AN: thescavalry on twitter wrote: "YALL daisy's fear (the nun) was never killed? which means daisy is gonna see her soon? i swear if i don't get melinda going "not my daughter you b/itch" when daisy sees the nun my hands will be thrown"
and I couldn't stop thinking about it!

Unbetaed again because I'm an impatient stubborn being

For Alina

The hands are pale and bony, with long pointy nails that don't really belong.

(The dry noise of the clipper every Saturday morning used to set a rhythm to her early years).

The robe's fabric is still rough to the touch and it frizzles with statics where it brushes her arm.

(That's why they all had those sandals with leather soles, she muses).

The cross is as bright as she remembers.

That's where Daisy keeps her focus. She can't look away, even if it's rude to stare, as they used to remind her.

If she did, she'd see the black holes where Sister Claire's jaundiced eyes used to stare back at her. Or the brittle thin lips sneer Sister Anna always directed at her if she came up last to the dinner table.

(There never was any pudding for the last to the table).

Daisy doesn't need to look at anything else but the gold cross to still feel the chill in her bones that came with every winter she lied down in that metal framed bunk bed with the too thin mattress and a dozen different children every few months.

She should say something, probably, but nothing comes to mind except all those times she should have kept her tongue and didn't.

(Sister Theresa used her cane to poke her when she spoke back, Sister Lucy used to hose them all down when they got too loud in the backyard those last summer afternoons, Sister Eleanor simply dragged her to the brooms closet and locked the door until she believed the apologies for misbehaving were heartfelt - usually a few hours a lot of begging later).

The fingers around her throat are cold and unfamiliar, the nails are digging in her skin and she should at least try to scream but nothing more than a wheeze comes out of her as her eyes start to water and the cross hanging from the nun's neck gets blurry.

Daisy shudders, squeezing her hands around the wrist bones covered in paper thin skin of the nightmarish nun that's choking her, trying to ease the grip around her neck at least a little bit.

For a bag of old bones born from her own childhood fears this nun is really strong.

She feels darkness pooling at the edges of her vision and a few light spots dancing in the middle.

She should fight back.

Why isn't she?

Her limbs feel heavy, her ears ring with the static feedback of a rush of blood and nothing more.

A black blur flies in front of her eyes and Daisy thinks this is it, this is how I die, as the golden cross catches the light. Those digging nails scratch at the sides of her throat on their way off, then vanish with a whooshing sound and she's suddenly breathing again, coughing and sputtering and thrashing and scrambling on the floor of the Lighthouse basement, with flashes dancing all around her before she can focus her vision again on something: a pair of black worn out combat boots in her line of sight.

May.

Sure enough she looks up to wide dark eyes and pursed lips. "Why did I just have to punch a nun in the face?" she asks miffed.

Daisy could probably give a few, plausible, reasonable answers such as I was dying, she was choking me, I couldn't breathe, if her mind weren't stuck in a loop of nonsense. Her eyes well up again because that's another mom face, she thinks instead.

"I- I… Sorry," she manages before a coughing fit leaves her breathless again.

May kneels beside her on the concrete floor, venturing a tentative hand on her arm, raising the little hair there in goosebump. "Daisy?"

"I'm sorry," she rasps, "I just… I froze."

She was stupid. She panicked. She saw the well known shadow out the corner of her eye, heard the familiar rustling of the tunic, the peculiar mix of incense and talc and she was five years old again, alone and scared and helpless. She remembered too late that she'd escaped St Agnes, that she was not a scrawny kid anymore, that she was not a nameless rejected child but Daisy Johnson, Agent of SHIELD, and Quake!

Stupid, of course. No vibration was caused by her touch anymore.

Those creaking bones and old lady knobby fingers were already clamping around her throat and she was flailing around trying to use a power she couldn't muster again instead of punching and kicking.

Stupid.

She feels stupid, tearing up in front of May, a mess of snot and drool and choked up horror at her brainless failure. But shame only brings more tears to the surface and she can't repress a sob. Even if May is right there, even if she will think less of her, and be disappointed in her for not fighting back like she was taught to.

(For fearing the old ghost of a nun, of all the deadly threats they faced since).

Why didn't she fight back?

Why couldn't she find the strength to even try?

Why?

The palm that slides up to her shoulder is warm and gentle, but May's touch is firm and Daisy looks up at her again, squaring her shoulders, swallowing tears, trying to regain a bit of dignity. She catches a glimpse of worry between May's eyebrows before her usual composure is back in place.

"How many nuns were there?"

Daisy shrugs. "About a dozen." She remembers all of them, their different accents in the choir, the different rhythm to their steps up the wooden stairs to the attic when her isolation time was finally over, each of their favorite biblical quotes she had to write down in penance a hundred times, and the set in their jaws whenever a family sent her back.

May's eyes narrow imperceptibly and Daisy's heart skips a bit because she thinks it might be yet another mom face. A determined one.

"I'll punch them all in the face," May says standing up looking as the fierce warrior that she is, "Will you help?"

It's her heart to well up now as she nods and accepts May's hand and stand as well, cracking a smile through the tears and locking her arms around the woman's neck. May doesn't even stiffen this time, her own arm comes around Daisy's waist and she leans into her warm wet cheek with half closed eyes.

She can fight back, Daisy thinks, but she probably won't even need to now, because Melinda May would never take her back to the orphanage, and mean, scary nuns don't seem much of a threat anymore.