#aosteam

“I told you! I already told you, I didn’t think it would- !”

Something should have seemed off then, when Skye apparently decided to bite her own tongue and fall silent right in the middle of an argument – nay, a fight. Of course, in those few seconds it seemed obvious why she’d done it: there was no way she was going to win against the entire rest of the team, especially when even she herself wasn’t really on her own side. She knew what she had done was wrong, was dangerous, but what she was doing with Shield felt just as wrong, just as dangerous, sometimes. It was all messed up in her head, and now she was beginning to realise that it had become all messed up in her heart as well, and it didn’t seem worth questioning, that she would fall silent in the face of inevitable defeat, with an added dimension of self-exploration.

It was not worth questioning – in fact, the tension was so thick that everyone was actively avoiding questioning it – until they were sitting in the car on the way back to the Bus, and more and more things started to seem off.

Skye didn’t smile at FitzSimmons’ bickering. She didn’t help, or complain, when all their equipment was shoved all over her, she just let it happen as if she didn’t even realise she was in its way. She didn’t ask about music, or bury her head in the nearest device. She didn’t even look at the window. She stared straight ahead, at the back of May’s seat, and if somebody looked closely they might notice her shoulders shaking. Her arms shaking. Her fingers shaking. Her lips shaking.

In a way, Skye knew all this was happening. It had happened before – not for a long time, but it had. She’d forgotten how to hide it properly, she’d caught it too late, and now she was trapped. Trapped in more ways than one. Words felt sharp and stuck in her throat and it felt like she was choking, even when she gave up trying to speak them. Everyone’s anger was so loud, it felt like all the air in the car was shaking with it. Every little jingle of a zip or clearing of a throat, it all clambered on top of each other until there was no air anymore, there was only noise, and all Skye could do was tap on her own arm and remind herself that it would not be long until she could lock herself back in her room on the Bus until all the other sounds went away.

(A little voice in her head began to hiss: They already don’t want you. How much worse could it be? She tapped and tapped, but it only got worse. She’d forgotten how the song went. Had she ever even known at all?)

Then Simmons tapped her on the shoulder, and she almost felt like screaming. Couldn’t they just leave her alone? Hadn’t she already said she was sorry?

“Skye?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

Even their caring was loud. Skye felt tears well in her eyes. She couldn’t do this. What kind of spy was she? Well, she wasn’t one, and that was the whole point wasn’t it? That’s what had led her here to begin with? Failing the people she- Well, these people. Betraying them, actually. Oh, wow. She really did not need this. And the caring. And the cracking open of a bottle of water. Skye gritted her teeth and swallowed, glad that May’s door controlled the locks in this car so she couldn’t throw the door open on impulse. Objectively, she knew, that would be bad, but the sensory overload was worse – well, almost. So she kept tapping, and turned away from Simmons. Maybe they would just figure that she was upset and leave her be. Tapping, tapping. It wouldn’t be much longer.

Simmons, of course, was very good at noticing things, and had never been particularly good at leaving things be. It certainly didn’t help matters that – though in fairness, through not much choice of her own - she was pressed right against Skye’s leg in the confines of the car. She could feel the shaking. The silence in the car was deadly, and people were still annoyed, and Simmons was not all that used to speaking when people were silent and annoyed, but somebody had to, right? It seemed to be what Skye would have done. So Simmons tapped her gently.

“Skye? Are you okay?”

Skye made an uncomfortable sort of motion, almost a shrug, but one that looked like she had never shrugged before in her life. She turned to the window with a slow sort of awkwardness, like she was acting and had forgotten how. Staring out the window, her fingers were moving, tapping back and forth on her own arm, and on the side of the car door, with an incessant, spidery, anxious rhythm, and near-silent, using the pads of her fingers like she was trying to remember some sort of song.

Fitz leaned forward in his seat, and frowned. He’d seen Skye upset before, but not like this. Miserable Skye wasn’t nearly so restless. Worried Skye wasn’t usually so quiet. It made his skin crawl. He could only imagine what it must be like to be inside her head right now. What could possibly have been going on?

He shared a worried glace with Simmons, and then they both looked up into the rear view mirror. May was still paying attention to the road, thank goodness – though she’d never admit that her hands were tighter on the wheel than they otherwise might have been. Coulson looked up and then back at them with concern, even distress, in his expression.

“What is it?” he asked. “Is she sick? Skye, have you eaten today?”

“I think she’s having some sort of seizure,” Fitz put in.

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” Simmons corrected. “She was responsive. Sort of. I think she can hear us, she just… can’t ask for help.”

“What?” Coulson demanded, shifting in his seat, discomfited by the idea that he didn’t know what was going on, and apparently couldn’t do anything about it. “What do you mean, she can’t ask for help? Is it- is it an anxiety attack or something?”

“Well, I wouldn’t blame her,” Fitz muttered, “you were saying some pretty harsh things back there.”

“And you weren’t?”

“Hey, we all said things we didn’t mean, okay, and I’m sure Skye-“

“I’m sure Skye doesn’t need us to speak for her when she’s sitting right here-“

“Well clearly somebody should since she’s gone nonverb- wait. She’s gone nonverbal? Like, nonverbal nonverbal?“

“I think so to.”

Understanding flashed between Fitz and Simmons like electricity in the air. All of a sudden, bags and crates were passed back and forth with purpose as Fitz wrestled noise-cancelling headphones from one of them and his phone from another. Simmons dug around in the packs as well, but she couldn’t find something that fit what she was after quite right.

“What do you need?” May asked. “Should I pull over?”

“Buttons, buttons,” Simmons muttered, gesturing a pressing motion. “She’s doing this sort of, tapping thing. Probably more satisfying with something to push. Like, a calculator, or…”

“This do?”

Coulson held out his car keys. Since Lola was somewhere far away, he had no need of them, and judging by the way Simmons’ eyes lit up, they might just be helpful after all.

“Skye?” Simmons checked with her again, tapping her on the shoulder so that she could be more sure that she was being addressed. “It’s okay. You don’t have to speak. Fitz has something for you, you should put these on. They’re very good. They'll make it quiet.”

She gestured a sort of padding motion with her hands. Skye still looked a little dazed, but if nothing else, she recognised the headphones being held out to her and she didn’t fight it when Fitz reached forward hesitantly to put them on. Instantly, the world was muted. The rushing of the wind past the car, and the wheels on the road beneath her. The jingle of buckles and rattling of breath. All of it faded beneath the sound of her own blood in her ears. It was odd, but soothing. Skye let out a breath.

(The others did too. It had been a long, stressful day and it was nice to take a moment and rally around one of their own. And she was, one of their own, in spite of everything. They took a moment, each to themselves, to reflect on that somehow unsurprising truth.)

Fitz lifted his phone and waved the end of the aux cord.

“Do you want music?” he offered. She frowned, trying to read the shape of his lips. It really was quiet in here; she could only catch the slightest murmur of sound even though, from the shape of his mouth, he was deliberately trying to be loud. “Or can be silent. Music? No music? You know what, here, you pick.”

He plugged the phone in and passed it to her, and she realised what he must have been saying as he left a song paused beneath her fingers. You pick. Huh.

Another tapping on her shoulder. Skye looked toward it, and saw Simmons offer forth a set of car keys. She gestured the clicking motion with them, and passed them to Skye, and it felt a little silly but Skye couldn’t help but smile as she mimicked her. The tapping certainly felt a lot less neurotic this way, where she couldn’t twice feel it on her own skin. Plus, the clicking sensation was oddly satisfying. She did it again, and again, and she had to laugh at herself.

“Simmons, you’re a genius,” she said. “But I guess you already knew that.”

Skye was pretty sure they’d laughed, but she wasn’t quite settled enough to check that yet. The sounds had quietened down, but the anxiety spiral was still going strong. She’d had a lot of these on the way back to the orphanage, and she’d been really looking forward to putting them behind her. Still, at least the view outside looked a lot nicer now that she wasn’t half mad with desire to claw through the glass and get out to it. She didn’t mind the silence, but maybe, she could drown out some of the anxiety too if she tried listening to a song. She could always pause it later if she changed her mind, right?

She pressed play, and this time, it wasn’t herself she laughed at.

“ABBA?” she teased, smirking at Fitz.

“Oi, I was trying to find something you might like.” His indignance was clear, even if his voice was gloriously peacefully muffled.

“Oh, okay sure,” Skye assured him, and as he continued to blather, she added: “For the record, I can’t hear you.”

She could if she wanted to, of course, but she wasn't quite ready to jump back into the wind-whipping reality of the outside world, so instead she pointed at the headphones he had given her, and he rolled his eyes and threw his hands up in exasperation. Simmons stifled a giggle as Skye went back to staring at the view. If she was not mistaken, Fitz would be complaining right about now. Something about how you try to do one nice thing! Jemma would be rolling her eyes at his nonsense and trying to reassure him. May would, just generally, be rolling her eyes. Coulson probably still had his eyes on her in the rear view mirror, Skye mused. He was always looking out for her, that one.

This had shattered what was left of Fitz. His life, his friends, his confidence in himself. All of it was awash in a mad storm and Skye knew all too well what it was like to be abandoned by somebody she was sure had loved her, in one way or another. She knew all to well what Fitz must be feeling: after all, Jemma had never given either of them a reason for leaving, had never even said goodbye. Skye had thought – and so had Fitz apparently – that she had just been headed off on a visit home, but then she’d dropped off the radar. Just like that. Fitz had torn himself up over it for weeks, and had come to the conclusion that she had given up on him, or been repulsed, or been scared off: that, for whatever reason, she had abandoned him. Skye had tried and tried to promise him that was not the case, but she couldn’t give him an alternative. If she were being honest, she was feeling quite abandoned too.

Unfortunately, this didn’t really help her reach out to Fitz as much as she might like. He was feeling lower than he’d ever felt, and he was bitter and angry and horrifically depressed and honestly, Skye was worried about him, but if Jemma couldn’t help him, how could she? And it didn’t help that he struggled to communicate back, too. He was different to how he was before, and it unnerved Skye – it unnerved all of them – and though she was more ashamed by the minute to admit it, she knew the team was starting to abandon him too. They ignored him when he got upset, instead of trying to figure out why. They didn’t stop the lab techs from gossiping, or from avoiding Fitz in the hallways. They even started to avoid him themselves. It was cowardly, Skye knew, but what else was there to do? She was busy, she told herself. She was just too busy.

But she loved her friend, and it hurt to see him, hear him, feel him in pain. She just needed a push in the right direction, to help her passion overcome her hesitation, and today was the day she received that push, in the form of a crashing sound. It could have been a mistake, she thought, but then it was followed by another, and a howl of anger and despair.

It was coming from Fitz’s room, of all places, and Skye’s first thought was that he must be in danger so she ran up to his door with her heart in her throat. The smashes and thuds continued in a fairly regular pattern, with the occasional cursing and muttering and wordless screeches in between. Then there was a break. Perhaps he’d run out of things to throw around, but he seemed to be breathing heavily. Running out of momentum? Skye took a deep breath. It was now or never.

She keyed in his code and the door slid open.

Fitz turned to her and for a brief, brief moment she saw his body light up as if he thought that maybe, just maybe, it was Jemma coming home. When he saw that it was Skye, he froze up. There were books and clothes and sheets and instruments and souvenirs scattered about the place, some more broken than others, and he standing amongst it all. Helpless. Distressed. He held a plastic model Tardis in one hand, clenching and unclenching his fingers around it as if waiting for the fury and pain to bubble back up and inspire him to throw it to the ground, but it did not. It hovered below the surface, quelled by that brief moment of hope that all was not lost, and by the fact that Skye hadn’t turned and left him yet.

“I don’t think you want to do that,” Skye offered. “You don’t want to break that, Fitz. Maybe put it down?”

Fitz clenched his fist again, until he could feel the plastic straining against his fingers. Surely nothing would be such a satisfying cure to the tension beneath his skin, than to throw it into his dresser mirror, or similar. It probably wouldn’t break though, and his arm didn’t want to move anyway. Tension was turning to tears, overwhelmed by confusion and frustration and shame.

“It’s okay, Fitz, I’m not going to take it off you,” Skye assured him. “I just… I understand. I understand why you’re so hurt so angry, but this isn’t how you want to deal with it. I promise.”

He nodded. She waited a beat and asked,

“Can I come in?”

Fitz retreated and sat on the side of his bed. Skye stepped through the carnage to join him, and he realised as a bitter taste settled on his tongue, that she was right. Littered across the floor were Academy shirts and jackets and books he and Jemma had once studied together. A little carved monkey on a keychain, a gift she’d bought him from their first trip to the Central Park Zoo. An old copy of the Hobbit, with some of its pages scattered – it hadn’t been faring well before this onslaught, when Jemma had read it to Fitz at his bedside. Seeing it finally broken brought tears to his eyes, and all he could think of was how much Jemma loved that book. What had he done?

Skye inhaled slowly, heavily, as she took in the wreckage of the room. Beside her, Fitz whimpered with regret and heartache and Skye began to feel herself fill with the same. She’d been doing quite well with denying how much she missed Jemma, by hiding in the betrayal of it all just as well as Fitz did sometimes, but the loose ends still stung sometimes. Especially since she’d hoped to be putting those days behind her – which was part of the reason she had come in here. She took Fitz’s hand, the one not still half-heartedly clinging to the Tardis, and intertwined his fingers with hers. She leaned into him, until the warmth and pressure soothed them both.

“I don’t mean, like, you shouldn’t be angry,” she clarified solemnly. “I’m angry too, I get it. I know you loved her a lot and sometimes it feels like it was all some big joke and none of this is worth it anymore, right? It’s just- I’ve been there, and I wish somebody had stopped me.”

“…From what?” Fitz asked, after a moment.

Skye drew a deep breath and wiped the tears from her eyes. More came to take their place, but apparently it was going to be that kind of a moment, so she let them be this time.

“You know how I was… I was in the foster system when I was a kid. Some of the homes, they sucked, but some of them were great. They were really great. But even the great ones kicked me out. Sent me back. I mean, now I know it was Shield making them do it, to keep me safe or whatever, but it still- it still hurt, you know?” She sniffed again, suddenly feeling acutely like that little girl all over again. She squeezed Fitz’s hand and pushed on. It had been so long since she’d thought about this, and felt it all, that now she couldn’t stop.

“One family, they bought me this camera,” she recalled. “Oh, it was beautiful. Way fancier than I knew anything about, so I spent weeks reading the manual and watching these tutorial things, learning everything I could about it. Taking pictures of literally everything. We went on a camping trip, me and them and their son and daughter, and I documented it all on this camera and I was going to scrapbook it and everything. I finally thought I was part of something. But of course…”

“They sent you back.”

“Yeah.” Skye blinked. Closed her eyes for a moment, lost in the bittersweet memory of her last few moments of peace at that house. “As soon as we got home. I didn’t even get to unpack.

“So of course I was furious, and I smashed the camera and ripped the manual all up and everything and it wasn’t until way later, after I’d run away and was living alone in my van feeling sorry for myself one night, that I realised… I’d destroyed everything I had of the people that had loved me. That had taken me into their home, their family. I could have done photography for money, I could have even sold the parts, but that’s not what I missed. It was the photos. It was the whole thing, what it meant. It was gone. Forever. All because I’d been a bit too angry for a few too many seconds.

“I just- I didn’t want that to happen with you and Simmons. That’s all.”

She cleared her throat and wiped her eyes, and glanced at Fitz’s other hand – the one around the Tardis. He lifted it from his lap, and put the Tardis down on the bed-sheets beside him, safely away from impulsive hands. In silence, Fitz took a few moments to let Skye’s story sink in, and then squeezed her hand.

“Thank you,” he said. “I think- I think you’re right.”

“I hope I’m right,” Skye added.

“Me too.”

But she couldn’t very well go back to where they were. Whatever this was, it was coming from them. Was it jealousy? Was it fear? Had she been poisoned? No, surely not, she could remember feeling like this before and not dying, but how? When?

Daisy staggered through the school and out the back, fortunately avoiding most people as it was long past home time. By the time she made it out to the other side, to the track field she felt like screaming. Like throwing herself into the air until pure suffocation lulled her anxiety into cloudy, dreamy, nothingness, and survival made all other thoughts into nothing. Unfortunately for her though, it seemed those who were not headed home had come out here for training. She saw the football team, running laps, and a couple of cheerleaders throwing each other into flips that turned her stomach. She couldn’t flee upwards with so many witnesses. Not least because it looked half like dying, unless she was to make a scene blasting herself out of the arena entirely and running off into the suburbs of this poor town for no reason other than a strange and sickening fear. Or was it loneliness? Or was it both?

And so, with nowhere else to go, Daisy’s body led her on autopilot to a very familiar place. A place where people had come to mourn and fear and skip and shoot up and cause mischief since the dawn of time. A place where you could hide even in a crowd; a place amidst some of the most everyday lives in the world, where anyone could take a time out, however small.

She sat under the bleachers, hugged her knees, and waited for the feeling to pass.

-

She was still waiting when a familiar set of footsteps approached. Stopped. She heard the crunch of the grass and grit and dirt, the hiccup in breath as her observer bent over to catch better sight of her, and made his way around. A few seconds later, Fitz knocked on one of the load-bearing pillars, with a soft but inquisitive expression. It wasn’t often, after all, that one found an agent – however newly minted – freaking out like this.

“Knock knock?” he posited, when he saw that Daisy didn’t seem to be entirely against his intrusion. At this, she rolled her eyes – and wiped at them, just in case, though she was not crying – and turned toward him, slowly uncurling from her ball as he came over and sat down beside her. A smile touched her lips as he glanced around himself uncertainly, afraid of gum or spider webs or who knows what, before turning back to her.

“How did you find me?” Daisy asked.

“Well, I couldn’t exactly check the girls toilets, could I?” Fitz returned. “You’ve been gone for a while, is all. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Daisy snorted, shrugging it off, though the stormy sickness was not yet quelled. Fitz, of course, saw straight through this, so she pushed on and tried to forge him a vague but convincing answer, and failed. After all, how could she be vague about this feeling when she didn’t know what it was to be vague about? The more she tried to circumvent the point, the more she realised what the point was, and it was like sinking a hot knife into her chest. Tears finally spilled over as she realised exactly what it was she was feeling.

“I don’t know what happened, I just- I saw Abby with Linda, how lovely they were, and it made me remember some… bad things. About growing up. I thought I’d forgotten what that rejection felt like, you know, I’m good now right? But something about that, it just reminded me, I’ve felt like this before. I had good parents, some of them, in the system. I had families I thought I would be with forever, and they thought I’d be with them too, and- and they sent me away anyway. Nobody told me anything. They rejected me over and over again, even the good ones, and it hurts so much...”

Fitz shuffled around in the dirt to sit beside her as she paused a moment in her speech to pull herself together. It wasn’t jealousy after all, or fear for Abby’s safety or her own. It was just a memory, buried for over a decade. The memory of an abandoned child.

“You know they did it to keep you safe,” Fitz reminded her, as gently as he could. He took her hand, and squeezed it reassuringly. “Some of them, anyway, right? They loved you very much. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know that now,” Daisy promised. “Fifteen year old me didn’t know that. Twelve year old me didn’t know that. Eight year old me didn’t know that.”

Now Fitz was starting to tear up too. He, of course, had his own experiences with abandonment and rejection from his father, and with never feeling good enough. He hardly dared to imagine what it would have been like if, rather than helping him through it, his mother had turned on him too. If it had happened over and over…

“Damn it, I’m sorry, I didn't mean to bring the mood down," Daisy backtracked halfheartedly. “Let’s just go-“

“How many was it?” Fitz asked.

“What?”

“How many?” Fitz repeated, meeting her eyes. “Houses.” He re-thought his question, and dropped his gaze to where their hands still sat intertwined. “I mean, you don’t have to answer, I was just...”

“Nineteen,” Daisy said. “Yeah. I got kicked out of more houses than years I was alive. Then I got to thinking, fuck that noise, you know? I ran away when I was sixteen, moved into that van, lived there ever since.”

“Wow. That’s brave.”

“It was stupid. And really dangerous.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t brave.”

He squeezed his hand again, and smiled at her. She smiled back, but for all she wanted to, she just couldn’t quite let the moment sit.

“What about you, supergenius?” she teased, nudging him with their joined hands. “You moved countries at that age, didn’t you?”

“Well, I mean, I was technically fourteen,” Fitz pointed out. “But I had a support system. I called my Mum every week. She sent me biscuits in the mail. I got teased relentlessly o’ course, but I also had a PhD at fourteen, so, what did they know, eh?”

“What did who know?”

Fitz and Daisy glanced around for the voice, and found Jemma picking her way down the under-bleachers toward them. She sat promptly and primly, studying their tearful faces and sad smiles.

“Welcome to the pity party,” Daisy greeted. “I had a freak-out, Fitz came and found me, everything’s all good now but I still kinda feel like there’s concrete in my lungs. Just a quick update.”

“Have you had enough water? Since the fight?”

“No, Jemma, I haven’t had water. So unless you-”

“Well, here then.”

“- of course you do.”

And the concrete might have got a little lighter, as she took the water bottle from Jemma. Satisfied that her mother-hen duties were complete for the time being, Jemma shuffled around to sit on Daisy’s other side.

“Watch out for the spider webs,” Fitz warned.

“Oh, never mind that,” she assured him, brushing some aside with her hand. She contemplated wiping her hand on the ground, but a look at the ground warned her against it. Instead she cleared her throat, tucked her hand into her lap and asked; “What are we talking about?”

“Moving out at 16.”

“Oh, I was fourteen, actually, when I attended an American university,” Jemma corrected. “I got myself into some rather sticky situations under bleachers like these. I found I quite preferred the library, though it’s not as good for crying.”

“I wasn’t crying-“ Daisy protested.

“Having a panic attack, then,” Jemma corrected. “You don’t have to give me the gory details, I’m just glad to know you’re okay. I’ve messaged May. She thought you might have taken off and done a runner somewhere in the suburbs.”

“I was close,” Daisy confessed. “I didn’t want you guys to have to go running around after me, that’s all.” She snorted at the irony.

Above them, the bleachers creaked and thudded under the weight of someone’s footsteps. The three of them huddled together a little on instinct, unsure where their current threat level fell, between imminent mortal danger, and children who had stayed up past curfew at a sleepover. But their fear was, fortunately, unfounded, as the head that shortly found its way to glance down between the gaps was none other than Coulson’s. He smiled at the unexpectedly cozy image.

“Hey guys,” he greeted. They blinked up at him, bewildered, and he had to ask; “Watcha doing?”

“Hiding under the bleachers while we wait for May to come get us?” Daisy offered in much the same tone. There wasn’t much left to explain by now, anyway, and when nothing more was forthcoming, Coulson nodded to himself.

“Cool,” he said. “Mind if I join?”

Upon their affirmative, he trotted down the stairs and jogged around the back, watching his head and glancing around at the things people had written, scratched, tied, and otherwise left under here. Eventually he sat, flicking the tails of his jacket out of the way and then pulling out a packet of Red Vines. Fitz’s eyes widened.

“Did you have that in there the whole time?”

He was quite sure, at one point, Coulson had flipped over a table. What kind of magical pockets did he have?

“Yeah. Want some?”

“Uh, yes,” Daisy answered for him, reaching out with enthusiasm. “I was the first one here, I get first pick of the Red Vines.”

When Fitz did not protest, Coulson moved the packet to offer them to her first.

“Why are we here?” he asked.