The Body
Our World, Present
Once the briefing was over, May made her escape as soon as she could leave the Director’s Office without attracting any unwarranted attention. Too late, she realized that her exit had not gone unnoticed. The familiar clop of Coulson’s gait followed her through the hallway. She closed her eyes as the steps picked up speed and he caught up with her.
“What did you think of the plan?” He asked.
“It’s solid,” she said, not breaking her stride. “If he takes the bait.”
“May, do you have a second to talk?”
“Nothing to say,” she replied.
“Then can you just listen?” He begged.
May pivoted on her heel and turned to face him so fast, Coulson almost got whiplash just watching her.
“What?” She snapped.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For?”
“Can we go somewhere private?” He asked. “Please?”
After a pause, she acquiesced with a curt nod and followed him to his quarters in the housing corridor.
She made sure to stand between him and the door in case she needed to make a quick getaway. Coulson sat on the corner of his bed a meter away from her. It was an effective tactic, one they were taught at The Academy. Placing yourself in a supplicating position below your opponent’s eye-line was a sure-fire way to garner sympathy.
What Coulson did not realize was that her lack of sympathy was not the issue. It was his inability to understand the situation that had come between them.
“You’re right,” he started. “I didn’t believe you were her when you came back.”
May did not budge. This wasn’t anything she did not already know.
“You know about the LMD that replaced you for two weeks before we were forced into the Framework,” he continued. “But what you don’t know is how it felt.
“I thought you were dead. I hoped you weren’t, but I could not imagine there was any reason that they were keeping you alive. I was fooled by a robot. All the while, you could have been being tortured or killed. You have no idea how much I hated myself for that. And then, when I woke up, it was like a nightmare had come true.”
“I know,” May murmured. “I was there.”
Our World, Seven Weeks Ago
Stepping into the Gravitonium portal was the most terrifying event May had ever experienced. Pain did not come close to describing it. Pain was an old friend, something her body could understand. The wormhole made her felt like she was being blown apart and squeezed into the space of a single pinpoint all at once. If she could have begged for death, she would have. Instead, she just existed in interminable terror and agony.
Then, it was over.
She was standing, drenched in sweat and shaking, in a darkened room somewhere in the basement of an off-site SHIELD facility. By the time she had finished vomiting, Daisy, Simmons and Yo-Yo were prying the vault door open and pulling her aboard a quinjet.
Daisy and Simmons had left for the “backdoor” shortly after May had consented to take the Gravitonium gateway back to their world. Using the descriptions provided by Mack, Mace, Coulson and Fitz, Daisy and Simmons awoke on the Zephyr with Yo-Yo and pinpointed the submarine’s exact location. May had followed them out of the Framework an hour later and was picked up on the way to rescue the others.
When Zephyr One descended on the port where the submarine was docked, May only made a cursory protest to Daisy’s insistence that she stay put while she, Simmons, and Yo-Yo went to retrieve their team. She would not have been of much help. May felt an unprecedented swell of empathy for Simmons and what she must have gone through after being on that planet for so long. Everything, even breathing, was disorienting.
Still, as the minutes ticked by, she started to grow anxious.
If this “Superior” was anything as formidable as Daisy claimed, they may have fallen into a trap. May groaned, reached for her ICER, and half-climbed, half-fell through the hatch in the submarine. She stumbled through the darkness, following the sounds of muted shouts and gasps.
The sight that greeted her when she caught up to her team made her knees buckle. She grabbed the doorframe for support and fought the reflex to gag.
One second, Yo-Yo was standing next to the haphazard scrap pile that had been AIDA. The next, she was right beside Mack, removing the headgear and straps that tied him to the Framework. From their restrained positions beside Mack, Fitz and Mace blinked in confusion at the scene in front of them.
In the middle of the room, May saw herself.
She watched as Coulson breathed into the mouth of her lifeless body and performed chest compressions, while Daisy and Simmons begged him to stop. May did not know how long he had been awake, trying to coax her body back to life. He was trembling and dripping with sweat, but refused to stop.
“Coulson, please,” Daisy pleaded. “You’ve got to trust us. She’s not gone!”
“I know,” he yelled. “May! Wake up!”
Simmons stood back, wiping the tears from her face, and caught a glimpse of May struggling to stand in the doorway.
“May,” she gasped.
Simmons grabbed Coulson’s arm and forced him to look in her direction.
“Look, sir,” she said. “See? She’s here. She’s not gone.”
Far from being relieved, Coulson’s face had crumbled when he finally paused resuscitation and saw her. That glance told her all she needed to know.
He did not remember.
She had lost him.
“No,” he groaned. “No, no, nonono…”
Coulson buried his face in the chest of his dead partner. His muffled howl echoed through the metallic innards of the ship.
May could not watch anymore.
As she made her way back to the Zephyr on leaden feet, she could still hear his pleas, begging the dead woman in his arms to come back.
***
It took two weeks for him to approach her. Two weeks of isolation, sympathetic glances from her colleagues, and mandatory therapy sessions. In those two weeks, Coulson had buried the body that she used to inhabit, apparently with full honors. For all she knew, he was the only one in attendance for her funeral.
She accepted his apology “for his behavior” and his offer of a “fresh start,” but she knew they were a long way from being okay again. May did not want a fresh start. She wanted him to accept her for who she was. She wanted him to remember.
Work made her new lot in life a little easier.
Luckily for them, Anton Ivanov had not been on board the submarine when they raided it. Unfortunately, AIDA had constructed a nearly indestructible body for him that was being controlled remotely by his brain, which was separate from the body entirely. May thought after almost thirty years of working for SHIELD, she could not be surprised anymore, but fate still had a twisted way of keeping things interesting.
The team was kept on their toes taking down Ivanov’s Watchdogs. If nothing else, the work helped the days go by quicker.
Then, a little over a month after her return from the Framework, Simmons summoned May to the medical bay. She had spotted an anomaly in her blood-work. May was far from shocked. No one knew the side effects of traveling through a manufactured black hole. She had just been relieved that everything in her body seemed to be in the right place.
She had not been at all prepared for what Simmons had told her: she was pregnant.
After running a secondary test to confirm (then three more because May had insisted), Simmons stuck by her original diagnosis. It was not until May received a full DNA analysis of the fetus to assure that there were no developmental problems, that she accepted the news. She swore Simmons to secrecy on the condition that she would not take any unnecessary risks in the field.
May quickly discovered that was something easier promised than done.
If this had happened while she was still in the Framework, she would have been elated.
As it was, she was terrified.
She was going to be a mother and the man who was her child’s father did not even remember their shared history. He did not even believe she was real.
Our World, Present
“…told me you weren’t a LMD, but I couldn’t understand that at the time.”
Coulson was still talking.
May blinked and tried to follow his words.
“May?” He asked.
She did not know what to say. As much as she wanted to empathize, it would take more than an apology to erase the hurt of the weeks past.
“You buried my body,” she managed.
It was not a simple observation. It was an accusation. That gesture hurt more than she had let on. Logically, she understood the need to say goodbye, but she was not gone! It was like he had buried her that day, closing a chapter on a friendship that had spanned over two decades. He had let her go and she felt like a ghost, haunting his life with a reminder of what he had lost.
“I did,” he agreed. “Maybe that was wrong, but it was something I needed to do. I told myself it wasn’t you it was saying goodbye to. There was nothing in her body that was left of you, but it was still yours. It carried you for most of your life. It was marked with the scars of every bullet you took and every punch you landed in protection of your team. I thought that needed to be honored.”
She had not thought about it like that.
Her Framework body was a blank canvas. It did not bare the marks from Bahrain or the callouses built up from years of training. It was hers, but it was unused. She never thought she would miss those old scars until now.
“I went to that grave today,” Coulson told her.
May frowned.
“Why?”
He shrugged.
“I thought maybe I could find answers to all of the questions that I have been asking myself since I came back.”
“And did you?” She asked.
“No,” he replied. “I just remembered something I already knew: we’ve changed. All of us have changed since we first met. Sometimes it’s slow, sometimes it’s because of one horrible event, but we’re not the same people we used to be.
“I died, May. And you stuck by me. You never once questioned if I was the same person I was before TAHITI. Even when I lost my mind, you were there, tethering me to the person I used to be. I am so sorry I didn’t do the same for you. But, I want to, if you’ll give me the chance.”
He meant it. Every word. He might not remember everything, but he was willing to accept. It was the most she could ask for under the circumstances.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Okay?” He repeated.
May nodded.
When he stood up from the bed, May steeled herself in case he tried to touch her. She was not ready for that. Luckily, he seemed to know to keep his distance.
“Can you tell me what happened to you when you froze in the warehouse?” He asked.
Her eyes darted to the side.
Not yet. She could not tell him that yet.
“Was it because of something that happened in the Framework?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
Coulson frowned.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me now,” he assured her. “But I hope you will one day. I’m sorry I can’t remember it.”
There was nothing to say to that. She was sorry too.
“Protocol states that an agent has to be benched after an incident like that in the field until a shrink can sign off on your mental competence,” Coulson stated. “But I’m leaving that up to you.”
May arched an eyebrow.
“Come on, May,” he said. “You were married to a shrink. You’re already in mandatory therapy. You know your limits. So, what do you think? Are you okay to stay in the field?”
That was a loaded question.
Simmons certainly did not think so. If the young biochemist had her way, May would probably be on bedrest for the next seven months. Simmons was nothing if not overcautious. Still, she might have had a point on this one. Carrying an unborn child into a potential shoot-out was irrefutably reckless. It had already compromised her once.
“That depends,” May demurred. “What did you have in mind?”
“I want you with me on this Watchdog op,” he stated. “You’re the only one I trust to have my back on this one. But you know the risks. It’s going to be dangerous and if you think you’re not up to it, I’ll ask Daisy. I don’t want you going into the field if you aren’t ready. I don’t want to…”
“To what?”
“To lose you again,” he finished uneasily.
“Again.”
That, more than anything else, convinced her of his sincerity.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m in,” she affirmed.
“Thanks, May.”
Coulson did not seem to know what to do with his hands, so he shoved them in his pockets. May gave him a soft smile and pulled open the door behind her.
“See you tomorrow, Coulson.”
As she left his room and headed for her bunk, May rested a hand on the small rise in her lower abdomen. If this mission did not prove to be a huge mistake, they were going to have to have another conversation again very soon. One that would be significantly more difficult.