An Empty Chair at an Empty Desk
It was weird walking past the now empty desk that had been filled for as long as she'd been part of the department with the soft-spoken, unassuming 'Clark Kent' of Intelligence Analysis.
Impossibly thin, a stutter that had gotten better but never seemed to leave him entirely, hunched and always trying to make himself smaller. Germaine Shepherd looked like a mousey little yes man and pulled it off incredibly well. If you didn't know him, it would have been impossible not to underestimate him.
Beneath that cardigan-wearing, friendly neighborhood nerd exterior was nothing less than the greatest feat of engineering Phillipa had ever had the privilege of knowing. He could process data faster than the computers they worked on - sorted through incoming reports with an unmatched efficiency and could archive and send to the right place or person like a .. well. A machine.
He threw a hell of a mean punch, too. He was fast as fuck, strong as hell, and as dangerous as a wet kitten.
She paused, hand on the back of the chair he'd used to sit in, taking in black monitors and spotlessly clean cubicle. He was one of the last people she thought she'd miss, but he was moving on and up and she was happy for him. He deserved it. His potential was wasted here.
But the coffee would never be the same. Or the holidays. He'd always taken such good care of the people in the office. He never missed a birthday, a wedding, a graduation or big achievement and he'd been more than generous with the skills he -could- share. She could technically still reach out to him through emails for Excel Spreadsheet magic tricks (He could make it do things she'd never dreamed of and he'd taught her -so- much), or go to the gym and train with other SHIELD agents but it just wasn't the same.
He had always been there before she got in every morning and greeted her with a crooked, unsure smile and he had still been there every day when she clocked out. He was a sort of ... fixture... in her mind.
She'd hated him at first. She'd thought he was aloof. A weakling content to hunch over his keyboard and never see any sort of combat - but she couldn't have been more wrong.
He was -careful-. One wrong miscalculation could shatter a coffee cup... or a tibia. One mistake could ruin an entire mission and endanger the agents out in the field or the civilians caught in the resulting cross-fire. He could crush a man's skull with his hand, but he used that strength on more than one occassion to fiercely protect the people in the cubicles around him.
She'd grown to respect him and had learned through his (frankly a little annoyingly unwavering) loyalty to Sterling to respect the head of the department just as much. She didn't like that Sterling had given Germaine his blessings, but she knew it had been the right decision.
It didn't make it feel any less 'liminal' that the mop of brown hair wouldn't be peaking over the edges of his cubical walls across the office from her, though.
And it didn't make the coffee pot any less empty.
Phillipa frowned and slogged her way into the break room (with a short stop off at her desk to shrug out of her leather jacket) to get the first pot .. or maybe it was the second or third... of the day going and tried to remember all the little tricks he'd taught her to get the -perfect- cup.
Nope. It was definitely not going to be the same around here.
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