Must Come Down

Olivia could tell that Fury was not very pleased with the fact that she was trying to help him walk down the halls of the base. But she was much stronger than she looked, and she would not relinquish her hold on his arm as she tried to support him and ease the pain in his ribs on the way. She carefully eyed any agent that they passed, making sure they weren't injured or if they needed her assistance more than Fury. But it appeared that, at most, there was a cut or scrape from where people had fallen during the initial crash. Fury appeared to have just landed in the wrong position.

But the man would not be stopped, he wouldn't even allow her to wrap his ribs quickly along the way, finally having huffed out that she could wrap them when they got to the Bridge but no sooner.

"Coulson!" Fury shouted into the comm. device in his ear, "Initiate official lock down in the detention section then get to the armory! Move out!"

That confirmed Olivia's suspicions that whatever was happening on the base at the moment had something to do with Loki. Whether it was a planned attack, using him as a location for where to strike next, or a rescue mission of some sort, it had something to do with Loki. It was probably too much to hope that the attack was an enemy of Loki instead of...

Olivia's step faltered for just a moment as she realized what this would mean. The only people who would be attempting to rescue Loki would be the ones he had compromised. The base might be about to be infiltrated by its own agents, perhaps even by Agent Barton. That would only serve to complicate matters so much more.

The moment the ship had been attacked, her mind had drifted for a brief second to the fighting lessons that Natasha and Maria had been leading her through. She could imagine they would see this as an opportunity for her to test what she had learned. But if those men who were about to attack them were actual SHIELD agents compromised by Loki, she didn't think she could. She had seen it in the war, when it came to attacks, it was shoot or be shot. If these compromised agents actually fired at any of the others on this ship, she didn't doubt their first reaction would be to fire straight back, no matter who they were firing at.

She could understand an enemy trying to attack because they fully believed in what they were doing, such as the HYDRA agents during the war. She could understand they were the true enemy, that they would not be stopped, that they would die for their cause. But they had the choice to. These men who might be invading had been compromised by Loki, they had been taken over and put under his control. In their right mind they would never think to attack SHIELD the way they were.

This was not their choice and so she honestly didn't think she would be able to fight them with that knowledge in mind. She didn't know how the other agents would be able to fight them either. It wouldn't be fair to kill a compromised agent when it wasn't them who was really doing the attacking, but what Loki was forcing them to do.

She had to wonder if Maria or Natasha would feel the same way, if they would try to save these agents or kill them on sight. When it came to Agent Barton, she couldn't imagine Natasha going so far as to kill him as opposed to try and bring him back. But it also wasn't fair that she should save him only because she had a personal connection to him and not try to save the other agent either. She didn't know this Agent Barton, but she didn't think that one man should have a special exception to all the others that had been taken over by Loki.

She shook her head, trying to push past the thoughts, push through allowing her personal beliefs to cloud her judgment. That wouldn't be fair to Natasha or Maria either. There was no saying that the people attacking were compromised SHIELD agents, they could just as easily be enemies of SHIELD that Barton reached out to. They may not be controlled by Loki at all. There was a chance Barton would be the only one among them who was a compromise agent. And she didn't know what Natasha or Maria would do, she didn't know if they would attack to kill or just to incapacitate. And it wasn't fair of her to think the worst of them, she needed to see what they did first. But whatever they did, it wouldn't affect what she did. It would be her choice whether she fought or how she fought.

Right now though, it would not be about fighting at all. If Fury himself could be injured in this surprise attack, there was no telling how many others were injured. Right now she wasn't a soldier, she wasn't a fighter, she wasn't an agent of SHIELD, she was a Medic.

With that in mind, she renewed her efforts, helping Fury along even faster as they finally made it to the Bridge, stepping in to see if it had descended into pure chaos, appearing even worse than what they had heard over the comm. only moments ago. Agents were running around, frantically trying to get everything under control, the helmsman especially appeared to be struggling a great deal.

"Bring the carrier inwards and head south!" Fury immediately began to take control, Olivia helping him over to the main control panel even if it was offline at the moment, "Take us to the water."

As soon as he was secured Olivia began to make her rounds around the room, checking on any agent that wasn't currently rushing around, for the only reason she could think that they wouldn't be trying to help at the moment was that they were too injured to do so.

"Why water?" the Helmsman asked, struggling to get the navigation system back online so he could try to move the craft where instructed, "Navigations recalibrated after the engine failure."

"Is the sun coming up?!" Fury snapped, seeming completely done with how a Helmsman didn't know how to navigate without a navigation system.

"Yes, sir."

"Then put it on the left! Get us over water! One more turbine goes down and we drop."

"Sir, it's up!" Maria called, managing to get a handful of the monitors working once more, Fury making his way over to them to try and see the state of the rest of the craft.

Olivia knelt down beside a SHIELD agent who was gripping his left arm, quickly checking his mobility and feeling around the top of the shoulder, "Brace yourself," she ordered the man quickly, before moving beside him and getting the proper grip to push the shoulder back into its socket. She spared another moment to gently massage the man's arm slightly, asking a few short questions to make sure they weren't injured anywhere else before she moved on to the next person. She knew, in any other situation, she would do more, she would try to assist the person more thoroughly, but in a case like this she could feel her medic training kicking in. Stabilize, stabilize first, make sure they can last till the battle is over or more help is had.

"We need a full evac. on the lower hangar bay," Fury shouted.

"Any injured?" Olivia called back, even as she focused on another agent, shining a small pen light in both the woman's eyes to make sure she didn't have a concussion as the gash on her head might indicate, but she seemed alright for the moment.

"No reports," Fury replied.

Olivia nodded and stood, looking over to the other end of the room and making her way over there, closer to the door they had entered through. She could see Maria heading for the door as well, clearly moving to assist with the evacuation. She heard a small clicking noise, as if something were clattering or bouncing on the ground, and looked over at the same time Maria saw a grenade slide into the room.

"GRENADE!" Maria cried out.

Olivia was already running towards it, faster than almost anyone could blink, and kicked the grenade back towards the door just a moment before it went off, grabbing Maria and turning to brace her down on the ground, using her own body to block whatever remnants of the blast were coming through the door. She put a hand over Maria's head to keep her down when a gunshot went off over her head, and peeked up to see Fury firing his weapon at the open entrance. Keeping low, she began to move Maria back towards the main keep, so that the woman could get up and use some of the monitors for cover. The other agents appeared to have ducked as well, though the ones able to get to their weapons quickly raised them in preparation.

Fury made his way towards the entrance, stepping just to the side of it and waiting, it took longer than he thought it would, but eventually a handful of men entered the room, weapons drawn, however they looked quite worse for the wear given the fact that their grenade had gone off in their territory instead. He would have to thank Olivia for her quick thinking, for it had slowed the men down considerably, allowing him and Maria a chance to take these men out.

"Warn the others!" Olivia shouted to one of the agents nearest her, if these men had managed to make their way into the Bridge, the most secure area of the ship, it could only mean there might be others working elsewhere. She glanced back at the invading men, swallowing past a lump of guilt that had formed at the realization she had kicked a grenade at them. But none of the men appeared truly injured which she had been counting on. If they threw it into the room, they had to be far enough away to avoid the blast. She had been aiming to slow them, not kill them, which she had.

"We got perimeter breach!" the man quickly shouted into is comm., "Hostiles are in SHIELD gear. Hold on to every junction."

Olivia quickly looked over to her left when a man who had tried to fire his weapon was knocked down by the enemy fire. More men appeared to enter the room after the ones Fury and Maria had dealt with. She kept low and quickly scuttled her way over to the fallen man, checking on his injury, but luckily it appeared that the bullet that had sent him falling had only grazed his right shoulder and not lodged itself into his flesh. So she quickly got to work treating the wound, keeping her senses and attention open to everyone else around her should they get injured too.

With every careful glance up that she made away from her patient, she could see that SHIELD agents were clearly very well trained, firing with an efficiency she had only seen from Bucky during the war.

"Sir!" the same man who had warned the others of the breach shouted out to Fury, getting a report over the comm., "The Hulk and Thor are in shuttle levels 2, 3 and 4!"

"Sir, the Hulk will tear this place apart!" Maria warned.

"Get his attention!" he ordered.

"Escort 606!" Maria called over her comm., "Proceed to 270. Don't get too close!"

"Copy!" the escort came back.

Olivia helped the fallen agent to sit up, looking around to see if any others had been injured in the firefight, when she noticed something odd. The gunfight seemed to have lessened, slowing down, the agents around her still at arms and ready to fire, but when she managed to look up more towards the door she could see that the men entering were coming in at a slower pace, easily taken down just by Fury. She frowned when she saw that, the men didn't even appear as though they were going to fight when they stepped into the room, their guns drawn yet not even aimed.

Fury seemed equally as confused, "They are not getting through here, so what the hell..."

Olivia heard a whistling noise, the sound of a string snapping, and looked up, seeing an arrow coming from somewhere above them. She grabbed the nearest object she could find, a clipboard and hurled it up into the air. She hoped her math skills hadn't gotten rusty in her time on the ice, she was trying to anticipate the speed of the arrow, the direction, and the proper angle to throw the clipboard in very little time. She hadn't quite managed it as exactly as she had hoped, but the clipboard managed to, pun still not intended, clip part of the arrow and send it flying in a different direction, towards the ceiling.

Where it exploded.

She quickly hurried her way up the small steps of the Bridge, trying to get closer to Fury and Maria, trying to see exactly where the arrow had come from. Fury had just turned to look at her, making his own way to try and aim his gun better at where Barton, for clearly it could only be him, must have been standing. He looked at her for just a moment, to nod his head in thanks, before Olivia tackled him to the ground as another arrow was fired right at him, a multi-tipped arrow that ended up lodged in the command desk, right above a USB port. Fury rolled over, firing his gun in the direction Barton must have been, but there was no one there any longer.

Olivia helped him up, Maria already running towards the command computer, where the arrow seemed to have activated itself and inserted something into the USB port, hacking into almost every single monitor and mainframe. Maria had just managed to pull the arrow out when the ship lurched to the side, alarms going off.

"Sir, we've lost all power in Engine 1!" one of the agents reported.

"It's Barton," Fury shouted into the comm., "He took out our systems. He's headed for the detention level. Does anybody copy?"

"This is Agent Romanoff," Natasha's voice rang out, "I copy."

"Stark, we're losing altitude!"

"Yeah," Tony scoffed over the comm., "Noticed."

Olivia moved over to one of the monitors, trying to see if anyone through the ship had been injured by the sudden tilting of it. Only for her eyes to widen when she caught sight of security footage. It seemed to have been backed up on a different system, and she could understand why, it was the detention room that Loki had been secured in.

Only he wasn't secured there any longer, Thor instead was locked in the circular cage, with Loki making his way over to the control panel. He was saying something to Thor, his hand moving just above the button that would let the cage fall to earth, when one of the agents that was standing just the edge of the footage to guard Loki fell to the ground.

"Phil," she breathed.

The man was standing there, holding what was clearly one of SHIELD's new HYDRA based weapons, slowly approaching Loki to get him away from the controls. She couldn't hear what was being said, the audio seemed to have cut out, but the video footage was still there.

She gasped, her hands flying to her mouth when she saw the Loki in front of Phil disappear, another one behind him stabbing Phil through the chest with the scepter.

It wasn't until she found herself already running out of the Bridge and halfway down the hall that she realized she should have told Maria or Fury what she had seen. But she hadn't been thinking of that, she just saw Phil, an agent and a friend, being severely injured, far worse than any of agents she had seen on the Bridge. And she reacted. On the field of battle you didn't always have time to call out commands and call for help, you had to react and you had to act fast, especially medics. Every spare moment was one where it could mean someone else's life or death.

Footage had still been playing, she was sure that Fury or Maria or some agent would have to notice, Loki had been the focus point of this attack. They would be looking at the monitor soon enough and they would send help, but she needed to get there now. An injury such as that would not be one easy to treat, nor easy to survive, but if she could just get there, if she could try to help, maybe she could do something.

She could barely recall the directions they had been given when they have been briefed in the command room, when they had gathered there before Loki had been brought to his cell. They had been shown exactly where the cell would be in terms of the blueprints of the base. Oddly enough, it had been in the event of there being an attack and one of them needed to get to Loki to secure him. She hoped she was going in the right direction and she tried not to feel too guilty about not stopping to help every single SHIELD agent that she happened to pass. But they were all stable enough, and Phil could be bleeding out on the floor right now, or worse if Loki had attacked him a second time.

She hadn't even realized she hadn't thought of a game plan for dealing with Loki when she reached the detention chamber. She skid almost into the doorway, having run faster than she could ever remember running, trying to get there in time. She nearly fell backwards when there was a whoosh of air, having arrived right as Loki hit a button that sent the cage falling out of the ship with Thor still inside it. But she quickly got her footing and got her breath back, rushing over to Phil's side, kneeling beside him, already slinging the medical pack off of her back. Not even having realized she hadn't taken it off, she'd been using things from her utility belt before. It was another testament to just how much thought Phil had put into her uniform that the pack rested so comfortably on her she didn't even notice it was there.

"You know I could crush you, don't you?" Loki spoke, and Olivia spared him only a glance up, before she ignored him, focusing on Phil's wound.

"She's...no threat...to you..." Phil panted, not wanting her to be attacked for trying to assist him, ignoring the light shushing noise she made to try to keep him quiet even as she gently maneuvered him to lie on the ground.

Loki made a noise that sounded a cross between a laugh and a scoff, "I'm all too aware of the fragility of your women," Loki sneered at her, "She has not the skill to face me down," he began to smirk as he watched her frantically trying to save the life of the man on the ground. He tilted his head, considering whether or not he should actually attack her, before he laughed, "Why should I attack her, when I can cause her a far greater pain?"

Olivia's jaw clenched as she pulled her jacket off to bunch up and place under Phil's head. She understood what Loki was saying. He wasn't going to attack her, not just because she wasn't worth attacking in his mind, but because he genuinely thought that Phil was going to die right in front of her despite her best efforts to save him. And it truly would be a greater pain to have tried so hard to save someone and failed than to try and attack someone else and not be able to land a blow.

Not all pain was physical.

Instead Loki merely waved his fingertips at them and turned to stalk out of the room.

"You're gonna lose," Phil weakly called out to the man.

"Save your strength," Olivia murmured, quickly tearing Phil's shirt open to more closely examine the wound, it wasn't gushing, which was a good sign that an artery hadn't been hit.

But Phil's words seemed to still Loki, for the man stopped in his path and turned to face him, smug, and gesturing around as though to say how am I losing right now, "Am I?"

"It's in...your nature," Phil spoke, before letting out a hiss of pain as Olivia washed out his wound with a saline solution from her pack, quickly using gauze to press down on the wound.

Loki still seemed quite amused for watching Olivia struggle to save the man, "Your heroes are scattered, your floating fortress falls from the sky...where is my disadvantage?"

Phil panted as Olivia gently moved him just slightly to his side, enough to get a saline soaked gauze to press against the back of his wound as well, sucking in a deep breath when he was back on his back, "You...lack conviction."

"Phil, you need to stop talking," Olivia murmured to him, getting out more gauze and some medical tape, trying to dry a patch of his skin enough to try and close at least part of the wound. It was a difficult position right now, with Phil talking. On one hand, it was distracting him from the wound and the pain he must be feeling, it was keeping his focus away from it. But, on the other hand, him talking would also be expending energy that would be best saved.

"I don't think I..." Loki began, but Phil managed to maneuver the gun he was still holding to blast at Loki.

Olivia spared only a glance up to see what had happened, Loki had been to thrown clear through a wall behind him.

"...so that's what it does," Phil murmured, finally relaxing his grip on the gun and resting back, as though he could finally just let himself be now that he had done his duty and tried to stop the enemy.

Olivia reached out and took the gun from him, throwing it behind her almost into the hallway she'd come from. She probably shouldn't have, if Loki decided to get back up and come after them, it would be best to have the weapon in their possession once more. But it was far, far too much like a HYDRA weapon and she couldn't bear to be that close to another one. She would be able to focus better on Phil without constantly having that gun in the corner of her eye.

And if Loki were smart, which he had proven he was, he would not enter the room another time and risk a second blast.

"Phil," she began, ripping a piece of tape with precision, trying to bind the wound at least closer together so she could apply more pressure without allowing any more blood to escape him, "Phil, I need you to focus on me ok."

"Ok..." the man managed to nod as he lulled his head to the side to look at her, knowing it was a distraction technique, knowing exactly what it was for, which didn't exactly help him ignore the fact there was a gaping wound in his abdomen, but appreciating the effort.

"Alright, you can say one more thing and then no talking," she quickly put a liner of gauze over the tape she had managed to get stuck on to him. In any other situation, her first thought would have been to stitch the wound closed, however this was a much deeper wound and could require surgery of some sort, if any internal organs were hit during the attack. It would only cause him more pain to have his wounds stitched and then ripped open in surgery later, "Tell me something you want to know. About me, about Steve, anything that I can talk to you about."

Phil was quiet for a moment, as she got more gauze and began to apply pressure to the wound.

"Can the Cap really draw?"

Olivia let out a soft laugh at that, out of everything he could have possibly asked, he wanted to know about Steve's artistic ability. She had no idea how he knew that Steve tended to sketch and doodle when he had time to do it, she wasn't going to question Phil's methods of finding out, right now she would tell him just about anything he wanted to know to help distract him.

"He can," she began, "He's quite wonderful at it. The first time I ever saw a sketch of his was while he was touring around America and then into Europe, performing for civilians and soldiers. He was dressed in his first Captain America uniform, but he wasn't very happy. He'd been doodling himself as a performing monkey."

Phil let out a small chuckle before groaning in pain, and Olivia quickly applied more pressure to the wound.

Olivia bit her lip and turned as much as she could, maintaining the pressure with her left hand as her right rummaged through her pack for something she had seen but hadn't opened yet. She pulled out the small packet and ripped it open with her teeth. She began to flail her right arm about trying to get the object that was in the packet out without needing to release her pressure on Phil's wound. Finally she managed to do it, waving her arm a little bit more to expand the object in question.

A moment later she twisted back towards Phil, fanning the shock blanket over him, knowing that, with a wound like this, it would be imperative to keep him warm and not allow him to slip into shock. She managed to keep her one hand on his wound though, even as the blanket came to rest over it.

"He was always doodling stars on all of his reports and the notes he would take during the meetings," she continued to speak, trying her best to distract Phil and keep him alert, "He doodled just before we came here. He sketched a lovely architecture, just in front of Stark Towers. And you know what, Phil, if you keep your eyes open," she said a little more firmly when his eyes began to flutter shut, causing him to look at her once more, "I'll give you that doodle. I'll give you that sketch and even get Steve to sign it. You'll be the only person to have a drawing done by Captain America. Ok? Wouldn't that be amazing, something to add to your collection? But you can't do that if you go to sleep on me Phil. Do we have a deal?"

"Deal," he murmured, managing to crack a smile. She was relieved to hear his words weren't slurring.

"Coulson!" Fury's voice suddenly rang out from beside them, and Olivia looked over to see the director in the doorway, rushing over to them.

"Sorry, boss," Phil tried to speak, "They got rabbited."

"Just stay awake," Fury demanded, same as Olivia, "EYES ON ME!"

"No," Phil groaned, "I'm clocked out here."

"Don't you dare go back on our deal, Phil," Olivia told him, "I'll be very cross."

"Sorry..."

Olivia looked up at Fury, "I've got him as stable as I could, cleaned and partially sealed the wound, I've been applying pressure to it. But he'll need surgery and more blood, now!"

In that single moment, Fury knew he had made the right call in bringing in Major Williams to this mission. Anyone with a brain would think to ask Captain America to join, this was right up his alley. An enemy of Earth, danger to civilians, the Tesseract, a battle about to be fought in which a soldier would be needed. But he had gotten a quite a few words of opposition when he planned to bring in Major Britannia as well. She had no combat history, she hadn't fought in the War, she wasn't a soldier, she was a non-combatant field medic. Everyone seemed to think that that was a detriment, or that that somehow made her useless.

But here she was, proving exactly why he needed her on this mission. People were going to get hurt, people were going to get badly hurt, they were going to need a medic on the field. Because if they lost any of the specialists SHIELD had brought in for this mission, there would be hell to pay all across the world. They needed someone who had experience treating others in the heat of battle, they needed someone with medical experience, they needed someone who knew how to handle themselves when everything was going to shit around them. Many people overlooked Olivia Williams, but he knew exactly what she was capable of and exactly what role she would play...and right now it may mean the difference between losing one of his best agents or saving him.

You can't have a soldier on the field of battle without a medic there to pull him out of it.

Fury immediately called into the comm., "Agent Coulson is down. Detention room! NOW!"

"Paramedics are on their way," another SHIELD agent reported.

"It's ok, boss," Phil tried to speak, but his eyes kept fluttering again, "This was never going to work...if they didn't have something...to..."

"Phil!" Olivia shouted, reaching out to touch the side of his face, the move just enough for him to roll his eyes open once more and focus on her even while she applied more pressure to the wound with her other hand.

"They're here!" Fury reported into the comm. when a small team of SHIELD's Medical Division rushed into the room and swarmed around Phil. He got to his feet, stepping back, allowing them more access to the fallen agent as Olivia quickly gave them a rundown of his injury and her treatment..

He watched as they managed to get him onto a sort of gurney, Olivia going with them, still applying pressure...

And that was when he made his decision, tapping the comm. to open it once more across all channels, "They called it."

Olivia's head snapped over at those three words, a deep frown on her face, her mouth opening to tell the man that no, Phil was still alive, that he stood a fighting chance, but Fury just put a finger over his lips and shook his head.

"Phil Coulson is gone."

A/N: Coulson's ultimate fate will be revealed in the next chapter. Did he survive? :) Or was Loki's torture for Olivia correct and she failed to save him? :'( What will that mean for Olivia either way? O.O

I felt like that might be something Loki would do, he would want to torment Olivia instead of attack her. Someone as 'softhearted' as her would be devatated and broken to lose a man like Phil she was fighting so hard to save. In his mind, Coulson was going to die, there was no way one person could save him, so it was more darkly amusing to watch someone try and fail :(

But yay, Olivia's talents are shining through :) I feel like she could not have spent that much time around Steve with his shield and the Commandos with their guns without learning something about aim ;)

Some notes on reviews...

Oh I fully am yelling at Fury too...and someone else might yell at him in the next chapter too but I won't say who ;)

Olivia was able to reach Phil, not in time to prevent the wound, but she got there fast enough to treat it...but it was a severe wound, we'll have to wait and see if her efforts made a difference :(

I can understand that, I think Olivia is having a hard time trusting SHIELD as it is just after learning about them recreating HYDRA weapons :( But, at the same time, this is an organization her best friend helped build so I feel like she wouldn't want to write them off :/ I definitely think she and Steve are in line for rude awakening after rude awakening in just about every story to come, whether it's about the government or their own team :( But I agree, some very poor decisions in how to run things :(

I don't want to give away too much but let's just say I wouldn't have brought in Natasha and Maria taking Olivia under their wing or working out a weapon for her if she was always going to be just a side medic ;) I can understand that she hasn't changed much, but change doesn't happen overnight (or in the three days this movie seems set over lol) and she has a lot of personal beliefs and trauma from the war that she will have to work through first to be able to change more ;) We don't see much of it on the surface, because she tries to focus on other things, but it's always there and holding her back. Steve, in his own way, is trying to be understanding and supportive by NOT hounding her about learning to fight and respecting her beliefs, because it's something she needs to come to terms with first, so he tries his best to protect her and keep her safe in other ways. Being a medic will always come first to her, that's her calling, but she will begin to work on balancing that with active combat ;) We have 6-7 stories for her to do that in, it won't happen in just a single story :)

Phil is SUPER adorable. So it killed me to write this chapter :(

Olivia definitely gave her all to try and save Phil, we'll have to wait and see if she succeeded though ;) I've heard he was revived in the TV series, so it'll just depend on how much they need to do after this chapter to save him or if he'll still need to be revived ;) I've got the entire story prewritten so we'll find out very soon what Phil's ultimate fate will be ;) But thank you, I'm very glad you're enjoying the stories :D