#… i don’t think we ever saw where may and coulson slept

[jamiedc-they-them]

Proof Not Necessary (Platonic)

Requested Imagine: “Could you possibly write an agents of shield x reader where reader is still younger then everybody but they were already an agent before daisy got on the team so during the TRACKS episode they’re with fitz and Skye so when they go to Quinn’s house they’re the one that goes to look for the briefcase and is the one that ends up being shot? I love your writing”

Skye hadn’t slept yet; Coulson, who was beside her, had just fallen into that state. She knew, logically, that she should. That she should rest after the few days she had been through. She couldn’t, though. Not while you rested.

Sure, they’d done what they’d done. But you still hadn’t opened your eyes yet. So, it wasn’t over yet.

Despite Simmons’ words of assurance. Despite how much she trusted her friend and how relieved she was to hear the words she said. It wasn’t enough. Despite how your hear rate continued to make the machine beep; despite how it calmed her to know her friend in the bed was still alive. It wasn’t enough.

So, she waited. She’d wait as long as she needed to for you to wake up. For you to be alive and proving that to the world. As, in her and the team’s eyes, that was all you needed to prove.

 You were young, one of the youngest agents in SHIELD history. Sure, some of the other agents teased you for it. But, for the most part, other agents and teachers found it kind of inspiring for someone as young as you were to become a fully fledged agent of SHIELD.

That was a while ago now, as now you sat on a plane that flew you from place to place. But it was more than that, it was a place that was like home to you; the place had beds and food whenever you wanted it. Ironically, it was more stable than your life before SHIELD.

Coulson had learned about your life; your uneasy dynamic with a shit family and how it snowballed into your need to be the best. To prove yourself even once proven. He saw it in the way you wanted Ward to teach you despite him already teaching Skye (not that she minded, of course. It was nice to have a friend to train with and talk shit about Ward with behind his back, even if in a joking way).

He saw it in the way you went and saw May after every mission and sat with her in the cockpit and asked about what the buttons did. You seemed genuinely interested in learning how to pilot. Sometimes, Skye would join you and just sit with you both, listening to her rattle off what everything did as you watched with a happy smile and interest in your gaze.

It was the way you tried to understand the words Fitzsimmons were saying. You actually tried to get it, to grasp it. He found that admirable, if not a little heart-breaking.

You seemed to want to dip your toes in everything and try and find a way to be good at it.

What he saw, though, was someone who was close to burnout. Someone who, if nothing was going to be done to stop on your accidental path of self-destruction, would end in something akin to that just on a larger scale. He knew it wouldn’t be pretty.

 “Y/N, thank you for coming,” Coulson said with a warm smile as you walked into his office. You carried yourself with nervousness, arms folded and eyes meeting his then darting around for a moment, “It’s alright, you aren’t in trouble.” He assured you as he gestured to the seat opposite him.

You took it, “What’s going on?” You asked him in a quiet voice.

“You seem more tired lately,” He said; you sighed at his words, knowing where this was likely going, “I know you’re up reading more of Fitzsimmons’ books. And that’s great that you’re interested. It’s just…I’m worried about you. You’re pushing yourself too hard. You’re a really good agent. I just don’t want you to burn yourself out trying to learn everything.” He said, gently warning you.

“I appreciate the concern, sir. But I’ll be ok, really. I’ll take it easier. But, I’m ok.” You told him. He desperately wanted to believe your words. But, part of him told him that you weren’t going to listen, “Besides, I might be good. But I’m not a great agent.” There it was.

As you left, he sighed. That was what he was afraid you were going to say.

 It had been a few days since then, and you ere going after Ian Quinn. His company was moving something by train. A train you were going to infiltrate by going undercover. You had only had one sting undercover, that being when you and Skye infiltrated a party that brought you face to face with the man himself.

“May and Ward, you’re front and centre. Once we locate the package, you’ll tag it with a tracker. Skye, Y/N, Fitz, you’ll be running communications. After the package is tagged, we’ll follow it to Quinn.” Coulson started to tell everyone their jobs, when you spoke up.

“Wait, what?” Everyone paused and looked at you, “Why am I going with them? I’m not a hacker or comms person, I trained at the academy like Ward,” you looked at your two friends, “No offense.” You added, worried that they would take it as such.

“It’s ok.” Skye said with a smile.

“None at all.” Fitz assured you. You then looked to Coulson.

“Look, Y/N, I know you don’t like it. But they need someone watching their backs. They aren’t as well trained as you are in combat.” Coulson told you his reasoning. With it, you felt a little embarrassed by your outburst.

“Think about it this way,” Skye said, nudging your shoulder with her arm as she saw your blush at your wrongdoing, “It’s a bonding exercise. We get to team up again, anyway.” You smiled at your friend; you had never really figured out how she managed to turn a negative of yours into a positive like that. But you were thankful either way.

“Ok.” You agreed.

After that, the plan was settled.

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You had to get away from your family. It was a toxic environment, so you managed to get yourself into the academy. You had done quite well, had a spirit and a fight in you the teachers saw and used to keep you going when the going got tough.

“Whose that?” Coulson asked Maria Hill as he saw you kick another trainee’s ass. You were the one against the group, and you were holding yourself well. You weren’t perfect, some moves weren’t pulled off great and you got hit once or twice.

Other than that, though, you were doing well.

“That’s Y/N Y/L/N. Rough family, came here to be someone.” She answered, having recently reread your file.

“They’re good.” Coulson commented, his friend nodded at this words.

“They are.”

 You passed by a pissed off May and apathetic looking Ward as you and your two friends made your way to your seats. You sat down, Skye letting you get the window seat and her sitting next to you. Fitz sat opposite you.

“You nervous?” He asked you. Skye answered his question.

“Just ready for this all to be over. Ready to get Quinn” She said, looking up at the Scotsman.

“Me too,” Fitz said in agreement before he looked over his shoulder and then back to you both, “So, are we British or American?” Fitz asked.

“Does that matter?” Skye questioned.

“Well, we’re traveling together. We should at least be from the same country,” Fitz reasoned, “How’s your Scottish accent?”

“I don’t know. You tell me how great it is, laddie.” Skye said in an awful accent. Fitz sighed as he looked to you.

“How do you think?” You asked; his eyes widened a little at your pretty decent attempt at it.

“American, then. That’s a better idea.” Fitz said in an almost perfect spot on accent.

“Oh! That was really good.” Skye aid, impressed.

“I used to watch a lot of American TV growing up. Some of it’s quite good. Lots of nice teeth.” Fitz said, you smiled but shook your head at his words.

“Oh, here we go. Follow my lead.” Skye said as she pulled you up with her. She stood up and stopped the innocent staff member.

“Excuse me. Do you speak English?” She asked.

“Of course. How may I be of service?” He asked; he seemed nice and friendly. For once, it didn’t seem like he was just because of his job.

“Can you recommend a restaurant in downtown Zagreb?” Skye asked as Fitz stood up to sell the idea of them being a couple more.

“Someplace affordable. With big portions.” He said.

“You are looking for something romantic?” The staff member asked.

“Yes, please.” She pressed a kiss on the side of Fitz’s face, “We are celebrating our six-month anniversary with a whirlwind trip all over Europe. Brought my sibling with me so they could get the know each other.” The member looked at you both with what looked to be genuine happiness for the two.

“Well technically, we met six months ago, but he didn’t ask me out till last month. So, our official one-month anniversary isn’t until next Saturday. –”

“Sunday. Saturday.” Fitz said, quickly correcting his misstate.

Skye walked towards the member, “I think he found me intimidating.” She said as she stole the keys from him.

“Young love, so…confusing.” The member said, trying to find the right words.

“Is it?”

 Skye opened the door which Fitz held for you as you all entered a more secluded part of the train, “You go a little flustered back there.” Skye teased her friend as you all walked to a table.

“What, when you kissed my cheek like my grandmother? Good going. Really selling our relationship there,” Fitz said as he put his bag down, “U have a device that couldn’t done those things –”

“Kiss you on the cheek?” Skye laughed at your words while Fitz glared a you playfully, “No, broken the lock and al that.” He told you both.

“What? Why wouldn’t you tell us that?” Skye asked.

“I’m always the gadget guy. Maybe sometimes I wanna do things with my bare hands.”

“You make the gadgets with your bare hands.” Skye had a point.

“Just allow me these rare moments of self-pity, ok?” You both smiled at him, “You’re the least supportive girlfriend and supportive girlfriend’s siblings I’ve ever had.” Fitz told you both.

“We’ll try better next time.” You said, playfully.

“Comms are live. Coulson? Simmons? You in position?” Skye asked her two friends who were elsewhere in the train.

“Yes. Just waiting on May’s signal.” Coulson answered. To you, he sounded bored, almost.

Jemma and Coulson did their part of the job, that being spilling what looked to be ashes onto him. However, it most likely wasn’t. Whatever it was, it was enough for May to use goggles to detect and start making her on the rooftop of the train as she followed the footsteps.

“Great, we see what you see.” Skye said to May over the comms as you all watched her screen. Well, you did as Skye typed more on her keyboard.

“Alright May, Cybertek cases are usually lined with tungsten polymer to prevent scanning. It should appear black on your infrared.” Fitz told his team-mate.

She continued walking, until her glasses pinged, and she saw a black case. “Bingo.” Fitz said as he pointed to it, telling May where it was exactly.

 So far, nothing had come up. So, you were pretty much in the background as Fitz and Skye did what they did on their end.

“I wish we had more time to take in the scenery.” Fitz admitted as he looked out the dusty window that you had to try and do that with, “Three peaks of Lavaredo. They’re supposed to be stunning.” He told you both.

“Any chance what’s in there could be an 0-8-4?” Skye asked, looking at you both.

You and Fitz shared a look as you shrugged, “This? No. We may not know what it is, but we o know that it came from Cybertek.” Fitz answered for you both.

“Right. Unknown origin. The one we found in Peru was a machine, but they don’t always have to be that, right?” She continued to ask.

“No, it can be all sorts of things; weapons, spacecrafts, energy sources. Apart from unknown origin, they’re dangerous.” You answered your friend. She looked at you with a wide-eyed puppy look, but it seemed to hold some fear to it.

“Right….” She drifted off, looking away from you.

“Hey, whatever this package turns out to be, we’ll deal with it.” Fitz assured Skye.

“Just like always.” You added. “We’ve been through worse.” Skye smiled a little at your own assurance.

“Seems that you’ve got another skill.” She teased you for. You only rolled your eyes.

“Hey, have either of you ever heard of an 0-8-4 being a person?” Again, you and Fitz looked at each other and both shrugged.

“No. Although I suppose it’s possible. Hate to meet the guy.”

“Fitz.” You cocked your head to the side as you gave him a disappointed look. Despite you being the youngest of the team, you could muster up a disappointed sibling look when you wanted to.

It was then that all electronics went down. As you all got up to leave and warn the others, a Cybertek guard entered and fired at you all.

“GET DOWN!” You yelled, pushing your friends down behind some crates as you went behind another and sprung out at him. You attacked him, trying to disarm him, but got knocked to the ground.

Fitz fired at him as Skye pushed a create into him and punched him. They did what they could, but they too ended up on the floor. As Skye grabbed his gun, he pulled a grenade.

“We’ve been made!” Jemma yelled as she ran to you.

“Oh, bloody hell!” She cursed as she ran to the man and pulled him towards herself to take the explosive. They both fell down.

Skye ran over to her friend as Fitz helped you up, “Are you ok?” He asked. You only kept your eyes on your injured friend.

 “Y/N Y/L/N?” Agent Coulson asked as he approached you; after your last fight he’d seen you have; he’d made up his mind.

“Yes, sir. How can I help you sir?” You asked, gulping a bit at having a legendary SHIELD agent approach you.

“It’s alright, you’re not in trouble.” He gestured to an empty seat, you nodded. He sat in it, “Saw your last results, you’re doing well. The youngest agent we’ve had, I think.” You nodded to confirm the last bit.

He then looked around your room, a pretty boring room with not a lot of personality to it, “Got to admit though, thought you would’ve added something to  the place.” He admitted.

“Didn’t have many things to bring from home. So, what I have is here. Not many friends here either.” Both comments made himself sadden at them.

He turned to you with a smile, “I have a proposition for you,” You nodded, “I have a team I’m building, and I think you’d be great on it. But you’ll make your room there a little livelier.” You nodded instantly at the offer; shaking his hand enthusiastically.

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Fitz realised that the thing that knocked them out was the same thing that was in the night-night gun. As you all moved Simmons to a more comfortable place. Fitz placed a spare night-night gun in her grasp as you put the man that had hurt her in a box and shot him a few more times for hurting your friend.

The train then stopped, “I’ve looked everywhere. May, Ward, and Coulson are gone.” Skye told you both.

“What about Cybertek?” Fitz asked, Skye shook her head. That meant one thing, you were the only ones left on the team to complete this mission now.

You heard trucks outside. You ran to the window, seeing Cybertek guards holding the package. They had it, and you were the only ones who could take if off them and stop them from whatever they wanted to do with it.  

“What do we do? We’re the only ones left.” Fitz said to you both with fear.

“Do you have an extra tracker?” Skye asked, plan already forming in her mind.

“Of course.” Fitz said, like it would be obvious.

“Then we follow them.” They heard a gun click; they saw you reloading yours. You looked to them as you inserted the clip and made sure the weapon was loaded before you spoke.

“We do this, I’m leading it. You do what I say, when I say it, got it?” Your older friends watched you, “Do you got it?” You repeated, they nodded silently.

“Good, then let’s go.”

 “Which way?” You asked Skye as you continued to lead your friends, they followed in a similar position to your own; a slight crouched one.

“Next left.” Skye told you, you nodded as you then paused by the end of the bush, the other two stopping as well.

“There it is.” You said as you fully crouched down as another vehicle arrived. The three of you snuck father into the compound, hiding behind another bush to get a view of who had arrived. As it turned out, it was the man you were looking for.

“Coulson was right. Cybertek led us to Quinn.” Fitz said as he got out of the car and looked around with his normal cocky look.

“Activate the tracker. Let them know we’re here.” Skye told Fitz. Fitz did just that, but he then saw her look.

“You want to go in?” Skye nodded at her friend’s observation. She then looked to you, but you checked your ICER one more time before shaking your head at her. Your intentions were clear.

“What? No –” She started to say.

“Skye, I get that you want to prove yourself, to show that the training has been worth it,” It was pretty hypocritical, “But, you both need to stay together on this.” You got up, but Skye pulled you back behind cover.

“What if it’s a trap?” She asked, worried for your fate if you went in alone.

“Then I’ll deal with it. Look, if it goes south, you and Fitz regroup with the others and run,” She looked at you like she wanted to argue, “Skye, do you trust me?” You asked her.

“Of course, I do,” She said without a beat, “But, wouldn’t you stand a better chance with backup in there.” She had a point.

“Maybe, but I can do this. Trust me.” You didn’t give them a chance as you ran towards the house, leaving the two friends to watch you with a worried look.

You shot the guard in front of the house and made your way in. You took a breath to try and calm your nerves as you continued into the house. You had keep in control, the others were counting on you. Ward had given you some tips on how to control your breathing. So, why wasn’t it working?

 “Y/N, this is Skye. She’s joining our team.” Coulson said as you entered the holo-com room and saw a new woman in the room along with your new team-mates. You had been excused with a family matter and returned soon after.

She gave you a small smile, one you returned. You then looked to Coulson and he saw the tears that started to threaten to fall, “Do you want to talk about it in private?” he asked you softly. You shook your head.

You looked down and talk a breath as the others watched. Skye, Fitz, and Jemma watched you with concern and pity. While Ward watched you with just pity. He knew all about having a shitty family.

“They revoked my last name. So, uh, yeah….could’ve gone better.” You said as you swallowed back the tears now.

The room fell into a silence as they digested what you had said. Despite having just met you, Skye felt a pull; maybe it was because you were younger than her, maybe because she too didn’t have a family and would feel as crushed as you probably felt at being told you had none anymore.

“Can I,” You cleared your throat to get rid of the tremble of it, “Can I go to my bunk, please?” Coulson nodded and let you go on your way. However, he then caught Skye’s look of plead.

“Ok.” He nodded; the woman left after you. Coulson then looked at the others, all who looked saddened at the news.

“Bastards.” Ward damned them.

“That’s awful.” Jemma said, hurt and thinking of what it would be like if it had happened to her.

“Who does that to their own child?” Fitz asked, thinking back to his own parental (father) issues. Jemma placed a hand over her best friend’s one in comfort. He squeezed hers to try and give her some as well.

 Skye knocked at your door, “Come in.” A small, but sniffling voice said. You sounded so innocent in that moment. Skye gulped as she opened the door.

“Hey.” She said, awkwardly playing with her fingers.

You looked up at her, “Hey.” You said, trying a smile but failing.

She pointed to your bed, you nodded She sat next to you, “I’m sorry your family did that to you.” She meant the words.

“It was bound to happen sooner or later.” You were brokenly honest.

“Still, you don’t deserve it.”

“Nothing was ever good enough for them. Whole reason why I joined them was to prove to them that I was.”

“Hey,” She turned your head, so you looked at her, “They weren’t enough for you. No one deserves that.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” You asked, quietly. You had just met her after all.

“Because, I don’t have a last name. And if I found my family and found them to be like yours were, I’d want someone to help me through it.”

 You continued down, finding a basement. Entering it, you were greeted with a pod. Going to the pod, you saw an occupant inside.

Not just any occupant, though.

“Mike.” You breathed out in shock at him being stuck in there. You were glad he survived, just not that this had been what he had become in the process.

“Ah-ah.” You turned, only to then be pinned against the pod by one of Quinn’s people. The man stole your weapon and held it back at you.

“So much for being the best agent, right?” He asked, seemingly knowing how desperate you were for that to be true.

“Well, I’m sure you’re wondering what’s gonna happen here with your friend?” He asked, not waiting for your answer and only pulled Mike out of the pod. You watched silently, but fearfully.

He asked Mike about orders and gave him a robotic leg to replace the one he’d lost. The man himself looked like he didn’t want to comply with those orders but had no choice in the matter.

Quinn then pointed a gun at him, asking if whether or not Mike would hurt him if he tried to hurt the man. Mike denied it, telling him that those were the orders from the Clairvoyant.

“Mike,” He turned to you, “I have no idea what’s happening. But what I do know is that we need to get out of here. But I’ll need your help to do that, ok?”

Quinn, in response, placed the gun in his hand, “What if I told you to hurt them?” You sucked in a breath at the barrel staring at you. You had been in this situation before, but it never meant you weren’t scared of it.

“You know, to kill them, will you?” He asked, growing a devilish smile, “What would agent Coulson do if we hurt the agent, he grabbed the moment he could? The agent so young, yet so full of promise. What if he lost that person?” He taunted you, making eye contact with you.

“Those aren’t my orders.” Mike said, aiming the gun away from you and giving it back to Quinn, “They aren’t who I’m meant to kill.” He said, and only started to walk off the next moment.

“Mike, wait!” You would’ve been more careful had you not been relying on instinct and empathy. You weren’t relying on your training like usual.

As you went after him, Quinn grabbed you and pulled the trigger the next moment. You stood in shock, looking at him with such an expression as your voice trembled. No words came out, just unsteady breathes as you fully processed what had just happened.

He’d shot you. For once, though, he looked to have some pity for doing it. He approached you quickly, grabbing you and trying to shush you; whether for comfort or so the others didn’t hear you, you weren’t sure.

He fired again, a second shot entering your body and making you gasp. He slowly lowered you to the floor, gently resting your body on the ground, “I’m sorry it came to this, Y/N. But I had my orders too.” With that, he left you to what was sure to be your end.

 “Oh, thank god,” Skye said in relief when the others showed up; she quickly gave Jemma a hug, happy that her friend was ok.

“Where’s Y/N?” Coulson asked, noticing that you were missing from the group.

“They went inside.” Fitz said in stress, knowing it had been too long now for you to in there for.

“We’ll find them, Fitz.” Ward assured his friends, just hoping he could make good on his promise to his friend.

 Ward burst through the doors first, expertly shooting two guards with his ICERs. Skye was behind him, holding her own. She let her adrenaline drive her as she shot another guard coming down the stairs; his body rolled down the rest.

It was then that Coulson found Quinn, punching him and pressing him into the table, “Where are they? You sick son of a bitch!” He yelled, letting his anger fuel him in this moment.

“Pretty bad idea sending in your youngest, agent Coulson. Too bad they won’t be able to see how much you guys actually care.” Coulson looked to Skye, who nodded. She ran off to find you.

“Y/N? Y/N?!” She yelled, becoming desperate to find you now. She had been in almost every room. All except for one. This one was the last one she had to check. She just hoped you were behind it.

She opened the door, aiming her weapon to check for anyone; she paused, however, when she saw you on the floor, eyes closed and bleeding out.

“Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no.” She said as she ran over to you and hovered over your body, “COULSON!” She yelled out as she then crouched next to you. She wasn’t a doctor, but she could tell you’d already lost a lot of blood. You weren’t good, at all.

She placed her hand over one of your wounds, “Hey, Y/N. It’s Skye, can you hear me?” You didn’t give a response. Her breath picked up more as the seconds went by before Coulson burst into the room himself, followed by the others.

“Get them in the pod!” Jemma ordered; they all did without a second. As she pressed different buttons, your other friends all watched with bated breath as nothing happened for a moment. Then another. Then another.

They all let out a breath of relief as you let out your own breath, a gasp for air.

They knew they weren’t out of the woods yet, but this was something to keep their morale up. You were alive.

 “I did it.” Skye cheered as she managed to knock you on the floor and be victorious. You were both out of breath. Ward watched you both with an impressed look.

“Yeah, you did.” You said in your own breath and took the hand she had offered down to you. She lifted you up but saw your expression of one of annoyance.

“What is it?” She asked, cocking her head to the side.

“Nothing, I’m glad your getting better.” You meant your words. But she got the other part to them. The unspoken part.

“Hey, that means we’re getting to the same level. And that’s a pretty good level.” She said to try and give some comfort.

“There’s always going to be on above though. Another level to reach.” You know you sounded petty, but it was better to get it off your chest in that moment then keep it sealed up.

“There always will be.” Ward said, in light warning, “You just do what you can to improve. You find your own next level. You don’t look at someone else for it. If you do, though, look at friend. Their there to help you get better.”

 “What are you saying?” Coulson asked the nurse that had entered the room; she had just told them that they would need to decide on whether or not to let you go or put you on life support. In short, Quinn had pretty much killed you.

“I’m saying you need to contact their family.” At that, his heart broke more. He remembered what your blood family had done.

He looked back at the others, all seeing the same crestfallen expression on their faces. He then looked back at the nurse and said his next words with as much conviction as he possibly could.

“We’re their family.”

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It might not be the best option, but it was the only option they had if they wanted to keep you alive. The option where it would mean you coming out the other side and being ok.

So, they all got ready to siege the place and find what they wanted, “You sure your ready for this?” Ward asked Skye as he passed her a pistol.

“Little nervous, but we have to do this for Y/N.” She answered; Ward nodded, satisfied with the answer.

“Alright, here we go.” Coulson said, leading the way to the base, “My name is Phil Coulson, I’m an agent of SHIELD. We have an agent in need of critical medical assistance.” He said, but he did not receive an answer. It was only the wind blowing that he got in return.

“Well, time to go say hello.” Garret said.

 They were in, walking through the entrance and going down an elevator only to then come across a door. The door required Fitz to open it. The engineer did what was needed. As soon as they entered, however, they were met with gunfire.

“Cover me!” Ward ordered Skye after Coulson tried o get them to calm down. She nodded, raising up from cover and firing her weapon as Ward flanked the enemy, he gunned down two of them as the third was bleeding, but managed to get away.

They followed after him and found him bleeding out. Skye knelt down, “We’re looking for a drug, GH-325. It’s for my friend. Do you know where it is?” She asked.

“No….but I know about the timer.” He answered; but there was no malice to his words. It was a warning.

There were bombs that had been triggered to stop intruders from finding what was down here. Skye and Coulson shared a look, “Alright, Fitz; you start trying to find a way to deactivate the bombs. Skye and I will try and find the serum.” Fitz nodded, running back to Garret and Ward.

Coulson then looked to Skye, who mirrored his determination, “Let’s go save Y/N.”

The two agents ran down the corridor, coming into a lab and desperately searching for what they needed. They knew time was very close to running out; either they’d explode and be buried in here, or they would get there too late and you’d have passed on.

They couldn’t let either of those options come to pass.

“Here!” She yelled, holding up the serum you needed to survive.

“Get it back to Y/N, now.” Coulson ordered; Skye went to argue, “I’ll catch up with you, just make sure they survive.” Skye nodded, knowing they didn’t have much time to argue or waste. She ran out of the room, holding onto the serum as tight as she could as she ran through the doors that had then been blown open by the other three.

“Where’s Phil?” Garret asked; Skye stopped her running to turn to him.

“He told me to go, I’ve got what we need to save Y/N.” She rushed through her words, desperate to get back to you.

Garret nodded, “Get going then, sweetheart. I’ll go get him.”

She didn’t wait a second longer.

 “Simmons!” She yelled to her friend, pretty much throwing her the serum. Luckily, Jemma had caught it and then grabbed a syringe, she filled it with the serum, and they followed her to you. This was it, the moment of truth.

 “Please work…” Jemma said quietly, desperately hoping it would; Skye put her fisted hand to her moth in nervousness.

Jemma stuck the syringe in and pressed down.

“No, don’t inject them with it!” Coulson screamed as he came into the room in a flash. Jemma, however, had a tear fall as she answered him mournfully.

“It was this or lose them sir, what’s the harm it can do?” Her question was asked with a shake in her voice. She couldn’t bare the thought that she may have just signed your death warrant.

Your vitals spiked; you arched your back as you gasped. There wasn’t anything the others could do other than watch their friend who was clearly in pain; Jemma kept patting your hair and trying to shush you in an attempt at comfort. But, at this point, she was openly crying.

Finally, you stopped, and your vitals went back to normal. Everyone held their breathes as Jemma turned to them, “They’re ok.”

 It was what had led to Skye having not slept. She just wanted you to open your eyes. To show to her that you were in fact alive. To show that, for once, she could have a happy ending.

They flickered for a moment, before fully opening and taking a moment to take the new environment in.

“Hey.” Skye said, drawing your eyes to meet her elated ones. She grabbed one of your hands in her to fully make herself believe that this wasn’t a dream.

Her friend was alive, and all was right with the world as of now.

“Hey.” You said in response, “I’m so sorry I did that. It was stupid of me.” You said, realising your error that led to you ending up in the bed.

“It was. But, you’re ok now. We can work on it.” She said, softly. You managed a smile, one she then returned.

You were alive, and now willing to stop looking for a new level to try and get to. Instead, you were going to do what you could with your friends to help save the world.

And try and make it right.

#agents of shield imagine #agents of s.h.i.e.l.d imagine #agents of shield x reader #daisy johnson x reader #daisy johnson imagine

[athenadcvell]

THE NEW FIST OF HYDRA - TRUST [ 5 ]

Chapter Links: [ONE] | [TWO] | [THREE] | [FOUR]

Word Count: 1.7k

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Sam's snores are what wake up Bucky that morning. He had never been a heavy sleeper; not since what Hydra did to him. Sleep tended to bring nightmares. However, ever since he had settled in Wakanda, the nightmares had begun to cease.

So, being able to sleep again, Bucky enjoyed that time. What he did not enjoy, was his teammate's snores awakening him at five in the morning.

Steve had slept on a spare bed in the cockpit, while Natasha had taken one of the two rooms. The other room that Sam and Bucky has taken, identical to her's, except for the bunk bed filling the small space.

Bucky and Sam had already dreaded sleeping in the same room, due to their tendency to bicker amongst each other constantly. Sleep had come quick, however, without too many teases and harsh words exchanged.

Until now.

"Sam," Bucky drones out, glaring at the top bunk. When there is no response, he says it a bit louder, however, Sam remains asleep, his snores only loundening. "Sam, wake up," Bucky gently nudges the mattress above him, though no luck prevails.

Finally, frustrated with his outcomes, Bucky punches the mattress with his newly Vibranium arm.

"Oof!" Sam grunts as he flies up a few inches, falling off of the bed and a few feet down to the metal floor. Bucky smirks down at the sight, enjoying seeing his fellow teammate in pain. "What the hell was that for?!" Sam bursts groggily, glaring daggers at the super soldier.

"You snore like a tank," Bucky snaps, raising a brow. "I couldn't sleep."

"So you punched me with your damn arm?!"

"You wouldn't wake up; had to make sure you didn't fall into a coma," Bucky smirks, turning on his side. Sam glares at the brunette, before slyly turning to his wrist band and typing a few codes into it. Redwing, which had been on the side table, beeps to life.

"Go get im', buddy," Sam whispers, quickly standing up and removing himself from the path of fire. Immediately, the small machine flies towards Bucky and rams itself into his back.

"What the fu- Sam!" Bucky growls, springing up from his bed. Sam simply smiles in amusement as he directs the small bird like machine in attacks, dodging Bucky's arm as he swings it.

It isn't until a banging on their door that the machine retreats back to Sam's side. Bucky straightens up, his brown locks a wild mess around his head. Sending one last dirty glare directed at Sam, he pulls down on the crumpled green t-shirt he wears and opens the door.

On the other side awaits a scowling Natasha, her full lips pursed and arms crossed over her chest.

"What the hell are you two idiots doing?" She snaps, narrowing her green eyes at Sam, who sits cross legged on his bed. He gives the red head a small smile and waves sheepishly.

"Sam was snoring," Bucky responds, shrugging.

"And as a response, cyborg here thought it was smart to punch me with his arm."

"Yeah, well, you got your bird thing to attack me."

"Shut up," Natasha mumbles, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You're both morons. I honestly think that Spider kid might have been more mature than the two of you combined. Making me rethink Team Cap at this point."

"I would hope not," Steve comes up behind them, dressed in a white tank top and crumpled jeans, covering a yawn. "Everything okay, here?"

"Fine," All three answer in unison, Natasha rolling her eyes as Bucky and Sam exchange cold looks.

"Well, if everyone is awake, I think now would be a good time to talk about a plan. Meeting in the control room in ten minutes."

Steve turns to return to the cockpit while Natasha her room. Sam grabs a few articles of clothing and side steps Bucky to get a headstart on the bathroom, leaving Bucky to change in private.

Ten minutes later, Natasha is the only one, besides Steve, to arrive to the control room. Steve looks up, his tank top replaced for a white t-shirt, brown boots on his feet. The soldier remains hunched over a table, holographic images floating above it.

"Where are the other two?" Steve questions, raising a brow. Natasha scoffs, flipping her red curls over a shoulder.

"Probably somewhere being disappointments. Solid plan putting them in the same room, by the way," Natasha sarcastically retorts. A hint of a smirk appears on the Captain's lips.

"Not my smartest idea, huh? Thought maybe I could get them to bond," He shrugs.

"Yeah, I'm sure Redwing did a whole lot of bonding with his back," Sam remarks, grinning as he enters the room. Bucky follows shortly after, glaring at the back of Sam's head.

"What took you two so long?" Natasha asks, raising a curious brow.

"He took forever in the bathroom fixing the hair he doesn't have," Bucky replies, retreating to a corner and leaning against the wall. Sam rolls his dark eyes, shaking his head.

"Man, not everyone is tryin' to be a shampoo model."

"I hate you."

Steve sighs loudly, earning an amused look from the only female of the four. To assist her friend, she pulls a throwing knife from her pocket and swings it directly in the space between Bucky and Sam, the weapon making a soft, thud, against the wall as it makes contact.

Immediately, the two allies quiet down, eyes wide in shock by the sudden interruption.

"If you two are done acting like you're auditioning for the next, Dumb and Dumber movie, it'd be great to tend to the problem at hand."

"I'm starving. Can we tend to that problem?" Sam mumbles, plopping down in a seat and crossing his arms over his chest. Steve tosses a granola bar to everyone, along with a bottle of water, before quickly turning back to the table.

"Okay, now that we've tended to everyone's needs," The leader gives a pointed look to his two best friends. "We need come up with a game plan."

"We don't have one?" Bucky questions, raising a brow. Had he known that this team was so ill prepared for a mission this portentous, he would have been a bit more cautious on leaving his secluded home in Wakanda.

"We have information," Natasha begins, stepping beside Steve and typing into the keyboard. A series of photos float above the screen, while Natasha only picks one out of them to showcase. An average sized man with blonde hair and brown eyes appears, exiting a convenience store. "This is Dr. Roman Dimochka, Russian scientist who had been one of Hydra's top while under Alexander Pierce's leadership; guy even had a say in Project Insight."

The red head stops for a moment to make sure everyone is paying close attention, before flicking to a second image. This one shows a bright violet liquid laying in a syringe.

"He was also the creator of this. Well, re-creator. Arnim Zola had made it, until the last bit of it got wiped out. And this guy saw it smart to remake it. When our S.H.I.E.L.D team was able to infiltrate Hydra's bases, we came across this. Didn't think much of it, but after we got it popped under a microscope, we discovered it has components that don't even exist on our periodic table."

"What do you mean?" Sam asks through a mouthful of food.

"We think... it may have the ability to give powers. Not on it's own, no," Natasha's green eyes snap to Bucky, who is still retreated in the corner. "But with a similar process of what they did to you, Barnes, it is very possible."

Bucky's breath halts in his throat as the words leave her mouth. There was no denying that he knew what they were dealing with- or at least the echo of it.

"Buck?" Steve questions softly. "What's wrong?"

"Noth-" Bucky stops when Natasha gives him a cold look, urging the information out of him. He sighs, and changes his words. "While I was in Hydra, I heard some whispers going around about a weapon- a person- who is somewhat like me. But stronger, in every sense of the word. It was all just talk, though," His pale eyes flicker to Natasha. "That's all I know. They were careful about what to say around me."

The two assassins stare each other down, the younger of the two practically feeling the lies wafting off of the other. Natasha knows Bucky didn't exactly lie, per se, however he didn't tell them the full truth of it either.

"So, what you're saying, is, we gotta deal with another Winter Soldier, but on superpower steroids?" Sam groans, rubbing his eyes. "Man, I miss the days when we were just taking down spies."

"Ditto," Steve agrees, scratching the back of his head. His brows lower down over blue eyes, confusions striking his features.

"Something wrong?" Natasha questions, opening her water bottle and downing a few sips.

"Yeah," Steve mumbles quietly, shaking his head. "If Hydra has decided they want to rise once again, then who's leading them?"

"Could it be the scientist?" Sam questions, leaning forward. Bucky shakes his head at that.

"I remember Dr. Dimochka- guy's not much of a leader. He rarely ever made an appearance out of his lab unless it was necessary."

"Any leaders Hydra has ever had, are dead," Steve says quietly. "Last time I checked in with Coulson, his team went against Hydra a couple of times-"

"Did they?" Natasha snorts, amused at the thought of some of their rookie agents taking care of Hydra. Steve nods grimly.

"They did. Last known leader was Grant Ward- dead."

Bucky's face pales slightly at the thought of someone taking over Hydra. It could be anyone; the role of leader was a popular one. However, in the wrong hands, Hydra could bring the world to hell, more than they were already destined to.

#the new fist of hydra #bucky barnes #sebastian stan #winter soldier #sam wilson #anthony mackie #falcon #natasha romanoff #scarjo #black widow #steve rogers #captain america #chris evans #marvel #mcu #marvel fanfic #fanfic

[writingsbfe]

I Found

I LOOOVE AVA! Can’t wait until AMATW is for purchase. Until then, I’ll just have to write for her. And here’s to hoping she shows up in Avengers 4 :)

Pairing: Ava Starr/Ghost x reader

Summary: You fell in love with your teammate, but too bad you can never be anything more... Or could you? An accident may bring some things to light.

I Found - Ava Starr / Ghost

“I’ll use you as a warning sign, that if you talk enough sense then you’ll lose your mind,”

    “Suit up,” your Commanding Officer Garrett instructed. “We got a big mission ahead.”

    “What is it?” You asked, curious. It seemed there hadn’t been much to do lately. Even your elite stealth team, Casper (thought of by Agent Coulson, of course), had resorted to doing paperwork.

    “Classified,” he spoke simply.

    “So classified we can’t know what it is?” Your beautiful, accented partner questioned.

    “That is correct, Starr.”

    “How are we supposed to carry out the mission if we can’t know what it is?” You scrunched your brow. There wasn’t a lot of SHIELD intel that was classified to you anymore, so this was odd.

    “It’s simple. You just have to get in, extract a hard drive, and get out. Now I want you both ready in five.” Garrett left the room, presumably to allow us to dress. Ava pulled out her suit, while you grabbed your catsuit.

    It was hard, while you were dressing, to not sneak a peek at the gorgeous brunette next to you. Being honest with yourself, you were completely entranced by her. Not only her looks, but her personality, her mannerisms, everything about her. Unfortunately, she saw you as no more than a partner. A coworker you would be civil to at work, but otherwise kept your life separate from. You would give anything to have her reciprocate your feelings.

    As you finished slipping your suit on you cleared your throat, asking, “You have any clue what this is about?”

    “No,” she sighed. “But I do not have a good feeling about it.”

“And I’ll use you as a focal point, so I don’t lose sight of what I want,”

    You sat in the air vents, above the room you were supposed to infiltrate. Garrett had been right - the plan was fairly simple. Ava would distract, and you would retrieve. Easy. Looking down through the vent’s slats, you counted six men all wearing expensive suits. You did your best to listen to what they were saying, but it was all small talk. It seemed more like an insurance office than a highly-classified enemy operation. Tired of listening to the closest two guys talk about the secretary’s terrible mustache, she checked her watch. Ava should be entering any second.

    Sure enough, the door flung open. Ava, masked, burst in. Only once all eyes were on her, did she shift. The office erupted in screams as she disappeared, and you smirked. It took you a moment to realize you had a job to do, as you thought about how cool her abilities were. You silently dropped from the vent.

    Grabbing the hard drive was easy. You pocketed it and went to jump on the desk, spring yourself back up into the vents, and make an escape undetected.

    Your gymnastics were halted abruptly, as an alarmed security guard burst in. You did feel a little bad for him, as you kept track of him out of your peripheral. He was young, too inexperienced to be handling something like this. Once again, it sparked your suspicion as to why Team Casper was needed for this. Even a lower-level stealth operative could’ve just walked in and taken it.

    But as you sprung from the desk, reaching towards the vents, everything happened too fast. He pulled a gun, aiming it at Ava and pulling the trigger. You didn’t worry - she was facing him, had clearly seen it, and was always good at getting out of the way. But before you could avert your jump, the bullet whistled through the air where Ava had just stood, and directly into your abdomen.

    You fell, and couldn’t register quite what was happening. You’d never been shot before. You thought it would hurt more, but all you felt was an intense heat in the hole the bullet had ripped into your lower left side. “No!” Ava screamed, and you felt her next to you in an instant.

    “Av-” you slurred.

    “I’m here. You’re going to be fine, Y/N.” She soothed, scrambling to put pressure to the wound.

    The security guard that had fired the gun ran up to where you were sprawled on the floor. “Oh god, shit,” he mumbled, pulling at his hair. “Here, let me help-” he tried to take over holding the jacket that Ava had presumably found laying around tightly.

    “Don’t touch her!” Ava snapped harshly, her voice coming out more monotoned from behind the mask. But you could hear the emotion clearly. She was angry, and… fearful? She quickly scooped you into her arms, running out of the building. She knew she was in plain sight, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t disappear with you in her arms. While she was busy carrying you, you were smart enough to keep pressure on the injury yourself. She sprinted all the way to where Garrett’s car waited.

“And I’ve moved further than I thought I could, but I missed you more than I thought I would,”

    It was rare for Garrett to show concern, but he was ignoring all the speed limits. Ava was mumbling, sweet nothings falling from her lips as she obviously tried to keep you awake. You smiled. You could stay like that forever, your head in her lap with her soothing accent rolling over you.

    Everything started to go fuzzy, and your eyes lost focus. You could feel yourself beginning to slip under. Sleep allured you.

    “Y/N, Y/N stay with me.” She was pleaded. “Please.”

    “‘M not going anywhere,” you slurred. That was the last thing you remembered as everything faded to black.

“And I found love where it wasn’t supposed to be,”

    You woke up to the familiar smell of hospital. You blinked your eyes open, correct in your observation as the telling white walls and bedding filled your vision. One thing that you weren’t used to seeing in the hospital was the head of long brown hair in a chair next to you, head resting on your bed. You noticed with a smile that her hand was intertwined with yours.

    Careful not to disturb her, you reached over to the side table and grabbed a paper cup filled with water. You drained the whole thing, taking the time to marvel at how beautiful she was, even as she slept with worry marring her features.

    As you put the cup back, you jostled your hand a bit. She stirred from her sleep.

    You waited with baited breath, to see if once the drama was over she would still see you as someone she had to work with, or more.

    Her eyes met yours, finally open, and her eyes twinkled. “You’re awake.” She sat up, scooting closer. “How are you feeling?”

    “Never better,” you answered with a smile.

    She gave you a pointed look, disbelieving.

    “I’m serious!” You defended. “These are some powerful drugs here. I haven’t felt this good in a loooong time. All those superhero landings and stuff? Really hard on the joints. You think we could get some of this to go?”

    She laughed at your medication-fueled rambling. “I’ll be sure to ask the nurse,” she humored you.

    You sobered up, though your next words were one hundred percent blamed on the morphine. You never, ever would have told her this on your own.

    “I love you, Ava.”

    She gave another laugh. You hadn’t ever seen her smile so much. Then again, you hadn’t really hung out with her outside of work. “No, really. I love you. Like when I see you, I get butterflies and I just want to kiss you…”

    She wasn’t laughing anymore, almost looking nervous. “You don’t. It’s the drugs.” Was she trying to convince you, or herself?

    “Not the drugs,” you shook your head. “I’ve felt this way for a long time. I’m only telling you this now while the confidence-boost is still in effect.”

    She was at war with herself, and the small part of your rational brain that was still piloting this ship reasoned that she was probably struggling with all of her insecurities. It was no secret that she had them, just as you did.

    But her next actions surprised you more than anything that had come out of your mouth so far. “I love you, too.” she admitted. “I was always too afraid, but…” She trailed off, not finishing. Instead, she kissed you.

    And you kissed her back.

“Right in front of me,”

    When you both pulled apart, you felt like a schoolgirl who’d just had her first kiss. She slowly drew away, like she didn’t want to end it. You didn’t want to, either. “I’m going to find the nurse,” she excused, standing up and moving to leave. Before she exited the room., she turned back, “I hope you remember this when the drugs wear off.”

    And how could you forget the greatest moment of your life?

“Talk some sense to me.”

#ava starr #ghost #marvel #avengers #imagine #x reader #ava starr x reader #hurt #hospital #shot #one-sided love #or maybe not #trigger warning: gun violence #also some blood #morphine high #ant man and the wasp

[theclaravoyant]

AN ~ this one’s for myself, but also for @jadehendrixmusic who asked on a convo between me and @marvelthismarvelthat that this be written. Enjoy the PAIN but srsly have I told you how much I love Daisy mcfreaking Johnson. This also fills @aosadvent2017 prompt “hope”

“We can’t change the future,” he reminded her. “We couldn’t then and we can’t now. But they did get one thing wrong.”

The real story of how and why Daisy Johnson broke apart the Earth.

Read on AO3 (~2300wd). Rated T. Rshps: Daisy-centric, Daisy & the Team, Daisy & Fitz. Angst with a Happy(ish?) Ending. MCD and I’m not f*ckin around w that

Destroyer of Worlds

In the end, Daisy thought, she should have seen it coming.

She’d felt it for a while, somewhere deep inside herself.

The knowledge that she would bury her friends.

-

For a while they managed to stick together as the world collapsed into chaos around them. They clung to each other, looked after each other so well it almost felt like they were the last real people left on Earth. But of course, there was only so much that seven people could do against an alien dictatorship and soon enough, things started to spiral beyond their control.

Coulson was the first to go, in a fiery, guns-blazing, one-against-the-world sacrifice to buy time while Daisy and Elena escaped, and rescued a mob of Inhumans from the Kree cells.

A little while after that, Jemma’s mysterious immunity to one of the Kree’s favourite pathogens attracted the wrong sort of attention from their leaders. She was captured and – after flatly refusing to cooperate, whether willingly or under duress - experimented on, before finally being released. Delirious with her newly regained freedom, she had sprinted full-tilt for that shadowy corner of the world that the team now called home, until she’d realised - and stumbled and fallen and ploughed into the dirt with the shock of it – that the only reason they would have let her go was because they’d won. She’d contracted something. Something dangerous. Something that could wipe out the resistance.

So she’d run the opposite direction instead, and died alone.

May lasted a little longer than that. She was getting old by the time she went. Her eyes clouded with cataracts and she walked with a permanent limp, her legs and knees having been destroyed and re-knitted so many times. She remained a key strategist in their little band of resistance until the end, and died in as much peace as anyone could afford these days, surrounded by most of the remaining people that loved her.

It was funny, Daisy mused, the way that people used ‘funny’ for things that were not funny at all – like how she was sure that May would have preferred Coulson’s end, and he hers.

Still, the rest of them soldiered on.

-

And then there was Fitz.

His was a slow death, and one of the hardest as the dwindling resistance lost perhaps its truest believer. It started with a painful arthritis - in his hands at first, which was cruel enough, and then it spread to his shoulders, his back, his knees. Still, he refused to stop working; building panel after panel, machine after machine, engines and life support systems and generators and UV light-towers for growing food, and all manner of things that Daisy and even Mack did not fully recognise or understand. As per the policy they’d developed in case of capture, nobody had a clear idea of what all this was supposed to mean, not even the people working on it, until the day Fitz died.

That day, Daisy was curled up in a chair by his bedside as he slept, trying to resist the urge to chew on the sleeve of her jacket. She had asked not to be disturbed, feeling much less the hardy resistance leader their followers knew, and much more the lost girl about to watch one of her best friends disappear before her very eyes.

Fitz mumbled something, incoherent, and Daisy threw herself forward, falling to her knees at his bedside. He smiled – amused, apparently, by her dramatics, as if he wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing.

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “’s just what happens when you breathe in metal dust all day, ‘n don’t eat anything, and-“

He cut himself off, his words lost in a barrage of coughing, and Daisy poured him a glass of water. She couldn’t tell if her hands were shaking or if it was the water in the glass itself, but she got it to him eventually and the coughing calmed. She helped rearrange his pillow so that he could sit up, but Fitz batted her away, too tired for the effort. Almost too tired to keep his eyes open. His whole body ached, even as he smiled ruefully over at Daisy.

“Not long now,” he said, his voice croaking with an age he hadn’t lived yet.

She clutched his hand fiercely. “Mack – just wait for Mack. He’s coming in from scouting. He’ll be here soon.”

“That’ll be nice.”

His body shook – once, violently - as if it was about to launch into another coughing fit, but was too tired to manage it. The end was coming faster than he thought it would, and though it hurt to push her away, he had to claw past Daisy to pull open a nearby drawer. He pushed a notebook into her hands. Frowning in confusion, she pulled out more papers from the drawer. On one of them was an illustration of a massive space station. Daisy’s jaw slackened.

“This is what you’ve been building?”

“The Lighthouse,” Fitz confirmed. “That’s what it was called, right?”

“Yeah. The one in – the one in space, after I…” Daisy frowned, piecing things together slowly. “Wait. You don’t think –“

“It’s big enough for several thousand people. Mack’s been helping me make shuttles, too. We’ve been sending bits and pieces into space. It’s nearly ready.”

“Ready? For what? I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do,” Fitz pointed out. He reached out again and Daisy gave him her hand. His squeeze was not as strong as it once had been, and his skin felt papery and odd, but it was still his hand. It still felt warm. With horror, she thought about how this might be the last time she’d ever feel that warmth. But Fitz needed to tell her something, so Daisy looked into his eyes, and saw in them why he had been such a believer. The wonder and the inevitability of the universe.

“We can’t change the future,” he reminded her, his voice soft but steady, and full of conviction. “We couldn’t then and we can’t now. We bought ourselves a little time, with a lot of lives, and here we are. But they did get one thing wrong.”

He smiled.

“You’re Daisy Johnson, and you’re going to save us all.”

-

Those words echoed in Daisy’s mind for hours. Days. They were a lot to live up to – as were the eyes of the gathering crowd, who had fled here from, as far as Daisy could tell, all over the world. Some of them still managed to have such hope that it almost broke her heart at the same time as filling it. Most of them, though, looked to her: the last hope, for humanity and Inhumanity alike.

“Don’t let me fail them,” she whispered. She was not sure to whom. Mack, standing a few feet away, directing refugees about their final missions on Earth? The ghost of Fitz or Jemma or Coulson or May, who she longed to guide her through this? Maybe herself. That’s all she had left, really.

Not long now.

The ground seemed to beat beneath her, as if it could feel the anticipation thrumming through her veins. The crowd buzzed, scared and hopeful, curious and heartbroken. The prospect of spending the next few days in tiny shuttles in the unknown vacuum of space was not an inviting one, but it was better than the alternative: the Kree were turning more and more Inhumans – there were even rumours of mind and blood control – and those pockets of resistance that had made it this far were being snuffed out one by one. As far as Daisy had managed to discover – and as Fitz had probably already known – this was the last one.

Before her sat the last shuttle of the 10-stage interstellar evacuation mission to save humanity.

The SS Hope, Fitz had called it.

That’s why they’d decided to launch it last: in case it pulled a Challenger and blasted itself out of the sky. Nothing killed a revolution like Hope literally going down in flames.

Fortunately - as could always be expected of Fitz and Mack’s work – the other shuttles had all taken off harmlessly and were well on their way up to the Lighthouse. The last of the remaining civilians were walking up the gangplank of the Hope when Elena appeared at Daisy’s side.

Daisy clenched her fist.

“They’re here,” Elena reported.

She’d seen this coming too. Felt it, in the vibrations on the ground: armies, marching. This being their last chance – life or death - they’d be coming after the dregs of the resistance with everything they had.

“We’re ready,” Mack announced, marching down from the gangplank with a determined expression. “Everyone’s strapped in, ready to go.”

“Yeah, but we’ve got company,” Daisy informed him grimly. He frowned, at her, then at Elena, who he knew had been out scouting before. The shotgun axe came down from his back, and he cocked it.

“Where?”

Elena nodded her head in the direction they would have to go, and Mack nodded with determination. To Daisy, he said –

“Get that bird off the ground,”

- and with that he was gone, following Elena to face the firing lines. Two of them against an army would never last long, but for them this had always been where it was going to end. Humanity’s last line of defence. Death so that others may live. Not the worst way to go, all things considered.

Which brings us back to Daisy.

It was with a heaviness in her heart that she signalled for the last pilot to take off. She received his solemn final salute with a stiff upper lip and turned her attention to the task ahead. It was all up to her now and these precious, last few seconds were where she would make her final stand. They were oh-so-close now, and she knew what she had to do.

Daisy lifted her head, proud, feeling the heat on her face and the rush of the air from the engines of the last shuttle lifting off. She reached out after it, feeling its vibrations in the air; feeling her blood sing with the frequency that would get humanity to freedom. A smile touched her lips as she farewelled the ship – after all, maybe she couldn’t literally change the future, but who would have thought that one day she, a scrappy orphan raised in a van, would become this?

Kneeling slowly, Daisy put her outstretched hand on the precious earth. She dug her fingers into its surface and reached down into it with her mind, feeling the frequencies of rock and magma and shifting plates. She reached further than she ever had before, pushing through the nosebleed and the headache, downward and outward until she could hear the running river; the grass crushed underfoot; the kickback of pistols and the falling of bodies in battle not far away. She felt – with a violence she had not expected; so powerful it was as if she could see it – Mack’s body crash to the ground as the immense odds finally overwhelmed him. She was hardly aware of her own self, her own heart breaking, the tears on her own face, with her consciousness spread so wide across the world, but she knew it hurt. And when she felt the hummingbird heartbeat that was Elena die it was if strings were being cut inside her.

Maybe they were.

The last strings holding Daisy to this world were gone. Overwhelmed with the pain and Elena’s scream when Mack was cut down and the dissonant screaming of the earth she screamed too and the world shifted. Rocks cracked and split, magma trembled and fissures broke open – not just at her feet but all across the country. Kree ships were blasted out of the sky. Cracks opened in the earth that swallowed trees and buildings. Her body hummed with all the frequencies of a dying world and Daisy watched herself be lifted into the air, pulling all the threads together into a reluctant, tumultuous harmony. She hit a note, somewhere in there, and all of a sudden it didn’t hurt. It felt like diving into a pool of water; slow and smooth, and she could watch the world collapse around her in slow motion, untouched.

Drifting above the apocalypse, Daisy remembered that once the Asgardian, Sif, had claimed she would be transformed into a Kree weapon; a drone, marching at their beck and call – or worse, a believer in their empire. The Kree themselves had been pretty excited about that too. And Deke, and the others on the Lighthouse fifty-odd years from now, had believed it too, or some version of it anyway. That she’d destroyed their world. Only she knew… she, and the ones who had come before her… that it was not so simple.

She was Quake. Destroyer of Worlds.

Yet, even as the tectonic plates of the Earth cracked and burst by her will, like a glass still in the motion of breaking, she had crushed that name into the dust. There was hardly anything left to destroy. Only enough for one hell of a scorched-earth campaign as the Hope escaped the atmosphere, sailing humanity onto their next sanctuary – and their next challenge.

Those few Kree who had somehow managed to cross the burning, exploding Earth approached Daisy. They looked small, and greedy, and far too confident for the likes of her. Could they not see what she had become?

She was Daisy Johnson. Saviour of Humanity.

And like an opera singer breaking a glass, she waited until the perfect moment to let go the note she’d been holding onto. The harmony shattered, and all the discord of this dying world unleashed at once. It ripped through her fragile human-esque body, and through the Kree, and through the Earth, and the whole planet finally splintered around them.

Daisy died with a bloody, victorious smile upon her face.

#daisy johnson #daisyjohnsonfic #aosteam #aospositivitynet #buskidsnet #clara's fic tag #aosadvent2017 #prompt: hope #prompt: angel #fitzdaisy

[avengerofyourheart]

Leave This Town Pt 6 (Mechanic!Bucky AU)

Characters: reader, Bucky, Natasha, Surprise Avenger! :)

Summary: Your dreams of kissing your small town life goodbye are about to come true when an unexpected detour leaves you stranded. Meeting the handsome local mechanic has you rethinking your plans. Perhaps happiness is less about where you’re headed and more about the people you meet along the way.

Song Inspiration: Sleep on the Floor by The Lumineers

Warnings: Angst and then a bit of fluff. Mentions of sex.

Word Count: 2.7k

Tags are at bottom (TAG LIST IS CLOSED I’M SORRY)

**This fic is for @bionic-buckyb ‘s 5K AU Writing Challenge**

A/N: Soooo yeah. Heh. Just keep in mind that this is not the end! At least 2 more parts coming. Here’s my ask box if you feel the need to share. ;) 

<<<Part Five   Part Six   Part Seven>>> 

Leave This Town Masterlist

Full Masterlist

__________________________________________________

“You’re meant for more than this small town, too,” you declared louder this time, grasping his face in your hands.

“I don’t underst—“

“Come with me.”

_____________

“What did you just say?” Bucky asked, taking a step back.

“Bucky,” you began calmly, since you had blurted it out too quickly the first time. “I want you to come with me. To L.A.”

With a dazed look, he slipped from your grasp, taking halting steps backwards until he reached the bed and sat down. “Are you serious?” he asked, finally meeting your gaze.

“Yes.”

“You want me to come to L.A. and…do what?” he questioned.

You felt a spark of excitement then, thinking he might actually be considering your proposal. “I don’t know. They have auto shops there, if that’s what you still want to do. And they have auditions for guitarists all the time! You could do gigs at night and work during the day,” you said as the possibilities flowed from your mind. You walked over and took a seat facing him, grasping one of his hands. “That’s the beauty of this adventure, Bucky. You can do whatever you want.”

“Where would we live?” he asked, giving your hand a squeeze.

Nerves bubbled up at the thought of co-habitating with Bucky, even if that’s not what he meant. “Um…I don’t know. I plan on staying in a cheap hostel for a few days while I checked out places. People are always looking for roommates to lower the rent. I’ve looked it up online and there are always short-term vacancies until you find something more permanent. So what do you say?” you grinned, full of hope.

Bucky stood then and took a few steps, running hands through his hair. He was still shirtless, thick ropes of muscle visible under his tanned skin as he moved. The thought of not having to say goodbye spread a warmth of happiness through your whole body. Could this really be happening? Could you get the guy AND chase your dreams?

He let his arms drop as he turned your way, his expression stopping you cold. “I can’t,” he whispered with his gaze on the stained carpet.

“What?” you uttered quietly. “Wh—why not?”

“Why not?” he repeated, disbelief shading his features. “Y/N, I have a life here, a job, family. I just…I can’t leave for the hell of it.”

“I did,” you almost shouted, slight wavering in your voice. “Bucky, we’re young. We both have our whole lives ahead of us. Now is the time to take risks, have adventures, even make mistakes. I may have a dream and a plan, maybe a small chance at success but even then, I am fully aware that I might fail. I could get there and fall flat on my face. But you know what? I’d rather fail than stay in one place the rest of my life, wondering what might have been,” you finished, boldly holding his gaze.

Bucky huffed out a sigh, crossing arms over his sculpted chest. “Not all of us have that kind of conviction, Y/N,” he spoke quietly. “Some people are just meant for smaller lives.”

“Really?” you said, standing up from the bed. “This is it for you? This small town, knowing all the same people your whole life, never experiencing anything new, you’re okay with that? There’s nothing more you’d like to see or do?”

You saw Bucky hesitate, chewing on his lip for a moment. Taking that as an opportunity, you closed the distance between you and looped your arms around his trim waist.

“Bucky. I see you. I see your big heart and handsome smile and charismatic spirit. You’ve folded yourself down to fit into this small town life. Aren’t you at least a little bit curious what might happen if you allowed yourself to just…let go? Explore? Find out all that you can become?” you asked, grasping his chin so he would look your way but his eyes remained off in the distance.

Silence hung in the stale evening air as you watched the wheels turn in his handsome head. Finally he clenched his jaw and shook his head, unhooking your arms from around his waist as he created space between you.

“No. I can’t. I don’t have those dreams anymore. I have the shop and my mom and sisters….this is my life now. It’s not right for you to try and make me feel like it’s not enough,” he spoke quickly as he grabbed his shirt off the bed and slipped into it.

“Bucky…” you said, pleading as you reached toward him.

He evaded your grasp as he picked up his shoes and headed for the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. “I’ll have your car ready by 10. It’s probably best if you hit the road after that,” he said with finality, swinging the door open and closing it behind him before you could get out a word.

Staring at the closed door, you let yourself sink to the floor beside the bed as the tears began to fall.

_________________

Morning came and you were surprised to see light filtering through the curtains. You didn’t know how the sun could still rise and the birds sing when you felt like your world had already crumbled around you. How could the past three days have become so life-changing? How could a man you didn’t even know the week before become both the wind in your sails and the rocks you had found yourself crashing against?

With sluggish movements, you stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom where you were met with your exhausted reflection. Your eyes were red and swollen from both crying and the few hours you had slept. Splashing some cold water on your face and taking a shower, you felt a little better. You dressed and attempted to hide the circles under your eyes.

Packing up your toiletries and clothing, you zipped your bags before taking a seat on the bed to look around. The sheets still smelled like him. He had left behind a hair tie on the nightstand with the empty pizza box from last night on the floor beside it. The hotel room felt like a time capsule, a frozen moment where your time together had existed. Taking a step outside meant leaving it all behind and letting go.

Glancing at the clock, you saw that it was nearly 9am. Check out time wasn’t until 10:30, but you feared Wanda may somehow take advantage of a seconds-late check-out time and charge you for it after your latest interaction. If only she knew how it all had changed. You were unable to sit still any longer anyway, so you picked up your bags and left the room without looking back.

Stepping into the office, you expected to see a disgruntled Wanda, but instead you were met with a tall, silver-haired young man at the computer.

“Morning, I’m Pietro,” he greeted you. “Checking out?”

You simply nodded, sliding the key across the counter toward him.

“Room 17…” he muttered searching the computer. “Ah, Ms. (Y/L/N). Oh.”

He seemed to put the pieces together as he took in your bedraggled appearance. He let out a slight smirk at you, but kept his thoughts to himself. He probably couldn’t wait to tell his sister how you left town with your tail between your legs. It didn’t matter though. You paid for your three-night stay in cash and left without a word.

Lugging your bags a few blocks, you arrived at the diner and settled in a booth after saying hello to Nattie behind the counter. She arrived at your table with her usual bright smile, but it dimmed as her gaze met your red, saddened eyes.

“Hey, hun. Heading out today?” she asked, seeing your bags and pouring you coffee without asking.

You nodded, gripping the warm mug with both hands with eyes focused on the dark liquid inside.

Nattie paused a moment, then lowering herself into the booth to sit across from you and setting the coffee pot on the table. “It’s probably not my place, but…you two looked cute together. It’s never easy. I’m sorry to see you go so soon.”

“Thanks,” you answered thickly with a sniffle.

She reached across the table and patted your hand with hers before standing. “How ‘bout I have them whip you up something special for breakfast? Hm?” she offered.

You let out the smallest of smiles. “Sure.”

A special breakfast turned out to be pancakes with fruit for a face and whip cream hair. It made you smile and what little you could stomach tasted delicious. As you asked for your check, you also requested a piece of boysenberry pie to go. It was just after 10am when you left the diner and shouldered your bags for the walk toward the auto shop. Your heart ached as you stepped into the office and left your bags on one of the chairs in the waiting room.

Bucky was helping a customer at the counter. He had met your eye when the bell above the door jangled as you entered, but you quickly glanced away, pulling out your wallet and waiting your turn to pay.

“Thanks for coming in, Mr. Coulson. We’ll see you and Lola next time,” Bucky said with a smile.

The balding man at the counter nodded in farewell, “A pleasure as always, Mr. Barnes.” As he turned your way, he slipped on a pair of sunglasses and you took in the dark suit and tie he was wearing. There was something a little odd about him, like he held all the secrets you ever wanted to know and he relished in it. He walked passed you with an all-knowing smile and the door jangled again as he exited, leaving you and Bucky alone.

Without a word, you approached the counter, keeping your eyes downcast. Bucky reached for your paperwork behind him and slid it toward you. Fishing out the cash needed, you slid it toward him and he took a moment to count out your change before dropping it in your hand with a graze of his fingers against your palm. You had glanced at the list of charges on your bill and of course, Bucky had been even more generous than promised but you weren’t going to argue. He was a better man than you’d ever met and at that moment, you knew you didn’t deserve him.

Finally giving in, you glanced up to meet his eyes, seeing light shadows as evidence of lost sleep under his eyes as well. You saw nothing but kindness there and you couldn’t hold it in any longer. A sob bubbled up in your throat until it burst with your words of apology.

“I’m sorry,” you said thickly through your tears. “I’m so sorry, I never meant to…”

“I know,” he spoke quietly, walking around the counter until you were enveloped in his strong, familiar arms. “I know you didn’t mean to put down this small town life and I shouldn’t have left the way I did. It’s just…you struck a nerve. Your passion and conviction almost made me want to forget it all and say yes and…it scared me.”

Lifting your head from where it had been resting on his chest, you sniffled. “Really?”

He nodded, caressing a hand across your back. “I haven’t let myself want anything more in…I don’t know how long. I really wish it was that simple, to just leave it all behind.”

“Me, too,” you whispered with a teary smile.

He pulled you close again, relishing the quiet comfort of being in each others’ arms. After a few moments, you pulled away just enough to meet his eye, then pressing a lingering kiss to his soft lips. You never wanted to forget the feeling of electricity fizzling in your veins.

Breaking the silence, you spoke, “I need to show you something. Do you have a minute?”

He nodded and slipped out of your grasp. “Hang on,” he said, walking toward the front door where he flipped a sign that said ‘Back in 5 minutes’.

You clasped his hand in yours and walked behind the counter toward the back office. Taking a few minutes, you showed him the work you had done and how much easier the business side of things should be from now on with a bit of organization. Bucky was impressed and assured you he would do his best to keep it that way. It was a small thing, but you were glad to be a small part of his life after you left.

“Thank you, Y/N,” he said, squeezing your hand in his.

“You’re welcome,” you replied, feeling calmer than you had all morning.

“Anything else to show me?” he asked, feeling as uneasy about saying goodbye as you were.

A sly smile spread across your face then, causing Bucky to furrow his brow in confusion.

“What?”

“There’s just…one more thing on my to-do list,” you said with a grin, leading him out of the office and into the cavernous garage. You walked past the line of cars, some with hoods propped open along with your own vehicle, all fixed up and ready to go.

“Y/N, what—“

You glanced back, putting a finger up to your mouth as you kept walking to the far end of the garage and into the little alcove hidden from sight. Stepping up into the car frame, Bucky followed you, still confused. That is until you gave him a light shove causing him to take a seat on the black leather bench seat with you straddling him seconds after. Your lips found his as your hands brushed down his muscular torso and sought the warm skin under his shirt to remove it.

Bucky had caught on by then and quickly rid you of your own top, his large hands gripping your hips shortly after. You broke the kiss only out of need for breath as you lifted your face heavenward, his lips nibbling at the sensitive skin of your neck.

Letting out a breathless laugh, he muttered against your skin, “This has always been a fantasy of mine.”

You threaded your fingers into his hair, pulling his head back to meet your lips again. “What, you’ve never been with someone in a car before?” you asked in surprise, grasping at his belt buckle.

“Well…not in THIS car,” he smirked, recapturing your lips.

Sinking your knees into the soft black leather to settle closer to his hips, you felt like the wide back seat of a sexy, classic car was made for this sort of behavior.

“Then, I’m glad I get to leave a lasting impression,” you smiled against his lips, “And I’ve fantasized about this, too.”

Finding your shared rhythm and both panting in the hot sticky air of the garage, your body reached its blazing peak and he followed you shortly after. You clung to one other for a while as your sweat-covered skin began to cool in the stillness. You pressed one last kiss to his lips, foreheads meeting as you held his gaze. In that moment, you had never felt so in tune with anyone. Mind, body, heart and soul.

______________

An hour later, the scenery slipped past in a blur as a warm breeze whipped through your hair with an arm dangling out the open window. The radio struggled to hold a signal, static cutting in every other word, but you hadn’t noticed. Your mind was still in a hot garage with the man who had changed everything. Although your plans remained the same, something in you had shifted.

Driving westward, your car now was running better than it ever had the 10 days you had owned it. He must have done more than replace your radiator and you weren’t surprised. 

Outwardly, you were still a girl from a small town headed to the big city with big plans and even bigger dreams. But inside, you now knew there was more to small town living than you had ever considered.

Your only souvenir from your memorable weekend was a half-eaten slice of pie resting on the passenger’s seat that would be devoured shortly, the package to be tossed at the next stop. The memories, though…those you would never let go.

_______________

Part 7>>>

_______________________________________________________

I KNOW I KNOW I’M SORRY. But this is the way it had to be. BUT just trust me, there are at least two more parts and I’m excited about them. :) Please let me know your thoughts, I love to hear from you! You’re the best!! 

Permanent Tag List and LTT tag list are CLOSED. 

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[freaoscanlin]

Given Unsought, Part 1

A/N: This fic is something I’ve been working on and I’m pretty deep into it now. I’ll be posting the full thing on AO3 as soon as I figure out just a bit of it, but I thought I’d put the first part up now. This is a retelling of season three of Agents of SHIELD where Jemma came back from Maveth just a liiiiittle bit different. The final fic will be about 40-45k, and it’ll be broken down into weeks. Jemma/Daisy with mentions of other ships. Warnings for language, injury, isolation, past abuse. I’ll be posting the fic in chunks and tagged on my blog as “given unsought.” Thanks to @insidiousmisandry for encouraging this, you enabler.

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.  The Twelfth Night, Act III, Scene I, Line 147

Week Four

In her years at SHIELD, Daisy had learned to evaluate the silence of the post-mission flight. The grim quiet of a failed mission had an entirely different flavor to the quiet of exhaustion after a successful op. And a truly successful op didn’t usually contain great stretches of time without talking. Bringing an agent back from the dead usually called for breaking into one of Hunter’s many secret stashes of beer on the quinjet and cracking open a cold one. If Bobbi was the pilot, she’d play cheesy eighties pop on the intercom and Daisy could get a dance party started in the hold.

She’d even twirled May once. That had been very, very strange, and Daisy still wasn’t sure she hadn’t dreamed that.

The flight from Gloucester should have been jubilant, full of dancing and music. They’d brought Simmons back. She was safe, and coming home, and Fitz—after months and months where Daisy had lost hope—had done it, the cheeky bastard. He’d gone to another world and had come back clutching his friend. By all rights, even though she’d drained all of her energy, Daisy should have been standing on her seat, holding a beer aloft and shout-singing Captain & Tenille with Mack. Instead, she sat quietly in the co-pilot’s seat and watched his giant hands as he moved them over the controls.

“Feeling okay?”

“Nothing sleeping for a year can’t fix.” She stretched out her arms, grimacing as her muscles creaked. “I still can’t believe Fitz did it.”

“Can’t you? He’s a determined one, our Fitz.”

Daisy nodded. She could have flown back on Zephyr One, but she hadn’t wanted to abandon Mack. Plus, she suspected that she’d only be in the way as Bobbi checked Simmons over. And maybe there was a desire to avoid more unnecessary medical checkups herself. Sure, she had the mother of all migraines, but the nosebleed had stopped. She’d be fine. “What do you think it was like over there?”

“Looked like it was pretty dusty.” Mack flipped a couple switches overhead.

Daisy glanced down at her front, still covered in dirt from the explosion of the monolith and hugging Jemma afterward. “Well, you’re not wrong.”

“We’ll find out more soon enough, Tremors.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m just impatient. I can’t believe she’s back. Like finally, something’s going our way.” Chasing down the rapidly expanding inhuman outbreak pattern had grown exhausting. Convincing Dr. Garner to let even one of the people onto her team of secret warriors doubly so. She’d fallen into the classic pitfall of being evaluated by him herself earlier that day and even though she hadn’t wanted to rail at it as much as she would’ve in the past, he did leave her feeling frustrated and annoyed.

But Simmons was back, and she was going to be fine, so that had to count for something.

“A much needed win,” Mack said, smiling as he agreed. “Seatbelt on, we’re coming in.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Pilot sir.”

Mack rolled his eyes at her, but she caught the smile he tried to hide.

The Zephyr had beaten them back to base. Though Daisy expected everybody to be busy with Jemma, Bobbi stood with her hip cocked and her arms crossed over her chest, waiting for the loading ramp to descend. Daisy groaned.

“Time to head to the lab. Coulson’s orders,” Bobbi said.

“I’m fine. I just need to sleep and I’ll feel like a human being again. Things just got a little shaky for a bit—ha. Literally.”

“You passed out twice,” Bobbi said, tilting her head. “We’ll put you on a bunk next to Simmons.”

Okay, that might not be terrible. With all of the science that needed to be run, it wasn’t like she would be able to see Jemma at all otherwise. Daisy followed Bobbi out of the hangar, both of them waving cheerily at Mack as he sarcastically called that, sure, he’d be happy to handle the post-mission checklist by himself, no problem.

“He loves us,” Bobbi said as she walked Daisy to the lab.

Bobbi had lied: they’d put Jemma off to one side of the lab and Daisy was led to the other and checked over by a SHIELD tech. With their leading inhuman biology expert on another planet for months, the rest of the lab workers had had to step up, and it just wasn’t the same. None of them ever gave her lollipops the way Jemma had sardonically taken to doing to keep Daisy from griping about getting poked so much. She wanted to complain, but Bobbi kept looking over and raising an eyebrow at her. Daisy decided it was easier not to cause a ruckus.

“Can I go yet?” she asked.

“Just a couple more tests, Agent Johnson.”

“Sameer, we’re poker buddies. You know all my tells, I think that entitles you to call me Daisy.”

For that, he took another vial of blood, though he assured her he would’ve done that anyway. Daisy grumped at him and leaned back on her cot. Movement on the opposite side of the room, near where Jemma still slept, caught her eye. One of the techs running blood tests did a double-take at something on his screen and began gesturing, wildly. Fitz and Bobbi immediately raced over. Daisy rose to her feet, too, only for Sameer to grab her arm.

“You probably should give them a moment,” he said.

“If she’s hurt—”

“They’ll figure it out much faster without distractions.”

As much as she hated it, he had a point. Daisy allowed herself to be pulled back, and sat down on the cot while Sameer ran the rest of his tests. She kept an eye on things, monitoring the way the surprised tech gesticulated while talking to Fitz and Bobbi. Fitz shoved him to the side and typed rapidly into his computer. Whatever he saw on the screen made him shove both hands into his curls and rest his hands on his head, elbows out.

Bobbi put a hand on his shoulder and said something to the tech.

“Something’s wrong,” Daisy said. “Something’s wrong with her—I need to—”

But Fitz stomped right past her when she stood up. Bobbi looked over, met Daisy’s eyes, and shook her head. She gestured for Daisy to stay put.

“She can’t expect me to just sit here when something might be wrong with Simmons,” Daisy said.

“Looks like she does.” Sameer rummaged in the pocket of his lab coat and held out a grape lollipop. “Will this help?”

“No.” But Daisy took it anyway. She flopped down, determined to stay until Bobbi gave her some answers. She missed the needle until Sameer had it in her arm. “What the—hey! What are you doing?”

“Dr. Morse’s orders. It’s just a sedative.”

Daisy felt her eyes begin to roll back into her head. “I’m cleaning you out next time we play poker,” she said and the last thing she saw before she slept was Simmons, curled up on a cot, asleep.

The only mercy when she opened her eyes was that her head no longer ached, but everything else pretty much sucked. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, her left arm had fallen asleep because she’d apparently laid on top of it for hours, and Mack hadn’t carried her back to her bed like he occasionally did whenever somebody (Bobbi) knocked her out. She’d apparently been kept in the lab, drooling into a pillow for all the techs to see. Not that there were many of those around at the moment.

Daisy rubbed her hand over her face and grimaced at the gritty sensation. She glanced at the clock, saw that it was just after four a.m., and groaned. “I’m quaking Sameer into a wall next time I see him.”

“I’d advise against that.” Bobbi’s voice sounded rusty. Daisy looked over her shoulder and saw her on the chair beside her cot, eyes open and arms crossed over her chest. The knee brace had been set aside for the night. “He was following my orders.”

“Yeah, well, don’t think you’re forgiven either, Barbara.”

Bobbi made a face and sat up. “Like you’d have gotten any sleep with that migraine you tried to hide. You can thank me later.”

“Thank. Right. That’s exactly what’ll happen.” Daisy sat up and stretched. She looked over across the lab, to the other cot on the far end. “Is Simmons okay?”

Bobbi paused for so long that Daisy swiveled away from Jemma to face her coworker. “Is something wrong? The planet wasn’t killing her slowly, was it?” Best to blurt out the worst possible option, get it out of the way, even while her brain hammered Not Jemma not Jemma not Jemma.

“No. Her body adapted to what we suspect is a lower level of oxygen, so that will cause a few problems in the short term. Her metabolism’s changed. But she’s healthy.” Bobbi folded her arms over her chest. “But there’s something else, though. She’s pregnant.”

The word slammed into Daisy so hard it might as well have been a punch to the face. “She got sucked into an alien planet and came back pregnant? Was it something in the air? Or was it the planet? Wait, how is that even possible? And is she okay? Is the baby okay? How far along—”

“Easy there, motor mouth,” Bobbi said, and Daisy abruptly shut up. Hysteria, she realized. That was what coursed through her veins. That, and adrenaline. “One question at a time.”

“How?” was all Daisy can manage.

“She hasn’t talked much, but as far as we can tell, it happened the usual way. As far as we can tell, she’s about four weeks along. That’s early to tell, but we’re SHIELD. Cutting edge is kind of our thing.”

“She wasn’t alone over there?”

“There was an astronaut with her. She didn’t say his name, but we’re assuming that he’s human.” Bobbi shrugged.

Daisy looked toward Jemma. In sleep, she remained twitchy, pale and drawn like she constantly awaited danger. For all they knew, she did. Daisy’d barely heard her say five words since Fitz pulled her out of the portal.

Speaking of…

“Guess there’s no need to ask how Fitz is taking it?” Daisy asked. Late one night, drunk off cheap tequila and sitting in the middle of the room he’d turned into a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream in search of Simmons, he’d confessed that he’d made his move. Daisy, not nearly as drunk, had found herself struggling to congratulate him, with no idea why. They’d be cute together, she’d said, when they got Jemma back. Of course they would be. They were Fitz and Simmons. FitzSimmons. They already had a smushname all their own without even trying.

And hell, Fitz’s mania had paid off, hadn’t it? Fitz had doggedly and methodically followed the steps to save her for months, while Daisy threw herself into finding inhumans so she wouldn’t have to think about the grief and fear waiting just around the corner, far too close for comfort.

“I don’t know,” Bobbi said. “He didn’t say much when he came back.”

She gestured. On the other side of the lab, Fitz had a studied frown on his face as he stared into a microscope. From the set of his shoulders alone, Daisy figured bothering him would be one of the worst ideas she’d entertained since trusting her mother.

“You know she asked him to dinner right before…” Bobbi trailed off.

“I know,” Daisy said. “Should I—I don’t know? Talk to him?”

“You can try, but I don’t think it’ll work. I’m sending Hunter to annoy the truth out of him if he gets back soon.”

Daisy raised her eyebrows. “You’re going straight to the nuclear option?”

“For a man whose talents are very annoying, he’s also very good at what he does.” They both paused when Daisy’s wrist-unit beeped with an alert. “See you later.”

“Um, if she wakes up, tell her I’ll stop by?” There was too much she wanted to ask, as she was burning with curiosity and kind of a weird sense of unreality and terror. Her friend was pregnant. With an actual human child. Well. Daisy looked at her hands. Maybe mostly human. Who knew? Daisy sent one last swift look at Jemma and left to handle whatever emergency had arisen on the inhuman front.

What the hell happened on that planet, and what would Jemma do now?

Week Six

For the next two days, her timing was so terrible, it might as well be one of their plans. She dropped by whenever she could get one of the other agents to cover the enforcement agency channels, but Jemma was always sleeping. Daisy busied herself with briefings and seeing Joey, and worked on trying to track Lincoln, who wasn’t answering her calls. Finally, she escaped and made it to Jemma’s bedroom, but there was no answer to her soft knock, so Daisy moved on to her own quarters two doors down and passed out face first into the mattress.

Coulson called her in before she was even fully awake the next morning, to a distress call in Tallahassee. It turned out to be a false alarm—just a kid with a lighter and some superstitious neighbors—but the mission still nearly went sideways three times. Daisy couldn’t deny that she was frustrated. Searching for other inhumans was beyond trying to find a needle in a haystack. More like a needle in a field full of haystacks.

And behind all of that a constant tattoo beat in her head: Jemma is pregnant, Jemma came back from an alien planet with a baby.

In the hangar bay after nearly five days in Florida, she stepped off the quinjet and frowned. “Why don’t you go on without me?” she asked Mack.

“Tremors?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Got something on your mind?”

“Nah, I just—I just—” Stop babbling, Sk—Daisy. He’s going to know something’s up. “I think I’ll take a walk, clear my head before I get stuck in an underground base and feeling all claustrophobic. Or worse, somebody needs me to do something.”

Mack eyed her, but he nodded. “I’ll keep your paperwork warm for you.”

“My hero,” she said, and waved at the rest of the support team as they headed in for post-mission grub. Daisy moved back to her quarters to grab a set of civvies, pulling a dark beanie over her hair, and made for the secret exit that put her on Fourth Street. From there, it was only a few blocks to the bookstore.

She kept an eye out, just to be sure nobody tailed her, before taking a deep breath and stepping resolutely to the appropriate shelf. Wow, this area of the bookstore was huge. And there were so many books with similar titles. Daisy stared at the bookshelf.

Rows and rows of babies stared back at her from the covers. She picked up What to Expect When You’re Expecting because even a homeless hacker living in a van had heard of that one, and paged through. More than part of her felt ridiculous. It was absurd that she’d even be here looking at these books. Jemma had, like, a gazillion degrees, she was bound to know everything that went into pregnancy. But Daisy didn’t, and she felt kind of stupid about it.

Even worse, there wasn’t really a What to Expect When Your Best Friend Went to an Alien Planet and is Now Expecting. Unfair. There seemed to be every other super-specific topic of baby raising on these shelves. But that was Jemma Simmons for you. Always going above and beyond in the most endearing way.

Daisy selected a couple books that didn’t look as schmaltzy as the others, ones she suspected might be written with the fathers in mind, and carried them to the counter. She paid cash and made sure not to be memorable, neither staring nor avoiding the cashier’s eyes. When she left, she kept the beanie low.

At the next store over, she picked up a cloth shopping bag just in case the plastic bag they gave her wasn’t opaque enough. She also rooted around in a small gift section, as she didn’t want Jemma to think she was avoiding her or weird about anything. So a little trinket, that seemed like the ticket. A little blue vase of bright yellow daisies, cheerful and bobbing gently in the breeze of a ceiling fan, caught her eye, and Daisy paid for them almost without thinking about it. Books safely hidden, flowers in hand, she went home.

For once, she was in luck.

“Skye!” Jemma’s face lit up when Daisy stepped in. Then she looked down and away, sheepish. “Daisy. Sorry.”

Daisy held out the flowers. “It’s a multipurpose gift,” she said. “It’s pretty, and it’s a reminder. You can call me whatever you want.” She absolutely meant that. Everybody else had an adjustment period where they called her Sk-daisy, which was aggravating but at least they were trying. With Jemma, Daisy was so happy she was back that she didn’t care.

She studied her friend, pale and diminished but vibrantly alive, and words came tumbling out. “I can’t stay for too long, I’m tracking law-enforcement channels, but I’m really sorry that I haven’t come sooner. It’s—there’s just a lot going on.”

“And I’ve been sleeping.” Jemma’s voice cracked, but her smile felt real and familiar.

“Which is good,” Daisy said a little too fast. Sleep was good for the baby, right? It seemed like it would be. “Do whatever you need to do to get better. We need you. And I…” What did you say to somebody who comes back from another dimension with an amniotic passenger in tow? She sat down on the bed, glancing once at where Jemma’s hand resting on her abdomen. Absently, like an afterthought.

Jemma sighed. “Bobbi told you.”

“The tech who ran your tests wasn’t exactly discreet. Coulson fired his ass, don’t worry, but Bobbi told the team in case it got out. I know you probably don’t want to talk about what happened yet, but when you do, I’m here to listen.” Daisy set the bag of the books on the floor and sat on the bed, close to but not crowding her friend. Bobbi had warned her that Jemma still jumped at everything.

“I’d rather listen now, if that’s okay.” Jemma leaned forward. “The terrigen is spreading?”

“And so’s the paranoia.” Shoptalk. She could handle shoptalk. Daisy filled her in on the nightmare of the past few months, the way cocoons spread all over the world, with inhumans popping up—

“Like daisies?” Jemma interrupted, giving her a small, real smile.

“I’ll let you have that one,” Daisy said, unable to stop her laugh. “We found a new one a few weeks ago. Joey Gutiérrez. He’s very sweet. He just melts metal, like, poof, wow. I think once he gets a handle on it, he’ll be incredible. If we can ever get Dr. Garner to sign off on letting him be a full-time team member.”

At this rate, Andrew was never going to sign off on anybody for a secret inhuman team.

“And you?” Jemma asked, surprising Daisy. “How are you handling all of this?”

“I…” Daisy blinked. She hadn’t really thought about it. How was she handling Lincoln being a fugitive, the ads from politicians on TV, the fearmongering and spreading hate toward what she was? The message boards about “How to Hunt Inhuman Scum” that twisted her stomach into knots? Even at SHIELD, where she was insulated, a couple of the new agents still twitched whenever she walked into the room. “I’m handling it. I’ve been more worried about you, to be honest. You’re really okay?”

“I think so.” Jemma’s voice was soft, like talking too loud hurt her ears. “I just…there’s…some of it is hard to talk about and—”

She jolted like frightened prey when Daisy’s cell phone buzzed. “I am so sorry,” Daisy said.

“N-no, it’s okay. You should take that.”

Guilty, Daisy picked up the phone and answered. Lincoln’s voice, distressed and just as afraid as Jemma seemed, filled her ear. She gave Jemma one last apologetic look and, passing the daisies on the nightstand, hurried off go to handle yet another crisis.

Part 2.

#skimmons #bioquake #agents of shield #daisy johnson #jemma simmons #bobbi morse #mack #avengers #avengers fanfiction #aos fanfiction #fanfiction #given unsought #lincoln is there but he's kind of 'sir not appearing in this fic'

[marvelousbirthdays]

Happy Birthday,  phantomofthenightclub!

May 3 - "What’s your favorite silverware? Because I like to spoon!” Jemma/Bucky or Karen Page/Frank Castle for @phantomofthenightclub

This is Jemma/Bucky, unashamedly pulling from the classic ‘huddling for warmth’ trope :3

Written by @cinnaatheart (CinnaAtHeart on AO3)

The cabin is so many shades of ‘disaster waiting to happen’ Jemma can scarcely believe it actually exists. The tiny, one-bedroom homestead is hidden in the wilds of Canada, an hour’s drive from the nearest township. The bedroom itself is poky and cramped, the mattress on the bed at least a few decades old, and the kitchen- if one could really call it that- smells ever so faintly of rancid meat and cigarette smoke. So far out, the cabin isn’t hooked to the power grid, powered instead by a generator that could be described as shonky at best, and don’t even get her started on the bathroom. It’s a horror show on all levels, and more than once she pinches herself, as though somehow it might wake her from this walking nightmare of a mission.

Jemma’s suspects their ‘banishment’ here is half-research assignment, half an excuse to keep Barnes hidden in the aftermath of the latest international disaster. Another ‘favour for a friend’, no doubt, though Coulson had been sketchy on the details.

She doesn’t quite know what to think of Barnes. He seems quiet for the most part; when she saw him back at base, he seemed to move tentatively, like he’s afraid of making himself noticeable. A helpless case there; more than once Jemma’s had to remind herself to stop staring, all too easily entranced by the graceful utility of his movements and his muted smile when he sees something he likes. It’s… distracting, and she’d been almost relieved to finally reach the cabin and have him run off as soon as she’d set her bags down..

She sighs, and stares glumly down at the generator, lit dimly by the torch on her phone. Unsurprisingly, it had gone kaput about ten minutes ago, taking with it their only source of light. “Damn,” she huffs. She looks over the machine, searching for any evidence of a fault, breath turning to a thick fog around her. “Why couldn’t Fitz have come along?”

“What’s wrong?”

Jemma yelps, and her phone tumbles from her frozen grip, landing with a disappointing thwack in the slush around the generator. “Bugger,” she growls, and bends down to retrieve it, wiping the mud off carefully. “You scared me,” she says, glaring over at Barnes half-heartedly. He at least has the grace to look sheepish, his face deeply shadowed by the moonlight. She wonders, briefly, where he’s been all day.

“Sorry,” he says. He scratches at the back on his head awkwardly, and motions to the generator. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Jemma fusses, and turns back to the machine. “It just… stopped working! I have a basic knowledge of how it works, but Fitz is the engineer, not me.”

“Hmm,” he hums. He shoulders past her, and Jemma tries not to inhale too deeply at the scent of him; leather and the sharp, astringent scent of pine needles. Rude.

Barnes crouches down beside the generator, and looks over it curiously; Jemma tries to light his view for him with her phone, but she doubts there’s much they can do in the dark. Better off really to wait until morning to see what the problem is.

As if to confirm her thoughts, Barnes settles back on his haunches, looking put out. “Beats me what’s wrong with it,” he sighs, breath misting. “Guess we’ll just have to live by candlelight tonight.”

Jemma bites her lip, and misses the way his gaze lingers on her mouth. “Do you think we can fix it tomorrow? I need to be able to use my computer.”

He shrugs. “Maybe? I’m no expert, but I think we can work it out.”

She nods, satisfied. A cold breeze rustles through the trees, and through the silhouetted branches, she watches a mass of clouds creep over the moon. She shivers. “I wonder if it’ll snow again.”

Barnes scowls and stands, fussing with the thick scarf wrapped around his neck. “I hope not. C’mon, we should get inside.”

“Right,” Jemma says absently, and she lets him lead her around the cabin and inside. It’s significantly warmer, though she’d let the wood-burning stove go cold hours ago, and the fire’s died down. “Where have you been, anyway?”

He shrugs off his coat and hangs it on one of the hooks by the door, kicking off his muddy boots with a graceful efficiency. She copies him, and grimaces as she realises how much warmth she’s let leech away from the rooms, the chill of the wood seeping through her socks. Shouldn’t have let herself get distracted by her work.

Barnes ambles over to the fire and tosses in another cut log. “Just out,” he says. “Felt like going for a walk.”

“All day?” she blurts out, and when he glances over at her she blushes, fumbling for the right thing to say. “Sorry- it’s just- you know…”

He shakes his head, looking wary. “No, I don’t know.”

Jemma shrugs helplessly. “Well… most people I know don’t go for day long ‘walks’ through the wilds of Canada in the middle of winter! Did you even take food?”

He pinks and glances away. “I… didn’t want to get in your hair,” he says quietly. Jemma blinks in surprise.

“Why would you get in my hair?”

His mouth twists. She finds his micro-expressions fascinating. For a former assassin, Jemma thinks, he’s not terribly good at school his emotions. “I’ve seen you work. At base,” he explains, every word slow and deliberate, “you seem to get very… absorbed. I didn’t want to break your concentration.”

“Oh,” she says, and looks away. She can’t think of anything else to say.

--

Jemma shifts in her bed for the umpteenth time, curled in on herself to try and stave off the bitter cold. The main room of the cabin may be warm- thanks to the fire and the stove- but the poky little bedroom Barnes had insisted she take is freezing, even with four layers of blankets and a woollen duvet. Sleeping had been a lost cause the moment she’d slipped into bed.

At her wit’s end, she sighs and slips out of the bed. The duvet she hangs around her shoulders like a cape, and determined, she pick up her musty-smelling pillow and wanders out into the main room. The change in temperature is immediate, the fire stoked so enthusiastically she almost begins to sweat.

Barnes- spread languidly across the single, uncharacteriscally spacious futon, book in hand- looks up. “Hey,” he says, looking confused. The warm orange light of the fire casts his face is rich shadows. “What’s up?”

“I…” Jemma shuffles self-consciously. She feels oddly child-like, draped in her blanket and clutching her pillow like a teddy-bear. If Barnes thinks the same, he shows no sign of it. “I couldn’t sleep. My room is freezing.”

“Ah,” he says. He dog-ears his page and drops the paperback on the floor. “Did you want the couch?”

“No, no! It’s fine! I can just sleep on the floor.”

He frowns at her. “I ain’t gonna let a woman sleep on the floor,” he says disapprovingly.

“It’s fine, really! I’ve slept on far worse!”

“Bull.” He shakes his head and sits up. In his sweatpants and knitted jumper, he looks soft and unfairly handsome; miles away from the legend he carried for fifty years. “The floor’ll leach the warmth right outta you.”

“Fine,” she capitulates. It’s late, she reasons, and she’s tired. “We could share the couch though…? I mean, if that’s okay with you…”

His brows rise in surprise and he blinks at her. “Yeah alright.”

He lies back down and holds up his blanket, and it’s Jemma’s turn to stare at him in surprise. His mouth curls into a smirk. “C’mon doll,” he says. “I’m getting’ cold here. No shame in keeping warm.”

“Right!’ Jemma is certain her entire face is on fire, but she drops her pillow and sits down tentatively at the edge of the futon. She had meant sleep end-to-end, but when a man like Barnes offers to share his space, she’s not about to object. She’s selfish like that.

He smiles and tugs her down, tucking her back against him and pulls his blankets over the top of them. “Do you mind?” he asks quietly, hand hovering over her waist.

“It’s fine,” she says again, feeling stiff and ungainly as she shifts, trying to get herself comfortable despite her acute awareness of his proximity. He murmurs a ‘thanks’ into her hair, and curls his arm around her waist. Jemma’s mouth goes dry, heart stuttering in her chest.

“If it makes you feel any better, I promise not to let my hands wander.”

“I’m sure,” she says. “Sorry to make you share.”

He chuckles, low and soft. “Oh, I dunno,” he drawls, and Jemma may not be able to see him, but she can hear his smirk plain as day, “I’m always up for a nice spoon.”

“Oh my God,” she says, face burning. “Please shut up.”

“What’s wrong, doll? Got another piece of silverware in mind?”

“I have no idea what that means, but I can hear the euphemism in your voice.”

He laughs again, and his arm tightens around Jemma’s waist. Barnes is blissfully warm, the smell of pine weaker now, but still present. She stares into the fire, hypnotised by the flames. They’re peaceful.

“Don’t worry,” he says eventually. Jemma twitches in his hold, and tries not to dwell on the strange intimacy in his voice. “My intentions are pure, I swear.”

She giggles despite herself. “What a relief,” she drawls, her speech slurring with a wide, jaw-cracking yawn.

“You should sleep.”

“Mm. So should you.”

“Don’t worry about me, doll. You get your beauty sleep. You need it.”

She scoffs in mock outrage and elbows him in the gut, and Barnes yelps, flinching backwards. “Rude!” she scolds him and he cackles, the sound loud and cheery in her ear.

“Sorry- sorry!” he laughs. “I’ll behave, I swear.”

“Liar,” she grumbles, but she hides her smile beneath the blankets. This man is going to be the death of her, she’s sure.

#Jemma/Bucky #winter biochemist

[b00k-freak]

Robot

Summary: May can't figure out which is more terrifying. Keeping this a secret and potentially hurting her team, or telling them, and having them hate her.

a.n. So I wrote this all today because DAMNIT I FEEL SO BAD FOR ROBO MAY. Spoilers for 410

Daisy wasn't sure what woke her up so early in the morning, but she was wide awake the second she opened her eyes. She yawned, stretching, and pulled on her workout clothes, thinking of going to the gym to get some training done.

When she opened her door, however, it was to find a hesitant looking Melinda May on the other side, looking like she was about to knock. Daisy smiled, “May, hey. What,” She yawned again, “are you doing up?”

She saw May's throat work for a moment before she spoke. “I need to talk to you.”

Daisy could see the apprehension on her face a mile away. “What is it?” She asked, concerned. “Is something wrong?”

The worry in Daisy's eyes made Melinda's heart ache. Except... no. She didn't really have a heart, did she? And Daisy wasn't actually worried about her. May nodded quietly.

Daisy gestured to her room. “Do you wanna come in?”

Melinda entered silently, sinking into Daisy's chair. Daisy sat on the edge of her unmade bed, leaning forwards. May sighed. “If I asked you to throw me into a holding cell with no explanation, would you do it?”

Daisy rolled her eyes. “Have we met?” She asked sarcastically. She was going for a joke, but the look on May's face was only one of conflict. Daisy hesitated. “May, you're scaring me. Just- tell me what it is, okay? We'll figure it out.”

Melinda tried to take a breath to calm down, but even that felt wrong. Did she even need to breathe? She trembled ever so slightly. “I- I'm not who you think I am.”

Daisy cocker her head. “What do you mean?” She bit her lip. “Did you have a nightmare about...”

But May shook her head. “I haven't slept.”

“Okay.” Daisy would hound her about that later. “Then what is it?”

May tried to say it. I think I'm an android. The words wouldn't come. She wasn't sure if she was programmed not to say it, or if she was just too scared. She chewed on her lip. “I feel like me.” She said softly, “I- I know I care about everyone. I remember-” She sucked a breath, trying to calm down, “I remember training you. I remember being at the academy with Coulson. All our missions as a team.”

Daisy frowned. “Yeah, so do I. What's going on?”

Melinda looked down. She couldn't say it. No way Daisy would just figure it out. She swallowed the sour feeling in her mouth. She didn't want to lose Daisy, but... she wasn't the person Daisy thought she was. “I-” She couldn't ask Daisy to trust her. She didn't even trust herself. “I need you to look at my shoulder.”

“Is something wrong?” Daisy asked, “Is it infected or something?”

She shook her head. “No. Y-” She felt sick. “You have to- pull the skin back to see.”

Daisy recoiled. “Are you serious?! I'm not gonna do that! I don't wanna hurt you, and- what the hell May?!”

Melinda licked her lips. She should have known that Daisy wouldn't make this easy. She was so scared though. Daisy was... Daisy. She didn't want to lose her, or any of her team.

But they weren't her team.

Melinda drew her swiss army knife from her pocket. “I didn't know.” She said softly, and before Daisy could shout out, May had driven the knife into her abdomen.

Daisy screamed, rocketing backwards. “W-what the hell are you doing?!” She exclaimed, staring at the knife May was removing from her stomach, wincing in pain.

Melinda put the knife down, holding up her hands. “Daisy- look.”

Daisy went for the door. “The only thing I'm looking for is a doctor.” She said.

“No, Daisy-” May stood and caught her arm. “Look.” She gestured to the wound, and the first thing Daisy noticed was that if definitely should be bleeding more than that. Then May wiped away a little of it with her shirt as she pulled it up, and Daisy saw the telltale shine of metal beneath the skin.

Daisy stared, uncomprehending for a long moment as the reality started to sink in. She wrenched her arm from May's grip, taking several steps backwards. She tried to speak. She couldn't.

May held up her hands, hating the fear in Daisy's eyes. “I'm not gonna hurt you.” She said, “I-I don't know what's going on.”

Daisy stared. “Y-you're not May.”

Melinda swallowed. “I- I feel like I am.” She said, “I didn't know until I hurt my shoulder.”

Daisy started to relax her arms, tentatively accepting that this... robot May, wasn't going to attack. “I- where's the real May?”

The emphasis put on 'real' stung. “I don't know.” She admitted, “But if I had to put money on it...”

Daisy's eyes narrowed. “Aida did something.” She growled, but the fear started to grow. Had May been dead for weeks? “When did this happen?”

The robot shook her head. “I don't know, Daisy- I... I don't know what to do.”

Daisy could see the panic written all over the robot's countenance, and realised that she didn't look very much different. “Just- breathe, okay? We'll figure this out.”

May felt sick again. “I don't need to breath though, do I?”

Daisy took a deep breath. “To calm down you do.” She bit her lip. “Remember? You taught me that.”

“That wasn't me.” May said, but did as Daisy said. Her shoulders sagged as she exhaled, and despite everything, she felt slightly better. “We need to find... me.”

Daisy hesitated. “Who can we trust though?” She asked, realising. “Any of the others could be...”

May rolled her eyes. “Can't go around stabbing everyone.”

Daisy thought for a moment, then brought her hand up, facing the ceiling, and sent out the tiniest of pulses. “Aida can't copy this.” She said.

May nodded. “So you're not-”

“That's a start.” Daisy muttered. “And Yoyo. But the others...”

That pulled Melinda up short. Were the others androids too? Was Phil? Oh God. Phil. She sank back into the chair.

“Hey,” Daisy's voice interrupted her thoughts. “We'll figure this out. Everything's gonna be alright.”

“Then what?” May asked quietly. She was scared. Best case scenario they found... her, alive and well, took down Aida or whoever was behind this, and then... she wasn't sure. She would be deactivated, probably.

Daisy put a tentative hand over hers. “I... I won't let anyone hurt you.” She promised.

Melinda wished she could pull away. “Why not?” She asked flatly. “I'm not really May. I... I don't know what I am.”

Daisy cocked her head. “I do.” She said softly. “You're someone who needs help. And,” She smiled a little, “Lucky for you, I'm kind of a big deal when it comes to superheroes.”

Despite herself, Melinda smiled. “Good to see it hasn't gone to your head.”

Daisy grinned back. “You know me, modest to a fault.”

May rolled her eyes and Daisy hesitated. “Look, I know you're not... really May.” She said, “But you told me the truth, and that means that you trust me, so... I trust you too.” She swallowed. “We could still be friends, if you want.”

Melinda swallowed. “Thank you Daisy.” She said softly. She was okay with losing everything she thought she was, just so long as she could keep the people she cared about.

Daisy smiled bashfully. “You gonna cry now?” She teased, trying to hide her own embarrassment.

“Robots don't cry.”

“Sappy robots do.”

#Agents of SHIELD fanfic #AoS fanfic #Daisymay #Melinda May #Daisy Johnson #Family feels

[elrondsscribe]

The Seventh Avenger: Chapter 2

All rights belong to Marvel Studios and the Tolkien Estate.

Unforgivably early morning, May 3, 2012

Glorfindel always enjoyed his first week back at work after a two month "break," but at the end of each night, he was glad for the day to be over.

It was the first week back in the routine - warming up, stretching, and exercising in the morning, making the long, hectic drive to the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and spending the entire day training and rehearsing and dancing. And after the equally long drive back to his apartment, he was perfectly happy to fall into bed and sleep through the night (which he rarely bothered to do). He had not slept much last night, and had been a little sluggish the subsequent day.

Which was why the buzzing of his phone at about half past three in the morning was was an even more unwelcome sound than usual. "Thought I put you on silent," he grumbled, sitting up blearily and grabbing at the offending device to see what was up.

It was an incoming call. There was no number or name on the screen - "Blocked number" was all that was displayed.

He was suddenly wide awake. He didn't get many calls from blocked numbers, and considering he'd recently had a surprise visit from the director of a quasi-intelligence agency . . .

He swiped his thumb over the "Answer" icon and put the phone to his ear. "Who is this?" he asked, not caring how rude it was.

"I trust I don't have to re-introduce myself," came the inimitable voice of Nick Fury.

"Thought as much," said Glorfindel dryly. "I assume there's only one reason you're calling me in the middle of the night. You need me to come in, don't you?"

"I'll put it this way," rumbled Fury. "There's a car waiting for you outside your complex, with one of our best agents inside. He's going to bring you to a facility where I'll be waiting in a chopper, and you and I are gonna take a ride."

Glorfindel arched his eyebrows. "On the off-chance that you are not who I believe you are or you try to take me anywhere funny, understand that I will kill you and whoever's with you with my bare hands and leave the bodies where they won't be found for the next decade." He hung up with another swipe, and stared resentfully at his phone.

Then trudged into the bathroom where he splashed his face and head with water, pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt, and wrestled his hair into two braids. He shoved his feet into his sneakers and pocketed his phone, wallet, and keys.

He slipped quietly out of his apartment, locked it behind him, and walked quietly down the hall, taking the stairs rather than the elevator. The security guards looked at him sideways when he checked himself out at the front desk, but let him out without too many questions.

He stepped outside and paused, looking up and down the curb for an unfamiliar car. Half a block away was a plain black sedan, with a man in a business suit leaning easily against it. As soon as he saw Glorfindel, he waved.

Glorfindel took a breath, quelled his misgivings, and walked up to the car. The man - presumably Fury's agent - was of average height with such a mild expression and unassuming manner that Glorfindel immediately felt uneasy.

"Please get in," said the agent, opening the passenger door of the sedan. Glorfindel swung himself inside, and was pleasantly surprised to find the seat situated well back from the dashboard to accommodate his longer legs.

The agent shut the door, passed around the front of the car, and climbed into the driver's seat. He smiled at Glorfindel and produced a laminated name tag from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. "Agent Coulson, Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division," he said.

Glorfindel dipped his head. "You must be Fury's agent," he said.

Agent Coulson's smile did not alter. "Buckle up," he said, and pushed a large button by the steering wheel. The engine turned over and all the car windows lit up with blue and white icons. A bright point of light shone briefly and rather painfully into Glorfindel's eyes, and a rather grating alarm began to blare. "Unidentified being present," said an automated voice.

"Add retinal scan under the name Glorfindel," said Agent Coulson, and to Glorfindel he added, "Sorry about that."

"Not a problem," Glorfindel lied, fastening his safety belt. Now any SHIELD fool can trace me anywhere, and I'm not that good at hacking. Damn you, Fury, this was not part of the deal. "Are you at liberty to tell me what's going on?"

Agent Coulson pointed at the glove compartment. "There's a folder in there with everything we have so far," he said, beginning to pull away from the curb. "Oh, there is one thing, though. Do you know anything about Norse mythology?"

Glorfindel, who was in the act of opening the glove compartment to retrieve the folder, looked around in some confusion. "Norse mythology? You mean the exaggerated stories the Scandinavians liked to tell about the strange race of warriors who fought off alien invaders about a thousand years ago?"

"You saying you were there?" asked Coulson with obvious interest.

"Well, not personally," said Glorfindel candidly. "I was in the Middle East at the time . . . but I did hear about it."

"Huh," said Coulson, seeming to store this little fact away for further inquiry later. "Well, is there anything you can tell us about a Loki?"

"Loki?" Glorfindel frowned. "I don't think I've heard the name from anybody I'd consider a credible source. The tales I've heard over the years say he's good at sorcery and rather mischievous, but fairly harmless as demigods go. Why?"

"He might have honored us with a visit last night," said Coulson placidly. It took a moment or two for the impact of his words to sink in.

"Loki is real?" he asked sharply.

"Real, and here," said Fury grimly. He was seated across from Glorfindel in a SHIELD helicopter, and together with Agent Coulson and an agent in the pilot's chair they were flying from a secured base just outside of New York City. Coulson had driven the sedan into a concealed garage and escorted Glorfindel into the base to meet Fury, who seemed distinctly ruffled and had refused to say anything about the situation until everybody was inside the chopper. "Introduced himself and everything; said he was 'burdened with glorious purpose' or some bullshit. Stole an important artifact and made off with it, in the process destroying one of our facilities, brainwashing a couple dozen of our best men, and killing a couple dozen others."

"Eru, it's too early for this," muttered Glorfindel, rubbing his forehead. But aloud he said, "What did Loki steal?"

"Can you tell me anything about the guy or not?" asked Fury rather irritably.

Glorfindel sighed. "No, I can't. Now you said we had about a ninety-minute ride - tell me more about what Loki stole from you. This," he lifted the folder. "doesn't mention anything about an artifact."

"That's classified," said Fury.

"Sure it is, which is why you're flying me who knows where in the wee hours of the morning instead of just arranging to meet me." The Elf leaned forward. "Do you understand that I just went back to work for the season?"

"Look, I'm sorry about the inconvenience," said Fury, sincerely enough that Glorfindel believed him. "But this is need-to-know for now, you got it?"

Glorfindel's jaw tightened. "Fury, there was a reason I left the intelligence field. I didn't join your precious Avengers Initiative to get back in the game."

"And I'm telling you now what I told you then," said Fury. "I'm not asking you to get back in the game. I'm asking if you're prepared to give us a hand while we track down Loki and the agents he swooped off with."

"Including the one who shoots a bow and arrow," Glorfindel couldn't help saying.

"His choice," said Fury with a shrug.

May 3, 2012

"You've been briefed on the situation already?" asked the redheaded, attractive, and smartly dressed Agent Romanoff as she began escorting Glorfindel across the deck. Director Fury had been whisked away on urgent matters at once, and she had taken the Elf in hand once they stepped off the helicopter onto the paved deck of some enormous vessel in the middle of the Atlantic. Glorfindel had dropped all pretenses and now walked fully clothed in his natural radiance.

He held up the folder Fury had given him on the helicopter. "I know what's in here and the little Fury would tell me," he said. "Is that Dr. Banner?" he pointed ahead.

A man with gently waving dark hair sprinkled with grey and a nervous manner seemed to be trying to stay out of everybody's way - actually to vanish into the air, in Glorfindel's opinion. He turned at the sound of his name, and caught sight of Romanoff and the tall Elf. His eyes behind the specs widened ever so slightly, and he came over to fall into step on Glorfindel's other side. "Mr., uh, Alexander?" he asked uncertainly.

"Glorfindel, please," said that individual with a smile. "My pleasure, Dr. Banner, and thanks for saving Harlem."

The Man blinked, obviously taken aback. "Uh, if that's what you wanna call it," he muttered uncomfortably, adjusting his glasses. "Natasha," he nodded at Romanoff.

"Doctor," Natasha Romanoff nodded back. "Just Glorfindel, or is there a title?"

"Oh, I haven't had a title for nearly five hundred years," said Glorfindel casually, relishing the way Banner seemed suddenly to pull up short as he realized the strangeness of having an immortal next to him.

But Romanoff was of course not so easily readable. "Course not, you've been in America, if I'm not mistaken," she said.

"You aren't," said Glorfindel. "Is this our base, by the way?"

"Until we can track down the Cube," said Romanoff. "You know, ever since Fury reported having found you and basically proved a bunch of really popular literature to be true, people have been geeking out like crazy. Be prepared for celebrity status and nerdgasms. There's our next candidate," she added, pointing.

Glorfindel stopped and took a second look at the tall broad-shouldered fair-haired man just stepping off the ramp of a small jet. "That's not who it looks like, is it?"

Agent Coulson, who seemed to be a person of some importance, was accompanying the fresh-faced celebrity from the past. "Agent Romanoff, Dr. Banner, Glorfindel," he introduced them proudly. "Captain Rogers."

(Glorfindel solidly resisted the urge to break out in song - Who's strong and brave, here to save the American way? - and from cracking age or ice-related jokes.)

"Ma'am," said the Captain politely, shaking hands with each of the three in turn. "Doctor, sir." His gaze lingered disapprovingly on the Elf's nearly waist-length hair.

"Captain," returned Glorfindel with a brilliant smile. "How nice to meet you again."

Captain Rogers blinked, obviously not remembering him and not wanting to say so.

"Good to see you again, Agent Coulson," said Glorfindel, smiling more normally as he shook the man's hand

Romanoff had shot Glorfindel a look that threatened amusement, but next moment was all business. "They need you on the bridge, they're starting the face trace," she told Coulson.

"See you there," said Rogers to Coulson, who promptly vanished.

"Quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice," said Romanoff to Rogers as they drifted toward the deck railing. "I thought Coulson in particular was gonna swoon." She smirked. "Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"

Glorfindel stifled a chuckle. Coulson had hidden it well, but there had been a slightly star-struck air about him while in the Captain's presence.

"Trading cards?" Rogers was smiling.

"They're vintage," said Romanoff helpfully. "He's very proud."

Rogers turned away from the subject, and his eye fell on Dr. Banner again, who was silently trailing Glorfindel like a nervous child trails his father.

"You know, I hear you can find the Cube, Dr. Banner," he said.

"That all you've heard about me?" asked Banner skeptically.

"All I've heard that matters," said Rogers firmly.

Banner nodded, seeming to appreciate this.

Glorfindel, looking at the two men, thought suddenly that in Steve Rogers Banner must be seeing the finished project, the result he had so catastrophically failed to duplicate (not that it was his own fault, as Glorfindel well knew from the stories leaked by an anonymous disgruntled underling of one General Thaddeus 'The Thunderbolt' Ross). He felt a pang of sympathy for the physicist.

"Vita rays," he heard himself say aloud.

"Scuse me?" Steve blinked up at him.

"Sorry, I was talking to myself," said Glorfindel.

But at that moment Agent Romanoff, who had just thrown a look over her shoulder, spoke again. "Gentlemen, you may want to step inside in a moment. It's going to get a little hard to breathe."

Almost as she said it, there came a series of clankings and whirrings as people around them began hurrying in various directions and barking orders.

"Oh, this is a submarine?" asked Glorfindel in surprise. The thing didn't seem the right shape and the deck was still littered with jets and copters. He went to the edge with Steve and Banner to look.

"Really?" said Banner wryly. "They want me in a submerged pressurized metal container?"

And then the water beyond the edges of the deck began frothing and foaming, and from beneath the surface rose two great fans with blades each the size of a small cottage. At the same time Glorfindel could feel the concrete quivering under his feet now begin, not to sink, but to ascend. Cataracts of water streamed from various openings as the vessel climbed into the air.

Steve's eyes widened. "An airship?!"

"A Helicarrier," corrected Agent Romanoff. "We'll be airborne for a while."

Banner smiled. "Well, this is much worse!"

#the seventh avenger #elrondsscribe #fanfiction #fanfiction on tumblr #crossover #avengers #lotr #lord of the rings

[quinlin-blog1]

The Lost Island ~ Chapter Six

Currently, school was going to be held off. The only things that we were learning right now were specialty control and self-defense. I was feeling much better now, my cold was gone, but after that Catherine and Crystal got sick, but we got over that too.

Another thing was bugging me as well. Crystal was hiding something from us. She came around less and less, she wasn't obsessing over baby animals like she used to, and she rarely ever spoke to us. This was different from Crystal’s usual behavior, usually she always had something to say, even if it had nothing to do with what we were talking about. I could always rely on her to brighten the mood if she needed to. But now, she just couldn’t and I really wanted to find out why.

Catherine and I stormed up to the animal guru's living area. We opened the door, to see Crystal cornered by, what seemed to be the entire group of them. Catherine and I cast each other an unsure look and we crept closer, deceivingly quiet. But we weren't prepared for what we heard.

“You know. My sister used to have a clown fish as a pet. Maybe you're related!”

“Come on funny one, tell us a joke!”

“Maybe you should just leave!”

“We'd be better off without you”

The insults were flowing from everyone. Catherine and I looked at each other, our eyes were completely filled with anger and understanding. We now knew why Crystal had been acting so weird.

“Hey!” I shouted. Grabbing the attention of everyone if the room. Crystal seemed to become paler when she saw us standing there.

“Maybe you should leave her alone and pick on someone your own size,” I yelled at them.

The biggest one of the group came out and looked at me. He towered over me, he must have been at least six foot. Much taller than me, even though I was quite tall.

“Who are you to tell us what to do?” He sneered, he most likely expected me to back down.

“I'm me and that should be enough. Now leave my friend alone before I make you,” I replied.

“Make us! Ha! You can't make us tiny!”

“And why should I waste my time on people like you?” I challenged, not really feeling the need for violence.

Catherine was pulling Crystal out of range while everyone was distracted.

“Excuse me?”

“Why should I bother with people like you? You’re not worth my time!” I laughed bitterly, without humor “You are all horrible people. Torturing someone who’s different from you? Taunting them because you don’t like them. That’s low.” I stated.

“Two months,” A voice piped up. Though it came with no context, I understood what they meant.

“Two months? That’s how long this has been going on? Why would you do that?” I asked, my voice filled with venom and pity.

No one answered.

“Any one?” I asked.

Nothing.

“If there was no reason to it, then why would you do it?” I think I was terrifying them right now.

“If I catch this happening one more time. You will wish you never came into my path” I warned, my voice lowering. They nodded hastily. “Now, if you'll excuse me. I now must have to deal with a broken girl. Off you trot”

I waved them off and made my way to Crystal’s room. I heard Catherine in there and sniffling, so I could only assume that this had hurt Crystal more than anything before. Sure, we’d been through things, like when Bets fell out of the tree and sprained her ankle, she cried then, and she cried when Agent Coulson died in the Avengers, but I don’t think that this was like those times.

I knocked and went in. Crystal was a little worse for wear, maybe more than a little. She looked terrible. But don't tell her I said that.

“Hey Bets,” I said softly, sitting next to wear my friends were.

“H-hey D-Delly” Crystal stuttered. Trying to wipe the obvious tears away.

“Bets why didn't you tell us?” Catherine asked.

“I didn't want you to be disappointed in me. I was afraid you'd see me as weak and judge me. I'm not supposed to be bugged by these kinds of things, but it hit me too close to home. I didn't say anything because I was worried that you wouldn't think the same of me anymore.” She sniffled.

That literally, almost broke my little black heart. I didn't know what to say and it appeared that Catherine didn't either. I simply blinked at her. But Crystal only assumed the worst.

“Well?! Say something!” She shouted

“Bets. You should have told us. We wouldn't have thought of you any differently than we already do. I hurt slightly that you'd expect us to.” Catherine said

“Yeah Bets. Telling us before would have been much healthier for you. Looks at what's happened! Look at what you've done to yourself! If you had told us before all of this could have been avoided,” I stated.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier. I was just scared”

“Well next time, if there even is one, tell us first,” Catherine said.

“Yeah. I could knock a few heads sooner,” I joked and Crystal giggled slightly.

We're OK. We're going to be OK.

And if there was any time when I have more jinxed us, I’d be worried.

“Where is she?!” I bellowed as Crystal and I were sitting in Olive’s office. Catherine had been kidnapped in the middle of the night. I was even awake at the time! How could I not have heard? She would have had to have made some sort of distressed noise, Catherine was one of the lightest sleepers I know, surely, she couldn’t have slept through her own kidnapping.

“We're doing everything we can Dri.” Olive assured me.

“Well it’s not enough!” I shouted.

I’d always felt that it was my job to make sure my friends were safe, as an older sister I’ve always felt like it’s my job to protect and help my family and friends. How can I do that now? Catherine is gone, maybe if I’d been there to help her she would be safe.

But there was no real way to know that and deep down inside I knew that it wasn’t really my fault, but I still felt that way on the outside. And due to these feelings, I was acting very short tempered.

“Delly. They're doing what they can. For now, you and me need to go tell Alex and Porter,” Crystal told me.

I looked at Olive, who stared back at me, her expression unchanging. I felt a sudden surge of hate towards my older Sister in-law. I hoped for a moment that maybe she would say something more, but she turned away from me.

Crystal helped me up and we went back to my rooms, a quiet, lonely walk where neither of us spoke because we didn’t know what to say, neither of us really wanting to talk. We walked into Catherine, Alex and my shared living room, where Alex was just waking up. She looked at us as we walked in and I could tell by the look in her eyes that she knew something was wrong.

“Addy, Crys. Where's Cathy?” She asked

My breath caught in my throat as I tried to fit the words in my head. I took a breath and began to speak.

“Cathy was . . . Kidnapped. They're doing what they can to find and help her, but we don't know where they took her,” I stuttered.

Alex was speechless. Her mouth opened and then closed again. She repeated this motion several times before tearing up.

“How did it happen?” She asked.

I looked pleadingly at Crystal to explain, I knew that I couldn't. As Crystal began talking I found myself unable to listen to the story again, so I went into my room.

I threw a punch at the wall, feeling my hand contact the bricks, although I didn’t punch hard, I could feel the bones in my hand shake. I looked over at my closet, retracting my hand. I ran, my hand closely cradled to my chest as it throbbed, threw some t-shirts, jeans, toothbrush, mobile and my pocket knife. If Catherine was gone, it was my responsibility to find her. I grabbed my medicine kit (Which was significantly smaller than Catherine’s but it still worked) I stuffed my back-pack with my stuff and headed out of my room.

Really, I knew that I was acting rash, I mean, where was I going to go? Where was I going to look? I hadn’t the first clue as to where they would take Catherine, but my body was acting faster than my brain could think and soon, I found myself completely ready to launch myself into danger to find Catherine.

“Where do you think you're going?” Crystal asked from where she sat on the sofa with her head in her hands. Her voice cracked a tiny bit when she spoke but her face was clear of tears.

“I'm going to find Alphs. It's my job to look after you guys and that's what I'm going to do,” I said.

“You can't go by yourself! You'll get yourself in the same pace as Alphs did!” Crystal told me.

“What am I supposed to do?! Sit here and wait?!” I shouted, but my words came out and my voice cracked at the end.

“It's all you can do! All we can do! But risking yourself isn't going to help!” Crystal yelled back.

“Who put you in-charge!?”

“Alphs did when she told me that it was my job to lead you guys when she wasn't around!”

“Well Alphs isn't here and she may never be here again if someone doesn't do something!”  

“What can we do? We're just kids! We can't go up against a maniac!” Crystal pointed out

“Well it's better than nothing,” I huffed.

“And what do you think that you’ll end up doing? You’ll be completely alone out there! You heard what Olive said, fully grown men have gone out there and never came back. You can’t go out there by yourself! I don’t care how strong you think you are, you’ll get taken in seconds” Crystal yelled at me, waving her arms all over the place.

Deep down I knew she was right, a little bit above that I was shocked by her words, but all over I was too angry with whoever had taken Catherine, with Crystal and mostly with myself, to see Crystal’s reasoning.

“What do you expect me to do? I can’t sit here and just wait for them to kill Alphs. I can’t even stomach the idea of what they could possibly be doing to her right now! How can you expect me to sit here and do nothing?”

“I don’t expect you, but I hope that you’ll see to reason. You can’t go out there. How long do you think that you’ll last when you leave the school grounds? You won’t even make it to the night time Delly! What are you thinking?”

Having had enough of the seemingly pointless argument, I stormed towards the doors.

I felt Crystal grab my arm. When I turned back to her she was looking down at the floor. Her hand was shaking violently and her foot was tapping to the ground, which told me that she was irritated, but upset.

“If you're going. At least let Porter and I come with. You can't do this on your own,” Crystal asked me.

“You're not going to drop this, are you?” I sighed.

“Nope” Crystal said bluntly, not even using her usual happy tone, which showed me that this was more serious than I admitted to myself.

Feeling defeated by her, I sighed again and nodded. Crystal smirked triumphantly, knowing she had won and ran to pack. Shaking my head, I went to Porters room, which was down to hall from my own rooms, and I knocked on the door, careful to not wake up anyone else.

One of his roommates answered.

“Um . . . Yeah?” He asked, obviously, a little bit surprised to see me.

“I need Porter,” I said simply.

He nodded and went inside. I waited for about two minutes before Porter came out looking half asleep.

“Yeah Dell?” He asked rubbing drowsily at his eyes.

“Alphs has been kidnapped” I muttered to him, hoping that his roommates, who were standing in the background, wouldn’t hear us.

Porter suddenly jerked awake. “You’re serious?” He asked, all traces of sleep gone from his eyes.

I nodded. “Bets and I are going to find her. We need you to come too” I said, still talking quietly so that no one else could hear.

“Alright give me five minutes,” Porter reassured me before he went inside. I went back downstairs and waited for Bets and Porter.

A thought came to me. I'll leave a note addresses to Roxanne, explaining where we had gone to.

I grabbed a pen and paper and began to write.

 Professor Olive.

 You are probably wondering why Crystal, Porter and I are not in class today.

The answer is simple.

As you know, our best friend Catherine was kidnapped late last night. I can't help but feel that it is my fault.

So, Crystal, Porter and I decided that, and don't take offense to this, that your scouting and assurance was not enough, so we set out to find her ourselves.

You and I both know that you have no way of tracking us, and you don't know where she is. Neither do I.

But we are going anyway. Make sure that Catherine's little sister Alexandria understands our reasoning and is in good care. I am counting on you to do this.

Sincerely Adriana.

  I heard Crystal and Porter come down. I nodded at them and we left out the common area, I quickly turned and stuck the note to the door. We walked out of the school and off the grounds. I looked up at the school, thinking of what things were going to become while I was gone. This was going to be a long trip.

#Writers #first book #Superpowers #magic #school #kidnapping #students #Adventures