A/N: I'd like to give fair warning on this one: the plot bunnies would not leave me alone. Blame them. I'm not sure I know the characters well enough (with the exception of a couple of them that we've met before) to be comfortable writing them just yet, so please excuse an OOC. I'm obsessive about keeping characters in character, so please let me know if you see it so that I can tweak it. Also, with work picking up, I probably will not be able to update daily as I used to. Apologies.

Oh, and as a secondary note, this is within the same head-cannon as my series, in that the events of Phil and Loki's exchange of information in Fractured Reflections takes place. You have been warned.

Living on Your Knees

"There's no poetry in my soul,

Just a list of lies I've told.

And I don't know how much longer I can hold on."

Stitches, Young Guns.

It was just a box. A box that seemed to react ever so slightly to its surroundings, but harmless nevertheless. That was the report that Fitz and Simmons were busy scribbling into their electronic notes when Skye peeked around the corner.

"Are we taking that thing into the plane?" she asked cautiously.

"As of now I don' know why not," Fitz answered as he scanned some of the sparse data the little dwarf bots had returned. "Looks like a bit of an overreaction to it."

"I don't think there's such thing as an overreaction after last time," Skye grumbled, eyeing the little cube suspiciously, almost like she expected it to explode for no reason at all.

"Don't be like that. It's rather... sweet," Simmons almost cooed, reaching over to run a gloved hand across the seemingly smooth outer shell. Small veins pulsed faintly with blue light as she did and it made a soft sound. "See? It purrs."

"Or it's thinking if the best way to open on up and take your hand down its hidden throat," the hacker growled. "Is it alive?"

Both scientist tilted their head, mirroring the other's actions. "Sort of," they finally said together.

"How can you be sort of alive?"

"Alive or dead or somewhere in between, have you cleared it?" Ward's irritated voice filled the small area they were working in. He glared. "And in English. Is this thing going to blow a hole in the side of the plane?"

"We haven't seen anything to make us think it will. It's energy levels are low and steady, but we've only had a couple hours with it. "

"And that's all Coulson is giving you. You knew that."

Simmons frowned and Fitz looked insulted by the clipped words, but neither exploded at Ward like they would have just a few weeks before. They were getting better, if for that.

"Least we're not getting shot at this time," the engineer grumbled.

"Have you seriously never watched a movie in your life?" Skye demanded. "Don't say things like that."

"Coulson and Agent May are waiting. Would you two pack it up and come on?" Ward snapped.

"What caught hold of him today?" Simmons asked in a hushed tone, opening the ready containment unit. It let out a quiet hiss and any residual "purring" ceased as it was eased in, the light-veins disappearing and the small cube going entirely dark.

"So is there a reason Coulson wouldn't come down?" Skye asked as they started towards the jeep that would take them to the plane.

"Can't say for sure."

"I heard a rumour about him not being allowed on this island for some political reason. Sure it's a bunch of rubbish," Fitz said with a shrug.

"Like most rumours that float around the academy levels about high end operatives," Ward piped in as he jumped over the door rather than opening it. With the ease that he moved the others thought it might have taken longer to open it than to jump. He turned his gaze towards their resident consultant. "If you hadn't guessed already, Agent Phil Coulson is a bit of a legend to some of the new kids."

"Don't let him fool you," Fitz said as he carefully placed the containment unit with the little cube inside of it into the seat and followed after it, pulling it protectively into his lap. "You should have seen the look on his face when he found out Coulson wasn't dead."

"You didn't see the look on my face," Ward grumbled.

"But we all heard about it," Simmons chirped with a bright smile.

The field agent gave an irritable snort and started the jeep. It had been a long forty-eight hours of constant moving and while he'd never admit it out loud, he was looking forward to a shower and some sleep. The report of the 084 had come in directly following a case of much lesser importance, sending them straight into the air. He'd taken to the notes of what little they knew. It was an unknown object discovered on an island so small that he hadn't even heard of it. It was buried in the sand, they were told, deep as if it had crashed there and simply sunk many years ago. Maybe it had.

Now the local geniuses had OK'd it and he'd be able to meet his fluffy pillow face first if he so chose, and he was pretty sure that's what he'd settled on. He was so set on the idea that he hardly took the time to acknowledge Coulson - looking more like he'd spent the last few hours staring at a screen on a conference call than finding ways to be exiled off an island that didn't house a single native person on it - as he came into garage level. He gave a half nod, half salute as he moved past, only being stopped by a thin hand grabbing his wrist and it was everything he could do not to spin around and clock the person across the head on instinct.

"Hey, if you go running off you can't give me hell later on training."

Ward blinked at Skye, his brain clicking into slow gear and finally grinding through her meaning as he glanced down at his wrist watch. 1600. Training. Damn. "You've got the basics. I shouldn't have to babysit you through every step. Get in there and get to work."

She stood staring at him even as he all but stalked out of the hanger, leaving his teammates and boss behind. Skye turned back to see Coulson offer her an easy shrug and continue to speak with the two scientists about their new pet project. "Get it secured and get strapped down. May wants to get us in the air and we'll get it to a secure facility."

"We're not going to slingshot it, are we?" Simmons asked, her voice not doing much to hide the worry.

"Attached that fast? We don't know for sure yet. Get it strapped down and we'll get into the air."

"I can't help but think there's something deeper inside that the probes aren't picking up on."

Leo Fitz looked up from his notes that he'd been working on and glanced over at his partner. She had been staring at the contained cube for the past half hour as if she'd cause whatever she thought was inside to leap out simply by wishing it to happen.

"If there was something to find, they would have found it," Fitz answered.

"I don't know, they don't seem to react well to it. Did they seem a bit-"

"Sluggish? Yeah, I noticed that too."

"I mean, Happy never drains that fast and Doc's all but powered down."

"Bashful didn't even give up the data before he quit on me."

The two SHIELD scientists stopped and looked at each other, both allowing their gazes to trail down to the cube in unison. "That's not something we miss," Simmons murmured.

"Not in a million years," Fitz agreed.

Jemma gave a short laugh, rolling her eyes. "That's just silly. Nothing in our readings has shown any sign of anything that would alter awareness or-"

"We should let Agent Coulson know."

"Didn't we already?"

"No. We just started talking about it."

"No, I'm sure we called him half an hour ago about it." Simmons stood, starting towards the communicator against the wall. "See? There's a log right here… There's nothing. I could have sworn we'd called him."

"Called who?" Coulson asked from the door. "Because I've been waiting for the two of you to give me your update on this thing. We're at a point that we need to make a decision if we're just taking it to a secure facility or if we're taking it to a slingshot location."

"Seems fine, sir," Fitz said with a shrug. "Nothing out of the usual."

"No, there was something. We were just talking about it," Simmons snapped.

Coulson stood in the doorway, hazel eyes bouncing back and forth between his two genius scientist who had gone from normal to squabbling in the matter of seconds. They'd begun shouting at each other now, both leaned over the table with the container in the middle of them. The elder agent stepped forward, careful and silent as he reached the edge of the table and saw a faint glow from the containment box. The blue light was pulsing, echoing softly off the glass that surrounded it and there was a low rumble that was only audible to someone that was listening. "How long has it been doing this?" he asked, effectively breaking their spat mid-shout.

"Doing what?" they asked together and looked to where their boss pointed down at the box.

"It's purring again," Simmons whispered and Coulson quirked an eyebrow.

"Out."

"What?"

A sigh escaped the elder man. "Something's… wrong here. It's clouding your judgement. Out of the room and and I'll let May know we don't have any other choice than to make our way to a slingshot location."

"You can't!"

Even Fitz seemed surprised with the sharp reaction in his partner and his eyes widened when she made a grab for the containment box, fingers just looping around the handles when Coulson took it from her, his usual easy demeanor less so as he barked for them to both get out again. The whole room shook, sending three pairs of eyes wide and the box was instantly released, clattering down to the table, small cracks running along the box.

"Lock the room down," Coulson order. "It's feeding off live energy."

The three agents barely made it out the door when the box that had been containing what should have been a fairly harmless cube shattered outward, a faint blue light pulsing behind it. As the energy slammed against the door, nearly knocking him off his feet, Coulson took a moment to think about how he hated 084's. Well, hate was a strong word. He hadn't hated Thor's hammer. That had been an interesting adventure that had led them on even more interesting adventures, but the last couple had been terrible. He really wasn't a fan of the trend.

"Coulson?" May's voice came over the intercomm.

"What is it? We've got a bit of a problem."

"Bigger than you might think. Something's thrown the plane's systems out of joint. I have no outgoing or incoming signals. Only internal."

Phil gave a low sound of frustration, mind spinning. He turned his attention to the two very frazzled looking scientists. "Will this door hold?"

"It should."

"Should or will?"

"Sir, we've been looking at this all wrong from the beginning."

"Yeah. I'd say it wanted you to."

"What is that thing, Agent Coulson?" Simmons asked, her voice small.

"I've got an idea that I'd rather be wrong. Just keep it contained. I have faith that the two of you can do that. And keep each other accountable. Don't let anyone in there."

"Yes sir."

"Sir, if you don't mind me asking-"

Coulson flashed a smile. "I'm going to find someone that might have a better clue as to how to keep this under wraps until we can get it off our planet."

Fitz and Simmons didn't bother trying to argue that the outgoing communications were down. Somehow with Coulson things like that never seemed to matter.

TBC

A/n: So... I have to admit that third episode into the series that I'm a little disappointed. There was no Thor commercial. Yep, that's the only disappointment thus far.