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Mary Sue Poots doesn’t understand love. The first time it happens she has no idea what it is. She’s hugging her foster mom, hoping she can stay there forever when all of a sudden there is a warm feeling on her right arm. She looks down but there was nothing there. Then she looks at her foster mom. Her arm is different. Along her arm there is a line spreading outward and fraying into more lines, like it is cracking her skin apart. It is black and bottomless.
Mary Sue’s first thought is that it actually looked kinda cool. But she looks up at her foster mom and sees her staring with something like horror. And oh. Oh, no. Mary Sue can’t breathe. What did she do? What did she do?
“I, I’m sorry,” she says hurriedly.
A pause. And then, “It’s okay sweetie.”
But Mary Sue was sent back to St. Agnes the next day.
One of the other girls at the orphanage explains it to her. Love. It happens when you love someone.
“Oh,” Mary Sue says sadly.
“What?”
“I didn’t think it would look like that.”
“Like what?”
Mary Sue thinks of the expression she saw. The woman she wanted so badly to call ‘mom’. “Ugly. Painful. Maybe that’s why they sent me back.”
“Maybe.”
“How do I stop it?” she asks desperately.
The other girl shrugs. “I don’t know. Don’t get too close.”
When you love someone, it leaves a mark. An, impression. Sometimes fleeting, sometimes permanent. And sometimes burning and then fading into scar tissue. The impression wasn’t always anything in particular. Lines and shapes that maybe formed images. But each one was unique. When you love someone, you leave a mark. When you’re loved, you gain one. Proof, written on your body. That you were changed.
Mary Sue has two marks on her left arm. She’s had them her entire life, since she was dropped off at the orphanage. One looks like a flower. Black lines with hints of purple. The other is sort of wrapped around it, like thorny vines. Black outlines again but with earthy greens. They go together. And they look good on her skin. Like they all fit.
When Mary Sue learns what the marks are, she looks down at her left arm. She has people who love her and they have not turned into scars which means they are alive. They can only be her parents. Her parents are alive and they love her still. She just needs to find them.
She goes to foster home after foster home, swearing that she will never love someone who doesn’t love her again. She won’t allow it. But she hopes. Even as she knows her parents are out there, she also knows she may never find them. She keeps hoping that this family, this time, it will happen. This time they will love her. They never do. And so she is on to the next one.
Skye feels greedy. She has two whole marks, has her entire life. That should be enough. But she doesn’t know them. Doesn’t feel connected to them. She is separate. Other. She just doesn’t quite, fit. So she keeps searching. She feels like she is filled with ink waiting to come pouring out of her. Waiting to write her story and leave her mark. She keeps it buried underground, underneath her skin, where it is waiting for a crack in the surface. Waiting for her to be vulnerable. She craves connection as desperately as she is afraid of it. And so when she can feel the pressure building, she runs. Where she can’t get close to them, and they can’t get close to her.
Skye was never in love with Miles. But she did love him and she didn’t really feel any kind of pressure about it. She loved him in the kind of passive way you love someone who’s just there a lot. He was there for years, with her, which was more than anyone else ever was, so she loved him. And then it was gone. She can feel their marks fading, and it’s sad but it’s not breaking. It’s just over. They’re not the people they used to be.
“You’ve changed.”
“Good.”
She can feel their marks disappear, leaving space for new ones. They were never meant to be permanent.
Of the team, Jemma’s was first. Skye was surprised, because she thought it would be Coulson. But, it makes sense. She has been pushing it away her whole life. Resigned to that look of horror and determined to never see it again. She tried, with this new team, to keep it to herself. But then, just like that, Jemma is jumping out of a plane and Skye is pulling her into her arms. And they both feel the warmth on their right hand.
Skye freezes. Steps back from Jemma. But Jemma, gazing down at the black lines on her hand, fractured broken lines, just smiles. Skye looks down at her own hand. It’s not blank as she had expected. Instead there are lines, deep blue and yellow and black, connecting dots. Hesitantly, Skye smiles back at Jemma.
Coulson is next. And she held off as long as she could, really she did. Please don’t send me away. Please let me stay. He is the one who leaves, but not of his own volition, no. He is taken. She is going to find him. She needs to let him know.
She finds him, and she holds his hand and their arms get warm but she doesn’t even bother to look. As long as he is okay. That is all that matters.
Later, she will see it on her own arm, her outer right forearm. It’s a grayish silvery color. A repeating pattern. It looks like armor. She smiles a little. A shield.
Fitz’s happens when he hands her an ICER so that she can protect herself when she goes after Quinn. A series of geometric shapes and lines on her inner right arm. A brief moment of happiness before she goes in to find Quinn and then, and then. She gets a different kind of mark.
She’s sorry. She’s so sorry. She never meant to leave behind scars.
Her’s and May’s didn’t happen at the same time because Skye was unconscious. When she wakes up she eventually notices it, May’s mark right there on her outer right forearm next to Coulson’s. In fact, it looked like an extension of Coulson’s. A sword. Her arm burns and she wonders what her own fault line looks like on May’s arm. She feels the now familiar guilt and shame and pushes it aside.
She waited for Ward. His never showed up, and neither did hers. She’s grateful after, though she was confused at the time. She loved the rest of the team by then and she thought she was ready to love him too. Then it all makes horrible sense. The person she thought she loved was a lie. And the person he thought he loved, the one he wanted to save him, didn’t exist. They never really knew each other at all. For once, they are entirely on the same page, with their matching blank skin.
The first one she lost was Trip’s. Feathers that spanned across her back from shoulder to shoulder like wings. It was scars now. White and raised on her skin. Scars from a wound that hurt and never healed properly. That split her open and never stitched her back up. Scars that sometimes still itched. She can’t see much of it without a mirror. But she can feel it. It means he loved her until the moment he died. (Even though she led him right to his death.)
Even when her mom was draining the life from her, Jiaying’s mark never faded. Not completely. (Skye’s never did either. Jiaying died with it. At least she died loved.) But her mom tried to kill her. And her mom loved her at least a little. And Skye doesn’t see how these things can coexist. Honestly, it pisses her right the fuck off. It’s not until long after when Daisy realizes, Jiaying loved her as a baby. That for the rest of her life, she loved that baby. And Daisy knows that baby was a part of her. Too bad her mom never loved the rest of her.
She had wondered if Cal’s would fade. It doesn’t disappear, but it turns to white scar tissue. Fitting. He is still alive, but the him who loved her is gone. It’s better this way. It is.
She looks down at her left arm. She has an arm of thorns and vines and the remnants of what used to be a flower. A daisy.
Jemma was gone but they knew she was still alive. They knew it and they stared at their marks and they never gave up. And then she is back. Daisy falls to the ground, relieved. Then Mack’s arms are around her and she leans back into him. Her shoulder warms just as she passes out. Mack. Jemma was back and she had Mack. Everything was going to be okay.
Lincoln’s looked like hers. Not identical, but similar enough to make them both stop and stare. It was on their backs. Large and across their spines. On his, her fault line that made so much sense now, looking like it was splitting him open. And on her back, lines too, yellow and white. In parts, it almost looked like it was already a scar. But it wasn’t. It was bright and brilliant and alive, extending outward like lightning. Daisy laughs.
Daisy doesn’t love Hive. She knows it. So why does it feel like she does? She doesn’t love him. She hasn’t left an impression. So why does it feel so good? So right? How is she so tied, so connected to him. She is a part of him. He is a part of her. Right? But she she doesn’t love him. So why does she want to help him? What is she doing. She doesn’t want this. She never wanted this.
But-
She needs it.
Lincoln died in space.
He died with that stupid fault line across his skin and hers burned white hot as he turned to stardust.
She wants to get them off, off, off of her skin. It’s too much. She can’t be connected to them. Connection, connection, connection. The weight of it all is too much. She can’t -
“I’m sorry you won’t feel our connection.”
“Take me back.”
“It’s okay sweetie.”
“Feels pretty right to me.”
She kept waiting for them to disappear. She left them, and she knew they wouldn’t love her anymore. She thinks sometimes she can feel Fitz’s flickering and fading. But when she looks, it’s still there. They are all still there. And maybe if she can just get rid of hers, then their marks on her skin would fade too. And she would have nothing to lose. And she would have nothing she leaves behind. Nothing connecting her to anyone. Not even scars.
She tries. She really does. But they never fade. She can’t stop loving them, no matter how much she wants to.
What would it take? For them to stop loving her? Would it take her fault line splitting the earth apart? She never wanted that. She’s been trying to stop it her whole life.
What did it take for him to stop loving her? Why did she ever want love in the first place?
Daisy looks down at the geometric shapes on her inner right arm. Her neck throbs. A lot of it had faded away. But not all. Some of it was there, but it was, charred. Not like scars but like scorch marks. Broken and burned away. Ashes.
But it was still there.
She can’t breathe she can’t think she can’t-
That can’t be love. It can’t be.
“You don’t get to choose who cares about you.”
She doesn’t get to choose what they do with it either.
“We never turned our backs!”
Until he did.
With her heart beating rapidly she rummages through a drawer until she finds a lighter. Clenching her jaw and closing her fist, she burns away the remaining lines. Covers his scorch marks with her own. And those burns were the last marks she had for a long while.
When Fitz dies, she can’t even feel it. He was already gone to her. She hates that she misses him. When she cries she doesn’t know exactly what she is mourning. Maybe just all of it.
Coulson goes to Tahiti. Of course he does. She knows it the moment he dies. Her arm burns and she closes her eyes.
Daisy opens her eyes to warmth. To her sister. To Coulson and May and Mack.
The last new mark Daisy had was Lincoln’s. After three years of loving and losing more than she ever thought she could, she closed herself off again. She couldn’t take anymore scars so she hid. Maybe it took dying and coming back to life for her to remember. That she’s allowed to have this. She gets to have this.
“Family.”
Kora takes her left hand in hers and lifts it to show Daisy who can’t quite raise her head. It’s a starburst, bright, vibrant, yellow and orange.
Daisy had never met anyone with more impression scars than her. Her parents, Coulson, Trip, Lincoln. What was left of Fitz. Even May, though the mark came back, the scar was still there too. Seven people, seven impressions, seven stories told in scar tissue. The only ones remaining were Jemma’s constellation and Mack’s pattern of wires. And then Daisy meets Daniel Sousa. And of course, everyone who loved him is dead. He has no one. But not for long.
She doesn’t mean to fall in love with him.
It happens suddenly and quietly and with surprisingly little apprehension. And maybe the marks are a silly way of measuring it, Daisy realizes. Because if he were to disappear from her life right now, she wouldn’t be the same. She would carry him with her too. But still, some part of her won’t allow it.
“Do you ever wish that they didn’t scar, that they just disappeared?”
“No,” Daniel says immediately. “I still love them and I like to think they would too. And I like having them with me. It reminds me that I came from somewhere.”
She looks at him in slight surprise at that.
“What?”
Daisy shakes her head. “Nothing it’s just-” It’s just she’s felt like that her whole life. She bites her lip then lifts her left arm so he can see the marks up close.
“These are my parents’. I’ve had them my whole life. Some of the daisy, it came back, after I met Jiaying, again. Before I lost her, again.” Her right hand traces idly over the mark on her left and she lowers her arms, resisting the urge to wrap them around herself. “I never thought scars could heal. I guess sometimes they can.”
Daisy shrugs. “There’s some I’m glad are a part of me. It makes sense.” So much of her is made from them. And she likes herself a little bit more because she knows they loved her. “But there are some that I wish…I wish I could just forget.” Wishes she could get them off her skin. It was too permeant, too damaging, too much. Her chest tightens in fear even just saying it. “I don’t. I just. I’m tired of being, hurt.”
Daisy stares up at the celling while Daniel lies asleep next to her. It doesn’t really make sense- their still blank skin. Because she knows herself and she knows what she is feeling. There had been plenty of moments where she felt vulnerable and he gave her that look, full of softness, and she thought…It would be there for a moment. She could almost feel it, flickering and then fading before she can look.
She finds it strange, more than she finds it concerning. He loves her. Somehow she knows it, can feel it even without the mark. She wonders if he is doing what she is. If he is scared to open up too. It’s not something most people know to do. It’s not something she can entirely control. It’s just a deeply engrained fear. That love destroys. But that doesn’t quite fit with how he acts. And then she realizes, it’s not like he scared, it’s like he’s waiting. Waiting for, permission. Waiting for her.
She shakes him awake and he opens his eyes and frowns in confusion and concern.
“I love you,” she whispers.
His eyes light up as he beams. “I love you.” And he kisses her slowly. She can feel it on her chest, on her heart. Shapes spread across her collar bone. They look like roots. She takes his shirt off to look at his. She traces her finger over the fault lines. Somehow, on his chest, they look, strong. Powerful and solid. Beautiful. He’s beautiful.
He smirks at her. “Quake,” he teases.
The baby wasn’t crying. She had blood on her cheek and she had tear streaks on her face but now she was silent. Daisy picks her up. She holds her close, and she knows.
It doesn’t take long for it to happen. From their little girl’s palm to her elbow stretches their marks, intertwined around each other. His roots and her fault lines. And together their marks just fit.
Not long after with a babbled ‘Mama’, there on the inside of Daisy’s left arm blooms a sunflower.
Daisy has never understood love. Maybe she still doesn’t. She looks down at all of her marks. Years of pain and love and loss. Marks faded and burned away, broken and scarred, filling her up and tearing her down. She has never understood love, but she understands this. Daisy looks at the marks on her daughter’s arm. Looks at the mark on her own arm. It’s big and bright and perfect. Waiting to grow into even more.