Learning to Love the Rain

Growing up, Skye had always hated the rain. When you're one of eighteen children in a single, ten-by-ten room in an orphanage built in the late nineteenth century, thunder and lightning are absolutely terrifying, and it wasn't as if she had a mother and father to run to in her fear. She had only the nuns, and there were always just three of them at a time, which meant that they were always much too busy. So, eventually, Skye learned to hide beneath the blankets and wait for the storm to pass. She learned to do this so well that she spent most of her life hiding from pain and waiting for it to pass.

At the age of nine, she had nearly been adopted by a kind mother and father with several other children. The Brady family had seemed to enjoy her company, but, inevitably, they sent her back to the orphanage. The nuns had comforted her and said that it wasn't her fault, that the family simply had no more room, but she had known the truth. She was so unlovable that even the kindest people she had ever met couldn't take her in. That night, it rained once again, and she began to truly hate the rain.

At the age of sixteen, she left. She told Sister Margaret where she was going and then she ran as though she had never run before. She lived in a rundown van and made her money hacking into places she certainly should not be hacking into. It brought her as much joy as she ever thought anything was going to, and so she continued doing the same thing, again and again, for five years.

At the age of twenty-one, she met Miles. And yes, he was kind, and sweet, and charming. He smiled at her as though she was the only person he saw, and he made her feel as though she mattered. Like everyone before him, though, he only wanted something from her. He recruited her to Rising Tide and helped her become the best hacker the group had ever had. She began to feel as though she mattered, but then there were times she knew that, in his eyes, she didn't. When it rained, she still hid beneath her blankets as she always had.

At twenty-three, SHIELD had found her. She didn't know why or how- yes, okay, she did, they were one of the best hacking agencies in the United States government, but that didn't mean that she was easy to find-but they had tracked her down quickly and had taken her to their headquarters. When they had done so, she had never thought that they would become the closest thing to family she had ever known.

It was also at twenty-three that she met Grant Ward. Unlike Miles, he was not charming. He was cold and bitter and often acted as though she was a machine, which earned him her playful nickname of 'Robot.' But there was something raw about him, something truthful and real and unique, that made her want to discover the mystery of him much more than she had wanted to discover the mysteries hidden by anyone before him.

The day she found out of his betrayal was her twenty-fourth birthday.

She learned to move on with her life, and she left SHIELD at the age of twenty-six, less than three years after being made an agent. She had loved the organization and the family that she had found there, but it was still much too difficult to be an agent that was trying to take down the organization of a man that she cared deeply about-and that was at the very least. So she left and tried to start a new, happier life outside of SHIELD.

She settled in Massachusetts, only a mile from the town where Ward had grown up, and wasn't at all surprised to run into his sister. Rosalie was kind- one of the kindest people Skye had ever met, in fact- and she told Skye that her older brother was in town. What Skye hadn't expected was Rosalie to know her name well enough to say it the moment they met.

"He talks about you constantly," Rosalie replied with a laugh. "Watch out. I think he may be in love with you." With that, she walked away, not knowing she had just changed Skye's view of the world.

That night, it rained, and Skye walked outside and stood beneath the downpour, smiling for the first time in months, and she began to realize why people so loved to dance in the rain.

It rained on the day that they wed outside, and Skye simply stared at the sky and smiled, because she had learned that there was nothing to fear when it thundered or when lightning flashed. She was so much in love on that day that she laughed as mud stained the hem of her white gown and rainwater ruined her hair and her veil.

And now, she lay in a hospital bed, listening to the rain fall outside without any true interest in it. The reason behind her lack of interest lay bundled in pink in the crook of her arm, sucking her thumb contentedly as she snoozed. Rosalie Natalia Ward had been born three hours before and immediately placed in the arms of her mother after her father held her and cut her cord.

Skye learned that she loved the rain, and the happiness it brought, more than anything else in the world.