A/N: I wrote this for Tumblr user lucyrinner as part of the FitzSimmons Whole New World exchange. (P.S. Happy birthday!) This story functions more as a crossover than an AU, partly because I've never written a true AU before and partly because I wanted to keep Psych's characters as well as those in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. On the Psych end, the story is set sometime in early season 5 (specifically between Feet, Don't Kill Me Now and Not Even Close, Encounters), but it isn't necessary to have seen those episodes recently to understand the plot. Despite the fact that I apparently don't know how to AU, I really hope you enjoy the story. I've had such a blast writing it. :)

1987

Shawn deftly weaved through the crowded pathway, taking care not to draw too much attention to himself as he approached his target. It wasn't all that difficult, considering he had the advantage of the flashing Tilt-a-Whirl on his right, and loud cheers for a guy winning a stuffed bear for his girlfriend on his left. Add to that the general hustle and bustle of the Santa Barbara County Fair, and Shawn was positive he was going to get away with it.

He still advanced stealthily, though, his footsteps barely making a sound in the trampled grass. He was so close now, just a few more feet. The fluffy blue treat hovered in front of him, and Shawn gleefully noticed that its owner was unaware of the crime that was about to happen. He slowly reached a hand out, his mouth already watering, and attempted to grab a small fistful –

Only to be stopped by a sharp rap on his wrist.

"I know you're not trying to steal my cotton candy, Shawn," Gus said as he jerked the candy away from him. The kid must have had some kind of sixth sense for whenever anyone tried to touch his food, because this was Shawn's twentieth unsuccessful attempt to do so.

"Come on, Gus," Shawn whined, his stomach growling right on cue. "I haven't had any all day."

Gus was apparently untroubled by the fact that Shawn was starving to death. "It's not my fault you wasted all your money trying to knock over those bottles."

"That's not fair," Shawn argued as he shot an angry look at the pimply teenager responsible for his current woes. He received a sneer in response. "That game was rigged and you know it," he mumbled. "I'm an awesome shot."

Of course, Dad could never let a few minutes go without putting in his two cents. "Gus is right, Shawn," he said in his annoyingly self-satisfied tone. "You should've been paying attention to how much money you were spending. And sometimes you've gotta know your limits. No matter how cool you might think the prize is."

Shawn didn't even have to look at him to know he was putting air quotes around the word "cool." And he totally wasn't going to give up so easily. "That squid hat was awesome, Dad. Do you have any idea what I could've done with that?"

"You mean besides make yourself look like an idiot?" After a moment (and a scowl from Shawn), Dad seemed to regret his choice of words. Or maybe he regretted the fact that he'd said it so loudly a few moms had turned their heads. "But you're right," he muttered quietly. "That game was rigged."

Shawn was about to suggest going back to the bottle game and arresting the horrible attendant for ten counts of trickery, when he heard a soft, clear voice coming from somewhere over his right shoulder.

"Hello, Shawn Spencer."

Shawn whipped his head around, his eyes falling on a young woman sitting at a purple booth. She was alone, a crystal ball and some strange cards decorating the table in front of her. The whole setup looked like any old psychic booth. The woman was different from most psychics he'd seen at the fair, though. She didn't have anything on her head to cover her dark curls, and she wore a simple flower dress instead of the flashy costumes they normally wore. A sign hanging from the table read "Madame Raina" in cursive letters. Shawn was fairly certain that he'd never seen her before in his life. Yet Madame Raina was looking at him as if she not only knew him, but could also see into his soul.

He struggled to move past his surprise. "H-how…how did you know my name?" he asked as he took a few careful steps towards her.

"I know a lot about you, Shawn," she smiled. "But you're probably not interested in what you already know about yourself. Would you like to know about your future?"

Shawn began to nod his head when he heard his dad clear his throat behind him. His excited grin fell. "I'm sorry," he said dejectedly. "I don't have any money."

Madame Raina glanced over his shoulder for a moment, her smile still perfectly in place. "For the young man with stars in his eyes and a world of possibilities ahead of him?" She gave him another one of those mysterious soul-searching looks. "No charge."

Shawn ignored the low mutters and scoffs from his father and sat down in front of the booth. The questions tumbled out of him at lightning speed. "Am I gonna be a billionaire? It's when I find Bouchard's hidden treasure, isn't it? Is Gus actually going to be a lawyer, or is that just a phase he's going through? If Marty McFly goes to the future and sees his kids, won't that mess with the space-time continuum? Shouldn't he know better by now?" Shawn could almost see his dad's irritation, which made him think of the most important question of all. "How long will I have good hair?"

Madame Raina laughed. "My, you are a curious one, aren't you, Shawn Spencer?" she asked. "Here, may I have a look at your palms?"

Feeling a little sheepish, Shawn held his hands out for her to take. Madame Raina inspected his palms for a few moments, running her fingertips lightly over the lines in his skin. "Oh, yes," she nodded, although Shawn had no idea what she could possibly be seeing or talking about. "Yes, just what I expected."

Shawn leaned forward excitedly. "What? What do you see?"

"I see a very bright future for you, Shawn Spencer," she smiled, releasing his hands. "You're going to be responsible for saving many, many lives."

"Really?" Shawn asked in awe.

"Yeah, yeah, he's going to follow in his father's footsteps and become a cop," Dad said in annoyance as he put his hand on Shawn's shoulder. "Shawn, she sees that you're with me, I'm in my uniform, it's called educated guessing. Come on, let's go. I think we've heard enough."

"But Dad-"

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that, Dad," Madame Raina interrupted. She still had that soft smile on her face, but for the first time, Shawn noticed a dark glint in her eyes. "Shawn will save many lives, yes, but I don't think it'll be in a way that you expect. In fact, Shawn, I think we'll all be very interested in finding out…what you become."

Shawn had to fight to keep very still. "What will I become?"

But Madame Raina just smirked at Dad. "Oh, I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise."

"All right, that's enough," Dad said forcefully, pulling Shawn out of his chair. "Thank you."

"Wait, what about me?" Gus asked as he stepped up to the table. "What can you tell me about my future?"

Madame Raina folded her hands in front of her. "That'll be five dollars."

"Five dollars?!" Gus repeated in indignation. "But you didn't make him pay!"

"A girl's gotta make a living," she smiled sweetly.

"Man, whatever," Gus scoffed, following after Shawn. "Let's get out of here."

"Goodbye, Shawn Spencer," Madame Raina called out. "Good luck at your game tomorrow."

Shawn glanced over his shoulder, trying and failing to fight against the firm hand on his back that was guiding him forward. "How did she know I had a game tomorrow?"

"Shawn, are you serious?" Dad asked with a roll of his eyes. "Think about it for a minute. You're wearing your team jersey, so she probably figured you play baseball. It's a Friday, and most Little League games in the summer are on Saturday mornings. Plus, you've got red marks all down your left leg from sliding onto the bases. It's not rocket science, son."

Shawn knew he made sense, but he wasn't willing to let it go. "Okay, fine. How'd she know my name then?"

For once, Dad looked like he was sort of stumped. But the moment was gone in a flash. "Shawn, did you ever notice how easy it is to eavesdrop in a crowd? She sits in her little booth, listening to people come and go, and she latches on to tiny bits of conversation so she can spin her story. She probably heard me say your name, saw my nametag on the uniform, and surmised that you were my son. Come on, didn't I teach you anything about putting two and two together? Trust me, Shawn. There's no such thing as psychics. It's all just a bunch of phonies using context clues and a little hocus pocus to make a quick buck. Remember that."

Shawn simply folded his arms in defeat as he realized he'd been fooled. But he couldn't help but look back at the girl in the flower dress with the mysterious smile, wondering how she'd gotten into the psychic business in the first place and who on earth used the word "surmised" in everyday conversation.

PRESENT DAY

"Trust me, Hannah," Shawn said in between bites of Doritos. "You've got nothing to worry about. The spirits are all very pleased with Tobias. They say he's a real stand-up guy."

Gus walked into the office just then with his briefcase, and Shawn gave him a nod as he continued reassuring their latest client. "No, he's not cheating on you, honey. But you've gotta talk to him, get everything out in the open, okay? Oh, and uh, don't let him fix any faulty appliances for a while. I-I just have a feeling about this one, something about his aura tells me I don't want him near my circuit breaker, you know what I mean?" He chuckled a little, but Hannah's response was absent from any humor. Oh, well. She didn't seem like the kind of person that laughed a lot anyway.

"No, thank you," Shawn said. "You can make your check out to Psych or Shawn Spencer. Whichever is more convenient." Gus gave him a pointed look, but Shawn waved him off. "All right, you take care, Hannah. Mmhmm. Buh-bye."

Gus was on him as soon as he hung up the phone. "I thought we weren't taking any more cheating cases, Shawn," he said as he poured himself a glass of milk.

"Gus, it's money," Shawn argued, using his hands for emphasis. "With my dad blocking us from all the good cases nowadays, we can't afford to turn down the easy freebies. And yes, they are so easy, but you know what? Who cares? I sure don't. Besides, I didn't think you'd care that one of us is actually trying to pay the bills for this place."

Gus paused to swallow his milk. "I pay the bills for this place. You don't even know how to balance your own checkbook."

"Gus, no one knows how to balance their checkbook," Shawn argued. "It's one of those myths of adulthood that everyone claims to do but never actually does, like folding fitted sheets. Or listening to NPR." He crumpled up his empty Doritos bag and tossed it through the basketball hoop into the trashcan. "Or paying taxes."

Gus gave him a concerned look. "Everybody pays taxes, Shawn."

"Agree to disagree."

Before Gus could reply, Shawn moved on. "And it technically wasn't even a cheating case, okay? Her boyfriend just got fired for committing a bunch of safety violations and hasn't owned up to it. He's been spending all his time job hunting."

"You say tomato, I say-"

Just at that moment, there was a light knock on the open office door. "Hey, um…are you Shawn Spencer?"

Shawn spun around, his eyes habitually taking in every tiny detail of the girl that had just walked in the door, from the small frays on the ends of her plaid shirt to the old laptop case slung across her shoulders to the slight curl in her fingertips, probably from typing a lot. With her ethnically ambiguous facial features, she somehow managed to combine exotic with the Girl Next Door. It was fairly impressive, actually.

"That's what it says on my birth certificate," he replied, stepping forward to shake her hand. "Although I can neither confirm nor deny my whereabouts when that particular document was created. You see," he continued in a mock serious tone. "I was too young to remember."

"Funny," she smiled, laughing a little. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Spencer. I'm Skye."

"Oh, please," Shawn held up his hands and shook his head. "Mr. Spencer is my father. My very bald, anal-retentive, Deadliest Catch-obsessed father." He turned to slap Gus on the shoulder, who was apparently trying to communicate something to him with his eyes. Shawn ignored him, getting back to Skye. "It's Shawn to my familiars, and there is something…very familiar about you."

Shawn could practically feel Gus rolling his eyes next to him. Skye made a noise that was some kind of snort and chuckle mixed together, sounding weirdly adorable in the process.

"Really?" she asked. Shawn thought she seemed a bit skeptical, but she also looked willing to go along with the bit. And after all, she'd come to see him, hadn't she?

"Yes," he insisted, bringing his finger up to his temple. "You know, I too spend a lot of time on the computer. But not nearly as much as you, I'm sensing."

Skye stared at him blankly for a second. "Wow," she said, sounding impressed. Shawn smiled along with her, making a show with his hands like it'd been nothing. "I'm sure my laptop case wasn't a dead giveaway there. Like, at all."

Gus's snickers were extremely audible.

"I'm also sensing," Shawn continued in a loud voice, determined to use his skills properly this time, "that you've spent a lot of time moving around." He noticed that her shirt, while frayed, was also lightened from many years of washing, and that a couple of the buttons were slightly different, like they'd been clumsily sewn on somewhere down the line.

"Yes, you've gone from one place to the next, searching for something, something different, but…but none of those places ever felt like home. No. No, you've never really had a home, have you, Skye?" His tone grew softer as her faltered smile confirmed his guess. "I'm sorry, it's just…I can't imagine what it must have been like to never know your parents. You'll have to forgive me for that callous birth certificate joke I made earlier. Skye is a lovely name. I'm curious, did you pick that one out yourself?"

"I'd like to apologize for my partner's behavior," Gus interrupted, quickly trying to step in front of Shawn. "Sometimes he has off days."

Skye shook her head. "No, he's…he's right," she said softly.

Shawn was surprised. He'd fully been expecting a slap in the face. At least.

"Really?" he and Gus asked at the same time.

"Yeah," Skye nodded, moving to set her bag down on one of their cushioned chairs. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you earlier. It's just…" She sighed as she ran one hand through her long curls. "Well, I wanted to make sure you were legit, because honestly, you're kind of my last resort. No offense."

"None taken," Shawn assured her.

"And I know you've solved a bucket load of cases for the SBPD," she went on, proceeding to take out her laptop and set it up on Shawn's desk like it was hers or something. "You've got a pretty big fan base online, too. Everyone says you're the best."

Shawn swatted Gus's arm in excitement. "Hey, how come you didn't tell me I had fans online?" he hissed.

"She probably means the Rising Tide," Gus dismissed, rubbing his arm where Shawn had hit him. "It's this website where people go to discuss paranormal activity throughout the world. Ghost sightings, haunted houses, that kind of thing. You're very popular in the psychic forums."

"How do you know all this?" Shawn asked before he figured it out. "You have an account, don't you?"

"Do not."

"Do too."

Skye looked up from her computer. "I helped create the Rising Tide."

Gus immediately turned his head away from Shawn. "My username is supersniffer42."

"Of course it is," Shawn whispered, but Gus wasn't paying attention to him.

"Anyway," Skye continued. "I'm not here because of the website. I'm here because I could really use your help."

Shawn pulled a chair up so he could see what she was looking at. The screen was filled with a strange sequence of numbers and what looked like a map. "What can we do for you?"

"About a year ago, I started working in the IT department for Shield," she explained. "Ever heard of it?"

"Yeah," Gus replied before Shawn could say something sarcastic. "It's a biotech company that specializes in experimental research, right?"

"Right." Skye looked over her shoulder and gave Gus an impressed smile.

Gus shrugged, but Shawn knew he was probably pretty damn pleased with himself. "I work for Central Coast Pharmaceuticals. We've been trying to sell to Shield for years."

"We've got our own people to develop drugs and all that stuff," Skye said, returning to her computer. "And they are very good at what they do."

But Shawn wanted to get to the good part. "All right, fine. What do you need us to do?"

"Well, a while ago, I started noticing some shady stuff going on. Nothing too bad, just like a random file transfer here, a glitch in the system there. It wasn't anything I could pinpoint, though. But then, a month ago, the director of Shield was kidnapped and tortured by a group of people looking for information."

Shawn's eyes widened. He'd been expecting something like embezzlement or fraud, but this was so much better.

"Oh, my God," Gus breathed. "What kind of information?"

"We're not sure. Our security team found him after less than two days, and he says he doesn't really know what they were hoping to find. Some kind of drug or something? But that's not the weird part. Apparently the people torturing him were only working for someone else, someone that stayed behind the scenes during the whole thing."

Shawn was sifting through the information in his head, so Gus continued to ask the standard questions. "Do you have any idea who it could've been?"

Skye shook her head. "Nope. But…look, these people knew things about my boss. Things they couldn't possibly have known. He seemed really shaken up about it. And if you knew Coulson, you'd know that the guy doesn't shake easily."

"Well, he was kidnapped," Shawn reasoned. "And tortured."

Skye didn't buy the simple explanation. "It's something else, I can tell. He won't talk to anybody about it." The map on the screen began to zoom in towards a specific location, somewhere in southern Canada. "But we need to find out who's behind all this, because we just had a security breach at our facility in Vancouver and our guys up there aren't responding. Plus our cameras are down so we have no idea if anything's been stolen."

Shawn knew what Gus was going to say, but he still shot him a death glare when he said it.

"Sounds like you should go to the police."

Skye gave them an apologetic wince. "The thing is, Shield likes to deal with things…internally."

Shawn asked the next question, skipping the part where Gus clarified that they were, in fact, an external source. "Then why come to us?"

Skye glanced down at her hands. "It's just…I know this is gonna sound weird, but this company, these people…they're the closest thing I have to family." She looked back up at them, swiveling around in the chair. "And I just can't shake this feeling that something really bad is about to happen. So I want to find out who's doing this before anybody else gets hurt."

Shawn considered her face for a moment. She seemed sincere enough. "If you'll excuse us for a moment, I will confer with my colleague."

He and Gus walked precisely two steps away and turned their backs on Skye.

"She needs to go to the police," Gus said in a low voice.

"Dude, you're always harping about money and never having any cool cases. This is a cool case!"

"Cool cases don't involve kidnapping and torture, Shawn."

"Sure, they do! Besides, if nothing else, you'll get to see the inner workings of Shield, maybe give your sales pitch to somebody high up on the ladder. Come on, Gus. I'm tired of waiting for my father to call us for a case."

Gus didn't reply for a few seconds, but Shawn already knew that he'd won.

"Fine," he caved. "But if anything goes wrong-"

"We're out of there."

Skye spoke up. "You know I can hear you, right? I'm literally right behind you. You're not even whispering."

Ignoring her last comment, Shawn clapped his hands together as he turned around. "Okay, what do we know about this mysterious kidnapper?"

"Not much," Skye answered, folding her arms. "He's got a lot of cronies, many of which are creepy as hell. But apparently no one has ever seen him. They only know him by his alias, which…is actually where I got the idea to ask you for help."

"Oh, really?" Shawn asked. "What is it?"

She flashed him a smile, but Shawn could tell she felt almost embarrassed to say it.

"They call him the Clairvoyant."