Friends and Foes

...Phil Coulson listened to the narrative with barely a twitch of the eyelid. "So, this is how it went?" he asked, rhetorically, of Melinda and her team.

"Yes," Melinda nodded curtly. "Hydra might've been behind this, but you got to admit, this is somewhat new. Plus, Stark isn't Hydra, let's be frank here, neither is Maria, and they are involved in the university's running-"

"Does Andrew know about Stark's connection to S.H.I.E.L.D., new or old?" Coulson asked, sharply.

"Not from Maria. Or Nick," Melinda replied immediately. "Andrew was never initiated into S.H.I.E.L.D., at least by me?"

"Excuse me," Hudima actually raised his arm, as if he was a school boy of some sort. "How is one get initiated? In my case I was just found by Hand and her posse, told that S.H.I.E.L.D. was just the right place for me, period. Is it different for ordinary people?"

"Point," Lance admitted. "I just gave you a post-it note, remember? You nodded in agreement, this is it. Bob told me quite a different story - recruiting office and all, very much more formal. What's up?"

Coulson and May exchanged a look, then gave another one to the two men (and Skye). "Ok," Coulson confessed, "the thing is-"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't Hydra," May said firmly. "It doesn't use incentives, or brainwashing, or anything like this - it doesn't. It does tend to use coercion, however, or rather - it tries to play the playing field. It tries to recruit people who are naturally inclined to join it initially, such as Skye - I mean Daisy," she shot a look to the younger woman. "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, let's be honest here."

"But Ward was recruited properly, wasn't he?" Skye frowned. "There is no reason for DC and you and the others to abandon this scheme altogether."

"We hadn't," Melinda replied, looking oddly uncomfortable (for her, anyways). "We've just become more discreet-"

"They had me put out feelers for my old, mercenary crew," Lance explained, 'helpfully'. "Then they recruited them in bulk and sent with Fury to help the Avengers fight the Sokovia killer robot."

"This is different," May said simply. "Different people are hired to be agents for different levels-"

"Tiankong Chuju," Hudima exhaled, "this is how democracy works, actually. It gives equal opportunities to different people. How they use these opportunities is entirely up to them."

"...What did you call me now?" Skye finally exclaimed as the others just stared at the big gifted. "My name is Daisy-"

"Yes, Lance Hunter explained it to me while you were with agent May upstairs," Hudima nodded. "Your name is Sky Daisy, apparently, but you prefer to be called the last part. Fair enough, your family had lived in Li Shi - in China for the last thousand years or so, so naturally you gravitate towards an unusual name."

"Ok, now you're just messing with me and Daisy," Lance began, but the Daisy in question interrupted him:

"Really? You knew my biological family?" she asked softly.

"Not really," the other gifted shook his head. "I was never a part of Li Shi community, my speciality was India rather than China, but on occassion your mother would contact me regarding some InHuman business or other. She was a part of the more progressive wing in the InHuman community."

"Then where did it go wrong?" Coulson asked just as softly as Skye did.

"Tiankong Chuju's bloodline contains - for the last 1000 years or so, as I understood - the blood of undisputed queens of Li Shi," Hudima didn't back down. "It was never a very big family - not like the Hapsburgs or the Romanoffs, for example. Tiankong Chuju doesn't have any siblings, though rumors has it that her mother had tried, quite a lot of times... never mind. The thing is, Jiaying and her husband knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. had taken their daughter and hid her. For the rest of their lives Jiaying and her husband searched for their daughter, Jiaying's heir. And when they found her, their protectiveness went into overdrive. And when Jiaying saw that she had an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a daughter now, she went berserk and implemented her plan that she had been designing for the last few decades of her life. Sir, you did everything right, I wager, the odds were just against it."

"Why didn't we know this?" Coulson asked softly.

"Because of compartmentalization," Hunter snapped. "Out of all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s features, this one is one of my least favorite. Maybe it is Hydra's influence or something, but S.H.I.E.L.D.'s agents tend to hoard their knowledge rather than share it-"

"Because knowledge is power, Lance Hunter," Hudima shrugged. "S.H.I.E.L.D. was full of powerful - or power-hungry - people. Why so surprised?"

"I don't know mate - I'm actually confused," Lance confessed. "Sometimes I honestly like being a part of the agency - and other times? If it wasn't Ward being somewhere out there, lurking in the wings, I would've just taken Bob and left."

"Well, what if we assume that S.H.I.E.L.D. can handle Ward without your help?" Melinda said in a strange tone of voice. "What then? Will you stay with us or will you go? Without any enmity, BTW?"

"Honestly?" Lance looked Melinda straight in the eye. "Right now I would like to talk to Bob first-"

"Talk to me about what?" Bobbi chose this moment to appear. "Melinda-"

"About Mason, Bob," Hunter's voice was more serious than Skye (or others) have ever heard him use. "I want us to talk about him."

"What about him?" Bobbi's face froze. So did her voice, and suddenly she was very reminiscent of Melinda May recently, for some reason.

"Nothing," Lance got onto his own feet too. "Why are you here?"

"Naomi has woken up-"

Melinda was on her feet and moving towards the medical wing with almost the speed of light, leaving the others behind.

"Well," Coulson said slowly, "I suppose the rest of you should go with her too-"

"DC, come with us," Skye said simply. "You're a part of her family - obviously. Don't be obtuse."

"It's not that," Coulson protested as the three of them followed May down the corridor. (Bobbi and Lance were off to the side, arguing about something or someone sotto voce). "It's just, I don't know, it's her family. Plus, her parents never liked me, plus, I honestly don't know anything about her daughter - no one in Melinda's family had really wanted for Naomi to go into S.H.I.E.L.D., not even Melinda - hello, Fitz."

"Hello, sir. Hello, Skye - do I know you?" the younger man asked the big gifted.

"No, I don't think so," Hudima rumbled. "Nice to meet you too, agent Fizz."

Fitz blinked. "It's Fitz - agent doctor Leo Fitz, thank you very much, sir," he told huffily. "But don't call me that - I hate my name."

"Well, it is slightly humorous, but don't worry - I promise to call you agent Leo from now on."

"...I was talking about the Leo part," Fitz twitched again.

"Just ignore him - I think he got issues regarding names," Coulson decided to intervene. "He's got problems with Daisy's name too."

Fitz blinked. "And Daisy is-?" he prompted carefully.

"Me," Skye said with a sigh. "I decided to change my name while you were away. Only it doesn't really seem to be working - May still calls me Skye, Coulson still calls me Skye half the time, Hudima here decided that my name is actually Sky Daisy, or-"

"Tiankong Chuju," the man in question said smoothly.

"-so yeah, I might as well stick with Skye."

"I agree," Fitz nodded seriously. "Skye is a lovely name. So's Daisy, of course, but Skye's better."

"Gee, thank you for two cents, agent Fizz," Skye said wryly. "BTW, how are you holding up in regards to Simmons?"

Before Fitz could snap at her pointed mangling of his name, or burst into tears about Simmons, they arrived at the medical wing.

"Mama?" It was the first word that Naomi May (well, Garner-May) said, when she opened her eyes and looked around. "Mam! And Gran! And Grandad! You're here!"

"Of course we're here, Naomi," Melinda said as she and her daughter instinctively hugged. (It may've been somewhat uncomfortable, but there was nothing stiff about it). "Where else would we be?"

"You left. You came back, but you left," Naomi muttered into her mother's shoulder (the two of them were actually of a similar build and height, but Naomi probably still had few more inches to grow left in her). "Why did you leave, mam?"

"Naomi," Melinda said with some very vivid bitterness (especially for her). "You don't know, you didn't know... I kiled a child in Bahrain. I killed her mother. I didn't mean to, but I killed them. I couldn't look you in the eye. I couldn't look Andrew in the eye. I left you with your father..." she paused and added in a more regular voice (for her, anyhow). "That was probably a mistake, wasn't it?"

"Yes, mam. Dad, he may be a nice guy, but he doesn't love me, he likes you better...where is he?" Naomi pulled herself out of Melinda's embrace and looked around. "Where-where am I? Something is wrong. What is it?"

"Miss May?" Coulson, who had been on the scene, (alongside others, even Hunter and Morse, but was staying at a distance to give Melinda and her family some immediate privacy), "I am, uh, director Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D., and these are my agents. You're in one of our facilities-"

"Really?" Naomi blinked. "But mam was adamant - I'm not to be a part of S.H.I.E.L.D., this was one out of few things that she and dad had actually agreed on."

"Really?" Coulson shot May a look, and the Chinese woman actually avoided it. "Well, perhaps, but you're still one of us, at least to some extent. In any case, you still need few more days to recover."

"From what?" Naomi frowned, and despite the fact that her facial features (and the general skin color) were more like Andrew's, right now she looked a lot like her mother. "Mam! What has happened to me?"

"Naomi, here. Look in the mirror," her grandmother answered instead, producing a hand mirror out of her handbag. "Be a dear?"

Her granddaughter looked and froze. "Mam! What has happened to me?"

Melinda opened her mouth, closed it, repeated it several times and actually looked around for support. Surprisingly (or not so much), her gaze landed upon director Coulson.

"Tell me, Miss May," the man said in his most professional tone of voice. "Do you recognize any of these crests and mottos?" he produced several sheets of paper out of his own folder.

"Yes, I recognize the one on the left," Naomi nodded. "It's for a medical research center, called Green Branches. Dad was a psychological consultant for them as far as I can remember. They were associated with S.H.I.E.L.D."

"That is correct," Melinda nodded and turned to face the director herself. "Phil, Fury used Green Branches to help you recover after the Battle of New York-"

"In other words, this is the same mess that we've just gone through - with Bob, and Ahab, and the others," Hunter shook his head.

"Nuh-uh," Skye said firmly. "I checked out the license plate numbers of the Saab, the Audi and the other cars - they are firmly affiliated with ATCU. This is a different mess than the one that we've just gone through."

"Um, mam? What are your friends arguing about?" Naomi blinked.

"Nothing, dear, just a case," Melinda exhaled, but then seemed to change her mind some. "Naomi, what is the last thing you remember?"

"Dad is having some of his friends over. I think that they were your coworkers, mam - from S.H.I.E.L.D. ...this place, I guess," Naomi frowned as she thought this over. "And then...it all becomes a blur. Just walls, empty grey walls and glass. Some people - empty grey people with eyes like glass. And then - some stranger, younger than the director over there, looking down in me in horror, saying something like 'What have they done to you?' And then...I go into a sleep, a real sleep, and then I wake up, and I'm here, and you're here, and Gran and Grandad are here..." Naomi began to shake.

"And that's enough for the moment," Bobbi spoke in a very professional tone of voice. "Melinda, sir and madam?" she turned to the older generations. "Naomi needs rest for now, and some warm turkey soup."

"Turkey, not chicken?"

"We're fresh out of chicken," Bobbi confessed. "Budget cuts, cough. We got turkey and some goose, actually, as far as fowl goes. No chicken."

There was a pause as Naomi's grandparents gave Coulson a very unimpressed look. "I'll go and rework our budget," the latter said with a sigh.

"No, Phil - we will," Naomi's grandmother said firmly. "Give us the paperwork."

Coulson opened his mouth.

"Don't argue, Phil," Melinda appeared to be very interested in some lint on her sleeve. "When they're in this mood...it's impossible to argue..."

Phil exhaled, gave Melinda a sharp look, and complied.

TBC