Elena frankly had no interest in being in Daisy’s briefing at such an early hour. Well, on Earth it would’ve been an early hour, not that they’d been back there for going on two months.
So, no, she didn’t particularly care about whatever threat they were facing, she wanted to go back to bed.
But Daisy was still talking, on and on about the specs of the alien— or maybe not alien ship that was following them. Agent Davis had gathered some specs on the ship, mostly as much of the layout as their surveillance equipment allowed.
“We should just blow them up.” Piper groaned, leaning her elbows on the table and burying her face in her hands. “We’ve been watching them for two days, and we don’t know who they are.”
“Hey, hey, we’re not blowing anyone up,” Mack announced firmly.
“I know,” Piper replied, drawing out the last word in frustration.
“Have we asked Jemma about any of this? Maybe she knows something we don’t.” Elena suggested, talking through a yawn.
“She’s resting, I didn’t want to wake her,” Daisy said.
Pour supuesto ella pueda dormir mientras trabajamos! If Mack disappeared for a little bit would they let me sleep?
“Fine, so we’re doing nothing, then?” Elena set her hands on the table, surprising herself, and everyone else with the loud metallic clang of her prosthetics against the steel lab bench.
“No one’s saying that you and I can go, do what needs to be done,” Daisy suggested; they’d been tossing the plan around for a while, but until now there wasn’t nearly enough information to justify it, Elena supposed. SHIELD still works slow, at this rate, we’ll find Fitz in ten years and be home in fifteen.
“Now hang on, just the two of you?” Mack sounded— understandably, dubious.
“We can take Davis.” Daisy offered.
Davis scoffed. “Sure, send the guy without superpowers to deal with the aliens.”
“We’ve all dealt with them, it’s your turn.” Elena retorted.
“Also, the superpowers are coming with you. Also, they could be from Earth, we really haven’t made it that far.”
“Fine. But we’re taking those,” Davis paused, unsure of the word. “Spacesuit things in case Daisy has to you know... I’m not looking to get killed by aliens.”
“Those suits are going to be awful in a fight.” Daisy pointed out.
“I still think that would be the coolest way to go, aliens, just saying.”
“Okay, now you’re just asking for trouble, Piper.” Mack admonished. “I’ll allow the mission but everyone is wearing those suits, and if you’re gone longer than four hours, we’re coming in.”
“We’ll dock with the Quinjet, our tail is well within its range.”
Mack nodded. “Fine. Everyone go prep then, Piper, you stay here, set up comms, let Simmons know what’s happening.”
Mack accompanied them to the shuttle bay, he was quiet. Not that he wasn’t usually, but it was a stony sort of silence that told her he hated the whole plan.
“Don’t worry so much, Turtleman.”
“This is one hell of a mission to start off with being director,” Mack noted, shaking his head.
“This isn’t the first one, we had Graviton, and then those Confederation assholes who wanted revenge, and then--”
“This whole space thing, I want to find him as much as the next person, but I wonder sometimes.”
“Is it worth it?” Elena guessed.
“Yeah.” Mack grabbed her hand, intertwining their fingers. “I mean, Piper and Davis have lives on Earth, and I’m sure Daisy would rather be with May right now.”
Elena laughed at that. “Daisy, May, and Coulson should thank us for pulling her away from that vacation.”
Mack laughed, and pulled on her hand, drawing her close to him.
“You’re doing great.”
“Hey lovebirds!” Daisy called. “You know we have a time window here, right?”
Mack stood by while they performed EVA suit checks, then donned the suits. They were huge, unwieldy things, made of white cloth with plastic plates around the joints and on the torso. On their heads, they wore round, and bright orange helmets equipped with respiratory support and comms.
Elena had worn one once to fix something on the exterior of Zephyr One, and they were undoubtedly her least favorite part of being out here. Besides, what was the point of plastic stormtrooper arm guards with robot arms? Fue uno tonterìa!
Mack finished connecting in the air tank to the back of her suit and handed her her helmet. “All set.”
“Thank you.”
“Stay safe out there, right?”
Elena rolled her eyes. “Of course, I’m back in two hours tops and then…” She trailed off with a wink.
Mack didn’t bite. “You’re sure you’re up to this?”
“Don’t worry, Turtleman. We survived the Lighthouse on so little sleep, this is nothing.”
“I hate to interrupt, but the longer we wait, the bigger the chance is that the ship gets out of range.”
Elena nodded, then turned back to Mack. “See you later, then.”
He leaned closer, struggling to get the bulky chest plate despite his height. “Te amo, te veo pronto.”
Elena was almost too busy laughing at his awkward fumbling with the EVA suit to properly respond when he kissed her.
*
There wasn’t much to say of the ship, it was so nondescript that every inch of it looked the same to Elena. And there wasn’t much to say of the ensuing fight either, the aliens-- an unfamiliar lot; tall, and thin, and muted orange, who carried no weapons weren’t particularly formidable enemies. And they were irritated that the Zephyr’s team had failed to pay the fee for crossing into their airspace.
By which, of course, Elena meant that Daisy had easily snapped them in half with a half-hearted blast, delivered with a flick of her hand. After the Framework, the Lighthouse, and Talbot, a few extraterrestrial traffic cops didn’t seem like much of a threat.
Well, didn’t, past tense. Because after Daisy had disposed of their five opponents, the ship exploded. Later, Jemma and Piper say that it was some sort of failsafe they had no real explanation for with no cultural context for the strangers.
One moment, Elena was standing in a hallway with steel walls, a steel floor, and a steel ceiling, no doors in sight.
The next, a piece of debris slammed into her chest so hard she felt the plastic chest plate crumple under the force. It felt like something was pulling her outwards, out of the hallway. She must have squeezed her eyes shut because when she opened them, she was still surrounded by the steel wall, but something was wrong. The wall was in fragments, she wasn’t magnetically tied to the floor- was she upside down? She had completely lost track of Daisy and Davis.
She tried, as hard as she could for several long moments to keep her eyes open, but it was futile. The last thing she was able to make out was the light from her helmet’s computer glancing off some debris.
*
Elena felt like she’d been hit with a truck, or, maybe a Quinjet. Her entire body ached, and the light in front of her eyelids felt like a knife wound to the skull.
Someone had taken her arms off. What a weird thing to say.
She vaguely remembered something about a mission, maybe, had Daisy been there? Had Davis? Where were they then, where was she now? The longer she lay there, unwilling to open her eyes, the more anxious she grew.
Without her arms, it was hard to try to feel out where she was, or even sit up. So, she cracked an eye open despite the pain.
She was lying in the Zephyr’s medbay, and all the lights where off, no one was around in her direct line of vision.
Mack was sitting to her left, and she only spotted him when she forced herself to turn her head, he was dozing off in a chair beside her.
“Mack” Her throat was so dry that she could barely make a sound, but the strangled, raspy sounding noise woke him anyways.
“Yoyo,” He said, instantly wide awake and sounding beyond relieved. “You’re awake.” Then, like a dam broke, his questions spilled out, one after the other, blending and running together; how are you feeling? Do you need me to get Simmons? Can I get you anything?
He seemed positively frantic for a man who had been asleep moments before.
“Slow down, Mack. What happened?”
“The ship blew up, some failsafe as far as we can tell. You were banged up pretty badly, Simmons says you have a few broken ribs.”
“Is everyone else okay?”
“Not even a scratch.”
Elena groaned, the sound breaking and uneven in her parched throat. “Can I drink something?”
Mack nodded, rising from the chair. “Give me one second.”
He disappeared around the corner for a second, and Elena thought she could make out the sound of running water. Though, through the haze of painkillers, it was hard to trust any of her senses.
When Mack returned, he was carrying bottled water, so she must have been mistaken. He poured the water into a small paper cup which he held up to her mouth. Without a hand to help him balance the cup, the action was clumsy, and half of the cup of water dribbled down her neck and spilled on the paper-thin hospital gown covering her.
Elena tried to laugh, Mack got worried if she didn’t laugh when her lack of arms tripped things up-- and he had a point, laughter always helped put a positive spin on it. But the gesture hurt her ribs, and instead of laughing, she winced.
“Good?” Mack asked, setting the cup of water aside to cup her cheek.
Elena nodded. “Seems I can’t breathe too hard, unfortunately for you.”
“The way you flirt is shameless, mi amore,” Mack said, taking a lightly scolding tone, but she knew he didn’t really mean it.
Elena grinned back at him. “And you love it.”
Mack returned the expression, but his smile seemed tight, concerned, even though Elena was clearly awake, and doing well enough.
She hadn’t even needed a breathing tube; so, it was a relatively minor wound.
“Mack, it’s not your fault. There was no way for you to know.”
“I know.”
“It’s not the director’s job to know everything that could go wrong, everyone’s alive. And, the ship’s gone, the mission was successful, que no?”
“I almost lost you.” Mack’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly against her cheek as he leaned forward to kiss her forehead.
“Hardly almost.”
Mack shook his head. “No, before there was always some excuse not to get out of this before--”
“Mack.” She leaned upward, almost losing her balance with no way to support herself, and Mack quickly caught her around the waist. “I’m fine.”
She pressed a quick kiss to his lips and leaned her forehead on his. “I love you. Now, come and sit with me while I recover, least you can do after sending me on a dangerous mission, no?”
“Yoyo!”