her all about it, the three men in the room shuddered: Stephanie Malick would not know what hit her.
End?