Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sun was setting over the neighborhood in that slow, lazy yellow way it only did in the late summer heat of New York City – casting long shadows across brick buildings and iron fences, turning the pavement gold. Patrol shifts got quieter this time of day. People settled in, shops started to close, and Officer Melinda May welcomed the lull.

She walked her beat without thinking too much about it. It was a rhythm she has known for years: the comforting crunch of her boots on the sidewalk, the radio clipped to her vest muttering updates in the background, the background noise of the neighborhood around her. She passed the front of St. Agnes Home for Children without really meaning to look, already glancing toward the corner store when the sound of yelling made her stop.

It wasn’t the usual playground shouting. It was sharper. Meaner. Eyes narrowing, she turned and spotted the commotion right away: four teenage boys were cornering a smaller boy, pushing him like a game of keep-away. The little kid was crying now, trying to back into the fence.

But what really caught May’s attention was a girl. She came in fast and furious – a blur of ripped jeans and frayed sleeves, and barrelled into the group like a firecracker. She shoved the biggest boy square in the chest, then stood between them and the younger kid like a wall of fire.

“Leave him alone,” she snapped. “Touch him again, jackass, and I’ll bite your fingers off.”

She bared her teeth like she meant it. And May didn’t doubt it.

May was already moving closer, calm and silent. She didn’t shout or even break her stride. She didn’t need to; she had that air of stillness that made people instinctively back off. 

“Hey.” She used that voice that everyone in the precinct said meant business.

The older boys froze and then ran off, not even arguing or mouthing back. The younger boy scrambled away without looking back. The girl stayed.

Of course she did.

She turned to face May, chin lifted high like she was daring May to make a move. Her eyes were wild and bright and furious, but she was not scared. Not even a little bit.

“They’re just idiots,” she muttered. “Didn’t need backup.”

May tilted her head. “Didn’t say you did.”

They stood in silence for a beat while May studied her – this mouthy, skinny hapa-looking girl with a wild mess of dark hair standing like she could take on the whole damn world with nothing but a glare and her scraped knuckles.

“What’s your name?”

The girl hesitated. “Daisy.”

May nodded and tucked the name away. “Next time someone bothers you,” she said, voice low but firm, “find an adult.”

Daisy snorted, sarcastic and bitter all at once. “When has an adult ever helped me?”

And there it was, just beneath the tough girl act: the truth.

May didn’t answer right away. Instead, she reached into her breast pocket and pulled out a business card. On one side was the precinct’s phone number, her badge number, and her name: OFFICER MELINDA MAY. She flipped it over and scribbled down her cell number on the back. “Try me,” she handed it over to the girl with no fanfare. 

Daisy stared at the card suspiciously. “Why would you give me this?”

May looked her in the eye. “Because you look like the kind of kid who won’t use it unless she really needs to.”

Chapter Text

Dinner at St. Agnes was always loud: metal trays clattering, kids shouting over one another, someone crying, someone else laughing too hard, the constant hum of fluorescent lights buzzing above it all like they might burst.

Daisy settled into her seat and stared at her dinner of pale mashed potatoes, canned green beans, and something they said was chicken. Across the room, she saw one of the little ones, Mia, staring down at her empty tray with hollow eyes. The nuns caught Mia sneaking a lollipop from the common room and cut her dinner. Daisy knew that kind of punishment, but she also knew it wouldn’t make Mia any less likely to steal. It would just make her hungrier next time.

Sighing, she got up. “Here,” she said, dropping her tray in front of Mia.

Mia looked up like she had been caught again, but Daisy just ruffled her hair and walked off before anyone could stop her.

By lights out, Daisy’s stomach was eating itself.

She curled up in her bunk, waiting for the footsteps of Sister Anne to fade down the hallway. When it was safe, she silently got up, pulled on her hoodie, and crept across the dormitory floor like she’s done a hundred times before. The window latch was sticky – it always groaned when she slid it open, but no one stirred.

She dropped to the ground behind the hedges and took off down the block. She knew the little bodega on the corner of Ninth and Beverley would be open late, and that the guy behind the counter didn’t care much about anything. He sold cigarettes to high schoolers and expired candy for a dollar. She’s only stolen from him once – a bag of chips months ago, and he didn’t even notice.

The bell above the door chimed when she walked in. It was too bright inside, and it smelled like mop water and burnt coffee. She pulled her hood up and snuck into the back. Her eyes scanned the fridge and saw a sad little plastic-wrapped sandwich, the deli turkey and cheese already curling at the edges. He would probably throw it out in the morning anyway. As soon as he turned to restock the cigarettes, she grabbed it and ran. 

Unfortunately, she only made it three steps before he caught her by the arm. 

“Hey!”

She froze, teeth clenched, already planning to yank away. But he didn’t hurt her. He just looked... confused. And maybe a little worried.

“You trying to steal a sandwich?”

She didn’t answer. She stared at the floor and waited for it to go bad.

May was two minutes from signing out when the call came through.

“Petty theft, Ninth and Beverley. Minor caught with food, no damage.”

Her partner, Phil Coulson, leaned over the cruiser they just parked and groaned. “So close.” 

May glanced at the clock ticking to midnight. “Go home, I’ll take it. It’s on my way back anyway.”

The bodega was quiet when she arrived. Seeing her, the owner looked relieved as he held out a half-crushed sandwich in a plastic bag. 

“I’m not pressing charges,” he said immediately. “Just… look at her. It’s midnight and she’s stealing food. I don’t care about the five bucks. I’m worried about the kid.”

May looked past him to the kid, slouched against the freezer door with her arms crossed. Her face looked like she was trying to look pissed, but instead she looked kind of embarrassed. 

May recognized the dark hair and posture instantly. “Daisy.” 

“Oh, hey…” Daisy muttered as she looked up. “What are the odds?”

May looked at the sandwich, then at the girl, then at the owner. “How much?”

“Forget it,” the man said. “I just want to go home.”

May nodded and handed him a ten anyway. “Get in the car,” she said to Daisy.

Daisy didn’t argue.

“You arrest everyone who’s hungry?” Daisy asked dryly as they drove off. 

“You always this snarky after curfew?”

“Only when I’m starving.”

May didn’t answer. She didn’t say anything when they passed St. Agnes either, despite Daisy’s confused glare. Instead, she pulled into a parking spot in front of the 24-hour diner without a word. 

Daisy looked out the window confused. “What…?”

“You’re hungry,” May said simply. “Let’s go.”

Inside, the diner was mostly empty. The waitress chewed her gum loudly and poured a cup of coffee for herself in the corner. May lightly nudged Daisy towards an empty table, watching as the girl slid into the booth like she expected to be thrown out. When the menus came, Daisy barely touched it. 

“What do you want?” May asked, careful to keep her tone casual. 

“I don’t know.” 

May cocked an eyebrow. “You said you were hungry. Get whatever you want.” 

“I’ll just have a grilled cheese,” she mumbled. 

It was the cheapest entree on the menu. “Anything else?”

Daisy shook her head. 

May didn’t argue. “Okay. I’ll have the same. And fries and a chocolate shake.” 

Daisy kept her hands to herself for exactly three minutes. 

Then, as May sipped her shake, one fry disappeared. And then another. She didn’t say anything, she just slid the plate closer to the girl and added a straw to her shake. 

Daisy took a sip. “You gonna ask me what happened?”

“No.”

That seemed to surprise the teenager. 

Their sandwiches came out and they ate in silence. The grilled cheese was buttery and warm and better than anything Daisy had eaten in months.

“I didn’t eat lunch,” Daisy blurted out suddenly. “My school gives out vouchers but they ran out today. And then I gave my dinner to one of the kids at St. Agnes. She’s like six and got her dinner taken away for something stupid. So, yeah… I took the sandwich.”

May didn’t say anything. She just nodded like it made sense.

And for some reason, that made Daisy’s throat close up.

After they ate, May pulled up to the side entrance of St. Agnes and put the car in park.

Daisy didn’t move. “Thanks for the grilled cheese,” she said eventually.

“Don’t make it a habit.”

“Of thanking people?”

May glanced at her sideways. “Of stealing sandwiches.”

That made Daisy laugh, short and surprised. 

“Call me next time. We’ll get grilled cheese again.” 

Daisy hesitated and didn’t respond. She just slipped out of the car and into the shadows. 

May waited until the door shut behind her before pulling away.

Chapter Text

The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the cracked sidewalk in front of Roosevelt High as May walked around the building, patrolling a perimeter two blocks south. The school bell rang and a tidal wave of students spilled down the school steps, their backpacks swinging, voices loud, phones glowing in their hands. And, near the edge of the crowd, May spotted a familiar bounce of dark hair.

Daisy.

She was walking between two kids who looked almost absurdly clean and polite: a girl with giant glasses and a clipboard sticking out of her backpack, and a boy with curly hair who tripped over a crack in the sidewalk. Daisy was snorting into her sleeve, and the other girl was giggling so hard she nearly choked.

May stopped at the bottom of the stairs just as Daisy spotted her. The teenager’s smile turned into a smirk and she lifted a hand in a lazy wave. May could read her lips as she told her friends, “I know her.”

The boy blinked at May’s uniform. The girl’s mouth fell open.

“You making trouble?” May asked dryly.

Daisy gave a mock salute. “Only the usual.”

The other girl took a step forward with the wide-eyed caution of someone approaching a tiger at a zoo. “You know a police officer? Like… know-know? In real life?”

“She arrested me once,” Daisy lied breezily. 

“What?” the girl gasped. “Oh my God. Daisy! I knew you were up to bad girl shenanigans! I said it, didn’t I say it, Fitz?”

The boy, Fitz (apparently), was still staring at May like she might handcuff him for jaywalking. “She literally just said it this morning,” he confirmed.

May raised an eyebrow. “Bad girl shenanigans?” 

The girl blanched. “Not in, like, a real criminal way! More like... Daisy just has this energy, you know? Like chaos. But… charming chaos. Very Robin Hood.”

May narrowed her eyes. “So she steals?”

“No!” the girl practically shouted. “No, no. She’s amazing. Brilliant, actually. Gets us out of every jam. Well, except the vending machine incident…”

“Jemma,” Daisy hissed, burying her face in her hands.

“Sorry! Anyway, she’s great,” Jemma finished in a rush.

May’s eyes slid to Daisy. She looked… younger like this, with her friends. The flush in her cheeks wasn’t shame or guilt, it was something gentler. And it made May realize: She’s just a kid. 

She was just a kid who made her friends laugh. A kid who stood up for those who needed help and probably got in trouble for sneaking snacks into class. A kid who carried so much weight in her eyes, but still had moments like this where she wasn’t fighting for anything. Just... walking home with her friends. 

May softened, just a little. “Well,” she said, pretending to glance at her watch. “I should probably get going. Don’t let her talk you into anything illegal.”

Jemma saluted. “Never! Well… not intentionally.”

May hid a smile. 

Daisy rolled her eyes. “I’ll see you around, Officer May.” 

“Stay out of trouble.”

“Can’t promise that.”

Chapter Text

It had been weeks since May had last seen Daisy. Sometimes May caught glimpses of her across the street from Roosevelt High, or ducking out of a bodega with a soda, or joking with her same friends from before. But always from a distance, always moving fast.

Daisy wasn’t at St. Agnes anymore. May had casually asked the nuns and learned that Daisy had been moved to a different foster placement a few neighborhoods over. It wasn’t uncommon. May knew the drill for kids like Daisy: overcrowded homes, short fuses, longer waitlists. Kids like Daisy got shuffled around until someone decided they were “too difficult,” then they would get dropped somewhere else.

It was 2am when the call came. Her phone buzzed against the nightstand, soft and persistent. May opened her eyes instantly – years of muscle memory trained her to wake at the first vibration. She squinted at the screen while her eyes adjusted to the glow.

Unknown Number.

She answered out of habit, voice low and alert. “This is May.”

She was met with a long pause. There was no noise on the other end except for the faint hum of street traffic somewhere distant. Then a voice came, dry and defensive and too small to hide the shake behind it. “I’m not in trouble or anything. Just… the guy I was staying with… he got drunk, and… it’s not a big deal, but I left. I’m outside a gas station.”

“Daisy,” May swung out of bed. 

“I didn’t know who else to…”

May was already grabbing her keys from the hook by the door. “What’s the cross street?”

The gas station was fifteen minutes away on an empty road. May barely stopped at the lights. When she pulled up, she saw Daisy sitting on the low concrete curb next to a rusty payphone with her arms wrapped tight around her knees. She looked like she was trying to disappear into her own hoodie – face shadowed and chin down. But even from a distance, May could see the tension in her shoulders. It wasn’t fear, exactly. It was more like defiance laced with a tiny bit of hope. That dangerous combination of a kid who didn’t trust kindness anymore, but still craved it. 

May parked and killed the engine. She got out but didn’t say anything, letting Daisy take the lead. The girl didn’t meet her eyes. She just stood slowly, wiped her hands down her jeans, and slid into the passenger seat without a word. 

“You want food or just sleep?” May asked finally. 

Daisy didn’t answer right away. Then, softly, “Sleep.”

May drove her to the overnight youth shelter she knew back in their neighborhood. She didn’t want Daisy to deal with CPS or a precinct or anywhere that might require paperwork tonight. Just a safe, clean place with a locked door and a cot. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for tonight. When they pulled up, May turned to her. “I trust this place, you’ll be safe tonight. You want me to come in with you?” 

Daisy shook her head, eyes still glued to the clenched fists in her lap. 

“Okay. You still have my number?” May asked.

Daisy nodded, barely.

“Then use it,” May said. “Next time, call sooner.”

Daisy hesitated. “I didn’t think you’d answer.”

May waited for her to look up so she could meet her eyes. “I will always answer.”

Daisy looked down again, but shoulders were looser now. Not relaxed, but not braced for impact anymore. 

After she went inside, May sat in the idling car for an extra minute longer, watching the door close and wondering when the next call would come.

Chapter Text

May was already on her second cup of coffee that morning. Sleep had become short and patchy again – her brain spinning on too many things she couldn’t talk about out loud. She was heading back to her desk when a familiar head of dark hair in the hallway caught her eye.

Daisy was leaning casually against the front desk, chatting with their receptionist like she owned the place. She spotted May and grinned – smug and lazy and absolutely unapologetic. “Well, well, well, Officer May. Looks like I found you.” 

May frowned as she approached the front desk. “How did you get in?”

“I told the lady downstairs we had an appointment.” Daisy shrugged. “Very official. Very legitimate. I could probably pass a background check if you don’t look too hard.”

“You have a record.”

Daisy shrugged. “It’s charming.”

May exhaled slowly, fighting the corner of her mouth that wanted to twitch up. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m meeting my case worker,” Daisy said, like it was obvious. “She wanted me to give a statement about what happened with the last house.” Her voice darkened slightly, then flattened again. “She’s late. Shocking.”

May jerked her chin toward the bullpen. “Come on. Don’t hover in the lobby like a stray.”

Daisy followed her through the hall like she had been there a hundred times already, slipping past officers and uniforms without blinking. When they reached May’s desk, she spun in a slow circle, taking it all in: the clean desktop, the perfectly aligned folders, the coffee mug with the chipped handle. 

“This is so much neater than I thought it’d be,” she muttered, then immediately started poking through the desk drawers. “You got any snacks?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Daisy.”

“Okay, okay jeez. I’m just appreciating your workspace.” She leaned against the desk and peered around. “Where are the donuts?”

“There are no donuts.”

And then, like divine timing or some cruel trick of fate, Coulson walked in through the side entrance with a brown paper box in hand. He gave May a look of startled amusement as he peered at the teenager lounging across May’s desk like she worked there. “Am I in the right universe, or…?”

May shot him a warning look.

Daisy lit up like she won a prize. “Please tell me those are donuts.”

Coulson looked at the box, then at May, then back at Daisy. “Uh… yes?”

“Thank you!” Daisy plucked the box right out of his hands, opened it like it contained treasure, picked a chocolate one, and took a giant bite with a blissful hum. “God, I love this country.”

He raised an eyebrow. “So… this is…?”

“Daisy,” May said dryly. “This is Phil Coulson. He works major cases.”

“Like FBI?” Daisy asked with her mouth full, chocolate donut caked in her teeth. She cocked her head to the side as she sized Coulson up and down. 

“We used to be,” he said with a small smile. “Now we just chase bad guys and I bring breakfast.”

Daisy gave him a thumbs-up. “I approve.”

They bantered for a few minutes. Daisy threw sarcasm like darts but Phil kept up with calm amusement. May stood between them silently, sipping her coffee with something suspiciously close to tolerance.

Then a frantic voice called from down the hall. “Daisy?! Daisy Johnson??” A woman with a frazzled bun and an overstuffed messenger bag stood in the doorway, flipping through a folder.

Daisy groaned. “That’s my cue.”

She shoved the rest of the donut into her mouth, licked sugar off her thumb, and waved lazily. “Nice meeting you, Phil. Get me some strawberry jam ones next time.” 

She breezed past them, and disappeared down the hallway. 

Phil turned slowly to May, eyebrows lifted. “So...”

May sipped her coffee.

“She’s not what I pictured when you said you were ‘keeping an eye on a kid.’”

“I never said that.”

“You did.” 

“I said she keeps showing up.”

“Uh-huh.” Phil grinned. “And you keep letting her.”

May didn’t answer.

“You know this is classic. The precinct’s ice queen finally picked up a puppy.”

“She’s not a puppy.”

“She’s a kid you found at a bodega in the middle of the night, and now you’re letting her spin in your office chair.” He chuckled, “It’s okay May, we all adopt one eventually.”

She glared at him again before adding more quietly, “She’s not a puppy. She’s… Daisy.”

Phil didn’t tease her for that. He just smiled gently. “Well she’s lucky.” 

May didn’t answer. 

Because they both knew Daisy would be back. And they both knew May would let her in.

Chapter Text

When Daisy showed up again, May wasn’t even surprised. It was a Friday afternoon, and the precinct was buzzing with the low-level chaos of officers finishing reports and prepping for the weekend rush. May was at her desk, focused on a stack of paperwork, when she caught sight of Daisy sauntering through the bullpen.

“What are you doing here?” May asked without looking up.

“Homework,” Daisy replied simply as she dropped her backpack on the floor and slid into the chair next to May’s desk. She pulled out a battered notebook and started scribbling, as though she hadn’t just walked into a police precinct like it was her personal library.

May raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

It became a routine before either of them could name it. Daisy started showing up at the precinct every few days. Casual – just a teenage girl wandering into a bullpen full of over-caffeinated officers like she belonged there. And somehow, she did.

May never told her to leave. Not once. She let Daisy loiter. She let the teenager fiddle with her pens and dig through her desk drawers for granola bars. She let her roll her eyes at boring precinct chatter and mutter jokes under her breath that May pretended not to hear (even when they were kind of funny). May never said it out loud, but she had the gut feeling that Daisy just needed somewhere to be. Somewhere that felt safe.

One Sunday afternoon, May walked into the bullpen to find Daisy already in her chair, balancing a brand new laptop open on her knees. The screen cast a bluish light over her face as her fingers danced across the keyboard.

May narrowed her eyes. “Where did you get that?”

Daisy didn’t even look up. “You’re late.”

“Answer the question.”

“I won it,” Daisy grinned smugly. “In a bet.”

May raised a brow.

“Well, okay, more like a challenge. A hacking challenge,” Daisy clarified, leaning back like a queen on her throne. “This cocky sophomore at NYU was running his mouth online, so I made him a little bet. If I cracked his encryption faster than he could crack mine, he’d give me his laptop.”

May stared at her.

“I cracked his in like seven minutes,” Daisy said with pride. “He didn’t even finish mine.”

“And then?”

“And then he… tried to punch me.”

May blinked.

“I ran,” Daisy added cheerfully. “Fast. But totally worth it, right? It’s got like thirty-two gigs of RAM.”

May didn’t smile; she filed it away. Smart. Impulsive. Possibly on fire at any given moment. And definitely going to get herself into trouble one day.

“Okay, show me.” 

Technical jargon spilled out of Daisy’s mouth, “...I already doubled the memory, swapped in a solid-state drive, patched the kernel to bypass the admin lockout, and rerouted the bootloader through a custom GRUB config so I could dual-boot a secure Linux distro. Oh, and I flashed the BIOS. Twice.”

May had no idea what she was talking about, but she knew skill when she saw it. “Not bad,” she said.

Daisy’s smile stretched ear to ear.

Over time, May noticed subtle changes in Daisy. Small shifts. Daisy’s energy seemed dimmer after she moved to a new foster home, but she didn’t say anything about it. Her sarcasm was still razor-sharp, but her posture changed. She held her shoulders just a little higher and the dark circles under her eyes were just a little more pronounced. She twitched in her sleep when she dozed off in the chair next to May’s desk, and flinched a little harder when someone shouted across the room.

But she never complained, so May didn’t ask. She didn’t want to push her; she just kept an eye on the girl more closely than ever.

One day, Daisy was unusually quiet. She sat at May’s desk with her chin propped on her hand, staring at her open notebook but not writing anything down. May noticed how her hoodie sleeves were pulled low over her wrists and she hadn’t touched her precious laptop that she kept locked in May’s desk drawer (for safekeeping) once all afternoon. 

“Alright, come on,” May said abruptly, standing up and grabbing her keys.

Daisy looked up, startled. “Where are we going?”

“You’re riding along with me today.”

“What?” Daisy blinked, half in disbelief. “Isn’t that, like, illegal?”

“Not if I sign a waiver,” May replied. “And you keep your mouth shut.”

Daisy grinned big, “Hell yeah.” 

The girl could barely contain her excitement as she sat in the front seat of May’s patrol car. Her eyes darted everywhere, soaking in every detail: the radio chatter, the way May’s hands rested on the wheel, the quiet authority in her posture.

“You’re so cool,” Daisy blurted out at one point.

May glanced at her sideways. “I’m just driving.”

“Yeah, but you’re doing it like a badass,” Daisy insisted. “Everyone listens to you. You walk into a room and they just… respect you.”

May didn’t respond, but something in her chest softened.

At sunset, they parked by the river near St. Agnes to finish her shift. The sun cast a shimmering golden light across the water. Daisy leaned her head against the window with a thoughtful expression. “I want to be like you when I grow up,” she said softly.

May glanced at her, surprised.

“You don’t take crap from anyone,” Daisy continued. “And you help people. That’s cool.”

“You don’t have to be like me, Daisy,” May said quietly, her words carrying weight. “You can be better.” 

Daisy smiled faintly at that and looked out at the river.

For a moment, they sat in silence and let the quiet hum of the city settle around them. And in that stillness, May realized just how much she cared for this sharp-tongued, bright-eyed kid who barged into her life and refused to leave.

Chapter Text

May was out of the city that day handling a federal asset transfer. Phil spotted Daisy at May’s desk before she spotted him.

“Well,” he said from the hallway, voice mild and amused. “If it isn’t our junior detective.”

Daisy turned, a smirk curling at her lips. “Present.”

“You do realize May’s not here, right?”

“Yeah, I know.” She leaned back in May’s chair like she owned it. “You’re my consolation prize.”

He laughed. “I’m flattered.”

Daisy never really liked adult men. Most of the foster dads she’s had were careless or cruel – handsy, mean, or silent. She learned to keep her distance. 

But Phil wasn’t like them. He was warm and calm in a way that felt real. He was kind, without being performative about it. He didn’t talk down to her, didn’t push when she curled up into her sarcasm. He saw her, sharp edges and all, and didn’t flinch.

She liked him. 

After his shift ended, he offered to grab dinner. “It’s what you guys do, right? May feeds you if you loiter long enough.”

“You know me,” Daisy said with an exaggerated stretch. “Never pass up a free grilled cheese.”

They went to the diner a few blocks away and sat across from each other in the booth. Their conversation was light, mostly just banter and mutual teasing. Daisy lamented about how “impossibly boring” her biology class was, and Phil swore up and down that his grilled cheese was better than these.

“She’s not good at pretending, you know,” Daisy said casually. “May.”

Phil blinked. “No?”

“She acts like she doesn’t care. Like she’s cold. But she’s not, you can tell.” Daisy looked down at her plate, pushing the fries around. “She pretends, but… she cares. She really, really cares.”

Phil smiled, a little sad. “You’re not wrong.”

Daisy glanced up. “Was she always like that?”

He hesitated, fingers drumming softly against the tabletop. “No. Not always.”

The diner buzzed around them as Phil sifted through his thoughts. His voice dropped to a more intimate tone, as if the weight of the past pulled it lower. “She used to laugh all the time,” he said. “She was bright. Loved pulling pranks. She once swapped out the entire academy's coffee supply with decaf just to mess with everyone. And she was brilliant. Quick. Could outshoot anyone at the range, outfight anyone in the gym. I’ve known her since we were in the FBI academy. Then we were on the same team for more than a decade.” 

Daisy listened, quiet now.

Phil’s expression shifted. “Everything changed with her last mission. It was supposed to be a coordinated takedown. Human trafficking ring in a warehouse outside Detroit. She was sent in undercover to get the layout, but… the comms failed. No signal. And she was stuck in there, all alone, with a building full of scared girls and a lot of very bad men.”

Daisy’s throat tightened.

“She didn’t wait. She took them all out. Fought her way through the entire building, moved those girls out room by room. She saved all of them. Except one.” He looked down at his hands. “When we finally got in, she was… sitting on the floor, holding the girl’s body. She didn’t speak for hours. Just… rocked her.”

Daisy didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. 

“She resigned the next week,” Phil continued. “Quit the FBI, cut everyone off. I went to her place every day for months. Just sat on her doorstep if she didn’t let me in. Brought her food. Usually we didn’t talk. Sometimes we did. 

“Eventually, she started letting me in. Then one day, she told me she was applying to the NYPD.” He smiled faintly. “So I followed her. She’s my best friend, and I’d do anything for her.”

Daisy was quiet for a long time. Her eyes burned, but she didn’t look away. “She saved those girls,” she said finally. “Even if… she couldn’t save all of them.”

He nodded. “She did.”

A comfortable silence settled between them. It felt reverent – bound by grief and respect and all the things they didn’t need to say out loud.

Daisy reached for another fry. “So you’re like… totally in love with her…”

Phil snorted. “That’s classified.” 

Chapter Text

Daisy’s new fosters, the Jenkins, barely tolerated her presence. Their apartment was cramped, dim, and always smelled faintly of alcohol and mildew. She didn’t have a room of her own, just a worn-out blanket on the sagging couch that dug into her spine. At night, the shouting would start as soon as the man started drinking. He liked to yell. Sometimes he liked to hit. She learned quickly not to be in the apartment when he got like that.

But she didn’t complain. It wasn’t the worst house she’s ever been in. Not by a long shot. Besides, she still got to go to her school, so she had Jemma and Fitz. And now, she had May. She couldn’t risk losing all of that. 

So she did the dishes, mopped the floors, kept her head down, and nodded along when the woman muttered about how they were “doing her a favor.” She did her homework at May’s desk, came home late at night, and left early in the mornings so they wouldn’t notice her. It wasn’t ideal, but it was survivable.

One night, the man was drunker than usual. His words slurred and his steps staggered. Daisy tried to slip out of the room to stay invisible, but this time he followed her. 

“You little bitch,” he muttered, cornering her against the wall. “Always sulking around like some goddamn rat. Don’t think I don’t see you, looking down on us. Thinking you’re better than us.”

“I’m not,” Daisy said quickly, voice tight. “I swear, I’m not.”

“Ungrateful freeloading mutt!” His hand shot out and snatched her upper arm in an iron grip. 

Daisy tried to twist away. “Stop!”

His grip tightened enough to bruise as he jerked her closer. 

“Sto–” 

His open hand slapped her across the face before she could even finish the word. Her ears immediately started ringing and she stumbled back into the wall as he pushed her away.

As soon as he released her, she ran. 

Without looking back, she bolted out the door, down the stairs, across the street, and into the dark night. She ran until her lungs burned. Her heart pounded in her chest so hard it hurt. She didn’t even realize she didn’t have her jacket until the early fall chill ran down her spine. She cursed herself at the realization: her backpack was still sitting by the couch, so she didn’t have any money to use a payphone. 

The city grew quiet as the night slipped past midnight. Her legs ached from wandering for hours, her stomach was eating itself out of hunger, and her eyes stung with exhaustion. She tried to find a quiet place to sleep but every alley looked too dark. Too dangerous. Too exposed.

And then she saw it: a sleek and clean car, practically glowing under the streetlamp. She glanced around, just to be sure, before she tried the door handle. It was unlocked.

Hot-wiring it was easy. A foster brother taught her long ago how to crack an ignition faster than most people could open a can of beans. She carefully eased the car a few blocks away and parked it in the shadowed mouth of a narrow alley that was hidden just-enough. As the engine died, she triple-checked the locks, curled up in the front seat, pulled her hoodie over her head, and passed out.

Phil was already pacing the precinct floor the next morning when May arrived. “She’s gone,” he told her, panic edged in his voice. “Someone stole Lola.”

May arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure you didn’t just forget where you parked?”

Phil gave her a look. “You think I could forget where I parked my father’s restored ‘62 Corvette?”

She sighed. “Let’s go find her.”

They canvassed the neighborhood and questioned anyone who might have seen a bright red vintage car moving around at two in the morning. It was nearly nine when they finally turned a corner and spotted her, parked neatly in a dead-end alley. 

Phil’s face lit up. “Lola!” he cried out in relief.

May, on the other hand, drew her weapon. “Wait. There’s someone inside.”

They approached the car slowly as they couldn’t make out who they were dealing with through the foggy windows. Giving Phil a nod, May yanked open the door and hauled the figure out of the front seat. The person – small and curled up in a hoodie – flailed and fell back, eyes wide and confused from sleep.

May froze. “Daisy?”

Daisy blinked at them groggily. Then her face twisted into something stubborn and defensive. “What the hell? I was sleeping!”

May’s jaw tightened. “You were sleeping…? You stole a car.”

“I borrowed it,” Daisy muttered.

“That’s a felony,” May snapped, an unexplainable panic building in her chest. “You don’t just borrow someone’s vintage Corvette!”

Phil crouched beside the car, running a hand along the door frame and checking for damage. “She’s fine,” he muttered. “No scratches. Engine’s clean.”

Daisy brushed herself off, not meeting May’s eyes. “I was just tired. I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

“That’s not an excuse. What if this wasn’t Coulson’s car? You would’ve been screwed!”

“Why do you even care?” Daisy’s voice cracked a little, but she masked it with a scoff. “You think this is the worst thing I’ve ever done? Just give me the citation and be done with it.”

May stared at her for a long moment before pulling out her notepad and promptly writing her up. 

“Melinda…” Phil tried, but May shot him a glare that shut him up immediately. 

Daisy’s expression slowly hardened as she watched May write the note. When May handed her the slip, Daisy all but snatched it from her hand. “Thanks for the ride,” she muttered before throwing up her hood and storming down the street. 

Phil walked up slowly beside May as they watched her go. “You were pretty hard on her.”

“She stole your car.”

“She slept in my car,” he corrected. “And we don’t even know why.”

May kicked herself internally as she stared down the street where Daisy disappeared. She was so angry she didn’t even ask. “I’ll talk to her,” she said finally. 

Phil looked over. “You really want to save this one, don’t you?”

She didn’t answer.

Chapter Text

Two weeks went by and May still hadn’t talked to Daisy. The girl was straight up ignoring her – no calls, no visits. May even went to Roosevelt High one afternoon, but Daisy turned on her heel as soon as she spotted May. The message was clear: Leave me alone. 

So May tried to tell herself she wasn’t worried, but she absolutely was. She knew teenagers like Daisy didn’t go quiet unless something was wrong.

The air in the apartment was already thick and stale with alcohol when Daisy crept into the apartment. She tried to close the door as quietly as possible, wincing when her sneakers squeaked slightly against the warped tile. It was past curfew, and the kitchen light was off.

That wasn’t a good sign. 

She only made it a few careful steps forward when his voice sliced through the dark. “Where the hell have you been, girl.” 

“I was at the library,” she lied quickly. “Group project. I lost track of time.” It wasn’t true; she just didn’t want to come back. The library closed hours ago, but she still walked aimlessly around the neighborhood killing time she couldn’t afford to spend. 

“Bullshit,” he growled. The fridge door creaked open and closed as he grabbed another beer.

Daisy backed up a step. “I’ll do the dishes now, I know I forgot–”

“The dishes?” He came into view, his bulky body taking up most of the doorway. His eyes were glazed over, already red-rimmed and feral. “You think the dishes are the fucking problem?”

She swallowed hard, heart hammering in her chest. “I’m sorry.”

He moved faster than she expected. The empty beer bottle shattered against the wall as he chucked it at her head. She shrieked, ducking instinctively, but it was too late. A shard sliced her temple and blood immediately started dripping down the side of her face.

“You think ‘sorry’ is enough?” He grabbed the front of her hoodie and dragged her into the hallway. “You think you can break the rules and still live under my roof?” 

She didn't even remember the first blow clearly – just the sensation of the hit as he backhanded her across the face: hot, sudden, and violent. Her body crumpled instantly and her skull cracked against the tile floor. 

“You think you can just waltz in here late?” he roared above her, his spit hitting her cheek. His boot crashed into her side. “You think you’re so special? Like we owe you something?”

His heavy boots kept kicking her, hard and wild. Her ribs exploded with pain as she tried to protect her face and her stomach, curling up tight into a ball. 

“You little piece of shit!” He accentuated the last word with a stomp, and his boot caught her forearm as she tried to shield her face.

A sickening crack split the air, louder than her own cry. The sound tore through her body before the pain did: white-hot and jagged, slamming through her bones like fire. The scream that ripped out of her throat startled even her own ears, raw and animal.

He froze above her at the sound of bone snapping, the rage in his face faltering. Bones weren’t supposed to make sounds like that. “Fuck…” His voice dropped as he staggered back a step. “Goddamn it…”

She whimpered and cradled her arm close to her chest, but he wouldn’t look at her. His muttered curses grew more and more panicked before he finally turned away, stumbled down the hall, and slammed a door behind him – leaving her broken and bleeding on the floor.

She couldn’t move for what felt like hours, breath wheezing and vision blurry with blood and tears. Her left arm hung limp. She couldn’t even feel her fingers. Her ribs screamed every time she tried to shift. One eye kept twitching with bursts of sharp pain. Finally she dragged herself – inch by inch, using her good arm – into a corner of the hallway. Each scrape across the floor made her clench her jaw tighter to keep from making a sound. If he heard her again, he might come back. And she didn’t know if she could survive another round. 

She stayed in the corner all night – curled up tight, trembling in the shadows. The apartment was silent except for the faint hum of the broken refrigerator fan and the occasional drip of blood from her temple ticking softly onto the floor. She didn’t sleep. She just stared into the dark, counting the seconds until they blurred into hours and the black outside the window began to turn gray.

By some miracle, she got up when morning came. Her legs wobbled under her, but she made it to the bathroom. She carefully peeled off her clothes, each motion stabbing pain through her chest. She found an old ACE bandage in the bottom of a drawer and tried her best to wind it around her broken arm, but her fingers were trembling too much to tie it tight. The cheap foundation she plastered over her bruised jawline didn’t really cover the purple swelling, but it dulled the edges enough. Her dark bangs covered the worst of the cut on her temple. She practiced a half-smile in the mirror, but it came out feeble and cracked at the corners.

When she stepped outside, the morning air felt too fresh. Too clean. She walked slowly, her posture hunched and her breathing shallow. With each step, she told herself over and over that she could do this. She could make it through the day. 

She just had to survive.

The school hallway was a blur – too bright and too loud. Right away, everyone was staring.

“Yo, what happened to your face?”

“Did she get jumped?”

“Jesus, she looks like she was hit by a car.”

Jemma and Fitz didn’t even pretend to hide their horror.

“Bloody hell,” Fitz wheezed. “What happened?” 

Daisy tried to smile like she practiced in the bathroom mirror, but it came out twisted. “I fell off the skateboard,” she mumbled. “Landed wrong.”

“You don’t skate,” Fitz said flatly.

Daisy shrugged with her good shoulder. “Guess now we know why.”

Jemma stepped closer. “Why are you holding your arm like it’s… Daisy, is it broken?”

“No,” she said too quickly. “Just sprained. It’s fine. I just… I didn’t sleep great.” That, of course, was a lie. Her arm was swelling inside her hoodie now, fingers buzzing and numb. Every breath cut into her ribs like glass. 

“This isn’t sleep deprivation,” Jemma said with a trembling voice. “You’re hurt. You’re really hurt.”

She turned away from them to focus on her locker instead. “I’m fine. Just drop it.” 

FitzSimmons exchanged worried looks and left her alone. But before the first bell even rang, Ms. Weaver came up to her locker. Right away, she knew Jemma must have said something to their biology teacher (the English girl’s favorite teacher, of course). 

Ms. Weaver bent down slightly to meet her eyes. “Daisy, what happened to your arm?”

“I fell,” Daisy said quickly. “It’s nothing.”

Ms. Weaver’s face didn’t change. She didn’t buy it. “We’re going to the nurse.”

“I’m fine.”

“That wasn’t a suggestion.”

The second the school nurse saw Daisy, she stood up from her desk. “Oh, honey,” she said softly. “Come here. Sit.”

Daisy obeyed numbly.

The nurse gently pulled back her hoodie and gasped. “Jesus.”

The bandage she desperately tried to wrap an hour earlier was already falling off, revealing the purple and misshapen forearm. Her fingers were mottled and cold.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” the nurse asked, reaching for the phone.

“I… I can’t go to the hospital. Please,” Daisy begged, voice trembling. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re in shock.”

“I just…” the tears were coming now. “Please… please don’t call anyone.”

The nurse ignored her and made the call for an ambulance. She kept her voice calm and professional, but Daisy could hear the urgency.

“Your ribs too?” she asked, gently reaching for Daisy’s side. Daisy cried out when she brushed over the tender bruising, still hidden under her shirt. The nurse’s eyes looked sad. “Oh, honey. Okay, they’ll be here soon.”

The ride in the ambulance was another blur, this time of sirens and questions. Most of which she didn’t answer. At the hospital, they wheeled her in under bright fluorescent lights. Someone clipped a monitor to her finger and someone else inserted an IV. They started cutting her hoodie off before she could object.

“Suspected radial fracture. Swelling in the forearm.” 

“Facial contusions. Possible rib fractures.”

The words floated around her like they were about someone else as she zoned in her stare on the ceiling. 

A doctor leaned over her. “Daisy, can you tell me what happened?”

“I fell,” she said flatly.

The doctor sighed, but didn’t argue. “Okay. We’re going to take care of you.”

They sent her for X-rays. Her arm was broken. One of her ribs was cracked, another bruised. She needed stitches above her brow. By the time they wheeled her into a room and set her arm into a cast, hours had passed. And no one had come. 

A nurse walked in to update her chart. “You didn’t list an emergency contact, sweetheart. Who should we call?”

Daisy stared at the empty line dumbly. 

Who could she write? Her fosters? She laughed sardonically at the thought. 

Her caseworker would just get annoyed. She was always annoyed with Daisy. 

Unbidden, she thought of May and her heart squeezed painfully. 

She won’t come, Daisy thought achingly. Not after Daisy stole Coulson’s car. Not after Daisy ignored her for the last two weeks. May would probably roll her eyes and write Daisy off as too much trouble. 

But still, her hand moved out of sync with her brain. 

Emergency Contact: Melinda May

She handed the clipboard back to the nurse and turned her face towards the wall, fully prepared to be disappointed.

Because no one came for girls like her.

Chapter Text

Melinda May wasn’t the panicking type, but her heart was hammering by the time she reached the hospital parking lot. The name Daisy Johnson had clawed its way into her chest the second the nurse said it over the phone. 

It had been two weeks – two long, silent weeks since their last interaction. And May hadn’t heard a word from the girl: not a sarcastic quip, not a phone call, not even a stolen granola bar or a smug grin. Nothing.

But now Daisy was in the hospital. And Daisy put her name down.

That detail stuck with May more than she wanted to admit.

The hospital was too cold, filled with too many people pretending like they weren’t in pain. The receptionist looked up as May ran to the front desk. “Can I help–?”

“Daisy Johnson. She listed me as her emergency contact.”

She flipped through the binder. “She’s in the emergency wing. Room 106.”

May moved fast down the hallway, her gut heavy with worry. Room numbers blurred past until she finally found the one she was looking for: 106. Suddenly, she stopped short, her hand hovering just shy of the doorknob. For a breath, she let herself feel the tremor of fear in her chest before she steadied herself and knocked. 

A voice croaked from the inside, small and unsure: “Come in.”

May pushed the door open, stepped in… 

… and stopped dead.

Daisy was barely recognizable.

Her left arm was locked in a thick cast, suspended in a sling against her chest. Her face was a patchwork of bruises: yellow blooming under her eye, purple spiderwebbing along her jaw, stitches above her temple. 

The girl’s face instantly crumpled when she saw who it was. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as her eyes filled with tears. “I… I didn’t think you would come.”

May’s throat tightened. She knew her usual stone-faced calm had fallen away; she could feel the way her eyebrows knit in worry. “What happened?” she asked softly, stepping to Daisy’s side.

“I… I didn’t have anyone to call,” Daisy stammered. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t be mad anymore about the car thing and…” She broke off, her voice cracking. “But I get it if you are. I just–”

“Stop. I don’t care about that. Are you okay?”

Daisy gave the same shrug she always gave when she wanted to lie. “I don't know..." 

May gently brushed Daisy’s bangs out of her face, careful of the stitches. “Who did this to you?”

The question hung in the air like a knife. May forced herself to stay still, to keep her expression neutral. But watching Daisy shrink under the weight of the question made her chest tighten with an ache she couldn’t even describe. 

“My foster dad,” Daisy whispered eventually. “I came home late and he was drunk and... I didn’t call anyone because…” She swallowed. “That’ll just make it worse.”

Rage burned in May’s chest like acid. She’s seen injuries like this before, of course. She couldn’t even count the number of reports she’s written over the course of her career in law enforcement on kids who didn’t make it out in time. 

But this wasn’t just any kid. This was Daisy. 

“You’re not going back there,” she said steely. 

Tears spilled over as Daisy pulled her knees up (as much as her bruised ribs would allow anyway) and turned her face into the pillow. “It’s the same every time, May,” she whispered. “They always say I’m too loud, or I’m too difficult. Or I get in trouble and I make them mad and then they hurt me and throw me away. Maybe that’s all I’m good for.” 

“Hey. No.” May touched her shoulder, solid and reassuring. “You are not the problem. What he did… what any of them did – that’s on them. Not you. You hear me? There’s nothing about you that needs fixing. You did nothing wrong.” 

“I’ve been in, like, thirteen homes,” Daisy mumbled through her tears. “My case worker will just get mad at me. I’m fifteen. No one wants a teenager, especially not one with a record and a mouth and–”

“Just because they don’t see your worth doesn’t mean it’s not there,” May said. “I see it.”

Daisy sniffled. “What?”

“You’re smart. And funny. And stubborn as hell. And you matter. I’m calling your caseworker. This ends now.”

“No, don’t,” Daisy begged. “Please. Just let me… just let me be quiet about it. They’ll just move me again and it might be even worse next time.”

Even worse? May cursed internally. “You deserve so much better, Daisy.” 

The girl’s eyes filled with disbelief, like the words didn’t even mean anything to her. 

May sighed and gently nudged her over. “Move.” 

“What?” 

May didn’t repeat herself. She just kicked off her boots and climbed into the narrow hospital bed beside Daisy, wrapping a careful arm around the girl’s shoulder. It took less than a second for Daisy to scoot closer and curl into her side. She nestled her face into May’s shoulder and let out a soft, shuddering breath. 

After Daisy finally fell asleep, May slipped into the hallway and pulled out her phone.

“Alisha Whitley,” a voice answered. “Who is this?”

“This is Officer Melinda May. I’m calling about Daisy Johnson. She’s in the hospital.”

“Oh,” Alisha replied flatly before audibly sighing. “What did she do this time?”

May’s jaw clenched. “She didn’t do anything. She’s got a broken arm, fractured ribs, and stitches across her face. Her foster father hurt her.”

“She says that a lot,” Alisha replied evenly. “You know she has a history, right? Multiple false reports, three runaway charges, got mixed up in drugs last year–”

“She’s not lying. She didn’t run.”

The caseworker didn’t reply. 

May pushed forward. “She can’t go back there. I’m filing a formal report, and I will be opening an investigation into the house. She needs to be removed from that placement immediately.”

“We can send a welfare check to the house–”

“I’m not asking,” May cut her off coldly. “I’m telling you.”

Daisy hated being in the hospital. The nurses tried to make it seem like a win when they wheeled her out of the emergency wing and into a regular room the next morning. But it was still the same. The walls still pressed in, in the same way. Too white. Too clean. Too much silence broken by machines that never stopped humming.

She still didn’t know how to sleep here. She hadn’t known the last time either. Every time she closed her eyes for more than a minute – she was back on the floor again, ribs splintering under a boot, her breath ripped out of her like it didn’t belong to her at all. The sheets tangled around her legs became hands holding her down. Even blinking too long felt dangerous. 

The painkillers dulled the edges, but couldn’t touch the weight pressing on her chest or the ache of loneliness deep in her bones. Or even the memory of months spent in a bed just like this one, curtains pulled tight to block out a world that had kept moving without her. 

So she counted the hours instead of sleeping. By late afternoon, her throat ached from disuse, and her good hand kept fidgeting with the IV tape just to remind herself she was still here, still tethered. Waiting for something. Anything.

Just after 5pm, the door finally opened… and there she was: May. 

Daisy blinked hard, relief hitting her like a second wave of pain.

May stepped into the room, still in her uniform, her face as unreadable as always. Her hands were full and the tote bag slung over her shoulder was awkwardly over-packed. 

“You came back.” The words spilled out before Daisy could stop herself. 

“Of course I did,” May said simply, like it was never even a question. “Brought you some stuff.”

Daisy tried to laugh, but it came out crooked and small. 

From the bag, May pulled out an old hoodie with the cuffs stretched and worn. “It’s mine. Don't make it weird.”

Then came a large ziplock bag of snacks: gummy worms, red vines, granola bars, a sleeve of Oreos. Then a paperback with the spine so broken it was practically folded in half: The Count of Monte Cristo. “Classic revenge story,” May said. “Figured you would appreciate the genre.”

Daisy took the hoodie in her good arm and held it close, burying her face in its softness. It smelled faintly of laundry detergent and jasmine – comfort, stitched into the fabric. "Thank you," she mumbled. It sounded too small for everything May did for her. For everything she was still doing.

Night fell slowly as the soft blue of early evening turned to gray, then finally to dark. Nurses came and went. Dinner was a tray of something pretending to be chicken. Daisy picked at it. May told her she would bring some real food tomorrow. 

Daisy started to fade as the clock pushed past ten, finally succumbing to the pain meds. Her limbs began to twitch with exhaustion and muscle memory, as if her body couldn’t forget the way it had tensed and recoiled. She fell asleep once, but then bolted upright thirty minutes later gasping for air. Her eyes darted wildly around the room and landed on May, who was already reaching for her shoulder. 

“You’re safe,” May said, voice low and steady. “You’re in the hospital. He’s not here.”

Daisy nodded and sank back down into the pillow, but her fingers were still trembling.

May hesitated and then took Daisy’s uninjured hand into hers. Her grip was firm. Real and present. 

“Why are you still here?” Daisy whispered, her throat was tight. “It’s late.”

“I’m off shift.”

“Still. You didn’t have to come.”

May looked at her for a long moment, her expression still unreadable but softer than usual. “I wanted to come,” she said.

Daisy turned her face away, blinking hard. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Do what?”

“This. Be around someone who… stays.” She gripped May’s hand tighter. “Usually I just get moved again. Or kicked out. Or forgotten.”

May didn’t respond right away. She just brushed her thumb slowly across the back of Daisy’s hand. “You don’t have to do anything,” May said finally. “You just have to heal.”

The silence hung for a beat too long before Daisy finally turned to look at her, eyes red and glassy. “Everyone leaves,” she whispered, barely audible.

May looked back, her own eyes dark and steady. “I’m not everyone.”

Daisy didn’t speak again, but she let herself close her eyes, comforted by the warmth of a hand that didn’t let go. And this time, when the nightmare clawed at the edges of her sleep, it didn’t win. 

Because this time, someone stayed.

The precinct was quiet in that strange, in-between way that only hit well after midnight. The bullpen was empty, making the hum of the overhead fluorescent lights buzz like mosquitoes in the silence. 

May hadn’t moved in over ten minutes, not that she was counting. Her eyes stayed locked on the report in front of her and the monitor glared back at her, the words stark and clinical on the screen:

Minor sustained a transverse fracture of the left ulna, likely from blunt-force trauma. Extensive contusions on the face and torso. Rib fracture, suspected from repeated kicking. Minor arrived via mandated call from school’s medical personnel. Reported abuse from foster parent following a curfew violation.

May’s hand clenched the mouse so hard it clicked under her fingers.

The report didn’t say what Daisy looked like in the hospital bed: too small and too quiet, eyes flicking to the door every time it creaked like she expected him to charge through it. It didn’t mention the sound she made when May asked her, "Who did this to you?” – like the breath had to be clawed out of her lungs to answer that question.

It didn’t say any of that. It just stated facts – numbers and statements that stripped the pain into bullet points. May didn’t used to hate this part of the job. She used to like that it was clean and procedural. She used to like that she could stay distant. But Daisy made it personal without even trying.

Exhaustion crawled down her spine as she leaned back in her chair. Her gaze shifted to the case folder on her desk, filled with statements and medical records and photographs she didn’t have the stomach to look at twice.

Phil didn’t say anything as he walked in and set a mug of coffee next to her elbow. “You came back so late,” he said softly, like it wasn’t a surprise.

May didn’t look at him. “I need to finish the paperwork.”

He took the seat next to her. “That’s not why you’re still here.”

She didn’t answer.

“How is she?”

May’s voice was lower than usual. “She’s in pain, but she’s fighting through it.”

“Like someone else I know.”

She shot him a look, sharp and warning, but Coulson didn’t flinch.

Instead, he nodded toward the file. “You’ve read that five times.”

“I want to make sure it's airtight. The last thing she needs is for this to fall apart in court.”

He nodded. “You know… it’s okay if this one gets under your skin.”

“She’s just a kid.”

“Yeah, but… she’s not just a kid,” Coulson said quietly. “She’s your kid. At least that’s the way you’re looking at her.”

May didn’t reply.

“You’ve taken bruised-up kids to the hospital before. You’ve filled out dozens of these reports. But you didn’t stay up all night with them. You didn’t bring them snacks and hoodies and ancient paperback novels.”

May exhaled sharply through her nose. “You spying on me, Coulson?”

“I’m observant.”

She hesitated as her fingers traced the seam of the folder. “She's... smart. Too smart. And sharp. She cuts with it, like she’s daring the world to push back. She reminds me of someone I used to know.”

Coulson waited; he knew better than to push.

Finally, she said it. “She reminds me of me.”

If that surprised him, he didn’t let it show. 

“Not the same story,” May added. “I didn’t go through what she did. I had parents who loved me, teachers who cared. But... that fire. That stubbornness. That need to never let anyone see you weak.” She paused before continuing, “She wears it like armor. Like me.”

Phil’s voice softened. “And that scares you?”

“It terrifies me.” She pushed the file away, as if the weight of it was finally too much. “She’s not just a victim. She’s not just a case. She’s a girl who has been let down by every adult in her life, over and over. And now she’s looking at me like I’m supposed to be different.”

“You are different.”

May looked up at him and her composure cracked, just a little. “I don’t know if I can be what she needs.”

Coulson’s voice was as calm and firm as ever. “You already are.”

May didn’t answer, but her jaw eased. She slid the case file into the completed stack. But she wasn’t done, not by a long shot. 

Chapter Text

St. Agnes always looked a little haunted in the late fall. The ancient brick walls loomed heavy in the dusk, surrounded by bare and gray trees that have watched too many forgotten children grow into forgotten adults. It always creeped May out a little, but she hadn’t seen Daisy since she dropped her off a few days ago after her hospital discharge. She gave Daisy a burner phone to use so she could call her anytime, but the girl went dark again. For the last few days, the girl hadn’t responded to any texts – not even give a sarcastic thumbs-up in response to May’s check-ins.

That was why she was here now, on her one night off this week, dressed down in jeans and her leather jacket. Her boots echoed quietly up the staircase that led to the rooftop after Sister Beatrice muttered under her breath that the girl was “probably on the damn roof again.”

The rusty door creaked loudly as May pushed it open, but Daisy didn’t look up. She was sitting cross-legged on a threadbare blanket, her cast resting in her lap, surrounded by a silent flock of paper cranes scattered around her. There were dozens of cranes in all different colors – made from magazine clippings, notebook paper, a few glossy bits of packaging, receipts – all folded with aching precision. 

May stepped closer. The air was crisper up here, the kind of cold that nipped at your fingers and stiffened sleeves. “Shouldn’t you be resting?” she asked.

Daisy startled slightly, then shrugged with her good shoulder. “Can’t sleep. Thought I’d do something with my hands. Well… hand, I guess.”

“You always fold paper birds when you’re avoiding someone?”

“Only when I’m avoiding myself too.”

May noticed how the girl didn’t meet her eyes. “You’re not answering my texts,” she said evenly.

Daisy kept folding, her movements were slow and meticulous. Her fingers stumbled awkwardly with the cast, but she pushed through with practiced stubbornness. “Didn’t have anything to say,” Daisy mumbled. “I know you’re probably… annoyed at me.”

“For what?”

“For needing you.” It came out too raw. Daisy flinched subtly, like she said something shameful.

May didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing. Instead, she crouched and picked up a small blue paper, and ripped it into a square. She turned it over in her fingers.

Daisy hesitated before sharing, “I read that if you fold a thousand cranes, you get a wish. It’s probably dumb, but…”

“It’s not dumb,” May said as she started folding. The first crease was a little crooked; her hands weren’t as practiced as they used to be when she was young. 

“You know how to fold them?” Daisy asked, surprised.

“My grandmother taught me. A long time ago.”

Daisy nodded, watching the way the paper whispered between May’s fingers. “I know it won’t fix anything,” Daisy said, voice low. “But I thought maybe if I folded enough… maybe the universe will finally…  listen to me.”

May didn’t look up. “What are you wishing for?”

Daisy hesitated again. Then, just as the wind quieted and the city seemed to lean in just to listen, she whispered: “To be wanted. Like… for real. Not just because someone’s paid to feed me, or check a box to make sure I don’t end up dead.”

May didn’t respond right away. She finished the crane in her hands and set it down beside Daisy’s. It was a little crumpled and imperfect, its wings uneven. But it stood. 

“That’s not a wish, Daisy,” May said softly. “That’s a right.”

Daisy blinked, like the words didn’t quite register at first. Her mouth opened, then closed again. Her eyes were shining but she didn’t wipe them.

May sat beside her without asking, mirroring her criss-cross position. They didn’t say much after that. They just folded, one bird at a time. 

The rain was coming down in sheets that night, cold and relentless, soaking through clothing in seconds. It was already past midnight when May finally clocked out and got into her car to drive home. Her shift was supposed to end hours ago, but paperwork and a backed-up intake log kept her late. She was halfway home when she saw a lone figure huddled under the flickering streetlamp at a bus stop. 

It was Daisy: completely soaked through, her hoodie clinging to her like a second skin. Her shoulders were curled in tight, legs pulled up on the bench like she was trying to fold herself out of existence.

May pulled over without thinking. Rain slapped against the car roof in thick percussive waves as she rolled down the window. “Get in,” she called out over the roaring rain. 

Daisy didn’t move at first. She just blinked at May through her wet lashes. Her big brown eyes looked hollow with something older than fifteen. “May, I’m fine–”

“Get in,” May repeated, firmer this time. “No questions.”

Daisy stood slowly, her cast still awkward against her side. She didn’t have a bag or an umbrella or even a jacket despite the November chill. All she had was her threadbare hoodie and her defiance wrapped around her like armor. She slid into the passenger seat without a word.

The drive was quiet. May didn’t push and Daisy didn’t explain. But somewhere between one red light and the next, the defiance faded into exhaustion.

May’s apartment was everything Daisy imagined it would be: clean lines, dim lighting, and not a thing out of place. It smelled faintly like jasmine and lemon cleaner. There was no clutter, no family photos on the walls. Daisy hovered in the doorway like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to breathe inside.

May hung up her own jacket, then turned to beckon the girl inside. “Shoes off. The shower’s down the hallway. There’s extra towels in the cabinet. Take your time.”

Daisy nodded mutely and disappeared down the hall.

The water ran for a long time. When Daisy finally emerged again, hair damp and skin pink from scrubbing, she was wearing a towel and the quiet look of someone unsure where she belonged. May handed her a pair of clean sweatpants and a soft hoodie. 

Daisy blinked at it. “Thanks.”

They sat on the couch, and May set two mugs of tea between them. Daisy curled into one end, hoodie sleeves hanging well past her hands. May sat at the other, calm but alert. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” Daisy finally said. “And I just… needed to get out of St. Agnes for a bit. I didn’t know it was going to rain like that.” 

May didn’t say anything. 

Daisy took a sip of her tea and stared down at the steam. “My ribs don’t hurt that much anymore,” she murmured, almost to herself. “My arm’s itchy. Think that means it’s healing.”

May nodded. “That’s good.”

It was silent again for a while before Daisy finally said quietly: “I looked at myself in the mirror, just now. First time since the hospital.”

May didn’t say anything; she just waited.

“I thought I would hate it. Hate the way I looked. But... I dunno. I didn’t. I looked strong. Like I made it through something.”

May’s gaze softened. “You did.”

Daisy didn’t look up, just nodded slowly. “I don’t want to go back to St. Agnes.”

“I know.”

“I’m tired of everything being temporary.”

May set her tea down. “You can stay here tonight.”

Daisy looked up, wide-eyed. Her voice was very small. “Just tonight?”

May hesitated. “One night at a time.”

When Daisy finally curled up under the covers on the guest bed, May’s hoodie still swallowing her frame, she looked even younger than she usually did. May turned off the lights and stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching the rise and fall of the girl’s chest wordlessly. 

“Thanks for coming to get me,” Daisy whispered softly before May closed the door. 

May couldn’t explain the ache in her chest. “Always.”

After that, May let Daisy stay some nights. It wasn’t an official arrangement – they didn’t have any discussions about it. May just added a toothbrush to the bathroom counter and let Daisy claim her hoodies as her own. Daisy was still going to school and was still technically placed at St. Agnes. But some nights, after May took her out for dinner, she didn’t go back. And May didn’t ask her to.

One night, Daisy was curled up on the couch with the blanket around her shoulders, flipping through some dumb superhero movie with the sound on low. She wasn’t really watching. May sat next to her on the couch, a case file open but unread in her lap. She hadn't turned a page in ten minutes. She was waiting. 

The silence between them wasn’t tense. But it was weighted. It had been building for days and May knew what was coming. She just didn’t know when Daisy would let herself break.

Daisy shifted, pulling the blanket tighter around her. “Can I ask you something?” she asked May softly. 

May looked up. “Of course.”

“Do you ever think about your worst night?” Daisy’s voice wavered but she pushed through. “Like… not just remember it, but… actually feel it? Like it’s happening all over again, even when it’s not?” 

May didn’t answer right away. She closed the file and set it aside. “Yeah,” she said at last. “Sometimes it sneaks up on you. You think you’re fine and then… it’s there again. In your chest. In your breath.”

Daisy nodded like that was exactly what she meant. She looked down at her cast. The bruises on her face had faded to yellow-green ghosts and her ribs were healing, but the pain hadn’t left. 

“I’ve never told anyone about…” she swallowed. “Not all of it. Not even when I went to the hospital. I didn’t want to sound dramatic. Or like I was trying to get attention.”

May’s jaw clenched, but she said nothing. She just let Daisy keep going.

The girl looked up at her, eyes were glassy but she wasn't crying. “I didn’t think anyone would believe me. Alisha always gets so annoyed at me when she has to move me again. She thinks that I cause the drama.”

Silence settled between them again, raw and heavy.

When it came, May’s voice was low and steady, laced with rage held in check only for Daisy’s sake. “You didn’t deserve that. Not any of it.”

Daisy let out a shuddering breath. “I know. I mean… I’m trying to know. But it’s hard. When that stuff happens enough times, you start to think… maybe it’s me. I’m the common denominator.”

“That’s not true. And they’re wrong. You’re not broken. You’re not difficult. You’re not a burden.”

Daisy laughed bitterly. “You sure about that?”

“I’ve seen burdens, Daisy. You’re not one of them.”

Daisy looked down again, like she didn’t quite believe it. Like she wanted to, but wasn’t sure how.

May folded her arms and stared at the rain streaking the window. “You’re just a kid. You deserve to heal. So… take it one day at a time. Let people in, even when it’s scary.” She paused. “And you can let yourself need things.”

“What if I need too much?” Daisy’s voice was barely audible. 

“You won’t.”

“What if I already do?”

May turned to her, meeting her gaze head-on. “Then I’ll deal with it.”

Daisy’s breath hitched. She blinked fast, but a tear still slipped down before she could wipe it away. “You don’t have to fix me.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“Then why are you still here?”

May hesitated, then decided to just say the thing she knew was true but she still hadn’t said yet. “Because I care about you.”

Daisy looked at her like she’d misheard.

“I see you,” May continued. “I see how hard you’re trying. I see your strength. I see the parts that are still healing. It doesn’t scare me.”

Daisy turned toward her slowly, curling in on herself a little like she was afraid this might all be a dream. “You think I’ll be okay?” she whispered.

May nodded. “I do.”

Daisy leaned over and rested her head on May’s shoulder. It was tentative at first, but when May didn’t pull away, she relaxed into it. The rain outside kept falling, and they didn’t say anything else for a long time.

Chapter Text

May generally didn’t like the holidays – too many expectations and too much forced sentiment. Too many things left unsaid at tables full of people pretending everything was fine. So, she usually worked on Thanksgiving. But this year, she took the day off.

She told herself it was just because she didn’t feel like dealing with drunk drivers and the annual uptick in domestic disputes. She told herself it was definitely not at all about the girl she couldn’t stop thinking about all week.

But it still took her an agonizing fifteen minutes to come up with a text that would seem casual and deniable enough for Daisy that morning: ‘made too much food. come eat.’

Daisy showed up an hour later, damp from the November drizzle outside. She was wearing one of May’s hoodies, its sleeves pulled down over her hands. She didn’t knock anymore. 

“You ‘made’ too much food?” Daisy asked with a sly smile, tone disbelieving. 

May looked up from the kitchen counter, where she was transferring takeout containers into mismatched bowls in a valiant attempt at presentation. “I overestimated,” she deadpanned.

Daisy grinned. The table was already set with two plates, real napkins, and wine glasses filled with root beer. She took it in quietly and tucked it away in her mind like a keepsake. “Wow,” she drawled, eyeing the spread. “This is like… three kinds of stuffing. May, are you nesting?”

May raised an eyebrow. “Careful, or I’ll make you do the dishes.”

“I have a cast on!”  

The food was warm and comforting. They had rotisserie chicken instead of turkey, and the mashed potatoes were definitely from a plastic container. But Daisy didn’t care; it was the best meal she’s had in… she couldn’t even remember. 

Halfway through her second helping of stuffing, Daisy set her fork down and held up her root beer like she was making a toast. “To… whatever the hell this is,” she said with a wry smile. 

May picked up her own glass and touched it to Daisy’s with a soft clink. “To surviving,” she said.

After the dishes were done (thanks to May) – they curled up on their sides of the couch, stomachs aching from eating way too much pie. Outside, the fog deepened. The streetlights glowed soft and golden through the windows. 

Daisy broke the quiet. “You gonna bail when I mess up again?” She didn’t look at May when she said it, careful to just stare straight ahead instead. She kept her voice casual so it wouldn't seem like she really cared what the answer was.

May didn’t hesitate even a second. “No,” she said. Then, she smirked, “But I will yell at you.”

Daisy cracked a smile. “Fair.”

Daisy started showing up at the precinct again, casually dropping in after school or on weekends. She would settle at the empty desk next to May’s, spread out her textbooks, and claim the corner chair as her unofficial domain. She cracked jokes, borrowed pens without returning them, and once nearly knocked over an evidence box while trying to kick her feet up like she owned the place.

May only raised an eyebrow. “Maybe if you learned basic physics, you wouldn’t keep failing at lounging,” she muttered.

Daisy grinned. “Maybe if you guys got nicer chairs, my genius would flourish.”

Outside of the precinct, they eased back into their old habits. May kept quiet tabs on her at St. Agnes and made sure the new social worker didn’t screw anything up. Sometimes she let Daisy tag along on patrol, and sometimes they got dinner afterwards. Sometimes they just drove, with no destination in mind, to the hum of the engine and Daisy’s music on the radio (a playlist mixed between riot girl rock and nostalgic soft pop).

May never asked what Daisy needed – she just gave it, over and over again, like a promise she didn’t know how to say out loud.

And Daisy never said thank you. Not because she wasn’t grateful (she was) but because it all felt too big for words. Too precious. She didn’t want to jinx it.

One bone-dull afternoon at the precinct, May rifled through a half-stack of incident reports with the energy of someone who hadn’t slept in days. Which, for the record, she hadn’t. A triple shift and two back-to-back calls left her running on caffeine fumes and sheer force of will. She looked, in Daisy’s words, “like a retired crypt keeper.” 

Which was exactly what Daisy called her the moment she strolled through the precinct doors after school. She placed a cup of May’s favorite coffee order with a post-it that read ‘Corpse Juice’ right on May’s desk.

“Afternoon, sunshine,” Daisy said, propping her chin on the edge of the desk like a smug cat. “I figured some caffeine might resurrect you.”

May glared at the cup. “Your attitude is gonna get you killed one day.” 

Daisy pouted, “More paperwork for you, then.” 

Across the bullpen, Coulson caught the tail end of the exchange as he strolled over with his usual clipboard in hand. “Nice jacket, Johnson,” he said, eyeing the oversized, aggressively colorful bomber she was wearing. “What thrift store couch did you skin to make it?”

Daisy didn’t miss a beat. “Yours, apparently. I found three Werther’s Originals in the pocket and a receipt for orthopedic insoles.”

May laughed – a sharp, unguarded sound – full-bodied and completely involuntary. 

The precinct went silent.

Chairs swiveled. Heads turned. Half a dozen officers looked up from their keyboards as though someone just fired a weapon indoors.

Daisy blinked, then grinned like the sun broke right through her. “You laughed,” she said, breathless, her eyes wide with delight.

May coughed once, like she could stuff it back down. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Too late,” Daisy said, her grin stretching ear to ear. “I’m gonna tell the nuns. I’m gonna tell everyone.”

“Do that and I’ll make you file evidence bags for a month.”

“Still worth it.”

May shook her head, but the corners of her mouth tugged upward like she couldn’t quite suppress the glow that lingered from the laugh. The warmth of it hung in the air, like the first real thaw after a long winter.

Coulson leaned in toward May as Daisy wandered off to the vending machine. “She’s good for you,” he murmured.

May gave him a look, but it lacked heat. “She’s chaos,” she muttered.

“She’s your chaos,” he replied with a smile.

May didn't answer. But when Daisy returned, shaking a pack of Skittles and humming something tuneless, May stole the red ones just to elicit a whine from the girl. 

Chapter Text

Daisy never meant to cause trouble, but she always seemed to be in trouble. This time, it was a coding assignment for her Advanced Computer Science class: break into a simulated website as part of a penetration test. Mr. Sitwell lauded it as a “challenge” – but Daisy finished it in less than ten minutes. The simulation was clunky, full of holes she could spot without even trying. So she accessed a real archived version of the site, just an old student council election page from five years ago. There was no risk in it. Not really. But when Mr. Sitwell walked by right as the login shell blinked open on her screen, he panicked. 

And, yet again, Daisy was in trouble. 

Principal Talbot’s office smelled like bleach and burnt coffee. She sat stiffly in the hard chair on the opposite side of his desk, trying to shrink herself into the smallest possible space. Her cast itched under her hoodie sleeve, and the bruises that hadn’t faded yet felt like they were glowing beneath her skin.

He droned on and on about the “misuse of technology” and “criminal intent” and “zero-tolerance policies.” His voice was sharp and practical, like he already decided what kind of kid she was just by looking at her file. When he threatened suspension and a potential legal follow-up, she didn’t even flinch. She just nodded quietly like she was expecting it. Of course this was how it would go.

Of course she was the problem.

He made her sit outside his office while they called her emergency contact. She didn’t have the energy to ask who that would be. St. Agnes? Her new case worker who she never even met? 

So when the secretary said, “Officer May is on her way” – something in Daisy’s chest twisted. She didn’t ask for May to come. 

But May was coming anyway.

She showed up exactly seventeen minutes later, looking as professional and unreadable as ever. Her even stride clipped through the hallway and she didn’t even slow down when the secretary tried to stop her at the front desk. “You alright?” she asked Daisy instead. 

Daisy couldn’t say anything; she just gave a tiny nod.

May nodded in response and turned on her heel. 

Principal Talbot blinked as she entered his office without knocking. “Detective–?”

“Officer,” May corrected coolly. “I’m here for Daisy Johnson. I understand there’s been a... misunderstanding.”

The principal tried to explain. He used words like “security breach” and “district-wide protocols” in a defensive tirade of indignation. 

May listened in silence with her hands folded and head tilted ever so slightly. “So… you assigned a hacking challenge and punished the student who completed it better than you expected.” Her voice was like steep wrapped in velvet. “You’re not describing misconduct. You’re describing talent.”

Principal Talbot floundered, “But she… she accessed a live site–”

“That was not password protected. That's not illegal.” May leaned forward. “Do you want to explain to the board why you tried to suspend a foster youth for doing exactly what your curriculum asked her to do, just more competently?”

He fell silent.

Daisy, watching from her seat outside, didn’t move until May opened the door.

“Let’s go,” she said.

And that was that.

The silence in the car was thick. Daisy kept her arms tucked into her hoodie sleeves, cast and all. Her eyes fixed straight ahead.

May didn’t say a word. She didn’t start the car. She just waited.

It broke Daisy wide open. Her voice cracked on the first word. “I didn’t… I didn’t even do anything wrong. I did the stupid assignment, and yeah, maybe I didn’t do it the way they wanted me to, but… is that all it takes? For everyone to call me a criminal again?” 

She sucked in a breath, hard. “They already whisper about me. In the hallways. In class. I hear them. Everyone stares at me, May. They think I’m broken or violent or… that I deserved what happened.” Her voice shook, “I see them laughing when they think I can’t hear. Like it’s funny. Like… I’m funny.”

She turned towards the window, wiping at her face with her sleeve brusquely. “I’m so tired of being the freak. The orphan kid. The girl with the cast and the bruises and no parents and a rap sheet. Everyone keeps looking at me like they already know how I end. Like they know I’m gonna end up in jail or on the streets one day. I don’t want to be someone you fix, May. I just…I just want to feel like I matter.”

May didn’t rush to respond – after a long and still pause, she simply asked softly, “You think I showed up today because I want to fix you?”

Daisy blinked at her.

“I showed up,” May said, “because you do matter. You matter to me.”

Daisy looked away, breathing hard. A tear slipped past her cheekbone and hit the fabric of her hoodie. “Why are you the only one who cares?” she whispered.

May reached across the console and gently rested a hand over Daisy’s cast. “I shouldn’t be,” she said quietly. Sadly, almost. “But I’m here.”

Daisy sobbed once – one sharp, messy breath – and then leaned across the seat and pressed her forehead into May’s shoulder. 

And May just held her – no lecture, no corrections, no telling her to be stronger. Just held her because she needed to be held. 

“Thanks for not leaving,” Daisy muttered into May’s shoulder when she finally calmed. 

“Not going to,” May answered without pause. “So you better get used to it.”

The exam room was cold in that sterile, clinical way that made everything feel more exposed than it should. Daisy couldn’t stop bouncing her knees as she sat on the paper-covered exam table. The faded blue fiberglass of her cast looked almost comically large now, like it belonged to a different version of her. May stood in the corner of the room with her arms crossed, still as a rock. She wasn’t hovering (May didn’t hover), but she was present. She was present – always there – in the way that Daisy was starting to recognize as something rare and special. 

The orthopedic tech gave them both a perfunctory smile before clicking on the small saw. “Don’t move,” he warned. “It’s loud, but it won’t cut skin.”

“Tell that to my nerves,” Daisy muttered under her breath.

May raised an eyebrow. “You hacked into a website to prove a point, but this rattles you?”

“I didn’t say I was logical.”

The saw screamed to life with a mechanical snarl that echoed in the small space. Daisy flinched at the first contact, but didn’t move. Still, May noticed the way her fingers twitched and the tension in her jaw. She recognized it as the tight and deliberate stillness of a girl who had to learn too early how to not react. The cast cracked and split open before the tech gently peeled it away, layer by layer. And then… it was off.

Her left arm was pale, thinned out from weeks of disuse. There were healing bruises still clinging to her skin like ghosted hands. The surgical line near her wrist had faded to a thin red scar. She flexed her fingers carefully, watching them respond with stiff reluctance.

“Good range of motion,” the tech said. “You’ll need to take it easy for a few weeks. Physical therapy’s optional, but it helps.”

Daisy nodded absent-mindedly. When he left the room, she kept staring at her arm like it didn’t quite belong to her. 

“Well,” she said, trying for levity. “There goes my signature weapon. No more sympathy points or creative excuses to get out of gym.”

May didn’t laugh. She noticed the tremor in Daisy’s hand, subtle but persistent. It was the kind of shake that came not from pain, but from something deeper: remembered fear.

Remembered damage.

“You okay?” she asked quietly.

Daisy shrugged with the one shoulder. “Yeah. Just feels weird. Like… I got used to it. The cast was annoying, but it kind of made it easier, you know? To explain stuff. People stared, but they didn’t ask.”

She paused and picked at a bit of dried skin near her wrist. “In a messed-up way, it gave me something to point at. Like: see? That’s where it hurt. That’s what they did.” Her voice went smaller. “Now it’s just skin again. And what if… what if it happens again, and I let it?”

May stepped forward, slow and measured. “You’ll always remember who got you out. Who didn’t let it break you. You.”

Daisy looked up at May. “You always show up,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

May held her gaze. “So start expecting it.”

They went to the diner to celebrate taking the cast off. Daisy slid into the booth slowly, still flexing her newly freed arm like it surprised her. It didn’t hurt, exactly. It just felt… wrong. Lighter. Unprotected. 

Halfway through their shared chocolate milkshake Daisy quipped up suddenly, “Did you know I was dropped off at the church?”

May glanced up from her grilled cheese. “No.”

“Church next to St. Agnes,” Daisy twisted the metal straw in her hand. “Cardboard box, baby blanket. A real orphan-origin story. They said there was a note tucked under the blanket that said my name was Daisy Johnson. And my birthday was April 26. No explanation.” 

May didn’t interrupt.

“They found out my mom died a couple days before that. Apparently she ran some type of doomsday cult in the woods. Real ‘drink the Kool-Aid and worship the sky’ kind of thing. She died in a raid before I was even three months old. 

“And my dad… he didn’t take it well. Ended up stabbing a bunch of people and then they found him wandering in the woods muttering about how he was ‘fulfilling her vision.’ Now he’s locked up in one of those institutions for the criminally insane.”

She said it with the breezy detachment of someone who was reading a Wikipedia article about a stranger, but May didn’t miss the tremor in her voice. “Did you ever meet him?” May asked. 

Daisy shook her head. “I used to imagine he would show up one day. When I was little, I’d check the front gate every night. But he never came.” 

She paused, concentrating hard on the straw in her hand. “I used to think it was in my blood. Like… all the people who said I was too clingy, or too loud, or had too many behavioral issues…” She swallowed hard. “It starts to feel like a prophecy or something. Like… maybe I’m just the type of kid they expect me to be.” 

As always, May didn’t speak right away – she just leaned back and looked at Daisy thoughtfully. “You know, when I first joined the FBI,” she finally said quietly, “everyone assumed I’d be assigned to desk work. Paperwork. Translation services. One guy told me I was ‘the kind of agent who keeps the coffee hot and the admin files cleaner than his apartment.’”

Daisy snorted. “Wow. Sexist and racist. Two for one.”

May gave a thin smile. “I was a twenty-three year old Asian girl who looked like a college intern. What they didn’t know was…” She trailed off, then picked up a fry. “That my mom trained me my entire life how to not miss anything, how to keep my heart steady under fire, and how to never wait for permission.” 

Daisy blinked. “Was your mom like a secret spy or something?”

May didn’t answer. She just raised an eyebrow and bit into the fry.

Daisy balked. “Wait… you’re not denying it.”

“My mother taught me that you never owe anyone the version of you they expect.”

Daisy looked down at her cast-free arm. “What if I don’t know what version I am yet?”

“That’s fine,” May said simply. “You’ll figure it out. But in the meantime, you need to eat so… finish your sandwich.”

Daisy took a bite. “You’re a terrible mentor,” she mumbled with her mouth full. 

May took another sip of their milkshake. “And you’re not a cult baby. So…”

Daisy laughed a real laugh. 

They didn’t talk about expectations anymore after that.

Chapter Text

May never, ever wrapped gifts. She hated the pageantry of it – the bows, the tags, the layers of wrapping paper meant to disguise intention. If she gave someone something, she wanted it to be straightforward. She was a practical person, not a sentimental person.

But this Christmas morning, she stood at her desk and carefully slid a thick cream-colored cardstock under the black matte bow on a small box neatly wrapped in a rich cream paper. She made sure it looked simple enough that no one could accuse her of trying too much. Even if she did. 

Inside was a delicate solid gold chain with a tiny daisy pendant. The second she saw it in a store window, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. The resemblance was uncanny: a beautiful, stubborn little bloom. She bought it without a second thought, and then cursed herself all the way home for being sentimental. 

“May…” Phil’s voice sing-songed from across the bullpen, dragging her out of her thoughts. “Is that for me?” He strolled up her desk, eyeing the box with a shit-eating grin on his face. 

“No,” May replied flatly, shoving the box away before he could get too close.

He raised his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me… your puppy?”

May rolled her eyes. “She’s not a puppy.”

“Right, right…” He leaned against the side of her desk. “What did you get her?”

May shrugged, eyes fixed on the box. “Just a necklace. It’s not a big deal.”

Phil tilted his head, studying her in that maddeningly patient way of his. “You’re allowed to care, you know.” 

“She’s just a kid who's had a rough time,” May deflected. “That’s all.”

Phil didn’t argue. He just gave her his soft, knowing smile. “Okay.” 

May stared hard at the box on her desk. Was this too much? Should she not give it to Daisy? What was their relationship anyway? 

They had only known each other a few months since the summer, but somehow – in that short period of time – Daisy had burrowed her way into all the empty corners of May’s life. The precinct calling her “May’s puppy” wasn’t just a joke anymore. Daisy sent her memes and inside jokes, clung to her on bad days, and bragged to her on good ones. The girl had no idea how to ask for comfort directly, but she didn’t have to. May was always there – every doctor’s appointment, every school meeting, every dinner when Daisy didn’t want to stay at St. Agnes. And May had stopped pretending long ago like she didn’t look forward to every text or every rant about how much the nuns sucked or every sideways hug the girl gave her in the middle of her work day. 

This kid mattered to her. 

A lot. 

And she wanted to show it. 

The precinct was busier than May expected for Christmas Day. If she were the praying type, she would’ve expected a quiet and peaceful day. Instead she got: five drunk-and-disorderlies bellowing carols off-key in holding; four traffic accidents involving people running late to Christmas dinner; three shoplifters who actually tried to make a break for it with entire frozen turkeys shoved under their coats; two neighbors who nearly strangled each other over “who has a better ham recipe” – all leading to one very cranky and exhausted Officer Melinda May. 

By the time May finally shoved the last report across her desk, the sun was already sliding down behind the rooftops.

And she still hadn’t seen Daisy all day. 

Quickly, she grabbed her coat and sprinted to her cruiser. If she was quick, maybe she could snag Daisy out of St. Agnes before Christmas mass. 

But, of course, it was Sister Beatrice who opened the heavy wooden door with her usual scowl.  

“Daisy here?” May asked. 

The nun narrowed her eyes, giving May a long and skeptical look. “She left a few hours ago. Said you were taking her to Christmas service at your church.”

May’s brain stuttered. “My… church?”

“Yes,” Sister Beatrice said crisply. “She promised Sister Catherine that she wouldn’t skip church on this Holy Day of Obligation.” 

“Oh! Right. Of course not!” May forced a smile, baring all her teeth. “I thought I was picking her up, but we must’ve gotten our wires crossed. I’ll meet her at… church then.” 

Sister Beatrice huffed. “Sister Catherine is far too lenient with that girl, letting her gallivant around the city as she pleases.” 

“Mm,” May hummed through gritted teeth. “Well. Merry Christmas.”

“May the Lord have mercy,” Sister Beatrice replied, and shut the door in her face.

May stalked down the orphanage steps with her fists clenched, counting her breaths: Five, four, three, two, one… it’s probably a sin to punch a nun. Especially on Christmas. 

Back in her cruiser, she spent the next hour scouring the neighborhood. But Daisy wasn’t at the playgrounds, or the skatepark she liked to hang out at, or the bus station. She wasn’t at the bodega where she sometimes sweet-talked the cashier into giving her free hot chocolates and slushies that stained her whole mouth blue. She wasn’t even on the courthouse steps where she said she liked to “study pigeon family dynamics.” 

It was well past dark by the time May trudged back to the precinct. The small wrapped box was still tucked in her hidden breastpocket, pressed close against her chest. The disappointment of realizing that she wouldn’t get to see Daisy’s face when she opened the present on Christmas Day hit harder than she expected. Heaving a sigh, she pushed open the side door… 

…and there was Daisy, curled up in May’s chair like a very smug cat. She was casually flipping through a case file that she absolutely had no clearance to touch, and next to May’s computer sat a crooked little bundle wrapped in recycled newspaper. 

“What are you doing here?” May asked, fighting to suppress the laugh breaking through her voice. 

Daisy grinned sheepishly as she looked up. “Merry Christmas?”

May rubbed her eyes in fake frustration, “Get your feet off my desk.” 

Daisy obeyed quickly, scooping up the package to thrust it toward May. “I got you something.” 

May smiled a real smile. “Come on, let’s get dinner.” 

They ended up at the diner, of course, and ordered their usual. When Daisy literally bounced in her seat at the “Christmas edition” red and green sprinkles on the chocolate shake, May willfully ignored the ache creeping behind her ribs. 

After the food arrived, Daisy slid the gift across the table. “It’s not much,” she mumbled. “But… I wanted to give you something.” 

May opened it slowly, peeling away the newspaper with careful fingers to reveal a handmade leather keychain inside. The leather looked like it was repurposed from an old belt or bag. On the side, her initials M.M. were burned into the center and stitched around the edges. 

“I know it’s kinda ugly…” Daisy said preemptively, avoiding her eyes. “But I didn’t have money for something real, and I found this old leather strap in one of the church bins and I sorta… figured it out.” 

May turned it over in her hand. The weight of it surprised her. She ran her thumb over the stitched edges of the lettering. It was obvious Daisy had spent a long time making sure they were done right. “I love it,” May said earnestly. 

“Really?” The girl flushed, eyes darting down like she couldn’t bear the praise. 

“Yeah, I really do. Thank you.” 

Daisy’s shoulders dropped half an inch, relief softening her expression. “I wanted to give you something. You always do so much for me, and…” She looked embarrassed saying it, like she revealed too much by accident. 

May reached into her coat to pull out the wrapped box she had also spent so long agonizing over. “Yours.” 

Daisy blinked. “You got me something?” 

“Open it.” 

Daisy unwrapped it slowly, reverently, like she didn’t want it to end. The wrapping paper and cardstock felt expensive, placed with care. She opened the card first, her lips parting as she read the simple words out loud: 

Thank you for being in my life. You matter to me. A lot. Merry Christmas.

She traced the words with her thumb like she was afraid they would fade. For a long moment, she didn’t say anything but May could see how her throat worked with effort. Then, she pressed the heel of her hands against her eyes like she was trying not to cry. 

“Open the box,” May urged her softly. 

When the lid came off and she saw the necklace, Daisy froze. She stared at the tiny golden daisy against the black velvet like she had just discovered treasure. 

“You gonna take it out?” May asked softly.

“It’s just… it’s so nice in the box,” Daisy said, voice barely audible.

“Come here, let me put it on,” May reached out and Daisy slid into her side of the booth right away. She swept her hair to one side as May’s steady hands clasped the chain around her neck. 

When Daisy turned back around, she touched the pendant like it was a piece of starlight. “No one’s ever… given me something like this before,” she whispered.

May’s chest ached, but she stayed quiet, letting Daisy have the moment.

Daisy swallowed hard, then laughed softly like she was embarrassed. “It’s stupid, but… thank you. Thanks for making me feel like I matter. Like I’m not just–” She cut herself off, shaking her head.

“You do matter,” May said firmly, cutting in before Daisy could say something sarcastic or deflective to cover the moment of vulnerability. “More than you know.”

Daisy blinked fast, trying to mask her tears with a crooked smile. “Then I’m never taking it off. Ever. You’re stuck with me now.”

“Good.” May slipped an arm around Daisy’s shoulders and pulled her in close. “Merry Christmas, kid.” 

The halls were hushed that night at St. Agnes, the world outside wrapped in the heavy silence of winter. Daisy padded over the creaky floors in her socks to her bunk, May’s oversized hoodie swallowing her whole. It hung off her shoulders like a second skin – soft, worn, smelling faintly of jasmine and something she couldn’t put into words. Something like safety.

The dormitory was emptier than it usually was. During this time of year, long-lost relatives liked to re-appear – suddenly remembering children they had forgotten about, even if just for a little while. She climbed into her bunk slowly, careful with her arm that was free of its cast but still ached in the winter chill. The radiators hissed unevenly and a draft crept in under the old stained-glass windows. She pulled the blanket up to her chin and tucked the sleeves of May’s hoodie into her palms. Then her hand drifted, instinctively, to her collarbone.

The little daisy pendant caught the light – warm gold and light as a whisper.

She held it in her fingers, gently rubbing her thumb over the smooth surface. Part of her still didn’t quite believe it was hers. It was too beautiful, too delicate. It wasn’t a hand-me down or from a charity box. It was something that someone had chosen… for her. Real gold. Expensive. Intended to last. 

Daisy pulled the hoodie’s collar up over her mouth and exhaled into it. Her chest ached, slow and steady, like it was learning how to stretch and expand. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t fall asleep pretending she was somewhere else. She fell asleep right where she was: wrapped in May’s warmth, wearing her name around her neck.

Wanted.

Chapter Text

Daisy was not expecting to spend her Friday night at the hospital. She got back to St. Agnes late that night after a marathon study session with Jemma in the library, and Sister Catherine waved her to the kitchen to microwave her dinner. She was mindlessly scrolling through her phone when she heard Sister Beatrice talking on the phone in the hallway. The words – Officer May, shoulder injury, had to go to the hospital – jumped out at her like red ink on white linen. 

Daisy didn't even wait for the microwave to finish before grabbing her hoodie and bolting out the side entrance. 

Less than twenty minutes later, she was arguing with the nurse at the front desk to let her in. She wasn’t family, but something in her face must have worked. Or maybe the lady just didn’t want a teenager yelling in the hospital lobby. 

“Room 412,” the nurse finally said. “She's sleeping.”

“Not for long,” Daisy muttered under her breath.

Running down the hallways, she quickly found the room, cracked the door open, and stopped short.

May was asleep, half-upright in the hospital bed with an IV in one arm. Her right shoulder was bandaged and a bruise blossomed along her temple like ink in water. She looked smaller than Daisy had ever seen her.

The sight froze Daisy in place. The self-righteous rage she had walked in with fizzled somewhere in her chest, leaving only a sick ache behind. She crept inside, quiet as a shadow, and pulled the lone chair close to the bed. She tugged May’s jacket over her own shoulders and kicked off her shoes to tuck her legs up in the chair. She meant to keep watch – to sit guard through the night. But exhaustion tugged at her, and somewhere between counting the steady rise and fall of May’s breathing, her own eyes slid shut.

May woke sometime after midnight to the soft sound of breathing and the weight of someone slumped against her bedrail. She blinked blearily and turned her head just enough to see Daisy curled in the chair beside her, arms tucked under her cheek, face half-hidden in the folds of May’s coat. Her hand was gripping the sleeve tightly, even in sleep.

May’s throat tightened. She exhaled through her nose and let her head fall back against the pillow, fighting the lump rising in her throat. She felt bad that the girl was scared. It was just a busted collarbone after a particularly hard tackle in a foot pursuit. It wasn’t like the others. It wasn’t– 

“Hey,” Daisy whispered, voice scratchy, still half-alseep. 

May blinked over at her. “Hey.”

“You never texted me back today.”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

Daisy sat up slowly, her expression crumpling. “You got hurt, May. I had to find out from Sister Muzzlemouth.”

May chuckled, knowing exactly who she was referring to. “She doesn’t like you.”

“No one does. Except you.” Her voice broke just slightly. “And I didn’t know if you were okay, and then I heard you were in the hospital, and–”

May held out her good arm and Daisy didn’t even hesitate as she climbed into the bed. She folded herself gently against May’s side, careful of her shoulder, and tucked her face in close. 

“You scared the hell out of me,” she whispered. “You always show up for me and I didn’t… I didn’t know if I could…”

“You did,” May murmured. “You’re here.”

“I don’t like this,” Daisy mumbled against her. “Worrying. About you.”

May smiled faintly. “It’s the worst.”

Daisy sniffed. “Yeah.”

They laid in silence for a moment, listening to the slow beeping of the monitor and the distant hum of fluorescent lights. When May woke hours later to find Daisy still curled into her side – fast asleep, the gold daisy pendant resting in her hand like a worry stone – she let herself watch the girl sleep. For once, she didn’t guard the soft thing in her chest that cracked wide open every time this kid touched her.

This kid. Her puppy. 

May was discharged the next morning with a sling, a prescription for painkillers she insisted she didn’t need, and a warning to rest that she absolutely did not intend to follow. She barely made it through the front door of her apartment before Daisy gently pushed her toward the couch.

“Sit. And don’t do that thing where you pretend like you’re not in pain,” Daisy said, toeing off her sneakers and moving into the kitchen. “You are in pain, by the way. In case you thought you were hiding it.”

May sighed audibly, but the couch did feel good. She watched from her corner of the cushions as Daisy moved around the kitchen like she owned the place. She filled the kettle, pulled down the battered tin of jasmine tea, and retrieved the small jar of honey from its hiding place behind the mugs. Then she started rummaging for bread.

“Don’t touch the toaster oven,” May called, half-serious. “It’s haunted.”

Daisy snorted. “Please. If I can jailbreak a school Chromebook, I can toast bread.”

May didn’t miss a beat. “Can you please remember what we talked about when it comes to confessing to crimes? In front of a cop?”

Daisy popped her head around the cabinet. “Yeah but… my cop.”

The tea steeped while the toast popped up. Daisy plated it with soft butter and strawberry jam and carried the goods over. She set the mug down on a coaster and perched next to May on the couch, legs crisscrossed beneath her.

“Room-service!” she said in what May guessed was supposed to be a fancy accent, “Deluxe package includes fluffing your pillows.” She reached over to unwrap the sling and settled the mug in May's good hand. 

They sat in easy silence for a few minutes while May sipped on the tea, warm and familiar. The ache in her shoulder slowly dulled to a background throb.

Daisy reached for one of the toast halves and took a bite, talking around it. “Phil called this morning and said he’ll be by tonight after his shift. He wanted to make sure you weren’t being stubborn.”

May gave her a look.

“I told him not to worry,” Daisy said innocently. “You’ve been slightly upgraded from ‘impossible’ to just ‘extremely difficult.’ He seemed proud.”

May scoffed with a faint smile, shaking her head.

Daisy watched her for a long moment after that. Her gaze was steady, a flicker of something soft and unfamiliar behind her eyes. Worry, maybe. Relief, probably. “I’ve never done this whole caretaking thing,” Daisy said softly. “But I think I’m okay at it?”

May looked down at the tea cup in her hand, perfectly made with just the right amount of honey. And the toast, while a little burned, was obviously made with care. “You’re great at it.”

Daisy’s mouth tugged into her lopsided grin. “Yeah?”

May reached out and brushed a crumb from the girl’s cheek. “Yeah.”

They didn’t say anything more after that, content to just finish their tea shoulder to shoulder on the couch. And when May drifted off into a rare, dreamless nap, it was Daisy who folded a blanket over her.

Chapter Text

Daisy was barefoot in May’s kitchen, steeping May’s tea just the way she liked it, when her phone buzzed. She didn’t recognize the number, but she had a bad feeling the moment it lit up on the screen.

“Daisy Johnson?” The woman’s voice on the other end was brisk and official. 

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“This is Ms. Palamas, your assigned social worker. We haven’t spoken before, but I took over your case after the Jenkin’s house.”

Daisy’s grip tightened on the ceramic mug. “Okay...?”

“I’m calling to let you know there’s an opening for a long-term foster placement in the Bronx. The Thompson’s house. You’ll be moving in tomorrow.”

The words hit her like a freight train. “Tomorrow? Wait… what?” Daisy dropped the spoon with a clatter. “I… I didn’t agree to that.”

“You’re still a ward of the state, Miss Johnson. You don’t get to decline transfers.”

She didn’t hear the rest when Palamas rattled off about logistics. The cup was shaking in her hands as she hung up. By the time May came back from the bathroom, she was pacing the length of the kitchen like there was a storm rattling inside her fifteen-year-old frame.

“I got a call,” Daisy said. “From the new social worker. They’re moving me.”

May blinked. “What?”

“It’s a new placement in the Bronx. Tomorrow. I didn’t even do anything wrong.” Her voice broke halfway through the word. 

May stayed silent but her jaw ticked, just slightly. 

Daisy threw her hands up. “It’s like I don’t even exist! Like I’m just some folder they can push around on a desk.”

“Okay. Slow down…”

But Daisy was vibrating, trembling on the edge of something too big for her body. “I just…” Her voice cracked again. “I just got used to here. To this. With you.”

May didn’t know what to say. “I’ll still be here,” she offered. 

“It’s like two boroughs away! You’re not gonna be able to just show up, and I… I don’t know if they’re the type to be chill about visits.”

“Then we’ll plan. I’ll check in every day if I have to. You can call me. Anytime. Day or night.”

Daisy’s voice dropped to a whisper. “What if they don’t let me?”

May moved to catch her eyes. “They can’t stop me from caring. They can’t stop me from showing up.”

Daisy pressed her lips together. Her eyes were red but she wasn’t crying. “What if it’s not safe?” she whispered. “What if it’s like... like before?”

May’s face hardened. “Then you call me the minute it turns.”

“But what if I don’t know how to tell?”

“Trust your gut,” May said, hands warm and steady on Daisy’s shoulders. “And trust me.”

Daisy packed the next morning in silence. She didn’t have much, just a few pieces of clothing, her favorite hoodie (May’s, now hers), some books May thought she would like, and the necklace she never took off. May gave her a duffle to use so she wouldn’t have to pack it all in a garbage bag this time. 

May insisted on dropping her off, and they drove away from Brooklyn in silence. Even after living in New York for so many years, May never realized how far away the Bronx was until this drive. By the time they pulled up in front of the house – squat and faded, with peeling paint and a chain-link fence – Daisy’s hands were clenched so tightly in her lap her knuckles were white.

She stared straight ahead, “Are you gonna leave?”

May turned off the engine. “I’ll be down the block for an hour, just in case. After that, I’m one call away.”

Daisy nodded tightly. Before she went, she leaned over the center console and wrapped her arms around May’s neck. “Don’t forget me,” she whispered.

May hugged her back. “Impossible.”

Daisy stepped out and walked up the cracked path to the front door. There were shouting voices from somewhere inside already, and no one came out to greet her. She turned back to the car to see May still watching from the driver’s seat, giving her a nod that she figured was supposed to be reassuring. She took a breath, squared her shoulders, and went inside. 

Little did she know – she would be calling May in less than a week.

But May knew. She could feel it like pressure in the air, like a storm rolling in.

And she already cleared her schedule.

Chapter Text

The house was a pressure cooker, and Daisy could feel it about to blow. 

Mr. and Mrs. Thompson didn’t speak much to each other but when they did, it was sharp and clipped – like sparring partners too tired for a full fight. They barely said two words to her when she arrived. Mrs. Thompson handed her a blanket and pointed to a spare cot in the laundry room. The demands came quickly after that: laundry folded in the very specific way she wanted, no headphones, no resting during the day. The lock on the bathroom door didn’t work. The windows barely opened. The air was always heavy.

Almost immediately, the phone May gave her was gone. “I’ll be keeping this,” Mrs. Thompson said, dropping it into a locked drawer. “No need for that kind of distraction under our roof.”

Daisy didn’t say anything. She learned the rules of how to survive new placements early on in life: don’t ask for anything, don’t push back on anything, and don’t act like something is yours (even if it is).

But in the dark, with the hum of the washer right next to her ear and the cold metal frame of the cot digging into her back, she clutched the daisy pendant at her neck and thought of May’s steady voice saying: “You do matter, Daisy. More than you know.”

Except May wasn’t here. May said she was "only" two boroughs away – but it might as well have been a continent.

The next few days blurred together. Mrs. Thompson barked orders and criticized everything Daisy did. “This one’s useless,” she hissed to her husband. “Doesn’t even try to fit in.”

Mr. Thompson grunted in dismissal, but his eyes lingered on Daisy too long in a familiar way that made her stomach turn. 

Daisy had to go to a new school. Unbeknownst to her, dozens of unread messages were piling up from Jemma and Fitz, asking if everything was okay. They had no way of knowing how not-fine things were. 

May texted every night, without fail.

"checking in. hope today wasn’t too rough."

"haven’t heard from you. starting to worry kid."

"you ok?"

"call me."

None of the messages reached Daisy.

At the precinct, May kept opening her phone every hour – like she could will into existence a meme, a sarcastic emoji, a random text, anything from the girl. But her inbox stayed empty.

“Where’s your shadow?” Phil asked one morning, stirring too much sugar into his coffee.

“New placement,” May said shortly.

“Oh.” He paused. “You don’t like it.”

“I don’t trust it.”

Phil didn’t press. But every so often, he glanced at her like he was half-expecting her to bolt out of the building and go find the girl herself.

She almost did. And later, she would curse herself for not. 

The worst night started quietly.

Mrs. Thompson was out at her women’s Bible study and Mr. Thompson came home later than usual, smelling like cheap whiskey and fried food. Daisy was in the laundry room folding their bedsheets – white cotton ones, crisp and a little overstarched. She kept her head down and made sure to follow Mrs. Thompson’s exact instructions: shake it out, neat folds, perfect corners, no wrinkles… 

She heard the door creak open before she saw him; his slow, dragging steps across the floor; and the click of him undoing his belt buckle before he settled to lean against the doorframe of the laundry room. 

“Hey kid,” he slurred, watching her. “You’re awfully quiet. So polite.” 

She didn’t answer and kept folding, hoping he would lose interest. 

He chuckled unkindly. “You know… when your kind doesn’t talk, it’s hard to tell if you’re being shy or stuck up.” He stepped closer, and the smell of alcohol wafted over her. “Too good to talk to me?” 

“No, sir,” she murmured, hands trembling as she smoothed the comforter’s edge.

“That’s better.” His voice dropped. “When we first got you, I kept trying to figure out if you’re part Chinese or Japanese or something. You’ve got such a delicate little face.” He reached out to stroke her cheek, “Pretty thing like you should know how to be nice.”

Her stomach clenched. She took a step back.

“Don’t be like that,” he said, cornering her further into the room. His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.

“Let go,” she said, her voice firm but shaking.

“Or what?” He grinned as his grip tightened. She saw the change in his eyes – a flicker of something predatory and certain – like he knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew no one would stop him. 

She yanked her arm free and stumbled backwards into the metal shelving. Pain shot through her arm as it caught a sharp edge, but she didn’t stop moving. Her eyes darted to the door behind him, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

“Come here you little slut,” he sneered, lunging for her again.

This time, she grabbed the closest thing she could – a heavy detergent bottle – and swung with all her might. 

It cracked hard against his shoulder, knocking him off balance. He cursed, clutching the spot, but recovered too quickly. He came at her again, and this time both his hands closed around her neck – choking and shoving her against the wall. 

Daisy’s vision blurred as she clawed at his wrists, nails raking over his skin but he didn’t even flinch. His face just twisted with sick satisfaction as he leaned his weight into her throat even harder. She couldn’t breathe, and the sound of her gasping for breath came out in shallow chokes. Blackness pricked at the edge of her vision. Her legs kicked against the air in desperation until finally, somehow, her knee finally found its target – shooting up fast and hard straight into his stomach. He wheezed and doubled over with a groan, finally releasing her. She hit the floor hard, choking for air. And before he could recover, she was up and bolting out the door and out the house. 

The night air was freezing, but Daisy didn’t stop running until her lungs burned and her feet screamed from hitting the icy pavement barefoot. She didn’t even realize she was bleeding until she reached a gas station many blocks away. A jagged slice ran across her forearm, probably from the metal shelving she crashed into. The blood felt cold as it dripped down her arm. 

The fluorescent lights inside the gas station were harsh and disorienting. She stumbled toward the counter, her breath still coming in ragged gulps. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. The words wouldn’t come.

“Hey, kid – whoa, hey… sit down, okay?” the clerk said. “I’m gonna call someone, alright?” 

He looked at the blood on her arm, her vacant stare, her bare feet. He didn’t ask questions, just led her to a chair in the back and dialed the only number Daisy could stammer out through her chattering teeth.

May’s heart sank the moment her phone buzzed.

“Hey uh… this is the Shell station on Webster Ave,” the caller said. “Uh… there’s a girl here. Says she knows you. You need to come, like, right now.”

May didn’t even remember getting into her car or speeding through the streets into the Bronx. All she remembered was the sound of her boots slamming against the pavement of the gas station’s parking lot before she burst through the door, heart in her throat. She spotted the girl immediately – folded into herself on the floor by the fridge with her knees tucked close to her chest and her bare feet streaked with dirt. 

“Daisy.”

The girl flinched and lifted her head at the sound of her own name. Her eyes were glassy and distant, but she still reached for May instinctively with trembling fingers. 

May knelt in front of her, pulling off her own coat to wrap it around Daisy’s shoulders. “I’m here,” she said, her voice steady and calm despite the storm brewing inside her. “You’re safe now. I got you.”

Daisy’s eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t speak.

May glanced down at the blood seeping through Daisy’s torn sleeve. “You’re hurt,” she said gently. “We’ll get you patched up, okay?”

Daisy nodded weakly, her fingers clutching May’s sleeve like a lifeline.

May turned to the clerk. “Thank you,” she said, her voice tight but genuine. “I got it from here.”

At the hospital, Daisy was silent as the nurses cleaned her arm and checked for bruising. May stayed by her side, her hand resting lightly on the girl’s knee.

When they got back to her apartment, May didn’t say a word. She just helped Daisy inside, gave her a warm towel with a clean set of clothes, and waited while Daisy took the world’s slowest shower. She made the guest bed, but Daisy didn’t even look at the guest room. Instead, she hovered at the doorway to May’s own room, clutching the daisy pendant around her neck in a vice grip. 

“Can I…?” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

May didn’t hesitate. She just pulled back the covers and nodded. 

Daisy climbed in and curled up with her back to May, but just for a moment. Then she turned, her fingers finding the sleeve of May’s shirt again. She clutched it like a child might clutch a blanket – like she needed something real to hold onto.

“You’re safe now,” May murmured, her voice low in the dark. “No one’s gonna hurt you here.”

Daisy didn’t answer.

But for the first time since the move, she slept.

Chapter Text

The apartment was quiet the morning after. Daisy wasn’t talking much. She barely touched the breakfast May made her; she just sat on the far end of the couch with her knees tucked tight to her chest, swallowed up in one of May’s hoodies. Her eyes looked hollow and far-away, like she was thinking about something she couldn’t say out loud. 

May couldn’t stop watching her from the corner of her eye as she paced the length of the kitchen, making call after call after call… 

The emergency intake social worker was sympathetic, but firm. “She's not your legal ward, Officer May. You did the right thing bringing her to the hospital, but if you want to pursue placement you have to file a petition through family court.”

“I want to do that,” May said immediately. Again.

“Okay, then please submit the paperwork at the office I gave you earlier. And, as I said, it'll take some time. The office will need to schedule a home inspection, process the background checks, go through the mandatory waiting period–”

“She was assaulted in her placement. She can’t go back there.”

“No, of course not. We’ll mark that placement down for an investigation. But until a judge signs off on your paperwork, she needs to return to her assigned care facility.”

“St. Agnes.”

“Yes.”

May stayed silent for a moment. Her chest hurt. “They’ll make her feel like it's her fault.”

“Officer May, I understand your concern, but this is the policy. And the policy is in place to protect the children. So if you go to the office and file the paperwork, we can make an appointment to review your petition. And if it’s approved, she could be with you in as soon as a few weeks.” 

May ended the call with a clipped “thank you,” but her whole body radiated tension. She looked to the living room again to see that Daisy hadn’t moved at all. She was just staring at the same corner of the rug like it might fall through the floor. Slowly, she walked over to sit on the edge of the coffee table. 

“Hey,” she said quietly.

Daisy blinked, but didn’t meet her eyes.

“I tried,” May continued. “I talked to everyone I could. But… they’re saying you have to go back to St. Agnes. Just until we get the paperwork sorted.”

She was met with silence.

“I’ll put in the request for custody today,” May added, firmer. “I’ll do whatever I need to do. You won’t be there long. Okay?”

Daisy nodded slowly, but her face was blank.

“Did you hear me?”

Another nod, barely. 

May exhaled, crouching a little closer. “You can be angry. Or scared. Or… whatever you are. Just don’t shut down on me, alright?”

“I’m not shutting down,” Daisy finally said, her voice hoarse. “I’m just… I’m tired of hoping people mean it.”

The words cut deeper than any shouted accusation could. May’s heart ached. “I do mean it.”

“I know. Today you do.” Daisy finally looked at her. Her eyes were too old for her face. “Everyone means it at first.”

May wanted to grab the girl and shake the belief into her. Instead, she said as solemnly as she could, “I’ll prove to you I’m not everyone.”

Daisy didn’t answer.

The ride back to St. Agnes was quiet, broken only by the soft hiss of the heater. When they pulled up to the curb, the stone steps looked steeper than usual. May stared at them, her fingers tight on the wheel.

Daisy didn’t move.

“I can walk you in,” May offered.

“No.” Daisy’s voice was flat. “If you do that, they’ll make it worse.”

May’s jaw clenched. “I’ll check in. Every day.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Daisy replied – not unkindly, just tired. “You’ve got a life.”

May turned to her. “You’re an important part of my life.”

Daisy’s breathing hitched, but she didn’t answer.

May reached over and placed something in Daisy's palm: another burner phone, small and cheap but functional. “It’s not that nice, but it works. Just until we can get your other one back.”

Daisy didn’t say anything, but her fingers closed around the phone. 

“I’ll come by after my shift tomorrow, we can go get some dinner or go for a drive.” 

Daisy finally looked up. Her lip trembled just slightly. “Promise?”

May reached over and tugged the front of Daisy’s hoodie forward gently. “I promise.” 

Daisy nodded and opened the door. She climbed the steps slowly and didn’t look back until she reached the top. 

May raised a hand in a small wave.

Daisy didn’t wave back. She just turned and disappeared into the heavy doors – her shoulders hunched, her whole body smaller than it was the last time May picked her up from these exact steps to go to that damned house. 

At the precinct, Coulson took one look at May and knew better than to offer pleasantries. He just set a cup of coffee down at her desk. “Kid stuff?” he asked softly. 

May nodded, the ache in her shoulders blooming deeper.

“People have been asking,” he added. “About your puppy.”

“She’s not a puppy,” May said quietly, almost reflexively.

Phil smiled a little. “No. Guess she’s more like a wolf these days. Still needs a pack though.”

May didn’t respond. She looked out the window – past the frost on the glass, towards nothing in particular – and tried to pretend like she hadn’t just left her kid behind.

Chapter Text

St. Agnes always felt like a cage. But this time, coming back made it feel even smaller. Even tighter. There was no welcome back. No warmth. Sister Beatrice barely acknowledged her return; she just handed Daisy a bunk sheet and said, “Try not to cause trouble this time.”

The walk back to school the next morning felt like it took an hour, even though it was probably only the usual twenty minutes. Her hoodie was too thin for the late winter wind. Her earbuds were dead. And every step dragged like her shoes were filled with lead. She slipped through the front doors, keeping her hood up and shoulders hunched. Her fingers kept running over the frayed edge of her backpack strap to soothe herself as she tried to not feel the eyes already on her. 

The whispers had a rhythm now, but she wasn’t just “the foster kid” or “that orphan girl” anymore. There was a new edge to the whispers now – something darker. She knew they didn’t have the full story, but they knew enough.

She kept her head down and made a beeline for her locker.

“DAISY!”

She turned just in time to catch the blur of a bright blue peacoat slamming into her with a hug that nearly knocked her off-balance.

“God, where have you been?” Jemma demanded, holding on tight. “You didn’t respond to any of our texts last week!” 

Fitz stumbled up behind her, panting hard like he just sprinted across half the school. “We thought you’d been, I dunno, kidnapped by aliens or something. Jemma wouldn’t let me sleep.”

“You didn’t try to sleep,” Jemma huffed, and then turned back to Daisy with laser focus. “Are you okay? Are you back at St. Agnes? Is this hoodie new? Wait, are you hurt?”

“I’m not…” Daisy muttered as she tugged her hood off at last. “Why are you yelling?”

“Because we missed you, you emotionally constipated goblin,” Jemma said matter-of-factly before she gently elbowed her. “Don’t scare us like that again.”

Fitz nodded, less confrontational but just as firm. “Seriously.”

Daisy blinked.

Here they were: her ridiculous and chaotic friends, standing with her like she was still someone worth standing next to. Like she hadn’t come back a little more broken than when she left. She swallowed hard, trying to clear the lump in her throat. “I missed you guys too,” she finally mumbled. “Like… a lot.”

“Good,” Jemma said, satisfied. She promptly looped her arm through Daisy’s. “Come on. I have a list of ‘Welcome Back Questions’ for you to answer.”

“She always has a list,” Fitz stage-whispered.

“I reserve the right to not answer to your list,” Daisy deadpanned. But she let herself get pulled down the hallway between them. Her ribs still ached from holding everything in, but the weight eased – ever so slightly – under the warmth of their noise and their closeness. 

And when someone across the hall whispered her name, she didn’t flinch.

When they walked out of school after the final bell, Daisy saw the familiar black cruiser idling at the curb.

“Need a lift?” May asked.

Daisy froze as a slow, disbelieving smile crept onto her face. She blinked fast, trying not to let it crack her open. “You really came.”

May quirked a brow. “I said I would.”

They didn’t talk much as May drove her usual route, answering a few dispatch calls here and there. Daisy leaned her forehead against the window, watching the familiar trees and buildings of their neighborhood blur past. Her gaze flickered down past the center console, and saw the leather keychain she made May for Christmas looped through her keys. She didn’t say anything, but something in Daisy’s chest unclenched at the sight. 

The next day, Daisy lingered at the library after school, reluctant to return to the orphanage. The week before, she left her precious laptop with May while she was at the Thompsons – she was afraid it would get pawned, and it probably would’ve been… Finally sitting down to code again felt like taking a breath after nearly drowning – like fire rushing back through her veins after spending far too long in the cold. Her fingers flew across the keys like muscle memory. It was one of the only places her mind still felt sharp and in control. Like things still made sense. 

She didn’t even notice the soft footsteps behind her until a paper cup landed gently next to her elbow. 

“Still making the Matrix?” May asked, crouching down beside her.

Daisy turned, startled. “You found me again?”

May gestured at the screen. “I saw your code through the window. That bright green font is a dead giveaway.”

Daisy gave a short laugh. “Are you tracking my IP or something?”

“I wouldn’t tell you if I was.”

Daisy stared at her.

“Come on, let’s get dinner.” 

Daisy shut down the terminal.

They went to the diner and got their usual – two grilled cheeses, a chocolate milkshake with two straws. Daisy stole May’s fries. May pretended to be annoyed but let her anyway.

She didn’t ask how Daisy was doing. She didn’t need to.

And so it went– 

Day three: May was waiting outside school again with Daisy’s favorite burrito. 

Day four: they sat on the courthouse steps and watched the pigeons bully each other for crumbs.

Day five: Daisy stepped out of class, half-expecting the curb to be empty since it was May’s day off. But of course it wasn’t. 

The cruiser was there, idling with the heat running as May nodded along to some podcast about ancient military tactics inside. Her eyes softened when she saw Daisy approaching the passenger seat door. “Hey kid.”

Daisy got in without a word, a breath hitching in her chest like a dam cracking.

By the second week, Daisy ventured back to the precinct again after school. 

Coulson was the first to spot her. “Well look at what the cat dragged in,” he smirked. He looked genuinely happy. “And here I was thinking the office was too quiet lately.”

“Yeah, well…” Daisy muttered, “I had to remind you who runs this place.”

Laughter echoed from across the bullpen. The other officers leaned back in their chairs and offered her high-fives. Someone tossed her a bag of gummy worms they knew she liked. It made Daisy smile for the first time in what felt like weeks.

May quietly watched from the hallway, a rare smile on her face. 

When Daisy turned and saw her, she didn’t say anything. She just crossed the space and leaned her head against May’s shoulder for a moment, brief but real.

May didn’t say anything either. She just stood there, steady and solid, letting Daisy know without words: This is still your place. I’m still your person.

Chapter Text

Something inside May shifted the moment she dropped Daisy back off at St. Agnes that first night. Long after the girl went inside, she didn’t move. She didn’t go home. She didn’t sleep. She just sat in the driver’s seat of her cruiser outside the orphanage, with her forehead pressed against the wheel so hard it left an imprint. And for the first time in years, she shook. Not from fear, but from fury. From powerlessness.

From love.

The very next morning, she was sitting in a too-small chair across from the Department of Children and Family Services’ worst-smiling caseworker. She had to fold her hands tightly in her lap to stop herself from making a scene.

“I’m asking for emergency custody,” May said evenly, again.

It was the first time May met with Kara Palamas in person, and she did not like the woman. She knew government officials like this – suits with fake compassion and fake pleasantries and “we’re doing everything we can” – just for the system to chew through kids like spare parts. 

Palamas smiled at her the way people smiled before they told you your house just burned down. “Officer May… you’re not a registered foster guardian.”

“No,” May confirmed. 

“Married? Roommate?”

“No.”

“Family?”

“No.”

The caseworker pursed her lips. “I’m afraid we can’t just… hand her over, Officer May.”

“I’m not asking for a handoff,” May bit out. “I’m asking you to do your job and get her somewhere safe.”

“We need a full home study. Paperwork, background check–”

“I’ve already been vetted for my badge.”

“That’s not the same.”

“It’s more.”

The caseworker kept scribbling in her file, nonplussed. “I’m sure the girl is grateful for your support. It’s not uncommon for teenagers her age to… project feelings of dependency.”

“She’s not projecting,” May said sharply.

She didn’t say: She’s mine.

She didn’t say: I will burn this building down if you let her fall through the cracks again.

She just kept her face hard like she did in interrogation rooms, but Palamas didn’t even flinch. Bureaucracy never did. May left the building with a stack of forms, a list of requirements, and a timeline of “at least six to eight weeks.”

She walked back to her car, got in, and slammed the door so hard the side mirror quivered.

A few weeks later, Daisy was folding laundry in May’s apartment – her own laundry, which May told her she could start bringing over after she complained about how everything always smelled like bleach after going through St. Agnes’ ancient washer. It gave her something to do with her hands, something that felt oddly intimate. The comfort of the diner trips, the precinct visits, the school pickups… it was all very real. But so was the voice in the back of her mind that kept warning her: Don’t get too comfortable. May doesn’t love you.

No one does. 

So she kept holding her breath, kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, kept waiting for May to get too tired or too busy or too burdened. She kept waiting for the day May wouldn’t show up anymore. 

But that day never came. Instead, every afternoon, May was there – with a hot chocolate, or an after-school snack, or a book she thought Daisy might like. She never pushed. She never asked how Daisy was sleeping or if she still got flashbacks. 

She just showed up.

At the precinct, May walked into HR with her folder of completed emergency custody forms like it was an arrest warrant.

“Melinda,” the HR rep said gently, “you still need a home inspection. And family references. You need to prove you can support a teenager emotionally, not just financially.”

“I’m already supporting her.”

“We know that, but you have to prove it to a judge. And judges don’t care about sentiment. They care about systems.”

May didn’t sigh or argue back. She just left the room and scheduled the inspection for the next available day. She bought new towels, labeled the guest room closet, and set up a desk in the corner for schoolwork. And then she stared at that room for a very long time.

Daisy was walking down the school steps when she saw the cruiser again. May wasn’t in her uniform today, but in jeans and her favorite leather jacket, holding two bobas and a plastic bag.

Daisy’s face lit up before she could stop it. “You’re not working?”

“Day off.”

Daisy blinked. “You still came?”

May handed her a boba. “Obviously.”

Inside the bag was Daisy’s favorite burrito and a brown paper envelope.

“What’s this?” Daisy asked.

May just gestured for her to open it. Inside was a copy of the custody paperwork. Her full name was on the line: Daisy Johnson. And an inked signature from May sat at the bottom.

Intended guardian: Melinda Q. May.

Daisy blinked. “You’re serious?”

May sipped her drink. “Daisy, I’ve been serious. I finally got the appointment to review the petition in a few weeks.”

The teenager swallowed hard. “What if they say no?”

May looked at her. “Then we fight harder.”

“What if…” Daisy’s voice died a little in her throat. “What if I’m not worth fighting for?” 

May reached over to tug the sleeve of her hoodie back down over Daisy’s wrist and smoothed it over. “Too late for that, kid.”

That night, Daisy returned to St. Agnes with something new in her pocket: a photo May had printed for her. It was a selfie Coulson took of himself, May, and her – all crammed together – blurry, mid-laugh, bad lighting. After she curled up in her bunk under the thin blanket, Daisy stared at the photo for a very long time.

Chapter Text

Daisy was reading one of May’s old paperbacks while absent-mindedly picking at her bowl of lukewarm oatmeal in the St. Agnes mess hall when Sister Catherine slid an envelope onto her tray without a word. She barely gave it a second glance… until she saw the seal of the New York Criminal Court staring back at her. Her spoon stilled before she dropped it and tore the envelope open with trembling fingers. 

Unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

Oh right, that time she stole Coulson’s car. 

She read the date twice. Then again. The hearing was set for Friday. This Friday. Like… in three days.

She barely made it through school that day. She couldn’t concentrate in class, couldn’t stomach lunch, couldn’t even focus in Comp Sci (despite the fact that they were going over Python scripts, her favorite). When May picked her up after school, Daisy didn’t say anything; she didn’t know how. 

May glanced over. “What happened?”

Daisy didn’t answer.

May didn’t press.

Later that night, Daisy sat at the bottom of St. Agnes’ stone steps staring at the court paper – folded and unfolded and folded again – in her shaking hands. She didn’t hear the cruiser pull up, but she did feel it when May sat down beside her. The woman said nothing, just waited like always.

“I got a summons,” Daisy said eventually, voice flat. 

May didn’t flinch. “For what?”

“That time I… ” She winced. “Coulson’s car from last year.”

May hummed. “I wondered when that would come back.”

Daisy gave a humorless laugh. “Are you mad?”

“No.”

Daisy turned to look at her. “Why not? You should be.”

“You made a mistake,” May said simply. “But… you’re doing better. You’re trying. You’re building something. The system’s just slow to catch up.”

Daisy blinked. “Can you come with me?”

May looked at her like it was the stupidest question in the world. “Of course I’m coming.”

On Friday, Daisy wore the one button-down shirt she owned. The sleeves were too short and the collar was awkward, but it fit (kind of). May offered her a blazer to borrow, but Daisy said no. She wanted to look like herself, not someone pretending to be better.

May and Coulson were already waiting at the courthouse in Manhattan when she arrived. He handed her a hot chocolate and offered a warm, steady smile. “Ready to face the music?”

“More like throw up to it,” Daisy muttered.

“Fair.”

They sat together on the bench outside Courtroom 3B. Daisy’s leg bounced the entire time. She clutched the paper cup so tightly the lid bent inward.

The prosecutor gave the facts and Daisy didn’t argue them. She did steal the car. She did have a history of petty theft and truancy. She did run away from three different placements. She did, at some point, tell a cop to “shove a cactus up his ass.” 

She expected May to stay silent. But she didn’t. 

“Your Honor,” May stood after the prosecutor rattled off her record, her badge clipped to her belt and her tone as sharp as ever. “I’d like to speak about character.”

The judge peered at May over his glasses. “You’re the arresting officer?”

“I am. I’m also her unofficial guardian.”

The judge raised an eyebrow.

“She was scared and angry. She had no adults who listened. She made bad choices, but not out of malice. Out of survival. And since then, she’s been working hard. She’s stayed in school. She helps out at the precinct. She’s not a danger to society. She’s just a fifteen-year-old trying to find something stable.”

The room was quiet.

“She deserves a second chance.”

The judge gave a faint smile. “Noted.”

In the end, the charge was dropped to community service and a formal warning – no fine, no record. 

Daisy blinked up at May as they walked out of the courtroom and into the blinding late winter sun. “You didn’t have to do that.”

May shrugged. “You’re not your worst decision.”

Coulson chimed in, “Besides, if we held every teenager’s dumb choices against them, I’d still be grounded.”

They took her out to lunch after, just like it was any other day. May led them a few blocks away from the courthouse to her favorite dumpling place in Chinatown – a true hole in the wall where the lady recognized May immediately. Daisy never had dumplings before. They were freaking delicious. Phil challenged her to eat fifteen. She ate twenty-five and felt sick at the end. 

For an hour, they laughed and swapped dumb stories. The air felt light again. Daisy looked between them – between Coulson’s dorky dad jokes and May’s dry comebacks and the way they dropped food onto her plate without asking. They moved around her like she was known. Wanted.

And for one small, fragile moment – she let herself imagine it.

A family.

That night, Daisy didn’t get out right away when May pulled the cruiser up to the curb outside St. Agnes. She fiddled with the zipper of her hoodie as she stalled. “Can I ask you something?”

May nodded. “Of course.”

Daisy didn’t look at her when she spoke next. “Why me?”

May was quiet for a long moment. She turned the keys to quiet the engine – her fingers lingering for just a second longer over the leather keychain Daisy made for her – before finally saying softly, “Because you’re smart. And stubborn. And… good. Even when you think you’re not. You remind me of someone…” She trailed off, before taking a breath to continue. “You remind me of me.”

Daisy couldn’t breathe.

“The first time I saw you: scrappy, ready to burn the world down to protect that kid, yelling at me – a cop,” May huffed a laugh under her breath, like she still couldn’t believe it. “I knew you were mine.”

Daisy looked up in surprise. “You mean like…”

“I mean family,” May said with no hesitation.

Daisy swallowed hard. She turned back a bit before stepping into the chill of the night air, “Goodnight, May.” 

“Goodnight, kid.”

Chapter Text

96%

That’s what it said on her Biology test  – something on photosynthesis and genetic markers and plant hormones that usually made Daisy’s eyes glaze over. But this time she studied hard, for weeks. She didn’t tell anyone she was even trying though. So it wouldn’t matter if she failed. 

But she didn’t.

Ms. Weaver handed the graded test on her desk with a raised eyebrow. She even drew a small smiley face next to the number. Daisy stared at the paper for a full ten minutes before she tucked it in her binder with trembling hands. Jemma saw it and shot her a proud, blinding smile. 

She didn’t remember walking from school to the precinct, but she did remember running once she saw the building. She bolted through the doors like a storm, past the desk sergeant, and up the familiar hallway to May’s desk. 

May looked up, startled.

Daisy dropped her binder on the desk, flipped it open, and smacked the test paper down like it was evidence in a high-profile case.

May blinked as she read the grade. And then she looked up at Daisy. “I’m guessing you’re not here for an arrest.”

Daisy beamed, a little breathless. “I killed that test.”

“I can see that.”

“I thought I was gonna fail. I almost did last semester. But I didn’t, May, I didn’t!” She was bouncing on her heels, biting back her smile like she didn’t know how to wear it yet.

May smiled too. A small smile, but very real. “You want to celebrate?”

“Can we?”

“I’m your adult, aren’t I?”

Daisy grinned. “You are.”

They drove across the bridge to Chinatown with the windows cracked, letting the early spring air in. May parked on a side street near the little red awning with faded gold lettering that Daisy recognized from the last time they went. Inside, it was all steam and chatter and warm fluorescent light. The owner greeted May warmly in Chinese and waved Daisy behind the counter to pick out her soda.

When the dumplings came – pan-fried, Daisy’s new favorite thing ever – she moaned around the first bite. “God, that’s illegal.”

May chuckled. “Good illegal?”

“The best illegal.”

They ate slowly, talking about everything and nothing: teachers, the fact that Coulson apparently ran track in college, a pigeon Daisy had named Gerald who stalked her outside homeroom, how Sister Beatrice almost slipped and fell last night. 

It was so… normal. Boring. 

Good.

And that’s when it hit her.

Halfway through her eighth dumpling, Daisy suddenly felt her throat close. Her hands went cold and her chest went tight in that familiar way… but it wasn’t fear.

It was the absence of fear. 

She set her chopsticks down carefully and swallowed hard, trying to control the way her heart fluttered. 

May noticed immediately. “You okay?”

Daisy nodded, shook her head, then nodded again. But as her lip trembled, she scrambled to cover her face with both hands like she could hold the tears in that way.

May leaned forward slightly, voice low and steady. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t…” Daisy’s voice cracked. “I don’t know what this is.”

May didn’t move. 

Daisy let her hands fall. Her smile was still there, just a little wobbly and crooked now. “It’s just… so weird. Not being scared.” She said it like a confession.

May was quiet for a long moment. “This is what a good day feels like.”

“I didn’t know those were real.”

“They are.”

Daisy nodded, biting her cheek to keep more tears in.

May passed her a napkin. “Let yourself have it.”

“Even if I’m not used to it?”

“Especially then.”

Daisy took a deep breath. And then another. She picked her chopsticks back up and ate another dumpling. Her hands still shook, but not from panic – from relief. 

Later, on their way back to St. Agnes, Daisy turned to May with a strange and vulnerable look in her eyes. “Hey. Can I tell you something kind of stupid?”

May nodded.

“I think I want to be someone. Like… for real.”

May met her gaze. “You already are.”

Chapter Text

May wore a different face to the appointment she had been waiting so impatiently for. 

The gentle one – the one that traded jokes over dumplings and laughed ironically at made-up pigeon love stories – was gone. In its place was the face of someone who wanted to dismantle an entire system. She went through the paperwork already; called in every favor she could think of; talked to the department’s HR rep and legal team; and memorized all seventeen, overloaded pages of Daisy’s file. She didn’t care what the courts wanted to label it as – custody, emergency guardianship, long-term placement, whatever. All she cared about was Daisy coming home for good. 

But the meeting did not go as planned.

“Officer May,” Kara Palamas said, her tone smooth with the kind of calm reserved for difficult toddlers, “we appreciate your concern. But Daisy’s history of being a flight risk and behavioral flags puts her in the high-risk category. You’re not licensed for foster care, and without emergency override from a judge–”

“I’ve been taking care of her already,” May said, her voice low and sharp. “I’ve taken her to every medical follow-up, every school meeting, every–”

“I understand. But Daisy’s file–”

“She’s not a file.”

Palamas didn’t flinch. “We can revisit guardianship at her next review hearing in a few months. Until then, St. Agnes is the safest and most stable place–”

May stood abruptly, her entire body vibrating with anger. “If anything happens to her, I will hold you personally accountable.” She walked out before Palamas could respond.

That evening, she reluctantly went to St. Agnes after avoiding the precinct all day. Daisy had texted her an hour ago after school: ‘everything ok? just checking in’

May didn’t know how to answer, so she didn’t. When she finally arrived, Daisy was already waiting for her on the front steps with that hopeful little half-smile that cracked May’s heart in two.

“You okay?” Daisy asked.

“Let’s talk.”

They parked at the spot next to the river. The city glowed in front of them like a distant mirage. May told her everything: how the hearing went; how the state didn’t consider her eligible yet; how there would be more forms, more bureaucracy, more red tape. She spoke as calmly as she could.

Daisy didn’t. “So that’s it?” she snapped. “They say no and you just give up?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you said ‘later.’ And later means they’ll stick me back in another hellhole and you’ll just keep… what? Showing up a few hours a day and pretending like that’s enough?!”

May didn’t know how to react. Her silence only made Daisy angrier.

“You promised me,” Daisy said, voice cracking now. “You said I would be safe with you. That I could… that maybe I could belong somewhere and…” Her breath hitched. She looked away, hot tears brimming. “And I believed you.”

“Daisy–”

“No, forget it,” Daisy spat, already unbuckling her seatbelt. “I should’ve known better. I’m not stupid, I get it. You were just being nice. You felt bad for me. That’s all.”

May stared at her like Daisy slapped her across the face. “No…”

But Daisy was already out of the car. She slammed the door hard and walked away fast. 

May didn’t chase after her; she just let her go. She knew that sometimes Daisy needed space. But as the city lights bled into the sky and the wind picked up, May knuckles turned white with how hard she was gripping the wheel – furious at every broken policy, every delayed signature, every adult who had failed Daisy before.

She made a promise and she was going to keep it, even if Daisy didn’t believe her yet.

Chapter Text

Daisy didn’t go to school the next day. She meant to – she even laced up her boots and trudged out the heavy front doors of St. Agnes, head down and hood up. But the second the morning air hit her skin, something inside buckled. The world was too loud. The wind scraped across her face like sandpaper. Every car horn, every pedestrian step, every flapping street banner felt like it was screaming.

So when she got down the front steps, she turned left instead of right.

Her feet wandered without permission down cracked sidewalks and under rusted fences and through alleys where the graffiti curled like old scabs. She wandered past the familiar places she usually loitered, and into places where no one asked questions because everyone else was trying to disappear too. 

She told herself she was just taking the long way to school. She told herself May didn’t matter.

You really thought she would fight for you?

You really thought people like her keep people like you?

You’re disposable, Daisy. You know that.

The voice was hers, but also not. It echoed in the spaces May had started to fill, eating her away. 

The city blurred into itself and her fingers turned numb from the chill of early spring. By late morning, she was somewhere unfamiliar on the outskirts of a neighborhood with uneven pavement and hollow-eyed houses. She ended up wandering outside a bodega where a group of older teens huddled under the awning.

“Hey,” one of them said. “You lost?”

She shook her head, but didn’t leave.

“C’mere. You want a hit?”

The joint smelled cheap and sour. But it would be a distraction – a way to let the world fuzz around the edges.

She moved toward them.

It was dark when she came to hours later. It wasn’t really like waking up, more like floating back into herself. She was on the floor of someone’s basement, music pulsing like it was underwater, bass rippling through her ribs. A couple was making out on a saggy couch next to her. Someone was throwing up in the corner. She had no idea how she got there. Her body buzzed with static. Her head was stuffed with cotton and smoke. She could barely keep her eyes open

A boy sat beside her, too close. She didn’t know his name. He offered her a red plastic cup. “Here,” he grinned, mean and leering. “Drink up.”

The smell made her stomach twist. “No thanks,” she slurred.

His hand slid onto her thigh. “Come on… you came all this way. Be nice.”

“No,” she mumbled, pulling back – or trying to at least. Her limbs felt slow and heavy.

He gripped tighter. “Don’t act like that now.”

Her vision swam. The room leaned left.

But somewhere in the haze, something old and buried kicked its way to the surface: survival, instinct, panic. She shoved him off, hard, and stumbled to her feet – heart hammering as she staggered toward the stairs. He grabbed for her, but she twisted away. Her boots slipped on the old carpet, knocking her into the wall, but she still managed to stumble up the stairs and through the door.

She ran until the wind cut her lungs raw. The streets were getting dark now. She had no idea where her coat was and barely registered that her backpack was still on. Her fingers were shaking. Her mouth was dry. 

She walked for hours, barely noticing the ache in her legs. She didn't know where she was or where she was going. 

Eventually a cruiser rolled to a crawl next to her at an intersection. A voice called out, low and steady. “Hey! Hey, kid. You okay?”

She turned, unsteady on her feet.

The cop stepped out. He had kind eyes, studying her like he knew her face. “Wait… Daisy?”

She blinked at him, pupils blown wide. Her mouth opened, but her tongue felt like it didn’t work.

“I’m Officer Trip. I know Officer May. You remember May, right?”

At the sound of her name, something in Daisy’s shoulders dropped. Her head wobbled in a slow nod.

“Okay,” he said gently, holding out a hand. “Okay, come on. Let’s get you somewhere safe.”

May stood in the archway of St. Agnes’s dorm hall, her jaw tight. It was dinnertime. School ended hours ago, and she still couldn’t find Daisy. She called the library – nothing. She found Jemma – Daisy didn’t go to school today. She checked her phone over and over again – no texts. 

Sister Beatrice pursed her lips, completely unfazed, “She’s probably just with a friend.” 

“I talked to Jemma, she didn’t go to school today.” 

The nun shrugged, already turning away. “She’s probably off sulking. You know how she gets.” 

May’s patience cracked, “She’s fifteen. If you noticed she didn’t come back, maybe try acting like that matters.”

The nun glared at her, but she didn’t care. The pit in her gut was growing heavier by the second.

She went back to the precinct and was pouring herself the fifth coffee of the day when she got the call from Officer Trip at the next precinct over. The words barely registered: found a teenage girl wandering, clearly stoned, recognized her… 

May was already in her car before the sentence ended.

By the time she pulled up to their station, Trip was waiting for her outside. The worry was clear on his face. 

“I found her stumbling around a few blocks from Sutter and Howard – not a good neighborhood. She’s barely coherent. I figured… well, I remembered you talking about her.”

May didn’t even thank him. She just ran.

Inside, Daisy sat in the corner of a small interview room with her legs pulled up to her chest, wrapped under an old NYPD blanket. She was swaying slightly. Her eyes didn’t focus. Her jaw hung slack. She looked small, even younger than usual. There was blood on her sleeve. Not much, but just enough to make May’s heart punch its way into her throat. 

May’s voice cracked the silence. “Daisy.”

No answer.

May stepped forward, crouching in front of her. “Hey. It’s me. I’m here.”

Still nothing.

May shrugged out of her coat and wrapped it around Daisy’s shoulders, slow and careful, like she was tucking her into something safe. 

Daisy flinched, just barely, then froze. Her fingers gripped the collar of the jacket tighter around herself and she finally looked up. When her eyes locked on May’s, it was like she was resurfacing from underwater. 

May leaned forward, pressing her forehead gently to Daisy’s. “You’re safe,” she whispered. “I’m here.”

Daisy’s lip trembled, but she didn’t cry. She didn’t say anything. She just clung to the fabric of May’s coat like it was the last tether she had left.

And May didn’t try to fix it because she knew she couldn’t. She just stayed there, arms around the shaking girl, and anchored her through the storm.

It was still dark when Daisy woke up hours later. Her skin was on fire. Her heart was racing. The blanket wrapped around her was damp with sweat and her muscles ached like she had been sprinting for miles. Her mouth was bone-dry, tongue thick and sour. Her head pulsed with a slow, sick rhythm  like her brain was trying to crawl out through her skull.

She didn’t remember falling asleep. She barely remembered getting to May’s apartment. 

She sat up too fast, and the whole room tilted sideways. Her stomach clenched painfully. She bolted off the couch but didn’t make it to the bathroom in time. The retching hit her hard and sudden. Acid and bile spilled onto the hallway floor just outside the bathroom door.

“It’s okay, I got you.” Out of nowhere May was there, crouching beside her, solid and quiet. 

Daisy tried to curl away, ashamed and shaking. Her hands were clammy. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean–”

“Stop,” May said gently. “Just breathe.”

She guided Daisy to the toilet and held her hair back while Daisy heaved until there was nothing left. Even after, her body kept trying – spasming in waves, each one sharper than the last. Tears leaked from her eyes without sound. It felt like her body was purging everything – the basement, the boy’s breath on her neck, the feeling of being unreachable, her voice locked deep in her chest like a prisoner screaming behind glass.

When it was finally over, she slumped to the side trembling. May didn’t leave. She sat beside her on the bathroom floor and gently pressed a damp washcloth to Daisy’s forehead.

“You’re okay,” she murmured. “It’s just your body coming down.” 

But Daisy didn’t feel okay. She felt sick, not just in her body – but in her skin. In her bones. Her mind. She was so sick of the way she kept breathing. So sick of holding it all in. So sick of herself. 

Her mind wouldn’t stop replaying things – the worst things, the things she never said out loud – not like memories, but like ghosts that clung to her ribs and whispered into her ears. She clawed at her scalp like she could scrape them out, scrub herself clean from the inside out. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood.

The crack of his belt against the walls. The cloying scent of cologne that still made her gag. The exact count of plaster lines in the old ceiling. The click of the door when he locked her inside. The little ones crying, begging her to wake up. The way her body would go silent and still, because that was the only way to live through it. 

“Make it stop,” she whispered, her voice hollow and hoarse. “Please.”

May steadied her gently, not fully understanding what she meant. “Let’s get you cleaned up and then get something bland for your stomach. That’ll help.” 

Daisy didn’t say anything. 

May helped her rinse out her mouth and change into a clean shirt, and then led her into the dim kitchen. She set a plate on the table with two dry slices of toast, plain and warm. 

“Try a little,” she said. “It’ll help your stomach settle.”

Daisy sat. Her hands shook as she took a small bite. 

May sat across from her, still in her sweats. She looked like she hadn’t slept at all, but her eyes were as alert and watchful as ever. 

The silence stretched between them like a held breath.

The memories burned in her exhausted brain. 

“I was thirteen,” Daisy said suddenly. Her voice sounded far away. “It was winter when they dropped me off. There was snow everywhere. The house was upstate, middle of nowhere. They had horses. I thought it might be okay.”

May didn’t speak. She just turned slightly in her chair, giving Daisy her full attention.

“There were four of us kids. I was the oldest, so I… I tried to protect the little ones. The adults were…” She stopped and swallowed hard. “They liked to remind us that we weren’t wanted. That we were there because no one else would take us. They didn’t just hit us. They would use whatever they could grab… belts, brooms, shovels…”

May’s hands curled slightly on the table. But still, she said nothing and just let Daisy talk.

“He…” Daisy’s mouth went dry. “The man. He used to come into my room at night. I didn’t… I couldn’t fight him. I tried, at first. But it just made everything worse.”

The words were coming faster now – like once the dam broke, it could no longer be contained. “I used to count the cracks in the ceiling to stay still. To stay gone. I got really good at pretending I was somewhere else. I liked to pretend like I was invisible. Or dead. That helped.”

May was as still as a statue, but the ache behind her ribs clawed upward like fire.

Daisy barked a laugh, bitter and humorless. “It finally stopped when he beat me so bad they thought I might actually die. And I thought… maybe if I did die, then at least the little ones would be safe. They drove me to the hospital and told them I fell off the porch or something. The nurse didn’t believe them and reported it. That’s how I got pulled.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I didn’t want to get pulled. I wanted to die.”

May didn’t say anything. She remembered reading about this house in Daisy’s file. She read the intake notes from the ER in a small town outside Albany. The girl was brought in under a fake name, her body a roadmap of trauma. Severe concussion. Internal bleeding. Dislocated shoulder. Shattered ribs. Collapsed lung. Crushed orbital. Bruising and welts in every direction. She knew Daisy spent nearly two months in the hospital. She knew Daisy was silent – nonverbal for the first three days.

No documented notes of sexual abuse. May remembered a small line on a healing pelvic fracture, but no follow-up beyond that. Just a small, inconsequential note that they didn’t even bother to address. 

Now, hearing it in the girl’s own words made May’s chest feel like it was folding in on itself.

The kitchen was heavy with silence.

Then May’s chair scraped the floor as she stood.

Daisy flinched, ever so slightly – the kind of instinct you don’t grow out of.

But May didn’t come at her. She just walked slowly over to her side of the table and knelt down next to her. She didn’t look like a cop or an agent; she looked like someone choosing to kneel to meet Daisy where she was.

“You should have never had to survive that,” she said quietly. Her voice was trembling with something too old for anger, too sharp for sadness. “You should have never been left there. I am so sorry, Daisy.”

Daisy blinked, hard. Her face was tight and unmoving – like if she let one expression out, the whole wall would crack.

May touched her hand. “You deserve more,” she said. “More than just ‘not that bad.’ You deserve good days. Safe nights. A bed where no one hurts you. A door that only you control. A place where you never have to hide or disappear again.”

Daisy stared at her. “You don’t get to give me that right?” she whispered bitterly. “You’re not allowed. You said you were trying to get custody, and now it’s… what? Lawyers? Judges? People who don’t care? You’ll leave me too. Everyone does.”

May leaned in, steady and fierce. “I’m not everyone,” she said. “And I’m not letting anyone take you from me.”

Daisy’s lower lip trembled. “I don’t want to go back to St. Agnes.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to end up like them. Like the people who hurt me. Like my parents.”

“You won’t.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“I can,” May said, brushing a thumb across the back of Daisy’s hand. “And I can promise that you won’t ever be alone again. Not while I’m breathing.”

Daisy let out a shaky breath and folded forward, resting her head against May’s shoulder. Her shoulders trembled, and her fingers fisted the fabric of May’s shirt like a child clutching a lifeline.

May held her, rocking her slightly. Just once. Just enough to say: I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.

And for the first time since she was thirteen, Daisy let someone see her. 

Chapter Text

No one spoke in the car, even though the trip from the city into upstate was more than three hours away. The caseworker didn’t know what to say and Daisy didn’t want to hear it anyway. She was thirteen, tired, cold, and smart enough to know how the system worked. Or rather, how it didn’t.

The house was far north, surrounded by fields of snow that seemed to stretch endlessly. It was an old clapboard farmhouse with peeling paint and a porch that sagged in the middle. The man who opened the door was broad-shouldered and smiling, with slicked-back hair and yellow teeth and a voice too smooth. He looked at her like she was meat in a butcher’s window. 

“Well,” he said, eyes dragging from her face to her hips in a way that made Daisy’s stomach churn with dread. “I didn’t know we were getting a little Chinese girl.” 

Her caseworker shifted uncomfortably on her feet, “Um… well… Daisy’s very excited to be here, right Daisy?” 

Daisy didn’t answer. 

“Some fresh air outside the city will be good for you.” 

The air inside the house was stagnant with mildew and alcohol. The furniture was threadbare. The walls were yellowed with smoke. The other kids – a tiny eight-year-old girl named Tasha and twin ten-year-old boys who never spoke – huddled in the corner of the living room like shadows.

Daisy was the oldest. They made that clear the first night.

“You keep the others in line,” the woman said to her, handing her a trash bag of hand-me-down clothes. “We don’t like trouble.”

Trouble meant making noise or asking a question or crying or not eating fast enough or wetting the bed. Trouble got punished.

Once, they shoved soap so far down Tasha’s throat, she vomited. The boys were kept in their room for entire weekends, locked inside without food or water, because they cried at night.

Daisy became their shield. 

Every time, she would step forward and say, “It was me.”

The beatings came often. The man didn’t just hit with his fists or kick with his boots. He used things like broom handles, thick leather belts, cooking spoons, the flat side of a snow shovel… whatever he could get his hands on. Whatever would hurt the most. Sometimes the woman would watch and sometimes she joined in, slapping hard enough to leave Daisy’s ears ringing. 

But the worst part wasn’t the bruises, or the welts, or the burns. 

At first, he just watched. He would open her door when she was changing and stare. He would touch her waist too long and comment on how she was “growing up.” 

Then came the nights.

She learned how his footsteps would sound differently depending on his mood. She learned how her door would creak as it opened in the dead of night. She learned what would happen after he whispered “baby girl” into her ear. 

Her room had a small window, frostbitten at the edges, and a ceiling dotted with water stains. She would count the cracks like stars, pretending she was somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Sometimes she counted them all two or three times over before it was finally over. She never cried. She learned not to – crying made it last longer. Silence was faster. 

Some nights, he liked to talk to her. Some nights, he didn’t talk at all – he just used her. Some nights, he would make her bleed. She would crawl into the closet after he left and sit there until sunrise. 

She never told anyone. Who would listen? Who would care? 

The younger kids didn’t know the details, but they knew enough. They knew that Daisy was taking the worst of it so they didn’t have to. They clung to her; they called her their sister.

So she stayed.

She didn’t mark time in weekends or holidays, because there weren’t any. She counted broken things: broken bones, swollen eyes, chipped teeth. She hid them as best she could. But in the end, she stayed until she almost didn’t survive it.

It was a humid early summer night. They were washing the dishes and Tasha dropped a glass. It shattered into a thousand pieces on the linoleum floor. Everyone froze. 

The woman screamed and the man stormed in, reeking of whiskey and something sour. His eyes were unfocused, but already burning with hate and rage. 

The twins clung to the wall. Tasha froze mid-sob, her fingers twitching like she wanted to take it back. 

Daisy stepped in front of them. “I did it,” she said, voice steady. “It was me.”

He grabbed Daisy by the collar, yanked her across the room, and slammed her against the wall so hard her teeth clicked. 

“Always you, huh?” he hissed. “You like the attention?”

Before she could even apologize, his fist came down – not a slap – but a punch to the gut like he was trying to cave her in. The air rushed out of her lungs with a sharp, helpless wheeze. Her body folded in on itself, arms hugging her middle, but the blows kept coming – a battering ram driving into her ribs until they felt like splintered glass. When he finally released her, her knees collapsed. She dropped hard to the floor, gasping soundlessly, mouth open and useless. Each attempt at breath scraped her throat raw, as though her lungs had forgotten how to work.

But he didn’t stop.

He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her through the kitchen and towards the basement door like a rag doll. 

“No…” she choked, panic rising. The basement meant pain. 

She twisted, kicked, bit his arm hard enough to taste blood. He roared in rage and slammed her head against the shaky metal railing until she saw stars. A high, keening ring filled her ears. Her vision blurred at the edges, colors bleeding together. She wanted to throw up, but couldn’t find the breath for it. 

Every stair scraped at her knees, her shins, her hips as he hauled her downstairs and flung her into the basement. Her cheek bounced off the cement, and something in her shoulder tore unnaturally on impact with a sickening crunch. She choked out a gasp, curling instinctively around the injury. 

She tried to crawl backwards, but her legs wouldn’t move right. Her good arm shook and the world spun wildly around her. Her body ached like it was coming apart at the seams. 

“Stop… please…” she managed to feebly choke out. 

He came at her fast and grabbed her face, forcing her to look at him. “You think you’re some kind of hero?” he spat. “Think you’re so brave? Let’s see how brave you are now, you little bitch.” 

Then the real beating began.

He didn’t rush. He never did. He liked it slow and deliberate. He liked to watch the pain, the fear in her eyes. He liked to watch the light bleed out of her pupils. 

His fist crashed into her cheekbone. Her head whipped sideways, the world flickering gray. Another hit broke the skin along her temple, and blood dripped into her eye, hot and thick. She blinked frantically, but the blur only worsened.

Then off came his belt. The crack of leather in the air made her flinch even before it landed. Lashes rained down on her over and over – searing across her back, her arms, the back of her neck – eliciting pathetic whimpers and ragged cries of pain that barely sounded human. Her skin split under the force, the whip leaving angry red-hot welts on her flesh that bled through her tattered shirt. She tried to roll away, but he kicked her square in the spine. 

She screamed, high and hoarse. 

He threw the belt to the side, panting hard like he was tired. “You want to play hero?” he snarled, voice low and furious. “This is what it gets you.” 

He yanked her upright again – his claws in her hair, her scalp burning like hellfire – slammed her against the wall and hammered his fists into her body. Each blow was blunt, jarring, too deep. Her body jerked to take each hit until she was gagging up thick strings of blood, spit red across her chin. The dirty wall was cold against her face where he pinned her in place, a rough anchor keeping her upright when her legs just wanted to drop. 

Daisy could feel her body giving out. Her arm was numb, her ribs were cracked, and her blood felt warm as it trickled down her side. She mustered all her energy to kick at his shins at one last time, a feeble shot at freedom. 

“You don’t get to fight,” he snarled in her ear before he threw her across the room like she weighed nothing at all. 

She flew at the momentum, tripping over her own two feet, and her hip caught the corner of a chair. A flash of pain shot down her leg and she fell to the ground breathless. Still, she tried to move, clawing at the floor to crawl away. But he was faster. His hand clamped on her ankle as he yanked her back to him, her nails leaving faint scratches on the floor. 

He bent over to pick up an old curtain rod discarded on the floor, and swung it down on her body like a baseball bat. The cold metal cracked against her shoulder blade and something broke – she could feel it give under her skin. He brought it down on her hip. Her calf. Her already-broken ribs. The side of her jaw. And every time, she could feel it – a wet, sickening crunch of something inside giving way – before pain exploded like lightning detonating under her skin. Her screams broke into gurgles, choked on her own blood and spit. Her vision started to fray black, then white, then black again. She couldn’t hold on to shapes anymore.

“Still moving?” he sneered at her broken body, “Still think you’re something? You are nothing. And no one is coming for you.” 

He hit her again, lower this time, and the edge of the rod caught her thigh. It tore through her skin like paper. The sensation made her scream, a guttural sound tearing from deep in her chest. 

“You want to fucking scream? Then scream.” 

He dropped the rod and grabbed her by the hair again – a brutal, two-fisted twist – and slammed her face into the wall. 

Once. 

Twice. 

The third time, the wall cracked. Blood smeared the pale sheetrock in an arc where he rammed her head clear through. Her body went limp. 

After that, she didn’t make a sound.

Her world narrowed to fragments. The pain dulled, as if someone had pulled a curtain between her and it. She felt herself floating, weightless and detached from her body. 

The ceiling… she focused on that. There was a water stain in the corner that looked like a bird with broken wings. She counted the cracks around it. 

She was somewhere else now, watching from above even though she didn’t want to look anymore. She could see his heavy boots stomping on her body like he wanted to crush her into the dust. But her body didn’t even feel like hers anymore. It was just a thing that bore the brunt of pain. A thing that took hurt.  

She stayed there, in that place outside herself, where she couldn’t feel it. 

She stayed there until it ended. Until he left her in the dark – barely conscious, bloodied and slack and broken on the cold floor, shirt shredded, skin in ribbons, bones crushed.  

When the door finally slammed behind him, she didn’t move.

She couldn’t move. 

Not for minutes. Not for hours. 

The chill of the cement seeped into her skin, her cheek smashed into the floor. Blood dripped down her spine and pooled beneath her shirt, sticky and warm. Her fingers trembled. Her mouth hung open, but she wasn’t even sure if she was breathing. Her chest felt sunken and empty. 

She thought about Tasha and the boys, and the way they huddled together in the dark when they were scared. The way they watched her for every signal.

She thought: Maybe if I finally die, they’ll be safe.

The door cracked open hours later. “Get up,” the woman barked from the top of the stairs. 

Daisy couldn’t respond. 

She came down with a flashlight, annoyed. “I said–” 

She stopped cold. 

Daisy could see the woman’s cheap flip-flops in front of her, faded pink with glitter. But she didn’t move to look up. She couldn’t. 

The woman stood there for a long, frozen moment. Then she swore under her breath. “Shit… Get up! Get the fuck up.” 

She crouched down to check Daisy’s pulse and slapped her bloody face. “Get up, girl,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare die here.”

Daisy couldn’t move. 

The woman backed out, calling for him in rising panic. Her voice cracked.

No one came. 

Not for hours. 

They didn’t call an ambulance or try to clean her up. They just left her there, whispering at the top of the stairs and peeking in on her like she was a spilled drink they didn’t want to mop up.

It wasn’t until Daisy started vomiting blood – thick, viscous black-red streaks that splattered down her chin and onto the floor – did the panic turn real. 

“She’ll die,” the woman hissed, dragging her limp body onto a towel. “We can’t have her die in the house.”

They dragged her back up the stairs like luggage, bundled in a towel with her limbs hanging out like a broken doll. Every jolt sent knives through her ribs, but she couldn’t even make a sound. 

They threw her into the backseat of their rusted pickup truck. The world flickered around her like a broken film reel as they made the long drive to the rural ER in the dead of night.

The woman rehearsed the story out loud, over and over. “She fell down the porch steps. She’s clumsy. Always causing problems.”

But the nurse’s face changed the second she laid eyes on Daisy. She already did not believe the obvious lies the woman was spinning, but she was not at all prepared for what she saw in the back of the truck. 

Daisy didn’t just look injured. 

She looked like a pulping mess of skin and bones. 

Blood had dried in thick rivulets along the curve of her neck. One eye was swollen completely shut. Her lips were split, cracked open, caked with blood and bile. Her arms hung limply at her sides, twitching occasionally like they didn’t quite belong to her. The towel they put the girl on was already soaked through with blood. 

The nurse crouched beside the car and gently touched Daisy’s wrist. Her pulse was thready. And too fast. 

“Hey, sweetheart?” she asked quietly. “Can you hear me?” 

Daisy didn’t speak. Her good eye fluttered open, then closed. She was just so tired. 

That was enough.

The nurse turned back, voice snapping like a whip as she called to the staff inside. “I need a gurney, now! Get Dr. Peterson on call. And someone call CPS.” 

Daisy only caught pieces of the chaos around her as they wheeled her into the trauma unit – the bright flash of the overhead lights, the sharp scent of antiseptic, the flurry of hands on her skin, the chorus of voices shouting orders she couldn’t really process. 

“She’s got a collapsed lung. We need to intubate–” 

“OR-2 is prepped and ready now–” 

“BP is dropping–” 

“Jesus Christ, what did they do to her–” 

Someone slid a needle into her IV and a cold flood rushed through her veins. The last thing she felt was weightlessness, like being pulled underwater by invisible hands, before everything went black. 

The police were called. The man and woman were arrested. But by then it was too late.

They had taken something from her that she would never get back. Daisy never went back to that house, but the house never really left her.

And she never told the full story. Not to the doctors. Not to the nurses. Not to the police. Not to a single social worker.

Until May.

Until that quiet kitchen, a piece of plain toast because she was hungover, and the unbearable safety of someone who cared.

Chapter Text

May didn’t sleep at all that night, or the next. She stayed on the edge of the living room couch with Daisy’s emergency intake file laid open in her lap – staring endlessly at the file stuffed with police reports, affidavits, and her own personal statement (already rewritten three times and still too clinical). It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t fast enough. The system worked on its own clock, and Daisy didn’t have that kind of time.

She could still hear the girl’s voice in her head, flat and hollow: “And I thought… maybe if I did die, then at least the little ones would be safe.” 

May had never been good with helplessness. But this wasn't just helplessness – this was fury in a cage. It burned low behind her ribs and turned every breath into glass. She wanted to break something. Preferably the system: every lock, every loophole, every lazy bureaucrat who let this child fall through the cracks. She craved the sharp relief of grinding all those failures down to dust beneath her knuckles. 

Instead, she stayed still, and listened to the faint rise and fall of Daisy’s breath in the guest room. She finally fell asleep in one of May’s hoodies, clutching the sleeves in her fists like lifelines. She looked so impossibly small for someone who had already been through so much pain. For someone who May knew still had so much fire and spirit despite it all. 

And until the paperwork finally caught up with reality, May knew that this would be Daisy’s last night under her roof. Daisy still belonged to the state. And that meant the system could, and would, put her wherever they wanted. Even if it meant putting her back at St. Agnes, where the nuns treated her like baggage instead of a child.

Melinda May didn’t beg… but she had begged. She called every judge she knew, every social worker, every emergency placement coordinator. She leaned on every ounce of clout she had in the precinct and beyond. And while she did manage to expedite Daisy’s next review, it was still so far away. 

“We already pushed it up to next week,” they said. “Be patient.” 

Patience… what a luxury.

It was afternoon when Daisy woke up again. The emptiness in her gut felt like a living thing, eating her from the inside out. She had no energy left to rage – no fire left to push back. There was just numbness. And deep beneath that… shame. Familiar and suffocating. 

You let it happen.

You’re a black hole.

You ruin everything good that touches you.

May’s throat felt like sandpaper as she studied the hollowness of Daisy’s eyes when the girl finally emerged in the kitchen. 

“I fought,” she said quietly. “I got your review hearing pushed up to next week, but… they won’t let you stay here. I’m sorry.”

Daisy shrugged, detached. “Not your fault.”

But May heard the subtext clearly: I didn’t think you’d keep me anyway.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to flip the whole damn system on its head. She reached out. “Daisy…”

The girl flinched.

May froze, heart twisting.

Daisy didn’t step back, but she didn’t move forward either. It was like watching the girl sink beneath a thick ice, one inch at a time.

The drive to St. Agnes was silent. May’s hands gripped the wheel too tight. Daisy stared out the window. When they pulled up to the curb, May turned to face her. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll go for a drive. Or get something to eat. Or nothing, if that’s what you want.”

Daisy nodded, but her eyes didn’t lift.

“Hey,” May said, trying her best to keep her voice soft and comforting. “This is temporary, I swear. I’m going to get you out of here.”

Daisy opened the door silently. 

May reached across, stopped her with a hand on her wrist. “One more thing.”

The girl looked at her warily.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Daisy’s eyes welled, but the tears didn’t fall. “That’s what they always say.”

May watched her walk up the steps – stiff, slow, mechanical – and waited until the heavy wood door swallowed her whole.

Only then did her grip finally slip from the wheel. Only then did the tears come, silent and steady, carving hot tracks down a face that had learned too well how to stay unmoved. She had promised Daisy strength, but in the dark solitude of her car, she let herself unravel and feel it – Daisy’s pain, her own helplessness – until it nearly split her in two.

Chapter Text

True to May’s word, she showed up everyday, leaning against the hood of her cruiser like she had nowhere else to be. 

The first day, Daisy saw her but ducked her head and kept walking with her friends. The second day, she slowed down a bit but still didn’t stop. On day three, she opened the door and got in without a word. 

They didn’t talk for the first ten minutes. Then May asked, "Want to see something cool?"

Daisy shrugged, noncommittal, but she didn’t say no.

They left the city behind. May took the long route north with the windows cracked just enough to let in the smell of early spring: thawed earth, wet bark, a breath of rain still clinging to the trees. Daisy rested her head against the glass and watched the city skyline shrink in the rearview mirror.

An hour later, they got out of the car at a quiet overlook above the Hudson. There was no one else there, just the wind and the river and the low rustle of trees waking up for spring. May reached into her bag and pulled out a camera. It was an old, scratched-up, clunky little thing with a cracked leather strap. 

"You ever used one of these before?"

Daisy blinked. "Like... real film?"

May held it out. "Try it."

The teenager hesitated before taking it, fingers tentative on the buttons. She fiddled with the settings until the shutter clicked. The snap of it made her grin, just barely. It felt foreign on her face, like a fragile flower pushing up through concrete.

"You look like a spy," she said, squinting at May’s all-black outfit over the lens.

May arched a brow. "You look like someone who needs to eat."

They ended up back at the diner near the precinct – grilled cheese and a chocolate milkshake to share. They didn’t even need to order, the waitress just poured their waters and grabbed the laminated menus they didn’t touch. 

The food was hot and comforting, the kind of greasy that made your chest feel warm. Daisy demolished hers without realizing how hungry she was. They didn’t talk much, just about work and school. But when May made a derisive comment about Sister Beatrice, Daisy laughed for the first time since their fight a week ago. A real laugh, not a brittle one or a sarcastic huff. A joyful laugh. The sound made May’s heart twist.

They didn’t talk about what was coming. They didn’t talk about the hearing coming in a few days or Daisy’s birthday. They didn’t talk about the weight of next week pressing on both their shoulders like a stormcloud waiting to break.

When they pulled up to St. Agnes, Daisy didn’t move to open the door right away. "Hey," she said, eyes fixed on the leather keychain May still used.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks. For today."

May looked at her quietly. "Of course."

Daisy hesitated. She was still gripping the camera. "Do you think it'll work? The hearing?"

May didn’t answer right away. She just said simply, "I think you belong at home. With me. And I’m going to say that in every room they put me in."

Daisy nodded. Her throat was too tight. "May?"

"Hmm?"

Her voice was barely a whisper. "Next week... if they don’t let me stay with you… can we still have cake or something?"

May smiled the kind of smile that carried more weight than she meant it to. "We’re having cake no matter what."

Chapter Text

The courtroom was smaller than May expected, almost insultingly so for something this important. The windows were narrow and high, and May had to listen hard to hear the judge’s voice over the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. That, and the rush of blood in her ears. 

But none of that mattered the second the gavel hit the desk and the words “emergency custodial transfer approved” left the judge’s mouth. May took in a shaky breath like she hadn’t breathed in a month.

It was done.

Her hands were shaking as she grabbed the paperwork. She thanked the lawyer, barely heard what he said in response, and practically ran down the courthouse steps. 

She didn’t bother calling or texting – she wanted to tell Daisy in person. Daisy was finally coming home. No more waiting, no more placements, no more strangers making decisions about her. Just a real home, somewhere she was already wanted and loved. 

May didn’t stop for coffee or to grab lunch, even though she hadn’t eaten all day. She got in her car and broke half a dozen traffic laws racing across town, heart pounding harder with every block she passed… because today wasn’t just the hearing. 

It was Daisy’s birthday. 

May parked at the curb outside St. Agnes, grabbed the folder of documents, scaled the steep steps two at a time, and strode through the heavy door with something close to pride burning in her chest.

Except Daisy wasn’t there.

The front foyer was quiet. She couldn’t find Daisy in her dorm room or on the roof or loitering in the mess hall or hacking away on her computer in the tiny orphanage library. When she asked a younger girl folding laundry where Daisy was, the child looked nervous. 

“She’s gone.” 

May’s stomach twisted. “What do you mean, she’s gone?” 

The girl looked scared. “Sister Beatrice said she broke a rule. That she got mouthy again. She was yelling at one of the sisters this morning – said she wouldn’t let them hit the little kids anymore. They told her they were going to send her to juvie if she didn’t shut up. Daisy packed a bag and ran before they could.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know.” The girl hesitated. “They took her phone away. She looked… really scared.”

May was already moving before the girl could say anything more. She called Daisy’s number anyway, but it went straight to voicemail. She drove around the neighborhood in circles. She checked the bus station, the public library near her school, the diner near the precinct, the skatepark Daisy liked to hang out at, the landing by the river. There was no sign of her anywhere. Panic clawed at May’s ribs as the silence in her car grew unbearable. 

May tried to keep her thoughts rational: Daisy knows how to survive. She’s a smart kid. She knows the city.

But the idea of her being all alone, on her birthday, kicked out like garbage… May’s mind couldn’t stop flashing back to how it felt to find Daisy at the other precinct last week, stoned out of her mind and trembling like a leaf. It made her feel sick. 

Then, abruptly, she remembered the hidden park that Daisy once told her about and how she used to hide there when St. Agnes got too loud. 

May floored the gas.

She found Daisy on a bench by the swings with  her knees hugged to her chest, her duffle crumpled beside her. Her head was down, bangs shielding her face, and she looked so small – so heartbreakingly young – that May’s breath caught in her throat.

“Daisy,” she called softly.

Daisy looked up. Tears were already sliding down her cheeks and when she saw May, her whole body seemed to uncoil. “I… I didn’t know if you were coming,” she choked out.

May crossed the distance between them and dropped to her knees in front of her. She cupped Daisy’s face with both hands. “Of course I came. I promised, didn’t I?”

“They said they were going to send me to juvie. That I was violent. That I was a threat.” Daisy whispered. “I just couldn’t watch anymore. The little girl was crying and Sister Beatrice wouldn’t stop yelling. I told her to leave the kid alone. I said I wasn’t going to shut up. And that’s when she said they were going to call juvie and tell them I assaulted the staff.”

May couldn’t stop her face from twisting into a snarl. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“They made it sound like I’m some kind of monster.” 

“You’re not.”

Daisy dropped her head. “I really thought this was it. That you changed your mind. That they were right about me all along.”

May’s hands tightened their grip around Daisy’s shoulders. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”

“I don’t even have my phone. They took it. I thought about running… just leaving the city behind. But I… I couldn’t even figure out where to go.”

“You don’t have to figure it out anymore,” May said, voice fierce and tender all at once. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the custody papers, crumpled and creased from her grip. “I have these. You’re mine now. For real. You have a home. You always have a home with me.”

Daisy looked down at the papers in disbelief, like they were magic. “But what if I mess something up?”

“You will.”

Daisy stiffened. 

“Then we work through it, together.” May exhaled. “You’re not a temporary thing, Daisy. You don’t have to earn my love. I’m not just showing up when things go bad. I’m here. For the good stuff too. For the boring days. For everything.”

Daisy pressed her fist against her mouth like she was holding something in, but it slipped through anyway – a strangled sob, followed by another. 

May, still kneeling in the dirt, gently gathered the girl into her arms. They stayed like that for a long time until Daisy’s breathing finally slowed.

“You ready to go home?” May asked softly.

Daisy nodded into her shoulder, breath shuddering.

And as they drove back to May’s apartment, Daisy noticed May texting with one hand and a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously. 

“Giving Coulson a heads-up,” May said. 

“Why?” Daisy blinked.

May just smiled.

The apartment smelled like cake and takeout. A “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” banner hung crookedly over the kitchen cabinets, and a cluster of balloons bobbed above the table. Coulson stood in the middle of it all, holding a lighter in one hand and a cake with sixteen flaming candles on top in the other. 

“Just in time,” he said, grinning.

Daisy froze in the doorway. “This is… for me?”

May gently nudged her further in. “You didn’t think I was going to let you turn sixteen without cake, did you?”

Daisy made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a gasp. “I didn’t even think you were gonna show up,” she whispered.

Phil put down the cake so he wouldn’t start a fire, and handed Daisy a wrapped box with a wink. “Open this one first. It’s the less expensive one.”

Inside was a LEGO Polaroid camera set. Daisy lit up. “Dude! This is awesome.”

Then May handed her another box, this one smaller and sleeker. Daisy opened it carefully, reverently, like it might disappear. The phone inside gleamed. Brand new. 

She stared at it. “May. I can’t. This is…”

“You can,” May said firmly. “It’s yours. No questions.”

Daisy’s hands shook as she held it. “This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever given me.”

Phil leaned in, whispering like a stage actor, “Just say thank you.”

“Thank you,” Daisy whispered. 

They turned off the lights and sang. It was off-key but perfect. Daisy blew out the candles with her eyes squeezed shut.

No one asked what she wished for.

And after the cake, after the presents, after the kung pao chicken and lo mien – Daisy stood in the middle of the kitchen in her socks, still taking it all in. 

“I don’t even care if tomorrow’s terrible,” she said softly.

May looked up.

“Today was good. Really good. That’s enough.”

May crossed the room and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “You’ve got a lot more good coming.”

Daisy smiled and leaned into her side.

And for once, for the first time in sixteen years, Daisy let herself believe that was true.

Chapter Text

It was so quiet when Daisy woke up. There were no church bells ringing, no doors slamming, no girls shouting down the hallway or muffled prayers echoing off stone walls. No footsteps creaking down the hallway in the dead of night making her flinch, even if she knew it was just a nun doing rounds.

Just… quiet.

She kept her eyes closed for a long time. 

She was warm – not sweaty-hot like in the radiator-blasted rooms at St. Agnes – but soft-warm, wrapped in a real comforter with actual weight to it. Beneath her, the mattress didn’t dip in the middle or creak when she shifted. It held her like it meant it.

She opened her eyes slowly.

The room was already undeniably hers. Her hoodie rested on the chair in front of the new desk May bought for the room (for her!), her new phone was charging on the nightstand. Daisy stared at the ceiling. It was just clean paint; no cracks, no mold, no stains where the roof leaked during storms. She still half-expected to hear someone start pounding on the door and screaming at her to wake up, to clean something, to stop being lazy and earn her place.

Because she didn’t earn this – it was just given to her. 

And that terrified her.

The birthday party from last night was a blur of sugar and laughter and too many feelings stuffed into too-small spaces. She thought about the balloons, the cake, blowing out the candles with tears on her cheeks, and May’s steady hand on her shoulder. She remembered hugging Coulson, twice. She remembered May handing her a wrapped present like it was nothing, like it wasn’t the most expensive thing anyone had ever given her.

And she remembered what May had said in the park: “You’re not a temporary thing, Daisy. You don’t have to earn my love. I’m not just showing up when things go bad. I’m here. For the good stuff too. For the boring days. For everything.”

No one had ever said anything like that to her before. She wanted to believe it. God, she wanted to. But her heart was a house built on sand, and every kind word made it tilt. 

What if she messed up? What if she was too loud or too much or too broken?

What if May woke up today and changed her mind?

That last thought made her head hurt.

In the kitchen, May was standing at the stove in soft gray sweatpants and a worn NYPD shirt. She looked like someone who was just having a quiet Saturday morning, not someone who just rescued a teenager from a park bench the night before. The apartment smelled like toast and calm.

May looked up and smiled. “You’re up.” 

Daisy nodded, hovering at the edge of the doorway.

“You sleep okay?”

She nodded again, hesitating. “It was weird.”

May raised a brow. “Weird how?”

“Just… quiet. Comfortable. I didn’t think I’d sleep. I usually don’t the first night, but I did.”

“Good.” May handed her a mug of tea. “There’s food if you’re hungry. And no schedule. So don’t feel like you have to do anything.”

“So, uhh… is this it? Like… I just… live here now?”

“Yeah. You just live here now.”

Daisy swallowed hard. “You’re not gonna change your mind?”

“Nope.”

“But–”

“Stop,” May, voice steely and soft all at once. “You fought your way through hell and you came out the other side still fighting. You already deserve this. You just haven’t been given it. But this is yours. Your bed. Your room. Your home. You don’t have to prove anything. So just… breathe. Eat. Be.”

“Be…?” Daisy gave her a skeptical look. 

May responded with a smirk. “That’s the job description.”

Daisy let out a shaky breath. “Okay. I’ll try.”

They ate breakfast quietly after that, two people stitched together with survival and quiet companionship, surrounded by the soft sounds of a home being built – not with hammers and nails, but with safety and trust. 

With love.

It was easier than Daisy thought it would be to build a routine. Weekend mornings started slow, with grocery lists and quiet laughter. May scribbled a few things down on the back of an envelope and handed it over to Daisy at breakfast. 

“You can add anything you want. Within reason.”

Daisy raised an eyebrow. “What’s unreasonable?”

“A giant tub of Red Vines.”

“Okay… but what about two tubs of Red Vines?”

May gave her a look. “Let’s not test boundaries this early.”

They walked to the store together, shoulder to shoulder. It was only a few blocks away, and Daisy liked to insist on carrying the canvas bags because “you already let me stay here, the least I can do is carry the groceries.”

May never argued. She figured the kid needed to feel useful.

Inside the grocery store, Daisy moved through the aisles with a kind of wonder May didn’t expect. The girl paused for a long time in front of the cereal display, overwhelmed by how many kinds there were, and spent a solid five minutes picking out the exact right jar of jam.

“What’s the difference?” May asked, peering over her shoulder.

“This one has whole fruit. You said I could choose.”

May raised her hands. “I did. Just didn’t know you were a jam connoisseur.”

“I have layers,” Daisy said solemnly, holding the jam like it was a crown jewel.

They made lunch together, something easy and dumb like sandwiches and salad and sliced apples. Daisy pretended she didn’t notice when May cut the crusts off her sandwich without being asked, even if it made her chest ache. But she did say thank you, twice.

At night, after dinner and dishes, May pulled out old board games from a dusty, forgotten closet in the hallway. 

“You good at Battleship?” she asked.

Daisy raised an eyebrow, eyes gleaming with challenge. “Are you sure you’re ready to lose a destroyer to a high school degenerate?”

Twenty minutes later, May narrowed her eyes as Daisy announced, “C-7.”

May’s lips twitched. “Hit.”

Daisy grinned like a cat with a mouth full of canary. “Knew it. That’s your battleship.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re bluffing,” Daisy said, flipping a red peg triumphantly into place. “Your tell is you blink too slow.”

May scoffed. “I don’t have a tell.”

Daisy just smirked. “You will when I sink that sub.”

They played two full games. Daisy won both. She celebrated the second victory with both arms in the air and a triumphant “BOOM!” like she won a naval war single-handed.

May glared at her over her mug. “You’re insufferable.”

“You’re just mad because you keep hiding ships like a math teacher. So predictable.”

But May didn’t argue, because watching Daisy smile like that – loose and bright and warm – was worth every sunken cruiser.

By late night, Daisy was curled up half-asleep on the couch with a blanket pulled over her legs while Mythbusters reruns flickered on the screen. May sat next to her, scrolling through her phone, half-listening. When Daisy’s head dropped onto her shoulder like it had done it a dozen times before, May let it stay there. 

And for the first time in years, May didn’t feel alone in her home.

It was a few weeks after Daisy moved in when May first heard the sound after midnight. It was soft, barely audible from May’s room. She sat up slowly, letting her ears adjust to the dark.

Then came the sob. 

Choked. Muffled. Guttural.

May was out of bed before she realized she was moving. 

Daisy was tangled in her sheets, curled so tight around herself it looked painful. One hand was pressed to her mouth like she was trying to smother the sounds, but they kept coming – raw and panicked and barely human.

“Daisy,” May said gently, crouching beside the bed.

The girl didn’t respond. Her eyes were wide but unseeing, locked somewhere May couldn’t reach. Her breath hitched and her legs kicked once, as if she was trying to flee something invisible.

May reached out, slow and deliberate, and laid a hand on Daisy’s back.

“I’m here. You’re home,” she said softly. “It’s okay. It’s just a dream.”

But Daisy flinched so hard she almost fell off the bed.

“Hey. Hey, it’s okay. Breathe with me.”

Still no response.

May sat on the edge of the mattress and started to speak in the calm, metronomic voice she used in hostage negotiations and car accidents. “Breathe in. Four seconds. One, two, three, four. Hold. One, two… now out. One, two, three, four.”

Daisy’s breath stuttered but she followed.

“In again. One, two, three… hold it… good. Out. One, two…”

Eventually, the gasps slowed. The tremors faded. The room stopped spinning. Daisy blinked hard, and reality started to bleed back into her eyes. 

“I…” she croaked, voice wrecked. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” May said gently, brushing her sweaty bangs out of her forehead. “I was up.”

Daisy knew that wasn’t true, but she didn’t argue. “I dreamed… I was back there,” she whispered. “That house. The one I told you about.”

May didn’t ask which house, she already knew.

“I couldn’t stop it,” Daisy said, voice cracking. “I was screaming but I couldn’t move. I thought… I thought…” Her voice broke completely.

May pulled her into a hug and Daisy didn’t resist. She clung to May like a lifeline, fists curled in May’s shirt as sobs hiccuped against her chest.

“I got you,” May whispered into her hair. “You’re safe. You’re home. No one’s touching you again.”

“I hate that it still feels real.”

“It was real. But it’s not happening anymore.”

Daisy was silent for a long time. Then, with a voice so small that May almost didn’t hear it, she quietly whispered, “Can you stay? Just for a little?”

Without hesitation, May shifted into the girl’s bed and pulled the comforter back over both of them. Daisy curled against her side, her body still trembling faintly like it was releasing something it had held for far too long. May put an arm around the girl she promised to protect, quietly listening to Daisy’s breathing even out. She didn’t move until the early morning light bled through the curtains.

And for the first time in a long time, Daisy dreamed of nothing at all.

Coulson came by about once a week. May always knew it was him without even opening the door. 

“That’s Phil,” she said after hearing the knock, eyes never leaving her newspaper. 

“How do you know?”

“Too polite to just come in. Too stubborn to wait longer than five seconds.”

Sure enough, five seconds later the door creaked open. Coulson poked his head in. 

“Hey. I got lunch.” 

“You’re late,” May answered. 

Coulson grinned, fully stepping into the apartment. “Daisy, I brought your favorite. Turkey, mustard, no tomato. And I got some backup options if I guessed wrong.”

Daisy blinked. “How did you…?”

“You’re a creature of habit. And you love complaining about the texture of tomatoes.” 

He set the rest of the food down at the kitchen counter and started unpacking like it was his own place. Him and May liked to talk mindlessly about precinct things. Today, he started in about a rookie who tried to tase a suspect in the rain… and ended up zapping himself so hard he face-planted into a birdbath. 

Daisy laughed – a rare, unguarded kind of laugh that May had learned to treasure.

“We need to talk about your sandwich crimes.” Coulson turned to her with mock outrage. “May tells me you eat peanut butter and cheddar. Together.”

“It’s protein-efficient,” Daisy said defensively, mouth full. “Also, your sandwich is dry.”

“It’s artisan mustard.”

“It’s pretentious mustard.”

May smirked behind her tea. 

Coulson raised his hands. “Fine. I’m not cool enough to hang with the tech crowd. I get it.” He watched her with kind eyes while she snickered in response. “I like seeing you here, kid. Comfortable.”

Daisy stiffened, not really sure what to say. “Still figuring that part out.”

“Take your time,” he said easily. “No clock on that.”

May didn’t say anything, but her eyes were gentle.

Later that evening, after Phil left, Daisy asked May, “Why do you let him come over so much?”

May didn’t look up from folding laundry. “Because he shows up.”

Daisy paused at that, “That’s kind of rare.”

May gave her a knowing smile.

Chapter Text

It was an ordinary day. The smell of tea and something toasting filled the small apartment. A fan rattled softly in the corner, and sunlight spilled across the floor in long strips, warming the tile and making Daisy's socks feel too warm. It was the kind of ordinary day she used to dream about: quiet, slow, no alarms in her brain telling her to flinch or run.

May stood at the stove in a loose t-shirt and joggers, flipping something in the skillet with practiced ease. “You got any homework today?” she asked without looking up.

Daisy nodded, mouth full of peanut butter toast. “We have to finish the group project in robotics. Jemma and Fitz are always fighting over whose design is better. Half the time, I think I’m just there to look pretty.” 

May smirked. “Sounds like productive chaos.”

“It is.” Daisy took a sip of her juice and hesitated. “The library’s closed this week though. Construction or something.”

May glanced over her shoulder. “You want to invite them here?”

Daisy blinked. “Here?”

“Yeah. If you want. It’s your home too.”

The toast froze halfway to Daisy’s mouth. She didn’t say anything right away, because her brain was short-circuiting a little. Not because she didn’t want her friends to come… she did. But the idea that she could, that she was allowed to invite people over… that was new. Her whole life, she was the girl who made excuses. Whose “home” wasn’t really hers, or safe, or anything she wanted people to see.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “Yeah. I’ll ask them.”

They came in the afternoon, notebooks in hand and a little wide-eyed at the idea of seeing “Daisy’s place.”

“So,” Fitz asked as soon as the door opened. “Is she gonna hover in the background with a clipboard and judge us?”

May stepped out of the kitchen with a raised eyebrow. “That depends,” she said, calm as stone. “Are you planning to commit any crimes?”

Fitz froze, almost too afraid to come inside. 

“Doesn’t your mum have police work to do?” Jemma whispered.

“Not my mom,” Daisy muttered, already trying to drag them toward the living room.

May didn’t say anything. She just went back into the kitchen and returned five minutes later with a tray of drinks. 

Jemma whispered, “She’s like... intimidating Mary Poppins.”

May didn’t hover, but she also didn’t hide. When Fitz grumbled about a weird magnetic interference issue, she knelt beside the table and pointed out how some old aviation models used to handle it. Jemma admired the framed photos on the shelf, and ended up chatting with May about the best pressure points to disable someone non-lethally – half horrified, half fascinated, asking follow-up questions like she was prepping for a thesis.

Daisy sat in the middle of it all, quietly stunned.

She had friends… in her house. Laughing and eating snacks that were hers, in a living room that was hers. And May wasn’t pretending to be someone she wasn’t.

It felt revolutionary. 

Later that night, after her friends left and the apartment was quiet again, Daisy wandered into the kitchen and found May trying to coax an ancient laptop back to life.

“It’s possessed,” May said flatly, pressing the power button for the third time.

Daisy grinned. “You need to hold the key combo when you boot. Otherwise it skips the firmware update.”

She knelt beside the table, fingers flying across the keyboard. Within seconds, the laptop purred to life, new firmware running in the background.

May stared. “Where the hell did you learn that?”

Daisy shrugged. “I used to borrow busted laptops from school dumpsters. Figured out how to fix them.” She didn’t say it was because sometimes coding was the only thing that made sense, when everything else felt like it was on fire.

“You should be doing more of this,” May said without missing a beat.

Daisy blinked. “Of what?”

“This. Coding. Computers. You’re good at it. And you like it.”

Daisy nodded slowly.

“Then let’s see where it can go.”

The next morning, Coulson almost spilled his coffee out of excitement at the precinct. “She what?” he gasped, eyes wide as saucers.

“She recovered six years of lost files from an encrypted backup server,” May said over her own coffee.

“Are you kidding me? That network was closed like a military-grade vault.”

May shrugged. “She said it wasn’t even that hard.”

“She… no,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “No, May. That server… do you remember how long IT spent trying to access that drive? Three months. They had to bring in someone from Homeland.”

“She did it in twenty minutes.”

Coulson set down his mug very carefully. “You’re telling me this kid hacked a locked forensic drive, decrypted it without root access, and casually restructured the backup chain like she was solving a jigsaw puzzle?”

May raised an eyebrow. “That’s a lot of technobabble for someone who couldn’t reset his voicemail password.”

He waved a hand. “Irrelevant. This is huge, May. Huge. I thought you said she was into robotics.”

“She is. She does the coding parts.” 

Coulson blinked, then let out a long, low whistle. “Okay, we’re setting up a meeting with Cybertech next week. Koenig there owes me a favor. She needs to see the work they do. And they need to see her.”

May didn’t protest.

Coulson grinned, already buzzing with ideas. “She could shadow an analyst. Sit in on a workshop. Maybe we can even fast-track her into a summer internship or something.”

May finished her coffee and leaned against the counter. “She’s still figuring out what she wants. But I think… she’s starting to believe she has options.”

Coulson looked thoughtful for a beat, then smiled softly. “Good. She deserves to.”

Unbeknownst to either of them, Daisy was in the hallway outside the break room, backpack slung lazily over one shoulder and headphones dangling around her neck. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but the moment she heard her own name, she froze in place. What she heard rooted her to the floor. The adults inside weren’t talking about her like she was just a liability, or a project to manage, or a foster kid destined to burn out like all the others. They were talking about her like she mattered – like her future stretched out wide and full of possibility. Like she was someone worth investing in. Someone worth believing in. The words hit harder than any hit she’s ever taken. For a wild, fleeting, dizzying moment – Daisy glimpsed a version of herself she never, ever dared to imagine: a girl who wasn’t disposable. A girl who wasn’t just scraping by in the dark. A girl who was seen. 

It was too much; her chest ached with the weight of it. She pushed the door open a little louder than necessary and stepped inside.

May glanced over, not at all surprised by her entrance. “Hey. How was school?”

“Amazing," she deadpanned. "Learned about mitochondria again, so I’m basically a doctor now.”

Coulson looked up and grinned. “Hey, Hacker Queen.”

Daisy blinked. “Excuse me?”

“That’s your name now. I don’t make the rules.”

She narrowed her eyes. “If you try to put that on a t-shirt, I will hack your phone and set your ringtone to a fart symphony.”

Coulson raised both hands in surrender. “See? That’s the spirit.”

May tilted her head, studying Daisy the way she always did – quiet, sharp, reading everything. Daisy had to look away. Her throat felt tight and weird and hopeful, and she didn’t know what to do with that yet. 

But when May gestured to the door and said, “Let’s go for a drive” – Daisy followed.

Just before she walked out, she turned back to Coulson, “Thanks.”

He blinked. “For what?”

She didn’t answer right away, because she didn’t know how to say: For seeing me. For being excited about me. For making it real.

So instead, she shoved her hands in her pockets, smirked like a smartass, and said, “You finally got my donut order right yesterday.”

Coulson laughed. “Anything for you, Hacker Queen.”

Daisy curled up in bed one night, her laptop quietly humming a familiar heartbeat of code and light beside her. On the desk across the room, her notebooks and textbooks were stacked in uneven piles, highlighters scattered like candy in the pencil cup – just like the ones the nerd herd used. There was a half-built circuit board under a magnifying lamp she insisted she didn’t need, but definitely used all the time. 

She sat up and surveyed the room. Over the last few weeks with May, the simple guest room had slowly transformed into something inexplicably hers. It didn’t happen all at once. But in a slow layering, like brushstrokes filling in a sketch. May bought her the desk without saying anything – it was just set up in the apartment one day before Daisy even moved in. May pretended not to smirk while watching Daisy light up at the tiny drawers.

After she moved in, they found a rug from the flea market in Queens that Daisy absolutely loved: ugly, fluffy, and perfect. Then, they carried a nightstand three blocks from a sidewalk sale because Daisy liked the weird claw feet. 

The bookshelf began filling up slowly. First came old books that Coulson knew Daisy would like: dystopian, nerdy, slightly conspiratorial. Jemma got her a plant in a beaker glass pot, which she watered out of spite after it survived the first month. There were some thick computer manuals and coding books, and some borrowed sci-fi novels filled with Fitz’ careful tabs in the margin. There was even a thrifted poetry anthology that Daisy pretended was ironic, but couldn’t stop earmarking. 

There were framed photos now too: the selfie of her and May and Phil at the precinct way back when, and pictures with her friends. Next to those was the Lego polaroid Phil got her for her birthday, which they spent an entire Sunday afternoon building together, complete with a little fake photo sticking out of it. And May’s old film camera, vintage and battered, sat on the shelf like it had always belonged there. Technically it was still May’s, but Daisy was the only one who ever used it now.

And then there was the flyer.

May left it on her desk that afternoon – nothing dramatic, just folded neatly beside a fresh stack of notebooks: a flyer for a summer course in Computer Science at the nearby college. 

“No pressure,” May said. “But you’d crush it.”

Daisy had stared at it for ten minutes before picking it up. The paper felt heavier than it really was, like it carried more than just dates and course descriptions. It was proof that someone thought she belonged in a classroom. Proof that she could sit with kids who weren’t weighed down by case files and broken homes, and hold her own. No one had ever handed her something like that before – not homework, not expectations, not threats of juvie or jail or homelessness if she didn’t shape up – but possibility. 

She rolled back down on the bed with a content sigh. Her fingers moved instinctively to her chest, brushing against the daisy pendant that never left her neck. The city lights blinked faintly against the sky. Somewhere, her friends were probably asleep. Coulson was probably trying to figure out how to change his ringtone out of the fart symphony she sneakily set it as earlier that week. May was probably reading on the couch with tea. The apartment was still. Safe. Hers.

She was home.

Chapter Text

The warehouse cracked with gunfire, each shot ricocheting off steel beams like a war drum. May didn’t even flinch. A split-second decision sliced through her head like a wire: move forward or fall back. She always moved forward. 

This case was a bad one from the start – drug traffickers with ex-military ties, heavily armed, using people as mules. Seeing the footage of people locked up in shipping containers on this dock made something in her burn. But she trusted herself; she knew when and how to be cautious. Plus, the second the signal from backup went dark and the steel door slammed behind her, she was already too deep anyway. 

She dropped two men in a blur, gun and fists moving as one. The third caught her off-guard and his round slashed her side open like a blade. The pain was sharp and immediate, lighting her nerves on fire. But the pain was nothing compared to the sudden panic that gutted her, raw and unfamiliar. 

It wasn’t about dying – she had made peace with that a long time ago.

It was about Daisy. 

The thought hit her like a sledgehammer to the ribs: If you die here, she’ll be alone again.

May staggered back against a support beam, breath ragged, blood warm and sticky at her hip. Her hands were slick, gun trembling. She cursed her body for slowing down, cursed the way her vision blurred. 

Move. Get out. You have to get out. She needs you.

“May!” Coulson’s voice cut through the darkness. It was the sweetest goddamn thing she had ever heard.

For a second she thought she was still standing, still fighting. But then the weight of her own body betrayed her. She didn’t remember falling – only the sudden stop, and the warmth of Coulson’s arms wrapping around her before the ground could. 

The world fractured into flashes. Sirens screaming too loud, too close. Fluorescent lights strobing across her vision. The slap of boots on concrete. The smell of antiseptic burning her throat. Every detail stabbed through her fog, unmoored and unreal.

Hands pressed down on her side, hard. Too hard. She tried to shove them away, but her arms wouldn’t listen. A voice asked her if she could feel her legs. 

She couldn’t answer. Because she didn’t know. Because part of her didn’t want to know.

Instead, Daisy’s face filled the dark behind her eyes. The kid May had fought so hard to bring home – fragile and furious and brilliant and bright and aching for someone not to leave her. 

Not again. Don’t do that to her. Don’t make her bury you.

May fought to drag in air, each breath tearing her lungs like shards of glass. The monitors were wailing louder than the sirens now, a chorus counting her down. Darkness clawed its way into her vision, black swallowing color, sound thinning to an echo. 

Her lips moved, barely a sound. “Don’t tell Daisy.” 

Coulson’s face bent close, steady and calm in the chaos. His hand was firm on hers. “She’s okay,” he promised. “I won’t call her yet. Not until you’re out of surgery.” 

The pain roared loud, drowning everything else out. 

And then it was black. 

The next time her eyes fluttered open, the world was dark. For a moment, she didn’t know if it was night or just the blackness pressing in again. Then her gaze caught the window and the streetlights glowing faint beyond the glass, and she understood. It was night. She looked at the ticking clock on the wall. It was after 10pm. 

Her mouth was desert-dry. She tried to swallow and felt nothing but sand in her throat. Her side throbbed with a jagged heat, every breath tugging against the stitches buried there. 

She wiggled her toes. She could feel them. 

Thank God. 

Phil was slouched in the chair beside her bed, worry carved into the lines of his face. The sight of him – solid, patient, waiting – anchored her more than the steady blip of the machines ever could. Her throat scraped raw when she tried to speak. He caught it instantly, reaching for the cup on the tray. One hand slid behind her shoulders, steady and careful, while the other held the straw to her lips. 

The water felt like life itself. Relief swept through her – not just because she could swallow, not just because she could move her toes, or even because she was alive – but because he was here. 

He was always here. 

“Daisy’s called us twenty-two times,” he said quietly, answering the question before she could even find the strength to ask. 

May’s heart twisted. “You should’ve picked up.”

“I didn’t want to scare her. Not until we knew you were going to be okay.”

“She’ll think I disappeared,” May whispered. The panic edged back, sharp and raw. She knew too well what absence meant, what silence meant, for a girl who has been abandoned too many times already.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, the weight of his attention fully on her. “Mace is keeping an eye on her at the precinct. She’s waiting for you. Sitting at your desk like it’s the only stable thing left in the world.”

May pressed her eyes shut, breathing through the ache in her chest. “Phil, if something happened to me–”

“It didn’t.” His response was immediate. Firm. 

“You don’t understand. I can’t… if she loses me, she’ll break. And I can’t keep doing this. I can’t be half-in. Not with her. Not with you.” The confession ripped out of her like shrapnel, jagged and unplanned. She didn’t mean to let that slip. She wasn’t even sure if the words made sense. 

But Phil reached out and took her hand – carefully, like she was something fragile and precious. 

“You’re not half-in,” he said quietly. “You just don’t know how to be loved without preparing for the worst.”

She swallowed hard, unable to answer. Silence stretched between them, thick with everything unspoken. 

His voice dropped, rough at the edges with unspoken emotion. “You and I… we’ve been dancing around this for years. You didn’t think I’d stay. I get that. But I’m here. Always. And I’m not going anywhere. Not from you. Not from her.” He drew in a shaky breath, voice catching. “You almost died tonight, May. And I realized something. There’s no version of this where I stand by and just let that be okay. I love you, Melinda. And you don’t get to push me away anymore.”

Her chest tightened. She blinked fast. She wasn’t crying. Seriously, she wasn’t. 

“Can you go get her?” she said hoarsely. 

He kissed her forehead, brief but steady, like a vow. “I’ll bring her.”

The bullpen was empty when Phil pushed through the precinct doors. The midnight hour showed in every corner – completed case files stacked and forgotten, the smell of burnt coffee clinging to the air. Chief Mace stood near the far end of the room near his office. He caught Phil’s eye and gave the smallest nod, an unspoken reassurance that he had been keeping watch. 

And there, at May’s desk, was Daisy. 

She was curled up in May’s chair, arms wrapped tight around herself, eyes fixed on her phone like she could will it to ring. Every few seconds, her gaze darted to the door, hope flaring and breaking all over again. 

She stood up the moment he stepped inside. 

“Where is she?” she asked, voice cracking.

He walked over to the edge of the desk. “She’s okay. She was hurt, pretty badly, but she’s out of surgery and stable. I just came from the hospital.”

Daisy stared at him, wide-eyed and frozen. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We didn’t want to call until we knew she was alright. We didn’t want to scare you–”

“I was scared!” Daisy’s voice cracked like glass. “All day! No one told me anything, no one–” She pressed her fists against her eyes, her throat closing up. “I thought… I thought she left.” The words dissolved into a whisper. 

Phil’s expression softened. “She didn’t. She will never do that. She asked for you, first thing. I promise.” He reached out to cup her cheeks softly, thumbs brushing away the tears. “Daisy, listen to me. She’s going to be okay. It’ll take some time, but she’s strong.”

“She always has to be strong,” Daisy whispered. “What if she doesn’t want to be anymore?”

Phil took a slow breath. “Then we hold her up,” he said simply. “You and me.”

Daisy didn’t say anything. She just leaned forward and let herself cry into his shoulder. 

The hospital room was dim when they arrived. May was half-sitting in the bed with an IV drip in her arm, pale but alert. She looked up as soon as the door creaked open.

Daisy lingered in the doorway like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to be there. But when May lifted her arms – no words, just an invitation – that was all Daisy needed. She darted forward, kicking off her sneakers and scrambling onto the bed with the urgency of someone afraid the moment might vanish if she waited too long. Nestling close, she pressed her head to May’s shoulder, her movements gentle to avoid the bandages and the tangle of wires that reminded her all-too-clearly how close May came to not being here. 

“Don’t do that again,” she whispered. “Don’t make me find out you almost died after dinner.”

“I’m sorry,” May said quietly, threading her fingers through Daisy’s dark hair. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I thought you left.” The words broke through like something half-swallowed

“I wouldn’t.” May leaned back just enough to catch her eyes, brushing the stray bangs from Daisy’s forehead with aching gentleness. “Not without you.”

From the doorway, Phil lingered in the threshold of light, watching the fragile knot the two of them made – a wounded body and a frightened child clinging to each other. He eased the switch down, leaving them in the dark. They laid in silence after that, the soft hum of the machines their only witness. 

Daisy fought against sleep for as long as she could, her hand curled in the folds of May’s blanket like she was holding onto an anchor. The steady rhythm of May’s heartbeat echoed from the monitor and beneath her ear on May’s chest. She clung to each pulse like a promise. 

Eventually, May whispered, “Go to sleep, kid. I got you.”

And despite everything, Daisy let herself smile into May’s shoulder. Because even in pain, May was still her safe place.

Chapter Text

May’s discharge instructions were strict: rest, limited movement, no lifting anything heavier than a grocery bag. She hated being still. She hated the quiet of recovery. She hated the way the stitches along her side still pulled every time she breathed too deep. She hated the way it slowed her thoughts and magnified every creak of her body. But Daisy made it easier.

The girl got up before her in the mornings, doing her best to make clumsy pancakes or scrambled eggs that were more charred than fluffy. But every plate was delivered with that wide-eyed look of nervous anticipation for her approval. So May made sure to eat every bite – even when the toast had the texture of drywall.

“You shouldn’t be getting up so much,” Daisy chided her one morning, plucking the kettle out of May’s hand. “You’re supposed to be recovering. That’s, like, literally your only job right now.”

May raised a brow, easing herself down into a chair with a wince. “And yours is taking over the apartment?”

Daisy smirked. “Exactly. You’re a very attractive houseplant and I’m your full-time caretaker.”

May shook her head, but her smile lingered. She was used to being the one who kept things running and carried the weight others didn’t see. But Daisy… God, the kid had taken over like she was born for it: grocery lists, laundry, cooking (or at least trying to). She even downloaded a medication reminder app just to keep May on schedule.

It was ridiculous. But it was also a little endearing. 

Phil, of course, hovered.

He came to the apartment every day. He brought soup, DVDs, and flowers from the bodega that made May roll her eyes. Once he even brought a mini whiteboard where he wrote the phrase “Operation Recovery” in block letters and added bullet points underneath. 

Daisy drew devil horns on a cartoon version of him within five minutes.

They didn’t talk about his confession in the hospital. They didn’t have to; it was something both of them had already known for a long time. 

He started staying overnight around day five.

At first it was innocent: May couldn’t sleep and the pain meds made her foggy, so Phil stayed on the couch to make sure she didn’t fall getting to the bathroom. But by day seven, he had taken over breakfast in the mornings from Daisy (something they were all very grateful for) and read the paper at the kitchen table with Daisy like he belonged there.

Naturally, Daisy had opinions.

“Are we charging rent?” she asked one night, one eyebrow cocked as she gestured to Phil’s half-unpacked duffel bag in the corner.

“I cook,” he replied solemnly. “I am rent.”

May buried her face in her hands.

“I’m just saying,” Daisy continued. “This place is starting to look awfully domestic. I mean… you guys want me to build you a joint Pinterest board or…?”

“Go do your homework,” May groaned.

“Oh I am,” Daisy said, pulling out her laptop. “I’m just multitasking as your unofficial relationship counselor – slash – witness to the slowest mutual pining in recorded history.”

Coulson choked on his tea.

May didn’t even argue. It was, objectively, fair.

May shuffled into the kitchen after her daily afternoon nap, still sore and stiff, but something smelled good. Suspiciously good. Not Daisy’s “burnt-but-edible” level of good.

She found Phil at the stove – an apron tied crooked around his waist, sleeves rolled up, humming off-key to some song she didn’t recognize, and wielding a spatula like he was auditioning for a cooking show.

“What are you doing?” she asked, voice still rough from sleep.

He turned with exaggerated innocence. “Making dinner.”

She crossed her arms. “Dinner at…” she checked the clock on the wall, “...five o’clock?”

“Your discharge papers said: ‘Eat before pain medication.’” He tapped the folded instructions on the counter like evidence. “So, technically, I’m following medical orders. And also,” his mouth tugged into that familiar lopsided smile, “asking you out on our first real date.”

May blinked. “Here? In my apartment? While I’m wearing sweatpants?”

“Exactly.” He leaned against the counter, eyes twinkling. “Low-pressure. You don’t even have to leave the house. Plus, Daisy’s at Jemma’s tonight, which means no teenage commentary.”

She rolled her eyes, but there was a pull at her mouth she couldn’t quite smother. “And what makes this a date, exactly?”

“Well…” he gestured outside to the small table he set up on the balcony with a checkered tablecloth, two plates, real silverware, a singular candle, and a little vase filled with fresh flowers. “Ambience.”

May shook her head, but she didn’t stop the small smile tugging at her lips. She eased into a chair while he plated dinner. “This is corny.”

“Sure, but in a charming way,” he corrected, plating the steak and potatoes like it was fine dining.

“Daisy put you up to this, didn’t she?” 

“She might have threatened to revoke my visitation rights if I didn’t try harder,” he admitted with a shrug. “Your puppy’s scarier than you, by the way.”

That earned him a soft snort, which was victory enough. 

Dinner was simple, but warm. And when she caught him just… watching her eat like he was memorizing the moment, May felt something shift in her chest.

“You don’t have to hover,” she said after a while.

“I prefer the term ‘dedicated caretaker.’”

“Phil–”

His fork stilled. He didn’t joke this time. “I just watched you get shot, Melinda. Humor me.”

She didn’t have a retort for that. The quiet between them stretched. She hated how raw it made her feel, but she didn’t look away.

Later, they moved to the couch, and Phil played a black-and-white noir movie he brought from his collection. She sat stiff at first, but halfway through, his hand brushed hers. He didn’t force it. Just let it rest there, warm and steady.

She surprised herself by not pulling away.

By the time the credits rolled, her head was on his shoulder, his arm draped carefully around her. She could hear his heart if she pressed close enough.

“This is ridiculous,” she murmured.

“What is?” he asked softly.

“You. Me. A candle. In sweatpants.”

He chuckled low, the sound vibrating against her temple. “Best date I’ve ever been on.”

She let out a quiet breath, one that trembled more than she meant it to. “Don’t make me get used to this.”

His arm tightened gently around her. “Too late.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. It wasn’t fireworks or champagne. It wasn’t even really a date. But when she caught their reflection in the dark TV screen – both of them quiet, close, alive – May couldn’t help but agree that this was the best date she’s ever had. 

Daisy let herself into the apartment the next morning with her backpack slung over her shoulder. She was humming to herself (her and Jemma stayed up all night lip syncing to Hamilton and now it was stuck in her head) until she stopped dead in the doorway.

The small table on the balcony was still set. Two plates stacked in the sink. One stub of a candle burned down to a puddle of wax.

Daisy’s mouth curved into a slow, wicked grin. “Oh… my God.”

May, who was just emerging from her room in her robe, narrowed her eyes immediately. “Don’t.”

“Don’t?” Daisy said, scandalized. “Don’t pretend you didn’t just have the world’s cheesiest, most domestic, candlelit dinner? With him?”

Phil, coming out of the bedroom behind May – yes, the bedroom – froze mid-step, caught like a deer in headlights. His hair was mussed, his shirt rumpled. “Uh…” 

Daisy’s grin widened. “Oh. Ohhhhhh.” She pointed at him dramatically. “He didn’t even sleep on the couch! I knew it!”

May pinched the bridge of her nose. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Sure,” Daisy said, dropping her bag by the door and crossing her arms with mock solemnity. “It’s never like that. Until there’s candles and cuddling and…” she gestured vaguely between the two of them. “Whatever that is.”

Phil coughed into his hand, trying to look composed. “I was just making sure she didn’t… uh… trip on her way to the bathroom.”

“Uh-huh.” Daisy arched an eyebrow. “All. Night. Long.”

May groaned and headed for the water kettle, muttering, “I can’t believe I survived a gunshot wound for this.”

Daisy followed, merciless. “Don’t even try to be grumpy. You two are disgustingly cute. You’ve been pining for, like… years! Literal years. And now I have front-row seats to the greatest slow-burn pay-off of all time.”

Phil looked like he wanted to sink into the floor. “You make it sound like a TV show.”

“It is a TV show,” Daisy said, grabbing a banana off the counter. “It’s called May Finally Lets Herself Be Happy, and guess what? I’m the executive producer.”

May shot her a flat look, mug in hand. “Go unpack.”

But Daisy just smirked, took a triumphant bite of her banana, and said with a full mouth of mush, “Don’t worry. I’ll save my speech for the wedding.”

Phil couldn’t help but smile at that. 

May just closed her eyes and counted back from five. 

That night, May caught Phil halfway down the hall making a suspicious beeline for her bedroom, pillow tucked under his arm. 

“Don’t even think about it,” she said.

He froze slowly like a kid caught raiding the cookie jar. “What? I was just coming to… check the structural integrity of your mattress.”

She leaned against the wall and pointed to the living room. “You’re on the couch.”

He looked at her with a pout, eyes deceptively innocent. “Daisy’s already asleep. She’ll never know.”

May raised a brow. “She always knows.”

“She’s not omniscient.” He gestured at the darkened hallway. “She’s a teenager. Teenagers sleep like the dead. It’s scientifically proven. No one would blame me if I… relocated.”

“You’re staying on the couch.”

Phil spread his hands. “Come on, Melinda. I’ve been a model guest. I cook, I wash the dishes, I even folded Daisy’s laundry.”

“You shrunk two of her t-shirts.”

“That was an accident.” He took her hands into his. “Besides, I’m wounded that you think she’d be scandalized. She’s practically rooting for us. She calls herself the ‘captain of our couple ship.’ Whatever that means.” 

“That’s exactly why you’re on the couch.”

He sighed like a man facing grave injustice. “You realize you’re punishing me for being considerate, right? Some would call that cruel.”

“Some would call it appropriate,” May countered, though her mouth betrayed the faintest twitch.

“Okay.” He switched on his negotiation hat, lowering his voice like this was a classified briefing. “Partial custody. Half the bed, clear borders, no hostilities. We can even draft a treaty.”

“Phil…”

“Fine, seventy-thirty. You like your space.”

“You’re ridiculous.” She couldn't swallow her grin any further. 

Seeing her smile, that grin – the one that always undid her more than she liked to admit – spread across his face. “And yet… you like me anyway.”

“Phil.” Her arms crossed, trying her damned hardest to hold her ground. “Couch.”

He tilted his head at her. “Are you giving me an order?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “I’m giving you an order.”

“Well…” his eyebrows lifted playfully as he closed the space between them, “you know how I feel about orders.”

And before she could tell him exactly where he could stick that smile, he kissed her.

It was meant to be quick, probably just to disarm her – but when his hand found her waist, careful of her stitches, she suddenly wasn’t protesting anymore. She let herself lean into him, her fingers curling under his shirt, the couch completely forgotten. His mouth was warm, insistent, and oh-so achingly familiar. The kiss deepened, stealing the breath from her chest, until she was pressed against the wall and completely lost in him and… 

“Seriously?”

May went rigid.

Daisy stood at the other end of the hall, hair sticking up from sleep, arms crossed. Her tone was dry enough to sand wood. “I just wanted to get a water. Now I need bleach.”

Mortification hit May like a fresh bullet wound. She shoved Phil back like he burned her, muttered something unintelligible that might have been “goodnight,” and retreated straight to her room. Cowardly, maybe, but she wasn’t about to debate boundaries with her teenage ward in the middle of the night.

Left behind, Phil dragged a hand over his face. “Not a word, Johnson. That’s an order.”

Daisy smirked, utterly merciless. “Copy that. Hot Lips.”

Phil groaned. “I’m never living this down.”

“That is correct,” Daisy said sweetly as she refilled her cup before disappearing back into her room.

The apartment went quiet again. Phil resigned himself with a long sigh and tossed the pillow back on the couch. He stretched out, stared at the ceiling, and accepted his fate.

Until a soft voice came from the dark hallway.

“Phil?”

He sat up. May was leaning against the doorway to her room, looking at him with a mixture of exasperation and something warmer.

She tilted her head toward the bedroom. “Don’t make me ask twice.”

“Yes, ma’am.” 

The letter came two days later. May was sorting through the mail absentmindedly when her fingers paused on an envelope bearing the city seal. It wasn’t from the precinct. It was from the state. That alone was enough to make her shoulders tense.

Inside was a formal notice from CPS. It stated, in sterile legalese, that due to the “recent violent incident involving Officer May’s line of duty,” Daisy’s placement was flagged for review: 

“Daisy Johnson is currently placed in provisional non-familial placement pending risk assessment.”

May read the letter twice. And then again. Her stomach sank.

She didn’t say anything that night. The kid was finally relaxed, watching a sci-fi movie with Phil and giggling at his dramatic reenactments of the dialogue. It was the first time she laughed like that since before the hospital.

So she held the letter behind her back, slipped it quietly into her nightstand, and told herself she’d call a lawyer in the morning. 

Later that night, long after the apartment had gone still, May lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. The ache beneath her ribs throbbed in time with her heartbeat, a dull reminder she couldn’t shift away from. She reminded herself to breathe, to slow down, to think of anything but the folded letter hidden in her nightstand drawer.

But the words lingered anyway, sharp and unforgiving. 

This was exactly what she feared since the very beginning. 

She always knew that opening her life to someone like Daisy – someone vulnerable, someone already bruised by the system – came with risks. But knowing it in theory was different from holding the proof in her hands.

One bad day at work. One injury. One headline. And the people who made decisions behind desks could yank it all away.

They don’t know us, May thought. They don’t know what we’ve built here.

But the system didn’t care about healing. It didn’t reward trust or softness or late-night comfort. It cared about liability.

May turned to look toward the hallway, where Daisy’s door was ajar. She could hear faint typing – another late-night coding binge, no doubt – and the ache in her chest deepened until it hurt. 

She wanted to believe it would be okay, but she knew what this world did to girls like Daisy. And she knew what this world did to the women who dared to love them. 

Coulson noticed her silence in the morning. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

They went back to her room and closed the door. May handed him the letter.

His face darkened as he read it. “Jesus.”

“They’re reviewing the placement. Risk protocol.”

“Because you got hurt in the line of duty?” he said, incredulous. “You were doing your job.”

“I know.”

“And you saved lives.”

“I know.”

He set the paper down with a sharp sigh. “What are you going to do?”

May looked toward the hall. “What I always do. Fight.”

He nodded, stepping closer. “Okay. But this time, you don’t do it alone.”

May stared at him. 

He reached for her hands. “We’re going to fight this. I’m not letting them take her from you. From us.”

May’s breath caught. “Us.”

His smile was small, but sure. “She’s ours now. Whether the system catches up to that or not.”

The words felt like a lifeline. 

Chapter Text

In her dream, Daisy was ten again. It was the last day of school.

The classroom buzzed with the noise of happy children around her: laughter, chairs scraping, crinkling candy wrappers as kids passed around end-of-year treats. The teacher smiled brightly and chirped about summer break like it was a gift. 

But Daisy knew better.

Summer wasn’t freedom. Summer meant no escape. No locked bathroom stalls to hide in at recess. No excuse to be out of the house. Just her and them.

The house came into focus: peeling paint, busted railing, a yard littered with cigarette butts. Inside, the air was stale and thick, curtains drawn tight to keep out the sun. Every step creaked too loud. Every door echoed.

Mr. Kane sat on the couch like a king on a rotting throne. The television flickered blue across his sallow face as he flipped through channels with slow, heavy fingers. 

“Look who finally came home,” he said, voice slow, drawled like he was tired of existing.

His wife appeared from the kitchen without a word and held out a list. “Start with the windows. Then the trash. If I see a speck of dust, you’re doing it twice.”

Daisy didn’t argue. She knew better.

There was no talking in this house. Just orders.

No one asked if she had eaten. No one welcomed her home or asked about her day. She worked for hours – scrubbing until her hands hurt, until the bleach made her eyes water, until her knees were red from kneeling on tile.

At night, she laid on the floor of the narrow hallway closet where she slept. It wasn’t locked, but it might as well have been. If she came out too soon, even just to use the bathroom, there would always be consequences.

So she stayed in the dark, waiting for them to go to bed. Listening to the sounds outside – the drone of the TV, the clink of bottles, the sudden creak of footsteps next to the closet door that made her whole body tense. The hours stretched long and elastic, full of heat and stillness and dread. 

Summer stretched out in front of her like a prison sentence.

When she woke up – in May’s apartment, in a real bed with clean sheets and soft light spilling through half-open curtains – her whole body was still trembling from tension. Daisy wrapped her arms around herself and counted the facts, one by one, until her body slowly released the strain. 

The room was quiet. The air was cool and easy to breathe in. There was no yelling, no slamming doors. The only sounds were the distant hum of the fridge, the soft clink of May making tea in the kitchen, and the low chatter of her and Coulson talking over the crossword in the paper. 

She was safe.

The closet was gone.

Summer was here, but this time she wasn’t trapped in it. 

It was the last day of school. 

The hallway was loud, full of teenage bravado and slamming lockers. Shouts of freedom echoed down the corridors like war cries. Daisy stood at the edge of it all but, for once, she was not on the outside looking in. She watched with a bemused smile, half listening to a heated debate between Jemma and Fitz about monkeys. She let herself feel the thrum of something she had never experienced at the start of summer: 

Excitement. 

Not dread or fear. Not the silent questions of: Where will I go this time? What’s going to happen to me? 

No, this year Daisy had plans. She enrolled in the summer coding class May encouraged her to sign-up for. She started last week, going three nights a week and already blowing the minds of instructors twice her age. She also had an internship at the precinct. Well, technically it was her court-mandated community service… but she managed to land a position with the NYPD’s Cybertech unit thanks to a little Coulson magic and a portfolio of Python scripts that were equal parts brilliant and mildly concerning. She loved the idea of going to work with May in the mornings. 

She had a home. Not a foster house, not St. Agnes, not a temporary stop on someone else’s schedule. But a real home, with her own room. With May. 

She left school with a grin on her face and flew towards the car as soon as she spotted it.  

“I’m a junior now!” she declared as she hopped into the backseat.

Phil was at the wheel – he had taken over driving since May’s injury. He turned, grinning. “And here I was thinking you already knew everything.”

“Bold of you to assume I don’t.”

“Do you?” Phil raised an eyebrow and a challenge. “Then explain quantum entanglement.” 

“That’s not junior year material!” 

“Cop out,” May smirked, handing her a smoothie. 

They took her out for dinner. But not for pizza or takeout or someplace where the laminated menus stuck to the table. The restaurant they walked to that night was nicer than anywhere she’s ever been in her life. Everything smelled like lemon and roasted garlic, and Daisy felt so out of place she almost turned around at the door. 

But May put a hand on her shoulder and steered her inside. “You deserve this.”

They ordered things Daisy never even heard of and dinner passed in a blur of lemon risotto, bread she couldn’t pronounce, and Coulson teasing her about her inability to fold the cloth napkin properly. And then, dessert arrived – an absurdly rich slice of chocolate cake with a sparkler on top. 

The waitress beamed. “Congratulations, sweetheart,” she said brightly. “You must be so proud of your daughter.”

Daisy froze. 

She could feel her whole body clench – shoulders tightening, stomach pumping acid, eyes darting up in panic. She braced herself for the correction – for the awkward “she’s not actually…” explanation. For the reminder that nothing in her life came with permanence. That she didn’t belong anywhere. 

But May just nodded, calm and sincere. “Very proud,” she said.

Phil smiled. “She’s one of a kind.”

Something knotted in Daisy’s throat. She couldn’t speak, so she just smiled and let herself soak in the moment.

When they got home, Daisy volunteered to get the mail. She needed some air - her heart was still swollen from something she didn’t have the words for. She padded down to the mailroom and unlocked their box, flipping through the envelopes: coupons, bills, a postcard from Phil’s sister… 

And then she saw it: an unassuming white envelope with the city seal. It was from the Department of Children and Family Services, and her name was in the subject. Her pulse started to pound. The edges of the envelope felt sharp in her fingers. She knew she wasn’t supposed to, but she opened it anyway.

The words didn’t make sense at first. She read them over, twice… three times… 

“...placement flagged for reevaluation…”

“...an incident involving Officer May brings into question her fitness to provide a low-risk home environment…”

“...in-home interview to be scheduled…”

The walls around her started to buckle. 

The front door slammed behind her with a force that shook the entire apartment. May and Phil looked up from the couch in alarm as she stormed into the living room with the letter clenched in her balled fist. 

“What the fuck is this?”

May stood up too quickly, wincing slightly from the motion. “Daisy–”

“You weren’t gonna tell me?” Her voice was rising now, eyes wide and wet and unblinking. “You were just going to keep pretending everything was fine?”

“I was going to tell you,” May said, calm but taut. “I wanted to wait until–”

“Until… what? Until they show up and drag me out? Until I get dumped in another fucking group home and you get to play hero again?”

“Daisy–” Phil tried, standing now.

But Daisy wasn’t listening. She was spiraling. “I finally thought… I thought this was real. That this was mine!”

May stepped forward. “It is yours. I’m not letting them take you.”

“But they can.” Daisy’s voice was small now. “Right?” 

May didn’t answer right away. And that pause, just a fraction of a second too long, was everything. 

“I trusted you,” she whispered. “I let myself feel safe.”

May’s voice softened. “You are safe.”

“No. I’m not.” She turned and walked out the door.

May started after her, but Phil stepped in gently. “Give her a minute,” he said softly. “She’s not gonna run.” 

The apartment was suddenly too quiet. Too empty.

The envelope lay on the floor where Daisy dropped it, crumpled and accusing.

Chapter Text

Hours later, the apartment sat in deafening stillness. May hadn’t spoken in over an hour. Phil had tried to fill the space with gentle theories about where Daisy might have gone, reminders that this wasn’t a total regression. But as the clock turned to midnight and calls to her friends came up empty, even his optimism faltered.

“We should go,” May said, low.

Phil nodded immediately. “I’ll grab the car.”

The city suddenly felt vast and unknowable. They hit the benches near the bus station where Daisy used to loiter, the graffiti-covered skatepark, the diner near the precinct, even the hidden park Daisy liked to escape to. 

Nothing.

Phil drove with one hand on the wheel, the other with his phone pressed to his ear. He looped in the night-shift officers on patrol, notified all the local youth shelters. 

Still nothing. 

May remained silent, her jaw clenched tight enough to ache. Her worry wasn’t loud or frantic; it was subterranean, volcanic. And the longer Daisy was gone, the hotter it burned.

Phil turned to May after a few hours, “We need to stop and recalibrate.”

“No,” she said, eyes still fixed on the road. “We don’t stop. Not until we find her.”

Phil hesitated. “She’s not stupid, May. She knows how to disappear.”

“She’s not disappearing,” May said flatly. “She’s hurting. And scared. And it’s my fault.”

He didn’t argue. The truth sat heavy in the car between them.

Outside, the city turned restless. Friday night spilled into its inevitable chaos – drunk couples fighting, sirens wailing in the distance, someone vomiting in an alley. They passed groups of young people walking home barefoot with heels in hand, loud music thumping from nightclubs and bars.

Phil’s phone buzzed. Still nothing.

It was just after 4am when May finally told Phil to pull over. Her eyes scanned the horizon outside the windshield like she could will Daisy into view. He turned the engine off and they sat in silence, trying not to feel like they had totally failed. 

A soft knock on the driver-side window startled both of them. And there she was: hood pulled low, eyes wide and rimmed with exhaustion. 

Daisy. 

Phil scrambled out first, his hands quickly checking her over for injuries. “Are you okay? Where the hell have you been?”

“I… I saw you guys driving by like, half an hour ago,” Daisy mumbled. “Didn’t know if I should come out. You looked… pissed.”

May shot out of the car and crossed to her in three strides. “I thought you were gone,” she said.

Daisy opened her mouth to joke – to say something sarcastic, to minimize the way her legs had been shaking for hours. But when May pulled her into a fierce hug, it shut her down immediately. 

“I thought I lost you,” May said, her voice raw.

Daisy stiffened, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But it didn’t come. There was no shouting, no punishment. 

There was just May’s arms wrapped around her, a gentle hand stroking the back of her head. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Are you mad?” Daisy whispered.

May leaned back and sighed. “I’m not mad. I’m scared. I’m always scared when I don’t know if you’re safe.”

“I didn’t mean to… I just… I saw the letter and everything broke.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t.”

“But CPS–”

“We’ll handle them.”

“They think I’m a problem. And if something happened to you, I’d just be… what? Dumped back into the system like a broken return?”

May’s expression tightened. “You are not a problem. The system failed you too many times already. I won’t let it fail you again.”

“They have all the power, May.”

“They don’t have me,” she said. “And you do.”

Daisy’s mouth opened, then shut. She didn’t know how to argue with that. And some part of her – some small, starved part – didn’t want to.

The sun was beginning to rise when they got back to the apartment. It cast a soft golden glow through the blinds as they stepped inside. The silence in the apartment this time was different, soft and tentative.

May sat down heavily on the couch and reached out a hand.

Daisy stood frozen for a beat, but then curled up beside her and leaned her head on May’s shoulder. “You’re really not mad?” she whispered.

“I’m exhausted,” May replied. “But no. Not mad.”

“You’re going to fight for me?” she asked, voice small.

“Always,” May said.

“I’m scared.”

“I know. Me too,” she admitted. “But I’d rather be scared with you than live without you.”

They sat like that, pressed together on the couch as the sun slowly warmed the world around them, for a long time. 

The next few weeks passed in a blur of paperwork and meetings and evaluations and prep, and then all of a sudden – the hearing was set for tomorrow. Daisy sat cross-legged on the living room floor, surrounded by forms and legal handouts she didn’t fully understand. May had offered to go through them with her, but Daisy said she needed to feel like she could do something on her own. Even if it meant reading through legal jargon until her eyes crossed.

Every few minutes she glanced toward the couch where May sat with her ankle propped up on a pillow, recovering slowly but surely. She finally got her stitches removed and the bruises were fading into shadows. But Daisy still remembered the way she looked in the hospital: pale and breakable.

“What’s your face doing,” May asked quietly, not looking up from her tablet.

“I’m not making a face.”

“You’re making five.”

“It’s just…” Daisy exhaled sharply. “I don’t want tomorrow to screw everything up.”

“It won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No,” May said calmly. “But I know us.”

That word startled Daisy. Us. Not “me” and “the kid.” 

Us.

“They’re going to ask questions about the shooting. About your job. They’re going to say I’m unstable or reactive or–”

“They’ve already asked,” May cut in. “They’ve already read the reports. They’ve already talked to my team at the precinct. Tomorrow isn’t about proving we’re perfect. It’s about showing we’re solid.”

Daisy chewed her bottom lip. “What if I mess it up?”

“You won’t.”

Daisy grimaced. She wanted to believe that, but after being the problem her whole life… she wasn’t sure how else to view herself. 

May watched her for a long moment, then leaned over and nudged one of the papers with her toe. “By the way… you’re reading this upside down.”

Daisy blinked, then squinted down. “Oh my God.”

“Very impressive,” May deadpanned. “I didn’t realize we had a legal scholar in the house.”

“Shut up.”

“Rude.” 

“I’m emotionally vulnerable right now.”

“You’ll survive.”

Daisy sighed dramatically and dropped backwards onto the rug, arms spread like a chalk outline. “I’m not so sure.”

May just raised an eyebrow and reached for a takeout menu on the coffee table. “You want to panic-read affidavits, or you want to order pizza?” 

Daisy’s head popped up immediately. “Pizza.”

May smirked. “Thought so.”

Thirty minutes later, they were sitting on the floor over a pizza box, watching a rerun of Jeopardy. May kept beating her to the answers, which Daisy pretended not to care about. But every time she got one right, she cheered “HA!” – like she won an Olympic medal.

Later that night, Daisy couldn’t sleep at all. She laid awake on her back, staring up at the ceiling fan. The apartment was quiet and peaceful, but her mind wasn’t. She got up quietly and padded barefoot to the balcony. The air was warm and thick with the early summer heat, and the city lights blinked back at her like a message she couldn’t read.

After a few minutes, the sliding door opened behind her. May stepped out, pulled her own sweater tighter around her body, and leaned on the railing next to Daisy. 

Daisy glanced sideways. “You should be sleeping.”

“So should you.”

“Are you nervous?”

May shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“It does to me.”

“I’m not nervous about the hearing,” May said at last. “I’m nervous about how much it means to you. To us. I know I’m good at doing things under pressure. But this… being trusted with you…” Her gaze unfocused, dark eyes turning inward as her voice thinned to a whisper. “This feels like the one thing I can’t afford to lose.” The words came out soft and low, like a confession she didn’t mean to say out loud. 

Daisy blinked, startled. “You’ve never said anything like that before.”

May turned to look at her, a wry smile softening her face. “I’m not great at feelings.”

Daisy snorted. “Yeah. I noticed.”

They stood there in the quiet for another minute.

“Do you remember the first time you called me?” May asked suddenly. 

Daisy nodded. “It was after I ran away from the Freeman house. I called from that payphone at the gas station. I memorized the number you wrote on the back of your card.” 

“I didn’t think you’d call.”

“I didn’t think you’d answer.”

They both laughed softly. 

“But you did,” Daisy said. “And you kept showing up.”

“I will always show up for you.”

The words landed heavily in Daisy’s chest. Because even now – even with May next to her, and with this apartment being more of a home than any other place in her life – there was still some hidden part of her that was bracing for the trap door. For the sudden drop that always seemed to come when she let herself lean too far. She could feel the tension of it – like standing over the edge of a crumbling cliff that could give way at any second. 

And yet… May’s presence was steady. Her voice was sure. Her promises unwavering. 

“Okay,” Daisy whispered.

“Okay?”

“I believe you.”

May turned to look at her, and something flickered in her expression. She opened her arms wordlessly, and Daisy stepped into them. She tucked her head against May’s shoulder, breathing in the faint scent of jasmine shampoo and clean laundry.

They stood like that for a long time.

The next morning, the courthouse was humming with quiet tension. It was barely 9am, but it was already humid in that way that only New York could be in late June. Daisy wore the one nice outfit she owned: a navy dress May made her buy a few months ago “just in case.” 

Phil was waiting outside when they arrived, with coffees in hand. He handed Daisy a small paper bag. “Emergency chocolate muffin.”

“I love you,” she said, immediately stuffing half of it in her mouth.

“Am I the favorite now?” he asked her with mock solemnity. “You don’t have to tell May.”

May rolled her eyes, but she smiled.

Things moved slowly inside the courtroom. The judge asked calm, probing questions. Daisy kept her hands folded in her lap and made sure to answer every question clearly, even when her voice shook.

When it was May’s turn, she spoke the truth: “She’s not my biological daughter. But she is my family. And I am hers. We are not a perfect household, but we are a committed one. I would give my life for her. And more importantly, I want her to live with me.”

Daisy didn’t cry, but her hand found May’s and she held it like a lifeline.

They didn’t get an answer that day; it would take a few more days for a final ruling. Even so, when they stepped out into the sunlight again, it felt like exhaling after being underwater. 

Daisy looked up at May. “Whatever happens…”

May squeezed her hand. “I know.”

Chapter Text

Daisy was thirteen again. Rail-thin, hollow-eyed, knees bruised from being shoved down to hard floors. This time, she was sitting on the floor of the bedroom where she slept. The wallpaper had once been pink. Now it was a sickly yellow, stained with nicotine and mold. 

The door didn’t lock. Not anymore

At first, she tried to block it. She shoved an old dresser in front of it, wedged a chair under the handle. But it never stopped him. It only made him angrier.

After that, he took the door off and reversed it so it could only be locked or blocked from the outside. And then her room wasn’t really a room anymore – it was a box. No privacy, no boundary. No escape. The one place that was supposed to be hers was now a stage for someone else’s control. There was no safe edge where she could pretend the world ended and she was alone. Just walls. 

And waiting.

She never told anyone. She didn’t say a word to the caseworker, who came every few months just to stay fifteen minutes and ask all the wrong questions. She never told her teachers, who stopped asking why she was always falling asleep in class. She knew how it would go – the questions, the denial, the blame. 

So she said nothing. She told herself that if she could take it, and keep taking it, then he wouldn’t look at the little ones. 

The lie got her through a lot of nights. 

The first time he called her “baby girl,” it felt like someone poured battery acid into her ears. He said it like a joke, like it was sweet. Like he owned her. 

She tried her hardest to just not move. That was the trick – don’t move, don’t cry. If she cried, he would flip her over and put her in a chokehold in the bend of his elbow.

“Shut up or I’ll snap your fucking neck.” 

But sometimes staying still wasn’t enough.

The first time he touched under her underwear, something inside her snapped. She shoved him away with everything she had and kneed him in the stomach. He groaned a curse but then recovered too fast. He grabbed her by the jaw so hard it made her vision go white. Hit her so brutally in the stomach, blood sprayed the back of her throat. Dragged her out of bed by the arm and slammed her against the wall. 

After that, it was much worse. 

She remembered the smell. The weight. The pain that wouldn’t stop. 

When it was finally over, she just laid curled up on the stained carpet – breathing slow and shallow, blood and something else leaking down her inner thigh. One arm was twisted behind her. Her jaw throbbed in time with her pulse. 

“Don’t be ungrateful,” he said, stroking her hair like she was a pet. “You’re lucky someone even wants you, baby girl.”

She stared at the water stains on the walls and counted them, like stars in a ruined sky.

One, two, three. Don’t cry. Don’t move. Don’t breathe too loud.

One, two, three. It won’t always be like this. It won’t always be like this. It won’t always be like this.

But it was. For months.

Until the night he went too far. Until he and his wife panicked and lied to the ER staff. And then the parade of placements started again. 

Because even after that – she wasn’t safe. She wasn’t safe anywhere. 

Daisy woke with a start, hand clutching her chest, breath jagged. She was in her room, in May’s apartment. Her space. Her bed.

Safe.

But she didn’t feel safe. The memory clung to her clammy skin like cold sweat.

She pushed the covers off and crept into the living room. The sky outside was still dim. It was almost dawn, and May was asleep on the couch. She must’ve passed out last night watching her British detective drama. Her tea mug sat cold and half full on the table. Daisy sat on the floor by her side and just… breathed. 

In… out. 

In… out. 

She tried to match her breath to the rise and fall of May’s chest, the soft rhythm of her quiet breathing. It was like listening to a lullaby only Daisy could hear. 

She studied May form: her face, slack with sleep, looked younger than it usually did during the day; the loose strands of dark hair that slipped across her forehead; the way her hand dangled over the edge of the couch. Little things. Harmless things. Daisy wrapped her arms around her knees and kept breathing with her, steady as she could. There was nothing dangerous here. Nothing that would hurt her here. 

Just safety. 

May’s back was straight as a board as she stared straight ahead at the judge’s bench in front of them. Her non-expression looked stone-cold, but Daisy knew her tells – the way she clenched her jaw too tight, the way her hands stayed perfectly still in her lap. Daisy did her best to mimic May’s poise, but she couldn’t stop squirming next to her. 

The judge was a woman with silver hair and tired eyes. She flipped through the file in silence as she read through the notes. Then, she leaned forward to clearly state for the courtroom: “Thank you all for your patience. We’ve reviewed the petition for permanent guardianship of Daisy Johnson by Officer Melinda May.”

There was a quiet shifting of weight across the room. 

“The court notes,” the judge continued, “that there was recent cause for concern regarding the petitioner’s profession and a field-related injury. This incident resulted in a flag being placed on the case for secondary review by the department.”

Daisy’s heart plummeted. 

The judge glanced at her. “After review – there is no evidence of misconduct, neglect, or any pattern of instability in the home. Quite the opposite, actually. Extensive documentation, statements, and professional evaluations indicate this placement has provided exceptional support and emotional rehabilitation for the minor in question.”

Daisy didn’t dare breathe.

“The court, therefore, finds no grounds to rescind guardianship.”

May exhaled quietly, but with visible relief.

“Guardianship of Miss Johnson will continue with Officer Melinda May. However…” The judge’s tone sharpened, ever so slightly. “... this court instructs the Department of Children and Family Services to retain an open flag on the file. This is not punitive, just procedural. Officer May’s role in active fieldwork is to be monitored. Should further injury or occupational risk arise, a reassessment may be triggered.”

The gavel came down. And that was that. 

The courtroom cleared out slowly. Phil was waiting in the hallway with what he probably thought was a neutral expression, but Daisy could tell he had been pacing in the hall. 

“Well?” he asked.

Daisy held up the court document, beaming. “She’s stuck with me.” 

Phil grinned and released a breath of relief. He slung an arm over Daisy's shoulder. “Poor woman. You couldn’t just get a cat?”

May, who hadn’t smiled all morning, finally did.

They left together: May, Daisy, and Phil – three people who had somehow become a family, walking out into sunlight that felt earned.

Phil insisted on taking them out to dinner somewhere nice, not their usual go-tos. 

“This is a landmark,” he said, as he held the door open for them. “We don’t skimp on landmarks.”

Daisy couldn’t stop smiling all day. She was a little dazed, maybe, and still kept glancing at the custody documents tucked into May’s messenger bag like she was half-afraid they might evaporate. But she was happy. It was a soft thing, the way her shoulders dropped half an inch after weeks of holding tension in her body. A quiet release.

May, on the other hand, was still braced. Her usual alertness actually picked up after the hearing. She sat straight-backed in her seat while Phil cracked dad-jokes and Daisy demolished the complimentary basket of artisan bread with the single-minded hunger of a growing teenager. 

Daisy didn’t miss it. “You know you can smile, right?” she teased as she dipped a piece of bread into olive oil. “It won’t ruin your whole reputation.”

May looked at her over the rim of her glass. “My reputation is already compromised. Everyone thinks I have a daughter now.”

Daisy blinked, unsure of whether or not it was a joke.

But May’s mouth curved up, just barely. She reached for another slice of bread and tore it in half, handing the larger piece to Daisy without a word.

Phil watched the whole exchange with the kind of pleased silence that May had grown to find both insufferable and lovable. When the check came, he paid before either of them could blink. May scowled, but he just glanced at her sideways and murmured, “Don’t fight me. This is what family does.” 

It was nearly midnight when Daisy finally retreated to bed, full of food and happiness. She passed out almost instantly.

May and Phil lingered in the kitchen, rinsing their mugs and putting away clean dishes just to have something to do.

“She’s happy,” he finally said, breaking the silence. 

May nodded, slowly. “She should be.”

He looked at her, sharp and kind. “But you’re not.”

“I am.” 

Phil dried his hands. “Talk to me.”

May hesitated, pausing for a long time to find the voice to finally say it. “I want to adopt her.”

He didn’t react, at least not with surprise. He just nodded slowly, like it made sense. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

“I don’t want the system to have a say anymore. If something happens to me… if there’s another injury, another flag–”

“She stays yours.”

“She stays safe.”

Phil crossed his arms, his voice low. “Are you ready for what that means? Court, again. More evaluations. More paperwork.” 

May glanced down the hallway to Daisy’s door, which she left cracked open. If she listened closely she could hear the faint, even snoring of a teenager finally at peace. Finally safe. 

“I’m ready.”

Chapter Text

For the first time in Daisy’s life, summer didn’t feel like an empty stretch of danger. She woke up to birdsong and the gentle street noises of the city waking up and NPR playing in the kitchen. No more slamming doors or shouted orders or grabbing hands. She wore shorts and coded on her laptop eating watermelon slices. She laughed too loud at memes FitzSimmons sent in their group chat during lunch breaks. She helped out when Coulson cooked dinner so she wouldn’t, according to him, “start a grease fire one day.” 

Her internship with the cybertech department turned out to be the kind of gig that probably should’ve come with a salary. Her supervisor, Officer Koenig, tried to mansplain hash encryption to her when they first met. Now he stopped by May’s desk at least twice a week. 

“She rewrote the internal network mapper in two hours,” he said one Tuesday. “And added a diagnostic module. You’re not feeding that kid enough.”

May sipped her tea, utterly unmoved. “She eats.”

“She’s a genius,” Koenig insisted.

“I know.”

From across the bullpen, Coulson smirked. “Your puppy is making us all look bad.”

“She has teeth,” May replied dryly. “And she’s not a puppy.” 

Three nights a week, Daisy went to the nearby college for her Comp Sci class. Jemma was also taking classes in Biochem at the same campus. They shared energy drinks, playlists, and chaotic theories about alien mitochondria.

One night, Daisy came home beaming, holding a graded paper. “Professor Lin says I’m smarter than her grad students,” she said, waving it in front of May.

May read the glowing feedback at the top. “I’m proud of you,” she said simply. 

Daisy tried not to cry. 

She failed.

May’s medical leave finally transitioned to light duty. She returned to the precinct but stayed behind the desk, confined to paperwork and observation. It was enough to settle her, but not enough to satisfy her.

So she trained.

When she wasn’t at the precinct, she would push the living room furniture to the walls and unroll a mat across the floor. Daisy would sit on the couch pretending to play on her phone while watching May move through slow, fluid motions – precise and elegant.

“What is that?” she asked one morning.

“Taichi.”

“Can you teach me?”

May paused to study the teenager’s face. She wasn’t asking to pass time; she was asking to learn. May nodded. “Come on. Start by standing like this.”

It became another ritual. May taught Daisy how to breathe, how to move with intention, and how balance wasn’t just physical – but emotional.

“How do you stay calm when things are bad?” Daisy asked once, arms trembling from holding a stance too long.

May looked her in the eye. “You learn to stay with yourself. Even when it hurts.”

And Daisy – stronger than she knew, braver than she admitted – nodded. “I want to learn that too.”

Daisy’s favorite parts of summer were the quiet nights in the apartments – when the summer heat would press its warmth into the walls, and the curtains would gently sway with the open window, and the scent of grilled food from the kebab place down the street would waft lazily inside. It was the kind of stillness that felt weighty and kind. 

That night, May was making tea (of course). Her gait had smoothed back to its usual sharp control – though Daisy still caught her flinching occasionally, favoring her right side. Recovery was coming in slow inches, and Daisy watched each one like a hawk. When she returned to the living room, she reached into the drawer beside the couch instead of the television remote and pulled out a slim, legal-sized envelope. It looked unassuming, but it made Daisy’s pulse speed up. 

“I want to talk to you about something,” she said.

Daisy blinked. “That’s never a good way to start a sentence.”

May gave her a look. “I’ve started the paperwork to adopt you. Officially. Permanently.”

Daisy froze. Her mouth opened, then shut again. It was too big a sentence. Too impossible a word.

Adopt.

That was the kind of things other kids got. Kids with better timing, better pasts. Kids who didn’t grow up stitching escape routes into the lining of their lives. 

Kids who were good. 

“You don’t have to,” Daisy blurted out, her heart racing. The word didn’t make sense. “I mean… things are already... this is already more than I ever–”

“I want to,” May said, firm but quiet.

“I–I’m almost eighteen,” Daisy stammered through her muddled thoughts. “I’m… I mean, legally, isn’t it kind of pointless now?”

May didn’t waver. “It’s not about paperwork. It’s about you having a family. A real one. One that doesn’t come with qualifiers.”

Daisy stared down into her mug. “What if…” her voice cracked. “What if something goes wrong?”

“It won’t,” May said. “Not this time.”

It didn’t sound like a guess. It sounded like a promise.

Daisy exhaled, slow and shuddering. She didn’t look up. She couldn’t. “Okay… yeah I… I’d like that,” she whispered.

May smiled. “Good. Because it’s already in motion.”

Daisy sat at her workstation in the cybertech office, her fingers dancing across the keyboard. She had quickly graduated from observational tagging and junior assignments to more real-time system monitoring: routing reports, flagging anomalies, backtracing spammer networks. It felt like flying. 

She was running a routine audit check on the foster system (her personal side project) when the name slammed into her like a punch to the gut.

Tasha Fuller. Age 11. Placement: Thompson household in the Bronx. 

Her chair squeaked loudly from the force of her standing up.

Tasha was the youngest kid from that one house. The one upstate. Daisy used to braid her hair, distract her with made-up stories to make her laugh, wrap her arms around Tasha’s tiny frame when the yelling started. Tasha, who had once been so small her whole body fit under Daisy’s chin. And now she was going to another house that Daisy knew was dangerous. 

She stared at the screen, heart galloping. She barely noticed when Koenig asked if she was okay. She just mumbled something incoherent and rushed out into the hallway – and straight to May, with shaking hands.

May didn’t hesitate. “We’ll get her out. Whatever it takes.”

Daisy’s voice cracked. “It’s the Thompsons.”

“They won’t touch her,” May said. “Not if we move fast.”

And they did.

May called in every contact she had. Daisy combed the system, found logs, CPS incident reports, case notes. She mapped holes in the paperwork and gaps that smelled of someone cutting corners. Daisy stayed up until 3am writing up a report that May handed directly to a judge the next morning.

The apartment was dark, but not silent. This time, with May by her side, she was not powerless.

Chapter Text

Somewhere down the hall, a pipe clicked in the walls. The air outside was heavy with summer heat and Daisy lay curled beneath her blanket, tangled tight and sweaty. Her breathing hitched into shallow, uneven gasps. 

She was there again.

She was fourteen now. Not that anyone celebrated or remembered her birthday. 

Tasha was there. The little girl accidentally knocked over her plastic cup of juice. Daisy rushed to clean it before the woman saw, but it didn’t matter. It never did. The screaming went on for ten minutes. Slurs. Accusations. Threats of the belt. 

That night, Daisy pulled Tasha onto the bare mattress beside her. No sheets – only a thin, ragged blanket stretched over stains too old to name. Daisy curled around her like a shield, murmuring soft nonsense into her hair so she wouldn’t be scared. 

Then came the man. 

He was drunk. She could hear it in the way he dragged his feet and bumped into the hall table. His breathing was heavy already; he was hunting for a reason.

Daisy sat up in the dark, moving fast into the corner of the room with Tasha tucked behind her. 

The door groaned open.

“What the fuck did I say about cry babies in my goddamn house?”

Tasha whimpered. Daisy stepped in front of her. “She didn’t mean to. I told her to go to bed, she’s not crying–”

His hand struck out like a snake. The slap snapped Daisy’s head to the side and she stumbled backwards, but didn’t fall.

He came at her again, this time with something hard and heavy. A flashlight, she realized. He always grabbed whatever was closest.

It hit her shoulder first, then her ribs.

She dropped to her knees, curling in. She tried to shield her head, but it didn’t matter. Another blow landed directly on her left temple. 

Her ear rang. Her vision swam.

She couldn’t tell if she passed out or if she was just frozen in place – trembling, trying not to vomit from how hard the room was spinning. 

Then the darkness came. 

He left. Maybe he got bored.

Time blurred.

Hands were on her face.

“Wake up… Daisy, wake up. Wake up… please wake up…”

It was Tasha’s voice, high and shaking. Her tiny fingers were patting Daisy’s cheeks, wet with tears and blood.

“I’ll be good, I promise… don’t be hurt, don’t… wake up. Daisy, please! Please wake up…”

Daisy’s eyes fluttered.

The room tilted sideways.

The little girl was crying so hard she could barely speak, clutching Daisy’s torn shirt like a lifeline.

“I thought you died,” she sobbed. “You can’t die Daisy. You said you wouldn’t.”

Daisy’s jaw ached. “Not gonna die,” she whispered. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

She tried to raise a hand to soothe the child, but couldn’t. Instead, she closed her eyes again and held on.

Daisy bolted upright in bed gasping, heart trying to beat out of her chest. Her shirt was damp with sweat, and her hands were curled into fists so tight her nails left half-moons in her palms.

It wasn’t just a dream. It was a memory: a bone-deep, blood-stamped memory.

And now Tasha’s name was back on her radar.

She stared at the ceiling for a long time, chest heaving. Then, silently, she slid out of bed and went to the balcony, where the air was a little cooler. She folded her arms over her knees and stared out at the glowing horizon, waiting for the sun to rise.

The cybertech room buzzed with low conversation, humming servers, and the frantic rhythm of half a dozen keyboards click-clacking away. Daisy sat cross-legged in her chair, staring up at her three monitors, a half-empty boba sweating next to her hand. Her fingers moved faster than her thoughts – sifting through the code, parsing data dumps, tracking an exploit for a corrupted IP in what looked like a suspicious burner server.

But she wasn’t really there. No, her brain drifted in static, backwards… 

The memory of Tasha’s shaking hands patting her damp cheeks… 

The soft, pitiful way she whispered: “Daisy, please wake up…” 

The way Daisy hadn’t been able to move, hadn’t been able to protect her… 

“Daisy,” May’s voice came from the doorway.

She startled slightly. 

May had a strange softness in her eyes, one Daisy had learned to read as something good. She casually leaned against the edge of Daisy’s desk.

“She got moved,” May said.

Daisy blinked. “Who did?”

“Tasha. The case worker just called. They pulled her out.” 

Daisy sat up straight. “Where?”

“To a house with a few older long-term placements. All female. No one under ten. No younger kids to babysit. One of the girls is planning to go to trade school. Another’s on the honor roll. It’s stable. They even have a school liaison.”

It took a beat for the news to land, then Daisy exhaled in relief. “That’s good,” she murmured quietly. “That’s… that’s really good.”

May gave her a small nod. “They closed the Thompson house too. And Palamas is being flagged for review. You did that.”

Daisy shook her head reflexively. “You helped. And the lawyers. And–”

“You saw her name. You flagged the case. You insisted we dig. You built the evidence. You stood up for her.” May’s voice was low but strong. “That strength of yours… you don’t just carry it. You use it.”

Daisy stared at her, throat tight, unsure how to receive the praise. It scraped against the hollow ache inside her like paper on a bruise.

Koenig stuck his head in from the hallway. He had a donut in one hand, a file in the other. 

“What is she using? Please tell me she’s using her terrifying hacker powers for good today,” he muttered, mouth half-full. “Otherwise I’m gonna have to report her as a national security threat.”

Daisy gave a small, practiced smirk. “Guess you’ll just have to keep being nice to me.”

He grunted. “God help us all.”

May smiled faintly, and for a moment, things felt still.

But Daisy’s smile faded as soon as her screen blinked back to life. The code in front of her blurred. Somewhere in her ribs, the phantom ache of that flashlight still lingered. A two-year-old memory shouldn’t still hurt. 

But it did. 

Dinner was boiled dumplings and stir-fried green beans with garlic, courtesy of Phil. Daisy sat at the table with her legs tucked up underneath her, half-laughing at Phil’s story about catching his new rookie falling asleep during a suspect interview.

It was a nice, normal night. 

But her mouth moved without tasting, and her laugh didn’t make it all the way up to her eyes. She tried to hide it, but May noticed. 

May always noticed. 

Later, when the dishes were done and Phil was falling asleep to a Nat Geo documentary, May knocked lightly on Daisy’s door.

“Hey. You good?” she asked, leaning in, already dressed down for the night.

“Fine,” Daisy said, too quickly.

May tilted her head. “You’ve been quiet tonight.”

Daisy shrugged with the one shoulder. “Just tired.”

May hesitated, but nodded. “Alright. Get some sleep.”

Daisy curled into bed after she left, arms wrapped around her pillow like it might anchor her. Her heart felt like it was trying to beat in two timelines at once.

In the morning – two hundred miles away – the gates of Albany Correctional slid open with a clank and a buzz.

The man who stepped out squinted against the glaring summer sun. His frame was leaner now, face worn into sharper angles. The left side of his jaw still ached when the weather turned, thanks to the steel table the guards slammed his face into that first night.

His name was Frank Raynes: fifty-eight years old, former foster parent. Record of battery, resisting arrest, and obstruction. He served two years for assaulting a minor. 

Daisy Johnson. She was the one who put him in a cell.

And now she was out there, walking free, like she hadn’t ruined his life.

He lit a cigarette with shaking fingers and sucked in his first taste of real nicotine in two years. His knuckles cracked around the lighter.

“That little bitch,” he muttered. “That little chink bitch.”

He had time now – no job, no home, no wife, no parole meetings. 

He knew how to wait. And he knew how to make people remember.

Chapter Text

It was Phil’s idea. All three of them had the entire weekend off – which was a rarity – and the stretch of summer sunlight that morning was too golden to ignore. Daisy had never been to Fire Island before. She’s heard other kids talk about it like some mythical (slightly bougie) oasis beyond the subway map, but she never expected to go there with family. 

Phil was determined. “No precinct. No work talk. No screens. Just sand, snacks, and sunscreen,” he said, eyes twinkling.

Daisy beamed with excitement. Then she panicked.

The thought of the beach – the skin of it – made something go still inside her. She hadn’t worn a swimsuit in years. The last time had been in the backyard above-ground pool at the Raynes’ house. The memory of how the man’s eyes stayed too long… how he came into the bathroom while she was showering… how he had told her she was “growing into something pretty”... made her blood go cold even under the summer sun.

She hesitated in her room, staring at the untouched swimsuit laid out on the bed. It was a modest one-piece, but still far too revealing.

May knocked softly before entering. She saw the way Daisy stood frozen, and her gaze tracked immediately to the suit. 

“You don’t have to go if it doesn’t feel safe,” she said gently.

Daisy didn’t meet her eyes. “I want to. I think. I just…”

She didn’t know how to say: I’m afraid of being looked at that way again. Afraid of what it might feel like to be watched.

May walked over and placed a gentle hand on Daisy’s back. “Phil isn’t him,” she said, quietly but firmly. “And you’re not alone anymore.”

Daisy breathed in deep through her nose and nodded. 

On the ferry, she leaned over the rail with her eyes wide like a kid, watching the city skyline disappear. Phil packed an embarrassing amount of snacks. May brought books. Daisy clutched her towel and May’s film camera. 

The beach was all wind and salty waves and laughter and ice cream cones that melted too fast. At first, she stayed covered and kept her oversized t-shirt on, legs drawn up close to her chest. But the sun was warm and honest, and Phil never once looked at her like she was something to be had or used. He offered her chips, made up telenovela narratives about the seagulls, and then fell asleep snoring softly under the umbrella.

Eventually, Daisy pulled off the t-shirt, slowly and quietly, and went to the water.

May joined her without comment, walking beside her in the surf. They walked in further until the waves hit their ankles, then their knees, then their thighs. Daisy shrieked with genuine laughter when a foamy swell caught her off guard and soaked her hair.

"Hey, turn around!" she heard Phil yell from behind them. 

When she looked back, there was only warmth in his eyes. Nothing dangerous. Nothing that made her stomach turn. He snapped a picture of her and May in the waves on the camera and grinned the biggest, goofiest smile she had ever seen on a man. His eyes were filled with complete adoration. 

And he was looking straight at May. 

They stayed until sundown. On the way home, with her head resting on May’s shoulder and Phil humming tunelessly under his breath, Daisy let herself think: I could get used to this.

A few days later, Daisy sat alone at her desk in the cybertech room. The hum of the machines was low and steady. Her code compiled neatly in front of her, clean lines of logic threading one to the next in order. 

But something in her gut twitched – an animal instinct. Something in the air shifted just enough to set her teeth on edge.

She looked over her shoulder.

Nothing.

She looked again.

Still nothing.

It was just… the feeling of being watched. But not like a casual glance of coworkers or passing strangers.

No… this felt sharper. Hungrier.

She rubbed her arms and forced herself back into the work, but her breath was already a little shallow. Even when May stopped by to say they were ordering Thai for dinner, and Daisy smiled and nodded, something deep in her spine was vibrating.

Run, a voice whispered. Run now.

He watched from across the street in a rental car that smelled like old smoke and stale coffee. His fingers tapped the steering wheel in an off-rhythm. His beard was trimmed now. His hair, freshly cut, was slicked back neatly. He looked clean enough to be ignored. 

Daisy Johnson. 

Honors student at high school. College courses over the summer. Cybertech intern at the police department. 

He almost laughed.

The girl he remembered was bony, and dirty, and full of fire and spit. He remembered how she would cry after he stomped on her ribs. He remembered how she used to bite him, like a goddamn animal. He remembered how the light in her eyes would fade and turn dull when he entered her. 

That was the girl who put him in a cell. 

She looked different now. Taller. Hair darker. Shoulders straighter. Smiling with people like she belonged.

He hated how pretty she was becoming. How confident.

He watched her laugh when a coworker passed by with a donut. Watched her tuck her hair behind her ear. Watched her stretch her arms up in a yawn.

Rage curled in his gut like smoke. 

You cost me everything, he thought. And now you’re gonna pay.

He made a note in his notebook.

He wasn’t ready yet. But he had time.

She didn’t.