Lesser of Two
She stood at rigid attention, waiting for the intruder to reveal themselves. She hoped it was someone on her Strike Team. They respected (or feared) her enough to leave quietly and not say a word to anyone.
“May?” A voice asked from the darkened hallway. “Are you okay?”
No such luck.
The door to the cargo hold had been left cracked open. May remained standing, staring at the mark the glass had left on the wall. The door swished quietly on well-oiled hinges as Daisy pushed it open.
“Did I catch you in the middle of target practice?”
May had to hand it to the girl, her voice didn’t even shake a little in spite of the discomfort she must have felt. But then, Daisy’s discomfort threshold had probably ratcheted up significantly over the past six months.
“He left you Lola,” May said, by way of an answer.
“What?”
Daisy crossed the room and stood beside the box littered with papers and a manila envelope.
“Coulson left you Lola in his will,” she clarified. “There’s practically a manual’s worth of instructions and caveats in here on how to take care of her. I don’t know if it’s worth it.”
“That’s what you’re doing in the middle of the hangar at 3:00 in the morning?” Daisy demanded. “Getting hammered and reading Coulson’s will?”
“What are you doing here, Daisy?” May asked wearily. The events of the very long day were starting to weigh on her.
“I couldn’t sleep and I saw you the security footage,” she explained. “I thought we could talk. I thought… I just wanted to check on you.”
“I’m fine, Daisy.”
Daisy rolled her eyes at the mark on the wall.
“No, you’re not.”
May didn’t answer. She sat down hard on her crate and set about organizing the papers and stuffing them back into the envelope.
“You’re giving up,” Daisy realized.
“I’m not…” May stopped herself. She couldn’t do this anymore. She was tired. “I don’t know, Daisy.”
Daisy crouched down on the crate across from her and placed her hands palms down on the table, as if laying down arms to negotiate a cease-fire.
Poor girl.
She still thought of herself as something dangerous, as the enemy. Even if she was not the instrument of her teammate’s disappearance, then she was the conduit through which misfortune and tragedy surged.
“May, we can’t give up hope,” she said.
“It’s not your fault,” May replied.
“What?”
“What happened to the team,” May continued. “I know you want to blame yourself. God knows, it’s what you do. But we stumbled onto Morrow’s trail before you came back. It was only a matter of time before we caught up to him. What happened at Roxxon wasn’t because of you. Whether we get them back or not, it isn’t your fault, Daisy.”
Daisy pulled back her hands from the table and folded them in her lap. She stared back at May, tears running freely down her face, unabated.
“Then why have you been avoiding me?” She asked, voice finally breaking. “If it’s not my fault, why have you run in the other direction every time I turn the corner?”
“Because…” May paused, hating herself for what she was about to admit. “Because I knew if I talked to you, I wouldn’t be able to lie.”
“Lie about what?”
“About them, Fitz and Coulson. And Reyes,” she added, as an afterthought. “I’ve been telling Jemma, the Director, and everyone else, that they are alive, that we’ll find them. But the truth is…”
“You think they’re dead.” Daisy whispered.
May smiled sadly and shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
The words were mangled by the gravel in her voice, but Daisy heard them all the same. Tears fell from May’s eyes, painting her cheeks with unfamiliar warmth and she watched as Daisy’s pained expression turn to one of confusion and horror.
May almost smiled at the reaction. She could sympathize.
It was the feeling every child had watching their parent fall apart. Having that awful realization that they were no more in control of the world than you were. That they could be hurt. Or fail.
Or give up.
Daisy crossed the space between them so quickly, May barely had a chance to react before Daisy had her thrown arms around her neck in a hug like a vice.
“It’s going to be okay, May,” Daisy assured her. “It’ll be okay.”
As awkward as it was to be comforted by her former student, May didn’t try to break away. She felt Daisy’s heart hammer against her chest. It was the most real and comforting thing she had felt in weeks.
“We don’t know that they’re dead,” Daisy continued. “If there was some way to prove that they didn’t die in that accident, maybe we could find a way to bring them back.”
The muscles in her back grew rigid and Daisy released her grip.
“What is it?” She asked.
May did not answer. She meant what she said. She wasn’t any good at lying to Daisy.
“May?” Daisy tried again. “What are you not saying?”
She looked down the girl she had once thought of as a daughter and saw in her face a reflection of all of the pain May had locked inside. She wasn’t her child, but she had still inherited all of her flaws—the compulsion to shut everyone out, the self-doubt, the inability to shrug off the crushing guilt of every misstep, every mistake. Daisy felt the loss of all of them just as acutely as May did.
If the Darkhold could bring them back and take away that pain…
“If this book is as powerful as everyone thinks it is…”
And just like that, Phil was in her head again, saying the same damn thing he had said every night since the accident.
“…Getting it out of here and hiding it somewhere safe is our top priority.”
But she had promised him something else long before she had agreed to guard the Darkhold.
“No matter what happens, I’ll take care of you.”
Before Eli Morrow, or the Darkhold. Before he had ordered her to put a bullet in his head as he slipped closer and closer to psychosis.
“I’ll find a way.”
Before he even showed up in her office with nothing but a scar and a head full of false memories as evidence that he had spent the last month hovering between life and death.
Two days after his funeral, she had made him a promise.
“May, what’s going on?” Daisy asked again.
“You’re the only one I trust,” his voice reminded her once again.
One last chance for her to rethink what she was about to do.
Sorry, Phil.
May turned to Daisy and said the words before she could regret it.
“I know a way,” she told her. “I know how to get them back.”