Don't Fuck With Angry Assassians
Natasha and Clint looked at each other once Skye had passed out. They were both extremely angry at Coulson. How could he do that to his own kid? They didn't know May, but they'd heard about what happened in Bahrain. That she came out of it different.
Coulson hadn't talked about May much, but whenever he had, it was clear to the two that he still cared deeply for her. They had no idea how that felt, but they knew that leaving your child was the right way to deal with heartbreak.
Once they tucked Skye under the covers and removed the knives off her, they went to the kitchen, hoping some water would clear their heads, and food would soak up the small amount of vodka in their systems. They barely had any, not even a full mouthful each, but the stuff was potent.
"She's gonna have a killer hangover tomorrow" Clint commented. He wasn't sure what to do with his anger, he'd never felt so much of it in his life. Natasha was used to dealing with rage, knew how to store it a way, to be used when it was needed.
Just at that moment, Phil walked in. Natasha immediately threw her mug at him, which he dodged, and then shattered against the wall.
"Won't that wake her?" Clint asks, too angry to even look at Phil, let alone talk to him.
"No, she's out cold" Natasha answers Clint, avoiding Coulson as well.
"I know you're mad at me, you have every right to be" Coulson's statement was met with glares, nevertheless, he continued "You were lied to about my death, and it was unfair to let you keep thinking tha-" he was interrupted by Clint.
"Not telling us you were alive was a dick move, no one's arguing that. That's a whole other thing we'll get to later. Our main problem right now, is the girl who's passed out drunk, with the eyes of a fucking veteran." Clint wasn't even shouting. He was talking in a clear calm and quiet voice. This wasn't good at all. He looked Coulson directly in the eye, just so he would see how furious he was. Clint had wanted, more than anything, to see Coulson again. He didn't picture them meeting again like this. "Our problem" he continued "is that, that god damn girl has a serious alcohol tolerance, thanks to a childhood of drinking. Drinking, because it was the only way she would stop crying. Drinking so much she can't get drunk anymore. Did she tell you that she only started to get better after you died? That things were looking good, because you weren't ignoring her anymore." He knew what he was saying was hurting Coulson. A lot. Hell, it could kill him, but he needed to know exactly how fucked up Skye was because of Coulson's actions.
"Did she tell you that after May became part of the team, she got so fucked up, she doesn't remember the following week? You fucked up Coulson. Big time."
Natasha didn't say anything, just gave him one of her legendary glares.
Phil sat down on a chair, his head low. The glares Clint and Natasha were sending him were intense and unwavering.
"In Bahrain" Phil started, his voice heavy "something happened to Melinda. It changed her. A little girl died in the crossfire. There's more to it than that, but it's not my story to tell."
"When she got home, she saw the little girl in Skye. She saw her own inability to protect in the dead girl, and by extension, Skye. It was too much for Melinda, so she left. And I couldn't stop her." There were silent tears streaming down his face now. Clint and Natasha were still tense and angry, everyone was affected by missions, it didn't give you an excuse to give everything else up.
Phil ploughed through "I hated myself so much for it, still do, but I couldn't look at Skye without seeing the reason Melinda left. I couldn't look at her without seeing Melinda herself. She got sad when Melinda left, which made her so much more like the current Melinda. I couldn't cope either, so I left too. When she was about sixteen or so, she changed the locks to the house. When I woke up after I died, she had been gone for months."
"My last thought before I died, was how I couldn't leave her, except that I'd left her years ago. When I woke up, my main priority was to get her back."
"We found her, completely by accident. Fury set up a search, very high priority, but she was good, stayed hidden for two years. We didn't even know it was her when we found her. She was just some hacker trying to take S.H.I.E.L.D. down. She wouldn't talk to us, wouldn't look at us. Stayed in her van almost the entire time. I've no right to it, but I want my baby back. May's gotten better, she misses Skye so much. We can't make up for lost time, we can't take back what we did. We just want to be whole again and without Skye we'll never be."
Neither Clint nor Natasha said anything to that and it was worrying Coulson. He could handle their insults their punches, but this was something new. No death threats from Natasha, no sarcastic remarks from Clint.
Natasha finally broke the silence, speaking for the first time.
"My parents died and the Red Room took me. Tortured me, turned me into a weapon, all the abusive shit you could go through and by some miracle, I turned out relatively okay. You know why I think I didn't turn into a psycopath? Because I knew why. I knew they wanted a weapon, they weren't just doing it for fun. I knew, that my parent's had loved me before they died, and would never let anything bad happen to me if they were still alive. This mess of a girl in there, didn't have that luxury. She didn't know why you stopped loving her, why the bad stuff happened, why mom and dad stopped fighting her demons and let her get ripped apart by them. What you did, is not on Coulson. I don't even know if it's forgiveable. I know I wouldn't."
Coulson looks defeated. He knows' she's right. What he did was something that would make his mother turn over in her grave. Natasha drags him out of his head.
"Which is why I want you to know" she told him, looking at him for the first time "we#'re doing this, not for you, but for the girl who's had to deal with too much, who needs her parents and fucking rehab if she doesn't stop soon."
Coulson has a fresh look of hope on his face, that quickly disappears as soon as Natasha punches his face. "This isn't over Coulson" she tells him, pulling him into a hug "and it isn't forgotten. But that girl needs her parents more than I need revenge."