Hi there! I'm so sorry for how long it's taken me to get some new chapters up. Between finals, pandemic, and losing my job and having to move back in with my parents, things have been a little hectic, but I think I have a decent schedule set out for myself now, so hopefully I can start to write more regularly! (Also, I'm starting a new, different job with better hours, so that's good too!) This chapter's a little short, but I tried to make the next few a little longer to make it up to you all and to thank you for being so patient with me! Thanks for reading and sticking with this story :)

"What happened?"

"Is Bobbi going to be all right?" Skye and Jemma spoke simultaneously the second Phil stepped into their bedroom and eased the door shut behind him. He smiled, but Skye could tell there was some sadness in his eyes.

"I think she'll be okay. She had a hard fall, but May's with her. I think she's mostly just scared right now." He paused for a moment, deep in thought. Skye had an overwhelming urge to take his hand the way she had that afternoon, but something stopped her. Stifling a yawn, she went and sat next to Jemma, who was tapping lightly on her bedpost, and took her unoccupied hand instead. Spotting her failed attempt at masking her tiredness, Phil snapped out of his reverie and clapped his hands together softly.

"I'm supposed to be getting you two back in bed," he said, giving his head a shake. "It's way too late for any of us to still be awake." Neither Skye nor Jemma made any move towards getting back in bed, however. Jemma's brow was still creased with worry and her fingers still drummed on the bedpost, and Skye wasn't about to move away from her while she was still so fretful.

"She'll have to make sure she didn't damage any of the cartilage or tendons," Jemma said, almost to herself. "The structure of the knee is flimsy at best, and with it already being in a compromised state…"

"Hey," Phil said quietly, interrupting her rambling with a gentleness that let her know he wasn't brushing her concerns off, but that he wasn't going to let her get carried away either. "I promise, everything will be okay. May was planning on taking Bobbi to the doctor tomorrow anyway to set up her physical therapist appointments, so if anything is wrong, she'll be well taken care of." Jemma bit her lip, still grappling with her consternation, but gave Phil a small nod. A warm feeling seeped into Skye's chest at the sight of Jemma's trust, and at how deftly Phil had managed to assuage her.

"What do you say I read to you both a little bit, to help you fall asleep?" he asked, crossing over to the bookshelf and starting to peruse. Skye beamed and bounced back over to her own bed. She could definitely get used to regular reading from Phil. She looked back over to Jemma and was surprised to see her face puckered, not unlike the look she had worn earlier that day when Phil had read The Giver. Phil noticed the expression, too.

"Or not… I don't have to read, if you don't want me to, Jemma." A pink flush crept onto Jemma's cheeks, and she ducked her head. She stared at her hands, which were twisting back and forth in her lap.

"No, it's not that," she finally said, her voice unsteady. She took a shuddery breath and interlocked her fingers, then released them. "It's just… the last people who read to me out loud were my mum and dad, and…" Her voice caught then, and she brought her hands to her face, pressing them gently into the sides of her neck. After another quaky breath, she continued. "I could read by myself by the time I was three, so most people thought I didn't need to be read to. Mum and Dad loved books and stories, though, and they would still read to me even though I could do it myself. No one else has ever done it."

"How does it make you feel, to have someone read to you?" Phil asked. Jemma was quiet for a while, but neither Skye nor Phil minded waiting for her to put her thoughts in order.

"It's confusing," came her eventual reply. "I like hearing stories, that makes me happy. But it also makes me think of Mum and Dad. That feels sad. It makes me miss how happy we used to be." She paused, rifling through her extensive vocabulary to find the precise word to capture her complicated emotions. "There's not a word that's quite right for it. I thought maybe ambivalent, or agathokakological, but neither one really fits the way it feels…"

"That sounds very bittersweet, to me," Phil said. "That's the word I use to explain to Melinda how I feel sometimes. When I do things that remind me of my parents, like cooking my mother's chicken soup recipe, or watching baseball on Sunday afternoons like I used to do with my dad. It can be pretty confusing for me, too. I have happy memories of those things, and I like to do them, but it's hard to do those special things without the people you love nearby."

"Are your parents gone, too, Phil?" Jemma asked quietly. Skye watched as a fat, shiny tear rolled down her friend's cheek and plopped onto her knee, leaving a small, damp circle on the fabric of her new pajamas.

"Yes," said Phil, almost as softly as Jemma. "They've been gone for a long time, but I still miss them every day. I don't think we ever stop missing the people we love once they're gone. We carry them in our hearts for the rest of our lives, but eventually, the happy memories start to outweigh the sad ones. You don't forget the sad ones, of course, but they don't stay as sharp as time goes on. They don't hurt as much. And all those memories that you have, those things that you carry with you, they make you who you are. I can see all the ways that your parents are still with you, Jemma. Like how you love the stars and books and science, and how you care for other people. Those things that make you a wonderful person show me that you were made by some wonderful people, too."

Phil had tears in his own eyes then, but he was still smiling – a watery, loving smile that made Skye's heart ache. His words were so kind, and it was clear that they were what Jemma needed to hear, but the emptiness that Skye cradled in her own heart, the hole that she had felt for as long as she could remember, felt like it was only growing bigger. She didn't know anything about where she came from, about the people who had made her. Instead she'd had strict nuns and angry foster parents. She couldn't miss people she had never known or a life she had never had.

She swallowed her hurt down, though, when she saw Jemma get up from her bed and barrel into Phil, hugging him tightly around the waist. This wasn't about her; it was about Jemma, and as much as what Phil had said had saddened Skye, it had been just the kind of comfort Jemma had needed.

Phil looked a little taken aback by Jemma's sudden display of affection, but he quickly recovered and gave Jemma a gentle squeeze in return. The pair stayed like that for a while, no one saying a word or moving a muscle until Phil bent over and pressed his forehead lightly onto the top of Jemma's head. It was a sweet, simple gesture, and Skye had never seen anything like it. Somehow, though, she knew that it was the kind of thing Jemma would love.

"There's room for one more in here, Skye," Phil said after a minute, stretching out one of his arms in an invitation. Skye hesitated. She didn't want to interrupt what was clearly a special moment between Phil and Jemma, and she had never been good at handling affection with adults. On the other hand, however, there was something in the air that seemed to whisper to her that it would be okay. And, if she was being totally honest, it felt nice knowing that Phil didn't want to leave her out.

Before she could talk herself out of it, Skye crossed the room and tucked herself into the crook of Phil's outstretched arm. She gave him a short, sharp squeeze around the middle just as Phil's embrace enveloped her and Jemma together. His arms were strong, but he was soft and warm, too, holding on gently enough to not hurt them or make them feel trapped but tight enough to make it seem like maybe, as long as they were in his arms like this, nothing bad would ever happen to them again.

The feeling was one of the nicest Skye had ever experienced, but it unsettled her, too. Her entire life she had been forced to learn over and over again that foster parents and foster homes weren't there to make her feel safe. They were there to keep her on her toes, to sharpen her so that she could spot and handle all the crummy things that fate wanted to throw her way. Phil wasn't like the others, that much she knew, but a wheedley voice at the back of her head scratched and nagged at her, telling her that she was going soft. Get too comfortable, and you won't be able to cut it anymore when this all gets taken away from you.

"Can I tell you girls something?" Phil asked, breaking the silence and hushing the nasty voice in Skye's brain. He pulled out of the hug slightly so he could look both her and Jemma in the eye. Without hesitation, they both nodded. "You two are so remarkable. You helped me talk about something that was hard for me to say tonight, and you made me feel so much better. Thank you." Skye felt her cheeks grow warm, and Jemma's face flushed at the compliment.

"You made me feel better, too," she told him. "Thank you."

Phil smiled and gave Jemma's shoulder a squeeze. "Anytime, Jemma. Every time. That's what I'm here for. For you, and you, Skye, and everyone in this house. That's what families do – they take care of each other."

As much as Skye wanted the moment between the three of them to last forever, she couldn't keep a yawn from escaping her – a yawn that Phil could have spotted from a mile away.

"Okay, bedtime for real this time. We all should be asleep right now." He motioned for Skye and Jemma to clamber back into bed while he crouched in front of the bookcase, perusing his options.

"Do you think…" Jemma's voice faltered, her question dying in her throat before she could force herself to ask. Immediately, Phil gave Jemma his full attention, waiting patiently for her to find the words.

"Do you think, instead of reading something, you could tell us about your parents?" she asked timorously. "Just for tonight." She glanced over at Skye quickly to make sure the suggestion was all right with her, too, and Skye pumped her head up and down encouragingly. Phil's face broke into a grin.

"I would love to." He situated himself in the desk chair as Skye and Jemma nestled into their beds, eager to hear and fighting sleep.

"Let's see," Phil said. "My dad was a good man. One of the most hardworking men I think I've ever known. He cared about people. He was the football coach at the high school here, and he taught history, too. He's the reason I'm a teacher now. He died in the spring of my sophomore year of high school, and almost everybody in the whole town came out for the funeral, it seemed like. People he had taught, or coached, or just helped in some way. It felt like everybody had a story about how he changed their life. That's when I realized I wanted to be like him. To help people and have the kind of impact on my community that he did. I'm no football coach – baseball was always more my speed – but I teach, and I work with students, and I try to help them find the best in themselves. My dad did that for me.

"We didn't always see eye to eye on everything, of course, but he always made sure I knew how much he loved me. We would watch baseball together, he would read me the Captain America comic strip from the paper every morning while we had breakfast. When I was old enough, he let me help him work on this old car he was fixing up, a red convertible. He called her Lola. He loved that car. We had to sell it when he got sick, to help pay for the treatments. My mom was so broken up about it, because she knew how much Lola meant to him, but he just kept saying 'she's just metal, Jules, my insides are more important than hers' to try and cheer her up.

"My mom was the sweetest, kindest woman. She took it really hard after my dad died, but she always made sure I was okay, made sure to check in with me every night before bed. She was a great cook, and she taught me a lot of her best recipes, which you now have the honor of eating most nights. She showed me how important it is to choose kindness every day. She never hesitated to help anyone – a neighbor, a friend, someone she just met at the grocery store. I remember one time we were leaving the store one day, and this woman was sitting outside with her baby, asking people for change. And my mom just gave her our whole cart full of groceries, just like that, even though money was always kind of tight for us. I never saw the woman again, but that wasn't the important thing for my mom. The important thing was knowing that she had the power to help someone and she made the choice to use that power instead of walking away. She was kind of like a superhero that way."

Phil glanced over at Skye, whose eyes were getting impossibly heavy. Across the room, she could hear Jemma's breathing, thick and even with sleep, and the sound lulled her.

"I think maybe we should call it a night," he said quietly, standing up and making his way to the door. "Goodnight, Skye. Thanks for listening." Skye didn't answer; she had fallen asleep.

Thanks again for reading! I'm so grateful for you all. Also - who's been keeping up with the new season of AoS? Two episodes in and I'm enjoying it a lot so far :) I'd love to hear what you think about it (or about the fic, too, whatever floats your boat)!