Second Nature (Nature Series #4)

Set after 3.16: Paradise Lost and into the early scenes of 03.17: The Team.

Second Nature: noun; a habit or mode of behaviour so long practiced that it seems innate.

4. Fury

"Nick Fury?" Phil asks. "Last official Director of SHIELD before me? He was my Supervising Officer. And a good friend."

"You refuse to see the connection between yourself and Hand. Perhaps you'll see the connection between yourself and Fury."

"Like I said. He was my S.O. That's a pretty clear connection, but it doesn't mean me becoming director was predetermined."

"Fury," Hive says, and this time Phil's almost certain there's only a small f to the word. "The emotion. The rage locked away deep inside you where you think nobody can see it."

Phil blinks at it, expression composed of equal parts polite amiability and vague bafflement. "You know, much like the fact that a lot of people have lost a hand, a lot of people feel anger. At some point. Over the course of their life. Some people even feel it more than once. Hard to believe, I know. You'll just have to take my word for it."

Hive sighs and turns away. Phil watches with hungry eyes as the prosthetic hand goes back beside his current one and the wall panel slides across again, hiding it from sight. "What did you feel when you killed Grant Ward?"

"Exhausted. It was a long week."

"Fury," says Hive, ignoring Phil's reply. "You felt nothing less than pure fury."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Oh, yes." Something perilously close to a smile stretches Ward's mouth.

"How do you know?"

"Let me," it says, "show you."

Hive glides closer on silent feet, stopping close to Phil. Far too close, if Phil's honest: the skin at the back of his neck prickles with renewed force, tiny hairs standing on end. He doesn't need the reminder that, no matter how human the creature looks, the reality is far different.

And then Hive reaches for the buttons on Phil's shirt.

What.

It takes everything he has to not react, to sit frozen and still and expressionless while Ward's hands on Ward's body guided by not-Ward unbutton his shirt, moving from collar to hem with detached efficiency. It peels the sides back, revealing Phil's pale bare chest.

Revealing the scar.

Hive retreats again, hands going to its own clothes. In another minute it's shrugged out of the dark coat and shirt, leaving both of them bare-chested in the cool of the room.

Phil can hardly bring himself to look. But he doesn't have a choice. Ward's chest is right there.

As it turns out… he frowns… there's nothing. No bruising. No splintered ribs poking through the skin. Just bare, unblemished skin.

Hive takes a slow, deep breath, chest rising and falling.

The flawless skin ripples and falls away, an illusion breaking free, showing the true extent of the damage underneath.

Phil doesn't want to look at the bullet holes where he shot Ward: one in the lower left side, one in the upper right shoulder. At the sallow, distended belly. At the distorted lines of broken ribs, the spider-web of cracks in the right quadrant, the skin that clings too tight to every protrusion of clavicle and ribcage.

And — more damning than anything else— at the bruised black shadow of a handprint over Ward's crushed sternum.

But he does look.

He memorises.

This is his handiwork. Literally.

This is where he crossed the line. The line he never should have even thought about crossing.

If the time has come to pay his penance…

…forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us…

Then that's what he'll do.

… deliver us from evil. For Yours is the Kingdom…

"You see?" Hive says, gesturing to itself and then to the scar bisecting Phil's chest. "We're alike, you and I. And I think you cannot now say that you don't feel fury."

"I never said I don't feel fury."

"So you do?"

"Yes."

"And you did?"

"When I murdered Ward?"

"Yes."

"No." He's thought about this long and hard. What happened on Maveth shook him to the core. In some ways — in many ways, even now — he can't explain what happened there. But he knows it wasn't fury that he felt. "Not fury. Hatred."

Hive blinks. "An interesting distinction."

"Is it? In any case, it blows your theory out of the water. Again."

Hive shakes its head in disappointment. "No, no. Fury." It gestures to its chest again. The skin ripples and is once again whole. "Hand." It waves to the alcove in the wall. "You're really going to try and deny their connections to you?"

"You still missed — "

"Melinda May is important. Not just to you, but to the lineage of your directors. What month were you born in?"

"July," Phil says flatly.

The creature looks at him. Through him. "Ah," it says.

"What?"

"It's not for you. It's for someone who comes after you."

Okay, that's just beyond creepy. Phil lifts an incredulous eyebrow. "You know who's going to be director after me?"

"Everybody knows who's going to be director after you, Coulson." It shrugs into its coat, eyes cold. "Why do you think I didn't mention May the first time?"

Phil shakes his head.

"Because," says Hive, "she hasn't finished yet." It steps closer. "She was there when you began as director. And she will be there when you end."

It doesn't sound so much like a threat as a promise. Phil lifts his chin. It seems his time might be up. "Then the only thing I have to say is that she has my unreserved blessing. She'll be one hell of a great director."

"Is that so."

"Yes."

"No final questions?"

"I don't suppose you'd accept you can't kill me, I'm like you?"

Hive's eyes glitter. "You wouldn't be the first director of SHIELD to fall to my sword."

"You have a sword?" Phil flashes a mocking grin. "Bro. Awesome. Actually, one question. My team would kill me if I didn't ask."

"Yes?"

"Hydra's motto. Cut off one _, two more shall take its place. Was it head or limb?"

Hive eyes him. "That's your question?"

"Yeah. I first stumbled across it at college related to some old SHIELD stuff. It's been annoying me for decades."

"I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. The answer, Director Coulson, is both." Hive twitches. Its head… changes.

Oh, yuck. That is, frankly, revolting.

It changes back, and is Grant Ward once more.

"Well," says Phil faintly. "That explains a lot."

"I'm glad."

"Really?"

"At least as far as I feel gladness. Or any emotion. Yes. I'm glad I could answer your question. Let you pass on in peace."

It glides to stand in front of Phil, close enough to touch.

"Look," Phil says calmly, "I have people I need to say goodbye to, would you just — ?"

"No. You of all people should know it doesn't work like that." It extends a lean forefinger to trace the scar on his chest. The touch is ice-cold. "Life is short. Messy. You know this, Coulson. You know that if you had anything important to say… you should have already said it."

He does know that. Dying has a way of making you realise that there's no point leaving things unsaid. His heart shudders inside him. He doesn't want to die. Nobody should want to die.

But if this is his end, after all the chances he's been given, the lives he's lead, the family he's formed? Then he'll accept it and be thankful.

At least Hive doesn't look like stabbing him in the back.

"Last question," he says. "I promise." His dad always said insatiable curiosity was a good trait for a historian.

Hive almost looks annoyed. "What?"

"Fury. Hand. Coulson. May. You said they're all connected."

"Yes?"

"Where do I fit into it? Coulson. That's not an amputated limb or a birth month or a common, albeit extreme, emotion. How does that fit into your theory?"

"It's not for you. It's for those who come after."

"Like May, okay, I get it, but how?"

The corner of Hive's mouth lifts a fraction. It ducks its head. Its voice, when it comes, is so low that Phil has to strain to hear. "Coulson. Son of Coul."

Phil catches his breath.

"Or daughter, perhaps. The original name was gender-neutral. But then… you knew that."

He stares up at Hive, eyes widening despite himself. May. Son of Coul. More than one member of his team — his family — was born in May. More than one could be called son or daughter.

And all teams are fluid. They lose some, they gain some. There's no guarantee that any member of his team now will still be around when it comes time for May to hand over the reins.

But all the same…

He doesn't believe it, he doesn't, it's bad intel, he can't trust a demonic thing with Ward's face, but all the same…

His heart's hammering out of his chest. Threatening to burst the lines of scarring down his breastbone.

Son of Coul.

Child of Coul.

"Does that reassure you?" Hive asks.

Phil stares into those dark, dispassionate eyes. And maybe there is a connection there, because he can't bring himself to lie. "Yes," he says hoarsely.

For all that he's spent the last thirty years as a spy, he doesn't want his last words to be false.

Truth matters. More than ever.

Hive brings its hands up to cradle Phil's face. Its grip is firm, but not painful.

The words spill without conscious thought from his mouth. "You're going to lose." As last words go, they're not bad. He supposes they'll have an added gravitas for being his last words twice.

"Am I?"

"It's in your nature." The creature might be a fallen angel, a demon, but even the Devil himself was created by something. Someone. There's always a bigger… "You lack conviction."

"That," says Hive, "is one thing I do not lack."

The grip tightens, forcing Phil's mouth open.

He breathes, and finds a certain comfort in the inhale-exhale of air.

Hive opens its mouth —

And jerks its head up, staring past Phil with a frown.

It blinks.

And closes its mouth. Drops its hands. Steps back. Smoothes a wrinkle out of its coat.

"Excuse me," it says. "I'm needed elsewhere."

It strides past Phil with quiet footsteps. A door opens and closes.

Phil slumps, breathing hard. A quick check over his shoulder proves that, yes, the room really is empty. Hive's gone. But probably not for long.

He'll need to act fast.

He pulls up the self-extraction plan from the back of his mind, where it's been quietly ticking away for the duration of the conversation. Twists to get at the band clamped around his left bicep. He might not be flexible enough for advanced yoga, but a decade with Clint and his ridiculous gymnastics taught him a few things. He's more than flexible enough for this.

A quick lick down the length of the band, neck muscles screaming where the torsion pulls at his trapezius and fascia, and then a careful five-second wait, ears straining for the least hint of reaction between the metal and his saliva.

Nothing.

Good.

Using his tongue, he counts two in from the end on the lower left side of his mouth. Finds the seal. Cracks it with a sudden sharp movement. Cyanide's old-school, and it would work okay for this, but thankfully Fitz had some better ideas. He takes the hidden capsule between his teeth, pulls his lips well back and — there's a technique to it, but he's a little out of practice — breaks it open, letting the acid dribble out of his mouth onto the metal.

It works fast. After four seconds, the metal is thin enough that tensing his bicep breaks it open the rest of the way. He pulls his arm free, ignoring the sting of spilled droplets burning through his shirt sleeve, and stifles a relieved groan as muscles held still for too long stretch and contract. That's much better.

Now. The stump by itself is more or less useless, but it's a good first step. If he can just get to his hand…

He shifts his weight experimentally. Hmm. The chair isn't light — duh, it's solid metal — but it's doable. Even with his shins strapped to the chair legs. Hive clearly didn't think to weld it to the floor.

Amateur.

He rocks his weight back and throws himself forward. Catches himself on his toes, teeters, shifts and shifts again until the chair is square at his back. Got it. Ten steps, quick and careful, take him the five metres to the wall where Hive shut his hands away.

Try as he might, he can't see the seams where the panel closed.

Phil sets his teeth against the weight on his back and brings his stump up, probing the area with the edge of the port. Nothing. Nothing. The impact against the port rim isn't enough to hurt, but every so often it jars, sending a strange shivering up the interface to his very human nervous system. Come on, come on…

Wait. He backtracks a couple of inches. Leans his head closer, listening.

And grins.

There.

Another few taps and the panel slides open. Hello. All it takes to reattach the latest prosthesis is a thrust and a twist. The days of needing his one remaining hand, plus May's two, plus a good half-hour of adjustment and calibration are long gone.

With the augmented strength of the cybernetic hand, the rest is easy. He rips open the metal cuffs that shackle his legs, and then the bands around his right bicep and forearm. The chair falls with a clatter behind him.

Even after eleven months, he can't quite stop the instinctive rub around the band where the prosthesis joins his arm.

Just like he can't stop his gaze returning to the black prosthetic in the alcove.

He takes a moment to look at it, to really see it, to feel the lingering hatred and the revulsion and the horror at what, exactly, he'd turned out to be capable of after all.

And then he slaps the panel shut and turns away.

Time to go.

He's nearly at the door when he pauses. That's… new. There's a slight hint of air movement brushing against his cheek. But the door is closed.

Air circulation in a closed room?

He licks the tip of his finger and holds it up, checking. Yep. That's a breeze, alright.

There's an air vent somewhere.

That could be his ticket out of here.

Phil tips his head back, studying the ceiling. No signs of a vent. But if it's as well camouflaged as the wall panel was…

There's an easy fix. The old ways are great, but so are the new ways. He brings up the X-ray projection beam on his hand and sweeps it overhead in the first row of a grid pattern. One pass. Two. Three. Four. There. Yay for more bad-guy cliches: the tunnels are big enough for him to worm his way through. Barely.

He still can't see the seams of the panel with his naked eye, but he doesn't have to. The x-ray shows them clear as daylight.

The ceiling is high. Too high to jump from ground level. He drags the chair over and climbs onto it. Checks the positioning of the vent one last time before shutting down the projector.

He leaps, digs his fingers into the barely-there grooves of the panel, and clings for his life. The twist of his foot as he jumps sends the chair skittering across the floor, back to its original position in the centre of the room. It's the work of moments to tug the panel open, swing himself up into the vent with an ease that would make Natasha proud, and close the panel behind him.

He doesn't need a visual to know that the room below him is exactly as it was when Hive left, except for the pardonable absence of one Phil Coulson and his prosthetic hand.

A quick check of the GPS in his hand shows a) he's still at the oilfield where Giyera landed them, and b) the Zephyr is grounded only a few hundred metres away. He moves.

x

Mack lets him in with a relieved sigh when he knocks on the door of the Zephyr's safe room. "Thought you'd never get here, sir."

"Got held up," Phil says, dusting himself off. "We're still surrounded, I had to come the long way. Sorry."

Mack twitches a meaningful look over his shoulder to where May is slumped against the back wall, bloody and bruised, while Fitz and Simmons hover like a couple of concerned chicks.

Phil blinks.

Mack nods. Indicates the screen on the wall with a single raised finger. Darts a glance back to May and grimaces.

Damn. He's in for it now. "Thanks for the heads up."

"You got it."

"How far…?"

"This far. We think. Fitz blocked the signal as best he could. It might have made it through to a couple of the home servers, but that's all."

That's a weight off his mind. Phil winds his way past the stacks of supplies and crouches down beside May. Fitz and Simmons take one look at May's increasingly pissed-off expression and beat a hasty retreat.

"How bad are you hurt?" Phil asks. The triage assessment is automatic; he rolls up his sleeves, probes the gash down her cheekbone with gentle fingers, and reaches for the gauze kit. She's almost bled through the first layer of bandaging on her arm. His doctoring skills aren't nearly as neat as Jemma's, but they'll do.

May hisses at the first real bit of pressure. For someone as experienced in pain management as she is, that's not a good sign.

"I've had worse," she says through gritted teeth.

"So have I. Answer the question."

She meets his eyes. Jerks her head in a silent negative.

Not good. Okay. And the fact that she's admitting it… not to the team, maybe, but to him…

Somewhere outside the bunker, an explosion rocks the plane.

"Glad you could make it," she says. There's a weight to the words he wouldn't have noticed two years ago. Or maybe the weight wouldn't have been there two years ago. Hard to tell.

He doesn't look up from wrapping gauze around her arm. "You heard, huh?"

"Yeah. Phil."

"It's nothing I wouldn't have said to your face, you know."

"Phil." She tangles a shaking hand in his shirt and yanks him closer.

He lifts his gaze, strangely reluctant to meet her eyes. At the other end of the room, Mack, Fitz and Simmons are doing the tactful thing and pretending they're spontaneously deaf.

"I," she says, eyes blazing, "am not worth ten of you. And you are not worth ten of me."

"I had to keep him talking."

"We're worth one. Of each other. Different skillsets, equal value. Got it?"

"Yeah."

Her grip tightens. "Is that understood?"

"Understood," he says, even as the thought crosses his mind that she's possibly the only person in the entire world who could get away with using those words on him in that tone.

You're the man in charge, but I'm in charge of you, remember?

"I know." He softens his voice. "Melinda. Believe me. I know my worth. And yours."

"Good." She lets him go. Her head settles back against the wall with a thunk, sweat gleaming on her temples. "Bandage is a bit loose. Yeah, that's better. Thanks. And my ankle itches like crazy. Would you mind?"