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2018-05-21
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If the Darkness is to Keep Us Apart

Summary:

Coulson had accepted his death for a while now, but he did not expect May to do the same. While they are in TAHITI, he gives her the only thing he has left.

Notes:

Please excuse typos. I wrote this pretty quickly.
And I was crying.
So let that be an indication about how this is going to go.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

"I'm just having a hard enough time leaving you behind." -Coulson, "The End"

Days turned into weeks and there was little change in Coulson’s condition. May suspected that living a life devoid of the stresses of leadership and making life-or-death decisions played some small role in sustaining him. There were minutes, sometimes even hours, that would pass before something would wake her up and remind her that this was not a true vacation. His breath would grow short. He would pass out for a nap and wake up fourteen hours later.

She became adept at smothering her panic and remaining calm for him. It never got any easier though.

On the third Tuesday after the Zephyr had dropped them off, May woke up to see him watching her.

“Good morning,” she greeted him.

“Morning,” he echoed faintly.

“You want to get up and make me some more of those banana pancakes?”

Coulson’s answering smile was tense. His hand reached down and grasped hers tightly.

“What is it?”

“I can’t,” he admitted. “I’ve been trying to get up, but… my legs… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said quickly, feeling her stomach flip and turn. “It’s okay. We’ll stay here.”

He did not leave the bed again.

Every night, when she could no longer keep her eyes open, she knew that she could awake to find that he had slipped away. But he held on.

On the fourth day after he could no longer stand, May woke up, still feeling the faint beating of his heart underneath her cheek. The rush of relief that swallowed her was followed by something else.

Guilt.

She picked up her head to find him smiling at her.

“Hello,” he said.

He brought a hand to her cheek to brush a tangle of hair behind her ear. May took the hand in her own and kissed it, closing her eyes.

“You okay?” He asked.

“Phil?” She asked. “Are you—are you staying… holding on for me?”

He sighed.

“Not just for you,” he said. “I’ve gotten to really look forward to this.”

“What?”

“You,” he said. “Smiling. Well, not today. But most mornings. You just look happy to see me. I always wanted to make you happy.”

May grimaced and kissed his dry lips.

“You always made me happy,” she said.

“Not always,” he replied with a dry chuckle.

May grinned and laid beside him.

“No,” she conceded. “Not always. Not when you were being stubborn, or went off on one of your crazy, suicidal ideas—

“Wow! So, never then?”

She laughed.

“We had some moments.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We did.”

He found her hand with his and laced their fingers together.

“So, what’s next for you, Agent May?”

May starred resolutely at the ceiling fan. As much as she hated herself for thinking beyond the present moment, she had had a lot of time to let her mind wander over the last month. It was not fair to him. She should not be planning for a future he would have no part of.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said at last.

“Yeah it does,” he insisted, turning his head to face her. “Come on. Are you going to rejoin the team? Or has this life of luxury made you reconsider early retirement?”

“I—I’m going to go back,” she confessed. “The kids—the team, they need someone to watch their back.”

May blushed at her verbal slip. Of course, Coulson would not let that go.

“‘Kids,’ huh?” He repeated. “Never heard you call them that before.”

“They are kids,” she said. “Thinking they are invincible, going off on half-cocked plans without waiting for all of the intel, getting themselves hurt or… worse.”

“Yeah,” Coulson said softly. “I know.”

May’s head suddenly felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. She sat up and took a deep breath.

“Fitz wasn’t your fault, you know,” she heard him say. “You were there for him in the end. All you could do was be there.”

“I didn’t do much,” she said. “Mack did most of the talking. I couldn’t… by the time I thought of the right words to say, he was gone.”

“So, tell him,” he replied. “Tell him when you see him again.”

“Maybe I will.”

May stared blankly at the wall in front of her.

There was so much she had left to tell Fitz. To tell Simmons and Daisy. She had tried to show them every day how much they mattered to her. Words never came as easily as actions. But when she lost Fitz… that sweet, loyal kid that was as open with his feelings as she was cut off from them, she knew that it was not enough.

They had to be told.

They had to know beyond all doubt how precious they were to her.

“They love you,” Coulson said, breaking into her thoughts. “Much more than you realize.”

May turned around and raised her eyebrow, telegraphing her skepticism.

“They do,” he reasserted. “They’re yours.”

She sighed and laid back down beside him.

“Not just mine,” she whispered.

***

May was only gone for half an hour. Coulson might not have been eating much anymore, but she had gone through every one of their meager supplies in the past week. She had just ran to the grocery store to get enough food to last the next few days.

When she came back, she found him slumped on the kitchen floor, barely conscious.

“Phil!” She yelled, dropping the groceries.

His head jerked in her direction and his eyes fluttered.

May crashed to her knees beside him and cradled his face between her hands. Coulson blinked groggily and looked up at her.

“You okay?”

“’s a relative term,” he slurred.

“Okay,” May said. “Help me out here. Can you put your arms around my neck?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Coulson reached up and wrapped his arms around her. May felt a muscle in her back pull as she raised him to his feet.

“I’ve got you,” she assured him. She bore the brunt of his weight as he took one step after another until they were standing next to the bed.

He let go of her and rolled gracelessly onto the mattress, gasping for air.

“I… I was… I needed to get… something…”

May fumbled with the oxygen mask beside their bed as he tried to make himself understood.

“Hey,” she shushed him, holding the mask to his face. “Save it. Just breathe.”

Coulson nodded and took in one shaky breath after the other. May’s white-knuckled grip on the mask relaxed as the lines in his face began to smooth and his breathing became more even.

“Okay?” She asked after a few minutes.

His answered “yes” fogged up the translucent plastic tubing.

“Good,” she said, putting the mask down. “Now, you want to tell me what the hell you were doing?”

“I had to get something to write with,” he explained, looking down.

It was only now that she realized that he had been grasping a white envelope in his hands. Between the crinkled folds of the paper, she could make out the letters of her first name.

“When—when did you want me to read that?” She asked.

Coulson shrugged.

“I don’t think I've got much longer, Melinda,” he whispered. “I didn’t know if I would get the chance…”

May eyed the envelope and looked back to the faint pink glow on his cheeks.

“Would you like me to wait?”

He held out the letter to her.

“You can read it now,” he said softly.

May let out a long breath, taking the chance to study every line of his face. She took the envelope from him and slid her finger under the adhesive tab. A loose scrap of paper fluttered to her lap when she pulled the letter out. May picked it up and held it between two fingers. It was a random, 16-digit alphanumeric code.

“What is this?”

“Just read,” Coulson answered.

She could feel his eyes watching her, then very studiously not watching her, as she read the letter one time, then a second, and then a third to make sure she had not misunderstood. By the last time she read, “I love you --Phil,” her arms felt so heavy, she could barely support the weight of the piece of paper in her hands.

“Melinda,” she heard him say. “I don’t expect you to—

“The Stasis Archive?” She interrupted him.

Coulson nodded.

“Phil,” she said. “How do you even know it still exists? When Hydra overthrew SHIELD, they must have destroyed it.”

“They didn’t,” he replied. “It makes sense. Plenty of SHIELD was Hydra. They were so obsessed with eugenics. Wouldn't want to destroy the next generation of potential Hydra soldiers. They had as much invested in the Archives as we did. For different reasons, of course.”

May swallowed and picked up the discarded alphanumeric code.

“So, this is yours? The code to your locker?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Never thought I would use it. But my sample is still viable.”

She read the key code over and over, trying to make sense of what he was giving her. She hadn’t thought about the Stasis Archive since Andrew and she separated. Every agent was given the opportunity to have their reproductive material frozen in case of a mission-related incident. Between radiation exposure, 084s, and garden variety bullet-wounds, plenty of agents had to use the Archives if they ever wanted to have their own children.

“So is yours,” he added.

Her head shot up and she stared at him in shock. He at least had the grace to look guilty.

“A old contact of Talbot’s is running the facility now,” he explained. “There are several other branches of the government using it. Apparently, we aren’t the only ones at risk of having our genetic material compromised from field work.”

He reached for the mask and took another lungful of oxygen before continuing.

“The Archives are active,” he said. “Every agent who gave a sample can still access it. I checked.”

“When?” She whispered. "When did you check?"

Coulson licked his lips.

“When we got back from the future.”

May closed her eyes and clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking.

“Why didn’t you say anything then?”

“Because I didn’t know how,” he admitted. “I obviously still don’t know how. I just… I know how much FitzSimmons and Daisy mean to you. I know how good you are with them. And when I saw you with Robin… I meant what I said, Melinda. You would make a great mother.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him.

“Not without you,” she said.

Coulson reached for her hand and held it tight.

“Robin is proof that you don’t need anyone’s help,” he said. “But I don’t expect anything from you. This is… you can do whatever you want with this information. You don’t have to use it.”

“Yeah,” she chided. “You only wrote that about six times in this letter.”

He smiled faintly.

“What do you want, Phil?”

“What I want,” he said slowly. “Is not to leave you alone.”

May wiped the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand. Placing the letter and code back in the envelope, she laid it carefully on the nightstand before crawling into bed next to him. He pressed his lips to the crown of her head and sighed.

“I don't want you to decide anything right now. I know it's... unexpected. I just wish I could have done more than this,” he said. “You deserve more.”

“Phil," she said pointedly. "This is everything.”

He pulled her against him with a strength that she did not know he still possessed.

“I love you,” he whispered.

May winced and her eyes spilled over.

“I love you too,” she told him.

“Melinda?”

She picked up her head.

“Did you mean it when you said that you saw me?” He asked. “When you died?”

“Yes,” she said. “I saw you. You were always there for me. Always.”

He smiled and brought a hand up to stroke her cheek.

“Good.”

He closed his eyes.

“I hope I see you,” he whispered.

Notes:

*Title borrowed from "Walk On," by U2