Chapter Text
Chapter 1
The strike snaps her head back despite turning with the momentum at the last moment to lessen the impact. She dances back out of range quickly, shaking her head to shift the haze of pain attempting to burr the edges of her vision whilst keeping her attacker firmly in her sights to counter any follow up. He’s not pursuing immediately. It gives her a chance to spit the blood from her mouth, her split lip stinging as crimson splatters to the mats like the abstract art of a child.
No, nothing so innocent.
She steps over the splatter so that she doesn’t have to look at it, wiping thoughts of blood and pain and death from her mind as easily as removing it from her sight.
As she closes back in on him to continue the fight she tries to remind herself how she ended up here and now with Phillip J Coulson hitting her – no, beating on her…
x
There’s silence as she first walks into the rec room.
For about a minute.
Then everyone speaks at once – congratulations, welcome backs, missed yous, the usual. She’s surrounded by well-meaning well-wishers, drawn into uncomfortable hugs despite her bristling. She even manages a few tense smiles at some of them, some of those she knows, one she’d considered a daughter before now, her team mates, some she wouldn’t be able to recall the names of but faces she might recognise as having passed her once in a corridor. Familiar. Friendly.
She only has eyes for him. He who stands with shocked pain painted across the canvas of his face. Always so expressive. So brilliantly able to conceal his true thoughts and feelings behind a mask of seemingly genuine false emotions. So much better a lie than her ‘blank face’. So much more readily believed.
She has a feeling that this horrible tableau is the truth, the genuine him, the mask reflecting everything beneath its surface. It cuts her deep, robs her breath, glues her feet in place as the crowds talk around her, to her, at her. A storm raging with her at the centre, oblivious to the swirling winds, concerned only for him.
Time seems to stand still for an eternity of a heat beat.
Then it moves too swiftly as he turns about and heads up the dark stairs to his office without a word. The world rushes in to fill the void, noisy, too chaotic, drowning her in sound and lights and people when she’d just rather be alone right now.
She lets her head fall to look at the ground, eyes shut, taking a deep breath to centre herself amidst the sudden chaos.
She can feel the others’ stares upon her – questioning, sympathising? She doesn’t care to look up and find out.
He’s walked away.
That’s okay, she tells herself. Presumably, he means for her to follow him, to let them great each other in private. What they have to say to one another is not for public consumption.
The slammed door before she’s taken a second step makes it clear that she assumes wrong.
Everyone watches on silently now, seemingly unwilling to disturb the sudden stillness. The tension in the room is palpable. If only she really could cut it with a knife. Any minute now someone will start giggling nervously and she’ll have to kill them.
“Awk-ward,” Skye breathes just loudly enough for everyone to hear but quietly enough that she can choose to pretend that she didn’t. She couldn’t agree more! She could have laid odds that the young girl would be the first to crack (and the first to brave her wrath). It breaks some of the tension but more importantly it drives her to take action before anything more is said.
She shakes herself mentally – she didn’t come here to be ignored. She could’ve stayed away and been ignored quite easily enough without everyone else witnessing her humiliation.
She climbs the dark stairs and knocks on the office door well aware of the eyes studiously not following her.
“Go away, May.”
Well she’s no intention of just walking away.
She tries the door handle.
Locked.
She swallows as she tries not to let her expression show just how much that hurts her.
“Open the door, Phil,” she asks quietly. She’s incredibly conscious of the many ears straining to hear what she says. “Let me in,” she near begs.
“You don’t want to come in here right now,” his distorted voice comes slightly muffled through the door but she’s no doubt everyone else can hear him perfectly.
“I do.”
Silence.
“Don’t make me do this through the door, Phil,” she pleads. She can feel the weight of the stares of the others on the back of her neck. She doesn’t need the witnesses. This... this thing between them, this... friendship, relationship, whatever... is private. She doesn’t want to be talking to him in front of them or through a solid door. There’s been too many things standing between them recently – the lies, the miles, now this door.
“The door’s for your safety.”
She scoffs. Yeah right. Like she needs protection from him. “You’d never hurt me,” she says with certainty. They might lie to each other, plan and deceive, but he’d never raise a hand to her.
“I might if you come in here,” the door replies.
“I’ll take the risk,” she tells him firmly.
There’s another few beats of silence.
She sighs audibly. “Please Phil,” she begs quietly notwithstanding her audience.
Finally, just as she’s almost given up hope of the door opening voluntarily, there’s the click of the lock sliding back. He’s not opening the door per se, he’s not inviting her in, but it’s enough. Enough that she can open it with a turn of the handle.
She’s come this far.
Another handle, another push, another step… she can do that.
x
“You’re back.” It’s a statement but also a question. She hears what he doesn’t add - ‘are you staying?’ They’ve always read between the lines of the little that they say out loud. She hopes he’s just as proficient at understanding what she doesn’t say now.
“I’m here,” she replies to both his asked and unasked questions. ‘Not necessarily back,’ she doesn’t say, ‘not necessarily staying.’
“You didn’t tell me you were coming.” I wasn’t ready. I could have been more prepared.
“I thought about it.” I was worried that you’d lock the doors. “You didn’t change my access codes.”
“I thought about it.” I was worried that you’d find a locked door. “I decided you’d probably just break the door down.” But I was worried that you might not try.
“You want to tell me where you’ve been these past six months?” I missed you. Or maybe that’s just what she wishes he’d say, what she wants to hear.
“You knew where I was.” You could’ve come got me.
“I sent agents.” A gesture of peace. “You sent them back.” Rejection.
“I didn’t want your agents.” I wanted you to come yourself.
“I offered to come.” I wasn’t brave enough to go if I wasn’t welcome. “As I recall, you hung up on me.”
“I did.” I was a coward. “It wasn’t a ‘no.’”
It felt like one to him.
“It wasn’t a ‘yes’ either.” She doesn’t dispute that. He’s not wrong.
x
“Why did you come back?” he asks her as the silence turns uncomfortable between them. It’s never been uncomfortable like this before. Even after he’d died. Even after she’d lied. Never like this.
“I didn’t find what I was looking for,” she answers with a typical non-answer the kinds of which they’re all so proficient at now.
“You didn’t go on some walk about to find yourself or inner peace or whatever the rest of them believe.” It’s not a question.
“No.” She answers anyway.
“Then why?”
“Why did I leave or why did I come back?” she asks to buy time. She moves away, twiddles with a doo-hickey on the corner of his desk. Distancing herself physically as much as emotionally.
“Yes.” She laughs without humour. They’re all experts at this double speak.
It falls silent. Usually she likes the silence. She’s content without words. This time there’s tension, accusation maybe. She didn’t come here for silence or double speak. She didn’t come here for the parry of words back and forth, neither the victor both ending up cut.
“I missed my friend.” She tries honesty.
She missed the friend he used to be. Before Tahiti, before all the lies and the betrayals. Before the pain and when it became okay to hurt each other.
Silence.
“We’ve both made mistakes,” he ventures. Another olive branch extended.
“They weren’t mistakes,” she refutes quietly, saddened. Not a rejection, not as such, but she can’t accept peace on a lie.
“What?” he’s confused, maybe a little suspicious that she’s not accepted his offer to wipe everything under the rug and move forwards.
“They weren’t mistakes,” she clarifies. “We made the decisions we had to. Mistake implies that we’d correct it if we could, that we’d make a different decision if we got a second chance to do everything over.”
“You’d still make the same decisions,” he says, half accusation half realisation.
“I might have kept Skye from Puerto Rico and Simmons away from an alien rock… but essentially… Yes, I’d make the same choices.”
He thinks on that for a few moments and she lets him. She won’t pretend, not any more. They are either broken or not, she’s not willing to press anymore band aids to this gushing wound.
“We both would,” he confirms eventually.
Silence descends.
The end of an era? The end of their friendship? The end of even trying to put everything back together again?
He breaks the silence first. He usually does.
“I miss my friend.”
That’s all that matters after all is said and done. It’s why she’s here. It’s why she’s trying. It’s why this is so damn hard, so damn important. Neither of them verbalises the question they’re both thinking, both too afraid of the answer to risk it.
How do we fix this?
x