*A/N: Hey guys, I committed the awful author's folly of posting a chapter before I'd really ironed out the ending, meaning that later I backtracked a little and needed to fix ch4, moving some of the conversations into that chapter rather than this one. I should have just waited to publish. Sorry! If you read ch4 within the first day or two after it was posted, it probably was different than what you'd see now, mostly in this last two scenes (their sparring match and Skye's injury), but a little extra in the swimming lesson scene. Anyway, sorry again, but you should check back and make sure you've read the later version before reading this chapter.

She was trying to decide if this was worse than the last time-the last time she'd felt this particular sinking feeling of hollowed-out dread. It had been present that day in Austin when she had slipped away from Coulson's team and snuck off to meet Miles at his safehouse, and when she had later opened the door of his bedroom to find the Cavalry herself holding out her t-shirt and telling her very calmly to get dressed. But now, buckled in the quinjet across from Hunter and next to Coulson, with May severe and silent at the controls, not even facing her but voicing her disapproval all the same…the crushing, sinking, hollow feeling of dread had Skye immobile within its grip.

She knew she was in trouble.

May had been her usual, silent self on the whole flight back from the city where Coulson had sat across from Raina at a white-tablecloth restaurant while May and Skye listened from the kitchen and Hunter watched from the next table. It had been maybe only an hour since Skye had listened to Raina's threat to expose Simmons and received a crushing slam against the wall when she had tried to break through May's authority and give herself up for Simmons' sake. Only minutes later, she had slipped out the back of the restaurant and raced ahead of her team to the place Raina had said they would go- unknowingly racing toward the bad news and bloodbath that waited in the darkness.

She had disobeyed her leaders and abandoned her team.

May hadn't said anything at all to her yet, but the temperature of her silence was Skye's warning: it was only a matter of time.

Skye hadn't even had the energy to demand an explanation from Coulson about what was happening with Simmons. The entire exchange with her team inside the bloody back room had been all she had the presence of mind for, even during the whole ride back to base in the quinjet. She didn't even feel the anger or the grief that would have seemed only natural, now that her only living parent was a proven monster. It was the same yawning emptiness that had taken over the day they had discovered Ward was a traitor-like a safety switch thrown when the darkness was too deep to look into at the moment.

Today, she was grateful for it. But dread still had a claw in and was digging away in the back of her mind.

What was May going to say?

When they touched down at the base again and had taxied safely into the underground hanger, she, Coulson, and Hunter unbuckled quietly.

"Simmons will be back soon," Coulson said, catching Skye's eye as the cargo door was lowered. "You all should stay up and wait for her."

May appeared in the door of the cockpit and folded her arms.

"You guys go on in," she said coolly.

Hunter and Coulson moved down the ramp without another word.

Skye didn't have to be told to stay.

As a cold silence stretched, Skye's mind involuntarily shoved forward another memory-the very first time she had ever experienced this particular feeling. She remembered sitting in a middle school's principal's office, holding an ice pack against bloody knuckles while the boy down the bench held one against his split lip, listening to the secretary get her foster mom on the phone and knowing that she had done it again-that she had just ruined another good thing. The empty dread had hollowed her out, leaving her without even grief as her DHS agent had arrived instead of her foster mom. She had already packed Skye's things.

Fear of the unknown was one thing. The inevitability of the thing she feared most was worse.

"You disobeyed a direct order. Twice." May's low voice slipped in and scattered the memories like smoke.

Deciding to face her accuser, Skye turned and met her eyes.

"I'm not going to apologize for that, May. You all kept me in the dark."

May held her gaze unflinchingly.

"We have a system in this organization, Skye. A chain of command that operates on the condition of trusting obedience. Which is why I asked you to agree to only one rule."

Her choice of words triggered a memory, and Skye flung it at her. "Don't you remember the last time Coulson told us to trust the system? That system sent Ward and Fitz into a combat situation to die."

"And do you remember what happened when you found that out?" May did nothing except uncross her arms, but the heat in the room seemed to be rising. "Coulson broke protocol and brought us after them. Do you think that same man would leave Simmons stranded within HYDRA to fend for herself?"

Skye shook her head, rising to her feet. She was further down the ramp than May, so the woman was taller than her for once.

"I want to believe that-I want to believe that he knew exactly what he was doing-but you all deliberately withheld all of that information. About Simmons being in HYDRA in the first place, about her extraction plan, about the source of the carvings…"

"Do you remember the Clairvoyant, Skye? Do you remember why it's dangerous for one person to know everything?"

Something in Skye's chest sparked at that reminder.

"That's bullshit-look how much you're already in on! How is this any different?"

May took a half step forward, the air around her seeming to crackle. "Then why is it not enough for me to tell you that Coulson has a plan? Is there no one that you trust?"

Skye felt herself combust as she glared up at May, the words falling carelessly from her lips.

"May, I can't just accept orders that put my teammate's life in danger! I'm not you! I'm not a machine!"

She saw the flicker in May's eyes and regretted her words immediately. She didn't have the chance to say anything else though.

The woman wrenched her gaze away and brushed past her down the ramp into the deserted hangar, throwing a final command over her shoulder on the way out.

"Gas the plane and then go talk to Coulson."

Nearly an hour later, Skye had left Coulson's office, a stack of freshly-printed photos in hand. He had also sent to her account all the scans and photos of carvings that had been withheld from her for the past nine months. There were plenty.

She had also gone to the lab and mechanically hugged Simmons, who had seemed equally stunned by the events of the past three hours. She had been introduced to Agent Morse, the tall, severe brunette who was to thank for Coulson's cool head in front of Raina.

She still needed a shower and a chance to recalibrate, a chance to absorb all the world-shattering information that she had been loaded with today.

But before anything else, she needed May. Needed to see her and make her understand.

She checked the training room. The mess hall. Coulson's office again. The Bus. The cockpit of every plane in the hangar. No sign of her.

May had no office like Coulson's, just her tiny dorm room in the women's barracks hall. Skye had never once gone there-in fact, she could not remember a time she had ever been awake when the woman had been asleep.

Although, there was always a first time for everything.

She found the right door and knocked.

No sound from inside.

She knocked again and tipped her ear towards the door.

"May?"

She put her hand tentatively on the knob, half-expecting it to electrocute her, but it turned without resistance.

Skye pushed in the door a few inches. Darkness seemed to spill outward into the hallway, but she didn't hear a sound. She leaned in and peered around the door.

The shape in May's bed was undoubtedly the woman herself, sprawled on her stomach beneath the covers. Her face was turned away from the door, and her breathing was even, but Skye was certain she was awake. She taught me to always sleep facing the door.

"May? Could I come in?"

No reply, no movement, but it was better than rejection. Skye slipped in and shut the door behind her.

As her eyes adjusted and the darkness became more defined, she noticed May's jacket dropped carelessly on the floor, a smudge of ink against the softer dark of the carpet. Compared with the military-precise arrangement of everything else in the room, it felt like a bad sign. Skye at first hesitated at the door, two hands behind her back gripping the knob. Eventually though, her impatient feet carried her forward until she was standing next to May's bed.

"May, I want to apologize for what I said earlier. I know I shouldn't have said that. Partly because it was so disrespectful, but mostly because I know it's not true. You're not a machine. I know that, probably better than anyone. So I'm sorry I didn't think before I spoke."

Still nothing from May, not even a change in her breathing, but Skye pressed on, turning to seat herself lightly on May's mattress, facing away from her and out into the darkness.

"I get it, May. I understand why we can't know everything. But I told you I wouldn't apologize for what I did, and that's still true. I'm not going to be you. I can't. I can't keep myself compartmentalized and carve my emotions out of situations like this. This team is my family, and there will never come a time when I'll be willing to look away from a situation that puts one of them in danger, just because I was ordered to."

Skye stared down at her fingers, twisting together between her knees, the cold dread almost choking her as she went on to the cleaving question.

"I'm sorry, but if that's the agent you need me to be, then I guess that means I'll just keep failing you. And if that means that I can't be on your team anymore…then I'd rather we skipped ahead to the inevitable."

There was no reply from May, but Skye still didn't turn to face her, just focused on forcing her heartbeat back into a manageable state.

"I'm just going to stay here, May," she said into the darkness in front of her, "until you tell me what we're doing next."

Only a few seconds passed with Skye waiting in silence before a few quiet words behind her dispelled it.

"If I've made you think I want you to be just like me, then I owe you an apology."

Skye turned sharply over her shoulder and saw that May had moved like a silent, weightless shadow and was now sitting up, the covers puddled around her legs. Skye turned fully to face her, pulling her legs up onto the mattress and folding them beneath herself.

"What do you-"

"I've been training you to be an agent, Skye, not to be the second edition of the person I've become. Parents who want their kids to be just like them aim too low."

Skye's heart skipped a beat.

Parents…

"This organization does not need a cold-hearted assassin or a heartless fighting machine-and that's not what I would ever want for you to be either. I don't want you to become any less than the person you were before, but it scares me just how likely that possibility still is."

May was leaning back against her headboard now, her legs drawn up against her chest, arms wrapped around her legs and her hands grasping her bare ankles. A slant of blue light from the screen of the digital clock on her nightstand lent depth to her features, which were composed as ever.

"Just because you're an agent doesn't mean you have to stop caring about the people you love, fighting for them, or protecting them. But being an agent means we live lives where the decision to protect the world sometimes means we can't always prioritize each other. Sometimes, that backfires. And that's why you have to choose to trust the decisions of your leaders."

Skye sighed, looking down at her feet.

"I know. And Coulson explained to me about Morse and the extraction plan. But why couldn't you tell me that in the kitchen in the first place?"

"Because we have one rule that you agreed to obey. And I needed to see how far that went."

Skye understood, but needed one more thing. Needed to clarify.

"But May…what would you have done? If you didn't know that Simmons had an extraction plan, an agent in place to get her out safely…would you have stood there and let him deny Raina what she wanted, even when you've seen what he's been doing to the walls of his office every night? Is there no part of you that cares more for her than for the mission?"

May's hand was suddenly closing around her wrist in the darkness, her grip as severe as her gaze. "I know you don't have any reason to believe me when I tell you this, but let me be perfectly clear: No one would have more guilt from losing Simmons than me."

The woman abruptly released her wrist, and Skye watched May's eyes leave hers and settle on the duvet between them. More than a few seconds passed, but Skye didn't doubt that she would continue. She was just still selecting her words.

It was like the Bahrain confessional all over again.

"Coulson may have been the one who selected the members by name, but I'm the one who actually assembled this team. Once Coulson was back from 'Tahiti' and requesting a team, Fury knew he would ask me to join up and conferenced me on everything ahead of time-the TAHITI project, GH-325, all of it. Then he let me make the call-who did I want on the plane around Coulson? I gave him the specs-a biotech team to heal and project, a specialist to defend and restrain…and myself to supervise and report. I gave the parameters to Fury, who gave them to Coulson…and here we are."

Skye joined the threads.

"So you think that if anything had actually happened to Jemma, it would indirectly be your fault that she was ever here for it to happen to?"

May was still staring at the mattress as she replied.

"Yeah. She was just a kid when he brought her onto this plane. A starry-eyed scientist with no field experience who was here for the adventure and the exploration. Then the field happens to you. One trauma after another knocks you over, and every time you get back up, something's different. Usually, it's you. She was just a kid. But now she's an agent that we can plant in the belly of the beast, our hen in the wolfhouse…and she's the after. She's lost that innocence one mission at a time because I told Fury to make sure Coulson had the best possible Science team on this plane."

Skye leaned towards May, trying to draw her gaze to her own.

"May. You can't go that route. If you did, you would have too much else to shoulder-you can't possibly think that you're also at fault for Ward being with us-or for what happened to Fitz..."

May pushed a hand through her hair and down her neck, still staring down at the blanket between them.

"Who says I'm not?"

Skye's hand grabbed hers this time in a tight squeeze.

"I say it. And so would anyone else who has seen all you have done to protect us from day one. You have put yourself between us and the darkness more times than I can count-but that's too big of a burden for you to make yourself bear. And if your goal is to make us great agents, then sooner or later, we will each have to face the darkness on our own. You can only help us be ready for that. And you've done that. You're doing that."

May was quiet for a long time, her hand still limp within Skye's.

"You didn't send Simmons in unprepared. You told me she was good. Ready for the task the Director set her to. And you knew she wasn't without protection."

May's lip pulled in a strange half-smirk in the dark. "Yeah. Sending a girl into danger unprepared and unprotected is not something I planned to ever do twice."

Nothing in May's tone had changed, but like a rubber band, Skye's mind snapped to the front the words of a conversation from nearly a year ago-the story of the Cavalry's infamous mission…

Oh Jesus.

She looked at the woman across from her in the darkness, a woman who, surely, must have once been the before- the starry-eyed agent fresh on the field, unscarred and unafraid. And then one trauma at a time had burned everything away. Forging her and refining her as only fire could.

The after.

"You say you don't want me to turn out like you. But sitting here, I can't see any reason why that would be a bad thing."

May suddenly, finally, looked up, their gazes meeting with the force of magnets aligning.

"I don't want you to be me, Skye-I want you to be better."

Skye felt herself smiling, feeling the weight lifting a little, the cold dread clearing like mist before the sun.

"Oh, sure, perfection. Not at all hard to improve on."

May's hand was moving at last, but not holding back-instead, it was extracting itself from Skye's grip.

"Don't joke about this-listen to me." May was shifting, leaning towards her, one hand actually twisting in the fabric of May's shirt to pull her forward. "I am not planning on ever leaving again, but that doesn't mean I will always be there to lead or protect you. And when that time comes-"

"No, May, shut up, don't talk like that-"

"Skye, listen." Her volume had not risen at all, but the weight of her tone was so intense that Skye shut her mouth immediately, her eyes searching May's in the darkness.

The hand fisted in her t-shirt twisted tighter.

"If there ever comes a time that you are on your own, without me, or Coulson, or your leaders between the darkness and you, then I need to know that you're ready for anything that could be demanded of you. Even making the decisions that you don't want to make. Obeying the orders that no part of you wants to obey."

Something quivered behind May's words, and Skye put a hand on the arm stretching between them, feeling the tremors beneath her S.O.'s skin. She searched the woman's eyes, seeing the fractures from beneath rising to the surface.

"May? What aren't you telling me?"

Seeming to realize that she was showing a hand that she hadn't intended to show, May suddenly released Skye's shirt and leaned back again, her legs untucking from beneath her as she leaned back against the headboard. Suddenly realizing there was no reason to still be sitting in the dark, Skye reached for the switch on the lamp on the nightstand. As gold light filled the room, she caught the glimmer of tear tracks before May's hand was smearing them away.

"May?" Skye scooted closer until their crossed legs were bumping. She put a hand lightly on the woman's knee. "May, there's nothing you could tell me that could be worse than everything else I've learned today. Please, will you let me understand?"

May had turned her face away, was looking into the corner of the room, the hair that had fallen over her shoulder hiding her face from Skye, and Skye saw her draw a few steady breaths before turning back to face her. Her eyes were still shining.

"What you thought Coulson was doing tonight? Sacrificing one team member to save another? He is capable of that. In fact, you now know that he's doing it right now."

Understanding dawned.

Skye felt her eyes widen involuntarily. "The carvings-"

"Are the first step down the dark road that Garrett blazed ahead of him, a road with an unknown but no less fearsome destination. But he won't let himself go that far-and he's asked me to make that call if…when…the time comes."

Cold realization threaded through Skye. She pulled her hand away, felt herself covering her mouth. May's eyes closed, sending tears creeping down her cheeks, her hands tightening around handfuls of the fabric of her pants as she went on in a voice like an open grave.

"A machine could do it. A machine could do it and live with herself. But I don't want to. For every selfish reason, I don't want to have to put him down, orders be damned.

May suddenly looked up at Skye, holding her gaze in the half-light.

"What you just did? Disobeying me, trying to give yourself up if it would save the teammate you love? I would do it in a heartbeat if there was any way…and there's not. He can send in Morse to save Simmons or me to save you, but there's nothing any of us can do to save him from himself."

Skye was moving without thinking, crawling to the top of the mattress and sitting down hip-to-hip with May, bringing one hand to rest lightly on her back as she tipped her forehead against May's temple and spoke into her ear.

"May. We'll find a way."

She felt the woman shake her head minutely against hers.

"I want to believe that."

Skye leaned forward and touched May's chin gently with her other hand, and the woman turned slightly toward her. Skye reached up and brushed the tears gently away, ready to be pushed back at any moment, ready for May to turn away and sever the connection and redraw the blurry borders of their relationship…but she let herself tentatively ask for more.

"Will you let me help you?"

As May stared solemnly into her eyes for a suspended second, Skye felt all the other questions pass between them.

Will you let me stay by your side?

Will you tell me I'm wanted, not just tolerated?

Will you tell me you want me with you?

Instead of answering, however, May just leaned in and let her face drop into the curve of Skye's shoulder. Skye's arms encircled her gently as they both drew their legs in, curling into one another as May folded herself into Skye's space, fitting themselves in and around each other like complementary shapes. May's tears were of a quieter sort than Skye's, but she still felt the collar of her shirt grow damp beneath May's cheek. As she tugged the blanket up over their legs and drew the woman closer against her, Skye felt herself smiling almost sadly.

If we were relatively normal, adjusted, untraumatized individuals, we never would have reached this point with one another.

Her hand fell to May's ribs, resting just over the scars only she had seen. Her fingers traced its borders through the woman's shirt, memorizing its shape and pressing in warmth.

But if we were relatively normal, adjusted, untraumatized individuals, we wouldn't need this at all.

"We're such a mess, aren't we, Skye?" May said beneath her chin. "Both needing so desperately exactly what we never let ourselves ask for." She felt her hand tracing gently along her ribs, lingering precisely where two bullets had nearly killed her almost a year ago.

Skye tightened her arms around May and brushed her lips against the woman's brow.

"Maybe we are. But when we both give each other all of the nothing we have, it's amazing how that nothing somehow manages to be enough."

May tipped her face up, moving her hand up to brush Skye's cheek gently for a moment before leaning in to press a single, gentle kiss against her lips.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is."

*A/N: Well, that's it. Please let me know how you felt about the way I wrote them/any other Skye/May stories you'd like to read-I'm sure I'll be writing more.