I DO NOT OWN "MARVEL's AGENTS OF SHIELD"!
After months of hard work and many hours spent overcoming of Writer's Block, I am finally ready to deliver the final chapter of my very first multi-chapter fanfic.
For those of you who have no completely skipped over this, in order to get to the chapter, thank you!
And so, without further adieu, I present you you the last chapter of Forgiveness is a Two Way Street!
Epilogue: Accept the Past, and Let Yourself Heal
Mace looks at me with a calm expression. "We're currently in the process of contacting her foster family-"
"What do you think's gonna happen?" I huff, frustrated at him already.
"It's come to our attention that they may have contacted the Watch Dogs about her...transformation." Mace says carefully. "What their motives might have been, if they did in fact do such a thing, is still unknown."
"Regardless, she can't go back into the system." I say. "She dodged a bullet this time, but if another family finds out what she can do, there's no telling what could happen." I'm getting riled up, and I can hear my heart monitor begin to pick up. When I turn my head to look directly at Mace, the pain almost causes me to gasp. "She has to stay where she's safe," I grunt, "and that sure as hell isn't in the system!" My anger makes my battered body ache and throb with a new pain, and it takes everything I have not to press the button for painkillers.
Mace just stares at me, studying me. All I can presume is that he's trying to guess my true motives. "No, of course not." He finally says slowly. "She doesn't even know how to use her powers, let alone control them. So for now, she's staying here, where she's safe, and where the public is safe from her should she ever lose control." He says it like it was a decision that was already made, but I can tell he was bending to my iron-will. I guess he didn't want me hurting myself further by trying to argue about it.
"Good." I say.
"As for you," Mace continues, "well, Agent Simmons has filled me in on your condition. I'm sure you're well aware that you'll be out of the limelight for quite some time."
"Yeah."
"Well, once you're all recovered, we can talk about your reinstatement into the agency."
"Wait, what?!" I ask, shocked. "With all due respect, Mace, you do not want a known vigilante working for your agency."
Mace crosses his arms. "That's my one condition. Abby can stay here, so long as you stay here, where I can keep an eye on you. You've been running around causing all sorts of trouble, and giving the few Inhumans who are out working for this agency a less that desirable name. If I make you an agent again, we can undo some of that damage if we say it was in the name of SHIELD."
I'm about to say a snarky insult about his judgement, just before Mace adds, "Plus, if you're an agent, you can officially take charge of the kid's training, without us having to hide the both of you from other agencies looking for rogue Inhumans. You work for us, we protect the kid. So, Agent Johnson, do we have a deal?"
I consider my options, which aren't that many, and finally nod my head.
"Deal."
Six Months Later...
-Daisy-
"Good, Abby." I say. "Focus, now, the targets are starting to move." Abby's shooting fireballs at moving targets, and from here I can see sweat beading on her forehead. It takes a lot of effort to focus her powers, I know from my own experience. It took her about a week to learn to control her fire, and another month to concentrate it around her hands without lighting up her hair, too. But learning control did not come without its hazards, too. The first time she was able to willingly turn herself into a human Roman candle, she'd lost control and set the gym on fire. Now, three months later, she's shooting moving targets in a controlled space.
I watch her from the side of the gym, impressed at the progress she's made. I imagine that this was how my mother felt when she taught me how to use my powers correctly. The memory of her standing beside me as I happen into the vibrations of a mountain stirs a familiar sensation within me. Consequently, it also causes a sudden tremor of pain to bring my attention away from Abby. I put my good around around my damaged one, which was still hung in a sling.
Since coming back to SHIELD, Jemma had done almost ten surgeries to repair the shredded bones, muscles, and ligaments in my left arm. She successfully removed most of the shards from muscles, and reconnected the torn ligaments, and put in grafts to fill that gaps too broken to repair. The muscles would heal on their own, she said, but the bones and ligaments would need more work. Tomorrow, I'd be going through another surgery to repair a few tendons in my wrist. Apparently, there were some bone shards still lodged in there that were gradually cutting away nerves and connective tissue. Jemma said that, at best, I'd have 90% range of motion in my left arm once it healed. That was about as much as I was going to get, but I'll take it. At least I can still use my arm.
But still, the damage was done, and some of it won't ever heal. It left me unable to feel the fingertips on my right hand, and can't rotate my arm completely. It still functions normally-for the most part- but I still have a lot of physical therapy to get through before I can become a field agent again. Right now, I'm still relearning to hack systems as fast as I used to. My reaction time in my hands is still off, and the surgery tomorrow would set me back a few weeks. Hopefully, once all is said and done, I'll be able to code and hack like I used to.
It felt strange, the first few weeks I'd had to spend in a hospital bed. As much as I wanted to get up and move around, my body was covered in so much pain that it was impossible to even breath without hurting. But the worst and scariest thing about me in those first few weeks, was not being able to use my arm. I felt that I'd lost a part of me, even though, physically, I was still very much whole. I still felt that way, sometimes, when I was reminded that I couldn't do things as well as I used to. I could barely even hold a cup for a while. That was very frustrating, you can imagine.
"That's enough." I say, bringing myself out of my painful reminiscence. Abby stops her shooting, and puts her hands on her knees. She's exhausted, but her session still isn't done.
"Can't I take a break?" Abby whines, something I've learned to ignore over the past few months since we've started training.
"No", I say, and I can't help but smile at the fact that I'm starting to sound like May. "Move on to the next exercise." I say.
Abby's sessions were compiled mostly into exercises that would practice control, concentration, and precision. Her powers could be very dangerous if they were to get out of control. I was hoping that by teaching her these exercises, she could someday return to her normal life without worrying about losing control again.
Right now, Abby's standing on the far side of the gym, close to the entrance. She's staring at a table on the wall opposite her with so much focus, that I can almost see the gears turning inside her head. It was an exercise similar to how I had to vibrate several glasses of water at once. However, instead of glasses, Abby has to light several candles at once from across the room. It's the hardest thing she's had to do so far, and I won't let her start anything new until she can learn to do this. So far, all she's been able to do is stare and get frustrated.
Abby breaks her concentration, and puts her hands on her knees, leaning over while she gasped for breath. "I can't do it." She says as she sucks in air. "Lighting a candle without touching it? It's impossible!"
"That's what I thought, too." I say as I put my good hand on her shoulder. "I thought I would never learn to do the things I can now. I thought they were impossible, too, but they weren't. I'd just convinced myself that they were."
Abby looks up at me with uncertainty, sweat dripping down her face. Looking at her, I can't help but notice how much she's grown in the past few months. She's finally hit her growth spurt, and was now almost up to my nose. Her hair's grown, too, though now it's pulled back into a ponytail. It used to be just a stump that she'd pull back into a hair tie, but now it went down almost past her shoulders. The way her hair framed her face when she let it down made her appear younger than she was. Her eyes, though, have kept their guarded look, making her look older than thirteen.
"You can do this", I say again. "I know you can. You can't give up now, not after you've come so far."
Abby nods, and pushes flyaways from her face. "Alright." She says, recomposing her focus. A minute passes, and Abby's still staring intently at the candles.
"Feel your power within you." I say, "Focus it on your target. Then let it out, gently."
Another minute passes...and then another.
And then, a lone candle at the center of the table flickers to light on the table. The flame on its wick grows to the size of an eraser, and glows brighter, until the entire candle melts onto the table.
Abby releases her focus, and the flam extinguishes. She gasps, and wipes beads of sweat from her face. "That good enough?" She asks dryly.
I rub my knuckles into her hair, and grin with pride for her. "You did great." I say, "I can't wait to see what you can do next!"
Abby groans. "No, not another pointless exercise."
"Hey, this is important!" I say, a little hurt she thinks its pointless what she's doing.
"When am I ever going to need to light a candle from across the room?" Abby asks, still wiping more sweat from her brow. "I want to do cool things with my power. Stuff like you can do."
I sigh, exasperated. We'd had this conversation several times before, and it always came down to me lecturing Abby about patience. Amazing. Me, not only giving a lecture, but one about patience.
What is this kid doing to me? I thought.
Suddenly, Abby's eyes light up with excitement. "Hey, you think that if I forced enough fire to my hands, it'd lift me up off of the ground? You know, like Iron Man, but without all the armor?"
I stare at Abby with a serious look. "Kid, don't even try it-"
Before I can finish my sentence, Abby lights up her hands, points them to the ground, and causes an inferno to engulf the room. Once she realizes her mistake, she commands the fire to cease, but her mark has already been made. The entire floor of the gym had become a black circle from, with Abby directly in the middle of it. Smoke and embers cloud the entire room, and some of the gym equipment has caught fire. I stand still in my spot, and brush off embers that had fallen onto my sling. "Great." I sigh, covering my eyes with my good hand. " Now I have to tell Mace that we burned down the gym...Again."
"Sorry, Daisy." Abby says, sheepish and embarrassed that her brilliant idea didn't work.
"It's okay, Kid." I sigh, "Hazards of the trade, Mace knows that...just don't ever do that again, or you're grounded for a week."
Abby groans. "What are you, my mother now?" She says jokingly.
I laugh at her sarcasm. "Nope. You're way to old to have a mother my age."
Abby looks up at me, smirking. "Oh, yeah? How about an over-protective, naggy big sister? Cause you check a lot of those boxes already."
"Big sister, huh." I chuckle, humoring the idea. "Yeah...I could live with that."
As we walk out of the gym just as the emergency sprinklers go off. I wrap my left arm around Abby's shoulders, and I can feel her lean into me a little.
"Love you, Sis." Abby whispers. I don't think she intended for me to hear it, but I did all the same. It made me smile, and a
"Love you too, Kid." I whisper back.
To Be continued...
Nah, just kidding!
THE END
Author's Note: And thus continues my very first multi-chapter fanfic! Thanks for all the reviews, follows, likes, and comments!
A special thanks to my best friend afangirlofsorts for helping me with the story, and for giving me ideas about what I should include in the story.
Keep your eyes out for more of my stories! I'm not done writing just yet!
-thrillerartist