Skye finds her miracle cure a bit of a mixed bag. She struggles to be happier when Simmons brings her endless mugs of hot tea, or when Fitz hardly ever seems to be looking at anything other than her shirt, but not in the same place as before; now it's her stomach, where she also still sees a sticky puddle of her life's blood, slowly oozing away, every time she closes her eyes at night.
Ward hasn't cracked a smile in days. She's starting to wonder if he ever has, or if she'd just been trying it on him in her imagination, like a Mr. Potato Head with an ear stuck where its nose should go - something laughably unready, incongruous and forlorn.
May is always May, only now slightly more so - rarely ever seen outside the cockpit, rumors of her ever sleeping, eating or even using the bathroom largely unsubstantiated. There is some slight change, though; Skye used to imagine the agent's face a mask of iced-over granite, whereas now it largely resembles sun-warmed stone, unyielding and comfortable. Skye can feel May's moods in the movements of the plane, and that's comforting, even if the pilot herself is not.
Coulson. Skye is having difficulty voicing anything to follow his name. Of all her team members, he is the one to whom she feels closest, the one with whom, in spite of the generation gap, she finds it easiest to share the heavy loads. And she can't talk to him, can't even begin to reach him. If May is cold, stable ground under her feet, Coulson is a beach's shifting sands, warm and gentle and never in the same place from one minute to the next. Skye can see granules of the truth here and there, drifting occasionally to the surface in his eyes when he looks at her, instinct ordering him constantly to reconfirm her presence, her breath, her pulse. The thread of their rather familial bond has been severed, feelings lingering aimlessly on both sides, their connection point lost. It hurts her as hardly anything ever has before.
The tide's turning point, though, is no mystery to her. She knows she should have seen it before, but, dazzled by the prospect of belonging to something very like a family, she ignored the warning signs.
Their conversations - not only the world-tipping, brain-bending, heart-ripping ones, but also the daily meaningless ones - have been about her. Skye's history, Skye's needs, Skye's problems, Skye's pain and trauma and mistakes and need for acceptance and blind, loyal adoration. Anything like a personal truth from him has been background trivia to her, just so much white noise. She's wept for him, loved him, taken on the world for him, but never taken his confession the way he has hers.
After she heard him begging to die, she started listening. She found out he was already halfway down a road for which she never even saw the turning.
She nearly lost him, and now he's nearly lost her, and what they share most of all now is the shadow of the grave. It's the reason for all the tea and strange looks and grueling training sessions that leave her a panting wreck. Coulson leaves her alone. Whether it's what he thinks she needs or simple avoidance, it needs to stop. Skye has gained not only a new lease on life and a scar in her abdomen, but an appreciation for responsibility. She is responsible for one half of this friendship, and she's taking ownership of his love for her. All she has to figure out is how to get him to sit still for a second and let her.