A distant explosion ripped off the veil of sleep, and I jerked awake with a sharp intake of breath. I was on the floor, curled up next to Victoria, holding her hand. She was alive; I could feel a faint, thready pulse in her wrist. And that meant I was probably alive too. Which was unfortunate; my skin screamed with the pain of a thousand cuts and burns; my face throbbed, and sandpaper scraped the inside of my lungs with every breath. I tried to give an exasperated sigh, but it turned into a cough, and I moaned in pain.

Another explosion, nearer this time, then faint voices shouting, then another explosion. Blasting charges. Someone was blowing up doors. Hope blossomed in my chest, and I sat up as best I could.

"Victoria, wake up," I said urgently, squeezing her hand. "Come on, up. We need to get away from the door." Mucus crackled in my throat as I spoke, and I winced at the sound of my own voice. It was weak, broken, barely there.

"I can't, please, just let me sleep," Victoria moaned. "My stomach hurts, May, it hurts so bad." Shit. One of Bodho's men had kicked her yesterday and now she was probably bleeding internally. She shouldn't be moving around, but we hardly had a choice. If someone blew the door to our cell, the force of the blast would kill us unless we got out of the way.

"Get up, Victoria," I told her, trying to make it sound like an order and missing by a mile. I rose to my feet, desperately sucking air into my burning lungs. "We have to get away from the door, and I am not going to carry you. Victoria Hand, get up."

She pushed herself into a sitting position, stifling a cry and clutching her stomach. Slowly, carefully, she staggered to her feet, practically bent double from the pain in her abdomen. I put my hand around her shoulder, careful not to touch any of the raw skin, and together we stumbled to the far corner of the cell. It was only a few feet, but it felt like a thousand miles. Each step we took without falling was a victory, until we were far enough away from the door that we wouldn't be hurt. I reached my hand out and braced myself against the wall. My legs shook, and I fell to my knees, choking on pain.

Another blasting charge went off, and I could hear voices shouting, coming closer. I couldn't tell exactly what they were saying, but they were speaking English.

"It's an extraction team," Victoria breathed, as though it were some sort of exotic bird.

"It sure is." I felt a smile pulling at the corners of my mouth, the first one in what felt like years. This would all be over in a few hours. We could go home. Soon this hell would be a distant memory. I would see Phil again, and Victoria would go on to become one of the finest agents SHIELD had ever seen. After all this, we were finally going to get our lives back. My smile widened, and I slowly rose to my feet again, not because I had to, but because Agent Melinda May of SHIELD would never let herself be found crumpled on the floor, bloody and broken. I was a woman, tall, proud, strong, and maybe some of that was still there, even after all Bodho had done to me.

Hurried footsteps approached the door, and I gripped Victoria's hand tightly and turned my face away, bracing myself for the blast. But it never came. There was only the all too familiar sound of a key in the lock, and the rasp of the deadbolt sliding away. I felt a sudden chill go through me. An extraction team wouldn't have had time for keys; they would have simply blown the door. Fear spread cold acid through my stomach, and my breath caught in my throat.

The door swung open with a scream of ungreased hinges to reveal a face I'd hoped I would never have to see again.

"Hello Agent May, Agent Hand," John Bodho said, flashing us a vicious, predatory smile. He held up a handgun and pointed it squarely at Victoria's chest. "It seems your friends have come for you. A shame all they'll find is your bodies." He gave a cruel, triumphant laugh and brandished his gun. "I was going to kill you today anyway, since you're not as much fun to play with anymore," he continued. "Perhaps take you outside, let you see the sun one last time before I made you dig your own graves. Much as I hate to have to rush things, it can't be helped."

"No," Victoria whimpered. "No, please, don't."

"Pathetic," he spat. "On your knees, both of you."

It couldn't end this way. We couldn't die now, not with rescue just seconds away. We hadn't endured all that pain, survived all that hardship, only to meet our end in a dark, lonely prison cell at the hands of a psychopath.

And not on our knees. We would not die on our knees.

Melinda May faded into the background as the Cavalry reared her ugly head.

I lunged forward, grabbing his gun hand and twisting it, hard. The weapon fell from his grasp and clattered to the ground. Bodho immediately dove for it, but I stepped in, blocking his path. He turned to face me, hands raised. I aimed a palm-heel strike at his nose, but my timing was off by a mile, and he caught my hand and shoved me against the wall. Lungs burning, head spinning, I pushed off from the wall and managed a weak punch to the face. He only laughed and knocked me to the floor with ease. I came up to my hands and knees, trying to stand again, but he kicked me, hard, and I heard ribs crack. But the Cavalry felt no pain. She only rose to her feet, hands up in a guard. Bodho knocked me to the floor again, then turned his attention to Victoria, who was braced against the wall, clutching her stomach.

"Look at me," he ordered. "I want to see your face when you die."

Wheezing from exertion and lack of oxygen, I stumbled to my feet. I could barely stand, and my ribs shot red-hot pain up my side every time I moved, but I couldn't let him kill her. I'd let her down enough already; I wasn't going to fail her now.

Stumbling forward, I grabbed Bodho's shirt with both hands and pulled him down. My knee found his solar plexus and he doubled over in pain. I pushed him backwards with all my strength, and he tumbled to the ground, landing flat on his back. He was mine now, at my mercy, and it was such a wonderful feeling, finally being the one in control.

With victory singing through my veins, I raised my foot to crush his throat.

But I was a second too late, and my tattered boot hit the concrete floor with an empty thud. Bodho rolled away and grabbed his gun, then turned over on his back, weapon raised. After all I had survived, his insane, triumphant grin would be the last thing I ever saw. I tasted ashes, bitter and hopeless in my mouth. I'd been crazy to think I could beat him, a bleeding, shattered remnant of what was once an agent.

"Please," I begged. "Please, not like this."

He didn't reply. He didn't need to. He simply leveled the weapon, took his aim, and—

The sound of a gunshot rang through the room. Bright red blood sprayed the walls in slow motion. My vision swam, and the last thing I saw was the floor rushing toward me.

"Shh, May, you're going to be all right." That voice. I knew that voice. Quiet, gentle, familiar. "It's all right; I've got you."

"Phil?" I whispered, almost afraid to hope.

"It's me." I opened my eyes and saw him, that smiling, creased face looking down at me, blue eyes full of concern.

"You're dead?" I asked.

"No, Melinda. You're alive."

I woke up slowly, consciousness filtering back in pieces. My eyelids fluttered, and I opened them to a world vastly different from the one I'd left. The murmur of a dozen voices rippled in the background, and harsh fluorescent lights assaulted my eyes. The air smelled of cheap air freshener and antiseptic, and the surface beneath me was warm and soft and dry. Monitors beeped steadily, keeping time with my heartbeat. There was an IV line snaking out from under my collarbone, and oxygen from a nasal cannula tickled the inside of my nose. Everything still hurt, but it was the dull, muted kind of pain that came with large doses of painkillers. I moved my arm experimentally and felt the rustle of gauze, the pull of sutures and medical tape.

I glanced to my side and saw Phil Coulson sitting in a folding chair next to my bed, a calm, patient expression on his face. When he saw I was awake, he smiled broadly, and I felt my heart ache. I never thought I'd see that smile again.

"Welcome back," he whispered, leaning forward.

"What's going on?" I asked. He looked at me strangely, and I realized I'd spoken in Mandarin. I repeated the question, feeling a slight rush of adrenaline. It was a post-traumatic reflex, one I'd experienced before, though never this badly. I knew I was safe; Phil was here, and I was obviously in some sort of medical facility, but my body was still expecting another assault.

Still expecting him, his knives and acid and blowtorch and bucket of bacteria-infested water. My breath caught in my throat, and the heart monitor's beeping sped up angrily. God, that sound was annoying. I tried to sit up with the vague intention of breaking it, but Phil gently pushed me back down, and between my injuries and the painkillers, I was in no condition to put up a fight.

"You're in the infirmary back at the Hub, and you're going to be fine," he said softly. "You were intubated for a while because you weren't getting enough oxygen, but they took you off the ventilator this morning, and your lungs are sounding pretty clear." It was true; it didn't hurt as much to breathe, and my chest didn't rattle when I inhaled.

"V-v-victoria?" I asked, tripping over the words, half afraid of the answer.

"Agent Hand's going to be okay," he assured me. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. "They had to take out her spleen, and she was septic for a while, but she's doing fine." He sobered. "Another twelve hours and she wouldn't have made it. You did good out there, Melinda."

But I hadn't. In the end, it was the extraction team who'd pulled us out, not me. I hadn't done a damn thing except get us captured in the first place and then screw up our escape. I deserved no praise. Hell, I deserved a demotion. No, the real hero was Victoria. She'd stayed strong the entire time, held up under torture with no training, kept me sane when I felt like I was losing my mind. She was the one who'd done good out there, not I.

Phil spoke again. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit. Bodho … the man with the gun …"

"Dead. Agent Garrett shot him."

I gave a choked laugh, dry and humorless. "Thought he shot me."

"No. You're okay. He can't hurt you anymore. Melinda, it's over."

It didn't feel over. And I'd been in Operations long enough, seen enough carnage, to know that it would never be over. When stuff like this, like Bahrain and Zurich and Sarajevo happened, there was always fallout. Major fallout. And I would never truly recover. And just for a second, I wondered if maybe it would've been better if Garrett had arrived just a second or two later, if Bodho had taken that shot and killed me, finished the job he'd started. Maybe it was better to be dead than shattered.

"Phil?" I asked, my voice sounding weak and broken.

"I'm here," he assured me.

"Don't go?"

"Wouldn't dream of it."

I felt tears pricking at the corners of my eyes, and I let them fall, because it was okay to cry in front of him. And I think that was when I figured it out, why Coulson and I were so close. It was because he let me see him at his most vulnerable, and I let him see me at mine. He'd let me care for him after the meteorite incident in Florida, let me pull him out from under the rubble and set his broken arm. I sat with him when the nightmares woke him up yelling for days afterwards, talking soothingly and telling him he was safe until he calmed down. And then a year later, he saw me come out of the warehouse in Zurich, shaking and crying with blood running down my shirt. After debriefing, he gave me his sweatshirt to wear, since my own clothes had been cut away by the medics who treated me. I hadn't even tried to keep my mask on; I was too exhausted and I just didn't care.

I had shown him this side of me, the part I kept so carefully guarded, and he'd accepted it, then shown me the same.

"Shh, it's okay," Phil whispered. "I've got you."

I felt him pick up my hand and rub the back of it with his thumb, the way he always did when I was sick or hurt. It was gentle, calming, like sedation. They could shoot whatever they wanted into my arm, but sometimes there was just no substitute for a human touch. He sat with me for a while, told me a couple of his patented really bad jokes, including the one about the man who was afraid of flying, and wondered aloud where he could find the last Captain America trading card he was missing. I didn't really listen, but let the soft, steady sound of his voice wash over me.

A nurse with tacky, bleach-blond hair and too much lipstick came by at some point and told him that visiting hours were over, and that I needed my rest. He kindly, calmly told her where to put her visiting hours. Startled by his audacity, she quickly regained her composure and walked away in a huff, muttering something about reporting him to her supervisor.

"Thanks," I whispered, once she was gone.

He smiled gently. "I promised I wouldn't go. You need anything? Ice chips, something to eat?"

"No. Just … keep talking."

"Okay. Why did the chicken cross the playground?"

I don't know how long he sat there, just whispering to me, holding my hand, assuring me that everything was going to be okay. Sometimes I saw a flash of Bodho's sadistic grin, or heard a whisper of Congolese French, and gripped his hand even tighter. A whimper escaped my lips.

Phil reached up and stroked my hair. "You're okay; you're safe," he said soothingly.

"Doesn't feel like it."

"These things take time."

"I guess."

"Try and get some rest. You'll feel better in the morning. And I'll be right here when you wake up."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Author's Note: Thank you for all the feedback on Chapter 8. I'm glad you liked it. MaariSiqueira, thanks for suggesting I include Phil. I originally wasn't going to give him such a big part, but I think Melinda needed him in this chapter.