As The World Comes Crashing Down
By Misha
Disclaimer- I own none of it. I wish I did, but I don't. I am not making money off of this, so please don't sue me.
Author's Notes- Even though Ward is the villain in one of my other stories and ambiguous in the other, deep down a part of me still roots for SkyeWard. I just fell so hard during the first season. They were so beautiful together and I don't think Ward is truly evil. I think he's mentally unstable and that he has replaced blind loyalty to Garrett with a fixation on Skye and I don't think that they can get a happy pretty love story. But that's not what this is. This takes places after "What They Become" and it is inspired by Cal's words to Skye. What if the team did turn on her, but instead of turning to her father, she chooses the devil she knew instead? That's how this was born. This could also be seen as the alternative to "Awakening Quake". That story is what happens to Skye if Coulson gets her help, this is what happens if he doesn't. There is one tiny reference to "Awakening Quake" if you care to look for it.
Pairings- Ward/Skye
Rating- Very strong T.
Summery- When Skye has nowhere else to turn, Ward is there for her and she realizes that life isn't a fairy-tale and love isn't perfect.
Spoilers- Up to 2x10.
"After you change, no one else will understand. They'll be afraid. Change is terrifying."
After she emerged from the temple in San Juan forever changed, Skye kept repeating her father's words in her head. They taunted her as the rest of her team, the only real family she'd ever had, started to withdraw from her.
Her father's words were a dark prophecy and it didn't take long for it start being fulfilled. It soon became obvious that she was no longer 'one of the team'. She was different now and she could see that the others were terrified of her.
The new members of the team were more obvious about it. Mack, in particular, couldn't stand to be in the same room as her. Skye didn't entirely blame him. His experience in the temple was straight out of a horror movie, so she couldn't blame him for wanting to avoid all reminders of that experience. Including her. Lance and Bobbi were more polite about it, but it was obvious that they were uncomfortable with what she had become.
Fitz and Simmons tried. They really did and Skye knew they cared about her. But they also looked at her like a lab rat. They kept wanting to experiment on her and figure out what exactly had happened to her. In some ways it was worse than if they were afraid of her.
May and Coulson hid it the best, but in time even they showed cracks. May was trained to react against threats and as an unknown with incredible powers, Skye was undeniably a threat. Coulson, he tried the hardest. Skye knew that he loved her as a daughter and that he wanted her safe and happy, but he also needed to do what was best for S.H.I.E.L.D and she knew there would come a time when he'd see that that meant cutting her loose.
Especially as she began to lose whatever grip she had on her powers and nearly destroyed one of the rooms in the playground, bringing all the shelves crashing down around her while she stood there perfectly fine. Even Coulson had looked afraid then.
That was when she started realizing she couldn't stay with the team. The look on Coulson's face convinced her of that, but she also knew that he would have a hard time making that decision. It would hurt him to cast her out and she owed him too much to put him through that, so she made the decision on her own. She'd leave before they could kick her out. But the question was where would she go?
"But I'm your father, and I love you. I will always love you, Dasiy."
She knew her father would come if she called him. That he would rescue her as he promised and he would show her how to use her powers and some part of her wanted that. The poor little orphan girl she had once been wanted to trust her father and go with him. That girl had once dreamed that one day her parents would find her and take her away and everything would be perfect. But that girl had grown up.
Skye knew too much to trust Cal. The reports of the casualties that had followed her abduction. The atrocities he had committed. He was a monster. But then, maybe she was as well.
Maybe that was the problem, S.H.I.E.L.D was meant to protect against the monsters, even when those monsters were one of their own. There was no room for people like her in the new S.H.I.E.L.D. No room for grey areas. The more Skye came to terms with what she was, the more she understood about the world in general and about the one she lived in. It was an 'us' against 'them' mentality and now she was part of the enemy. Even if no one would say it out loud.
Yet, she couldn't bring herself to think of Cal as someone she could trust, as the person who would save her. He was her father, but there was no bond there. She had never known him, never loved him. It meant he had never hurt her, but it also meant she had no reason to go to him. But there was someone else who fit that bill.
There was another man who claimed to love her. Like with her father, Skye didn't really believe him because there had been too many lies and too much destruction. She had sworn she'd never trust him again, but he might be the only one who could help her.
He was the biggest villain of her life story, even more so than her father, and she had once seen him as a monster. But he might be the one who could help her now that she was becoming the monster.
Someday. Someday, you'll understand.
Skye hadn't wanted to believe that there would ever be a time where she could forgive Grant Ward or understand his motives. But that day had come.
It wasn't so much that she understood, as she realized the world was more complicated than she'd liked to believe. Now that she was alone with powers that terrified even her, she knew she needed someone. Once she made a break from S.H.I.E.L.D, they would come looking for her. She would no longer be the teammate they didn't know what to do with. She would officially be the enemy. Just like he was.
Oh, she wasn't a murderer. The only time she had actively taken a life had been in the line of duty. Nothing to feel guilty about. Except Trip. A voice in her head pointed out. She knew it wasn't her fault Trip had died, but she couldn't help blame herself and deep, down she believed the others did as well.
Still she would never kill anyone on purpose. She thought of herself as a good person and maybe that was the difference between her and Ward. He never had any such illusions about himself. She was the one who had thought he was something that he wasn't.
So maybe she shouldn't go to him. Yet, his was the name that popped into her head when she thought of escaping. He had promised to never lie to her again, to help her. She didn't really believe him, not after everything. But it wasn't like she had any other choices.
So she sent an e-mail to an old address, one they'd once used for communication purposes, hoping he still checked it.
Of course, the last time she had seen him she had shot him. So he might not respond. Maybe he would abandon her too.
I am not a good man, Skye.
She hadn't wanted to believe him when he'd warned her that he wasn't one of the good guys. Her love for him had been too fresh and it had blinded her to the truth. Later, it was all she wanted to believe. That he was evil. That he was the enemy.
Now, she knew the truth was so much more complicated.
No, Grant Ward was not a good man. But he could be her savior.
He responded to her e-mail almost immediately and when she escaped from the Playground, he was there waiting for her.
"I'll take you away." He promised her. "You'll be safe with me."
He wanted to take her to her father and she knew that eventually she'd let him. But first, she just needed to be away. She needed to forget the last year and a half of her life. As alone as she had been, things had been easier when she'd been that girl living in her van.
Before Grant Ward had walked into her life. He was the one who had brought her into this and it seemed fitting that he would be the one to help her escape. She wouldn't think of it as more than that. It couldn't be more than that.
Because, as he'd once told her, Grant Ward was not a good man and deep down Skye still believed in a world of heroes. The problem was, there was no place for her in that world.
She was no longer one of the heroes and she refused to become a villain. All she could do was hide in the shadows and that was why she hadn't reached out to a hero to save her. She could have found a way to contact one, she was a smart girl, but she thought she was beyond their help. There was no Captain America to rescue her. She wasn't the damsel in distress and she didn't think she was the heroine in this story.
She was no longer part of S.H.I.E.L.D. No longer one of the good guys. There would be no fairy tale ending for her and no hero to rescue her from herself.
There was only Grant Ward, who in his own words, was definitely not the hero of any story.
What I want, is to stay here with you and imagine the outside world doesn't exist.
Skye had no idea what the future would hold for her and Ward. If they would even have a future. He rescued her, yes, but it really mean anything?
She was still torn about her feelings for him. She'd loved him. Part of her still did. Then she'd hated him. Part of her still did. What was left was a complicated mix and it didn't seem to bode well for a future.
Yet, the night he took her away from S.H.I.E.L.D and they went into hiding together, Skye found herself putting her hand on his arm when he told her he'd sleep on the floor.
"I don't want to be alone." She told him.
She hadn't slept well since San Juan. They had been sedating her, just in case. To make sure she didn't harm anyone, because that was what she was to them now: a potential threat.
But Ward didn't see her that way.
He wasn't noble, didn't refuse her offer or even take it as a gesture of friendship. Instead he crushed his lips against her and fumbling with the button of her jeans as soon as she made the offer.
"You'll never be alone." He promised her as he pushed her down onto the bed. "You'll always have me."
It shouldn't be comforting. Not coming from him. But it was. She pulled him towards her and what happened next was fast and furious. It wasn't sweet and gentle, but that wasn't what she wanted and it wasn't what she need. Instead it was fast and it was rough, he pounded himself into her and she dug her nails into his back, drawing blood.
Maybe once their first time would have been sweet and slow. Maybe then they would have savored every touch, every caress and taken their time to truly get to know each other's bodies. Back when she had believed in their love story. But that time had passed them by. Instead what they got was fast, dirty sex in an anonymous hotel room as they hid from both the good guys and the bad guys.
"HYDRA will be after you." Ward told her afterwards. "S.H.I.E.L.D. too."
"I know." She did know. She was an unknown. A potential threat. A potential asset. And both sides would want to examine her, more interest in her as a lab experiment than as a living breathing person. "I wish we could make the world outside go away."
He'd said something similar to her once. She'd dismissed it as one of his many lies, but now in this place she knew he hadn't been lying. He had wanted to be more than he was, more than they were. Just like she did now.
But wanting something didn't make it real. He was a liar, a murder, a traitor. She was the daughter of a monster with the ability to become a monster herself. Hiding from the world wouldn't change that. Wouldn't change them.
Is it really that hard to see? It's love. Agent Ward believes if he helps Skye fulfill her destiny, she'll see him for who he really is.
Skye reluctantly let Ward take her back to her father. She didn't trust Cal, she didn't want his help, but he seemed a better alternative than HYDRA or S.H.I.E.L.D. For the moment, at least, Cal made no demands on her.
Neither did Ward. Though he spent every night in her bed.
It wasn't perfect. She knew what he was. But she also knew what she was and Ward was one of the few people who didn't seem afraid of her now. She wasn't a monster to him or an asset. She was just Skye.
As she let Cal teach her to control her powers, she let herself believe for the first time that Ward truly loved her. It didn't change the past or erase the horrible things he had done, but she was starting to see past that.
Raina had once commented that Ward had been motivated by love and wanting Skye to see him as more than a villain and Skye had to admit, it was working. She was losing herself a bit more every day, but she was starting to see Ward more clearly and see beyond the HYDRA agent who had betrayed them to the broken man he really was and the only person who didn't want her for her powers.
The first time Cal brought up searching for another artefact, finding more people like them and bringing them together, Skye remembered that she couldn't trust him. He too had an agenda. Only Ward didn't seem too.
"This isn't you, Skye," Coulson pleaded with her when her path had temporarily crossed with S.H.I.E.L.D's, "you want to help people. You can't do that like this. You can't trust them. Come back with us, we'll help you."
She wanted to believe him, but she could see the doubt in May's eyes, the fear in Hunter's. Nothing had changed. She'd still be the outsider.
So she escaped S.H.I.E.L.D once more and stayed with her father, for now. There was still the threat of HYDRA and that if they found her, she might suffer her mother's fate. Everyone wanted something from her. Everyone had an agenda. Except Ward, all he wanted was her.
"Can we disappear?" She asked him one night, as they lay naked in bed. They weren't touching. They never cuddled after sex. Ward had tried to hold her once, but she had evaded his touch. Sex she could handle, but not intimacy. He hadn't tried again. "Just you and I. Somewhere S.H.I.E.L.D and HYDRA and my father can never find us?"
There was hope in his eyes at her words. She knew that he read a future in them. A part of her doubted that they could actually have a real future, but he might be her only chance at salvation, so she would try.
"I'll make the arrangements." Ward promised her. "We might… Need some creative funds."
"I can arrange that." Skye told him, thinking of some HYDRA accounts she had hacked into for S.H.I.E.L.D. Diverting money for personal use didn't feel right, but then neither did being a prisoner forever.
"I'll take you away from all of this." Ward promised her. "It'll just be you and me. Like it always should have been."
It was all Skye had wanted once. It was all she wanted now. Then she had wanted it because she had believed in her and Ward and their future. Now she wanted it, because it was the only chance she had. Grant Ward might have once been the enemy, but now he was the only who could save her.
They're real, Skye. They always have been.
Two weeks later they were in Australia.
Devon and Amanda Jacobs. A young married couple who had immigrated to Australia because she had family ties there.
They couldn't stay there permanently, of course. There would be no permanence in their lives. Not with S.H.I.E.L.D and HYDRA after them. Not to mention Cal. But for now they could pretend.
Amanda weeded the garden. Devon did work around the house. They both worked from home. They chatted with the neighbors and attended community events.
It was a fantasy. The girl who had never had a home was able to pretend for a while that she had one. That she was happily married to a good man and they were putting down roots. It was so much better than the truth.
That every day she fought the monster inside of her and that man she was with, was far from a good man. This life wasn't real and it couldn't last. Yet, Skye was starting to believe that while the life wasn't real, something else was.
In time, the sex became less frantic and rough and more slow and gentle. She even stayed in his arms afterwards. Then one morning she woke up and realized she'd stayed there all night. Somehow Ward had become her safe place.
He had once tried to tell her that his feelings for her had always been real. She hadn't believed him then. But she finally did. That didn't mean it was perfect or that she would ever truly be able to forget what he had done, but that no longer matter.
The truth was neither of them was perfect. If Skye had been more, she would have stuck it out with S.H.I.E.L.D and let them poke and prod her and see if they could use her as a weapon for good. Instead, she ran away.
Ward had lied and betrayed and murdered and yet he had protected her at every turn. He had given her shelter when she desperately needed it. He wasn't perfect, but then neither was she and maybe that wasn't the point.
Love wasn't perfect. It wasn't easy. It was pretty. It just was.
Her life would never be a fairy tale and Grant Ward would never be Prince Charming, but he was hers and maybe, just maybe, that was enough.
The End