May had this awful feeling the second she found out Skye and Fitz has left the train. Something in her gut told her things had gone wrong and they needed to find them. When they found Fitz who said she hadn't wanted to let them get away, her heart dropped.
She felt physically sick when she saw the young woman bloodied and pale, and things like this didn't usually bother her. And when Simmons didn't answer her right away when she asked if the chamber was working, she almost panicked. Until she saw Skye take a breath. They immediately flew her to a SHIELD facility while Simmons worked to keep her alive.
Seeing Phil watch over her stirred up something she hadn't felt in years. Shaking her head to clear it, she went to check on their course and make sure they were getting to the hospital as soon as possible.
Once at the hospital, they all sat and waited in tense anticipation, hoping and praying she would live. So when a nurse told them they needed to call her family to get them there, Coulson declared they were all her family.
She wasn't going to make it, they could keep her on life support but it wouldn't get them anywhere.
May had never been so angry in her life. She marched away, not sure where she was going. She felt like she was in a blind rage, on autopilot. She found herself yanking a chair out from under Quinn and actually feeling like she would beat him to death.
Phil came in and yelled for her to stop, that it wouldn't help, and he wasn't going to let her die. That was enough for May. She had been through enough with him to know to trust him.
With no course in mind and Skye in a med pod on the plane, alive for now, she took off. She just needed a destination from FitzSimmons.
Once she had it, she felt that she had never been so anxious to get somewhere in her life.
Meanwhile, Coulson sat in his office after he and Garrett came to an agreement about Quinn. He had a gut feeling. He tried ignoring it all this time, but the current situation made him feel like he needed to know.
Over twenty years ago, his life has been completely different. May's too. They were married. Shortly after graduating the academy, in a brief ceremony followed by a short honeymoon. They had only been married a year when they unexpectedly conceived a baby. May coordinated missions through comms for the duration of her pregnancy, spend 6 months at home with their baby girl, and began instructing at the academy, not willing to go too far away and leave their daughter with anyone. Coulson was still active in the field.
Their Daisy was a beautiful baby girl, with May's dark hair and eyes. Coulson secretly hoped she would look exactly like her mother.
Often, he was out on long missions. And during this time, May would let Daisy sleep with her to help them both deal with the missions.
So one night, a couple of months after the baby's first birthday, May couldn't sleep. She got up, stretched, and walked across the hall to the baby's room.
She didn't expect to see someone else in there. Two men were in the room, one holding her still sleeping baby. After a couple of seconds of shock, everyone reacted.
May lunged and the second man took a shot, striking her in the leg. Both men took off into the night, taking the crying baby with them.
The only reason May didn't bleed out was because the neighbor called 911 after hearing the gunfire.
When she woke up, she was in a SHIELD hospital and Coulson was sitting in a nearby chair. When he looked up, she knew.
"She's gone isn't she?" May asked.
They grieved, they processed, and May had to move on. But Coulson couldn't. He never let it go and it drove them to a divorce. May threw herself into her work, taking mission after mission. When Bahrain happened, it destroyed the last of who she used to be.
Coulson blinked back into the present. They were almost there, it was now or maybe never. He collected a DNA sample from a cloth covered in Skye's blood, went to ask May about their ETA and swabbed a water bottle she had nearby, and then swabbed his own cheek.
Then he made his way down to the lab and told Simmons to check the relationship between the three. She asked what it was for and he said it was classified, to just get it done while they were trying to get medical care for Skye from the guest house.
Simmons nodded and took the samples. Her, Tripp, and May would be staying aboard the plane while everyone else handled saving Skye.
Not long after they infiltrated comms went down, May told Simmons if she didn't hear anything within an hour she was going after them.
It was the longest hour of their lives, Skye coded and they were able to stop it once but Simmons wasn't sure she could stop it again.
Coulson felt like he was in a daze by the end of it. He had been regaining memories about his time there after he was killed. He sent Fitz to the surface with the drug that saved his life and after that he saw the horrible truth.
The source of the drug was a long dead alien. Coulson knee he had suffered after the drug was given to him, but now knowing this he couldn't let them inject Skye with it.
Meanwhile, Skye was coding again. Fitz came on the radio, erratic but there, telling them he had the drug and to get the plane ready to fly. The whole mountain was going to fall out from under them. May ran to the cockpit and started everything up but left the cargo door open. She didn't want to leave Phil and Garrett behind to die but she wasn't going to risk her whole team.
The two men barely made it in time, and Coulson ran in screaming for them not to give her the drug. But the needle was in her arm.
"I was losing her anyway. What harm could it do?" Simmons said with tears in her eyes.
Seconds later, Skye came off the bed.
"She's spiking!" May said.
"Stop it! How can we stop it? Skye!" Ward screamed.
Coulson was sick. What had he done?
As suddenly as she had spiked, she stopped and stabilized.
Tripp asked what was in it and Simmons said she didn't know, but what was important was that it worked.
After everyone had left and Garrett left to grill Quinn in the cage, Simmons pulled Coulson aside.
"Sir, I ran the DNA test you asked for. Sample A is related to B and C on a 99% level but B and C are not related. Sample A is likely the child of B and C or otherwise related." She said.