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Chapter Text

Chapter 1 – Rules of the Game

She wakes up cold.

If she's honest it’s a surprise to be waking at all when the last thing she remembers is looking up through pain-blurred eyes at the kree woman who'd kicked her ass up one side of the room and down the other. She remembers the arrogant smirk that curled those lips into a snarl as she stood above her juggling that damned floating ball of death. Remembers wishing she had the energy to wipe away that smile by planting her fist in the woman’s face. Then wishing she had the strength to move when seeing that floating ball heading straight towards her forehead at a speed at a speed she could not hope to dodge.

She remembers wondering if this was it; if this is how she dies.

Guess not.

As deaths go, it would have been a good one: quick, fairly painless, life sacrificed to protect her team and friends.

The thought rouses her mind closer to active consciousness - if she’s still here then she’s got a team to protect. She forces herself to remain unmoving and keeps her breathing even just in case she’s under guard. The circumstances in which she was last make it most likely she’s in enemy hands. If she can catch them by surprise immediately, she might be able to engineer an escape.

The force with which that little weaponized ball struck her temple has left her with a pounding headache she can barely think past it to do a basic sitrep.

There’s the stale smell of blood upon the air. It could be her own. There’s the bitter taste of iron still in the back of her throat, a lingering numbness upon her lips, and tenderness around a likely bruised nose. Standard consequences to getting punched in the face too many times. Although when it comes to being punched in the face, one is too many.

It’s absolutely silent. The only whisper is the sound of her own breath. Likely alone. She tenses her muscle ready for immediate action just in case as she allows her eyes to open and blinks rapidly to force her vision to focus. Huh.

She’s completely alone. Not a door or a window in sight. She knows better than to assume that means they’re not monitoring her though. Her prison is small, no more than three strides across in any direction, with dark metalized walls that feel like they leach the heat from her bones. Cosy is the sarcastic thought Coulson would feel the need to verbalise.

She forces herself to roll up, pushes herself to a standing position. Fuck her leg still hurts! But it’s weight bearing and that’s all that really matters if she’s got to fight her way out of here. She tenses her muscles in turn, swiftly checking her body’s capabilities – better to know before she needs to know. She’s banged up and bruised, but noting serious enough to inhibit her range.

She spins at the mechanised sound to face a piece of previously solid wall that is now steadily rising like a hanger door. Her head is still off, her vision lagging behind the movement her body makes. She swallows back the bile, reshuffles her steps to centre her stance more firmly balanced, hands raised defensively. Whatever is behind that door, she cannot afford to look as weak as she feels.

There’s a bright light she can only squint against, straining her eyes to try to force them to focus and see beyond.

A dull roaring reaches her ears, louder with each inch of the slowly rising wall.

Cheering. Applause. The high pitched squeal of whistles.

“LAAAAAADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” the announcement is just this side of deafening, easily drowning out the roars of what she can ascertain now is the result of crowds upon crowds, row upon row, packed hollering above and all around the cavernous arena. “ANDROGENOUS BEINGS AND LIFE FORMS OF AAAAALL VARIATIONS!” Still in space then. Still the future no matter how the current visage might resemble a gladiatorial arena. A thirty meter diameter kill ring. The roaring tastes hungry, the crowds baying for their blood. Terrifying on an instinctive level. Her mouth’s running dry. The primal reaction highest in her mind – fight or flight. She’s never listened to it before. “MAY I PRESENT TO YOU TO THE FIGHT OF THE MILENNIAAAAAA…” She snorts derisively. If they want a fight, well then she is happy to provide! “THE BATTLE OF THE GALAXIES…” She can feel her lip curl at the thought. She definitely owes them an ass kicking after all she’s been through in this retched place! She is not going down so easily this time.

“QUAKE THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS HAS RETURNED TO THE GALAXIES!” It’s a cold rush drenching her battle lust – Daisy is here. She almost steps towards the opening door, checking herself just in time. She’s no idea what’s out there. The tactical decision says hang back, leave herself a little room to deal with whatever comes.

“QUAKE!” The voice repeats and the demanding chant is immediately taken up. “Quake!” The energy in the room tangible, almost alive itself. “Quake!” She can feel her heart thudding in time. “Quake!” She is not immune to the surging excitement all around her. The bloodlust. The fire. It’s infectious.

“I PRESENT TO YOU, FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY, THE BATTLE OF THE MILENNIA: QUAKE, THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS, VERSUS THE PROPHESIZED RETURNED AGENTS OF SHIELD!!!” Well. Fuck.

She flinches as a humming begins in the room behind her. Swift and intense enough that she checks behind. A blue grid of some kind of energy has formed, interlaced behind her with no obvious source apparent. She knows not what it is but she knows danger when she sees it and she does not want it touching her. It shifts, the beams twisting, grids rotating, then advances upon her position.

The intention is clear – she’s to be forced to exit the holding room and enter the arena. It’s petty that she’s tempted to stand her ground out of sheer stubbornness.

She’s tempted.

But she is not an idiot.

After all, it doesn’t take Fitzsimmons to work out that Daisy is out in that arena.

She drops the fighting stance and strolls as casually as she can force her body to feign, her path directly in to the bright light, quickly swallowed up in the deafening of hate-filled cheers, senses surrounded, suffocated by the bitter taste at the back of her throat, the acrid smell of blood and death.

X

She walks directly towards Daisy as soon as the lights clear her vision enough to allow her to locate her. Daisy does likewise and they end up meeting in the centre of the arena.

“Fancy seeing you here,” is Daisy’s opening greeting but a swift glare warns her not to say anything more. Any more might expose a weakness to their enemies. She indulges in a glancing assessment - Daisy looks well. No obvious lameness or apparent injuries. Fit enough to run. Fit enough to fight. Good. Daisy’s eyes flick to her left leg and back up in question. She blinks twice, an affirmative – it remains weak, her liability. She’s worked with worse.

They turn as one to face the now obvious raised platform, luxurious surrounds for the twenty or so alien creatures lounging at various points of ease, so very clearly in control above the lowly common crowds in their lowly common seating stretching out to either side in a semicircle around them.

Their host has not stopped his spiel through the seconds they traversed the sands and met. It’s Kasias. At least they’re not likely to have travelled too far from home. Not too far from friends. From Phil and the inevitable rescue operation he’ll be planning even with the odds so heavily stacked against success.

In the light it is easy to find the tells of Daisy’s nerves beneath the joking and the feigned confidence. More nerves than the situation so far as she sees it really warrants. They’re captured sure, but they’re free enough at the moment. They’re not being questioned, or tortured. They’re together. Yet, Daisy’s jaw is clenched almost as tightly as her fists. It makes her want to touch her, say something to reassure her, bring Daisy back in to herself, remind her of balance and the necessity before every fight of drawing upon her calm. She daren’t make any such overt moves before this audience. She settles for a brush of the side of her hand over the knuckle of Daisy’s smallest finger. An accidental touch, likely to be overlooked. She hears the shuddered breath as Daisy rapidly inhales in response. Catches from the corner of her vision without turning as Daisy’s fist opens, fingers extended, flexing, forcing the blood back in to circulation. She’s well trained. She’ll be ready when the time comes.

Kasias is still talking, whipping his audience in to a frenzy with an ease that tells of much practice. They’ve time.

May whispers out of the corner of her mouth, almost certain that the jeers of the crowd will hide her words, “The platform they’re on, think you - ?”

“Tried before, they’re shielded somehow,” Daisy answers cutting her off before she can finish.

She raises an eyebrow in surprise, a silent request to elaborate.

“Yeah, this whole arena fighting gig, not my first time.” Daisy down plays it but May can see the cost to her protégé in a little tightness around the eyes, a slight dulling of her usually upbeat persona, maybe even a sense of weariness, a heaviness of the soul. She’s not one for regrets she cannot change but she regrets not finding Daisy earlier. Regrets not saving Daisy from whatever pain she’s endured through her time of captivity, the mental more so than the physical.

Daisy pushes on choosing to ignore her concern and bury away whatever she feels. To be fair, it’s probably not the best of circumstances to start up a heart to heart. Coulson’s always better at those than she is anyway. He can talk to Daisy after he gets them out of this damned mess. She needs a shower. And her own bed.

“How about the walls? Could you boost me up-”

“Not a chance. There’s some kind of barrier shielding all around the top. Protecting the crowds. It hurts like hell, trust me, not worth it,” Daisy answers.

“The rooms we came in through then-”

“Sure, just point me out which intentionally blank piece of none descript wall you’d like me to magically open when all the controls are … up there,” Daisy gestures to Kasias’ platform. The snarkiness is particularly unlike the Daisy she knows.

“Hey,” May says simply. She places a hand upon Daisy’s shoulder – the firm grip a limited comfort she can’t stop herself from offering even in view of their audience here and now. They can’t really afford for her to show this much. It’s a weakness their captors can exploit, a friendship a weapon to be wielded against them. Daisy inhales raggedly but exhales more slowly, relaxing her muscles in time with the steady breathing she’s been trained to use.

“I’ve tried everything to get out of here,” Daisy confesses quietly.

“So… maybe it’s just not possible from inside,” May responds, happy to see a small glimmer of hope relit in Daisy’s eyes at the acceptance and the reminder that rescue is outside somewhere.

“You’re right. Coulson is so not gonna sit out there whilst I kick your ass in here!” Daisy teases her with a smirk.

May’s response is cut off as a beam of light engulfs her unexpectedly. A spotlight on her form as her character is introduced to the screaming crowds. How he found her details is a question of little interest to her. She deals in the present; it doesn’t matter how he knows her identity. Assassin is a little off point, though she’s taken those missions when required. It’s the use of her call sign that causes her to grimace, and Daisy to bristle alongside her, but there seems little point in expressing her disinclination to be called by it given the circumstances.

A second illumination beam to her left side introduces the villain Quake to a tremendous increase in volume. But all she sees when she looks to the girl next to her is Daisy. Daisy maybe with a little hint of Skye. Certainly, no villain to this piece.

“YOU MAY BEGIN!” is the command shouted from seemingly nowhere and everywhere all at once.

The crowds fall silent as nothing occurs.

A hush that extends for long seconds.

May simply raises an eyebrow, unimpressed, and resolves to out wait them. Any delay is in their favour after all. It gives Coulson more time to get here and get his plan in to motion.

Unfortunately, Daisy’s never been one to recognise the benefits of patience. She rolls her eyes as the younger woman takes an obvious stride forwards, arm raised to garner attention – as though they didn’t already have the attention of every eye in the place. “Hey, so yeah… sorry to like rain on your parade-”

“Not that sorry,” May can’t help but mumble.

“But we,” Daisy accompanies it with a gesture between the two of them and back, like there could be any doubt to whom she was referring, “we are not going to fight. So you may as well all pack up your bags, go home, call it an early night, maybe crash on the couch in front of whatever kind of tv wanna be device you guys call entertainment nowadays before crying yourselves to sleep at how you’ve wasted your lives. Show’s over folks!”

There’s a breath of silence.

“I said, ‘go home!’” Daisy repeats.

Then the tittering begins. A low murmur, sources unidentifiable.

A brash laugh erupts over whatever speaker system is in place – Kasias. She’s really growing to hate that guy. The arena follows his lead, hilarity neither of them comprehend, and Daisy steps back to her side for solidarity.

“You are not the first reluctant competitor we have had in this arena, my dear. So, let me ask you: Do you know of the worst way to die?” Kasias asks mockingly and obviously rhetorically. She’s gritting her teeth again as Daisy responds anyway. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times she tells Daisy that keeping quiet and assessing the situation rather than antagonising your enemy is the better tactical decision. She blames Coulson’s influence – he’s never been able to keep from making lame jokes when captured either.

“Alone, on your own, with no thought of friends or family who would comfort you,” Daisy shouts back up in a cocky answer that probably pretty accurately describes her own thoughts on the subject of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deaths. As if there’s any manner of dying more virtuous than another. What matters to her mind is the reason for dying, not the method.

Kasias’ chuckle can send chills down the spine.

“Not at all. The worst way to die is surrounded by such family and friends,” Kasias explains condescendingly, a twisted smirk gracing his stale blue features.

“You see that you will die here is, unfortunately for you, a certainty. The only question is… who dies easy and who dies hard. The ones you kill, well, they are the lucky ones. You see the victor… the victor gets Goqmor!”

The chant is taken up around the arena immediately. The crowds cheering ‘Goqmor’ like their cries can summon it alone if loud enough. She really doesn’t want to know who, or what, a Goqmor is.

“That supposed to mean something to me?” Daisy, damnit. She had to ask. “Goqmor? Sounds like a German designer with too much frill.”

A blast of feigned laughter from their host is the response for the audience’s entertainment even if he doesn’t get the reference. “Goqmor! The slowest and most excruciatingly painful death that has ever been devised out of Alpha Centauri. Perhaps… a little demonstration,” Kasias asks obviously rhetorically, his right palm offered up, gesturing. Jemma! Jemma seems to realise at the same instant. She tries to run, May doesn’t blame her, but she’s swiftly out matched by two of the giant kree guards and dragged before Kasias.

“It is a pity to ruin such seldom seen beauty…” Kasias starts faux regret lacing his voice. He touches Jemma’s face, gently cupping her cheek as though he’s a genuine fondness for her. It makes her stomach turn. “But, needs must,” Kasias ends suddenly, casting Jemma aside like so much rubbish and turning back to his adoring audience as Jemma is dragged forcefully across the larger platform.

There’s a grandiose flourish of Kasias’ robes as his arm outstretches, ever the showman, ever the production and a spotlight follows Jemma’s progress as she’s forced away. A far smaller circular platform swoops from an unseen position far far above them in the darkness. It stops next to Jemma’s position and she’s pushed up on to its surface despite her attempt at a struggle. There’s a collectively indrawn breath as the artificial light that follows her alights upon a hooded figure atop the smaller platform. The personification of death.

All flinch instinctively when the whip like device he unfurls is cracked deliberately in the air.

“No!” Daisy cries out as she takes a stumbling step forwards. May feels the same, but there is no way she’s letting them delight in her weakness for their entertainment.

Kasias’ smirk only widens.

The robed form captures Jemma’s forearm in a strong gloved hand and the force with which it propels her to the centre of the platform tells of its inhuman strength. Her arms are forced above her head and secured to what appears to be thin air alone but the effects are clearly far more restrictive than air as Jemma’s feet barely touch the ground whilst she hangs from the nothingness. She’s almost luminous in the light above the dark of the arena as the small platform moves under its own power to a more central viewing position. A sacrifice appropriately dressed in white.

A tearing sound and the cloak is torn from her. The unblemished skin of her back almost as pale in the white lighting as the cloak had appeared.

“The first strike is something of a phenomenon,” Kasias explains into the now hushed arena as the hooded being in black unfurls his whip and steps back in to the darkness of the small platform, takes up his position at a distance in readiness to begin. He’s a mastery at increasing the tension if the thundering of her heart is anything to go by. There’s no way she can reach Jemma’s position so high up above. “You see for the first fifteen or so seconds the tormented actually wonders if they have imagined the feeling of the impact. There’s no apparent pain from so thin a slice and they of course cannot see what we all see. They will wonder if they imagined the way their heart stuttered as the electrostim shot through their nerve endings.” May can hardly force her eyes to watch but she will not let herself look away. Jemma has to bear the pain. She will at least bear to watch. She promises herself that if Jemma dies today, she will not do so alone.

Kasias continues his voice waxing and waning, pausing dramatically, a performance in truth, “After a lengthy time, just as the tormented creature thinks they’ve escaped the strike, that’s when the nerve endings ignite. A line of excruciating fire ripping a blazing trail across the skin without end, without mercy! And that’s just the first stroke. When the skin is eventually so torn it can no longer hold to its frame we will watch as strips slowly unfurl and fall. The most talented masters of this art can strike over a hundred times before the first layer of skin succumbs to the artgrav. Let me assure you, I employ only masters of this craft!” The cheers are deafening. Sickening.

“It takes days to die, if carefully managed, and I understand the pain level that can be achieved is … simply … excruciating. None will escape easily from Goqmor under the masters’ talented hands! There will be no escape through blood loss as the e-stims cauterise upon landing! There will be no escape through overloading of their primitive brain’s capacity for pain when overrides have already been implanted! There will be no escape through easy deaths here! GOQMOR!” he shouts, a battle cry and an instruction all at once.

She sees the whip fly in an overhand strike, too fast to follow with the naked eye. Hears the hiss of parting air from far above, the resounding crack against no longer unblemished flesh, Jemma’s rough exhale in the silence that follows. The wait for what all know is inevitably coming is the worst fifteen seconds of her life.

Jemma’s body arches back uncontrolled, body jerking ineffectually, a tortuous scream ripped from her throat as the excruciating pain foretold takes hold. The crowd’s roars in appreciation cannot drown out that hollow sound in her ears. The bitter taste of bile in the back of her mouth. The thought comes unwelcome that this is only the first blow.

“You fight or you all die by Goqmor!!!” Kasias shouts above the screams and applause.

She’s no breath in her lungs.

Jemma’s continuing screams fill her ears. Screams interspersed with shudderingly wet gasps as her body forces her to break off to inhale. Passing out would be a blessing. And that’s only the first blow.

Daisy seems likewise frozen, unable to find the breath to respond, even if she knew the words to say.

Her brain needs to think past the immediate threat to make a plan. These are her agents, damnit. She’s damn sure not going to let Jemma suffer through torture when there’s another option on the table.

“FINE!” She shouts up to the arena at large, her first words in this tableau that garners an interested quietness from their bloodthirsty audience. Jemma’s screams have fallen to whimpers but every single small wet sound drags at her heart. “WE FIGHT!”

X

“We fight, we buy time,” May tells Daisy quickly before they are forced apart and directed back to their respective sides to begin. Coulson will have a rescue plan. He simply needs time to get everything in to place. He will come. She knows that with a certainly. As sure as she knows his name is Philip Jedediah Coulson!

She prepares herself mentally given the usual situation of actually having chance to plan through her moves and tactics in advance of a fight. Usually, they’re just forced upon her and she’s required to react, relying upon training and quick thinking to keep herself alive.

She watches as Daisy does likewise but she’s picking up on Daisy’s distraction – Jemma bound high above on a hovering platform, hung by shackles upon her wrists to a light source alone. The platform is whirring more intently. Then it detaches, rises under its own power to return to its previous position above their heads and visible to all in the arena without question but obviously no longer the intended focus of the crowds entertainment this night. No, they have that dubious honour.

May shakes her head. Getting herself back in the game. They’ll play this out. Fight one another to avoid the far worse injuries that will be inflicted before Phil can rescue them if they refuse. She needs to buy him time.

Her eyes hone in upon Daisy’s position. She’s trying to take up a balanced stance in readiness but it’s clear that even if her feet are in the right place Daisy’s head simply isn’t. May doesn’t bother echoing the stance. She’s thirty meters of killing ground to cover before she can make even an attempt at an attack. Charging Daisy’s position is her game plan. Maybe the shock will jump start Daisy’s brain back to focusing on the fight ahead. Force her to get her head in the damn game before one of them ends up accidentally injured through sheer carelessness or inattention.

A bleeping starts. An obvious steady countdown to raise the tension.

She measures her breaths in and out.

She’s ready to sprint the distance.

“Oh, one last thing,” Kasias interrupts, the countdown halted. “I just want to introduce the rest of the competitors for this evening’s entertainment!” Cheers erupt throughout the arena and the lights on their positions go dark. A single spotlight upon their merry ring leader as he gestures grandly to the skies. She’s more than a little annoyed at the casual dismissal even if it works to their advantage in delaying the inevitable fight a few minutes longer.

Daisy has the same idea as the two of them move steadily back to meet one another along the back wall whilst their actions are going somewhat unnoticed.

“I cannot believe he’s ignoring us!” Daisy faux complains trying to bring lightheartedness to the somewhat dire situation they find themselves in. She spends far too much time with Coulson. “Think we should moon him?” Far too much time.

May sticks to the tactical rather than wasting time on jokes that don’t get them anywhere, whispering quickly: “When we fight, engage briefly and break away quick. Target for minimal injury but we telegraph higher value strikes. Keep moving. Short engagements followed by distance. Take an opening to strike across my face, it won’t take much to get my nose bleeding again, and the crowds will love the sight of it. Use your powers if things get stale, up the ante to throw me a distance. We give them the entertainment they want but conserve energy. Think endurance marathon not sprint. We have to give Coulson time to get here.”

“Right,” Daisy acknowledges with a nod.

Sudden movement brings a halt to their words. A second small platform whooshing in to the centre of the arena still far above their heads. Kasias still droning on in the play starring himself: “Introducing… The Claaaw!”

“It’s,” Daisy starts but she doesn’t finish.

May’s heart drops. Stutters in place.

Phil.

It’s Phil.

Here’s already here.

Fuck.

x

The platform halts halfway across the arena so their view from below is only of his back but she’d know his form anywhere. The clothes he’s been dressed in are wholly alien to him. Tight. Dark. Dangerous. His hand has clearly been replaced with some kind of superior weapons technology. Gaudy, Phil would call it. Or overkill. Stark’s wet dream.

He’s stationary in the exact centre of the circular platform. It’s a forced stance
too wide for him to be natural. Her eyes hone in on the band of soft blue light encompassing his ankles, makes the connection that they’re holding him trapped in place.

“When Quake has destroooooyed the assassin … sorry, sorry. I mean of course that the victor of the first match-” Kasias drones on.

“Guess they don’t think much of your chances either,” Daisy whispers to her in blatant challenge.

“They haven’t seen me fight yet,” she tosses back quickly but she can’t find the joking tone it should be said in when all she can see is Phil captured with them and not in the midst of a superb rescue operation.

“-will face The Claw in the second round,” Kasias continues speaking over them. “This experienced fighter-”

“Coulson? Seriously? Guess they haven’t seen him fight yet either,” Daisy’s trying to keep things upbeat but she’s falling way short of the mark.

“Will prove a true challenge even to the inhuman powers of Quake: The Destroyer of Worlds,” Kasias pronounces.

“Really beginning to hate that nickname,” Daisy mutters. May’s mind is more focused upon possible outcomes and probabilities of success. She’s coming up disappointingly empty. If Phil is caught, then-

“In the third round, The Destroyer will face a vicious killer the likes of which has never before set foot in this arena. He can crush your skull between his bare fists! He’s huge, he’s angry, he is The Behemoth!!!” A third platform alights in time with the cheers and flies forwards to hover besides Coulson’s prison post. Mack. Hardly a killer but bearing the war paint they’ve decorated his upper body with she can admit the sight is moderately convincing. She can feel her heart dropping. Lead in her stomach. She feels sick. Swallows back bile and tries to refocus her thoughts. Delay and wait for rescue is definitely no longer on the cards.

She brushes closer to Daisy’s position, leaving only part of her mind to track the more than expected final introduction of “the inhuman that moves faster than the very air itself! Who better a challenger to face of Quake than one who can move faster than the very powers Quake can bring to bear?”

“I don’t think the rescue went as well as they’d planned,” Daisy whispers as all three platforms hover illuminated, a hooded figure standing clearly to the rear of each one. Two spare platforms fly in and add to the line up at a click of Kasias’ fingers. Empty except for the hooded figure upon each. An abundantly clear reminder of his threat to kill all of them slowly should they fail to entertain.

May’s mind has already made the desperate connections that she’s been trying to think her way through since she first saw Coulson’s captured form. In this broken time, there is no one left to rescue them. No possible hope of escape. She’s thought her way through the probabilities but with no inside ability and no outside help… they are all going to die in here.

It’s sickening. Debilitating.

He has them trapped not just between a rock and a hard place but deciding between murder and torture. Between killing her team one by one until all that remains is death over days of excruciating pain… and having her team hung up beside her as they all suffer through days of torment beyond the ability to comprehend.

“To the losers, I gift thee an entertaining and swift death. To the victor, I gift the the honour of dying by Goqmor before all these witnesses here!!!” Kasias shouts, turns with arms open wide, basks in the adoration of his audience, and smiles.

May’s knees hit the soft sand before she’s even aware she’s falling. She blames her leg for the weakness.

The small platforms move backwards at an unspoken signal, swooping through the air with a casualness that feels wholly inappropriate to line up along the back wall of their great arena prison. A line of the only friends they have in the here and now.

She blinks away the tears that are silently trying to fall and looks up to the friends she may have to kill to save from worse. A line of her weaknesses. She’s so very many weaknesses.

x

She’s aware in the back of her mind that Daisy has already run. Charging at the insurmountable wall beneath the platform of luxury upon which Kasias parades. Shouting and screaming threats and pleas interchangeably. Ineffectively. Daisy’s unheard beneath the crowds cheering for their entertainment, cheering for their deaths, and Kasias simply smirks wider as her ignores her attempts.

May tells herself that she knows better than to waste energy or what little time they have left. In reality… she’s just not ready to face reality.

She finds Phil’s eyes first. She needs the comfort of his eyes, the strength that comes knowing he’s here with her. The tightness around his eyes confirm he’s hurting. Whether from an extensive period hanging from his shoulders or another unseen injury she cannot tell. It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s pretty clear that any of their injuries will be short lived. She almost loses it as she realises she’ll have to kill him next.

It hurts to even consider it. The betrayal that will take over his expression as her hands tighten around his throat -

She holds his gaze anyway. Tries to push all that she feels, all of the pain of this decision, towards him in the hope he can somehow read her mind. In the hope that he’s made the same calculations. That he’s come to the same doomed conclusion. Minutes pass. Maybe only seconds. His eyes flicker upwards. Hers follow. To his hands. The left forced horizontal above unseen manacles, palm flat, rotated side to side. No rescue is coming. She knew that already. The confirmation still echoes hollowly through her soul.

She meets his eyes again. Hopelessness. A million experiences draw down to this. She has to-

They are all going to die here, she reminds herself. The only choice left for them to make is the when … and the how.

He holds her eyes seriously. There’s the glisten of what might be a tear on his cheek as he blinks. Twice. An affirmative he follows up with a firm nod to be sure she receives given the distance between them. His blessing to the horrors he knows she must now commit.

She lets her eyes fall closed partially in relief that he’s with her on this, partically to try to regain some control over the tears that currently fall.

She pushes herself back to her feet through sheer force of will.

Reopens her reddened eyes with new resolve.

Necessity drives her.

She won’t let them suffer.

Not through whipping and pain and death. Not through allowing Daisy or anyone else to be forced to stain their hands and souls with the murder of any of the others. The only options are to die quickly or die slowly, agonisingly painfully over days for the morbid entertainment of others. She’ll be damned if she lets any of them go through such excruciating pain.

It’s decided.

She has to save them.

She has to kill them all.

X

Chapter Text

Chapter 2 – It’ll be okay

“Begin or you all die,” Kasias’ artificially enhanced voice echoes around the arena.

May meant to begin immediately after announcing to the arena that they'd fight. She'd meant to rush Daisy's position, to try to take her by surprise, make it swift and as painless as she could. But now Daisy's looking at her and those deep eyes are so filled with sadness that she just... She's just having a little trouble forcing her body to carry it out.

She’s made her decision, she just can't force her feet to move.

She doesn’t want to kill Daisy.

She can appreciate, even if only within the silence of her own mind, that she’s been hesitating despite her resolve. Delaying, even though she knows she is only delaying the inevitable.

This would be easier if Daisy was already suffering. That’s what she tells herself anyway. She’s been the specialist assigned to euthanase an asset more than once. They don't abandon their agents to torture but it is not always feasible to extract. It’s always hard to take that shot. Always hard to look down the scope of a sniper rifle from a position of safety at a fellow agent suffering unfathomable torture… to wish to rescue them… and to squeeze the trigger anyway.

“I will not instruct you so a second time,” Kasias warns, deliberately overlooking that he has in fact just told them a second time. She doesn’t have any inclination to point it out to him. She doesn’t have any inclination to do anything at all.

It’s the right decision. She’s certain of it. She’s been tortured before. Enough times for each to be less than memorable. Many are the times that she’s screamed out over a raw throat and prayed for a bullet from the skies. She’s always been blessed with a rescue op instead. There's no rescue op coming now. Her luck has run out.

“NOW! Or you will all die by Goqmor!” Kasias screams.

Seems her time’s run out too.

The arena is devoid of weapons so far as she can ascertain and nothing that’s been left on her person is sufficient to be used for anything useful. It means she’ll have to take their lives with her bare hands. She’s not sure if it’s better that way… more personal… or really not.

She does know that without weapons or any obstacles to use as cover she’s outmatched by Daisy’s inhuman powers. In a straight up fight, she loses.

She can’t afford to lose.

She just has to tell her body to take the first step. The first step is the hardest.

The first step towards Daisy.

The first step towards killing her.

Drops of wetness hit the sand as she watches her right booted foot meet the ground in the first of many strides that follow.

She keeps her pace even through sheer force of will. One foot just in front of the other. Then again. Lift, forwards and down. Step by steady step.

She hears the light tread of footfalls in the sand that say Daisy is following her lead, also up and covering the distance between them, but she has to look up to make sure. Daisy's tear streaked face is a canvas of misery in print. Her eyes large and luminous with further tears threatening to fall.

"I don't want to fight you," are Daisy's quiet words as they near and the world of despair contained within those words rends her heart in two. Those wet eyes speak volumes as tears brim once more. Those eyes beg May for a denial. Plead with her to come up with a plan.

She has no plan worth sharing and no way to delay the inevitable further as her feet carry her unwilling heart towards her target.

Daisy stops a stride apart but she doesn't, momentum carrying her forwards, intention driving her to do what must be done. Daisy doesn't perceive it as an attack as she takes that last stride closer, her arms coming up to wrap about Daisy's only marginally resistant form and pull her in closer to a hug that should signal reassurance but in reality simply gives her a greater chance of snapping a neck. Rising bile in her stomach at the thought nearly forces her to break away. She swallows it down through force of will as Daisy sobs on a sudden long exhale, before relaxing her muscles all at once, slumping against her for support and giving in to her desperate need for comfort. Sometimes she forgets how young the girl still is, how inexperienced, how unbroken by the world at large. She won’t let it be this place that breaks her.

"It's okay," she whispers in to the dark hair that she rests her cheek upon, "you don't have to fight me." It's all the reassurance she can give without tipping the girl to her intentions and losing what little advantage she may possess.

Daisy curls in tighter in response, the silent request of a child to be protected from the evils of the world. She wishes she could. She allows herself to enjoy the contact, pulls on the human comfort in the hopes of wrapping the feeling about her tattered heart like a shroud and hiding it from what must be done. She allows her arms to tighten as though if she can just hold on tight enough maybe she can protect Daisy. She holds to that fantasy just for a moment for the sake of them both. Just for a moment.

She won’t let Daisy suffer. “Everything is going to be okay,” she whispers, repeating the reassurance knowing full well its untruth.

Nothing is ever going to be okay again.

She’s swift when she makes her move – a sudden lurch right, a wrench to Daisy's left arm simultaneously and Daisy's left wholly unsupported, off balance, stumbling forwards past her. A single short step and she's behind Daisy's stumbling form, arms already snapping up to find their targets like vipers rearing in the sands. Daisy's head is wrenched back by the force of the forearm crashing up in to her throat. The fingertips of her other hand wrap around the front, brush against a swiftly turning cheek to make the necessary grasp to wrench her target's neck and force an abrupt end –

"Seems our assassin has gone for a sneak attack, we should have expected nothing less!" she can hear Kasias' elation in direct contrast to the despair rising in her gut.

Her fingers fail to find purchase, nails scratching dully as Daisy turns her head out of reach. Doubling over as Daisy's elbow is introduced to her stomach with breath stealing results! Fuck!

She missed the grab. She missed the opportunity to get this over and done with as painlessly as possible. She's doomed Daisy - She's no time to let her thoughts run off with her! She twists her torso, positions her body flat against Daisy's back to avoid any other strikes to her mid region and uses her raised right arm to force an elbow to lock down around the left arm she maintains around Daisy's neck, securing the hold against Daisy’s surprised struggles.

“Shhhh,” she tries to comfort. Tries to calm. “It’s okay.” If Daisy can just relax, just let go and accept that this is the better way then Daisy can still die quietly. Painlessly. Suffocation will take longer sure, but it's still better than the alternative.

Daisy’s ankle hooks behind her own, a move she damn well taught her! Weight thrown backwards, forcing her to trip, to fall, when she refuses to give up her hold around Daisy’s neck. They both over balance backwards but May’s quick to tuck her feet up as they go, making sure that she doesn’t get tangled with Daisy’s legs, ensuring she’s the first with ability to manoeuvre. She pushes their bodies upright, keeps her clinging grasp wrapped as she remains around Daisy’s back and uses her weight atop Daisy’s form to subdue her struggles further, limit her options.

"Don't fight me, Daisy,” she spits out through gritted teeth, hoping against hope that Daisy will understand enough to realise that this is the better way. “Just relax. Let it happen."

Daisy’s naturally frustrating response is to increase the ferocity of her attempts. Daisy’s legs kick out, scrambling, digging great furrows in the sand, kicking up dirt across them both in desperation. Her arms grasp at hair, scratch at skin, but cannot find the entry to May’s eyes she seeks whilst May’s head is tucked down against her failing body. There isn’t a way out of this hold that she’ll permit Daisy to utilise. Not now.

She’s deliberately tuned out the audience around them, only peripherally aware of the mocking announcements, the cheers and whoops. The only bonus is that they drown out most of Daisy’s panicked grunts as she strives for air not permitted to enter her lungs. The fluttering pressure against her inner arm growing more desperate as she forces herself to hold.

She was wrong. The first step isn’t the hardest.

Holding tightly as the girls she loves like a daughter fights frantically, using every single thing she’s taught her, and still fails to bring air into her lungs is the hardest. Following through is the hardest.

Her eyes screw tightly shut as though if she just tries hard enough then she can blank out everything that is happening around her. If she just believes strongly enough then she can pretend that the windpipe she’s crushing does not belong to the little lost girl that tried to do right from the very beginning. The girl whose goodness shone through so blindingly brightly that Phil couldn’t help but invite her on board the Bus, keep that innocent light close enough for them all to pretend that the darkness didn’t exist. She’d had more than a few choice words for Coulson at the time. Words like ‘secret organisation’ and ‘spies’ and ‘security risk’ and ‘are you out of your fucking mind!’

Daisy wrapped him so tightly around her little finger when they began that she couldn’t help but baulk, history had already made her ever the pessimist, too cautious by half as she checked the teeth of their gifted horse and hoped to hell it didn’t blow up in his face.

Even against her initial resentment and distrust, the girl had seemed to manage to wheedle her way in closer to their little team of misfits. Volunteering for mission she had no interest in being involved in, zero training but enough brash arrogance to try to pull it off anyway! At the time, she’d been fuming that Coulson had overruled her and authorised it. More than once! Especially in light of the zero training which the girl had received. But Daisy had fared far better under pressure than most second year cadets and if that didn’t make her just a little bit proud of the girl even before she was ready to admit anything positive about her.

The first inkling she’d seen of that courage hidden deep within the distrustful little girl was Daisy standing up to her, a misguided attempt to try to protect a haunted girl’s feelings, even when Daisy was so obviously afraid of her. When everyone was afraid of her on their little bus. Sure, the distance she put there, the walls she wanted up but… she hadn’t wanted everyone to jump every time she so much as appeared in a room! Deep inside she can admit to herself their reactions in those early days made her feel even more like a monster. All except Coulson. Phil. And one young girl that broke in to her cockpit and braved her wrath just to sit next to her in silence and keep her company. One girl who had suffered more hardship than most by her young age and yet had still somehow came out good and kind.

Skye’s hero worship had certainly been amusing at first. More so to Coulson than herself, who delighted in pointing out the changes in Daisy’s wardrobe, the way she started to stand at ease trying to emulate her, and the ridiculous attempts Daisy made to watch events occurring in silence rather than letting her mouth leap in with opinions before ascertaining the facts. That latter she wasn’t quite so adept at but it sure was fun watching Coulson lay out traps to coax her into abandoning her intended silences.

Daisy’s silent now. Shuddering breaths making little impact on the deafening world around them. She can’t think of that now. She wants to stay with happier memories.

Maybe it was Coulson pointing it out but it was only later than she began to see the similarities between them – the way she dived in to danger, tried to protect others, didn’t seem to acknowledge her own mortality. A little of that in Skye meant seeing a little of herself in the girl.

The unexpected betrayal by one of those closest to them naturally brought the two together. Maybe finally gave Skye an insight in to her own mind, in to the reasons she made the decisions she did. She wishes Skye could understand her decision now. She is doing this for the right reasons.

A sob of an inhale and she forces her arms to hold, not to loosen their grip no matter the memories but it’s so damn hard.

She has memories of holding Skye just like this. Training her in hand to hand, every morning from five. She can almost smile at the way the girl had arrived early for all of three weeks, determined to train with her no matter that she was very clearly asleep on her feet and just rolled out of bed to race down the halls. After three weeks of admittedly gruelling training trying to push the girl to see what she was made of, see if she would give up... after three weeks she’d shifted their start back to six thirty and Skye had gradually relaxed enough around her to stop worrying about arriving on time. It had turned in to a bit of a game between them, the many ways she’d find to awaken Skye if she’d overslept. Oh there’d been many many buckets of water, air horns and the likes, not to mention the goat incident! She’s missed having fun waking Skye up like that these past few months. Maybe she should sneak something in to Daisy’s quarters just to re-

She swallows as she realises she’s never going to have the chance to wake Skye up like that again.

Daisy isn’t going to wake up from this.

She’s held Skye in this hold before. Daisy too. She’s trained her all the possible counters and attacks that could result in escape. She’s left no openings to allow her to use any of them now. Daisy learned well but she’s always had the edge when they spar. There really is no substitute for experience and decisiveness in combat. If Daisy had been less trusting, had thought through the problem fully before opening herself to attack, maybe things would be very different.

Daisy has the edge in any real fight. Her powers make taking her on one on one almost certainly doomed to failure. When they’re sparring, it’s different. It’s practice. There’s little point setting herself up as punching bag for Daisy’s powers. They practise hand to hand, close range work. They do not try to injure one another. They are not seeking to kill.

She regrets … oh so many things! But currently uppermost in her mind is that she regrets having to fool Daisy in to this position. Regrets offering the girl a comforting hug only to turn it around and use that hold to try to snap her neck. It’s a cruel betrayal that will wound Daisy to the core. Daisy won’t have to live with it much longer. She can feel her struggles diminishing.

She had no choice against Daisy’s powers! With powers in the equation Daisy wins every time. She scoffs internally at the most memorable: flying through the air only to find blackness as she lands in the aptly named Afterlife. Skye had been so confused. So upset. In hindsight she should have seen it. She knows Skye, she should have seen Skye’s preoccupation, she could have spoken with her before marching in, could have asked her what was wrong. She didn’t need to position herself so clearly on the opposite site when Skye was so very confused about how to do what was right. Her loyalties were pulled in so very many directions. Her caring heart torn between her family and her friends. She made the wrong call in May’s opinion but then who hasn’t made a bad decision in their lives.

They’d set things right, eventually. That’s what matters. Not the past but the present. The present in which Daisy has grown, beyond her wildest imaginings, into a strong, powerful, capable agent who still lets herself be guided by empathy as well as reason. She simply couldn’t be more proud of the woman Daisy has become.

She may have been the last to succumb, may have made Daisy prove herself through a gauntlet of weird and wonderful missions, earn her respect through hard work and commitment, but Daisy… Daisy had won them all over eventually. Her bravery. Her compassion. Her heart.

A heart that will soon beat its last.

One voice breaks through her self imposed isolation in the chaos of noise that surrounds them. One voice her ears seemed automatically attuned to hear irrespective of her desire to perform in silence. To finish this without any interruption. She wants to get it over with.

It’s his voice she hears. Coulson. Phil. His voice alone she cannot fade in to the background of meaningless sound. He’s so far above her and yet he may as well be stood right beside them. She can’t force herself to look up. She knows beyond any doubt that he’ll be fighting to free himself. Some hopeless attempt to try to do something. She’s not sure what he’d do if he could get loose. She’s not sure she wants to even hazard a guess.

Would he try to stop her despite his earlier agreement?

Would the reality of seeing her murder Daisy make him reconsider his decision?

If he interfered, tried to stop her, would it be to save Daisy or to save her? Would he take the burden of killing Daisy if it saved either one of them? Would he – No, she’s not sure she wants to know.

He loves Daisy like a daughter. She might not be able to say it out loud but maybe there’s a part of her that feels the same way...

Friends are the family you choose after all. This family grew on her. Completely unexpectedly. She never planned to have a team support her again. She never planned for any of them to become anything more than passing acquaintances for an extended babysitting mission. Just people to be on the bus if needed. No one she planned to associate with, or even talk to beyond the usual standard greetings and pleasantries. They were there only because she needed them for Phil. She would have been quite happy alone!

She’s terrified when she thinks of being alone now. Alone at the end of this. Once they’re all gone, there’ll be nothing left to live for anyway. Nothing left for her as she dies… all alone.

Fitzsimmons were an annoyance, she deliberately forces herself on mentally. She needs the distraction of reliving happier times if she’s to be able to continue tuning out the reality of the cheering arena surrounding them, the friends so high above shouting to try to change her mind, Coulson – No, Fitzsimmons. In the beginning, Fitzsimmons were an annoyance to her. Worse! A liability! The two babbled incessantly, causing her to become quite irritable with them. They were less than useless in the field. Not to mention their complete inability to give a concise sitrep in words of less than three syllables! The two drove her almost to be brink of reassigning them. If she hadn’t have needed to get the requests past Phil (he was still supposed to think he was in charge after all) then things might have turned out very differently. She misses how young they used to be. How innocent of the world and it’s darkness. Now Jemma is tortured to force their compliance, standing bravely and seemingly unsurprised at the fresh cruelty she must now bear. She’s been betrayed, abandoned, faced death and worse. She’s seen the darker side but still come through clean.

She misses Fitz. Can’t help but wish he were here with their team just so that they were all together for one last time. Even as she fervently thanks whatever deity might exist for keeping him from this horror.

It’s bad enough she has to kill Daisy. She can’t think past that to what comes next. It’s hard enough to do Daisy. Enough to hold to her resolve. To hold until all possible change of heart has fled her own thoughts. Until there is no possibility of failing to follow through.

Daisy’s struggles are getting weaker. Ever the fighter, she’s never been one to take the easy way out, but the pressure against her inner arm is getting fainter with every passing moment. It takes far longer than anyone ever appreciates to choke someone to unconsciousness. The seconds drag on into what feels like minutes, in to what feels like an eternity.

Daisy’s legs no longer kick against the sands. Her arms have dropped to hang limply at her sides. The pressure fighting against her grip lessening as Daisy’s lungs concede. She can feel the life slipping away from her.

She tightens her grasp forcefully, knows that Daisy falling unconscious is only the beginning. She has to hold firm. To hold and to hold and to hold until all possible revival is out of the question.

“It’s okay,” she whispers but the words stick in her throat brokenly. She’s unsure herself for who’s benefit she speaks the words she can’t even convince herself are true. “It’ll be over soon.” Soon enough. She just has to hold on.

“Everything is going to be okay.”

Nothing is ever going to be okay again.

X

Then she’s concussed.

Staring up at lights that are far too bright.

It takes her mind a moment to reorient itself. Her body lurches sideways and spits blood from her mouth, wiping the back of her sleeves across dirt speckled lips. Well. That hurt.

She forces herself to roll. Finds her hands and knees more steadily than she’d like.

Her mind catches up. Daisy.

Daisy coughes from her position several meters away. She’s standing hunched over, hands at her own neck, rubbing where no doubt bruises will form. If they live long enough. Daisy’s every shudderingly forced gasp is like a stake through her heart. But it’s the betrayal in her eyes when they meet that makes May feel like her soul is already lost. Maybe it is.

“You tried to kill me.” The soft words over a sore throat are not a question but an accusation.

Those whispered words of betrayal echo around the inside of her mind as Kasias' amplified voice echoes around the arena.

"NOW THE FUN STARTS!"

X

Chapter Text

Chapter 3 – An unfair fight

“You tried to kill me.” The soft words over a sore throat are not a question but an accusation.

Those whispered words of betrayal echo around the inside of her mind as Kasias' amplified voice echoes around the arena. "NOW THE FUN STARTS!"

It takes a few moments for May to decide whether she even ought to respond to Daisy when she has absolutely no idea what to say. How do you apologise for trying to kill someone? How do you explain that it is your sole intention to try again? She uses the action of forcing herself to her feet to delay, give her time to think. There’s no comforting lie that she can find to gift to Daisy when the facts against her are so damning. “I’m sorry,” is what she settles upon. “I’m sorry, but it’s better this way.”

“Better!?” Daisy scoffs, disbelieving and hurt.

“There is no rescue coming, Daisy,” she tries to calmly explain. It’s not like she’s liking this any more than Daisy is. She is just the one that has to make the hard call.

“So you just KILL ME!?” Daisy would be screaming but for a damaged throat and her voice breaking mid word.

“We’re all going to die!” she can’t help but snap it back. She doesn’t want to kill any of them. She has to. If Daisy would take a few breaths, stop letting emotions cloud her judgement, she’d see it too. She’d understand. “It’s by my hand or their whips!” That’s what it comes down to when all is said and done.

“You’re wrong.” Daisy’s tone says that she knows she’s not. A simple denial but no alternative is proffered. “You’re wrong.” Simply repeating it doesn’t make it any more true. She’s not wrong in this.

“How would you rather die then?!” May demands and maybe she’s losing control just a little bit if the fact that she screams the words is anything to go by. “How Daisy? Tell me, because I sure as hell don’t know! Do you want to die like that?” She gestures up at where the platforms still hover in a never-ending threat. “Screaming and begging for death as you suffer excruciating pain for the entertainment of psychopathic aliens in this hell hole of a future!? Is that how you want to go?”

“I sure as hell don’t want to go your way!” Daisy screams back at her over a broken throat. “Last time, it was my mother trying to kill me with a touch,” Daisy says quietly. Brokenly. It makes her heart weep painfully. If only she’d been there. “And now you… you want to kill me too. What is so wrong with me that everyone I … every moth-”

“START FIGHTING OR YOU WILL ALL DIE!” Kasias shouts over Daisy’s heart breaking words. They can’t afford to waste any more of his patience, can’t afford the risk that he will carry out his threat, take the decision out of her hands and torture them all.

It takes May a split second to decide to take the risk anyway –

“I love you, you idiot!” May shouts back, Daisy’s words leaving her furious and distraught. How can Daisy think that after so many years? How can she value herself so little? How can she not see what everyone else sees? Not understand that even if it’s not said out loud, that they love her like their daughter. She blames herself. Her cowardice. She knows she should have found to courage to say it before, especially to Daisy. Given her history, she should have realised that Daisy needed to hear it.

“FIGHT!” comes the instruction and this time there’s an increased whirring as the platforms above them threaten to move, threaten to take centre stage once more, threaten to hurt them all. All of her family.

“Daisy, we don’t have the time,” she’s crossing the sands towards Daisy briskly now. Trying to put in to a few quick words every part of this horrific circumstance to try to make Daisy understand that a quick death now is the only thing she can offer them. She can’t protect them anymore. Not here in this future hell hole. “Daisy, please. You have to understand. We – I, I can’t watch you die like that. I can’t let that happen. Not if I can stop it.” The words only seem to give more power to the sobs the wrack Daisy’s small form. She wishes she could hold her. Protect her from this horrific world. “I can stop it, Daisy. I can do it quick and painless.” If she can just convince Daisy to let this happen it will be so very much easier. Easier on them both. “I could snap your neck so fast you’d probably never feel it. If you just let me-” she reaches out a hand towards Daisy’s shoulder.

“NO!” With a shout she’s flung away violently. The force of Daisy’s power sending her high up in to the air, the stunned faces of an indistinct crowd turned to joyous as their entertainment recommences in such a violent fashion. She’s time to think all of this as her body takes its time to fall from such a height. The ground is harder than she expects. The sand barely a cushioning as she tries to catch herself with palms and knees that give way and flatten as her body continues its ride to the ground.

Her body rebels, winded and hurt, unable to find any breath to explain, to make Daisy understand. She forces her arms to bear some weight, pushes herself up from the dirt enough to spit the sand from her mouth between gasps.

Daisy simply doesn’t understand and she’s out of time to try to convince her.

It takes May three tries to swallow enough air in to her lungs to make any kind of a response. “I guess… we’re doing this the hard way,” she manages to gasp out quietly, finally raising her eyes to find Daisy who still stands at a distance, arm out stretched threatening to unleash a further blow with her powers. Even from this distance she can sense that Daisy is furious at the apparent betrayal. Furious and hurt. A potentially lethal combination.

“You can’t kill me, May,” Daisy shouts, an attempt to sway her from attempting to attack. That Daisy doesn’t want to hurt her is obvious.

“I-”

“No. You can’t,” Daisy’s voice is hard. Uncompromising. It remains filled with tears but undeniably resolute. “Because you can’t beat me, May. Not anymore.”

x

Another blast has her airborne. The sand whipped up along with her, grit stinging where it scraps against her skin in a tornado of air that dissipates as swiftly as its come.

She lands better this time, a crouch and one palm keeping her from a mouthful of dirt. For all of a second before she’s flung backwards a dozen meters, her back meeting the earth with a boneshaking thump, her head with a sharper crack.

“How, May? How do you kill me when you can’t even get near me?” Daisy’s voice is filled with pain, rising above the ringing in her ears, the cheering of the crowds as they see their Destroyer unleashed.

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out too quietly to be heard. She’s sorry she ever pushed Daisy to this. Sorry she hesitated and didn’t move fast enough to snap Daisy’s neck. Sorry she didn’t keep a tighter hold when she had the chance to end this peacefully. Sorry she didn’t find a way to end this without Daisy in pain.

She’s whipped up again, a whirlwind of blinding sand taking her directly upwards.

“You can’t hurt me, May!” Daisy shouts above the roaring winds. It’s apparent she’s already hurt Daisy more than enough with her failed attempts.

And now she can’t even get close to trying again. She’s wholly out matched. Flung as a rag doll from place to place with no control to bring on where she might end up.

She can’t get close!

Her back screams at her as she impacts a wall. Her ribcage compressed tightly by unseen force. She can barely expand her lungs beneath the pressure. Heaves. Tries to force back down the instinctive panic when she fails to pull in a full breath. She can see as Daisy approaches where she hangs pinned like a butterfly against the cold wall. Tear tracks clear against dirt decorate Daisy’s face. A burning anger in her eyes fuelled by what she sees as betrayal. “Don’t,” she tries to caution Daisy. She can’t let Daisy have her death on her conscience. She doesn’t want Daisy forced to become the monster. Daisy should never have to follow in her footsteps.

X

“Well it seems our first fight is coming to a disappointingly swift end,” Kasias commentates. May wishes she had the ability to shut him the hell up! “But no matter, my friends! This was always only ever the warm up. For who would bet on a tiny human woman to take down Quake The Destroyer of Worlds?!”

Laughter follows his pronouncement. She’d like to prove them wrong. She’d like to save Daisy such pain.

Pain of killing her.

Of murdering the rest of their team.

The final indignity of suffering agonising days of electric torture, beaten down by whips repeatedly without even the courtesy of her body being able to retreat in to unconsciousness and death.

Truth is, she cannot beat Daisy in a one on one fight anymore. Not when Daisy has such inhuman power to bring to bear. Not without cover to protect herself, to help her cover the distance to get in close and attack hand to hand. Not without a weapon to even the odds.

“You want entertainment?!” May shouts out to the crowds baying for her blood. Her voice is enough of a surprise to silence them.

“Put me down,” she orders Daisy more quietly, for her ears only. The girl is a good agent, still willing to believe she might have a plan to get them out of this, still willing to follow her lead even when she shouldn’t, and the pressure lets up allowing her to drop to her knees in the soft dirt. “Then give me a damned weapon!” she hollers up to the stands, delighting the audience who cheer her bravado in the face of such apparently overwhelming odds. Everyone loves an underdog. The chant is taken up above them.

Kasias’ laughter is grating.

She will not let Daisy die whipped to shreds over days of agonising pain. No way, no how.

Same goes for the rest of the damn team!

Better by her hand than anyone else’s.

She will be fast enough to kill Daisy.

She has to be.

X

“Give me a weapon and I’ll kill your damned Destroyer of Worlds,” she shouts again, demanding their support, their cry for more violent entertainment in order to elicit some form of weapon that might help her end this.

Daisy’s eyes narrow in obvious hatred at the name.

“Bring it, Cavalry,” Daisy sneers back. And that hurts, being called that here and now, being called that by Daisy of all people. It brings to mind another time. A similar time in the baking hot sands, with another little girl she had to kill. It hurts, but maybe that’s fair too. Maybe it should hurt.

A weapon lands in the sands to the left of her position. A spear with a wickedly sharp bladed tip. Not a weapon of her choice. Not a weapon she’s ever mastered. Her fingers scream immediately as Daisy blasts the spear from her clutching hands to land some thirty meters away.

She swallows against the dry air. There is no way she clears that distance before Daisy is upon her.

More weapons are tossed in to their arena – precious gifts tumbling from the heavens to land at her feet and all around. Apparently, everyone wants to have a part in defeating the Destroyer of Worlds. Maybe if that’s all she sees before her she can actually win this fight. If she only sees an enemy she can land the killing blow.

She feints right for the closest glint of a knife, throws herself to the left, feels the brush of air as the Destroyer falls for it, rolls and is up racing across the sands, covering the limited ground between them to attack.

She makes good use of her momentum, pushing off from her right leg a stride or so out, spinning as she leaps, left leg extended to deliver a crushing blow as she rotates. The Destroyer brings her forearms up to protect, a hasty step backwards to provide stability to her form as she tries to deflect the force down and away. She still takes the brunt of it, but she’s enough training to be wary. The obvious is never the main attack. The Destroyer spots the glint of the knife as her left arm follows a similar path, torso twisting to bring her wrist to the target even whilst she remains in mid-air. The Destroyer ducks left but she feels the impact down her arm before she lands.

A quick push off her outside leg to turn herself back and she’s facing the Destroyer’s bleeding face. A slice high over her left eye dripping blood, copious enough to obscure her vision. May follows up before the Destroyer can do anything more than drag a sleeve across her brow, her arms required to block the fluffy of blows that are unleashed. A kick down atop the Destroyer’s knee forces it to buckle and her down to the ground. A counter from below, a punch to probably bruise ribs steals May’s breath, makes her break away for the instant it takes for the Destroyer to find her feet and blast her backwards across the grounds.

She lands fortuitously close to an electric glow of green and forces her body to scramble before it even comes to rest. A long range weapon of some form could end this all. One pull of the trigger. She can do this. Her hand takes up a familiar grasp, fingers locking round the grip of what appears to be some futuristic gun. Long practised, her index finger finds the trigger as she continues the movement to roll up to a one kneed firing stance. Her eyes sight down the barrel at the raging Destroyer, who raises her arm once more in attack. It’s a matter of speed. A race to see who can get off a blast first.

Yet everything slows.

She goes to her killing place. Her quiet place. The thud of her heartbeat the only sound of which she’s aware, unnaturally steady in her ears. Her inhale a lengthy whisper of breath. It feels like she has all the time in the world. She zones in on the Destroyer’s heart. That’s where she’ll place the bullet. In the interminable moments between an inhale and the following exhale she pulls. Forcefully. One does not squeeze a trigger in such circumstances.

Her muscles seize and spasm, immediately going down electrocuted. The laughter from all around them humiliating her. Kasias’ voice mocking her, “A wise safety precaution appears to have rendered our assassin debilitated. And that ladies and gentlemen is why you never take up another’s blaster! A little lesson for our foolish assassin!”

A little lesson she could damn well do without! It’s hard enough to kill the Destroyer without trap weapons laying her out as well!

She flings the green gun away from her with a scowl and finds her feet, on the move before the Destroyer can decide to blast power at her again.

She runs. Zig zagging left and right. Changing course randomly. Unexpectedly. It’s all she can do to try to evade the repeated blasts that the Destroyer fires at her anticipated position.

Her lungs burn around the dust she’s swallowed but she forces herself to endure. She has to keep moving, keep dodging ahead of the Destroyer’s blasts no matter how it strains her legs to the absolute limits of what her body will take. She doesn’t have to endure it for much longer.

A blast seen only in the sands flying in front of her forces an abrupt change in direction as she falls back. It occurs to her even as she sprints away again that she’ll tire of dashing about well before the Destroyer exhausts, and that the Destroyer is at some point going to predict her move and hit her, taking her out of the fight once again. There’s only so long she can maintain this pace.

“I’ve told you before to conserve your energy!” she snaps out in an attempt to have Daisy change tack.

“Look to yourself. I can do this all day!” the Destroyer shouts back arrogantly. The cheers of all around the arena seem to rise in support of the Destroyer. They all want to see her death.

A blast that’s far too close, forcing her to dive to the sands. She spits the grains from her lips, bring one knee beneath her quickly to push her to her feet, back up and sprinting again within seconds.

“Your stamina test scores say otherwise!” she calls, mocking Daisy, trying to force the Destroyer in to rash action, then rolls forwards beneath the expected blast in response.

A dive forwards and right evades a second blast. Then she’s on her feet, running, flipping, rolling. Her every movement forwards, closing in on the Destroyer’s position. The Destroyer’s putting her all in to it now, alternating hands as she fires blast after blast of power frantically. The power in to each blast is enough to take her head off if it hits but there’s an edge of desperation skewing her aim as she simply throws the power at her indiscriminately.

Then she’s close enough to the Destroyer’s position to fling sand up towards her eyes, taking the opening the momentary blindness presents, smacking the Destroyer down to the floor with a fist to her face. Hearing a sickening the grating sound of bone protesting. Daisy cries out. It makes May hesitate and she curses herself for it.

In the second the Destroyer is up to one knee, a palm outstretched in a strike towards May’s ribs. It’s blocked by the expected forearm. Followed up with an immediate strike to the body with her left. It doesn’t land. The Destroyer has already dodged, twisting away from where her strike had been aimed, finding her feet in the same movement. May spins right as a counter strike is flying at her head and ducks the follow up strikes before being forced to drop back. The Destroyer is fast, very fast. And she’s good.

She should be, she wouldn’t have quit until Daisy learned everything she had to teach her.

They exchange strikes almost without thought. A mixture of the kick boxing Daisy prefers and the martial arts in which May excels, the two of them switching almost seamlessly from one form to the next. It’s a tactic she’s always used to good effect when fighting – fix on a clear fighting technique to lure your opponent into reacting based upon that technique then switch and take advantage of the lag as your opponent tries to catch up. She’s never been up against an enemy who could keep up with her before. Fighting the Destroyer is testing every part of her being even now she’s in close and out of threat from those inhuman powers.

Blows land to non-crucial areas as each of them are forced to make sacrifices in the strikes they block, an attempt to gain an advantage, to find that single opening to land a debilitating blow. Adrenaline runs high in her blood, desperation lending strength to her strikes. She can do this.

She misses a feint, but the Destroyer pulls the intended strike, landing it with far less than the force required to break her thigh. It’s immediately apparent Daisy’s avoiding landing the harder hits, not taking advantage where she should to knock a knee out of place or twist an arm into dislocating. It gives her a slight edge knowing that the Destroyer is playing it somewhat cautiously. Daisy doesn’t want to hurt her.

She ups the ante, throws herself into every strike thereafter, leaves herself open to counters that she’d never normally risk. They’re both fighting too fast now. So fast that one of them is going to make a mistake soon.

A fatal mistake.

The Destroyer goes down… but as she seeks to follow up she’s flung back, immediately aware that the slight increase in distance between them and pause in blows has left the Destroyer an opening to raise a single arm between their positions and Daisy’s seemingly no hesitation in firing a blast of power that sends her form flying a dozen meters to land with a thumb in the ground.

Unstirring.

For several moments as she tries to reorient her thoughts.

It works to her advantage as she hears the light footfalls in the sand approaching her position. She feigns unconsciousness. Listens intently for the soft shifting of sands below Kasias’ crowing announcement at what he assumes to be the conclusion of their bout.

“I know you’re faking,” the Destroyer tells her quietly, her footsteps stopping well outside of reach of any successful surprise attack.

She remains silent, unmoving, her limbs flung out askew across the sand. She only needs the Destroyer to take a few more steps closer to increase her prospects of success to where its worth an attempt.

“May, just get up. I’m not falling for it.”

Maybe she isn’t at that.

Unspeaking, May rolls slowly up to her feet and turns to face the Destroyer.

But it’s Daisy there in the sands looking at her in despair. It’s Daisy that whispers, “I don’t want to hurt you.” It’s Daisy that she has to find a way to kill.

She closes her eyes against the sight. Takes a series of long and steady breaths to bring her mind and body back to the focus she needs to finish this. She needs to move. She needs a weapon. She needs to get in close and to take Daisy down.

She opens her eyes, focused on her goals. An expression of surprise crosses her face, followed by a smile as she steps forwards in relief. “Phil.”

It’s enough to make the Destroyer turn to look. She should know better. May’s immediately upon her. A taunting “made you look” lending a furious edge to the Destroyer’s blocks and counters. She strikes out with the blade an inch too far. It allows the Destroyer to capture her arm. She leans on the arm anyway, pushes down with everything she has to bring the blade in closer to the Destroyer’s neck.

“That won’t work twice,” the Destroyer spits out through gritted teeth as they struggle, each trying to overpower the other through strength alone.

“It shouldn’t have worked once!” May replies, trying to break through with a mental offence as much as the physical if she possibly can. She breaks away with an oath as the Destroyer drops one hand away and seeks to target her eyes. It’s a dirty move.

She couldn’t be prouder.

Daisy targets a blast at her legs, forcing May to catch herself on palms in the sand. She pushes up immediately, rolling her body forwards over her arms, turns the movement into a handstand, into a forward flip as gust of sand blast past her fingertips as she swiftly leaves the ground. Then she’s running again.

A glint in the sand and her next three strides are suddenly a flip, hands settling in the soft sands, her grip around the hilt of a blade before pushing off and continuing her erratic dash.

It’s a minor success. She has another blade. Longer. Well balanced. Sharper. This blade could reach a heart without issue. If she can just avoid being hit for long enough to get in close she can – The Destroyer’s power drags at her ankle as it lands in the sand. Her sole support gone in an instant and she crashes to the ground. She screws her eyes tightly shut and closes her fingers tightly around the hilt of her weapon as she winds around her suddenly increase, sand scratching at her face as she’s drawn airborne once again. She tucks her hands tightly in to her chest, curls her form in to a protective ball about them. She is not losing the weapon that could end this.

She lands hard, pushes to a knee only to feel the winds whipping up around her again. Palm outstretched towards Daisy she implores her silently to wait even as she’s launched up into the air again. This is ridiculous! She is so completely outmatched it’s laughable! Daisy has merely to keep throwing her from place to place before she’s chance to recover her feet until eventually one of these repeated landings will force her mind to flee into unconsciousness.

She knows Daisy won’t kill her like this but she is certainly stretching Kasias’ patience, that could end up with them all on platforms awaiting tortuous deaths. The exact thing she’s trying to save them from. If the Destroyer knocks her unconscious she won’t be able to help any of them with the tough calls, won’t get any of them through this painlessly. She can’t afford to let daisy take her out. She can’t afford to let daisy win.

Phil is next.

She can’t force this burden upon him. She can’t force Phil to kill daisy if she fails. It would break him.

She has to take daisy out herself.

It seems an impossible task as she’s flung yet again immediately upon landing, barely a chance to catch her breath never mind to find her feet and evade once more.

“Please!” she manages to force out on an exhale as her body falls once more, hoping to play upon Daisy’s emotions. “Please…” she begs gasping. There’s no immediate follow up.

“This is getting tiresome. FINISH IT!” Kasias shouts from far above.

“Daisy… please. Let me die on my feet,” she pleads. It’s her last hope. She’s not fatalistic but she must acknowledge, even if only in the silence of her own mind, that her body is too hurt, too exhausted to force itself to her feet and run once more before the Destroyer blasts her away again. She’s not fast enough.

A soft “I am not going to kill you” accompanies the hand she feels on her upper arm. Then she’s being helped upwards, supported as she finds her unsteady feet.

May curls in to the body supporting her. She’s too close for the Destroyer’s powers to be of any real threat as she tackles her head on. A palm to Daisy’s sternum has her heart stuttering, shock plastered across Daisy’s face for the seconds after it lands. A back hand across Daisy’s cheek makes a sickening sound that rebounds in her ears over and again, a multitude of times uncountable in the minutes it seems to take Daisy’s body to fall.

She falls with her. Internally.

Externally, she presses her advantage, taking up a victory position astride Daisy’s hips, far enough back to avoid being grappled by legs, far enough forwards to keep her down. Instinctively she’s captured Daisy’s wrists, transferred them to the one hand, rested her body weight atop them. She palms the blade. It’s happened too fast but she has the advantage.

She has Daisy pinned.

She can do this.

She can do this!

X

The arena’s gone silent around her. Time seems to slow to a crawl. Her tears drip on to Daisy’s face. She drops the blade in to the sand for a moment. A moment only. Brushing her hand across Daisy’s forehead. Trying to wipe the blood and the dirt away. That sweet pale face still contains such innocence. Such fragile innocence.

The blood upon her hands.

There’s no change there.

She’s always been a monster.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers brokenly. The only words she can find to give.

Daisy sniffles, her eyes closing tight against the inevitable. May’s hand picks up the blade, shakes it lightly to let the dusts of sand fall clear. It’s so brilliantly clean she daren’t look too closely at it. She doesn’t want to see her reflection in her murder weapon of choice.

She focuses on Daisy. Focuses upon Skye. The girl she loves like a daughter. Loved like a daughter. It’s past tense now. She inhales raggedly and looks away, quickly blinking back fresh tears that seek to obscure her vision.

Daisy’s looking up at her when she refocuses. Luminously bright orbs drilling in to her own. Kindness and compassion reflected back at her when it should be hatred. Skye is worth ten of her.

She presses the blade against that delicate neck. Its edge is sharp. It will take but a moment. The throat beneath her gulps and she almost shifts, movement aborted at the last moment. It’s important to do it right. She lowers her head above Daisy’s face, lets her hair fall as a curtain around them, obscuring the last moment from their audience’s view. This is not for their entertainment.

“Remember we love you,” she breathes. It’s the last thing she deserves to hear.

“Love you too… mom,” come the answering words unbiddden. The tears brim over her eyes, blurring her sight. She turns her head sideways as though that might help make it easier. It’s this or everyone dies by torture, she reminds herself forcibly. It’s a single slip of a knife or screams for what will feel like eternity for all of them.

A slip of the knife.

“Forgive yourself,” Daisy pleads with her but not for her life. The Destroyer is a figment of this arena’s fiction. Skye is too good for this world. The blade is sharp in her hand… but she can’t move it the fraction of an inch to slice it across.

May screams out loud the pain and anguish of the decision that forces her to take Daisy’s life. A long low sound of such burning pain that it silences the rest of the arena in awe. She can’t just slit Daisy’s throat.

She kneels up, blade raised high above her head. The impact is unnecessary to slip so sharp a weapon between vertebrae to strike a killing blow but she needs the momentum of the swing to force her hand, needs gravity to exert its pull upon her wrist once she’s begun the blade’s course to see it through. She brings her hands together around the hilt above her head. Daisy makes no movement to defend herself. No movement to even try to stop the inevitable. Maybe now she understands.

The knife point splits its target easily as it lands.

The soft words “I’m sorry” accompanying it on an exhale.

X

Chapter Text

Chapter 4 – How not to die when a superhuman tries to kill you

The knife point splits its target easily as it lands.

The soft words “I’m sorry” accompanying it on an exhale.

x

Time seems to stand still. Her faltering heart beat an echo of seconds that stretch on timeless in to eternity. She’s peripherally aware of the cheering crowds she can barely hear beyond the silence blanketing her mind. Nothing seems to matter. She feels broken. Fragmented. A mirror shattered in to pieces by her own hand.

A devastation so utterly absolute that she fears she might never bring herself back from such failure.

And yet…

And yet… there’s a freedom in the blackness that her thoughts haunt. A feeling that caresses over the sharp edges of her mind, coaxing them back together.

Relief.

Profound relief.

She’s aware of movement as Daisy’s arms come up around her. The blade removed from her unresisting grasp as she sink boneless in to the offered comfort.

“I’m sorry,” she hears the whispered words and only afterwards does she recognise her own voice as the speaker.

She can’t kill Daisy.

She can’t kill their Daisy.

And yet… with her cognitive functions seemingly slowly returning, she starts to appreciate the results of her actions. Daisy is alive. She couldn’t save them. Despair follows the thought, hot on its heels.

She’s failed.

She wasn’t strong enough to save them all from greater suffering. She’s made the hard calls before, but here and now she can’t kill Daisy. She knows it’s the right decision, knows she should make the call to save her from worse, and yet… when it comes right down to it, she is wholly unable to follow through.

The fact she can’t take that killing shot, even knowing it to be the right decision, both devastates her completely … and heals her soul. Maybe she isn’t as broken as she thought? Not the monster she feared since Bahrain. Seems like kind of a late time to be finding out but she guesses it’s better late than never.

It’s with almost disbelief that she fully embraces her decision not to hurt Daisy.

It’s with tentative hope that she can decide not to kill Phil.

It’s with new found confidence that she can tell herself with certainty that she won’t kill Mac or Elena or Jemma.

She won’t kill any one of them.

“FIGHT! Fight or you will all die horribly!” It doesn’t seem to matter that Kasias is still shouting. The words are no longer the threat that Kasias thinks they are. She’s not a monster and she cannot kill Daisy. She’d rather die with all of them right now anyway than try to kill any one of them alone.

“You can’t kill me, Melinda,” Daisy says quietly, ignoring the demands, and it makes her question when has Daisy ever called her by her first name? The smallest of chills on her inner forearm is a fraction of a second’s warning of Daisy’s intent even before her words continue. “But maybe I can save you.” It’s enough time to push frantically away, leaving Daisy rolling up from her sprawled position in the sands as May scrambles then fights to find her uncooperative feet at a far safer distance. The glint of metal under the lights tells of the small blade concealed within Daisy’s palm.

“Agent Johnson!” May snaps, hoping to instill some sort of reason through respect for the chain of command.

“Don’t you dare try to pull rank on this! You tried to KILL ME FIRST!” Daisy may have a point, a small one!

“I was trying to SAVE you,” May emphasises, talking slowly whilst scouring the ground to check weapon location – not that Daisy needs a weapon to win this fight. She needs to find a way to get in close and incapacitate Daisy. A way to knock her out for long enough that she doesn’t have the opportunity to try to turn this around. She will not have Daisy kill her. She will not let Daisy live with such guilt. She will not leave it to Phil to have no option but to kill his daughter. She will NOT.

“And now I’m going to save you,” is Daisy’s rejoinder with a supporting blast of power aimed directly at May that she only just manages to spin away from, the colliding force of Daisy’s arms meet her own as Daisy follows hot on the heels of her blast in attack.

She’s barely time to think to counter the blows that Daisy throws, forced to rely upon instinct, upon training. Her hands counter, block, slap away the offending strikes as her body moves with the instinctual rhythm of combat, weaving and dodging, up high over a sweeping leg, ducking low under an aerial attempt. A dance she’s practiced if not perfected. The moves ever changing but the underlying rhythm, the flow of attack and retreat, ever the same. If often over and concluded well before the dance hits its peak.

Her partner in this instant is nearly as good, nearly as proficient, and failing an uncharacteristic slip by either of them this dance is unlikely to end in premature disappointment.

She swallows back the intrusive thought that this fight isn’t going to end in disappointment but in devastation.

She doesn’t force the thought back soon enough though and her mind is jolted out of the simple patterns of strikes to attack and counter. It’s is suddenly alive again to the devastating possibilities laid out before them. This fight will end in devastation for them both irrespective of the victor.

She still can’t let Daisy win.

Their arms clash between their tight positions, feet placed firmly deep in the sands as they strain against one another, each trying to overcome. She sees so closely in to Daisy’s eyes. Sees her own fears reflected back at her.

May’s not afraid to die. There have been times when she’s even thought she’d welcome it. But if she dies, if she lets Daisy kill her… she is mortally afraid for Daisy.

She rocks left suddenly, hoping to overbalance them, succeeding in escaping those heart wrenchingly honest eyes as the move breaks them apart for a second before Daisy is down, spinning a sweeping leg out targeting her unbalanced stance. She dodges and Daisy is up, targeting her centre even as she blocks and counters with her own swift strikes... her body fighting the charge as her mind stumbles along faltering in the wake of a tortuous choice she can not make.

If Daisy kills her… she doesn’t want Daisy to have that on her conscience. Doesn’t want Daisy to suffer the guilt and the trauma and the repeat nightmares that will haunt her nights and waking dreams irrespective of the rational reason in support of her choice. Daisy doesn’t deserve to suffer so.

She can’t help the thought that flashes Phil is next.

She can’t help that it wipes her mind of all other thoughts and stuns her in to insensibility.

The strike that cracks her cheekbone drives pain like a knifepoint through her skull. It’s as nothing compared to the ice speared through her heart.

Phil is next.

The cool sands envelop her face, encrust her closed eyes, and she pauses for a split second, infinitesimally long, as her mind decides whether to stay down, accept defeat and leave this world with its impossible choices behind. Her stubbornness be damned, she thinks as stinging palms connect with shifting sands and the firmness beneath to push her head clear and inhale. As desirable as it might seem to allow defeat to take her, she won’t let her team suffer the consequences that follow.

Phil is next and she will not let him be forced in to the position of having to kill Daisy. She won’t let him have to make that horrific decision or try to carry it out. Phil can’t do that, even if Agent Coulson can foresee the rationality. It would break Phil to make the attempt. He wouldn’t be successful anyway. It would break Daisy if Phil made the attempt. There’d be nothing left of her to break when she was inevitably successful and took Phil’s life by her hands too.

There’d be nothing left to Daisy to break when she takes the lives of Elena and Mack. Or of Simmons, her closest friend. There’ll be nothing left of any of them. Nothing except pain.

She will not let Daisy kill her. She will not let Phil be next.

She forces her exhausted body to redouble its efforts, to move faster, to hit harder. She can ignore the pain it reports in return. Answers the screaming nerves that it’s not for too much longer. Pushes on through.

She can still save this team. She can save them from themselves.

Better to die together in whatever circumstances than to sacrifice who they are.

Better to allow their bodies to be whipped and beaten, their exterior shells to be torn to shreds, than to destroy one another, sunder their minds and blacken their souls.

She takes a single step back. Disengages from the fight. Surprise flashes across Daisy’s face at the unexpected move, then suspicion. That’s fair. It’s hardly the first time in this fight she’s tried to trick the girl to gain whatever paltry advantage she can.

“I don’t want you to kill me, Daisy,” May starts, hoping to try to find some way to explain the journey her thoughts have taken and the conclusions she hopes to bring Daisy around to understanding.

“Snap,” is the less than helpful response that breaks in to her half-ready speech and a high kick stops her from snapping back at the girl as she’s forced to hastily deflect the strike.

Then they’re engaged again, fighting hand to hand furiously like there’s been no pause, no attempt to break away and interject some semblance of sense to the proceedings. Daisy doesn’t want to hear her. She can understand the driving force behind that. Daisy just wants to get this over with.

She tries to break off twice. Thrice. Unsuccessful on each occasion as Daisy simply follows, renews her efforts to force her down to the ground.

She can’t afford to run. There’s no where to run to even if she could afford to risk the distance that would give Daisy the prompt and the opening to use her powers once more. One blast and she would be out of this game… if that’s what Daisy wants. If it is, it raises the question why hasn’t she done that yet?

She twists right to afford a strike targeted at her ribcage that she can’t swing her arm up to block in time. Her knee collapses out from under her in protest at the movement. Its unexpected by both of them. That’s all that saves her from the blunder ending this match, that minute hesitation caused by surprise delaying Daisy long enough on a follow through. She leans out sideways over her collapsed leg, weight supported swiftly on a hand as she lashes out with her working leg to take out Daisy’s ankle. Daisy’s sudden grounding gives her time to risk inattention, to feel at her screaming knee, to apply pressure where needed to force the surrounding muscles to uncramp sufficiently enough for her to risk forcing herself to her feet.

She can’t keep this up much longer.

The wearied way Daisy pushes herself upright to her knees explains more than words can tell that she’s tiring too. Exhaustion snaps at both of their heels, saps their strength.

The crowds all around them have lost none of their fervor. The bright patterns of clothes and faces indistinct when there are other concerns than the damaged audience that passionately cheers them on to death and destruction.

She takes the break whilst it’s on offer. Breathes as deeply as she dares through burning lungs and jagged feeling ribs. She doesn’t assess the damage. There’s no point. This will be over soon enough.

“You don’t have to do this, Daisy,” she tries forcing out a cracking voice over a sand grazed throat. She swallows back the iron taste of blood from teeth cut lips. “We don’t have to do this.”

“You were right the first time, May,” Daisy tells her softly, regret in every nuance of her defeated stance until she pulls herself more firmly upright, resets her feet in to balance. It’s an unspoken confirmation of Daisy’s intention to continue and to see this out to the end. “It is better this way.”

May sways away from the first aimed at her head. Blocks with a forearm the left that comes around for her ribs. With a palm the knee that’s raised. Stumbles right out of range of a strike to the left. Forearm blocking the round house kick. Dropping lower to smack away the uppercut. She throws her weight behind her left arm as she drives for the opening left Daisy has mistakenly left her.

It’s not a mistake she appreciates a millisecond too late to correct the over reach. Her wrist is taken. Captured. Twisted. Her body follows the movement to compensate for the action. Three repeated blows to her ribs have her breathless. Unable to beg for mercy even if she had the piece of mind to do so. Her other arm beats at any part she can reach in futility. Daisy’s head is tucked far enough down that she’s unable to target vulnerable areas. She hears more than feels a sickening pop as her shoulder dislocates. Feels cut off from the action until her body screams a moment later.

Daisy doesn’t hesitate.

She’d be proud if these were any other circumstances.

Daisy follows through exactly as she’s been trained, dropping her now useless arm and kicking a leg down atop her kneecap. She’s forced down to one knee. Forced to look up at the girl through a haze of sickening pain and know that this is where she has failed.

“I’m sorry,” Daisy speaks and as Daisy raises her right palm facing outwards she knows that this is where it all ends. She’s blasted back. Chest under forces of pressure she cannot describe as she fails to force her lungs to expand to draw in anything close to the breath required to keep her body functioning. Her back strikes the end wall meters above the arena sands with a crash that resounds throughout her body and continues to ring in her ears. A dull groan is all she can hear beneath the tumultuous cheers as she falls.

She’s weightless for an instant before being caught in slight yet strong arms and guided down to what she presumes is the ground, her upper body comfortingly cradled and her face turned up towards the lights and the tear streaked face of her would be murderer.

The face of a friend.

“You beat me,” May forces herself to gasp out, trying to push a proud smile to her face beyond the grimace of pain.

“There’s a first time for everything right?”

“Right,” May hopes she whispers out loud in reply, as her eyes ignore her orders and fall falteringly closed. Her hand reaches blindly upwards, is caught by Daisy’s and brought close to cup a cheek, held there as wet tears drip down unchecked to land on a dust streaked face. “You’re getting me wet,” she tries to complain but it loses something in the delivery when she can hardly breathe past the pain.

“I’m sorry,” Daisy whispers, devastated yet resigned. “I didn’t understand before, but I do now… and I’m sorry.”

She summons all of her remaining strength to force her throat to work the words that need to be heard. “Daisy… I don’t want you to do this,” she says with as much force as she can put behind the words, hoping to convince her not to take that final blow. She doesn’t want Daisy to carry that burden with her no matter how little time she may have left. Daisy doesn’t deserve that stain on her hands, that pain on her conscience, that uneraseable black mark on her soul. “But I forgive you… if you do.” She can promise the girl that much at least.

It’s stupid really - how much like her Daisy has become. Willing to make the hard call. Willing to kill a friend and sacrifice herself to unfathomable pain. She’s so very proud of the woman Daisy has become. Her protégé following so very clearly in her shoes. Maybe Daisy has even surpassed her.

She can see the edges of her vision hazing, the sounds of the arena fading, darkness closing in all around her, enveloping her in the dull silence of the night.

Maybe Daisy is stronger than she ever could be.

Maybe Daisy can succeed where she has failed.

She can feel her own thoughts slipping, trickling through her grasp like water slipping through her fingers to fall down. Down in to a seemingly never-ending abyss. She’s drawn as the rushing waters, follows those fleeting thoughts down into the darkness.

Her last thought is -

“ARGH!” the sudden shout awakes her from whatever edge of consciousness state she’s lapsed into with an immediacy felt jerkily throughout her entire body. Her warrior reflexes force bleary eyes to hone in on the movement - upon flashing glints of metal as a blade tumbles end over end through the air, flung violently away from them. Then she’s taken up in strong arms that constrict around broken ribs painfully, Daisy’s sobs echoing hollowly, felt not only within the tremors of her body but deeper, within her soul.

She’s more relieved than she can possibly put in to words.

“I am so proud of you,” she manages to whisper as her world falls silent.

X

“You fools,” Kasias sneers unheard by either.

X

Chapter Text

Chapter 5 – Together or not at all!

Eventually…

Eventually… they help each other to stand.

Slowly. Painfully.

They stumble together, a depressing parody of a three-legged race that is anything but funny. Anything but race like.

Without conferring they end up standing before Kasias. Standing before their friends. Standing between Kasias and their friends. That feels important.

Friends they have doomed to such pain and suffering. Friends neither one of them could kill any more than they could kill each other. Friends that they will die beside.

“We die together,” Daisy announces to the jeering crowds in a strong voice that tells nothing of their weariness.

“Do your worst,” May snarls in support, daring them, even as she clings to Daisy’s side to keep her body from sinking to the ground in exhausted pain.

It’s a brave and final stand.

The crowds love their defiance. A fickle audience. Entertainment for the masses.

It doesn’t help their case. There’s no possible way either of them can even attempt to fight off the dozen kree guardians that enter the arena from various concealed entrances, inaccessible from within.

They aren’t even given the chance.

Daisy’s chip clicks on with a short sharp sound, the light glow confirming they’ve disabled whatever potential power she might have been able to bring to bear.

The kree raise their weapons from a distance that even if she were fit and healthy she’d have no chance of covering in time.

She knows it likely that they’ll only be stunned to suffer a more lengthy death at the hands of Kasias. She can’t help a small hope that maybe some level one kree guard will make a mistake. That maybe they will both still die quick today, even if they couldn’t at the other’s hand.

She holds tighter to Daisy’s hand. Feels her fingers crushed back tighter in return.

What better way than to die beside friends?

She turns her head to catch Phil’s eyes for possibly the last time. She doesn’t look away. The last thing she wants to remember is how his eyes glow with pride beneath the tears.

The sound of an alien blaster discharging is wholly expected.

They’ve taken out Daisy first. She’s still standing. Still captured by the depths of Phil’s eyes.

Until he looks away. He doesn’t want to see her fall.

Until he looks beyond her, over her head.

She turns in slow motion and the world comes rushing back in to sharp focus. The deafening noise. The screams. The panic as the crowds stampede towards limited exits. The kree guards are down, fanned out around them bizarre and strange.

“May!” A hand roughly grasps her upper arm. Spins her half around and pushes a shotgun in to her hands that she can only stare at. The hand shakes her more firmly until she looks up. Fitz? That can’t be … possible.

He’s already moved on to Daisy, pressing a weapon firmly in to her hands much like her own.

It’s chaos as humans range around them. A swarm of righteous anger risen up to fight their oppressors. Daisy seems likewise stunned by the swarms. There’s an indeterminate moment where their eyes meet. It feels like forever and no time at all.

“They wanted a fight,” Daisy throws out with a smirk of mischief that says everything her words don’t say. They’ve done it. They’ve beaten the odds again. They will -

A smile she doesn’t bother to disguise is her answer as they raise their weapons and step forwards, carefully, together.

They wanted a fight.

Let’s give them one!

x

Chapter Text

Alternative Chapter 4 & 5 And they all (didn’t) live happily ever after…

(Phil’s POV because it was just too damn hard to write it from May’s POV)

The knife point splits its target easily as it lands. The soft words “I’m sorry” accompanying it on an exhale. x  

His heart is in his mouth.

It’s choking off his words.

Words like: “no”

Like: “Stop.”

Like: “You don’t have to do this, May.”

Maybe: “We can find another way.”

It’s a blessing that he can’t issue those words beyond the lump in his throat. A blessing and a curse.

He understands the reasoning. His rational mind is (almost) fully in support of the decision she’s been forced to make. It’s a terrible choice she’s made for all of them… but it is the right decision no matter how it feels so very wrong.

Versus pain and suffering and eventual death, a quick death is by far preferable. For himself. For their team.

It doesn’t stop his soul bleeding at the scream of anguish Melinda lets tear free over a burning throat before she thrusts down the long glittering blade that ends Daisy’s life. It doesn’t stop the wretched devastation that causes her to falter and fall, collapsing across Daisy’s already blood stained chest as sobs wreck her frame anew.

His platform whirring to life to deliver him unto her is miraculous and… not. The restraints on his ankles drop and retract far too slowly when he needs to be with her, needs to hold her. Eventually they are gone and he’s off, stumbling across the uneven sands only slightly hampered by the giant monstrosity they’ve attached to his left arm that pulls him off balance in unexpected ways.

He has her up and in his arms notwithstanding the halfhearted way she beats at his chest and tries to escape him to hold on to Daisy. He holds her tightly in to him as she loses what little strength she’s held on to throughout all of this. She simply succumbs.

Falls bonelessly against him.

And cries.

He wishes with all his heart that he could take this pain away from her. Wishes that somehow she hadn’t been chosen as the first one in this horrific arena to fight against their fictitious monster, The Destroyer of Worlds. Wishes she didn’t have to thrust a blade in to Daisy’s heart to save her.

He can’t stop himself from staring over her shoulder at the frozen body, blood already soaked through and spread across her chest, dark hair tangled across the sands mixing with the pool that continues to increase, lips turned pale parted in a last gasp, eyes glassy and dead to the world. Here lies their great Destroyer.

Here lies his team’s heart and soul.

As Melinda’s sobs form in to words, into hurried apologies and pleas for forgiveness he has nothing to offer. Nothing to offer but more lies, assurances that ‘it’s okay’, that he ‘forgives her’, that he’d ‘have done the same’, that ‘it will all be over soon.’ He can’t find the heart within him to make them even a little bit convincing. They are all going to die here.

“Let me take it from here,” he offers simply. It’s the most he can give to her in the here and now. The release from this unconscionable burden. He doesn’t even really know if he could kill the rest of them himself. He’s not certain he could be strong enough to carry it out. Not physically. Not mentally.

Melinda simply shakes her head against him in denial. He’s relieved and then disgusted with himself for the feeling. She won’t let another take up this burden for her, not even him. She’d rather sacrifice herself, he knew that even as he offered. Even if this breaks her, she won't let it anyone else take her place. Even if this destroys her.

Because this is going to destroy her... if it hasn’t already.

The lash and a scream seemingly never-ending sound out above. Simmons suffering for his delay. Her agony in exchange for the little comfort he can offer Melinda before she continues on her tortuous path.

Melinda is the one to shun his touch, the one to call an end to the comfort of his arms, dry her eyes roughly with a sleeve and take up a battle stance a few feet away from his position whilst her face fails to mask her devastation.

He crosses the distance to her anyway. Ignores her soft plea to “don’t” and brushes her fists aside to capture her chin, softly directing her up to meet his lips with her own. A slow and unhurried kiss all the sweeter for being their first. He pulls her bodily in to him and deepens the kiss, memorising every single moment to comfort him in the darkness that might follow.

“You’re so strong,” he whispers against her lips as they part breathless. He continues hurriedly, well aware that he’s rambling but needing her to hear the words before he runs out of time entirely, “This is the right decision, Melinda. I’d do it myself if I could. You could let me – but then you wouldn’t be you. I’m so very proud of you. I love you. Please remember. No matter how bad it gets. You’re doing this for the right reasons and I love you.” The effect his words have on her cannot be described in words. She’s stunned, saddened, beautiful and devastating, hopeful and yet resigned, desperate, despairing, -

He turns away before he can see anything more. Brushes his own face with a hand to clear the tears from his eyes enough to see. He collects the gun shaped weapon from the ground, shakes off the sand lightly, holds it awkwardly, puts it to his heart, hears her voice scream out in denial, and pulls the triggering mechanism. It’s better this way. She shouldn’t have to kill him too.

x

Melinda’s POV

His body collapses to the ground as though a puppet with his strings suddenly cut. She daren’t approach, daren’t even think of what that means. She can’t afford to lose it right now. She pushes everything down. Tries to turn off her emotions. All that matters now is the rest of the team. He trusted her to finish this.

The titan that fills the shoes of Agent Mackenzie is almost a welcome distraction from nothingness.

Mac stops six feet away. He’s maintaining a distance between them, keeping apart from the monster that she is and the destruction that she has wrecked. He doesn't want to come close to her. She can understand that. She'd doesn't want to be close to her either.

"I can't kill a friend," Mac states simply, his earnest eyes still so full of tears. She's little doubt that this has broken him inside.

It's broken her as well. But she's needs to hold it together just a little more. Just a little longer and this can all be over.

"You're a good man, Mack," she replies with a sad little smile. It's been years since she considered herself to be 'good.' Decades. Hell! Perhaps she never was. Sometimes SHIELD needs its monsters just as much as the few 'good' men to drive its conscience.

“There’s no way out of this, is there?” he asks, eyes almost begging her to tell him a comforting lie. As if she’d have killed Daisy and let Coulson – no, she can’t think about that.

She shakes her head in the negative. She’s no comfort for Mack.

She’s no comfort for herself.

He sighs heavily then carefully kneels down in the sands. A considered movement. One leg then the other. His huge hands, so gentle in all that they do, clasp together in front of him. A mountain at rest. Not peaceful but resigned.

His eyes pierce hers as she forces her weary legs to carry her in approach. “I’m not killing anyone,” he says and the tone itself is an apology. He knows what this means for her. She nods simply in acknowledgment and his eyes cast heavenward instead. To Elaina or to God, she’s not sure. She’s not sure it matters. Nothing matters anymore.

She steps up behind him.

Her small hands already blood stained and cracking.

She reaches around broad shoulders, grips fragile fingers around a neck… and wrenches hard. A sickening snap resounds throughout the arena.

Her stomach rebels and she finds herself dropping to all fours. Mack’s body lies next to her. His dead eyes still staring up at the skies.

x

Yoyo is distraught.

Angry. Upset.

Hatred spews from her verbally and physically as she puts those feelings in to sustained attack. Melinda has nothing left to give her – no energy to fight against a target that moves so swiftly she probably couldn’t fathom to hit it anyway and no words or lies of comfort she can bring herself to tell. She suffers for her failures, repeatedly. A blow to her temple splits the skin above her eye, stinging. All she can see is blood. Again and again she is forced back, struck down. She accepts the pain as deserved. She killed Mack. She struggles on through the broken ribs that compromise her breathing. She murdered Daisy and Coul- She blinks the tears from her eyes and wretches, coughs the blood up from her lungs.

She bleeds for her sins.

She bleeds for them all.

She’s sprawled upon the ground with the next attack. No energy to move her limbs any distance to even try to get up. She looks up as the bright lights above. A false brightness.

A breeze beside her and she knows Elaina is there, sat beside her - furious and yet unable to take her life and finish this.

She’s defenceless. Weak.

She’s not sure which of them she means.

She closes her eyes briefly. Drained. “You have to kill me, Elaina,” she reminds her gently.

If there was anything left to her heart it would break anew at the quiet sobs beside her.

“You have to kill me, Elaina,” she reminds her again.

Elaina’s prayers follow, soft lilting voice pleading for assistance, for forgiveness.

“Please…” she begs eventually, “don’t let them hurt Simmons.” That’s her only hope in the here and now. If she’s to die, so be it, but it needs to be soon. It needs to be now. Kasias won’t wait forever for Elaina to decide.

Cold hands on her hands haul her bodily up in to a sitting position. Her head rolls on a neck ill equipped to support it until she forces her body in to cooperating. Raising her head, eyes blinking to focus in the light that continues to suffuse the area and remains far too bright. Her hands are pressed around a thin neck and held there even as she tries to snatch them back. Sharp eyes find her own, hold her frozen in place, simple words: “Just like Mack” that confirm she had a piece of heart left hiding that shatters all anew. She nods beneath the tears, tightens thin fingers dangerously, reaches for a chin and pulls. A long twisting motion and she’s done.

She’s done.

x

No matter how much she wishes it, she is not done.

Simmons stumbles across the shifting sands the moment the platform releases her. She runs as though the devil himself is chasing her. Fear lines every inch of her pale face. The horrors she has suffered. The horrors she has seen. She crashes down to hands and knees only to force herself back upright immediately and continue her daring race across the arena to find what she presumes to be safety in May’s arms. Melinda would narrow the distance herself if she had the ability to do more than continue to stand, propped against the cool wall of their prison.

Her arms open in welcome as Jemma crashes into them and she bites her tongue to keep from crying out at the pain such an action brings.

Seconds later she starts to realise…

She falls back an unsteady step, unable to wrap her mind around it.

Her eyes focus down on Jemma's hands. Everything seems to be coming slowly. Has time slowed down or is it just her recognition of it that's so very slow? Jemma's hands are wrong. Wrong and red. The dull glint of metal reflecting the lighting overhead. Jemma has a knife in her hands. It takes a seeming eternity for her brain to make the connection. Her palm encountering an all too familiar wetness as she holds it to her left side. She should have seen it coming.

She's left reeling. Face stunned, mouth open in astonishment, in question. She's off balance, her center so thoroughly out of alignment that she staggers back a step, away from someone she never considered a danger.

Pressure - she tries to force pressure to stem the gushing tide of blood as it bubbles out of her. Her thoughts are too slow. Bubbles - puncture to the left lung. A surgeon's precision to slip a knife so cleanly between her lower ribs. She's gasping. Breathing compromised.

Jemma's face is resolute. Distraught yet determined as Jemma follows up the attack. There's no way Melinda can avoid it as Jemma's arm comes up around her throat, fingers clasping around the back of her neck beneath her hair, pulling her forwards on to the still gleaming blade even as she somehow finds the breath to gasp out "Jemma!"

Oh, what has she done?

Her faltering heart tells her Jemma has struck true. So sharp a blade piercing her broken heart so suddenly there is surprisingly little pain. Only anguish at the future torture Jemma has sacrificed herself to endure.

She's so proud of her.

She's so scared for her.

Melinda's knees buckle without warning. Her hands grabbing for Jemma's forearms even as Jemma supports her weight, lowers her down more gently to the sands. Then Jemma's kneeling with her in the dirt, supporting her half seated, cradling her like a child as her vision blurs, eyes refusing to focus, brain refusing to interpret. She never thought it would end like this.

"It's okay, May."

Jemma's still no better at lying.

"Shhhh. Just rest."

Maybe she will rest. She seems unaccountably tired right now.

"Everything is going to be okay now."

That would be nice for a change.

"You've saved everyone."

No, not everyone is her last thought and her world falls dark and silent.

She couldn't save them all.

Oh Jemma... why?

x