#vinskye

wanderlust is a funny thing, she thinks, waiting in the airport to board her plane back home to new york. she had spent a couple weeks in france to visit eloise and bother jason before she decided it was, finally, time to head home.

despite everything she’s said about the last two years being the best of her life (they were), she really does miss having a phone and reception everywhere and to be able to talk to her friends whenever she wants. she misses new york pizza and the new york skyline and she misses her dad’s shepherd’s pie and she misses her bed. her bed is probably one of the things she misses the most during her travels, and despite the charmings’ tendency to overcompensate and give her the softest bed in their kingdom (jason had said that), honestly, skye misses her bed.

new york is just as she remembers it, from the last day she had spent there packing before up and leaving for two years. she sees her dad every so often, when he’s on missions for the avengers and they’re in the same area.

but, she misses her brother the most.

she misses how they used to argue all the time, and how she had to cook for him, and how she would force him to learn how to make a sandwich, and how she used to make his hair different colors and how he could always make her laugh. and how warm his hugs always were.

she puts in her earbuds when she gets her seat on the plane, red hair tied up into a ponytail and she chooses the playlist of songs that she had stolen from his laptop before she left. 

she can’t wait to see her brother.

--

when she lands, she grabs her suitcase, thankfully it was one of the first, before hopping in a taxi and heading home. despite wanting to surprise her brother, she really needs a shower from that long as fuck flight and maybe some food. she makes microwaveable macaroni and cheese as her first meal back in new york, damp towel slung around her shoulders as she listens to the beep. it’s nice to be home, she thinks, shoveling the pasta down her throat as soon as it’s cooled enough for her to not scald her tongue.

she lets herself indulge in being home for a while longer, swigging out of the milk carton in the fridge and helping herself to one of the tied up chip bags in the pantry, wondering if her dad was even home or if she had the house to herself for a little bit. she had told him she was coming back but no one else knew. 

once she’s run out of things to occupy herself with, skye puts on some makeup, changes into short and a loose tshirt and slinging a little bag over her shoulder, stuffing everything she would need into it -- her wallet, checking to make sure she had money, her brother’s souvenirs, and the cute little polaroid camera keychain she had bought for sebastian -- before heading out to stark tower. 

her father had clued her in on everything she had missed while traveling the world, everything about her brother going to their uncle tony and learning about the functions and the dealings of all the iron men suits and whatnot, and she almost hopes he’s made her some gadget to play with, but he doesn’t know she’s coming back, no one does really, so she shoos those hopes out the window. 

-- 

it doesn’t take long to get to the tower, a popular tourist attraction meaning that almost everything pointed her in that direction anyway, even having a subway stop named after it and she glances up, remembering when she used to play with her brother up top.

she’s let in almost immediately, knowing her brother was most definitely there and she grins to herself in the elevator. 

-- 

“OLLLIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” he’s not even given a moment to really put down whatever he’s holding before he’s practically bowled over in her tackle, flying into his arms with a bright smile and she buries her face in his -- lab coat -- shirt with a soft sigh. 

his hugs are just as good as she’s remembered them to be.

his expression is surprised, almost disbelieving as he gazes down at her and she glances up to meet his eyes, her own crinkling up in the wide smile and she’s promised herself she wouldn’t cry because it would be stupid to cry over her own brother but that doesn’t stop her from hugging him tight, hiding her face in his chest again in an attempt to stop herself from crying. she’s not crying, really, she promises. she’s got something in her eye. really. 

his hand strokes over her hair, making her think of when they were little and she used to crawl into his lap or his bed whenever she had had a nightmare, and she glances up at him when she feels his shoulders shaking, feeling his soft little breaths in her hair and she smiles to herself, hugging him just as tightly as he was squeezing her. 

“hey, if you don’t stop crying i’m going to start and we don’t want to flood uncle tony’s lab,” she tries to reason, pulling away to look up at him (all the way up, damn his height!), her voice shaky and if she sniffles a little bit, well, who can blame her? 

“you’re back,” it’s a whisper, and it’s the only reply she gets before she’s tugged back into his arms and she smiles to herself. he hasn’t changed, she thinks, rather happily and she just lets herself be hugged, letting him hold her as if to make up for the two years she had been away, out of contact, honestly having missed this either way. 

not that she would admit that of course.

“i’m back.”

maybe to him. 

a/n: i don’t know what happened or where this angst came from wHOOPS yolos

sometimes she wishes she hadn’t been born. her entire existence has been built upon lies, on a shrouded reality, seen through rose-coloured sunglasses and she doesn’t know what she should believe anymore. her mother, her favorite person for three years out of her fifteen years of living, had left her behind and she had never felt more – 

lost in a sea of faces, she realizes that the nightmares she’s been having, flashes of red hair, a smile that matched her own, were of her mother, crimson hair and emerald eyes, and she had dyed her hair and gotten colored contacts to see if she could bring her – 

back to back, she stands with her older brother, the person who had helped her father orchestrate her life of half-truths, things she were told that she was too young to understand when he, he was only two years and three months older and yet he was part of that world, part of the real world that she was always denied, a world that she was not allowed to take her place in, to take her stand and she hates him half the time, loves him the other half. she does love him though, more than she should, more than she should be allowed to. (he is her brother after all.) she’s a black hole, and she eats everything, takes in light from all life forms and he’s a star that’s wandering too close for her to be – 

comfortable, she’s comfortable around him despite all her jokes and how she picks on him all the time and she wishes she wasn’t, that she wasn’t consumed by the idea that she’ll one day extinguish the light he has inside of him and it worries her to an extent, thinking that maybe she should leave but when it’s time for them to sleep and she crawls into his bed, tucked against him for warmth she hears her name, her name whispered between the sheets and the quiet snores that have always plagued him, and his pleas for her not to leave him, them, their family and she decides to stay. stay for a bit until she can safely get away. it’s not easy because she knows she’s just a fly tangled in the spider’s web of lies that her family is weaving around her but she can’t bear to leave, not when she’s still wanted, even if her wings are clipped and tied back she can’t leave because she wants to – 

stay, stay, she has to tell herself all the time whenever she has the urge to flee, to leave so she doesn’t hurt anyone else. she knows her father hurts everyday because she acts like her mother, speaks like her, has more of her mother’s spunk and is practically a carbon copy of her now that she’s dyed her hair and gone in her footsteps. they’re both terrified she’ll leave and she hates the fact that she knows she will one day. one day soon, one day later, one day far in the future, she doesn’t know but it’s definite. it’ll happen sooner or later, or later rather than sooner –