It's late, I'm half awake, I can't asleep, with a painful broken elbow and nothing but Skye/Ward thoughts.
Perfect time to write.
"If you ever know a man who tries to drown his sorrows, kindly inform him his sorrows know how to swim." -Pittacus Lore
He finds her planted firmly on the worn leather couch in the commons area, staring blankly at a static covered screen on the opposite wall. Beside her there is a sliver of a remote, but she makes no move to grab it – in fact, she makes no move at all, instead choosing to grip a bottle of pure alcohol in her hands tighter than she grips the knife she normally carries on her person. There's broken glass beside her; it litters the oak coffee table, giving it a flash of color of sorts. A red tint in fact, the same color that is leaking from the palms of her alcohol soaked hands.
He pauses in the doorway for a moment, briefly staring before he realizes there's another person staring back at him – the man, whose face is scarred by old age, motions to the shattered hacker, eyes dark and blank with an emotion he'd never seen before on the "father" of the plane's occupants. Help her, Coulson's eyes plead. Help her, Ward.
And so he does, stepping closer as the other man vanishes from the opposite doorway. Skye makes no movement to show that she heard him, only bringing the bottle to her lips, mixing blood with poison. He crouches in front of the hacker – carefully avoiding the broken glass – moving his hand carefully towards the bottle she's gulping with urgency.
This time she does react, jerking away from him. She nearly falls off the couch as she does so; only the ill-timed movement of his hand flashing toward her thigh, moving her back on. But she bolts away from his though again, eyeing him with blank eyes – she doesn't recognize him, or doesn't care too.
"Skye," he whispers, voice low and mixed in with her shallow and uneven breaths. "Skye, put down the bottle."
She shakes her head, gripping it with such intensity he's afraid for a moment that the bottle (where the hell did she get that anyway?) will shatter into thousands of pieces, harming him and her, but it doesn't – he takes this chance to wrap his hand around hers, carefully, gently, while prying her white knuckles from the glass.
And he does manage to remove the flask from her grip, first setting it on the glass shatter tabled and pushing it away slowly with his thumb. His gaze never wavers from her though, and when his thumb pushes it a few feet away, the alcohol teetering at the edge, her eyes follow it before she nearly bolts for the bottle.
He catches her waist with lightening speed and pulls her up – away from the couch, away from the glass. She jerks against him, pounding at his chest, but he's got her in a death grip and he sure as hell isn't letting go anytime soon.
A flash in the mirror catches another person watching the pair, May this time – the older woman seems worn, so unlike Coulson's encouraging manner. Her eyes seem emotionless, blank; and its then he tears his grip away from her and focuses on the squirming girl in his arms.
When he looks up again, the senior agent is gone.
He drags Skye far from the commons area, every step forcing her to keep moving. She's so far past drunk at this point he's surprised she hasn't passed out yet – then again, the young girl always seems full of surprises.
Their short journey brings them to the training room, the place where he first taught her how to throw and pack a punch – she softens slightly when they enter the large space, but begins resisting harder when his real objective is revealed to her; his room off the side of the training room.
"Let me go," she croaks, and for a split second the near shock of her speaking nearly makes him do so – but then he manages to get her into the room and nearly throws her in. She stumbles as he slams the door shut and locks it, throwing the pair into near darkness.
He throws the sharp light on, not flinching when the dark fades to light, though she does. She's clearly unsteady on her feet, pitching back and forth to the beat of the plane – May's probably at the cockpit again, steering the Bus on its aimless path.
There's only one window in the room and shades blanket it with a thick cover, but he stomps over to it and jerks the blinds up, revealing the stars of the night sky. When he turns around again, she's pressed with her back against his headboard, arms wrapped tightly around gripped knees.
Their eyes meet, and he speaks first, voice mixed in with the low roar of the jets. "What's going on?"
She stares at him, eyes dark and at loss of their usual spark. "What's wrong?" she replies, her voice dry. "What isn't wrong?" Her voice cracks at this point and she retreats, seemingly putting up a barrier between them.
But he tears it down brick by brick, sending a challenging glare back at her. "You can't drink away your problems, Skye."
She stares at him blankly, angrily. "Do you even know what it's like?" Her tone is pitched low, yet he can hear every emotion threatening to break through it. "I've never had a family," she continues. "No goddamn foster family even kept me for more than a few months – they all hated me, looked at me like I was a piece of trash that they couldn't get rid of fast enough.
"Even the Penaldalds," her voice breaks as a tear leaks down her cheek, "I thought they liked me; I thought they were gonna keep me. But no, I went back. Just like all the others."
He's not sure what to do – she's unloading at this point, sobbing in his bed. To be honest, he doesn't even know why he brought her down here. He just wanted to drag her away from the bottle, to protect her.
Protectiveness. It's a feeling he hasn't felt in a long time, not since his little brother – not since his parents had died in a car crash, not since his deadbeat of an uncle had tossed his older brother out on the streets; he hadn't had the urge to protect someone so much that he would die of them in a long, long time.
"Why are you crying?" he asked, in spite of himself – he suspected the answer, but wanted to hear it from her lips.
Her dark eyes were wide as she nearly screamed at him, knees no longer bent, hands gripping his sheets with fierceness. "Damn it," she swore. "God – Coulson told me. He told me I'm a goddamn 0-8-4; he told me that an entire village died to protect me. He told me that I have powers."
She stared at her hands blankly, as if waiting for them to light up. He waited to see what she would do next – Coulson, after having gotten back from him and May's improv mission, had filled him in about Skye's past.
He just didn't know that the older man had told Skye.
"Skye," he started (god, when had he started saying her name like it was the last piece of every puzzle, the solution to every problem), "This doesn't make you any different."
She wasn't listening. "Agents died to protect me," she whispered, breathing uneven. He rose from his place at the wall and stepped towards her, slowly, with each step taking pains not to make too much noise. But she didn't seem to care.
He was at the foot of the bed now, only a few feet away from her. He paused, waited, to see how she'd react.
In all honesty, he half-expected her hit him.
Instead, quietly suddenly, he found her straight in front of him, fisting her fingers into his gray shirt while opening sobbing into his chest.
His hands found their way on her bare shoulders – how was she not cold in that strapless tank top? – thumbs moving in a comforting pattern. "It's all right," he said. "Everything's gonna be alright. Don't worry."
But she didn't listen, so his hands moved upwards to cup her cheeks, moving her face away from his now tear-stained shirt. "Stop crying," he ordered. "Stop it, Skye."
Her eyes met his and his breath hitched. She never looked more innocent, more pure, than at that moment, just the two of them. Brown curls were falling softly around her face, barely messed up from her crying – there were light mascara mixed in with the tear stains and her lipstick was slightly smudged, along with her brown eyes flickering into the light from chocolate to a dark black. But they just stared at each other, faces millimeters apart, as he held her as she cried her tears away.
Eventually, just as the sun was beginning to rise and the night was spent with broken promises and whispered worries, she collapsed completely into his arms, eyes flickering shut. After a briefly pause of indecision he slipped one arm under her thighs and one circling her lower back, lifting her into his arms. Her head clunked against his chest as he carried her out of his room and though the hallways, peering away from the curious eyes of the rest of the team.
Her room barely took any time to reach, and when he did he slid the door shut with his foot and settled her onto her bed, tucking the thin sheets around her.
She didn't wake. And around noon, when she finally woke up, hung-over with a pounding headache, he discovered she didn't remember anything that happened that night.
But he did, and he couldn't get it out of his mind.
Some stories are meant to stay one-shots.
Sorry guys, but this is one of them. I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed, favorited, or followed this story; when I started writing, my writing was pure crap (not literally, take a look at some of my earlier stories). Now, when I'm getting 20 favorites overnight, I'm blown away. I never thought that would happen.
However, I still will be posting new Skye/Ward stories - last night I posted Alright a Skye/Ward story and it's blowing up. I woke up and there were 32 alerts in my inbox from people who favorited, followed or reviewed. You guys are the best.
Keep an eye out for some more stories!