v.
Daisy has to admit, she's impressed by him. She knew that she would be – he is, after all, a formidable agent and a SHIELD legend – but the fact that he's still standing upright despite everything he's been through, that's impressive, and she's not sure she'd be coping quite as well if she were in his shoes.
He must have a million questions, but she would hardly know it. He's kept them mostly to himself, and she appreciates that about him, the way he takes things in stride and adapts to new environments.
Still, she has to laugh at his reaction to seeing a photo of himself on her phone. Of all the things for him to be so impressed by – time travel, the future, her powers – it figures that it would be something as mundane as zooming in on a touchscreen. She returns the phone to her pocket, joking that he looks good for his age and chuckling again over his furrowed brow in the photo.
He exhales sharply in response, and she looks up, seeing the realization hit him. The emotions dance across his face as clearly as if he'd shouted them, and it breaks her heart a little, hearing the regret in his voice when he speaks. The look in his eyes makes her falter, and she finds herself wondering for the first time if they really made the right choice in rewriting his story.
Yes, they saved his life and gave him a future, but what kind of life will he have now? He's in a world he doesn't recognize, where everyone he knows thinks he's dead. If he's lucky, he'll have to create a new identity and start over from scratch. If he's not, he'll die for a second time, caught in the crossfire of a war that wasn't his to fight.
If the same thing had happened to her – if she'd been plucked out of her life, dropped in a different time, cut off from the people she loved – she's not sure she'd be as polite about it as he has been. She's not sure she'd forgive the people who did that to her, no matter how good their intentions.
He's a better person than she is, clearly, and that only makes it worse. Because the truth is, she's glad they did it.
Even now, seeing that haunted expression on his face, she's still glad they saved him. The world needs more people like him, and considering what they're up against, they could use all the help they can get.
It's not that she expects him to stay. He has already done more than his fair share, and she has no right to ask him to sacrifice anything else. But it's hard not to think about how well he fits on their team, how natural it feels to have him standing guard even though he knows now just how capable she is of protecting herself.
Even after everything he's been through, he's still willing to show up, willing to help in whatever way he can. He's a good man, too good, and they don't deserve him, but he's here, isn't he?
He's here. He's alive. He's flesh and blood beside her.
She'd do it again in a heartbeat.
I'm sorry, she murmurs, because the words still need to be said.
What she means is, I don't regret it.
...
Daniel thought he knew what SHIELD stood for, how it operated, which lines they would and wouldn't cross in pursuit of a mission. He had thought that those principles would be nonnegotiable, that they'd be set in stone, but clearly, he was wrong. Since when did they start taking hostages? And when did they develop new super serum powers?
Every minute with this team seems to raise new questions, none of them good ones.
He wonders how they reached this point, how they let it get this bad. They should've stopped the threat in their own time, prevented any of this from happening in the first place. But perhaps he's being unfair to them. Whatever they've been through, whatever decisions they've had to make, he knows it hasn't been easy.
Still, he'd like to get the full picture of how it got this way. Surely he's owed that much, considering they faked his death and upended his life without asking. He's trying not to think too much about that. He's not sure he can deal with it just yet.
Instead, he turns his thoughts to that thing Daisy did, that blast of air – or vibrations, maybe? – that came from her hand. He wouldn't have thought of her as someone to volunteer for the super serum, but it occurs to him then that he doesn't actually know her very well. Strange, because it feels like he does.
He's not entirely sure what it is about her. Certainly she reminds him of people he's known – her confidence, her charm, and her ability to take down a man twice her size are all achingly familiar – but there's something else too, some other feeling that he can't explain.
He felt it the very moment they met, the sense that everything was falling into place somehow. He's felt it every moment since.
But as much as he likes the feeling, he knows it's not one he can keep.
There are much bigger things at play here, and despite the team's attempts at preserving the timeline, they seem to have only made things worse with each successive jump. It's not that he thinks they don't care, but there's a sense of detachment that touches their actions and reactions. He's not judging them for it. If anything, it makes sense, because to them, 1976 is the distant past, a time they've read about in history books. For everyone else, it's just the present unfolding in front of their eyes.
Perhaps this team has forgotten that each time they jump, they're leaving behind a whole world filled with real people with real lives.
Daniel hasn't forgotten.
He swore to protect those people, and he can't do that from the hold of a ship that could disappear at any given moment. No, this has to be his last stop. At the very least, he'll be able to fight Hydra on the ground, prevent them from doing any more damage, try to save this world while the others save theirs.
Daisy's computer starts beeping, and the sound reminds him of the task at hand. Before anything else, they have to stop Project Insight before it can wipe out their allies, past, present, and future.
He looks over at her, hard at work on a device that seems incongruously small for what they need it to do. It never ceases to amaze him, how sleek and advanced their technology is, and the thing she calls a phone is a true marvel, with a camera somehow inside of it and a screen you can control with just a touch. It's incredible, it really is, and he can't quite picture how those big blocky telephones of his day end up becoming that tiny rectangle in her hand.
This world must seem so primitive in comparison, and he wonders how she can stand it. He can barely keep up with the changes from these past few days, and it's easier to go forward than it is to go back.
But wait. That's not right. It's not just days that have passed, it's years. Twenty of them.
Two decades gone in the blink of an eye, and it finally hits him then, all the things he has lost. Family, friends, his career, his home. Everything he knows, everyone he loves is gone. Twenty years isn't so long that he'll have outlived them, but it's long enough that the people who knew him would have mourned his death and moved on. He's a mere memory to them. He's a ghost.
And god, it hurts.
He lets the echoes wash over him, thinking of all the things he wanted to do, all the people he wanted to see one last time. But it's too late now. He can never see them again.
And that hurts too.
Daisy's voice pulls him back, and her apology is appreciated, but it's not necessary. Despite how strange and difficult his current circumstances may be, this is the job, and he understands what it asks for, he understands what it takes. He just never thought he'd have to deal with the aftermath when it finally took everything.
Well, not quite everything.
He's still here, isn't he? That's something, isn't it?
It means another chance for him to do good, to make the world a better place, not in the past or in the future, but here, in the present. It also means parting ways with this team, now for a second time.
And that hurts too, but not as much as he would've expected. Maybe because he knows he's doing the right thing, because he knows they'll be doing the same.
He exhales and looks back at her, remembering the first time he had left. He won't make the same mistake of leaving wordlessly in the night. When he leaves this time, he'll do it right.
But that doesn't mean he'll enjoy it.
Wish I could've said some goodbyes, he confesses.
What he means is, I wish you didn't have to be one of them.