Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jemma takes a tiny sip of her drink, wincing immediately at the taste. The Martians call it Deimos distilled. Everyone else calls it disgusting.

She doesn’t even want to be in this awful bar, for God’s sake. It had been Fitz’s idea, a few drinks to celebrate them finally getting the jobs they had been after since their first trip to university. They’re working in an interstellar lab, developing communications systems between species. It’s challenging, it requires all of the four tenth levels they have between them, and best of all, they get to work together. Jemma can’t be mad at him for wanting to celebrate.

She can be mad at him, though, for somehow forgetting that Mars is the galactic equivalent of a trash fire. It’s a mess of illegal markets, pirate hangouts, and horrible dive bars like the one Jemma is currently seated in. Worse still, Fitz has already found a man to flirt with and disappeared into the crowd, leaving Jemma abandoned to drink disgusting liquor alone at the bar.

The girl seated beside her downs her third glass of Deimos since Jemma sat down, and Jemma can’t ignore it anymore.

“How are you doing that?” she demands, turning. The girl looks up in surprise, and Jemma nearly swallows her tongue. She’s gorgeous, dark hair and flawless skin and practically glowing in the half-darkness of the bar.

“Huh?” the girl asks, twisting her mouth into a half-smile. Jemma doesn’t even register the question, staring at the girl. “You good?”

“Yes!” Jemma says suddenly, her mind catching up. “Yes, I’m fine. Are you? How many of those have you had?” The girl glances at her glass and shrugs.

“Five?” she says thoughtfully. “I don’t know. They don’t bother me, though.” Jemma shakes her head, torn between awe and horror. “I’m Daisy.”

“Jemma,” Jemma returns. She’s still staring at the other girl, but her gaze is analytical now, her mind jumping from thought to thought like the jumping spiders on Agrith that Fitz used to have nightmares about. “You’re Inhuman,” Jemma says after a moment, putting the pieces together. Daisy raises her eyebrows.

“How’d you figure it out?” she asks with a grin.

“You look like one,” Jemma says, wincing as soon as the words leave her mouth. “Sorry, that sounds bad. You just—Inhumans have this glow? You’re all strangely beautiful and sort of immortal looking.” Daisy’s grin widens. Jemma realizes that she’s just inadvertently called this stranger beautiful. She chooses to not take it back. It’s true.

“So, Jemma,” Daisy says, turning on her stool to face Jemma. “What are you doing here? No offense, you just don’t look like the girls I usually meet in bars like these. Or on Mars in general.” Jemma glances down at her cardigan and jeans, compares it to Daisy’s black leather jacket and impossibly tight pants of some unknown material, and reaches much the same conclusion.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Jemma explains. “My friend dragged me out here. What about you?” Daisy shrugs.

“I like the drinks,” she says. “‘sides, I was born on Mars.”

“Visiting family?” Jemma asks.

“No family,” Daisy corrects. “Not by blood, anyway. My family is all on my ship with me.”

“You have your own ship?” Jemma asks, surprised. “That’s impressive. What do you do?” Daisy grins wickedly.

“I’m a supply runner,” she says. Jemma has no reason to doubt her, but something in her smile isn’t the least bit convincing. “You?”

“I just got a new job, actually,” Jemma says excitedly. “I’m building communications devices to cross interspecies barriers. Did you know that we’re currently aware of over seven thousand species that we can’t communicate efficiently with because their evolution didn't include ears or vocal cords? Seven thousand. Can you imagine how much knowledge we could gain if we learned how to speak to them?” She notices Daisy’s slightly overwhelmed look and deflates. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “It’s boring, I know.”

“No, don’t apologize,” Daisy says immediately. “I think it’s interesting.” Jemma gives her a skeptical look. “I do! Most of it would probably go over my head, because, hey, didn’t even finish my third levels here, but I think it’s cool that you’re trying to help people.”

“Don’t you need at least fourth levels to be a pilot?” Jemma says, frowning, trying to recall the regulations handbook all interstellar travelers were tested on when they received their passports.

“Nope,” Daisy says a little too quickly, a little too cheerfully. “So, what company is sponsoring your whole communications thing?”

“Not a company,” Jemma says absently. “S.H.I.E.L.D.” Daisy’s smile drops.

“S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she repeats.

“Yes,” Jemma says. “Is that bad?”

The doors of the bar slam open with a crash, letting the weak light of the Martian evening flood the dark interior. In storms a human woman, blaster out, followed quickly by—

“Agent Coulson?” Jemma says, utterly perplexed. “Agent May?”

“Oh, fuck,” Daisy says from beside her.

“Simmons, get away from her, now,” Coulson says calmly. Jemma stands automatically (Coulson is using his commander voice; he never uses his commander voice), taking a few steps back from the bar, more confused than ever. May levels her blaster at Daisy.

“Hey, A.C.,” Daisy says with a crooked grin.

“Miss Johnson,” Coulson returns cooly, and Jemma puts the pieces together. “I would tell you to come with us, but that hasn’t worked out the last eleven times, so I guess it’s kind of pointless.”

“Yep,” Daisy agrees. She stands up from her stool slowly. May keeps the blaster trained on her. Daisy starts to raise her hands.

“Not happening,” May says. “Keep them down.”

“Oh, please,” Daisy says dismissively. “Like you’re actually going to shoot me. You love me, May, don’t lie to yourself.” May doesn’t respond, but Jemma could swear she sees the normally impassive agent’s mouth twitch slightly, like she’s holding back a smile.

“Keep them down,” she repeats. Daisy makes a show of holding her hands by her sides. Coulson steps forward, pulling a set of handcuffs from his belt and walking towards Daisy, carefully staying out of May’s line of fire.

“I don’t know why you spend so much time trying to catch me, A.C.,” Daisy says conversationally. “It’s not like it ever works out.” She holds out her wrists innocently. Coulson eyes her suspiciously before beginning to slip the cuffs onto her—

—and suddenly Coulson is cuffed to the bar, and Daisy is holding May’s blaster. She glances down at the blaster in her hand, like she’s surprised it’s there, before she turns to address the room at large.

“Well, it’s been fun as always,” she announces. “Good seeing you, A.C., May. Call me sometime, Jemma.” Jemma turns bright red. “Let’s go, guys.” As Jemma watches, five humans step out of the crowd of people of different species in the bar: a tall, beautiful blonde accompanied by a slightly shorter man, an utterly massive dark skinned man, a shorter man with a devilishly handsome grin, and a woman tossing the key to Coulson’s handcuffs from hand to hand with a mischievous smile.

Daisy’s group sweeps out of the bar in a parade of dark clothing and combat boots. Coulson watches them go, and Jemma genuinely can’t tell if he’s upset or amused.

“That was Daisy Johnson,” she says flatly.

“Yep,” Coulson confirms.

“The Daisy Johnson,” she continues. “Quake Daisy Johnson. Most-infamous-pirate-this-side-of-Sol Daisy Johnson.”

“Yep.”

“Bloody hell.”

A murmur of conversation and awed whispers is beginning to rise from the crowd in the bar. Quake is a notorious name anywhere, but on Mars, the beloved home and hangout of pirates and their admirers from all over the galaxy, she’s all but legendary. There’s no photos of her anywhere; she never gets caught, and the few times she’s been sketched or someone has tried to generate a computer image of her, the files have mysteriously disappeared from wherever they happen to be stored.

Still, Jemma would never have expected to not recognize her. The stories about Quake, about her ship (the Rising Tide, an absolute legend in engineer circles, at least according to Fitz; apparently Daisy’s mechanic is one of the best in the past two centuries) appearing out of nowhere and taking company supply ships in minutes before fading back into nothing, about her powers being strong enough to destroy worlds (some stories say they already have, but Jemma is skeptical; there’s too many rumors about Quake’s refusal to kill and avoidance of violence for such stories to hold weight), about her charisma and determination, gave Jemma the impression of someone somehow larger than life, someone not quite real, more of a myth than a person.

(That’s a conspiracy, too; that Daisy Johnson is imaginary, the product of a government coverup to disguise the fact that an unknown species is trying to destroy interplanetary trade. Jemma has always found that one rather ridiculous, especially seeing how the goods Quake steals have a habit of reappearing on worlds that desperately need them.)

The real Daisy Johnson is something that Jemma was not in the slightest prepared to deal with. She’s kind, and funny, and Inhumanly gorgeous with a capital i, and definitely real, and undeniably fascinating.

“Jemma!” Fitz pushes his way out of the crowd and over to her. “Are you alright?”

“Physically,” Jemma says, shaking her head slowly. “I…I believe I just inadvertently hit on Daisy Johnson.”

“Oh, you are kidding me,” Fitz groans. “You too?”

“You were also flirting with her? No offense, but you don’t really seem her type. Or her yours, for that matter.”

“Not her,” Fitz corrects her, talking with his hands the way he always does when he’s excited. “Her mechanic.”

“The mechanic whose work you’re always salivating over?”

“Yes,” Fitz says. “Unfortunately, he seems to be straight.”

“Also a space pirate,” Jemma reminds him. Fitz shrugs dismissively.

“Nobody’s perfect.” Jemma shakes her head at his words. “Besides, you were flirting with Daisy Johnson, you’re hardly in a position to criticize.”

“I didn’t know it was her!” Jemma protests.

“Would that have stopped you?” Jemma hesitates. She’s actually not entirely sure she wouldn’t continue to flirt with Daisy, given the opportunity.

“Will one of you please get me out of these cuffs?” Coulson calls from the bar, sounding exasperated. Jemma and Fitz exchange a guilty look before turning around as one. Coulson is still cuffed to the rail at the back of the bar, glaring at them. May is as impassive as always, although that telltale twitch is tugging at the corner of her mouth again.

“Sorry, sir,” they mumble in unison, and Fitz steps forward, tapping on the metal of the cuffs to wake the computers in them up. He hits a series of keys that mean absolutely nothing to Jemma, and the cuffs spring open.

“Thank you,” Coulson says, sliding the cuffs off the bar and reattaching them to his belt. “Now, if you two would come with me, we’re going to track the Rising Tide.” Without waiting for an answer, he walks out of the bar. May follows silently. Jemma and Fitz exchange glances and shrugs before following as well.

“I can’t believe you flirted with Daisy Johnson and didn’t know it,” Fitz comments.

“Will you shut up?”

Chapter Text

The next time Jemma sees Daisy, she nearly gives her ship’s entire crew a possibly fatal disease.

She’s minding her own business in the lab on board S.H.I.E.L.D-616, observing a particularly interesting sample of bacteria she had collected on an unnamed planet mainly inhabited by odd, vaguely cat-like creatures who had somehow managed to become both sentient and photosynthetic, when she hears the glass doors to the lab slide open.

“Fitz, can you get the tissue samples out of the fridge for me?” Jemma calls without looking up.

“I would, but I’m pretty sure you don’t want me touching your stuff,” a voice that is very much not Fitz’s replies. Jemma drops the petri dish she’s holding, and alien bacteria spills all over the floor. “Oh shit, sorry,” Daisy continues, standing in the doorway. “Is that stuff poisonous or something?”

“Daisy,” Jemma says blankly. They had lost track of the Rising Tide only hours after leaving Mars, and it had been three weeks since then. Unfortunately, it seems that time has not lessened Jemma’s complete inability to think around Daisy.

“You didn’t call,” Daisy says, mock-hurt.

“You didn’t exactly give me a way to,” Jemma replies. Daisy smiles, but it isn’t the cocky, careless grin Jemma had seen from her under the dim lights of a Martian bar. It’s soft, hesitant, almost shy.

“Would you have called if I did?” she asks. Jemma opens her mouth and doesn’t have an answer. At least, not one she wants to admit.

(She absolutely would’ve called Daisy. She would’ve justified it as being her duty as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, as a way of gathering information on a known fugitive. It wouldn’t be, but she’s pretty good at denial when she tries.)

“That’s—how did you even get in here?” Jemma demands. Daisy’s smile widens, turning back into that heart-stopping grin.

(Jemma studiously ignores the part of her that immediately misses Daisy’s softer, more genuine smile.)

“Oh, please,” Daisy says dismissively. “S.H.I.E.L.D. security is pathetic. I just hacked the keypad.”

“How did you even get on the ship?” Jemma asks.

“I hacked the docking system and listed my ship as a S.H.I.E.L.D. fighter,” Daisy explains, shrugging. “Any idea where I can find Coulson? I have some cargo he’ll be interested in.”

“What exactly do you have that S.H.I.E.L.D. would want?” Jemma questions.

“Blue-skinned douchebag named Kasius,” Daisy says. “Slave trader. Took down his ship and found a cargo hold full of Inhumans.”

“Kasius?” Jemma asks. “The Kree slaver that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been trying to catch for years?” Daisy shrugs.

“He’s blue,” she repeats. “And yells a lot. Calls me ‘Destroyer of Worlds’. I hate that nickname. I’ve only ever destroyed uninhabited moons.” Jemma frowns at her, unsure if she’s being serious. Daisy just smirks at her.

“Coulson is either in his office or in the cockpit with Agent May,” Jemma says, choosing to focus on a subject that doesn’t involve the destruction of planets or uninhabited moons. “I can’t promise they won’t try to arrest you.”

“Why aren’t you trying to arrest me?” Daisy asks, tilting her head. “I am a wanted criminal, and you’re a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.” Jemma hesitates. She can’t very well answer that with the fact that she’s been reading up on Daisy Johnson ever since that night in the bar and, the more she reads, the more she understands that Daisy is the closest a pirate can be to heroic. She only targets supply ships owned by massive, unethical corporations, carrying goods and resources taken from planets that can’t afford to lose them. Everything she steals reappears weeks or months later, on primitive planets with exploited populations. Jemma had read about a character named Robin Hood in her Earth Studies elective for her fifth levels, and Daisy seems to fit the profile: steal from the moderately evil and extremely wealthy, give to the underprivileged and impoverished.

“I doubt I would be able to,” Jemma says instead. “I’m a scientist, not a field agent.”

“Shame,” Daisy says. “I might actually let you.” Jemma feels herself flush, her ears getting hot.

“You should go,” she says, turning away and stepping over to the closet she and Fitz keep the cleaning supplies in. There is still possibly toxic bacteria all over the floor, after all. “You have a prisoner to deal with.”

“You wanna come with me?” Daisy asks. Jemma freezes. “To get Kasius?” Jemma relaxes. For a moment, she had thought Daisy was asking her to leave S.H.I.E.L.D., to go with her. She scared herself, for that half a second, with how willing she was to consider it. For Earth’s sake, Jemma, she scolds herself. She’s just a pretty girl. “I have a nice ship,” Daisy promises. “Besides, I might get lost on the way out.” God damn it.

“Okay,” Jemma agrees. She grabs a sticky note from her desk, scribbles biohazard on the floor, Fitz please clean on it and doodles a little biohazard sign underneath it, and steps outside the sliding glass doors to stand beside Daisy. They slide shut, and she slaps the sticky on them. Daisy grins at her.

“Would Fitz be the guy who was flirting with Mack back on Mars?” she asks. Jemma sighs.

“Yes,” she confirms. “He’s hopeless.” Daisy laughs, and Jemma nearly trips over her own feet.

“Mack thought it was cute,” she confides. “He’s taken, though.” They walk into the docking area, where the port is open and a ship is attached. The doors on Daisy’s ship are open as well. Daisy leads her on board the Rising Tide.

It’s a far smaller ship than S.H.I.E.L.D-616 (Jemma and Fitz call it the Bus for a reason), but no less high-tech. They don’t see anyone on their way down to the cargo hold, but Jemma sees no less than eight blasters of varying sizes lying about. She swears she even sees a blaster with an axe attached propped up next to a couch.

“Fair warning, he’s a total dick,” Daisy says when they reach the cargo hold doors. Jemma nods in acknowledgement, and Daisy presses her hand to the DNA scanner next to the door. It flashes green, and the doors slide open.

“Quake,” a voice from inside says. “Destroyer of Worlds.”

“I swear to God,” Daisy grumbles, stepping through. Jemma follows her uncertainly. “Stop calling me that.” She hits a switch for the lights, and the dark room is suddenly illuminated. There’s crates stacked everywhere, painted generic colors. Jemma can just barely see the outline of Quinn Industries logos on several of them beneath the layers of paint, and realizes with a shiver that she’s looking at the disguised spoils of Daisy’s latest raids. At the back, beside a rack of crates of power cells, a Kree man is cuffed to the wall in a seated position. He glares lazily up at them.

“Someday you will pay for your sins,” he says. “Someday the Kree will—“

“Oh my God, shut up,” Daisy snaps, holding a hand up. Kasius’s head snaps back, and he slumps against the wall.

“Did you just—“

“Kill him? Of course not. I just vibrated the base of his skull a bit.”

“You did what?”

“He’ll be fine,” Daisy dismisses with a wave of her hand. “He’ll have the worst headache of all time when he wakes up, but I don’t really feel bad for him.” Jemma can’t exactly argue with that. Besides, it’s the first time she’s seen Daisy’s powers in action, and she has the sudden urge to start researching. “Help me carry him,” Daisy orders, unlocking the cuffs holding Kasius to the wall with a few taps and lifting up his upper body by his arms. Jemma picks up the Kree’s ankles hesitantly. Together, they lift him up and carry him back out of the cargo hold.

“So, if I give you my comms handle this time, would you actually call?” Daisy asks as they head for the docking chamber again. Jemma hesitates.

“I’m not sure my boss would approve of that,” she answers. Daisy snorts.

“A.C.?” she asks. “Oh please. He loves me.”

“You seem very confident in that, despite the fact that he’s tried to arrest you a dozen times,” Jemma observes.

“Exactly,” Daisy says. “He’s tried. He hasn’t actually arrested me once. You don’t think he could if he wanted to?” Jemma frowns.

“You are exceedingly powerful,” she points out. Daisy shrugs dismissively.

“I am,” she agrees. It’s not a boast, just an acknowledgement. Daisy knows exactly just how powerful she is. “But I don’t want to fight Coulson, and he knows that. If he actually wanted to bring me in, he would’ve used that against me by now and I’d be rotting in a cell. Fact is, I do the right thing. Maybe I go about it in an illegal way, but I’m helping people. Coulson knows that. He also knows that S.H.I.E.L.D. has to at least act like they’re trying catch me, so he chases me around the galaxy and pretends to arrest me every few months. It works for him, it works for me, and it works for the S.H.I.E.L.D. higher-ups because seriously, you guys have bigger problems than me.”

“So what you’re saying is, Coulson wouldn’t mind if we stayed in contact,” Jemma concludes. Daisy grins at her.

“What I’m saying is, if you don’t tell him, he’ll do a really good job of pretending not to know.” Jemma nods slowly. She can work with that.

Daisy kicks the door of Coulson’s office (Jemma realizes with a start that they’re already there), not hard enough to break it down, but enough to get his attention. Seconds later, it slides open, and Coulson sees them. He sighs heavily, not even looking surprised.

“Simmons,” he greets. “Miss Johnson.”

“Please, A.C., call me Daisy,” Daisy says cheerfully. “I think you’ve tried to arrest me enough times to be on a first name basis.” Coulson doesn’t dignify that with a response.

“Is that a Kree?” he asks, gesturing down between them, where they’re still holding Kasius.

“Kasius,” Daisy announces, dropping him. Jemma nearly falls over as his ankles are ripped out of her hands. “I figured you might want him.” Coulson gazes down at Kasius for a moment before looking back up at Daisy.

“You understand that I have to arrest you,” he says.

“Sure,” she agrees. “One thing first though.” She pulls out a pen and grabs Jemma’s arm, scribbling a series of letters and numbers across her wrist. From what Jemma sees, it appears to be a server address of some sort. “Now you don’t have an excuse not to call me,” she announces, satisfied. She turns back to Coulson and flashes him a grin. “Catch me if you can.” She takes off, running down the hallway back towards the docking doors, leaving behind a bemused Jemma, an exasperated Coulson, and an unconscious Kree slave trader lying at their feet.

Coulson doesn’t even bother chasing her.

(Later, Jemma will return to the lab and find a highly irritated Fitz waiting for her, the floor freshly sanitized. He’ll demand to know why she left a possibly toxic mess behind for him to deal with, and he won’t find the answer Daisy was visiting to be nearly as satisfactory as she will.)

Chapter Text

The third time Jemma runs into Daisy, it’s less flirtatious and more terrifying.

They catch up with the Rising Tide a few hundred light-years away from Snagrinn, a planet of aquatic mammals experiencing one of the worst droughts in the known history of the galaxy, where it had dropped off elemental reconfiguration machinery—top of the line, stolen from Quinn Industries—to use to generate water from the air. Unfortunately, the Quinn Industries cargo ship the equipment had been stolen from was inhabited by Ian Quinn himself. He had proceeded to chase down Daisy, board her ship, and shoot her in the stomach. Not with a blaster, which would’ve most likely killed her on impact, but with an old-fashioned gun from Earth, leaving her to bleed out in her own cargo hold without proper medical attention. His ship was damaged by the Rising Tide’s blasters, and he had left Daisy’s ship and crew intact, but Daisy was left with a hole in her stomach.

Which is where Jemma comes in.

Mack sent their coordinates over Daisy and Jemma’s secure line, and May had flown them to the location (which they had already been in the vicinity of; they’re pretending to chase Daisy again) in under an hour, but by the time Mack and a much more reasonably sized man (who Jemma later identifies as Lance Hunter) carry Daisy onto the Bus on a stretcher, she’s barely breathing. She looks so much smaller like this, unconscious and still and deathly pale, blood all over her jacket. It makes Jemma’s heart nearly stop in her chest.

Daisy’s actually does. Four times.

By the time Jemma is pulling off her surgical mask and fluffing up the pillows on Daisy’s bed, she’s about ready to pass out on her feet. She holds the exhaustion off, though; instead, she cleans up, checks the monitors one last time and makes sure all of Daisy’s vitals are strong, and pulls up a chair, prepared to wait until Daisy wakes up. Unsurprisingly, she’s half-asleep in the chair when Coulson walks in a few minutes later.

“Simmons,” he greets. “I have to…” He pulls the handcuffs off his belt, and Jemma sees red.

“Absolutely not,” she snaps, springing to her feet. The rational part of her mind is horrified that she’s speaking this way to a superior officer. The vast majority of her mind, which is (as usual) predominantly occupied with thinking about Daisy, could not care less.

“It’s procedure—“ Coulson tries.

“And when have you given a damn about procedure when it comes to Daisy?” Jemma demands. Coulson winces. “That girl was just shot, sir. She’ll be lucky if she can walk by next week. She will be in an unbelievable amount of pain when she wakes up, and I will not let you cuff her and add to that!” Her outburst is met with deafening silence. Finally, Coulson smiles.

“I understand you two have…bonded,” he begins, and, well. That’s an understatement.

It’s been three months since Daisy delivered Kasius to Coulson’s door, and in that time, Jemma and Daisy have become inseparable, or at least, as inseparable as two people can be when separated by the law and a few thousand light-years at any given time. The secure server Daisy had set up for them allowed any type of communication, from text messaging to holograms. It’s gotten to the point that Jemma can time out her day based on messages from Daisy: a good morning! two hours after Jemma gets up, random messages throughout the morning that increase in incoherency until lunch, a voice call after lunch, and long conversations, sometimes text, sometimes video calls, after dinner until long after Jemma really should go to bed. All the while, Coulson has pretended to be clueless, outside of the knowing looks he sends her in the mornings after she and Daisy talk all night when she can barely keep her eyes open.

So yes, bonded.

“I’m glad,” Coulson continues. “She needs someone on her side. Someone to stand up for her.” He slides the cuffs back onto his belt, and Jemma relaxes. “I’m glad she has you now.”

“She has you, too,” Jemma points out. Coulson smiles and holds a finger to his lips in a shhh gesture before turning and walking away. Jemma sits down again and looks at Daisy. The heart monitor is beeping rhythmically, slowly. Daisy is still pale, but when Jemma reaches out and takes her hand, it’s warm against her skin.

Jemma falls asleep on the side of Daisy’s bed to the steady beeping of the heart monitor, hand still wrapped tightly around Daisy’s.

The first thing Daisy is aware of is a weight on her side. Luckily, not the side with the bullet wound. The second thing she notices is the bullet wound.

She barely stops herself from groaning in pain as she returns fully to consciousness. The needle she can feel in her arm is probably doing something to numb the pain, but one doesn’t get their internal organs blown apart and stitched back together without at least a little agony. She keeps herself quiet, though. It’s an old habit. She doesn’t know where she is or what she could be waking up to, and it’s better to get a bearing on her situation before letting the world know she’s awake.

Daisy can hear the beeping of a heart monitor. Her heart monitor. The weight on her uninjured side is still there, and her hand is warm, gripped tightly in someone else’s. Hesitantly, Daisy opens her eyes and looks down.

It’s Jemma. She’s passed out in a chair beside Daisy’s bed, slumped forward, with her head resting on Daisy’s hip and Daisy’s hand ensconced in her own. She looks worried, even in sleep, her brow furrowed and a light frown on her face. Daisy can’t help but grin. She relaxes back into the pillow behind her head. She’s safe here. Jemma is here.

She squeezes Jemma’s hand lightly, and it’s enough to cause a hitch in Jemma’s slow, sleeping breaths. Slowly, Jemma’s eyes slide open.

“Morning,” Daisy murmurs with a grin, immediately wincing as speaking sends a jolt of pain through her side.

“Midafternoon in this orbit, actually,” Jemma corrects automatically. Daisy’s smile widens, and Jemma realizes where she is suddenly. “Daisy!” she exclaims, sitting up. “I’m so sorry, I must have fallen asleep. I wasn’t hurting you, was I? I didn’t mean to—“

“Jemma,” Daisy interrupts gently. “It’s fine. It’s great, actually.” She squeezes Jemma’s hand lightly. Jemma looks down, as if realizing for the first time that their fingers are interlocked. She doesn’t pull away. She looks back up at Daisy, searching her face. Daisy looks back at her unflinchingly, offering her a soft smile. It seems to be what Jemma is looking for, because she smiles back. After a moment, she blushes and ducks her head, biting her lip.

“I’ll check your bandages,” she announces, releasing Daisy’s hand and getting to her feet. She slides the sheets down to expose Daisy’s side.

“Exactly how bad is it?” Daisy asks. Jemma begins to rattle off an impressive list of injuries, including but not limited to a punctured lung and a ruptured spleen.

“It was quite difficult to patch you up,” Jemma says as she examines Daisy’s side.

“You did it?” Daisy asks, surprised. “I didn’t know you were a doctor.”

“I’m not,” Jemma says, and doesn’t offer an explanation. Daisy stares down at her, eyes wide. Jemma notices after a moment and laughs. “I took a medical minor for my eighth levels,” she explains. “I’m trained in field medicine as well. Honestly, I have all the skills, just not the title.” Daisy lets out a relieved breath.

“Sorry for making you clean me up,” she says teasingly.

“It was no trouble,” Jemma says, finding Daisy’s condition to be satisfactory and pulling the sheets back over her. Daisy catches her arm.

“Jemma,” she says quietly, uncharacteristically serious. “Thank you.” Jemma doesn’t say anything for a moment, searching for the words.

“Yes, well,” she settles on. “Don’t make a habit of it. I don’t like stitching you up any more than you like being stitched.” Daisy releases her arm with a smile. They both know what she means.

You’re welcome. Don’t scare me like that again.

Mack and Hunter break Daisy out a week later. Coulson barely even pretends to try to stop them.

Jemma misses Daisy the moment she leaves.