Author's Note: Wow it's been so long since I last posted something. Usually I post a couple of stories during the holiday season but my muse was sadly absent, however I have managed to come up with this. Just a bit of angst for right before the airing of the 100th episode, I hope y'all enjoy :)
Mum.
Such a simple word. Just three letters, and yet this one word has changed her life in a way she has not been prepared for.
Mum.
The one word she never thought she would be called after the events of Bahrain. A title that she felt she would be undeserving of.
Mum.
The word whispered in her ear as a woman stabbed lay dying in her arms. Her last breath used to utter the words, 'I love you mum'.
Robin.
A young girl whose life was laced with tragedy from the very beginning. A young girl with a gift that too few could understand.
Robin.
The woman who lay dying in her arms as she told her how they would save the world. The woman that saw a side to her that she thought had long since been broken.
Robin.
The one that called her 'mum'. Her daughter.
It's strange, how the world keeps turning and life goes on, everyone else none the wiser that they just got saved from an extinction level event. Saving the world is weird that way. People still hate them though. Still want their heads on a spike for all their apparent crimes that they've committed. If only they knew the half of it. It doesn't matter though, because in the end there will always be another imminent threat that eclipses the last - it's just how their life goes. But for now there is a lull. It's the quiet before the storm she thinks, but regardless she is going to take what she can from this rare moment of peace.
The whole team is tired and recuperating, still dealing with the backlash of the framework let alone the after effects of their time travel. Her body is still healing - a pipe through the leg won't just go away overnight even if she pretends that it isn't that bad - but it's not just the physical trauma that's left her vulnerable. The framework had messed with her head, taken her memories and implanted a false life in her brain. A life without warmth, no family or friends. Just a life dedicated to Hydra, dedicated to eternally trying to atone for her one sin. For saving the life of an inhuman child.
It pains her to think back to the cold and unfeeling monster she had been in the framework, but it is nothing in comparison to the way it breaks her heart to remember the woman bleeding out in her arms on the zephyr, a whispered 'mum' leaving her lips as she tells her of a life that they lived together. And that's why she finds herself sitting on a park bench, watching as a woman and her young daughter sit together quietly on a rug, the woman watching over the little girl as she draws away silently, crayon gliding over paper.
Robin was right. They do have a special relationship, but the only thing is that by saving the world… their story never happens. Robin's mother never dies, the world is not destroyed, they don't fly to the Lighthouse and she and Robin never meet.
She never becomes a mum.
There is a dull ache in her chest as she forces herself to face the reality of it all. It seems ridiculous to mourn something that she can't even remember, to mourn something that she technically has never actually lived through. But the heart is a fickle thing, and she cannot deny the heavy ache that she feels deep within her. The hollow emptiness inside her chest that yearns for something that is not hers to have.
It's wrong.
It is wrong in oh so many ways. There are three lives she has lived, but only one of them is real, only one of them is truly hers. She is not the callous and harsh Hydra agent, nor is she the single mother of an inhuman child in the midst of post apocalyptic Earth. She is Melinda May, Agent of SHIELD, and yet even when she repeats the words aloud to herself there is still that feeling of an endless void in her heart that won't disappear, regardless of how she tries to reason with herself that there is nothing missing. This is the life she chose, this is the life she wants. But a part of her, remnants of the old Melinda come floating to the surface, reminding her that once upon a time she did want something different from SHIELD.
A child.
After Bahrain she never truly allowed herself to grieve the loss of all the opportunities she gave up when she shut down. In some way it was her own self imposed punishment that she felt she deserved. A life for a life perhaps. And yet now circumstances have her yearning for a child once more. A child that she cannot have.
A small smile comes unbidden to her lips as she watches the young girl offer up another drawing to her mother, a page full of colourful lines and smiling stick figures. Her mother takes the drawing silently with a smile that looks almost pained as her daughter begins scribbling out another scene on a fresh page. They look so normal, except Melinda knows that they are anything but. To anyone else they appear like any other mother and daughter out on a picnic, but in reality it is a mother watching her daughter plagued by a gift she cannot control, helpless in guiding her daughter through something even she doesn't fully understand. In some ways the situation is almost too reminiscent of Bahrain.
"You should talk to her," an all too familiar voice says behind her.
She barely reacts, just a slight shift of her head towards the sound of his voice.
"It wouldn't achieve anything," she says in reply after several moments of silence.
His feet crunch on the autumn leaves as he moves around to sit beside her on the bench.
"It might help," Phil looks at her with a softness in his blue eyes.
Tearing her eyes away from the mother and her young inhuman daughter, she finally looks at him, brown eyes filled with a heavy sadness and pain that she doesn't bother to hide from him.
"I just can't stop thinking about this other life I had," she admits, "as a mother."
His blue eyes look at her with understanding written in them because he too is still dealing with the after effects of his own false life in the framework. Reaching over he takes her hand in his, clasping it warmly in his much larger one. The corner of her lips quirk up in the barest hint of a smile. He finds his own lips lifting up in a small smile in return as he watches her carefully, slowly raising their joint hands to his lips where he presses a soft kiss to the back of her hand. The action brings a smile to her lips - a real smile - and sends a warmth through her chest that makes her feel like for the first time, maybe that void inside her won't always be there. Because regardless of what happens, she will always have him. And for her, that is enough.
A/N
Let me know what you thought! It's a bit of a change up for me to write a dynamic that's not just May and Coulson so share with me your reactions.