Prologue: Problem

Skye

Life is pretty good right now, or it should be. We took down Garrett while doing major damage to Hydra, and we came out the other side almost totally intact. Coulson's even in charge of rebuilding SHIELD as its director, and I have to admit, I didn't see that one coming. Sweet.

Still, the damage that Hydra caused is impossible to forget. They destroyed SHIELD's credibility, and it's going to take long, hard work to get that back. Too bad for them that they couldn't see the impossibility of breaking our spirit. That SHIELD, even reduced to a mere idea, was stronger than they'd ever be. But in the meantime, they broke into our ranks and put a traitor in our midst who we thought was a trusted friend. Thanks to Ward's betrayal, his inability to comprehend the line between right and completely effing insane wrong, Fitz has been in a wheelchair for weeks and is lucky he even survived. I have to fight back tears every time I walk by his room and see Simmons sitting with him, holding his hand, even reading to him, or laughing over some shared geek joke. The wounds we all feel are fresh and they are gonna hurt like hell for the foreseeable future.

That's why I don't get it. Why do I come down here every night? I keep telling myself I won't, but then I can't sleep unless I go to him.

He doesn't know I'm here. Ward, that is. I just stand outside his cell and think about going in, looking into those hollow eyes of his and asking so many questions. Like why? What was it all for? If he and Garrett had won, what was the endgame? What did Ward even want with the world that he was so content to help his crazy mentor take it over? Sure, I'd ask those, but even if I did go in, I don't think I would have the guts to ask the questions that haunt me the most.

How could I have felt so drawn to a murderous psychopath twisted and brutal enough to do the things he did? I'm relieved that he'll never know the depth of what I felt for him before I knew his true colors. Honestly, it would've taken me ages to admit I was actually falling for Ward, even if we'd had a shot and he wasn't pure evil. Because frankly, I'm kind of a commitment phobe and the idea of exposing my inner vulnerability to someone who could crush me was and is abhorrent. So lucky for me I kept my walls up, my mask of casual, "hey, I just kissed you because there was a 97 percent chance you might die" bravado. But even though my pride survived, it obliterated my heart when I learned the truth about Ward. Not just because I was terrified about who I must be if I was stupid enough to have feelings for a monster parading around pretending to be a human being. This leads me to my current dilemma.

I'm past the stupid part now and onto something so much worse. Never mind that I didn't see through Ward's act until it was almost too late to stop him. I stopped him. Well, with some help, but I was a big part of the takedown and that should bring me peace. But no. No peace.

Never mind stupid or blind or naive. The question I most want to ask Ward is the one I know I can't because it contains pure destructive power such as I have never known. So I stand here outside his cell every night, feeling his presence through the walls. And I ask myself instead.

Why do I still love him?

Chapter One: I'm trouble

Ward

I know she's out there. Screw it.

"I know you're out there, Skye," I call, sounding teasing and malicious, and like none of the things I feel. The real me is someone I know almost nothing about, but I do know he's lonely and yearning for the one person in the world he feels anything for. But she'll never understand.

Let's face it, I don't exactly make it easy, do I?

"How do you know that?" She asks after a long pause. She must have been weighing her curiosity against the appeal of slipping silently away. I'm glad the former won out.

"I can smell you," I admit, even though it makes me sound like some perverted brute. The cell might be impervious to any of my escape attempts, but there is a slot in the door where my meals come in, and I'm sitting on the floor right below it, my back against the wall that she's right on the other side of. Like a bitter metaphor of our entire situation. I once had a chance to get through her defenses, get her to love me. Now that's shot to hell.

"Bullshit," Skye declares bluntly.

"Untrue," I counter, "I can smell that shampoo you always wear. It's raspberry, right?"

"Damn you, Bath and Body Works. Foiled again." Ha. God, she's funny. And adorable. And sexy. I'm such an asshole.

"Why do you come here, Skye?" Now I can hear the honesty in my own voice, the neediness of the question.

"Just making sure you're still locked up nice and tight, where you can't hurt anyone else," she says cooly, easily. Too easily.

"Simple as that, huh?" I can't help the mockery. That's what it is gonna to take to piss her off enough to bring her close. "Why don't you come in here and tell me how you really feel?"

Another pause. Then, click. The turn of the lock. And Skye stands before me in all her glory, complex emotion glimmering in her stunning brown eyes, lovely hair tumbling free over her shoulders. And what is she wearing?

She closes the door behind her. For the first time, I love that sound. We're alone.

"Are you in your pj's?" I inquire with a grin. I don't think I've smiled since the last time I saw her, right before May took out my voice. It's back now, but sounds a tinge raspy still.

She glares down at me, majestic even in her grey cotton top with a picture of a cartoon teddy bear and black and white polka dot pants, Converse stuffed on over wooly sleep socks. "It's 2am."

"Can't sleep?" I cross my arms and give her my very best smoldering look. She rolls her eyes.

"Can't sleep unless I know for sure you're in here on lockdown," Skye retorts. Her face is so sad, though. It makes my heart ache.

"I think you come here every night just to be close to me," I posit, standing up but keeping a respectful distance. For now.

"You think wrong," she assures me. "Ward, I can't even wrap my mind around what a black hole you are, that you were okay with hitching your horse to someone like Garrett. But no matter what made you so freaking evil, you got there. And you killed innocent people. SHIELD agents. If you were redeemable at all, you would've stopped before crossing that line. Or tossing FitzSimmons into the damned ocean."

She spits that last part at me so hatefully that I almost flinch. Skye couldn't know how agonized I had felt at that moment when I released FitzSimmons' pod and sent them to only maybe-death. At that time, I was convinced that even in leaving them a sliver of a chance at living, I was the worst kind of weakling. Yet the thought of hurting those two was like a dagger to my soul. I just couldn't put the pieces together fast enough to come up with another solution. The longer I sat here in this cell thinking about my past actions, the more I hated myself for blindly following Garrett, simply because the man was the only home I'd ever known. That was why Coulson had been so damn gung-ho to leave me stewing here, I knew. I begrudgingly respected his wisdom in this, as in all things. Too bad I never had someone like him to show me the way until it was too late.

"Make no mistake, Skye, I'm trouble. All day, every day. Have been since birth. But guess what?" Unwilling to make myself any more defenseless to her disdain by admitting my recent realizations, my regrets, I just dig the hole even deeper. It's what I'm good at. "That means that somewhere deep inside you, there's a bad girl lurking. Because you still want me."

"You're delusional," Skye insists, shaking her head in revulsion, disgust. And something else...guilt? What? In all my bragging and prattling on just to keep her in the same room while protecting myself from thinking too hard about my own villainy, I'd failed to really believe my own words about her. But what if Skye does still feel something for me? The hope that ignites within me is so painfully beautiful that it pushes me towards her before I know what I'm doing.

"Skye," I murmur, dropping my facade of smirking egotism in an instant. I reach out and brush my hand gently against her warm, soft cheek, watching the coldness flee from her eyes as she comes this close to leaning into my touch before she jerks away.

"Don't touch me," Skye snaps harshly, grabbing for the door.

"Come back soon," I say, trying to revert to my smooth persona but finding myself pleading instead.

"I'll never come back here," Skye replies, exiting in a huff.

Okay. So I'll just have to find another way to get to her.