Chapter Text
“You take that back!” Skye wiped her nose with her hand. She glanced down as she felt something sticky and runny on it. It was bloodied. She cursed inwardly, wondering how many Hail Mary's she was going to say tonight after Sister Mary was done with her.
“Aww, did you hear what the little Poots said?”
“My name is Skye!” her shout ended on a high screech.
All it produced was jeering laughter as she tried hard not to let the tears forming in her eyes fall. She rubbed her nose again, this time smelling the brief whiff of something metallic. She sniffed and gulped, tasting the blood going down her throat.
“Mary Sue, Mary Sue, Mary Sue Poots,” one of the larger boys and girls surrounding her taunted, waving Blankie around.
“Gimme back Blankie!” she tried to lunge at the boy holding her blanket, but he only laughed and held it away.
She tripped and stumbled, catching herself before she hit the hard dirt of the playground with both of her hands, whimpering as they skidded across the sharp small pebbles and sand. She wiped them down against her pants, as she felt a stinging sensation across her palms.
The laughter echoed above her. She clenched her fists and glared up at them, tears tracking down her face, the stinging sensation making her want to scrub her eyes furiously, but she knew that she would only get it really dirty. “Stop it! STOP IT!” she screamed. “Give me Blankie back! Stop calling me names!”
“Lookie at her, she's about to cry!” one of the older girls jeered.
Skye did not know where Katie was, hoping that her friend was nearby to stop the girl from saying anything else. She saw Katie hanging with the girl some times, but with her friend's absence, Skye didn't know what to do. “I'm not Orphan Annie, I'm not Mary Sue Poots-”
The laughter echoed loudly and harshly in her ears.
“-I'm not-”
It was as if something inside of her snapped, her vision narrowing into pinpoint slits as she suddenly pushed herself off of the ground. Something heady, angry and with a sensation that frightened her to the core seemingly over took her. One of her hands curled into a fist as she drew her hand back and slugged the laughing face of the boy that was holding Blankie away from her. Her cry of rage echoed through with the punch.
The boy stumbled back into his group of friends, all whom fell immediately silent as she stood there, panting hard. Her hands shook, a sensation crawling through her that left her frightened. She could feel her thoughts racing a million-miles per hour, the first immediate one was that she had just punched the boy across the face and the second one following that was that she was going to be in so much trouble.
She did not even get a chance to form a third thought as stars suddenly exploded across her vision, her world tilting sideways and down before she breathed in the earthy, musty smell of dirt. Pain exploded across her head and dizziness assaulted her as she groggily wondered what happened.
She became dimly aware of sharp bursts of cries, the sounds of scuffling and fighting and tried to sit up. It was not a good idea as she immediately felt nauseous and she dry heaved. Her hand automatically came up to her mouth as she choked, but what caught her blurry, dizzy vision was that Matt, a flurry of loose jeans, green sweater, reddish-brown hair, and white cane had abandoned his glasses near her and was a blur. He was kicking, punching and flipping through the group of playground bullies that had once surrounded her.
She watched, her head pounding, wondering if she was really seeing what she was seeing. Matt moved like no one could touch him, his cane acting as both a weapon and as a way for him to move out of the way incoming objects. She grimaced as her head pounded harder, almost in sympathy to the boy who stole Blankie was suddenly flipped to the ground, Matt immediately subdued him with a twist of his arm before rapidly punching the boy several times in the head.
She thought he would stop after the first few punches, but Matt seemingly sat on the boy's back, hand and arm still pinned, punching him repeatedly in the head. His face was a mask of something that unsettled Skye – like a cross between a grimace of pain and of her friend's familiar crooked smile.
“Matt-” Skye tried to speak, before wincing, her hand going to her forehead before she cried out softly.
She lifted her hand away and saw that a good amount of blood came away. Her vision became even blurrier for a second before she suddenly found her bloodied hand engulfed in a warm, but sticky and tender one.
“You're bleeding,” Matt's voice was near her right and she blinked owlishly, her vision focusing on him again as she realized he had stopped his beating of the boy and was kneeling next to her. “Kevin pushed you from behind and knocked you over where you hit your forehead into the ground.”
“Oww...” she moaned quietly. “It hurts-”
“Here,” Matt draped something warm around her shoulders and she realized it was Blankie. “Shawn gave it up...”
She reflexively glanced over to the boy who was now lying on the ground, unconscious. His face looked rather swollen and bloodied. She stared down at Matt's hand covering her own. His fists looked like they had been dunked in a vat of blood.
Skye suddenly felt sick.
“I think-”
She didn't get to finish her sentence as bile suddenly forced itself way up her throat and she turned to the side to throw up. The burning sensation worked its way up through her throat and nose as she coughed and heaved to the side. She coughed some more, feeling very dizzy and unable to focus. She was dimly aware of Matt saying something, his comforting hand leaving her own as she threw up again. The dizziness overwhelmed her and she squeezed her eyes shut. She tried to breath through her nose, trying to focus on the blackness of her eyes shut, but the dizziness wouldn't abate. The next thing she was aware of was the matronly voices of the sisters and one male voice, probably Father Lantom, all crowding around her.
Someone suddenly lifted her and she immediately tried to find some kind of purchase, some kind of grip to hold onto before the small familiar warmth of Matt's hand slipped into her own. It was the last sensation she was aware of before her dizziness became too much and she passed out.