A glass half-full
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Marvel™.
When the rest of the team arrived, the FitzSimmons thought that they were ready for anything bad…and they were right, just not fully. Yo-Yo had immediately left to talk to Mack, (the two of them apparently had their own personal issues to work out on top of anything else), and Coulson was doing his best to look optimistic, but not quite succeeding. What was surprising, (at least to the FitzSimmons – the Cavalry was also there, cough, but it was hard to tell with her), was that Daisy seemed to be doing the same thing…something that she was not prone to doing lately, not even after she was brought back into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fold in the months past.
"So," Jeffrey Mace did his best to appear business-like and professional, (and was succeeding at this, actually). "Where do we stand with Dr. Radcliffe?"
"One step behind, it seems," Jemma replied flatly. "We got fooled by a robot." She looked askance at Daisy – the relationship between the two young women was still somewhat rocky. "So now the real Radcliffe is who knows where, and he will do anything to get the Darkhold, we bet. We're screwed."
"Maybe," Daisy nodded with a smile that was reassuring, but also awkward – she had not smiled in a long while, after all – "but, honestly? If compared to the time when you were stuck on the alien planet? This is sunflower seeds! We will chew it up and spit it out! Look at it this way – we only had Radcliffe in our midst; if we had Radcliffe and someone else, then it would've been worse."
"…Well, when you put it like that, then yeah," the FitzSimmons exchanged looks. "Good point. Did you have to bring it up, though?" They gave Mace a look – the two scientists received the revelation that he was not an InHuman with an ill grace, (it was hard to tell with Melinda, and Yo-Yo generally was too busy with Mack to worry about anyone else).
"Hey," Daisy shrugged, "S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't speak for the InHumans – it could've once, but it never did, and since Jeffrey is still the director, he is still in. He and Phil can work out just who is privy to what information later, between each other."
"And we probably will," Jeffrey agreed brightly, while giving the FitzSimmons a look. "Speaking of information, agent Simmons?"
"Yeah?" Jemma cautiously replied.
"More bad news – so far there is no new evidence of senator Nadeer's brother; given her association with the Watchdogs, odds of him being deceased are high."
Jemma swore and kicked a nearby wall; Fitz opted to keep quiet, for he had never met the man, he reminded Fitz of Will for some reason, and finally, he was dead, so speaking anything regarding him was just wrong, in Fitz's opinion.
There was a lull in the conversation, as no one really knew how to fill in the gap and so they waited for Jemma to do it. "Got any more useful comparisons?" she grouchily asked Daisy.
"No, but it should be noted that the InHumans have a different anatomy from ordinary humans, period," Melinda answered instead. "What is lethal to you or I may not be so to someone like Daisy, so your friend Vijay might've survived, provided that they didn't try to make it a public spectacle."
"Ellen may not be the woman I once thought that she was, but to publicly execute her own brother? Not her style and it is too ambiguous for her tastes," Jeffrey said firmly as he sat down onto a nearby bench.
"You were friends once?" Fitz decided to latch onto the safer topic for conversation.
"Yes. Before Vienna," the current director of S.H.I.E.L.D. laughed, humorlessly. "For a while I thought that the only good thing that came out of this would be the good impression that it'll make on Ellen. Life being what it is, the result was a complete opposite instead. There were not any benefits between her and me, not even political, but before Vienna, and NYC, and everything, she came off as a different person, you know? Much better than the one we're dealing with now."
"Things don't always work out how we plan them to be," May spoke with a surprising gentleness, (especially for her). "But on the plus side? If she will try to make it personal, you can always ask the senator about her brother. When you are preaching moral superiority, you have to practice it, for otherwise? It'll just bite you in the arse."
"Personal experience, is it?" Jeffrey asked, archly.
"Yes," Melinda did not quite look him in the eye. "When I had Ward tricked into killing his last girlfriend, 33, I, admittedly, thought that it was a good one on him. And then he took this trick of mine and turned it into a nightmare for all of us, and then Coulson killed him, and the result was a far worse nightmare. Did 33 deserve to die? Considering that by then she was choosing to consciously work with Ward over any other option? Probably yes. But it still should've been executed better." She shuddered, caught by her own thoughts.
"…Okay, but they aren't coming back from the land of the dead, right? I mean, Fitz and Coulson did," Jeffrey blinked.
"We weren't dead to begin with! We were being dragged off to Hell or wherever alive!" Fitz yelled before checking himself. "…You know, now that I think about it, everyone? Daisy is right: the legal mess that is facing us is bad, but we have faced far worse. We can weather it!"
There was a pause as the others thought this over. "Okay, now that we're over the political slump," May spoke cheerfully, (by her standards), "can we get to the serious issue? Radcliffe and his robots?" she grimaced. "The last one was also a robot, as Fitz has discovered."
"…Any chance it could've been the real Radcliffe? Maybe he and Aida were robots to begin with that were sentient enough to fool us?" Daisy spoke brightly. "After all we've seen sentient robots don't seem much of a stretch."
"True, but given our luck? This was most likely a decoy instead," Coulson shook his head. "Let's go with the worst case scenario instead?"
"Radcliffe comes across almost like an older version of Fitz, but one thing that he isn't, is a coward," Daisy grew thoughtful. "When Hive captured him, Radcliffe sucked up to him, but he wasn't exactly afraid of him – or of me."
"You sure?" Coulson blinked. "You weren't exactly in your right mind-"
"Yes," Daisy said flatly. "Back then I rather was," she paused. "And Radcliffe wasn't exactly scared of Hive, even though Hive actually ate people," she looked away, over to the FitzSimmons. "I remember you telling me what Hive was, before I had my breakdown and left. It was a multi-something, correct?"
"No," Jemma said promptly, "I love Fitz to pieces-"
"- and I have both the auditory recordings and the reports of the janitorial staff to prove it," Jeffrey added wryly.
"…yeah," both of the FitzSimmons turned red, "this is why we've moved into our own place, these days, protocol or not. But," Jemma continued, giving Fitz an enigmatic look, "Leo still gets his biological and botanical terms confused. Hive was a colony of single-cell organisms that needed a human corpse for framework, not even a host-"
"Exactly," Daisy looked at no one in particular. "Hive was once an InHuman, until the Kree captured him and turned him into their weapon to control the InHumans. The Kree may've created the InHumans initially, but before long the InHumans grew beyond their control, especially manual one…" she trailed away.
"And you know this how?" Jemma blinked.
"The other InHumans explained it to me, this and other things," Daisy snapped suddenly. "Of course, Phil had been sitting on this information ever since Li Shi fell and Jiaying was gone, but hey, this is S.H.I.E.L.D.! Apparently, no matter who is in charge, there is always going to be compartmentalization, so let's just accept it and move on."
"Daisy," Phil began, but the InHuman woman gave him a look:
"Phil, I meant what I said when me and Mace waited for the hearing; you believed in me before I believed in you, and I'm going to stand by you and our friends, regardless of what comes. However, I speak only for myself, not any other InHumans, and they know it. Between the Iliad, Hive and anything else, they are content at keeping S.H.I.E.L.D. at a distance and becoming a part of the U.S. society directly. I do not know what you and Jeffrey here have spun to the others, but that is the truth, and people know it, including senator Nadeer – maybe. In hindsight, I can see that this was a trap, but you know what? I do not care. We have survived Hive and the aliens and we will survive this," Daisy snapped. "But the InHumans generally will not be with us, they have their own path to walk, and they will walk it, just as we will walk ours. If any of them will want to work with us as Yo-Yo does – good for them. But I will not have any of them coerced as it has happened with Lincoln!"
"Daisy," May spoke quietly, but the younger woman immediately stopped shouting and paid attention. "Will we have a fight again about this? The three of us?"
"No," Daisy looked away first. "You and Phil were right, I was wrong – but I also have a differently-shaped brain: hence my powers, but I also may not always react in conventional ways?" she made an ingratiating grin.
"Funny, your head feels ordinary," May commented as she patted the younger woman on the body part in question.
"My brain remained the same size," Daisy said crossly, "so my skull contains it just as it has before. My skull is different on the inside, the same as of ordinary people on the outside, so no experiments," she shot the FitzSimmons a look.
"Aw! Are you sure?" the scientists spoke in tandem, looking equally dejected. Daisy just gave them a look.
"…I think we got sidelined," Jeffrey sounded equally curious and uncomfortable – but not scared or disgusted, BTW. "Radcliffe?"
"When we were rescuing Phil, and Fitz, and Robbie Reyes from the land of the dead or wherever," Melinda spoke quietly, "I offered the book to Radcliffe first. He promptly rejected it – this was how it he was able to fool us, too. He passed onto Aida, even though he wants it badly enough to start all of this mess. He is smarter and trickier than how he looks – and he knows what the Darkhold is, this was his official reason as to why he had Aida read it. He is a trickster and a subtle man, often going for the long game." She turned to Daisy. "Think that he might be an InHuman?"
"Wasn't there blood work done and whatnot else?" Daisy grew thoughtful.
"Yes!" the FitzSimmons replied brightly. "But! On one hand, it showed him to be an ordinary person, on the other – it can be faked; even Andrew was able to do it…sorry May…"
Melinda made a dismissive gesture regarding the reference of her ex-husband, now deceased. "About him?" Daisy said quietly, but the older woman immediately turned to her. "We need to talk."
"I know," May replied equally quietly. "But not now. Leo, Jemma?"
"Y-yes?" the FitzSimmons replied carefully.
"Radcliffe?"
"We have his official biography," Mace spoke up suddenly. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think that S.H.I.E.L.D. made it – it's that good."
"Really?" Coulson replied equally intently, obviously uncomfortable by the discussion of May and Daisy.
"Yes."
"…Well, it wasn't us." Coulson shook his head. "Radcliffe came to our scrutiny few times for his sexual activities-"
"There were rumors of him offering the FitzSimmons a threesome," May nodded.
"Never happened!" the FitzSimmons said brightly.
"The offer or the actual threesome?"
"Neither! Both! Either! Or!" the FitzSimmons nodded in agreement.
"-but no, he never worked for us," Coulson did an admirable effort to ignore the interaction.
"So then he ended up here how?" Daisy asked, also ignoring the still gesticulating FitzSimmons.
"He was an associate; he was helpful enough, and useful enough, and decent enough to, well, help. Even the FitzSimmons appreciated his help with science," Jeffrey reminisced thoughtfully, "and after he and his Aida helped us out with the new Ghost Rider and his uncle, I figured that it was time to bring him into the fold. This mess is my fault; I could've just ordered him to dismantle Aida with the FitzSimmons supervision and that would've been that; instead-"
"Don't," Coulson shook his head. "For all we know, if the Darkhold hadn't surfaced, Radcliffe would've remained one of us – sort of. Now, however, we must find him and, well, capture him – or eliminate him. Sorry," he looked at the FitzSimmons, who didn't look very happy at this revelation, "but-"
"Let's first find him," May gave Coulson a look, and everyone agreed – and consequently, promptly returned to their more regular S.H.I.E.L.D. duties. The impromptu conference was over.
End,