I'm not insane.
It's not the memory of her lips or the sloping curve of her spine that is imprinted in his memory. Those tendrils were rooted in his mind a long time ago, wrapped around every part of his brain like the quirk of her lips in a smile, the amber gold flecks in her eyes.
It's not those memories that crawl from some cavernous part of his soul and howl in voracious hunger when Skye kisses him.
He sees her in front of him, hazed like vaporous smoke. Wearing unfamiliar silk and lace, looking the same but a flawed duplicate. He doesn't care, because for a moment he's staring into her eyes again and that long, painful aching in his heart tells him he can be selfish this once. His mind wars with his impulses, one pushing her away the other drawing her in. His eyes search her, reading nothing of the girl who once spilled her secrets to him and told him he was a good man.
But she's here.
The kiss lands on him and sends explosions through his body. That beast that lives within him, starved from the lack of touch, lack of feeling, lack of anything resembling humanity, wants this so badly. The back he palms up feels familiar, his hands search for the arch where she leans into him and finds it to his satisfaction. In that kiss, he feeds the thing inside of him that began to rot when she left him for dead.
Skye.
He thinks he rasps her name as he kisses her back with a ferocity she doesn't match. It's desperate and it coaxes that part of him out, but it's not her. It stirs some dark part of him, but like a jigsaw puzzle missing pieces something is wrong.
It's nothing like her at all.
In his memories, she demands with her lips. She comforts. She restores. But there is something corrupt in this, and as he pulls away he's faced with nothing but a ghost. She dissolves into the air and in his ear he can hear the distinct ringing of four loud bangs.
His heart, woefully abused, bleeds. Pooling parts of his soul at his feet, he reminds himself about control. To erase her from his thoughts. He's not insane.
The ringing in his ear is as strong when he jerks awake, feeling the phantom pains in his abdomen as the sound reverberates as loudly as when he first heard them. He's not insane at all, he told that to the ghost. Seeing Kara reminds him that no one deserves this feeling.
He never dreams about it again, about that again.
It's not the memory of her touch or her kiss that hounds him night after night. It's run faster into that wall, it's never turn your back on your enemy, it's four reminders that he is hollow again.
It's the pathetic fact that he'll demand nothing from her (because he had always asked too much) and lay nothing at her feet but his broken love.
A/N: Definitely didn't mean for this to get so angsty, but you know I had a lot of feelings after that moment. And now that I've had time to think and analyze it, here is my contribution. Sorry. This wasn't meant to make Skye look villainous, just to prod at Ward a little bit because somehow I love causing pain. Also to show that Ward has grown, but he's still holding that torch up. Anyways, feedback and comments are always welcome!