I don't know when, exactly, this is supposed to take place. Spoilers for the first season only, though.
I own nothing, or Coulson would hug Skye a whole lot more and the two of them and May would be a happy - albeit an angsty - family!
Please comment!
The bus cut through the sky: silent but deadly. It sliced through the night; dark through dark - almost invisible.
May stared through the front of the cockpit, autopilot on for the night, but she still remained. The dark brought out the worst of her memories, and so sleep was rare during these hours. It was always preferable to snatch hours of sleep on the couch during the day when Jemma was likely to jump on beside her and jolt her awake before nightmares could take root. She preferred to sleep when Leo and Ward's bickering was the soundtrack and Skye pacing with her laptop the first thing she saw upon opening her eyes.
Skye was enjoying her newfound freedom. Anyone who payed attention knew it, for sometimes she would glance at her wrist and grin at the lack of the bracelet on it. And other times an alert would flash up on the main screen that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s server had been hacked and she would sit, staring at the laptop with a silly grin on her face and not doing anything. Because she hadn't broken in to spy. She had broken in because she could.
Most frequently, however, was when the other residents of the bus spotted her with her badge. Sometimes staring, sometimes holding, and sometimes tracing the ridges on it, as though she couldn't quite believe that she owned it.
Coulson had hoped it would help her cope. She'd seen them protective over her, and yet she still pulled back, terrified they would abandon her. They'd all shown her affection freely, given her access to every room in the bus, and any ear she wanted if she needed to talk.
She had every heart in the plane, but she was still distant.
None of them could blame her.
They all knew how many foster homes she'd been in. They all knew about the abuse in some of them. They all knew about the nightmares.
So then came the badge: irrevocable. Proof that this wasn't to be temporary. And something changed in her eyes, now. She fought harder to hold back, even as her heart was a magnet that drew her in only one direction.
To a family.
But when she'd been a fake part of twenty-seven different families, things stuck with her.
It was the calm before the storm: the entire plane with silent except for the sound of the engine. It was at these times that Coulson was most restless.
His footsteps echoed around the room as he paced it for the twenty-sixth time, his brain running itself where it wished to go. He saw it all so vividly. The blood in her hair, her lids flickering weakly to cover eyes that didn't even recognise him. He remembered her warm blood on his hands, even as her skin was as ice. The room had smelled of blood as her life-force drained, her status among the living slipping away as he held her.
Twenty-seven...
Skye still slept in the medical pod: monitors hooked up to her throughout the night when she couldn't be watched in person. It had been Coulson's special insistence if she was to move freely throughout the day, and she had complied without argument.
It was the without argument part that concerned him.
Twenty-eight...
The audio on his tablet was turned up and the screen was propped up on his desk to allow for easy viewing at a moment's notice.
Her heart rate was reassuring at 64 beats-per-minute and her chest rose with every breath, but his heart twisted painfully in his chest at the memory of the moment her pulse had stopped beneath his fingertips.
Twenty-nine...
She just didn't get it...
She didn't get that without her, nothing made sense to him. That even when he was angry at her, his heart only beat because her own did, too.
She didn't get that he would give anything to save her or protect her.
Thirty...
The blood pressure cuff tightened around her bicep and gave a high reading. That was the first warning sign before her heart rate jumped and she struggled on the bed.
For only a moment Coulson was frozen, staring in terror as the girl fought the blankets, strangled sounds coming from her lips, and then she arched her back and screamed.
It was the kind of scream that made his blood run cold, that sent him through the doorway of his office and down the spiral stairs in a flash. The kind that stopped his heart as he turned to corner into the lab and smashed into May.
No words were exchanged as the two agents moved side-by-side into the medical pod where Skye still struggled with her blankets. Her hands were clenched into fists, taut-white as she fought an invisible assistant with all she had.
She screamed again and Coulson shot forward, propping one knee up on the bed and slipping beneath her. He cradled her in his lap, running his fingers through her hair as she stopped struggling, dropping bonelessly against him.
He held her tightly, rocking her slightly as May approached the bed and took a seat beside him; Skye's eyes flickered open.
"Ouch..." she whimpered.
May eyes flashed concernedly and she instantly adjusted to her training, her fingers carefully lifting the girl's sweatshirt and brushing over her abdomen. Relief shone in her face when they came away clear, reassuring her that the stitches had not broken and Skye was, for now, just fine.
"We should get Simmons to check her." Coulson spoke under his breath, his eyes flickering slightly to view May in his peripheral vision. "Make sure there's no internal damage."
"Oh, don't..." Skye pulled a face. "She's finally sleeping. Don't disturb her." Her surrogate parents both turned to her, eyes concerned and expressions unsure, and so she went on. "Will you wait until morning if I say please?"
"Well..." Coulson still didn't look sure.
"Or if I said it didn't hurt?"
"No."
The two senior agents spoke unanimously, now, both aware that Skye was a liar when it came to how much pain she was in. This decided, Coulson rose to wake his second-youngest agent on the team.
Simmons completed her assessment in less than ten minutes, feeling Skye's tender abdomen carefully and throwing around terms cooperative with her doctorate degree as though she was in her white lab coat instead of fluffy bunny jammies and matching slippers.
After she'd left to return to bed there was a moment of silence, May and Coulson's eyes meeting almost as though they could communicate in that one glance. Skye shifted uncomfortably under her blankets, watching the silent exchange for several seconds before she cleared her throat.
"I said I was fine..." she mentioned spitefully.
"Wasn't worth the risk."
To her surprise, it was May who spoke though she didn't look away from Coulson.
"I disagree. You woke Simmons."
"She's already over it."
May nodded almost imperceptibly to Coulson and he sighed not in frustration, but mere exhaustion. He turned back and walked to the bed, sitting down on it as May disappeared from the room, closing the door carefully behind her.
"Skye?" Her face dropped but he brought a hand beneath her chin, lifting it up. "You alright? What was the nightmare about?"
She chewed on her lip, one of many self-destructive habits he was determined to break her of.
"Quinn..." she said at last, but he wasn't sure if she was just saying that because she thought he expected it. Nightmares of the person who shot her? It sounded legitimate in every situation.
Every situation except Skye...
"He shot you, AC."
Skye's voice was utterly silent and then in an instant, Coulson believed her.
"I'm sorry," he told her gently. His hand moved from her chin to her cheek and she leaned into it, closing her eyes and relishing the warmth.
Seconds passed before she pulled away and forced a smile.
"Not tired. Can I have my laptop?"
"Absolutely not." Coulson was direct. "It's late. Time for young hackers to be sleeping. Not..."
"Hacking," she completed his sentence.
Coulson dropped his head in a stiff nod, but then his face softened.
"Come here."
She rose from her bed, winding her blanket tightly around her shoulders as he disconnected her blood pressure cuff and heart monitor.
They wouldn't need it where he was taking her.
Neither of them spoke a word as they made their way through the silent plane and up the winding stairs where, through his office, he lead her through a doorway to his personal room.
The silence continued until he'd gotten her tucked into his queen-sized bed, his calloused hand smoothing over her hair in an affectionate gesture as she relaxed into the soft coverings.
He watched her for a moment and then turned around, undoing the top four buttons of his dress shirt to allow him to pull it over his head leaving him in just his t-shirt and workout pants - what he usually slept in.
"Move over."
She stared at him for a moment, seemingly assessing whether or not he was kidding, and then she shifted the slightest bit toward the middle of the bed and laid there for a moment, waiting.
He slid in beside her and dropped wearily down onto the pillow, closing his eyes instantly though he felt her gaze on his still form. Finally, though, he extended an arm and she slipped over it, rolling to rest her head on his chest.
"Now go to sleep," he whispered.
The door creaked open and May slipped inside in her own sleep clothes. She closed the door behind her and dimmed the lights before she, too, slid into bed beside Skye, one hand resting on the girl's shoulder.
She knew the situation.
She understood what Coulson had said when things seemed bleak toward Skye's future.
They were this girl's family, no matter what way they looked at it, and she had long since decided that they needed to act like it. And if that meant Co-sleeping like she was an infant to chase away nightmares, then so-be-it.
Skye snuggled into Coulson's side.
There was no other way to describe it.
A smile drifted over his face as he turned his forehead into her hair, one hand groping blindly until it found May's arm and he squeezed it.
Decades ago he'd made a painful decision. One that meant that he'd never cause his children any pain, either by abuse such as his mother had, or by dying such as his father had.
He'd never fall in love and get married. He'd never have children, because now his job was not compatible with that lifestyle. But as it happened, life clearly had its own plans, he though as he lay beside the woman he loved most in the world and the girl that had hacked her way into his heart.
And also his desktop computer, but more importantly: his heart.
He was compromised, he knew, but for now he could live with that.
Skye's chest rose against his ribs and he squeezed her slightly, noting that she was already asleep. May stared at the ceiling but he suspected that she, too, might actually be sleeping.
She flashed him a glare, almost as though reading his thoughts, and he laughed softly and closed his eyes.
Tomorrow there would be problems. He could bet on it. But tonight he had this, and that was enough for now.
