A Pretty Good Punch

by Berzerker_prime

Skye hung back, watching the marines cart off Ward from a discreet distance. She had already watched Mike Peterson walk off into the night after trying to convince him otherwise. She didn't really feel like locking horns with a psycho traitor before he was taken off to where ever they were going to take him.

She hoped it was the same place he had sent Agent Hand.

After Ward had been escorted away, Skye felt okay with approaching Coulson and May. The former gave some instructions to the latter, then May went off somewhere with purpose. Trip was there, too, filling in some of the military personnel that had invaded the Cybertek compound like it was a small, hostile, foreign country.

Coulson spotted her coming and came her direction as she approached.

"Skye," he said, "I thought I said to bring in Peterson."

She shrugged her shoulders, helplessly. "I tried to convince him," she said, "but he didn't wanna hear any of it. And it's not like I could stop him from leaving, even if I wanted to." At Coulson's grimacing sigh, Skye pulled out her cell phone and held it up. It was still showing the feed from Deathlok's eye implant. "Besides, we can still see him, when we want to. I think he just needs some time to process, you know? He may be half robot, now, but he's still human. God, did I just say that? What is my life?" With a bewildered shake of her head, she shoved her cell phone back into a pocket.

Coulson gave a snort. "I did promise you the strangest show on Earth," he said.

Skye didn't really have a reply to that. She just stared at him instead.

"C'mon, let's catch up with May," Coulson said, turning back toward the main building of the compound and gesturing her along, "Trip will be along in a while. There's something we gotta take care of inside."

Skye followed along behind him. As they went, the soldiers that were crawling all over the place began to thin out and finally disappeared. Skye watched Coulson as they moved through the compound and noticed that his gait was tightening up. But it wasn't until they reached a stairway that she actually saw him stumble, just a little. The stairs apparently aggravated something because by the time he reached the bottom of them, he was outright flagging.

"Hey, you all right, AC?" Skye asked.

That seemed to be the permission Coulson needed. He came to a halt and leaned against a nearby metal I-beam pillar, a hand to his side.

"Yeah, Garrett just knocked me around a little," Coulson replied.

"Super-human psycho knocked you around a little," Skye parroted, to which Coulson nodded. "And just how far did you go flying?"

"About twenty feet," Coulson replied with a pained expression, "maybe thirty," he amended when Skye gave him a very May-like look of skepticism. He allowed himself a moment to double over, hands on knees, releasing a deep breath. "Adrenaline must be wearing off."

"Maybe you should get checked out," Skye ventured, hovering a little closer and placing a hand on his shoulder.

Coulson shook his head. "Later," he said, drawing himself back up to his full height, "too much to get done right now." Resolutely, he pushed himself up from the pillar and went onward, a distinct hitch in his gait. When she didn't follow for a moment, he gestured her along again. "C'mon."

Skye rolled her eyes and caught up with him. "You know you're being a walking male stereotype right now?" she said, placing herself at his side, the one that seemed to be stiffer, and wrapping an arm around his back. His arm naturally fell across her shoulders. To anyone who didn't know them, it would have looked like the walking hug of two close friends.

"What are you doing?" Coulson asked, even as he leaned on her a little more than he would have cared to admit.

"Making sure May doesn't see you limping when we walk in," she replied.

"I'm not limping."

"Tough guy! You totally are!"

Not long after, they rounded the last corner at the end of the corridor and entered a large, industrial room. But where Skye had expected to see May, she instead saw May and one other; a tall, sunglasses-wearing vagabond like the type that used to try and break into her van. The sight of him brought her up short because the vagabond looked a lot like the guy that had come to The Bus to scold Coulson about breaking it shortly after getting it; one Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD.

They stopped at the entry way. May and Fury stared back at them for a long moment.

"What?" Skye asked.

In response, Fury looked over at May. "They foolin' you?" he asked her.

"Nope," May replied, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Good," Fury said, then turned back to Coulson and Skye, flailing a hand at them in exasperation. "The hell, Coulson?!"

"Well, I tried," Skye muttered, extricating herself from Coulson.

"What happened?" May asked, matter-of-factly, as she approached them with patented Ice Queen concern.

"Garrett landed a punch," Coulson said, allowing an arm to wrap around his side, "and then I landed hard."

"Speaking of which," Skye said, her eyes settling on Fury.

No one in the room was ready for what happened next. In her own hindsight, Skye was actually convinced that she hadn't planned it and wasn't really sure she was completely present inside her own skull at the time. But seeing Nick Fury, standing there before her in the flesh, brought a number of memories flooding back in a way she had not been prepared for. In particular, a certain shack in the American south-west and a phrase uttered by the only person ever to see fit to give her an honest-to-god chance; two in fact. The memory of Coulson begging for death, and the knowledge of who had ordered the procedure that had caused pain that would make him ask to die, caused an inexplicable red haze to rise before Skye's eyes.

So when she marched across the room and threw a punch straight across Nick Fury's face, it was true that absolutely no one, not even Skye herself, had expected it.

As Fury's sunglasses clattered to a stop on the concrete floor, everyone froze. Coulson and May stared at her aghast. Skye was aghast for half a moment herself before she realized that she didn't regret it one bit.

Slowly, Fury turned his head back to face her, opening his eyes to look at her. Well, opening his eye. His left was decidedly sightless and, frankly, really creeped her out. It weirdly blew away the red haze in her own sight.

"You done?" he asked her.

"Yup," she replied with a shrug, taking a couple steps back.

"Skye, you had better have a good reason for that," May said, a warning note in her voice.

"'Cause AC won't," she replied, stepping back further to stand next to Coulson on the side opposite May, somewhat protectively, "and he deserved it for what he did to him."

"He and I were gonna have a conversation," Coulson stated, still aghast, "not a fist-fight."

For his part, Fury silently retrieved his sunglasses from the ground. He walked up to Skye slowly and used them to point at her as if wagging a finger. The action made her shrink a little and she swallowed hard. "I probably deserved it, so you get one," he told her, "that was it. Do that again and I'll put you on the ground. Savvy?"

"Yeah," Skye breathed out, giving a shaking nod.

"Good." Replacing his sunglasses on his face, Fury looked over to May. "How's he looking?"

"Stubborn," May replied.

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Fury said, "get the vest off, and let's take a look."

"Sir," Coulson protested as May led him over to the nearest wall, "I really don't think it's-"

"Just shut up and do it, Phil," Fury ordered.

May and Skye guided Coulson down to sit on the floor, back leaning against the wall before Coulson could utter an acknowledgment. It was only another minute before May had the tac vest off and was gently probing around his sore side. Fury stood a few yards away, silently watching with a critical eye, arms crossed over his chest.

"You know the drill," May said to Coulson. She then pressed a hand into his side, somewhere near his liver. She let it go a moment later.

Coulson shook his head with a grimace. "Worse when you press in," he said, "should be good."

"Wait, what did you just do?" Skye asked. "Know the drill for what?"

"She was checking for internal bleeding," Coulson explained, "push in on the abdomen. If the pain gets worse when you let go, that's when you start to worry. Operations Field Triage 101."

"And you know this drill," Skye said, clearly disbelieving what she was hearing, "just how many times have you had to check for internal bleeding before!?"

"Last count?" Coulson said, thoughtfully. "This makes twenty-two."

"Twenty-one," Fury corrected, "that business in Antarctica doesn't count. Stop bein' such a baby about it."

"You people scare me," said Skye with a shake of her head.

"Good," May said, the corner of her mouth lifting, just a little, in a smirk.

"Well?" Fury pressed.

"Looks like it's just bruising," May reported, "I'm not feeling any broken ribs. He'll be stiff and sore for a few days, but that's it."

"Hello? The gushing head wound?" Skye pressed.

Coulson waved that away. "Superficial," he said, "capillaries in the head are closer to the surface, so head wounds bleed more, in general."

"More Operations Field Triage 101?"

"You're learning," Coulson replied, then he looked back to May, "can I get up now?"

May stood back up to her full height and offered a hand to Coulson. "Take two aspirin," he said, hoisting him up as he grabbed on, "and call me in the morning."

"Morning's good," said Fury, "I'll meet you back on The Bus at oh-eight-hundred. I owe you a loud conversation. In the meantime, I gotta keep out of sight of the military neanderthals running around this joint. But you might want to check for any of the 0-8-4s that Garrett and Ward took from the Fridge."

"Well, the Berserker Staff is buried under rubble in Mexico," May stated.

"We'll have to go pick that up later," Coulson said, "but the 0-8-4 from Peru is still tops on my list. It should be around here. I've got a couple ideas where it might be."

"Find it," Fury said, "and anything else they have around here."

"Understood, sir," Coulson replied.

"Enough with the 'sir' stuff, Phil," Fury said as he turned and began to walk deeper into the compound.

Without anything further, Coulson and May walked back the way they had come, toward the outer portions of the compound. For a moment, Skye debated if she should follow, but something made her go after Fury.

"Hey, one-eye!" she called after him, once she was sure Coulson and May were out of earshot.

Fury stopped dead in his tracks, just in the shadow of an over-hanging mezzanine. He turned back to look at her as she approached, bringing her to a sudden halt. Obviously, he did not like the pet-name. "You really are stomping around on thin ice, aren't you?" he said.

"I just wanna make sure we understand each other," Skye said, pathetically aware of just how lame and cliche the line sounded. She squared her shoulders, trying to muster a conviction that Fury's gaze somehow managed to suck right out of her.

"That right?" Fury walked right back up to her and towered over her, about a foot away.

"Yeah," Skye said. She glanced about the room, trying to find something to focus on that still made her look like she should be taken seriously. In the end, she dragged her gaze back to Fury's face. "'Cause I've heard the way Coulson talks about you. And I know that, in spite of everything that's happened because of what you did to him, he would still follow your lead without a second thought. I know that he trusts you with his life. So I just wanted to make sure you know... what you are to him, he is to me."

Fury's eyebrows rose toward his non-existent hairline. "Huh," he said, "well, fine then. But as long as we're understanding each other, then you aught to know, too; I've heard the way he talks about you, too. And what you are to him, he is to me. And that's the reason everything that's happened has happened. So don't go gettin' all self-righteous all over the place."

And that was the very last gasp of wind leaving Skye's sails, right there. It hit her like a punch in the chest and she looked down at her feet, unable to summon any more reserves for the battle of wills.

"Now," Fury continued, "if you're quite finished makin' your point, there's work that needs doin'. So you can either stay down here, locking horns with me, or you can go up there and help him. But if you're going to stand by him, then I suggest you start by standing by him."

And that basically sent Skye running for the stairs that led back to the main level.

"Agent Skye," Fury called after her, causing her to stop at the bottom stair. Hesitantly, she looked back at him one more time. "Just keep doin' what you're doin'. He's gonna need that."

Skye gave him a nod, meeting his gaze one last time. Then, she whirled around and headed back up the stairs.

If she had stayed for just another moment to watch Fury disappear back into the compound's shadows, she might have heard him muttering under his breath:

"Understanding, hah! I'm gettin' too old for this bull-crap!"