The thing about Skye
She grew up in an orphanage. An honest to God (pardon her language, Sister Margaret) orphanage- with nuns and grubby children and 'please, Sir, may I have some more?' as an actual phrase uttered by the younger kids who don't know better yet (if you switch out 'Sir' with 'Sister.')
The team doesn't know that part, the details, though. Skye doesn't talk about the orphanage.
She doesn't talk about the carefully restricted food that gets even further restricted for the slightest infringement on rules. She doesn't talk about how she never had anything truly hers, because anything she might have gotten at one foster home or another was immediately confiscated upon her return (because it wouldn't be fair to the other children and wanting anything at all for yourself is greedy, and greed is a sin unto God).
Skye doesn't talk about the back room where bad children go, where greedy or lying or can't sit still children go (she definitely doesn't tell them that she was a frequent visitor to that room- doesn't tell them how she's so scared to ever want anything, because wanting only ever got her a paddle to the back of the legs and hours of Bible study as the nuns told her how awful she was, and that she was going to hell for it).
Skye doesn't think she believes in God. Every time she thinks she might, she feels an instinctual terror so overwhelming that she can't function, can't think, can't breathe. So, she decides that she doesn't believe (that the echoing whispers that she's 'bad' and 'vial' and has 'the devil in her,' aren't there), and she can function somewhat normally.
When she meets Hannah Hutchins, who claims that God is punishing her, Skye trembles. She wants to run away as far as possible, lest God catch sight of her again and decide she needs to be punished again- but- no- God isn't real. He isn't real, he's just an excuse for people to justify punishing people in his name and-
Skye forces herself to stay.
Skye digs through all her knowledge of God (she has an abundance burned into her brain) and picks out one thing she heard. It's floaty and distant in her memory because it wasn't beat into her like the brimstone and hellfire was, but it was the nicest thing she's ever heard anyone say about God.
"God is love," Skye tells the scared woman through the door, even though everything inside herself vehemently disagrees and doesn't believe.
Skye doesn't want to believe that there is a God that loves any more than she wants to believe in the God that is wrathful (because a God that loves her has caused her just as much misery as the God that punishes her).
Skye doesn't tell the team any of this, because Skye wants. Skye wants this team, and it causes her legs to tremble and the backs of them to burn like she's been walloped a few dozen times with that paddle from the back room, and Skye is afraid. She's afraid that, now that she wants, if she ever dares show it, it will be snatched away quicker than she could ever attempt to ask forgiveness (to a God she definitely doesn't believe in).
A/N: Please review!
~Silver~
