She'd never expected to come back here.
St Agnes' hadn't changed in years. Red bricks, a crack in the kitchen window, the soft rustle of the nuns' habits as they passed by it on their nightly rounds. Daisy stopped before she could enter, lost in memories. St Agnes' had been her most frequent pit stop between foster homes- never there for more than a month or two, but often enough to know the place like the back of her hand. The hymns Sister Hayley used to hum when she was cleaning, the scent of cheap shampoo and cafeteria food, the distant crying of a new arrival in the night.
"You alright?" Mike asked.
Daisy started, shook herself. "I'm fine," she insisted. "Just... didn't realise I actually kinda missed this place."
"I could go and take a look around without you." The light of the streetlamp glinted off his visor. Beyond the steady hum of Mike's cybernetics, somewhere inside the orphanage, a lump of chrysalis called to her.
"No," she said.
He nodded, then turned to look into the kitchen. "There's nobody near. Let's do this."
A soft press of her powers shattered the lock on the window. Mike pulled himself up through it, and then reached down to offer her a hand. Daisy shooed him back, and then burst up through the window on her own strength, vibrations visible under her hands. She landed without a sound.
"Show-off," Mike said, grinning. Already in place by the kitchen door.
"Quiet! I swear, the nuns here have bat ears." She frowned, thought of Lash, or Raina. "Maybe literally."
Mike's nose wrinkled, but he made no comment. Daisy led the way through the corridors, following the high, clear song of the chrysalis up to the third floor. If they hadn't changed in the last decade or so- and she wasn't willing to bet the nuns here had changed a thing since the sixties- then this was where the teenagers' bedrooms were. Mike caught her arm before she could turn the corner.
"There's someone there," he whispered.
Daisy frowned. "Might be one of the nuns keeping watch, if a kid's sick. Or our Inhuman."
"Wait." Mike inched forwards, silent despite his heavy enhancements. Peered into the dark. Then turned back to her. "Nun."
"Okay," Daisy murmured. "Stand clear. I'll knock her out."
"You can't hit a nun!" he hissed, catching her arm.
Daisy blinked at him, disbelieving. Then, defensively- "I was gonna use my powers!"
"No."
"Fine." She peered around the corner, just as he had. Thought back to the floor below. "Okay, we need to get out of sight."
Mike led her into a recess in the wall that she hadn't seen in the gloom, just big enough to fit the two of them. Daisy closed her eyes, and then in one sharp burst of power, broke a window one the floor below. The sound of shattering glass echoed up the stairway. A count of five, four, three, two- the nun's habit rustled as she hurried to investigate. Mike covering her, Daisy slipped out and headed back to the door the nun had been guarding. Before she could reach for the handle, it opened.
"Who the hell are you?" demanded the boy. Behind her, she could hear Mike stifle an exclamation. The boy in front of her had to be Inhuman- his skin burst with thick, heavy veins, like he was straining every muscle in his body to breaking point. Red eyes narrowed at her under a mop of black hair. He couldn't have been more than thirteen.
Daisy leaned forwards a little to reach his eye level, keeping her hands visible. "My name's Daisy. I'm here to help you."
"What are y-" He broke off, looking up above her, eyes wide. Gaped. Even with the red glow of his eye dimmed, Mike cut an intimidating figure.
"This is Mike. He's with me. Can I come in?"
The boy shook his head fervently. "She doesn't want anyone to see."
Daisy's heart fluttered. "It's okay. I'm one of you. I won't get scared."
"Everyone laughed at her," he insisted. She tried to see into the room behind, but not even a crack of light crawled in between the curtains.
"How about we leave the light out," she offered. "I won't look until you trust me. We can just talk."
The boy frowned. Looked up at Mike's robotic eye.
"I'll stay out here and warn you before that nun comes back," Mike said. The boy nodded slowly, then pulled Daisy into the room and shut the door behind her. In the pitch black, he lead her clumsily forwards until her knee struck a bedpost. Patting down the mattress, Daisy sat.
"So, what are your names?" she asked, keeping her voice soft and low.
"I'm Flynn," the boy said from somewhere to her left. Silence hung in the air, punctuated by the scruffling of someone bunching up the bedsheets in their fists. Flynn sighed. "This is my sister, Fiona. She won't talk to anyone."
"Hi, Fiona," Daisy said. Won't, not can't. "Did you hear what I said to your brother?"
No response.
"Well, my name's Daisy. I'm an Inhuman, just like you."
"Inhuman?" Flynn interrupted.
Daisy nodded, pointlessly. "That's what we call ourselves. We're human- or, we start out that way. But some people have a dormant alien gene-"
"Huh?"
She hummed in thought. "Okay. So, thousands of years ago, aliens came to Earth."
"Like Thor?" Flynn asked, excited.
"Not exactly. These aliens were big, and blue, and they were called the Kree. They came here because they wanted to create super soldiers." She grinned. "You know, like Captain America. So to do that, they game some humans a special gene- you know what genes are?"
"They're why you look like your parents?" he said, hesitantly. "Your hair, and your eyes-"
"That's right," she picked up when Flynn broke off. "Well, this gene passes on from parents to kids the same way, except when you're born it doesn't do anything. The only way it will do anything, it if you come into contact with a substance called terrigen."
"I've never heard of it."
"Have you ever taken fish oil pills?"
"Yeah." A soft rustle that might have been a shrug. "The Millers made us. They're nasty."
A foster family, with its own weird quirks, and rules. She knew that game. "Well, a little while ago, something happened that meant that all the fish ate some terrigen, so now the terrigen is in fish oil pills. That's how you and your sister transformed. You were in a chrysalis, right? And then you came out with powers."
"Is that what happened to you? How did the teligen get into the fish? How do you even know?" Flynn's voice sped up with interest. Daisy heard the bed groan as Fiona leaned forwards to hear her response.
"No, that's not how I transformed. For me, I was... with another girl, somewhere very far away. She had something called an obelisk, which has terrigen inside it. When she opened it, we both became Inhuman." Daisy closed her eyes, pushed away their faces. Trip. Raina. She moved on. "The terrigen got into the fish because someone tried to release it all over the world, so that all the humans would either become Inhumans or be killed by the cloud. I know because I was there. I stopped her. But the terrigen she had fell into the sea, where the fish breathed it in, and now it's int the pills made out of them."
"What happened to the other girl? And how come you look normal?" Flynn demanded.
"Some of us look like humans, some of us don't. The other girl, Raina, she looked different. She had sort of- orangey skin, and no hair, and spines all over, and golden eyes. Her gift was seeing the future."
"Her gift?" asked a small, female voice. Daisy heard Flynn's sharp intake of breath.
Forced her voice to remain steady. "All Inhumans have a gift. Some of them are hard to control, but we can all learn. My friend Elena can run super-fast. I can control vibrations. Do you know what your gifts are?"
Silence.
"You don't have to tell me," she assured.
"I can fly," Flynn said. "I bet Fiona can, too, cause she's got-" A sharp crack of a hand swatting at an arm.
Daisy grinned. "You can fly? That's amazing. I can push myself into the air, but I can only go straight up or down. I knew someone who could kind of- hover, but he hardly ever did it cause it took so much focus."
"No, flying's easy," Flynn assured her, a note of petulance in his voice. "I fell down a lot at first, and I've only ever done it in here because I didn't want the nuns to see. Sister Laura says we're cursed."
Daisy found her fists clenching. "That's rubbish. We've been given a gift."
"I don't want it!" Fiona burst out, thumping against the bed. "I want to be normal!"
Holding her breath, Daisy reached towards the sound and covered Fiona's small hand in her own. Under her fingers, she felt feathered digits instead of skin, giving way to wicked talons. Fiona went deathly still.
"I thought that too," Daisy admitted. "When I first transformed, I kept breaking things. A light, first, then a window, even my own arms. I was scared, too. But being Inhuman- it's not a curse, Fiona. If I wasn't Inhuman now, I'd never have met my real family. I grew up here, you know? The name the nuns gave me was Mary Sue Poots, so you can probably guess how glad I was that my parents always wanted to call me Daisy."
"Your parents are Inhumans?" Flynn whispered. She knew that note of longing.
"They're... not around any more. But Inhumans are my people. There's a group called the Secret Warriors- all Inhumans, who use their powers to stop bad people from doing bad things. That's what being Inhuman is. Finding somewhere to belong."
"Are you a... secret warrior? Are they like the Avengers?"
"Sometimes, I am." She let a little grin tug at her lips, even if the siblings couldn't see it. "You like superheroes?"
"Yeah," they both replied at the same time.
"The papers call me Quake."
Notes:
Flynn and Fiona are actual comics characters, albeit very minor ones. They can indeed both fly, despite very different physical manifestations of their abilities. According to the Marvel Wiki, Flynn's flight is down to the increased mass from his bulging veins (huh?), while Fiona's is thanks to her... feathers. Probably.
This assumes that Daisy has created some kind of halfway house/ new Afterlife/ safe space for Inhumans. That seems like exactly the kind of thing she'd do whilst on the run tbh.
Not a very immediate response to the 'what it means to be a hero' prompt? But oh well I had fun writing it.