Chapter Text
July 2, 1988
The best and worst day of their lives.
A daughter made from love but born into heartbreak. Two young people, two young agents, crying with joy when their baby girl comes out screaming but sobbing just hours later as they drive to that place.
She was born in the early morning as the sun was just peeking over the horizon. She entered the world in her parents’ bed in their lovely white farmhouse on a hill. She was a week early, and she arrived fast. There wasn’t enough time for them to get to a hospital in the city. They knew they couldn’t anyways. It was far too unsafe. They had prepared for this. A particularly fascinating class in SHIELD Academy was how they learned this only a few years before. But for Agent Phillip J. Coulson and the woman baring their child, this was much more terrifying than fascinating. But the baby, Daisy, was born healthy and beautiful nonetheless.
They had only that daylight with her, holding her close as she cried and slept and fed. All the while, her parents, deeply in love with her and each other, moved from smiling and laughing to sobbing again. It was a day unlike any other, and it passed far too quickly.
By the time darkness dusked their home on a hill, mother, father, and child climbed into that red ‘62 corvette — affectionately called Lola by the father — and they flew off together. Away from home and the life they were supposed to have. Into the night sky and away from the sunset.
Not even a full 24 hours after giving birth was the mother riding in that flying car. Phil had worried about her coming. He said he could do it himself even though he knew he really couldn’t. She had scoffed at the idea and lifted her head proudly, “I’m Melinda May. A little childbirth won’t stop me.”
“No, of course not,” Phil had smiled, pulling her and the baby in her arms to him.
They had searched any and every orphanage to find the best option to leave her. In the end, there really were no good options, so Saint Agnes Orphanage in New York City it was. As they got to the city, it became later and later. Daisy fell asleep and her parents held hands over their baby’s car seat between them as they wept.
They arrived at that orphanage, landed in an alleyway next to the building and climbed from the car. Phil pulled Daisy from the carseat, and passed her over to Melinda. Sitting against Lola and standing in that dark alleyway, Melinda gave her daughter the final feeding they would share as she leaned into her lover’s arms, and he played with their child’s hands and feet. Each of them doing everything in their power to memorize this moment, to memorize their baby before giving her away. It was all that they would ever have of what they wanted.
When Daisy was done feeding, Melinda kissed their baby on her forehead and passed her over to Phil who bounced her gently back to sleep. Daisy eyes fluttered shut so easily, meant to be there on her father’s chest.
“It’s time,” Melinda whispered, always the brave one, always the one to speak what couldn’t be spoken.
Together, they broke into the orphanage and put their baby in an unoccupied crib. Whispers of love and apologies as they watched her wiggle in her sleep was the last moment of parenthood Melinda and Phil could claim.
They left back through the window, got into that flying car, and held hands as they flew back to the house that didn’t feel like home anymore.
They fell asleep in each other's arms, without any more tears left to shed.
When Phil woke up the next morning, he found Melinda gone. A note laid on her side of the bed, now cold with her absence.
I’m sorry. I love you. - Mel
He understood. He left that afternoon, went back to his dad’s house, and spent a week in that place that had been empty since his father’s passing. He cried and slept, and he begged for it all to change to how it should be. It didn’t. He got back to work somehow.
It was three months before he saw Melinda again in the halls of the Hub, and it was nearly a year before they worked together again.
They survived somehow. Became friends, and more again. It was never easy, but they survived.
And now he’s practically begging, but not asking, for her to join him to fly the bus. And god dammit, she argues some but she doesn't refuse. Things have changed a million times between them in the lifetime they’ve shared, and this is just another change, but somehow it feels different.
Somehow, it feels like their headed in the right direction.
Phil begs that the direction they go will lead them home again, as a family.