Coulson slid the cracked hard drive into a plastic bag and handed it to Skye.
"Take that down to Fitzsim-, " he stopped, swallowed painfully, and restarted. "Take that down to Fitz for analyzing." Skye nodded in assent, not trusting herself to speak. She grabbed the bag and headed down to the lab. A lone figure was bent over the microscope, leaving a lot of empty space in the lab that used to be filled. Too much, thought Skye. She tapped on the door to the lab-lately they let him lock it so that if he needed to be alone he could. Fitz looked up slowly, then reached over and pushed a button to let Skye in.
"Hey," she spoke softly, cautiously, "Coulson wants you to take a look at this." She handed him the hard drive. Fitz looked at it, nodded, and then went back to whatever was under the microscope. Skye looked at the jar on the table and tried not to think about the fact that whatever material was in it would have been a source of wonder and amazement to a certain biochemist-a certain biochemist who was no longer with them. Skye pushed the thought away. Fitz looked up with question in his eyes-no one ever lingered in the lab anymore unless they needed something. It just hurt all of them too much. No one was quite sure how Fitz, of all people, was able to go on working in the lab. In fact, he spent just about every waking moment there-as though nothing had changed. Skye just shook her head and Fitz returned to his analysis. Skye left him to his memories, taking her own out the door with her.
Fitz watched Skye go from the corner of his eye. He leaned back on his stool, returning to the non-productive state he had been in for the past couple weeks. He did his best for the rest of the team, but he knew he wasn't really fooling anyone. Losing her would have hurt enough, but having her choose to walk away broke him. The lab was empty and as hard as he tried he couldn't fill the space that Jemma had left behind. Fitz stared blankly at the sample he had been bent over all morning. She would have finished it by now. A sob formed in his chest but he firmly pressed his lips together and swallowed it. She's not crying over you Fitz, he told himself sternly. It was hard to accept that all it took to break the closest friendship he had ever had was a single person, but he knew better than anyone how true it was. She's gone and she's not coming back. He shook his head and pulled the microscope closer. You need to accept it and move on. But the tears that rolled down his face and blurred his vision told him that he never would.
Skye curled herself into a ball in her bunk after she returned from the lab. She was almost to the point where she didn't care if the team saw her go to pieces anymore. Everyone told her that they would all feel better with time, but as far as she could see, allowing time to heal just allowed for more things to go wrong. Skye stared at the only picture she had of Simmons. The two of them were standing outside the Bus just after the ice fiasco at the Academy. Lying in her side, Skye watched Simmons' smiling face blur as the tears started. I'd give anything, she thought desperately, anything to go back to that. She closed her eyes tightly, wishing it was possible. Before Hydra, before Ward, before she left. But Skye knew that there was no going back. The world had conspired to rip apart her family, the family she hadn't even known about until a few short weeks ago. Now she had lost so much that she couldn't even fight the world, couldn't do the one thing that had kept her going since she escaped foster care. The world had taken the only thing that mattered to her and broken it irreparably and her spirit along with it. So when the sobs followed the tears, Skye didn't bother trying to stop them. She let them rip through her and let the pain flow unchecked. It can't hurt me anymore than it already has. But she knew that it always could and it always would and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Ward tried not to hear the sound of Skye's torment but it wasn't like he could turn his ears off. In another time he would have gone over and held her, comforted her, but he couldn't do that now. I'd only make things worse, he thought bitterly, after all the shit Fury made me do to them. He didn't have a very high opinion of the director at the moment. Ward hadn't foreseen a problem with being a spy inside Hydra. That was before he let his emotions compromise his job. Even now it shocked him that the cold, hard trainee was feeling so completely lost at the absence of a team member. Why couldn't Coulson just let me be a specialist? But he knew that he wouldn't trade the time he had spent with the team, wouldn't give up the lessons that he had learned here, not even if it meant he could fix all of S.H.I.E.L.D. Ward was selfish that way. He knew that he was part of the reason that Skye was dying inside and that his 'betrayal' was what broke the team apart and drove Simmons to leave. He knew he couldn't forgive himself for wrecking the very thing he had sworn to protect. He pushed open the door to his bunk. I need a drink.