Chapter 1
Star Trek/Agents of Shield
Paring: Skye/Trip and a few others
She watched, helpless, heart shattering with every piece of grey stone that broke away from the whole that once made up a body, a person, an amazing person. The bronze and chocolate skin, so smooth and healthy, it's all grey. His eyes used to gleam with a strange sort of glow only he had, humor hiding in them at all times, glowing with personality that could not be contained; his bright personality spilled out in his words and through his eyes. It's not fair for someone so beyond alive, so vibrant, to become what she sees. He crumbles right before her, like old, forgotten stone that was too soft to weather time. It should not be so easy, so easy for anything to take him. He is far too glorious, the sun itself, vibrant in a way nothing else in life ever could be, full of life, except now it's gone and he's breaking apart. She thinks it looks something like volcanic rock... like a person was drowned in it and shaped only to fall away in the wind.
It's sickening the way she knows he is gone, knows she can't reach him now, but can't even move to try.
It wasn't fair! He should never die!
"Trip!" She screams, because there is nothing else she can do, nothing at all, but she has to do something, has to deny the truth for a few seconds more. She does not know how long she screams but her throat hurts and it doesn't matter.
Skye's eyes open with a snap, body nearly convulsing with the force of her jump, like her mind was so desperate to wake that her body responded to escape, but she screams his name again without meaning to. She can feel the tears spilling from the corners of her eyes now that she opened them to let the buildup free.
"Hey, hey," sleepy, tired voice made husky from disuse, "easy, girl, it's okay." An arm drapes over her in a heavy sprawl that lacks coordination, "'m right here, s'okay. You're safe, girl, I promise."
The beats of her heart are rapid with lingering panic and her breaths are desperate gasps. Her body is shaking and so it the bed, and the table. It's really a good thing they are in space and she has things to control her. The room is specially made, no less. Highly intelligent of Coulson to make those changes, offer her a place to contain herself when she needs it. Her quarters can detach from the ship a fly beside it on its own if needs be.
The shaking has not stopped and he begins to coil around her like an octopus. It is impressive for a human to be able to wind so totally around another body the way he manages. Trip is as human as she once thought she was but he is better than anyone from any other race she has ever found. He is, she would say with all confidence, the most ideal human there ever could be. Perfect, really.
"You're safe, Skye." He repeats, nuzzling his nose into her dark hair, breath hot against the back of her neck as he just pulls her more tightly to his body, chest to her back, encasing her with his legs and arms.
She's not worried about her safety, could care less about that, but his voice is enough to assure her that he's alive.
They are in her quarters, bare and desolate, devoid of much in the way of personal touch other than the frantically bobbing hula dancer by her bed. She never kept much in the way of personal items but after the crew recovered her and she returned, she held onto almost nothing. White, padded walls, white lights, white furniture melded to the floor; she could not rearrange if she wanted to. Most rooms are variants of grey but hers is white. It makes it easy to see dirt and makes it feel like the med bay.
Antoine's room is fully of everything that makes him the most interesting person anyone knows. He has things his great, great grandfather's great grandfather kept from a war she doesn't remember the name of, but Trip would. Captain Coulson would know too, nearly drooled the first time he saw everything Trip collected; Phil is a collector too. The old items are preserved perfectly and carefully, have been for many generations that cared about their history, and all of it should really be in a museum of human history but it isn't.
When they sleep in his room the dreams might be worse because she is surrounded by his essence in every way and it makes her even more afraid of having lost him. She has dreams of his death but she never tells him about them, never explains them. It feels like explaining might make them come true, and she can't let that happen, not to him.
He thinks she has nightmares about the Borg and she doesn't correct him. Sometimes she does dream about the Borg, about her capture, about what they did to her while she still had enough of her mind left to know what was happening.
She is slowly coming back to herself, mostly human again. She looks almost normal now that her hair has come back and reaches her shoulders. Fitz and Simmons worked miracles on her, kept her alive and restored her the way no one else could have. They made it possible for her to function, to have a mind of her own but they still seem to feel they did not do enough. Her body no longer looks like a human, machine hybrid save a few places.
The gauntlets FitzSimmons made for her were hijacked and used by the Borg, affixed to her and made a part of her until it would do more harm than good to take them off. They are more disturbed by the gauntlets than she is but she thinks it's mostly because it is a reminder. It might feel the same to her if something she made was used to harm someone when it was intended to help, though they do help, they keep her under control.
Trip pressed a gentle kiss to her shoulder, sliding his fingers in through hers so he could hold her hand without expending the effort to keep his fingers locked. He is using her as much as a pillow as anything now that the shaking has stopped. Sleep is clearly cling to him and he might not last much longer. She stays still, thinking it might be best to let him drift away. He had a late shift.
Skye is not human, never truly was so mechanical enhancements are one more thing to add to the list that makes her different. While she knew who she was; human father Calvin Johnson; Inhuman mother Jiaying; things had changed. Only the crew knew her fully history, knew she was Inhuman, knew that the Borg and their tampering had nothing to do with the reason she can make things shake. No one outside the ship know of her mother, know that she even knows her father beyond a slip of paper telling her he signer her away. They hide her secrets, guard her like a pack of watchdogs, closing ranks if anyone even looks at her. She is not sure that even Admiral Fury knows about her.
She is still listed as Lieutenant Junior Grade, Daisy Johnson but it hardly counts anymore; not after her powers awakened to make her an Inhuman; not after she subsequently was captured by Cardassians only to escape and land herself not into freedom, but right in Borg hands. She had tasted freedom, victory of escape, but she never made it back to the Bus.
Some Admiral talked about giving her a medal for essentially surviving all of that. Trip thought she deserved it, Fitz thought she should take it, May said it would mark her as a survivor so she would always know how tough she really was. She cared nothing about a reward for what happened, but May knew that.
Her entry into Starfleet had always been a little interesting anyway considering she started as a prisoner, should probably have started out as a Petty Officer at best rather than Ensign, and moved up in rank only after their ship, the Bus, was nearly destroyed in one of their many, many skirmishes with Cardassian forces. Skye hardly got used to being in Starfleet before she moved up a rank. Captain Coulson arranged it all, every step, but she hardly felt she still deserved a rank at all considering she nearly killed all of them while under Borg control, Mack in particular.
If you really wanted to get technical, which she very much did in the privacy of her own mind, she was the reason they lost former Third Officer, Lieutenant Grant Ward. Her memory was rather shady on that time but she remembered him coming in after her, like he really believed he could get them both away from the Borg. She did not remember everything but she knew perfectly well that neither of them got out. Ward was not stupid, he knew going in after her was as good as suicide, even if he was stronger and faster than a human, but he did it anyway. Stupid, stupid man!
While he had transferred off their ship once she caught him playing double agent, he still heard her distress call and he still came. Why he was in the quadrant she might never know. A traitor to the Federation in some degree by passing along information to Cardassians, not much better than an assassin, but he still tried to take on the impossible. He never even made it to a hearing, never was punished because he was too valuable. He knew too much about too many things to be in any real danger, and he was the poster-child for peace between the Federation and other worlds, ironically, because he was Romulan serving as an officer. She almost doubted much would have been done to him, maybe not even a court-marshal. He had still been in active duty, not even probation.
He loved her, she knew that, but she wished he never had for his sake. She wished she had never loved him either since it would have saved her a broken heart after she realized the truth about him. Everyone always was a little wary of him to some degree considering Romulans were not known for their loyalty to the Federation, but he won them all over. He might not have been raised by the Romulans, left to die as an infant for some perceived defect he was born with and found by Ferengi, but he was a bit of a gamble on Coulson's part. He always insisted he had to really betrayed them but he left all the same. It did not sit well with her that he was with the Borg; that was guilt talking, of course.
She turned in Trip's arms and nuzzled her face into his neck. He was already asleep again but that was a comfort all its own. Trip is her rock, had been for a very long time. She hardly knew him to start with, was half dead when they actually met, but she was always attracted to his light, his smile, the way he seemed to walk on air even when he was clearly on the ground. He had imagination but he was very grounded. When she needed it he made her laugh, could fill the silence or he could just sit beside her like silence was just as good. Whatever the situation, he knew what to do. He always had her back and everyone else's too. Captain America could not have been better than Antoine Triplett; not that she had met the man even if he and his crew had been freed from cryosleep, but she still could not imagine a better man existed. Even Phil, an avid fan of the once famous crew of the Avenger, might agree.
Trip picked her up and dusted her off as a friend after Ward left the first time once she revealed his secret, after they all nearly died in their first big clash with the Cardassion fleet called Hydra. He saved several of their necks in that battle and no one could really help but adore him. Daisy fell hardest even if she fell a little slower, or fell in love slower. It did not take long for him to become her sun. She told him once, somewhere in the beginning, that she thought he was like the sun; warm; bright; a lifesaver. Trip laughed like he thought it was really not a very good description of him and said; "Girl, if I'm the sun, you're the sky."
She was fairly sure that was why shy had been so sure her name was Skye after her brain had been scrambled a little. It was probably why she kept it too, after she stopped seeing herself as Daisy Johnson. Daisy was gone, she was fairly sure, but Trip thought she was the sky, so it surely meant she was big enough to become something new. A few days ago he said he loved her like he loved air. She told him he was a hopeless romantic.
"If I'm your air, you're my gravity, holding me together." She whispered against his lips, making his lids flutter.
"I do what I can." He slurred.
Skye pressed her lips to his and he made a valiant effort to wake up enough to kiss her back. The kiss was not particularly graceful but it was sweet and endearing, like him. He was a sap but it was kind of nice, at least if it was him. He was the best, worst romantic that had ever lived and she was so lucky to have him, lucky he never gave up on her even when no one believed she was capable of remembering them. It must have been hell on him but he stuck with her, they all had, but none more closely than he did. Even after she tried to stab him, he came right back, still grinning. "You always did have spunk girl, but I bring the funk." That was the first time she remembered anything from her past. It helped that she had not been with the Borg very long, but it had been long enough. Trip brought back her first real memory though, and he brought back others.
He and Mack had come to see her and her second memory came back when Mack said; "Hey, Tremors, how you feeling?"
From there it got easier, she stopped shaking and falling apart every time she remembered something. If she lost control, Trip was always there, a loving octopus that held her till she could hold her own. If he had ever been afraid of her, he never showed it, just talked her through like he was giving her directions to the common room.
Skye kissed him with a loud smack of lips before she pulled away, stroking his face and his perennially perfectly sculpted facial hair. "You're perfect, you know?"
Trip smirked, eyes more than half-lidded, "You're only saying that now because you don't think I'm awake enough to remember in the morning."
She found herself laughing, and it was still a little rare to feel enough joy to be able to express that, "Maybe." She kissed him again, the novelty never wearing off, "You awake enough to... bring the funk?"
Antoine laughed, deep and musical, "Oh, I can bring it, day or night, girl!"
A little impulsively, she leaned in and ran her teeth over the lobe of his ear very carefully, drawing a long groan out of him. With a little growl he pulled her too him, kissing anything he could catch. His hands splayed and rubbed carefully over her back, he was always careful with her, like she was precious.
"I should let you sleep." She offered without really meaning it.
"Oh no, not after you woke me up like that! I'm awake, I'm awake!"
She pushed her hands to his chest, leaning out of the reach of his mouth, "But you were tired," she drawled.
"You love to tease, don't you? Vixen!" He caught a kiss to her jaw anyway.
"You love it, don't lie." She leaned back into his arms, planting a kiss to his nose.
"You're right, I love it. I love you!" He looked so fond and it was almost hard to see.
"Even if I'm evil?" She asked playfully.
"You know I love that too! There's noting not to love." And he could say that even when her gauntlets were pressed against his chest as that little reminder, even when she knew he could feel the scars on her scalp when his fingers sank into her hair.
"I love you more." Skye offered, because nothing and no one could love him more than she did.
"How about we call it even and get back to the kissing?" His smile could light up the whole ship.
"Deal."
Skye did not really remember those last moments before the Borg captured them but sometimes she almost did. Sometimes she almost remembered Ward's eyes when he looked at her, the resignation and horrible regret. The worst part was she knew the regret was not for his own capture, it was for hers. They tried so hard to escape and the awful part was having nearly made it, having hope. Skye could almost hear his last words to her, the last free words either of them spoke before neither of them knew anything.
"We're gonna make it, Daisy, just keep running!"
They both knew it was a lie, knew they would never make it out, but that did not stop them from trying. He kept hold of her hand and she kept a death grip on his.
It really was better not to think about it. Trip knew she shouldn't think about it and tried to keep her mind firmly in the moment, she knew he did.