On the willows there we hung up our lyres.
-Psalm 137
It seemed a reasonable enough request at the time. The team was in a brief lull, and Jemma was always happy to put up with a little discomfort in the name of science. There was talk of perhaps coauthoring a paper, afterward, about the Chitauri virus and whatever long-term effects it might have on the human body.
Jemma didn't expect them to find anything. She'd been monitoring her own blood-work, after all, and everything had returned to normal shortly after her little sky-diving adventure. Still, it would be nice to lay everything out on paper, and she had heard rumors of some very interesting developments in the nanobiotechnology lab.
Jemma really was quite passionate about science. Quite driven. And so, it was with a cheerful smile that she wished her teammates well, promising Fitz they would catch up on Sherlock as soon as she returned.
The problem was, she never returned.
The official excuse was that Agent Simmons was caught up in her own research, and that she fully expected to finish in a few months. She would return then, the bland message stated. Until that day, SHIELD was supplying them with an interim biomedical expert, an agent by the name of Thomas Morgan.
He was perfectly nice, with excellent credentials and a taste for terrible puns. He was even field certified, which theoretically made him an even more valuable asset than Simmons- though of course, if anyone on the team had been queried on that point, they all would have taken issue with that particular idea.
And, three months after he was assigned to the Bus as a temp, his assignment was made permanent, news which made Fitz sulk and stalk the corridors like an offended cat.
Coulson sent in his own inquiries as to the assignment, a twinge of unease rapidly blooming into actual worry as the same reply returned again and again into his inbox:
Agent Simmons has been permanently reassigned.
It was, surprisingly, May who summed up the group's feelings on the matter. "This is bullshit," she said, dropping the copies of the emails in question into a nearby trash can. She then grabbed Fitz by the arm and hauled him into the kitchen, where she plied him with milk and cookies until he stopped snarling.
"Jemma made the best shortbread," he said weepily, and May patted him on the head, which seemed only to alarm him.
When a moping Skye appeared in the kitchen, May shoved three chocolate chip cookies into her hands before pushing her back out the door with an order to bother someone else.
She only had the patience to mother one agent at any given time, and even that was a stretch.
Life, and work, continued. If the lab did not run quite as smoothly as before – if Fitz seemed a bit unproductive – well, they were transitioning. If the team no longer gelled quite as well without Jemma as peacemaker, and arguments broke out over things that no one had ever argued about before, then… they were transitioning.
The argument over French versus Italian roast proved so bitterly contentious that Coulson, in a rare moment of spite, stocked the kitchen with only decaf and locked all the caffeinated coffee in his bedroom closet. This backfired when Skye picked the locks and questioned his taste in ties to his face at two in the morning.
They transitioned for three more months before Coulson gave up and contacted the one person he knew could get him actual answers, consequences be damned.
And there were, indeed, consequences.
Natasha punched him in the face, though she did so with a friendly expression and very conscientiously pulled her swing just enough to avoid breaking bone.
It was either a kindness, or she had plans to tie him up in a basement somewhere and torture him. He figured the odds were about even.
"It's about time you called me," she said, patting his cheek in a rare moment of fondness (though it was the same side of his face that she had just planted her fist into, unsurprisingly). "I figured out you were alive ten months ago."
Of course she had.
"You're looking for your missing agent," she continued. "Jemma Simmons? British, pretty, in a great deal of trouble?"
"Not what I was hoping to hear," he replied, hiding his sigh of exasperation. "You can confirm that?"
"I've just heard whispers so far." She shrugged slightly. "I could find out for you."
It wasn't like Natasha to offer up a favor so quickly, especially when she was annoyed with the person in question. She seemed to understand his hesitation. "Sometimes it's best to lay low," she said quietly. "Some things are harder to get past than others."
From her expression, Phil had the feeling that she might be even better acquainted with his medical file than he was- not that such a thing would have been difficult.
"And I don't like what I've been hearing," she continued. "I expected better from SHIELD."
That was worrisome. For Natasha to be displeased with SHIELD, her standards being what they were, meant that something seriously off-kilter had taken root in one of SHIELD's best research facilities. Simmons was not the type to be the architect of such a problem, at least not knowingly, and he didn't like what role that left her in.
"I would appreciate whatever help you are willing to give," he told her after a moment, and she smiled slightly.
"I'm going to tell Clint."
Barton, at least, could keep a secret. "Just please, for the love of God, don't tell Stark."
She smirked. "You mean you don't want him to show up on your windshield mid-flight, asking Agent May if you can come out to play?"
God help him, if that should ever come to pass. May would toss him out of the Bus herself.
It was three weeks before Natasha made another appearance, this time dropping unexpectedly into the chair across from him at a table in a cafe in Nice.
"I was under the impression that medical experimentation was Hydra's purview, not SHIELD's," she said coolly, anger evident in her eyes.
"Present company excepted," he replied dryly, and she nodded after a moment.
"True enough." She slid an unmarked manila envelope across the table. "Don't open this in public," she warned. "You won't like it, Phil."
He wasn't surprised; had half expected that something terrible would be the end result of his query. "Is she alive, at least?"
Her lips pursed slightly. "For the moment." She sat back in her chair, eyeing him consideringly. "You'll need help to get her out."
He didn't answer her. He didn't need to.
"You can't bring your team in on this," she continued. "It took all of my considerable skill to get my hands on what I've brought you, and it's precious little. They've covered their tracks well enough that you'll have a hard time convincing Fury that the entire department is rotten."
"It's that bad?"
"Worse." She shook her head. "If you drag them into this, at best they'll all end up in prison. At worst, they'll be dead. It doesn't matter that they're trustworthy. And while your new agent is clean, given the choice between the team and SHIELD, he'll choose SHIELD every time." She studied her nails, and then looked up at him from beneath her lashes. It should have been coquettish, or even seductive, but on Natasha it was far more reminiscent of predator eyeing prey. "What are you willing to lose to get her out, Phil?"
The answer, as it turned out, was surprisingly easy and required no consideration at all. "Everything."
He had very little left, after all.
She smiled. "You're a better man than most," was all she said, and the simplicity of her reply was rather terrifying.
The envelope contained a blurred photocopy of a page from a medical file for a Subject S. Said subject, the notes read, had been restrained and subjected to an open lung biopsy under general anaesthesia. No abnormalities found, though further testing would be required.
Subject was recovering well.
Before New York, he would have been skeptical. SHIELD was not free of corruption, but he had believed them to be above playing god with the lives of their own agents- or so he had thought, in those days before Tahiti. Phil found that it was one thing for Fury to treat him as his own personal experiment in necromancy, but it was quite another to know that someone, somewhere, had authorized using Jemma Simmons as a lab rat. Jemma, who had a smile for everyone she passed in the halls, whose mere presence soothed ragged tempers, who had been brave enough to throw herself out of an airplane rather than risk the lives of everyone around her.
He was going to kill someone, and he found that this knowledge was not distressing in the slightest.
Barton and Natasha found him when the team was overnighting in Sydney, on one of the rare occasions when he could justify putting the entire team up in a hotel. Last he had seen, Skye and Morgan were babysitting Fitz in the bar, distracting him with ridiculous, unlikely scenarios ("Butwhat if we did run into the Doctor and ninjas at the same time. What if. Who would kick Ward's ass first?") and what appeared to be a bottle of scotch. May and Ward had disappeared, no doubt to continue their quietly tempestuous relationship which these days always seemed to hover just on the verge of being completely unacceptable.
But then, Phil was planning on tossing away a respectable career by breaking into a secure SHIELD facility and stealing one of their own assets, so scolding May and Ward for breaking anti-fraternization regs seemed hypocritical and a waste of his time.
Instead, he holed up in his own room on the eighth floor, not surprised when his two former agents opened the locked window and tumbled inside, bristling with assorted weaponry and bringing the rain in with them.
"As I live and breathe," Clint said dramatically, striking a pose. "Phil Coulson, you miraculous bastard."
Well, at least his first move hadn't been to put an arrow in a sensitive spot. "How kind of you to aid me in committing a crime against our own organization."
"If anyone asks, I'll tell them it was a training exercise," Clint replied. "And then I will shout from the rooftops that you're alive, and the ensuing chaos will ensure I get away with everything."
Natasha shook her head slightly. In a certain light, her expression might be mistaken for amusement. "When you're done exchanging quips…"
"Yes, mother," Clint said in mock contrition. "Tell us your plan."
She pulled up a set of building plans on her small tablet. They examined them in silence for a moment, all too familiar with the labyrinthine security system and the seeming impossibility of their task. "I think I'm just going to blow shit up," she finally said, in a calm tone that would not have been out of place in a church sanctuary.
"That's your grand plan?" Clint asked, not sounding doubtful, but rather, intrigued. Excited, even.
She shrugged. "Sometimes brute force is necessary. She's being held here-"
She indicated the south-west quadrant of one of the sub-basement levels.
"-so we go in, create as much confusion as possible, and then everyone disappears." She turned to Clint. "What do you think. Canada?"
"You promised we'd hide somewhere warmer, next time," Clint shot back. "That winter in Siberia was hell, Nat."
Phil had to restrain himself from suggesting Tahiti, magical place or no. "You're both willing to go into exile for this?"
"I've been meaning to take up knitting," Natasha told him very seriously, and he had a sudden mental image of just the kind of damage the Black Widow could do with a circular needle and a pack of DPNs. "It looks very soothing."
Clint grinned. "Finally, a chance to finish that symphony."
Everyone he worked with was absolutely batshit and completely lacking in self-preservation instincts, a fact for which Phil was suddenly very glad.
"Your furlough starts in two weeks?" Natasha queried in a tone that told him she knew exactly when his furlough started, and probably knew exactly what he had eaten for breakfast that morning in the bargain.
"The 21st," he confirmed, and she nodded.
"We'll be ready."