notes:
+ i've been working on this on and off for ages and it's sorta grown and grown and now it's just this weird monster. but it's also my baby. so.
+ i hope you cry basically.
+ title from "esmerelda" by ben howard.
The last thing Skye remembers is grit and blood and bullet holes and pain, and then it all fades away to white.
There's a dull buzzing in her head and an odd feeling of weightlessness.
Eventually, white turns to black and the cellar comes back into focus.
Skye's mind wakes up as her body falls asleep for the last time.
She's confused, her mind is still a humming haze. She has to sit up, turn round, and see her own bloody form still on the floor before it makes any sense.
So the bad news is that she's dead.
Which is a bit of down on her day.
But the good news is that she's no longer in pain.
She stands up. Walks around the room, tries to get her bearings. She feels strange. Too light, and she can't really feel the ground beneath her feet.
She brushes her hands across the chamber Mike was being held in, and finds that her fingers slip through.
That's new.
She's got to admit, it isn't quite what she was expected to come next, but then again she doesn't know what she had been expecting.
There's noise now. Shouting and gunfire, and Coulson runs in.
'Oh no,' he breathes, and Skye's heart clenches. Or it would, if it was still beating.
She sees him sink to cradle her body, yelling for Simmons, and she wants to tell him that there's no point.
She's gone, there's no bringing her back.
She moves to the back of the room, sinking back into the wall because she knows this is going to hurt.
There are footsteps on the stairs, and the team are crowding round her body. Coulson even says it - says he can't get a pulse, but they have an awful determination, and Skye knows there's nothing she can do to make them realise that it's pointless. They lift her up into the chamber, all watching carefully for signs of life.
Skye waits, arms wrapped around her middle, for them to realise that there will be none.
'Nothing's happening,' Simmons whispers. 'She should be coming back. She needs to stabilise now or...'
Finally, Fitz steps back. 'She's gone.'
'No,' says Ward. He's shaking his head. 'No, she's not. She can't be.' His hands are pressed against the glass, looking down at her like he can will her back to life. 'She's not. I won't let that-' He breaks off. Skye's metaphorical heart is twisting so tight she can feel real pain again because he can't say it.
Slowly, the rest of the team are moving back. Simmons is wiping blood against her jeans, Fitz visibly shaking.
The cellar is in silence, save for Ward whispering at her corpse like he's breaking.
Skye isn't sure she can take it.
She knows it's hopeless, that she's less than a shadow, but it doesn't stop her crossing the room to where he is.
She leans against the glass next to him. She finds if she really focuses she can stop herself going through it. She can study her own dead body with him. She keep her hands on the glass and look up at him.
She reaches across to brush her fingers the back of his hand.
She feels him shiver under her touch.
Did he feel her there?
Does he know that she's still there?
He looks right at her - ghost her, not corpse her - and right through her at the same time.
She wants to keep him frozen there, because that way she can hope a little, that he isn't lost, even if she is.
When he turns away, she feels helpless again. Useless. Nothing.
She can't do anything but watch.
At some point, they move her body to the Bus.
May heads to set a course to the Hub. Coulson goes to his office, and Fitzsimmons are hiding in the lab (they've not switched the lights on. Maybe it's so they can't see the corpse on the other side of the lab doors).
She sits beside Ward on the couch. It's easier said than done - it takes her a while to focus enough to actually sit without ending up slipping in. He's staring blankly at the floor by his feet, all curled in on himself.
She wants to make him smile like she used to be able to. To clamber all over him while he's reading so he makes frustrated noises. To grin when he moves to make room for her anyway and then to watch him sneaking looks at her every time he thinks she's looking at her phone.
But she knows that he wouldn't even know that she was there.
She presses her eyes shut. Can ghosts cry? Because she thinks she's going to cry.
(And the worst part is that she isn't crying for herself. The fact that she is dead, gone, properly can't have registered yet, because right now she's crying for them. For the team who have lost someone they loved.)
She wants to sleep. She tries lying down against the couch, bringing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around herself.
Hours pass by in almost complete silence, during which she makes the discovery that the dead do not, in fact, sleep.
But she's just so tired.
It seems like a bit of a let down. She'd imagined that death would be when she really would catch up on some well-earned rest.
Instead she feels like someone is forcing her to stay conscious and vigilant.
The only saving grace is that, four hours in, Ward finally stops staring at the floor as if he's waiting for it to tell him how to fix the world (or maybe just his world), and he falls asleep.
He doesn't look comfortable. He's still all hunched in, facing down.
Skye crawls to her knees in front of him.
She places her hands on his shoulders, squeezes her eyes shut in concentration, and tries to push him back.
It aches, it properly aches in the pit of her stomach, but she manages. She gets him lying down on the couch, half on his side.
She's impressed with herself. He's heavy even when she has real limbs.
She sits back and sighs.
His eyes flicker open, just for a second, catches her own, and she sees her name form on his lips.
She falls back in shock, just as he drifts back to sleep.
It was just because he was remembering her, she tells herself. It wasn't that he saw her. He couldn't have seen her.
She isn't really here.
And yet she'd swear he looked right at her. Not through her. At her.
She curls up on the end of the sofa, by his feet, and waits. She's not sure exactly what she's waiting for. Maybe for him to wake up. She doesn't have anything else, now.
She feels like she might be going to do a lot of waiting. Waiting until she gets to slip away.
How long is that going to be? Is she going to watch the team wither away and die themselves, and be stuck here, alone? Is she going to fade away?
Maybe waiting for Ward to wake and sleep is going to be her existence from now on. Like some twisted guardian angel.
After another few hours May passes through for coffee. Black and sugarless. Skye pads after her. She follows her up the stairs to Coulson's office, and waits outside the door when May shuts it.
Even though she could go through. She doesn't.
'Half an hour to the Hub,' Coulson is saying. 'We'll drop off Ian Quinn and the...' He trails off. Doesn't know whether to say Skye or the body or what.
May just nods. 'And then?'
'Then we make the Clairvoyant pay,' he says. There's a malice in his voice, a hardness that surprises Skye.
She jumps back, expecting to be reprimanded for eavesdropping when May pulls the door open sharply. Then remembers that she's not really there.
She takes the stairs back down four at a time. She didn't used to be able to do that, but she moves differently now.
May heads back to the cockpit, and Skye goes the other way, back towards the living area.
Ward is awake. The kettle is boiling, and Jemma is making tea, hands shaking slightly. Skye slips up onto the counter, crossing her legs.
She wishes Ward would get mad.
He always used to get mad when she did this.
But he doesn't look at her.
He looks at Jemma instead. 'Toast?' he asks. Too quietly.
Jemma nods. She stares down at the mug. 'How are you feeling?' she asks.
Ward takes a moment, then shakes his head. 'I...' he whispers. 'I keep seeing her. In my dreams and… not.'
Skye nearly falls off the worktop.
Jemma gives him a sympathetic look. 'Hallucinations are a common symptom of trauma and grief,' she says. Her voice is too steady. It's forced.
Ward nods slowly. 'Yes.'
He sees her.
He actually sees her.
How can he see her? She isn't really here. She's nothing. Just a ghost.
Jemma leaves, clutching two mugs of tea and enough toast for both her and Fitz.
Ward stays. He makes himself breakfast. Quietly, focussing on tiny things. Skye knows what he's doing. Trying to concentrate so hard that everything else, everything that is weighing you down and pressing on you fades away. Why did she hack, after all?
But it doesn't work.
He sighs and turns, leans back against the counter and just stares at her.
She feels frozen to the spot and unable to speak. She doesn't know what to say, how to react.
He keeps staring. He thinks she's a hallucination.
Maybe she is. Maybe she's just a figment of his imagination. Or maybe she's only here because he's not letting her go.
There's that quote. That Banksy one. The one about you dying twice. Once when you stop breathing. Once when someone says your name for the last time.
Maybe that's what this is. That she isn't going to really go until the people who love her let her.
People who love her? Who is she kidding. As much as the rest of the team might love her, it has to be him keeping her here. He's the one who sees her.
He's the one who…
He's the one who loves loves her.
'I used to hate it when she did that,' he says, breaking through her thoughts. He frowns in that way when you're trying not to cry. 'I'd tell her - you, tell you - to stop. Not that you would.' He smiles slightly. 'You were always stubborn. About everything. About getting out of bed before eleven. And going after bastards like Quinn without waiting for backup.' He shakes his head slowly, sighs, and turns away. 'I should have been there,' he mumbles. 'I'm so sorry.'
He goes back to the sofa, after that, and staring at the floor, but Skye doesn't follow.
She stays on the counter. She wonders why she didn't say anything.
But what could she have said?
Hey Ward? Yeah, I'm not a hallucination, I'm just a ghost that only you can see. But I am still very much dead. Isn't that great!
She waits. Tries to lull her mind in to sleep, but it doesn't work. She can't eat, can't sleep, can't properly touch or interact with the real world.
So what's the point of her being here?
(Answer: Ward. To be his "twisted guardian angel". That's the point. That doesn't mean for a second that she likes it.)
She's not sure she's going to be able to take this. Not that she has much choice. There is literally no escape.
They touch down at the Hub, and Skye follows the team out.
There's a little group of agents waiting for them, with sombre faces, to discuss what comes next.
Skye doesn't want to think about what comes next. What comes next is they put her body in the ground somewhere and maybe, if she's lucky, she gets her name on a Shield memorial wall. Not that she was ever an agent.
Her life has been such a failure. The one good thing she did, and she didn't even make it to agent.
And she has to stand here and watch them mourn.
In the end, she can't take it. She can't watch the team - her team - sit on those little grey chairs and plan her funeral.
She walks. She wanders the Hub. Aimlessly. She sees plans being drawn up and missions being overseen and…
And she doesn't care.
Her brain is clouded. She can't think straight. She can feel the pain and emotion of everyone around her pressing down, weighing into her.
Death is when you're supposed to get peace.
This isn't peace. This is hell.
She stops. She tries to focus, to still the world, in the same way that she focuses herself into being able to touch.
She can slow the buzz of thoughts down, right down to a gradual swell.
She recognises the pain that breaks through, because it's for her. Ward. Ward's is strongest. She hears I'm sorry over and over again until it hurts.
She can feel a sharp tug, in her gut, round her throat, and she's back in the room with the team.
She can't escape. This is what she needed away from. From their overwhelming, crushing grief.
She's trapped her. By him.
.
.
.
She sits above the cargo hold and watches Ward hit the life out of a punching bag.
She wonders who he's picturing.
Quinn, maybe.
But there's something else there too, she can feel it.
But she can't see it.
Yet.
She could go down there and talk to him. She could tell him that she's here, that she might be dead but she's here and that he has to stop blaming himself, because he might as well be saying it out loud.
(And in his sleep he does.)
Or she could plead with him to let her go.
But she doesn't.
Maybe because she knows he never will forgive himself, and he never ever will let her go.
.
.
.
It doesn't rain the day of the funeral.
Skye feels a little cheated. It rains at all good funerals.
They bury her next to Coulson's non-grave, with a little headstone naming her a posthumous Shield agent.
Under that, it just says Skye, and it strikes her that none of her team know her real name.
It isn't well attended. Not even Miles shows up. Does Miles even know that she's dead? Would they have told him?
She stares down. That's it. That's her. She's down there. It's the end of her.
She looks back up and Ward is staring right at her. Not through her, not near her but at her.
She meets his eyes and knows. She has to do it. She has to talk to him.
She walks round the grave and past him, glancing over her shoulder. She knows he's going to follow.
She waits under a tree.
'I know you can see me,' she says.
He just nods.
'And I know you probably don't believe I'm really here,' she says.
'You can't be,' he says. 'You're dead.'
'I am,' she says. 'Here. And dead.'
'I'm sorry,' he says. 'I should have protected you. I'm so sorry.'
'I know.' She swallows. 'And I think that's why I'm still here.'
He frowns, reaching his hand out like he wants to touch her before he stops himself. 'What do you mean?'
'You're… keeping me here,' she says. 'I'm trapped.'
'But you're here,' he says. 'Isn't that good?'
'No,' she says. 'No, you don't understand. I'm not supposed to be here, Ward. It hurts.'
'But you're here,' he repeats. 'You can't go. You can't leave me.'
'You have to let me go,' she says. 'Please.' She lifts her hand up, tries to focus and touch his cheek. 'Please let me go.'
He shakes his head. 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I can't.'
.
.
.
When you can't sleep or interact, you have to find something else to do with your life. (Correction, death.)
She can see things she couldn't see before, if she really focuses.
Mostly Ward. He's so loud, he might as well be yelling at her.
Not that he has to say anything.
She sees things she doesn't like.
Nothing is clear, not even with Ward.
But she sees a boy being beaten, she sees woods, she sees a man with a gun.
She sees Hydra.
.
.
.
She doesn't say anything because really, what can she say?
So he's Hydra. He works for that big bad organisation that Captain America fought.
But there's more in there too, in his head. So much suffering.
It's such a mess, though. Nothing is clear. Just flickers and images, fleeting moments.
It's not like there's anyone she could tell, anyway. He's the only one who even knows she's there.
.
.
.
Coulson's bringing on a couple of hands, he says.
Just for a while.
Until things settle down.
(Translation: until we all get through missions without breaking down again. Until Ward stops asking 'where's Skye?' on comms and making Simmons cry.)
Skye recognises him as soon as he comes up the cargo ramp.
Garrett.
She's seen him stamped all over Ward's head.
There's another man with him that Skye doesn't know. Agent Triplett, and Fitzsimmons take to him in their own way, cajoling him into the lab with them.
Garrett uses some excuse about catching up with his rookie to get Ward alone in the back of the Bus. Skye waits just out of sight, listens.
'You good, son?' Garrett asks.
Ward doesn't answer. Not for a moment. Skye hears him push out a little breath. 'No,' he says. 'She's dead, and it's your fault. You had her killed.'
'You should have told me,' Garrett says, 'if you were sweet on her. I might have let her walk. But remember what I taught you. It would have become a weakness.'
Ward doesn't say anything. Skye peers round the corner, and he sees her straight away. He makes a move to go towards her, but Garrett catches him by the shoulder.
'Or was it already a weakness?' he growls. 'Did you have a little crush, boy? Did you think you were in love.' He gives him a shove, but Ward isn't focusing, he's staring straight at Skye. 'Don't forget who put you here. Don't forget your mission.'
Ward tries to move past him, towards Skye. 'No,' he says.
Garrett seems to take it as an agreement, but Skye knows it's for her. 'I already knew,' she says. 'I can see you.'
He glances back at Garrett. 'Sir?' he asks. 'Could I have a moment?'
Garrett nods, leaves, and it's just the two of them.
'Do you hate me?' Ward asks. 'More than you did before.'
'I don't know,' she says, honestly. 'I don't know how you could do this.'
'I have to,' he says. 'I'm sorry.' And she doesn't know whether he's referring to serving Hydra or keeping her here. Or both.
.
.
.
Sometimes she thinks she might be fading away, slipping over to the other side finally, when something gets Ward distracted.
And then she feels him panic and pull her right back, right to him.
She hates him for it, a little bit, because it hurts. She shouldn't be here.
But he's all she has now.
He's the only one that sees her, that she can speak to.
She tries to make the most of it. She tries to tell herself he doesn't mean it (and she almost almost does believe it). She sits next to him at team movie nights. She makes jokes no one else can hear, and smiles when they all give Ward strange looks for laughing at nothing.
She sits on the counter when he makes pancakes and (tries and) fails to pass him the eggs.
She calls bullets that he doesn't see and watches his back for him.
He takes her to a wall, once, and shows her her own name.
Agent Skye.
He goes to hold her when she almost cries, and then remembers he can't.
There's a part of her that thinks it might love him. But it's hard to love someone when they're binding you down, whether they mean it or not.
It's also hard when they work for Hydra, no matter that they promise they would never betray you. ('Too late,' Skye says, 'I'm already dead and betrayed.' He can't look her in the eye for a week.) It's a little late for promises that he can't trust Garrett any longer.
But she just has to stand and watch as Garrett taunts the team with her death through Thomas Nash.
She has to listen, as the mechanical voice asks, 'Did you ever tell her? Or is that another failure, another regret?'
And when Ward shoots Nash, Skye can't hate him for it nearly as much as she'd like.
(They don't talk about it. Don't talk about how he's in love with a ghost, or about how destructive it is, for everyone involved.)
.
.
.
'Don't do this,' she says.
He looks at her across the little janitor's closet. 'I have to.' There's a determination in his voice, and Skye hates it.
'It's suicide.'
He doesn't look at her.
'Please, Ward,' she whispers.
'I just have to get to the processing centre and set the charge,' he says.
'Through at least a dozen guards,' she argues. 'You'll die.'
He's not correcting her. He has to correct her, to tell her no, he can do this, this is easy.
He doesn't.
He opens the door, and she might be screaming at him. She feels stronger, more real than ever.
He makes it to the processing centre and sets the charge, and then they overcome him.
She's still screaming when they're done with him. He's a bloody, awful mess, and she falls to her knees beside him.
'Don't die,' she whispers. 'Don't leave me.'
He chokes out a laugh. 'Isn't that what you've been telling me to do for months?'
She shakes her head. 'No, please.'
He reaches for her. 'Now-' He breaks off, coughing a little blood up. 'Now I can. Now you'll be free.'
'No. Don't, please. Please live,' she pleads.
He shakes his head, trying to grab her hand. 'I'm letting you go.'
She's sobbing, properly sobbing now, just whispering 'no' and 'please' over and over, but it makes no difference. He's going to die because of her and there's nothing she can do.
'Skye,' he says. He can barely speak now, it's barely more than a breath. 'I love you. You have to know that.'
She nods. She can feel herself fading away now, as he goes, but with the last strength in her she grabs hold of his hand.
And then she's gone.
They both are.
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(The end.)
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(For him, at least.)
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Her eyes flicker open, and at first it's just light.
Slowly, things start to come into focus. There's a woman with dark curls leaning over her, checking machines around them.
'Finally,' she says. 'Something must have been holding her.' She looks down. 'Welcome back,' she says, smiling.
Skye tries to sit up, but there are restraints around her wrists. The woman seems to notice, and loosens them off.
'How do you feel?' she asks.
'I...' Skye begins, but her voice is croaky and hoarse from disuse. 'I don't know. Not… bad?'
The woman laughs. 'You're good as new,' she says. She motions forwards a man in a white coat, who braces one arm round Skye and helps her up, leading her to a mirror. 'Take a look.'
Good as new isn't exactly how Skye would put it. She looks like a mess. Her stomach is a mess of scars and different coloured flesh, like she's a doll been sewn back together. She's thin and drawn, but too clean.
'Let's sit you down,' the woman says. 'We'll need to run some tests before Garrett can let you out.'
Skye doesn't really understand, but she nods anyway and sits down numbly.
The woman smoothes down her flower dress and goes to leave. 'Wait,' Skye says. 'Who are you?'
The woman raises her eyebrows a little. 'So your brain was damaged by the time on ice,' she says. 'I suspected. What do you remember?'
Skye frowns. Her thoughts are nothing. A white blur.
'Nothing,' she says. 'Just my name.'
It might be a lie. There's something else, something on the very edge of her memory, just out of reach.
A boy?