Who We are (Away from SHIELD)

by cameomac

Agent May thought she needed to find out who she was away from SHIELD, and the answer might be more frightening than she ever could have guessed. Jemma Simmons found out who she was, and the answer effected not just her, but her friend and partner, Leo Fitz. Slightly AU Scenes set in and around Season 3, detailing how the team comes together, in loyalty and in love.

1. Chapter 1

It was her fault.

She wanted to blame Hunter – wanted to scream and hit and curse until everything changed, until the past rewound and she could make everything turn out right, but it was useless. Andrew was dead, and as much as she wanted to put the blame elsewhere, she knew the truth.

It was her fault, and it always had been.

She had never been able to give him what he wanted. She'd tried. When he had gone down on one knee and asked her to marry him… she'd tried. When she'd let herself believe they could start a family, that they could be normal… she'd tried. When she'd agreed to a second chance – a chance to see who they were away from SHIELD…

She'd tried, but it wasn't enough, and now he was dead.

They were combing through the rubble… searching for the charred remains of his body. Coulson – not Phil, never Phil, not in a situation like this – wouldn't let her join the search. He was worried about her, glancing her way every time the team reported in, not even attempting to hide the concern welling in his eyes.

She kept her own gaze blank.

"Director, we've found something!"

Within minutes, the team had dug the body out and reverently placed it on a gurney. Coulson had tried to shield it from her view, but she had wanted… had needed to see. She needed to seal the image in her memory – a gruesome reminder of who she was and who she could never be.

They zipped him into a body bag and wheeled him onto the Zephyr.

The flight was long but smooth. She made sure it was. For everything she had denied him, for everything she had held back, she could at least give him a peaceful flight home.

She was in her room, working through ways to convince the Director to let her rejoin Hunter when they came for her. Bobbi stood in the doorway, her eyes warm with sorrow and heavy with reluctance.

"You need me to identify his body."

Bobbi shook her head. "No. We were able to run a DNA test on the remains."

"Understood. Someone will need to contact his parents. I'll take care of it."

"May, it wasn't him. It wasn't Andrew."

"Then we need to go back. I can have wheels up in ten."

"May, you don't understand. We didn't find his body, but we did find something." She shifted uneasily, wincing as the movement strained her injured knee. "Something we've seen before."

Shaking off the pain, she stared Melinda in the eyes, her gaze troubled but filled by a core of steel. "May… did you know Andrew was taking supplements?"