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“Cool down, Tremmers,” Mack warns, taking two long strides to catch up to her stormy pace.
“It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” Daisy growls, making the jet raddle beneath them. “It took us years to get the rocks, months to get the portal open, and this? This is what we get? We had to attack him to get him back here, and –” her voice catches and shatters. “We couldn’t even find Jemma.”
Mack wraps a heavy arm around her shoulders. “It was always a shot in the dark. It’s a miracle we got Fitz back.”
“It’s not good enough!” Daisy cries, breaking out of his grip. “I’m going back.”
“Daisy, she might not even –”
“She’s alive! If Fitz made it this long, then Jemma is there, and I’m bringing her back now.”
In fifteen minutes Daisy, Mack, May, and Hunter are geared up and ready for a second dive through the portal. Bobbi turns the machine on and Coulson gives the signal.
“It’ll open again in four hours,” Bobbi reminds them as they jump through. “Be there.”
It’s a dark, desolate wasteland on the other side. It really was a miracle they ran into Fitz so easily. The planet is huge and the portal opened in an entirely new location this time. They have equipment, though, incredibly sensitive bio-detection equipment Fitzsimmons had been working on before….
They rove the sand for three hours without so much as a hit, and May has just made the call to turn back for the portal, sorrow pushing at the neutrality of her tone, when something blips on Daisy’s screen. Footprints. Half-buried from the wind, but easily detectable to the equipment. She sets off at a run.
They lead to a metal hatch, also mostly buried in the sand. Daisy rips it open just as Hunter skids in next to her. They scramble down the ladder, completely unprepared for what’s waiting for them.
It’s like a hobbit hole, Daisy thinks, only a little more stone-aged. There’s a long, low chamber carved into the bedrock, beds, tables, chairs, a basin, all the makings of a home. There are even roughly woven rugs covering the floor and sketches decorating the walls. But it’s the far corner that grabs Daisy’s attention, the image slamming into her like a tsunami.
It’s Jemma, unmistakably, but so different, so otherworldly. Like Fitz, she is garbed in clothing clearly hand-made. A gown down to the floor made of some rough, fiber material. Flowers and birds and clouds are painted into the folds of her skirt, though, like a mural, and her bare arms, strong and muscled now, are painted with charcoal designs. Her hair is longer than Daisy ever saw it, wound into many tight braids that wrap around her head like a crown and spill down her back. In one hand she clutches a staff topped with a lethally jagged stone blade.
A downy-haired toddler is settled on her other hip. Three more little figures huddle against the wall in her shadow, and beneath her gown, a very pregnant belly pushes outward.
But the thing that stops Daisy in her tracks, the thing that almost drops her to the floor, is the expression on Jemma’s face. It is ferocious. Dangerous. Almost feral. Her lips are twisted into a snarl, and her wild eyes are fixed on Daisy. With her spear, her baby, her children crouched behind her, her crown of braids, she is a warrior, a queen, a goddess. She is a wolf protecting her litter. And the moment Hunter drops heavily down beside Daisy, she springs.
She slides the toddler from her hip into the arms of one of the crouching children and whirls, surprisingly graceful, surprisingly powerful. With a screech, she brings her staff sailing at Hunter’s midriff and he only barely manages to dart out of its path. Without missing a beat, she lunges at Daisy, spear aimed for her throat. Daisy blocks it, and it comes again, aimed at her knee. She jumps, rolls. Hunter tries edging along the wall, but the minute he gets too close to the children, Jemma jabs the spear at his face, her gown flying out around her in a flowery swirl as she pivots, actually growling at him low in her throat.
“Jemma,” Daisy pleads, holding up her hands.
Jemma spins toward her voice, dropping to a crouch to block as much of the children from their view as she can. Like an idiot, Daisy has forgotten about her helmet and her mask. She is dressed all in dark tack, her face entirely covered. She must look like a storm trooper or a soulless military drone coming to steal her babies.
As quickly as she can, she rips the helmet off, tosses it aside. “Jemma, we’re not here to hurt you,” she promises.
Jemma rears back, shock hijacking her features.
“Skye?” the word falls from her lips before she can stop it, and for a second everything about her softens.
“Daisy now, actually,” Daisy says through a grin so wide it hurts.
Without thinking, she takes a step forward and fight leaps back into every one of Jemma’s muscles. With another fierce screech she flies at Daisy, stabbing and swinging and kicking wildly. It’s all Daisy can do to dodge the blows. She doesn’t dare fight back, afraid of hurting Jemma or the baby and also kind of staggered by the fact that Jemma Simmons is dueling with her while harboring a bowling-ball-sized human being inside her. And might qualify as winning.
“Easy, Princess,” Hunter says, trying to approach from the side, but she catches him in the chest with the shaft of her spear and actually knocks him back.
But she is way too outnumbered. Mack and May have joined them by now, and Mack catches the spear as she winds up to swing again at Daisy’s face.
“We’re here to help you,” he says in his soothing baritone. “We’re friends.”
Daisy sees something beyond fury flood every part of her as her eyes swivel to Mack. “You took my husband!” she screams and it is raw and primal and filled with a thousand wild things. She wrenches the spear from Mack’s stunned grip. “You will not take my children!”
The thrust she aims at his unguarded throat (they have all discarded their helmets by now) is a kill shot. Or it would have been if Daisy hadn’t snapped the weapon in half with a flying kick.
There is a click and May, silent as a shadow, is holding a gun to Jemma’s head. It’s only an ICER, but Jemma doesn’t know that. “Stand down, Agent Simmons,” she says in a low, hard voice that Daisy knows to hold an ocean of emotion.
Jemma knows she’s finished. The fight is running from her veins like water between fingers. But the ferocity doesn’t leave her face, the jagged end of the shaft still held to Mack’s throat.
“You killed him,” she says and her voice is brittle. “I saw it.”
Daisy does not understand what she’s talking about. And then she does. Oh. Oh, no.
“No, Jemma, no, we didn’t,” she’s tripping over her tongue to say it. “We only stunned Fitz. So we could get him back thought the portal. He was running and fighting and it was about to close. He’s fine! He’s safe! We’ll take you to him.”
There is no trust in Jemma’s eyes though. Daisy isn’t even sure she heard a word.
“That’s what It says,” she mutters to herself. “It plays mind games.”
“It’s us,” Daisy pleads desperately. She wants to cup Jemma’s face in her palms, force her to look into Daisy’s eyes, to see the love and joy and relief burning there for her, but she doesn’t dare. “It’s us, Jemma. We’re here to help you.”
“And we’re on a bit of a clock,” Hunter groans, picking himself up from the floor. “We’ve only got thirty minutes,” he says. “And that thing doesn’t have enough juice for a third go around. Not for a decade at least.” He’s talking about the mechanism that opens the portal.
May exchanges a glance with Mack, a raised eyebrow asking if she should pull the trigger, and Mack nods almost imperceptibly.
“Wait!” Daisy cries because this isn’t the way to do it. She can’t just shoot her friend, not again. The way Fitz had looked at her when he’d woken up, the utter terror and mistrust in his face. They have to do this right. They have to try.
“Jemma, look at me,” she orders, and as if following orders is a habit she can’t break, Jemma’s eyes swivel to her. “It’s Skye, remember? Daisy? It’s your team. We finally made it back to you, to bring you home.”
“You’re not real,” Jemma tells her, shaking her head. “You’re It. It digs around in my head, pulls things out to trick me. You’re a trap.”
“I am real. See? You can feel me,” she puts her hand on Jemma’s forearm, brushes the back of her hand with her fingers. “I’m right here. It’s me. The girl from the van, the one who pulled you into bad-girl shenanigans. The one whose life you saved. Remember ‘You certainly have a gorgeous head’? Remember ‘I like men who are the same height as me but heavier’? Remember the hula girl and all the fucking Doctor Who and that time we got drunk and I showed you my tattoo. Where do I have a tattoo, Jemma?”
Hesitantly, Jemma raises a hand to Daisy’s face, a finger going to the place just behind her ear where she’d tattooed Miles’s name in binary along her hairline. Daisy thinks she’s going to burst into tears for a second. But then Jemma’s hand falls.
“You’re pulling it out of my head,” she whispers.
“We don’t have time for this,” Hunter intones at her shoulder. “Whatever It is, it’s fucked her up. You’re not going to convince her we come in peace.”
“I’m afraid of bees!” Daisy blurts out, thinking furiously. “I never told you that. Lincoln – he died. After you were taken. Ward killed him like the fucking son-of-a-bitch he’s always been and May stabbed out his eyes for it. Um… I stole that Ravenclaw key chain you loved so much back on the Bus, when I thought I’d be bailing, because I wanted something to remember you by. And then I liked having something of you to carry around with me so I never gave it back and that probably sounds really creepy and –”
But Jemma’s still staring at her with a blank face. None of this is helping to prove her identity. They’re getting nowhere.
“You’re going to take them, too, aren’t you?” Jemma whispers, eyes flicking toward the children huddled in the far corner.
“Yes, we are,” Daisy says because it’s the truth. “But we’re not going to hurt them. I swear, Jemma, we’re not.”
Jemma is chewing her lip hard enough to draw blood.
“Twenty minutes,” Hunter tells them.
“Okay, Jemma,” Daisy says, putting her hands on Jemma’s shoulders. “We’re going to take you back through the portal. But we have to stun you and the kids. We don’t have a lot of time and we can’t risk you trying to run once we get out in the open.” She’d made this decision while they were sparring. Jemma will run or tell the kids to run the first chance she gets and they can’t afford that. “Plus, it’s a rough transition going from here back to Earth, and you’ll all do way better if you’re unconscious. It’s just neurotoxins, though. You’ll all wake up. You’ll be safe.”
“Do them first,” Jemma whispers. Daisy blinks, thrown. “Do them first so I know it’s quick. And if you try to hurt them – I’ll do it myself before you get the chance to drag it out.” There is blood in her eyes, a hatred and a darkness flashed at Daisy that curdles her stomach.
“Okay,” Daisy agrees in a cracked voice, letting go of Jemma’s shoulders. “Okay. We won’t hurt them.”
Jemma drops her staff with a hollow clatter and turns toward the children. She kneels and opens her arms to them and when she speaks her voice is soft as summer grass and choked with tears. “Come here, babies.”
They run to her at once. Four of them. All girls, Daisy thinks, now that she can examine them at close range. A taller dark-haired one carrying the toddler and two little blondies who have to be twins. They pile into Jemma’s arms with mewls of “Mummy, Mummy,” and somehow she manages to wrap herself around all of them, hold them like she’s holding the universe, a thousand worlds and a billion shining stars and every possibility ever dreamed clutched to her chest.
“These people are going to take us to Da,” she says, pulling back, and Daisy has never heard her accent so thick. “It’s going to look a little scary, but I promise it isn’t. And Da’ll be there when you wake up, alright?”
“And you?” one of the little blondes asks, tugging at the front of Jemma’s gown.
There are tears soaking her face now as she cups the girl’s cheeks and touches their noses together. “And Mummy too, yes.” She straightens and looks at the older girl. “Will you go first, my brave one? Show your sisters there’s nothing to be afraid of?”
The girl can’t be older than six or seven. She’s so pale her skin is almost translucent, but somehow she goes even whiter at her mother’s words. But her jaw stets like steel, her fingers curl into determined fists, and she nods. Jemma has her hands full of the littler ones, so all she can do is smile at her. The girl turns huge hazel eyes exactly like her mother’s on Daisy.
Feeling sick, Daisy kneels down and pulls out her ICER, and immediately the girl flinches away, dealing sharp smacks to Daisy’s forearms to keep her at bay.
“Let her do it, Skye,” Jemma says sternly, and at once the girl stills.
“Skye?” Daisy barely has the voice to ask, raising her eyes to Jemma.
But Jemma is ignoring her, watching her daughter’s stiff profile. She slides the toddler off her lap, brushing away the clinging hands and frightened crying. She shuffles forward behind the oldest girl and warps her arms around her waist, pulling her against the bulge of her stomach. The girl – Skye – visibly relaxes. Jemma begins to hum a few bars in her ear, rubbing circles into the girl's elbow with her thumb. At first it sounds tuneless, but then Daisy hears the familiar Beatles song.
The girl closes her eyes and in a small voice starts to fill in the words, clutching at her mother’s arms. “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me…”
“Speaking words of wisdom, let it be,” Jemma takes over, stroking Skye’s hair out of her eyes. She raises her own eyes to meet Daisy’s, a pointed look there, so Daisy raises the ICER. “And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me,” Jemma sings in a slow, soothing lilt. A lullaby, Daisy realizes as she aims at the girl’s chest. She and Fitz must sing this to comfort them. “Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”
Daisy fires. The blue shoots through the girl like lightening. Her breath comes out in a surprised puff, a little jolt, and she sags against her mother. Jemma’s hand covers the girl’s heart, and Daisy wishes with bitterly that the toxin didn’t work so well, that it didn’t slow the heart rate to almost nothing for the first several minutes, or Jemma would still feel the steady thrust of life in her daughter’s chest and know they meant no harm. Instead, a vicious, silent sob shudders through her and she buries her face in the girl’s hair.
They are running out of time. Just barely fifteen minutes to make it back to the portal. Daisy was planning on not leaving Jemma’s side – possibly for the rest of her life – but she isn’t sure how long of a run it is back exactly, and she needs to take this girl, her responsibility. She can feel it in her bones as she eases the child’s weight from Jemma’s arms to her own. Skye. Fitz and Simmons’ daughter. Fitz needs her, and Jemma wants her saved, so Skye will run with her to the portal just in case time is not on their side.
She leans forward to plant a hard kiss on Jemma’s forehead before whisking her first-born off into the darkness, having to believe the others will follow in time.
Jemma swallows her tears, resuming the lullaby as she turns to the other children. “Let it be, let it be,” she croons, taking one of the blond girls in her arms, holding her tightly and kissing the crown of her head. Mack has taken Daisy’s place kneeling before them. Hunter can tell he is distracted by the curls, the blue eyes that are so clearly Fitz’s watching him in abject fear. “Speaking words of wisdom, let it be,” Jemma sings, nodding to Mack, and he fires the ICER.
The girl goes limp. Jemma’s hand fists in her dress briefly, but she doesn’t miss a note as Mack cradles the child in one strong arm and she reaches out to the other blond one.
“And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree,” she sings soothingly, holding the girl close and rubbing her back. “There will be an answer, let it be.”
Mack fires a second shot. This girl jolts a little and Hunter sees Jemma shudder another muffled sob. Her voice is barely a whisper as she scoops up the toddler and Mack departs with a small child in each arm.
Hunter wants to shake her, to shout that they are not killing her children, to make her believe that is not what she’s doing, holding them one after the other as they die in her arms. He cannot stomach the needless devastation before him. But he knows there is nothing he could possibly say to convince her otherwise. He wonders if it would not be kinder to hit Jemma with an ICER now than to allow this to continue. But he saw Fitz wake up, too, and he’s afraid not doing things Jemma’s way might destroy any possibility of gaining her trust back on Earth.
“For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see…” May is kneeling before them now. Jemma rocks the littles girl, pressing her head against her own heart, carding her fingers through the baby’s soft light hair as she whispers the lullaby. “There will be an answer, let it be.”
May fires the ICER on cue and lifts the baby from Jemma’s arms. A real, harsh sob is ripped from Jemma as the girl is pulled away, and May stutters in her retreat, closing her eyes painfully against the sound before swiftly climbing the ladder.
It is only Hunter and Jemma left. He should have realized this part was falling to him, but somehow he didn’t. He doesn’t know if he can do it. God. He’d only known her a year before she disappeared, but… somehow she’s his baby sister. He’d dreamed about bringing her home almost every night for the past eight years, but not like this. She’ll think he’s killing her, and he doesn’t know if he can do it.
As he crouches before her, she straightens up. Tears still pour down her cheeks, but her voice is stronger when it resumes the song. It’s not a song anymore, really. It’s a payer.
“Let it be, let it be.” she takes his hand gripping the ICER, raising it to her own heart, pressing the barrel to her chest. Her eyes lock onto his, ordering him to do it, now. “Let it be, let it be. Yeah, there will be an answer, let it be.”
Feeling a sob of his own well up inside of him, he squeezes the trigger. She drops against him, and he feels the baby inside her pressed between them. They only have ten minutes to make the portal, so he rakes himself together and gathers her up, somehow climbing the ladder with his arms full. Even pregnant she’s feather-light, translucent skin stretched too tightly over jutting bones. Not enough food here, not enough sunlight.
Out in the desert, he runs full-tilt, clutching her to his chest. They have to make it, they have to. After all of this, they cannot be too late.
They’re not. There’s light; he sees it. He launches himself into the portal and does everything to cushion their landing as they’re spit out the other side and roll across hard concrete.
“Oh my god, oh my god.” Bobbi is at their side in an instant, hands running over Jemma, over him. “Cutting it hella fine, there, Hunter,” she chides, very displeased while also brimming over with happiness to see them both.
Hunter has nothing to say to that. He shifts Jemma in his arms, smoothing a thumb over her cheek, splaying a hand on her belly and hoping to feel movement.
“And when the night is cloudy,” he picks up where she left off, voice shaking and not nearly as melodic as hers. “There is still a light that shines on me. Shine until tomorrow, let it be. Let it be.”
Bobbi helps him to his feet, steadying Jemma in his arms. He’s crying, he realizes as tears splash onto the front of her dress. He can’t help it.
“I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom. Let it be.”
They make their slow way out of the ruin to the jet. His eyes never leave her grief-stricken face, taught with brave determination even in sleep.
“Let it be, let it be. Let it be, yeah, let it be. There will be an answer, let it be.”
He lays her gently on a white medical bed. May is still cradling the baby, sitting on the end of Jemma’s cot. They didn’t come with enough equipment for this many people, but the girls are small, they’ll make it work.
“Let it be, let it be,” he whispers to her, a prayer of his own, smoothing a hand over her braids, thumbing at her forehead. “Let it be, yeah, let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.”
He hums the closing bars as the jet takes off.