AN: So, first fic in quite some time...

What I find fascinating about Skye is that she is this bright funny person even after growing up in foster system, being moved around every few month. I mean, she must have thought that nobody wanted her and all... and still she isn't bitter. This story is put together out of snippets of what I think could be Skye's story.

I hope you like it!

She is four years old and not yet Skye. Her name is Katie, and this is her 11th foster family. Not that she knows. Or cares.

What Katie cares about is that the new foster mom actually remembers how much she loves cocoa. Every evening before bedtime she comes into Katie's room, reads her a story and lets her drink hot cocoa, until she is so sleepy she just wants cuddle the little bear the mom bought her and sleep. The mom doesn't let her until she brushed her teeth, but that's okay. Katie knows brushing her teeth is important. She's seen it on TV.

It's the best foster family she can remember. The mom isn't married, but that doesn't matter, because the mom is warm and funny and caring. They live in a little apartment in the city and when Katie goes to sleep she hears the mom watching TV. It's calming, to know that the mom isn't far.

Before she sleeps, she prays. She isn't sure whether she believes in god, but the family she was in before did, and Katie really wants to stay here, so she prays to god that he will let her. That she can stay here forever.

She can't.

Katie is five and it's dark and she is afraid. She made the dad angry. She spilled the orange juice on his newspaper. She should have been more careful. She knew that she should stay away from the dad when he had that look in his eyes, but she had been so thirsty.

She is in one of the basement rooms. There are some tools in here, but nothing to sit on. The switch for the light is outside the room, so she cannot even see her hand before her eyes. It's cold, too. Katie only wears her sleeping clothes. She wishes she had her teddy with her. She still remembers the mom that had given her the teddy. There had been tears in that moms eyes when she had returned Katie to the orphanage. Katie misses that mom. She had been the best mom ever.

Katie wonders how long she will have to stay here. Marty, the foster brother, says that the dad once left a kid in here for two days. Katie hopes she doesn't have to stay that long. She really doesn't like the dark.

It's one day and a half, and Katie can never stand full darkness again.

Katie is six and it's her first day in school. She wears new clothes and proudly carries her bag with books and pencils around. The mom and the dad had looked very proud, too, when they had waved her goodbye. They are good foster parents. Nice people, they remember that she is allergic against strawberries, listen to her when she tells them what she like to read and they never get angry at her. They had been surprised when she told them that she had taught herself to read, and then they had said what a clever girl she is.

Katie really wants to stay with them, but she has a sneaking suspicion she won't. As much as the parents try to hide it, they fight often, and when they don't there is an uneasy silence in the room that makes Katie want to talk just so the tension will dissolve. She has heard about such situation from other kids at the orphanage. The parents will probably split up soon, and then Katie will have to leave again.

But this is her first day in school and so Katie smiles brightly and tries to make friends.

It's two months before the parents file a divorce and Katie loses her new friends because she has to move.

Katie is seven and she is happy. She sits in the living room with the dad while he explains to her how the computer works. It's fascinating and Katie listens to every word he says. The dad is good at explaining, he doesn't use words Katie doesn't know but he doesn't talk to her as if she's stupid either.

In the kitchen Katie can hear the mom humming along with the radio while she cooks something that smells delicious, and she smiles brightly when the dad tells her why that little ventilator is so important (the computer can become really hot when it is used to long, so it has to be cooled down so the important parts don't get damaged).

The mom calls them for dinner and Katie wants nothing more than for this to never end.

It does, of course. The parents don't want her to leave, Katie knows, she sees it in their eyes, but somebody from administration told them that Katie has to go. Katie doesn't understand. Why isn't she allowed to stay with these nice people?

Katie is eight and everything hurts. She is in her room, lying on her bed and tries not to think of the pain. The dad, no, he doesn't want her to call him dad, he said that his name is Derek and damn, kid, call me by my name, had been drunk and the mom Blanche was still at work and Derek had decided that she was being too cheeky so he had beaten her up a bit, like he called it.

He does that, to her and to Blanche to. Katie had known it the moment she looked into Blanche's eyes when Blanche had come to pick her up from the orphanage. Blanche had that hollow look that told about the pain she was in. Katie had begged the nuns not to send her away, but Sister Mary had told her sternly to do as she was told.

Her arm hurt. Everything else hurt, too, but her arm is the worst. She hopes it isn't broken. Her head lay on the pillow. It is hard, because she hides the book the computer dad had given her there, along with her teddy. She hopes she can leave soon.

The arm is broken. Blanche drives her to the hospital when she arrives that evening and Katie tells the doc that Derek hit her, but Derek tells them that she lies and that she fell down the stairs. Blanche looks apologetic at Katie but tells the doc that Derek is right. She has to stay with Blanche and Derek for another two weeks before she is moved again, and in this time falls down the stairs a second time breaking her leg. Sister Bethany looks doubtful at Katie and asks her what really happened, but Katie learned her lesson and keeps her mouth shut.

Katie is nine and all she wants is to be left alone. She sits in the library of the city and reads every book about computer and programming she can find. Susan, the foster mom, doesn't care where Katie is anyway, so Katie figures she can miss dinner.

Susan doesn't care about much. She's always working, and if she isn't, she meets friends or wants to read. Katie is okay with that. There is so much worse than a foster mom who doesn't care.

Sometimes she wishes Susan would care, though. When the other kids at school get picked up from school for example, or when they get giddy with pride about their grades and can't wait to tell their parents. Katie doesn't tell Susan about school. She tried, in the beginning, but gave up after a week.

She stays three month, without talking to Susan more than two hours in total. She does learn a lot about programming, though.

Katie is ten and she wants nothing more than to run. The foster dad, Kevin, is choleric and the foster mom Lynette is useless. There is another foster kid, Jennifer. Jennifer is eight. She is scared of Kevin, like really scared, and she has every reason to, considering Kevin is one of those foster dads that beat the crap out of you when they get angry. And Kevin gets angry a lot.

Yet Katie doesn't run. She's not sure what that would accomplish, and she would not leave Jennifer behind. It's an unspoken rule for foster kids not to get attached to one another because you usually just don't stay together for much longer than a few month, so why bother, but the second unspoken rule for foster kids is that when you get into a family like this you protect the younger kids. Katie has had older foster kids protecting her a few times, but it's her first time being the older kid.

She does her best to protect Jennifer. She takes a beating for the little girl quite a few times, pulls Kevin's attention away from Jennifer to herself. She tells Jennifer stories she read and even some she's heard from foster parents. She holds the Jennifer when she has nightmares. Together, they hope that they are moved soon.

They have to stay for four month. Katie never sees Jennifer again afterward.

Katie is eleven and life is good. The foster mom, Liz, is in her early thirties and she is an IT specialist. Liz answers every question Katie has, praises her skills with the computer and teaches her a few programming tricks.

They live in a small flat in the city. Liz comes home every day at six, and then they make dinner together. Liz is a horrible cook, Katie is a bit better and somehow they mostly end up with something eatable. If not, they get a pizza. Liz tells Katie about her day at work and Katie tells Liz about school. Katie really started learning again since she moved to Liz. Liz cares about Katie's grades.

They spend the evenings talking about programming, watching movies and eating ice cream. Sometimes they go out and watch the stars on the nightly sky. Liz says that one day Katie can conquer them all. They laugh a lot. Life is good.

It doesn't stay good, of course. After five months Katie has to move again. It's only five month because Liz fought tooth and nail, Katie knows, administration wanted to pick Katie up after three months already. She stopped questioning it a while ago.

Katie is twelve and she knows she doesn't belong. The foster parents Nick and Celia already have two kids on their own, Justin and Erin, and all of them make it clear to Katie that she doesn't belong. She is only there because the Millers want to show the world what good people they are. Katie knows this kind of people. She's been in such families before.

Justin and Erin are insufferable, though. They are twins, fifteen and they are really mean. Katie makes sure to hide her personal things from them, she knows they would destroy them if they could. It's not much, anyway. Just her old teddy, the book about computers from one of the good foster dads and the hula dancer doll Liz had given her when they had parted. Not much, but it's Katie's and she does not want to lose those things.

Justin and Erin push her in the pool when their parents are out. Katie can't swim. Nobody ever thought of teaching her. She nearly drowns, is only saved because the neighbor saw what happened. She gets send back to the orphanage the next morning. The nuns make sure she learns to swim after that. The incident is never talked about.

Katie is thirteen and she should be in the PE lesson. Instead she is in the library. The foster parents don't own a computer, they are in some kind of religious group that says that computers and TVs and mobiles are the work of the devil and that children should come home directly after school and only meet with other children from the group... Katie zones out every time somebody tries to tell her the rules. She's really not that interested in the group, and she isn't going to stay here long anyway, so she doesn't bother.

She forged the foster parents signature on a paper that says she isn't allowed to do PE and so she sits in the library instead, in front of the only computer there is surfing in the internet. The computer settings don't allow student to access the internet safe for some sites the school specifically picked out, but Katie only needed thirty seconds to get around those settings. Really, it was almost embarrassing how easy it was.

Out of boredom she hacks the directors email. It's not really a challenge for her, but it's fun, especially when she can spam him with cute videos about cats.

Nobody ever finds out that it was her who cut of the electricity on exam day. It was easy, and she had a lot of fun, but she really wants to find out what else she can do.

Katie is fourteen and she knows that this is illegal, but she just wants to know how far she will get. She is alone in the house, the foster parents are out for the night, and she knows she has several hours. The computer is prepared, the teddy, her computer book and the hula dancer standing in sight as lucky charms and she takes a deep breath. She can do this.

When she starts, she is really tense, but after a while that subsides. Hacking the FBI is difficult, especially because she knows that if she gets caught she is in deep shit, but she wants a challenge. She hacked the local police station in her first week here, and it had been ridiculously easy. So now, one step up.

It's two hours when she makes a mistake, trips an alarm. For a moment she is frantic, desperate, than she calmly takes pulls out plug and watches the screen turn dark. She only tripped a single alarm, and if she was fast enough they will know that somebody hacked them, but not who.

She spends the next two weeks until she is moved nervous and scared, but the FBI doesn't show up at the front door, so she figures she got away with it.

Katie is fifteen and she hopes against logic that this time she can stay. She knows she can't, if there is one thing life told her it's that the nothing ever lasts and that no matter how much she hopes, she won't be allowed to stay, but she can't help but hope.

She lives with Nancy, a nice elderly woman who loves to cook and who has this grandmotherly charm that makes Katie love her despite better judgment. Loving a foster parent is dangerous, because it will inevitably get your heart broken, but Katie can't help it. Nancy is so nice, and so kind, and so attentive, and so... Nancy.

Nancy loves to tell tales about her youth, and how things were different then, but Nancy is also great at listening. Katie finds herself telling Nancy about her past. Not much, of course, but bits and pieces. Nancy is always ready to listen. When Katie's birthday rolls around, she finds herself gifted with a locket necklace. There is no picture inside, just the words "God is love". Katie remembers telling Nancy that story, and she can't stop grinning like a fool for the rest of the week because Nancy remembered it, too.

Nancy is robbed and killed on her way home from the supermarket one evening. They tell Katie the next morning, but she already knew. After it took Nancy over two hours to return from the market, Katie hacked into the local police station. She saw the report about the dead woman and identified the pictures before the police had. She never gets the image out of her head again.

Katie is sixteen and she really wants to know why the hell her file is redacted by a government agency called SHIELD. She doesn't even know what SHIELD is. She isn't sure it's a government, she has never heard of it, but if they redact her file they have to be, don't they?

She hacked into child services, because she was bored and she wanted to know whether or not her parents were still alive. Not that she cared that much, her parents had never been such a big matter to her, but now, to see that somebody had blackened that info on her file really made her curious. Why didn't SHIELD want anybody to know? Why would they care about what the file of a foster kid like her said?

She meets Miles Lydon a few weeks later. She knows he's probably bad company, but he is funny, he is clever and he tells her interesting things about the government she didn't know. She runs away with him because there isn't anybody who would care where she is.

Katie is seventeen and she decides that she doesn't want to be Katie anymore. Katie is a little foster kid, just one out of many. She remembers Liz telling her she could conquer the sky, and decides that Skye is a nice name.

Miles introduces her to interesting people. They are all skeptical about the government, they discuss politics and computer security and Skye is delighted to talk to people who are hackers just like she herself is one. She isn't stupid, she knows that there are a few of them she should probably keep her distance from, but she can't help it. These people draw her in, with their ideas and plans and paroles like "Who watches the Watchmen" (Skye is almost sure that one is stolen out of a comic, but she can't remember which one).

Within three month, the rising tide is founded and somehow Skye is part of it. She participates in the hacking of CIA and NSA (she could probably do it alone, but it's safer to do so in a group), learns that she can out drink quite a few of her new friends and feels a bit like it's the seventies and they are hippies (only with, you know, computers).

Skye is eighteen and she lives in a little apartment somewhere in the dirtier parts of LA. She could have a bigger apartment, she hacked banks before, the money wouldn't be a problem, but somehow she doesn't see the point in it. Her apartment is big enough and her computers are the best that are on the market. She doesn't need much more.

She and Miles are officially a couple now. She thinks she loves him. She isn't sure because she is pretty sure she's never been in love before. Sure, she loved Liz and she loved Nancy, but she had not been in love. It's a strange feeling. She doesn't want it to end.

It nearly does. Miles is sloppy and gets caught hacking the FBI from her apartment. They have to run, her name ends up in a data base, with a nice criminal record attached to it.

She erases herself from the digital network as reaction. It's not easy, but after two weeks, there is no digital trace of Katherine Lewis to be found anymore. She is only Skye now.

Skye is nineteen and she is in love. Not with Miles. Well, with Miles too, but mostly with this van she just found. It's not much, but it's big enough that she can fit a bed and her stuff in. She doesn't have much stuff anyway, and she always wanted to have a van.

Miles won't be too happy, he wanted to find a flat for them both, but Skye knows she's fallen in love with this van so yes, she is going to buy it.

It's the first real fight they have. There is screaming and Skye drives away in her new van. Miles calls two days later and they make up.

Skye is twenty and she is starting to get scared by the Rising Tide. She still thinks the ground idea is great, but somehow, a few of the people she's met are scaring the shit out of her and she thinks that the group is taking a bad direction.

The Rising Tide has never been legal, but it hasn't been this level of illegal before, either. Miles nods when she tells him, and they decide to get out. They fight more often now, Skye is scared she will lose him.

They are out for two weeks when New York happens. Skye wants back in, not so deep as before but her distrust into the government and her faith in the Rising Tide has been renewed. She does some PR now, internet radio and stuff like that. Miles and her fight even more, but they don't break up. They need each other.

Skye is twenty-one and she really likes this Agent Coulson. Like, what agent decides to drug his own lackey because he wants her to trust him? Also, she really wants to help Michael. She sends Miles a short text that she is okay and that he should stay away, and then starts working with this team. When Coulson offers her a job, she takes it. She doubted the Rising Tide for quite some time now, and by now she also really wants to know why the hell SHIELD redacted her file.

This could be fun.

Of course, it blows up in her face. Like most everything she does. She feels incredibly disappointed in Miles, because damnit, she trusted him. Believed that he is just as idealistic as she is. She sees the distrust in Wards, in Mays, in Coulsons face. Coulson is the worst, so she tells him about her parents. He tells her that he will try to help her. And she trusts him. Starts hoping. She probably shouldn't, but she does anyway. That just seems to be part of her. Hoping, even when she knows she shouldn't.

I hope you liked it!