A/N: I worked on this for about four days. I have no idea what happened (it never takes me this long)... except this is exactly what was supposed to happen. I'm sorry, I've just been completely overwhelmed by all of the wonderful new promos for season three. And, you know, all the real-world stuff, but whatever. HAHAHA.

Thanks to everyone who reads/reviews/follows/favorites. I love getting messages and reading comments! You're the best.

Ten points to whoever finds the "2 Broke Girls" quote in this chapter.

Enjoy!

Mama.

Mama, wake up.

Skye sighed in her sleep and rolled to one side. She unconsciously moved her fingers to her belly, gently pressing small circles into the taut skin.

Mama, wake up.

Skye shifted again, pulling the blanket up over her shoulders.

Mama, I want to play.

As though those words were some sort of catalyst, Skye abruptly opened her eyes, pushed down the blanket, and got out of bed. Without further hesitation she stepped barefoot across the room, opened the door, and slipped out into the hallway.

Simmons put her head in her hands and groaned. She'd been up for several hours past her limits, and her body was screaming for sleep, but she didn't want to leave until she had figured out a way to make sure that the effects of the fetus' Terrigenesis weren't going to be life-threatening to Skye.

She stood up, rolling her head to work some of the kinks out. It had gotten chilly in the lab and she was ready for another cup of tea.

Simmons stood, reaching absentmindedly to one side to pick up her tea mug.

It wasn't there.

She looked over at the place it used to be, and… it was there, okay.

But it was hovering.

Simmons let out a shriek and the mug slammed down to the lab table, shattering. As the shards flew everywhere she noticed they were leaving trails of… of something behind. Streams of light? Wisps of…? She couldn't begin to figure out what they were. All she knew was that they were purple.

Movement from the hallway caught her eye and she turned. Another wave of terror rolled over her – other things in the lab were hovering, too, surrounded by that same purple light – beakers and a microscope and bottles of chemicals and –

Simmons bolted out into the hallway and nearly took Skye out in her haste. Her dark-haired friend was moving slowly down the hallway, head tilted to one side, one hand out as her fingers trailed against the wall. Skye's bare feet were leaving footprints of the same purple trail that had come out of Simmons' mug. And her fingertips, on the wall, were drawing wobbly streaks of the same color.

"Skye?" Simmons asked, her voice shaking.

Skye didn't stop or slow down; she gave no sign of hearing Simmons.

"Skye," Simmons said, a little more firmly. She took a few hurried steps down the hallway, catching up to Skye, and she put one hand on Skye's shoulder.

Her friend turned towards her and Simmons stepped back with a gasp. All of Skye's exposed skin was mottled with the same purple… whatever it was. It seemed to be pulsing and flowing through her like some sort of strange venous map; the only thing Simmons could compare it to was the immediate after-burn from an ICER round, the blue pulse that marbled the place the round entered the body.

She's not here right now.

Simmons jerked back even further. It was that voice – the one she'd heard earlier.

A sudden horrifying thought pulsed through her, and she reached out carefully to pull up the hem of Skye's pajama top.

"Oh, God," she whispered.

Over Skye's still-innie belly button, at the very apex of her rounded abdomen, was a handprint. It was tiny, it was purple, and it seemed to be pressing up from the inside of Skye's belly.

Skye just stood still as Simmons looked her over, blinking patiently, her fingers still touching the wall.

"What are you doing?" Simmons hissed. She couldn't tell what overwhelming emotion was threatening to make her heart explode, but it vacillated quickly between panic and annoyance.

Playing.

"No!" Simmons' voice was a shrill cry. "You are a fetus! Put her back!"

She'll be back soon.

"I have got to be hallucinating," Simmons muttered.

You didn't like me earlier. You don't like me now.

"I am not… arguing… with a fetus."

I have a name, you know.

"Bloody hell."

That is not it.

Simmons backed away from Skye.

"Jemma?"

Simmons whirled around, barely noticing that May had an ICER drawn. "Agent May! Thank God!"

"What's going on?" May asked, indicating the footprints on the floor, still steadily glowing purple. Her voice was steady, but her body posture suggested she was more than a little shaken. "I'm guessing someone didn't get into our poster paint supply."

"I don't know," Simmons managed to get out. "It's just…"

The ICER in May's hand rose into the air and flew off down the hallway.

May's eyes widened further. "What the hell is happening?"

Simmons leaned in and delicately pulled up the hem of Skye's shirt again, showing May the pulsing purple handprint.

May frowned. "Is that…?"

Momma May.

"No!" burst out of May's mouth before she could stop it. She clapped her hands over her mouth, backing away from Skye.

"Did she talk to you?" Simmons asked gently.

"This is a thing?"

Simmons had never seen May out of control, ever, but the situation in front of them definitely qualified as a good one to lose control over.

"Who else knows about this?" May's voice shook.

"Skye, Coulson, Dr. Garner, Fitz, myself, and now… you," Simmons said.

"And you're calm?"

"I'm actually trying very hard not to check myself into the loony bin," Simmons replied.

May took a deep breath and moved closer to Skye. "Hi, little one," May said, her voice only slightly wobbly. "What are you doing?"

You shot my mama.

"Because she asked me to!" May protested.

No more guns for you.

May threw her hands up and strode a few paces away. "Dear God. I'm arguing with…"

"With a fetus," Simmons confirmed. "And she's awfully sassy."

"How do we… how do we get it to stop?"

Might as well ask the one in charge.

May and Simmons turned back towards Skye.

"Did we both…?" Simmons stuttered. A quick look at May confirmed that they'd both heard the message.

"Fine," May said. "This isn't weird enough already. Little one, will you take your mama back to bed?"

There was no response, and May and Simmons shared a glance, trying to figure out if it had all been some detailed hallucination.

When the voice replied, it was small and sad. Do I have to go away forever?

"Oh, sweetheart, no," Simmons said, emotion flooding back through her. "Soon you'll be born and you can play with all of us and…"

"But until then," May said firmly, "you have to let Skye rest. She needs to stay healthy. For her, and for you. Do you understand?"

Another pause.

Are you afraid of me? Like you're afraid of my mama?

Simmons gasped.

May put a hand to her forehead.

It's okay. That's my answer. I'm all done playing now.

All of the purple trails of… whatever it was began winding themselves back towards Skye's body, disappearing rapidly from the floor, the walls, and her body, swirling back through her skin and into her belly.

Skye blinked up at them confusedly.

Before she could speak, a series of loud crashes echoed up from the lab behind them as all of the previously-hovering things ceased to hover.

Skye yawned. "Do we have any more chocolate pudding?"

"I'm not going back with you," Lincoln said firmly.

"We just drove an RV through a cult compound for you while suffering from the after-effects of the worst drug trip I've ever taken, and I'm including the time I sat down on an armchair in Berlin and woke up on a bloke's couch in Wisconsin twelve days later," Hunter snapped. "Mate, the last thing you're doing is staying here."

He looked over at Bobbi and Mack, waiting for their support.

Lincoln spoke first. "Oh, I'm not staying here. But I'm not going back to the base."

Mack groaned. "We've been over this, Sparky. Skye's back at the base and…"

"It's better for her if I'm not there," Lincoln interrupted firmly. "It's better for both of them."

"What kind of attitude is that?" Bobbi asked.

Lincoln threw his hands up. "Inhuman pregnancies are not… they're not…"

"You realize that there's about two people in the world we can contact about Inhuman stuff, and one of them didn't find out she was an Inhuman until really recently?" Mack tilted his head.

"Not to be squabbling about this now," Lincoln said, "but you realize that's because the majority of them have gone underground and the others are dead, mostly because of you?"

"Fine," Mack said abruptly. "If you don't want to go back with us, get out now. You can walk to wherever it is you think you're going."

Bobbi shot a glare at Mack.

Lincoln stood. "Fine."

"Just know that you will not be welcome back at the base," Mack said. "If you get out there and change your mind, which I know you will, you're going to have to earn your way back in. With us and undoubtedly with Skye."

Lincoln grabbed his coat from the bench seat in the RV. He slung his pack over his shoulder and shoved the door open.

Before he could exit the vehicle entirely, Bobbi spoke up, her voice quiet but firm. "Skye came to find you against all odds. She had to get support from Raina, someone she didn't trust at all. She had to prove her worth to Gordon. She had to work on a team with a man who threatened to take everything she held dear away from her – she had to go to the Arctic with Grant Ward. She saved your life without even knowing if it was possible because she cared about you. She put herself in danger every time she knew you needed her help."

Lincoln put his head down.

"And now she needs your help. We all need your help, and you're going to just walk off into the sunset and pretend as though this isn't your problem."

Lincoln sighed and looked up at her. "It's not," he said, and he got out of the RV, slamming the door behind him.

"Anyone ever think we're not good at pep talks?" Hunter asked in the sudden silence.

"All right, so, why do I want to do this?"

"Well, on account of… you're trying to… uhh…" Fitz furrowed his brow. "Y'know, no one's ever asked me that before."

"It just seems so pointless."

"Uh, well, you have to… sort of… move… uhhh… that thing… towards that thing, and then…"

"Couldn't we just do something else?"

"I guess. This is what Mack and I usually… how we usually relax."

"What's relaxing about this?"

"There's the movement, and the skill, and… sometimes there's zombies?"

Coulson carefully set the controller down on the coffee table. "Fitz, I respect you as a person and an agent, but I can't play any more video games with you."

"We haven't even played any video games yet," Fitz said. "You've stared at a loading screen for twenty minutes."

"That's only the loading screen?" Coulson asked in shock. "It was so appealing and the music was so jaunty that I thought it was some sort of… I don't know, intro level."

"If it helps we usually drink while we play," Fitz offered. "And you can't be any worse than Dr. Garner."

Coulson turned to look at Andrew.

"Apparently you're not supposed to get stuck in a door exiting a safety bunker," the psychiatrist said. "And then when you restart the level and get to that same position, you're not supposed to shoot yourself in the head on accident."

"No. No, you're not," Fitz agreed.

"Just one question," Coulson said, watching as Andrew tentatively picked up the controller. "What ever happened to Pong? That I could play with one hand."

"I can make you a controller," Fitz said. "That's not the hard part."

Andrew pressed a button and the screen went black, reopening to show his character, a tall humanoid figure in a bulky suit of armor. "Okay, so, who am I again? Voltron?"

Fitz groaned. "I need something to drink."

"Make it a double, and put half of it into my glass," May said as she wandered in.

"I don't know… what that means," Fitz said.

"Bring the woman a drink," Andrew said, and Fitz nodded, heading for the kitchen.

"What's going on?" Coulson asked.

May sank down on the couch next to Andrew. "You're all real, right?"

"As opposed to what?" Andrew mashed a few buttons on the controller and his character began moving across a desert wasteland with an odd loping gait.

May shook her head.

Fitz returned with two juice boxes and handed one to May.

"Fitz," May said sternly. "I'm not in the mood for jokes."

"Hunter drank all the beer," Fitz said, "and I was drinking water earlier, and you said stronger…"

May reached up and took the juice box, poking the little straw into the top. "Guess this night couldn't get any weirder."

An explosion boomed from the TV screen. "If I wasn't supposed to touch it, why was it so shiny?" Andrew demanded. "Damn it, now I have to start over."

May took a drink from the juice box.

Coulson shifted his position on the couch to look at her. "What's gotten you so shaken?"

"A fetus threw my ICER down a hallway and then shattered several thousand dollars of science equipment," May said.

Another explosion echoed from the TV. "Shit! And I had that awesome gun thing!"

Fitz reached over and took the controller from Andrew's hand, making the TV go silent. "Can you… repeat that?" the Scot asked May.

"Skye's baby… she…" May shook her head. "She talked to me. And to Simmons. And she's… she's purple. Little lights. Wispy, sort of."

"Can you repeat that… and make it make sense?"

"I'd rather try to get the awesome gun thing from that troll again," Andrew muttered.

"You don't need any pudding," Simmons said. "You need to go back to sleep."

"I was asleep. Now I want pudding."

"You just vomited twice," Simmons said, a little more forcefully. "You don't need pudding."

"Simmons," Skye groaned, feebly batting at her friend's face. "Why are you so mean?"

Simmons hesitated. "Skye, do you remember what happened a bit earlier?"

"I guess I was sleepwalking," Skye said. "I remember you and May in the hallway. Why?"

"Oh, no reason. I… uh… I'll let you sleep now," Simmons said.

Skye yawned and pulled her blankets up.

"Skye?" Simmons asked, her hand on the light switch.

"Hmm?" Skye responded drowsily.

"You'd tell me… if something was… if something was wrong, right?"

"Wonder if I'd know." Skye yawned again. "But you'd be the first to know. After me, I guess."

Simmons sighed and flicked the light off. As she was about to close the door to the bunk, she heard Skye's sleepy voice again.

"She's nice, isn't she? She's so nice. She sounds beautiful."

She sounds terrifying was what Simmons wanted to say, but Skye was already breathing steadily.

And anyway, saying something would have confirmed exactly what the baby had wanted to know earlier – are you afraid of me?

"You're awfully quiet," Fitz said once they were in the dark, his arms wrapped around Simmons.

"What could I add to your story about Dr. Garner blowing himself up twice?" Simmons asked, but it felt forced. "I'm sorry."

"About what?"

"I can't focus. I can't concentrate on anything. She… she rattled me."

"Skye?"

"No. Skye I can handle. I'm good at figuring out the medical side of things; it's like an aggravatingly difficult puzzle, but I know there's a solution somewhere. No, I mean…"

Fitz hesitated. "The… the baby?"

"Yes," Simmons whispered. "You didn't see it, Fitz… her hand, and the way she talked to us… it was like she knew us."

Fitz gently brushed hair back from Simmons' face. "Maybe she does."

"But how would she know anything except from Skye?"

"We don't know what her gifts are," Fitz said slowly. "Maybe…"

Simmons let out a muffled sob. "Then she's so much more powerful than Skye. She's… she's not even born and she's able to move objects, leave trails of energy, speak telepathically…"

"Shh, shh," Fitz said helplessly.

"What's she going to be like when she's born?"

Fitz could feel her heartbeat racing like a trapped hummingbird. "If she's anything like her mother, she'll be amazing. Just like you, too."

Simmons let out a choked laugh. "Oh, Fitz."

"I never like it when you say oh Fitz. It never ends well for me."

"We could change that," Simmons offered, and she smiled. "Oh, Fitz, would you ravish me?"

"Well, I like the sound of that. Actually, I'm not entirely sure what that entails, but I'm sure I'd like to find out."

Coulson passed Andrew a tumbler. In turn the doctor passed that to May, who sat on the sofa behind him.

"A gifted fetus," Coulson said heavily.

"A very gifted fetus," May agreed, taking a long swig from her tumbler.

"I see why you save the good stuff for the really difficult occasions," Andrew said. He drained his glass and held it out. Without another word, Coulson refilled it.

They drank in silence for several long dark moments.

"All of the things Skye's dealt with so far have been awful," Coulson said eventually, tilting his tumbler so the ice clinked against the far side. "The information Mack got from Lincoln doesn't sound any more promising. There are no guarantees, there's no rule book, there's not a doctor in this world or any other that knows what the next twenty-ish weeks are going to be like."

"What about the boxes we brought back from Afterlife?" May asked. "There might be something in there."

"We can take a look," Coulson said, and he took a long drink. "In the morning."

"I'd like to try to speak with Skye again in the morning as well," Andrew said. "We didn't really get a chance to have a full conversation, and I think this is as trying mentally as it is physically for her."

"And on all of us," May said softly.

"We're in the dark on this," Coulson agreed.

A red light over the office door began to strobe and an alarm started to wail. May had her tumbler on the desk and her weapon drawn before Coulson had even registered the alarm.

"Mack and Bobbi aren't due back until tomorrow," May murmured to Coulson. "We got any other incoming packages?"

Coulson shook his head. "It's the entry sensor from the garage."

He reached into his desk drawer and took out his gun, handing it to Andrew. "You're probably going to be a better shot. I'm several drinks ahead of you… and I only have one hand."

"Okay," Andrew said, taking the weapon. "What's your plan?"

"I was thinking about doing something hilarious with a frying pan, but I guess I'll just be the welcoming committee."

The threesome approached the secured doors to the garage without finding any enemy combatants. Coulson held up his hand and hurried up to the video monitors showing the live security feed. A woman was standing directly before the camera, holding a large piece of poster-board with six words scrawled on it.

Hello, Director Coulson.

How's the baby?