The thing about Skye
There a few things that make her inexplicably happy
Skye feels disconnected as she stares around the 24 hour Walmart. She's not normally the one to go shopping, but SHIELD has fallen- their home in the sky is gone- and the fate of the world rests on six traumatized individuals (all in different ways).
And there is a nervousness and paranoia in the air, so they are all in this store together because they need food and clothes, and because their home was hijacked by the Sociopath they thought was their friend.
Once inside the store, the bedraggled team had spread out a bit, but Skye just stands there, drifting in a world that is unraveling under her feet.
And then she spots them. Sees them just hanging there, right at eye level, and she reaches out.
They are a package of pajama pants, and they have little fire trucks on them, and then Skye's already disjointed mind is thrown into the past. A past of when she is about 10 and newly traumatized from her last home, and she wakes up with a shout because she accidentally fell asleep and now there was a hand shaking her awake and a weight in her bed.
It wasn't a bad home until then. That's why she managed to accidentally fall asleep. And there were still no bad things to greet her after she was shaken awake. It was her foster parent's kid who was a few years older, and kind of weird, but mostly left her alone. He was autistic and obsessed with fire trucks and didn't like anyone touching him any more than Skye liked anyone touching her.
He had apologized after shaking her awake, and avoided looking her in the eyes, and traced the little fire trucks on his pajama pants as he told her that she was whimpering in her sleep.
He rocked anxiously as she stared at him in confusion, because he wasn't angry. He wasn't like anyone Skye had ever met. And Skye didn't want to go back to sleep, but wanted to somehow thank this boy who wasn't angry at her for waking him up and actually apologized for waking her up in turn.
So she searches for something to say but the only thing she can focus on are the little trucks he keeps tracing on his legs, so Skye asks about them.
And he lights up in complete happiness and launches eagerly into where he got them and what exact model each truck was and all the differences between one truck and the next. Skye didn't know that there were that many different fire trucks.
She learned a lot in the following weeks, because he warmed up to her after that, and Skye liked listening to him talk and ramble about something he so clearly loved and he never tried to touch her like a few of her other foster brothers did. He became something like a best friend to her for about three months before she inevitably had to go back.
"Skye," a voice pulls her out of her memories, and she blinks up at Coulson who looks all-too concerned to have only called her name once. He glances down at the package of pajamas Skye hadn't realized she'd picked up and clenched tightly in her hands. "You getting those?"
Skye looks down, too, and seeing the little red trucks brings a light, fluttery, feeling of nostalgia to her chest and makes her smile softly. She hasn't thought about that boy in years. The bad memories always seem to overwhelm the few good ones.
Skye's hands tighten around the package, and she looks up at Coulson. She wants them. But this is supposed to be a supply mission. Things they need to survive. She doesn't need them.
Her smile fades. "I don't think-"
Coulson's face changes suddenly, and he plucks the package right out of her hands before discarding them in his basket. "We're getting them," he says with a firmness she doesn't dare argue against (she doesn't want to, anyway).
And Skye climbs into them as soon as they get back to the motel, and something in her chest is soothed.
(After they take down Garrett and Ward, her team starts getting her things with little fire trucks on them, and each gift makes her heart leap, and she can name every single model she's handed except for the newer ones. And when she does come across one she doesn't know, she spends her substantial free time at night learning everything she can about it.)
….
Skye watches Jemma work, hunched low over her microscope, and the slight scowl is as cute as it is amusing every time a stray stand falls forward in the way.
After another impatient huff, and she gets annoyed enough to start rifling through drawers looking for a headband, Skye boosts herself off of her perch.
"Here," she says, turning Jemma's head to face forward and starts working her fingers through the soft strands.
Jemma freezes like a deer in the headlights, though it seems more from confusion rather than from discomfort, so Skye keeps going. "What are you doing?" she hedges.
"I'm going to braid your hair," Skye informs, starting to separate the pieces. "Head back please."
Jemma tilts her head back and stares up at Skye with curious eyes. And Skye… well, her hands fall into a familiar pattern and her shoulders relax and something in her chest eases at this easy, mindless, task.
A peace falls over Skye, but then her task is over all too soon- Jemma's hair in a perfect french braid that isn't too tight or loose.
When she's done, Jemma turns to look at Skye for a moment, expression scrutinizing, and it makes Skye uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough that she starts to fidget before her mind screams at her to be still, and she consciously stills herself.
Jemma blinks, and then starts shuffling through her drawers. "Can you do me a favor?"
"Sure," Skye relaxes, glad to have something to do. Her eyes widen when Jemma emerges with a mass of tangled wires that look like just one massive knot.
"This has been sitting here since we first transitioned from the Bus, and I just haven't found time to try untangling them all. If you're not too busy, do you mind…?"
"Sure," Skye says, surprised but taking the mass of wires back to her perch. It's a mindless task that Skye can do without thinking, and Skye relaxes into it with a happy sigh.
It reminds her of helping some of her younger foster siblings to braid hair, and days where she sorted through what seemed like miles of Christmas lights. They were easy tasks where she didn't get in trouble for fidgeting, because she was being productive, and she was usually left alone in her task.
No one complained when she was being productive, and she enjoyed it anyway. It let her mind drift off and a rare calm to settle over her.
When she looks up again, there is a small smile playing on her lips as she finds Jemma still watching her. Skye might feel uneasy if Jemma's expression wasn't so soft.
Instead, she feels weirdly embarrassed. "What?" she asks, and Jemma's own smile cracks wider.
"Nothing," she says, and then turns back to her microscope. "Would you mind if I asked you to braid my hair again, sometime?"
"Not at all," Skye hums, absently working on a particularly difficult knot.
(Later that day, Fitz flops down on the couch in a dramatic huff, head landing in Skye's lap, and asks if she could braid his hair. And Skye smiles bemusedly, because his hair is far too short to braid- but he insists she try, so she spends the next few hours playing with the curly hair, twisting it around her fingers, and doesn't even realize that hours have passed like they can when she's immersed in the world of hacking.)
(Skye laughs when Hunter comes in a few weeks later, donning a blonde wig and requesting a complicated updo, and Skye does it anyway because he seems content to sit under her ministrations even if he does complain about the wig itching.)
(And a homeless pile of tangled cables and wires for some reason finds home in a box next to the couch in the lounge, and what else is she supposed to do except work on them when she has nothing better to do with her hands when they are all just hanging out and goofing off?)
….
Daisy nearly jumps out of her skin when the dog bursts out of nowhere, and she almost quakes it before the large dog-grin and flopping tongue register, rather than sharp teeth and vicious snarls.
Its tail wags like crazy as it trots up to them, which is strange because they are all a bit bruised and bloody and just want to go home.
But it's a dog and Daisy immediately drops down to her knees, the exhaustion wiped from her bones, and she laughs as the dog wiggles into her arms and bathes her face in excited kisses, and she buries her overwhelming burst of joy into the dog's furry neck.
She had befriended a stray dog when she was little, and he used to hang around the orphanage whenever Daisy returned. Daisy had thrown rocks and screamed like a crazy person to chase off a small group of older boys taunting it with sticks. Somehow, she didn't scare off the dog, too, and it started following her around. The dog was her occasional companion for about four years, and the best thing about the orphanage, until one day she got back from a foster home and the dog was just gone. She looked, but he was nowhere to be found. Daisy chose to believe that he found a nice, loving family to take care of him- take care of him like Daisy never could have properly managed.
A dog appearing now, just after a rough mission, is unexpected, but it quickly veers away from an irritation with the complete, rare, joy of their resident inhuman.
It softens the exhaustion, and May raises her eyes, to make sure no one has witnessed the brief break in her stony mask, but all their eyes are on Daisy and the dog. Her eyes catch Coulson's expression in particular- the complete adoration and a damn light in his eyes and-
"No," May says firmly, and Coulson's head jerks up to gape at her.
"But-"
"No-" May growls, enunciating each word so there is absolutely no confusion. "Damn it, Phil- we are not keeping the damn thing. We live on a secret base- we cannot take care of a dog."
He turns pleading eyes from May to Daisy who is looking up at them in confusion, but she quickly gets distracted by the dog's insistence of having all of her attention. And May's resolve cracks, it wavers, but she doesn't let it show because Coulson will latch onto that flicker with both hands and not let go until she inevitably gives in.
She levels him a hard stare, and doesn't blink, and the rest of their little family exchange looks between 'mom' and 'dad' and their very oblivious powerhouse of an inhuman.
(Somehow- somehow- they are suddenly back at the base and the dog is on the couch and snuggled up contently in Daisy's equally happy arms. But it's just until they find it a proper home.
Coulson and his damn strays. He got it from Fury.
May wonders, a bit vindictively, how the ex-Director would react if May tracked down whatever hole he's hiding in and just dumped the dog on him to deal with.)
A/N: There was a request a while back for happier memories from Skye's past, so here it is.
Please review!
~Silver~
