To Love Is To Destroy

Chapter 9

“It’s your bed, isn’t it?” Sam Wilson asked. Stefan turned around.

“Excuse me?”

“Your bed. It’s too soft. When I was in Afghanistan, I used rocks as pillows. I got back, and—“

“It’s like sleeping on a marshmallow.” Stefan swallowed. “Yeah, a little bit.”

Sam shook his head and smiled. “You know, we meet on Saturdays.”

“I’ll…keep it in mind.”

 “Please…let me die.” Phil’s body arched as the cattle prod was applied to his ribs. His jaw locked, and his hands clenched so hard the knuckles cracked. Maybe the bone would split, gleaming and wet against the backdrop of pale fingers. He had a vague sense of himself screaming through gritted teeth and bleeding gums. The taser was removed, and he had the impression someone was standing over him.

Edison Po was gone. The girl in the flower dress. They’d called her…Raina. His brain was a slurry, and his breath came in wet, heaving pants as he looked at her, blood running into one eye.

“He won’t hurt you anymore,” she said, and her voice was soothing, cool fingers smoothing damp hair from his forehead. He looked over and saw Po’s body being shifted away. “He’s outlived his usefulness to the Clairvoyant.”

“But I haven’t.” It was a statement, and Raina smiled.

“You haven’t, no. You see, this is the one thing the Clairvoyant can’t see. They want to know what happened to you. Don’t you?”

“You realize I’m a trained SHIELD agent. One of their best interrogators,” he said, his breathing feeling like he was doing it through half-set gelatin. “You won’t get any classified information out of me.”

Raina’s smile didn’t change, but her eyes went flat, like pools that had ice right beneath the surface. Phil’s jaw flexed, and he calculated his chances of getting out of this one.

“I'm not interested in those secrets. The Clairvoyant can see within any agency, any government. He knows what the President dreams about at night. I want what you want to uncover a different secret, the secret SHIELD is keeping from you.” She reached out, and he tried not to flinch away as she pushed the sweaty hair from his forehead. His whole body juddered, the residuals of the taser still making his nerves dance and jump outside his control.

He closed his eyes.

“I know about you, your psychological evaluations,” she said, her voice soft. She was a spider, but he’d run up against worse. “Your love for helping people. How the death of your father was a defining moment in your life.”

His eyelids twitched open.

“When did you get the call?” she asked.

I was eighteen and in jump school. His lips remained pressed in a thin, pained line that made the edges of his mouth pale and white. He was shot because I wasn’t there to protect him. I could have shielded him.

Long brown fingers painted over the edge of the machine, leaving the rust of blood behind. His blood. His breathing quickened a hair, and she cupped his jaw.

“This machine is a modern miracle. All funded by someone who just wants the truth. It induces theta brain-wave frequencies to help uncover the secrets buried in the subconscious. If you cooperate, you can surf those waves.”

Phil shook his head, struggling to sit up and draw a full breath without pain. “I've gone surfing. This is definitely not like surfing.”

“Don’t you want to know? Why you can’t access your retrieval report? Why you can’t find out any information on your recovery? Why your own medical records are sealed? SHIELD took away your civil right to see your records, keeping personal information from you.”

Phil hesitated.

“Did Director Fury give you a reason?” she asked. She was unnervingly close, leaned over him with her hand on his chest, concern a mask she wore, brown eyes still flat and lifeless. He swallowed. “Did he tell you why?”

Slowly, almost against his will, he lay back.

“Show me what happened,” she whispered, clamping the theta wave generator over his head again. “Let’s find out, together.”

 I gotta say, it's an honor to meet you, officially. I sort of met you, I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping. I mean, I was... I was present while you were unconscious from the ice. You know, it's really, it's just a... just a huge honor to have you on board.

 “No,” she whispered, skimming her fingers over his cheeks. “Too far back. Cooperate with me, Phil. I’m going to show you the truth.”

 Things sped up, like a tape wound tight and on fast-forward. Faces passed—Jasper, Nick, Patricia. Anna Marks, graduating the Academy with high marks and a socio-psychology double focus. Shaking his hand, accepting his internship. Holly, her blonde curls passing over bare shoulders as he lifted them away from the nape of her neck to kiss it before a performance. Stefan Roosevelt, larger than life and warm, standing next to him in the Quin.

 “Come forward, Phil,” Raina coaxed. “Forward.”

 The helicarrier. Loki’s cruel smile as the staff entered his chest. He shuddered, arching up off the table, his back bowing and his heels drumming the metal in agony. He screamed. He wished he could swallow his tongue. His last words to Fury.

 “Death is a woman,” he mumbled. Raina ignored him.

 I need more. Give me more—Phil stay with us—

 “What is Tahiti?” Raina asked.

“It’s a…magical place,” he said, barely above a whisper.

“What is it, though?”

“I don’t…I don’t know. Let me die. It hurts. Please. Please, let me die.”

“Only when you can tell me what Tahiti is.” She stroked his hair, cooing to him like one would a child.

“It’s…magical…” Blood spilled from his lips, coating his tongue as he coughed. He tasted pennies.

“Unhook him,” Skye said, leveling her weapon at Raina. “Do it. Now. Get it off of him.”

Raina raised her hands, stepping away and into May, who slammed her down onto the table and cuffed her. Skye jerked the power cables out of the back of the processor, and the machine whirred to a stop. She closed warm hands over Phil’s chilled ones, and he turned sightless eyes to hers.

“Shh,” she said, as he opened his mouth. “Come back to us, Coulson. We’ve got this. Shh. Come on. Come back to me.”

Slowly, his gaze cleared. “Holly?”

“No…sorry.” He focused, and saw Skye’s face, drawn and pale. “We’re here to save the day.”

“I—“

“It’s okay. Come on, let’s get you out of here, AC.” She unbound his wrists, and paused. “You have a mark.”

“What?” he asked, looking down stupidly at his wrist. A faint series of lines was seeping into the skin below his pulse on his left wrist, like ink dripped onto paper. “No. Can’t be. I don’t have a—“

“We need to go,” Melinda said, poking her head in the door. “Can he walk?”

Skye covered the mark with her fingertips, glancing up at Melinda. “If not, I’ll carry him.”

“Come on, then,” she said. “Let’s get out of this hellhole.”

Skye bolstered her shoulder underneath Phil’s and they staggered toward the light and the waiting cars.

 [Location: Undisclosed SHIELD Hospital, California]

One year. One year and he’d been sidelined, forced to handle his s**t and get it together before he was allowed back in the field. Fury’s orders. His hands clenched and unclenched, the tendons working like overwrought bowstrings, and he breathed deep through his nose, a relaxation technique Bruce had taught him.

“Well hey, stranger,” a voice said, and his eyes snapped open. He wondered if she would see the blue lurking below the surface and recoil, know the danger he was. “Remember me?”

“Zero bar,” he said. “Was good. Thanks.”

“That’s me,” she said, sitting down. “Back again for another eval. You still coming too?”

“Yeah. Gotta be five by five before they’ll let you on an op again,” he muttered, one knee to his chest and the other dangling. “S’good thing, too. Wouldn’t want to endanger my team, be the weakest link or make a bad call by bein’ the crazy one.”

“Nah, you’re not the crazy one,” she said, and she held out another candy bar. He reached up and took the silver-wrapped treat, looking it over. “Trust me, with the stuff that goes on around here, you’re positively sane.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he snorted. “Never caught your name, Zero.”

“It’s Amara. Agent Kota if you’re nasty.”

“Think I prefer Zero.”

She snorted, and then Doctor Marks called his name. She swung her feet at him as he passed, and gave him a little thumbs up as she sipped her coke.

 Stefan woke at one in the morning in a cold sweat. The dream, half-remembered, faded from his sight as he lay in bed. He was on his back, chest slowing from heaving breaths as his heart stopped its rapid fire beneath his ribs and returned to its measured thud.

What had his dream been about?

He couldn’t remember.

He sat up, reaching for the music player that Natasha had gifted him when he arrived. It still took him a minute to remember what the sequence was to start it up, but when he did, and placed it in the dock, he’d managed to get the song he wanted right off the bat.

 “I know some places and I seen some faces

I got my connections, they take my directions

What people say, that's okay, they don't bother me, no

I'm ready to make it, don't care 'bout the weather

Don't care 'bout no trouble, got myself together

Laughin', no cryin', my protection's all around me…”

He stood up, the music filtering softly through his apartment, and he scrubbed a hand over his face. Nightmares. Things he didn’t get with Patricia, warm and content, sleeping next to him. Two months couldn’t make up for seventy years, but he was damn sure trying, and he knew it was best to gather roses while he could. Stretching until his back popped with a ripple of muscle, he shuffled into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.

“I come up hard, baby, I've been for real, baby

With the trouble mind, movin', goin' tight

I come up hard, come on, get down

There's only three things for sure

Taxes, death and trouble, oh

This I know, baby, this I've known, baby

Hey now, let it sweat, baby, ooh—“

He poured himself a cup and added sugar, stirring pensively. His brow knit and he reached for his phone.

“Stefan?” Patricia asked.

“Did I wake you?” he asked softly, stirring his coffee again.

“No, I woke up early. I have the yearly exam at the end of the week. I’m always a little lighter sleeper when it comes due.”

“Oh?”

“SHIELD sponsored. I think it’s because some pencil-necked accountant wants to begrudge me the pension I earned before he was even a twinkle in his father’s blank stare.”

Stefan suppressed a chuckle. “I think it’s just for their records.”

“I think they’re trying to study me. Because I’m ninety-five this year and I look like their mothers.” He could hear the sound of pouring water. “If only they showed me the same respect.”

“I could talk to Fury,” he offered.

“No, it’s just a yearly physical,” she said. “I’ll live.”

“If you’re sure?” he asked. “I mean, I am right here, and I know he—“

“It’s all right,” she said. He listened to her bustle about the kitchen for the moment before she spoke again. “You’re up late.”

“Nightmare,” he said. “And I missed you.”

“Flirt,” she said. “What about?”

“I don’t remember,” he said. “Which is strange, because I usually can.”

“Possibly just a night terror,” she said. “I know you, you’ll try and comb your memory until you get it. You should rest while you can. You being in DC is not only a job, but a veiled threat from Nick. You’re the muscle, and you know how he thinks. He won’t hesitate to use you if he thinks he needs to in order to keep the council satisfied.”

“You are vicious.”

“I was the one who demanded the council be put in place,” she said. “A lone director with no one to answer to for his actions? That’s a terrifying thought.”

He made a noise of assent. “True enough. Look, I’m sorry I called so early. I guess…I guess I just missed hearing your voice.”

He could almost see the smile she wore, fond and not a little exasperated with him.

“Stefan,” she said.

“I know, I know. But…I spent seventy years missing it. So.” He was red, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess I’m just old-fashioned.”

“Sometimes, that’s what the world needs.”

The echoed words hit like a fist to the chest, and he was silent for a long moment.

“You going to be okay?” Patricia asked.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice soft. “Yeah. It’s nothing. Just wanted to tell you good morning before I went back to sleep.”

“Good morning,” she said. “I’ll see you soon, right?”

“Right,” he said, sipping his coffee.

“Good. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He listened to her breathe for a moment before he ended the call, setting his phone face down on the counter.

“ I come up hard baby, but now I'm cool

I didn't make it sugar, playin' by the rules

I come up hard baby, but now I'm fine

I'm checkin trouble sugar, movin' down the line

I come up hard but that's okay

'Cause trouble man, don't get in my way

I come up hard, baby…”

Phil sat in his office, poring over the photos of the TAHITI project. Surgery after surgery, scars so thin he couldn’t feel them when he scrubbed his scalp to wash his hair. The only evidence he’d been there at all was the gnarled scar on his chest, puckered and pink. He rubbed his hand against it.

“You need to put those away,” Melinda said, leaning against the doorway.

“I...can’t,” he said. “I need to know why.”

“Staring at them won’t bring you any closer to the answers,” she said.

“No, but what else can I do? We’ve got to uncover it. This…it’s not what SHIELD was for. This isn’t the organization I signed up for.”

Melinda moved into the office, her hands coming out and spreading over the gory pictures. She gathered them up and stacked them neatly back into their folder.

“You have been up for six days,” she said. “You need sleep, a hot meal, and downtime. In that order.”

“We don’t have time,” he said.

“We do,” she said. “Listen, you without sleep makes you the king of bad decisions at times. I’m being generous with my assessment there. You go haring off after threads, and we’re not going to go anywhere. We’ll chase our tails into the dust and we don’t want that. Instead of claiming we’ll waste time, think of all the time we’ll save with our CO clearheaded.”

He swallowed, rubbing at his forehead. He glanced at the folder, then at her.

“You’re right,” he said. His brain was buzzing and his teeth were grit more often than not as he struggled to remember. He knew forcing things would only hurt things more. “You’re right.”

“You’ve been playing fast and loose with protocol,” she said, and he realized she was leaning her hip on the corner of his desk, a hand on his neck. It was a gesture of intimacy, but one from one agent to another, one who understood. He looked up.

“Talk to me, Coulson,” she said.

“It feels a little bit like I’m silly putty and I’ve been stretched in all directions,” he admitted. “Like ‘butter spread across too much bread’ as Tolkien would have put it. I just…I don’t know where to go from here.”

“We go up,” she said. “Just remember, like Skye’s parents, this isn’t going to be something you’ll like the answer to – or they wouldn’t have kept it from us.”

He nodded. “The Clairvoyant wants to know. So do I. We’re going to start at the bottom, root out all the secrets we can find. Good or bad, I—“

He swallowed, and Melinda moved away, fetching him a bottle of water from the mini-fridge.

“I need to know.”

She nodded. “Then…as your second, please trust me to help how I can. You can’t do this alone.”

“Who do I trust?” he asked, spinning the bottle in his hands before he took a long drink. “Out of all of SHIELD, Fury would be the one, but…he’s kept this from me for a reason.”

“He has,” she said, and with his head down he missed the look of discomfort that crossed her face. “But his reasoning must be sound.”

“Knowing Fury, it could be anything.” He sighed. “I’m spinning my wheels, May. I don’t know where I’m going, but where I’ve been…I can’t keep trusting in a system that would keep this from me.”

“You need sleep. And food.” She gathered the folder and locked it in the safe, punching in the combination and sliding the large plaque with the SHIELD eagle on it down, hiding the wall safe. “And then some time off. We could all use the break.”

“You’re right,” he said, rubbing his eyes. They itched like he’d been petting a cat and that was when he knew she was right. “Wake me in four hours?”

“Promise me eight and I’ll buy breakfast,” she said.

 [Location: Undisclosed SHIELD Hospital, California]

“How is the apartment building going?” she asked.

“S’crappy,” he said. “Too many people want all up in m’business, and I just want a damn nap.”

“Kate?” she asked.

“She left. Took the dog,” he said. He covered his eyes with his arm where he lay on the couch, refusing to look at Anna. He rarely looked at her, and she’d noted the behavior. Clint Barton was ashamed. It just manifested itself in different ways with him.

“Kate left? Why?”

“Cause I screwed up. I always screw up,” he said, low enough that she had to strain to hear him.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“If I didn’t, then why’s Coulson—“ He stopped, abrupt, and sat up, his hands dangling between his knees and his head down. She waited for him to resume speaking, but after a long while she realized he’d retreated into his own thoughts. It was the first time he’d mentioned his fallen handler in over a year. Perhaps this was the breakthrough he needed.

“I miss him too, you know,” she said quietly. He slumped, sinking onto the couch with his head in his hands. She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “We miss everyone that fell. And we remember.”

“I killed him,” he whispered. “I killed all of them.”

“No, Clint, you didn’t,” Anna said. “I’m telling you this because it’s the truth. You didn’t kill him, because you weren’t you at the time. Loki…wasn’t something we trained for. You couldn’t have known what was going on. Agents died that day, yes. But what did you do the second you came out of things?”

“I picked up m’bow,” he mumbled. “Wanted to put an arrow in Loki’s eye socket.”

“That’s right,” she said. “You’re not a murderer. You’re a victim, just like everyone else.”

“Wish t’god I could believe that,” he said.

The storage space wasn’t expensive, a hole in the wall that charged her several hundred pounds a year to store a suitcase. But they took cash and they didn’t ask questions. It was a good thing. She mused on it as she pulled out her key, clicking down the lot’s aisle in her sensible heels.

Her snubnosed .38 in her purse was a cold comfort. She raised the garage door just enough to duck inside, and pulled it down behind her. The bare bulb came on after a moment, warming slowly in the heat of the early morning. A bare folding table with a small briefcase greeted her, covered in a layer of thick dust. She hadn’t been back in a year, and nothing had disturbed it since she’d last touched it.

She blew a breath out through her nose, brushing the dust from the old leather case. The refrigeration unit was still doing its job, and she changed out the battery before dialing in her combination and then swiping her thumb across the lock mechanism. The case popped open with the hiss of pneumatics.

Three vials left.

The liquid flowed like water, bright pink to almost the point of luminescence in the light of the dusty bare bulb. She tilted it, checking the viscosity before thumping the vial gently. Still good. Swallowing, she set it in the injector before rolling up her sleeve.

Patricia hissed when the needle entered her arm, the liquid draining into her blood stream before the chill started. It radiated up her arm and centered itself in her chest, and she coughed a little, the cold stealing her air for a moment. She disposed of the needle and empty vial into a plastic bag in her purse, replacing the injector.

She rolled her sleeve down and buttoned it, swallowing.

The Infinity Formula was almost gone. She’d better be finished when it ran out. Looking down at the case, the empty spaces for vials far outnumbered the filled spaces, forty-eight in total. She brushed her fingers across the leather.

Almost guilty, she wondered if Stefan would mind.

Still, she vowed to tell him.

When he returned from the US, she’d sit him down and tell him her time was limited. She sighed, closing the case with another pneumatic hiss. Patricia smoothed her hands over the leather, rubbing it with her thumbs.

Soon. She’d tell him soon.