It was a weird feeling, staring at your own grave. But was it weirder to be staring at it and to feel disappointed? To feel as though the answers you thought you would gain at the end of your life had been ripped away from you? That the closure that you had so desperately been searching for had been denied? Coulson wasn't sure. But standing in the middle of a cemetery in Portland and looking at the headstones side by side, he felt disappointed. And it wasn't that he didn't appreciate the efforts the S.H.I.E.L.D medical team had put into saving his life, it wasn't that he couldn't understand why Nick Fury had put such determination into keeping his oldest friend alive and it wasn't even that he couldn't understand that there was still work to be done… that there was still work he could do. He got all of that, he really did, but he couldn't shake the disappointment rising within. The sadness that seemed to pool in the pit of his stomach and cause him more pain than the constant dull ache emanating from his lungs.

It was the headstone next to his.

He knew he could pin all of his disappointment onto that one headstone and he knew exactly why. Because for as much as he appreciated that his friend had battled to keep him alive, he now had to live with the fact that his oldest friend had kept him from her. Again.

It was the beeping that first brought Coulson round. The constant and steady beep…beep…beep of the heart monitor that alerted him to the fact he was in a hospital bed. With that realisation came a rush of familiarity assaulting his senses all at once, the scent of anti-sceptic lingering in the air, the sound of the hospital machines, the whir of an oxygen mask, the itchiness of the infirmary sheets, and a flash of blonde. Wait… that last one wasn't right. He opened his eyes and unprepared for the bright white light that flooded his vision and dizzied his senses he closed his eyes once more.

"Phil?"

That voice was familiar.

He opened his eyes slower this time and was confronted by the face of his friend only inches from his own.

"Director?" Was the response Phil attempted, though after weeks in a coma it came out more as a croaky growl.

Fury only smiled in response and gripped Coulson's shoulder gently.

"It's good to have you back Agent." He said with an almost-smile, before calling for a nurse.

He must have lost consciousness again, because Phil didn't remember the nurse arrive, or Fury leaving. The next thing he knew he was alone and the room was dark. He took a moment to take stock of his surroundings, confusion adding to the morphine-induced cloudiness in his mind. He didn't recognise this room… at all. He knew all of the rooms at the S.H.I.E.L.D infirmaries, at least, the ones at the base and on the helecarrier; Barton and Romanoff had frequented all of them on numerous occasions, so why didn't he recognise this room?

Then there was the silence. It was off-putting to someone trained to decipher their location by sound alone. Apart from the machines that were apparently monitoring his welfare there was not a sound to be heard. Where the hell was he? How long had he been here? And why could he suddenly smell lavender?

The third time Coulson opened his eyes he felt more normal. Sure his head was spinning, breathing seemed harder than ever and his back was aching like nobody's business, but he felt more normal, more alert and generally more awake than he had before.

"Agent Coulson" a voice said from beside him, the white coat invariably exposing the man as a doctor, "Agent Coulson, can you hear me?"

Phil nodded slowly, as the doctor proceeded to shine a light in both his eyes and examine the bandages that Phil found himself covered in.

"It's good to see you awake, Agent. You had us worried for a while there." The doctor said softly, as he stepped back from his patient to update the file hanging on the end of his bed.

"Where…" Phil began, his voice croaky as the dryness in his throat caused him to cough.

"You're at a S.H.I.E.L.D base Agent Coulson, you've been here for 6 weeks." The doctor supplied, while moving a glass of water towards the Agent and helping him to drink.

"What happened?" was all Phil could manage, his voice still raspy and raw.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Loki" Coulson said simply, vividly remembering the demi-god puncturing his lungs and leaving him for dead.

The doctor looked at Phil for a moment, a flicker of surprise passing over the man's face. "Most people wouldn't remember anything Agent Coulson. A trauma like that usually takes weeks, even months to resurface -"

"-He's not most people."

Both Phil and the doctor looked towards the door, as the man belonging to the voice that had cut off the doctor walked into the room.

"Director" the doctor said with a small nod of the head.

"Doctor Garland" Fury said simply, "how's the patient?"

"Doing well Sir, we lowered his dosage per your request, he came to about 5 minutes ago."

"Good. Give us a few minutes, would you?" Fury said, in one of his infamous orders that sounded like a question.

"Of course." The doctor said before stepping out of the room.

"Where am I, boss?" Coulson said once the doctor was clear of the room.

"Welcome to level 7, Phil."

That conversation had only taken place a few weeks ago and in that time the Director, (the only one apart from the medical team in Switzerland, who currently knew that Coulson was alive) had filled him in on some of the essentials from his absence.

Got Barton back? Check.

Avengers assembled? Check… Well sort of.

Won the Battle of New York? Check.

Set up a new level of security clearance to hide the fact you lied about an Agent's death? Check.

Coulson actually wasn't so pleased with that last one.

He understood why Fury had done it. In fact he supposed that technically it had been his idea. After all hadn't his 'dying' declaration been that the Avengers wouldn't work unless they had something to avenge?

So intellectually, Coulson could understand Fury's decision. As a S.H.I.E.L.D agent he respected the decision for what it had been, a necessity, a gamble, a risk worth taking to save the world.

But emotionally?

Phil Coulson, the husband, the brother, the friend, couldn't condone what Fury had done. Not least because it stirred questions and doubts in his own mind and, worst of all, had allowed him a flicker of hope, only to have it crushed minutes after it had formed. For a blissful few minutes the idea that his death had been hidden from his colleagues, from his friends, from his family, had allowed him to hope that this had happened before… He'd seen the blonde and smelled the lavender; did that mean that she too was still alive?

No.

He was alive and she was still dead.

He laid the flowers he had been holding on Jenny's grave. He'd felt her presence when he was in that coma, he was sure of it. He was as sure of that as he had been that the Avengers would win. He'd given his life for that certainty. Eventually, he'd do the same for her.

"Sir?"

"Yeah Jarvis? What is it?"

"You asked me to monitor the Coulsons in Portland, Sir"

"Yeah Jarvis, I remember that, seeing as, you know, I was the one who asked you to do it."

"Well, Sir…"

"Yes?"

"I think there's something you ought to know…"