Prompt: broken wings
Turns out, Skye had learned that morning, that angels with broken wings have to ride the county bus.
She'd argued with AC about it, but Coulson stayed firm. It wasn't a punishment for what had happened with Ward, her previous charge. No, he'd insisted, it was a lesson.
She was stuck riding the bus until she'd demonstrated that she was ready to get her wings back.
Apparently just saying she was sorry wasn't enough.
A long time ago, to steal a line from some movie Skye'd seen years before, there'd been a great divide of the cosmos. Light and dark. Good and bad. There'd been betrayals and losses.
The fight seemed like it would never end.
And then, in a moment of divine inspiration, a whole new category of beings had been created.
Humans.
Innocents.
New minds and hearts and bodies.
Unclaimed.
And in that moment, a whole new fight began.
Skye belonged to a class of angels tasked with identifying humans being courted by the other side, and then protecting them from the demons sent to seduce them.
Why this charge and not that one, what the demons wanted from these particular humans, Skye didn't know. She'd asked Coulson time and time again, but he'd always waved her questions off. "It wasn't their business to know," he'd say, or her least favorite phrase, "have faith."
Generally, Skye concluded, it was a numbers game. Maybe there there was a reason, maybe there wasn't. But it was pretty clear that no one was going to be letting her in on the big secret any time soon.
So she went about her business. Coulson gave her names. She stood guard over her charges, convinced the demons that people like Matty Price, the museum guard from Louisville, and Luz Velazquez, the elementary school teacher from Sao Paolo, weren't worth the trouble of acquiring. That, Skye had to admit, was always fun.
And then there'd been Ward. A tall, good-looking federal agent with a dark personal history.
Or so she'd thought. The dark history had been true. But that had been the only thing. Okay, and the good-looking part too. But his good looks had been nothing more than a pretty, shiny distraction meant to hide his true identity.
For the first time in an eternity, an angel had been led astray. Skye had been taken in by Ward's deceptions, for his mask of vulnerability. Instead of protecting someone from the clutches of the dark, Skye had fallen for the lies of a nephilim.
She'd survived.
But she'd come back broken.
She'd come back without her wings.
AC had kept her grounded for a while, letting her recover from her experience slowly. But this morning he'd sought her out and slipped a small piece of paper into her hand and giving her that fatherly nod he seemed to reserve for his favorites.
"Jemma Simmons," he told her, "9:23, Addams and 4th."
The slip of paper was a bus ticket.
Which is how she found herself sitting on a sticky bus shelter bench next to a teenager obviously on his way home from the gym. She was wondering if it would be rude to ask the kid if he'd ever considered using an antiperspirant. Hey, he smelled like a locker room—she was an angel, not a saint.
Turned out she didn't need to though, because the bus pulled up and people came streaming out of its doors. Skye jumped up and moved to board, handing her ticket to the driver and moving into the bus, looking for an open seat. Unfortunately, there were none. She moved to stand near the back, when a woman sitting in the back caught her eye.
"Margaret! Over here," the pretty brunette said, waving. "Excuse me, my friend just got on," she said to the man sitting next to her, and stood up to climb past him, and moved to stand next to Skye near the rear door.
"I'm so sorry," the woman whispered, "but this guy sat down next to me and asked me out and I really don't think he wants to take no for an answer. So if you wouldn't mind pretending to be my friend for the next ten minutes, I'd really appreciate it."
Skye was a little flabbergasted, but she nodded.
"Great, I'm Jemma, by the way."
"Skye," the angel said, "nice to meet you."
The bus took a sharp turn, throwing their bodies together against the side of the bus.
Jemma just laughed, caught between Skye and the wall.
It was a precious sound, like the gentle peel of bells.
Hearing it, Skye felt a familiar twitch in the feathers of her wings.
When she looked up, she could have sworn she saw Coulson at the wheel, his reflection smiling back at her in the mirror.