Author's Note: A Skye-centric chapter. Huge thanks to those who have reviewed - it's so encouraging! Favorites and follows are awesome, too. :)
Skye couldn't sleep that night. Her emotions, held down tightly for so long, were struggling free, and the associated waves of nausea and a dull ache in her chest were keeping her awake. She wasn't sure what it was about the day's events that had seemed to bring everything to the surface. But there it was.
She gave up, got up, and quietly padded out to the lounge, where she hoped to lose herself in a comfy chair and a firearms operations manual. Anything to keep her mind off...everything.
She should have chosen different reading material. Every page she looked at just brought back memories: her first session of marksmanship training with Ward; the day Coulson had taken off her bracelet and she was allowed near the ammo storage again; the ICER Fitz had handed her before she snuck into the mansion where Quinn had shot her. The terror of being shot by Quinn. The look on Coulson's face when she came to after being shot by Quinn. The look on Coulson's face when he asked her to go down to the vault and talk to Ward.
It was too much. Skye felt tears pricking in her eyes. She hadn't allowed herself to cry, not in months. Not since they came to the Playground. She was going to train hard, become tough, get back at Hydra for what they had done. She wasn't going to let her emotions weaken her. But it wasn't working. Especially not tonight.
Tired of fighting it, Skye shut the book in her lap and began to cry quietly, hoping that nobody was up to hear her. They shouldn't be - she was usually the only one wandering around at night.
At first, the tears came slowly; it was hard to let anything out after months of bottling it up so fiercely. But the breaking was inevitable: soon, she was sobbing more violently than she had expected to, grasping at a nearby box of tissues that had suddenly become necessary.
Of course, it was at this moment that Skye heard the soft sound of footsteps coming toward her on the hard floor. She knew she was caught and made the decision not to care. She stayed balled up in the chair and hoped that whoever it was would leave her alone.
Instead, whoever it was came closer, and Skye felt a comforting hand placed on her back.
The reassuring gesture undid her completely.
Memories, regrets, fears, doubts, abandonment, betrayal - it all crashed over her in waves. She found that physical contact with someone who cared grounded her enough to dive into the sea of pain without drowning in it. She wasn't sure how long she cried, but it was long enough for the unbearable swirl of her thoughts to quiet and the ache in her chest to begin to fade.
As her tears subsided, Skye looked up to see whose quiet comfort had steadied her through them. She was expecting Trip, or maybe Fitz. In her wildest dreams, Coulson.
She was shocked to see Lance Hunter.