Chapter Text
When May first returned from Radcliffe’s extensive testing after they had exorcised Lucy Bauer's ghost out of her, almost nobody knew anything was wrong.
Mack was playing video games on the couch, trying and failing to convince Fitz to join him, just for one game, Coulson was grabbing a mug of coffee to go with his mountain of paperwork, and Daisy was making a sandwich for Jemma, who still refused to leave her room.
Which is fair, Daisy thought, chopping up a pepper with careful precision that wasn’t quite her own, they all had to feel May slip away, but Jemma was the only one holding the paddles to bring her back.
Daisy knew Jemma needed a moment to collect herself. She respected it, honestly. Wished she had the courage to do the same. Because all she was doing right now was thinking about the whole reason this shit show had started in the first place, when that demon thing had literally stepped through May and suddenly…
She was gone. No, that wasn't it. May was still there, but something else had taken over.
“What the fuck just happened?” Bobbi cursed, nearly falling over herself as she appeared to May's right. She had a beer clasped loosely in her hand and Daisy could hear the blaring noise of a sports game from the redhead's living room.
May didn't say anything, just stared blankly ahead at nothing.
Visiting proved to not be a good idea, and was only met with splitting screams and visions of cracked skin and inky black eyes.
Jemma winced at Daisy's side where she had been napping, groggily sitting up. “It's freezing. Did Coulson really turn on the air conditioning in the middle of winter?”
Daisy could feel May's fear start to build, rattling around in her bones, and sending relentless chills up her spine.
It was unnerving, to feel such emotion rolling off the other woman, when she normally kept everything so close to the chest.
Jemma didn't have any answers either, only a thin needle and that uncomfortable prickle as May faded into unconsciousness.
What followed was a rapid series of events involving thwarting more ghostly possessions, trapping said ghosts in the same cubes they had recently vacated, and then eventually the unfortunate incident where Jemma was forced to kill May so they could perform what basically amounted to a complete factory reset to her brain.
Fucking fantastic.
So yeah, Daisy was so lost in that memory that when the hangar doors slid open with a hiss, she didn't look up until Coulson spoke, his voice relieved.
“I was starting to think Radcliffe was never letting you go.”
And then Daisy really really wished she hadn’t looked up.
She felt something shift inside her, a phantom twinge that reminded her of the truth, because it definitely looked like her, definitely walked like her, but whatever had just stepped into the base was not Agent Melinda May.
Her first glaring clue was that Daisy could still feel the fuzziness where May usually was when she reached out for her, which Jemma had explained was because of the sedation Radcliffe was using.
And it had been bugging her all day. Like an itch she couldn’t scratch. Which is why she immediately knew that the rift was still there.
Her second clue was the blatant wrongness that flooded her veins the second their eyes met through the glass windows of the common area.
A sudden wave of nausea overcame the cluster as Bobbi, who had been half-asleep on her couch, fell straight onto the floor, her elbow knocking on her coffee table. “Whaz happnin?”
Daisy gripped the stone countertop, fingers twitching toward the knife still within reach, sandwich forgotten.
Jemma barely noticed the glass crunching under her shoe from a shattered water glass when she stumbled forward.
And all the while, May continued walking down the hallway, unbothered.
Bobbi was on the next flight out.
—
The problem was as simple as it was gut wrenchingly awful.
There was no way AIDA didn’t know about homo-sensorium from the Darkhold, or from Radcliffe's research on human biology. Or even from his stint with Hive not so long ago.
Which meant if she suspected that May was a part of a cluster, and that that cluster would move heaven and Earth to find her, she would kill May without hesitation.
As much as they hated to admit it, May was expendable in the face of AIDA's drive to protect the Framework.
So they had to push through the wriggling sense of discomfort they felt every time they met LMD May's eyes, the way she instinctively stood closer even if her brain couldn't tell her the reason why.
The way she smiled just like the real May would when she saw Daisy and Jemma hunched over a lab bench, their bodies so in tune with each other that it wasn't uncommon for Daisy to grab an item Jemma needed before she even asked.
The way everything looked right but felt so, so wrong.
—
Three hours later, Coulson nearly blew a gasket at the sight of Bobbi Morse stumbling into his base, flushed from the bite of oncoming snow. Her usual red hair was dyed brown, something Coulson hadn't seen since her time at Hydra. One of the rare times she actually listened to his suggestions to stay hidden.
The two were locked in his office for the next thirty minutes, arguing in muffled voices behind the frosted glass.
Fitz sighed sharply every time a particularly loud comment was made, rubbing his temples to stave off a headache. Daisy felt much the same.
She knew Coulson wasn’t truly angry. Deep down he was glad to see Bobbi too, but he also knew that the fragileness of the truce with Talbot and the ATCU could be put in jeopardy if they knew that she was there.
The general never allowed Coulson to forget that they were still walking on eggshells after the mission that had forced her and Hunter out in the first place.
But still, Daisy floated untethered in her body. May had been her SO after Ward's betrayal, the one who got her through the grief of losing someone she trusted, so her disappearance was hitting the brunette harder than most.
She was at the same time slumped over Jemma's desk watching the scientist work as she was tapping her foot repeatedly in the chair beside Bobbi, her attempt at comfort by proximity dulled by the relentless and repetitive noise.
After a while, the turmoil within the base reached such a suffocating state that Jemma subconsciously reached out, begging someone to help.
Unfortunately, it brought about the opposite of the intended effect.
As if she was a phantom limb thriving off jolts of nonexistent energy, the LMD wearing May's face entered the lab, instinctively headed straight for Daisy.
Jemma quickly clicked off her monitor and the code attempting to siphon through their limited information on the Darkkhold. She gently grabbed Daisy's hand when she tensed.
On the floor above them, Bobbi's voice stuttered to a stop.
Even Fitz could sense the tension, straightening slightly from where he was aimlessly staring at a 3D model of the AIDA's disembodied head, and the data patterns fluctuating around it.
But before May could reach them, Piper came in like a guardian angel, calling the woman away for a sparring session to “commemorate her return”.
Thankfully, May didn’t argue, and turned to leave, casting only a single worried glance back into the lab before she departed.
Daisy waited until Fitz had settled again before she let her tears fall.