Chapter Text
Skye had never settled somewhere for too long. She was always on the move. It wasn’t totally by choice there were people after her and she had to always remain vigilant. She had been back in the U.S for less than a year now. She had kept moving around the northern continent but she hadn’t left its boundaries ever since her return.
She had bought a van with the money she had gained from her mercenary’s days. It was practical and a good way to hide in plain sight. Her van was second hand but that only reinforced its disguise and avoided making it stand out beside it still was in pretty decent shape. She had done some modifications to make it more comfortable and to suit her needs, like an electric generator that recharged while she drove.
She could track and investigate new leads and be out fast without leaving a trail or anything behind if she had to make an emergency run this way. She really liked her van. It was home for her now.
Her van could rival or be an even better mobile command center than some owned by diverse alphabet agencies like the FBI or the CIA. She still avoided the latter after their last encounter. It hadn’t been a pleasant one. And they had parted in less than friendly ways.
Nowadays she mostly stuck to laying low and being a hacker. Skye sometimes helped remotely her best mate who was still doing mercenary’s work. and if he called she wouldn’t think twice in giving him a hand. She knew he wouldn’t call her unless he had run out of options. It was still having hang ups and feeling guilty about what happened the last time he had asked her help.
He still had made her promise him to be careful and stay safe, he could be such a mother hen when he wanted. He was the one that suggested she go back to the ‘States and tried to just enjoy life for a bit. He should have known that just wasn’t her style. Of course, trouble had found her even though it could be argued that she had sought it out. Not that she cared about semantics.
She had joined the rising tide at one point thanks to Miles. She had also hooked up with him again. It was nothing serious. But she was sure that if her best friend knew she was back with Miles he would totally give her the speech of ‘she could do so much better and why was she still wasting her time with him.’ Honestly she didn’t have a good answer to that. It just kind of happened again. It wasn’t that big of a deal, not for her anyway. It’s true that Miles was a jerk and an asshole but he was useful. And there was nothing wrong in using him as a stress relief. She could almost feel the judgy look and the following heavy eyes roll of her best mate at that thought.
Skye really didn’t care much for the rising tide as an organization. She hadn't joined them because she believed in their cause. It was just a means to an end for her.
Skye couldn’t just give up on her quest. And they were a good resource to have to that end. She really tried to let it rest for a while to avoid letting it become an obsession again. It was hard to put it on pause especially when it was so damn personal to be anything else. Except this time she had managed to not let her quest consume all her time. It wasn't exactly by her own choice. Not when every few leads she had found had all frustratingly ended up in dead ends.
Her last lead had also been a bust. She was left with no option but to try to get SHIELD's attention and try to gain access to their internal servers and see if they had some of the answers she was seeking. A part of her really didn’t want to do that. She had been avoiding it as much as possible, letting it be a last resort but she was left with no other options left now.
She really hated this. It was such a big risk. She had to make sure that only SHIELD would follow the lead she was going to leave and not the people after her. So she had left a trail of little crumbs for SHIELD to pick.
While she waited for them she had heard rumors through some black channels that there was a new research lab linked to something called centipede. The whole thing seemed very shady. So she had decided to investigate and see what they were up to. Honestly it seemed just like the type of thing Hyde would back up or be involved with. And she sure wasn’t going to let that possibility go uncheck, not when it could be connected to that bastard.
She had spent all week trying to gather more information and see if Zabo was related to this in any way while avoiding raising any kind of suspicion. Lucky for her there was a little coffee shop not far with free Wi-Fi and an innocuous alley for her to park her van.
If the lab was connected to one of Hyde’s side projects she hadn’t found any proof yet. Still, she knew that something wasn’t quite right with this. If she was wrong she would just drop it and move on but if indeed there was something going on there as she suspected she had planned to leak the information through the Rising Tide channels to get it shut down.
To that end she had been up all night putting together what she had found. At some point she had decided to take a break and get a coffee when the building suddenly blew up.
When the explosion occurred. A man jumped from the top floor where the lab was situated down 6 storeys below without as much of a scratch with a woman in his arms. It was one of the scientists if her white blouse was any type of indication.
Her lucky break meant that she had fortunately been there to record everything. This became the perfect opportunity to truly get into SHIELD's radars. it seemed she had been too subtle and careful with her precedent approach. She still thought this was a bit of stupid plan but she didn’t have much of a choice now that her latest lead had literally blown out and went out into flames. It didn’t take long for SHIELD to follow the neon sign trail she had left for them this time.
She only planned to stick around long enough to grab what she needed and disappear again. Easy, in and out, no problem whatsoever, well except for the fact that her terrible luck was far from being over.
She was already frustrated with the situation as it was and her lack of sleep wasn’t helping her already bad mood but it was about to turn even more sour.
As expected after she had posted the video, SHIELD sent two agents after her. They had barged in her van (she did let the door open for them) and didn’t waste any time. They immediately grabbed and black bagged her ass. It sucked that she only had time for a small breakfast before they had showed up. They had also put plastic handcuffs on her. She could have easily broken free from it of course but they didn’t need to know that.
At least the two agents were both Betas. She was not looking to have to deal with any Alphas on top of everything else. Dealing with Alphas was exhausting half of the time. And dealing with them on an almost empty stomach wasn’t what she would call joy.
She decided to go with the rebellious Omega act. It worked every time to foul or annoy people in dropping their guards. So she wasn’t going to discourage them from assuming that she was anything but an Omega, at least for now. It was always better to be underestimated. Besides, who would suspect that of just being an act? It's not like these government grunts would be able to guess what they were dealing with or what her true nature really was. People like her were so few that their existence was basically considered a myth still.
She made sure to sell her act and put on a good show on resisting her arrest and complaining like a disgruntled brat about the situation.
It rightly earned her an annoyed and aggressive reaction mixed with threats from the young agent. He was so irritated that he had totally manhandled her. He clearly had anger issues. Good thing he wasn’t an alpha or his stinky pheromones would have been all over the car and on her.
The older agent was very calm in comparison. He didn’t have any problem controlling his pheromones. Even his vibrations were radiating warmly calm. He had such a dad vibe to him. It worked in making him deceptively innocuous. Fucking spies, she was definitely going to keep a closer look on him.
Despite that the car ride had been mostly silent.
When they arrived they ushered her out of the car. Again Agent angry wasn’t being very considerate with his actions. They had taken her into a plane if her reading on the vibrations around her was correct and not a base. She sighed internally; things were already not going her way.
As Skye set foot on the plane her plan and contingencies plans went instantly out of the cargo bay. She immediately tensed when a particular scent that shouldn’t smell so familiar reached her. She let a long exasperated sigh escape because fuck this was so not happening right now. if she hated her plan before now she didn’t have the word to express how much she wanted to get the hell away from this place. There was just no way to get out of this situation easily now.
How could one of the last if not THE last person she wanted to run up to and she had been avoiding at all cost for years be there? This shouldn't have been a possibility. Melinda May shouldn't have been present in this type of situation right now. She was supposed to have definitely left the field after what happened in Bahrain years ago.
Yet, here she was. Why the actual hell was Melinda May doing here?
This was just the worst.
Skye was grateful for the black bag over her head at that moment. Despite making it harder to take deep breaths to calm herself it worked in her favor to mask her reaction. There was no need for them to know how shocked she was.
Skye had to reign in her emotions. It wasn't the time to let any of her control slip no matter how much this situation was making her reeling.
Skye hadn't expected her day to take this drastic turn but it happened. And now she had to deal with it. Starting by calming the fuck down and regaining control on her jackrabbited heart.
Despite how much effort Skye had put in avoiding this. She couldn't delay the inevitable forever. She knew it was an unwinnable battle from the start that she was bound to run into one of them eventually. She just thought that she had more time and that dreadfully fateful day would still be far out.
Still, here she was sitting in a SHIELD interrogation room with Melinda May. Not only was she one of her fated pack mates, she was also an Alpha. In other words she was the last person Skye wanted to be stuck with.
Damn it all, Skye really didn’t want to deal with this today or ever.
Why did she always have to have such shitty luck?