TW for discussion of injuries, blood loss, previous character death, and past GSW

She covered Quake with her refraction cape as they picked their way back through the building and slipped out the way Melinda had entered. No reason for anyone to see them leaving together and cast suspicion on the poor kid. Melinda had ridden the Storm Cycle over, in case of a need for a quick getaway, and she wondered briefly if Quake was in any condition to ride, but Quake climbed on wordlessly and held on tight like it was the most natural thing in the world. Melinda tried hard not to notice that Quake was still trembling slightly against her.

Melinda wove the bike through the city, back towards the secret entrance to the tunnel that would take them to her apartment unnoticed, and soon they were stepping off the elevator into her living room.

"You should send a message to your handler," Melinda said quietly. "So they don't think you've gone AWOL. Just let them know that I got away, but that you interrupted me before I took anything, so you don't take a full loss on your record. Throw in a code 49-19. They should leave you alone tonight if you use that one."

"'Mental or emotional distress, request for personal recovery time,'" Quake recited numbly as she tapped away at the comm screen in her gauntlet. "How do you know that SHIELD code?"

"I'm the reason they wrote that code."

Quake looked up, confused, but Melinda didn't elaborate.

"It doesn't matter. We just don't need them trying to track you tonight and finding you here."

"Yeah." Quake studied her for a moment longer, maybe trying to parse out any other clues about Melinda's knowledge of SHIELD codes, but soon her expression twisted like she was going to start crying again and she turned away. "Your face… I'm so sorry."

Melinda leaned to one side to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the window. She certainly looked worse for wear, between the seismic beatdown and the glass shower, but that didn't really concern her much at the moment. She had stitched herself up from worse.

"Never mind that," she said softly. "It'll heal."

"I didn't… I don't know what…" Quake was crying again for real now, jerky breaths interrupting her words as she tried to explain what had happened between the two of them in the Cybertek offices. Melinda didn't need to hear it – she knew exactly what had happened. If anyone understood what it was like to snap after taking one too many losses, it was her.

"It's okay," she soothed. "I… I saw what happened this afternoon, so I know tonight was…" She faltered, at a loss for words, and instead reached out to put a hand on Quake's shoulder. Quake flinched at her touch and Melinda withdrew. "We can figure it all out in the morning, but I think some sleep would do both of us some good."

Quake let out a hollow, shaky laugh. Like the idea of sleep was so foreign and far away that it was ridiculous to suggest it. That was probably true. But it was also true that she had been pushed to the brink today, and Melinda knew collapse was probably both inevitable and imminent.

"Are you hurt?" Melinda asked, with a quick amendment. "Physically?"

Quake shook her head.

"No fractures, cuts from the glass? What about your hands?"

"No."

"You know it's worse if you don't treat things right away."

Quake's shoulders bristled, and Melinda wondered for a moment if Quake might turn around and take another swing at her for being so pushy, but the thought was quickly dismissed when Quake turned around and, instead, held her arms out grudgingly for inspection.

Her knuckles were swollen and purpling from all the punching, split open in a few places but not actively bleeding anymore. Silently, Melinda eased the gauntlets off Quake's arms and rolled the sleeves of her suit up, revealing deep, mottled bruising dappling its way up from hand to elbow.

"Do you have any more CalciFi?"

"They gave me some to take after…" Quake's voice cracked slightly. "After this afternoon. But I haven't taken it yet. Didn't want to be out of commission if something else came up."

"I've got SteriStrips for those cuts, and ice for your knuckles," Melinda said. "And you should probably take the CalciFi."

"Yeah."

"Do you want me to give you pressure? Might help you sleep."

"No," Quake said quickly. She paused, swallowed hard. "No, I… I want to be alone tonight."

"I understand."

And it was true, probably more true than Quake realized. Melinda understood wanting – needing – to be alone after everything that had happened that day. She also understood wanting to feel the pain that injuries or CalciFi might bring. She didn't like it, and she didn't wish it on Quake, but she understood. Sometimes, when the pain and guilt and grief inside was so powerful it felt like you might crack in two, it made things easier to handle if you could focus on the physical. Sometimes, you just felt like you deserved it. It wasn't the healthiest of coping strategies, but it was real, and tonight wasn't the night to try and talk Quake out of it.

Quake did at least accept the SteriStrips and ice before she disappeared into her bedroom, leaving Melinda to do the same. She took her time packing her suit and gear away, tucking the Fishing Net and the documents from Quinn's office into the hidden draw with her tape recorder, cleaning the glass fragments from her suit and cape, oiling and cleaning her sword before hanging it up. It was therapeutic, the rhythm and routine of it all. It helped her decompress.

She spent a little time in the bathroom, mopping up her bloody face and applying her own share of bandages and balms to all her cuts and bruises, then sank weakly into bed, grimacing around the ache in her knee and her tender ribs. When, a few minutes later, she began to feel the pulses of pain seeping over from Quake's room, she forced herself to stay put and respect the kid's desire for solitude and penance, even though that felt worse to her than any of her other injuries.

Melinda was surprised the next morning when she stepped out into the main room of the apartment for breakfast and saw Quake was already up. She was dressed in sweats, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the big windows and staring down at the bustling city coming to life below them. She didn't make a move when Melinda appeared, or really acknowledge that she knew Melinda was there at all, and Melinda let her be.

Melinda set to work quietly in the kitchen, putting the kettle on for tea and cutting up berries for her yogurt, but she kept an eye on the kid as she worked. Quake sat stock still, never taking her eyes off the streets below. The sleeves of her sweatshirt hid her arms from view, but Melinda could see that her knuckles, while not as alarming as yesterday, still looked tender and red.

Eventually, after Melinda had eaten and the kettle began to sing, she finally spoke. "Do you want some tea?"

Quake still didn't move, but she did answer after a moment, at least. "I don't know. I've never had it, so I don't know if I like it. I don't want you to waste it on me."

Melinda almost asked how a person had never had tea before in their life, but caught herself when she remembered Quake was a former foster kid who'd been living on her own since she was 15. Tea-tasting opportunities might have been pretty scarce.

"If I made you some, would you try it?"

"I guess so."

It wasn't long before Melinda had crossed over to where Quake sat, two steaming mugs in hand. She lowered herself delicately to the floor and crossed her legs, mimicking Quake's position, and passed one of the mugs to Quake before turning to look out the window, too.

The sky was overcast, a thick, grey blanket of cloud covering the city, and the daylight that filtered through was thin. Below them, swarms of people, cars, bikes, and busses swirled and danced the choreography of life moving on.

"How'd you sleep?"

"Like shit," Quake said dully. "I gave up a little before sunrise."

"I always love the way sunrise looks through these windows."

"Clouds made it hard to see today. But I bet it looks nice on other days."

Melinda made a thoughtful noise, but didn't say anything. They sat in silence for a long while, sipping occasionally. The tea was strong and sweet, and Quake kept drinking, so she must have liked it well enough.

They sat there for what must have been close to half an hour before Quake finally spoke again. That was fine with Melinda. She had always worked well with silence, and it seemed important to let Quake be the one to choose if and when they started talking.

"Deke and Gordon didn't make it. They were gone before the Med Team even got there."

"Your teammates from yesterday?"

Quake nodded and blinked hard a few times before busying herself with another sip of tea. When she spoke again, her voice was thick. "Raina's in pretty bad shape, but she's still alive. In SHIELD critical care last time I checked. That… that thing drains the blood out of people, apparently. She lost a lot before…"

"Before you saved her life by getting her away from the mist," Melinda finished, quiet but firm. "I saw what you did yesterday."

"So then you saw how I completely failed," Quake said flatly. "How I messed up and got people killed and let a deadly alien threat escape into the city."

"I saw a young team get thrown in over their heads against an unknown threat with no backup," Melinda corrected. "I saw a kid doing her best to lead inexperienced agents, who saved the life of one and kept an evil alien engaged long enough that no civilians got hurt."

"You don't have to sugarcoat it—"

"I'm not finished," Melinda interrupted gently. "I also saw a kid take a hard loss that would shake even the most experienced senior agents. I saw you lose two people you felt responsible for. I saw you hold your own against a horror-show of a threat, but we both know that doesn't come without cost."

"I can't stop thinking about the way they looked, hollowed out like that. It all happened so fast."

"It always does."

"We'd been tracking these shadow reports – these sightings and strange reports – for months. Never anything concrete or actionable until yesterday. We finally thought we'd caught a break, we were trying to set up an ambush, catch the thing off guard so we could take it in, but it was like… It was like it was ready for us, expecting us. It was like it knew all our maneuvers, our tactics. It felt like we were losing before we'd even started fighting."

A chill ran down the length of Melinda's spine, and her mind flashed to the SHIELD documents she'd found hidden in Cybertek's office. Yet another instance of enemies having knowledge of SHIELD's inner workings that they shouldn't.

"I knew in my gut that we should have gotten out of there as soon as it was obvious we'd been made, but we didn't get a retreat order, and I… I wanted to prove myself, too. It was the first time I'd been tapped to lead the team, not an underling and not solo work, y'know? I was so stupid…"

"Where was your SO during all this?" Melinda wanted to know. "Your handler? They should have pulled you all out once things went south."

"My SO got put on some high-clearance mission earlier in the day," Quake said, shaking her head. "Avengers-level, I think. That was part of why I was allowed to take point in the field, with Berserker being gone. My handler… I don't know, we were supposed to hold defensive positions and wait for backup, but I guess things fell apart too quickly for him to change tactics."

Melinda frowned. Whether they had meant to or not, it sounded to her like SHIELD had set Quake and her team up to fail. No active SO on the mission, a slow-reacting handler, and backup that was too far out for an immediate intervention.

"They kept me at HQ after, for observation or whatever. I guess they could tell I was shaken up. My SO got back in at one point, came down on me for everything that happened, like I didn't already know it was my fault two people were dead. I got mad and went off on him a little bit. So when the alert came in about the Cybertek break-in, he decided I should be the one to respond. To help me focus on something else, get my head back on. Learn to compartmentalize."

"Which worked so well," Melinda scoffed before she could help herself.

Quake winced, and Melinda chastised herself.

"Sorry," she said. "That came out harsher than I meant it."

"It's not like you're wrong. I completely lost it in there."

"SHIELD preaches compartmentalization, and there are times when it's the best course of action, yes," Melinda said thoughtfully. "But sometimes compartmentalizing things, trying to file them away and lock them up and just keep moving forward… if you don't address the heavy things behind you, they start to drag you down eventually, no matter how fast you try to run away from them. SHIELD tends to forget that."

"Hell, if that isn't true," Quake agreed with a sad little laugh. "Like, when they thought sending me to fucking Cybertek of all places last night to try and shake me out of my feelings was a good idea… You know, the last time I went to Cybertek, I almost died. Probably not the best place to send me if they wanted me to work on staying focused and unemotional in the field."

"You almost died at Cybertek?" A new layer of understanding settled into place in Melinda's mind – Quake's distraction, her uneasiness last night before they'd started fighting. It wasn't just about being shaken from the alien fight.

"Yeah, I got shot there for sticking my nose in places where it didn't belong. Took two to the gut. Almost didn't make it."

Melinda swallowed hard. The gunshot wounds. The medical report in Quake's file. The G.H.325.

"Who shot you?"

"I don't know," Quake admitted. "I lost some memory from that time, all the trauma on my body, they said. I don't think they ever figured out who did it, but somebody from within Cybertek, I guess."

"And then SHIELD moved mountains to heal your body, but didn't give a shit about your mind," Melinda said darkly. "Just threw you back in like it wouldn't matter to you to go back to a place where something horrible happened. I wish I was more surprised."

"You know, the way you talk about SHIELD… it's like you know them," Quake murmured. "More than just someone who's fought them for years."

Melinda was quiet for a moment, considering her next words carefully. "Let's just say that SHIELD is one of those heavy things I've tried to run from. Still working on dealing with it so the weight doesn't pull me under."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean…" Melinda hesitated. She had sworn to herself that she would never talk about this with another person. That this story would stay tucked away on a tape recorder until she was long gone, and the tapes could be left with someone trustworthy.

She tore her gaze away from the window and looked over to Quake, to the hurting, unmoored kid who was looking at her with those big, dark eyes, reaching out for some kind of connection, some kind of lifeline – a perfect echo of all her failures before. Maybe this was her second chance. Maybe this was her opportunity to make right what she had done wrong before, to atone and amend and actually do something that helped, that mattered. Maybe this was the person she was supposed to trust. Maybe this was the person who could help her live up to the words Andrew had left her with, that she had never believed would be possible.

Maybe this was how she would do good.

Do good, Melinda.

Do. Good.

"I mean," she tried again, taking a deep breath, "that I was SHIELD. A long time ago. I've been an agent. I've been a hero. And I've been used as a weapon, and I've been used as a tool to do a lot of things that I wish I could take back."

"I don't…"

"And most of all, I mean that I understand more about what you're going through than most people. And I understand how, as much as you might not want to hear it, being a part of SHIELD will hurt you more in the long run than anyone will ever admit." Melinda paused, swallowed hard. "I also mean that I don't want to see them do to you what they did to me, and I'm starting to get worried that I might be too late."

Quake narrowed her eyes. "You're lying. You're trying to… I don't know, turn me against SHIELD or something. Which is really shitty of you, even for a villain—"

"I'm not lying."

"I can't believe I fell for all this," Quake said with a shake of her head. She started clambering to her feet. Tea sloshed out over the lip of her mug. "I should never have let my guard down. And now, when I'm already all screwed up, you just… you just…"

"Quake. Daisy. Daisy, wait—"

"That's not even my name," she snapped.

"Well, it's the name you gave me," Melinda pushed back. "You want me to call you 'Skye Powers?' Because I doubt that's your real name, either."

"You don't know me," glared Quake. She slammed the mug down on a table and began stalking over to her door, probably to pack up and leave for good. Melinda had miscalculated, ruined everything. "You don't know my name. I don't know your name. We're strangers. Worse, we're enemies. This whole thing was such a colossally bad idea."

"Melinda."

Quake froze. "What?"

"My real name. It's Melinda. Melinda May, former agent of SHIELD, former hero known as The Cavalry."

"…I've heard about the Cavalry. She died."

"I promise you, I'm not dead." Melinda crossed over to where Quake was standing, with enough space between them that Quake could hopefully see that Melinda wasn't trying to box her in. "And I promise, I'm not lying, either. There's something… something I can show you. Just take a look at it, then decide for yourself if I'm telling you the truth or not. If you want, you can leave after that, and you'll never have to see me again. I'll disappear, if that's what you want from me. Just please, please, hear me out before you do."

"What is it? The thing you want me to see?"

Melinda gestured for Quake to wait a second, then dipped into the office to retrieve the tape recorder. She held it out for Quake to take.

"I've been trying to get it all down, everything that I did. It's… it's not finished. There's a piece of the story I haven't explained yet. If you want, you come find me when you're done listening and I'll tell you the rest. Otherwise, you can walk away, and you'll never hear from me again. You have my word."

Quake didn't move at first, a beat too long, just staring at Melinda's outstretched hand as she deliberated on what to do, what to believe. Then, she reached out and took the recorder and said the one thing that made Melinda feel like not all hope had been lost:

"Okay."