It has been a while, hasn't it? Suffice it to say, my life has been crazy, and I've been very busy. This chapter was sitting in my files for a while, and a friend of mine asked me about it. Some feedback and minor refinements later, here it is. It's much shorter than what I usually post, but the endpoint felt natural, and I honestly don't have it in me to write more right now. Hope you enjoy.
I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.
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"You feel empty. You feel alone. Lonely. Almost frightened, but also strong, yes?... The name for what you are feeling is freedom."
- Vergere
At precisely 12:00 PM on November 17th, 2013, the dreary London skies were rent by the light of the Bifrost for the fifth time in less than a week. The scintillating colors deposited Aemon and Thor on the veranda of Jane Foster's apartment. Thor was dressed for battle in his silvery scale armor and flowing red cape, but Aemon had opted for a more casual black and brown tunic with matching trousers, boots, and belt. His lightsabers hung at his sides, as always, but his armor, spare clothes, and other belongings were in a simple bag made from sturdy Asgardian materials, which he was borrowing from Thor.
Ready for it this time, Aemon was able to dull his Force senses enough that they weren't overwhelmed by the Bifrost. As the colors faded, the apartment door in front of them opened, and Jane Foster emerged, ignoring the autumn chill that hung in the air as she leaped at Thor, who rushed forward and caught her in his embrace.
Aemon looked away awkwardly as they kissed. He opened himself more fully to the Force again, adjusted his grip on his bag, and walked past the happy couple into the room where he'd planned the battle against the Dark Elves. Darcy Lewis, Erik Selvig, and Ian Boothby were seated at the dining table, which was decorated with the remnants of their lunch. Leaning against a wall next to Lewis was Steve Rogers.
The captain wore civilian clothes, a black shirt and dark blue denim pants that hugged his muscular frame like a second skin. The round shield strapped to his back ruined the casual image. His chiseled face looked drawn, but his voice was warm as he spoke. "Welcome back."
His aura still felt very much like an inviting campfire, but Aemon saw now that the sense of comfort he got from the man's presence had been something of a self-deception. Yes, Rogers radiated as much Light as was possible for one who lacked strength in the Force, but as with all beings, the bulk of the iceberg lay hidden beneath the surface.
Pain. Loneliness. World-weary vigilance. The man compartmentalized very well under battle conditions, better than some Jedi, even. Inside, though, he was almost as much of a grieving mess as Aemon himself.
"Good to be back," Aemon replied, and found, to his surprise, that it was true. Awash in petty conflict as it was, Earth was hardly quiet in the Force, but his instincts told him that it was the right place for him. He wouldn't necessarily find peace here, but he would find purpose. As long as he was needed, he would survive.
Once pleasantries were exchanged, Rogers surprised Aemon by asking him and Thor if they could speak in private. A few minutes later, they were standing on the rooftop of Jane's building, where Aemon insisted on weaving a Force illusion to disguise their identities and words.
Calling on the White Current, he slowly traced an arc through the air with his right hand, wrapping them in a veil of banal ignobility that would convince observers the three men were foul-mouthed vagrants indulging in illicit substances.
"How are you doing that?" Rogers asked.
Aemon offered a small smile. "Long story… and done."
Rogers nodded, then began to speak. "SHIELD has quarantined the battle site. Even the Avengers aren't allowed on the campus."
Aemon cocked his head to one side. "What are they hiding?"
"That's what I spent yesterday trying to figure out."
"Did you succeed?" Thor asked.
"I think so, but it still doesn't make sense."
"Because?" Aemon prompted after a long moment of silence elapsed.
Rogers looked at Thor. "Because I saw Phil Coulson leading the cleanup team."
Thor's expression darkened. "Impossible. Could it have been a look-alike?"
Rogers shrugged. "Maybe, but I know how to clock a body double. This looked like the real deal. Besides, why would SHIELD try this hard to hide the identity of a lookalike?"
Frowning, Aemon said, "Forgive me, but who's Phil Coulson?"
Both blondes winced. "Ah, of course, you weren't there," Thor said apologetically. "Phil, Son of Coul, was a respected agent of SHIELD who helped bring the Avengers together. He perished during our first battle together. At my brother's hand."
"He was your friend," Aemon said. He didn't need the Force to detect Thor's pain and regret.
"For too brief a time, yes."
"None of us really knew him that well, but his death is what united us," Rogers added. "And he did die. There's no way he could have survived. For him to be alive now…."
Aemon frowned. "No disrespect intended, but how can you be sure that Coulson was truly dead? Did you see the body?"
"No need to be diplomatic," Rogers said. Evidently, he too had seen too much in the theater of war. "I saw the security footage."
"And I was there when it happened," Thor added with a grimace. "Loki stabbed him in the back with the Chitauri Scepter of Command. The blade went right through his spine and likely tore his heart in half. Somehow, he stayed alive long enough to shoot Loki with an energy weapon even as he bled to death on the floor."
Aemon winced. "The Force was with him in his final moments."
"You two both come from civilizations way more advanced than Earth," Rogers said. "Do you know of any medical procedures that can…"
"Revive the dead?" Aemon finished. "No. Medical science can do amazing things, but it has limits. Force-users have all sorts of techniques to keep themselves alive while severely injured and accelerate their recovery, but that wouldn't have been enough to save him from what Thor described, even if Coulson had the training and the power. Frankly, I'm amazed he didn't die instantly. And for him to be alive now…"
"There are dark magics that can reanimate the dead," Thor added, "but such foul arts merely use the corpse like a puppet. There is no way to fully restore the original personality, and no amount of illusion or repair spells can fully conceal the creature's undead nature."
"Should be impossible," Rogers noted. Without the stress of a battle forcing a hard, focused edge into his voice, he was so soft-spoken and measured he sounded almost musical. "But reality's hardly ever what it should be."
"That's an understatement," Aemon agreed.
Rogers peered at Aemon, a searching look in his blue eyes. "What did you mean 'the Force was with' Coulson?"
Aemon shifted in place. He had learned from experience how to explain the real difference between the Light and Dark sides without sounding like a sanctimonious fanatic, but he'd never had to explain the basic nature of the Force to someone who'd never even heard of it. "The Force is an energy field generated from life, and which generates life in turn. It's omnipresent and binds all things in the universe together, like a river or ocean that flows through everything and everyone, subtly pushing and pulling on people and events. A rare few beings, such as myself, are born with the ability to sense and tap into the power of the Force. Even the Asgardians draw their power from a manifestation of the Force, though their relationship with it is completely different from mine."
Rogers raised a blonde eyebrow, darker than the golden hair on his scalp, and glanced at Thor. "You've never talked about this… Force."
Thor looked embarrassed. "Master al'Cazar's order understands the Force as a whole far better than my people do, and I'm the last person to call myself a scholar of metaphysics."
Rogers looked at Aemon again. "Your order? Is that what Thor meant when he called you a Jedi?"
Aemon hesitated. "It's complicated," he said. "And not relevant at the moment. What is relevant is that I can sense things through the Force, like the emotional states and life auras of people around me."
Rogers frowned. "You know what I'm feeling?"
"To an extent. I know how rattled you are by the idea of Coulson somehow coming back to life, because it's your, for lack of a better word, loudest emotion at the moment. It's not mind-reading. That takes more focus."
"You can read minds?"
Aemon sighed. "Minds aren't books I can just open up and examine any time I want. They're multi-layered, complex, and unique. Yes, I can passively pick up on people's thoughts if they're experiencing powerful emotions, and yes, I can actively observe a person's thoughts if I focus, but that doesn't mean I can interpret them correctly. Viewing memories and pulling hidden knowledge from someone's mind without their consent is much harder, especially if they're aware and actively resisting. Just knowing that I have the ability is enough to protect your privacy."
Rogers nodded. "Sorry," he said with such sincerity Aemon felt bad for letting his annoyance show. "No offense, but…"
"You were worried about the sanctity of your mind. I understand," Aemon said. More than you know. "But it's part of being a Force user, for better or worse. It's not an exaggeration to say I knew how it felt to die before I could walk, but shutting it off makes me feel like I've gone blind and deaf."
Rogers winced. "How… how much of other people's pain do you carry, Master al'Cazar?"
Instead of answering the question, Aemon riposted, "How much do you carry, Captain Rogers?"
"If we could please return to the matter at hand," Thor interjected.
Rogers and Aemon both looked at him. "Sorry," Rogers repeated.
"My point," Aemon resumed, "is that I'm our best chance of figuring out what the deal is with Coulson."
"Then we'd better get going," said Rogers. "I don't want him getting away and making us chase him around the world. Thor, you coming?"
Thor hesitated. "Is my presence necessary?"
"Honestly?" Aemon said, "I think this will go better if it's just myself and Captain Rogers. Leaving aside your personal feelings, this is a SHIELD internal affair. I'm going because my abilities are needed to determine the truth, but I'll be acting on behalf of an Earth native trying to hold his employer accountable for potential wrongdoing. If you go, it could be misconstrued as an Asgardian attempt to assert sovereignty over Earth by interfering in SHIELD business without their consent."
Thor nodded. He appeared simultaneously disappointed and relieved.
"Fair enough," Rogers conceded.
Aemon gave Thor a sly look. "Besides, you want to stay and work things out with Jane."
Thor's face turned bright red. "I, well, that is…"
The Force rippled with Captain Rogers's amusement, but beneath that, Aemon sensed anguish and loss so profound that it made his heart ache. Then he remembered what Frigga had told him about the man's situation, and realized it wasn't just sympathy he was feeling. He was reacting to a kindred spirit; Rogers's pain mirrored his own.
Aemon forced himself to smile as Rogers said, "I can't speak for her, but I've heard her talk about you, and the way you talk about her… well, I think what you have is real."
Thor's embarrassment shivered with uncertainty. Sensing that his input wasn't needed, Aemon kept his mouth shut and turned away.
"Look," Rogers continued, "as maybe the world's leading authority on 'waiting too long;' don't."
Before Thor left for his talk with Jane, he handed Steve a slender tube of dark gray metal about as long as a cell phone, marked at each end with Asgardian knotwork and a pair of symbols Steve couldn't read.
Steve opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, but Thor preempted him in a low, grim voice Steve had never heard him use before. "This is a scroll of confidentiality. It will not reveal the information it contains to any but the individuals its creator allows. I keyed this one to you, Master al'Cazar, and the other Avengers. Its contents must not be shared with anyone else, especially not with SHIELD."
Steve kept his face blank as he took the cylinder, feeling along its surface with his thumb to memorize its texture and details. He didn't bother asking the reason for the secrecy, knowing as he did exactly why Thor didn't trust the organization. He slipped the scroll into his pocket, the best he could manage in his civilian clothes, and exchanged one last forearm grasp with Thor before the other man took his leave.
When Steve turned to look back at Master al'Cazar, he saw the Jedi staring into space, his gaze unfocused. "Master al'Cazar?"
al'Cazar blinked and turned to look at him. The Jedi's spectral white skin looked even paler contrasted against his dark clothes, making his face look as if it were carved from marble. His large, dark blue eyes only enhanced the impression; they looked like sapphires set into the sockets.
No, not sapphires, Steve decided. That particular shade of indigo was too close to purple. A rarer gem he'd read about in a Nat Geo magazine, tanzanite, was a more apt comparison.
"Please, call me Aemon," he said in that oddly resonant voice. "Or Master Aemon, if you insist on using titles."
A memory of a particular television watch night at Avengers Tower rose to the top of Steve's mind, and he hid reluctant amusement as he replied. "Just Aemon, then."
Aemon cocked his head in confusion. He had picked up on Steve's emotion, but without context, he had no way of understanding what it meant. Empathic senses, Steve thought with an inward shake of his head, still not quite able to wrap his head around the implications. If he'd been sensing the pain and the deaths of people around him since infancy… best not to think about it.
"What got your attention just now?" Steve asked.
"A disturbance in the Force," Aemon said with just the slightest bit of hesitation.
"I don't understand."
"Everything in existence creates ripples in the Force," Aemon explained. "But most of those ripples are too small for even trained Force-sensitives to notice unless they're close by, or deliberately searching. When I say disturbance, I'm talking about a disruption powerful enough to sense from a great distance, even half a galaxy away."
"And disturbances are caused by?"
"Bad things. The approach of extreme danger. The death of someone strong in the Force, or the simultaneous deaths of millions of living things. The presence of highly anomalous energies or entities."
Steve's heart climbed into his throat. "Anomalies like, say, dead people coming back to life?"
"Maybe," Aemon said, turning back to look in the direction he'd been staring. "But this one's different. I thought I picked something up from the battle site, and then it hit me like a shockwave. Something's coming, or has come, to this planet, and whatever it is, it's bad news. Of course," he added with a frown Steve heard rather than saw, "it's hard to tell if this disturbance is anything new, or something I didn't notice while I was distracted by the Convergence. The Force on this planet is so chaotic and turbulent it makes my brain hurt."
That was a loaded statement if Steve had ever heard one. He opened his mouth to ask for clarification, then thought better of it and said instead, "Can you get any… details? About what's causing this big disturbance, I mean."
Aemon shook his head. "I wish." He pivoted to look at Steve once more. "All I can tell you for certain is that I'll know it when I see it. In my experience, the Force tends to lead you where you need to go when you let it, but you can't force it."
Steve couldn't restrain a smile. "You can't Force a clear vision of how to solve a problem?"
Aemon looked at him in apparent confusion and said something that went untranslated. It seemed the ability that had facilitated easy communication between them didn't work with puns or idioms.
"Sorry, that was terrible," Steve admitted with a contrite smile.
"At any rate," Aemon resumed, "my gut is telling me the best way to prepare for whatever is coming is to go after your Coulson problem."
Steve hesitated, then nodded soberly. "Lead the way."
Aemon extended a hand. "Take my arm."
Steve's thoughts flashed back to Avengers Tower again. Another watch party, but for Harry Potter rather than Game of Thrones, all part of the team's ongoing efforts to get him acquainted with modern popular culture. Steve had enjoyed the former more than the latter, though not nearly as much as the other Avengers had expected. And with the eidetic memory granted by the super soldier serum, Steve couldn't help but think of a particular scene from the sixth film.
Aemon noticed. "There's no need to brace yourself," he said reassuringly. "It doesn't hurt."
Steve nearly raised a reflexive objection at having his feelings read, then realized that he didn't actually mind. It was a passive sensory ability, and Aemon had used it to offer comfort rather than condescension. He was about to grasp the Jedi's arm when a thought occurred to him.
"What is it?" Aemon asked.
"We don't need to drop in on them now," Steve said. "SHIELD is an international organization, but Coulson is an American citizen."
"So?"
"So his team most likely consists of American citizens."
"And?"
It took Steve a moment to remember that Aemon knew nothing of Earth politics and nation-states. "Wherever they live, it isn't here. So, they had to come in something."
al'Cazar's eyes widened in recognition. "An aircraft?"
"Exactly. And there aren't many airfields in London secure enough for SHIELD to park a quinjet." Steve pulled out his smartphone and opened the map app. The complex hardware and software packed into the device allowed him to tap into restricted satellite networks capable of bypassing the various tricks SHIELD used to obscure their assets from orbital surveillance. It therefore only took him a couple of minutes to locate the small military airfield near the Royal Arsenal neighborhood and the C-17 Globemaster airplane painted in SHIELD colors.
Steve showed Aemon the screen. "What do you think?"
Aemon nodded. "Give me a second." He stared at the image on Steve's phone for a moment, as if committing it to memory, then closed his eyes. Another moment passed, and he opened them again. "Got it. I can get us there." He extended his arm again, and Steve took it, pocketing his phone.
"Don't get used to this," Aemon said. "Space is still pretty thin around here. When the aftereffects of the Convergence fade, it'll be a lot harder to transport myself to places out of eyeshot, let alone take others with me."
"What happens if you mess it up?"
Aemon smiled enigmatically, then snapped his fingers. Flicker. Steve heard a faint popping noise and stumbled to regain his footing as the flat surface he'd been standing on was replaced by a curved one. They were standing on the roof of an airplane hangar. A heavily modified Globemaster airplane painted in SHIELD colors was idling on the runway below, a bright red convertible easing its way up the aft cargo loading ramp.
Lola. Romanoff and Barton had told Steve all about Coulson's pet supercar. Another sign that Coulson was alive. The question was how.
"Can you jump us closer?" Steve asked.
"I could, but not while holding an illusion. We'd be seen the instant we reappear."
"Can you hide us while we cross the tarmac?"
"Only if we move slow."
At Steve's unspoken question, Aemon shook his head. "I'll explain later." He took off down the gray rooftop, heading not forward, but left toward a maintenance ladder surrounded by a security cage. Glancing over the side, he flicked his fingers toward a CCTV camera hanging from the edge of the roof, then jumped off.
Steve watched him land in a crouch, waited for him to step aside, then followed suit. As Steve rose back to his full height, he felt the familiar sensation of a breeze that wasn't real wash over him. It was more intense this time, as if he were being immersed in an invisible river current, gentle yet infinitely powerful.
"Stay close to me," Aemon said in a low voice. Together, they sauntered across the tarmac toward the SHIELD plane.
It was surreal. Airfield staff, all of them SHIELD agents with pistols in their belts, were milling about performing various duties, and none of them noticed the two strangers strolling by with a vibranium shield and travel bags slung over their shoulders. Steve looked one man straight in the eye, and the man stared right past him. He wondered what it would be like to live this way, invisible unless touched. Lonely, no doubt.
They barely made it. The cargo ramp, laden with Lola and an unmarked black SUV strapped down by the wheels, was nearly halfway off the tarmac when Steve closed a hand around it. He pulled himself up and over the rising edge of the ramp, rolled down the interior, and landed on Lola's rear fender with a thump that made his heart skip a beat. He glanced in Aemon's direction; the Jedi Master had used the same maneuver and crouched against the back of the black SUV.
Steve waited for a count of one hundred. When he was sure no one else had come to check on the noise, he peeked around a tire only for the half second it took him to take a mental picture of what he glimpsed. Though hardly an expert on SHIELD history, he had studied enough military history to recognize the modifications made to the plane's interior. Most of its cargo space had been sacrificed to create multiple decks of cabins, with a lift and spiral staircase connecting the main levels at the port and starboard sides. Between them were the transparent sliding doors to a vacant field laboratory. The bulkheads to either side were lined with military acceleration chairs, a holdover from the plane's original design. There were no security cameras.
Cautiously, Steve rose to his full height. "Can you sense anything?" Despite the rising roar of the jet engines, he kept his voice low.
"They don't know we're here," Aemon said carefully, "but they are concerned about something. I think they're starting a new mission. And there's something… wrong with one of them."
Steve frowned. "Wrong how?"
"I don't understand it. They're alive, but they don't feel real. I don't know how that's possible, but that's what it feels like."
Steve rapped a knuckle lightly on Lola's trunk. "Real or not, Coulson would never let anyone else play with his favorite toy."
"I'll take your word for it."
"Wait till they're in the air and crash the party?"
"They won't like that." Aemon sounded amused, though his face remained stony.
"Yeah, well, I don't much care what SHIELD likes right now."
"Fair enough."
And they strapped themselves into acceleration chairs for takeoff.
Skye leaned against the digital table in the Bus's command center, the better to keep herself from toying with her tracking bracelet while she listened to the briefing. It was unusual for SHIELD to get involved in what should have been a simple murder investigation, but then again, this particular investigation was hardly ordinary.
"We got the call from Trillemarka National Park," the pale-eyed Norwegian officer on the wall screen was saying. "His partner was murdered by a woman with superhuman strength. She and her companion were vandalizing the park, cut down a tree to get something from inside. A senseless killing, by the sound of it."
"And you don't know anything else?" Coulson asked.
"Nothing. The witness isn't very coherent right now."
"We'll be there in under two hours. Maybe he'll be ready to talk then."
"No doubt," the officer said in a voice that made it clear he doubted very much. "We won't touch the crime scene without you, in any case."
"Good. Do what you can for the witness. Six One Six out." Coulson cut the transmission. He turned to Skye. "What do you think?"
"Scandinavia's been like a kicked anthill ever since New York. Not every day your ancient gods show up and trash a city or two. I shouldn't be surprised having Asgardians back on Earth would inspire the wrong kind of people, but…"
"The wrong kind of people will take inspiration from anything," Ward finished from Coulson's other side. "That's what we're for."
She rolled her eyes. "Thanks, Captain Obvious." Pushing herself to a proper standing position, she looked at Coulson. "I can look through park records, see who went in and out today. Narrow the range of suspects."
"Check what you find against the Index; we might get lucky."
"Will do." A minute later, Skye was sitting on a flight couch in the aft lounge, her laptop resting on the tops of her legs. She got into the database she wanted in short order and was just pulling up SHIELD's Index—the database of powered people made her uncomfortable, but needs must—when she thought she heard… something behind her. If she didn't know any better, she thought it was the click of a door opening, but when she turned her head to look, both hatches leading to the cargo bay were as firmly closed as they'd been when the Bus took off.
Skye frowned in unease. She wasn't prone to auditory hallucinations. She scanned the cabin around her, wondering if some invisible stowaway were trying to sneak past her, but there was nothing. Nothing she could see or hear, at least. She shrugged; she was just rattled by the second alien invasion in two years, and it was making her see things. That was all.
Aemon waited until the dark-haired young woman had well and truly immersed herself in her work before taking another step. It was always harder to hide oneself from the perceptions of strong-willed individuals, and his benighted state made it more than twice as difficult. He tapped Steve's wrist and looked pointedly at the girl, silently asking whether to drop the illusion. Steve shook his head.
Well, if you insist, Aemon thought, not caring either way. This was, in the end, Steve's mission, and he wasn't here for the woman in any case.
Aemon followed the sense of wrongness down the long cabin space, noting the tasteful luxury of it all as he moved. He'd seen similar setups aboard intelligence vessels many times. His own Nightlight had been designed with similar sensibilities, for all that he'd done his best to personalize it. The sleek, polished wood finishes and leather furnishings felt like home.
Uncomfortably like home.
The source of the wrongness was a middle-aged man with thinning hair dressed in a nondescript business suit. He was stepping out of a command cabin enclosed in curved window walls halfway down the aircraft to meet with a female presence approaching from the cockpit. Another man was bracing his hands against the command center's interface table, eyes downcast. He was the same height as Aemon and roughly the same weight, with lean muscles, fair skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. Handsome, though hard-faced, he radiated danger into the Force like a hot coal. Not malice or hatred, but a tangible warning of deceit and menace. Aemon had sensed plenty of similar auras from agents of Republic Strategic Information Services, but never before had the feeling of danger been so intense.
The older female agent in the cockpit radiated a similar sense of menace and deceit, though not nearly as pronounced. There were two more presences in the forward lounge, and compared to the trained killers around them, they struck Aemon as positively innocent. The young woman too had yet to be hardened by life, but neither was she soft.
All very interesting, but most interesting of all was the man who radiated the wrongness. There was no malice there that Aemon could detect, nor could he sense anything truly treacherous, but wrong nevertheless. He hadn't been lying or exaggerating when he tried to describe it to Steve, but he couldn't put his finger on the why of it. Sith magic could create multiple forms of undeath, but such dark arts always tainted the environs in which they were practiced; he felt no such corruption here. Would fully resurrecting a being from the dead produce a lingering disturbance in the Force? He didn't know enough one way or the other to be sure.
At Steve's gesture, Aemon led the way up a tight spiral staircase in the forward lounge, at the top of which they found what seemed to be the captain's quarters. While Steve took the chair behind the desk—he had to take his shield out of its harness on his back to fit in the seat—Aemon took the cushioned bench seat opposite him and spun a new illusion from the White Current, wrapping the cabin in a veil of silence. Neither said a word.
They waited for several minutes until one of the presences a deck below—the wrongness—began to walk up the spiral staircase. Aemon raised his head as if roused from a nap and watched the hatch slide open.
"Good to see you, Agent Coulson," Steve said faux-casually. "You are Coulson, aren't you? I don't think SHIELD's in the cloning business, and my friend here would know if you're an LMD."
A what? Aemon wondered.
"No offense, but I was hoping you wouldn't find out I'm alive till I retired," Coulson said conversationally. His face and mien gave nothing away, but his disturbing Force presence all but shouted with alarm.
Steve's anger boiled like a kettle on a hot stove. "You were dead. Not injured, not in a coma, not faking it to fool Loki. Dead."
"I was. My heart stopped beating for thirty seconds. The med techs brought me back before I started losing brain cells. Had to spend some time convalescing in Tahiti. It's a magical place."
Aemon raised an eyebrow. "If you believe that, you're either delusional or brainwashed."
Coulson turned around, seeming to notice him for the first time. "Lemme guess. You're our telekinetic friend with the laser swords."
"Lightsabers," Aemon corrected carelessly. "Thor told me what he saw that day. The Chitauri Scepter tore your heart in half. I know better than most how far medicine can go, but this is something else. You're no zombie, but you're not normal either."
"Are you an authority on such things where you're from?" Neither Coulson's face nor his voice changed. He could have been discussing the matter over drinks.
"Yes and no. I have senses most people don't, and your presence feels wrong. I mean palpably wrong. It's like you're lying while shouting the words 'I can lie.'"
"Funny how the only time you know someone's telling the truth is when they say they have the ability to lie, isn't it? How can you tell? You psychic? X-ray vision? Superhearing?"
Steve slammed an open palm onto the desktop, pulling Coulson's attention back to him. "Is this a joke to you?" He snapped. "Romanoff and Barton cried at your funeral, Coulson! Barton still blames himself for what happened, and so does Thor. Hell, Pepper cried the last time someone mentioned you at dinner in the tower. And here you are, cleaning up after us when you think we're not looking, acting like it's all just an inconvenience that we know you're alive. Did you or Fury ever give a damn?"
"You needed a push. Something to unite you against the enemy."
"And when it was over?"
"You didn't need to know."
"Bullshit," Steve snarled.
Sensing Coulson's rising confusion, Aemon said, "Your crew can't hear us until I decide they can, Agent Coulson. I didn't think Captain Rogers would appreciate any interruptions."
Chagrinned understanding replaced Coulson's bewilderment, followed by resignation. "You're in my seat, Cap."
The look of disappointment Steve shot him was so effective it made Aemon wince in sympathy, but he yielded the chair to sit beside Aemon. "Why, Coulson?" Steve repeated in a growl.
Coulson cleared his throat. "Director Fury felt that the Avengers needed to stay focused on high-profile crises; things that SHIELD can't take care of quietly. My team has a more generalized role that requires us to stay out of the spotlight. If the Avengers ever decided I needed their help and swooped in to pull me out of the fire, I'd become a celebrity overnight, just like they are. SHIELD agents aren't supposed to be celebrities."
"So, your boss thinks his best assets are idiots," Aemon summarized, letting some of his contempt show.
"Emotionally compromised," Coulson defended. "And I wasn't kidding about staying out of the spotlight."
Steve's scorn was like a bitter aftertaste in the Force. "I don't know how to break this to you," he said sarcastically, "but that ship sailed a long time ago. I've seen little boys in Hawkeye costumes chasing each other with toy bows. A dame in Brooklyn flashed me her Black Widow-themed bra last week. SHIELD did that. Stark helped, but SHIELD is the reason all six of us are household names. That hasn't stopped Strike Team Delta from doing their jobs."
Coulson's mouth tightened. "Not my call either way."
"Following orders." Steve leaned back in his seat. He suddenly looked very tired. "You can hide behind that if it makes you feel better, but it won't save you or Fury from Barton and Romanoff."
Aemon was surprised how hurt Coulson was. His aura reminded Aemon of a Padawan he'd seen publicly chastised by a council master for blundering in a practice duel. Why did Coulson value Steve's opinion so highly?
"Aemon," Steve said, "you said his presence feels like a lie. Can you elaborate?"
"I can't think of any other way to describe it," he admitted. "I'm not much of a healer, and even if I were, I don't have the context to understand what I'm sensing." He looked Coulson in the eye. "There is something wrong with you, agent. I don't know what your boss did to save your life, but he didn't send you to a magical paradise to convalesce, I can promise you that."
Coulson hesitated for the first time. The mystery of his resurrection bothered him a lot more than the lying to his comrades. "If you had time, could you figure out what really happened to me?" He asked in a soft, almost frightened voice.
"Probably. I'd need to investigate the exact circumstances of your… resurrection to know for sure."
Coulson nodded. His expression became neutral once more, but oh, the storm he was in the Force….
"Are you going to investigate?" Steve asked, studying Aemon.
Aemon paused, opening himself to the Force for guidance. After a moment, he came back to himself and set his jaw. "I am."
"To do that," Coulson said, "you'd have to stay on this plane and follow me around on missions, at least for a while."
"Fine by me," Aemon said. "Not like I've got anything better to do."
Steve said, "Then I've got a proposition for you."
"A proposition?"
"You're staying on Earth for the foreseeable future, right? Join the Avengers."
Aemon's mouth quirked into a half smile. "You know that name sounds like a band for kids trying to look tough, right?"
"Wasn't my idea, but it grows on you. Protocol dictates that candidates are assessed by SHIELD first, but you made a pretty strong impression helping us with the Dark Elves. If we work together on this investigation…"
Aemon listened, asked a few questions, opened himself to the Force, and made his decision. When Coulson objected, Steve looked him in the eye and flatly said, "You got a problem, you can take it to Fury. A dead man can't give the Avengers orders."
Aemon's jaw clenched as he fought to keep from laughing.
