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I. Horologium: The Pendulum Clock
Daisy stumbles across Jemma in the middle of the night.
(“Technically, there’s no such thing as day or night anymore,” Jemma mutters. Davis gives Piper this look as they both resist the urge to roll their eyes. Daisy struggles with the strap of her gun holster as it slides off the side of her hip. She pulls at buckles and velcro as Jemma stands in front of the crew, hair pulled back tight and pinned up in maybe about a million places. She’s assumed this type of posture ever since Fitz’s death. It’s all hands on hips, tight pressed lips, and tightly knit brows.
“You know what they mean, Jemma.” Daisy tries to keep the meeting moving forward. She wants nothing more than to crawl into her bunk, regardless if day or night existed.
Jemma’s resolve breaks for a brief moment. Her lips turn down into a frown, the ridge in between her eyebrows deepening. And then all of a sudden the corners of her mouth turn upward, like some ghost of those soft smiles Jemma used to give when she was gentle. It’s like Jemma hasn’t quite decided how she wants to respond yet, and her body has trouble reacting accordingly. “You’re right,” Jemma says at last. She nods her head, facing the crew, but it only looks as if she’s trying to assure herself.
Daisy wonders if she should take Jemma down from the stage she had set up for herself. She’s cracking at the seams, held together by glue and tape, and the others are quickly picking up on it. “Which means we can finish this meeting later,” Daisy interrupts softly. Most of the crew doesn’t hear her, but she knows that Jemma does. Daisy’s hand rests on Jemma’s tense arm, and it’s enough. “It’s late. Everyone needs some rest.”
Jemma inhales sharply, turning away. She continues nodding her head even as Daisy grabs her by the arm and leads her away from the large screen on the Zephyr. “It’s important to keep track of time. It can get hard when there’s no sunlight. It was a good idea to bring along the clock.”)
Daisy’s used to walking with soft footsteps. It’s a skill that had been trained into her when she was a little girl, and it’s one that’s continued to benefit her as an adult. She tiptoes down the stairs, bearing her weight on the back portion of each step, careful not to let the metal groan under her weight.
When she finds Jemma, it scares her out of her mind. The clock reads 1:58am in bright red, and it’s the only thing illuminating the dark control room besides distant stars sending small rays of light through the Zephyr’s windshield. Daisy is only able to catch the back of Jemma’s head. She’s sitting still, staring out at the constellations surrounding them. It’s dead silent, and Daisy almost asks what Jemma’s doing up, but then she hears a rough, ragged breath, a gasp and a sharp inhale.
Jemma’s crying.
Daisy knows she should go help her- a hand on a shoulder, whispered assurances. Helping Jemma has always felt more like pulling teeth, and Daisy thinks she should be trying to seize this rare opportunity to emotionally support her friend, but then again, Daisy doesn’t want to say something stupid again.
Fitz isn’t physically there with them.
Physically he is buried somewhere in Perthshire, and physically, he is somewhere lost in space, maybe billions of lightyears away. But he lives in the Zephyr the same as the rest of them. He rises in the morning, and at night he haunts.
Daisy can’t see him, but he looms over her like smoke after a fire. He is the smell of burning wood, melting plastic, smoke and the lingering scent of gasoline. He lingers on their clothes and in their hair. He sucks the air out of the room, makes Daisy’s eyes burn and her chest ache.
Daisy tries to cool her fury, but the longer she waits, the angrier she feels. The reminder of him is bitter. He is the salt in Jemma’s tears, and Daisy doesn’t want to lick them up, taste it on her tongue. She doesn’t want to pretend like the thought of Fitz doesn’t make something underneath her skin crawl- like he doesn’t make her turn inside out.
She doesn’t want to watch Jemma struggle either, just because Daisy is haunted by a ghost that runs parallel to hers- similar but never the same.
She curses Fitz for the millionth time for putting her into another impossible situation.
(There is a scar on Daisy’s neck.
The first time she notices it, she’s reaching around her body, grabbing at her back and trying to get her suit on as fast as she can. She catches her reflection in the mirror, and her hands still when she sees the spot where her skin had thrown itself back together. When she tilts her head the right way, and the skin on her neck pulls just right, she can see the outline of the cut. It’s a lopsided rectangle where the inhibitor used to be- imprinted onto her, wrinkled and uneven. It’s concave, and Daisy’s fingers twitch when she goes to touch it- pieces of her that had been taken and would never grow back the same.
Her hands curl into a fist, nails digging into her own skin, and then Piper stumbles through the door.
“I’m glad you’re not naked,” Piper says, forcing her way into the small closet-sized space. She turns and pushes Daisy out from the back. “It’s time to go princess. We need you out there.”
The Zephyr lurches all of a sudden, sending them both stumbling out and down the hall.
Later, Daisy will go into the training room and she’ll destroy a million punching bags. She’ll shatter them from the inside out until they feel exactly how she does. Until then, Daisy waits.)
Sometimes, Daisy thinks she’s past it.
On some nights, she sits on her bed. She stares at the ceiling and listens to the hum of the Zephyr. It’s a familiar song that takes her back, wraps her up in a warm embrace. It reminds her of a time in her life when she had been in love, nights where this place meant home and family. On those nights, Daisy tries to grasp onto the threads of her anger that had felt so right for so long, but they pass through her fingers like running water. She doesn’t really feel anything at all then.
Most times, when she’s looking for Fitz, she doesn’t think about it very hard. She’s looking for the same Fitz she always had- the one from before the sedatives and before the restraints, before the betrayals- and Daisy supposes that this is the objective truth. When Daisy acknowledges this, she thinks that must mean she’s moved on.
But there are other nights. There are the nights when Daisy knows that the person Jemma misses is not necessarily the same person that they’re looking for. Daisy knows that she’s not the most important person in Jemma’s life- she’s never really won that award in anyone’s life before- and she doesn’t expect that from Jemma either, won’t ask for it. But it still doesn’t wash away the bitter taste in Daisy’s mouth when she remembers that Jemma had chosen him over her.
(When Daisy stumbles back into the Lighthouse, there is blood underneath her fingernails and dried sweat on her brows. There is this metallic taste in her mouth, her cheeks sore and bitten up. It was a bad habit that May had always tried to make her break, but it’s come back with a ruthless force.
Daisy feels disgusting, and she feels heavy. She wants to hide in a shower and scrub herself until she’s raw and clean. She hasn’t even turned the first corner before she hears Jemma running up behind her, footsteps echoing in the empty, metal halls.
Daisy turns around before Jemma gets to her, stops and waits for Jemma to watch up. She digs at the drying blood underneath her fingernails, pushes flakes out from her cuticles, tries not to get nauseous. “Daisy,” Jemma says. Something flutters in Daisy’s stomach. She’s not sure if it’s the nausea from seeing the dark flakes of blood fall towards the floor, but it feels suspiciously like hope. It brings her up high. She’s sitting at the top of a rollercoaster, looking down, waiting for the moment it drops. “There’s a reason Fitz and I had to leave.”
She’s crashing down now. Her stomach drops. She feels weightless for a moment. “You broke him out of a cell. You betrayed Mack.” There’s a rushing noise in Daisy’s ears, and it makes it harder to hear what Jemma says in response. Daisy doesn’t really care though. None of it would have changed anything. It wasn’t as if anyone was sharing any apologies.
“I don’t care what your intentions were,” Daisy mutters, “People still got hurt.” Blood underneath her fingernails. Girls who couldn’t control themselves.
“You’re being stubborn,” Jemma snaps back, “You refuse to see it from anyone’s perspective but your own.” Daisy is too heavy for this. There is this dense weight in her chest, and Daisy’s going to hit the ground any minute now with tremendous force. It’s going to shatter her, and she wants to be alone when that happens- not here with Jemma who only seems content to add more and more and more.
Daisy is walking away when Jemma says, with too much certainty and calmness, “He’s not a bad person.”
Daisy bites her cheek.
He is to me.
She doesn’t say that part.
Jemma should’ve known.)
Daisy can’t bring herself to believe that people are fundamentally evil, but sometimes she wishes they were. It would be easier then. She wouldn’t have to remember chaste kisses in hidden hallways when the person she thought she could’ve loved handcuffs her to a railing. She won’t think about family dinners and birthday dates when her life is drained from her skin. And she won’t have to feel gentle hands cradling her shattered arms when wires are pulled from where they’re wrapped around her brain.
She won’t have to wonder what she’ll do when she sees him again.
Daisy knows Fitz isn’t fundamentally evil. She doesn’t necessarily want him to be. Given the chance, why would she choose the broken man- the one who had hurt her and left behind scars? Why wouldn’t she want her friend back- to have him before all the broken promises and tears and blood?
But Daisy is tired of wondering whether or not the person she’s angry at deserves it. She’s so tired of “deserves” and hypotheticals. Daisy knows she didn’t deserve what happened, but it happened anyway. She knows that the Fitz they’re looking for doesn’t deserve her anger or her resentment, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel it. She knows that Jemma needs her support, deserves it, but that doesn’t mean that Daisy can give it to her.
Daisy stands in the doorway and stares. She’s waiting patiently for low tide to come in, but each wave of emotion is violent in nature. It crashes against the shore, kicking up sand, and then it pulls back, bringing pieces along with it. The water swirls until she tumbles and drowns in it, brought along unwillingly for a turbulent ride. She’s stuck in this whirlpool. Daisy can’t seem to move forward like her friends have. She just spins and spins around, stuck on the same path she had never chosen.
There is a supposedly simple answer: forgiveness. If Daisy lets go of this grudge, she won’t be fighting invisible demons for the rest of her life. She can swim out. But the idea of becoming indifferent to what he did to her feels like an injustice. It feels unfair.
Daisy thinks about leaving, running back to her room like a coward, unable to help a friend in need. But the clock strikes 2:00am, and she sees Jemma shift. The Zephyr hums as it continues its path, and the stars that had previously illuminated the control room are left behind. Daisy sees Jemma’s reflection in the glass, eyes still trained on the black abyss ahead of them. Jemma finds where she is hiding eventually. Their eyes catch in the glass, and Jemma is still. She’s not a deer in headlights, fearful of her fate, but more a man on a ledge, waiting for the pull of gravity.
All the sour and bitter thoughts on Daisy’s tongue disappear, and the tides change with the same suddenness they had appeared. They lap at Daisy’s feet as she moves past the doorway, and she knows, if she’s careful, she won’t get swept away. “I was thirsty,” Daisy explains. Jemma nods robotically. “I was hoping for water… or a cup of tea.”
Jemma doesn’t respond verbally. She stands up from her seat, tears wiped away with superhuman speed. Daisy is completely capable of making her own tea, and they both know that, but Jemma likes to do it, so they walk towards the kitchen. Daisy rambles on and on about useless things- what was keeping her up, what she would’ve done if Jemma wasn’t there, what sort of tea she likes best- and she thinks if she talks enough, she might be able to drown out the steady dull ache of her beating heart.
Daisy is good at talking. She talks until Jemma, throat cleared, shoulder back, begins to respond. It starts with small acknowledgements, then short sentences, until finally, Jemma is sharing her day- the obstacles they have, the mission. The Zephyr is loud at night, they agree. Daisy is good at talking about everything. Everything but Fitz.
II. Pyxis: The Compass
It happens a month or so into their mission. Their crew is slowly dwindling in numbers, and Daisy is trying to compensate. They no longer have the numbers to keep the Zephyr running smoothly- no doubt a result of Daisy’s inefficacy as a leader- and now Daisy has to learn how to be fifty different places at once. She tries to keep a level head during the day as they run from planet to planet, leaving destruction in their wake, but at night she is staring at a slowly growing list of tasks.
Daisy is no engineer, and the list of the Zephyr’s damaged systems grows at an exponential rate. She would ask Jemma, but Jemma is laser focused on her hunt nowadays. Daisy tries her best to keep Jemma alive as Jemma tries her best to make sure they’re on the right path. These two momentous responsibilities take up all their time, and the Zephyr carries them through it in a state of neglect.
(Daisy’s arms shake in the aftermath.
Had they always done that? Daisy swore she used to have a steadier hand, and May would never let her on a mission in this state. But May isn’t here. Daisy is the leader, and there’s no one to tell her when to stop. There are bodies struggling on the ground, yards away from her, and Daisy’s arm is still outstretched. The muscles in her forearm beg her to rest, but Daisy stays put, even as the grainy wind of the planet blurs her vision and stings her eyes.
“We have to get out of here!” Davis yells. He is standing on the open loading dock of the Zephyr to Daisy’s left, and the wind picks up, making the metal rattle as larger pieces of debris hit the sides. “If we don’t leave now, we’re not gonna make it out of this storm!”
Daisy signals with her other hand for the agents at her side to follow Davis’ order. She watches as they all stumble blindly towards the Zephyr. It gets harder and harder to see through the dust, but Daisy doesn’t have to look to know who’s not among them.
“Jemma!” Daisy shouts. She stumbles backwards. The wind pushes her, whips her hair into her eyes and fills her mouth with some dry, sour type of dirt. “Jemma! We have to leave!”
The woman appears from the clouds like she is the center of the storm. She pushes through the wind with an impressive, ruthless type of force, and Daisy would stare if she could see straight. She notices the blood dripping down Jemma’s forearm- like she had just went elbow deep into a vat of blood. In her other hand she drags a skinny, lanky alien along.
Daisy stumbles forward, attempting to quake the body onto the plane and speed up the process herself, but by the time she gets to Jemma, she notices the huddle of aliens that had followed along. These guys are larger. They stand a head or two above Daisy’s height, and they are bulk and brute strength. They snarl at her with razor sharp teeth.
Jemma doesn’t acknowledge the herd she had brought along, continuing her steady path towards the Zephyr. Daisy steps in between them, trying to assert herself, even as the wind threatens to drag her off her feet. There are four of them, she notes, and brute strength is no match for her. They speak to her in a language she doesn’t understand.
Daisy doesn’t want to fight them. She hopes her presence will be enough to deter them, but the smallest, maybe 6’5”, glances over Daisy’s shoulder at the body Jemma is loading onto the Zephyr. He runs forward. Daisy pushes him back with a small quake, and she skids backwards onto the floor. And then they are all rushing towards her at once.
Somewhere between the third and fourth hit they land on her, Daisy feels it again. It’s like all her senses get muffled, and she’s underwater all of a sudden. Everything outside is quiet, but inside, there is too much for her to feel all at once. She is sure that this will be the time it kills her, but someone calls her name, and Daisy shouts, a blast of vibrations disseminating around her.
The bodies fall.
Daisy doesn’t have time to check if they’re dead.
She stumbles back towards the Zephyr, pushing herself off the ground, flying into the dock as the hangar door closes and the Zephyr leaves the ground. It’s a shaky liftoff, and Daisy grips onto the leg of a seat as they bang around.
Then suddenly everything is quiet, and Daisy can see again. Her chest is pounding, but Daisy doesn’t really feel much at all. She’s alive, but she feels defeated and empty. Her heart is a flooded city once all the water had runoff. Everything is destroyed, nothing left behind.
Jemma rubs uselessly at her arm with some stained rag, and Daisy looks at the body before she looks at Jemma. “He’s not dead,” Jemma mutters, “And we can bring him back once I get what I want.”
Daisy doesn’t respond. She thinks about all the bodies they have stored in a room on the Zephyr- the ones they could get anyways. They will go home too, but the same as they came.
She thinks May would have disproved of how that all went down. Daisy disproves of it already. But she has lost many things in the past few months, and it seems her self control is one of them.)
They are running low on rations.
Daisy notes it on a tab on her laptop. The other plays a rerun of some Disney movie Daisy never got to watch as a kid. It gets to the part of the movie where the protagonist gets up, makes a stand, says this is the right thing to do.
That is when Jemma comes in.
It’s one of those quiet periods of time somewhere between evening and night. Of course everything felt about the same on the Zephyr, but everyone valued this quiet time since they practically lived on top of each other the rest of the day. They had all said their goodnights and went to bed, but no one was really asleep yet.
Daisy’s door is not shut all the way, courtesy of her reasonable paranoia and need for a quick exit. When Jemma knocks it creaks open slowly, and she stands still in the doorway like some apparition. She looks unsure of if she wants to be there, so Daisy pretends not to see her, keeping her eyes trained on the laptop screen, hands poised to type. She tries not to let the surprise show on her face. Jemma had been quiet as of late- stuck in this rut and forcing herself out through stubbornness alone. And Jemma rarely came to Daisy first. She is so different from the Jemma that Daisy knew a year ago. Jemma is apathetic now, but Daisy supposes she is too.
When Jemma steps one foot through the doorway, her palm pushing the door open just enough to be able to step through, Daisy looks up from what she was pretending to do. Now that Daisy’s acknowledged her, the silence becomes more unsettling. Daisy clears her throat, throwing her legs over the side of the bed.
“Is there something I can help you with?” She tries not to let the regret show on her face. It sounds so formal and detached, and it doesn’t feel like she’s talking to Jemma at all. Then again, she hasn’t really talked to Jemma in what feels like ages. “What do you need?” Daisy tries again. It still comes out hollow, just meaner this time.
She’s half expecting Jemma to turn right around and leave- to realize that whatever she needs, Daisy’s probably not the answer. Instead Jemma swallows hard enough for Daisy to see the line of it traveling along her throat like a comet in the sky. “When we find Fitz,” Jemma begins, and she has to clear her throat. Her voice always breaks on the word ‘when.’ “When we find him,” Jemma says, her face morphing form the anxious twist into the same steely look Daisy has become familiar with, “When we find him, I think I want to leave.”
There is a long beat of silence. Daisy presses her lips together, hides behind a curtain of her own hair. There is something stirring underneath her skin. It is restless, and Daisy tries to keep it on a tight leash, unsure of what to name it yet. “What do you mean leave?”
“Leave SHIELD.” Jemma must lose her nerve. The straight hard pressed line adorning her lips falters for a second, and she looks away. “I just can’t do it again. I can’t do this again.” Her face falls away entirely, her teeth flashing for a moment as her lip curls back, and then she presses them together again. Her head snaps back into place, and she looks at Daisy like she just remembered what she really came here for. “Will you be okay without me?”
Daisy isn’t expecting that question, and she can’t breathe. She feels like she’s standing on a fine line, unsure of which way to go, so she holds as still as she can. She thinks she should’ve been happy, but Daisy’s emotions like to blaze a trail of their own, diverging from the given and the logical. She thought she would’ve been happy that Jemma cared enough to bother asking, but Daisy is left with a question she doesn’t really know how to answer.
(“How’s it going boss?” Daisy has to look up when she talks to Mack, and she can only catch a glimpse of his profile. He looks concentrated, staring hard at the Zephyr with various blueprints crumpled up in his hand.
When he turns to look at her, he gives a brief flash of a smile. “It’s going,” Mack replies shortly. His face falls back into something more defeated. “I can’t understand Fitz’s designs. The materials I can get, but the physics not so much.”
“Aw come on,” Daisy teases, “How different could a spaceship be from a motorcycle? You’re not giving up, are you?”
“Course not,” Mack shakes his head, clears his throat. He rolls up the schematics and tucks it safely away into a folder resting in his other hand. “What about you? Simmons wants you on the Zephyr when it takes off.”
Daisy gives him a tight smile, but she can’t meet his eyes. Instead she studies the outline of the Zephyr where the sun reflects off its black wings and makes it hard to see properly. “I told her yes, didn’t I?” It’s not a lie, but it does very little to reassure Mack of her role. It’s too flighty, too unsure, a little bitter if she’s being honest.
“Daisy.” At the mention of her name, Daisy grimaces and turns to face him. She’s been on the receiving end of many life lessons and lectures for the past few months. One day they tell her about grief, the next day they discuss forgiveness. But Daisy doesn’t want to learn how to move on when she never learned how to process it all.
She expects that the problem at hand will be her. How could it not be? Daisy is hardly fit to be an agent at all, scraping by based on past experience and strength. There’s a reason she needs to get out, leave. But when she looks at Mack his face is torn, and his eyes don’t show that he’s really there. He seems stuck in himself, imploding, and Daisy realized with a turn of her stomach that she had been so caught up and worried about her other friends, she had managed to completely neglect another.
“When you asked me to be director, you said it was because you couldn’t put your personal issues aside.” Daisy had meant it, but a part of her wishes she had never said it now. Mack seems to have taken her words to heart, cutting off his own attachments. “If you’re going, I need you to lead.”
“I can lead,” Daisy says, even if she doesn’t know if she can follow through. But she needs to get out. There are the problems that Daisy can’t control, and then there are the problems that she can. Daisy runs full speed into the latter.
“Are you okay, Mack?” SHIELD is growing, but Mack holds the weight of it on his back. If he crumbles, Daisy knows SHIELD will too, but once she leaves, she wonders if anyone will be left to help him. A part of her fantasizes him telling her he needs her to stay- that she doesn’t need to do this, that nothing’s changed. She wonders if she would stay if he asked, but before she can get far, Mack stomps out any flame growing in Daisy’s mind.
“Of course I’m okay.” Daisy still sees the way his fist curls up tight around the folder, bending creases into the manilla paper. Daisy wants to reach out and smooth the lines, but she doesn’t. “Are you okay?” He asks.
Daisy thinks she would’ve called him out on being a liar if she wasn’t one herself. “Yes. Of course I am.”)
Daisy feels like she is suffocating under Jemma’s gaze. She doesn’t want to respond until she knows exactly what she wants to say, but the silence seems to speak for her. Jemma becomes uncomfortable, her body visibly getting tighter like someone was twisting a windup behind her back. Daisy blinks rapidly in response as if that could make her mind work faster.
Daisy won’t be okay.
She knows this fact already because just the idea of it makes her stomach stir and her eyes water. It makes her feel like she is too full- like she might combust. She is leaking at the seams, and she is a fragile machine. A part of Daisy is even angry at the question, because how could Jemma ask without already knowing the answer? Hasn’t Daisy lost enough people?
But Daisy doesn’t have it in her heart to deny Jemma of this. She wouldn’t be able to call herself Jemma’s friend if she denied her of this. How could she ask Jemma to stay, to give up a lifetime of happiness and comfort and peace, only to get Daisy in return? It wasn’t a fair trade, and Jemma would always resent her for it in the long run.
So Daisy has a choice to make, and it’s coming down on her quite rapidly. She can tell Jemma is getting ready to open her mouth again, try to explain some things away and try to help, but that will only confuse Daisy more. She is on the tip of a revelation, and Daisy needs to get her thoughts out before she loses them altogether.
“Okay,” Daisy begins. Jemma returns to playing the waiting game. “Okay… I will be fine.”
It’s a blatant lie.
It’s a noble lie.
Daisy is a spy. She has to believe in noble lies to stay sane. Ideally, Daisy wouldn’t have to lie at all. She would be the type of person that her friends need, but she isn’t full of love and forgiveness. She doesn’t think she ever has been.
So Daisy lies and hopes that if she fakes it for long enough, one day she’ll forget what it felt like to be anything else but good.
(They come across each other like this too often.
Daisy: bleeding. Jemma: crying.
They are quiet tears born of frustration and confusion. They haven’t fallen quite yet, but Daisy can see them threatening to. They make their presence known in the corners of her eyes until finally, they will fall along the line of her nose. “I’m sorry,” Daisy mutters. She can barely hear herself behind the ringing in her ears. It makes her feel off balance, so instead of speaking, she holds her bloody arm out.
Instead of acknowledging Daisy, Jemma goes to grab the medical kit out of the nearest drawer. Daisy is vaguely aware of her vision spotting, but she doesn’t sit down until Jemma motions her over to the nearest seat.
It’s a gory sight- the bright red of unoxidized blood spilling down Daisy’s arm, the muscles peeking out from beneath layers of ripped up skin. It’s a jagged cut, torn unevenly, and a couple of years ago, it might’ve made her sick to look at. But Daisy has seen a fair amount of blood now, and it’s become a bit routine- Jemma patching her up like this.
Daisy stares as the end of a suture needle makes its way under her skin. She doesn’t even really feel it. The entirety of her arm feels like a wildfire, throbbing and aching and screaming, and the needle blends into all those feelings so seamlessly. It registers in her mind that she is wounded and it hurts (it hurts very, very badly), but Daisy doesn’t really feel it. She sits there with her vision spotting, wondering when she would finally get to go to sleep.
“Daisy.” Jemma is watching her carefully. It’s a difficult task. There is one gloved hand with the needle, stitching her up, but the other hand is bare and pressing firmly against Daisy’s lower thigh. Her eyes dart back and forth between the wound and Daisy’s face. “Daisy, look at me.”
Daisy doesn’t understand this instruction because she’s looking at Jemma already, but she shakes her head until it feels clear enough to think again even as her vision fills up with little spots and dots. When she refocuses on Jemma, it’s like seeing for the first time again- like there had been this layer of fog on the glass separating them, and Daisy had just cleaned it up. She notices tears on Jemma’s face. “What?”
“Nothing,” Jemma whispers. She turns her full attention back to Daisy’s injury, her bare hand trailing from Daisy thigh to steady the wounded arm. When their skin makes contact, it’s like Daisy has been electrocuted and she can feel all over again. Jemma’s skin is soft, gentle, and it’s everything the needle and the blood is not. It brings Daisy’s attention to the burning wound, her frayed nerves. The next time the needle pierces her skin, Daisy feels a couple of tears fall from her eyes.
Daisy takes a few quick breaths, blinking rapidly until all the tears have fallen into her lap. She’s been through worse, Daisy reminds herself, but she still digs her heels into the floor when Jemma ties off the knot. Jemma cleans the blood off with a wipe, and Daisy watches as the blood begs to spill over again, but her skin stays stubbornly shut. It certainly looks better- jagged and ugly, but better. Of course the pain of the wound lingers stubbornly, not bothering to cease in the slightest.
Jemma has something for that too apparently. She cleans up the dried blood along Daisy’s arms and in the crevices of her fingers, and she hands Daisy a couple of pills. Daisy doesn’t bother asking what they are before she throws them back, taking the water that Jemma offers even if she doesn't really need it. Jemma watches her the whole time, lips pressed together, and once Daisy hands the water bottle back with her good arm, Jemma looks away. “I wish you wouldn't be so dangerous.”
Daisy has been tightly strung, like she’s been stuck in some medieval torture device, limb tearing from limb. Jemma’s words have plucked her like a guitar string, and she sways in retaliation, making the messy noise of an untuned guitar. “I know what I’m doing. I wouldn’t have done any of it if I thought I was putting the teams at risk, and I’m not exactly impulsive. You’re definitely one to talk with the way you-”
“That’s not what I meant.” Jemma doesn’t seem angry. She doesn’t even seem to disagree. Daisy regrets her words before she’s had time to consider whether or not she really meant them. “You don’t need to throw yourself in front of the gun every time. You might be inhuman, but you’re still made up of the same stuff as the rest of us.”
Daisy feels out of breath. “I’m the leader. It’s my job-”
“And you won’t be able to lead if you’re dead.” There’s a long silence that follows.
Daisy knows it’s true, but she also knew she wouldn’t be a good leader from the beginning. She’s following the footsteps of someone long gone, working off memory alone. She feels like she’s drifting off without him, but then Jemma places a hand on Daisy’s, and she whispers, “Daisy, I need you here.”)
Jemma doesn’t look completely satisfied. There is still this unease to her, and it almost makes Daisy want to take it back. Daisy had lied through her teeth, put someone else first, tried to do the right thing, but it still wasn’t enough for Jemma.
“Is that good enough?” Daisy asks, but she already knows the answer. She sees it in Jemma’s face.
Jemma’s mouth twitches into one of those forced, tight smiles. She says, “Yes. Yes, thank you. Of course.” Daisy tries to resist the building pressure in her chest. When did she become such an angry person? When did things take a turn for the worst? Daisy swears she wasn’t always like this, but when she looks back and tries to pinpoint the moment things went wrong, she can only look back on a lifetime of heartbreaks and betrayals. She can’t pinpoint the moment, and Daisy supposes, with disappointment, she had always been this angry.
When Daisy looks at Jemma, it’s like she’s going through the motions of a recurring dream. Jemma’s voice, the words she said, it feels like Daisy has been here before.
Daisy thinks that Jemma isn’t all that different from all those foster homes she had lived in as a kid. It’s all broken promises, actions that contradict statements. There is this concept of forever implanted into her head, but in the end, Daisy was never really meant to stay. They never really intended to keep her.
But above all, what Daisy thinks is the most familiar, is the knowledge that she doesn’t really care.
Jemma is a ticking time bomb. She is a rubber band getting stretched beyond its limits, a cocked gun. Daisy knows that Jemma will inevitably leave, but Daisy has always been open arms reaching out into darkness. She clings onto threads and scraps that have been thrown at her, holds onto people like she’s holding water in her hands even after a million heartbreaks.
It’s nonsensical, but Daisy knows that people rarely make sense. Her mother had been so loving, and yet she was so willing to throw away what she had claimed was everything to her. Fitz- her best friend and simultaneously the worst thing to ever happen to her. Even Coulson who had promised to always be there for her, only to willingly walk away. And most of all Jemma. Jemma is the hardest to make sense of, and Daisy hasn’t done it successfully yet.
Jemma who is always so good at taking care of Daisy- so gentle and kind and caring. She is everything that Daisy admires and loves, and yet Daisy can’t help but hate her. How could Jemma make this love feel so tangible and real, and how could she walk away from it so effortlessly?
Maybe that was the real reason Daisy had lied. Because Daisy doesn’t really believe that being good gets her anywhere- she’s tried it her whole childhood. Because there was no way that Jemma could have asked that question without already knowing the answer.
Daisy had lied because Jemma’s mind was already made up, and Daisy can’t stand the thought of Jemma walking away anyways- choosing him over her one last time.
III. Andromeda: The Chained Maiden
The Zephyr rattles as it takes off.
Daisy wonders if she should get around to fixing that, but then she remembers that this isn’t her little van, and she can’t superglue and zip tie a spaceship back together and expect it to work. She thinks she should remind Jemma that there are some things she can do that the other can’t (like figuring out what that awful rattling noise means) but at the moment, Daisy and Jemma can barely look each other in the eye, much less converse.
It was a rough mission to say the least.
Thinking about it fills Daisy with this unmanageable anger. Her control is slipping, and she thinks about certain lies she had told Mack months ago when she said she could handle all this. Why hadn’t he stopped her? Daisy was clearly lying, and she had already proven that she couldn’t lead. Daisy is too emotional, and she thinks she isn’t the only one.
She clenches her fist, feels the edge of her gauntlets bite into her palm. It reminds her of who made them, and she has to squeeze her eyes shut and count three deep breaths before she can think again. Her vision blurs when she reopens her eyes, and the ceiling of the Zephyr spins and spins.
Daisy waits for the waves to recede, for low tide to hit, but her anger builds and builds. Her thoughts race and race. She is holding on tight to a leash, but she’s too weak. She gets dragged along wherever her anger wants to take her. It’s a turbulent ride, and Daisy thinks she might throw up.
Or maybe it’s a cracked rib.
She sits up slowly, the ache in her torso still present. She needs to spend time alone- to sort through her thoughts before she loses them altogether. When she catches sight of Jemma’s boot in her peripheral vision, she thinks she should run instead.
“Daisy.”
Jemma stops her before she’s even had the chance to stand up.
Daisy doesn’t trust herself to speak, so she hums her acknowledgement instead.
“What’s wrong?”
Daisy has spent the last six hours of her life getting doused in gasoline (figuratively), and Jemma has pushed her and pushed her. Now she lights the match and sets Daisy ablaze, and Daisy thinks she has to know what she’s doing. How could she not? Jemma Simmons wasn’t oblivious.
“You know what’s wrong.” There’s this silence that follows, and Daisy really wants to believe that Jemma really is that stupid. Daisy would rather believe that Jemma hadn’t cared to think about how she felt at all, but she knows better.
“I’m sorry.” It’s the closest that Daisy will ever get to Jemma truly admitting it.
Daisy spins around, too fast for the growing pain in her head, but she steadies herself long enough to throw a glare in Jemma’s direction and spit out the words, “If you were really sorry, you wouldn’t have done it. You asked me to be here- you asked me to lead, but you won’t listen to me! You have some death wish, and if you’re trying to kill yourself, I wish you hadn’t asked me to come along to watch.”
“I had to! I had to know if Fitz was there! I’m sorry. Next time, I can go by myself, and then the team-“
Daisy can’t help but laugh. It looks like she had gotten exactly what she wished for; Jemma really is stupid. Jemma is the smartest person she’s ever met, but she is also the stupidest person Daisy has ever had the displeasure of interacting with.
“This isn’t about the team, Jemma.” Daisy stumbles over her words clumsily, “It’s not about us. It’s about you. I need you-“
“Fitz needs me.”
Daisy doesn’t know how to respond to that.
(Daisy is wrung out. She’s cried herself dry.
She would’ve preferred to do this in the privacy of her bedroom. There is this sort of reputation that has been placed upon her. She doesn’t know where it came from- this idea that she was strong, given some name so much bigger than her.
The Destroyer of Worlds.
Quake.
Her name, one of many, had come from a phase of her life born of pain and self destruction. She wasn’t an amazing, noble, powerful vigilante as others seemed to believe. She was literally caving in on herself, shattering her bones from the outside in. She has never been anything but a desperate child, but she’s alone now, no one chasing after her.
Daisy knows she is getting older, but she feels smaller and smaller everyday. There is broken glass at her feet, and it feels so familiar. She falls back into old habits so easily, old mindsets.
She had been sobbing just minutes ago, causing a ruckus. There were people rushing around her, telling her to watch her feet, stay still, and what kind of adult needed to be reminded to be careful around broken glass? What kind of woman needed to be cleaned up after?
But she wasn’t thinking straight. There is this beast that waits in the back of her mind. She has to tiptoe around it, keep the peace. But when Daisy had watched that glass slip from her fingers and shatter on the floor, the beast woke and lunged.
Daisy thinks, stares at the little glistening shards, and she is bombarded by memories of all the times that this has happened before and all the things that come afterwards. What’s particularly familiar is the loneliness- the reminder, always, that love is conditional.
Daisy can pretend, and she can talk to her team and bring herself back from the brink when daylight streams in from the hangar doors. But at the late hours of the night, when things move slowly and no one bothers with pretending, Daisy doesn’t know who she goes to anymore. She is alone. That is enough to send her spiraling.
And then Jemma pushes a pill into Daisy’s hand, forces water down her throat, and Daisy tries to take it even when she chokes on her own breath.
And there’s this detachment that comes.
Daisy stands still as her breathing returns to a normal rate, watching as a broom brushes at her feet, dragging tiny twinkling shards of glass across the metal floor. She blinks, and she is stunned at the mess that she has made.
Daisy feels embarrassed- small- and she doesn’t protest when Jemma leads her away from the rest of the team. Would Mack take her off the mission after this? Would Daisy care if he did? Her breathing has returned to its normal rate, but there is still this oppressive force that is settled so comfortably in her chest. It has been subdued, put to sleep, but it curls up in the middle of Daisy’s sternum, brushing its tail back and forth, waiting for the next moment it can pounce.
Jemma’s hand comes to her back, and Daisy buries her face in her hands. She waits for the beast to wake back up, come crawling back for round two, but it sleeps lazily, claws leaving permanent marks in Daisy’s heart. She takes a deep breath, and then she lifts her head, blinking at the bright fluorescent lights. “That was a lot,” Daisy manages. Jemma hums her agreement, hand continuing its gentle circles. It makes Daisy feel worse. She doesn’t need to be comforted like a child. She’s past it. “I’m fine now. That was a lot, but I’m okay.”
“Do you want to talk about what happened?”
Daisy feels like there is acid crawling up her throat, but she swallows it back down. Her cheeks burn. “I don’t know what happened.” Daisy doesn’t know if she’s lying. “No. No. I’m okay now.” And when Daisy thinks she’s made it out with as much of her pride intact as she can, she can’t help but say, “Everything’s just a little hard right now.”
“What do you mean?”
Daisy can’t bring herself to talk anymore. There’s no magic words Jemma could say to make it all feel better, and every time Daisy lets a piece of herself go, it comes back to stab her in the long run.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to explain.” Jemma pulls Daisy closer in then, as much as she can anyway. “But I’m here if you need me.”
Daisy is thankful, but all she can think about is how Coulson had said the same thing.)
Jemma doesn’t try to stop Daisy when she stumbles away.
It’s not like she had said anything that Daisy didn’t already know. She always knew that Fitzsimmons were just that- two halves of the same soul, breathing each other’s air, hearts beating in time. Daisy was a visitor at best. She’s grateful for the love that she had received from them in the past. It doesn’t take away from how much she had cared about them in turn, didn’t make any of that less real, the things they had done for each other, but Daisy is still an outsider.
And once in her life, she was convinced that she was okay with this. But things are different now. Things had happened in the last year that she can’t erase from her mind. The truth is that Daisy doesn’t know how much longer she can do this. There is only so much blood in her veins, and Daisy thinks she has bled herself dry. There is nothing left of her to give.
(Daisy wakes up. The spotting in her vision clears for long enough to catch a ceiling tile in the pitch black darkness of her bunk, and she can see the vague outlines of a coat hanger and a lamp. She lies flat on her back, limbs haphazardly placed around her, the outline of a murder scene, and her brain attempts to jumpstart itself like a sputtering dead car.
Then she realizes she is awake.
She is not yet in her right state of mind, and as her eyes strain to see past the darkness in her room, Daisy realizes how badly she hates waking up.
She doesn’t want to do this anymore.
Her mornings are rough, groggy, and Daisy thinks that with her experience- jumping out of bed for a mission, or worse, cardio- she wouldn’t struggle so much to wake up. But there is a part of her mind that yearns for the familiar darkness, that simple kind of relief. Daisy lives life with this constant weight on her shoulders, and she can keep herself from the brink when she tries hard enough. She knows how to categorize her thoughts by now, put them where they need to be, not lose control. But when she’s unconscious, Daisy doesn’t have to try at all. She’s nowhere, and it’s the safest place she’s ever lived.
But Daisy has places to be, things to do. She’s assessing members for her new team before lunch, and she’s already let herself sleep in well past her alarm. So Daisy’s morning is slow, but it’s filled with caffeine pills and hot water. She’s searching through the fridge, hoping for something, anything, other than the same rations and ramen noodle cups she’s been living off of for the last year of her life. Then she hears footsteps behind her.
Yoyo is a quiet walker, but they are the only two awake in the kitchen. Daisy clears her throat awkwardly, and they make eye contact. Her eyes dart away, careful not to linger for too long. The fridge only offers empty, cold, fluorescent air, but Daisy pretends like there is something interesting about the shelves.
There is no resentment that lingers between her and Yoyo. They are too tired. There is some sort of distance that has grown between them and the people they were when the world was ending. They had done things, said things, in a state of fear, and now that the world is in one piece, they look back on those versions of themselves with a tepid dislike. And rather than spoil completely, their relationship just seemed to have gone stale.
Daisy shakes the ache out of her back as she stands back up, and when she turns around, Yoyo is inspecting the coffee machine, sorting between various coffee grinds. Yoyo doesn’t look at her, but she must see Daisy watching because she says, “Do you want any?”
“I don’t drink coffee.” Daisy’s voice is rough from disuse, and it comes out gravelly and soft to match the quiet atmosphere of the kitchen.
“I forget,” Yoyo says back. Her voice is strong, and despite the confidence and volume of it, it doesn’t seem out of place. Daisy envies her for that, clearing her throat as her stomach turns and her veins jump. “But you take those right?” Yoyo gestures back to the caffeine pills sitting on the counter. “I don’t get it. Same thing, but less flavor.”
“If you want to call coffee flavorful,” Daisy chuckles softly. “Tastes bitter to me.”
“You’re not having it right.”
“Just not my taste. Too many weird side effects.” There is a beat of silence again. It drags on until Daisy loses count of how long it's been, and she vaguely wonders if it had been her fault. Maybe she should have said something different. Something to keep the conversation moving. “Mack has me looking at agents for the new team today.”
Yoyo perks up a little, but she doesn’t turn around, eyes trained on the water she’s pouring into the coffee machine. “You don’t have the names yet?”
“Jemma obviously. Piper and Davis volunteered ahead of time. The other agents I don’t know as well…” Daisy taps her foot nervously against the leg of the table. “You could too,” she blurts out before she can think better of it. “If you wanted to. You could come.”
Yoyo stays still as if Daisy had taken a camera and snapped the moment in front of her: Yoyo in front of the coffee machine, contemplative, shocked maybe. “You want me there?” Yoyo asks. It’s the first time Daisy can see a crack in the wall- a sliver of insecurity shining through her voice. Daisy moves closer, tries to peek through.
“I want you there,” Daisy confirms. She’s this far in now. Might as well play her cards. “Because you were right. You were right about Coulson, and you were right about me leading.”
Yoyo looks away, hands trailing to her hips. Daisy can see something eating away at her. It’s so familiar. Daisy swears as much as they fought the last year, they are too similar, knit from the same cloth. “I’m sorry,” Yoyo begins, “I shouldn’t have-”
“You meant it, didn’t you? And you were right. You’d do it again.” Daisy says it aloud, but she doesn’t wait for Yoyo to respond. It’s all rhetorical. Daisy already knows the answer. “I would too. You know that? I don’t care that I was wrong. I would’ve done everything the same again.”
“You did what you thought was right,” Yoyo said, her voice lowered, “We all did.”
Even Fitz.
Daisy pushes that thought out of her mind. She doesn’t have the time to think about what that means.
“I didn’t think you’d want me there,” Yoyo admits. There’s a vulnerability to it, but she focuses on the task at hand- making sure that boiling water gets safely in a cup. Daisy can hear the whir of Yoyo’s prosthetics.
“Is it because I’m leading?”
“Because of Coulson.”
Silence again. The sound of pouring water. The slightly squeaky noise of the coffee machine.
“What do you mean?”
“Because I wanted Coulson dead.”
It’s not funny but Daisy laughs a little. “But you were right .”
“But you still look at me like a killer.” Yoyo turns around, and Daisy is forced to make eye contact, and all of a sudden, she knows they’re not talking about Coulson anymore. They’re talking about someone else- someone Daisy still doesn’t know how to feel about. “I don’t know if you were right. But I would do it again. I would’ve done the same thing. I don’t regret it.”
Daisy smiles down at the table. None of this feels like a victory, but her suspicions have been validated. Her and Yoyo are not that different at all. “And what does that make us?”
“Selfish,” Yoyo says with no hesitation. She heads toward the exit, but she pauses before she makes it through the doorway. “I wouldn’t be able to lead either. We weren’t made to lead.”
“But people keep asking me too.”
Yoyo doesn’t say anything at first, and Daisy thinks if she listens hard enough, she might be able to hear the gears turning in Yoyo’s head. “I’m not going to come with you. Because I care too much about Mack. I can’t leave him,” Yoyo explains. She turns around, looks Daisy in the eye. “What’s the real reason you’re going?”)
Daisy wonders if she asks for too much sometimes. When she’s crawled away from every other person in her life, sitting alone in her dark bedroom, she can’t help but think she had put herself here. Jemma never asked her to leave, quite the contrary. Daisy just has this miraculous bad habit of making things about herself.
Fitz’s death is no exception.
She’s tried. She really has. She tries to be the person that Jemma needs, tries to be good despite the fact that she doesn’t believe any of it ever pays off. She wants to be capable of doing this, but the more Daisy pushes herself, the more she wonders why her anger is worse than the hurt that had caused it in the first place.
Her feelings have hit a discordant crescendo. Everything mixes and pulls apart and bleeds, and Daisy isn’t sure what to feel. Guilt? Anger? Grief? She feels like she’s walking backwards on a forward moving train, like the things she thinks don't quite match up with the things she feels. And at the center of it all, joining Fitz as she always has, is Jemma. Jemma- the person Daisy loves and the person Daisy hates. The best person Daisy knows and the one who hurts her the most. The one who takes care of her and the one who leaves her stranded.
Sometimes Daisy wonders if Jemma asks for too much.
(“Will you come with me?”
Daisy freezes in her spot. Her instinct is to say, Yes, of course . Because Jemma’s her best friend, and she would do anything for Jemma, but the words don’t leave her lips seamlessly. They get stuck behind something else, and Daisy doesn’t speak.
“It’s… it’s been really hard,” Jemma admits, “And I don’t think I would’ve been able to do this without you. I don’t think I can keep doing this without you. I need you there.”
So it’s not just one life on the line, but two. She’s not just responsible for finding Fitz. She’s also responsible for making sure Jemma doesn’t die in the process. When did that become her burden to bear?
And now all Daisy wants to do is say no. She’s tired, of this, of all of it. But she already knows, in this flashing moment of revelation, that she’ll regret saying no if she does. She won’t be able to tell Jemma no and mean it, not after what Jemma’s just said.
“Okay,” Daisy mutters, and the smile on Jemma’s face is instant and it’s genuine and it’s real. It’s so real. Daisy’s licking at paper cuts, soothing Jemma’s wounds. It’s voluntary work, simple work, and Daisy would make the same choice again and again and again just to hold on as long as she can.
She still can’t help but think she hates Jemma for that.
For asking.)
Daisy thinks Jemma asks too much of her. Jemma comes into her room an hour later. “Are you mad at me?” Daisy thinks it’s a stupid question, and it’s defintiely a question she doesn’t want to answer. Jemma already knows the answer anyway. Daisy can tell by her thin pressed lips and the tense in her brow.
“I don’t know.” Daisy says. The answer is yes. She is livid, filled with this potent hate that she used to think was impossible to feel towards the people she loved. But she can’t say it, because her own anger opens up a doorway to guilt. She doesn’t really believe that she has a right to be angry at Jemma for this- for choosing Fitz. He is her husband, the love of her life, but Daisy doesn’t know how much longer she can hold on to a single thread.
She doesn’t have to say it anyway. Jemma knows. “I don’t know what you want me to do.” It’s not accusatory, not even desperate. It’s a genuine question, begging for things to be the way they used to- the way that things could have been if some things had gone down differently.
But Daisy has lost a lifetime of sleep trying to think of solutions. She has fought and scrambled to relieve the awful ache in her chest that haunts her days and nights. Daisy wants nothing more than to let this go, be the person she could have been, but she can’t seem to find the path to get there. She has lost the trail long ago, and she is tired of taking the blame for it- for suffering from Fitz’s actions, forcing herself to heal for the sake of people who have always loved him more.
“There’s nothing to do.”
Jemma’s face falls, and she leaves a minute later.
IV. Apus: Bird of Paradise
Daisy comes out of a three day fever in a fog. She is still disoriented, her head bursting at its seams. But at least she is capable of thought again. She can breathe air again without her body threatening to turn itself inside out. It’s a relief, but it’s one that Daisy doesn’t welcome with open arms.
There was a point in those three days, likely on the second night if Daisy can remember correctly, that she was sure she would die. She had seen so many deaths in the last few months- her crew, or worse, her victims. It wasn’t unfeasible to see herself go next- another person in a long line of meaningless goodbyes. She would pass away alone in her bunk like she was destined to spend her life.
And a part of Daisy thinks she had wanted it. At the very least, a part of her had liked it- living on the brink of death. Every breath she breathed was a deliberate act, so full of thought and purpose and meaning. Her brain didn’t care much for things like emotion, only fought to survive. And Daisy did. The ghost that haunts her had left her alone in those horrid three days, and Daisy heaved until she was dry. She survived.
As thought returned to her list of capabilities, so did all the painful memories. Daisy realizes, at the end of it all, eating solid food for the first time in 48 hours and regretting it, that she is jealous of Fitz.
He is the one who got to die.
When they find him, he will be undamaged. He will be the way that he always was. He never had to feel the end of the world, didn’t have to live with the things that his hands did. He doesn’t have to remember, but Daisy does.
She used to think of Fitz like this brother she never had- someone who had always helped her and supported her. He is someone she would be undeniably irrevocably different without. But now when she wonders what she would do without him, she wonders if she would be happy. At some point the pain of knowing him outweighed the joy of their memories.
(Daisy’s back slams into the mat below her, and she coughs hard until the air returns to her lungs. “You’re being meaner than usual,” Daisy chokes out.
May only rolls her eyes, even going as far as to step over Daisy on the path to her water bottle. “I’m always mean. You need to get out of your head.”
“I’ve been relying too much on my powers,” Daisy admits but May makes a sharp clicking noise with her tongue, and Daisy shuts up.
“You’re making up excuses.”
Daisy grimaces as she sits up, trying to keep the annoyance out of her face. May was already taking the liberty to lecture her enough as it was, and Daisy really doesn’t want to know what May would say if Daisy started pouting like a child. She’s not thirsty, but she reaches for her water anyway because May would have something to say about that too.
As much as irritation builds a home in her heart, Daisy thinks bitterly, as she sips at her lukewarm water, that the only reason she hasn’t completely fallen apart is May and Coulson’s presence.
She is counting down the days to the funeral. It would certainly be the most unconventional funeral of her life. She has already attended one since what was supposed to be the end of the world. She didn’t own a black a dress, but she showed up in black jeans and a black t-shirt. The rest of the team dressed in similar attire, but Jemma had looked like death itself. She had somehow managed to get her hands on a black dress. It was simple, modest, nothing fancy, and she wouldn’t have stuck out from the rest of them that much if it weren’t for the stoic look on her face. She never smiled, never talked, never even cried. She drifted among them silently.
The memory of the funeral makes Daisy grimace. She had showed up more for Jemma than for Fitz. She doesn’t know if she feels guilty about that. Fitz was her friend for years, even if the end of it was a coma-inducing car wreck. But Daisy found that death didn’t kill the bitterness or resentment she holds towards him. It didn’t take away the hurt. Instead, the grief piled itself on top, breaking Daisy’s back underneath the weight of a million contradictory emotions.
May notices the expression on her face, and she turns back to the wall, staring blankly. Daisy can practically see the little thought bubbles coming out of her head. For someone who claims to hate emotions, May is incredibly perceptive of other people’s feelings. Daisy knows she’s better off following May’s advice, but she is getting so tired of control. Some days she feels as if she spends all her time putting herself back together after others break her down.
Maybe May can tell, because she turns around and asks, “Do you think what he did was right?” Daisy tries not to choke on her water. No one talks about what happened between her and Fitz- not after his death. It didn’t feel right to bring up his past transgressions after he had given his life to save the world. Despite that fact, May doesn’t have to specify for Daisy to know what she’s talking about.
Her instinct is to get on the defense, snap at May. There’s something about the way the question is phrased though. For once, it’s just a question. There is no influence to it- no one trying to get Daisy to answer a specific way. May wouldn’t judge her regardless of the answer.
But Daisy doesn’t know how to answer.
Instead, she gets up, gets into a starting position. May mirrors her, eyes flickering over her limbs and cataloguing all the ways she could take Daisy down. Daisy strikes first. That’s usually how it goes, but this time she strikes too early and she doesn’t pay close enough attention. She is too stuck in her head- swirling around in that whirlpool of memories, tied down by all those emotions that keep piling and piling. She is drowning in it.
Her back hits the mat for the fiftieth time that day. She doesn’t think she’s won a single match, and a selfish part of her wonders if she keeps failing if May and Coulson will stay. She shakes that thought from her head quickly, already embarrassed to have thought it at all.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Daisy must really be losing it, because any control she previously had a grip on flies free. “Because it’s a stupid question,” She grunts out, “Why would ask me that?” The question doesn’t sound nearly as angry as she intended it to. It was hurt- confused- and Daisy realizes, after the feeling has already settled in, that she is hurt and confused.
“You won’t ask yourself.” May holds out a hand, and that’s how Daisy knows she’s an above average disaster. May helping her up? Really? “It’s okay if the answer is no. But is that your answer.”
Daisy turns away from May’s outstretched hand. She tries to hide her face, sucks in her lip to hide the trembling. “Does it matter?” Daisy forces the question out from deep in her chest. Her voice is deep and rough, but it’s better than broken. “It doesn’t change what happened.”
“I think it matters to you.”
And clearly it does. Daisy is tucked up into herself, knees to her chest like she’s a little girl again, trying to soothe herself because no one else was there. Everything is a little fuzzy. She can’t hear anything beyond the buzzing of the air conditioner, fading into white noise. Her vision is blurred and all she can see is the red of the mat. Everything outside is dull, but inside it feels like she is being bombarded. She is collapsing in on herself.
She is being flooded, the water, the memories, forcing itself down her throat and into her lungs and stomach. They’re consuming her so entirely. There’s so many details. There are the things that people have told her and the things that she feels. She covers her ears and tries to force it all back out.
None of it matters.
Fitz is dead anyway.)
Daisy stumbled out of the medbay. Her head is still light and hot, but she is capable of standing now, and it’s all she needs. It must be night, or whatever night means on the Zephyr. It’s always pitch black or blinding white outside the windows depending on how close they were to the suns or stars of whatever solar system they were in. But the lights on the Zephyr are all, and no one has noticed her clumsy dissent to the main cockpit, so it must be night. A quick glance at the clock confirms her suspicion.
She manages to get to the passenger seat before she collapses, adjusting herself carefully before she really gets a good look outside the windows. They’re far away, drifting in one of the emptier portions of space, away from any objects with a strong gravitational pull. It was safer to travel that way- saved fuel too. There is a lot of black, but the stars illuminate the sky in a way they don’t really do on Earth.
Daisy looks at the empty pilot’s seat, and she feels indescribably alone. The stars outside make it worse. They’re beautiful, and Daisy thinks she could even name one or two- could say what constellation they were in- but she only knows because of a specific person.
It’s too much to think about. It hurts to remember. Memories like to come out at her from left field. She can remember the big things- the weddings, the betrayals, the vacations, saving their ass. She anticipates those memories, but Jemma and Fitz have this knack of sneaking into mundane places that are harder to get rid of. She finds them in a list of movies left behind on her laptop, the monkey statue she used to love, a book recommendation, a song, the Zephyr’s storage closet, her gauntlets, the name of a constellation.
They had been leaving marks since before Daisy even knew her own name, and it’s impossible to try and eradicate them from her brain. She has reached the point of irreparable damage. She is the shattered glass. The people in her life try to clean her up, try not to cut themselves on her jagged edges. Daisy knows it’s no one’s job to try and glue her back together- she’d never be the same anyway- but she wishes someone had tried instead of throwing it all away.
Daisy thinks, deep down, she was always holding out hope for an apology. She told herself she would never forgive him, but with the chance of it taken away, Daisy thinks she at least wanted him to try. To everyone else, it seems that dying was good enough to earn their forgiveness. They think about his sacrifice. Daisy thinks about how she’ll never get an apology.
V. Scutum: The Shield
Daisy would consider herself recklessly hopeful. Her entire childhood, people had taken her in, claiming to be the family. There would be all these promises about home and forever, and then she’d get tossed back out in a week or a month. It should’ve been enough to teach her better than to trust, but the second SHIELD had roped her in with more promises… Daisy had seen the red flags, practically had them spelled out to her, but it didn’t matter.
Ward was a good example of the consequences of her reckless hope. And yet after that, Daisy had still trusted her mother only to get similar results. And still, still Daisy managed to fall in love- really fall head over heels. That one had been a little different, but it still ended with her disappointed and alone.
And Daisy had all these thoughts back then too. This would be the last time. She is done throwing herself into relationships, done building bridges just to watch them all burn. But then Coulson and Jemma and Fitz and May and Mack and…
And she was back in.
Daisy never really learns her lesson.
She goes back to Jemma after a week of giving her the cold shoulder. There is something humiliating about it. She has to crawl back on her hands and knees, cutting herself on the edges of the things she broke, and she would have to beg Jemma to take her back and patch her up after all of it.
When she finds Jemma in the medbay, there is silence. Daisy isn’t quiet about the way she enters, and she can see the way Jemma’s shoulders rise and tense, the way her eyes stop flitting around the room and stay trained on the kit in front of her. The silence makes Daisy's chest pound harder, as if anger was filling her veins, getting ready to burst. Jemma would never be the one to reach out first, and that should’ve been enough for Daisy to never come back.
But she is so tired.
Before Jemma can pass through the doorway, Daisy latches onto her arm like a little leech, and she mutters, “I think my forehead is infected.”
It’s not a lie. Daisy has never been as responsible as she should be, and she’s only taken a downhill path. The cut on her forehead was most likely the result of getting thrown on the floor or against the wall, and it was most likely not a sanitary situation. Not to mention how much it itches.
Jemma takes one look at it and hisses, her face contorting into a tight grimace. “Daisy, you should’ve let me look at this.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” It’s an obvious fact- something that the both of them knew- but it wasn’t the sort of thing they said aloud to each other.
“I know,” Jemma whispers. She picks the bandage off of Daisy’s head, wipes something on the wound and Daisy winces. “Sorry.”
Daisy catches glimpses of Jemma’s face from behind her moving arms. She’s calculating the risk and reward, trying to decide if she can let Jemma pick her back up one more time, already knowing she’ll fall down by the end of it. And Daisy realizes, in her gut before her brain has caught up, that she will. As long as Jemma wants her, Daisy will crawl back.
“I can’t forgive him,” Daisy begins, “I know you want me to. Everyone wants me to. But I can’t pretend like I don’t remember.”
“That’s okay. I understand.”
Daisy studies Jemma’s face. She wants to believe these robotic words are said genuinely, but it’s not feasible for them to shed all their walls in one night. They’re both slightly on guard, and Daisy doesn’t know how to find the truth in Jemma’s words- doesn’t know if she even wants to. “I know that you still love him. Not the Fitz we’re finding. The one you married. But I can’t stand it. I hate him.”
“I hate him too.”
Daisy thinks she must have passed out on the table. She feels like she is drifting along in a dream- the kind where nothing really makes sense and figures just say words to say words. Then Jemma’s finger drags across the cut, and the pain brings Daisy back into reality.
“What ?”
“I hate him too. Not in the way you do. I know it’s not the same.” Jemma turns away from Daisy, ripping the gloves off her hands before the back of one wrist comes up to stifle a sob. “I hate him for everything he did. For the things he did and the things I did too… and for leaving. Leaving me with everything before I could figure out what any of it meant.” Jemma inhales sharply, a new bandage in her hand. She takes care to breathe and steady her hands before pressing it onto Daisy’s forehead. “It’s not the same, but I hate him too.”
It’s not the same, but Daisy thinks it’s not too different either.
(They’re sitting in the back of a black car, and Daisy thinks it shouldn’t, but it sort of feels like home.
She doesn’t want to get out. She’s slouched against the door of the car, peeking at the street lamps through tinted windows. Coulson’s sitting on the other side of the car, and there’s not really a reason for them to be in there anymore. They had gone out, had the best dinner they could under the current circumstances. That basically meant they picked up fast food and ate it in the backseat of a SHIELD car. The air is some odd mix of leather, french fries, and hamburger grease- far from appetizing, but Daisy still refuses to leave her seat.
If she did that would be it.
They would stumble from the street to the Lighthouse, go to bed, wake up, and the next day Coulson would be in Tahiti. And then that would be the last time she ever saw him.
She tries to hang on to the words he’s saying- it might be important- but she’s drifting off a little bit, struggling to keep her eyes open in the darkness. Coulson notices, because he stops whatever he was saying about his favorite lakeside towns and Chicago pizza, and he says, “Maybe it’s time we call it a night. It’s best to get some rest while we can.”
“I’m good,” Daisy mutters, but she doesn’t miss the way her words knit together. She shakes herself awake, shifting into a better sitting position until she feels awake again. “Really. I’m not that tired.”
“You could’ve fooled me.” He reaches for the door, and Daisy is suddenly overwhelmed by this anger she hasn’t felt since she first found out he was dying. She is watching him try to walk away, and Daisy thinks she hates him. She hates him for not trying harder, not wanting to stay, leaving. She hates him for that and for being the type of person she could miss.
It would’ve been easier if he didn’t make himself a person she could love.
She doesn’t realize the leather is ripping apart underneath her hands until Coulson puts a hand on her shoulder. “Sorry,” Daisy mutters. She’s such a mess. “I’m sorry,” Daisy says again. The leather is ripped apart, spilling polyester, but Coulson doesn’t seem afraid. He was never the type to be- never scared of the things she could do. The memory sticks into her brain like a splinter, stubborn and painful and impossible to remove.
Daisy gets out of the car, slamming the door with more force than she meant to. Coulson calls after her, and she hears him groan as he tries to get out the car, catch up with her. Her instincts pull at each other, further fracturing her already split mind. One part of her wants to run away, pull the band aid clean off, but the other part wins out. She rushes towards him, helping him to standing. She shouldn’t have run off. He’s too weak to be playing the chasing game anymore. She should know better.
“You’re right,” Daisy says, “We should get some rest. May will kill me if I kill you before she gets to go on vacation.”
Coulson lets out a weak wheeze in place of a laugh. He catches his breath, gets his bearings. Then they begin their slow and steady walk towards the Lighthouse. Daisy is watching her footing, careful not to trip on any particularly large rocks or uneven ground. She thinks about telling Coulson to do the same because he seems content to be watching her. Instead Daisy says, “Spit it out.”
“You first. You wanna tell me what that was about?” It’s not accusatory, but Daisy grimaces and shakes her head like he had told another bad joke. “You ripped apart one of Mack’s brand new cars. He needs those, you know.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Daisy says. She stuffs her hands into her hoodie pocket, trying to hide her bare fingers from the lingering mosquitoes. “We had a nice night. Isn’t that enough?”
“If you have something on your mind, you should say it now. You might not get another chance.”
He says it with this painful casualty. It reminds Daisy that he has come to terms with his death, with leaving it all behind, and selfishly, Daisy secretly wants him to struggle- to fight to stay. It’s enough to provoke her. “Okay,” Daisy says, “I hate you.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.”
“No it’s not.”
“It is.”
He doesn’t keep fighting her, but he doesn’t look at her the way she’d expect him to. He doesn’t look upset- doesn’t look like she had just told a man on his deathbed that she hates him. She wonders if he believes her. She doesn’t think he does. He has this unwavering faith in her, but it’s undeserved.
“I hate you because-” Because she loves him? That makes no sense. She can’t say that. But when she looks at Coulson it’s like he already knows.
“It doesn’t get easier to lose people.” They’re in a stand still, and the lake sends a chill over the land nearby. Daisy shivers, wipes quickly at the tears that have managed to escape.
“Then why does everyone expect me to move on?”
“I think you’re the only one who expects that of yourself.”)
“I messed it up,” Daisy whispers horrified, a chunk of brown hair in her fist, “I think I messed it up.”
Jemma seems to not care at all. She shrugs before she even sees the result, shifting around in her chair until she could catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror. “It looks fine to me.”
“But it looks like I cut them.”
“Isn’t that the point? Put the scissors down.”
Daisy moves quickly to follow Jemma’s orders. The hair and the scissors get scattered across the bathroom counter, and Daisy hops up next to them, checking her own reflection. “You just did such a good job. My hair looks great. Professional even-”
“I am a biochemist.”
“And I just wanted your hair to look good too.”
“I think you’re digging yourself a deeper hole,” Jemma laughs, “I like it. Do you not?”
“I like it as long as you like it.”
“Problem solved then.” Jemma leans back and stretches out, her body draped over the folding metal chair they found in one of the storage closets. No one admitted to bringing it along, but Daisy is glad they have it now. She groans, stretching her legs out in front of her.
They’re both a little tipsy from homemade booze, and Daisy feels tired more than drunk. Jemma is in a similar state. The bathroom still smells vaguely of bleach from earlier. They’re almost at a year now. A year since Daisy got her least favorite scar, and after that, a year since Fitz’s death, and after that, a year since Coulson’s death.
Daisy thinks about shutting her eyes, but she’s worried she’ll fall right off the side of the counter. Even perched there slightly drunk is a dangerous game to play, and she reaches a hand out to the mirror to steady herself. She is caught off guard by her own reflection.
It’s not the first time in her life it’s happened. There’s a million versions of herself running around in her head- little Mary and Skye and Quake and the Destroyer of Worlds. She’s cut her hair before, always in the name of new beginnings, of leaving other pieces of her behind. How many times has she built herself back up from the ground?
Daisy does close her eyes then. It’s this time of night when the memories start coming back. They slip through the backdoor her tired mind forgets to close. It’s harder now than it used to be to leave everything behind. Her memories are so potent. It’s like she can still feel the calluses on his hands, taste the salt of her tears on her tongue. They all used the same laundry detergent but his cardigans had picked the scent up better than anyone else’s clothes, and she could hear it too- his voice, whispered assurances, awkward laughter.
Daisy’s head hits the tile wall behind her with a dull thud, and she checks her reflection again. She is blonde, bloodshot eyes, definitely drunk. She looks different, but Daisy doesn’t think this is starting over. She doesn’t think she can take a wrecking ball to herself all over again. She doesn’t want to rebuild, just wants to be Daisy Johnson again. Whatever that meant.
Daisy knows very few things about herself nowadays. She knows she can hold grudges like no other- knows she can hate with every bone in her body. But she loves with everything she has too. She’s open arms until there’s someone to cling on to, and she loves with everything she has. She’s bad at moving on.
“I miss him too.”