Phil/Victor
Phil used to love his soulmate words. He had a name, he knew they had a daughter, he doubted he's hear those words more than once in his life. And Mother was just always so thrilled with the idea that she'd get a granddaughter and in-law on the same day. Phil used to love it as much as she did.
And then Mother got sick, and Fury came knocking, and the first name that Phil put in the SHIELD database was the one written in sloply letters on his left elbow. And Phil held his mother's hand and told her that he's looked, he hadn't found him yet but he's look, and she would get better and meet them, and he was going to keep looking, and keep looking, and kee- He lied until the moment they tossed the dirt onto her coffin, and then he lied once more, told Fury his mark had faded, checked off the box on the update form, and washed his hands of whatever mess his soulmate was bound to be.
Because Agent Coulson hated his soul mark.
---
"Sir, they have enhanced down here."
Phil swore, put a hand up to silence the bickering agents in front of him, and turned to the map on the wall, the display of the HYDRA facility they were working on destroying and studied the electronic dot that was Skye's location. "Come again, Skye? Could have sworn you just told me they had enhanced."
"Yes sir." The dot that is the team's hacker and big hitter isn't moving, deep in the basement levels of the building, far below what looked like an average shopping mall. "She's," there's a pause, and the sound of Skye taking a deep breath, "not in a good way. She needs a hospital. Like yesterday, AC."
"I'll send extract. Simmons will be waiting on the outside."
Simmons is, when Skye comes out with the pink skinned girl, and so is Phil, supporting his prodigy as she watches Simmons fuss over her, and- Wait, pink? Phil blinks, and nope, HYDRA found a way to turn people pink, it has to be the only reason for her pigmentation, he can't be that tired, though HYDRA gassing them all isn't out of the picture yet. Simmons is getting the girl onto a stretcher, and murmuring to her, but Phil can see when she raises her eyes the fear that's hiding just below the surface.
Skye finds a bottle of water and her laptop, and sits down in the front seat of the SUV. "I'll find out who she is," she says, just as Phil is opening his mouth. "Skin like that got to turn up something, yes?"
But it's clearly not that easy, because after they've done the clean up, gotten the prisoners away and the corpses carted out, after the data has been transferred and the walls checked for secret passageways, Phil comes back to the car and finds Skye still shaking her head at the computer. "You have got to be kidding me!" She looks up at Phil's cough, growls, and slams her fist down on the table. "Sir, I'm sorry, this is turning out to be harder than I thought."
"Why don't you tell me what you do know, and we can work from there?"
Skye turns the laptop to face him with a sigh, running a hand through her hair as she leans back against the headrest. "No facial matches, even though the files we pulled from the base's computer say she was that way when they kidnapped her. I stripped the colour, ran it again, and the closest match was a Clarice Ferguson. Repeated missing seven years ago, right after the death of her family." On the screen is the police report, along with a picture that looks very much like the girl they had found, though this one has dark skin and purple diamonds on her face. "But she was confirmed dead by the Xavier Institute several months after that."
Phil's eyebrows go up. "Xavier?"
Skye nods, and taps the laptop screen without looking. "One of the teachers there filed the report. She lost control of her powers, killed herself, probably how her family died as well."
"And now she's turned up here."
Skye sighes. "Yes. And I've tried contacting Xavier's, but you know how they are, and then I tried cracking their systems to find more about the report, and I can't get through. Their system is too good."
Phil covers his face with his hand. He knows that Xavier's people value their privacy, but not talking to Skye about this situation is something that he's got to deal with. "Put out a call with her photo, see if anything turns up. Make sure it goes up on social media too, I don't trust the media with this alone."
"Because she's a mutant."
Phil doesn't dignify that with a verbal response, just walks away.
---
Back at the base, Phil falls into a chair watching through the window at the bed, the girl sleeping on it without moving, her hair and skin standing out starkly against the white sheets, her thin chest rising and falling slowly against the cords and wires Jemma had attached and pushed in to monitor the girl. The quicky written report is open on the tablet on his lap, but he's read it already, read it multiple times, and he's not sure what to do with it. It's hard to prove, hard to read, hard to see the brief summary of what the HYDRA file had included that she had gone through, and how much attention she'll need to get back to her full health.
He puts his head in his hands, closes his eyes, and-
Phil wakes up with a jerk. The room is darkened, the shades drawn and the lights turned down, until the space across from Phil is hidden behind a curtain of darkness. There's a figure bending over the bed, huge shoulders and wild hair, and arms reaching to cover the girl. Bursting out of his chair, Phil brings his gun up as he kicks through the door, shouting for Skye and May, watching the man fall still, just still above the bed, with his hands on the mattress and his face hidden in darkness, no view of his face that Phil can get, but he's lurking above her like that.
"Whoever you are, you need to get away from her!"
And the man straightens up, doesn't pull away though, and Phil can see his face, and his heart is in his throat, and he doesn't know how to breath, doesn't know how to get air into his lungs. He knows that face. He's studied that face in the reports, in the file, in the moments when he caved to weakness and put the name on his elbow into the SHIELD system.
"My name's Victor Creed, and she's my daughter."
Phil knows that whatever he could have planned to get away from his soulmate has just gone out of the window. Victor Creed smiles, and he can see gleaming white fangs in his mouth, and then Phil fires the gun, and is standing over the unconcious man when the rest of the team comes racing in.
---
They put him in the vault, because it was sadly just an ICER that he used, and Phil waits on the other side of the glass for Creed to come around. He does, faster than they expected, jerks to his feet and slams his hands against the forcefield barrier. "You...Don't know what you are dealing with!"
Phil is far more calm now, with the passage of time between that darkened meeting, and he gets to his feet in a slow motion, drags his way over with the tablet in his hands. "Don't I? I've known your name for my entire life. Isn't too hard to find your file on SHIELD's registar. Want to tell me who's paying you to take that girl? HYDRA's not your profile employer, but what do I know? They pay well."
"That's not what's happening."
"You're a hired killer, and you show up on my base univited, and you try to take her. So, who hired you?" He looks down at the tablet, drags his finger through the file. "You haven't been reported as working with Stryker for a while, but this is exactly his style. That him?"
Before Creed can respond, the door opens, and Phil looks up to see a panicked looking Skye sticking her head in. "Uh, DC, the uh, Xmen just showed up. And uh, they say we need to let this guy out." Phil blanches at her, and she just shrugs. "I think they might be right. I mean, he is your soulmate, he's not going to be completely evil."
When Phil turns back to Creed, he's standing away from the force field, and grinning.
"So little brother Jimmy comes to the rescue after all. How about that?"
"Now, you gonna let me out of this cage, and I'll explain how I'm not the guy you're reading all those reports about?"