Chapter Text
What Phil needs is a chance to sit down for a few hours and think things through. Formulate a strategy, if you wish. He’s always been good at that part, after all, a natural ability that SHIELD Academy had been very happy to capitalize on. If only he had some quiet time and a chance to think about himself and not everyone else on the team.
Instead, it takes no more than a few hours – and an encrypted message on SHIELD frequencies – for his life to be turned upside down. Hydra. He spent his whole goddamn university life researching their pre- and post-war operations and SHIELD’s effort to bring the whole network down. He could hardly have imagined they were within SHIELD the whole time.
That said, perhaps his research shortcomings are not the first thing he should be thinking about at the moment.
Right now, he barely knows if there’s a SHIELD anymore. If – if, because Phil still doesn’t believe that, he can’t, no matter the fact that he knows that Melinda was not lying about what they told her – if Fury really is dead, then he guesses SHIELD is too.
He pushes away the worry about the friends he hasn’t seen since he died. Barton, Romanoff, the rest of the Avengers – he doesn’t know where they are, but he knows beyond any doubt that they’re not Hydra, and that means they’re in danger right now.
At the same time, he has to constantly push away similar worries about Andrew Garner, about a father and mother who are not his but are both connected to secret agencies of their own and have a daughter within SHIELD that can now easily be turned into leverage.
Yeah. That. And as if Phil didn’t have enough on his platter right now, there is also the small matter of Melinda’s pain bleeding through the back of his mind as they rush through the Bus and the gunshots still raining on it, an unwelcome reminder that she’s been shot, and that whatever his current doubts about her, his top priority has automatically become patching her up.
So that’s what he does. He finds a room that seems safe enough and has a stash of medical supplies he can use. His hands are almost steady as he digs into the wound for the bullet, ignoring both the shared pain and the grief he can feel welling up on Melinda’s side of the bond as well as his. It’s an unspoken acknowledgment that they’re both starting to believe it, that the thought that Nick might truly be dead is sinking in.
“It’s just you and me,” he tells her, and for a moment that’s their only thought, wrapped up in a jumble of emotions that he won’t even begin to untangle, knowing – remembering – that there’s no point in asking how much of it is his own and how much is coming from Melinda’s side. He remembers now that there is no point making that distinction. It’s almost funny, how easily his mind falls back upon familiar thought patterns. He doesn’t even want to go near to considering how comforting it feels.
Right now, however, he mostly feels numb, the kind of numbness that stems from exhaustion as much as discouragement. Once again, he knows that Melinda feels that too.
Getting the details of Fury’s assignment from her is surprisingly easy. Maybe it’s their physical closeness, lowering their mental barriers further. Maybe it’s just that the whole purpose of Melinda’s surveillance has been defeated.
As she lists Fury’s worries, he wants to grab her shoulders, shake her and shout that he’s fine, that he regained his memories and nothing happened, so why keep them from him in the first place. It’s not just Melinda’s wound that stops him from doing that. He can tell that the answer to that question is among the things that Melinda is still keeping from him, the answers he knows are still hidden in her mind. He could dig for them, he thinks, but he won’t – he knows she never did that with him, not even when it was part of her mission, and he’s not about to cross that particular barrier, not now.
What he can do, right now, is ask her why she accepted Fury’s mission. Her answer is not entirely surprising, but that doesn’t make it hurt less.
“I did it for you,” she says, and Phil can feel tears of frustration and exhaustion prickling against his eyes. “To protect you.” Her voice cracks. “You mean a lot to me. A lot. When I felt you die –” She cuts herself off after that, but it’s too late to prevent some of the images from slipping into Phil’s mind. For a moment, he can feel the bond breaking in Melinda’s mind, he can feel himself disappearing and then coming back, the searing pain during the first stages of the TAHITI procedure cursing through him in a blur of his own body’s memories and Melinda’s. Underneath that, he can sense something else, a surge of passion and protectiveness that is almost painful to behold in itself, and not just because it’s a feeling he recognizes from his own past reflections on Melinda.
A bitten-off cry brings him back to reality, and he realizes that he’s been clamping down with his hand on Melinda’s injured shoulder. He steps back as if he’d been burnt. His vision is blurred, but he can see the tears in Melinda’s eyes, and he knows they’re not just coming from the physical pain.
“You may not believe me,” she forces herself to say, and he can feel her pulling out of his mind, can still feel the reluctance that comes with that after all the time they’ve been as good as forced apart. “But that’s the truth.”
He can still hear gunfire outside, just another reminder that they don’t have time for this, not now.
“I want to believe you,” he finally answers. “But you’ve used that against me this whole time.”
As they walk out of the room, still side by side, Melinda’s bitterness and exhaustion blends with his own.
***
The good news, apparently, is that they have internet, and that Nick may or may not be alive. That about sums it up. The bad news is, well, everything else. Starting with the knowledge that someone messed with his head, that his whole life is apparently made of people messing with his head, and going all the way down to the fact that they’re currently stranded in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, with nothing but the prospect of freezing to death in front of them, and the rising suspicion that Fury’s coordinates might not be Fury’s coordinates after all, or that they lead to nowhere anyway. Considering the situation, it’s surprising it even takes Melinda voicing her disbelief for Phil to break down.
The thing is, he does believe that the SHIELD badge in his hand means something, coordinates or not. It may be the last thing he believes in, and feeling Melinda’s nagging doubts growing at the back of his mind as he speaks-slash-cries out in desperation might just be the last straw for Phil.
He’s about to lash out against that when the forest around them comes alive with defensive tech. He’s never been happier to be stared down by a turret in his entire life.
***
The lie detector sounds like a stupid idea, no matter how Agent Koenig insists this machine can outsmart the Black Widow. (Natasha. Phil hopes she’s alive, at least. He wonders if she knows about Nick. If she doesn’t, the hurt is going to – don’t. She can take care of herself. Out of all of them, she’s the one who’s the closest to having been through this before.) Anyway, whatever the benefit, it’s not worth the spike of emotion coursing through the bond as Melinda flat-out tells Koenig that she’s here for Phil.
That emotion is still at the back of Phil’s thoughts when Melinda comes to confront him about not being allowed on the Audrey mission. Maybe he should not be thinking about it as the Audrey mission. Maybe he should stop letting everything affect him so personally.
He hates it. He hates how thin his boundaries have become, hates feeling this vulnerable. Hates that the easiest thing to do is to lash out at the earliest opportunity.
Melinda questioning his orders, patronizing him over things having become personal – and it’s not a surprise, how close to his own thoughts that feels, she’s been in his head all this time, hasn’t she – provides just that opportunity.
“We don’t do personal,” he bites back, enjoying feeling Melinda recoil from the hit. He presses in, because he can. “Not anymore.”
“Phil. You know I’m not hiding anything. You didn’t need that stupid polygraph thing to help you with that.”
He shakes his head. That’s beyond the pale even for her. “You mean you’re not hiding anything else, apart from everything regarding the TAHITI project.”
“I won’t tell you more than you already know. It’s dangerous, Phil. You have to trust me on this, and I know it’s the one thing I shouldn’t be asking of you right now, but it can kill you. Knowing more can kill you, and I – I’m not letting that happen.” He can feel her desperation again, just like when he was patching her up on the Bus, mixed up with that other bundle of feelings he’s still refusing to look at.
Instead, he pushes back. “You saw me. You saw me searching for the truth, you felt it. You saw someone in agony –” he can feel the memories of the mind-wipe welling up, and he sort of feels like a dick for what comes next, but he still soldiers on – “and you didn’t say anything. That’s wrong, Melinda.” She makes a move to interrupt him, but he won’t allow her, he’s still not done. “And don’t tell me it’s because you care so damn much.”
The mess of unspoken feeling is pushing up at the forefront of Melinda’s mind now, along with the hurt she’s barely trying to hide. Phil doesn’t even need to say anything anymore. As soon as she realizes that he can feel that, that despite it he’s not doing anything to soften the blow, Melinda turns on her heels and storms out. The last thing he feels from her is understanding, a reminder that she knows why he’s doing this, that she understands his mind as much as he does. That some part of her, at least, thinks he’s right. It doesn’t do anything to placate his anger, but it does make him wonder how much of it is directed at Melinda and how much at himself.
***
He comes back from Portland to an empty base. Rationally, of course, he knows it’s not empty, that the rest of his team is still around. Of course, he also knows that Melinda is not.
The bond tells him that she’s far enough away by now that she doesn’t even need to actively block him out. He still doesn’t feel alone in his mind, the baseline empathic connection still operating as normal, but all the technical jargon he can use doesn’t do much to help the fact that Melinda’s absence hurts, that no matter how much he’s been resenting the connection since the Guest House he still misses it, like a lost limb.
That night, as he curls up in his bunk and waits for sleep to come and wipe his thoughts away for a few hours, he hopes that Melinda is far enough away not to feel what’s going on in his mind. If she can feel it and she’s not coming back –
Well, at least he can enjoy the irony in this.
He stops that train of thought before it even starts. Instead, he curls up around the hole in his mind and tries to sleep.
***
If Phil thought he was exhausted before, well. This doesn’t even begin to compare. Then, again, he has jumped off a plane in a flying car today. That doesn’t happen often.
He pretends that thought is enough to make him smile.
He knows Skye is safe with the rest of the team, as safe as she can ever be. He tries to focus on that, blocking out all the worry and anger at himself for not understanding what was going on sooner, not even suspecting Ward of being Hydra despite all the signs. For being so focused on himself and Melinda and the whole mess between them that he allowed a traitor to endanger his team.
It’s the second time he fails at protecting Skye. He knows that there will be others, no matter what he vows he will or won’t do again.
The other thing he knows is that Melinda is coming back. He hates the way that knowledge reminds him of the bond, makes him want to scrape it out of his head, and at the same time makes him feel relieved. He hates that as soon as he steps into his motel room he knows Melinda is waiting in there, and he hates how happy he is to see her.
Most importantly, however, he knows that everything that happened lately is his own fault, that Melinda is not the one who’s been making mistake after mistake and hurting people. The first thing he has to do is apologize.
When he tells Melinda that he was hoping she’d come back, it comes as news to both of them.
Anyway, it seems that Melinda came back for a reason.
“I have something to show you,” she says, handing him a flash drive. As their fingers brush against each other’s, he catches a glimpse of her digging into his grave to retrieve it, and uh, that’s something he wants to know more about. Right now, however, his priority is to see what’s on the memory stick.
After Phil is finished watching himself give instructions on the termination of the TAHITI protocol, it’s up to Melinda to break the stunned silence.
“This is what I was shown before they wiped your memory.” Her voice is level, but they’re close enough that Phil can’t help sensing every nuance of her emotions. “I thought it would be better for you to see this, rather than trust me to tell you the truth, bond or not,” she adds, and the accuracy of her prediction stings.
“So this is why you were monitoring me.” He doesn’t really need the confirmation, but he needs to give Melinda a chance to say something, preferably before his fears get the better of him.
She nods anyway. “Doing what Fury asked me to do – it meant that if something went wrong, if you started showing signs of degeneration, there could be another solution, a way to get through it that was not shooting you in the head. I couldn’t refuse.”
There’s a pause as Phil tries to figure out what to say. He’s almost given up when Melinda adds, “I’m still sorry. For what it’s worth.”
“It is. Worth something, I mean.” He wets his lips. “See, the thing is – the one way we always thought we were supposed to navigate all this was by setting boundaries and respecting them. And that was fine, but then you – you were put in a situation where you had to walk all over these boundaries, and I couldn’t have a say in that, for obvious reasons – and just so it’s clear, I’m not blaming you for that, just like I’m not blaming Nick for starting the TAHITI procedure for me in the first place. I would have done the same thing.”
He can feel the morose direction Melinda’s thoughts are shifting towards, so he doesn’t allow himself to pause. “And the thing is – after all that’s happened – remember the things we always said we should do? I still want to do all of them. Remember that bottle of Haig we kept saying we were going to open? Yeah, I don’t know why we never did that. I still – I still want all this. I went without it for almost a year, and I didn’t even know what I was missing, and now – and I guess you get that better than I thought, because I did die on you, didn’t I?”
The mere mention of his death brings a sharp pinprick of pain through the bond, and yes, this is something they will need to talk about, because he can’t imagine what those few days did to Melinda, but he still wants to know. Underneath that, he can still feel that tangle of emotion and longing, the one he knows too well from seeing it so many times in his own mind. It’s what prompts him to open his mouth again.
“See, I – you mean a lot to me, too. Although I guess that was rather obvious. But, well. Needed to say it, I guess.” He smiles at his own lack of eloquence. “Is this going to be another of those conversations where I just blabber on and you don’t say anything but nudge me in the right direction?”
This time, the bond lights up with Melinda’s amusement. Maybe, she says, and he can feel her smile in his head.
Good, he sends back, with a smile of his own. I like those.
He’s so close to Melinda’s mind, just right now, and all of a sudden, he’s aware of just how much he missed this. The intimacy of it. All those things are lighting up in his mind, and he knows that Melinda can see them, she can see the feeling behind them, and she’s not pulling back.
He’s still hesitant as he tilts his head towards Melinda’s. Is this okay?
Yes, she answers, closing the gap with both her lips and her mind. More than okay.
***
Nick is alive, if a little worse off than the last time they saw each other; Garrett is dead, Ward is in custody – and oh, Melinda has plans for him, and seeing her being her best, fiercest self puts Phil in a disturbingly good mood, considering the situation.
They have won, after all.
All in all, Phil’s day was going pretty well, even before Nick decided to all but call him an Avenger outright. As for Nick’s speech about what SHIELD means – he’s never believed it more than he does right now, with Melinda standing next to him, tired and banged up but whole, her mind a warm and comforting presence. When Fury mentions people being worth saving, the memory of her and Bahrain is as prominent in his thoughts as the pain of TAHITI is in Melinda’s.
That, of course, is before Nick whips out the small black toolbox. “You’ll be the head,” he says, and the certainty in Melinda’s mind that Phil is about to become Director is humbling and faintly amusing at the same time.
“Both of you,” Nick adds, grinning at the brief flash of astonishment on Melinda’s usually blank face. Phil, on the other hand, is sure he looks about as surprised as he feels, which is, not at all. “I took a page out of Hydra’s book, for once – replacing one head with two doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Plus, it would have been a hopeless mess of a security leak if I decided to put you on different levels. Even I can see that.”
About time, is Melinda’s sardonic, silent comment.
As her emotions slowly move from incredulity to something that feels a lot like pride, Phil finds himself unable to stop smiling. If he could, he’d take Melinda’s hand. As it is, he sends a warm tendril of thought through the bond, letting Melinda sense his own happiness. Together, he tells her. We’re doing this together.
***
That night, Melinda wakes up to an empty bed and a mind filled with patterns, lines and circles and shapes, along with a burning, all-encompassing, almost violent need to get them out.
It doesn’t last long. As soon as the compulsion stops, she gets out of bed and goes looking for Phil.
She finds him kneeling in front of a wall, staring at the knife he’s still clutching and trying desperately to wrestle the panic in his mind back under control. She takes his hand, entwining their fingers together as she sits cross-legged next to him. Phil sags against her shoulder immediately, shivering from exhaustion and the chilly air.
She can still feel his fear, and her own mixing with it.
We’ll get through this, she sends him, along with all the reassurance she can muster. We’ll be okay.
We’re still doing this together, after all.