Excused Absences

Two weeks passed without incident.

And Nick was suspicious.

Two days after that conversation, two days of May being withdrawn, and jumpy, and Clint and Natasha bitching at him about it (because ‘we know you did something, Fury, we just don’t know what so fix it!’). Then May asked for a radio and gave no explanation as to why she wanted it.

Three days after that conversation, Nick gave her one.

A week after that conversation, Fitzsimmons’ I.C.E.R. prototype replaced all the tasers at the school (Nick was not now, not even calling it a Night-Night gun, no matter how much Fitz whined about it).

Two weeks of no incidents at school or at home.

May went to all her classes and after those two days and even started to join into Clint and Natasha’s conversation again. She participated in their sparring, taught Barton some of her moves and he taught her some of his, and practiced ballet with Natasha. She did her homework with the others and even helped Natasha prank Clint.

Two weeks of no incidents and Nick was suspicious. Something was going to go very wrong, very soon.

And it did.

Exactly two weeks and two days from the damn conversation, Maria busted through his office door.

Steven Levins released a hallucinogenic gas into the gym.

He said it was an accident.

Nick thought it was less of an accident and more of an ‘I wonder what will happen if I pumped gas into the gym during fourth period’ stupid ass thing to do. He didn’t have the chance to really look into it at the moment because everything went to hell quickly after that.

And really, it was probably a long time coming.

For a school of geniuses and probably one of the best labs from here to Stark Tower, they were rather relaxed on lab rules, citing Howard Stark’s ‘rules block creativity and innovation’ logic. If you passed the lab safety test (which involved watching a poorly acted film and a ten question quiz) and signed the safety waved than you had free range to do whatever you wanted with little to no supervision.

Stark threw himself into a wall working on rocket boosters and the only consequence that happened was that someone put it up on YouTube.

Like seriously.

There were only two rules

1. Wear your goddamn goggles
2. Don’t blow up the school

And Fury thought they should probably add ‘don’t be a fucking idiot and release a hallucinogenic gas into the gym, ever but especially not if Natasha Romanoff was in it.’

Seriously, common sense, people!

The school was in chaos because of fucking Steven Levins.

Nick thought as he, Maria, Sitwell, and Hand armed themselves with gas mask and I.C.E.R.s that he was actually going to kill that kid.

No, he was going to let him have a go with Natasha.

Natasha had choked out two security guard with her thighs, and managed to rip the mask of another one before Nick had the opportunity to put the I.C.E.R.s to use.

It was effective as hell in stopping the Russian demands to know where the hell they were keeping her. He managed to catch her before she hit the ground, then left her to Victoria, who was currently herding out all the kids who didn’t have traumatic pasts to revert to when exposed to hallucinogenic gas.

Fuck Levins. Seriously, fuck that guy.

Hallucinogenic gas should not even be something you have to factor into your life.

Banner had destroyed the weight room and got a good hit to the side of Sitwell’s face before they iced him.

It took nearly two hours for Coulson, dragged out of Spanish again, and Maria, to talk Clint down from the rafters (where he apparently kept a fucking bow and a stack of arrows before he threatened to shoot anyone who took a step towards him). He demonstrated just how serious he was by almost taking off Nick’s ear.

He demanded that Nick tell him what the hell he did with Barney or face the wrath of The Amazing Hawkeye. When Nick told him that Barney wasn’t there, Barton dropped the bow and arrow down to the gym floor and climbed down.

He didn’t say anything for over an hour after then, even to Coulson.

Then it was just to ask if he knew where Barney was, in a voice that was so, so very little and so very lost.

It took until Nick found a security guard knocked out and his I.C.E.R. missing for him to realize that May was in that class, and that she was missing.

And with her? Grant Ward.

She was not in administrations, or his office, or the roof, or in the vent.

In fact, they were not in the school at all because she was in Nick’s car.

And he knew that because his car was not there.

His keys were there which made everything slightly more annoying.

He waited until seventh period before taking Maria’s keys and telling her to keep an eye on Barton and field any of the calls about the gas leak until he got back.

“Nick.”

“Don’t say anything,” Nick warned as Maria leaned back in her chair.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” he responded innocently, holding her hands up.

“Yes, you were.”

“What would I possibly say, sir?” She asked, fighting a smile. “Just that a sixteen year old girl stole your super-spy car that you swore couldn’t be broken into, the same girl that kicked your ass a month ago.”

“She didn’t kick my ass,” Nick groaned.

“She slammed you into the lockers,” She smiled. “I really like her.”

“Whatever,” Nick grumbled. “Watch Barton, keep him out of the vents.”

“Call me when you find her,” Maria called after him.

The first thing he found was his SUV parked hazardously halfway on the sidewalk. Nick wondered briefly as he observed the park job, the open car door, and exposed wiring, if May even had a license.

She probably had multiple ones, actually.

The second thing he noticed was the music, even before he got to the door, the door that was not only unlocked but left wide open. The oddly soothing otherworldly tones of David Bowie’s Soul Love greeted him as he stepped over the threshold.

Nick’s hand stayed on his I.C.E.R. as he continued on to the living room; the lock didn’t look tampered with and nothing looked out of place, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

He was welcomed to a gun pointed in his face as soon as he stepped into the living room.

A real gun.

A very real gun.

“Melinda,” He said cautiously, hands rose above his head.

Her hair was wild and messy, and he was pretty sure there was a dead leaf tangled in there. A gash was still seeping blood down her temple, and her cast was long gone. There was a tear in the sleeve of her jacket and her eyes were still clouded from the gas.

“What happened to you?”

“What did you do?” She demanded slowly, enunciating her words to hide the slur. “What did you do to me?”

The living room was in disarray, there was a bullet hole in the plaster by the door leading to the kitchen and in a pillow.

She found a pack of bullet that could have only come from the back of the hall closet, dumped all over the table and spilt over onto the floor. Books were pulled out of their spots, left open on the table or tossed on the floor, even a chair was overturned and there looked to be blood in the corner.

“There was a gas leak from one of the labs into the gym,” Nick told her. “Hallucinogenic. Whatever you are experiencing, whatever you’re seeing, it isn’t happening right now. You’re safe.”

She didn’t say anything, just kept the gun pointed at his head.

“Where did you get that?”

“I found it.”

“What happened to you?” Nick asked again.

“It got difficult,” She told him, her eyes darting quickly to the couch and then back to him. Ward was there, looking just as worse for wears as May did, but he wasn’t moving.

“Did you–”

“I didn’t shoot him,” she said, voice still cold and distracted, but her eyes slide from his to something over to his left. “I saved him. He hit me, I used this.”

She held up the I.C.E.R. that she stole off the security guard.

“It’s useful.”

“Yeah,” Nick said, only mildly concerned with the fact that she probably didn’t know what the gun did before using it. “Mind putting it down?”

He gestured to the gun she had pointed at him.

“Yes.”

“Melinda–”

“You’re S.H.I.E.L.D., you can’t be trusted.”

“What does that mean?” He asked.

“The music in your car is stupid,” She said instead of answering his question, her eyes darting away from him to the bookshelf in the corner. “Who listens to U2? No one likes U2. And… and your seat is too far back.”

“May, put the gun down,” Nick said slowly.

“It’s all your fault,” She whispered, not looking at him. “They’re gone – S.H.I.E.L.D….and it’s all – they knew we were coming. How did they know?”

“Melinda, what are you talking about?”

And then she shot, shattering a vase on the bookshelf.

“Where are they?” She demanded, voice low and shaky as she pointed and took aim at something Nick could not see. “What did you do with them?”

Her next shot embedded itself in the wall next to the window before she turned the gun back onto Nick.

“Tell me,” She demanded. Her eyes were brimmed with tears and shaky hands held tightly around the gun. “Tell me, or, or, I will kill you.”

‘Well now, that’s just bad interrogating.’

The gun slid out of her grasp, and she fell unconscious against Nick, his own gun pointed. He was going to give Fitzsimmons a goddamn metal for these stupidly named guns.

The first thing May did upon waking up was to reach for the gun.

Her movements were clumsy with the aftereffects of the tranquilizer. She only managed to knock it off the table and crashing her shoulders painfully into the corner of it before regaining her balance.

It was the clattering sound of metal sliding across glass that alerted Nick to her presence. He ended the hushed conversation that he was having on the phone without a goodbye.

If May was in the right mindset than she probably would have been suspicious of that.

“You’re safe,” He told her, picking the gun off the floor, empty of all its bullets. “I’m Nick Fury, and you’re at my house. You can have this if it’ll make you feel better, but you are safe.”

She snatched the gun out of his outstretched hand and checked for bullets. Upon seeing was empty she tossed it to the side and muttered something that sounded like ‘useless.’

“I–” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I’m fuzzy.”

“Curtsey of this,” Nick said, holding up the I.C.E.R. “You’re right. Useful.”

“I almost shot you.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I almost shot you.”

She didn’t say anything more after that. Didn’t apologize, she wouldn’t apologize, and he wouldn’t expect her to do so. She was confused, and Nick certainly looked like a threat even when he wasn’t. He couldn’t fault her even if he wanted to.

Her attention was drawn to the couch where Ward sat, shuffling a deck of old cards awkwardly in his hands.

“You okay?” He asked her when he noticed her gaze.

Nick didn’t think that he was talking about being iced, and reminded himself to grill the boy about it later.

“I’ve had worse.”

“That’s good,” He said, nodding and then shaking his head no. “Well, not good that you’ve had worse but yeah.”

“I have to stop by the school,” Nick told her, keeping the annoyed sigh out of his voice, because he was still the principal and there was still, what the newspapers were reporting as a ‘gas leak.’ “Barton and Romanoff are at Stark’s.”

Clint had said it was so they could eat all of Tony’s imported snacks. Natasha said it was so they could get drunk on all of Howard’s imported Scotch. Nick supposed it was probably a bit of both and the company of someone who could get their minds off all those feelings and images dredged up by the gas.

Clint wanted to feel normalcy, Natasha didn’t want to feel anything at all – Tony’s was the place for both.

“I’ll give you a ride over if you want,” He called to her as he pulled his trench coat out of the hall closet. “Ward, I can drop you off at home.”

They had both declined.

Nick came home, three hours after the school day had ended, to find May, Coulson, and Coulson’s motley group of misfits doing a puzzle at the kitchen table. There was a heated debate that was not deterred by the arrival of their eye-patched principal about cavemen and astronauts.

David Bowie’s Hunky Dory crooned softly in the background, wrapping around words and puzzle pieces like a surreal dream.

May made eye contact with him from across the room, sandwiched in between Coulson and Fitz, and she nodded, short and sharp just to let him know she’d be okay.

Simmons had said May’s arm was ‘healed enough’ as long as she wore the splint again and avoided strenuous exercise before launching back into the argument.

They accepted that, for now anyways.

He woke up the next morning to find them all still asleep on every available surface of May’s bedroom. He called off work, put Maria in charge, and decided to let sleeping children lie.

He cursed himself that he didn’t have a gun or, at the very least, an I.C.E.R. on him when he saw a moving shadow pass across the hallway’s entrance to the living room.

He’d just taken a silence step back towards his room when, “Nick.”

It was said simply like the asshole didn’t break into his house. Nick rolled his eyes and scowled.

“Pierce,” He said with a nonchalance that covered his irrigation and then walked into the room.

Alexander Piece, sure enough, was there in his three piece suit and an air of casualness as he examined the bullet hole that now dotted the walls. His eyes flickered to the blood, now dried on the floor, before boring into Nick’s.

“Redecorating?”

“You do know how to use a phone, right?”

“I did call,” he said like he was distracted, his eyes leaving Nick’s to go back to observing his bullet ridden walls. Nick knew better than to assume that Pierce was anything but alert. “You weren’t in your office.”

“Called off.”

“I know, I heard what happened yesterday,” He looked back to Nick with a raised eyebrow. “What did happen?”

“Lab mishap.”

“We need to talk.”

He gestured to the couch, inviting Nick to sit with him before sitting down himself, like it was his fucking couch. Nick complied, like he had a choice anyways.  “Have you learned anything new from our little…project.”

“She’s not a project,” Nick said defensively. May thought herself a lot less-than-human, he didn’t need other people enforcing that belief. Pierce raised an eyebrow in response to the sudden edge in his voice and Nick cursed himself for giving himself away so easily. “Nothing relevant.”

“So, she has said something.”

“She said,” Nick sighed, looking over his shoulder before lowering his voice because May had a habit of appearing out of nowhere (to the point that Nick was seriously considering taking Clint’s suggestion and getting her a bell). “That it was handled.”

“What was handled?” Pierce asked interested.

“She didn’t elaborate,” Nick said flatly. “I think, and I’m not really sure but, I think that she thinks at least, that they were set up.”

“And she said that?”

“She alluded to it.”

“Nick,” Pierce said, looking him in the eye, talking to him in that voice that he used when he wanted something and what you gave wasn’t good enough. “It is of the utmost importance that we know what she knows.”

“Why?” Nick asked because he may not be out doing missions, but he was respected by Pierce, clearance level be damned when you went as far back as they did.

And he really wanted to fucking know.

What was so important about this? What was he supposed to be looking for?

“What is so important about Bahrain?” He asked after a moment.

“We don’t know if the threat was neutralized,” He replied. “I need you to get her to talk.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Work faster.”

“I’m working on it, Alex,” He repeated. “She’s not exactly Chatty Cathy.”

“There’s another thing I need from you,” Pierce said, pulling a folder out of his briefcase and holding it out to him.

“I’m not taking in anymore kids,” He stated flatly, eying the folder with the same weariness one would eye an open flesh wound.

“Not that,” Pierce huffed out a laugh. “A mission.”

“I can’t leave my school,” He said instead of I’m not leaving my kids.’

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” He reassured, shoving the folder into his hand. “Just plan the damn thing. You’re the best damn strategist that we’ve got and we need all hands on deck for this.”

‘If that was true, why am I a high school principal?’ Nick thought bitterly.

“I’ll even let you use Captain America,” Pierce promised, sweetening the deal that he knew Nick didn’t really have a choice in taking anyways.

“I’ll do it,” Nick replied, because again, he didn’t really have a choice in the matter. “But only if Rogers talks to my students.”

“Deal.”