#daisy x sousa
Quick oneshot sometime post 7x10, and pre finale, it is a little darker than normal, not quite as full blown angst as I had first planned, but that would have been probably triple the word count and didn’t have the time for that.
Definitely not what will happen in the show, not with only 3 ep’s left! But was just annoying my brain until I wrote it out.
The fight to get Jemma back had been tough and gruelling, but ultimately successful, if success was measured simply on the fact that her, Deke, and the Zephyr all returned alive and in one piece. But Nathaniel still managed to get away, weaker and with minimal supporters, but alive, they were still stuck in the 80’s and everyone was quite worse for wear.
The parting words of Enoch were starting to appear more and more likely, with the team barely hanging on, barely a team, and Coulson was fairly certain that they would all need a long break at the end of this; if they survived the end that was. The team, still a family when it counted, had gone off to their separate corners of the light house, had gone off on their separate ways to cope and prepare in their own ways for the end of the mission; however it panned out.
Simmons hadn’t spoken much about what they had done to her while they kept her hostage, just that they had been after Fitz and had not been able to remove the memory device before the rescue, but even without remembering, what Daisy had told her about when she did remember had thrown her. Daisy and Coulson were the only two that remembered those screams, and they were just another something that kept them up at night, the unknown, the fear and the worry for their teammate haunting them.
Even if she didn’t know anything further regarding Fitz or her missing time, Simmons was shaken from her ordeal, the longer she went without Fitz, answers, and now Enoch, the more her optimism was fading. Deke was keeping close to his Nana, watching out for her, trying to help, and trying to give her hope, where hope was desperately needed.
The two of them spent most of the time going over anything and everything on the base and on the Zephyr, in an attempt to get or send a message to Fitz, to find something that might help or just keep themselves busy enough to not have the chance to think about what the truth could be. Running off caffeine and energy bars, they would work for days straight until finally crashing, or until one of the others stepped in to force them to rest, more oftenly being May.
With Deke not leaving Jemma’s side, Yo-Yo had taken over the supply runs, her powers allowing her to get in and out of the nearby town easier than anyone else and she was glad for the breath of fresh air, the chance to have a moment away from the doom and gloom type feeling that was settling across the underground base. She knew the team needed a moment, needed a bit of time to get back up and finish the fight, and made an effort on every trip to find something new or exciting to take back to them to share a little bit of happiness amongst them.
Mack and Coulson were spending any spare moment pouring over any documents, history texts and shared knowledge, trying to come up with a plan, a way to save the timeline, and finish the mission. They had turned one of the walls into what looked more like an elaborate conspiracy theory, not a S.H.I.E.L.D. assignment, and the two were also working as the central command for any information Deke and Simmons came up with in their lab, or anything Daisy had hacked for them. Yo-Yo constantly stopped in with food, making sure they took some level of care for themselves, as she helped collect them whatever files or books they didn’t have.
Between training with anyone that wanted to, and going over every last bit of the Zephyr, May was bouncing back the quickest, something that surprised no one, but with her new found gift, she was struggling with the first row seat to how the team was handling it. Initially, this had her hiding in the plane under the guise of making sure it was as it had been before Nathaniel took it, but as time went on, she used it to her advantage for the teams well being; taking the extra time to make sure Daisy got some fresh air, Mack had someone to vent about how Coulson annoyed him that day, and to just check in with Simmons.
After everything that had happened, and only just coming away from Simmons’ rescue mission in one piece, Daisy had gone quieter and more determined than ever, but she was still drained. She had gone from tougher mission, to tougher and now to the toughest she had had to face, and that was saying something. The others noticed but were all on similar wavelengths and for the most part, left her to herself as she readied herself for the fight.
She had taken to sparring with either May or Yo-Yo any chance she got, leaving the lighthouse with May for their daily runs whenever they got the all-clear, or just trying to stick to the other agents insane treadmill settings, and it almost felt as if she was getting simultaneously fitter and tireder as the days drew on. But she knew that for them to have any shot at succeeding at this mission, one that they had no choice but to win, then she would have to be stronger and more ready than ever.
Making sure to stay clear of anywhere near the room they were holding her sister in, while they were still undecided of her loyalties and what exactly to do with her. Daisy tried to keep herself from dwelling on the topic right now, and keep herself from the discussions involving her, she just wasn’t ready to reach out to yet another member of her family who could very well let her down once more, and she wasn’t ready to face the half sister who had gotten the relationship with her mother that she done anything for; but instead, Kora had thrown away so quickly to side with the same person who had tortured Daisy and killed their mother.
A part of her routine involved slipping into Sousa’s bunk every night, the first time he had hesitated, as she thought he would, not wanting to take advantage of her – ever the gentleman, but he, along with the rest of the team, quickly got used to that being her bunk too, not that anyone ever questioned it. That was something she was glad of, she wasn’t sure she had any answers and if she thought to much on the subject right now, she wasn’t sure she could handle that.
There were times that she felt that she was the one taking advantage of him, of his kindness to her and his desire to look after her, and sometimes in the middle of the night, instead of sleep, she would be kept awake with concern that she might just push him too far away before she has a chance to decide if she could risk going all in, and she wasn’t sure which scared her more. Likewise, she knew she would either be surprised or not surprised if at the end of all this, he was still there by her side; both options, although opposites, seemed like they could be the outcome.
But, for the moment, he was letting it slide and she was grateful, knowing that if he pushed to talk about what they were, or to take some space to decide, that she wouldn’t be able to either, and probably just end up ruining something that could see was potentially good for her. So, instead she tried to let him be there for her, like he had told her he wanted to be in the loop, accepting his help, accepting his comfort, and trying to show him that she was thankful, that she just wasn’t able to focus on much more than the mission until it was over; until they had won.
If there was one thing Sousa was sure of, it was that this team he had found himself in, had not had a second to breath in a long time. He had complained about being pulled from his time, but the rest of the team had been too, and by the sounds of it, they had been pulled right at the end of a hard mission; that was right after another hard mission and it just seemed to repeat back like that, and yet, they still seemed to be regrouping; slower, but steadily.
Early on, he had felt himself pulled more toward the one team member in particular, and as time moved forward, that pull strengthened. Sure, the team was a good one to be a part of, and he was always ready to help them, but he only felt that he fitted in, that he wanted to actually keep jumping through time, because he felt like he had found his place alongside Daisy, and the more time he spent with them all, the more he realised just how much that was something she needed.
He knew that she was struggling with it all, and a part of him was worried that she would burn out, or that it would all get too much, and she would push him away completely, because she didn’t see herself, her own well being as higher than the mission. So he did what he could to show her she was worth it, to show her that he wouldn’t leave her, and for the most part it seemed to be working, she seemed to be letting him be there and really that was all that he could ask of her right now.
He always made sure to find her throughout the day with an energy bar or a piece of fruit, just something simple and easy that she might actually eat and would leave a selection of snacks on her bedside table in their bunk. He made extra sure to not spook her, or judge her when she would show up every night, not pushing the subject and definitely not turning her away, letting her have her unimportant small talk or listening when she did broach something more serious, or just giving her days of silence.
Choosing instead to focus on the wins, the positive, like the way she accepted the food with a small smile, or the nights that she would curl up next to him, without initiating anything further, or the times in more public spaces, where she would lean into his brief touches, or the biggest win of all; that she continued to come back to him, to seek him out. Because as snappy as she could get, as cold as she could seem to him occasionally, she was still there, still by his side, still trying to know him, she was just also trying to mend and win a war at the same time.
The rest of the team never questioned him on it either, they all seemed to know about them and either were too caught up in their own things to say anything or didn’t want to risk ruining it, but they knew. Yo-Yo always left anything she had gotten in town for Daisy in his bunk, May would tell him any changes to pass on to her training schedule with her, and Mack would sometimes give him tech stuff to give her, Simmons did once touch on the subject, in her own distracted way, but only to tell him she was glad he was there for her.
Coulson raised the topic with him once, and he thought he was about to cop an earful about taking advantage and that it wasn’t proper, but instead the man that was like a father to her, thanked him for being her person, for not shying away from her. That it was something she needed, whether she would admit it or not, and that it made him happy someone was in her corner more than the missions, and that she was sometimes sidelined on that front in the team because of the strong front she puts on and the others having their own issues.
She had offhandedly made a comment once, a throwback to something that had happened in one of her loops that he didn’t remember, about knowing that it all fazed him too, and that she might not be ready to talk, but she could listen, should he need it. And it in that moment, that he knew that the girl he had been following through time, he would follow anywhere she let him.
Haunted Hallways
A quick little oneshot after 7x10 because how is this ship making me write episode tags?!
One of these days I might actually edit/triple check errors, but today is not that day.
The last time Daisy had seen her mother’s lifeless body it had been only moments after Jiaying had nearly drained the life out of her. That time, she had been so caught up in the chance to get to know her mother that she had nearly believed her every lie, now, she had been so caught up in her own past, that she had nearly refused her the chance this time.
Cradling the lifeless head in her hands, the grief she felt was also different, this time she was actually losing something, not just the lie of the chance of something. She had had the chance to see how her mother was before Hydra, before all the horrible things that made her capable of trying to kill her own daughter, and she would be lying if she said she had hated what she heard.
There was a pit in her stomach, she had spent too long watching those she loved die, and somehow she was in that position once again, even though she had spent so long trying to convince herself that she didn’t care about her mother, not after everything she had done. Deep down though, she was still just that little girl wanting her family to come back for her, to tell her everything would be okay and that they had always been searching for her, that they loved her.
When she first heard her mother had had another daughter, one she spoke so highly of her relationship with, one she cared so deeply for that she would go to any lengths for, it had gutted Daisy, but now, now she felt gutted that this was the mother she could have had, the one that she could have loved. She pushed aside the thoughts shadowing her mind of what this all meant, of what it meant that her mother died before she had even been born and continued to stare ahead, trying to refocus herself to get back in the fight.
She heard the footsteps approaching, but made no move to react to them, they held no malice to them, so she didn’t have the energy left to waste. They stilled once they were closer to her side, she had still yet to turn, but she knew who it was, the one person who always seemed to find her, whether she wanted him to or not.
“I’m so sorry, Daisy,” Daniel’s voice cut through the silent corridor, but she still made no move to even look at him.
Crouching down next to her, he placed a hand tentatively on her shoulder in an attempt to give some sort of comfort. The contact breaking her resolve as she turned into him, a sob breaking out as she ducked her head into the crook of his neck, his arms engulfing her small frame as he drew her closer, trying to provide as much comfort as he could in the moment.
Her sob’s had subsided for the most part by the time another set of footsteps distracted him, as he moved them into a standing position to allow him to turn his head slightly to see who was joining them and ensure her safety. He sighed in relief that it was only Mack that was approaching, and not yet another threat, the other agent glancing between the woman in his arms and the one of the floor, and making some quick, calculated guesses as to what had gone down.
“Tremor’s,” Mack spoke softly, his nickname for her drawing her attention slightly as she turned to meet his eye, but not enough to break her contact with the man holding her close, “I’ll move her some place better.”
Daisy nodded in agreement, not quite trusting her voice to hold out, and trying to not think about what that meant exactly, instead focusing on Daniel’s hand running up and down her back, grounding her. She watched as Mack bent down and very carefully picked up the lifeless body of her mother, and she knew he would treat her with respect.
“Coulson wants to see you, whenever you’re ready,” he told her, something to his tone unsettling her slightly, like whatever he had come to talk to her about, warn her about, was going to be even more for her to take now.
Watching as he walked away, she turned back to face Daniel, his hand still on her back, his eyes on her, waiting for whatever she needed him to do next. She closed her eyes and took a shaky breath, opening them quickly as she felt his finger brush aside some more tears that had fallen, adverting her gaze back down to the ground as he gently traced the nasty bruise forming on her forehead.
“We should ice this,” he stated, dropping his hand but keeping his gaze on her as he caught her shake of the head to his suggestion.
“Is everyone else okay?” she questioned shakily, a part of her afraid of what his answer might be and another part of her still caught up in the events of the day.
Turning her head back to face him, she furrowed her eyebrows at his lack of response, between the look on his face and his hand on her back stilling, she knew there was something he wasn’t saying, something that she wasn’t sure that she wanted to hear. She blinked back a few more tears, trying to force herself to hold it together; the mission was far from over after all.
“Tell me,” she pushed, her voice barely audible as she requested, knowing that he would the second time and a voice in her head had tried convincing her not to ask.
“They got Simmons,” he ducked his head ashamedly, as if he was blaming himself for that fact and any other time she would have pushed it further, pushed for more information, but she didn’t feel she had the energy to.
“We’ll get her back,” she nodded sadly, swallowing thickly as she leaned into his side, near whispering out the truth of the matter, “we have too.”
“We will,” he echoed her statement, sounding like he was trying to convince them both of the fact.
“I should find Coulson,” she told him after a moment, making no move to leave, as if she was still in the process of talking herself into it.
“I’m sure he can wait,” he countered, his response acting as a prompt to get her moving as she slowly started to head towards where she figured she would come across the others, unsurprised as he followed closely next to her, never dropping his hand from her back.
The slow pace that she set, slowed even more when she could hear the others up a head, she was still not sure she was ready to face them yet, and even less sure she was ready to face whatever it was that they wanted to talk to her about this time, knowing, after all that Coulson had been on the mission to Afterlife and to get her half-sister. The split second before they turned to corner on the rest of the team, she felt Daniel drop his hand and she instantly missed his contact, glad at least that he stayed close, ready to support her at whatever it was.
