WARD:

I couldn't believe it. May was leaving. Never in a million could I have ever guessed that. She doesn't think Coulson can ever trust her again. But this works for me now, there's no time to try to set her straight. This leaves me open to Skye.

I head back to Koenig. If I ever knocked her out, I'd never hear the end of it. And I winced. I'd slept with May. Once she found out I was Hydra she was going to want to kill me. Coulson better protect me.

"Skye's good. She's already in. Did you take care of Agent May?" Agent Koenig was already looking at images from the NSA.

I had to smile. That's my girl. She was killing my timeline though.

"May left."

"She what? Why?"

"She doesn't think Coulson doesn't trust her."

"Did you at least try to make her stay?"

I shook my head. "Why would I do that? It's better that she's out of my way. I didn't look forward to knocking her out. She'd have killed me. Coulson will sort it out when he's back. She's not my concern. Right now, I have to make it convincing that I killed you." I motion him toward me.

He hesitates. "Yea, I was thinking about that. What if you were to just knock me out?" Koenig didn't look like he wanted to get punched.

I sigh. "I won't hit you. OK how about this, I just strangle you or slice your neck open?"

Koenig winced but I waited as he thought about it. "Ok, I think I still have some fake blood from Halloween." I watch as he scrambles away.

He came back with a bucket. A bucket. I raised an eyebrow. "My brother's and I are into cosplay." He shrugged.

We set up the scene and, in the end, I had to ice him because he kept fidgeting. This needed to look real.

Here goes nothing.

I find Skye looking at the images exactly where I'd found Koenig. I take a deep breath. I'm not ready for this.

She asks where Koenig is and I just rattle something out without thinking about it much. Next I move onto May and tell Skye that she's gone.

Skye shakes her head. "Wow. So, no goodbye? No nothing?"

I shake my head and shrug.

"She never felt anything for us, did she? She just played us to keep an eye on Coulson." She looks angry but I can she the pain in her eyes.

Shit. She thinks one more home just closed the door on her.

"That was her mission." I didn't know if I'm telling her about May or myself.

She looks at me a second. Something changes in her eyes. "Did you feel anything for her?"

Was that jealousy in her eyes? Ha. I wish.

"Um, no. The only comfort we took in each other was knowing we didn't have to." I clear my throat.

"You can't choose to feel." She's challenging me.

"Usually I can." I know the smile on my face looks sad. I try to recover. "It's different for us."

"Us is a strong word." She says as I grab a bottle to get a drink. She continues, "I mean, I know I kissed you, but to be fair, I thought there was a 97% chance that we were gonna die." She chuckles because she's nervous. "But we didn't die."

I give her a small smile. "Which is good."

"Yes, that is very good. But there's still no rush on us being an "us". It's not like it's a good time to start anything."

Skye, if you only knew. "There's never a good time. We got to start somewhere."

I hand her the drink and she looks right into my soul as she smiles.

We sit on the couch and start having a nice talk. I'm telling her that as a specialist we need to keep a distance from people. She jokes with me making it look so easy but nobody has ever done it with me. She's the only one who's ever treated me like a regular Joe. Even when she was intimidated with me, she didn't let that stop her from poking fun and making jokes.

"You're different." I tell her.

"Different bad?" She really wants to know.

"Bad for me." I have to be honest. "I didn't want to think about you. I wanted to stay focused. And then I saw you after you were shot fighting to stay alive…" I hesitate. I'm all but saying the words now. I love you, Skye. "But you're right. I'm Kevlar. You're not."

"You don't have to be." She urges.

I'm trying, Skye. I'm trying for you.

"You don't have to shut people out." She searches my eyes.

I'm afraid. "Yeah, I do." I can't even look at her for a second. "There are things about me that you wouldn't like if you knew." So many things.

"You think I don't have skeletons." She frowns refusing to believe the ugly side of me.

She needs to see me for the piece of shit I am. "It's different. You're good."

"So are you." She believes it through and through.

I wish I could be good for you. I wish I hadn't been blind. John may be manipulative but I chose to kill all those people. "Not always." I hesitate. Maybe I should tell her a little more about Christian. "I lied to you. My older brother, he didn't beat up my younger brother. He was crueler than that. He made me do it. And I let him. I was afraid of him."

She can't believe it. She takes a deep breath and for a second, I think she won't look at me again. "What about your parents?"

"They were worse." It's a simple answer. "I am not a good man, Skye." I'm lost. Do I want her to believe me or do I want her to believe in me?

"Hey." She stands from where she's at and comes sits next to me. She takes my hand and takes my chin into her other hand to look her in the eye. "Yes, you are." Her eyes are begging me to believe her. I want to believe her.

Again, I'm lost. I know this will probably my only chance. I look for confirmation in her eyes before I lean in and kiss her.

My hand makes its way to the back of her head to hold her to me. She responds, instantly kissing me back. Her hands are mimicking mine and settle on each side of my face.

She pulls away because she has blood—fake blood on her hands. Shit. I'm out of time.

I apologize and tell her I'm gonna clean up. She insists on helping but I brush her off. She's about to hate me. The time has come for her to find "Koenig's body".

I go clean the fake blood off me and give her enough time to explore. I wipe the cameras clean and make my way and leave a note for Coulson. I don't know if he'll want to involve the whole team or not. I don't even know if he'll agree with my plan but that doesn't matter now.

I go looking for Skye. When I find her, she looks a little off and my insides turn. She found him. She hates me.

I have to give it to her though. She plays it off like all is well. But I know her too well. She's looking at me different. This is how she will always look at you now that she knows you're a monster.

I knew she'd hate me from the beginning. It was partially why I'd waited so long to turn myself into Coulson.

She kisses me to make me believe she loved the first kiss and I'm weak enough that I kiss her back. I'm selfish. I know I shouldn't be kissing her. She doesn't want to be kissing me.

She looks me in the eye and lies. She said she wants this and asks what I want. I want this to be real. I want you not to hate me. But it's time.

"What I want?" Nothing I can have. "What I want is to stay here with you and imagine the world outside doesn't exist." I take a deep breath. "But the world outside does exist. I just got word from Fitz. They need our help. The bus is fueled up, ready to go."

I see she's afraid. She doesn't want to go with me. I shatter on the inside. She doesn't want to be anywhere near me. She tries to make excuses, to push off leaving. I take her by the hand and pull gently. "Hey, we need to go right now."

She agrees and as we're walking toward the hanger, I reach for her hand. She takes it. Although I know that's not what she wants to be doing, I take pleasure in it. I take in her warmth, her soft skin, trying to memorize every bit of her before we get to where we're going.

Once the bus is in the air, I let her know that she needs to decrypt the hard drive. I can see her thinking and making an exit plan just by looking into her eyes. I smile at her. I smile because she's going to get away. She's going to put a plan in motion and get away. She's smart. She won't get hurt by John.

I can feel her looking at me. She smiles anytime I look at her but when I turn away, I can feel the hate boring into me. I try to ignore it and when I can't, I try to get used to it.

I hate you, John.

I'm nervous. Even at the dinner, I keep fidgeting. I know Coulson is probably back at the base. I hope he finds my note and nobody else sees. Although, I don't know how much he's told the rest of the group of how he's going to want to proceed. He's gonna be mad.

John's probably pissed it's taking me so long. I'm going to be getting a phone call soon enough. I want to buy more time for Skye to get away without giving away what I'm doing. I can't let her know because John would know if she was lying. Dammit.

"You're staring again." Skye isn't amused. Her patience with me is weighing.

"I'm not allowed to do that?"

"I told you, it's a complicated hack." She faces the laptop at me with what looks like a tone of mumbo jumbo.

"You've mistaken my admiration for impatience." I swing the laptop back facing her.

She's getting mad. "No, it's impatience."

"Ok. Sorry. Didn't mean to stress you out." Only, she knows me and every part of my being is unstable. I'm nervous and fidgety. My super spy cooling powers are no longer working. We're out in the open and I'm scared that John will march in through the door and hurt her.

She looks me in the eye and suggests that I duck outside and try the sat phone. You are just itching to get away from me. Good girl. Although it hurt non-the less.

"No." I shake my head. "We stick together and we stick to the plan." It would be easy to do just that, go outside and let her escape but John would know that I had let her. It had to look like she'd outsmarted me.

"The sooner we decrypt this hard drive," I gave her a look.

"The sooner we can get to them. I heard you twice the first time." She gives me a fake grin and gets back to it. "It" being whatever the hell it was she was doing because I knew it wasn't decrypting anything.

"Are you alright?" I can't help myself and reach out to touch her hand. "You look nervous."

"How can you tell, superspy?" She's being sarcastic and it makes me smile.

"Staying unnaturally still to keep from fidgeting, maintaining eye contact to give the impression of confidence. What's wrong." There was still time to teach her. She was MY ROOKIE after all.

She takes a second to catch her breath and starts her lie, "The last time I was in this booth, I was sitting across from Mike Peterson. A good man, and now he's a murderer. And we are the FBI's most wanted. It's just like any moment, something could go horribly wrong."

I let her believe I buy what she's telling me. "Relax. You're doing great."

"Hiding what I'm thinking and feeling, it doesn't come as easy for me as it does for you."

Sweetheart, I've had practice. "Well, it comes with experience."

"Yea, I guess it does." But I'm not paying attention to her now because 2 cops come into the dinner.

Fuck. If we stay here longer we're going to be made.

I let Skye work will my insides turned. "How much longer?" I asked then I couldn't sit still any longer.

"Half-hour." She doesn't look up. She looks serious.

"You said that half an hour ago."

She has a small smile as she drinks and says, "Weren't you the one who told me to relax?"

I lean on my hand and motion with my eyes. "Those cops over there keep looking at us." I need to keep her safe.

She glances their way. "They're just checking out the waitress." She goes back to her computer. "They don't know you're pretending to be someone you're not."

I chuckle nervously. The time is here. She's going to confront me. "Yea. Right. Who am I pretending to be?"

"My impatient boyfriend."

I look out the window. "I like that cover." There's another cop car passing us. My face falls. I'm out of time dammit. Time to say goodbye.

"What's the longest you've been undercover? Like, deep undercover?" She's trying to distract me.

"Um, 16 months." I have to play along.

"When was that?"

"Mm, about five years outside of the academy." Those cops are making me nervous. I don't want Skye getting hurt. "I posed as a Russian attaché at the embassy in Warsaw."

"That's got to be so hard, living a double life like that, getting close to people, only to turn on them. I don't know how Garrett did it."

It hurts. I know she's speaking to me but I can't deny that she's wrong. I did turn on them. Her. "Garrett?"

"Think about all that time he spent as your S.O., getting to know you, bring your mentor—only to lie to your face, betray you like that."

I swallow. Damn, sweetheart. Stab me right in the heart why don't you. I'm fighting now. I'm trying to do the right thing.

"It was, uh, difficult to accept. But thankfully that's over."

"Because you took care of him." She dared me with her comment.

I'm weak. Maybe I should tell her what I'm doing. "Can we not discuss this right now?"

"If you had one more moment before you shot him in the back of the head, so heroically, if he was sitting right here and you could say anything you want. What would you say?" her anger is spilling through.

I want to cringe. "Skye."

She kept on. It seemed she had reached her limit. "Would you say he's disgusting? Would you tell him he's a disgusting backstabbing traitor? Or to rot in hell?"

I'm sick to my stomach. This is just the tip of her hatred for me. She will always look at me like this. "What are you doing?"

"I'm just trying to have an honest conversation for once." It's like she throwing knives and they all hit their target.

The cops are moving people away. "They're starting to clear people out. We should go." I get up. I can't worry about her hating me right now. I have to keep her safe.

"No, I think I'm good right here." She's not moving.

"Skye, we've been made. Come on." I urge her.

"No." She turns the laptop to me. My picture is on the screen. "I tipped them off."

I look at the screen, at a loss for words.

"Hail Hydra."

Damn. She played me. She's so fucking smart. It all made sense now. She had bought enough time to do exactly what I knew she'd do. You did it, Skye.

The cops move in and she gives me away, telling them I'm armed. I need to make sure she gets away from me but I can't let them take her. I fight my way through the cops as she collects her things to run.

As I make my way through the dinner, I see two cops slam her against their car and I see red. Motherfuckers.

I don't hesitate as I shoot them. In that moment, I know I can't kill them. Skye would only hold that against me too. So, I make sure I injure them enough to go down but no real damage.

She runs into the car and starts to drive off.

That's right, sweetheart. Get away from here. Run to Coulson. He'll keep you safe.

But I still yell at her through the window that I won't hurt her. She needs to believe that before she gets away.

I stop running. There's no way anyone could think I could keep up but before I smile, I notice someone in the middle of the road.

Fuck. That's Mike Peterson. Shit. Fuck. No. Garrett got her. He got her. Somehow Garrett knew she'd get away from me or I'd let her know. Both of us were going to die.

I start running again as Mike jumps in the air and lands on the hood of the car. Shit. Don't you fucking hurt her. "Mike!" I push myself to get there as fast as I can and see the car swerve and suddenly brake.

Wheels squeal and I hear glass brake. "Skye!"

Authors Note: Thanks everyone for reading. I'd really like some feedback. It doesn't need to be positive. I just need some honest feedback to see what I need to work on.