I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.
Here we go again, guys! 10 chapters, 27k words, lots of delicious hurt and comfort and angst and friendship and drama.
For TYRider. Again.
Set during 3.09 Closure
Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom; empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something.
1. Extraction
"Get down!"
Phil throws himself forward into a shoulder roll, hears Mack's pistol spit, hears a body thud to the ground behind him, all in the same half-second. Then he's on his feet beside the SUV. Mack fires again as he tumbles into the back seat and slams the door shut.
"Go, go, go!"
A gun fires somewhere outside. The SUV shoots forward, tires squealing.
Mack meets his eyes in the rearview mirror. "What about Ms Price?"
Panting for air, Phil shakes his head. It's an effort to speak past the burning lump in his throat. "Just drive." He reaches for the centre console, for the gun stashed in a safe box there, and the light falls on his bloody hand, wet and red and gleaming.
Mack's eyes flick downward and darken. He's a veteran agent; between the text (under fire need extraction), the blood (so much blood, slick and wet and gushing between his fingers), and the absence of Rosalind (Look at me! Ros! Breathe. Please breathe. Please breathe), he'll know exactly what to make of the situation.
New gun in hand, Phil hunkers down in the back seat, staying as low as he can. It's almost a relief to curl in on himself, making his body as small a target as possible while he checks the pistol over methodically. The stolen gun he leaves lying on the far seat. His heart hammers in his chest but his hands are steady; even under the onslaught of adrenaline, his hands are steady.
SHIELD agents get the shakes trained out of them early. Phil's got twenty-odd years of field experience on top of that training. His mind might not be unshakeable, but his hands certainly are.
Even the prosthetic one.
"Mack," he says.
"Yes, sir."
"Call Commander May. Keep her updated."
He'll need her. More than ever.
SHIELD will need her.
"What do you want me to tell her?" Mack reaches for the overhead comm unit. His eyes don't stray from the road.
Phil wipes his free hand over his forehead. Feels the smear of blood he leaves in its wake. "Tell her we're en route. And that Rosalind Price — " the breath sticks in his throat " — has been assassinated by Grant Ward."
The adrenaline has worn off by the time they arrive at the Playground. Phil tucks his gun into the small of his back and slides out of the vehicle, legs shaky. He hardly notices the stares at the unexpectedly early return of a grim, blood-splattered director.
He doesn't know if word has spread yet. No doubt it will soon enough.
Mack is a steady presence at his side as they make their way to the common room. Phil moves like a ghost through the halls, dimly aware of passing Lincoln, then Simmons and Fitz, then a handful of other agents. May and Skye in the common room. Lance and Bobbi in the kitchen.
He takes the stairs two at a time, absently noting the lack of accompanying footsteps. Mack's staying downstairs. Leaving him alone for now.
Good.
All he wants to be — all he is — is alone.
He makes it to his office. Crosses the hardwood floor in a daze. Turns, turns again, blindly seeking. For what, he doesn't know. For Rosalind? No.
She's dead.
His desk is just as he left it: computer, keypad, a coffee mug, a few vintage pieces. So too is the conference table with its tray of drinking glasses, the empty water jug, the stacks of manila folders from a recent briefing. The infamous axe is still on the wall.
Funny. He'd expected something to have changed.
His skin feels numb. There's a curious shivering under the surface, almost a jitteriness. He should recognise it, he thinks dimly. He doesn't.
His chest hurts. What is he missing? Oxygen? He sucks in air with an effort. It's a battle against the lead weight of his lungs, the heaviness in his limbs, but he manages.
It kills him, but he manages.
He ducks his head, stretching out the tightness down the back of his neck. Even his spine is sore. Every muscle throbs.
His gaze falls on his shirt. The world vanishes a white-out of panic. There's blood there. Too much blood, too red against the deep blue, too real, get it off get it off get it off. His pulse thunders in his ears. He rips the buttons open, tears the shirt off, throws it as far from him as he can.
It carves an arc through the air and crumples to the ground.
Something clatters at his feet.
What?
It's the match box. That's right, he stuck it in his pocket at the apartment. And now it's here. In his office. On the floor.
Chest heaving, fighting for air, he bends and picks it up. Traces the words with a trembling finger. Half Moon Pub. The last word is almost obscured beneath a thick ring of blood. His blood? Rosalind's?
He doesn't know.
It doesn't matter.
Fire floods his veins. The box flattens in his hand, his fingers closing over it in a crushing grip. He hates it. Hates the box, hates the pub, hates the reminder of what he'd had with Ros, what he'd fooled himself into thinking he could keep.
Who was he kidding? He'd thought — maybe — Audrey. Sure, she was a civilian, but she was kind and talented and beautiful and smart, she had a brother in the Special Forces so she knew that there were questions he couldn't answer. Even when that question was how was your day? and he didn't answer, she understood.
But then he'd died, and she'd started moving on, started healing, and he'd thought, well, maybe it's better this way. It hurts like hell, but it's better.
And this time… oh, this time. He'd thought — maybe — Rosalind. She was radiant and shrewd and hard-edged and, for all that, sometimes gloriously naive. She'd been around the block, so to speak. Awkward questions wouldn't be a problem; she knew the business. He'd thought that would make it easier.
He'd been wrong.
I always had one finger on the eject button.
Had he? Really?
That's because you're incapable of anything else.
Was he?
They had a lot in common. Too much. He can see that now. Both spies. Both heads of their respective organisations. Both with trust issues, because the only spies without trust issues are very young or very —
Well.
Even the ones with trust issues end up dead.
You were stabbed through the heart. You must derive sadistic pleasure in doing the same to others.
They hardly knew each other, but still (stupid, stupid, and cruel, and very stupid) he'd let himself hope.
They hardly knew each other, but they knew more than enough to hurt, to stab with barbed words, lashing out in pre-emptive self-defence. Now, he can only wonder if it was fear that drove them. If they were afraid of getting too close.
At least I didn't use the story of my dead husband to sell an idea we both know is a lie.
He can't speak for Ros. She's dead. But for himself…
Yeah. Maybe. Maybe he was scared of opening up, getting too close, of trusting someone again only to have that ripped away.
But they'd grown close despite that. Close enough to go for drinks, to have dinner, to sleep together. Sleep. Not sex. As veteran spies they knew the fleeting value of sex as a tool, as a weapon — and, conversely, as something to be withheld until the right time, cherished in the right situation with the right person. Sleeping beside someone was an act of trust in itself. In their line of work, guns and knives were more often bedfellows than people. The intimacy that it implied…
I like Ros. Whether she can be trusted is yet to be determined.
His chest hurts. Again.
He doesn't think it will ever stop hurting.
Hell of a time to find out just how much he really had cared for her. He'd tried so carefully to guard against it, to take things slow. To sound out the water before diving in.
Surprise.
Phil Coulson cares for Rosalind Price.
Cared.
Past tense.
She's dead.
His gaze falls to the match box in his hand. His lip curls, some indeterminable riot of disgust and anguish and rage and sorrow and revulsion and pure pain churning inside him.
Half Moon Pub.
They'll never go there again. He'll never go there again.
Ros is dead.
Ros is dead.
A ragged cry tears from his throat. He flings the match box away from him and clears one end of the conference table with a sweep of his arm. Incongruously, his mind throws up the memory of Fitz doing the same thing in the lab. Maybe they're more alike than Phil thought. There's a stab of visceral satisfaction as glass shatters, as splintered pieces of the wooden tray fall to the floor. It's not enough. He does it again and again until the table is clear, unsullied, a blank state to start over with.
Cheeks wet, chest heaving, he finds himself on the floor surrounded by broken glass and scattered paper. He's on his knees in a parody of supplication, a pale mimicry of prayer to a god he's not sure he believes in.
After he died, he knew there was something out there. Something beyond life and the end of life.
Now? He's not so sure.
He forgot how much death hurts.
He thought he'd learnt this lesson. After Ward's betrayal, after Trip's death. After Audrey.
But apparently not.
His arm hurts. It's a different pain from the exhausted aching grief that suffuses his bones. A sharp pain, slicing and tearing. He lifts his right hand, clenches it experimentally, and hisses as the pain intensifies. For the first time, the thought crosses his mind that some of the blood on him might be his.
He doesn't know why that surprises him. Tonight he's been in both a fistfight and a gunfight, jumped through a closed window, rolled across a street strewn with debris, and trashed his own office. Any one of those things might have resulted in injury.
And he's been too numb to feel it.
That thought makes his stomach drop.
He needs help. He's injured and he can't feel it. He needs help.
Behind the buzzing static, the blind shock, the blank haze of grief, one thought rises.
Go to May.
He goes.