[1] Take the Shot | Leo Fitz

48

3 Years Ago

No matter how much you loved seeing someone or being something, there was always one part of it that you hated. In Nina's case, she loved being the leader of extraction team alpha. She loved the team she'd been given to command, she loved the good they did and how well they worked together.

The part she hated, however, was the meetings.

Hours and hours of meetings with people she didn't want to know, hours reciting every move made on a mission to people who would never understand the gravity of the situation she and her team had been in.

It had been 4 hours since she'd first entered the conference room and she was only just now finishing up. It was a routine operation that she had been discussing but for some reason, they wanted to know everything and Nina had to account for every bullet fired and each speck of blood on her knives before she was dismissed. She bolted out of the room once she was, not wanting to be cornered by Sitwell, whose infatuation with her made her feel unsafe.

"Roll call," Nina announced as she entered one of the many labs of the Triskelion, this being the one her team had taken to occupying.

"Oh! Melody Kline," the blonde girl grinned as she turned off the soldering torch in her grip and flipped up the mask protecting her face. Nina didn't question why she was holding the torch or the metal of various shapes on the counter in front of her, because Melody was always building and breaking something.

"Badu," Nina swivelled around on her heel and met the face of Sara, who sat cross-legged on the floor while cleaning out her rifle. Again that didn't surprise Nina, despite coming out of Communications Sara was equally as dangerous as the Operations agents. She was older than Nina (though the entire team was) and a mother to a 4-year-old, yet that ruthlessness was still as present as before. Most people called Sara crazy and for the most part, they weren't wrong, lucky for Nina it was a crazy she could command.

"Huxley," Tobias said as he made himself known. Nina smiled at his voice, her hand going to the ring hanging around her neck as she turned to face him. He was shirtless, with sweat glistening on his perfectly imperfect body showcasing the tattoo above his ribcage.

Everyone had the same tattoo, a list of the members' names in an order a random generator had decided. They'd all gotten it after their 100th mission together, while everybody was drunk and susceptible.

Except for Tobias and Nina, who were old enough to kill legally but weren't old enough to drink at the time.

"Why are you shirtless?" Nina asked confused as Tobias walked further into the room, he kissed her cheek and refrained from hugging her since he was sweaty.

"Adam had me running some drills, he's researching something I don't understand or really want to understand for my sanity," Tobias answered as Melody threw him a towel and he began wiping away his sweat. It was a temporary fix until he could take a shower, "he couldn't find his resident guinea pig, Tristian, so I had to help."

"The last time you helped him, both of you almost died," Nina deadpanned as she remembered the day she had left the room for 5 minutes and returned to the lab to see her fiancé swarmed with bees and Adam dangling out a window.

"Yeah but there were no bugs this time and he promised to buy Brave New World, so I caved," he came clean and Nina grinned at the mention of the book by author Aldous Huxley, her fiance hadn't stopped talking about.

"You are too easy, Toby," she laughed as Tobias pulled a discarded shirt over his torso.

"And yet, you still love me," he grinned as he leaned down to connect their lips. Nina smiled into the kiss before pulling away, as much as the team didn't care if they displayed their relationship publically Nina didn't like to.