notes:
+ this was both ridiculously fun and ridiculously painful to write. dark!skyeward is my new fav thing though. gimme all the dark!skyeward AUs. let me use it to ignore the angst in the show atm.
+ timeline wise this really takes place over about four or five years, starting in 1929 and finishing in the early-mid thirties.
+ content warning wise, there's a fair amount of death, blood, swearing, and some pretty mild sex references?
+ title from "born to die" by lana del rey. basically it's compulsory you listen to her while reading this?
The room is a haze of cigarette smoke, Texas heat, and the low him of a gramophone. Skye winds her way through to the kitchen of Jemma's little house.
She hears a knock on the door. Probably Fitz. He's smitten with Jemma, it couldn't be more obvious. But Jemma's still too pure to let herself fall for a bootlegger. Even if she helps him make the alcohol in the basement.
"Jemma," Skye calls. She pokes her head out the kitchen, brandy in one hand. "You want anything to drink?"
Jemma bustles through. In tow isn't Fitz, though, like Skye was expecting, but a guy that makes her feel really small. She would swoon, but she isn't the swooning type, so she stares a little bit instead.
"Yes please," Jemma says, but by this point Skye has forgotten what she'd asked. It takes her a second or two.
"Drinks," she says. "Right. You want some?" She holds up the bottle to Jemma's rather attractive friend.
"Yes," he says. "Please."
Skye smiles at him, sweet as sugar. "Jemma," she says. "Why don't you come help me?" She practically drags her friend through to the kitchen, leaving Mr Attractive standing a little awkwardly in the hall.
"Who's that?" Skye hisses, closing the kitchen door.
"Hmm?" Jemma grabs a couple of glasses off the shelf, utterly oblivious. "Oh. Grant Ward. He's a friend of Fitz's. He's just picking up something."
Skye raises an eyebrow. Adjusts her black dress a little. Snatches two glasses from Jemma's hands. "Can you grab whatever it is our guest needs, then?" she suggests. "I'll keep him entertained." She moves back out into the hall, where Ward is lighting a cigarette. "Come sit down," she tells him. "I've got your drink here."
She leads him out the back. There's a couple of stools in the yard. She sits down on one, crossing her legs, and hands him a glass.
"Jemma said your name's Ward?" Skye asks.
He nods. He's leaning back against the wall of the house. There's an air of confidence to him, but Skye has been around guys like him for long enough to know that it's fake. "You?" he asks her.
"Skye," she says, and leaves it at that. Poots is an awful surname anyway, and the people who gave it to her are long in the ground. "Haven't seen you round before."
"I came down from Massachusetts not that long ago," he says. "Family trouble."
Skye laughs. "Must have been some big trouble," she says, "for you to come all that way."
He smirks. "I burned down their house," he says. "With my brother still inside."
"Oh." Skye maybe should be put off by that, but she can't help it. She's intrigued. "So you're what, a fugitive from justice?" She leans forward a little, smiling playfully.
His smirk grows. "You could say that."
Jemma picks that moment to stumble out into the yard in a flurry long scarves a . "I've got the boxes up," she says. Then looks a little sheepish, like she's realised she's interrupted something. Skye makes sure to shoot her a pointed glare.
Ward stands up, crushing the remainders of his cigar under his boot and finishing his drink in one. "You shouldn't have," he says, sounding a little concerned for the little lady (despite the fact she's making moonshine in her basement). So chivalry isn't dead. "I'd probably better go, then."
Skye can't help feeling a little disappointed. "Well," she says, following him to the door where there's a crate waiting. "I'll see you around."
He looks down at her. (Fuck he's tall.) "I'm counting on it," he says.
There's not a job in town, so sometimes you've gotta find other ways to make your way in life.
Jemma and Fitz make and sell moonshine by the barrel, but Skye can't get the hang of that science crap.
Normally she just lifts what she needs when she needs it from wherever's nearest. But Ward - Grant - he's in with people who do it different.
He presses the gun into her hand. "Only use it if you really have to," he says, and kisses her forehead. She feels a rush of electricity through her veins.
"I know," she says. "You tell me every time. Now go, I'll be here." She watches him round the corner and climbs into the car.
It would be wrong to say she isn't nervous. She's been with John Garrett's crew for a month or so now, but Grant's known him for longer than that. They hit liquor stores and gas stations and grocery stores. Anywhere they can get money and food and drink.
Skye is pretty sure Garrett still doesn't really trust her. He accepted her in fine enough, but she's pretty sure that's for Grant's sake more than anything. There's just something about the man.
Maybe it's just that he thinks she's incompetent, because at the moment all he'll let her do is be the getaway driver. Skye taps the barrell of the gun impatiently against the steering wheel. She's never been good at waiting, but she always worries that this will be the day something goes wrong.
This is the day something goes wrong.
Grant and Garrett round the corner at speed.
"Drive," Grant tells her, a little out of breath. "Now."
Skye slams her foot down. "What about Kominsky?"
"Not coming."
"What?"
"The son of a bitch pulled a gun on us. Kominsky went down before I could shoot him," Grant says.
Skye nods, swerving violently round a corner. She should maybe be more concerned with how easily he kills, but she knows he does it to keep them safe. Otherwise, who knows where they would be? Freezing on the streets, probably.
It'll be in the paper, tomorrow, though, and they'll probably have to move on again, before the police come knocking on the door of the rental apartment they're not going to pay up for.
She swings up to the kerb in front of said apartment, breakin sharply. Miles has taught her to drive, before he skipped town for something better. He was a terrible driver, and Skye is probably even worse. But she's fast, and that's what matters.
They climb the three flights of steep stairs. Grant's got one arm around her waist, and she leans into him. There's a heavy sort of exhaustion hanging over them, like there always is when a job goes wrong.
Inside is smoky and loud. There's at least a half a dozen of Garrett's guys drinking, slumped against any and every surface. She'd maybe feel a little scared if Grant wasn't there.
Garrett's immediately off to his room to do business, whatever that means. Skye tugs Grant up to their room. One of the perks of fucking the boss's right hand man is that you don't have to share, since Grant always gets second pick when they move to a new place.
They sit on the bed together. He's leaning against the headboard, she's pretty much straddling him. It's not really sexual. Yet. They just need each other's touch, a reassurance that that they are both still here, still alive.
"You good?" she asks him. Sometimes she thinks he's invincible. She has to remind herself that they aren't anything more than mortals.
He nods. "Didn't get hurt." He huffs, obviously annoyed that they hadn't succeeded in bagging more cash.
She nods. "Next time," she says, in answer to what he leaves unspoken. "Garrett'll come up with something." She touches his chin, bringing it up so he looks at her. "We'll be okay. We just gotta stick together. "
"I know," he says, and kisses her.
Kisses her lips, her neck, her collarbone, her shoulder. Her blouse is on the floor, her skirt is hitched up round her hips, and how do you breathe again?
Trip picks that moment to knock on the door. "Ward?" he calls.
Grant takes a minute to answer. "Yes?" he shouts back, annoyance obvious in his voice. Skye bites back a smile.
"Garrett wants you."
He sends them off to a hardware store a couple of days later, but he wants guns, not money or food or booze.
Skye knows he's up to something.
"Bank robbery," Grant tells her in the car. It's just the two of them. Just something small, and they can handle it themselves.
Skye's eyebrows raise a fraction. "Oh."
"You get to come," he adds.
Her eyebrows raise a little higher. "Oh?" The corners of her mouth twist up into a half-smile. "I didn't think Garrett trusted me as far as he could throw me."
"Nah," Ward says. "You're my girl. Of course he does." He smiles at her (and her heart does a funny little double-time against her ribcage). "Plus, you're only little. He could probably throw you a fair way."
Maybe Garrett shouldn't trust them, because they manage to royally fuck up their little job.
It's Grant's fault. He distracted her. She's supposed to be scoping out the little store. The guns are all on the back wall, and the storekeeper is reading the paper. It should have been easy.
But Grant is there, pressed right up against her, and neither of them notice the couple of cops come in.
They recognise Grant, from the paper and the posters and because they're cops, for god's sake.
But Skye and Grant deal.
Not well, but they deal.
Grant shoots the first in the neck and hits the second, leaving him on the floor. Skye stands over him and puts a bullet right through his forehead.
She doesn't know when she last felt such a rush.
Grant grabs all the guns he can, while she presses the barrel of her own to the shopkeeper's temple.
She shoots him anyway, when they leave, to stop him describing them to the police.
"You good?" she asks him. Her own breaths are still a little heavy, ragged, and her head feels a little light. There's dead men's blood on her dress and her skin, but it feels good.
"Yeah. You?"
"I shot a cop," Skye says. "Fuck, I shot a cop."
"I saw." There's pride in his voice and in his eyes, and it makes her feel like she might burst. "You okay though?"
She pulls him to her by the front of his shirt, kisses him till he's as breathless as her. "I'm good," she says.
The bank robbery is fun. Skye thinks it goes off fine. There are cops, yes. But Grant takes care of them.
There's one awful moment, one which Skye swears felt longer than an age and barely a second all at once, where a bullet whistles right at her, but Grant pulls her out the way.
It grazes his shoulder, but he insists it's nothing, just a scratch. After, she presses a rag to it and kisses the skin just above it.
She thinks the job went okay, but afterwards Garrett calls Grant up to his room. It's above the rest of the old warehouse they've turned into their base, accessed by a set of rusty spiral stairs. She tries to listen outside the door, but Trip shoos her away, so she sits at the bottom instead. Shouts follow her down.
"What's he angry about?" she asks Trip.
He gives her a funny look, standing above her. "Girl," he laughs (but there's not much humour in it. Maybe pity), "don't you know?"
She gives him an unimpressed look. "If I knew, would I be asking?" she asks.
He nods, as if to agree with her. "You," he says, and then leaves her there, on step.
Grant never tells her what it was.
(But he comes out with a nasty bruise round his eye that he tells her he got during the robbery. He might be a good liar, but never to her.)
Things are tense, after that. It's not just between Grant and Garrett, because Skye can tell something is changing there - has changed, maybe - even if neither of them will say it.
There are cops after them wherever they go. Grant swears about Captain fucking Coulson not giving them a break. They move more often. Their pictures turn up in the papers, pinning them as some kind of cigar-smoking murder lovers.
(Which is actually pretty accurate. It's just a lot less glamorous than it might sound.)
They hit banks and bars with equal ferocity and try to forget.
They make promises to each other. I love yous, forevers, as long as we're togethers. They are promises that, for once in her life, Skye intends to keep.
It comes to a head in a parking lot behind a diner outside Dallas under a candyfloss sky.
It starts with an argument about who finds them beer.
Skye volunteers.
Grant says no, he doesn't want her out on her own, not with their faces plastered on every wanted poster from here to Jacksonville.
And Garrett says see, there it is again. This is what I was talking about.
Skye gets it then. Gets it like a kick in the gut (which is something she's all too familiar with. Fucking Coulson and his cops). She gets it. She's come between Grant and Garrett, and Garrett thinks he's no longer loyal.
"So?" Grant asks. He spits at Garrett's feet, snarls something, and Skye is scared.
"So how do I know you won't do something stupid for your little crush?" Garrett asks.
Ward looks sick at the word 'crush'. "You don't."
Garrett sighs heavily. "Ah," he says, sounding disappointed. "Well. There's a pity."
"If you want me to stay," Grant says, "it's something you'll have to live with."
"See, that's the thing boy. I can't have you around." Skye hates how calm he sounds. She'd quite like to kick his guts in. "But you know how we work. You know you don't just get to walk away." He sighs again. Looks just a little pained, resigned to what he has to do next.
Maybe, Skye thinks later, if he had tried to shoot Grant he would have lived. But he points his gun at Skye.
Grant kicks him into the dirt. Puts two in the back of his head.
And then empties the rest of his bullets, just for good measure.
It's just them now.
They make do. They don't have the same power as they did running with Garrett's gang, to take whatever they please, but they're good together.
They hit gas stations in the middle of nowhere, mostly. Take you for everything you've got and leave you dry. And if you get in the way, you had it coming.
Skye screws up. She kills the wrong guy - some copper with a dead wife and two kids or some shit - and the world turns against them.
Everybody loves the gorgeous murder couple. Nobody loves them once they kill the poor defenceless (he had his gun on them, for god's sake) one.
"It'll be fine," Grant tells her. "It'll all settle down soon."
They lay low, live out of their beat up car.
They drive, across Texas and into Louisiana.
But it's okay, they're together.
She empties her revolver at the moon and breathes hard.
Waits for his arms around her.
"You okay?" he asks, and she shakes her head slowly.
"Nightmares."
He kisses the top of her head. "I know," he says. He scoops her up, lies her down in the backseat.
Kisses her lips, her neck, her collarbone, unbuttons her dress, kisses her torso, goes down on her until she forgets all the blood on her hands and in her mind.
"Do you ever regret," he asks her, "not just living and dying the same way everyone else does?"
She laughs, harsh and humourless. "Like everyone else?" She crawls across the bed, kisses him in the half light. "Everyone else don't have half the fun of us."
You can't run forever.
Everything catches up with everyone.
It catches up with them as Captain Coulson and Deputy May all the way from back in Texas, and Louisiana's Hill, plus a couple she doesn't recognise.
They back them down a dead end country road, and Skye looks at Grant, and they both know this is it.
She empties a cartridge at the officers, but only one does down.
She doesn't cry. They won't get that.
When Grant goes down, she closes her eye. She won't see that.
It doesn't hurt that much. The ground hurts more, when it comes up to meet her head.
The sky is the colour of candy floss, or maybe she's imagining it. She can feel his hand in hers, and she thinks it's okay. Gotta stick together.
They're still young and gorgeous enough to be history's goddamn fucking tragedy.