One Life for the Price of Two
May landed the Bus gracefully on a clear spot within the docking area of the Hub. She announced that they had touched down, but he didn't hear. Agent Phil Coulson was still shaken up by what he had seen. That… thing in that tube. His mind had been desperately trying to wrap itself around it. He hadn't seen anything like it before.
Seeing that creature, mangled and disembowled, and lying in a tube full of God knew what was bad enough. Knowing that whatever that thing's fluids were were what GH-325 was, and that that stuff was pumped into him and Skye, made him ill.
He looked at his hands. They were trembling again, something that had become commonplace whenever he got to thinking about that thing. He sighed and tried to will them to stop, but to no avail. Was it an alien? Who knew what else was out there, lurking in the darkness of space to try what the Chitauri failed to. It wouldn't surprise him if it was, but that didn't mean that he wanted its juices running through his veins.
"Phil?" He looked up and saw May standing in the doorway. "You're not coming?"
"I am." He cleared his throat and stood slowly. "Just thinking things over." He saw her frown ever so slightly. Almost imperceptibly, but he saw it. "I'm fine. Really." To prove this, he flashed a small smile, and cursed inwardly when it faltered nearly upon arrival.
She eyed him, as only she could. "Okay. We're about to pick up some lunch. Wanna join in?"
He really needed to call Director Fury and talk with him about this. Something in the back of his mind told him that he already knew, and why wouldn't he? He was the spy, he knew everything that was happening in his organization. Well, not everything. He spared May a single, quick glance. "Sure, just let me make a phone call first."
They strode quickly through the Bus toward the off ramp quickly and silently, as had become their custom during times like this. He was almost off when caught the mistakable sound of Director Fury himself chewing someone out. He would have chuckled, if it hadn't have been two of his own.
Before Fury stood Fitz and Ward, off to the side. Ward stood rigid and at attention, absorbing every word that exited the Director's mouth like religious rhetoric. Fitz also stood rigid, but was shaking too much to be considered anything but scared shitless. "…and this had damn well better not happen again. Do you two understand me?"
"Yes sir," they said in unison. Coulson watched Fitz swallow roughly and sway a little, as if about to pass out.
"You have better sense than this, damn it. I would expect that if you're give bad orders, you don't follow them or make fair suggestions. Time being a factor isn't an excuse for this kind of shit. Simple as. Understood?"
"Yes sir," Ward replied dutifully. Fitz, no longer able to speak coherently, just nodded clearly.
Coulson felt a wave of anger flash over him before it was quashed. He marched down the ramp and made a beeline for where they were standing. "Director Fury."
"Agent Coulson. My office, now." He didn't spare them more than a passing but clearly apologetic glanced before following his superior officer to his office within the Hub. He could just barely hear Ward and May consoling Fitz as best could. Poor kid; he knew what Fury was going on about, but it was on no one but him. "Just what the hell did you think you were doing at that facility?" Fury demanded when they reached his office.
"Saving a member of my team, sir," he replied promptly.
"In doing so, you've over stepped your bounds. The very same bounds you've been tight-roping almost ever since your team came into existence," he charged. "I don't know where you get off –"
"Where I get off, sir," he interrupted, "is at the need to ensure that my team member is safe. I would do anything, anything, to make sure that those five agents are alive and able to conduct their assignments and live their lives on the Bus as well as possible. She can't do that if she's dying of a gunshot wound. So, yes, I broke into that facility, but the alternative was unacceptable."
Fury's expression didn't soften but only a scant iota. He leaned back in the chair that he slid into behind his desk during Coulson's reply. "So, her life is worth two?"
Coulson frowned bemusedly. "I'm sorry?"
"Her life. To save it, you had to steal GH-325; in doing so, you killed two men who were just doing their jobs."
"Sir, they wouldn't allow us to enter, even after we repeatedly informed that we were in dire need of medical assistance. And I told that I was with SHIELD, and they still didn't let us in. So –"
"So, you killed them."
"They shot first."
"How is that a reason, and not an excuse? Coulson, I made that facility classified Level 10 for a reason. I had it off the books for a reason. There were guards there for a reason. Those guards were just doing their jobs, which was to not allow any unauthorized personnel into the building by any means. If you didn't have the proper code phrase, then they were well within their rights to shoot first. As that was their job. And now, because of you, they're dead. If a hospital wouldn't allow you to take some drugs that, as far as they knew, you may or may not have needed, would you have shot the place up?"
Coulson said nothing, but felt an overwhelming wave of guilt wash over him. This… this wasn't like him in the least.
"Hell, they could've been off-duty soldiers there just for the week. For all you know, they could have had wives. Children. Wives and children that will never see them again, because you thought that one life was greater than theirs."
Coulson sighed heavily. "It seems to me, sir, that you're trying to run my through a moral wringer," he replied with only a hint of annoyance. "If that's true, then everything you say rings hollow. You know why?"
"No, can't say that I do."
He knew that he did, but he explained anyway. "You're the one who hid the facility from SHIELD's eyes. You're the one ordering the conducting of illegal and unethical medical practices there. You're the one who was holding an… alien or creature or whatever that thing was in there. You pumped that thing's fluids into me and opened my head up to zap my brain, even when I asked you, begged you, to let me die. As far as I'm concerned, you are in no place at all to be giving me a morality lesson."
Fury just sat back in listened to what Coulson had to say. When finished, he just shrugged. "I never intended it to sound like that. Because that wasn't my point. The point was that facility was top secret. You needed to enter in order to get a sample of what healed you to save that girl. That's fine. What isn't is you killing two men doing their jobs, when you didn't have to. Fitz and Simmons, they're as smart as we all think they are right? They made that tranquilizer gun, right?"
And then, it dawned on him. He hadn't even considered it at that time, even though he did every other time they needed some kind of firearm. Fitz even had one with him when they went in. "Sir, I –"
"It's unlike you, Phil. A man who hadn't killed someone in years, who has agents adverse to using guns on a regular basis on his team, overseeing and okay the killing of two when using the tranquilizers would have been a better option from your standpoint. Which is why I will ask you one last time; is that girl's life worth more than two others?"
To that, he had no answer. He didn't want to answer. He stood silently in Fury's office, head down and forehead creased sigh lines of intense thought and rumination. He had always tried to take as few lives as possible, because his conscious couldn't take it if he didn't. So many around SHIELD, May included, were changed forever once lives were taken by their hands. He saw and resolved to never be a part of it, unless absolutely necessary. Then, at the Guest House, it wasn't necessary. And his conscious was letting him have it.
"Thought so," Fury said finally. A knock at the door. Agent Hand stuck her head in the door. "Come in, Hand. Get out of here, Coulson. Remember what I said."
"Yes sir," he said quietly. As he walked out and through the hall back to the Bus, he thought back to their breaking into the facility. He thought back to how narrow their focus was; saving Skye was the only thing on their mind, and it cost two men their lives. Not when they could've gone about it in such a different manner. Yes, they were getting shot at and were running out of time, but…
He couldn't think about it. He didn't want to think about it.
Skye was safe and getting better; that was all that mattered.
A/N: I wrote this due to a discussion I've been reading on a forum about the morality of them killing those guards en route to saving Skye. I'm not sure about you guys, but I have to put them in the wrong. They didn't have to kill them, not when they had a nite-nite gun on hand with Fitz, and then another one in rifle form for Ward. It just wasn't necessary, in my eyes. You may or may not agree, and that's fine either way. Hope you enjoyed regardless and please leave your thoughts in the reviews :)