I like to think of this chapter as 'a comprehensive guide to digging yourself out of a grave'
xx
Daisy dresses, then follows Ward out of the apartment in a haze, still reeling. She doesn't have her powers. They never even considered, coming in here, that she wouldn't have her powers.
Is it because the framework can't handle them? Do inhumans not exist here?
She has no answers. Just questions, and a shrinking amount of time before Ward realizes that there's something very off about his girlfriend. Or who she hopes is his girlfriend. She might actually die if they're engaged. When this is all over she's going to get a bottle of tequila and have a long night of forgetting about all this.
They're in a parking garage before she really realizes where they're going. Ward is standing on the passenger side looking at her expectantly. It takes her a moment to realize that he said her name. Well, he said Skye, which is apparently her name again.
"Did you forget your keys?"
She puts her hand in her jacket pocket and pulls the keys out instinctually, apparently fake her leaves them in the same spot as real her. Except she can't drive because she doesn't know where they're going. An echo sparks, one of driving down the highway with some kind of loud music playing and Ward in the passenger seat, but she can't figure out the location, or their destination.
"I think I'm getting a migraine, why don't you drive." She tosses the keys smoothly over the roof of the car into Ward's hands. He gives her a quirk of a frown but swaps sides with her without any further questioning.
Yeah, she's going to be having a lot of migraines if they end up staying in this place for a while.
He drives just like she remembers. Smooth and fast, with that easy confidence of having his eyes on the road but not paying any real attention to it, like it's not worth his time. She hates the dredge of memories. It's all the ones that she supressed, shoved away, because he's a traitor, in her own world at least, this one she's not so sure.
She runs her fingers through her hair and tries not to make a face when the ends don't free her fingers as she expects them to. Another thing she'll have to adjust to quickly.
They don't spend long on the highway, it's still early enough that they've beat the rush of commuters, and before she knows it there's a building looming before her that looks suspiciously similar to the Triskelion headquarters that used to be on the Potomac before SHIELD fell with HYDRA.
The unease that's been building in her gut since she woke up here spikes, her instincts telling her something that her conscious mind hasn't yet caught up with yet. Something's wrong. More wrong than just Aida messing with her love life.
She puts her hand in her pocket, feels the badge that was there earlier along with her keys and pulls it out. The outside looks just like the one that Coulson – temporarily – handed her all those years ago only on this one the leather casing has actually had time to wear in. Without cause, she holds her breath as she flips the thing open.
It takes her a moment to realize what's wrong with it, she's too preoccupied with the information written on the card – particularly ANALYST where she expected SPECIALIST - but then she looks closer. The badge itself is not a different shape but the imprint on it is, instead of the friendly eagle she's met with something she hasn't seen in what feels like a decade now. The hydra, skull and octopus limbs. Her heart stutters to a stop as she looks up, the rounded edge of the building coming into view. The same symbol is painted on for all to see.
She needs to get out of this car.
Simmons panics.
Her hands dig into the fabric, gripping uselessly as her nails scramble against the wood. Her heart thunders in her chest. Her breathing rasps against the inside of her throat.
No. Breathing. Stop.
She doesn't draw another breath, feels the pull of want for air under her collar bones, and focuses. The calmer she is the longer her air will last. She draws in a breath through her teeth.
There's a way out of this. She knows there is. Fitz was rambling on about it the other day. Well, she supposes that must have been a few months ago now actually. They were watching a show and he started rambling on about the techniques for escaping a buried coffin.
"Okay." She says to herself, aloud, even though she knows it's using more air than she has. It'll keep her calm, being able to talk this through like any other problem.
"Dimensions of a casket," she splays her hands over the lid above her face, from end to end, trying to estimate the measurement. Then stretches her feet down to find the end. She has to shimmy down slightly to reach it.
"Five foot three," her own height, she stretches her hand above her head, "Plus maybe, twenty inches," she converts the numbers quickly, "is 84 inches long, times maybe thirty inches across, times-" she feels up the side of the casket, "twenty inches high."
Another slow carefully controlled breath makes its way through her lungs, she can already feel the CO2 build up. Her nails dig into her palms as she does more mental math.
"-Would be, about 900 litres, minus the average human body volume of 66 litres. That leaves 830, one fifth of which is oxygen, so if that's consumed at a rate of point five litres per minute that allows about five and a half hours of air left." Her breath shakes through her on the way out. "Okay."
"Except of course once that time runs out I'll suffocate, dying in the framework which also means dying in real life." No problem at all.
Daisy won't find her in that time either, she's got to dig herself out.
What was Fitz prattling on about?
She takes stock. Her clothes are a simple blouse and trousers, there doesn't seem to be anything here buried with her, nothing to jab at the boards of the coffin with. She runs her hands over the surface of the thing, it's bowed in towards her under the weight of the earth but there aren't any cracks. Of course her family would choose to bury her in an expensive box.
Air. Air is the biggest problem. Once she gets the coffin to cave in on itself dirt will pile atop her, crushing the air from her chest, like an avalanche of snow, like an explosion at the bottom of the ocean. The world is only six feet above her head. If she could stand right now she'd be able to break her fingers through to the surface.
She wriggles her arms out of the sleeves of the shirt. Thankfully it's one piece, no buttons lining down the front so she pulls it up to her neck, tying the sleeves like a bag around her head. It feels weird, and even more claustrophobic, but it will keep her mouth, and hopefully her lungs, free of dirt.
She makes her plan, visualizing it is easy in the pressing darkness, and hopes to the stars that Fitz's theory works.
The silken lining caves under her grip. She shreds it, causing a gaping hole from the top of the coffin all the way down to her feet.
"Beat the lid until you start getting dirt falling in." It's Fitz's voice in her mind as she speaks the words to herself, following his guide the best she can remember. She batters the wood with her knees and fists, the space is too small for her to build up proper momentum though so more than half the hits end up dull. Her knuckles go raw before the wood cracks.
There's a snap, around the center of the lid where her knee connects and a dribble of cool dirt scatters over her pants. She hits the same point again. The hole opens up a little more, chunks of mud falling in. She shoves the dirt to the bottom of the box, filling it up around her and carving out a hole above.
Once she's filled the coffin as much a she can, her body curled up awkwardly beneath the crumped boards, she steadies her hands to make the next move.
"Okay, Fitz," she whispers, "here goes nothing." She fills her lungs.
Tearing away the boards, widening the hole so that her shoulders will fit through, cascades soil into the coffin. It pours down and she uses the shift, the loosening of the dirt, to shove herself to her feet. Her lungs burn but she holds the breath inside.
Dirt presses in against the shirt around her face and she claws upwards, digging her fingers through the damp earth. She tries to push her feet through it too, swimming up against the crushing current. Up and up, then- grass. She digs through the roots, mud sinking deep beneath her nail beds, until her fingers emerge on the surface. Air. Warm, fresh air.
The rest is a bit of a disorientated struggle. The breath burns out of her lungs as she claws her way up to the surface, thrashing around to loosen the dirt enough to bring her body up to join her hands.
Her face reaches the surface and she rips off the shirt covering it. A warm breeze ghosts over her skin. She could almost cry with relief. She laughs, lungs gasping, her chest still pressed up against the cool soil and drops her cheek down against the disrupted sod.
"Thank you, Fitz," she breathes, a tear slipping over her cheek, caving a track in the dirt.
Now she only has to find him again.
The traffic emerges from nowhere. One second they're cruising down the highway, the next there's a line forming in the road in front of them, as far as Daisy can see.
Ward glances over at her as he brings the vehicle to a stop. "Are you okay?"
Her skin feels cold; her face has gone ashen. This time, she can't grit her teeth and fake it. She stares up at the looming building.
How has this happened?
"I-" she draws a breath. They're sitting in a car, in gridlock traffic, and he's got the only gun. She can't believe this.
The car in front of them rolls forward, he looks back at the road, Daisy jams her knuckles into his side and rips the gun from the holster beneath his open coat before he can even react.
He groans, body crumpling from her hit. "What the hell, Skye?"
She clicks off the safety, the weapon trained on the side of his skull.
"You're going to turn the car around."
"Skye," He warns her, but the cars start moving properly again, traffic picking up and he has no choice but to go along with it.
"Take the next exit."
"Skye." It's bitter, hard, the way his voice would sound when she teased him too far.
"The next exit, Ward. Now." She doesn't give.
"What's going on Skye?" He does as she says though, bringing the car into the rightmost lane smoothly. Daisy doesn't dare glance ahead to see where the exit will take them. Just because he's driving doesn't make him any less adept an agent, any less dangerous.
"I'm not the one who needs to be explaining things right now."
His brow furrows, the speed of the car drops as they enter the exit ramp. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
She doesn't answer him, uses a split second while he's changing lanes again to glance around at the highway signs. They're in DC, she knows DC – a little. They're driving south, now on a different highway, along the river. She doesn't want to give him an opportunity to get to the bridge, she doesn't want be pointing a gun at a HYDRA agent in front of the goddamn HYDRA base.
"Take the 110, south."
He sighs but does it, his voice hard, dissaproving. "Where do you want to go Skye? The airport?"
Oh, maybe.
xx
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