This is my first Skyeward fic and we have so little to go off that I was a little nervous about getting their characters wrong and not doing them justice. Hopefully that didn't happen!

Unbeta'd so any mistakes are mine and I apologise!

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Prompted by: alwayslistentostiles


"Skye?" Ward whispered, craning his head in an attempt to look at the unconscious girl whose hands were bound tightly with his, their arms pulled behind them. Ward tested the ropes, wiggling his wrists and cringing when he felt the pull of the zip ties that had been used to prevent him moving his wrists with enough force to loosen the ropes binding him and Skye. He could feel the stiffness throughout his upper body, the pins and needles in his legs where, like Skye, he too had been unconscious for a long period of time.

Skye was slumped forward, a trickle of dried blood on her head from a small wound where she had been knocked unconscious by one of their captors. Ward looked around at the small holding cell that they were being kept in. The only light came from a small light bulb, suspended far above them on the high ceiling. He twisted his wrists again, testing the strength of the ropes, testing to see if the zip ties would budge.

"Skye?" Ward repeated, gently pushing backwards with his arms and then pulling her back towards him in a shaking movement.

Skye groaned, her eyelids fluttering briefly as she began to regain consciousness.

"Ward?" He heard her whisper, her head rising as she straightened out of the slumped position she had been in previously, groaning at the pain in her head from the blow that had been delivered.

"Skye, are you okay? Can you tell me where you're hurt?" Ward asked, trying to twist his body to look at her without jostling her.

"My head hurts, it's fuzzy, I think I might have a concussion and my ankle is swollen. I twisted it when we were running from them, other than that I'm okay." Skye said, her head moving slowly, cataloguing the visible injuries to her body.

"Can you move your ankle? Is it broken?" Ward asked, his stomach sinking.

There went their chance of a swift escape.

"I don't think it..ouch!" Skye hissed. "I don't think it's broken."

"That's one thing then."

"Where are we?" Skye asked, leaning against his back as she attempted to push herself into a more upright position before sliding back into a slumped position, her head resting between Ward's shoulder blades as she fought the waves of dizziness and nausea that the movements had caused her. "I don't feel too good."

"You just need to hang on a minute okay? They'll be looking for us, I'm sure Shield will be able to find us soon. I have no clue where we are, one of them hit me around the back of the head with the end of a pipe."

"Smooth. Any marvellous escape plans?" Skye mumbled.

"I'm working on it, Rookie."

Ward felt her turn her head from side to side, taking in their surroundings as he had done when he too had regained consciousness.

"We need to get these ropes off first of all, then we can figure out how the hell we're going to get out of here. Do you have the zip ties on your wrists too?"

"Yes. Can we not just break them?" Skye asked, pulling on her binds weakly, her lack of strength worrying the older agent.

"Even if we did, we're stuck, there's no way out of this cell. It looks like an old bunker; the walls are probably made from reinforced steel. You couldn't break through the doors no matter how hard you tried." Ward grimaced at the direness of the situation.

"How are we supposed to get out of here? I can't even sit up. God, sorry, that sounded so pathetic." Skye let out an annoyed huff as she tried to manoeuvre herself into an upright position for a second time, only to collapse her head back against Ward's shoulder blades again.

"It's okay, just give me a minute, and try not to move too much." Ward frowned in concentration, angling his body so that he could see the ropes on Skye's hands.

"Ward, these aren't going to budge," she told him, "you know that better than me."

"I can't just sit here!" Ward said, his voice rising in annoyance. "If you'd have just listened to me in the first place and left when I told you to, we wouldn't be in this mess!"

"I wasn't leaving that kid in there! What happened to the big brother who looked out for his little brother? I thought you out of everyone would understand!" Skye snapped, her voice beginning to slur.

"I would understand, but the kid was one of them, he'd been planted there!"

"Well I didn't know that! Look, I'm sorry okay, I didn't know that. I thought he was just caught in the crossfire! Next time I'll listen to you."

Ward heard the panic in her voice, the concussion making her incoherent enough not to be able to successfully hide her emotions and he felt guilt stir in his stomach, it wasn't her fault. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be snapping at you, it was my fault too, I was careless, I don't know how I missed that sensor."

She snorted weakly, "it happens. Don't beat yourself up about it."

"I'm supposed to take care of you and make sure you're safe! Look where that got us! You're hurt and we're both caught. You should have someone better as your S.O." Ward snarled, his self-loathing surprising both of them.

"You do look after me, if it wasn't for you I'd have been dead numerous times over! I would have been shot on my first mission if you hadn't taught me how to disarm someone even though I was being an idiot in training and then again if you hadn't stopped them from shooting me by the pool. You always look out for me. Sometimes someone comes along and hits you so hard you can't get up again. It happens. Sometimes, well, most of the time, I act like a hard headed idiot and ignore you and then you have to come back and rescue my ass. You always look out for me, you look out for everyone. I'm not that badly hurt, I have a concussion and maybe an sprained ankle, I'm not dead the last time I checked and neither are you. So to me, that means you didn't do too badly." Skye said, gently nudging his back with her head, counting it as a win that the world didn't start spinning as she did so.

"I should have done better." Ward mumbled.

"You couldn't have done better; things don't always go to plan. Hell, I didn't plan on you guys finding me! But then I wouldn't have got some answers for the things I've been searching for for years! I wouldn't have realised that the men in dark suits can be the good guys who are just doing their best to keep everyone safe."

Ward smiled slightly, moving his hands so that he could squeeze hers gently, "sometimes the annoying rookie isn't as annoying as she first seems."

Skye laughed quietly, "but only sometimes."

"Hey, listen a minute," Ward shushed her as there was a loud bang from outside, the walls vibrating in the aftershock of the explosion.

"In my opinion, that was definitely a Fitzsimmons explosion."

"I agree."

"Well, that makes a change." Skye replied. "Making a habit of being nice to me Agent Ward?"

"Wouldn't dream of it." Ward rolled his eyes at her even though he knew she could see it as the door to the cell rattled before swinging open to reveal May.

"You took your time." Ward joked, smirking at the dry look on her face.

"Do you want me to leave you here?"

"Please leave him here!" Skye said, though her voice was a little too forced to be sarcastic.

May moved forward, pulling a knife out of her pocket and cutting the binds on Ward's wrists first, enabling him to twist around to prevent Skye hitting the ground as she fell backward at the loss of his support.

"You okay?" he asked, as she rubbed her wrists.

She looked like hell, her face bloody and hair matted from the wound on her head, her shirt torn slightly. His eyes roamed over her, cataloguing injuries that luckily were mostly superficial.

"I'll be fine, let's just get out of here," she told him, accepting the hand that he offered her and allowing him to heave her upright, his hands encompassing her small waist, pulling her into his side as she swayed dizzily.

"Now that's a command I can definitely listen to."


Let me know what you think!