A/N: First AoS fic, first Skyeward fic, and I'm jumping into the deep end with dark!skyeward. This is really dark, AU, season 2 canon divergence skyeward.
Warning: major character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
When Ward kisses Skye, something seeps into her blood. She doesn't realize it, attributes the sudden feeling of light-headedness to his kisses, and forgets all about it.
Throughout his betrayal, it sleeps, never rearing its head, never making its presence known. Skye doesn't know it yet but she's been marked.
And marks are meant to be caught.
The nightmares start later, much later. She dies in her dreams but not before she feels the fire rushing in her veins, the power it gives her, the sudden spark of rage which makes her hands glow red, which makes her heart beat so fast she doesn't recognize it any more. Sometimes she sees Ward's face but it's not him, it's someone who looks like him and is unknown but familiar, and he smiles at her, pulling her closer.
She wakes up screaming and doesn't remember why.
She thinks she sees her arms still glowing faintly red but it disappears with the blink of an eye.
Skye talks to Ward and wants to summon her anger, her hurt, everything he made her feel, everything she never asked for.
It doesn't happen.
Instead, she feels calm and centred, she feels his whole being calling for her but it's not exactly him. It's something else, something to be feared and respected. It beckons her closer but she can't move.
"Skye?"
He looks at her curiously and she realizes she's taken a step forward and raised her hand as if wanting to reach out for him, glass or no glass.
She leaves abruptly, feeling unbalanced and completely in control at the same time.
It all goes well until she almost kills someone just by looking at them. May is caught in a crossfire and Skye freezes in place but her mind screams and the man who's almost had a shot at May suddenly turns red and crumples to the ground.
Skye promptly passes out, hands shaking, heart racing, fire boiling in her veins.
When she comes to, she's on the bus and Simmons is hovering over her, checking her vitals with a worried look.
"Oh! You're awake."
She smiles but it is shaky and Skye immediately knows something went horribly wrong. But she doesn't remember.
Simmons clears the room and leaves her alone with Coulson whom she just notices.
"Skye. What was that back there?"
Her mind is a mess but the question brings back a flash of something.
"Back where?"
He eyes her carefully before responding. "Something happened back there. A man almost died."
"Did I do that?"
"We don't know."
"But it's possible, right?"
"What do you remember?"
And she tries, she really tries but it's all a whirr of emotions and anger and rage and Ward's face flashes for a second and she doesn't understand anything.
"I...nothing."
"We'll figure this out. Don't worry."
Skye feels like she already knows but doesn't know what it is that she's figured out.
"You're a monster!"
Simmons yells out and there is so much destruction around them, so much fire and chaos and mess but Raina only smirks, looking calm and untouched in the middle of a fiery base, the flowers on her dress glowing.
"Oh, no. You brought the monster."
And her gaze locks with Skye's, and she can't breathe, can't move, can only stare at the other woman who steps closer, calmly, slowly, intention behind every step.
"Even if you kill us, our team is coming." Jemma's voice is mixed with tears and Skye hears it, lets herself believe that Coulson and May will find them, will figure out that they're still here, still in the heart of the fire.
Raina nods placatingly. "Of course they are."
Skye wants to summon the destruction that she's felt before, the heat that almost killed a man but she can't seem to find it anywhere, it's muted and she doesn't really know how to control it anyway.
"Here, let me help you with that." And Raina puts a staff in the palm of her hand and it burns through her veins, it burns and chars, and finds company, and Skye feels it pull her skin apart, feels it tear her heart into pieces and put it back together and everything fades away.
This time, when she wakes, she is still in the middle of the fire and Simmons is crying out her name but everything feels miles away and she is remade.
There's a persistent thrumming in her blood and it takes a few moments before she recognizes the beat, before it becomes familiar and she hears it thump out Find me, take me, be with me, come to me.
She has a purpose.
"Skye, what are you doing?"
Simmons' voice is far away and doesn't evoke any emotions inside her. Skye thinks she remembers some distant emotion but the thrumming of her blood is stronger than anything else.
She turns to Simmons and smiles but it's not happy or sweet or even Skye. It is something else, someone else, and Simmons is afraid.
"I'm going home."
And she walks through the fire because flames can't burn if you've been set alight.
The closer she gets to Ward's cell, the calmer she feels. The thrumming has gotten louder and louder and now it just chants out his name, and she lets it guide her because it feels right.
"Agent Skye? We weren't informed you would be coming today."
The two guards give her a stern look but before one of them even manages to finish the thought of calling someone, she snaps the neck of one and presses down with the heel of her hand over the other's heart. He burns from inside out and she watches curiously, flexing her fingers and filing the knowledge of what she can do away.
Ward does not seem to be surprised to see her.
"What happened, Skye?"
She puts her hand on the glass wall and it melts under the heat, disintegrates. The alarm starts blaring but it's little more than a nuisance.
"I've come for you."
He doesn't seem scared or astonished at what she's done, merely nods and she notices his eyes have blackened and his skin glows red, and feels the magnetic pull to go to him, so she does, coming to a stand in front of him. When she touches her hand to his heart, it doesn't explode but yields to her.
"I've been waiting."
She kisses him and the power surges through them both, the rage finding its partner, combining, sharing, melting until it's hers and his and theirs.
Their eyes glow and they share a secret smile as they separate.
When the guards come, the rage delights.
"What happened in that building with Raina?"
Coulson's looked at the security footage, has seen Skye break Ward out, has seen them both kill everyone who dared step in their way, and he doesn't understand.
"I think...I think she did something to Skye."
Simmons twists her hands as she flashes back to seeing Skye walk through the fire, seeing a...being she didn't recognize.
"And Ward?"
His voice is quiet but laced with anger and disbelief and Simmons wants to have all the answers but what she thinks she knows will not help.
"There was a report that the Berserker staff became active."
"What do you mean, active?"
"It glows like someone's touched it. I think Raina did that, gave Skye the Berserker anger. And it reacted with whatever she is."
"And what happens now?"
She doesn't respond because she doesn't know, because no one knows, because Skye is an 0-8-4 and whatever that means has given her unseen powers which can't be stopped, which means that she and Ward can't be stopped, and that thought alone is scary.
"It is wonderful to see you, Skye. Agent Ward." Raina smiles as she steps through their latest destruction, the Hydra agents that tried to detain them.
They look at her calmly, with mild interest, falling back next to each other and assessing her, almost in sync.
Raina does not get scared; she's seen too much to feel such simple emotions.
But their eyes penetrate right through her and she feels uncomfortable.
"I've come to invite you home. Your father is expecting you. Come with me, Skye."
She's been told to be sincere and inviting, to not invoke any emotional response.
"No."
Skye is not angry; her voice is more bored and patient, like explaining something to a five-year-old.
If there is one thing Raina can do, it is to convince people to do what she needs them to.
"Skye, your father has done this for you. He's been waiting for you for so long. He wants to tell you who you are."
Raina has forgotten that she is not really people.
"I don't need him to know who I am."
She laces her fingers with Ward's and they share a secret smile, and Raina feels unnerved when they step closer to her, ever so slowly.
"Be reasonable, Skye. You want to know where you came from. Will you turn down this opportunity to find out what you can do? You are destined for greatness."
She sighs and her gaze is suddenly unbearable, flashing hot and red and Raina can't look away. "I know I am."
They put their free hands on her shoulders – and she didn't notice when they got this close – and the touch rips her skin apart and Raina feels scared and alone and all other possible emotional responses, centuries and millennia of suffering and agony racing through her blood, burning itself into the planes of her skin.
When they release her – seconds, which feel like hours, later – she is barely holding on to her consciousness but just enough to hear a whisper.
"Thank you for the gift."
They almost kill each other when they have sex. Skye burns his skin with her kisses, presses down on him too hard and almost makes him collapse. Ward kisses her with bruising force, squeezing the air out of her lungs, almost crushing her bones. The rage rushes through them both, choosing one, then the other, never settling, never relaxing, until it spreads in the end, and they achieve equilibrium.
Sometimes, after, she asks him if he remembers who they were.
She thinks there was a before.
He has the vaguest sense of something which came before.
He always says no.
It doesn't matter when they have a now and a together.
Besides, isn't it all that was important before as well?
S.H.I.E.L.D. tries to stop them once and they kill all 27 support team members in minutes, a blur of motion and heat and unbreakable rage.
May tries to reason with them.
"Skye. Clear your head. This is not you."
But she doesn't recognize May, doesn't know what she or Coulson or Jemma or Fitz meant to her, merely smiles with the echo of who she used to be.
She has May on her back with a broken pelvis before the other woman can even understand they're fighting.
They both stand over her, assessing and cataloguing, eyes cold and unseeing.
"Skye, please."
She tries one last time but already knows that this is not Skye, and this is not Ward.
Skye blows her a kiss and it burns her skin. The last thing she sees is Ward's smile before he strikes her.
They break Fitz's and Simmon's necks simultaneously, in a faint echo of almost remembering that they belong together, without giving them the time to say anything, and watching each other do so with unreserved glee.
Coulson meets them with the Berserker staff wrapped up in a cloth, unwilling to use its power against them but when he sees the mayhem, when he realizes the impossibility, he takes it into his hand.
"Fight fire with fire."
The rage which rushes through him is blinding and he sees his most painful memories, feels the darkest corners of himself awaken, and when they reach him, his skin is pulsing the same as theirs. But he still remembers who he really is.
He fights and they rejoice in a worthy opponent. He manages to knock Ward down and throw Skye around and he hates it but it's the only way.
Still, he is no match for their symbiosis.
They each grab the end of the staff he's still holding and the rage surges towards them, bows to greater beings, and leaves Coulson weak as the staff falls down from his hand.
Ward puts his hands on his shoulders and forces him to stand up, to look at Skye, and through the pain, he sees destruction and death and fire.
"You are not worthy."
She presses her hand over his heart and burns the man who once gave her purpose.
They are each other's purpose now.
A/N: Feedback is welcome.