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She first noticed it when she clung to Fitz like a buoy in the ocean after realizing she was the one making things shake. She gripped and squeezed and saw his arms wrap around her too. She felt none of it. He held her too loosely, and the fabric of his cardigan felt like nothing but a solid obstacle clenched in her fingers.
No one touched her for a while, after that. Too scared it might be contagious. Too worried that she as dangerous. That she might hurt them.
Slowly, they came around again. Nudges here and there. Brushes against her skin. She catalogued each moment with a hungry fervor, her eyes always tracking, tracing their movements as they neared her. She could look, and she could almost imagine the warmth and the slight scrape as skin brushed across skin.
That's the funny part about vibrations. They aren't meant to be contained. They're meant to leak out and cede into the environment around them, gentle waves crashing against one another like a beating ocean, full of life and turmoil and calm crashes. One human body wasn't meant to hold on to them.
But she couldn't let them go. The constant buzzing in her stomach that spread through her bones into the very flesh of her fingertips and her cheeks and her skin contained more than the vessel was meant to hold. Letting it leak... She nearly brought the base down on them all. But it was too much. She couldn't stop it.
When she woke up after Lincoln's therapy, it was cemented, the power coiling deep in her gut and buzzing, loud enough for her to struggle to hear him over the constant hum of her bones in her ears and the echo of her skin sliding against her clothes.
She felt nothing. Her mother touched her and there was no leak. Her mother felt no small buzz in her daughter's cheeks. Her daughter felt no warmth, no pressing, no texture of her own mother's hand. Only her own buzz, fraying the very human nerves that were never built to hold to vibrations of the world.
Lincoln sparked. She wasn't entirely sure he realized he did, and the Sparks weren't visible, much less shocking to anyone else. She was sure she would've noticed others jumping from him if they were. But when he touched her, she could feel a jolt. A small river of current that flooded through the frayed nerves and sparked some deep rooted connection. It wasn't warm or textured or firm but it was something. The first something she had since waking up. She held on tight.
Then came Hive. His presence sunk deep into her, settling in her flesh, warm and firm and good. She could feel him, only him. The warmth of his hands was more of a drug than the chemicals she could feel sluggishly moving through system. She hung from his desperately, always in contact, always brushing against him. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of her mind, she knew Hive didn't care about how his touch made her fee. Maybe, he didn't even know. But he let her kiss him, and that was enough.
He was salvation.
Then he was dead, and her system broke down the vestiges of his body left in her and the warmth was gone. The pressure in her skin lessened. Her lips buzzed and felt of nothing once more. Her one rock in the building waves around her sacrificed himself for her. She could imagine his sparks trying to find an outlet and only finding space.
She found herself living for the rare sensations she could feel. A stab wound there. A bruised rib here. A bullet to the shoulder. She let her head thunk back against Simmons' door with a wan smile. She could just barely feel Simmons’ metal instruments as she dug around for the lost bullet in her flesh. Not pain, but a deep seated pressure. Her eyes traced Simmons' face while she worked, imagining it was just them with no bullets and no blood and just a squeeze to the shoulder, a thanks for doing her a favor, like in the good old days on the Bus.
The Framework proved more tempting than she could imagine. Maybe she pushed for the idea too hard, maybe it was stupid, going in here rather than finding them out there. Maybe. Maybe. But she had to know. She needed to feel. So she pushed until Simmons' agreed and Piper and Elena had no choice.
The world turned black, then white, and she was staring up at ceiling tiles. She blinked. The world looked... Different. Steadier almost. Less blurry around the edges. Her eyes... Had they been vibrating all this time? Throwing the world out of focus? They weren't vibrating now. The constant hum of her own bones in her ears was gone, replaced by an eerie silence. An emptiness that left each breath sounding overly loud in the quiet bathroom, ricocheting off of the tiled walls and floors and bouncing back at her in a mockery.
She moved to stand. A cacophony of sounds rebounded back at her, water dripping from skin splashing into the bath below. Belatedly she looked down. Tears threatened at the corner of her vision and she fisted her hands into the corner of her eyes to stop them. Ragged gasps ripped from her chest. Some part of her knew what this meant, even without Simmons' there to explain the science behind it. Her nerves were shot. She was done. There would be no more feeling in her lifetime.
Daisy moved robotically after that. She had a mission. She completed it. The team didn't touch her anymore. She didn't have to fake a reaction, she was never forced to relive the realization that came with every unfelt brush against her. She existed to protect her people. A wall between them and whatever threatened them. Let them hurt her, let them try.
Then it was her people doing the hurting. Fitz strapping her to a table and cutting into her neck, ripping the dampner out by force. She wondered if he expected her to fight once the pain hit. He hadn't given her any pain killers, hadn't even taken the time to stuff something in her mouth to bite down on. Only the straps. But he wouldn't get that satisfaction. Even with her powers dampened, the constant crescendo in her ears reduced to only a faint hum, she couldn't feel. Her nerves were gone. Frayed. Shot. Whatever you want to call it. She didn't bother to fight it. This was her role now. To take the hits for her team, to do the wet work for them. If that meant cutting into her... So be it.
If that meant letting them decide the risk of her destroying the world was worth it to take, so be it.
Her powers flooded back in, and she couldn't hear Fitz's excuses over the crescendo in her ears.
Talbot was the first time Daisy considered that she might lose for something other than her own mistakes. He was strong. She was alone. Alone and with a vial burning in her gauntlet. A vial that could make her strong enough to win. A vial that she hated. It shouldn't be here in her gauntlets. It should be with a better man, a stronger man who could feel and could live and deserved so much more than this. But he made a choice, and Daisy couldn't bring herself to force her own on him. She'd had enough of people doing that for her, she couldn't do it to him.
She used it. She had to.
And when Talbot was blasted into the sun and she was lying on her back in a crater staring up after him, she could've sworn she felt something like an ache in her arms.
It came back slowly, her mother's blood and the bastardized centipede serum working its way through her nerves, repairing one connection at a time. She noticed it first in those long empty hours in Zephyr, flying around on a goose chase for Fitz. Her arms... Itched. The weave of the gauntlets scratched against her skin uncomfortably. Jemma and Piper gave her a weird look as she quickly excused herself from dinner and hurried back to her bunk.
With shaking fingers, she tore off her gauntlets and pinched herself. It... It hurt. It hurt in a dull, distant kind of way, but it hurt. She leaned her head back on the wall of her bunk and cried.
She was so warm, and Jemma's warm arm was flopped across from her and their legs were half tangled and the rug under her was fluffy. She never wanted to leave. Never wanted to come down front his floaty high and be cold and alone again. The fall was inevitable. Fitz was here. Jemma's clung to him instead,
Daisy's skin danced with the echo of the first warm touch she'd had in years.
She'd stubbed her toe trying to sneak into the lab in the 50s. The sudden sharp stab was enough for an "ow" to drop from her lips. Did stubbed toes always hurt this much? She couldn't remember but this was a special kind of localized pain that she decided then and there she did not miss.
Simmons' gave her a weird look and motioned for her to hurry up.
In 1976, Daisy screamed for the first time in years. Malick's blade split her skin like it was butter, and red hot blood oozed from the in censor, covering her torso and his hands and dousing her in a warmth that felt wrong. It congealed into her tank top until it was sticky and tacky against her skin. She felt it. She felt it all. Every cut. Every gland ripped from its place in her body. Every burning rush of serum as it tried desperately to repair the damage, spread too thin to do much of anything now.
And then Daniel was holding her close to his chest and he was warm and strong and his skin and hands were just calloused enough to scratch at her own skin lightly when he shifted his grip and Daisy felt every movement, every slide and light, scraping brush.
Waking up in Simmons' miracle healing pod felt like getting baptized by fire. Fire burned her fingertips and her blood boiled. Her heart thudded too fast in her chest and the skin pulsed faintly with its movement. Something constricted around her chest and jabbed knives into her skin.
She threw herself off of the table with a pained gasp. Hitting the floor felt like getting hit by a bus, a sudden smack of bone breaking pain. Did her nose crunch? Surely it did. Her eyes watered with the pain.
Daniel was there. Again. And his warm hands were touching her and they felt like fire and she scrambled away, flinching from his touch. He held his hands up in peace, and didn't touch her. Just knelt beside her as she sobbed through the pain.
Waking up in Simmons' miracle pod felt like getting baptized by boiling water. Her fingertips stung and her blood bubbled under her skin. Her heart thudded to fast in her chest and the skin pulsed faintly with its movement. Something constricted around her chest and rubbed like sandpaper.
She threw herself off the table with a panicked gasp. Hitting the floor felt like running into a brick wall, a sudden smack of bruising pain. She blinked back her watery tears.
Daniel crouched down beside her. His warm hands reaching out and Daisy quickly scooted away again to curl in on herself. He held his hands up in peace and simply kneeled beside her. He talked absently, about nothing about how he lost his leg, anything. Daisy clung to his voice like a life line.
Waking up in Simmons' miracle pod felt like waking up with a thousand bugs crawling over her. Her fingertips tingled and her blood itched. Her shirt was tight around her chest and scratched painfully. She swung her legs over the side of the bench and grasped desperately at her shirt to rip it off. Like ripping off a bandaid. A painful uncomfortable sting and then relief. Only the ghostly sensation of bugs crawling along her skin with each burst of air from the vents.
"Hey, hey, you okay?" Daniel asked, jerking up from the chair he'd occupied in the corner to stand infront of her, warm brown eyes looking for any sign of lingering injury. A small blush lingered on his cheeks when his eyes drifted down to the bare skin of her chest, obscured only by a simple sports bra.
But Daisy was only human. And Daisy could feel now. And she missed feeling, missed the warmth, hated the way she'd drifted alone on an island for years. She surged forward and grabbed his collar, pulling him into a bruising kiss.
His lips were warm and wet and just a little chapped and each minuscule movement sent a thrum of joy through her straight down to the butterflies low in her stomach.
It was like being kissed for the first time all over again. The fireworks and the butterflies and the warmth.
She clung to him like she'd clung to Fitz in those first days after Terrigenesis. Daniel was here, he was solid, he made her feel. And could anyone really be surprised she fell in love?