Untitled (Gen)
The badges arrive in the mail at the third motel they take up residence in, five weeks and three days after SHIELD is brought down.
They come by courier whom asks for Agent Agent and Phil might have given the guy the hairy eyeball for that, and then he'd stared at the envelope after the courier had gone for a good five minutes before tearing it open; when he tilts it, five laminated badges with RFID chips slide onto Fitz's bed, shiny and new, with a credit card in the middle of them.
The pictures on the IDs are all recent, either from files or from (in his and Skye's case) recent security camera stills that have been cleaned and digitized until they look normal, with the Stark Industries logo placed neatly above. Their names are typed below, Skye's legal surname beside the name she'd picked, and Phil swallows thickly.
A note is written on a scrap of paper attached to the credit card, Tony's chicken scratch handwriting comforting to see—
Congratulations on not being dead. I have your first paychecks and apartments waiting for you in New York. See you soon.
—and he smiles a bit at the tactless message. God, but he's missed Tony.
“Hey, AC,” Skye murmurs, standing in the doorway. “What's all this?”
He tosses her badge over. “Backup.”