Simulacrum
Our World, Present Day
There was no way Coulson could have heard her whispered reply over the percussive explosions from the Watchdog’s semi-automatics, but he must have figured out she was not coming to him. May watched, not moving a fraction, as he activated his shield and crossed the length of the room to her hiding space.
“May!”
His face was inches from hers.
She shuddered like he had woken her from a dream.
“You with me?” He asked.
May must have nodded, because he slung one of her arms around his shoulder and hoisted her to her feet. She allowed herself to be half-led, half-dragged behind him while he cleared the path of the crossfire, unable to shoot back at their assailants as he held her and the shield that protected them.
Her brain was working in slow-motion, trying to process what had just happened.
It was not until they were back on the Zephyr and airborne that shame started to creep in. She left the control room and stumbled into the hallway in a daze.
What the hell had happened to her back there?
She slumped against the cool metal of the corridor wall and all of the air in her lungs left her.
She should have listened to Simmons. She should have never gone into the field. She could have been killed. She could have gotten him killed.
How was she supposed to know that she would have frozen like that? She had taken enemy combatants with twice the firepower of those Watchdogs back in the warehouse and never once had she hesitated.
But things were different now. It wasn’t just her she had to worry about anymore. It would have been so much easier if he knew, if he remembered.
“You okay?”
May flinched.
Damn, she was off her game. She had not even heard Coulson approach.
She got to her feet.
“I think so,” she lied. An assertive “yes” would have been more than he would have been able to swallow. “I’m sorry… about—
“It’s okay,” Coulson assured her. “It’s understandable. After everything…”
May gave him a quick nod.
“Will you have Simmons look you over when you get back to the base?”
She answered with a soft snort. Simmons would not find anything she did not know already.
“Can you tell me what’s going on?” He asked. “You know I’m here if you ever want to talk about—
“Stop,” she cut him off. If she could not handle a team of thugs-for-hire inexpertly spraying bullets in her direction, there was not a chance she could handle this. For two months, she had kept it all hidden away: the secrets, the isolation, the pain as he kept his distance from her. It was taking a hard toll and she could not keep pretending it did not hurt.
“May…” He trailed off.
“You’re not ready to hear what I have to say,” she stated.
Coulson frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you might have been able to hear it from her, but not me.”
There.
She had said it.
After almost two months dancing around the elephant in the room, she had given it a name. It wasn’t just her burden to bare anymore.
“May, you are her,” he insisted.
“I believe that,” she agreed. “But I don’t think you do.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out.
Good.
At least he respected her enough not to lie.
“That’s what I thought,” she said.
She kept her posture straight and composed as she turned and left him standing alone in the hallway. May might not have much left, but she refused to lose face in front of him again.
The Framework, Seven Weeks Ago
It was a week after the conversation in the kitchen that they met the girl that would tear apart the entire world they had tried to build for themselves.
At first, Melinda thought she was insane.
She showed up at their door on a Saturday afternoon, wearing a torn denim jacket and a positively manic smile. She introduced herself as “Daisy.”
Daisy said she was an agent of SHIELD and that she knew Phil and Melinda. She said they were co-workers, friends, as close as family. She told them this world wasn’t real: Hydra, the Chitauri attack that had leveled New York, even her marriage. It was all a virtual reality they were trapped in called “The Framework.”
The claims that Daisy was making were crazy enough, not to mention treasonous enough, for Melinda to have called the Containment Team at Hydra and have her taken away for processing.
But Phil wasn’t so sure.
That was enough to make her pause.
In that brief moment of uncertainty, something happened. It wasn’t a conscious thought or a memory. It was a feeling.
She knew this girl, Daisy. She had met her before.
It was a feeling stronger than déjà vu.
It was like a memory from a dream.
The expression on her face must have given something away.
“You know I’m right,” Daisy said. “Don’t you, May?”
“May.”
No one had called her that in years. So why did it sound so familiar on the girl’s lips?
“Better do what the man says, Agent May.”
“I’m sorry, May.”
“May! Oh my God, it’s good to see you!”
“May, you have no idea… What I did…I have nothing left.”
“Then why did Andrew save you?” She muttered. Her eyes darted across the room, as if she was reading a book only she could see. She had spoken these words before. Not here. Some place far away. In a plane. She said these words to a girl in a cage on the other side of a window made of bulletproof glass.
“Melinda?” Phil asked.
“You remember,” Daisy gasped.
“You did a lot of bad things,” Melinda recited. “All you can do now is balance the scales—
“Do some good,” Daisy finished with her.
When Melinda looked up, there were tears in the girl’s eyes.
“Daisy?”
“Yeah, May,” Daisy agreed. “It’s me.”
The memories from the life she had forgotten assaulted her. She was caught in a riptide, unable to catch her breath. The good times, the bad, the traumatic, all of them broke free at once, burning her consciousness with the bittersweet pain of nostalgia.
It was too much.
When the torrent stopped and the world was still again, there were only two inescapable thoughts left: She was not Melinda Coulson, Agent of Hydra.
And nothing was going to be simple ever again.
***
She followed Daisy and Phil to the “backdoor” through a graveyard with heavy steps on stiff legs that barely obeyed her commands.
When their memories returned, she and her “husband” could barely look at one another, let alone speak. Their dual lives each fought for dominance in their Framework brains, unable to reconcile one with the other.
Daisy insisted that it would get better once they were back home. May had to believe her. She just knew she could not stay here. Not now that she knew the truth.
They had almost reached the exit, disguised as the grave of Dr. Jemma Simmons, when Daisy’s phone rang. May and Phil stood on either side of the girl, listening to the one-sided conversation with blank stares.
“Why not?” Daisy asked the caller. “Are you sure?”
Daisy spared a glance at May and she felt a tug in her gut. Something had gone wrong.
“Is that the only way?... But you’re sure it will work?... Okay. We’ll be there in ten.”
“What’s up?” Coulson asked.
Phil was sounding more like “Coulson” now. The complacent school teacher was fading into the background as the confident agent of SHIELD took over.
“There’s been a… development,” Daisy said, avoiding May’s eyes. “We need to meet FitzSimmons and the others at Fitz’s lab.”
“What kind of development?” May demanded. She had a horrible suspicion it had to do with her.
Daisy bit her lip.
“I think it’s better if Fitz explains in person.”