The Last Recommendation of Agent Coulson: Chapter 1
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Chapter 1
The Visit and 5 Infractractions
“Ms. Lewis” Darcy jumped halfway off her bunk even though it was painful business to move at all.
“Agghhhh, I mean,” she peering in the darkness but that voice and the suit that went with it was distinctive. “Agent Coulson, you nearly gave me a heart attack, it’s after lights out.”
“I heard about your own nighttime excursions,” Darcy smirked at his word choice. “Do you want to get kicked out of basic training?”
Darcy blinked at his casual tone because the question made her feel like a deer caught in the headlights. “This place, this its not for me. Cramps my style.”
“Do you know why I recruited you Ms. Lewis?”
“Because I was a liability.” Darcy responded trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She was exhausted and she was getting away with not standing at attention. The lamp that Coulson stood in front of threw his features into shadow but she knew his expression would not have changed, it rarely did unless you looked hard enough. The moment stretched out into the silence and it started to make her itch. “So what are you going to do now? Pack me off and send me to prison so I can keep my mouth shut?” She wanted to say more but she knew she was in too much pain to actually keep her anger burning. More silence.
“God what do you want with me? Why are you even still here? Can’t someone kick me out? ”
“Answer my questions Private Lewis.”
“I don’t want to be here, its hard I’m tired all the time, it hurts, I don’t want any of this! So yeah I wanna get kicked out, I don’t want to be a G-man.” She was glad that she hadn’t burst into tears but she was burnt out and her muscles felt wrung out after the endless pushups she’d had to do for not standing at attention. Coulson shifted sitting on the empty chair. “What else do you want me to say?”
“I’ve come with the exit package. You’ll be done with your basic training and after that you’ll be done with SHIELD.” He reached down pulling out papers from his briefcase. It gleamed bulletproof metal in the lamplight. Darcy snorted but she was afraid to say anything. “That is if you can answer one more question. Do you really want to be in the dark never knowing when alien attacks are coming?”
So he knew about the nightmares, about the way she hated the thought of handling live munitions. She thought hard then because she didn’t want to cry and because....
“I won’t be any safer will I?”
“No one is safe Ms. Lewis. But you can choose, choose to help others know things before they happen or....”
Or submit to the nightmares, be afraid all the time. Even just wondering and never knowing when something on the news was a cover story or not. She stared hard at the exit package in his hands. She ventured a look up at his face, he was unflappable impenetrable. She wanted to ask him so much in this terrible barracks, the wind and rain raging outside she wanted to ask how he stayed unbowed by the cold even though she could see moisture on his face and on his shoes. He checked his watch, got up and left the exit package on her trunk with a pen.
“I’ll leave these here, someone will pick them up in the morning. We are all liabilities Ms. Lewis. You can join us or you can look away.” And he was gone the footsteps heard even after the door was closed. Darcy watched the papers laying down away on her locker, the lights off again she felt them taunting her.
In the morning she was awoken by someone knocking on the door, they retrieved the papers, saying only she should report to the drill sergeant or follow him.
Darcy reported to the drill sergeant.
---------
“Probationary Agent Lewis I count five wardrobe infractions here.”
“These suits seriously suck, I’m just trying to spruce things up.” Like with the killer silk shirts she’d gotten at the thrift store. She had on a cream one that looked almost exactly like the regulation cut.
“Did you feel the need to spruce up your BDUs? Did they also cramp your style?” Darcy was about to say something but hearing her words in Agent Coulson’s mouth gave her pause.
“BDU’s are comfortable,” she said for lack of anything else to say. “They’re also, you know, filled with pockets!” Now she was on a roll, “They were totally comfy and great for carrying snacks and chapstick. One private at boot camp even packed a small book of poetry." Coulson waited patiently. “We both know I’m just going to be an office drone, I mean like what does it matter that I put some heels and a cuter top on?”
“Do you know you’re going to be an office drone?” Coulson asked as an assistant came in handing Coulson a tablet. He scrolled through the video quickly, reset it, passed it to Darcy. “Here watch this. When you’re done here, Agent Sitwell will escort you back to your unit.”
“Yay movies!” she was aiming for sarcastic but as she held the tablet and pressed play, she thought, exactly what does Agent Coulson think would best be conveyed through video instead of words?
“Please sit make yourself comfortable, unless you’re alright standing.” His eyes flicked down to her black pumps, really not stylish but they went with the skirt she’d managed to track down at a thrift store that she’d tried wearing today. She’d left the suit jacket alone only because the silk shirt she’d bought for the cute sweater was at the dry cleaners because of an unfortunate reaction to gun oil it might not even make it. But Coulson’s comment was a challenge and she debated the merits of sitting down on his comfy looking leather couch. It might be hard to get up from the couch but her heels were... Ugh why did he have to leave her with her thoughts instead of just telling her all this?
She sighed, looked around the room staring at the corners of the room where barely perceptible indentations there in the ceiling. “You won ok? I won’t wear heels again. Ouu comfy couch.”
As she settled down into the couch she tried crossing her legs demurely it didn’t work right away and she wasn’t paying attention when an explosion called her attention back to the tablet. She rewound the footage to a minute before the explosion. The office drones weren’t doing much just shuffling papers, working on the computers, making copies, drinking coffee.... And there the explosion erupted from the coffee maker, wait no she slowed down the replay and paused it frame by frame. Somehow the explosion came from the wall and not the coffee pot.
There were no screams just whimpers, everyone reached for their guns, attended to their wounded coworkers and two people grabbed fire extinguishers. No one came to help but someone started first aid and then, gunfire. But it was like no gunfire she’d ever seen. It looked like the phosphorus tracer rounds from the old desert storm news footage that had terrified her as a kid. Except there was no Christiane Amanpour narrating or giving direction. The agents were trying to respond to one of the codes she couldn’t remember yet; half of those still able rushed through exits the injured being attended to while the other half worked furiously on their computers and watched through the massive hole in the wall. It looked like the shots had slowed down for a moment and then without warning intruders streamed through the hole bringing dust and rubble and obscuring the security feed.
The few that didn’t have their guns drawn now did, even the lady on the ground who was bandaged, her face peppered with seeping wounds. They put down two intruders before someone emerged from the exit with a round grenade, they yelled something and everyone dove for cover. It was just a flash bang and everyone beat a hasty retreat into the remaining intact hallway. Once they had cleared out another real grenade was tossed into the room and got the last three intruders and the camera.
Darcy was tense, as the video ended in static. Then it kept rolling but the time stamp was different and the angle was different. It was from the hallway where the remaining workers were huddled, guns still drawn vests and helmets emerging from a hallway closet. Everyone reloaded their magazines strapped on a few more machine guns, got on the walkies and were told essentially to hold their positions. A few crawled back into the main floor and dragged some cubicle partitions and desks to plug up their hallways. Others dragged out a laptop and some phones trying to desperately to figure out what the situation was like around the building, working on maps of the small outpost and yelling instructions through the walkies. The lady that was bleeding was propped up in the hallway closet, someone was still working on her wounds but she waved them away as there was more gunfire and someone pulled out another grenade two other heavily armored agents hopped back over the barricade crouching low and investigating while cover fire was laid down for them.
It was hard to make out the spoken directions over the chaos and the narrowness of the hallway prevented much to be seen of those that had gone back over barricade after a minute.
She was trying to dig into her boot camp experiences and found that they were doing nothing wrong until she caught the order for them to beat a hasty retreat. Some more agents had managed to strap on some vests. Only one came back over the barricade. Darcy felt her cheeks burning the tears falling, they dragged their comrade away his pants torn and revealing a gash on his leg. Three arranged themselves in formation taking turns to lay more cover fire in hopes that the other would come back, while the rest went further into the building towards the exits. Finally there was another intruder that jumped the barricade and the brave office worker fired at him as he lobbed the grenade into the hallway and behind the intruder and was out of the camera view. Just before the explosion hit Darcy caught sight of four more intruders. “You don’t leave a man behind!” she yelled frustrated wiping tears away.
“Her name was Agent Stacy Johnson.” it was Agent Sitwell who spoke from the doorway. “I know you can’t tell from the feed, she’d just uh... she was wearing a helmet and the vest that’s why you didn’t know.” He didn’t look Darcy in the eyes, “I came back from over the barricade she didn’t.”
“Why?” she said before she could stop herself. He looked her in the eyes then and huffed a laugh that sounded suspiciously painful.
“‘Ours not to reason why, Ours but to do...’” he didn’t finish the quote just let his voice die out. Darcy realized the footage continued and looked down rewinding it a bit. The camera angle had shifted again. The workers were backed up but she paused it. Looked up at Agent Sitwell then stood up grabbed a kleenex. He was frozen to the spot looking at the floor, she blew her nose. “Just come out when you’re done watching.” He closed the door again.
There wasn’t much else to the footage, the office workers kept working on their tablets they went back in the direction of the hallway and then Darcy realized they were in lobby/reception area of the building. Wherever these offices were the space must have been tiny maybe even a temporary outpost. It got quiet as they launched a final bid into the hallway to watch for any more hostiles and retrieve some more supplies. They passed around rations from the supply closet everyone finished putting on armor. The bandaged woman was passing out against the wall. Fifteen more minutes and they were told that someone was coming back to pick them up after they were done dealing with whatever it was. “We’ve got able bodies here we can help.”
“Stay there, keep doing what you’re doing, keep being our eyes and ears. Inspect the intruders for any clues you can find. Call out anymore information you may have.”
No help was coming and when the bandaged woman came to they lied to her saying help would come soon. In the hallway there was some movement as two agents inspected the body of the intruder and dictated their findings. methodically to another who typed.
“There’s nothing else to watch, but no one has edited the footage. I can take you back now.” Sitwell was back, offered her a hand up. Darcy was very aware of her need to readjust her skirt and having to uncross her legs and that she did need to use his hand to rise from the couch. She kept thinking of the agents running over the barricade, Agent Sitwell had been wearing a suit in the footage but now he wore a blue SHIELD uniform the kind that people on the helicarriers wore. She was going to get one! she’d scoffed at that, when they took her measurements, thinking, when would they ever let me on the helicarrier? But on Agent Sitwell as they walked back she was very conscious of thickness of the chest area and the arms. Her heels making it a little difficult to keep up with his long stride, he had to slow down twice. Every snarky thought kept getting beat down by the little things she kept thinking about the footage and the ease everyone they passed seemed to have in their own suits and the extremely comfortable ugly regulation shoes.
Suits were the new BDUs and when you got promoted you might get the blue helicarrier uniforms or if you were put in even more danger you got the black leather like Director Fury, or Agents Barton and Romanov. And she was pretty sure Agent Coulson’s was some Armani version of the suit with like bulletproof weave.
Darcy never had another clothing infraction.
Chapter 1
The Visit and 5 Infractractions
“Ms. Lewis” Darcy jumped halfway off her bunk even though it was painful business to move at all.
“Agghhhh, I mean,” she peering in the darkness but that voice and the suit that went with it was distinctive. “Agent Coulson, you nearly gave me a heart attack, it’s after lights out.”
“I heard about your own nighttime excursions,” Darcy smirked at his word choice. “Do you want to get kicked out of basic training?”
Darcy blinked at his casual tone because the question made her feel like a deer caught in the headlights. “This place, this its not for me. Cramps my style.”
“Do you know why I recruited you Ms. Lewis?”
“Because I was a liability.” Darcy responded trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She was exhausted and she was getting away with not standing at attention. The lamp that Coulson stood in front of threw his features into shadow but she knew his expression would not have changed, it rarely did unless you looked hard enough. The moment stretched out into the silence and it started to make her itch. “So what are you going to do now? Pack me off and send me to prison so I can keep my mouth shut?” She wanted to say more but she knew she was in too much pain to actually keep her anger burning. More silence.
“God what do you want with me? Why are you even still here? Can’t someone kick me out? ”
“Answer my questions Private Lewis.”
“I don’t want to be here, its hard I’m tired all the time, it hurts, I don’t want any of this! So yeah I wanna get kicked out, I don’t want to be a G-man.” She was glad that she hadn’t burst into tears but she was burnt out and her muscles felt wrung out after the endless pushups she’d had to do for not standing at attention. Coulson shifted sitting on the empty chair. “What else do you want me to say?”
“I’ve come with the exit package. You’ll be done with your basic training and after that you’ll be done with SHIELD.” He reached down pulling out papers from his briefcase. It gleamed bulletproof metal in the lamplight. Darcy snorted but she was afraid to say anything. “That is if you can answer one more question. Do you really want to be in the dark never knowing when alien attacks are coming?”
So he knew about the nightmares, about the way she hated the thought of handling live munitions. She thought hard then because she didn’t want to cry and because....
“I won’t be any safer will I?”
“No one is safe Ms. Lewis. But you can choose, choose to help others know things before they happen or....”
Or submit to the nightmares, be afraid all the time. Even just wondering and never knowing when something on the news was a cover story or not. She stared hard at the exit package in his hands. She ventured a look up at his face, he was unflappable impenetrable. She wanted to ask him so much in this terrible barracks, the wind and rain raging outside she wanted to ask how he stayed unbowed by the cold even though she could see moisture on his face and on his shoes. He checked his watch, got up and left the exit package on her trunk with a pen.
“I’ll leave these here, someone will pick them up in the morning. We are all liabilities Ms. Lewis. You can join us or you can look away.” And he was gone the footsteps heard even after the door was closed. Darcy watched the papers laying down away on her locker, the lights off again she felt them taunting her.
In the morning she was awoken by someone knocking on the door, they retrieved the papers, saying only she should report to the drill sergeant or follow him.
Darcy reported to the drill sergeant.
---------
“Probationary Agent Lewis I count five wardrobe infractions here.”
“These suits seriously suck, I’m just trying to spruce things up.” Like with the killer silk shirts she’d gotten at the thrift store. She had on a cream one that looked almost exactly like the regulation cut.
“Did you feel the need to spruce up your BDUs? Did they also cramp your style?” Darcy was about to say something but hearing her words in Agent Coulson’s mouth gave her pause.
“BDU’s are comfortable,” she said for lack of anything else to say. “They’re also, you know, filled with pockets!” Now she was on a roll, “They were totally comfy and great for carrying snacks and chapstick. One private at boot camp even packed a small book of poetry." Coulson waited patiently. “We both know I’m just going to be an office drone, I mean like what does it matter that I put some heels and a cuter top on?”
“Do you know you’re going to be an office drone?” Coulson asked as an assistant came in handing Coulson a tablet. He scrolled through the video quickly, reset it, passed it to Darcy. “Here watch this. When you’re done here, Agent Sitwell will escort you back to your unit.”
“Yay movies!” she was aiming for sarcastic but as she held the tablet and pressed play, she thought, exactly what does Agent Coulson think would best be conveyed through video instead of words?
“Please sit make yourself comfortable, unless you’re alright standing.” His eyes flicked down to her black pumps, really not stylish but they went with the skirt she’d managed to track down at a thrift store that she’d tried wearing today. She’d left the suit jacket alone only because the silk shirt she’d bought for the cute sweater was at the dry cleaners because of an unfortunate reaction to gun oil it might not even make it. But Coulson’s comment was a challenge and she debated the merits of sitting down on his comfy looking leather couch. It might be hard to get up from the couch but her heels were... Ugh why did he have to leave her with her thoughts instead of just telling her all this?
She sighed, looked around the room staring at the corners of the room where barely perceptible indentations there in the ceiling. “You won ok? I won’t wear heels again. Ouu comfy couch.”
As she settled down into the couch she tried crossing her legs demurely it didn’t work right away and she wasn’t paying attention when an explosion called her attention back to the tablet. She rewound the footage to a minute before the explosion. The office drones weren’t doing much just shuffling papers, working on the computers, making copies, drinking coffee.... And there the explosion erupted from the coffee maker, wait no she slowed down the replay and paused it frame by frame. Somehow the explosion came from the wall and not the coffee pot.
There were no screams just whimpers, everyone reached for their guns, attended to their wounded coworkers and two people grabbed fire extinguishers. No one came to help but someone started first aid and then, gunfire. But it was like no gunfire she’d ever seen. It looked like the phosphorus tracer rounds from the old desert storm news footage that had terrified her as a kid. Except there was no Christiane Amanpour narrating or giving direction. The agents were trying to respond to one of the codes she couldn’t remember yet; half of those still able rushed through exits the injured being attended to while the other half worked furiously on their computers and watched through the massive hole in the wall. It looked like the shots had slowed down for a moment and then without warning intruders streamed through the hole bringing dust and rubble and obscuring the security feed.
The few that didn’t have their guns drawn now did, even the lady on the ground who was bandaged, her face peppered with seeping wounds. They put down two intruders before someone emerged from the exit with a round grenade, they yelled something and everyone dove for cover. It was just a flash bang and everyone beat a hasty retreat into the remaining intact hallway. Once they had cleared out another real grenade was tossed into the room and got the last three intruders and the camera.
Darcy was tense, as the video ended in static. Then it kept rolling but the time stamp was different and the angle was different. It was from the hallway where the remaining workers were huddled, guns still drawn vests and helmets emerging from a hallway closet. Everyone reloaded their magazines strapped on a few more machine guns, got on the walkies and were told essentially to hold their positions. A few crawled back into the main floor and dragged some cubicle partitions and desks to plug up their hallways. Others dragged out a laptop and some phones trying to desperately to figure out what the situation was like around the building, working on maps of the small outpost and yelling instructions through the walkies. The lady that was bleeding was propped up in the hallway closet, someone was still working on her wounds but she waved them away as there was more gunfire and someone pulled out another grenade two other heavily armored agents hopped back over the barricade crouching low and investigating while cover fire was laid down for them.
It was hard to make out the spoken directions over the chaos and the narrowness of the hallway prevented much to be seen of those that had gone back over barricade after a minute.
She was trying to dig into her boot camp experiences and found that they were doing nothing wrong until she caught the order for them to beat a hasty retreat. Some more agents had managed to strap on some vests. Only one came back over the barricade. Darcy felt her cheeks burning the tears falling, they dragged their comrade away his pants torn and revealing a gash on his leg. Three arranged themselves in formation taking turns to lay more cover fire in hopes that the other would come back, while the rest went further into the building towards the exits. Finally there was another intruder that jumped the barricade and the brave office worker fired at him as he lobbed the grenade into the hallway and behind the intruder and was out of the camera view. Just before the explosion hit Darcy caught sight of four more intruders. “You don’t leave a man behind!” she yelled frustrated wiping tears away.
“Her name was Agent Stacy Johnson.” it was Agent Sitwell who spoke from the doorway. “I know you can’t tell from the feed, she’d just uh... she was wearing a helmet and the vest that’s why you didn’t know.” He didn’t look Darcy in the eyes, “I came back from over the barricade she didn’t.”
“Why?” she said before she could stop herself. He looked her in the eyes then and huffed a laugh that sounded suspiciously painful.
“‘Ours not to reason why, Ours but to do...’” he didn’t finish the quote just let his voice die out. Darcy realized the footage continued and looked down rewinding it a bit. The camera angle had shifted again. The workers were backed up but she paused it. Looked up at Agent Sitwell then stood up grabbed a kleenex. He was frozen to the spot looking at the floor, she blew her nose. “Just come out when you’re done watching.” He closed the door again.
There wasn’t much else to the footage, the office workers kept working on their tablets they went back in the direction of the hallway and then Darcy realized they were in lobby/reception area of the building. Wherever these offices were the space must have been tiny maybe even a temporary outpost. It got quiet as they launched a final bid into the hallway to watch for any more hostiles and retrieve some more supplies. They passed around rations from the supply closet everyone finished putting on armor. The bandaged woman was passing out against the wall. Fifteen more minutes and they were told that someone was coming back to pick them up after they were done dealing with whatever it was. “We’ve got able bodies here we can help.”
“Stay there, keep doing what you’re doing, keep being our eyes and ears. Inspect the intruders for any clues you can find. Call out anymore information you may have.”
No help was coming and when the bandaged woman came to they lied to her saying help would come soon. In the hallway there was some movement as two agents inspected the body of the intruder and dictated their findings. methodically to another who typed.
“There’s nothing else to watch, but no one has edited the footage. I can take you back now.” Sitwell was back, offered her a hand up. Darcy was very aware of her need to readjust her skirt and having to uncross her legs and that she did need to use his hand to rise from the couch. She kept thinking of the agents running over the barricade, Agent Sitwell had been wearing a suit in the footage but now he wore a blue SHIELD uniform the kind that people on the helicarriers wore. She was going to get one! she’d scoffed at that, when they took her measurements, thinking, when would they ever let me on the helicarrier? But on Agent Sitwell as they walked back she was very conscious of thickness of the chest area and the arms. Her heels making it a little difficult to keep up with his long stride, he had to slow down twice. Every snarky thought kept getting beat down by the little things she kept thinking about the footage and the ease everyone they passed seemed to have in their own suits and the extremely comfortable ugly regulation shoes.
Suits were the new BDUs and when you got promoted you might get the blue helicarrier uniforms or if you were put in even more danger you got the black leather like Director Fury, or Agents Barton and Romanov. And she was pretty sure Agent Coulson’s was some Armani version of the suit with like bulletproof weave.
Darcy never had another clothing infraction.