"That one!" Alya exclaimed, pointing at a particular nearby tree.
Daisy walked over to the tree in question, one arm holding their daughter perched up on her hip. The tree completely towered over Daisy, far too tall to fit anywhere inside of Zephyr One, and especially in the small living area that Coulson had agreed to let FitzSkimmons and little one put a Christmas tree up in.
"Sweetie, I know it looks cool and all, but there is no way that will fit on our plane," the inhuman patiently told the five year old, who was already giving her mom puppy dog eyes to pick that one.
But before she could actually start begging, from across the woods they heard Simmons call out, "This one looks reasonable!"
As Daisy made it over to her wife and Alya's biological mum, their husband came walking up at the same time from the opposite direction with the axe slung over his shoulder from where he had been looking for a suitable Christmas tree as well.
Looking at the tree that Simmons had found, he said, "It looks a little small, doesn't it?"
"You may be the engineer of our little family, but you're overestimating the height of the plane's ceiling since we're out here in the wide open," Simmons answered. "To be completely honest, I'm not a hundred percent sure this one is short enough, especially once it's in the tree stand."
Fitz shrugged. "If you think so, Jemma, it looks nice enough to me."
"I'm fine with it," Daisy said. "You're the most realistic of us, and don't try to swallow things bigger than you can handle."
But before Simmons could scold her wife for making inappropriate sex jokes in front of the little one, said youngest member of the family made her opinion known about the tree that the biochemist had picked out to cut.
"I want a bigger one!" Alya shouted. "The biggest one we can get!"
Simmons held her arms out, and Daisy grudgingly handed their daughter over to her so that Jemma could hold Alya for a while.
"Little Monkey, this is the biggest one we can get that will actually fit in our confined plane home," Simmons said gently to the little girl as she propped her up on her hip like Daisy had been doing before. "But I promise you when we go visit Mack and Yo-Yo on the Zephyr Two aircraft carrier, they will have a huge tree in the control area, since it is big enough for one. So you will still get to see a really big tree, even though we can't have one on our ship."
Alya pouted cutely but didn't say anything more, and Simmons nodded at her husband to go ahead and start chopping down the fir that she had picked out for them. As Fitz swung the axe over and over into the trunk of the tree, Daisy used her quaking powers to lean the tree away from where her husband was chopping to make it easier to cut, and to keep it from falling over into the snow whenever he did cleave it through.
It didn't take Fitz long to liberate the main tree from the bottom of its trunk. Daisy then used her quaking powers to levitate it back to the quinjet that they had flown down to the forest in, FitzSimmons and Alya walking along with her through the light snow.
Just getting the Christmas tree into the back of the quinjet, Fitz and Daisy could already tell that their wife had a better eye on what height would actually work in the ship, as the tree was a tight fit even in the cargo hold of the quinjet, which had more space than the Zephyr One common area would. But once Daisy had flown them back up to Zephyr One and docked the quinjet on top, she and Fitz were able to successfully carry the tree down through the space-and-time traveling ship to the common area and set it up in its tree stand, with the top just barely brushing against the ceiling.
"Perfect!" Simmons exclaimed, before turning to look at Alya and saying, "Now doesn't that look good in here?"
Alya kind of half-shrugged in her cute little way, relentingly admitting, "It is bigger than the room," before immediately going, "So when are we going to decorate it and put lights and everything on it?!"
Simmons chuckled, but before she could actually answer her daughter's question, Coulson's voice came from behind them.
"Right now, Miss Alya — we brought all the boxes of decorations and lights."
Everyone turned to see the lmd/robot Director standing at the edge of the hallway leading into the living room, holding a box of Christmas stuff, and even more surprisingly, May standing there next to him holding a box as well and almost looking as if she were kind of smiling.
Trying to squeeze six people around one tree in an already small space made decorating the tree and room in general take much longer than it would have with only one or two people doing it all, but time wasn't of essence, togetherness and Christmas spirit were. And finally as Alya — sitting on Fitz's shoulders — put the angel on the top of the tree, Simmons put the manger with the newborn Savior in the small nativity at the foot of the tree, and they all stepped back to look. Daisy pulled up the Christmas tree lights app on her iPhone and turned them on, lighting up the whole room.
"You know, I'll admit when you first asked, I thought a tree onboard was a little ridiculous, but this looks good," Coulson said.
"Well, had you only sent my spouses and daughter, it would have been ridiculous because they would have brought back something so huge and tall we would have had to cut a hole in the ceiling of the plane for it to stick out the top through," Simmons teased, sending a loving look at her family. "But thankfully, I was there to save the day, as usual."
Fitz and Daisy just nodded their heads in agreement, knowing that it was perfectly true — they could get a little ambitious sometimes, and give in to their daughter's wishes a little too easily sometimes as well, like getting a tree twice as tall as the room because it looked really good out in the forest.
Coulson looked around at his Shield family, all of the good agents from the original BUS days plus one new member, who was scampering about the room like the young girl she was.
"Merry Christmas, everyone."