✯⋆ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴏɴᴏʀ ᴏꜰ ᴡʜᴏ ⋆✯

✯𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗿𝘁𝘆 𝗙𝗢𝗨𝗥✯

"Meredith L. Coulson," read the gravestone.

I know Meredith Coulson is alive and breathing. But, in the instance of confusion, it made sense that I shouldn't be.

Clutching at the muddy ground, I pulled myself closer to it, my disarray giving my tired body a much-needed adrenaline rush.

My hazy eyes could barely see what I was reading, just a dark jumble of shadows I recognized to have the same length and highs and lows of my name. I opted to believe that I was simply reading it wrong and that my eyes just needed some time to adjust to the darkness.

Rubbing away the dirt on the stone-carved letters, a perfectly timed lightning strike illuminated it, and I was forced to come to the reality that this was a gravestone with my name on it.

As my eyes finally adjusted to look through the slight rain, I could see that it wasn't rain at all, but it was a flurry of snow. We haven't had snow in May in years.

I brought myself to my feet, leaning against my gravestone to pull myself up when I noticed the gravestone next to mine.

"Phillip J. Coulson."

Except that one was real. The dirt still piled on top, grass sprouting from it, a light snow freshly coating it as I stared in bewilderment.

The winds whistled around me, sending a chill to my body. My shoulders tensed, blood rushing to my head as the hairs on my neck stood straight up when I could sense someone was near.

"Something really strange is going on,"  I said to the person standing behind me, in a shaky tone I tried my best to steady.

"Well, Meredith, it's gotten to be that way since the woman who died a year ago fell from the sky," He raised a gun up at me. "Who are you?"

"Oh c'mon, Fury, It's me," I said, an awkward laugh escaping my lips as I tried to play it cool, the coldness of the air beginning to sink through my skin.

"Put your hands up where I can see them," he demanded, his single eye wide with fear, which scared me even further.

"What do you mean, a year?" I asked, backing up a little bit, obeying Fury and putting my hands up, shaking as I did so.

"I can't tell you that. You've died. Or at least that's what everyone had told me," He said, his gun still raised.

I couldn't understand what he was saying. The words were separated from each other in a way that only made sense to be scrambled, any other way was the worst possible. 

"I may look that way, but believe me I'm breathing too hard to mistake my current state of existence," I said, pointing, knowing the answer would probably be yes.

There was no possible way I could've been gone for a year.

"I don't trust that," He said, gun still raised, "You've got to prove to me that you're my Meredith. You know why."

"Uh..." I stammered, slowly lowering my hands. "When I was 16, I was in the kitchen and accidentally cut myself so bad while making a midnight snack that you had to bring me to the emergency room. I got 15 stitches and you fell asleep during a really important meeting. That following birthday, you got four airplane pillows."

"What were you making?"

"Oh..." I smiled. "Uh, pizza rolls. The knife was used to cut the bag. Dad told me the day before he left for the mission not to play with knives anymore and I did it anyway. So we didn't tell him and found out that summer and we had a meeting together in his office. Good times."

Fury smiled, putting away his gun. "Those times are over."

"Who else could I have been?" I asked.

"The most reasonable answer is a Skrull. They're the only shapeshifters I know. But I took my chances," he said, being cut off by me wrapping my arms around him, hugging him as quickly as possible.