Excused Absences

This mission was stupid.

Honestly, who thought of this and why did he agree to go along with it?

It wasn’t like he was some emotionally deficient boy that didn’t understand basic human emotions like Daisy would say if he told them all exactly how stupid this plan was. If he told them that this was literally the dumbest plan he’d ever heard of and he was embarrassed to be a part of it.

This was magnificently stupid and not thought out at all, they were supposed to be the geniuses not him, why couldn’t they see that?

And it wasn’t like he didn’t think that Coulson and May weren’t all googly-eyed for each other. It wasn’t that he didn’t think that the only reason they weren’t the sickly sweet, hand holding, voted prom king and queen type of couple was because they were too clueless to pick up on it, because he did. He totally did.

Everyone thought that.

Hence, this dumb and not thought out mission.

He was all for playing the role he was given. That was kind of his thing, to just go with it, whatever it might have been. He was uncomfortable with the plan and the execution, and all of this was verging in on some really awkward territory.

He was, in no way, looking forward to ever having to explain to Coulson that he had seen his girlfriend naked, but, he was willing to burn that bridge if they ever got to it.

The mission, the goal, was to figure out what was going on in May’s head. It was literally to find out if she was all lovely-dovey under her tough exterior for Coulson’s geeky sweater vest, and to get ice cream because that was apparently essential for them to do all of this.

This was no way to do a mission.

Missions don’t involve ice cream and you don’t ever discuss your mission when your mission was right there.

“How do we even go about this?” Simmons whispered, looking over her shoulder to where May was not paying them any attention. In fact, they were lucky that May found her surroundings more interesting than her friend.

“We just go to Wal-Mart,” Fitz replied, like it was obvious. “Simple.”

“Not that,” she retorted, smiling her ‘of Fitz’ smile. “About May. It’s not like she’s just going to tell us.”

‘Of course, she wasn’t,’ Grant thought. It was a stupid plan. You know what they knew about Melinda May? Like, in the entire time they have known her?

She had S.H.I.E.L.D. parents – via leaked government files and a prank.

She was the reason John Garrett no longer went to MHS – determined from evidence. Bruce Banner does not haul off and punch someone in the face for no reason.

She was pretty much a ninja – demonstrated.

She had a great body – personal knowledge; cannot be shared.

You know what else they also knew?

She liked Phil Coulson.

Everyone knew she liked Coulson, everyone but Phil Coulson.

She wouldn’t say it. Not to them. Just like she wouldn’t say what happened to her parents in Bahrain or where that scar on her shoulder came from.

The only person she would ever possibly tell would be Coulson.

This was an exercise in pointlessness.

Time Wasting 101.

And they were all passing with flying colors.

“Ward, you’re frowning,” Daisy observed, crossing her arms and raising a questioning eyebrow at him because this was, after all, the brainchild of her and Stark. His eyes flickered over from Daisy’s annoyance with him to May’s ridged stance. She was tense.

“This is stupid.”

Her eyes were scanning the parking lot once again before she inconspicuously took a step back and then another. The others didn’t seem to notice but he did. Something was up, or at least May thought so.

“We’re just going to talk to her,” Daisy rolled her eyes. “What could go wrong?”

“She could walk away,” Simmons answered the clearly rhetorical question.

“She could kill us,” Fitz replied at the same time as Simmons. Ward wondered, not for the first time, if there was a rule that said geniuses had to miss all social cues and if there was an ingrained inability to plan missions ahead of time in their DNA.

“Possibly everything because you said, ‘what could go wrong?” Simmons added.

“Exactly,” He replied, straight-faced. “That’s what I’m imagining with this frown.

“Well, your frown will be on record. And she’s not going to kill us, Fitz.”

‘Good,’ Ward thought. He could rub it in their faces when this crashed and burned, and he was proven to be undoubtedly right.

“She could if she wanted to,” Fitz laughed in a way that suggested he wasn’t completely sold on the idea that she didn’t want to kill them all.

“Let’s go,” May snapped, standing next to a pillar. Her voice was hard and commanding, barring no argument and far too intense for the situation.

 He was right, something was up. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

“We haven’t figured–”

The man in the black uniform came out of nowhere, appearing like an apparition from behind the closest stone pillar behind May. Before any of them could react, could reach for her, or call out, or prepare for the horrid sound and images that came with a headshot at that close of proximity, May had him.

She grabbed the gun over the barrel, like her mother had always told her not to do before she got her fingers blown off. Pulling the gun to the left, she flipped the gunman over onto the ground, disarming him in the process. Another solider dressed in black Kevlar with a gun and a thick bulletproof vest appeared from behind the pillar.

How long had they been hiding?

She should have noticed them sooner, she thought as she grabbed the gun.

She just wanted to watch a movie, she thought as she jabbed her elbow into his nose, and twisted the gun.

Just one freaking day, she thought, gritting her teeth around the building anger, dodging a wild punch from the disoriented soldier. She debated breaking his nose before punching the man in the stomach.

She was sick of this. He doubled over.

Sick of them. She slammed her knee into his face.

Sick of everything. The soldier fell to the ground.

There was a hand on her shoulder, roughly gripping her before slipping away.

When May whirled around in her fighting stance, they flinched.

She dropped her fist immediately. She looked at the rest of her team – Coulson’s team, no friends, Christ, they were children, they needed protecting.

 She found another soldier with Ward’s strong arms wrapped around his neck. Her gaze jumped from Ward, deciding she’d figure out how she felt about that later, to see if the rest were okay.

Fitz, Simmons, and Daisy looked to be in various phases of confusion, ranging from awe to fight to ‘what the actual hell,’ but otherwise unharmed. May let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

The relief was short lived, her head whipped around to the sound of squealing tires as an unmarked van skidded to a halt in the no parking zone. She could see out of the corner of her eye that Ward positioned the solider in front of him.

He was going to use him as a shield.

She ordered Fitzsimmons and Skye behind a pillar with one pointed glance before she yanked the solider out of Ward’s grip and knocked him out with the handle of her gun.

“Do you know how to use this?” She asked, handing the gun over to him before he could answer.

“Yeah,” He answered as she checked the van. The soldiers were filing out.

“Get them out of here,” She ordered, checking her own stolen gun. “Now!”

She could hear the footsteps of half a dozen men and somewhere in the distance the sound of speeding tires over speed bumps; she knew they were for her.

Ward hadn’t moved.

Things were going to get bad quickly. The least she could do was get them out of the line of fire.

“Now!” She shouted, pushing him. “Do as I say.”

“Sorry,” He smirked at her, radiating calmness.

She narrowed her eyes, feeling her own painful heart beat and the vise grip her anxiety had on her lungs. Calm was not something you should do feeling in this situation, not when Fitzsimmons were fourteen, and here, and in danger of being killed or tortured. Not when Daisy, or any civilian that might walk through those doors (though she suspected the unusual emptiness of the mall was because they cleared the place beforehand to avoid bad press, governmental most likely) ran the risk of being shot.

Not in this situation, not calm, not ever.

“I forgot I was working with the Cavalry,” He drawled, tipping his head towards her with a grin.

She counted six. They left the van running so at least seven. The second van was there now. She could hear the static feedback over communicators, so S.T.R.I.K.E. team most likely.

Ward was messing with her, with the smile, and the nickname, and the calm. It was supposed to be funny. It wasn’t.

“Don’t ever call me that,” She bit out as he rounded the corner, smile still on his face. She turned around as the door to the second van slide open. Planting her feet steady on the ground, she raised her hands in the air, gun held up.

There were ten soldiers, not heavily armed but all in combat gear.

“Is this because of the car?” She asked with a smirk playing along her lips and a confidence she did not feel. She missed her protective leather, but Clint’s purple hoodie and Natasha’s old jeans did the trick.

She wouldn’t go down without a fight, they didn’t know that.

Not when the soldier closest to her, yanked on her arm and tried to twist it behind her back.

Not when the gun went off and he fell to the ground before her.

But they did when their bullets that were bullets and bullets that weren’t bullets missed her and when she snapped one of their arms.

She wished she had a knife.