Chapter Text
Appa lifts his enormous shaggy head to look at the door. He barks twice and lays back down.
Rylie scratches behind his ears absently, listening hard, staring unseeing at the carpet of her bedroom. Tony’s been on the phone for nine minutes. He’s been shouting for seven of those minutes. The walls are nearly soundproof, but Rylie’s found that if she sits in this corner with the door 38 degrees open, the hallway has an acoustic bounce effect on noises from the living room, and she’s almost got a handle on the words.
She thinks she heard “evaluate” earlier. She also thinks she heard a number of words that she’s been told she shouldn’t repeat. She’s pretty sure she heard Tony say “national security” like someone would say “yeast infection.” She definitely heard something heavy fall over.
Appa doesn’t seem worried, so Rylie judges the situation safe for now. Tony just breaks things sometimes, Clint said to her once. Bruce had overheard and said something like “Ultron,” but Rylie didn’t want to go down that road just yet. Not when she still wasn’t too secure here in the tower.
She scoots a half inch to the left. Appa heaves a sigh and follows her to put his head back in her lap. The sound finally comes clearer, like fine-tuning a radio.
“… even care what Fury said,” Tony’s spitting, and Rylie’s never heard him drop all his humor and snark and just sound mad like this. “You tell Fury to call me, and I’ll tell him where he can stick his evaluation. The kid stays here. …Fine. Fine. Call S.H.I.E.L.D. Call Homeland Security, too. Call the damn Navy for all I care. But I’ll warn you one time, Councilwoman, you don’t want to try this by force. Not with the people in this house.”
That… was a lot to unpack. Rylie’s suspected that she posed a legal tough spot for everybody for a while now, but anytime she voiced her concerns she was dismissed with a “Don’t worry about that.” Now she’s not so sure.
Appa looks up at her uncertainly. Rylie realizes she’s clenching her fists and forces them open.
Tony’s hung up, apparently having gotten the last word, but Rylie can feel the faint rhythm of pacing footsteps in the floor beneath her and can imagine Stark running his hands through his hair, toying with a situation in his head like he would toy with a new molecule.
Appa’s head swivels back to the door and Rylie hears someone else coming down the hall, quieter footfalls than Tony’s, and Bucky Barnes knocks at her 38 degrees open door. Appa’s tail slowly starts to thump against the wall.
“Got a minute?” Bucky asks. His face is the carefully neutral of a trained assassin, but the lines around his eyes look deeper than usual.
Rylie doesn’t answer, but she gets up. Appa comes with her.
-
Steve Rogers rubs his eyes. He looks tired. He always looks at least a little tired, but this is a different kind of tired. Like he’s just come back from a mission that didn’t end well.
“S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to talk to you,” he starts, choosing his words carefully. That ramps up Rylie’s anxiety more than if he’d been blunt about it. “They said they’ll be sending an agent for what they call an evaluation.”
Evaluation is never a good word. Rylie nods.
Steve seems to relax a little. “It’s not a big deal,” he goes on, even though Rylie’s sure he’s trying to convince himself of it. “They’re just going to ask you some questions. Won’t take more than an hour or so.”
Rylie knows he has no way of knowing that. The fact that he’s trying to put her at ease is making her palms sweat. “What kind of questions?”
Steve shoots a quick glance at Bucky, sitting on the far side of the room, not even pretending not to eavesdrop. “About the Center,” Steve continues. “About your time there, what your instructions were. A lot of people have been trying to take them down for a long time, and your intel is going to help them dismantle the whole operation.”
Rylie can tell it’s not the whole story. “Okay. When?”
Bucky answers before Steve can. “They said they were sending someone over tonight. We’re all going to be here just in case.” To Steve, he rolls his eyes. “Your beating around the bush is making her more nervous.”
Tonight. Okay. She can work with that. “What else do they want from me?” she asks Bucky. She likes Steve, she does, but Bucky knows her like Natasha does. Like Clint does.
Bucky shrugs, lopsidedly. He’s still not used to the new Wakandan arm, Rylie can tell by the way he compensates for weight that isn’t there anymore. “You used to work for a hostile group,” he says. “They want to make sure you weren’t brainwashed to be a sleeper cell. If they decide you are, they’ll take you somewhere. But that won’t happen.”
Thinking of being taken from here makes Rylie’s blood run a little cold. “Why not?”
“Well, are you a sleeper agent?” Bucky asks, blunt as a spoon.
“No.”
“Then they won’t need to take you anywhere. And even if they tried, you think we’d let them?”
Rylie shakes her head.
“Exactly. It’s gonna be fine.”
She hopes he’s right.
-
The man they send is someone she’s never met, but she can’t say the same for anyone else. She can hear at least two sharp gasps when he steps out of the elevator. He’s unassuming, receding hairline, wearing a suit and tie, a folder stamped CLASSIFIED under his arm. That’s all Rylie can deduce before everyone starts talking over each other.
“Phil?”
“Coulson –”
“– saw you die –”
“– doing here?”
“–oes Fury know about –”
The man stands and smiles a little ruefully until the talking pauses. “Hi. Yeah. Fury knows. Don’t worry about it. I’m here for the evaluation.” He finally catches Rylie’s eye and smiles less ruefully. “I’m Agent Coulson. Can we talk?”
Rylie nods, more than a little caught off guard by the group’s reaction. Tony isn’t even trying to hide it, looking wildly between Agent Coulson and everyone else. “I’m sorry, did I miss something?” he says a bit hysterically. “Phil? Phil Coulson, Agent Phil Coulson, is standing in my house looking super not dead anymore and he just… FRIDAY?”
“Agent Coulson is not dead,” FRIDAY confirms from the ceiling.
“Where’ve you been?” Clint Barton demands, though there’s not much heat to it. He sounds surprised, sure, but there’s a bone-deep relief he’s trying to hide. Rylie relaxes a little more. If Clint knows this guy, she’ll trust his judgment.
“Tahiti.” Coulson’s smile goes tight. “It’s a magical place. Now can we please start this? I have places to be.” He motions for Rylie. “And… can we have some privacy, please? I do have to do this with no one else in the room.”
Rylie looks back over her shoulder. Tony’s got the thrusters from his suit on, and he’s trying very hard to hide them behind his back. Natasha sits sideways in an armchair, cleaning her gun like she does it every day (which she does). Barton’s slipped one of his half-dozen knives back in his belt. Bruce still has his arms crossed, a vein on his forehead standing out. He’s not convinced that’s really Phil Coulson. Whoever that is.
Vision rises up through the floor, cape flowing. “If you require privacy,” he says while Coulson starts violently, nearly dropping the file.
“Hell, I wasn’t ready for that,” he manages, interrupting Vision. “But yes, we do. Romanov, put that away.”
“Weapons need to be cleaned,” Nat says, closing one eye to inspect the magazine. “In case I need them.”
“Stop being threatening and point me to a room you won’t eavesdrop in.”
“Oh, we’re gonna eavesdrop.” Tony folds his arms like Bruce, then remembers the thrusters and hurriedly puts his hands behind his back again. “Doesn’t matter what you or Fury say.”
Coulson sighs. He looks every bit a weary, put-upon businessman. If Rylie didn’t see a telltale lump where a handgun hangs by his pocket, concealed by the well-tailored suit, she might write him off as nonthreatening. But she follows him to the kitchen, giving Nat what she hopes is a reassuring look. Barton nods at her over Natasha’s shoulder and gives her a quick sign, so fast she’s sure no one else catches it. Safe, his hands say.
She sits at the table and watches Agent Coulson flip through his file, sitting at the other end. “You got a last name, Rylie?” he asks pleasantly.
She shrugs. As much as Barton seems to trust the guy, she’s apprehensive. The situation feels a bit like her old evaluations at the Center, waiting to be judged and told where all her flaws are.
“Mmm.” Coulson’s pen scratches on the paper. Rylie doesn’t remember a lot of her Intelligence Recon lessons, but she thinks he just wrote “none” by her name. “Do you remember how old you were when you were approached by the Center?”
Rylie fidgets. “Young,” she says vaguely. She doesn’t remember much of her life before the Center. Cold winters and hot summers and clothes that never fit right and too many missed dinners. “They didn’t approach me. I would stay there after school. Then one day no one came to pick me up. The Counselors took me downstairs.”
More scratching. “And what happened downstairs?”
Rylie shrugs again. “I didn’t leave. Not until Clint found me down there.”
“That was years later.”
Rylie nods. Agent Coulson’s mouth hardens into a thin line, but he keeps writing. Moments tick past.
He puts the pen down again. “Did any of the Counselors tell you what your purpose was?”
Rylie looks down at the table, trying to organize her thoughts. The Counselors told her a million things and expected her to remember them all. “We had combat training,” she recalls. “More often than other training. Some kids were trained in diplomacy, but not me. Sometimes they’d disappear. They came back a few times but mostly we didn’t see those kids again.” She pauses again, takes a deep breath. “They didn’t tell us our purposes. Just what to do.”
“What did they tell you to do?” The pen is in his hand again.
“Reconnaissance, I think. That’s what they were training me for. Gathering intel and scouting locations. Threat assessments and things like that. Stealth. Combat too.”
Coulson writes for a long time and Rylie wishes she hadn’t mentioned some of that. What if he decides she’s a threat now? What if he tries to take her from the tower?
Coulson sets the pen down and shuts the folder. “Okay. Just a few more questions and we’ll be done.” He smiles at her and the lines around his eyes crinkle. “Did anyone at the Center ever mention S.H.I.E.L.D.?”
“Sometimes. They didn’t talk about those kinds of things around us. But I was a stealth operative.” She risks a quick little smile. “I would hear things.”
Coulson’s smile broadens. “Oh, that’s good. Using their own training against them, that’s smart. What did you hear?”
“I thought it was a rival agency or something. I didn’t think it was part of the government. Before I left, I heard them saying things about the Center in Dubai. That S.H.I.E.L.D. was getting too close.”
Coulson holds up a finger and pulls out a cell phone, taps out a rapid text. From what Rylie can tell, he’d said “We were right about Dubai, Center operational.” Then he sets the phone facedown on the table and turns his attention back to her. “Sorry about that. Just a few more questions. You’re doing just fine.”
“How do you know Clint?” comes out before Rylie can stop it.
Coulson looks a bit taken aback, but then the warm smile spreads back over his face. “I used to be his handler. We worked together for a long time. I remember when he met Romanov. And Thor, for that matter. Get him to tell you that story sometime, he loves telling it.”
Rylie offers back a shy smile. It feels weird on her face.
“Did you get the names of any of the Counselors while you were there? Any of the higher level personnel?”
Rylie has to think about that. “Mostly we were just supposed to call them by one name. Miss Preston, Mister Chandler, and Miss Beatrice were in charge of the Stealth operatives. They were our handlers. But there were more there. None of them had nametags, and if we didn’t know their names we weren’t supposed to talk to them. But,” she adds quickly, seeing Coulson’s face tense with disappointment, “I know they all made at least one trip to Ontario every year to report to the higher-ups. They called it a Sabbatical. I don’t know where or who they went to, though.”
“Ontario.” Coulson jots it down. “That narrows our search down. By a lot.” He flips the folder closed. “I think that’s all we need to know for now, Rylie. Thanks for the talk.”
Rylie’s guard doesn’t go down. “What next?”
Coulson gets up, tucks the folder under his arm, and opens the kitchen door. Peter falls through. “Ow,” he says from the floor.
“We weren’t eavesdropping,” says Vision, hovering just outside the door. “We were just… loitering with functional hearing.”
Coulson rolls his eyes. “We’ll be in touch,” he says to the rest of the team, clustered behind Vision and trying to look casual about it. “I trust that my visit will stay confidential. Not many people know I’m back in the field.”
Tony waves halfheartedly. “Yeah, we’re great at keeping things quiet. Take care of yourself, Agent.”
“Coulson.” Clint Barton leans too casually against the wall by the elevator. “You’re forgetting something.”
“Am I?”
Rylie might be mistaken, but the edge of a smile plays on his face.
“The evaluation. Where do we stand?”
Phil Coulson presses the elevator button. “Oh, that.”
The elevator dings and slides open.
“Yeah, I signed off on that on the drive over here. Did you really think I’d take the kid?”
Relief washes over Rylie. Coulson hadn’t ever intended to take her.
“Evening,” he says and the elevator shuts.
The silence is comfortable and relieved. Then Natasha says, “I should call T'Challa. I asked if he’d smuggle Rylie out to Wakanda in case S.H.I.E.L.D. tried anything and I think he might have sent an armada.”
Clint snickers and Rylie can’t help but giggle too.
She belongs here, and for the first time she really feels like it.