Coulson Squared

Prologue

That's right, this was your seventh assignment in three weeks. That was the equivalent of a new assignment every three days. Everyone outside of the situation told you that Fury was overworking you, and that you should be taking your time to move on.

"It's not healthy," one fellow agent might tell you.

"A lot of the stuff I do isn't healthy," you'd retort tersely. Then, you'd walk away, trying your best to be alone.

The truth was, Fury himself told you that you shouldn't have been doing what you were. You were requesting assignment after assignment in order to distract yourself. You didn't want to think about what had happened almost a month ago on that helicarrier, when you had heard the four words that you had feared for years: "Agent Coulson is down."

The night after that marked the first time you had cried in years. Coulson was the only part of your family you had left, as your father, and now that he was gone, you were really alone. That seemed reason enough to cry to you, and you truly despised crying.

You weren't the most social of people, and you didn't ever feel the need to make friends. When you said that you had no one, you really didn't. Though there was a large crowd at your father's funeral, none, save a few generally concerned individuals said anything to you. None offered friendship or a shoulder to cry on--though you wouldn't have taken the latter--just their sincerest condolences.

You limited your conversations with Director Fury to strictly SHIELD business. Maybe he would have tried to help you, but you shut down his every attempt to turn a conversation elsewhere.

"(Y/N), how about you take some time off instead of taking another assignment?" he'd suggested the day before.

"I'm going to have to respectfully decline your generous offer, Director," you gave your rehearsed reply. "I think it's best that I keep doing what I pledged to do when I joined SHIELD."

"What, run yourself down into exhaustion? That's not what you pledged to do. And when you do, what then, Coulson?"

You flinched at the sound of your last name. "I do what my dad would do."

"And that is?"

You looked directly into his eye and spoke quietly, yet clearly, "I just keep going."

Today, you were at an airport in the Midwest waiting out a layover. You were supposed to arrive at a SHIELD safe house in Alaska late that night in order to observe some supposedly magical moving island that was loaded with treasure.

Sunlight flooded the airport through the large windows, creating a happy, excited feeling in the air. You ignored that like a champ, sitting on a bench and glaring daggers at the gigantic American flag on the wall. The world was a visibly darker place without Phil Coulson, to you, anyway.

A man noticed your state and approached you. "Something the matter?" the stranger asked you, sitting down next to you on the bench.

You avoided looking at him, and replied, "No, everything is just perfect. Life's good and all that."

"Oh, I can tell. You feel like talking about it?"

"You're a stranger. I don't feel like talking to you about anything."

"I wouldn't say that we're strangers," he said. "We've met before."

"Have we? How?"

"SHIELD."

"Ah. That would explain it." You took a quick glance over at him, taking in his general appearance. He wore a black jacket and sweatpants with a heather gray painting shirt with gray running shoes. His hood was up so that you couldn't see his face, but otherwise, he didn't look like a SHIELD agent. "Undercover agent or a run-in?"