"And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."

— Haruki Murakami

(She couldn't remember much of her life anymore, fading memories always just out of her reach.)

"I'm Kevlar, you're not."

The blood dripping from Eric's body burned against her skin like the acid churning in her stomach. Her entire body was trembling, breaths hitching as they caught in her teeth on their way out.

(But this day... Oh, this day was seared into her mind like a brand.)

"There are things about me that you wouldn't like, if you knew."

She let out a wounded noise as she slid down to the floor, a disbelieving, "He's HYDRA," falling out of her mouth. Her hands were shaking as she pressed her fingertips to her still kiss-bitten red lips and shook her head.

"I'm not a good man, Skye."

The way she tangled her hair in her hands hurt and she jerked forward, wanting to ignore the sound of Ward's voice as he called her name. Choking back sobs, she shook her head again and forced herself to her feet.

(His voice haunted her dreams, even now.)

"Please," she whispered, rushing to the cabinets. She hastily rubbed at her cheeks and rummaged through the materials inside. Finding what she needed, she moved to the photo on the wall.

Biting her lip with angry tears threatening to blind her, Skye carved her message as carefully and quickly as she could.

"Skye?"

She let out a shaky breath and greeted Ward, putting together a bullshit story for why she left, telling him everything he wanted to hear with a smile plastered to her face.

Skye reassured him, the "No, I'm good," offered gently as she had watched him watch her, a sour taste in her mouth as she allowed their lips to press together.

(Though she couldn't remember what words followed the most bitter kiss she'd ever been given, she could remember the way she forced her hand not to shake when he laced their fingers together.)

Skye remembered things sporadically now that she was old and gray; the ride in Lola with Coulson lit her face with a smile on a chilly spring day, the ache of the gunshot returning as she ran her fingers against the spines of books in her bedroom, the burn of Ward's betrayal creeping in on cold, lonely nights when she was alone in her bed. The pain of watching the world she had come to know and love falling apart around her and knowing that the only thing that had kept her standing was her team bursting out as she made her lunch with shaking hands.

She would try and force herself to remember how she had grown close to her team, trusted them with everything she had, on a lonely Christmas night when the sparkle of her tree did nothing but make the hollow pit in her chest ache. They had been her family, the one she had spent her entire life searching for without even knowing it.

(She had lost them all eventually, just as she always had. No one stayed with her forever, that was just the way it was.)

She knew she had played her part well; the love-sick girl on a mission with her heroic boyfriend at her side.

Eventually though, she finally had enough. Enough stalling, enough smiling, enough acting like she could stand the feeling of his hands on her skin.

(There are days, even now, where the spots where he had touched her still ache like fingers pressing on a fresh bruise.)

"I don't know how Garrett did it," she stated casually, watching as he tensed, eyes fully focused on her.

"Garrett?"

"Think about all that time he spent as your SO." Skye kept her face carefully blank, acting as though this was just a normal, everyday conversation. "Getting to know you, being your mentor. Only to lie to your face, betray you like that." She wondered, absently, as she watched him stare at her, if he could hear the double-meaning in her words as clearly as she could hear it in every single one of his.

He blinked at her before choosing his words carefully. "It was- uh, difficult to accept. But thankfully that's over."

"Because you took care of him?" She made her eyes wide and her voice insistent.

Ward glanced over at the officers again before lowering his voice a notch. "Could we not discuss this right now?"

Skye kept her eyes on him as she tilted her head and asked, "If you had one more moment, before you shot him the back of the head, so heroically. If he was sitting right here and you could say anything you want, what would you say?"

"Skye." His eyes were narrowed and his voice held a warning.

She ignored him, unable to stop now that she had finally started. "Would you say he's disgusting? Would you tell him that he's a disgusting, backstabbing, traitor?" She gritted her teeth. "Or to rot in hell?"

He regarded her carefully before asking, "What're you doing?"

The bitterness in her voice surprised her (still surprises her) as she replied, "I'm just trying to have an honest conversation for once."

Ward stared at her, eyes only moving away to take note of the police quietly telling the civilians to stay down. "They're starting to clear people out, we should go."

She dropped her gaze back to her laptop and typed a few things, flatly telling him, "No, I think I'm good here."

"Skye," his voice was stern. "We've been made. C'mon."

"No," she turned her laptop to face him, taking cruel delight in the way his face fell. "I tipped them off."

(She's not ashamed to admit that she still takes a cruel delight in the memory of his face in that moment.)

Ward stared at the screen for a long moment before looking up at her, a betrayed look clear in his eyes.

Burns like a bitch, doesn't it? Her lip curled as she spat out sarcastically, "Hail HYDRA."

The snow fell softly, shadows creeping in to smother her as she sat on her windowsill, silently wishing she could trade her memories of that day for happier ones, ones with May and Fitz and Simmons and Coulson. Memories that wouldn't make her heart break every time she went through them.

The glass was cold enough to make her shiver as she rested against it, Ward's voice filled with desperation as he screamed in her head, "I'm not trying to hurt you!"

Skye brushed a lock of gray tinged hair behind her ear and let out a ragged breath as he told her, like he did every night, "it wasn't personal."

Her eyes fell shut and she echoed herself from years before, voice weary, "You were right about one thing, Ward. I wouldn't like the real you."

(There was a bitter taste that had never left her mouth, even years after the kiss he had pressed to her lips. It had made his betrayal so much crueler; a bone deep wound, one that continues to fester and ache even years later, when she was old and gray with nothing but her fading memories left to comfort her.)

They weren't really a comfort though. They never had been.