Her lips are moving. Skye can see them forming words behind the glass but there’s a buzz in her ears and she can’t hear them. She can’t hear anything.
This isn’t real.
Simmons turns from Coulson to the rest of them. “Would you mind if I had a brief moment alone with Fitz.”
Her feet are fixed to the floor, her throat lodged with all the things she had imagined saying but never did, all the words she had agonised over, alone in her bunk in the middle of the night. A hand pulls her away – May’s – and she doesn’t have the presence of mind to do anything else but be led. She is numb. Nothing about this feels real.
Dazed, she climbs up the stairs with the others to the control room.
I’m Agent Grant Ward, and I could rupture your spleen with my left pinkie. Blindfolded.
Skye looks down to her watch. Nine hours ago everything was fine. Nine hours ago they had all the time in the world.
Her hand clenches the rail and she stops.
“Skye?” May stops beside her.
“I need–” her voice cracks and she clears her throat. “I need a minute. Go on ahead without me.”
May squeezes her shoulder and leaves without a word. Turning around, Skye sits down on the step and buries her face in her hands. It still feels like an incredibly bad dream, or another Malta or Peru; any of the tight situations they have scraped through that had, at one time or another, felt impossible. But then, this time is different – this time they have actually said their goodbyes.
Or rather, Coulson and Fitz have – she hasn’t said anything. For two months she hasn’t said a goddamn word.
She bangs her fist against the railing and the sharp clang of her tracking bracelet against metal rings out around her. Looking down at the thin, silver band, her jaw clenches. She hasn’t had a chance to make it up to her yet, not for lying or sneaking around, not for a boyfriend – an ex-boyfriend – that she never told her she had. Not that she and Simmons were together by any stretch of the imagination, but they had their moments – seconds, really – where a mutual understanding that they could have been something was shared in a look.
A muted whimper and she presses the heels of her palms to her wet eyes. Simmons had barely even glanced at her before when she was saying goodbye. The silence, the avoidance of it all now sits heavy in her stomach and it feels wrong, so incredibly, stupidly wrong to have walked away from her, because even though she isn’t family to her like Fitz is, she had to be more than no words at all.
She has to be more than no words at all.
“Damn it.”
Wiping at her cheeks, she stands up and rushes back down the stairs to the lab. A blaring alarm shrieks around her and she stumbles, catching herself on the railing. Simmons. She jumps down the rest of the steps and sprints towards the lab. She can’t be too late. Please don’t let her be too late.
She can hear Fitz screaming Jemma’s name, over and over again and it carries her faster, around the corner to the lab and into the glaring sunlight pouring through the open cargo ramp. Her eyes adjust and a silhouette on the edge of the ramp morphs into Simmons; a single second suspended in time and she doesn’t breathe – can’t breathe - as Simmons takes a final look at Fitz, then one at her, then lets herself slip off the edge.
Her heart drops.
“No!” she cries, rushing forward. Fitz bangs his fist on the glass and yells at her, points to the back wall where the parachute bags are hanging and she runs towards them. She picks up the first and slings it over her back, fumbling to fit the clasps together. She has no idea what she’s doing, Ward only really taught her which string to pull, but Fitz has broken out of the lab and is thrusting the device into her hands.
“Just get to her and press this button!” he yells over the roar of the wind, pointing to the device as he shoves her to the ramp. She runs, ignores the distant shouts of Ward and Coulson telling her to wait, and in a reckless moment of insanity launches herself into the air.
She can’t see a thing. Straining against the wind to keep her eyes open, she searches for a figure, a spot amongst the fog and clouds but there’s nothing. She streamlines her body to move faster, another thing Ward taught her, hurtling through the air until she sees her, a flailing body, that isn’t at all on her trajectory.
Crap.
She doesn’t know what to do. She has to get to her – she didn’t jump out of a goddamn plane to not get to her – but there’s little else she can do but fall; thinking closer, closer, she has to be closer and then suddenly, like her body is changing course on its own, her fall angles towards Simmons and she shoots towards her.
What the hell? She’s not...is she?
She scoffs. In her dreams.
Drawing closer, she spreads her arms to slow herself down and their hands clasp, jerking themselves together so hard it feels like her shoulder has been wrenched from its socket. Simmons’ legs wrap around her and she jabs the device into her thigh. A blue zap and it’s done, and with her free hand she yanks the string on the backpack.
Nothing.
No, no, no.
She yanks it again. Still nothing.
This isn’t happening.
Simmons slaps her hand away and pulls on it herself but they keep falling, out of the cloud cover toward the ocean, plummeting hard and fast and out of control. She grabs Simmons by the back of her head and pulls her closer until their foreheads press together.
This is it. This isn’t Malta or Peru; there's no Ward or May to get them through it, just the two of them falling, Simmons with a painful grip on the nape of her neck and Skye with the fervent hope that what she’s about to do will be taken well, because there really won’t be time for apologies if she has misread everything.
“I like you!” Skye shouts.
“What?!”
“I like you!”
“I can’t hear–”
God damn it.
Without preamble, she fists her hand in Simmons’ hair and presses their lips together. It’s hard, not the least bit the kiss she had imagined, but Simmons presses her mouth back against hers and the only thing she can think as they fall is not now.
She can’t die now.
Abruptly, the wind dies down around them and the dropping sensation in her stomach disappears.
Together they pull back from the kiss and look down to the ocean surface, which lies two hundred steady, not-currently-decreasing feet below them.
“Should we talk about the fact that we’re floating right now?” Simmons asks. “Or the fact that you just kissed me?”
“Hey,” Skye says, affronted. “We may have been falling to our deaths so I can’t be a hundred percent certain that you kissed me back, but I’m pretty sure you did.”
Simmons peaks a grin at her. “You did just jump out of a plane for me. It would’ve been remiss of me to do otherwise.”
“I hope that’s not how you say thank you to everyone.”
“Not quite,” Simmons says, then dips her head to kiss her again. It’s much softer this time, Simmons only barely peaking her tongue out to brush it against her lip, but her stomach flips like she's falling again.
She feels Simmons shift against her and for a precarious second she panics. “Hold up, no moving,” she says, pulling Simmons flush against her so her legs are sitting on her hips. “I’m pretty sure gravity is still working on you.”
“And not on you?”
“Nope,” Skye quips. “Feeling light as a feather.”
Simmons looks at her quizzically. “So I’m only floating because you’re floating? How wonderfully interesting and entirely unfair.”
“I have a sneaky suspicion we’re not just floating,” Skye says.
“What do you mean?”
She feels too ridiculous to say it aloud so she closes her eyes, concentrates on the plane and imagines them rising up towards it.
Faster than she intended, they shoot up into the air and Simmons clings to her with a shriek. Skye slows them down to a hover again and gives Simmons a second to collect herself.
“Oh, you mean flying. Obviously,” Simmons says. “Is this a normal thing for you?”
“Flying?” Skye asks. “Sure. That and the innate ability to shoot lightning from a big, big hammer.”
Simmons flicks her shoulder. “In that case, any chance you can safely transport us back to The Bus? Not that I don’t have full faith in your heretofore non-existent abilities, I just don’t much like hanging onto you for dear life.”
“I don’t mind it,” Skye says with a grin, before shooting them skywards once more.
If this is what it meant to be an 0-8-4, she could totally do this superhero thing.