Epilogue
It had sounded ridiculous to him at the time.
Phil Coulson had and always would be an Agent of SHIELD. The thought of having any other career had never appealed to him. Despite what he said to May about there not being anything in the Framework that was not a product of their own minds, in this case, there must have been a glitch.
But once May told him that he had been a teacher in their other life, the idea rooted itself in his brain and stayed there, irritating him like an itch that he could not scratch.
As much as the career-spy in him was loathe to admit it, there was something appealing about the idea of teaching something. Maybe history, like his dad.
After all, SHIELD had initially recruited him because he saw patterns in historical data that hinted at a whole world beyond what was recorded in the textbooks. Now, most of that larger world, including aliens, superheroes, and SHIELD itself, was a matter of public knowledge. He could use his own experiences to educate a new generation that was struggling to grasp the ramifications of the reality that had only recently come to light.
The day Margaret May Coulson was born was the day those idle thoughts became more than a possibility.
His hands would not stop shaking the first time he held his daughter. Her blue, teary eyes looked up at him and Coulson realized that he had never experienced true fear until that moment. For the first time in his life, there was someone who relied on him completely, someone who needed him to come home safe at the end of the day.
He could think of worse ways to make sure that happened than to educate people using what he had learned during his time as an agent.
While predictably disappointed, no one was particularly surprised when he handed in his two weeks’ notice and stepped down as the de facto head of SHIELD. Within a month, he and May had moved their small family to a house off-base.
Which is how, two years after the fatal run-in with the Superior, Phil Coulson found himself standing in front of a packed lecture hall at the local community college. On the chalkboard behind him, he had scrawled the title of the day’s lecture, “Inhumans: Deconstructing the Myth.”
“So as you can see from the reading,” he said. “Contrary to recent political rhetoric that would have you believe that Inhumans are a recent phenomenon, their history dates back thousands of years. They have been a part of our global community since before most human civilizations began.”
A student in the third row of the lecture hall raised her hand.
“Yes, Calle?”
Phil Coulson leaned against the desk at the front of the classroom and waited for the girl to speak.
“Why do people fear Inhumans so much then, if they’ve always been here?” Calle asked.
He smiled.
“What do you guys think?”
Several students pipped up in response. Coulson stood back and listened, content to let them debate among themselves. After a few minutes, a familiar prickling sensation diverted his attention from the discussion.
He was being watched, and not just by his class.
Looking over at the narrow window in the classroom door, he saw Melinda May staring back at him from the hallway. A tight smile concealed her impatience as she adjusted the toddler on her hip.
Coulson turned back to his students.
“It’s true that people often fear what they don’t understand,” he said. “When the Terrigen crystals were first released into the environment, there was a lot of panic. This led to misinformation being spread, making the panic worse. Luckily, the study of Kree artifacts has increased our awareness of the origin of the Inhumans and helped us to understand them a little better.
“So for tonight, please read the declassified SHIELD report on the Gloucestershire Monolith and we will discuss it when I will see you on Wednesday.”
May maneuvered past the hoard of undergraduates as they filed out of the door.
One of the students took a glance at May, then back at Coulson.
“Is this your wife, Mr. C?”
“Derek,” Coulson acknowledged. “This is my partner, Melinda,”
“Nice to meet you,” Derek nodded at her.
When Derek walked away, he shot a thumbs up in Coulson’s direction with a mouthed “Nice!”
Coulson refrained from rolling his eyes as he turned towards May.
“Hey ladies!” He greeted her and his daughter.
The child in May’s arms squirmed and reached out to him. Coulson pulled her from May’s grasp and kissed her on the cheek.
“Hey there, Maggie May!”
The girl replied with a series of gurgles that Coulson took to mean she was happy to see him.
“I thought it was your day off?” He asked May.
After her maternity leave was over, May had taken a “soft retirement” from her job as a specialist. Technically, she was only supposed to be working at SHIELD on a consulting basis now, but the only thing that seemed to have changed was having the option to ignore her phone if she did not feel like coming in. Coulson suspected she would have complained more if she did not love it. There was something immensely satisfying about knowing you were impossible to replace.
“It was,” she sighed. “I just got a call from Daisy. They’ve found them. The team is ready to move in.”
“The last Watchdog cell?” He asked. “She’s sure this time?”
May nodded.
“This is it, Phil,” she affirmed. “It’s a heavily fortified compound, but we’ve got the element of surprise. They have no idea we’re coming.”
“Okay,” he said, bouncing his daughter on his hip. “So I guess it’s just you and me tonight, huh, Mags?”
The girl cooed and smacked him lightly in the face with a wet palm. Coulson snorted, but May shook her head.
“FitzSimmons are staying on base,” she said. “All of the tech is locked and loaded. They said they would watch Maggie for us.”
“Us?” He repeated, looking up. “You know I’m retired, right?”
“Sure,” May replied. “You were retired a year ago when Loki and Odin showed up in New York, too.”
“Well, yeah, but you couldn’t really expected me to sit out—
“And that incident in Wakanda two months ago?” She goaded.
“May, Cap was there!” Coulson insisted. “Steve Rogers needed my help. You know I couldn’t pass that up.”
May smirked and grabbed his hand, leading him out of the classroom to the parking deck. When they got to the SHIELD-issued SUV, Coulson buckled Maggie into her car seat and joined his partner in the front.
“You really want me on this one?” Coulson asked, as he secured his own seat-belt.
“You were there when we started this, Phil,” May replied. She turned the ignition and gunned the vehicle to life. “I thought you’d want to be there when we finished. Besides, you’re the only one I trust to have my back.”
Coulson cast a sidelong glance at her.
“If I had known what a guilt-trip that line was, I wouldn’t have used it on you so much back in the day,” he said.
May grinned.
“Yeah, you would have.”
“Yeah, I would have,” he agreed.
Coulson turned around and checked on their daughter. Maggie had her eyes closed, already rocked to sleep by the steady motion of the car.
“Hey,” May said softly. “She’ll be safe at the base. I would not have asked you to come otherwise.”
“Alright,” Coulson sighed. “I guess I can dust off the old ICER. But only because you need me to watch your back.”
“Won’t need much dusting, since you sleep with it under your pillow,” she retorted.
She was right about that.
Spies never really retired. The missions just got a little further apart and they found new ways to distract themselves between them.
At least that was what he used to think.
Between May, Maggie, and his teaching career, his new life was more than just a distraction from his intermittent jobs with SHIELD. It was the best of both worlds.
“What is it?” May asked, after a few minutes had passed in silence.
“What?”
“You’re staring at me.”
Coulson was quiet for a minute longer before replying.
“I was just thinking. Daisy told me that when we were in the Framework, you were happy. We were together, you were a spy, I was a teacher… was it like this? Was it like our life is now?”
May scoffed.
“Not even close.”
Not taking her eyes from the road, her hand found his. Coulson watched her press their entwined fingers to her lips for a brief moment before resting their hands on the center console.
“This is much better.”