When Ward finally returns to base, she's gone.
She and the rest of the ragtag group he began to consider a team. The woman he loves, the schoolteacher, the Brit, a Hydra agent, and a dad.
Is that how the joke goes? 5 strangers walk into a bar?
He can't quite remember the punchline.
Maybe it's better this way, without another awkward goodbye, without another glance at the face that both is and isn't hers, without another chance for him to bite his tongue so he won't ask her to stay.
Maybe it's better this way.
He sits down in the hallway and leans his head against the wall. The cold brick does nothing for his bruised and beaten body, but he doesn't move. He wants to be here, to be the first person she sees when she comes back.
If she comes back.
Hours pass, or maybe just minutes.
The door stays closed.
No one comes through.
…
Many miles away, a woman named Daisy in the body of a woman named Skye stands on the edge.
One of them wants to go.
But one wants to stay.
…
He knows, of course, that there is a chance that she's gone, that she's lost to this world, and to him forever. There is a possibility, a strong one. But it's not one he wants to consider, not just yet.
Instead, he closes his eyes and pictures the way she looks first thing in the morning when sunlight streams in through the window. When she squints and scrunches her nose, when she buries her head in his chest, when her breath tickles his skin.
When he loves her, and she loves him.
He closes his eyes and remembers.
…
Many miles away, a woman jumps.
But it's two women who disappear.
…
Do you think he felt it?
Do you think he knows?
…
He buys her flowers once.
For their first date.
She hates them but doesn't have the heart to tell him until the end of the night when they get back to her place.
He gives them to her neighbor, and when he gets back, she kisses him for the first time, and the second, and the third, and after that, he stops counting.
She invites him to spend the night, the first of many.
He's in love with her by morning.
…
Of course he felt it.
Of course he knew.
She was his other half, after all. His better half. The light of his life, the keeper of his heart, the calm to his storm.
He loves her.
And he lost her.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Of course he felt it.
…
When the door finally opens, the only thought running through his head is that he finally remembers the punchline to that joke.
This is how it goes:
5 strangers walk into a bar.
One walks out.
…
The truth is, he stopped waiting hours ago.
Something woke him earlier, when he didn't even realize he was sleeping.
The hallway was still empty, the door still closed. But there was a pit in his stomach, a sinking feeling he couldn't shake.
It felt like every bad memory he ever had, every punch he ever took, every person he ever lost.
It felt like suffocating.
And that's when he knew.
He would never have another morning with her.
…
See, it's funny because he expected all of them to walk out, because the one who did isn't the one he wanted.
See, it's funny because it's not funny at all.
…
He picks himself up off the floor.
She's gone.
She's gone, but he's still here, and life goes on. For now.
He's not sure how much time this world has left, but he knows there's still a war to win, there's still an enemy to defeat, there's still good to be done.
He readies his weapons and opens the door, and says a prayer before he passes through the threshold.
Maybe the next world will be kinder.
Maybe in the next world, we'll be together.
…
Fin