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In hindsight, there are probably better places to question reality than in the middle of an escape from Hydra, but Melinda May is not a patient person when it comes to getting answers out of people, and this is no exception.
“Explain.”
Skye whips her head around at her words, an expression of disbelief across her features before she's once again distracted by the four agents trying to take her down.
“Really? Now?”
Melinda sends a glare in her direction, unappreciative of the sarcasm in her tone and also annoyed at the security protocols she herself had insisted on.
It made escaping so much more inconvenient for them.
“Ever heard of multitasking?”
There's a bark of laughter and grunts of pain as several an agent is sent flying across the room and into the wall.
“It’s kind of a long story.”
Melinda suppresses the urge to roll her eyes, focusing on an escape route. She knows this place inside and out but there are too many variables to calculate, and it's easier to do so in the heat of the moment.
“Better make it quick then, Skye,” she calls out as she takes down another agent, knocking him hard enough into the ground to leave him incapacitated.
“It’s Daisy.”
Their leader is dead.
Jeffrey Mace was a hero in every sense, and Phil could not have admired his courage and bravery more. He sees the confusion in the eyes of the agents back at base when they arrive with a busload of former Hydra prisoners and children, the way the mood changes from celebrating the completion of a successful mission, to the mourning of the man that held them all together.
They're all upset.
Jemma in particular.
And that is something Phil cannot quite figure out, though he suspects it has something to do with her being completely self aware in this fictional reality - everything must be so much more disconcerting. He’s in the same boat, but he really can't remember much of his “real” life, only brief flashes here and there, all precious memories he keeps stored away in an old manila folder.
But still, he tries to understand, makes an effort to approach her; it’s not all for the benefit of helping a friend find comfort - he has too many questions he wants to ask about the real world, questions that Skye can’t answer now that she’s been taken by Hydra.
Their number one priority right now is to rescue her, even in the wake of the loss of their leader, but he knows he won’t be able to concentrate until he learns as much of the truth as possible.
He finds her talking to some of the kids, stands silently by until she’s finished, and then requests to have a word with her. She’s startled, and it shows.
“Can you tell me more about the real world?” he asks her in a whisper as they head down the hall to find somewhere more private to speak.
“If we get out of here, I’m sure all the memories will come right back to you sir,” she replies, pausing outside the doorway to an empty room. He gestures for her to enter, and follows closely behind, shutting the door with a soft click.
“Yeah, you never really explained that part. Look about Mace… is he really?”
“Yes. Dead. This is exactly why I didn’t want either of you to take unnecessary risks.”
The tone of her voice conveys both concern for him, and annoyance that her instructions had clearly been ignored, but the expression on her face is one of sadness. She’s the very image of a woman who has lost someone they care for - it’s further than her anguish at her boyfriend being the very evil murderous head of an equally terrifying organisation.
“What you said before, about it being dangerous for us? Why?”
He’s confused - it’s not his fault. Phil thinks that he is actually taking it pretty well, all things considered. Two strange women showing up within a day and telling him his life is a lie, going from a teacher to a vigilante, watching someone die right before his eyes. It’s a wonder he hasn’t had himself committed yet, but he’s pretty sure he isn’t crazy.
“Whatever happens to you here, happens in the real world too. It’s all connected.”
He nods, slowly. That meant Mace, whoever he was to them in reality, was now dead. And death.. it’s not reversible.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her. He is, he truly is. And he has a feeling he’ll be even more sorry once they finally get back into reality and he remembers this man, not just for the bravery he displayed here, but for who he truly was, whoever that may be.
“Well… I guess it’s a good thing we brought down a member of Hydra while we were at it,” he continues after a moment of silence, trying his best to lighten the mood. It’s depressing enough already, the way everyone has lost morale.
An army divided cannot win a war.
Jemma looks up at him, frowning, as if unable to process his words.
“What?”
“The agent who tried to kill us. The one Ward called May. I didn’t see her get out,” Phil explains, shrugging slightly. He almost takes a step back in shock when Jemma throws her hands into the air, groaning in frustration.
“That is not a good thing. Ugh.. How do I even? Why can’t you just remember already?”
He lets her be as she lets out her frustrations vocally, unable to actually keep up with most of what she is saying, but trying to be supportive, even in his confusion.
“Look sir, there is really no good way to say this, so I’m just going to come right out with it. Agent May… she’s one of us. Well strictly speaking that’s not the best definition I could use. She’s your.. Well quite frankly I don’t know what she is to you, no one does.”
Phil’s first reaction is to be horrified at his own words, wishing death upon a woman who in reality was part of their own team. His second is despair, because there is every possibility that she is dead, like Mace. She’d frozen when he snapped at her; that should have been the first sign. How could he not realise?
He’s also still confused, and it must show on his face, because Jemma slows down and tries to find another explanation. He can see how difficult this is for her, and he truly appreciates it.. All of it. That her and Daisy came to save them, risked their own lives for it, that he has people out there, people that he cares about and people who care for him. Life had been lonely before now, never really feeling quite right, and this, this does a lot to explain it.
“You and Agent May… She’s like your Fitz. Maybe not quite in the romantic sense, but you’re both so private we wouldn’t really know. He’s been by my side for years, since I started with SHIELD, and you and May have that same kind of history.”
So she wasn’t just his teammate, a coworker like he’d first thought. She was something else… something more.
And now he might never get to find out what that something was.
They've given him use of Mace’s office.
It feels so right and so wrong at the same time. The space is both comfortable and familiar, yet he can't help but feel distressed that he's only here because Mace is dead and somehow Jemma has Ward and the others convinced that he is the right choice for new leadership.
He's just a school teacher here; Ward had been right about that, but he has a gut feeling about this, like he's meant to be here somehow.
When the long day is done, the meetings over and the other agents have retired to their respective bunks, he pulls out the folder he has so many of his fleeting memories stored within and tries to clear his mind.
His sleeves are rolled up and his glasses are off and he presses his palms against his closed eyes for a moment, the frustration growing. The growing headache that he feels cannot be chased away, even as he massages his temples, fingertips digging into his skin, into his skull. He can see a clear image of the woman, Agent May, in his mind, but no matter how hard he tries to dig further into his lost memories, he can't latch onto anything new.
Phil thinks he may have seen her face before, but he can't be sure. All his other flashes had been so clear, but there had been the fuzzy outline of a woman, never enough for him to form a proper picture. He'd even tried to draw her, capture her likeness on paper in an attempt to help himself remember, but it was to no avail.
He knows what she looks like now, and even with this new knowledge he can't bring his mind to cooperate. With a sigh, he stows his belongings away and heads to bed.
There are things to do in the morning, important tasks they need to accomplish, and it won't do if he’s sleep deprived, no matter how reluctant he is to do so. If he could he would stay up all night; the need to know the truth is overwhelming, a desire he has no control over.
That night he dreams, and his dreams are full of her.
Agent May.
Melinda.
They're fighting, in what appears to be a training room. She pins him to the ground and laughs before helping him back up.
He has a wound in his arm. She's stitching it up, fingers lingering on his skin as she places the bandage over the injury. She smiles when she is done.
There’s a ballroom and they're twirling around on the dance floor together. She calls him by a different name and rests her head against his shoulder as he holds her in his arms.
He’s storming into a room, a group of soldiers behind him. Her back is to him but there's a girl lying dead in her arms, gunshot wound to the head. She's crying in his arms, body wracking with the force of her sobs, tears staining his shirt.
They're in an office and he calls her by her name, and they share a smile.
She's pointing a gun at him and he's doing the same to her and she looks terrified.
They're sharing a drink in a familiar office… this office. She’s smiling at him again, asks to touch his hand - it's only a memory but he can almost feel the tingle as her fingertips meet his cybernetic palm.
He's trying to claw his way back home and the first thing he sees is her; falls into her arms. She looks overwhelmed, overjoyed, tells him that she knew he wasn't dead.
It's the woman, the one that The Doctor had shot. She looks troubled to see him. Radcliffe took something from me too. Her name is Melinda May and she means everything to me.
He wakes up covered in sweat, mind full of memories, his heart in his throat and an overwhelming sense of dread.
Melinda is not particularly impressed with this renegade version of SHIELD. Their security is poor and if they're letting random civilians sign up to be agents, they lack judgement. But their leader had been a good man, sacrificing his own life for his team, even saving her life in the process. He could have let the building fall moments earlier, crushed her to death.
He made the choice to let her live.
And with all that Skye, no Daisy has told her, she wants to help them, she has to if she wants an escape from this virtual prison.
This world brings her pain with each day she lives, for the mistakes she had made, and she has this gut feeling that no matter how bad life is in reality, it cannot be worse than this.
“Radcliffe wanted to fix one regret for each member of our team. He knew yours was Bahrain, killing the girl.”
It's quite ironic that her biggest regret here was she didn't just take the kid out. It wouldn't have lead all this. But Daisy says none of it is real anyway, so she guesses that it really doesn't matter.
She's eager to find out more about the real world, has so many questions she wants to ask, but she knows that the most important thing right now is to get to safety and then figure out a way to escape this prison.
“You have to be careful okay. I know you May, you put others before yourself, but you need to know, the others here don't matter. They're not real. But if you die here, you'll die in the real world, and I can't let that happen. Coulson… he wouldn't react well to waking up and finding you dead okay.”
Coulson had been the man in the ill fitting combat outfit and framed glasses who had shouted at her before The Patriot’s death. He was a civilian, a teacher.
“Snap out of it May!”
She was used to her superiors barking out orders at her in the past. It didn't happen so much now at Hydra, where the Doctor and Madame Hydra had perfected speaking slowly and in low and threatening tones to have her obey them.
But his voice had sounded so familiar to her; truth be told seeing the image of his face after the reports had come in had already sparked something within her, a feeling she couldn't explain.
She didn't recognise his name, but hearing herself say it brought on an urge to smile. She hadn't of course - The Doctor would have no doubt found her behaviour suspicious, and she’s always been good enough at controlling her emotions to conceal it.
But now that she doesn’t have to, she wants to know about this man.
Daisy seems all too happy to oblige as they're cuffed by the suspicious guard who tells them that they're being taken prisoner by SHIELD.
Phil is heading down the hallway towards the converted labs when an agent he has yet to learn the name of rushes past, shouting that Ward’s girlfriend was back and they now had a high level member of Hydra in their custody.
His only reaction is to follow the guy, trying to suppress the hope that was building at the thought that it could be May, she could be alive.
He doesn't want to feel the crushing disappointment if it isn't her, if she indeed is dead. She can't be, not now, not when he is so close to remembering her, remembering them. He doesn't even know her, knows only glimpses, but he knows that his heart will be broken if she is gone, if he can't see her again.
“Stop it! Let her go. She saved my life!”
The first thing Phil sees when he rushes into the room is Daisy being held back by Mack and Ward, both men trying to stop her from rushing forward and tackling a group of agents that were standing in a circle, guns pointed at someone blocked from his line of sight by the crowd in the room.
He pushes his way past, trying to get through, freezing when he finally catches a glimpse of her, May, kneeling on the ground with her hands behind her head.
“What are you doing? Let her go,” he finds himself shouting before remembering he doesn't have much real authority here.
“We don't take orders from you.”
He clenches his fist, resisting the urge to act on instinct and attack the agent who had spoken, shouted really. They don't trust him; he’s nobody to them. He turns his attention to Ward, trying to convey as much of his thoughts through expressions as possible.
Please. Please let her go.
Daisy echoes his thoughts with loud shouts.
He can only stand helpless on the sidelines as Ward orders for them to take her to a holding cell until they can decide what to do with her. He listens as both Daisy and Jemma voice their objections, watches as two agents pull May to her feet and drag her from the room.
It’s been a long day.
Daisy had cried when she saw Trip, running to embrace him, much to the confusion of the man, who was sensible enough to just go with the flow. She had cried again upon learning what happened to Mace, and then once more as she and Jemma spoke about what had happened to her during captivity.
Phil had turned away, trying not to listen in. He knew they wouldn't mind, that he could go and comfort both of them, but his thoughts were too convoluted to process much else beside the fact that Melinda May was in this very building, and he couldn't go and see how she was.
She hadn't looked well when they dragged her away; injured - Daisy had mentioned that they fought their way out of Hydra, and he just wanted to know that she was safe, that she was okay.
He needs to know that she's fine.
Simmons attaches herself to Ward’s side and tags along to the interrogation, and thank god for that, because only half an hour later, they’ve made the decision to release May under the condition that she be relocated to a room where they can still monitor her actions.
It takes all of twenty minutes after everyone else has left for Phil to make his way there.
She's sitting on the small bed in the corner of the room when he enters, arms raised to show that he meant her no harm, and he can't quite read the expression on her face.
It almost seemed like she was glad to see him.
“Hi, I'm Phil Coulson. I saw you were injured and I was want to make sure you're okay,” he tells her as he moves closer, showing her the medkit he has in one hand. Maybe he's imagining things but she seems to curl up even more, shrink away at his approach.
She’s afraid.
“I’m going to be honest, I haven't really done this before, but you're in safe hands, I promise.”
She cracks a smile and it warms him to the very core.
He sets the medkit down beside her on the bed, and prompts her to move a little closer so he can tend to the worst of the damage. She's still in her uniform, the hydra logo patches on her upper arms stand out against the rest of it, and she sits in silence as he reaches to help her take it off. The shirt underneath is soaked, and he wants to be angry that someone hasn't brought her a change of clothes already, but he knows they're short on supplies, and most of the agents are pissed she's been let out in the first place.
She winces as she stretches her arms to allow him to pull her shirt up and over her head, and he feels a sharp pang in his heart as the cloth comes away, revealing inch by inch of bruised skin. There are several bleeding cuts and he's pretty sure that the wound on her arm is a bullet graze, and if he had known that it was this bad, he would have fought harder to get to her.
“I'm sorry,” he mumbles to her as he gets started on bandaging up the worst of her injuries. He can feel her scrutinising his every move; he tries hard not to keep flicking his gaze up to her face to gauge her reaction. The corner of her lips are tilted upwards slightly and he thinks she might be smiling at him.
“This must hurt,” he tries, desperate to get a response from her, to hear her voice again and see if it’s the same one from his very brief memories of her.
“I've had worse.”
He doesn't know how to react to that. He feels pain, sadness that she's been hurt worse than this, but also elation, that she's finally responding to his words.
Phil knows that logically there is no correct way for him to tell this woman that he barely knows, that they've actually known each other for so long, in another world, in the real world. He thinks that it might be better to wait to break it to her, to ease her into it, but something about her makes him want to just voice all of his thoughts.
He can't help it.
“I'm sorry,” he tells her again.
“So you've said.”
She's actually smiling this time; it's barely there, but she is, and it's at him, and it makes him feel a kind of happiness that he cannot explain.
“Melinda,” he says softly, his hand moving to cover hers, looking up into her eyes, praying to every power out there that she remembers him.
An icy feeling settles over his heart as she stares at him blankly.
“I.. I don't know how to tell you this. But I've been having these flashes of memories… they're of you, of us actually. I know we haven't met before, well, before you pointed a gun at me and I yelled at you, but the truth is we have.”
Her non-expression morphs into a frown but at least she hasn't shoved him away yet, so he takes it as a sign to continue.
“I suspected, thought things weren’t quite right. I didn't know for sure until Jemma and then Daisy showed up and told me the truth. That this world, all of it is fake. It's a virtual reality and we’re just avatars controlled by our real selves. I’m pretty sure we were kidnapped by a robot in reality, but Daisy glossed over that part.”
He pauses, waiting for her to tell him that he's insane, but she's still unmoving, like a statue, and he wonders if he has shocked her a degree to far, but then she tilts her head to the side and makes eye contact with him, and he thinks that it's her way of giving him permission to continue.
“They told me that our entire team had been taken. You are part of that team, one of us. I couldn't remember much of anything to be honest, I only had occasional flashes of another life, but last night… I saw you in my dreams. And as say that now, I realise how cheesy it sounds, but I haven't been able to get you out of my mind ever since.”
She's not frowning anymore, in fact, he thinks she might be humoured by all of this. Maybe she thinks he's insane and she's only humouring him because he's being kind to her, he doesn't know.
“I… I saw us sparring together. We were both younger, but I can't be sure because you still look so youthful now. And we danced and I did this, I patched you up, and you patched me up. And I've seen you cry and we had drinks and I can't explain it really. I know that there's something there, I can feel it.”
She’s biting her bottom lip and it could be a sign that she's pondering whether it's a good time to scream for help, or she could be remembering… He can't recall if he'd always been so hopeful, but he thinks he probably has. He just wants her to, needs her to remember; these memories can't be false, it would hurt too much if they were.
He's a desperate man.
“Melinda… Please,” he begs, moving to hold her hands in his, expecting her to pull away from him immediately, but too consumed by his thoughts to notice that she doesn't.
“You have to remember. I saw myself telling a woman, one with the same face as Madame Hydra, that the man named Radcliffe had taken something from me. I said your name, I told her that you meant everything to me, and I can't even recall most of that life but I know that it's true. It has to be true.”
He stares into her eyes, hands probably crushing hers with how tight he's holding on, desperately searching for a sign that she remembers something, anything. He can't breathe as she slips one of her hands out from between his; his first instinct is to think that she's done playing games with him, but then she raises it up to cup his cheek, and smiles, much like the one he recalls so vividly from his memories.
It’s working.
She's remembering.
He almost topples over and off the bed when she laughs. It takes him a moment longer than he'd care to admit to realise why.
She'd known this whole time.
“Daisy told you already didn't she?”
“In great detail. We had time to fill on the way over.”
His heart sinks to his stomach. If she had already known, she was just making fun of him this whole time. He doesn't know her, know Melinda May, not really, but he knows that he loves her, it's not a memory that can be erased, not something that can be taken away so easily. But he also thinks that there is a reason all his memories of them had been so… platonic.
Maybe she didn't feel the same way.
He tries to get up to leave, but finds that her fingers are wrapped tightly around his wrist, not letting him leave. He pauses, searching her for a sign of how to proceed, feeling so much more confusion now even having been enlightened.
Phil cannot conceal the gasp that leaves him as she tugs on his arm and pulls him back to sit down beside him.
“Daisy told me that they took me first. That you did everything in your power to try and find me, save me. Thank you, Phil.”
He nods slowly, swallowing. His throat is so dry and he's afraid any response he gives now will show her how utterly devastated he is that she's turned down his advances. He’s so angry at himself for thinking this way; if he really did love her, and he knew that he did, he should be happy just knowing that she's safe, and happy that they'll get out of this mess, whether or not she reciprocates these feelings of his.
“I don't remember,” she tells him, and he imagines this is what it feels like to have one’s heart broken, but he just nods, casting his gaze down to where she's still holding his wrist and slowly trying to pull away without her noticing.
She doesn't let him go.
“But… I want you to help me. I just can't shake this feeling… I don't remember you, I don't remember anything. But I… I think you mean a lot to me… a lot, and I know that, even without my memories.”
He feels a surge of hope from within, can't help the smile breaking out on his face as she returns it. She doesn't pull away as he drifts closer, just needing to be nearer to her. It's clearly something that neither of them can explain, he's pretty sure this, whatever that they've confessed to one another, hasn't happened before.
He can't imagine that they wouldn't be together if they both knew how the other felt, and he knows that he loves her, so much.
“Can I… Can I try something?” he asks her. He's nervous, hesitant, but he's never wanted, never needed something so much before. To hold her in his arms, to never let her go again.
She nods, and he shuffles right up to her on the bed, intent on moving his arms so he can pull her into an embrace. He's both shocked and pleasantly surprised as she leans into him, smiling as his arms wrap around her bare waist, careful to not press against her injuries and do any further damage.
He's so happy, so content, even knowing that the evils of the world are out there, he feels like can take on anything with her by his side.
“Phil…” she whispers, and it's definitely not just his imagination, because she's drifting closer to him, fingers pressing into the base of his skull as she rests her forehead against his. They're so close, and he knows that she's giving him the choice to take the plunge.
He thinks the real him, with the real memories, would be bitterly disappointed if he didn't.
And so he moves one hand up from around her waist, cupping her jaw gently as he leans in, their breath mingling, lips about to touch when the door slams open and he can hear Daisy’s gasp of shock. In any other circumstance he might have stopped, pulled away, embarrassed to be caught but it feels like they've been waiting an eternity for this and he’ll be damned if he lets them get interrupted.
“Melinda,” he whispers a second before their lips meet, and once they do, he doesn't want it to ever end.
There's a familiarity to it all, yet a sense that this is something they've always been hesitant to do, but he tries not to dwell on it because she's pressing closer against him, arms winding tighter around his neck as she almost pulls herself into his lap. They both want this, more than anything; an overwhelming urge to be here, together, expressing their affections for one another.
They break apart, gasping for air but it doesn't last long because before he has much of a chance to react, her lips are on his again. This time she's biting at his lip, running her tongue against his. They're consumed in one another.
He barely notices the loud “Eeewww” echo out before the door slams and they're alone once more.
He knows that this isn't real, but he also knows that when they get out of here, he’s not going to let this end. She means everything to him, and he means a lot to her, and that's more than enough to conquer all the fear, all the pain.
When they break apart again she has the warmest smile on her face, but even so, he can see how tired she is.
“You should get some sleep,” he tells her, tracing over her bruised cheek with a thumb, grinning as she leans into his touch.
“We should get some sleep,” she responds, and he's happy she suggested it because even knowing how she felt, he was afraid to take things too far.
He moves to stand, leaning down to brush a kiss against her forehead because he just can't help it, and grabs the medkit, closing it up and setting it down in the floor at the foot of the bed.
“That can't be comfortable,” he comments, looking at the tight pants she is wearing and she snickers, undoing the button and zip before slowly siding them off.
“Already trying to get into my pants?” she jokes, but he's too stunned by the sight of her in just her underwear to really respond. He clears his throat awkwardly, scratching at the back of his head, well aware that he's probably redder than a ripened tomato at this point.
“Here… In case anyone else comes in,” he says as he moves to unbutton his shirt, shrugging it off and handing it to her. She gives him a strangely disappointed look as she pulls it on, leaving the buttons undone, and he swallows again.
Maybe that hadn't been such a good idea.
“You're tired too. Let's sleep.”
He smiles a little nervously at her as she lies down on the bed, pressing her back against the wall to give him room to climb in beside her. He quickly takes off his pants too, folding them into a near pile and leaving them beside the medical kit, before moving to lie down next to her.
He rolls onto his side to face her, grinning when she tugs at the waistband of his boxers, pulling him closer against her until they're pressed together.
“I thought you were dead,” he tells her. It's a heavy topic but something he needs to get off his chest before he wakes up in the middle of the night with horrible visions of it. She nods, cheek brushing against his chest as she moves to rest one hand over his heart.
“I'm right here.”
“I know.”
There's a long silence and he thinks that she's drifted off when she runs her fingers over his bare arm and let's out a quiet sigh.
“Phil, who even wears an undershirt?”
He snorts with mock offense.
“Melinda, are you trying to get me naked?”
She sighs again, turning so her back his against his front, and he slips an arm around her waist, holding her. He buries his face into her hair, and they're joined from head to toe, beginning to end.
“We have a lot to make up for when we get back to reality,” she mumbles, and he nods laughing softly.
They have so much ahead of them to look forward to, and he cannot wait to thank the son of a bitch who caused this mess in this first place, before destroying them. Or standing back and giving Melinda the honours.
Either way, it'll be a good day.