"I don't wanna hurt you…like I've always done before, I will not do it anymore," –The Perishers

"You don't have to break my heart." He froze in his place. No no no. This wasn't supposed to happen. He wasn't supposed to get caught. He turned around and saw her. Her long hair tangled around her shoulders, eyes showing hurt. "Just because everyone else did doesn't mean you have to." Her eyes were shining with unshed tears, a sob threatening to escape her lips. "Just because I've been hurt before doesn't mean that it should happen again."

"I don't want to hurt you anymore," he responded, the image of her forever engraved in his mind. He was hers, truly and entirely. "I can't hurt you anymore. The deeper we go, the harder it is to pull away."

"You don't have to pull away!" she argued, crossing her arms across her chest and looking at him with a look that said it all. "You don't have to leave me, Grant." He sent her a final look before he fled.

She wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, wouldn't drink. FitzSimmons discovered her in the safehouse, wracked with sobs.

"What did he say?" Simmons asked her. She didn't respond for a moment. She just stared blankly at them. Then she blinked and a single tear fell to the ground.

"Goodbye."

She cried. That's all she did. She went for days in a row, crying. It was a horrifically silent noise. So loud yet so quiet, and practiced. So well hidden.

Fitz fed her like a baby, and Jemma rocked her back and forth until she slept. But they could both hear her whispering cries for him to stay. Cries like ghosts, so unsure of whether they were real, so quick to disappear.

It killed Coulson. Hearing her sharp breaths and silent pain. He didn't know how to help. He didn't know how make the pain go away. He didn't know how to make it stop.

But he so wished he could.

She was so quiet and so lonely. She wanted to feel his arms around her, but she knew it was stupid. He was gone. He had seemed different but he was still gone. He hurt her like all the others.

FitzSimmons finally got her to eat something. She ate a piece of plain bread. Nothing on it. It wasn't even cooked. It was a piece of gray bread, but at least it was something.

Her body was exhausted, her lungs ached, her eyes swelled, and her heart hurt. But her mind, her mind kept working. What was he doing, while she was killing herself over him? What was he doing when she couldn't even sleep? What was he doing while she was barely breathing?

She slept eventually. After a week or so, she slept for a few days, occasionally mumbling a beg or plea for him to stay.

"Skye!" Jemma would say, waking her up from the painful memory.

"I'm fine," she would squeak, even though she wasn't.

"Skye-"

"Please go. I need to be alone."

And then she was.

And it sucked.

Simmons then told her about the five stages of grief. Isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Skye could feel herself slipping in to stage two.

She would get up and punch. It built muscle, sure, but it weakened her heart. So much anger. She wasn't releasing it, she was fueling it.

Bargaining, she went through quickly. She would be found yelling "Why?" in her sleep or talking to her reflection about what she did wrong. Evaluating herself.

But that was it.

Depression came head-on.

She stopped talking. She would also spend long periods of time staring at her reflection.

"Skye, say something!" Fitz yelled.

"He always wanted me to be quieter," came her reply.

"Jemma!" he yelled, his eyes still trained on Skye. The next thing she knew, she was lying on the bed in the lab, being monitored.

"I get it now," she told Coulson quietly. "I get why nobody wants me. I'm too much, right? Too much to deal with. I get it now." But she still hurt. She still cried sometimes. But she never cried for him.

Acceptance.

"Loving you forever can't be wrong. Even though you're not here, can't move on," –Lana Del Rey

It was on one of the team's rare nights off when they met again. In the dark setting of the club with the rare neon light allowing one to see another.

He saw her first. He grabbed her and pulled her out through a side exit into the alley. She fought and struggled, but nobody noticed through the crowds of people.

"Skye," he breathed, taking her in. But she refused to look. She wouldn't look at him. She shut her eyes tight. He put a hand on each side of her face and lifted it up.

"What?" she hissed. "What do you want?" He looked right at her, eyes boring into her soul.

"You."

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why do you want me?" she folded her arms across her chest. "I am broken, don't you understand that? I am broken. And I thought that you wanted me. I could've sworn that you were different but you left me, Grant. You left me. You're just like everyone else. All the foster families, Miles—"

"I am nothing like him. He abandoned you!"

"And you didn't!?"

"I had to cut ties with Hydra before I could be with you. It was too dangerous!"

"Don't you understand? You don't want me! You shouldn't want me. And I understand. I forgive you."

"Skye—"

"No! Shut up. I'm doing this for me, not for you. I forgive you for being human and having human DNA and hating me. It's not your fault that I got hurt so many times. It's your fault for pouring salt on the wound. I can't blame you. I can't blame you because then I'm admitting that you can hurt me. You're a coward, and you can't help it. You don't deserve to hurt me. You don't get to hurt me anymore. Okay? So I forgive you for being a stupid, worthless, human, piece of shit. I forgive you, Grant. I forgive you." He looked at her, shaking with anger and tears streaming down her face.

"Skye, look at me."

She did.

"Skye, I love you."

She cried some more.

"That's what they all say to me."

"Skye, what can I say to prove that I'm different?" Then it clicked in her mind. He was different. He wasn't Miles. He wasn't like all the others.

He came back.

She threw her arms around him and cried.

He held her.

And he didn't let go.

A/N: I can't stop writing sad fics. Review?