You may understand this better if you have read the rest of this series, but I will briefly summarise if not.

1. Daisy and Daniel ended up stranded in the 1950s/60s. They have a child now and her name is Tina. May mentions that her mother wants to meet her. This is it.

2. Tina has adopted May and Coulson as her grandparents.


Melinda May's relationship with her parents was rocky, to say the least. Her father had always been more openly loving than her mother, mostly due to their differences in careers. Lian May had been in the CIA before she retired, and as a result, had been rather tight-lipped about what she did. Quite a lot of this had crossed over into her family life, through no fault of her own. Melinda rarely called her as an adult, and hardly ever visited either. She supposed that she could very easily make a conscious decision to be more engaged, even though it had been more difficult than ever after Bahrain. A part of her reasoned that it could be the fact that she wanted to be more like her mother that resulted in the distance between them. As a child, she had desperately wanted the approval of her mother, a way to do that was to remain emotionally distant. Her mother responded better to that as well. Nowadays, their silence was how they communicated.

William May had been a doctor and had possessed a keen interest in golf even before he had retired. When Melinda had been a child, they had been inseparable. Despite his long working hours, he had been at home more than Lian, and as he wasn't dealing with matters of national security, she was able to be more open. He was always the one to take her to ice skating practice and had been very invested in the idea of her following him into the medical field. Melinda had shown no aptitude for the sciences whatsoever and made it clear early on that although she wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life, medicine was not it. Although this was disappointing to him, he made it clear that he would support her in whatever she wanted to do. When she had moved away to attend the academy, she had always tried to keep in touch, and for the first year or so, this worked. Not living with her parents had meant she had got on ever better with them.

The dynamic of her childhood, and the assumption that although her parents were as different as chalk and cheese, they had a strong relationship, had changed at the point when she received a call from her parents on a Wednesday about half of the way through her second year. That in itself had been surprising as they had always called on Tuesdays and Fridays at 9 pm like clockwork. It was when there was time on the dorm phone rota that matched up with both of the elder Mays being home from work. It was then that she had been told they were getting divorced. She was never told why, simply that it was not her fault and that they would tell her more when they knew what was going to happen. All she had been told since then was about living arrangements and that their wills had been updated. Her continued desire to make her mother proud of her had resulted in her making a resolution to ensure that she didn't appear to take sides in their divorce. She hadn't realised it at the time, but it had resulted in her talking to her father less and her mother more and this had fundamentally altered their relationship.

The call was not expected. As she had mentioned to Daisy, her mother had very heavily inferred that she wanted to be introduced, but Melinda hadn't anticipated that an invitation to their first meeting would arrive in the form of a summons to her mother's 85th birthday celebration: Melinda May and family. She had called her mother to get a better understanding of what was meant by "family" and was told she was expected to bring Coulson as she wanted a word, and that she knew she didn't love her as she still hadn't been introduced to her granddaughter and her family.

This was just before her mother's birthday. In many families, this would come with a morally enforceable obligation to be present throughout the festivities. In Melinda's family, this was never expected. The status quo was that Lian would be quite content with her presence being remembered and Melinda was the same. William had slightly different expectations, but they extended to a morning of golfing at his favourite club, followed by Paninis and doughnuts in the café after. This year was an anomaly.

Melinda wasn't quite sure what to do with the invitation and since the emphasis was put on Daisy, she decided to call her to get her reaction.

"Daisy, are you free to talk?"

"Yeah, sure. What's up M?"

"My mother just told me that the three of you are expected at her birthday party on June 12th. By the way she talked, I don't think you have any choice in the matter." Then she hung up.

This was the way things had worked recently. Daisy always gave off strong emotions whenever she received a new piece of information, so Melinda gave her plenty of time to process it. They had already planned to meet up the next day for ice cream with Tina. Sousa had training, as his routine had rather lapsed in the time he had been in the past. English teachers don't generally chase after bad guys. Phil was at an insurance conference. Apparently, all his years of getting confused for an insurance salesman had resulted in him getting invited to a plethora of conferences. He had gathered many like-attired acquaintances over the years.

They had arranged to meet at 11am, and at five past, Tina came careering around the corner with Daisy in tow. She was prone to wandering off, so a well-meaning agent had gifted her a backpack that looked like a ladybird with a lead attached. Daisy had confessed to feeling uncomfortable using it with the lead as something on a larger scale had been used at St Agnes', but when Tina had seen it, she had been so enamoured with it that she had begged her to let her use it, at least as a backpack. As a result, the backpack was just a backpack, and Daisy and Sousa always took care to ensure that they kept a close eye on her.

"Grandma! Grandma!" She chirped, and Melinda knew that if she had still been able to feel it, her heart would have swelled. As she got closer, she began to be able to feel her excitement, and she soon joined in with the joy.

"What have you been up to today?"

"We went to see my new school. Did you know that there's a poster of Uncle Steve on one of the walls of the classroom? Mommy had to stop me from talking!"

"Hey M," Daisy said, catching up with her daughter, "has Tina been telling you about her day?"

"We had cake, but Mommy wouldn't let me have an entire one to myself."

"I thought you'd want to save space for ice cream." Daisy explained reasonably. It was strange to Melinda how much she sounded like Phil when he was trying to compromise.

"I suppose that's true…" Tina admitted, although she still sounded dejected. Once they had set Tina up with ice cream to keep her occupied, they got to talking.

"So, you were saying yesterday that your mother wants us to attend her birthday party?" Daisy's overwhelming emotion was confusion, which was far less pungent than strong bursts of everything at once. "I didn't think she'd know anything about me!"

"In periods of complicated communication with my mother, I would sometimes talk about how I was worried about you, then about your training, then more worry, then more training…" she wasn't quite sure how to explain it. A moment of thought brought them into sight. "…then it was how proud of you I was and she started asking about you regularly. My Dad too. They seem to have adopted you as a grandchild."

"Grandchild." Daisy's voice was strangely closed off. Before she had got her powers, Melinda would have been confused, but now she was able to interpret it as what it was. Emotion.

"Look, I know we've never really talked about it. Not as much as you and Coulson have, anyway. For a long time, they've been hearing more about your life than mine, which they have chosen to stop being confused by."

"We really should have talked about it before now. Shouldn't we." Daisy mused. "I suppose it's obvious when you really give it some thought. People have been asking if you and Coulson are my parents for almost as long as I've known you."

May couldn't help but wonder how she would be feeling right now if she could. There had been all these milestones recently, or fairly recently that she knew she hadn't processed in the way she would have done in the past. She knew she should probably feel loss about that.

"So will you come?"


I hope you enjoyed this. I found it more difficult to write than the time travel stuff from before. I am a law student. Family stuff isn't quite my forte.

Also, I have created a fanfiction Tumblr under mackie02-ffn

I hope to be able to post on there when I update, so you can follow me there if you are interested. My asks are also open.