A/N: This is the start of a season 3 AU. Consider it my ideal arc for Simmons.
She's been running for months. At least it feels like months, she has no way of knowing. Days here don't pass like those on Earth. The sky is dark and unchanging, reinforcing the niggling thought that this is all a twisted afterlife. If she is dead though, then why does she bother running?
Her legs pump furiously, muscles burning with the exertion of sprinting on a planet with higher gravity. Her foot slips and she hits the floor. Hard. Pain surges from the point of impact, sending signals to her already overloaded brain. Simmons chokes on a gasp, forcing herself to her feet again, one hand rubbing the bruise that is already forming on her elbow. She risks a glance over her shoulder and then she's off.
Simmons is at her cave entrance when she hears it. A booming cackle, elongated and eerie as it bounces off the valleys and craters she has just scrambled through. Her blood runs cold. She waits, praying to a god she doesn't believe in that her pursuer has given up.
It's an hour before she moves again, standing on aching legs and slipping sideways through a crevice in the rocks.
Inside is dry and warm, starlight leaking in from a small hole in the domed ceiling. It's almost like a skylight. Simmons settles against a wall, sliding down until her rump his the ground. She stretches her legs out and slips her makeshift bag off. There's plants tucked inside. Those that she had been collecting when she heard the hunter. She had wanted to look for a new water source too but there hadn't been time. Her rainwater well – merely a reservoir hewn into the cave floor below the skylight – had run dry two days ago. Simmons ignores the pounding in her head and begins to chew on the plant roots, her dry tongue soothed by the small amount of moisture in them.
Simmons sighs, her eyes roaming the foreign stars. Her right hand swirls in the dirt of the cave floor. She ignores the grit under her fingernails, absentmindedly tracing a single name into the dirt.
Skye.