This little idea has been bugging me since the trailer for Season 2.5 was released, and I only finished it today, 20 minutes before the episode was done. Of course, I then had to go and watch the episode, WHICH WAS AMAZING (seriously, I missed everyone so much, it was like a little family reunion), so this is getting up now. It was written before "Aftershocks", so it's canon-divergent. Just FYI for posterity. ;)
Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Marvel Universe, though I appreciate, love and cherish pretty much every character as my own.
"Our whole lives have been leading to this moment," Raina said, eyes gleaming with a manic excitement. "This is our destiny, our purpose. Why else would we be here?"
"You're insane!"
"Skye, you know we need to be here! Open your mind to the possibilities around you! Think of the possibilities…"
Raina trailed off and Skye was left speechless once again in as many hours. The earth around them shook as if agreeing with the older woman, and she laughed in awe as the stone walls around them began to close, grinding shut. Skye made to run out, but her feet and legs felt heavy, her muscles unwilling to respond to her brains frantic pleas for them to move.
Trip ran through a crack in the stone walls that were just sliding shut, and Skye felt her pulse rate spike. It was already dangerous enough, and for him to be there- they didn't know what was going to happen. Raina had put the obelisk on the pillar, the walls were closing- shut. They had closed with a bang.
"Trip! Get out!" Skye screamed, feeling a terrible sense of foreboding, a need to escape. "Get out!"
In slow motion Trip turned towards her and the obelisk exploded, sending a wave of rock fragments out in a circle around it, like a ripple of water on a lake. Skye felt the force hit her, felt the rock begin to take over her body, to trap her. It spread quicker that she could have thought possible, until it covered her nose, eyes, ears, and mouth, blinding her senses and cutting off her air.
And then the burning started. It began where the rock had hit her in the sternum, right below her heart that was still thudding away in her chest – Why am I not dead yet? – and spread outward, searing her limbs from the inside out, consuming her mind in an inferno like a hurricane.
"Skye!"
The pain still coursing through her body, Skye felt the stone covering her body begin to crack, faint light glowing against her eyelids as pieces fell off of her face like she was shedding a second skin.
"Skye!"
Her eyes blinked open, the only part of her that could move, and she found herself looking at the ground, where a rocky figure laid, hands over its face.
Skye's breathing slowed, her vision tunneling, as she realized it was Trip.
"Skye! Please!"
With a scream of terror and pain the rest of the rock covering her skin was blown off, the ground around her shuddered in a huge quake, Trip's body was disintegrating before her eyes-
And she sat up in a bed in the underground complex they were using as SHIELD headquarters, Jemma next to her with a syringe ready. She flinched.
"Sorry, Skye," the scientist said, wincing slightly as she set down the sedative. "Just a precaution. If the earthquake had gotten any worse-"
"I know," Skye said, eyes dropping, taking deep breaths as her racing heart slowly calmed.
Jemma was checking the monitor on her right arm, pressing buttons that made obnoxious beeping noises, and making notes on a handheld tablet.
"Well, it wasn't as bad as last time," she said, with a fake tone of airiness. She lost the smile as she caught Skye's glare. "Well, it wasn't."
"I don't want it to happen at all," she shot back, a silence falling for a moment before she asked, "Why didn't you wake me up? I was just practicing meditation."
"And the fact that you nodded off while meditating again, not to mention the growing dark circles under your eyes, tell me even more that you needed the rest."
Skye wanted to argue, but realized it was a battle she couldn't win. It was true, she hadn't been sleeping since what happened in the underground city. It wasn't that she was scared to, or that she had too many things going through her mind (common factors to her insomnia when she was younger), but that her mind simply felt different. It wasn't like you read in the books and comics or watch on TV, where the main character feels like their eyes have been opened, like they can see so much more. She didn't have some new outlook on life or felt enlightened now that she had her new ability.
If she was honest with herself, it felt like a part of her was missing. The "innocent" girl she had been before discovering just what her father had done, what Whitehall had done, what had been done to her mother – that girl was gone. Her life had changed so much in the past – year and a half? Two years? She'd gone from a hacker from and intelligence organization to a consultant for SHIELD to a mistrusted member of the team to a Level One agent to a fugitive of SHIELD and HYDRA on the run with her team to some alien who had the power to shake the ground beneath her feet with a simple force of will.
"After you change, no one else will understand. They'll be afraid."
Her fath-Cal hadn't been wrong. No one understood, least of all herself. But he hadn't been entirely right either. The only one who was afraid of what she'd become was herself. She wasn't naïve enough to think that everyone else was avoiding her. She was, both intentionally and unintentionally, avoiding the other members in the base.
"Skye?"
She looked up at Jemma's voice. "Yeah?"
"Are you sure you're alright?"
"I'm okay," she lied, avoiding Simmons' eyes. "Go on, I'll be fine."
Simmons opened her mouth to say something, but stayed silent and left the room, leaving Skye alone.
Leaning back on the bed once the scientists' footsteps had faded away, Skye rolled over so she was no longer facing the glass wall, giving her a lovely view of shelves full of medical supplies, but also giving her an illusion, however slight, of privacy. There were cameras in each corner of the Playground, and people walking everywhere except for the bunks, and an illusion was all she was going to get.
Her eyes drifted to the camera visible from where she was laying and wondered who was behind it. Every member of the team took shifts keeping watch, and she couldn't keep track of the rotation – never had been able to.
If she started a quake they were instructed to grab an ICER and sedate her in case it escalated. Luckily, it hadn't gotten out of control since the first incident, but they still kept watch just in case.
Skye had woken from a nightmare a week after San Juan to her own power shaking the ground beneath her bunk. The window above her bed had shattered, only increasing her fear in her confused state, and May and Hunter had been banging on her door, yelling her name. The rest was a blur, but she knew they had somehow managed to get the door open and tag her with an ICER before the quake had caused any serious damage.
After that incident she'd requested to be moved somewhere in the basement, where the walls were more solid and there was only earth beneath the concrete floor. There weren't any bedrooms in the basement, but she didn't care. The team was more important than her having a window in her room. It didn't matter to Skye that she had little privacy at night if it meant she wouldn't hurt anyone.
After the first incident Skye had spent her nights awake, doing whatever she could to keep from dozing off and potentially having nightmares or another episode. When May found out, after Simmons had caught Skye napping during meals, her SO had been trying to get her into the habit of meditation to "calm her mind" before bed. Not that it had helped much. More often than not she fell asleep during the silent minutes and ended up having disturbing dreams that kept her awake for the rest of the night.
Skye's thoughts turned to Trip and she sat up suddenly, hands gripping the cot she was on, purposefully thinking of something else. This was another tactic May had given her to practice – diversion of attention, or thinking of something non-threatening as it decreased the chances of a quake forming.
Her breathing evened out and a smile spread onto her face, proud of her accomplishment, however small it was. It wasn't often she was able to dispel a quake before it even started.
Mind buzzing and knowing she was too wound up still to actually sleep, Skye turned to one of the cameras and pointed up, signaling that she was coming upstairs. She turned off the lights Simmons had left on and slid the door closed behind her.
The labs she passed by were quiet and dark, except for one where Simmons was typing something into a computer, her back to the hallway. Skye kept walking.
In a room off of the main area, right around the corner from the kitchen, Skye heard the tell-tale sounds of a Halo battle being fought by Fitz and Mack, their good-tempered bickering growing louder as she got closer. Instead of joining them or watching them as she would have done before, she slipped past, continuing on her way.
After making herself a hot cup of tea (Simmons had obviously been having too much of an influence on her eating habits) with two sugars, the hacker grabbed a blanket off the couch in the common area and made her way up the last two flights of stairs to the roof.
She went to her usual spot, but saw it was already occupied by… May.
Pausing a few feet away must have prompted her SO into speech because the older woman said "Sit," in a no-nonsense voice. She did, pulling the blanket tight around her shoulders with one hand, the other balancing her tea as she draped her legs over the edge of the rooftop.
They sat in silence for a few moments before Skye spoke, still looking out at the rows of streetlights laid out around them.
"I thought you and Bobbi were going to be in Colorado until Thursday."
"The op went easy," May said, her hands moving from her lap to either side of her hips, bracing herself against the stone of the roof. "They didn't come quietly and had guns firing the moment we knocked on the door so we took them out, grabbed the intel and flew back."
"No problems then?"
"None at all."
There was silence for a few more moments until Skye spoke again.
"How did you know I'd be up here?"
"It's not like the roof is a secret hideout, Skye," May said, and though Skye didn't look over she heard the eye roll in her SO's tone of voice.
"I just…"
She trailed off, not exactly sure what she was going to say. Part of her wanted to wait out the night alone, but another part of her didn't want to be alone, and she felt a slight tremble run through her at the thought of being alone with her thoughts.
The tea burned her tongue as she took too large of a gulp, but she didn't care. They sat in silence beneath the cloudy sky and as a late-night breeze blew over them Skye shivered and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Maybe she should have grabbed her jacket and some socks when she decided to go to the roof.
"Have you been working on your meditation?" May asked out of the blue, Skye looking over at her. She took a moment to choose her words before answering.
"In a manner of speaking."
"Hmm?"
May sounded skeptical but interested and Skye sighed, sipping her tea again to stall. Her gaze drifted out to the city below them once again.
"Every time I try to calm my mind I end up falling asleep."
"That is the whole point of the exercise."
"But it doesn't help!" Skye snapped, frustrated all of a sudden. "It never helps! The quakes happen regardless!"
"Do they?" May asked, and Skye couldn't tell if the vibration she felt was a shiver or the ground trembling.
"I haven't been able to control them," she said, feeling agitated. "No matter what I try."
"It's not about keeping control, it's about finding peace," May said.
"How am I supposed to find 'peace' when I can't seem to relax for anything?" Skye asked, abandoning her tea on the ground and pulling the blanket tight around her. She'd been trying and trying to relax, to calm her mind, but there was always something that made her jump, something that caught her attention, something that distracted her from what she was trying to do until she simply drifted off to sleep.
"Have you talked to anyone about what happened in the temple?" May asked, and Skye looked up, wary at the change in subject.
"You all heard the story."
"From Mack and Coulson, but not from you."
"That's all there is to know."
May gave her a skeptical look. "I'm sure."
Skye waited for a few moments, preparing herself for something that wasn't forthcoming. "You aren't going to ask about it?"
"If you don't want to talk, I'm not going to make you, Skye."
Skye sighed at that.
"I know how these sorts of experiences can change you," May continued, Skye glancing over at her surreptitiously. "Granted, I may not have a psychopathic father or a traitor for an ex-beau, but I more than most know that life doesn't always stay on the path we're trying to follow."
"Sure doesn't," Skye scoffed, pulling her legs close under her arms as a strong gust of wind blew across the rooftop. "Not that it would be a life worth living if it did. I mean, who wouldn't like a life where the government and an evil agency were hunting them down? Seriously, that's what makes it fun."
Her dry sarcasm was not lost on May and Skye felt a little stirring of pride to see the smirk that pulled at her SO's lips.
The two women sat in silence for the next half hour, Skye nursing her significantly cooled tea with a pensive look on her face, and May gazing up at the stars. As the older woman's watch beeped to signal the turn of the hour – two in the morning – May stood up slowly and stretched, her back popping a few times as her bones slid into place after too long a stretch of sitting in one spot.
"Tai Chi in the morning?" she asked he protégée.
"Do I have to?"
"It will help."
"If I need to," Skye said, rolling her eyes. "What time?"
"Seven?"
"Not the usual five AM session?"
"I personally would like a little more than three hours of sleep, but if you want to wake up early…"
"No, I'm fine," Skye said quickly, shaking her head. "Seven it is then."
She gathered up her mug and the blanket and the two of them went inside, Skye relishing the warmth of the air from the heated building.
"It really would help to talk," May said as they reached the floor the bunks were on.
"Are you offering?"
"I'm willing. Slightly different terminology, but yes. I'll talk if you want to."
"I might just take you up on that offer," Skye said, nodding as her SO headed to her bunk. "-Hang on!"
May turned quickly at the shout, fists up, eyes scanning the corridor on high alert.
"Oh, sorry," Skye said with a sheepish smile. "Just wondered if you could take the mug back to the kitchen."
She held out the mug and May took it, a smile threatening to break through her nonplussed look. "See you at seven," she said in lieu of dismissal, turning away and letting the door close behind her.
Skye smiled after her SO, feeling lighter than she had since she'd changed. She headed back down to her temporary room, taking the blanket with her. Heck, if she was getting up at seven she'd want to be as comfortable as possible.