Skye may not have finished high school, but she's not stupid. She reads a lot, always has, and spent several months when she was 19 fascinated by psychology and reading every book she could get her hands on, every website she could find.
So she's not going to say something like "I don't know why I keep doing this". She knows.
It's not like she hates herself or anything. It's not about that. Most of the time she really likes herself. She's proud of everything she's accomplished. Becoming a SHIELD agent, helping to take down Hydra. Hell, just surviving.
But there's a part of her that she's just not sure of. She doesn't even know what it is.
Literally.
She knows she's an 0-8-4. But she has no idea what that really means.
She does know that it's probably bad. Fitz said it himself, that he'd never heard of an 0-8-4 that was something good, that was anything other than dangerous and destructive.
And that scares Skye. She knows there's a part of herself that is very likely dark and dangerous, and it terrifies her.
It terrifies her that underneath it all, she might be evil.
More than once she thinks that maybe that's what drew Ward to her. At first she couldn't figure out what she had done to make Ward, the real Ward, the evil, manipulative, lying Ward, want her.
But maybe it takes one to know one. Maybe he had seen the evil that was somewhere inside of her, that even she wasn't aware of, still doesn't really feel aware of. She thinks that, in a horrible way, Ward might be the only one who can really see what she truly is.
It's that line of thought that usually leads her to Ward's cell, to asking the guard to leave them alone while she questions him. It's what usually leads her to ending up on her back on the cot in the cell, with Ward above her, pounding into her. With her biting her lip, trying to keep the sound in.
It always ends the same way now, with Ward rolling away from her, facing the wall, and Skye redressing hastily, the two never looking at each other as she leaves the cell and calls the guard back.
The first time, though, he had tried to hold her after, as though he thought the sex, the fucking, was some kind of forgiveness on her part. She had pulled away and slapped him – hard – before running out.
After that she really didn't think he'd be willing to keep doing it. But he was. He was always willing.
They never speak. They hardly ever look at each other. It's always hard and rough. Ward lets Skye scratch him with her nails, leaving long, deep gashes in his back. He lets her bite him hard enough to draw blood. He takes all of it.
Sometimes she thinks he hates himself almost as much as she hates him.
END