Thank yous to Ghost Rider of Aragon, BenRG, vamp of alium sativum, isi7140, TFKpuppet, Qweb, LarielRomeniel, Sammy, paisley15, Sybretooth, Sandy-wmd, JubileeKnight, MissMisfit07, RavenMerc, LittleMissUnderstood97, Jabberwocki, and flashwitch for reviewing chapter 6! They gave me the honeyglow something fierce. :)
I've got to promote flashwitch. She's a great writer on this site and I recommend you go checkout her works. The Avengers OCD verse is a favorite!
I'm glad the Chitauri Neural Link was a surprise to most. I completely believe they introduced that thing for a reason on the show.
"Chitauri." Skye said, looking around, "As in the aliens that invaded?"
Fury nodded as he turned the head back. "Recovered technology, repurposed." He stepped back from the bed and looked at the LMD Coulson. "When I said you were Phil Coulson, I meant it. The Link connects your brain to this LMD body. For you, this is the most realistic dream you will ever have."
Coulson stared down at himself then to the body he was in and very deliberately took a deep breath.
Ward placed a hand on his back. "Maybe you should sit down, sir."
"Do I need to?" he asked Fury. "Do I even need to sleep? I get tired, don't I?" He breathed again. Wait, did he breath, or was that just what his brain was telling him to do?
"Coulson-"
"Yes," Coulson nodded, "I think I'll sit."
A chair was suddenly behind him and hands were helping him sit. "This is-"
"Very hard to explain." Fury finished for him. "I only know the basics of how this all works. But it would be best if you didn't think about it too much."
Coulson laughed, what else was he suppose to think about now.
The room was quiet around him, then he heard Skye ask, "Coulson laughing is the equivalent of someone else going crazy, right?"
He laughed again, softly, as his head dropped into his hands. He could hear the others murmuring, then a glass of water was held out to him. He reconized May's arm. He looked up at her.
"FitzSimmons are looking for something you can eat."
He nodded and took the glass, sipping it slowly. As he handed the glass back, his eyes locked on himself in the bed. "I… there was no head wound. Why won't I wake up?"
Fury hadn't moved. "We don't know."
"You said blood loss and trauma, right?" May prompted, "It's been over a year since New York, how much has his body healed?"
Fury shifted, or as much as he would shift. "We're working on that."
"On what?" Coulson looked up. "Has my body healed or not?"
"As much as it can on it's own."
"How… how injured was I? What did the spear do?"
Fury braced himself. "I can't tell you."
"What?" Coulson asked, slowly.
"Can't or won't?" Skye demanded.
"It isn't a good idea for you to know. We don't know what will happen if I tell you."
"What does that mean?" May asked.
Fury's focus remained on Coulson. "The body you're controlling right now is fine."
"It's fake." Coulson ground out.
"It's uninjured." Fury countered. "But if I remind you what kind of injuries your actual body sustained and is still recovering from, whose to say your brain won't automatically relay that information to this body? Say you have a broken arm and I tell you. The arm wouldn't break in that body, but it might stop working, it might start acting broken. We don't know. This kind of technology is new to us."
"I thought you said Stark read old files on the program." Ward said.
"He did. But until we got a hold of the neural links, we were never able to get it to work."
"So you decided to test it on me?" Coulson demanded.
Fury scoffed. "Have you looked outside this room? No, you weren't the first. But when it didn't look like you were going to wake up, I had them start on an LMD for you, not knowing if it would work on someone in a natural coma."
"Natural?" Fitz asked, from the doorway, a candy bar in his hand, his face shocked. "Do you mean to say all those people out there are in drug induced comas?"
Sorry that it cuts off so abruptly, but this was the best place to stop and let you digest some more.
