"You're here late."
Maria shouldn't be surprised to find Phil closing the door to her office behind him. Since his return to the field he's been back to his usual routine of haunting the halls at all hours. She looks up at him, sliding her keyboard neatly back into its place within her desk as her computer powers down.
"You say that like it's news," she answers.
"Hardly," Phil says. "I've had to trick you into trading that desk for a bed more times than I can count."
"About as many times as I've had to order you to do the same, I'd imagine," Maria answers. She leans forward in his seat, crossing her arms before her. He stands just a few steps from the door, hands shoved in his pockets and tie loosened. "But I don't think that's why you're here."
He smiles, but the expression lacks any humor.
"How long did you think it would be before I found out?" he asks her, his voice mild as ever.
"I thought we had another few weeks," she answers without missing a beat. "Clearly I was wrong."
He nods with a frown, as though he had been hoping against hope that she wouldn't have known what he was talking about. She watches him as he stares at the space on the floor a foot in front of him, waiting for something, anything. It's different every time, even if only slightly, so she's not sure what to expect. She prefers it when he's angry, when he breaks things; it's harder to deal with when the only thing breaking is him.
"Phil—"
"Don't call me that."
The ferocity of the statement always surprises her because it's delivered quietly, menacingly. It's a tone he's never directed at her until they began this.
"Why?" she asks, even though she already knows the answer.
"I'm not him," he says. "I'm not real."
"That depends on your definition of 'real,'" Maria says.
"I died. You took my memories, my thoughts, and you shoved them into… into this," Phil snarls, pointing viciously at his own chest. "Phil Coulson doesn't exist anymore. I'm just an echo, a shadow. I'm whatever was leftover. So don't you dare sit there and argue that I'm anything other than an imitation."
Maria takes a slow, deep breath. "It doesn't have to be like this."
"Spare me whatever you're going to use to try and goad me into complacency," Phil says, his tone cold. "It's not going to work."
"It never does," Maria admits.
Phil freezes at that, the meaning of her words hitting him all at once. He looks dazed as he covers his eyes with one hand, his shoulders shaking. She knows he's remembering; not everything, just fragments. He'd told her so once before, that certain words act as triggers that dredge up flashes of memories he should no longer have.
"This has happened before," he says breathlessly.
"It's hard to get a clean wipe. But yes, this has happened before. It's not always the same," she tells him. "You always find out, eventually. We erased any memories pertaining to your resurrection, but you being you, there's really nothing we can do to prevent you from figuring it out on your own. Nothing until you actually figure it out, anyway."
"And then you just wipe me like a hard drive and send me back out like it never happened," Phil says numbly. There's a lost look to his eyes when he peels his hand away as he stands before her. She always wavers here, seeing him like this. Especially when he looks to her and asks, his voice broken and desolate, "Why?"
"Because we still need you," she says.
"Not like this," he says desperately. "Please, not like this."
"I'm sorry," she says.
"You always… you always say that," he says, shaking his head as though to clear a dizzy spell. "It's not any truer just because you repeat it."
"And it doesn't make it any less true," she counters.
Maria had hit the panic button beneath her desk when she'd pushed her keyboard back into place, but it's only now that security comes filing into the room. Phil puts up a struggle, as he always does, but however many guards he takes down there are always two more to replace their fallen comrade. Soon enough they have him restrained, pressed to the floor on his stomach as they bind his arms behind him. Maria doesn't flinch as he looks up at her imploringly.
"You said it doesn't have to be like this," he reminds her, his voice gruff.
"It doesn't. But you make it this way," Maria says. "Are you honestly going to try to tell me that if I let you walk out of here you're just going to go along with this? If I don't do this, you're going to find the closest bridge and jump off it."
"Because no one should have to be this!" Phil says frantically. "I don't want to be this. Maria, please, just end it."
Phil Coulson was never one to beg. Under torture, under the harshest treatment, he never once begged for his life or for his tormentors to stop. Not in all his years with S.H.I.E.L.D. and likely not even before that. That knowledge makes it all the harder to swallow the fact that she's seen him beg no less than a dozen times for her to end him, to stop him, to shut him off. His wording isn't always the same, but the message is.
"Please make it stop."
He sounds small and vulnerable, nothing like the man she remembers him as. But then, he's said himself that he's not Phil Coulson, hasn't he? With that she looks to the guards and nods once. They know the routine. They haul him up and gag him before dragging him from the room. His eyes plead with her until he's out of sight.
With a sigh she reaches for her phone. Fury won't be happy to be woken, but all setbacks must be reported, however minor.
It's all part of the job.