Author's Notes: To Aquabloodhound... For once, yes!

CHAPTER SIX

As soon as Wanda Maximoff delivered her death sentence against Phil Coulson, cries of protest sounded from nearly everyone else. Even Vision hesitated in surprise, having fully expected the verdict to go the other way. He released Wanda as soon as she could stand and took a step back, his eyes flicking between her and the intended victim.

Coulson was standing a little ways off, rubbing his head and blinking in confusion as he readjusted to the present moment in time.

Vision pointed at him and clarified, "You wish for me to kill this man?"

"Yes," Wanda hissed between clenched teeth.

He turned to look at all the others, all of whom were truly as shocked as he was. The Avengers, the SHIELD agents, and all the rest were completely dumbfounded and disbelieving, from Audrey Nathan to Tony Stark. It was hard to believe that all of them could have been so wrong, and Vision felt compelled to press the issue. "You are certain there is no trace of humanity left in him?" he asked reluctantly, although he was sure at this point that Wanda would not be swayed.

"When I spoke of darkness, I did not expect to see anything quite so literal, but my vision could not have been clearer. I saw a great light – beautiful, indescribable. I saw his mind torn away from that light and enter into something... that I've never felt before." She ended with a shudder and glared forward, her lip curled with loathing.

Daisy Johnson felt herself unconsciously start to pull away from her boss. She stopped with one hand on his shoulder and whispered, "A.C.? She's lying, right?" When he didn't respond immediately, only opening and then closing his mouth again wordlessly, that hand fell away, too.

Shaking his head, Coulson started with the most unsatisfactory answer imaginable. "It's... all a matter of perspective," he started before realizing that the others would take this as an admission of guilt. The startled, angry glares that met his statement confirmed his miscalculation. "I mean, she didn't see what she thought she saw. She chose to look at one moment completely out of context, and then she jumped to the wrong conclusions."

"I was looking," Wanda snapped, "at the moment of his resurrection, which is exactly what is in question here."

"Yes, you saw the moment I returned to my physical body, returned to Earth. That darkness you saw... that's the Earth just like it's always been as long as either you or I have been on it. It only looks worse now that you've seen what I left." They weren't too quick on the uptake, so Coulson sighed and tried again. "People talk all the time about how I died, and about how I came back from the dead. No one ever asks what happened in between those two things." Ignoring the dawning realization and growing horror of his friends, he clarified, "Actually, one man asked once. He was about to die, and he asked me what it was like. I thought May was listening in when I told him, but she didn't bring it up afterwards."

"What is it like?" Daisy asked quietly.

Coulson shrugged. "I only remember a little bit now. I don't think the human mind can fully comprehend it. Sorry, but that's the best answer I can give you."

Her tone turned sharp and bitter. "Is that why you're always charging into danger?"

"What? No. It's not what you're thinking. Daisy, I don't want to die. I have too much to do here and too many people I care about. But I can't be afraid of death, either, since I know what's waiting for me afterwards." He cleared his throat. "Speaking of my possibly imminent death, Wanda, I'd like you to read my mind again. Ignore my death, resurrection, and the time in between. Look at anything before or after those few days. I already agreed to your deal. If you decide to kill me, I won't stop you, and neither will my people, but first, you need to do a thorough job with your investigation."

"Fine. Give me your sidearm." Wanda held out her hand, and Coulson grudgingly placed his Smith & Wesson M&P into her palm. She took off the safety, pointed it at his chest, and rested her finger lightly against the trigger, ignoring a few gasps behind her. She did make one allowance, though. "Do you have anything you need to say to your people?"

He looked around with a sad smile. "I actually have a lot to say to you all, which is why I have goodbye messages and final instructions for you and some other people all ready in case anything happens to me. I actually update them a lot to account for recent events, so I'll warn you now, they're pretty long. I left them with Agent Koenig."

That raised one obvious question, which Hunter raised. "Which Agent Koenig?"

"Billy, of course."

"I don' t think that merits an 'of course'? I still can't tell the difference between them, I don' t know about the rest of you guys." He snapped his fingers. "Oh, more importantly, who gets Lola? No, wait, it's Daisy, I'll bet."

"Of course," Coulson repeated with a wry smile.

"What about your..."

"Daisy gets all my stuff, Hunter. She can give away or throw out what she likes, but I'm dumping that responsibility on her. Sorry about that," he added over his shoulder to Daisy. "Besides my stuff on the base, I have this one storage unit that's a little... cluttered."

"Figures," she said.

"What's wrong with you all?" Fitz demanded. "Why are you talking about this right now? No one cares who gets Coulson's stuff. Shouldn't we be a little more concerned for his life?"

Hunter slapped him on the back with forced good humor. "Relax, mate. She won't kill him. She can't, right? Like I said before – like we've all been saying – we know the man's not evil, so she can't kill him."

"She's not exactly practicing gun safety, though, is she? One more painful memory, and she'll pull the trigger on accident."

"You're not wrong," Daisy agreed. "How about it, Miss Scarlet?"

The slender finger uncurled from around the trigger and rested on the guard. "Better?"

She didn't think it was too much better, but she didn't really have much of a say. Other people who also didn't have a say continued to raise objections, however. "Is this really happening?" Darcy demanded. "Is she really just going to shoot a guy in the chest right here in front of everybody? In front of the Avengers and SHIELD and his ex-girlfriend and, you know, the rest of us?" She motioned one hand in a circle to encapsulate the small, miscellaneous group that was feeling really out of place. Jane pulled her back and shushed her. "What, you're okay with this? What about you?" She rounded on Audrey, who whispered,

"No, of course I'm not okay with this, but I didn't even know until today that Phil was alive. Now it seems like the Avengers are saying this isn't really him, and I don't know whether or not to believe them."

Barton was quick to contradict her by saying, "Not all of the Avengers, but I'm with the people who are convinced he'll pass Wanda's test. Who cares if SHIELD brought him back from the dead? We can't punish him for something he had no control over. It's not like he asked for it... I assume."

This he directed obliquely toward Coulson, who confirmed, "I was adamantly, vocally against the idea before, during, and after the procedure."

"Well, you couldn't be that vocal during the..." He stopped that sentence, seeing Coulson's raised eyebrow. "Oh. You were awake during the... Wow. Sorry, boss."

"Not your fault."

"No, but I feel like someone should say it, and I'm guessing Fury didn't."

"He said he was glad he did it." Coulson blew out a long breath and took a step forward so that his gun was about an inch away from his chest. "Okay, I'm ready. Time to finish this."

Wanda took a breath and closed her eyes, and if they turned red again, they weren't visible to the outside world. Her hand came up again, and soon she and Coulson were lost again to the world of his mind. Many eyes watched anxiously as her chest started to rise and fall more quickly and the her gun hand trembled.

Behind her, Barton edged closer, preparing to grab the gun if he had to. He'd made no promises, after all, and he didn't want this Maximoff kid to do something she'd regret. He sort of thought of her as his responsibility after bringing her onto the team, and after the death of her brother. He wondered if he'd have any support if it came down to a fight. Natasha, his usual backup, might not have his back on this one, since if anything scared that woman, it was the really out-there stuff, like monsters and aliens and people who came back from the dead.

Oh, well. If he got the drop on Wanda, it might not matter.

The gun continued to waver, and Wanda's already-moist eyes began to run freely with tears. After what seemed like an eternity, she gasped and let the weapon fall to her side. "I was wrong," she choked out. "I nearly... I can't believe..."

Clint took that opportunity to pry the gun from her loose fingers and hand it back to Coulson, who stood very still and quiet. "Not an evil monster, then?" Barton prompted.

"I almost killed him. You have to believe I would never..."

"Of course not," Coulson assured her softly.

She wiped at the tears with the back of her hand. "I thought I'd learned my lesson with Ultron about making assumptions and choosing sides, but it seems I was wrong. Can you ever forgive me?"

"Nothing to forgive. You thought I might be a threat, investigated that threat, and then found out I wasn't. That sounds perfectly sensible to me." He offered her a small smile, fighting past the haze of whatever memories he's been seeing. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I don't know how much time has past, so I think I should check on the brownies I left in the oven, now that you know I'm a regular human."

He dug into his pocket for his earpiece, held it up so that everyone else could see it, and passed it off to Barton before walking back toward the cabin. He paused and turned at the sound of Wanda's voice when she said, "I never said you're a regular human. You never were, even before the Kree drug filled your veins."

Thor perked up at the word "Kree", but Jane mouthed, "Not now," and he settled back with a dark glower.

"But that's not a bad thing," Wanda concluded as Phil disappeared inside. Daisy shook herself and started to follow, but Wanda put a hand on her arm to stop her. "He wants some time alone right now."

Angrily, Daisy ripped away from the Avenger and demanded, "What would you know about it? You might've had a couple quick peeks in his head, but that doesn't exactly entitle you to have an opinion here."

"I have seen into his memories and into his heart. Among other things, I know that he prefers to retreat from others, especially those he loves, when he is in hurting, which he is right now in both mind and body."

"In mind and body?" Daisy echoed. "What else did you do to him besides pry into his mind."

Her eyes widening in surprise at Daisy's anger, Wand said, "I mean his hand, of course. The pain is always worse with stress."

Daisy shook her head savagely. "Wrong again. He lost his hand months ago, so it's all healed by now."

A throat cleared from somewhere in the back of the group, and Daisy glared at Sam Wilson, also known as the Falcon, who was already regretting making a noise. "Look, none of this is my business, but I think Wanda's talking about phantom limb pain." Yep, there was no denying that he found this five-foot-six bundle of earthquake energy a little intimidating. "I work for the Department of Veterans Affairs, especially with soldiers living with PTSD, so I see this kind of thing all the time. A lot of amputees can feel pain in their missing limb for weeks or months after the amputation. For some people, it never goes away. Lots of things can trigger it, like..."

"Yeah, yeah. I think I've heard of phantom pains before. But Coulson doesn't have that." She lost a little momentum and asked her team, "Right? This would be news to everyone else, too?"

Fitz ignored her and asked Sam, "So, how can we help him?"

"Honestly, the best thing you can do is be supportive and give him space when he wants it or listen when he's ready to talk. Educating yourself is a good idea, too, and finding out what course of treatment he's on. Also, if you can manage it, a stress-free work environment would be great, too." This got a slight chuckle, but he went on, "Seriously, though, I'm kind of concerned for SHIELD at this point. So your director died, came back from the dead with some kind of horrible side effects, lost an arm, lost a bunch of friends when SHIELD fell, and who knows what else. I think I heard someone mention torture very offhandedly like it wasn't a big deal. How is he coping?"

"Fine, I guess," Fitz shrugged, in case that was directed at him specifically.

"I don't like where this is headed," Hunter said. "If you're about to tell us that you think Coulson is unfit for command, then I will tell you that we just went through this with the near witch-hunt."

Falcon held up his hands, palms facing Hunter. "I'm just saying, most guys I know would have trouble with even one of those things. It tends to affect people's actions and decision-making abilities. I'm sure he's talking through his troubles with SHIELD psychologists..."

"Actually, his shrink's on vacation right now, and he's probably earned it."

"...but speaking for myself, if I hear someone has that much trauma under their belt, I'd hesitate before handing them a loaded weapon, much less a vast network of vigilante spies."

Mack nodded darkly. "When you put it like that..."

"Shut up, Mack," Hunter whined. "Just shut up. Can't we all just close our mouths, go inside, eat brownies, and never bring this up again? Bobbi?" he pleaded. "A little support?"

The blonde woman deflected responsibility as quickly but logically as she could, suggesting, "Why don't we ask the Scarlet Witch? Miss Maximoff, you were just in Coulson's head. Is there anything in there that suggests he might be emotionally compromised?"

"You know that he is. Breaking into a SHIELD facility to save Skye's life... disobeying orders when he was told to throw Agent Simmons off his airplane..."

"Actually, I wasn't there for either of those things," Bobbi pointed out, to which Wanda tilted her head in confusion as she sorted through the memory jumble.

"Regardless, there is a clear pattern of misplaced priorities, where he is willing to endanger the greater good to save a smaller number of people."

"We did save them," Fitz protested. "He was right in both cases, and everyone was fine."

Wanda shook her head. "Not everyone. Two SHIELD agents died on your mission to save Skye. Daisy," she corrected, realizing that this was the second time she'd gotten the name wrong. "I apologize."

Daisy huffed noncommittally, well past the point of caring. "You must have some residual Coulson left in you."

"Coulson loves you. Paternally, I mean," she clarified, mostly to Audrey, in case there was any doubt. "He loves all of his people, and he would do anything to save any one of you. It's one of the reasons I decided he couldn't be evil after all."

"Ya think?"

"But whether or not that makes him too emotionally compromised to be the director of SHIELD is a matter that I leave entirely in the hands of that organization."

Since Falcon hadn't really wanted to intrude anyway, he willingly backed off, leaving SHIELD to sort out its own problems.

Hunter clicked his tongue a few times while Bobbi and Mack exchanged tired but meaningful glances. "Soooo... brownies?" he asked.

"Yes, Hunter," Bobbi said with a relieved smile. "Brownies would be great."

It was unclear whether or not anything had been accomplished. Wanda was especially bewildered, staring at the chocolate-motivated mass surging back toward the cabin. "I just said we shouldn't go in there while he's... Never mind. I'm sure it's fine."

She entered the cabin to find Coulson staring skeptically at them all with his hands planted on his hips. "Finished dissecting my life already? What's the consensus?"

"You have a lot of issues," Bobbi summed up, "and more than your share of flaws, but we'd all rather eat brownies than talk about them."

"Me, too, but there's still fifteen minutes left on the timer. We weren't out there as long as I thought. Is everyone done talking about his anyway?" he asked anxiously.

"Sure, but didn't you invite everyone here specifically to talk?"

"Doesn't mean I don't hate it." Coulson checked the timer again.

It was going to be a long fifteen minutes.