You hate the light that isn't there, but you fear the glare that comes with its presence more. You resent it like an absent mother whose brief visits only nurture emptiness; every time she returns, the darkness intensifies.
You dream of a kiss, of sharp words and needled skin; you imagine your obscured perception draining away, faithfully chasing the tracks of life—but they take away your new salvation as they took away the old.
A dead man needs no sight, but they will not grant it to the living and they will not allow release. What are you to do then but breathe? In and out until your windpipe closes. You swallowed darkness, and it will not digest.
One day the light returns and the bulwark crumbles; you collect the stones they throw your way to built your walls anew and give them access to the crypts. Slowly, you raise a castle from the ruins.
A tide has turned. You earn your freedom, but not forgiveness.
The sunlight has become a stranger, the once open sky is sealed—the world has become a prison on its own.
You take one step towards the horizon and start running.
You never stop.
---
“You look good,” she says and smiles like a glass window, see-through and breakable. You wonder when the metal in her eyes began to rust, what pressure snapped the tips of her blades and left her blunted—she used to be sharp in word and mind, used to dig into your skin and watch you bleed.
She is beautiful and her beauty is eternal, but she no longer inspires virtue nor invites morality. You look at her and see only humanity where once was a higher form of being. The irony does not escape you.
They request your help and you cannot refuse. You catch targets and bullets for them. You shield.
“Stay,” she says, but it does not sound like a request. You hear that same tone reflected in another's voice weeks later and wonder if Coulson knows she is slipping away.
Death almost comes for you then, and he wears a human mask.
---
“Sometimes I miss you,” Simmons tells him. She kneels down on the concrete and holds pressure to the hole in your side. Her hands are too small, you think as blood escapes through the gaps, but you know what they're capable of now.
“But then I remember,” she laughs harshly, “you weren't real.”
You admire her strength of character as she keeps you alive until the extraction arrives. Her extraction, not yours. You work alone.
They sew you back together. You thank them and escape the base the moment they leave you unattended.
The next time you're forced to go there—bleeding perpetually from one arm while holding on to Agent Triplett with the other—Coulson reminds you you're free, and if you need to go, you can just walk out instead of setting off all the alarms.
---
“You could have,” Fitz says, and you aren't sure the silence that follows is intentional. You never are. “-killed me. You could have killed me.”
Yes, you think, I could have. A thousand times and one you had opted not to; but a good man does not choose to merely not kill, they choose to save.
And you did not save them.
But Fitz is doing well on his own, improving slowly as his frustration lessens. Mackenzie is a great help. You have observed them working together when everyone assumed you had already left.
Security is not as tight as they'd like to believe. Perhaps you should tell Coulson this, but the man frightens you. You were never Coulson's favourite person, and his disapproval turned to resentment after he learned the truth, but there is little left of that now.
There is something behind his eyes though, something unstable, and you can tell May knows it too.
Skye doesn't believe in Coulson like she used to. She treats Fitz like he's broken, all concerned stares and sympathetic glances, and once demanded Simmons to fix him, that she owes him as much. Simmons hardly responded that day and Skye mistook her hurt for indifference. The next time you saw them, the tension was still there.
You would question when she became so blind, if you did not recognize desperation.
You wonder if she really thought of them as family before they started to fall apart. You would tell her this version is more realistic, that family is bruising and breaking at the points of contact, that it is hurting and being hurt—but you are not that cruel.
You do not want to be the one to drive her into her father's arms.
You'd rather see her human than dead.
---
You carry a little girl out of a burning building and stare at her mother when she calls you a hero. Back in your hotel room, you draw the curtains shut and sit in the dark.
You swallowed darkness once—every time the light returns, it intensifies.
Years pass like fundamental believes. You see people fall and rise and crumble to ashes. You see the phoenix burning and her glare still scares you, though not the way it used to.
You have earned forgiveness but lost your freedom; your heart is anchored to her soul.
She blazes through like wildfire. You follow and shield her from the fallout until the smoke becomes too much to bear.
You breathe in and out until your windpipe closes.
This time the darkness swallows you—after all, a dead man needs no sight.