I can't even tell you how close I am to forgetting to post this every week. I am so impressed I remembered!

Hope you enjoy!

"Think they're still going to want to read to us?" Skye wondered as Natasha helped her dry her hair. They were still in the bathroom, the air still slightly steamy from the warm shower water. It had taken longer than usual because keeping her cast dry had been really hard.

"I don't know," Natasha shrugged, handing Skye the pajamas that Mrs. May had given them. Skye's were blue and silky and she took a moment to rub them against her face.

"They're so nice," Skye commented, letting Natasha examine the bruises on her back before helping her into her pajamas.

"Sure." Natasha's voice was flat. "But remember how nice Becky was to you when you first came? How she bought you all those things?"

Skye frowned. Becky had done some similar things, like getting her lots of toys and clothes... She thought about that for a moment because she knew that what Mrs. May and Mr. Coulson were doing felt different, but she had to figure out how to explain it.

"But Becky never asked me what I wanted," Skye realized triumphantly. "Mrs. May and Mr. Coulson always ask me what I want and let me choose."

To her frustration, Natasha just shrugged.

"Why don't you like it here?" Skye grabbed Natasha's hand.

Natasha glanced at her, green eyes worried.

"I just don't want you to get hurt," she said.

Skye did not want that either. She looked down at her arm in its heavy cast, then to Natasha's scabbed over lip. Then she started thinking about that horrible night that Natasha had been taken away and the closet and...

"Skye... Skye."

Skye slowly became aware of where she was and realized that Natasha was running her hand through her hair.

"You okay?" Natasha's face was creased with worry. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Skye just hugged her big sister, being careful with her ribs.

"I want us to be safe," she mumbled, fighting back tears. What she couldn't say was that she wanted Mrs. May and Mr. Coulson's house to be their safe place. She so desperately wanted them to be okay. "I don't want to be scared." Skye looked up at Natasha.

"Me too." Natasha kissed the top of her head.

Skye couldn't help but smile when she saw Mr. Coulson and Mrs. May sitting outside their room, waiting.

"What story are we going to read?" she asked excitedly.

"I was thinking," Mrs. May began, holding up a book that was not a picture book, "that we could read Matilda. I started reading it to Natasha one time but we never got to finish. Maybe we could read a chapter every night."

"Is that a chapter book?" Skye's mouth fell open. "It's so long, it's gonna take us like a year to finish that!" She glanced at Natasha, who, to her surprise, looked slightly pleased.

Mr. Coulson laughed.

"It'll go a lot faster than a year. But it might take us a couple weeks. Does that sound okay to you? Then after that, we can pick out a different long book."

Skye tried to hide her excitement. It sounded like Mr. Coulson and Mrs. May wanted to keep them for a long time.

"It's okay with me," Natasha shrugged but Skye could tell she liked the idea.

"Me too!" Skye chimed in.

"Great!" Mrs. May gave them a big smile. "Let's get started."

When they walked into the room, Skye suddenly felt her gaze being drawn to the back wall and the open closet door. She hadn't noticed it before, maybe because last night when they came into their room Skye had been utterly exhausted and this morning she been too worried about being late to think about anything else.

The inside of the closet looked so dark. Maybe it was the fact that she had just been thinking about that horrible night at the Garrett's, but Skye's heart started racing.

"Skye, honey, are you okay?"

Skye glanced at Mrs. May, nodding quickly.

It was dumb to be scared of a closet.

But when she had to cross the room to get to the bed, she couldn't help but edge past slowly, putting as much distance between her and the closet as she could.

Her breath caught in her chest as she kept looking at the pit of the closet. Where was Nattie? She needed her.

"Skye?"

She couldn't help it, she flinched at Mr. Coulson's voice.

"Hey, hey, I got you." Suddenly Natasha was carrying her to the bed, kissing her cheek and stroking her hair. "What's wrong?"

The tears that Skye had tried so hard to keep in leaked out. "The closet," she choked out, burying her face in Natasha's shoulder. Natasha hugged her tighter and soon Skye felt better.

"Is something wrong with the closet?" Mr. Coulson asked, his face creased with confusion.

Skye leaned against Natasha, nodding at her slightly.

"Skye's scared of closets. John used to lock her in the one in his house." Natasha's voice was flat.

Skye saw something in Mr. Coulson's face shift but then it was back to normal.

"I'm sorry that happened to you. You never deserved that, Skye. It wasn't right that he did that."

Skye looked at Mr. Coulson's face, finding his bright blue eyes with her brown ones. She could tell that he really meant what he said. "How many times did that happen?"

Natasha stiffened and Skye could tell she didn't like being asked that question. But Skye knew that Mr. Coulson was okay, and he already knew that John had hurt them.

Skye bit her lip. "I don't know. Maybe... five times?" She looked at Natasha for confirmation.

"Probably more." Natasha's voice was hard and cold.

"That was very wrong of the Garrett's. You never ever deserved that and it wasn't your fault. What they did was wrong." Mr. Coulson said again. His blue eyes were so intense that Skye had to look down.

It had sort of been her fault, she wouldn't have gotten put in that closet if she wasn't bad...

"Well, I've got an idea," Mrs. May spoke up. "What if we took the door off the closet and replaced it with a colorful curtain? That way you don't ever have to worry about getting stuck in it. We could pick a really pretty curtain."

Skye's eyes widened and she looked at Natasha, who seemed as surprised as she was.

"You... you would do that?"

"Sure. I can grab the screwdriver and we can take the door off right now."

Skye sat in stunned silence and watched as Mrs. May disappeared out the door and into the hallway.

"I'm going to get all of your clothes and things tomorrow. Is there anything specific that you want me to grab?" Mr. Coulson's voice caught her attention and she looked over to where he was standing a respectful distance away.

Skye thought of her room back at the Garrett's and tried to remember if there was anything important that she wanted to have but she couldn't think of anything. She had Nattie so she was happy.

Natasha, on the other hand, was quick to reply, "Our school stuff."

Skye suddenly pictured their precious library books scattered across the floor and the splintered door lying on top of some of them.

"Don't forget our library books," she spoke up quickly. It was really bad not to take library books back and Skye liked the nice librarian at their school. She didn't want her to be sad or upset about missing books.

Mr. Coulson nodded and looked like he was waiting for them to say more. When they didn't, his forehead scrunched up and he tentatively asked, "Any of your favorite toys?"

Becky had bought her a lot of toys when she had first moved in with them but Skye hadn't liked any of them and they had all been pushed under her bed. It's not like the toys hadn't looked fun, it was just that it had felt weird to play with them, like she was okay with Becky treating her like her own personal doll, so she had ignored them. It was much more fun to play with Nattie anyways. Her sister always came up with the best games and read her the best stories.

They both shook their heads and Mr. Coulson looked a little sad.

Mrs. May breezed back into the room with a screwdriver in hand and a determined look on her face and Skye was kind of happy that the conversation was over. She didn't like it when Mr. Coulson looked sad.

"Do you girls want to learn how to take a door off the wall?" Mrs. May looked very happy with the screwdriver in her hand while Mr. Coulson looked a little scared. "Here, I'll work on the top hinge and show you how to do it, then you and Nat can work on the middle and bottom one."

Skye watched as Mrs. May carefully twisted the screwdriver in one screw, then another. Soon the hinge came off and Mrs. May offered it to her.

Skye took the piece of metal in her hand and examined it. The metal was cold and heavy.

"This keeps a door closed?" She wondered. It wasn't that big or impressive looking.

"That's it, love."

Skye bit her lip and rubbed her fingers over the metal.

"Can I keep it?" The question slipped out of her mouth before she could stop it. Immediately she flushed. What a dumb thing to say. Part of her wanted to throw the door hinge out of the window as hard as she could. But another part of her felt kinda powerful holding the piece of metal.

"Of course," Mr. Coulson nodded at her thoughtfully, making Skye feel like maybe she wasn't that dumb after all.

Mrs. May cleared her throat, "Do you want to take out the last two?"

Nodding eagerly, Skye took the screwdriver from Mrs. May and held it carefully in her hand. She felt Nattie stand close behind her and let her sister guide her cast-free hand up to the middle hinge and tried to twist one of the screws out. It was kind of hard to do it with one of her hands in a cast but her sister helped her out and when all the screws were out and lying neatly on the floor next to the rest of the hinges, Mrs. May slowly lowered the door to the ground.

"I'll move that into the garage tomorrow."

Leaning into her sister's side, she acknowledged Mr. Coulson and peered into the doorless closet. It was a little dark in there and still empty because they hadn't unpacked any of their clothes yet, but it wasn't scary anymore. Without a door, there was no way that she would ever get stuck in there.

Feeling brave, she took three big steps so that she was standing just inside the closet and looked around. She gave the small closet a tough look so that it knew she wasn't afraid of it before running back to Natasha's side. She felt her sister run a comforting hand down her back and took a deep breath before she looked up at Mrs. May and Mr. Coulson and gave them a shy smile, "Thank you."

She softly tapped Natasha's hand and she heard her sister sigh before gruffly saying, "Yeah, thank you."

Mr. Coulson's gave her his special smile and she even thought that she saw Mrs. May smile widely for a second before she nodded graciously, "Of course. We can find a pretty curtain tomorrow along with some other stuff to decorate this room a little and make it feel like yours."

A warm, happy feeling traveled through her when she heard Mrs. May say that this room was hers.

"How do you think it's going?" Melinda sighed beside Phil and he turned slightly in the bed to draw her closer.

"We're moving slowly for sure," he said lightly.

"Slower than slow," Melinda grimaced, letting him pull her closer.

"We're snails," Phil smiled into her hair. "A snail family with you as snail mom, me as snail dad, our beautiful snail children, slowly inching our way forward..."

"You're impossible." But Melinda couldn't help but smile. It was silent for a moment. "I think that Skye would be more comfortable with us but Natasha is making her be cautious. Which makes total sense, since Natasha has been the only one taking care of Skye for the past couple months. But it's making it really hard to reach either of them."

"Natasha is definitely more closed off," Phil agreed. "But the moment we brought them into our home, it seemed like both of them were even more scared of us than before. They don't see home as a safe place..."

"Mmm," Melinda put her head on his shoulder, wondering if he could feel her sadness through the touch.

He could. "Hey, they're here now and we have lots of time to give them the love they deserve. This snail family is in no rush."

Let me know what you think!

Catch you next week!

~silverlining