Philinda Forever - One Shots

What is Human?

    You know, I've noticed that the Robot versions of the agents never had POVs in fanfics, even 'tho they had their own thoughts and feelings, (or should I say Pheelings?) But I decided to change that today. Enjoy the fic! 😊 

   -Nightsisterkaris

   --------- -:x:- ---------

(LMD Phil POV)

   I know what I am. I am not flesh and blood, but steel and oil. I was made with a purpose, programmed with the life, thoughts, hopes, emotions, memories, and desires of Phillip J. Coulson.

   I, a Life Model Decoy, was built by Dr. Holden Radcliff to serve a purpose. And if we succeed, the real Phil Coulson will be better off. He will have no regrets, and neither will the person he loves. Melinda May.

   I know that the woman standing before me is also a replica, like me. She has the same soft brown eyes that I could stare into for hours. The same smooth hands that I could hold all day. The same beautiful personality that I could indulge myself in for the rest of my life.

  But she does not know who she was. This May believes she really was Melinda Qialoian May. But she isn't.

   I tell her who I am. I tell her who we are, even though she knows, she had to hear it. What our purpose is. That the forms that the two of us dwell in don't belong to us. They are replicas. Serving a higher command for the good of the the real us.

  I remind myself that in this form, Holden Radcliff had come across a slight difficulty with my programming. My maker told me that I had not followed orders without a purpose. So he gave me one.

  The memory is small, several snippets of the life Dr. Radcliff has created for the real us. We live together, we're married. We have domestic lives with domestic jobs and a regular, warm place to call home. We're happy.

   And that's what drives me forward. To finish my mission, to obey orders, my programming, and help the real me.

  Perhaps the real me will be less rational. Take more chances. Risk a little more.

  I may be a robot, but in my own way, I'm real. I'm human in every way but flesh and blood.

  And it's the human part that makes me love Melinda May. The two of us, standing here, may be  robots -LMDs- but I know that in another place, another time, another universe, she's mine.

-:x:-

  (LMD Melinda POV)

   There's nothing like the shock of discovering that you aren't real. That your life is a lie.

   I denied what I saw. I refused to accept it. I must have been exhausted and my eyes tired from the fight that day. 

    But glowing wires and metal frames move under my skin-like cover, which hides the whirring controls of my true self. For me, Fitz would be the better doctor than Simmons.

   And then my worst nightmare came true. I was not alone. There were others who had been replaced. 

   And the one I live for, The one I would die for, the one that keeps me going is gone. I try not to dwell on thoughts about our real selves. Maybe we are together, fighting something? Rescuing someone? Undercover? Abducted? It doesn't matter, fake-Phil says. 

    We are together in an alternate universe. Isn't that real enough?

   I have emotions, thoughts, ideas, desires... Even the power over my decisions. Doesn't that make me human? Do I really not matter?

   I stand, studying his face. I know him better than anything. There could be on tiniest, ittyest, bittiest thing off, and i would know.

   At least I thought I knew. Phil Coulson is a robot, switched out under my nose. What happened? Was our kiss even real?

   If I don't matter, if I exist without meaning, then the kiss does too, right?

   What makes me human?

   What distinguishes me from living and conscious, from alive and aware, from me and the real Melinda May. Aren't I technically "real"?

   I have to be. I know I am real. Because that kiss meant something and I'm not going to let it not mean something. 

    We are real. Not human, not alive, but we are real.