Chapter 2
Laura sent him a fruit basket of whole pineapples (he was allergic) and a note that read Cooper cried all the way through your funeral, you bastard.
An unstamped postcard appeared in her mailbox a few days later– a generic glossy image of a Maine lighthouse on a high green bluff. No signature, but Phil’s square handwriting. My apologies for the inconvenience.
She threw the card on the counter, grabbed the axe from the woodshed, and chopped firewood until her arms screamed, because if she was going to be in a fury she might as well make it a productive one.
Laura wasn’t Level Seven or above– she wasn’t any Level, technically, as according to SHIELD she didn’‘t technically exist these days– but she had friends in high places. Or low ones. It was a matter of perspective. She had found out about Phil Coulson before Clint, because Clint only broke rules because of his big heart and she’d always broken them because of her nosy mind.
She had called Clint immediately–before the fruit basket–to pass on the (good–she was furious, but it was good, it was good) news. Clint had said, “Oh,” in a great terrible relieved rush of air.
While the landline was passed among Lila and Cooper so they could chatter at their father, Laura had called Natasha on her cell. She’d said, “Oh,” too, but there was no rush of air, no exhale, no exclamation, because Natasha understood about resources, about conserving them, always had.
“Nat?”
“I bet that’s where Melinda May went,” Natasha said. “But, anyway, how’d Lila’s recital go?“
Laura didn’t tell Tony, Steve, or Bruce, though she was tempted. But it would be petty, not kind, and she tried to cling to kindness by her ragged fingernails.
Phil used words like inconvenience when he meant pain. He said compromised when he meant possessed and involuntarily homicidal, when he meant lost. He was a man of euphemisms and Laura tried to roll with it– her son preferred sign to speech most days, her husband was a hard-of-hearing ex-carnie, her best friend was a slippery, sweet ex-child-soldier who carried all her cards and all her hurt close to her chest. Laura understood that no one spoke the same language and that part of loving someone was looking for what words meant in their hands.
"Apology not accepted, you prick,” she told him as soon as he picked up the phone. The friend of a friend who got her the number didn’t know or didn’t tell her where exactly Phil was, but a different friend of a different friend told her the mission, and another told her the coordinates. Laura was a friendly gal. She listened for ambient noise, hints of the crowded city she knew he was chasing uncanny phenomena in, and heard nothing.
“Which otherwise excellent employee of this agency did you coerce into betraying classified information this time?"
"Maybe one of your shiny new team,” she snapped. “Have you even spoken to Natasha, since, Phil? What the hell? What were you thinking?”
“We were thinking that without a united front, against Loki–”
Laura paced over the kitchen floor Clint had put in by hand during a chill autumn during which even the kids grew tired of take-out. “Did you think they’d only fight for you if you were dead? Did you not trust them to believe in the fight?”
“I understand you’re defensive of your husband–”
“I’m not angry for Clint’s sake,” she snapped, and Phil went quiet. “He gave a toast in your honor and came home to hold his children. He was always going to get through this.”
“Angry for yourself, then, Mrs. Barton? Laura, I never knew you cared."
"I send you fucking fruit baskets, don’t you even joke. You taught my kids how to whittle, you shut your undead fucking mouth, Phil. But it’s not even that. They were a bunch of squabbling petty children up there, weren’t they?” she said. “Clint doesn’t talk about that particular fight, but I’ve met them now, and I can imagine. Tony, lord. I get what you were trying to do. You were dumb, but I get it."
"Then why are you angry?"
"You should have trusted her.”
“Ah,” said Phil. “Romanoff."
"I get not trusting all the caped crusaders, not then, not yet, but you all keep leaving Natasha.” She clutched the cord of the phone in her hand, winding it around and around her palm. “You all keep leaving her, and not even having the decency to die."
"It was a delicate situation– Fury’s death even more than mine."
"And you think Natasha can’t handle delicate? She has been dying for you for years, and she hasn’t earned your trust yet? Phil, godamnit.”
“We thought she could handle it."
"She could. She did. She shouldn’t have to."
Laura strained to hear the ambient sounds under his silence, staring out the kitchen window at Cooper making rock towers and sandy canyons at the pond’s edge. She felt muffled, locked out, smothered with only the bare staticky sound of Phil’s voice making it over the line.
"I apologize for the inconvenience,” he said, and he said it softly.