Marvel's Agents of Shield Fic: The Wheels On The Bus (Go Round And Round)

[hucknclem]

Title: The Wheels On The Bus (Go Round And Round)
Characters: Coulson, Skye, Ward, team
Rating: PG if you squint?
Warnings: Spanking and the usual gratuitous schmoop
Summary: There are way too many kids on this bus
A/N: Potential spoilers up to FZZT, whereafter this fits

Comments

As promised, the babbling commentary

[shotboxer]

I did warn you there would be babbling:

Warning - I may have over-identifed with Skye just a bit. What can I say, your writing just pulled me in. . .

The tension you set up in this fic between Skye and Coulson and their ways of doing things (learned yearning for, and seeking out of, as much info as possible vs. trained to keep as much info close to his chest as possible and rely on others to trust his orders with little or no background info) is a great, believeable set up and also drove me up a wall (in a good way).

Because, really, while Coulson has never given Skye any reason to distrust him, and he's been more than fair and forgiving, he also hasn't really given her any overt reasons to trust him, or, more specifically, to trust the SHIELD protocols he follows when he's in 'mission mode'.

After all, in The Hub, the one time he told her explicitly to 'trust the system', the system ended up leaving Ward and Fitz to die and it was only Skye and Jemma breaking some major rules that allowed the team to rescue them at the last minute. And then, despite telling Victoria Hand that he would 'deal with it internally' in regards to Skye and Jemma's actions, he doesn't appear to actually do anything at all, even talk to them together or individually about what happened and how and why things could/should have been done differently. His first apparent interaction with Skye afterwards is to give her the information about her possible mother (which is included in a really big lie of omission). And he brushes off her apology before giving her the news.

Talk about mixed messages.

Coulson, in my opinion, is very lucky that Skye is A. very good at reading people B. willing and able, in most situations, to read his intent as positive and intuit a lot/most of the nice things he won't/doesn't say to her and C. that she has these skills at all, given how she grew up and all the baggage she should/does have re. reading people and naturally/understandably assuming the worst of and from others. Coulson basically relies totally on her ability to read between his lines while in 'mission' mode and that she'll be able to hold out against her more negative instincts indefinately with little or no positive input from him.

Of course she reaches the end of her rope eventually.

TBC . . .