Skye stifled a yawn as she sat on a bench beside the pond and threw food to the ducks. It was only seven-thirty, but she'd been up for hours. After finishing her session with May, she showered in the gym and changed for work. Then she'd decided to bring her cafeteria breakfast sandwich and coffee out to the park.

She'd been training with May for a couple of weeks. She'd gotten into the habit of having coffee with Grant in the mornings, but he and several of the specialists were away on a classified assignment. Skye felt a pang as she finished her sandwich and sipped her coffee. Grant had been gone for five days now, and she missed him.

The summer ducklings were all pretty big, and she knew they'd soon be flying south for the winter. It was early October; the leaves were starting to show the first hints of fall, and the hazy late summer days had begrudgingly given way to cooler weather. She'd pulled out a lightweight jacket for the first time earlier in the week, and this morning she was also wearing a light scarf.

One of the ducks waddled over and nudged her foot with its bill, making her smile. She held out her hand and let it eat a few seeds from her palm. It tickled, and she laughed.

"Hi."

Startled, she glanced up to see Alanna Johnson a few feet away. Dressed down in jeans, a blue sweater and a chocolate brown leather jacket, with minimal makeup and her blonde hair pulled back into a low ponytail, she looked years younger than she actually was.

"Skye, right?" Alanna gestured to the bench. "Do you mind if I sit? I'm waiting for my daughters, Henna and Jenny. They're getting coffee. Would you like one? I could always call and ask them to bring one more."

Skye shook her head slowly, holding up her travel mug. "Mine's still mostly full. But you can sit, if you want."

She ignored the flutter of nerves in her stomach as Alanna sat down. It felt weird to have her biological aunt sitting next to her; to Skye it was significant even though she knew Alanna was just being friendly.

"The weather is really nice this week," Alanna commented with a smile. "As much as I miss Austin and my husband, I'll be a little sad to leave in a few days."

"It'll be cold soon. I'm sure you won't miss the winters here," Skye replied, throwing a few more seeds to the ducks. "I'm still getting used to them."

"Where are you from?" Alanna asked. She took some seeds from the bag Skye offered her and tossed them to the new ducks that had just arrived.

"All over," Skye answered slowly. She bit her lip and then added, "But I grew up in Austin."

"Ah, a fellow Texan," Alanna said, laughing. "Small world. Do you still have family there?"

"I was left at St. Agnes when I was a baby." It wasn't a lie. Skye was proud of herself for keeping the bitterness out of her voice. "I grew up there. They told me my mother died."

"Oh, Skye." Alanna turned on the bench to look at her apologetically. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."

She shrugged. "It's fine. I'm sure it could have been worse."

While definitely true, she knew from numerous annoying therapy sessions that the words were a coping mechanism. Words like 'It's fine' and 'It could have been worse' served to downplay shitty events in her own mind. Her childhood had been full of the kind of pop psychology that court appointed therapists and case workers liked to toss at kids in the system. They were trying to help, but it had never actually made her feel any better. Coping though – that had a hundred percent success rate.

"That's our family church," Alanna finally said. "I've done quite a bit of volunteer work there, including at the orphanage. How long were you there?"

"I left when I was fifteen. I had a few foster homes but none that worked out."

Skye didn't know why she was telling Alanna all of this. For one thing, it was dangerous to start handing out the details of her past life to a woman who might very well be able to connect the dots back to her own brother. For another, oversharing had never been her thing, and she doubted Alanna wanted all the gory details anyway.

However, when Skye looked over at the older woman, she was watching her. She clearly had questions that she was trying to hold back. She looked away and they sat in silence for a minute, watching the ducks.

"Fifteen is young," Alanna finally said quietly. "Too young to be on your own. I sometimes work with the police department on child pornography and prostitution cases. The streets aren't a safe place."

"I was lucky," Skye told her. "And I was good at reading people. I couch surfed for a while, and I started spending time with this guy named Miles – he was a hacktivist with a group called the Rising Tide. I had some natural skill there because I picked it up pretty fast."

"I'm being nosy, but how did you end up with SHIELD?"

"AC – sorry, Coulson – caught me hacking into SHIELD when I was eighteen," Skye said ruefully. "I wasn't quite as good seven years ago as I am now. Instead of taking me to a cell, he took me to a diner and bought me lunch. He helped me get my GED and go to college. I never saw myself with an organization like SHIELD, but I like the sense of family I've found there."

"You know, I used to work there, too," Alanna said. "I was also a computer analyst. Of course, that was a long time ago, but I do have a sense of what the job entails."

Skye heard laughter behind her. Turning, she saw Henna and Jenny walking towards them.

Alanna looked over her shoulder and waved at her daughters. "I left when my husband and I started talking about having a family. We're both from Texas, so we thought it would be a good time to go home."

With the twins' arrival, hugs and greetings were exchanged. Skye sensed the private bubble they'd been in slipping away, and she felt a little awkward. She stood up. "I should probably get going."

It was warming up, so she unwound the scarf she was wearing and put it in her bag.

"That's a pretty locket," Henna said, leaning in for a closer look. "It looks antique."

Skye's hand rose to touch the gold locket. "Thanks." It had been the only personal item left with her at the orphanage, though she didn't often wear it. She supposed being around Quartermain again had her thinking more about the past. "I think it might have belonged to my mother."

Henna looked a little confused by her answer since she hadn't heard the story Skye told Alanna, but she tactfully skirted it. "Well, it's beautiful."

Skye glanced over at Alanna to see that she had gone pale, and she was staring at the locket around Skye's neck. "What?"

"Did…" Alanna paused as if she were trying to organize her thoughts. "You said you think it might have belonged to your mother?"

Skye's hand crept up again to close around the locket in a defensive gesture. "It was the only thing left with me at St. Agnes. I assumed it was hers."

"And your father? Did you ever find him?" Alanna asked somewhat abruptly, ignoring the way her daughters were staring at her.

Her palms were starting to sweat; Skye released the locket and picked up her bag. "I should go."

Alanna reached out, and Skye stilled as the older woman grasped her hand to stop her from leaving. They stared at one another, wary brown eyes locked with searching blue ones. Skye felt sick as she realized that somehow, Alanna knew.

"I'm sorry," Alanna said, her voice a little shaky. "It's just that my grandmother had a locket just like yours. She gave it to my brother. It's meant to be passed on to his daughter."

Skye could feel the blood draining from her face and a hot, prickly feeling in her veins as her heart started pounding. She understood what Alanna was saying, but it didn't compute. Because why would the man who had abandoned her leave her with a family heirloom? It had never – not even once – occurred to her that the locket was from Quartermain. She had half convinced herself that it didn't mean anything at all since she had wondered where a Chinese village woman might have gotten that type of locket.

"It was engraved," Alanna continued in a soft voice, almost as if she were speaking to herself. She reached for the locket and turned it over.

Skye knew what was engraved there. She had read it a thousand times as she ran her fingers over the words.

Love endures all things.

Alanna was the one running her finger over the words now, and she looked both confused and upset as their eyes met once again. "Skye…"

"I have to go." Skye pulled back and turned, walking as quickly as possible back to the Triskelion.


Alanna watched Skye walk away, her own feet seemingly rooted to the ground. She couldn't stop her brain from recycling everything Skye had told her as she tried desperately to put the pieces together in a way that didn't make her brother a liar – a man who would leave his daughter in an orphanage, mere miles away from her family.

"Geez, Mom. Personal much?" Jenny spoke up behind her. "Some people have boundaries you know. Didn't you see the look on her face?"

"Jenny." Henna spoke up, a warning in her voice.

Alanna realized then that she had made a mistake, and she turned to look at Henna. The eldest by six minutes, Henna had always been the more observant and perceptive of the two girls, and none of her mother's interactions with Skye had gone over her head.

"I don't understand," Henna said quietly. "She mentioned St. Agnes, and you asked her if she ever found her father. But Uncle Clay wouldn't, right? There's a mistake."

Alanna didn't answer her, but she was beginning to fear the truth staring her in the face. She'd first thought that her brother had gotten involved with Skye romantically, but he'd been so disgusted by her question that she dismissed it. Now she thought she understood why.

Skye was clearly of Asian and Caucasian descent. She said she was eighteen when she met Coulson, and that was seven years ago. That put her around twenty-five years old. And twenty-five years ago, her brother was working in China.

The pieces fell into place faster and faster – how withdrawn Clay had been when he came home from China. How he'd spent some extra time at the church, helping with general repairs during his rare time off. How he never talked about his time in Asia. The last hadn't concerned her much given the nature of specialists' missions. But all together, combined with the locket and what she knew of Skye? It added up to the young woman being Clay's daughter.

"Mom?"

Alanna sighed and looked at Henna. "I'm sorry, sweetie. I shouldn't have asked her those questions, and especially not with you girls here, listening in. It just took me by surprise. The truth is, I don't know what's going on."

"Wait." Jenny had finally caught on, and she looked at them incredulously. "You're both crazy. You're not suggesting Uncle Clay dumped her off at the family church a few miles down the road and forgot about her. He wouldn't do that."

"But that was your grandmother's locket, wasn't it?" Henna asked, clearly intent on pushing for answers. "I've seen it in old pictures. Did it have the same engraving?"

"Stop." Alanna spoke sharply and firmly. "We're not discussing this until I've talked to your uncle. There has to be a reasonable explanation, and I don't want either of you saying another word about it. Are we clear?"

Jenny looked relieved to change the subject, but the stubborn tilt of Henna's chin let Alanna know that she wouldn't be stalled forever. She needed to talk to Clay as soon as possible.

The girls left a few minutes later since they both had morning classes, and Alanna hit speed dial four on her phone. She got Clay's voicemail. She hung up and dialed again. Then again.

He picked up the third time. "Honey, I'm about to go into a meeting…"

"I need to talk to you, Clay." She kept the anger from her tone, but she knew she sounded serious.

There was a pause on his end, followed by the sound of a door closing. "What's wrong?"

"I don't want to get into it on the phone." That was the truth. "How soon can you meet me?"

"Give me a couple of hours," he said. "I'll meet you at your hotel."

"Okay." She disconnected the call and went back to the hotel. Then she sat down with a legal pad and started outlining everything she knew and everything she suspected. It only made her more upset.

By the time Clay arrived, she was just angry. He was barely inside the room before she asked the question that had been repeating in her mind, over and over, for the last couple of hours. "How could you do it?"

He paused and shot her a wary look. "Do what?"

"How could you abandon your daughter the way you did?" Never could she have imagined her brother capable of something like that. But if there had been even a sliver of doubt, it was gone the moment she saw his expression shut down.

When he started for the door, her words stopped him. "Don't. Don't you dare walk out of this room. You don't get to walk away from this. I need to know why."

"No, you want to know. There's a difference," he answered her.

He didn't leave though. He turned and walked over to the table by the window and sat down.

Alanna walked slowly across the room to join him.

Clay maintained his stony expression, but his blue eyes, so much like her own, betrayed him. Alanna knew him well enough to know it was a front.

"Did Coulson tell you?" he finally asked. "He's been asking questions, but I didn't think he'd come to you."

"Coulson knows too?" She immediately backtracked. "It doesn't matter. The answer is no, Coulson didn't tell me. I saw Skye this morning at the duck pond. I was waiting for the girls, and we started talking. She told me a little about her background, though not much. And then I saw her locket, and I knew."

Her brother didn't look away, but he didn't offer any explanations either. She desperately needed him to explain.

"She knows, too," she continued. "I could see it in her eyes before she left. Somehow she tracked you down at SHIELD after she ran away from St. Agnes." Suddenly, the significance of that time frame hit her. "Which was about ten years ago. You took a six month leave of absence ten years ago. You kept track of her up until then, didn't you? That's why you took the leave. You were looking for her."

Something shifted in his expression then, and for the first time he looked away.

Alanna waited.

"Skye was born in the Hunan Province in China," Clay finally said as he stared out the window. "It's where I met her mother, Jiaying. We were hunting stray Hydra cells and they were looking for powered people. You know some of this since you were with SHIELD at the time."

"I know you were looking for Plan Chu," she answered. "So was one of the Hydra cells, right?"

"Hydra was looking for powered people in general," Clay told her. "Plan Chu was one of them, but there were rumors of a race of people who were more than human. That's why the Paranormal Containment Unit was sent out there to begin with. Jiaying gave me information that helped us find Plan Chu. She knew he was dangerous, that Hydra was dangerous, and she wanted to protect the people in her village."

That surprised her. "You broke your cover for her?"

He shook his head. "I was posing as an international aid worker, but somehow she knew I wasn't. She agreed to help me as long as I didn't tell anyone where the information came from. I didn't plan to get involved with her in the middle of a long term mission, but it happened. Garrett and I tracked Plan Chu for the next few months in a neighboring province, and when I got back, Jiaying was almost ready to give birth. I didn't even know she was pregnant before I left."

"Skye said that her mother died. Was it in childbirth?" she asked.

Clay wiped a hand down his face and looked at her. "She didn't die. She was murdered. Skye was only a few months old when Hydra agents rounded up some of the villagers. By the time I found them, it was too late for Jiaying but I snuck Skye out before SHIELD hit the base. Some of the Hydra agents escaped and I couldn't take the chance that they'd start looking for Skye. I had given her to one of the village elders, but I doubled back a few nights later and took her."

"And you brought her back with you. But how did you hide a baby from the team?"

"Jessica brought her back for me," he said, sounding weary. "I didn't know what else to do."

Jessica Jones. She hadn't been on the PCU team sent to China, but she wasn't surprised that her brother had turned to her. They'd been romantically involved more than once, and she was one of the few people Clay trusted.

"Why St. Agnes? If you couldn't keep her, you know that I would have, Clay. Why didn't you tell me?"

"We were running down those Hydra cells for several years afterwards, and you know it," he replied, a thread of anger in his voice. "They were interested in Jiaying's baby. They were looking for her. But no one, not even the village elders, knew I was the father. No one knew we had been involved. I couldn't show up in Texas with a half-Chinese daughter, Alanna. SHIELD would have asked questions, and someone might have connected the dots from Jiaying to me to Skye."

"We could have figured something out," she shot back, her voice rising. "She is our family and she grew up alone. How could you do that to her?"

"I made a hard call!" he shouted at her. He paused as he attempted to regain some of his control. "If you had fucking seen what I saw, you'd understand. They gutted her mother like an animal, and they didn't give a shit that Skye was just a baby. They would have done the same damn thing to her. So I talked to the priest and we agreed that he'd keep her hidden there. I stuck around for a few months to make sure no one had tracked Jessica from China to Texas. When no one asked questions, I figured Skye was finally safe."

Alanna realized she was crying. She took a deep breath and wiped her cheeks. "You took a leave of absence ten years ago when she ran away. That's why you came home – to look for her. That's why Jessica was there, too."

"The nuns thought she might have run away, but I was afraid it was worse than that. I gave her the name Daisy Johnson, and every trace of her had vanished – no records anywhere. If Jess and I had known that she took up hacking and was hanging around with other hackers, we might have been able to find her. But she was only fifteen, and when nothing turned up through official channels I thought…"

"You thought she was probably dead," Alanna finished quietly.

She thought back to that time. It hadn't escaped her attention that Clay was upset about something, but she'd thought it was related to SHIELD or one of his missions. He wasn't the first specialist to occasionally need time off to get his head back in the game. After a few months, he'd started drinking enough to spark concern. With Jessica's help, he'd eventually pulled himself back together and gone back to work.

"Five years ago I walked into Coulson's office and there she was," Clay explained. "They both knew I was the one who had left her at St. Agnes. Obviously she had questions I can't answer."

"Questions you refused to answer." Alanna shook her head. "It's been twenty-five years, Clay. She deserves to know the truth. I can't even imagine what she must think, knowing she was that close to family but you still refused to acknowledge her existence."

"Whatever she thinks, it's better than the alternative. I wanted her away from this world – away from SHIELD, and away from people who might hurt her," Clay stated. "It's too late to go back on that decision."

Alanna realized that he had resigned himself long ago to the idea that he would never have a relationship with Skye. "Because of her mother? You said they took the villagers because they were looking for powered people. Was her mother gifted?"

He didn't answer, and she suddenly knew he wasn't going to. She sat back and thought about what he'd told her. If Skye's mother was gifted, then it stood to reason that he worried Skye would be as well. She knew SHIELD's protocol for gifted people, so she understood his concern. But Skye seemed to be perfectly normal.

He'd named her Daisy after their grandmother, and he'd left the locket with her. Clearly he'd wanted to give a piece of himself and his family to her. He cared whether he wanted to admit it or not.

"Clay, I love you, and I understand what you were thinking when you left Skye at St. Agnes," she told him quietly. "I don't agree that it was the best decision – for you or for her – but I understand. The problem is you're still denying Skye a chance to know her family and where she comes from, and I can't understand that. I refuse to believe that is best for anyone in this situation, and I'm not going to pass her in the park and pretend I don't know she's my niece. I can't."

"She doesn't want to have anything to do with me," Clay replied, rubbing the back of his neck.

"The girls were there when I saw the locket," she said with a sigh.

He barked out a laugh. "Well that's just great."

"I'm sorry. It shocked the hell out of me, and I reacted without thinking it through. Henna being Henna, she figured out what was going on right away. Jenny doesn't believe it, but I'll have to talk to them about it now. And I'm not going to lie to them. They grew up in a family that's second generation SHIELD, Clay. They can handle some half-truths, or enough to make them try to understand."

"And then what? We're one big happy family?" He shook his head and stood up.

It was apparent that her brother thought it was about twenty-five years too late for that. Like most specialists, he navigated life by using his head and gut instinct. They were taught to compartmentalize emotional reactions because they were dangerous to the mission; to Clay, Skye and the mission were hopelessly entangled. But Alanna was just as stubborn as he was, and she was determined to know her niece. Skye might have grown up without a family, but she had one now. She wasn't going to give up.

A/N: Sorry about the lack of Ward in this chapter! There's a lot of him and Skye in the next one. But I needed to start bringing her biological family into the story because of what's coming in future installments – particularly parts 5 and 6. More of Skye's backstory will be revealed later, but Quartermain is still keeping a lot of secrets.

Up Next – Grant is caught in a sticky situation on his op, and Skye breaks protocol to get him out of it. When he returns, they both realize they're on a slippery slope with regard to their feelings. While this prompts Skye to have a difficult conversation with Patrick, Grant resorts to compartmentalizing feelings he's not ready to deal with yet. Alanna seeks Skye out before returning to Austin. I might have it up tomorrow since I'm tweaking it now. Thanks for reading!