I have like two more scenes in my head for this story, so it'll continue at least a little but I'm still not sure how long it'll end up.
"Lemons." So much funnier when you take into account the fanfic definition of the word.
~1500 words
A Painful History
Daisy paced back and forth in the concrete hallway, nervously checking her watch every twenty seconds.
Not long now…
Working with S.H.I.E.L.D. before had ended with him unexpectedly spending significant time in other dimensions, so Robbie was taking the time to say a proper goodbye to Gabe. She had been fine when the others were still up, but because of the time difference, he wouldn't get there until late. The rest of the team had left the control areas of the Lighthouse for the bunks a while ago, supposedly to take advantage of the otherwise uneventful night to catch up on sleep, but Daisy had a sneaking suspicion they'd wanted to give her and Robbie the chance to reunite in private.
Any other time, that might have been warranted, even welcome. Any other time, Daisy probably would be nervous about seeing him again. Instead, her mind was occupied with a cacophony of anxieties and doubts about another subject entirely.
Could she really survive this?
Her desire to stay in the future had never been because she truly believed she had quaked the earth apart, but because just the possibility was too awful to risk it. But in the weeks since they'd learned of the Confederacy's plan to make a gravity bomb–long before they knew the specifics–Daisy found herself thinking again and again about the video Voss had shown her. Causation of something on the scale of the planet cracking apart was unlikely to change from one loop to the next. If it was a bomb now, it probably was the last time too, so how could she not wonder why the blame had fallen so thoroughly on her shoulders?—why that was the last time anyone ever heard from Daisy Johnson?
Whatever they'd done last time, however they'd failed to stop it; she had died trying.
Whether or not the Earth, to quote Voss, "cracked like an egg" depended mostly on how far the gravitonium was from the explosion, whether it was out of the confined space of the tunnels. The farther it was from the concussive force of the blast, the smaller the effect on the gravitonium and the lower the magnitude of the quake that resulted. Daisy's job was just to get it as far away as possible with the hope that it would be enough, but no matter how far she got, she would still be in the blast zone. The gravitonium would be subjected to less of the explosion, but an explosion all the same. They'd evacuated the entire area above because even a reduced earthquake would destroy the city at least, likely much more. Even if the blast didn't kill her, Daisy knew she would absorb as much of the earthquake as she could; so, she had grown comfortable with the idea that she wouldn't have to see what happened to the world if she failed.
She didn't believe Fitz's theory that time couldn't change—she couldn't—but Daisy knew they'd been through this loop at least once before; with no idea what they'd done last time, the chances of repeating their mistakes were high. She could do everything in her power to be faster this time, to get the gravitonium farther away, but she probably did all the same things last time too, thinking of beating the time before that.
But Robbie, he could make a portal to the other side of the world, or to a different dimension; they could get the gravitonium and themselves so far from the explosion that it didn't matter at all. After all the time they'd spent trying to prevent the end of the Earth, it almost seemed like cheating.
Daisy paced the hallway, back and forth, over and over, trying to think of what they must have missed. If preventing this was so easy, why had they not done it before? Maybe the Daisy she'd watched angrily storm off from the Quinjet had been alone because the video she'd seen had been of her and Robbie heading to epicenter together; maybe there were two alternating loops, one alone and one with Robbie, in both they fail and the next Daisy saw the video and changed to do the other—
Ugh! Paradoxes were the worst. Just thinking about that gave her a headache.
Daisy went to the kitchen to pour herself another drink, needing something to dull her thoughts just enough that she couldn't go down that rabbit hole. There was still a little while before Robbie was due to arrive anyway; no reason to pace a hole in the floor while she waited. Daisy went lighter with the alcohol this time, still hearing Jemma's voice in her head. It was so much harder to ignore when she knew she was self-medicating.
Downing the drink in just a few swallows, she went back to the hallway and leaned against a wall. The thing she was most worried about was failing to stop it and surviving. That seemed to be the cruelest fate. Every human being was a slave in that future, but the ones who became Inhumans were told that to be a slave—to fight for entertainment, to be used as a tool; to be sold—was something to be celebrated.
She didn't want to see how the world became that.
She didn't want to watch heroes become worse than legend; cautionary tales to avoid if you want to stay alive.
She didn't want to watch Coulson die.
Daisy had spent her whole life without anyone to look out for her. The nuns, guardians, foster parents; everyone who should have cared her had betrayed her eventually. Everyone who should have protected her—even those few she thought actually would—had left her when the going got tough, and, far too often, when it hadn't; just abandoned her without so much as a "Sorry, but I'm not coming back."
And she'd been left wondering, again and again, what she could have done differently, done better; who she could have been to make them stay.
Coulson was the first person to ever stay by her side—even when she had screwed up so bad, he had no logical reason to. Daisy had been used to people leaving when she'd done nothing wrong, but Coulson stood by her through everything. Through finding out she'd joined his team under false pretenses, through learning she wasn't entirely human, through everything she did for Hive; through leaving the team that had never left her. He was always there for her.
It was only because of Coulson that Daisy had begun to trust people—really trust them. After everything she had gone through growing up, Ward's betrayal should have broken her, made her unable to trust anyone again. But even as she left with Ward, Daisy had known Coulson would come for her.
How could she live in a world without him?
Daisy closed her eyes, shifting her head to allow the cool concrete to hit the scar on her neck. She had bigger things to worry about; bigger things to be angry about than Coulson's refusal to save himself. She could, on some level, understand his decision to not heal himself again through Kree blood—it had, after all, not been a good experience for him the first time. Besides, Daisy didn't want to spend what little time they had left being angry.
A fzzt-sound nearby made Daisy open her eyes, and the smell of smoke wafted through the corridor. He was here. Daisy pushed herself off the wall, moving in front of the trail of sparks and smoke slowly forming a ring in the middle of the hall. Her mouth pulled into a smile. Robbie's presence had always been a bit distracting, and Daisy needed that right now.
As the ring of fire and smoke became fully formed, Daisy was able to see through to the other side of the portal like it was a lightly warped window pane. As he walked toward her from what looked to be his kitchen, Robbie's eyes met her own, and he grinned. It wasn't a huge smile—Daisy wasn't sure he ever smiled like that—but the kind he'd had when they were talking on the Zephyr before everything went down with Aida.
Her own smile faltered.
Oh, God.
Daisy's lungs constricted. She had the oddest feeling in her wrists; like her blood was running backward, withdrawing to her chest. She wished it was unfamiliar.
Coulson had said he hadn't known what the price would be before the merge; before the whatever-it-was realized he was living on borrowed time. The rushing in her ears grew into thunder.
The last time Robbie smiled at her like that was right before Coulson became the Ghost Rider.
When he had helped her later, the way that he'd looked at her…
He knew.
Why are they preparing the Lighthouse to be what it was? It didn't occur to me until I was writing this, but there are actually three ways to prove they can change stuff. 1. The Earth doesn't get destroyed, 2. There's something else on the video, and 3. There is no Lighthouse. Need to prove that time is changeable? Blow that shit up.
I am so sick of the Invincible Three. Is there some theory of time travel that I'm missing where you can't be killed because time doesn't change, but you can change the hell out of everything else? At least Fitz has been consistent with his 'we can't change it, we never could,' but Simmons and Yo-Yo were all 'we're gonna do things differently this time, use our invincibility, and go to a Hydra outpost and stop it all from happening.' Simmons is supposed to be a super genius; she should realize the transitive property applies. I can't wait til Deke finds out and yells at them for just accepting that his mother, who dedicated her life to the idea that they could change things (likely because her parents raised her believing it), will die a horrible, violent death.
I was not expecting it to get so dark with Ruby. Couldn't the writers have let her (and us) have a few seconds of happiness with the knowledge that Werner genuinely loved her before the rest of it happened? I mean, the main thing about her character was that she felt completely devoid of love her entire life. Geez.
