Fractures,
Written by WickedSong.
Disclaimer/Note: I don't own AoS, obviously. I'm very eh about this title right now but I want to post this. So it could change but it could also grow on me, who knows? So basically this is a fic that will involve time travel and angst. I know the general plot line, but because I don't have an awful lot more, and won't have it, until I can really dedicate myself to the story when my exams are finished, I don't want to say much more. So please read the prologue and if you're interested, well, I hope you'll be here for the next update in about a week and a half.
On her first day at SHIELD Eleanor Smith is introduced to her parents.
Well, they aren't her parents yet and that's what she has to remember as she shakes the hands of Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons. She murmurs a few words of greeting, and, in turn, they both express them back. She tries to keep her foot out of her mouth as much as possible as they welcome her and she instead chooses to marvel at not only how much younger they are, but also at how they still look the same. Her dad, without any grey in his hair, but with his hands on his hips and giving a forced smile, like all the times he's never really cared for company. Her dad likes what he knows; it makes him feel comfortable and safe, much like herself. Her mum, on the other hand, is the nicest woman she knows and there is not a wrinkle in sight on her face as she gives a welcoming grin, while telling her it's a 'pleasure to have her on board'.
Both of them, however, make clear of their interest in the fact that she's a specialist, much like Agents May and Ward, who she'll meet sooner rather than later they're sure. Eleanor smiles and nods along, aware of the fact that she is not, and will never be, a specialist, and it is simply part of her cover.
FitzSimmons, as they're known around the BUS, and very much all around SHIELD welcome her on board and show her to her bunk as per Coulson's orders and then leave her to go conduct whatever experiment it is they're up to in the lab this week. Eleanor thinks she might get a moment of peace to think about the people she just met and the ones she left behind at home; both the same people but not; it's been such a whirlwind since she agreed to do this; but instead she hears a knock at the door which snaps her out of her reverie. Before she's barely had time to form a coherent thought she comes face to face with the type of agents she's to blend in with.
She recognises the woman in front of her immediately. Melinda May, dead in an extraction gone wrong, when she was only five years old, gives a slight nod and holds out her hand quickly. She knows that Agent May also pilots the plane as well as being involved in the field.
She knows the man, Agent Grand Ward, from pictures and a few stories but he was killed in an unspecified mission before she was born and so she doesn't have nearly as much to hold on to.
The 'pleased to meet you' rolls off her tongue with relative ease, nonetheless; this isn't her area of expertise; and she can't help but feel like she already knows these people anyway, despite the fact that she actually really doesn't - in any time. She's heard the stories; the legends. Melinda May, also known as The Calvary, has always been described as a stern woman and the way that she looks straight past Eleanor now as she says 'how do you do' was like she was sizing up any possible threat. Just like Coulson said she would.
Agent Ward is a little more relaxed, gives her a stiff smile and asks where she's from.
She stutters a little, stumbles over her words but manages to somehow splutter about how she was moved between places a lot as a child. She was mainly raised between Scotland and England with her mum and dad flitting between the two before deciding to settle down near a SHIELD facility at the border. She was told to keep the cover about being part-English and part-Scottish, with two parents who couldn't agree completely on where to raise her. There was no need to bring up any parental relation to SHIELD and raise questions about them in front of her actual parents. She puts her accent; a dual twang, down to this, and no one seems suspicious.
She has her mother's penchant for following the rules and being polite but also her father's profanity and she can't help but think that's coloured her voice in turn.
When she turns her attention back to Agent Ward she finds it odd to look at him and have nothing from the future to go on.
She has a few memories of Melinda May. There's a bracelet that was a present when she was a baby that she keeps as a memento of her, always around her wrist, and a few old photographs where the woman gives a rare, soft smile while holding a tiny bundle in a white blanket, and then playing with a small toddler while on a rare break from the BUS. Agent Ward, on the other hand, is a blank canvas for her. She has a few stories to fill him in, but nothing substantial, as if her parents have always been a little scared to build that bridge.
The reason, Eleanor guesses, is the woman who has now joined their small group.
To Eleanor, she's Aunt Skye, who'll sometimes drop in when she's finished a mission to reassure her parents she's still alive and to drop off a trinket or two that she found that 'the kid' might like. When she was younger it was all about story time, and Aunt Skye would have plenty to fashion for her from her missions, but there was an emptiness there that Eleanor only picked up on when she became older.
To SHIELD she's Agent S, an extremely capable but lesser trained and more reckless Melinda May. She goes in, gets the job done and comes back without much fuss. She'll sometimes start a fight or ruckus that they might have deemed unnecessary just because she can, just because she wants to, but as long as SHIELD can cover it up and as long as she gets the mission done it's something they're willing to let go for one of their best operatives.
But this is Skye; she's a vibrant, seemingly carefree young woman; how her parents described she was until Ward, and then May died. She doesn't seem too far-removed from the woman that Eleanor knows, maybe just injected with more colour, more of a heart here. She holds out her hand first and asks her name once more with a welcoming smile on her face, while also expressing some confusion over the accent, saying she can't tell whether it sounds like Fitz's or Simmons's.
Eleanor tells her it's a mixture of both and it's not even a lie on any count, not that they'd know.
She had tried to paper over it with an American accent; but it just wouldn't stick no matter how many times she practiced, and she's really not good at this operative stuff.
She's not a real operative; she took a crash course before coming back here; two weeks putting her through her paces because apparently she's the only one who can do this, because apparently it was too risky to send someone already with the system back, not to mention an entire team. She's not like them, not like Agents Ward or May once were, or like Agent S – Skye – is now.
It's her now, not their now. Time travel tends to get confusing.
Yeah, she thinks as she looks at the people around her, she, Eleanor Fitzsimmons, is in over her head this time.