TW for gun violence/GSW (no major character death), blood, minor swearing, mention of death of a parent

"You surprised us," Cal murmured. He settled himself back a little, leaning on the table in the middle of the room. He was getting that faraway look in his eyes again. "You came earlier than we expected. That's why you were born in Sheboygan. We lived in Milwaukee at the time, your mother and I. Worked together at one of the hospitals there. That's where we met, as a matter of fact. I had finished school, just started my residency there, and your mother was working as a medical interpreter to help pay her way through med school. She had a year of school left when we met, and she just… she took my breath away the first time I saw her. Beautiful. Smart. Passionate. She was always so concerned about her patients, so kind to them. She knew more about the medical terminology than I did, by leaps and bounds, and in multiple languages, no less. A warm smile, and oh, she had the most entrancing eyes. People say eyes are the window to the soul, but with her… it was less of a window and more of a door, waiting for you to knock. The kind of eyes that held a thousand unspoken thoughts, you know, a deep well just brimming with possibility. Which was so like her. She was always thinking, always so full of ideas and thoughts, but she was careful who she shared it with. You had to be a special person to get invited into those eyes, into that mind. She made you feel special."

He paused, turned to look over at Skye, and she was surprised to see that his own eyes were fully present again, and glistening with emotion. "You have them, you know. Her eyes. You've got them, same color and everything. Beautiful."

A lump materialized in her throat, and she had to turn away from him a little bit as she swallowed hard. She was a little surprised at how overwhelming it was to hear Cal talk about her mother, to hear how much he loved her, to hear about what kind of a person she was. Skye had hoped and dreamed for years that her parents would turn out to be like the ones from stories – kind, loving, fallen-on-hard-times people who were looking for her, who wanted her. She had hated herself for letting her imagination get the better of her, had tried to readjust her expectations, only to end up hating her parents, whoever they were, for leaving her behind. Then hating herself again for thinking the worst of them, even though she knew it was the likeliest possibility. It was almost unreal to hear that her mother had been so much like the mother she had dreamed about. That she was smart and compassionate, and someone had found her beautiful. Skye wondered, with bitterness flooding her mouth, if there was any of her mother at all left in Skye, or if the traces of her had been ground out and washed away over the years, leaving nothing but superficial things like her eye color.

"Where was I?" Cal gave himself a little shake, realizing he had gotten carried away talking about Skye's mom. "Oh yes, your birthday. Best day ever. Well, like I said, you surprised us. We had driven up to Sheboygan for the day to visit some friends, but before we knew it, you were on your way. Your mother didn't tell me for the longest time," he laughed. "Apparently she'd been having contractions for hours before she suggested we head to the hospital. She tidied up our friends' apartment for them before she said anything, helped with the dishes, if you can believe it. Anyway, you were so determined to be born at that point that we didn't really have time to go anywhere but the hospital in Sheboygan."

His face twisted darkly. "We never should have gone there. We didn't know any of the doctors there, and your mother… I know a lot of people say that the ones they love are special, but I don't just mean it like that when I say she was special. We trusted her doctor in Milwaukee, she understood the circumstances, but that sorry excuse for a doctor in Sheboygan…" He stopped, made a face like he was in pain. Skye's eyes flicked briefly down to his hands, which were clenching and unclenching into fists. At least he wasn't making any moves for his gun or the sharp surgical instruments that were well within his reach.

"What happened?" Skye asked quietly, barely above a whisper. The sick swirling in the pit of her stomach suggested that she likely already knew the answer, but she needed to hear him say it. "What happened to her? Did I… did I…" She couldn't get the words out. She was too afraid to say it, to hear it.

Cal blinked and the painful anger that had been contorting his features snapped away into confusion. He cocked his head to one side as he pieced together what Skye was trying to ask. Once it clicked, his expression changed a third time, this time into something almost sad. "Oh, Daisy, no. No, you had nothing to do with what happened to your mother. None of that was your fault. It was all him. The doctor. Whitehall."

"The doctor?" Skye was surprised to hear Jemma speak. Her voice was quiet, and Skye could tell she was confused, but not for the first time since they met Cal, Jemma's tone seemed to be without fear. "What did the doctor do? Doctors are supposed to help people."

Cal let out a harsh bark of a laugh. "They are, aren't they? By that measure, Daniel Whitehall is no doctor."

"What do you mean?" Skye asked.

"Well, you were delivered without any trouble. You were absolutely perfect, of course. But Whitehall kept insisting that something was wrong, with you, with your mother. He was… something about your mother fascinated him for some reason. He wanted to run tests, check for all these complications. Now, I'm not trained in pediatrics or obstetrics, but I know my way around a delivery room. And I knew your mother. Something didn't sit right with me. I tried to push back on Whitehall, ask him questions about the tests he was ordering, see her chart, anything. He had me kicked out of the room. And every time I tried to ask him what was going on, tried to get back in to see your mother, he was always right there, telling me they were working, I couldn't see her yet." Cal inhaled sharply through his nose, and when he spoke again, the words came ragged out of his throat.

"All he would tell me was that there were some abnormalities, and that they needed to do a little experimenting to discover what was going on with her. Like she was a damn science project. Not exactly the kind of thing a man wants to hear about his wife right after she's just given birth. And we – your mother and I, that is – we knew that she wasn't your typical patient, but we never imagined… I don't know exactly what Whitehall did to her, I don't know what tests he ran, but I do know that when I was forced out of that room, my wife was alive and healthy, and after a day with him…" His voice broke, and he rubbed his eyes brusquely, pinching the bridge of his nose while he caught his breath. "He wouldn't even let me in to see her. Just told me she was… she was gone. I couldn't even see her. Couldn't say goodbye."

"She died?" Skye's face and neck all felt hot, flushed, like she had a raging fever. There was a roaring building up in her ears, and her chest felt tight. It wasn't like she was surprised to learn it. She had run through countless what-if scenarios where her parents were dead, and Cal had as good as told her that fact earlier in the evening, but to hear it now, in plain words, with the pain of his story coloring the loss… it was like someone had come along and carved out a big section of her middle, leaving her feeling cold and empty. "She got sick and died? Or… or that doctor-?"

"He wanted to get to you next," Cal said numbly, lost in his own memories. "He said he wanted to test you, see if you were like her, if you had the same… abnormalities. Obviously, I wasn't about to let that happen. I… I wasn't going to let him take my wife and my daughter in the same day. I lost my head a little bit. Did some things that I shouldn't have. The doctor was in pretty bad shape by the time security had pulled me off of him, but I wasn't going to let them arrest me, wasn't about to let them split us up. So, I fought off the guards, and I took you. I got you out of the nursery and left. I was going to take you back to Milwaukee with me, we were going to build a new life."

He was getting agitated now, his gestures becoming bigger, more animated. He paced slightly, and every so often he would run his palms across the leg of his pants, like he was trying to dry them of nervous sweat. There was something crackling in the air, something electric that both scared Skye and pulled her in even farther than before. She could tell that they were about to reach the point of the story where her life – the life she had always known, instead of the life she could have had – began.

"I got out of there as fast as I could, and you… you were sound asleep. Perfect, tiny little thing. Sound asleep, even though it was the fourth of July and there were firecrackers going off every few minutes. I wasn't thinking, I just ran. Left the car behind, left my money, my wallet. I… I knew I would have to get some money for us to live on while we were on the run, and I figured, I was already in deep for what I'd done to Whitehall, so why not just keep digging? I didn't want to put you in danger, of course, so I left you somewhere I thought would be safe. The steps of that nun house, you know. I figured they knew how to take care of babies, and I was going to come right back. I swear Daisy, I was coming right back."

"Why didn't you?" Skye thought she might already know the answer, but she wanted to hear him say it, wanted to hear him explain himself.

"I got arrested," he admitted, shoulders slumping ashamedly. "Not for attacking Whitehall, funnily enough. I don't think the police ever realized I was the one behind that attack. Whitehall never ratted me out, probably because he didn't want me turning it around on him. I might be a monster of a man, but I'm nothing, nothing, compared to the evil that brute is capable of. The things I learned about him later… I should have killed him when I had the chance." Something dangerous flashed in Cal's eyes, and a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold air outside prickled its way down Skye's spine.

"I got arrested trying to rob a gas station a few miles down the road from where I'd left you," he continued, dropping the roiling fury he'd cradled only moments ago and returning to the story like nothing had happened. "I still had the scalpel I'd taken from the hospital, so technically it was armed robbery, which got me a longer sentence. I couldn't come back for you because I was in jail."

"What about after?" Skye wanted to know. "After you got out. Why couldn't you come and get me then? I was there. I was waiting for you. I waited for you for thirteen years." Her anger caught her off guard, a hard edge slipping into her tone before she had realized just how mad she had become.

"I tried," Cal insisted. His pacing had taken him to the other side of the room, but he quickly crossed back over to where Skye was still perched on the stool, cradling her throbbing arm. His pale brown eyes bore into her face, pleading with her. "Daisy, believe me, I tried. As soon as I got out, I came straight to the orphanage, but you weren't there. You were at some foster house, and I had no proof you were mine that I could use to force them to bring you back to me. I didn't have the birth certificate or any records, and neither did you. And even if I had been able to prove you were mine, they would have seen I had a record. They wouldn't have let me see you, much less take you home with me. But I never gave up on you, Daisy, I swear. I stayed close to Sheboygan when I could, tried to keep an eye on you any time you came back. I saw your second-grade play, if you can believe it, snuck in the back of the auditorium. The one about the garden. You were a worm, right? The cutest one on the whole stage."

Something sour flooded Skye's mouth as she felt her jaw go slack at this latest admission. "You spied on me?"

"It wasn't spying," Cal said indignantly. "Watching my daughter in her school play isn't spying. It's being a father. The best one I could be at the time. And I know it isn't much, it isn't enough to make up for what I did, leaving you alone like that for so long, but… I never stopped looking for you, Daisy. Even the times when I was locked up again, or you got sent where I couldn't track you – to homes and families far away – I still did my best to find you. I found people like Raina, foster kids who were happy for a job, some spending money, a place to spend the night if their foster home wasn't safe, and had them help me, keep their eyes open for you."

"So is that what you've been doing all this time, sitting around and watching me and using other foster kids to keep tabs on me? Did you just sit there and watch my miserable life play out like some tragic tv show? Did it matter to you at all when I got bullied by other kids, or beaten up by foster parents, or berated by nuns? Why not step in? Why not do something, take me away, anything?" She could feel the anger building up again, the desperation to understand why she had to endure such a difficult life.

"I told you, there wasn't anything I could do," Cal countered hotly, raking a hand through his shaggy hair. "And it's not like I could just grab you and take off. The police would be all over me in a heartbeat if I stole a child, even if she was my own flesh and blood. Plus, I… I had other obligations, you know. I had to rebuild a life, make a name and a living for myself now that I was a man on the run. I had to track down Whitehall and make him pay, had to piece together the past and understand how everything had gone so wrong. Keeping an eye on you was the best I could do. The best thing for both of us."

"That's a lie, and you know it." She could see that Cal was getting agitated, but she couldn't make herself stop prodding the hornet's nest of this conversation, picking at the scab that had formed over all the years of injury and insult until they were both bleeding. Her words were coming faster now, the vowels and consonants crashing into each other as they burst out of her in a frenzied rush, driven by rising frustration and years of pent-up pain and resentment. "What's the point of keeping an eye on me all this time if you're just going to sit there and watch me struggle? Do you know how long I waited for you? Do you know how long I wanted a family? Do you know how much it hurts to want and want and want for years, never getting the one thing you're desperately looking for? Not knowing if the reason you're all alone in the world is because bad things happen sometimes and life isn't fair, or if it's because there's something wrong with you? If it's because someone took one look at you and decided you weren't worth the trouble, because nothing about you matters at all to anyone? Because the only person who would even notice, much less care, if you disappeared off the face of the planet is somebody who's in the exact same, stupid, helpless, hopeless boat as you?"

A lump the size of a golf ball lodged in her throat as she locked her eyes onto Jemma. Jemma, the only person who had truly seen her for so long. Jemma, the only person who knew everything about her and loved her anyways. Jemma, the person who had followed her on this madcap quest to find a man who Skye was starting to finally understand was never going to give her what she needed or be who she wanted. Cal was too embroiled in his own turmoil, too ensconced in some twisted version of the past that he was convinced he could recreate. He couldn't see how broken everything was, how wrong his actions were. He didn't love her. Couldn't love her, because he didn't know her. He loved the idea of her, but he had no idea how to love the reality of her. She felt her heart break all over again, shattering into gritty fragments that caked the inside of her with sharpness and sadness. Even when she was standing a few feet away from the thing she had always longed for, always looked for, she was still no closer to finding a family.

"You left me," Skye finished quietly. "You left me on the doorstep thirteen years ago, but you left me all over again every single time you chose not to come back or to try and get me. You left me and you hurt me, just like you hurt all those other people – the doctor, your friend, those people from the police reports—"

"Daisy, you need to calm down," Cal warned, narrowing his eyes. "I know I wasn't there for you, and I know I wasn't perfect, but I tried. I'm trying. We're here together now, aren't we? All the things I did, the measures I went to in order to bring us back, they're paying off. Maybe I hurt people, and maybe I did some bad things, but I did what I had to do to make things right and have a happy ending. You're smart enough to know that the end justifies the means."

"I'm also smart enough to know that the people who say that are usually the ones doing bad things," Skye fired back.

"Skye's right. People say that because they want to convince themselves that they can do the wrong thing in order to get the results they want," Jemma added, quoting something Phil had told them once, what now felt to Skye like an eternity ago. "An end reached by compromising moral integrity along the way isn't a well-deserved one."

"Her name is Daisy," muttered Cal darkly, wheeling on Jemma. "And you have no room to lecture me on morals or tough decisions. Not with your family history being what it is."

"There's nothing wrong with my family," Jemma said, taken aback. "What are you talking about?"

"I've made it my business to know all there is to know about the seedy underbelly of the world over the years," Cal told her. "It didn't take me long after I started digging into your past to realize where I'd heard the name Simmons before. I know things about your father that would make your hair curl. Didn't you ever wonder why a nice British family would pack up and move to the States so suddenly? And of course there's that mysterious car crash—"

"Stop it!" Skye ordered. She couldn't tear her eyes away from Jemma, who had blanched and was shaking her head back and forth dazedly, like she was trying to clear water out of her ear or shake Cal's words loose from her brain. Her shoulders caved in slightly and her hands were twisting in front of her, caught between tapping and knotting together in a tight wad of tension. Obviously whatever Cal was saying was upsetting her. Skye hopped off her stool and went to stand by Jemma's side protectively. "Leave her alone."

"Just trying to be honest," Cal said snidely. "Consider it a step on my path towards restoring my moral integrity."

"My father was a good man," Jemma managed to choke out. Sky watched as Jemma's fingers untangled and found a place to tap on her hip, short and harsh, and her posture straightened with righteous indignation. Something hard crystalized in her eyes, a defiant kind of anger that Skye had rarely seen on Jemma's face. "A better man than you. A better father than you. You don't deserve a daughter like Skye."

"That's not her name," growled Cal.

There was something dangerous and unbalanced in the air, like the way the sky feels right before a massive thunderstorm – laced with ozone and an impending thunder so powerful you feel the rumble in your bones. Skye flicked her gaze around nervously, scanning for risk factors and contingency plans. The gun and surgical instruments were still well within Cal's reach, but he didn't exactly seem aware of their presence, which was a good thing. There wasn't much else that could be used as a weapon, besides some boxes of bandages and medicine that she might have been able to chuck at him if her right arm wasn't splinted and useless at the moment. She had no idea if it would occur to Jemma to use the medical supplies as a projectile, should the need arise.

With a jolt, Skye realized that she and Jemma were not too far from the door to the room, and that Cal was much farther from it than they were. There was nothing in between them and the door, which Skye was sure Cal hadn't locked when they all came in, since he was focused on cleaning and tending to her broken arm. Maybe there was some way they could distract Cal, or subdue him long enough to make a break for it.

"Don't try it," Cal said suddenly. He had caught Skye staring at the door. Before she could move a muscle, Cal had scooped up the gun and aimed it in their direction. "You can't leave, Daisy. We're not done."

"Put it down," Skye breathed, holding her good hand up in a gesture of surrender. "Please. I wasn't going to… We weren't going to…"

"This is wrong, this is all wrong," mumbled Cal to himself. He lowered the gun helplessly, but he didn't set it back on the table. "This isn't how it was supposed to go. This was supposed to be… I don't want you to be afraid of me."

"Give me a reason not to be," Skye urged. Suddenly, an idea – maybe brilliant, maybe stupid, but an idea, fully formed and half-baked all at the same time – popped into her brain. "Do something for me. To show me I can trust you."

"What do want?"

"I want you to let Jemma go," Skye said slowly. She was watching Cal, so she couldn't see Jemma's face, but she could imagine the stricken look she was likely wearing, and the gasp off to her side all but confirmed her suspicions. Skye slipped her left hand behind her back and found Jemma's fingers. She gave Jemma's hand a light squeeze and tapped two short, sharp taps on Jemma's wrist, trying to signal for Jemma to trust-me. She prayed the message went through.

"I can't—"

"I know you said you didn't want her running off and telling, but she won't," Skye said. "We don't even know where we are, and Jemma won't do anything bad. I just want her to be able to go without getting hurt. And I… I want to have some time just the two of us." The last part was a complete and total lie – the last thing she wanted was to be in a room alone with Cal – but she needed to keep Jemma, her family, safe, and she was hoping against hope that Jemma would be able to get help as soon as she was free from Cal's clutches. "That's what I want. You let her go, and I'll trust you. I'll do whatever you want after that."

"Whatever I—" Cal's face was scrunched up in confusion.

"Skye, no," Jemma hissed. "You can't, that's completely—"

"That's not her name!" Cal erupted, the confusion replaced with blazing outrage faster than Skye could process. He slammed his hands down on the table in frustration, including the hand holding the gun. He must have hit it wrong on the table, because it went off with an ear-shattering bang that reverberated around the small room, rocking Skye's world. Instinctively, she dropped to the floor, ignoring the jolt of pain that zipped up her arm at the sudden movement. For a moment, it was like she couldn't see a thing past her panic, and her ears were ringing from the explosion of noise. The hot, powdery smell of metal and fire twisted around the room.

"Skye?"

"I'm okay," she murmured, struggling back to her feet and giving her head a shake.

"Skye?" As the ringing in her ears dampened, Skye realized, with an awful, sickening slowness, like poison sap oozing from a tree, that there was something very wrong with Jemma's voice. It was confused and afraid and much too faint. Skye whirled around and saw, to her horror, Jemma's hands clutching at her side, just above her hip. The fabric of her sweater was changing color, darkening rapidly around the place where Jemma's hands scrabbled, and the earthy, animal scent of blood found its way to Skye's nose.

"Jemma?"

Jemma's face went white, and she swayed for a moment, before her knees went weak. Skye managed to bolster her with one arm slightly as she sank, easing her to the floor and avoiding a total collapse. Skye looked up at Cal with fear and revulsion. "What did you do?"

"I… I didn't mean to," he spluttered, leaving the gun on the table and sliding it away from him. "It went off, but I didn't mean…"

"You shot her!" Skye shouted, tears obscuring her vision as she cradled Jemma's head in her lap. Jemma's breathing was sharp and wheezy, and her face was screwed up in pain. "She's my family and you shot her!"

"I'm you family!" Cal shouted back. "And I told you I didn't mean to! I would never hurt a child on purpose. I'm not that evil."

"Skye," Jemma croaked. "You have to… pressure…"

"Help me," Skye pleaded to Cal. "Help me fix her. Like that guy earlier. Don't let her die. If… If she dies, I'll never forgive you." I'll never forgive myself.

For a split-second Cal stood frozen, apparently horrified by what he'd done, but then he snapped out of it and into doctor mode.

"Put pressure on the wound," he instructed, darting over to the shelves and pulling down supplies that Skye couldn't see from her position on the floor. "Try to stop the bleeding as best you can. We have to stabilize her. Then I'll see what I can do."

Desperately, Skye moved to place her shaking hands over the place where Jemma's wound was, broken arm or not. "I don't know what I'm doing."

"Just press down as hard as you can to try and stop the bleeding," came Cal's voice from over by the shelves. "Find the hole and apply pressure."

Skye knelt over Jemma, trying as hard as she could to follow Cal's directions. She had never been good at following orders, but if there was ever a time to get it right, this was it.

"Hang on, Jemma," she begged. "Just hang on."

The pain was worse than anything Jemma had ever felt in her life. Worse than her spinal surgery, worse than her injuries after the car accident, worse than anything a foster parent had ever done to her. It was hot and radiating and so, so sharp, splintering out from her side all over her body. As hot as the pain was, though, the rest of her body felt cold. So cold. And it was hard to breathe, although whether that was from the wound, the pain, the terror coursing through her veins, or some toxic combination, she couldn't be sure.

She was only vaguely aware of the world around her. She could hear Skye better than she could see her – her vision was foggy and her brain was having trouble focusing on the shapes and colors that swirled in front of her. She knew Skye was close. She knew Skye was scared and didn't know what to do. She tried to tell Skye about applying pressure, but the words got stuck somewhere along the way. She tried to lift a hand, tap out a message or a beat, but her fingers felt like they had been filled with lead. Everything felt so heavy. It was so hard to move.

Jemma had often wondered what kind of a star she might be. It was always so much easier to classify other people as stars than to do so for herself. Sometimes she felt like she might be an orange dwarf – a low burning, long living star that didn't draw much attention to itself, that survived, that held the possibility of sustaining life – or maybe a white dwarf, like Alya (Theta Serpentis, her favorite star), a star technically past its prime, but one that still shone brightly because of what was once there. She had never considered the possibility that she could be a brown dwarf star, but as she lay on the cold ground, feeling the world seep away from her, the potential for that classification to become her reality began to sink in. A brown dwarf was star without enough initial mass to start the fusion process, so it never really became much of anything. It was a failed star. A star that never got a chance to live, that never got the chance to truly shine. There had been so few stars out tonight. The world was dark and getting darker. She never got her chance to shine.

Gosh, I know that's a terrible place to end a chapter, I'm sorry. To make it up to you, I have a four-chapter update this time! Thanks for reading and being here with me :)