The streets are still littered with red, white and blue streamers the day Phillip Coulson is born, in a small town in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. His father is a history teacher, his mother a homemaker, and he is their first and only child. He weighs eight pounds and two ounces, measures twenty inches and lets out quiet cries of protest as he is dragged into the world by a none too gentle doctor.
Phil grows up an average boy.
He is of an average height and average weight, and attends the local elementary school with all the other regular boys and girls. He plays baseball in the little leagues, does all his chores and homework and spends time with the neighbour's children in the front yard in the afternoons, supervised by his mother who often presents him with treats as rewards for good behaviour.
His favourite in summer is her Apple pie, with a golden and flakey crust, wrapped around a piping hot filling of caramelised apple slices. It's not too sweet and not too sour, and she always serves it with a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade; the lemons picked from a little tree in their back garden.
In winter, his parents make hot chocolate from scratch, and the family of three stay warm huddled by the fireplace, trading stories about their day.
They're an average family, with an average house and an average life.
But the first eight years of Phil's life are safe, and happy.
He is nine years old when his father dies.
He doesn't remember the day well; only a blur of tears and terror as his mother explains to him as simply as possible how it happened, and then the condolences from every person he encountered. He remembers everything moving around him, his whole world shifting and then crumbling.
While they were not by any means wealthy before his father's passing, they had more than enough to live comfortably. But now his mother is left to raise him alone, strapped for cash and not enough hours in a day or days in a week to earn enough. He begins to do odd tasks around the neighbourhood, delivering papers, mowing lawns, walking dogs, trying to help her out, but even then, it's not enough.
They sell off many possessions - Phil's father had always been a sentimental man - and keep only the red corvette that they had been restoring together before the man died. It is several years before he opens up the garage door once more to work on the car, to complete the task he and his father had started.
He names the car Lola.
Phil is smaller than the other boys in middle school, and enjoys studying, learning, more than anything. He has his own group of friends, kids that share the same interests - to have lunch with and work together in classes, but once school is over, he's off to the local convenience store to help stock shelves in the back. His mother always insists that she doesn't need his help, to save the little money he earns for himself, but he's stubborn and makes sure she gets it one way or another.
He does save a little for himself, hoarding pennies and dimes and the occasional dollar in a jar on his bedside table labeled "Collectibles". He still has many of his childhood treasures saved - those that are priceless to him but worthless to others - a particularly round stone he'd found by the river while skipping rocks, a broken seashell from a vacation they took to the beach one year, a pen with no more ink that his father had once carried around with him. He has other things too of course - various well-read Captain America comic books, miniature figurines, random cogs and screws from old watches and clocks. His mother teases him about it, saying that his fascination for memorabilia came from his father.
Phil kisses a girl for the first time in eighth grade. It's just a peck on the lips shared with his date for a school dance, Michelle, who smiles prettily at him, blushing, before, running off to tell her friends about it. He doesn't remember the kiss itself, just the sound of her giggles, the butterflies in his stomach.
His first "serious" girlfriend is Lisa, who sits two rows in front of him in English in tenth grade. They lose their virginity to each other, and last nearly four months before she breaks up with him. There's no hard feelings really, even when he sees her flirting with a member of their school's football team not three weeks later.
He understands it, he really does.
When he was younger, there had been a point where he wanted to be one of those guys - the same uniform, logos blazing, running out on the field as part of a team, all working towards achieving the same goal. But his father had taught him how to play, and he can't bring himself to do it without the man's guidance and support.
All he has left is the knowledge and wisdom his father had managed to impart on him in the nine years they were fortunate enough to spend together, and he clings on to it, unwilling to let it go.
By the time turns seventeen, Phil has his life planned out ahead of him. He'll graduate from high school, go to college, study history. He'll get a job, build a life for himself.
His mother always did say he was a dreamer.
And he did dream - of the ideal life. A house that felt just as warm as his childhood home, Lola parked in the garage, a sensible distance away from the mini-van in the front driveway. He imagines the woman he will end up spending his life with; he wants the life that his parents shared together - however short it had been. He wants to know the moment he meets the one for him, to win her over and build a future together.
He knows that he wants children, plural. Growing up as an only child had it's positives, he was the center of attention, there was never anyone to fight with. But he had been lonely, and he doesn't want that for his future kids. He knows that he'll love them.
And so he dreams, imagines, and plans.
The thing about life is that it doesn't care about your plans. It throws curveballs at you and expects you to dodge them; and whatever outcome occurs if you fail, is on you.
He goes off to college at age eighteen. He's made his plans, and he's following them. It's supposed to be the beginning of his new life, his adult life.
It's the year everything begins.
It's also the year his mother dies.
He skips classes for a week, holed up his dorm room, before he pulls himself together and gets on with life. It isn't going to sit around and wait for him. His parents had already given him everything he needed to survive in the world, and he wasn't going to let them down by falling apart.
He doesn't have anyone on his team anymore, no one to truly support him, and so he must adapt to surviving on his own.
He throws himself into his school work, studying harder than he ever has. It's history, it's something he enjoys, something he loves, something he's loved his entire life. The more he learns, the more he wants to learn; hours upon hours spent at the library, combing through book after book.
He's intelligent. He's observant.
He notices things. Inconsistencies. Half-truths. Complete lies.
Where there are secrets there must be people keeping them, and so he digs further.
Notices more.
Until one day he notices the man with eyepatch watching him.
He is just shy of nineteen years old when Nick Fury recruits him for an organisation the man calls S.H.I.E.L.D. It's a peace keeping agency headed by Peggy Carter herself; a woman who had been integral to the success of missions carried out by Captain America and his allies during the second world war. During the war against Hydra.
Fury is clear that joining means dedicating himself completely to the cause; to fight for the greater good, to protect the world, to be the shield. Phil has nothing left to lose the day he packs his bags and leaves his life behind for good, following Nicholas Fury into the unknown.
Fury puts him through his paces, makes sure he knows what he's getting himself into. There's so much to learn, so much to study, and he thrives off of it. It's the first time he's truly found purpose since he lost his mother, and he thinks both she and his father would be proud of the man he is trying to become.
And so he trains, hard, for the next three years, absorbing all the knowledge he can, learning all the skills. He learns to fight, with his hands, with his body. He learns the weapons of the trade - knives, guns, rifles. Fury thinks he'll make a good field agent once he goes through proper training at the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy.
He looks forward to the experience.