A/N: TRIGGER WARNING: panic attack, flashback, mentions of rape

The thing about Skye

Sometimes, she can't breathe

Squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak.

Skye feels off. There is a vagueness about her existence that is both familiar and strange. It's a warbling, wavering sensation of falling and standing still- the world stretching out infinitely and collapsing in on a single point- on Skye. Maybe it's because of her lingering concussion. Maybe it's because Skye's whole world seems to be falling apart.

She thought she was over this. Over being surprised when the rug is inevitably yanked out from under her- just when she fully lets herself hope (she thought she was over hope, too), but it still somehow came as a shock to her.

She didn't see it coming. Not in this way.

Skye feels like she should have. She is good at seeing through bullshit, but maybe it's because it wasn't bullshit. Ward never pretended to like her in the beginning. He never faked nice- with her or anyone else. He actually, in some twisted way, came to care for them.

Care for her.

"I love you, I love you-"

They could have been a family. Skye thought they were- that she might have finally found one, but that delusion is well and truly dead. Everything is different now. Coulson is avoiding her, May's eyes always seem to be boring into her back, and Jemma hasn't left Fitz's side in three days... Fitz is in a coma.

Squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak.

Skye's hands tighten around her arms, the stain on the the wall blurring and collapsing within the confines of her tunneling vision. She misses her van. She wishes she never left it. It was safe there.

"-Please, just let me show you-"

Skye's eyes fall closed. She should leave. Just get up and go- walk away before it's too late. Before she's hurt again. What if… what if someone else is Hydra? May or Simmons, or- or- or Coulson? She doesn't want to know. She should just leave. Run, run, run, run-

"You're okay. You're safe now."

"Skye? Are… are you okay?"

Squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak-

"Did you get new lab rats?" Skye asks the insides of her eyelids. The chair is cold and hard under her thighs, and the chill seeps through her sweatpants. Her body should have warmed the metal by now, but it hasn't.

The chair Simmons was sitting in groans as she rises for the first time in days. The click of her shoes are loud in Skye's ears, like the retreating steps of Deathlock as he leaves Skye alone, chained to a rail.

Skye feels off. All the hairs on her arms are standing on end like static is dancing along her skin. Her limbs feel like lead- heavy and clumsy- like the connections in her brain aren't working right.

Get up. Move dammit. Please just go. Leave. NOW!

Her body remains rooted and immobile.

Squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak.

A hand lands on Skye's leg, large and warm and carrying with it a heaviness that seem to drag Skye's body down, down, down-

"Skye, breathe," a sharp voice cuts through the clogged ringing in her ears, drawing nearer. Suddenly, Skye has mobility again, and she bats at the hands on her, caressing her, ghosting over her, but her hands only come into contact with her own body.

The other hands aren't on the surface- they are branded on her skin, burrowed underneath it. They are familiar but so wrong, and Skye needs out- off the plane- out of her own skin so she can leave the hands behind.

She rips desperately at her arms- trying to pry the fingers from bone and nerve if she has to- but she only manages it for a few seconds before her wrists are seized in a tight grip.

"Skye!"

Skye doesn't know if those hands are going to slip under her skin, too, and she claws at them. "Please, please, please, please-"

"Skye, stop. Stop. You're safe. Okay? You're safe."

"You're okay. You're safe now."

Skye sobs. This is Ward. Ward. He actually cares for her- is the first person to ever say he loves her- yet it's still happening. All she's ever wanted was to be loved- by someone. For someone to want her and tell her to stay. Being loved is actually a lot worse feeling than being screamed out the door.

"Please, Skye. You're on the Playground. It's Jemma. Please, it's Jemma. Please stop fighting."

Skye freezes. Jemma? That's not right. Jemma's not on the plane- can't be on the plane-

"You're on the Playground. Whatever is going on in that head of yours, it's not real, okay? I'm real. See?"

The small hands wrapped around Skye's wrists squeeze gently.

"I'm here. Can you please breathe for me?"

Skye hadn't realized that she stopped breathing until she suddenly sucks in a desperate gulp and it stabs her lungs like knives and like relief, and color swims across her vision. She coughs and almost throws up like she inhaled cold water instead of air. She tries it again, and a surge of energy makes her limbs slightly less heavy as she twists her hand and catches the wrist holding her. It's slim. Feminine.

It's cool to the touch like the owner has bad circulation. Ward always ran hot like a furnace. Ward had thick wrists that Skye always struggled to grip or hold on to.

After several minutes of struggling with her lungs, struggling with the contradictory sensations of what she knows and what the connections in her brain are telling her, Skye's vision finally clears of all the darkness except the sporadic, floating, black specs.

Jemma slowly comes into focus as Ward's looming form fades to a ghost, and the first thing Skye notices are the red lines raised and swelling on her friend's normally pale arms. The sleeves have been rucked up halfway to the elbow with more lines disappearing underneath. Several already have beads of blood rising to the surface, and one particularly deep gash even has it trickling over the split skin and trailing until it melts into the creases of Skye's numb fingers strangling the wrists.

A flash of shame, fast and hot, burns through Skye like the rotting guts of guilt.

"Hey," Jemma says, jolting Skye's gaze upward. "It's fine. I'm okay."

"Please-" Skye bursts, trying to release her tight hold, but Jemma doesn't let her retreat. "-Don't tell May! Or Coulson. Please don't tell them."

Jemma frowns deeply. It's a full face frown that has the creasing brow and low eyebrows, and even the eyes that change slightly. They darken in disbelief and upset. It's an expression that Skye is unfortunately very familiar with. "Skye-"

Skye tugs again on her arms, finally pulling herself free. She stuffs them between her stomach and raised knees so they can't be captured again. Restrained again. Her arms burn where she briefly raked her nails along them, trying to dig out a memory.

"Please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm-"

"Skye-" Jemma cuts off sharply. "It's okay. You didn't do anything wrong. They won't be angry, I promise, but they do need to know-"

"Please don't tell them." It comes out softly. So soft and weak that it's hardly heard, but something about it, this time, renders Jemma silent.

Skye promised them she wasn't compromised. That she was fine. And she is. This was just a fluke. It's… It's the concussion. It will be healed soon and then she can start training with May and everything will be fine.

Skye's gaze drifts to Fitz, lying in the medical bed with an oxygen tube and IVs and a quiet beeping that tells them he's still alive.

She doesn't really think May or Coulson or Jemma are Hydra. It's her paranoia. Her brain trying to distance itself- protect itself. Give her reasons to go- like everything inside of her is telling her to- but it's fractured. Because whatever is telling her to go, there is an opposing force, a stronger force, that knows that she can't. Not anymore.

Because of the new Director locked in his office. Because of the Agent whose eyes follow her. Because of the girl kneeling in front of her- because of the boy in the bed.

The delusion of family is ruined- maybe she was the only one deluded- but it still felt like that to Skye. The way Skye felt- feels- about them is real and didn't magically go away; she's attached, so now she's stuck. Stuck in a limbo of waiting for the next horrible thing to end it.

Skye can feel Jemma's unwavering gaze focussed on her, and it feels so very wrong to be hogging her worry. Jemma should be focussed on Fitz. She's fine. What happened to her doesn't matter- Fitz almost died. They don't know if he's going to wake up.

And here she is, taking all the attention like she always does over something so small and insignificant in comparison.

"Hey." It's said softly, but it still snaps Skye's attention back to the woman kneeled in front of her. "What was the trigger?"

"What?" Skye utters. She still feels off. And exhausted.

"What triggered this episode?"

Squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak.

Skye's eyes drift over to the row of cages with little white rodents and the rolling wheels that squeak and squeak and squeak.

Jemma follows her gaze and frowns in confusion. They had lab rats on the Bus for a while, for emergency purposes, and Skye loved to dote on them right alongside Fitz. She's never had a problem with them before.

But that was before Ward raped her in the lab that Skye always felt comfortable in- and there weren't even any rats in the lab at the time, but she now associates the squeaking wheel with that lab, and that lab is soiled. Ruined forever, just like the Bus is, and the idea of family is, and Skye is.

Skye shrugs, dragging her attention away from the turning, turning, wheels, but she can't look at Jemma either, so she stares down at the welts Skye left on those once perfectly unmarred arms (it's not an any better direction to look).

"It's nothing. Just the concussion."

"That's not how concussions work," Jemma informs, and Skye knows. She knows how they work, she's had enough of them to be an expert, but it has to be something. Something other than Skye- something in Skye- something that can heal and not leave her always as this broken, malfunctioning, human being.

She's always been faulty, but it only seems to grow worse with age and experience.

Skye can't help scowling slightly. She buries it in her knees so Jemma doesn't see, but she does anyway.

"Can we talk about it?" she asks, and Skye's heart lurches and thuds, and no. They can't, Skye won't, Skye won't ever.

Skye staggers to her feet, and Jemma has to scoot backward to avoid getting headbutted or stepped on. "I'm going to bed," Skye announces, before realizing just how awful and obvious a lie it is. "Or- hack. I'm going to go hack something." Which might even be the truth.

If her damn hands would just stop shaking. Skye presses them more firmly against her body, digging the tips on her fingers into the gaps of her ribs to keep her mind from drifting.

She isn't sure what she's really going to do. She just needs away. Away from Jemma and her questions, away from the shiny new lab, the rats, Fitz. She needs away from Fitz who lies so still, and is someone who she dearly cares about, and who Ward- Ward- hurt so badly because she couldn't stop him on that plane.

Because she's broken, and can only attract a broken love from other broken people, and she's not strong enough, clever enough, good enough, to stop them.

"Skye, wait." Jemma catches her hand as she makes her escape, and Skye almost swings a fist before reeling her gut reactions in. Jemma hesitates when Skye reluctantly turns back to her, feet still angled to flee.

Then Jemma steps forward and presses her lips very gently to Skye's forehead. The spot burns. "I love you. And Fitz loves you. We're here for you; okay?"

Skye bolts. She flees the room with wide eyes and like hellhounds are on her heels as her mind turns and spirals and her heart convulses and jolts.

What does this mean? What does this mean?!

Skye tears through the unfamiliar base, looking, looking, but she doesn't know where to hide. Doesn't know where she is. She blinks and finds herself at a grate, nails digging and prying at the seams until it comes away from the wall and she dives in.

They love her? They love her? How could they possibly?

Skye doesn't know where or how far she goes before her vision is entirely obscured and she has to switch from crawling to attempting to stem the flow of tears like it's an arterial bleed. Is she bleeding? She might be bleeding.

A/N: Happy Holidays everyone! I feel like I should have tried to write a fluffy Christmas special, but you guys get this instead. Good thing everyone reading this loves Daisy in pain.

Please let me know what you guys think!

~Silver~