Child of Monsters and Men
Spoilers: Short Sequel to Hope for the Lost, read first or you will be lost.
Disclaimer: I really don't own anything...
Brief Note: This will be only 2-5 chapters long, just depends on how I want to play this. However if I do want to expand it longer than 5 chapters, I will but that is NOT A PROMISE.
Grant Ward knew two things in the world kept him grounded: the fight against HYDRA and the girl that HYDRA wanted. So watching as Skye explain what she was and why she'd risked everything to save about three dozen agents, he stood silently prepared to support her as far as it went. She was the child of monsters but also of men; May and Coulson were the only parental figures she really had and since her confession of seeing them that way, they'd stepped up to take those titles. May was not one to be emotional but with Skye she'd fight tooth and nail for the girl as if she'd bore the young agent herself. The lengths Coulson went to protect Skye had already been measured so there was no doubting his care of her.
Coulson put a hand up to stop Skye's explanation, he stood from where he sat behind his desk and moved around to her. Leaning against the front of it he looked her in the eyes. "You say you hate this feeling, the feeling that consumes you when you take in blood."
"I feel like I'm watching from behind glass, like my actions aren't my own." She looked at Ward from where he stood leaning against one of the office bookcases. "Ward does a pretty good job of keeping me focused during the whole thing. Whatever I am when I do it, I don't think I have much control of my actions because I remember everything but I also remember not thinking any of it." Shrugging she looked at her hands, "it's like there's two parts of me: Skye and whatever I was born to be."
May shot Ward a glare before turning her attention to Skye, "but you still chose to do it?"
"I couldn't let anyone else die." Skye looked at both Coulson and May, "if you could save them all you would have done it. We're in a war and death is part of war but I won't let that happen if I can help it."
Coulson squatted down in front of Skye's chair, "we're worried about you not everyone else. Skye, right now you can control this but what if one day you start to feel the same blood lust your parents enjoyed?" He touched her hand, "that's what we're worried about, how this affects you in the future."
The agent nodded and looked Coulson in the eyes. "I understand but I'm not sorry."
"Just let us know next time you're even thinking about it." May reached over and touched Skye's arm. "Why don't you go check on the agents and see how their recovery is going."
She stood and started to move before turning to smile at them. "Thanks guys."
Ward started to move but May's voice made him pause, "Ward stay behind."
Skye looked at him and he put up a hand, "go on, I'll meet you later."
The door closed and Ward looked at both senior agents, Coulson stared at him as he returned to the chair behind his desk. "You swore to protect her and now you're letting her put herself in harm's way. You should have told us this immediately instead of keeping it a secret."
"It was Skye's choice to keep it from you, not mine." Ward folded his arms, "she hates what she is and doesn't know how people would view her if they knew."
"What do you think of it all, of what she is?" May folded her arms and Ward looked her in the eyes as he prepared to say what he thought.
"She's Skye, human or not it doesn't matter to me." He took a step forward and looked at them both. "I said I would protect her and that also means making sure she doesn't do anything reckless. If I hadn't controlled how things happened than they could have ended up a lot worse. You know when she sets her mind to something and is emotional she doesn't think and that's where I come in."
Coulson nodded and looked over at May, "he's right as much as we don't like it."
"I'll watch for any signs of blood lust but so far she's adverse to blood as you saw in the Infirmary." Ward shoved his hands in his pocket, "I won't let her become what her parents were."
May sat down and shared a look with Coulson before the director nodded. He moved his chin in the direction of the door, "make sure this doesn't get beyond our doors, I'll direct Simmons to keep quiet."
With a nod he began to leave till May's voice made him turn back. "I have one question." Turning to look at him, she gazed with both confusion and curiosity, "how do you keep her focused during it all?"
He couldn't help but smile softly at the intimate moments they create during those times of her blood spells. Looking down before meeting May's eyes, he didn't let his smile fade. "I stare into her eyes and tell her who she really is, what makes her Skye."
Finding Skye wasn't hard, he knew she'd be checking on the agents that were recovering but he didn't expect to see her exiting Simmons' Infirmary office with tears in her eyes and on her cheeks. She meets his eyes as she passed him and shakes her head as if to warn him off before leaving the Infirmary with her arms around her waist. It has him standing in front of the scientist immediately who merely looks up from her files and pales when she knows why he's there.
Medical privacy doesn't exist between him and Skye, she knows everything about him and he knows everything her because there are no secrets anymore. If Simmons or Huang or some other stupid person tries to pull the 'doctor-patient confidentiality' string it doesn't matter because they'll know what happened within hours of the visit. Simmons had learned this when Skye asked something about Ward and before Simmons could talk about how she couldn't tell Skye, the man had handed over a handwritten note with his signature stating Skye could know anything. An hour later an additional note sat from Skye on her desk.
"One of the patients woke up when I was administering the blood and refused to accept it until I told him where it was from." The scientist swallowed before continuing, "I couldn't let him die."
Ward had to remind himself that harming the scientist was out of question because his protective instinct was flaring. "Why was Skye crying?"
"I told her that one of the patients knew where it came from, specifically her and that he'd told all the other patients that she's not human." Simmons looked down at the desk and seemed to search for something before pulling a piece of paper out. She handed it to Ward, "she's also pregnant, I found out when I ran her blood for illness just to be sure there were no diseases present. I found a substance similar to hCG or the human pregnancy hormone, it's similar but not specific so it aligns with her near-human biology to tell me she's pregnant."
He stared at the words at the bottom of the lab report because it was news that brought his life to a halt. They had just made it to six months together and while they were prepared for a lifetime, they hadn't planned for the news Simmons was handing him.
Results: No viral or bacterial infection present. Hormone similar in biology to Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG) present in blood of patient. Given patient's near-human biology, hormone present would indicate patient is positive for pregnancy. Similar biology of hormone to hCG allows for scale of measurement to suggest a rate in pregnancy. Comparison of hormone to hCG suggests patient is between 8-10 weeks pregnant.
"I don't know which she is more upset about but she refused to allow me to run an ultrasound. I need to verify if Skye is pregnant or if this hormone is just a difference in biology. However she refuses to allow me to run any tests further."
Looking up the specialist handed her back the report, "I'll bring her in this evening once everyone is asleep. She probably doesn't want to walk through the Infirmary to the exam rooms and have everyone stare at her."
"The hormone is similar enough to the human variant that a pregnancy test should work." Simmons moved to a cabinet and dug through before emerging with an at-home pregnancy test which she handed to him. "It's crude perhaps but if it is positive, which it wasn't a few months ago when she begged for one, it should verify my findings."
Ward would never forget the incident three weeks after they'd dispatched Hand and Skye's parents. She'd come out of the bathroom scared and told him she needed to get a test from Simmons because she thought she might be pregnant. The test had come back negative but they'd started using contraceptives however Simmons had told them that any type of birth control Skye could use would likely not work with her near-human biology so it left them with a method that could become faulty at any moment if they they finally had failed and it would change their lives forever.
A/N: Skye has two big situations on her hands: fellow agents and now a baby.
Next we see Ward try to talk to Skye about the baby as well as watch as she faces her fellow agents as word spreads across the base about her not being human.
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