The Old Hydrokinetic (MCU AU) : #27.1

Commissioned by [Thykindhunter] on P*treon.

Disclaimer - All the usual Yada Yada Yada. I don’t own any rights to any characters in this fic save for my OCs. Don’t sue me.

Anywho, without further ado - read on.

Earth-6161 [May 2012]

Maldives

–Agent Eric–

His eyes fluttered open, momentary panic instantly snapping him into awareness as he sat ramrod straight on his bed, in the makeshift home that had been built for him on this island. For all intents and purposes, this was a private island, bought by one of SHIELD’s many arms in the private sector.

In reality? It was the home of the strongest human on the planet, who, for some reason, did not tolerate the existence of any other agent than himself. Rubbing his eyes to get the sleep out of them, he reached out for the flask of water on the nightstand, and gulped down the cool water in large mouthfuls.

Pausing momentarily, he looked at the water left in the flask, the mere existence of that reminding him of the fact that he was living with Samantha Weber on the same island. 

Sighing, he got up and got ready. Looking at himself in the mirror, he got to work.

He would have loved to brag about the fact that he was something special, that there was some specific reason as to why he was the only one who could communicate properly with Weber, if they could even call it that.

Most of the time, he anticipated what she would need and sourced it beforehand through SHIELD’s logistical challenges. He did not have any special powers, was not particularly soft spoken or a people person like Coulson was, or did not even have any high authority to make him a tempting option for Weber.

Nothing, on the surface, that is. He had never broached the subject with Weber but he had a hunch that she knew, she knew that she had killed one of his brothers during the botched raid to capture an enhanced who had killed law enforcement officers. Usually, SHIELD swooped in and snatched any enhanced who did so, as it allowed them whole and sole access to a person with powers, ripe for testing since the criminal usually did not have much of a choice.

Obviously, that was not the case with Weber. She slaughtered the team sent after her and retreated. He did not know why but he felt as if she felt guilty for killing his brother and this was her way of saying sorry?

He shook his head, buttoning up his shirt. It was not like he would ever know. Sometimes, he felt as if he was living in a prison, locked up with a dangerous beast as the only person who could keep it docile somewhat. 

Oh, they tried. Boy, did they try, a lot of times, to get someone to replace him. They grilled him about what made him so special, to figure out if there was something he did that anyone else could do, to make sure that no single agent had an undue amount of influence on an asset that was capable of toppling smaller countries on her lonesome.

It was standard procedure, really. It was followed for even the weakest of enhanced they could find but alas, nothing worked. For one, he physically could not get off the island. The sea would swallow any vessel that he boarded and then promptly deposit his wet ass back on the island.

Secondly, anyone who came to the island would only get a stay of a few short days, and that too if they were smart enough and kept to themselves. After a few days, anyone who was on the island and was not named Eric found themselves being booted into the ocean, without any concern of their continued survival.

If they were foolish enough to approach her directly? Well, let’s just say that he had seen enough people experiencing a heart attack and then being thrown into the ocean that he had a specific section in the storage room, full of equipment just for that.

Thankfully, she was not cruel enough to just kill them or turn them into mist to be done with it but he had made sure to impress upon the higher ups in his reports that continued disturbances might result in continued escalation.

That had stopped the visits, for the most part. Since he was the one who noticed the pattern and informed them about it, the eggheads had been the ones who made regular trips to his humble abode.

Usually perched on top of the supply ships, the geeks came with their shiny equipment to try and measure something about Weber. It mostly ended in either failure, or getting a result that was the same as a nonresult, resulting in them going back with a frown on their faces.

One of them had been audacious enough to ask him for Weber’s blood sample or any other DNA sample and he had been tempted to just slap some sense into that fool on the spot. Thankfully, cooler thoughts prevailed and he just used his executive privilege to boot the man off the island, giving him the small motorised jet ski he had in storage, so that he could make the trip to the nearby SHIELD vessel safely.

Yes, SHIELD had camped all around the island, covering it from all angles, even underwater, with round the clock surveillance from all sides. He was sure that at any given point, dozens of cameras were being pointed in their direction.

Satellites. Submarines. Ships. Drones.

Anything with a sensor or camera? He would find it in the weekly reports. He was told about all of them, because just in case someone earned the ire of Weber, he was to calm her down and tell her that they were allied and not enemies to be either shot down, drowned, crushed underwater, or turned into a bloody mist.

All disturbing options that Ms.Weber could carry out with equally disturbing ease, without even stopping mid sip as she drank alcohol more than water.

He snorted at the clever byplay that happened unintentionally. Forgoing the jacket, he opened the refrigerator and swiped a candy bar, because he felt like it. Sucking on that, he surveyed the assortment of goods available to him, wondering what he could make for breakfast.

He was supposed to wake up way earlier, exercise, eat/drink the optimal nutritional goop that SHIELD gave to people on onsite stints and then start with preparing the meal. Alas, he was completely out of f*cks to give since no amount of physical exercise would save him from the next alien invasion.

Having a happy camper, who loved his food? Now that would most certainly help his chances.

Doing the usual round of checks after he had taken the chicken out, he walked into the control room of this place, so to speak. He still had flashes of that headache he got when he saw Tony Stark, in his Iron Man suit, being dropped off on the island. Yes, Mr.Stark was smart enough to know that landing on the island with the suit was a big no-no but getting dropped off? That was fair game.

Once that happened, the man had made a beeline straight for Ms.Weber. He had tried to stop her but the man was relentless and his superiors asked him to take a wait and watch approach, to see if Ms.Weber would tolerate the approach of a person she had fought with, as much as anyone helped Ms.Weber in the Battle of New York.

As far as he knew, she had ended that battle single-handedly, only needing some input as to how to close the portal, else she was more than capable of slaughtering anything that came through that portal. It was only the nuke that forced her hand, nothing else.

To his growing disbelief, Mr.Stark, had offered Ms.Weber a priceless bottle of wine and an assortment of other expensive alcohol, which he thought to be one of the only reasons she tolerated his company for over a week.

In the beginning, Mr.Stark would stay over for a couple of hours during the day, after which, he would call in his ride, the Iron Man suit–and wasn’t that an odd thought– and then head back. The second day however, things changed.

It was clear for Mr.Stark to see that SHIELD was building an outpost of sorts all the way over on the end of the island. The island’s surface was not too rigid, allowing for easy underground tunneling, something that SHIELD intended to exploit to create a downward spiralling base of operations. It was going to be very small, since he was the only one who could operate it but it was going to be comprehensive.

Mr.Stark, unheeding of his protests, had barged into the still ongoing construction–it was going slow because he only had two sets of hands–and had taken one look at it before calling for his suit.

In front of his confused eyes, Mr.Stark had procured the very classified plans for the place and proceeded to upgrade them on the fly. Due to his orders, he did not intervene and only watched as Mr.Stark used an Arc Reactor, yes, the one technology that he was reluctant to hand over to anyone to power the whole thing.

The only explanation given to him was, “I don’t think your resident super powered woman would appreciate the fumes of a generator and solar power is not as reliable as this bad boy here. So, you’re welcome, I guess.”