TW for discussions of bullying
As outraged as Skye had been to learn that Ward had somehow weaseled his way out of his in-school suspensions, she had to admit it vastly improved the experience of sitting in a tiny, windowless room deep inside the school for three days straight to not have to share it with Ward. Not that the vast improvement made much of a dent in how unpleasant ISS was. It didn't bother her so much to be in trouble, or to have to sit there with a stoic, unspeaking teacher while she tried to work on the homework packets her teachers had sent for her while she was shut away – no, it was the boredom and the cooped-upness that drove her up the walls. She hated feeling stuck in the room, hated having to sit perfectly still and quiet and try to muddle her way through written work while Mr. Meyers, the teacher tasked with ISS duty this week, it seemed, watched her struggle with only the occasional disapproving glance if she started fidgeting too much. She hated the feelings of guilt and worry that clawed up in the back of her throat if she let herself think too much about Jemma, alone in class while Fitz was at home and she was stuck in near solitude. She hated how much ISS reminded her of the times when she had been locked in closets or bedrooms, sometimes for days at a time, and how it became harder and harder to keep the memories from flooding back and overwhelming her.
She didn't tell Jemma though, and she didn't complain to May and Phil, either. There wasn't anything anyone could do about it, and she knew, deep down, that she deserved it. She wasn't being punished at home for the fight, for what she did to Fitz, so this penance at school was hers to bear with a stiff upper lip, no matter how crazy it drove her. Experience had taught her that the best way to endure a distasteful punishment was to just ride it out with as little trouble as possible, so that was exactly what she was going to do.
By the time Friday rolled around, the last day of her time in ISS, Skye was determined to survive the day with as much dignity as she could muster. That meant not trudging into the achingly bland room, not squirming under Mr. Meyers' exasperated eye, not fidgeting or fussing while she did her best to slog through the remainder of her homework packets. She expected that it would be hard, she expected that it would feel like near torture by the end of the day, but what she didn't expect was to see Mrs. Hinton sitting at the desk up front where Mr. Meyers had been holding court the last several days.
"Hi Skye, come on in," Mrs. Hinton smiled. Skye took a few hesitant steps into the room and drifted over to the chair she usually occupied. She didn't take off her backpack, though, and she fixed Mrs. Hinton with her most dubious look.
"Is something wrong?" she asked, cocking her head to one side.
Mrs. Hinton raised her eyebrows in slightly concerned confusion. "Wrong? No, not at all. Why do you ask?"
"Because… well, because…" Skye felt like it would be rude to say 'because you're here,' so she settled for letting her words trail off and ending with a noncommittal shrug.
"I suppose my being here is probably a little bit of an unexpected change," said Mrs. Hinton kindly. "Mr. Meyers is working with some of the sixth graders today, so I'm filling in for him. I'm sorry we didn't give you a heads' up about the change – I hope this is okay."
"Sure," Skye said. She was trying to maintain an air of nonchalance, but internally she was trying her hardest to sift through the confusing combination of feelings that had flooded her. On the one hand, she liked Mrs. Hinton, and she was thoroughly pleased to be rid of Mr. Meyers for the day. On the other, she was a little embarrassed that Mrs. Hinton had to see her in this place, and that she would likely be witness to Skye's struggles to stay still and focused in the claustrophobic, painfully boring room.
"Great." Mrs. Hinton settled back into her seat, content with Skye's answer it seemed. Skye followed her lead and shrugged out of her backpack before taking her own seat. "Well, Skye, I'm sure you know how this is supposed to go today…"
Skye nodded, a little forlornly. Only seven hours of agony left until she was free. "Yeah. I know. No talking. No moving. Do my work." Mrs. Hinton pursed her lips in that way that made Skye think she was a little amused by the way Skye was acting, but she chose to overlook the minor indignity. Even nice grownups couldn't help themselves sometimes, she supposed.
"I was wondering if you would consider doing something a little differently with me today," Mrs. Hinton suggested, and suddenly all of Skye's unease was replaced with excited curiosity.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when I get to spend time with students in ISS, I have a couple of things I like to do with them," explained Mrs. Hinton. "We can talk, you and I, maybe about some of the things that led to you spending time in ISS, and we can maybe try tackling some of that homework packet together too, instead of you working on it silently. I noticed you hadn't turned in your pages from the last two days."
Skye blushed. "I wasn't done with it. It's… it's too hard to focus in here."
"That's understandable," said Mrs. Hinton. "There's a fine balance between working in a room with too many distractions, like a classroom, and a room that has so few distractions that all you can think about is how there's nothing but you and your work."
"Yeah," Skye agreed. Mrs. Hinton had taken the words right out of her mouth. "All I can think about in here is all the stuff I'm not supposed to be doing, like talking and fidgeting and stuff. So I try to focus on the work to try and distract me from that stuff, but then the homework is too hard, so all I can think about is how I can't do the things I am supposed to be doing, and I start fidgeting, which makes me remember that I'm not supposed to do that, and it starts all over again. And then I get nothing done."
"I'm hoping I can help with that today," Mrs. Hinton smiled. "For one thing, I think it would be okay if you and I talked while you work. And if you need to take some breaks to stretch your legs, that's okay with me, too."
"That sounds way better than the way Mr. Meyers did it."
"We just have different ideas about what makes ISS the most effective teaching tool," said Mrs. Hinton with a casual wave of her hand. "I know in-school suspension is a disciplinary tool, but I'm hoping you can see that it's an opportunity to learn from your mistakes more than just a punishment."
Skye didn't really know how to respond to that. She had always understood that discipline and punishment were the same thing, and that neither one was a good thing. But Mrs. Hinton seemed so convinced that something good was going to come out of their time today. It made Skye's brain stick a little bit, like chewing gum had gotten wadded into the gears, and she could practically see the error message pop up in front of her eyes: Error: Does Not Compute. It wasn't a problem she felt she had the energy to troubleshoot at the moment, so she opted for something a little more concrete instead. "I guess we should do some homework or something now, right?"
It was incredible how much more smoothly Skye's work on her homework packets went when she had Mrs. Hinton there to help her. Her math worksheets, which had been giving her fits and making her feel like ripping the papers to shreds the day before, became bearable when she and Mrs. Hinton could talk through the steps of how to solve each problem. It reminded Skye of the way Phil or Natasha or Jemma would work with her, prompting her to remember what step to do next.
"So now that you've got your answer, what's the last thing you need to do?"
"Change it from an improper fraction to a mixed number."
"Good, show me how you do that."
She still hated fractions, of course, and the process of figuring out how to make the numbers fit into one another was sometimes so frustrating it made her teeth hurt, but at least she didn't flounder at the first step like she did when she was trying to do it alone. History and science, too, were easier when she could read the questions out loud (or even better, hear them out loud as Mrs. Hinton read them), and Mrs. Hinton was patient as Skye stumbled through the reading comprehension practice tests that they were supposed to be working on in English that week. More patient than Skye was, certainly.
"I can't," she grumbled, nudging the paper away from her and propping her chin on a surly fist. She was supposed to be reading a short story about a kid who ran for class president, but the story was wholly uninteresting and full of too many words that she had to take time to sound out in that slow, stuttering voice she hated to use. That was always the worst part about reading out loud in front of anybody (besides Jemma, and maybe Natasha) – hearing just how bumbling and lurching her own words sounded as they tripped up to her ears and knowing that everyone else could hear just how stagnated her reading was, too.
"You're doing just fine," Mrs. Hinton assured her. "You've made good progress. What do you think is tripping you up right now?"
Skye shrugged, scowled down at the page. "It's too hard. I don't know these words. I've never learned them or seen them before."
"That can be frustrating, when you don't have the experience you need to understand something. But that's one of the important things about practicing reading – the more you practice, the more words you can learn and recognize. Eventually you get to the place where you can start to know most of the words you come across."
"Jemma knows pretty much every word ever," Skye mused. "But she's been reading since she was a preschooler, so she's had way more practice. I've only been reading since 3rd grade."
"You know a lot of words for someone who's only been reading for five years," Mrs. Hinton said, impressed. Skye felt her cheeks flush a little at the compliment, even though she didn't really believe it. "Just think how many words you knew when you started versus how many you know now. And think of how many more you'll know in five more years."
"I guess."
"You know, Skye," Mrs. Hinton began, leaning back in her chair and fixing Skye with a thoughtful gaze, "I'm going to let you in on something. Learning is hard work. People like to pretend like it's not, and they act like things always click, or they've known how to do things their whole lives, but the fact of the matter is, it takes real effort to learn. There's this whole process of stripping away the clutter of expectations, the work of preparing your foundations, so the new knowledge has a place to take root, and then the labor of getting new information and figuring out what to do with it. Then you have to practice using that information over and over until you've got a handle on it."
"Basketball players take hundreds of shots so that their muscles can learn the feeling of making a basket," she continued. "Musicians practice their scales over and over again so their fingers recognize the patterns and their ears can pick out an out-of-place note. My daughter draws probably twenty pictures a day, and each one is a little better than the last. It's kind of how like, even after you've done all the work of planting your garden, you still have to water it and weed it and make sure the squirrels aren't pilfering your tomatoes before they're ripe. It's work. Hard, tiring, worthwhile work. People sometimes make the mistake of forgetting how much work goes into learning new things, especially when it's something that hasn't been new to them in a while. Jemma probably doesn't remember what it was like to learn to read, because it was a long time ago for her, but you do. It happened more recently for you, so you remember the work that you had to put in to start putting letters and sounds together into words, words into sentences."
"Jemma remembers," Skye informed Mrs. Hinton, a proud smile working itself onto her face. "Jemma doesn't forget things. Plus, she was the one who taught me."
"Is that so?" Mrs. Hinton asked with a laugh. Skye pumped her head up and down.
"When we first met, she tried to write me notes before she talked to me, but I couldn't read them, so once she did start talking to me, she helped me learn how. We'd practice sounding things out, and she'd read things to me and then make me read them back to her." Skye couldn't help but sing Jemma's praises a little bit. She had, after all, been able to do the thing no teacher had managed with Skye before that point. "She even made this thing out of index cards this one time – it was these four cards taped together in a square with a little space in the middle like a window. The window made it so I would only look at one word at a time on the page, so I wouldn't get the other letters mixed up with the letters of the word I was reading. That worked pretty good until one of the other kids caught us using it and tore it up to be funny."
"That doesn't sound especially funny to me."
Skye shrugged. "None of Michaela Dodson's jokes were ever actually funny. They weren't even really jokes, just her finding ways to pick on us. I wouldn't plan on her becoming a successful comedian when she grows up." The corners of Mrs. Hinton's mouth twitched at Skye's last comment, and Skye was pleased that her attempt at humor had landed well enough to, hopefully, distract Mrs. Hinton from pursuing Skye's history with Michaela Dodson any further.
"Jokes that are an excuse to belittle someone or make them feel badly certainly don't count as jokes in my opinion," Mrs. Hinton said carefully. Hopes dashed, it would seem. "It sounds more to me like bullying." Skye didn't say anything, and Mrs. Hinton pressed a little more. "What do you think, Skye? When people go out of their way to hurt others, does that seem like bullying to you?"
She didn't like where this was going, and she couldn't force herself to answer Mrs. Hinton. She didn't want to, and even if she did, she wasn't sure her body would let her, so instead, she just stared at the desktop and swallowed hard, over and over again, to keep her throat from tightening. They were talking about her. She had hurt Fitz on accident, but she had hurt Grant Ward on purpose. She was the bully, and Mrs. Hinton wanted her to own up to it. A punishment worse than three days of silent suspension.
"Has Grant Ward been bullying you, Skye?" The question was so unexpected, it hit Skye like a bolt of lightning and snapped her out of her thoughts almost instantaneously. She jerked her head up and looked at Mrs. Hinton in near disbelief.
"What?"
"I asked if Grant Ward has been bullying you. Or really, any student here, any person at all," Mrs. Hinton repeated. "You strike me as a good kid, Skye. You don't seem like the type to get into fights for no good reason, and frankly, I'm a little worried about you. I want to make sure that no one's hurting you."
Without thinking, Skye raised a hand to her face and felt her fingertips drag lightly across the still tender places on her chin and under her eye. "Ward's never hit me before. Not before the fight. And I hit him first."
"I'm not just talking about the fight."
"Oh." Skye was quiet for a minute, trying to decide how best to answer without worrying Mrs. Hinton too much. The guidance counselor's expression was so concerned and earnest, it was almost unsettling. "I mean, he's kind of a jerk to me and my friends. He's been pushing Fitz around for forever, and he's said… It's not really a big deal. I've heard worse. I'm used to it, so it doesn't really bother me. I shouldn't have gotten into that fight, and I'm really, really sorry."
"I know," Mrs. Hinton assured her. "Skye, just because you're used to something bad doesn't make it okay. It might feel like it doesn't bother you, but in my experience at least, I've found that what it's truly doing is wearing you down. It's like a slow-acting poison that just keeps eating away at you until one day something happens that tips the scales just enough to really cause you a lot of pain. I don't want to see that happen to you."
"It's not like that," Skye insisted. "He's just a monster-of-the-week annoyance, honest. And most of the stuff he says is true, anyways, so who'd even believe me if I tried to explain how it makes me feel?"
"I'd believe you. And I bet Phil and Melinda would, too."
The back of Skye's neck felt hot. She ducked her head again and stared intently at the swirls of desktop woodgrain intermingling beneath her fingers.
"How does it make you feel, when someone talks to you like that? Grant or anyone, really?" This time the question was one Skye had anticipated. It was quiet and open, an invitation more than an interrogation, but she was having trouble finding the words to RSVP.
"I don't know. Bad or something. Everybody feels bad when they get reminded about all the stuff that's wrong with them."
"Sure," said Mrs. Hinton kindly. "It doesn't feel good to have another person focus on the things you think are your flaws. I find that those kinds of comments aren't usually an accurate reflection of who we are as people, though."
"Depends," Skye shrugged.
"I suppose it does," agreed Mrs. Hinton. "Just remember that a great many things in our life can alter the way we view ourselves. That doesn't make the view any more clear. In fact, it usually has the opposite effect. Sometimes it can take a long time to strip away the additions and estimates that other people's perceptions have laden us with, to get back to the you that's truly underneath. It can take a long time to let your own voice of self-definition be louder than the voices and opinions of everyone else, but it's worth it in the end."
"Sounds like a fancy way of saying, 'don't listen to the people who say bad things about you,'" Skye pointed out, not quite managing to reign in all of her sass. One of the many corny, trite sayings teachers and therapists and counselors were so fond of spouting off to her: Do your best, be yourself, let your light shine, all that baloney. All she needed now was one of those cheesy posters with the kitten dangling off the branch saying "Hang in there!"
"Maybe so," chuckled Mrs. Hinton. "But just because it's clichéd doesn't make it not true. You just have to figure out how to make it true for you."
It was with great relief that Skye finally made it to the weekend, fully paying off her debt to the middle school discipline overlords and basking in the freedom of someone who knew that the next time she set foot in school, she would be heading back to her normal class and her friends, not the confines of a days-long, glorified time-out. Of course, it wasn't all celebratory. The weekend ticked by slowly and stiltedly, everyone still walking on eggshells around each other somewhat after everything that had happened in the past week. May and Phil were trying to give her space, she could tell, but being given space felt an awful lot like a couple steps shy of the silent treatment, which Skye couldn't stand.
If she thought about it logically, she knew they weren't freezing her out, and that they were trying their best to do what they thought she had asked them to do, but clearly Skye hadn't thought things through when she'd requested more breaks and alone time. She hated being alone. She hated being in the quiet. Worst of all, she had no idea how to properly explain what she wanted from them, and she was too stubborn to go back on her request less than a week after she'd made it.
Jemma could tell she was miserable, and she did her best to jockey Skye into socializing, but Skye didn't make it easy on her, coming up with excuses not to leave their room or reasons why she couldn't just pop into the kitchen to cook with Phil or ask May for a round of Uno.
"You'll feel better if you let yourself do something fun," Jemma told her on Sunday afternoon as she combed through a thick book on neuroscience she had gotten from the school library a few days ago, tapping away contentedly. "You're not in trouble at school anymore. You're off the hook. You're allowed to enjoy the weekend."
"They're probably busy," Skye shrugged, futzing with some computer parts she had been trying to repair recently. "I don't want to bother anybody."
"You know you're not a bother. No one thinks that."
"I'm bothering you right now," Skye said, gesturing towards the book that Jemma was clearly trying to read while they conversed.
"You're not," Jemma promised. "I can multitask. I'm just trying to read up on brain injuries as much as I can before Fitz comes back to school tomorrow."
Ever since Bobbi had come home with the news from Hunter that Fitz had gotten a concussion from the fight, Jemma had been scouring as many books as she could to learn everything she didn't already know about brain health. If Skye hadn't been so worried about Fitz, she would have thought it was funny how seriously Jemma was taking her research. It was like she was preparing for brain surgery, not meeting up with a friend at school. But because it was Fitz, and because she still couldn't shake the clammy feeling of culpability, Skye figured that the more Jemma knew about how to best help Fitz, the better.
She hadn't told anyone this, but Skye was feeling more than a little apprehensive about their reunion with Fitz tomorrow. She was worried he would be upset with her, would blame her for his injury. She was worried that he wouldn't be acting like himself – something Jemma had warned might happen with a brain injury. She was worried to see the extent of the damage she had inadvertently caused. People kept saying that what happened to Fitz wasn't her fault, but they were wrong. She had been the one to push Ward, which is what caused Fitz to fall. And even before that, she had been the one who didn't want to go to a teacher sooner, she had been the one to take point on their ridiculous plan to catch Ward, she had been the one to encourage Fitz to stand up to Ward and change the status quo. Any way she looked at it, it all came back to her, or at least to her and Ward together. And if she was being honest, Skye would almost rather take all the blame herself than be lumped in with Ward as joint guilty parties.
"Finding anything good in there?" Skye asked, nodding towards Jemma's book. At least she could try and pick up a few things secondhand from Jemma's research.
"It's fascinating the advances they've made in neurosurgery in the past decade," Jemma said excitedly. "These are some of the most complex procedures I've ever read about. Not that any of them have to do with Fitz," she added quickly, seeing the perturbed look on Skye's face. "Fitz's TBI was mild, according to Hunter, so he wouldn't need any of these surgeries. But they're still fascinating to read about. Did you know that some brain operations are performed while the patient is fully conscious? They're given medication for the pain, of course, but they're awake while the doctors work on their brain. Their brain, Skye."
"That's so creepy," Skye shuddered. "No way would I want somebody poking around in my brain while I was there to hear and see it." She didn't even like people poking around in her brain metaphorically. There was no way she was eager to have anyone do it literally as well.
"You probably wouldn't get to see much, since most of the work would be done above and behind you," Jemma pointed out.
"Still gross," Skye grinned. "The only brains I like are CPUs. Those don't squish when you poke them."
"Unless you've taken a very wrong turn with your computers," Jemma remarked, causing them both to break into a wave of giggles. Skye couldn't wipe the smile off of her face, her first broad beam since the fight last week. Things weren't perfect, but she'd always be grateful for Jemma. Somehow nothing seemed quite so bad when she could share space with her, smiling, laughing, livening, loving. With Jemma nearby, everything seemed a little bit better. Everything seemed a little bit more sure.
She tried to hold onto that feeling of sureness as they waited by the melted picnic table the next morning, puffing on their frozen fingers and trying not to let the chilly bite of late November eat away at them too much. She bounced a little on the balls of her feet, hoping to stay warm and distract herself from how fidgety she was starting to feel at the prospect of seeing Fitz again.
"Come on girl, you need to relax," Trip urged, flashing her a smile. "Fitz's mom wouldn't let him come back to school if he wasn't ready, and you know he's going to be excited to see us. Don't be so nervous."
"I'm not nervous," Skye lied reflexively. "It's cold." It didn't escape Skye's notice that Jemma and Trip exchanged a knowing glance between the two of them at her obvious fib. Clearly there had been some kind of bonding between them both during Skye and Fitz's absences last week if they were communicating silently now. Skye supposed it made sense, since Trip was almost definitely unwelcome among the jocks and Ward's posse after revealing his allegiance to their little ragtag crew, and Jemma was unlikely to have struck up conversation with another living soul outside of their group. Still, she didn't like feeling out of the loop.
"Here he comes," Jemma said suddenly, her eyes snapping over to the parking lot, where a bundled-up Fitz was being hugged and sent off by his mother. They watched as Fitz waved goodbye and began shuffling across the blacktop towards them. A couple of the basketball-playing jocks froze and watched him pass by, one elbowing Ward and pointing. Skye narrowed her eyes and felt her heartrate pick up speed momentarily, but Ward made no moves towards Fitz, returning to his jump shot as quickly as he had been pulled away from it.
"Hi Fitz," said Jemma as he approached them. She had a funny look on her face, caught in between a relieved smile and an apprehensive frown. Skye understood how she felt.
"Hi." Fitz and Jemma stood stiffly, like they weren't sure if they were supposed to hug each other or not. After a moment of awkwardness, Jemma settled for grabbing his hand and tapping softly on the back of it as she let the apprehensive half of her expression slide away.
"How are you?"
"Well enough," he shrugged, looking a little embarrassed, but pleased to see her, nonetheless. "Glad to be back. Glad to see you lot."
"Yeah?" Trip asked with a grin.
"Yeah," Fitz nodded, returning the smile. "I was going mental stuck at home with my mum all day. She fusses."
"Well she ought to," Jemma huffed. "Head injuries need a lot of care."
"I got to see the CT scans of my brain," Fitz informed her proudly. "It was so cool." Jemma's eyes went wide, and Skye had to bite back a laugh at how impressed and envious Jemma looked at Fitz's announcement.
"You got to see your scans? Did you see all the structures, the temporal lobe and Wernicke's area and everything?"
Fitz nodded. "Sort of. The images were a little hard to make sense of, especially since I'm… I'm having difficulty reading and concentrating, but I could see the whole thing, plus the places where it was injured. Not too bad, though," he added quickly. "My doctors aren't too worried about permanent damage."
"That's good," Trip smiled. "No permanent damage is very good. We were worried about you, buddy. Jemma was reading every brain book she could get her hands on." Jemma blushed, but didn't deny it.
"I should thank you all," Fitz said then. "You especially, Skye. For stopping Ward when you did. If you hadn't, who knows what might have happened to me."
"I'm the reason you fell," Skye said quietly, speaking for the first time. She couldn't make herself look Fitz in the eye. "I'm so sorry, Fitz."
"I fell because Ward pushed me," Fitz said matter-of-factly. "And Ward pushed me because he'd been holding me by the neck. I would have choked if you hadn't gotten him to let go. I'd rather have a knock on the head than have my windpipe crushed. I'm okay, thanks to you."
"You're okay?" She wanted to be absolutely sure that he was fine after what had happened.
"I'm okay," Fitz promised. "Really. I haven't had as many headaches the last few days, and I don't have to wear sunglasses everywhere I go anymore. I'm on the mend."
"Sunglasses?"
"For the lights. They were too bright, hurt my head," he explained. "I have a pair in my backpack, just in case, but I haven't needed them since Friday."
"I bet you totally looked like a secret agent with 'em on," Trip laughed. "Like the Men in Black or something."
"My cousin told me I looked like an even pastier Horatio Caine," Fitz said. "I don't know who that is, but I know he was teasing me, so I'm assuming it wasn't a compliment."
"We'll go with Men in Black, then," Trip decided, laughing again. The air around them relaxed as they continued laughing and talking, and Skye felt the tension in her chest slowly start to loosen as they fell into a familiar rhythm. Fitz wasn't mad at her, and he was still the same old Fitz he'd always been. The relief of it all made her arms go almost limp.
"So, what did I miss?" Fitz wanted to know eventually.
"We studied monkeys all week in science class," Skye deadpanned. Fitz's jaw fell open.
"I missed monkey week?"
"She's teasing," Jemma said, making a face at Skye. "We're still doing plant and animal cells, don't worry."
"Monkey week isn't a laughing matter, Skye," Fitz said solemnly. "There's nothing funny about missing monkey week."
"It won't happen again," Skye assured him playfully.
Jemma and Trip caught him up to speed on everything else he had missed in classes, and Skye caught him up on her time in ISS.
"Ward got out of his, somehow," she finished. "Not that I minded. Sitting in that room with him for three days would have been—"
"—the absolute worst," Fitz agreed. "Wonder how he got off?"
"I'm guessing Coach Garrett had something to do with it," Trip said darkly. "There was no way Coach was going to let him miss our playoff game over a school suspension."
"I still can't believe he didn't get punished at all," Jemma murmured. "After everything he's done… it's not fair."
"That's just how stuff like this goes," muttered Skye. "People like Ward don't get in trouble, not really. Bad stuff doesn't stick to them the way it sticks to us."
"He'll get his." Trip said this with more confidence than Skye could have ever managed. "Maybe not from us, or the school, but everything balances out in the end, right? It's got to."
"Cosmic balance theory," Fitz mused. The ringing of the warning bell pierced the air, and crowds of kids started moving towards the door. "Maybe a good topic for lunch today, what do you think?"
"I think as long as we're just talking about the universe putting Ward right, and not us coming up with another plan to get him into trouble," Jemma said, "then it's a perfect topic for a lunchtime debate."
Rejoining the classroom after nearly a week away from it was an off-putting experience for Skye. Kids stared at her in every class she entered, some with the wide eyes of people who couldn't believe she'd fought a Ward and lived to tell the tale, some with the sneering looks of people who couldn't wait for her to be put back in her place. The teachers were a mixed bag, too. Miss Hill acted like nothing unusual had happened, while Mrs. Henry tried to be overly accommodating to the fact that Skye had been out of class, and Mr. Bennett kept a close eye on her the whole time, like he was waiting for her to screw up again.
As weird as being back in class was for her, though, she was sure it was ten times harder for Fitz. Not only did he have to deal with the array of kids watching him the way they watched her, and teachers going out of their way to be nice to him, he also had to cope with the fact that his brain wasn't exactly fully healed from its concussion. Skye watched him throughout the morning, and it didn't escape her notice that he was having trouble writing his notes fast enough to keep up with Mrs. Henry in social studies, or that it took him nearly as long as her to fill out their pop quiz in science.
By the time lunch rolled around, he was very obviously tired and frustrated, and his expression was downright crabby as they settled at the table and began unpacking their lunches.
"Whoever decided that fluorescent lighting was the best choice for schools was a sadist," he grumbled, squinching his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose. "A person can't bloody think when the rooms are being blasted with cold light like that."
"Do you need your glasses?" Jemma asked.
Fitz shook his head. "I'd rather have a headache than let Ward see me in them."
"He should see you in them," Trip said hotly. "He should see what he did to you, man."
"I think we all know he'd just find it hilarious," Fitz grouched. He opened his eyes and looked right over at Skye. "I don't know how you put up with it, Skye."
"What are you talking about? I don't get headaches…"
"Reading. Concentrating. All of it. It's so hard," he said, gesturing weakly around them. "The letters just float around on the page, waiting for my brain to put them in order, but it's like… I can't remember what order they go in, so I just have to start guessing. And I can barely focus on what anybody's saying because all I can think about is the lights, or my headache, or the fact that I can hear sounds but their not translating into ideas the way they usually do. I get there eventually, but by the time I've caught up, we've already moved on. My notes from today are a total mess."
Skye was a little taken aback by his description of what school was like for him now. Some parts were uniquely his own experience, of course, but so much of it sounded eerily familiar to her own, which was more than a little confusing.
"Are you saying your brain injury made you… made you like me?"
"No," Fitz said quickly.
"The science behind concussion symptoms, ADHD, and dyslexia is totally different," Jemma elaborated. "TBIs disrupt the brain's normal function, so things like vision control or language processing might be changed until the brain heals. With you Skye, it's not that your brain is damaged, it's just that it inherently functions differently than brains without dyslexia or ADHD."
"So your brain's not broken, just mine," Fitz finished, a tinge of sadness creeping in.
"Not broken," Skye said firmly, echoing something Fitz had told her weeks ago. "Just different."
"And likely not forever," added Jemma. "It's certainly possible that a brain injury could result in permanent changes in areas like speech or motor control, but that's far less common with mild cases like yours."
"Besides," Skye smiled, allowing a twinkle of playful teasing to spark across her face, "even if it was permanent, at least we could be slow readers and bad note takers together. I'll give you all my tips for focusing. They're probably not very helpful, since I haven't found any that actually work, but I'm still happy to share." That got a laugh out of everyone, even Fitz, and Skye was happy to see that the deep frown he had been wearing earlier was starting to relax away.
"You should probably go see the nurse or something if you keep getting headaches, though," Trip said seriously, after their laughter had died down. "You don't want to push yourself too hard. Maybe she could give you a note to get out of gym class, at least."
"Already got one of those," Fitz said, rummaging in his backpack for a minute before producing a crumpled letter on very official-looking hospital paper. "No strenuous physical activity until I'm cleared. Even if my doctors didn't say I should be taking it easy, I'd bet the entire salary of Manchester United that my mum would do anything to get them to write something keeping me out of gym with Ward."
"Smart lady," Trip muttered. "I mean, I bet Ward's going to be keeping his distance for a while, just until all this blows over and he can go back to being the school's squeaky clean golden boy, but still… you don't want to give him any opportunities for revenge."
"Do you think that's a possibility?" Jemma asked, worry wrinkling her face.
Trip shrugged. "No idea. But if I had to guess, I'd say probably. Ward didn't come out of last week looking great, so he's probably going to be looking for a way to restore what, in his mind, is the natural order of things. And I'm sure his family got on his case about the fight, about getting his butt kicked by us. I'm not saying we need to be cowering away from him or anything," he added hastily, seeing the grimace on Skye's face, "but just think about how much damage he did when he thought he was in control and compare that to what he might do now that he feels like he's got something to prove. Cornered, on the defensive. That makes him dangerous. On the other hand, the teachers have seen what he's capable of now, so he's not going to get as much freedom to flex his muscles on us. That gives us the advantage."
"Not much of an advantage," Fitz pointed out.
"It's enough," Skye said. "We'll take what we can get. He knows we fight back now, too. If he's smart, he'll think twice before going after us for a while."
"That's a big 'if' if I ever heard one," Trip joked, coaxing smiles out of them all and restoring some of the lightheartedness that talking about Ward had drained them of. It felt good to laugh. If she'd known that it would be the last time she laughed for a while, she might have savored it a little bit more.