Even if the sky comes falling down
Arrowsbane
"There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do…"
She blazes into Rumlow's life in a blue van and a hail of bullets. A mystery is a plaid shirt and high-tops.
The first time his team meets her, they almost shoot her.
"Jesus Christ!" Jenson yelps, starling them all awake in a second – everybody reaching for the nearest weapon as their training kicks in.
"You said not to be sneaky!" Skye yelps, from where she's hidden behind the couch, and Rumlow puts his gun down.
It's to be expected that they eye her cautiously. What isn't expected is the insanity that follows.
As twenty-eight, Jenson is the youngest of the group, and he's always been treated like the proverbial baby of the family. A hostile, trigger-happy, Kevlar-wearing dysfunctional family, but a family nonetheless. Then Skye happens, and suddenly he's not the youngest. He'd always wanted a little sister, and now here she is, tailor made – once he apologizes for pointing a gun at her of course.
She likes the same games as him, and enjoys pulling pranks. She can beat Rollins at Poker and teaches how to fix his computer – something he's always been crap at. She gets him. She makes the boss relax, makes him smile, something Jenson hasn't seen happen often. Even though they say they aren't together, Jenson can see the attraction, has money on it actually.
Four years between them, he thinks. She's not just his little sister, she's his baby sister. He really hopes things work out between her and the boss, because he's pretty sure he might get himself killed trying to avenge her broken heart.
She doesn't look at him like he's a monster. His hands are wet with blood, his ledger soaking in red, but she treats him like he's human. Summers can appreciate that. At first, he thinks it's just because she's innocent of their lifestyle, but he's proven wrong in the most unexpected way.
It happens on a game night, something they've become accustomed to. They play Poker (and Wicks laments the lack of extra women because they could have played strip poker) around the table with beer and Mexican food picked up from the restaurant down the street on the way home. Then they crash wherever there's space.
The door opens in the middle of the night when they're just beginning to fall asleep and the next thing anybody knows a stranger is standing in the room, a gun pointed at them – all their own weapons are out of reach, which looking back on it was a stupid-ass mistake.
Nobody moves – nobody breathes, and then Skye appears from the kitchen, standing behind the intruder. She has Brock's spare glock pressed to the nape of the intruder's neck. Her eyes are cold, and it's almost terrifying – the lack of feeling in eyes that are made to laugh.
"Don't think for a second that I won't shoot you," she says, and her voice is steady. "Put the gun down." The intruder grips the handle of his firearm tighter, and she jabs him with the end of her own weapon.
"Now." Wisely, the intruder holds his hands up, bending to put the gun down.
"Get out," Skye snarls, and the intruder bolts, leaving his gun behind. Skye exhales heavily and laughs shakily.
"Thank god I didn't have to pull the trigger," Skye tells them, "I can't remember which one it is." She hands the gun off to Rumlow with an unsure smile before settling on the couch and curling in on herself.
That's when he realizes, it isn't that she doesn't know - which should have been blindingly obvious considering how she and the boss met.
It's simply that she doesn't care.
And that's okay.
She's also a damn good actress.
That's okay too.
"I have a confession to make," Skye finally says when they're all sat around the living room, chowing down on egg fried rice and orange chicken. "I hacked your Shield files."
"The hell?" Rollins shouts, while Jenson tries not to choke on his chopsticks.
"Why?" Summers asks, puzzled. Wicks had been expecting it to happen sooner or later, once her curiosity got the better of her.
"You guys hung up the phone before telling me if anybody was allergic to peanut oil." She protests, trying to hide behind a carton of sweet and sour chicken.
"You hacked our files… to check for peanut allergies?" Wicks says, more than a little stunned.
"Yes?"
"But not to see if you were at risk from being around people who kill for a living?" He continues, baffled by her thought process.
"I already knew I wasn't." Skye protests, shifting her weight anxiously.
"How?" It's a valid question.
"I asked Brock after you lot almost shot me." She admits and silence reigns until a snort breaks the ice.
They all wind up laughing until a wheezing Jenson falls off the couch.
To begin with, he can't stand her.
She beats him at poker, which is a hit to his pride. She's an intrusion on his social circle, always there whenever he goes to hang out with his friend. She's always smiling, which can be freaking annoying. He wonders if maybe she's just hanging onto his friend like a social climber because she's a damn good hacker and the Alpha Strike team often works with Captain America and the Black Widow.
But then he sees how Brock doesn't look as tired, sees that he's sleeping through the night. Then he realizes she isn't just a one-hit wonder with her computer skills because she doesn't just hack computers, she can explain it to Jenson who's never had a head for technology. She doesn't even bat an eyelash when Steve joins them for an evening except to smile and offer him a beer before curling up next to Brock on the couch.
She's not so bad, he thinks. At least she isn't a groupie.
Technically, Steve isn't a part of Rumlow's squad – he and Romanoff are Team Delta, but he still gets invited along to hang out with them. Half the time he only goes in order to avoid Natasha's blatant attempts to find him a girlfriend.
He meets Skye on one of these nights. She's… intriguing. Doesn't give a dime about how society expects her to behave, she is who she is and nobody can tell her otherwise. It's refreshing, almost all the women he meets in this time – save Natasha, but she's not exactly normal – are very focused on how other people value them. Skye not only laughs in the face of mainstream society, but walks all over it in muddy shoes and then kicks it while it's down for good measure.
Nobody is really sure how the conversation turns around to childhood heroes and the Howling Commandos end up in the mix by the time it gets around to Skye.
"I always admired Bucky Barnes," she says, not a trace of deceit in her eyes.
"Not Rodgers over there?" Wicks asks her, shifting to look at her.
"No," she says, "Barnes was my childhood hero. Still is." Steve blinks, remembering the man who used to save his ass in a fight and try to set him up with girls. To the end of the line, they had promised. The line had ended too soon.
"Why?" he asks, not because he's offended, but because he wants to know why this tiny slip of a woman looked up to his best friend. Wants to know what she knows of his brother in all but blood.
"Before you were the Cap," she says, looking down at her mug, "you were a scrawny little kid from Brooklyn with more courage than strength." In the background he can hear Rollins laugh and Skye frowns.
"I've seen the photos." She continues, picking up an apple from the counter and nailing Rollins in the side with it. "Most folk wouldn't have looked twice at you. But Barnes… he didn't need to have the serum beefing you up to know you were something special. So that's why he's my hero."
Steve smiles, relaxing.
"Yeah," he says. "Bucky was pretty special like that."
He thinks Bucky would like her – she's loyal beyond belief, but she won't take anyone's crap. Always worrying over the team and making sure there is food around when they wander in after a mission, whether they're high on victory or brooding over a failure.
She's good at taking care of folk like that.
Just like he was.
Somewhere along the way, she becomes part of the family. She's one of them. They take it upon themselves to make sure she can fire a gun and hit the target. Wicks takes it a step further by insisting they call Romanoff in to train her in basic combat. Jenson throws an orange at him.
It devolves into a food-fight, which only ends when the front door clicks open.
"What the hell did you do?" Brock stares in horror at the mess that was his kitchen while Skye collapses in a fit of giggles.
AN Because really, Strike wasn't just going to let a stranger date their boss.