Ward
It was Ward who offered first.
Captured, tied and beaten he still smiled as he looked at her. It wasn't the smile she had loved once.
"So what are you going to do with me now?"
It was hard to look at him with blood on his face and fight the urge to wipe it away. He had been their friend. Their brother in arms.
He had been more.
"You can't put me in The Fridge but I'm willing to bet you can't kill me either." He smiled at her as though they were playing a game and he was stacking the deck. There was blood between his teeth. May hadn't shown any remorse when she put it there.
Skye didn't say anything. Just stood there and looked. She had known this man- a man, at least and yet there was nothing left. They'd lived together, fought together, laughed together.
Accepting the man she knew was dead was made harder by the fact he was sat in front of her.
Ward smiled, the split in his lip cracking open again, "Would it help if I did this?" He asked, and when Skye looked again the Hydra agent wasn't sitting in front of her. It was the agent that they'd all known and trusted.
"Skye?" He asked softly. His voice was gentle and his face held the same expression as it did whenever he accidentally said something sweet. She used to think it was endearing. "What's going-"
"Stop it."
The mask disappeared.
Hesitation.
The question burned but it forced itself to be spoken. "Was it really that easy?" She asked refusing to look away, "To lie to us? To make us trust you? To make us love you?"
For a breath she thought she could see the old Ward there. Faint and dim and screaming.
But then he smiled and the illusion was gone. "Easier." He said and his smile was sharp. Cold and stinging like a dagger between the shoulder blades, "You were expecting it that time. Agent Grant Ward was the perfect cover."
"Probably not even your real name."
"How would you know?" He was maddening and yet there was almost a familiar lilt to his teasing tone.
It was time for her to leave before she became convinced of something she knew wasn't true. Coulson had given her five minutes. She'd already had four.
It seemed to her like she should have more to ask, but as it happened there was nothing left. No anger, no despair, just certainty.
The Ward they had known, she had known, might have existed once. But now, now he was dead.
She went to leave the makeshift cell they'd stashed him in like a dirty little secret. SHIELD's dirty little secret. She'd mourn the man she'd lost, as would they all.
"Wait."
She turned back, her hand on the door handle.
Ward looked up at her, "I answered your question. You answer mine. What are you going to do with me?"
"I'm not going to kill you." She was certain of this. She wouldn't so much as raise her hand to him. The almost pitying look he gave her told her that he believed her. "But I won't stop them from doing it."
Them. May, Coulson and after everything that had been ripped away from them she wouldn't want to bet that Ward would be able to walk away from Fitzsimmons now.
His head tilted to one side. His eyes searched her face. It wasn't the first time he'd done that but before she had always thought he was searching for the truth behind her words. Now it felt like he was searching for the bugs in her firewall.
"Won't you?" He looked curious but unafraid, "Could you really let them kill me?"
The answer seized her immediately but she paused to make sure he knew she meant it.
"Yes."
He laughed and it was foreign.
"You know, with a mind like that," he told her, "you could almost be a Ward. How do you like the sound of that? Skye Ward."
She didn't answer. She had no answer. She let herself out of the room, nodded to May and left to her bunk.
Only when she was there did she stop pretending that was the first time she had ever thought of those two names side by side.
...
Three hours later he escaped.
Three hours and three minutes later Fitzsimmons was trapped in Ward's cell, Coulson was bleeding and May was unconscious.
Somehow Skye was forgotten. Ward had trained her after all, he knew what she could and couldn't do. Only earlier she'd told him she wouldn't- couldn't kill him.
And yet she was the only one of the team with a shot.
Three hours and four minutes after she told him she wouldn't kill him, Grant Ward, if that was still his name, was dead.
She lied.
Fitzsimmons
Considering how well their first undercover mission went as a team Skye felt a little justified at the amount of effort that she was putting into this one.
"Hometown?" Asked Simmons brightly.
"Er...New York?"
Simmons nodded sagely and jotted something down.
"Very good. Favourite colour?"
Skye looked at Fitz across the lab for help but he was giving her the universal look of well-you-asked-for-it. Which was true. Simmons practically had memoirs for the covers and fake personas she made and Skye...well, Skye didn't.
She looked back to Fitz for any help in getting out of her self-caused situation but he shook his head merrily. Her eyes landed on his blue shirt.
"Blue!" She blurted.
Simmon's nodded encouragingly and leant forward, "But why?"
Really?
"Because the dress I wore to prom was blue." She invented wildly, "It reminds me of..." Her mind searched frantically for anything to say but nothing leapt forward. Behind Simmons, Fitz's smile had grown smug as he watched her flounder.
"It reminds me of dead scientists." She said narrowing her eyes.
Fitz's head ducked down quickly to his own work.
Simmons cottoned on, looking disapprovingly between the two of them, "Fine." She huffed, "One last question. Full name?
Skye shifted uncomfortably in her seat, "It's not that deep of a cover. I was just going to use my name I guess."
"Skye," said Simmons drawing it out as she tapped it into the file she was making, "last name?"
When Skye didn't answer immediately, Simmons looked up.
"You can have mine." She said typing it in before there was any protest. There wasn't.
"What? No way." Skye looked over at Fitz shaking his head, "That's a terrible fake name. Skye Simmons? Pfft, please. Fitzsimmons is ten times better. Put that down instead."
Simmons shot him a glare at disparaging her fake name but tapped it in nonetheless.
"Here." She said giving the file to Skye, "Have a look through."
The file was headed Skye Fitzsimmons. She changed a few details of her soon to be person but she left that as it was.
When later Coulson read it he opened his mouth to question but Skye got there first.
"They gave it to me." She said with a self-conscious shrug, "Seemed rude to say no."
And how could she refuse the nicest present she'd ever been offered?
May
It was a rare night between picking up the shards- no, the glittering sand, of what was once SHIELD and trying to balance them back together and trying and desperately failing to contain the escaped inmates from the Fridge that the entire team decides that for one night the have had enough.
It started easy enough. Skye had swiped a bottle of wine from their last stop on solid ground and a glass had seemed like a good idea.
When Simmons sat down it was only good manners to offer to share.
Where Simmons went Fitz would surely follow. Skye had looked doubtfully at their nearly empty bottle before Fitz rolled his eyes and stood up again. When he came back a few minutes later bearing more alcohol than Skye had known had ever been on the Bus she opened her mouth to ask but was beaten to the question.
"Is that our secret stash?" Jemma asked interestedly.
"Yep." Fitz said pouring a liberal shot of what looked like vodka into a glass.
Skye looked between them, "Wait, you guys have a secret stash?"
"Some of the best scientific discoveries have been made under the influence." Jemma put in defensively.
Fitz raised his glass in agreement.
Skye raised an eyebrow. "Name one."
Jemma held on for a second longer before slumping back in her chair; grasping the slender neck of her wine glass and knocking it back. "Fine." She muttered, "But don't tell Coulson."
"Don't tell Coulson what?"
Three heads whipped around. It might have been the wine gone straight to her head (she hadn't had a lot but my god had it been a long time) because apparently her only idea to defuse the situation was to hold out a glass and smile. "Drink, sir?"
Fitz was shaking his head minutely but frantically, Simmons looked like she wanted to die and Coulson looked distinctly unimpressed.
Then, to everyone's surprise including seemingly his own, he took a seat. He picked up a bottle lying across the desk and made a disparaging noise. "There's no way I'm drinking that."
Skye was about to offer something else (she wasn't sure what else there was but something had to be fancy enough to offer their boss, right?) but instead just watched as Coulson just reached into his jacket and pulled out a small flask. It was amber when he poured it into one of the spare tumblers but she didn't get a look at it before Coulson had tipped it back in much the same manner of Simmons.
"Hell of a week." He said to nobody in particular.
Skye agreed fervently but settled for pouring her and Simmons another generous glass. Jemma was going an interesting shade of pink. Skye idly wondered how what would happen after more of the same.
"You not going to save any for me?"
Skye may have been a little tipsy but she was still present enough to realise things were getting surreal.
May sat next to Fitz who looked only mildly terrified. She looked expectantly at Skye. Wordlessly, Skye handed over the bottle.
May took a drink straight from the bottle looking over each of them.
Skye followed her gaze. She hadn't realised just tired everyone was looking. Sort of...worn looking. The sort of look that comes from being stretched too thin for too long. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen everyone together in the same room. It had been a long time since May had deemed them safe enough to engage autopilot.
It was nice, she decided, seeing everybody at once. "Cheers." She said, holding up her only slightly wobbling glass. When she heard the enough echoes she took in a long draught and watched as everyone did the same.
Twenty minutes later Fitz and Coulson were in a heated debate about Lola's ARC reactor technology, Simmons was humming to herself quietly and completely out of it and Skye was having a half shouted conversation with May over the din.
"...and that's how we took down half the security of the White House before they realised we were there."
Skye stared at her for a second with unabashed awe, "That's fucking awesome. How do you even- you know what, I don't want to know. I wish I could do that."
Skye realised that May may have been a little drunker than when she waved her response down with an uncoordinated hand. "You could." she said with the confidence that usually followed wine, "You got that guy Rathman didn't you?"
Skye looked at her blankly.
"Lloyd Rathman." She elaborated, "When I kicked you off the plane?"
The memory returned suddenly, the stolen car, false bravado and stupid lies. Skye flushed a little, "Sort of, I had a little help."
"Who?"
Skye momentarily felt gratitude for the alcohol she'd had that she could blame this on later. "I told him I was you."
May looked a little confused so Skye pressed on, "I needed a little kick-ass and- well, you're the most kick-ass person I know."
Skye fancied she saw May smile for a second, "You could have used your own name, you know."
Skye rolled her eyes- and god was she pissed if she was brave enough to do that, "I only have the one and I don't think 'Skye' would have got the reaction I was going for."
"Could have made up a last name." May pointed out.
Skye shrugged, a little uncomfortable, "Sorry, I just sort of went with the first one that came to me. Never had a real last name so I just went with yours. Won't do it again."
May got up with a steadiness that made Skye think that she wasn't really as tipsy as she was acting. She cast an eye over their temporarily happy teammates and looked back to Skye.
"I don't mind." She said looking her in the eye, "And if you need last name or another cover 'May' is always welcome to you."
Skye realised her mouth was open and hastily snapped it closed when she realised what May was telling her in her own way.
"After all," said May with a smirk, "people know better than to mess with an agent with the last name May."
Coulson
The stack of paper sat as a focal point for the unease in the room.
The entire team, well, all five of them and a space where betrayal sat, gathered around the conference table. There was silence.
It was broken by an uneasy little cough. "So," began Simmons, "We just fill in these and we'll exist again?"
She had asked everyone but all eyes turned to Skye.
"Sort of." She said uncomfortably, "This is just the final step, but...yeah. We'll be back on the map."
Wiping the team from existence had been what saved them while HYDRA had still been strong. They'd been the wild cards and perhaps what had saved the fledging SHIELD from it's ashes.
But it hadn't been easy on anyone. Families left behind and friends forgotten. Becoming invisible had taken a strain on everyone.
But it had kept them alive. And breathing was a hard habit to break.
"Is it safe?" Fitz asked for the third time since they had sat. "Are we sure it's safe?"
Skye looked at him. He looked more washed out than he had done months ago; they all did. He jumped whenever anyone called his name and she knew that him and Simmons both had been pretty much caffeinated to the top and working around the clock for the past six months.
"It's safe." She said soothingly, "They're gone now."
Another uneasy pause as no one made a move for the blank forms that were their last barrier between them and officially existing again.
Coulson reached for his first. "We're not taking back our old identities," he said. Skye had made sure that they had been wiped from any record ever to exist. This would be a new slate for all of them. No past for May, no criminal record for Skye (it had been one night in an overnight cell. Never again) and no record of their missions as a team. A new chance at life. "But it is time for us to stop hiding."
Skye looked at the papers and carefully avoided thinking about how now Ward would never be real again. They'd left his body where she had shot him. Even after all this time it stung to think that Ward was never coming back, not even as a name.
She wondered for a second if Ward hadn't been real when she shot him, had she really killed anybody?
She knew the answer.
Coulson left, presumedly for his office. May looked at them all once before taking hers to the cockpit. When Fitzsimmons grabbed theirs and muttered something about heading to the lab she was left alone at a table too big and a room too empty. She was glad in a way; this felt a little personal to do in a group. Resurrection, it turned out, was not to be taken lightly.
She dragged the remaining forms to where she sat; grabbed a pen; and worked on becoming real again.
...
She hadn't seen anyone since she'd placed the finished pages gingerly on Coulson's desk. She'd faked a smile for him and beat a hasty retreat.
So when he asked her to come to his office she was more than a little reluctant to go. She felt a little too...self-aware. Forging a identity for herself had drained her until she felt like she just wanted to curl in her bunk and feel the pulse of the Bus beneath her. Warm and constant. Away from everyone just for a little bit. Long enough to feel like like she wasn't quite so raw.
So when Coulson sat down next to her in the deserted living area, she didn't even acknowledge him at first.
"Skye?" He said eventually.
The backlight from her lap top was starting to strain her eyes but she didn't look away from it to answer him, "Hmm?"
He sounded more insistent the second time, "Skye."
She didn't look up until a wad of paper landed across her typing hands. Her (mostly) completed forms.
"What's this for?" She said looking around at him. He had a sort of gentle expression on his face that she'd seen a few too many times in her life. Foster parents that thought they could fix her or carers that just pitied her. On him though it made her feel like he might actually care.
"You didn't finish all of the sections." He said and Skye suddenly felt a little queasy looking at the paper still strewn across her hands. She gathered them quickly and tried to hand them back. He wouldn't take them.
"I filled in all the ones I could." She said and hated the tone of pleading that crept into her voice. The one that she desperately hoped made him let her leave it at what she had filled in.
Coulson, to his credit, did look a little torn but in the end resolve took over.
"Let's start with the small stuff." He said decisively, "When's your birthday?" He asked pulling a pen from his jacket.
Skye just shrugged. She wasn't trying to be difficult but it was hard. She had, after all, never known when her date of birth actually was.
Coulson seemed to realise this. "You have a specific day you celebrate?" He ventured.
Skye shook her head, "Never really settled on one I guess."
She saw Coulson scribble something down nonetheless.
"What did you put?" She asked trying to look.
He just shifted the paper away from her and smiled blandly, "Never mind. The others will find out. I'm sure it'll be a nice surprise when it happens."
A smile threatened to twitch her lips but she held her face firmly in check. "What's the next one?" She asked.
"Next of kin?"
She snorted, "Pass."
He levelled her a look.
"I don't have any." She said defensively, "What do you want me to do about it?"
"Next of kin doesn't actually have to be kin. Just put someone down."
"Like who?" She returned.
Coulson remained unruffled by the bitter tinge in her voice, "One of the team. They're a type of family too, you know."
Skye cast her mind around before slumping back down in her seat. "Put you down. You might as well know if I'm dead in a ditch somewhere."
He smiled just a little, and filled in another of the blank boxes. "If you're dead in a ditch though, the chances are that the rest of us are only a little further down."
Skye laughed and tried not to get a little choked up on the fact that she'd just put down her first next of kin in her life but she was pretty sure that Coulson knew anyway. It was almost like having a real family.
"Final one." He promised, "Last name?"
Skye shook her head at that one. "I never had one before."
Coulson looked at her and it was like the time he'd caught her and Simmons trying to catch malteasers in their mouths in the middle of the lab. The faint disapproval followed by you-should-know-better.
"You need one now," He said, "or this won't go through."
She made a frustrated noise. "I know but...I just want to belong somewhere, you know? I just thought a name might help with that."
There was a silence for a moment before she gave a defeated sigh. "Just put something generic, I don't know. Probably won't use it anyway."
She expected Coulson to pen her answer down carefully just as he had the last ones but he didn't move. She looked up to see him staring at her, lips pressed together.
"What about Coulson?" He said eventually.
"What?" Surprise didn't even approach the disjointed feeling that completely blindsided her.
He looked down at the paper, "I'm already your next of kin. Might as well make it easy on the admin guys. Besides, you're like the niece I never had." Skye thought back to the tough spots they'd somehow wound up in together. The moments where despite the odds Coulson still trusted her. That was kind of what family did wasn't it? Somewhere between hunting her boss down across the desert and him practically blowing up a mountain to save her from a stomach full of gunpowder it felt like family wasn't the worst word to describe them.
Still though, "Why niece?" She asked a little surprised she could still sound relatively normal.
"I figure if you were my daughter you'd have to listen to me more."
"Clearly spoken from a man with no children."
He laughed quietly but when he spoke next his voice was serious, "Do you want the name or not? You don't have to have it-"
She looked at him and tried to smile though she had a feeling it might have come out a little wobbly, "Yeah. I want it."
Skye Coulson. Huh. Seemed like she'd found a family after all.
...
But perhaps the best part- the very best part was when she finally met the Avengers. SHIELD was still rebuilding but for the first time it seemed like they wete actually making some headway. They were all at the new base; any agents that are still loyal, her team and more excitingly the Avengers were all mingled into one room awaiting Fury.
She tried not to stare but she had turn away when she saw Captain America. A reminder that she was an agent of a badass spy organisation wouldn't stop her from turning into a fangirl if he came any closer.
That was when the rest of the Avengers converged on her.
The first one was Hawkeye, or really she supposed seeing as they were both sort-of agents of a semi-existing secret organisation, Clint Barton.
"You're on Phil's team aren't you?" He asked casually. Tony Stark appeared at the mention of the spy he had been pretty sure was dead.
"Agent Coulson." She said, sticking out her hand. Be cool, be cool, be cool, chanted through her head. Romanoff who had vaguely followed Barton raised an eyebrow that made Skye briefly wonder if she could hear her internal monologue. Wasn't that a terrifying thought?
Barton took it, "That's him, alright." He said with a smile.
Skye laughed only a little higher pitched than normal, "No, I meant my name. I'm Skye Coulson."
Tony Stark (and holy fuck how did she some to be in a room with Tony Stark?) looked like all of the christmases for the rest of his life have arrived at once, Romanoff smirked; took a sip of her drink and reminded her entirely too much of May and Hawkeye choked on his own tongue.
Trying not to laugh too much at a superhero that was still gasping for breath she looked around. Her team was still there, interspersed in the room and she knew unequivocally that this is where she belonged.
She chose her name well.