TW for presence of a gun (not fired), mentions of violence (including prior, off-screen GSW)

He drove a white van, because of course he did. The back of it was emptied out, so there weren't any seats for them, but Cal indicated that was where Skye and Jemma should climb in, and there wasn't much arguing either one of them could do with his gun still pointed at them.

The drive wasn't long, maybe only ten or fifteen minutes. It was hard to tell exactly, with only Jemma's tapping to mark the passing seconds, and there were no windows besides the windshields to look out of for landmarks, so Skye had no clue where they were going. Each pothole and bump in the road jostled them as they sat on the floor of the van, mixed in with boxes and tools and an assortment of other rattly things, and Skye's stomach lurched at every bounce, every reminder that they were being taken farther and farther away from safety and it was all her fault.

Eventually the van eased into a parking lot. Skye could hear gravel crunching under the wheels and she saw, when she craned her neck to peer out the front windshield, an abandoned-looking warehouse coming into view. Several of the streetlights around them weren't lit – broken or burned out, most likely – so there were only a few patches of yellow light assisting the moon in illuminating their surroundings. They drove through an opening in a tall, spiky fence, and Cal guided the van closer to the front of the building.

"He's early," Cal muttered to himself, cutting his eyes over to a shadowy corner of the lot. Skye followed his gaze and spotted an SUV idling under one of the broken lamps. Its headlights were off, but she could see exhaust fumes swirling out from the tailpipe, and a surly-looking bald man sat in the front seat. "He's not supposed to come until tomorrow."

Cal steered the van over towards the SUV and rolled down his window, letting in a gust of icy night air. "You're early, Ajax."

"This isn't about the delivery." The man in the front seat spoke with an urgency Skye hadn't been expecting from someone who looked like he could be the leader of a motorcycle gang. "Me and Vinny, we got in a little bit of trouble on the way down from Green Bay."

"I'm afraid I don't have time for trouble, tonight," Cal said coolly. "I'll see you tomorrow as planned."

"Vinny's in the backseat," Ajax explained, before Cal had a chance to roll up his window. "He's real bad, Zabo. We got into it with some punks off the highway, didn't realize they had guns."

"He's bleeding?"

"Bad."

Cal sighed deeply, drummed his fingers on the steering wheel for a moment while he thought. "Bring him around back. Give me a minute to set up shop, I'll come get you when I'm ready."

"Thanks, doc."

Cal threw the van into reverse and backed away, then turned and drove around the back side of the building. The SUV with the bleeding man and his friend followed.

"I'm sorry about this," Cal said suddenly, glancing back into the rearview mirror to look at Skye. "I wasn't planning on having to work tonight. It was supposed to be just the two of us. You don't mind waiting, do you?"

Skye didn't say anything – what could she say, really? It wasn't as if her answer would change what Cal did or didn't do.

"What are you going to do to him?" Jemma asked fearfully. She spoke so quietly it was a wonder Cal heard her over the scraping of gravel and puttering of the engine, but his ears must have been sharp.

"I'm a doctor," he said cheerily. "Or, I was at one point. My practice isn't exactly on the books these days, but it keeps me afloat. You'd be surprised how much mobsters and ne'er-do-wells will pay to avoid all the pesky paperwork of an ER."

"So you're going to help the guy in the car?" Skye wanted to know.

Cal chuckled. "Wouldn't be the first time I've pulled bullets out of old Vincent. He has a hot temper and an itchy trigger finger. Not a good combination if you ask me." He parked the car and killed the engine, then swung out of the cab with the spryness of a much younger man. Skye pressed her nose against the back windshield and watched as Cal held up a hand towards the SUV, signaling for them to wait, then crossed quickly back towards the van. He flung open the door, sending Skye scrambling backwards in surprise.

"Come on," he instructed. The gun was tucked into his belt, still catching the moonlight in an ominous glimmer, still well within his reach. "Let's get you in from the cold before I deal with those two. Don't want you wandering off while I'm in surgery." He said that last part like it was a joke, but his fingers twitched towards his belt and Skye knew he was deadly serious.

He led them over to what looked like a loading dock at the back of the warehouse and fiddled momentarily with a series of locks on a small door to the side of the big, sliding garage door that gaped down at them with rusty metal and chains. As terrified as Skye was, she was doing her best to pay attention to the things around them, to the way they came in, to the things that might help or hinder them if they tried to make an escape. All the locks on the door, for example, would be tricky to navigate, but she knew she had a better chance of cracking those than lifting the garage door without making a cacophonous racket.

She cut her eyes over to Jemma while Cal had his back turned, preoccupied with the locks. Jemma's eyes were wide and glassy with fear, and she was tapping up a storm, but Skye could see the gears turning in Jemma's brain. She hadn't shut down. She was thinking, taking it all in as best she could. Skye watched as Jemma wriggled her wrist against her thigh briefly, like she was scratching an itch, and realized that Jemma was subtly inching her bracelet – the DNA one Bobbi had given her months ago, the one she never took off – off her arm and into the palm of her hand. Jemma flicked her gaze over to Skye for a heartbeat, telegraphing her plan instantaneously. Skye nodded, understanding, and coughed loudly as Jemma dropped the bracelet into the gravel, the noise of the cough covering the sound of plastic beads hitting stone.

Cal perked up at Skye's cough and swiveled his head around to check on her. "Everything all right back there?"

"Just cold," Skye mumbled, coughing again and puffing on her frozen fingers for good measure.

"I guess it's a good thing we're going inside, then," Cal said jovially. He swung open the door with a creak of rusty hinges and ushered them into the warehouse. Inside was a long, empty corridor – dimly lit, once Cal threw the switch and coaxed the ancient bulbs that dotted the ceiling to wake up – with concrete floor and windowless doors every few feet. The whole place smelled old and damp, like metal and mineral and mildew, and it wasn't much warmer inside than it was out.

"I know it's not the best of accommodations," Cal admitted as he led them down the hall. "I have a couple other buildings, nicer ones, here and there. One in Sheboygan, Milwaukee, you know. But this one was closest to us. And it's secure. No one will bother us here."

No one will find us here, Skye's thoughts corrected him. Except for scary guys in SUVs who needed emergency, illegitimate surgery, and somehow she didn't hold out much hope that Ajax and Vinny were going to come to her and Jemma's rescue.

"You can wait in here," said Cal. He pushed open a heavy door and swept his arm out with playful grandeur. "Best room in the whole place, if you ask me. I shouldn't be long with those two – maybe a couple of hours, tops. I'll be back to check on you soon, all right?" He flashed his stiff smile again, but didn't wait for an answer before nudging them both into the room and swinging the door shut with a clunk of doomed finality. Skye listened to the sound of a chunking deadbolt and the scrape of a chain lock, both sealing them in, trapping them, shackling her to the cold reality of her mistakes.

The room was mostly empty, except for a battered lawn chair and a rickety army cot in one corner. There were windows on one wall, but they were the tiny rectangle kind up near the ceiling – not exactly useful for a great escape. If despair looked like a place, Skye would have conjured up the image of this room in a heartbeat. As she stood there, in the dim, dank, room, with no way out and nothing but her own hopeless thoughts banging against the walls of her brain, the despair of the space slowly started seeping into her – into her bones, her heart, her spirit. The corners of her eyes burned with gathering, helpless tears, and she was grateful for the fact that she had her back to Jemma. She might feel like doing nothing else, but crying wasn't going to do either of them any good.

"I'm so sorry, Jemma." Her voice cracked on the words, fragile shells of anguish shattering as she spoke them, as they hit the air. "I'm so, so sorry. I never should have gotten you mixed up in all this."

Jemma didn't say anything, and for a split second, Skye felt the awful dagger of guilt plunge even deeper into her heart as she wondered if Jemma would ever forgive her. Then there was a gentle hand on her shoulder, a little cold and a little tremulous, but a hand. Jemma's hand. Skye's shoulders sagged under her touch, and she turned to face Jemma, ready to face what she'd done. She was surprised by the soft look on Jemma's face. Her eyes were afraid, but there was something kind and determined dancing around behind the fear, and, much to Skye's amazement and immense relief, there wasn't a single trace of anger or blame.

Jemma's hand slid down from Skye's shoulder, down her arm, until hand met hand. One finger flitted out to start tapping on the back of Skye's hand, and Jemma squeezed tight, breathing in deeply and deliberately at the same time. Squeeze, breathe in. Let go, breathe out. It felt like such a long time ago that their old trick was used for simple things, like orphanage bullies and first day of school jitters, and now… Skye wasn't sure there were enough calming tricks in the world to make her feel steady right now.

"We'll… we'll figure out something," Jemma whispered. "We have each other. We just need a plan. We're good at making plans."

Skye gave an empty, shuddery laugh. "I'm pretty sure all of my plans lately have ended in us getting into trouble. Sheboygan, Ward, and now my dad. I haven't made a single good decision since we came to May and Phil's. I should have listened to you. You were right. You're always right."

"I'm not always right. No one is always right. And this… this isn't something I wanted to be right about. Skye, I'm so sorry your father's…"

"A lunatic with a gun who kidnaps people and does illegal surgeries on criminals in creepy warehouses?"

"I was going to say, 'not the person you were hoping for.'"

"That's the thing," Skye murmured. She sank weakly onto the edge of the army cot, and Jemma joined her, still holding her hand. "I didn't even really know what I was hoping for. I've been looking for my parents my whole life, but I never… I never really had this one image of the people I was hoping for. It was too hard to imagine what my life would be like if I ever found them, so I never could settle on a vision. It was more like… a dream. Or a feeling. A really fuzzy feeling. Like, eventually I'd find them and everything would just click. My life would make sense all of the sudden. Or I'd find out they were dead or why they didn't keep me, and even though it wouldn't feel good, at least I'd know. But this… this isn't right. Nothing clicked. Nothing feels right. And I still have no idea why they didn't want me in the first place."

"Maybe…. Maybe you could ask him. When he comes back, if he's in the right mood. He said he wants to talk to you. Maybe he'll explain."

"I don't even know if I want to hear it anymore," Skye admitted quietly. "Everything about him just feels so wrong. I'm not sure I want to hear what he has to say. I just… I just want to go home." Her vision blurred with hot tears and her chin trembled. "I want to go home."

"I know," Jemma said, leaning into her side and squeezing her hand tight. "Me too."

It was hard to keep track of time in the room. Jemma counted her taps halfheartedly, in an attempt to at least estimate the number of seconds that limped past them as they waited for Cal to return, but it wasn't easy without a clock to anchor her beat. Skye drifted into an uneasy sleep somewhere around the 2,000th tap, her head slumped onto Jemma's shoulder. Jemma was glad that Skye was able to get some rest, even if it was fretful. She was clearly exhausted, and Jemma knew how draining it could be to process such a large amount of new information all at once, not to mention the fatigue that came once the adrenaline and fear sapped out of your body.

Despite the late hour and the emotional toll that their situation was taking, Jemma didn't feel especially sleepy herself. Maybe it was because the fear hadn't left her body yet, and her senses were still rapid-firing, picking up every little flicker of the dim light, every gust of wind outside the windows, every intermingling scent of metal and mineral and mildew. Normally it would all be far too much for her – all the input and nothing to help with the output – but she kept swallowing every bubble of overload and lurch of anxiety down as deep as she could, compressing it as small as she could, locking it away as tightly as she could.

It was a variation of a trick her father had once taught her when she was very small. She had been so afraid of the dark – no stars to count or to depend on for light, too many undefined places for her imagination to run away with itself – but he had taught her to take the frightening things and squash them into the smallest little cube imaginable. Small volume, high density, a hot star of unmanageable feeling, crushed into a tiny lump that she could lock away in her music box. The box played a gentle, plunking tune, always the same one, easy to depend on. The song lasted exactly sixty seconds, every time, and if she listened carefully, she could hear the clicks and whirs of the gears inside (240 ticks per every playthrough of the song. Four ticks per second.). She loved to count the clicks and seconds, and even now, years after the box had been lost or broken, she didn't really know, she could still recall the precise pattern of them.

Of course, when he had been alive, her father had helped her to find times to unpack the music box, too. In the daylight, after the fear had long passed, when the feelings weren't so strong or overwhelming, they would sit and listen, categorize and systematize the feelings, talk through the science of fear, figure out exactly why her fears were illogical but not unimportant. Her mother took a softer approach, distracting Jemma with sweet things like a favorite story or the tender humming of a favorite tune. Jemma loved those moments, too, but nothing worked quite so well as her father's method. Nothing these days worked quite so well, either, and her modified version was only ever a temporary solution. Still, temporary was better than nothing at all.

It wasn't the healthiest of strategies, she knew, but it might be enough to keep her from getting out of sorts for a little while longer while she wracked her brain for a plan of escape. The quelling wouldn't last forever – it never did, not in any of the old foster homes where she'd tried and failed to force herself to fit into the narrow mold of acceptable behavior, not in her most stressful moments – but she could hang on for just a little more time. She had to, for Skye's sake as well as her own.

Abandoning her tapping for a moment, Jemma shifted slightly on the army cot so she could get a better look out of the narrow windows up near the ceiling. She wanted to see the stars, count a few, check them to see if she could figure out which direction Cal had driven them or how much time had passed. She craned her neck, but all she could see out the glass was a slim rectangle of monochromatic darkness. There wasn't a star in sight.

A lump gathered in her throat, one she couldn't swallow down. They were locked in a room in a building with a dangerous man far from home with no way of breaking free. There were no stars. There was no escape. No stars. No hope. Without thinking, she started tapping again, hard and fast, 1-1-1-1 on her knee. Her breath snagged sharply in her chest. Trapped. They were trapped. There were no stars and they were trapped. Even in her most horrible foster homes, even when she had been hurt and scared and so far gone from her body that she didn't feel anything but bad, bad, bad, there had always been stars. Something to remind her that there was once someone who had loved her enough to map the skies with her, that light was still traveling towards her, sometimes from billions of years away, that there would always be something that interrupted the overwhelming emptiness of it all. But now she could see no stars.

Skye stirred slightly, maybe at the change in Jemma's posture, the agitation that was building up and tightening her muscles. Hastily, Jemma forced herself to relax, even though she had to screw her eyes up with the effort. She didn't want to wake Skye. Not yet. Not before she had calmed down. Not before she had a plan to offer.

Skye made a small, sleepy sound, almost a snuffle, and slipped back into sleep, much to Jemma's relief. She still had time to think, if only she could get her mind to cooperate. It was so hard to get unstuck from the stars, though.

Jemma took a deep breath in through her nose, closed her eyes. Oxygen first. Life needs oxygen. If she was going to bring her thoughts to life, they would need oxygen. She wanted the stars. Her best thoughts often came from amongst the stars. Another deep breath. She couldn't have the stars. There weren't any. But maybe she could still populate her thoughts with them. There was more than one way to be a star. Carl Sagan once wrote that humans were made of star stuff. They were a way for the cosmos to know itself. The people who orbited her, who lent her their gravity and helped her to know herself, they were her daytime stars. Fitz was her blue giant; he was Leo the person and Leo the constellation. Easy to find, easy to count on and figure out. May was Ursa Major; bright, reliable, guiding. Phil was Cygnus, the backbone of the Milky Way, holding them all together. Bobbi, Canis Major, home to Sirius, the brightest star they could see from earth. And Skye. Skye was Ursa Minor, the cradle of Polaris, her north star. Skye was her compass, the fearless one who led the way, charged ahead. But now Skye was lost, and it was Jemma's turn to chart their course.

Behind her closed eyes, the stars of her universe popped to life, creating a woven star map of her very own galaxy. She had her stars. There was light, there was space, there was an infinitely expanding universe stretching far beyond her, far beyond locked doors and concrete walls and grim circumstance. The knot ensnaring her heart eased slightly, and it was just the tiniest bit easier to draw air into her lungs. Her body might be trapped in this small room and impossible predicament, but her mind wasn't. Her mind was among the stars, stretching out into the deep reaches of space. Space. Expanding space. If only they could expand their space, there might be a way out.

Jemma looked back up to the windows lining the top of the room, squinted hard at the wooden frames sealing each one into the concrete wall. Something about them seemed unusual to her. Taking care not to jostle Skye too much, Jemma eased herself out from under Skye's sleeping form and crept over to the windows to get a better look. The light was terrible on this side of the room, and they were several feet above her head, but Jemma was struck by the appearance of the wood. It looked old, damp, maybe rotting even. It was fragile; of that, she was sure. And fragile wood could be broken, and broken wood around the window might mean…

"Space," she murmured to herself as she dragged the lawn chair over to the wall. "Expanding space."

She clambered up onto the spindly chair and stretched up onto her tiptoes, peering at the window frames, inspecting the potential damage. She had been right. She couldn't quite bring herself to smile at the fact, but the buzzing tightness in her arms turned into an excited rush of hope. They might not be as trapped as it had first appeared.

She hated to wake Skye, but she didn't know how much longer they would be alone, and she didn't want to miss this opportunity. "Skye. Skye!"

Skye blinked torpidly a few times, clearing the cloudiness from her drowsy eyes. "Jemma? What's going on?" Her voice was raspy with interrupted sleep, but there was an alertness in her tone that took over immediately as she pieced together the sight in front of her. "What are you doing?"

"Come and look at these windows with me," Jemma instructed, scooting over slightly so there was room for Skye to stand on the chair with her. "Look at the wood and tell me what you see."

Skye scrambled over and joined her, took a quick look, and made a face. "Rotten. I bet there were bugs living in it when it was warm weather."

"Exactly," Jemma breathed excitedly. "Rotten wood. Structurally compromised wood."

"You think we can break it?"

Jemma nodded. "It looks damaged enough that we might be able to pull it down by hand."

Skye didn't wait for a green light. Immediately, she grabbed the closest piece and yanked hard, wedging her fingertips under a crumbly corner. The piece broke easily, and half of the board came away in Skye's grasp. Skye turned to look at her, eyes lit up with amazement.

"I'm the Hulk," she grinned. "And you were right."

"Keep pulling," Jemma said, grabbing her own section of the window frame. They went to work quickly, prying the splintery and disintegrating wood away from the hole in the concrete it had been shoddily sunk into. "It looks like whoever built this building cut a lot of corners in construction. I don't know if I'm right, but I'm hoping that means—"

She was cut off by Skye, who had wrenched a particularly large chunk of wood away from the wall, including a piece of the wood that was supposed to be the divide between two of the windows.

"It's just one big window," Skye said in astonishment. "Or, one big hole, I guess. Lots of small pieces of glass shoved into one empty space and held in with crappy wood frames. There's no way that's up to code."

"Never mind the code." This time Jemma allowed herself a smile. "We just expanded space. We made—"

"An escape route," Skye realized. "It'll be tight, but I bet we can fit through here. We just have to reach."

"We'll have to break the glass," Jemma pointed out as they finished stripping away the last few pieces of rotten frame from the windows. "It's stuck too tightly into the concrete for us to take out whole."

"I've broken plenty of windows before," smirked Skye. "At least this time breaking something is going to turn out to be a good thing."

"Should we use the wood?"

Skye shook her head and held up a finger, signaling for Jemma to wait and watch. She pulled her sweatshirt up over her head and wrapped it around her fist tightly.

"Keeps me from cutting up my hand and it's way quieter than using something hard," Skye explained. "Learned that at Mr. Erikson's when he locked me in the garden shed one time."

"Doesn't that hurt?"

"The glass doesn't look that thick, and it's only stuck in the concrete around the edges, so it should come out pretty easily. If I can't crack it in a couple hits we can try something else." Skye paused, took in the worried pucker Jemma now wore. "I'll be careful, I promise. Step back so you don't get glass on you, okay?"

Jemma obliged and hopped off the chair to give Skye a wide berth as she wound up and planted her swaddled fist directly in the center of the first plate of glass. A muffled thwump filled the still air, and Jemma sucked in a breath. It wasn't really that loud of a sound, but to her vigilant ears it sounded like cannon fire. Skye grimaced, but she steeled herself and swung again before Jemma had a chance to suggest they try a different approach. This time the thwump was undercut by the sound of a stifled crack, and when Skye pulled her hand away this time, there was a spidery web of fractures feathering away from the place where she had hit it.

"One more should get it," Skye panted. She took a deep breath and swung hard at the window for a third time. She was right. This time her hand went cleanly through to the outside, and the twinkling sound of tiny shards of glass spraying across the concrete was like a symphony of liberation. Skye wriggled her arm a little, working her hand back through the hole in the glass. As she pulled it through, she knocked shards loose from the place in the wall where the plate had been sunk in, and she used her sweatshirt to clear away as many fragments as she could. Eventually, the first window was free and clear, and Skye wore a triumphant grin.

"One down, two to go."