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VII.
“Skye, you need to leave now.”
She didn’t even bother to look at him. It was one of the most infuriating things of her fingers being practically glued to any keyboard within her reach. Now it was more distressing than anything else.
She wouldn’t even engage him in an argument. That would waste time and he knew that was exactly what she was thinking. She had learned how to handle him. But he needed to engage her. Rifle shots could be heard from outside the door and he tightened his grip on his automatic.
She couldn’t be here when they got here.
“Skye.”
“You couldn’t tell me what to do when you were my SO and you definitely don’t have grounds to tell me now.”
Ward ground his teeth together. She always used that argument. And it worked. He knew she was right. She was too stubborn and right now, he couldn’t think of a single reason why he married her.
“You mean my wife.”
She finally flashed her teeth, still hacking into the encrypted network. She was actually amused by all of this. When they were all about to die.
Oh, that’s why he married her. Because he couldn’t stand to see her hurt.
It was a weakness. Skye taught him that was okay.
He couldn’t think about that right now.
“Almost done,” Skye assured him. She didn’t look away from the screen, but put a hand on his tensed forearm. He knew she could feel his tension radiating off of him. Even now, her touch somehow soothed him.
“You can’t be here,” he said urgently.
Maybe he was stubborn too.
Skye finally tore her eyes away to look at him with a hint of annoyance.
“I’m not helpless. I can defend myself. You don’t have to protect me all the time.”
It was a familiar argument and one that couldn’t be humored at that exact moment. He opened his mouth to reply when the door blasted from its hinges.
In a moment where he wasn’t so amped up on adrenaline, he would have noticed that was because it had just been riddled with bullets. If he had been of sounder mind, he would have realized she was in danger.
But all he heard was a faint popping sound. His ears roared and it was deafening. Skye stopped speaking immediately. Her jaw went slack and he knew immediately what happened.
He had no time to process. He threw her to the ground and fired off the automatic rifle that had been strapped across his torso.
He ran to the extraction point with her bleeding out in his arms.
They told him that he was hit, but he didn’t believe it until Simmons wheedled the bullet from his center of mass. That was where they had been aiming.
They had shot right through Skye to get him.
She wasn’t wearing a vest.
He had.
Now she was on life support and he only had a few stitches.
I.
The support desk at the Triskelion was manned by dozens upon dozens of graduates from the Communications Academy.
He was directed to this one specifically.
“Agent Maria Hill told me you could help—“
“Yeah, just about done, Agent Ward.”
Ward looked down at the girl at the desk. Her face was familiar and he realized he had seen her before. It took him a moment to place it. She looked up at him and smiled.
“You remember me,” Ward stated. Surprising since they had only crossed paths momentarily when she was still at the academy.
Now-Agent Skye simply smiled. It was as sentimental as he was likely to get.
“Here, take a look at this.” She swiveled her computer screen so he can see the running decryption program clearly.
He bent down slightly, his tie brushing the keyboard as he tried to decipher the numbers whirling past his eyes. This was more than a little out of his area of expertise. Where was a nuclear bomb when you needed one? He had to go to Agent Hill who – to his embarrassment – referred him to a Level One communications agent.
But he wasn’t surprised. He remembered her now from the incident at the academy a few years ago.
He studied the screen for a few more minutes and decided the best way to proceed was to pretend he knew what he was seeing. Her big dark eyes studied him expectantly.
They had one course for communications at Operations and that was almost a decade ago for him.
How old was she, twenty?
Ward dismissed the thought. He straightened. “Hill just sent me down. How long did you have to decrypt this?”
She was typing furiously on the keyboard again, too distracted to look at him. He didn’t know why that offended him so much.
“About three minutes since she told me,” Skye said simply.
No trouble at all.
“You got here way faster than I thought you would,” Skye finished. “Usually it takes Operations hours to get down here.”
Ward wondered if there was a compliment in there somewhere. It was probably better if he didn’t.
“There’s a rush order on this.”
“Don’t you have someone on communications on your team?” she asked curiously.
She was looking at him so he guessed that meant she was done. She didn’t move to finish the conversation, though. Ward shifted from one foot to the other. He was increasingly aware of how dressed up he was. He rarely made it to the Triskelion. That’s where the Communications officers came to breed and as he said already, and as far as he had seen, everyone in the communications division seemed to have agreed on a dress code of plaid in jeans. She looked comfortable.
“I’m a specialist,” Ward told her. “They call me in from time to time, but this isn’t my expertise.”
Skye shrugged like it was no big deal. She was exceedingly laid back in comparison to the other hackers he’d met. Usually they just treated him like a dumb jock.
The feeling was mutual, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as SciTech.
“You really did this in three minutes?” Ward couldn’t help but ask. Even for the Triskelion, that was impressive.
“I was bored and had a few minutes,” she replied.
“What is it?”
Skye looked up. A mysterious smile played on her lips.
“You want to know how I cracked it?”
“That’s just very impressive.”
“It’s a similar encryption to a lot of professional security companies,” Skye said. “Your data is there, but it’s so full of false information you couldn’t access it.”
“And you, what?” Ward asked. “Sifted through it?”
“Sort of.”
“What are you doing down here?” he asked. “Someone with your skills should be in the field.”
“Thanks,” she said. But her lips were tight and he knew he shouldn’t have said that. “Tell that to Agent Hill. I’m probably going to be a Level One with no combat training for the rest of my life.”
“Why?”
“Failed my field assessment.”
That was strange. She certainly didn’t look incapable. You could usually spot the ones that were meant for the basement. That happened more in SciTech than anywhere else, but usually agents had aspirations for fieldwork.
“Who was your SO?” Ward asked curiously. There had to be an answer in there somewhere.
“SO?” Skye asked, her brow furrowed.
Ah. The problem revealed itself.
“Supervising Officer,” Ward replied. Whatever idiot recommended her for field duty didn’t assign her an officer. Usually the mentor would be an SO and in her field but obviously that didn’t end up happening. “If you want to be a field agent, they have to assign you an SO.”
“Never got one,” Skye said flippantly. The sounded… odd.
“How is that possible?”
Somehow, Skye wasn’t fazed. Everything seemed to just roll off her back. Maybe that was good if she wanted to do field work.
“Yeah, they don’t like me too much.”
“They.”
“Well I was in the top ten percent at the academy,” Skye says. “And then miraculously a hack job gets pinned on me. Weird, right?”
“That doesn’t sound weird,” Ward said. “That sounds like that Miles kid was a little over competitive.”
He couldn’t tell what was so amusing, but she was smiling at him like they had an inside joke.
“Yeah, I know,” Skye said. “I was kidding.”
She seemed to have graduated all right, but she was still stuck down here. SHIELD hazing could be rough.
“Well it was really nice to see you again, Agent Ward.” She ejected a flash drive with all the decrypted information and handed it to him. “Don’t get shot.”
She smiled again.
As he walked away, he didn’t think he had ever met anyone so bright in such a dank place. So much that he forgot how annoying she was.
IIX.
“No more bikinis for me.” The first thing Skye told him when she woke up was a joke and he really shouldn’t have expected any less.
He was so angry with her. He wanted to shake her and yell. When he would get into his berserker rages, she would just support him and let him exhaust himself. He owed her too much for that.
He was tired now from wanting so much to break down but refusing to. He thought she knew that and that was why she was smiling so much at him.
Never in her life was Skye unable to smile.
He ached for her and thanked every day that she ever looked at him. He didn’t deserve it.
He didn’t deserve her waking up. It was entirely his fault but she would never let him think it.
He was so tired and she couldn’t help but goad him. “I must look terrible. Simmons won’t even let me have a mirror.”
“I’ve seen worse.” He was still angry, but she was smiling fondly at him.
Like she missed him the weeks she was asleep. It wasn’t fair. He was the one suffering not knowing if she was ever going to wake up. For her, it was barely a second.
“Thanks.” Her smile was teasing.
“That’s not what I meant,” Ward sighed. “You looked better than when you were dying.
He kept swinging and missing but she took his hand. She was used to his locked down instincts and all she had to do was take his hand.
He wished that everything just rolled off his back like her.
“I should have gotten you out.”
She sighed and let go. He knew she wasn’t upset with him. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this fight. Even before she was shot, they talked about this. Too much, she would say. But he couldn’t help it. She was field rated but Communications at heart.
That was how they met. He knew she could take care of herself. It just wasn’t her instinct like it was his.
“Ward,” she said gently. “It isn’t your fault.”
“They were gunning for me,” he said harshly. Her eyes grew hard. He knew she could be sharp when she needed to be.
Usually it had to be for his benefit.
“There’s no use in going over that now,” she said briskly. “Just because I’m not a specialist doesn’t mean—“
“And if you were, wouldn’t you have been okay?” Ward snapped.
“You’re doing it again.”
She was right. He knew she wasn’t helpless. He just could never shake the desire to protect her at all costs.
She had been twenty-one when he met her, just at the desk at the Triskelion with a sweet smile and talking too much whenever he stopped by. Barely even a level one when he had been a level six for years.
Falling for her had been easier than he would like to admit. Admitting it was harder.
“I’ll just have to train more,” she said easily. “No big deal.”
“No big deal,” Ward repeated.
“Don’t,” she smiled. She took his hand again and he squeezed back forcefully.
“You needed tubes to breathe, Skye.”
“Grant.”
He exhaled. She only called him that when she really needed to get through to him.
The last time was when he had been knocked out in an explosion during tactical. Hers was the first voice he had heard.
“You’re not going to rush into anything.” As compromises went, it was the best he could do.
“Oh, aren’t I?” She teased again. But the message was the same. He couldn’t be her big protector all the time. And he couldn’t tell her what to do. “What did you do when I was asleep?”
He knew what she was asking. And he was sorry.
“I didn’t know if you were going to wake up.”
“And what if I didn’t?” She really wanted to know. For a long time he couldn’t tell her the truth. First just about his missions. She didn’t have clearance. And then why he would drop by her desk for decryption that wasn’t necessary and then eventually the way he felt about her.
Truth was something she demanded of him, no matter how much it hurt her sometimes.
“They’ll live now,” Ward replied. He knew she didn’t like that answer, but it was the truth. If Skye hadn’t lived, Ward wouldn’t have been responsible for his actions. Everyone knew that.
Especially her.
“Hey,” Skye said brightly. “We match now.”
After they took off the bandages she paraded her war scars with pride. He shook his head at that, but seeing her smile was more than he could ask for
II.
She was surprised to see him again. It was the third time this month he stopped by her station. Already she was preparing her system for another decryption.
“So what is it this time, Agent Ward?”
She didn’t even know his first name until a couple days ago when Agent Hill brought up Grant Ward and his top-secret missions that Skye couldn’t know anything about.
If that was the mentality, she didn’t understand why bring it up at all.
Ward’s hand was in his suit pocket, retrieving a hardrive.
He gave it to her soundlessly, as was his MO.
“How’s the toppling of regimes game going?” she asked conversationally. She knew it irritated him to no end, but sometimes would catch a smile if it was a full moon.
“It’s not a game.”
He was serious today – more serious than usual - so she just tapped away on her computer. She wished she had more to do so she didn’t have to look at him. In her opinion, this decryption was cake that even someone in Operations could do it.
“I wanted to discuss something with you.”
Skye looked up. He was leaning against her desk, arms folded. His serious stance, if he had any other.
“Okay.”
“You mentioned having interest in field duty.”
Skye shrugged. “Beats being stuck in here. Data analysis. Boring.”
She knew that was wrong. He didn’t like her taking the subject too lightly. It had come up a few times. He cast her that look and she sat back, taking the punishment of his gaze.
“The real way you go about it is you have a supervising officer who trains you and you take the required assessments that you will pass and have your clearance upgraded.”
“Will I?” Skye asked.
“Yes, you will,” Ward said definitively. “With me as your SO.”
“What?” Skye asked in surprise. “Are you kidding me?”
She thought that maybe he was coming down here so much because of some other reason. Not because he wanted to see her succeed. She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.
Skye immediately scolded herself for being such a stupid girl about jumping to the wrong conclusion like that. She wasn’t in the academy any more. And in any case, this was Grant Ward. She hoped he didn’t see her burning face and think her any more of a foolish schoolgirl than he already did.
“No,” Ward said. “I was just in a meeting with Agent Hill on the subject. If you like, I can go up and tell her you’ve decided against it.”
“No,” Skye promised hastily. “I want this. I’m just surprised. That’s all.”
“Why are you surprised?” Ward asked.
Skye shrugged her shoulders again, trying not to look at him too much. Sometimes he did that weird unblinking stare thing like he was trying to look right through you.
“I’m just me,” Skye finally said. “I didn’t think anyone would see me as a field agent.”
“That’s your decision.” His face softened for a moment. “You have real potential, Skye. From what I remember of your dealings at the academy—“
“Alleged,” Skye smiled.
There was that concealed half smile she remembered.
“I know you can do this.”
“Well…” Skye said. “Thank you. So much, Agent Ward.”
“We don’t have to be that formal now that I’ll be supervising you.”
“Alright,” Skye said, “Ward.”
She winked and he actually smiled this time.
“I have a first name.”
“I wouldn’t want things to move to fast between us,” Skye said. “Maybe I’ll try it some time. We’ll see how it goes.”
Ward nodded, ignoring her flagrant and inappropriate humor. “I’ll see you bright and early then.”
At that moment she realized with dismay that early for Grant Ward was earlier than for most people.
V.
“Remember, you have man hands so don’t look down when you swipe the card.”
“I know.”
Ward’s voice crackled through the coms and Skye grinned. His irritation with her was palpable through the line. She knew that he didn’t like her being Communication on his Ops. He considered it too dangerous, the hypocrite.
They had only been on a couple before Ward was assigned to Agent Coulson’s new elite unit. Ward himself was hesitant about the mobile unit. He was still resistant to team work.
Until Skye.
Skye, who twisted his arm to let her come too. They had been on separate missions lots of times but she would be damned if he was going to go on the coolest unit – in addition to having reservations about it – while all she got to do was run stupid surveillance.
She knew they weren’t technically allowed to do long term missions together. That was the first excuse Ward brought up. But when Skye wanted something, he was powerless to resist for long.
It took three months for her to convince him and for him in turn to get her on board.
After that, it was pie.
“You must be Mrs. Ward.”
The English girl smiled so brightly that Skye took an immediate liking to her. She set her bag down in the cargo hold. “Skye’s just fine,” she amended. “Only name.”
The girl’s logical brow furrowed as she took her hand. “Only?"
“He’s Ward,” Skye said. “I’m just me.”
“Well we were so excited to hear that you were able to come.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Skye answered honestly. “Sweet ride.”
“I have to say,” Simmons said, showing Skye to her bunk, “we were a bit surprised when we saw you.”
“Is that so?” Skye asked. They were so polite. She couldn’t help but provoke them. The Scottish one, Fitz, appeared wildly by Simmons’ elbow.
“You’re much younger than Ward’s first wife.”
“Fitz!”
Skye had to smile. She had a feeling this would be coming.
“Sorry,” Fitz apologized bashfully.
“We don’t mean to pry,” Simmons concluded. Fitzsimmons nodded in unison like they had been thinking the exact same thing.
“No worries,” Skye answered honestly. “I’m only here because I practically had to blackmail Ward into letting me. I know it’s not very SHIELD-y of me. Husbands and wives should be able to work apart. But I just couldn’t pass this up. It is so cool.”
Simmons smiled. “You are definitely not what we expected.”
“Yeah,” Fitz concurred. “May 2.0”
“Fitz.” Simmons elbowed him hard in the ribs.
“It’s alright,” Skye assured them. “May is an amazing woman. If I was anything like her, I could have gotten on board by myself.”
“But you did,” Simmons said.
“What do you mean?”
“I apologize for being a bit presumptuous—“
“Spill,” Skye ordered.
“You just should have heard Agent Ward talking to Coulson,” Simmons said. “He’s very proud of you. And you’re impressive in your own right. To hear of what you’ve accomplished in the field. And Coulson agrees. He likes collecting that sort of thing.”
“Wow,” Skye said. “I’ll have to mercilessly tease Ward about that later.”
“Mercilessly tease me about what?” Ward appeared at her door. He smiled, but his folded arms indicated that he was slightly irked.
He was always slightly irked about something or other.
“What a big softie you are.”
His brow furrowed. A warning for her to shut up, but she grinned at him anyway.
“There’s a briefing in ten,” Ward said.
“I’ll meet you there.” Skye gave him a sultry, teasing wink.
Ward rolled his eyes and walked off.
“We don’t mean to gossip,” Simmons said. Skye liked how she always referred to herself and Fitz as though one person. So did everyone else, it seemed. “We were just very anxious to see you two together.”
“Want to see where the magic happens?”
FitzSimmons looked scandalized and Skye burst out laughing.
“You’re very different from May,” Fitz noted as they made their way to the briefing. Ward was the only one who had arrived and had dismantled his weapon and was cleaning it carefully on the table.
“We just could never picture what he was like with his wife,” Simmons said.
“Neither could I,” Skye said honestly.
FitzSimmons had fallen silent at his presence, but as per usual, Skye paid no mind.
“Hey, Ward. Did May ever take your last name?” Skye asked pointedly.
Ward didn’t bother looking up from his work. “No.”
“See?” Skye asked. “Not so strange around here. Now that you’ve got all the inside dirt, feel free to tweet about it.”
“They’re not tweeting about it,” Ward retorted.
“See?” Skye pointed out. “What a softie.”
Ward finally raised his eyes to glower at her. But when FitzSimmons had turned their backs, Skye spotted a flicker of a smile.
X.
Seeing when something was wrong with Ward was an acquired skill. He didn’t think she was ready to go back into the field. In truth, her perforated stomach was still healing.
“What was that all about?”
Fitz was on duty with her in the back of the van as she was running surveillance in the compound tactical was about to raid. She could hear Ward on her coms, though he wasn’t exactly aware that she had patched into him especially.
“What?” Skye asked, tapping into the surveillance feed of the building.
“In the cargo bay.”
Say no more, Fitz.
Skye rolled her eyes. “Yeah, try being married to that.”
Ward was still upset that she had been cleared for duty and aimed his misplaced anger at her.
“But it’s not your fault you got shot,” Fitz said.
“Yeah, having to deal with that for nine years takes an acquired skill,” Skye said.
“You’ve been married for nine years?” Fitz asked.
No, that math wasn’t right.
“Five,” Skye answered. “But he was my SO four years prior to that.”
“Isn’t that quite a bit long to have an SO?” Fitz asked.
“Like I said,” Skye said. “He gets like that.”
“You can’t have been that bad.”
Skye smiled and Fitz realized what he said.
“Not to say that you are,” Fitz amended hurriedly.
“It’s fine,” Skye said. “He’s just a perfectionist in his own way. Which is the way he all but insinuated that clearing me for combat is a recipe for me getting myself shot again.”
“He didn’t say that.”
“It’s what he doesn’t say,” Skye said. “I swear, dealing with his passive aggressiveness should have been in the manual. He can be such a toolbag sometimes.”
The truth was, she knew that Ward was the one that wasn’t ready. He was afraid of her going into the field, which meant sometimes he would be curt and distant.
“You married him,” Fitz muttered.
“Just because I love a tool doesn’t mean he’s still not a tool.”
Fitz grinned at hat. Ward working on his own emotional intelligence would always be a work in progress.
“We’re up and running,” Fitz said, releasing his robots into the atmosphere. It was a moment before she saw Ward through the feed on the camera.
“What am I seeing here?” Skye asked for help. Fitz looked over her shoulder.
“What’s he doing there?” Fitz asked, more to himself than to her.
Skye jumped at the sound of sudden gunfire. It took her a moment to realize whose gun had gone off.
There was no remorse in Ward’s eyes when he pulled the trigger.
“What just happened?” She looked to Fitz who had no answers for her.
III.
“What were you two talking about?”
Ward was never a particularly chatty SO. Trip had more stories to tell and didn’t make her do fifteen push-ups for each minute she was late.
But now Ward sounded more annoyed than curious and she couldn’t figure that out.
“You know,” Skye said, starting to punch the bag. “Just shop talk.”
Ward wordlessly fixed her stance. It was almost second nature by now that she was sure she ought to be able to do it herself. He never complained about that though. He just instructed her to tighten her core.
“That should be classified,” Ward muttered.
“I know,” Skye said, resuming her punching. “He said. So we had to talk about the only thing we had in common. You.”
Ward scowled and raised her arms higher. They were tired, but she knew better than to complain.
“You never told me you had a wife.”
“You’re dropping your elbow again,” Ward said critically.
Clearly this guy did not want to talk.
“But I’ll have a talk with Trip about personal business later.” Skye grinned, not minding having to keep her fists up this time. It was an improvement from his usual monosyllables. “I’m not really.”
Skye wasn’t sure she heard him at first, he said it so flippantly. Ward didn’t do flippant. He peered at her from around the bag.
“Not what?”
“Married,” he said. “May and I haven’t been together in awhile.”
“May,” Skye said. “As in Melinda May.”
Ward sighed as though it was a huge inconvenience.
“Your wife is The Cavalry?” Skye asked. “Yyyyikes.”
“Why do you say that?”
Skye had done that ‘saying inappropriate things’ thing again. She was lucky that he didn’t make her do pull-ups every time she said something unprofessional.
“I heard she rode into Bahrain on horseback with two automatic rifles.”
“Horseback?” Ward asks. “That’s not true.”
It sounded like he had heard that one before, though.
“And it’s really not a big deal.”
Skye laughed. “Wow. Married to The Cavalry and it’s not a big deal. You must have it going on.”
Ward stared at her and she knew she must have said something too inappropriate for a duty-oriented Operations agent to conceive.
Crap. She was really bad at this.
Skye looked away and started punching again. There were several moments of awkward silence until he walked over behind her.
“Hands up.” Ward guided her to the proper stance.
“I’m sure I’ll get it eventually,” Skye said helpfully. She was sure he was starting to regret his decision to mentor her.
“That’s good,” he said instead. She didn’t look around to see his expression. That was the last thing she expected him to say and she didn’t want to jinx it. “And she’s not, you know.”
“Not what?” Skye asked.
Ward rounded the bag again and held it still for her. Her blood was pumping and she almost missed his response from the sounds of her fists hitting the bag.
“Not my wife anymore.”
XI.
Skye wore their rings around her neck when they went out on missions. It came to the point where it didn’t look like they had any. But that never really mattered to either of them before.
Ward was put in the back of one of the SHIELD vehicles. He looked out the window, his eyes lost.
He was relieved when she entered the interrogation room and handed him a bottle of water.
“I thought you were Coulson."
She was angry with him. Clearly.
Really upset. But the edgeless look to his eyes had disappeared.
“I’ll take whatever punishment they give me,” he assured her. “But I don’t regret what I’ve done.”
“You don’t?”
She needed to get inside his head. She needed to know where he was so she can help him.
“It means you’re safe. He wasn’t going to stop, Skye. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t put you in danger again.”
She reached across the table and took his hand.
“We’re going to be okay.”
His fingers curled in hers. He knew.
“I should have done this earlier.”
“Done what?” Skye asked. “Kill the person who shot me?”
Some sort of ghost flickered past his eyes. “No.”
He was lost in the past, she realized.
“It took me four years to figure us out.”
He was known to get a sentimental streak at times. Only when he was sure no one could see it.
“I actually knew most of the decryption codes that I came to you for,” Ward said.
A smile played at her lips. “I know.”
His eyes were dark with intensity. Almost black when they weren’t in the light. And she knew what he meant. The two of them had been gun shy, somehow. Ironically enough.
Skye had told him that there hadn’t been a rush to be an us when they stopped avoiding each other.
Somehow in a broom closet, Ward had shaken the feelings of being weak.
“I wanted to spend time with you."
“I’m glad,” Skye said.
“I shouldn’t have wasted all that time.”
“Training wasn’t a waste,” Skye said.
“We could have had more time if I hadn’t lied,” Ward said. “And still be your SO at the same time.”
“We both lied,” Skye said. “In some way or another.”
“I didn’t predict you,” Ward said. “You caught me by surprise.”
Once Simmons asked Skye when everything changed for her. When she realized she wasn’t meant for the desk at Communications.
Ward used to call it a defining moment.
Skye knew his and would never repeat it to anyone.
But hers was a different story.
As she watched Ward leave debriefing, she felt a sigh of relief. That was one benefit of having a paper that legally said he had to share all of his legal entanglements.
Go American marriage system.
He shrugged it off as if he almost wasn’t charged with some pretty serious crimes. Instead he would be going back into the field after some mandated psychological tests that he would undoubtedly pass.
He took her hand and they walked down the hall together.
IV.
Ward’s defining moment had come a long time ago when he barely could understand what he was going to become.
Skye’s had come much later. She was only Level Three at the time.
She was in the Triskelion as three Hellicarriers went careening into it. The idea hadn’t actually been to be in that building when it was under attack. She always seemed to go off book at the most inconvenient moments.
It was the screams that did it. That was when she was sure she was dead. There were already hundreds of foot soldiers out there for sure, not going to wait for the explosion to take her out.
God, she should have locked the door behind her.
Like that would have helped. The yells and gunfire had stopped. She felt for her pack but it was too late. The door burst open and she held her computer in front of her.
She stared for a moment, not sure what she was seeing.
Grant Ward stood in front of her, his face a mess of bloody welts, breathing with exertion.
“Hey,” he said succinctly.
“Hi,” she said in surprise.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Coming to get you,” Ward said, grabbing her arm. “We have to move now. This place is going to go. I won’t even talk about what you’re doing down here until we’re clear.”
And suddenly it was like no time had passed. Like she had just aced her field assessment yesterday and was waiting with him to get her new assignment. Like he hadn’t just spent the last sixteen months under deep cover in Moscow.
She gripped his hand fiercely. He looked down. She was close enough now to see that he hadn’t shaved in the past few days. His eyes were tired and he was favoring his right side like that time he had a cracked rib.
He was the one that taught her what to look for.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Now wasn’t the time for smiling. She knew that. But she could still tell he was pleased with her reaction.
“Where’s your sidearm?” Ward barked instead. There was the trusty SO she remembered.
“I don’t have it,” Skye admitted.
“You’re don’t have your weapon on you? Skye. As your SO—“
“But you’re not my SO anymore. Right, partner?”
His eyes were hard. But she had never been afraid of him.
“Just a lowly Level Three. And looks like that’s how it’s going to end."
“I’m getting you out of here.”
“You just took out a hundred guys—“
“Twelve,” he corrected. He always had to be accurate.
She laughed. She couldn’t think of a time that she had been happier to see anyone in her life.
“What?”
“Hey,” she breathed. The most ridiculous thing that they could do. She hadn’t seen this specialist in two years and here he came busting in like some Jason Bourne. As if he even knew whom that was.
His eyes didn’t leave hers. “I don’t know what I would have done if something happened to you.”
Skye stared at him for a moment. She couldn’t understand what he was saying for a second.
“Something is going to happen to us, Grant.”
His eyes flicked to hers. He closed the space between them.
“No it isn’t.”
He wasn’t confident. He was ruthless. And throughout all the training with him and one or two missions he helped her with, this was it.
Call her moment defined.
Kissing Grant Ward was the only thing she could think of to do.
He was still for a moment, his lips responding slightly. She pulled away and he still didn’t move.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Well if we’re going to die.”
He kissed her back.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
VI.
“Pardon me for saying so—“
“I’m not what you expected,” Skye finished for him. Coulson had a warm way about him. She had tougher commanding officers before.
Tougher SO’s, really.
She liked him.
Coulson crossed his arms, leaning against the Holotable. He had her stay behind after the briefing. Skye was sure she hadn’t done anything yet that was too terrible yet. Somehow, she felt safe here.
“When I heard Ward’s wife wanted on the bus, I didn’t know if you were in the secretary pool or what to expect.”
“I think they’re called assistants now.”
“But I’m glad you’re here,” Coulson said. “Even if this is a little forward. I can see that you’re good for him.”
“Funny, that’s the opposite of when he said when we first met.”
“That you were bad for him."
“More or less,” Skye said. She watched through the glass plating to see Ward trying out Fitz’s new design weapon. He was probably complaining that it was off by an ounce or something just as ridiculous. “His family history makes it hard for him sometimes.”
“That’s why he needs someone like you,” Coulson said. “And again, pardon me for saying so but, he and May were too similar.”
Skye shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No, I don’t suppose it does,” Coulson answered. “In any case, no shenanigans on the bus, alright? This is a professional environment.”
Skye saluted him. “Aye, aye, captain.”
IX.
Ward was on the stick when he realized something was wrong. It didn’t take a rocket scientist, really. As a matter of fact, he was sure that the resident rocket scientist had something to do with the hack and the fact that the seal on Skye’s door had been breached.
He only came to this conclusion after he vaulted himself from the cockpit to barge in to Skye’s hospital room to find her music was being blasted from the PA.
Ward rested against the doorjamb, letting his cardiac arrest settle before embracing the indignant rage at his wife out of bed and dancing to music.
“Are you trying to rip your stitches out?”
Skye turned towards him with a smile. FitzSimmons could see them from the lab and were laughing.
“Yes,” Skye said, just to get a rise out of him.
This wasn’t the most excruciating of Skye’s music that caused her to dance. There was a lot of that. He supposed he had that to be thankful for.
“What are you doing?” Ward asked dryly.
“What does it look like?”
Skye took his hands and he groaned. Her invitation to dance would become more exuberant and spastic the more he tried to reject it.
He had learned this from experience.
“I am celebrating that I still have use of my legs.” She waved his arms wildly for him.
He felt a slight pang of guilt. She was right. She was incredibly lucky that the bullet hadn’t hit her spinal cord, no matter how much Simmons tried to convince him she was never in any danger of that.
Her bare feet smacked against the tiles as she jumped up and down exuberantly.
“This is definitely not protocol,” he said over the music.
“I know!”
How she ever became an agent was a mystery.
And then he remembered.
Skye flopped back onto her bed, exhausted.
“Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule for coming to visit me.”
She did like to tease him mercilessly. She pulled him by his hand and he lay next to her.
“Hey, guess what?” she said.
“What?” he asked softly. FitzSimmons couldn’t hear them over the music this way.
“I love you.”
XII.
“Skye. You’re running back-end from the tactical van.”
Whenever they were in the field, he spoke to her like this. Once Fitz asked if she ever called him by his first name.
“You,” Ward addressed one of the field agents next to her. “I want you six feet from Skye at all times, weapons hot.”
He knew Skye wouldn’t like it. But the mere fact that he had been acquitted and was even allowed out on missions was a feat in itself. Just like how she was being allowed out in the field so soon.
He didn’t know how he felt about that.
“Ward. It’s okay.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“I’m okay,” she told him.
It was all she had to say. Fitz stood next to her, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. He and Ward had a little chat right before the mission and made his orders perfectly clear.
If he knew Skye, she would throw a wrench in that. But he wasn’t the sort of reasonable person, he supposed.
“I’m ready.”
He wished he had kissed her then. Even as he jerked his head in dismissing her to the back of the van, he regretted it. He didn’t know exactly why that was.
He didn’t know until he heard the explosion. The van went up and his blood ran cold. He had been cold since before he knew her and only with her had he become a true and decent person.
He had been alone too long. And then she had come into his life changing everything.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go.
“Skye?”
The van was a crumpled mass of metal and fire. He couldn’t imagine her body being in there, all smoke and crumbling bone. For five seconds, he let himself be naïve. He let himself believe that she was safe.
And then he didn’t.
“Skye,” he yelled again.
He spotted Fitz first.
Immediately he drew his weapon. The kid was bleeding from the head but breathing. He took that to mean he was still alive. But there was something out there. Something that wanted to hurt her. She shouldn’t have come.
She just shouldn’t have.
“Hey.”
And it was typical.
Ward sighed, letting his gun fall against his torso, supported by the strap.
This was just so typical of her. Giving him a heart attack like that. He dropped to his knees to where she was on her laptop behind a tree, still running the hack.
He pressed his lips fiercely to hers.
“Whoa there soldier,” Skye said, his arms around her. “Little happy to see me, are we?”
She wasn’t looking at him, but her smile was teasing. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Skye pressed enter and looked back up at him. “I love you.”
XIII.
When he was with her, he smiled easier.