Author's note: Originally, this was going to be a oneshot, but it got longer than expected, and since people have been writing in suggesting I expand it, I'm going to write another chapter a la When the Fireflies Came. NB, I have not seen the s2 premiere, and am holding off on that until this piece is done so that I am not influenced by it. So if you'd like one more chapter after this, let me know quickly, as I am itching to watch it. Most of the sparring sequences in this piece are pretty accurate, a mixture of self-defense and the karate I practice. Apples and peanut butter do indeed make a very good snack, especially if you cut the apples so the slices are circular. A rotator cuff (as those of you who've read Shatter may remember) is a series of muscles and tendons that stabilize the shoulder joint, though unlike in Shatter, there is no damage to anyone's rotator cuff. The weird guy who failed the FBI psych tests may or may not be a tongue-in-cheek reference to NBC's Hannibal, the newest addition to my "favorite TV shows" pile. Bandar Seri Begawan is the capital of Brunei. J and C# (See-sharp) are programming languages. So, enjoy, and tell me what you thought. If I make a third chapter, I want it to be the best one yet, so pile on the constructive criticism!

If someone had told him that, at the age of 29-almost-30, he would be cleaning up vomit at a junior high school in the middle of Nowhere, Massachusetts, former SHIELD agent Grant Ward wouldn't have believed them. But that's exactly what he found himself doing on an unseasonably warm September afternoon.

Like most things in life, getting a job as a school janitor had seemed like a good idea at the time, since he was running short of cash and, ever since his chance encounter with Skye two months ago, he'd felt guilty about stealing people's credit cards. And after a two-week-long hunt for an escaped Index Asset landed him in the middle of Nowhere, Massachusetts where the local middle school was looking for a custodian, Ward had secured gainful employment for the first time in his life. To his surprise, he found himself enjoying it. It was solitary work; he discovered that people have a natural tendency to ignore janitors and other maintenance workers, which suited him nicely, and collecting a paycheck at the end of the week was oddly satisfying. It would only be temporary, of course, until the next mission came along, but until then, he could relax, at least as much as was wise for a wanted fugitive.

But now, mopping up the last of some poor kid's stomach contents, he was beginning to regret his choice of career.

The bell rang, and several dozen tweens spilled out of various doorways and made their way through the freshly waxed hallways into various other doorways. Watching the kids swarming the halls during passing periods always put an ache in his stomach. He'd never had a childhood, not a proper one, anyway, and he couldn't help but envy these kids their normal lives. He resented that they the relative innocence he never had, and something clawed at the inside of his chest as he realized that it was too late, that he could never go back and relive those years the way they should have been lived.

After the hallways had cleared and the late bell had rung, Ward spotted a scrawny, red-haired boy sitting on the floor next to the art room, who, judging by his chalky complexion, was likely the one who'd gotten sick. He had his knees drawn up to his chest and his head in his hands, and Ward couldn't help but feel sorry for him. Quietly, cautiously, he approached the boy, who looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. He'd been crying.

"Hey, kid," Ward said, setting aside his mop and sitting down next to the boy.

"Hey," he replied listlessly.

"I'm Grant," he offered. "What's your name?"

"Ryan," the boy answered. "Ryan Dill. And if you call me Dillweed, I'm going to … well, just don't call me that."

"Never occurred to me," Ward assured him. "So, uh, what's wrong? Why aren't you in class?"

"You know why," he muttered. "I threw up in front of everyone, and Parker's never gonna let me live it down."

Ward stayed quiet, not knowing what to say. Despite his proficiency in disarming nuclear bombs, he had almost no idea how to deal with kids.

"Parker and his friends have been picking on me since school started," Ryan continued. "I told the teacher, and you know what she said? She said I just needed to stand up for myself more. To "assert myself." She didn't call Parker's parents, didn't even write him a demerit. Just told me to assert myself."

Ward didn't know what to say. Apathetic adults had been one of the reasons his childhood had been so violent. He couldn't remember the number of times a parent, a teacher, a coach had told him the exact same thing Ryan's teacher had. As though being a victim were a choice.

"Well, Parker's a bully," Ward said, looking for the right words. "You stand up to bullies." It sounded lame, but he couldn't think of any other way to put it.

Ryan looked at him sideways. "And how am I supposed to do that, Mr. Janitor-man-who-knows-everything?"

"Use your voice first," Ward instructed. "Stand up straight, head high, shoulders back, and just flat-out tell him to cut it out."

"Like that'll ever work," Ryan scoffed.

"It actually works pretty well," said Ward, though he himself had had relatively few occasions on which to use it. Guns had been his first line of defense against the bullies of the adult world, with fists coming in a close second. "Most bullies are just trying to make themselves feel tough by picking on easy targets. They're not used to people standing up to them. So show him how strong you are."

"But I'm not strong," Ryan protested. "I'm just a loser."

"Hey, kid, look at me," Ward ordered. Ryan turned his head miserably and looked Ward in the eye. "You're not a loser," Ward said. "Don't ever let anyone make you think that. Because once you think you're a loser, people will take advantage of that. They'll start to treat you like one, and you'll do all kinds of things to prove them wrong, and that will not end well. You threw up in class, big deal. Cafeteria food will do that to you. That doesn't make you any less of a person."

Ryan looked at him quizzically, and Ward realized that he probably sounded a bit strange. "Look, if it gets too bad, my closet's over by the computer lab," he offered. If he couldn't offer solace, he could at least offer sanctuary. "You can come chill there any time you want."

"Really?" Ryan asked, and Ward got the impression that this was the first time an adult had offered to help him in any meaningful way.

"Really. I'll even write you a note so you can miss class."

"You're a janitor," Ryan pointed out.

"By day," said Ward, smiling mischievously. "At night, I'm a secret agent who fights crime. Forging absence excuses is nothing."

"Yeah, right," Ryan snorted, but he seemed happier.

"No, really," Ward insisted. "I have to go now, but remember what I said. And if you ever need to talk, I'm here." He stood up and shouldered his mop.

"Thanks," Ryan said, also standing. "That, uh, that actually means a lot."

Feeling an odd sense of satisfaction, Ward clocked out and headed home. Since his time in Nowhere, Massachusetts was only temporary, he hadn't bothered to rent an apartment. It would introduce such inconveniences as bills and neighbors, as well as making him much more traceable than he was comfortable with. So he'd bought a sizable pickup truck, paid with a stolen credit card (the last time, he swore), and parked it in a clearing in the woods outside of town. There, he'd begun assembling a campsite, nothing fancy, just a few logs for benches and some bear-proof canisters so he didn't have to keep all his supplies in the truck. A circle of stones around a hole in the ground was occasionally host to a small campfire, when he was in the mood for it and the winds were strong enough to blow the smoke away. It was a nice home, even better for the fact that he'd built it himself.

It was here that he found her.

She was leaning up against his truck, absently twirling a lock of hair around her index finger and drawing patterns in the dirt with the tip of her shoe. She wore a light pink sweater and gauzy gray scarf, and a blue messenger bag was slung across her shoulder. As he watched, a gust of wind ruffled her clothing, and she looked up at him and smiled.

"Hey, Skye," he said, not knowing what else to say.

"Grant," she replied, and he noticed she called him by his first name.

"How long have you been here?" he asked.

"Not long. And don't worry; I didn't touch anything. Nice little setup you've got here," she commented, looking around. "Very covered-wagon-pioneer."

"Thanks." They stood there awkwardly for a few seconds until Ward asked, "How'd you find me?"

"Well, everyone leaves a trail somewhere, so I did some digging on the 'net, and I came across a Grant May working as a janitor at some middle school out in the sticks.."

"Clever. Come on; sit down," he added, remembering his manners. "Can I get you anything? Food, water?"

"Nah," she said, sitting down on a tree stump he'd sanded and turned into a chair of sorts.

Ward sat down against a tree across from her. "Did you tell them about me?" he asked. "About meeting me two months ago in the ER?"

"Yeah," she said, a note of apology in her voice. "I had to. After what happened with Miles last year, well, you know. I got the usual tongue-lashing from Coulson, but I don't think he really meant it. And Fitzsimmons asked about you, if you were doing okay. I think they really miss you, or at least, the person they thought you were."

He shook his head and looked down at his lap, shame creeping up his neck. He picked up a leaf and started ripping small pieces off of it, crumpling them between his fingers as a distraction. "Do they know you're here?"

"No. Coulson's off on important SHIELD-director business in Bandar Seri Begawan, and so it wasn't too hard to sneak out for the day. It's just the two of us."

"So how are things going with the new SHIELD?" he asked, looking up from his leaf-shredding.

"Pretty good," she replied, and he noticed her face lighting up at its mention. Skye had never belonged anywhere before joining their team, and the fall of SHIELD had perhaps hit her hardest of all of them. And now she had the opportunity to take back that sense of camaraderie, to be part of a family again. Ward smiled internally as he saw the sparkle in her eye, and then the smile fell away as he realized that, had he made what he now knew to be the right choice, he could have been a part of her family too.

But he was done with that now. He had regrets, enough for a lifetime, but that didn't mean he had to dwell on them.

"Right now, our biggest problem is personnel," Skye continued, interrupting his train of thought, "since so many agents scattered to the far corners of the earth after the fall. And since we're still technically a terrorist organization, people aren't exactly lining up around the block to join us. So we've basically been dipping into the reject piles of other agencies, FBI, MI-6, Secret Service, which usually isn't a problem; a lot of them were denied for stupid stuff like stealing a car when they were fourteen or having flat feet. And hey, I used to work for a cyber-anarchist organization, so I'm one to talk."

"True."

"Oh, but there's this one guy we picked up a couple weeks ago, a complete weirdo. Failed the FBI psych screenings, which I can totally believe; he's creepy as heck. But AC has us keep him around because he's also dead brilliant. Still, if I start finding severed body parts in his locker or something, he's outta there."

Ward almost laughed.

"Most of the guys we recruit just flunked the physical fitness tests," she added. "We just turn 'em over to May, and after a couple weeks the words "potato chips" and "TV" are gone from their vocabulary."

"So how is May?" he asked, picking a stray thread on the sleeve of his jacket. He really needed to get new clothes; these were falling apart.

"She's doing okay," said Skye, pushing some hair out of her face. "We train together in the mornings. She's teaching me tai chi and hand-to-hand."

"And how's that going?"

"Good." Her eyes took on a mischievous gleam. "Want to go a few rounds?"

Ward looked up, surprised. "You mean, right now?"

"Sure. Last time we met, you said it was nice to have a partner you could let loose on."

He shook his head and looked down. "I don't know if …"

"What, does your shoulder still hurt or something?" she asked, unslinging her bag and standing up.

"No," he said. "Full range of motion, no damage to the rotator cuff." He swung his arm to demonstrate.

Skye's face split into a grin. "I know. You're just afraid you'll get beaten by a girl."

"I am not."

"Are so. Come on; there's a patch of grass over there we can use." She gestured to a small area a few yards from where he'd parked his truck. "C'mon! You'll love all the new moves May taught me."

Her enthusiasm was contagious. He'd always liked that about her. "Bring it on," he said, standing up to face her.

The grass made a perfect sparring surface, soft enough to cushion a blow, but not spongy. They shrugged off their jackets, and Skye put her hair in a loose ponytail to keep it out of her face. They began with some simple drills and a few takedowns to warm up, and Skye was surprisingly competent; she moved with a fluid grace he'd never seen in her before. When he … left, she'd been a decent fighter, but with no real aptitude for hand-to-hand, and he felt a pang of jealousy that May had been able to teach her what he had not.

Then they began sparring in earnest, full open, first one to pin the other wins. Ward took the offensive first, swinging his leg around to sweep Skye's feet out from under her. Skye jumped out of the way, then moved in and drove her knee into his stomach with force that belied her small frame. He doubled over, momentarily stunned, but recovered quickly and aimed an elbow strike at her ribs. Smoothly, all in one motion, she blocked the elbow and grabbed his arm, twisting it behind his back. Still surprised at the level of skill she was displaying, he muscled his way out of the lock (crude, but effective), and spun around with a hooking punch. But once again, Skye was too quick for him, using her small size to dodge and weave, evading his strikes, wriggling out of joint locks that should have had her pinned. He was reminded of trying to hold a wet bar of soap in the shower.

Nevertheless, he won the first round, by dropping his guard to bait her into coming in close. When she moved in with a front kick, he grabbed her leg and threw her on the ground, pinning her on her stomach with a knee to her back.

"Break!" she yelled, tapping the ground with her hand. He immediately released his hold and helped her up. Her hair had escaped her ponytail and was flying wild around her dirt-stained face, and there were grass stains all over her pants. A thin sheen of sweat coated her skin, glistening in the late afternoon sun, and her breath was ragged and labored. She'd never looked more beautiful.

"Best two out of three?" Skye asked, grinning at him.

"You betcha." So they began again. Now that he knew a little more about her sparring style, Ward gained the upper hand quickly, landing strike after strike, anticipating her movements. He managed to knock her off her feet, and she hit the grass with a sharp exhalation, then lay on her back, struggling clumsily onto her side into a ground fighting stance. But when he moved in for the final blow, she brought her knees up to her chest and kicked out as hard as she could, catching him square in the stomach and ripping the air from his lungs. Immediately, she sprung to her feet, a wicked gleam in her eye. She'd been playing possum!

"That's fighting dirty," he gasped, sucking in air.

"Is there any other kind?" she said, aiming a kick to his thigh. He dodged, but her leg came back and knocked his feet out from under him, and he hit the ground hard. Before he knew what was happening, Skye's foot was above his neck, and he had a momentary flashback to his last stand against May. Skye's face shifted into hers, and he could almost feel the force of her blow crushing his throat. Even after almost half a year, his voice was still a little raspy, and it had only recently stopped hurting to swallow. And the fear, the gut-wrenching fear and the absolute certainty that he was going to die at the hands of the same woman he'd worked alongside for so long, and the knowledge that he deserved it …

"Well?" Skye looked down at him impatiently.

"Break," he said, tapping his hand against his thigh and bringing himself back to the present. "One more?"

The last round ended in a stalemate, because they both agreed that they were hungry and exhausted and that the poor grass had had enough for one day. So, hair plastered to their faces with sweat, grass stains decorating their knees and elbows, Skye and Ward wearily gathered up their jackets and dragged themselves back to the campsite.

"I think I've got some spam or something around here," Ward said apologetically, digging through one of his bear-proof canisters. "Maybe some protein bars. I-I haven't exactly been eating very well."

"It's okay," Skye assured him, retrieving her bag from where she'd dropped it. "I brought my own food." She produced a large plastic bag of sliced apples and grinned.

"Would you mind sharing? I haven't had fresh fruit in forever." It spoiled too fast, and he only liked the kind that wasn't coated in wax and herbicide, which tended to run on the expensive side.

"Sure." Her face brightened. "Know what's better than apples?"

"What?"

"Apples with peanut butter," she said, pulling out a Tupperware container of peanut butter.

They ate in silence, enjoying each other's company, the only sound the steady crunch of apples being chewed. She was right; apples and peanut butter were a match made in heaven. They shared a bottle of water, and stretched out the various muscles and joints that had taken the most abuse in the past half hour's sparring tournament.

"So how're things going with you?" Skye asked him, licking the last of the peanut butter from her fingers and wiping them on her pants.

"Okay. Work's easy, and I get paid every week. And I like camping out here. Kind of reminds me of…" he let his voice trail off.

"Of what?"

He didn't particularly want to talk about it. Those five years he'd spent alone in the woods, being slowly worn down into a fine, malleable clay for Garrett to mold had been the best and the worst of his life. On the one hand, there had been the blissful solitude, respite from all the bullying and harassment, and the satisfaction of carving out his own niche in the ecosystem. On the other hand, and this became especially obvious in retrospect, it was those years that had broken him, turned him into the monster that had betrayed Skye and the rest of the team.

But despite that, he found himself saying, "Before I entered the Academy, well, it's kind of a long story, but Garrett had me camped out in the woods for a couple of years. All alone, no one but a dog—" whom he made me kill "—and I just had to make my own way. And that was how he did it, how he made me … unreal."

"Is it hard? Being in the woods again, I mean."

"A little," he said. "At first. But I've had a lot of time to think, and one of the things I've figured out is that if the woods changed me once, they can change me again. There's something cleansing about living close to nature."

Skye raised her eyebrows. "Never had you pegged for a pocket philosopher," she remarked.

He shrugged. "I think the real Ward can get a little deep. Besides, intellectualism isn't weakness, the way I used to think it was." At the mention of intellect, something occurred to him, and he . "Um, I hate to ask, but how's Fitz doing?"

"He's okay," she replied. "Talking's getting better, and he hardly ever gets seizures anymore. Also I'm learning BSL, since he seems to prefer that." She made a few hand gestures. "That's 'Hi, how are you? My name's Skye' in sign," she said proudly. "Also May's teaching me Mandarin, and I'm teaching myself Spanish because why not."

"Becoming quite the polyglot," he remarked.

"Hey, I don't just learn languages. We've got a sort of ad hoc Academy going for the new recruits, and I teach a class in computer languages. Everything from J to C#."

He tried to picture Skye as a teacher, standing in front of a room full of wide-eyed rookies discussing how best to hack government agencies without getting caught. He wondered what kind of homework she assigned. Go home and do something subversive and anarchical, probably. A-plus, you put a virus on Coulson's laptop. Making Fitzsimmons' holotable malfunction, eh, that's a B. You ate your vegetables and went to bed early; F-minus.

"We're trying to get May to teach a class or two in hand fighting, but she just glares at us when we bring up the subject," Skye continued. "I'm lucky she puts up with me in the mornings. Once Fitz is a little better, he wants to start teaching some basic engineering. Oh, and speaking of Fitz, Simmons is cooking up some sort of treatment that's supposed to stimulate brain cell growth so he can recover more brain function."

Ward sat up. "Really? I didn't think that was possible."

"Dude, aliens invaded New York; my boss rose from the dead, and there are people wandering around who can turn into big green monsters or shoot a dime off someone's head with an arrow. Anything's possible. She explained it to me a couple of times, but it's kind of out of my league. But once it's ready, we're thinking of publishing it and making it available to anyone. Like, to send the message that the new SHIELD's not about secrets and lies and keeping all the cool tech to ourselves."

An ache developed in Ward's chest, somewhere above his heart. More than anything, he wanted to be a part of this new SHIELD, to belong to a team again. There was possibility there, hope, and he couldn't be part of it. Never could. Not with what he'd done. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time, the judge had told him after he'd burned down his family's home. He'd made his choice, and he'd paid the price.

"You okay?" Skye asked, seeing the melancholy in his eyes.

"Yeah," he replied, slipping on his poker face. "Just thinking."

"Penny for them," she said. "Your thoughts, I mean."

Ward shook his head. "Not this time. Not tonight. It's getting dark," he observed, glancing up through the trees. The sun was dipping below the horizon, casting light horizontally through the sky. The clouds he could see were illuminated bright pink with sunset, and the rest of the sky was a dusty purple.

"Can I stay a little longer?" Skye asked. "I don't need to be back until tomorrow morning."

Ward smiled, for the first time in what felt like forever. "Sure. Here, take off your shoes and get into my truck. The view out here is gorgeous."

They kicked off their mud-caked boots and brushed off their clothes as best they could. Ward climbed into the back of the truck and zipped himself into his sleeping bag. Skye sat next to him, covered in a blanket, and together they watched the stars come out, a thousand pinpricks of silver surrounding the thin slice of crescent moon.

"I named myself after this," she said, after a few minutes.

"Huh?"

"The night sky. I was sitting on the steps outside this internet café watching the stars come out, and it was so beautiful, and I thought, wherever you go, the sky's always there. I liked the idea, so I started calling myself Skye."

Ward looked over at her, then up at the stars. He'd never really given much thought to where her name had come from. But he could see why she'd chosen it.

On a normal night, the peaceful, inky blanket of the night sky would soon give way to nightmares, about any one of a number of missions he'd been on, or of Garrett beating him senseless to drive the "weakness" away, or … or of watching Fitzsimmons fall. And lately, Skye had been heavily featured, impaled on stakes or shot through the neck, and he always knew, in the way one knows in dreams, that it had been all his fault.

But tonight, he felt a hand reaching over and tentatively stroking his hair. He looked over at Skye, who smiled at him before turning her gaze back to the night for which she was named. Slowly, he fell into a deep, soft sleep, and there were no bad dreams.

When he awoke, it was already dawn. Forest birds were flitting from branch to branch, exchanging their good mornings, and the air smelled of dew and trampled grass. The space next to him in the back of the truck was empty except for the crumpled blanket, and there was an ache in his chest where Skye had once been.

But she wasn't gone for good. If she'd found him once, she could find him again. And even if she didn't, he would think of her every time he watched the stars come out.

As he washed his face and got dressed for work, he considered what to do next. This was probably the longest he'd stayed in one place since the fall, and if Skye could find him, so could INTERPOL and the US Marshals and whoever else was looking for him. But he liked his campsite, liked having a steady job, and besides, he'd promised Ryan help dealing with Parker and his bully friends. Maybe he'd stay long enough to make sure the kid was all right, even if it was a little risky.

It was what the real Ward would do.