A Different Call

Apologies

A.N. Trigger warnings to implied/referenced suicide attempts.

Coulson's P.O.V.

"I think that this scares me more than that time that May laughed while undercover," Skye said, lingering outside the med and glancing through the window. She was accompanied by Hunter and Simmons.

"I mean senior agents tend to have gone through traumatizing experiences, so it makes sense that she acts differently about someone with similar experiences," Simmons replied, trying to approach the situation at hand from a logical stance.

"Act differently, she does everything differently, even to her smile, which can I just say I didn't realize that someone could make a smile in a casual setting hostel," Skye crossed her arms over her chest and did a small shudder.

"Oh yeah, the tooth thing she does. I'm pretty sure she's like a reincarnate of that woman cat thing-"

"The Sphinx?" Simmons supplied for Hunter.

"Yeah, like I swear when she does that smile a gleam comes over her canines like it's an anime show."

"Helpful hint maybe don't talk about agents outside of the room that they're in," I finally said, startling the other agents.

"Oh, don't worry AC, those two have no idea what's going on right now," Skye retorted.

I glanced through the window quickly and saw that the two were sitting on the bed, Natasha sitting at the foot of it and Clint propped up with a pillow. They were playing some sort of card game, which for some reason involved throwing popcorn and corn nuts into the other's mouths at moments that I couldn't quite predict. It was very satisfying to see the two acting their age, a look of happiness on both of their faces, though I could tell that Clint was also experiencing some sort of pain but was trying to mask it for Natasha's sake. Maybe he wasn't that great at his hoax because Natasha was subtly upping his morphine drip, no doubt Clint was trying to avoid using the drug as much as possible, a fear stemming from growing up with a parent that was addicted to pain killers. I was not ready to ruin the moment but knew it had to be done.

I stepped into the room and Natasha and Clint both snapped their heads to look at me. I could see Clint's eyes begin to gloss over from tears as he began to look frantically between Natasha and me.

"You know if this some sort of sick joke Hunter, I'm not laughing."

I took a step forward to try to comfort Clint, but he reacted by quickly jerking back followed by wincing from pain.

Natasha put a hand on Clint's chest, trying to keep him from moving and aggravating his injuries. "I know it sounds crazy, but that really is Coulson. I promise you, besides Hunter is most likely trying to subconsciously flirt with Bobbi right now."

"Say something that only Coulson would know?" Clint had now gone into a pseudo-panic mode. His response was perfectly reasonable, after what Hydra did to him, his brain was most likely still coming to grips with what was truly reality.

"Besides the fact that you know how to say can I pet your dog in every language? I know that if something is bothering you, you'll stay at the firing range until your fingers bleed. And I know that you were thinking about retiring from SHIELD before you were assigned to Ukraine to take down a high-level target and ever since you've never brought the subject up again."

"I thought that I kil-," Clint cut off his sentence after a stern look from Nat. "I thought that you were killed during the attack on the helicarrier. What happened?"

"There was a project that Fury had created with the purpose of saving a fallen Avenger. I don't even know what all the logistics are. All I know is that it involved some sort of transfusion from an alien donor. After that, I was given a team and told I was not allowed to contact any of you. I'm sorry."