A/N: My favorite band is a super-awesome indie group from Canada called Walk Off the Earth. All its members are super-talented musicians (seriously, they all play like six or eight instruments apiece) who happen to be some of the nicest people in the world. They are receptive to their fans, respond to posts on their social media, and genuinely care about everyone who attends their shows, sees their videos, or listens to their music. I've seen them in concert three times and each time it was the best concert I've ever seen. And I've met them!
Why does this matter? They released an album earlier this summer and it's just amazing. I can't say enough good things about it. I've had it on repeat basically since the day it came out, and I've known for awhile that I wanted to write a series of Skye-drabbles based on the songs.
Here they are, in track-listing order. I highly recommend finding a place to stream and/or download the album "Sing It All Away" (definitely available on Pandora and iTunes definitely, probably on Spotify and other providers as well) so you can listen to each song while you read each drabble.
(Please don't hunt me down and attack me when you become obsessed.)
And I apologize if this writing style/formatting seems different from my usual stuff - I don't know where half of this came from but I basically wrote it in two and a half hours of passion and creativity. Also, these are in no particular chronological order. Some are canon-compliant and some aren't. I hope you'll like them either way.
Ten points to whoever finds the "Firefly" quote stuck in here.
Thanks in advance to everyone who reads/reviews/favorites! You're the best!
Enjoy!
sing it all away
1: rule the world
they say no way oh i say i'll rule the world
ain't afraid of the walls i'mma break 'em down
i say yeah yeah yeah, they say no no no
they say slow slow slow i say go go go
they say no way oh i say i'll rule the world
i say i rule the world
It hits her, all of a sudden.
Of all of the things to dislike about Afterlife – not knowing where she is, having Gordon and Jiaying control everything, no phones or wifi or TV (she didn't know she was ever going to miss Hunter drinking and commenting loudly on "Days of Our Lives"), stares from people who don't even know her, and for God's sake, Raina – there's one thing she likes immediately.
No one is scared of her.
No one wants to lock her in a box. Or experiment on her. Or claim that her kind should be eradicated, put down like dogs.
They're all reverent and pissed, of course, because she's the first in a gazillion years to do the Terrigenesis thing "the old-fashioned way" (and maybe a little because she's Jiaying's daughter), but not scared.
She doesn't have to hide. Doesn't have to lie. Doesn't have to pretend everything's all right when clearly things are the furthest they've ever been from all right. She's not steering a ship on stormy seas – she's safely on land.
And, oh, the land… when she stretches out her hand she can feel every note and vibration running through it. The whole world hums and she wonders how she's missed it for so long. If she closes her eyes it's as though she can still hear it, her fingers outstretched to conduct and strengthen and direct those tremoring notes, pulsing with power.
She wonders if Simmons knows the world vibrates. Probably, what with her being such an educated woman and all. Wonders if that would change Simmons' view of her, wonders if it would change those gloves or her bruises.
She wonders if it works on heartbeats, wonders if she can feel the vibrations pulsing through someone, that fragile line between alive and not ringing like a tuning fork in midair.
And when she pulls, grabs those vibrations like a skein of yarn from the air – oh, God, is that power.
She's not scared anymore either.
She's going to make them understand. She's going to rule her world.
2: i'll be waiting
day by day it might be hard to do
but these are the times when you gotta push through
can't let them break you down or bend the truth
these are the times when you gotta push through
After being nearly kidnapped by a Kree and Lady Sif, she reevaluates her life. Well, first she takes a twelve-hour nap, courtesy of the dendro-toxin blaring through her system. But after that…
Does she really belong at SHIELD anymore? They're putting her on the Index. Mack won't look at her. Hunter and Bobbi are noticeably colder. Fitz and Simmons are fighting again. DC's eyes are full of pain every time they talk, and she hates that. She hates being weak in front of him. In front of any of them.
"You've changed."
"Good."
Who is she? Some scrambled mess of alien and not, hacker and not, SHIELD agent and not.
And lately, more not than before.
Maybe she's nothing.
Maybe she's something new.
"Her injuries are something neither of us saw coming."
"What won't we see next time?"
Who can she trust? May, of course – when she wakes with a throbbing dendro-toxin headache, her SO is sitting next to her, face drawn and subdued. And after a tongue-lashing that ends with "Did you know it was an ICER?" she's shocked to see May lean towards her and wrap her arms around her.
May smells like jasmine.
(Later, when she goes back and looks at the security footage, she hears May's panicked gasp: "Skye!" and sees that her SO was beside her in an instant, crouched on the bed with her, gently touching her face and taking her pulse. She isn't sure how she feels about that, but something in her likes it. Appreciates it.)
"After you change no one else will understand."
She shows up at training on time, slips in behind May, and begins to copy her movements, just like always. They don't speak – they don't need to.
She doesn't need everyone else to understand. She doesn't even need to understand. She needs someone in her life who knows her, understands her, knows the truth and always speaks it. Maybe then she'll figure out who she is, where she belongs – if she's ever truly belonged anywhere.
She can start with May.
Everyone else can wait.
3. home we'll go
don't let your head hang low
you've seen the darkest skies i know
it's a long road but we're not alone
together we stand and we're coming home
it's a long road but we're not alone
together we stand and we're coming home
She's never been happier to see Mack. Never been happier to hear his dry wit. She even loves the nickname "Tremors," which is far better than what Lincoln's been calling her – "Shaky McQuake" or, alternately, "Shake-n-Quake."
"Just you and me, Tremors." He hands her the laptop and even through the inhibitors she can feel power returning to her fingers – hacker-fu, as opposed to earthquaking. She's itching to fix this, itching to stop Jiaying from hurting (or killing but don't think about that) everyone she loves.
She's willing to forfeit everything she found in Afterlife – kin, safety, control, her mother – for everything she's worked for. Some sort of bright spark burns in her, eager to prove everyone wrong.
She is who she is.
She's in control.
And they could put her on the Index or lock her underground or tie her hands behind her back and force her to type with a chopstick in her mouth – she's still going to figure out a way to get back where she belongs.
No one is going to take that away from her.
4. hold on (the break)
you gotta hold on to what you got babe
it ain't always greener on the other side you know
we ain't rich but we're worth a lot babe
i wanna see the world again with your hand in mine you know
come on i'll love you like that
She misses everything about Trip.
She misses his easy smile – the way he could never stop grinning at all the wrong moments, including the time May caught them fighting with some of her super-special kung-fu swords and made them run sprints outside. In August.
She misses the way he'd sing in the kitchen. He was a great cook, but she especially loved the way he'd sing about whatever he was cooking. "Grilled cheese, yeah, grilled cheese… grilled cheese you're the bee's knees…" It always made her laugh, and somehow the food tasted better when there was a song behind it. He'd hold out a wooden spoon as a microphone and force her to take over the melody, tapping out a rhythm on a coffee can or doing what he referred to as "sick beats" in the background.
She misses that, how he'd put something of himself in everything he did.
She misses the photos that would show up on her phone every now and then: Trip behind Coulson's desk wearing a top hat and holding a cigar. Trip doing a peace sign like a Japanese teenager over a passed-out Hunter. Trip dancing with Simmons, Simmons' face a blur of laughter and happiness. Trip and Mack arm-wrestling. Fitz teaching Trip how to do something involving beakers and alcohol.
She misses his hugs.
The way he always told the truth.
The smell of his aftershave, especially if they were going to be crammed in a small space like a quin-jet or an air duct or, that one time in Bogota, an underground cistern. It stayed with her for days, and though she teased him about it every time, she loved it. He was there even when he wasn't.
She misses him so completely that her body tremors nearly every time she thinks about his last moments.
She misses him because he'd know what to do with her now.
Because he'd sit outside the quarantine chamber and they'd play cards and he'd accuse her of cheating and she'd deny it and he'd challenge her and then tell her a ridiculous story about some relative of his who cheated at cards and got tied to a chicken or something as punishment.
Because he'd press his palm up against the glass, tell her everything was going to be all right, that he'd love her no matter what happened, and she'd believe him (because he would mean it).
But he's not there. The floor is empty; she's staring out at the semi-darkened lab, looking at the place where he should be sitting.
She feels like that's going to be the rest of her life –
- looking at the empty spots where Trip's supposed to be.
5. boomerang
you're a little bit yesterday
but i'm kickin' it here today
you're dope at the game you play
but i'm not your boomerang
you're a little bit fire show
i'm a little bit h-2-oh
it's time that i let you go
i'm not your boomerang
Everyone on the base knows it. Fitz and Simmons have not been Fitzsimmons for ages, not since they went down to the bottom of the ocean in the box.
Fitz's brain injury. Simmons' time with HYDRA and her seeming infatuation with Bobbi. Mack's defense of Fitz. Simmons' rants about powered people and Fitz's earnest defense of those with gifts.
She remembers his arms around her. Him telling her it was going to be all right.
And it was, up until the Kree. And Lady Sif. And the nightmare football game. And her father. And the bruises and fractures and capillary ruptures and –
And now they're sitting on the plane, mere steps from the vibranium box where she's spent the last few days, and she's looking up at them wondering what it'll take for Fitz and Simmons to become Fitzsimmons again.
Maybe a miracle.
Whatever it is, it's clearly not dealing with their newly-enhanced friend and her restrictive but modern-looking arm braces. Or discussing the Avengers.
They used to be together. They used to be a trio of people who could rely on each other, babes in the wood as they were, working for what mattered and trying to forget (sometimes) that their jobs basically involved staring death in the face and then kicking it in the balls.
Simmons saved her life.
Fitz was the only one she could trust after Puerto Rico.
Simmons made the casts to keep her safe.
Fitz believes in her. Thinks she could be Avengers-level.
They are her best friends, even if they're no longer each other's best friends. Even if they're not her best friends.
She just wishes she could figure out a way to say that.
But her mouth won't move, and instead her powers shake the plane.
She wants to shake them up – remind of them of who they could be – and bring them back together.
Just another thing on the list of things she can't do right now.
6. sing it all away
i know a place that will take you away
your troubles no longer remain from the day
i found a love there it's hard to escape
it cures me at night but it hurts when I wake
there's no judge and the jury's at bay
'cause this is our house where the melodies play
She hates everything about the cabin.
It's too far away from everything. It's too sunny outside. It's boring. The couch is terrible. She's no good at solitaire. There are too few Little Debbie snack cakes in the box. The gluten-free "biscuits" Simmons picked out taste like wet cardboard in her mouth. The bed is uncomfortable. There's ants in the shower drain. She's bored nearly immediately after waking up, sometimes bored enough to go throw things at the electric-shock grid outside. She's pissed that she has to be there at all, angry at the world that gave her powers without an instruction manual or a course on how to educate her friends and family about her spectacular new earth-shaking (haha, pun not intended) gifts.
She hates everything.
Well, except for one thing.
She loves the stars.
At the Playground it's difficult to see the stars. They're underground, for starters, and at night they're usually on missions or asleep, waiting for the next mission or the morning's training sessions. Even if she stays up late it's to do paperwork or hack something (or, that one time, binge-watch "Parks and Recreation" on Coulson's Netflix account). She can't remember the last time she just looked at the stars.
Now at the cabin it's the one thing she looks forward to the most.
She takes an uncomfortable wool blanket outside and spreads it out under the dark bowl of the sky, looking up at her namesake, the stars sprinkled like diamonds on black velvet above her. They're so tiny and yet so large at the same time. It takes her breath away.
She stares up at them until they form into patterns and fractals and whorls, moving like fingerprints and helixes and messages over her head. Until the rage built up in her bruised body slowly ebbs away. Until they sing like music in her chest.
Until she feels human again.
It's easier to sleep outside, under the stars, the night cupping her like a gentle caress.
It's only in the morning that she remembers she hates everything, and it starts all over again.
7. climb out your window
don't try and change our ways
our love, our faith, our home, our heads
we play it everywhere we go
we play it everywhere we go
wake up, wake up now
today there's nowhere we can't go
If she's expecting major changes after they escape the SS Real SHIELD, she'll apparently be waiting awhile. Things get back to "normal."
Mack goes back to distrusting alien things of all sorts.
Except now it's his job.
Fitz goes back to the lab.
That was his job anyway.
Simmons smiles more.
It's as though she's forgotten all the things that caused her to lose that smile (which isn't a bad thing, just a noticeable fact).
Hunter slobbers over Bobbi.
Bobbi, in an odd turn of events, slobbers back.
(They spend a lot of time together doing things that don't merit discussion.)
May trains, and drinks tea, and plans her vacation.
The words "vacation" and "Melinda May" have probably never been uttered in the same sentence before, unless the sentence was "Melinda May will never take a vacation."
Coulson sprawls over blueprints, talks to Andrew, stays up far too late discussing the future with Fitz.
They're home. In a way.
They're family. In a way.
They're going to keep the world safe (maybe?).
They're talking more. Listening more.
(And, horror of all horrors, hugging more.)
They're figuring out how to deal with all the loss they came home with.
Coulson's hand. Cal. Jiaying. Gonzales. The crystals. The uncertain future.
Sometimes she just stands outside, drawing in the vibrations of a tree or a rock or the closest, biggest thing and hoping the energy will replace everything she came home without.
(It doesn't always work.)
8. california trees
so we're young and we're trees and we wanna grow up
till we just let go and we figure it out
you won't know, you won't know
She never thought much about having kids, other than to promise herself that if it ever happened, she was never going to leave them. Never ever, and she'd never let them go until they were old enough to physically run away from her. (She figured it would happen when they were 30.)
She didn't think much of it the entire time she was pregnant. It was as though she was disconnected from the entire process, working in the field or as mission support right up until the day Coulson came down to the lab and demanded she stop ("For God's sake, if you give birth on a mission May is going to murder me, and she knows how to do it without leaving any evidence!").
(As it turned out, he was smart to demand such a thing when he did, because not twelve hours later her first contraction brought her to her knees in the middle of game night, an hour after that her water broke, and five hours later her daughter was in the world.)
Her daughter.
Her daughter who is everything she's not.
Fragile. Delicate. Dreamy. Pale like porcelain.
Irreparably broken.
(Well, okay, that one they share.)
From birth Luna refuses to do things she's supposed to. Breathe. Swallow. Eat.
As she grows the problem goes deeper. At age five she's still a tiny pixie of a thing with curls that are more white than blond and drifting cloudy eyes and a feeding tube, propped up most times in a specially-built wheelchair. No one knows if she'll speak, or walk; no one knows what she hears or sees or comprehends.
But her smile lights up the darkest of souls. Her laughter rings like music. She's gorgeous, and she's adored, and she's cherished.
And she's never going to run away.
(That one breaks her.)
9. alright
don't let regrets have a party in your head
nowhere compares to the places you'll be left
open your eyes and don't forget
"Nadya, I know you're confused and upset, but we're friends. We're here to help."
"Can't be helped."
"We know you didn't mean to hurt those people. We know you have gifts that you can't control. We'd like to show you how to use those gifts for good."
"Nothing good about them."
"That's what I thought, once upon a time, but it turns out that's not true. Every gift has a purpose."
She hears a dark chuckle from the treehouse far above her, where their newest gifted has hidden herself away after accidentally killing two men and seriously injuring a third. In a small town that's tantamount to burning the Bible while summoning Satan and riding a goat naked, which is why Lincoln's down the road trying to keep the riotous citizens from storming up here to take care of Nadya themselves.
It doesn't help that Nadya's been up there for several days without food or water, leaving her words stuttery and slurred at alternate turns. Or that it's been raining and cold, so those words are punctuated with gut-wrenching coughs.
Or that Nadya is fourteen years old.
She almost misses it when a small voice speaks from above.
"If I come with you, will they leave me alone?"
She's quiet for a moment. "I think they will."
A small face appears at the top of the treehouse ladder. "Do I ever have to come back here?"
"Not if you don't want to."
"I don't want to be here ever again." The exhausted girl looks down with an expression far older than her age. "I don't want to be alive anymore."
She looks up at Nadya, praying for the right words. "I understand how scared you are."
"It was wrong," the girl says, close to tears. "It was wrong and I didn't know how to stop it and I wanted to stop it and I was afraid and…"
Nadya hesitates. "And I kind of liked it."
At that she knows Nadya will be all right. "If you come down from there, we'll talk about what you can learn to do. Who you can become once you have control over this."
Nadya nods and slowly comes down the ladder. As her feet touch the ground, she leans in and hugs Nadya, whispering into her hair, "It's okay. It's okay to like it. I promise."
10. heart is a weapon
your heart is a weapon
can't take it anymore
change your direction
stop banging on my door
She thought Grant Ward was out of her life forever.
Turns out she was wrong about that.
He shows up at Disneyland, of all places, appearing on a boat in "It's a Small World" sometime between three and four in the morning on a Sunday, his hands tied behind his back and a jaunty Mickey Mouse printed bandana stuffed in his mouth as a crude but effectively marketed gag. A sign pinned to his raggy and torn shirt reads "If found, Phil Coulson will be awfully glad to see me."
She knows this because she receives an email, mysteriously, from "A Friend." The subject line reads "Happy Birthday" and the message only contains a link to the Disneyland security feeds of "It's a Small World."
It takes about ten minutes for the ride to make a complete circle.
And maybe she's a bad person, but she lets the ride go around ten… or fifteen… or maybe twenty times before she goes to wake up Coulson and let him know their biggest fugitive is being tormented by multicultural puppets.
(What? It's her birthday present.)
11. we got love
two steps forward, one step back
with you on my shoulders it's not fast
but i will get there someday
might be slower, but we'll have stories
when we're older
hard days, but we got one another
that's the thing about us
we got love, love, love
that's the thing about us
we got love, love, love
if you think you might break
if you think you might fall
if you think you've got nothing at all
but you got us, we got love, love, love
oh, we got love, love, love
Some days it seems all she feels is loss.
Who they could have been.
Who they should have been.
The things that broke that should have stayed together. The things that lasted when they should have been thrown away.
(Broken bones. Broken hearts. Broken trust.)
Some days it seems all she feels is anger.
What she could have done.
What she would have done.
The things that stopped her – fear, or protocol, or imminent danger, or… the list goes on and on and they all sound like excuses.
All the things she never found the courage to say.
I need you to stay.
I need you to go.
I need you to remind me that I matter.
I need a hug.
Bruises fade and scars get softer with time; relationships heal slowly and trust can be rebuilt.
It's something she never gets tired of seeing, because she knows exactly what it means.
They're a family, and they're little, and they're broken, but still good.
Still fighting.
Still worth that fight.
And no matter how they express it – Mack's offer to arm wrestle Hunter, Fitz's "ugly sweater" party at Christmas, Bobbi buying the first round of drinks at the country western bar they find in Dublin, May and Coulson slow-dancing in the hallway when they think no one's looking, even the grin Jemma gives her when the ultrasound picks up the heartbeat of the baby floating in her gently-swelling abdomen – it all comes down to one thing.
Love, love, love.
(It's the kind of thing that girl living in her van could never have dreamed of.)
And everything else?
She'll just sing it all away.
A/N: One of the statements near the end here is from "Lilo and Stitch."