Bloodborne: First Blood {1}

Chapter 𝟝𝟚 - A Bond Like No Other

Coulson slumped down in my arms, he slowly bled out and nothing I did was working, noting at all...I couldn't even save Thor.

I felt so useless as I just sat with Coulson, limp in my arms. He was barely hanging on.

I heard footsteps march into the cell room. When I looked up, Director Fury stared at me and Coulson.

"Sorry Boss," Coulson said as Fury crouched down in front of him, observing the man. "The God rabbited."

"Just stay awake. Eyes on me."

"No, I'm clocking out here."

"Not an option." Fury glanced at me for a look of agreeance but I couldn't say anything. I knew he didn't want to admit it, if my powers weren't strong enough to save him, he didn't have a chance.

"It's okay, boss. This was never gonna work if they didn't have something to..." He trailed off, I started to shake him a bit.

"Coulson—Coulson!" When I turned to look at him, there is the horrible truth. He was gone. Damnit.

I rolled my fists tight and bit back my lip to hold any emotion I had, keeping it together was hard. I had come this far though, loss shouldn't be able to break me but to see this man, the man I met briefly as a kid with so much life in front of him die like this, it would get anyone choked up.

Fury exhaled heavily. "Agent Harding." I started to move away from Coulson to let the medical staff take care of him.

"What do you need me to do?"

"We'll regroup." He tapped his earpiece to deliver the news to the rest of the team. "Agent Coulson is down."

"A medical team is already on its way to your location."

"They're here. They called it." He radioed out. "Come with me, Agent Harding."

We walked out of the room but before that, I looked back once more at Coulson being taken away. Gone before he even met his hero, a damn shame I say. Fury and I walked in silence to the main bridge, nothing needed to be said anymore, nothing could be said.

I sat at the table with my head down waiting as Tony and Steve arrived one by one, sitting in their seats in solemn. Each one of them hid their hurt as Fury started to speak.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket." Fury held a packet of cards, the same ones Coulson had wanted me and Steve to sign. I never noticed when Fury grabbed them but I was too grief-stricken to notice anything else. "I guess he never did get you to sign them."

He threw the cards on the table, and Steve stared at them.

"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, the location of the Cube, Banner, Thor, I got nothing for you. I lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming."

None of us said anything.

"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number, though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark and Harding knew this, called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea. In heroes."

Tony stood up suddenly and looked around, distraught. He tried to leave but I beat him to the chase. He had to hear this.

"Coulson died believing that we could win this, he believed Loki couldn't rival us. If we're gonna do this for something, do it for him." I heard Tony stop for a moment then, his shoes hit the floor again walking away.