Chapter Text
Skye felt a new vibrational signature arrive at St. Agnes Orphanage. “Hey Matt, we didn't have a new person arriving right?” She asked, and considering how she often snuck into the Sisters’ office it was a surprise she didn't know.
“I don't think so.” The blind teen said. “Why?”
“Mary!” A nun called out before she could think of an excuse. Skye scowled at that name. “Show Jean here around will you?”
“Yes, Sister Margaret!” She said, voice tight, walking over to the red haired girl who looked her age. “Sorry, I don't like that name. I go by Skye.”
“Jean Grey.” The girl said, clutching her backpack.
As Skye showed her around, she got to talking. After explaining the rules and giving tips to survive St. Agnes Orphanage, she started talking about her search for her parents to fill the silence.
“You're looking for your parents?” Jean asked.
“Yeah?” Skye said, confused.
“Um… What do you have so far?”
“A letter from this organization, looks like a government one, that the nuns get, but the name is blacked out. Why?”
“I want to look for my sister, who was kidnapped by these military looking guys.” Jean muttered.
“I’m sorry. Why would they do that?”
Jean hesitated. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.” She whispered. She didn't want to control Skye or touch her mind, not when she was the first nice person to her since Sara was taken.
“You never know. Try me.”
Jean paused and took a deep breath. “I'm a psychic.” She whispered, looking at the floor, fists clenched. She didn't know why she told her, but Skye was someone who could help and probably would definitely help.
Skye blinked. Logically, she knew there was a possibility more powered people were out there, and she finally had proof. She didn't need to have Jean show it when she gave no sign of lying in her vibrations. She took one of Jean’s hands, and sent light vibrations up her arm.
Jean’s head snapped to her. “You have powers too?” She whispered.
“Yeah, and I can hack really good. Better than Tony Stark good. So, how about a deal? We work together to find our families. You with your psychic powers, me with my hacking.”
Jean positively beamed, turning Skye's grip into a handshake. “You have a deal, Skye.”
______________________________________________________
That was when they were thirteen, and they were still no closer to their goal three years later. They had hacked and mind controlled everything and everyone from every agency they could think of, internationally and domestically.
They were about to give up when the Battle of New York happened and a new agency came out of the shadows.
SHIELD.
Hacking into that got them two redacted files: One on her, one on Jean. Both heavily redacted, no mention of Sara Grey, but now they had a lead.
“What do we do? We’re so close, and with the recent invasion and going public, they trained their agents to recognize and resist mind control.” Jean was frustrated. She got rebuffed by a high level agent and had to make herself scarce as he looked around.
“As well as beefing up their cyber security. I can only get surface level stuff now. It's infuriating.” Said Skye. Jean could have laughed at Skye’s anger at being outdone if she wasn't angry also. “Which means we have to infiltrate their organization.”
“How?” Jean asked. “We can't use our powers, although knowing us we will anyway.”
“Well, what if we find something they're likely to look into?” Skye said, pulling up a ton of places they hacked, one being AIM, which had this serum called EXTREMIS, a knock off super soldier serum. It was now under new ownership and called Project Centipede.
“That one.” Jean said, pointing at Centipede. “Seems like something they’d be interested in, what with Captain America and all.”
“Good idea.” Skye grinned. “Let's hope the team they send is decently behaved though, in case we have to use our powers, maybe buy masks just in case.” Jean nodded.
“Absolutely last resort though.” She muttered.
“Agreed.” Skye replied. “But better that than nothing at all.”
“True.” Jean conceded. They were both willing to do anything to get their families at this point, especially when so close.
So Skye began hacking Centipede and found a lab, and a few others just in case, as Jean began driving.
Jean could steal the knowledge of particularly weak minded individuals, unless she really focused but that gave her migraines, not ones that were dumb but just had weak mental defenses, and had stolen knowledge of how to drive and taught Skye after controlling someone to sell a used van. It was also how Skye got physical access points to agency servers.
______________________________________________________
Skye and her were sitting at a cafe outside the lab a few days later, having a date, because they always seemed to unintentionally do that when on tasks like this. It was actually how they started dating.
It was also an easy cover.
Of course, as they were doing that it blew up. Skye and Jean waited for someone to do something to hopefully catch SHIELD’s attention, but no one else from Centipede seemed nearby.
“Masks?” Skye asked.
“Masks.” Jean agreed.
They got their masks and Skye quake jumped them up, throwing up a vibrational shield to ward off the fire and falling debris, extending it over scientists and doctors as Jean telekinetically threw debris and fire away from people, saving as many as possible. Skye and her got everyone out as her girlfriend’s arms turned black and blue.
Jean hurried her away as soon as they got outside, a man landing a few feet from them from a floor higher, with a woman in his arms. The three paused and looked at each other, but ultimately ran off.
They snuck back to the van, getting powerful painkillers Jean mind controlled a doctor for a prescription of and gave Skye some as she got cold compresses, helping Skye hold them until she nodded, then wrapped her arms in compression bandages. “How bad?” Skye asked.
“Don't think too bad this time. It wasn't as long as most others. Or as frequent, obviously.” Jean guessed, having medical knowledge from doctors she controlled, as she took ibuprofen for her headache. Skye nodded.
“Good, and I guess we got their attention.” Because Skye’s screen was displaying SHIELD communication channels she had managed to hack into going a mile a minute.
“So… Wait here? How will they even know it's us?” Jean asked, as they hadn't thought of that.
“They probably have some type of gear to find out heights and some identifying features. Would probably help to wear the same clothes too, and they may have gear to identify us based on that description.” Skye said.
“Let's get taken into custody!” Jean cheered sarcastically and Skye laughed and said “Here, here!” They fist bumped, gently.
_______________________________________
“Got any eights?” Jean asked, doing control training with Skye. They used card games, so that she could practice staying out of others’ minds.
They had found “the Hooded Hero” as the media was calling the man, and learned he was Mike Peterson. More bargaining material for SHIELD.
“Go fish.” Skye said, smiling proudly.
Jean beamed, but the van door flew open, and two men, one middle aged, one younger, stood there. “Hey.” She started.
“What up?” Skye finished, popping the P.
Bags were shoved over their heads and they were handcuffed.
They were shoved into the back seat of a car, and they eventually arrived at an airport, judging by the sounds when they were taken out.
They were marched up the stairs and shoved onto chairs, and the bags were removed but not the cuffs.
They glared at the agents.
“So…” Began the older guy. “Interesting powers.”
“What are you talking about?” Skye asked.
“You two smell like smoke, you’re wearing the same clothes, and are the height and build of the Masked Heroes.” The younger guy said, annoyed.
“And? For all you know these Masked Heroes saw that and framed us.” Jean snapped.
“In this line of work?” Middle age said. “Coincidences like that are too rare. You would know their faces after all.” He threw their masks on the table.
“So there are two ways this could go…” The Terminator said.
“Oh, is one of them the easy way?” Skye mocked.
“No.”
“Oh…” Both muttered, rethinking their decision.
“I think you were suspiciously cooperative. Even now you haven't gotten out of the cuffs and attacked us despite being able to. You did this on purpose. You want something.”
The two tensed. 'This guy's good.' Jean sent Skye.
'Yeah.' She thought back. They found out Jean could do this, a while back, and obviously only the two of them did it. 'What do we do?'
'I say tell the truth, get what we want in exchange for telling them about Centipede?'
“Fine. We want two things.” Skye said. “Files.”
“I can't do that.” The older one said.
“You can if they're about us.” Jean scoffed.
“Why would they be about you?”
“My sister was taken by an organization, and she was left on the doorstep of an orphanage. Your agency is the only one besides that orphanage with anything on either of us.”
“In exchange we’ll tell you what we know about Centipede.” Skye said.
The older one stared at them for a few long minutes. “Tell me your names, and agree to be consultants for SHIELD, and you have a deal.”
The two looked at each other. 'Do we trust that?' Jean asked.
'No, but there are more resources for us to look for our families and we can easily find more things inside, maybe even without getting in trouble with supervision. We should ask for assurances first though.'
“We want a written deal stating all this and that anything harmful to us will not happen, as well as being allowed to search with supervision with SHIELD resources. Putting us on a list, harmful experiments, treating us like threats, etc, does not happen.” Jean said. There was a long pause.
“I’m Agent Phil Coulson, and you have a deal.”
“Jean Grey.”
“Skye. No last name. Can we get the handcuffs off now?” Coulson nodded to the younger guy.
“Let them out Agent Ward.” He looked like he had serious misgivings about this, but Ward did as he was told.
“I’ll go get this written up. Be right back.” The two agents left and returned shortly, piece of paper and pen in hand.
After they signed, Skye began filling them in on Centipede.
“It's basically the EXTREMIS project from AIM dialled up to eleven. Mass production of stable super soldiers stronger than AIM’s. We don't know who's backing them, we have a few more lab coordinates, but that's about it and the identity of the Hooded Hero, his name’s Mike Peterson.” Skye said. “I can write down the coordinates for you.”
“That would be helpful, thanks.” Coulson said.
They left what Coulson called the Cage and Skye wrote down the coordinates.
“Fitzsimmons, what have we got?”
“Well uh… The guy is very mad…” Said the man.
“We don't know. We can't decipher it without a sync point.” The woman continued.
“Oh God there's two of them…” They heard Ward mutter, and they looked at him. “What? I can already tell those two do it a lot too!” He gestured to Skye and Jean.
“What if you had audio?” Jean asked, deciding to ignore him. Everyone looked at the two girls, getting back on task.
“We had a shotgun mic pointed at the building and recorded everything. The files are in our van.” Skye said.
What followed was a bunch of technobabble.
“That would work.”
“That would be great, thank you.”
“You get any of that?” Skye asked her.
“Only that it works, and Ward was actually right.” Jean blinked. “And I got knowledge from quite a few engineers up here.”
“What?” Simmons asked.
“We both have powers. I control vibrations.”
“And I am a psychic. Whenever I mind control people, sometimes I get their knowledge too. I won't do it to you, but I did it to try and find my sister and Skye’s parents.”
“How old are you?” May asked, tense.
“Sixteen.” Skye said. “At least I think for me. The Nuns just slapped a date on me.”
“I can confirm she is. Her brain development matches other sixteen year olds.” Jean answered, then saw Skye’s look. “You never asked.” She and Skye shrugged simultaneously. Ward looked like he was regretting every life choice he made.
That would be fun to mess with.
“Fair enough. Oh and the encryption is locked to the GPS. The van needs to be in that alley way to work.”
“Alright. May take Jean and Skye to the alley.” Oh that was not a friendly look she gave Coulson… “The rest of us will begin preparing for take off here.”
So… May was not thrilled. “Stay out of my head.” She warned, and Jean nodded, kinda scared.
“I won't go in unless it's to send a telepathic message in an emergency.”
May seemed reluctantly satisfied with that.
The drive was done in silence.
As Skye uploaded the audio to the bus, Jean packed their things she knew they'd want. Skye’s and her medical supplies, which May eyed, Skye’s hula girl, laptop, and SD card. Her favorite jacket, books, and cards, and various other power training tools for both. She finally packed their clothes and just finished as Skye did when May was suddenly thrown against the wall by Mike, slumping unconscious.
“You said you could help me disappear right? Well we need help.”
“We?” Skye asked. Oh God this guy was an unstable Centipede subject and his son was here. Judging by his expression he was gonna blow any second.
Jean took the wheel. “Drive to the train station.”
Skye began deleting everything on him and his son, something Jean knew she was scarily good at. She was also discretely sending a message to SHIELD.
“Can't you hurry up?”
“I'm going as fast as I can. There's a lot of stuff to delete.” Skye said. She had sent the message to SHIELD about their situation.
‘May unconscious. Mike has us. Volatile. Son involved. Headed to the train station.’ With their coordinates and his name.
______________________________________________________
“Mister Peterson! My name is Phil Coulson, please step out of the van!”
“What did you do?!” He roared, before ripping open the van door and taking his son out and into the station.
They climbed out after him. “He’s in the station!” Jean yelled to Coulson and Ward.
The four ran in to see Mike fighting a bunch of guys he tried to push past, and Coulson got his son out.
What ensued was a long crisis negotiation before Ward shot him.
Coulson, May (who had shown up and taken out a shotgun wielding “cop”), Jean, and Skye rushed over. “He’s alive.” Coulson sighed in relief, seeing the dendrotoxin branching throughout his skin.
Skye and Jean sighed in relief. “You okay May?” Skye asked.
“Had worse.” May asked, though Jean could hear slight surprise and… Fear? in her tone.
She opened her mouth to say something but the older woman was already walking away.
“Don't mind her. She’ll come around.” Coulson told them, with a look that clearly said to leave it.
They nodded.
They dropped Ace off at his Aunt's, got Mike treatment at a SHIELD base and were off to Peru for an 0-8-4, or an object of unknown origin.