Disclaimer: Don't own it. Wish I did.
Author's Note: This picks up on the Quinjet ride to Afterlife, during "Heritage, part 2". It's basically the first part of a long conversation between Skye and May. Let me know what you think?
Clearing the Air, part 1
The thought had been going through her head as they flew to Afterlife. Around and around and around again. What did May mean when she said "Big Brother" to Coulson that made him so magically come around to their point of view? And May told her on the aircraft carrier that she forgave her for using her powers on her, but did she? And other then them needing a pilot, why was she along? She knew she should be focused on the mission at hand – find out about the Monolith to help Simmons, trace Coulson's Inhuman genealogy if they had time, find out what happened to the rest of the Inhumans who didn't follow Jiaying into war? Jiaying...her perfect mother, the mother she had always dreamed of finding, the mother who tried to kill her. She shook off that thought, tucking it into the far back of her mind. She knew she'd fall apart if she thought too much about it and that definitely wasn't needed now. But she could do something about the rest of it.
"I'm going to go talk to May," Skye said, unbuckling herself. "You don't mind?"
"No, of course not," Lincoln assured her. She really wanted to ask if not to eavesdrop, but that didn't seem polite. Well, hope for the best.
"Thanks." She went up to the cockpit. "May, can I join you?"
"Sure."
Skye sat down in the co-pilot's chair. The cockpit was smaller than the Bus' but it kinda felt like old times. "Thank you for backing us up there, with Coulson. Lincoln thinks that if Coulson had the genealogies and everything, he'd try to Index everyone and he didn't want that."
"What about you?"
"I...I guess I really don't know. I mean, I can see both sides, pros and cons. It's not black or white, good or bad. You taught me that."
"Hmm."
"Can I ask you about what you said to Coulson? What made him change his mind so sudden?"
May paused. "You mean the Big Brother comment?" Skye nodded. "We had a conversation while he was still recovering, about what to do with the sudden influx of people with powers, of a community of powered people. We Indexed everyone from the aircraft carrier, and let them go."
"I know. I was...surprised. They attacked S.H.I.E.L.D."
"That's was my first thought too. Lincoln showed me the truth. "We're not bad, just misled," he told me at one point during the fight. And then he took down the angry redheads. And I told the same thing to Coulson. Since they attacked us, we Indexed them, to be on the safe side. But did we really want to go in, guns blazing, and deal with a whole community? It was different before, when it was the occasional person now and again, like Mike Peterson. But did we need to go 'Big Brother' on all of them, just because they're powered? Did we have that kind of jurisdiction? Besides, we didn't know about them before, so why was now different? Because a group of them attacked us? We dealt with that group. As for the rest of it, it's a new S.H.I.E.L.D, a different S.H.I.E.L.D." She paused. "Not to speak ill of the dead, Gonzales was a good agent, but he had a blind spot when dealing with anything...out of the ordinary. A leader needs to be more...open-minded. Bobbi even realized that, she came to me with her concerns."
"She did?" Skye wasn't proud of the fact that her voice squeaked.
"You wanna unpack that?"
"At the cabin, I...I kinda hit her with my powers. I figured, she'd be pissed."
"I forgave you."
"About that..."
"I said, I forgave you. Enough said. Bobbi was never mad, not at you. She defended you. Gonzales called you a thing, armed and hostile. Bobbi called you an agent, scared and defending yourself. She told me that Calderon fired on you, after you dropped your weapon. She was actually incensed that he fired a real bullet on an unarmed agent."
"She was?"
"She was. She knew all you did was defend yourself in the only way you could. And honestly, I think she lost some faith in Gonzales after that incident."
"Oh."
"Stop beating yourself up about it. But, back on track, please, Coulson hasn't really decided yet. To be truthful, that's one of the reasons I'm along. To see what intel I can gather, and to see if we can start trying to figure it out. I'm hoping we can figure out who the new leader of the Inhumans is, now that both Jiaying and Gordon are gone."
"Oh. Thanks, May. Thanks for telling me that, for looping me in, for being honest."
"No matter what anyone else says, as far as I'm concerned, you're still an agent. And I'm still your S.O. So, yeah, you should have the details of a mission." Skye smiled. "What?"
"It's just, that's the most you've said to me in a while."
May refrained from rolling her eyes but it was a near thing."Strap in, Skye, here or back there. We're landing in five," she said, calling out the same thing to Lincoln.