"Do you want to know why I trusted you, Phil?"
Coulson looked over at him, hard, anger just below the surface. Hands fighting not to ball into fists.
"Do you want to know why I trusted you?" Fury repeated.
"Your one good eye," he replied bitterly.
Fury sighed. "Your name is Geheneris HalaSon Mahr Vehl."
Coulson looked at him like he was crazy.
"My parents names are Robert and Julie," he started. "I was born in Boston..."
"You're reading me your file, Phil. I've read it," he said, staring him into silence. "We all have."
"This is insane," Coulson cut him off. "That name sounds..."
"Yes, yes it does," Fury confirmed. "And before I go any further," Fury stated. "You need to know one thing: This was all *your* idea."
Coulson blanched. His face went blank, just as it had when May had showed him his taped resignation to Fury, dug up from his grave. He had supervised TAHITI. How could it possibly get any more twisted, any worse?
"SHIELD first encountered the alien race known as the Kree after a small village in China was laid waste to by an alien insurgency team. The entire population killed, and our extraction teams gutted. Their mission, was to find a baby. A little girl."
Coulson looked around the room. His head was spinning, he slumped down into a nearby chair.
"I don't remember any of this," he said, wide eyed.
"Of course you don't," Fury replied. "You made sure of that."
"When you saw the carnage, the lengths that you would have to go to in order to retrieve the girl, and that your leadership was not going to stop, regardless of the human cost, you switched sides. You sabotaged your own team to do what you believed was right. That was the first time you died."
Coulson glanced over at Fury. So, then.
"We were able to keep you alive, stabilize you, but your regenerative abilities were weakened, your body was shutting down. That was when I met you face-to-face. Learned your name. That's when you told me how big the universe was, and how small we were. How the Kree had been experimenting on humans. Like the girl."
"Skye?" Coulson said, caught out of his own dark reverie. "She's an alien, like me."
"Hold on Coulson, let me tell your damn story," Fury continued. "I don't know what she is. Her parents were kidnapped from that village in Hunan province, and experimented on by the Kree. The Kree have been kidnapping us since, the dawn of time, I guess. You see, they view us as lesser life forms." He said that with thinly veiled anger. "But someone else on the inside viewed that girl as special, and took her, hid her back in the village."
"So, the insurgents were trying to get her back. And they included her parents." He had heard this part repeated by Skye herself. She'd learned it from Ward. Then it dawned on him: he had killed Skye's parents. He felt a little piece of him twist, trying not to break. He needed all the details before he broke.
"As you were dying," Fury said, "You said that your consciousness could live outside of your body for a limited period of time, while it regenerated."
"Hooray, this sounds like it's about to get 100% worse," Coulson started.
"Our third Life Model Decoy series," he said. "Remember that?" Coulson gritted his teeth. "It seemed like a good option," Fury continued. "We based you on a man named Phillip J. Coulson, born in Boston, father and mother both deceased. No family ties."
"I'm a damn robot on top of it all. Perfect." He felt sick. That thing, in the Guest House, dear God...
"No, I think you're probably something new. But," he said, "I knew that a man who had seen the universe, who understood what we faced, who came to our planet and looked at us and then *still* had to save us, even from his own... That was a man truly worth saving. My one good eye." Coulson felt a little ill, despite the fact Fury was getting sentimental.
"TAHITI, the Avengers Initiative, the weapons specs for the Tesseract energy..." Coulson realized.
"All your ideas," Fury stated. Just.Like.That.
"Did they all know?" he said, standing. Looking over his shoulder at Fury.
"Who?"
"No more lies," he said like ice.
"Yes. They all knew. From the beginning. And that doesn't mean that they loved or admired you any less."
Coulson stood up. "I need some air. I need a drink. I need..."
"We both know what you need," Fury said, and walked out the door.
***
Coulson pulled Lola into the Bus hangar, had to back her in and out again a few times to get her locked.
He was drunk. Or, maybe he was just programmed to believe he was drunk and he really wasn't anything. Agent of Nothing. Wow, that had a whole knew meaning at the moment.
Stumbling out of the car, he slammed the door. It was late. Everyone that was asleep was asleep and wouldn't get up unless they thought the Bus was being stormed by HYDRA. His only worries were dodging May and Skye. Skye.
Thinking about it was too much, he just took a deep breath and make his way with purpose back to his room. All was quiet, this was good. This was perfect, really, because he didn't know if he could handle...
"Late night with the walking dead?"
Damn, his foot was on the first stair step. He could hear the sarcasm in her voice. He stiffened.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay," she replied.
Good. He continued up the stairs.
"You look like a freakin' mess, to be honest," she said after him.
He stopped again, bent down a little to look at her. She looked worried. And tired. Like she had stayed up. To make sure he was okay. Of course she had.
Knotting his brows, he wondered if he really want to do this right now.
"Come up," he said.
She followed him slowly up the stairs and into his office. He was standing near the door and closed it after her. Motioned for her to take a seat. He remained standing.
"That good, huh?" she said after a moment.
They had promised, no secrets. He'd completely forgotten that she knew he was meeting with Fury.
"I've been drinking, a lot," he said, and went to pour himself another drink. "Want one?"
"Are you sure that's a good..."
"Because you will," he interrupted. "Want one."
"Okaaay," she said, settling herself on the couch, suddenly uneasy, taking the glass from him while he remained standing. This had to be bad. It was 2:46 a.m. and he was handing her a stiff drink.
"Maybe in the form of a list would be best?" he asked. "Because it really doesn't get more insane than what I'm about to tell you," he did stop himself and knock on wood this time, "And, I figure, we can just have a little Q&A after..."
"A.C., you're kind of freaking me out."
"Let's start with #1. I'm an alien. Or, I used to be."
"Okay, hold on," she said, "Phil, you need to calm down."
"Nope," he said, "No more secrets, no more being calm. #2 I'm also a Life Model Decoy. That is Stark Industries terminology for 'fancy robot'."
Skye swallowed, her eyes getting huge. "You need to stop for a second. Just. Stop."
"Please hold all your questions for the Q&A period to follow," he said erratically. "#3 I was "born" in the 80s. Phil Coulson was an actual person, but, just not me."
Her mouth fell open.
"I know, right?" he said. Then he sobered up. He had to say it.
"I was part of a team," he said, choking out the words, "That was hunting down a baby girl with special powers, in a village in China..."
He barely got the last part out.
The glass fell out of Skye's hands and hit the floor. She stood up, went for the door. He beat her to it, slammed it back shut.
"I don't want to hear any more," she said. "What the hell is wrong with you?! Why did Fury tell you all of this?!!!"
"Because I wanted the truth," he said, staring down at her. "Skye," he started again. "I think, I think I might have been responsible for..."
She put her hands over her ears. Turned away from him, went to his bathroom, shut herself in.
He could hear her crying on the other side of it. He slumped down against the door. Put his hand on it, thinking of her on the other side. Wishing things could just be more simple.
"It's possible that I killed your parents, Skye."
The door swung open, hard. He caught himself before he hit the floor. She stared down at him, wearing a look he'd never seen.
"Tell me everything."
He did.
***
"Why were they after me?" she asked.
"Unclear," he replied, sounding a bit too business-like. Then he added, "It's because they thought you were special. Which is true."
The guilt was eating him alive. He was wearing it, had been, all night.
"At some point, you're going to have to let it go," she said. "It doesn't matter."
"Of course it matters," he huffed. "You need to stop doing that."
"Let's get this straight. You're a robot alien, and I'm a Kree science experiment from the 80s, and still an 084."
"Robot alien is definitely worse," he said, staring up at the stars.
"Yeah, but you erased your own memory, so, kind of on you."
"Is there any way to maybe not make this sound *more* screwed up?" he said, turning to her.
They were sitting in Lola, in an empty field, watching the stars shoot across the sky. They had both wanted to see the stars so badly after all of that talking.
"I knew when you told me about my parents, and don't get me wrong, it did make me angry, but you would never have done that without a reason. I don't know what to think of it, still, because it's a mess," she continued. "But it feels like somehow, you were always protecting me. Is that weird?"
"No," he said, putting his arm around her, hugging her to him. She put her head on his shoulder.
A star shot across the sky.
"That's where we came from," she said, sounding small.
"I knew what I was before the Battle of New York. And after, I didn't. And that was my body sitting in a tube somewhere, and Garrett had a little piece of me..."
"And I have a little piece of you," she said, turning her face up towards him.
"Yes," he answered, looking towards her in the dark.
"Kind of feels like fate, right?"
He let out a hitched breath. That made her smile.
"Like the universe made sure we would always find each other," he said, after a time.
It was the one thing. The pieces weren't all worked out, but he knew he had been missing something before the Battle of New York, and she had been searching. And then they'd come closer, again, and everything became more clear. Like an alignment. A convergence.
Maybe it was a robot heart, he didn't care. It was pounding a bit, he could feel it. It was doing what it was supposed to do. He pulled his arm gently from under her head, turned towards her in the darkness and put his hands on either side of her face, hesitated.
Then, he leaned in and kissed her.
Her breath caught, perhaps a little startled, maybe it was too much, all of this. He began to pull back, but then her hand came to rest softly in his hair, the other at the base of his neck. She was leaning into him now, and whispered.
"We're woven together, it seems."