None of these folks are mine. Just working out some stress with some angsty fic.

Ian Quinn was a man with a twisted sense of justice that had nothing to do with his status as one of the most wanted men in the world. Legal and illegal, right and wrong... those weren't words that carried meaning for him nor did they matter much in the universe he had skyrocketed through until very recently. No, Quinn was more about do unto me and I do unto you times ten. It wasn't about leveling the field so much as it was about ripping your guts out in retaliation for scratching him on your way through a door.

It was why, despite the fact that he'd been following orders, he hadn't really minded shooting Skye and leaving her to a gruesome death back in Italy. She had done unto him. It was simple payback.

So when he and Raina had gone back to Cuba to retrieve anything left behind that might aid them in reconstructing the GH325 mystery juice, he'd almost cackled with glee when he found the intricately carved stick lying in the wreckage. His mind replayed a story he'd heard Ward tell Garrett, the details jumping out to Quinn because despite his status as Garrett's chosen boy, Ward clearly had been a little intimidated by his experience with the alien relic.

The rest of the story, though... the part after Ward put it down... that was the part that interested Ian Quinn.

He slipped on his gloves and picked up the legendary piece of weaponry. The weight of it in his hands was intriguing... it was heavier than it looked, and yet not something a mortal main couldn't handle, not like the stories he'd heard about Thor's hammer.

The temptation to slip off his gloves and feel the power of the ages-old artifact was powerful. But then he thought about the satisfaction to come. And he realized he could wait to feel the surge of adrenaline that came from holding life and death in his hands until he could share it with the person he most wanted to endure some distinct and painful agony.

He could wait till opportunity knocked. He had no doubt that it would.

There had been a moment when Melinda May's mother had sat her down and explained a painful and overwhelming reality about the path she was choosing by joining S.H.I.E.L.D. and committing to their ideals.

"You are promising to put yourself between the innocent and the dangerous. You are agreeing to your own sacrifice for as little as one life saved. Do you understand that?"

Melinda understood. And she didn't think herself particularly noble or generous in the decision to marry her life to that one ideal of "protection." It was just that she didn't believe she could function in the world of far more gray goals that her mother had lived in for years. Counterintelligence aided in keeping the world safe; there was no debate about that. But it also operated on a firm foundation of deception that had already come between Melinda's parents to the point that she didn't even know what her father looked like.

She wanted a life different than that. And so she'd chosen S.H.I.E.L.D. The price she'd paid for that choice had been unbearably high, and yet even after Bahrain, Melinda couldn't say she'd go back and make another decision. S.H.I.E.L.D. had given her much despite the cost. It had given her Phil. It had, in the most unexpected surprise, given her the little team that she now called family as she watched over them as they fought to recover in a world where S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ideals had been thrown back in the faces of the loyal by HYDRA's evil.

Part of her had always assumed that when she died it would be in exactly the manner her mother had described to her... standing between an innocent and danger, making a choice to do what was right no matter the cost. It was nothing Melinda feared or that she sought. Just the likely result of the way she lived her life. And it shouldn't have come as a surprise that her enemies would know this about her. Some part of her maybe should have been on guard for it. But how did you guard against the thing that made you who you were?

So it was her own beliefs, her own unshakable faith in the mission, that made her vulnerable. A centipede soldier bearing down on Simmons, Tripp too busy fending off a second attack against Skye and Coulson to respond. It took barely ten steps really before May was there, on the soldier, doing her best to distract him from Simmons until she could get to Tripp's position and safety.

She was ten seconds too late in seeing the trap. The soldier made no move to go after Simmons. In fact, none of them did, not even to support their men under assault from Triplett's and now Coulson's guns. The man she was wrestling wasn't there to kill Simmons, he was there to distract Melinda, and as that information registered, an arm wrapped around her throat and, before she could react, a hypodermic pricked the skin of her neck.

Melinda heard Phil screaming her name as she faded, her mind desperately clinging to the last sliver of consciousness she could before everything slipped away.

The design had been Raina's idea, the positioning and angles perfect for the research project they had in mind. When Quinn had told her about his plans, the gleam in the exotic woman's eyes had done more to turn him on than the sexiest piece of lingerie ever could.

Sure, it was torture really... and by the time they were done, if their subject survived, she'd be of little use to anyone. But Raina was beyond intrigued with the possibility of watching someone pushed to their literal breaking point. And he had a feeling it would take a lot of delicious, agonizing time to get to that fracturing moment. Because their lab rat might be all too human, but she was, after all, the legendary "Cavalry."

Quinn smiled and gave his soldiers the go ahead.

Melinda woke up on her knees, her torso up straight and pressed against a hardened steel surface. Her arms were pushed through channels in the steel, barely big enough for her to fit, so she wondered if it had been built with her in mind. Her head could rest on the top of what looked like a tabletop whose width went all the way to her wrists, where locks held her firmly in place, turned so her hands were facing up.

Being a fierce fighter didn't mean she never felt fear, and Melinda felt it then, not so much of dying or pain but of the unknown. She had no idea from the setup in front of her what her captor's plan was. The only thing clear was they had gone to extreme lengths to make sure she was unable to escape or fight back.

"You look anxious."

Ian Quinn's voice made Melinda's eyes narrow. She hated this man for what he'd done to Skye and to Phil, and the reality that he still walked free was a constant source of fury to her. She knew that if she'd killed him that day on the Bus, it would have haunted her, but Melinda couldn't deny a small part of her wished Phil had never opened that door.

"Well, you look anxious and like you want to beat my face in again. That was not a pleasant experience for me, Agent May. I have to admit, you pack one hell of a punch. Or a half dozen or so punches, right?"

Melinda continued to glare at him but said nothing. If he was looking for some kind of satisfaction from her before he killed her, which she could only imagine was his plan, he was going to suffer one more huge blow to his ego before she went out.

"I'm not angry, though. Truly. In fact, I brought you a gift. I'm told that you're quite the master with it. Though I do hear it packs a hell of a punch, too."

Four centipede soldiers stepped into the room as Quinn motioned toward the door, and Melinda saw instantly what the smug bastard in front of her was referring to. The berserker staff lay suspended in the gloved hands of two men. The other two stepped forward toward May.

Instinctively, she closed her hands. She knew what that thing had done to her the last two times she'd touched it. She'd even told Coulson that when they were finally able to recover it, she was personally going to ask Thor to take the damn thing back to Asgard or destroy it.

But it seemed that the staff had found her.

She struggled as the two empty-handed soldiers pried her fingers flat, but it was useless. With no leverage to counter their power, Melinda could do nothing to stop them, and soon she felt the surge of adrenaline that came from first one palm and then the other coming into contact with the alien metal.

Then the centipede soldiers closed their gloved hands over hers... and made certain she couldn't let go.

The rage tore a scream from her in minutes, the intensity worse than she remembered, but Melinda guessed that was because she had no physical outlet for it. Her body was trapped, immobile, and all she could do was try to manage the pain that began to make her nerve endings feel like small explosions were taking place along every pressure point head to toe.

She'd take that pain any day over what came next.

The idea was wholly flawed and likely to fail, but she had to try. Melinda May knew she had to do something because she and Phil were outnumbered and the people in that building were counting on them.

Free the trapped agents and the civilian hostage, hold off the enemy force for as long as she could until they were free, do her best to get out alive.

Phil would never forgive her if she didn't make it. But she had to. This was the life she'd chosen.

Her first two goals took survey and time and precision. The agents were being held in a storage room that she could only access by literally taking the door off one excruciating screw twist at a time.

Then there was the civilian... the girl the gifted individual and his followers had taken hostage.

Only the story was wrong, the agents whispered. The girl was the gifted one and their person of interest was using her to amass an army.

Melinda found the girl sitting on what could best be described as an altar, though it was makeshift... boxes stacked and shaped into a curve, the girl sitting between two men armed with machetes.

The supposed gifted and his army stood between Melinda and that girl.

She gave instructions to the agents, dispersing them as best she could to keep them safe and fulfill her mission. They only had to open the doors so the girl could run through. And then they were supposed to run themselves. No looking back. No rushing in with Phil to try to save the day, not until the hostage was clear.

There were 22 men and women and the man they'd come for. And one by one, they came, rushing at Melinda from the moment she exposed herself.

She knew lethal force was her only option.

Bodies fell. Bones broke. Blood flew.

They kept coming.

More bodies, and bones, and blood.

More came.

Bodies... bones... blood.

More.

And screaming... sharp, shrill screaming that made Melinda's ears ache.

More came.

More died.

And finally there was one. One man with a machete in one hand and the girl in the other.

Melinda knew they believed the child was a god from what she'd overheard while plotting her movements. She knew the man wouldn't kill the child.

But he also wouldn't let her go.

So Melinda stepped toward him.

He looked at her, stunned, and threatened the girl.

Melinda stepped forward again.

Then she looked at the girl.

"Run."

She said it calmly, her voice even, but with a definite sense of command. Then she stepped forward again.

The machete lifted.

The girl ran.

And somehow a moment later, Melinda May took the blows that the man intended to end her life and stood over his body, his blood and hers running together.

She turned and saw the sea of death that lay behind her.

She saw the girl staring at her, frozen from fear and shock and a trauma Melinda couldn't even imagine.

And then she picked the girl up, her shrill, terrifying screams ringing in Melinda's ears, as she carried her outside.

Phil was there before she realized how far she'd moved, his hands reaching for the screaming, fighting child, his words barely reaching her over the sounds of terror the little girl was making.

"Let the girl go, May. Let the girl go."

She did. She let her go.

And then Melinda dropped to the ground.

She'd chosen death to save the innocent but lived.

But she could still hear the screaming long after the girl was safely in the hands of a S.H.I.E.L.D. team that would carry her away to safety.

And then Phil was there, holding her up, telling her that she would be okay.

Melinda screamed as the loop replayed again and again and again, her body exhausted, her mind so blind with rage she could barely think.

Somewhere she heard Ian Quinn laugh, and it sparked her rage to a new level of intensity.

She had no idea how long she'd been there... hours? Days? Everything was lost in the haze of red-hot anger that pulsed through Melinda's body, her bones burning with it, the need to move becoming a plea from each individual cell.

And her body, which had so long been Melinda's greatest weapon... it heard the plea and, desperate to destroy something, anything, to ease the ache inside... it moved.

Her body pulled backwards.

The staff came with her, the metal of her prison yielding, crinkling as if made out of paper.

The centipede soldiers who had held her hands closed against the wrath-inducing staff flew towards the wall, their grips released.

But Melinda was anything but free. The berserker staff wanted blood.

Bodies fell, bones broke, blood flew.

More men came.

More bodies, and bones, and blood.

More came.

Bodies... bones... blood.

More.

And then him.

Ian Quinn was begging for his life, his pathetic ego crumbled in the face of death, and Melinda stepped toward him, staff poised, no longer able to register anything but danger. She had to end this, and if it took killing this man, so be it.

"Melinda!"

The name stopped her for a moment... one long moment where she knew, even through the rage and pain and unrelenting nightmare images, that she was not alone.

Phil shouted her name again, a heartbreaking plea in his voice.

But she couldn't stop it. Her body literally flamed with the need to kill the cowering man at her feet.

And then she felt it... the impact in her chest, the moment of shock before relief flooded through her body.

It was over. Her hands opened, and the staff clattered to the ground, and it was over.

Bodies... bones... blood.

Melinda jerked awake, no longer certain which visions she was being haunted by, the new or the old. She was still in the med bay, her vitals monitored closely by a half dozen machines that made Simmons look worried every time she came near.

"You're okay," Phil whispered, his face close enough to hers that she could feel his breath on her cheek.

She waited through her eyes' struggle to focus and her lungs' fight to find a calm rhythmic intake of oxygen, and then Melinda found him, her lids lifting just enough to see Phil bring his hand up to brush against her cheek.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you for not letting me kill him... not like that."

He smiled weakly.

"I'm not sure I'm ready for you to thank me for shooting you with an Icer. I really need to never have to do that again."

She wanted to laugh, to smile, to ease away the guilt he felt every time he remembered that day in the cargo hold so long ago. But Melinda couldn't do any of those things. She felt heavy and drained, and the familiar tentacles that pulled at her from deep down inside were too strong to let any light out, even for him.

Phil leaned closer, and this time his hand touched down just above where her heart was still remembering how to beat without adrenaline pushing it to the edge.

"There is no place you could be that I won't find you, Melinda. Not even the dark places that scare you in here. So it's okay. It's all right if what's happened traps you there for a little while. I can see you."

And she knew that would be enough. She would climb back out of the well of death and ghosts again because just as he had before, Phil would refuse to let her go.

Melinda May's job was to step between innocence and danger. It was a choice she had made, and she could live with the consequences.

But Phil Coulson was willing to stand guard and watch over her when her demons came calling.

And she knew she'd relive every day of her life... every day... if it meant she had him by her side, even in the dark.