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They each took one, by unspoken agreement. After Fury threw down his challenge, they just couldn’t leave them there on the table.
Initially, Steve kept his in his wallet, after it had dried. Crumpled, imperfect, the not quite familiar face obscured by a wash of red-turned-brown, he thought it would keep him humble, and remind him that a man didn’t have to be blessed by science, wealth or extraordinary talents to still be a hero. Until that blond reporter with a thing for Stark noticed and asked if he kept all the creepy mementos his fans sent him. Unable to explain to his new, modern countrymen for whom death was an infrequent visitor, to people who grew up with smaller wars and plagues that were caught from lovers instead of walking through grimy streets and crawling through filthy trenches, he put it in his nightstand drawer, marking pages in his Bible, along with the grainy printouts of Peggy and Bucky that Natasha had helped him find on Ancestry.com. He had never been able to bring himself to sign it, no matter how much Agent Coulson would have wanted that. The mark of the blood was too indelible.
Maria didn’t take hers from the table, but found it in his locker, having fallen from the pack and into an empty shoe when the rest were taken. Unblemished, near mint, it smelled faintly of bubblegum and leather. She had clipped it to her refrigerator to bring to the funeral, but was never certain if she had forgotten it intentionally or not. Slowly, as the grief grew less sharp, it was buried under bills, appointment reminders and old take out menus, until one day, weeks later, she cleared off the mountain of paper, tossing it into the trash with barely a glance. Realizing her mistake the next morning, she spent three tearful hours rummaging through the dumpster behind her building, half from renewed anguish, half from the terror of mortality still unacknowledged. Years later, moving from one apartment to the next, she found it under the refrigerator, still like new. The bubblegum and leather smell had gone, long faded into dust.
Thor took his home to Asgard, and held it up as proof of his adventures in Midgard. After being passed through countless hands and revelries, many of them drunken, the small token of the strength of the humans began to fray, marred by small creases and more than one drop of wine to match the blood. Upon sobering up in the wee hours after another grand feast, Thor Odinson found his stuck to the bottom of his boot. Chastened by his lack of care, he commissioned a grand painting to hang in the Warrior’s Hall; the Avengers of Midgard. Darcy was able to provide him with a group photograph for the artists to work from, and was even able to add in the fallen through some miraculous spell called Photoshop. Still, after spreading his tales so widely, he had a great deal of trouble convincing the artists that Late and Glorious Son of Coul was not depicted on the card that was eventually mounted into the frame, but was in fact the short one and had typically worn such bland suits. The painters took artistic license with the clothes.
Tony picked his up off the table, holding it gingerly until it had dried completely as he stared at the bloody smear left behind. Silently, he had thought about Yinsen, cellists, and how he was going to break the news to Pepper. Feeling somewhat foolish, he tucked it into the small compartment in his suit where he normally kept his platinum card (even Iron Man needed to eat), and carried it with him through the entire battle, feeling the weight of it, even through the mechanized armor. Pepper found it when he finally managed to get himself and the remains of his suit home, and the look on his face told her the news for him. After the funeral, Tony made a private toast or five to the fallen Agent, then did his best to stop thinking about the small cardboard rectangle that celebrated America’s champion instead of the quiet man who died for what he believed in. He was almost successful in drowning out the memories and regrets until one caffeine-fueled night when he came up from his lab to find the always underfoot, forever unfinished Captain America shield mounted on the living room wall, flanked by the framed card and a portrait of Coulson holding the prototype. He wondered how many hours Pepper had spent going through security footage to find that shot of their late friend, but decided against asking JARVIS for a tally.
Bruce took his reluctantly, not really wanting to, but keenly aware that it would offend the others if he didn’t. It’s not that he hated the man exactly, he had barely known him at all. But Coulson had been an agent of SHIELD, and as polite, and frankly goofy as the man had seemed, he was one of them, one who worked behind the scenes and made deals in the shadows and hid dark secrets behind opaque RayBans. He was someone who had people like Bruce killed. And now he was gone, and it was generally not a good idea for him to keep around gleeful reminders of dead people who had done him wrong, considering his curious condition. But it was only a card, and knowing him, he could conveniently lose it the next time he had another incident or had to evacuate quickly. He soon surprised himself however, by discovering he didn’t actually want to lose it. Maybe it was the niggling memory of Natasha telling him that SHIELD had kept other factions off his back. Maybe it was Sitwell’s half-drunk recounting of how he and Coulson had intentionally sabotaged negotiations to recruit that asshole Blonski. Maybe it was the memory of the woman sobbing in the hall at the viewing who looked so much like Betty from a distance; he had never been sure if she had been Coulson’s sister or his girlfriend. Regardless, some of his ever-present anger melted as it became apparent that SHIELD was run by imperfect humans, no less or more monstrous than he was. And to everyone else, it was what pulled their team together, a team that accepted even him. It came to be something else. Knowing he could not keep it, but no longer wanting to throw it away, he briefly considered eating it and symbolically holding it within himself forever, but no amount of security in his sexual orientation or confidence in his hulked out immune system could get him to actually ingest another man’s dried bodily fluids. In the end, he sent it to Betty, the woman who still held his heart and humanity, if not his salvation.
Sitwell didn’t get one. Fury had intended for them to yoke the divas but Sitwell didn’t have a problem being a team player, and there were none left in the locker by the time the dust had settled. Instead, Sitwell got an unwelcome promotion (more responsibility, though not everything Phil had had to do), and the unpleasant task of cleaning out Coulson’s office in the Triskelion after those with higher security clearance removed all of the sensitive files. In the bottom desk drawer was a small bottle of vodka and a Captain America coffee mug. Sitwell remembered seeing that mug only after the worst of the worst crises had passed. Phil would go get a cup of decaf, and apparently would add a shot of something stronger, before passing out on his small sofa because he was too exhausted to get himself home safely, even on the Metro. The mug lasted much longer than the vodka, and when Sitwell took to using it for his afternoon jolt when he started getting hit with all the crap that Phil had always made look so easy, no one said a word. When he stopped using it, no one noticed.
Natasha took two; one for Barton and one for herself. The one she kept had a smiling Steve Rogers in full Captain America regalia reaching for a little girl’s cat stuck in a tree. The cat had a livid, pissed off expression that screamed ‘If this costumed freak touches me, I’m going to tear him apart.’ She had practiced the same face many times, both in the mirror and on Coulson. Like the captain in the card, Coulson hadn’t batted an eye, though he had not been oblivious to the threat. When she had first joined the organization, she had thought of Coulson as everyone else did on sight, an over-glorified secretary who hopped to it when Fury said ‘jump’ and never made a decision for himself. She had been insulted to be assigned a handler who was a scrawny, panty-waisted pencil-pusher whose greatest job skills seemed to be kissing the director’s ass, issuing orders from mission control and talking out of his butt rather than attacking the enemy. When he had brought her the small, velvet-lined wooden box, she couldn’t decide if it was a clumsy come on or a surveillance device. (Careful investigation found no bugs, but neither was there any additional behavior that could be misconstrued as flirtation, so the awkward mystery had remained). When the other agents began their laughingly predictable hazing, she decided she would rather be stripped barefoot and naked to parade around the streets of Moscow on New Year’s Eve before she would say anything about it to that useless prick.
She had handled it well initially, taking everything the bullies had to dish out, but when they struck too close to home, she had made the mistake of openly retaliating in front of her handler. The black-suited elbow had moved almost casually as it connected with her throat and by the time she had gotten her breath back she was bound, hand and foot to a visitor’s chair in Coulson’s office. The only detail that had made it remotely bearable was that Sharon had been similarly tied to the other one. He never asked Natasha to explain or justify her actions. He simply asked Sharon why she had been wearing Natasha’s diamond earrings. Sharon, as much a victim of initiation as she, had had no idea that the diamonds had been real, had been someone else’s, had been the only possession Natasha had of her previous life, and had not simply been a casual gift from a misogynistic muscle-head commando masquerading as potential boyfriend material. A few mouse clicks to confirm the theft in the security feed were followed by quick consultation with Director Fury over speakerphone during which Coulson outlined in exacting detail why the perpetrators should have their privileges revoked, their ranks demoted and their asses handed to them on a platter. Nick Fury simply agreed and only after the call was over did Coulson come back around the desk to untie and dismiss them as if it had all been a minor misunderstanding about office supplies. Sharon had fled quickly, mouthing still terrified apologies, but Natasha stood still, staring down at her handler who had returned to his own chair to begin filling out the necessary documentation to remove the miscreants from his list of problems to deal with. When she made no move to speak after several minutes, he asked her if she hadn’t liked the box, and she realized it had simply been a token to welcome her to his team. A jewelry box for a woman whose only possessions were her lethal fighting skills and a pair of earrings. Natasha ignored the question, demanding he explain how he had known the baubles were so important to her.
He had settled back in his chair to look up into her eyes. “We keep close the things that remind us who we are, who we were, and who we want to be.” Then he turned back to his computer, his focus back on his work, and never spoke of the incident again.
Natasha kept her card in the wooden box, next to her mother’s earrings, to remind herself that some rescuers wore wool suits, not spandex, and if she learned to pay enough attention, she might someday pay it forward.
She had tried to wipe the blood off the one she took for Barton, but it had already begun to clot by the time she had gotten to them. Pickings had been slim, but she didn’t think she could have chosen a better one if she had tried. The front had a brightly grinning Captain America holding up his shield against a big blue sky and flag, and a single, narrow ribbon of blood marred the back side. Exuberant, even cheery in its unapologetic patriotism, it perfectly expressed the rare giddy flashes of Coulson’s hidden inner life. Out of all of the Avengers, Clint had known him the longest, and had had the privilege of seeing it the most, in the downtime on long stake outs and clandestine missions. Sitwell had run the tech while Coulson called the shots, but Barton was the one who actually had to take those shots. Phil had been able to count on Natasha or Sitwell or Hill, but he actually had to place his trust in Barton and the sniper’s judgment; the respect was mutual.
They had all agreed not to tell Barton until after the battle, but Natasha knew he must have suspected something was wrong when he finally had time to think about it. Coulson was not known for radio silence.
She had meant to tell him when the hole in the sky had closed, and the whole mess had gone from epic battle to clean up and recovery. But Stark, damn him, had managed to avert a nuclear disaster and had lived, so it really hadn’t seemed unreasonable to indulge his shawarma whim. By the time they got there they were so exhausted that conversation, especially that one, had just been too much. Then everyone had limped to their separate bolt holes for the night, most of them on the half-crippled Helicarrier. She and Clint had woken the next morning to the smell of unwashed bodies, and they knew they really needed the shower, but Natasha didn’t want Clint to find out by accident. So while the water heated up, she told him the man that had taken care of him on nearly every mission for the past decade had been killed by a rogue demigod before the battle had even started. Then she held him under the spray, washing away the grime and blood while he howled out his grief and guilt. Clint would spend the next week listlessly pouring over the casualty lists, as if hoping they would melt away like Loki’s possession. After the funeral, he finally threw the printouts away.
The card he kept.
At first he kept it in his pocket in a small leather holder, the kind with a transparent window that people kept ID cards or transit passes in. The smiling captain did not face the world through the clear plastic, rather the bloodstain did. Clint supposed it was morbid, but he kept it for Phil, not Steve, and it seemed wrong to hide Phil away like that. Neither his psychiatrist, nor Natasha found that particularly healthy, but they didn’t make him stop either.
After three months he woke one morning to find someone had covered the card with a wallet-sized photograph of Phil, that familiar almost smile just teasing at his lips. Clint had seen the photo many times before; it was the picture SHIELD used for Phil’s fake photo IDs. No one admitted to doing it and whoever it was hadn’t taken the card, so Clint didn’t complain. It also looked a lot less weird when people saw it.
After six months Clint was cleared for missions, and when he almost lost his keepsake somewhere above the waters off Oahu, he decided it was time to stop carrying around his security blanket. When he got back to New York, he went to the Brooklyn Flea Market with Steve and found a vintage picture frame, designed to hold an assortment of small photos all together. He put the card (Steve facing out) in one corner, then put Phil at the top, next to a carefully cropped promotional advertisement of Tina the Fat Lady from Carson’s Traveling Circus. He filled the rest of the small frames with black and white candid shots of his teammates, carefully chosen to make them hard to identify: Natasha, Tony, Bruce, Thor and Steve. The largest frame he saved for a group photo of Laura and the kids.
When Cooper asked who the man in the suit was, Clint told him it was his dad. When he told the children stories about their grandparents in his heart, he hoped Phil didn’t mind having Tina for a ‘wife.’
Nick Fury took a card, but he didn’t keep it. A man like him couldn’t afford to keep mementos. It was a much bigger challenge to keep the memories at bay. The only card he could keep was the ace up his sleeve. Phil’s card would be one he’d have to play.
Melinda didn’t take a card. She thought Phil’s cards were silly, childish and overly-sentimental. She had told him so, but she had never teased him about it. They all had their heroes and ideals and childhood dreams; Phil just kept his longer than most.
Melinda couldn’t have taken a card, even if she had wanted one. Phil had taken his cards with him on the Helicarrier, and she wasn’t a field agent anymore. She wasn’t in the field to take a card, and she wasn’t in the field to watch his back. And so he was stabbed in the back, and even though the real agents of SHIELD and the Heroes of New York had fought back the alien forces and won the day without her, her world was now an even darker place than it had been before.
Ten days after the battle, Maria Hill stopped by her desk and dropped off a small box keyed to her thumbprint, coded top secret, for her eyes only. When she opened it in a secure intelligence room, it wasn’t the next quarterly budget. Instead, it contained a thin card printed with a face made eerily familiar by the continuing CNN coverage. It was clean and well-cared for, clear of any stains or creases. She wanted to crush it, to tear it, to grind it beneath her boot heel. She did not. Someone had sent it for a reason.
Beneath the card was a folded printout of a time and a hangar number. Nick Fury’s distinct scrawl slashed across the bottom, and when she read the note, she almost forgot to breathe.
The vacation is over. The captain isn’t the only one who has been spending time on ice.
Nick Fury wasn’t the only one who knew how to play his cards. Melinda gave hers to Dr. Streiten when they met to discuss the patient. It was still in his desk drawer when SHIELD fell. May had no need for childish things, but she knew how to make a threat.
Phil never got a chance to rebuild his collection. He had been understandably angry when Nick admitted what had happened to them, and frankly at the time, it looked as if his boss was starting to think it would have been a better idea to blow up what was left of the Helicarrier than admit what he had done to the cards. Phil had almost forgiven him for it by the time Skye had renewed her “friendship” with the Rising Tide. He had forgotten about it completely when he met the VIP at the Guest House. He got over it when Nick showed up at just the right time with his favorite gun. Finding out that Garrett was the Clairvoyant reminded him that in battle, fighting for good didn’t necessarily mean you didn’t have to do bad things sometimes.
After Trip died on his watch, he just didn’t have it in him to care anymore. Besides, it would have made it awkward if he ever got a chance to work with the Avengers again.
Well, more awkward.
When he woke up the morning after the surgery to clean up his arm stump, Skye was waiting with a package from Sam Koenig at the “other base.” She helped him open it, and gave him a worried look when he laughed in delight.
The box contained a small album full of cards. Skye looked them over, mystified, while she turned the pages for him. The first dozen or so were all of Captain America, and looked kind of old-fashioned, based on the print quality. A few had minor wear, but most were pristine.
The next six looked to be printed with newer technology, but they were done in the same style, this time of all of the Heroes of New York. The next three were nearly identical; the pictures were the same, but they were labeled Eric, Billy and Sam Koenig, respectively. After that, the cards depicted a mix of people, some Skye knew, and some she didn’t: Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Iron Patriot, Sam Wilson, Pepper Potts, Vision, Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. The rest of the plastic sleeves were empty, save for the last, which contained a note in Barton’s handwriting.
Now that we know, we can finish your set with the rest of your team. Nick said you were finally going to visit, but you’re being treated for some slight foxing around the edges. After Stark and Tasha authenticate you, stop by my place. You know where it is. Your grandkids want to meet you.
“Grandkids?” Skye raised an eyebrow. “You have grandkids you forgot to tell me about?”
Phil blinked down at the note, flabbergasted. “Damn TAHITI! I think I forgot to tell me about them!”