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Fitz liked to believe there was a time where his mother was happy in her marriage to his father. He liked to picture a smile on both his parents' faces and love in their eyes as they looked at one another.

Where Fitz imagination was restricted, he still liked to ponder on the life his family could've led had their home be filled with love instead of ridicule. Despite his obsession with the imagery a younger Fitz had fallen in, present Fitz was first and foremost a scientist. A scientist who believed in the facts.

And the fact was, his mother was unhappy in her marriage while before he was born. It was only when he came along did that unhappiness form into fear, as she now had two people to protect from the slammed doors, broken glass and insulting words of her drunken husband.

Fitz had always admired his mother for standing strong and unbreakable. When she'd kicked that monster out of their home, she quickly became his hero.

He'd never been able to blame his mother for taking 10 years to get rid of his father and he'd never blamed her for loving a villain like him because she'd saved him and herself before it was too late.

Fitz understood that love knew no bounds... no matter how hard you try to teach it some.

When the engineer first found himself falling for Nina, he did the obvious thing and tried to ignore it. He tried his best to ignore the skip of his heartbeat every time she was around and pushed back to urge to hold her whenever she brushed up against him.

He'd even gone as far as to whittle his feelings for the executioner down to malfunctions in his endocrine system that led to high levels of dopamine and norepinephrine. That explanation didn't stop her name from always remaining on his lips and the need to make her smile growing whenever he saw her.

When Fitz finally accepted that he was in love he accepted one other thing. Loving Nina was going to destroy him because loving his father had destroyed his mother and Nina had a habit of treating herself like an expendable object.

He'd told himself that he was okay with that and the heartbreak that would come with loving someone like her. Fitz felt that if he wasn't able to show her just how special she was, he would do whatever he could to make Nina feel happy and loved in her last moments while he prayed that those moments wouldn't be her last.

And in an hour's time, Fitz would realise something very important while staring down at the pictures that plagued his mind.

Nina Ramos was yet to have her last moments on Earth.

*

The sound of a grate hitting the floor filled the usually quiet room in Hydra's building. Nina's body dropped out of the vent and she landed on the floor with a quiet thud, she groaned slightly as she did and pulled a few cobwebs off her black uniform.

"I really don't see the appeal in vents," Nina muttered under her breath as she looked up at the place she'd just dropped from, "maybe I'm doing it wrong... I'll ask Clint."

Nina stepped away from her landing point and watched as Seven dropped down from the vent with a grimace. She reached out and grabbed him before he fell as he landed. The teenager in question gagged as he brushed off the dirt from his clothes and looked back at the vent with disdain.

"That was disgusting," he pouted as Nina pulled a cobweb from his hair, "why couldn't we just go through the front door?"

"I don't exactly have authorisation and as Hydra's experiment, you can't waltz in like you own the place. They technically own you," Nina told the boy before gesturing for him to follow her. Seven sighed but followed anyway.

[2] An Executioner's Requiem | Leo FitzWhere stories live. Discover now