The underground SHIELD hospital was one of the few secure strongholds the organization had left. Almost everyone who had been injured during the HYDRA takeover was within these walls.
Coulson got the room number he needed from the nurse on call, and headed down the hallway in the direction she pointed.
When he reached room 379, he gently nudged the door ajar and peered through the crack into the room. His friend lay in the bed, unmoving except for the steady rise and fall of his chest, assisted by the machines that were helping him breathe.
Quietly, Coulson slipped inside and sat down in the chair beside the bed. As if sensing the older agent's presence, the man in the bed stirred and blinked his eyes open.
"Hi, Jasper," Coulson said with a soft smile.
"Phil…" Jasper Sitwell blinked again, still bleary-eyed from the drug-induced sleep. "What're you doing here?"
"Came to check on a few friends," Coulson said. "I just came from seeing Agent Blake."
"How's he doing?" Sitwell asked.
"A lot better," Coulson said. "He says it still hurts when he breathes, but he's standing up, walking around, so that's good. What about you?"
Sitwell paused for a second. "Hurts when I…blink."
"That bad, huh?" a pained, sympathetic look crossed Coulson's face.
"I got thrown out of a car and clipped by a semi, Phil," Sitwell said, a trace of his customary sarcasm lining his tired voice. "Yeah, it's that bad."
He was silent for a moment, reluctant to say what they both knew was going to come up eventually. True to his nature, Coulson didn't try to break the silence. Finally Sitwell said, "Listen…I don't know what you've been hearing about me lately, but you need to know—"
"It's all right, Jasper," Coulson assured him. "Fury told me everything. I know you're not a traitor."
Sitwell visibly relaxed. The idea of his friend and former S.O. thinking he was HYDRA had been weighing heavily on the younger agent's mind since he first woke up in the hospital and realized that getting hit by a truck hadn't actually killed him.
"It was deep cover, Phil," he began.
"You don't owe me an explanation," Coulson said.
He knew a lot of it already. Sitwell had gone to Fury with his suspicions that HYDRA might have infiltrated SHIELD. At the time no one, not even Fury, had any idea just how large-scale the whole thing really was. They thought at most that a handful of HYDRA agents might have wormed their way into high-level positions. So Fury had put Sitwell in charge of gathering information, and to do that, Sitwell had to get close to their top suspects. He had spent the last several months ingratiating himself to Alexander Pierce, to Senator Stern, and to John Garrett, among others, all the while reporting back to Fury with every new piece of information he got.
"Just let me," Sitwell looked at him, almost pleading. "I need to."
Coulson's face softened, and he nodded, understanding.
"I was relieved when Rogers and his friends found me out," Sitwell went on. "I realized it was a perfect opportunity to tell them HYDRA's plans. 'Course I had to put up a little resistance first, make it seem convincing, in case anyone was listening in. HYDRA had ears everywhere. It's kind of terrifying, actually. So I put up a bit of a fight, tried to act loyal to Pierce. Got thrown off a roof for it."
"That doesn't sound like Caps' style," Coulson said, surprised.
"Funny you should say that," Sitwell said with a humorless laugh. "It was Romanoff that did it. And they had some guy with high-tech wings waiting to catch me. After that, I told them everything I knew. I guess someone was listening, because we were on our way back to the Triskelion when the Winter Soldier attacked. Went for me first. It's like I told Rogers—HYDRA doesn't like leaks."
"Once you talked, they knew you were no good to them anymore," Coulson said.
"Faking allegiance to HYDRA on that rooftop was the least horrible thing I've had to do in the last few months," Sitwell said bitterly. "I had to do whatever it took to make them trust me. They asked me to do things…I had to preserve my cover, so I couldn't exactly refuse. They put me in charge of the new recruits, filling the ranks."
"Garrett mentioned something about that," Coulson nodded.
"I had to train a bunch of bright young agents to turn on their comrades and kill them in cold blood as soon as they got the order," Sitwell squeezed his eyes shut and made a noise that sounded almost like a whimper. It was a disturbing thing to hear from a man who Coulson had always thought of as unshakeable.
"The things I did for this cover, Phil, the damage I caused…" the younger man averted his gaze and stared blankly at the opposite wall. "Hell, I might as well have been HYDRA for real."
"Hey!" Coulson's voice turned suddenly sharp. "Don't say that." He put a firm hand on Sitwell's arm and said, "Look at me."
Reluctantly, Sitwell complied. Coulson locked eyes with him. "Fury told me you were the one who brought him the intel about Zola's algorithm. Without it, Cap and his team never would have been able to take down the Insight helicarriers. Millions of people would have died. They're alive today because of you. You're a hero, Jasper."
The injured agent held his friend's gaze for a moment, and finally managed a smile. "It means a lot to hear you say that, Phil."
"I'll keep saying it until you believe it," Coulson insisted.
"Might be a while," Sitwell admitted, nodding slightly as his eyelids grew heavy.
"We have plenty of time," Coulson assured him. He gave his friend's arm a squeeze. "Right now you need to rest. You should go back to sleep."
Sitwell drifted off after a few minutes, and Coulson leaned back in his chair. He stayed beside the bed for the next few hours, staring thoughtfully into the distance while his friend slept.
As the new director of SHIELD, Coulson had already begun to think through a lot of ideas about the future of the organization as it was rebuilt under his leadership. One thing that had crossed his mind was awards ceremonies. He understood that it would be a long time before anyone would consider it an honor to receive an award from SHIELD, so he had filed it away in the back of his mind for use sometime down the road. But now there was one thing he was sure of.
When the rebuilt SHIELD could finally hold a ceremony to acknowledge their heroes, Jasper Sitwell would be the first agent to receive a medal.
END
Edit: MAX HERNANDEZ HIMSELF HAS READ THIS FIC AND SAID HE LOVED IT! Yeah, I'm more than a little psyched about that.