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Phil Coulson doesn’t intend to fake his own death; he expects to die. When Loki’s spear scythes through his back, shuffling off this mortal coil seems rather inevitable. This is not premeditated. In spite of Fury’s interesting, shifting moral code and Phil’s deep love of the greater good, this is not a premeditated act. Phil is nothing so manipulative.
When his eyes close, he does not expect to open them again.
.
The medics get him onto a stretcher and cart him off to the OR, buried deep in the bowels of the Helicarrier. The trauma surgeon on board has years of experience with SHIELD and she’s never seen anything like it.
There is no longer an exit wound, although his shirt is torn and there’s an ugly scar, red and angry and entirely healed. The entry wound appears cauterised and the blood loss is sluggish at best. He’s probably lost about a litre of blood into his pleural cavity but whatever Loki was packing, the surgeon wants for her OR. The spear slices through Coulson’s left lung but it’s cauterised all the vessels there, too. Most of the blood is from a tear in a pulmonary vein and that’s bad news but nothing she can’t fix although she’d appreciate it if the damned Helicarrier would level off a bit. Somehow, the left side of the heart is unscathed though there is a linear burn over the external pericardium that suggests that Phil Coulson is a very lucky man.
.
When Coulson wakes up, he’s in a private room in a healthcare facility in upstate New York. Three weeks have passed since the battle of Manhattan and there are no flowers in his room, and no cards, and he must be a very lonely man, say the nurses when they think he cannot hear.
The name over the bed is John Doe. His suit, they tell him, is in a yellow hazard bag in the closet. It’s probably irreparable but he thought he was irreparable so it’s no great loss.
They ask about his next of kin. He thinks about the cellist. Not for the first time, he wishes she was real.
.
After another week and a CT scan of his thorax, it’s declared that he’s well enough for discharge. There are wires keeping his sternum closed now and his chest is scarred and there is no cellist. He wears a pair of scrubs and surgical clogs and gets into the waiting car, clutching a battered sportsbag to his chest.
I am alive, he wants to say to the driver. He doesn’t know him. The journey to the SHIELD headquarters is long and he is aware of every bump in the road.
.
He doesn’t have his ID so he has to sign in at front desk. He says that Nick Fury is expecting him and the security guard’s eyes widen. Coulson is not surprised when the cavalry arrive.
What the everliving fuck? Stark is less eloquent than usual. Natasha looks murderous and Clint looks lost. Steve frowns. But you’re -
Phil shrugs and his expression tightens with pain.
You’re alive.
He licks his lips, to moisten them enough to speak. Rumours of my demise- There is a wave of dizziness. Steve and Clint rush forward.
You won, is all he can manage to say before he blacks out.
.
Now he is in the SHIELD infirmary. A wound infection that has nothing to do with Loki’s initial attack.
Coulson, says Clint. You’re alive.
I’m sorry, replies Phil. He is not sorry that he has survived. He is not even sorry that Fury manipulated the team. He is a little sorry about the trading cards. He is mostly sorry at the guilt that clouds Clint’s eyes and weighs him down, like a thundercloud or the tons of rubble that might have killed them all in New Mexico.
Clint’s hand fumbles for Phil’s and he doesn’t miss. Coulson, he says again.
Are you angry? asks Phil and Clint shakes his head, jerkily.
Nat is furious, though. Rogers is even more disillusioned and Tony’s threatening to tell your cellist.
There is no cellist, says Phil. He wishes there was but Clint’s fingers are around his wrist and he can probably feel Phil’s thready pulse.
.
The next time Clint visits, Phil is attempting to clean himself.
Clint blushes but he is curious. He touches the scars; the sutured one, down the centre of Phil’s chest, where they cracked open his chest while the Helicarrier was tumbling from the sky. The healed, puckered red line to the left of it, where Loki’s spear drove through and Clint briefly holds his hand to his own chest, where there’ll never be a scar. There are two small scars, either side of his chest, from the drains they’d had to insert and there’s a long scar on his back, next to his spine.
You’ve lost weight, says Clint.
Phil thinks he lost his appetite somewhere along the way.
.
Phil is to be discharged but only as far as Stark’s monstrosity on Park. Clint carries his bag, like he carries his guilt.
It is not your fault, Phil wants to say, but Clint won’t hear it (not yet).
.
It’s beautiful, seeing the sun rise, though Manhattan still moulders. The Chrysler building needs repairs but the East River sparkles beyond it.
.
It is not your fault.
Clint hmphs and lingers over Phil’s bandages, like he doesn’t trust Phil to look after himself.
.
It is not your fault.
Now Phil lingers, his fingertips light against Clint’s jaw.
Look at me, he says, and Clint’s eyes flicker but he is a brave man. He sighs. There is something about being compromised, there is something about compromise and Phil says that the balance is still in Clint’s favour.
.
Natasha starts talking to him again after a fortnight. She comes into his apartment, which is beautifully appointed and entirely featureless, and curls up with a battered paperback, her back to the rain-smeared window.
.
I thought I had died, Phil says, suddenly, one day. Natasha puts down her book and Clint’s fingers tighten on Phil’s hip.
I thought I had died for a reason, says Phil, and he knows that he’ll never have a good death, not now that he’s fluffed his lines.
.
You lived for a reason, says Clint, in the night, when it is hard to breathe. You lived for a reason, says Natasha, in the day, when the East River sparkles.
.
It is no sin to survive.