Excused Absences

Nick was up late.

Again.

Though the reason was not because of a mysterious file rather a not so mysterious file that he had to finish tonight because there was a faculty meeting tomorrow.

He was a legendary spy for a multitude of government agencies and now he was reading dumb reports and going to dumb faculty meeting where they were going to discuss fundraisers and standardized test. He could hardly believe that this was his life.

He had forgone the droopy La-Z-Boy, that had seen better children-free days, for a hard chair at the kitchen table because he couldn’t – well he could – fall asleep.

Nick had found that messing up, though it did come with its own consequences, rarely resulted in the death of himself or the people under his command. If he didn’t finish reading a report on if they had enough wooden pencils for state testing wasn’t actually a life-threatening event but nonetheless. He couldn’t bitch at Barton for not doing his homework if he neglected to do his own.

Nick wouldn’t have even known he wasn’t alone if it wasn’t for the light.

Nick Fury, ex-soldier, who was always aware of his surroundings didn’t notice the soft socked-covered footsteps of his newest charge until the little light inside the refrigerator casted its glow in the poorly lit room.

The table sat farther back in a nook in the kitchen and it appeared that she had not noticed him either because when he spoke, her spine stiffened and she swung around to face him after he drawled out the word, “Hungry?”

She was dressed only in a tank top and pajama shorts, bruises looking nearly translucent in the fridge lighting on her legs and her shoulders. There was nasty scar tissue on her shoulder that glimmered almost white in the light. She didn’t look like much of a threat.

“Sorry,” He found himself saying. “It was not my intention to scare you. There is some leftover spaghetti in there.”

She gave him a sharp nod before angling herself so she could see the contents of the fridge and him at the table. She ended up, after giving the fridge a once over, grabbing a bottle of water and an orange out of the bowl on the counter.

“Care to join me?” Nick spoke when she started to head out of the room.

A few seconds of silence dragged between them before she responded, “A demand masquerading as a question.”

“Glad to see that you can read between the lines,” Nick responded, sitting his report on the table to give her his full attention as she sat down. “We haven’t got to talk. If there was anything you wanted to tell me you can.”

She twisted the cap off the bottle and narrowed her eyes in response.

“Okay,” He sighed because he knew that it was not going to be as easy as that. “Let’s play twenty questions.”

She responded with a raised eyebrow.

“Sam told me that you don’t talk much,” Nick explained. “And I get that, a bunch of agents that you don’t know demanding answers to things that are understandably traumatic, but I’m not them.”

“You’ve probably heard that from half a dozen agents,” He continued, “I know because S.H.I.E.L.D. is full of bastards but you’re living in my house. I want you to know that you’re okay so, twenty questions. I can get some answers and you can get some answers. This whole situation is unfair but the game is not.”

She didn’t respond to him or acknowledge him in anyway other than to eat a slice of her orange. Nick found himself almost missing Barton’s snappy comments about his eyepatch.

“You want to go first?” He asked.

No response. He would say that she was ignoring him if she didn’t look like she was ready to bolt if he made any sudden movements.

The silence dragged on between them and he sighed internally. He was about to ask something when she piped up.

“Are you a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?”

“No.”

“Were you a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?”

“Yes,” He answered honestly. “I am not an agent anymore and I do not share their agenda.”

“Then what are you.”

It was a demand, with suspicious eyes that dared him to answer falsely.

“A babysitter, apparently.”

“Are you reporting on me to S.H.I.E.L.D.?” She asked because damn it all if she didn’t know how the game worked.

“I don’t share their agenda,” He repeated.

“That is not a no,” She pointed out.

“No, it is not,” He agreed. “If you say something that could potentially save someone’s life then I would relay the information, just like I would do with anybody else.”

She seemed to accept that and gave a sharp nod.

“That’s three. Do you have any allergies?”

“Lactose Intolerance.”

“I got that,” Fury said though he honestly doubted it. She was raised by spies, raised to be misleading and hold things close. Medical information such as allergies were a liability in the field if they were told but they were also telling if you ended up with milk in your coffee. He played along anyways, “Anything else?”

She shook her head no. “That’s two.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why aren’t you an agent anymore?”

“Still holding onto that?”

“Yes, that’s three. Answer the question.”

Her voice was clipped, hard, and gave away no emotion like she was interrogating him. He couldn’t help the smirk that came across his face because she was clever. He always liked clever.

“A grenade went off and I lost most of my sight in one eye,” He answered, gesturing to the eyepatch. “It’s not a fashion statement.”

“How much of your vision is gone?” She asked after a moment, like she was debating to ask for more details before deciding against it.

“Ninety-five percent,” he stated. “Do you go by Melinda or something else?”

“May is fine,” She answered coldly. As far as nicknames go, that one said that she was keeping him at arm’s length. “What do you go by?”

“Nick is fine around here but at the school, it is either Mr. Fury or just Fury. Not Nick.”

“School?”

“Yeah, school,” Nick answered, watching her face for any reaction.

There wasn’t one.

“You’ll be attending, not tomorrow but the next day. Marvel High School. I’m the principal.”

She raised an eyebrow at that.

“Yeah, really,” He scoffed. “So, I’ll get you situated. I know you were homeschooled so we’ll have to do a placement test, which can be done tomorrow during my meeting.”

“Do you have enough clothes to last you a week?” Fury asked. “Because your bags looked light.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Fine, we’ll go to the mall after your placement test,” Fury stated, catching her eye. “S.H.I.E.L.D. said they’d help with getting you settled in so let’s make them regret that.”

“Why are you sleeping on a futon?”

“How’d you know about that?”

“Process of elimination,” She stated. “Answer the question.”

“I lost a bet.”

She opened her mouth like she was going to ask another question but closed it. Stating instead, “Explain.”

“We made a bet on whose room you’d get and I lost.” Her eyes narrowed in question but she didn’t ask any. “You play a sport?”

“No.”

“Have any hobbies?”

“No.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue. How long will I be here?”

She looked away.

Her eyes deviated from his to look just over his shoulder. It occurred to him for the first time that this outer shell still housed that smiling eight year old girl from the picture. She was sad, and scared, and alone for what could be the first time.

He didn’t really know what to tell her – she would be here forever, or until S.H.I.E.L.D. decided something else for her, or some strange third uncle twice removed took her in. She’d be here until someone figured out how to bring the dead back to life because her parents were dead and with them, all sense of safety that she ever had.

“As long as you like,” He told her. “What are your parents’ names?”

“You don’t know?”

“It was classified.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have green tea?” She asked bringing the water bottle up to her lips.

“No, but you can add it to the shopping list on the fridge,” Nick responded, not missing that she ignored his question. “What happened in Bahrain?”

“What?”

“What happened in Bahrain?”

The bottle slipped from her hand when the shaking got to be too much, and it fell to the table with a splatter of water. It soaked through Nick’s report.

‘Ah, a trigger,’ he thought dully.

“I’m… I’m sorry?” She stuttered, looking around for paper towels like she was lost. “…It…”

“It’s okay,” Nick said, standing up. “Just… Calm down.”

He walked to the other side of the room and grabbed a roll of paper towels. When he turned back around she was gone.

Five minutes.

Nick was up.

Less than four hours ago he was blow-drying a report dry and now he was awake. Five minutes before his alarm was supposed to go off because some asshole was trying to shove their fist through his front door. And he had to get up because they were going to wake the kids.

And that was fine.

It really was fine because Nick was going to kick their ass or shoot them in the foot with a nail gun. He hadn’t decided.

Nick didn’t even care if it was someone dangerous; if it was someone to blind his other eye because it was five fifty-fucking-five in the morning and he was not supposed to be up for another five goddamn minutes.

He felt like shit because less than three hours ago, he was trying to jimmy May’s door open but she was clever. Oh, how he thought that he had liked that.

She used the chair from the desk to jam up under the doorknob so even if Nick could unlock the door, which he could, he couldn’t get it open without risking waking someone up or property damage. Neither of which he was all that keen to do.

“Leave,” She said with a great deal of voice control after a few minutes. Her voice was calm and sharp, and left no room for argument from somewhere ridiculously close to the door.

And damn it all if Fury didn’t just listen because the direct route of question didn’t work.

Barton had caved and babbled on for hours about nothing in particular, and Romanoff had reacted with violence and insults that told Nick enough but May. She… there was a panic and a grief that was not being expressed properly. Nick wasn’t sure if he didn’t just screw himself over with getting through to her.

“Get back in your room,” Nick told Natasha as he passed by. He was not convinced that she ever actually slept.

“Who is it?”

“Tell them to die,” Clint called from his room.

“Go back to bed.”

And with that, she disappeared into Clint’s room. It was good enough.

Nick continued to the door as the knocking grew louder. He flipped the lock and slammed the door open.

What the fuck, was what Nick wanted to say to the sharply dressed Men in Black wannabes, but he settled on, “Barton said to die.”

“What?” The woman asked, her brow crinkled in confusion.

“Agent MacDonald,” The man said, and judging from his red knuckles he was the one that thought it was okay to break down someone’s front door five minutes before their goddamn alarm went off. Nick hated him in particular.

MacDonald pointed to the woman, “Agent Tucker.”

“What do you want.”  It was a demand, it was far too early for questions.

“May we come in?” asked the woman, who did not seem to get the hostility coming off Nick in tidal waves.

Maybe it was his Christmas pajama pants (they were a gift from Romanoff for this very reason) or the skewed eyepatch that he had thrown on hazardously. He should start sleeping in leather of something, he though offhandedly.

“No.”

“It’s cold.”

“It’s six in the morning.”

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” the man, Agent MacDonald, said apologetically. “It is sensitive information and we’d prefer not to discuss it in front of your neighbors.”

He eyed blonde hair, blue eyed Mrs. Coulson across the street in her “We Support the Troops’ t-shirt and her beagle on a leash like she was a terrorist.

Nick turned to leave, leaving the door open and walking to the kitchen. If they were going to do this now he was going to need coffee. He heard the click of their shoes on the kitchen tiles as he turned on the coffee machine.

Nick turned to them stiffly. He did not want to deal with this, with them.

“What do you want?”

“We’re here by orders of the director to stress how important it is to get information from this girl,” MacDonald stated.

“Melinda,” Agent Tucker added with a smile like she would get a gold star for remembering her name. Nick decided that he liked her the least.

“I got that all from Sam,” Nick sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. He needed to shave and a few more hours of sleep, not these two.

“Yes, and Captain Sawyer said that you were not taking this seriously.”

“She knows time sensitive information,” added Tucker persuasively, trying and failing to appeal to Nick’s sworn oath to protect, to be that shield between chaos and humanity.

It might have worked if he gave a shit about anything right now.

“You don’t know that.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t know what she knows,” Nick stated. “I’ve read the file; there is no time sensitivity if you’re still trying to piece it all together. That’s why she’s here, is it not?”

“Well-“

“It is,” Nick voiced. “And I’m working with her. If she says anything useful, I’ll personally call Pierce and let him know but I’m not going to push her. She just saw her parents die.”

“It’s very important-“

“I’d care more about that if you would tell me why the hell it is so damn important.”

“That’s classified.”

“Of course, it is.”

“Has she said anything yet?” Tucked asked.

“Yeah, she’s a big fan of the color blue.”

“Stop wasting the time of S.H.I.E.L.D,” MacDonald growled.

“Stop wasting the time of a high school principal,” Fury growled back. “She has been here a day. A day. I don’t know what you were expecting but most people don’t discuss how their parents were brutally mur-“

And there she was.

With her goddam cat-like footsteps and daughter-of-spies ability to sneak around undetected, standing in the doorway with bed hair and a look of unsurprised betrayal across her face.

Nick didn’t know how long she had been there.

“May,” He began but the harden glare that she turned on his stopped him from continuing.

What was he going to say anyways?

“Agent Tucker, MacDonald,” May said with a nod. Her jaw was tight and her movements stiff as she turned on her feet and marched out of the room. Nick seriously felt like stabbing them.

“And now,” He stated in a deadly whisper, playing on every ounce of his former reputation to cause both agents to stiffen their spines. “It is going to take longer for her to trust me.”

He took a deep breath before continuing louder, “Get out.”

They did so, leaving him with card to contact someone Nick didn’t even bother remembering the name of.

As he slid the card into his wallet, he noticed that green tea was added to the grocery list under Clint’s chicken scratch request for pizza rolls and Natasha’s looping cursive for Oreos. Her handwriting was sharp and to the point, much like the girl herself.

“Nick.”

“Natasha.”

“Who was that?”

“Social workers.”

“Melin – May,” Fury corrected himself as he knocked on her door. “Breakfast is in ten. Get ready, your placement test is today.”

He didn’t get an ‘okay’ or an ‘I hate your guts’ in response so he left her to join Clint in the kitchen.

“Is she coming?” He asked as he cracked an egg on the edge of the frying pan. “You know, I haven’t even seen her face yet. You know that, right?”

“I know, Barton,” Fury replied tiredly.

“And you’re being weird.”

“How so?”

“It’s – I don’t know,” Clint began, his eyes focused on not breaking the yokes of his frying eggs. “It’s, like, you’re being too nice to her.”

Nick’s lip curled into a smirk, “I’m a nice guy.”

“Oh really, I completely missed that,” Clint said with a sarcastic laugh. “No, you’re a good guy. Nice is reserved for Coulson’s mom.”

“If this is an elaborate way of saying that you want me to make you a cake there are simpler ways.”  

“Uh no thanks, you’d burn the house down.” Clint flipped an egg. “And I said, too nice, keep up.”

Everything was quite for a moment and Nick knew that Clint wanted to continue. If he needed time to organize his thoughts and figure out how he wanted to say whatever it was he wanted to say than Nick would give him that time.

“It’s, uh, did something happen to her?” He asked, voice pitched into almost a whisper as if he didn’t want to be overheard, even by Nick. “Like worse than me and Tasha.”

“She’s not from a circus, no,” Nick replied, matching his quiet tone but was dismissive. He did not want to have this conversation, no right now and not with Barton. “Or Russia.”

“You know what I meant and that’s not it,” Clint said undeterred, though he did crack a smile. “I mean, it’s not a shitty parents thing, is it? Tasha doesn’t talk about it but her parents sucked, or whoever raised her or something. And mine died, not like they were all that great before, and Barney just… well, the orphanages I was in were – not great. It’s more than people just leaving her, right?”

“Clint,” Nick said, dropping his dismissive tone and got serious. “Like with you and with Natasha, if you want to know than you’re just going to have to wait until she tells you.”

“I know,” Clint sighed, making enough eggs to feed everyone on the block. “Are you going to ask-“

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fine. She’s fine.”

“But couldn’t-“

“Clint.”

“I just want to help!”

“Help with what?” Natasha asked as she walked into the room.

“Help with getting you a bell,” Clint supplied. “You’re too damn sneaky.”

“Clint,” Fury warned half-heartedly.

He sighed and rolled his eyes, dropping into his seat with four eggs, “I know, I know, don’t say the ‘damn’ word.”

“Is she coming?”

“Eventually,” Nick replied. Before he could comment that May’s delay might have been caused by the outrageous amount of time Natasha spent in the bathroom, she walked into the room.

Her hair was damp, leaving wet patches on her black button up and her footsteps audible on the tile because of her black boots. Her shoulders were tense as she sat down in the seat between Natasha and Nick, never relaxing.

Nick couldn’t blame her.

“Hi, I’m Clint,” Clint greeted her. His eyes were wide and excited as he observed her, looking for anything to tell his friends.

“And I’m Natasha,” Romanoff added. “Thanks for the introduction, Clint.”

She nodded softly as she stared at the eggs in front of her, “May.”

“So, uh, I made the eggs. Nick can’t cook, like at all, so we take turns.”

“Thanks.” May picked up her fork before cutting the eggs into smaller pieces

“When you start school, we can show you around,” Natasha said after an awkward lull in the conversation. “Marvel High is pretty big but it’s easy to navigate once you get used to it.”

“And you can eat lunch with us,” Clint added.

May didn’t respond; Nick didn’t expect her to.

Natasha and Clint exchanged a look before Clint shrugged, “Or not, if you don’t want to. There are plenty of people to eat with.”

“May,” Nick said, watching as she moved pieces of egg around her plate without ever taking a bite. “I have a facility meeting today, during which you can take your placement test.”

“Oh, that sucked,” Clint winced in remembrance. “It was so boring.”

“And then I’m taking the rest of the day off so I can-“

“Spy on me,” She cut in, looking at him with a glare that dared him to lie.

“Take you to the mall to get clothes,” Nick finished dully.

“Spy?”

“Just a misunderstanding, Romanoff.”

“Oh, I see,” She as if she did actually see it.

“What, is it because of the locks?” Clint asked, turning to May. “You know, we’re not allowed to lock the doors to our room. In case of emergencies or fire. Also, it’s just kind of rude, I guess. You also can’t go into someone’s room without asking even if it’s to hide their bow because that was apparently so funny.

“It was hilarious,” Natasha grinned.

“No, it wasn’t.”

And that was how breakfast continued, awkward as Clint and Natasha bantered about old pranks and too many failed attempts to loop May into the conversation. Nick wondered what Maria was going to say when he brought in a wrinkled report into a meeting, and wondered just how well a dreaded mall trip was going to go with a girl that refused to talk to him.

And then Natasha’s phone rung and everyone pretended not to notice how May dropped her fork at the sound. Natasha got up from the table to take the call, already talking to Elektra Natchios about their science project before getting out of earshot. Nick was reminded of something else he had to do.

“We’ll get you a phone as well,” Nick said, mentally adding it to his growing list of shit that had to get done today.

“I don’t have anybody to call,” May stated like that was just an acceptable thing for a sixteen year old to have no one.

“So, you call me,” Nick replied. “Or I call you.”

“Don’t text him during class though,” Clint piped up, talking around a piece of toast. “He’ll call the teacher to take your phone. Uncool, Fury, uncool.”

“Eat your eggs, Barton.”