Chapter 8
“So… Are you done putting holes in century old walls, Agent Johnson?” Coulson asked.
The young woman fired off one more blast of her powers before turning around.
“Yeah, I got it out of my system.” Daisy said before crossing her arms and blowing some of her hair out of her face “I just… I’ve spent the better part of a year trying to get that woman to like me, okay. She keeps calling me every nasty thing in the book, all because I love her grandson and I’m not the Duchess of something or other. But… honestly, I could stomach that. I don’t have to but up with her. I don’t need to see her every day. Rest of the family adores me… But for her to ignore MY DAUGHTER, her great granddaughter… like that, to pretend she doesn’t exist…”
“Well… Sometimes you just can’t please everyone.” Coulson said “You know, the girl Ward and I pulled out that van… She didn’t care about those sorts of things. About approval. She did what she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it. That’s what always impressed me about you, your initiative. What changed, Daisy? You seem so… different.”
“I’m a mom.” She said. “Having a kid changes you.”
“That’s not it.” He said “Something is wrong, deep, deep down. I know you, Daisy. I know something inside is hurting. You can tell me.”
“Coulson… Phil… I…” She said “After you died… we… we all started to drift apart. Other than seeing Scott every other week when we were sent to Norfolk for the Avengers, or when he’d come down on the train to be with me… I was alone again… and I… My entire life, all I ever wanted was a family. To be accepted. To be loved. With You and May and FitzSimmons and Mack and the others… I finally had one… I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. And just like that, it was gone again. I was alone again and I didn’t want that.”
“It can’t have been all bad.” He reminded her “You know how confusing it is for me to have TWO of you running around. I get over you changing your name, and now, poof, ‘Skye’ is back.”
Daisy laughed at little, thinking about her sister.
“and then there’s Scott…” Coulson continued “I know you call him a ‘Goofball man-child’ but…”
“And now I’m married,” She interrupted “and I have a kid, and I am so damn over my head that I don’t know which way is up anymore. I’ve got that… Pain in the ass Billings constantly shoving her way into my house with a camera crew. I can tell Sherman wants me fired but can’t find a reason yet.
“I’ve been sidelined for an entire year now. I’m a fucking desk jockey and I CAN’T TAKE IT. Getting locked in the cell, wandering in a desert… I don’t even feel ALIVE anymore!
“Seven years ago… Yeah… I’m not that girl you pulled out the van anymore. Fuck, I don’t even know where that van is. They lost track of it the first time Hydra showed up.”
Daisy composed herself. She was going to calm down, but something Coulson had said caused a revelation.
“Wait… What did you just say about Scott?” She said to him
“That you sometimes call him a ‘Goofball man-child”
“No… I don’t… I…” She looked shaken. “It can’t be.”
Coulson tilted his head “you must have told me at some point…”
“I’ve THOUGHT about him that way on occasions, but I’ve never said that about him… expect for… a few months ago… not long after Tony was born… I had a dream… don’t know if that’s the right word for it because I kinda knocked myself unconscious… I saw you… we spoke… about…”
“…About how you were feeling lost.” Coulson said, looking at her with a bit of confusion of his own “About the people you though were always going to be there for you were constantly ditching you…”
“How?” Daisy asked, frightened. “I’ve never told anyone the details of that dream, I only told Scott I’d had it.
“Daisy… Don’t you see… It means that wasn’t a dream… Till just now, I thought it was to, or something… All I remember is dying, then that conversation, then waking up the day we found you in that other world where Scott was a ghost, and you were a Hydra defector… Daisy… It wasn’t a dream. It was real. I was there. That was ME you were talking to… I heard everything. But I guess I wasn’t the one talking.”