Disclaimer: I don't own SHIELD or any of the characters.
I am watching television, Skye's head resting against my shoulder. It's just the news-we can never agree on shows to watch aboard the bus. Celebrities stroll across the screen, smiling and waving at some awards ceremony or other. A couple head down the red carpet- I don't indulge in media enough to recognise them. The news reader refers to them as 'Brangelina'. The term is new to me.
'Brangelina?' I ask.
Skye looks surprised. 'Yeah. Brad and Angelina. It's their couple name. Like Caskett. Or Tiva?'
These mean nothing to me, but I nod nonetheless and Skye turns back to the screen.
Later that night, with Skye's sleeping body warm against mine, I mull over this. I wonder what our name would be. Grye? Wye? Skard? Skant?
None of these are right. I think some more. Perhaps just… Skyeward?
This fits, I think, tracing lazy patterns on her skin. She makes me feel this way. Like I can let all my troubles go, a kind of buoyancy where we can fly away together. With her I am free, from my past, my treachery, my debts. With her I am happy, a strange new sensation that had always seemed more distant than the nearest of stars.
As we fall apart, I long to take her by the hand, to feel this weightless feeling once again. Like balloons, drifting high among the clouds we found each other, but the pin is never far around the corner and the fall is worse the higher you drift. I never understood how people could fear heights before. When you stand on a precipice, the ground far beneath you and adrenaline coursing through your veins, it is exhilarating. But now I know how it is to fall, no parachute, no safety net. Only cold, hard ground and the hatred in her eyes.
I long to tell her how I wish I could change, but metamorphosis isn't so easy when it's you. That the caterpillar can grow wings and fly away, but it doesn't stop its fear of falling. It's okay being weightless, but what's to stop you from drifting away. We all have limits, we are all bound by duty and sometimes the Skye just isn't far enough to escape.
I thought that I was the balloon, free and weightless. Now I see that I am the child, the anchor. Holding it down, because I can never fly with it, even as it strains against the strings, until eventually it floats away.
What a shame that I
Was the one
Who had to
Let go
…