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just-dreaming-marvel · 4 years ago

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Out Of Time ~ 125

MASTERLIST

< previous chapter

Word Count: 8,010ish (YIKES)

Summary: The team works together to stop Aida. Goodbyes are had.

Y/N and Daisy gasped, both waking up on the floor of the Zephyr. Simmons was helping Daisy and Yo-Yo was with Y/N.

“Were you able to save Mack?” Yo-Yo asked, looking between Daisy and Y/N.

“I’m so sorry,” Daisy replied. The Zephyr was shaking.

“What’s going on?” Y/N asked, looking around.

“We’re being shot out of the sky,” Piper replied.

They helped Daisy and Y/N up and they stumbled to the front of the Zephyr.

“How many hits have we taken?” Daisy asked.

“Three,” Piper answered.

“The Zephyr’s like a tank,” Agent Prince stated. “She’s holding together.”

“Yeah, but we had to pull the plug on everything except for flight control to keep the Framework running for you guys.”

“So we can’t fight back,” Simmons stated.

“Or see where it’s coming from,” Daisy added.

“Yes, we can,” Y/N said, causing them all o look at her. “I’m going to go onto the top of the Zephyr. If I get a look at the jet shooting at us, I can portal myself onto it. I can stop them from the inside.”

“Y/N, that’s too—“

“I’m doing it. It might be our best shot at the moment.”

Then a portal opened and Y/N appeared on the roof of the Zephyr. She anchored herself onto the roof with her powers. She looked around, through the clouds, for the jet. Seeing it, she focused don’t eh roof and opened a portal to it. On the other jet’s roof, Y/N used her powers to blast a hole through the top and jumped inside. The man flying the jet shot the Zephyr again before turning to head straight for the Zephyr.

“Who are you?” He turned around. He was tall and buff with a Russian accent.

“I’m just here to kick your ass,” Y/N replied.

With her hands glowing both red and purple, she pushed them towards each other to form a ball. Her hands were vibrating slightly with the amount of power coming from her.

“Who the hell are you?” He asked.

“I’m Lady America.”

Y/N aimed her hands at the man, pushing the ball of power to hit him straight in the chest. The man, who turned out to be a LMD, disintegrated into thin air. With the jet still aimed at the Zephyr, Y/N jumped back through the hole she created. Leaping backwards through an open portal, Y/N blasted the jet into pieces. She landed, hard, on the floor of the Zephyr.

“Y/N!” Simmons and Daisy exclaimed, rushing to her side.

“Are you okay?” Daisy asked.

“I’m fine,” Y/N answered. “Looks like you got the power back on. Are we headed to the others?”

“Davis has the coordinates,” Simmons replied. “We’re on our way there.”

“Good.” Y/N nodded.

“Can we now talk about why you didn’t save Mack?” Yo-Yo asked.

“It’s not that simple,” Daisy responded.

“Then explain it to me. What stopped you? He was right there with you, no?”

“Yes, but, Yo-Yo,” Y/N began, “he didn’t want to come.”

“Oh, you only bring back the people that matter to you, not to me!”

“You know what? I’ve known Mack longer than you,” Daisy argued. “And he mean as much to me—“

“You promised! You promised me!”

“We tried! He didn’t want to come back!”

“Who cares?! You knock him over the head, you break his legs, you kick him through the exit! It was a video game!”

“He didn’t want to leave Hope!” Y/N exclaimed.

“Hope? His daughter?”

“You know about her?” Daisy asked. “Because I didn’t. Not until I saw her face.”

“She’s dead.”

“Yeah, well, in there, she’s 10,” Y/N said. “And she’s bring and adorable, and she means the world to him, even if it’s not a real world…. And I get that.”

“I’m sorry,” Daisy apologized to Yo-Yo. “He wouldn’t have left her for anything.”

“Even me.”

“He didn’t remember you, Yo-Yo.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Then I’ll go remind him.”

“No, no, no,” Daisy rushed as Yo-Yo headed to go plug herself into the Framework.

“Yo-Yo, no,” Y/N grabbed her had. “Do not—“

“I’ll go get him out myself,” Yo-Yo stated.

“Do not do that.”

“Besides the fact that going into that world as an inhuman is the worst idea ever,” Daisy started, “we need you here, making sure that the real Mack stays alive, or it’ll all be for nothing. Coulson and May just woke up next to Mack with no idea where they are or what they’re up against.”

“Daisy, Y/N,” Piper called. “We need to show you something.”

Piper guided them to the screen and played the recent news conference. General Talbot was at the podium. There was a banner on the TV that said ‘sabotage at SHIELD’.

“Like I said,” Talbot talked to the reporters, “with an explosion that size, we still have a lot to sift through at SHIELD headquarters. The entire area is sealed off, but, no, I can’t rule out Daisy Johnson’s involvement.”

“It’s been playing on every channel,” Piper told them.

“Sir,” a reporter called out to Talbot, “any truth to reports that Director Jeffrey Mace’s body has, in fact, been found?”

“I have have no new information about that,” Talbot answered. “But I can assure you, the manhunt for the members within SHIELD who remain at large is still our top priority. We can only assume that they’re behind this attack.”

“General!” A different reporter called out. “There are rumors that former Avenger and SHIELD Agent, Y/N Rogers, could also have been involved. Do you have anything to say about that?”

“Not at the moment. Though the hunt for both Rogers and the other fugitive former Avengers is still on going. Look, they’re terrorists, and we’re not gonna rest until we take them down and find out exactly who’s responsible.”

“Who gave them my name?” Y/N asked quietly, completely confused. “No one should have seen me with you guys, we haven’t touched ground. Why would he—“

“Talbot’s never let the idea that we’ve been hiding you, go,” Daisy replied. “He just wants a way to end us once and for all.”

~~~

Setting the Zephyr to hover above the drilling platform, Daisy, Yo-Yo, and Y/N took the isolation pod down. As they exited, Coulson and May exited the top doors. Coulson was carrying most of May’s weight.

“Oh, perfect timing,” Coulson commented. “Hi, everybody.” Daisy took May from Coulson. “She’s very weak— Oof!” Y/N had latched herself onto Coulson in a hug, which he quickly reciprocated. “You left,” he whispered, holding her close. “You woke up and you disappeared.”

“I know,” she responded, quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

“And Mack?” Yo-Yo asked as Coulson and Y/N let each other go.

“Down below,” Coulson answered, leading Yo-Yo and Y/N towards the doors. “We have to keep him attached to the equipment. So before we can wheel him o—“ The platform shook from an explosion, causing the three of them to lose their balance. Coulson grabbed onto both Yo-Yo and Y/N. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Yo-Yo responded with a nod.

Coulson pried open the doors. The three looked down to see the explosion making its way up the shaft.

“Go!” Coulson shouted.

The three ran the other way, getting launched forward by the explosion.

“No more elevator,” Coulson grunted.

“Where are the stairs?” Yo-Yo asked through the comms as they pushed themselves back up.

“They’ve collapsed, too,” Simmons informed from the Zephyr. “You need to get off the rig now. Repeat, the structure is about to crumble! Guys, you need to get in the containment module and in the air! Now!”

“No.” Yo-Yo shook her head.

“You got to get in here before this rig goes down!” Daisy yelled from the module.

“No, I won’t leave without Mack, not his time!”

“There’s no time!” Simmons responded.

“No! We can’t leave without Mack!” She headed for the burning elevator shaft.

“Yo-Yo, no,” Coulson exclaimed, grabbing onto her. “Come on! We got to go!”

“No!”

“We have to get out of here!” Y/N shouted. “I’m so sorry, Yo-Yo. But we have to—“

“I have Mack,” Simmons informed.

“What?” YN questioned, quickly making herself appear in the Zephyr.

She gasped as she saw Mack, still hooked up to the machines, Fitz, and Aida, unconscious on the floor. The floor was wet all around them.

“How….?” Y/N asked.

“Let’s go home,” Simmons replied, over the comms.

~~~

As the Zephyr began descending into the base’s hanger bay, the damage from the explosion was more than Y/N had imagined. The base was almost complete rubble.

“Who did this?” May gasped.

“You did,” Daisy replied. “To stop him from coming after us.”

“To stop who?” Coulson asked.

“You,” Simmons responded.

Armed with flashlights and guns, they headed into the destroyed base. Walking the halls, Y/N was reminded of memories from what felt like another lifetime ago. Wires and other things were hanging from the ceiling. They climbed over over objects, layering the floors. Thankfully, the insolation room was barely damaged, allowing them to put Fitz and Aida there. After checking the base, they met back on the Zephyr.

“Looks like we weren’t detected flying in,” May informed.

“We can’t stay long,” Coulson said. “Probably shouldn’t have come here.”

“We have to refuel,” Simmons said. “Also, we had no choice.”

“Because of that room?” Yo-Yo asked.

“It’s the only place that can contain Aida’s teleportation ability.”

“It’s outfitted with technology we used to stop Gordon,” Y/N explained. “The first guy we encountered with that particular skill set.”

“She’ll remain inside until we can decide what we want to do with her,” Daisy said.

“Why don’t we chop off her head like last time?” Yo-Yo wondered. “You need a volunteer?”

“Let’s take a moment and think about that, Sweeney Todd,” Coulson responded. “She’s a real person now, and she—“

“She saved Mack,” Daisy interrupted.

“She made herself real in order to escape Radcliffe’s programming, so… now maybe she’s different.”

“I highly doubt that,” Simmons said. “People don’t name themselves ‘Madame Hydra’ if they’re open-minded.”

“I’m with Simmons on this one,” Y/N said.

“She did what you said in the Framework,” Yo-Yo added. “Seems better safe than sorry.”

“No more killing,” May stated. “There’s been enough killing.”

“Which leads to the next question,” Coulson said, looking at Simmons.

“What do we do with Fitz?” Y/N asked.

Simmons was silent for a few moments before stepping closer to May and Coulson. “What do the two of you remember of your Framework lives?” She questioned.

“As much as I remember about this life,” Coulson answered. “The only different is, I know—“

“It wasn’t real,” May interrupted.

“So it’s like you woke up from a dream,” Simmons said.

“No. Not a dream, Simmons. A life.”

“But this is you, right? I mean… does it feel… as real as…” Simmons left out a shuddered breath, trying to stop herself from crying. She walked away from the group.

“She’s afraid Fitz will be the same guy he was in the Framework,” Daisy said.

“No,” Y/N said, “that’s not it.”

“She’s afraid he still loves someone else,” Yo-Yo said, before walking away herself.

Y/N bit her lip and walked out of the Zephyr. She found her way to her old bunker. The ceiling at collapsed on top of the bed and the walls were blackened from the fire. But it was still her room, with her things still in it.

“I locked this room up,” Coulson said from behind her. “In case you ever showed back up again… I.. I came in here sometimes, when I felt I needed your help.”

“I don’t know what’s going on anymore, Phil,” she whispered in response, still facing away from him. “My old life… the life I knew… is completely gone. Almost every part of it…. Nothing is the same anymore. And I— I don’t like it.”

Coulson stepped closer to her, coming to her side. “Where have you been, Y/N/N?"

“Running for my life… don’t worry. I’ve been safe. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“But, Y/N, what happened? You collapsed in my arms and then were in a coma for 6 months… you wake up and don’t even say good bye.”

“I couldn’t. The new Director and Talbot were after me. And you needed to focus on saving Daisy. Which you did…. That was more important.”

“Y/N…” Coulson stood in front of her. “You were important too… just tell me, during that 6 months, what happened?”

“Something’s coming…. You know I’ve never been wrong about that. But this time… it’s something bigger. Something so powerful, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to stop it. But I’ve been tasked to.”

“Tasked to? By who?”

“The Stones.”

“Stones? I don’t under— the Tesseract. Loki’s scepter. Is that what you’re talking about?”

“There are six Infinity Stones, two of them you’ve named. My powers come from them for the soul purpose of stopping whatever’s coming.”

“Do you know when? Or what exactly it is?”

“I don’t.” She shook her head. “I just know it’s coming soon. And that I need to be ready when it does.”

“I’ll fight by your side when it does. The whole team will. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“You can’t. I won’t let you or the team put yourselves in harms way like that. This will be something I have to do, alone.”

“When will you get it through your thick head that you’ve never had to do anything alone? And that you never will? You’ve always had someone, me, Fury, Tony, Steve, Bucky, the Avengers, this team. You’ve never needed to do anything alone. When the fight comes, I will be there, by your side, like the good ole days.”

Coulson grabbed her hand. As he grasped onto it, Y/N heard a voice in her head. The voice of one of the Stones.

“He will not be at your side,” the rough voice stated. “Neither will this team. This will be your last mission with them before the time comes where you will fight and his life with end.”

Tears formed in her eyes as the voice spoke, leaving as quick as it came. She pulled Coulson in for a hug, cherishing one of her last hugs with her dear, old friend.

“I’m going to be there,” Coulson whispered. “Always.”

~~~

Y/N, Coulson, May, and Daisy were talking in the Zephyr when armed army men with guns came towards them. They held their hands up.

“We need to extract Fitz from that room!” Simmons came yelling from behind, freezing at the sight before her.

“Hands in the air!” One of the men shouted. “Don’t move!”

“Slow down,” Coulson said calmly. “We’re not the enemy here. Let’s just keep our cool—“

“You shut your robot mouth,” Talbot ordered coming up to them. “Or I’ll have these men weld it shut for you.”

Staring at Talbot, Y/N missed the nod one of the army men gave to another. The man standing right in front of Y/N, firing a silenced gun. Y/N gasped as the bullet entered her abdomen and she fell to the ground.

“Y/N!!” A chorus of shouts were heard. Y/N put pressure on her bleeding wound.

“Nobody move!” Another man shouted.

“Well, at least we know Rogers here isn’t the robot,” Talbot stated.

“We’re not robots, Glenn!” Coulson exclaimed. “Let one of us help her!”

“Yes, they are!” Talbot told his men. “You assume each and every one of them is a damn C-3PO unless you hear otherwise from me! One of you eyes on Rogers at all times! If she so much as teleports, take her and someone else down. And this one!” He pointed at Daisy. “If she so much as blinks, take her down. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir,” the men responded.

Taking deep breaths, Y/N tried to focus on stopping the bleeding. A soldier came above her, pointing a gun down at her.

“Is all this really necessary?” Coulson asked, trying hard not to worry too much about Y/N.

“Necessary?!” Talbot responded. “It’s essential. Unless you can explain to me in 50 words or less why I found Jeffrey Mace’s body washed up on the beach with his bones quaked apart, days after I found this base in flames, flesh melting off of robot bodies, 12 SHIELD agents in critical with burns or broken bones. Three dead… double hits to the heart and crushed frickin’ skulls! Can you explain that?”

“I can try.” Coulson went on to try and quickly explain as Y/N tried to find some power that she held to heal herself. “…And then the base under the oil rig fell into the sea.”

“You expect me to believe a word of that?”

“I could show you,” Y/N grunted.

“Shut your damn mouth, Rogers! You’re going straight to Raft once this is over.”

“She’s everywhere!” A man shouted over the soldier’s walkie-talkies, shots being fired in the back ground. “Aah!”

“What’s that mean, Coulson? ‘She’s everywhere.’” Talbot looked at Y/N, seeing as she was still there. “Who’s everywhere?” He looked around “Where’s that Speedy Gonzalez girl? Who’s attacking us?!”

“Aida…” Y/N panted, quietly. “Aida got out.”

Suddenly, the soldiers were on more alert as the isolation module appeared in the Zephyr. Fitz and Piper were in it. With everyone distracted, Y/N’s hand glowed green, turning the time back to before she was shot.

“May!” Fitz shouted. “Take off now! We have to move! If she can find us, she’ll kill us all!”

“Davis had her down for the count,” Piper stated.

“They won’t listen to me! She can’t be stopped!” Fitz hit against the window. “May! May! You’re the only other person that knows about the inhumans we tested.”

May quickly looked around and took off for the front of the Zephyr.

“Hey!” Talbot shouted as guns cocked.

“Try it,” both Daisy and Y/N said, threatening the soldiers.

Y/N had appeared next to Daisy. Daisy had a hand out, while both of Y/N’s were near her sides, glowing purple. Talbot pointed his gun at her head.

“Let’s see what happens,” Y/N taunted.

“How did you— you were— we—“ Talbot stammered.

“Don’t ever underestimate me, again.”

The stand-off stood firm, even as the Zephyr began to lift from the ground.

“If you drop your guns, you can come with us,” Daisy said.

“I don’t suggest staying,” Coulson said. “But the Zephyr’s leaving with or without you.”

Daisy and Y/N stepped forward. Talbot quickly lifted his hands up in the air.

“Fall back!” He ordered his men, who immediately listened.

Y/N and Daisy kept their threatening stances until the soldiers were off and the ramp was up. Coulson and Daisy both rushed to Y/N’s side.

“Are you okay?” Coulson worried.

“I’m fine,” Y/N swatted them away.

Daisy lifted Y/N’s shirt up. “There’s a whole lot of blood,” she said. “But no wound. Did you—“

“Turn back time and heal myself?” Y/N interrupted. “Yep.”

“Since when?”

“The Stones,” Coulson whispered in realization. He met her eyes. “Y/N, exactly how powerful are you?”

“More than I care to admit,” she answered, pulling her shirt down. “Now, let’s go meet up with the gang up front.”

Simmons went to see Fitz as Y/N, Coulson, and Daisy made their way to the front.

“May needs to keep us on the move,” Daisy said.

“Or Aida will be on us like a flash,” Y/N added.

“Even Yo-Yo couldn’t…” Coulson stopped, freezing in place. “Wait a minute. Where was Yo-Yo during that standoff?”

Daisy and Y/N looked at each other. “No.”

The three of them ran to where Mack’s body was still plugged into the Framework. They saw Yo-Yo plugged in beside him.

“Damn it,” Y/N muttered.

“Yo-Yo has no idea what she’s in for,” Daisy said.

“For that matter, neither do we,” Coulson said.

~~~

“I’ve set autopilot to change bearing, altitude, and speed every couple of minutes,” May stated as Y/N and Coulson walked into the control room.

“I hate playing defense,” Coulson said. “But if Aida drops in on us before we figure out how to stop her, it’s—“

“Game over,” Y/N finished.

“Any word from Piper since she HALO’d out?” May asked, tapping some control screens.

“Not yet, but she knows what to do if this doesn’t go our way.”

“It has to go our way. And then… you’re gonna explain why you drank that bottle of Haig without me.”

“Fair enough, but we’re gonna beed another bottle to discuss what happened with that bottle.”

“Have you two kissed yet?” Y/N asked, leaning against a wall, arms folded over her. “Cause the vibe I’m getting is that you have or that you really need to already.” The two gave her a look. She held up her hands. “You know what? I’m going to see if Daisy needs help keeping an eye out on Mack and Yo-Yo.”

Y/N quickly disappeared through a portal to Yo-Yo’s bedside. Daisy was standing near their two unconscious friends, typing on a laptop.

“Hey,” Y/N greeted, only to be met with silence. “Okay… I don’t know what I did. But talking to me might—“

“Your powers confuse me and frustrate me,” Daisy cut in, focused on the screen in front of her.

“Okay… care to go into any detail?”

“It’s just… it’s slowly becoming clearer that you have been hiding things from us.” Y/N sighed. “Why?”

“To keep everyone safe. That’s why I haven’t said much about my abilities, it’s also one of the reasons that I couldn’t stay here after waking up.”

“I thought—“ Daisy sighed. “We used to be close. We used to understand each other. And now…”

“Now, we still do. Circumstances have just prevented us from keeping the bond.”

“Why were you with Tony?”

“Why did you call Tony?”

“Cause I knew if anyone knew where, or how, to find you, it would be him.”

“Smart.” Y/N nodded. “I’ve been… secretly dating both him and Bucky.” She cringed, saying it out loud was a lot.

“Bucky? As in the Winter Soldier?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” Daisy nodded. “Impressive. How long has this been going on?”

“Actually, a few days. Tony and I were in the middle of our first date, since everything, when you called.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You calling showed me a different side of him. He willingly let me go. He’s never done that— well, in that matter, before. It was nice.”

“Tell him the next one’s on me.”

Y/N laughed. “I will… Daisy… I’m proud of you.”

Daisy looked over, confused. “Thanks? What’s… what’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Y/N plastered a small smile on her face. “I just felt the need to say that.”

Coulson walked in, studying Mack and Yo-Yo’s vitals. Daisy went back to focusing on the computer screen.

“Vitals are stable,” Coulson commented. “That’s good.”

“We should’ve forced Mack to come back with us,” Daisy said.

“Literally,” Y/N added.

“Wasn’t your decision to make,” Coulson said. “Either of yours.”

“Yeah, well, now we might lose both Mack and Yo-Yo,” Daisy added.

“Again, not your call.”

“She went in with no extraction plan, no idea how to find Mack,” Y/N said with a sigh.

“I think I may have been able to help her with that,” Daisy said, still working on the computer. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No!”

“What?” Coulson questioned, him and Y/N moving closer to her. “Did you do something?"

“No, this was not me. I didn’t—“

“Are you guys seeing this?” Simmons asked, coming into the room. “What’s happening to the Framework?”

“What do you mean?” Y/N wondered, following Simmons towards the control room. “What’s wrong?”

“The Framework’s disappearing. Daisy.”

“I’m on it!” Daisy replied, typing faster.

“How long before the Framework’s completely gone?” Coulson asked.

“Fitz estimates between 12 and 20 hours.” They paused in front of a screen analyzing the Framework. “Looks so innocent, just numbers and symbols. But each thread of code has a corollary in the Framework— a favorite blouse, a schoolhouse, a newborn child— they’re all blinking out of existence forever.”

“Mack and Yo-Yo?” Y/N questioned.

“There’s no guarantee that they’ll survive until the end. Fitz and Daisy are doing everything they can to protect them and devise an exit.”

Coulson pulled out his ringing cellphone. “General Talbot,” he told the women. Simmons walked away and he answered it, putting it on speaker for Y/N to hear. “General, I’m relieved that you’re still alive.”

“Three of my finest aren’t so fortunate,” Talbot responded, “and I have no idea what killed them.”

“We lost good people, too. The short answer is they were murdered by a vanishing banshee made of matter from another dimension.”

“You expect me to put that in my report?”

“I’ve died and come back to life. I have a cybernetic hand. I’ve been to another planet. This stuff happens in SHIELD.”

“There’s not going to be a SHIELD, not since Director Mace’s autopsy report was leaked. I’ve got a dozen intelligence agencies who now know that Mace wasn’t an inhuman.”

“What?!” Y/N exclaimed.

“They know SHIELD lied about it, and they’re wondering what else you might’ve lied about.”

“That was your lie, Talbot,” Coulson argued. “Not ours.”

“Damn it, Phil, you’re missing the point. There’s an international intelligence inquiry tomorrow morning, and I need you there to defend SHIELD.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Damn it, Coulson, so is a vanishing banshee. Phil, I’m not gonna get up on my hind legs and beg for buttermilk. But you or one of your right hands needs to be there to take down these spooks before they take down SHIELD once and for all. That’s an order.”

“I wish we could, General, but my team and I are Aida’s primary target. Our presence would only endanger the lives of everyone there. Plus, you decided to shoot one of my right hands and threaten to put her in Raft.”

“Phil—“

“If anything changes, you’ll be the first to know.” Coulson hung up.

“I’ve never liked that guy,” Y/N muttered, shaking her head. Daisy then came into the room.

“Is that a good-news face or a bad-news face?”

“It’s a weird-news face,” Daisy replied. “Robbie Reyes just stole his charger out of a SHIELD impound garage outside of Dover.”

“Robbie Reyes?” Y/N repeated. “Who’s he?”

“Right,” Coulson said, “I forgot you weren’t there for that. Let’s just say, don’t get on his bad side. He—“

“Turns into a flame-headed demon,” Daisy interrupted. “May’s rerouting us to Dover now.”

~~~

Daisy went and met up with Robbie Reyes, bring him back to the Zephyr. Y/N and Coulson met them in the cargo bay.

“Mr. Reyes,” Coulson greeted, shaking the younger man’s hand.

“Coulson,” Robbie responded.

“This is Y/N Rogers.” Coulson motioned to Y/N. “She—“

“Aren’t you currently a fugitive?”

“Does it matter?”

“How’d you find Aida?” Coulson asked him.

“There was a—a tear in the dark world when she was created. It’s how I escaped. The thing in me is drawn to dark matter the way your GPS tracks my car.”

“So you’re saying Aida’s made of the same stuff as the Darkhold?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the Darkhold?” Y/N asked.

“It’s an ancient book of spells and unspeakable power. It’s made of dark matter from the hell dimension.”

“Okay…” Y/N nodded. “And just when I thought my life couldn’t get anymore weird.”

“The rider wants to send them both back to where they came from.”

“I hope that means hell,” Daisy commented.

“Hell is relative. Dimensions, space, planets—it’s all connected. Plenty of them qualify as hell.. The Earth is just one territory in a war that’s been going on forever.”

“Can you beat Aida?”

“I don’t know. But what I do know is the demon in me hates her in ways I’ve never felt.”

“We all feel like that,” Coulson said.

“Why do you have that?” Daisy asked, looking behind Coulson and Y/N. They turned to see May holding a head.

“It was in the module with the LMDs Robbie destroyed,” May answered. “Do we know who he is?”

“No, looks like Aida’s been busy,” Coulson replied.

“She could’ve duplicated anybody,” Y/N said, shaking her head.

“I’ll run facial recognition,” Daisy stated, “see if we can ID this guy.”

~~~

The next morning, May, Robbie, Y/N, Daisy, and Coulson got on a quinjet. Coulson was on the phone, trying to get a hold of someone. They were all currently on their way to the SHIELD inquiry.

“We’ve ID’d the head,” May stated, holding up a tablet for Daisy, Robbie and Y/N to see. “He’s one of the senior Russian analysts invited to the SHIELD inquiry today, and look who he’s bringing as his plus-one.” She changed the picture and Y/N took the tablet from her.

“This is the Russian guy I tore to bits on the jet,” Y/N stated. “The one that was targeting us on the way to the oil rig. How has he… Aida. Damn it.”

Coulson sighed, hanging out the phone again. “I’ve left messages for General Talbot,” he said. “But he’s not answering.”

“What’s Aida’s play here?” Daisy questioned. “Why have the LMDs attend this?”

“My guys is to drive the final nail into SHIELD’s coffin.”

~~~

Arriving at the SHIELD inquiry, there were dead soldiers lining the halls. Gunshots and shouts were in the distance. They ran towards the sounds. Robbie and Y/N got in there first, seeing a duplicate of Daisy rush off. Robbie followed it while Y/N pinned the two LMDs down with her powers. May and Coulson began firing at them.

“Y/N, let them go,” Coulson directed. “Check on Talbot.”

With a huff, Y/N let them go and went over to Talbot. He had a bullet to the brain.

“There’s still a pulse,” Talbot’s right hand told Y/N.

“Everybody out— now!” Coulson ordered the others still in the room. “And get some medical help.”

“Phil,” May called, looking at the Darkhold on the floor. “They’ll be back for that.”

Coulson quickly grabbed it as medical came rushing in.

“Y/N, go!” Coulson ordered. “Find Reyes and Daisy! Help them.”

Nodding, Y/N rushing out of the room, searching for Daisy. Y/N ran into a storage room just in time to watch Robbie’s head turn into a fiery skull.

“What the actual hell,” she mumbled, frozen by the door.

Robbie used the chain to attack the LMD security officer. She heard a swish behind her.

“Hello, Y/N,” a voice greeted. Y/N turned around to see Aida. “Nice to finally meet you.”

“Can’t say I feel the same,” Y/N responded.

“You are the one thing I never planned for in the Framework. You’re also the one thing that could have truly made me unstoppable.”

“Here’s the thing, Aida, my powers don’t work like that. So even if you would have stolen my DNA and tortured me, you would have never gotten my abilities.”

Aida growled. “We’ll see about that.”

Raising her hands in front of her, Aida shot electric beams at Y/N. Y/N quickly deflected them by using a portal, sending them into Aida’s back. Letting out a cry, Aida stumbled forward. This allowed Y/N to shoot a purple energy beam Aida’s way. It hit her before Aida disappeared. On guard, Y/N spun around multiple times, waiting for Aida to reappear. She never did. Coulson and May ran up to the room, where Daisy and Robbie were panting.

“I missed it, didn’t I?” Coulson questioned. “You guys together, and we missed it. Damn. Come on. We got to go. Come on!”

He started running down the hall, with May following. Y/N turned to look at Robbie and Daisy.

“Do you want to run with them or do you want me to just open a portal to the quinjet?” Y/N asked, pointing in Coulson’s direction. “Cause I really don’t feel like following them.”

~~~

“This must be Aida’s payback cause I quaked her skinny ass out that window,” Daisy stated, marching towards the front of the Zephyr with the rest of them following. “She’s gonna send Daisy-bot after Daisy-bot to assassinate people.” She kicked a wall in frustration. “So stupid.

“She won’t have to,” May said. “As soon as the video of your LMD shooting Talbot in the head gets out, SHIELD is dead.”

“It’s worse than that,” Coulson added. “Daisy’s not just SHIELD. She’s inhuman. Not to mention the fact that Y/N appeared not long after. They could make it look like they were working together.”

“Oh my gosh, you’re right. It’s the same tactic Aida used in the Framework. Unite people in their fear of inhumans. But instead of a Cambridge incident…”

“It’s me,” Daisy said. “I’ll be the monster. She wants the same racist state that she had in the Framework. This is her plan! She’s won.”

“No, she hasn’t,” Y/N argued.

“I’m with Y/N,” Coulson agreed. “Okay, maybe she won today. But like Robbie said, we’re part of a bigger war. This isn’t the Framework. We’re awake, we’re unified, and frankly, pissed off enough to risk everything to stop her.” Coulson turned to Robbie. “I need the Darkhold.”

“What?” May exclaimed. “No! No one’s ever reading that damn book again.”

“I don’t want to read it. I want to use it as bait. Aida’s human now. She feels what we feel, including fear.”

“No,” Robbie responded. “I’m sorry, man. I’m taking it.”

“She’s got to be terrified we’ll use it to stop her.”

“She’s also terrified of Robbie,” Daisy added. “As soon as she saw his chain flame on, she teleported out.”

“That’s not exactly true,” Y/N said. “I may have had a run in with her. Then she teleported out.”

“You two together,” Coulson said, pointing between Y/N and Robbie. “Could you destroy her?”

“Maybe,” Robbie shrugged. “But it’s like Daisy said, she won’t let me anywhere near her.”

“I can get you near her,” Y/N offered. “And she won’t even be able to sense you coming.”

“I think I have an idea that might solve all our problems,” Coulson stated.

“We’re running out of options,” Simmons said, appearing on the upper level.

“There isn’t enough power on the Zephyr to protect Mack and Yo-Yo,” Fitz said, joining her. The two headed downstairs to the others.

“Then we’ll have to go back to base,” Coulson responded.

“That’s a terrible idea,” May said.

“I agree,” Daisy added. “The military, Aida, more LMDs are probably waiting for us.”

“Maybe, but I’m tired of hiding,” Coulson said. “Let’s take the fight back home.” Coulson turned around and walked up to Fitz-Simmons. “Look, I know you two still have a lot to work out, but right now, I need you on the same page, okay?” They nodded before Coulson looked back to the others. “Alright, May, take us back to HQ.”

~~~

On the way back to HQ, Y/N hung out near Fitz. His thoughts were so loud that Y/N couldn’t help but hear them.

“It’s not your fault, Fitz,” she said quietly, standing behind him.

“You don’t know,” he replied.

“I do. Cause I can feel your thoughts and cause I know what happened. It wasn’t you. It was Aida, it was the Framework.”

He slammed his fist against the table. “But it was me! Cause I remember it! I did it!”

“Fitz.” She reached to put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. “You’re not a bad person, Fitz. You’re just, human. Please don’t be so hard on yourself… I… you just need to know that I care. That I always have and always will. You’re… you’re like my little brother I’ve never had. Actually… at this point, you’re closer to me than my actual brother.”

Fitz turned around. “Why are you talking like this? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “I just… I don’t know, after this mission, when I’ll see any of you again.”

“You’re lying. You know something.”

Y/N looked down. “It’s my burden to bare Fitz. You already have too much. Just remember, you’re family.”

~~~

Y/N was sitting in one of the pilot’s seats, staring out the window. May came and sat beside her.

“What’s got you so quiet?” May asked.

Y/N rolled her head to look at May. “You really want to know?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, didn’t think so.” Y/N faced the window again. “I used to be terrified of this… the thought of falling to my death. I think I’ve done it so many times now that I’m numb to it.”

“Yeah, I get that… I remember the first months with you on the team. You got shaken so easily.”

“I had a lot going on, a lot that I wasn’t dealing with.”

“Like now?”

Kinda… now’s… different. We’ve all been through so much. I’m really not allowed to get as shaken as I used to.” She looked down at her hands. “Can’t really afford to do that on the run.”

“You going to stay on the run?”

“Really have no choice… it’s okay. I’ve found a place I’ve been laying low at. It’s nice… don’t… May, don’t wait too long to make a move on Coulson.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can’t lie to me. I can read your thoughts. Just… I wouldn’t advise waiting too long. Every moment is precious. Don’t waste it.”

~~~

It didn’t take too long for the Zephyr to land at HQ. May and Coulson went to check it out while everyone else stayed on the Zephyr. Y/N was laying in the isolation module when she sensed it.

“Aida,” she whispered.

Y/N stood up, quickly creating a portal to the hallway outside of where Fitz-Simmons was located. She had never been inside the room they were in, so she couldn’t exactly get herself in there.

“No!” She heard Fitz shout through the door.

“Beg me to let her live,” Aida’s voice directed.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Fitz pled.

Y/N grabbed the door handle, slowly using her powers to melt it away. She didn’t want Aida to quickly do anything.

“We can go away,” Fitz continued. “Start again.”

“Too late,” Aida responded. Y/N could hear Simmons gasping. “This is making me feel better. Fitz, why do we feel better when we make someone else suffer?”

“Because there’s something wrong with you,” Simmons replied. “You psycho-ooo.” She grunted.

Pushing the door open slightly, Y/N got enough of the room to be able to create a portal. She did, behind Aida, who had a screwdriver in Simmons’ chest. Putting a finger over her lips, Y/N signaled Fitz to be quiet. Aida pressed the screwdriver in further.

“Stop,” Fitz begged as Simmons cried out. “Stop, stop, stop, stop. Please, please, spare Jemma.”

“So it’s Jemma now?” Aida taunted. “Trying to humanize her. I’m afraid you’re gonna have to do better than that.” Aida turned the screwdriver.

“Fitz, please,” Simmons begged. “I’m scared. Make her stop.”

Glancing back at Y/N, Fitz noticed green floating from one of Y/N’s hands to Simmons back. Y/N was turning back time slowly, so that the damage wasn’t as bad. The other hand had red and yellow coming from it, heading towards Aida’s head.

“The Darkhold!” Fitz exclaimed. “That’s the only way we could beat you. Let Jemma go, and I’ll go get it for you.”

Aida grasped onto Simmons neck.

“You did this, Fitz,” Simmons said.

“I’m so sorry, Jemma,” he apologized.

“Coulson’s reading the book. He’s firing up the gateway right now… Come on. Please. Let me take you to it.”

Aida glanced down at Simmons. She put her hand in front of her and let out an electric beam. Before it could hit Simmons, Y/N appeared between them, getting shocked instead. Y/N fell to the ground, half conscious. Aida threw Simmons on top of her.

“No!” Fitz shouted.

Aida grabbed him, shoving him up against the tech. “I’m gonna kill everyone you love right in front of you,” Aida whispered. “And there’s nothing you can do.”

Aida pressed a kiss to the side of Fitz’ face before teleporting off. Fitz, breathing deeply, quickly rushed towards Y/N.

“Y/N, Y/N,” he grabbed her, resting her head in his lap. “Are you okay?”

“I’m… fine…” Y/N grunted. “I can’t believe she was fooled by that damn Simmons LMD.”

“Did you do it?”

“Aida won’t be able to teleport outside of the base boundaries. There also might be a slight chance she thinks she’s going crazy.” Fitz helped Y/N sit up, grunting. “That hurt.” She rubbed her chest. “I should have just let the LMD take the brunt of it.”

“You think you could portal us to where the rest of them are?” Fitz helped her onto her feet.

“Of course. But why the hurry?” Fitz shot her a look. “Fine, fine.” She opened a portal into the base. “Let’s go.”

Fitz and her stepped through it. The use of all her powers for the last few days was beginning to take a toll on her. She’d never done as much with them as she had been, before. Staying outside of the room, they watched through the windows of what Y/N remembered as one of the common rooms, though now destroyed.

Aida was facing them, her wounds slowly healing from where the real Simmons had shot her. Simmons was standing just out of the doorway, gun still aimed at Aida.

“You’re trap failed,” Aida smirked. “Your weapon can’t stop me.”

“I know,” Simmons responded. “I just really wanted to do that.”

“Now it’s my turn.” Aida marched towards Simmons with Coulson following. She spun around to face him. “Don’t you get it? You can’t kill me.”

“Maybe not,” Coulson replied. He gripped onto Aida’s wrist. “But I’m pretty sure he can.”

Grunting, steam began to flow from Coulson’s head. Coulson normal head disappeared, being replaced by a fiery skull.

“Okay,” Y/N said, pointing at Coulson, “no one told me that part of the plan.”

Aida and Coulson, or Ghost Rider, began fighting. Aida teleported them away.

“They won’t be able to go far,” Y/N stated. “I can sense them a few hallways down.”

Fitz-Simmons and Y/N took a portal to where Ghost Rider and Aida were fighting. He was gripping onto her wrists, burning her. She looked over at them as she was set aflame, turning into ash. Ghost Rider lifted her skeleton up and threw her against the rumble at the end of the hallway. Ghost Rider then disappeared, bring Coulson back. The others slowly made their way towards the pile of dust.

“Is she really…?” Simmons wondered.

“Yeah,” Coulson panted.

~~~

Y/N had taken a walk through the destroyed base, by herself. She was on her way to meet the others when she heard Robbie and Coulson talking.

“I don’t know how you live with it all the time,” Coulson said, his voice coming closer. “I’m just grateful ghost rider kept its part of the deal and went back to you.”

“You know why he made the deal in the first place, right?” Robbie questioned.

“I do.” I’m dying, Y/N heard Coulson’s thoughts.

She bit her lip, looking up at the ceiling as she tried to stop the tears. The Stones had basically told her this already. She just wasn’t prepared for it to be true.

“Are you gonna tell the others?” Robbie asked.

“No,” Coulson answered. “And I’d ask that you don’t either. I will when it’s time.”

Y/N waited until the hallways met up and acted like she hadn’t heard anything. But the look that Coulson gave her… she knew that he knew, she knew. Giving the men a small smile, she followed them into the room with a round machine.

“You really have to leave right away?” Daisy asked Robbie as him, Coulson, and Y/N entered.

“Yeah,” Robbie answered. “I have to get this book someplace safe… Keep an eye on my brother?” Daisy nodded.

“The gateway’s almost ready,” Simmons informed.

“Don’t need it. I’ve learned a few things since you saw me last.”

Robbie turned away and whipped his chain out, causing it to fire up. He spun it around over his head before forming a center in front of him. A orange portal formed, staying put as Robbie turned around to grab the Darkhold from Coulson.

“I don’t envy you,” Robbie told Coulson.

“I was gonna say the same to you,” the man replied.

Taking the book, Robbie turned around to face the portal. He glanced back at Daisy, once last time, before stepping through the portal. The portal disappeared, with Robbie along with it.

“What did he mean by that?” May asked.

Before May could answer, Mack and Yo-Yo quickly entered the room.

“We picked up radio chatter on the Zephyr,” Mack informed. “The good news is, is that Talbot is alive. He’s in a coma, but alive.”

“The bad news is they know we’re here,” Yo-Yo picked up. “And they’re on their way.”

“Yeah, you should go while you can,” Fitz said.

“Yeah, we’re all going,” Coulson responded.

“No, I’m gonna stay. This is my fault—Aida, the LMDs, all the deaths. Those aren’t on SHIELD. Those are on me. And, uh, I can explain art I built the LMD that shot Talbot. That way—“

“Fitz,” Daisy called. “We were all in the Framework together. We understand how confusing and screwed-up that world is. And trust me, it’s gonna take me years to process everything that happened in there. But the one thing that I don’t need time to understand is that we are all in this together… I tried to take the blame for everything not too long ago. I dyed my hair. I ran away. I thought that separating myself from the team would help me protect it. But in truth, I know of just lost myself. And you—you were the one who pulled me back in. This is not on you, okay? We all lost ourselves in there. And yeah, it might take you a long time to forgive yourself. But speaking on behalf of the team, you have nothing to apologize for.”

“If there’s a price to pay, we pay it together,” May stated.

“Amen,” Simmons agreed.

Y/N took a shuddery inhale, causing them all to look at her.

“I… I wish…” she swallowed, trying to stop her overwhelming emotions. “I wish I could pay it with you guys… But, my price is death. If they get a hold of me, they will kill me. Talbot proved that… I’m so sorry.”

“Y/N,” Coulson stepped up, “you have done more than was asked of you.”

“No,” she shook her head. “I haven’t… cause this is my team. And I didn’t stay… I should’ve stayed. I…”

“Is this the last time you’ll be with us?” Daisy asked, voice wavering.

Y/N let a tear fall as she looked at Daisy, pausing before she nodded. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “But there’s something I have to do… something’s coming… and it’s up to me to stop it.”

“We’re a team,” May stated. “It’s up to us.”

“Not this… this is… bigger than all of us.”

“So, this is good bye?” Fitz questioned. “Like, actually a good bye?”

“I’m so sorry…. I wish I could pay the price with you.”

“No,” Coulson said, grabbing Y/N’s hand. “You’ve already paid many prices… you go, you run, we’ll pay this one. You’ll just get the next.” The group laughed.

“You were my first friend out of the ice,” Y/N whispered. “Thank you.”

“I was one of your biggest fans,” Coulson smiled. “It was an honor.”

He brought her in for a hug. They held each other tightly, crying into each other. The others slowly gathered around, forming a group hug. With all of them crying, they stayed close until Y/N felt that it was time to go. Separating, she wiped away her tears.

“You guys should go,” she said before swallowing. “They could be here any second.” She looked at each of them, slowly opening a portal beneath her feet. “Stay safe. The world needs you. All of you. And I love each and every one of you. Thank you for this… this family. It’s been the greatest honor being apart of this family.”

And she disappeared through the portal beneath her feet.

next chapter >

NOTES: from now on the taglist when be added by a reblog. I will reblog it using my second account, @just-dreaming-marvel-2. Just so that my main page doesn’t get too cluttered.

If you want to be added to the tag list, please dm me or send in an ask.

#agents of shield x reader #agents of shield #Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.#aos x reader #Phil Coulson x Reader #the avengers x reader #avengers x reader #marvel x reader #marvel imagine #marvel imagines #avengers imagine

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iheartkikixo · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D series finale

********AOS SERIES FINALE SPOILERS AHEAD*********

********AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D SERIES FINALE SPOILERS AHEAD*********

*******SERIOUSLY. IF YOU DON’T WANNA BE SPOILED STOP READING NOW********

You were warned.

Okay. So Agents of Shield is finished.

On the first watch I won’t lie, I was REALLY conflicted and bothered by the ending. I really couldn’t understand why they chose to go that route and I ended up pacing my house for like 30mins. However, after a couple hours of mulling it over, a rewatch and a nap. I understand why they ended it the way they did and actually have a newfound respect and maybe even love for the ending.

I know on first watch seeing everyone (especially May and Daisy) separated and alone initially feels depressing and possibly like the last 7 years of building this family was redundant, but if you look closer, it wasn’t...at all.

When we first met May, she wasn’t just alone, she was broken and self-isolated from everyone that she cared about and who cared about her. After the events of Bahrain, she closed herself down and became a shell of herself while her guilt and self-loathing threatened to eat her alive. The May we see in the final 3 episodes is so incredibly far from that. When Daisy throws Bahrain in her face in s2, the self loathing is still very present and she still can barely speak on it, she still feels like a monster for what happened and she retreats away from the team (to a degree) and back into herself. This reaction is so different to when Kora throws Bahrain in her face in 7x11. May is at a point where she fully realizes she wasn’t the monster in that story, she did what she did to save the innocent, and that at her very core is who she is, a protector of the innocent and those who can't protect themselves. And like she tells Kora, she’s “made peace with it”. In the last scene with May, yes there is a sadness that the team isn’t all together, but she’s not broken, unhappy or even alone. She’s found a new calling teaching at an Academy named after Coulson which upholds his legacy. She’s jovial when Flint comes and she laughs and jokes. It's so far removed from s1 May. Before Bahrain, May wanted kids and even when she was trying to save Katya, you could tell that she cared about kids a lot, this echoes to her protectiveness over the bus kids, and also extends into the Framework where kids being in danger was the thing that kinda brought her back to herself, and then also Robin, who she becomes a mother to. This is where the best of May comes out, she’s a mentor and a protector and in her last scene we see her happily being that to Flint and other students. So it’s full circle, she’s physically away from the team but not holed up alone in a cubicle in pain. She’s healed over these past several years and found a new purpose for her life, and her Shield family and time with them gave her that and made that possible.

The same with Daisy. When we meet her she is truly alone, she’s grown up alone, has nobody, she’s living in a van, she doesn’t even know her real name or date of birth, she’s searching for her family and searching for an identity and purpose. Throughout the last 7 seasons she’s found all of that and more. In this ending, like May, she’s not with the team, but she’s not truly without it either. She’s still in Shield, still doing missions, still in contact with the team, she still has them. If something goes wrong, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that they will come running as they always have, but after several years of fighting Hydra, Inhumans, ghosts, demons, LMDs, aliens, Chronicoms, being stranded on alien planets or at the bottom of the sea, being thrown into the future and then into the past, being mutilated or killed and resurrected or not, they all deserve some reprieve. They also can’t live under each other forever and they all deserve to actually live their lives. At the beginning of the series Daisy was lost and she didn’t know who she was, by the end neither of those are true anymore. She’s found her calling, she’s found family, she’s found relatives, she’s even found love. And now It’s like she’s paying it forward. Someone found her and gave her love, home, family and solid ground and now she’s doing the same for others (namely Daniel and Kora). Everything really goes back to the conversation her and Mack had where he tells her that even if the team dynamic shifts, it's okay and she’ll be okay. In real families we don’t all stay under the same roof forever, we branch out, take jobs in other cities or countries and start families of our own, but it doesn’t negate our original family and I don't think this ending does either. It doesn’t mean found families hold less weight than blood families, because with family (the people you’ve chosen to love and have chosen to love you back, blood or not), even when you’re not around them 24/7, distance and time change nothing. Based on the group conversation, they clearly have been in contact and will continue to be, Jemma saying she’ll email Daisy later about something they had earlier discussed, Mack and Yoyo still being together even though they’re on mission in different places at the moment, May telling Mack she has some names of recruits to send him, Coulson telling Daisy to give him a call once she gets back to Earth etc. It's not that they’re not family anymore or that they’re only gonna contact or see each other once a year, their life choices just have them spread out and busy, but they’re still family. Jemma saying they need to do the group meeting annually doesn’t mean it has to only happen once a year, nor does it mean they won’t interact individually whenever they can, it just means that despite how busy life gets they need to make sure they as a whole group isolate some time to be together however they can. That is the most family thing ever. Throughout the year ppl are busy and you see each other but not everyone together at the same time, but then you have something like Thanksgiving or Christmas where everyone makes it their business to find themselves under the same roof for a day. It feels like the same concept applies here. It only feels sad right now because it's new, but after a while it will be normal. They’ve spent the better part of a decade living under the same roof and now they’re not even on the same planet all the time, it's a weird adjustment, but they will adjust.

As far as Philinda goes. Philinda has been my AoS OTP since season 1 and while I was kinda sad initially that they didn’t end together, I get it. Phil is dead and PhilLMD is just that, an LMD. A robot. He’s not real and as such, while still having Philinda scenes makes me happy, I don’t think I want May to have to settle for a robot no matter how advanced. It’s not fair. Especially with her being an empath now, every time she touches Phil it's a reminder that he’s not real. He can’t grow old with her or be truly intimate because everything about him is coded into him. She deserves the chance and the space to move on and find something real with someone real and him being around her all the time would prevent that because she loves Phil, even though he’s not really here anymore. Phil was ready to go in season 5 as he felt like he had already been given a second chance and didn’t want to be greedy, which is why he didn’t seek out the cure in space. LMD!Phil who works solely off of Phil’s memories and feelings is echoing the same sentiments by contemplating shutting down. It's not fair for May to let herself explore this any deeper (especially now being an empath as she feels things more deeply), only for him to decide to shut down leaving her again, and it's not fair for them to explore this and him to force himself to stay operative until she dies as to not hurt her again, even though his Phil coding is telling him it's time to go. I feel like once everyone is comfortably settled into their new lives and he knows they’re all truly okay, he’ll shut down for good, until then he’s just around in case they need him.

I don’t think I need to speak too much on Fitzsimmons or Mackelena. With everything Fitz and Simmons have endured over the last 7 seasons, retirement (not sure if Simmons is fully retired too) seems beyond reasonable. We’ve watched them lose each other or themselves in one way or another every season, and like everyone else on the team they kept coming back for more when it would’ve been easier to walk away and most probably would have. But they're not most people, they are a family and refused to abandon the team while it was in need. So this ending with their super cute kid is just very deserved and great to see. Mackelena. I love that they’re still agents. I was also initially surprised Mack was still an agent as he seemed like the most likely to leave a couple seasons ago. Maybe the Adventures of Mack and The D gave him a new outlook, realizing that there are so many out there who want to and will do good if given the space and opportunity to. I also love that Piper asked for a Davis LMD and that he and Piper can argue like old times. I thought that was kinda cute.

Overall, I feel like this moment was necessary. Change sucks, but it's necessary for growth. I also think the messaging is great and applies to the cast, the fans and just the world in general. Change isn’t bad, people come into our lives for seasons and they teach us, love us, heal us and sometimes leave us, but that’s not the end. There are new people and new adventures waiting, and the same way people come into your lives for a reason, we also are destined to go into other people's lives and be that person who teaches, loves and heals them the way someone did for us. It’s a cycle. And that's one of the ways the world moves forward and gets better. Good people bringing out the best in other people, who move on to bring out the best in other people, creating more and more good people. Philindaisy will always hold the most special place in my heart in this show. Phil found May in her cubicle and Daisy in her van, and the three of them saved each other in so many ways and gave each other everything they needed as well unconditional, unwavering love and support which helped them move beyond their past traumas to the point where they were mentally healthy and strong enough to not just have the family they formed with each other, but also form their own families outside of the original family unit and do the same for others. That in itself is beautiful. This is the end of this particular part of their journey, but in no way do I think it's the end of the family that they all formed over the last 7 years, because you don’t go through all they went through and then just feel nothing. They will forever be a part of each other and they will forever pull from the lessons, experiences and love they have for and gave each other. And that’s life, and also what I’m taking away from this show.

#agents of shield #aos finale #aos spoilers #philinda #philindaisy #melinda may #phil coulson #daisy johnson

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joannechocolat · 4 years ago

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ORFEIA: on grief, and the dark side of fairytale.

When my daughter was eight years old, I began to write a crime novel about the death of a child. Nine pages in, I abandoned it. The thought of losing a child like that, even in fiction, was so viscerally upsetting to me that I ditched the idea permanently. Or so I thought.

Twenty years later, I wrote Orfeia, the story of a woman, Fay, who loses her adult daughter Daisy through suicide, and of her journey through the different levels of London, through Faërie, and finally to the Land of Death, where she must face the Hallowe’en King, and enter a battle of wits with him for her daughter’s return. It is a battle she cannot win, as she is losing her memory; and yet I like to think that victory, like love, is in the eye of the beholder.

Why I decided to write this story then, and in that fairytale genre, I didn’t ask myself at first, except that it seemed right, somehow, and because somehow the story wanted – needed – to be told.

In some ways Orfeia closely follows The Strawberry Thief, in which Vianne Rocher has to come to terms with her beloved Anouk growing up, getting married and moving away. At the time of writing it, my own daughter was embarking on the same journey, and it was inevitable that some of my own experience would make it into my fiction. I know it isn’t the same sort of loss, but for a parent, there is a kind of bereavement when a child leaves home, along with a sense of questioning their purpose and direction, now that the child’s upbringing is no longer at the centre of their life. But Fay’s real story comes from elsewhere, and has taken me a long time to process.

We often find in fairy tales accounts of people who die of grief. But I saw it happen first-hand, and it was anything but fantasy. My great-aunt, my grandmother’s sister, had been living as a cleaner in Paris. Her only son, whom she adored, but with whom she was estranged, had been living abroad for years. From time to time she would hear news of him and his family, but he never wrote to her. She had a single – very old - photograph of him with his wife and their daughter, which she always proudly showed me when I came to visit.

One day a friend, assuming that she already knew, made a casual reference to her son’s suicide. My great-aunt found out in this dreadful way that her son had died some years before. The shock of the news sent her into a sudden, dramatic decline. The tough Parisian resilience that had helped her survive a war, an acrimonious divorce and near-financial ruin just collapsed almost overnight. In only a few months, she became completely unable to function, or even to remember who she was. She would look at herself in the mirror and complain that “an old woman” - or sometimes a “witch” - was spying on her through a secret window. She died in a retirement home, less than six months afterwards.

That memory has stayed with me, and I used it in Orfeia. I wanted to take a familiar story (the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice) and use it as a metaphor for a woman’s journey from grief to a kind of acceptance. The fairytale and fantasy details act as a reflection of Fay’s mental state, as her life (and maybe her sanity) begins to unravel. I also wanted to hint on some level that her growing confusion and memory loss might be something to do with grief-induced dementia.

If that sounds a little bleak, it is - which is why I also wanted to give Fay some kind of resolution. It’s also the reason I chose to tell this story through the lens of fantasy; because the truth underlying it – the raw grief of a mother robbed of her child – was still too much for me to explore within a real-world setting. But fairy tales are dark tales; in spite of attempts to make them into harmless stories for children, they deal with the darkest of issues – grief, loss, murder, abuse, monsters both human and inhuman, and of course Death, that ultimate monster, and our constant struggle with him – which is why they speak to us on a deeper, more intuitive, more primal level than stories of the real world.

In pre-Freudian times, fairy tales were the only means to express deep and unspoken feelings that could not be otherwise expressed. Now that we understand more about the workings of the human mind, they emerge as a kind of counterpart to the human subconscious; a direct conduit to what we feel; the secret language of Humankind.

During my time as a Languages student I fell into the rabbit-hole of German psychoanalysis. During that time I came to believe that there’s a direct parallel between the levels of the conscious and unconscious mind and the different narratives that we use to express our identity. History is the ego; the conscious, rational, factual mind and the official identity of a culture. Story – that is, fantasy, folklore and fairytale - reflects the human subconscious; its needs, fears, and dreams throughout the centuries; the secret, hidden identity running alongside the official version. So the further we look into ourselves, and the more we explore our cultural identity, the more likely we are to find value in these “fantasy” narratives, which are in fact the truest expressions of our collective unconscious.

In Orfeia I wanted to challenge the distinction between what we think of as “reality” and “fantasy.” Just as Fay slips from one state of consciousness into another, the story slips between both worlds, from the familiar ego-London to the World Below of London’s subconscious and its secret, forest heart.

The framework of existing folklore is surprisingly receptive to this. The two Child Ballads I chose as the foundation of the story lead naturally to each other. King Orfeo – the Celtic adaptation of the Orpheus myth - already contains many fairytale elements, which made it easy to incorporate the further elements from The Elphin Knight. And the idea of riddles as a means of communicating with Death (the unknown, the unconscious mind, etc) just seemed like the next logical step. To expand my theory of the conscious and the unconscious mind as a universal analogy, I was trying to introduce the idea that fantasy and reality are all part of the same world, just as the conscious and the unconscious mind are all part of the same brain. Anything that can be imagined is real on some level of existence. That means that all my books – including the ones not generally seen as fantasy - are actually part of the same extended multiverse. Whether I’m writing fantasy as Joanne M. Harris, or literary fiction as Joanne, I like the symmetry of that - and also how much it will annoy those among the literary community who refuse to acknowledge fantasy as the legitimate art form it undoubtedly is.

#fairytales #grief #psychology

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arrow-guy · 5 years ago

Text

Take Cover (11/??)

Summary: The world’s gone to shit and the Avengers have been missing for eight years. What difference can one person ever hope to make?

A/N: Hi, it’s been Too Long since I posted a new chapter of this story, but there’s no time like the present to get back to it. As a warning, this chapter is Super Emotional, so please go into it with caution. I made myself cry with this one, it’s that heavy. Anyway, please enjoy!

Page Dividers by @carryonmyswansong

Pairing: ClintxReader

Word Count: 4.4k

Warnings: Fire, severe exhaustion, Abuse, Murder

Part 10

“How did you figure out your powers?”

“Hydra tortured my brother and I until we were able to control them well enough.”

“I mean when you weren’t being used as a weapon.”

She frowns. “When I had the time, I would meditate. Retreat within my mind, and try to work towards the source of my powers. Then I was better able to control myself and my power. It is still a work in progress, but progress is made every single day.”

“Do you think it could work for me?” I ask. “My powers aren’t quite on the same level as yours, but they could come from the same place.”

Wanda shrugs. “It is worth a try, right?”

I nod and sigh. I press my palms together and rest my hands in my lap. Closing my eyes, I focus on trying to locate the source of my powers within me. Wanda tells me that she was able to gain better control of her powers by going back to the source. She explains that her source was a bright, angry, red ball of emotion at the core of her being, which she finds is anchored in her mind. I can’t even begin to guess at what mine will be, if I can even manage to find it.

No matter how hard I try, how tightly I squeeze my eyes shut, I can’t seem to find anything. Frustration flares in me and I clench my hands.

"I can't feel anything," I mutter. "It's just blank. Like I'm empty."

Wanda frowns. “There has to be something in there, (Y/N). Maybe you just need a little extra help to find it.”

“Are you suggesting-”

“That I poke around inside of your head?” she asks. I nod. “That is exactly what I’m suggesting.”

I hesitate. “I don’t know…”

She tilts her head to the side. “Why? Are you worried about what I might find?”

“No, it’s just… does it hurt?” I ask. “What if I lose control of my powers and hurt you?”

“That won’t happen,” she says. “And I promise that I will be gentle.”

I press my lips together. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

“Give me your hands.”

I reach out and we link hands. Her eyes glow red and her power gathers in her hands before traveling up my arms. Every point that a tendril touches tingles and goes numb. I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on trying to locate my power. Even with a little bit of help from Wanda, I can feel something within me that I couldn’t feel before, but I can’t pull it forward.

“You need to relax, (Y/N),” Wanda says. “Getting frustrated will not help.”

I nod and take several slow, deep breaths. I try to release the tension from my shoulders and sit up a little straighter, but it still feels like there’s something holding me back.

“I can feel it, but I can’t reach it.”

“This will take time. You won’t get to it after only trying for five minutes.” Her grip on my hands tightens and I feel a surge of energy rush into my chest. “Allow me to help you look.”

The energy spreads from my chest to the rest of my body, but it’s most concentrated behind my eyes. The pressure inside my head builds until everything just falls away, and I’m free-falling through blank space. I hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs and I just lay there for a moment, trying to catch my breath. When I can finally manage it, I sit up. The area around me is bathed in pale, watery light.

I can vaguely hear Wanda’s voice in the distance. She’s trying to get my attention, but there’s too much going through my head for anything she says to stick. I stumble around in the hazy darkness until a light cuts through in the distance. I freeze in my tracks and watch as it advances on me. It gets closer and closer and I try to turn to run, but my feet are stuck in place. I can’t move.

I close my eyes and bring my arms up to shield myself as the light crashes over me. Wanda’s voice drains away completely.

When the light dissipates, it’s replaced by the warm, red light of a raging fire. I shield my face against the glow, only to realize what I’m looking at. It’s the Church. The farm I left behind all those months ago, up in flames. Something inside me forces me forward to find water, Tells me to put out the fire. Fix this. Put everything back the way things used to be. Control the outcome.

I race around, trying to find any source of water possible, but every single spigot that I know was at the farm is gone. It’s not until I find a single bucket near the chicken pens that I see any kind of source.

When I reach out to turn the crank, I jerk my hands back. Looking at my palms, I find massive blisters forming all over my hands. I clench my hands into fists and reach out again. I fill the bucket with water and throw the contents at the fire. I fill it again and again, but nothing I do makes any kind of dent in the wall of flames separating me from the rest of the facility. I keep working and push myself to the point of exhaustion.

I pause to take a break, only for the fire to swallow me up. The heat of the flames slams into me with enough force to knock me to the ground. I gasp for air and only manage to pull smoke into my lungs. With each breath, my vision grows darker and darker until I finally lose consciousness.

When I come to, I’m sat on the stool in front of Tony’s set-up in the lab. The same place where I first saw myself on the Most Wanted list. The place where I learned that Grant Ward had completely, and thoroughly betrayed me and everyone else who was supposed to trust him. That he had helped the government, Hydra, capture and torture Inhumans, my own kind, for no reason other than a sadistic fascination with taking something apart with absolutely no intention to put it back together. My blood boils just thinking about it.

I try to get up from the stool, but I’m held there by an invisible force. The more I struggle against it, the tighter the hold becomes until I’m gasping for air. Just when I think the restraints might crack a rib, the room goes dark. The restraints loosen slightly. Screens flicker to life from every possible angle, bathing the room in an eerie light. The room seems to tilt as a video begins to play.

A figure is curled into a ball in the corner to my left. It takes me a moment to recognize them as Daisy. The door opens and I flinch away when Ward walks in front of me. The audio from the video is garbled and fuzzy, like the sound is coming from far away as Ward addressed Daisy. She doesn’t move except to breathe and Ward nudges her with his boot. When she doesn’t respond he kicks her harder. I try to call out to her, to yell, scream, whatever I can to just get her attention, but no sound comes out.

Only when he does it a fourth time do her whimpers reach my ears. I yell for her again. Still, no sound.

Ward turns to face me completely and walks towards the screen facing me. He has a smile plastered on that is much too wide for his features and it makes my stomach churn.

“Ah, (Y/F/N) (Y/L/N). How kind of you to join us again.” He grabs the back of Daisy’s shirt and drags her into the middle of the room. “All of this,” he gestures to Daisy, then the room in general. “All of this could’ve been avoided if you hadn’t been such a selfish little kid. Handed over the power to me instead. You never knew what you were doing. I was the only one who could’ve handled the pressure.”

Daisy gurgles out something incoherent and Ward kicks her again, several times over. “Shut up,” he hisses. “You’re the reason everyone left. No one trusted you. Not even Coulson’s favorites. Now look at them. Daisy’s the only one left.”

Bile rises at the back of my throat, and I gag. I try to say something, anything, but the words won’t come. I can’t force them past my lips.

“May was easy, Yo-yo didn’t stand a chance against the scientists, and Mack?” Ward whistles and shakes his head. “Not nearly as tough as he wanted everyone to think he was, was he, Skye?” He laughs when she doesn’t answer. “Fitz and Simmons, now they were fun. Watching one beg for the other’s life. Wow. That truly was something special.”

I strain against the restraints as tears roll down my cheeks. I still can’t force any sound past my lips, but something shifts in the bindings around my body. They loosen and give with each new movement, and they soon snap and disappear altogether. I lunge forward to stop Ward, only for the room to go dark again. I fall to my knees and bury my head in my hands.

“Don’t cry.”

I startle at the familiar voice and, trembling, lift my eyes to see them.

Coulson lays in a hospital bed, gaunt and sickly. This would be about the time he died, if not the exact day.

I shuffle over to his bedside and haul myself up into the chair there. The plastic is hard and digs into my back. I feel very small all of a sudden. I take several shaky breaths and reach out to take his hand. It’s cold and insubstantial, like he’s here, but just barely. He could disappear at any moment.

“I don’t know how much time I’ve got with you,” he says. “But I don’t want to make you cry, (Y/N). There’s been enough of that already.”

I nod and rub my tears away with the heel of my hand. I still can’t quite form words, but they’re there on the tip of my tongue. I just need a little extra time.

Coulson squeezes my hand. “Good. You always were one of my favorites.”

“You had a lot of favorites, Phil,” I mumble. “You liked people. A lot.”

“I certainly did my best,” he says. “Though I’m sure I could’ve done better.”

I shake my head. “No, you couldn’t. You were the best. You kept everyone together.”

“All that took practice. I had my fair share of failures among the successes.” He sighs. “I will admit, you didn’t have enough time to get used to the position-”

“You didn’t even tell me I was supposed to be running S.H.I.E.L.D., Phil. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.”

“Would you have stuck around if I’d told you?”

“I don’t know, but I didn’t even get to make that choice, and then I had to watch you die after I had to do the same with my dad.” I hunch in on myself. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

“You’ve lost a lot already, but there’s still more to come before you can do anything about it.”

“What?”

“You’re on a journey here, (Y/N).” Images appear on the walls. My father’s death, trashing the Church, Daisy, Fitz, Simmons, May, everything, everyone I’ve lost along the way, laid out for me to see. Every image chips away at whatever’s been holding me together.

“Why?”

“Hell if I know, I’m just in your head. I do know that there’s just one last thing you need to see. You’re not ready. You’ll never be ready. But whatever it is you’re trying to find, this last thing is the key.”

“I don’t want that.”

“No, (Y/N). What you don’t like about this is letting go of your control over the situation. But you know that you’ve never been in control of any of this. You gave that up a long time ago.”

“I know.”

“You have to be strong,” he says. “Not just for everyone else, but for yourself. Especially yourself.”

I nod and wipe my thumb under my eyes. “I understand. Or I think I will, at least.”

“Good.” He squeezes my hand one last time. “This is it, kiddo. I can’t help you after this.”

“I know,” I take a deep, shaking breath. “I know.”

Phil nods once and settles back against his pillows.

Everything begins to blur and fade until Phil is gone and my chair disappears from underneath me. I expect to fall to the floor, but I slowly drift down through hazy white clouds. Only when I begin to relax does my momentum begin to build, and I find myself plummeting through open space. I wrap my arms around myself and curl into as tight a ball as I can manage.

I land with back-breaking force in a grassy field, arms and legs akimbo.

It takes a moment for my head to stop spinning and for me to register the world around me.

I feel the sun on my skin and manage to peel myself up from the ground and sit up. I’m in the middle of a grassy clearing in the middle of the forest. A short way off I can see two people playing in the sun, while another sits against the trunk of a tree, watching them. Curious, I wander closer to investigate. I freeze when I’m close enough to see the person against the tree.

“Dad?” I say.

He doesn’t register anything I said and doesn’t react when I sit beside him. He just stares at the two people in the middle of the clearing. I glance at the pair running around in the sun before looking back at my father. He’s so much younger than I remember him. Happier. The worry lines haven’t set in yet and the tension I remember in his shoulders isn’t there. It brings tears to my eyes realizing that this is probably before we lost my mother.

Dad leans forward slightly and I follow his gaze.

“Careful, Rose,” he calls. “Our little sparkplug is faster than you think! She’ll run you down in no time.”

The woman stops running away from the child, who I assume is me, probably around three years old here, to look back at dad and grin. Little me manages to get the upper hand and crashes into mother’s legs. Both of them tumble to the ground laughing.

“I got you, mommy!” I squeak.

“So you did!” she exclaims. “I think that warrants a prize.”

Little me gasps and sits back in mother’s lap as she sits up. I watch in awe as she plucks several daisies from the grass and closes them between her hands. When she pulls them apart, the daisies have tripled in size and number, weaving themselves into a vibrant green, white, and fuschia flower crown. Little me squeals and claps her hands and leans forward for mother to place the crown on top of her head. Mother laughs and positions the fragile crown daintily on her head.

“Do I look pretty?” little me asks.

Mother smiles and tucks my hair behind my ear, carefully smoothing down any stray strands. “You look beautiful, little one. Every bit the princess you are.”

A rustling in the underbrush at the other side of the clearing draws my attention away from my mother, and dad seems to have noticed it as well. Mother looks up when the first man in black breaks through the treeline.

Hydra.

The first man lifts his gun, followed by four more following through the brush. Dad tenses and slowly creeps forward until he’s just barely covered by the shade.

“Take her,” mother hisses. She slowly moves little me from her lap, trying her best to keep the toddler behind her back.

“But what about you?!” dad hisses back.

“Come with us,” one of the men in black demands. “Come freely and no one will be harmed.”

“Take her, Daniel!” she says. “You take her and-”

“You will come with us!” another man barks. “We will not give you another chance.”

A third man advances with his gun raised. “Don’t move!”

Mother raises her hands, submissive. She glances back at dad and little me, silently begging my father to grab me and get out of there. Little me makes the mistake of reaching out for her, saying, “Mommy?”

One of the men gets spooked and fires off several rounds. Dad lurches forward and snatches up little me. The rest of the men open fire on the clearing and my mother rears back before slamming her hands to the earth. The ground trembles and massive roots burst through the earth. Mother is shot in the leg and she cries out. Dad looks back for a moment. A mistake.

The men turn their fire on us, and little me cries out for our mother, not understanding what’s going on. I feel sick to my stomach, but stand rooted to my spot. I’m helpless to do anything but watch. I can’t even call out a warning.

The roots tangle around the men, binding their arms to their sides, forcing their guns from their hands. She then turns back and slaps her hand on the ground behind her. A wall of grass and roots weaves together behind my father and little me. Three more men emerge from the underbrush before the wall closes completely and my father looks back, just in time to see the three men shoot her. Once in the stomach, once in the heart, and one last time in her neck.

She chokes on her own blood and collapses onto the torn-up earth beneath her, arm outstretched to us as little me screams out for her. Dad takes off running, but the Hydra operatives make no move to follow them. Instead, they stand over my mother’s body, shaking their heads, freeing their companions, and radioing back to whoever they answer to. Eventually, they clear out, leaving my mother to bleed out in the middle of the clearing.

I’m finally able to make myself move and manage to stumble over to my mother. I fall to my knees beside her, hands hovering over her motionless body, unsure of what I’m supposed to do.

“No, no, mom, I-” my voice fails me when I can’t hold back the tears any longer.

I cover my mouth with one hand to muffle the broken noises I make as tears stream down my cheeks. This is why dad never talked about her. Why wanted everything to be normal for me growing up.

“I’m so s-sorry,” I sob. I lean forward and press my forehead to my mothers, hiccupping and sniffling, completely incapable of getting myself under control. “I can barely remember who you were. I never knew you. It’s not fair. None of this is fair.”

I curl in on myself and just allow myself to cry. Let everything out. The grief, the pain, the stress, and anxiety, and pressure that’s been building up over the years. Let go of it, feel it, let it flow through me like it’s supposed to instead of keeping it bottled up.

Everything around me fades away, leaving me to cry alone in the dark.

“(Y/N)?“ I recognize that voice. “(Y/N), you gotta come back to us.”

“I don’t know how,” I answer. My voice is feeble. Broken. They won’t be able to hear me.

“Come on, sweetheart,” they say. “You’re strong. I know you can do this.”

The panicked edge in their voice causes me to worry. I prop myself up on one elbow and look around. Off in the distance, there’s a pinprick of light. It’s far away, I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it.

“Please,” they beg.

I stand up.

“Come back to us.”

I put one foot in front of the other. The voice urges me forward, gives me the strength to make the journey. The light grows bigger and brighter than before.

“Come back to me, (Y/N). I need you.”

I reach the edge of the light. Again, the voice pleads for me to come back. I take a running leap at the light, shielding my face with my hands. The world rushes in around me as soon as I crash through the barrier.

Someone sits in front of me, quietly begging for me to come back. Their warm hands on either side of my face slowly pull me forward. I can’t quite open my eyes yet. It feels like they’re glued shut. I feel myself begin to shake with the effort it takes to force my eyes open.

The person in front of me slowly comes into focus as I manage to pry one eye open, then the other. I squint against the lights but manage to make out their face.

“Clint?”

“(Y/N), oh, thank God.” He leans forward and presses his forehead to mine. “We couldn’t get through to you. I didn’t know what to do.”

“H-how long was I out?”

“Five, maybe six minutes?” He looks to Wanda for confirmation. “Wanda couldn’t pull you out of it.”

I let out a shaky breath. Everything I saw is slowly sinking in and my eyes fill with tears.

“I’m so sorry, (Y/N),” Wanda says.

“What happened?” Clint asks. He looks from me to Wanda for an answer.

“I can’t,” I shake my head. “Not here.”

Clint nods. “Okay.”

He helps me to my feet, almost supporting my full weight with his arm.

“Carry her,” Wanda says. “She is weak.”

Clint looks to me for approval and, only when I nod does he pick me up. He gently kisses my forehead and walks out into the hall. I let my head fall against his chest and hold my hands against my stomach when my fingers start to tingle. I don’t feel like I’m in control anymore.

Clint and I curl up together in bed, but he doesn’t ask me to talk. He keeps me close to his chest, my head tucked under his chin. I allow myself to calm down, for my shoulders to stop shaking, and for the tears and sniffling to subside before even trying to get his attention.

“I think I’m ready,” I say.

“Okay,” he says. He shifts back enough to see my face. “Don’t push yourself.”

I nod. “Wanda was trying to help me figure out how to use my powers. Something went wrong and I got stuck in my head, but it felt like it was longer than five minutes. It felt more like hours, and there was nothing I could do to control what was happening. There were just urges and feelings and no way to escape.”

“Are you okay?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Can you tell me about what you saw?”

I recount the scene from the farm, how I had to keep throwing water on the fire until I passed out. About Ward and Daisy. About seeing Coulson again. “It was like he was there. Like the day he died. More lucid that he’d been for months right before he passed. He knew more about what was happening than I did.”

“He always seemed to figure things out before everyone else.”

“He warned me about the last thing I saw. Said I wasn’t ready for it and that I never would be.”

“Was he right?”

“Yes,” I whisper. I press my lips together to keep myself from crying again. I suck in a sharp breath and wipe my cheeks. “He was right. He always was.”

“What happened?”

“I saw how my mom died.”

“I thought she left when you were little.”

“No, she-” I take a shaky breath. “She was an Inhuman. She could control plants. She and I were playing in a clearing in the woods when I was about three. My dad was watching us. We were ambushed by a team of Hydra operatives. I think they were trying to bring her in or something, maybe for their experiments, but they didn’t try very hard. When I reached out for her, one of the operatives got spooked and started shooting. It turned into a full out firefight. My dad managed to get me out of there, but my mother was shot.”

“(Y/N)...”

“And I had to just watch while it happened. There was nothing I could do to stop it.” I cover my face with my hands. “I watched my own mother get murdered when I was a little kid because she was an Inhuman. Because she was different. And now I’m just like her, facing off against the same people, and I can’t even control my powers like she could.”

“You’ll get there. You’re already leaps ahead of where you were last week.”

“Huh?”

“Webster is like four floors up right now,” he says. His brows pull together. “Did you not know that?”

“No, how could I?” I begin to panic, which sends my fingers sparking. I hold my hands tight to my chest and shuffle away from Clint. I shake my head and curl into myself.

“(Y/N)-”

“No, I can’t do this.” I can feel myself start to hyperventilate. “I can’t keep doing this. I can’t.”

“Give me your hand.”

“Wh-”

“Gimme your hand, (Y/N),” he says. “I’m serious.”

I tentatively place my still sparking hand in his. The muscles in his forearm tense and I try to pull back. Clint doesn’t let me. Instead, he holds on tighter.

It dawns on me that he trusts me. Trusts that I won’t hurt him. I don’t want to hurt him. I won’t hurt him. I won’t. I won’t. I silently repeat it like a mantra and push down my panic. Clint relaxes.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I chant as Clint pulls me against him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m so sorry, Clint.”

“Honey, calm down,” he says. “You just gave me a little shock.”

“I could’ve hurt you.”

“You’d never hurt me. You’re too patient for that.” He ducks his head to look me in the eye. “I love you, (Y/N). I know you can get this.”

My heart hammers in my chest. “I love you too.”

Clint cups my face and kisses me. “We’ll do this together. Okay?”

I sniff once and nod. “Okay. Together.”

He smiles, kisses my forehead, and holds me close. I fall asleep against his chest.

Thank you guys so much for reading! If you liked this chapter, please reblog, comment, and/or shoot me an ask! Feedback would be greatly appreciated!

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@ghostlyhamlet, @helmerfan43-blog, @baguettegirl, @claws-of-vibranium, @creaturefeatures101, @buckysendoftheline, @imagine-assembling-the-avengers, @ptprocrastination, @1950schick, @amayasymone23, @liladeldiamandis, @arfrona-and-marvel, @ek823, @fanaticfangirl001, @ilovebeingjoyful, @furrywerewolfcollector, @kissofvenom922, @not-that-type-of-person, @dawn-phantomhive, @fangirlwithasweettooth, @silas-aeiou, @thedoctorlivesthroughbooks, @mairhof1, @starryeyesbadguys, @leahhavoc, @future-ll-evans, @trap-house-homiecide, @buckywhitewolfbarnes, @kaepm981, @howdoesoneadult, @pcdmesamidala, @thefandomplace, @sian22redux, @skeletoresinthebasement, @lady-thor-foster, @jazzcutie, @gaytonystark, @geeksareunique, @buckybcrnes, @nyxveracity, @idalinette, @tomorraw, @breezy1415, @feelmyroarrrr, @darling-loki, @lemonadeorange73, @thisismysecrethappyplace, @princess-unicorn124, @hermionie-is-my-queen, @tofeartheunknown, @queenoftheunderdark

Just this fic:

@smarse, @avengerscompound, @letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked, @hey-i-really-miss-you, @outsider-underwater, @ayatimascd, @donnaintx, @shadyskit, @capandbuck, @playbucky, @embrel, @charliepeaceout, @geeksareunique, @bbparker, @fangirl570, @sydthekid1518, @llamaandi, @saxgirl21, @novashine666, @emziann, @wefracturedmotivation, @kazuha159, @lemonadeorange73, @knightofreaders, @captain-shannon-becker, @hannah-olivia, @carryonmyswansong, @everything-is-awesomesauce

#clint bartonxreader #readerxclint barton #clint barton x reader #reader x clint barton #hawkeye #clint barton #my perfect birdie boy #reader insert marvel fic

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ncfan-1 · 6 years ago

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ncfan listens to The Magnus Archives: S4 EP123, ‘Web Development’

We have further insight into the way the Archival staff is just completely falling apart, my suspicion that the other Powers were taking shots at the Institute (specifically, the Archival staff) is confirmed, and we have the third statement in a row to provide us with a parallel to Jon. I begin to suspect some sort of external influence on the kinds of statements he’s getting his hands on.

- We open with Jon grumbling to himself about his office has been rearranged while he’s away, only to hear Melanie out breaking stuff in the hallway.

- That Melanie responds so poorly to Jon, his return, and just… him in general, doesn’t really shock me. She’s just so badly destabilized, and the idea that Tim and Daisy both died* while Jon gets off incredibly, implausibly lightly by comparison, suffering apparently no ill effects from having been in a coma for six months, would upset someone who wasn’t already halfway down the slippery slope into Slaughterville. Just… what are consequences? Something that matters very much to Melanie King, and rather less so to Jonathan Sims.

And Jon is just thinking very shallowly about Melanie’s situation when he thought that getting Elias out of the picture would make everything be hunky-dory with her, because Elias is a big symptom of Melanie’s problem, but far from being the root cause. If Melanie is falling apart, I think that is happening in large part due to the fact that she is still bound to the Institute. She’s still trapped. She can’t leave. She’s a prisoner in a supernatural box, and in the absence of Elias, I’m honestly not surprised that she’d zero in on Jon as being to blame for everything, especially everything that’s going on with her.

Because if you think about it, Melanie wouldn’t be in this situation if not for Jon. She would never have crossed paths with the Magnus Institute in any meaningful way if Georgie hadn’t pointed her towards Jon. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to blame him for the breakdown of Melanie King’s life, because she would have become a laughingstock in the paranormal YouTuber/podcaster community with or without him, and would likely have had to find a different line of work anyways. But I don’t need to be halfway to Slaughterville to see where she’s gotten the idea that Jon is to blame for everything. Jon is a symbol; that part of what being an avatar is. He’s a symbol for the Archive, a symbol for the Beholding, and a symbol for the forces at work that have destroyed Melanie’s life.

And the worst thing is, it sounds like Melanie, even if she wanted to, wouldn’t have had the luxury of trying to pull herself back from the influence of the Slaughter. Because as I mentioned up above, the other Powers have been taking potshots at the Eye, and the Archival staff have needed someone a halfway-to-Slaughterville skillset just to stay safe. So we have Melanie, having to sacrifice bits and pieces of her sanity just to stay alive, just to keep Basira and Martin safe, and as I’ll talk about more in just a little while, I wouldn’t be shocked if she thinks Jon has had it entirely too easy by comparison.

*I still say I’ll believe Daisy’s dead when I see a body. I honestly think that by the time she killed whichever half of Breekon & Hope she killed, she had become like Jon: too inhuman to die. And when the explosion happened, I think that she, like Jon, made a choice, and walked away from it changed.

- That said, I also think Melanie is justified in her distrust. As I have emphasized before, it is not natural to walk away from a six-month coma as cleanly as Jon did. “You don’t know me, and I don’t know you.” He just waltzes back into the Archive, apparently completely fine after having been in a coma for six months, that just screams supernatural bullshit. As Georgie said, we can think that this is a miraculous second chance for Jon all we like, but it is probably not anything so positive.

- I no longer think Basira’s behavior is just a matter of her not being sure she can trust Jon. She’s so detached, so impersonal. She defends Melanie to Jon, but even when she’s talking about how she was attacked and almost killed by the Flesh, it’s like it was happening to another person, and she was just an observer. In any other series, I’d say that’s down to trauma, but here? That’s got the fingerprints of the Beholding all over it.

But I think another part of it may be that Basira is just done with Jon? Because let’s talk about what I just mentioned: the Archival staff were attacked by the Flesh. Like, some of my favorite episodes are the ones with the Flesh, because they’re so entertainingly weird, but the Flesh is probably the worst Power you could ever be attacked by, because unless you’re being attacked by cannibals, it’s just going to be something so bizarre, so alien, that you just have no frame of reference for what you’re dealing with. You can’t discern pattern or motive, and that makes it very difficult to find a way to effectively deal with it, unless you have a Hunter with you, or someone in the process of succumbing to the Slaughter. (Since the Hunt and the Slaughter seem to derive from the same source, is a human agent of the Slaughter able to kill monsters like Hunters can? I’d be interested to know. I’d also be interested to know whether or not it’s true that only Hunters can kill monsters.)

Though this was the worst incident, Basira (to me) implies that it wasn’t the only one. I think it would have taken more than one attack to convince Melanie, of all people, that she needs to stay in the Institute most of the time for her own protection. And meanwhile, we get no indication that Jon was ever in any danger from agents of other Powers for the entire six months he was in the hospital. He was comatose on a hospital bed for six months, and doesn’t seem to have been in danger from any of the other Powers even once. If I was Melanie, or Basira, or Martin, for that matter, I would probably have a hard time looking at Jon and not thinking about how much better he seems to have had it. And now he’s come back, only dubiously human? I’d be ready to be done with him, too. I mean, I love Jonathan Sims the Disaster Man, but if I was occupying the same universe as him, at this point I’d have serious reservations about whether or not I’d still want to be associated with him.

- I’m at the point where I think I can construct a timeline of events regarding the teaser. I think the teaser took place right after the attack by the Flesh two months prior to this episode. Martin’s been made an offer by Peter Lukas: work for me more closely, and I’ll guarantee you and your coworkers a certain level of protection. He’s thinking it over at Jon’s bedside, Peter calls, and Martin accepts the offer. Martin, like Melanie, makes a choice (though probably more consciously than Melanie’s choice, since it is to me at best unclear as to how much Melanie understands about what’s happening to her) to work outside the system of the Eye to protect his coworkers. And if it doesn’t bite both of them in the ass, I will be amazed.

- Peter Lukas being an absentee boss does not surprise me. Peter Lukas disappearing staff does not surprise me. Whoosh makes me snicker.

- Can we just stop with the assumption that all laughter is a response to finding a situation humorous? Seriously, I think laughter as an involuntary response to culturally-inappropriate stimuli is a widely-known enough thing that we can stop snapping at people to stop laughing and take something seriously if they suddenly burst into laughter at the wrong time. If you snap at someone that “it isn’t funny,” you just look ignorant. Just. Saying.

- Here’s something from my notes: “Tape recorders really do just pop up out of nowhere; I begin to understand why we meet so few human agents of the Beholding.” Like, seriously. It fits pretty well with the Beholding, which is cruel, voyeuristic, and honestly kind of ineffectual, to just spawn tape recorders instead of putting too much effort into growing a large body of human/monstrous ambulatory agents. It’s almost funny, it’s so pathetic.

- Basira’s “play dead” is another reason I think she may just be done with Jon.

- I won’t go into quite as much detail about the statement. It is pretty distinctive for a few reasons. One is that the statement subject (but not the giver, since the subject is too passive a guy to even take the step of talking to the Institute), Gregory Cox, provides another parallel for Jon. This time, we see a parallel for Jon in the form of a man who got sucked into supernatural shenanigans unawares and was after that point unwilling to really think about what that meant, and what he was involved in. Even when confronted with someone in the process of turning into a spider and begging him for help, he seriously tries to play it off as the person having had “an unfortunate condition.” That’s Jon’s S1 “willful ignorance that flies in the face of all logic” to a tee. And Jon, as best as I can tell, hasn’t really thought much about what it means that he’s involved with the Beholding, that he’s responsible for hurting people in the name of the Beholding. He’s quite like Cox, in that respect.

- So anyways, Cox is an incredibly passive man who is hired by a woman who, from her description (very thin, has clearly suffered grievous head trauma at some point in her life) and her association with the Web, is almost certainly Annabelle Cane, to make a website. A very basic, very simple website with weird coding that includes strings of people’s names, and a very long, impossible to memorize url name that changes every few weeks. A website called ‘Chelicerae.’

@agnesmontague and @flo-nelja have clarified both the spelling of ‘chelicerae’ and what they are. They’re the mouth parts of a spider. They’re the jaws of a spider. So when you enter this website, you are entering the jaws of the spider.

You tell a story to the “story-spinner”, about the worst event of your life. And if your story satisfies the story-spinner, you will be rewarded with the death of someone you have singled out. We don’t know what happens if your story doesn’t satisfy. It probably isn’t anything good.

Every few weeks, Cox was asked to code strange things into the website. Strings of meaningless words, bits and pieces of poetry, and a different name, every time. With everything taken in context, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that he was literally coding someone’s horrific death into the website.

Eventually, it gets out that Cox has some involvement in this lethal urban legend, and he starts to get emails begging him to make it stop, demanding to know what’s happening to them, pleading for forgiveness and mercy. The “Bring them back” especially stuck with me. Cox has become the instrument of so many people’s suffering, and he refuses to face it, refuses to face up to what it means that he’s become involved with something very weird, and very dangerous. Like I said, he’s very like Jon, in this way.

- Cox has since vanished, almost a year after the statement was given. As this statement took place before Gertrude died, and would have been fairly current and potentially urgent, I do wonder at her not doing anything about it—especially since the presence of a story-spinner potentially suggests an overlap with the Beholding. I guess it may be like Jon thinks, and Gertrude never knew it had been given.

- The real kicker of this statement, though, is the supplementary document attached to it: a list of the names of the people Cox added into the website’s code. Several of them are the names of statement-givers, including Carlos Vittery. Yeah, suddenly what happened to him doesn’t seem nearly as random as it used to.

- Jon is finally facing up to the fact that he was always a bit of a shitty boss. Whether or not he actually learns something from it is anyone’s guess.

- My verdict: unless whatever Peter Lukas and Martin are working on is literally a plan to stop the Watcher’s Crown, these people do not have a chance in hell of stopping the Watcher’s Crown. They literally cannot pull themselves together fast enough. The Watcher’s Crown will go through, and we’ll see what the world is like when one of the Powers has come through the interstice—and dragged hangers-on with it. Then, the Archival staff, if they’re still in any state to do so, will go about trying to mitigate or reverse the effects. Should be fun.

#ncfan listens to The Magnus Archives

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missizzy · 6 years ago

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Ficlet: Bobbi Morse, Four and a Half Weeks Later(Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

“I do have to say this,” Bobbi says, as she leads the two men, one woman, and one large raccoon to the safehouse, “because I can’t stop thinking about it. Robin lived in the original timeline. As did at least one other person Thanos killed.”

“So you don’t think he succeeded there,” says Dr. Banner softly. “I suppose Wanda might have survived long enough to destroy the Mind Stone, and with the remains of Earth floating around in space it would’ve been harder for Thanos to find where they’d been and do his time-turning trick. So the casualties would’ve merely been in the billions, instead of…”

“We don’t know that,” Captain Rogers says crossly as they open the door and step in. “If he did it at a different moment in time, with billions of people dead already, the gauntlet would’ve selected different people to kill. We don’t have it confirmed this didn’t happen. Besides, you people couldn’t have known this would result from you saving the world, and even if you had…”

“Shit.” Rocket’s too quiet gasp of it silenced them immediately, especially when they see which one of Robin’s drawings he’s spotted. The one of Tony Stark on the surface of an alien planet, kneeling over a disintegrating Spider-Man, while near him a blue-skinned woman stood in shock.

“That’s Nebula.” The raccoon’s voice is shaking. “And those are your two pals…but where are the others?” He’s run up to it, then the picture taped to the wall next to it. “Where are the others?” He’s now frantically turning from drawing to drawing, obviously seeing in none of them any of the people he’s looking for. “They can’t be all dead, we couldn’t have been that unlucky-where are they? Where are they? Where are they? They can’t be all dead!!” He’s close to yelling now.

Then he slams himself against the wall, and Captain Rogers runs to restrain him, Dr. Banner following. He’s getting louder and louder, drowning out their words to him.

Agent 13 stays with Bobbi, also surveying the drawings, saying, “You say she drew all of these on the trip back here after Agent Johnson defeated General Talbot?”

“Most of them. She put them in a folder; I don’t she let anyone see them until she presented them to me right after walking in, saying I had to have them because I was the only one of us who was going to survive. She even showed me a drawing of my boyfriend’s death.”

(Lance didn’t react well when he first saw that, obviously. But when the time came, he just turned to her the way the picture had shown, a sad, “I love you, Bobbi” his final words.)

Bobbi’s spent the last month sorting the drawings out, trying to guess at the chronology and put them up in order. She’s only left the safehouse to find and guide Inhuman and other refugees in and out; there are none here right now. She sent photos of them back to Daisy, who contacted her a week ago saying the Avengers wanted to see them. They might just make more sense of them than she can.

“Those at that end,” she points, “have probably happened already; I’ve moved ones over there I’ve been able to confirm. Robin tended more towards seeing things involving people she either knew or was going to meet, so there’s a lot of S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff in here, but I think each of you guys shows up at least once. There’s one here I especially think you’ll want to see.” And she leads them to one of the pictures, the one of Tony Stark what was obviously a spaceship, with the stars outside the large window behind him.

“Bruce?” Agent 13 calls over to the two men. “You’re the one of us who’s seen spaceships. Can you come have a look at this?”

“It’s mostly the other guy who saw them, and there’s a lot I don’t remember,” Dr. Banner says, but he comes over. Rocket is now firmly in Rogers’ grip, and his shouts have given way to loud, devastated sobs, though he’s still choking out, “They can’t be, they just can’t…”

He carefully studies the drawing as Agent 13 takes her phone out and starts taking photos. After a minute or so, he shakes his head. “I don’t like this at all. I mean, I suppose you can take only so much from this kind of drawing, but looking at this?” He points to a contraption in one of the corners. “If that’s what I think it is, it’s broken, and that means he’s probably stranded. And that thing he’s doing with the helmet is definitely sending a message, and when that the signal from it’s only going to go so far and register on frequencies only we’d be checking-that’s a last resort kind of thing. If Pepper doesn’t pull off a miracle with that suit…”

“Pepper’s trying to make a suit?” Bobbi asks, thinking now of the things about S.H.I.E.L.D. she originally wasn’t planning to mention, and how much she might now tell them.

He nods. “Been trying to since Thanos’ ship first carted him off. I wrote down everything I know for her. But the truth is, to make a spaceworthy one, she needs stuff only Tony could provide her with. Or maybe the Wakandans, but, well, they certainly won’t now, and nor should they, quite frankly.”

Or, Bobbi thinks, Leo Fitzsimmons, recently deceased, or Leo Fitz, status and location currently unknown. Or, just maybe, a Jemma Fitzsimmons who will stop at nothing to find him.

“Listen,” she says. “There’s only so much I’m willing to tell you without consulting with the new director, but there is reason to believe S.H.I.E.L.D. would be very happy to see someone take an Iron Man suit with all its sensors and ability to gather data into space right now, and they might even have developed what she needs. I can try to contact them again, though I can’t make any promises.”

She looks anxiously at Steve; she’s pretty sure he’ll never fully trust S.H.I.E.L.D. again. But he nods, “If you can get us help, I think we’d all appreciate that.”

#agents of s.h.i.e.l.d.#The Avengers #marvel cinematic universe #guardians of the galaxy #bobbi morse #rocket raccoon #Steve Rogers #bruce banner #sharon carter #infinity war

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cursedcomics · 7 years ago

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What’s right and wrong (to my tastes anyway) on comicbook TV.

This is going to be a little bit of a love letter/ report card of hate for comic related TV shows. And, honestly, a rant.

TV is a different breed. Any discussion of this subject has to begin with that point. You have to acknowledge that they cannot just mirror comic stories. You have to give them the freedom to write their own stories.

That said, the entire point of basing a TV show on a comic is that it will start with an established fan base. If you honor the source material, you gain. If you shit on it , you lose.

The Walking Dead may be the best example of this. The characters from the comics show up. They are generally the same characters, but each character’s chronology is different. The show has taken a different direction on TV and that changes their path to death. I love that. That is a healthy relationship with your source material. That gives your comic readers and your new TV fans something to watch.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is the polar opposite. It is really a pretty bad show I have binge watched. Almost every character in the show is a jacked up version of their comic selves or doesn’t exist in the comics. Sure, there are some exceptions. They got Martin Stein right, although his dialogue is way too whiny. Arguably they more or less got the hawks right. The guy who played Vandal Savage was a good actor, although IMO way too short. It would be almost totally unwatchable if not for the fact that they have pretty good actors. They floated a comic based on it and it totally flopped. That could mean something about the TV show, or nothing at all. In this instance I think it is your dead mine canary telling you that comic fans have tuned out because your writers are not universally good, They have jacked up the characters turning off the fans, and that you probably have the wrong characters on the show.

I would argue that the LOT would profit greatly from a comic-style reboot. THe Arrow-verse is well suited for reboots.

Have something irrevocably change the timeline and recast your time travelers. You only NEED Sarah Lance and I’d argue, Rip Hunter, out of the existing cast. The other 5 can rotate new characters in and out. I’d love to see Jonah Hex get pulled into different eras, eventually abandoned in the future, and meet his own stuffed body. Why not have Booster Gold show up and (intentionally) accidentally screw up missions to yield better results. Bring in the LOSH for a guest appearance. There is no reason to restore vandal Savage. T.O. Morrow, the Lord of Time, Good and Bad Chronos are all ripe players available for season long baddies. I would argue it is time for something new.

The Flash seems to bounce between fresh and tired. I can’t tell if the status quo or the writers yield the tired stories. While the Central City status quo is perfect for telling “Supervillian X shows up and flash saves the day” stories, it feels dated now. Plus no one really likes Barry and Iris dating as brother and sister. The one good thing about the flashpoint reboot timeline is that it temporarily cleaned up that awkward relationship into one that TV fans could tolerate.

I think they would be wise to have some new character unwind the original flashpoint (the one created by the reverse flash) and leave Iris and Barry to have a normal committed relationship, even a married one, with Joe seen as Barry’s beloved mentor. Keep the characters people like and flush the dead weight story baggage that fans don’t like. You can bring back the popular Officer Thorne. The guy who plays the reverse flash is fantastic and really hasn’t been given top scripts to go off. Here is a Zoom who as a scientist from the future, might (should?) have some fairly big concerns about killing "Historical figures” (although he didn’t show any in the past). The danger of Zoom without the bodycount.

You can kill off Barry’s dad to make it a stronger relationship and that could be an impetus to explore Keystone City in Jay Garricks’ earth and get out of Central City for a while. DO Jay Garrick and Jesse Quick remember the flash and everything that happened? I would think so, so you don’t have to revisit Zoom. That might be neat for Barry and Vibe to start calling Jay Garrick’s world Earth 2 as they wouldn’t remember naming them. You could then toss the comic fans a bone by introducing the crime syndicate on Jesse's now Earth 3. But that is admittedly, robbing peter to pay paul. It would be somewhat befuddling for easily confused TV folk. But that is just some random thoughts, not a prescription like I mentioned for LOT.

Green Arrow is a series where they took everything cool from the comic, added new pieces, and built a new coherent world from it. The dialogue and stories have gone downhill since season one and team arrow is way too big, but they is a good nucleus there. A LOT reboot could tighten that up too. Mr. Terrific could fall into Jay Garrick’s world and meet his boyfriend there that he just likes better. Mad Dog could be an Arrow adversary. Ras Al Ghul could stay dead. Ray, Roy and Speedy could also migrate to earth 2 or 3. John could get back both kids in the reset, which might push him into semi- retirement as a hero. That could clear the table for fresh new villains to threaten Star City.

I really like the supergirl series. It’s not that they do everything right, it’s just a another show where they have a very likable star. And they really cater to the comic fan. They write the show from a premise akin to “Hey what if we took the core 1/3 characters of the DCU to populate this universe and then had Superman almost always away on special projects leaving Supergirl to save the day? How would things shake out? Anything Superman would normally handle, we will give to her. ”

The writing feels much more organic than on LOT. I don’t like the guy who plays the Martian Manhunter, but I love that the Martian Manhunter is in the show. (note you could always “kill off” that identity). Mon-el is a nice add. Bringing in the LOSH is very much mirroring what I perceive to be the concept of the show.

Agent Carter has gone by the wasteside and that was a shame. I think the show really blew it by not getting more into the era. Why not have the 1950′s avengers or Marvel’s 40′s Heroes trickle through? A hearthrob alien from Venus with advanced technology and questionable motives? A killer robot? Venus? Namor and Namora? The Original Black widow? The Torch? All handled by Agent Carter with an occasional assist from the wasp and Ant Man? Their directive shunned their comic audience, IMO.

Agents of Sheild has also gotten into trouble for similar reasons. I get that Marvel didn’t want to give them access to the main MU heroes, so they tried to build around a cast instead and an assigned shit storyline eater ---the inhumans, but I think they didn’t make the right arguments. Ulysses Klaw would have made an awesome villain for shield for the last season....adding to his impact in the black panther movie. They should have focused on minor villains with International operations. The Kangaroo. Batroc the Leaper would have been a screen munching over the top villain straight out of a bond movie. He could have a plan to kill his nemesis, Captain America, that shield could thwart. I have always been partial to the mandrill, (and his sister Dansen Macabre), and the success of the purple man character tapping a nerve suggests it is high time for a little monkey business.

I get that getting the Ghost Rider right was an expensive investment dictating they used that a lot for a season. The storyline just wasn’t that good. Another Mort. Maybe guest star the shroud. Werewolf by night.

Like LOT, the AOS show is really built on only a small portion of their cast. Three characters since they offed Grant --- Mockingbird, Daisy, and Coulter. Really everyone else SHOULD be nameless agents who come and go. It’s a spy show. You don’t have to have ongoing arcs each week. It’s great to be the prisoner, but you can be the 1960′s Avengers some weeks. I think they lost sight of that.

That’s all I really got today. End rant.

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justlightlysedated · 7 years ago

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@pizza-is-my-buziness asked for skimmons+take me to church, and well because i’m me, i concentrated more on the ‘they disapprove, but idgaf’ aspect of the song, instead of the sexy, worshipping part, oops??? maybe next time

Jemma was maybe, twenty seconds away from punching somebody in the face.

The only reason she’d refrained (so far) was because Coulson had instructed all of them to be on their best behavior (glaring at Daisy, Jemma, and Fitz in particular, as though Trip, Mack, Elena, and Bobbi were the epitome of well behaved agents), and Jemma was trying.

That didn’t mean that she just had to sit there and listen to people bad talk her team mates.

Especially when the team mate in question was Daisy.

Jemma doesn’t know exactly how she ended up sitting down at the same table as these idiots, but she was going to have some words with Coulson about how just because Jemma and Daisy couldn’t keep their hands off each other in the communal rec and dining room, didn’t mean that they should be seated on opposite sides of the room during SHIELD get togethers.

Especially if he was going to sit her with a group of people almost twice her age, who seemed to believe that you had to be over thirty to contribute anything important to anything, let alone something like SHIELD. Who apparently not only bought the rumors that Daisy was just a ditzy, klutz who slept with Coulson to get a place on the team, but also thought that her powers and Inhuman status were just a scam put in place to make her a SHIELD agent.

“But I’ve heard that it’s not only Coulson,” an agent who looked as though he’d never been on the field. let alone in life threatening danger, sneered as everyone stared over to where Daisy was laughing at something Trip said, hand wrapped around his bicep.

The laugh, which Jemma could hear clearly over the low din of voices conversing quietly to each other during the meal, made something warm and fond curl in the pit of her stomach.

“I’ve also heard that it’s not only men,” he continued, his greasy, smarmy voice bringing Jemma’s attention back to the table.

Most of the faces around the table looked disgusted, others bored, and there were two that were now leering at Daisy with disturbing looks on their faces.

Jemma felt exasperated and disgusted at the blatant homophobia, biphobia, and sexism that was still alive and well among most of the senior agents.

Jemma set her glass down on the table so hard that it very nearly breaks, spider web fractures spread out from the bottom of the glass towards the top, but she doesn’t really care.

After an uncomfortable beat of silence, where Jemma met every eye of the six other members sitting at her table, the same man cleared his throat uncomfortably, but that didn’t stop him from opening his mouth to speak again.

“You work with her don’t you?” He asked, looking somewhere between elated and cautious, but not cautious enough.

“I do,” Jemma answered primly, with a challenge in her tone.

He blanched a little, but recovered fast.

“So is it true?”

Jemma gave him a blank look, “You’ll have to be more specific, I wasn’t paying attention.”

He sputtered, turning very red in the face, and it was very amusing to watch.

But before he could recover, the woman sitting to his right intervened in a snotty, I-Know-Better-Than-You, voice, that probably helped to keep other junior agents in line, but was really not working for Jemma.

“The rumors, dear,” she said dear as though it was something more insulting, which didn’t help at all. She smiled indulgently as though Jemma was particularly dumb, and Jemma’s eye twitched.

She wondered if anyone at SHIELD HQ even bothered to check who it was exactly who co-created all of their recent weapon and gadget upgrades.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” she repeated, smiling lightly. “I don’t entertain idle gossip.”

The woman flinched back, simpering smile falling off her face, as though Jemma had slapped her, which was oddly fitting, because it was exactly what Jemma wanted to do.

“But it’s not just idle gossip,” another person said, and stopped to gulp when Jemma turned to look at them, but continued speaking, albeit more hesitant than before. “People have even seen her kissing multiple members of her team.”

“People?” Jemma asked disbelief dripping from her tone. “Are you one of these ‘people?’” She lifted her hands to do quotation marks around the word.

“Well, no,” he started to say stuttering.

“Well then,” Jemma interrupted. “Maybe instead of blindly believing something someone said, you should do your own research.”

“Well,” the first man said. “What about the so-called superpowers. We’ve never seen her actually use them. Just what we’ve heard. And the one time most of us were in the same room with her, she did the little hand gesture, but nothing happened.”

Jemma’s fingers curled into fists on top of the table, and she stood up once the man wiggled his fingers mockingly, in a mimicry of Daisy’s move.

“Listen here, Mr. I’m-Too-Important-to-SHIELD-to-Leave-My-Desk,” Jemma starts heatedly, feeling intense satisfaction at the fact that everyone blanches and leans back into their chairs. “I was there when Agent Daisy Johnson risked her life to stop an uninformed girl from using the artifact that ended up giving her powers and seriously injured another member of my team. Maybe next time, actually do some real research instead of getting all of your information from the lowlifes that do nothing but stand around the Donut table in the dining hall and spread false rumors about agents who are a million times better than they’ll ever hope to be. And while you’re at it, maybe go see a doctor to help to get rid of that giant stick that you’ve got stuck up your ar…”

“Excuse us,” Daisy interjects loudly, appearing out of nowhere and grabbing Jemma from behind, wrapping her arms around Jemma’s waist and tugging her away from the table.

“I wasn’t finished,” Jemma huffs indignantly as Daisy tugs her through the tables full of people watching her with wide eyes.

“Yeah,” Daisy says laughter coloring her voice. “I noticed, but I had to step in before you landed yourself with a court martial.”

Jemma pulls away from Daisy and turns stopping their procession at the edge of the dance floor that only a few couples have taken advantage of now that the dinner had been served and mostly eaten.

She gives Daisy a look, “SHIELD is not a military based agency.”

Daisy raises an eyebrow back, “Yeah, okay. Wanna dance?”

Jemma stops short at that a little surprised, “Why?”

Daisy shrugs.

“How much of the conversation at the table did you hear?” Jemma asks brows furrowing.

“Enough to know that no one will be too shocked if I drag you out on the dance floor.”

Jemma inclines her head slightly. “You want to make a statement.”

“The biggest statement possible,” Daisy says smiling and stepping in closer so that Jemma has to tilt her head back a little to keep eye contact. “But it’s not really about them. I don’t care what anyone else thinks, as long as the people that I care about know the truth. And I just really want to dance with you.”

Jemma ducks her head blushing slightly, but she nods. “Okay.”

Daisy grins widely, and grabs her hand, tugging her out onto the dance floor.

Predictably, the song changes from something fast paced, to a slow song.

Daisy tugs on Jemma’s hand, bringing her in close, and wrapping one arm around her waist, and extending their joined hands into a waltz position. Jemma hooks her arm around Daisy’s neck and lets her take the lead.

Jemma can follow Daisy’s lead in anything, and dancing isn’t any different, not when it’s a common thing for anyone to walk into the rec room and find the furniture pushed up against the walls, and them spinning together in the middle, oblivious to everyone else.

Which is basically how they would be right now, if it wasn’t for the tiny voice in Jemma’s brain that was getting progressively louder with every turn they took that let Jemma see how people were whispering behind their hands and looking in their general direction.

“I care,” Jemma whispers suddenly, and Daisy’s hand presses harder against her back, in a wordless gesture that she’s listening.

Jemma turns her head away from the stares and into Daisy’s shoulder. She stares sightlessly at the pearl necklace that Trip had given Daisy as a birthday present last year, and closes her eyes.

“It’s not that what they’re saying changes anything about what I think about you. Even if I didn’t know you, and know for a fact that all the rumors are just blatant lies, I still wouldn’t believe anything anyone says about you. But the fact is that I do know you Daisy, and you’re amazing. Incredible. Awe inspiring. Worship worthy.”

Jemma lets go of Daisy’s hand and slides her hand down her arm before wrapping her other arm around Daisy’s waist tugging their bodies closer together. Daisy slides her free hand across the back of Jemma’s neck, and her fingers dig in harder against Jemma’s back.

“So it’s frustrating,” Jemma continues. “To hear them talking about you as though you didn’t work your butt off to become an agent. As though you didn’t suffer for your abilities. As though you’re nothing, when you’re everything, and more than they could ever be. So I know that you don’t care, but I do, and whenever I can set the story straight, I will. Because I l-”

Jemma stops talking abruptly, and Daisy lets her pull away, but not too far, still spinning them around in slow circles.

Daisy looks fond, and happy. “You don’t have to say it, if you’re still not ready to.”

Jemma can’t help the smile, and the overwhelming amount of feeling that seems to spill out of her pours, because Daisy is amazing and understanding, and Jemma adores her.

Daisy leans down and presses their foreheads together.

Jemma exhales slowly.

“I love you,” she whispers, barely moving her lips.

Daisy’s smile widens, and she tugs Jemma in closer, tilting her head, to press their lips together.

Before she can, someone taps Jemma on the back, finger pressing down pointedly at the naked skin of her shoulder.

Jemma frowns pulling away, and turns around to spot the same greasy, smarmy man that was spouting bullshit at her table.

“Excuse me,” he says sounding for all the world like he’s doing her a favor. “But if you must do sick and depraved things, please take it somewhere else. No one here wants to see that. It’s sick and you’re going to go to hell…”

“Oh shit,” Jemma hears Daisy say under her breath. Daisy moves, but she’s not fast enough to stop Jemma.

So much for being on her best behavior.

Polaroids Taken by Bobbi That Were Hung on the Wall of the Rec Room

--Jemma leaning over a table, fists clenched on top of it, looking for all the world like she was going to murder someone with the power of her glare alone. The words, You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry, written along the bottom.

--Trip laughing while Daisy drags Jemma away from the table in the background of the picture.

--Daisy and Jemma with their foreheads pressed together while they dance, looking as though they’re in their own world.

--An unidentified asshole, falling backwards, blood spurting out from his nose, and a split lip. Daisy once again dragging Jemma backwards, but this time Jemma is actively attempting to break her hold and continue punching some asshole in the face.

--Trip and Fitz dancing the tango.

--Mack stealing Trip from Fitz, with Fitz pouting at the camera, while Elena wraps her arm around his shoulder.

--Elena and Bobbi with their cheeks pressed together, smiling widely at the camera. The asshole is on the floor with an ice bag across his face in the background.

--Jemma and Daisy stumbling back into the reception area. Daisy’s hair is a messy disarray, and one strap of her dress is not put on properly. Jemma’s hair is falling off the fashionable bun she’d had it in, and she’s not wearing stockings anymore. They’re wearing each other’s shoes.

--Coulson with his head in his hands. May patting his shoulder while smiling at the camera.

--Everyone sitting/standing at a bench waiting for the car from the valet.

--Jemma and Daisy sleeping against each other in the back of the van. Fitz taking up the remainder space, his head on Jemma’s shoulder.

#hope you like it!#pizza-is-my-buziness #skimmons #song prompts #warnings for:#homophobic language

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biluata · 7 years ago

Text

It Didn't Even Feel like Falling - Quakerider One-shot

Words: 15,522

Request #8: Daisy ranting about her evolving friendship with Robbie Reyes to Simmons

A little Fluff. Lots of Emotions. Pretty Saucy. Some Humor. Gets a bit Sappy. (I apologize)

Read on Ao3: Here

Daisy pounded on the apartment door with enough fury to nearly knock it off its hinges. After all the craziness that happened these past few days, she had to talk to someone. Anyone, really. She tightened her left hand into a fist in her coat pocket as her right hand continued to batter the innocent door once more.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she muttered as her foot tapped faster than a jackhammer into the hardwood floors. If someone didn’t answer in the next two seconds, Daisy swore she was going to quake the damn door down.

Suddenly, a loud thunk resonated through the door as the deadbolt slid out of place. Daisy let out an audible sigh as her shoulders relaxed. Finally!

The door quickly creaked open inward, revealing a wide-eyed, slightly disheveled Jemma Simmons in comfy, gray loungewear. She held a small I.C.E.R. in her right hand, but quickly lowered the gun to her hip once she saw it was only her.

“Daisy? What on Earth are you doing here?” Simmons asked, brushing back a strand of hair that had gotten loose from her messy bun.

“I needed to see you,” Daisy simply replied. She slipped past the British woman, who gaped at her all huge-eyed and open-mouthed like a goldfish, and shuffled her way into the apartment.

It was the same apartment Daisy helped pick out for Fitz-Simmons in what honestly seemed like a lifetime ago. Still, even if it had only been a trick to lure Simmons into meeting and helping her, she was glad her friends had ended up deciding to keep it.

Overall, it was cute and what she imagined a cozy, modern English cottage would look like if it were brought into the city. Instead of her blood decorating the walls and floors, the space was stuffed with transitional furniture and décor. Everything was in neutral, earthy tones with lots of whites and creams to make the small space seem bright and more open. Even if the place gave off the staged aura of a Home & Garden magazine page, Fitz-Simmons managed to make it feel like their own with personal touches. Various science books and trinkets she couldn’t even begin to comprehend were scattered throughout the space, along with several pictures of themselves and the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team. This was the perfect place for her two beloved friends. After all they had been through, they deserved it.

Daisy paused at the small, circular dining table set up in the breakfast nook. Wedding magazines and binders filled the small surface area with one binder currently opened to a huge page filled with just various, different floral arrangements one could have for the “big day.” Her stomach swirled uneasily and she hastily averted her eyes.

“Daisy, what is going on?” Simmons asked as she shut the front door and set her I.C.E.R. on a nearby end table.

“Is Fitz here?”

Her eyes roved the space, peeking into the kitchen. Fitz-Simmons were always a packaged pair. You couldn’t have one without the other too far behind.

“Uh, no,” she answered slowly as she stepped closer. “He’s helping Coulson with new enhancements for Zephyr One.”

“Probably for the best.” Daisy nodded. If they were both here, they’d probably tag-team against her. No, one-on-one had to be the best scenario for what she was about to reveal.

“Daisy, what is going on? Why are you here?” Simmons demanded as she tugged her cardigan sweater closer while crossing her arms. Her cheeks flushed as she realized how harsh that sounded and quickly added: “Not that I don’t appreciate you visiting. You are always welcomed here, but you were pounding on the door like a madman and you seem–” She narrowed her eyes. “On edge? Is everything okay?”

A cold sweat began to form on the back of her neck. That was Simmons alright. Always the observant scientist. Daisy tightened her left hand in her pocket as her other hand ran its fingers through her short, dark locks.

“It’s … It’s a long story,” she admitted, casting her gaze to the ground. “So, first we are going to need a drink!”

Simmons sputtered as if her whole system crashed into error while Daisy quickly marched into her kitchen. It had the same charm as the living room, but she didn’t have time to admire. Daisy set her eyes on the top, cream cupboards and tugged them open. Nothing. She turned to the refrigerator, but the only decent alcohol she could find was a nice Moscato on the bottom shelf.

What? No Scotch? Does Fitz not have any patriotic pride?

Daisy sighed as she pulled the chilled wine out and set it on the dark granite countertop before closing the fridge. It wasn’t exactly the hard stuff, but it would work just fine.

“Daisy, it’s 11 in the morning!” Simmons criticized as she walked up to the counter.

Daisy ignored her as she started to pull out drawer after drawer in the search for a corkscrew. Each one she opened was carefully organized like how Simmons always kept her work space and lab, but even in all the many years she had known her, Daisy still could not figure out the method to her madness. After opening, rifling through the fifth drawer and still coming up empty, she groaned and gave up.

Turning towards the Moscato, Daisy carefully pointed her right hand at it. She concentrated on the air vibrations inside the bottle and gave her wrist a tiny flick. The cork came flying out of the bottle as it were champagne and landed softly on the counter. Daisy grinned. There was nothing quite like abusing one’s powers to make it through the struggles of the every day.

“Daisy, what is this all about?”

She glanced at Simmons as she snatched two wine glasses from a row in the cupboards she found earlier. Right, the reason she was here. Daisy took in a deep breath and let out a sigh as she set the two glasses down hard by the wine bottle.

“Robbie.”

Now that peaked the other woman’s interest. Simmons raised an eyebrow as she sat down on one of the bar stools on the other side of the counter. “Robbie? As in Robbie Reyes?”

“Mm-hmm,” Daisy hummed in confirmation as she poured herself a generous glass. She gestured the second empty glass towards her British companion, but Simmons hurriedly shook her head.

“What about Robbie Reyes?”

Her stomach lurched uneasily. “It’s … complicated.”

Simmons shot her a look. “Daisy, I earned two PhDs by the time I was 17. I can do complicated.”

I doubt this, Daisy thought as she took a sip of wine and let the sweet, citrus taste mull over her tongue. She swallowed and let out another sigh as Simmons kept looking to her expectantly. Well, she had wanted to talk this over with somebody. It was either now or horribly half-assed later, which would probably be at the most terrible time and lead to a lot of confused yelling.

“Alright,” Daisy started,“ So, after the whole A.I.D.A. and Darkhold incident, Robbie and I started to hang out a lot more often. We’d help each other out on missions, you know, just a casual superhero team-up for the greater good. It was nice and fun, but then …” She took another sip.

“But then what?”

Daisy bit her lip. Well, here goes the first Band-Aid.

“But then we kind of had sex.”

Simmons’ eyes nearly popped out of her head, but she said nothing. Instead, she hastily reached across the counter and poured herself a full glass of wine. She took a sip before gingerly setting her glass down.

“Kind of?” Simmons questioned, her voice terribly high-pitched and screechy as if Mary Poppins turned into an owl. “What do you mean you kind of had sex? How do you kind of have sex?”

A grin coiled on Daisy’s lips. “Well, when a guy and a girl who are attracted to each other meet, sometimes they get these urges in their–”

“Don’t you get clever with me! I know perfectly well how sexual intercourse works, thank you very much.”

Daisy cringed. Sexual intercourse. It was like she was back in middle school forced to attend the sex-education class.

“Okay, alright, alright, just don’t get all medical, technical term on me,” Daisy stated, wrinkling her nose. “It’s so proper and weird and takes all the fun out of sex.”

Simmons smirked. “Well then?”

Daisy took another sip of wine. “Alright, so one night …”

* * *

The ground rumbled beneath her as she silently landed on the wet asphalt outside of the warehouse. Her arms groaned like an old oak tree threatening to splinter and keel over in a harsh breeze. Daisy gritted her teeth as she tried to rub the dull ache away. If only she had snatched her gauntlets before coming here, but she didn’t have the time. Any minute now Coulson might realize that she had taken a detour during her Inhuman asset check-up and send back-up to come track her down. It wouldn’t be hard if she was successful in what she was planning to do.

Thankful at least she had thought to wear black, Daisy stuck to the shadows as she skirted the outside of the huge, metallic warehouse. From the exterior, there was certainly nothing suspicious about this place. It looked like any of the other rusting warehouses lined up on the harbor docks, but Daisy had heard the chatter on the dark web. Watchdogs were gathering here.

Even after Senator Nadeer and Ivanov fell from grace, the Watchdogs continued to grow and strengthen their numbers. They might have been silent in the recent months, but it was only a matter of time before they struck again. As long as the Watchdogs were around, no Inhuman was safe.

Coulson had promised her that they would focus on the ending the Watchdogs for good soon, but after months of waiting, she’d had enough. She had to do something, even if it meant doing it outside of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s oversight once more.

Daisy crouched down behind a damp set of indistinct wooden crates and peered out at the backdoor. She frowned. No guards. Usually there had to be some of those canine-masked goons loitering about to keep watch, but so far, she hadn’t come across a single one. It was … unnerving and made her stomach crawl. She couldn’t have been mistaken with the information, could she?

A mechanical rumble roared through the still night.

Daisy whirled around from her crouched position just in time to see a very familiar, sleek black ‘69 Charger appear from around the corner. The muscle car skidded to a halt a couple yards away, small wisps of steam billowing off its metallic hide in the cool, marine air.

Warmth bubbled in her chest and a smile inched across her face. She had a good feeling she knew who it was behind the wheel.

Daisy checked the area once more for any signs of the Watchdogs, then stood once her search came up empty again. She slowly made her way over to the Charger as the rumbling black beauty hissed into silence and the driver’s door swung open.

“Funny running into you here,” Daisy called as Robbie Reyes stepped out of the vehicle.

He froze, but as he turned his head and his eyes landed on her, a hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth beneath his mustache. Her heart sped up a little bit.

Robbie had been doing a lot more smiling lately the more she had been seeing him. It was surprisingly nice, actually. His whole face seemed so much more youthful and warm when it didn’t have the hard lines of his glower weighing him down. Other than that, he was looking pretty much the same as always ever since he returned from hiding the Darkhold a few weeks ago. Same leather jacket, same chain, same possessive fiery vengeance demon hiding beneath his skull.

“You following me or something?” She asked, stopping just a few feet short of him.

This had to be the fourth time she ran into him these past few weeks, outside of S.H.I.E.L.D.-ordered appearances, and Daisy rarely believed in coincidences. Not that she minded seeing him again. When he wasn’t all grim and “I sold my soul to the devil,” Robbie was actually pretty fun to hang around. The last time they had ran into each other, they had ended up getting drunk together at a country bar in Texas and rode a mechanical bull.

“Because, stalking really does not look good on you, Reyes.” Daisy crossed her arms across her chest and jutted her hip out to the side. Her gesture was supposed to come off as cool and intimidating, maybe even a little badass. Robbie just snorted a chuckle instead.

“You wish,” he stated, slamming his car door shut and walking over towards her. “I was actually just in the neighborhood taking care of some dark magic cultists in Salem when I sensed some trouble here.” Robbie stopped a few feet short of her and smirked. “I guess I found it.”

Daisy rolled her eyes. “Ha. Ha,” she declared, punctuating each syllable with as much sarcasm as she could muster. “But, that’s actually why I’m here, too. I heard some talk of Watchdogs meeting here.”

She shot another glance around, but it was still just the two of them. Honestly, where were they? If Robbie, the bad-mojo-detecting wonder, could sense there was something wrong here, she couldn’t be far-off.

Daisy turned back towards Robbie and her heart jolted harshly in her chest. He was staring at her intently, his dark eyes roving up and down her whole frame. A spark of electricity tingled up her spine and prickled her skin. Her heart began to pick up speed, thudding heavily against her ribcage.

“So, I’m guessing you aren’t here under official S.H.I.E.L.D. business?” He asked, nodding his head at her outfit.

Daisy raised her eyebrows as she glanced down at her ensemble of jeans, a black tank-top and a black leather jacket. Right, her clothes. If she had been ordered by S.H.I.E.L.D. to handle the Watchdogs, she would usually wear her Quake uniform and, at least, her gauntlets. Of course, that’s what he had noticed. Not that he had been staring at her because he liked–

No! That was ridiculous. This was just Robbie, after all. They were just friends. Besides, there was no way he would even be looking at her in that way. He had seen her sweaty and disheveled, vomiting into a cowboy hat just last week. If that wasn’t a big enough turn-off, she didn’t know what was.

“I guess you could call it an off-the-grid, side project,” she admitted with a shrug of her shoulders.

“Don’t worry,” Robbie grinned as he stepped a bit closer to her. Her breath hitched in her chest as she fought the urge to step back. “Your secret is safe with me.”

His eyes focused on something over her shoulder and suddenly his whole face blanched. “Daisy!”

Then everything happened so fast it almost seemed like it was frozen in slow motion.

Daisy whirled around to see a lone Watchdog aim a pistol at her. He let loose several shots, but before they could hit her, Robbie leapt in front of her. A chilling numbness took over her as the bullets hit him square in the chest, staining the night air with a mist of his blood. Robbie shuddered from the impact before his body pitched forward and he collapsed onto his knees.

The thud of body onto pavement quickly knocked her and everything else back into motion. She set her steely gaze on the Watchdog and quickly sent a shockwave in his direction. He went flying back several feet and landed with a sickening bang against the steel warehouse wall before crumpling to the ground.

“Robbie?“ Her voice cracked as she turned to check on him, but Robbie wasn’t there anymore.

Fire ignited where he once kneeled and the hot flames caused Daisy to quickly stagger a few steps back. A cold sweat pricked at the back of her neck as the Ghost Rider slowly rose to his feet. He glanced over at her, the embers that made his eyes boring deep into her soul. She had met the demon many times before now, but the sight of his flaming skull still sent a shiver down her spine.

Her head whipped around as several pounding feet coalesced around them. A large group of over a dozen Watchdogs surrounded them. They trained their weapons on them, but there was some hesitancy in their grip and stance.

"I-I told you Quake would come, but who-who the Hell is that other … thing?” One of them barked to the person next to them.

“I dunno, some weird-ass fire Inhuman? No matter, we stick with the plan," the other responded back, cocking his rifle.

Daisy gritted her teeth as a fire began to burn in her chest. So, this had all just been a grand scheme to lure her here? She should have known. Oh well, that would be their mistake, not hers.

She raised her arms into a fighting stance and glanced over towards the Rider who unwrapped the chain from around his torso with a loud snap. "You game?”

He turned his skull towards her and nodded. Then all Hell broke loose.

Instantly, Daisy sent quake blast after quake blast towards the Watchdogs’ weapons, destroying some into tiny pieces while the Ghost Rider used his chain to melt others. The Watchdogs were only hindered for a moment before they rushed forward in a mass of yelling canine masks. Daisy’s S.H.I.E.L.D.-trained instincts immediately kicked in. She dodged one punch and caught another’s arm as he was sending a knife down at her throat. Daisy twisted it out of his grip with a snap and quaked him away before taking the knife and stabbing it in the other’s chest.

A few times she would quake a Watchdog goon in the Rider’s direction who would take care of them instantly with his chain or bare hands. Sometimes he would wrangle up a few in his chain and send them her way to be immediately blasted hundreds of feet away into the harbor. They were perfectly in sync. An unstoppable team of fire and earthquakes that quickly brought down every single Watchdog until there were none left standing.

Daisy sunk her butt onto a wooden crate as she tried to catch her breath. The bones in her arm whined, but her body was still too buzzed to notice any real pain. She was certainly going to feel it in the morning, though.

Her eyes shifted to her fiery companion as his flaming skull extinguished and flesh took over once more. Then, he was back.

Robbie Reyes staggered towards his Charger, dropping his chain with a sizzle as it hit the cold, wet ground. An icy shard stabbed its way through her heart as he collapsed onto his car for support.

“Robbie!” Daisy quickly rose to her feet and rushed over towards him.

He groaned as he slowly turned around, but a ghost of a smile flicked across his lip as his eyes landed on her.

“Hey,” he panted.

“Hey?” She faltered for a moment, slowing down before finishing her stride up to him. “Robbie, you just got shot in the chest and all you can say is ‘hey'?”

Robbie smirked and Daisy clenched her hands to restrain herself from slapping the smug look off his face. “Daisy, I’m fine.”

She raised her brow. “Robbie, you were shot in the chest. Multiple times. How is that fine?”

“I’m fine, honestly,” he stated, pushing himself off the Charger with his shoulders and straightening up.

Daisy frowned, crossing her arms. “You don’t look fine.”

Sure, he didn’t look like he was at Death’s door, but there was a tightness to his expression with each heavy breath he took. The shard in her heart twisted. He was in some sort of pain, even if he was too damn stubborn to admit it. Why did he always have to be so stubborn?

Robbie watched her, his face softening. “I’ll be fine. See?”

He gestured to his jacket and Daisy tilted her head. After all those bullets, his signature leather jacket should be the equivalence of Swiss cheese right now. Instead, it was perfectly fine. There wasn’t even a scratch on it.

Daisy stepped closer, her eyes focused on his seemingly okay chest as everything else started to spin around her. She didn’t even ask, but Robbie didn’t protest, as she unbuttoned his jacket and zipped it down. Her fingers ghosted over his fitted dark grey shirt. There were no bullet holes either, not even a hint of blood as proof of the horror she witnessed. A chill settled in her stomach. It was as if he never got shot at all.

Robbie reached a gloved hand to her cheek, but hesitated and let it settle on her shoulder, instead.

“I told you. I don’t get hurt.”

His words shocked her back into reality and all the fire that had simmered in her chest came bellowing back full-force. Daisy frowned as her hand on his chest balled into a fist.

“Well that doesn’t mean you can just take a bullet for me, Reyes,” she spat, pounding her clenched hand into his chest. Robbie winced.

Good, so he does get hurt, she thought, glaring at him.

Robbie narrowed his eyes at her and his usual glower took over his face. “Are you being serious?” He demanded, dropping his hand from her shoulder. “Of course, I’d take a bullet for you. Or a dozen. Hell, I’d do it again without a second thought. You know why?”

“Why?” She snapped, stepping closer to get in his face.

“It’s cause despite how much of a badass you think you are, you’re not invincible, Daisy. I am!”

“For now!” Daisy shouted, blood roaring through her system as heat stung at the back of her eyes. “Who’s to say the next time you get knocked down, you don’t get back up? Just because it’s happened before, doesn’t mean it always will. What if the other guy just decides to leave you cold on the ground?”

“We have a deal–”

“Ugh, don’t you dare start with that 'deal with the devil’ bullshit, again.”

“Bullshit? Are you serious? The deal is the only damn reason I’m still alive and here right now!”

“The deal doesn’t matter! Damn it, you don’t get it, Robbie! You can’t just risk your life for mine! You can’t just sacrifice yourself for my careless mistakes! I can’t lose–”

The rest of her words cracked in her throat as Daisy fell silent. The blood drained from her face. Robbie furrowed his brow as his fiery brown eyes searched hers, waiting for her to continue. But it was gone. All that fire that had consumed her was snuffed out leaving her numb and heavy.

Daisy ducked her head to avoid his gaze and closed her eyes. Immediately, she was back on the Zephyr One. Her body was frozen like a statue, unable to do anything but watch the lone Quinjet on the monitors spiral outside the Earth’s atmosphere. She steeled her heart, waiting as the seconds ticked down for the explosion, but before it could, she blinked, and suddenly she was back at the docks moments ago. Robbie stood in front of her, seconds away from being riddled with bullets. Daisy tried to move, to quake him out of the way, to push him aside, to do something, anything, but she couldn’t even scream. She could only watch and wait before another person she cared about was ripped away from her again.

A hollowness ached in her chest as she opened her eyes and raised her head. Robbie was no longer glaring at her. The harsh lines had disappeared, making his face smooth and tender once more. The fierce fire was gone from his eyes, as well. Instead, they held a gentle warmth like pools of molten chocolate sweetly watching her with a glisten of concern.

Her heart fluttered wildly in her chest while her stomach squirmed. There was a charge in the air in the small distance between them, something electric and magnetic that slowly drew her even closer to him.

Daisy froze, quickly averting her gaze as heat pooled in her cheeks. What was she doing? She took a step back, running a hand through her hair. So much happened in the past few minutes, a rollercoaster of emotions and adrenaline. She had to get out of here.

“Sorry, I should–” Daisy pinched her brow and shook her head before quickly turning around. She only took a few steps when suddenly a warm, leather hand grabbed hold of her wrist. Daisy barely had time to acknowledge it before she was roughly spun around and Robbie’s lips pounced on her own.

It was like lightning struck her spine, frying all her nerves as she stood there frozen and wide-eyed beneath his mouth. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t move. An explosion had gone off in her brain, leaving her disoriented and barely able to comprehend anything besides the fact that Robbie Reyes was kissing her right now.

Then, the fire appeared. It started off small and white-hot like a shower of sparks where their lips met, but then quickly it ignited into a blazing inferno. The flames swept across her body, consuming every inch of her in its warm glow. It was hot and sweet like the desert sun, kindly coaxing her into its scorching embrace. Daisy slowly closed her eyes as she started to melt into his kiss.

As sudden as it had happened, Robbie broke off the kiss like the snap of safety tether over a cavernous drop. Immediately, a chill rushed in, suffocating the warmth inside her.

Daisy opened her eyes, her lips still tingling like they were being lit up by firecrackers as Robbie stared at her a good arm-length’s distance away. He was breathing heavy, face flushed and eyes wider than a deer’s in headlights.

She glanced at his parted lips as her own ached. He had kissed her. Robbie had kissed her.

“I–” He choked out, running a hand across his short hair. “I’m so sorry– I just– I don’t know what–”

Daisy wrapped her fingers tight around Robbie’s leather jacket and roughly tugged him towards her. She closed her eyes as her lips crashed against his, kissing him with a fevered eagerness while the fire roared to life in her once more. Robbie’s lips trembled against hers, wanting to kiss her back, but he grabbed her shoulders and held her back.

“Daisy, we shouldn’t–”

“Shut up,” she breathed and kissed him again, hard enough to probably leave a bruise.

Robbie instantly gave in as he wrapped his arms around her waist and jerked her close to him. They kissed as if they were wildfire. Messy and raw with an enormous heat that consumed everything they touched. Their hands roamed each other in a frantic mess, desperately tugging and pulling each other closer as if the other was the oxygen they needed to survive.

Robbie stumbled back against his Charger taking her with him. The sudden jolt broke their kiss for a moment, before Robbie’s lips came rushing back onto her own. Daisy clung to him desperately like to a ship in a raging storm as he trailed hot kisses from her lips down to her neck. She dug her fingernails into his jacket as his teeth grazed her skin and a moan shot through her as he reached a sensitive part of her neck. That only seemed to encourage him more as Robbie left more little nips that had her melting.

Daisy couldn’t take it anymore. The sweet stings of his mouth, the smooth leather of his gloved fingers trailing hot streaks on the skin of her lower back, it all left her with a pulsing desire for more. She wanted him. She needed him in a way she didn’t think she’d ever feel for another man again.

“Car? Now?” She panted breathlessly in his ear as one of her hands slid down and played with the buckle of his jeans’ belt.

Robbie pulled his head back and Daisy opened her eyes in time to see him nod. His hand quickly fumbled for the driver’s door handle and pulled it open. Daisy planted one last kiss on his lips, leaving a teasing bite, before she ducked into his car. She crawled into the backseat where she quickly kicked off her boots and vehemently shrugged off her jacket as it stuck harshly to her sweaty skin.

The car door slammed shut with a heavy thunk as Robbie hopped in. Daisy watched him from where he sat in the driver’s seat tearing off his gloves and his own shoes.

A cold spike pierced her chest. Oh fuck, were they really going to do this? She was starting to wonder if she should call this off before it was too late when his hungry, dark eyes landed on her and all such thoughts went up in a puff of smoke.

Daisy pulled her to him as he crawled into the back and kissed him roughly. Their lips continued to part and meet like lovers on a dancefloor as they tugged each other’s clothes off until there was nothing left between them. Robbie hovered over her, his face mirroring her own hesitation for the briefest of moments before Daisy kissed him and tugged him onto her. Everything exploded in a blinding white heat as their bodies meshed and melded as one.

* * *

“So then what?” Simmons asked, digging her hand into a bowl of mini pretzels she had gotten out during Daisy’s tale. She popped two into her mouth with a loud crunch as her eyes looked to her expectantly.

“Well,” Daisy murmured, trailing her finger around the base of her glass. “After Robbie and I … you know, I just … left.”

Simmons' eyes almost bugged out of her head and she coughed on the pretzels still in her mouth. She quickly grabbed her wine glass and took a sip, swallowing with relieving sigh. “You left?” she questioned piercingly like a whistle.

Daisy jumped. “Yeah? Why? What? Was that bad?”

Simmons groaned as she sank against the countertop, rubbing at her temple. “I mean, yes, kind of? You two had sex. What does this mean? Are you together now?”

“See, I didn’t know! It all just happened so fast all of a sudden, I just had to get out of there, ” she admitted and took a sip of wine. “I mean, I cared about Robbie. We were friends, but …”

“You still weren’t over Lincoln.”

Daisy stared down into her glass and nodded her head. “I mean, it’s not entirely crazy, right? Lincoln was the first guy I could say I ever truly loved. I didn’t know if I was ready to have such a serious relationship like that again.”

“Did you tell Robbie that?”

Her palms began to sweat as she glanced up at Simmons, but quickly averted her gaze. “Well, I had planned to when I saw him again a week later at the Base. I brought him to my room so we could talk in private … ”

“But?” Simmons supplied, unease creeping in her voice.

Daisy bit her lip. “But then we had sex again.”

“What?!” Daisy cringed as Simmons slammed her hand onto the counter, rattling their glasses. “You’re joking?”

Her cheeks began to warm. “Well, I hadn’t really seen or talked to him ever since that night, and, as we were standing there, the memories just started coming back …”

She didn’t want to be so melodramatic about it, but their sex in the Charger had been good. Like really freaking good. It had been a bit cramped and awkward at first, but the more they got into it, the more his touch ignited her and brought her whole body to life. He had left her reeling in ecstasy.

Daisy had thought maybe it was just a one-time fluke. It had been the first time in a really long time since she had been with anyone, and maybe by that point her body was desperate for any touch. But then they had sex in her room, and Daisy swore it had been even better than their first tryst.

“After that I told him I wasn’t really looking for a serious relationship, so we agreed to just be friends … who happened to have sex sometimes.”

“Wait a minute,” Simmons murmured, straightening up. “I remember the Watchdog’s harbor incident. That was last June.” Her eyes widened. “You mean to tell me you and Robbie have been having friendly, casual sex for 10 months and I am just now finding out about it?”

Daisy shrugged as she snatched a pretzel out of the bowl. “Well, it’s not like we saw each other that much, you know, between S.H.I.E.L.D. duties and his Ghost Rider duties.”

“But when you did?”

“I mean, not every time. We’re not sex freaks.” She popped the pretzel in her mouth and chewed it slowly for a moment. “But, yeah.”

Simmons sighed as she sank back into her stool. There was a distant look in her eyes, as if Daisy had just told her all the laws of thermodynamics were proven to be a sham. “I … I cannot believe I never figured it out. You and Robbie are my friends, and I didn’t even realize.”

The pretzel she had been chewing quickly turned to ashes in her mouth, and Daisy struggled to swallow it. “I’m sorry, it’s just that we didn’t even really know what our relationship was. It was nice and fun and if we told you guys, it would have been complicated.”

“Still,” she whined. “I should have at least noticed something was going on with you two.”

“Hey,” Daisy reached her right hand out and let it rest gently on her friend’s arm. “You got engaged. You’ve been kicking biochemical ass at S.H.I.E.L.D. and planning a wedding! I’d say you’ve more than earned being allowed to be a little distracted.”

A smile tugged at the corners of Simmons’ mouth as she fiddled with her engagement ring. It was a gorgeous three-diamond gold ring with the middle diamond being slightly larger than its two companions. Daisy and the rest of the team had all been there when Fitz proposed and gave the ring to her several months ago. Everyone had been in tears, even May, the whole moment had been so romantically beautiful.

Daisy smiled tightly as she twisted her left hand still in her coat pocket. “Besides, if it makes you feel any better, you were really close to walking in on us one time.”

Simmons froze, the smile slowly fading off her face as she tilted her head. “What one time?” She asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Well, Robbie and I were banging out a quickie in the science-tech lab supply closet when–”

The supply closet? Are you serious?“ Simmons shrilled and Daisy hastily returned her hand.

"I mean, at the time, it was just right there–”

“Daisy! There are so many sensitive equipment stored in there! I cannot believe you would do–”

“Oh, please, we didn’t break anything and you didn’t even notice. Besides, surely you must’ve thought of getting a little frisky with Fitz in the Containment Module at least once, right?” She waggled her eyebrows.

Simmons’ face immediately flushed a bright, cherry blossom pink. Daisy grinned.

Busted.

Man, they had been talking about her sex life for almost the past hour, it was nice to have the tables turn, at least for a moment.

Simmons took a long, shaky sip of wine. “I-I mean, sure, the idea might have crossed our minds a few times, but we would never–” She paused, eyes widening. “Wait a minute! Did you and Robbie have sex in the Containment Module, as well?”

Shit.

Warmth rose in Daisy’s cheek as she hastily took her own long sip of wine instead of answering the question. Apparently, that was already telling enough. A huge grin stretched across Simmons’ face until she realized what she was smiling about and scowled instead.

“Honestly, is there any place at the Base you two haven’t defiled with your antics?” She questioned.

Daisy set her empty glass on the counter and poured herself some more. “Simmons, the Base is freaking ginormous. Do you honestly think two people can have sex in every possible–”

“That’s not answering my question.”

Daisy sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yes, Simmons, there are places we haven’t had sex in. We’re not sex freaks!”

Although she and Robbie probably had fooled around in more places than anybody else who worked at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base. There was even that time in the director’s office when Coulson left her in charge for a week.

She hadn’t planned on it, obviously. They had just been talking late one night after he had invited himself in to check on her, but Robbie just had a way of easily turning her on. One minute she was ranting about her problems while he was massaging away the stress in her shoulders, the next they were kissing and quickly pulling each other’s clothes off.

Daisy had paid particularly close attention to make sure all physical and digital evidence of that incident had been wiped clean, but that still didn’t stop her heart rate from spiking every time Coulson called to talk to her in his office. So far, to her knowledge, he still hadn’t found out about it, and hopefully he never would.

Simmons shook her head as she fiddled with her wine glass. “I just cannot believe nobody figured out what was happening with you two.”

“Actually, Gabe found out,” Daisy admitted as she popped another pretzel in her mouth.

He was the closest person in Robbie’s life and a really smart kid. It didn’t take him long to put together what was really going on between the two of them. Although, it was kind of painfully obvious when he had spotted her leaving Robbie’s room early one morning with fresh sex hair.

Breakfast later that morning between the three of them had to be one of the most terribly awkward meals she ever had to endure, but in the end Gabe had said he was fine with their arrangement as long as Robbie was happy. And as long as they were careful to make sure he didn’t become an uncle just yet. The sight of coffee shooting out of Robbie’s nose almost made up for the mini heart-attack Gabe had given even her for even implying something like that.

She swallowed. “And May caught us.”

“Seriously?” Simmons asked, sitting up in her seat. “What happened?”

Daisy pinched her eyebrows together. Ugh, May catching her with Robbie had to be worse than Gabe finding out. Maybe even worse than when she caught her with Miles.

Daisy had been sparring with Robbie in the gym-training room when their heated match quickly became a heated kiss. It wasn’t long before the clothes had started coming off. She had her hands sliding down his sweatpants when May had loudly cleared her throat. It was like the bang of a gunshot that had them hastily separating themselves from each other faster than Yo-Yo’s super-speed.

May was her S.O. and the basic equivalence of a mother to her (even though neither of them would admittedly openly call their relationship that). Seeing the older woman standing in the gym’s doorway with her arms crossed and an arctic cold expression on her face, an extremely red-faced Daisy had nearly died on the spot. As they put their clothes back on, she had expected a scolding lecture, maybe even a slap on the wrist. What had came next still floored her to this day.

“She asked for an explanation, and after we did, May was surprisingly fine with it. She even agreed not to tell anyone else what were doing unless it would cause problems that affected the team.”

Simmons raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s all?” She questioned, doubt evident in her voice.

A grin slipped on Daisy’s face. “Well, she may have also threatened Robbie that she would find a way to kill him if he ever hurt me.”

Robbie’s blanching face had been priceless. It honestly had to have been the first time she had seen him look actually unnerved about his immortality. He had been around long enough to know May wasn’t one to be easily trifled with. If she made a threat, she would certainly follow through with it.

Daisy knew the older woman must have been thinking about Ward when she made the threat. May knew first-hand how having a secretive, sexual relationship with a coworker could really go wrong. The gesture had been sweet, but Daisy had already known that Robbie was far from turning out to be a Ward situation. She had known that the minute she had learned about the man behind the fiery Los Angeles serial killer, and he had proven his good nature countless times since.

“Okay,” Simmons murmured slowly, folding her hands together on the counter. “So you and Robbie have been having this–” She paused, her eyes darting to find the right phrasing. “– friendly sexual relationship for months now without most people’s knowledge. Why are you telling me this now? What changed?”

Daisy tensed as if a bucket of freezing ice water had been dumped over her head. There was the clever Simmons she knew. Always able to figure out the root of the reasoning behind a mess of data.

She played with the lint in her left coat pocket as she took another sip of wine. Here comes the second Band-Aid.

“Alright, so I was staying at Robbie’s house last Friday while I was conducting ’S.H.I.E.L.D. check-ups.’ It’s how we got to spend time together sometimes. But …”

* * *

Daisy was stirred from her dreamless slumber as the mattress creaked and shifted beneath her. She didn’t even open her eyes as she immediately reached out and latched onto the warm body next to her trying to leave the bed.

“Robbie, no,” she grumbled as she tugged him back, rubbing her cheek into his burning hot, bare shoulder. He was always so damn warm and cozy, as if she was snuggling up against a huge campfire marshmallow.

A chuckle rumbled through him that sent pleasant tremors straight to her heart. “Sorry, chica, I got to go,” he murmured quietly.

The logical part in Daisy knew that. Unlike she, who was taking an undisclosed mini vacation from S.H.I.E.L.D., Robbie actually had responsibilities and duties to uphold. However, the logical part of Daisy was still very much asleep and honestly didn’t care to try to wake up at the moment. All she wanted was for Robbie and his wonderfully warm body to stay just a little bit longer. It couldn’t be that late in the morning already.

She wrapped her arms tighter around him and another laugh tumbled out of him. Daisy was prepared to hold on with the vice-like grip of a crocodile in a death roll until Robbie’s fingers began to tickle her arms. She whined and jerked, but no matter how hard she tried to resist, she was no match for his tickling. Her grip on him loosened and Robbie hastily slipped out of her arms and rolled away. Daisy immediately grasped out for him again, but all her fingers found were rapidly cooling, empty sheets.

She let out a groan, opening her eyes just a crack in the dim room to see a turned-around Robbie slipping on a pair of jeans over his boxers. Her eyes widened just a little more as she watched the way the taut muscles on his shirtless back moved while he finished adjusting his pants. Daisy bit her bottom lip as she sat up, pulling his dark sheets closer to her cold, half-naked body. What she wouldn’t give to rake her fingernails across that smooth skin right now.

“Why go when you could stay in bed with me?” She purred, letting the bed sheet slip lower over her breasts.

Robbie turned around, his eyes widening for a moment as they locked on her before a cheeky grin began to stretch across his face. “You know I would rather choose bed with you in a heartbeat,” he admitted, then his smile fell away. “But I promised Gabe I would drop him off at school and I’ve got to swing by Canelo’s to do a few things.”

Daisy kicked her left foot out from under the sheets and slowly pulled the fabric back from around her smooth, bare leg. Robbie’s eyes followed the teasing movement like a hungry predator as the sheet inched higher and higher up her leg until it stopped just below the hem of her black underwear.

“You sure?” She crooned sweetly, swaying her hips.

Robbie said nothing, but his dark eyes revealed everything. The way they longingly trailed over her body, causing goosebumps to shiver across her skin, she knew he was considering it. Daisy grinned. Any second now and he would be on her, warming her body with his sweet touch.

Robbie’s face pinched together as he sighed and shook his head. “Sadly, yes.”

What? Daisy furrowed her brow while Robbie returned to getting dressed for the day. She crossed her arms across her chest as he pulled a dark gray t-shirt out of his dresser and slipped it on along with his socks and shoes. Was he serious?

“Are you serious?” Daisy asked, dropping the enticing tone as a frown settled on her lips. This wouldn’t be the first time she was denied sex, but the rejection still stung like a thorn to her ego.

Robbie turned to her with a remorseful look. "Sorry, Dais, I really have to go, but I promise I’ll make it up to you.“

He scooped up his signature leather jacket from off the floor as he walked over to her and then bent down until they were eye-level with each other, their faces mere inches away from one another. His warm chocolate brown eyes searched her own as a soft smile tugged at his mouth.

"When I get back, I swear, I’m.” Daisy closed her eyes as he leaned forward and gave a soft peck to her pouting lips. “All.” He kissed her again. “Yours.”

Daisy’s pout trembled as his lips found hers once more, until she finally gave in and kissed him back. His lips were always sweeter than honey, but they also held a fire to them that gently stung. Robbie broke off the kiss before giving her one final quick smooch. She opened her eyes as he stood up and tugged his jacket on.

“Who says I’m going to be here when you get back, Reyes?” She haughtily asked, biting back the smile tingling on her lips.

Robbie paused his primping as he stared at her for a moment. He titled his head, slightly opening his mouth as if meant to say something but hesitation teetered on his lips. Closing his mouth, Robbie quickly shook his head and, apparently, the thought aside. “I’ll see you in a few hours,” he smirked before exiting his room and closing the door behind him.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Daisy muttered as she sunk back into the bed.

She stared up at the shadows on the ceiling casted by the early morning light as the sound of the two Reyes brothers bumbling about in the house filtered through the cracks in the door. What had he wanted to say? The first thing that came to mind was a joke at her expense, but Robbie had never been one to hold back from a wisecrack, even when they first met and all he did was pout and glower.

Daisy casted her eyes to the bedroom door as the solid thud of the front door closing vibrated through the house’s structure. It was quiet for a moment until the rumbling growl of the Charger’s engine roared out, instead. The high-pitched squeal of the tires peeling out screamed over it for a moment before the Charger’s clamor faded away, and everything returned to a dull silence once more. She was all alone.

A sigh slipped past her lips as she rolled over onto her side and pulled the sheets closer to her body. Robbie may have stuff to do, but this was her day off. No missions to worry about. No morning training sessions to attend. She could sleep for as long as she wanted to, and she planned to. Who knew when the next time she’d get a peaceful morning like this?

Snuggling her cheek into her pillow, Daisy closed her eyes. Instead of empty blackness that would soon lull her into slumber, Robbie’s face filled her vision as if he was on a jumbo movie screen. He had that look on his face before he left as if he had a hidden inside joke that he seemed to not want to share with her. Why?

Daisy frowned as she rolled over to her other side. She didn’t want to think about Robbie or his annoyingly appealing face or anything. All she wanted was to get a few more hours of sleep. Daisy squeezed her eyes even tighter shut, hoping to will the prickly thoughts away, as she rolled over again. After several minutes of doing this, and not being any closer to getting sleepy or getting Robbie out of her head, Daisy groaned like a wounded, defeated bear and opened her eyes.

Well, I guess I’ll just get up then.

She tossed the sheets back and the morning chill immediately began to settle across her bare skin. A shiver ran through her as she stretched her stiff limbs before quickly rising out of bed. Daisy went over to his dresser and opened the drawer that held several articles of her clothing. As she tugged on a pair of dark gray jeans and a navy-blue sweater, her eyes landed on the photo strip she and Robbie had taken when they went to the Santa Monica pier last September resting on top of his dresser.

A smile tugged on the corners of her mouth. That had been such a great day. It was probably the most fun and relaxing day she had in a while filled with nothing but laughter and bellies full of junk food. As soon as she had spotted the photo booth, she had dragged Robbie’s protesting ass as fast as she could to it. He had pouted originally, as evidenced by the first photo, but after she had poked his cheeks back with her index fingers in order to force him to smile, she had been able to coax him into making ridiculous faces alongside her.

“I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Daisy frowned as she slammed the drawer shut. It had been such an innocent statement, but it rubbed her the wrong way like sandpaper across her skin. It had been the way he said it, not really a request but more as if it was a fact that she would be here waiting for him to get home. Where did he even get off expecting something like that?“

She ran her fingers through her tangled hair as she left his room and headed for the bathroom to finish getting ready for the day. The small counter was a mess of toothbrushes, razors and whatever the Hell else guys needed, as it usually was in the morning, but the boys were kind enough to leave the space with her toiletries fairly clear. Daisy tugged open her makeup bag and quickly got to work.

I mean, I know we are friends, she thought as she flicked on some mascara. And yes, I came out to L.A. to see him specifically, but that doesn’t mean I can’t go off and do my own thing.

Daisy finished making herself look somewhat of a presentable person before she left the bathroom and made her way into the kitchen. Immediately, she was hit with the bitter warm smell of roasted coffee. The ”#1 Superhero” mug Coulson got her for Christmas sat on the counter with the tawny brown liquid filled to the brim inside. Warmth bubbled in her chest. Robbie must have poured it for her before he left.

She raised the mug to her lips and took a tentative sip. The coffee was barely tepid by this point, but it still had the perfect amount of cream and sugar to make the bitter, life-saving fuel enjoyable. There was even the hint of cinnamon she loved to add to give her coffee a fun little kick. Daisy smiled, but quickly forced herself to frown.

I don’t have to be here when he comes back, she thought as she set the mug in the microwave to heat it up for a few seconds.

As she waited, Daisy went into the pantry and snatched a package of brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts out from the box she hid in the corner from Gabe (the sneaky little thief). The microwave went off and she quickly retrieved her coffee, wincing as the hot ceramic burned her fingers briefly.

In fact, I don’t even have to stay here at all.

Daisy took her breakfast and headed into the living room. With careful, practiced ease, she sunk into her favored spot on the brown leather couch and kicked her feet up onto the coffee table. She raised her mug to her mouth once more.

After all, it’s not like I live here.

Daisy froze as that thought crossed her mind, her mug hovering just inches from her lips. She glanced down at the white “#1 Superhero” letters printed on her mug, contrasting sharply with its navy-blue background.

This was her mug.

In his house.

Her eyes shifted to the Pop-Tarts she had in her lap. Her Pop-Tarts. The ones she had specifically bought for herself along with the other various food items she had in his pantry and fridge.

An icy grip seized her squirming gut as she sat up and shakily set her mug and pastries onto the coffee table. Daisy glanced around his living room, quickly recognizing several more items as her own:

That was her black leather jacket hanging on the coat rack. Those were her boots and sandals by the front door. Her laptop sat charging on the dining room table. The daisy-patterned fleece blanket Bobbi got her for Christmas hung on the adjacent dining chair. Even the framed photograph she took of everyone in her S.H.I.E.L.D. family (including Robbie) during their short vacation in Hawaii rested on one of the bookshelves.

But Daisy knew it didn’t just end here. Some of her clothes were in his dresser. Her beloved dancing hula figure sat on his desk. Her favorite vanilla shampoo and conditioner were in the shower. Hell, she was even certain she had a box of tampons underneath the bathroom sink.

Daisy ran a hand across her clammy face as everything started to go all topsy-turvy around her. Suddenly, Robbie’s smirk and comment earlier were starting to make sense. This wasn’t just his and Gabe’s home anymore. Somehow, sometime along the way, it had become her home, as well.

“Oh, shit.”

* * *

Daisy fiddled with the stem of her glass, the swirling and sloshing pale yellow wine inside matching her own inner unease. “I mean, I was living there, Simmons. Living there! Without even realizing it. How stupid could I be?” She groaned.

“Well, I have great evidence that correlates to a profound percentage just from this conversation alone, so …” Simmons muttered before draining the last of the Moscato bottle into her glass.

Daisy winced. Man, she forgot how catty Simmons could get after a few drinks. Daisy snatched a handful of pretzels out and laid them on the counter before quickly scooting the rest of the whole bowl across towards her friend.

“Okay, I admit, sleeping with Robbie in the first place was probably not a good idea,” Daisy stated, a knife twisting in her heart. “Then, agreeing to continue having sex with him was probably an even worse idea, but it just felt so good.”

She frowned as she started pacing back and forth the small length of the kitchen.

“Whenever I was with Robbie, with or without the sex, I was free. I wasn’t an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. I wasn’t deputy director. I wasn’t even Quake the supehero. I was just Daisy. No worries, no responsibilities, just carefree fun. What we had it … It wasn’t supposed to be serious. I said I wasn’t ready for anything serious, but living together? That’s–”

“Serious?” Simmons supplied.

“Exactly!” Daisy murmured, slumping back onto the counter.

Simmons shifted in her seat, sitting up. “So, what did you do?”

“Well, after I realized that I was actually living with Robbie, I freaked out for a good hour.”

“Obviously.”

“But then I calmed down and started to think things over and reflect. When Robbie came back later, we talked about this change in our relationship, and, well …” Daisy picked up her wine glass and took a big sip. Crap, could she even say it?

“Oh no, did you guys break up?”

* * *

Daisy sat on the couch as the warm, afternoon sunlight filtered through the slats in the windows. Her coffee and Pop-Tarts still laid on the coffee table, cold and untouched. Any second now Robbie could be returning and then–

Her heart jerked as the familiar thrum of the Charger’s engine roared just outside the house. Speak of the devil, she thought with a tiny smirk while all her insides turned into mush. This was it. The beginning or end to everything.

Ever since her recent living situation realization, Daisy had spent the past couple hours running through so many different ways her conversation with Robbie could go in her head. Some where pleasant. Most were terrible, so terrible she had ended up packing several of her things already just in case she needed to make a quick getaway. Now it was time to see which scenario it was going to be.

The front door clanked open and Robbie greeted her kindly, but it was as if they were miles away instead of a few feet. Daisy stared into her murky coffee mug as her sweaty hands fiddled in her lap.

This is it, Daisy. You can do this. Just tell Robbie how you feel and hope for the best.

Her whole body tensed as a warm, wet kiss was pressed to her cheek while Robbie passed behind her. It tingled her skin like the sweet fizz of soda and her heart writhed heavily in her chest.

Or you could just run away right now? Completely ignore the elephant in the room. Meet up with him next week and continue our relationship as if everything is normal.

“So, what did you want to do for the rest of today?” Robbie called from the kitchen, popping open the fridge. “We could watch a movie? Drive around town? Or,” He paused, closing the fridge with a soft click before shuffling closer. “Gabe isn’t going to be back from studying at the library for a few more hours if the offer from this morning is still on the table?”

Daisy twisted around to see him briefly waggle his eyebrows at her through the kitchen's pass-through window. A devilish grin played on his lips. Her heart fluttered briefly the way it always seemed to whenever he smiled at her. It was her one damn weakness.

No. She had to do this. She had to tell him the truth. A massive weight sunk in her chest. Even if it might break her stupid, foolish heart.

Daisy took in a deep breath to settle the shaking of her nerves and slowly let it out. “We need to talk.”

“Fine it doesn’t have to be on the table,” Robbie smirked as he walked back into the living room, cracking open the bottle of apple juice he had gotten. “It could be on the bed, on the couch, Hell, even on the–”

“Robbie!” Daisy cut him off, wincing at how sharp her tone was even to her own ears. “This is serious.”

He froze mid-stride, his grin quickly sliding off his face. His eyes searched her face waiting for the crack of a smile or a crinkle in her eyes that told him she was just messing with him like she always did.

It never came.

Robbie flexed his jaw as he set his drink on the dining room table before making his way to the couch. Daisy swiveled in her spot towards him as he hesitantly sat down on the couch cushion beside her. The leather creaked as he slowly sunk in.

“Okay, Daisy, what is going on?” His dark brown eyes focused intensely on her as he reached out and rested a hand on her forearm. Even through her sweater, his touch was so gentle and warm like a sliver of pure sunshine.

“Did you–” Daisy bit her bottom lip. “Did you know?”

“Know what?” He asked tentatively.

Her eyebrows kitted together. “That I’m basically living in your house?” She questioned incredulously.

Robbie furrowed his brow briefly before a grin returned to his face. “Are you– Are you serious? Is that all?”

Daisy tilted her head. “Yeah?” She frowned as his smirk grew wider. “And I’m going to guess you already knew.”

He snorted, trying to hold back a laugh until a few chuckles made it past his lips. Those small chuckles swiftly turned into a hearty flow and scorching heat rose in Daisy’s face. “Hell, girl, I thought that maybe you– Nervermind.” Robbie snickered, shaking his head back.

Her lips pursed together and she twisted her shaking fingers to quell the urge to quake his ass off the couch. “Well, I’m glad this is all one big joke to you,” she snapped.

His laughter cut off instantaneously, filling the space for a long moment in silence. Robbie then cleared his throat, sitting up and focusing on her once more. “I’m sorry, Daisy,” he stated, and the tension in her eased. “It’s just that you living in my house? It’s no big deal. Really. I’m happy to have you stay here whenever. We’re friends, right?” He offered her a soft smile and gave her arm a kind squeeze.

Her heart grew heavy as her guts twisted into knots. “But that’s the problem,” Daisy admitted faintly.

Robbie’s face recoiled as if she had just slapped him. His eyes glistened like shattered window glass before they hardened with his lowered eyebrows and steely frown. “So, what? You don’t want to be friends anymore? Is that it?” He retorted like a venomous sting.

“No! Well, not exactly –”

“What? Is it about us sleeping together, then? Damn it, Daisy, I’d rather lose the sex than lose out on our friendship.”

“No, it’s just that– Well, I– Fuck!” Daisy slammed a fist into the couch and quickly stood.

Why did this have to go so off-track? Why did this have to be so difficult? She should have just grabbed her bag and left.

Daisy ran a hand through her hair as she slowly began to pace around the room. No, she was already in this deep. Might as well get it over with. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, then opened her eyes again as she breathed out. Robbie watched her from the couch, his body tense and guarded.

“Can I just start over? Say what I need to say?” She asked.

He nodded.

Okay, good. She paced the room a few more times to gather her nerves and thoughts, before she stopped and faced Robbie once more.

“When we started this … Friends-with-benefits relationship almost a year ago, I agreed to it because I wasn’t ready for a serious relationship again. Not after what happened with Lincoln. I thought it was because I still wasn’t over him, and maybe that was partially true, but it was also probably because I was scared. Scared to care for someone so much like that again only to end up hurt once more.

“When I realized I was I was living with you, I panicked, because that? That’s serious. It’s the complete opposite of what I thought I wanted. I thought I should leave. Wish you all the best in a note and never see you again. But, every time I made my way to that door, something in me stopped myself. Something that told me I should stay, that leaving would be one of the biggest mistakes I ever made, and you know what I realized?”

Robbie’s eyes never left her as he sat apprehensively on the couch. He remained silent, waiting.

“I care about you, Robbie. I care about you more than I ever thought I could with someone again. Maybe it happened sometime in the months since we’ve been sleeping together, or maybe I’ve felt this way ever since you came back from the other dimension and I was too stubborn to accept it, but I do. You’re the first thing I think about in the morning, and the last thing I think about at night. Even when we are miles apart from each other, I can’t stop thinking about you. I’d always be like, 'I wish Robbie was here to see this,’ or 'Robbie would laugh if he was here right now.’ I know it’s silly, but I look forward to seeing you and spending time with you far more than I should.”

Daisy turned away as warmth crept in her cheeks. Sure, she could wholeheartedly sleep with the guy for months on end without barely a bat of an eye, but telling him about her feelings was what left her a blushing mess.

“I know this might not be what you want, but I have to be truthful. To you and to me.” She paused, taking a shaky breath. “I don’t want us to pretend were just friends while sneaking around and having sex behind nearly everyone-we-care-about’s backs. I don’t want to hide how much you genuinely mean to me anymore. I want us to be something real and true, because, damn it, Robbie, I–”

Daisy turned around and her heart nearly stopped in her chest. Her eyes widened as they laser-focused in on the square black velvet box Robbie pulled out from a pocket inside his jacket. It was small and nestled perfectly in the palm of his hand. There were only so many objects that could fit in a box that tiny.

“Wh-what is that?” She asked through strained breath while a cold sweat pricked down her back. Daisy was not a complete idiot. She had a very good idea of what it could be, but he couldn’t seriously be about to do that, could he?

Robbie stared at the box as he fiddled with it in his hands, his shoulders tense. “It’s nothing really,” he murmured slowly before his face pinched together and he shook his head. Even he could tell that was bullshit. “Okay, it’s just … something I’ve been carrying with me for the past few weeks, but I wasn’t really thinking anything until you– Well–”

He sighed, glancing over at her. The tips of his ears were turning red. “Can I?” He asked, waving his free hand back and forth by his mouth in a gesture to speak.

Daisy gave a curt nod, her whole body frozen and stiff. She could barely breathe.

Robbie smiled tightly and nodded back. He stood, rubbing the back of his neck as he took a deep breath.

“I know I’m not usually the best with words, so just heart me out. These past several months have been the happiest months of my life. When I made my deal, and became the Ghost Rider, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to have happiness again. I accepted my condemned agreement. But then you showed up at El Monte one night like my own personal angel from Hell,” He chuckled warmly and her heart squeezed tight. “And you shook up my life and changed it so much for the better. Before you appeared, I was just a dead man walking, but you showed me that I could have and be so much more than that. If it weren’t for you, I may have never had a great, open relationship with Gabe again, for which I can never thank you enough. You helped me find control in my chaos. You helped me find the light in the darkness.

"I know we never really put a label on whatever this thing was with us, and I understand if this is too much for you, but I’ve got to let my feelings known.”

Robbie stepped closer until they were barely a foot apart, holding up the little black box. He flipped open the lid and Daisy inhaled sharply through her nose. Cushioned inside was a simple, silver twisted ring, set with a tiny white diamond. The gem had to be barely ¼-carat, but it still managed to shine radiantly in the soft light.

Shit, that’s a ring. That is a freaking ring.

Daisy covered her nose and mouth with her hands as she struggled to keep her legs from going out from under her. Despite her S.H.I.E.L.D. training to remain calm no matter the situation, her heart started picking up speed until she was pretty sure it was going a mile a minute. He couldn’t be serious. This couldn’t actually be happening right now.

“This was my mother’s engagement ring,” Robbie continued, unable to meet her gaze as his face began to flush. “It’s not much, but it represents the eternal love between two of the most wonderful people I’ve ever known. It was given to me after they died, and I was told to save it for somebody special. I didn’t think that would ever happen, but Papá always used to say, 'When you know, you know.’” He looked to her and nodded his head. “And I know.”

The floorboards creaked as Robbie slowly got down on to one knee in front of her. Daisy couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, but everything around her started to tremble. This was actually happening. He was actually doing this. Out of all the scenarios she had imagined in her head about where their conversation would go when he got home, this was definitely not one of them. Daisy bit the inside of her cheek as butterflies scrambled in her stomach. Oh, crap, was she going to throw up?

Robbie took a deep breath as he raised the little box and his eyes focused on hers. There was a fire in those dark brown eyes. Not as fierce as when the Ghost Rider showed up, but they still burned brighter than a shooting star. There was also a gentle warmth flickering in them like a friendly campfire on a cold night. It was the tenderness to his flames that so few got to see, but she was grateful she was one of them.

The rumbling hysteria that was her nerves slowly began to quell into a standstill. Daisy lowered her hands away from her face, and Robbie gently took hold of her left hand in his right. The rough skin of his thumb ran comfortingly over her fingers, spreading a warmth in her hand that quickly took hold of the rest of her body and melted her heart.

"Daisy Louise Johnson,” he started, his eyes never leaving hers as he fondly punctuated each word of her name like they were sacred. “I love you. I love you so much more than I thought I ever could with anybody. I love your smile. I love your laugh. I love your strong, compassionate heart. I love how you put Sriracha sauce on practically almost everything you eat even if that is honestly the grossest, most disgusting thing I’ve ever had to repeatedly witness.” He laughed and few chuckles bubbled out of her, as well.

“Please, I’ve seen you drink Tapatío straight from the bottle," Daisy cracked.

"Yeah, well you're practically drinking Sriracha with how much you smother everything in it." Robbie grinned impishly. He then cleared his throat, collecting himself once more.

"Anyway, Daisy," he stated, giving her hand a soft squeeze. "Besides Gabe, you are the most important person in this world, dimension, universe or otherwise to me. There was a time I wanted nothing more than you out of my life, and now I can't imagine not having you in it. You make every day so much better just be your mere presence. There is nothing more that I want to do than to spend the rest of my life with you, however long that may be. I know our lives aren't easy, and I know I'm not the most reliable person all the time, but, Daisy, I promise I will do my best to make you as happy every day as you make me. We may argue, we may fight, we may become separated beyond all possible reach for lengths of time, but I swear I will never stop loving you.

"Daisy Johnson, will you m--"

"Yes."

Robbie blinked, his eyebrows scrunching together. "Wait, what?"

Daisy snorted and shook her head back. "Sorry, I couldn't wait any longer, but yes, Robbie. Yes," she stressed, softly smiling and squeezing his hand.

Her heart swelled as his eyes widened and a grin quickly began to grow across his face. "You're serious?"

She groaned, but continued smiling. "Oh my, yes, Robbie! I love you and I want to -- Mmph!"

She was cut off as Robbie suddenly stood and kissed her hard. He still held her hand while his other arm snaked around her waist and pulled her close to him. Daisy grinned against his lips before she closed her eyes and kissed him back long and dear.

Soon, she broke off the kiss, leaning slightly back. "Um, isn't there something you should?" Daisy asked, lifting their conjoined hands as she opened her eyes. Even if this was her first time being proposed to, she had watched enough rom-coms with Fitz-Simmons to know these usually ended with a ring on somebody's finger.

Robbie raised his brow as he opened his eyes. He glanced at her hand and his face started to flush with color. "Right, sorry," he murmured shyly, unwrapping his arm from around her.

Her chest grew tight as Robbie plucked out the ring and slowly slipped the cool metal on to her left ring finger. It was a little loose, but overall it fit perfectly. Tears pricked at her eyes as she stared down at the little ring and soon her entire vision became blurry.

Damn it, Daisy thought as she squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn't supposed to get all emotional and shit.

"Sorry," she murmured, opening her eyes to look up at the ceiling and rapidly blink the tears away.

Robbie laughed and squeezed her hand. "It's okay. You're still the most beautiful woman in the universe even when you cry."

Daisy glanced down at his smirking face and rolled her eyes. "Oh, shut up," she scoffed, fighting back a smile.

A few more chuckles tumbled their way out of Robbie as he leaned forward and bent his head down. Daisy closed her eyes as his lips met hers once more. Their arms found their way around one another as they held each other close and kissed sweetly. The fire still burned between them with each kiss, as it did the first time all those many months ago. It might not have been as intense as that night, but the flames still blazed as strongly and surely as ever.

She kept her eyes closed as Robbie slowly broke off the kiss and softly rested his warm forehead against hers. Neither one said anything. They didn't need to as they relished in each other's touch and close company.

Daisy smiled weakly. No matter how much she wanted to stay in this perfect moment, she knew it couldn't last. Eventually, S.H.I.E.L.D. would call her back, or maybe the Rider would order Robbie away. Something would happen that would pull them apart from each other again for who knew how long this time.

Daisy tightened her grip on him. She loved Robbie. She didn't know how it happened, but somehow, he slipped right through the cracks in the defensive armor she wore and found a home in her heart. After wasting all this time ignoring her true feelings, she couldn't bear the thought of leaving him now. What if this was the last time they had with each other?

Her heart grew heavy, and then suddenly an idea struck her like sunlight parting through clouds on a rainy day.

Daisy leaned back and opened her eyes. "Robbie, let's get married."

He cocked his head as he opened his eyes and shot her a dubious look. "Um, yeah, Daisy, that was kind of the whole point of me proposing? Sorry if you seemed to miss that--"

"No!" She interjected, slightly bouncing on her toes. "I mean, Vegas is, like, what? A four-hour drive away? Let's go and get married today."

Robbie's eyes widened as his eyebrows shot up high into his forehead. "Today? Isn't that a bit soon?"

"What? Is someone getting cold feet?" She teased with a wicked grin, wiggling her eyebrows.

The double-meaning was not lost on Robbie as he rolled his eyes and disapprovingly shook his head.

"No, it's just --" He pressed his lips together as his eyes hesitantly searched hers. "Are you sure?"

"Robbie," Daisy said softly. She unwrapped her arms from around him and stepped out of his own embrace only to immediately take his hands into her own. Curling their fingers together, Daisy gave him a loving squeeze and flashed him a smile. "I don't mean to put this lightly, but we're freaking superheroes. We risk our lives almost every day to help the greater good. We don't know which day is going to be our last or how much time we will have left together, so . . . Why wait?"

Marriage might have never been in her plans until this very moment. Hell, she'd rather face a whole battalion of Watchdogs alone than even think about getting married, but if there was one thing Daisy was certain of, it was she loved Robbie Reyes. So, if she was going to marry him someday anyway, then why not now?

Daisy had thought she had all the time in the world when she was with Lincoln, and the first time they had ended up saying, "I love you," had also been their last. She couldn't risk waiting for the right moment. Not again.

Robbie stared at the floor as his eyes flicked back and forth in consideration. "Eloping in Vegas," he murmured, rubbing circles on her hands with his thumbs. His eyes slowly met hers. "You know it's crazy, right?"

Daisy snorted and shrugged her shoulders. "When has anything in our lives not been crazy?"

He shook his head as he took a deep breath and sighed. The biggest grin then broke out across his face as he squeezed her hands. "Alright, let's do this. Let's go to Vegas and get married."

Her heart soared as she tugged Robbie towards her and kissed him with all her might. "Let's get hitched!" She beamed as she pulled away.

Robbie chuckled as he separated himself from her and snatched his car keys from off the dining room table. "First, I've got to grab Gabe from the library. He has to come."

She nodded, following him to the front door. "And while you do that, I'll start packing everyone's stuff."

"Make sure you pack something white." He grinned. Robbie wrapped an arm around her waist and dipped her slightly for a kiss. It was a brief, but the move still left her head spinning.

Daisy let out a giddy laugh as she was righted back up and Robbie broke off the kiss. He gave her one final peck good-bye then headed out the front door. She watched him through the window get into the Charger and take off before her eyes flickered to the new ring sitting heavy on her finger. As if acknowledging her gaze, the small jewel flashed a dazzling glimmer that made her heart pick up speed.

A grin stretched across her lips as Daisy turned and headed towards their room. There was even a small skip in her step as she quickly began to figure out what exactly was close enough to being white for her to wear.

* * *

Simmons' hands covered her mouth and her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as Daisy pulled her left hand out of her coat pocket and held it out between them. On her left ring finger nestled the engagement ring Robbie had given her along with the small silver band she had received at the Vegas wedding chapel. Somewhere out there in this world, its twin rested on Robbie's own left ring finger, forever tying them to each other as husband and wife. Or, however that cheesy wedding officiant had phrased it.

"So, yeah, I got married."

Simmons said nothing. She only continued to stare at her hand as if it had grown two heads and started singing a duet of the "The Elements."

Oh, crap, I broke her.

"Simmons? Jemma?" Daisy reached across the counter and shook the other woman's arm. What was Fitz going to think if he came back and found his fiancée like this? "Jemma, come back to me."

After a few more rougher shoves, Simmons suddenly blinked back into presence. Daisy let out an audible sigh as she withdrew her hand and the tenseness in her shoulders relaxed.

Simmons slowly shook her head as she lowered her hands from her face onto the counter. "You got married?" She murmured, her eyes seemingly focused on something off in the distance while her voice had a misty, dream-like cadence to it.

"Yeah," Daisy replied, nodding her head. "I was there myself. Signed the official marriage license and everything."

"Daisy!" Simmons snapped suddenly, sounding more like her usual old self. She furrowed her brown then threw a mini pretzel at her.

"Ow!" Daisy retorted, even though the small, salty snack harmlessly bounced off her shoulder and on to the floor. Still, the gesture stung. "What was that for?"

"You got married and you didn't tell us?!"

"I'm telling you now, aren't I-- Hey!" She hollered as another pretzel smacked into her forehead and tumbled onto the counter.

Simmons glared at her with a pout on her lips from across the counter. She held the bowl of mini delicious ammunition close against her chest, one arm poised over the opening ready to grab another projectile at a moment's notice.

Daisy frowned, glancing at her friend's empty wine glass. She had also forgotten how violent Simmons could be sometimes after a few drinks. The whole S.H.I.E.L.D. team still remembered the "Tropical Umbrella Toothpick Incident of 2015." It was honestly hard not to. Why did she choose to drink her worries away with Simmons in the first place?

"Why didn't you tell us when you were about to get married? We all could've been there for it!"

"I told you it was--" Daisy gritted her teeth as she dodged another pretzel. "It was a-- It was-- Jemma stop with the pretzels, already! I told you it was a spur of the moment decision, okay?"

"But we're your family, Daisy! You didn't think we'd want to be there for you during such a momentous occasion?" Simmons snapped. "How would you feel if Fitz and I just decided to head to Cornwall for the weekend and elope without telling anyone else, hm?"

Daisy pursed her lips as her heart grew heavy. This had been what she was afraid of. The yelling. The judgement. All of it was just a colossal weight bearing down on her shoulders and threatening to crush her into the ground. She knew it came from a place of love, but it still hurt all the same.

"Jemma, of course I wanted all of your there more than anything. You know that, but you also didn't even know I was with Robbie until today. Hell, you're the first person I've even told this to. If I told all of you guys I was getting married, there would have been this big commotion of questions and yelling hurt feelings. You guys would have tried to stop me, and all I wanted to do was marry Robbie.

"I know, I should have been more honest with you guys, and I am really sorry, but I'm trying to be now, if that counts for anything."

Simmons' face softened and she slowly released her hold on the pretzel bowl. Daisy quickly grabbed the bowl and placed it far from the other woman's reach.

"I'm sorry, it's just, I was supposed to be your maid of honor!" Simmons sighed, resting her chin on her hand. "I had all these great plans. I was going to help throw your bridal shower, your bachelorette party, and make sure everything went perfectly for your special day."

"Aw, Jemma," Daisy murmured with a tight smile as she reached out and gave Simmons' free hand a comforting squeeze.

"I even started a wedding idea scrapbook for you."

Daisy's eyebrows twisted together as she slowly retracted her hand. "Wait, what?"

Simmons' already pink cheeks flushed to watermelon red as she fiddled with her empty glass and avoided Daisy's eyes. "Oh, it's not much really. It's just that while I was looking up ideas for Fitz and I's wedding, I would see stuff that I thought would be perfect for your wedding. So, I started cataloguing them in your own scrapbook, making sure to leave plenty of space for whatever your future betrothed's style would be, as well," She frowned. "But now I suppose you don't need it."

"Hey, not necessarily," Daisy stated, offering a gentle smile. "Maybe I can use it in a few years if we decide to renew our vows? You know, like a second wedding. That's a thing, right?"

Simmons perked her head up a little higher. "Yeah, or maybe for your next marriage?" She countered with a coy grin.

"Simmons!" Daisy scoffed with a slack jaw. "Robbie's a great guy and you know that!"

Sure, things had been a little rocky when they all first met, but Robbie had really grown to be a part of the team over the past year. Besides providing help during missions and saving their asses countless times, Robbie would often hang out with all of them on the Zephyr or at the Playground during some of his downtime. While some of that had mostly been so they could fool around, Daisy had noticed him getting along well with the rest of her teammates, as well.

Robbie would talk for hours on end about cars with Coulson and Mack. He'd watch and cheer on soccer matches with Fitz and Simmons. He and Yo-Yo were often conversing and joking in Spanish. Daisy had even caught May smile briefly while practice-sparring with him. Even if he refused to be an official S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Robbie was one of them through and through.

"I know, I know," Jemma sighed dramatically, but still had a good-natured smile on her face. "But how great can he be if he helped hide your relationship from us, hm? You know Coulson might just kill you both when he finds out."

Daisy groaned, sinking her upper body on the counter like a rag doll. "Ugh, don't remind me! I have to talk to him before he finds the Vegas charges on my S.H.I.E.L.D. account. " She had hacked them to be listed and labeled as regular various S.H.I.E.L.D. expenses, but she was certain that once Coulson saw the numbers he'd grow suspicious. Sadly, Las Vegas weddings didn't come cheap.

"You charged everything to S.H.I.E.L.D. funds? Glad to see your bad-girl shenanigans never change," Simmons smirked.

"Hey," Daisy retorted, straightening up. "I'll take a pay cut, live off ramen for a few months. It'll be fine." Besides, after all she had done for S.H.I.E.L.D. over the years, she deserved a little treat that just so happened to be in the form of a three-day honeymoon in Vegas.

"Well," Simmons mused, her stool creaking as she shifted in her seat. "Congratulations, Daisy. Seriously. I'm sorry I didn't say it first. I just--" She shook her head. "Can't believe you got married before I did."

"Yeah, trust me, no one is more shocked than I am," Daisy chuckled.

"Are you regretting it? You seemed really upset earlier when you walked in."

Daisy furrowed her brow as she stared at her rings, fiddling them with her thumb. "I was a little concerned at first," she admitted.

Her entire weekend had been nothing but a delicious haze of Robbie loving and room-service coconut shrimp. When she had said good-bye to the Reyes brothers that morning and got on the Quinjet back to the East Coast, it was like she was waking up from a dream. All the warm and fuzzy feelings started to fade away, only to be replaced by the harsh, cold-sweating doubts of reality. Had she made the right decision to marry Robbie? Maybe they had both been too caught up in the moment to realize they could be making a humongous mistake?

"But talking it out with you, reliving all those moments," Warmth flooded her chest as a small beam of sunlight hit her engagement ring and made it sparkle brighter than a thousand stars. Just like it had when Robbie gave it to her. Daisy smiled. "No, I don't regret it. Not one single bit."

It was silly the whole idea that their relationship was determined by a legal document that could never fully express the love she had for Robbie Reyes, but it meant Robbie was hers. No matter what shit might happen in their future, nothing could change that.

Her gaze turned to Simmons who with her quivering smile and glistening eyes looked more emotional than when they finished marathoning the eight Harry Potter movies together.

"Aw, Simmons," Daisy fussed as her heart panged heavily in her chest. "Don't you get all emotional on me, because when you get emotional, I get emotional."

Simmons choked up a laugh as she dabbed at her eyes. "Sorry, it's just you look so happy. It's nice."

Heat rushed to her face and her cheeks began to cramp from her wide smile. "Yeah, it really is nice," she beamed, glancing at her rings.

Simmons took in a deep breath and audibly exhaled in one quick huff. "Well," she announced, slapping her hands onto the counter and pushing herself up off her chair. "Since you didn't get to plan your wedding, you are going to help me plan mine."

Daisy sagged her shoulders and groaned loudly as the other woman grabbed hold of her arm and began tugging her towards the living room. She tried to resist, but Simmons had her in a death grip with the strength of a mountain lion. "Come on, Simmons, you know I'm more of a doer than a planner."

"Oh, I am very much aware of that, Mrs. Reyes."

Her cheeks immediately blazed even hotter. "Actually, it's still Daisy Johnson, but I see your point."

"Come on," Simmons urged, pulling her towards the table she saw earlier filled entirely with wedding booklets and magazines. "We can order sushi and you can tell me more about your husband."

Butterflies swarmed in her stomach. My husband. It was still so surreal to think of Robbie like that, but after all they had been through together in this past year, Daisy knew in her heart that it felt right.

"Okay, but I need at least a dozen spicy tuna rolls and you better have some Sriracha."

119 notes · View notes

kylosrehn · 7 years ago

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oh. oh. so that's how we're doing this? fine then. (I kid I love the excuse to send you LOTS) favorite character to write about this year? any new fics to start next year? events you participated in this year? fics you wanted to write but didn’t? a fic you read this year you would recommend everyone read?

spamming me is actually the way to my heart, this is facts

• favorite character to write about this year:

honestly i’m torn between ophelia and leopold (as in, framework fitz.) i loved exploring ophelia, giving her a backstory and developing her character (because ahem, canon failed to do so), putting her in different scenario/aus and just having fun with her in general. i tried to stick to the (brief) canonic characterisation of her in like, the first half of 4x21, before everything went to shit, and obviously the madame hydra characterisation as much as i could, but admittedly a lot of it was my own personal input/shared headcanons and i guess that’s what made it so fun. that’s not to say she’s a blank canvas, but because canon didn’t really expand on her character (she was human for like, what, less than a day?) a lot of it was down to personal interpretation to fill in the blanks. !always human ophelia, for example, would obviously be totally different to the canon enhanced/inhuman/freshly 3d printed version of her and so on. basically it was really fun to try and figure out what she’d be like had canon not done her so dirty.

and, of course, leopold. it’s true that watching/writing/reading about villains is often more fascinating than focusing on the protagonist. i stand by what i’ve said before - he is my favourite aos character. yeah, he was in four episodes, and yeah he’s technically not a separate character at all - but it feels like he is and that’s basically the interpretation i ran with most of the time, treating the framework as an alternate, separate universe as opposed to a virtual reality. hell, even within that virtual reality, he’s just so vastly different, so deliciously depraved that it makes it super fun to explore his character further. there’s just so much more to him than meets the eye and i fondly remember all the days i spent over the summer just coming up with and discussing headcanons about his upbringing, his father and mother, his academy years and rise to power at hydra. that’s the great thing about the framework - the parts it gives you are fantastic, but the parts it doesn’t give you are even better. so a lot of it was exploring his past and his future (babiesssss. !dad leopold might just be my favourite thing, like, ever. the mad, scary doctor caring for a baby. it kills me. him worrying that he’s going to let his child down and become just like his father. the angsssst). he’s so complex and so evidently deeply troubled and absolutely tragic and i love it. he’s not a black and white, “he’s evil and that’s it” kind of character. he’s passionate and determined; he wants to love and be loved, but because of the constant pressure via his father and the absence of his mother, he’s not quite sure how to go about showing it. it’s so fun to explore his voice because he’s canonically savage and just so… like, there’s something so chilling about his stoic demeanor (notice how he only has angry outbursts in private.) i can’t begin to explain how fun it is to poke around his head and explore why he does what he does - he’s convinced he’s saving people, okay, he literally believes that - and how he deals with the complications that arise (inhuman baby, that will be all.)

tl;dr: leopold “the doctor” fitz is fucked up and i absolutely love it.

any new fics to start next year?

not entirely sure if this is a fic rec or a wip question tbh, so i’m basically gonna give a brief run-down of my fic to-do-list: okay, so i have like three fitz/skye fics i still need to write (as in, plot bunnies that will literally keep driving me insane until i finally get my shit together and get them down on virtual paper). the first one is a (late) christmas-based fic where they’re both working at hydra and he’s her scrouge-like boss who, outwardly, hates joy and love and christmas. one day, after a phone call from his mother, he tells skye he’s got a proposal for her (literally and figuratively speaking). cue a fake-dating trope fic with christmas fluff and a scottish backdrop. basically “the proposal” but with less deportation and more christmas.

the second one is the framework fitz/skye post-revolution prison au (totally inspired by your three sentence prompt fill, which i love.) listen, i love torturing him and the entire prison sequence from 5x05 stole my heart, depression prison beard and all. so, it’s more of that, plus a lot of healing in a motel room.

and the third one, which is less of a solid idea and more of a vague outline in my head: a lowkey star wars au. well. a part of it. soulbond i guess? whatever you want to call it. basically i can’t stop thinking about the two of them being psychically linked and appearing to each other at the most inconvenient of times and falling in love like idiots despite the fact that he’s the literal actual head of hydra and she’s a newly-turned-inhuman and, you know, a devoted resistance member. basically, she’s his redemption arc.

also i’m gonna try and finally fill the prompts in my inbox, because i’m always yelling for more and then they just sit there and i end up hoarding.

events you participated in this year?

i really started writing proper aos fic in the second half of the year, so i didn’t get a chance to join all that many, but hopefully i’ll join more of these in 2018.

• fitzsimmonsnetwork secret santa 2017• aospositivitynet secret santa 2017• skyeward big bang(because i like to mix it up a little. also because like no aos fic writing event accounts for my fav aos ship, rip)

fics you wanted to write but didn’t?

SO. MANY. too many arguably. like, i’m so bad. i’ll probably update this post if/when i upload an actual unfinished fic dump 2017 part II, because tbh i’ve been toying with the idea for a while.

okay, so there’s:

1. the literal very first aos fic i started writing, a direct result of all my pent-up anger and frustration at that lame-ass finale. i decided a fix-it fic was in order, where it basically diverges from canon around halfway through 4x21 (before that scene) and ophelia’s pardoned and allowed to stay, albeit under close surveillance and basically locked up in the containment module and the team has to learn to deal with it and accept her while fitz helps her come to terms with what it really means to be human. also, feelings don’t just get thrown away instead of being properly addressed because that’s lazy writing and you can love more than one person at a time, god fucking damn it). while this is still unfinished, it admittedly later evolved into a broader collab verse known as “team au.”

2. fitz/ophelia ‘we kind of broke up because you chose jemma and now we’re meeting again years later in new york and i never realised how much i missed you until you started chasing me down the street’ au.

3. this one canon-divergence (though canon can’t prove me wrong, so technically…) au where the framework is still the framework and everything is pretty much the same except ophelia’s pregnant (look, in 4x16 when he’s getting all worked up about “i have to protect you, i have to…” and she grabs his hand i literally thought for a moment that she was going to place it against her stomach and they’d do an oh-my-god-baby reveal, but they’re not ballsy enough to go there, so it’s mostly just wishful thinking BUT STILL) so when daisy quakes her out the window, well. in other words: ANGST.

4. this one fic where fitz and ophelia went to high school together but never really interacted until one party during the summer of their freshman year of college, realise they have feelings for each other and sleep together literally under the stars before he moves across the country because of college and a prestigious internship. shortly after term starts, ophelia realises she’s pregnant. cue long-distance internet pining, several failed attempts to confess/meet up in person, and and lots of hurt/comfort as ophelia slowly learns to accept her situation and make the best of it. plus some father-daughter bonding. it sounds really lame now i guess, but it’s really an idea that’s been with me for a long time and i’ve plotted and planned it and thought about it a lot so i would really love to push myself to just sit down and word vomit it out at some point. i promised myself i’d do in december/over christmas, but of course that didn’t happen, so hopefully sometime in january. it’s kind of a pet project of mine so i’ll be really disappointed in myself if i just let it go, even though the fitz/ophelia ship is as good as dead by now and i’d probably just be writing it for myself more so than for any real kind of audience. (yeah, i still have a soft spot for this ship, mostly because of the chest-tightening nostalgia i get whenever i think about it and the literal hours i’d spent being so completely invested in it over the summer. will i ever get over it? probably not.)

there’s a bunch of other stuff i always wanted to explore (leopold backstory, framework-canon hydra uprising, framework post-canon revolution, etc.) but never really got far enough in any other stuff to go into detail about them here (i really have to properly sift through my docs at some point, it’s literally a fic dump of headcanons/ideas from like, three months of hardcore obsessing all summer) but i guess one simple conclusion can be drawn from all this: i have a thing for angst, redemption arcs and pregnancy/baby fic, not necessarily in that order.

a fic you read this year you would recommend everyone read?

this is such a hard question because 1. i’ve read a lot of stuff from like, a weird mix of different fandoms, 2. with my ‘unfortunate/problematic’ choice of ships/favourite characters it’s hard to pick something everyone would enjoy. however:

for this empire, after night - i know the kylo ren/rey pairing isn’t for everyone (see above), but in my defense this isn’t really a shippy fic at all. it may, however, be one of the damn most beautiful things i’ve read in a long, long time. the descriptions, the imagery. it’s breathtaking (and really puts my own miserable scribbling into perspective)

#replies #ilosttrackofthings #as per usual this got away from me #it's basically a meta or something welp #writing #fic tag #long post

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plinys · 7 years ago

Note

did you see agentverbivore 's meta on why fraida is sexual assault? can you comment on it?

so like, i wasn’t going to answer this. i was off enjoying my life, i saw cars 3 which is great i cant believe doc hudson is gay and lightening mcqueen is secretly fitz and if y’all think im not gonna write a cars fraida au you’re wrong

and i come home to this

lovely anon

i was really just going to be like ??? this isnt worth my time and just go write fraida fic and dont worry guys if youre here for baby au or beach house verse or kinky framework smut well i got you covered later today

but before that, we need to talk

this is long, and doesnt cover most the important bits

first off, apologies to my one (1) mutual that is a huge holden radcliffe fan, you should probably look away for part of this meta. because im gonna put some of the blame on him

a few points from that awful meta i skimmed that was again not valid because it was written by a fs stan and these people by default cannot stand any other character looking at fs (like my girl oph may be evil, but like will daniels was not !? but man were the fs stans ready to call him abusive and sexual assualt back then so, again as proof opinions of those extra gross fs stans are not valid)

now if you are a mildly reasonable fs fan or just a normal person that ships other things, please do not let the crazies convince you of some total bullshit

hee’s some ground facts

my girl aida, now know as ophelia, is one of the main villains of the season. she’s evil af in the later half. im not here to deny that. she’s one of the seasons villains

you know who else are tho - holden radcliffe and leopold fitz

back in 4.01 my girl was created to be a digital assistant, programmed not to lie and not to kill and generally just like a good™ person. now that got fucked up and whose fault is that

well lets have some more facts:

holden gave her the programming that it was okay to kill if it was to fill an objective he set (this allowed her to kill him later and honestly that was his bad)

fitz taught her how to lie, and holden assured her that it was okay to do so

as mack, the only person with a logical fear of robots would tell us, this is a bad idea

and then we get the darkhold

man who, from the other side, convinced aida to read the book?

who then later enabled her to keep reading and gain all the knowledge and use it to help him create the framework and expand it and make it better

but oh man thats another good point who designed the framework?

holden radcliffe and leopold fitz

holden specifically was the one that wanted it to grow, that encouraged her to push the simulation, that had the plan to put may into it and give her a whole different life to keep her contained

holden was also the one to have them kidnap and replace the rest of the team

wait you mean? aida was just following orders? the whole time? oh yes, thats right guys. she was

until of course

the framework

now here’s where it gets messy because

the framework

in the framework, the darkhold has no hold on you anymore

which means, holden gets to experience regret and becomes not the villain anymore go him

though as mentioned before this, holden’s instructions were to fix regret so people would stay in the framework and not question the narrative or want to leave

which leaves us with

coulson not a shield agent

may saving the girl (both of which ive mentioned in previous metas is why hydra rose with no one to assemble the avengers and a fear of inhumans in the public it was easy)

fitz being raised with his father (who i personally hc as hydra in the real world too but thats just me)

mace being an inhuman

and mack having his daughter

now despite what poor sad jemma simmons, and the fs stan mouth piece that daisy got to be for a brief moment (i miss a well written daisy wow) will tell you,

not having a girl in your life does not suddenly make you a super villain

maybe its idk

the hydra father you were raised with

in a demonstrated emotionally abusive house that says not to show emotions and weakness (much like john garrett did to grant ward)

a world in which there was a fear of inhumans and a push for hydra to rise

a natural inclination for ambition

now, idk if its just me but

aida didnt make fitz evil

she followed holden orders to fix his regret,

if anything holden made him evil but really this anger and darkness has been inside of fitz all along and if you dont believe me rewatch season 2/3. watch that scene with ward when he cuts off the air, watch him with the gun and yelling at the space rock, watch him angrily pushing things onto the ground when frustrated

this kid has been two shakes from being a villain since season two

now to the fraida bit

if you believe ophelia on the beach scene which i do, she’s human now, able to feel things, there’s no way this girl so new to emotions that she has a panic attack thinking about people being hurt, so new that she loses herself to heart break in what is honestly just bad writing but canon so i can use it as a point here

would lie without there being an obvious tell

she’s not lying.

she wanted to feel loved and human

so she took jemma’s place at the academy

now when did fitzsimmons first hook up? when did they first kiss? how long did that take?

aida, then calling herself ophelia, wanted to be jemma simmons and like i get that. you, the fs stans, should get that. i mean isnt that why you all write self insert fanfic while slapping the name jemma on the character and pretending its the same one we see in canon?

aidas just like you

maybe a little misguided, playing a fucked up sims game of the real world

in a sense they created an alternate universe

an earth 2

and now you’re here telling me a robot, who cannot canonically feel anything more than pain, was the one to initiate sex? no, that boy def initiated it.

the horrible example of the meta involves someone being roofed and forced into sex, but thats not what happened. she wouldnt have been the one to touch him first, wouldn’t have been the one to initiate anything because she wanted to experience love and humanity and none of that is part of it

now iain confirmed the friada sex happened, canon later told us that it happened in 4.21 and again reminded us that she could feel nothing, which important take away here

now if you say

there’s consent issues, probably dub-con ill agree

but the framework version of him, this alternate universe man very much wanted every part of that

and honestly could you blame him?

so now i am going to sit here and write my fic set in the framework verse as if it was a full earth 2 and enjoy living it up in my alternate universe sin verse

im going to write my lets ignore everything after she saves mack fix it fics because i can do whatever i want

its fandom

and theres like 4 of us shipping fraida

block the tag if you dont want to see it

dont come up in my inbox anymore and ask my opinions or for m to justify my ship ever again, im just going to start replying with the parks & rec gif of ron with her permit to do what he wants

ye be warned

#aos meta #fraida #aida #leo fitz #leopold fitz #plinys meta #WELP I PROBABLY SHOULDNT HAVE BOTHERED REPLYING BUT OH WELL #anon #asks

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just-dreaming-marvel · 4 years ago

Text

Out Of Time ~ 107

MASTERLIST

< previous chapter

Word Count: 4,300ish

Summary: The team figures out the monolith and tries to save Simmons

“Do something!”

“Fitz,” Y/N got up and hurried to him. She was afraid to portal, scared of what the monolith might do. “Come on.” She grabbed his arm but he tore it away. “We have to get out of here!”

“Leave me alone!”

He turned and decked Y/N in the face, causing her to tumble down the steps and to the ground. Y/N gently touched her face, pulling her hand back to see blood.

“Fitz! Y/N!” Mack shouted, rushing to grab Fitz from the container.

“Fitz, get out of there!” Hunter yelled, getting the door.

“Are you crazy?”

“Close it!” Bobbi yelled. “Close it!”

“Y/N!” Daisy rushed over. “Oh my gosh, you’re bleeding.”

As soon as Bobbi and Hunter closed the container, the monolith turned into liquid. Everyone was panting.

“Damn it, Fitz,” Coulson murmured, coming into the room.

“I had to know,” Fitz panted. “Had to— had to know—“

“I already lost Simmons to that thing. I cannot afford to lose you or Y/N, too.”

“Trying to get yourself killed?” Hunter wondered.

“Sorry,” Fitz said. “I won’t give up. I can’t give up.”

“None of us want to, Fitz, but…” Daisy tried to say.

“Fitz,” Bobbi knelt down in front of him, “you tried. Okay? You tried your hardest. Everybody knows that.”

“No,” he shook his head. “I missed something. I m… I missed something.” He wiped something off his face.

“What is that?”

“Proof.” Fitz got up and ran to the lab.

“Y/N,” Coulson said, the others turning to face her. She was still on the ground, breathing heavily. “Oh my…” There was a long cut down the right side of Y/N’s face. “Did he—“

“I’ll be fine…” She panted. “I’ll be fine…”

“Come on,” Daisy urged, helping Y/N up. “Let’s get that stitched up.”

Daisy took Y/N to Coulson’s office and Bobbi brought all the supplies to help patch up the cut.

“He didn’t mean to,” Bobbi said quietly.

“I know,” Y/N responded.

“He just misses Simmons so much.”

“I know.”

“It hurts—“

“I know, Bobbi! Just stop, okay?” Tears formed in Y/N’s eyes. “Out of everyone here, I think I understand the most… I lost Bucky… no one could find his body… I was torn. I acted out too. That’s how I’m here… So I understand. I get that now we know Bucky’s alive, but we didn’t then. And I didn’t think he would ever come back… Honestly, at least he has hope. That’s more than I ever had.”

~~~

Fitz showed up in the office not too long later. He had a tablet in hand and pulled up his findings.

“Sand,” he stated. “Not just sand. Impossible sand.”

“The monolith’s case is a clean room,” Mack said. “There’s nothing in there but that rock. Not even dust.”

“Unless you blast it open with a shotgun and contaminate everything,” Hunter retorted.

“That’s not what this is,” Bobbi shook her head.

“Okay, the sand itself, not unusual,” Fitz continued. “Mostly silicone-dioxide particles just like on Earth.”

“Wait, are you saying…” Y/N paused. “You’re saying this sand is not from Earth?”

“Carbon dating show that—“

“It predates the Earth by a billion years,” Fitz interrupted Bobbi.

“So you think the rock is a portal?” Daisy asked.

“No. No, I’m proving that it’s a portal. Okay, to another planet, a-a very old planet. A crack in space-time that carried Simmons away… and carried the sand back. Which means…”

“She’s out there,” Coulson stated. “But it’s been months.”

“Yeah?”

“She could be long gone from wherever this thing dropped her.”

“Yeah.”

“She could be dead.”

“Yes.”

“But we’re gonna find out, aren’t we?”

“Yeah.” / “You’re damn right.” / “For sure.” / “Yeah.”

“Okay, Fitz, what do you need?” Y/N asked. “I can get Tony to bring some things as well.”

“Uh, uh, well, uh, more historical data. People have studied this thing for centuries. I need an expert on quantum mechanics and Einstein-Rosen Bridge theory. And a— a sandwich would be nice.”

“I might have an idea,” Coulson said, nodding, “about the other things.” He turned to Daisy and Mack. “You two, stay with our new inhuman guest. Be here for Dr. Garner’s assessment. Building that team is still the priority.”

“What did I say?” Daisy commented, her and Mack exiting.

“Bobbi—“

“I’m on this with Fitz,” Bobbi responded.

“Yeah, haven’t you been on this with Fitz the whole time? Hiding his trip to Morocco, covering for him on a constant basis?”

“Have I?” She smirked, walking out.

“And you know where you’re going,” Coulson said to Hunter. Hunter nodded and left.

“What about me?” Y/N asked. “I’m staying until Simmons is found. I’ve already texted Tony and he’s on stand-by if we need anything.”

“With me.”

~~~

Coulson explained that they were going to make a visit to a Professor Randolph. He was an Asgardian, hiding out on Earth. The team had a run in with him once when Y/N was on a break. Bobbi and Fitz joined them.

“I’m sorry,” Randolph said, reading a book inside of his cell. “I can’t help you.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Coulson questioned.

“Potato, puh-tah-toe.”

“And your reason?”

“The nightly news, cities flying into the atmosphere, government task forces, and now the public is freaking out about alien outbreaks. Pretty crappy time to be on Earth if you’re not a local, so I am staying low. And of course,” he chuckled, “there is my current situation.”

“Destruction of property, public drunkenness,” Bobbi clarified.

“And here I thought that Asgardians could hold their drinks?” Y/N retorted.

“Yes, well, Asgardians can generally hold their drink. It’s just, well, one night I tried to hold all the drinks.”

“Asgardians are also strong, right?” Bobbi questioned. “You could easily break out.”

“What? And miss dinner?” He chuckled. “Oh, no. Yes, norse prisons are surprisingly evolved—decent food, comfy bed, extensive library, and no attention being drawn to me. Come back in a few months, why don’t you? Maybe then I’ll be in the mood.”

“Can’t I just call in Thor?” Y/N muttered to Bobbi.

“We don’t have a few months,” Fitz stated.

“And neither do you,” Coulson said. “I don’t have to remind you that I saved your life. Though I did just mention it in case you forgot. But I’d still have no problems contacting those task forces you mentioned. I bet they’d go bonkers to have a real life Asgardian to dissect in their labs. I don’t know how comfy you’d be there.”

“Why, Agent Coulson…” Randolph said, standing up. “Are you threatening me?”

“I wouldn’t call it a… well, yeah, I guess I am. That’s absolutely a threat.”

“You’re different now. You know that?”

“One must accommodate the times or things get messy.”

“What’s with the hand?”

“Things got messy.”

“Well… you’ll have to cover my realize. And if there is a portal, which I will have to see to believe, you are diving into very dangerous waters here.”

“We live in the dangerous waters,” Y/N commented. “And have been for a while.”

Randolph exhaled sharply. “Alright. Well, it’s not like you’re giving me any choice.”

He quickly tore off the door and the alarm started blaring. He grabbed his coat and they began walking out. Guards rushed in.

“He did it,” Randolph said, pointed at Coulson.

Coulson gave a nervous chuckle and a smile.

~~~

After talking themselves out of it, they took Randolph to the base. He walked around, observing the monolith.

“Well, I hate to disappoint, but it looks like your regular, old—“ He stopped when the monolith turned to liquid then back into a rock. “Oh. How often does it do that?”

“It’s random,” Fitz answered.

“No. No, no, no, no. It may seem random. But… something is clearly triggering it.”

“I’ve checked it against tides, relation to the sun, rotation—“

“On this planet. So you have no idea how to control it. Why come to me? I’m no interstellar-travel expert. I’ve never even studied gravitational lensing or zero-point energy fields or quantum-harmonic oscillation theory.”

“Yet you know all those words you just said,” Bobbi retorted.

“And you’re scared of portals,” Coulson added. “You’re scared of being dragged back home through a portal. Y/N?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Y/N replied with a smirk.

She walked up to Randolph, opening a portal behind him and pushed him into it. Another portal opened on the other side of the room, causing him to exit from it.

“Impossible,” Randolph panted. “No human should be—“

“I’m connected with the Tesseract,” Y/N interrupted. “I can channel it. And I know it’s on Asgard and I’m pretty sure if I tried hard enough I could send you back there.”

“What I think, Randolph, is that in your drunken stumble through history, you’ve probably investigated every story involving a portal,” Coulson said.

“And I’ve seen you eyeing all of your exits,” Bobbi added. “My knee brace, wondering if you can get away with it. The only reason you came with us was to confirm its existence.”

“And destroy it,” Randolph confirmed.

“You’ll have to go through me,” Fitz stated.

“And I could. Literally. But, then, I don’t know what amazon woman and robot hand are capable of these days. And don’t get me started with the Avenger over there. So I will help you get her back. I’m not entirely heartless. But if I do, I want your word that we will demolish this portal and no one passes through it again.”

“I’ll sleep better at night,” Coulson confirmed.

“Good. Well, I’ve investigated a lot of these wormhole rumors. But that’s all they were, rumors. None have panned out. So we know nothing of its origin.”

“Kree, maybe.”

“And this parchment was found with it,” Bobbi said, grabbing the paper and handing it to Randolph.

“Well, hello,” Randolph said, studying the parchment through the bag it was in. “I’ve seen this.”

“It’s a common Hebrew word.”

“Yes. What else do we know, Mr. Fitz?”

“Uh, well, the monolith changed hands a lot,” Fitz explained. “Germanic tribes, spent the hundred years’ war in France. But before the Napoleon era, it was moved again. I lost track of it somewhere in—“

“England.”

“Yeah. How did you know that?”

“Because I have seen this word carved into the walls of a castle in Gloucestershire, England, in 1853. To the plane!” Then Randolph started for the door, when no one followed he turned around. “W—am I allowed to say that?”

“Let’s all go to the plane, I guess,” Coulson agreed.

~~~

While on the flight over to England, Y/N was talking to Tony.

“Are you sure you guys don’t need my help?” Tony asked. “I could get there at the same time as you still.”

“I’m sure, Tony,” Y/N replied. “The lead we’re currently following seems solid.” Y/N sighed. “I just want to bring Simmons home so that I can come home.”

“You’ll find her. I know you will.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

From the doorway, Fitz cleared his throat, drawing Y/N’s attention to him. He looked guilty.

“I need to go, Tones,” Y/N said. “I love you.” She hung up, slipping her phone in her pocket. “You need something, Fitz?”

“Yeah, I, uh…” Fitz started, coming to sit beside Y/N. “I need to apologize… I shouldn’t have hit you back like I did. You were only trying to help… I’m so sorry.”

“I know, Fitz.” She rested a hand on his knee. “I completely understand… I was the same way when Bucky died. Or, I guess, when I thought he was dead… So I get it, Fitz. I think that’s why Coulson called me in.”

“Or cause he missed you. You and May left, he lost his hand and Simmons… I think he just wanted a little of the good old days back.”

“Sadly, after we find Simmons, I can’t stay… I need some more time. I’m doing much better than I was. But I don’t think I can ever go back to this life full time. I don’t think it’s in the cards anymore.”

~~~

Randolph led them into the castle. They looked around with their flashlights, searching for the carving.

“Yes. Yes, yes,” the Asgardian exclaimed. “I came here for a costume ball. That was the pretext, of course, ‘cause I had heard rumors of travel to the stars. Found it all to be nonsense. But it was a fun party.”

“The carvings?” Coulson questioned, trying to get back to the point.

“Oh, right, right. Of course. So I was here admiring the stone work, and…”

Randolph turned and shined his flashlight on the stones over the door. There was the word, carved in to one of the stones.

“The same as the scroll,” Fitz stated. “Death.”

“Maveth,” Randolph clarified. “Yeah, one of its translations is actually ‘death by punishment’.”

“Could mean no trespassing,” Coulson suggested.

“A Hebrew warning carved in an English castle struck me as odd. Out of place. Seems ancient.”

“But you stopped looking into it?” Y/N asked.

“A man dressed as an owl, of all things. I got him drunk enough to admit that no travel to other worlds was even occurring. Just ritualistic killings.” Everyone continued to look around as Randolph talked. “En, the whole thing stunk of half-baked satanism. Just some fabrications to entice new members. And, well, there were fire dancers. I got distracted.”

“Here’s another one,” Coulson called. “This is why I got rid of all the SHIELD logos on our vehicles. It’s like screaming for attention.”

“About time,” Y/N muttered.

“You know, there’s an ginormous eagle symbol on top of our jet,” Bobbi pointed out.

“Yeah,” Coulson agreed. “Sometime I can’t help myself with the cool.”

Coulson then pushed a stone in the wall, causing part of it to open up. Revealing a passage way.

“You certain about this?” Randolph asked. “It does say death by punishment.”

Fitz and Y/N went in, examining the walls. They made their way down the passage. Eventually it led to a round room, with old equipment in it.

“Okay, well, this wasn’t on the last tour,” Randolph said. “It’s an odd shoe for architecture this period. Definitely built after I was here.”

“Reminds me of the bunker under the Louvre,” Bobbi commented.

“What? There’s no bunker under the Louvre. That’s a joke, right? You messing with me.” Bobbi simply glanced his way and walked to the other side of the room and Y/N chuckled. “Alright, great. Now I’ll have to check.”

Fitz knocked on the metal he was studying. “It’s late 1800s,” he stated.

He pushed the lever up. Suddenly, electricity crackled and the room lit up.

“Still got some life to it,” Coulson commented.

“I hear water,” Bobbi added. “Could be a stream underground, maybe hydroelectric power.”

On the other side of the room, Fitz hit the control panel on the wall and Randolph pulled down another lever. Suddenly, a round floor panel, in the center of the room, disappeared. They all walked up to it, looking down.

“This looks a lot like it was made to hold—“

“The monolith,” Fitz interrupted Bobbi. “This machine was designed to control the portal, to open and close it at will.”

“Do you know that, or is that just what you hope it to be?” Coulson asked.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

Sighing, Coulson pulled out his phone and dialed a number. “Mack, I need you to load something onto Zephyr One and bring it to us.”

“What exactly am I bringing, sir?” Mack against on the other end of the phone.

“Yeah… you’re not gonna like it.”

~~~

It wasn’t long before Mack and Daisy arrived with Zephyr One and the monolith was being lowered into the hole. Fitz and Randolph were getting the systems working. Bobbi was guiding the container down, monitoring the monolith on the tablet she was holding.

“Zephyr One,” Bobbi called into the comms, “you’re clear to retract.”

“Wow. Room full of ancient gack,” Mack commented as him and Daisy entered the room. “Kind of reminds me of your office, director.”

“Realistically, what are the odds of this thing working?” Daisy asked.

“If we were realistic, we never would have gotten this far,” Coulson said.

“With anything,” Y/N added.

“Well, Andrew Garner thinks I need to be more so,” Daisy said. “He recommended three months observation and counseling before reassessment for Joey. Says I’m reckless.”

“Wonder what he thinks about me.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Coulson said. “He probably just meant that—“

“He said you’re desperate,” Daisy added.

“What? He didn’t say that. Did he say that?”

“I can read minds, Phil,” Y/N said. “He definitely said that.”

“You can read minds, too?” Randolph pipped up. “Why is the Tesseract gifting you all these things?”

“Long story.”

“Let me guess,” Bobbi came up to them. “I’m struggling to come to terms with physical limitations and losing my sense of self instead of redefining it.”

“No,” Daisy said. “He didn’t mention you.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, he did. That’s what he said.”

“Oh, good.”

“Yeah.”

“Mack,” Fitz called. “Mack, push that lever.” Mack turned to a lever. “No, the one— the one that’s— the one that’s down. The one— the one beside it. Push it.”

Mack did as directed while Fitz did the same thing on the other side of the room. The gears starting turning, the machine started working. The room began to tremble and the monolith turned to liquid.

“Fitz, it’s working!” Y/N exclaimed.

Fitz knelt down beside the whole, pointing a flashlight into it.

“It’s staying open,” he stated. “Light! I need more light!”

The trembling began to get to Daisy. Y/N watched with concern as she groaned and put her head in her hands. She went over.

“Daisy?” She quietly called. “Daisy, what’s happening?”

“We got a problem!” Mack shouted.

“I need some bloody light!” Fitz yelled.

“Fitz!” Coulson called, tossing him a flare gun.

Fitz shot it through the monolith. Daisy held her head as she began panting.

“The gears have locked!” Mack yelled. “Bobbi!”

Y/N’s eyes grew wide as she saw blood coming out of Daisy’s nose.

“Daisy!” She exclaimed. Y/N caught her as she fainted, slowly lowering her down.

“Skye?” Coulson called, coming up beside them. “Hey.” The trembling and machine stopped. “Skye, are you okay? Skye?”

“It’s Daisy,” Daisy replied softly.

“What?”

“It’s Daisy now,” Y/N responded.

“You’re really having a hard time with this, huh?” Bobbi wondered.

“Damn it,” Coulson muttered. “Yeah. Daisy, hey.” Daisy lifted her head up. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” she replied. Y/N helped her sit up. “I’m better. That pulsing sound was killing me.”

“What pulsing sound?”

“Are you serious? It was deafening.”

“The vibrations,” Y/N whispered.

“What?”

“The vibrations. You can sense them. And there was so many, that it was too much for you. It’s kind of like, how if you’re all thinking at once, especially about a similar think, I can sense it.”

“Maybe, Y/N’s on to something,” Bobbi agreed.

~~~

The team was currently trying to find a way to put the machine back together.

“It’ll just rattle apart again,” Fitz stated. “We have to reinforce the connections.”

“Reinf— look, most of the workings are under the ground,” Mack said. “We just can’t tear the castle down. And actually, we’re lucky the room is shaped this way, or the machine might have shaken it apart on top of us.” The two bent down to try and pick a piece of the machine up.

“Wait. Wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the point. Quantum harmonic oscillation theory, like the professor said.”

“I know that look,” Bobbi commented.

“It’s a strange shape for this time period because it’s made to resonate, uh, to—to—to—uh— create a-a quantized field within the stone.”

“Fitz, you’re talking, but we’re not totally following,” Coulson said.

“The room is a speaker. The machine is an amplifier. Uh, a sub—subsonic frequency to resonate with the monolith.”

“You saying you figured out a way to fix the machine?” Mack asked.

“No. I’m saying I figured out that—“

“We don’t have to,” Daisy said, glancing at Y/N. “I can do it. I can open the portal myself.”

“Daisy, no,” Y/N said. “It’s too risky.”

“If I can open the portal and help save Simmons, then I’m doing it.”

~~~

The team added a frame with a lot of rope, to lower some into the portal and bring them back.

“Well, turns out we’re standing in the in the middle of the world’s largest subwoofer,” Randolph stated.

“Yeah,” Mack agreed.

“If the point of the machine was to resonate the room at a certain frequency,” Daisy said, “I can do that.”

“And you can replicate it?” Coulson asked.

“Kind of drilled into my brain.”

“And it could kill you,” Y/N stated, not at all happy with this plan.

“How long do you think you can hold it?” Coulson asked.

“Maybe a minute,” Daisy responded.

“If it’s too much, you pull back. I can’t lose you, too.”

“I got this.”

“Here we go,” Bobbi said, reentering the room with a machine. “Camera and data sensors are hard-lined back to us through a cable. No signal loss that way.” She clipped it onto a cable to be lowered into the portal. “If Daisy can hold it, we’ll get a visual of the other side.”

“That’s what we’re looking for,” Coulson said before turning to Daisy. “Alright, you listen to me. You take care of yourself. We lose that probe, nobody cares.”

“Uh, I’m confused,” Randolph spoke up. “What exactly is she planning to do here?”

Allowing her space, everyone moved as Daisy readied herself. She held both arms out to the sides, causing the parts of the old machine to tremble.

“Sorry,” she strained an apology. “Still tuning.”

After getting the right tune, she aimed at the monolith. Causing it to turn into liquid.

“Hold it open as long as you can,” Fitz stated.

Everyone turned to him. He had clipped himself onto the cable. He ran towards the liquid monolith.

“Fitz, no!” Coulson shouted.

But Fitz jumped into the monolith, disappearing.

“I’m going in after him!” Y/N yelled.

“No!” Coulson held her back. “I can’t lose you anymore than I already have.”

“But I’m the best chance to get back if Daisy can’t hold it long enough.”

“You don’t know if you can do that.”

“And you don’t know if I can’t.” They stared at each other. “If Daisy looks like she’s ready to give out, I’m going in. And no one can stop me.”

The trembling and the cable rope moving was causing the structure that was keeping it steady to lose up. Mack, Bobbi, and Y/N all quickly grabbed onto a different piece, trying to keep it steady.

“Damn it. Pull him back,” Coulson ordered, rushing around to where the cable was. “Get him back here.” He pulled the lever and the cable began spin back up.

“I can’t hold it!” Daisy shouted.

“Y/N, don’t! We can’t lose the both of you!”

Before Y/N could jump, Daisy stopped the trembles and the monolith burst into pieces. Every looked down in the hole, hoping, praying, for something to give. Suddenly, Fitz uncovered himself and pulled Simmons up. Daisy fell to the ground, Mack and Y/N rushing to her.

“You did good, tremors,” Mack said. “You did good.”

~~~

Y/N brought everyone onto Zephyr One quickly. Simmons needed to be checked out immediately and Fitz needed to be monitored in case of radiation. They laid Simmons in the containment module, hooked up to IV’s and allowed time to rest. Randolph and Y/N were standing outside as Coulson came to update them.

“They’re gonna be okay,” he informed. “No sign of radiation or infection. Fitz would never have found her, but she saw the flare. We brought a woman back from the dead today.”

“Yes,” Randolph agreed. “And, happily, you kept up your end of the bargain. The portal is destroyed.”

“Thank Daisy for that.”

“Yeah. Agent Coulson… what exactly is Daisy?”

“The call themselves inhumans.”

He looked surprised. “I have not heard that word in a very long time.”

“You know it?” Y/N questioned.

“I know more about them than I do you. You are something else… The Tesseract you said, that’s how you get your abilities?”

“Part of them.”

“Interesting.”

~~~

They were landing at the base when Y/N pulled Coulson aside.

“You’re leaving,” he stated.

“I am,” she replied.

“Anything that I could do to convince you to stay?”

“No… Look, I’m sorry, Phil, that I left and May left. But sometimes you need to tap out. SHIELD can’t be everything in anyone’s life… Even yours.” Y/N pulled him in for a hug. “If you need anything like this again, I’ll be there.” She pushed herself away, walking back towards the portal she opened. “Just don’t go opening anymore portals to other planets any time soon. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Bye, Phil.”

~~~

“But she’s safe? There’s nothing wrong with her?”

“Nothing,” Y/N shook her head.

“Wow,” Tony leaned back. “That’s… that’s—“

“A miracle. An absolute miracle.”

“And you’re sure you don’t want to join the team again?” Tony pulled Y/N in-between his legs. “You didn’t miss it at all?”

“I missed them. But not SHIELD. Plus,” she gave him a kiss, “I wouldn’t get to do that as much as I would like.”

Tony hummed. “Good. Can you do it again?”

next chapter >

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metawitches · 6 years ago

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Welcome back, fellow agents! After a year long absence and the loss of Director Coulson, SHIELD has reinvented itself again. This time, they are officially headquartered in the Lighthouse, the scene of much of the action in season 5. Mack has become Director Mackenzie, standing strong and steady as he watches over operations, with Coulson’s insights, projected from Fury’s cube, guiding him.

May and Yo-Yo are at the lighthouse with Mack, along with numerous new agents. It’s been a year in SHIELD’s timeline, as well, and in that time Melinda has buried Coulson and recruited talent, mainly of the muscle/field agent variety. Two in particular stand out: Keller, who has a chiseled jawline, a flirtation with Yo-Yo and a dumb idea about their current case that proves true; and Fox, who is his nerdy sidekick and possibly a single episode red shirt.

The current case is a series of anomalies reality warps distortions [name to be determined later] which have yet to be explained. When one of these events occurs, aliens arrive on Earth through a breach. By the end of the episode, their leader arrives, a character with a very familiar face.

Melinda is also trying to recruit a new science department, starting with Dr Marcus Benson, a former colleague of her ex-husband/inhuman Andrew Garner. Dr Benson is crusty and jaded, but finds a spark of hope at the thought of working on space-spy cases (spy-space cases?).

A new science department is needed because, as the team keeps saying, their two brightest minds are currently in deep space. After the death of the Fitz who rescued the team from the future and helped break the time loop, Daisy, Jemma, Piper and Davis have spent a year looking for the Fitz who was still frozen at the end of season 5. They’re running out of leads, and Daisy, Piper and Davis are ready to take a break. But Jemma’s ruthless, determined side rises to the surface. Nothing and no one will keep her and Fitz apart.

In the neverending search and rescue for Fitz or Simmons, it’s Simmons’ turn to save her man from near-certain death. We get a peek at formerly frozen Fitz’s current location at the end of the episode. He’s alive, awake and functioning, but seems like he’s been through some trauma of his own.

Fitz is changed, but the show gives us evidence that the most epic lovers in the MCU are still on the same wavelength. The dream of a happily ever after remains, even though Deke, their grandson from the future, is nowhere to be found, in universe, in the opening episode, nor is he mentioned. He is, however, a regular this season, so someone who looks like Jeff Ward still exists in the MCU.

Agents of SHIELD began their time and space shenanigans early last season, which the film part of the MCU has embraced in Endgame. Before we get to the detailed recap, there are some issues with time and time travel in the MCU that really, really need to be cleared up. Everyone on the internet has their own explanation for how it works. Of course I have my own version, too.

There are spoilers ahead for Endgame and the Spiderman: Far from Home trailer, because I’m trying to create a unified theory that encompasses both of those, AoS and the rest of canon. I don’t however, put much weight on what the producers, showrunners, writers, etc say when doing promotion, because they purposely mislead the audience at times in order to avoid giving away spoilers. The MCU is well known for this and admits it freely. It’s one of the important rules of media analysis: Producers and showrunners lie. Only canon counts.

Let’s Talk About Time Travel!

First, let’s note, the “previously” for this episode reminds us that AoS has had Time-Space travel for years, with time machines in the form of Kree monoliths. The Kree have understood Time-Space travel for millennia.

I hope someone finally explains and/or figures out how the monoliths work this season. They’re too dangerous to figure out by simply messing around with them, the way FitzSimmons normally would. But if the team had one and knew how to use it, imagine how useful it could be. The Fitz who died had enough of a working understanding of the technology to use a piece of one in his single-use time machine last season, but he, that monolith and that time machine are all gone.

The monoliths must essentially be large, unwieldy versions of Tony’s compact Time-Space wrist GPS. The monolith has the advantage of being able to move multiple people at once, being durable and difficult to lose. But, it’s not as portable as the wrist GPS. I’d put the fact that the programming isn’t obvious in the neutral category: Sure, anyone can quickly figure out how to use the GPS, but that means ANYONE, friend or foe, can use it. Monoliths are secure.

Still, given what Fitz accomplished last season, it’s possible he could use monolith technology to create something similar to Tony’s device.

Next, let’s recall the rules established already for time and time travel on AoS. In the early days, Fitz insisted on living according to Einstein’s theory of space-time, with a single, unchangeable thread. Time travel would involve jumping to different parts of this timeline. Any changes the traveler appeared to make had actually always been part of the timeline.

In season 5, Enoch sent the core group, other than Fitz, 70 years into the future, to a cracked earth dominated by the Kree, where Robin had prophesied that they’d help save the world. The prophecy turned out to be much more complicated than anyone understood until the end of the season, involving a long-term time loop, multiple timelines, Fitz going into cryo for 70 years, and Deke traveling back to the present day with his grandparents, FitzSimmons.

In this apocalyptic, time-looping future, the first half of the loop involved the team jumping forward 70 years, learning about the broken future, then jumping back to their present day. In the second half, they and their descendants lived through the entire 70 years of the apocalypse. Yo-Yo was captured early on by the Kree and held hostage, then taken in and out of cryo repeatedly over the decades to have new information tortured out of her, since she’d already seen the future.

When our version of the team is sent to the future, the captured version of Yo-Yo is still there, though the rest of the team is long dead. Older Yo-Yo tells our Yo-Yo that over the course of going through the loop hundreds of times and giving advice to herself in this moment, she’s tried everything. It always comes down to the fact that the team saves Coulson instead of stopping Gravitron. Even knowing that they have to let him die, they always think they can find another way, so the loop continues.

But this time, in the crucial moments, between the actions of Coulson and Daisy, they choose to kill Gravitron and let Phil go. The loop is broken. Everyone expects Deke to disappear, but he doesn’t. He’s now a time remnant, an orphaned time traveler whose timeline is presumed to no longer exist, since the team has changed the future.

SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME AND FROM THE SPIDERMAN: FAR FROM HOME TRAILER!!

In Endgame, we’re told by Bruce and the Ancient One that the past can’t be changed. Instead, changes to the timeline will cause branches that form multiple realities. Bruce tries to convince the Ancient One to let him take the time stone by telling her that he’ll return the stone to its point of origin, assuming that will make it as if he never took the stone. The Ancient One doesn’t budge on her decision.

She only changes her mind when he namedrops Dr Strange and says that Strange gave up the time stone for the cause. It doesn’t really make sense, because giving the stone to Bruce and giving it to Thanos are 2 different things, but I guess it was all she had to go on.

The Ancient One didn’t change her mind about giving Bruce the time stone because she thought returning the stones would get rid of the branched realities, because you can’t change the past. Bruce was the one who told us this rule. Those branched realities all still exist. Once the Avengers took the stones from their normal spots in time, those timelines played out. Putting the stones back doesn’t change that. It just creates another branch where the stone was replaced.

The Ancient One only changed her mind because Bruce convinced her it’s what Dr Strange wanted her to do.

The flow of time also has nothing to do with the Infinity Stones, which is a concept I keep reading in articles. Most of the time travel and the movie take place after the stones are destroyed, so how can the flow of time and time travel be dependent on the stones’ existence? This doesn’t even make sense.

The next Spiderman movie is going to deal with the issue of the branched realities (aka the multiverse) created by everything that was done in Avengers: Endgame. Between removing the stones, replacing the stones, all of the people who are out of place, whatever the heck Steve did while he grew old, and whatever Loki’s doing with the Tesseract, the multiverse is now a disaster.

Ever since Age of Ultron, General Ross, who just happened to be at Tony’s funeral, and the rest of the world governments, have been complaining that the Avengers don’t clean up after themselves or think about the consequences of their actions. Now we’re about to see the payoff for that thread.

The multiverse is going to have some anger issues happening with Earth and the Avengers for a while over the lousy timelines they’re stuck in, thanks to this timeline trying to save itself and various characters doing whatever they wanted. For example, there is no way Steve went back and lived with Peggy for decades without a) creating a new timeline and b) creating anomalies or distortions or whatever because there were two Steves in the timeline. Look at what this timeline did with two Fitzes.

This is what Agents of SHIELD began showing in season 5 and is continuing to show in season 6. Using the extension of AoS’s rules that we were given in Endgame, now we can see that Deke didn’t cease to exist because his timeline didn’t cease to exist, because nothing changed in that timeline, because you can’t change the past. That future is Deke’s past.

Instead, a new branch of the timeline was created, wherein the earth was saved. We are watching that new branching timeline of the multiverse. They aren’t going to officially confirm that right now, because they’re saving some surprises for Spiderman and later.

Each time through season 5’s time loop was technically a different branch, but they all end the same way, causing them to stack up and merge. The scenario/timeline that the team left behind when they returned to the present, with Flint and the other survivors in what was left of the Lighthouse, continued/continues on in that timeline, while the timeline we’re watching now is on a different path.

So early Fitz was right about some things. We live in a multiverse instead of a single timeline, but, as he believed, an individual timeline can’t be changed. Instead, new timelines are created to accomodate what appear to be changes in time. As Fitz believed, points on a timeline can be visited as if all times exist at once, but using the quantum realm instead of Einstein’s theories.

At some point at the end of season 5, the AoS timeline also separated from the MCU film timeline. I suspect those film references were purposeful, to highlight that the separation happened. They just aren’t ready yet for the team, or us, to figure out exactly when and how it happened. It could be because of the Avengers’ actions or it could be because of SHIELD actions.

Only time will tell. 😘

Recap

The episode opens on a positively angelic close-up view of Fitz in the cryo chamber. Someone in the writers room has been reading fan fiction again. As the camera pulls away, it becomes clear that Enoch’s ship, where Fitz was meant to spend ~70 frozen years, is under attack.

Enoch is there with Fitz, explaining their current situation to him. The Chronicom was all set to hang with Fitz and the cryo chamber for the next 73 years, 261 days, as bros do, but their time together has been rudely interrupted. Now, Enoch has to do some difficult calculations regarding Fitz’s chances of survival, and he has to do them fast. There’s an energy weapon, that looks like a buzz saw, headed their way.

Enoch looks out the window of the ship. Moments later, the ship is sawed in half.

Cue the title card and a one year time jump.

Behind the the time jump announcement is a cool, if inhospitable planet. The visuals in the space sections of this episode make me want to turn the recap into a graphic novel using screencaps. Attempting to practice restraint.

The Zephyr comes flying in for a landing on the alien planet, with Davis as the pilot and Piper providing backup. She’s currently manually spraying coolant on the drive lines while also keeping track of whoever was chasing them. As they approach the landing pad, she warns Daisy that the action is about to start.

After they touch down, a message quickly appears, irately informing them they’ve “violated galactic ordinance and entered D’Rillian atmosphere, without clearance.” They’re about to be boarded.

Daisy meets the D’Rillian welcome party at the back door, letting them know she’s unarmed. Sort of. She also doesn’t have the authorization they demand. The guards try to send the team away, but Daisy insists they’ll give her fuel and everything else she asks for. They scan her face, and discover she’s Quake. Her reputation precedes her.

She quakes their weapons apart with precision before they can attack. Two run away, leaving the leader alone. Daisy brings him down quickly. She’s been practicing her melee skills. He promises her whatever she wants, as expected. Simmons appears from the shadows and says they’re looking for someone. They just want to bring him home.

Quick change to the picture postcard view of the Lighthouse. Down in the command center, Mack stands in the middle of ops, watching the main board. The music is tense and there’s an ominous clicking. Mack tells “Runco” to stop clicking his pen. The ominous clicking stops.

They’re monitoring some sort of low level energy that they’ve seen before, but can’t explain yet. There are four teams on four quinjets, spread out across hundreds of miles, prepared to intercept whatever might come of the expected energy surge, as it grows. When it comes, it’s in a basketball court, in a park in Indiana. May’s team is closest.

In the park, the basketball some kids are using turns into glass, then shatters, then the pieces become crows who fly away. The basketball court’s cement backstop wall glows, then becomes soft and fibrous, then a large man in Mad Max regalia emerges from it. A second man tries to follow him out of the wall, but he doesn’t quite make it before the wall hardens back into its normal state, with only his head and one arm having emerged.

May’s quinjet hovers over the park and tells the alien, Jaco, to surrender or they’ll fire on him. Her co-pilot, Keller, has a shot lined up, but there are kids close by and he’s not confident that the blast would miss them. Jaco has no such qualms, and fires his giant gun up at the quinjet, sending it into a tailspin. The quinjet crashes, while Jaco walks away.

In the mission post-mortem, Mack tells them they should have landed and confronted Jaco on foot. Yo-Yo reminds Mack that he’s been focusing on speed and catching up to the energy events in real time, so until now it made sense for them to stay in the air.

They briefly discuss what to call these disturbing energy events 😉, but can’t settle on a name. They’ve already used up all the good ones on other disturbing phenomena.

This is the first time they’ve gotten to one of the energy events in time to catch a person emerging, so they made some progress this mission, and didn’t lose any agents or civilians. But they need to start generating theories, even stupid ones. They really miss FitzSimmons.

A new agent, Fox, who’s already spoken up several times in the meeting, mentions that Keller has been working on a theory. He’s not ready to share, but they make him do it anyway. Fox has been helping him look for a pattern that fits this incident, the city bus with the holes torn through it, and the lake that froze solid in the middle of the desert.

Fox: “They all sit on ley-lines. Energy lines that crisscross the earth in a sort of pattern.”

Keller: “Multiple cultures have believed in some version of this. Aborigine, Native American. Maybe we can use that to narrow the search.”

The crowd is skeptical, but Mack tells them to continue working on their theory. He orders Yo-Yo to step up her fight training with May, since these aliens seem like monsters. He sends everyone else back to their regular assignments, then leaves for his regular morning check in.

Once he’s in his office, Mack watches an inspirational TED talk from a Coulson hologram. Coulson advises him to take things one step at a time, remember to delegate, and build good teams who he can trust with the tasks he delegates to them. As a bonus, Coulson throws in his favorite Nick Fury quote, a callback to the Hydra storyline of season 1: “A man can accomplish anything, once he realizes he’s a part of something bigger.”

Those were the days.

May stops in and notices Mack watching Coulson. She tells him Phil would be proud. Mack says he’s not the director Coulson was. Mays says he’s a different director, but the job suits him, and everyone in SHIELD can see it.

Mack mentions that tomorrow is the one year anniversary of Phil’s death. He wants to honor the day by officially starting work on May’s proposal, but they still need to decide on a department head. May tells him she’s working on it, and she’ll have a name for him by the end of the day. He says she’s doing well with recruiting new agents, they just need more brainy types.

As May’s leaving the office, Mack says it’s hard to believe that it’s been a whole year, but he’s glad she and Coulson had some time together. Melinda responds, “We got more than we thought we would.”

Meanwhile, on the Zephyr…

The head D’Rillian is hanging upside down in the cargo bay, while Jemma channels the Framework version of her husband.

Simmons: “Your planet has 68% of the gravity we generate on this aircraft. While that makes it easier to lift ore out of the ground, it makes your cells gelatinous, your bones porous. Now I’m not an expert in D’Rillian anatomy. When I cut into your corpse, I will be. But, I assume, enough time under this pressure, your brain will hemorrhage or the weight of your organs will collapse your lungs.”

Jemma is curious as to which outcome will occur first. The guard asks what they want. They tell him they’ve found one half of Enoch’s ship, which contained the manifest. They’ve visited every supplier on the manifest. They’ve been to the O-2 oceans of Trinawa and the rusted moons of Pyree.

Jemma: “Someone must have tracked the ship and given that information to whomever attacked it.”

Daisy: “And you, sir, have a reputation for selling traceable fuel.”

The guard insists that he had nothing to do with what happened to the ship. He wouldn’t bother to put traceable fuel in it, since it was basically unmanned. He offers to show them the fuel lines to prove it to them. He bought the other half of the ship for parts, not even knowing it had been attacked.

Daisy and Jemma had no idea it was so close. They go straight to the half ship.

While they practice hand to hand, May tells Yo-Yo that she also needs to practice her poker face. May can tell that she’s trying to hide her attraction to Keller for Mack’s sake, but she’s trying too hard, which makes it obvious.

Plus, May tells her, there’s no reason why Elena can’t move on and see someone else. She doesn’t have to protect Mack’s feelings. He’s an adult. He walked away from Elena, using the new job as an excuse to run away from his feelings, even though Elena tried hard to make their relationship work. The last year has taught Melinda that, “Life isn’t meant to be lived alone.”

All four agents search the other half of Enoch’s ship, worried that the loss of cabin pressure will have been harmful to Fitz. Davis finds the cryo pod. When Jemma opens it, Fitz is gone. There are bloody finger smears inside the viewing window. Otherwise, they’ve hit a dead end.

Agent Keller pulls Yo-Yo aside to request permission to use the main computer during off hours to work on his and Fox’s ley-lines theory. Yo-Yo approves, then tells him that Agent May suspects that something is going on between them. As it happens, something is going on between them, with the code name “Night Shift”.

Keller turns out to be a decent guy, who immediately asks if she wants to take a break so they don’t get found out. Yo-Yo does, though she emphasizes that it’s not to protect Mack, it’s for herself, so that she feels ready when their relationship goes public. Keller is patient and understanding, adding that he respects Mack and doesn’t want to mess up the relationship he’s building with his new boss.

Poor guy. He has “midgame” written all over him. I hope he at least survives the season.

That evening, May finds Mack at the local townie bar, going over paperwork. It’s become one of his regular haunts and a way to stay grounded. Coulson told him to find ways to keep his feet on the ground and maintain contact with the people they’re fighting for. So he comes to the bar most nights, reviews Coulson’s advice each the morning and goes to the Baptist church on Sundays. May thinks he just likes the beers the bar carries.

She’s there on business. Her top candidate for department head keeps telling her no, so she needs Mack to get a yes from him. He here, sitting at the other end of the bar. The potential new addition, Dr Marcus Benson, is the latest in SHIELD’s long line of cantankerous, older, mad scientists, and currently the Director of Natural Sciences at Culver University. He’s highly intelligent and a former teacher, colleague and friend of May’s late ex-husband, Andrew Garner. Garner turned into an inhuman and died in the fight against Hive.

Benson only showed up for the meeting because the university has cut back on his course load, and he wants to know if that’s SHIELD’s doing or if they’ve noticed his worsening alcoholism. May admits to doing a background check, but nothing more. Benson admits that he’s been drinking more since the love of his life died, leaving him alone.

Mack explains that they recently lost their leader, who was also a teacher. They’re trying to rebuild, slowly, but they need more brains. They want Benson to restart SHIELD Academy, in Coulson’s name. They expect it will take him a year or two to get it up and running. It would be SHIELD’S, and Benson’s, second chance.

And, coincidentally, a great idea for a spin off, right around the time season 7 ends and Disney’s streaming service gets going. Agents of SHIELD: Coulson Academy, Coming Fall 2020. You heard it here first. Cast to include the darling baby daughter of FitzSimmons, of course.

Benson is a tough sell. He says he’s too old and his brain is too foggy (totally relate, dude). Plus, he has no interest in chasing fictional boogeymen (can’t relate there). May says that he’d get to work on science he’s only theorized about. Mack says he’s their only option. He brings up, again that their 2 brightest minds are in deep space and out of touch. They’re scientifically screwed until FitzSimmons jump back.

The term “deep space” finally gets Benson’s attention. May smiles a knowing smile.

Out in deep space, Jemma examines the cryo pod, which is now on board the Zephyr. She opens it up and climbs inside, letting the lid close on her.

Daisy and Piper are gutted that they’ve reached the end of their leads and worried for Jemma. As Davis enters the room, Daisy decides that it’s time to head back to Earth and regroup. Davis and Piper are relieved. Daisy thanks them for sticking with her and Jemma for so long, even when everyone else moved on to earthbound assignments. But now, she says, they all need to go home, and SHIELD needs them.

Jaco waits under some trees for more aliens to come through another distortion. This time, the two aliens, a female named Butterfly and a male named Trok, make it through without trouble. Butterfly asks about Tinker, Jaco’s traveling companion. He tells her what happened. She’s sad for a minute, then decides he’s become a butterfly.

Someone named Sarge will be crossing to Earth soon, and there’s a museum where he intends to come through. The three aliens make plans to blow the museum up, so it won’t be in Sarge’s way.

While Jemma’s lying in the cryo pod, she notices a tag with the location of where it was made. It’s in the alien written language Aeonian, of course, which Jemma learned in her spare time. The translations read, “low temperature suspension chamber” and “Naro-Atzia”, which is a planet in deep, deep space. Jemma is sure that Fitz would go there to get another pod so that he could freeze himself again.

She’s ready to follow him, right this minute, but the others are skeptical. They don’t think it’s even a clue and refuse to help her. They argue that the ship is in bad shape and might not be able to withstand the long distance jumps, then jump back to Earth. They still want to go back to Earth, restock and refuel, visit with family, including Davis’ young son, and then begin the search for Fitz again when they’re fresh.

Jemma tries to appeal to Daisy as the commanding officer, but Piper and Davis insist that with a crew of only 4 people, it’s a group decision. They and the ship are worn thin. Jemma says that the ship would be in better shape if Daisy didn’t spread violence and destruction everywhere they go. Daisy says that with only 4 people on board, she has to make them appear as powerful as possible, so they’ll be left alone.

As their argument heats up, a Confederacy ship finds them and prepares to attack. They leave off arguing and rush to their battle stations. It’s a destroyer, which hasn’t spotted them yet, or they’d have been… destroyed. They turn off all the power to avoid detection, and watch from the cockpit as it moves over them, whispering to each other.

Jemma reminds them that they don’t need to whisper, because sound doesn’t travel in the vacuum of space. That’s why in space, no one can hear you scream. Davis says that whispering makes him feel better.

SHIELD has brought the cement backstop/alien combo back to the lab for analysis. Benson is dubious about the whole thing. During his examination, he discovers that the alien, Tinker, is made of concrete, rather than encased in it. Tinker is also cybernetic, doesn’t have a heart and has a lens on his neck.

Tinker becomes conscious for a moment and grabs Benson’s collar. He says they can’t stop Pachakutiq, it’s coming. They should just wave goodbye. Then Tinker lapses into unconsciousness again.

Tinker drops a device which has a countdown clock and location. Mack has the coordinates put into the computer. They show the natural history museum in Muncie, Indiana. Fox and Keller are happy (in an appropriately subdued way) to see that the spot is on a ley-line. The teams head for the coordinates.

The destroyer spots the Zephyr and fires on them. They power up and escape the blast, just in time. Piper prepares the jump drive, which is General Hale’s Confederacy transporter device, while Jemma inputs the coordinates. Just as Jemma throws the switch, Daisy realizes that she input the coordinates for Naro-Atzia instead of Earth. Jemma says, “I’m sorry.” It doesn’t seem completely sincere.

Trok takes a couple of alien bombs out of his pack, just as the SHIELD teams arrive at the museum. He and Jaco place the devices, while Butterfly agrees to go distract the angry natives. She uses a knife to cut her own head on her way out.

Butterfly runs out the front door, screaming that they’ve got her son and they’ll kill him. That’s all it takes to stop SHIELD in its tracks. They stand outside at the front door. No one sneaks in a window or a back door, no one questions her, no one does any recon. They wait for something to happen, because to do anything else might make them complicit in the deaths of the hostages.

Welcome to SHIELD under Mack’s cautious leadership.

Butterfly tells Fox that soon he’ll be a butterfly. Keller hears what she says, and thinks it’s strange. Then she covers her ears and ducks. Keller and Mack brilliantly figure out that something bad is about to happen.

A powerful stream of energy flows upwards through the building to the top of the bell tower, then back to the ground, taking the building with it. The monitors at the Lighthouse lose their feed. Benson says that communications have been knocked out.

At the museum, Butterfly recovers quickly, but the humans are disoriented and have burst ear drums. May stands up, just as the countdown clock reaches 0 and a huge truck materializes, heading straight for her.

The truck comes to a stop after crashing through several SHIELD vehicles and the driver climbs out. Surprise! He looks like the Road Warrior version of Phil Coulson. This is Sarge, the traveler the other aliens were preparing for.

Like Coulson, he speaks softly and carries a big stick gun. Fox has captured Butterfly. Sarge approaches and orders Fox to let her go, warning that he doesn’t ask twice. Fox is confused, because Coulson is on their side. Sage shoots down Fox, and says he’s never heard of SHIELD. He and Butterfly get in the truck and drive away.

Melinda watches in astonishment.

Tag:

Somewhere in deep space, in a dark, cluttered workshop, Fitz is toiling away on a project. He’s wearing ill-fitting clothes and weeks worth of grime. Someone pounds on the door and shouts in an aggressive, deep voice. Fitz calls back to them, in an alien language, words that translate to, “Shut it! I’ll be there in a moment. Tell the Controller to cool down.”

He’s had his back to us the whole time, and continues that way. Fitz finishes the device he’s working on and holds it up to his neck. It’s an injection device. He pulls the trigger and flinches, then tenses up as the substance takes hold.

Fitz finally turns around to face the camera, but his eyes are closed. When he’s adjusted to whatever he injected, he opens them. They are a bright milky green. Fitz calls out, “Let’s do this!” in alien, and strides toward the camera.

Commentary

They made a pretty clear Alien the Movie reference when the destroyer flew over the Zephyr. Are there evil symbiants in our future?

Davis calls Piper “Sidekick” when he lands the Zephyr in the opening minutes. Please, can that be her codename? Can he have one that’s equally insulting? “Second Best” or “Copilot”?

Runco, the pen clicker, is a middle aged guy with a shaved head and a desk job. I’m reminded of my beloved Agent Jasper Sitwell, but also of the dastardly Brock Rumlow, since the names sound similar. Was this the idea? Is Runco going to stick around as comic relief?

Brooke Williams, the actress who plays Butterfly, also played Hannah Jones on the late, great 12 Monkeys. She’s well versed in space-time travel.

The Confederacy was season 5’s Evil League of Evil Aliens who tried to take over Earth, destroy Earth, mine Earth and probably more.

Pachakutiq, the name in the warning Tinker gave to Benson and the others when they examined him as part of the concrete wall, was the Incan emperor from 1418-1472. He vastly expanded the empire and made the Incans more powerful. His name is translated as “he who overturns space and time” or, simply, “Earth Shaker”. There are also several mountains in Peru named Pachakutiq.

The Power Struggles within the SHIELD Family Continue

Mack has had an upgrade in posture and wardrobe since he became director. He looks right, standing in the command spot. Pretty sure I’ll still disagree with most of his decisions, and I’ll never really trust him. At least he’s listening to May and Coulson, even if he did ditch Elena.

Maybe the disastrous mission at the museum will be a wake up call for him to pursue balance in his leadership, but I’m worried it will temporarily drive him to be even more cautious. He sees his belief in preserving life at all costs as his trademark, and has never truly confronted what that could mean.

The agents are already having to point out to him that he’s giving them contradictory orders, and there’s bound to be frustration among the agents, like Keller, who could tell something was going wrong before the bombs went off at the natural history museum. Especially if Fox, his friend, is really dead.

I have a feeling that last season’s power struggles were only the beginning. It’s another tried and true AoS trope, after all. Mack has been on the side of the rebels (when SHIELD fell) and he’s also tried to stay out of it (in season 5). How will it go when he’s THE authority figure?

Personally, I think May should be running SHIELD. I understand why she couldn’t take over right after Coulson left, but now it’s been a year. They could have called Mack the acting director until she felt up to it, or they could be codirectors, if she doesn’t want to do the job solo. However, since Peggy, Coulson and Fury all did the job by themselves with much larger organizations, it’s insulting to say an accomplished woman like Melinda May wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Especially after they’ve already said that their other Asian woman, Daisy, also can’t handle it. Daisy can’t be that different in age and experience to what Peggy was when she and Howard created SHIELD. To pass over two talented women in favor of a less talented, less loyal man will never be okay with me.

On the Zephyr, the power struggles also continue, with the bonds of friendship and the drive of raw need blurring the lines of command. Since it’s a TV show and I can occasionally endorse bad behavior and play favorites, let me say that I couldn’t love Jemma Simmons more.

Objectively, when she made the jump to deep space instead of to earth, she unfairly went against the wishes of the others, who wanted a break. But, practically, she was right to do it. This was probably her only chance to go deeper into space and follow the clue she found. It was likely her only chance to keep searching for her husband in the near term, and I can’t blame her for taking it.

Last season, Fitz wouldn’t, and didn’t, give up looking for all of them and trying to save the world. They owe him the rescue. It’s not clear yet how much Mack is going to honor those ties, and how much he’s going to value objectivity and putting the mission first. But his roots are in the latter, no matter how much they’ve tried to retcon him in the last couple of seasons. He judges the people close to him harshly, while trying to save the people he doesn’t know.

If they had gone home and regrouped, Jemma may not have been able to convince anyone to go back into deep space. Mack is such a cautious leader, he probably wouldn’t have wanted to give up the resources, personnel and the Zephyr to continue searching for one person, based on so little evidence. They have battles to fight at home, and in this episode the SHIELD agents constantly expressed how hard it was to get by without FitzSimmons. If Mack could get Simmons back, even without Fitz, he would consider it prudent to cut his losses and move on.

Jemma’s switch with the jump coordinates was fantastic as a grand gesture to show that she’s as dedicated as ever to Fitz. If we’re talking about love languages, devotion is mine, and there is no more devoted couple than FitzSimmons. I will follow them to the ends of the earth, as long as they continue to love each other and put each other first. If saving each other’s lives occasionally requires mutiny or causing the apocalypse, well, as long as they’re together, they can probably fix it.

If you want their science expertise, you have to accept that they come as a matched set, along with the ramifications of that. Just like if you want Tony Stark, you have to deal with his alcoholism, mean streak and gift for almost ending the world. With great science comes great madness.

(I so wish more shows would follow their model of epic love and create couples who’ll go to h–l and back for each other. I think Outlander might be the only other show on TV that has this kind of relationship and allows the couple to actually express their feelings, rather than being all about the “potential” of a relationship or breaking up, then finding their way back to each other. (Ugh, don’t even look at me, Torchwood, Ianto and Captain Jack.) If there are other long-term, epic, devoted couples, let me know!!)

What’s Up with Fitz?

During the “previously”, we hear Future Yo-Yo’s warning speech to her younger self, saying that Coulson has to die. As she says it, we see Time Traveler Fitz die (during the battle with Gravitron), suggesting that he also had to die. Coulson and Graviton dying definitely helped break the time loop last season, but what effect did Fitz’s death have? That lost Fitz had been to the future and created a time machine, among other, less ethical adventures.

Losing his technical expertise will affect the future, but I believe that Time wouldn’t allow duplicates to exist in the same timeline, so it got rid of the extra. The scary part is that it tried to get rid of both, as evidenced by the destruction of Enoch’s ship, which Cryo Fitz must have barely survived. It didn’t care which one of the duplicates died, or if both died. Time is ruthless and bloodthirsty.

Speaking of ruthless and bloodthirking beings, sorry, not sorry, but still on Fitz’s side with the whole returning Daisy’s powers against her will thing. When it comes to hurting Daisy’s feelings vs saving the world, Fitz made the right choice. No one has ever given the threat from the fear dimension the weight it deserves, which makes me think it will come back to haunt them again. Possibly, it has something to do with Sarge and the evil not-agents.

Assuming the guy we saw in the tag was our Fitz and not a Skrull, clone, LMD, from another timeline, or whatever Sarge is, he seems a bit different from the man who went into cryofreeze. As far as I know, that guy didn’t speak alien or have milky green eyes.

The green eyes could be explained by a few things. The first, sadly, is that Fitz’s vision could have been affected by the ship being broken in half and his quick ejection from cryo. The bloody fingerprints inside the cryo pod show that his removal didn’t go smoothly. Being thawed too quickly could have harmed his delicate eye tissue or his optical nerve. The green could be AoS’s elaborate version of something like cataracts. Or, something else could have happened to his eyes and what we’re seeing are replacement eyeballs or the result of an eye treatment.

The second, and most probable, explanation, is that whatever Fitz injected himself with in the tag, also turns his eyes green. He could be injecting himself with something that makes him appear to be another species, as a disguise; something that helps him survive the environmental conditions of wherever he is, such as something that helps him breathe the atmosphere or helps his eyes survive in harsh lighting; or it could be a drug he’s become addicted to. The drug seemed like it might act as a stimulant.

Fitz also appears to speak an alien language fluently now. Since Jemma was able to become fluent in at least one alien language over the same time period, while living on the Zephyr, it makes sense that Fitz would quickly learn the language while stuck on a planet with aliens.

He’s also putting his skills to use, back in a workshop, fixing and maybe inventing things. Did he have to give up on getting home, in exchange for a way to survive? Does he have a long-term escape plan? Does he have amnesia?

Fitz seemed in reasonably good spirits, though that could be aided by the drug. There’s also the question of his current status in society. Is he a slave? Working class, but a free man? Has he now been through space experiences that are close matches to what Jemma and the rest of the team experienced in the future Lighthouse?

And what part has Enoch played in all of this?

What Are Ley-Lines?

Ley-lines were named by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins in 1921, who had noticed that many of Britain’s ancient monuments and megaliths seemed to be purposely arranged in straight lines. He saw them simply as the remnants of ancient roads, and eventually dropped the name ley-lines, in favor of archaic tracks or old straight tracks. Later, others picked up on the name ley-lines and continued his research, with more open minds and in broader directions.

The phenomenon known as ley-lines in Britain and America has been observed since ancient times and is called “Heilige Linien” (Holy Lines) in Germany, “Fairy paths” in Ireland, “Dragon Lines” in China, “Spirit Lines” in Peru, “Spirit Lines” by the Inca, and “Song Paths” by Australian Aborigines. Archeological evidence of ley-lines has been found at Ancestral Puebloan sites in the Southwestern US and Mayan sites in Mexico.

The phenomenon is global, with each culture’s definition providing variations on the theme. Ley-lines are absolutely straight, as if drawn using precision instruments. They travel over a long distance, further than the line of sight, without trail markers that can be seen from the previous stop. They channel some form of energy and are thus associated with religion, the supernatural, dreams or unexplained phenomena.

The modern belief is that ley-lines are connected to the Earth’s own electromagnetic field in ways that science doesn’t understand and doesn’t have the proper tests to measure for. Ley-lines form an energy grid around the Earth. In places where ley-lines cross, the energy is particularly powerful. These spots tend to become especially sacred places, such as churches, holy springs, stone circles and burial sites. Some lines also follow astronomical events across the sky, such as the path of the sun on a particular day of the year.

It’s also believed by some that the energy where ley-lines cross can be good or evil. Negative energy can result in hauntings or a vortex opening. It can also attract UFOs, which would be where AoS’s use of the lines comes in.

They are clearly going with a model that involves powerful, untapped energy flowing along Earth’s ley-lines. When the bombs went off in the museum, they set off a stream of energy which Sarge used to cross over into our dimension.

Sources:

Ancientwisdom.com – Ley-Lines

BBC.co.uk- Gloucestershire’s Ley-Lines

VortexHunters.com – What is a Ley-Line?

Markus and McFeely Address How Time Works

Markus and McFeely, writers on Endgame, Infinity War, all 3 Captain America movies and others, acknowledge in an interview with the NY Times that when the Infinity Stones are removed from a timeline, the newly created alternate timelines play out and doesn’t disappear when the stones are returned. They also artfully dodge the question of exactly what Steve was doing while he was growing old. This is a typical response from any of the people involved with the MCU. If you read carefully, you can see that they acknowledge what’s seen in the film, a dance, and nothing more. That may or may not mean something for the future. It may just be more fan service for Bucky/Steve and Tony/Steve fans, who hated the ending.

Here, they address the issue of the branching timelines created by removing the Infinity Stones from the past. They use one of the more benign scenarios, in their estimation, taking the Mjolnir from Dark World Thor. As is pointed out in the film, removing some of the Infinity Stones results in much darker timelines being created, but Markus and McFeely sidestep addressing that possibility for now.

NYTIMES Thor recovers his hammer, Mjolnir, by taking it from an earlier timeline. So that raises the question — McFEELY Does that screw that other Thor? MARKUS Is he killed by Dark Elves? McFEELY I think we’re leaning on, when you just take a baseball mitt, you didn’t ruin that kid’s life. When you took Mjolnir, we accept that that movie happened. Because time is irrefutable. MARKUS You can make any number of what ifs. The Dark Elves would have arrived, intending to get the Aether. It’s what they came for and it was no longer there. McFEELY So they build a paradise together. MARKUS They all got married. [laughter]

Markus and McFeely successfully tap dance around the question of Cap’s future-past by answering a different question altogether. We were shown an old man and a dance. It’s an assumption that Cap stayed with Peggy after the dance. Markus and McFeely don’t actually acknowledge that Steve was with Peggy after the dance. If he was, and his story is done because he’s gotten his happily ever after, why not discuss the logistics of their marriage and children? They aren’t talking because that’s not what happened and his story isn’t over. He helped break time and he’ll need to help deal with the aftermath.

NYTIMES And Cap was always going to be allowed his happy ending with Peggy Carter?

McFEELY From the very first outline, we knew he was going to get his dance. On a separate subject, I started to lose my barometer on what was just fan service and what was good for the character. Because I think it’s good for the characters. But we also just gave you what you wanted. Is that good? I don’t know. But I’ll tell you, it’s satisfying. He’s postponed a life in order to fulfill his duty. That’s why I didn’t think we were ever going to kill him. Because that’s not the arc. The arc is, I finally get to put my shield down because I’ve earned that. MARKUS A hero without sacrifice, you’re not going to get the miles out of that person that you need to for these movies. That’s what makes them a hero, it’s not the powers.

Images courtesy of ABC/MCU.

Agents of SHIELD Season 6 Episode 1: Missing Pieces Recap Welcome back, fellow agents! After a year long absence and the loss of Director Coulson, SHIELD has reinvented itself again.

#Agents of SHIELD #Chloe Bennet #clark gregg #Elizabeth Henstridge #Iain De Caestecker #marvel cinematic universe #Marvel Comics #metacrone #ming-na wen #Missing Pieces #recaps #review #science fiction

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