Chapter Text
Episode 1: Before, After
Chapter 1
Daisy couldn’t help smiling as she started at the swirling colours of the nebula that were spread in front of Zephyr Three. Her gaze drifted from her sister, Kora, to her boyfriend, Sousa. A year ago, she would never have thought that she would be here, with her family. After losing Jiaying to Hydra, Cal to the Tahiti program, Lincoln to Hive and then Coulson after the whole “Destroyer of Worlds” debacle, she had never thought that she would be here right now, with people who cared about her. People beyond the team that was. Her old team.
“How’s the team?” Kora asked her, glancing up at her sister. While they definitely had gotten past the whole “let’s kill each other” program, Kora and the others had never really bonded. If they ever hung out together again, Daisy was confident that they would, but she wasn’t sure it would ever happen.
Although, admittedly, Daisy wasn’t sure how much she believed Enoch’s statement of their previous mission being their last one as a team. Fitz had given his whole spiel about spacetime and then, two years later, they had changed the timeline. And then changed it again about a year after that. Yep. Even though Enoch had seen the future, she didn’t believe that it was set in stone. Not after her experiences with time.
“They’re good,” Daisy said, smiling. “I just wish we could see each other more than once a year though. Oh, and Alya is thriving...so maybe in like 20 years from now, we’ll get Deke 2.0?”
Kora snickered and Sousa cracked a smile.
“Something tells me that Fitz would not be amused to hear you say that,” Kora replied and Daisy laughed.
“If anyone can figure out a way to get him back it would be Fitz,” Sousa said. “He figured out time-travel to give Alya a normal life; he would be able to figure out a way to bring Deke back. Right?”
Daisy fiddled with her fingers. “Maybe. I’m no engineer, but the whole point of leaving Deke was to tether the two timelines together. Which would mean that not anyone could be the tether. It would have be someone from the original timeline...plus the Chronicoms are gone. I don’t think we’ll see the original Deke back any time soon.”
Just as Daisy spoke, a blinding flash of light filled Zephyr Three. Kora yelped, Daisy threw up both hands in front of her face and Sousa swung around, moving protectively in front of the sisters.
As the light faded, Daisy squinted at the figure in the centre of the Zephyr. It was a man, wearing a helmet like Fitz’s when he had time-travelled; Daisy’s first thought was that it was Fitz. But that made zero sense whatsoever since he was obviously with Simmons.
“Deke?” she spluttered, her brain going into overdrive. Had they somehow made him appear by simply talking about him? Crazier things had happened.
The man pulled off his helmet, tucking it under one arm and Daisy’s heart stopped in her throat. There was no way. Absolutely no way she could be seeing whom she thought she was seeing.
The man turned and saw the three of them staring at him. He raised both hands in the universal “I surrender” gesture and said, “Hi. Are you guys the Secret Warriors initiative? We need your help.”
Daisy felt faint. There was no way. Of course, she had seen Sarge aka Coulson’s lookalike, seen May be resurrected by Simmon’s healing pod and saved the other Fitz with Simmons. She’d even seen the Flint version be produced from the Monoliths. Not to mention the ruddy Framework which had brought back Ward, Trip and Hope from the dead, even if they were pixels of data on a computer. But in all her experiences, she had never seen this man before, no matter how much she had wanted to. In the last five years, she had become resigned to never seeing him again. And now….
“Lincoln?” she whispered, all the blood draining out of her face.
Lincoln turned to look at her. His eyes widened all of a sudden.
“It’s you,” he said. “You must be...Daisy? Daisy Johnson?”
Daisy was vaguely aware of Sousa holding her up. Her legs felt like they were about to give out beneath her; if he hadn’t been there, she might have cracked her head open on the floor.
“You...you remember me?” she stammered, emotions surging through her like a whirlwind; if May had been there, she would probably have puked from the bucketful of emotions that Daisy was currently experiencing.
“Uh, well, kinda,” Lincoln said, scratching his head. “It’s a little complicated. You’re probably going to think I’m crazy, but I mean, I just appeared out of thin air, so you definitely think I’m crazy.”
Sousa couldn’t help but smile, despite his roving gaze between Daisy and Lincoln. “We’ve all seen worse, trust me.”
“Uh, okay,” Lincoln said. “I’ve seen you before...in visions. Visions of the future. Two Inhumans showed me. Raina and Charles Hinton. They showed me your face. You’re from the director’s timeline, right? This is where I am, right? The timeline that the director came from?”
“Who’s the director?” Daisy asked, trying to get a grasp on her footing. She focused on Lincoln. Lincoln who could, quite possibly, be real. And alive. Standing in front of her.
“Director Deke Shaw,” Lincoln said. “You do know him, right? And I am in the right timeline?”
“Yes,” Daisy said, pulling herself together. “Oh my God. Deke...oh my God. Deke rescued you? From the car crash?”
It was Lincoln’s turn to go pale. “How did you know?”
“Oh my God,” Daisy said; Kora stood up and Sousa helped her sit on the seat that Kora had just vacated. “Oh my God. Deke saved you. Deke saved you. Oh my God.”
Kora raised her eyebrows. “That man wasn’t kidding when he said he only wanted you to be happy.”
Daisy pressed her fingertips into her forehead. “And Deke sent you to our timeline? Oh my God, I’m going to kill him.”
Sousa looked down at her and then back at Lincoln. His forehead creased into lines that Daisy did not have time to worry about. She glanced up at Kora, the only person on the plane who knew the turmoil going through her insides. Kora, who had seen the timestream and knew how much Lincoln meant to her. Kora, who had lived with them for the last year and also knew how much Sousa meant to her. Kora opened her mouth to speak, but Lincoln beat her to the punch.
“Listen, I don’t know what your beef with Deke is, but I need your help,” he said anxiously. “I’m really sorry to come messing up your life; I don’t know what either of us did, but Deke said that in an emergency, we could count on you guys. You guys are our Secret Warriors. The team’s been taken - kidnapped - and there is no one else I can turn to. The only other person who wasn’t kidnapped with the rest of the team has become the tether in the timeline. If you guys don’t want to help, I need to find her and get back.”
Daisy’s head snapped up. “I’m...I’m alive in your timeline?”
“What?” Lincoln’s face mirrored the confusion on Daisy’s.
Kora spoke up. “Not you, Daisy. I think...Bobbi Morse?”
Lincoln stared at Kora. “How did you know?”
Kora shook her head. “I’ve seen the timelines. It was one of the possibilities. Deke sent you and Bobbi to find-”
“James,” Daisy interrupted. “If you’ve already met Charles Hinton, you’ve already dealt with spacetime and deaths and Deke sent you and Bobbi to find James. Which means Giyera took over the plane with the rest of the team in it?”
“You both can see the future?” Lincoln asked.
“No,” Daisy said, standing up. “I’ve lived it. In this timeline. Kora has seen the timestream. But if we’re your Secret Warriors….” She stopped talking as she realized the events that had already been set in motion. Events that she had failed to stop the first time, but was definitely not going to fail this time around. “Someone on our team is going to die.”