Chapter Summary: Working black ops for SHIELD in New York- AKA-Superhero Capital of the frickin' world, means that you run into 'Superheros' an awful lot; some ... not so helpful.

New York – Five Years After Department K Escape

"I guess, I just, I don't see why it takes three people." Spiderman sighs with a shrug, he knew despite his best arguments he couldn't win; somehow, he had ended up debating the inner workings of how sub sandwiches where made. He had his suspicions it's to do with fast food joint that was visible from their current vantage point atop a New York roof. "I mean, it's one sandwich, handled by three people it's just asking for cross-contamination."

"But… But… You have one for the bread, another for the meatballs {ha-ha, balls} and the third one puts the chili sauce and that green stuff on it…" Deadpool's voice is raised a decibel or two in conviction as he counts up on his fingers.

"You mean the salad? How is it you don't know what salad is?" Spiderman pinches the bridge of his nose in an effort to stave off a mercenary-related migraine. "Besides; I prefer the beef, with the ranch dressing." He shifts folding his arms in front of himself scanning the street below that's half illuminated with street lights.

"So, it's a Reuben-Ranch-Relay [oh lord] for you then?" There's a pause, followed by a jab to the web-slingers ribs, "Do you get it?" The slap of Spiderman's facepalm echo's above the din of late night New York and Deadpool's laughter, amused by his own antics even when nobody else is.

"You are such an idiot." He mumbles into the palm of his hand and watches through narrowing eyes until Deadpool stops giggling like a child and settles to do little more than fidget next to him on the roof. "Seriously, if you are going to stay up here at least sit still…. How do you keep finding me anyway?"

His question goes unanswered as soft footsteps from behind the two set off the minute reverberations of his Spider-Senses, not a full-blown 'duck and cover' reaction, more a whisper of danger prickling at the back of his neck. He's up and on his feet locking his stance and turning to face the intruder; Deadpool half turns to watch but remains perched on the edge of the building.

"You do realize I can see you both from the street, right?" A computerized voice comes from a seemingly invisible owner, there are more soft footsteps and the intruder steps into the light; they're barely visible, a moving shadow against the black of the night "What are you doing up here?"

"Talking about sandwiches." Deadpool answers, "more specifically sub sandwiches." He turns back to look out over the street uninterested.

"Hmm, those places where 3 people handle your food, no thanks." The dark figure offers their half-hearted input to the conversation. "You weren't lying when you said that you hung around with Spiderman." There's a slight nod of the head and a shifting of the material on their hood as they gesture towards the vigilante.

"I know right? That's another fifty bucks you owe me." Deadpool states with not even a glance back.

"I didn't agree to that. You can't just put 'I bet you' in front of a statement and assume I've agreed to it." The intruder huffs, hands moving to grip their hips.

"Hey, we do not hang around," Spiderman interjects half a conversation behind the others; however, he doesn't miss the pun intended in their comment as he stands straighter and puffs out his chest. He's taller than the gate-crasher, but as far as superhumans go, he's a little on the svelte side and it's all he can do to make himself look more intimidating. It's lost on the new arrival who signals for him to move with a gloved hand.

"Shift Spider-boy you're blocking my vantage point of that deadbeat New York alley." Spiderman does as he told, watching as the dark figure crouches and rests on their heels at the edge of the building close enough to Deadpool to backhand his leg. "Pick your feet up." They scold, Deadpool obligingly scoots back to sit cross-legged and peer over the edge.

"What are we looking at Spooky?" He asks craning his neck to the same angle as the intruder.

"Spooky?" Spiderman stifles a snigger. Deadpool bolts upright and strides over before dragging him to the edge of the building whilst he tries to wrestle out of his grip.

"You two haven't met! Spidey, Spooky, Spooky, Spidey."

"It's Ghost actually; and use your inside voices; you're going to scare off my mark." Succeeding in pushing Deadpool away with a mixture of super strength and annoyance Spiderman moves to crouch next to 'Ghost'. He debates offering a hand to shake but the way Ghost sits tight like a coiled spring has him rejecting the idea.

"So, you kill people like he does?" She doesn't need superhuman abilities to detect the disdain in his voice.

"No… Not tonight Spidey, we're watching Deal or No Deal," Ghost answers and shifts, silently, wrists resting loosely on her knees. Spiderman scowls in her direction, it's an expression that's lost behind the lenses of his mask. Ghost speaks again, a low whisper that's just about picked up and distorted as she points to the scene below. "We have Dingus A over here with a holdall of the goods, and Dingus B approaching from the south with a pocket full of cash."

The three watch as the exchange takes place beneath the circular shaft of light from a flickering street lamp, "Well folks that looks like a deal." She announces triumphantly as a swift hand shoots out to grab Spiderman's arm who flinched to move and stop the disappearing drug dealer. "Let him go Spidey, we need what this one's got in the bag." Ghost stands and matches the marks speed along the edge of the building, disappearing into the shadows and over the edge, dropping to the street below.

"I like your friends even less than I like you." Spiderman sneers through a pursed mouth to Deadpool who has stood up next to him.

"Yeah, she's something else." He answers disappearing after her jumping off the edge of the building with a loud "Yeeha!" Absolutely no regard for stealth…. Or the landing.

"She?" There's a moment as a flustered Spiderman briefly wondering if in the short exchange on the roof he had managed to make an ass of himself in front of Deadpool's female friend; before he had to asked himself why he even cared.

He lands a little way in front of Ghost whose running after 'Dingus B' she's fast, long seamless strides catching up to the man who's being slowed down by the large holdall, but Spiderman is faster, webs shooting out to string up the escaping mark to the nearest lamp post; one of the most girlish shrieks Spiderman has ever heard a criminal make escapes the man as he flips upside down. Ghost skids to a halt next to the vigilante as Deadpool limps from the shadows, his left foot clearly broken after landing in some trash cans. "High five for the assist!" Deadpool yells, leather hand held above his head, the others sigh, and he gets left hanging.

"Hey, look man whatever you want I don't have it, you've got the wrong guy, I can get you money if that's what you want." The trio turn to the man hanging at an awkward angle face slowly reddening as blood rushes to his head.

"Looks like this one has worst verbal diarrhea than me! Don't blow your whole wad at once, or you'll have nothing to tell the cops." Deadpool laughs adjusting a pistol on his hip and twisting his foot back in place. Spiderman takes a step forward pulling the holdall loose from the webbing and grimaces at the merc patching himself back up out the corner of his eye.

"Hey man, you can't have that!" the man twists violently in his cocoon before going onto the offensive, "The papers are right about you, you are a menace. Wait until I tell them Spiderman deals in Class A Drugs." He spits thrashing fruitlessly against the webbing. Spiderman goes about pulled the bag free above his head.

"Well aren't we a ray of fucking sunshine." Ghost sneers hollow and toneless from behind the vigilante "Be nice or- "

BANG!

All four are stilled into silence by a single shot being fired; the sound reverberating in the small confines of the alley. "Sorry, my bad, just making sure it was still working, I landed on it." Deadpool pipes up once everybody's ears have stopping ringing. "Oops."

"Oops? What do you mean oops?" Ghost rounds on him before she whirls back to their two other companions. Deadpool's shot went cleanly through the holdall, piercing the plastic wrapping around the blocks of ominous white powder and spilling a large portion of its contents directly onto the person below it - Spiderman, who was now, a little surprisingly, still standing covered in a dusting of white from head to toe, with nothing to do but give a feebly cough against something that's already working through his system.

Ghost tenses watching the ridiculous scene playing out in front of her, it's like a low budget movie at a point where the plot just got so absurd you have to keep watching to see how it's going to end and poke fun at it later.

"FUCKING OOPS? THAT'S ALL YOU'VE GOT TO SAY?" Deadpool shrugs as Ghost shout, so loud the distorter whines with feedback. They watch as the holdall drops, then Spiderman drops, both wincing at his uncoordinated faceplant onto the tarmac. The mark's still hanging from the lamp post in his cocoon of webbing looking ridiculous.

Deadpool watches as Ghost's fist clench and unclench, she's doing her best 'count to 10' exercise that he sees people doing a lot in his presence. "I'm supposed to be alone tonight. I'm supposed to be black ops. How the hell do I keep running into you?" She's muttering under her breath as she moves closer to the scene nudging the red and blue superhero with her foot who groans in response, "He's fine. I'm out of here." Crouching next to the bag she rips a portion of her sleeve off and plugs the two holes made by the mercenary's pistol.

"But you can't leave!" Deadpool protests, "we haven't even taken a group selfie! Don't you want a picture with Spiderman?" Ghost would have looked at him incredulously had the mask not been over her face.

"He's unconscious, so I think I'll pass on the photo opportunity." She deadpans as she hoists the bag over her shoulder, "besides, I'm not entirely sure it wouldn't end up in the 'Daily Bugle' tomorrow, I have my suspicions that it's YOU who gives them all those photos of Spiderman, you're known for being a massive stalker."

"Man, I wish" Deadpool shakes his head in aspiration, as Ghost makes to leave. "Wait, you can't leave me here with this." He gestures down at the scene underneath the thin pool of yellow light Ghost looks at the crumpled superhero and the upside-down criminal.

"It's not that bad, surely you've dealt with worse?" Had it of been anyone else Ghost would have been gone by now, but it was Wade, neurotic, dangerous, reckless Wade who no matter how many times she scalded, pushed him and told him he was an idiot; never turned her away when she showed up at his apartment in the middle of the night, drunk, bawling and having an identity crisis.

"Yeah but you're my accomplice this time. Annnd we can't just leave him here-" he points down at Spiderman who's stirring on the floor (albeit with some effort). Ghost puts the bag down in conceit.

"Why does it take three of you to mess this up so bad?" Deadpool and Ghost turn at the same time eye level with the upside down criminal, he misses the tight jaws and flared nostrils before- BLAM!

"One problem dealt with, at least nobody knows how bigger amateurs we looked like tonight." [Spiderman is going to be seriously pissed when he wakes up] Meh, I just won't tell him we killed him, and if he finds out, we'll tell him Ghost did it. [Nice, stitch up your friend, a rare person who actually tolerates you, you really are something else].

Deadpool's second shot went cleanly through the marks skull and blew the contents out the back across the alley wall. "Eww." He examines the splatter of bone fragments and brain mush.

"When you're done being disgusting, maybe you can help me over here." Ghost is trying to pull a barely conscious Spiderman to his feet, she's manages to manhandle him to a sitting position before he hopelessly flops back; Deadpool slings the holdall Ghost dropped over his back, at the same time admiring her ability to not so much as look in the direction of the dead man dripping on the concrete. She was either so used to it that it didn't even register as bad anymore or she was doing her best to ignore it. It's hard to tell with the mask.

He pulls one of Spiderman's arms over his shoulders dragging him up to stand, Ghost moves swiftly to pull his other arm over her own much slimer shoulders, thankful that there's only a small height difference.

"Come on Spidey, one foot in front of the other." Deadpool sings dragging the smaller superhero along as Ghost takes the uneven weight from the other side trying to match the merc's pace.

Ghost did not possess super strength, she was built for agility, the heavy lifting-not so much. For the fifth time in ten minutes she manages to falter out of step with Deadpool and take the full weight of another, much heavier person, "Ouff, Deadpool, where are we going, I thought we were dumping him in a taxi then leaving him to it?"

"This is Spiderman, we can't just-" Deadpool pauses, clears his throat and puts on a bad British accent, "'dump him in a taxi'. Honestly Ghost, where's your loyalty?"

"Why would I have loyalty to Spiderman? And where are we going?" Ghost huffs attempting to shift the weight she's carrying. "And stop taking the piss out of my accent." She mumbles.

"Stark Tower, that's home for my boy here." Deadpool claps a hand across Spiderman's chest who groans in response.

"Of course, you know where he lives, you're a massive stalker." Ghost mutters.

The next three city blocks the trio walk to get to Stark Tower are arduous, it's late at night so luckily the streets are (mostly) deserted; Ghost can't help but give thanks for the part-time street lighting which means only one in three are actually on.

They manage to successfully avoid any of New York's late-night residents by dodging down back alleys, although neither Deadpool or Ghost have super senses so it's more a case of Deadpool shoving Spiderman into a back alley and the inertia shoving Ghost down there along with him every time they hear somebody approaching that little bit too late.

"Oh, thank God I can see the tower!" Ghost could almost cry, she was supposed to be done and back to the SHIELD base in New York within the hour, by now she has well and truly had enough "This guy's a dead weight, and heavier than he looks." Ghost jostles the Superhero they've managed to drag between them with her shoulder, her arm that is still anchored around his back is screaming in protest and threatening to give at any moment; secretly she's glad Deadpool grabbed the holdall and slung it over his shoulder so she hadn't had to carry that too.

"You could say, 'he has the proportionate dead weight of a spider'." [oh, that was painful] Deadpool manages a little breathlessly as they come to the bottom of the steps up to the Tower.

"So, what the plan, just prop him up against the door and run?" Ghost looks over to the mercenary with so much hope in her voice "I really don't fancy ringing the doorbell this late at night…"

"We can't leave him on the steps! He's drugged, any number of his highly elaborated, well-imagined enemies could come along and then what might happen?!" Deadpool is gesturing wildly with his one free hand making Ghost bare more of the weight than she's capable of holding like this.

"Help! Help! Help!" She buckles.

"Whoops! Sorry!" Deadpool rights himself and hoists Spiderman back up who lets out an obligatory groan. "See even he agrees with me." He pauses as they mount the stairs. "Out of curiosity what has he been drugged with?"

"That's what I was doing tonight, trying to get hold of this." Ghost gestures to the bag evading the question and almost missing a step in the process. "I'm in New York picking up leads on all these weird new drugs, slash, trying to find what they are made from, needed it before it gets cut with anything else, a half decent sample to take back, SHIELD is trying to figure out the source, hence the bag, although your bullet probably contaminated it. Thanks for that by the way;" she manages breathlessly before adding, "And thanks for this. I love dragging drugged Superhero's back to their homes across New York late at night." They're nearing the glass.

"You're going to ask me to do the thing," she sighs as her steps slow to a halt.

"Do the thing Spooky!" Deadpool bounces, Ghost is about to take them all through solid glass he watches her sigh again and drop her head, it's followed by everything going strangely muffled and slow; like moving through fog and being weightless but grounded all at the same time, it was disorientating. He couldn't move his limbs the way he wanted, they wouldn't respond fast enough, he turns his head and there's a delay between the movement and his vision catching up, the world ripples around them as he can do little but follow Ghost, she's stronger like this pulling him and Spiderman along and through the glass in their intangible forms before they are in standing in the middle of the lobby of Stark Towers.

The world comes rushing back into sharp focus; every noise seems that little bit too loud, the scarce light of the deserted lobby that little bit too bright as Ghost goes back to her tangible self. It's left an odd knot in Deadpool's stomach and everything is tingling as if feeling has just returned after an extended period of pins and needles.

"You OK? Now what?" Ghost is looking around; the lobby is plush, plusher than anything at SHIELD; in the weak light cast from the emergency lighting she can make out massive domineering glass cabinets the slight glint of something mechanical inside; she wants a closer look but knows better at a time like this; with a nod from the merc they both bend and lay the drugged vigilante down in the middle of the marble floor.

"He's going to get a numb arse on that floor." Ghost's already distracted not looking at him as she speaks, to busy looking at the high ceiling that goes up at least ten or twelve floors, balconies look out over the lobby with acoustic batons running all the way up. She is tipping back on her heels threatening to fall backwards when Deadpool breaks her from her daydream pushing the holdall into her chest.

"I left a note, let's go!" They are both out the door; "I have one more question for you Spooky," he watches as his companion dusts herself off atop the steps, "not that I don't approve of making things unnecessarily complicated for the sake of putting on a good show, but why go after the guy who bought the drugs and not the one supplying them?" Ghost looks down.

"I need the suppliers to think things have gone off without a hitch, I still need them for information."

"What information?"

"That parts classified Deadpool."

"Yeah, I guess," he answers lightly. Ghost thinks she can detect a hint of dejection in his voice. "You know, pulling shit like this is always more fun when we're both drunk."

"Yeah…. I'll, I'll see you around Wade." Ghost goes left, Deadpool goes right.

SHIELD Headquarters – New York

Ghost slunk back to her quarters with a bag full of evidence she should have dropped off a good three hours ago. By now it was too late; everybody would have turned in for the night; so, it would have to wait until morning, Ghost could wait until the morning for the inevitable ass-kicking from the Director. The rooms in the New York HQ were amicable enough, like a three-star hotel room, comfortable, warm but distinctly missing the creature comforts of home.

Ghost shucked what was left of her ninja suit having ripped it with a few clumsy moves (she chalked up to being tired) on the way back across the New York skyline. She dropped her hood and peeled off her mask taking her patch with it. Blinked against the sudden intrusion of harsh light, her fingers idly traced the scar which went from her eyebrow to her cheekbone and cut cleanly through her distorted excuse for a left eyeball in a neat white slash.

She tugged at the quick releases on her weapon holsters neatly arranging them on the dresser, wondering whether it the SHIELD agent she had become or the victim she once was that makes her so OCD and anal about her weaponry; always neat, clean, lined up and within reach.

She catches sight of herself in the full-length mirror, pausing to examining her leather under armor before shedding that too, letting it fall to her feet in a fleshy heap; leaning into the mirror she studies her reflection even closer then. Her waist was pulled in tighter than it ever had been and her ribs were ever so slightly prominent below the hollow of her throat; somewhere along the line in the past two years doing black operations for SHIELD her body had been honed into something much sleeker and destructive than it ever had been; she sighed feeling the cool breeze coming in through the open skylight on her naked flesh, it was a welcome distraction against her tired skin as she flopped heavily on the bed in a graceless motion; rolling over to lay like a starfish and look up at the stars through the window she had to smile; Pips always saw to it that she had a room with a skylight when she stayed away from the Triskelion Building, he knew that was the only way he'd be certain she closed the drapes at night, he always made sure she was looked after.

The next morning….

Stark Tower

Spiderman wakes to a repetitive clicking which feels like it is reverberating in his skull, he attempts to put his hands up to hold his head still, sit up – move anything.

Everything is numb and cold; the clicking is getting louder and he at least manages to open his eyes, it takes some effort and as feeling starts to come back he isn't sure which limb to rub first, right now he feels more pins and needles than man.

A pair of dangerous red heels come into focus; their owner leans down to snag something which has been stuck to his forehead. "'Sorry, drugged Spidey by accident. Love DP & G.'" They read aloud; efficiently and unimpressed. Pepper sighs planting her hands on her hips at the top of her pencil skirt "Peter, what on earth are you doing in the lobby?"

SHIELD Headquarters – New York

"So, I had a phone call." Nick pauses looking up at the person sat the opposite side of his desk. "At stupid o'clock this morning, I might add." Ilona flinches, gaze fixed firmly on her shoes. "From the CEO of Stark Industries. Apparently, somebody was kind enough to drop Spiderman off home late last night." Ilona's fairly certain Nick pauses just to watch her squirm. "Not before they drugged him, and I quote 'by accident'. Oh, he's fine by the way." He brushes off, sipping his coffee before steepling his hands in front of himself on the desk. "So, do you want to tell me what happened?" Ilona sighs and slumps before she recounts the details of the previous evening and the trouble she ran into of the black, red and blue variety.

"It was supposed to be low profile," Nick says evenly after hearing what she has to say.

"They were sat on the building swinging their legs over the side like a…" Ilona gestures looking for the right words. "Like a pair of kids." She leans forward in her chair. "How is it my fault the Avenger's pet got out? If he had of stayed out of it, then Deadpool wouldn't have got involved!" She jabs her chest voices raising wildly "I got you want you wanted! What's the problem?" Nick lowers his voice to answer, attempting to restore some level of calm.

"You're a member of the Shadow Force. The nature of the operations that they undertake means that interaction with the other SHIELD teams is to be kept to an absolute minimum." He stresses before Ilona cuts in.

"Yes Nick, Shadow Force is a deep-fried SHIELD conspiracy, never seen therefore never appreciated, yadahyadahyadah. I get it, I've heard it before." She paused before punctuating her next sentence for effect. "Like. I. Said. It's not MY fault the Avengers PET was out playing with a pre-chewed mercenary toy and they both happened to be where I needed to be. I had known that deal was going to take place for the past two weeks and I reacted accordingly when I was thrown two massive curveballs. Nobody got hurt-"

"Police found a man shot dead face down in the street, or I should say, what was left of his face, in a pile of very strong opiates," Nick says calmly folding his arms on his desk.

"Nobody innocent got hurt." Ilona offers scuffing the floor with her converse shoes.

"Get out of my office," He exasperates, rubbing his temples. "I have to come up with an explanation as to how you and Deadpool got in and out of Stark Tower without setting off that ridiculously overpowered security system."

Ilona is dismissed slinking out of Director Fury's office; she passes Philip Coulson in the foyer with a curt nod, pulling her jacket around herself a bit tighter; it's not an idle gesture. It's a warning, 'I don't want to talk.'

Nick leans back in his chair replaying the security footage he had been sent of the Stark Tower Lobby for the 5th time, he's not sure what's impressing him more (not that he would admit to being impressed by any of it), the quality of the playback, the fact that despite the quality of the playback Ghost is barely more than moving shadow and is given away by sliver of exposed skin on her arm, or the fact that Deadpool appears to be co-operating with her.

She wasn't quite the polished agent that Nick would have preferred to be on SHIELD's enigmatic Shadow Force and he had originally been against the idea when Coulson had pitched it. Had you have told him she would end up as one of the key members of SHIELDS most covert teams two years ago when she had sat in front of him in one of the interrogation rooms, he would have scoffed at the idea, but he had to admit she had proven time and time again to be level-headed and composed in bad situations. She had turned out to be a formidable foe when she was chucking around her Kusari blades, plus even he couldn't deny that the walking through walls came in very useful for a team that took on black ops.

Nick is pulled from his thoughts by a knocking on his door and Philip Coulson walking straight on in. When you have been colleagues for as long as they have you didn't wait at the threshold to be invited. "Morning Nick, I just saw Ilona in the lobby, she didn't look happy…"

"She'll learn." Nick states closing the security footage, Coulson hums in response and sits down in one of the vacant chairs across from him as the Director looks around his computer screen. "You heard where she was last night?" He asks sipping lukewarm coffee.

"Yes, well I guessed from the description it was her. It wasn't just you Pepper phoned this morning. Also, and here's a fun one." Coulson fishes his phone out of his pocket. Swiping at the touch screen "Tony Stark has had some sort of freak out that they didn't trip the security system, so he's been speaking to our friend Deadpool. It's safe to say he now knows Ghost is one of ours and wants to meet her, I'm not entirely sure what for, but I have my suspicions it's not to discuss the inner workings of an alarm system over a friendly coffee." Coulson sighs, "I'm running out of excuses here Nick, he's bombarded me with messages. The guy's usually dead to the world until midday and it's not even 10 o'clock." Coulson shifts in his seat fiddling with the phone he's still got in his hand; jumping when it buzzes to alert him to another message.

A heavy silence fell in Nick's office. "I could have done without this this morning," Coulson says flatly as his phone buzzes again, this time he puts it face down on the desk between the two men. Nick glances at it then back up to the agent. "It would be a bad idea, wouldn't it Nick? To tell them I mean…" Coulson trails off staring at his face down phone, eyes glazed over like he's looking but not seeing. There's a beat of silence as Nick chooses his words carefully, painfully aware that he is about to negotiate a minefield.

"Phil, I know what happened between you and Elizabeth was… Shit." He pauses because what he's about to say had been on the tip of his tongue for two years. "But it doesn't make Ilona your responsibil- "

"But she should have been!" Coulson stands up and shouts through bared teeth knocking his chair backwards before the Director can finish his sentence, he stalks over to the window. Nick rubs his eye, affronted by the sudden shift in the Agent's temperament, he was going to need a lot more than tepid coffee to get through Coulson having a meltdown.

"She should have been mine," Coulson repeats staring out of the window and running a worn hand through his hair that was frosted with grey.

A faint haze of mist is lingering in the street below, it's just enough to make the outlines of objects and people a slight blur from this height. "You know, everybody thought she was. Well, until Elizabeth moved back to England." He glances over his shoulder back to Nick for affirmation.

"It wasn't your fault Phil, Elizabeth was a very well-respected agent, but what she did was cruel."

Coulson jabs at his chest with his finger as he speaks through an expanding lump in his throat, "I told her to leave, I told her I never wanted to see her or the baby again."

"I thought... I thought I could handle it, I thought we could be a happy family, but I couldn't get passed it and Lizzy knew, it tore us apart… It tore me apart. Of all the people to sleep with..." Nick watches as Phil leans on his hands and slumps his shoulders with a slight shake.

People crying always made Nick Fury uncomfortable, he squirms in his chair. "I would have done the same." He says clearing his throat, pulling wrinkles out of his sleeves and doing his best not to look at Coulson. "I wouldn't have even entertained the idea of playing happy families." It comes out colder than he meant it to, but Nick has no desire for children, so the idea of raising a child that isn't even yours was unfathomable and damn right alien. He looks at his hands resting on his desk, listening awkwardly as Coulson snivels, and eventually goes quiet. The silence that follows stretches taut, hanging there like the mist that's thickening in the street.

"Ilona asked me about her mother's time at SHEILD," Coulson straightens up, shifting his hands from the windows sill and clasped them behind his back.

"I told her that she was one of the few Agents to be open about being a mutant; that she was brilliant because she could read minds; those jade green eyes really could see into people's souls." He pauses again. "I lied to her Nick." There is an ever so slight drop in Coulson's shoulders at the admission. "I told her she looked like her mother, I told her that her mother would have been proud of her because I thought it was what I should say." He stops to draw a breath. "Does it make me a bad person, that when there was the Hydra attack in London, you remember the one." Coulson turns away from the window and sits at Nick's desk. "Elizabeth was the target and she got killed, it felt like a weight had been lifted, one I had carried for fifteen years because I had nothing left for her but hate, fifteen years had made me bitter." Coulson hunches forward elbows propped on his knees as his hand moves to rake through his hair again.

"If I remember it correctly," Nick offers leaning back in his chair. "I had to physically stop you from taking a jet across the Atlantic to go and find Ilona. I think you had something other than hate or else you wouldn't have cared. The way you felt back then, it made you human."

"And how did stopping me work out?" Coulson replies narrowing his eyes to a scowl and sitting up straighter.

"We had to protect her from a world she was too young to understand Phil. It wasn't until five years ago we found out that she was being watched." Nick is done with this two-year conversation loop they seem to be stuck in, he's done with Phil, and he's done with Phil's insistent mobile phone which has been buzzing on his desk for the past twenty minutes, nothing Nick is going to say is going to be right anyway, nothing Nick ever says to Coulson about Ilona is right.

"She ended up in captivity for two years, in the hands of evil people who gave her a useless telepathic eye she can't focus or control and a healing factor she didn't want. That wouldn't have happened if I had made her my responsibility twenty-five years ago." Coulson is not done and still harboring some guilt issues.

"Phil what happened; happened. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Ilona wasn't your responsibility then and she's not now. If anybody should feel guilty-" He stops before he finishes his sentence as he sees the pre-emptive flinch of contempt from the agent sat across from him.

"I can't, I can't do this now Phil. Go home, we'll talk tomorrow." It's the second person Nick has had to give the day off to today, he watches a deflated Philip Coulson drag his feet all the way out of his office.

The SHIELD Director leans back in his imposing leather chair with a slight creek; he exhales rubbing his temples again with more vigour than before and hits the play button on the Stark Tower footage one last time. The phone Agent Coulson has left on his desk starts to vibrate, again. "Phil wasn't kidding." He mutters to himself thumbing through the messages that have come in from a, by now, rather irate at being ignored Tony Stark.

Nick sighs somewhere between exasperation and exhaustion, he has a nagging feeling he can't escape; he's pushed it down for years and kept secrets in the name of the US government and public safety, but the past, it's an ugly thing and one of the few things that truly scared the SHIELD Director. Now it's hovering, surfacing just on the peripherals of his vision, ever so slightly out of his reach, he can brush it with his fingertips but can't grasp it to push it back down.

He opens a long-abandoned file on his computer, removing Agent Philip Coulson's access to it; he's tortured himself enough over Ilona Warner, he didn't need to go reading the gruesome detail of her time in captivity… Again.