It's time for Coulson and Daisy to have "The Talk."
Phil Coulson looked at his watch again.
4:47 pm.
Still.
He was jumpy. He could not seem to keep his left foot from twitching. The third cup of coffee had probably been a mistake. The anticipation and the caffeine had dialed all of his senses up to 11. The gunshot wound above his knee throbbed with a pulsing pain that was hot to the touch. He might have been understating the situation when he told Mack it was just a graze. The bullet had taken out a substantial chunk of flesh. It took a good bit of a spool of thread (and half a bottle of whisky) for him to sew the damn thing up. Another scar to add to his growing collection.
4:48 pm.
She'll be here, he told himself.
She had to come. He could not leave this mission empty-handed. If Daisy heard him out and made her decision not to come back to S.H.I.E.L.D., then he would have to live with it. But he could not leave without warning her about the danger she was in, at the very least. He had to know she would be safe.
At 4:49, the bell above the coffee shop door rang and Daisy Johnson walked in.
She headed towards his table without a glance at any of the other patrons.
"You're here early," she greeted him. "Afraid I wouldn't show?"
Daisy slid into the booth across from him. She seemed a little better than she had two days earlier. The dark circles under her eyes were gone and her hair had made at least a passing acquaintance with a brush.
He offered her a small smile.
"I haven't had much else to do these last few days. Didn't think it would hurt to be a few minutes early, " he admitted. "I'm glad you're here."
She looked at him intently.
"Why am I here?" she asked. "What the hell is going on, Coulson? What were you doing with the A.T.C.U.? Where's the rest of the team? Are they safe?"
"Anything else?" Coulson asked.
Daisy pouted, looking every bit like the young woman he had hauled out of that van in the back alley four years ago.
"They're safe," he assured her. "You're in much more danger than the rest of the team."
"Me?" Daisy demanded. "I don't have my face plastered on the news every night for breaking the Sokovia Accords. You made an appearance on CNN last night, by the way. You and Mack have joined the A.T.C.U.'s most wanted."
Coulson's fixed smile did not falter.
"I saw," he said. "Which is why I don't have the time to play Twenty Questions. I've got an extraction team coming to pick me up as soon as I give the signal. I want you to come with me."
"Coulson-
"Let me make this clear," he interrupted. "If you stay in the States, you will be hunted down by the A.T.C.U. and put into stasis. If you are lucky, they will find a 'cure' for your powers and release you. The process could take years. If you aren't lucky, they will shoot you on sight and they will rest better for having done it. Since they've been hunting you for months, my money is on the latter."
He watched as her face drained of color. She reached for the condiment caddy and grabbed a handful of sugar packets. She arranged the tiny brown envelopes into a neat row, as if stalling for time.
"Daisy?" He asked.
"I've avoided them so far," she mumbled. "Except in Baltimore."
"How do you think you've managed that, Daisy?" He asked gently.
When she raised her head, she didn't quite manage to meet his eyes.
"It was you, wasn't it?" She muttered. "You and Mack. You kept them from finding me."
"For as long as we could," Coulson confirmed. "We were trying to meet with you, to get you to come home."
Daisy wiped her face with the sleeve of her denim jacket. If his leg was not paralyzed in pain, he would have joined her on her side of the table, hugged her and let her cry. But he wasn't even sure if she would let him touch her now. She wasn't the same person that left six months earlier.
Then again, neither was he.
"Why are you doing this?" She pleaded.
"Daisy, you know why."
"I can't come back, Coulson!" She said. "Everywhere I turned in the base, I expected to run into him. For him to show up at my door and tell me it was all a dream. I couldn't do a damn thing except wallow in guilt."
"It's a new base," Coulson tried.
She banged her palm on the table in frustration.
"Don't you realize that ever since I joined S.H.I.E.L.D., all you have done is fix my mistakes?" Daisy asked. "The Rising Tide, Trip, my father, my mother, Hive… I have done nothing but cause trouble from the moment you picked me up."
"That's not true!" Coulson protested. "You stopped Deathlock from killing me and Fury, you kept your mother from killing innocent civilians, and you opened the portal that brought Simmons back. All of those things that you say you brought on us? They would have happened anyway, Daisy. If it wasn't you, it would have been someone else. The only difference is, you wouldn't have been there to stop it."
Coulson sighed.
He was exhausted. There was only so much he could say to convince her she was wrong. He had first-hand experience in trying to save someone who did not want to be rescued. If Daisy wasn't ready to hear him, then it was useless trying to persuade her otherwise.
"I'm afraid," she confessed.
"Of what?"
"I'm afraid I'll make the same mistakes again," she said. "And more people will get hurt."
"Make the same mistakes again."
He had to smirk. She wasn't alone in that. Ever since May had brought up Budapest, he had gone over the situation again and again, trying to convince himself that he wasn't repeating the past. He had not been very successful.
"What?" Daisy demanded.
Coulson swallowed, considering how to answer.
"Have you heard of Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff?" He asked.
"Yeah," Daisy said slowly. "Of course."
"About ten years ago, they were given an assignment in Budapest," he began. "It was a pretty straightforward op: go in, retrieve an 084, get out. The challenge was, the object had apparently attracted the attention of a terrorist faction. They were closing in the same time Barton and Romanoff were tapped."
"What was the 084?" Daisy asked.
"It was thought to be some kind of weapon," Coulson said with a shrug. "We never found out. The terrorist cell caught up to our agents before they could even get eyes on the object. May and I were called in to extract them."
"You and May were called in to rescue Hawkeye and the Black Widow?" Daisy repeated.
"Try not to act so surprised," Coulson admonished. "I can be pretty badass when I want to be."
Daisy rewarded him with a shade of a grin.
"We were told to retrieve the object if we could," he continued. "But the priority was getting our agents out. As soon as we reached the scene, we knew the 084 was a lost cause. Barton and Romanoff were pinned down in a shootout in the middle of a street, crouched behind a car, and surrounded from all sides. May and I drew the fire of the attackers long enough for Clint and Nat to get clear. Then May called for extraction. When the backup team arrived, they all boarded the quinjet and I stayed behind."
"What?" Daisy asked. "Why?"
"I was convinced I could grab the 084 by myself," he said.
"You thought you could get through a bunch of angry terrorists and get it when two of the best spies in S.H.I.E.L.D. history had failed?" Daisy scoffed.
Coulson pressed his lips together. Maybe he should not have told her this story. It certainly was not going to do any favors for her image of him.
"A few days earlier, my girlfriend of four years had broken up with me."
He held up his hand, anticipating her interruption. "You don't know her. She worked in accounting."
"It was the job. She was in New York; I was always away. I put work first and we both knew it. I thought she understood, since she was S.H.I.E.L.D. too, but…When we got the call to Budapest, all I could think about was going back to that empty apartment with nothing to come home to, having failed at the mission. I needed something…"
"To make you feel like you had a purpose?" Daisy supplied.
Coulson nodded. It was a feeling he knew she could understand.
"What happened?" She asked.
"I don't remember," he admitted. "From the four broken ribs and the concussion I got, it couldn't have been good. I woke up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. treatment facility three days later. The first thing May did when I regained consciousness was ask me if my mid-life crisis was over."
Daisy chuckled.
"She pulled you out, huh?"
"Yeah," he said.
"You're lucky she's got your back, you know that?"
He let out a long breath.
"The point is," Coulson continued. "She thinks I'm making the same mistake again."
"Nearly getting yourself killed over a lost cause?" Daisy asked sardonically.
"More like trying to salvage something from the wreckage all of this, so when I go back, I won't have lost it all for nothing."
She fidgeted under his gaze, turning her attention back to the line of sugar packets.
"Is she right?" Daisy whispered.
"I don't know," he conceded. "Maybe. The difference is, this time, I'm not going after an object of unknown origin. I'm trying to bring one of the most important people in my life home. So, whether May's right or not, it's worth it."
"Coulson—
"You don't have to decide right now if you want to come back for good,"
"Coulson—
"But whether you stay or not, you need to leave the country because—
"Coulson!" Daisy hissed. "They're here."
Although every nerve in his body screamed at once, commanding him to duck or hide or grab Daisy's hand and run, he managed to keep her eyes locked on hers so as not to give himself away.
"A.T.C.U.?" He asked, keeping his practiced façade of calm in place. "Are you sure?"
Daisy looked away from the window and nodded slightly.
"I count two on your 4 o'clock," she muttered. "Another one heading this way on my left."
They listened to the tell-tale screech of rubber on asphalt and the percussive bang of doors opening and closing as more reinforcements arrived across the street from the diner. Coulson's neck stiffened against the impulse to look in that direction. As soon as the A.C.T.U. realized they were made, the clock would start counting down. He needed to buy them as much time as possible.
"That's three more," he counted. "They're lightly armed. It's not a tactical team. They're going to hold us here and wait for backup. Standard procedure."
Coulson slipped his hand inside the pocket of his jacket and closed his fingers around the transmitter.
"I'm calling for extraction, Daisy."
She swallowed. Her eyes seemed to lose their focus.
She was going back to that place she had fallen into when Lincoln died. Back into that emptiness that had been carved out inside of her by the foster system where she was told she wasn't wanted so many times that she believed it. Daisy had learned over and over again what happened to people who messed up. There was no room for forgiveness or unconditional love in her disposition. Love wasn't given. It was earned. And she had lost it. She did not deserve to come home.
In the four years he had known her, Coulson had yet to convince her otherwise. But he sure as hell wasn't going to leave her in that dark place alone.
"Daisy, we're getting out of here," he told her. "We'll figure the rest out when we're in the wind."
She blinked and stared like she had just noticed that he was sitting across from her.
"Okay," she whispered.
Coulson depressed the button on the top of the transmitter.
"Alright," he announced. "We've got ten minutes to shake these guys and get somewhere high enough that the quinjet can reach us. I'm open to suggestions."
"Well," Daisy began. "There may be one thing... Do you know your old boss's phone number?"
"General McDonnell?" he asked. "Yeah, I remember it."
Daisy's mouth twitched, fighting a smile.
"Then I might have an idea."
Next up: The A.T.C.U. closes in!
Getting in to the home-stretch!
I was trying to space out the timing of these last few chapters, but I'm leaving the country in about a week and I want to post them all before I go. So the next update may be pretty soon!
