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Seventeen.
When she got out of this, Coulson was going to owe her a new pair of boots.
Eighteen.
Better yet, a pair of boots that came equipped with a shield, like the one his hand could project. He was too proud of that thing. Making him share might stop the insufferable smirk. And having a shield would have come in handy a couple of hours ago.
Nineteen.
Melinda wiped the back of her hand across her forehead and pointedly ignored the gritty sensation of dirt being smeared across her skin. She was coated in a sheen of sweat that only came from having too much moisture in the air and too much heat in too small of a space. It made the dirt cling to her exposed arms like glitter that had exploded out of a birthday card.
Twenty.
She used her nails to scrape at the dirt wedged between two rocks, shoving her fingers into the crevice in an effort to dig out more of the debris. One nail had split already, leaving a little smear of blood down her index finger. It could be worse though. She could be dead. Which, considering the situation, it was surprising that she wasn't.
Because Coulson had wanted her to 'hang back'.
May scoffed at the thought as she made enough room to grip a rock and start to wiggle it free. A couple of minutes later it was loose enough that she could carefully pry it out and toss it to the side to join the others.
Twenty-one.
The 0-8-4, as it turned out, had been a person. A person who would benefit more from Daisy's type of experience and people skills than her own type of skills. Or so the argument had claimed. The comms had stopped working before she found out how badly that went.
She'd been scouting the woods along the base of the mountain, trying to make sure there were no HYDRA agents lurking about. All she knew for sure was that something had caused Daisy to use her powers. The side of the mountain and ground beneath her feet had begun to tremor, and as the boulders started falling she'd been forced to dodge out of the way and into a cavity in the side of the mountain. She'd barely missed being struck in the head by a large rock and it had hit her lower leg instead as she took refuge in the small shelter. By the time the tremor stopped, she was boxed in by a wall of dirt and rock and her lungs had to fight against the dirt in the air.
The area she found herself in was dark and small. The overhang wasn't high enough for her to stand up straight. There wasn't even enough room to stretch out her arms fully. Fortunately most of the cave-in was made up of dirt and small bits of rubble. It made finding safe rocks to remove easier. The last thing she needed was for the barricade to encroach even further into her personal space. The problem was she couldn't be sure how thick the barrier was.
She slid another rock out from wall of rubble and added it to the pile.
Twenty-two.
She was making progress. Somewhere on the other side of her make-shift prison the rest of the team would either be running for their lives or looking for her. Without being able to contact them, she had no way of knowing if they were even still alive or if the 0-8-4 had killed them.
She was running out of debris to remove safely, though. The area she had cleared of rocks wasn't even big enough to fit her head through, and there was still dirt to dig out. And probably more rocks hiding in said dirt, depending on how deep the barricade was.
She was really starting to hate dirt.
Melinda wiped at the sweat along her hairline again and sat down on the small pile of rubble she'd cleared away. Her brows creased momentarily as a sharp pain shot up her left leg when she stretched it out. The bleeding had stopped, though the vest she'd tied around the wound was probably a lost cause now. She pushed the sleeves of her uniform up a bit higher as the heat grew heavier around her. She was going to need to get out of here pretty soon, judging by her increasing difficulty with breathing.
May closed her eyes, took a shallow but steady breath, and focused on sustaining control. As she released the breath her heart-rate slowed and the pain began to turn to a dull throbbing.
"May to Zephyr," she said, tapping her comms.
The comms didn't so much as respond with static.
"If anyone's listening, tell Daisy to avoid causing an avalanche in the future."
“I could take down a mountain, May,” she remembered Daisy saying once during a morning training session. 'Why are we still training like this?”
“Taking down a mountain is all well and good,” she'd replied. “Until you take it down on top someone you didn't mean to. Power without control is just destruction.”
Had the girl lost control again? Or had she purposefully tried to split the mountain in half?
They'd made substantial progress in her ability to control herself, but May knew Daisy was someone with a lot of passion. She was like Coulson in that regard. She trusted Daisy to control her breathing and physical movements, but emotions were something else.
“She's just a little...emotional, right now,” Jemma had said on Daisy's behalf after a rather loud rant about 'not fitting in' as a SHIELD agent following a failed sparring session in the gym.
As if she'd needed an apology.
“It's that emotion that will get her or someone else killed,” she'd replied.
Jemma had shifted from one foot to the other, looking down and to the side in that way she did when she was uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “Does that mean we're done training for the day?”
“No.”
To her credit, Jemma had only looked disappointed for a split second before following her back to the mats. For someone almost...bubbly...Jemma had a good grasp of mental and emotional control. Not perfect, but decent enough. When Phil told her his plan to send her undercover, May had known Jemma could handle it regardless of her initial difficulty with lying.
May pushed herself up, using the wall to help take pressure off her leg, before returning to her work. She once again began carefully digging away at the dirt through the small hole she'd made in the rocks. It was damp dirt, fortunately. No doubt a result of the waterfall further up the mountain.
Her lips hardened into a thin line and a short sigh of annoyance escaped when her nails scraped against another rock. Instead of removing it, she began to work around it for structural integrity.
“A monkey could get through there,” Fitz' voice resounded in her head. “Then we wouldn't have to blow up a wall.”
Fitz was a strange mix of reality and fantasy. Imagination with a grounding of logic.
“He's more Star Trek than Star Wars,” she once overheard Mack joke.
Sometimes she was curious just what Fitz would do with a monkey. A part of her wanted to find out. Another part figured it'd be like Barton given a tube of glow-in-the-dark paint and locked in Maria Hill's office for an hour. She didn't necessarily disapprove, but the clean-up was a hassle.
Despite his sometimes fantastical ideas Fitz was dedicated, though. Maybe not dedicated directly to S.H.I.E.L.D., at first, but it was a dedication that had proven to be an asset to them. His loyalty to his friends meant dedication to the organization. Which meant he would probably build a dirt digging robot monkey to get her out of here if need be, because otherwise Simmons wouldn't have someone to show her how to stand properly when shooting a glock.
Melinda paused for a moment as a laugh nearly erupted from her diaphragm. The piercing intake of air strained her lungs and left behind an almost euphoric lightness. The air quantity was definitely approaching a dangerous level. She closed her eyes again and steadied herself before launching back into digging. She'd made a hole deep enough to fit her hand into up to her wrist, but there was still a lot of work to do.
She kept digging. Inch-by-inch and bug-by-bug. It was slow work, but eventually her fingertips slid through air instead of compacted soil. The air felt cool against her hand as she patted the lining of the hole to keep the dirt from falling in on itself. The wall of debris in this section was only about the length of her arm. Not too bad. The hole wasn't nearly big enough to get through, but at least she had some fresh air.
Once she was sure the little tunnel wouldn't collapse right away, she slid back down to her pile of rocks. It was just for a second. Just enough time to get fresh air into her lungs again and for the world to stop spinning her around like this was some kind of roller coaster.
"May?"
She stood up instantly, ignoring the protest her leg made, and looked through the hole. Phil Coulson stared back, his expression neutral but his eyes shinning like a puppy who'd found a long lost bone.
"Coulson," she said. She didn't particularly appreciate the dry grittiness in her mouth or the way dirt crunched between her teeth.
His lips quirked upwards into a half-smile. "If you'd wanted some alone time you could have just asked."
She stared back without comment. He didn't deserve one.
Coulson only continued to smirk. "Okay, take your time. We'll wait. Just let me know when you're ready to leave."
"Was anyone hurt?" she asked instead of taking the bait.
"Mack has a concussion, but otherwise we got out fine.
"The 0-8-4?"
His expression faltered for a second. "Long story. We'll debrief when we get you out of here."
"This isn't exactly a stable tunnel," she pointed out. In fact, she could just barely see his face on the other side and it wouldn't take much to collapse the work she'd accomplished over the last few hours.
His expression brightened again. "We've worked something out. Fitz."
Coulson was replaced a second later by Fitz shoving his face up to the hole as if trying to get a look around her new abode. "I'm going to need to send in a D.W.A.R.F. to get a look around before we do anything, but I think I can move a good chunk of this debris without burying you alive again."
May's lip twitched upward briefly. "Did you make a dirt digging robot monkey?"
"W-what? No. I...did you want me to?"
She could swear he sounded a little guilty. He definitely wasn't opposed to the idea. "Just get me out. I need a shower," she added, mostly to herself.
"Yeah."
She stared back at him and silently enjoyed when he squirmed.
"I just meant that I'm sure you do. Because...dirt. And...things."
She rolled her eyes upwards and leaned back against the rock wall as he started moving around to, what she assumed, was to get a D.W.A.R.F. ready.
"This will only take a minute. I thought we might use this dimension door opener Simmons and I have been working on. Kind of like a transporter, but...not. It'll be fantastic."
"If it works," she muttered. She should probably be more concerned about being part of this science experiment test-run, but couldn't bring herself to care all that much. Whatever death awaited her in the next few minutes might be better than inhaling anymore dirt.
"I want to call it the Grippler, but Simmons doesn't like it."
One of the drones flew through the hole, coming about an inch from her dirt smeared nose. She considered swatting it away like a fly, but resisted the temptation.
"Okay, yeah, this'll be fine. A bit of a snug fit, but doable," she heard him say from the other side of the cave-in. He continued speaking, but his voice grew harder to understand as if he'd walked away from the hole.
"Hey, May!" a new visitor called a moment later.
She didn't move to look through the hole again. "Daisy."
"I'm really sorry, May. It was an accident. I didn't know you were so close to the mountain and..."
"Can we have this conversation after I've had a shower?" she asked.
There was a pause before Daisy replied, "Yeah. Just, you know, glad you're alive."
She didn't feel the need to reply. Especially not when her adrenaline was running low and her leg was starting to throb again.
Another beat of silence passed. "Did you really dig yourself out of a grave once?" Daisy asked.
May's eyebrows lowered for a second in confusion before realization hit. "Coulson...."
The sound of people moving about met her ears for a second. She was pretty sure someone stepped on Fitz' toes.
"Sorry," Coulson called through the hole. "I may have started telling the story of that time in the Namib while we were trying to figure out how to get you out. It seemed applicable."
The situation wasn't that applicable. There had only been five or six feet of loose sand, no coffin, and she'd had a bag over her head. It hadn't been that hard to get out.
"He also mentioned something about you sitting on a landmine," Fitz called, his voice muffled by the dirt.
May rolled her eyes again and moved to sit on her pile of debris. "I didn't sit on a landmine. Stop telling people I sat on a landmine."
She heard something that sounded suspiciously like a conspiratorial whisper, but let it pass. She wanted fresh air, a shower, and maybe a new team. She could train agents again, after all. Maybe ones who weren't so insufferably easy to get attached to. Next time she was definitely digging herself out without their help. It seemed easier.
"May," Coulson called through the hole, sounding simultaneously bewildered and suspicious. "Did you tell Fitz he could build a robot monkey?"
She smirked lightly and let the silence speak for her.