Chapter Eight: the Fallen Soldier
Things continued to go to hell as everyone fought against Loki's minions, an angry hulk, and broken engines. The first to get split from the group was the Hulk after fighting with Thor and trying to take on a jet which ended with him falling to Earth. Emma ended up being separated from Steve as she used her anger to fight off Barton's men.
They were surprised that such a small girl like Emma could take them on which gave her the upper hand. After knocking them out, she ended up running into Coulson who happened to be carrying a gigantic gun.
"Hey, funny running into you here?" Coulson asked with a grin. "Working hard or hardly working?"
"Oh, don't be that guy that makes dad jokes," Emma said rolling her eyes and she raised an eyebrow at the weapon. "Also, I feel like I should be making a 'Scarface' joke."
"Looks like Loki escaped, you should probably find some place to hide. Loki's not exactly a nice guy," Coulson said after he finished laughing at her.
"You think that I'm going to let you face Loki alone?" Emma asked, looking incredulously at him.
"I have my little friend here," Coulson said with a smirk.
"And this little friend," she said, pointing to herself. "Seriously, Phil, I'm coming with you and there's nothing that you say or do that stop me."
"I could knock you out," he said, giving her a serious look.
"You wouldn't do that," she said scoffing at him but that's exactly what he ended up doing.
"I only did that because I care about you," Phil said to her unconscious body. "You'll understand eventually and hope that one day you can forgive me."
When Emma came to, Fury was leaning over with a concerned look in his one eye.
"Are you going to sleep all day, Agent Carter?" Fury asked and helped her up.
"We have to find Phil," she rubbing her jaw. "He went to face Loki by himself."
The went to the detention section of the hellicarrier to find Coulson on the floor still alive, but barely. Fury and Emma went to his side immediately. She put his hand on his chest, trying to stop the bleeding, tears welling up in his eyes.
"Sorry, boss, they got rabbited," Phil spoke, blood dripping from his mouth.
"Just stay awake. EYES ON ME!" Fury exclaimed.
"No, I'm clocked out here," Phil said.
"Not an option," Fury replied.
"You bloody idiot, you should have let me go with you," Emma sobbed.
"What could you have done?" he asked.
"I could have saved you," she cried.
"It's okay," he said. "This was never going to work. . . they didn't have something to. . .," Phil trailed off as he breathed his last breath.
Fury looked grimly at Coulson and looked over at Emma to see her crying as she continued to clutch his chest. He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her off of him as the medical team arrived. Fury announced Coulson's death over the communications system as Emma cried in the background, his blood covering her hands.
Numbly, Emma stood in the bathroom as she stood in a bathroom as she washed her hands repeatedly in an attempt to clean the blood off. Phil Coulson was dead, Loki murdered him. He was never going to talk to her again, to give her fatherly advice, or to watch her become a better agent. Loki took that away from him, away from her, and she was beyond angry. She let out a yell and slammed her hands on the sink, breaking the sink completely. She collapsed on the floor and cried herself out, backing herself against the wall as she tried to avoid the spray of the water.
The pain in her chest was overwhelming, it was as if someone was trying to squeeze her heart until it burst, as though someone were inflating a balloon. She grabbed at her chest and tried to claw the grief out but the only thing she was doing was creating scratch marks, just more pain to add on top of that. She fixed her blouse and winced at the sight of the sink. As she was leaving the restroom, she bumped into a shield agent who's eyes widened at the sight of the bathroom.
"Uh, it was like that when I got in here," Emma said shrugging her shoulders.
When she walked back onto the bridge, everyone was gathered around the briefing room with grim looks on their faces. Steve stood up and embraced his granddaughter, she wanted to cry again. She gave him a watery smile and settled into the chair next to him. Fury threw Coulson's trading cards towards Steve, they were covered in blood. Emma glared at him, she knew where he got them.
"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming. Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. Emma, I had no intention of using you as a weapon but I was hoping to use you in some way. I never put all my chips on those numbers because I was playing something even riskier. There is an idea, Stark and Carter knows, called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes," Fury said, Tony leaving at that, not wanting to hear anymore. "Well, it's an old fashioned idea."
Emma sat there for a while, letting what he said sink in. Did he really think she could become that? She could become a hero? She shook her head. He was right about one thing, they really needed to come together on this. She would do it for Phil.