A/N: So, since I don't have TV, I have to wait until tomorrow to see the season finale of MAoS. Instead, I wrote this and watched a guy play video games on YouTube. Also, there were cookies.
I love this story... I don't know if that's an okay thing to admit, but I really am enjoying writing it and seeing all of your reactions to it. Enjoy!
Skye comes up for air and finds the room is still around her. No May, no Coulson, no Simmons. None of the people she's been terrified of. Just Fitz, in the corner, holding his tablet and looking right at her.
She can't tell if it's real or not.
She wants it to be real. Wants Fitz's calm, gentle eyes to be real, wants him to come and hold her hand and tell her things are going to be okay. Most of all she wants him to remain gentle Fitz, and not try to kill her or shoot her or choke her to death.
"Skye?" he asks gently. "'S that you?"
They've fixed the lights, she notices, or maybe she's in a different room.
Fitz stands up and brings his tablet over. "They've still got you on the breathing machine," he says, keeping his voice very steady and modulated. "There's another machine in here now that's shaking up the junk in your lungs to get it out, so you might feel a little squeeze around your chest every now and then. Do you understand me? Look up for yes, down for no."
She flicks her eyes up.
"Good," Fitz says, and he smiles. "Are you in any pain?"
Skye thinks about it. Emotional pain, yes, and she feels battered and bruised, mostly because she is. She can feel new fractures and new ruptures all up and down her arms and in her shoulders, but they ache with an odd kind of familiarity.
She flicks her eyes down.
"Okay," Fitz says. "I made something for you that might help you communicate while you've got that tube in your mouth."
He holds up what looks like two silvery stickers. "I'm going to put one over each of your eyes, and then you can type with your eye movements."
He leans in, and Skye hates herself for it, but she flinches.
"It's okay," Fitz says softly. "I understand how scared you must be."
And Skye believes him. She remembers the feeling of Fitz's arms around her on the floor of the quarantine chamber, rocking her back and forth, telling her things would be all right. She believed him then, and she believes him now. His touch is feathery on her forehead, though she realizes how high her fever must still be, because Fitz's fingers feel like cool angel's wings.
When he leans back he smiles, and holds his tablet up. "Okay, whenever you're ready."
Skye's eyes swim over the tablet. She feels hot and choked and nauseous, but the first thing she finds herself typing is "Scared."
"Scared of what?" Fitz asks.
"Dying."
"Oh, you're not going to die," Fitz says confidently. "You've got the top doctor in the hospital on your case now, that mad Dr. Ullman is gone, and Simmons is threatening to beat up anyone who won't help."
At the mention of Simmons Skye's heart rate pings up and she tenses, which sends ricochets of pain up her arms.
Fitz furrows his brow. "You all right?"
Skye forces herself not to cry, and she yells in her head not to close her eyes, not to go back in the darkness. She thinks of the meter on her wrist, and though she can't see it, she imagines her heart rate slowing, noise in the background. She lets the ventilator give her a breath and then she types, "In my head."
"Pain?"
Skye flicks her eyes down.
Fitz hesitates, trying to puzzle out her meaning. "Dying… in your head."
Skye flicks her eyes up.
"Like… uh…" He's stuck now, and Skye feels terrible because she knows the word he's looking for. "Like… dreams… but they're not real."
She flicks her eyes up. He'd gotten pretty close to hallucinations, and with their limited methods of communication, she'll let it go.
"And the people in your bad dreams are… us?"
Skye hesitates, then types, "Not you."
A small smile appears on Fitz's face. "Well, that's a relief."
Then he realizes what that means. "But… everyone else?"
She flicks her eyes up.
"Oh, Skye," he murmurs. "I'm sorry."
Skye can feel her head getting swimmy again, and she knows she's got limited time before the darkness sucks her down again. She forces herself to look at the tablet screen, and type out the word she'd been trying to mouth to Coulson. "Gloves."
This one really throws Fitz. "Your hands are cold?"
She flicks her eyes down.
He bites his lip.
The room wobbles, and Skye thinks she might vomit.
"Try again," Fitz says gently.
"Gloves," Skye types. She can feel her eyes burning. "Gloves. Gloves. Stop. Shakes."
Understanding dawns on Fitz's face. "No, Skye. You don't have to do that."
Everything tilts. Skye wants to tell Fitz that she isn't asking out of desire – she's asking out of necessity. "Fitz. Gloves. Now."
Pain ruptures through her chest and she unclenches her hands, sliding back into the dark.
A sharp foot slams into her rib cage and she whimpers as she flops against a cold cement floor. It's dark and she struggles to see the space around her, trying to figure out who's coming after her this time.
"Stay down," a voice hisses.
Something in Skye wants to fight, and she drags herself up, trying to pull herself across the floor away from her attacker.
"I said stay down," the voice roars, and strong hands reach down like clamps, yanking her up from the floor and tossing her like a rag doll against a wall.
Skye can't breathe. She can feel blood trickling down her lips and she fights down the urge to vomit. She recognizes the voice.
Cal comes closer, bends down next to her. "I told you no one would understand you after you changed."
It's not true! Skye wants to scream. And yet in every hallucination she's had, one of her SHIELD family members is trying to eradicate her. They don't want her. No one wants her.
She sobs.
"There's a place for you," Cal whispers.
Hell? Skye wonders.
"You can come with me, live with my kind. Freaks and weirdos, troublemakers and rebels – we'll protect you. Keep you from SHIELD."
His whisper sounds like a snake running down her back and Skye retches. Her whole body burns with pain.
"They don't want you," Cal hisses. "They're afraid of you. They'll lock you up, treat you like a criminal. With me you can be who you were truly meant to be."
He leans in and traces his fingers down her cheek. Skye shudders and retches again.
"Oh, Daisy," Cal murmurs. "You have so much to learn. So much you could be."
He pauses, hesitates, and Skye wonders if he's gone away.
Then his hands are on her again, lifting her broken body up from the floor, and throwing her back down again. "But you're still just nothing. Exactly who SHIELD wanted you to be."
Rage bubbles up in Skye's chest and she flings her hand out without thinking. A wave of power explodes from her hand – clearly they haven't got those damn gloves on her yet – and Cal goes flying back. He looks like a sack of dirty laundry as he tumbles end over end, and some part of Skye loves it.
Cal lands on the ground and for a long moment doesn't move. Then Skye hears something – he's laughing. Laughing the crazed, demented laugh of a crazed, demented madman. It scares her even worse than being thrown against a wall or kicked in the ribs.
"I knew that's who you were, Daisy," Cal wheezes, still laughing. "I knew you had darkness at your core."
She wants to make him shut up. Her arms throb, her head swims, everything hurts.
"You liked that, didn't you?" He's still talking, still amused. "You liked hurting me, didn't you, Daisy? I can tell you did. You want to hurt people with that gift. I can show you how to do that. I can…"
She reaches up again and shoves another wave at him. There's a sound like a sack of cans tumbling down a flight of stairs, and then there's silence.
Skye pulls her knees into her chest and sobs, alone on the cold floor in the dark.
"That's preposterous, Fitz," Simmons says.
"Is it?" Fitz holds up his tablet for the gathered agents to read.
"She typed this?" Coulson asks.
Fitz nods. "I put dots between her eyes that sensed her muscle movements. She was able to use her eyes to move the mouse over the letters on the screen."
Simmons looks over at the window into Skye's room, as though she's forgotten that several techs are in the room, replacing the tubing and fluids and padding running through the cooling system. They closed the blinds, leaving May and Coulson and Simmons and Fitz standing in the hallway.
"Why does she want the gloves on?" Coulson asks, pointing to what Skye had typed.
"I don't know."
"Is that what she was trying to say to me earlier?"
"I think so," Fitz answers.
"It doesn't make sense," Simmons murmurs.
Fitz bites his lip.
"What's all this?" May asks, pointing to the things Skye had typed above.
"Oh," Fitz says. "Uh… when she's unconscious… she's having… um… the bad dreams that aren't real."
"Hallucinations?" Simmons offers.
Fitz nods.
"Hallucinations about us killing her?" Fitz can't figure out if May is upset or sad.
"No wonder she was so upset earlier!" Simmons laments. "When she saw Agent Coulson and me, she was so frightened that she caused a quake and broke the lights."
May purses her lips but doesn't say anything.
"If she wants the gloves on, let's give it a try," Coulson says. He looks around at the others. "It can't possibly hurt her, could it?"
The door opens before he gets an answer, and one of the techs sticks his head out. "Sir, there's something you should see."
Another tech pushes past him, heading for the nurses' station at the end of the hall, moving at a fast clip.
Coulson heads back into the room and looks down at Skye. She suddenly looks tiny, and for a moment he doesn't notice what's changed. Then he realizes she has a trickle of blood running out of her mouth, down her chin, around the breathing tube. And her hand is up, shaking and bruised, as though she's trying to use her powers to get rid of someone.
"Skye," he says softly. "Skye, can you look at me?"
Her eyelids flutter, and she lets out a moan around the tube.
"Skye," he says, a little louder. "Skye, open your eyes."
The door opens and Dr. Mayerstein enters, followed by a nurse. "Agent Coulson? What's wrong?"
Coulson gestures helplessly to the blood running out of Skye's mouth. The nurse steps in and begins suctioning it out.
"It's possible one of her seizures caused the endotracheal tube to rub against the lining of her throat," Dr. Mayerstein says. "It's not common but it's not impossible."
She notices Skye's hand, still up and out, and steps forward carefully, trying to move it down. Skye fights it, her hand wavering, and Coulson finds he's holding his breath, praying to a God he's not sure he believes in, begging that Skye won't shove the doctor across the room or break another light.
The nurse stops suctioning and waits.
"Skye," Coulson says. "I talked to Fitz. He showed me what you typed. If you want me to put the gloves on, I want you to open your eyes and look up at the ceiling."
The room is very still. The blood starts running out of Skye's mouth again, and the nurse again steps in to suction it out. When the suction wand goes silent, Skye opens her eyes.
She looks right at Coulson.
"If you want me to put the gloves on…" he starts.
Skye raises her eyes to the ceiling.
Coulson's heart breaks, but he's a man of his word. "Okay," he says quietly. "I'll go get them."
He's almost out the door when Skye starts coughing and the monitors start wailing. He whips back around.
Skye shoves herself upwards and grabs the breathing tube from her mouth, coughing and drooling blood and mucus all over herself. The tube slides out far too easily, and she hacks and wheezes as it slips from her lips.
Dr. Mayerstein looks shocked. The nurse is frozen.
Skye looks up at Coulson, her hair wild, her IV lines trembling in her bruised and broken arms, blood dripping from her face like some sort of crazed demon. She looks like she belongs in a horror movie. "Gloves. Now," she rasps at Coulson.
He's too scared to do anything but obey.
He can hear the monitors going off again as he sprints from the room.