Hey again everyone! Still kinda nervous about posting this lol... but then, I'll just go for it :P
Note: This fic is based loosely on a few lyrics (bolded lines) from the song Just Be Held, by Casting Crowns. Not beta-read, so there might be typos... Oh, also... I have no experience with panic attacks, or any medical information outside a bit of research, so apologies if things aren't accurate. There'll be one more chapter after this :D
Hold it all together, everybody needs you strong.
As the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Phil Coulson was privileged with many things, including the most elite team in the agency, the latest technology available, and a practically unlimited budget. Courtesy of the fact that most people thought him dead, he enjoyed a certain level of anonymity as well.
But one thing that hadn't been included in the theoretical recruitment letter was the insane amount of responsibility he felt for the young lives in his care. The heavy guilt that weighed him down every time one of the team was hurt, that made him ask, "What did I do wrong?" every time. The almost paternal love that washed over him whenever he saw Skye struggling to find an identity, Ward hiding his shaken tears, Jemma and Fitz flirting with each while denying they were in love. It was nothing he had signed up for.
And then there were the nightmares. It's normal, the doctors told him. Get over it, he yelled at himself. You're not alone, May assured him. But it sure felt like he was, as he fumbled for the switch of his bedside lamp and fought to control his trembling.
Sometimes they were past events, coming back to haunt him. Sometimes it was the future, outcomes he knew were a possibility with the kind of life they led. Sometimes they were only vague feelings, but those were the worst, because they lingered long after he opened his eyes. And they were never of himself; always of his family.
Not his real family, of course, the one he didn't have. He'd had a little sister, but for all he knew, she could be working in the room next door and he'd never know; she'd been kidnapped long before he'd been old enough to act. He'd had a girlfriend once, too, a cellist, but she thought he was dead and he didn't know many women who enjoyed dating ghosts.
So, no, these nightmares were always the predator of his family-at-heart. Also known as, his team. Ward, like his oldest son, someone who took after his hidden need for love, and understood his reasons for keeping it all in. Jemma and Leo, like his twins, in a way, adorable and smart, personifying the relationship he could have had with his sister. Sweet and genuine, so childlike and innocent. Skye, like his baby girl, the daughter he'd always longed for, the one who knew how to curl her hair and play tough all at once. Sassy, but compassionate. Hurt, but doing her best to overcome it.
And May…. he wasn't quite sure who May was in his life. Sometimes she was his sister, and they'd compete over stupid things, laugh over old-school movie puns. Sometimes she was almost his mother, stroking his hair when he was sick and kissing his forehead as he fell asleep. And sometimes, his favorite times, she was like his wife, if he dared to let her that close, waiting up all night for him to return to the Bus, and holding him up as he fell apart.
It was this May that his nightmares had chosen to target tonight, and he wanted nothing more to creep into her room and assure himself that she was still alright. He wanted to watch her chest rise up and down, wanted to feel her pulse, strong and steady, wanted to warm his ice-cold hands by placing them in hers. If he had it his way, he'd curl up under her blanket, let her wrap her arms around him, cry into her shoulder and trust that no one else would ever know.
"May," he whispered, although it sounded more like a whimper, even to his own ears. "I can't...I can't…."
In the back of his mind, he wondered who he was talking to. To his demons, maybe, the ones that never ceased to accuse him of being a killer, a failure, a waste. To those who told him that he was stronger than this, that he was better than this, that he should be good enough to do life alone. To everyone that made it abundantly clear that he was the leader, the captain. That he didn't get to be human, didn't get to have weaknesses, that he didn't deserve love or someone to hold him together.
It didn't matter, in the end, whom he was fighting with. Because he believed them anyway.
But life hits you out of nowhere and barely leaves you holding on.
Agent Coulson, they'd said, is your team strong enough for this?
We can handle this, he'd said.
We've got this, he'd said.
I know the risks, he'd said.
A lot of good it did him now, to know the risks, when he couldn't prevent them. When his team got hurt, because he wasn't fast enough to keep them safe. When he was curled up in a chair beside May's bed, anxiously toying with the cuffs of his sleeves and raking his mind for everything he might've done wrong. He didn't know which was worse - the fact that a member of his team came so close to dying, or that she was still unconscious, looking as near to dead as one could when still alive. He reached out to touch her, to assure himself that she was still breathing, still healing, but her hands were as ice-cold as his own.
"May!" he hissed, wanting to scream but too tired for more than a whisper. His breathing hitched, and quickened, but there was nothing he could do.
"Agent Coulson, the doctors are requesting you."
"Breathe, Phil, it's okay."
"I... don't know what we can do..."
His mind clashed with his heart; fears melted into facts; reality twisted into nightmares.
"You have failed me, Philip."
"Wait, wait, don't leave me! Please! Don't...don't go!"
"It's a magical place…. It's a magical place…. It's a magical place."
He didn't have time for this; he didn't have the freedom for this; he didn't even have the energy for this. He was an agent, a level eight agent, in fact, and he didn't freak out. He didn't cry, he didn't have panic attacks. Whatever was happening now just really, really looked like it.
It's all your fault, some voice told him, and he agreed, without even know what it was referring to. Perhaps the fact that May had taken the bullet for him. Maybe it was forcing her back into combat, bringing back old and faded memories, in the selfish hope the old May he'd once known was still hidden in there. It could even have very likely been that he had even formed a team in the first place, desperate to prove himself still worthy of the respect he'd once had. Desperate for a family. Desperate for love, in any form.
This kind of thing had never happened before he'd "died". Had Loki messed with his mind, when he'd stabbed him in the heart? Was it the result of being here, and then there, and then back here again, that had softened him? Was it the family he'd surrounded himself with, that he'd become so attached to? Was it the fact that the bubble he thought he'd placed his team in, had been so violently and abruptly broken? He supposed he'd never know; that was then, and there was no going back. He had no place to be but the now.
Which also happened to be where he was experiencing his non-panic attack, struggling for breath and clutching the armrests of his medbay chair so hard his fingers were white. Where May was fighting for her life against a bullet wound in her chest and the infection that'd set in, battling a raging fever and a concussion at the same time. Where the monitor was beeping, steadily, comfortingly, but Phil knew that if it so much as stuttered, he would collapse. He heard the footsteps echoing in the empty hallway that passed by May's room, but they didn't really register. He watched the handle turn, and the crack between the door and the wall grow larger until he could see who was behind it.
"Skye," he greeted her, feeling somewhat detached and automatic, his mind still whirling with memories and haunted with nightmares. He buried them down, pushed them away. He wouldn't fall apart in front of his baby girl. He had to be strong, for her, for everyone.
But really, it was hard. To pretend you were okay, when you certainly weren't. To act like a professional, when you felt like a child. To stand tall in a suit and tie when all you really wanted was to curl up on someone's lap and have them assure that it would all be alright. It was hard to have the roles reversed.
"H-hey." He managed to cover up the stutter with a cough, but he was sure she'd heard it. "What are you...what are you doing here?"
Her eyes were slightly red, like she'd been unable to hold in a few tears, but hadn't allowed herself to cry. She ignored the question. "You missed dinner."
Phil shook his head, and his stomach flipped. "Not hungry."
Skye sank into the chair beside him, her almost uninterested attitude seeming to unravel as she did so. "Figured," she whispered. "Neither was I. Even Ward didn't really eat, and that's saying something." She leaned her head on Phil's shoulder, and he really wished she'd stop pretending that he cared about the way his team had eaten dinner.
She seemed to get the idea, and she blinked rapidly a few times before allowing the tears to finally fall. But instead of asking the question he thought she would, instead of inquiring after May's status, she turned to him.
"Are you okay?"
He should have known she would ask that. He should have known she would come in here just as he was coming apart. He should have never let himself become this soft, this weak, never let his team into danger, never risked May's life just so he could try and bring her old self back out.
It was stupid, so stupid, and now May was hurt, almost dead, and...and...and….
"AC…. Phil...come on...breathe!"
He gasped back into reality, to find himself in that same stupid chair, in that same stupid room, with the two women who meant the most to him in the whole world. And the one that was like his daughter, looking thoroughly confused and more than anxious.
"Did you...did you just...have a...panic attack?" She sounded incredulous, like she'd been sure he was immune to such human-like things.
Phil exhaled sharply, and it audibly shook. "I...I don't know. Maybe."
She leaned forward slightly, eyeing him sideways. "Has it ever happened before?"
Great. Now she's going to go all protective. The last thing I need right now is for her to call Simmons and have her perform all kinds of tests on me. "No, not before today."
She was still giving him that 'why-aren't-we-doing-anything' look that he'd grown so used to seeing. "Is that okay?"
Feeling his strong facade slowly crumbling, Phil sighed, shaking his head and refusing to make eye contact with Skye in case the love he knew he'd see in her brown eyes brought tears into his own. "I don't know. I don't think so. Don't tell Jemma."
"You need...like, help, I don't know, something," she protested. It wasn't easy to watch the strongest man she knew being reduced to shaky breaths and guilty thoughts, like a broken toy that repeated the same thing over and over and over again.
Her mouth opened a little, involuntarily, as she realized what was happening. "Listen, AC. You know that…. You know you don't have to do this alone, right? That's why you've got a team, a- a…. Family. We've got your back." Her confident voice dropped to nearly a whisper, but Phil couldn't tell whether it was because the gravity of their situation had suddenly caught up to her, or because he was sure she could tell that he was about to cry. "You don't have to fight alone."
A tear fell, but he brushed it away roughly with the hard cuff of his jacket sleeve.
You don't have to fight alone, she'd said.
But I do, his broken heart said back.