With the season finale of Agent Carter airing tomorrow and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returning in eight days, I decided it was time to post this despite the fact that I am not done with it yet. It's been in the works for a long time. The first two chapters deal with May and the base of the 'Cavalry' nickname before we actually get to meet the young S.H.I.E.L.D. agent the "civilian girl" from the Bahrain mission grew up to be. Please, enjoy.
Foreword
[Personal Log:
Location: Sanctuary Base
31 December 2015
617 Days After the HYDRA Uprising]_
Special report for Nick J. Fury, classified level eight. I know that you're supposed to be the only one who ever gets to read this, sir, but I can't help but feel like it'll fall into someone else's hands someday, and I want them to understand everything that's happened since that fateful day, everything that's spiraled us down on this path. You know most of this already—who knows how much you've been monitoring us all along, really—but for their sake I'll start from the beginning. It makes the most sense that way.
Very few people can say they've survived Agent Melinda May unscathed. Even fewer can say she's used their first name. Even fewer than that can say they know her.
I am a rare one, to say the least. I know her. We don't necessarily get along, but I know her. I understand her drive, her hidden compassion, and her power. I understand the beautiful warrior with the heart of ice. We have a lot in common, she and I.
We weren't always this way. August 11, 1996—it started. For me at least. Three miles south of Manama, Bahrain.
That's where I first met Agent May. That's where she saved my life.
And remember, sir, we classified this for a reason—I don't want just any agent picking up this file folder off your desk and reading my life story. Plus there is probably some stuff in here that really should be classified, if S.H.I.E.L.D. still had the official jurisdiction to do such things. And I don't think May would exactly be thrilled with her part in here either. In fact, there might be some gentle maiming should she ever find out. I'd prefer to avoid that.
Okay. Here we go.
[Mission Log:
Location: CLASSIFIED
11 August 1996
18 Years Prior to the HYDRA Uprising] _
"Melinda? Melinda, what happened in there?" Phil Coulson asked worriedly, surveying his fellow agent and good friend. Her face was dusted with soot and congealed blood leaked from one temple. Her lip was cut on one side and she walked toward him with a slight limp. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," she answered with a clipped tone, avoiding his gaze.
"I've done my fair share of telling S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors the same thing," Coulson told her. "Remember Melbourne? I'm very familiar with fine, and you don't look it." Not even a ghost of a smile.
Giving him one last, long look, she pulled the trunk of the car open with a vengeance and dropped the firearm she'd been holding inside it. Coulson knew she hadn't gone in with a gun. Certainly not a lethal one. They were only the Index Asset Evaluation and Intake team; what had gone so horribly wrong that May wouldn't even speak more than two words to him? Usually she was laughing after missions, telling stories of her enemy's stupidity and sometimes even her own. Or, on a bad one, they'd go to a nondescript convenience store and return with a bottle of alcohol. They'd talk it over; take comfort in one another's understanding. He couldn't comprehend why she would push him away now. It hurt his heart to see her like this.
"Get in the car," she ordered, stalking to the passenger side and climbing in. He reluctantly acquiesced, shoving the stick shift of the black van into gear and following the line of S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles headed back across the small desert to Manama. She never let him drive.
"Did we lose someone?" he continued with the questions. Silences had never before been an issue between him and Melinda—usually they meant a really good quip was on its way—but this one felt different. She exuded tension and something else he couldn't quite identify. "Corrigan, Moto, Gherig?"
"They're fine." For a moment he thought that was all she was going to give him, but she added, "They're in the other van, recovering."
"And who was the girl?"
"The girl?" She looked at him, studying his face, feigning surprise.
"I arrived just in time to see you bring out a girl in your arms. She couldn't have been more than what, eight? Nine? What the hell was she doing in a place like that?"
"I don't know." May faced forward, staring off into the distance again. The car lurched forward on the uneven sand.
"You can't go running off like that, Melinda," Coulson told her. "I didn't even realize you were gone until it was too late. I was so worried that you'd get yourself killed. I couldn't lose you like that, May. We promised that of either of us was going to die, the other would be right by their side fighting to the end, remember? What were you thinking?"
"Those were our people trapped in there, Phil," May monotoned in a low voice. "Not specialists, the evaluation part of an I.E.A.I. team. Fury didn't seem to take that into account. As soon as Harris said there were more than sixty guys in there... He wanted us to sit on our hands for a day so that proper backup could arrive. Superior numbers."
"So you stole a S.H.I.E.L.D. van and took it out to the compound yourself with no backup whatsoever? We didn't even realize you were gone until an hour later! It was a stupid move, May! Just stupid!" he shouted. She refused to look at him, and all of a sudden the blood on her head and haunted look in her eyes registered with him again. He touched her shoulder gently. "I'm glad you're alive."
Her next words nearly stopped his heart. "I'm not so sure you should be."
They followed none of their post-op rituals over the next few days. After their plane departed the Bahrainian runway, it was impossible to have any more time alone until they touched down again, and the fact that there was a child on the plane robbed them of any conversation regarding the S.H.I.E.L.D. mission or results. May sat next to him, stony-faced.
The girl was another enigma entirely. She just sat silently in one of the back seats, refusing to speak but watching everything with wide, alert eyes. She looked Russian to his best guess, but how a little Russian girl would end up in Bahrain was beyond him. Her auburn hair was unkempt, as if it had not been washed in many days, and her clothes were plain and unadorned: rough, faded blue jeans and a shirt that might have once been green but now appeared to be more of a slime hue. The few agents that sat down next to her got no response and eventually left, and Coulson noticed that she stared at May more than the rest of them. From the murmurs of the other agents, there were speculations that she was a victim of human trafficking or the gifted's progeny herself, but nothing further could be known until one of the agents rescued were well enough to give a report or the girl herself deigned to speak.
After touchdown, May gave no indication that she required nor wanted his company, but he followed her back to her apartment anyway and she raised no vocal objection. There they drank in silence, and when they were done she bade him goodnight and left him standing just outside her door as it shut definitively in front of his eyes. He left for the night, not wishing to disturb her privacy, but returned early the next morning and left himself in with the key with which she had entrusted him. He made breakfast, receiving a polite "thank you" in return, and even found the courage to ask about the origin of the smallest piece of a Russian nesting doll that mysteriously appeared on her sidetable. She strung more words together than she had in days. "It was in my hand when we left the op." He heralded that as progress.
It wasn't.
The next week followed the same routine, until she finally turned on him one day and told him that he should return to work. "I'll be fine on my own until Fury clears me for duty again. It's not as if I've never lived on my own before, Phil." It was that same hard, emotionless voice he'd grown accustomed to hearing over the eight days. He feared he would begin to forget what her laugh, once so abundantly given and shared, sounded like. Or, even worse, she herself would forget.
He could find no rhyme nor reason for him to stay as long as she insisted on her wellness, and left with a heavy heart. Melinda May had not lost a single agent she'd gone to rescue in there, but it was becoming more and more clear to him that she'd lost herself somewhere in the shadowy depths of that compound. His Melinda May seemed to have all but disappeared.
If you feel so inclined, feel free to leave some feedback. Updates will come every 3-5 days until I run out of pre-written material, about twenty chapters from now.