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The first name she ever knew for herself was Mary Sue Poots.
The nuns at St. Agnes gave her that name since there was no name tagged with her when she was dropped off at the orphanage. That was the best they could come up with? Mary itself wasn’t terrible, but the name all together just allowed for the other kids to make fun of her.
“Mary Sue, you’re not special.”
“Aw, is Mary crying again?”
“What kind of terrible do you have to be to be named Mary Sue Poots?”
Those words continued to run wild in her mind even as an adult. The name had been tainted since the moment it was given to her. It wasn’t just the kids, unfortunately. Even adults had put shame on her name. Sometimes, that felt worse.
“Mary Sue, you can’t just keep doing this.”
“You just weren’t a good fit, Mary.”
“Mary Sue Poots has got the devil in her.”
All little Mary wanted was for someone to love her. Why didn’t any of the families that took her in want to keep her? She tried. She really did. No matter what she did, it was just back to St. Agnes. It almost felt like there was some other force at play that was keeping her from getting adopted and loved.
Sure, some homes really did suck. However, there were few homes where it almost felt like it was going to work. The parents were nice. The siblings were great. She actually worked well in the family unit. Why didn’t they want her in the end?
It was the same thing over and over again. And it went on for years. She hated her name. She hated it every single time she was called it. She actually had come up with a new name for herself one day when she was nine after she was returned to St. Agnes after the Brody’s. No one ever called her it though. The nuns insisted Mary Sue Poots was her God-given name. The more they pushed this on her, the more she didn’t want to believe in the God they used as a scare tactic on the kids. It didn’t take long for her to learn that Mary Sue Poots was not who she wanted to be. Mary Sue Poots was a scared and unloved kid. She didn’t want that for herself.
So when she had enough of it, she ran.
She ran from the orphanage. She ran from the system. She ran from the nuns who never showed her true care. She ran from the other kids who taunted her. She ran from her school that had failed her. She ran from the homes that were never going to be a good fit. She ran from Mary Sue Poots who would forever be a name of the past.
She was free from all that did her wrong, and the name Mary Sue Poots had dropped.
She remembers looking up at the sky one day at St. Agnes. She had just been sent back after her time with the Brody’s. She thought it was going to be a good fit. She actually liked being there. She just made the stupid mistake to call the foster mother ‘mom’, and she was packing her bags the next day.
There was something about looking up at the sky that made her feel a little better about the heartbreak. It was vast. It was unpredictable. It was calming. It was stunning. So much potential, but people didn’t really see it for what it could mean.
Much like her.
There, lying on the grass, she decided on the name Skye for herself. This name was one of the first things she had decided for herself. Every decision was made for her. At nine years old, young Skye wanted her life to be in her own hands. Many of the nuns saw this as rebellion, calling her a troubled child for not wanting to go by her so-called God given name despite the nuns themselves actually not knowing the name she was given at birth.
Skye was a cool name. A name she could actually claim for herself. Why did others want to take it away from her? It was much better than unwanted Mary Sue Poots, who was unwanted by others and herself.
Skye was a symbol of hope that maybe, someday, she would be able to reach her full potential.
At sixteen, when Skye was able to escape the foster system, she erased all records of Mary Sue Poots. The one thing she was good at during high school was computer science. She was actually very good at it. One of the only teachers that actually had faith in her even mentioned she could have a career in computer science. However, she never finished high school, and decided that she wanted more than what life seemed to provide for her.
She would find where she came from.
She introduced herself to others as Skye. Other hackers she met across the world knew her as Skye. Miles, the first relationship that truly meant something to her, loved her as Skye. Or so she thought as their morals seemed to be on different sides of the spectrum.
When Phil Coulson found her in her van, kidnapped really, she introduced herself as Skye. However, when Ward demanded she tell them her real name, she fell silent. The truth was… she didn’t know her real name.
Oh, how she still so desperately wanted to know her real name.
That’s why she allowed herself to get captured by SHIELD. The redacted file on her entry into the orphanage was being kept hidden by this said organization. She was going to discover who she really was.
Whatever the circumstance, she appreciated people finally calling her the name she had chosen for herself. Coulson, Ward, May, Fitz, and Jemma all never told her to call herself a name she hated. The embraced her and accepted her for who she was and who she wanted to become.
Unfortunately, after Ward’s betrayal and Trip’s death, the name Skye almost felt tainted as well. It was the name Ward used when manipulating her and threatening her. It was the name Trip called out before the terrigen had cocooned her and turned Trip to stone.
Behind all her charisma and smarts, Skye was still a very lost individual. She carried the burden of her past with her. Skye had no place in the world. Skye felt like she was running when she didn’t want to anymore. It wasn’t who she wanted to be. Skye turned out to be more of a placeholder name. A name to use until she found her real name. Skye may be the name she formed for herself, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to know more about herself. For her entire life, she didn’t have an identity to call her own. She still longed for that family. There just had to be something.
There just had to be more to her identity in this world.
“I will always love you, Daisy.”
Her lungs constricted when she heard Cal, her father, speak that name to her for the very first time. That was it. Her real name. The name that was always intended for her.
The name also came with abilities. It came with the power to shake the Earth with ease straight from her fingertips. It was frightening. How was this supposed to be who she was? She didn’t want this. This wasn’t her choice.
And then she met her.
She met her mother, who embraced her. She embraced her powers. She taught her how to embrace herself. She taught her things she didn’t know before. She was half Chinese and born China. She was loved by her parents for nearly ten months while living in the Chinese village that she learned almost a year ago that had been destroyed. She was inhuman. She was from a line of people that had a vast history and had the potential to become something extraordinary.
Her name was Daisy Johnson.
Even when everything went downhill fast, it was the name that her parents, the universe, had intended for her. Daisy Johnson had history. Daisy Johnson had an identity. Daisy Johnson had heritage.
Skye fell as the husk from her transformation broke away, and Daisy Johnson was born again in her body. She was no longer lost. She knew who she wanted to be. No one would be able to take the name away from her. It was hers, and it would always be.
Daisy Johnson would lead. She would help the people like her just as her mother had. Despite what became of her mother, Daisy knew that she was right to keep inhumans safe. These were her people. These people shared their heritage with her.
She finally had belonged somewhere.
Why? Why did the press have to come up with that stupid name?
Quake was another name given to her against her wishes. After Hive, how could she go back to how she was before? Hive took so much away from her. He took her autonomy. He took her agency. He took her free will. He took everything from her. Quake was put onto her in the aftermath.
She didn’t want to be a vigilante, but people were out to irradicate the people she found an identity in. They wanted to get rid of people like her. She couldn’t just sit and watch it all happen in front of her. She had the chance to do something about it, and that’s just what she did. Thus, Quake was born.
It wasn’t long before the name wasn’t the name of a vigilante, but a hero. Daisy wasn’t sure she wanted that either. She didn’t want to be a hero. She was just doing what she felt was the right thing to do. It was never her intention to be a superhero like the Avengers. That was not the attention she wanted for herself. She didn’t know how she felt about all these people looking up to her like she was some sort of idol to be praised. She felt like she didn’t deserve it. Why would little girls want to be just like her?
Quake was an annoyance she figured she would just have to deal with. Though, that special someone she found love in joking and teasing her about the silly name made it a little more bearable.
It always seemed like she had more unwanted names than names she chose for herself. Titles and monikers never were her thing. She learned to just ignore them and focus on what she wanted for herself, but there was a curse of a name that would not leave her alone.
The Destroyer of Worlds is what they called her. Someway, somehow, she had the power to cause an earthquake that tore the Earth apart. She was defined by an event that she had yet to do. But she couldn’t possibly achieve that, could she? Her powers her not that powerful.
The name even stuck with her team as they feared she would tear it apart. Why couldn’t they understand that this was not something she wanted to do. She never wanted to hurt people. Despite not wanting the hero title, she still wanted to save people.
She wanted to save Coulson. She didn’t want him to die. Unfortunately, her desperation to keep the closest she had to a father figure alive was seen as emotional and not fit to be in charge. There it was again. She was not a good fit.
Destroyer of Worlds expressed everything she was incapable of. She apparently was incapable of control. She was apparently incapable of keeping emotions in check. She was incapable of her own power. The name is what others used to define her. She was done letting people put her into a box. She was done letting other people define who she was meant to be.
She would show them that she was stronger than they knew.
She had met the Kasius of their time. She was the Destroyer of Worlds. She was the destroyer of the worlds people created for her. She would create her own world, her own life, where she was the one to define who she was. Now, the Destroyer fo Worlds was an expression of her own power and glory.
The name was no longer a name for others to throw onto her. The name was now hers to claim for herself. She had the power to break through the barriers others built for her.
The name was her own.
Daisy looked at the mirror teary-eyed as she pressed her white dress down and adjusted her veil so it laid nicely against her curled hair. It was her wedding day. Little Mary Sue Poots would have never imagined this day coming to fruition, but here she was about to marry the love of her life.
Jemma, Bobbi, Elena, Kora, and Piper all came to her, telling her to not mess up her makeup, but she knew they were also telling her not to cry because if she did, they would all be crying with her. One of the guys came in, telling the girls it was almost time.
They all made their way over to the venue, lining up just as they had rehearsed. Coulson was officiating. He gave Daisy one last hug, telling her just how proud he was of her, before going up to the front before the ceremony started.
Daisy took breaths, trying to calm the racing heart in her chest. “Nervous?” May asked as she approached her. May held her arm out, ready for Daisy to take it. Because Coulson was officiating, and there was no other person Daisy would want to wed her and Daniel Sousa, May was the one to be handing her off.
Daisy wrapped her arm around May’s. “Am I that obvious?” she teased.
May chuckled. Even if she wasn’t an empath, May would tell that behind all the apprehensiveness and worry was a girl about to embark on the happiest day of her life that would be the start of a brand new journey. “Well then, are you ready Mrs. Sousa?”
“Mrs. Johnson-Sousa,” Daisy corrected her. “We’re hyphenating our last names. We’ll be Mr. and Mrs. Johnson-Sousa.”
When Daniel first proposed, Daisy figured she would become Daisy Sousa. Daniel then approached her one day, saying that he had actually wanted to take her name. He had no problem becoming Daniel Johnson. Daisy was confused until Daniel said his reasoning.
Over the three years between their meeting and their wedding, Daniel had learned so much of Daisy’s past. He knew what trials and tribulations she had gone through just to find her own name. Daisy Johnson was a name she had claimed for herself after self-discovery. That was not something he was about to take from her. Who was he to take something she had searched for so long for from her?
However, Daisy still wanted Daniel to have something of his own. She wanted to share something of his too. That’s when the compromise of hyphenating their last names. They would share something of hers and something of his; though, Daniel made it a point that her last name would go first.
May smiled at hearing the hyphenated name. Daisy had really grown since she was Skye, the young hacker that Coulson had pulled from a van in an alley. She was her own person that was now given the chance to make choices for herself and be who she was supposed to be. She got to choose who she wanted to be.
Daisy had through so many names. Ones she chose for herself and ones that her forced upon her. She finally got to claim how those names represented her.