For twenty-three years, Skye had been alone. She had grown used to it, had embraced it. She had been abandoned at the age of six months old on the doorstep of an orphanage, and as kind and caring as the women there were towards all of their charges, they weren't a family. They weren't her mother, weren't people she could run to with every little problem in her world.

She had finally begun to believe that she was no longer alive, that she had been accepted and integrated into the team she had chosen to join. Ward, Fitz-Simmons, and Coulson seemed to be much kinder than they had been after her betrayal. May, on the other hand, seemed to despise her even more.

She knew that the words May had uttered would be considered fair by most of her friends. She had chosen personal attachments over the mission once before, but she had no more secrets. She had not lied to any members of her team since that day, and she didn't plan to.

She walked into her bunk, staring at the papers in disarray across the bed before picking them up and shredding them to pieces. She just wanted to know who her mother was, what she looked like. She wanted to know which side of the family her traits had been inherited from, whose smile she had, whose eyes she had inherited.

She didn't want to give up on the team. She never would again. She had failed to trust them before, and it had cost her their trust and friendship for weeks. She had gained their friendship back and was beginning to gain their trust. If she never gained May's again, it was something she could deal with. She didn't want to see May again, didn't want to read the coldness in her eyes and know that her lifelong pain meant nothing to the older woman. The cruel words uttered moments before had already informed her of the agent's dislike of her. She didn't need to see it in her eyes, as well.

She was so trapped in her thoughts that she didn't notice her supervising officer enter the bunk until his large hands circled her wrists and pulled her back against his chest. She struggled for a moment but he simply held onto her. She finally gave up, sinking against him and turning so that her head was nestled beneath his chin, her tears soaking the tee shirt that he wore over his heart.

"Rookie," Ward whispered, his breath tickling her cheek, "what happened?"

"May hates me," she sobbed, very aware that this moment was rare. Ward had said more than once that emotions weren't his forte, and yet here he was, comforting her as best as he knew how.

"Why do you say that? What did she say to you?" he questioned, furious at the senior agent for causing the young woman in his arms as much pain as she so obviously had. "What happened, rookie?"

"She said that since I want to find my parents, my mind isn't on the mission and I don't care about the team. She said there's no place here for me anymore if they're all I can think about."

"You're working on the case, Skye. She can't blame you for wanting to know who your parents are."

"She does," Skye sobbed, and he felt as though his heart was broken in his chest. "She said I don't belong here, Ward!"

"She's wrong," he said. "You belong here."

She nodded, pulling away from him slowly. "I'll clean this up," she said, wiping away her tears slowly before gesturing to the papers strewn around the room.

"I know you will," he said with a smile, shaking his head. She had just had an emotional breakdown in his arms and yet she felt as though he cared that her bunk was in disarray. "You know where I am if you need me."

"I do," she said, reaching for his hand and causing him to pause in his exit of the room. "Thank you, Grant."

"Of course, Rookie," he said, holding her hand for a moment longer than necessary before walking out of the room, his eyes full of fury as he headed for the cockpit.

"How is Skye?" Coulson asked when he passed the older agent on the way to his destination.

"She thinks that May hates her," Ward ground out, his eyes full of fury.

"Don't be hard on her," Coulson said.

"You shouldn't worry about me being hard on my rookie, sir. Your pilot, however," he said, walking past the agent.

"What did she say to her?" Coulson asked.

"She said that she doesn't have a place here if she can't focus solely on the missions and take focus off of her parents."

"That is harsh, even for May. You going to talk to her?"

"Yes, sir, very loudly," he warned.

Coulson nodded. "I'll go check on Skye, tell her she has a place."

Ward nodded as he finally reached the cockpit.

"She told you," May said, not glancing up from the controls.

"She did. Didn't want to, but she was sobbing, so I figured I should ask. She is a member of our team." Ward shook his head. "She didn't do anything wrong."

"She betrayed us," May reminded him.

"You punished her for that already. We all did. She doesn't deserve to be told she doesn't have a place because she wants to know where she comes from. Haven't you heard of basic human rights? People you deem betrayers have them too, May!" he snapped. "Whatever this was between us, this exchange of fury, it's over."

"You think this is something that needs to be ended? It's sex, Ward. It's meaningless." She shook her head. "You're choosing a consultant over an agent. Are you sure your priorities are in the right place?"

"Yes, it does need to be ended, because I need to be able to look that consultant in the eyes when she becomes an agent. You're right, it is meaningless, because you're not the person that could make sex mean anything to me, much less a relationship. And lastly, May, for the record, I'd choose my rookie over everyone. She's the best confidant I've ever had."

"You could confide in me," May said, shaking her head. "I've never betrayed this team."

"Yes, you have. You betrayed Skye. Despite what you seem to believe, she is a part of this team. And you're right, I could have confided in you, but that rookie's taught me a few things, one of them being that two broken people can't fix one another if they're broken in the same way. She and I aren't, May. She's light where I'm dark, and I have to deal with the fact that, even if we weren't involved, our meaningless sex was me betraying her. You telling her that her personal issues mean nothing to you? That's irreparable damage, because I've read your file enough to know that you at least had the privilege of knowing what your parents looked like. That's more than Skye has ever had."

He walked from the room feeling none of the guilt he had before he entered. She deserved to know how he felt about his rookie, even if they hadn't been involved. And he knew that Skye deserved much better than someone who told her that he hated the sound of her voice in moments of anger, who turned his back on her when she needed him the most. But, as she had told him more than once, he needed to trust her to make her own decisions. Perhaps he could trust her to make one when it came to him.

"Hey, Rookie," he said, finding her where he had anticipated to. She was punching the bag in front of her with a fierceness that would have terrified anyone that hadn't trained her. "I'd ask if you wanted to talk about it, but I don't want you to treat my face like you're treating that bag."

She flashed him a shy smile before returning to what she was doing, her face becoming a mask of indifference once again.

"Hey," he said, walking behind her when she paused for a few moments, "keep your hands up." He took her hands in his and held them in the correct position. "If you keep them lower than that, you could break a finger."

"That sounds painful," she said, wincing as she moved her hands more quickly.

"How long have you been doing this, rookie?" he asked, glancing at her hands.

"I don't know. I got up at four, haven't really stopped since." She punched the bag harshly, wincing in pain.

Ward grabbed her hands, pulling her back against his chest. "Rookie, stop."

She moved to keep punching the air.

"Skye! You need to stop. Your knuckles are bleeding." He unwrapped her hands, causing her to whimper in pain. "Damn it, rookie, why didn't you stop?"

"I needed an outlet," she said. "Not all of us can go have sex."

He stopped his movements, his eyes finding hers. "What are you talking about?"

"You went to May's hotel room after I said I would listen. I realized it when I came up two minutes after you left, but I realized I was right when you stopped making dinner after I said she needed to get laid. That meant that she was taken care of in that department."

"Rookie, I was furious at myself that night, and I needed someone around who knew what that fury felt like. I slept with Agent May because if I had stayed I would have said things to you that you didn't need to hear at the time. I slept with May, but everything she knows about my family history she got from a file. You know more than she does for a reason, Skye, and it's not because I slipped in a conversation. I left that night because whatever I needed had to be meaningless, and anything with you would have been anything but."

"I wasn't offering to have sex with you," she said, a smirk curving her lips.

"I understand that."

"I thought I'd let you know. You know, we were going to just talk if you had stayed. Well, maybe a kiss, but no sex."

"Okay," he said. "Wait, what did you just say?"

"That's classified, Agent Ward."

She walked away, drawing her hand slowly from his and throwing him a blown kiss over the shoulder, and he groaned. That infuriating woman was going to be the death of him.

"Agent Coulson, sir, have you seen Skye?" Ward asked, glancing around the room in search of the young hacker.

"Did you check her bunk?" Coulson asked, glancing up from his paperwork.

"Yes."

"Did you check Simmons' bunk?"

"Yes."

"Did you check the vans, the SUVs, and Lola?"

"Yes."

"Did you check your bunk?"

"No, sir."

"Well, that's where she told me she was going."

"She doesn't have the passcode, sir."

"I gave it to her."

"So this conversation could have been a lot shorter than it was?"

"She is worth the effort."

Ward nodded in agreement as he walked into his own bunk, leaning against the doorway and smiling at the look of innocence and content on the young hacker's face as she slept. He bent down, stroking her hair away from her face and kissing the tip of her nose.

"Hey, Skye," he said, and she opened one eye before flashing him a smile and moving so that he could sit on the bed before she crawled into his embrace and rested her head on his shoulder.

"'M tired," she said, exhaustion clear in her tone, and he smiled gently at the sweetness in her tone. "Your bed is more comfortable than mine."

"Our beds are exactly the same."

"Mm," she said, sighing tiredly. "Well, your shoulder is a very firm pillow."

He smiled at her before pressing his lips into her hair.

She turned her face towards his and kissed him gently, a smile on her lips when she pulled away. "Ward, you know how I said I had no family before?"

"Yeah," he said, brushing her hair away from her face.

"I think that changed," she said before snuggling more firmly into his arms. "'Cause I have you."

A/N: Sorry if anyone was OOC. I tried my best to stick to things they'd say and do. Anyway, please review and let me know what you thought! CONSTRUCTIVE criticism only, please.