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The common room was fully decked out in everything red, green, and gold possible. It looked liked the box of mismatched donated decorations Daisy remembered from the orphanage had thrown up on every available surface. Except with much less of the wear and tear those dated used decorations had and strings of lights that actually lit up. Still it gave Daisy this dizzying sense of deja vu that she wasn’t sure she liked.
Bobbi blamed it on Jemma, the two of them had been collecting decorations here and there everywhere they’d landed since Thanksgiving but the inside scoop straight from Hunter was that Bobbi was a closeted Christmas fanatic and Jemma had barely done anything beyond picking out a nice festive wreath, as she had put it. How much input she’d had or not Jemma seemed to spend all her time in the space for the past month. Currently she had files strewn out over the coffee table, and her lap, and the couch. Probably the floor too but Daisy couldn’t see from where she was sitting opposite her. Jemma’s laptop probably displayed complicated research or the simulations Fitz had been working on that Daisy hadn’t listened close enough to know anything about but Christmas music drifted softly from it’s speakers and it actually did make Daisy wonder what it was Jemma was working on because it was a little impressive how focused and relaxed Jemma looked at the same time.
Not that she was looking. Definitely not at the crease in Jemma’s brow or the pen cap trapped between her lips. That would be silly. She was playing solitaire. Killing time. Paying absolutely no attention to any of those things.
“Do I have something on my face?”
Daisy blinked and then she could have smacked her palm to her forehead because apparently in her not at all paying attention to Jemma she was staring directly at her.
“No.” She said and shook her head. “You don’t.”
Jemma looked at her strangely but before anything else could be said Coulson swept into the room and addressed them both without slowing his stride.
“We’ve got an 0-8-4, wheels up in twenty.” He informed and disappeared out the opposite set of doors on the other side of the room.
“Did he say an 0-8-4?” Jemma questioned, looking thrilled with the idea.
“It’s Christmas Eve.” Daisy countered, less than pleased.
“An actual 0-8-4? Oh that’s brilliant, it’ll be like getting back to our roots!”
“Is it even legal for us to work on Christmas Eve?”
---
Sure Daisy had been one of the first to volunteer to remain on base over Christmas, it wasn’t as if she had anywhere else to be but she hadn’t expected they’d see any action.
Their destination was apparently some sort of secret because even when she plopped down in the cockpit with Bobbi, after growing bored of her relocated game of solitaire, she got as much out of her as she could have gotten out of May. Which meant basically nothing.
“This is taking way longer than I figured it would.” She speculated but Bobbi only hummed in response.
“It’s a good thing I’ve still got a coat on this plane too.”
The amount of snow she could see from their attitude seemed never ending. From what she could see through the gaps in the clouds and the mountains that poked out above them, it was all snow for miles and miles.
“I’m gonna start thinking we’re headed to the North Pole.” Daisy added with a chuckle but when she got no response from Bobbi again she rethought it. “Wait that’s not a real place is it? I mean, I’m not talking elves and reindeer but…”
Bobbi snorted and she looked away from the controls just long enough to check if Daisy was being serious.
“No, it’s not a real place, but that’s hilarious.” Sort of absently, Bobbi flipped a few switches Daisy didn’t know the function of and then said. “We’ll be there soon.”
---
Be there soon had really meant another three hours and there, Daisy had found out, was a long hike in a freaking blizzard. It wasn’t actually a blizzard but it was the coldest she had felt since Koenig’s unnamed secret base and that was close enough.
The 0-8-4 was embedded in an icy rock face inside a cave according to whoever their classified source was. If Daisy had known they were going to be going all Indiana Jones on Christmas Eve she would have had a bigger breakfast.
Jemma and Fitz went right into preparing to inspect the object and Bobbi and Hunter spread out and posted up to be sure the area was secure. Daisy’s job was to stick with Fitzsimmons until they figured out what the object was, and what to do with it.
Unfortunately, as always, curiousity got the better of her and she couldn’t keep her distance. Daisy wanted to see it too, they hadn’t gotten an 0-8-4 since the obelisk and not only did the mission remind her of one of their first and the disastrous trip to Peru, the way the boxy metal jutted from the cave wall was just as reminiscent.
It was a chrome sort of color, with rounded edges and engineered marks and crevices throughout. As Daisy neared for some reason an intense need to reach out and touch it roused in her but she wasn’t an amature. If something unknown and possibly not human made was calling out to her it was best to keep a distance. And she did, until the cave suddenly shook around them with the force of what felt like a small earthquake and the part of the 0-8-4 that clung snug to the rock face plummeted free.
“No, Daisy don’t!” Jemma called out to her and took hold of her arm to pull her back but it was too late, Daisy’s reflex had already kicked in and she caught the device before it could hit the stone floor.
A second later a sickening lurch pulled from somewhere behind her bellybutton and everything around her twisted into a blur. Daisy only had time to shut her eyes before she was slamming into something solid and every inch of her body roared and protested over whatever the hell had happened.
---
When Daisy finally got the feeling back in her limbs she groaned and made to roll over onto her back only to find something clamped down on her arm was stopping her. She opened her eyes slowly to the sight of messy brown hair. Jemma with her face all scrunched up clung to her as if her life depended on it and Daisy shook her arm to get her attention.
“Have we exploded?” She asked, eyes still closed.
“Not that I’ve ever lost faith in you but as a Biochemist I think you should know that.”
Jemma opened her eyes and something flickered across her expression Daisy couldn’t place. Then all at once she released her grip and moved away.
They both stood at the same time, brushing themselves off and nursing the sore points on their bodies that had hit the floor first.
“Alright we haven’t been blown up but where the bloody hell are-- oh my God.” Jemma’s mouth had fallen open and Daisy was quick to survey the area, searching for some kind of obvious danger but all she saw was a seemingly normal living room and a lit up christmas tree.
“What?” She questioned, looking between Jemma and the unfamiliar room around them.
Before Jemma could answer approaching voices from another room carried toward them and Daisy momentarily panicked over whether or not they should hide.
“Have you set out the biscuits?” A deep but smooth voice questioned, British Daisy noted.
Jemma didn’t seem nearly as alarmed as Daisy felt suitable for the situation because she was freaking out herself and Jemma was usually ten levels lower on the scale of keeping it together in a crisis than she was.
She took to hiding behind the couch and hissed toward Jemma when she didn’t follow. Midway through reaching out to tug the other agent down with her the man entered the room, his gaze scanning around in search of something.
“Yes, but you ought to wait until we are sure she’s asleep for the night don’t you think?” A woman responded and then appeared a second later behind him with a dish towel hanging over her shoulder.
Daisy stood frozen beside Jemma, contemplating what excuse they could use for breaking into these stranger’s home or if they should just stick to the truth and let Coulson sort it out when he got there. Wherever there was.
“This is our Jem we’re speaking about love, she tucked herself in early.”
The woman laughed and then nodded, conceding. “Right, what was I thinking? Have at them then Santa.”
Just as the man plucked a cookie off a small plate set by a tall glass of milk, Jemma stepped forward.
“Dad.”
“What?” Daisy immediately questioned, somehow more confused than she had been a moment before.
The woman turned and left the room, followed soon after by the man who stuffed the rest of the cookie into his mouth and grabbed the remaining two on his way.
“Dad!” Jemma tried again and began moving toward the doorway they’d disappeared through but she only got a few steps away before Daisy felt the odd tug to her body again and all at once the room blurred and she was falling again.
---
Somehow Jemma had managed to remain on her feet but Daisy hit the floor a second time with the same force. Cursing, she stood.
“What the hell is happening?!” She grumbled while rubbing the portion of her forehead that had unfortunately met with the floor.
“That was my parents home.” Jemma said, sounding equally confused and excited.
It only really hit Daisy that they were no longer standing in the same place when a distantly familiar smell crept into her nose and her body stiffened in reaction.
They were somewhere new, standing in a narrow hallway with a door at the end. The walls were an ugly muted color and bare in contrast to the decorations and picture frames that had hung in the warm living room they had been in moments before.
“It’s the device, it must be teleporting us.” Jemma speculated, fascination seeded in her tone. “Erratically it seems, it may have taken on damage before we got to it.”
Jemma continued talking after that but Daisy had tuned out, she took a few steps forward, the laminated floor sticky beneath her boots. It was a sweater draped over the banister of the stairs to their left that caught her attention, green and well worn. She recognized it right away, along with the musty smell that was causing an unpleasant reaction in her stomach and soon after the hallway itself.
“Daisy?” Jemma questioned gently, catching on to the fact that she was no longer listening.
“I know where we are.” She said and just after the crash of breaking glass sounded somewhere in the house.
From there the sound of hurried footsteps heading toward them was drowned out by a bellowing voice that traveled down from the stairs.
“What did you do?!” A woman’s voice, though much different than Jemma’s mother’s. American for one thing.
There was no response. Daisy and Jemma watched a girl appear in the hallway, a flash of long dark hair and a small frame before she tucked herself behind the door at the end of the hall and slammed it shut.
The woman that came down the stairs had a scowl on her face and Daisy recognized her right away. Mrs Getty, one of her less savory foster parents from when she was young.
“How many dishes are you going to break in this house!” Mrs Getty yelled and Daisy stepped out of the woman’s way, mouth hanging open and apparently unseen by her. “This is why you’re getting nothing but coal. I’ll be damned if Santa makes a stop at this house.”
Anger filled Daisy quickly but the odd scenario had her rooted to the spot. To be standing as an outsider and witness was disorienting.
“Come out of that closet right now!” Mrs Getty hollered at the door and Daisy nearly jumped at the other end of the hall when she pounded her fist against it.
“No!” A very stern but muffled voice replied and it struck Daisy with a small rush of pride.
She remembered this, it wasn’t just something that she was somehow watching, it was a memory. The water in the sink had been too hot and she’d accidentally sent a glass off the counter when she recoiled from it. One of her first placements out of St. Agnes and she’d hated it. Especially because her arrival had only been a few weeks before Christmas and Daisy learned quickly that the Getty’s weren’t exactly the happy warm family she had been hoping for. At least at St. Agnes the nuns scraped together a big dinner on Christmas day to celebrate.
“Hey!” She shouted when Mrs Getty’s fist pounded again into the closet door but, again, she wasn’t seen or heard and her sudden move to advance was stopped by Jemma’s hand in hers and the starling sensation of the floor falling out from beneath them for the third time.
---
“So we’re time traveling?”
“That’s not possible.” Jemma was quick to respond.
“Well we’re something because all of that, I remember that.”
Jemma’s expression softened and she looked like she wanted to say something about it but changed her mind.
“We’re at my parent’s again.” Jemma informed instead. There was Christmas music playing, happy voices carrying along with it. “They’ve been having an annual Christmas Eve party for as long as I can remember.”
“Really? You didn’t go last year.” Come to think of it, Jemma wasn’t there this year either.
Jemma shrugged. “With everything going on, you know how I get.”
That was true, Daisy did know. When things in Jemma’s life were overwhelming she had this strange aversion to wanting to explain the more strange Shield events and she wasn’t exactly great at pretending everything was fine either.
“Yeah, I guess.” She said. Even though she understood Jemma’s reason she didn’t get why Jemma wouldn’t want to spend the time with her parents. Then again, their perspectives were vastly different.
“Jemma wait!” Someone yelled out, pulling Daisy out of her thoughts.
Two kids ran by, causing both Daisy and Jemma to press up against the wall in the hallway to make space. Although, it was probably unnecessary seeing it was becoming pretty clear they were like ghosts.
“Is that you?”
The girl, only slightly shorter than the boy that was chasing her, was wearing a pretty holiday dress and her hair was in a single braid that fell just between her shoulders at the back of her neck. Daisy didn’t notice how indisputable the girl being a younger Agent Simmons was until she stopped and turned abruptly to face the boy in the main archway.
“Oh no not this…” Jemma hushed out and a spare glance in her direction revealed a very clear flush spreading across her cheeks.
Daisy felt a flicker of excitement and affection spark in her and she quickly turned her attention back to the scene in front of them to see what the cause for the sudden blush was.
“Do you like experiments?” Younger Jemma said, bright eyes and very serious.
The boy shrugged and offered her an unenthusiastic “Sure.” in response.
“I love experiments.” She went on to explain and Daisy easily recognized the inquisitive expression, even on smaller features. Younger Jemma pointed up and it was then that both the boy and Daisy noticed the mistletoe hanging above them. Daisy snorted.
“Smooth Jemma.”
“Oh, hush it.”
Younger Jemma went on to explain that it would be an experiment because she intended to use the experience as collected data and asked that he stay very still during the ‘process’. As eloquent as always.
“How old are you? Here I mean… there… whatever, you get it.”
Jemma groaned and covered her face. “Twelve I think.” She sighed what sounded a bit like defeat. “I have it written down somewhere as… data.”
Daisy’s laugh was full bellied and any thoughts that had still been lingering about their last head trip of a time change instantly vanished.
“That’s the neighbors son, he fancied me for quite some time actually, right up until I left for college.”
Which wasn’t saying much in terms of time seeing as Daisy knew Jemma finished school at some ridiculously young age, too crazy smart for her own good.
“How was it?” The boy asked after twelve year old Jemma had leaned in and pressed her lips to his just long enough to make contact.
“I can hardly draw a conclusion without a sample size.” She said but her face scrunched when the boy moved to kiss her again and was quick to turn on her heels and loudly rush out that her mother had made pudding.
It dawned on Daisy then, as the two kids made their way in the other direction and she gasped.
“Did I just witness your first kiss!?”
Jemma’s cheeks darkened but she didn’t have time to reply as once again they were tugged by an invisible force and the room disintegrated from view.
---
Daisy kept her footing when they came to a halt, practice working in her favor. When her eyes adjusted to the new lighting of sun spilling in through large paned windows she knew exactly where they were right away.
“I hated this place.” She said, taking in the paint chipped walls and messily made beds of mismatched bedding around them.
“Poots got her undies all up in a bunch!” She heard in an annoying taunting tone from behind them and spun around.
There she stood, probably about the same age as they’d just seen Jemma at her parent’s home, facing a group of other kids varying in age and size. The one that had spoken towered over her younger self with at least a few years on her back then. Definitely not someone she liked.
“My name is Skye.” She heard herself say and her eyes widened slightly at how weird that seemed now, almost paralleled to her recent struggle in getting Coulson and others to remember to call her Daisy.
“You can’t just make up your own name.” Another kid complained in protest, earning the nodded approval of the others.
“Yeah, Mary Sue.” The bigger kid teased, making it a point to pronounce every bit of the name clearly.
“Call me Skye!” She all but yelled and when the kid opened their mouth to call her Poots again all they got out was the start of the P before she was watching herself swing straight for their face and her small fist connected satisfyingly with the kid’s nose.
The kid yelled out in pain, both hands flying up to check for blood.
“MY. NAME. IS. SKYE.”
“Oh, Daisy.” Jemma sighed out from beside her and Daisy was almost startled by it.
She had been so wrapped up in the scene and feeling it leak its way into her chest and up into her head to connect with memories she hadn’t thought about in ages.
All the other kids scrambled from the room and Daisy knew that not long after one of the head nuns would come and find her, calling her Mary too and forbidding her from joining their Christmas dinner the following day. Violence was not tolerated.
Jemma’s hand slipped into hers and it drew her attention away from herself and out of her thoughts.
“Are you alright?” She asked, her voice full of concern and Daisy couldn’t help but to crack a small reassuring smile at least for Jemma’s benefit.
“It’s fine.” She promised. “Not as much of a milestone as a first kiss.”
Predictably Jemma looked away and rolled her eyes. The distraction of their palms pressed together was more affecting than Daisy would have guessed, but welcome.
---
“I’m going to get whiplash if this keeps happening.” Daisy complained, trying to stay her footing after St. Agnes disappeared.
“Three minutes.” Jemma spouted, her eyes glued to the watch on her wrist.
“What?”
“It’s always three minutes, the duration of each jump.”
Of course, Jemma was taking measurements without her even knowing. While Daisy was angsting against her past and teasing Jemma for hers, Jemma was actually working on trying to figure out what was happening to them.
“Well it’s certainly broken.” Fitz cut in and both of them snapped their attention up toward him.
Daisy breathed a sigh of relief, glad that whatever the heck had swept them off on the weirdest reverse back to the future adventure had decided to spit them back out where they belonged.
“Where do you think it’s from? Doesn’t look like any tech I’ve seen and that includes some of the things that got pulled out of the fridge last year.” Bobbi said from beside him. They were both inspecting the 0-8-4 which laid in more than one piece at their feet on the icey cave floor.
“You guys are never going to guess what this thing does.” Daisy announced excitedly, headed toward them.
“It’s honestly fascinating. I thought the monolith teleport was wildly unimaginable but this is just…” Jemma faltered and Daisy looked back at her to see a horrified expression painted accross her face.
“Could be alien.” Fitz continued and it settled in that just like every encounter they’d had so far, they couldn’t be seen.
Then Daisy caught sight of what Jemma was looking at and her jaw fell slack.
“Oh.”
There, just behind the mysterious object laid two bodies, their bodies. Tangled up in each other on the stone floor. One of her hands was stretched out over a piece of the broken 0-8-4 and the other had somehow fallen around Jemma who was curled up against her side. If she didn’t know any better it almost looked like two people embraced and resting.
The thought made Daisy’s cheeks hot but she snapped herself into remembering the bigger picture. They weren’t back.
“Well this is unnerving.” Jemma muttered, looking on as well.
Daisy let out a puff of air and nodded. She didn’t really have words.
Then Jemma snapped into action and circled around Fitz and Bobbi to get a better look at the device.
“If I’m right we only have a few minutes left.” She explained, crouching down to inspect the largest piece beneath the palm of the unconscious version of Daisy on the floor.
At least Daisy hoped they were just unconscious. A chill shot up her spine and raised goosebumps on her arms, the begging question right at the tip of her tongue.
She knelt down to look at herself and on impulse reached out to check her own pulse thinking she could at least settle one uncertainty but Jemma yelled out to her and it made her recoil.
“What?!” She questioned as she shot back up to her feet.
“If I were to take anything scientific from the years of watching highly inaccurate adventures of the Doctor and the TARDIS it is that you are absolutely not to come in physical contact with yourself in another time.”
“I thought you said we weren’t time traveling.”
Jemma narrowed her eyes but the pointed expression quickly morphed into something of uncertainty.
“I don’t seem to have a clue and there isn’t anything here to--”
Jemma didn’t finish her sentence but Daisy guessed what it was she was about to say before they were displaced for a sixth time.
---
“Uh-huh, my Grammy was a superhero!”
Before Daisy had a chance to get her bearings, that’s what filled her ears. Very small but very loud and insisting. A couple of rounds of ‘nosa’ and ‘uh-huh’ went back and forth a few times and gave her the time to take in where they’d ended up.
Nothing looked familiar, not the house or the kids that were gathered and arguing around a tall Christmas tree.
“Do you know them?” Daisy asked but Jemma shook her head and dropped her gaze to take a quick check of her watch.
“Have you considered the watch might not be right seeing as we’re not, you know, really our bodies?”
Jemma paused and then shook it off without looking at Daisy, clearly ignoring this small detail.
Daisy understood it, keeping the time of their jumps was the only thing she had found to be of any helpful meaning so far. Shattering that wouldn’t help either of them, even if the time was wrong or insignificant.
“Uh-Huh! She had super cool powers and everything!”
“People with powers don’t exist, those are just stories for babies.” The opposite kid challenged and Daisy brought her attention back to them, intrigued by the conversation. “Your granny was a nobody.”
Daisy could see the angry building in the other kid, his fists balling at his sides and in one swift movement he swung at the other child and narrowly missed a collision with their nose.
Jemma gasped and lurched forward as if she were going to help break it up, as if she could.
“You take that back!” The kid shouted, all four feet tall and red in the face.
“What’s going on in here?” Came a soft voice from the doorway, a familiar voice and when Daisy and Jemma looked they gasped in unison.
There in the doorway, a deep red shawl wrapped around frailer looking shoulders, stood Jemma with more grey hair than not and noticeable evidence of age around her eyes.
The angry kid ran toward her and knocked into her knees to grab at her long thick skirt, making her sway a little in surprise of the impact. “Grandma, tell ‘em Granny had super powers like you told me before.” He demanded and shot a glaring look back at the other kids.
“Oh my…” Jemma said slowly and moved in closer to Daisy to nudge at her as if Daisy weren’t already looking. “I think that’s me.”
Daisy couldn’t work up a reply. She agreed, it was very clear the woman was Jemma, she could see it in every one of her features and the elegant sound of her voice that had barely changed at all.
“I’ve aged fantastically.” She bragged, bright smile evident in her tone.
“About the extra special stuff she got from her family.” The child nagged and tugged more at the grey haired woman’s skirt.
The woman, Jemma, smiled warmly at him and ran her fingers over the mess of dark hair on top of his head in an attempt to straighten it out.
“Another time dear, you are all needed for opening presents downstairs.”
All the kids lit up at once and the argument was effectively put to a halt as they bounded excitedly out of the room but not without a last stubborn, “It is true though. If Granny were still here too she coulda just showed us.”
“I have grandchildren.” Jemma said in a hushed voice beside Daisy. Her arms had moved up to hook around Daisy’s and the way she spoke the words was as if they were fragile or too good to be true. If Daisy were in her shoes, watching herself that way, she would probably be react the same way.
It wasn’t until older Jemma moved toward the tree, focusing in on a specific ornament that she realized there actually was something familiar to her in the room. She could have sworn the odd looking almost jagged piece of metal hanging from a red ribbon on the tree was exactly like something she had just been looking at on the cave floor. Though she didn’t have time to dwell on it because once again their reality warped and the image of Jemma with wrinkles around her eyes faded away.
---
Daisy had been so enthralled in the last scene she hit the floor hard like she had the first few times they experienced their still unexplained travel. Feeling defeated she made no real move to get up until she heard a distinct and wildly out of place sound fill her ears.
“Is that a crying baby?” She asked but Jemma was already moving toward the sound and the idea of being separated when their allotted three minutes was up motivated her enough to peel herself up off the hardwood floor and follow.
Again her surroundings weren’t familiar to her but that last place they’d been was obviously Jemma’s future, Daisy considered that and prepared herself for what she might find as they closed in on the decidedly unhappy wailing baby.
What she was met with however was too perplexing for her to immediately grasp.
The living room was covered just about wall to wall with Christmas decorations, it reminded Daisy of the common room on base and she knew there was something connecting and amusing about that but all she could focus on was a second Jemma standing by the overly decorated Christmas tree looking entirely like her present self and cradling the crying baby. Herself standing next to her.
“You would think her first Christmas would make her happy.” She watched herself say. It was a much stranger experience than the earlier memories they had revisited. She had already lived it and knew what to expect, finding herself in a house she didn’t recognize, standing around in pajamas with Jemma and presumably Jemma’s child was certainly not at all on her radar of things to expect.
“I think the monkey plush Fitz got frightens her.” The Jemma before them said, her eyes on the infant who Daisy could now see was no older than a few months.
Daisy and Jemma shared a wide eyed glance at one another but Daisy had to look away quickly, heat rising to her cheeks and a familiar flutter of what she guessed she would describe as butterflies in her stomach.
“There we go, the last one.” The other Daisy said as she hung a white bulb reading first Christmas 2022 in red lettering right next to the same odd metallic ornament looped with ribbon she had witnessed an Elderly Jemma admiring.
“Oh my God.” Daisy said aloud, understanding finally coming to her. Though she kept the parrot of Jemma’s ‘I have grandchildren’ under wraps in her own head.
“I’ll go warm a bottle.” Future Daisy announced and then promptly kissed her square on the lips.
“Oh my God.” She repeated, though the second time it was in harmony with Jemma beside her.
“Perfect.” The other Jemma said and bounced the fussy baby in her arms. “If you get her down early enough I have a special present for you…”
Daisy’s mouth went dry. That wasn’t subtle at all. Since when did Jemma Simmons learn to pull off that level of flirting?
“God bless us everyone.” Her future self tossed back playfully over her shoulder on the way to the kitchen and Daisy was too utterly stunned not to laugh at it.
“Tiny Tim reference.” She giggled, trying her hardest to keep herself under control. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“Daisy!”
The suggestion of her wording came to her a touch too late and it sobered her laughter. “No, I mean… Hey she said it not me! Okay well I said it-- or I’m going to say it.” Daisy huffed. “This is too big of a headache for me. What meant was that it was relevant to this warped Christmas Carol we’re trapped in right now.”
The explanation didn’t stop either of their faces from being so red but it tipped a reminder to their situation in time to not be surprised by the tug behind her bellybutton that pulled them away.
---
The next thing Daisy remembered was waking up, not being deposited out somewhere along a timeline. She was definitely in a medical pod, quarantined, of course and alone. She checked herself for any sign of injury and came up with none.
Daisy certainly felt different, solid and less like something abstract. When she was with Jemma everything they saw felt a little rough around the edges, like a dream. She could see that clearer. The same way she sometimes sleeps through her alarm and dreams she’d gotten out of bed and dressed for the day only to wake up and realize it was most certainly not real.
In the time Daisy spent alone the plane ride back to base she had started to wonder if she’d made the whole thing up, a product of hitting her head or getting knocked out by falling ice sheets in the cave. Without Jemma to compare notes with right away it remained a mystery until Daisy could finally drum up the courage to ask.
“So, Fitz said in debrief that they reversed whatever the last signal was before the device broke.” Whatever that meant.
They were back on base, a good rest and a whole day later. Daisy just couldn’t bring herself to knock on Jemma’s door, not after what she’d seen. A part of her was embarrassed but she also recognized that a portion of her feelings lended to the concern that Jemma would have no recollection of anything that Daisy thought had happened. It was the most likely thing and Daisy felt crazy for even considering that it hadn't been a dream.
Jemma regarded her for a moment, perched at the edge of her perfectly made bed.
“Something of an electric current.” She explained, though Daisy got the sense that Jemma was simplifying it for her benefit. “It affected me as well because I was touching you when the device sent out the pulse.”
Daisy ducked shyly and scrunched her nose. “Sorry.”
Though Jemma just smiled and shook her head. “Don’t be, it inspired the most fascinating dream and medically speaking we both check out alright. I had a look at your chart.”
Daisy perked up. “You had a dream?”
The question made Jemma look away. She looked suddenly nervous and her hands came together in her lap.
“About… your first kiss at your parents Christmas party?”
Jemma’s eyes widened.
“And some kid calling you grandma.”
They both stared at each other and then as if they’d decided it together busted out laughing uncontrollably at the same time.
Nursing her side Daisy moved to sit beside Jemma on the bed, the last of her laughter still making its way through her.
“You punched that child in the face for teasing you.” Jemma said. “I wasn’t aware that you were living the life of combat before joining Shield.”
“Ha ha.” Daisy mocked. “At least I wasn’t the one with all the grey hair.”
Jemma laughed but then she paused and hesitated once before speaking. “You kissed me.”
The simple statement sent a ripple effect through Daisy, touching on some of the millions of questions she had about the whole ordeal.
“I think the baby’s first Christmas thing was kind of a bigger deal than that part…”
Jemma laughed. It was all too weird and Daisy felt overwhelmed so she could imagine Jemma felt some of the same but her smile reached her eyes and somehow nothing really felt out of place.
“I have something for you.” Daisy remembered and stuffed her hand into her sweater pocket to retrieve a flat square box.
“Oh I didn’t think we were doing presents until after dinner.” Jemma commented, confused.
“It’s something else.” Daisy said and handed it over.
Before coming to see Jemma, Daisy got a chance to get a look at what was left of the 0-8-4. Fitz assured her that it was inactive but she still suggested they revisit the old protocol of jettisoning the thing out into space. It was extreme and that seemed to amuse him but he told her they would be shipping it to a different lab for inspection and safe keeping. Daisy figured there would be renewed interest in just what it might be once she and Jemma added to the description of it’s effects.
“Fitz said it was basically a pile of rubbish so I didn’t think anyone would mind.” Daisy explained as Jemma peered down into the small box.
She had stolen a small familiar piece of the device. A broken off corner of the outer casing that was instantly familiar to her. Daisy strung a small loop of red ribbon through it like she had seen in her dream but she wasn’t sure she was going to show Jemma at all until it was clear that it hadn’t been a dream at all.
“Merry Christmas.” She said finally and not a second later Jemma was turning toward her and closing the distance between them.
The kiss felt like some sort of final relief, like something she hadn’t been aware she was anticipating and when they parted Daisy couldn’t keep from grinning.
“It’s all rather paradoxical.” Jemma commented, as she held up the odd ornament to inspect it. “Seeing ourselves together before it happened. Although, I’m not entirely convinced it wasn’t some sort of telepathic hallucination.”
“Like that’s any less insane.”
It was true Daisy may have taken longer to figure out what she wanted had she not seen it, hallucination or not, but nothing really felt like a paradox to her. More like fate. Like something that would have been eventual regardless so it didn’t matter.
And according to the ghost of Christmas future, she had a lot to look forward to.