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Given Unsought, Part 5

Jemma came back from Maveth with a little something in tow. She and Daisy attempt to deal. Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

A/N: Christmas! This is the longest week in the story. This is heavily rated PG-13 with warnings for violence, emotional manipulation, and certain threats coming to life. 10424 words. I’m going to start posting to AO3 now, too, so you’ll see this chapter there in four weeks.

Week Fifteen

When asked about Christmas, Daisy would have answered that she planned to spend the holiday on the couch, eating Chinese food with Coulson. “As is the way of my people,” he’d told her the year before. Daisy had never been big on Christmas. At St. Agnes, it had just been a stark reminder that none of them had had families that wanted them. Afterward, it had been even worse. She’d always done her best to avoid everything associated with it: the manic and intense shopping, the travel, the family get-togethers, singing carols, Christmas trees, all of it.

And yet, here she was, wheeling her luggage through a train station crowded train station in Sheffield the day before Christmas. They’d hopped a train from London so the Simmons family wouldn’t get suspicious and Jemma had spent the train ride pointing out landmarks and points of interest, reminiscing with Fitz about all of their trips home from the Academy, and generally glowing with excitement. It had been a little difficult to take her eyes off of Jemma and look at whatever she was pointing out, though Daisy didn’t plan on telling her that. She wasn’t even sure she should be there with them, but Coulson and Jemma had insisted.

With Coulson, it had been orders. Ward was still at large, making it unsafe for Fitz or Jemma to visit family alone. Since Daisy didn’t exactly have family that she could plausibly visit, the assignment made sense. She wouldn’t be taking any other agents away from their families.

Jemma saw it differently.

“I’m officially inviting you,” she’d said, neatly folding one of Daisy’s shirts and placing it in her suitcase the night before. She’d insisted on helping Daisy pack, possibly because she knew Daisy would just wait until the last minute and throw random things into a duffel. “Even though Coulson says you’re going along as protection, you’ll be a guest. My mum’s been asking about you for ages.”

“You told your mom about me?” Daisy had asked, handing her another shirt.

“Of course I did. I did say that you work in IT since they don’t know about what we really do, but I mentioned how brilliant you are, and how we’ve been such great friends. She’s excited to meet you.”

“I don’t have, um, gifts or anything for them.”

“Don’t worry about that, they’re not expecting anything like that. You’ll be a guest. It’ll be fun, I promise.”

Now, walking through the Sheffield train station, Daisy wasn’t entirely convinced. She was already determined to spend the next week not letting on that a family Christmas was a new thing for her so she wouldn’t get any of those “Poor Orphan Skye” reactions she’d always hated. No big deal.

A tall man stood at the end of the platform, peering through the crowd. That would be Jack, Daisy determined as Jemma immediately raced up and hugged him. Fitz hurried up to shake his hand, talking too fast for Daisy to understand, and she brought up the rear a little more slowly.

Jemma lit up when she spotted her. “Jack, you have to come meet her, this is Daisy Johnson, my friend from work. And Daisy, my little brother Jack.”

Daisy made a point of craning her neck to look up at him, and Jack grinned. “I’ve been taller than her for years, but she refuses to call me anything else. A pleasure. Jack Simmons.”

“Daisy.” She shook his hand. He had the same eyebrows and freckles as his sister, but his hair was shock-white blond. “Hi. Sim—Jemma’s told me a lot about you.”

“That I’m charming and got all of the good looks for this generation? I would hope so.” He offered to take her bag, but Daisy inclined her head at Jemma’s bag. Without missing a beat, he scooped that up instead.

“Enjoy the free labor,” Daisy said as Jemma rolled her eyes at both of them and pointed out that she was still very much capable of carrying her own bag. “I may not have brothers, but even I know that’s what they’re for.”

After stowing their luggage in the trunk—“It’s called the boot, you’re in England now,” Fitz told her irritably, ducking away when Daisy tried to flick his ear—they piled into Jack’s car. Jemma was bursting with questions, chattering at her brother, though she stopped occasionally to point at things outside to Daisy, with asides from Fitz. She was in proper big sister mode, scolding and teasing and batting at Jack’s man-bun all at once.

As for Jack, Daisy hadn’t been exactly sure what she’d been expecting. She’d been anticipating, what, a boy version of Simmons? Jemma’s cardigans and sensible shoes, but male? Daisy glanced at Fitz next to her in the backseat, looking down at his cardigan and his hiking shoes, and kind of wanted to kick herself. She really had been imagining basically Fitz with Jemma’s face.

Instead Jack teased Jemma about her geeky science and argued clubs with Fitz. It took Daisy forever to realize that they were talking about soccer and not afterschool programs, and she’d only cottoned on because Hunter always coopted the den TV for his games that he insisted were, “Football, love, none of that soccer business in here.” And when Jack asked Daisy about where she was from and if she liked working with his egghead of a sister, he winked at her. Definitely flirting.

“Oh, don’t even start, you’re not her type,” Jemma said, rolling her eyes at him.

“I can adapt. You mentioned your friend was cute, but I think you undersold it a bit.”

“Aw, you think I’m cute?” Daisy asked Jemma, who gave her that wildly patient ‘you’re being ridiculous’ look that she’d perfected over the years, though she did look a bit pink. To Jack, Daisy said, “She has a point, though. You do seem far too well-adjusted to be my type.”

“I’ll live in eternal sorrow at that.” He grinned cheekily and turned the car into the drive of a picturesque little house. Not quite suburbs, but not farmhouse rural either. Daisy gave the place a once-over, automatically locating all egress points and escape routes the way May had trained her. Jemma had grown up here, in this idyllic little home with a sloping, waist-height stone wall encircling the property. It was about as far from the institutional walls of St. Agnes as she could get all the way down to the three cats drowsing on the front porch.

“Those two are Cassiopeia and…Scorpius, I think? He’s new. But this old man is Leo Minor,” Jemma said as Daisy crouched to offer her fingers for sniffing. Jemma plucked up a gigantic gray cat, who seemed to tolerate the affection for only a few seconds before letting out a yawn.

“Leo Mi…Leo like Fitz? You named a cat after Fitz?”

“No, she didn’t because my name is Leopold,” Fitz said, stressing the second syllable. He gave them a disgruntled look even as he scratched beneath Leo Minor’s chin. “I was not named for the constellation, therefore—”

“I named him after Fitz,” Jemma said. “And the constellation, too, of course. But they look just alike, you see?” She held the cat out next to Fitz.

Daisy couldn’t deny that both cat and scientist wore the same annoyed expression. “It’s uncanny,” she agreed.

“Unbelievable,” Fitz said to the both of them, taking the cat from Jemma and walking into the house.

“I thought annoying him was my job,” Daisy said.

“You don’t think I’d let you have all the fun, do you? Leo Minor loves him.” Jemma took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, and Daisy realized she wasn’t alone in being nervous. She reached out and squeezed her friend’s hand, and Jemma smiled back at her.

“You two just going to stand around in the cold all day?” Jack asked, walking by with their luggage. He stepped into the house. “Oi, Mum. Dad! Jemma’s home.”

“After you,” Daisy said, holding the door open for her friend.

Inside was just as cozy and lived in as the exterior promised, and Daisy found herself pulled through a foyer and into a kitchen, where Mr. Simmons was in the middle of scrambling together something called a full English. Daisy found out in short time that meant breakfast, even though it was well after noon, and for some reason, tinned tomatoes and beans were included. Since neither Jemma nor Fitz seemed to find anything strange about this, Daisy tucked in.

Later, she carried her impressions of the Simmons family up to Jemma’s childhood bedroom with her during the tour of the house. Craig Simmons had slapped Fitz on the back and given him a hearty handshake before greeting Daisy almost the same way and insisting that she call him Craig, as the only people who called him Mr. Simmons were his students and Daisy looked a trifle too old to be one of those. She’d seen the worry lines and then the relief when Jemma had hugged him.

Mrs. Simmons had given Daisy just as crushing a hug as either Fitz or Jemma. She’d offered them tea, which Daisy had accepted with a defeated ‘when in Rome’ feeling, and had immediately begun asking them about their trip, and how was Daisy finding England, was this her first time here, and you’re not still having trouble with the morning sickness, are you, Jems, your color’s looking good. Jemma had protested that they’d just arrived, couldn’t she wait five minutes before being nosy, but it had made Daisy laugh.

She’d be bunking with Jemma for the stay. Jemma had tried to get her to take the bed, but Daisy had countered that no way in hell was she kicking a pregnant lady out of her childhood bed. So Daisy had an air mattress in the middle of the floor.

“I know, I know,” Jemma said as she ushered Daisy inside. “It’s childish and silly. I’ve been after Mum and Dad to turn it into a proper guest bedroom for ages, but they’ve insisted—”

“It’s lovely,” Daisy said, absolutely meaning it. Jemma’s room was precisely how she would have imagined it. The attic room had a little reading nook and a child-sized desk, the furniture painted a prim white. Among the old toys were scientific texts with words too long for Daisy to pronounce. A corkboard in the corner still had equations pinned to it, mixed with old birthday cards and pictures of Jemma, her family, and even of Fitz, looking even more baby-faced and grumpier than ever. The bed was built into a little alcove, with glow-in-the-dark stars glued all over the ceiling. Daisy would put good money that those were constellations in the patterns, probably sharing names with the cats running around.

Jemma turned a bit pink around the cheeks. “I’m glad you think so, even if I feel a bit silly.”

“Beats the bed in the room I shared with three other girls at St. Agnes,” Daisy said, keeping her tone light. She put her backpack on the mattress and wandered over to look at the corkboard. The handwriting definitely belonged to Jemma, though it was considerably larger and loopier. Daisy turned one of the pages over and gawked at the date. “You wrote this when you were eleven? I don’t even know what half of these symbols mean.”

“I did have two PhDs by the time I was seventeen,” Jemma said, fidgeting. Daisy pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of tiny Fitz and Jemma in their Academy shirts. “Why are you doing that?”

“First, saving this for my own personal collection, duh,” Daisy said, thumbs flying over the keyboard. “And secondly, I’m texting this to Bobbi right away because no way should she live without this picture in her life. Look at his cheeks!”

“Fitz may have a point about us being mean to him,” Jemma said, unzipping her suitcase.

“He’s been so snooty to me all day. ‘No, Daisy, it’s a car park, it’s not a parking lot.’” She sent the text to Bobbi and followed it up with a second text to Coulson, letting him know they’d arrived and she hadn’t spotted any trouble. Conscience struck when Jemma sighed. “All right, all right. I’ll try to be nicer to him. Since it’s Christmas and all.”

“Thank you. He’s frustrated because—”

“The portal stuff,” Daisy said, nodding. “I know. I know how he gets. From the looks of things, he visits here a lot, huh?”

“He used to come back on breaks with me since his mum always takes her trips during the holidays. Mum and Dad, they’ve always let Jack and me have friends over, running wild all over the place. Not that I really had many friends until Fitz. Jack, on the other hand, has too many friends to remember. You’ll likely meet more than a few of them.” Jemma unpacked her clothes into the dresser, waving that she’d left a couple of drawers for Daisy. “And I’m sorry about him flirting, by the way. I’ll tell him to stop bothering you.”

“Why? He’s harmless. And kinda cute.”

“My brother? Blech.”

Daisy laughed. “You two look a lot alike, you know.”

“We actually favored each other more when we were kids.” Jemma’s voice broke, and Daisy’s head jerked up. But her friend waved her off, even as she pressed her fingers to her closed eyelids. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll get it under control. But it’s just—it’s been nearly a year since I’ve seen them, and they have no idea about Maveth and how close I was to never coming back, and they’re so happy and…”

She sat on the edge of the bed and began to cry in earnest. Daisy glanced around the room, looking for tissues. Seeing none, she dug in her own luggage until she produced the little travel pack she kept, which she pushed gently into Jemma’s hands. Wordlessly, she sat on the bed and let her friend cry. She wasn’t entirely sure Jemma had even slept the night before, but they’d been up at the before dawn. The stress of traveling to London in the quinjet and taking the train north likely hadn’t helped. So Daisy sat quietly, simply rubbing her hand over Jemma’s back as she cried. It didn’t surprise her that Jemma eventually curled up, her sobs finally dying away.

“Your mom suggested you should take a nap,” Daisy said. “Why don’t you take her up on it? I’ll go downstairs and let you get some sleep.”

Jemma lifted her head. “You’re my guest, I should be showing you around—”

“Please, it’s obvious Fitz is just as much a member of the Family Simmons as you are. If I run into trouble, I’ll bug him. Sleep. I’m sure Blob will appreciate it.”

Jemma’s eyes drifted closed. “Blob is an awful name to saddle a child with. Even an unborn one.”

“So back to Simmons Junior it is.” Daisy eased herself off of the bed and pulled off her sweater, exchanging it for one Jemma hadn’t cried into. It felt a little awkward wandering down without the social shielding Jemma provided, but she was spending a week at the Simmons homestead and she couldn’t monopolize Jemma’s time. She peeked in the den and saw Jack, Fitz, and Craig watching TV and arguing about something. Daisy decided to back out of that one and checked in the kitchen instead, where Jemma’s mother had set up with a laptop and several magazines, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.

“Oh, hello. Did Jems decide on a nap after all?”

“The flight wore her out,” Daisy lied. “And I think maybe the hormones got to her a bit. Childhood home and all.”

“I broke down crying at the drop of a hat while pregnant with both her and Jack,” Nora said. “Poor Craig had no idea what to do with me half the time. I remember watching a chat show sobbing and laughing, and Craig thought I’d gone absolutely mad.”

“I don’t think it’s gotten quite that bad for Jemma yet,” Daisy said. “But I’ll keep an eye out.”

“I’m sure she appreciates that,” Nora said. She retrieved a plate of cookies—biscuits—from the counter and set them on the table before bringing the kettle over. Tea really was a way of life in this house, Daisy was beginning to discover. Maybe by the end of the trip, she’d even like it. “Jemma says you’re absolutely brilliant with computers. You work in the IT department?”

“Er, yeah. I keep things running. Fitz and S—Jemma are the brilliant ones, though.”

“Lord, when they get going, I only understand one word in eight.” Nora settled in at the table. She had an open, friendly face, and Jemma’s eyes. “Craig and I aren’t certain where she gets her brains from. He’s a schoolteacher from a family of accountants and my folk are a little more free-spirited in their thinking. Not a lot of scientists or mathematicians in the lot.”

“At some point, I just assume it’s magic. Don’t tell her that, though, I’ll get a lecture.” Daisy glanced down at the feeling of something rubbing against her ankle. Leo Minor looked at her so pitifully that she scooped him up. She scritched behind his ears, smiling when he began to not so much purr as actually rumble. The vibrations traveled up her arms, tickling the edges of her powers. She wondered what Coulson would say to having a cat on base. “She talks about this place a lot, and I can see why. It’s a lovely home.”

“Thank you.” Nora looked as though she were about to say something, but seemed to change her mind. “You’ll have to forgive the curiosity, as you’re the first friend besides Fitz that Jemma’s brought home. Every time we call, it’s been ‘Skye this’ or ‘Daisy that.’ It took me awhile to put together that they were one and the same.”

“Oh, right,” Daisy said. “The name change. I guess it’s a little complicated. I…I found my birth parents earlier this year and learned my birth name, so it made sense to switch.”

Nora squeezed Daisy’s wrist, reassuringly, in a move that was so like Jemma it almost took her breath away. “Daisy’s a lovely name. I’ve always liked the flower names. I’ve got an Aunt Poppy, actually, and my cousin’s Rose. Names are so important, don’t you think?”

Daisy squinted. “Mrs. Simmons, are you digging to find out if she’s picked out names yet?”

Nora laughed. “She said you were quick on your feet. Well? Has she?”

“She’s got it locked up tighter than Fort Knox,” Daisy said, the words spilling out. She obliged Leo Minor by scratching behind his ears. “It’s driving me nuts, but she won’t say a word.”

“That does sound like my daughter.” Nora sipped her tea and leaned in, conspiratorially. “So no hints on the gender, either?”

“None, but she’s not keeping it a secret. The baby wasn’t cooperating for pictures during the ultrasound. I mean, not that I’d blab, but there’s nothing to blab, so I’m not being tested, thankfully.”

“Oh, fine,” Nora said. “You must have other gossip, then. The bloke, what was he really like? Did you meet him?”

Daisy shook her head. “But from what I’ve gathered, he wa—he’s very handsome. So if you were worried about less-than-attractive grandbabies, you’re probably fine.”

Nora laughed. “Oh, I like you. And of course I wasn’t worried about that. But she’s been a bit of an enigma lately—”

“That’s exactly what I’ve thought!”

“—and it’s so nice to gossip a bit.”

“Isn’t it?” Daisy said. She leaned over, running her hand down Leo Minor’s back. “I’m willing to trade stories for blackmail material against Jemma for the next time she shames me about eating a burger.”

“Deal,” Nora said, her eyes twinkling.

When Jemma came downstairs over an hour later, she found her friend and her mother laughing, the cat still purring away contentedly in Daisy’s lap, and the tea in Daisy’s mug completely gone.

Christmas passed in a blur of almost over-the-top cheer from Jemma, who’d managed to procure matching sweaters for Fitz, Daisy, and herself even with the lack of notice about their holiday plans (Daisy suspected she might have already had the sweaters—“Jumpers, Daisy, they’re jumpers”— and had been waiting for an opportunity to deploy them). The gift exchange was followed by lunch where one of the cats made off with half of the roast, causing general chaos as Jack and Fitz tried to catch the beast. Jack introduced Daisy to the concept of Christmas crackers, which led to them wearing ridiculous green paper crowns for most of the day. They went for a walk with Jemma and Fitz, who’d packed one of his dwarves and spent the entire outing making it dive-bomb Daisy while he and Jemma giggled.

If Jack hadn’t been there, Daisy would have quaked the drone from the sky. But as Jemma’s family didn’t know she was inhuman, and she didn’t plan to share, she merely swiped ineffectively at the drone and laughed at Jack’s antics as he tried to protect her. Secretly, she planned her revenge.

She’d been waiting for the subject of inhumans to come up. It didn’t until Christmas night, when the news report mentioned a suspected inhuman sighting had turned out to be a giant hoax during the Christmas evening broadcast.

“That’s your research, isn’t it?” Jack asked Jemma, who was helping him with the dishes. “Studying inhumans and how they work. Have you actually met one yet?”

Fitz, noodling with a drone at the table, looked up and locked eyes with Daisy.

“They keep us in the lab a lot of the time,” Jemma said. “And you know I’m not allowed to talk about my research. It’s highly classified and mostly theoretical anyway.”

“That’s too bad,” Jack said.

Daisy cleared her throat. “What do you mean?”

Jack shrugged and dunked his hands back into the soapy water. “It’d be neat to meet an inhuman, that’s all. You’ve got Thor popping up in Greenwich, of all places, saving the whole bloody world. And now we’ve got more and more people like Thor around? Makes you curious.”

“Thor’s a god, not an inhuman, I must point out,” Jemma said.

“I heard there was one that could lift an entire car and just chuck it.” Jack handed his sister a dish. “What must it be like, to have that much power and still go about your day? What kind of change would that be?”

“For one, you switch your coffee from regular to decaf,” Fitz said in a light voice. “Otherwise you might get a wee bit jittery.”

Since Jack was rinsing a dish, Daisy stuck her tongue out at him. “You’re not afraid of them?” she asked Jack.

“Nah,” Jack said, like it was just that simple. And to him, maybe it was. Where Jemma could be a little uptight at times, her brother was the epitome of relaxed. Potentially too relaxed, really. Daisy had no idea how he would even handle the situations they faced almost daily.

“I’m sure you’ll meet one someday,” Jemma said, sharing a long look with Daisy. They looked away and the subject was dropped.

The day after Christmas was apparently a holiday in its own right. No lazing about indoors for the Simmons family, as Daisy found herself bundled up for the cold and tagging along to cheer Nora and Craig as they jogged in a local race for charity. Several of Jack’s friends showed up, most of them angling for an introduction to Daisy, which made Fitz laugh and Jemma scowl. After they’d wandered off with Jack to head to the local pub for a pint, Daisy nudged Jemma. “What’s the matter? You look annoyed.”

“I’m not annoyed, of course I’m not annoyed. What? I’m not!” Jemma wrinkled her nose. “But they were laying it on a bit thick, weren’t they? I mean, Bertie actually kissed your hand.”

“Since he willingly goes by Bertie, I feel like he probably doesn’t have much else going for him, so I threw him a bone. What’s the harm? It’s a bit of flirting, Simmons, it’s not a marriage contract.”

But Jemma continued to scowl. “You’re practically a taken woman. Don’t you have that mutual pining thing going on with Mr. Electricity?”

“Careful, Jem, you sound jealous,” Fitz said without looking away from the race.

“Oh, Fitz, don’t be ridiculous. Why would I be jealous?”

Daisy, on the other hand, frowned at the mention of Lincoln. She hadn’t called him, she realized. Christmas had passed and she hadn’t even thought of him once. Sure, he was on the run, but usually they called to check in, their silences saying just as much as their words. Immediately, guilt flooded through her. She’d enjoyed herself with a full family Christmas while he was out there, probably not eating well, on the run from all and sundry.

But then, he hadn’t called her either, had he?

She tuned back into the conversation, which had become full force bickering. “I dunno,” Fitz was saying, “maybe it’s the hormones?”

Daisy heard the warning bells go off even as Jemma’s eyes turned absolutely black with fury. Thinking quickly, she threw an arm around both of her friends and pulled them close. “Are we really arguing on the one vacation we get this year?” she asked. To annoy Fitz, she gave him a smacking kiss on the side of the head, and automatically did the same to Jemma, who went weirdly still under her arm. “C’mon, guys, it’s Christmas.”

“It’s Boxing Day,” they corrected her in unison.

“Close enough.” But the crisis of a full Fitzsimmons meltdown seemed to have been averted, mercifully enough.

After the race finished, Daisy and Jemma left Fitz at the pub and went out to lunch with Nora. Lunch stretched out into a bit of shopping after Jemma, turning down an offer of finishing Daisy’s chips, groaned that her pants were tight enough lately, thanks very much. It had taken both Nora and Daisy to convince her that perhaps it was time to look into purchasing maternity clothing.

“It’s such a waste,” she said two hours later, as they poked through the racks of a clothing store. “After the baby’s born, this will be absolutely useless. I’ll never wear it again. Plus, most of it is downright hideous. Look at this.”

She yanked a green dress off the rack and brandished it at Daisy, accusingly.

“The pattern’s…unfortunate,” Daisy said, “but you could make it work.”

Jemma narrowed her eyes at Daisy. “I feel like this might be a comment on my fashion choices.”

“Of course it isn’t.” Nora calmly placed the dress back on the rack. “And the clothing could be put into storage should you choose to decide to have another child.”

Jemma’s face went absolutely white. “Another one? I didn’t even plan for this one in the first place!”

Nora gave her a serene smile. “Who knows? You might have this child and discover you want another. Intentionally, even. Your father and I only had one child in mind. You were such a perfect angel that we decided to have another, and we got Jack out of the bargain.” She wandered over to look at stand full of professional trousers.

Jemma jerked Daisy close. “Please kill me,” she whispered.

Daisy laughed and patted her on the shoulder. “There’s got to be something in here that’s not horrible.”

“I doubt it.” Jemma gave her one last dark look when Nora called her name, and walked off to join her mother.

Daisy stayed where she was, poking through a rack full of dresses. Her phone buzzed, so she pulled it out of her pocket, eyebrows going up at Coulson’s face on her screen. “Coulson, hey! How’s it going? Got a Chinese food hangover?”

“Get out of there right now,” Coulson said.

Daisy snapped to attention, every muscle tensing. The bright and happy department store playing cheerful pop suddenly became something far more sinister. Automatically, she reached her hand to the small of her back, where she kept an icer hidden. “What’s the—”

“There you are! Finally.”

Every cell in Daisy’s body abruptly felt like it had been plunged into an ice bath. She stared in a mixture of horror and confusion as Grant Ward easily stepped through the racks of maternity clothing and gave her a giant, friendly smile. Like he had any right to be there, like he was happy to see her.

And the sickest part of it, she knew he was.

She hated that she’d frozen, even if it was only briefly. “Ah, ah, ah,” Ward said. He’d grown a goatee in the time they’d been apart. And he looked rugged, handsome, solid, all the things that had once made him seem trustworthy. “We’re in public, Skye. I wouldn’t.”

She caught the way his eyes cut to the left, and glanced that way herself. Ward hadn’t come alone. She made three Hydra goons, big ones capable of handling themselves in a fight, nicely spaced out among the women’s clothing department. One stood a few feet away from where Jemma and her mother were holding a debate over a shirt. All the saliva in Daisy’s mouth dried up.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Daisy. Daisy, are you there?” Coulson’s voice in her ear brought her back.

Ward merely crossed his arms over his chest and smirked. “Tell Coulson I say hello.”

“Ward’s here,” Daisy said, her voice steady. She could feel her pulse increasing, making the heat pool at the back of her neck.

When he held his hand out for the phone, she considered quaking him into oblivion. But she couldn’t take out Ward and his men before one of them would get to Jemma or Nora, not by herself. And she was in public, in view of every camera under the sun. Never mind that Nora had no idea that Daisy was an agent and inhuman, and Jemma would no doubt prefer it stay that way.

So she handed over the phone.

“Smart,” Ward said with a condescending little tilt of his head, like he still believed he was her SO. Putting the phone to his ear, he said, “Coulson, it’s been awhile. No, no, I don’t think I’ll be doing that, but I’m touched.”

Ward powered off the phone and removed the chip. He pulled out his own phone. On the screen, Daisy could see some kind of dark barroom, and in the center of it Jack and Fitz at a snooker table. The temperature dropped another ten degrees. “In case you think of trying anything funny,” he said.

“Go to hell.”

“You’ve already tried to send me there. It didn’t work out the way you planned, did it?”

“Can I help it if you’re a cockroach?”

“Skye. Skye, Skye, Skye. Always so full of spirit.” His smirk broadened. She gritted her teeth against the creepy-crawly feeling of nastiness that coated her skin whenever he was around. “Here’s what’s going to happen. So we don’t raise any suspicion, you’re going to go and introduce me to the nice lady with Dr. Simmons’ smile, and come up with an excuse for us to leave so that nobody gets suspicious.”

“And you really think Simmons is just going to go along with that?”

“She will if she wants to see the father of her child again.” Ward flashed the phone at her again, giving her another glimpse of the pub with Jack and Fitz. He thought the baby was Fitz’s, she realized. It took every bit of skill she’d learned at the poker table to keep the shock off of her face. And because of that, she was pretty sure her face remained blank, even seeing the outline of the man at the bar behind Fitz, his back to the camera as he enjoyed a pint.

“You’ve been watching us,” Daisy said.

“Of course I have. I’m never far, Skye.”

“Simmons will never go for this. Coulson knows you’re here. How exactly do you plan to get away with this?”

“Just do your part, and maybe all these nice people won’t have their day ruined, hmm?” He grabbed her arm and turned her around, steering her toward Jemma and her mother.

Daisy swallowed hard, eyeing the other three goons. One stood particularly close to a group of young girls, and it turned her stomach. She walked back to where Nora and Jemma were admiring a blazer, and cleared her throat.

Jemma’s eyes widened. They were lucky she hadn’t brought an icer, Daisy saw, for her expression immediately turned to stone and her fists clenched. “Ward!”

Daisy gestured at Jemma to stand down, keeping her hand by her side where Nora wouldn’t see it and get suspicious. “Look who just showed up out of the blue,” she said with a great deal of false cheer.

“Who’s this?” Nora asked, looking in confusion between Daisy and her daughter.

Ward put his arm around Daisy, extending his free hand to Nora. Every bit the jovial, confident conman that had tricked them for months. Anger burned under Daisy’s breastbone as Ward shook Nora’s hand. “Skye hasn’t talked about me? I’m Grant, her boyfriend.”

It took everything in Daisy’s power not to snort her opinion of that. Jemma practically vibrated with tension. She slid her gaze to the left, seemed to noticed one of the goons, and scanned the store. She locked eyes with Daisy and in the two seconds Nora shook Ward’s hand, they held a silent conversation.

“She’s never mentioned a boyfriend,” Nora said.

Can you take him down? Jemma’s eyes seemed to ask.

Daisy flicked a glance at the goons, then Nora, and raised an eyebrow slightly. Jemma’s expression settled into a frown.

“I’ve been upset with him,” Daisy said to Nora, putting on a false smile. “We fought right before I left.”

“But I’m here now,” Ward said, all smarm. “I simply couldn’t go another day without seeing my beloved Skye. And I know she’s missed me, too. Isn’t that right, babe?”

“You know it,” Daisy said.

Ward squeezed her arm, hard enough to hurt. “All this time apart and she doesn’t seem happy to see me.”

“Imagine that,” Jemma said.

Nora gave her daughter a baffled look at the flat tone. “You came all this way to Sheffield to surprise Daisy?”

Nora sounded far too suspicious for Ward’s liking, apparently. He squeezed her arm again, and Daisy did her best not to flinch. “That’s him,” she said. “King of romance. Do you mind if I steal this handsome fella for a bit? We can meet up with you later in the—does this place have a food court?”

“There’s a coffee shop next door, we were headed there afterward to meet Fitz and Jack,” Nora said.

“Oh, those two, they get into such trouble. I’m sure somebody has an eye on them,” Daisy said, not looking away from Jemma, whose eyes widened. From the way Ward tensed against her, he noticed. “We’ll meet you there in an hour?”

She tried to communicate with her eyes alone that Jemma should go along with it. Ward had always made it clear that while he valued Fitz and Jemma and even in some twisted way wanted their respect, they didn’t matter to him as much as Daisy and destroying SHIELD. Being one level removed from Jemma, Nora was worth a second thought in Ward’s mind, but nothing beyond that.

Daisy had to get him away from her at all costs.

“Before you go, I have to ask: why are you calling her Skye?” Nora asked, throwing a wrench in Daisy’s plans. “Daisy, do you truly know this man? He’s not…?”

“My psycho ex? Of course not.” The last thing they needed was Nora contacting the police. Or worse, provoking Ward into attacking. Not with all these innocent bystanders about. “He caught me by surprise, that’s all. No big deal. Right, honey?” Gagging internally, she kissed Ward’s cheek.

He gave Nora a charming look. “It’s nice that Skye—sorry, Daisy, I still have trouble adjusting, she’s just always been my bright Skye—has someone watching out for her. I promise you, I’m harmless.”

“We’ll catch up with you at the coffee shop,” Daisy said. “Text me when you’re ready to go, yeah?”

She hugged Jemma, keeping her hands in sight for the goons and for Ward’s benefit. “Three, eight, twelve o’clock,” she whispered, naming the locations of the goons, and stepped back.

They left Nora and Jemma behind, Ward’s arm going around her again. “I said not to make it suspicious,” he muttered.

“Not my fault my boyfriend doesn’t even know my damn name.” Two of the men followed them, and one lingered near Jemma and Nora. Extra insurance, Daisy figured, in addition to what they thought they had on Fitz and Jack in the pub. She gritted her teeth. “What do you want, Ward?”

“I want Coulson to suffer. No better way to do that than to take you away from him.”

“This isn’t repressed jealousy over not being Director’s Pet, is it? You might’ve had a shot at that title if you hadn’t turned psychotic and betrayed us all.” Daisy looked around for any help, any weapons, as they walked past household appliances and kitchenware. “Which is kind of ironic, given how much Apt Pupil turned out to be your thing.”

“Clever,” Ward said.

“Where have you been all these months, anyway? Usually you’re much more annoying, but SHIELD hasn’t heard a peep.”

“I was holding off on attacking you out of respect for the baby, of course. But now that I know it’s not yours—”

“Wait, how did you even know and why would you ever think it was mine?”

Ward let her go to pull out a folded up sheet. The fold lines had gone white and spider-cracked with age and use, which turned her stomach. He must have carried this with him all the time. Daisy recognized the bookstore, the beanie, and the baby books she was loading in the bag in the picture, and wanted to be sick. He’d thought they were for her.

He’d kept this as a memento, thinking she was pregnant. To what end? No way in hell this theoretical baby could’ve been his.

But in Ward’s corrupt and twisted mind…what? Did he think he was somehow going to kidnap the pregnant version of her and they’d become a big, happy family?

It made every part of her feel cold and disgusting. Automatically, Daisy glanced back toward Jemma and her mother, and found Jemma looking at her intensely. Her face said everything Daisy needed to know.

She handed the paper back to Ward. “Following me, huh? Cute.”

“I had names picked out and everything. Given your family baggage being only slightly less murderous than mine, I thought Calvin might be a good name. If it’s a boy, of course.”

“You’re vile,” Daisy said. She stepped over to a display of dishes and picked up a plate.

“What are you doing?” Ward asked.

“Selling our cover so that Mrs. Simmons doesn’t get suspicious. Cute pattern, right?” She held it up, testing the vibrations between her hands.

Ward narrowed his eyes at her. “Put that down.”

“What? C’mon, you can’t possibly think I can beat you with a plate.”

“Keep it up and Fitz won’t be a very happy man for much longer. Or a living one,” Ward said.

“I doubt that,” Daisy said, and threw the plate like a frisbee at the goon subtly menacing the group of girls twenty feet away. She hit it with a blast of vibration energy to speed it up so that it shattered against the goon’s skull.

He toppled like a giant redwood.

Ward’s strike caught her in the lower back, sending up a flare of pain, but she’d expected that. She threw herself forward, spinning as she did so and unleashing a full quake directly at him. It sang up her arms, lighting everything on fire, but it drove him back into a sales rack. His arms wind-milled. She rolled up onto one knee and yanked her gun free, firing three rounds at him even as he dodged away.

Daisy leapt to her feet. Ward was the primary threat, but not the only one. She had to hope Jemma could handle herself against the third man. Seeing the second moving toward a crowd of screaming shoppers, though, she herself put on a burst of speed. She hurtled into a display, plowing into a mannequin and slamming it with earthquake force so that it pummeled the goon and shattered. As he reeled back in shock, she iced him right between the eyes.

Ward hit her from the back, throwing her to the ground again. She scrambled up and fought back, matching his strikes with her own. Muscle memory made it seem like she was back on the Bus, fighting her SO all over again, but this was so much meaner and desperate. He knocked her back with a punch to the face that May would yell at her for, and she unloaded two hands full of tremor shocks at him.

The fight turned desperate even as the sadistic gleam in his eyes intensified, his years and years of hand to hand training surpassing even the quakes she blasted at him. Sick bastard was getting off on this, she realized with a stomach dropping jolt. He kicked her in the midsection and she stumbled back. The shelves of appliances provided little cover: he threw her into racks, smiling at every punch landed, controlling the fight with vicious smarminess. She battled on, searching for any weakness, but his fighting skill usurped hers and her arms absolutely screamed with agony from the unrelenting quake force. The hits became sloppier, more painful, and every moment he held the upper hand, she could feel the panic closing in.

She just had to hold on and hope Jemma and her mother had gotten away safely.

Ward landed a lucky hit that sent her careening through a rack of men’s shirts. Daisy landed hard, out of breath. When she tried to push herself up, her arms hurt so bad that she screamed. She’d definitely unleashed too much force. She tried to scramble away by using her elbows to pull herself backward.

Ward stepped around the fallen rack and shook his head at her in disappointment. He was limping, his free hand clutching his midsection in a way that suggested broken ribs. Blood dripped freely from a cut on his hairline. “I wanted to do this the easy way, Skye,” he said. “You could have spared Simmons a lot of pain. Now her baby will grow up without a father. Of course, maybe it’ll be better off.”

“Do you ever shut up?” Daisy asked. She tasted blood on her teeth. One blast, she thought. Powerful enough to take him out. She’d break her arm in the process, but one blast…

“I didn’t want to hurt you, Skye.” Ward pulled out a gun and aimed it right between her eyes. “You or Fitz. But you’ve given me no choice but to—”

A gunshot echoed throughout the store. Daisy went tense, waiting for the agony of bullets ripping through her again, waiting for death and pain.

Instead, Ward fell backward, a neat red hole in his forehead.

His body hit the floor with a loud thud, audible even with the screaming shoppers all around.

Daisy stared at it, uncomprehending. Jerkily, she raised her head and looked around until she saw Jemma, twenty feet away, gun still clenched in both hands, shoulders heaving. “S-Simmons?”

The sound of her name seemed to break the spell. Jemma lowered the gun and raced over to Daisy, kneeling down next to her. “Are you all right? How badly are you hurt? Oh, god, your poor arms—”

“Y-you killed him. You shot him.”

“About time, too.” Jemma patted down Daisy’s arms and torso, her brow furrowing when Daisy hissed out a breath through gritted teeth. “He was about to kill you. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“But—your mom—”

“I told her to run. Hopefully she didn’t see that. Thank god you’re all right.” Jemma pulled her into a tight, crushing hug. Daisy could feel her trembling, or maybe that was her. It didn’t matter, in the end. Daisy closed her eyes and pushed her face into her friend’s shoulder.

“What on earth possessed you to go with him?” Jemma asked, not letting go. She sounded near tears.

“He—your mom, she doesn’t know about you still being SHIELD.”

“I’d rather tell her than lose you.”

“Either way, it doesn’t matter,” Daisy said. “I had to let him keep thinking the agents tailing Fitz were actually a threat. They weren’t because—”

“Hunter was there,” said a new voice, and Jemma and Daisy broke apart to see May standing over them wearing, of all things, a Debbie Harry shirt under her leather jacket. And way more eyeliner than Daisy was used to seeing on her.

“Agent May!” Jemma scrambled up. “When did you get here?”

“Too late to do much. But it looks like you two handled it.” May nodded dispassionately at the dead body on the floor. “I’ll secure the scene until Coulson arrives.”

“Wait.” It hurt like nothing else, and Jemma had to grab her elbow to help, but Daisy climbed to her feet and gave May a hard hug. “God, I am so glad to see you. Can you please come home now?”

It might have been the pain making her hallucinate, but she swore May hugged her back a little.

The small laugh, though, she definitely had to be imagining that.

While May handled the police, Jemma drew Daisy away from the downed bodies of the Hydra soldiers and into the women’s washroom so that she could assess the damage to Daisy’s arms.

“You’ve definitely got hairline fractures, at the very least. If only I had my diagnostic equipment with me—”

“Because that’s something you take with you on a shopping trip.” Daisy grimaced as Jemma’s probing fingers sent a bolt of agony straight through her arm and up to her jaw. “Ward really did a number on me.”

“You returned the favor. He definitely had more than one broken bone, though of course I’m not going to examine him further.” Jemma’s hands shook as she wetted down a square of paper towel to dab at a cut on Daisy’s clavicle. “Maybe his brain, assuming I didn’t damage it too badly.”

Daisy closed her eyes and leaned back against the mirror, gritting her teeth against the pain. Jemma had scolded her until she’d sat down on the counter by the sinks, so at least her jellified knees didn’t have to hold her up anymore. A thought had her frowning. “What’d you do to the third guy? And how’d you convince your mother to run?”

“I told her I’m still with SHIELD and that you were in danger if she didn’t go.” Jemma carefully pulled a bloodstained object from the sleeve of her sweater. Daisy recognized the knife she’d made on Maveth. “As for the man: pregnant, need I remind you, does not mean helpless.”

“Apparently not. Do you think your mother saw that or…” Daisy gestured helplessly at her hands.

“I don’t know. It happened pretty quickly.” Jemma looked down. “Maybe this is something of a blessing. I never want my parents to worry about what we do, so I thought, well, I’ll just keep them in the dark, won’t I?”

“Sure,” Daisy said, aware it was better just to let Jemma ramble until she talked herself down.

“But as this year has more than proven, life doesn’t always go to plan, does it?” Jemma swapped the paper towel on Daisy’s clavicle for a fresh one, putting a little pressure on the wound. “And as much as we’d love to insulate the ones we love from getting hurt, sometimes it’s simply not possible. We wouldn’t have been in this situation today, where you felt you had to go off on your own to keep my mother from knowing, if I’d warned her in the first place, wouldn’t we? To be truthful, I’m not entirely sure how well she’ll take it. My dad’s quite cool under pressure, you’ll find, but my mother is another case entirely. When I was nine, I wandered off on a family camping trip accidentally, as you do when you’re a child, which was entirely understandable, but she completely lost it and—”

“Simmons. Simmons—Jemma.” Daisy nudged her with her knee since she didn’t want to move her arms. “We’re okay. Everything turned out all right, and everything will also be okay with your parents.”

“Right.” Jemma pushed her shoulders back, obviously trying to collect herself, and seemed to deflate instead. “When I saw you there, and him, and he had the gun, I thought that was the end. And I really, really don’t think I could bear losing you.” Her free hand traveled up from Daisy’s clavicle to cup her cheek. “Whatever’s coming, I really don’t want to face it without you.”

“Your parents? I’m pretty sure they’ll be fine. There may be some yelling first.”

“No, not that. I mean, I don’t want to face any of this without you.”

It struck Daisy in that moment that their faces were uncommonly close, and her heart had begun to gallop again. It wasn’t the adrenaline rush that came from a fight, but a fluttery feeling seemed to beat through her veins anyway. There were inches between them, and it would be extraordinarily easy to grab the front of Jemma’s cardigan and pull her closer. And even more than that, she wanted to.

“I,” she said, and had to lick her lips because her voice had begun to crack. “I don’t—”

The door banged open against the wall, making both of them jump and jolt away from each other and jostling Daisy’s arms. She hissed in pain even as Nora raced in.

“Oh, thank god, you’re both all right,” Nora said. Daisy went stiff in surprise when instead of just hugging Jemma, she threw an arm around each of them and pulled them both close. “I was so worried.”

It took nearly half an hour to calm Nora down and even then, she kept touching Jemma’s cheeks and shoulders as if to reassure herself that she was truly unharmed. She clucked over Daisy’s arms, even when Jemma scolded her for fussing. “You’re one of them, right? The inhumans that Jemma’s been studying,” she said to Daisy.

“One of them? Mum, she’s—”

“I’m inhuman, yes,” Daisy said, her mouth dry.

“And the shaking, that was you? You caused the earthquakes and…hit people with them?”

“It’s much more complicated than that, Mum. Her powers are actually—”

“Actually, your mom’s pretty much got it,” Daisy told Jemma before she could go on the full spiel. Daisy had heard it at least seven times and she still only understood about twelve percent of it. She remained sitting where she was, tensing and waiting for the judgment.

Instead, Nora patted her knee. “How effective is it on moles? Because Craig’s got a few in the garden that have been an absolute problem and—”

“Mum!”

Daisy was spared from any further bickering by the door opening again, this time to admit Hunter, Jack, and Fitz, who all started talking over each other at once and didn’t stop until May came in and glared them all to silence. It lasted three seconds before the second wave of arrivals: Coulson, leading Bobbi and Mack, and carrying Jemma and Fitz’s preferred field kits. Chaos reigned until Nora, taking control of the situation, shooed most of the agents out—“This is a loo, not a lounge!”—and left Fitz, Bobbi, and Daisy behind.

Jemma shot one final look at Daisy as she was dragged out by her mother, no doubt to explain to her family why exactly there had been an attack at a department store in Sheffield when she was supposed to be a lowly scientist.

After she left, it took forever for Daisy’s pulse to calm as Bobbi and Fitz treated the hairline fractures on her arms, easing her into the cast-gauntlets they’d made. Daisy told herself it was just coming down from the adrenaline of fighting with Ward and seeing him die, and not from that strange moment with Jemma before they’d been interrupted.

But even she wasn’t that good at lying to herself.

Coulson handled the clean-up at the department store, sending Ward’s body and the Hydra goons back to headquarters. Instead of being put on a quinjet, Daisy was driven back to the Simmons homestead, where she found most of their team gathered around the dinner table. Apparently Craig and Nora Simmons’ reaction to finding out their daughter had never left SHIELD was to simply feed the entire team. Daisy, arms in temporary casts, found herself stuffed between Jack and Bobbi at the dinner table, answering Jack’s questions. Bobbi occasionally nudged Daisy and raised an eyebrow at Jemma’s brother in a cute, right? sort of way, but Daisy was frankly too exhausted from her day and from finally, finally seeing Ward fall to put up much of an argument.

She got the full story after dinner while Jemma and her family vanished into the living room, leaving the other SHIELD agents to catch up. May and Hunter had infiltrated the lower ranks of local crime rings used by Hydra, how they’d spent months trying to get close. Hunter hadn’t even known it would be Fitz he’d be threatening at the pub, or that Ward had even been in England. But the minute he’d seen Fitz, he’d known. It simply hadn’t been enough time to warn Daisy and Jemma.

Luckily, they’d handled matters on their own, in the end.

And Ward was dead.

She didn’t know how she felt about that. Relief came in among the top emotions, buried as it was under a layer of numbness. She felt hollowed out. After all of the pain he’d inflicted on her, all of the emotional manipulation and mind games, he was gone. Jemma had put a bullet in his brain using his own henchman’s gun. With a single pull of a trigger, SHIELD’s number one enemy had fallen.

The long, twisted string of his life had been cut, just like that.

The Simmons family hadn’t emerged by the time most of the team left. “Take the vacation, Daisy. You’ve earned it,” Coulson had said before he’d driven the others back to the quinjet. Fitz had vanished up to the guest bedroom right afterward, leaving Daisy with her thoughts.

Rather than going upstairs to wait for Jemma, she pulled on a coat and trekked outside. She’d do some stargazing and philosophize, she decided. That was what you were supposed to do after watching the man who’d manipulated and hurt your friends finally kick the bucket, right? Even if it was cold as balls outside. Like, god, on nights like these she really missed L.A. Scorching hot in the summer, but at least the air had never hurt her face.

She looked up at the panoply of stars above, the milky way visible in such darkness, and her heart lifted. In L.A., she’d gone up into the hills, crawled on top of her van, and had just watched the stars, daydreaming for hours and hours. Usually the same daydreams, ones about finding her parents, or making out with somebody hot. That had been an entirely different person in a different lifetime then.

Now she sat in Sheffield, frozen to the bone, hollowed out and numb to it.

She heard footsteps and whirled, scrabbling for the icer tucked into the back of her jeans.

“Just me,” Craig’s voice said in the darkness before he came around the shed. He held two mugs that steamed in the moonlight. “Jemma thought you might be getting cold. She would’ve delivered it herself, but I’m afraid her mum’s got a few hundred more questions for her.”

“I bet.” Daisy took the mug with a thanks, and sipped. “I, ah, know it’s a bit of a shock. All of it. SHIELD, what happened today, my being an inhuman, Jemma’s whole…job.”

“If nothing else, you’ve certainly made Jack’s day. He’s been curious about inhumans for ages. You mind if I sit?”

Daisy scooted over on the bench to make room for him. She hadn’t spent any time with Jemma’s father alone. He seemed so…professorly. Jemma had definitely inherited his love of neat cardigans and blazers with elbow patches. “So, Mr. S, how are you holding up?”

“About as well as can be expected, considering I missed all of the excitement.” Craig took a sip and looked around the yard. He pointed. “You see that tree there? Jack begged me for ages to put a treehouse in that tree, but Jemma wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted the nailing things into the tree would be beyond cruel.”

“Really? How old was she?”

“About nine or so.” Craig smiled. “She always had a soft spot for animals and plants. Unsurprising that she became a biochemist, isn’t it?”

“Nowadays I’m more likely get a lecture about the genus of that specific tree and how it’s good for, I don’t know, a specific strain of medicine.” Daisy felt a smile tug at her lips, a genuine one. “This seems like a nice place to grow up. No wonder she talks about this place so much.”

“We miss her when she’s gone. As much as we’d love to keep her here, we always knew she wasn’t meant to stay.” Craig sipped his hot chocolate.

“You worry about her,” Daisy said. She grimaced at herself. “What am I saying? Of course you worry about her. Now more, probably, since you know the truth.”

“We’d worry either way. There’s no holding Jemma back when she has her mind set on something.”

He had a point there. Daisy made a noncommittal noise.

“But,” Craig said, “now we know she has a good team with her. Even the Arsenal fan.”

“Hunter’s a sweet guy. Deep down. Very, very deep down,” Daisy said, frowning a little. She’d never been a fan of sports—she hadn’t really done team activities of any kind before SHIELD—but the arguing had seemed friendly enough between Hunter and Craig.

“I’ll try not to hold his team against him, I suppose.”

“Oh, no, go ahead. We love Hunter, but he’s a human disaster.”

Craig laughed and toasted her with the hot chocolate mug. “I can see why Jemma speaks so highly of your team.”

“We all love Jemma, though, all of us,” Daisy said. “She’s my best friend, and actually kind of my first real friend I’ve ever had. Her and Fitz both. My first day with SHIELD, they immediately made me feel welcome.”

She cleared her throat. “Then of course they tried to haze me later on, but nobody’s perfect.”

Craig chuckled. “That does sound like Fitz and Jemma. I worry a little less knowing he’s with her. And now you, too.”

“We’re definitely not going anywhere.”

Craig regarded her for a long moment and nodded to himself, like he’d found something he expected to see. Daisy almost asked him about what he’d been looking for, but he cleared his throat and changed the subject, asking her if she shared Jemma’s love for astronomy. Daisy only knew a few constellations, and those she knew had more to do with navigation than anything else. But she sat and listened to Craig point out stars, filling in her in on the stories behind them, until the rest of the hot chocolate had long grown cold.

Jemma had returned to their shared bedroom by the time she dragged herself back in, all feeling in her toes and fingers completely gone. She’d changed into her pajamas and she had one of those gigantic texts with the unpronounceable words on the cover open, propped up on her chest. She closed it when Daisy stepped in. “You look cold.”

“I can’t feel my fingers or toes.” Daisy wrinkled her nose and met her friend’s gaze. The moment from the bathroom earlier rushed back to the front of her mind, but she shoved it away. She fell back on a smile as she peeled out of her jacket, hanging that neatly on the desk chair. She pulled off her boots and sat on the air mattress. “What a day, huh?”

Jemma let out a little laugh and put the text to the side. She rubbed her forehead. “That’s putting it mildly, I fear.”

“No kidding. How are you doing? Now that your family knows?”

“It’s a weight off of my chest, I can’t deny that.” Jemma rubbed tiredly at her face with one hand. The other, freed from the book, absently circled her stomach. “But my mum didn’t handle all of it well. Maveth in particular. I’ll be calling home a lot more in the near future, it looks like, to keep Mum from worrying overmuch.”

“Guess that’s a mom’s job, right? Worrying.”

Jemma’s hand stilled on her stomach. “Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.”

Daisy left her to her quiet reverie as she stepped into the bathroom and prepared for bed as best she could with her arms still in their casts. Her arms itched, but the painkillers were still working. She grimaced at the cuts on her temple and above her lip, but nothing she could really do about that. When she stepped back into the room, Jemma had dimmed most of the lights, leaving only the lamp by Daisy’s mattress on her. She had curled into a little ball under her covers, facing away from Daisy.

Daisy tiptoed across the room and slipped into bed, sighing as she finally let the tension drain from her limbs. “Happy Boxing Day, I guess,” she whispered.

Jemma, clearly asleep, only made a small noise in response.

Daisy lay on the mattress for hours, staring up at the ceiling. Sleep never came.

#given unsought

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