A/N: The idea of Skye having been changed by the Obelisk, but not realizing it, fascinates me. I think there's a lot of good drama that could come out of that, and I wanted to explore it. P.S. - I own nothing!

Before her eyes, Trip was transforming.

The mist had thrown him against the wall like a blast from a grenade, and now he was pinned there, staring at Skye. His eyes were pleading, and his lips moved wordlessly as he began turning to stone.

Like the Hydra agent she had killed with the Obelisk in the building far above them.

Skye tried to reach out, to rescue him, but she felt as heavy as stone herself, feet rooted to the floor and arms dead weight, unresponsive at her sides.

She could only watch, trapped in her own body, as stone crept up Trip's arms and shoulders to his neck, his beautiful living skin fading to dull gray. His face was the last thing to change, his lips hissing out the first sound of her name before they were petrified. Then he was gone.

And in a second, he crumbled to pieces, nothing but fine dust on the floor.

"No!" Skye shouted desperately, straining helplessly against a force she couldn't see. "NOOOOO!"

The chamber began to shake.

She awoke, drenched in sweat, to her room at the Playground shaking in real life, her few personal knickknacks skittering on the shelves. The earthquake was a strong one, but not enough to motivate her to dive for cover.

After a minute or so, the shaking subsided, and Skye let out a shuddery breath.

A week.

It had been one week since Puerto Rico. A week since she'd seen the Obelisk open and the crystals emerge from inside it. A week since she'd broken out of whatever cocoon had enveloped her to see Triplett, turned to stone and then disintegrating before her eyes.

Skye blinked back tears. She was surprised this was the first nightmare she'd had about it. Of course, she'd been bottling things up pretty tightly since then. There was too much emotion locked up in the events of that day to access and still be able to maintain her composure. And she needed to maintain her composure.

Puerto Rico had left everyone devastated. The sweetness of taking down Whitehall and preventing mass civilian casualties had been completely overshadowed by the death of Agent Triplett.

"My acceptable loss number was zero," Coulson had confided to her brokenly on the way back to base. His reddened eyes had shown Skye clearly just how torn up her Director was by the loss.

Not that anyone was unaffected. Simmons, especially, had spent an inordinate amount of time crying. Some days it seemed like there was barely enough morale and emotional stability on the team to keep things going. Skye had learned from Agent May the skills necessary to keep herself under control. So that's what she'd been doing.

Skye took a deep breath and let herself briefly remember that day. She still couldn't believe Coulson had followed her after Raina. And Trip had followed them both. He had pulled all the charges just in time, apparently, saving them all. And then he had come into the chamber. It was still surreal, even in memory.

After everything went down, Mack had had to half-carry Skye back to the plane, overcome as she was by emotion and exhaustion. The Obelisk hadn't been a weapon of mass destruction after all. Just a weapon of small-scale, agonizing destruction for those caught in the room with it.

She would have thought it was nothing more than that, but for what happened to Raina. When the once-lovely con artist broke out of her cocoon, she had shockingly morphed into something hideous - spikes protruding from her skin, fingers twisted and deformed like a witch in a fairy tale. It was ironic, Skye reflected with bitter amusement. After so long wanting to change, that's what Raina had become.

Skye wondered whether she was disappointed, or whether she welcomed her new, awful state with her characteristic wide-eyed idealism. There was no way to know. Raina had shoved her way out of the chamber past a stunned and grief-stricken Skye, Mack, and Coulson, and they hadn't seen her since. Not that Skye was sure she wanted to.

She shuddered. Makes me even more glad the Obelisk didn't work on me.

Skye's father - Cal; it seemed easier, less personal, to think of him as Cal - had said that it would give her a gift. But she hadn't received any gift. Unless you counted the endless ache in her chest and the suffocating sense of guilt. She had come out just the same as before, only a thousand times more broken.

She was the reason Trip had gone down there. If she hadn't followed Raina, the obsessed woman could have gone through her grotesque change all by herself, and Trip would still be alive. It was her fault he was gone.

Skye's face crumpled in grief. A tear rolled down her cheek as an aftershock rippled through the base, providing a welcome distraction from her thoughts.

This is so weird. We're in New England, not L.A. What's up with the earthquakes?

Skye rolled over and checked her clock. 9am. May had been letting her sleep lately, waiting until midday to do their training. Skye had a feeling May was trying to provide her with as much distraction as possible during the day and as much chance as possible to sleep at night.

She decided to get up and make sure all the shaking wasn't some project of Fitz's and Simmons' gone horribly wrong and threatening to blow the place up. Although, if it was, there would probably be an alarm going off. The absence of one was reassuring.

Skye pulled on decent clothes, didn't bother with shoes or socks, and padded barefoot down to Coulson's office. She found Agent May watching a bank of video feeds in the room downstairs.

"What's with all the seismic activity?" Skye asked abruptly.

May shrugged. "It's unusual for this area, but it's not unheard of. None of it seems strong enough to worry about," she replied reassuringly. She appraised Skye carefully, noticing the puffiness of her eyes and the redness of her nose. "You okay?" she asked with gentleness.

Skye shook her head, blinking back tears as she refused to let herself break down.

In an uncharacteristic show of comfort, May stood and walked over to Skye, gently drawing the younger woman into her arms. "We all miss him," she whispered compassionately.

Skye nodded, burying her face in May's shoulder. She took in the comfort May offered, without allowing it to penetrate too deeply into her heart. That would just make her sob. And life was too busy and too hard, and her job too important, to spend time sobbing.

A/N: I love to hear what people think, and follows, favorites, and reviews make my day. :)