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Her heart is racing trying to acclimatize herself with this new “reality” when she wakes up in the bath with a start. Her eyes wide open immediately looking around the bathroom. She’s memorizing the layout the best she can.
It was not her reality. However she knew that if she weren’t careful her perception could be affected. She could find herself lost in this reality, in the framework.
The phone lights up and chirps twice behind her. The text reads simply, “Wake up your boyfriend. We’re being called in.”
Her races for a different reason. Daisy whispers “Lincoln.” It’s a small, quiet and earnest plea. Let him be alive. Let her have lasting moments with someone she felt remorse and regret over.
The voice inside her head, that sounds awfully like May, tells her to remember the mission. Don’t get caught up. Lincoln can be her boyfriend, he can softly kiss her cheek, he can prepare breakfast in bed but this Lincoln won’t be there when she wakes up. And she has to wake up.
She exits the bedroom and sees him sleeping in bed. She passes the unnoticed picture frame on the dresser. She readies herself in practical, and stylish attire--an athletic, sleek, black long sleeve top and a pair of black cargo pants and steel toed boots, and tech that comes with the job.
Daisy approaches the bed and frowns slightly. The expanse of the back feels off somehow. It’s not as she quite remembered Lincoln. She has a small chill in the base of her skull that she shushes for the moment until she can get confirmation--all the while thinking of ways to defend herself if need be.
“Hey, babe,” Daisy gently shakes the man’s shoulders and that chill becomes stronger and more persistent.
Her heart beat races for yet another reason--terror. There’s a hitch she feels forming deep inside her. It’s stronger as the man rouses from sleep and turns slowly--sleepily. In the next few moments that it takes for him to face her head on, she steels herself.
“Mmmm,” the man says with that sardonic smirk she thought mysterious she now finds terrifying.
Daisy paints on the face of a woman who slept with her boyfriend the previous night. She fights to hide the revulsion and disgust.
“Get ready in ten, we’re being called in,” Daisy said, adding as much sweetness as she can stomach, “no time to waste.”
The next ten minutes of him getting ready is a blur as is the commute to meet their contact. She hides her nervousness with the music blasting from the car speakers and being interested with the world whizzing by. Ward paid no mind believing she was simply into the latest top 40 hit.
Her heart beat races again as the large building comes into view. The once standing S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters now had the Hydra logo emblazoned on the side of the building. They both end up in the director’s office with May looking out the view in front of her.
Daisy could feel herself fill with the urgent hope that in spite of May being in this reality for so long that all of the anachronisms that were so blatantly spitting in the face of everything May stood for meant that May wasn’t lost. Still, Daisy would have to play a delicate game and try to figure out if May was still truly May.
This was the world that Holden Radcliffe and Aida had dreamed up. They had honestly and truly believed this was a reality she could find herself lost in. They had paired her with the man who was Hydra, who betrayed their entire team in the most heinous way imaginable, who killed Director Hand and countless others including herself. She could never forget the terror she felt hiding from him and knowing that he would actually kill her. Then adding insult to injury, having Hydra so openly and brazenly in the public who was responsible for allowing a man like Daniel Whitehall terrorize and torture her mother, and carry out heinous experiments.
It seemed that Aida had not the ability to discern memories by emotional response or interpret them within the context of facts and emotional response. Rather the framework seemed to calculate based on the ratio of “good” (even if under a falsehood) memories versus “bad” memories. It was unable to gauge how deep her fear, terror and betrayal ran when it came to Ward. It was unable to realize that any good memory she shared with Ward was a lie. It was unable to see that no matter how long the good memories were with Ward, they were forever trashed because of the monster he showed himself to be.
She was sorry to not have some last moments with Lincoln even if to simply hug, and say sorry for when left the framework but she was going to use her situation to help her.
It was going to be this that she would hold onto. This realization that would keep her grounded in the--real reality.
Daisy only plead loudly in her brain that May had done the same. That she had held onto her own firm truths to keep herself from getting lost in this reality.
Now to try and get May’s attention, while looking for Jemma, without getting locked up, tortured or worse.