I don't own Agents Of SHIELD.
Final chapter, here we go! :)
Set during 3.09 Closure.
Nature abhors a vacuum; idiom; empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature; any empty space must be filled with something.
10. Restoration
They sit in silence for a few minutes: Phil because he's too exhausted to even think about talking, let alone moving, and the other two… okay, he doesn't know why Clint and Natasha don't speak. They're holding a silent conversation with each other, he can tell that much. The silence is too deep. Too meaningful. And it's punctuated by the odd whisper of air moving when one of them reinforces a point with a hand signal.
He braces his elbows on his knees and drops his head into his hands. Lets himself rest in the darkness, still and silent and blessedly free of questions. He's not sorry they held the debrief tonight. No matter what May's reservations might have been. He might be reeling from the shock — he is reeling from the shock — but grief, for him, has always been something like a blister. The sooner he lances the wound and lets it all gush out of him, the sooner he can start to heal.
The debrief was many things. Uncomfortable, yes, and not just for him. Painful, yes, for all involved. Longer than it should have been, maybe. Awkward in places, undoubtedly.
But also very, very necessary.
He's not infallible. He knows this.
SHIELD itself is not infallible. The shindig with Hydra proved that, if nothing else.
But sometimes he wonders if, down here in their frankly awesome secret underground base, they maybe start thinking they're impenetrable. Imperturbable. Irreproachable. And a lot of other words ending in -able.
Possibly even insufferable.
Hopefully not discoverable, though.
And definitely not irreparable.
Death hurts. A lot. But the survivors limp on.
Sometimes even… not the survivors.
What he told May was the truth. He wouldn't wish the Tahiti procedure on anyone. Not his friends. Not his enemies.
Not even former SHIELD agent Grant Douglas Ward, young upstart that he is.
The warning whine at the back of his mind grows louder. He blinks into the darkness of his hands and tenses at the sound of quiet movement beside him. "Talk. Please." They'll understand. Too many years on comms-only missions. Sight, touch, hearing, they're all linked, but they have their priorities, too.
"I'm just going to check the doors," says Clint, soft and low. His voice moves away towards the corridor. "The team closed them on their way out, but it never hurts to check. Are we going to get interrupted here, do you think? I can lock them."
It's an effort to think. The gap between question and answer lingers. But there's no impatient sigh from Natasha, no prompting from Clint. They're giving him space.
"No," he says finally. "We won't be interrupted."
May will have access to the cameras. She'll warn off anyone who thinks it's a good idea to barge into the director's common room in the middle of the night.
It's not like they don't have other common rooms. Other kitchens and lounges and widescreen tv's with gaming consoles and surround sound. His team just happen to prefer this one. Probably because it's closest to his office. They're staking their claim, in a way. He might be your director but he's our team lead.
It shouldn't make him feel better, not really. He shouldn't encourage the elitism. Directors don't play favourites.
But it warms him inside anyway. Just a little.
"Don't lock the doors," he adds. "We're safe here."
"Yes," says Natasha, all glittering steel certainty under wry humour. "We are."
"We've got you," Clint says.
Phil knows. Adrift in a vast ocean of grief, that's one thing he clings to beyond doubt. They've got him. They've got him. He's safe.
But all the same, the warning in his mind reaches a fever pitch. He takes his hands from his face and pivots in his seat to stare with red-rimmed eyes at the doors.
They're closed. Like Clint said.
Stairs? Empty.
May's the only one up there, anyway. And he can trust her.
He sweeps his gaze around the room, taking in the shadowy far reaches of the darkened kitchen, the closed door of the bathroom under the stairs, that tricky corner behind the bookcase where no-one ever bothers to clean and as such it's slowly accumulating a pile of assorted books/food wrappers/items of clothing/spare cables/dirty mugs/whatever.
The room is clear.
The jittering under his skin settles. It won't be for long, he knows. He'd thought the debrief would help that. The presence of his team. The company of Clint and Natasha, Agents Barton and Romanov, the only people in the world who are both a) highly competent assassins working for SHIELD, and b) close enough and trustworthy enough to be called his family.
Although, if he thinks about it, May could be on that list, too.
He doesn't think about it.
"Overwatch," says Clint, sounding like it's far from the first time he's tried to get Phil's attention.
Phil jerks his gaze back to Clint. "What?"
"There he is." Nat grins. It doesn't reach the disquiet in her eyes. She stands from the armchair, carrying the movement through into a full-body stretch. "Do you want to move to the couch?" It's only half a question, and the half-question is more than ninety percent rhetorical.
He doesn't bother verbalising a reply. Just climbs wearily to his feet, sways on the spot, and accepts Clint's arm around his back to make it the short distance to the sofa.
It's a very nice couch. Probably the most comfortable couch in the whole Playground, not that he's had the time or inclination to try all of them out. It's dark grey leather, slightly distressed. A tiny bit sagging on the left hand side, in the corner that provides the best line of sight to three doors and the stairs. Worn down in all the usual places, but with years of hard use still in it.
Much like him, really.
He really needs to stop anthropomorphising things to fit his headspace. It's a bad habit.
"You want the middle?" Clint asks.
Phil turns a forbearing eye on him and drops to sprawl on the middle seat of the sofa, arms outstretched along the back. He tips his head in invitation.
A second later he's got a black-clad assassin ensconced on either side of him. For the second time tonight he notes the lack of logos, SHIELD or Avengers or otherwise, on their gear. It reminds him of the time someone — he remembers lean cheekbones and a shadow of what was probably supposed to be designer stubble but in reality just looked sad, but he doesn't remember a name — suggested in passing that they stick a logo on the couch since they like it so much.
"'Cause it's, you know, black and leather, and most of our stuff is black and leather, and…"
The kid had petered off into thunderous silence at the look on his face, stammered some excuse, and fled the room.
Phil likes the logo, he can't deny that. It was fine when they were above ground, literally and figuratively. But they're a damn secret organisation now. They don't even have the official sanction of the US government to be operating on home soil, let alone that of any other government around the world.
Expect maybe Australia. But that's a special case. Always has been.
So no. He'll accept the logo on their plane and offical jackets and whatever else they need. Hell, he'll even accept SHIELD-branded pens, because the things are useful and every so often he strikes one that never runs out of ink. Ever. He's still got the one Nick Fury gave him to sign his recruitment form three decades ago.
But he draws the line at sticking it on a couch.
"Coulson," says Natasha. Once again, he's pretty sure it's not the first time she's said it.
"Yeah," he rasps. "Sorry."
"You don't need to — " she says.
"Would you stop — " says Clint at the same time.
Phil drops his hands from the back of the couch to grip their shoulders. The protests halt.
"You're shaking," Nat says with a frown.
So he is. "Oh." It doesn't seem important.
She takes his chin between gentle fingers and turns his head toward her, studying him. The frown deepens. But she doesn't say anything.
She doesn't have to.
Phil knows he's going downhill. Fast. The debrief may have helped stave off the worst of the effects for a while, but he knows — or he should have known, under the layers of adrenaline and shock and hyper-vigilance — that delaying it never helps. Not really.
But it was necessary.
"Come here," Natasha murmurs. She curls a hand around the back of his neck and tugs him down to rest on her shoulder. Wraps a warm arm around his back.
He can feel it now: the shivering. Like the tingle of hypervigilance in his veins has spread out onto the surface of his skin, raising goosebumps and forcing a far-too-visible reaction.
It's not like the blood and the scrapes and the expression on his face weren't visible reaction enough.
But he can't bring himself to care. It's dangerous, he knows, stupid and dangerous, because if he can't even control his own body then what can he control? But he Just. Can't. Care.
He's got nothing left.
So he rests his head on Nat's shoulder, winds a shaking hand into her jacket, and stares blankly past her at the wall. His eyes ache, dry and hot. The pounding behind his temples grows. The marrow of his bones feels like it's been sucked out and replaced with lead.
Every breath hurts.
Clint's hand grips his shoulder. A calloused thumb rubs circles at the nape of his neck.
"It's okay, Phil. You can let go. There's no shame in it. Like me in Manila, huh? Let it go."
Manila. Where Clint had made his first extraction call in almost two years. Natasha was closest; she found Clint and his doctor. Got them safely in the air. And Phil had watched through the quintet cameras, helpless from half a world away, while Clint sobbed into Nat's shoulder, worn thin by a months-long deep cover op that had started with biochemical manipulation and only gotten worse.
"You're safe here," Clint says. "We're safe. Let go."
Let go. You did good. Let the girl go.
Nausea burns in his gut, in his throat.
Safe.
Phil shudders, the memory of his own words rearing up to stab and rip and tear. You're going back in to the ATCU? I can't protect you in there.
He couldn't even protect her in her own home.
I don't need your protection.
Well. She certainly didn't now.
Unless maybe from grave robbers.
He huffs a laugh that emerges perilously close to hysterical. Behind Nat's shoulder, the brick wall blurs. His breath hitches. The stinging at the back of his eyes intensifies and overflows, hot and wet and cleansing.
And he lets go.
On some level he's aware of Natasha rubbing a hand across his back, palm scrubbing with precision over the seam of the scarred entry wound, even though he could swear there's no way she can feel it under the double layer of clothing. On some level he's aware of Clint warm and solid at his back, the grounding touch on his shoulder, the soft words.
"It's okay, we've got you. We've got you. We won't let you fall. Let go, okay. Trust us. We'll get through this."
On another level it all fades into the background, and he sees nothing but the apartment, a pool of bright light in the darkness —
out of the darkness, into the light
And hears the tinkle of breaking glass, and smells the metallic tang of new blood —
breathe Ros just breathe for me, stay with me stay with the sound of my voice, breathe please breathe please breathe
And feels the blood gush between his fingers, vivid red against the paleness of his human hand.
He doesn't think the stains will ever come out. No, that blood is here to stay.
Her blood is on his hands.
His hands… and Ward's.
Something snaps inside him. Whatever it is, it's both terrible and wonderful, awe-inspiring and world-shattering.
Maybe this is his terragenesis. His baptism. Transformation. Renewal.
His Bahrain.
Between one breath and the next, a tidal wave searing as fire and sharp as ice floods his veins. The storm of shock and grief and anger crystallises into a lens, funnelling the howling turmoil into a single thought, a single focus.
A single name.
Ward.
He must have made a noise or moved or, hell, maybe his heart rate just changed minutely, because Natasha eases back, looks at him, and says, "You're crashing hard, huh, boss?"
Sure. That's as good an excuse as any. Plus it has the advantage of being true. Burning purpose can't negate total physical and emotional exhaustion, no matter how hard he tries.
So he lies down properly on the couch and lets them fuss over him. They slip a cushion under his head where it rests on Nat's lap, and drape a blanket over him, and then Clint tugs off his boots and socks and starts massaging with gentle thoroughness.
One last thing, and then he can sleep.
"Hawkeye," Phil manages, blinking heavy eyelids.
"Yes, sir?" The words are soft, very nearly a drawl, but deferential nonetheless. Concerned subordinate to superior officer. Little brother to big brother.
"You're good to take night watch?"
The corner of Clint's mouth quirks. "Affirmative. Widow and I will alternate."
"You're safe here," Nat says. One hand smooths the blanket across his shoulder while the other rests on the arm of the sofa, gleaming pistol at the ready. "We've got you, Overwatch. Go to sleep."
"Copy that." Phil reaches for her hand. Squeezes it in silent thanks, and shivers, and sleeps.
Movement wakes him just before six o'clock. He rolls and comes up to a crouch, groping for the knife strapped to his thigh. He's aware of Clint perched on the back of the sofa to his left, arrow on the string, bow drawn. Natasha's still slumped in the corner to his right. She'd appear asleep to the casual observer, but he knows her eyes will be slitted, her finger ready on the trigger.
"It's just me," says May, stepping down into the common room. She looks like she's just had a solid eight hours of sleep. In reality, Phil knows, she would have been lucky to snatch even one. "Delta, you've got a call out. Coulson, the kids will be here in an hour."
Without a word, Natasha grabs her bag and vanishes in the direction of the bathroom. Clint grunts, lays a hand on Phil's arm in silent good-morning, and shuffles down to the kitchen. It's not hard to guess where he's going: they keep a pot of filter coffee percolating at all hours, and whoever empties it had better damn well refill it, on pain of everyone's displeasure.
"Barton," May adds, "drink straight out of the coffeepot again and I'll do something unmentionable to your unmentionables."
Clint yawns hugely, flips the bird over his shoulder at her, and reaches for the coffeepot.
And drinks from it.
"That's disgusting."
He shrugs unconcerned acceptance and, pot in hand, turns to the pantry in search of food.
May looks at Phil. Gives him a slow once-over, dissecting and analysing and piecing together again. She's not fool enough to ask how he is.
The storm's still there, a grief that clamps down with an iron fist and twists until he can hardly breathe. He can feel it lingering just below the surface. But layered over the top is a lightness, a swiftness. A surety of purpose. His burning resolution. Conviction on a level he hasn't felt since before Providence.
We are not agents of nothing.
He nods tacit acknowledgement and steps past May. There are a few changes of clothes upstairs in the private bathroom, including, if he's not mistaken, a clean shirt. Black. Blacker than black.
Phil's team will be here soon. Ready and waiting for questioning.
Ward needs him — and he needs Ward.
Which means he needs to get inside Ward's head.
He leaves Clint and Nat to their preparations, leaves May to her worry and her responsibilities, and goes to clothe himself in death.