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Daisy opens her eyes.
She is lying on the ground in the center aisle of a church. Lying on her back in the aisle between the pews. The untouchably high ceiling looming above her. A larger than life cross glaring down at her. The burning smell of incense piercing her nostrils. The rhythmic chiming of bells.
She stands up. Walks forwards, towards the cross.
How did she get here?
There is a figure up there already. He turns and smiles, open mouthed, his eyes beaming, his posture somehow glowing. Daisy blinks. He is standing in front of a painting of an angel. It’s wings protruding from his back.
“Trip? I, you. You’re…Where am I?”
Trip looks at her softly. “The better question, Skye, is where are you going?”
Daisy shakes her head. “I, is this the Framework? Are you some kind of LMD?”
There is a voice behind her. A familiar voice. Her voice. Daisy turns.
“You know who I am.”
“No.” Daisy shakes her head at herself. No. “This isn’t real. This, I’m dreaming.”
The girl, the woman, the thing wearing her body, smirks. “Well spotted. Thought getting older was supposed to make you smarter.”
“So you’re Skye, then,” Daisy tries, looking at the younger version of what is unmistakably herself.
Skye shrugs. “Sure, if calling me by a different name makes it easier for you.”
“It really, really does.”
Trips turns suddenly, urgently, and starts to run.
“Hey!” Daisy shouts at him. “Wait!” She runs after him. They go down. Down to a basement. Down into the darkness. Into a temple.
Daisy starts to follow him, but an arm reaches out and stops her. Skye. Massive stone walls move into place. Locking them both outside, and Trip in.
“No!” Daisy shouts. Not again.
The room is shaking. The walls start to cave in on them.
“What did you do!” Daisy shouts at Skye.
“Destiny,” she says, bitterly.
The building collapses and Daisy falls to her knees. She looks up at Skye.
“This was your fault.”
Skye looks back, cooly, and says nothing. A piece of the ceiling falls. Hits Daisy on the head. And then nothing. Just darkness.
Daisy opens her eyes.
She is in a Quinjet. Standing above her position on the ground, staring down at her, is her, Skye. She has bangs. She is wearing the clothes she wore when she first went to Afterlife.
“So, Trip was first. Are you ready for whose next.”
Daisy stands. Glares at Skye. “What are you talking about?”
But then Daisy sees. Another cross. Small this time. Small enough to hold in her hand. Floating. Floating.
Skye walks off the Quinjet and leans back against the wall and waits. Waits. For what? For…
Lincoln.
No.
“Lincoln! No! Stop!”
Daisy doesn’t let Skye stop her this time. She doesn’t let Lincoln stop her. She is still inside the Quinjet when the door closes. She tries to push him out with her quakes. But. The power won’t come. Nothing.
No.
They take off together. No Hive in sight. Just the two of them. Maybe they could just stay here.
Lincoln turns and looks at her. “Daisy. This isn’t right. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Suddenly a beeping starts.
Daisy stares at Lincoln. Stares and stares and stares. And then the beeping stops. And there is a rush of fire.
Daisy opens her eyes.
She is in the Lighthouse. Across from her is Coulson.
“Daisy?”
“Coulson?” Daisy is confused. He looks terrified, and she doesn’t understand.
“Daisy, I need you to put down the knife.”
Daisy looks down. She is holding a knife. Holding it over her own arm. And then suddenly, she is not. Suddenly, Skye is there, and she is holding the knife. And then the knife is inside Coulson’s back. His eyes go wide. Daisy’s do too. He coughs and then collapses, eye’s shut.
“What did you do!” Daisy shouts at Skye.
She shrugs. “I was just speeding it along. He was going to die anyway, trying to save you from yourself. Like the others. No point in dragging it out.”
Daisy shoots out a wave of powers and shoves Skye into the wall, pinning her there.
Skye glares at her. “Go on, do it then,” she goads. “Do it! I deserve it. You deserve it. I’m the part of you that does. We both know you want to. We both know you’ve always wanted to.”
Daisy stares into Skye’s eyes. Her eyes. So full of loathing and anger and hatred. Coulson’s body on the ground behind them. And she can’t stand it. Not for another second. She can’t stand here inside this skin and exist with this much hatred in her veins, in her heart, pumping through her like poison.
She drops Skye abruptly. Then she punches her. They topple to the ground, Daisy on top, raising her fist and striking her again and again.
“Quake, a big hero.” Skye spits blood out of her mouth. “That’s what you are, right? What we are. Or maybe I’m Skye, helpless, useless. Or Mary. Trouble. Screw up. Unwanted. Broken.”
“Shut up,” Daisy snaps. She reaches out again, and starts to choke Skye. She hates her. She swears. She has never hated anyone more than she hates this girl underneath her. With Coulson’s blood all over her hands. And she wants nothing more than to erase her from existence. To take back everything she ever did and said and everything that ever brought her here.
It was her fault. Her fault. Her fault. All her fault.
Skye pulls out a knife. Always the survivor, Daisy thinks bitterly. There is a sharp pain in her stomach. She ignores it. Continues choking Skye even as her own vision starts to fade away. Skye goes still. Daisy falls on top of her.
She coughs out blood and drags her body off of Skye and over to the wall, leaning against it. She looks back down at Skye. She can’t fix this. She can’t undo it. She can’t take it back. So she pays for it. Daisy closes her eyes. Darkness pressing in around her. No one was coming to save her this time.
Daisy opens her eyes.
She is inside the Zephyr. Standing next to Daniel. Daisy looks around. Finds Skye. “No, not him,” Daisy shakes her head, demanding. Begging. Pleading. “Not him.”
“Why not? Everyone else dies. What makes him so special?”
“Not him. Please.”
He starts to choke, coughing up blood.
“No, no Daniel!”
He sinks to the floor. Daisy collapses next to him, his head cradled in her hand.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “You’re gonna be alright. This will restart, and you’ll be fine.”
Daisy’s eyes go cloudy with tears. Daniel’s body goes still.
Daisy freezes. The room starts shaking. She stands up. Turns to Skye. She pulls her gun from her hip. She doesn’t know or care when it got there. She points it at Skye.
“Haven’t you figured it out!” Skye snaps. “There’s no way to kill me, without killing yourself!”
“Maybe that’s the idea.” Daisy pulls the trigger.
Daisy sighs, eyes squeezed shut. Please. Please let it be over now. She opens her eyes.
And she sees. Bodies. Lined up. Dead. Trip, Lincoln, Coulson, Enoch, Daniel, May, Mack, Elena, Jemma, Fitz, Alya. They were all dead. Daisy’s heart stutters. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.
Skye is crouched by the bodies, tears streaming down her face. She stands abruptly when she spots Daisy. Her face going cold.
Daisy sighs at her. “How many times do I have to kill you for it to stick?”
“You would kill me? Again?” Skye gestures wildly. “Look around. It didn’t do anything. It didn’t stop anything. They all died anyway.” Her voice cracks. “They all die,” she whispers. “And you would kill me anyway?”
Daisy has no patience for this. She is tired. She is done. She snaps, “You’re not real! I want to wake up!”
Skye flickers, and then, in a blink, where the twenty five year old was glaring at her, now there is only a child. A ten year old girl full of anger and helplessness and fear.
“So kill me,” the girl- Mary, the girl is unmistakably Mary- says with false bravado.
Daisy shakes her head. “Stop.”
“I’m you.”
“Don’t,” Daisy begs taking a step back.
Mary walks forward, closing in on her. “I’m you before you hurt anyone. Kill me now, and save all that future suffering.” She points behind her at all of the bodies.
“Please.”
“Do it,” Mary demands.
“I can help you,” Daisy tries, even though she knows, she knows it’s a lie.
Mary does too. She starts forward aggressively and Daisy falls back to the ground.
She shouts, “No you can’t! I’m the one person who you never help! The one person who you leave behind! The one person you-”
She cuts her off. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She is. She swears she is.
“Kill me,” Mary begs, Skye begs, Daisy begs. “Don’t let me kill them. Please. I don’t want to grow up and become that. I don’t want do that. Please. Stop me now.”
Daisy moves backwards, across the floor. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Coward,” the girl spits at her. Then she raises a gun-when did she get a gun?- and shoots herself in the head.
“NO!”
Daisy opens her eyes.
She’s in the LMD room of the Zephyr. Instead of Coulson across from her there is herself. It didn’t help anymore, calling her by a different name. It was her, every version of her. Daisy stands across from herself. They stare at each other. Daisy knows, they are both thinking the same thing right now. They are alone. Standing with the person who tried to kill them. And Daisy understands.
“I’ve been here before,” Daisy tells herself quietly.
“Really?” she responds sarcastically.
Daisy shakes her head. “I’ve done this before. I’ve done, this before.” She gestures, trying to explain.
Past her doesn’t understand. Of course she doesn’t. How could she?
“Okay…” she says slowly.
“You’re not real,” Daisy tries again. Because the girl in front of her, the girl she killed, the girl she watched kill herself, that girl may be her, but she is not that girl. Not anymore.
“Yeah, no shit.”
“No, I mean, you’re not real. I don’t have to listen to you.” Because Daisy gets it now, what she didn’t before. That thoughts are not facts and her opinions of herself have never been unbiased.
“You weren’t listening that great before.”
“I’ve done this before,” Daisy says quietly. She has been fighting, for so long fighting, and she never stoped to question why. She had to win. She had to win this fight. To defeat the monsters.
“And you want to do it again?”
“No. But I will. And again. And again.”
“Why?”
Because it’s worth it, Daisy wants to say. But she knows that she won’t believe her. So Daisy just shrugs. “I could never seem to kill you. So I guess I have to live with you. But you’re not real. So I don’t have to listen to you.”
And now she sees. Now she understands. “So that’s it?”
Daisy nods. “That’s it.” She doesn’t have to fight and win, though it went against her every instinct. The monsters in her head are not real. She can just, open her eyes and wake up.
She changes. Back. Back into a 28 year old with short hair and blood on her hands and a scar on her cheek. Back into Skye. Back into the cocky twenty five year old with nothing to lose. Back into the lost and angry sixteen year old who ran away and never stopped running. “I was just trying to survive,” she whispers.
Daisy nods. “I know,” she says, not unkindly. “And you did. But I’m trying to do more than that now. And you’re getting in my way.”
“I’ll see you again.”
“Yeah, probably,” Daisy acknowledges.
“You don’t hate me anymore,” Skye observes.
“I don’t know,” Daisy admits. She’s trying not to. “I just know I can’t carry that around anymore.” She doesn’t have space for that much hatred in her heart. So she has to let it go.
“Do you hate me?” Daisy asks.
“No. I’m…proud.” She looks a little grossed out at that, and Daisy almost wants to laugh.
Daisy takes one last look at herself. Looks with a kindness and gentleness she has never granted herself before. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“So am I.”
Daisy wakes up.
She is sitting upright in her bed. Daniel is beside her. “Daisy?” he says, all sleepy and soft and concerned. “Are you okay?”
Daisy pauses then nods. “I’m okay.”
Daniel looks at her. He says gently, “What do you need?” They have taken to asking each other this. Both too stubborn to just be able to say it. It is a question that requires an honest answer.
Daisy thinks about it. She has everything she needs right here. She takes his hand and laces their fingers together. He runs his thumb over her knuckles automatically. He is real and solid and alive. So is she.
Daisy shifts and they move so that they are leaning against the headrest. Her pressed against him. “Just stay,” she whispers. “Stay here with me. Be there when I fall asleep. Be there when I wake up.”
“Always.”