Chapter Text
Natasha had tried to show him how to do it, but the place in his phone’s settings where he could program in a ‘shortcut’ was bafflingly difficult to find, so Nat had just rolled her eyes and snatched his phone with ease.
“I’ll put in all the essential ones,” she had said. Phil had crossed his arms, but hadn’t hid his smile. “‘Btw’, ‘idk’, ‘idc’, ‘smh’-”
“Besides btw, I don’t know what any of that means,” Phil had said, but Nat had only smirked.
“‘Istg’, ‘jk’, ‘tbh’, ‘ily’-”
He still didn’t know what half of them meant, but he had figured out a few. Phil hefted the huge, experimental gun onto his shoulder and pulled out his phone. He tapped in three letters, waited a split-second to make sure it sent, then ran down the hallway towards the containment module.
Miles away, Melinda’s phone lit up.
“Sir, those were in Coulson’s locker,” Maria said. Fury just stared after Steve Rogers, ignoring the bloody cards on the table.
“They needed the push.”
Maria’s jaw tightened momentarily, but she didn’t object. Phil didn’t need them anymore. Maria tried not to let her stomach lurch at the thought.
Phil Coulson had been a constant at SHIELD as long as she had. Cadets learned about him in class, read his reports, studied his cases. But Maria had known him since before he was Fury’s famously dependable good eye, and more than almost anyone she knew what SHIELD had lost.
SHIELD had lost one of the few top level agents who truly believed in the goodness of humanity and the rightness of SHIELD’s mission; Maria herself had fallen into cynicism long ago, and no one really knew Fury’s motivations, but no one would ever assume they came from the goodness of his heart. Phil Coulson had embodied everything the organization was meant to be, from his faith in the mission to his willingness to die for the cause. There would never be another agent like him. Or another friend.
Maria stood behind Fury, staring sightlessly at the floor. She knew they were both wondering the same thing: how were any of them going to manage?
Slowly, the beeps and shuffles of the command center worked their way back into her senses, and Maria blinked when she noticed a young agent at her elbow, holding out a tablet and looking nervous.
“Uh, Commander-” Maria tapped the frequency on the screen and a hard voice crackled through her earpiece. Maria’s eyes widened and her fingers clenched around the tablet. A pit opened in her chest.
“Sir-” Fury turned his head. “Agent May is requesting permission to dock.” Fury’s shoulders, slumped with the weight of a power-mad mind-controlling god on the loose, tensed. He whipped around to face her, barely managing to conceal his horror. He met her eyes and she pressed her lips into a line, waiting for his orders. Fury let out a long breath, as if he were deflating.
“Damn.” Maria stood motionless, tablet in hand. “Permission granted.”
“Where is he?”
“Melinda-”
“Where is he, Hill?” Maria grimaced but took the use of her last name as a cue. She straightened and spoke as if she were delivering a mission report, meeting Melinda’s determined eyes head on.
“Med bay. They called it on the scene.” Shock flickered in Melinda’s eyes, and Maria knew it was bad when she didn’t try to hide it. But Melinda pursed her lips to keep them from trembling and fixed her with a hard look.
“Take me to him.” Maria didn’t hesitate. She strode away down the hall, and she didn’t have to think before shortening her steps to match strides with Melinda’s normal pace.
The med bay wasn’t a long walk from the deck, but it felt like the longest silence of Maria’s life. Melinda didn’t speak, didn’t ask how it happened, who had done it. The spy in Maria, the agent who was second-in-command of this vessel, wanted to ask how Melinda had been informed. Wondered whether there was a leak. But she didn’t speak.
Melinda stood next to Maria in the elevator with the same shock in her eyes. Maria sensed more than saw Melinda clenching her fists, and she didn’t look down to confirm. Neither of them moved until the elevator doors slid open, and Maria led Melinda to the med bay without a word.
There were a few battered agents crowded in one side of the room, all of them studiously ignoring the black body bag on the farthest bed. Melinda stiffened in the doorway.
“Is anyone dying?” Maria asked curtly. No one spoke. “Then out.” Maybe they were intimidated, maybe they saw how Melinda was staring at the bag and put two and two together. It didn’t matter. The room cleared without protest. Maria slipped out after the last agent, brushing her fingertips against Melinda’s elbow as she went. Melinda didn’t react.
She didn’t open the bag. Part of her wanted to, but she knew if she opened the bag and saw his face, all the resolve in the world wouldn’t be able to keep her from breaking down and sobbing on the floor. So she stood next to the bed, aching to touch him one last time, but not allowing herself that comfort.
She should have been there. He had wanted her there, had roped her into looking over every page of paperwork related to the Avengers Initiative, had called and asked her to come in after Clint had been compromised. A spike of protective fear had gone through her heart and she had almost left her cubicle, but she had told herself Natasha would handle it. They didn’t need her. She made things worse.
He had needed her, and she had turned away.
In twenty-two years of marriage, he had never turned away from her. Not after their botched first mission, not after the first time she had been shot and hadn’t wanted his concern, not after she had agreed to train an ex-KGB agent turned SHIELD asset without telling him. He hadn’t abandoned her after Bahrain, when he had all but dragged her to the hospital because she had refused to go. The doctors had told him “she lost the baby,” and, “oh, I’m sorry, we thought you knew,” and still Phil hadn’t left her side. For two months a human had grown inside her, and she hadn’t known until they were gone. Any other mother would have known, would have felt the changes in her body. Melinda hadn’t realized until it was too late. But still, Phil had stayed, in the weeks and months after when she barely spoke to him and never let him touch her. When she had finally whispered the truth about the girl through the dark, believing him to be asleep, he hadn’t reeled back in disgust. He had wrapped himself around her and told her over and over that he loved her, that he wasn’t going anywhere. Every shaky step she had taken towards feeling again, wanting to feel again, he had been beside her.
And when he had needed her, she hadn’t been there. She had been working in her cubicle, determinedly not thinking about Clint and whether he would be okay. They didn’t need her, she had told herself. They’re fine. Her phone had buzzed, and she had glanced away from her budgeting reports.
I love you.
For reasons she couldn’t explain, Melinda’s heart had stopped in her chest. Without a thought she had left her desk, grabbing her jacket and badge while calling a different number.
“Vic, I need a plane. Any plane.”
The moment she had seen Maria’s face, she had known. Even on the phone with Vic, she had known, but for once she had allowed herself hope.
She had given up on hope a long time ago, and for good reason. Hope played no part in a successful mission. And it certainly hadn’t kept Phil alive.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” she said to the body bag. “I should have been here. I should have stopped it.”
There was no answer.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, and she could almost hear Phil saying it wasn’t her fault as she left the med bay.
“He’s really gone?” Natasha nodded, staring at the wall.
“Yeah. Loki stabbed him.” Clint clenched his jaw and took a breath through his nose, a calming technique that had become a habit years ago. He had hated learning to meditate, and May had hated teaching him. His heart squeezed in his chest.
“Did anyone tell Mel?” he asked, and Natasha’s shoulders drooped.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll ask Hill.” But she made no move to get up. Clint didn’t push her; they both needed a moment to be quiet together. Something else they had both hated to learn, but had served them well.
As if his thoughts had summoned her, the door swished open.
“Barton, Romanoff.” Natasha straightened at her name and gave her SO a wary look. May raised an eyebrow at Clint. He nodded.
“Nat knocked some sense into me.” On another day, May would have smirked. She had been smirking again recently, rolling her eyes at Clint’s antics, smiling whenever Natasha said something snarky. But whatever life had been coming back to her was gone; her eyes were dark and cold.
“You good to kill some aliens?” Old May hadn’t liked killing. She had greatly enjoyed fighting, but had dreaded killing, even people who deserved it. When Clint had been Coulson’s rookie it had confused him that a warrior with May’s skills wouldn’t relish putting people down.
He certainly had.
But she and Coulson had slowly worked that out of him, piece by piece, mission by mission, sparring session by sparring session. May had taught him how to pin a man to the ground with an arrow without killing him, and Coulson had taught him to disarm an opponent with a clueless attitude before it even came to shooting. Under the guise of training, they had shaped the murderer he had been into a human being.
He hadn’t fully appreciated their efforts until Natasha was pinning him to the ground for the fourth time that day, screaming that she’d kill him. But May had just nudged Natasha away and peeled Clint off the floor, and together they had returned to convincing a scared, lonely woman they weren’t trying to kill her. Helping train Natasha had been one of the most draining efforts in Clint’s life, but it had helped him realize what May and Coulson had done for him. They hadn’t given up on him, or Natasha. So he hadn’t, either.
But Coulson was gone, and he had taken that warm, caring May with him. Guilt and grief and rage roared through Clint’s body- guilt for the part he had played in Loki’s plans, grief for two of the only people who had ever cared for him, and rage to end the monsters who had taken them.
Clint couldn’t kill Loki, he wasn’t a god. But he could absolutely take out as much of his army as possible.
Clint glanced at Natasha, and she pressed her lips into a line.
“Yeah,” he said, and looked up at May. “Let’s go.”
“All right, listen up.” Rogers looked up at the portal, his mouth set in a determined line. Aliens streamed out of it like ants from an anthill. “Until we can close that portal our priority is containment. Barton-” Clint snapped his head towards Rogers, waiting for orders. His knuckles were white around his bow, and Natasha felt her first spike of real fear. Either she would be fine or she wouldn’t, that was how it worked, but Clint had more to live for, and she had let him come down here. “-I want you on that roof, call out patterns and strays. Stark, you’ve got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, turn it back or turn it to ash.”
“Wanna give me a boost?” Clint met Natasha’s eyes for less than a second, and she knew he was feeling that same fear for her.
“Yeah, might want to clench up, Legolas,” Tony said. He grabbed Clint by the scruff and they blasted into the air. Natasha watched them go as Rogers continued.
“Thor, you’ve gotta try and bottle neck that portal. Slow ‘em down. You’ve got the lightning, light the bastards up.” With a grim look, Thor swung his hammer and flew into the air, straight for the top of Stark Tower. Tony dropped Clint safely on the roof of the building, and Natasha looked to Rogers. “You and me, we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here.” Natasha nodded. Rogers glanced down the street. “Will Agent May be back?”
Natasha cocked her handgun. May had disappeared without a word shortly after landing the flaming quinjet. Loki had flashed by on his speeder, Natasha had turned, and May had been gone. “She’ll pull her weight.” Rogers gave her a terse nod, and turned to the Hulk.
“And Hulk-” Hulk grunted, and Rogers pointed into the air. “-smash.” Hulk grinned.
It was the most chaotic battle Natasha had ever been part of. Her standard mission was get in, complete the mission, get out. If Clint was along, explosions were more likely, but this was still out of her wheelhouse. An army of alien soldiers with huge alien guns and scepters converged on them from every angle, and for what felt like a long time, Natasha’s life condensed into gunshots and pain and alien shrieks.
They were huge, and powerful, but they went down at the first hit. Natasha shot one in the face, grabbed another by the head, and swung herself around its neck to kick another in the abdomen. They dropped like flies. Heavy flies, that got in a few punches first. All the while, she was aware of Rogers a few feet away, brandishing his shield and yelling with every blow. May would have rolled her eyes at his technique, but it was effective enough. Natasha darted to the side, ducked under an alien’s arm, and rammed it into one of its friends.
A massive clawed hand smacked her into a car, and Natasha barely managed to roll over before a scepter slashed her in half. She jabbed one of her bites into the alien’s neck and shoved its writhing body off her. Rogers caved in an alien skull and staggered to his feet.
There was a lull as another squadron flew by overhead. Natasha took a few deep breaths and forced herself to her feet.
“Nice moves,” Rogers panted, and Natasha quirked half a smile.
“It won’t be worth anything if we can’t close that portal.” Rogers followed her gaze, and they both stared up at the rip in the universe. Natasha saw stars on the other side, and was almost crushed with the hopelessness of what they were trying to do. This was an alien invasion. This was armageddon.
And Coulson had died trying to stop it. Natasha set her jaw.
“You got a plan to get up there?” Rogers asked. Another squadron flew over their heads, and Natasha frowned up at them. There was a gunshot, and one of the speeders tumbled out of the sky as Rogers and Natasha whipped around. Natasha grinned.
“I could catch a ride.” She met Rogers’ disbelieving eyes. “Could use a boost, though.”
“How did she-?”
“After we save the world, Rogers,” Natasha said, because they were going to. Coulson was dead but there was still hope, always, as long as she was willing to fight.
And Natasha liked to fight. She leaped onto Rogers’ shield and he launched her into the air, straight into the path of an approaching speeder.
“You know,” she shouted over the wind as she clambered onto the platform. “I was gonna get a taxi, but this’ll do.” May said nothing, only glanced back at her, but Natasha thought she saw a trace of a smile.
May piloted the alien craft through the city at dizzying speeds, whipping around corners and catapulting over buildings with reckless abandon. They overtook another squadron and May tossed Natasha her handgun; Natasha took great pleasure in squeezing off each shot and watching them fall out of the sky.
“I was telling Clint-” May took a sharp turn and Natasha nearly tumbled overboard. “-this is like Budapest all over again.”
“You and I remember Budapest differently,” May shouted, and Natasha’s face split into a wide grin.
“That’s what Clint said!” May ducked the speeder under an oncoming team, and Natasha managed to shoot four aliens in the back as they sped away. “We need to get to the tower,” Natasha yelled. “We need to shut the portal.” May pulled up on the controls and they rose over the city and most of the conflict. Natasha shot a few aliens off the sides of some buildings.
The speeder jolted and Natasha instinctively threw herself to the floor of the platform. She peeked over the edge.
“This guy,” she growled, and impossibly, Loki seemed to hear her. He smirked and pointed his scepter at their speeder in a command. Four crafts’ worth of alien soldiers opened fire on them, and May stayed hard on course, but with a new tension in her shoulders. Her hands twitched.
“May.” May’s head tilted toward her voice, but she betrayed no other reaction. Natasha squeezed off a few shots, but only managed to take out one of the shooters. “May, the tower. We can handle Loki later.” Another volley hit the speeder and slammed Natasha to one side. May tilted the speeder to give her more cover. The tendons in her neck stood out like rope. “May!” Natasha yelled as they were hit again. “Evasive maneuvers! May!” Loki aimed his scepter at them with a sardonic grin, ready to take them out. Natasha’s eyes darted from Loki to his honor guard to their speeders, trying to calculate how to inflict the most damage with the few bullets she had left. “May!”
“I got him,” a voice crackled in her ear, and Loki’s hand whipped up and plucked something out of the air. He smirked as if he had won.
Clint’s arrow exploded. Loki left a trail of smoke as he plummeted from his craft to Stark’s tower, and Clint whooped over the comms.
May dove after Loki, ignoring Natasha’s screams. Natasha fought the wind to claw her way up to May and grabbed her shoulder, but May threw her off. Her face was twisted in hate and her teeth were bared, and for a split-second Natasha didn’t recognize her.
“May!” she barked in a commanding tone. It was the voice Victoria and Maria used when May had gone over the line, and May’s face twitched. “This is not the mission!” She reached around May to grab the controls herself, and May didn’t resist as Natasha pulled them to the side. “Get me to that thing!” Natasha ordered, pointing at the device Loki had used to open the portal. May didn’t answer. She shrugged Natasha off and looped back around towards the tower.
“I can’t land this thing,” May called back as they approached. Her shoulders were stiff.
“Understood.” Natasha tapped May with her handgun. “You want this back?” May shook her head, keeping her eyes trained on the tower.
“You keep it.” The tower swelled in Natasha’s vision until it was all she could see. “Now!” May barked, and Natasha jumped. She tucked and rolled and May peeled away at a sharp angle. Natasha watched until she was sure May wasn’t pulling around for another kamikaze run, then turned to the machine.
“Taxi!” Natasha pressed her comm deeper into her ear, as if that would somehow make the signal clearer. Tony flashed by her on a rapid, uncontrolled descent. “Taxi!”
“Shut up, I’m flying!” Natasha leaned over the edge of the tower, watching Tony fall with hawklike intensity. May appeared around a building, hurtling down until her trajectory was parallel with Tony’s. She maneuvered directly underneath him, and Natasha’s breath caught when May finally pulled up, barely ten yards from the ground. But to stop on a dime would have been as deadly to Tony as slamming to the ground, and May couldn’t control the fall. The craft crashed into the street, and both May and Tony were thrown clear.
Thor swung his hammer and with a bound that spanned the length of a block, Natasha saw him catch May over his shoulder. Tony, in his armor, was not so lucky, and Rogers and Hulk hurried to his crumpled form. Natasha waited with bated breath, her hand over her comm.
“Romanoff, Barton? Check in.” Natasha bit back a gasp. She never thought she would hear May’s voice over comms again.
“I’m good,” she said. “I have Loki’s scepter.”
“I’m fine,” Clint said, and he sounded exhausted, but not pained. Some of the tightness in Natasha’s chest relaxed. “On my way to you. How’s Stark?”
Thor leaped to Tony’s side with one arm wrapped around May’s waist. May stepped away immediately to examine Tony, and even though she knew she was too far, Natasha still squinted in an attempt to gauge May’s expression.
May’s exasperated voice crackled through comms. “He’s fine.” Natasha let out a long breath. “Romanoff, we’re coming up to you.” It took her a second to remember, but then Natasha’s heart squeezed.
“Affirmative, Agent May.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll have that drink now.” Natasha’s knuckles whitened around Loki’s scepter. He smiled up at them almost sheepishly, like a child caught cheating in a game.
Clint’s muscles flexed and Natasha knew how badly he wanted to loose his arrow, but he gritted his teeth and stayed still. Thor crossed his arms, face stony, and turned to May in the back of the group.
“I would ask that you not kill him, May,” he said in his deep voice, “wife of Coulson.” Loki’s eyes widened. “He will face justice on Asgard. But I have no other restraints.” May nodded minutely. She stepped forward, and the Avengers parted before her.
She looked expressionlessly down at Loki, who had the gall to smile nervously. Without warning, May delivered a vicious kick to his side with her steel toed boot. Loki grunted and curled in on himself, clutching his ribs.
“Ow,” he muttered. May slammed her heel into his stomach. Wild, manic, pained energy was rolling off her in waves, and Natasha knew she was on a knife’s edge between calm and insane. May pulled back and Loki relaxed slightly. Natasha smirked.
May punched Loki in the face with enough force to smash his head into the ground. His eyes rolled back in his head.
“Nice hit.” They all ignored Tony, but somehow his quiet words broke the tension. All the fight drained from May at once, and Clint and Natasha surged forward as one to each wrap an arm around her shoulders as Rogers and Thor restrained Loki. May let them hold her while SHIELD agents took possession of Loki’s staff and the Tesseract, and while Tony pestered everyone into agreeing to go have lunch with him.
“Romanoff. Barton.” Natasha sagged in relief, and at her side, May looked up. The others filed out of the elevator, instinctively keeping a wide berth of Victoria Hand. Hand’s face softened. “May.”
“Hand.” Natasha and Clint slipped away to a safe distance and May took a shaky step out of the elevator. “Load of help you were.” Hand smirked.
“Who do you think mobilized the national guard?” she said. “You think they were just ready to go without warning?” May remained expressionless, but her shoulders drooped in exhaustion. Natasha twitched to hug her, but she knew better than to get between them. Hand tilted her head.
“Where are they going?” she asked, gesturing over her shoulder at the Avengers milling around the door. May said nothing, and Hand glanced at Natasha and raised her eyebrows.
“Lunch.” Hand nodded and fixed May with a stare. May’s face grew stony.
“No.”
“Have you eaten since you called me this morning?” Hand asked tersely, and May’s mouth tightened at the corners. “Let’s go.” May didn’t move. Hand cocked an eyebrow. “You want me to get them to drag you?” she said, jerking her head towards Clint and Natasha. “Because I absolutely will.” For a moment, Natasha was sure she was about to be ordered to knock May out and haul her to a restaurant, and it was the most terrifying few seconds of the day so far.
Hand beckoned May towards the door, and after glancing at Clint and Natasha, May obeyed.
May ate half of her shawarma, and Victoria counted it as a success. She had manhandled May into a chair between Barton and Romanoff and let them do the rest, keeping one watchful eye on May’s plate and the other on Loki. He was bound and standing where Thor could see him, but Victoria had taken it upon herself to make sure he didn’t try anything.
Lunch was silent, as was probably to be expected. Everyone was busy eating and staring into space. Rogers looked to be in shock, but Victoria left him for Fury and focused on May.
When they were done, Stark pulled a wad of hundred dollar bills out of somewhere and dropped it on the table.
“Great food,” he said around his last bite, looking unconcerned as one of the two employees nearly fainted. “Excellent service. Thank you.” Victoria rolled her eyes.
Thor grabbed Loki’s arm, and everyone but May followed them out of the restaurant. Victoria planted herself beside her.
“Any injuries?” she asked, watching as the others left. Romanoff glanced back, and Victoria nodded.
May didn’t answer, but Victoria didn’t look down until she heard the slightest gasp.
“Out of the way.” Victoria knew she was imposing and used it to her advantage; dusty civilians scrambled out of her way as she strode through the waiting room with May hanging from her shoulder. May winced and clenched her jaw, and Victoria knew she was biting back a groan.
“Ma’am, we’re overwhelmed right now- I promise we’ll get to you as soon as we-” Victoria pulled out her badge and slammed it onto the main desk, ignoring the nurse’s protests.
“I am Agent Victoria Hand, of SHIELD,” she said. “This woman just saved your city. Find me a doctor or I go back there myself.”
The staff of the hospital was rushed and the atmosphere was hectic, but Victoria managed to get May to the top of every list. They didn’t have a bed for her, so Victoria paced next to her chair while they waited for test results.
May hissed through her teeth, and Victoria paced faster.
Doctors and nurses darted in and out, more than once with the wrong chart or instruments, until Victoria felt like throttling the next person to come through the door.
“Melinda Coulson?” A harried-looking doctor caught Victoria’s eye, and she beckoned him over. “Mrs. Coulson, I’m sorry for the delay, but we have your results.”
“Are you sure?” Victoria asked sharply. “We’ve gotten two false alarms.” The doctor grimaced.
“No- you are Melinda May Coulson?” he asked, flipping through the papers on his clipboard, and May nodded. Despite the chaos around them and the rush he was undoubtedly in, real sympathy came over the doctor’s face. “I’m so sorry, but you lost the baby.”
A small pain she didn’t understand opened a hole in Victoria’s chest.
“I see you’re experiencing some discomfort-”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Victoria interrupted. May was completely silent in her chair.
“We have some medication-”
“I’ll get it.” The doctor didn’t argue; he had other patients to see. Victoria watched him leave, telling herself to stop staring and do something. But she couldn’t force herself to turn around. Not much frightened her anymore, but Victoria was scared of what she would see.
Stop it, she told herself fiercely, and spun on her heel, ready to be hard and blunt and everything everyone hated about her, but May had always appreciated.
May’s chair was empty, and Victoria ran out of the room without another thought. “Hill! I need eyes on my location, stat. May’s gone off the grid.”
*WARNING- NEXT SECTION CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF ATTEMPTED SUICIDE AND VOMITING. SKIP TO THE NEXT LINE BREAK TO AVOID IT*
A lot of things neither Victoria nor Maria wanted to imagine could happen in six hours. Maria called in Barton and Romanoff after the first two, and after Victoria briefed them on the hospital visit they had split up immediately, hitting each of May’s old haunts with speed and precision. Victoria called around- every hospital in the city, police stations, Lian May, Izzy Hartley, Bobbi Morse, anywhere May might have ended up or anyone she might have called. Maria coordinated the search from the helicarrier, but there was no news until four hours after May had disappeared.
“Vic,” Maria said curtly, and for once Victoria didn’t snap at the nickname. “Train heading south. Triskelion.”
“On it.” Victoria called for a quinjet while Maria rounded up Romanoff and Barton. The plane was filled with quiet, anxious tension, and Victoria didn’t say a word about Barton’s hurried landing. Fury had more to worry about than some crushed landing gear.
Victoria sent Barton and Romanoff down to Administration and sprinted to Coulson’s office, ignoring the shocked looks following her.
Coulson’s door was open. “Barton, Romanoff, up here now.” She didn’t hear an affirmative, but she didn’t need one. She stormed through Coulson’s door.
Victoria hadn’t screamed in years. Gun shot wounds, losing friends, losing contact in a heated battle, losing trust, alien invasion, none of it had brought her close. She pulled up short in the doorway, and May’s name hurt her throat screeching out.
Romanoff and Barton dove into the room, weapons drawn, but Victoria didn’t notice enough to care. May was slumped in Coulson’s chair, eyes rolled back in her head, and if Victoria hadn’t been in heels she probably would have vaulted over the desk to save the 0.5 seconds it took her to round it.
“May!” She shook May’s shoulders. “Agent May, look at me!” May’s head lolled back.
“Hand.” Romanoff pointed to two bottles, one on the desk and the other rolling out of May’s hand. The scotch was half-full but the bottle of painkillers was empty. Victoria’s nostrils flared.
“Get medical up here now.” Romanoff was gone so quickly it was like she had vanished into thin air. Victoria pushed May’s chair back and gestured to Barton. “Hold her over the trash can.” Barton obeyed, face grim. He knew what was coming.
“You brought this on yourself,” Victoria growled, shoving her sleeves up her arms. She yanked May’s mouth open and forced her fingers down her throat.
It was slippery and painful and disgusting, and Victoria grimaced at the first wave of vomit. It coated her hand with mucusy bile, and Victoria pulled her hand away just long enough for the rest of it to fall out of May’s mouth. Oranginsh-brown substance streamed into the trashcan in clumps of half-digested shawarma and dozens of tiny blue pills. “Count.” Barton’s eyes darted over the pills as Victoria grabbed the bottle.
“Twenty-seven.” Victoria’s knuckles whitened.
“This holds fifty. Again.” Barton hefted May back over the trash can, and Victoria paused only to shake some gunk off her hand before plunging her fingers down May’s throat again. May’s stomach convulsed and Victoria gritted her teeth, probing forcefully for the back of May’s throat. Another wave of bile washed over her hand, with less food and less pills. The trashcan reeked.
“Thirty-eight.”
“Again.” May’s teeth scraped the back of Victoria’s hand, and Victoria flattened her fist. Her fingers slipped over each other as she clawed down May’s throat.
“Forty-four.”
Romanoff’s sharp voice reached Victoria through her haze. “In here.” May was taken from Barton’s hands, and he and Romanoff fell in behind Victoria as she followed May’s gurney from the room.
*END*
“Sit rep.”
“Washed down a bottle of oxycodone with half a bottle of scotch. Doctor said it must have happened minutes before we got there. Got most of it out before medical got upstairs.” Maria grimaced.
“You wash your hands?” Victoria flexed her fingers, still feeling the poison running over her hand.
“Only about forty-five times.” Maria half-smirked, but it slipped off her face as she turned to the window.
They hadn’t been allowed in to see her yet; once she had stabilized, the doctors had insisted on giving May a full examination while she was still out. Victoria didn’t blame them.
“Any complications with the-?” Maria’s voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. Victoria pretended not to see the tears in her eyes, and Maria pretended not to hear the waver in her voice when she answered.
“Miscarriage? No, not that they told me. They closed the curtains for about ten minutes half an hour ago.” Maria’s mouth thinned.
“And she didn’t know?” Victoria shook her head. There was a pause, and Victoria glanced at Romanoff and Barton standing together, arms crossed, mirror images of May’s usual stance. “I’m gonna say it.”
“Don’t even think it.”
“Vic.” Victoria’s shoulders drooped. “Alien invasion, May miscarried, we lost Ph-” Victoria sent her a sharp, pleading look. She wasn’t ready to hear it yet. “-Coulson.” Victoria held Maria’s gaze for a moment, then shrugged.
“Suppose you may as well.” Maria looked through the glass.
“I don’t see how this day can get much worse.” As one, Victoria and Maria glanced at the ceiling.
“See?” May had said, grinning through the rubber bullets whizzing past them. The Academy seemed like a lifetime ago.
“The sky didn’t fall.”