Okay, forewarning, I was all over the place with this chapter! Like, literally, it does not have a single coherent train of thought in it.


CHAPTER 5

Skye was sitting in the living room with her laptop, tapping away at something with lines of code flying across the screen. Her brown eyes were bright and a smirk played on her lips as she typed, waited a moment, typed again, waited some more, typed-Bobbi shut the computer earning a yelp and glare in response.

"Do you have a death wish or something?" Skye really did look like she wanted to use the computer as a weapon, it was enough to give Bobbi pause. "I was in the middle of-"

"So, I guess you don't want this back?" The tiny blue memory card flicked between her fingers and it shut her right up. "We're gonna have a chat and then you get this back." Skye's eyes followed the plastic raptly as it was lowered back into the blonde's pocket.

Skye stared, maybe if she stared hard enough it would will the memory card back into her possesion without the conversation. "What's there to talk about?" Really, what was there to talk about? Everything was on the card. Everything. She followed the blonde though because Bobbi hadn't told anyone about the card and her intentions yet, so if all she wanted was a conversation for her silence, it wouldn't be the worst thing that had happened in her life.

Bobbi's scoff was tossed over her shoulder as the blonde opened her bunk. "The things we have to talk about is a conversation of it's own." Skye's eyes flittered around the small bunk, in the 5 weeks since she'd been recruited to S.H.I.E.L.D it was the first time she'd seen the inside of the blonde's personal space as more than a glimpse. "Why don't we start with erasing your past and work our way up to Director Fury." The bunk was mostly bare, but she could see small touches of Bobbi - because this was Bobbi, not Agent Morse. Like the photos on the nightstand, and the blanket that was definitely not regulation issue, and the computer sitting open on the bed with a Star Wars screensaver. Was this what Bobbi classed as a personal space? It looked more like that one foster family she'd had when she was 12 who insisted on appearing absolutely perfect to the point that she wasn't allowed to have any of her own things anywhere but in her closet.

Skye's eyes roamed over the pictures as she made herself comfortable at the desk without being invited to. "Thought you said you were divorced." One of the pictures was easy to identify as a wedding; Bobbi in a white sun dress on a beach with a bouquet of flowers, a man next to her with his arm around her, a small group of people surrounding them, and a priest - recognisable by his collar.

"I am." Bobbi's answer was short, slightly harsh, it gave Skye a moment of pause. "I liked the picture." It was a nice picture, even if she did only know one of the 9 people in it.

"So that's him, huh?" Dark eyes, dark hair, shorter than Bobbi though. Handsome enough, in the rogue-ish, unshaven way.

Bobbi was silent, Skye could feel her looking over her shoulder. "Yeah, that's him." The bed creaked as Bobbi sat and Skye finally tore her eyes away from the picture, from the smiling happy image of Bobbi on her wedding day. "But, we're not talking about me." Of course not, that would be too easy.

"You already know everything about me, it's only fair." Skye shrugged instead of giving. It wasn't in her nature to just give up, especially not when the conversation was about her and all the details of her sordid past. "What's the idiots name?"

She could see the calculating look in the blue eyes staring at her. Bobbi may have training to read people, but Skye had learnt from neccessity all her life. "Who said he was an idiot?"

"Divorced you, didn't he?" She smirked earning a roll of blue eyes in response.

"If you want to find your parents and your past so badly, why did you delete everything?" Bobbi questioned instead of answering, Skye resisted the urge to pout at not getting her way. "Deleting yourself, changing everything, not existing wouldn't exactly help you find what you're looking for."

Skye turned away from the wedding picture, "the name I had isn't my real name, the birthday I have isn't mine, nothing on the files was real. I followed the trail as deep as I could and it led me here. It also told me that I wasn't the only one looking, and I wasn't going to let my information - however fake it may be - be available to the entire world." No-one needed to see all her hospital visits, and how many times she'd been sent back. And Skye certainly didn't want to see the pity in peoples eyes when they found out. So she got rid of it. She got rid of everything.

Whether that satisfied Bobbi or not, Skye didn't know, but she didn't press the topic. "What about the babies?" Right, the talk wasn't over, Bobbi probably had an actual list of things to talk about. The babies were a whole other achey point in her life. Skye didn't say anything, turning her eyes back to studying the pictures. "Lance."

"Huh?" She cast a curious glance at the blonde.

"My husband-ex husband." Bobbi corrected herself with an eye-roll. "An English mercenary; Lance Hunter." Tit for Tat; Bobbi was throwing her a bone and telling her something she wanted to know in exchange for her entire life.

"English, huh?" Skye smirked, brown eyes lighting up. "So, you like foreign guys? Should I warn Fitz? Or would you prefer Simmons?" Bobbi's blue eyes rolled at her - again - and she groaned. "What about both? It'd be kinda hot in a weird way, I guess."

Bobbi had a smirk of her own on her lips. "They're not really my type." Skye's eyes flicked back to the wedding picture, to the scruffy, unshaven, roguish Englishman. Was that her type? Was that her destiny? If so, it didn't seem to be working out for her and Fate had majorly fucked up somewhere along the way. "Babies."

Right, the blonde had an agender. Not to say that Skye didn't have an agender first, but it didn't mean she had to like this. "It was a long shot; what if I was one of them, and they'd been looking all this time?" She absently traced a finger around the frame of a picture featuring a Bobbi that couldn't have been older than 5, and two people that must have been her parents. Bobbi had never wondered who her parents were, or if they loved her. She'd never had to search through the faces of missing babies and wondered if she was any of them - and knowing that most of them would never be found. "It was bullshit, didn't do anything but make me depressed."

"I'm sorry." Skye had a harsh comeback on the tip of her tongue about exactly where Bobbi could shove her 'sorry', but she bit it back when she saw no pity in those pretty blue eyes.

"Thanks." Is what came out instead after a muted pause.

The silence stretched between them again, Skye was just about ready to leave the conversation altogether - memory card be damned. Was her memory card really worth this conversation? After so many years Skye thought she'd be numb to the hurt by now, besides it's not like she didn't have all the information backed up so this whole talk was just another way to remind her of what a shitty past she had had. "I can look into the redacted file." The offer was soft, spoken as the blonde looked at her through her lashes.

"But?" Skye prompted, nothing was ever as simple just having it offered to her.

For a long moment Skye didn't think Bobbi was going to answer her. "How do you know Fury?" That was it? Of all the things Bobbi could have asked in exchange for her offer, she just wanted to know about Nick Fury?

"I noticed him one day, I was, like, sixteen or something and there was a second set of footprints in the snow so I hacked the security cameras and found him." She shrugged like it was no big deal, "and I kept looking and I kept finding him. I thought he was some creepy stalker that wanted to kill me or something, but then he'd start leaving things." Bobbi couldn't have looked more surprised if she tried, which meant she must have been really surprised because Skye was pretty sure she'd been trained not to show her surprise. "You know, like money and blankets and food and stuff. I caught him one day and demanded answers and he said he was just someone who was looking out for me. It was shit, but I got his fingerprints from it and it was classified to Shield... Makes you wonder why the Director of Shield was so interested in an orphan, huh?" Skye could see the moment Bobbi regretted her words about S.H.I. not being concerned with orphans. "Fury kept coming, I kept digging and a couple years later I found the redacted file and I realised where he came from and how he always knew where to find me. That's when he stopped coming."

"You knew Fury?" The shock was still there.

Skye let out a scoff, "that's a strong word; more like he was around... Until he wasn't." That really did seem like the most accurate explanation. "It's not like we had long talks and braided each others hair-" Bobbi let out a short laugh at that, no doubt trying to imagine the formidable 6 foot 2 Nick Fury braiding hair, or even with hair on his head. "He turned up every few months, sometimes he brought stuff, sometimes he told not to look too closely at something, and I figured I should probably listen to the guy who always knew where I was and was creepy as fuck, so I stayed away from whatever it was." She put the picture frame of the Bobbi's wedding back on the desk and stood up. "Listen, are we done here? You can keep the card, I just want to go." Bobbi didn't look like they were anywhere close being done, but Skye was, so Skye did what Skye always did when Skye got rattled; Skye ran.

Skye really had to stop thinking about herself in the third person!


Brown eyes darted around the room; Coulson, May, Fitz, Bobbi, Simmons. They were all talking, planning, strategising about the latest case. Skye had no doubt that they'd find Miles - he was good, but S.H.I.E.L.D was better - it was just a matter of which side she chose to represent.

Bobbi had offered to look into her redacted file - even though Skye knew that it was restricted to Level 8 and above and the blonde was only a 7 - and she figured it wouldn't take her too long to get Coulson to help her too if she told him. Plus, she had a good thing going here and it had only been just over a month. A month of working out with Bobbi, and stopping bad things from happening, and actually feeling like she could be more than the orphan hacker that nobody wanted.

Like she could be more than the Markless orphan that nobody cared about.

"I can get to Miles." The words bubbled out before she'd even finished making the decision and the room went silent. "I can get close without him suspecting anything, just-" he was actually someone she once considered a friend, a morally questionable, slightly anarchist friend, but a friend non-the-less. "-just don't hurt him?"

"Skye." Coulson's tone held a warning in it. "Do you know Miles Lydon?"

"In the, uh, Biblical sense." Simmons flushed and stammered, Fitz looked entirely too uncomfortable, May looked as stone-faced as usual, Coulson coughed lightly and looked away. The most interesting reaction was Bobbi's clenched fists and the hard glint in her eyes, as if she'd caught her red-handed sleeping with Miles right that minute. "Like I said, I can get close to him, but he's not a bad guy, he's with the Rising Tide; freedom of information, you know, not kidnapping."

May rolled her eyes across the room, adressing Coulson as she turned on her heel. "Don't adopt this one." The sliding door shut with a quiet hiss after her.

Coulson cleared his throat with a small, attention commanding noise. "New plan;" because they'd had such a solid plan before. Skye resisted the urge to roll her eyes, all they'd had before was talking over each other and the fact that he was Austin. "Morse, go with Skye and bring in this Lydon guy-" Bobbi looked like she wanted to protest, odd how she always wanted to protest when it came to her. "-I'll have May set course to Hong Kong while you find out who he gave that information to and what they want with Chan Ho Yin."

Basic as far as plans went, but basic had a way of going perfectly right or horribly wrong. She just hoped Miles didn't take it badly that she gave him up. In her defence, though, she told everyone in the Rising Tide to stay away from S.H.I.E.L.D whilst she was there.


It was far to easy for Skye to get Miles to go back to his apartment once they were inside. She looked around the apartment; it was nicer than she remembered, better furniture, and the TV definitely hadn't been that big when she'd been here last.

"You sure he's coming?" Bobbi was poking through the kitchen, using her batons to move things and look behind them before scrunching her nose and moving onto something else. It seemed to be an actual system she had.

"He's coming." As if on cue the obnoxiously loud ding of the elevator sounded and the blonde in the kitchen automatically transitioned into Agent Morse, holding her batons at the ready and tip-toeing into place behind the front door.

Miles was humming as he unlocked his front door and tossed his keys down, grinning at her. "Hey, Baby." Out of the corner of her eye she could see Bobbi's knuckles turning white from gripping her batons too tightly, and the glare she was sending them was nothing short of deadly. His steps were long and purposeful as he cross his living room and brought his hands to her face, leaning down for a kiss, only to get the corner of her mouth when she turned her head. "Babe?"

Bobbi stepped out of the shadow she'd been hiding in and the look on her face was murderous. It was actually scaring Skye a little. "Hands. Off." The words were laced with so much venom that Miles automatically let her go and held his hands up in surrender.

"Hey." Skye frowned, stepping between the unreasonably angry blonde and Miles. "Chill. Agent Morse." Except this time her name wasn't flirty and teasing like she usually used it, this time she had a glare of her own and it reminded her of the first couple of weeks when they'd done nothing but argue with each other.

"Agent?" Miles went on the defensive, stepping away and lowering his hands. "You brought one of them here?"

So much for an easy talk. If Bobbi hadn't gotten so pissed for no reason they might have had a chance at a simple talk and then leaving with no-one getting angry. "We just want to talk, Miles, that's all."

"Talk?" His voice was rising, Skye took a slow step back from him. "You brought one of those suits here, what are you one of them now? Secrets and lies and everything we fought against?" He took a step closer to Skye. "You-" he was cut off by Bobbi yanking him back by his collar.

"Touch her again and I will end you." Agent Morse - because there was no trace of Bobbi there right now - hissed in Miles' ear, one of her batons held tight against his neck. "Understand?" Miles let out a vague affirmation. "Good. Now, you're going to sit down and tell us everything we want to know, or I'm going to arrest you and you can tell us from inside a cell. Understand?" Even as Bobbi was speaking Skye could see the determination glazing over Miles' features.

"If you're going to torture me, just do it and I'll expose you all for what you really are-mindless thugs who have no-" as he was ranting Morse was cuffing his hands behind his back. "-issues about civil liberty or-"

"Shut up!" Bobbi grumbled, shoving him none-too-gently towards the door. Skye held in a groan, this had not gone to plan at all. And at least this time it wasn't her fault; this Royal fuck up was all on Bobbi and whatever stick was up her ass.

In the SUV with Miles in the back, Skye climbed into the passengers seat and glared at the blonde. "What the Hell is your problem?" It was hard to sound appropriately pissed in a whisper. "I could have got him to help if you had gone all psycho for no reason."

"No reason?" Morse turned a harsh glare on her, blue eyes clouded with anger. "No-just forget it, Skye."

"O... Kay?" She got the distinct impression she'd done something wrong.

They talked that morning, Skye gave up everything about her past for a feeble hope that Bobbi wouldn't tell Coulson about her motives, Chan Ho Yin was reported missing, she uncovered that it was Miles' hack, she revealed that she knew Miles, and... And nothing, that was when cold and Distant and violent and angry Bobbi made her appearance. Was Bobbi pissed that she knew Miles? Why?

The drive back to the Bus was filled the occasional snide comment from Miles, stone silence from Morse, and an itching under her skin to escape a bad situation. When they got there Morse started dragging Miles through the plane to the cell that she had been kept when she was first brought in from her van.

Coulson was waiting in the hallway with his arms crossed and a disaproving look on his face. "I thought you said you could talk him in?"

"I could." Skye muttered, shooting Morse a dirty look as the blonde brushed past without a word. "I'm not the one with a stick up my ass who went all 'kill on first sight'."


Coulson let's Skye be the one to talk to Miles, but she's not deluded enough to think that every movement and word isn't being recorded. "I told you to stay out of Shield, Miles." She says after checking that Morse hadn't been too harsh with him.

"Come on, Skye, this is stupid." He rattled his handcuffs for emphasis, slumping down in his chair. "I'm an American, I have rights, those people can't just kidnap and deny me rights. You used to believe in that-"

"Someone's life is in danger, they don't have time for red tape bullshit, Miles." Skye frowned, it had been hours since Chan Ho Yin went missing, even she knew that the first 24 hours were the most important if they were going to save him. "Whatever you released, it got a man kidnapped and we're trying to save him."

"We?" Miles scoffed at her, eyes narrowing. "You think you're part of their 'we'? You're not one of them, Skye, you're one of us, you're-"

"I'm what?" She cut in with a glare. "Am I someone who would just sit there and not say anything when information I leaked was used to kidnap and potentially kill someone? Shield are the good guys, Miles."

"Good guys?" Miles sat forward abruptly, the metal of the handcuffs clinking loudly in the otherwise silent room, and his chair scraping across the floor. "They kidnapped me, Skye! How's that for good guys?" The door slammed open right in that moment to reveal the one person Skye didn't want to see; Bobbi Morse.

"Out." Morse wasn't looking at her, but considering Miles physically couldn't leave, she had to be talking to her.

"Excuse you!" Whatever stick was up her ass needed to be removed. Skye actually thought they were getting along and on the way to being friends - if not more from the occasional flirting. Bobbi ignored her and stalked to the table, a plain manila folder slapping down on the table. Skye had to hand it to her, Morse definitely knew how to command a presence. "Hey, I was-"

"Did you know he was selling his hacks." Cold blue eyes finally turned on her and Skye wished she hadn't. The room went quiet.

"What?" Her accusing glare turned on Miles. "Tell me you're not." He didn't tell her he wasn't.

Bobbi had a sinister smirk on her face. "Go ahead." Her arms acrossed over her chest. "Tell her that a mans life is a million dollars to a hacker that's not even smart enough to cover the fact that he was paid off." Miles withered under both of their glares.

Miles' eyes flickered between them, calculating, trying to decide which option would help him best. "It was for us, Baby." Apparently Skye was the one he deemed to be a weak link. "For you and me. Our future."

Skye hadn't made it 24 years in the system and on the streets by giving in whenever someone tried to sweet talk her. Miles was no different.


Every times she closed her eyes she could see the building going up in flames and the horror and fear would return; what if May and Coulson didn't get out in time? What if Fitz and Simmons had been down there too? What if Bobbi - stick up her ass and all - had been down there and unable to get out?

Coulson and May returned to the bus singed and morose, but otherwise unharmed. May stalked past silently, and Coulson followed, only stopping to close the open images on the big screen of Chan Ho Yin. Fitz was diligently working on the prototype second generation Night Night pistol. Simmons had come to sit with her after they had watched the building burn with people inside and nothing they could do to help them, both of them morosely sipping beer that hadn't been cold in a long time and not saying anything. Miles was locked back in the cage, no doubt planning to reveal everything he could about S.H.I.E.L.D the first chance he got. And Bobbi had been in the gym for what felt like hours, punching and kicking anything that came within her reach.

"Is it the first time you lost someone?" Skye's voice was barely more than a murmur to Simmons.

"Yes." The English woman's voice was just as quiet, her fingers picking at the label on her beer. "It's awful! Horrible! The field is a horrible place and I never should have pushed Fitz to leave the lab." Glassy tears were shining in her eyes. Was it the time someone in her vicinity had died, Skye couldn't help but wonder.

"Maybe." She had to admit it wasn't a good day when someone died right in front of her. "But, what about Mike Peterson, and Akela Amador? They wouldn't be alive if it weren't for you guys being here, and they're only the first ones, there will be a lot more, and they'll owe their lives to you."

Simmons smiled at that, a sad little smile, but still a smile. "Thank-you, Skye, it means a lot that you think that." Ever prim and proper, but it was part of her charm. "I think I'll go finish up in the lab now." Her beer was left abandoned on the coffee table as she left and Skye was left sitting alone. Always alone.

Alone since she was abandoned as a baby, alone after some unknown Fate decided that she wasn't worth a Mark, alone after every family sent her back. The feelings of abandonment always simmered under the surface, but Skye had had years of experience in pushing them down and pretending they didn't exist.

Her beer was gone in three gulps and she set her mind to doing anything other than wollowing in self-pity. Miles was a sellout, Coulson was talking to him right now, probably threatening to put him in some dark secluded cell if he didn't behave himself. Miles wasn't one to listen to threats. Simmons was taken care of for now, and she would take care of Fitz. May didn't even like her at the best of times. Bobbi.

The steady thump-thump-thwack could be heard all the way down the hall from the gym. Morse had been hitting the bag so long that her sweat had soaked right through her tank top and her breaths were ragged.

"Hey!" The hits faltered and the bag swung back at Bobbi, knocking into her body and making her fall back. "Shit! Sorry!" The blonde's skin was hot and slick with sweat when Skye reach out to help her up.

Bobbi didn't look at her, but ripped her arm out of the brunette's grasp. "What do you want, Skye?" That's it? Nothing about Chan Ho Yin, or Miles, or how any of the rest of the team were doing? Just a vague demand meant to push her away.

"Is it something I said?" Their talk in the morning had been hard, but that was for her, not Bobbi. Bobbi had been the one with all the power and who was getting all the answers. "Something I didn't say? Something I could have said? What the Hell is wrong with you today?"

Blue eyes blazed with anger and disbelief as they stared back at her. "Me? You! You're what's wrong with me!" Skye clenched her teeth and kept her mouth shut as Bobbi yelled. "You apparently think that asshole who couldn't give a shit about what he does affecting anyone else is worth your time and being a part of your life, but not-"

But not, what? Not Bobbi? Bobbi was a part of her life, probably one of the biggest parts of her life at the moment. And it wasn't like Bobbi ever expressed any interest in having anything more than a working relationship, anything that had happened had been Skye's olive branch. So that left Bobbi having a grudge against Miles, which seemed ridiculous because today was the first day they had crossed paths.

"You know what," Bobbi shook her head and turned back to the punching bag. "Forget it. Just go back to your boyfriend and just forget about it until you're ready to admit it." The punching started again, a steady thump-thump-thwack that was as clear a dismissal than if she'd actually said the words.

"Let me know when you get the stick out of your ass." Skye tossed at the blonde before leaving. Whatever her problem was, she could sort it out on her own.


Miles was left in Hong Kong with a nanny bracelet and no way to get back to Texas. Skye had tried to bargain with Coulson about leaving him there with no rescources and no way to get any, but he seemed intent on ignoring her and she knew which battles to pick. Coulson was the one who brought up how she knew Miles, and the Rising Tide. Why had she gotten into hacking?

It was as big an opening as she was ever going to get. "Do you know who your parents are, AC?" The question was a simple one, but it baffled the Agent. "Where you came from, if they loved you? Did you come home from school every day in your teeny tiny little suit-because you probably came out of the womb in a suit-and say hi to your Mommy and Daddy and know with absolute certainty that you were home?"

Coulson sat on the edge of his desk, watching her. "Skye?"

He knew she was an orphan, the whole team did, probably all of S.H.I.E.L.D knew. "I didn't; when I came back from school it was seven different homes and none of them loved me. None of them wanted me. None of them were my parents. And I wanted that." She didn't have her memory card, Bobbi still had it, but Bobbi was being an asshole and she didn't trust assholes to follow through on their words and look into redacted files they had promised to look into. "I wanted it so bad I started looking. And looking. And looking. And all I found was one document. Redacted. By Shield." Coulson sat still, watching her silently and letting her talk. "That's why I started hacking, that's why I got into the Rising Tide, and that's why I'm here."


It was dark, it was quiet, the hum of the plane was somewhat soothing, but even reciting algorithms in her head wasn't enough to lull her to sleep. Coulson had asked for a copy of the redacted file, and a promise that she wouldn't go looking through S.H.I.E.L.D databases herself - and he was even trusting enough to take her at her word. Fitz had gone to be early, Skye wasn't even sure that May ever slept, and Simmons was still pottering around in the lab.

Her door opened with a hiss, she kept her eyes shut, wondering which of them it would be. And what they wanted. Sleep was easy to fake, she'd learned to do it young - her second foster home left them alone if they were asleep so it was a survival instinct more than anything. The scent of sweat and Scotch filled her senses.

"Hey." Bobbi. Had she gotten over whatever was pissing her off. "This'd be a lot easier if you could admit it, you know." Admit what? What had she done that had upset the blonde so much? Was it because she asked about her husband? Was it that sore of a topic? She was the one who was so casual about it during their first meeting. "A reaction, a hint, anything."

Skye was nearly ready to stop pretending and just ask, but before she could the light footsteps got closer, and the smell of sweat and Scotch got stronger. The feeling of warmth on her forehead kept her quiet and still until long after Bobbi had left, the hiss of Skye's door closing and the blonde's ding a full rotation sounded and then silence.

What. The. Fuck!