Archive of Our Own ^beta

The atmosphere on the Zephyr was ice cold.

It was a rough few days for everyone on the ship. Supplies were running low. Their latest mission had ended far from ideally: hasty retreat, exchange of fire, damaged Quinjet; even some of the crew got injured.

Daisy put on her suit in silence, barely containing the currents of emotions running through her. She had a…disagreement with Daniel over their latest retreat. Actually, fuck that. It was a blowout. She was certain the entire crew heard them. The words of their rather loud argument rattled around her head—always looking for an excuse to punch her way out… never considering diplomacy or the safety and response of her entourage before taking a sudden left turn…

‘I think you’re enjoying your notoriety too much, Quake.’

She clicked her belt buckle shut with a forceful snap. That hurt. That one really hurt. Whether she liked it or not, her fame—or notoriety—was what granted them protection on their voyage. Who was he to just throw that in her face—

‘Five minutes to touchdown.’ Kora’s voice, level and seemingly unaffected, drifted over from the cockpit.

‘Copy that.’

With that confirmation, she headed for the cargo bay. There the crew was, fully geared up and performing final checks on their equipment. She descended the metal staircase, mentally steeling herself: this was just standard first contact procedure; she had done it a hundred times, she could do it. Weaving through the assembled agents, she quietly went over the mission brief with the team and talked to the newest recruits to calm them down.

And she definitely did not seek out Daniel in the crew.

Kani’a was a major planet on the outskirts of the M-78 Nebula. Its position made it a primary trading port and a necessary stop for everyone entering and leaving said galaxy. All sorts of goods, creatures, and—by extension—intelligence flowed through this one place. SHIELD had been itching to establish ties with such a planet for some time, but for a people rolling in the riches from all corners of the universe, what need would they have for a bunch of Terrans?

It was a full three days before they got an audience with the leader of Kani’a, and it took mere minutes for the discussion to freeze over.

‘I recognize you,’ said the Kani’an leader, their thin voice slicing through the tense silence. They got up from their throne and glided towards Daisy. The assembled Kani’an court parted around their leader as they passed through, and Daisy’s crew mirrored their action. Except Daniel. It was not until a sharp glare from the alien leader that he took a small step to the side, but he kept his eyes trained on the other all the same.

The alien leader circled Daisy; they were close enough that she could feel the internal rumbling of their organs. She took a long, careful deep breath, and clenched her fists.

‘You are Quake.’ The alien leader hissed.

She swallowed a grimace.

‘Yes,’ Daisy replied, trying not to sound too exasperated, ‘that would be me.’

‘And what made you think you can just waltz onto our planet, Quake?’ With a flourish, the alien leader turned back around and returned to their throne, high above everyone else.

‘I am not just waltzing in,’ said Daisy, calling upon all her training to keep her voice level. ‘I am here on a trade and diplomatic mission. Our crew applied for and was granted entry, like everybody else.’

‘A diplomatic mission?’ The head Kani’an picked up what looked like a blue fruit from a bowl by their side and examines it with mild interest, paying Daisy no mind. ‘My, my, the Terrans fancy themselves quite the wayfarers now, don’t they?’

Daisy swallowed hard against a rising fire in her throat. She had done this before, and this was nothing new. It was all part of the political game—taunts, big words, sizing each other up.

‘It is our wish to establish ties with different civilizations across the galaxy,’ Daisy declared. ‘You are right; us Terrans finally have the technology to reach out, and we hope to learn and make friends, and share what we know.’

The leader fixed her with a sharp glare, their voice turned icy.

‘Then you must also know that Kani’a does not deal with Krees, or any version of their descendants.’

She did not; none of their intel suggested that Kani’a was particularly hostile to any group. In fact, everyone they had spoken to vouched that the Kani’ans were an open-minded and welcoming people—which would make sense; a planet that depended on exchange of goods and people could not afford to be discriminatory.

Now, it seemed there were some holes in their intel.

‘I am not a Kree,’ Daisy tried, almost rolling her eyes. ‘I am of Terran descent; we call ourselves Inhumans.’

‘You have Kree blood running through your veins,’ the Kani’an leader’s voice dropped. ‘Just one drop of it is enough to make you one of them. It is enshrined in our laws that no Kree shall ever set foot on Kani’a.’

For all the allegations of hot-headedness, Daisy knew a dead end when she saw one. Looking around, she took in the stony faces of the entire Kani’an guard, the menacing weapons in their hands, and their strategic positions at every exit.

‘Fine, we’ll leave then,’ she bit out. ‘Sorry for wasting your time.’

With that, Daisy turned around, and gestured for the Zephyr crew to leave. She watched as her fellow agents picked up their bags and pulled on the helmets for this planet’s outdoors. She looked down at her gauntlets and adjusted a buckle, swallowing a sigh. Paperwork is hard enough on a good day; reporting this encounter to Mack is going to be a pain…

‘Wait.’

Daisy shut her eyes to suppress a wince; she could hear the sneer in the Kani’an leader’s voice. She spun around.

‘What do you want?’

‘Surely you don’t think you can just come and go as you please on my planet,’ the leader’s smooth voice wrapped around the threat. ‘You and your little motley crew have trespassed onto my planet, wasted everyone’s time, and you think you can just leave?’

Before she could open her mouth to make an offer, the Kani’an leader pointed at something, and said,

‘I want that one.’

She followed the direction of their finger, her gaze sweeping across the hall—across Kora, across her crew, and landed on—

Daniel.

Daisy’s heart skipped a beat.

The realization dawned on him at the same time; drawing a sharp breath, he straightened up and his arm twitched. Daisy knew what he was doing—he was readying to draw his weapon at a second’s notice. His action had not gone unnoticed; her crew were clearly taking cue from his move. All around her, they were tensing up. She could hear someone’s loud exhale from somewhere at the back, and for those who had had their weapons out the whole time, their grips visibly tightened.

If anyone said the wrong thing now, or made the wrong move, they would be shooting their way out of this. That was if they had enough firepower on their side; but even with her and Kora, they did not.

Daniel’s brows were furrowed the way they do when he was angry. This won’t end well, the thought suddenly crossed Daisy’s mind. He opened his mouth, no doubt ready to argue against the leader, but she cut in before he could make a sound.

‘I can offer you better,’ Daisy squared her shoulders and said to the Kani’an leader, trying her best to put on her Quake voice. ‘There is much more we can offer than a measly Terran—’

‘What?’ They sat back on their throne with an open smirk, ‘the legendary Quake cannot part with her little pet?’

Breathe. She stared straight into the leader’s eyes. The platoon of Kani’an guards slowly closed in, surrounding her, Kora, and her entirely, ordinarily human, crew. In her peripheral vision, she could see Daniel tensing up, ready to step forward, or make a move—

‘Take him.’

It was barely louder than a shaky whisper. Daniel whipped around, staring at her.

The room froze. The Kani’an leader raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

‘Say it again?’

‘I said take him.’ Daisy kept her eyes resolutely forward, her cold and steely tone a paper-thin façade over the thundering in her chest. ‘This is just as well. I have no time for insubordinate crew members that challenge their commander’s authority.’

She could hear an angry sound coming from Kora, who stood just behind her, but she was quickly cut off when the leader laughed and reached for a menacing-looking drink, sizzling and spluttering as it shifted through strange hues.

‘See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?’

The alien leader took a leisurely sip of their drink, and gestured at the guards with a jerk of his head. Instantly, a dozen guards descended upon Daniel. One quickly removed his sidearm as two others twisted his arms behind him at a painful angle, before frog-marching him out of the grand reception hall.

And Daisy’s gaze did not shift even one bit.

‘What the fuck are you doing?!’ Kora exploded the moment the loading bay door shut behind them. She stormed after Daisy, who was blazing a path through the plane, the crew jumping out of the way of the two sisters. ‘You just left Danny in the hands of a hostile alien civilization—’

It was as though Daisy had not heard a single word from her. She briskly made her way down the winding hallways of the Zephyr, flicking switches and pulling levers, getting the plane ready for take-off.

‘Just get the plane in the air, Kora.’

‘No!’ Kora finally caught up with her as they entered Command. She grabbed Daisy’s arm and rounded to face her. ‘You just left one of our own—and your boyfriend, no less—on a planet that does not care for humans, and even less for Inhumans like us. You just let the Kani’an leader take Daniel, and you don’t think you should at least explain yourself?’

Daisy returned her glare. Her jaws were aching from how tightly she was gritting her teeth. She could feel the slow roll of energy gathering in Kora’s arms—

‘Just get the plane off planet, Kora. This is an order.’

But she made no move. Instead, the rumble of energy was palpable now. Daisy takes a deep breath.

‘Please,’ she all but whispers.

Her glare did not waver for a second, and Daisy could feel the heat emanating from her palms…

Kora spun on her heels and stomped over to the pilot’s seat. With brutal efficiency, she launched into the familiar motion of take-off. Before long, the vessel was airborne.

Ignoring the shocked and confused looks on the faces of her crew, Daisy grabbed a tablet and headed for her bunk. The door slammed shut behind her as she plopped on the thin mattress.

It was only then that Daisy registered her own thundering heartbeat as the adrenaline left her system, her blood pounding loudly in her ears. There was a low rumbling, a rattling of some sort, and it took her a minute to realize the sound was coming from her. She swallowed hard. Her hands balled into tight fists, nails digging into the fabric of her gauntlet as she willed the vibrations to die down.

She had tried her best to appear unaffected back in the reception hall, but…

She hugged her knees to her chest, her breathing coming out in shudders. She did not miss the betrayed look on Daniel’s face when she basically handed him over to the Kani’an court on a silver platter. If they hated her this much, what were they going to do to him? She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, as if she could fling the disturbing thoughts from her mind.

And what was he going to think of her then? She was not really mad at him; not that way. She only needed to do this so she could bide time and get help. But with their previous argument still fresh in her memory…

There was nothing for it. What was done was done. If there was anyone who could save Daniel, it was her.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Daisy looked down at her tablet.

She had a call to make.

Daniel looked up and sighed.

There was a sliver of a window in the cell they were holding him in. If it was indeed showing the Kani’an skies, it had been five days. Five days here felt roughly like double of that Earth time; but really, without the right apparatus, and having been in space for so long, his biological clock was all over the place.

Since they took him in the reception hall, things had been…frankly speaking, familiar and unsurprising.

They did not take his prosthetic. They did, however, have it disabled (ha!). It was just a boring lump of titanium and carbon fiber now, with none of the fancy algorithms and calibration Simmons had programmed for him. If they had known about the charges and pocketknife hidden in the secret compartments of his prosthetic, they did not take them either. But then again, with the battery disabled, there was no way he could access them either.

He sighed again, as the scene in the reception hall replayed in his head.

He had never seen Daisy this cold and unmoved. She had barely flinched when the planet’s leader made their demand. And even as the guard took him away, as they manhandled him, she would not spare him a single glance…

‘”Dispassionate”, Chief. Your word!’

He frowned harder as the long-buried memory surfaced without invitation. Dispassionate…was that what that was? A simple façade to…fool the Kani’an leader?

‘I have no time for insubordinate crew members that challenge their commander’s authority.’

He groaned and leaned back, his head hitting the wall with a soft thud. Surely Daisy would not feed him to the wolves because of an argument? As he stared at the tufts of orange clouds through the tiny window, he could not help but recall what had led to that moment.

‘This is our third shootout of the month, Daisy, third “diplomatic mission” that ended in a fight!’ He was well aware of the crew staring—and clearly hearing—through the glass wall, but he did not care. Not right then. They had barely managed to get the Zephyr in the air, and the medbay was packed after the latest incident.

‘Are you blaming me for how those aliens reacted?’ Daisy had shouted right back. ‘I don’t get to control how they receive us!’

‘Oh sure you don’t,’ he sneered. ‘But certainly there could have been a compromise? It seems to me you are always looking for an excuse to punch your way out. I think you are enjoying your notoriety too much, Quake.’

He winced at the memory. If he could, he would travel back in time to stop those words from ever being uttered. Did he disagree with Daisy’s method at the time? Sure. But saying all that…accusing her of ‘enjoying her notoriety too much’, even…that crossed so many lines. He sighed again.

Wait.

Was he imagining it, or was the wall getting hotter?

He shifted away, just in time for the thick rock to melt into soup before his eyes, revealing a glowing figure. He thought it was Kora at first, but as the golden light died down, before him stood Carol Danvers, her trademark smug grin plastered on her face. On her shoulder perched her little orange cat, leisurely licking its paw as if storming an alien prison was just another Tuesday for it. Next to her, braced with her arm outstretched was—his heart skipped a beat—Daisy.

A thousand feelings flooded through him at once.

He watched her, but Daisy was trying her best to avoid his gaze. As she carefully lowered her arm, she glanced around his small cell, her expression unreadable.

It was Carol who broke the silence first, ostensibly oblivious to the awkward air hanging between them.

‘We’ve got two minutes before we are under siege,’ she announced with her usual cheer. ‘Free him then bolt; I’ll secure our exits.’

With that, Carol melted the locks on his cell like they were nothing, and dashed down the empty hallway. In the distance, he could hear the shouts of the guards.

Which left Daisy standing there.

He shifted; the shackles knocked noisily against the floor. Daisy started at the sound.

‘Get me out of these?’

‘I-yea. Of course.’

It was only then that she approached him, her steps lacking their usual pep. She stopped in front of him and raised her hand, aiming at the shackles.

‘Wait!’ Daniel said. Daisy froze. He glanced at the shackles and said, ‘Protocol 17.’

Their eyes locked. For a second, neither spoke as they searched for…something. He recited,

‘Test your powers first when…’

‘…when interacting with unknown, foreign, or alien material.’ They finished the sentence in unison. Daisy warily looked down at the dull, grey, metallic-looking shackles. This time, she kneeled in front of him, her hand hovering over the thick bar linking the two cuffs together.

‘Ready?’ He nodded.

‘One, two…’

Daisy aimed a small, controlled beam of energy at the thick bar. For a second, nothing seemed to happen. And then—

Daniel hissed.

‘Sorry!’ Daisy dropped her hand immediately. ‘I’m sorry—are you okay?’ He nodded.

‘It’s not you,’ he forced out between gritted teeth. He sucked in a breath. Then another. Then another. Finally, he exhaled, and nodded.

‘What happened?’

‘Some kind of electric shock,’ Daniel replied, still sounding a little breathless. ‘Might be built to be quake-proof.’

He watched as Daisy frowned and leaned in closer, examining the shackles with disdain. She pulled out a tiny flashlight from one of her pockets and peered into the locking mechanism.

‘If you still have the lockpicks I got you from the market…’ Daniel muttered. Daisy bit her lip.

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

She shoved the flashlight back in her pocket as if it had personally offended her, before pulling out the set of bronze-colored lockpicks from another. She was sitting cross-legged on the cold floor now; she took another closer look.

‘Doesn’t seem like something you’d have in your usual arsenal,’ Daniel finally replied. ‘I’ve never seen you use anything other than your powers and the occasional Icer.’

Daisy paused.

‘I’m more than that,’ she said plainly.

‘I know.’

She did not reply. Silently, she slowly worked the little notches and gears loose, holding her ear close to listen for the clicks. He had never seen her like this.

'I thought you hated me.’

'Of course I don’t! I just—’ Daisy sighed. There was a beat; she lowered the delicate tools and took a deep breath. ‘There was no way to bargain out of that. The best I could do was…appear unaffected, so that the Kani’ans wouldn’t hurt you too badly, to bide us some time while I get backup.’

‘”Dispassionate”, Chief. Your word!’

Peggy’s voice rang in his head again, the way she stared into his eyes as clear as if it was happening right there. He chuckled mirthlessly.

‘Yea, I guess I earned this…’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

Daisy looked up. Chewing her own lips, she forced herself to look at Daniel head on and study his expression. She did not know what she was expecting—frustration? Disappointment? Anger? Whatever it was, she could not find it. The only thing she saw was the soft, familiar smile.

‘Deal.’

With another poke, the locking mechanism released and fell to the floor with a loud clatter. Daniel immediately kicked it to the far corner, as if it might jump back up and bite him. Daisy helped him to his feet, and they hurried out of the cell.

It was only then that they became aware of the ruckus echoing down the cavernous hallways. They rounded a corner, and came face to face with the Kani’an leader, who blocked their path with an entire platoon of guards behind him.

‘Quake!’ The leader exclaimed. They held out their arms as their mouth blooms into a wide, teeth-baring grin. ‘What a surprise. Do you like our menagerie?’ Daisy rolled her eyes.

‘Let us go.’

‘How rude.’ The grin vanished like it was magicked away. ‘Or what? Do you think you get to make demands here?’

‘Or you’ll regret it. What, the great leader of Kani’a can’t part with their little Terran souvenir?’

‘Your notoriety is getting to your head, Quake. You don’t own the universe.’

‘Don’t I?’

Daisy tilted her head and raised her hand. The Kani’an guards tensed up, bracing for the impact; and for a second, it seemed as though her power had failed when nothing happened. And then—a muffled pop. Everyone spun around to the source of the sound, just in time to a blood-like purple liquid dripping out of their Leader’s mouth. With a soft thud, they crumpled.

Everyone stood in shocked silence; it was like time had stopped.

The guard in the front of the group—the one that had stood at the front of the reception hall with their nose in the air next to the throne—moved first. They lowered their weapon, raising their arms slowly. The reaction was swift; the rest of the guards followed suit. In a series of soft clacks, their weapons were laid on the hard floor, their hands in the air.

Daisy grinned.

‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’