Work Text:
“Again.”
Daisy didn’t scream this time – there was just not enough air left in her lungs to vocalise the pain coursing through her body. She just thrust her hand forward, letting the vibrations course through her hand and escape through her palm.
The block of who knew what shattered into a million pieces, showering the room with a million tiny fragments, Daisy instinctively deflecting all those coming towards her.
It would have been less painful to let them strike you, she thought as she dropped to her knees, gasping, watching as another drop of blood bounced off the floor. Her right arm shook, and she grabbed it with her left, clutching it against her chest, trying to force herself to take a deep breath.
Blacking out would only lead to her waking up in pain.
Almost unbearable pain.
It’s okay, she tried to convince herself, the mantra repeated so much in the last couple of hours that the words made no sense anymore; You can take this, Daisy. You have to. If it were anyone else…
She picked the Zephyr, her friends, Sousa, getting away, no doubt now bickering over the best way to get her back.
Better them bickering than them being subject to whatever ‘research’ they were trying to complete.
“Fascinating, Agent Johnson,” the man murmured, stepping over the debris of the last couple of hours, “Your stamina certainly is impressive. But I’m afraid the data just… isn’t giving me what I truly want to know.”
“Enough,” Daisy said, turning around, even that small movement threatening enough for him to shock her, causing her to fall to the ground.
Get up. Get up, Daisy.
“Not enough. You only broke things,” he said, looking on in fascination as the young agent refused to stay down, “I need you to show me how you break people.”
He stood up and snapped his fingers, “Bring them in.”
Daisy didn’t look up immediately, listening as the heavy door behind her dragged open and –
“Get off me!”
No. No, he’s safe. He’s on the Zephyr.
That’s not him.
She whipped her head up and towards the voice, watching as two burly men dragged Daniel into the room, forcing his wrists into the cuffs hanging from the ceiling.
His lip was split, a dark bruise colouring his jaw, clothes tattered as if they’d gone through a shredder twice before being put back on him.
“Daniel?” she breathed out, his name coming out as a cry. The belief that kept her going, that kept her clenching her teeth through the pain, knowing that the pain was worth her friends, her family, being safe, dissipated, replaced by horror.
If this is what they had been doing to her, what were they doing to him?
“You… you were supposed to be safe,” she put to him, but all he could do was shake his head.
“The final test is simple, Agent Johnson,” the man told her, brandishing the tiny remote in his hand, imagining her crushing that remote against his head, before…
She couldn’t afford to think that – when she tried to snap his neck the first time, she woke up to find herself face down on the floor, breathing in her own blood, pins and needles down both her arms. It didn’t take a genius to know that the man had followed up on his threat.
Another, milder shock, passed through her, snapping her focus back to the situation at hand, her further trail of thought around where everyone else was now lost.
“I said, Daisy, that I need to see what happens to human bone when you hit it. I need to see it snap.”
No.
“No,” Daisy whispered, her head shaking almost imperceptibly.
Sousa had done nothing to hurt her; she would do nothing to hurt him, no.
“Did you want to try that again?”
“No,” she said with a little more confidence, before the collar that was locked tightly around her neck whined almost imperceptibly, another shock being registered by her system.
“I thought you might say that, and so, Daisy. You have one minute. Tell her, Agent Sousa, what happens at the end of that one minute.”
Sousa’s eyes opened wide, and Daisy knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
The man spoke when he realised Sousa wouldn’t, “If the collar senses you haven’t quaked, and if it doesn’t register Agent Sousa here, in pain, you will die. There’s a shaped charge aimed at your carotid artery. Quick, but undoubtedly messy. Who knows, maybe some of your brain matter will end up all over Daniel here. But he won’t even have time to register that before I put a bullet in his brain too.”
Daisy met Sousa’s eyes, and then her eyes darted to the side towards the gun, which the man had held to the side of his head, finger darting dangerously close to the trigger.
“Do it, Daisy,” Sousa nodded. The man was far from bluffing, and until they could pull themselves out of the mess or they were rescued, they needed to stay alive.
Right now, the only way was for Daisy to listen.
“Do it,” he gave her permission again, louder.
“I… I could kill you,” she pointed out. She’d learnt to control her powers ages ago, but with the state of Sousa right now, she feared even the smallest of quakes she could conjure to create a snap would kill him.
“You won’t,” he said so matter-of-factly, for that one second, she believed him.
“Forty seconds,” the man interrupted, “Hit him. A limb will suffice, Agent. Just give me a fracture.”
Daisy took stock of Sousa’s face once more, noting how loud he was breathing and the sweat dripping down his nose.
Go, the word shaped by his lips, and she raised her hand, aiming low.
She focused on his leg, the bad leg, the one that was now a marvel of technology from the brains of Fitzsimmons. If she hit that, she wouldn’t hit any of his bones; she wouldn’t maim him. All that would be left to do is to get Jemma to work her magic again.
She directed her energy towards the shin, her attempt at an audible crack working, Sousa grunting as the force jerked his body, but he didn’t scream.
“I did it,” she looked to the man, who still had his gun to Sousa’s head, his face displaying nothing but abject disappointment as his other hand fiddled with the remote, a series of shocks coursing down her again.
“Do not insult my intelligence. Don’t you think I know about Agent Sousa’s prosthetic? Breaking and bending that doesn’t give me what I want.”
He waited until Daisy picked herself up off the floor before continuing.
“You’re wasting my time. And yours. And his. You have fifteen seconds to break something real.”
“Fourteen,” he began counting down.
“Don’t make me watch you die,” Sousa borderline begged her, leaning as far forward as he could.
“Eleven,” the irritating voice vocalised.
“I’m sorry,” she got out, raising her hand, aiming for his arm, trying to maintain her focus despite the pounding in her head and the nauseous feeling that had become the default one since she’d woken up here, but that would have been too easy.
Another shock hit her, and she didn’t have enough time to move her hand before the pain caused a spike in the intensity of her strike, the snap of bone followed by a scream. Sousa’s knees buckled, and he slumped in his chains, his head striking the beam behind it, his left arm contorted at an angle that nothing should have been contorted at.
Daisy dropped to her knees, retching.
“Much better, see, I knew you could do it. I just had to have the right leverage,” he said as pair of boots marked the presence of someone else now.
“That was exactly what we needed. Thank you,” he told her, leaning down to look into Daisy’s eyes, amused by their murderous glint.
Ha, she could try.
He tapped something on his phone, watching as a different light flashed on his test subject’s collar.
“I have what I came for,” he told her, “And so here’s the situation. Your collar is on a sixty-minute timer, after which the anti-tamper mechanism will disengage. It’s also proximity locked to this building. If you try to quake it off before the hour is up, or you try to follow me, you die anyway.”
He tossed his remote to the ground, crushing it under his boot.
“He’ll tell you when the hours are up,” the man pointed to Sousa, saying something in his ear, before leaving the two alone.
Daisy pushed herself off the floor, reaching Sousa, her hands hovering over his shattered arm, terrified at what she had been forced to do.
“Daniel?”
He opened his eyes again, trying to take a deep breath.
“What… what did he tell you?”
“That you… could quake anything now, except your collar. He found it amusing because you could have quaked him then and there. I’m sorry, I should have…”
“No, I’m sorry. I thought you were safe. If I knew you were close…”
“Daisy,” he tried to comfort her as much as he could, whilst in pain himself, “They didn’t do anything I couldn’t handle. Besides, they pit us against one another. He told me that if I tried to leave, fought back, he would kill you. I heard you scream.”
So he had been here as long as she had been.
She reached for the chains, quaking them at the point where they were fixated on the ceiling, not trusting herself just yet to instead quake the delicate lock mechanisms and free his wrists entirely.
Sousa slumped forward, and Daisy caught him, gently guiding him to the floor, as she sat with her back against the wall, and she pulled him into his lap, forcing herself to look at the damage she’d caused towards his broken arm, which he now clutched against his stomach, his good hand resting just below it, the cuffs still digging into his wrists.
“Don’t feel guilty,” Sousa told her, gritting his teeth, “you didn’t have a choice, and I told you, alright, that it was okay.”
“But it’s not okay. I hurt you.”
“And you will help me heal later, Daisy,” he told her, taking in a shaky breath, taking note of how upset she was.
“Give me your hand,” he asked her, and Daisy realised she had hidden them behind the column she was leaning against. Slowly, she pulled her right one around, and Sousa reached out with his good hand, sandwiching it between two of his against his stomach.
“Now we wait,” he told her.