AN: Have no idea where this came from, just that it kept bugging me when I was trying to work on something else so had to be written.
Their first kiss is tainted by blood and tears. It's an ending rather than a beginning, and he knows the chances of him seeing her again are slim. That's why when she kisses him, Ward only hesitates a second before kissing her back.
They're both battered and bruised and broken.
She's leaving them. Leaving him.
It's both by choice and not; if she doesn't leave willingly, a team of SHIELD agents will come and for her and take her by force. It was Coulson's idea for her to leave first, removing the bracelet from around her wrist so she could disappear because none of them are sure who in SHIELD can be trusted anymore and no one's willing to take the risk that she'll end up in the hands of someone who'll hurt her.
He thinks he should be sadder that it's come to this, angry that the agency he's dedicated his life to is falling apart at the seams but he finds he can't grieve for SHIELD when his heart is full of anguish at the thought of never seeing the woman in front of him again.
Their kiss is desperate, needy, urgent. An attempt at putting to rights all of the regrets and misunderstandings, a way of conveying without words everything they should've would've could've said but didn't.
He's aware of the others watching them, can feel their gazes burning his back, but that doesn't stop one of his hands from lifting to tangle in her hair, the other sliding along her waist to press against the small of her back and hold her closer.
They're all going to miss her, he knows, but he doubts anyone will miss her more than him.
His rookie.
They could've been so much more than that, would have been if the timing had been different and things hadn't become so screwed up and she hadn't chosen Miles over SHIELD and he hadn't touched the Berserker staff and hadn't sought comfort elsewhere rather than run the risk of hurting her and he hates that they're both to blame for things falling apart before they'd even had a chance to begin.
The kiss ends far too soon and she steps away from him, her brown eyes shimmering with tears of misery and regret.
With one last look at him, at them all, Skye turns on her heel and strides down the ramp, towards the bike – his bike – that's waiting for her.
A cloud of dust conceals her exit and he tells himself it's that that makes his eyes sting and not tears at his failure at being unable to protect the one person he really feels he should.
The next time he sees her, after SHIELD had been reformed and the bad guys are all hopefully gone, it comes as something as a shock. They're summoned to the Hub after one of Rising Tide's big players, one of those who were enlisted by the corrupt side of SHIELD and aided in the breakdown of the organisation, is arrested.
It's someone they've met before, someone who brings back thoughts of Skye and what could have beens.
Someone Ward hates.
Miles Lydon smirks at the one-way mirror in the interrogation room, looking entirely unrepentant for what he's done and entirely sure he's going to get away with it again.
He's wrong.
The smirk widens when the door opens and a woman in a black suit and crisp white shirt enters. It takes Ward a moment longer than it should to recognise her, to realise she's real and not a figment of his Skye-starved imagination.
Eight months of not seeing her, of not knowing where she is or if she's okay, and then suddenly she's there.
His hands clench into fists as Lydon starts to speak, telling her there's been some sort of mistake and can't she help him out for old time's sake and does she know how hot he finds the business woman look she's got going on, with the suit and shirt and her hair pinned up out of her face.
Skye just stares at him, her expression blank, her eyes cold.
It's Skye but it's not Skye and Ward both does and doesn't want to know what's happened to make her this way.
"You saved me last time, helped me." Lydon leans forward, his gaze as riveted on her as Ward's. "You know me, Skye. You know I'm not capable of doing the things they're saying."
"I know you broke my wrist once when it took me two hours to figure out what was wrong with a piece of code you'd been working on for two weeks," Skye responds, her voice flat and emotionless even as temper begins to spike inside Ward at the thought. "I didn't warn you to help you, Miles. I warned you because I knew if they cornered you in the cafe, you'd detonate the self-destruct in your car and people would get hurt."
It's the first time Ward's heard that, the first time Coulson and May and FitzSimmons have if the sharp intake of breaths beside him are any indication.
"You slept with me. We made love –"
"We had sex because it distracted you and gave the others time to find us. Because if we hadn't, you'd have hurt me anyway and then used the money you got from Centipede to go after my team."
Lydon's jaw drops; it's only by sheer force of will that Ward's doesn't do the same. "You don't mean that. You love me. What we've been through –"
"What we've been through is you taking advantage of a terrified fifteen year old who had no one else to turn to and nowhere else to go. And I'm through with being taken advantage of and played for a fool, just as I am through with you."
He feels the Berserker rage he'd long since thought over begin to build up as they speak, her voice calm and uncaring, unmoved by her ex's pleas for help.
He wishes she'd told him before, trusted him, confided in him. Things would have been different if they had, he thinks, but then he remembers her request for him to join her in facing Coulson and his response to it and realises he wouldn't have listened even if she'd tried.
"What's going to happen to me?" The cockiness is gone, fear taking its place.
Skye's expression doesn't change, and Ward's not sure if he's proud of her for that or if he's worried because it means the warm and compassionate woman he's in love with might be lost to him.
Wait.
In love with...?
Before he can dwell on that revelation, Skye leans closer to Lydon, her voice barely audible over the intercom.
"I don't know," she tells him honestly, "and I really don't care. Goodbye, Miles."
She strides out of the room and Ward's feet carry him to the door of the observation room. He hears movement behind him but no one tries to stop him.
He worries for a moment that she's not going to be there, that she's going to have vanished and he'll have to search for her in the myriad of rooms and hallways at the Hub but she's standing there, back against the wall facing the interrogation room door.
She looks up when the door clicks behind him, and he watches as he gets closer as her eyes widen in surprise and the beginnings of what he hopes is a smile cause the corners of her mouth to twitch.
She's in his arms in an instant, neither of them caring where they are or who might see, even when they hear the door he's just walked out of open again.
He feels her tears through the material of his shirt and tightens his arms around her, resting his head against the top of hers.
He's not sure how long they stand there, long enough for someone to clear their throat, which makes Skye pull back, wiping at her cheeks with a vaguely embarrassed look on her face.
It's not Coulson or May or FitzSimmons who interrupted them but Agent Hill, and Ward is surprised for what feels like the tenth time that day at the expression on her face, an expression aimed at the woman who's moved to stand at his side, shoulders squared as if standing to attention.
"Good work in bringing him in, Skye, we'll take it from here," the senior agent praises his rookie before glancing over their shoulders to where Coulson stands with the rest of the team. "Agent Reynolds will be able to rejoin your team if she wishes, Agent Coulson."
It takes him a moment to realise that Skye and Agent Reynolds are the same person, and he looks down at her with a question in his eyes.
"I read my file," she tells him quietly, a glance over her shoulder at Coulson and May, and when he follows her gaze, he notes they both look far more uncomfortable than he's ever seen them. "My mother was Annabelle Reynolds. She was a SHIELD agent, too."
"Skye –" Coulson cuts himself off as he takes a step towards her. "Can we talk?"
Skye nods but glances at Ward rather than their – his – boss. "Will you be here when we're done?"
"Of course." He doesn't hesitate, doesn't ask where else she thinks he'd be because to him it's simple; he's spent eight months thinking about her, wondering about where she was and wishing she was with him. Now she is, he's not about to let her slip away again.
She smiles at him briefly before it slips from her face and Ward is forced to watch as she walks away from him for what he hopes is the last time.
He's sitting in an empty break room when she finds him later and he stands immediately when she enters the room.
Her eyes are red and swollen but she tries to smile when she sees him. The attempt is already failing when he crosses the room and takes her in his arms.
Coulson and May knew, he learns as she tries to compose herself. They knew about her mother, about her father. They knew all along that her parents were dead, killed whilst working on a top secret mission for SHIELD, but they never told her.
They let her go on believing that there was hope, a chance that one day she'd be able to meet her family and ask them her questions and it's that that hurts her the most, the fact that she was given a false hope to cling to.
It takes an hour of sitting together in relative silence before he's brave enough to ask the question running circles in his mind, the one he desperately needs to know the answer to even if he's not sure the one he gets will be what he wants.
"Are you coming back with us?"
In all honesty, he wouldn't be surprised if the answer was no. And in all honesty, he's not sure what his reaction will be if it is. Though he loves his job and is attached to the team, the last eight months aboard the Bus has been different. The atmosphere isn't the same without the hacker-turned-SHIELD Agent and he knows he's not the first to realise she's the glue that holds their unlikely family unit together.
"I've said I need to think about it but I probably will." He takes a moment to process her answer, and the relief that floods him as a result. "We talked it out. They explained. And I still owe AC for letting me get away, for all of you for risking your careers so the corrupt half of SHIELD couldn't get me."
The corrupt half meaning those who'd sided with the Rising Tide, Ward knew, but the comment brings another question to his lips. "How did you end up here, working for SHIELD? I thought you were in hiding...?"
She tells him, a small smile on her face, and pride swells inside him. She spent two months doing some hacking over her own, making good use of being without the tracking bracelet Coulson removed before they said their goodbyes. She gathered a file of intel, a list of agents who could and couldn't be trusted, and hacked into the system so she could send a classified communication to the top of the food chain so-to-speak, directly to Director Fury and Agent Hill.
For six months, she's been a SHIELD operative, earning her stripes, rising through the ranks, helping track down rogue agents and Rising Tide members. She's only level four now but the speed in which she's reached it is impressive and he has no qualms about telling her so.
She blushes under his praise, ducks her head in a futile attempt at hiding how much it means to her. "I had a really great SO," she tells him, and the sincerity in her voice means it's his turn to feel his cheeks grow warm.
"You'll be needing a partner now," he tells her, striving for indifference but something in his voice must give him away because she lifts her head to look at him curiously.
"You're still three levels ahead of me." Her brow furrows. "And by the time I get to Level 7, you'll still be way ahead."
"Doesn't mean we can't be partners." It doesn't; though he's never had a partner before, always preferring to work on his own, he knows of partnerships that have started on an uneven keel and have balanced out over the years - Romanoff and Barton are an example that pops into his head.
A small smile begins to play on her lips. "Does that mean I'd still be your rookie?"
Something in the way she asks tells him she wouldn't mind if the answer was yes so Ward gives her another small grin – and gives in to the impulse to brush his lips against hers in a fleeting kiss. "You'll always be my rookie."
It's the right thing to say if her reaction is any indication, and it's some time later before they leave the break room in search of the rest of their team.
The following morning, a small group assembles to say goodbye to Skye – or Agent Reynolds as she's more formerly known. Agent Hill is among them and when Director Fury puts in an appearance, it's clear the former Rising Tide member has firmly put her past behind her and proven her allegiance to SHIELD once and for all.
After their goodbyes are said, the team make their way back to the Bus. As May retreats to the cockpit to get the plane in the air, Ward watches Skye re-familiarise herself with the Bus, the smile on his face almost identical to the one on hers.
Already, the atmosphere has started to change and the other members of the team are smiling more easily, exchanging quips and banter as they buckle themselves in for take-off. Ward sits beside her and listens to her laugh as FitzSimmons bicker playfully. He catches Coulson's eye across the room and sees a smile that's been absent for far too long on his bosses face.
As soon as she's able to put the plane on autopilot, May joins them in the lounge and it's kind of like old times but not as moments when they were all together were rare in the past. Ward thinks they'll be more common in the future, now that they know what it's like to have one of their number gone, and he's sure they'd all be in agreement when he thinks that he wouldn't have it any other way.