Super short one-shot because I'm always on my philindaisy BS and I need to get more comfortable writing them so that I can start posting some of my bigger fics. I own nothing but my words.
It's nothing that she ever would have told May- or maybe she would, someday. Maybe if one of them were dying or if the world truly fell apart at her own hands, God forbid. It was almost embarrassing, thinking about the amount of time she'd spent over the last five years, specifically in the first two, wondering what the world would have been like if the woman had been her biological mother.
At first, it was a series of why's and how's; the small, childlike hope that lingered in her practically begging the universe to make Melinda and Phil her birth parents, and then she met Jiaying and Cal. After the mess with them, it was that broken piece of her- the piece that knew the truth and silently and secretly wondered why the world had dealt her such a fucked up hand- that pitied anyone in the position to love her, while simultaneously holding on to whatever she could for dear life.
Beyond that, beyond the time it had taken Daisy to begin to heal from Jlaying's agenda and the mess that was Cal, beyond Lincoln's death and Ward's- no, Hive's- mind control, she held onto the words that May had once said to her. I hope your mother is everything you wanted her to be.
Because she was.
Not in the same sense. Not as in the woman who gave birth to her, or the dozen pseudo-mothers she'd spent her childhood with- the ones who casually held onto the title "Mom" as if it were nothing more than an unwanted occupation; but the woman who had shown and given her more strength, courage, and unspoken love than any so called "mother" she'd had before. The woman who had never had a child, who had never claimed the title, had become the only real mother that Daisy had ever known.
So, as she sat in the Zephyr, seventy odd years past her timeline, eavesdropping on a conversation between May and Coulson, she couldn't help the image that formed in her head of herself at Robin's young age with Melinda by her side, content with the idea of being her daughter.
"I was a mom. I just… I can't see it," May said hesitantly, almost scared of her own admission.
"I can."
"Yeah, you'd be that 'no phone, no TV, 7:30 curfew' kind of mom," Daisy chucked, empathetic to the underlying pain in the other woman's words.
I could have lived with that, she decided not to add. And Daisy could have, she knew that. They would have clashed once she hit fourteen, spent more than a few of May's missions in a silent feud, and even if a small amount of resentment had lingered into early adulthood, she could have lived with it. She would have spent her life loved, safe, and protected. Someone would have cared. Not just someone- Melinda, the woman who was all of those things for her now, and she would have known the sacrifices that would have had to have been made for someone like Melinda May to be a mother, but she would have been a damn good one.
She was already a damn good one.
"You're kind of proving my point with... the face."