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She couldn’t believe what she had just seen.
She had to be going crazy, or something seriously fucked up was happening right under their noses and she was the last (and only) one to notice. She was alone.
A sound in the same room as her startled her, it sounded like someone shifting. She tensed, setting her tablet aside and getting slowly to her feet, grabbing Mack’s shotgun-axe and holding it in preparation. She hadn’t fought one of these things yet, and she had no idea how it would go when she did.
Whoever was in the room noticed her movement and they darted at each other at the same time. It only took her a moment to recognize her best friend, covered in blood and trembling like a leaf but pointing a knife at her as if her life depended on it.
“Get away from me!” Jemma snapped, her voice tight and full of fear. She wanted to do nothing but rush forward and embrace her clearly distressed friend, but for all she knew she could be a robot, she had to be on guard.
“Simmons, what the literal hell?” She could hear the fear in her own voice, her brain trying to cope with everything going on. “What did I just see? What just happened to Fitz?” She knew Jemma would never harm him, there had to be another explanation.
“It wasn't him,” her voice shook desperately, “It wasn't him,” she repeated, as if saying it over and over again would change the fact that he was dead in the other room. Not Fitz- a robot of Fitz, she had to remind herself.
“Did you kill him?” She hoped she knew the answer.
“No,” Jemma insisted immediately, “not him . It wasn't him.” She had tears in her voice, her words were broken up by sniffles. Daisy felt her heart break just a little bit more at how upset her friend sounded.
“Are you a robot?” She hated to ask such a question. “Because I just saw a truckload of myself, and Mack is in on it. And Coulson just bashed an agent's head in and I-“ she felt like she was going insane, like things couldn’t get any worse than this. Jemma cut her off,
“They were all replaced,” she gasped out, “you, too. It's not you. It's not you!” Daisy knew what this looked like, she had seen Jemma have panic attacks before, but she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t do anything until she knew that the woman in front of her was real.
“Simmons... it's me,” she said as confidently as she could. But the fact that she hesitated scared her. “What about you? Prove to me that you're not a frickin' robot. Because it looks like you're malfunctioning.”
Her words felt so harsh but she couldn’t fight the fear building within her. It felt like everything was crashing down around her, she needed someone she could trust, and she didn’t know where to look.
“No way to prove it,” Jemma didn’t take offense, but her eyes had a haunted look to them, “you won't know until they kill you. There's no way to know until they kill you!” She gasped out another sob and Daisy felt her heart clench.
The door rattled, people talked outside, she glanced back towards it and tried not to think about Jemma using it as an opportunity to attack her. They needed to work together, she needed to get through to Jemma somehow, and fast.
Her breathing was harsh as she rushed to think of a solution. “Okay,” she inhaled shakily, “give me- give me your hand. I'll quake you.” She reached for her friend, wanting the contact and the feeling of her bones rattling within her. Jemma had to be real.
“Don't touch me!” Jemma jerked away from her, thrusting the knife out more as a threat.
“Give me your hand!” She was desperate now, she hoped the robots outside couldn’t hear her raised voice. “I'll quake you- not to hurt you!” She assured, “not to hurt you,” never to hurt her. “Just enough to feel your bones- the- the real bones, and they're not made of metal,” she stuttered out her words, her voice desperate.
“I'm me,” Jemma spat out, but she wasn’t certain, “I hope. I'm not one of them.” She hoped so too, she had never hoped for anything more.
“I can prove to you that I'm not one, either. An LMD wouldn't have Inhuman powers, right? That way, we'll both know.” Daisy hoped desperately that her logic made sense, that Jemma could see through her panic and recognize her reason.
“Don't touch me!” The shout echoed through the room and Daisy wanted to cry, she felt like giving up. But as the door opened, she realized she didn’t have another choice than to reach for Jemma and hope for the best.
She dropped her gun and dove for Jemma, knocking the knife from the girl's hand. Jemma resisted as she grabbed her arm, but she managed to tug the girl towards her, moving their location so they wouldn’t be seen as soon as the LMD’s came into the room. Flashlights lit up the space but she ignored them.
She wrapped her arms around her best friend, pressing the two of them against the wall. Jemma shook, tense in her arms, and she gently quaked the woman, feeling her bones rattle within her.
Finally, Jemma relaxed, and the two of them wrapped each other in a fierce hug, reveling in the human comfort. “Oh, thank God,” she heard her whisper against her ear.
The two broke down sobbing, and with background relief Daisy realized that they hadn’t been found, they were safe there. She tried to calm her breathing, to keep her heartbeat in check in hopes that Jemma’s would slow to match it.
“Daisy,” Jemma mumbled desperately into her shoulder, her face lifting up so they could make eye contact. “ Daisy.” She had never heard the woman say her name that way before.
“Yes?” She searched her eyes, her bloodied face, unsure of what she was about to say.
Then lips pressed against hers.
She almost didn’t react, so cemented in shock from the events of the last hour that she almost couldn’t process what was happening. But after a moment, her hand rested on Jemma’s cheek, holding her as gently as she could while they kissed.
“Jemma-“ she whispered when they pulled away, confusion winning over a multitude of other emotions.
“I love you,” the girl replied, eyes shining with unshed tears and lips parted with short, harsh breaths. Daisy almost went for another kiss.
“I love you too,” she gasped out, her heart pounding in a different way now. “What just-“
“We’ll talk about it later,” she dismissed, a tiny bit of panic starting to show in her pretty brown eyes. “We need to- we need to get out of this.” As much as she wanted to talk about what just happened, she had to agree.
“Together,” she stated, taking Jemma’s hands firmly in her own. The woman squeezed her back, her breathing finally starting to slow. Daisy could feel her pulse thrumming under her fingertips.
“Together,” Jemma agreed.