Swim Until You Can’t See Land || Pietro and Sadie (FUBAR Friday)
Between her meeting with Strucker, her growing fears about HYDRA, and her concern about her employers discovering her recent contact with Ward, Sadie had a lot on her plate. She wanted nothing more than to solve her problem the way she always had -- to run.
She wanted to leave HYDRA like she’d left her parents’ shitty apartment all those years ago; as nothing but a speck in a dingy rear-view mirror. Only that wasn’t an option anymore. Years ago, when she’d been packing her bags, her older brother had warned her that someday, she’d get herself into a situation she wouldn’t be able to talk herself out of. She remembered smiling, patting his shoulder, and assuring him that that would never happened. She wondered if she should call him and apologize now.
No, for the first time in her life, Sadie was really, honestly stuck. Not like she had been as a kid, trapped due to misplaced loyalty in her family, or even as she had been when she’d been recruited, forced to choose between two prisons. This time, the only other option was winding up a story on the news, someone who’d vanished without a trace.
And so, Sadie did the only thing she could do. She made herself invaluable.
News of long-dead faces returning to the land of the living had sent a stir through HYDRA. They’d lost many an agent throughout the years to everything ranging from SHIELD to superheroes to old age, and the possibility of getting them back, even temporarily, was too good to pass up. When Sadie was sent to track down some old agents, she hadn’t hesitated. At least this beat tricking people into signing their lives away.
She didn’t expect any protests. After all, most of these agents had died for HYDRA. It only made sense that they’d come back. What she hadn’t counted on was Dr. Richard Matthews and his devotion to his work. It figured she’d get stuck with the fucking science nerd.
She’d found him near Brooklyn, and when she’d offered to give him a ride back to HQ, he’d declined. He had to finish his research, he said. His research apparently meant tracking down some mutant he’d been running tests on at the time of his death. It made Sadie’s skin crawl, but she needed Dr. Matthews back at base if she was going to keep her ass out of the fire for another day, and she was always willing to sacrifice her own comfort -- and other people’s -- in order to save her own ass.
That’s how she found herself watching some kid speed around Manhattan playing hero when she should have been at home with a glass of wine. “That him?” she asked, glancing to Matthews, who nodded furiously. “Fine. I’ll take care of it. Stay.”
Matthews opened his mouth to protest, but Sadie was gone before he could get a word out, walking towards the mutant -- Maximoff, Matthews had told her -- with a look of distress plastered on her face. There was nothing heroes loved more than someone in need of help. “Excuse me,” she said, sounding lost and a little frightened. “I’m... I need help. Please, I don’t... I don’t know where I am.” She choked on a sob, bringing a hand up to cover her mouth. And, yes, those were real tears hanging from her lashes. She’d thank the Academy later.
