vii.
Daniel talks to her the whole way back.
He's never been much of a conversationalist, and loose lips are, of course, frowned upon in his profession, but now that he's started, he can't seem to stop.
He doesn't stick to any topic in particular, just whatever pops into his head, which is mostly a wide variety of questions he hopes Daisy will answer when she wakes up. Questions like, how long has she had her powers, does everyone else in the future have them too, what's the future like, are there flying cars, what's everyone's deal with Deke, and who and where is this Fitz he keeps hearing them talk about?
At a certain point, he runs out of things to ask, so he tells her about himself, about what his life was like before the war and after it. He talks for so long that his voice goes hoarse, but she's still unconscious and unresponsive, so he keeps talking. He won't let himself stop until they're safe.
Many years ago, when he was lying in the field hospital, he had overheard a doctor saying that it helped to talk to coma patients because they could still hear and the stimulation might help them wake up. He's not sure if that applies in this situation, but he's willing to give it a try.
Mostly, he just can't bear the silence.
Not again.
So, he tells her about his old team, his old partners who he understands have also become SHIELD legends and made it into the history books themselves. He tells her about the missions they completed, and he knows that she's read about them already, but the reports never tell the whole story. The real story is always much more or much less interesting than you'd expect it to be, and he wants her to hear it from him.
By the time he finally sees the plane on the horizon, his arms are numb and his legs are like jelly, but it's the strangest thing – he doesn't feel tired. On the contrary, he feels that he could do anything, that he could keep walking until the sun sets and the stars light up the sky, that he could hold her in his arms like this forever.
Well, maybe not forever. Maybe not yet.
For now, what he can do is carry her home, so he does, one step at a time, and when he makes it to the ramp, it occurs to him that he's begun to think of it as his home too. This place, these people, they've all become so important to him so quickly, and he realizes for the third time that he doesn't want to leave them.
He realizes he's already decided not to, though he's not sure exactly when or how it happened. It might have been somewhere along the way back, sometime during all those miles he walked, when he made the decision to stay. He can't say it was the flip of a switch or a conscious choice. No, it was more like getting caught in the rain. At first, you only feel a few raindrops, but then the drizzle turns into a torrent and before you know it, you're in a downpour, soaked all the way through to your bones.
As he makes his way into the plane, Daniel looks down at her again, hoping he might see her eyes open, hoping he might feel her shift in his arms. But she doesn't move, she hasn't stirred the entire way back, and he's really starting to worry now.
Simmons greets him at the top of the ramp and ushers him into a room with a long, glass tube, firing off instructions while grabbing bandages and clean clothes. Together, they get Daisy cleaned up and push her into the chamber, the lid shutting with an audible, if ominous, clang. He has to keep reminding himself that it's not a glass coffin.
With the machine coming to life and sending waves of light passing over her, he finally lets himself lean back against the beam, shifting his weight off his bad leg for the first time in hours. Simmons looks over, reminding him that he can still leave, and, under better circumstances, he would've laughed.
He's so far past leaving now that it's not even in the realm of possibility anymore.
These people saved his life and gave him a future he shouldn't have had. They've shown him things he wouldn't have otherwise seen. Where else would he go? What else would he do? The world still needs saving, after all, and, when the time comes, he wants to be there beside them. Beside her.
Oh, he's in the downpour, all right, and as he watches Daisy through the glass, he thinks that it's not so bad, being caught in this storm.
I'm where I need to be, he answers.
What he means is, there's no place I'd rather be.
...
Daisy is cold when she wakes.
It's the first thing she notices – not the humming of the machines, not the bright light passing over her body, but the feeling of missing a warmth that's no longer there.
Her memories have been coming back in pieces, fuzzy fragments of sounds and sensations, a little more each time she rises. This time, she remembers more of the same – the heaviness in her body, chains clinking, sharp things cutting her skin, and pain unlike anything she'd ever felt before. At this, she groans instinctively, turning onto her side as her hand makes contact with the glass surrounding her. Her fingers fumble with the release and she exhales in relief when the lid finally lifts.
Immediately, her body begins to ache again, and the weakness feels so uncomfortable, almost foreign, but she much prefers it to the claustrophobia of the narrow glass tube. The world spins as she sits up, and she shuts her eyes to keep from passing out or throwing up or some gross, messy combination of both. The thoughts rattle around in her head, setting off a new wave of pain each time they bring up something from her time in the barn.
She exhales slowly, trying to hold on to something, anything, anything else, anything better. She reaches blindly into the dark, foggy recesses of her mind until she finds it – the warmth that she had been missing. She remembers how it had stroked her hair and touched her face and cradled her in its arms.
Ah, she remembers now.
It was Sousa.
She holds on to this feeling for as long as she can, and when she opens her eyes, her body feels like her own again.
Gingerly, she places her feet on the ground and steadies herself against the healing chamber. She knows she has to rest, but she also knows that she can't afford to lose any more time. There's still so much more that needs to be done before they can make it home, so many things they still need to make right. She sets off for the bridge, taking achingly slow steps, trying to make sense of the snippets of conversation she can hear, something about slowing down, moving faster, something about Inhuman biology.
The answer clicks into place then, and she wills herself to move a little faster. The team is all gathered when she finally reaches them, and it makes her feel a bit better, telling them her plan, discussing tactics and their next mission. They have big decisions they need to make, ones they can't make alone, so she leans against Mack as they walk to Coulson's room, still trying to come to terms with the fact that he died. Again.
It's hard to believe, hard to comprehend, but when she sees him lying on the table as the rest of his body is being printed, she's reminded of the fact that he's not entirely human. Not anymore.
She sits there, watching as the machine stitches his legs into existence, thinking of the journey they've been on together. He pulled her from her van, gave her something to fight for, gave her a family to believe in. He was there with her the first time she almost died and was one of the only reasons that she didn't. She's fought by his side and against him, and it was never easy, but it was real, even when he wasn't himself.
Is he real now? Or is he code and programming?
This is the first time she's really had a chance to think about it. There's been so much happening, one disaster after the other, and if she's being honest, she was all too happy to put it out of her mind and focus only on the immediate threats at hand. But seeing him in this machine now brings the decision she made in 1931 front and center.
She did the right thing, didn't she? Pressing that button, telling him the truth? It was worth it, wasn't it, to have him here now?
This time, Simmons is the one who presses the button, and Coulson's eyes open immediately. He catches on to their current situation quickly and Daisy watches him the whole time.
Was it really worth it? Bringing him back to all of this?
She's not so sure, but then he turns his head and looks at her, and god, his eyes are the same as they've always been.
Yes, it was worth it.
It always will be.
If the choice is between a world with or without him, she knows which one she'll pick. She'll make the same choice every single time.
It doesn't matter what his body is made of. This is him, Phil Coulson. And yes, he's changed since she first met him, but so has she. They've both become entirely different people, but what matters is that they're still here. Together.
She pulls herself up and walks over to him, listening to him explain what he's gone through. It's been hard on him too, and she can't begin to imagine what it must have been like, but she knows they'll get through it just as they always have. This may not be the life she imagined, but it's the one she has, and it's enough that he's still in it. When he tells her that he's happy, she knows that he feels the same. She can hear it in his voice, see it on his face. It's still him, caring about her as he's always done.
She gives him a small smile, remembering what it took to get her back here, remembering who was responsible.
It sticks out to her, the fact that both Coulson and Sousa got a second chance at life, the fact that both of them ended up saving hers. She's never been a big believer in fate or destiny, but this knowledge feels weighty and important. It feels significant but it also makes her keenly aware of how improbable and impossible it is that both of these men are here beside her. She can't shake the terrible feeling that it's temporary, that she might wake up one day and find that it was all a dream.
Perhaps anyone else would've just been grateful that it wasn't a nightmare, but that's not enough for her. Daisy has always been careful and protective of the few people she lets herself get close to, and now that they're here, she can't imagine her life without them. She may not have a choice about it in the end, but that doesn't mean she'll go down without a fight, and anyone who knows her knows that she wins her fights.
Coulson watches as she recalls how lucky she was that Sousa was there, and she can tell that he's also realizing just how close they came to losing each other again.
I'm glad he's here, she tells him, and she isn't just talking about the man who carried her out of the barn.
What she means is, I hope he'll stay, and she means the both of them.