"If you're wondering why there's been a recent disturbance in the cosmos, why perhaps the little boundaries you set in place so long ago are crumbling, you need to look at one particular teenage witch. A half mortal with...grand designs."

Daisy stands still, arms crossed loosely over the armored sleeves of her jacket, gauntlets gleaming dully under the overhead fluorescents. The room is white, sterile, deceptively calm. A wide, reinforced observation panel separates it from the rest of the base, but she’s inside the cell itself—not watching from behind the glass like the others had suggested.

This kid doesn’t need a cold set of eyes cataloging her like a threat. She needs a voice, a face, someone who remembers what it felt like to wake up and find your body no longer obeys the rules you thought it did. Daisy remembers exactly what that feels like. The bed stirs. A flutter of movement beneath the thin gray blanket. Daisy steps forward, slow and sure, lowering herself to a crouch beside the metal-framed cot. No sudden movements, no clipped orders. Just warmth. Just presence.

She sees the girl’s face begin to tighten with the haze of returning consciousness. She is bruised, bandaged. Earth still clings to her skin in places they hadn’t been able to scrub clean. And under all of it—a power so wild, so angry, so deeply rooted—it had split the ground like a scream made of roots and soil. Daisy had seen the aftermath. Whole buildings cracked open like eggshells. Grown men wrapped in roots like infants in swaddling cloth, begging to be let go. But now, she sees a fifteen-year-old girl waking up on a military base, unable to go home, alone in a room built to hold the kind of monsters Daisy has spent so much time proving she isn’t.

She draws in a breath, steady, and speaks. ❛ Lokelani…❜ Her voice is soft, but not patronizing. ❛ Hey. Don’t try to sit up too quickly. ❜ She waits a beat. Lets the words settle. ❛ You’re safe, ❜ Daisy says. ❛ I know you don’t know where you are yet, or who I am, or why this is happening to you. ❜

Another beat. Her fingers twitch once at her side, the way they do when she’s trying not to project her own memories onto someone else’s trauma. ❛ My name is Daisy Johnson. I’m a SHIELD agent. ❜ she says. Not Skye. Not the hacker. Not the orphan. Not the girl who begged her bones not to break every time she clenched her fists. ❛ I’m here because it’s my job to protect you. And because I’ve been where you are. ❜

She glances around the room. The absence of anything green. Not so much as a potted plant. ❛ I know it’s not much, ❜ she says, offering a tight, lopsided smile, ❛ but this place is temporary. Not a cell. You’re not being punished. I’m here to walk you through every part of what’s happening to you. Every question you have, I’ll answer. No secrets. No lies. ❜

❝  i'll stay. ❞ she says, her voice unwavering. it was a new thing - being an older sibling to someone else. LOKI was accustomed to being the pain of a younger sibling to his elder brother. never the one that was mentally stable; creating issues everywhere that he went. though, for ATLAS - he had to be better than he usually was. had to pretend that he had his strings pulled tight. showing vulnerability & uncertainty in himself would have made his younger sibling feel unsure of themself.

"I know," Lilia said simply in acceptance, offering no argument or counterpoint. "So don't. You're more in control than you think, but fear is a block for all of us."

@heirceleste liked for a starter

Agatha trailed her nails over the spines on the bookshelf in front of her, humming a lesser known rendition of the Ballad of the Witches Road. A loud thud echoed through the quiet as she removed a book and dropped it flat on it's cover. A few more seconds and another two, one right after the other, fell near it on the floor. Agatha's attention broke from the books as she heard someone behind her and turned her upper body to face the young woman, hand still hovering in front of the shelves.

"Uh...can I help you?" Agatha fixed her with an annoyed stare, taken aback by the unexpected approach.

“ Bat shit, huh? ” Vivi smirked, letting out a grunt when Kel plopped by her side. “ I've got time, if you need more space to come to terms with it. ” She was laying on her stomach, turning the page in the engineering textbook and her little notes on the sides of it. It was no problem to split her attention, but Vivi paused, placing her hand on the opened page and looked at Kel. “ So what, magic is real, but witches aren't? This is ridiculous. ”