Daisy's a little odd in the first scene, but c'mon, it's been like 5 hours max since they got rid of the crazy robot. It's been a long day.

I can't seem to think of a name for this chapter, so I kinda phoned it in.

~3600 words

1/11/18

Chapter Four: Emotions 'n' Stuff

It seemed to take forever for the others to leave, but once they had, Daisy turned to her two closest friends.

Ignoring the exhaustion (and awful, throbbing pain) seeping into her bones after a day of fighting Aida, getting knifed in the arm, and then shot into space (not to mention everything that happened since), she looked suspiciously at the pair.

"What's going on with you two?"

They looked hesitant to tell her, no doubt remembering how snappy she could be when she was tired (there had been a number of unfortunate, un-caffeinated run-ins back when they were living on the Bus).

"About that—"
"After everything—"

Talking over each other even now, Fitz and Simmons both started trying to explain. They paused, having a silent conversation with their eyes. Trading one last look, they turned to Daisy, and Fitz spoke up. "We've decided to put our relationship on… hold. For now." Daisy fought the bleariness that threatened to cloud her eyes, looking at them in surprise.

"Yes, after everything that's happened: me getting trapped on another planet,"

"Me, turning into Josef Mengele in the framework…" Yikes. Daisy cringed at his comparison to the horrific Nazi scientist.

"We've just decided we need some time to…" Simmons searched for the right word.

"…Deal," Fitz supplied.

"—With that. Yes."

Daisy was dumbstruck for all of five seconds before transitioning to frustrated as all hell.

"Are you freaking kidding me?! You're trapped together for the first time in FOREVER, and you split up?!" Hearing what sounded suspiciously like despair in her voice, she realized she was way too exhausted to have this conversation; and seeing their startled expressions, she did her best to reign in her frustration. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and then opened them wide, blinking repeatedly in an effort to make her eyes less dry. Taking a breath, she asked, "It's really just a break, right? Not a breakup?"

They nodded, though she couldn't be sure if it was because they were certain of the answer or just freaked out by how fervently invested she was in their relationship. Maybe a bit of both.

"Good," she said, kicking off her shoes. She looked back and forth between the pair before finally just groaning in frustration and flopping face down onto her new bed. Too drained from the day to continue, she said through the pillow, " 'cause you two are frigging made for each other." Then, more to herself than to them, she mumbled, "Completing your sentences now." If her eyes had still been open, she would've rolled them in frustration.

Simmons followed Fitz into the other room, and Daisy dozed off, only waking when she heard Simmons come back in the room. Daisy started to sit up.

"You okay?"

Simmons jumped, unaware she'd woken. She paused thoughtfully. "Yes, I think. With the idea of taking a break, at least," Jemma walked toward her and sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'm more worried about Fitz than anything else."

She cloaked her emotions behind the explanatory tone she used so often.

"Because of how well Fitz and I know each other, I've always felt like I've known how to help him; even when what helps him is me being gone." Her voice lost some of its usual tone. "But everything is so different now." She scooted backward so she could lean back against the cool metal of the wall and Daisy moved to sit beside her, leaning her arm against Jemma's in silent support.

When Simmons spoke again, her voice had lost its self-assured, explanatory tone entirely. "He has a whole other life in his head that know so little about, and he doesn't want to talk about it," she sighed, frustrated, and leaned her head back against the wall. "I just don't know how to help him with this. Everything I know about helping Fitz is rooted in my knowledge of him, but right now, what he's dealing with is…"

"…The person he was when he was someone else," Daisy finished for her.

"Yeah," Jemma said miserably, as she drew her knees to her chest. Daisy snuck an arm around her friend's shoulders. "Half the things I say seem to just make it worse."

"Hey…" said Daisy in a soothing voice. "After everything he did in there… He's gotta have a lot going on in his head right now. It'll take some time for him to figure out who he is again. For now, he probably thinks that keeping you away from the stuff going through his head is protecting you somehow.

"I can't imagine what it's like to have the connection you two share. But I think if I did,.." Daisy trailed off, wondering how to phrase it best. Her brow furrowed and she sighed, continuing matter-of-factly, "I've been where Fitz is right now. I've done terrible things to good people, and I've woken up from it to realize… the damage I'd done; the monster I'd become.

"And I left so you guys wouldn't…" she heard an odd chuckle escape her throat, " 'drown in my wake' pretty soon afterward. I felt… toxic. And I didn't want for you—" Daisy cut herself off. "Anyway, if I'd had a weirdly semi-telepathic connection with someone the way you two do, I'd have stayed as far away as possible; keep you from ever having to understand what was in my head."

Jemma's expression had gone from distress to worry for Daisy as she spoke, but now she turned to her friend, a thoughtful look on her face. "You can help him."

Daisy shifted, uneasy with the idea of taking on Jemma's supportive role when she was clearly so put out about not being able to support him herself.

But Simmons seemed to perk up some at the idea. Noticing Daisy's discomfort, she said, rolling her eyes, "It's fine, Daisy. I've only been broken up about not being able to help him because I couldn't figure out how. I told you before, I've always known how to help him even when what helps is me not being there: it doesn't need to be me who helps him as long as he's being helped." Daisy's discomfort disappeared.

Simmons had almost completely recovered her usual demeanor, and she continued matter-of-factly, "I wish he could just talk to me, of course, like he usually does, but I just have no frame of reference for what it's like to have who I am altered or to face the fallout from that. But there are other people on this team who do."

"Yeah, way too many," said Daisy, with a tired laugh. "As long as you won't worry about not helping him yourself…" she scooted to the edge of the bed and looked at Simmons. "I will do everything I can to help him," Daisy promised, her eyes straying to the metal surface Jemma was leaning on, the shared wall behind which lay Fitz's quarters. "…to keep him from seeing himself as a monster." Her voice softened as a wave of melancholy overtook her. "I owe him that much." Pushing it aside, she smiled at Simmons. "Do you think he's still up?"

After a brief look of puzzlement, Simmons smiled back at her with understanding in her eyes, no doubt having figured out to what debt she'd been referring. "Oh, Fitz has never been great at sleeping in unfamiliar places. I'm sure he's up trying to figure out what the things in the ceiling are or something."

As she stood, Daisy tilted her head up, surprised. "What the hell are those?"

"Right, you must've still been asleep for that part. We have no idea. Odd though, aren't they?"

"Yeah…" Still studying the dimpled half-spheres spaced throughout the ceiling, "they look like the squishy, little balls we used in like first-grade gym class to learn how to throw, with the little craters to help our tiny hands grip it. But, yunno, cut in half and made of metal." Walking toward the door, she muttered loudly to herself, "Imagine the damage if we'd thrown those at those second-grade twerps."

She smiled to herself when she heard Simmons' soft chuckle at her childhood antics. Daisy opened the door to the bathroom before turning around to face Simmons again. Leaning on the doorframe, she studied her friend. "You know I'll always be there for you too, right? If you need someone to talk to?"

Daisy was glad to see Simmons smile at her at her and nod. "I know, Daisy. Just go talk to Fitz, he needs you more than I do right now."

Daisy nodded, heading across the sparse bathroom to the door to Fitz's room, her bare feet chilled by the tile of the floor. She knocked softly. "Fitz, it's Daisy." She waited.

"Come in," Fitz called, continuing to look at the pictures he'd taken on his phone.

"What are you looking at?" Daisy asked, sitting down across from him at his small table.

"Pictures of those," he said, motioning toward the ceiling. "After the, er, thing with the window…" His face screwed up as he looked at his phone, "Well, for all we know, anything in this place could be linked to life support, or airlocks, or something else that would have consequences if I destroyed it."

Best figure out what things do first, before messing with them.

"Hey," she said, extending a hand on the table and resting it in his view to get his attention. "Look at me." He did, reluctantly. "You okay?" He put down the phone.

"Yeah," he sighed, with a smile that he couldn't quite make reach his eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, "Just… tired, I guess."

"Somehow, I think it's more than just that…" Her eyes seemed to search his.

"Look, I don't know what you're going through with having had a whole other life inside the Framework, but I've had times where I felt toxic; like I destroyed everything around me, and there have been times that I felt like a monster." She put her hand over his on the table, "Talking—having someone listen—especially someone who can understand: it helps."

Even he could tell his smile was brittle. He wished he could believe her, but Fitz knew what he'd done, and that was bad enough. If the others knew… He shook his head. They might look at him and see what he saw in the mirror.

"The things you did when you were under Hive's sway, they're nothing like what I did. Daisy, I killed people." The agonized expressions of the Inhuman subjects of his experiments flashed before his eyes. A pale blue set of eyes, in particular, kept repeating; face twisting in pain, but the eyes had never left his own, never wavered. They stared him down even now. He closed his eyes against the onslaught, but it was no use. "I don't deserve your help. Not with this."

Daisy stood, walking around the table to Fitz's side. With her foot, she turned his chair to face her. "You do deserve—"

"Daisy, I killed Lincoln in there." He refused to meet her eyes. "Tortured him, really. Trying to figure out how his power worked, how he avoided getting electrocuted, how to harness it all for Ophelia's little 'project.'" Fitz hung his head, unable to face her. He pressed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth before he continued. "I performed needless, agonizing experiments on him, for days, and he never once stopped glaring at me, blaming me with his eyes. But it didn't even faze me," he heard the anguish in his voice and, even now, heard his father's voice in his head, scolding him for it. "And when my experiments proved fatal, I just ordered some assistant cart his body off to the incinerator without a second thought."

There. That should make her stop.

She paused.

She crouched down to catch his eyes and took his hand.

"You do deserve my help, Fitz. You always will." She said it with such finality.

"I wasn't only talking about Hive when I said I've felt some of what you're feeling. After Hive, I felt toxic. Like I was some black hole of pain and anger and misery that would engulf everything around me, and destroy it all. But after Terrigenesis? That's when I felt like a monster. And you were there for me in ways I can't even begin to pay back.

"We could debate all day on whether anyone in the framework was real, apart from Mace and Agnes—and hell, the case could be made that Agnes wasn't anymore—"

"Mace was, though," Fitz interrupted, "He was a good man; a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. And then I went and dropped a building on him."

Daisy stood up from her crouched position with a sigh. "And I splintered a tree through Agent Calderón: he was a good man …probably, and a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. And then I went and blasted a broken shard of tree into his chest." She shook out her feet for a second before sitting down cross-legged on the floor in front of him.

"Look, let's save the debate on whether or not you could be truly in control of your actions in a…" She made a face as she searched for the words to describe it, "whacked-out, digital alternate-universe that got hacked by an evil robot—" he was about to correct her when she rolled her eyes, "android, whatever—for another time. But whether or not you believe you are deserving of help in general: what you did for me, Fitz, in this life, outweighs anything you could possibly do in another. You will always deserve my help."

A small, hesitant smile spread across her face. "I know a lot has happened since I went through the mist, but do you remember what it was like at first?" Daisy's eyes searched his. "Everyone was so disturbed by what had happened to Trip, so scared of the change in Raina's DNA—and I could only be with other people from the other side of glass or a hazmat suit.

"I was so terrified when you said I might have caused the earthquake, the stuff around me exploded. And it scared you; I could see it on your face. But from that moment on, everything you did was to protect me.

"You made sure no one else would find out, you got rid of the others, and you came into my quarantine room so I wouldn't be alone when you told me that I had changed; but with everyone so scared, we should keep it between us," Daisy's voice welled with emotion, "to keep me safe while we figured things out."

She sniffed and got control of her voice before continuing with more force. "That is who you are, Fitz. You are the only person I know who would hold an out of control force of nature in his arms and say there was nothing wrong with her—who would tell her she's just different now, and that there was nothing wrong with that.

"Even if you think you don't deserve the world's help, Fitz, you will always deserve mine. And I'm not gonna give up on you."

Fitz finally broke down. Dropping off of his chair, he huddled into Daisy's willing embrace. They stayed there for a while; sniffling into each other's shoulders as he finally let his tears fall.

Daisy sniffed. "If you're not ready to talk to Simmons, I'll listen; if you need time on your own, I'll kick everyone out. If you need someone who understands what it's like to have a whole other evil life in their head… I'll get May." A laugh bubbled up through her unsteady voice. "You'd be surprised; she's pretty good at this stuff."

He tried to imagine that. It didn't work. Seeing his expression, she added, "She's not really comforting, she just… says things you need to hear. And she was an agent of Hydra in there, so she'll have some understanding of your role, as well as getting the whole fake-but-not-totally memories of being evil thing."

He paused as they stood up, realizing that if they were going to be talking about the not-quite-fake but not-quite-real events that transpired in the framework often, they might benefit from a shorter way to describe it.

"Quasi-"

Daisy looked at him blankly, 'WTF' practically written on her face.

Realizing it was a complete non-sequitur, he continued, "It means 'seemingly, or apparently, but not really.' For the not-quite-fake, not-quite-real things that happened in the Framework: quasi-real. Should be a bit less time-consuming."

Daisy nodded. "Definitely less time-consuming. And I know it's hard to talk to people about this kind of stuff. I mean… I left pretty soon after what happened with Hive and Lincoln; the whole team being there with constant support… it can be a lot. No matter how sincerely they tell you it's not your fault, if you can't believe it yet, it can just make it worse. So, while I one hundred percent believe that talking to the others will help you, especially May, and Simmons when you're ready; if you want to keep things just between us, that's fine." She tilted her chin up as she looked at him, a grin crinkling her eyes, as she said calmly, "I'll be your Fitz, and keep you safe while you figure it out." He smiled a little at how much she seemed to like the idea of helping him the way he'd done for her. "It might take some time, but once there's some distance betw—" She pulled a face.

"What's wrong?" He asked, thinking that she'd felt a twinge of pain.

She gave a slight huff. "Just..." She rolled her eyes. "Time and distance was the speech Coulson gave me after Hive."

That was an odd reaction; she must not have taken getting that advice very well.

"Was he right?"

She thought about it for a long moment. "Mostly, I guess." The corner of her mouth went up, "Though for me, I think it may have taken time, distance, and a vengeance demon," she shot him a self-effacing smile as she turned to leave.

"Hey, Daisy," he called after her. His brow knit together as he searched for the right thing to say. After a slight hesitation, all he managed was, "Thanks." She smiled at him.

For now, he didn't seem able to put the thoughts in his head in order well enough to elaborate on that. But, for the moment at least, she had brought his mind back to the actual things that they'd been through, instead of the quasi-false memories of the life he'd led in the Framework.
And he couldn't call the Framework memories false. While they did take place in an artificial reality, the memories he had of that world were still as real in his head as his memory of this one. Didn't that make them real—to him, at least?

Losh. Having two lives in his head was gonna be bloody rough.

"Well, it's not entirely selfless," she said with a playful look and a self-deprecating smile. "I need you and Simmons back together. If you haven't noticed, my romantic life is crap. I live vicariously through you." He smiled as she left, silently glad she was able to joke about her luck in that department. It really was terrible.

When he finally fell asleep that night, he dreamt of blue daisies, breakfast nooks, and that time he saw Jemma carrying Aida's head in a box.

And of monkeys in tiny spacesuits.

-Losh was not a typo; it's a Scottish-ism. From the way I've heard it used, it seems the same as saying 'gosh,' but I could be wrong. I just really like the idea that Fitz sounds more Scottish inside his head.
-While technically Calderón's fate is unknown, a few days after the accident they said he was still in critical condition and then they never mentioned him again, so I'm assuming dead.

So. Hope it didn't get too sappy (the rough draft was practically dripping in sap).

First, let me say I adore the Skimmons friendship—did that ever get renamed? cuz I'm partial to Daimons (daimon is just another spelling of daemon, the sort of quasi-deity/quasi-human benevolent nature spirit thing in Greek mythology, and in computer programming is… apparently also a thing.)—But I had to re-watch a few mid season two episodes to get the details right for these chapters, and the Daisy-Fitz (Ditz, heh) friendship is like my ultimate friendship-OTP now. Seriously, the moment when Fitz tells her she's changed was just unbelievably beautifully done. I hope my reversal did it a small amount of justice.

Loved episodes 5 and six so much (omg, the Fitzsimmons feels), but I am going to be deviating from the canon about Robin and her mom. Much as I love that the show followed through on the whole going-through-the-mist-too-young-can-mess-up-your-mind thing from Bahrain, I've been planning their small appearance in this story since long before the show went and added to their characters in the canon. Anyway, Robin will be remaining entirely human.

Thanks so much for reading—the number of views just hit over a thousand! (I have no idea if that's big by fanfic standards, but it's big for me!)