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Daisy Johnson has been through too much in her life.
She tried to repress the memories of the bad foster homes. The abuse and neglect stuck with her. She remembers a particular foster home she stayed at when she was seven. Her foster dad had an alcohol problem mixed with anger issues, and her foster mom did nothing to stop him. She remembered forgetting to do her chores one night. Her foster dad wasn’t having any of it. So he beat her. He hit her. He threw her. He hurt her in no way a parent should touch a child.
She was lucky that a neighbor had been walking by, heard screaming from the house, and called the police. She thought she was going to die. The pain was unbearable. At seven years old, she thought she was done for the moment her head hit one of the stairs as she was being thrown and blacked out. She woke up in the hospital to the sad face of Sister McKenna. She was going back to St. Agnes. She couldn’t believe that she was alive. She thought for sure that was going to be her end.
But she survived.
She never thought she could have a foster home worse than that. The universe proved her wrong when she sixteen. No one wanted to adopt a teenager. She apparently was unruly and a troubled kid. Maybe if they actually gave her the time of day, she would turn out a lot better instead of just belittling her every second of her life. This home, however, she got a little too much attention.
Her foster brother. She shivered every single time she even thought of his name. He was nineteen and attending community college while she was in her junior year of high school. He was her foster parents’ everything. He could do no wrong in their eyes. He was nice to her at first, which she was thankful for given her track record, but he soon turned on her as well.
He took advantage of her in ways she didn’t think possible. He took what he needed from her, and he degraded her for the actions despite him threatening her life if she didn’t comply to him. He took her autonomy. He took any dignity she had for herself. Any hope she had for herself had been striped away.
She felt used. She felt disgusted. How could she have let this happened? She couldn’t help but feel like it was her fault. She should have done something to stop it. She could not find the courage to live with herself with everything he did to her. The pain consumed her. She needed it to stop. She wanted it to end.
She sat in the bathroom, the door locking her end. She had the bottle of pills in her hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to open it. She was a coward. Or at least that’s what it felt like. She was running away from this problem, but if she just letting it happen, she felt even more like a coward. Her inner turmoil drove her mad. At the end of the day, she realized she wasn’t so much scared of death itself, but she feared dying. She didn’t want to die. She realized how much more of her life she had. She made the plan that night. She would run away from the foster home. She would run away from the foster system. She still had time to make something of her life.
She chose to survive.
She eventually found something worth living for. Their names were Phil Coulson, Melinda May, Jemma Simmons, Leopold Fitz, and Grant Ward. For the first time in her life, she actually felt like she belonged. Sure, she made mistakes along the way, but they showed her that she deserved forgiveness and happiness just like everyone else. She laughed. She cried. These people embraced her instead of turned away like so many people had done before. SHIELD had been looking out for her. SHIELD gave her a family.
They were the only people she thought about when Ian Quinn had put two bullets into her gut. They had to be coming for her. They had to be. The pain clouded her thoughts as she cried out for help. No heard her, and no one came. She slipped into unconsciousness, hoping to wake up to her team members looking out for her. However, she feared she would never wake up again.
But she did. Her eyes opened almost three days after she had been shot. Tears brimmed in her eyes, not because of the pain though it still felt like something tore through her body, but because they came for her. They cared about her enough to come and rescue her and even risk their own lives to find some impossible drug to save her. She hadn’t died because people actually loved and cared about her. And she loved them too.
Thanks to them, she had survived.
But as it turned out, maybe her love wasn’t enough. Ward was Hydra. He had been playing them this whole time. The man she thought she could possibly fall in love with was the enemy. She hated him now. She hated him with every fiber of her being. He manipulated her. He took advantage of her. He threatened her. She thought he was different. She thought they understood each other. Clearly, she was wrong. The team still stuck together through this betrayal. Despite all odds, they did it. They had won.
They had survived.
Building up SHIELD was more difficult than expected, but she had no doubt they would be able to do it. She wanted to protect the world. She wanted to protect people who were like her who didn’t have the means to look out for themselves. She would advocate for them.
How the hell did her lunatic father get in the mix of everything? He was crazy and spoke profoundly of some sort of destiny she was supposed to fulfill. She always imagined meeting her biological parents, but she never imagined the way she came into contact. All of this led to what seemed to be her destiny. The diviner had awaken power inside of her. She had the power to shake the earth from her finger tips. It scared her. She wasn’t too sure she wanted it. She wished it never happened and Trip was still alive.
But the universe chose her to survive.
Ultimately, it was fine. She learned control. She learned patients. All of this was learned form her mother. She found her mother. She found out she was loved. She found out she was wanted. Jiaying seemed to be just the mom she had been looking for for twenty-five - twenty-six years apparently. Cal didn’t seem so crazy anymore. She actually saw just how loving and caring he was towards her. The day she was taken shattered both of their hearts.
Like all good things in life, it soon came to an end. She was aware what Dr. Whitehall had done to Jiaying. She knew just what kind of torture her mother endured. She didn’t think about the consequences that came with it. Whitehall and Hydra had taken Jiaying’s humanity. She could tell that her mother really cared about her and the inhumans, she really did, but the anger that had been boiling up over the last two-and-a-half decades was bubbling up and clouding her thoughts.
She just hoped there was a way to get through to her; she was her daughter after all. Unfortunately, Jiaying soon saw her as another obstacle in her way of achieving her plan. All that love and devotion was gone once she placed her hands on her face and began to drain the life out of her. She drained the life out of her own daughter.
Even in her weakened state, she was still able to build up enough vibrations to send the terrigen into the ocean. She knew she had to take on Jiaying. She placed her arms on her mother, sending quakes through her body. She knew she could go stronger. Not only was she still in a very weakened state and about to lose consciousness very soon, she hesitated. Jiaying was still her mother. How could she live with killing her own mom?
Luckily, that burden soon fell onto Cal. She didn’t remember too much about what happened between the moment Jiaying’s spine was snapped to when she woke up in the med bay, or what was open of it. Between Coulson’s hand being chopped off and Bobbi taking bullets in the chest, she was secluded to a smaller part of the med bay. She rubbed her eyes, feeling physically better than before. She relaxed into the pillows on the bed when Simmons came back around with another round of sedatives.
Once again, she had survived.
If there was one thing Daisy knew for sure was that Jiaying was right about inhumans in society. The real world just wasn’t ready for them just yet. Daisy saw her power as an opportunity to help her people. Maybe she could form a team of inhumans? Unfortunately, that was a lot more easier said than done. Along with having a hard time getting to inhumans before other government agencies got to them, they were still fighting Hydra because people apparently have nothing better to do than continue to be nazis in the twenty-first century.
Daisy wasn’t going to lie, Coulson was acting quite irrationally after Gideon Malick ordered Ward to kill Rosalind Price. For awhile, they were without their leader, and Mack was put in charge very much against his own wishes. They were definitely outnumbered compared to the Hydra personnel, but they had to make sure the monolith would stay opened long enough for Fitz and Coulson to return.
There was torture. There was separation. There was no way to tell exactly how everything would play out and if everyone was going to make it out alive. Daisy definitely started to have her doubts when the vibrations from the monolith caused her splitting headaches. She had passed out right into Mack’s arms.
She opened them not long later and donut she was in a containment pod with Mack, Coulson, and Fitz. They returned back to Zephyr One with the rest of their team. Daisy immediately made her way to Lincoln, kissing him passionately. What seemed to be a pretty grim night turned into a victory.
They all survived.
Soon, Daisy did have her team of inhumans. It included her, Lincoln Campbell, Joey Gutierrez, and Elena Rodriguez. They all worked well together. Really well. Little did they know their first mission together would be their very last.
Hive had escaped from Maveth with the intent to sway and mind control inhumans. He got to Malick’s body guard Giyera. He got to a former Afterlife resident named James. He got to Daisy. Daisy’s long for a family and a place to belong allowed him to easily hollow out her mind and make him her desire. What he did to her was disgusting. He made her love him for the terrible things he encouraged her to do. She hurt Fitz. She hurt Mack. She hurt the team, but she still loved Hive for it.
He wanted her blood to make more inhumans. The GH-325 formula was still very prominent in her blood. That was sure to be enough to create more right? Her face was an ashen color, barely any blood flowing through her body. Even Holden Radcliffe could see how this would only cause more harm to her. But she was more than willing to do so. She was willing to do anything for him.
Even go up against the monster that was Lash. By then, more blood was taken, and she couldn’t even see straight or make it a few steps without collapsing to the ground. She watched his hand over her chest, ready to see the end, but that’s not what happened. Suddenly, her mind felt clear. She felt like herself again. Or at least what was left of herself. Lash… Andrew had saved her. Or rather sacrificed himself. Andrew relinquished Daisy from the sway to bring her home, and now she would bring him home.
Andrew wasn’t the only life that was sacrificed. Daisy thought she knew what she was doing when she went back to Hive. At first, it was for him to take her back, her withdrawal symptoms being too much and no one bothered to show her that things were alright. She just wanted the pain to stop. She didn’t remember the line of events too well, but Lincoln was caught in an explosive. He begged Daisy not to go on the quinjet like what she saw in the vision Charles Hinton had given her.
She thought it was her destiny. However, it turned out to be Lincoln’s. Lincoln chose to steal the necklace and take Daisy’s place, which was most likely arguably his place all along. Daisy, still guilty for everything she had done under Hive’s sway, begged for him to not do it despite knowing that it was already too late.
She watched as the quinjet disappeared from the radar. Lincoln was gone. Andrew was gone. She felt like most of herself was gone as well. People made sacrifices for her. Why would they do that? The things she’s been through in her life should be her burden to carry and only hers. No one else needed to carry with them her weight. Why were people paying for her mistakes?
Why did she survive?
The sickening feeling in her core told her that she didn’t deserve to live. She should have been in the place of Andrew. She should have been in the place of Lincoln. She should have been in the place of every single person who got hurt because of her whether or not it was her intention. She cared about people too much. Maybe that was the problem. She thought that if she distanced herself, she wouldn’t feel this kind of guilt, but that didn’t take away the loneliness she felt.
Daisy hadn’t realized just how much she missed her team after six months away from them. Despite all their belittling and condemning of her actions despite her feeling like she did what was best for herself, she was glad to be back. Things definitely were not the same as they were before. Jeffery Mace was currently the director, and there was a very human-like robot named Aida roaming around.
It still somehow ended up to be the most eventful year. They fought ghosts, devils, androids, and an army of Hydra goons in a virtual reality. All were moments where Daisy actually feared for her life when not too long ago she couldn’t have cared less if she lived or died. The Framework was what Fitz explained to her and Coulson was the computer system. It was all too real though. She felt the pain. She felt the horror.
The fear that they wouldn’t be able to save the whole team ate her up, but Daisy did her best to keep her emotions in check just as May had taught her. They lost Mace along the way as he chose to sacrifice himself. However, it was the computer system of his brain that chose it. Was there a chance that the actual Jeffery Mace chose that fate?
They ultimately did make it out of the Framework in one piece. With one look, Daisy could tell they all, including her, were quite messed up over what had happened in there. There were also looks of love and admiration across the room. They made it out together. No matter what they’ve been through, they all made it out alive together.
They would survive together.
They would go through whatever future space adventure they had just been thrown into. Daisy’s heart pounded against her chest when she gained consciousness and realized she was not on Earth. Luckily, she found her team in no time and even saved their lives from a space monster.
Things only went for a terrible turn when the new guy they met ended up selling her into slavery to the Kree alien who ran the place. She really hated Deke. Kasius was his name, and she apparently cracked the Earth apart. According to the citizens of the Lighthouse, she was the Destroyer of Worlds and had the power to create such destruction.
She was to be used. She was the higher ups’ entertainment. They had taken away her agency and autonomy when they took the power inhibitor in her neck. They left before they could turn it back on. However, Daisy soon came to the realization that maybe it was for the best. She really did try to think of another reason as to why the Earth would just break, but Voss told her that she was at the center of it all.
When it was time for the team to return to their time, Daisy had wanted to stay behind, fearing for what was about to happen according to these people. This was another choice that was taken from her as Coulson iced her.
She woke up in the Lighthouse but in 2018. She survived again.
She figured she wouldn’t know what to do without the people she had grown to love like family. She also couldn’t crack the Earth apart if she didn’t have her powers. It was a weird feeling. Even though she had her powers for only a little over three years, she couldn’t remember what her body felt like prior to terrigenesis. She had grown so used to the feeling of the buzzing under her skin. Now that the feeling was gone, she felt panicked. She felt like she was having an out-of-body experience.
That was taken from her too. She was in the halls of the Lighthouse one second and the next, she was waking up tied and boiled down to a freezing cold, metal table. When her vision cleared, she saw Fitz. Daisy was terrified. He was going to remove the inhibitor risking both paralyzing her and the end of the world. How could Fitz do this to her? Why was this the only way? Maybe if he actually talked to her about it, then maybe she would have agreed upon it, but right now, all she could think about was that her friend was about to hurt her.
He talked to himself until Jemma came running in, revealing that he was having a mental break with the Doctor from the Framework. Even after the realization, Fitz still did it. He still cut into her and ripped the inhibitor from her neck as she screamed, cried, and pleaded. She wasn’t paralyzed, thankfully, but she was forever traumatized.
Fitz then had the audacity to make her put the gravitonium into the device. After it was done, the world around her became numb. She still tried to process everything that had happened. The pain was excruciating. She was never going to forgive Fitz.
For as long as she survived, this was going to follow her forever.
Coulson was dying, her powers bubbled at the surface, and Talbot was brainwashed by Hydra. Things were falling apart much quicker than she would have liked. Suddenly, she was kidnapped by Kasius senior because Talbot had taken in all the gravitonium. Kasius said things to her, saying that she wasn’t powerful enough. It took her awhile, but she soon realized that wasn’t true. Her power was hers, and she was going to use it on her terms.
She pushed through whatever mind device they had on her, rescued May, Coulson, and Deke, and went down to try and convince Talbot to stop whatever he was doing. It was all clicking in her mind. Talbot was the one who really tore the Earth apart, but she was going to do whatever she could to turn the time tables.
She wasn’t able to get through to him. She injected herself with the Centipede serum Coulson had snuck into her gauntlets. She felt her powers rush through her body in a different way than she had ever felt. The power was almost uncontrollable, but she remembered to focus her power towards Talbot. She didn’t want to hurt him. She may have not liked him very much in the past, but he didn’t deserve to die. He deserved to return home to his wife and son just as much as everyone else.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Daisy fought and fought until finally, she won. She lied back, just before Talbot was gonna pull her into the gravitonium, and with one of the biggest quakes she ever released, sent Talbot flying through into the sky and into space.
The world seemed clouded and faint for a few minutes as she regained her bearings. The recoil of the quake had pushed her into the ground, cracks forming around her. Blood rushed through her ears as the outside world didn’t seem real. Daisy opened her eyes up to the blue sky.
She survived.
Fitz didn’t. Coulson didn’t. Moving on was easier said than done. She spent a year out in space with Jemma, much to her later dismay, in search of the second Fitz that was in a sleeping pod. A part of Daisy couldn’t help but feel jealous for Jemma. She was going to be getting her husband back while Daisy had to say goodbye to the man she loved like a father forever.
Through their ups and downs, they had found Fitz’s location. Due to circumstances, they were unable to return back to Earth with Fitz and Jemma. A part of Daisy wished she hadn’t left the two behind. She trusted them, but what met her back on Earth messed with her mind on another level.
His name was Sarge, but he had Coulson’s face. She felt like the universe was taunting her, making it impossible to really move on. Somehow, even May believed him to be Coulson somewhere deep down. Daisy wasn’t quite sure. If he had anyone else’s face, she was sure she wouldn’t be saying that.
Next thing they knew, they were in a truck moving at high speed towards a tower with an atom bomb on board. Though she never really liked Deke, she had faith that he would be able to disable it thanks to his extensive knowledge of alien tech, but when he uttered the words, “I can’t do it,” Daisy’s who world felt like it was breaking apart.
This was it. Death had looked her straight in the eye before, but this time, it seemed like death was going to win. She quickly grabbed May’s hand, intertwining their fingers together. Their were no words spoken between them, but the “I love you,” could be heard.
It all happened so fast. One moment, they were speeding towards death, and the next, Daisy had come up with an idea. She wasn’t holding back with her powers anymore. She was going to use them despite Sarge’s belittling. She launched herself towards the bomb, placing her hands on either side. She created a share of vibrations around it, keeping it steady as they crashed.
She was the reason they had survived.
They celebrated the team’s victory that night. They never could ever get a moment to rest before everything went to shit again. May supposedly shot Sarge in the head, but they soon found out it wasn’t her; it was Izel.
Izel had taken control of all of them. She was the cause of Davis’s death. Izel scared Daisy more than she would like to admit. She was a lot like Hive, using the bodies and minds of others to do their dirty work. She felt the panic in her chest, but tried to suppress it.
When Daisy saw Izel coming towards her, she braced herself, but was shocked when she felt a quick gust of wind, and suddenly, the gravitonium device Izel was after was in Elena’s hands. Izel had gotten inside of her instead.
Things were difficult. Getting through to Sarge was more vital than ever. Daisy was avoiding him, not wanting to think about Coulson, but she also knew she had to face the issue head on. She was finally able to let go of Coulson. Whether Sarge was the real thing in the end, she was ready to move on.
That was until Sarge stabbed May in the temple. Suddenly, everything felt like it was falling apart. She barely survived Coulson’s death; she didn’t know how she was going to survive May’s. Daisy tried to focus on May’s vibrations, but the disappearance of them broke her.
That was until lights flashed, and Jemma sporting a very new hairstyle came in. May was going to be okay. They all were going to be okay. Jemma was being very cryptic about things, but she ensured them all that this was all according to a plan. All Daisy knew was that they were going to be okay.
They were going to survive.
Time traveling was something Daisy never imagined happening in her life let alone twice. At least this time, they were in the past, so there was some recorded history that they were aware of. That’s where the LMD Coulson came into play. Daisy knew Coulson’s apprehensions against being turned into a robot, but Daisy pressed the button. She just wanted him back.
1931 was definitely a lot more chaotic than she thought, but 1955 ended up being way more crazier. Area 51 was apparently a SHIELD base, and she met SHIELD legend Daniel Sousa. He wasn’t quite what she imagined of him, but he was a great addition to the team. Daisy was very glad when Mack made the order to save Sousa.
It really was handy in 1976. Nathaniel Malick, the brother of Gideon Malick had seen Daisy use her powers and wanted it for himself. He kidnapped both her and Sousa. Once he spoke of Daniel Whitehall, Daisy felt the panic in her chest. She remembered what had been done to Jiaying; she didn’t want that happening to her.
The drugs Nathaniel had put into her had rendered her powerless, and she found herself strapped to a cold, metal table once again. The pain was almost too much, but there was a force that told her she needed to fight. She remembered shoving a piece of glass under the skin on her hand, but she was too delirious to really think. Daisy remembered Sousa’s voice speaking to her, telling her to fight. Daisy realized just how much she wanted to live. She fought and she fought.
She fought to survive.
The next parts were even more chaotic. Time loops, reuniting with the 1980s version of Jiaying, and rescuing a kidnapped Deke and Jemma. What Daisy was not prepared for was the ultimate split of the team. They were her family, and she felt as if she didn’t know who she was without them.
The time came for when she truly had to fight for her family. This isn’t exactly how she wanted to fight. It didn’t seem fair that she was always expected to put herself on the front line and sacrifice herself, but she was the only one capable to go hand-to-hand with Nathaniel and his stolen quake powers.
She fought Nathaniel with all her might and confidence. He may have overpowered her, but she had him outsmarted. The entire time they fought, she had been absorbing her quakes. Her quakes mixed with his caused a quake that, if it was on Earth, could have potentially cracked the world apart, but in space, it was enough to short out the systems and destroy the fleet of ships.
Daisy didn’t believe in God, but in that moment, she prayed her team reached her in time. She allowed the darkness and coldness to consume her as she waited for her team. Her past hadn’t been too kind to her, but these last six years were the best she ever had. They taught her that she could survive anything and was much stronger than the world thought.
And when she felt the warmth from Kora’s powers, she opened her eyes with such gratefulness in the universe. She had been through a lot, but she had learned one important thing.
She would always survive.