Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
I will go away to the mountain of myrrh
and the hill of frankincense.
You are altogether beautiful, my love;
there is no flaw in you.
-Song of Songs 4.6-7
Phil parked the car off a back road in the shade of a stand of cedar trees. Jemma had been quiet throughout lunch, a worried cast to her expression, but when he had asked her if she wished to return home she had been quite explicit in her wishes.
"I want to get a bit lost," she had said firmly, fastening her seat belt. "I want to be alone with you." Her left hand had landed on his knee, the diamonds on her ring catching the light with sudden fire. "Please."
She was in his lap before the keys were even out of the ignition, but once there she seemed to lose her initiative. "Are we running out of time?" she asked quietly, the sweet press of her hips against his at odds with the wistful expression on her face.
There was no answer he could give her with any certainty. Natasha was one of the best in the business when it came to intel and obfuscating the truth, but there was no guarantee that she could hide them forever. Discovery might come without warning, either jerking them from sleep or surprising them in the middle of the day. He had a sudden vision of snipers on the roof and Jemma in the garden, unaware of the danger above.
In a strange way, time was no longer quantifiable.
"I don't know," he told her honestly, and she nodded.
She kissed him suddenly, almost desperately, and he quickly realized she was crying. He eased her back, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket.
She accepted it with a choked laugh. "Do you always carry one of these around?"
"My mother was very particular," he said, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear, "with regards to how best court a lady."
She laughed again, and much to his disappointment moved back to her seat and adjusted her skirt. "And how closely have you been following those rules?"
He considered her question with a small smile. "Dinner, wine, handkerchiefs- check, check, check. Thoughtful gifts, check- or so I hope. She also said that women want a man who can make them laugh, but I think you've been humoring me so far."
Her smile was luminous. "I think you're funnier than Clint."
"I'll take it."
She shifted so that her legs draped over his lap, restoring some of their earlier intimacy. "I think you've done very well, though she might not approve of the fact that you are currently a fugitive for my sake."
"On the contrary," he replied dryly, "she would have been very disappointed in me if I had left you there. She would have called it ungentlemanly. You have to understand that not only did she have very interesting ideas about chivalry, she could also hit a bulls-eye at 50 paces and was arrested more than once at a variety of anti-government protests."
"Did she know about SHIELD?"
"To an extent. I think she hoped that I would eventually come to my senses and join some sort of commune." He smiled slyly at her, stroking her bare knees. "Perhaps I could have bred sheep."
She began to giggle helplessly.
"If I had put my mind to it, I'm sure I would have been very good at animal husbandry," he informed her teasingly, one hand slipping under the edge of her skirt to stroke the skin of her inner thighs. "You don't think so?"
Her laughter died. She was flushed, now, watching him with a gaze that was the very definition of come hither. He pulled his hand back to her calves, suddenly aware of the cramped confines of the car. They weren't teenagers at Lover's Lane, content with pulling clothing aside and knocking heads and limbs against car doors and gear shafts. Whatever his earlier plans had been, they were now null- he wouldn't have their first time here, when he could have her spread lovely and willing beneath him on their bed, secure on its wide, soft surface.
"I haven't wasted our time, have I?" she asked suddenly, softly. "By waiting so long."
He reached for her hand, and she bestowed it willingly on him. "No," he said firmly, and pressed a kiss to her palm. "When you're ready is the right time, and not a moment before."
She considered him in the soft, diffused light of the cedars. "Well," she murmured, "it won't be long now."
It rained that week, and Natasha burst into their room at three in the morning, unconcerned- approving, even- when Phil's first reaction was to aim a gun directly at her head. "Up," she said crisply. "Get dressed, quickly. This is a drill."
And that was how Jemma found herself scrambling through the underbrush in the dark, slipping in the mud and soaked to the skin. The drills were difficult enough in the daylight, but until this moment she had thought herself reasonably prepared for an emergency. Now, as she blundered into yet another patch of thorny vines, she realized how wrong she had been.
"Slow down," Natasha said, appearing suddenly at her side. "The conditions are making you panic, and that's perfectly normal. You need to remember that you still have the advantage."
Jemma glared at her in the dark, feeling the sting of fresh scratches on her arms. "How so?"
"You've memorized all the routes, Jemma," Natasha told her calmly. "They're second nature to you, now. Anyone who is coming after you won't know the terrain, and they'll find the dark and the rain even more confusing than you do. Slow down, and be sure of yourself, otherwise you'll land in a pit."
Jemma took in a deep breath and nodded. Natasha was right. She knew exactly where she was, and if she had been thinking clearly she would have remembered that particular patch of vines. She would veer right around this tree, and then continue north for twenty paces. The route continued to zig-zag for another mile after that, crossing over a ravine and around the vast trunks of a multitude of trees, before finally ending at a small cave. There were supplies there, as well as money and another set of fake identity papers, wrapped securely in plastic against the damp. From there they would have to hike out of the jungle and make their way to one of the safe houses Natasha had set up, and then flee the country.
"If the worst comes, you know what to do," Natasha continued. "You wait for no one."
That would be the hardest part. They had contingency plans in place, safe spots to hide for certain periods of time, but it was understood that no one would wait indefinitely. A sudden attack might separate them all for good.
They finally returned to the house at dawn, covered in mud and exhausted.
Jemma leaned wearily against the shower wall, examining her new wounds as water darkened by dirt and blood pooled at her feet. Some of the scratches were deeper than she had thought, and might scar. She found that she didn't mind that much. They were a small price to pay for safety, and these scars she had earned herself, of her own free will. There had been a time when she would have hesitated to venture into the jungle at all, and yet here she was, confidently throwing herself headlong down those dark, treacherous paths.
The rain was still drumming against the roof when she left the bedroom, and the air was beginning to turn sultry in the burgeoning heat of the day. She found the other three in the kitchen, lingering over breakfast.
"You did very well," Natasha said in a rare moment of praise, giving her a small smile. "We'll do it again sometime soon."
Jemma tried not to wince. No use begging for Natasha to reconsider; she'd only drag Jemma back out to the jungle that very moment.
"Nothing delights Nat more than a pre-dawn stroll through the woods," Clint said dryly. "She just has to share the joy with everyone. She's right, though. We didn't have to pull you out of a ditch or free you from one of the nets, and I can tell you from personal experience that she will mock you mercilessly if she ever finds you hanging from a tree by your ankles."
"And deservedly so," Natasha shot back. "You should have known better."
Phil set a mug of tea in front of Jemma as the other two continued to bicker about a past mission in Budapest, and he frowned at her bandaged arms.
"Don't fuss," Jemma said with a smile, laying a hand on his. "It's just some scratches. You look like you got a few of your own."
He smiled wryly. "Guilty." His thumb stroked her palm, one of the few unmarked spots on that arm. "You were amazing."
She couldn't help but agree with him.
A few days later Natasha left on reconnaissance, and when she returned she looked unaccountably amused. She made her appearance in the middle of dinner, and without ceremony served herself and sat down next to Clint.
"Your team has vanished," she said bluntly, dipping a piece of bread into her soup. "Minus Agent Morgan, of course."
Phil placed his spoon carefully aside and leaned back in his chair, considering the multitude of possibilities and not liking any of them. "What have you heard?"
"They were reassigned to different sectors after you left, but a week ago they all failed to report for work. No one's seen them since." She caught his gaze, shaking her head slightly at his unspoken question. "They left willingly, as best I can tell."
"Do we have to leave?" Jemma asked quietly, crumpling her napkin in her fist.
Natasha shook her head again. "Not yet, and maybe not at all. There's no indication that SHIELD has any idea where we are- in fact, I've been doing my best to lay a false trail to Greenland- and their attention is split, now."
Jemma stood suddenly. "Those idiots," she said with unaccustomed ferocity, and picked up her dishes. They clattered as she dropped them into the sink, and Phil heard the distinctive sound of china shattering. "They didn't need to do that."
"Phil tends to inspire ridiculous levels of loyalty," Natasha noted dryly. "And I doubt they would have left with no reason."
He ignored Natasha's first statement. "Either they're trying to protect us, or they've found something we haven't. Either way, she's right- this will distract SHIELD in the long run."
It didn't mean that he was happy about May's decision- because this definitely would have been May's decision. By disappearing along with them she was adding legitimacy to whatever mission they might be on. Technically Phil was still dead, at least according to official records, and Natasha and Clint had always been renegades, but May was the Cavalry. The news of her defection would spread like wild-fire.
He imagined that some very high-ranking members of SHIELD would be sleeping poorly for the conceivable future.
"This is going to rock SHIELD to the core," Clint said, apparently coming to the same conclusion and taking it a step further. "The Melinda May groupies are going to have a field day with this."
Phil winced instinctively, knowing how May would have responded to that statement were she here, but also aware that Clint spoke the truth. May had her own fans, and they had the potential to be quite bothersome. By leaving, May might well dismantle the entire damn operation, and wouldn't that just drive her crazy.
Jemma's anger seemed to fade, leaving her quiet and drawn. She resumed her seat. "Do we know anything else?"
Natasha shook her head. "There one day, gone another. No signs of struggle in their quarters, no strange goodbyes the day before. However," she said slowly, a small smile appearing on her face, "something very interesting happened with a certain department we've had our eyes on. I happened to intercept an order that called for the contents of a particular file room to be destroyed."
Clint tsked. "Stupid of them to put that in a memo."
"Indeed, especially since they've been so good at covering their tracks thus far. So," she continued, "I did some judicious editing, and arranged to have everything delivered to Fury's office."
Even Clint was silent at this. Phil glanced over at Jemma, who was wide-eyed and tense. "What was in that file room, Natasha?"
She shrugged. "That, I do not know. It could be fifty years worth of expense reports for cleaning supplies, but I doubt it. In any case, having it unceremoniously dumped next to Fury's desk will be suspicious enough, no matter the contents."
"As Darcy once said, you're such a troll, Nat," Clint said with a grin, and she looked pleased.
"I know." She smirked. "By the way, Phil, Darcy Lewis is very upset that you died without returning her ipod."
"Though not so much that you died," Clint added. "Very draconian sense of justice, that one."
The tense set of Jemma's shoulders softened as she listened to their exchange, and she smiled slightly when Phil caught her eye. "The tide was going to turn eventually," she said with a shrug. She glanced over at the sink with a rueful expression. "I broke a bowl."
"I once spent an hour smashing every dish in Tony's china cabinet," Clint told her. "It's very therapeutic, isn't it?"
Phil raised a brow. "And what did Pepper have to say about that?"
"It was her idea," he replied cheerfully. "She hated that pattern. Said it gave her heartburn."
"Priapic satyrs," Natasha said decisively, "do not belong on fine china."
And with that, Jemma burst out laughing.
She was still amused when she prepared for bed several hours later, buoyed by Tony Stark's terrible taste in china patterns and the first hopeful news they had received in months. Though she was not pleased that her former team had placed themselves into unnecessary danger, there was still an odd kind of satisfaction in knowing that somewhere in the world, the Cavalry was on the warpath.
Jemma hesitated as she reached for her pajamas, and turned to look at herself in the mirror. The scratches from the thorns were fading on her arms, and her scars still drew the eye, but she unexpectedly found herself past the point of caring. She thought that she might actually be beautiful, in her own way, where before she had never allowed herself to ascribe more than a general prettiness to her features. She had different standards for beauty, now: the brilliant blooms of caesalpinia pulcherrima, the scent of vanilla planifolia still on the vine, the grandeur of swietenia macrophylla. She could almost see them in herself, in the curve of her hips, in the lean muscle evident in her legs and arms, in the way her hair curled in the heat.
Coming to a decision that was both sudden and yet not sudden at all, she shook out her hair, letting it tumble around her shoulders. She was grinning, she realized, practically buzzing with excitement. She pulled a camisole on, not yet bold enough to simply saunter into the bedroom in just her knickers (she knew, though, that he would doubtlessly be delighted once he got over the shock, and she made a mental note to try it one day soon). The thin cotton clung in a very satisfactory manner; less of a veil and more of an enticement.
Jemma opened the bathroom door confidently, and he stared at her in a way she found quite gratifying, his book slipping from his hand onto the floor. He didn't say anything as she approached, but the look in his eyes was electrifying.
"How patient you've been," she said with a smile, pushing aside the blanket and straddling his lap. "I hope the old saying about good things coming to those who wait applies here."
He kissed her, pulling her firmly against his chest. "Let me prove it to you, love," he said, and he did.