Wake Up Call

by Berzerker_prime

A front row seat to the craziest show on Earth.

Or something like that, anyway. Skye was beginning to think that even the man who had described SHIELD to her in that way didn't really know the full extant of that statement.

It had been six days since Skye and May had found Coulson out in shack in the middle of the desert, strapped to a table and being subjected to a machine that had been doing God-knows-what to his brain. Six days since she had heard the most terrifying words she had ever heard the man utter.

Please let me die!

Try as she might, Skye couldn't get the image out of her head. It didn't even seem like the same man. Coulson had always been so buttoned up, so straight-laced. Hell, the man had an entire closet full of nothing but the same suit, repeated over and over. Other than "That Day," she had only ever seen him not wearing a suit when Simmons had been subjecting him to a SHIELD physical. Even then, the workout clothes he had been wearing had been emblazoned with the SHIELD logo, six ways from Sunday.

She was beginning to understand that there was more to the Coulson than the suit. Even so, he had put on a clean one as soon as he had been able to, when the the team had returned to The Bus with him in tow following the rescue. He had just slipped it back on, like nothing had happened, like there had been nothing to worry about the whole time.

It was then that Skye really began to understand Coulson; the suit was his disguise. It hid everything, made him look like the most put-together man on Earth when, in reality, he was just as screwed up as everyone else; maybe even more so.

Skye hadn't slept worth a damn since "That Day." Tonight was no exception. She tossed and turned in her bunk, hearing the hum of The Bus' jet engines. Out her tiny window, beyond the plastic hula girl, moonlight splashed against the matte black side of the plane and reflected off the distant white of some clouds. No one else was as restless as she was at night, she knew.

She knew because no one else seemed to know that Fitz snored like a chainsaw. Seriously, it sounded like a hole in damned hull. How a man so small could make a sound so loud, she would never know. Idly, Skye wondered if SHIELD would weaponize that snore someday.

But tonight, between the rumbles from the bunk next to hers, she heard another sound.

From upstairs, she heard a whimper, quiet and intermittent at first. The first few times she heard it, she had dismissed it as noise from the plane; perhaps something was shifting with some minor turbulence. But as they grew more intense, she became quite certain that it was a voice. As as it was reaching her through the ceiling, she knew it could only be coming from one person.

Seriously? No one else could hear that?

But really, Coulson was entitled to a few bad dreams without anyone passing judgment. After all, what he had been through could only be considered torture, by anyone's standards. She had had to hand it to the man, really; she probably would have run away and never come back to keep working the job after all that. But there was Coulson, back in his suit, right back on the horse.

At least, by day.

Skye turned over once again, trying to ignore the increasingly distressed sounds from above. She was beginning to make out words, now.

"Don't! Stop! Please! No!"

But finally, there were words that broke her heart all over again; words that brought all the terrible images of "That Day" flooding back to mind.

"Please let me die!"

That was it. Skye could stand it no longer. She had to do something. Whatever horrible nightmare Coulson was having, he was obviously reliving whatever trauma he had experienced while in Reina's venomous clutches. And that needed to stop.

She pushed her covers back and rolled out of bed. As quietly as she could manage it, she pushed back the pocket-door that closed her bunk off from the rest of The Bus and padded out into the common area in her bare feet. No one else seemed to be moving and that was just as well. She was pretty sure Coulson was going to be embarrassed enough without the rest of the team looking on.

Still hearing Coulson's nightmare cries, Skye quietly climbed the spiral staircase leading to the plane's upper level and Coulson's office and bunk.

Good God, the man literally lived in his office! It just wasn't right.

Coulson was probably going to be mad at her for this, she figured as she crept into the office. The room was softly lit with a glow from various electronic devices. As Skye slowly moved across the room, she made out Coulson's distressed figure tossing and turning among the covers, still muttering slurred pleas for the dreamed torture to end. As she got closer, she saw tiny beads of sweat on his forehead.

Skye hesitated for a moment, wondering if this was the right thing to do. Finally, as Coulson whimpered another cry for mercy, her heart broke a little more, beyond her tolerance. He was supposed to be the rock, the glue that held the team together. He was supposed to be the strong one that swept in and made everything better.

She wondered, for an instant, if that was what having a father felt like.

Skye couldn't stand it. He deserved better. If for no other reason, simply for what he had done for her. He could have thrown her to the wolves, but he hadn't. He had given her another chance to prove herself. She hadn't met anyone so decent as Agent Phil Coulson. He didn't deserve torment.

And so, at last, she reached out a gentle hand and rested it on his forehead.

"Hey, AC," she whispered, gently, "it's a nightmare, you can wake up."

And then she was flying.

It wasn't until she was already laid out on the floor before she understood what had happened. And even then she only had clues. There was a dull ache in her wrist, her head was spinning, and Coulson, wide awake and lightning fast, was pointing a gun at her with one hand and pinning her torso to the floor with the other.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Christ on a cracker!" Skye cried, all thoughts of stealth and keeping this between the two of them out the window with her dignity. "Please don't shoot! Please don't shoot!"

"Skye!" Coulson exclaimed, immediately moving the gun aside. "What the hell are you...?" He sat back, removing his hand from her chest.

"You were having a nightmare," Skye gasped out, still not moving. Even now, she heard the rumble of two sets of Specialist feet coming up the staircase. It wasn't even a breath later that May and Ward appeared at the door, guns at the ready, expertly covering all angles from the entry way like they were in a night raid on a Centipede compound.

"No one move!" Ward blared out.

"Stand down, we're clear!" Coulson stated, climbing to his feet, clad in SHIELD-emblazoned t-shirt and sweat-pants. With a flick of a hand, he turned on a lamp.

"What's happening in here?" May demanded.

"That's a good question," Coulson replied, looking back down at Skye.

Still, she didn't move, stunned into inactivity. "As soon as I figure out what just happened to me, I'll tell you."

Relaxing a little, May and Ward both brought their guns down and flipped the safeties on, taking a couple of tentative steps into the office.

"What's going on up there?" Fitz's drogue drifted up from the bottom of the spiral stairs.

"Is everyone all right?" Simmons' voice followed it.

And that was the whole gang. The idea just barely registered for Skye as the majority of her brain was still processing how she had ended up on the floor.

"It's clear," May called back down to them. There was then a patter of steps as Fitz-Simmons came barreling upstairs as well.

"You wanna explain why you were sneaking up on me in the middle of the night?" Coulson asked Skye.

"Wait, you snuck up on a highly-trained SHIELD field officer in the middle of the night?" Simmons asked.

"That's a rather ill-advised thing to do," Fitz agreed.

"Yeah, I got that," said Skye, still looking at the ceiling, "thanks. And no, I'd rather not explain with everyone standing around."

"Sir, as Skye's SO, this is on me," Ward stated stepping forward to stand over Skye opposite Coulson, "I apologize for this and I promise it won't happen again."

With a sigh, Coulson rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Everyone, just... just go back to sleep. Clear out. Now." He didn't raise his voice, he wasn't angry. "Everyone but Skye."

Fitz-Simmons were the first to leave, clearly seeing that the show was over. Ward paused long enough to direct a disapproving look down at Skye before following. May traded a wry look with Coulson, then was the last to depart.

There was a long, silent pause. Coulson stood over Skye, looking down at her.

"Well?" he finally said. "You hurt anywhere?"

"Nope."

"Good."

"How'd you do that?"

"Helped that you were completely flat-footed and limp when I threw you."

"Huh."

"Huh. Feel like getting up, now?"

"Yup." Skye was finally able to find her limbs. She reached an arm out and let Coulson pull her up to her feet. "So. You sleep with... a gun."

"Yup," Coulson replied, setting the gun down on his desk, "so do May and Ward."

"So it's like a... thing?"

"It's like a thing."

"And the semi-conscious ninja-moves?" Skye pressed.

"Also like a thing," Coulson replied. He leaned against the edge of his desk, looking at her with patented Agent Coulson aplomb. "Training that can keep you alive in the field. Ward will get to it with you, eventually."

"It's a little messed up the way you live, you know?" Skye said.

"Maybe," Coulson admitted, "but it's a job worth doing. But you still haven't said; what were you doing?"

Skye was suddenly extremely conscious of her feet. Her eyes slid away from Coulson and she shuffled back and forth. "Well, I... I heard you... freaking out in your sleep," she said, "you sounded... like someone should wake you up."

For a moment, Coulson's carefully constructed exterior cracked a little. He gave a sigh and looked away, out a window.

"You were saying the same thing that you said in the desert," Skye pressed, "like it was the same nightmare. I just thought... that you'd want someone to..."

"You thought I'd want someone to make it stop."

Coulson had said it so abruptly, like ripping off a band-aid.

"Well... yeah, I guess," Skye tentatively replied.

Coulson looked down to the floor for a moment, giving a sigh. He then dragged his gaze back up to her, the corners of his mouth twitching up just a little. "Thank you," he said.

She couldn't really find a reply. So she nodded instead, wandering over to lean against the desk next to him. "Sorry if I embarrassed you."

"It's fine," he replied, "but Skye, this is a part of it, too. This job... you're going to see things that will make you uncomfortable. Things that will instill terror in the night. You need to decide if you can live with that before you decide if you want to be an agent of SHIELD."

"Yeah, I got that message, already," Skye said, "I got that message in the desert. But I can't believe that means we gotta just pretend someone else isn't hurting, like we're all robots or something."

"Good," said Coulson, "don't ever start."

Skye gave him a nudge, shoulder-to-shoulder. "You got it, AC," she said.

"Now get outta here. I want to go back to sleep."

"Right," Skye said, pushing away from the desk, "sleep tight," she added as she made her way to the door.

"And Skye?" Coulson called after her, "next time, just throw something from across the room. It's marginally safer."

"You sleep with a gun."

"I said 'marginally.'"

Skye shook her head and let the roll of her eyes carry into turning around on her heel and leaving. "I don't get you."

"Yeah, you do."