Excused Absences

“Send in Garret,” Nick said, biting down a sigh as Daniels limped out the door. “And go to the nurse.”

John Garrett was a big man – no, kid. Child, really. A child with large arms and hands that he used to punch people and terrorize even small children. He was an asshole, in Nick’s very professional opinion, and he hated having to deal with the kid.

Also, his stupid turtlenecks somehow irritated Nick beyond everything else.

“Sit down,” Nick stated as the door opened, not looking up from the detention form that he was filing out for Marcus Daniels.

“They’re calling her The Cavalry.”

It was far too early for all this bullshit, Nick sighed as he rubbed at his temples. He sighed, “Maria.”

“As far as nicknames go, The Cavalry isn’t that bad, I guess. Better than mine in high school.”

“What?”

“That’s what they’re calling her.”

“May?”

“Yeah.”

“Great.”

“So, are you going to tell me what happened out there?” Maria asked, sitting down across from him.

“I don’t know what happened,” Nick admitted. “Daniels said that May attacked them and you know Garrett and his merry band of sociopaths are going to say the same thing. But-“

“You don’t believe that.”

It was not a question. She knew.

“Should I have any reason to believe that? It is not like Garrett hasn’t started shit just like this before with other students.”

“How does one person take out four people at once, alone, and their hair still look that good?”

“You’ve done it.”

“I’m a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.”

“She’s clever.”

“Yeah, she’s got some skills,” Maria agreed. “Did you know she could fight?”

“No.”

“Okay, so, other than her favorite color being blue and she’s good at foreign languages, what do you actually know about this girl?”

“She grew up in Canada.”

“What else?”

Nick didn’t respond, choosing instead to finish the form.

Maria sighed, “Then how can you know that she did not start the fight? She’s new, maybe she was just trying to make a name for herself.”

“That’s not it, Hill.”

“How do you know?”

He snapped, “She would have been taught to keep her head down.”

“What?”

“I just know, Hill.”

“Nick, you don’t know anything about this girl! Just because she lives with you does not mean that her intents were pure of heart and it does not bar her from bad behavior. I know, Garrett is a dick but maybe she did attack him. You don’t even know if that isn’t normal behavior for her because you don’t-“

“Her parents are dead,” He cut into her tirade with a pained tired sigh. He did not feel that it was his place to tell people, it was May’s pain and her trauma, and it should be her choice to share that. Not his.

It was just another breach of trust that he should never had trampled over.

“I’m sorry, what?” Maria asked, taken back.

“Her parents are dead,” He repeated. “They were killed and that is why she’s living with me.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, it was recently.”

“How do you not know?” Maria asked incredulously. “Surely, someone from your foster agency lets you know those things.”

“She...” Nick began, then paused. He decided to, for once, tell Maria the whole truth. “Nothing I saw leaves this room, okay?”

“Do you want me to pink promise, too?” She asked sarcastically as Nick got up and locked the door. He ignored the jab and the curious confusion that troubled her features.

“She’s not from the foster agency.”

“Then where-“

“I don’t know when or how her parents died because it’s classified.”

“Classified,” She repeated dryly. “Classified by who?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“I knew it.”

“I got a knock on my door from Sawyer a few weeks ago about a girl that knows too much. She watched her parents be tortured, or at least, they think she might have. From the medical reports it looked like… it wasn’t good.”

“My god,” Maria muttered.

“They were spies, I think, I’m not sure. They won’t tell me shit except that I need to get what she knows because she’s not talking about it. I asked her on her first night, ‘what happened in Bahrain.’ She panicked. She sleeps under her bed and she’s not eating unless I force her too. I didn’t know she could fight because she doesn’t trust me enough to tell me anything.”

“Nick, you can’t-“

“What?” He asked, a laugh in his voice. “Tell S.H.I.E.L.D.? That’s what I told her. I’m not interested in what S.H.I.E.L.D. wants, but you know how they are–“ and she did “–I don’t plan to tell them shit about what she tells me unless its potentially lifesaving, and she liked that. I thought I was making progress.”

“And?”

“And then S.H.I.E.L.D. was standing in my kitchen and she doesn’t trust me.”

“Nick, that doesn’t mean that she didn’t start the fight.”

“Her parents would have taught her to keep a low profile,” Nick stated.

“That doesn’t-“

“I saw the look in her eyes, Maria.”

That shut her up because Maria knew the look, knew that look, the one that took you miles away from the present. The look that you could practically see them drowning in the dark pools of their pupils just trying to escape whatever hell their mind concocted.

Anybody that had seen combat, service, the field knew the look so Maria knew the look because she’d experienced it firsthand. She had watched Nick down in his own dark pools.

She knew as well as he did that when the water came up too far, when it seeped into your shoes and dragged you under, that you go to autopilot. You let your body do the work because your mind took a raincheck, you fight to survive.

“She wasn’t there,” He said. “She might have been fighting Garrett, kicking his ass really.”

He smirked a little at that because damn, she really did kick his ass. He shouldn’t be proud of that.

“But she was miles away,” He continued. “She could have thrown the first punch but I doubt she did. I don’t think she would have been looking for a fight.”

“What are you going to do with them then?”

“Detention. All of them. Two weeks.”

“Fair enough, I guess,” Maria shrugged. “You know who’s good with people like Melinda? You should have her talk to-“

“No.”

“Why?”

“I’m handling it.”

“Are you really?” Maria asked with a smirk that told Nick that she had been speaking to Hand. Nick rolled his eyes as she threw open the door and shouted for Garret to, “Get in this damn office, now!”

He swaggered in like the stupid pile of bricks that he was, with his stupid turtleneck and a smirk that made Nick want to wipe it from his face the way Peggy Carter did with unruly trainees.  He thought that maybe if he Garrett had been at the school from the beginning than he would have a better understanding of how to deal with the kid by now.

Garrett wasn’t someone Clint went to school with in middle school and he didn’t start high school with Natasha. He was a problem kid that Fury didn’t have the summer to figure out how to handle or years to learn to. He just had a burning desire to knock the kid’s teeth down his throat and didn’t even feel bad about it.

“Sit down,” Maria commanded, slamming the door behind him. “Now tell me, do you get off on beating up little girls?”

Garrett offered her a smarmy smirk, “She started it.”  

“Really?” Nick asked unimpressed.

“Yes, sir, she hauled off and punched Quinn in the nose.”

“She got a nice kick to your face too,” Maria observed.

“Lucky shit.”

“And Quinn? What did he do?”

“Nothing, sir,” He said, self-satisfaction evident in his face and his voice. It made Nick’s entire mind feel like it was forced to shut down and reboot.

It really was a testament to his own self-control that he didn’t haul off and punch Garrett in the nose. There was really so much self-control coming from this side of the room. He deserved a goddamn cookie.

“Do you want to add anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“Get lost, Garrett,” Fury growled, composure snapping for one unruly second. “Go to class. Let the football coach know that you’ll be spending your practice time in detention for the next two weeks.”

The lumberjack stood up, smirking like a shark as he left the room without a word.

“I hate that son of a bitch,” Maria muttered as Nick pushed his chair back and stood up.

He moved around the desk and approached the door, “Me too.”

“He makes my skin crawl.”

Nick stared out pass the glass in the door as Garrett said something to May on the way out the office’s door. Pepper, who was seated next to May, glared disapprovingly as he went.

May, for her part, was sitting in her chair with a scowl across her features. Nick found it amusing, just for a moment he could imagine that she was just a regular kid. Just for a moment.

“Miss Potts,” He greeted as he walked towards the two.

“Mr. Fury,” She greeted back, lifting her clipboard. “I’ll need you to sign these.”

She handed him a stack of folders with the Stark Logo on the cover, no doubt Howard wanted to once again make renovations to the chemistry labs.

“But seeing how you have your hands full, take your time,” She continued to smile. “As long as your time is by the end of the day.”

“Of course, Miss Potts. May, follow me,” Nick said, turning back towards his office. He did not hear her get up and, really, he was just grateful that she had listened to him. His authority had already been questioned enough for one day and first period wasn’t even over yet.

As he sat down, he noticed that she did follow him and that she had foregone the chairs in favor of standing in front of his desk with her arms crossed behind her back. Her head was held high and her shoulders back like a soldier awaiting orders, or punishment.

“Care to tell me what happened out there?”

“No.”

“Remember when we talked about demands masquerading as questions,” Nick spoke, repeating her words back to her. “That was one of them.”

“I am aware.”

The corner of Nick’s lip flickered upwards because, of course.

Of course.

She was, after all, a teenager and what did teenagers do?

They were snarky, and sarcastic, and so frustratingly difficult. Nick wasn’t sure if she was still pissed off about the MacDonald/Tucker thing or not. So yes, of course, she wasn’t going to just tell him what happened, even if it did get herself out of trouble.

“You will tell me what happened,” Nick commanded, calm and firm because he couldn’t imagine that she would have gotten away with any of this shit if she was on missions with her parents. “That’s an order. “

He appeared to be right because her eyes narrowed a fraction and her jaw tightened at his words.

“I punched him first,” She stated like she was reading the weather. No bias, no justification, just the facts. It was like a fucking mission report.

“Why?” Maria asked from her seat, having not left the room.

“They were,” May began, her eyes darting to Maria for a quick second before turning back to Nick’s. She paused as if she was looking for the right words before settling on, “Bullying.”

“They were bullying you?”

“No.”

“Then-“

“The boy with the…ant farm and the girl dressed like a bee.”

“Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne,” Maria supplied.

May shrugged.

“So, then you punched Ian Quinn?” Nick asked.

“No.”

“No?”

“I told them to leave them alone,” May supplied.

“And how did that result in you breaking Quinn’s nose?” Nick asked, feeling like he was pulling teeth. She seemed to be determined to say as little as possible.

“The big one pushed me.”

“The big one?”

“Garrett.”

“So, you broke his friend’s nose? Work with me here, May, help me understand this.”

“He tried to hit me, Garrett,” May stated. “I dodged and then it got out of hand.”

She gestured to the split in her lip as if to emphasize her words and then added, “Quinn was collateral damage.”

“Will Pym and van Dyne collaborate with your story?”

She shrugged.

“I’m going to have to give you detention,” Nick told her. “Even if you were defending a student, those actions are appropriate in a school setting. Two weeks, after school. You need to find a teacher next time.”

May nodded before asking, “Can I go to class?”

Two class periods.

Two out of eight periods and Nick was very thankful that he didn’t have hair because he would have ripped it out by now.

Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne did collaborate with may’s story, as did Clint and Bruce, so not everything in the universe was working against him, just most of it. Barton was still being bitchy about being blown off earlier and Stark had apparently blown up the physics lab again.

And Nick had been called twice about Melinda May.

“Are you even listening to me, Principal Fury?” Sitwell’s voice questioned accusingly through the phone.

“Yep,” Fury replied as he played Tetris on his computer.

“I asked her to introduce herself to the class and she said no!” Sitwell expressed as if in a world with pizza delivery, Stark Expo, and people who kill the parents of sixteen year old girls, that was the most unbelievable thing. “No!”

“I’ll give her detention,” Nick said humorlessly, appeasing to Sitwell’s desire to ruin everybody’s day.

“You do that.”

‘Why is he even here?’ He mouthed, meeting Maria’s eyes through the glass in the door as Sitwell rambled on about manners and respect.

Jasper was a good agent, a top agent who had not fucked up in any way that Nick had heard of. And yet, he spent most of his time pretending to be a biology teacher at a high school.

‘Pierce’s eyes and ears??’ Maria scribbled out on a piece of paper and held up.

They both rolled their eyes; that was typical Alexander Pierce.

Fury ended the call as Maria went back to whatever it was she was doing while pretending to look busy, promising to ruin May’s life, or destroy the world, or whatever it was that Sitwell was talking about.

Nick was greeted by a knock on his door moments later. It took all his self-control not to groan when Dr. Steiten walked into his office.

“That is quite a girl you have,” He said as way of greeting.

Nick rolled his eyes.

“You know, they are calling her-“

“The Cavalry, I know.”

“She sent Thor to my office.”

“Why?” Nick hated to ask.

“Sprained his wrist,” Steiten replied quickly. “Shaw is going to make her play in the next football game if she keeps injuring his players. Thor apparently grabbed her shoulder in the hallway and she ‘reacted’ as he put it. He apologized profusely and expressed great concern about her getting in trouble.”

“Of course, he did.” Thor was the human version of a golden retriever.

“Also, Miss Hill told me to tell you that Koenig called,” The doctor said as he was leaving the office. “Apparently, she skipped his class.”

Nick groaned and picke dup the phone again.

“Hola,” The voice answered.

“Send him to me,” Furry spoke and then hung up.

“What are your thoughts on the Cavalry?”

“I think that they played an important role in gaining our independence from the British during the Revolutionary War and-“

“What?”

“What?”

“About the – where were you this morning?” Nick asked.

“I had a dentist appointment, sir.”

“What do you know about Melinda May?”

“She’s going to be our new student. Tony said that she’s part robot but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t serious.”

“She is out new student. Today is her first day.”

“Oh, is she the chica loca that kicked John Garrett in the face?” He asked curiously. “I thought they were talking about Natasha.”

“Nick?” Maria asked, walking into the room and completely disregarding the fact that he was currently in a meeting with someone. “Any idea on where May is?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know where she is if she’s not in class?” Nick all but shouted because damn it all if today wasn’t just one big test of his patience. “I don’t have her microchipped, Hill. Get out there and go find her.”

“Oh, how desperate are you?” Maria taunted as she took note of who his meeting had been with. “Very, very desperate if he’s here.”

“Maria,” Nick growled.

“I thought you were ‘handling’ it?” She chuckled.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” Coulson said truthfully, which only caused her to laugh more.

“Hill, out. I gave you a job,” Nick pointed to the door as if to emphasis how close he was to kicking her ass down to Level One.

Maria just smiled as she left the room, “Good luck, Coulson.”

“Uh, thanks?”

Nick, as he should have done the moment he heard anything about Melinda, had  pulled Phillip Coulson out of his Spanish class. Much like everybody suggested he did.

Phil Coulson was everything a principal could want in a student. He was the shining beacon in a sea of teenage angst; he was the very definition of a perfect student.

Coulson was president of student council, assistant coach of the football team, he was in Spanish club, science club (even if it was just to make sure Stark didn’t get Fitzsimmons killed or horribly disfigured), Quiz Bowl, History club, he ran the after school movie program for kids who took late buses, and he volunteered more time in the guidance office than anyone else. Phil Coulson had pull in every group, clique, and posse at Marvel High School and he used it for good.

Coulson was the most beneficial student at the school to Nick.

He was more useful to Fury as a junior in high school than the guidance counselor. Whereas Pepper Potts was brilliant at her job when dealing with people Tony Stark or Thor Odinson, she couldn’t connect with people like Melinda. And Maria, for all of her trying, rarely got through with anyone.

Coulson helped Grant Ward with his transition from abusive parents to cat-obsessed aunt. He, alone, got Romanoff to stop kicking the ass of anyone within a ten foot radius, without getting a single bruise in the process. He helped Barton through the hearing loss he never dealt with and the hearing aids, and other stuff Clint never properly came to terms with. He was the only person other than Pepper that could get Stark to listen half the time, and the one to adjust Thor to American culture. He helped Banner with his anger issues.

He made sure Fitzsimmons knew their way around the school after the move up from the middle schools. He got Skye to stop hacking into the school computers and changing the lunch to fish sticks.

And yeah, Barton still climbed through the air ducts like it was his own personal playground but he was doing it less because of Coulson.

All and all, if anyone could help May, it was Coulson. That was exactly what he told the boy who sat there with concerned eyes and a determined look.

Fury told him that May had recently lost her parents and nothing more on her past (he couldn’t exactly tell the truth, no matter how trustworthy, a high school student with the secrets of an international spy agency). Fury also told Coulson, in a voice that barred no argument, that he would appreciate (i.e. Coulson would) tell him what May said.

But as Nick predicted Coulson protested to that, even against Nick’s no nonsense voice, because Phil Coulson didn’t believe in betraying trust.

Nick shut him up by alluding that it was of the upmost importance to May’s health he did. Coulson, for his part, nodded and left with a note to go back to Spanish while Fury contemplated which level of Hell he’d end up in for lying about a girl being suicidal so someone would spy on her.