A/N: Hi, guys! It's been awhile for this story, but for better or worse I'm back. I'm hoping to keep the updates coming more regularly, though there have been some changes in my life and there are more on the way, so no guarantees on anything.
Thanks to everyone who reads/reviews/follows/favorites/etc. I appreciate all of the support!
I've been posting this on most of my updates, but I haven't gotten around to it on here: I discovered not too long ago that someone stole this story, changed a few things, and re-posted it as their own on AO3. I was alerted to this by two of my Tumblr followers and I am so grateful for that. I was extremely furious about what happened; taking this story especially hurt as it deals with some very personal elements. I dealt with that and their version of the story was removed from AO3. Please let me know if you see anyone else re-posting anything I've written. I post on here and on Tumblr as memorysdaughter; on AO3 I am earthquakegirl. Any other account that posts my work is doing so without my consent. I have never and will never give consent for that to occur.
Enjoy!
Phil knocked on the open door of Jemma's office. "I've got something you're going to want to see," he said, and held up a flash drive. "I was just down talking to Eric in Security, and I mentioned that I wanted extra eyes on Skye's new living quarters. He said Sam and Billy were already providing extra monitoring, and that they had her first two hours recorded and up on a drive for me."
"They're strangely efficient, aren't they?" Jemma asked. She closed the file she'd been writing in. "Anything interesting?"
Phil hesitated. "On the scale of today's excitement… no. On every other day… very."
He handed her the drive and waited while it loaded.
Jemma clicked open the first of three files. The screen was divided into quadrants – the first showing the hallway directly outside Skye's locked room, focusing intently on the door; the other three were from cameras inside the room, each providing a different angle. The footage was cued up to move at a rapid pace; viewing the first hour only took six minutes, and consisted of Mack and Trip bringing Skye into the room, Trip remaining behind to feed Skye a snack, Trip's departure, and Skye settling back down into her blankets.
The second video file started with a few minutes of Skye seeming to rest peacefully, then devolved into a complete meltdown. Screaming, self-abuse; the room shook around her. Skye curled into herself and began beating her head against the floor. Jemma lost count of how many times she did it, focused only on the blood spilling from Skye's forehead and the terrified screams escaping from Skye's mouth.
"She needs medical attention," Jemma said to Phil as soon as the video ended.
"I've got a team down there right now taking care of her," Phil said. "The third video is where things get weird."
Jemma frowned at him.
"Watch the camera mounted over the door," Phil suggested, pointing to the quadrant containing that footage.
For a few minutes nothing happened on-screen in that area, though in the room Skye continued to beat her head against the floor. Then…
"Is that…?" Jemma breathed.
"Miss Maximoff," Phil agreed with a nod.
"What's she doing?" Jemma leaned forward and watched as Wanda first tugged at the locked door handle, then turned around to inspect her surroundings.
The Sokovian girl's hand went up and something escaped from her fingertips.
"What the hell is that?" Jemma demanded, pausing the video.
"I have no clue," Phil replied.
Jemma restarted the video and together they watched as a burst of the same something flared up inside the lock. Wanda tugged the door open and disappeared into the room. Jemma immediately turned her attention to those quadrants of the screen.
Wanda scooped Skye up from the floor, seemingly oblivious to the blood flowing from Skye's forehead and mouth. Wanda's fingers moved to the back of Skye's head and lingered there, discharging more of the something. Skye screamed and then her entire body went limp. She seemed to move closer to Wanda, her eyes closing. Wanda's mouth moved; Jemma realized, belatedly, that her selectively mute patient spoke the entire time she was with Skye.
Jemma sat back in her chair. "I don't understand any of this."
"Join the club," Phil said. "Bobbi and Trip went to get Wanda. She should be here any minute. I'd like to ask her what she was doing down there… and more importantly, how she knew Skye was down there."
Jemma put her head in her hands. "And to think, just a few days ago my biggest worries involved fighting with insurance companies for continued coverage for patients."
"World's a weird place, isn't it?" Phil smiled. "God, I love puzzles."
Dimly Wanda registered the nice blond therapist helping her to her feet. She felt a trickle of blood making its way down her face, emanating from her nose. Her body was limp and uncooperative; she stumbled and swayed. Eventually she felt the therapist – Bobbi – strategically place arms around her torso, half-carrying her to the hallway, where there was a wheelchair waiting.
Wanda slumped into it, looking up at Bobbi. "I need sugar," she said, aware that she was speaking Sokovian but unable to think of the English words. "Sugar. Candy. Soda. Something. Please don't let me pass out. That's when the nightmares come."
Bobbi looked down at her in surprise, and Wanda realized the therapist had never heard her voice. "We'll figure it out," Bobbi said, sounding only somewhat confused.
"Please. Please don't let me pass out," Wanda begged. Her face was going numb and the blood dripped onto her pajamas. She wiped at it with one hand; her limbs felt like lead. She gripped the armrests of the wheelchair as Bobbi deftly rolled it into the elevator.
"It's all right," Bobbi said. "You're safe."
"I can't be safe if the nightmares come!" Wanda shrieked. Pressure built in her chest and she gulped air frantically. "You won't be safe either!"
Her hands were shaking. She looked down to see wisps of scarlet extending from her fingers.
"Oh, no," she moaned. "Please stop. Please help me. Please!"
The elevator doors opened and Bobbi wheeled her out onto the eighth floor. Dr. Jemma and Dr. Phil were there, both regarding her with stern expressions.
Wanda gulped more air and forced English words out of her mouth. "Need. Sweet. Now."
She tried to get to her feet. If the nightmares were coming she needed to be somewhere safe, and out in the open on the ward definitely wasn't it. She made it two steps before the room tilted around her and she grabbed onto the closest thing to stabilize herself.
It was Dr. Jemma, and she looked terrified. Wanda couldn't blame her; she hadn't been out of control like this since the day Pietro was shot. "Need. To eat. Sugar," she gasped out. The pressure spread up from her chest to her neck and she knew it was almost too late.
Dr. Phil and Dr. Jemma exchanged looks. Dr. Phil bolted over to the nurses' station and grabbed the jar of lollipops Dr. Jemma kept there. He took the lid off and began unwrapping lollipops, handing them to Dr. Jemma as quickly as he could.
Wanda snatched the first four out of Dr. Jemma's hand and shoved them into her mouth, crunching down on the hard candy. She yanked the sticks out of her mouth and let them fall to the floor. As soon as more lollipops were presented, she repeated the same process. Drool ran out of her mouth, mingling with the blood still seeping from her nose; she was too far gone to care.
At some point she became aware that the pressure was easing. Her lips were caked in flecks of candy and she felt the sugar rushing through her, replacing what using her gifts had taken out of her. And yet still she held her hand out for more. She was still untethered and loose and desperate.
"Wanda, slow down," Dr. Jemma said. "Take a breath."
Bobbi approached with a glass with a straw in it and held it out. "It's juice," she said. "Apple juice."
Wanda grabbed it from her. Ignoring the straw, she gulped it down. Her heart was racing now, but she saw the wisps of scarlet recede into her hands. She found her surroundings stabilizing and closed her eyes gratefully. "Thank you," she murmured to Dr. Jemma.
"What do you need now, Wanda?" Dr. Jemma asked gently.
Exhausted, Wanda let out a sigh. "Cannot sleep."
"I think that might be best for you," Dr. Jemma said slowly. Wanda realized Mack, the orderly, was standing next to her, recording her vital signs; she wondered how long he'd been there. "Your vital signs are extremely distressed."
"Cannot sleep!" Wanda repeated loudly. "Need…"
She ran out of English, her body ready for a crash. "… more sugar."
Dr. Jemma tilted her head. "Can you tell me that again? In English?"
Wanda pointed to the lollipop wrappers littering the ground like leaves fallen from a tree.
"Sugar? You need more sugar?"
Wanda nodded.
"We can put in an IV," Dr. Jemma said.
Wanda jerked her hands back. "No!" she screamed. The pressure seized her again and she clenched her hands into fists. "Please don't give me the needles."
"I wish we understood what she was saying," Dr. Phil murmured.
Wanda frantically tried to breathe. It wasn't working. Little black dots danced around the edges of her vision and she grabbed out for whatever she could. Her hands went limp and her body followed suit. She collapsed to the floor and remembered nothing else.
Skye kept her eyes closed, listening to everything happening around her. Trip brought her noise-canceling headphones, which rested securely over her ears, but she could still hear enough to know what was occurring in the room. People were talking, and two doctors bent over her, cleaning her wounds and applying ointment and bandages.
She looked up at Trip, who held her hand. Where is Wanda? Wanda. Wanda is my friend.
That realization startled her. She'd never had a friend before.
Friend. Friend. Friend. Skye tried it out in her head.
She waited for her mother's voice to slither back in, to tell her that she had no friends, she'd never have any friends, that she wasn't worthy of friendship or trust or love.
There was nothing.
It was still a shock. For six years she'd heard nothing but her mother. Now the silence was deafening and oh-so-pure.
Skye liked it.
"Once we've got you patched up, we'll take you back upstairs," Trip said. "Don't worry if you fall asleep again. We'll make sure you're safe in your room on the eighth floor. That's where you'll be when you wake up. Does anything hurt? Your arms?"
Skye shook her head. Everything thrummed with a dull ache, but she was afraid of what more medication would do to her. It had been a very stressful couple of days.
She kept her hand in Trip's and closed her eyes, letting the silence wrap around her like a warm hug as she drifted back to sleep.
Jemma stood in the doorway of Wanda's room. Dr. May was leaning over the Sokovian girl's bed, checking her vital signs. Since Wanda's collapse she'd remained unresponsive; the medical team assessed her condition and ordered a glucose drip, fluids, and constant monitoring. Jemma looked down at the chart in her hands: Blood sugar of eight. Heart rate at two-seventy-five when she collapsed. Blood pressure so low it wasn't registering. Temperature one-oh-four.
"How is she still alive?" Dr. May's voice broke through Jemma's thoughts.
"I was just thinking the same thing," Jemma said softly.
"And she survived whatever happened to her – and she's recovering," Dr. May went on. "Any other patient this happened to, they'd be dead. At least twice over. And she's fighting back. She's still breathing on her own. Her heart's still beating. I wouldn't be surprised if she wakes up here in a few hours with no other negative side effects. She's just… very, very asleep."
"Then let's leave her," Jemma said. "I'll go check in on Skye."
Dr. May nodded. "I'm going to look back through Skye's vital signs during the time she was held downstairs to see if we can figure out what Miss Maximoff did."
"Could you…" Jemma hesitated. "No, that's silly."
"What?"
"Could you go through the records of what happened when Wanda and her brother were attacked?" Jemma asked. "I want to… I want to go back and see if any of this lines up."
"I'll make sure we have all of the information possible," Dr. May answered. "We'll figure this out."
She stopped in the doorway. "And Jemma… what I said earlier, about Skye not belonging here any longer… obviously I was wrong. She needs to be with people who will fight for her, and obviously that's here, with you."
Skye woke sometime later in her closet and she smiled. It wasn't home, it would never be home, but it felt safe. Her arms no longer hurt, and the tugging and itching from the bandages on her head was minimal. The noise in her head remained absent. It was the happiest and the sanest she'd been in a very long time, and she was both delighted and confused by it all.
When she opened the closet door she discovered a small tray on the floor in front of it containing an open can of Sprite in an insulated holder, a straw already placed in it, and two chocolate cupcakes. A note was attached to the tray: Hey, girl. Thought you might want something to eat when you wake up. – Trip.
Skye forced herself to eat slowly, enjoying each bite of the cupcakes and alternating between the chocolate-and-cream and the lemon-lime flavors of her snack. Once she was finished she washed her hands in the sink bolted to the wall by the door and grabbed her computer.
It was strange, not having the white noise telling her where to go. In the hallway she hesitated, turning her head one way and then the other.
Wanda. Wanda. Friend. Wanda.
Skye set off for the Red Room. The door was partially closed; she stepped up close to it and peeked in.
Her friend – that was still a weird word – lay on the bed, apparently fast asleep. A monitoring device of some kind sat next to an IV pump at Wanda's bedside.
I did. I did not hurt. I did not hurt Wanda.
Skye tapped her lips.
Her hands. On my head. Solved the noise.
Wanda hurt. Wanda hurt Wanda.
She let out a soft noise of sadness, and without further hesitation she slipped into the room. Skye crawled up on the bed next to her friend and lay down, running her fingers through Wanda's long hair.
Sorry. Didn't ask. Didn't ask.
Wanted noise gone. Not like this.
Skye curled in towards Wanda and tried to remember the lullaby from earlier. As she attempted to get a few notes to escape her vocal cords, she realized something.
Never sang. Never sang.
It was a day of firsts, and though she knew she wasn't coming even close to the lullaby, somehow the attempt made her feel better about everything that had happened.
And everything that was undoubtedly coming.