Second Nature (Nature Series #4)

Set after 3.16: Paradise Lost and into the early scenes of 03.17: The Team.

Second Nature: noun; a habit or mode of behaviour so long practiced that it seems innate.

Thanks to LeDbrite for the heads-up on the last chapter! The correct chapter has been switched out now :) Reviews are appreciated.

3. Hand

He can't persist with the friendly government mask in the face of that. Pick your battles, Phil. He settles on an expression of flat neutrality that would make May proud. "What about the hand?"

"How did you lose the original?"

"Would you believe my dad sliced it off? He was trying to get me join some evil world government or something, I don't know, I wasn't really listening…" Phil trails off at the look on Hive's face. "What can I say? I like Star Wars. You should know, you lived on Tatooine for long enough."

"How," Hive says, very patiently, "did you lose your original hand?"

"Don't tell me you're still convinced the leadership of SHIELD is some preordained legacy. Me losing my hand had nothing to with Victoria Hand, unofficial director or not."

"Answer the question, Coulson. If you please."

He'd better not push his luck. "One of my men cut it off. Amputated it cleanly. Through-and-through with a fire ax."

"Why?"

"Saved my life." He's not about to reveal the particular toxic combination created by terrigen crystals coming into contact with plain old non-Inhuman skin. "I gave him a promotion. And a pay raise. Stretched the budget thin for a while, but it was worth it. He's a good agent."

"And Victoria Hand?"

Where's Hive going with this? "She was also a good agent."

"Really? Because according to Grant's memories, you disagreed with nearly every decision she made."

"So what? I'm not saying we were friends, but she was a damn good agent. She knew every card in her hand and she was ruthless in playing them."

"And yet you didn't like her."

"We worked together in a professional capacity more than once."

"Personally," Hive says. "You didn't like her personally."

It won't hurt to open up a little. It's old history now. "Far be it from me to speak ill of the dead. But. No. I didn't like her personally."

"Why not?"

Phil tries to shrug and comes up short against the steel bands around his arms. "Personality clash. We had completely different work styles. We bonded with teams differently, we shared intel differently, we held different views on… just about everything, really. But it didn't stop us working together. We were mature adults. Professionals. We got the job done."

Hive taps Phil's old hand contemplatively against his palm. "There's more to it than that. Isn't there?"

"Is there?" He keeps his eyes on Ward's. Resolutely doesn't look at the old black prosthetic. He doesn't need the reminder.

"Yes."

Phil affects a sigh. But subtly. "Well. If we're dredging up old history…"

"Please do," Hive says. Phil can almost see the thread of impatience in the words.

"Ward knew I hated chess, right? The board game."

"Yes."

"Did he know why?"

Hive pauses. "No."

"Victoria Hand," says Phil. "Is why I hate chess."

Hive tilts its head. "Really?"

"Yeah. I used to like chess. Used to be good at it, even — really good. And then she came along. We played every night for two weeks straight, sounding each other out, learning each other's strategies and techniques. I won some and lost some. We were more or less even. I didn't like her even then, just didn't click with her, but but she was a good opponent. A good rival."

"What happened?"

"She got cocky. Pulled out all the stops, gathered a room full of people, and challenged me publicly."

"And?"

"She won," he says. "She beat me at chess. Three times in a row. In a room full of junior agents. And she crowed about it. For weeks."

"And you? What did you do?"

"I took it as gracefully as I could, considering the circumstances. But I stopped playing chess. I learnt more about her in that one night than in the entire two weeks of matches before that."

Hive turns on the spot to look at Phil, eyes piercing. "What did you learn?"

Sorry, Victoria. "Arrogance," he says. "I admire anyone for competency. Being good at something and knowing exactly how good you are? Fine. But arrogance? Thinking you're better than you actually are, that you're better than someone else, that you don't need to listen and learn? No. Arrogance gets people killed — good people. And she was arrogant. Ruthless and smart and efficient, and arrogant. She'd sacrifice a team for the sake of the mission, no questions asked."

"And you?"

"No."

Hive nods. "You'd sacrifice the mission for the sake of the team."

"I'd find a way to get both."

"Yes. You would, wouldn't you? And you'd sacrifice yourself for the same objective."

"If it came down to it," Phil says. "Yes."

"Why?"

How can he explain it? "I gave my life for SHIELD. Literally. And I was given a second chance." The full explanation is tangled up inside him, a complicated morass of faith and pain and hope and desperation and cold determination. The short version is… easier. "It's only fair to extend that chance to others. No matter the personal cost to me."

"Your team," Hive says. "Your family."

They're in deep water now. "How many people did Grant Ward trust?"

Hive looks at him and doesn't answer.

"Exactly," Phil says. "Take that and multiply it by how much longer I've been in the agency, by how many more friends I've seen die, how many I couldn't save, how many more people I thought were friends who I've been betrayed by. And then I find the very few people I can trust, the few I click with like we've been together our whole lives — is it any wonder I'd die for them?"

"Perhaps not. Your lives are so short anyway. Throwing away a few decades of your own life in a futile attempt to prolong theirs… I can see how that would be important to you."

Well. Phil wouldn't go that far. But he knows poor interrogation psychology when he hears it. "A word of warning for you."

Hive stills, prosthesis still in hand. "I'm listening."

"Every agent in the business… we took an oath. To be the shield. The last line of defence. To step in front of the bullet heading for humanity, to do everything we possibly can to save earth. Not just our loved ones. Everyone. But you should know: everyone has someone they'll do that for. Agent, civilian, whatever. It doesn't matter. No-one is alone. Wherever you go, whoever you join forces with, whatever your objective here is? There will always be someone to oppose you. Seven billion people, all willing to die — or kill — to stop you. Because everybody loves someone, and everybody will do whatever it takes to keep that someone safe."

"Would you?"

"Yes. I have. And I would again."

Hive mulls that over for a few seconds. "Why did you leave the hand behind?"

Phil blinks. "What?"

"On Maveth," says Hive. "You killed Grant Ward and then you left your prosthetic hand behind. It's a marvellous piece of workmanship," it adds, turning the hand over in its palm and studying it. "Truly a stunning work of art and science. Rough, of course. An early prototype. I see you've upgraded to something far more elegant."

"A more civilised weapon for a less civilised age. Yeah."

"It can't have been cheap to replace."

"I have a very good engineer on our books. More than one, actually. They work better in a team."

The creature turns to face Phil front-on. When it speaks, its voice is deadly quiet. "Will you tell me why you deliberately left it behind, or would you like me to guess?"

"Please," says Phil. "Be my guest."

"Very well." Hive holds Phil's gaze and lifts the prosthetic. "You followed Grant to Maveth, hell-bent on extracting your vengeance for the death of Rosalind Price."

"Among other things. Like the torture of Bobbi Morse. Daisy Johnson's abduction. The attempted murders of Jemma Simmons and Leopold Fitz. Lance Hunter. Andrew Garner. Melinda May." If it really had been May that Ward had shot, and not just Kara Palamas wearing May's face… Phil's veins run cold. Nobody could come back from a triple gut-shot at point-blank range. Not even Melinda May, indomitable as she is. "I could go on, but you get the idea."

"Ms. Price was the catalyst."

He can't deny that. "Ros's death. Yes."

"The driving force."

"Yes."

"You shot him once on the way to the extraction point, but in the side, not fatally, because at that point you still hadn't quite decided what to do to him. You shot him again when you were almost at the exit. In the shoulder. He barely reacted. Didn't you wonder why?"

Phil nearly catches his breath. Surely not — is Hive saying — ?

"He tried to take you out, of course. You fought. Brawled, really. In the cold sand under the everlasting night of my planet."

Cool air fills his senses, thinner than the air on earth; coarse sand under his fingers, blue twilight all around. He fights back a shiver.

"And then the portal opened. You had to go. But you couldn't leave Grant alive."

Phil drags in air that feels too thin, too cold, and holds that alien gaze.

"You crushed his chest cavity," says Hive. The words are almost emotionless. "You looked him in the eye and bore down until his ribs cracked and broke, his breastbone gave way, his lungs collapsed. The light faded from his eyes. And he died. By your hand."

— sea and sand and lying under restraints on the cold steel of an operating table, knives digging into his neural synapses, stabbing and stabbing and stabbing, steady weight pressing him down and down and down, let me die let me die let me —

"The same hand," Hive adds, "which you subsequently removed. And dropped. You left it lying beside Grant Ward's lifeless body, and you walked away. Back to earth. Back to your team. Like nothing had ever happened."

"You're wrong," Phil rasps. Just ask May, who wakes him from nightmares about it even now. Everything changed on Maveth. Everything.

"I know. It scared you."

He doesn't reply.

"What you became in that moment. It terrified you."

"How do you…?"

"You've killed people before. Shot them. Stabbed them. Snapped their necks in the heat of battle. But to drain a man's life with your own hand, to feel the life go out inside him… as you did with Grant. With me. The look in your eyes…" Hive shakes its head. "A feeling so powerful it scared you — enough for you to leave that hand behind."

He'd thought Ward was still himself, on Maveth. But Phil has to wonder now, behind the frozen mask of indifference, if Hive had taken the opportunity of transferring bodies earlier than he guessed. If Ward had been under the sway of the demon even before Phil killed him.

Murdered him.

But no. That couldn't be right, could it?

He digs in his memory, frantically calling up the nightmare of blue light and blistering sand and that biting, ice-cold wind. No, that couldn't be right. Fitz had been fighting Will Daniels — except it hadn't been Will Daniels. The Will Daniels zombie under the control of Hive. Fitz fought it, Phil helped out with a couple of judiciously placed bullets at high speed, and Fitz finished it off with the flare gun.

Phil had watched Ward almost the whole time. He didn't remember the smallest change in body language, the slightest hint of anything alien in Ward's eyes. There had been pain, yes. Wild rage. Lurking confusion at his so-clearly impending demise. And yet… there had also been a strange sort of satisfaction, almost something like triumph.

No.

No, no, no, that's what it was.

Conviction.

Phil could kick himself for being so slow.

Conviction. Purpose. Burning certainty.

Ward had seen the city. He'd found his belief.

And then, so close to Hive, he'd died.

At the time, Phil had labelled it as nothing short of the most complete irony. That Ward had failed so close to his target. So close to what seemed to be his life's sole objective. He'd fallen without knowing that Hive was right there.

But now…

Now, Phil can only wonder. He doesn't believe in predestination. But he's known for a long time that there are forces at work in the world far beyond anything he could ever dream of.

Even in his worst nightmares.

Hive is still waiting for an answer.

"Ward was my team's specialist," Phil says after a minute. "My responsibility. Everything he did… that's on me."

"I'm sure there are those would disagree with your assessment of the situation."

"Probably. They can take it up with me in person."

"You feel that everything to do with Grant is your responsibility. Including his death."

"Including his murder. Yes." He can't explain why the terminology means so much to him. But it does. "I've killed people before."

"But not like this."

"No," Phil says to the undead body of the guy he murdered. "Not like this."

"Do you regret what you did?"

How is he supposed to answer that when he doesn't even know himself? "I regret the motivation behind it. It may have been the right move. I think it was. But the reasons… the reasons were all wrong. Petty. Personal. Selfish. In the end I didn't terminate Ward for the good of humanity. I murdered him out of hatred."

Ward's words on Maveth ring in his ears. I've been where you are now. Filled with rage. Wanting revenge. I chose HYDRA for petty, personal, selfish reasons. For a father figure. For vengeance. For closure. But what I saw today gave my life meaning.

Meaning. Somehow Phil doesn't think playing host to a parasitic demon was quite what he had in mind.

Hive nods thoughtfully. Taps the hand against his palm again. "Do you still deny the connection?"

"Your so-called connection between me losing my hand and Victoria Hand being a former de facto director of SHIELD?" Phil asks. "Absolutely. It's a stretch to even call it a coincidence. Random sequences of events don't make a plot."

"Very well." It shrugs, a lithe movement of presumably pain-free shoulders that makes Phil want to scream. Or hit someone. Preferably the thing in front of him.

He's not as young as he once was. And sitting on a metal chair is far less comfortable than it sounds, especially with his arms clamped in metal braces behind him.

His shoulders are killing him.

"Then," says Hive, "let's talk about Fury."