No trigger warnings exactly, for this chapter, just know that when I started writing it, I had visions of something on the fluffy side, but instead it got real angsty... there's a breath of hope at the end, though, so never fear! I don't like to leave things too dour ;) Just be warned of angst ahead...
"Are you all right?" That was the very first thing May said to her once she had slid into the passenger seat of the car. Skye didn't usually get to sit up front, but that was the door that May had leaned over and opened, so that was where she sat. Skye didn't say anything. She was trying to ignore the deep chill that permeated her body now that she had gotten out of the rain. She was also trying to force her chin to stop quivering, and she was worried that if she tried to talk, she would start crying again. She was tired of crying, and she didn't think that May was interested in listening to her blubber. May's face was totally unreadable – a blank slate – and Skye had a sinking feeling that meant she was about to be in more trouble than she could have ever imagined.
"Are you hurt?" May flicked her eyes off the road momentarily to check Skye's reaction to the question. Her face was still emotionless, but her voice gave her away. It was worried. Skye felt bad for making May worry, so she shook her head. She wasn't hurt, at least, not in any way that May needed to be concerned with.
May reached over and fiddled with the knobs on the air conditioning, and soon soupy warm air started blowing out towards Skye.
"You must be cold," May said. "You're soaked." Skye stared down at her lap, but nodded appreciatively. She didn't know why May was being so nice. She didn't know why she hadn't started yelling yet. Skye had done something incredibly stupid and dangerous, probably more stupid or dangerous than any of her other indiscretions, and May had to come out and rescue her.
"We have nearly thirty minutes in this car together before we get home," May said pointedly. "I think you and I should use that time to have a conversation."
Skye stuck out her chin and pulled her feet up into the seat with her, tucking her knees against her chest. A conversation was the last thing she wanted to have. She'd rather just get yelled at and get it over with. She could already see where this was going to end up, and she didn't see any point in dragging out the inevitable.
"Skye, your choices right now are very limited. Either we can talk now, in the car, or we can talk at home, but not talking isn't an option." The steeliness that Skye had been expecting had appeared in May's tone. So she was mad. She was just hiding it. That was, in Skye's experience, one of the more dangerous types of anger.
"I don't have anything to say," Skye said stubbornly. If May was going to pretend like she wasn't mad, then Skye wasn't going to fall for it. Better to get the anger out in the open, draw it out now while they were still in the car rather than wait for it to explode at home.
"Well, I have some things I'd like to know, so maybe we can start there," May clipped. Skye flinched. She hadn't meant to, but something about May's voice had reminded her of the nuns for the briefest moment, and she had hated the comparison. She tried to pass the flinch off as a shiver, but May was too smart for that. She must have realized how curt her tone was, though, because she spoke more carefully the next time. "How about this: We take turns asking each other questions until we get home, and the other person has to answer truthfully, no matter what."
"100% truth?"
"100% truth. From both of us. Deal?"
"Deal, I guess," Skye acquiesced. She propped her chin on her knees. She wasn't too thrilled with the agreement, but she wasn't sure she could see any way out of it. At least this way she could get something from May in exchange.
"I think we should start with what exactly you're doing out here in the rain in downtown Sheboygan."
Skye wrinkled her nose. She should have known May wasn't going to beat around the bush. She rifled through all of the possible explanations she could give, trying to decide if any of them were good enough to walk the line between 100% truth and still shielding some of her secrets.
"I didn't have enough money for the bus back home," Skye finally said. "And I couldn't think of anywhere else to go. That's why I was sitting out here in the rain." May inhaled stiffly through her nose, and Skye could tell she was exasperated by the evasiveness of Skye's answer. Skye had told the truth, though, so she considered her end of the bargain held up. To her credit, May didn't ask a follow-up question, although Skye thought she must be dying to.
"Okay," May said eventually. "It's your turn to ask a question."
"How did you find me?" It wasn't the question Skye had been planning on asking, but it slipped off her tongue before she realized it was there.
"I drove around all the bus stops I could find in Sheboygan," May said, in a cool imitation of Skye's vagueness. When she noticed the confused look on Skye's face, she continued. "The school called me and Phil when you didn't show up for class," she explained. "When we got there, Jemma had been called down to the office." A pang shot through Skye's heart. She could imagine how terrified Jemma must have been talking to the principal. Yet another thing for her to feel guilty about. "She was really worried, Skye. We all were. No one knew where you were, if you were safe."
"Jemma knew," Skye said, almost to herself. "Jemma told, didn't she?" She found that there wasn't a trace of frustration or disappointment towards Jemma anywhere in her. It hadn't been fair for her to ask Jemma to lie for her. Somehow, she knew that Jemma had only been trying to help.
"I'll let the two of you work that out. I just think you're very lucky you have someone who cares so much about you. Someone who would be brave enough to do something that scared her just to make sure you were safe."
"I know," Skye said, her voice small. "I shouldn't have put her in that position. I don't… I don't deserve someone like her."
"Skye, what you did was not okay, but that doesn't mean you don't deserve people who love you and care about you. Do you understand that?" Skye blinked hard to keep fresh tears from gathering in her eyes. May was wrong, but Skye didn't know how to explain that to her without making herself sound like an even worse person than she already was. May was waiting for an answer, so Skye just shrugged.
"Is that your next question?" she asked sarcastically. Her brain was shouting at her to stop being so rude, but a stubborn defensiveness was bricking up her heart. May didn't know anything about Skye. She didn't know just how undeserving Skye really was. May was supposed to be honest, but telling her that she deserved someone like Jemma felt a lot like a lie.
"No, I guess not," May relented. She paused for a minute, focused on the road as she changed lanes. When she spoke again, she sounded like she was trying hard not to be upset. "What were you trying to do here, Skye? Why come to Sheboygan in the first place? That's my real next question, and I want the whole story this time."
The whole story. Where to even start? Skye swallowed hard. How far back did May really want her to go? To this morning? To yesterday afternoon with Ward in the library? To the night she cracked into May's email? To the day she was dumped on the doorstep like a newspaper nobody would ever open? Skye locked and unlocked her fingers in front of her, stalling for time. Her hands were still so cold. She blew on them, trying to defrost her fingers as much as her mouth.
"I came to find my parents," Skye finally said. She was staring at her hands. She couldn't force herself to look at May while she confessed the whole messy truth. "Or, I guess, to find out stuff about them. I went to the hospital where I might have been born, and I tried to get the records, because I couldn't find them online. They said on the website that you had to ask in person." She paused, took a breath. Her heart was beating faster than she wanted it to.
"I know you said you were working on it, and I wanted to believe you, but I just… I couldn't wait anymore. I need to find them, especially after… I just need to find them, okay? I need to not be a burden anymore—"
"Skye, you're not a burden—"
"Don't lie!" Skye snapped. "You're not supposed to lie right now! I am a burden. You spent all day trying to find me because I didn't listen to you and I did something stupid. I can't read, I'm flunking out of school, and I get in trouble all the time, but I still keep breaking rules. I've been using the computers at school, even though it's against my punishment, I took a bus to a whole different city, I tell lies and get in fights, and I know you know about all the other bad stuff I do all the time because I went on your computer and looked at my file in your email, so I saw it all there."
"Skye, I need you to calm down—"
"I don't want to be calm!" Skye shouted. Her eyes stung with angry tears, and her hands were balled up into shaking fists. How had she managed to screw everything up so spectacularly? The one good thing in her life besides Jemma, and she was throwing it all out the window onto the rain-soaked highway.
May pulled the car over to the side of the road and slowed to a stop in the shoulder. She turned in her seat so that she was looking at Skye and nothing else.
"Okay, that's fine. You don't have to be calm right now if you don't want to. Whatever you want to feel, you can feel it right here. I'm not going anywhere, the car's not going anywhere. We can stay here as long as you need." Skye was crying for real now, agitated, jerky sobs of frustration and pent-up emotion, and she buried her head in her knees, wrapping her hands around the back of her neck, trying to block it all out. All of the rage, all of the hurt and guilt and shame. Why couldn't she just be good? Why couldn't she be good enough?
Somewhere deep inside her, a guttural bellow of anguish was building up, trying to claw its way out of her chest. Before she knew what she was doing, she was sitting up straight again, beating her fists as hard as she could against the dashboard with a shout of pure emotion – just one quick pound that sent shockwaves radiating up her arms. The force of the impact was enough to startle her out of doing it again, and just as soon as everything had exploded inside of her, everything flooded away, leaving her feeling hollow and exhausted and ashamed.
"It's my turn to ask a question," she whispered after a few minutes, wiping brusquely across her streaming eyes.
"Okay, ask away."
"Are you mad at me?"
There was a pause before May spoke. An excruciating, anxiety-riddled pause where Skye was roughly reminded that smart people didn't ask questions they didn't want to hear the answers to.
"Skye, I promised you that I would be honest, and I'm going to honor that. So, yes, there is a part of me that was angry at you earlier today. When we didn't know where you were, when we thought you had run away. When I found out where you had gone and what you had done. I was angry. But I wasn't angry at you. I was angry at the choice that you made, and at the situation. I was angry at myself, because I felt like part of it was my fault, like I hadn't done enough to help you. But I also want you to know that I was feeling a lot of other things. Mostly what I was feeling was scared. Skye, I was terrified when I realized you were gone and no one knew where to find you; we all were. Me, Phil, Bobbi, and Jemma especially. I was afraid that we had lost you forever, or that you didn't want to be a part of our family anymore. I was afraid that you might be in trouble, or that you might be hurt, or that I would never see you again."
May continued: "I also think it's important for you to know that I'm not mad at you right now, either. Not for yelling, or for the things you said. I'm worried for you, because it seems like you might be hurting in ways that Phil and I haven't seen before now. I'm sad because it sounds like you think you're a burden on the people who care about you, even though that's not true. Not at all. Not in any way."
"Why don't you hate me?" Skye said, in the smallest voice she had ever used. The voice of a child, scared, broken. A thimble voice, for a person who felt tiny enough to climb inside one and hide forever. "Everyone always does, eventually. Once they find out what I'm really like. Who I really am."
"Oh Skye," May's voice cracked, and Skye was shocked to see devastation cascade over her foster mother's face. "Skye, I don't hate you because I could never hate you. I don't hate you because you are not a hateful person. You're a good person, who is worthy of being loved all the time, no matter what, and never hated."
"How can you know that? You barely know me."
"I know enough," May said firmly. "I know that you have one of the biggest hearts of anyone I've ever met. I know that you are smart, and talented, and capable of remarkable things. I know that you care deeply about your friends. I know that you stand up for people who can't defend themselves. And I know that you try, so, so hard, to be the best version of yourself that you can be. Nobody's perfect, nobody's good all the time. That's why it matters that we do our best. That's why the important thing—"
"—is to try," Skye finished.
"Yes. And you do. Every day. And that's why I could never hate you. That's why I… that's why you deserve to be loved."
Skye felt numb. She wanted so desperately to believe the things that May was telling her. The things that filled her up with helium and made her feel like she was soaring up towards the sun. No grownup had ever talked to her like that before. No person, except for maybe Jemma, but she said it in her own, less direct way.
"You're not supposed to lie. That was the deal," Skye pointed out tentatively. She had to know.
"And I didn't," May told her. Her dark eyes, simultaneously fierce and gentle, were locked onto Skye's. "Everything I said was true."
"It's your turn to ask a question."
May thought for a moment. "Do you believe me?" The question hung there in the air, sucking up all of the oxygen in the car.
"I… I don't know. Maybe. I want to."
"Well, that's a really good place to start."