Chapter Text
With the London traffic, it takes around forty minutes to reach the Gardens. Coulson parks the SUV in a private staff parking spot, claiming that he has an ex-SHIELD buddy working here that he was able to contact. They use their SHIELD IDs to get through maintenance gates rather than braving the front entrance; it makes Skye giggle just because she feels like they’re breaking the rules.
The gardens are absolutely beautiful, stunningly pruned, and styled with thousands of different wonderful plant species. Even though it’s winter, there are surprisingly still some amazing flowers blooming, scenting the air. There are barely any people around, probably because it’s out of season to visit, but it means she can concentrate more on enjoying the scenery rather than worrying about civilians.
The three of them walk for a while along the pathways, pointing out various topiaries, until they find a good picnic spot on a vast stretch lawn that’s half out in the shade, half in the shade of a giant oak tree.
“Doesn’t look too damp,” Coulson observes, kneeling down to pat the grass. “It’s far away enough from the flower beds to avoid attracting insects as well.”
“Stop fussing, Phil, and move out of the way so I can lay out our blanket.” May throws the picnic blanket she’s tucked under her arm out for them to sit on, while Coulson drops the cool box down.
Skye flops down into the grass beside them face-first rather than on the blanket, humming as she enjoys the warmth and gentle vibrations that radiate from the ground. It’s a stark contrast from the constant mechanical buzz from the BUS’ engines, not just more natural and softer, but also distinctly different in the fact that she can also feel the life that exists within the plants and microfauna surrounding her. The blades of grass tickle her cheek pleasantly, a couple of them poking her nose. She closes her eyes and exhales slowly, the tension leaching out of her through her fingers as she presses them into the dirt.
“Are you trying to become one with the ground, Skye?” Coulson asks teasingly. “You know, for some reason, I don’t think suffocating yourself in mud is going to achieve that goal.”
“Shut up. It just has nice vibrations,” she sighs.
“The mud does?”
“No, the earth.”
“Ignore him,” May murmurs, resting her hand on her back. “You can relax, Skye.”
She pushes herself until she completely rolls over onto the blanket and lands on her side with her back to May. This new position results in May’s knees poking into her back and her legs brushing against Coulson’s. Their own calm vibrations join the natural ones, comforting her further to the point where she feels like she might actually be able to fall asleep, despite being in a public, and therefore potentially dangerous, place.
When her SO slips her boots and socks off for her so her feet can directly touch the grass, and her mentor begins delicately combing her fingers through Skye’s hair… she feels her respiratory and throat muscles start to vibrate. And she can’t even convince herself to be embarrassed about it.
May’s fingers pause very briefly as she comments, “That’s new,” before resuming playing with her hair.
“I told you Simmons wasn’t kidding when she told us Skye can purr,” Coulson says, his voice quiet and undisturbing but triumphant. “She’s even louder than that furball you had back at the Academy.”
“Remington just hated you so never purred around you, Phil,” May scoffs.
“You had a cat?” Skye murmurs, blinking up at her in bemusement. “And you named it Remington?”
“Remmy, for short. Remington Arms is a firearms and ammunition manufacturer,” Coulson explains. “Second year, May trained in Ops with an M24 sniper rifle, which was the military version of the Remington 700. Somehow a kitten got into the sniper range. It attached itself to May’s leg and didn’t let go until she got back to dorms and dug out a can of tuna. No microchip, couldn’t find an owner, so she kept it.”
May rolls her eyes. “He wasn’t my cat. He was a cat our Ops training unit collectively adopted. Maria took him after we graduated. Pretty sure she, Nat, and Clint all have joint custody now.” She starts twisting locks of Skye’s hair between her nimble hands as she begins to braid it. “And don’t worry, your purring isn’t that loud.”
“We should get a cat for the plane,” Skye hums.
“Fitz has been aiming for a monkey.”
“We are not getting a monkey,” May immediately shuts Coulson down. “Not when Fury won’t even approve a fish tank. I think we were lucky enough he approved Skye.”
Skye glances over her shoulder at her with an affronted scowl. “You say that like I’m your pet.” Her heart twinges at that last word, as she remembers when Ward, under the influence of the Berserker staff and pumped full of alien rage, called her Coulson’s pet. “I know you picked me off the streets like a stray, but it wasn’t like I was some helpless waif. I may have been on the run and yeah, homeless and jobless, but I had my van and I was surviving perfectly fine.”
“We know,” Coulson soothes, rubbing her calf. “We don’t mean it like that, Skye, and we don’t think of you like that. You’re an important and valuable member of our team. Not our pet.”
She sniffs, nuzzling back into the blanket. “Good. I - I know I’m an 0-8-4 and you’ve never had one of those be a person before, and SHIELD usually views them as objects, but I hate the whole idea of ‘ownership of assets’. Like people are nothing more than weapons in an armory. I’m not a possession.” She hesitates and then adds quietly, “I don’t mind being your kid, though. That is, if you’re not regretting the guardianship. You didn’t exactly sign up to be guardians to an 0-8-4.”
Coulson shoots her a piercing, concerned look. “We don’t regret it, but considering this is the second time you’ve suggested we might, I’m beginning to suspect you are.”
Skye releases a shaky exhalation, wanting to curl into a protective ball but knowing that she can’t do so without kicking her SO. She’s been subconsciously thinking about this a lot, actually. “My father killed over a hundred people, including god knows how many SHIELD agents, to try and get to me. I heard Ward talking to Fitzsimmons, wondering if agents that have suddenly gone MIA and AWOL in the past could be victims of his as well, as he attempted to track me down. If my dad finds out about you guys protecting me, he could try and kill you. Hell, if he finds out about the guardianship, he will definitely try and kill you.”
Coulson looks puzzled. “We know all of that. We knew that running into and dealing with your psycho father is a possibility we might have to deal with when we signed the papers.”
She shrugs helplessly. “I just - you shouldn’t have to deal with that. I’m more trouble than I’m worth. Sometimes I just think that -” She cuts herself off, knowing that Coulson and May will both get mad at her if she finishes her sentence. She can’t help it, though, feeling like a burden. Feeling as if they’d be better off without her on the team… feeling as if the world would be better off without her, period. “Never mind.”
Her SO stiffens. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about how you told me you would commit suicide if your father or Spectre ever came close to capturing you again,” Coulson says warningly.
May’s hands abruptly stop braiding her hair. Skye winces, and turns her burning face into the blanket. “I’m sorry, she told you what?” she asks, bristling.
“Now? You want to talk about this now?” Skye groans. “I thought we came out today to enjoy spending time together? Why do you always have to be in overprotective parents mode?”
“Has Simmons given her a psych eval?” May is questioning Coulson, entirely ignoring Skye now, her voice grave.
“Nothing substantial,” Coulson replies, not looking at her even as Skye kicks him to get his attention. “And I think you’re forgetting that Simmons is a biochemist, not an MD or psychiatrist.”
“She has multiple PhDs, which makes her a doctor. Not a medical one, but it’s good enough in my books.”
“That’s - really not how it works. But Simmons hasn’t expressed any concerns about Skye’s mental state. She hasn’t shown any self-destructive behavior recently beyond accidentally overusing her powers.”
“Which gave her dozens of microfractures and severe bruising along her arms,” May snaps. “And has caused her to repeatedly pass out. Do you want to wait until she’s actively self-harming to step in? You’ve seen her scars, Phil, she obviously has a history -”
“Lighthouse,” Skye immediately chokes out. “Lighthouse, lighthouse.” She scrambles to her feet and staggers away from them both, pressing the balls of her palms into her eyes until they hurt, and holding her breath to stop herself from hyperventilating. God, why did May have to bring that up? Now the scars themselves feel like hot brands on her skin and she wants nothing more than to try and scratch them off.
“Skye -”
“No. Stop. Shut up. Don’t say anything - fuck.” She heads to the nearest rose bed, hoping that the calming scent of the flowers might help with the somersaults her stomach is now doing. Fight or flight has kicked in at this point, causing her body to thrum with adrenalin.
“Dammit,” she hears Coulson mutter behind her. “Skye, wait -”
She runs.
But not far.
When she reaches a copse of oak trees, one of them having decently low hanging, sturdy limbs, Skye hoists herself up into it and then climbs up into the fork. From that one, she twists her body to clamber into a high fork where she can sit comfortably and stretch out her legs.
The rustling leaves and steady, heavy vibrations of the ancient tree act like anchors for her powers, helping her calm down. She’s rather glad there aren’t other visitors or any employees around, because they would probably squawk in horror at the fact she’s breaking all of the Gardens’ rules and ‘defacing’ one of their trees.
Skye’s been climbing trees since she was a toddler. There’s always been something so relaxing about raising herself off ground level, getting above everything else. Away from all of the troubles of her youth, out of sight, and free from society and her foster parents of the month’s expectations. Trees are silent and solid and permanent. She can always rely on a good tree to never let her down - as long as she picks one to climb that doesn’t have any dead limbs to crack and snap beneath her. She hasn’t actually climbed a tree in years now; she almost forgot how much it pacifies her.
“I spoke to Streiten.”
Blinking in surprise, Skye peers down through the branches at her SO. Coulson has seated himself in the dirt at the base of the tree trunk, and seems to be patiently waiting for her to come down rather than climbing after her. Craning her neck, she tries to peer back over at their picnic spot. May is still there on the blanket, and appears to be getting their food ready. Given the fact that Coulson is actively avoiding making her talk about her past self-harm habits, she decides that she can give him a chance.
“When we refueled, in San Diego?” she asks quietly.
“I should have told you immediately after I returned what I’d learned, but I needed time to wrap my head around it myself,” he sighs. He doesn’t look up at her, as if he knows she’ll hide behind the foliage if he tries; she hasn’t got the energy to maintain eye contact right now. “After New York, I wasn’t dead for a couple of minutes, like they wrote in the version of my file available to me. Apparently, I was dead for days.”
“Days?” she repeats. Her heart thunders in her chest. “That’s impossible.”
“Dr Streiten said that Fury refused to let me go, moved Heaven and earth to make sure I lived. Scientists and doctors used medical procedures on me which were in no way legal or ethical. Drugs that aren’t on record anywhere. I still don’t know what procedures, or how exactly they brought me back to life.” His voice is drained and exhausted. Skye can’t help but feel terribly sorry for him, so she slips back down into the lower fork to be closer. “Once I was alive again, they had to keep me conscious to monitor my brain activity. But I was in extreme pain.”
“You wanted to die,” Skye realizes, remembering Coulson’s pleading when he was trapped in the memory machine. “That’s what you were flashing back to in Raina’s machine.”
“I did,” he confirms. “Streiten wishes that he’d let me. The trauma I’d suffered through was insane and I had so much neurological damage that he reckons it was crueler keeping me alive than just pulling the plug. So they performed intensive brain surgery on me… suppressed my real memories and replaced them with those of Tahiti. Added conditioning, so that I would shut down anybody asking me about my recovery and prying too deeply into what happened.” He finally glances up at her, his eyes dark and haunted. “Streiten said I lost my will to live, lost my mind, and lost myself. They gave me false memories in order to reset me back to my pre-New York personality and mentality. And then isolated me and kept me away from my old friends and coworkers to maintain control over my reintroduction to the world.”
“You feel violated,” she guesses. Because that’s how she’s always felt about her imprisonment and experimentation by Spectre. From what it sounds like, Coulson became a lab rat just like she did.
“I just don’t understand why they would do all of it. Why Fury would be so desperate to bring me back to life. And I have absolutely no clue how he did it.” He stares down at his hands. “Now I’m stuck thinking about the connection to Raina, the Clairvoyant, Centipede, and Quinn… and then the link to your father, Spectre, and you. And SHIELD. Always SHIELD.”
Skye slips out of the fork and pushes off the tree, landing gracefully on her feet beside him. Dropping to her knees, she curls up to his side. Coulson’s arm wraps around her shoulders in a half-hug. “We’ll find Quinn,” she says confidently. “And we’ll find the Clairvoyant. And then we’ll be able to find out what they know. We’re not letting this stay a mystery - we’ll get our answers.” Pausing, she then asks hesitantly, “Have you told May about any of this?”
Coulson falls strangely quiet. “Some things, but not everything,” he eventually replies. “She probably doesn’t think I’ve noticed, but she keeps trying to shut me down whenever I mention Tahiti.”
Her heart clenches. “You don’t think she was in on it all, do you?”
“I hope she wasn’t,” he responds, despondent. “I hope she isn’t now, too. What do you think, Skye? Should I still be trusting her? She’s my best friend… I want to. But with everything that’s been going on, I’m doubting a lot at the moment.”
She bows her head thoughtfully, resting her forehead on his shoulder. Thinking back on all the times May has supported and cared for her, and how fond and protective she is of Coulson, she can’t imagine the specialist being okay with the level of suffering her SO just described. May’s heart is warm beneath the stony, cold exterior she displays to hide her vulnerabilities from those willing to exploit them. It’s especially warm for Coulson. Skye’s not an idiot, nor is she blind; she sees the incredibly emotionally loaded looks, rife with unresolved (she assumes unresolved) sexual tension, they exchange on a daily basis. No, May wouldn’t be able to hurt Coulson. But she reckons May has secrets of her own.
“I think we can trust her,” she finally declares. “Just maybe we should keep some of the finer details to ourselves.”
Coulson quirks an eyebrow. “I honestly thought you might start lecturing me about the morality of lies of omission.”
“That would be kind of hypocritical of me considering I lied by omission to the rest of the team about my powers for months,” she reminds him. But then settles him with a flat look. “But in all seriousness, if you ever lie directly to my face again and keep secrets about things incredibly personal to me, I’m walking. I can understand that you and May were trying to emotionally protect me, but it also comes across as manipulation.” She holds her hand up when he opens his mouth. “You don’t need to apologize again for it. Just tell me you understand.”
“I do.” Coulson nods and then heaves himself back to his feet, teetering slightly and having to lean on the tree. When he offers a hand to Skye, she takes it without hesitation. “Let’s get back over there before May finds a way to hide the cookies from us.”
Skye cast a cautious glance over in her mentor’s direction.
As if he can tell what she’s worrying over, Coulson assures her, “May won’t bring it up again. You set that boundary, and she’ll respect it.” He hesitates and then tells her quietly, “I think you remind her of Natasha. It took a long time for Romanoff to adjust when she defected and joined SHIELD, and May, Barton, and I were in charge of her intake. There were bad days - some really bad days. It was hard for everybody, most of all for Natasha, of course, but it was rough for May watching her go through that. May doesn’t really let it show externally, but she cares a lot about people she considers herself responsible for - people she cares about. You’re a part of that group now.”
“Going to take me a while to get used to that,” Skye admits.
“Well, you’re stuck with us now,” Coulson grins. “So you’ll have the time.”
May doesn’t bring it up again. In fact, when Skye and Coulson join the specialist on the picnic blanket again, the first thing she does is offer Skye a paper plate piled high with her favorite finger sandwiches, carrot, cucumber and bell pepper sticks, and a slice of quiche. They talk about meaningless things as they eat: changing the soap on the BUS because of how Jemma has been complaining about it cracking her hands, Ward getting annoyed when Skye used her powers to cheat at knife throwing, their disastrous attempts at making fresh pasta the other day… things like that. May offers to give her flying lessons, which Skye gratefully accepts. Teasingly claiming that May is trying to one-up him as a guardian, Coulson says he’ll teach her how to make fudge from scratch. Food is definitely the way to her heart.
Once she’s eaten enough to feel like she can’t handle another cookie, Skye lies on her back in the grass and vibrates her fingertips scented with strawberry lemonade to attract common blue butterflies. The unusual winter heatwave that’s swept through England recently has resulted in a lot of the critters not going into hibernation yet. They’re delicate and curious little creatures, fluttering over her fingers.
Coulson and May watch her with affectionate smiles, quietly discussing how they’re going to fly to Milan tomorrow. Skye sees her SO dig his phone out at one point to take photos of her, but doesn’t tell him to stop; she knows his phone is encrypted and secure, and the pictures will be stored safely and only sent to people they trust.
Once they’ve finished eating and the sky has clouded over in the late afternoon, they decide to head back to the BUS. Skye dashes quickly into the Gardens’ gift shop, though, to get souvenirs for their teammates. She buys some home-brewed honey mead for Ward, some bee-shaped hairclips for Jemma, and then, for Fitz, just because she can’t not buy it for him, a monkey keyring carved out of English chestnut wood. Coulson grabs some tea towels for the BUS, while May selects a jaw of raw wildflower set honey, stating it’s far better than sugar in tea.
“You have a beautiful family,” the lady behind the hill compliments them, smiling brightly at Coulson as their total is rung up. “I wish my girl was as willing as yours to go on parent-daughter day-outs.”
“Yeah, we’re lucky she’s okay with us cramping her style with our own,” Coulson jokes.
“You’d have to have style to begin with to do that,” Skye quips.
Coulson looks mock-offended. “You think I don’t have style?”
“Does ‘white, middle-aged, suburban baseball coach dad who’s enthusiastic about war history and vintage cars’ count as a style? Because those are the vibes you give off. Plus, you named your convertible Corvette Lola, I think that says enough.”
May bursts out laughing when Coulson splutters, turning red.
Skye grins triumphantly.
The next morning, after they’ve landed in Milan, Skye fulfills another achievement. She runs straight to Coulson’s office in her pajamas to tell him that she has a lead on Quinn. She’s discovered an invoice from his shell companies for something that cost ten million dollars from Cybertek Incorporated. They’re a small company that deals with advanced robotics and technical research.
She can’t tell what Quinn has bought from them, but it has to be important, considering Cybertek has hired a private-security outfit formed from ex-military thugs and mercenaries to move the package; they’re transporting it on a countryside train from Verona to Zagreb, probably directly into Quinn’s hands. As it’s a mere week before Christmas, the train is likely to be busy due to people traveling across Europe to get home, which will provide the perfect cover for the security guards by allowing them to blend in.
Coulson is clearly impressed with her work, because he contacts the Italian authorities to discuss it all over with them, and as it turns out, they’ve also been monitoring the situation. He heads out for a quick meeting for a SHIELD contact called Russo who works with the Italian police, who is heading the current operation, and when her SO returns, it’s to tell her they have the go-ahead to take over.
They explain all of this to the team in the briefing room so Coulson can lay out the mission. “If everything goes as planned, Cybertek's security team won't even know we were on the train. So we're going in undercover.”
May’s lip curls up in distaste. “I hate undercover,” she mutters. Skye has to agree that undercover sucks. She’s been undercover for most of her teen life and it’s draining as hell to maintain.
Coulson’s little smile says that he already knows of May’s dislike. “May and Ward, you're front and center. May will be a wealthy diplomat, Ward will be a porter assigned to meeting her needs. Once we locate the package, you'll tag it with a tracker. Simmons and I will be your back-up, posing as father and daughter. Skye and Fitz, you'll be pretending to be a couple on a whirlwind trip around Europe - and running our communications, monitoring the op.”
“Wait, so no babysitter for us?” Skye asks, raising an eyebrow.
“You’re approved for the field,” her SO tells her. “And more than capable of defending yourself and Fitz, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re his babysitter.”
She turns to the engineer, smirking. “You hear that?”
Fitz rolls his eyes. “I’m still older than you, Skye.”
Coulson appears amused by their banter, but focuses back on the mission, informing them, “After the package is tagged, you’ll trace it to Quinn. Once we capture Quinn, we'll be one step closer to the Clairvoyant.”
It sounds like it should be a smooth and relatively easy operation, but of course, when has anything ever been easy for them? They manage to get onto the train no problem, and her and Fitz’s cover as girlfriend and boyfriend works despite one or two hiccups; she pickpockets a set of keys from a porter and they sneak into the luggage car to set up their monitoring and comms equipment. For the first twenty or so minutes, it seems as if everything is going well. Going well to the point where they even feel comfortable making a little bit of small talk, with Skye deciding to brave the rough seas to ask Fitz about his thoughts on an 0-8-4 being a person and whether or not that makes her a liability.
The engineer just shakes his head apologetically and says that she’s the first, as far as he’s aware. But that classification doesn’t mean that she’s dangerous, as all SHIELD 0-8-4’s are often labeled. It’s the fact that they’re of unknown origin which makes agents often think they’re potentially harmful, because they rarely understand how they work. Skye might be a medical mystery with her altered DNA, but she’s still mostly human… just different.
When all of their equipment and comms go dead, however, Skye quickly throws herself into battle mode, aware that the malfunctions probably mean they’ve been made. It’s likely that Cybertek is using some kind of electronic scrambler, which has to mean they know the team is there. Skye’s stomach twists in discomfort and alarm. The two of them stand to make their way back down the train towards Coulson and Jemma when the car’s door smashes open.
Skye feels the vibrations of the bullets leaving the gun’s chamber before she sees their attacker wielding the weapon. “Fitz, get down!” She tackles him down behind a shelf of luggage, waiting for the man to stop shooting to reload before stepping out and quaking him against the wall.
The guy doesn’t get knocked unconscious, though, and is grappling with Fitz physically before Skye has the chance to quake him again. She tries to tear the man off the engineer to engage him herself, her heart pounding with adrenaline in her chest, but before she gets the chance to, their attacker raises a charging, glowing blue grenade-shaped object into the air.
Jemma runs in screaming about them getting made and grabs the man from behind to shield them from the grenade’s blast before Skye can stop her. It knocks both the biochemist and the man to the ground, their eyes glassy and faces streaked with bluish-purple veins. It’s only Jemma’s calm vibrations that say she’s knocked out, not dead, that keep Skye from freaking out.
“She’s okay, she’s okay, she’s breathing,” Skye reassures Fitz when she checks her over. He’s bouncing up and down anxiously on his heels and breathing heavily, looking stricken. “Her heart rate is elevated but steady. It - it looks like she’s been hit with a dose of dendrotoxin.”
“Clearly evolved,” Fitz mumbles, tucking a duffle bag under Jemma’s head and tenderly brushing her hair away from her face. He then gently closes her eyes so she looks more like she’s sleeping rather than dead. “Airborne, most likely. Judging by the volume of the dose, she’ll probably wake up in an hour or so.”
Skye clenches her jaw. “We’ve got to get out of here, find the others and figure out what to do next. We can’t take Jemma with us, though… but we can’t leave her like this. Let’s hide here and leave her with my Night Night Gun to protect herself, just in case. I don’t need it when I have my powers.”
“Look at her little face,” Fitz sighs fondly, as they shift her out of the aisle and half cover her up with other bags. “She’d be so embarrassed.” And Skye can’t help but chuckle at that, because god… she really would.
They drag the unconscious Cybertek merc across the car to find an empty crate, which they throw him into before Fitz shoots him with a couple of dendrotoxin round to keep him unconscious. Skye is just checking the rest of the team’s trackers - and they’re all completely offline, so they can’t find them - when the train starts screeching to a halt.
The breaks squeal with the sheer force of it, almost sending the two of them toppling over. They peer out of the windows to see that the package is being taken off the train and transported by car now. The Cybertek team are most likely taking it straight to Quinn. This might be their one chance to track the corrupt millionaire down and discover his link to Centipede and the Clairvoyant - but it will slip through their fingers if they don’t act soon.
With their commanding officer and two specialists gone, that leaves Skye as the only combat-approved team member in the field - and therefore, the one in charge. She can’t help but feel vastly out of her depth; she’s a consultant, not an actual agent, and yet it’s fallen to her to continue running this mission. Even with her powers, she and Fitz are drastically outgunned and outmanned. Both Coulson and May’s training kick in at that point, their voices in her head advising her what to do.
The two of them follow the cars’ tire tracks, and they don’t have to travel far to reach a large Mediterranean mansion estate. Crouching behind shrubbery, they observe Quinn greeting the Cybertek group on the porch steps. Skye exhales in satisfaction; their plan worked. They’ve managed to track Quinn down, despite all of his maneuverings to avoid them.
“You and Coulson were right. Cybertek led us to Quinn,” Fitz acknowledges begrudgingly.
She nods, ordering him, “Activate the tracker. Let the team know we're here.”
Then she turns back to the mansion, lifting her chin slightly so she can properly observe the entranceway and the positioning of all the guards. Quinn is vanishing inside with the package. He could disappear again while they just stay here hidden in the bushes waiting for their back-up to arrive. Placing her hand on the ground, she sends out a small wave of vibrations through the dirt so she can locate the guards. There are a lot of them; there’s no way she’ll be able to take them all out without risking Fitz getting hurt. Her only option is sneaking around the back to get inside and hoping security is laxer there.
After activating the tracker with a beep, Fitz narrows his eyes at her, realizing, “You want to go in.”
She huffs. “We can't let Quinn get away again.” When the engineer raises an eyebrow dubiously, she insists, “If Coulson were here, he wouldn't let that happen. He wouldn't want us to let that happen. If we lose Quinn now, it could be months before we get another shot at him. Even if we just manage to slow him down enough so that he can’t leave before the team gets here, we’ll have done something, rather than just sitting back and allowing him to escape again.”
“You're right,” Fitz agrees. “Fine… Let's do it. You got a plan?”
“Uh…” Her brain is whirring as she attempts to come up with one on the fly, running through the possibilities. “Can you disable their cars while I sneak around the back?”
Fitz shoots her a confused look and then grabs her arm, tugging it insistingly. “No, no, no, if we’re doing this, then we are doing this together. I’m not letting you go in there alone.”
“Fitz -”
“No,” the engineer repeats ferociously. “Look, I know Coulson said that you’re my babysitter and told you to protect me, but I made promises and I’m meant to be taking care of you too.”
She casts him a sideways, confused look. “What do you mean?”
“May… might have talked to me,” Fitz admits.
Skye groans. God only knows what the specialist told him. “Okay, lay it on me, what did she say?”
“She’s scarily protective of you. She told me that you have reckless, lone-wolf tendencies and lack a decent sense of self-preservation.”
Skye blinks, feeling slightly offended. “I have plenty of self-preservation, thank you very much,” she says defensively. “I’ve literally survived on the streets since I was fifteen while on the run and hiding superpowers.”
“Hey, that’s just what she said! I’m on your side here, I know you can handle yourself.” Fitz raises his hands into the surrender position. “But… she doesn’t seem to be wrong about the lone-wolf thing! You are insisting on entering hostile territory alone. I promised her that if you tried anything stupid, I would try and stop you, but if I couldn’t, I would follow you and do the stupid thing with you to try and make it less stupid. So I’m coming, alright?” He’s not going to be allowing her any arguments here, so she sighs in defeat and nods. Fitz looks smug for a brief second before he slips back into determined mission mode. “So you said the first step is disabling the cars?”
“Can you do that?”
“Oh yeah, with my bare hands,” Fitz waves his dominant one dismissively. “But that would waste time.” To her shock, he digs a Swiss army knife out of his pocket and flips the main blade open, smirking at her. “We could just slash the tires.”
Skye laughs and claps on him on the back, genuinely amused. “Now you’re talking, Fitz!”
“I like to think it’s your influence on me that’s encouraging these destructive thoughts.”
“Nah, there’s a secret little rebel inside of you that’s dying to create some chaos.”
Since she has a penknife of her own in her back pocket, the two of them work together to creep past the guards and stab the rear tires of all the vehicles, deflating them to make the vehicles impossible to drive. It’s a quicker job than she expects, and soon the two of them are silently sneaking around the back of the property and into the house in search of Quinn. Fitz wields his Night Night Gun while Skye keeps her dominant hand at the ready, in case she needs to quake anybody.
The adrenalin flooding her veins is making her tremble with anticipation, but the breathing exercises May taught her help her focus. When they overhear a woman who was part of the Cybertek group on the train talking about Quinn’s package being downstairs in the basement, she and Fitz exchange a look before hurrying in that direction.
It’s probably because she’s so utterly horrified at the sight of Mike, alive but terribly scarred, inside some sort of stasis chamber, that Skye doesn’t realize that they’ve been approached from behind until it’s too late. She feels the vibrations of three men ripple through the ground, but as she whips around to quake them back, pain explodes in her left thigh and then her right shoulder. The force of the bullet tearing through her shoulder in particular jerks her back, and as her left leg crumples beneath her, she collapses to the floor.
“SKYE,” Fitz yells.
Trying to fight against the blinding, blazing agony, she shakily raises her hand. She doesn’t get the chance to call on her powers because the muzzle of a gun is pressed firmly into her shoulder wound, making her choke as pain flares from the sight across her entire body. It makes her feel like she’s on fire and her mind has utterly disconnected from her body, her limbs unresponsive because of the nervous overload.
Blinking through the blurriness, she grits her teeth in a growl when she sees that Quinn has Fitz restrained and handcuffed, and he’s pointing a gun directly at the engineer’s head. A gun that just fired two shots at her. Mancini, the head of Cybertek’s security team, has secured Fitz by the throat.
“Hello, Daisy,” Quinn greets her, making her swallow. He knows her birth name. “The Clairvoyant told me to expect you. I don’t honestly know who was more excited to know you were gonna turn up here… him, or your dear old dad. Ah ah,” he warns, pressing the gun muzzle to Fitz’s temple when Skye shifts, trying to figure out where to aim a quake at him without hurting the engineer, who has his eyes screwed shut and is ashen with fear. “I know what you can do with those powers of yours. You so much as twitch, sweetie, and this one gets a bullet in his brain. The slightest tremor of an earthquake, and he dies.”
Shaking with rage, Skye slowly unclenches her fist, moving it down to her thigh to try and place pressure there. Through the pain, she can feel the bullet lodged against her femur. The gunshot wound in her shoulder is a through and through, and the sharp, nauseating scent of fresh blood is filling her nose. She’s starting to bleed out. Her head is even beginning to spin from the blood loss she’s suffered so far.
“Good girl,” Quinn praises her smugly. She shudders. “The Clairvoyant said that threatening anybody on your team would probably make you compliant, and I’m glad to see that’s true. You’re an attack dog, but you can be muzzled, just like Daddy claimed. I’m so happy you came, Daisy.”
“That’s not her name, y’bastard,” Fitz hisses in her defense. He wheezes when Mancini tightens his grasp on his throat, and Skye can’t help the snarl that rips out of her in response.
“Touchy,” Quinn tuts. “I didn’t think you’d be so feral. Of course, I knew you had fire. You did shoot me in the leg after all the last time we met face-to-face.”
Shit, so he does remember that.
“Shooting you in the shoulder was advised by the Clairvoyant, to disorientate you, but that extra bullet in your leg is payback for the bullet you put in mine.”
“You’re sick,” Fitz spits at him.
“Fitz,” she tries to protest feebly, not wanting him to draw any more attention to himself and get hurt.
“You’re just a puppy, all bark but no bite,” Quinn laughs at him, looking amused by the way he’s vibrating with rage. “Unlike your team’s pet earthquake machine here.” His eyes wander over to the chamber in which Mike lays unconscious, and a sinister smile crosses over his face. “Let’s invite somebody else to this conversation. Another machine.”
Skye honestly can’t find the energy or brainpower to concentrate on everything that’s happening, her consciousness fading in and out, as Quinn opens up the strange pod and Mike awakens. What she does notice, however, is the fact that the expression on Mike’s face is blank and impassive, as if all of his emotions have been leached out of him. When Quinn starts talking to him about orders, Skye jolts in outraged realization; the Clairvoyant and Centipede have turned Mike into one of their soldiers and are now controlling him. Fitz seems to be coming to the same realization, judging by his frightened, panicked face.
When Mancini releases the engineer’s throat to attach the package, an advanced prosthetic leg, to Mike, Skye has to close her eyes and bite her lip to contain her cry when he screams. Seconds later, though, he’s back to that blank look, and it’s utterly chilling. Quinn looks delighted.
“I know you get your orders from the Clairvoyant, so that means you're not allowed to hurt me, right?” Quinn checks.
“No,” Mike replies flatly.
“What if I tried to hurt you? Would you stop me?”
“No. I would not.”
Her voice a croak, cracked with pain, she tries, “Mike, listen. I do not know what they're doing to you, but if you’re still in there… we have to get out of here.” Fitz eyes her, giving the tiniest shake of his head, a desperate plea for her to not draw attention to herself. But Skye has to try. Mike is her friend, she can’t abandon him. “Mike, please.”
Quinn raises an eyebrow at her attempt to reach him, and then nods down at her, asking Mike coldly, “And if I wanted you to hurt her... you know, to kill her... will you?” Skye stares up at him with a lump in her throat, her fear now overtaking her pain from the two gunshot wounds. “I mean, what would hurt Agent Coulson more than to lose his pet super? Oh, sorry. I mean, his daughter. That is what you are now on paper, right?” Quinn asks her mockingly. She just glares at him.
“Those aren't my orders,” Mike responds, his eyes empty and voice lifeless. “She's not who I'm supposed to kill. The Clairvoyant and the doctor want her alive. They are pleased you have acquired her, but equally displeased she has been damaged more than they advised.”
Damaged. Like she’s a possession, rather than a person. An asset. Skye feels sick.
“What’s one extra bullet wound?” Quinn dismisses. “She’ll heal.”
More could have been said, but Skye blacks out for a couple of seconds because of a tidal wave that washes over her that is comprised of pure, terrifying numbing pain, that makes everything go fuzzy and dark. Her powers are completely out of reach right now; the world is dead and silent around her, to the point where she can’t even feel her own vibrations anymore. She’s going into shock, she can tell.
“Skye, Skye, stay with me,” she hears Fitz’s frantic voice, feels his warm palms on her cheeks. Quinn must have released him and shoved him down towards her.
Mike is gone.
“Kill the spare one,” Quinn orders Mancini with a lazy wave of his hand as he peers down at a document he’s reading over. “The girl is the only one they want and she’s about to pass out, so we don’t need the kid as leverage anymore.”
Mancini nods and takes aim at Fitz, squeezing the trigger twice. Her horror utterly overwhelming, Skye just reacts on instinct, trying to reach out to stop the two bullets and redirect them with her powers. Her control over them is so weak, however, that all she manages to do is slow them slightly. But it’s enough time to do what she needs to. If Quinn is planning on taking her to the Clairvoyant and to her father, who are now confirmed to be connected, then she would rather die than go with him. And she refuses to let Fitz get killed because of her. He’s like a brother to her; she dragged him into this mess, and it’s her job to get him out of it.
So it’s with absolutely no regret that with a sudden surge of adrenalin, she flings herself in front of the engineer as a human shield and takes the two bullets for him.
Acceptance. That this is who she is, what she wants to do. She wants to be her own fucking person and she wants to stand on her own two feet… making the choice to save her friend’s life and put others above herself, because that’s what really matters.
The first pierces through her abdomen, a few inches left of her belly button. The second lands slightly higher, center mass. Both are so painful that she instantly blacks out the moment they strike her, only returning to semi-consciousness when she hears Fitz shrieking her name and Quinn yelling at Mancini.
“THEY WANT HER ALIVE!” Quinn is shouting angrily.
“I wasn’t aiming for her!” Mancini bellows in response.
“How the hell am I meant to take her to them now she’s dying!? Fucking forget it! Shots like that, she’ll be dead in the next hour. Not even the doctor will be able to save her from that. I’ve gotta get myself underground before they find out she’s been killed on my watch and come after me!” Quinn storms out of the basement, Mancini following behind him.
Leaving her and Fitz alone in the basement. Lying in a puddle of blood. Her blood, and the pool is increasing in size, stinking of sickly iron and bright red because it’s not just venous blood she’s leaking everywhere - one of the bullets has nicked an artery. And yes, Skye is in a lot of pain, so much so that it’s an effort to breathe, let alone stay unconscious, but she knows that arterial blood loss like this is not good. It’s not good at all.
Her stomach is lurching, forcing her to retch, and the metallic tang in her mouth plus the thick liquid filling her throat probably means she’s starting to choke up blood. She can’t stand - Fitz can’t carry her because he can’t move her without removing the pressure he’s desperately trying to put on all of her wounds at once. She’s going to die down here. She’s actually dying, and considering the blackness already creeping into the edges of her vision, she’s going fast.
“Stay with me, Skye, c’mon, you’ve gotta stay awake,” Fitz begs, and that’s what she decides to focus on. She peers up at him through partially lidded eyes as she feels herself growing progressively weaker and weaker, feels something buried deep within her beginning to drain away. Her heart wrenches at the sound of Fitz’s anguished sobbing. “You’re gonna be okay. The team are gonna be here soon and Jemma - Jemma will know how t’help, she’ll save you, al’right!? But y’gotta stay awake! We - we’re celebrating our first Christmas together next week, aren’t we!? You don’t wanna miss that! Jemma’s gonna bake mince pies, and we’re gonna force Ward to wear a Santa hat -”
She wants to close her eyes. She does. She’s tired. Exhausted. In fact, maybe she should take a nap right here. That panics Fitz even more.
“No, no, no, don’t fall asleep, Skye! SOMEBODY HELP!” he howls. “PLEASE, COULSON, MAY, WARD! J-JEMMA! PLEASE, WE NEED H-HELP! Hang on, Skye, please, p-please hang on.”
At least she’s not going out alone, she dazedly thinks. She’d like to say something, thank Fitz for being the best brother she’s ever had, ask him to tell Jemma she’s brilliant and wonderful and stronger than she knows, tell Ward that he would make a great supervising officer in the future if he’s a little more patient, and he needs to practice playing Battleship and knife throwing some more. And also ask Fitz to tell Coulson and May they were and are incredible parents, and they should probably get their heads out of their asses because they clearly like each other.
But she barely has the energy to breathe. She can’t speak. Her vocal cords won’t respond.
All she’s able to manage is moving her blood-soaked hand a couple of inches up to nudge gently at Fitz’s fingers. A silent thank you, for staying with her until the end. Because she’s not so scared with him being here beside her. She’s terrified, but also the idea of death is not a new one to her, and this weirdly feels inevitable. Because with her powers, she’s felt the vibration of atoms and molecules and beyond, and she’s seen life and death and all that’s in between. Now the only thing left is for her to experience them all.
Her eyes flutter shut slowly.
“I wonder what your gift will be, once you have been activated. We’ll soon find out. Discovery requires experimentation, after all.”
“I - I don’t understand. You want me to hold it? What is it?”
“It’s called the Obelisk, and a very few special people can touch it without suffering, dear girl. Your father brought you to me as he believes you are one of them. Knowing who your mother was, I am of the same assumption. Go on… pick it up.”
“Oh baby girl, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to suffer. But this is your birthright, your destiny… one day you’ll understand and be able to forgive me, Daisy. This needs to happen so you can become your strongest self.”
“Where’s my dad? What did you do to him?”
“Dear girl, once he was able to use the Obelisk to change you, he was no longer useful to us anymore. His goals and ideas concerning you did not align with ours, and we couldn’t risk him disrupting our study of your miraculous abilities and remarkable DNA, could we? Don’t worry, we will take very good care of you here. Now… don’t struggle as we get you strapped onto the operating table, or we’ll have to drug you again. You don’t like the drugs, do you? That’s a good girl. This will only pinch a little.”
“The more you scream, dear Daisy, the more we have to hurt you.”
“Please… stop… I can’t…”
“Oh dear, you are being quite uncooperative today, aren’t you? Such a shame. We’ll just have to inject you with a paralytic and intubate you again to take our biopsies and spinal fluid. And I don’t think you deserve the anesthetic given your stubbornness.”
“No… please…”
“No… please…” Skye echoes, choking through the thick, hot liquid iron filling her mouth.
Everything fades.
She sinks into the darkness, which embraces her with deafening silence and grace.