Chapter 3

Disclaimer: no one here belongs to me, but to Marvel™.

…When the light faded, Daisy found herself lying in her bed, her room, in the Playground, the calendar on the wall showing that it was…the past. More than two years in the past, in fact, only a few days after Carl Kreel had killed agent Hartley and most of her team, (except for Hunter), and Daisy herself shot down Donnie Gill to his watery death. (There were some rumors about him afterwards, but nothing concrete, and certainly no obvious indication that the young Gifted had survived). This hadn't been a good time in Daisy's life or S.H.I.E.L.D.'s existence, but now Daisy knew that what came next was even worse – maybe much worse.

"So, Fitz seemed to have set-off an alien time machine," Daisy muttered to herself, as she quickly got dressed into her old uniform and entered the corridor, before pausing – now what?

The most sensible thing would be to go to the director's office, and talk to Melinda and Coulson about this – hopefully, Daisy was not the only one affected and/or brought back by the 0-8-4 in question…but what if she was?

Daisy shivered, and not from cold – the Playground actually used to have very good climate control; something was wrong. Well, something aside from the obvious, and that was even worse.

As Daisy aimlessly walked through the Playground's corridor, she came – accidentally or not – to the doorway, leading to vault D. It shouldn't have mattered, it didn't matter, Daisy knew that she had settled her account with Ward back in the Framework, so there was no reason for Daisy to go into it, but – the doorway was already open, meaning that someone was already downstairs, meaning…what?

Silently cursing her curiosity, (or whatever), Daisy went inside and downwards.

/ / /

…Melinda May woke in her own room as well, and not unlike Daisy, she did not get flat-footed either. "Phil?" she spoke into her comm.-link: "Are things getting weird or is it just me?"

"No, it isn't just you," Coulson sounded just as discomfited as Melinda herself felt. "We really did go back in time – and we should've expected that; time machines do exist, and Fitz had set one off, apparently."

"It was a 0-8-4, Phil!"

"An alien time machine, then."

"Not helping," Melinda grumbled. "Phil, where are we going from here? Once more, with feeling?!"

"That's an interesting question," Coulson commented, as he entered Melinda's room (and spoke to her directly – not via a comm.-link). "You have any specific ideas?"

"That's the thing Phil – I don't," Melinda muttered, as she looked away from her own comm.-link and directly at her – her friend. "Not this time. Things were going simply wrong for too long the first time around, and this time, I just do not want to repeat them. Anything can be better than what we have ended up with the first time!"

Phil blinked. "May, we 'ended up' with our friends – our family. We could have had it a lot worse-"

"Yes, Phil, but this isn't – it isn't what we wanted, or even Fury wanted," Melinda looked away. "You used to be S.H.I.E.L.D.'s field director, and I wasn't exactly stupid by the time when we had our reunion on the Bus. Fury entrusted us with S.H.I.E.L.D., and at the end? It was just us, and Mack, and Yo-Yo, and Tony Stark and his iron men on the other hand."

"'Just us and Mack and Yo-Yo'?" Coulson opted to remain difficult here. "Are you sure? You seem to have missed a person or three-"

"You know that I know that!" Melinda was not amused. "But they became family even before Mack and Yo-Yo did-!"

"Good point," Coulson agreed. "Well, since you are still back to 'all work and no play' setting, want to get Ward out of the way first?"

"…Honestly? I don't care," Melinda shrugged. "At this point in time he wasn't much of a threat, let's just hammer a deal with Maria and maybe Stark or Fury and move on to anyone or anything who is more important to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s well-being."

"Hill, or Stark, or Fury?" Coulson blinked in confusion. "Not his family?"

"If I remember correctly, the good senator thought that he could handle his brother. He was wrong. In addition, their youngest brother…I actually do not remember him that well or that fondly. He might have claimed to be grateful that you killed Ward in question, but he vanished very quickly soon after, and was not very helpful to us at all. I would rather not get involved with that family again, if we could help it. I am… quite suspicious that Ward was spying for us not just for Garrett and Hydra, but for Hill as well. Let us try to hand him over to Hill and see what happens instead – can't be worse than what happened the first time around…"

"Fine," Coulson gave in first. "We should run it by Daisy first…"

"Isn't she Skye, again? But that shouldn't be a problem – I understood that she had made her peace with Ward in that bloody computer program, somehow, so this shouldn't be too hard," Melinda looked away, thoughtful.

"Hey, May! Can you come out?" Lance Hunter called out from the corridor, outside, startling both her and Coulson – by now, they had rather forgotten about the Brit and his unpredictable attitude. "There's someone here that wants to see you!"

Feeling somewhat mystified, Melinda and Coulson went outside.

Several moments later Melinda's cry of 'Wu Ling May! What are you doing here?' shook the entire Playground, top to bottom.

/ / /

When Daisy descended into the vault D proper, Ward was already there. Or still there, she did not quite know what was the proper term, here and now. Unlike how she remembered, it the first time around, the big man was not listlessly sitting around, but pacing, and looking much more animate in general.

The feeling of wrongness came back to the young InHuman as she stared at Ward, and Ward stared back at her. Again, the look was different, Ward's hunger for her wasn't as evident in his gaze – it was still there, but it was now more subdued, and Ward currently didn't look as desperate as he did the first time around, but more like his regular self, complete with a plan…period. As a result…

"You finally made the beard work," was the first thing that Daisy said to him, (which was not what she wanted to say to him – not as a first thing, anyhow).

Grant stared at her, in a manner not unlike when she had confused parts of a gun and would say "bang" whenever she made a shot. "Really?" he asked quietly, instead of something scathing that she half-expected him to say. "You look good too. How life been treating you?"

"Lousy!" Daisy erupted, as whatever she wanted to say just exploded out of her without all the formalities or the politics that she wanted to add on top. "After you died, an alien monster named Hive took over your body and brainwashed me. Coulson and the others…didn't handle it very well; the Secret Warriors got broken and never came back…"

"I know; the dead know more than the living do, and while I'm grateful that I'm alive again, I must admit that that Kara and I were working on our own plan of coming back, and now it all is out the window. What happened?" Grant spoke in a neutral tone of voice.

"…You're an idiot," Daisy said, bitterly. "Here I am, trying to actually apologize to you-"

"Why do you need to do that?" Grant stared at her, openly confused. "You've done nothing to me-"

"You're an idiot and asshole, how you chose Garrett over us, what you did to Simmons and especially to Fitz, never mind the Koenigs, but the way we all treated you, the way that I treated you? It was not right either. I am sorry about it, and now that I know what it is like both being brainwashed and going through the withdrawal period, I'm sorry again, and I apologize again, and, and-"

"Stop, Skye," Grant muttered, looking, and sounding, just as miserable as Daisy herself felt. "Don't apologize to me, this isn't right. Whatever flaws that you had, whatever hardships, you're still the better person out of the two of us, I don't deserve your forgiveness-"

"You idiot!" Daisy snapped at him. "Don't you know? Understanding is forgiveness!"

"…Since when?" Grant sounded honestly surprised.

"Since ever!" Daisy poked him in the chest and blinked. "Uh, where's the barrier?"

"Ask Trip," Grant pointed to the man in question. "He's here too, you know?"

"… Trip. Hey! Didn't mean to ignore you!" Daisy turned red. "How you've been? I can explain everything!"

"Hey, no harm no foul. And um, after I died I got promoted to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s guardian angel, so I was – sort of – in the know all this time?" Trip explained brightly, with his trademark smile.

Daisy blinked. "You got to be the guardian angel of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Our guardian angel? Wow! No offense, but you sucked!"

"…I know," Trip looked away first. "Anyhow, here I am, trying to persuade Ward not to make his great escape from S.H.I.E.L.D., and-"

"Wait, you could physically escape all this time before?" Daisy looked up at Grant who just stared back at her with his trademark impassive stare. "You idiot, you, you, you-!"

"Yes, Skye?" Grant finally spoke, sounding faintly amused, for once.

"Again, I'm sorry," Daisy looked away. "We really should've handled this better."

"Yes, well-" Grant didn't finish, as some sort of a strange sound echoed through the vault. "Oh no. Cannot be."

He raced to the wall and pulled on it, revealing some sort of a secret tunnel, before vanishing down into it.

"What the-?" Daisy gaped and looked at Trip, whose look of honest worry did not inspire confidence in her.

"Skye? I would honestly like to say that I can explain everything, but I can't, not here and now," Grant spoke instead, as he returned to the vault, now flanked by several other people. "Also, Skye? Can I hide behind you? It seems that I'll be introducing the Cavalry to her potential son-in-law, so can I hide behind you if she decides to kill me?"

Daisy gaped. Next to her, Trip just burst into laughter, before cutting off abruptly as agent 33 appeared and shot him a look of death.

TBC

AN – it may be confusing for now, but all will be explained in the following chapters.