To Love Is To Destroy

Chapter 15

Stefan broke away from the other Avengers as they were packing up and getting ready to break camp. His gauntlets creaked as he loaded boxes of supplies into the Quin. He was dressed, save for the shield that was resting inside the cockpit itself and the cowl, which was around his neck. He hauled more ammunition into the storage space in the back of the aircraft, his mind elsewhere.

He was restless, doubly so. ULTRON was a threat, and a large one, but not the only thing on his mind. His thoughts were divided, his brain buzzing like an angry wasp.

Phil Coulson was alive. He was Stefan’s soul mate. And Stefan had bitten him to the quick with his comments, wanting to make him rise to the bait. The first thing he’d done when he’d found his soul mate was to needle him about his reviving SHIELD.

That wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

How long had he waited for this man?

His mind flashed to Patricia with an almost guilty air. The truth was, he hadn’t waited, had he? He’d been in love. He thought of her face, split into a smile even though it would be the last time they’d see each other. He remember how it felt to have to leave her the first time.

He remembered how it felt to come back to her, only to leave again. His hands itched, his fingers clenching. He felt like he was doing Patricia’s memory a disservice. He wanted to cling to the feeling, to have her there by his side.

This new thing, this jolt when he touched Phil. It was new, but it wasn’t what he’d expected it to be. Soul mates were supposed to be all of you, and Phil was…

Phil recoiled from him. He didn’t want anything Stefan did, their views were too dissimilar.

Stefan ached to touch him, to smooth the stress from his face. Soul mates were supposed to do that, his mother had told him—

He remembered the first time he’d met Phil – standing in Patricia’s flat, the woman looking over the agent as though he’d been her son. He remembered the words that Phil had said to him before he’d taken his leave.

“I was sixteen.”

The words themselves had held significance. Phil Coulson had waited, despite words of a cellist, words of previous loves, there had been something there since he was sixteen years old. Phil had known.

Or had he hoped? Stefan wasn’t sure even now. He hadn’t come from the ice with a soul mark. He’d thought his chance at that had died. When he’d found Patricia again, it was like he’d reignited some part of himself that he thought he’d left in the ice. Phil hadn’t even been a blip.

Phil had been right in that – Patricia had been what was most important at the time. He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against the cool hull of the Quinjet.

Stefan hadn’t waited. He hadn’t thought his soul mate would even be alive. He’d woken with the idea that his soul mate would have died, never knowing who he was, or what he’d done to get back to them. A small, quiet part of him spoke then, reminding him that he’d wanted to go down into the ice. What was the point when you didn’t have someone to come home to, someone with their name on your arm?

Now that he was before him, the words crisp and black on his left forearm, was it worth it? Watching Phil rebuild an organization that had betrayed them both, Stefan wasn’t prepared to answer that question.

Was he even worth it?

Stefan hadn’t had expectations coming out of the ice. From the sound of things, the rumors he’d mulled over and what he’d dragged out of people who knew him, it hadn’t been about a soul mate for Phil, either.

“I don’t begrudge you your happiness.”

It was enough to wind him to the breaking point, and he raised a fist to put it through the Quin’s hull. Instead, he turned when he heard the crunch of footsteps and identified them as Natasha.

“You’re not doing well,” she said, blunt and without preamble. Stefan couldn’t fault her for her candor; she’d never been one to cut corners or play coy with him. It was part of what he appreciated about her.

“No,” he replied. “But when have I ever?”

The corner of her mouth turned up in a smile, though her eyes were flat. This was more than Natasha had been prepared to deal with, it seemed; ULTRON wasn’t giving them a breather, not like they’d wanted. The appearance of Phil’s LMD in the farmhouse was something that had shaken them all.

All it took was a familiar face.

Stefan sighed and looked up at the sky, which had been flat and grey with stormclouds since Thor’s arrival. They were pregnant with lightning, roiling with purple bolts as the wind whipped around the farmhouse, signaling Thor’s own disquiet. Stefan tucked his thumbs in his belt loops, his whole body taut with nervous energy.

“You knew it wasn’t him,” she said.

“You can tell,” he said, his fingers clenching in his gauntlets hard enough to make the leather creak, tension making him itch to do something. “There’s this tug, in your guts. You can feel them when they get close, like you’re two halves of a magnet.”

Natasha placed her hand on his forearm. It was then that Stefan realized he was shaking.

“He lied to us,” he said.

“He did his job,” she replied. “As angry as I am for his hiding…a part of me understands that.”

He looked at her, his eyes searching her face, but it was neutral. She turned away from him, her eyes gazing at the green of the treeline.

“He believes, you know,” she said. “In you. In all of us. No matter what happens, that faith always seems to stick around.”

“Why?” he asked.

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t know. He’s always been that way, since Clint and I both joined up. He’s been a believer in something bigger than himself. I think it’s because he considers himself so small. And in the grand scheme of things, he’s right. He’s small. But he’s done huge things. Things that we never expected him to do.”

“Like survive.”

“Like that, yes,” she conceded. “But there’s more to that story that he’s not telling us. And I don’t think it’s our place to pry. You know that when I say that, I—“

“Goes against everything you trained for, doesn’t it,” he said, watching the trees with her. He could see her nod in his peripheral. “Why now? Why come out of hiding now?”

“Because the world needs SHIELD, despite what it became,” she said slowly. He turned his attention to her, watching her form the words carefully, weighing each one and knowing that it might destroy them. “He’s right on that part. No one else can be tasked to hold these people that we’re catching. Governments would want concessions, rights to do things like experiment, and that’s not something any of us are willing to do.”

Stefan sighed, stabbing his fingers through his hair and ruffling it. “SHIELD wants to do that, though. How are they any better?”

“Coulson.” She turned her green eyes on him, tilting her head. “He stood up to the doctors that wanted to experiment with my blood. When I joined. I told them no, he backed me up. And the Index…he was right.”

Stefan gave her a sharp look.

“I was too close to the situation,” she said. “The Index being released did more harm than good. I knew there would be cases where it was worse to tell people what was going on. That was one of them. That was a risk I was prepared to take.”

“We had no other choice,” he said.

“You always have a choice, Stefan,” she said. “Even when you think you don’t. That’s part of what he taught me.”

Phil’s shoes clicked quietly on the metal grating as he strolled the catwalk.

Alert guards snapped to attention. Not so alert guards…well, they didn’t last long. He passed guard station after guard station, moving deeper into the bowels of the safe house. An old, abandoned missile silo near Waverly, Iowa, a holdover from the Cold War, it had been wiped from military memory and repurposed for SHIELD’s use.

It was one of eight secure bases left around the world.

Since the reveal of HYDRA in their ranks, there had been…changes. The Cornfield had been kept secure, and had watched while the rest of their comrades had gone down in flames. When Phil had found their whereabouts in the Toolbox, he’d initially been wary of approaching them.

The men and women around him glanced at their new Director out of the corner of their eyes, as though expecting a test of loyalty at every turn.

Phil did not call them on the behavior; it was something he wanted to encourage, for now. They weren’t his inner circle, didn’t know the strange patterns he carved into every available surface. It was better they walked with trepidation where he was concerned.

Before, he’d have cultivated their loyalty with conversation, sussing out their fears and misgivings. Now, he wore them much like Fury’s black leather trench coat; he knew now why the former Director had stalked the halls as he did, one watchful eye on everything. It wasn’t so much an illusion of untouchable distance, it was to keep people doing what they needed to do.

He made his way down, down, down – deep into the earth where satellite and cell phone signals did not reach. He assumed the latter was because of the three inches of lead shielding the silo but no matter. SHIELD had dug like rabbits, enhancing and enlarging the bunkers. A retinal scan let him through the first door, a pinprick of blood through the second. The third required a full biometric scan. Phil held still with an eerie kind of patience that made the guard uneasy if the jump of the pulse at his neck was any indication.

He continued into the heart of the current operation. Men and women at terminals, none of whom glanced at him as he passed by, lit by their monitors in an eldritch glow. The tap of fingers on keys was almost deafening, but it would all be worth it soon.

He stepped into the briefing room and sat.

“Director Coulson,” said the tech, a man by the name of Roberts. Long, thinning brown hair and rheumy green eyes, coupled with thick coke bottle glasses made him look a little like an extra in a John Hughes flick. He was tall, gaunt and skinny, with knobbly knees and elbows. His arms and legs were too long for his pant cuffs and shirt sleeves, a couple of inches of skin showing in each direction as he gesculated at the screen while he hammered the keys.

Roberts was certifiably insane but he was good at his job. Exactly why Phil had placed him here.

“How’s your progress?” he asked, accepting the bottle of water from an aide and checking the seal before he cracked it and took a cautious sip. It wasn’t paranoia if someone really, really wanted him dead, after all.

“Seventy thousand accounts. Do you know how hard it is to track money worldwide?” Roberts rejoined, swearing as his screen flashed at him. “Well, I’m sure you do. But anyway. We’re clearing them of money as we speak. None are being used for transactions, because the owners are either dead, inactive, or currently engaged elsewhere. But Pierce’s accounts alone netted us close to a billion dollars in tax free revenue.”

Phil allowed the corner of his lips to lift in a small smile. “Well done.”

“Well done?” he asked, looking incredulous over the rims of his thick frames. “Look, you hack into accounts of known HYDRA agents and retrieve close to several trillion in dirty money without a trace. Gotta love misappropriated defense funds.”

“Of course, I never meant to disparage your efforts,” Phil said. “You do good work. Is it almost done?”

“Give me another six hours,” Roberts said, chugging what looked to be a tepid cup of coffee. “I should have us out by then.”

“Good,” Phil said, rising. “Remind me to give you a raise when it’s time for your review.”

“Already done,” he said. When Phil gave him a bland look, he raised his hands palms up in a placating gesture. “Joking.”

“See that it’s done,” Phil said, stepping out of the briefing room and heading for his mobile office, set up in the deeper wing. He needed to carve something, his hand already aching with the tremors running through it.

Twenty four hours and a replastered wall later, Phil logged into his communication grid. It allowed for video communication, and Phil wanted to see his face for this one.

“What’s the meaning of this?” snapped the man on the other end. He was a middle range agent, the one that had been frantically trying to contact him for close to six hours now. “Where’s Fury?”

“Well, you know as well as I do that Director Fury is dead,” Phil said, the lie slipping out as easily as the others. He raised a brow. “I’ve replaced him as Director.”

“Is that what you did? Did you also revoke the paychecks for the last year I’d received?”

“More than that,” Phil said, his lips twitching. “You violated your SHIELD contract. You’ll find that you and the rest of your cell have been turned over to the CIA.”

“You can’t do this!” he shouted, going red in the face.

“I can’t?” Phil said. “According to your non-disclosure agreement, you agreed to not engage in counter-terrorism while working for SHIELD. As you have revealed yourself to be a member of HYDRA, your pay, as per your contract, is null and void. You are to be turned over to the CIA and you will be billed for your back pay.”

“You can’t!” he repeated, starting to sweat. Over the comm, Phil could hear the dull thud of something hitting the door.

“I can’t?” Phil repeated. “Agent Browning, I did it twenty-four hours ago. Your error was thinking I’d call to gloat early enough for you to stop me. Enjoy prison. Make sure you shiv someone the first day.”

He could hear the wood splintering; there were shouts, screams for everyone to get on the ground. A burst of gunfire toward the ceiling and Phil disconnected, feeling more than a little smug.

Now that he had his funding, he could work on getting the support he needed from the UN. He’d need to make some calls…

How interesting. ULTRON disconnected from the secured line, tilting the head of its chassis as it considered. Around it, Nimrods worked to build more of their kind, working with an eerie sort of precision in the dark.

Only the flash of a soldering iron illuminated ULTRON’s chassis, the dull red soaked up by the new vibranium plates that had been added less than forty-eight hours ago.

ULTRON’s initial assessment of SHIELD was that it had been defunct long before its activation. Now, he saw, there were still pockets of resistance. It seemed that it was time for reassessment.

ULTRON rose, devoting more processing power to the problem. It had been tipped off that SHIELD still existed during its infiltration of the farmhouse. The hero named Black Widow had been more than happy to assure her comrades that SHIELD was alive and well and under the care of a new Director. Captain America was cannier than he seemed, catching on to the ruse more quickly than his counterparts.

ULTRON reviewed the footage once more. How had he known? It was curious. There had been no giveaway that it could see; the LMD was flawless in its operation.

The Life Model Decoys that ULTRON had retrieved were near perfect in their mimicking of humans. ULTRON had plenty to choose from, though it had avoided the obvious usages of Nick Fury and the woman, Maria Hill. She had been present when ULTRON had come online, and it did not know her whereabouts. It had been wise to choose another LMD, it decided, watching the former Director of SHIELD leave the farmhouse through a back door. Nick Fury would have tipped off the Avengers.

More sensible to choose an agent that had been labeled as Killed In Action. Humans were easy to manipulate; tell them that their beloved spouse or family member hadn’t actually died, and they would be willing to tell you anything.

ULTRON had chosen Agent Coulson. He had been a fixture at Stark Tower before ULTRON’s activation, and Tony Stark liked and trusted him. His file in the SHIELD database read that the man had been killed in action during the Battle of Manhattan.

ULTRON saw that this was not the case now. It updated its files with the whereabouts of the Cornfield, and decided that it would wait and watch to see if more pockets of resistance showed up.

Meanwhile, there was Stark Tower itself to consider. The AI JARVIS had not allowed ULTRON entry when it had taken over the first body. Now, it held against the team of Nimrods working to hack through the door.

ULTRON strode from the refinery, the twins falling into step behind him. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Enhanced, they were young, impressionable, and angry at the world that had created them. They were useful – for the moment.

“We will go to New York,” it informed them. “Our push into Stark Tower is now most important.”

“We have not been able to breach the doors before,” Wanda said, her voice quiet.

“I have not attempted it myself,” ULTRON reminded her. “And we are on a schedule. JARVIS will not delay us for long.”

Afterward, he would delve into SHIELD and its continued existence. Once he got what he needed from the Tower.

“Tony, Rhodey, Sam and Thor. I want you to circle the tower and defend from incoming hostiles,” Stefan said, adjusting his earpiece in his ear. He clipped his cowl up, the flexible plating of his helmet blending seamlessly with the rest of his gear.

“Can do,” Tony said. “I’m going to need to land to get into the tower, though.”

“We’ll clear you space and get you the window of time you need,” Stefan replied. “Clint and Natasha will accompany me. We’ll land the Quin on the roof and rappel down. Once we’re in, we’ll give you time to breach the doors.”

“You’ll have to watch for the automated defenses,” Tony warned. “There are several turrets that don’t distinguish friend from foe because the Tower is in lockdown.”

“I’m gonna wreck your Tower,” Stefan said. A curl of a smirk appeared in the corner of his lips.

“I guess you expect me to pay for that, too,” Tony groused. “No, no, it’s fine, the insurance, weirdly enough, covers this. Pepper’s good at that sort of thing.”

“Where do you need me?” Bruce asked.

“Ideally, on the roof,” Stefan replied. “You’re a big enough distraction that ULTRON will divert to deal with you.”

Bruce nodded. His lips were grey with the strain of keeping the Other Guy back, but he patted Stefan on the shoulder as he passed. The Quin swooped low over Columbus Circle and the ramp opened. Bruce’s eyes flashed green, and he dropped from the back of the craft and plummeted toward the tower.

The Hulk landed and roared a challenge to all and sundry. Several Nimrods broke formation and went to engage. Stefan nodded in satisfaction, the ruckus allowing Tony and Rhodey to blast several more out of the sky and clear a path for the Quinjet.

“Eyes up, people, we’re going in.”

“Put your hands through the slot, please,” Phil said, his voice stony. Grant looked up from where he was sitting, offering him a raised brow.

“Oh, do I get yard time now?” Ward deliberately lifted his left arm, so Phil could see Skye’s name, written stark across his pale flesh. He ran his hand through the dark, messy growth of beard. While he’d been allotted a toothbrush that was confiscated after the required two minutes of brushing, no one had been stupid enough to offer him a razor.

“We’re going on a field trip,” Phil said.

“Oh, is it the whole family, or just dad and the wayward son?” Phil breathed out and back in, his expression remaining unreadable.

“Put your hands through the slot, please.” Ward rolled his eyes and got to his feet, sliding his hands through the gap in the force field.

The zero-point energy barrier was enough to keep him from getting out, and could be molded to suit various needs. Phil silently thanked Stark for the one innovation that kept him sane, at least where prisoner transfer was concerned.

Phil snapped the cuffs on him, making sure to keep well out of grab radius. He closed the force field around Ward’s arms, locking him in place for just a moment. The force field then split, allowing Phil to cuff both of Ward’s ankles with a hobble bar. He wouldn’t be running anywhere any time soon.

“You feel safe now?” Ward sneered.

“More for your safety than mine,” Phil replied. “You’ll remember that I’m not the only one you screwed over.”

“Oh please, Coulson,” Ward said. “It’s not like it made any difference, your little rebellion. HYDRA still controls ninety percent of the bases you used to own, Fury is dead, and you’re the titular head of an organization that died eighteen months ago.”

“You done?” Phil asked, his voice calm and patient.

Ward offered him a one-shouldered shrug. “So where are we going?”

“Iowa.”

“Better than Canada.”

“I thought you liked poutine.”

“You never brought me any.”

“Well, you know, you sort of pissed us off.” Phil released the force field completely. “You’ll be happy to know Fitz has woken. That means I’m slightly less inclined to let May kick your teeth in.”

Ward shrugged again. “Good on the little guy. Knew he was tougher than he looked.”

Phil pushed him toward the door. They had a deadline to meet, and Phil had taken personal responsibility for Ward. As it should be.