Partners?
A/N: Hi guys! This chapter starts straight after the previous chapter. The next chapter will be the start of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
~1~
The day after she had been kidnapped she'd woken up hoping that it was all just one big nightmare but when Peter came out of the bathroom she knew it was real. So Peter at first tried to take her mind off it all and started telling her all about space, the different planets and its occupants. It was interesting and it took her mind off her new abilities and her predicament.
A Ravager had come to check on her after a week had gone by with Peter teaching her as much as he could about space. It made her freeze. She had mostly forgotten about her supposed new... abilities. It was like in the back of her mind she could hear a slight buzzing sound that wasn't there before she was cocooned in the Temple. She managed to ignore it until just when the evil space pirate, who she'd just learnt was Yondu's second in command, Kraglin Obfonteri, had to comment on it. It made her think of the buzzing sound she could always hear. It seemed it came out at night when she had nightmares of Trips death and the new threat of being either eaten or sold. Whenever the two of them woke up the room was messier than ever with objects lying on the floor and everything pressed against the other side of the room. It took Peter a long time to calm her down when Peter realised after a few days that it was she who had done it. But after that, everything that was lying out they put away somewhere safe and put all furniture up against the wall opposite the bed. She started to do tai-chi before going to bed as well as in the morning as May had started getting her to do. She hoped it would help relax her in the hope that it would make her nightmares less shaky. It didn't work straight away so Peter had the idea of putting her mind on other things which were learning about how the Ravagers went about their daily life and what he did to help them, as well as learning all about space.
When her powers were brought up by the Ravager, she started to get nervous about her powers and it made her think about the buzzing noise in the back of her head. Everything started shaking, the noise of the rattling of the walls and furniture rose with the buzzing of her head and the speed of her heart pumping until it was just all a loud cacophony of sound and she bunched over pressing her palms to her forehead as all the noise was so loud it hurt. Peter had shouted her name as the two around her looked around nervously. It was enough to shock her and look around at the shaking that she knew, though never wanted to believe, was causing.
Peter knew he had to calm Skye down. Yondu had said Skye had gotten powers which at that point he didn't believe. He hadn't heard of Humans getting powers before. Skye has got powers over vibrations Yondu said, so he realised it had to be only she causing everything to be pressed up against the opposite wall, including the walls, to rattle, till Skye woke up from a nightmare and took some calming breathes till the rattling stopped. If he didn't want her powers to blow the ship apart he'd have to do something to help her control them as he remembered Yondu had ordered him to do. He could just see Skye was so nervous when she woke up to see it wasn't a dream. He had hoped for the same thing when he had been kidnapped. He had just wanted to take her mind off it all and talking about the new world she'd been brought into seemed to help. It also made him forget that she had powers and that he was meant to be teaching her. "Calm down Skye."
"Calm down, how can I calm down?! I'm causing this and I don't want to. It's not me. It's not," she tried to deny before the buzzing in her head rose in time with the speed of her heart pumping and the objects in the room and the walls rattled more, causing some object to be knocked off on to the floor. "God, it hurts!"
Peter looked alarmed at that. "What hurts?" She didn't answer, just groaned until probably the whole ship was shaking.
It was in fact as Yondu came barrelling into the room. "What is going on here, boy," then he noticed Skye. "Oh yes, this is her doing, isn't it? Get her to stop vibrating the whole ship." He'd almost forgotten he'd kidnapped the Terran girl yesterday. He'd just been working out a next idea that he thought could get him a huge profit and he'd end up killing the girl if she interrupted, which would be a huge waste of his effort into getting her to become a part of the Ravagers. He thought he'd be able to steal even more valuable stuff a lot quicker than with just Quill and the Ravagers.
"I think it would help if you both got out of the room," he wasn't sure Skye knew Yondu was in the room with Kragin but having any one of them in with her, they being her kidnappers probably didn't help. She just needed to calm down. He waited till they had both left till he crouched and kneeled down before Skye. He put a hand on her arm and she flinched. Good, she was still there. He didn't have a clue what he was doing but since she was scared he thought the best thing would be to calm her down. It seemed to work when she took calming breathes in the morning after a nightmare. He certainly didn't want the ship to break apart and get thrown out into space to die. What a way to go. StarLord dies in space due to an exploding ship. He'd not thought of that one before.
"Skye, calm down. Look at me Skye," she did, slowly, with tears running down his cheeks and normally he liked to think he wasn't a big softie but his heart did just break for the girl then. He used to be like her when he first left Earth, sad and wanting to go back to his mom, then he realised he was just a scrawny little and there was no way he was going to escape the Ravagers. So he grew up quickly into the man he was today which he liked to think as a pretty cool dude, but no, his thoughts were getting away from him. He was supposed to be thinking about Skye. "Breathe, come on, with me, slowly. In. Out. In. Out," he made exaggerated motions of this as he'd heard from the doctors of when his mum was in the hospital that this was something you should do if someone was panicking or in shock. It did seem to be working as Skye copied him breathing shakily and her face got less pained looking. The shaking started to slow in intensity till it stopped completely. His body went stock still as Skye curled into him on the floor in front of their beds and started to sob. He didn't have a clue what to do he'd never comforted a crying girl in his arms before so he went with the first thing his mind came up with and cured his arms slowly around her. They had stayed like that a long time till Skye stopped crying.
"What's wrong with me?" Skye whispered, even being so close to her he only just caught it.
"What makes you think something's wrong?"
"This has never happened to me before. I was never like this. Something changed me in that temple." Her father did say something about undergoing a change, as did Raina, but she hardly listened then. She wished she'd never gone in the temple.
"What temple?" No-one had ever mentioned how they had found Skye just that they picked up strong vibrations coming from her and then decided to kidnap her.
She wondered whether she should tell him, about everything. It seemed Peter was her only ally here and she didn't want to lose him. He'd helped her just now and he'd been kind to her so far. Telling him everything might lead to him trusting her. She's learnt a lot about how important honesty is since she's been with S.H.I.E.L.D what with the Traitor and her betrayal with Miles: that feels like a lifetime ago. She's made up her mind. If she doesn't get to rejoin the team when she gets back after telling Peter her story then so be it. It will hopefully gain Peters trust if he knows her and what she's been through. She knows it will take a lot more than that to get him to trust her but telling her how she came to be on this ship would be a start. He then might decide to help her get back home. So she tells him her story, all of it, and he listens quietly where he only makes a noise after the really exciting bits like when she shot the traitor or booed, which made her laugh when they got betrayed by the traitor.
When she finished Peter felt the need to tell his story though Skye tried to protest at first not expecting him to do so. He didn't linger for long over his mothers' death. Skye just hugged him tightly, she knew how important family was to her. Her family was the team. She would never think of Cal as her father. He was just a monster in her mind. It seemed he thought highly of his mother. They were in the same boat: they both had one missing parent and one dead parent. They just sat quietly for a while after both tales were finished. Then Peter turned to her and asked if she would like to look at the ship. She said yes, partly to help memorise the layout, partly to see what an alien ship looked like on the inside as she had seen clips of the Chitauri ships from the Battle of New York so she knew what some looked like but also partly because she couldn't feel her legs and she was sure Peter must be the same so they got up to explore and soon feeling came back. Peter led her around the ship slowly and pointed out all the rooms in the ship.
Once the excitement of seeing the ship, yes excitement as not many Humans got to see this, faded and they entered their room again she was reminded of what happened earlier with her powers. Thankfully they didn't act up again but she just didn't know what to do. "Peter, what do I do now?"
"What do you mean?"
"With my... abilities?" she hesitated with that word. She didn't like to think of how she got them and the fact that she is now changed. She just wants to be Skye, just Skye again, back home with her team. After today though she can't help but acknowledge them as they shook the whole ship. Her new abilities seemed dangerous and even though she wanted out of here she didn't want to explode the ship as it was the only thing from keeping her from dying out in space. So what does she do to keep her... abilities under control? The most she's encountered with this types of ability is with Donnie Gill who had ice powers but he didn't get them anything like the way she got hers, plus look at how they handled them: she shot him. She knows that her team wouldn't do that to her, at least she hoped they wouldn't but she was pretty sure S.H.I.E.L.D had never encountered anything like her so they wouldn't know what to do with her either. She doesn't know why she's asking Peter as she doubts he will know what to do but she needs help. She can admit that and she has no-one else to turn to but Peter. So she hopes he won't turn his back and her and will help her though he doesn't have to as he hardly knows her. Yes, they traded backstories but they don't know what the other likes and dislikes and what they are like now. So she understands if he won't help her. She won't blame him, especially not with the- dangerous abilities she seems to have.
"Well," he scratched his head, trying to think of something, anything to help Skye. For one thing, he doesn't want what happened earlier to happen again, he especially didn't want the ship to blow apart and for them all to die. Also, even though he hardly knew Skye he could tell she was scared and she doesn't seem like a bad person to him so it wouldn't fit right to him, with what little manners his mum managed to engrain on him, to leave her alone to deal with this. It didn't matter that Yondu had ordered him to help he wanted to help of his own free will. Then he remembered Skye saying something had changed that wasn't there before. It was a good starting point he thought. "Skye, you said earlier about how something had changed, what did you mean?"
"Well, I meant that I didn't seem to have these... abilities," she again hesitated, she thinks she'd firmly acknowledged them, she was talking about what to do with them after all but she didn't want to have them and they'd take a lot of getting used to, both using them and talking about them. "...before I went into the temple."
"Do you feel as though anything else has changed."
She had a more thorough look than yesterday, and the only thing she noticed was the buzzing sound in her head which she told Peter about.
"So that's the only thing that's different," he clarified.
"Yeah, it's like the noise of the rattling and the whistle when Yondu somehow controls his arrow really hurts and the buzzing is loud in my head. The buzzing is also there constantly now."
"Ah, wondered what you mean by 'it hurts' earlier. He controls his arrow by whistling and partly by the implant in his brain, that's basically all I know about that. So it seems the buzzing sound in your head is the key to your powers. Hmmm, but how can that help us to control your powers. It seems like it reacts to noise but we know from Yondu you have powers over vibrations. I know there was something I learnt about for vibrations in geography class when I was at school but I can't remember what." There were a few minutes of silence while Peter tried to remember so it made her jump when he said, "Ha! I remember. It was that everything had vibrations. The bed, the walls, us, so if that's the case you could control anything you wanted in the universe." There was awe in his voice as both released how powerful her power was.
Skye didn't want to be all-powerful, she just wanted to be Skye. Her heartbeat spiked and things started to lightly rattle again but she took a few deep calming breathes before looking down at the floor, she didn't want to have to see Peter look afraid of her. She didn't want to be different she just wanted to be normal.
"Hey," said Peter softly, reaching out to put his hand on Skye's shoulder. She looked up, afraid to see fear and was surprised when she only saw concern, concern for her she realised. "No matter what happens with your powers just know you'll always have me, alright? I'm meant to be teaching you, after all. Well stick together Skye, you won't ever be alone in this."
He knew that this was a bit thing to promise to someone he still hardly knew but he had his mothers voice in his head saying, help her Peter, and he was never cruel: he could see how much all of this was hurting Skye and that she needed someone to help her see the good in her new powers, as it was clear she feared herself. He wouldn't want that on his worst enemy, for someone to be afraid of their own shadow. What's more, he wouldn't feel right if he was to just zoom off in his own ship and leave Skye to the mercy of Yondu and the Ravagers but also exploring or not exploring her powers alone. No, he would help her to the best of his ability to get on her feet, they would explore space together even if it was through the darker side of things by stealing things or broking deals and he'd try to help her with her powers. The rest was up to her, whether she eventually accepted her powers and then would decide what to use them for.
"Why would you promise something like that Peter? You hardly know me and I don't know what I could end up doing to you because of my knew... abilities."
"Because you're scared and alone, a lot like I was when I was first kidnapped but I didn't have the added stress of new powers to deal with so I think it only fair that we stick together and help each other out. So, how about it, shall we become partners?" he held his hand out that was not resting on her shoulder and after only a few seconds she shook it. She was so thankful she wasn't doing this alone, if she was she probably would have blown the ship apart and kill her along with everyone in it and even though Yondu and the Ravagers kidnapped her and plan to use her for their own gain she didn't want to kill them with her newly found... abilities. No, she would stick with Peter, as he said, and hopefully, one day she'd be able to control her new... abilities and hopefully- maybe she won't be so afraid of them one day and she'll also be back with her team, going back to the things they do best, solving the cases that threaten those who can't protect themselves.