Bed creaking under her weight, Skye worked to remove the blankets that had become tangled around her legs. "Breath, it's okay, you're okay," she reminded herself, practicing the breathing May had long instilled in her to bring her heart rate back to normal. Swallowing down the bitter taste of fear, she weakly straightened the blankets again, focusing her energy away from the cause of her fear. "Everything's okay."

It had only been a nightmare, but it'd left her heart racing and body feeling powerless.

There is an old wives' tale on nightmares warning against going to bed when you're angry at someone or you'll have a nightmare of them dying. Skye could've easily believed that. Among all the other preternatural stuff in her life, what was a little wives' tale coming true in comparison?

Opinions differ on the cause of nightmares. They are said to be the result of stress, or the brain trying to come to terms with a traumatic event. Which was probably the case with Skye, but science didn't offer an opinion. Dreams, nightmares, they were both the same, merely an effect of the R.E.M. state with their only difference being the chemical produced; either fear or happiness.

It wasn't even a topic of interest among the scientists at S.H.I.E.L.D., and if asked, they were liable to become irritable at being interrupted for such a trivial question.

Skye hadn't spoken of her nightmares to anyone though.

The nightmares weren't always there. Most nights they didn't come at all, the swiftly passing hours of sleep often holding nothing but the unconsciousness of slumber. On the nights that they do come, they overwhelm her.

Before joining S.H.I.E.L.D., Skye's nightmares had been of normal fears. Loneliness. Abandonment. Being caught by the authorities. Never knowing the truth of her family. Such innocent fears to the ones that had arisen from her experiences in S.H.I.E.L.D.

But they would be a blessed change compared to the one that haunts her, always lingering at the back of her mind even when she hasn't dreamed it for several weeks.

It begins differently every time. She's on a mission, gun held at the ready. She's sitting in Coulson's office, having a conversation, the settings oh so familiar. She's back in the Temple; skin itching as the stone crumbles off her body. She's in the training room, untrained muscles aching, sassing Ward as he corrects her for the hundredth time. Before S.H.I.E.L.D., after last week's mission, during her time with Rising Tide, on the BUS, with the Inhumans, the time always shifts, rarely happening true to memory. Faces and places are a shifting kaleidoscope even more jumbled than the timeline, but the ending never changes. One moment, she's in one spot, then she turns her head, and she's back in the villa where Ian Quinn shot her, staring at the muzzle of his gun.

But it's not Quinn who holds the gun.

Face achingly familiar, though shadowed and changed from pain and anger, no longer that of a friend, brown eyes hard and unforgiving, it's Grant Ward holding the gun.

Eyes locked with his, her heart clenching painfully with a wound that can never be healed, the moment lingers as time comes to a standstill. One thought reverberates through her head, filled with the hurt and recognition she can never speak. The one thought her dream state desperately wishes that it could speak.

"I'm sorry, so sorry."

Just as she thinks it, full of understanding in the part she played to bring him here, his eyes become harshly cold and his finger pulls the trigger.

And she awakes, mind panicking, ears ringing with the sound of the imaginary gunshot, hands clutching her stomach where Quinn shot her. "It's not real. It's not real. Ward's not here. I'm safe," she desperately reminds herself. But she remembers the nightmare.

Closing her eyes tight, pulling the blanket up to her chin and hugging it to her chest, Skye can't fight the rising emotions that flood her. The truth in that simple statement is too much. "He's not here. He's not here. Ward's gone, never to come back," tears at her soul, unbearable with a grief that she thought she had escaped, having long ago turned all emotions for him into hate.

But it does hurt.

Laying in the dark, she cries for his loss, grieving in a way that she hasn't let herself grieve before, sorrowed by how things had turned out.

/\\/\\

A/N: I have yet to watch Season 3, but I was saddened to hear of Ward's death and had to write something about it. The idea of Skye having nightmares about Quinn shooting her, only for it to be Ward's face in the nightmares, has been floating around in my head for a while and it seemed to fit for this piece.

Apologies if I got anything wrong!

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it ^^