I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.
Set between 1.08 The Well and 1.09 Repairs. First in the Nature series.
4. The Magical Place
"Tell me about Tahiti," Clint says.
Phil bites back a groan. "Seriously? Haven't we done this already?"
Clint eyeballs him.
"Blue sky, white sand, a lovely masseuse, it's a dammit magical — " He grits his teeth. Grunts protest as fire sears down his spine. His mouth itches, nerves buzzing like a thousand bees, and he knows it was close, he nearly didn't catch it in time. But the compulsion passes faster than before. He doesn't even need to pop his ears. The air leaves his lungs in a rush.
"Overwatch, status report. Now."
"Hawkeye, I'm fine," Phil says. "It was easier that time. Still hurt, but not as much. Makes my mouth itch like crazy, I don't know what that's about."
"And you're sure there's nothing attached to it? No other thoughts, no sudden urge to attack anyone around you or throw yourself off a building, anything like that?"
Jemma and Skye make identical shocked noises.
Phil holds up a hand, forestalling the protests before they can start. "Nothing," he says calmly, watching Clint's keen eyes dart from Phil to the team and back. "I know, I'm aware of the… possibility, shall we say… of something like that. But no, there's nothing. They're just words. Highly addictive words, maybe, but still just words."
"Hmm." Clint's eyes narrow.
"I know that look."
"Do you?"
"Yes. You're about to say something that will piss me off."
"Well, I hate to ruin your glorious nostalgia for paradise. That's got to be your first real holiday in decades."
Phil barks a mirthless laugh. "I wouldn't worry about it. What is it?"
"You said you spent most of your time sunbathing."
"I did."
"And getting massages."
"Yeah. Felt good to work the kinks out after twenty years of field work. They turned my muscles into a puddle of goo, it was awesome."
"Did you go swimming?"
He thinks about that for a second. "I… Yeah. I did. Water was great." He remembers snorkelling, breathing slow and deep through the tube as he watched fish swim through the reef. Floating on his back, arms tight at his sides, caught in the sun-drenched flow of the tide. "Went snorkelling. Those reefs are something else."
"I bet they are," Clint says, and the words hold an edge.
Phil frowns. "You don't believe me?"
"I believe you think that's what happened."
"And you don't. Think that's what happened."
Clint blows out a breath. The knife starts twirling from hand to hand again. "I — oh, damn."
"What?"
"I shouldn't have asked that."
"Asked what?" The question emerges sharper than Phil would have liked, but it's 3am, he's running on not much sleep, and Clint dancing around the issue is not helping.
"If you'd gone swimming," Clint says. "Because now we can't be sure if you actually remembered it yourself, or if those memories are susceptible to outside suggestion and you were just agreeing with me."
It's all Phil can do not to roll his eyes. "Come on, Clint. When have I ever just agreed with you?"
"Never," Clint admits. "But you'd never been dead before, either. I'd never been brainwashed by a mad alien demigod. You'd never had nightmares about one very specific Pacific Island. How was Tahiti, boss?"
"It's." He bites the inside of his cheek, tries to stop it. "A." His pulse thunders in his ears. The pressure builds inside him, headache growing in concert with the itching on the roof of his mouth. It slips out from between clenched teeth, syllables slurring into one. "Magical."
And he clamps down hard. Going any further is going backward, and he refuses to lose what little progress he's made.
"Take it easy, Overwatch."
"No," he mutters, and has approximately half a split-second to revel in the irony of flipped roles — Clint the responsible one urging caution, Phil the rebel determined to do whatever it takes to get the job done — when the air is sucked from his lungs.
It feels like being stabbed through the heart all over again. He slumps, palm pressing instinctively to the hole in his chest, trying to stem the bleeding. But it's not a hole, not anymore. It's a raised mass of scar tissue.
Air. He needs air.
The world lays silent and still at his feet. In the everlasting moment, he finds relief in the fact that there is no tinge of blue, no shadow of a haze. Every detail stands out clear: the tight weave of his jeans, the leather of his belt, the dull gleam of the silver buckle.
And then he sucks air and the world comes rushing back, colour and sound jumbled together, his team steady at his back, Clint on the screen before him. No time at all has passed. He thinks. Maybe a second or two.
What had Clint asked? How was Tahiti, boss?
"You tell me," he rasps, and clears his throat. "What are you thinking?"
"What the hell was that?" Clint asks by way of non-answer.
Of course he noticed. "Nothing."
The only reply is a incredulous stare of disbelief, and then a narrowing of the eyes. Worried. Demanding.
"Nothing significant," Phil amends. His hand still clutches his chest. He smooths his palm down his jersey and drops it to his side. "Traumatic memories resurface under stress, you know that. Fighting a conditioned response is stressful. And — surprise — turns out getting impaled through the heart really hurts."
"Ongoing chest pains are nothing significant?"
"They're hardly ongoing. Traumatic memories, like I said. It's fine."
"Still not healthy, Overwatch."
"Neither is dying," Phil says evenly. "I'm feeling a lot better. Really." He straightens. "Now. You have a theory?"
For a moment he thinks Clint's going to keep arguing. But Clint nods slowly. "Yeah, I have a theory."
"You want to share with the class? Sometime today, perhaps?"
"Depends. How was Tahiti?"
Phil clenches his jaw shut and glares at Clint. He's sick of the endless questions, the lack of answers, the unprecedented amount of unknowns at play here. The sheer frustration of Clint's non-answer is enough to combat the rising pain. He's sweating before too long. Then the shakes start.
But he doesn't say a word.
"Come on, Phil," Clint says. He leans forward, staring down the lens, voice almost taunting. "Tell me about Tahiti."
Fire sears his lungs. He holds the eye contact, fingers digging into the edge of the desk, and breathes deep through his nose. He knows exactly what Clint's trying to do. He can just see the refrain of come on Phil, you can do it, fight it, come on, come on behind his steady gaze.
Whether it will work is another question.
"Tahiti." Clint's eyes gleam. "Tahiti, boss. Talk to me. I want to know all about it. I hear it's a magical place, Tahiti."
The pressure builds and builds until he has to screw his eyes shut against the sensation. Light burns behind his eyelids, a million ants burrow into his skin, dozens of bees buzz over the roof of his mouth. The itching is unbearable. He curls his fingers tighter on the edge of the table.
"It's okay, Overwatch." Clint's voice filters through to him from a distance, calm, steady as a metronome. It's hardly more than a murmur over the blood pounding in his ears. "You can do this. I know you can do this."
Phil, boss, Overwatch… there's one name Clint hasn't called him yet. If Phil's right, if Clint is trying to help him beat this thing from any angle possible, that name will be next. Sweat drips into his eyes. He unclamps his jaw for long enough to let a single hoarse word slip out. "How?"
"Conviction, Coulson."
He was right about the name.
The one-word reply raises more questions than it answers, and the last thing he needs at the moment is more questions. Phil frowns in confusion. The temptation is there to keep pressing, to leverage the topic as a distraction against mindless pain; but no, he's on the edge as it is. He's close, so close. Too close. One slip and he's gone. So he keeps his mouth shut and drags in another lungful of air through dripping nostrils.
Wait. Dripping?
He peels the fingers of one hand from the desk and touches them to the skin under his nose.
Blood.
Isn't that just fantastic.
"Come on, Phil. You can do it. You can beat this thing, I know you can. You've beaten far worse." The words rise and fall like the ocean, ebb and flow, ebb and flow. Phil discards the words and loses himself in their rhythm, lets his mind drift in a haze of red pain. It's probably his imagination, but the agony decreases an infinitesimal fraction.
And then it builds again, rising relentlessly to a fever pitch. One last fight, he thinks dimly, and clings to the rock-solid anchor that is Clint's unwavering gaze. His body shudders under the onslaught. Blood drips onto his jeans. Becomes a trickle. Becomes a stream. His head feels like it's about to burst open. Knowing his luck, it'll splatter his brains all over the command room and his team will have to clean it up.
He breathes through the pain, inhales through more pain, exhales again. It's a never-ending cycle of pain pain pain pain pain. He's had worse. Not by much, mind you, and not often, but he's definitely felt worse.
Besides, he's come too far to back down now. He refuses to be ruled by this, this blind urge, this unthinking compulsion. Acting under duress is one thing when it's for the good of a mission. It's another thing entirely when he's home, safe, surrounded by a good team, free to be himself.
Tahiti will not conquer him. Not this time.
He ducks his head, grits his teeth, and holds the eye contact like it's the only thing keeping him upright.
It is the only thing keeping him upright.
Come on, come on…
He can do this. He just has to hold his jaw shut against the overwhelming compulsion to spill four simple words. Hold his head together against the splitting agony. It's the last gasp, he knows that like he knows the look in Clint's eye: it's the same one he gets when he's pressing down on a gushing wound, the one that says I'm hurting you and I'm sorry, I hate it, but it's for your own good. It's a hard call but it's one I have to make.
And then between one breath and the next the pain is gone. The pressure dissipates, the compulsion drains out of him. The shaking settles.
It's over.
He's free.
He takes a breath. And then another, chest heaving. It feels glorious. He commits the rush of oxygen to memory, the effortless inhale-exhale, revelling in the sudden freedom: freedom from pain, freedom from mental hijacking. A smile stretches his lips. Another breath, air flooding his lungs, and a laugh bursts from him, stunned and relieved.
"Overwatch," Clint raps out. "Status report."
Someone presses a wad of tissues into Phil's hand from behind. Bless you, Melinda. The bleeding has stopped, thankfully; only the odd drip falls now. He grimaces at the taste of fresh blood on his lip, all iron and salt, and dabs at his bloody nose. "Ask me," Phil says. The damp trail from nose to stubbled chin itches. He reaches back without looking, meeting May half way, and takes the sealed water bottle from her hand. That'll help.
Clint takes a slow breath. "How was Tahiti?"
Phil mimics the movement, using the time to inspect every cragged crevice of his tired mind. Nothing there that shouldn't be — or nothing that he's aware of, at any rate.
There's certainly no blasted urge to say it's a magical place.
"It's gone," he says.
Clint doesn't react. "Tahiti."
"Nothing. No urge, no nagging itch…"
"Tahiti, Tahiti, Tahiti, Tahiti…"
"Shut it, Clint."
Clint stops, eyes crinkling. Phil stifles a yawn. And in the soft twilight space where bone-deep weariness and open affection meet, they share a smile.
"That's sorted?" Clint asks, returning to the business at hand.
"It's sorted." Phil nods decisively. "Whatever it was."
"Oh, I have an idea."
"I know you do." Phil finishes wiping the blood off as best he can without a mirror and sets the tissues aside. Brings his notes back to life with the brush of a fingertip. Squares his shoulders. "That's why I brought you in on this. Because I knew you'd have something for me. Now would you mind telling me what, exactly, that idea is?"
