Two notes. First this is for Oparu, because her fics make me unbearably happy and because she is an accomplice to my brain's need to write fic. And for those who are following "Tendrils" wondering why there's this and not that... it's coming. The next chapter is a beast and it's having to be written piecemeal over time, but it will be updated, promise.

And now the legal stuff... don't own it, don't pretend to.

He wakes to the sound of his children laughing, and despite the other side of the bed being empty, Phil Coulson smiles. The place they live now is called The Playground, but it felt more like a mausoleum until Ambassador May arrived with her charges in tow.

This life is nothing that he and Melinda planned for their kids, and yet it has evolved so quickly and so organically that sometimes he wonders if the universe only pretended to give them choices back when they were younger, when it felt like their fates were somehow in their control.

"She went for a walk around the lake."

Phil nods and sits down on at the table beside Ambassador May. It doesn't matter that Melinda's mother has told him repeatedly to call her Lian, he simply cannot do it. The woman practically rewrote the manual for undercover work at MI-5. She served as Ambassador to the China for England for nearly a decade. She created Melinda May. All of those things earn her a place in the universe far too high for a mere mortal like him to call her by her first name. So Ambassador it is, despite the furrow it creates in her brow.

"She's pushing herself too hard," he notes as he takes in the cool morning air from their spot on the front porch. Breakfast is simple today... oatmeal, assorted berries, the vanilla yogurt Melinda favors, coffee. Phil stirs berries into his oatmeal as he takes a sip of the steaming hot caffeinated beverage.

"You both push yourselves too hard. So stubborn. No wonder you work well together."

Phil would disagree but it's pointless. If he's only rarely won a fight with Melinda, he's resigned to never winning one with the elder May. She's intimidating in a different way from the beautiful woman she reared. Sometimes, Phil would swear that Lian May can actually read the etchings of who he is where they're carved out in his soul.

They've been here for weeks now, with a good month left of their stay. Fury ordered them both off the grid for rest and recovery following Bahrain. Their injuries alone justified it. Melinda's right arm was so badly damaged at the shoulder she couldn't even lift it more than a few inches, and that was on top of two bullets to the torso, a severe concussion, and massive blood loss. Phil had fractured his leg in two places in their initial retreat trying to get some civilians clear of a grenade. He was just now cleared for road miles - walking only - and he had a chunk of rehab left to complete before he could be medically sound for the field.

But their injuries weren't why they were in Pennsylvania at the Ambassador's farm... the beautiful plot of land she'd chosen for retirement not long after Melinda had started the academy at S.H.I.E.L.D.. They were here for the scars no one could see on their bodies... more specifically the ones Melinda carried from the horror she'd faced inside the Bahrain compound. It was a nightmare she still couldn't talk about, one Fury had sealed away in a level 10 file that he wouldn't let Phil see.

"If she's ever ready to tell you, she'll tell you herself. That's the only way anyone should ever hear the story, Phil. Trust me."

He had hoped being here with Melinda would help her do that... find some peace, open up to him. Instead, she barely spoke. She'd sit across from him for hours silently, the laugh lines around her eyes and mouth invisible now that she no longer made the sound that had created them.

Melinda seemed to only need him when she needed the physical release of sex. The first time, they'd been a mess of bandages and awkward, injured limbs, but somehow they'd made it work, her body hovering over his, his hands anchoring her hips. She'd stayed quiet then, too, except for the rapid breaths that heralded her peak.

Phil could deal with the silence. It was the helplessness that tore at him, played games with his mind. Melinda couldn't open up. The sex didn't seem to be doing anything beyond providing temporary respites from the mental agony she suffered. Phil was failing her. He felt it keenly every day. And of everyone in the world he'd never wanted to fail...

"You think very loudly, Phillip."

He smiled and looked over at the Ambassador. She was looking out at the trail Melinda had taken that took a two mile loop around the small lake on the property.

"I just wish I could do more. I wish I could help her."

"You are the only help she wants. I give her a safe place to be, to heal. But you are what heals her."

He shook his head. "I've done nothing. She's still there in that place, in that awful, horrid desert, and I can't bring her back."

The touch of the Ambassador's hand on his arm startled Phil. The kindness in her eyes almost broke him wide open.

"There is no one else she allows here. No other man she brings to her bed. You are what she clings to, without even asking you to stay because she knows you will. It may not look like love now, Phillip, or feel like it... but allowing you to be that for her... it's the only way she can accept love. Not for always. For now."

The words embedded themselves inside Coulson, wrapping around his heart. It was love the only way she could accept it, and she wanted it from him.

That night, when Melinda crawled into his bed, he didn't try to convince her to talk, didn't whisper to her to go slower, didn't do any of the things he'd taken to trying to direct her away from sex for pursuits he thought were healthier or better for her. This was her fighting for her life... this was Melinda reminding herself who she was and who she loved. And so Phil found her eyes in the dark and let her see that he understood, that he was there.

He let her see love waiting for her when she was ready to claim it.

Five weeks later she met him as he returned from a run. He was still weeks away from medical clearance, but the future seemed clear to him now. He would return to S.H.I.E.L.D., Melinda would follow when she was ready, and time and love would give them back the life they'd planned before Bahrain tried to destroy them.

"I'm pregnant."

Phil had always imagined those words terrifying him. He wasn't sure he was meant to be anyone's father, not only because he'd lost his own so young, but because he liked what he did. Being a beacon of light in a dark place, being the protector for those who needed it... that was why he existed, Phil was sure of it.

Until he stood there looking at Melinda's eyes, saw fear and want and hope and anxiety there... saw life back in her again for the first time since she'd bid him good-bye and raced into that compound. And then all he wanted was to keep her there... anchored to life and to him.

"I can't be its mother and be trapped in the dark, Phil. And I want... I want it."

He stepped into her, arms wrapping around her, the feel of her sinking into his body all Phil needed to choose his course.

"I want it, too, Melinda. I want you. I love you so much."

They talked for hours, for days. Melinda wanted him to go back to S.H.I.E.L.D., to follow the path he'd chosen. But she couldn't do it with him. They could buy a house in Virginia, she said. She'd get a job teaching - she had degrees in psychology and history and spoke four languages - and she and the baby, they'd be there waiting when he came home from missions, when he got done saving the world.

But he couldn't imagine it anymore. Phil Coulson without Melinda May at his side felt like an invitation for disaster. Before, when they hadn't been a permanent team, they'd worked fine on their own, but now... any firefight, any blown mission, and the idea of anyone else at his side was untenable.

Phil made his choice for himself because Melinda insisted on it. His education, training and experience made him a Detective Sergeant in the D.C. police without much red tape to navigate and two weeks before he started, they got married on her mother's farm. Fury gave Melinda away. Barton and Hill and Romanov were their witnesses. And that was how their new life began.

They ended up buying an old horse farm that left Phil an hour's drive from D.C. because they wanted room for their former comrades in arms to visit and because the second barn made a perfect cover for the training room they built. Melinda didn't need to stay combat-ready anymore, but her husband still chased armed criminals down in the street and she never let him lose the edge S.H.I.E.L.D. had honed.

Their daughter was born six months after Phil was sworn in by the D.C. police. Their son followed three years later.

When the Battle of New York left a city they both loved in shambles, Melinda and Phil dropped the kids with the Ambassador and met up with Fury, Hill, Barton, and Romanov to help in the aftermath. They couldn't shake the feeling that somehow they had let their friends down... that maybe they should've been there fighting along side them. But Natasha would have none of it.

"Yours is the only home we have. All of us. We come to see you and we see what life can be like and it reminds us why we keep fighting."

They left with a slightly larger family in their hearts... the Avengers, the whole broken, heroic lot of them were now part of the Coulsons' sphere. Phil had been a little embarrassing when he met Captain America. But then he became "Uncle Steve" to their kids, and their house knew the joy of Peggy and Gabe Coulson laughing as Steve and Clint and Bruce Banner all took turns doing cartoon voices on Christmas morning over breakfast.

The day the phone rang, Phil hadn't been expecting the world to change again, to feel it shift and ripple beneath his feet, but it did.

"Coulson," Fury croaked, fighting for breath, "Take May and the kids and run."

"Sir?"

"Someone's after me. They know what you... they'll come for you."

Phil and Melinda disappeared that night, resurfacing via a private airfield in Pennsylvania two days later. With their kids safely in the Ambassador's loving and, if necessary, lethally protective care, Phil and Melinda went in search of the only people they knew they could trust. They were halfway back to D.C. when word reached them of Alexander Pierce's betrayal and the fall of the Triskelion.

They were in D.C. when satellite pictures came in of what was left of their home. A drone strike had left it in ruins a few hours after Fury's call.

Slowly but surely their ragtag family of powerful mortals and superheroes came back together... and Fury, who had "died" for the world but was still very much alive and pulling strings, flew Phil and Melinda to a base he'd dubbed The Playground.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. has to be rebuilt, Phil. The world needs it. And this time, it needs to be done right."

He handed a small cube to his former agent.

"That's a tool box to help you do it."

Phil felt loyalty and duty surge through him, but Melinda couldn't live in the darkness and be the woman she'd become. She had told him so. And Phil couldn't live without her.

"Sir, I can't."

But then Melinda stepped beside him and put her hand on his shoulder.

"Of course you can. I'll have your back."

He couldn't speak even though all he wanted to do was tell her no, she didn't have to do this, that it was too much to ask of her after all she had given him. But like her mother, Melinda saw through to the deepest parts of him, and she leaned into him, forehead touching against his.

"This isn't about going into the darkness, Phil. This is about protecting the light."

The mats never left the floor of the gym in The Playground since training was basically run around the clock. New recruits came in every day, agents whose loyalty had been vetted returned, and Phil and Melinda were the orchestrators of it all. But on this morning, as the laughter drew Director Coulson into the room, physical combat was most definitely not on the agenda.

"Auntie Tash, I can do it. Let me try!"

Melinda and Natasha walked Peggy through a complicated jump-spin combination. Her attempt to mimic the older women ended in something akin to comedy, but her fierce face told Phil his daughter would have the move down before the day was out. Gabe was in the corner giggling wildly as Clint taught him to climb the long rope he used to get up and down out of his "nest."

When Melinda caught sight of him, she smiled and whispered to Natasha before walking over to him.

"Now it feels like home," he whispered, leaning into her.

"Mother's taken over the kitchen. Koenig may never recover."

Phil chuckled. He could picture the Ambassador running the poor agent ragged. He owed Koenig some new video games at the very least.

"I have those files ready. Want to go over them with some coffee?"

He nodded and they headed off for the kitchen, their kids clearly more interested in their cool aunt and uncle than them... at least for the moment.

"They're not battle tested at all, but if we're going to rebuild our science and technology divisions, they're by far the most qualified of the candidates who've been cleared by Stark and Hill."

Melinda handed him the files. Jemma Simmons and Leopold Fitz. Tops of their class, brilliant minds, and fiercely loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D.. They had managed to secure their entire lab and defend it from HYDRA with a few impromptu and insane modifications to the electronic security system and a couple of beta weapons.

"I'm surprised Stark doesn't want to hire them," he quipped, and Melinda laughed.

"Oh, he does. They said no. Antoine Triplett is also on his way in. You signed off on his file already, but now we have an ETA. I tried to get Sharon Carter to come, too, but she thinks she'll be more use if she stays in the CIA."

"She just doesn't want to leave D.C."

Melinda chuckled. "Jealous that she's got a crush on Steve?"

He rolled his eyes as she dropped another file in front of him and sighed.

"This one's Fury's suggestion. I have my doubts. She's been on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar for some time, apparently. Amazing hacking skills. But she's had no training. We'll be starting from scratch."

"Skye," he said, reading her name in the file. "She'll be a project."

"You like projects."

Phil laughed. He did. It had been the cause of their first fight years ago when he'd been certain he could recruit Barton and Melinda had been equally sure he could not.

She'd won that one. It had taken Melinda's fighting skills and long night of drinking to get Barton to come in.

"So this group... we'll bring them here, make them our base team. That will give us time to get them ready for what's coming."

The worry and doubt about what exactly that was must have leaked out in his voice, because Melinda stepped into him, her head leaning on his shoulder.

"After Bahrain, when you stayed with me... I knew I wasn't who I wanted to be anymore, but your belief in me, it gave me time and the strength to become who I am now."

He waited as she wrapped her arms around him.

"S.H.I.E.L.D... maybe it was never what we thought it was. But you can help it become what it should be. That's who you are, Phil."

"Only with you beside me," he whispered, his throat tight with emotion as her faith in him overwhelmed him just a little.

"With or without me," she insisted, "but you don't have to worry. This is who I am. This is where I belong."