TW for mention of violence/physical abuse
It had been a week since the disastrous encounter with Ward in the gym, and true to his word, Trip seemed to have smoothed things out between everyone involved. Ward had taken to ignoring her completely, save for an assortment of nasty looks from a distance, but she was more than happy to handle glares and icy stares in place of the alternative.
Fitz had been a little more skittish than usual for a few days after the whole debacle, but he'd informed Skye and Jemma that his arrangement with Ward was back to business as usual and Skye felt like she owed it him to take him at his word.
Her days at school were becoming more and more routine, and even though most of her classes were harder than what she was used to, she actually found herself looking forward to going to school most days, which was a first for her. She figured it had more to do with the time she got to spend with Jemma and Fitz more than anything, but she still considered it a small personal victory that she didn't completely dread the seven hours she spent at school every day.
Trip had even started hanging out with them from time to time, which made for an interesting dynamic. Every couple of days or so he would show up at their lunch table and join them, something that had shocked Skye the first time he'd done it.
"Aren't you going to get in trouble with Ward for eating with us?" she asked. She craned her neck to try and catch a glimpse of Ward, but he was blocked by his usual posse of football goons and popular girls.
"Ward's not the boss of me," Trip said defiantly. He paused for a minute, then cracked up at the shocked looks on Skye, Jemma, and Fitz's faces. "Oh, come on, girl, you know I'm smarter than that. Ward thinks I'm keeping tabs on you, keeping you all in line."
"He really fell for that?" asked Skye incredulously. She wouldn't have called Ward a genius by any means, but she knew he wasn't a total dolt, either.
"It was his idea," Trip told them. "He thinks I have some power of persuasion over you all. Told me to pretend to be your friends so that he'd have an inside man."
"So you're a double agent, then," teased Skye.
"You don't think I can pull it off?" Trip teased back. "I'm basically the definition of calm, cool, and collected. I was born to be a secret agent!"
"Not exactly confidence inspiring," Fitz mumbled. Something was going on with him, but Skye hadn't been able to figure it out yet. It wasn't just the Ward thing, which Fitz had mostly bounced back from, and as far as she knew he wasn't still fighting with his cousin. The only thing she could figure was that Fitz didn't like Trip very much, but she had no idea why. Trip had been nothing but nice to them, and he was helping them with their plan to take down Ward. Sometimes Fitz was fine around him, and the pair of them would joke back and forth like normal friends, but other times Fitz would get grumpy and sullen around Trip. As far as Skye could tell, there was no discernable pattern to Fitz's moods, so she did her best to roll with them. It was possible that Jemma knew something that she didn't, but if so, Jemma hadn't felt the need to share it with Skye.
"I think you'd make an outstanding agent, Trip," Jemma assured him. It had taken Jemma a while to warm up to Trip the way Skye had, but she had started talking to him after a few days of observation, which Skye took as a good sign. Now that Skye actually had multiple friends at school, she wanted to do her best to make sure everyone got along.
Besides her friends, the other pressing issue on Skye's mind these days was the impending parent-teacher conferences that May and Phil had signed up for. Miss Hill had informed them one day in homeroom that, because they were older and "more capable of taking ownership of their own education," they would each have to be there for a part of the meeting.
"You're all mature enough to be a part of the conversation surrounding your learning," Miss Hill explained to a grumbling class. "You'll come to the meeting with your parents, and for the first part, you'll lead the discussion about your strengths, the areas you need to improve in, things like that. You'll get to show your parents some of the things you've been working on, which will give all of us an opportunity to see your fine achievements firsthand."
Skye wasn't so sure about that. She knew for a fact she didn't have any "fine achievements" to show off at a meeting, and she had an uneasy feeling about what a conversation about her school performance would look like with May, Phil, Miss Hill, and herself all involved.
Still, there was no avoiding it, since Miss Hill had been utterly diligent in ensuring that May and Phil had gotten all of the information they needed in an email, plus about a dozen reminders. Miss Hill was a fairly young teacher, but she clearly had been around the block enough times to know how to thwart middle schoolers' usual tricks for getting out of things.
When the evening of the conferences arrived, Skye found herself feeling even more nervous than she had expected. It had been a long day at school, with another pop quiz from Mr. DeRosa that she suspected she had failed, and a returned math worksheet with a fat, red D leering at her from the top corner, and Phil had been even more of a stickler about homework that afternoon than usual.
"It'll be worth it to have everything done before the conference," he told them. "You don't want to have to come home tonight and keep working on it, I promise." Skye didn't say anything, opting instead to scowl at the tabletop and pick at the eraser on her pencil. Jemma, of course, was dutifully working away, zipping through her own worksheets and assignments. Skye loved Jemma dearly, but there were times where her studiousness drove Skye up the wall.
Bobbi did her homework at the kitchen table with them now, too, and she gave Skye a sympathetic look. Bobbi had warmed up to them all a lot over the past week, although she still wasn't exactly what Skye would consider a chatterbox.
"Phil, I'm tired," Skye complained. She knew she sounded whiney, but she couldn't help it. Her nerves about tonight made her skin feel like it was crawling, and doing homework was the last thing she wanted to do. "Why can't I do it later?"
"If that's the choice you want to make, I can't stop you," Phil said wearily. He had a big stack of progress reports he had been working on filling out for the last few days, and Skye knew it wore him out to work on them. "I just think if you're tired now, you'll be even more tired later, and then you really won't want to do it."
"We could read," Jemma suggested. She had finished her star chart or whatever it was that she and Fitz had to do for astronomy, and looked ready to move on to her next assignment. They were only a few chapters from the end of The Giver, and although Skye still didn't love the book, even she had to admit the story was getting intense. The main character, Jonas, was planning on running away from home, even though it was super dangerous to do that in the world that the book took place in.
Skye had tried to run away from home before. Twice, actually, but she had never made it very far either time. Once was when she was little, maybe five or six. She had tried to run away from St. Agnes after Sister Margaret had given her an especially hard rap on the knuckles for sneaking an apple out of the kitchen in between meals. She had shoved all of her clothes into her pillowcase and had marched down the stairs and right out the front door. Sister Beatrice had watched her go, and had followed her from a safe distance as Skye had walked resolutely down the street. When Skye reached the corner, she had realized she was stuck, since she wasn't allowed to cross the street by herself. Sister Beatrice had come and gotten her after that, and the nun even helped Skye unpack her pillowcase once they had walked back into the orphanage together.
The other time, Skye had been older, almost ten, and she had learned from some of her previous mistakes. She had been living with the Bryants, a particularly nasty foster family, one with bratty biological kids who taunted her for not being a "real" part of their family and a mother who was more interested in having a live-in maid than another daughter. The dad had been the worst part about that house, though. He was a shouter, and he was always complaining about money and about how expensive it was to take care of her. He also kept all of the food in the kitchen locked up.
When Skye taught herself how to pick the locks so she wouldn't starve, he got angry. He had asked her if she knew how they used to punish people for stealing back in the olden days, and when Skye hadn't responded, he undid his belt to show her exactly how people had been whipped. It wasn't the first time Skye had been hit with a belt before, but it was the first time she had been hit with the buckle end instead of the plain side. The unforgiving metal of the buckle had cut into her shoulder, hurting even more than the usual crack of leather, and he had struck her over and over again until she was left in a crumpled, quivering heap on the kitchen floor. The back of her shirt felt sticky with blood from all the places where the buckle had cut her, and her whole back felt like it was on fire.
Before Mr. Bryant had left, he had sneered in her ear that if he ever caught her stealing from him again, he'd cut off her hand, and that was the final straw for Skye. That night, after everyone had gone to bed, Skye had packed her bag and slipped out onto the dark street with every intention of getting as far away from that home as possible. What she hadn't counted on was the expensive silent alarm system that the Bryants had wired their house with, so it was only another few minutes before the police had been called and she had been rounded up.
Her foster parents had fed the police a baloney story about how their "real" kids had caught Skye stealing from them, and how she had flipped out and gotten violent with them before taking off into the night. The police bought it, of course, and didn't even bother to ask Skye if it was true. They had called her social worker and told her the same thing, and Skye had been dumped back at St. Agnes that same night. It wasn't until hours later, when Jemma had snuck her into a broom closet where they could be alone, that she had finally let herself cry.
Jemma had nursed her back to health after that, keeping the cuts that snaked across her back clean while they healed, and Skye ended up with only a couple scars thanks to Jemma's skill with antibiotic cream and improvised bandages. Skye had also been given a new social worker after the incident, which she considered to be the one silver lining in the whole ordeal. Her old one had left a particularly harsh letter in her file before requesting to have Skye reassigned, insisting that she had never worked with a kid as difficult and unmanageable as Skye before. Skye would have been more upset if she hadn't ended up getting assigned to Miss Hand right after. Miss Hand wasn't perfect, but she was the best social worker she had ever had.
"Skye? Skye did you hear me?" Jemma's voice clawed its way into Skye's brain and snapped her out of her reverie. She looked up at everyone around the table, a little bewildered as she tried to refocus on the conversation happening in front of her.
"Huh? What… um, yeah, reading," she finally managed to get out. She gave herself a little shake to clear her head. "Let's do that."
"You okay, Skye?" Phil asked. The tiredness in his voice had disappeared, replaced with deep concern. He gave her a long, careful look. "Maybe you should go lie down before we have to get ready to go…"
"No!" Skye said quickly. "I'm fine. I was just… thinking about… I mean, I was… I got distracted is all." Her words were jumping out of her mouth before she could arrange them, and she knew she wasn't making any sense. She wasn't sure if it was anxiety about the upcoming meeting or the bad memories of her time with the Bryants, but something was making her brain feel more scrambled than usual. Phil could tell something was wrong, and he put down his pen, giving her his full attention.
"Do you want to talk about what's distracting you?" he asked. Skye squirmed under his worried gaze. This wasn't a conversation she wanted to have tonight.
"No, it's fine. I should just do my math or something," she muttered, avoiding the eyes of everyone at the table. She didn't even have to look to know Jemma's brow would be puckered with worry, her big brown eyes looking balefully up at her, or that the lines on Phil's forehead would be creased up, or that Bobbi's face wouldn't reveal much, except for her eyes, which would be full of curiosities and questions.
An uneasy silence settled over the table as everyone went back to their own work, but Skye couldn't stop the hive of bees that was buzzing around in her head, replaying her memories and pestering her with doubts.
"If… if somebody did something bad in this house, like really bad, not an accident, what would happen to them?" she heard herself asking. There was a quake in her voice that she wished she could get rid of, and she hadn't really intended to ask the question at all, but something inside of her made her feel like she needed to know the answer right then and there. She needed to hear Phil say it.
"What kind of bad thing?" Phil asked. "Most things aren't as bad as they seem. Usually they're mistakes, or poor choices, or—"
"A bad thing like stealing," Skye interrupted. She heard Jemma inhale sharply, and she knew Jemma had figured out what Skye was talking about. The sound of tapping quickly followed. "Something that's actually illegal. What would happen?"
"Well," Phil began slowly, "I guess the first thing we'd have to do is talk about it. See what happened and why the person thought stealing was the best choice to make in that particular situation. The person might have to give back the thing they stole, or pay to replace it, or they might have some privileges taken away. I guess that's something that Melinda and I would have to talk about and decide with the person who might have stolen."
"You wouldn't yell?" Skye asked. She made sure to look Phil right in the eyes when she spoke. She wanted to make sure he was telling her the truth. "You wouldn't hurt the person, even though they might need to be punished?"
"No, of course not. Yelling never solves anything, and it's never okay to hurt someone for punishment. I hope you know that. Skye, where's all this coming from?" Phil looked genuinely concerned about Skye's line of questioning, and Skye felt a little bad for ever thinking that he would ever be like Mr. Bryant. "Did something happen? Are you in some kind of trouble?"
"It's nothing," Skye promised. "I didn't do anything, I just… I was just thinking about… something that happened a long time ago, I guess. I just needed to know…"
"Skye, I promise you that Melinda and I will never hurt you," Phil told her. "We both believe very strongly that it's wrong to hurt other people, especially for grownups to hurt kids. Do you hear me?" He waited for Skye to nod that she understood what he was saying. "Jemma, Bobbi, the same goes for the both of you. It's very important to me and Melinda that you all know this is not a place where you are in danger. Do you know that?" Jemma's tapping slowed its pace, and she nodded solemnly, although she didn't meet Phil's eyes. When Skye looked to Bobbi, she was surprised to see the older girl's eyes were shining with gathering tears. Her jaw was set firmly, though, and she looked determined not to cry as she mirrored the same nod that Skye and Jemma had given Phil.
"You don't have to tell me anything if you don't feel like it," Phil said then, "but if you ever want to talk to me, or Melinda, about things like this, either one of us would be more than happy to listen. It's not for everybody, but I know a lot of people find it helpful to tell someone about the things that bother them. When they're ready to, of course. If you ever want to, you can talk to us about anything."
Skye suspected that Phil was hoping she would open up, but was too nice to push any harder on the issue. She was grateful that he was able to pick up on her boundaries so well and that he wasn't the type to try and test them. She was positive that if she opened her mouth to say another single word she would do something mortifying like burst into tears or spill her guts about every bad thing that had ever happened to her in her short, miserable life, and neither one of those seemed like an appealing option at the moment.
Sensing that the conversation was over for the time being, Phil returned to his papers, but Skye could tell that he still had one eye on her. She forced her face into a false smile to try and assure him that everything was fine and pulled out the math problems that Mr. Bennett had assigned to the kids who needed "extra practice." The dumb kids, like her, who got Ds on their homework and who were probably going to bomb the big unit test next week.
May walked in a few minutes later, looking a little frazzled. She seemed to relax when she saw everyone at the table together, and a faint smile crossed her face before she spoke.
"I'm so sorry, I'm running late. Fury stuck me with some extra paperwork right before I was getting ready to leave, and there was construction on the 151…"
"You're fine, honey," Phil soothed. He checked his watch. "We've got plenty of time. You go put your stuff down and we'll all start getting ready to leave, sound good?" May smiled for real, and gave Phil a quick peck on the cheek.
"I didn't even say hello," she chided herself. "How was everyone's day?" All three girls gave a variety of noncommittal answers, no one quite making eye contact with May as she looked from face to face. She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "Hmm, that good, huh? Well, I'd love to hear more detail later on tonight."
"I've got dinner waiting for that very opportunity," Phil promised, gesturing to a crockpot that was simmering away on the counter. "It should be ready to dig into by the time we get home later, and then we can catch each other up. Jemma, Skye, why don't you two pack your things up and go get your shoes? Melinda and I are going to go finish getting ready, and then we'll leave in about ten minutes, okay?" They both nodded, and Skye wasted no time in shoving all of her things roughly into her backpack. Her worksheet was definitely going to be crumpled when she pulled it out again later, but that was future Skye's problem, she decided.
She noticed that Phil gave May one of those "we need to talk about the kids once we're not in front of them" looks that she had seen so many times on grownups' faces before as he collected his own work and got up from the table. She should have known he was going to want to talk to May about how weird she had been acting earlier. Jemma was taking her time putting her things away, as usual, and Skye decided in a split second to linger beside Jemma to give May and Phil enough time to leave the room and to give herself enough time to follow them safely to eavesdrop.
Once she heard their footsteps on the stairs, she turned to Jemma and announced that she was going to go and put her backpack in their room.
"Is that all you're going to do?" Jemma asked suspiciously. Skye cast her eyes to one side and shrugged. Jemma had read her as easily as she read The Giver. Bobbi, who had been watching silently from the other side of the table, shook her head with a chuckle.
"Sound's like she's got you pegged, Skye."
"I'm just going to put my stuff upstairs, and if I happen to hear someone else's conversation on the way…" Skye shrugged again. When Jemma didn't look impressed by Skye's ambiguity, she tried another approach. "You know they're talking about me."
"They might not be," Jemma said. Skye knew she was trying to be helpful, but it was clear that even Jemma herself didn't really believe that. "Either way, it's a private conversation, Skye. You know I don't like it when you do that."
"I'm not asking you to go with me," Skye pointed out. "Besides, how else am I supposed to find stuff out? You know nobody ever tells us anything. We deserve to know things that have to do with us."
"They tell us some things," insisted Jemma. "They tell us the most important things."
"Not everything," Skye grumbled. She kicked gently at the ground, dragging her toe across the linoleum. There were so many holes in her life left by people not telling her the things she thought she needed to know. "Whatever, it doesn't matter. They're probably done talking about it now, anyway. You don't have to worry about me sinking into a life of delinquency or whatever."
She winced as soon as the words had come out of her mouth. She knew her tone had been too sharp. Jemma frowned, the corners of her mouth puckered down. Skye had hurt her feelings.
"I'm sorry," she apologized quickly. "I didn't mean it like that. I know you're just looking out for me." It wasn't until after a long, tense pause that Jemma spoke. She didn't look at Skye when she did.
"You've been acting strangely today." It wasn't a question, but Skye knew Jemma was waiting for an explanation. Skye figured she at least owed Jemma that much after snapping at her like that.
"I'm sorry," she said again. "I'm… I'm kind of… twisted up, I guess. I don't want to go to these stupid meetings tonight. I don't want Phil and May to hear about how bad I'm doing at school. I don't want you to think I'm dumb. And then in the book, Jonas is running away, and it keeps making me think about—" Her voice hitched in her throat.
"The Bryants," Jemma supplied, completing Skye's thought for her. "I thought that might be what you were asking Phil about." She stretched out a hand and brushed her fingers across the place on Skye's back where some of the scars still lingered. Skye swallowed hard. No one knew her scars like Jemma did.
"I'm just really messed up right now," Skye murmured. She stared intently at her hands in her lap, so she wouldn't have to see the look of sadness or disappointment on anybody's face. "And it's making me say things I don't mean. I'm really sorry, Jems."
"It's okay," Jemma said softly. "It's okay to be nervous or to feel…bad…when you remember bad things. The Bryants were bad."
"I was bad, too," Skye said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Bad things happen because I screw up. And I'm screwing up again, and now I'm just waiting for…" She couldn't finish her sentence. She wasn't exactly sure what she was waiting for. For the rug to pulled out from under her. For May and Phil to give up on her. For the other shoe to drop and crush her under its heel.
To Skye's surprise, Bobbi cleared her throat and began speaking hesitantly from the other side of the table.
"For what it's worth, Skye, I get it," she said. "My dad… well, he wasn't… I mean, I don't know what happened with these other people. And you don't have to tell me," she added quickly. "But I know what it's like to live in a place where all of your mistakes are ten times worse because of how someone else is going to react. I know what it's like to be afraid someone's going to… going to hurt you because of something you did wrong."
"It just makes everything so much worse," Skye admitted. "Even in places where I know nothing bad can happen when I mess up, it doesn't go away. It's like I get punished twice for every bad thing I do, and it's never going to change."
"There's always a chance," Jemma said. Her fingers still traced across Skye's back, but her eyes were far away. It was the expression that always made Skye think Jemma was seeing past the smog and gunk of their world and straight to the stars instead. "The universe is positively packed with potential energy, just waiting to be released. Everything changes eventually – a big bang, an evolutionary leap – even if it takes billions of years to do it. Maybe this time is our one in a billion."