Work Text:
After it was over, the Battle of Manhattan fought and won, the cleanup begun, Doctor Sharon Carter, PhD etc etc, finally had a chance to sit down and think. By then the Avengers had scattered, and she was left staring at her office walls, speculating on what came next, trying to predict what each of them would do. (Off the record. They deserved some privacy.)
It's what she did. Other than playing field medic at Bryant Park for the longest day of her life, her usual gig was sitting in an office, going over reports, making predictions, profiling, arguing with Research and Logistics. After her years at the FBI, then shifting over to SHIELD and digging into the really exotic psychology, she couldn't help but profile everyone; predict, label, pigeonhole. “Shrinking”, Clint called it, while he was playing darts in her office and bugging her to sign off on his psych paperwork. And the thing, the one thing, that kept sticking in her head, was the cards. Those ridiculous Captain America trading cards of Phil's. They were his prized possessions, partly because of their face value, but mostly because of how he'd acquired all of them. Two, the start of his collection, had been handed down to him from his grandfather. Clint and Natasha had given him several over the years; she'd even given him one, herself. (Never mind that it came from Aunt Peggy's collection, Peg wouldn't been the first to tell her to give it to someone with whom it had value.) Like everything Phil had, from his assets to his friends to his office supplies to his suits, he took damn good care of his stuff.
Yet there were his cards, soaked in blood. They'd been left, darkening and dried, on the table in the conference room the Avengers had taken over for their debriefing. No one touched them.
To settle her own mind, Sharon went down there, and cautiously, with the eraser end of a pencil, poked the cards around, looking at how the blood pooled on them. The blood spatter didn't make any sense. Not if they'd been in his pocket, as Fury said, when he was stabbed.
Fury lied. It was a well-known phenomenon.
This needed investigating.
- - - - -
Stark Tower, miraculously, was still standing. A testament to his genius, or maybe just his stubbornness. Either way, she was glad to see people coming and going in the lobby; Stark Industries' New York offices were in the building, and it seemed the lower floors hadn't gotten hammered too badly.
“Doctor Carter for Tony Stark.” Sharon announced at the front desk. Pretend you've got an appointment; often it worked.
The receptionist typed a few things into a computer, squinted at the screen, and nodded. “You're on the approved list. Please take the private elevator,” she nodded toward a set of doors off to one side, away from the main bank. “JARVIS will take you from there.” A pause. “You do... know... JARVIS?”
“Yes, we've met, thank you.” Sharon shouldered her bag and as she moved toward the doors, they opened for her. Approved list? Tony Stark was allowing her, of all people, free access?
The interior of the 'vator had no buttons. “Good afternoon, Doctor Carter.” JARVIS said smoothly. “You wish to see Sir?”
“Yes, please, JARVIS. It's good to hear you. You're well? You weren't, uh, hurt during the attack?”
“I am well, thank you.” JARVIS sounded pleased. It still astounded Sharon, that an AI truly functioned as an intelligence. The elevator began moving. “It was very frustrating, being unable to do more during the invasion. Sir and I are working to remedy that.” That probably meant JARVIS controlling weapons. Sharon actually felt better about the idea of an AI built and coded by Tony Stark having access to firepower, than half the agents she knew.
How was this her life?
The elevator stopped. “Sir is welding at the moment, there is safety equipment for you as you step out. Please be sure to put on the goggles.”
“Of course, thank you.” She did immediately pull on goggles when she stepped out into the eerie flashing lights. She followed with a hard hat, then paused to look around.
It was one of the upper floors that had been hit hard in the attack. It had been gutted, down to cement flooring and steel beams, and there was billionaire playboy Tony Stark, in dingy coveralls, welding alongside the rest of the work crew, repairing the damage.
Once she was near enough, she shouted “STARK!” several times. Someone else heard her, made some gesture at him, and Stark turned, pulling out ear plugs she hadn't seen.
“Carter?” He seemed more confused than surprised. “How in hell did you get in here?”
“JARVIS?”
“Traitor.” Tony muttered. “What's up? Is the team all right?”
Now there was a question.
“As far as I know, everything's status quo with the gang. Can we talk somewhere less... uh, bright?” All the welding was going to make her eyes bleed, sooner or later.
“Sure.” Tony took her back to the elevator, and to his shop.
Sharon hadn't seen his east coast shop yet, and looked around curiously. It was a relief to see DUM-E and U over in a corner, charging. “Looks good in here. Untouched.”
He grinned. “I had the place blast proofed, shock proofed, radiation proofed, and everything else I could think of, and here it kept the blasts OUT.”
As always with Stark, Sharon went with the blunt and straightforward approach. He responded better to things he didn't have to parse through for secret meaning. “So, y'know how I'm a shrink and I can claim all kinds of secrets are doctor-patient privilege?”
“...yes?”
“Are you still in the SHIELD mainframe? I know you wouldn't have stopped at hacking the hellicarrier.”
“That way you predict people is kinda creepy.”
“You have no idea. Is that a yes?”
Tony sat behind his bench, toyed with some tools, poked at a bundle of wire. “What's this really about, Carter?”
“I think Coulson might be alive. Stark.”
That got full on, jaw-hanging shock for a beat. “What? How?”
“Those cards?” Tony nodded and Sharon continued. “He didn't keep those in his pocket. He'd have never carried them anywhere without some kind of covering or case, and he usually kept them in a safe. No way he'd have put them in his pocket to deal with an invasion.”
Tony absorbed that for a moment. “Fury said the medics called it.”
“Maybe he really is dead and Fury just took the cards and smeared them to motivate you guys. Maybe Coulson coded and they revived him. Maybe it was an LMD. I'm not claiming to know. What I do know, is that something about this smells.”
“JARVIS, go through SHIELD medical, see if Phil's there.” Tony ordered.
“Yes, Sir. It will be a moment, the internal security is heavily encrypted.”
Sharon and Tony stared at each other, waiting.
Then, next to them, a monitor flickered into existence (damn Stark's crazy inventions) and there in 3D was someone who looked like Phil Coulson, in a hospital bed. “One moment.” JARVIS said, and then another monitor, with vitals, and then what looked like medical records.
Sharon had enough medical training to sift through it to the vitally important part: Phil was expected to make a full recovery, allowing for some muscle and nerve problems from the stabbing. Maybe he'd never get back to full field capability, but he'd definitely live, and be their Phil.
“Son. Of. A. Bitch. I'm going to kill that one-eyed motherfucker.”
“You're probably going to have to get in line.” Sharon admitted. She'd like a go herself, but she doubted there'd be much worth punching after Clint and Natasha got through with Fury.
“JARVIS, call in the team.” Tony ordered. He'd already gotten five steps ahead and was moving on to DOING SOMETHING. Classic Tony Stark crisis management.
In this case, Sharon was glad to have his assistance. Her brain didn't work quite so fast, and she was more about people than complex planning. “Stark, we can't just announce this to the team, we need to ease them into it a bit.”
“I'm not letting them think he's dead one hour longer than I have to.” Stark snarled.
“A couple minutes to ease into it, rather than baldly announcing it, it's all I ask. Bruce doesn't need to hulk out over it, and Clint... he's had enough shit piled on him for one lifetime.”
Tony nodded grudgingly. “Yeah, I get that. He and Agent were close, weren't they?”
They were in love and if this didn't get them off their asses, Sharon was going to break every shrinkly oath she ever took and tell them both everything she'd been told in confidence, so help her Freud. “...Coulson was his handler for years.”
“Strike Team Delta.” Tony murmured, watching the screen with Phil's heartbeat bipping across it.
“Yes. The three of them, Coulson, Clint, and Natasha, are pretty much unstoppable.” Add a couple heavy hitters for planetary invasion, and there you go. Once Phil and Steve put their heads together, the whole team would run like clockwork. Clockwork built by Tony Stark.
Tony glanced up, those eyes of his zeroing in on her with his incredible focus, for one long moment. “What role did you play?”
“Field medic and shrink.”
“I thought you were a profiler.”
“I am, but Clint talked his way around regular psych, kept pointing out that I was better than any of them at actually spotting mental issues. If I found one, I could send him for treatment with someone trained for it.” And before she knew it, she'd wound up the shrink of record for Phil and Natasha, too.
Tony made one of his 'processing data' noises that Sharon remembered from her short stint as his shop assistant. “Right. I've gotta make some calls. JARVIS, what's the team's ETA?”
“All of them will be in-house by nine tomorrow morning. I have sent a jet for Captain Rogers and purchased tickets for Doctor Banner and Agents Barton and Romanov.”
Sharon took a moment to marvel at Tony Stark's life. It still amazed her that he did ANYTHING, rather than lay on a beach in the tropics surrounded by women in bikinis and mai tais. The world was literally his for the asking, and he chose to weld girders on his own building. Narcissist, her ass. She still wanted to punch Fury for that bullshit “profile” he'd put together for Stark to see.
“Come back tomorrow, nineish, we'll tell the team. That work for you?” Stark asked.
Five steps ahead, as always. “Sure.”
“Here.” he thrust a Stark Industries tablet into her hand; it contained Phil's vitals across the bottom and the security feed from his room. “One other thing.”
This should be interesting. “Yes?”
“After all the shit we've shoveled together, d'you think you could call me Tony?”
And there was the Tony Fucking Stark charm that got him though congressional hearings. She grinned. Apparently he wasn't going to hold her covert profiling of him against her. “Sure. And it's Sharon.”
“Good. That's good. See you tomorrow.” Tony turned from her, focusing on another computer display, and Sharon knew that in Tony's reality, she wouldn't exist again until nineish tomorrow morning.
JARVIS let her out.
- - - - -
The more Sharon thought about it, that night in her empty apartment, the more angry she became. Rather than sleep, she spent most of the night pacing and trying to plan out what came next; unlike Tony Stark, she couldn't jump ahead in a nanosecond. She watched dawn break over the city from the roof of her apartment building, sipping tea and considering what Peggy would have done. Rather than than the usual suit she wore at SHIELD or for any professional capacity, Sharon wore jeans, combat boots, and a tee shirt. With a leather jacket to cover the gun. She had a feeling this was going to get really, incredibly ugly. Might as well wear shoes she could fight in.
Not being able to predict what Natasha and Clint would do was not helping her stress levels one bit.
Nineish, in the battered main room of Tony's penthouse, everyone was there, looking some degree of tired, worried, or stressed.
Except for Steve. Steve looked like he was breathing easily for the first time since he'd been thawed, hands in the pockets of faded jeans, new haircut from the current decade, and a fairly easy expression on his face under his concern. He even grinned, that lightning fast flash of teeth and dimples, when he saw her. “Hey, Sharon.”
He was getting better at modern phraseology, too. “Hi, Steve.” She glanced at everyone. “Sorry to pull you away from what you were doing, but we had a situation we thought you should know about.”
“On a scale of one to Chitauri invasion, how bad is this going to be?” Bruce asked on a sigh.
Good. Good, they were letting her ease them into it. “Zero for danger. Uh. Maybe a five for stress, and a ten for annoyance?”
“Eleven. Eleven on the annoyance.” Tony grumbled from behind the bar.
Sharon gave Natasha a look, then flicked her eyes quickly to Clint. Natasha connected things easily and moved closer to him.
“Stark-” at his cough, she corrected “Tony, at my request, did some digging yesterday, and we found out something about Coulson.” They all stiffened, and she tried to give them time to brace themselves without dragging it out to cruelty. Aaaand, bit the bullet. “He's still alive.”
Dead silence for one ringing minute.
“You're sure?” Natasha asked, arm around Clint.
Wordlessly, Sharon held out the tablet Tony had given her yesterday. Clint's hand was shaking when he took it.
“That's a real-time feed.” Tony added.
Steve dropped into one of the battered couches, and everyone followed suit. “Wow. Okay. What do we do?”
Captain America may be the Man With A Plan, but Tony Stark was the Guy With The Money. “I've got a private room ready for him in the Maria Stark wing of Bellevue. We go from here, get him, and take him there. Then we quit SHIELD, make ourselves a non-profit under the Maria Stark Foundation, and run the Avengers Initiative out of here. Phil will be liaison to... everyone and run logistics, Sharon will be field medic and make sure we're not crazy, and we'll find someone to do the paperwork. Maybe that assistant of Jane's is bored.” He paused when they all gaped at him. “Jane. Right. JARVIS, make a note, we need to hire her away from whoever she's working for now. We'll set her up with a lab here, Thor won't have to run around to see her when he gets back. Hire Selvig and the assistant, too.”
“Of course, Sir. Doctor Selvig is already on the Stark Industries payroll, taking a mandatory vacation. His cell phone tracking places him in New Mexico with Doctor Foster and Miss Lewis.”
Tony toasted them all with a highball glass full of fake Scotch (Sharon knew for a fact it was decaffeinated iced tea) and plopped into a chair that creaked precariously under him. “I'm designing floors for everyone, so if any of you have preferences, e-mail me. E-mail. JARVIS! Set up a secure, dedicated server, get everybody e-mail, storage space, the usual.”
“On it, Sir.” JARVIS replied.
“It can't be that easy.” Steve said weakly.
Tony snorted into his drink. “Easy my ass, there's going to be paperwork like you've never seen on this. But I'm about done answering to liars and people who think nuking Manhattan is a good idea. I'm gonna carry a grudge over that one. You have no idea how big a grudge.”
Clint, still staring at the tablet in his hands, asked “Should we send Fury resignation letters, or just tack them to his desk with arrows and knives?”
“Knives” Tony and Natasha answered together.
Steve snorted. “I'll take care of the resignations.” He glanced around at all of them. “We're agreed?”
Keep her safe job with the agency her family had helped found, or burn that bridge and throw in with assorted spies, assassins, scientists, a billionaire, and a Norse god. Not really a choice. “I'm in.” Sharon stated.
Tony blinked. “You impress me. I thought you'd be the hard sell.”
“Consider my family history.” Sharon told him, and he laughed.
“I'm already on the Stark Industries payroll. If I'm called in to help out on odd jobs occasionally, who am I to say no?” Bruce asked innocently.
Natasha gave her usual decisive nod.
That was it then, the independent Avengers Initiative was a go.
- - - - -
They got through regular SHIELD security, which surprised Sharon, since she was reasonably sure every single one of them was armed, with the possible exception of Doctor Banner. It wasn't until they headed for the freight elevator that went straight to the sub-basement levels where isolation (and Phil) were, that the security guards started to shift around on their feet.
“Excuse me-” one of them started.
“Don't worry, I've got it.” Tony told them, and hacked through the security on the elevator. With his cell phone. In about three seconds.
Sharon couldn't help but grin at that. This is what happened when you angered the man who'd designed your security systems.
Tony somehow got the doors of the elevator to slide shut in the guard's face, as he barked into a radio, glaring at them. “That should get Mad-Eye coming after us pretty quick.”
Steve straightened his shoulders. “I'll handle him. Sharon, you said you had any legal issues covered? Good. Doctor Banner, you're on medical, Stark on tech, Barton and Romanov on moving Coulson and taking down any other security.”
Everyone shifted slightly, bracing themselves, and the elevator doors opened.
A nurse built much like a tank looked up from his desk right inside the door to Isolation. “Doctor Carter. What-”
“We're here to get Agent Coulson.” Captain America stated in his best motivate-the-masses voice, and waved everyone else on the team around him; they knew where they were going. Natasha and Clint went ahead, checking doors and scaring the medical staff into cooperation. Tony and Banner followed behind.
“But- He's-”
Sharon took pity on the poor guy and handed over the paperwork so he could cover his ass later. “This is a durable Power of Attorney, giving me control of all decisions made about Agent Phillip Coulson in the event he is incapacitated.”
He took the paper, glancing down. “Really? Huh. Then why-”
“Exactly. I'm here to make decisions now.”
The nurse nodded. “Knock yourselves out, I won't stop you, but you have to know Fury won't go for this.”
“Not a problem.” Captain America stated, and turned when the elevator dinged, to face down The Man himself.
Sharon was really grateful, later, to have Tony's recordings of the whole blowout. (He'd taken over SHIELD security and had JARVIS monitor and record, because of course he did.) It really was proof the Avengers were a team: It went off so smoothly it was like they'd orchestrated every detail instead of making up a half-assed plan in the elevator.
“Director Fury.” Steve snarled. Oop. Captain America was slipping and in his place was a twenty-something guy who'd been through poverty, war, loss, and intergalactic invasion. Yeah. Captain America? He fought fair. Steve Rogers? Not so much.
“What in the hell is going on here?” Fury demanded.
Sharon didn't say a word, and for good measure, stayed out from between the two men. Definitely not something she wanted to get involved in. She simply handed him the PoA. Fury glanced at it. “How did you-? Stark.”
Okay, maybe she would say something. “Me. I'm a profiler, you sonofabitch, and I know all the personalities involved. Very well. You lying sack of shit.”
Steve (Captain America was well and truly gone now) laid a hand on her shoulder and she stepped back. Right. He was in charge. “We will be taking our teammate to a medical facility where we can see to his safety.”
“He's not stable enough to move.” Fury tried.
As if on cue, the other four wheeled Coulson, in his bed, down the hall. He'd been hooked up to portable monitors that Banner was monitoring closely. Clint and Tony were pushing the bed, and Natasha was watching their backs, their sides, their exit, and every person on the vicinity.
“Lie us another one, Fury.” Tony snapped as they pushed the bed past him, into the elevator that was supposed to be waiting for the Director.
Natasha took up point next to the elevator doors, guarding their exit.
“Are we clear?” Steve asked, without looking away from Fury.
“Yes. Clear.” Tony replied. Clint echoed him.
At Steve's hand signal, Sharon got on the elevator with Natasha.
“One last thing.” Steve told Fury, grabbing the lapel of the leather coat in one big fist. “We resign. Effective immediately.” Then he punched Fury full in the face, let him drop, and stepped over his body onto the elevator. “Go.” he ordered Tony.
“Right then!” Tony said with a grin, and up they went, to the ambulance at the loading dock, and away from SHIELD.
And the Avengers were an independent entity.