Even though this was the season finale, I plan on updating throughout the summer. It might mean this is now completely deviating from the show, but oh well. The_wordbutler said it was okay, and she's always right.

Anna asks JARVIS to pause the music playing in the bathroom before she swipes her hand on a towel and picks up her ringing phone from the heated tile floor. She's been traveling for the last three days to listen to various musicians, and all she wants is to sit in a dark bathroom and scald her skin off (minus her hand that is shrouded in plastic to keep her cast dry) with a searing bath. "Hello," she answers. She's scarily getting used to answering phone calls from unknown numbers.

"Hey," Phil greets.

"You okay?" she asks. It's been almost a week since he last called, and it's taken all of Anna's reserve to not ask Maria if she knows anything about Phil.

"I'm okay," he answers. "Everyone with me is fine."

"Yeah," Anna replies. "Maria said Fitz was being brought here for Stark and his friend to help him. What happened?"

Phil sighs wearily, and Anna immediately regrets asking, wishing instead that she was ignorant to everything work-related in his life. "FitzSimmons were trying to track our plane before it left Cuba. Ward captured them and brought them on board, where they hid in a container compartment. Ward dropped it into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico."

"Oh my god," Anna whispers in a mixture of anger, shock, and fear. "Please tell me they'll be okay."

"Fitz apparently could only build one breathing mask, and he gave it to Jemma."

"Of course he did," Anna mutters.

"Simmons pulled him to the surface, but he's suffering from cerebral hypoxia—oxygen deprivation to the brain."

"And Jemma?"

"She's fine," Phil reassures her. "She met back up with us a couple of hours ago." He pauses for the briefest moment, and Anna hears a slight hesitation in his voice. "Would you mind seeing if you could check in on him and get word back to Simmons?"

"I'll try, but wouldn't you rather me tell you and then you can talk to her?" He sighs, and Anna feels her gut twist. "What now?" she asks. She knows her tone is impolite, but seriously, what could be worse after the last month of finding out that her boyfriend was saved by aliens, getting kidnapped, having her fingers broken, losing her job, and having to move across the country?

"You want the good news or the bad news first?" Phil replies.

"Bad," she quickly answers.

"You have to know the good in order for the bad to make sense," he tells her in an apologetic voice. "The good news is Garrett is dead."

That pulls a sigh of relief from Anna's chest. "You're sure? Because you're supposed to be dead, too."

"I wasn't blasted into a bunch of tiny little pieces."

"Gross."

"You're not the one who had to clean him off your shoes." Phil takes a breath before continuing with his update. "Ward's in custody. He and May got into a scuffle; he's not really able to talk anymore."

"Good," Anna replies. And she means it. If he can't talk, then he can't spread more lies. He's done too much damage already, and the memory of his low voice tenses the muscles in her shoulders and neck. "So what are you going to do now? Maria said that she offered to let you come work with her."

"About that…"

Anna knows from his tone of voice that he won't be taking Maria up on her suggestion. She's half-tempted to not-so-accidentally drop her phone into the bath, but Stark's probably made the damn thing waterproof. "Yeah?"

"Turns out my old boss was about as dead as me. Ran into him, and he made me a job offer."

She has to bite her tongue to keep a curt comment from falling out of her mouth. He has the right to do what he wants even if that doesn't include her. He's not beholden to her in any way. "What would that be?"

"He wants me to rebuild the agency from scratch. He named me Director."

She's out of the bath water in a flash, overcome with a need to pace. She manages to poorly wrap a towel around herself before she storms out into the bedroom, waking Felix from yet another nap. "Please tell me you said no."

"Anna—"

"No, listen to me. Why are you going back to this? These people have lied to you, your best friends were traitors, S.H.I.E.L.D. got you killed."

"They also brought me back."

"And left you with unending questions, nightmares, fear, and you completely doubting your identity. Or do you not remember how broken you were when you sought me out?"

"Anna," he sighs, "this is the only life I've ever known."

She wants to call him a coward for not being brave enough to try something new, but it would be a lie. Because Phil Coulson is anything but a coward. This is the man who took on a god by himself without hesitation. He's faced death a number of times; she knows this because she knows the scars on his body. He's easily the bravest person she's ever met.

"Were you really going to leave?" she asks quietly. "Before? When you said you turned in your two weeks' notice?"

"Yes," he tells her and she can hear the honesty in the statement.

She nods to herself, taking that in. "I want that Phil back," she whispers and the hot tears she's been trying to fight back spill over onto her cheeks.

"I'm sorry."

"Me too." She shakes her head, and her anger at the entire situation—finding someone you love so deeply and never having anything work out—bubbles up and consumes her. "I run away from everything that hurts me. I can't live in DC again, military uniforms make me want to hyperventilate, I will never step foot in Georgia for as long as I live. Anything that's caused me the slightest bit of pain is immediately something I avoid—except you." She pauses to try and contain a sob and shakes her head. "You've hurt me, a number of times and with deep cuts, but I still come back to you. I just thought that would mean something to you." Her words feel petty, but they're true and she can't hide them anymore. She refuses to sweep them under the rug in order to protect him.

"Anna—"

"I have to go. And you have an intelligence agency to run, so this is probably for the best. I'll see if I can find anything out about Leo and get word to Jemma." She hangs up before he has a chance to respond and collapses on the bed.

The pain in her gut is torturous, one of the worst she's felt in her life. She curls into a ball and pulls the bedcovers up over her. Felix cries and burrows his way under the covers to join her. She pulls him close and is grateful that she has at least one constant in her life.