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It’s weird to think that her old normal used to be feeling nothing.
Not in the emotional sense - though at times, Daisy was probably good at that as well - but quite literally in the feeling sense. Sight, touch, sound, smell, and taste, that was all Daisy was able to sense for most of her life. The senses were a part of life, so they felt normal.
They felt like nothing.
Nothing physically weighing her down or making her feel like she was floating on air. She was still. She was human. Of course, when emotions became overwhelming, that was a different story, but she always had her senses to bring her back down to Earth.
5 things you can see
4 things you touch
3 things you can hear
2 things you can smell
1 thing you can taste
Years of childhood trauma has made her accustomed to such grounding techniques. She had to learn. She was on her own for so long, no one to help but herself. Nothing but the nothingness of normal. Again, she was only human.
Until one day, she was so much more.
The rock and crust cacoon enveloped her entire body. Against her skin, the crust felt just that… rocky. Nothing too out of the ordinary. The smell was a cross between dusty and musty. The cacoon brought nothing but darkness, so Daisy closed her eyes, comforting herself with the darkness she was able to bring upon on her own.
But there was another sense. Something buzzing under the surface of her skin. Not knowing what to do, and quite literally subconsciously, Daisy let it out. That’s when the shaking started, unbeknownst to her that she was the cause.
A different sensation overtook her body. It’s like she could feel the entire entity that was Raina, who had been standing across the room from her, but it was as strong as if Daisy had been touching her.
The room in the cave suddenly felt loud. Yes, felt loud. It was a big open space yet filled with packed rock and minerals. So much going on in such a minimal space.
Daisy had a power.
She had a gift as her parents had called it. She had abilities that made her more than just human with the typical five senses. She had the ability to absorb, store, manipulate, and expel seismic and vibrational activity.
Why it couldn’t just be the manipulate and expel part, Daisy didn’t know, but she quickly learned that every gift came with a price. If stored too much and not expelled, she could end up hurting herself.
She felt it all. Everything has its own vibration from the air outside to an animal in the woods to her own damn bed. It was an annoyance at first when she was trying to sleep only to quite literally hear the vibrations and density of her bed.
Was it even hearing? Daisy wasn’t sure. The best way she was able to describe how it felt was like a thousand bees stinging her at the same time all the time. She felt it under her skin, in her chest, and in her head. It sometimes made her feel fatigued more than normal. It was a pain and ache that never went away. But similarly to how one might do with a chronic illness, Daisy had to learn to live her life with it.
The manipulation and the sense of the vibrations were like tiny molecules; those molecules would be tight and vibrating against each other in a solid object but would be spaced out and flow more nicely in a liquid or a gas.
And Daisy could manipulate it all. It was something finally she had control over.
Her powers became useful for missions, and not just the expel aspect where she could send her enemies flying across a room. She could feel the integrity of a wall before crashing through it. She could pinpoint locations of enemies in a secret base.
Her powers were sort of like a radar. Things that were closer to her, she could feel more intensely. That’s when training led to her being blindfolded, learning how to become more attuned to her abilities. Daisy learned how to enhance what she always thought was a secret sixth sense: instinct.
Daisy thought she had pretty good instincts - again, childhood trauma left some serious scars that made her have to be more aware of the world around her - and now, her instincts were much more enhanced. She could sense things before they were right in front of her.
Even people had their own individual vibrations, Daisy realized. Not only could she feel heartbeats, a known vibration, but she could feel what she felt was their essence. May and Mack’s were a couple of her favorites.
Mack’s vibrations were sturdy like they were never going to back down. Made sense to her; Mack always seemed to be the most level-headed one out of all of them. May’s were a little different; hers had a little bit of an edge to them yet still steady. It was vibrations like these that helped bring Daisy back down when overwhelmed.
This was Daisy’s new normal. Feeling the world around her at an enhanced level and having control over what she feels and what she doesn’t.
So when she entered the Framework with no powers, it felt wrong. She felt the flow of the water in the bathtub against her chest but not the molecules she usually felt. She felt the cell phone in her fingers, the soft robe against her skin, and the bath rug under her toes, yet they didn’t feel right.
It all felt so wrong.
What used to be a constant connection to the world around her was suddenly missing. She had no control over what her body sensed. It felt as if she was having an out-of-body experience. Like this body wasn’t hers - truthfully, it wasn’t, and she was the one inhabiting it for now.
She was able to feel nothing. Not in the feeling normal sense anymore, but now actually feeling nothing. Daisy tried to remember what life felt like before her powers. She only had her powers for two years at that point, which was only 7% of her life then, but Daisy couldn’t remember it. Feeling everything around her was her normal. It was in her blood. It was a part of her now.
It’s what made her feel human.