‘ you’re hiding something. ’
Her keystrokes are quick and precise, hitting every letter and symbol at the right time. It’s instinct, just like muscle memory, and she never misses a beat.
Maintaining a neutral expression is easier said than done with Karen in one ear and Micro in the other, cutting in and out like a short circuit wire. The backend communications system he’d thrown together works about as well as you’d expect, but something is better than nothing, so something will just have to be enough for now.
“Skye––talk––me––what––go––g on?”
If there’s sweat dampening her forehead and nape, she doesn’t notice. She works well under pressure, but there are still times when her heart will skip a beat, once every couple of minutes by her count. Those times are few and far between. This is one of them.
“You’re lucky I can talk and type at the same time. I’m opening up a backdoor for you now, but it’s weird, I’ve only ever seen this kinda security monitoring with S.H.I.E.L.D. severs. And by the way, it’s Daisy.”
She pauses, keying in the last of the administration code.
“Alright, Lieberman, you’re up. Thirty seconds to work your magic. I’ll leave it open as long as I can.”
Beside her, Karen hovers and paces, hovers and paces, buoying from one to the other in almost record time. It reminds Daisy a lot of herself in some ways –– the girl that she used to be, itching to do something but not knowing what, feeling uncomfortably out of place. She wants to apologize for putting her out in her own home like this, but Karen speaks up before she has the chance.
“You’re hiding something.”
Her jaw tics just then, and she hesitates before leveling her with a stare that isn’t cold, but isn’t warm either.
“Yeah. Yeah, I am, but so are you. Like the fact your boyfriend is a serial killer, for example. Just throwing that out there before the pot accuses the kettle of lying to it again.”
“Don’t call him that. That’s not what he is.”
“Does telling yourself that help you sleep better at night?”
Karen falls silent after that, arms folded tight across her chest like she’s protecting it from something. The small pieces of shrapnel that splinter off every word, maybe.
“… look, I’ll be honest, I’m not doing this for him. I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep if they put him behind bars for the rest of his life. But I’ve got a stake in this, too, and I know what it’s like to want to protect something that nobody else understands. Castle’s in trouble. You’ve heard of HYDRA, right? Nazi fascist organization? Right, well, they’ve been keeping tabs on one of my friends for a while now. Guess he got caught in their crosshairs. They’re keeping them holed up in some underground facility, and we’re trying to get them out. Worst case scenario –– ? I quake them out, but that’ll draw more media attention than any of us want.”
meme.










