Skye was having trouble sleeping again. After all of the excitement of the soccer game and the shouting match that Bobbi's friends had gotten into with Ward's brother – his brother, of all people – everyone was a little on edge and more than a little exhausted by the time they all got home. Bobbi had totally clammed up after the fight, her eyes getting that glazed look on them that Skye had come to recognize as a sign of a total shutdown.
Jemma, too, had been quiet, although she didn't seem as shellshocked as Bobbi did. She had tapped the whole car ride home, and she hadn't let go of Skye's hand since the older boys had started arguing with Christian, but she hadn't had any trouble telling May that her homework was finished when she had been asked, or pointing out the constellations to Phil that she spotted through their bedroom window as she got ready for bed.
Skye hadn't really been too shaken by the fight. She had seen plenty of scuffles over the years, and participated in her fair share as well. And if Christian Ward was anything like his brother, which Skye suspected was highly likely, then he probably deserved to get pummeled by Hunter. No, Skye frowned as she lay there in bed. No one really deserves to get hit, she corrected herself. She was trying to be better about that, ever since Phil had talked to her and Jemma and Bobbi about how punishments should work, and especially ever since he and May had been so fair and understanding with her own punishment.
Still, she couldn't help but feel like she would probably have done the same thing if she was in Hunter's shoes. She practically had with her own Ward on more than one occasion, although she'd had people like Trip to help keep her head on straight. Hunter may be kind of a weirdo, in that mystifying, 'teenage boy who laughs at his own jokes' kind of way that Skye had yet to wrap her head around, but wanting to protect your loved ones by any means necessary was something she had no trouble comprehending.
So, it wasn't really the fight that was keeping her awake, as far as she could tell. Skye rolled over grouchily, trying to get comfortable, but nothing she tried seemed to work. Her mind was still churning away, and her hands and feet were feeling tingly, like she needed to get up and run around the house six or seven times just to get the sensation out. She flipped over again, growing more and more frustrated.
"Skye?" Jemma's gentle voice delicately broke the silence that had been pressing down on Skye's ears. It was like the quick and tidy way Phil broke eggs when they were cooking together – just a small, satisfying little cracking sound that opened up a whole egg of possibilities. "Are you awake?"
"Yeah," Skye murmured. "I can't sleep."
"Me neither."
Skye propped herself up on one elbow and reached over to flick on the lamp by her bed. The yellow glow that it gave off filled the room with a cozy light that only took Skye a few seconds to adjust to. Jemma was curled in her bed, facing Skye, and looking thoroughly unsleepy.
"I don't know why, I just can't turn my brain off," Skye admitted, sitting up fully and drawing her knees to her chest.
"A lot has happened today," Jemma offered. "You may still be processing everything. Even computers need time to recalibrate their data from time to time."
"What about you?" asked Skye. "Are you still processing, too?" Jemma was quiet for a moment.
"Maybe a little. This morning feels like a long time ago. There were lots of feelings today."
Skye nodded pensively. There had been a lot of feelings that day. All of the emotion of worrying about being caught, arguing with Jemma, feeling guilty when she was caught and afraid of her punishment, then relief and excitement when May and Phil hadn't punished her too much and had offered to help find her parents. The morning felt like ages ago. Then there was all the excitement of going to the game, and seeing Fitz, and eating popcorn, and watching Bobbi's friend score the winning goal. That had been more fun than Skye had had in a long time, and then it all came crashing back down when Christian Ward had come in and ruined things. He was so like Grant in so many ways, and Skye couldn't decide if she was afraid of him or just fed-up with jerks like him.
"Do you want to say what you're processing?" Jemma asked. She had noticed how wrapped up in her own thoughts Skye had become. Skye shrugged and picked at a loose thread on her quilt. It seemed like a lot to go into, but she knew that talking with Jemma always made her feel better. She felt kind of bad about unloading everything onto her all at once, though, especially when Jemma still had some processing of her own to do, it seemed.
"You can if you want to," Jemma assured her. When Skye didn't immediately take her up on the offer, Jemma stretched out an arm and picked up the book that was laying next to her bed. Skye squinted at the cover and saw that it was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. One of Jemma's favorites. "I'm going to read until I get tired, but I can listen, too, if you change your mind," Jemma told her with a small smile.
Skye nodded, and decided that she could work on something too until she was ready for sleep. She hung upside down off of her bed and dug out her squirreled away computer parts that she had stashed the night she had switched rooms. She hadn't made much progress in the last few weeks, but she was in the middle of straightening out all of the crumpled wires and connectors on a piece of half-smashed motherboard. They sat in silence for a few minutes, Jemma turning a page every so often, and Skye scowling at the cracked plastic and bent metal while she twisted and tinkered away with her tools.
After a while, Skye found herself beginning to speak. Somehow it was easier to talk when her hands were occupied with the motherboard and her attention was fixed on the work. She began to trace through the different pieces of her day, trying to explain what had been good and bad, and how each part had made her feel. Jemma was an excellent listener, commenting in all the right places and reassuring Skye whenever she got too tangled up in her own words. It helped for it to feel more like a conversation than just Skye dumping her every thought and feeling into Jemma's lap like a big, slimy trout that no one knew what to do with.
"…and then all that stuff happened with Ward. The big Ward, Christian," Skye continued, having reached the part of her day that was still bothering her for some reason.
"He was frightful," Jemma said. "And he was so much like his brother."
"I wonder what they're like together, at home?" pondered Skye. "Do you think they're nice to each other, because they're from the same family so they're on the same rung of the social ladder, or do you think they're just as nasty to each other as they are to us?"
"I… I really don't know," Jemma faltered. "I hadn't really thought about it."
"I guess it doesn't really matter," Skye shrugged. "They're huge jerks either way."
"And poor Fitz," frowned Jemma. "I don't understand why they're both so horrible to him."
Skye nodded sympathetically. "I get why Hunter wanted to pound him, though, after all that stuff he said about Fitz, and the way he treated Bobbi. It wasn't just being mean, it was like he was making threats." Jemma shuddered and closed her book.
"Do you think we should have told?" she asked finally. "I mean, when Phil asked what happened, do you think we should have said?"
"I don't know," said Skye. Sensing the weight of their conversation had shifted, Skye set her computer pieces to the side as well. "I don't know if it's for us to tell. Hunter didn't want to. I'm not sure about Bobbi. I couldn't tell if she didn't want to, or if she just couldn't."
"Do you think she's okay?" Jemma's eyes were swimming with concern, and Skye felt her heart swell at the sight. Jemma was always so watchful of other people's feelings it made Skye feel like she didn't deserve her sometimes.
"She did seem kind of freaked out," Skye admitted. "Maybe she doesn't like fighting. Maybe it makes her think of…" Skye stopped herself. It wasn't her place to guess.
"She was really nice to me this morning," Jemma said softly after another minute or so. "I was so worried about you getting into trouble that I…" She trailed off, lost for the word to describe the state she had nearly worked herself into. "But she tried to make me feel better. She let me list nucleotides to take my mind off of it."
"That is really nice," Skye teased gently. "She must like you a lot if she let you list nuclear-tides. All those letters are super boring, if you ask me." Jemma smiled at the playful ribbing, and didn't even correct Skye's pronunciation. The smile didn't reach her eyes, though, and Skye could tell she was still worried about Bobbi.
"She might still be awake," Sky suggested. "We could go check on her, if you want." Jemma smiled for real, then, and practically popped off of her bed.
"I think we should," Jemma said, nodding firmly. Skye bit back a smile at Jemma's eagerness to go and look in on Bobbi. It was like she had made up her mind long before, and all she had been waiting for was for Skye to make the suggestion.
They tiptoed out of their room and across the hall, then stood poised outside of Bobbi's shut door. Neither one made an immediate move to knock. As much as Skye knew Jemma wanted to check on Bobbi, she knew she didn't want to bother her, either. Still, as far as Skye was concerned, there was only one way to find out if Bobbi was up to see them or not, so she rapped softly on the door before Jemma could lose her nerve.
"Bobbi," Skye hissed through the door. "It's us. Are you awake?" She pressed her ear to the door and strained to listen for sounds of movement. Jemma leaned in close behind her, her breath tickling the back of Skye's neck. Skye thought she heard the sound of someone shifting in bed, and then the unmistakable thump of crutches on the floor. She took a step back from the door quickly, pulling Jemma along with her, just as the knob turned and half of Bobbi's face peered out from behind the door.
"Skye? Jemma? What are you doing up? It's late," Bobbi said, her eyebrows scrunched up in confusion. Skye nudged Jemma forward to speak. It had been her idea, and Skye didn't want to take credit for Jemma's abundant kindness.
"I…" Jemma faltered. Skye could see her shoulders tensing, and didn't have to look down to know Jemma was tapping against her leg. She gave Jemma an almost imperceptible nod, trying to encourage her. Jemma cleared her throat. "We just wanted to check on you. To see if… you were all right after…" Jemma flittered her free hand out into space to signal the kerfuffle that had transpired. Bobbi didn't move at first, and didn't say anything either for what felt like a centuries-long pause to Skye. Then, she clicked herself backwards into her room and pulled the door the rest of the way open, silently inviting Jemma and Skye to come in. Skye grinned.
As they stepped into the room, Skye looked around quickly and took stock of what had changed since she'd moved out. Most of the furniture was the same, save for the new bed that had been delivered a few days after Bobbi's arrival, and Bobbi hadn't changed much in the way of décor. The main difference was the presence of Bobbi's clothes hanging out of the dresser and in the closet, and school things piled up on her desk. The wooden sticks – her batons, she'd called them – were laying on top of the bed, which hadn't yet been turned down. That at least made Skye feel better, knowing that they hadn't woken Bobbi up.
"You can sit," Bobbi said awkwardly, trying to clear off the desk and scoop up her batons at the same time and succeeding only in setting herself off-balance. She took a second to right herself, then settled for grabbing the batons and taking the seat at the desk, leaving the now clear bed for Skye and Jemma.
"Sorry," she said flatly, ducking her head a little. "I was in the middle of a couple things. I didn't expect—"
"No, it's okay," Skye promised. "We're the ones who came by unannounced."
"We can go, if you want to be alone," Jemma said hurriedly, rising from the bed as quickly as she had sat down on it.
"No, no, you can stay," Bobbi told them. "I just meant that I would have cleaned up a little if I knew you were coming."
"We don't mind," smiled Skye. "My room is usually way messier. Jemma makes me keep ours clean, which does make it easier to find stuff, but—" Skye was cut short by the sound of Jemma clearing her throat. "Right, focus." Bobbi smiled a little at their exchange, which Skye took as a good sign.
"It was nice of you two to come and check on me," she said. "You didn't have to do that."
"We were worried," said Jemma softly. "You seemed upset after the game." Skye watched as the corners of Bobbi's mouth pulled tight in a kind of grimace. The older girl began to pump her hands back and forth, spinning the batons she still held in them around expertly. It was a little mesmerizing to watch the acumen with which Bobbi's fingers were able to wriggle and wrap around the wood as it spun in her hand.
"The whole thing with that guy Ward just kind of… I didn't react well," she said finally. Her eyes were fixed on her batons, and Skye wondered if Bobbi found it easier to talk while her hands were busy, too.
"What are you talking about?" Skye asked. "You didn't do anything wrong." In Skye's experience, the phrase "reacted badly" was usually reserved for some of her more aggressive outbursts, like the time she had accidentally knocked out a boy's front teeth at school when he had grabbed her too hard during tag. In Skye's defense, his teeth had been loose anyway, and he had been cheating the whole time at the game, trying to grab her and slow her down so she would get tagged instead of him, but the teacher hadn't seen it that way.
"I guess I just didn't handle it the way I thought I would. I didn't think it would bother me so much to see him and Hunter get into it like that."
"But it did," Jemma supplied. Bobbi nodded.
"It's not like I haven't seen fights before," she explained. "Something about the way they were yelling just… I don't know, it's stupid."
"It's not stupid," Skye said seriously. She thought back to the way she had cowered in front of Phil their first morning here, even though he hadn't done anything but make sure she hadn't hurt herself too badly on the broken glass, or how Jemma still got nervous around the broom. "You can't help the way you react to stuff, especially if it reminds you of bad things."
"It's a naturally encoded, biological response," Jemma nodded. Her expression clouded over momentarily. "That doesn't make it any less unpleasant, though."
"No, I know," Bobbi sighed. "You're right. It's just weird, I guess. I didn't use to be that way about stuff like that, is all." Skye cocked her head to one side and waited for Bobbi to elaborate. When she didn't, Jemma took the opportunity for a follow-up question.
"What do you mean?"
It took Bobbi a while to respond. Her face was puckered in thought, and her eyes looked stormy. Still, she didn't seem upset, and she didn't tell Skye and Jemma to leave, so they waited patiently for her answer.
"It's hard to explain," she began slowly. "It's like… I feel like there are two different versions of myself. It used to be that there was the version of me that I was at school, and the version of me that I was at home. At school I was…" she trailed off, searching for the right words. "People didn't mess with me at school. I wasn't mean or anything, I just kept to myself and didn't put up with people trying to push me around, so people stopped trying after a while. I was tough on the soccer field, I got good grades, I hung out with my teammates. I was… normal, I guess. As normal as I could be. At home was different, since it was just me and my... dad." She stumbled a little over the word 'dad,' and it sounded like her throat was growing thick. Skye didn't say anything, though. She wasn't sure she had ever heard Bobbi talk this much all at once, and she didn't want to interrupt.
"Things weren't all that good with him," Bobbi continued. "I know you know he was the one who messed me up before I came here. It was like that a lot. I was small. I tried to be quiet and stay out of his way, and if I couldn't do that, then I'd try not make him any madder than he already was. I was a different person at home, and nobody at school saw that person, and my dad didn't see the person I was at school."
Skye's chest ached as she listened to Bobbi recount what her life had been like. She had lived with some crummy people before, even people who had hurt her, although never enough to send her to a hospital. The biggest difference, however, was that Skye could blame her experiences on rotten foster parents who didn't care about her because she wasn't theirs. Bobbi couldn't say that. The person who hurt her was supposed to be one of the people who loved you no matter what.
"And now, even though I'm not living with him, I still feel like there are two versions of me," Bobbi admitted. "They're just not what I was expecting. I thought when I got away from him, I'd be the brave kid from school all the time, but I'm not. I'm never her. Instead, I'm the scared one. The one who gets jumpy about a fight, or who freaks out over what shirt to wear or the fact that she can't text Hunter her address because she doesn't have a phone."
Bobbi was getting worked up, now, spinning her batons harder and speaking so quickly it was like her words tripped over themselves as they poured out of her. "And she doesn't want to explain to Hunter why she doesn't have a phone, or why she lives at her teacher's house, because then she would have to explain about how utterly screwed up she is and how she's been lying about her life since the day they met, and then he and Mack and everyone else will know that she's the sad little weak and scared girl and not the strong put-together one she's been pretending to be this whole time."
Skye and Jemma sat there in a stunned silence for a minute, taking in everything Bobbi had just said. To Skye's surprise, tears started leaking from the corners of Bobbi's eyes, although she brushed them away brusquely almost as soon as they fell.
"You're not weak," Skye said quietly, after a beat. "Being afraid doesn't make you weak, and not being able to stand up to your dad doesn't make you weak either. He's a grownup. You're not supposed to stand up to him. You shouldn't have to. He should be standing up for you, not being the thing you have to stand up against." Bobbi let out a shuddery laugh that sounded more like she was trying to keep herself from crying again than an expression of amusement.
"Skye's right," Jemma murmured. "I think you're very brave, and strong. Your being here means that you are. And you're nice, too, which I think is even more important. You made me feel better this morning when I was worried about Skye. A lot of foster siblings wouldn't do that."
"That feels like such a long time ago," Bobbi said, a little dazed. After a few seconds, she perked her head up and twisted around to pick up something off of her desk. "That reminds me, Jemma, I have something for you."
"Really?" Jemma asked. She looked intrigued and excited at the prospect of the surprise gift. It wasn't often that people just handed out presents to her or Skye.
"My friend Natasha gave it to me today, because she thought you might like it," Bobbi explained as she held out a twisty string of beads. "It's a DNA bracelet. It's got two strings to be the sides of the double-helix, and the beads all have As, Ts, Gs, and Cs on them. I just finished putting it together right before you came in here." Jemma's face was stunned, but the expression was quickly replaced with utter joy as she examined the bracelet.
"It's perfect," she breathed. "Thank you." Bobbi gestured for her to hold out her wrist, then neatly tied the strings around Jemma's arm in an expert knot.
"I wasn't sure if you'd like a DNA one, Skye, but I can make you something different tomorrow, if you want," Bobbi said bashfully. "I can see if there's something to do with computers, maybe." Skye beamed and nodded eagerly. She couldn't believe how nice Bobbi was to want to make her one, too, and to remember that Skye liked computers as much as Jemma liked DNA.
"Hey Bobbi," Skye said suddenly, a thought starting to form in her brain. "You said Hunter and them didn't know about the other you, right? Is that why your friend Mack called us your cousins tonight?" Bobbi blushed.
"Yes," she mumbled. "I didn't know how to explain everything to them when we first met, so I let them believe that I got hurt in a car accident and that I'm staying with Phil and May until I get better. I also might have lied and said that Phil was my uncle. I feel really bad about it, but I don't know how to fix it now."
"You should know, Fitz knows about us being foster kids, and he knows that you're our foster sister," Skye told her.
"We didn't know it was a secret," Jemma said worriedly. "And we didn't know he was related to your friends, otherwise we wouldn't have said anything."
"He might not say anything about it to Hunter," Skye suggested. "He didn't seem to notice when Mack said it tonight."
"But just in case, it might be easier to tell the truth sooner rather than later," Jemma finished. That hadn't exactly been where Skye was going with it, but she should have figured that Jemma would be in favor of being honest.
"If it helps," Skye added with a shrug, "I don't usually tell people I meet at new schools that I'm a foster kid, but when we told Fitz, he took it really well. Maybe Hunter and your other friends will, too." Skye felt a little odd, giving so much counsel to a kid who was two years older than her, and in high school, but she felt like maybe it was okay for her to fill the role of advice-giver temporarily, as the one with the most experience with the topic in question.
"Maybe, but you didn't lie to Fitz for weeks before you told him the truth," Bobbi pointed out. "I never should have done it, but I'm in over my head now. They're all going to hate me when they find out I'm a liar."
"You don't know that," Jemma soothed. "Good friends wouldn't hate you."
"That's true," Skye nodded. "Jemma gets mad at me when I do bad stuff sometimes, but she never hates me, and she doesn't stay mad for long, especially once I apologize. Friends understand."
"I hope you're right," Bobbi said quietly. "Thanks. For everything tonight. I didn't know how much I needed someone to talk to, I guess."
"Hey, that's what foster sisters-slash-fake cousins are for," Skye grinned. Jemma nodded shyly beside her, and the corners of Bobbi's mouth tugged up into a small smile of her own.
When they returned to their room and climbed back in bed, Jemma seemed much more content than she had earlier, and Skye was pleased to find that she was suddenly very tired. Whatever had been buzzing around in her head and keeping her up had been resolved, it seemed, and it didn't take more than a few seconds once her head hit the pillow for sleep to overtake her.
Thanks again for reading! Hopefully you didn't mind some more Bobbi-centric chapters, but I felt like it was time to give her a little extra attention :) I'd love to hear what you thought!