A/N: From here on, the story will be told from May's POV.

Denial

Melinda sighed happily and rested her head on Grant's chest. Pale moonlight was leaking in through the half open curtains, bathing part of the room in its magnificence. She could feel his large hand rubbing her back softly. Warm feelings of emotions she hadn't felt or bothered to feel in years began to pool in her chest. Her heart was swelling with things that she had no business feeling.

"I love you."

It was said so matter-of-factly. It was all she needed to jump off the deep end, hand in hand with Grant. She may have paid for it later, but she would never regret it. "I love you, too."

Her eyes fluttered open. Vision blurry, she say the outline of a man standing over her. "…Grant?"

"Sorry, not quite. But I won't take offense." Damn, it was only Phil. Meaning that something happened to Grant. She swore, if that idiot got himself killed just to save her…

"Where…?" She sat up and shook her head to clear her vision. She looked around once it was clear enough and immediately recognized the tiny box that was her bunk. Meaning that, since the plane was flying, that someone else was flying the Bus. It had to have been Grant, since he was the only other certified pilot.

"Melinda, what happened in there?"

She ignored the question and went to grab another shirt. "I'm fine," she said, purely as an effort to placate his curiosity. She took off the ripped and cut up garments and replaced them with the proper replacements. Zipping up her new vest, she turned to him while backing toward the door. "Going to go chew out that idiot."

Normally, Phil would have smirked, or even chuckled. This time, he hesitated, as if he wanted to say something, but wasn't sure how.

"What? He's okay, right?" He still didn't, couldn't say anything. Dread started to settle into chest, although she hid it. "Answer me," she demanded quietly.

"He… FitzSimmons will take care of him."

Take care of him? For her sake, that better have meant that he had a few cuts and bruises, maybe a broken bone here or there. "I still want to see him." Phil regarded her quietly. Her back turned to him, but he could still feel his gaze on her. Not out of want, as that time was over, but out of concern. Perhaps because he wasn't telling her something.

"Whatever happens," he said, "Ward did the right thing."

She didn't want to hear that. "What aren't you –" Some loud noise thundered from the lab. Out out instinct, Melinda and Phil dashed out of the bunk and down the hall. The closer she got, the louder the noise and the yelling over the noise got. She could hear Phil muttering curses, not even bothering to hide them under his breath.

The first thing she saw when they reached the lab was the blood. So much blood. A small, and growing, crimson pool as collected on the floor and dripping off the table. The next was the pair of pants covering the legs on the table. She couldn't see the face, since Fitz's body was blocking it, but she recognized the pants as Grant's. He was on that table, bleeding profusely.

The heart monitor was the source of the noise. She was glad for it. As long as it kept it up, Grant was alive. He was going to pull through, and then she was going to yell at him for scaring her and then kiss him for being alive.

When his heart stopped, so did hers. When the heart monitor flatlined, everything froze.

Someone was screaming. "NO! Don't you dare, Grant!"

Was he dead? He couldn't have been. This was the guy who willingly jumped out of moving planes to save his friends, and lived. He couldn't die.

"Clear!"

He couldn't die, not when she… couldn't do anything about it.

"Mercury!"

He wouldn't die, because she wouldn't allow it. She wouldn't allow someone to die because he tried to save her. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. Why did someone she loved have to die? She wanted to move forward. Tried to move inside the lab, but her own knees were shaking to hard for her to go two steps without falling. So she stayed still, stock still and listened to the single monotone beep resonate through the entire Bus. Her heart was tearing itself to pieces.

"Clear!" Tears threatened to fall as it seemed that there was no hope. He was gone, and it was all her fault. He gave his life trying to save hers. She knew exactly why he did it, because he said so in not so many words. They swore this wouldn't happen. It wasn't suppose to happen. "Come on, dammit! Clear!" A beep. A pulse, a weak one, but it was there. He was alive. There was a chance he would be okay.

"Move Fitz!" Melinda lifted up her head and saw Simmons stab something into his chest. She wanted to scream out and stop her, but she knew that Simmons knew what she was doing. Seconds, unbearably tense seconds ticked away one by one in expectation of something. Simmons looked rigid, Fitz didn't breathe and Skye was whimpering like a scared little girl next to her. She couldn't blame the kid; they had gotten so close, like siblings.

"Oh thank God," Simmons breathed as the blaring subsided, replaced with a steady, and loud, heart rate from the monitor. Her own heart started to slow as well, but her damned body wouldn't stop shaking. She must have looked so scared, uncharacteristically so.

"Is he," Skye said softly, "is he okay?" She was terrified. Terrified that Grant had been lost. She still wasn't even half as scared as Melinda was.

"He'll be fine," Simmons reassured in a shaky voice. "Just had a wee little scare for a minute. You know how rather dramatic Ward can be." She tried to laugh to off, but it came out half-hearted.

Whether it was the innocent comment Simmons made to reassure everyone or everything else, Melinda had to walk away. If the others knew what was good for them, they wouldn't follow her.

She reached the cockpit and slammed the door closed behind her. Slowly, she sunk down into her seat and let out the shaky breath that she had been holding in since first hearing the flatline. The plane was on autopilot. Good. She was in no condition to fly with any sort of competency, not when her hands were shaking to the point that she could barely hold anything without dropping it.

Calm down, damn it. You're Melinda fucking May. Calm down!

She closed her eyes, allowing a few tears to fall before angrily wiping them away. Melinda May didn't cry. Not over herself, and not over someone she just shared a bed with. That's all Grant Ward was, just someone to share a bed with sometimes. That was it. That was all. Anyone who thought otherwise was in for a rude awakening. Grant included.

She was not going to allow herself to lose even an ounce of her composure over him. Not happening.

Phil walked in minutes later. He apparently didn't known what was good for him. "What do you want?" she asked tersely, allowing her annoyance at his unwanted intrusion to go heard.

"I know you're upset, but I thought you could –"

"I am not upset," she corrected.

"– use some company." He sat down in the co-pilot's chair, the chair where Grant always sat. She glared at him for daring to sit there. He ignored it. "They just moved Grant to his bunk. There's a machine monitoring his heart rate and brain activity, all that jazz. If you want to sit with him for a bit, you can, but you won't have much room." To her credit, she didn't jump out of her seat and run to his room. Because people didn't do that for people they were just sleeping with.

"I see," she instead said, calmly.

"When you're ready to tell me what happened, I'm here."

"Nothing happened to me," she said after a few minutes of silence, "other than her gassing me and Ward. When I woke up fully, I was strapped to a table, and she was cutting my clothes off. She started cutting me open, and Gra- Ward put a stop to it and asked… demanded that we switch places. I was injected with something that knocked me out again, and then woke up here." She chose to omit the admittedly not at all humorous caveat that Rappaccini would get to see him without his shirt on. It wasn't because she was jealous that some other broad was going to see his delicious chest and abs.

"Like what you see, Melinda?" he slurred slightly as he slid his shirt off. She licked her lips and nodded hungrily.

"I see. And by 'her', you mean Rappaccini?" Melinda nodded, and hid the swell of hate that rose in her chest.

"She escaped before we got there, but we have one of her agents in custody. I'm getting ready to interrogate her, if you want to watch."

Her jaw tightened and she nodded once, sharply. "I'll be there." Anything to find that bitch.