Author's Note:

This should only be a few chapters long, so don't expect more then ten chapters!

This chapter is set during season one, episode 12, 'Seeds'.

Need to give a shout out to two people: Sanctuaria, who helped me right at the beginning of writing chapter one; And my amazing beta, who edited this chapter and will further chapters and assisted with the summary and most importantly, the name of this story: TheVioletofMine, u/5504425.

May had just dropped Skye, Fitzsimmons and Ward off at the Academy, and was currently heading to a place she hasn't been to in over twenty years. She left the cockpit after inputting the destination and sought out Coulson.

"You have got to put that away," she informed him when she discovered he was still reading the T.A.H.I.T.I. report.

"How can I? You've read it," he responded.

"And you have to stop reading it," May told him; her voice was bored at the conversation even though it had just started. He was complicating things and him going insane was a possibility.

Coulson sighed- either at her request, what he was reading, or both. "I just can't get my head around it." He confessed, not looking up at her, eyes cast downwards, "I remember what happened, the pain… but I also remember Tahiti, as if-"

"What's in the file is the truth," May interrupted. She needed to get his mind off of this, and knew that telling him the truth was probably the best idea; it could help him have closure in the matter.

Coulson looked up at her defiantly. His trust in her was wavering after finding out that she knew about his death.

"Says who?" He questioned.

"Director Fury."

"If I hadn't asked, he would have kept it from me," Coulson spoke. "Kept me from knowing."

"And now that you know, you feel better?" May questioned, the sarcastic tone in her voice only slightly peeking through. She knew that he didn't know why it was kept from him, and she knew that he wanted to know… but the more he knew, the worse it could get. All that was running through May's head was honesty- honesty would help. "Put it away," she said softly, less of an order than before.

With a look at her, he closed the file and stood up. "Want to tell me why we're flying to South Dakota?"

"To get your head working on something else," May answered cryptically. "I looked into Skye's past like you asked- into the agent that dropped her off at the orphanage."

"Agent Avery. She was killed," Coulson spoke confidently.

May shook her head. "I don't know why she was killed, but it had nothing to do with Skye. She was not the person who dropped her off at the orphanage." She stopped.

"You've suddenly become active on the Skye investigation," Coulson pointed out, his eyes showing his skepticism at the new piece of information she'd just provided.

"She's proved herself, stepped up in a big way-for our team, for you," May answered, rationalizing why she had first looked into Skye's background. Although, in truth, as soon as she saw what redacted file Skye had discovered, she would have used any reason available to look into it further.

"Is that it?" Coulson asked, and for a moment, May thought he might know what was really going on. "Or are you just trying to distract me?"

May looked away from him. She was trying to distract him, but more than anything she didn't want to keep any secrets from him-she needed to talk things through with somebody, and Coulson was one of her closest and oldest friends. "Both," she answered before adding, "and something else." She turned to face him directly.

Coulson's expression remained mostly neutral, his mind obviously still on the T.A.H.I.T.I. incident. "Which is?" he prompted.

"I dropped Skye off at the orphanage," she told him simply, choosing not to expand on the subject and instead turning and walking back to the cockpit. As she sat down she saw Coulson take a seat behind her, strapping himself in and looking at the controls as if he knew how to use them-which he didn't.

"Why didn't you say anything before?" he asked.

May sighed. "At first, I didn't know. After you looked into that file and showed it to me, I asked Agent Avery if she wanted to put her name on it for extra credit and she created a little story to go with it." Coulson looked at her, confused. "She was going to tell people that she found the baby in the arms of a dead 'bad guy' and put her into foster care so she could have a chance to grow up normally."

"What really happened?" Coulson asked.

May's lips went into a narrow line. "I put her into foster care." She was glad when Coulson remained quiet for a few minutes, grateful for the respite.

"Are you going to tell her it was you? She'll have questions," he asked her eventually, no pressure in his voice. He was simply asking the question, not adding in his opinion-although she knew that would come sooner or later.

"I'll have answers."

May landed the plane in South Dakota and took a seat in Lola. Coulson didn't even bat an eyelid as he got into the driver's seat and took off- it seemed that he was still deep in thought about May's answers regarding Skye. He followed her directions and ended up parking in the middle of a storage container area. May was the first out of the car, the only one of the two of them who knew what was going on and why they were here. Coulson followed her after a few seconds.

"What's in the box?" he asked.

"Some of my personal belongings," May answered, glancing back at him to see him actually look surprised. Without any hesitation, she entered the code to the container and entered, waiting for Coulson to walk in after her and then closing the doors. She turned and examined the safe to make sure that nobody had tampered with it before performing the six complicated steps to unlock it.

"Must be some really important personal items," Coulson commented.

May didn't respond, simply pulling the door of the safe open and peering inside it. There were seven boxes, most of them rectangular and 100cm x 50cm x 40cm. Two of them were smaller. She reached in and pulled out one of them and placed it on the floor before locking the safe again. "Let's go."

Coulson furrowed his brows but walked out of the container and back into the car. "What's in the box?" he asked as soon as she had gotten in the car with him.

May moved the box from her lap to the backseat. "Everything about Skye and her parents that I have written down."

Coulson raised an eyebrow at her, "How did you come in contact with Skye as a baby?"

"I was on a mission," May answered shortly. "Drive."

Coulson attempted to get more information out of May on the plane ride back but ultimately failed. They landed back at the Academy to pick up their team, both knowing she was still hiding something. Everyone— minus Ward, who had stayed behind— was quiet as they walked back to the Bus until Fitz finally broke it.

"How could I have been so stupid?" the young engineer muttered.

"Fitz, will you stop?" Simmons asked, but it was full of concern and support.

Fitz looked at Coulson and practically ignored her, but it wasn't in a rude way. "I'm sorry, Sir; it was my fault."

"Any word on the missing cadets?" Coulson asked, pushing aside Fitz's remark and jumping straight into the mission. It seemed that May had managed to get him to focus again instead of relentlessly looking at the T.A.H.I.T.I. situation.

"Ward's coordinating the search effort with Agent Weaver," Simmons informed him before continuing. "They've set up a perimeter and are going building to building."

Skye stepped forward, a curious look on her face. "Where'd you guys go? We were trying to reach you."

"Not now," Coulson said, dismissing her before turning back to Simmons, who seemed to be the only one out of her, Fitz, and Skye who was fully focused on the mission. "How dangerous are they?"

"Extremely dangerous. This device turns any moisture around it to ice, very rapidly and at a great rate," Simmons informed him, seeming to dumb-down how the device worked for them.

"But Donnie is a good kid," Fitz added, looking at them with trust and naïveté as he came to Donnie's defense. "He just felt isolated. Seth must have befriended him to manipulate him, using him to finish the product…" He drifted off.

"Product?" May asked, her eyes squinting ever so slightly at Fitz's choice of words.

"Okay, I think they have a backer," Fitz informed them as he obviously just came to this conclusion. "The device's components are incredibly rare and expensive, nothing either of them could find on the open market themselves."

"If the parts are that rare, we can trace the purchases," Skye suggested.

"Sometimes, it's not a bad seed- just a bad influence," Coulson added. May was pretty sure he said it all for dramatic effect; he loved his one-liners. "Let's go."

May watched as they walked off. She signaled Coulson that she was going to be in the cockpit and headed the other direction.

Shortly after sitting down in the cockpit, Coulson arrived. "We have an idea how to stop the storm. I need you to fly the plane straight into the eye."

"Easy," May responded confidently as she started the engine. "You didn't say anything to Skye?"

"No, but the cold shoulder is not going to work for long," Coulson told her.

May shrugged that bit off. "I'll talk to her later."

The rest of the day involved flying the plane into the center of a superstorm, flying it back out, and listening to the distraught cries of Donnie over the loss of his friend. She ended up staying in the cockpit longer than necessary, even when they were back in the air on a steady and gentle path to their next destination. When she finally stood up and walked out of the room, she wasn't that surprised to discover that Skye, Fitz, and Simmons were all standing together talking.

"Skye, a moment?" May requested. As much as she had aimed for it to come out softly, giving Skye the choice to come with her, it came out as an order, cold and clipped as usual.

Skye looked up at her, her mouth slightly agape, before she nodded, put on a smile, and stood up. "Of course."

May turned and walked into her own quarters, where the box was. She sat on the bed and watched as Skye hesitantly followed her in. "Close the door. Take a seat."

Skye followed her instructions and looked around awkwardly, her eyes fixated on the box for a few moments-that being the only real object in the room other than the bed and side cabinet. She bit her lip. "Am I in trouble?" she asked.

May took a breath in, which a second later she realized one could mistake for annoyance, and just spoke to get it over with. "What I say in this room must not be repeated; do you understand me?"

"Yes," Skye said instantly.

May nodded and opened the box. She took out two envelopes before putting the lid back on it and twisting her body so that she was looking at Skye more directly. She took her time opening one of the envelopes and pulling out a picture of a man. She laid it down on the box between them. "That is your father."

Skye's hands grabbed the picture quickly as she stared at it, eyes wide and hopeful. "Who is he?"

It took May a few seconds to answer; not that Skye noticed. "Sergei Kravinoff, who most people know as 'Kraven the Hunter'. He's dead."

Skye looked up at her, mouth agape at the information. "He wasn't a good guy?" she asked. It was obvious she was trying to sound strong but failing.

May almost backed out right then. It would be easy to; there was no connection to be made past who her father was. "He was not… a good guy," she answered before beginning to talk in more detail. "He had a half-brother, Dmitri Smerdyakov, formally known as Chameleon-also deceased." Skye nodded tearfully, taking in the information. May retrieved another picture and held it out to Skye. It was a picture of Sergei holding her as a baby. "Your father loved you very much."

Skye slowly took the picture; it looked like her heart was breaking and filling at the same time. "That's me?" she asked with a small smile gracing her lips. "He knew me… did he want to give me up?"

"He died; he didn't have a choice," May answered and then carried on talking, a lot more than Skye would ever have imagined was possible. "Your half-uncle was on S.H.I.E.L.D's radar. I was set on a mission to infiltrate his life and work out a way to take him out after extracting all the information I could. A few agents had attempted before and failed, usually by getting found out and killed, but we had learned about his half-brother. It was always set to be a long undercover mission: the only way into their life was for me to fully insert myself into it in any possible way-that way was your father."

"So you knew him?" Skye asked, although the answer was obvious.

"Yes. Within a six weeks of first beginning the mission, I was involved with him and had met his half-brother once; it was the longest time anybody had managed to have in direct contact with him and I gathered some valuable information," May disclosed and only took a second before she continued talking. "The longer I was undercover, the more I noticed that your father was equally as dangerous as his half-brother."

May looked at Skye's face, taking in all the information, listening to every single word like it was her lifeline and decided that she could tell her all the filler information another time. "In total, I was undercover for 15 months. I let my emotions get the best of me and I fell in love with him. It compromised my judgement in certain situations and five months into it, I discovered I was pregnant. At that time, things were a little tense, my cover was shaky and your half-uncle was suspicious and your father's trust was a little shaky because of that-I had to make a judgment call about if I should tell him about the pregnancy, if I should tell S.H.I.E.L.D., if I should leave. It was one night when I realized that I hadn't even considered not having you and I realized that I couldn't not tell your father that you existed; it would have been wrong. So I told him and it made my cover so strong and your father so determined to keep me safe that even if I did pull out of the mission, he would do anything to find us, and I'm not sure if-" She stopped for a moment, composing herself and staying on topic; she didn't want to talk about Skye's father. This was already too emotional for her to keep it in. "I knew that if S.H.I.E.L.D. knew I had been compromised, they would have pulled me out, so, I lied to them and told them I was going to fake a pregnancy. They were pissed when you were born; their suspicions were confirmed. They couldn't do anything about it then; we were so close, and if they pulled me out, everything we worked towards would have been for nothing; it was far too late to pull me out. When you were ten weeks old, your father died and we no longer had his protection. Your half-uncle would have killed you in a heartbeat as soon as he worked out that I was working with S.H.I.E.L.D. and I was sure he knew something wasn't right about me. I put you into foster care for protection to keep you safe and hidden, and I made sure to specify that you needed to be moved around constantly. It worked better than I thought possible, because even I couldn't find you once everything was settled. I guess I made you too untraceable-the fear of what he could do to you was too great. After a year of searching, I heard about a little girl who matched your age and description-an orphan-who had drowned. Out of fear that it was you, I stopped looking. I regret my decision, I should have carried on until I knew or found you."

Skye's face showed everything, showed when she realized what May had said and it clocked on exactly what was going on. "You're… you're my mother?" She seemed to ignore everything else that May had said and focused on that one detail; it seemed that May hadn't needed to give a long explanation.

May nodded firmly, her face devoid of emotion. She placed the second envelope on the box and watched as Skye gently picked it up and pulled some of the photos out. One of the first ones she saw was a younger-looking May smiling into the camera, holding a baby wrapped in a pink blanket- and May was actually smiling. A smile had crept onto Skye's face by the time she looked at the next photo and it actually increased when she saw May looking, terrified, at Skye, who appeared to be falling off the couch. May saw the picture and cleared her throat. "That photo was timed badly."

"It's my favorite photo of you," Skye declared before she started to put it back in the envelope.

"You can keep it, if you want," May spoke. "This whole box is yours. It's from the first ten weeks of your life." She watched as Skye's hand touched the box hesitantly, a look of awe on her face; she had yet to fully react to finding out that May was her mother, and to be honest, that scared May.

"This is so cool," Skye announced. "Best… I can't believe you're my mother! I mean, we are nothing alike, you're all serious and stoic-in a good way. It's just… I never imagined that I'd actually find my parents, especially not after I've actually lived with them for weeks!"

"It was a surprise when I figured it out," May admitted, feeling relieved that Skye didn't appear to be upset about finding out that she was her mother.

"Can I… can I look in the box?" Skye asked, looking up at her. May simply nodded and watched as she smiled in return before pulling the lid off and looking inside. However, she didn't touch anything in it- instead, she looked up at May, "You said that I'm not allowed to tell anybody anything that you tell me in here- Does that mean I can't tell them you're my mother?"

May opened her mouth to reply, but it took her a second to allow her words to sink in, "You and I are currently the only people who know that I am your mother."

"Coulson doesn't know?" Skye asked. May shook her head. "I guess that means I shouldn't call you 'Mom'," she joked, laughing a bit.

"It is probably best that you didn't right now," May answered strategically before taking out a baby's outfit. "There's only one other living person who knows that I have a daughter who could be alive."

"Was that mine?" Skye inquired as she picked up the onesie.

"Yes, it was your first outfit; you've grown a lot," May reminisced.

"I can't believe I was that small," Skye added. "Do you have a photo of me wearing it?"

May gave a single nod as she looked through the first envelope. She flicked through them carefully. Finding the photo she was looking for, she held it out to Skye. "That was taken the day you were born."

Skye barely glanced at the picture before looking up at May, "I don't even know my birthday."

"July 2nd, six pounds, nine ounces, 5:49 A.M." May told her, answering her question and giving further information that she believed to be relevant. "I was in labour for three hours and you were the most beautiful baby girl I had ever seen. When they placed you in my arms, I was so tempted to go rogue, leave S.H.I.E.L.D. behind and run off with your father-although that would have involve telling your father the truth."

Skye had tears in her eyes, her emotions obviously running high with the truckload of information. Without any restraint, she leant over the box and hugged May. May pushed the box to one side as she hugged back. "I'm glad you're my mom." May closed her eyes as she embraced Skye a little tighter before they parted; she smiled softly as Skye turned back to the box and pulled out a small blanket with the name Rebecca sewn on it. "Rebecca… Is that my name?"

May nodded. "Rebecca Chao-Xing May."

Thank you for reading :)