Chapter Text
The rain over Abingdon had softened from a more honest downpour into a persistent, icy mist that clung to the asphalt.
Emily walked beside Daisy in silence, the distance between them spanning less than two feet physically, yet feeling like an insurmountable chasm emotionally to Emily
They crossed the street toward a twenty four hour diner whose red neon sign read, “The Silver Diner” flickering weakly against the gray sky overhead.
Inside, the diner smelled of stale grease, bleach, and roasted coffee beans. The bell above the door chimed softly as they entered. A bored waitress behind the counter merely gestured toward the empty booths before returning to her crosswords.
Emily stepped back slightly, allowing Daisy to choose their seating.
Without a word, Daisy walked straight to a corner booth in the far back. She smoothly slid into the bench facing the main entrance, her back pressed securely against the solid wall, giving her clear sightlines to the front windows, the kitchen doors, and the register.
Emily noted it, and chalked it up as more proof that her sister likely had some form of background in law enforcement or the military.
Emily took the opposite side of the booth from her sister.
Deliberately, intentionally, Emily sat with her back entirely exposed to the entrance, voluntarily surrendering her tactical advantage and putting her back to the room.
It was a gesture of absolute non-aggression, a silent signal in the language of operatives and spies that Emily posed no threat, held no backup, and was hiding nothing.
Daisy didn't miss it.
They understood each other. At least in this.
As Daisy had slid into the booth, her dark eyes darted in a lightning-fast, practiced sweep of the room: checking for exits, counting the patrons, noting the blind spots, and calculating the structural layout. It was subtle, invisible to anyone else, but to Emily, an ex-Interpol agent trained in the darkest corners of European intelligence herself, and looking for such signs in her sister with all her profiling expertise, it was unmistakable.
She’s running a threat assessment, Emily noted now with certainty as her theory from watching her sister in that interrogation room gained weight. Her heart was aching with a fresh, sharp pain. She isn't just a girl who learned to fight. She’s an operative. Military, intelligence, or deep-cover state asset maybe?
The waitress arrived, sloshing two thick ceramic mugs of motor oil black coffee onto the Formica table without ever asking what they wanted before walking away.
For a few long seconds, neither woman spoke. Analysing each other with careful, non hostile eye contact.
The steam rose from their mugs between them, carrying the bitter aroma of cheap diner coffee.
"I owe you an apology," Emily began quietly, breaking the silence.
Her voice lacked its usual crisp federal authority; even her usual received pronunciation and boarding school diction was somewhat softened.
Her voice was rough, tired, and heavy with emotion as she peeled back her professional mask and tried consciously to show her sister, show this fellow spy or soldier or something equally closed off, her true self. " I’m sorry about Rossi and JJ. They were... aggressive. My job…their job, it’s to look at the absolute worst possibilities in human nature and test them. When you've spent decades chasing serial killers, you start seeing monsters in every shadow."
Daisy picked up her mug, cradling the warm ceramic in her hands. She didn't drink, merely letting the heat seep into her fingers.
Daisy nodded fractionally in understanding. "They were doing their job," Daisy said evenly, her voice devoid of malice. "I get it. I know what kind of scum is out there in the dark. Your team... the BAU... you hunt monsters in human shape. I can respect that, even if I’m not particularly fond of federal badges throwing around bullshit profiles."
Despite her lifelong, deeply ingrained distrust of authority, a remnant of a childhood spent being shuffled through cold state institutions and being treated by local cops because she was a poor mixed race kid without any support. Daisy understood the necessity of people like Hotch, Rossi, and Emily. She spent her life fighting alien threats and global syndicates, but she knew the human horrors the FBI dealt with were just as real. They were just different.
Emily watched her sister carefully. Weighing her words.
Her profiler’s mind, operating on pure instinct rather than conscious thought, began piecing together the puzzle of the young woman sitting across from her:
Daisy spoke not with mere sympathy, but empathy.
Daisy was twenty-seven years old… but she carried herself with the lethal, fluid grace of a high-tier asset, the kind from the CIA Emily had had the misfortune to run across in her work with interpol.
Daisy’s official state records had vanished when she was fifteen.
Twelve years, Emily thought, a cold terror gripping her stomach. Twelve missing years.
Emily had read Daisy’s childhood files which she managed to recover from cover to cover. There were surprisingly dense for a child of merely fifteen years in the care system.
She had even used her rare holidays to go and interview the kindly nun at the St. Jude orphanage.
As cagey as the nuns and social workers had been, Emily had read between the lines, and sometime the sight of a badge and the idea of such an agent seeking information on a long forgotten ‘bad egg’ who they assumed had done something criminal, made them bluntly honest, even about their own failings and feelings about Mary Sue Poots.
Emily knew about the neglect, the cold group homes, the cycle of uncaring and overstretched foster parents and the horrific bust of the Stanikis. Emily was painfully aware of the statistics for mixed-race, at-risk youth in the American foster care system from her job. The venn diagram of such kids and some of the cases she investigated had a distressingly large overlap. The numbers were tragic: exploitation, human trafficking, forced labor, or an early grave in an unmarked field.
Even if Daisy had somehow clawed her way out of that darkness and become a government agent or a deniable state asset, Emily knew that such success didn't erase trauma. What horrors had Daisy survived between the ages of fifteen and twenty-seven to become this seemingly dangerously competent, iron-willed woman who had turned the tables on two of the country's top profilers? A woman who had single handedly taken down a serial killer like it was child’s play while pretending to be a hapless victim? What scars was she hiding beneath that calm, unbothered exterior?
Daisy’s patience finally snapped. She was never very good with silence.
She set her coffee mug down with a sharp, controlled click against the table. Her dark eyes locked onto Emily’s with a fierce, demanding intensity that cut through the diner’s dull ambient noise and Emily’s spiraling thoughts.
"Enough small talk, Agent Prentiss," Daisy said softly, though the edge in her voice could cut glasses she addressed Emily by her title. "No more federal tip-toeing. I want answers, and I want them now. Either you give them to me or I leave and get them myself. The first way would just be quicker."
Emily braced herself, her hands tightening in her lap under the table as she sighed, "You want answers…ask your questions. I am sure you have been making a list while you sat talking with JJ and Rossi."
"How did you know my legal birth name?" Daisy demanded, leaning forward, her posture rigid. "Who uploaded that familial DNA reference profile into CODIS? Why was the Feds system looking for a match to a ghost named Mary Sue Poots? And... who are you to me?"
The questions hung in the air, raw and demanding.
Emily felt a lump form in her throat.
Her mind raced with fear, fear that if she answered wrong, if she sounded too pushy or too emotional, Daisy would slide out of the booth, step into the Virginia rain, and vanish into the shadows forever. It was mere happenstance that Emily had found her today…if she left, would Emily ever see her again?
Emily took a slow, shaky breath and looked Daisy directly in the eyes as she tried to project sincerity and honesty. A look of authenticity on her face that none but her team might have a hope of recognising.
"The person who uploaded that DNA profile was me," Emily bluntly confessed, her voice thick with suppressed emotion. "Or rather, a friend of mine in the bureau did it at my request, off the books. She did it because...because I’ve been looking for you for over fifteen years."
Daisy didn't flinch, but her pupils dilated slightly. She remained silent, allowing Emily to speak.
Allowing silence to stretch and for Emily to fill it.
"My father... was a diplomat, as was my mother," Emily explained, the words tasting like ash in her mouth as she dragged her family's shameful secrets into the light. "He had an affair years ago…or rather a one night stand as he told it. A woman named Jiaying.” Daisy didn't startle but her hands tightened around her mug at the sound of the name. “It probably wasn’t the only affair he had, but... Jiaying had a baby girl. You."
Daisy’s breath hitched, a faint, barely perceptible twitch of her jaw revealing the sudden strike of the blow.
"Jiaying had a fiancé who she had quarreled with the night she met my father. They apparently made up and he agreed to raise the child. Jiaying was obsessed with bloodlines and felt my father deserved to know he was having a child but my father…he was uninterested. He was quite happy to let Jiaying and Cal raise you…at least he was until they disappeared and there you were alone and suddenly, legally at least, his responsibility.”
Emily slugged a gulp from her coffee. Breathing quickly as she tried to assess her sister, to assess if she believed her even as she sat as still as a statue, not even blinking.
Emily rushed on, ripping the plaster off this emotional wound as she revealed the truth. “To protect his political career, his reputation, and his marriage, my father quietly had you placed into the New York foster system under the name Mary Sue Poots," Emily’s eyes glistened with unshed tears of shame which she refused to let fall. Daisy lived it, Emily could recount it.
"He covered it up. Cover you up. He wiped the records he could, paid off who he had to, and pretended you didn't exist. I didn't find out about you until I was older, during a drunken argument between my parents."
Emily swallowed hard, reaching out a hand slightly across the table, though she didn't dare touch Daisy.
"The moment I found out, I started searching. But by the time I had the resources to track down the paper trail, you were already fifteen. I tracked your records to the Stanikis..." Emily’s voice cracked. "And then the Stanikis were busted for their part in a child trafficking ring and accessory to murder. The local police told me you had vanished. They said... they said you were likely sold, or buried in a ditch somewhere."
Emily clutched her fingers into fists, as though her body instinctively was readying itself for violence even at the mention of the Stanikis.
"I thought you were dead," Emily whispered. "It broke my heart. It’s the reason I became an FBI agent, Daisy. To fight for kids like you who fell through the cracks. I had Garcia upload my DNA into the system years ago as a familial reference, praying for closure. I thought... I thought if a match ever came up, it would be identifying a Jane Doe body in a cold case file…Or, or a victim in a trafficking raid."
Emily looked at Daisy with absolute, raw vulnerability. "I never imagined... I never dared to hope that you were alive. That you were somewhat whole."
Daisy snorted involuntarily at the idea of being whole. She sat completely still, processing the avalanche of information.
Inside her mind, pieces of her tangled, chaotic past began locking into place with terrifying clarity. A picture she had thought she knew well shifted and a new clearer image became apparent.
Jiaying.
Her mother.
Daisy knew Jiaying hadn't just vanished, she had been taken, ripped apart by Hydra butchers.
And Cal...
Cal, Daisy thought, her chest aching with a sudden, suffocating wave of grief.
Cal had loved her so much.
He had been driven insane by grief and dark science, torn apart by his desperate search for his wife and baby, but he had loved Daisy with every fractured piece of his heart.
Now, listening to Emily, Daisy realized the horrifying truth: Cal hadn't just lost his family to monsters, he had been unable to find his infant daughter in the care system because a high-ranking American diplomat had deliberately buried the paper trail with SHIELD aid to hide his own political scandal.
"Jiaying didn't just disappear," Daisy said quietly, her voice cold and distant as she carefully guarded S.H.I.E.L.D.'s classified history. On the fly she tried to explain without revealing the truth, and without lying outright to this…sister(?)
"She was taken. By... foreign actors."
Emily blinked, listening intently.
"And Cal..." Daisy’s voice softened, a rare, profound warmth touching her words before hardening again. "Cal loved me. He was broken, he was damaged, but he searched for my mother, tried to track her down until it destroyed him. He lost track of me in the system during his search for my mom…it, it never really made sense, but…but if someone made sure I was invisible…."
Daisy looked at Emily, her dark eyes flashing with a mix of anger and profound disbelief. "Your father didn't just abandon a mistake, Agent Prentiss. He made sure a grieving father couldn't find his child. He abandoned me to hell."
"I know," Emily said, her head bowing under the weight of the condemnation. "I know, Daisy. I hate him for it. I have spent my entire life despising the cowardice of my family."
Daisy stared at the woman sitting across from her.
Her internal alarm bells, sharpened by years of dealing with Hydra infiltrators, alien shape-shifters, and manipulative government agencies, were screaming at her to be cautious. Is this a trap? Is this a psychological play by a rival agency? A ploy to compromise me?
She searched Emily’s face with uncompromising scrutiny. She looked at the dark, sorrowful eyes, the high cheekbones, the faint cupid's bow of her lips, features that mirrored her own reflection in the mirror.
More than that, Daisy saw the raw, unscripted grief in Emily’s posture. This wasn't a handler trying to turn an asset.
This wasn't Hydra.
At least she doesn’t think it is.
Daisy looked at Emily and she saw a woman who had carried the ghost of a lost little sister for fifteen years.
Daisy leaned back against the booth, rubbing her temples as a massive headache began to form behind her eyes.
A sister. She had another sister.
A mundane sister.
A sister who by the sounds of her parents, by her dress and speech seems the embodiment of a WASPY.
A sister though who had become an FBI agent. Who had joined law enforcement just to find her ghost.
"I don't... I don't know what to do with this," Daisy admitted in a rare show of vulnerability. Her usual guarded composure slipping for a single, vulnerable second.
"I’ve spent my whole life being alone, Agent Prentiss…Emily. I found my real parents…or at least my real mom and the man who wanted to be my dad… and it almost destroyed me. I have a family now, sort of, people I work with, people who would take a bullet for me. I’m not... I’m not looking for a family. I …I don’t have the best experience with family at all so…so I’m not sure what you expect here…what I could give…what I want to give…"
"I’m not asking you to be my family, Daisy," Emily said quickly, her tone earnest and gentle. "I don't expect you to drop your life, or forgive my father, or pretend we’re sisters who grew up together. You don't owe me anything. I just... I just needed to know you were alive. I needed to see that you survived."
Daisy looked down at her hands, then back up at Emily.
"I need time," Daisy said plainly. "I have... an assignment that all of this interrupted” Daisy admitted in a small show of trust as she waved her hand. The word assignment giving a profiler like her sister yet more to work with. “I have a flight in a few hours, and a lot of things I need to process."
Daisy slid out of the booth, standing up smoothly. She adjusted her jacket, her posture returning to that of the sharp, invincible S.H.I.E.L.D. operative, all vulnerability compartmentalised and wiped clean from her face.
Emily scrambled out of her seat, a wave of panic crashing over her as she saw her sister preparing to walk away.
"Daisy, wait," Emily begged, stepping closer, though she kept a respectful distance. "Please. Give me a phone number. A burner phone, an email, anything. Just... let me know how to reach you."
Daisy was already striding for the door but she paused near the diner's exit. She turned back to look at Emily, conflict in her eyes for a brief moment.
The rain outside tapped rhythmically against the glass behind Daisy's dark silhouette. She looked at Emily Prentiss, the FBI agent, the diplomat's daughter, her supposed sister, the woman who had carried her memory through the dark for half her life.
"No numbers, Emily," Daisy said softly, using her name for the first time. A faint, sad, but genuine smile touched the corner of Daisy’s lips. "If I give you a number, your friend Garcia will try fruitlessly to track it in five minutes, and I can’t guarantee I will be contactable for the next little while anyway."
Emily let out a watery, self-deprecating laugh, unable to deny the truth of Garcia but feeling sudden fear that her sister would disappear.
"I need time to figure this out," Daisy repeated, her voice steady and warm despite the distance growing physically and emotionally between them. "I know how to find you. You’re a very public federal agent."
Daisy reached for the chrome handle of the diner door. She looked back over her shoulder one last time.
"I'll find you, Emily," she commented instead of a goodbye. It could have been a threat or a promise.
Before Emily could speak, the diner door opened with a soft chime. Daisy stepped out into the mist, her dark jacket blending seamlessly into the Virginia night.
Emily stood alone near the back booth, watching through the rain-streaked window as the shadow of her sister vanished down the street, disappearing into the dark as silently as a ghost.
Like a ghost she was gone again from Emily’s life.
Emily sank back into the booth, her chest heaving with a heavy, ragged sigh. Her eyes burned with tears, but as she looked down at the abandoned coffee mugs, a quiet, fragile sense of peace settled in her chest for the first time in fifteen years.
Mary Sue Poots was gone.
But Daisy was alive…strong, dangerous, and free. And for the first time in her life, Emily Prentiss had some certainty about her sister’s fate. It was more than she had just eight hours ago.
Six Months Later:
The night air at the FBI Headquarters was crisp, carrying the sharp scent of damp pine and exhaust fumes.
Daisy stood slouched against the dark side of an SUV parked in the shadows at the edge of the lot, her hood pulled up slightly, watching the illuminated glass entrance of the building.
Sister.
The word still tasted bizarre on her tongue. It was a concept Daisy had stopped hoping for a long time ago and then which she had only sort of gotten used to with time traveled salvation Kora when they had traveled space together. Even then, there was baggage with Kora and she was anything but ‘normal’ just like Daisy.
Over the past months, between missions, space travel and trying to get her head around the idea of Emily, of rejigging her whole childhood narrative to include a shadowy sister trying to find her as she herself tried to find out who she was, Daisy hadn't taken Emily at her word for who she was.
Daisy didn't do blind trust…not anymore. She had been burned far too often.
First, she had gone straight to Jemma Simmons in Scotland, who had run, re-run, and triple checked the DNA sequencing on the Zephyr’s lab equipment.
The match was undeniable.
Then Daisy had personally hacked the FBI’s network to scrub any residual traces of her holding and her DNA, but she hadn't stopped there. She had taken a short, silent trip back to New York, slipping into the dusty basements of social services and the old convent orphanage. She had pinched every single paper file, folder, and hardcopy record tied to "Mary Sue Poots" and reduced them to ash in a metal trash can.
That cursed name was officially gone from the physical world and the digital world… well, mostly, she would need to get hold of Emily’s copies and research too, but breaking into her sister’s home to do that seemed…rude? She would try asking first. A nice ice breaker for sisterly bonding.
Daisy hadn’t been content just with DNA and Jemma’s conclusions. She needed to understand, to know more about the situation, to know more about Emily to rule out some convoluted plot by Hydra of the government.
Using S.H.I.E.L.D. 's high-clearance assets and her own unmatched hacking skills, Daisy had ripped through the Prentiss family tree. Their biological father was a slimy, grasping political asshole whom Daisy wanted absolute zero to do with. Emily’s diplomat mother was even worse somehow, a cold, calculating socialite turned diplomat who viewed children as status accessories.
But Emily herself was a revelation.
Daisy had cracked open Emily’s classified Interpol files, scanning through blacked out reports and heavily redacted operational summaries.
Emily was a former spy too.
A phantom who had operated in the high-stakes, gray-morality world of international intelligence long before she ever put on an FBI badge.
There was an immediate, unmistakable kinship in that discovery.
Daisy saw the profile of a woman who had survived a cold, neglected home life, materially wealthy but emotionally barren, and had forged herself into someone entirely different from her parents.
More humbling, however, was the digital breadcrumb trail Daisy found while digging into Emily’s personal files.
For over fifteen years, embedded deep within private databases and personal inquiry logs, was a continuous, quiet search. While Daisy had been an unwanted foster kid and then a homeless, cyber terrorist, struggling teenager trying to figure out who she was, this woman…this sister…she had been tirelessly searching for her.
It almost felt too good to be true.
Daisy’s history with "family" was a graveyard of good intentions.
Her biological mother, Jiaying, had tried to use her as a weapon.
Her first father, Cal, had been a tragic, monster-driven heartbreak.
Her sister, Kora, had tried to kill her, and even now their relationship was complicated.
Even her found family on Coulson’s team had left deep scars.
She loved them, but she had been forced to step away when their care became conditional, when the mission and SHIELD always came before her well-being.
Going solo in space and keeping Mack and the rest of the team at a distance had been tough at first, but it had yielded a far healthier, safer work-life balance.
Still, Daisy needed to be sure Emily wasn't an elaborate trap.
She had thoroughly researched and profiled the Behavioral Analysis Unit with further hacking and SHIELD resources.
It didn't take long to realize the team wasn't a threat, if anything, the BAU was almost as much of a trauma bucket as Daisy’s old S.H.I.E.L.D. crew. They were a tight-knit family who spent their lives staring into the abyss, into the darkest versions of human cruelty.
Daisy could almost forgive them for treating her like shit and profiling her as a murderer during their first meeting. When you spend every day hunting real-world monsters, the evil eventually clings to you, and you start seeing monsters in every shadow.
The glass doors of the FBI facility hissed open.
Daisy pushed herself off the SUV, her eyes locking onto the group exiting the building.
They moved together like a family. Aaron Hotchner and David Rossi walked side by side, looking stern and carrying the weight of the bureau on their shoulders. Spencer Reid was blushing furiously at something Derek Morgan and Penelope Garcia were saying, while Morgan chuckled and clapped him on the shoulder. Emily was tossing out a dry, sarcastic quip over her shoulder, causing JJ to smile and roll her eyes in amused resignation.
Daisy stepped out of the deep shadows and directly into the harsh, white glare of the parking lot and foyer floodlights.
She kept her hands held wide, her palms open and completely clear. Between two fingers of her right hand, she held up her official, silver S.H.I.E.L.D. badge, letting it glint brightly in the spotlights.
The BAU stopped as one unified unit.
Morgan’s hand dropped instantly toward his holstered sidearm with remarkably quick reaction time, his body tensing for a fight. But Hotch’s arm shot out equally as quickly, his palm slapping firmly against Morgan’s chest to stay him.
Emily took a subconscious, frantic step forward, her breath hitching as the word “Daisy,” slipped through her lips in shock and restrained delight.
Every pair of eyes on the team darted from Daisy’s face to the gleaming badge held between her fingers.
Daisy didn't give them a single second to fall back into standard federal protocol. She bulldozed right through the silence, offering a crooked, familiar smirk.
"Figured we should continue our conversation, sis," Daisy called out, wiggling her fingers so the badge caught the light again. "But I reckon this badge should maybe help ease everyone's stress about you walking off into the night alone with me."
Rossi stared at her for a long second before stepping forward. He walked up to Daisy, his posture cautious, and deliberately plucked the badge from her fingers. He held it up to the light, turning it over to inspect the weight, the leather, and the heavy metal crest.
"It looks real, but is very new" Rossi reflected softly, a ghost of an impressed smirk touching his lips.
Daisy snorted irreverently, “Yeah it’s new. My last one got blown up…but it's still mine. Totally legit. Scouts honour!” She chirped as she sarcastically gave a scout salute.
Rossi turned and passed the badge directly to Garcia. "Penelope. Run it."
Garcia pulled out her high-end smartphone, taking a rapid, high-resolution photo of the crest, ID card and inlaid chip before her fingers turned into a blur as she typed on her screen.
Daisy winced, shaking her head. "Oh, that is going to raise so many automated red flags at HQ."
A long, tense thirty, then sixty seconds stretched over the parking lot. The profilers watched Daisy, while Daisy calmly folded her arms, entirely unbothered by the tactical eyes trained on her.
Suddenly, Garcia’s phone emitted a loud, high-pitched chime, and the tech analyst let out an audible squeak.
"It's real, my lovelies!" Garcia gasped, her eyes wide as saucers as she stared at her screen and then as Daisy. "At least... as far as my legal means can find. And my less-than-legal ones just ran face-first into some hardcore, military-grade firewalls that I’d need a mainframe and three days to even peek at!"
Daisy snorted, tossing Garcia a knowing grin. "Even at your best, you wouldn't be getting into those files, Black Queen."
Garcia squeaked again, her jaw dropping at the mention of her old hacker handle, before quickly thrusting the badge back toward Daisy like it was radioactive. Her eyes bouncing between Emily and Daisy as she throttled the desire to squeal and hug the sisters. Oh gosh, Emily had a kick ass spy sister! Totally cool in Garcia’s opinion.
Daisy tucked the badge neatly into her jacket pocket and turned her dark, guarded eyes back onto Emily.
The distance between them suddenly didn't feel like an ocean anymore.
It felt like a brand new, slightly fragile bridge.
"So..." Daisy hummed, her tone softening, and a real, unarmored smile breaking across her face. "Want to try that coffee thing again?"
Emily stood frozen for a beat, her chest swelling with a wave of relief so intense it threatened to knock her off balance.
She looked at her sister, not a victim, not a ghost, but apparently a badass Agent of SHIELD, standing under the Virginia lights, offering an olive branch.
Emily stepped forward, a restrained but no less genuine, radiant smile lighting up her face.
"I'd love to," Emily whispered seriously.
It wasn't a complete fix, and it wouldn't erase fifteen years of ghosts.
But as the two sisters walked side by side toward the edge of the lot, leaving the profilers behind in silent awe, both of them knew:
It was a beginning.
The End.