#these two just make me want to write
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.
