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English
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Part 2 of Director Quake
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Published:
2025-05-17
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1,397
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1/1
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Broken Trust Won't Come Back

Summary:

Running Shield at one of its lowest points is a stressful endeavor. Luckily Daisy has a team that's almost like family that will have her back.

Right?

Being Director requires one to take a step back and reevaluate.

Notes:

If it somehow wasn't obvious, this is not a happy one.

Kara was, as always, a great help with beta-reading this.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Getting Shield back in working order was a fucking nightmare. She had six agents, more than Coulson had when he had to rebuild Shield, but Coulson had loyalty. She hated it, but forcing herself to think in the most objective terms that she could, and she had the awful knowledge that the people she had considered family for so long didn’t look at her the same way.

Half the time she was in the same room as Fitz, he had the same look in his eyes that Whitehall had had. The sickening desire to ‘experiment.’ Simmons was… complicated, Daisy still wanted to trust her, but the woman had risked everyone's lives for Fitz. Elena wasn't going to forgive her for not being able to tear a man from his child in the Framework. May hated her, and was leaving to spend whatever time Coulson had left in him actually at Tahiti. She didn’t think May was coming back.

There were only two members of the team she didn't have reason to be wary of, Mack and Piper. She might think of Mack as something like a brother, but she barely knew Piper.

So, the first priority was resources. The money she had been siphoning off of a few hundred different businesses for Shield (and briefly for herself when she’d been alone), was still going strong, so that took care of resources as well as she could for the moment. Second priority, rebuilding. The Lighthouse worked as a base, and she had managed to thankfully upgrade its very outdated hardware and software without much issue. But the thing was quite clearly built as a doomsday bunker. There were only two entrances, one of them being the hanger. The Toolbox had a list of all Shield bases, both disclosed and undisclosed, but until she could send teams to check them, she had to operate under the assumption that each and every one had been seized by the nations they were hidden in.

Agents were needed. She knew where she could get three, highly skilled agents who she trusted, but two of them were disavowed, so bringing them in meant throwing away all hope for Shield to become legal again for as long as they stayed around, and the other had a son to look after.

Still, as soon as she wasn’t needed for anything else, she ordered Piper and Mack to focus on tracking down Bobbi and Hunter. Mike, on the other hand, she never lost track of him.

 

 

 

Setting down the cloaked quinjet, she opened the ramp and turned around to see Mike Peterson. For a man with a half burned face, he looked good.

“Five years and you go from anti-secret hacker, to Director of a spy agency?”

She snorted. God, when was the last time she smiled, really smiled? “Life never goes the way we expect it.”

“No need to tell me,” he waved a hand to the burns over his face. “Wanna come down for dinner? Ace would love to see you.”

“He remembers me?” He had been what, just barely eight the last time she'd seen him?

“You’re the hero who saved him and his dad,” Mike was looking at her with some concern, “he likes Quake more than any of the Heroes of New York now.”

Something in her melted, “Yeah, I'd love to see him again.”

 

 

 

“Skye!” She braced herself just in time for the twelve year old to jump into her with a hug.

“Hey kid,” Daisy squeezed him back, it felt like a lifetime ago that she was Skye, tracking Mike down to warn him off of Shield.

Ace, predictably, pouted, “Not a kid.”

She let out a chuckle, “Sure you're not, kid.”

Dinner was… it was good. There was something nice about getting to talk about her parents to Ace without having to mention all of the bad. Telling stories of her time as Quake like it was something fun, and not nearly a year of trying to get herself killed while lying to herself about it, was good. God she hated it but she was definitely gonna need to see a therapist if she was going to be leading Shield… thinking about it she definitely needed psych evals of everyone. Something for later, for now, she just enjoyed dinner with a happy family. And tried to ignore what she was there for until after dinner.

“Ace, could you take the dishes to the sink and wash them?”

The kid groaned and rolled his eyes but did what his dad asked.

“He's a good kid.”

Mike smiled at her, “Yeah, I'm dreading his rebellious phase though.” As soon as Ace was out of earshot, he turned completely serious, “I can't join Shield again, I gotta-”

“I know,” She stopped him, “I'm not asking you to. I would've killed for a dad like you when I was Ace’s age. You both deserve a normal life. I just want to ask if you could come in for emergencies, that's it.”

Mike took a deep breath and settled into his chair, “I can do that.”

Daisy nodded, “Thank you.” She glanced over to Ace, “You still getting the money I've been sending you?”

“Yeah, been working some jobs that don't need manual labor. Figured that'd draw a little too much attention.”

 

 

 

“This isn't a good idea.”

“And the next time the Index is used to hunt down inhumans or other enhanced? One of my first missions in Shield was dealing with the consequences of the Index, Mack.”

Mack’s arms crossed over his chest, his face barely not a scowl, “And what happens when the next enhanced decides that their powers make them a god?”

She looked down at her laptop again, honestly this argument was going to go nowhere, “We investigate and neutralize, preferably non-lethal, same as always.”

“And if they come back?”

She properly scowled at him now, “Were you even listening? I'm not erasing the Index, people who intentionally commit crimes with their enhancement will stay on the Index. If you want to try and twist my actions against me, you know where the door is, understood?” She had seen how the man had twisted Coulson's actions against him back when he had been spying on them. She could not allow him to do the same to her. Another fucking split was not something she wanted to deal with. And likely not something what was left of Shield could survive.

Something in Mack’s eyes hardened, and he turned to the door of her office, noticeably not giving any sign of agreement or understanding.

God when had he become someone she needed to handle like an insubordinate asshole? She'd thought of him as something like a brother for some time there… but then, he'd always believed that inhumans needed to be either controlled or locked up, hadn't he?

She let out a breath and leaned back into her chair. Was she an idiot, never putting it together that he thought she was ‘one of the good ones?’ Was she the fool, never realizing that the people she thought of as family would turn on her when it suited them?

 

 

 

“Ma’am?”

Daisy ignored the way Piper straightened at her presence. Honestly the woman had seen her in barely more than her underwear with three bullets in her and dozens of fractures, she didn't need to be formal. “I need you to find a therapist or psychologist who will agree to work with us in at least a limited capacity.” She frowned at her own words, “Multiple actually, if possible.” She wasn't entirely sure what was going on with Fitz, but a psych eval was probably the bare minimum she'd need to force on him.

Piper glanced at the search she was clearly in the middle of, “And my previous assignment?”

Daisy shook her head, “This is higher priority. And keep it quiet, I'd rather not deal with the headache of people trying to avoid shrinks longer than I have to.” Was it really the reason? No, but it was true.

Daisy had one agent she had no reason to be wary of, and it was because she barely knew the woman. At least Piper wasn't insubordinate, hopefully the woman would stay that way. She has some hope that she could trust Jemma again, but almost certainly never when it came to Fitz.

Notes:

If/when I continue this, it will probably be a little less angsty, hopefully with some humor to balance it out.

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