I just sat there on the floor for a while, giving thanks to God for being able to breathe again. You don't know how much you take air for granted until you don't have any, believe me.

"So… what she said," began Ward. "About seeing the future?"

"It's… not what you probably think," I began. There was no getting away from it now. Might as well come completely clean. I hate secrets. "I told Reyes about a friend and me getting attacked last year. What I didn't tell her was who attacked us. You all know what the Tesseract is? Well, it got stolen last year, and the people who'd stolen it were transporting it in a plane." Were they even allowed to know all of this stuff? Well, my story wasn't complete with out it. "Somehow, it fell out. I had a choir retreat nearby. A friend and I were on a walk. We ran into a guy who was looking for it. I recognized him, but not because I'd met him before. It was because I'd seen him in a movie. Called The Avengers. You might have heard of Hawkeye?"

"Wait," said Skye. "There aren't any movies about the Avengers."

Not in this universe, anyhow. "Yes, you're right. I'll get to that in a minute. When we saw him, I panicked, didn't know what to do. Said one too many things, accidentally let it slip I knew something that was probably classified, and tried to walk away. He went after us. My friend got caught. I almost did too. My friend slowed him down long enough that I was nearly to the main building before he caught up with me. He didn't know I had a black belt in karate and didn't expect me to put up much of a fight. I caught him off guard just enough that I made it. And that's where it all started."

There was silence as they waited for more.

"A few hours later, Agent Coulson and Agent Romanoff showed up. From the same movie. I was seeing characters from a movie. In real life. And one had just attacked me. I didn't know what to do. I tried to hide what I knew, but slipped up and got caught. Should never have tried in the first place, I'm terrible at hiding things. They brought me to the Helicarrier. I knew…" I hesitated. I especially didn't want to tell them this – that people so many people had died and I could have stopped it. "I knew was going to happen. Battle of New York, attack on the Helicarrier, Coulson's death, everything."

"So you're saying that we exist in a movie?" asked Ward. "This whole world is from a movie?"

"Actually, no. You all are from a spinoff TV series, but that's not really important since it's all from the same universe."

"Actually, to me, it's very important," said Skye.

"Wait, if you knew what was going to happen… didn't you tell them?" asked Simmons.

I hesitated. "Sort of. I… some times, information needs to be a secret."

"Information that could save lives?" said Ward.

"It could. Or, things could go terribly wrong and more people could die. Or, things could go right, but go bad later. The Avengers were constantly arguing, they couldn't get along. They needed something to avenge in order to bring them together. If I hadn't let something like that happen, then so many things could have gone terribly wrong. I did tell them, sort of. That piece of paper Reyes had? All the information on it. Every detail of what was going to happen. I gave it to him and told him to do what he felt best. I let things happen the way they were supposed to otherwise. And believe me, I understand the consequences my actions have on other people, and myself. Believe me, I wish it didn't have to be this way."

There was silence for a long moment.

"So… if we're part of a TV series… is this an episode?" asked Ward. "Did you know what was going to happen?"

I nodded. "It… needed to happen. You'll find out why very soon, I promise."

And then the door opened again.

Reyes came down the stairs.

She grabbed my shirt, pulling me to my feet and toward the stairs. "I have use for you upstairs."