A Miracle Starts With a Beat of a Heart

Chapter 26

"Hey guys."

It felt like her heart was about to beat out of her chest. Daisy couldn't believe her eyes. He was here. He was really here. Coulson was here. Granted, he was technically a robot now, but he was here nonetheless. It was so real. It was like... he never left. At least for him. 

There was not a sound in the room as Daisy and Mack were speechless.

Coulson's eyes darted around the room awkwardly. "Why is no one talking?" he whispered. Hearing his voice once again made Daisy's lip twitch into a small smile. Coulson got a good look at Daisy. "Oh, hey," he started. "I'm digging the hair," he said, pointing at Daisy's hair, which she had just dyed blonde with a couple of purple extensions about a month or so before the whole Sarge situation.

No one really knew where to start with him, so Jemma was the first one to speak up. "Sir, you've missed quite a lot."

"How did we get here?" he asked, taking in the new scenery.

"The last scan of your brain was from the Framework," Jemma explained. it hit Daisy that there was so much that Coulson didn't remember since the Framework thing with Aida happened a little over two years ago. He doesn't remember space. He doesn't remember the (almost) end of the world. He never even got to know about Nadia, so who knew how he was going to react. "I've done my best to update it with all that you've missed. But you may feel some disorientation as your mind catches up the present."

Coulson stared at his left hand, the words Jemma was telling him starting to fit in. "My arm feels different," he began, given that the real him had a prosthetic since his arm was cut off during their battle with the Afterlife inhumans, which was now a little over four years ago. 
It's fixed. Doesn't feel the same."

"Coulson, take it easy," Mack began. "Let Simmons explain."

"I don't feel the same. Why?"

Jemma took a deep breath before continuing. "We had to make a tough decision-"

"Because you're an LMD," Daisy said, interrupting Jemma. She knew that they didn't have much time to wait. Who knew what the chronicoms have done already. They just had to tell Coulson the real deal without sugar-coating it. Daisy made the decision to just rip off the band-aid.

Coulson's eyes went wide. "No." He looked at the three of them in the room, trying to see if they were joking with him, but all he could see was truth. He shook his head. "No... No!"

"Was that necessary?" Mack asked Daisy.

"There's no easy way to say it," she responded. 

"A state-of-the-art life model," Jemma further explained. "Enhanced with advance-"

"Chronicom hardware," Coulson finished for her. He stepped out from the space where it looked like he had been charging. "How do I know that word? Why am I..." Suddenly, memories began to fill his mind. "Oh,... I died. I died, and I came back. Not me. I died, and we said goodbye, and I came back." I died, and I came back-"

"What do we do?" Daisy asked. 

"Fix this," Mack told Jemma.

"I don't know how. There's a lot of data flooding his mind," Jemma said.

"Coulson," Daisy said, getting his attention. "I'm here," she said, trying to comfort him like he had done several times before. "Okay, so just take a breath."

"Do I breathe?"

"You are okay," Daisy assured him. "You are okay."

"No, I'm not okay," Coulson stated. "I'm not him." Coulson began rambling on about things that they had gone through. "I look like him. Pachakutiq... May, don't! May..." Coulson's face went sad for a small second.