#anyway whoever came up with the snap and the finger guns *chef's kiss*

[hubba1892]

[unaugmentedmonkeyscantfly]

From Space to the Grave || Drabble backstory for Framework!Fitz pt 1

Science was such a wonderful thing.  It had let humans touch the moon. Sample the stars.  Map the inner workings of the brain.  Yes, science was wonderful, and beautiful, more beautiful than any woman could ever be, mused Fitz, even knowing the lengths he’d go through for Madame Hydra.  It just…wasn’t the same.

Fortuitously timed, the doctor found something in his letters: a personal invitation from NASA to come see their new emergency escape modules.  Lesser Hydra agents might say that having such things was cowardice, but better to waste money on a module like that than waste a valuable human life. Fitz was no fool, and knew that some astronauts, cosmonauts, whatever, were irreplaceable (Damn shame about that Will Daniels bloke.  He had potential.)

“Reyna,” he called out to his bodyguard, standing outside the room as always.  "How’d you like to take a day trip to Houston tomorrow?“

"Sounds like fun, sir.”

“Excellent.”

–

The flight was a pleasant one, as always, little bits of information pinging in on his in-flight wifi. Hopefully the food would be better, the last chef hadn’t been as good as he’d hoped, and the one before that intentionally gave him food poisoning that put him out of action for a week. Needless to say, that particular chef had been made an example of.

The humidity wasn’t what got to Fitz the most.  It was the heat.  Early May in this part of the country was nasty enough for someone from Britain, worse still for someone wearing a three-piece suit.  Still, NASA was NASA, and it touched something deep inside Fitz’s memories, from the times in his childhood when he’d wanted nothing more than to build robot astronauts and the spaceships they flew in.  A simpler time.  A gentler Fitz.  A long-buried Fitz.

Checkpoints.  Blah, blah.  He never had to deal with the Inhuman ones, of course, but they weren’t the only people out there who didn’t see the wisdom of Hydra’s ways.  There were other subversives, some of whom had experience with explosives or weapons or heavy machinery, and they were never content to go out quietly.  Idiots who didn’t see that Hydra was saving lives, making them better, paving the way for an actual cure for Inhumans and other uncontrollable powered persons. Hadn’t the Deathlok program saved lives, too?  Didn’t stop people from forgetting that.

For whatever reason, the pod was set up near the testing pool.  Maybe they’d just finished doing some sealing tests on it or something, that was the only reason it should have been where it was, but he supposed NASA knew what they were doing.  It was dry now, at least.  The pod was something you could easily walk into and sit down, a partially collapsible rectangular prism big enough for five.

“As you can see, there are useful cubbies for things like basic first aid kits, oxygen tanks, thermal insulating blankets, that kind of thing,” the engineer was telling Fitz, to his clear approval.  "You never know when you’re going to have to get the hell out of Dodge while suffering from some moderate injuries like a broken arm or something.“

Reyna and the woman exchanged glances, and Fitz stood up straight, on-edge.  "What are you not telling me?”  There were alarm bells going off in his head, and he knew better than to dismiss them as paranoia.  "Reyna, what do you know that I don’t?“  Ice.  Anger. Worry.

But it wasn’t Reyna who answered the question, it was the scientist.  "We’re just a little worried that the seals won’t hold as airtight as possible with a subject inside who may be on the verge of panicking.  I mean, we screen all our pilots, but you never know what stress does to a person.”

“What you’re sayin’ is that you need someone to test it on, someone who has absolutely no idea what they’re bein’ thrown into, yes?”  Fitz followed towards the door to the pod as Reyna stepped outside and appeared to nonverbally flirt with the scientist, blocking Fitz’s way out. “So just chuck some poor sod in there, watch what happens.”

“Exactly what we were thinking,” the scientist said, and the door slammed shut, Fitz inside, Reyna outside.  Reyna turned and faced his boss, no apology or shame or worry in his expression.

“Very funny,” Fitz scowled.  Then the pod moved, the crane above shifting and jolting it.  "Reyna, do something.“  The pod lifted off the ground, and Fitz had to change his stance to stay upright, furious and outright terrified by the fact that his bodyguard was doing nothing to stop this kind of experiment.

"I am doing something. I’m watching a monster in a cage.”

Fitz pounded his hand on the inches-thick glass.  "Let me out of here, you coward, or you’ll die in ways you can’t even imag–“ The box shifted again, higher, and it seemed he was being lifted.  It didn’t take the engineer he was to realize that at the crane’s maximum height, if they dropped him onto the concrete, then the pod, the concrete, and he himself would be wrecked to kingdom come.  Don’t scream.  They can hear you.  Don’t show weakness.  You’re smarter than they could ever hope to dream of being.

Then the pod snapped off the crane, almost but not quite at full vertical reach, and the pod went plummeting down, throwing Fitz off-balance and causing him to hit his head on the first aid door, blacking out for about a minute and a half while the pod sank to the bottom, nestled right where the Hubble mockup used to be.  Not leaking, but definitely not buoyant.

When Fitz opened his eyes, there was blood on the wall, and all the first aid stuff had spilled out. First I get out, then I kill them, he decided, and looked to see if there was anything there.  No door release.  Nothing he could stab to let himself out without drowning first.  The oxygen tanks appeared to be there for demonstration purposes only, completely empty, although the alcohol and things were the genuine article.  But to Fitz’s relief, someone had thought to rig the door to blow like the old capsules, in case of water deployment, but he had no way to trigger it.  A simple spark wouldn’t be hot enough, nor would the flame from a lighter (not that he smoked anyway).

So he thought.  He sat down and pored over the maths, trying first to work out how long it was he had to think on this before he ran out of oxygen. Second, he was trying to figure out how many people were involved.  Clearly, whoever had designed the materials of the pod (and the people who could have vetoed them) was involved, as was Reyna, the person who stocked the pod for demonstration reasons, and whoever was on the security monitors.  A good crop of traitors in an organization Fitz had once yearned to belong to.  So much for childhood dreams.

Then it hit him.  The alcohol had a lower flash point than the explosives and a much higher temperature than the spark he could cause by shorting out his smartwatch.  (How did he come up with that?  Someone had come up with that before.  Who? Maybe it was on television somewhere. That made sense.)  He just had to hope that the shock didn’t knock him out and that nobody was waiting with a gun up above.  But the room was dark now–someone had switched off the lights in the facility a good ten minutes ago, probably giving some excuse about maintenance, and he was working by the light of his phone and nothing more.  Yet he had to escape.  He had to get out, had to punish them, had to punish himself for letting even a bodyguard get close.  Pity they couldn’t clone May or something, that would have been…

Fitz nodded to nobody, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and shorted out his watch.  Water rushed in, even though he was only forty feet down, knocked him against the back of the pod right as he registered lights flicking on again, and he was dazed enough that he forgot how to swim up and out of the pod.  Then he forgot how to do anything, and darkness came.

–

The water parted.  No, wait.  Water was clear.  Not black. The black parted.

"No, what I’m saying is there’s nothing I can do,” said a voice, although something about the noises he made sounded off. Not like words.  Just like…Sims.  "I’m good, but I’m not fix-severe-temporal-lobe-damage good. There, I said it.  Something I can’t do.“

The black came back.

–

Black gave way to sunshine. A nice little  blue room with a television and a thing on his arm.  And his face.  And his…the thing the arm had at the end of it.

And Madame Hydra was there, watching news reports until she saw him.  She…smiled at him.  "Hello, Leopold,” she said soothingly, and there at least was one word that sounded like a word.  "The doctors said you might never wake up, but I knew you would.  Some things are set in stone.“

The only response was a vacant but worried stare.  Fitz’s face itched, but he didn’t know what to do to fix that.

"There, there,” Madame Hydra said soothingly, placing her fingers against his cheek. “Everything’s going to be alright now.  I’ve made things the way they should be.  In a few days, you and I can watch as the people who hurt you die.  I promise.”  She did something then that she’d never done before.  She reached over and kissed his forehead, right above his left eyebrow.

It felt right, like the world was in the perfect alignment at that moment.  Like he’d be looked after, like he’d be safe.  Like he’d be loved for the first time he could remember.