Out with a whimper?
Disclaimer: I don' own any agents…
When Coulson finally found the Cavalry sitting in a flax field, he knew that things were about to come to a head, as the woman in question was just placidly sitting there and picking flowers – and neither of those activities was something that she usually did, not since she – both of them – were young, anyway.
"Want to tell me what is going on?" he asked Melinda as the woman just wove a garland from flax's pretty, blue flowers, (they were currently in Sweden, and it was felt).
"…I've no idea, save that I had enough," Melinda muttered, as she eyed the garland in question. "Hm. I think I will give this one to you, and make the next one for myself."
"…May?" Coulson asked as he just sat down next to her, proper decorum for a mission be damned. "I'm sorry to ask you, but what did I do wrong this time?"
"You didn't do anything," Melinda said with a trace of a better humor than her current one overall surfacing. "Nick Fury, on the other hand, well-"
Phil thought over his next response carefully. "May, are you upset that he hadn't contacted Mack, and Elena, and the rest of us first-?"
"Yes, rather," Melinda did not even bother arguing this time. "When it was all Hydra and all that, we did all that he asked, he put you through the hoops via T.A.H.I.T.I., and now… all of this was nothing, as we are all swept aside for his new favorites in S.W.O.R.D. … Oh, wait, S.A.B.E.R. The former are also on the out."
"Melinda, listen – you have to admit that the way we've handled S.H.I.E.L.D.-"
"Phil, we've argued about that a lot – back when it mattered. And now Mack and Yo-Yo are in charge, and they're the ones who matter, and who lead, and who are doing a decent enough job of it-"
"Melinda, we got your message in Germany, and we brought beer for everyone," Skye slash Daisy said brightly, as she brought out the aforementioned beer bottles. "Also, Grant and I have brought the FitzSimmons too, speaking of everyone…"
"Why are you here?" as the (nominate) team leader, Phil felt that he was obliged to ask. "Grant and Daisy were in Germany, you two were in one of the Baltic country-states-"
"Estonia," Fitz grimaced, "and then there was that assassin."
"Skrulls? Hydra?"
"Whoever Hunter and Morse had pissed off while they were away," Jemma shrugged, as Leo helped Grant pull out the beer case. "Nice landscape choice, also," she told Melinda.
"Hear, hear," everyone else agreed readily – so readily, that Coulson began to suspect that he was set up here, but still, given the mood at S.H.I.E.L.D. lately, even he did not want to set-up a fuss.
"…So you got anything to go with this beer?" he asked a brief while later instead, when the bottles and the folding furniture were set-up, and everything began to look a proper improvised picnic.
There was an awkward pause. "I got some walnuts," Grant admitted, sounding odd enough to surprise everyone.
"…Right, you eat them with beer," Melinda recollected their Bus-related trips the first time around.
"I eat them with all the booze," Grant shrugged. "You? And by that, I mean anyone else – got anything edible?"
"Daddy and mommy got my beans!" Alya FitzSimmons pipped-up from behind her parents. "Nice daisy chain, grandmamma May!"
"Thank you," Melinda beamed at the tiny girl, (even though the flax flowers in question did not look like daisies at all). "Here's one for you too!"
"Yay!" the girl in question replied as she laughed in delight, lying on her back and twirling her limbs in the air, (she was young enough to enjoy this sort of thing). "Mommy and daddy, I love you!"
There was a pause as everyone else just stared at her. "Ah, to be her age once again for real" Daisy said brightly, before eying Alya's parents in a more sombre way. "What did you pocket in that secret lab, anyhow?"
"Some sort of super-secret super-modified dandelion seeds!" Alya replied before her parents could.
"…Of course, industrial espionage," Phil sighed. "What else haven't we sunk into yet?"
"With all due respect, PC, that's bull," Daisy shot back. "According to Bobbie, S.H.I.E.L.D. has done something similar before-"
"Something similar is the key here-"
"People, please! Let's not fight," Melinda said mildly, and all argument immediately stopped.
"That said," she continued – serenely – "Fitz. Life sciences are not your strength, so no experiments until we get back to HQ, got it?"
Fitz nodded, however reluctantly – he hated being reminded of his failures with life sciences – but he did not want to argue with Melinda right now either… Silence fell. The half-a-dozen members of the team Bus just sat in a comfortable silence in the late summer afternoon, sipping beer with beans, and walnuts, and some stale Bus rations, and – authentically enjoying themselves after a long while in their lives. Nick Fury, it seems, has left S.H.I.E.L.D. and all of them behind, but they still had each other, (and the next generation), to keep each other company and to just keep on going, period.
"Out with a whimper, not a bang? Perhaps," Melinda voiced everyone's mood, (unexpectedly, but still), "but perhaps we're not done yet!" She pointed upwards, and sure enough, there were Mack and others, flying towards them, in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s (current) quinjet. "Looks like the gang is getting here en masse!"
End