i'm gonna change you like a remix [open]

[hacker]

Who: SKYE and YOU
Where: The main lobby, mostly (available elsewhere).
When: February 16th
What: If you're freezing half to death and can't control your powers, clap your hands.
Notes: Anyone is free to have wandered into range and noticed some WEIRD QUAKING going on. Available in prose or commentspam.

Something is very wrong here.

The tremors come intermittently, usually joined with particularly bad shakes on her part. It's not the first time she's noticed it—the bulb in her room shattered on the first day, the bible fell off the night table. Truthfully, she'd hoped "haunted" was the answer. It'd fit with the rest of the creepy atmosphere.

But this is something else. Blankets bundled around her, Skye departs her room, thinking it'll get her away from whatever the hell is going on with it, but the quaking follows her. She huddles up under the concierge desk in the lobby, tucked away from view. The fireplace doesn't do a lot for heat, but it keeps the main floor at a slightly higher temperature than the rest of the hotel (or maybe that's just the placebo effect of hearing it crackling). That's enough for her.

Or she'd like to think. Showing up in a t-shirt just off of a mission in San Juan was really biting her in the ass now: she hadn't packed for just above freezing temperatures. As her shivers worsen, so too does the way her abilities shake the room around her. Ten feet in any direction, a low-scale earthquake sets in. The pen cup rattles. The table lamp pops a bulb and falls over before vibrating off the edge of the desk, dangling by its cord.

And the fact that it moved with her from her bedroom? Well that just makes it harder for her to calm down.

Her shoulders hunch around her ears, and she raises her hands to pull at her hair, muscles tight to conserve both her body heat and her sanity. Something's wrong. Whatever those crystals in the temple did, it followed her here. So her breath is short with muted panic, afraid of herself and unable to get away from it.

Comments

[hacker]

As Peter reaches out, Skye scrambles back, recoiling like a cornered animal and drawing her arms up around her. The surprise of her retreat has the quake jostling the lobby more significantly, taking him just slightly off balance in his crouch. "Get back!" She cries out, more afraid for him than she is for herself. "I'm sorry. I can't make it stop." Distress contorts her expression into something miserable and pained, holding her trembling hands out in front of her like she isn't quite sure who they belong to anymore.

[trepidations]

He startles when she cries out, tumbling backward to land on his bum when the floor gives another sickening tremble. So maybe this was some kind of magic, after all.

"H-hey, it's okay, really. You're... you're not gonna hurt me, I promise. I've... I've been through much worse."

Try torturing curses and hexes, no less working with a bunch of power-hungry purebloods. "I promise! Hey, just... just try to calm down maybe?" If there was a swell in the tremors when she panicked? Well, maybe that would help. But maybe she didn't want his help, either. Peter does try, his heart is always in the right place, but he isn't always successful.

"I'm Peter. I mean, I know this is... is scary, but, well. What's your name? Just... just focus on me, maybe?"

[hacker]

For weeks, she'd allowed herself to believe it a coincidence. That it wasn't her causing these things, but rather, that they just happened to occur around her. It wasn't until the heat went and the tremors began to accompany her shaking that it even occurred to her that she was the source. And when she did, it got worse. Much worse.

She's afraid of herself, of what she might do, and that fear keeps her flinching away even as he tries to reassure her. Hands twisted, wringing together in front of her mouth, she lifts her gaze to fix on his like a fearful animal, cornered in a cage.

If she could just get out, she could get away. They'd be safer if she weren't here.

"Skye," she says quickly, trying to get it out between panicked breaths. "I need— I think something happened to me." She says it in a quiet voice, scratchy in the back of her throat. "And I need to figure out how to undo it." Simmons is gone. Fitz isn't Fitz anymore, not like he was. Who's supposed to be able to help her with this? She can't put it on Fitz after what happened. Can't put it on the strangers of this hotel, or trust any of them with it.