A/N: NaNoWriMo is kicking my ass. Here's more of this! Updated next: "stretta malagueña."

Thanks to everyone who reads/reviews/follows/favorites! Reviews are my favorite, but everything else is greatly appreciated too.

Enjoy!

Skye woke up disoriented, unable to identify place or time. She was pretty sure she was still in the hospital, but she wasn't in her usual closet in the Blue Room. Neither was she in the testing room with Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark. She was on a soft bed in a normal-looking room, and she liked it, even though she was pretty sure it wasn't real.

Then the haze of exhaustion cleared a bit and she was able to reorganize her thoughts. She wasn't on a bed, she was curled up on a couch. A very pretty floral couch, but a couch all the same. And the normal-looking room was still definitely normal, but there was also a desk, and an official-looking office chair, and two plants, and a filing cabinet, and a delicate clock on the windowsill. She was in someone's office.

The clock caught her attention the most; she sat up and pushed herself off the couch, padding towards the window. It was a funny sort of clock, and Skye had never seen one just like it. It was egg-shaped, with a lot of gold scrollwork around it, and it stood on a fancy golden pedestal created out of similar scrollwork. Skye realized the top of the clock was meant to look like a flower, a flower wearing a gold cap. Closest to the round face was an encircling ring of green enamel, and the rest of the front of the clock was a beautiful pink color.

But the time was wrong.

Skye reached for it, to figure out what was wrong, but then stopped. She didn't know what time it was. Perhaps it was really seven-thirty. The sky outside the hospital windows was fading towards sunset; it very definitely could have been seven-thirty.

She was so entranced by the setting sun that she didn't hear the door open, didn't hear someone coming up behind her until Jemma spoke. "Skye? Are you hungry?"

Skye turned around. The doctor stood in the doorway, looking tired. Suddenly Skye realized she was in Jemma's office.

"Huh," she vocalized.

Jemma held out her computer.

Skye took a few cautious steps towards the doctor.

"It's all right that you're in here," Jemma said, as though Skye was seeking validation for her actions. "You were sleeping so deeply after your time with Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark. I thought it might be nice to have you some place I could keep an eye on you. I only stepped out for a minute to use the restroom."

Skye wondered why Jemma was trying to justify her actions. Skye wasn't upset about being in the doctor's office. Everything was peaceful and light-colored and so very Jemma that it all made sense.

"I thought you might like to have something to eat," Jemma went on. "Then Wanda wants you to meet her brother."

She handed the computer to Skye.

Skye took it, staring down at the screen for a few minutes. Finally she flicked it on, bringing one hand to her mouth to tap against her lips before she started to type. "I would like apples peanut butter please also apple juice grilled cheese please."

Jemma smiled. "I think we can manage that."

Something else occurred to Skye. "What day is it?" she typed.

Jemma looked surprised by the question. "Thursday. Do you have somewhere you need to be?"

Skye shook her head. "Dad, Skye watch Great Big Quiz Show channel four at eight-seven central."

"Would you like to do that here?"

"Watch with Wanda's brother."

"I think we can manage that," Jemma said. "First, let's get you something to eat."

Skye nodded. She flicked the computer off. Something at the base of her neck itched, and she reached up to scratch at it.

"Be careful," Jemma said, having caught her movements. "Dr. Banner left a monitoring device clipped to your shirt. He's concerned about some after-effects of the device in your shoulder. You'll only have to have it on for the next few hours."

Skye's fingers found the monitor. It was slim and non-intrusive, and if she hadn't been told it was there, she probably never would have realized it was there. She let go of it, following Jemma out of the office, the only thing on her mind grilled cheese and the intellectual stimulation of the Great Big Quiz Show.

Two apples, one grilled cheese, a big glass of apple juice, and – most exciting – a chocolate cupcake later, Skye followed Bobbi Morse, the nice therapist, down to the fifth floor to watch TV with Wanda and her brother.

Brother name Pietro.

Brother. Brother. Twin brother.

Skye found her fingers twisting in front of her. She was nervous. No, nauseous. No, anxious. No…

"Skye?" Bobbi asked gently. "Are you all right?"

She was hearing things again.

"Little girl," an elderly, creaky voice called to her. She turned to see the tiny form of an old man in a hospital bed, back in one of the ICU's rooms. He lay very still, a tube branching from his mouth. He was completely alone. "Little girl are you here to set me free? Tell them. Tell them it's all right to turn off the machines."

Skye shook her head, hard, and took a few steps forward. Another voice called out to her – a woman's voice, younger than the first. Skye could see a beautiful woman in the next bed, with long red hair and rosy cheeks despite all of the machines around her bed and the tubing coming from her neck. There were balloons in her room, and a young man holding a cap in his hands, twisting the fabric back and forth. "Please, please. I can see your words. They missed one – angel. Please, be my angel. Don't let me…"

A third voice overlapped the second; the third patient was an obese man whose fists moved restlessly against the rails of his bed. He, too, had a tube down his throat. "Fuck you! Fuck you! Where is my wife?!"

"Little girl tell them…"

"… angel. Please be…"

"… my wife?! Find her please…"

It was as though a hand was gripped around Skye's lungs, squeezing the breath out of her. She couldn't get enough air in. The hallway tilted around her, and she put out one hand to steady herself against the wall, bringing the other hand up to trace a word on her left elbow: impossibility.

"Skye, can you type for me what's wrong?" Bobbi asked, holding the computer up in front of her.

"… please, little girl."

"Turn off the pain…"

"… want to see my wife."

Skye's hands shook as she tried to get her hands to the computer.

Bobbi nodded encouragingly.

"So much pain. So much pain, Daisy girl." That was her mother, joining the chorus. "You can make it stop, Daisy girl."

I AM NOT DAISY I AM NOT DAISY I DO NOT HAVE TO BE DAISY ANYMORE.

Skye let one of her hands flop onto the screen and focused on the keys. "I don't want to watch them all die."

Bobbi looked at her confusedly. "Who?"

Do you not hear them? Do you not hear her?

Skye choked in a breath. Her fingers spasmed against the screen and the computer repeated her message. "I don't want to watch them all die."

"No one here is dying," Bobbi said.

What about them?

Skye felt the pressure start in the base of her skull. She whimpered, bringing her hands up to push against it. The pressure grew and she moaned. "Hnnnnn…"

"Skye, look at me," Bobbi said. "Skye, listen to my voice, please."

Pain exploded in Skye's head like a hand grenade going off and she beat her hands against her head, screaming.

"Come with me," Bobbi said, her voice somehow still steady. "We'll go back upstairs and talk to Dr. Jemma."

Skye wanted that. She wanted to get out of here. She took a few hesitant steps towards Bobbi.

"Fucking retard," the third patient, the fat man, scoffed. "Got all these gifts and she's nothing more than a waste of space. Just like her to be an asshole – lock those gifts away – can't even help us. Screw you."

Skye screamed again, her hands slapping her ears ferociously.

Too much. Too much.

Mom and the patients and the machines and Bobbi and tubes and wires and rubber-soled shoes on tile floor and Jemma's office and Dad? Dad? and the radio down at the nurses' station and she says I am Daisy I AM NOT DAISY I AM NOT DAISY.

"Pppp…" Skye whimpered at Bobbi. Please turn it off before…

"Skye, it's okay," Bobbi said. "We'll figure it out."

The pain rose in fierce tendrils, twirling their way down her spine and into her arms like iron-studded electricity.

Skye couldn't breathe. She clenched her fists.

I'm so sorry. So sorry. So sorry.

Bobbi looked around. She didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but something had definitely set Skye off.

Then Bobbi realized things had gone oddly still. The air seemed too heavy to breathe, as though it was made of dense pound cake or Styrofoam.

Movement from something behind Skye caught the therapist's attention, and she shifted her position slightly to see what it was.

It was a pitcher of water on a cart parked just outside a patient's room, which was completely ordinary.

The fact that the pitcher was wobbling, all on its own, creating ripples in the water it held, was definitely not.

Bobbi barely had time to process that before she heard something strange – rat-tat-a-tat, rat-tat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat. At last she figured out what it was, though her explanation didn't make any sense: the fluorescent light ballasts overhead were shaking in their brackets.

Skye was completely still, frozen in position, her head turned to one side, sweat pouring from her brow.

The glass window in the door of the nurses' lounge shattered.

The pitcher flopped from the cart and water spilled over the floor.

The lights exploded – one, two, three – leaving the hallway in partial darkness.

Skye still didn't move.

"Skye," Bobbi said hesitantly. It was ridiculous to think Skye was doing this… wasn't it?

Below Bobbi's feet the floor began to shake. Another window shattered somewhere, a light further down the hallway popped in a series of sparks.

"Skye," Bobbi repeated, a bit more firmly. "Look at me, Skye."

Skye's hands rose from her sides to cup her ears. "Nnn, nnnn, nnnn, nnnn…" she breathed painfully. "Nnn, nnnn, NNNN!"

"Skye, stay calm," Bobbi said. "We'll figure it out."

Skye sucked in a sharp breath and the floor's shaking grew worse. Alarms were going off all around them, nurses rushing in and out of rooms, barking orders at each other.

Wanda appeared in the doorway of Pietro's room and looked at Bobbi and Skye.

"It's all right, Wanda," Bobbi said. "No one's hurt."

Wanda shook her head and went back into her brother's room.

"Skye, please," Bobbi said. "If this is you, you have to make it stop."

I can't. Can't make it stop. Can't stop it. Not now.

It felt as though her rib cage was being ripped open, as though she was being punched in the stomach by fists of iron.

Have to make it stop. Don't want to hurt anyone.

"Skye…"

Skye couldn't bear Bobbi's voice any longer. She jerked her hands away from her ears, her hands immediately clenching into fists. More things began to shake and wobble and crack apart. She thrust her fists out to the sides, feeling a surge of power and rage.

Pain roared up Skye's arms, and she looked down at them confusedly.

Bruises were sprouting on her skin like angry thumbprints, mixed with strange leafy red lines. She could hear crunching and some strange part of her brain knew she was doing it – you're breaking yourself, Daisy – and another part wasn't feeling anything at all.

She looked up at Bobbi, her mouth open but unable to get anything out but a soft moan.

And then she succumbed to the pain, to the foggy darkness, feeling absolutely shattered.

Just like everything around her.

Just like her arms.

Just like her heart.

"Seventy-five hairline fractures," Jemma reported, slapping X-rays up on the light box. "Two definite oblique fractures, one in each arm but in different places in each."

Phil let out a low whistle. "Jesus."

"And she's got ruptured blood vessels all over her skin," Jemma went on. "She's down in ortho right now getting casts put on."

"How did this happen?"

Jemma shook her head. "Bobbi told me what she saw, and I've watched the security feed at least five times, and I can't figure it out."

"Talk me through it."

"Skye said she wanted to watch a TV show with Wanda and Pietro. Bobbi took her downstairs. The second they stepped onto the ward Skye began to show symptoms of anxiety and distress. She kept looking into different patients' rooms with a strange look on her face. This progressed until she was visibly upset. She typed that she didn't want to 'watch them all die.'"

Jemma bit her lip and went on. "At that point she engaged in self-harm, beating her hands against her head. And then… then the weird stuff happened. Things started shaking. Windows broke, light bulbs exploded, various objects were jolted loose from their moorings."

"After that…"

She held up her tablet for Phil to see.

Phil stared in amazement as Skye's hands came down from her ears and clenched into fists, then saw those fists thrust out with sheer anger. As her hands came down the entire hospital seemed to be caught in the midst of a violent earthquake.

"This is impossible," Phil said, stunned.

"It's… it happened," Jemma said. "I mean, we felt the earthquake. Everyone in the building did. I feel as though it was extremely implausible, but…"

"No, Jemma, it's impossible. Things like this just don't…"

Jemma held up a small, thin disc with a clip on it. "Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark had this monitoring device attached to Skye's shirt during the event. They were hoping to gather more data about the implant in her shoulder, but it captured everything that occurred as well."

She pulled that file up on the tablet. "It mostly shows her vitals, and obviously those weren't in the normal range – heart rate and respiratory rate extremely accelerated, blood pressure and body temperature similarly heightened. I have further data on the chemicals flooding through her at the moment of the final quake, but the most important thing captured by the monitor is this."

Jemma scrolled over to a series of images. "During the entire series of events, there were seismic waves being produced."

"Of course," Phil said. "It was an earthquake."

"True," Jemma said. "But if it was a naturally-occurring earthquake, those seismic waves would have been pushing in on Skye's body the way they were on Bobbi's."

She showed him a still capture from the security feed, overlaid on to a spectrographic filter. Wiggly lines pulsed towards Bobbi's body. "But when we look at Skye…"

She flipped to the next image and it caused Phil to nearly stop breathing. "The waves are…"

"The waves are coming out of her," Jemma said softly. "Skye was producing the seismic waves."

Phil was stunned. "Jesus."

"We thought we had an autistic young woman who lived through serious mental and emotional trauma. Now we've got an autistic young woman rescued from a human experimentation trial, who lived through serious mental, emotional, and physical trauma, who may or may not have killed a man a few days ago, with a handful of unknown medical implements in her body, and who is now, apparently, creating earthquakes."

Phil shook his head. "It sounds like science fiction."

Jemma gave him a sad smile. "Until we figure it out, that's the only explanation we have."

"I don't think we're meant to figure this out," Phil said. "The people who did this to her…"

"No," Jemma interrupted him. "She deserves better than everything she's ever gotten, and that's what Shield Memorial is all about. We don't give up on anyone here, whether they're causing earthquakes or refusing to speak. We'll find a solution. We have to. She's… she's special."

Phil didn't ask why she looked so suddenly sad; he couldn't even correctly identify the ache in his own heart. "She's special," he repeated, his voice a near whisper, and for the first time in the years they'd worked together, he stepped forward and wrapped Jemma Simmons in a tight hug.

She sobbed into his shoulder and Phil just waited for his world to stop shaking.