notes:

+ i've had this idea in my head since turn, turn, turn. and i obviously decided that midnight when i should be studying exams was the time to write it.

+ it should hopefully be three chapters long - before they join coulson's team, pre episode 17, and post it.

+ title from "we don't eat" by james vincent mcmorrow and chapter title from "touch" by daughter.

When they first meet, they are both a little battered.

Correction.

She is a little battered. She's just got a split lip. She got it in a fight with a guy at the orphanage. It wasn't his fault, honestly. It was maybe hers. She's always been so stubborn. It was still her turn on the computer, he tried to shove her off… it escalated.

It feels like the story of her life. She runs away afterwards, because she doesn't want to face the repercussions.

Him, though. He's slumped against the wall of the alley. He has a broken rib, an eye bruised blue and there's blood dripping from scalp.

Skye sees him before he sees her. She's hesitant at first. He looks a few years older than her, maybe fourteen. He's probably about a foot taller than her as well. He could probably crush her too, ant style.

But then again, he doesn't look like he's going to.

She slides down beside him in the dirt and the mud, and he doesn't say anything, so she just starts speaking.

Actually, she wants to be crying. She feels so damn tired. She's eleven, for god's sake. And it feels like she's been taken away from three times as many foster homes. Now she's sitting in a gutter.

But she just speaks, because talking is easy, and it's all she does.

"My god," she says. "My head hurts." She touches her lip. It's a little swollen, and there's blood on her fingertips. "That stupid bastard," she says. "Not that he hit that hard, but he caught me off guard." She grins a blood stained smile. "I bit him though."

He looks at her then. He's pressing his own fingers to his head wound.

"Ew," Skye says. "You look awful." She reaches up to touch him, but he flinches away. "Get in a fight?" she asks.

He nods. "My brother."

She winces internally. That's harsh. "Bastard," she says instead.

"How old are you?" he asks, like it's despicable that she just minorly swore when she's so tiny.

"Eleven," she says. And it's the truth, for once. He looks like the kind of guy who could use the truth every once in a while. "I'm Skye." She waits for him to answer, but when he offers nothing she gives him a little push. "What about you?"

"Grant Ward," he tells her.

They take to each other like damaged mutant fish would take to water contaminated with toxic waste.

Which is to say, well.

The orphanage is pretty used to her being a little lax about coming back for curfew. They never go to his house. From what she's heard, it's literally the most miserable place since hell.

Usually, they take a drive.

She hotwires the car, he drives. He let her once, and his assessment of her ability was, "Remind me never ever to make that mistake again." (He was clinging to his seat, looking a little pale, but he's just a wimp.)

They take a drive to somewhere nobody no one knows their names. It's easier for her than him. She's a little shadow. He's made a bit of a name for himself, picking fights where he shouldn't.

They stop usually stop at a garage. Tonight they hit one about half an hour out of town. It's quiet, and there's only one assistant on, who looks pretty much asleep and possibly slightly drunk.

Honestly, it would be a crime not to grab themselves a drink and something to eat each. She does it mostly for the thrill, usually she gets enough to eat at the orphanage. She thinks he does it more out of necessity.

They're good, both of them. They've never been caught. On busier days he'll keep a lookout while she grabs, but there's no need for that tonight.

They go a couple miles further, after that. They stop at a park and climb onto the hood of the car, cheesy movie style.

Except in cheesy movies, the car and the snacks aren't stolen, he doesn't have a nasty cut on his cheek and a bruised rib that makes it hurts to laugh, and they aren't twelve and fifteen respectively.

He's usually pretty quiet, but that's okay, because Skye talks enough for the both of them. And when she doesn't they can just sit there, and it's okay. It's nice.

It's a little chilly. She doesn't shiver, because she knows he'll give her his jacket, and she doesn't want that.

"It's five years today," he says. It's not very specific, but Skye knows.

Five years since Grant's little brother died, after even life support failed to keep him alive. He took a while to tell her about it, but the fact that she does fills her with a quiet sort of pride.

She leans against his shoulder, wraps her arms around his muscular body, and he doesn't flinch away. "Sorry," she says. She feels him nod and squeezes tighter. His family almost makes her glad she doesn't have one. Not that she doesn't think every night of the mother and father she's missing out on. She's told him about how when she's older she'll find them. No matter why they left her, she just wants to know where she came from.

"Do you ever think," she asks, because tonight is a serious conversation kind of night, she can tell, "that it's unfair? That people have to live like us?"

He laughs, but she knows he doesn't find it funny at all. "You're asking me?"

"I know," she sighs. "I just want to change it. That's what I wanna do when I grow up. I want to change the world." It feels childish and silly, but he doesn't laugh or make fun of her, so he must understand.

She gets sent back from another foster home. This one stings her like most of the others haven't. She thought she was finally finding a family.

She shouldn't really follow Grant's example, because she sees where it gets him, and that's nowhere good. But she picks a fight anyway, with a guy way taller than her, who looked at her wrong.

Grant finds her.

He lands the guy in hospital. It's only a few stitches, but nevertheless.

Skye wants to be angry, because she can take care of herself, thank you very much.

But it's nice to know someone has your back.

(Maybe she does have a family.)

She is fifteen and he is eighteen. She looks older, though. She acts older too. They steal vodka instead of lemonade. He's got a girlfriend. Her name begins with C (Chrissie? Carrie?) and she smokes more than Skye drinks.

Skye's not jealous, but she feels Grant is attractive enough to find a girl who doesn't taste like cigarettes.

She knows what's coming before it does. He's going to leave. He's going to leave his hellhole of a house and he's going to leave her.

And in the end it's Skye that causes it, which makes her feel sick. If only she hadn't been so stupid. If only he wasn't so protective.

They're at some party that his girlfriend got them into. It's dark and the floor is sticky with booze. Skye's wearing a dress that's short enough that it hasn't even heard of knees, let alone ankles. She drinks a lot, more than usual, because he's going to go any day soon.

She knows she's going to throw up. Grant asks her if she's okay, and she nods, because she doesn't need him holding her hair, thanks very much. She's not a child.

She stumbles into the alley out the back. She doesn't notice the guy following her until he's upon her pressing her to the wall, one hand on her throat and the other trying to push her dress up.

She screams. He presses his hand to her mouth and she bites down hard and screams again.

Grant is there, then. He's hurt people for her before, but this time it's worse.

They've both had the odd assault charge before, but none of them have ever been pursued.

This is different.

It's two in the morning, and Skye is curled on a chair in the police station. They've given up trying to send her home. She won't go. Not until she sees him.

There was a man came in about half an hour ago. He flashed a badge at the officers and they ushered him through.

Skye can't help but picture the worst. Was it the FBI? CIA? How bad was what Grant did? Maybe it was someone really important that he beat up. Some government guy. And now they're trying to cover it up.

At three when Grant appears, she is nearly falling asleep. The man is with him. His name is Garret, he's with SHIELD, Grant explains to her.

"They want people like me, who can fight," he explains to her. "And if I go with him, they'll drop all the charges." He's crouched in front of her chair, holding her little hands in his.

She smiles up at him, unable to help herself feeling guilty about what he's done for her. "Good," she says. "When do you leave?"

He looks pained at that. "Tomorrow morning," he says. "I'm going to the SHIELD academy, and then Agent Garrett is going to be my supervising officer." He must see her face fall, her world crumple up, because he gives her hands a little squeeze. She tried to hide it, but he can see through her now (and she'd be lying if she said it didn't scare her a little bit). "It'll be fine," he assures her. "You'll be able to join too in a few years. This is what we said we'd do. Change the world."

After he's gone, she gets in with people even more toxic.

Grant could keep her grounded. He could protect her when she screwed up.

Miles just exaggerates the dark edge to her. He doesn't protect her, he helps her to make a mess.

He teaches her to hack. She's always been good with computers, but with his help she's unstoppable.

"You can find your parents," he tells her. They search, but all roads lead to SHIELD, so Skye goes back to messing up until she can join. She leaves the school and the orphanage the second she's sixteen.

(Literally the second. She checks on her watch. She doesn't know what time she was born, but as soon as it's midnight she's out the door and into Miles's beat-up car.)

Skye signs up for SHIELD as soon as she's eighteen. Grant has already graduated Operations a few years early, and is training under Agent Garrett. She gets put into Communications, but it's literally easier than breathing.

Grant comes and visits her when she's been there a few months.

"What do you think?" he asks her. They sit on her bed. He's on the end, looking awfully proper in a uniform and everything. It makes her feel a little self-conscious, sitting on her pillow in her tiny pyjamas.

But then she reminds herself that this is Grant Ward, the boy - man - who has seen her at her worst like noone else has.

"It's… easy," she decides. "I know better ways to do everything they're trying to teach me. And it feels like everything we're doing…" She trails off, chewing on her lip. "I don't know. Are we really fighting for change? Because it just feels like I'm being taught to invade people's privacy for the sake of bureaucracy."

Grant nods, leaning back against the wall. "That's what I thought for a while," he admits. "They try to tell you that you're the line between the normal world and something worse, but I felt like we were just keeping people in the dark."

"For a while?" Skye leans forward.

He nods again. "Then, see, Garrett started training me. He's part of this secret organisation within SHIELD called HYDRA, that want order and are working towards the greater good. People wouldn't have to suffer like we did," he tells her. She sense that he shouldn't be telling her this, from the secret bit, but they've always kept each other safe, kept each other's secrets. "They're more extreme than SHIELD, but that just means they'll get it done."

"So you joined?" Skye asks.

"Yes. It's for the greater good," he says again. "For change."

She graduates Communications after a year and is assigned straight to the Triskelion.

"It's perfect," Garrett tells her. "You'll be able to access anything." Nobody questions that Garrett and Grant visit her. She's pretty sure everyone thinks Grant is her boyfriend, but what the hell. It's a reasonable cover, so nobody suspects anything.

Not that anyone would. HYDRA is deep in SHIELD, and nobody has realised.

Skye at least feels vaguely more useful at the Triskelion. Garrett was right. She can hack her way into thousands of files, despite her low clearance level, and she bleeds through anything she thinks might be useful.

All the while, she looks for anything on her parents, but anything she finds is covered in more red tape than she can hack her way through.

And she does her actual job, of course, but that doesn't take very much effort. She could work for about half an hour and spend the rest of the day playing Galaga if she wanted, to be honest.

She moans to Grant on the phone about how easy it is pretty much every time he calls. (He doesn't call as often as she'd like.) Eventually, she must wear him down.

"You should come out into the field," he says suddenly one time, cutting her off mid sentence.

"What?" she asks.

"Come out into the field," he repeats. "I could train you. Be your SO."

"Really?" Skye asks. "Would you do that?"

"Of course," he says, like it's the dumbest question he's ever heard. "I know what you're capable of. You could be amazing out here."

There is a ferocity in them both. It's a product of their beginnings, but it makes Skye feel invincible. Sometimes she thinks it can't be blood that runs through her veins, but something much colder and darker.

They are unstoppable together, too. They compliment each other perfectly. Just like when they were younger, he is the brute force and she is the shadow, sneaking through the cracks in armour. They are legends in both of their organisations, and in high demand.

She never thought she would be a killer. When she can't sleep at night she tells herself they were terrible people. Sometimes it is for SHIELD she kills, sometimes for HYDRA.

But she can't quench the writhing in her stomach when she kills a researcher and mother of three on Garrett's orders. She tries to shut her heart down, but it's there, that gnawing feeling that this is /wrong/.

"Are we good people?" she asks Grant. They're in a hotel room, waiting orders on their next assignment. There's a bottle on the bed between them, almost empty.

"No," he says. "But we never were, even before we joined SHIELD or HYDRA."

She nods in agreement. She was screwed up from the beginning.

"Are you happy?" he asks suddenly.

Skye is taken by surprise. "I don't know," she answers, honestly, because she is never anything else with him. "What does it feel like?" Her voice is soft, timid.

He's looking at her like she's some kind of angel, fallen to earth. A mixture of sadness and pure adoration. Skye hates that she could do that to him.

She closes the space between them, thinking maybe this will make her stomach stop writhing. She pulls him in by the front of his shirt to meet her. He doesn't draw away. She knows he never would. She'd seen that look in his eyes a hundred times before. He'd wanted this since they were teenagers. She couldn't let either of them get hurt like that.

His hand goes to the back her hair as he kisses her. He presses her back against the mattress, moving his attention to her neck. The feeling in her stomach has definitely changed. It's hunger now, pure and raw.

Their assignment is simple enough in principle - infiltrate Coulson's team, find out how he came back from the dead. But it requires going into deep cover and careful planning.

They are exactly the kinds of people Coulson wants - two broken people he will think he can fix. Everyone knows they come as package deal, too. They're who you call if Strike Team Delta is busy and you need a pair with almost as much skill, just as much sex (because honestly, that Clint and Natasha are doing it is obvious) and just as much emotional baggage.

They have plans for winning the trust of the other team members too. Simmons, the biochemist, is Skye's to befriend. She'll charm Fitz like she can charm anyone. The Cavalry is the no-strings sex type, which will be up to Grant. (There isn't any time for jealousy.)

They arrive at the BUS with their bags, ready for their first assignment.

Some superpowered guy exposed by the Rising Tide.

Skye looks up at Grant as they walk up the cargo ramp towards the pair of bickering scientists. He gives her a little nod, and she knows it says, we can do this.