Left Behind
There was no one in the cargo hold of the Zephyr at three in the morning. Standing empty in the cold night air that seeped through the cracks in the roof of the base’s landing bay, the plane was the only place in the Playground where May knew she would not be disturbed.
Well, other than her room, perhaps. But there was something pathetically desolate about getting drunk in one’s own bedroom with nothing but four walls for company. And May was about one sip short of being completely hammered.
Juggling a half-empty bottle of whisky and the manila envelope with uncharacteristic gracelessness, she managed to enter the key code to the plane’s cargo hold and stumble her way onto one of the crates in the middle of the room. Sitting the bottle and envelope down on the makeshift table, she reached under the tool shelf behind her and pulled out one of the glasses that Coulson had concealed the last time they had shared a drink between assignments.
May blew the dust from the glass and poured herself another round.
There was no sound in the hanger but her own breathing.
Less than a month ago, he had sat across from her, smiling ruefully as she chastised him for getting caught in his most recent attempt to bring Daisy in. Now, she stared into the empty space in front of her as if she looked hard enough, he would reappear, grinning, as if nothing had happened.
“Oh yeah,” she chided herself. “This is much less depressing than drinking alone in your room.”
The unopened envelope caught her eye again and she glared at it for a full minute before sighing and picking it up.
“Alright, Phil,” she said. “What did you leave me? If it’s your Captain America comic collection, I swear I’m donating the whole stack to Goodwill. You know I never understood your obsession with that crap…”
May took out the will and let her eyes skim over the preamble, trying not linger on specific clauses: “in the event of my death”, “in the event of mental incapacitation”, “in the event I am translocated to Asgard and/or an equivalent world or dimension…” (“Really?” May asked aloud. “Good God, Phil…”)
After reading over the miscellaneous items that he left for the members of the team, she reached her name towards the end of the document.
“To Melinda May, I leave my family home in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. As she will no doubt have little interest in settling in the rural Midwest, she is free to sell the estate and use the proceeds as she sees fit.”
“Moreover, it is my wish that Melinda May take my place as the Director of SHIELD. She has been my closest ally and friend in the Agency and is the only person I trust to take the directorship in my absence. May has the loyalty of her subordinates and teammates. I have no doubt that under her leadership, the new SHIELD will continue to thrive and grow to achieve the international recognition it has held in years past.”
The letters on the page swam and blurred as her eyes began to water. Flipping back to the first page, she searched for the date. The will hadn’t been revised for almost a year. He had written this back when SHIELD was still in the shadows, still his to give away.
May collapsed into herself with her head in her hands.
“I don’t want any of this,” she whispered. “I don’t want your house. I don’t want SHIELD. Just come back.”
“It’s good to have a moment, just us.”
“You’ve always got my back.”
“You’re the only one I trust.”
“…my closest friend and ally…”
All of his words echoed and thundered in her memory until it was nothing but a deafening roar, screaming at her, chastening her for falling short, for not finding the answers to rescue him when he needed her the most.
May jumped to her feet with a guttural yell drowning out his voice in her head. She grabbed the half-empty glass from the table and threw it across the room, relishing the crash of glass on steel as it shattered against the far wall.
A muffled gasp came from somewhere behind her and her back stiffened.
She was not alone.