Notes

So... I haven't written for this fandom before, I don't have a beta (volunteers always welcome) I have bad grammar and my brain writes much faster than I do, i'm not good at re-read my work but I do try! I'm not even sure of my tenses here, so be prepared for mistakes! Its going to be angsty, I have no idea how long it will be, and the idea is probably much better in my head than on paper and actually only stretches to the next chapter! Not much to recommend it really! If you make it till the end of the chapter without running away, please let me know if I should hang up my boots!

Part One - Chat up lines.

The door opened almost silently but not enough for Agent Melinda May not to have heard. She raise her head slowly but her eyebrows lifted slightly, the only tell, to her surprise, at the sight before her. After all she was a Agent of Shield and they were trained to expect the unexpected and all that clichéd stuff that they really did teach you as a baby agent.

"Agent May, fancy seeing you here."

The cocky remark was just what she was expecting from the man currently draped across the door frame, she wanted to tut at him, but wouldn't give him the pleasure, he was so casual it was if he was looking to pick her up at a nightclub rather than break them out of a secure, well maybe not that secure, hydra facility but frankly she had never understood Coulsons Pet Archer and her Bosses fondness for him. She'd only worked with Clint Barton on rare occasions and she couldn't fault his abilities in the field but for lack of a better phrase he rubbed her up the wrong way. So it aggravated her somewhat that she couldn't be happier to see the smirking face looking down at her from across the cell.

"Barton," She sighed with just the right amount of disdain to lift the edges of Hawkeye's lips still further, "Not that I don't enjoy family reunions but I have been sitting here for the past three days on this rather hard and ridiculously wet concrete floor unable to do more than shuffle from one buttock to next, the only contact with the outside world is the guard that comes in here once a day to shove a bottle of water in my face and leer at me with bad teeth. My patience is starting to wear a little thin," She finished twisting her body round to indicate the cuffs holding her firmly to the wall and raising her eyebrows at him.

"My god, May, that's more than I have heard you say in the whole time I've known you, must be really boring in here!" Barton stated as he made his way over to her and blew the cuffs open.

She bounced to her feet, in total contrast to the hours of cramped confinement.

"So what did the bad guys want this time," He asked, as he watched her stretch out.

"No idea, haven't been asked a single question."

"Odd?"

"Very," she commented, " guess they had other things on their mind," she turned shapely back to Hawkeye, "Found anyone else?"

"Yep, got Mr tall dark and broody Ward, he's tying his shoelaces or taking a piss," he grinned as May pulled a face before carrying on, "possibly getting his legs to working again, they are preposterous long aren't they?" He looked back towards the door as if he expected Ward to be standing there, before turning back looking vaguely disappointed that he wasn't, "but apart from the wet butt his suit looks pretty unscathed too so I guess they left him to his own gloomy introspection as well."

Taking a deep breath, May gave him a dark look, as he ran his mouth off. This is why spending time round Hawkeye was a test, she remembered. She didn't know how Coulson survived it for all the years they had worked together but then the rumour mill around Shield corridors was that he also shared fringe benefits, but May never needed to listen to gossip and half truths, she knew exactly what the situation was/is? She had become the ear to one Phil Coulson in the last few months and the man before her was his greatest regret. It bothered her, she conceded, to see the doubt when he talked about what happened after New York, the quiet terror she saw in her bosses eyes about himself. Melinda May was waiting, for what she wasn't quite sure but she hoped to hell it wasn't a melt down because through it all she respected Coulson, she actually liked him, considered him a friend and she had less than a handful of them.

" Anyway Agent May, as lovely as this all is, I think we should get the hell out of dodge before anyone wonders why all the bad guys in the area have gone rather silent," Clint pronounced as he made his way across the cell the way he came in.

"Wait," May paused, as Clint turned back towards her. She was starting to get a sinking feeling by the way Barton seemed to think his job was done. "Barton what were you told about this mission, who gave it to you?"

Clint frowned at the inquiry, " It was a verbally instruction from Fury's office, why?"

" Damn," she whispered more to herself than the man standing near her, before saying, "We haven't finished yet. We're still a man down."

Any queries Barton was about to throw her way were stalled as Ward made an appearance his tall frame filling the cell door. "Have you found him?" Grant directed his question at May.

Barton did a double take between the two Agents trying to catch who the hell they where talking about. He was about to verbalize his thoughts as Melinda May stepped past him into the hallway of the compound , her feet splashing through the running water making a steady steam that presumably headed toward the exit. "Which way have you checked so far," She turned briefly towards Barton, body language showing her determination to get things moving.

Barton joined the two Shield operatives pointing downstream, from the direction he had come down, "Everything that way is clear."

"Okay, Ward start opening doors, Barton watch our six."

They checked the few doors in the corridor their own cells had been situated with no success and rounded the corner to another corridor the same as the last. May took one side and Ward the other opening what seemed like endless doors into empty rooms, some locked which the agents quickly blasted open only to find them unoccupied, some filled with furniture but none held what they were looking for. Barton had obviously done a real job of neutralizing the opposition though as this was not very stealth, quiet work.

Clint never the less stayed back letting them work, scanning both ways for visitors, he wasn't much in the mood for stepping on Melinda May's toes, that never panned out well! He watched as her eyes rapidly took in information as she went, robot like, assessing the situation, she reminded him of Phil, he knew that they had been friends of sorts back then before it had all gone to hell, he swallowed, he needed to blanked the name out of his head, thinking of him only lead to lost weekends and doom. He almost snorted at the hilarity of the idea of May and himself sitting down to chat about the good old days when Agent Coulson was still alive, even Phil would have found the amusement in that visual.

Hawkeye was draw back as the Melinda stopped, her eyes scanning forward, as she had noticed the streaming water was coming from one particular door ahead, drawing Wards attention to it, he skipped several doors to stop in front of it setting a charge on the lock and stepping back for a second as it blew, causing it to swing open with the force of the small explosion.

"Shit," Ward starred into the cell, and sent a look back toward May, his face betrayed the fact they had found what they were looking for and in that one glance, that it was not in pristine condition. She started forward towards the cell as Barton stepped up next to her, she placed a hand on his arm and prevented him going any further. Her mouth thinned out as if she didn't want to say the words but looked him in the face, "Its not his fault," she said cryptically, "he was under orders just like the rest of us."

Barton frowned in puzzlement but stepped into the cell after Ward without questioning her further, eager to see what had her rattled enough to touch him, after all Melinda May's was not known for her tactile behaviour, he noted that she followed him in, a close step behind before drawing level again.

Her gaze swept over the room, it was huge, no less run down than the others, the only sound was of water hitting the floor, breaking the silence and making the room feel even damper and colder than the others, but all three of the Agents attention was quickly drawn to one thing and it was exactly in the area that the water was pouring.