Chapter Text
Skye stomps her way back to her ce—her room. Her new room, not a cell. And slams the door behind her. Ice packs fall carelessly onto the lone pillow, fabric turning darker as the condensation is absorbed.
She paces. Her heart—she checks the monitor on…not the one on her arm, that was rendered useless by the fucking cuffs they’ve—no. That’s not fair. Her eyes dart to the screen on the corner. She’s had a wireless diode glued to her chest since she woke up, tracking her vitals. It’s showing her a digital seventy-nine and climbing.
She winces. The vibrations are already starting, just in her wrists for now, but she hasn’t quite healed from Wisconsin and it’s like she can feel where every facture is shifting, rubbing bone against shattered bone. Her eyes clench shut.
She tries her breathing exercises, but they’re what caused this in the first place. Tears start welling behind her closed eyelids, and she feels herself sink. She gasps, trying to suck in a lung-full of air. Simmons had said the fractures had only gone up to her clavicle, but now she truly feels like the bones protecting her very heart are about to shake apart and everything inside her will come spilling out.
“Maybe, maybe what we need is a distraction.” Skye’s eyes open. It’s just Fitz. She’d been so caught up in her despair, she hadn’t heard him come in. “I, uh, I knocked. Sorry.”
“Fitz.” Skye sobs out. “She hates me.”
Fitz’s face drops. They haven’t talked about it, this thing they share.
“I’m sorry,” Skye says. “I know. I know we don’t—I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
At this, her fellow techno-geek softens and takes a few steps to join her on her cot. “Skye, you gotta—you know.”
He sighs. “It’s okay if you love her.”
Skye’s head drops to his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just a monster to her. At least you’re still human.”
The Scotsman’s arm wraps around her. “I don’t…” He frowns. Words are still an issue sometimes, even now. “Don’t—um, what I mean is, I don’t think I meant it in the, um, the, the way others think I did. Erm, especially, not lately. Not since she left.”
Skye doesn’t answer.
“Look, uh, we were about to die. Obviously, I, I do care about her.” He continues. “We’ve been best mates since the academy. Of course I didn’t. But, Skye, you’re allowed to feel whatever you’re feeling, too.”
She sniffles into his shoulder and he winces. He’s going to have to sneak his laundry to the front of the line.
Fitz starts unwrapping the casts from around her arms, and she watches silently as he reaches across her to retrieve the melting icepacks. He applies them and asks, “How’s that? Hurt?”
Skye shakes her head, “No worse than anything else right now.” She sighs and looks up at the monitor once again. It’s holding steady at seventy-two. Still above average for her, but probably the calmest she’s been since this all began. She sighs. “You know I’d never try to get in between you two, right?”
This time it’s Fitz shaking his head, and she muses that if his curls weren’t as uptight as him, they would wiggle with the motion. “No, Skye. No. I—she—you, um, she doesn’t. Uh, not like me, like I do.”
Skye frowns down at her hands. “She loves you, Fitz.”
“Mm, no, not like—uh, I’m trying to say, we’re, we’re like, like I’m her brother. Even last year, Skye, she, she already liked you.” At this, Skye’s eyes snap up to his. He smiles, small and tight. It’s the clearest he’s seen her eyes in weeks. “Yeah, uh…I mean, we both—I thought you could tell.”
The former hacktivist takes a deep controlled breath. “I didn’t know. But, Fitz, it doesn’t matter now. I’m…I’m not even human to her anymore.”
At this, Fitz restlessness manifests and he leaves her on the bed. He stands, running a hand over his head, “No, Skye. It’s, it’s just shock. It’s new. She’s coming around, she’ll come around.”
He watches as his friend presses a tight smile. “Will she? I just—maybe it’d be better if I just left. Gave everyone some space to breathe, to calm down a bit.”
“No.” Leo interrupts. “No, that’s what she did, remember? She ran. You know better than the others what that did, to us, to the team. We can’t keep running from, um, from each other when this, when things get hard.”
He watches as Skye tips her head back and a tear rolls from the corner of her closed eyes. And he waits. “It just hurts so much.”
“I know, Skye.” He sighs, leaning back against the cell’s door. “But you don’t have to wait alone. I’ve got your back.”
Skye tips her head down and opens her eyes to smile, wet and genuine at him. “You’re the best little big brother, Fitz.”
He smiles back, ducking his head, and it feels almost like it did in their first year together.