A/N: It's been another while, I know. But I changed the turn these chapters coming up would have, so it took a little longer to work it out.

This chapter is a FLASHBACK to when Simmons made the awful decision that nearly killed Skye. It'll carry on into the next chapter, so none of the three friends we love so much for a while, but it'll link up nicely.

Also, just so I've got this on record, I looked up Lash (the villain they're bringing in for S3) and it turns out he has Inhuman powers of energy conversion, and it radiates out of his palms. This is the Earth 616 version, of course, and (spoilers! :P) he is supposed to have black hair and red eyes, but this is the MCU, and the released Mist by King Bolt in the comics is re-imagined by having Skye knock the crystals into the sea in the S2 finale. So, to get to the point - I'm calling Lincoln! Just saying.

Anyway...

Thank you to Serenity Shadowstar, LJ717, Maddison1803, highlander348, changingdestiny40 and guest for your reviews! :3
Guest - I'm so glad you liked it, but you'll have to wait another couple of chapters to see what happened with our favourite little team :)

Enjoy!

Jemma Simmons felt like today was both the best and worst day of her life so far. Both results from exactly the same source.

Skye.

At first, she had been excited at the prospect of a gifted individual working for S.H.I.E.L.D. Not to mention that said individual was one of her closet friends, and was like a sister to her. Then the facts kept stacking up, and she couldn't ignore them.

Trip died because of Skye.

The entire population of The Playground nearly died because Skye couldn't control her powers. In an extension, she couldn't control herself. And that made her dangerous.

Agent Simmons didn't like dangerous.

She didn't like aliens. Asgardians she could tolerate, but others like the Kree and Jotuns were deadly, and completely unsafe to be around.

Skye was alien; or at least the result of alien experiments. And she thought human experiments were bad enough.

Luckily, she was probably one of the last left of her kind. Another being Raina, of course, but Jemma didn't care about her.

So she tried to save Skye.

She created a serum based on how certain chemicals reacted with the extra macromolecules in Skye's new blood. Thankfully, her friend didn't need to find out until the serum was ready. All the wonderful technology she had could replicate biochemical reactions down to each individual molecule.

Fitz didn't like it.

"It's possible that you won't get the serum to work the way you want it to." He said, again, as she went through another scenario.

"It's science, Fitz." She replied with as much false cheer as she could muster. "Nothing's impossible."

"How are you going to make it so that it will only affect the macromolecules?" he asked stubbornly. "You're going to inject it into her bloodstream–"

"Exactly, Fitz." She cut him off, frustrated. "It will spread throughout her body with one injection."

"But her entire DNA has changed!"

God, did he have to be so insistent about this! She rolled her eyes to the heavens and wished that he would see her point of view.

He continued. "Every cell in her body is different to what it was before, and there's no way you can reverse it!"

His ramblings were eventually tuned out.

She was ready to fix Skye. To make her normal again, and safe.

But Skye didn't want it. Jemma was impressed with the guards' capabilities to hold on to a being that could throw them into a wall with the force of an avalanche, and quickly, she administered the cure.

It worked right away – the tremors that ran through the base settled even as Skye writhed around in agony on the table. She screamed, the pitch reaching high enough to shatter glass beakers around the room. Jemma's triumphant smile dropped. This is not what she expected.