Chapter Three – You Think It's Nothing Bad?
Sugarland – Baby Girl
Phil Coulson had an open-door policy. Which meant, literally, if his office door was open you were welcome to go in. If not – well, you better have a really good reason.
Jemma and Skye didn't have to worry this morning, though, because the door was open and Phil was sitting, not at his desk, but in one of the comfortable chairs to the side, reading a report while sipping his coffee. He glanced up to where they hovered nervously at the door and smiled.
"Good morning, Skye. Simmons." Sharp eyes took in Jemma's pale face and Skye's slightly furrowed brow. "Ohhh-kay." He set down the report and his mug. "You'd better tell me."
"It's nothing bad, sir!" Jemma rushed to reassure him. "I – think."
"You think it's nothing bad? The last time someone said that to me, Agent Barton had just blown up the Azerbaijani Parliament building… well, never mind. Sit down and tell me." He gestured to the two other chairs. "You look pale, Jemma, are you all right?"
She blushed a little, which at least had the effect of improving the colour in her cheeks somewhat. "I'm afraid I'm a little hungover, sir."
"Ah, the birthday drinks! Yes, May assured me that a good time was had by all."
"Still think you should have come with us, AC," Skye grumbled.
"Someone had to stay and mind the store, Skye," Phil said, unruffled. Skye had begged and pleaded for him to go, but he knew it wouldn't have been appropriate. It wasn't so much that he thought the boss shouldn't fraternise with his subordinates when off-duty – the excuse he'd given her – but more that these girls really were like the daughters he'd never had. And no father wants to see his daughter doing shots and hitting on strange men in a bar. Bad enough in his imagination, he had no doubt it was probably ten times worse in reality.
Looking again at Jemma's pale face, he got up and went to his desk, returning with a granola bar and putting it into her hand. He fetched her a bottle of water from his office fridge as well. "There; now I won't be quite as concerned that you'll pass out on me, Simmons."
She gave him a grateful smile and started nibbling on the granola. Skye gave her an expectant stare, though, and she finally choked down the first bite. Phil sat back, and waited patiently.
"I need to report, under the S.H.I.E.L.D. Procedures Handbook Section 16.1.1, that I met my soulmate last night, sir."
Phil had just taken another sip of his coffee. He spluttered it back into the cup. "What? I mean, who, when? In that bar?"
"Yes, sir, in the bar. As for who," Jemma gestured at Skye, "I was hoping you could tell me, sir."
Skye held out her tablet wordlessly. Phil looked at the screen. And then he leaned in closer, staring incredulously.
"Simmons, tell me this isn't the man you met last night."
Skye reached out and swiped across the screen, switching it to the view from outside the bar, when Hat Guy and Jemma came face to face. It was very clearly the same man.
"Oh, shit."
"Sir? Coulson!" Jemma grabbed at Phil's shoulders as he slumped back in his chair, going an alarming grey colour. "Don't you dare have a heart attack on me!" She loosened his tie, checked his pulse anxiously.
"I'm not having a heart attack," he muttered faintly. "It's just a nasty shock. I might have expected Skye to come up with a soulmate like that, but you, Jemma?"
She was beginning to feel a bit unwell herself. Skye gave her a push back into her chair. "Don't you dare faint! AC, you're scaring her. You're scaring me. Who the hell is this guy? I didn't even know there was a Level 8 clearance on the Asset Register until just now."
"There are a number of individuals who are considered so dangerous, that the very fact of their existence is concealed until an agent reaches Level 8 or higher," Phil murmured.
"So dangerous?" Jemma had to put her head between her knees. Skye patted her back, trying to soothe her.
"Why didn't May recognise him last night?" Skye demanded. "I know she saw him, we were both laughing at the way he looked at Jemma's ass when she walked to the bathroom…"
Phil shuddered, holding a hand up to stop Skye. He really didn't want to hear about it. "I highly doubt Agent May ever met him, nor would she have a reason to go into the Level 8 Asset Register database unless I asked her to. Which I haven't."
Skye gave him a Look, and he sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Jemma, you're absolutely, one hundred per cent, sure that he's your soulmate?"
"Even if I could ever be persuaded to do karaoke again," Jemma muttered into her knees, "I can't imagine anyone else complimenting me in French afterwards."
"Karaoke…? No, never mind. All right." Phil sighed, took the tablet, and gave it his thumbprint and a code to access the restricted data. "His name is Remy LeBeau."
"Oh, shit, of course it is!" Jemma lifted her head as her brain cleared, took one look at the horrified, incredulous expression on Phil's face and decided discretion was the better part of valour. She put her face back between her knees.
"Hah, doesn't le beau mean the handsome one?" Skye let out a chortle.
"As far as we know, he was born with the name, he didn't choose it," Phil said dryly as Skye grabbed the tablet back, scanning it. "LeBeau is a Cajun from New Orleans. He's a lot older than he looks, Jemma, he's been on our radar since the seventies."
"What?" Jemma's head snapped up. "No way. He looked barely older than me!"
"He's believed to be one of a number of individuals with some very advanced healing properties. He associates with…" Phil paused, wondering exactly what he should say "… several other individuals who are also Level 8 classified."
Skye and Jemma both gave him incredulous looks, and he rubbed his forehead. "I shouldn't even be talking to you about this."
"Have you met Remy?" Jemma asked then, and Phil winced at the way her voice already softened over his name.
"Once. It was a long time ago. I was a very junior agent." He hesitated, and then decided he might as well come clean. "It was a messy situation; we were pinned down in a very ugly firefight with – well, it doesn't matter, that particular terrorist group no longer exists. LeBeau came strolling into the fight and went through sixty men in about three minutes without so much as a scratch on him."
"How?" Jemma whispered, dry-mouthed.
"He does this thing." Phil waved his hands, trying to find a way to describe it. "He didn't allow us – S.H.I.E.L.D. that is – to study him, and because of the very nature of his power I don't think it would be possible to imprison him – but he did talk, briefly, to Peggy Carter. He explained to her that he is able to convert the potential energy of things – anything, really – to kinetic energy."
Skye's eyes glazed over at the science-speak. Jemma's widened incredulously. "That's… not possible."
"Jemma." Phil reached out, put his hand on hers gently. "I watched LeBeau take down a small army of insurgents with a pack of playing cards and a handful of gravel he picked up. He was throwing tiny specks of gravel – with deadly accuracy – and they were exploding like hand grenades. This was twenty-three years ago. There was nothing on Earth that could have mimicked what he did, in the way of technology. I don't think there is even today."
She had to put her head between her knees again. Playing cards. Oh God.
"He gave her a playing card," Skye told Phil.
"He gave me one too."
Both girls looked at him, shocked. Phil smiled slightly, headed over to his office safe, and after a few moments of fiddling with the combination, returned. "He gave them to several agents, over the years. I'm pretty sure we all kept them. Peggy Carter got the Queen of Spades, Fury the King of Clubs, Hill the Queen of Clubs. Barton got the Joker. Romanoff told me that she ran across him once in Russia, before she even joined S.H.I.E.L.D., and he gave her the Queen of Diamonds. When we found Steve Rogers, a letter arrived at the Triskelion the same day addressed to him: the only thing in it was a King of Diamonds." He came back to them and handed over a playing card.
It was the same type of card he'd given her, Jemma realised, black with an image of a pink gem on it. She flipped it over. The King of Spades. She looked up at Coulson in surprise. "This is yours?"
"Yes. He gave it to me right after he pulled me and my team out of that mess. Peggy Carter noted that she believed LeBeau could, to some degree, tell the future with his cards. Like the Tarot."
"Maybe that's why he was there last night," Skye murmured, slowly starting to accept. "He knew you'd be there, Jemma. Wearing a red dress. His Queen of Hearts."
"He gave you that card?" Phil's eyebrows shot up.
Unwillingly, Jemma pulled the card from her pocket and showed him. Phil looked and sighed.
"I've learned the hard way never to try to come between soulmates, Jemma. Bad things happen to those who do. So I won't tell you to stay away from him. But LeBeau is dangerous – quite probably the most dangerous person you'll ever meet – and I want you to promise me you'll be very careful and not just put your trust in him blindly."
Jemma nodded, unable to speak. That much she could promise. She reached for Skye's tablet, forgotten on the table, and started scrolling through the information on Remy.
"Guv'nor?" all three of them looked up to see Hunter at the door. "Sorry, am I interrupting? The door was open."
"It's all right, Hunter," Phil got to his feet. "What is it?"
"Just got back from doing a supply run, stopped by the mailbox we set up in town on the off-chance that there might be some post." He held an envelope out to Phil.
"Thanks – oh," Juliet Simpson, the name on the envelope said, in a bold hand. It was one of the aliases Skye had set up for Jemma. "It's for you, Jemma."
She looked up from the tablet in surprise and accepted the letter. Phil nodded to Hunter, who departed with only a curious glance at the two girls. Prudently, Phil decided to close the door. If that envelope was what he thought it might be…
A playing card fluttered to the floor. Skye dived for it, picking it up. "The four of hearts?" she frowned, puzzled. "What does that mean?"
There was a slip of paper in the envelope too. Jemma pulled it out. "'Stop looking. I told you I'd find you soon. R.'," she read aloud
"Okay, that's officially spooky," Skye said. She picked up the envelope. "This is postmarked three days ago. Sent from New Orleans."
"What date is it today?" Phil asked suddenly.
"The twelfth, why?"
He took the four of hearts from Skye's hand. "I think he's telling you when he's coming, Jemma. Four days from now."
Jemma had to put her head between her knees again.
Phil sighed and passed a hand over his forehead, finding sweat beading on it. So this is what happens when you have daughters. They fall in love with hell-raisers and turn all of your remaining hair grey.
"Oh my God, how am I going to tell May?"
In MCU canon, Jemma Simmons' birthday is given as September 11. I'm moving it to December 11 to better suit what I want to do, plus although Season 2 isn't timeline-fitted yet, I think it might run over her birthday, and I want this set in the mid-season break after San Juan.
Incidentally, all the abilities I've suggested Remy has come from the Marvel wiki on him – I'm not a comic reader! His age comes from the fact that he was running around in X-Men Origins: Wolverine which is set in the late '70's. It hasn't been suggested that he doesn't age (like Wolverine) but he does have superhuman strength and agility, and with his energy abilities he could quite possibly manipulate his physical form to not age.
As you may be able to tell, I'm largely playing this one for the giggles. Hence Hawkeye and the Azerbaijani Parliament. "It was only a small bomb, sir!"
(For super-fun Hawkeye giggles, check out the fic entitled Things Clint Barton May Not Do by MadamBackslash – it's Ao3 only but HYSTERICALLY funny. Excellent inspiration for crackfic).