Chapter Text
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Prologue
They say motherhood changes a person and in a lot of ways, Mary Sue Poots thinks that’s the truth. Before she became a mother her greatest goal in life was to find her parents, to track them down and ask them all the questions that had piled up, why they had abandoned her, how could they let her go. She’d been willing to do just about anything to track them down, lie, cheat even steal on occasion. Mary likes to think she’d draw the line at murder but sometimes she wonders looking back on how driven she was if she might have been capable of doing just that.
The birth of her daughter changed everything. Oh she still had questions, still had that thirst to know where she came from, what her roots were, but it no longer felt important when the doctor placed the small wrapped bundle in her arms. Everything faded away, the fear that she had lost her, the pain in her abdomen, everything faded and centered on the baby in her arms.
June 4th 2008 everything changed for her. Her life changed and her priorities shifted. She needed to provide a stable life for her daughter and living out of a van, hacking into government agencies staying two steps ahead of the law wasn’t the way to do that. She rented an apartment and instead of hacking mainframes started designing defenses for them that she could market to companies.
She was actually pulling in good money and it wouldn’t be long before instead of just looking at houses and dreaming of a yard she and Grace would be able to buy a house and her daughter would grow up with the stable upbringing she herself had lacked. There were days when she wondered if she gave up on her search to fast, gave up seeking truth to soon then Grace would give her a gummy smile and she just knew that she’d made the right choice. Her daughter was the most important thing in her life and she wanted nothing but the best for her. In order to give her daughter a good life she had to leave Skye firmly in the past.
She was Mary again and every time her daughter gave her a gooey smile she couldn’t regret it, she wouldn’t regret it.
~~
The mall was crowded, far more than Mary had expected it to be. She frowned slightly as she rocked the stroller back and forth a quick peek assured her that Grace was sleeping like the doll baby she was. Mary stooped to adjust the red velvet dress her daughter was wearing her fingers trailing over the lace. A picture with Santa to add to her daughter’s baby book, had been Mary’s intention when she’d started out this morning but judging by the line for Santa and the crowds in the mall she was thinking about taking her chances on another day.
She sighed and straightened knowing she’d only get maybe fifteen minutes more of her daughter sleeping before she’d wake up. She rocked the stroller slightly as she debated the pros and cons. Mary knew she was probably being a bit overzealous with the pictures as it was but she wanted to capture every milestone. She wanted desperately to make sure that her daughter never felt what she herself had felt so often growing up.
It happened fast. One moment she was moving at a snails pace in the line for Santa and the next she felt something bite her neck. One hand came up and slapped at her neck half expecting to feel a bee or a mosquito instead she stumbled slightly as waves and lines masked her vision. “What the hell,” she mumbled as her hand tightened on the stroller handle. She shook her head in an attempt to clear the fog that was clouding her mind suddenly.
“Grace,” she said softly her voice not much more than a whisper as the edges of reality faded around her. Her hand slipped from the stroller as her knees turned to jelly failing to support her body and she slumped bonelessly to the ground.
Immediately several people crowded into her view and dozens of voices were asking if she was alright. It all seemed to come at her from a great distance almost as if she was underwater. “Grace,” she managed to say again struggling against unconsciousness, fighting with every ounce of her being to stay in the now.
Past the people now crowding around her she could still see the stroller, pushed away from her slumped form to make room for all the people who seemed to be so concerned about her well being no one seemed to care about the infant in the stroller. “My baby,” she murmured one hand fluttering out to grab the nearest person to her, “please.”
A man leaned close to her yet his voice seemed to come from far away, “It’s going to be alright now.”
Mary couldn’t really make out his features but he was definitely an older man and he was wearing sunglasses which struck her as odd because they were indoors. Her attention went back to the stroller but it was gone now, “No,” she breathed and struggled even harder to fight whatever it was in her system, “my baby.”
“Just rest now,” the man said pushing her back towards the ground, “everything is going to be fine.”
“Grace,” she breathed out as she finally lost the fight to stay conscious and everything went black.
As soon as the young woman’s body went completely limp the good Samaritan on her right side quickly and systematically went through the purse the woman had been carrying on her shoulder. A small almost regretful frown creased his brow when he pulled a picture of the woman holding her daughter out of the wallet before he put it in his breast pocket. His hand came out of his pocket with a bottle of antidepressants that he quickly slipped into the purse before he quietly faded back into the crowd that had gathered around the collapsed woman. “Is the package secured?” he murmured quietly as he slipped from the crowd.
“Affirmative,” came the whispered reply in his ear.
“Is the nest clean,” he murmured back.
“As a whistle sir.”
“Good,” he said then paused to look back at the crowd that still surrounded the young woman whose life he’d just helped change. A niggling of guilt edged in on his conscience a niggling that he ruthlessly suppressed. It was for the greater good the woman was young barely nineteen from the information they had gathered she would be better off and as for the child. Well initial tests of the infant’s blood had shown wondrous healing capabilities, they would see to it that her education and care would be top notch far better than her single mother could provide. It was definitely for the best all around. The mother had shown resistance when the doctor who had alerted them to the properties in the child’s blood and attempted to diagnose the child as epileptic in order to allow for them to run more extensive tests and diagnostics on the child and her blood but the mother had balked, wanted a second opinion, especially before okaying any intrusive tests. The greater good was more important than the transitionary happiness of one woman or child.
A hand clapped down on his shoulder startling him out of his thoughts, “You ok.”
He shook his head real quick and shot a self depreciating smile up at the other man, “Doing fine, this job was just a bit tougher than I thought it would be.”
The other man chuckled, “Well hell if was easy,”
The first man shook his head, “I know, it wouldn’t be any fun.”
~~~
The door slammed shut, almost cracking from the force used on it. The petite brunette leaned against it sobbing furious tears one hand covering her mouth as she gasped for breath. She wasn’t crazy, she wasn’t. A small gasp left her lips as she surveyed the small apartment she’d made home for the past six months. All signs that a child had lived there were erased. Her purse slipped from her hands falling to the floor.
“No,” she breathed out as her dark eyes darted frantically from side to side looking for some sign that an infant had lived there. The baby blanket she remembered tossing on the back of the couch this morning after feeding Grace her bottle, gone, the framed pictures of Grace sitting on the mantle, missing. Her feet carried her to the kitchen, the dirty bottle she knew she left sitting in the sink, absent, the formula in the cuboards, replaced by liquor of varying varieties. Desperation drew her to the nursery, “Please,” she murmured softly as she opened the door, relief initially held her immobile as she stared into the immaculate nursery that was exactly how she’d set it up. Then another sob bubbled up in her throat as her eyes catalogued the changes. The nursery was immaculate, everything sitting in its place, unused as if no baby had every slept in it, as if no child had ever had the opportunity to use it. Dark eyes looked at the pristine condition of the clothes sitting at the ready on the dresser the room, the lack of the pictures she knew had been sitting there that morning all bore evidence that this room had been changed as well.
As if in a haze she moved to her bedroom where her laptop sat. She licked her lips and carefully booted it up a broken sob left her mouth as the background of her computer lit up revealing dogs instead of the picture of Grace giving the gummy smile she loved best. The folder she had on her desktop labeled Grace was also missing.
Her fingers flew over her keyboard, frowning a bit as the data flew across her screen then frowned harder. A few more key strokes altered the flow of data and her mouth took a decidedly grim look and the grief left her eyes replaced by determination. Her shoulder’s hunched and her fingers moved faster, the computer screen suddenly went blank before rebooting up.
Her lips curved into a small bittersweet smile of satisfaction as one hand drifted down to idly stroke the scar on her abdomen. Whoever had wiped her hard drive had been good, but she was better. The proof that Grace existed, that she wasn’t crazy was all right here on her computer not that anyone would believe her. Whoever had taken her baby had done a good job of selling her as a delusional crackpot. Hell she’d almost bought it herself but they weren’t as good as they thought.
Shield, she thought with a sneer. She’d come across the agency before. An intelligence agency that worked solely in the shadows, its whole existence believed by many to be a myth, a fairy tale. She’d run across them before during her dealings with the Rising Tide as well as the last bit of information she’d been able to discover about her parents had been a Shield case file that was so redacted it was impossible to read. They were the only ones who could have pulled this off. What they wanted with Grace, she didn’t know or care but Shield had a made an enemy that they would regret today. She would find her daughter and she would destroy anyone and everyone who got in her way
~~~
June 4th 2012
Various images from what TV talking heads were calling the battle of New York played on video screens behind the petite dark haired woman as she carefully unwrapped a chocolate frosted cupcake. She smiled a small bittersweet smile as she carefully lit one wax candle in the shape of a purple 4 and set it on top. In the quiet of the van that she had been making her home for the past 3 almost 4 years she sang Happy Birthday to the ghost of the child she wanted most right at that moment.
Today Grace would be four years old and Skye didn’t know if her daughter even liked chocolate or if she was allergic to soy. A single tear trickled down her cheek but she dashed it away quickly as she blew out the candle, her wish the same one she made every year on this day, on Christmas, on the day she celebrated her birth, in every wishing well and shooting star she saw that this year would be the year she would finally be reunited with her daughter.
One of the computers whirring in the background chimed suddenly drawing her attention from her mini breakdown into a chocolate cupcake. Her focus shifted to in and a manic gleam started to glow in her eyes as the information scrolled across her screen. Silently she toasted with the chocolate cupcake, Project Centipede. Skye had no idea what it was but it was going to be her way in come hell or high water.