It only lasted six minutes. Six minutes and twelve seconds, to be exact. He knew because he counted. He knew because they were, without a doubt, the worst six minutes and twelve seconds of his life.
Skye was in agony. Her screams bored into his skull, effectively erasing any false sense of control he thought he had on the situation. He felt his resolve crumble as he watched the dendrotoxin take hold. Fury had said that the process wasn't "exactly painless." Wasn't exactly painless? Coulson felt rage course through his body. This wasn't pain. This was torture.
What if he had been wrong? What if she really didn't have the genes S.H.I.E.L.D. thought she did? What if Simmons had been right, and he had just single-handedly brought about Skye's death? After she had already suffered through so much? After he had already let her down?
He reached out a hand to stroke her face, despite knowing that any act of comfort he provided would be absolutely useless against the pain of the dendrotoxin. Her eyes suddenly whipped open and she grasped onto his arm with a grip so tight it cut off his circulation. He didn't even notice, her glassy eyes the only thing tying him to the present moment. She was muttering unintelligibly, as if she were trying to tell him something. He shook his head, unable to speak, trying to indicate that he didn't understand what she was saying. Her face contorted with another scream, and she then met his gaze with a fierce lucidity that sent a chill through to his core. The next words that came out of her mouth crushed all that was left of him.
"Please…just let me die," she whispered before succumbing to the pain again. Her brief moment of coherence was gone, but she continued to hold onto his arm as if it were the only thing keeping her alive.
Coulson wanted nothing more than to explain to her why he did it. He tried to tell her that he just wanted her to be protected, that this was the only way he could think of to make sure that what happened with Quinn never happened to her again. He wanted her to know that she was such an important part of this team, his team, and that losing her was not an option, not when they still had so much left to do, not when she still had so much life left to live. He tried to say all of these things to her, but the only words that escaped his lips were the same words over and over again: "It's okay. It's okay. It's gonna be okay."
He let her squeeze his arm as the dendrotoxin finished its work. Her screams lost their power, but Coulson could tell that she was in no less pain. She was losing. Blue tendrils flashed briefly on her face and rippled along her arms. As they faded, her grip loosened on his arm and she fell still. He gently turned her wrist over and injected the contents of the second syringe, a single tear rolling down his face.
Brushing back the hair from her forehead, he anxiously watched her motionless form. Had it worked? How would he know? He held his breath as he waited for some sign of whether or not he had succeeded. He couldn't have failed. He didn't know what he would do if he failed. She couldn't die. Not like this. Not right now.
He felt his stomach drop as he heard a long beep coming from the heart monitor behind him.
"It's no use," Simmons cried, her hands bleeding from continuously pounding on the door. "We can't get in there."
Ward stilled his movements and rested his hands on the cool metal, breathing heavily. He had no idea what was going on anymore. In less than 24 hours, his whole world had been turned upside down.
It had all started with a mission gone south. Since then, one of their own had been shot, they had infiltrated a facility run by the very organization he had dedicated his life to, he had knocked out Director Fury, and he had been involved in a firefight against people who had, until today, been on the same side as him. And now he was forced to listen as all of those efforts were made useless.
He heard another scream, but this one was different. The urgency was gone, replaced by an agony that nearly drove him insane. It was like her body was giving out, and that cry was her last plea to the world to make the pain go away. He heard his brother's quiet sobs in that cry, trapped in the well. He heard the cries of all the agents that had fallen beside him on failed missions. He heard the agonized sob of a girl that was supposed to be under his protection. He heard all of his failures in that one unbearable sound.
"Simmons, move out of the way," he said quietly.
"Ward, you're not going to be able to open it. We've been trying-"
He turned his head to look directly at Simmons, who fell silent when she saw his expression. Her tears stopped as she held his gaze for just a moment longer, maybe hoping to give him some added strength or something. She gave a small nod before backing up to stand next to Garrett, who was looking at him with a concern that Ward didn't have time to address.
He closed his eyes and centered himself. He should've known better. Losing control and letting his emotions get in the way made him sloppy. He had let his fear overtake his movements, frantically pounding on the door when he knew that the only way to get the job done was to push everything aside and focus. He took a deep breath and channeled all of his energy.
The door burst open with one powerful kick.
Simmons flew past him into the passage and ran into Skye's room, Ward following closely behind. He immediately stopped in his tracks. Skye was lying motionless on the bed, and as he glanced over into Coulson's panic-stricken face, he felt as if he had been dropped a hundred feet. Simmons was standing, frozen, her eyes trained on the flat line displayed by the heart monitor. He noticed her sway on the spot and instinctively held out his arms to steady her. She reached behind her and grabbed onto him, shaking. Ward was thankful for her in that moment, knowing that if she hadn't been there to hold onto, he probably would have collapsed himself. They remained still, all three of them, staring at Skye, for what felt like an eternity. Time fell away. All he could see was Skye's unmoving form. All he could hear was that interminable beep ringing in his ears.
Just then, the beeping changed. He felt Simmons jump in his arms as they all looked at the heart monitor.
There, amidst the long line of unchanging uniformity, was a single hill.
After a few moments, it was followed by another, then another, until they started coming regularly. It took all of his strength not to let his knees give out from relief. He felt Simmons go limp and quickly grabbed a chair for her to sit down in. She rested her head in her hands and sobbed once before looking up at him with a watery smile. Ward smiled back, failing to keep a few of his own tears from falling down his face.
Skye was going to be okay.
The pain hadn't lasted long, after she'd been shot.
That's not to say that it didn't hurt like hell and could only be compared to stepping on a nail. Only through her gut. Followed closely by the sensation of swallowing a burning bowling ball. But thankfully her body had decided to show mercy and knock her unconscious, sparing her the agony of enduring that any longer.
She was hovering in a sea of white, numb to the world. Ironically enough, she'd never felt more safe than she did right there in that in-between place. She didn't have to run anymore. She didn't have to worry about her past. She didn't have to try to prove herself to people who didn't care about her. For once, she could just…be.
No expectations. No fear. No pain.
Peace.
After a while, she realized that she was probably dead.
Oh, well. It happens.
She had been stupid enough to try to stop Quinn alone. So she supposed she probably deserved it. But still. She had hoped to achieve a little bit more with her time before taking her final bow.
Had the team been able to stop Quinn? She sure hoped so. Maybe then her death wouldn't have been for nothing.
She wondered how they were doing. Had they buried her yet? Had they even found her? Or was she still lying next to the door in Quinn's basement? She didn't expect them to grieve too much for her – after all, they barely knew her and she had hardly proved her trustworthiness to them. God, they didn't even know her real name. But she held onto the small hope that maybe they would spare her a thought from time to time.
And really, that was her one regret: that she would never be able to tell them how much they all meant to her. Despite the fact that she knew she was only considered a flight risk to the team, in the past few months she had finally started to feel like she had found a place where she belonged, where she could make a difference in the world. She had even convinced herself for a little while that they had been starting to like her. She knew it was just a silly little fantasy, but sometimes it was nice to pretend.
She figured that that was life, though. Sometimes you couldn't always do everything you wanted to. Sometimes you couldn't tell the people you cared about exactly how much they mattered. It's unfortunate, but again, it happens.
She absentmindedly wondered if she was in Heaven. She had heard a lot of descriptions of the place growing up at St. Agnes, and while white was usually used by the nuns to describe the afterlife, she had expected a little bit more than the endless sea she found herself floating in. But she supposed that for an unbeliever like herself, she really shouldn't have had any grand expectations. And this really wasn't so bad. Compared to the alternative, she thought that she would have no problem staying in this place for the rest of eternity, relaxing in quiet peace.
That's when her blood caught fire.
It was like nothing she had ever felt before. The heat coursed through her veins, burning everything it touched. She tried desperately to escape the pain, but she was frozen in place. No matter what she did, the fire continued to tear at her body. She heard herself scream and cried out for someone, anyone, to just make the pain go away. She would rather die than live like this.
And just as suddenly as it had arrived, the pain disappeared. She was numb again. She vaguely wondered if she was going back to the white place.
The world around her faded and everything went black.
She didn't know how much time passed before she came back. She was thankfully still numb. Maybe she really was dead now. She tried to sink into the numbness, wanting nothing more than to succumb to the oblivion, but something shone at the far edge of her vision. It slowly grew brighter, nearly blinding her, until it enveloped her entire body.
She struggled to open her eyes.
At first, she couldn't make out anything, the colors swirling together in one giant blur. She blinked a few times, squinting under the light, until her vision focused on Coulson's anxious face right in front of hers.
He was there. Of course he was there.
"Hey, A.C.," she croaked, trying to sit up. Coulson gently but firmly pushed her shoulders back into the pillows.
"Whoa there. Just chill out for a sec, okay? You were shot." He said it in his typical Coulson way, emanating dry humor, but she could tell that he was struggling to keep his face neutral. She decided not to fight him on this one.
"Yeah, I was," Skye responded, smiling a little despite the circumstances. "So does that makes me a real S.H.I.E.L.D. agent now?"
She saw him fight the urge to chuckle. "How about we get to that later?" His face grew serious. "First off, how are you feeling?"
She was about to say something along the lines of, "Like I was shot in the stomach. Twice." She was a firm believer that if someone refused the opportunity to say something like that, they were wasting everyone's time. But unfortunately (or fortunately, she supposed), the pain in her abdomen was gone.
"Other than a killer headache, I feel great, actually." She was surprised. Shouldn't she be experiencing some aching or something? Surely her wounds hadn't been that superficial. Skye glanced down toward her stomach and widened her eyes in surprise. The skin had completely healed over.
"Whoa," she breathed. "How long have I been out?"
She glanced up at Coulson, who looked like he was inwardly deciding how much he wanted to tell her.
"Yeah, about that," he said warily. "Your recovery hasn't exactly been…normal."
Uh oh. That could never mean anything good.
"What do you mean?"
Fitz slowly followed her out of the room, cheeks burning. He'd really done it now. If Coulson didn't fire him from the team, then surely Agent May would make sure he was stripped of his security clearance and sent to the nearest mental hospital.
How could he have been so stupid?
There was an uncomfortable silence as he waited for May to say something.
"You know, when I said that going into the field meant getting your hands dirty, this wasn't what I meant," she said quietly, gesturing toward the gun in her hand.
He looked up at her, hoping that she could see the apology in his face.
"I wasn't-"
"You don't have to say anything." Her expression remained impassive, but he saw a look of understanding flash through her eyes. Her intense gaze made him break away and stare down at the floor, and he tried to think of something to say that would convince her he hadn't completely lost his mind.
"Look…um…" he struggled, rubbing the back of his neck. "Would you mind not-"
"I won't tell anyone."
He breathed out a sigh of relief.
"But Agent Fitz."
He glanced up at her, expecting the worst.
"Whatever it is you're going through right now, whatever demons you're battling against…you need to sort it out. Soon."
He simply nodded in response, not knowing what to say. Figuring he was dismissed, he began heading toward the stairs.
"Fitz?" He immediately spun around, bracing himself for another chastisement. But May's expression had softened.
"You've done well today."
What the hell was she talking about? He'd done nothing. Absolutely nothing but be a coward and make a damn fool of himself. He managed to give her a tight smile anyway before heading down the stairs.
When he entered the lab, he had no idea what to do with himself. He felt like an exposed nerve, like the smallest thing would send him over the edge. Maybe he was already over the edge. He didn't know anymore.
Skye needed to be okay. She just needed to be okay. He didn't know what he would do if she wasn't okay.
Out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly noticed the small object he had been working on earlier. He picked it up and held it in his palm, considering whether or not to destroy it. It's not like it would make a difference anyway. It was useless right now, just like he was. He was just about to smash it on the lab bench when he thought better of it and slipped it into his pocket instead.
"Wait," she exclaimed, hardly containing her excitement. "So I have, like, superpowers?"
Oh, boy. He should've known this was coming. And all he had done was tell her about the Extremis. He realized he had made the right choice in leaving out the part about the dendrotoxin, especially considering he had repressed those abilities with the last serum. There was no need to freak her out any more than he needed to. They could deal with that another day.
He tried to keep his expression stern as he replied, "You're able to heal three times as fast as normal."
She was still smiling. "So…super healing powers."
He fought the urge to roll his eyes. "Eh, if you wanna call it that…sure." He figured he could give her this one thing.
She took it without complaint. "That's so cool."
"All right, all right, don't get cocky about it," he replied. "You can still get hurt." He didn't want her to start going around jumping off buildings or slicing her hand on knives to show off her newfound abilities. She nodded with mock seriousness, but he could still see a smile playing on her lips.
"So boss, you gonna send me to Tahiti?"
He knew she was asking jokingly, but that didn't stop his heart from hammering loudly in his chest. "Do you want to go to Tahiti?"
The smile faded, and he knew she was remembering the day she had found him at the hands of the Clairvoyant's employees. "No," she said softly.
There was a heavy pause, and her expression turned to confusion as she seemed to consider something.
"Wait…if you gave me the Extremis, did you also give me the stuff in the Night-Night gun? I'm not gonna, like, explode or anything, am I?"
He chose his words carefully. "Not exactly." At her puzzled face, he decided to continue. "Skye…when I say that you can heal three times as fast as normal, I don't just mean three times faster than a normal human being." He paused. "You can heal faster than a normal human being with Extremis."
Her eyes widened. "I don't understand-" she began, but something must have clicked in her head. "Wait. Does this have to do with the whole me-being-an-0-8-4 thing?"
He hesitated, weighing his options. "Yeah," he responded.
She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to go on. When he remained silent, she gave him a look of quiet exasperation. "Coulson…just tell me."
He looked down at his hands. "The reason why Extremis has had this effect on you is because of…your genes."
"My genes?" Skye sounded confused. "But I don't even know-"
"There have been some…developments in what we've been able to find out about your past." He glanced up and saw that her face had paled.
"But…I thought it was a dead end," she whispered.
He had no idea how she was going to react to the truth, but he decided that after all she'd been through, he owed her this much. "I thought so, too. But because of how you reacted to the Extremis, it's becoming more and more likely that you…" He avoided her gaze.
"That I what?" She had never been good with suspense. He could tell she just wanted him to spit it out.
He took a deep breath and plunged forward. "That there's a part of your genetic makeup that's not of…this world."
At her silence, he glanced down at her, and immediately regretted his decision to tell her the truth. He had never seen her this speechless before. Her eyes welled up with tears and she appeared to be stumbling over the thoughts in her head, trying to form them into words. She looked down at her hands as if she were seeing them for the first time.
"You mean," she whispered, "I'm not even…human?"
Before he could stop himself, he had moved over to the side of her bed and grabbed her hands in his, willing her to look at him. He gingerly sat down, making sure not to brush up against her newly healed side. She continued to stare at her hands.
"Don't you ever for a second think something like that, do you understand me?" He tried to keep his voice steady, but his shattered heart made his voice crack towards the end. She looked up at him, tears flowing freely. "There are people in this world who don't deserve to call themselves human. Being human is not about what blood runs through your veins or where you come from. Being human is about how much you care, about how much you live, about how much you fight to do the right thing." He paused, brushing away a tear on her cheek. "You're more human than a lot of humans I know."
She continued to look at him with a pain that tore at his heartstrings, but she nodded and seemed to regain her composure, wiping the tears off of her face.
"So, um…where is everybody else?" Coulson was about to stand up, never one for extended periods of emotion, but thought better of it and remained where he was.
"May should be just about finished docking the Bus. I sent Fitz back there after we returned. He managed to lock down your room and made sure nobody else touched you, but I think knocking out four orderlies with the Night-Night gun really took a toll on him." He looked over to see Skye's shocked expression.
"Wait…Fitz? Locked down my room? Knocked out orderlies? After you returned…returned from where? What have you guys been doing while I've been unconscious?"
Coulson sighed. "It's a long story. And probably a lot more interesting coming from one of the other kids."
He had expected her to at least smile appreciatively at his last comment, but instead her face went white. "Wait…do the others know about…?"
"No," he replied, and saw her breathe a sigh of relief. "But…I think Simmons might figure it out soon, if she hasn't figured it out already. You'll probably want to tell her before that happens."
Skye sat up straighter. "Simmons is okay? Oh, thank God."
Coulson gave her a look of confusion. "What are you talking about?"
"She, like, jumped on a grenade on the train," Skye responded, looking alarmed that he didn't know about it. "To save me and Fitz."
The warning bell went off in his head again. "What? We found Simmons on the train, we knew she got hit with the dendrotoxin…but are you sure she jumped on it?"
"Well…she more, like, hugged the dude so that she'd take the blast. But still. She's starting to make Captain America look selfish."
Coulson was silent as he tried to process this new development. Why hadn't he been paying more attention to Simmons?
"Where's Ward?" Skye asked.
"Hmm?" he looked up at Skye's inquisitive glance and shook his head. "Oh, um, I think he's a little nervous to see you. Your whole situation has shaken up the team pretty bad."
"Are you serious? I thought you guys hated me." She said it dismissively, but it still felt like a knife to his gut.
"You're part of this team now, Skye," he said, looking into her eyes. Her smile faded as she saw the pain in his. "You should know that by now." She broke away from his gaze, cheeks reddened. He paused before saying, "And you shouldn't have gone in there alone."
She immediately whipped her head up. "Where's Quinn?"
"We've got him," he reassured her.
"And Mike?"
"Mike?"
"Peterson," she replied pointedly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"What are you talking about?"
She sighed with irritation.
"He was there!" she exclaimed. "At Quinn's house. Quinn gave him some kind of robot leg and he was acting totally weird. It was pretty scary, actually."
Coulson stood up abruptly. "I'll be back," he called over his shoulder as he headed towards the exit. Two nurses warily approached the room carrying food trays.
"Wait – you're just gonna leave me here?" At the sight of the nurses, she temporarily forgot him. "Oh, good, I'm starving."
Fitz continued pacing, unable to focus on anything. He wanted to run back into the hospital and find out for himself what was going on. Ward should have brought Jemma back by now. The fact that they hadn't returned made his breaths come short as he considered all of the possible dangers that could have delayed them. Hopefully Jemma had made it to Skye on time. He remembered the look in Coulson's eyes before he left and cursed himself for listening to Ward. He should have stayed. He shouldn't have left Skye alone again, even if he didn't know how to save her. He should've remained by her side until the very end. It would have been the absolute least he could do to make up for all of the pain he had caused her.
He noticed a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye, and saw Jemma running up the gangway. Fitz held his breath as she rushed into the lab, bracing himself. He thought he was going to puke.
As her face drew nearer, his alarm grew at seeing the tear tracks on her cheeks. But when he caught her gaze, she broke into a smile that brought down a relief so strong it nearly knocked the wind out of him.
"Skye's all right," she managed to get out.
"Oh, thank God," he breathed, and placed his hands on the lab bench to steady himself.
As relief for Skye passed through, all of his barriers came crashing down, and he felt an icy fear take hold of his heart, the one he had been pushing down for months, the one he had been feebly keeping at bay for the last 24 hours. He still felt like he was going to puke. Instead, he whispered, almost to himself:
"What the hell were you thinking, Jemma?"
The moment he said it, he wished he hadn't. Now was not the time or place he had wanted to have this conversation. Once he had said it, though, he couldn't take it back. He knew she had heard him by the sharp intake of her breath.
"What?" she whispered.
"I said," he repeated more forcibly. "What. The hell. Were you thinking?" He almost said her name again, just to make sure she knew how serious he was, but he didn't trust his voice not to crack. He looked up at her to see her staring at him in shock.
"Fitz, I don't have any idea what you're talking about," she said, her voice trembling.
"Oh, please, Jemma. Don't play the innocent card. You know damn well what I'm talking about."
Her voice rose as she met his intensity. He knew she hated feeling inferior when they argued, even if he was right. "Actually, Fitz, not everyone can follow what goes on in your head all the time. You can't just expect me to know exactly what you're thinking every minute of every day!"
Couldn't he, though? She had always been able to follow his line of thought. This entire conversation was just getting worse and worse.
"Oh. Really, now? Well, then answer me this, Jemma. Do you have some kind of death wish?"
He saw her open and close her mouth in astonishment, trying to recover her composure. But he saw the flash of fear in her eyes. "I don't know-" she began quietly, but he shouted over her.
"You don't know, do you? Jemma, come on. It's obvious that you have some kind of a problem-"
"Fitz, if this is about the whole hospital thing-"
"No, it's not just about the whole bloody hospital thing!" he screamed. She fell silent. "But you have to admit that that was pretty stupid, too. Running in there without backup? With no weapon? What were you thinking?"
She avoided his gaze. "I needed to help Skye," she murmured.
He fought to control his voice. "And how were you going to help her if you wound up dead, hmm?"
He saw her eyes fill with tears as she searched his face for some kind of clue as to where this was all coming from. "Fitz, what is this really all about?"
"The train, Jemma!" he shouted, and paused, taking in deep breaths. "The train," he repeated, more quietly. He could feel the anger seeping out of his bones, replaced by an exhaustion that threatened to crumble his resolve. He looked up and saw that she knew what he was talking about, but that she wasn't going to let him win so easily.
"Fitz, I don't-"
"You took that grenade, Jemma. Why?" He kept his voice steady.
She looked at him incredulously. "To protect you and Skye! Why else would I have-"
"And who told you that we needed protecting? That was not your call to make, Jemma!"
"Fitz, it all happened so quickly, I didn't even think about-"
He pointed his finger at her. "Ah, but that wasn't the first time, was it?" She was speechless, apparently uncomprehending, but he knew that she was finally on the same page he was, knew that she was remembering the look on his face right before she jumped, standing in the same spot she was standing in right now. Without looking at her, he walked past her towards the Bus's exit. She remained stunned for a few moments before calling after him, "Fitz, where are you going?"
"Just leave me alone right now, Simmons," he called back, and cursed himself once again.
He hated yelling at her like this. It took every ounce of his strength not to look back as he walked away, knowing he would see the hurt in her eyes and take back everything he had said. He needed her to know that he was serious.
But could he really not have picked a better time to blow up at her?
He knew how much stress and pressure she had been put under today. It was a part of her nature to remain calm under strain. She had always been the perfectionist, constantly aiming to please her professors, the higher-ups at SciOps, even him when they first met. He knew that Coulson had placed too many demands upon her to find a cure for Skye. She shouldn't have felt like Skye's safety was in her hands. She didn't need anyone else yelling at her. Jemma had always been good at doing that to herself.
He wanted nothing more than to close the gap between them, take her into his arms, and fix this. But she needed to know how much her actions hurt him. He would have to find her later and apologize, but right now he needed to sort out his thoughts, without her soothing presence there to quell the fears he had to address.
She picked up the phone after the third ring, but not before glancing at the clock on her bedside table. Who on earth was calling her at this hour?
"Hello?" she answered groggily.
She was immediately greeted with a terse voice. "Coulson is dead."
She sat up abruptly. "What? Are you sure?"
Fury groaned before replying, "Okay, he's not dead yet. But I'm gonna kill him!"
Maria rolled her eyes and was about to tell Fury to call her back at a more reasonable hour when she heard what sounded like waves crashing in the background.
"Where are you?"
"It's a long story." There was a pause before Fury lowered his voice. "Maria…he knows."
She was still shaking off her tiredness, but her ears perked up at his urgency. "What…everything?"
"No, not everything. But he knows about T.A.H.I.T.I."
Maria let out a sigh of relief. That wasn't so bad. And she had had a feeling Coulson was going to find out about that project soon enough anyways.
"So…what's the damage?"
"It's bad, Hill. The lab's gone. I can't just let him get away with this."
She was about to respond when she caught sight of the light of the TV screen at the foot of her bed. She had fallen asleep watching some sitcom or other, but as her eyes focused she noticed the station was broadcasting a foreign news report. She switched the channel to confirm what she had already suspected, that it was being broadcast on every station. The language looked Finnish, maybe Hungarian.
"You can't fire Coulson, sir."
"I can do whatever I damn well want!" Fury shouted.
"We're gonna need him. And his team."
"What are you talking about?"
She slowly turned up the volume on her screen.
"Are you near a television, sir?"
