Drabble 47: Shaken
A/N: This was requested by two people, AOSISMYLIFE and Bailey.B. It is an AU where Simmons was in the Temple instead of Skye. I'm sorry it took so long to update, but this drabble is a bit longer than usual, so hopefully that will make up for it. Updates will probably only be once a week, at least until my next school break. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and please leave me a review!
Simmons ran through the tunnels, her heart pounding in her chest and her feet flying over the ground as she sprinted. Skye was down here, which was dangerous. Simmons knew she wasn't supposed to be down here. She was terrified to be down here.
But Skye was somewhere ahead of her. So she mastered her fear and pelted on. Coulson had asked her to keep a close eye on Skye, to make sure she stayed safe. Now she had to make sure she did.
She reached a spot she hadn't seen before; this must be the center. Sure enough, Raina was there, and so was Trip. And Skye.
Coulson was ahead of her, Skye one step ahead of him, and Skye was running into the room Raina was in.
Though she had a huge stitch in her chest and no breath, Simmons put on a burst of speed and raced after them. She heard Coulson yell to Skye to stop, saw the walls start to close…
But she must have been closer to them than she realized. She caught up to Skye, who had stopped dead just inside the room, and shoved her back out before she realized what was happening, into Coulson's arms.
Unfortunately, that was all she had time for. The stone walls closed just as Skye passed, and Simmons felt the wall with a closed fist, her pulse the only sound in her ears besides the suddenly overwhelming silence.
"Coulson!" she yelled. "Skye!"
If they could hear her, she couldn't tell. The silence she had suddenly felt vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared, and she whirled around to see Raina stalking towards her.
"What did you do?" she growled. "She needs to be here for this! It's her destiny!"
"'Cause you know all about that." Trip said.
Simmons jumped when she heard Trip. She'd forgotten he was in here. Why was he in here?
"Fine." Raina said. "I can't wait any longer." She walked to the stand in the center of the room and smiled in wonder. "Skye will just have to discover herself some other way."
Trip pulled out a gun and pointed it at Raina. "Be really careful about what you do now." He said. "Open the walls."
"Even if I wanted to I couldn't." Raina said. "The process has already begun."
Simmons realized with a shock that she was right; something was happening. The Obelisk was changing, transforming, and the pedestal it had been on started to glow with a harsh light.
"Terra-genesis." Raina said, stepping back.
Trip looked at Simmons, his gun still out, silently asking what he should do. She had no idea, so even if they'd had time she couldn't have answered. But his questioning look was the only thing she saw before a pulse went through the room, rippling through her and making her focus only on herself and the Obelisk. She felt a sense of connection now, which was strange considering she hadn't felt unconnected before.
Then the change really started.
From that point on everything was a bit of a blur to Simmons, except for two things. The first was that Trip was covered with rock, and made to look like a statue. And then he'd fallen apart before her eyes.
The second thing she was extremely aware of was, even as she watched Trip, the rocky material was climbing up her body, covering her as well. She felt an overwhelming sense of terror, and then her thoughts stopped.
A moment later the rocks burst from her body forcefully, and she took a deep breath immediately. She was alive.
She checked herself over for injuries, but found nothing. She couldn't believe she was unscathed. And then she remembered Trip, and slowly brought her gaze over to his remains.
The room around her began to shake, but she would remember little about any of it later; it all blurred together.
All she knew at the end of it was that Trip hadn't survived in that closed room. But she had.
The next few days were very emotional for her. She was placed in quarantine as soon as her team mates found her, and all sorts of tests were done.
Fitz visited her the most, sitting or standing outside her confined area and talking with her.
She listened to him but rarely responded. She knew she was in a state of shock; she was glad of it, didn't want it to end. When it ended she would have to remember everything, instead of only bits and pieces. When it ended, she would realize that she was changed, and Trip was dead.
So she clung to the shock as long as she could. But Fitz knew how to bring her out of it. He knew her so well that he let her mentally fight, talking to her and allowing her to listen or not, whichever she wanted. He knew that, no matter how hard she tried to block out his voice, she would listen when it mattered.
It was three days before she spoke, really. She had collapsed against Fitz immediately after the transformation, distraught and crying. Then she had closed up, locking herself inside and barely responding to anyone besides Fitz. But after three days her shock ebbed, and she faced Fitz and spoke the longest sentence she had in days.
"Why did I live?" she asked in a rough whisper.
He looked up from his laptop, shocked to hear her voice, and smiled. "Jem, I'm glad you're back."
"Why did I live?" she repeated, her voice stronger this time.
Fitz looked at her for a moment before looking back at his laptop, shaking his head slightly. "I don't know."
But there was something odd in his voice… She realized that she was probably hurting him by asking immediately about the grave situation, but she needed to know.
"Fitz, tell me what you're looking at."
He closed the laptop and set it down. "Nothing important. So you're feeling better?"
"Alright." She said, easing up on him. He was as stressed as she was at the moment, after all.
An uneasy silence fell between them.
"I know what's really -."
"I don't feel the same-."
They stopped and smiled at each other, smiles that faded after the briefest of lives. Fitz motioned for her to go first, but she shook her head. "No," she said. "say what you were going to."
He took a deep breath and sighed. "Your DNA's changed. The mist altered it somehow, and it's completely different. I don't know why, or really even understand how, but there it is."
He looked at her carefully, waiting for her reaction.
She took it silently. It gave her an explanation for the weird feelings she'd been having that day. She felt like her body wasn't one big thing anymore. It felt like, every so often, she could feel every particle, every movement in the cells throughout her body. It felt foreign, and terrified her. It felt powerful, and worried her. Because it wasn't herself anymore; at the same time it was more herself than she had ever been.
It was extremely confusing.
She didn't speak to Fitz for a few minutes, and then she told him everything she was thinking. He looked worried, but put on a brave face for her.
"We'll get through this." He said. "No one else needs to know anything's changed. You can leave quarantine tomorrow, and we'll…"
"Wait, what?" she interrupted him. "Keep it secret?"
He blinked. "Yeah. If nothing's happened by now, no one needs to know anything's changed. It'll just complicate things, and I don't know if you're ready to handle it."
"I don't know." She murmured.
"Just for now, okay?"
Then Coulson walked in. "How is she?" he asked Fitz. Then he looked up and realized she was standing, looking alert and responsive for the first time in days. His serious face broke into a relief-filled smile. "Jemma, you're up. I'm so glad."
"Thank you sir." She said quietly.
He studied her for a second. "Are you okay?"
She met Fitz's eyes for the briefest instant and forced a smile onto her face; small, but a smile. "I'm fine sir. Just anxious to be out of quarantine."
"We're all waiting for that. I'll give you two some privacy, but I'll be back later. I need to talk to you."
She nodded, and watched as he left the room.
"I know it doesn't seem right not to tell them, but we just need a little time."
"I know." She said quietly.
"Yeah, this'll work."
"Okay."
"Maybe we should run another test though, just to make sure. And I'll need to modify the records the rest of the team looks at, or they'll find out the truth."
"I get it!" she cried. As if all the tension that had been building in her the past few days reached its maximum she exploded, but not in terms of voice. Her voice was louder, but what made Fitz stare with his mouth open was the sparks that flew from her fingertips, the lamp by her bed shattering and the light going out.
"Did- did I cause that?" she asked after a moment of stunned silence. Her voice was shaky.
Apparently Fitz was still stunned. All he managed to do was nod, his mouth still open.
They stared at each other. Simmons was breathing heavily, and she would have sworn Fitz could hear her heart racing. Then, as she thought about what Coulson would say to her if he had seen that, sparks danced on her fingertips and ran along her arms, racing across her body.
Simmons gasped, and that seemed to make them move faster. "Fitz! What's going on!" she could hear the panic in her voice, could taste the fear and sense the power. The more worked up she seemed to get the worse the sparks seemed to be, though they weren't hurting her.
It was an endless cycle, each minute bringing fresh panic and fear, and more sparks. They were thick now, and their energy was easy to ear, crackling like wildfire over her skin. And Fitz just stood there.
"Fitz!" she yelled.
That shocked him – literally. The glass that had been containing her shattered, and a spark flew and hit Fitz. He winced but didn't fall over. Instead he started running over to the cupboard.
She couldn't take it. She felt overwhelmed, more than she ever had before, and she couldn't control anything. The sparks were all over the room now, she seemed to be shaking…
"Fitz, help me!" she sobbed.
Finally he turned around, a syringe in his hand. "I'm going to put you out." He said loudly. "Okay?"
She nodded, trying to stop shaking. She hadn't realized that she was on the floor, curled into a ball. Fitz approached her carefully, but she barely noticed him. She felt him administer the sedative to her, felt her fear and pain ebb away as she sank gratefully into the forced oblivion. She heard feet running towards the lab, saw dark shapes in the doorway and Fitz leaning over her with a worried face, swimming before her eyes. Then she was gone.
She woke up connected to machines. The first thing she was aware of was the beeping of the monitors. Then she felt the gentle pressure of the devices connected to her skin. She opened her eyes and looked around to see where she was. To her surprise she was still in the same lab. Broken glass lay on the floor, pushed to the side but not cleaned up. How long had she been out? What had happened?
Coulson was sitting by her side, looking at her with a serious but worried face. Fitz was next to him.
And suddenly everything came rushing back to her. "What's wrong with me?" she whispered.
"Nothing." Fitz said forcefully. "You've changed, that's all."
Coulson looked at him and he quieted. "We don't know exactly what's happened to you, but I promise we're figuring it out as fast as we can."
She just looked at him, not knowing what to say.
"I have to keep you here, at least for the night. Fitz is going to monitor you. As long as you don't show any signs of… events, you should be able to get off the machines tomorrow."
From the way he said it, she knew he thought there would be more 'events'. If she honestly considered it, she thought there would be too. Coulson touched her on the shoulder and nodded his head, and then walked out of the room. Fitz took his spot.
"Did I hurt you?" she asked him. "I know I shocked you at least once."
"No, don't worry about that. It wasn't that serious. I was more worried about you. Where did the electricity come from?"
She shook her head. "I have no idea. But once it appeared I couldn't make it go away, and then I became more panicked and it became stronger." She took a calming breath, realizing how much her breathing had quickened even in thinking about the sparks. "I couldn't control it, whatever it was."
He looked at her. "We'll get through this, Jem. Just try to stay calm."
After that brief conversation she went back to sleep, this time naturally. She knew she needed to avoid thinking, because thinking made her worry about problems she didn't understand. She woke up in the middle of the night and saw Fitz dozing in his chair, laptop open on his lap. But there was someone else there too.
Skye was next to Fitz, looking at her. She smiled a bit when she realized she was awake. "Hey."
"Hey." Simmons said quietly, not wanting to make Fitz stir.
"I'm so sorry Jemma." Skye said. That small smile vanished, and the girl's eyes didn't meet hers. "It should've been me in the Temple, not you."
"No." Simmons said quickly.
Skye looked up, surprised.
"No one should have been there, but it definitely shouldn't have been you. That's just what they wanted, don't you see? Your father, Raina. They wanted you to go through what I did. But you didn't. Now you're safe."
Skye bit her lip and nodded, and after a moment left. Simmons was fine with that; she was still tired.
If she had known the dangers that lay in dreaming she would have forced herself to stay awake. She had a nightmare, and one of the worst ones in a long time. She was back in the Temple, undergoing the change, but this time it wasn't just Trip she had to watch die. It was everyone. Her favorite teachers. Her mother and father. Coulson, May, Mack, Bobbi, Hunter. Skye. Fitz. She watched all of them petrify and crumble as she stood helplessly five feet away, frozen as rocks covered her from the ground up.
She woke up with a start to noise all around her. Electricity was crackling all over the room, people were rushing in. Fitz was hovering over her, his hands up. Coulson was trying to get to Simmons, but Fitz was blocking him.
She snapped fully awake and realized she was covered in sparks again. Everything was covered in sparks. Her heart was racing in her chest and she was breathing rapidly. As she saw Fitz trying to keep Coulson from reaching her she held out a hand and touched his arm.
A shock went from her fingers to his arm. He jumped and looked at her, startled. Coulson took the opportunity to walk around him and move closer to her.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Sir, I really think she should calm down a bit more before -."
"Take it slow, but tell me." Coulson insisted.
She took a deep breath and told them about her nightmare. The sparks slowed to a periodic crackle, barely moving and only staying on her. Then Coulson told her how they had heard her whimpering and crying out in her sleep, and the electricity had started again with a vengeance. It had spread past this room, throughout a good section of the Bus. That was how Coulson had arrived, to find Fitz trying very carefully to wake her up. Then she had woken up, and here they were.
By the time everyone had explained themselves the sparks had stopped, and Simmons felt relatively calm.
"I can't control it." She said.
"I know." Coulson said soothingly. "But we've figured out one thing; it seems to be triggered by emotion."
His words settled over her and she collapsed back onto her pillow. "You're right." She said.
They were quiet for a minute.
"You shouldn't let me stay too alert." She said. "At least not until we figure out another way to stop the sparks."
"No way." Fitz said immediately.
"Fitz is right." Coulson said. "We'll get through this. I can't keep you under, though. One, I need you to analyze some things for me; help Fitz do what you guys do best. Two, if you start sparking in your sleep and you're drugged, we might not be able to get you out of it fast enough."
Simmons opened her mouth to protest but nodded. She couldn't argue with his reasoning.
They talked for a few more minutes before Coulson left the two of them alone again. He promised to check on them in an hour.
"So." Fitz said, slowly walking by her bedside and then sitting back down. "How are you?"
"I'm fine." She said.
"How are you really?" he pressed.
She closed her eyes for a moment. "I don't know." She said. "I feel so… different. I just…"
"Hey." He said. "It's okay." He touched her face and wiped away a tear she hadn't realized had fallen.
"I just keep thinking about Trip. And then I keep wondering why I didn't… why did I live when he didn't?"
"I've been looking at your DNA." Fitz said. "It's completely different from the record in your file. The Temple brought something out in it, something that was dormant before but is now active."
She opened her eyes. "I just want to get back to normal."
"Jem." He said quietly. "I think this is normal now." He rubbed the back of her hand gently. "We'll get through it."
"Thank you Fitz."
Quiet for a moment, and then Simmons chuckled.
Fitz furrowed his eyebrows and felt her forehead, and she smiled and pushed his hand away.
"I'm fine, Fitz. I only laughed because I thought of what Skye will say when she finds out about my powers."
"Okay, I can understand laughing about that." Fitz said, beginning to smile.
"I'm waiting for her to call me Sparky." Simmons laughed.
Fitz grinned evilly.
"Don't you dare." She said, knowing his intentions.
His smile grew wider.
"I can shock you." She warned.
"Course you can." He said. "Why else would we call you Sparky?"
She willed a spark to show up and touched him on the arm. Unfortunately, nothing happened.
"Next time I do spark, you better watch out." She said. "I'll learn how to control it soon enough."
"I have no doubt you will."
A/N: I figured Jemma's powers would be different from Skye's, and though electricity would be neat to work with. Hope you liked it!