A/N: I do not own Agents of Shield. Mistakes are mine.
Time
Everyone knew how long it had been since Skye went into surgery.
Simmons knew it down to the minute. Fitz had the timing down to the millisecond. May was keeping perfect time from the from clock in the waiting room. Colson knew the minute, the second and the millisecond along whatever clock in the waiting room was reading (which was thirteen seconds off).
Ward, however, was measuring time by every breath he took. Since the moment they brought Skye into the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D hospital, no, since the moment they found Skye in the basement of the Quinn's mansion, Ward was counting his breaths. He had originally hoped, childish as it may seem, that if held his breath time would stand still and for a second it did.
When they first found Skye his world stopped. His world came to a screeching halt as he stared at her bloodied and almost lifeless form. He stood there in the doorway, almost frozen in time. Then as the reality started to settle in and team started crowding in, his world began again and in hyper drive.
His breaths were coming quicker, his body moving faster, his worry and panic coming in hard. Ward didn't care to cover up his rising panic and fear but what he tried to hide was his growing frustration, the tidal wave of regrets and ultimately an onslaught of repressed sadness. Memories of his brother dying, thoughts of his little moments with Skye, and a throbbing pain in his chest were building inside as more moments passed and his rookie's condition worsened.
He didn't know when it started, but at some point in time, perhaps when he and the rest of the team had held their breaths waiting for Skye to breathe, he had began counting. Part of him did it to distract from that throbbing pain in chest and the new regrets his mind was churning out and part him was doing it from special ops training. He remembered counting how many breaths away a drop site, target or weapon was and now he was counting breaths until the time Skye came back to them.
Standing in the waiting room (sitting becoming far too relaxed for him), Agent Grant Ward had seen how his team counted time. He saw how intently May was starting at the clock on the wall, her gaze hardly ever flickering away from it.
May's time: 4 hours, 33 minutes and 30 seconds (give or take)
He could see how both Fitz and Simmons anxiously kept time with their hi-tech watches, ones that beep after every hour passed (a fact which was exposing a time glitch with the wall clock).
FitzSimmons time: 4 hours 33 minutes, 43 seconds and 98 milliseconds
And Ward knew Coulson, who hadn't stop staring out the door, was keeping some exact mental clock.
Coulson's time: 4 hours and 33 minutes
He, however, was still contented to keep to his breaths with some part of him wanting to believe that as long as he kept breathing maybe, just maybe, Skye would. But he was logical, and that was mere hoping, so he just counted breaths as a means to measuring time.
Since she was found: thousands of breaths.
Since she was taken in: mere hundreds.
Since she returned to the team - to him: zero.
Everyone was still keeping time and so would he, hoping her recovery was only breaths away.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed :)