#quakeshot

But when she’s alone, and everything’s even more of a mess than it had ever been, that’s when it sinks in. In all of her time with SHIELD, she had prided herself of being a woman of faith, of following the Ten Commandments even when her faith had been tested. Except now, now she had none of that. Seeing the things she had, losing people, losing her arms and getting a step closer to becoming that shell, her faith had waned.

She’d doubted God, even questioned whether she could believe in a being so destructive and uncaring, and now she was here. Alone, her girlfriend wanting nothing to do with her for encouraging Coulson’s death, a girl’s blood on her hands (and on her face, her chest, her shoulders) and she was a murderer. No matter how she try to twist it, the outcome remains the same. She murdered a girl, quite possibly for nothing, and now she couldn’t bear to look herself in the eye.

Elena had tried to go to bed, tried to repent for her sins despite the blood that still coated her skin, tacky and crumbling apart (just as she was herself). She prays for forgiveness until her throat is hoarse and the words no longer sound real, clinging to her rosary and crying when the imprint of the beads isn’t there to comfort her, the pain she tried to punish herself with being gone for good.

In the end she drags herself to the communal showers, finding the slightest solace in the fact that no one else would be there at this time of night. She strips down to her underwear before pulling off her prosthetics and putting them off to one side, the shower running on the painful side of hot. Not bothering to even try and stand, she sits under the spray, a sob creeping its way up through her throat and bursting past her lips, prompting the wailing cries that follow.

Comforted in the knowledge that no one would find her, she doesn’t try to fight back the tears or the prayers that tumble from her tongue, an incomprehensible mix of Spanish and English which makes no sense, even to her. There is no time or reality under the unforgiving boiling water, just Elena trying to make up for her sins, and as a result she doesn’t see Daisy enter the shared bathroom.

She doesn’t see the automatic conflicted look in her eyes as she sees Elena, nor how she drops everything once she realises there’s something seriously wrong. There’s no sound that comes from Daisy carelessly dropping her things onto the floor, nor the curses she mutters under her breath. Even as she turns the water off, Elena notices nothing, begging someone to relieve her of this pain and for God to forgive her for falling wayside.

Daisy braces her arms around her girlfriend, trapping her legs between hers as she tries to fight and pull away, still hoarsely begging for absolution.

“Te perdono Lena, siempre te perdonare.” Daisy repeats over and over as she holds onto her tighter, fingertips bruising her skin.