The thing about Skye
She wears a cracked mask
Deke's blood thrums with excitement as he carries his precious bundle in his shirt. He has eight lemons balanced there. Eight. And there were hundreds more back at the food center. He wonders if he should get more. They are so easy to get here. Maybe, back in the day, they filled the entire bed with lemons.
No, eight is plenty. He doesn't want to overdo it.
Deke stops as he comes to the correct door. He knows it's right, because there are only a few rooms in actual use, and they are all on the same hallway. He pushes into the room.
He's halfway surprised, as he stands in the doorway, how terribly empty it is. Daisy is so full of life and passion, he kind of figured her room would be the same. Or at least project the same chaotic and slightly manic energy she projects when she gets stuck on a thought.
But it's empty. Clean and bare- like agent May lives here, rather than Daisy. Well, they haven't been here very long. She probably hasn't had time to make it a mess (he ignores the fact that he's definitely had enough time to make his room a mess. After all, he's used to the Lighthouse. It's been his home his entire life).
Still, he goes to the closet and opens the doors, just to be sure. It's Daisy's clothes.
Reassured that he's not going to embarrass himself by giving the wrong person his lemons, he goes to the perfectly made bed and unfolds his shirt.
The round, yellow, fruit tumble to the bed, and he stops them before they can roll toward the edge. He arranges them into a neat pile (and worries again if he should go get more), before stepping back in satisfaction.
There. An appropriate declaration of lo- like. An appropriate declaration of like.
Mission complete, Deke happily bounces to the door (he does not poke through her closet anymore, or try on her leather jacket- that would be weird). He cracks it so he can squeeze out into the hallway again, but freezes when he sees a head of dark hair storming toward him. It's Daisy. Luckily, she's not looking up- she's glaring at the ground like it might be a Kree set on enslaving humanity.
Suppressing a yelp, he pulls the door closed again.
Crap. Crap crap crap, Daisy hates him. She can't find him in her room!
His head whips around desperately before he dives for the bed. It's compact and close to the ground, and he wiggles himself under. It's a tight squeeze, but he's been in tighter spaces and he just manages to settle before the door rips violently open.
He jolts, thinking maybe she saw him after all, but then she's catching the door and very, very, carefully closing it. The sound of heavy breathing fills the room. Gasping. A stilted, muffled, sob pierces the space, and there is a thunk against the door before a body slides down it toward the floor.
Deke remains rigid, eyes wide as he listens. He… should not be witnessing this. Almost against his will, his head slowly turns to stare at the body on the floor. At Daisy. Daisy whose knees are pulled to her chest and head buried in her knees and who looks so very small as she trembles and struggles to breathe.
Deke's stomach crawls up his throat and makes a home there.
"Shut up," he jolts as the words escape the Destroyer of Worlds in a whimper, barely audible, but Daisy's breakdown is the only thing audible in the room. He watches her hands tighten in her hair. One of them lifts in a fist and comes down hard again with a dull thump against her skull. "Shut up," she croaks again.
He's… never heard her sound like that. He didn't think she could sound like that (Broken. Hopeless. Like she grew up in the Lighthouse).
She punches herself several more times, each hit harder than the last, and Deke wants to scramble out of his hiding spot to stop her. To keep her from hurting herself (why would she hurt herself?), but then she'd know he was in here and seeing all this. She'd probably put him through the wall, inhibitor or not. She doesn't need earthquake powers to be terrifying.
And beautif- not the time, Deke!
He turns his eyes back toward the boxspring above him. It's the least he can do- the most privacy he's able to give as his ears can't help picking up each crack in her voice and each fall of her fist.
After a while, the crying quiets and the gasping breaths calm. It's silent for a long while, and Deke thinks it's finally over, when he hears another thud that makes him jump and immediately search out the sound.
Daisy had tilted her head back against the door. Her eyes are closed, cheeks flushed and wet with tears, and she blindly picks off strands of hair from around her fingers that she had inadvertently ripped out of her own head in her panic. She shakes them off and the long strands drift soundlessly to the floor.
She sniffles again, eyes still closed, and she just sits there a while. Deke thinks she might even fall asleep there, but then her whisper once again cuts through the room.
"Get up." She remains limp and sagging against the door, knees pulled up to her chest. Her newly freed fingers curl into fists against the concrete ground. Her voice cracks. "Just get up… Come on. Please, please, please… Get up."
She doesn't move, despite the weak pleading with herself. Deke's entire body feels numb.
Eventually, she does finally get up. Deke doesn't know how long it takes. It feels like forever before she slowly drags herself to her feet, looking like gravity has multiplied as it pulls at her entire body.
Deke can't see her face anymore, but he can see her feet shifting weight slowly back and forth, swaying, and he can hear the exaggerated breaths like she's still trying to wrestle control of it. Then she pushes back out her door without ever looking towards the lemons on her bed.
He sits there for another few minutes, brain spinning, before crawling back out from under the bed. The room is as empty and undisturbed as the first time he entered. He leaves quickly.
A/N: So, Deke was interesting to write. First time he's showed up in this, I'm pretty sure. Let me know what you think!
~Silver~