Neither girl said another word to each other as they slipped back up the stairs and into their beds, and when Skye awoke the next morning, the bad feelings she had gone to bed with were still churning around in her stomach. Jemma wasn't usually very chatty first thing in the morning, so it didn't surprise Skye when Jemma continued her streak of not speaking, but the fact that Jemma wouldn't even look at her was like a dagger to the heart. She didn't know what to say that would get Jemma to stop being upset with her, and she definitely didn't want to say the wrong thing and make it worse, so Skye opted to say nothing at all, continuing the silence between the two.
Phil had seemed distracted when he came in to check that they were awake, and he didn't comment on tension that was sitting thick in the room. Instead, he just reminded them not to dawdle so they had enough time to eat breakfast without rushing before disappearing back down the stairs.
"Did he seem weird to you?" Skye asked once the door was closed, finally breaking the awkward stillness. "He acted like he was in a hurry, but we still have plenty of time." She glanced over at the clock that now sat on the corner of the desk to make sure she hadn't misread it.
"I'm not sure," Jemma said.
A wave of relief flooded Skye at the sound of Jemma's voice, even if it was a little shorter than usual. Jemma wasn't really the "silent treatment" type, but then again she and Skye so rarely got into disagreements as serious as the one they'd had last night that there hadn't been much opportunity for Skye to see how Jemma reacted to that kind of situation.
Of all the ways for someone to handle being mad at her, Skye considered the silent treatment the worst. She couldn't stand the sitting around and waiting for someone to finally talk to you again, or all the begging and pleading that it took for them to pay you any attention. She'd much prefer that things just get talked out. Even dancing around the subject and talking about things that didn't matter like the weather, or being yelled at, while not great, was better than the silent treatment. At least somebody was saying something.
"Maybe something's bothering him, or maybe he's got a busy day today," Jemma suggested as she pulled some clothes out of the dresser. "I don't think he finished those progress reports he was working on last night."
"That's probably it," Skye nodded. "Working on those turns him grumpy." She paused, her hand on the doorknob, and took a deep breath. "Jemma, I'm really sorry. I know you probably don't want to talk about it-"
"I don't."
"So I won't drag it on, but I want you to know I'm sorry. And I don't want you to be mad at me. I didn't mean for you to find out, and I know I shouldn't have done it."
"Are you sorry you did it, or sorry I found out?" Jemma asked after a moment, her brow knit pensively.
"I…" Skye faltered. She didn't want to lie to Jemma. She knew that would only make things worse. "I'm sorry that I did something bad. And I'm sorry that I got you mixed up in it. But I… I don't know if I'm sorry about all of it. I'm not sorry about what I learned."
"You're not?" Jemma looked intrigued in spite of herself. "Was it good news?"
"Well, not exactly. It wasn't really news, just a couple things I didn't know before." Skye stopped herself before she got too carried away. "Are you sure you want me to tell you? You said you didn't want to know before."
"I think I was more angry last night," Jemma conceded. "I'm not so angry now. I still wish you hadn't gone into the police files. You could get in really big trouble, Skye. I don't want you to go to jail."
"They wouldn't throw me in jail for that, right?" Skye said playfully. When Jemma's expression didn't change, Skye felt the humor slip away. "Right?"
"I don't know," admitted Jemma. "I don't really know very much about the US legal system. It's not as interesting as biology or astronomy."
A knock sounded on their door, then, and Phil's voice called out from the other side.
"Skye, Jemma, hurry up please. I don't want to ask again."
Phil's odd mood seemed to have carried over into the kitchen as well. He was still bustling around like he normally did, but he was acting like his thoughts were a million miles in outer space, and he and May weren't chatting with each other like they normally did. May greeted Skye and Jemma when they sat down, but her smile didn't quite reach her eyes, and she didn't try and strike up any other conversation. Even Bobbi seemed to notice something was different, and she kept cutting her eyes back and forth from May to Phil to Skye and Jemma, like she was trying to figure out what was going on and who was going to break first.
Skye was a little unnerved, but if she had learned anything from years of impropriety, it was that if you had something to hide, the best way to keep it hidden was to act as natural as you could and not draw attention to yourself. That meant blend in, so Skye took her cues from the unusually quiet room and kept her comments to herself. If she had to guess, she figured that Bobbi knew better than to rock the boat as far as grownups were concerned, especially when they were acting weird and tense, and she knew she could count on Jemma to not say a word.
By the time they had finished eating, Jemma was tapping on the tabletop from nerves, something that didn't escape Phil's notice. He tried to inject some pep into his tone as he suggested they all get ready to go.
"You all grab your things, and I'll meet you out by the car," he said with a smile that, if Skye had to be honest, looked a little forced. Not interested in lingering in the stressed-out kitchen, Skye popped to her feet and was right behind Jemma halfway across the room before Phil's voice stopped her.
"Actually, Skye, if you could hang back for a second, Melinda and I have something we want to talk to you about." Skye felt the blood drain from her face. There was no way that a good conversation was about to go down. She had never heard Phil's tone be so solemn before. Bobbi cast her a sympathetic look as she thumped past her on her crutches, but she didn't stick around to watch whatever fireworks were coming. Jemma's face was blanched, and her trembling fingers began to drum with what Skye would have guessed was the speed of a hummingbird's heartrate.
Behind them, Phil cleared his throat, and Bobbi tugged gently on the cuff of Jemma's sleeve in an attempt to get her to follow her out to the car.
"Everything's going to be fine, Jemma," May promised. "Why don't you go with Bobbi? Phil and I just need to have a quick chat with Skye, okay?" Skye gave Jemma a weak half smile, trying to mentally telegraph to her not to worry, then turned around and faced the stern faces of her foster parents. She had never seen either of them look so serious before, Phil especially. A tiny, stupidly hopeful part of her brain thought that maybe they just wanted to talk about the tutoring thing, but she knew better than to stake anything on that pipe dream.
"Have a seat, Skye," Phil said as he pulled out her chair and proceeded to sit down himself. Skye obeyed, and a wad of dread sunk into the pit of her stomach. This was a "you're in trouble" chat, or a "you're going back to St. Agnes chat." She could feel it coming. Jemma would be so disappointed with her.
"We wanted to ask you something," May began. Her words were measured and cautious, like she was choosing them carefully to not upset Skye, or maybe not to upset herself. "When I woke up this morning, I had a notification from my work email that a request had been made to change the password on my account. I've never gotten a message like that before. The database we use is pretty secure, and I know I wasn't the one who made the request. So I tried to log on to my account this morning, but my password had been changed."
Skye felt the knots of guilt and anxiety and frustration all start to twist around inside of her. How could she have forgotten something as simple as that? Of course May would have another, department-official email account for work, and of course her database account would linked to that email. She hadn't even thought of it last night, she had been so swept up in the excitement of finding her file, and she hadn't thought about needing to re-reset the password either. She had totally blown it. Jemma had been right; she was probably going straight to jail.
"Once I managed to fix the password and get into my account," May continued, "I noticed that my account had been accessed last night, and that the searches done on it were about some birth records over near Sheboygan."
Skye cringed internally at her own stupidity. She hadn't realized the database logged your searches, too. She had cleared the browser history, but not the database account history.
"So, really, what I'm trying to ask you here, Skye, is whether there's anything you'd like to tell us," concluded May. Her face was almost totally neutral, which Skye found a little unnerving. She was glad May didn't seem angry, but it was almost worse not being able to tell what she was actually feeling at all. Skye couldn't stop herself from thinking that May was probably very skilled in the interrogation room at her job, although the thought wasn't much of a comfort in the moment.
For a split second, Skye considered denying everything and acting offended that they had just assumed that she had something to do with it. She had been in plenty of houses where she was the first to get blamed for things, even if she hadn't done anything wrong, just because the foster kid with the bad track record was an easy scapegoat, but she knew that wasn't what was going on here. She knew Miss Hand had warned May and Phil about her less than savory computer habits, and she knew they knew she was capable of doing what she was being accused of. They had just talked last night about hacking the Pentagon, for Pete's sake. Plus, the topics of her searches last night were more than a little incriminating. She had been caught fair and square, and something about May and Phil made the idea of lying to their faces seem wrong.
"I…" Skye tried to speak, but her chin began to quiver before she could get the words out. She wasn't sure why she felt like crying all of the sudden. She never got blubbery over getting in trouble before. Swallowing hard, Skye forced her jaw to stay strong, and she tried again.
"I'm sorry." The apology spilled out of her before the confession had formed on her tongue. She had to let them know how badly she felt before she even attempted to explain what she had done. She didn't want them to look at her the way so many other foster parents had. Like she was the hopeless case her file made her out to be.
"I went on your computer last night and looked at stuff I shouldn't have," she admitted, her eyes locked on the tabletop.
"What exactly were you looking for?" May wanted to know. She still didn't sound angry, which Skye took as a sign to continue being honest.
"I… I was looking for my parents," she finally said. Her voice sounded as small as she felt, sitting there in that chair with May and Phil on either side of her.
"What do you mean?" Phil asked. His tone was a little confused, and maybe a little sad, too. Skye didn't dare risk looking at him, for fear that she would see nothing but dismay and disappointment on his face.
"I don't know anything about them," she told the tabletop. "But I thought if I could find something about when I was born, maybe it would tell me something about them. What their names are, where they… where they live."
"And you thought hacking into a police database was the best way to do that?" asked May. Skye scrunched her shoulders up at the steely edge in May's voice. She felt sick.
May's hand reached out across the table and rested in Skye's line of sight.
"I'm sorry, that came out harsher than I meant it to," she apologized. Skye's gaze followed May's hand up her arm and to her face. She looked genuinely sorry, although the sternness hadn't completely disappeared either.
"Skye, we're not angry, but we need you to understand how wrong of you it was to do that," Phil said. "You can't just go poking into files like that without permission. There could be some serious consequences for doing something like that."
"Police files are locked behind passwords for a reason," May added. "There are things in there that aren't available to the public because they have personal information about people, or information that could be dangerous or harmful if the wrong people got their hands on it."
"I know," said Skye quietly. "I know I shouldn't have done it."
"Is there a reason why you thought that was the best choice to make?" Phil asked. "If finding information out about your parents is important to you, why not ask me or Melinda to help you out? Or Miss Hand?"
"I wasn't thinking," Skye tried to explain. "Or, I mean, I was thinking, and I thought that maybe I shouldn't, but I just needed to know. It was all right there, and I wanted to look for myself. All Miss Hand knows is what's in my file; that I was left at the orphanage when I was a baby and nobody knew who I was or where I came from. That's what she told me. And I didn't think I could ask you guys about it. You're not really supposed to ask foster parents about your real parents. And I didn't want you to get mad or say no."
"Skye, you can ask us anything," May assured her. "Asking questions is always allowed here, that won't make us mad. We might not always know the answer, or be able to tell you what you want to hear, but we want you to feel like you can always at least ask. Then we can be on the same page."
"If there's something we need to figure out together, we can do that," Phil pointed out. "But we need to know what we're supposed to be working on in order to do it."
"Does that mean you'll help me find out stuff about my parents?" Skye asked. She was having trouble wrapping her head around the possibility that was dangling in front of her.
"If that is something that's important to you, then we will do what we can," May promised. "Is there something in particular that you're looking for?"
"I just want to know about them. To know if they're out there, if they're looking for me, or even if they don't care about me."
"Skye, I feel like you should know," Phil said cautiously, "you might not like the answers that we find."
"That's what Jemma says," Skye remarked. "She doesn't want me to get my feelings hurt, I think, but nothing can be worse than what I've already imagined."
"She's a smart girl, that Jemma," Phil chuckled. "Just like you. Which is why we're hoping that you're going to be smart enough not to do something like this again. This kind of thing can't happen, Skye."
"I know," she said. "I'll be good, I promise. I won't do it again."
"It's not about being good," May told her. "You already are good. It's about making good choices. Good choices like not hacking into secure databases to go looking for private information, or like listening to that little voice in your head that speaks up when there are things you shouldn't be doing."
"Melinda and I talked, and we think that we've come up with an appropriate consequence," Phil said. "You can't use the computer for anything except schoolwork for the next two weeks, and when you do use it, one of us needs to be supervising the whole time. Does that sound fair to you?"
Skye nodded. She had never been asked if a punishment sounded fair before, but she wasn't about to disagree. She was just glad she wasn't going to be yelled at or be forced to do something like wash all the windows or re-grout the shower.
"Okay, then we're in agreement," Phil smiled. He checked his watch and his eyebrows shot up his forehead. "And we're going to be late if we don't get a move-on," he exclaimed. He popped out of his seat and started gathering up his things, his usual boisterous energy finally returning in full force. He stopped by May's chair to plant a quick kiss on her cheek, then beckoned for Skye to follow him out the door. May waved to them both, telling them to have a good day, and Skye waved back, a little shyly.
She was overjoyed that May and Phil weren't mad, and that her punishment was basically the easiest one she had ever had, but she still felt a little embarrassed for getting into trouble in the first place. Phil and May had been nice and even understanding about the whole thing, but that didn't distract Skye from the fact that she had still messed up in a big way and had probably made them realize even more just how screwed up she really was.
When she slid into the backseat, she noticed that Jemma looked like she was practically on the verge of tears. Jemma opened her mouth to try and say something, but there was nothing to hear besides the sound of her finger keeping rapid time on her knee.
Bobbi twisted around in the front seat as much as she could to look at Skye. "Is everything okay? Jemma's really…" Bobbi tightened her jaw and flicked her eyes over to Jemma. It wasn't the first time Skye had encountered someone who didn't have a good idea of how to describe her best friend. "She's been worried, I guess. But she couldn't tell me what was wrong."
"Everything's fine," Skye replied. She turned to face Jemma then, and took her free hand to give it a squeeze. "It really is okay, I promise."
Jemma let out a shuddery breath, and the faintest of relieved smiles glimmered on her face. The tempo of her tapping slowed to a much more relaxed one, and Skye knew that at least some of Jemma's stress had abated. She was about to elaborate further when Phil opened the door to the driver's side and eased himself into the car.
"Sorry about that, I had to go back for my keys," he grinned sheepishly. He was acting much more like his usual self than he had all morning, and that seemed to put everyone at ease even more than Skye's assurances had. Skye thought it was a little odd that he was acting like nothing had even happened, but she supposed it was nice that he wasn't making a big deal about it in front of Jemma and Bobbi.
The ride was mostly quiet, with only fragments of small talk popping up here and there. The radio was tuned to a station that played some jazzy, old-sounding song that Phil hummed along too softly when no one was talking, and Skye had to admit the sound was kind of soothing. He gave her and Jemma both a big smile when they pulled up outside of the middle school and sent them away with his usual call to have a great day and to wait for him in the library after school.
Once he had pulled away and they were alone on the blacktop, Jemma turned her gaze on Skye, her eyes brimming with the questions she hadn't been able to ask in the car.
"What happened? Are you in trouble? Did they find out?"
"Jeez, cool it with the paparazzi routine, will you?" Skye joked. Jemma didn't look all that amused, so Skye dropped the bit. "Sorry. It's not funny. Yeah, they knew. I didn't cover my tracks as well as I thought I had, and May got this notification on her other email about her account being reset, so I was basically busted from the beginning."
"Were they angry?" Jemma asked, barely above a whisper. They had started to cross the blacktop towards their usual melted table, which Skye could see was waiting empty for them. Somehow, they had beaten Fitz there this morning.
"No, not really. They didn't shout or anything. They weren't happy about it, but it was more like they were disappointed, I guess. They wanted to know why I did it."
"Did you tell them?"
"Kind of." Skye shifted her weight back and forth from one foot to the other. "I told them I was looking for my parents. I don't think they knew about the email thing. About me looking at our files. I think they only knew about me going into the police files and looking up birth records."
"Birth records?" Jemma furrowed her brow. "How could you look up birth records without knowing your birthdate?"
"Because I found something," Skye said excitedly. She had wanted to tell Jemma this part since last night, but had forced herself to keep it hidden when Jemma had been so upset. Now that they had made up and Skye's subterfuge was out in the open, she could finally tell Jemma what she found. "In our files, there's a page from the day we came to St. Agnes. It talks about where we came from, what we're like, stuff like that."
"But I thought you said someone left you outside the front door. No identifying information."
"That's what I thought, too. That's what Miss Hand told me, anyway."
"Did Miss Hand not tell you the truth?" Jemma's expression was creased with concern. "I thought she told us the truth about things."
"No, she did. I was left on the doorstep, just like she said. But she didn't include all the details, probably because she didn't think they were important."
Fitz strolled up to them then, looking a little more rumpled than usual, but otherwise chipper.
"Hi," he greeted them. "Who doesn't think details are important? Details are crucial. Almost all information is encoded in details." It didn't surprise Skye that he had jumped right in to the conversation. She debated momentarily about whether to include him in her grand plan to find her parents. On the one hand, a covert mission was always better with fewer agents involved, but on the other, he was basically her and Jemma's best friend, and he already knew a fair amount about her past. Plus, he was insanely smart, so it might not be such a bad thing to have his big brain working alongside Jemma's.
"I found a file that the nuns wrote about me when I was dropped off at the orphanage as a baby. It had more details than I had known before. Like, I was dropped off on the 4th of July, and the nun who wrote the form thought I looked like I was in between zero and two months old."
"So that gives you a window for your birthdate," Jemma said, her eyes wide. Her wheels were already turning, working the problem like it was an equation or a star chart. "Which is how could start searching birth records. You have a narrower window of time, plus a general area to search in."
"Not just that," Skye cut in. She could barely contain her excitement. "I have a hospital to look at." Jemma's eyebrows shot up her forehead.
"Did you have a tag from the hospital still on your ankle or something?" Fitz wanted to know. "That would have a lot of information on it."
"No," Skye shook her head. "Not that lucky. But I was wrapped up in a blanket that the nun said came from Ames' Memorial, that big hospital down the road from St. Agnes. So that has to be where I was born, right?"
"Statistically, it's not a total guarantee," Fitz said, "but it's extremely probable. The likelihood of someone trying to obfuscate your place of birth by using a decoy blanket is astronomical. Not to mention it's also a highly impractical strategy."
"So did you find something?" Jemma asked. "If you had the hospital and a date window?"
Skye frowned. "No," she admitted. "The database wouldn't let me look at the records from Ames' Memorial. Apparently they don't do digital records that far back or something, so I kind of hit a roadblock on that. But when I told May and Phil that's what I was looking for, they said they'd try to help."
"Really?" Jemma looked impressed. "They didn't tell you to stop looking?"
"Well, they kind of did," Skye shrugged. "I'm not really supposed to do any more digging, and I'm not allowed to use the computer without supervision. But if they're going to look, then I won't have to do it all by myself."
"That's… amazing," Jemma said after a beat. "Skye, I'm very happy for you."
"I've never been so close before," Skye gushed, unable to contain herself. "It's like I've been shoveling through all this useless dirt for years now, and suddenly I've hit something solid. I can't stop digging now."
"But you will, won't you?" Jemma looked serious. "If May and Phil are going to be looking and they've asked you not to do it yourself anymore, there's not really a need for you to keep going on your own." When Skye didn't immediately respond, Jemma let out a frustrated huff. "Skye, you can't get in trouble like that again. We were lucky that your punishment wasn't anything worse than losing computer privileges, you can't risk anything more."
"Come on, Jems, I don't want to fight about this again," Skye said exasperatedly. She reeled herself back in slightly when she saw the hurt expression on Jemma's face, but she didn't cave entirely, either. "Jemma, I promise, I'm not going to do anything bad like before. I won't break any rules, and I won't get in trouble. But I can't just give up. Please understand."
"I… I do," Jemma murmured. "I do understand. I just want you to be careful. Learning about your parents won't do you any good If you wind up in jail trying to do it."
"Is that a possibility here?" Fitz asked. "Did you do something illegal?"
"No!" Skye protested. "Not really, I don't think. I definitely looked at stuff I shouldn't have, and I might have hacked into a secure police database, but I'm sure they don't send kids to jail for that kind of stuff. Nobody said anything about jail this morning when May and Phil were chewing me out."
"Well that's good," Fitz remarked. "I don't think my mum would let me come and visit you if you were in jail."