A/N: All mistakes and typos are mine.
Coulson seeks out his right hand woman at first opportunity.
"Good, you're here."
May heaves an impatient sigh when he continues his incessant pacing despite her presence. "Something on your mind?"
Trepidation seeps out of Coulson's every step as he paces back and forth in the threshold of his memorabilia-ridden office, gathering his thoughts. May, as usual, watches silently, nothing akin to emotion betraying her features.
The director, however, knows better than to buy her impassiveness. No matter how much worry is brewing inside him at this moment, he bets May's mama bear personality could easily outmatch it. She's a worrier, a worse worrier than him even-she is simply too good at hiding it.
He walks on. May rolls her eyes.
"We have plasma drills that can do that, you know..." May flatly states.
Coulson momentarily halts on his step and snaps his eyes towards his friend in confusion. "Huh?"
"Stop pacing." She clarifies.
"Will you ever stop being so calm all the time?!"
"And what, join you in digging holes into the floorboards with my incessant pacing?" May asks. "I think I'll pass."
He glares at her."She asked Hunter to kill her if she gets out of control, Melinda."
May didn't even need to ask who he's pertaining to. She just knows.
He is aware that Skye is not in a very good place right now, but he never figured it to be this bad-that she felt hopeless and miserable enough that she even considers ending her own life. "How can I miss something like this?"
Coulson crashes down onto his chair, face almost crumbling in dejection. The weight of carrying SHIELD on his shoulders is beginning to wear him down, now more than ever. "How can I be so stupid?"
A pained look briefly crosses May's face. "Phil—"
His eyes blazed in warning. If his friend dares say that everything isn't his fault, he is going to shoot something. "The alien writings inside my head brought us there. I brought us there!" His fist meets his desk with so much force May thinks he actually left a dent on its surface.
"Are you seriously going down that road?"
He lets out a mirthless laugh. "You said it so yourself: if it weren't for me, she wouldn't be like this. She wouldn't be in so much pain right now!"
May is clearly taken aback by his remark. "Hey, that's not what I said."
"But it was what you meant!"
"Blaming yourself isn't going to solve anything." May says. "Skye is already drowning in that rabbit hole, Phil. I can't have you jumping in it, too."
Just as Phil was about to yell at his friend in frustration, the door in his office bursts open without warning, startling both agents.
"Skye!" A panicked Fitz suddenly appears, rushing towards Coulson's desk without as much as glancing at the person he almost literally plowed. He only missed a collision with May by a mere fingerbreadth. A few more to the right and he might've crashed right onto her. "Skye, uh, she's…"
"Skye's what Fitz?" Coulson asks, standing up. His gut twists. "What happened?"
"I-uh." Fitz stammers. "She and Hunter… they, uh…"
May's heart starts pounding mercilessly at the incredibly alarming picture Fitz's expression is painting inside her head. "Where are they?"
"They took a… er." The two could see how hard Fitz is trying to communicate. He is repeatedly rubbing his face and jumping up and down in exasperation. "Quin, uh-plane! They took a plane. A plane. They took a plane. They're leaving!"
Coulson and May didn't even have to be told twice. They run outside as fast as they could, both praying to high heavens that everything's not be as bad as they feared.
It was.
It is May who reacts first. "Morse!"
Bobbi is lying on the ground outside the cage, unconscious. She sees her just as Agent Grayson is dragging her to one side of the hallway, away from the tremendous foot traffic the commotion is causing inside the base.
"What's going on, Grayson?" Coulson asks immediately.
"Agent Skye and Hunter are trying to take a quinjet. Sir, I didn't think she did it on purpose but I saw Skye throw Morse across the room without even touching her. It was like a fast moving forcefield or something, sir." The agent answers quickly. His face has grown a couple of shades paler. Whatever he saw, it really scared the shit out of him. "Dr. Simmons just ran past me. She said she'll try to stop them. They're—"
A roaring airplane engine puts their conversation into a halt. A startled expression fills Phil's face whereas May's became clouded with apprehension. The two immediately ran to the direction of the sound, both silently hoping that it's not what they think it is.
Simmons almost crashes towards them as the last door towards the bay opens. Her eyes are wide in panic. "You got to stop her before they take off!" She says frantically. "Skye disabled all the other planes. Once they're airborne, there's no way for us to chase after them. I can't talk her down! I'm running towards the control room right now, maybe I can stop them by manually disabling closing the gates up above."
"Where is she, Jemma?" May asks frantically.
As if on cue, Phil sees the object of their worries from the corner of his eye. He spots her on the far end of the airstrip, practically scrambling to get inside one of the planes. It's already slightly off the ground, and she's barely hanging on to the partially opened ramp.
"Skye!" He runs towards her before he could stop himself, using only his arms to block the stream of air bursting out of the plane's engines. What the hell is Hunter doing? This is not the plan.
"Skye, stop! Let us talk about this please!" Coulson yells. But then, much to the director's annoyance, the plane suddenly revs. Warm air from the aircraft's engines solidly collides against his body. The force of it was strong enough to throw him a couple of yards away. His back hits one of the other parked planes with a painful thud.
Skye is almost overwhelmed by the urge to run to Coulson's aid, but she fears that if she gets to close to him again, she'll do more damage than good. So instead of stopping, she merely doubles her efforts to climb inside.
In her attempt to get inside the plane as quickly as possible, she completely misses her S.O.'s stealth approach from behind.
She catches her unprepared that the young agent is already crashing towards the ground before she actually realizes what happened. She grunts in pain when she finally lands.
When she opens her eyes, she sees May towering over her, looking very disappointed. And pissed.
Very, very pissed.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" The Cavalry hisses.
"May." Skye mutters with a soft groan. "You don't understand. I cannot do this here."
"Skye—"
The ground starts grumbling, and it is clearly not because of the roaring of the quinjet not ten feet away from her. "I can't stay."
"Then I'm gonna make you." May tells her sternly. She jumps into a fighting stance. "You know I can."
"I can't fight you, May." Skye murmurs. However, as she says it, the former Rising Tide hacker is already halfway through sweeping the older agent's legs from under her. It catches May completely off guard, causing her to fall and let out a soft curse.
"I'm sorry." Skye mutters.
Before May could even start to regret teaching her rookie how to perform that particular move, she again sees Skye running back towards the plane.
Damn it.
"Get in!" Hunter yells. He had barely a week to master the controls and learn to fly the plane. He could only hope that he could make it fly to wherever they're going without crashing onto anything.
"Working on it." Skye mutters, but mostly to herself. It'll all be easier if there are no swarms of bees practically crawling underneath her skin.
"Hey, Skye, watch ou—"
Hunters words gets drowned in Skye's ears by the sudden burst of pain that rises from the back of her thighs. Her knees buckle, momentum sending her tumbling forward. She grunts.
Shit. Of all the agents in the base, why does it have to be May?
"I need you to stand down." May orders her sternly.
"No." She replies in between pants, her hands are tightly fisted on the concrete, as if willing it to stop all its subtle shaking. Her organs are shifting. Her every vein is in chaos. She can't control it. It wants to come out. She's a monster. "The longer I'm in here, the more people get hurt."
When she turns to face her S.O., however, it is a barrel of an ICER that greets her.
"Don't make me use this." May warns.
Skye wanted to say something, but her breathing is beginning to get too labored. She inches slowly backwards, sliding herself on the ground and putting as much distance between her and May as she could. "May, please. I need to leave."
"And do what?" May asks. She might look as pissed as hell, but still she keeps the gun aimed only at her shoulder. "Let you deal with this alone?"
"Yes." She finally responds. She slides further back. "Alone." Where she would not be running the risk of hurting the people she cares about.
"Well, that's too bad." May pulls the trigger.
Skye only wanted May to stop, to keep the ICER bullet from dragging her back towards the only place where everyone she cares about could get easily killed because of her. However, when she instinctively raises her hands in defense, a wave of inexorable force suddenly bursts out from her palms. It throws May a good twenty five feet away from her, and she collides with a heap of unfolded parachutes on one side of the base. The roof explodes above her, casting a tremendous amount of dust and debris all around.
"Oh god." Monster monster monster.
"Get in the bloody plane, Skye!" Hunter screams. Skye hears nothing.
"Bloody goddamn fornicating hell!" Hunter curses as he puts back the plane on level ground and steps out of the cockpit towards to where Skye's standing.
"Skye." He calls out, trying to get her to look at him. "We need to go!" The wiser side of his brain keeps on nagging him that staying on the same plane with someone who can level an entire city is not a very good idea, but then again, he doesn't really have a choice, does he? If he leaves her here, chances are the entire base, not to mention the pretty huge town above it, will be blown to bits. She already sent Bobbi flying a good ten meters with her mind because of a panic attack, for pete' sake.
He may be a mercenary, but damn it, he's not a self-centered mercenary.
Seeing that there's no chance whatsoever that Skye would recover from her petrified state anytime soon, Hunter finally decides to act accordingly. He half drags, half carries Skye towards the plane.
Then they take off.
I've been very busy with work lately, hence my sporadic updates. Sorry. Comments?