A/N: TRIGGER WARNING for panic attacks and attempted suicide
The thing about Skye
She's… well, they kind of already suspected that
Daisy crouches low, clinging to the edge of the sink and pressing herself hard against the wall as she scrabbles for anything to ground her.
Her chest hurts. She might be having a heart attack.
Daisy's spine throbs, and the warm liquid trickling down her neck, soaking into her shirt, itches- but when she reaches up, the pain spikes horribly as her fingers come into contact with blood and open skin and what might be bone.
He really did it. He cut it out.
Daisy's chest aches. Worse than where she was cut open, and her bloody hand moves to clutch at it instead.
A sob bursts out as she remembers being tied down again- Fitz tied her down and cut her open and didn't even care that it was Daisy.
It was hard in the Framework, seeing Fitz- but that wasn't Fitz. It was Aida. She took away everything that was her friend- his kind, gentle, warm nature, who is sometimes awkward and a bit manic, but he's full of life and he loves her, loves Jemma, loves the team and is everything that is good in the world. Aida took away everything that made Fitz Fitz and turned him into a monster. So, Daisy could shake off the apathetically blank look he had gazed at her with, and shake off the feel of his fists and kicks. Because it wasn't him. He was taken. And Daisy was going to get him back.
This, though, down there- that was Fitz. This isn't the Framework (or what if it is?), and he tied her up, he ignored her pleas (she begged- she begged him- to let her go- 'Please! Please, I don't want this! Please let me go. Please, please, pleasepleaseplease-'), cut her open, and doomed the world.
Daisy's powers are an integral part of her now, but the muffled, disconnected, wrongness of them being out of reach has been her only comfort these past few weeks. And when he removed her inhibitor- ripped it ruthlessly from her nervous system, and the world burst into angry vibrations- it felt a lot like the end of the world.
The ground shook and trembled and screamed, a lot like it is doing right now as Daisy clings to the sink and presses into the wall and can't breathe.
There is a pounding on the door, or maybe the pounding is in her ears and suffused throughout her body. It throbs in her blood- blood that sticks to her hands and oozes down her spine along with what feels like fire ants and bees and wasps that sting and bite and rage at her from under her skin.
After being numb to the world for so long, the vibrations hurt as they assault her- slam into her like they want revenge for Daisy ever allowing them to be locked away. The buzzing in her head is loud and overwhelming and shakes her skull like it hasn't since she first came out of that cocoon as the world around her crumbled- Trip crumbled.
She doesn't have control. It's out over her reach- beyond it- this is how the world ends. Not with a bang, or a whimper- but crumbling to pieces like her friend crumbled at the beginning of it all.
Daisy hurts- she hurts- and she's going to destroy the world now, so maybe it's a good thing that she can't breathe and her heart and brain are being quaked apart.
The door bursts open, splinters showering the bathroom floor, and it's everyone- her entire team except for Fitz and Elena- and they can't be here. It's not safe. She's going to kill them- kill everyone.
The world wavers, the tunneling darkness surging over the rest of her vision, and she scrambles for the gun- the real gun- strapped to May's hip as her S.O. descends on Daisy. She turns it on herself and pulls the trigger in one, desperate, bid to make this stop- to save them.
The bang echoes loudly, making it past even the ringing in Daisy's ears- but she's more distracted by the pain that slams into her wrist.
Then Daisy's panic abruptly cuts off. Everything does.
….
When Daisy wakes up, she's much calmer. In fact, she doesn't feel anything at all. She normally hates it when she dissociates, but right now, it's like everything is in perspective.
"Daisy," a voice calls, and she turns her head to meet May's unreadable, but intense, expression. Daisy doesn't feel the nerves she normally does when looked at in such a way. She is numb. Her insides have been scraped out, and now there is nothing left of her. "Simmons sewed up your neck, but your body's taken a shock from the return of your powers. Your… wrist got sprained when I took the gun." May's eyes get sharper, get harder, like she does when she scolds Daisy for being unnecessarily reckless. "That was a real gun, Daisy. You could have died."
"That was the point."
May stiffens, her entire body going rigid and even more unnaturally still. It's like even her breathing halts.
"Don't say that," she hisses at Daisy. "Dying is never the answer. That won't help anyone."
It would, since Daisy's the one to end the world.
Daisy lets her head roll away, to look at something else. The ceiling. It's far above and unshakable. Undamaged. This metal and stone container is going to hold the entirety of Earth's population in the future. It's the only place to survive if Daisy does.
She knows now that she was too hasty in her attempt.
"Daisy!" May hisses.
She closes her eyes.
Daisy knows that May loves her. She's weirdly protective of Daisy. But that's why she can't be trusted to be objective about this. May, more than once, has abandoned a mission, risked lives, to save her.
That can't happen this time. It's too important.
Daisy needs to die.
This isn't like all the other times that she felt like she needed to die, this is bigger than that. This is the end of the world they are talking about, and that's entirely what SHIELD is about preventing.
It's only logical.
Only, May is being illogical, because it's Daisy, and she wastes resources by putting someone on Daisy 24/7. She's suddenly on Suicide Watch, and Daisy doesn't know what to do because, through Hydra, and LMDs, and being sent to the future and back, her team has never looked so unnerved, so shaken, so scared.
They should be scared- it's the end of the world- only that's not what seems to worry them the most half the time.
And then Daisy doesn't end the world, she saves it, and Daisy is lost all over again. Because she doesn't have to die, but she still kind of wants to. Coulson is dying, Fitz is dead, and she never even got a chance to yell at him- hate him- scream about his betrayal. He's dead, but he's also not because there is a version of him still drifting in space. A version who didn't pin her down and rip out the only thing keeping Daisy from falling apart.
Fitz is dead, but he's also alive, and this version, this Fitz, she can't hate, can't rage at, because this version didn't hurt her.
Daisy doesn't know how she will react when she sees him again, because he hasn't been able to look at Daisy once since he cut her open- but that's okay because, honestly, she was avoiding him entirely up until the not-really-end-of-the-world.
Crying, maybe, seems like a possible option. He is one of her best friends, and he hurt her so badly, so deeply- he ripped open new wounds along with the old ones that were finally just beginning to scar over. He was her biggest defender after Terragenesis- biggest supporter- her saving grace in every major change.
He was there since the beginning- maybe the one person Grant Ward hurt more than her (Ward is still hurting them even long dead)- the person she probably trusts the most in the world even over Coulson and May or anyone else. He went up against Simmons for her- all of SHIELD for her.
And he hurt her. Not like Ward did, but similar.
And, yet, she still misses him.
A/N: Please let me know what you guys think!
~Silver~
