So here it is! The first chapter of my spec fic that you'll know about if you read my other 4x15 pieces (shameless plug, check 'em out maybe?)
Honestly, I've got no idea what this is going to turn into, all I've got is a metric ton of episode notes, too much enthusiasm, and not enough coffee. Okay? Enjoy the ride.
Spoilers for 4x15: Self Control
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The first thing that startles her is how utterly real it feels. She knew that it would, of course, she's been in simulations before. The fight with Coulson that might as well have been real except for the unformed bruises on her skin. But this.
The heat from the water, sinking into her skin, the porcelain of the tub, firm yet slippery, the air that bubbles past her lungs, glancing across her cheekbones on its way to the surface, it all feels so real. The hollowness under her skin is barely noticeable.
She struggles against her own mind beneath the surface of the bubbles. Thoughts, ideas, memories conflict. A life that she didn't live swims just beyond her reach. Some of the details she can grab on to, a to-go cup of coffee in a busy shop, the frowning brow of a woman she recognizes but doesn't know, the ghost of a hand caressing down her ribs, but most slip away, through her fingers as easily as the water around her.
By the time she gets her head up to break the surface her lungs are burning from the lack of oxygen. Pressure that builds up inside her chest that pulls her towards the surface, despite her somewhat helpless thrashing. The air that cleans her lungs manages to refocus her fully.
The rendezvous point, she has to get to the rendezvous point.
A phone buzzes beside the tub that must be hers. She picks up the foreign technology curiously, not only is it not her usual cell, it's like nothing she's ever seen before. She doesn't allow herself any time to marvel over it as she reads the text.
Her boyfriend.
The thought shocks her so much that the device slips from her grip, almost into the tub with her, but she manages enough control that it bumps onto the bathmat instead.
Could it really be?
Everything else slips away as she makes her way out of the bathroom. A body lies in the bed, under a pile of blankets, turned away from her enough that she can't make out the shape's face. She has to get closer.
"Lincoln?" She breathes. She doesn't dare wake him. She doesn't dare disrupt this which must be a dream.
He died. She lost him.
Daisy steps around to the side of the bed and recoils. She clutches the robe across her chest and stutters backwards until her hip reaches the dresser. Something clatters and falls at the clumsy contact. She can't look to see what it was.
Ward.
Every possible emotion runs through her in a second. Grief, hurt, betrayal, confusion, anger. She ends up cold. Goosebumps flash across her skin.
He's waking, disturbed by her disturbance, and she gets stuck in place. Her feet may as well be soldered to the floor. They can't move as he rolls over and stretches, one hand slipping across the blankets to the other side of the bed. A shudder runs through her at the intimacy of the action. He's obviously looking for someone, and there's no one here but her.
By the time he's realized that he's alone in the bed and is sitting up, she's still rooted to her spot on the hardwood. She can't comprehend this.
He drags a hand over his face and smiles at her. "Morning."
She should reply, smile at least, but all she can do is gape. It makes him get up and move towards her.
"Skye?" he looks like he's going to touch her shoulder. She pulls back further, curving her spine around the dresser, pressing back firmly enough that the wood cuts through to her skin.
"I- what?" The icy chill in her veins isn't fading. Nausea presses at the front of her throat. How is this happening?
"Are you okay?" There's an ease to him that's just so Ward. Not Hive, not the monster he became or the monster he already was, when she saw him as a prisoner of SHIELD, but just her SO. It makes her feel small, young, weaker than she knows she is. It turns her into someone reminiscent of the girl who first met him. The name doesn't help.
"Yeah, uh, fine. We got called in." Which instinct tells her to play along, she's not sure, but it seems like the safest option at the moment. Much better than the confrontation that's now burning to a blaze under her skin as the shock fades. What is this place? What have she and Simmons gotten themselves into?
He nods, steps closer, lays a hand on her shoulder that she has to grit her teeth not to throw off, and kisses the side of her head. It's still damp from her submersion in the tub. That seems like a lifetime away but also like it's still happening.
"I'll shower, then we'll go."
She nods, numb.
He's naked. So naked, she realizes for the first time as he starts making his way back over her path towards the bathroom. She doesn't notice she's looked until she has, seen the sharp V of his torso, the definition of his back. Her gaze drops to the floor, focusing on a detail in the grain of the wood and squashing the blush rising in her cheeks.
Those old feelings will not be making a reappearance, she's sure of it.
The bathroom door swings shut behind him lazily, without enough force to click into the latch, to allow Daisy some proper solitude. She sighs her way through a breath once she hears the water running in the shower.
She turns around, pressing her palms into the surface of the dresser. Two deep breaths, with her eyes closed, is all she allows herself to get her emotions under control. Once she does, her gaze drops down onto the top of the dresser. There's a lamp, a basket full of creams, products which, after a cursory shuffle, she discovers are not the ones she's used to using, and a framed picture of the two of them smiling, Ward's arm comfortably slung over her shoulder, her fingers tangled with his. The object that fell is a hula girl, either the same one that used to be on the dashboard of her van or one very similar.
She picks it up carefully, twisting it to see every angle before she sets it down once again. It wobbles, next to the photograph. She doesn't want to look at either. Instead, she looks around the rest of the room, hoping for some indication of what the hell her life is in this place.
The entirety of the space is so, not her. Granted she's been living in SHIELD bases – which have a propensity for exploding perennially - or on the run for the last four years of her life, then just a van before that, so she's never really developed a taste in design per say. Regardless, whatever this is, it isn't her.
So it's his place then, or he picked it out. Her mind swims with questions. She starts opening drawers.
He's only going to be minutes in the shower, she remembers that from living on the Bus with him, he'd perfected the military efficiency, so she doesn't have much time to search. Anything would be helpful at this point though. Anything that would explain what got twisted up to land her in this world that isn't at all like her own. Simmons said that it was supposed to be identical.
Identical.
He called her Skye.
She looks down at her hands. They look precisely like her hands. She tries to feel the pulse of her heart within the veins, the neat ordering of bones and the muscles that fiber them together. The shred of panic rises.
Reaching out, she tries to grab onto the waver of the air in the perfectly still room. She looks for the building, the stress of its joists and the weakness below it, beneath the ground. Her mind's eye reaches down, through the other floors of the structure, beneath the building's basement and below the rock even under that, searching for the threads, flexing her carefully contained muscle.
She holds her breath.
Nothing.
Jemma opens her eyes and blinks.
It's dark, darker than dark really, more like there's nothing there to see. She blinks again, trying to differentiate which end of the motion of her eyes is open and which is closed. She can't. The surface her back lays against is hard, unforgiving, yet almost plush.
Claustrophobia creeps up the back of her neck and she tries to breathe it away. The air is dry, but rapidly moistening. She must not be in a very large space. It smells so heavily of soil she can taste it. Going into the simulation, she thought she was prepared for anything, she didn't expect this, whatever it is.
She lifts her hand, touching her eye to ensure it actually is open, then presses it out in the space beyond her face. It meets resistance almost immediately. Silken fabric drapes down from something and when she presses into it she meets the same hard surface beneath her spine. Wood then, beneath the fabric. Her hand slides up, testing to see how far it extends, reaching the corner just above the top of her head.
She curls her hand to a fist and knocks.
The silk masks the sound slightly as Simmons knocks two dull thuds into the wood. The frame doesn't give. The sound goes nowhere.
She gasps, realization crashing down. Wood box lined with soft fabric but no padding. Both of her hands press into the silk above her face, she pushes with all her strength.
Nothing happens.
It's a coffin.
She's been buried alive.
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So I'm thinking these chapters are going to be a little on the shorter side in general so I can get them out more quickly but let me know your thoughts on that. If you guys would prefer longer ones I can do that too, it would just mean longer breaks between.
Just a point of interest I thought I'd mention is that I basically have read nothing in regards to actual theories about how the season is going to progress and the few that I have read, I've completely disregarded while writing this. This story is mostly just to keep me (and hopefully you) entertained while we wait for the next episode and while I'm confident that it'll progress realistically, I'm absolutely certain that it won't be anywhere near what the show runners actually put out.
Anyways, let me know what you think and as always I'm around on Tumblr sinkingsidewalks.