A/N: This came out of me wondering what happens what would happen if Skye gets sick out at the cabin... and wanting desperately to fix the Simmons-Skye relationship.

I'm open to continuing if there's interest... otherwise this is a lovely one-shot. Enjoy!

At first it's not so bad. There's reading, and movies, and walking outside, and looking at the stars. And it's very quiet, so when she feels the need to step outside and scream until her lungs are raw, scream up at those winking dots of misfortune, she's glad no one can hear her.

She gets very good at cooking macaroni and cheese. And roasting marshmallows – in the microwave.

She spends an inordinate amount of time staring at that case on the kitchen table. She hasn't moved it, hasn't opened it, hasn't touched it since Coulson left. She can't figure out what she wants to do with it – either shoot it or put those gloves on and become the good little earthquake in a bottle they want.

And there's all the things she has to keep up on: tai chi, and meditating, and training, and so forth and so on, until the days are full of a rhythm. A hideously boring rhythm, but a rhythm nonetheless.

Sure, there are tremors, and once after a rough night of screaming at the stars she manages to make the lake outside ripple like some sort of modern art installment, but for the most part, things are very still and calm.

Then, completely without her permission, something changes.

On a Tuesday she wakes up and it feels as though her throat was used to grate cheese. She wonders if she's been screaming at the stars too much. Then the coughing starts, and every cough ricochets off her fractures and through her broken fingers and the pain is enough to make her cry. After that the room around her goes in and out of clarity, and she curls up on the bed in the fetal position, a coughing, crying, aching, snotty mess setting off miniature quakes with every cough.

At some point – it could have been eight hours, it could have been six weeks – she hears the door open and assumes it's May, coming to bring her food, and closes her feverish eyes.

Then a cool hand brushes her forehead, and she hears a very British intake of breath. "Oh, you poor girl," Simmons murmurs. "You're sicker than Coulson thought."

"Go 'way," Skye mutters, curling in on herself. The last person she wants to see her like this is Simmons. The last person she wants to see period is Simmons.

Then she coughs, and it shakes her chest wall and everything from her shoulders to her fingers aches and she finds that she's sobbing into her pillow. Before she knows it the bed is shimmying and the lampshade is twitching and Skye just wants to die. She closes her eyes.

"Shh, sweetheart," Simmons says, and the cool hand brushes her forehead again.

Skye opens her eyes and stares at Simmons exhaustedly. "You here to…" – she pauses to cough – "… put me down?"

The words hit their mark and Simmons' face falls. "I'm here to evaluate and treat your condition," the scientist says shortly. "Coulson thinks your illness might cause you to hurt yourself further."

Without a further word, Simmons opens the bag she's brought with her and moves into action. She sticks a thermo-strip on Skye's forehead and kneels beside the bed with a stethoscope, listening to Skye's lungs. Her fingers find Skye's pulse and for a long silent moment the room is still around them.

"You have a fever of a hundred and five," Simmons says after a moment. "And I can hear congestion in your lungs. I think you have a viral infection."

Skye coughs and winces.

"Is it difficult to breathe?" Simmons asks.

"Yes," Skye whispers. "My throat hurts."

Simmons removes the thermo-strip. "I'm recommending a treatment of painkillers, fever reducers, and aerosolized mist treatments to break up the congestion in your chest."

Her voice sounds kind for the first time in weeks and it's too much for Skye. The silverware starts clanking and the lampshades sway back and forth and the plates clank in the cupboard as she sobs.

"Shh, shh," Simmons says. "It's okay, Skye. I'm going to help you feel better. But you need to relax, all right?"

"Why?" Skye sobs. "Why are you helping me?"

Some part of her knows it's stupid to ask, but she can't help the words falling from her mouth. "Just… leave me alone. I'm dangerous. I could hurt you."

"Right now you're sick," Simmons says. "I want to help you feel better. But first I need you to stop shaking, okay? I don't want you to do any more damage."

Skye starts to protest, to tell Simmons that the cabin has seen much worse over the last weeks, but she realizes Simmons is talking about her own body. She sucks in a croupy breath and the room settles around her.

"Good girl," Simmons murmurs. "I'm going to give you some medication, and then I want you to sleep."

She brings Skye two plastic cups of syrupy liquid medication – one green, one red – and a larger cup of water. "Drink these," Simmons says, and Skye sits up to take them from her, dangling her feet over the side of the bed.

The world spins around her and Skye thinks for a moment she's going to vomit on Simmons' sensible shoes.

"Easy," Simmons says gently. "Take a minute to breathe."

Skye's dizzy and she can hear her breathing pick up. The room feels like it's closing in on her and she looks up at Simmons, terrified, her chest aching as she tries to catch her breath, wheezing and gasping and choking.

"Skye," Simmons says, a little more firmly. "Listen to me – you need to calm down. Take a deep breath."

"I can't. I can't." Skye's quickly losing control. The lamp in the corner wobbles, then falls from the end table, shattering. "I can't. Make it go away," she begs Simmons. "Please, just make it stop. Make it stop."

Simmons gets down in front of her, puts her hands on her shoulders. "Breathe with me, Skye," she says, and together they breathe, Skye's raggedy and clogged trying to match Simmons' slow and gentle.

At last they're breathing together in sync, slowly, though Simmons can still hear the rasp in Skye's throat.

"Drink your medicine," Simmons says at last, and Skye doesn't protest. She swallows the gem-colored medicines and half the cup of water, finding that her eyes are getting heavy.

She wants to ask Simmons how she knew she was sick, why Coulson sent her, and if her mind's been changed on the idea of people with powers, but her breathing gets slower, and her eyes droop shut, and there isn't anything else she can do or say before sleep steals over her.

When she swims back up into consciousness, she can hear Simmons talking. "Her fever is still very high, sir, and last night I noticed that she's broken a rib from coughing and the tremors it causes. She's very ill."

"Stay with her, Agent Simmons," comes Coulson's voice. He sounds tinny and far away. "I'd like you to stay, ideally, until she's better."

"Yes, sir."

Coulson's voice gets a little softer. "How is she, Jemma?"

"She's… very ill, sir," Simmons repeats. "Last night she was delirious and she had a panic attack. I hope Director Fury wasn't too attached to the lamp with the milkmaid painted on it."

"I'll get Fitz on eBay to find him another," Coulson says. "Please tell Skye I hope she feels better soon."

"I will, sir."

Skye opens her eyes and watches Simmons approach the bed with a thermo-strip and a glass of water. "'S that Coulson?" she slurs, her mouth sticky, though she already knows the answer.

"Yes," Simmons replies. "He sends his regards."

She hands Skye the glass of water. "Drink this, and then I want to do a mist treatment to break up the junk in your lungs."

While Skye drinks the water, Simmons sticks the thermo-strip to her forehead, watching her with worried eyes. "Are you still in pain?"

Skye nods. "Everywhere."

She sets the glass of water down on the nightstand and notices her braces are off. Simmons catches her glance. "You ruptured some more capillaries last night," the Brit says. "I removed them to try and tighten the casts, make them more precise. I'm almost finished."

Skye looks down at the bluish-red mottling her fingers and feels nothing but pain. Pain everywhere. Her head, her chest, her fingers –

"Skye, breathe," she hears Simmons say.

"I can't," she whimpers. "I can't. It hurts and I can't make it stop."

The water wobbles.

Simmons crouches before her and puts her hands on her knees. "It's okay," she says. "We're going to get through this. I want to help you feel better."

"What does that mean?" Skye grips her fingers, begging Simmons for something she can't even define.

"It means your fever needs to go down, we need to get the junk in your lungs broken up, and you need to rest and heal," Simmons says. "I know you're upset, Skye. Please let me help."

Skye is too weak to protest, and she finds herself back in bed with a mask over her face, breathing in some sort of medicated mist from a machine on the table next to her. Simmons brings over her casts and Skye holds up her arms while they go back on. Defeated, she closes her eyes.

At some point the mist treatment is over and Skye coughs and coughs and coughs. It hurts like hell and she breaks two glasses in the kitchen. Simmons gets her to drink two more nasty-tasting gem-colored syrups, and Skye falls asleep within minutes.

When she wakes again she's sweaty and disoriented and it's dark. She can see the light of a computer screen off in the darkness, and she sits up and tries to figure out what time it is.

As she pads into the kitchen, she hears Simmons' voice. "Fitz, she looks awful. I want to help, but I can't. She's getting worse and I don't know what to do. She has to cough to get the mucus buildup out of her lungs, but that aggravates her broken rib which aggravates all of her stress fractures and every time she coughs she breaks something and I'm scared for her."

"You can help her," Fitz's voice replies from the computer. "You're her friend, Jemma. I know she'll let you help her."

"Fitz," Simmons murmurs, and for the first time Skye realizes the Brit is about to cry. "When I got here and found her so sick, the first thing she asked me was if I was here to put her down."

"Oh, Jemma," Fitz says softly. "She didn't mean it. She was… uhh… with the fever…?"

"Delirious," Simmons finishes for him. "Yes, but still – to say something like that, it has to have been on your mind. Doesn't she… doesn't she know how much we love her?"

"She's trying to figure things out," Fitz says. "Help her physical symptoms heal and it's possible she'll let you help with the…"

"Emotional ones," Simmons says. "Thanks, Fitz."

The computer light blinks out, and Skye finds herself disoriented in the darkness. She wobbles unsteadily and feels her knees give out, dropping her to the floor.

A light comes on and Skye shies away from it, her eyes burning.

"Oh, Skye," Simmons says. "Come on, sweetheart."

Somehow Simmons gets her back in bed, and somehow Skye submits to another mist treatment. When that's finished she drinks more of the medicine, and lays in a fetal ball on the bed.

Simmons moves to leave, and Skye stops her. "Please don't go," she rasps out. Even though she's been terrified that Simmons is really there for some other purpose, her brain somehow registers that's a fever dream and not the truth. Now she's scared that Simmons is going to leave her in the middle of nowhere to die.

"Okay," Simmons says, a little confused, and she sits down on the bed next to Skye.

For a moment Skye just clings to Simmons' hand, her body trying to get her to go to sleep again. But she's desperate for conversation, for companionship, for someone to look at her like she's not going to bring the walls down around them. "Did Coulson make you come?"

"No," Simmons replies.

Skye looks at her, trying to see if she's lying.

"He could have sent someone else," Simmons says, "but we both agreed the situation was getting a little dire. You needed someone here who could… who could help you, someone you knew."

She looks upset, and says, "You were unconscious. For two days. We watched…"

Simmons shakes her head, hard, and Skye realizes she's crying.

"All I wanted… was for you to wake up," Simmons goes on. "We could see you were still breathing, we could see when you were shaking the house… Coulson thought you just had a cold, and you'd get up, and…"

She puts her head in her hands and sobs, and Skye feels even worse. Behind the calm scientist exterior, she's almost forgotten that Simmons is both human… and her friend.

"And then I told him I wanted to be the one to come and treat you," Simmons goes on. She tucks her hair back behind her ears. "Skye, I never wanted… I never wanted you to feel as though you were a pariah, like I wanted to put you down."

The words she'd uttered the day before come back to her and they hurt almost as much as her arms.

"When I saw you on the screen and you… you wouldn't wake up, I thought…" Simmons trails off. "That maybe you'd decided to do something about your situation."

For a minute Skye can't figure out what she means.

"And that this time, it wasn't an ICER."

Skye blinks back into awareness to find Simmons still on the bed next to her, running her fingers through Skye's hair.

"Your fever's down," Simmons says quietly. "Not back to normal but you're out of brain-frying range."

"Um, thank you," Skye says.

"All I did was stick a thermo-strip to your forehead."

"Not that," Skye says, reaching up to remove said strip. "For… for what you said last night."

"It's true," Simmons replies softly. "You are my friend, and after everything we've been through together, all I want is for you to be safe. And to know that you're not alone, and that we're going to help you figure things out."

Skye looks over at the case on the table and quenches a quake before it starts, even though it causes her chest to ache like it's on fire.

"Whatever you decide to do," Simmons says, "whatever choices you make – you'll have support. Coulson's, and Fitz's…"

She takes a deep breath. "And mine."

She leans forward and kisses Skye on the forehead, and for a moment the room spins around Skye again; she's dizzy from both the fever still boiling in her brain and the fact that since the first time she got out of quarantine, Simmons isn't looking at her like a science experiment.

Everything will take time to heal – her viral infection, her broken body, and her relationships with the rest of her family. But as Skye drinks down another medical cocktail, puts on the plasticky mask, breathes in the medicated mist, and prepares to cough until her other ribs break… or until she destroys every knickknack in Fury's cabin, she realizes for the first time it all might be possible.