Academy Reunion

Spoilers: All SHIELD episodes and movies.

Disclaimer: I currently only own SYA (maybe) and Azara.

Skye found herself sitting by her fireplace with a glass of wine, just staring at the flames. Lunch had been a disaster, of course she hadn't expected anything less after years apart from Coulson and May. It served to remind her that five years had passed and all she'd done to stay in contact was a letter or email back and forth. That had only been in the last two years, the past too hard to delve into especially after Salt Lake.

A knock her apartment door made her become aware of her surroundings, she ignored it figuring the person would go away eventually. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she let herself remember that Ward had to back out at the last moment because Conway had to talk to him about the upcoming assessment and the fact that a winter storm was pushing in on the location they were planning to use. Part of her felt like he'd abandoned her despite knowing the reason he'd left her was due to something beyond his control. Coulson and May's prodding about her abilities and about the Inhuman children at SYA had her on edge. Even more so, Hill had started badmouthing Ward in various ways and she'd lost it, practically yelling at them to shut up and that they assumed he was incapable of change when he'd changed the most out of them all.

"Skye?" Skye turned her head to the entryway that lead the foyer to the kitchen and split into the living room. She saw Ward walk to the edge of the couch and just stare at her. "Are you alright?"

She turned back to the flames. "Did you pick my door?"

"Azara told me the code for emergencies only. You didn't answer and you're a night owl so I was concerned." He moved over and sat down in the chair that was only a few feet away and waited for her to speak.

Skye picked at her socks, "I shouldn't have gone, they're still oblivious to what they did wrong five years ago. Of what it did to me and why I left the team. Coulson asked me to come work for him at the new base, manage the computerized security system and take field work if I wanted to." She shook her head and looked up at him. "How are they blind to what they did to me? They took away the remainder of my humanity. I was given no other option but to level the city, killing a million innocent men, women and children and after Coulson just told me everything would be okay since the leaders of the Registry were taken care of."

"You have nightmares." It was a general comment, not a question but Skye still nodded her head in agreement.

"It's like a million people screaming at once, the agony of searing pain as the shockwave rolled through them."

He sighed and slid down to the floor. "That day haunts me too but for a different reason." Skye looked at him as she rested her chin on her knees. "One day I'm going to have to tell Azara the truth about that day and she's going to hate me, one day I'm going to lose my daughter. I knew that when I adopted her and I'll know that every day for the rest of my life."

"You killed her parents…" Skye whispered upon realizing what he was saying without saying it. She'd known he'd been assigned with taking out all Inhumans during the war, at least until he switched sides.

"She doesn't remember but I do. She was three, curled up in the corner scared to death of the man who killed her parents. She never actually saw the murders and I determined later she only heard screams but it's haunting, knowing you took away the people who loved her."

Skye looked back at the flames. "You could have killed her."

"I was ordered to but when she saw me afterwards, she ran to me like I was there to save her." Ward sighed and shook his head, "in all the confusion she didn't know she was running towards the man sent to kill her. I thought about you when I saw her, her big brown eyes full of fear but hope at the same time. I decided to burn the house and deliver her to the Los Angeles Child Welfare office. She then grabbed my hand and didn't even realize what she was doing…"

"She showed you the truth about the war." Skye smiled slightly. "What made you decide to keep her?"

Ward removed his wallet from his back pocket and withdrew a slip of paper from it. "After the earthquake and destruction of the power grid, we had to walk to Los Angeles. We made it to Vegas and I was about to drop her off there instead until we ran into an Inhuman while eating. Azara inadvertently revealed herself and I had to fight to keep the man from attempting to take her." Shaking his head slightly Ward continued on. "I had no choice but to shoot him, he had some type of electrical abilities and he almost rendered Azara unconscious when he grabbed her."

Skye looked down at the paper and gently took it from his hand. It had the Inhuman language on, while the language couldn't be spoken by humans it could be read so there was little doubt that Ward learned to read it when working with the Registry. What it said made her take pause as she'd heard the rumors surrounding what was on the paper but they were just whispers of madmen really. "This is just a legend, what HYDRA really wanted we later determined before the war and right up until their destruction."

HYDRA had fallen during the first six months of the War of Registry, Inhumans were slowly recruited by SHIELD to help take down the organization and they had succeeded. However, the wish to put them on some type of list or index to keep track had pitted them against a few independent agents that had recruited ex-HYDRA agents to form the Registry. The death of one organization gave rise to another, the last more destructive than the first.

She reread the symbols and shook her head, disbelief that Azara was one of three special people born every generation. The Inhuman she'd met during her time at SHIELD, who had abandoned them when Coulson started to use her more and more destructively but she wouldn't break away, had told her a story about three Inhuman values that were lost with each generation but returned anew. She thought he just believed the story HYDRA put forward, wanting it to be true.

Truth has been reborn, Light and Hope still lost.

Born to an Exposed and Human, powerful in such youth.

Will Capture

"She is a beacon, she meets all the qualifications of being one." Ward took the paper back from her and put it in his wallet. "The fact she is the first of the three to be born means they'll be actively searching for her. Which is why her birth parents names aren't registered on the adoption papers, she's only listed as an unknown orphan and due to the massive displacement of young children they didn't bother searching for her parents. I made her disappear, Azara Jong-Sun died and became just a normal little girl born to Inhuman parents lost in the war."

"Jong-Sun?" Skye narrowed her eyes, "was that her father's surname or her mother's?"

"Her father's surname, why?"

"Jong-Sun," she smiled at him, "Johnson, I used my mother's surname and just made it sound English instead of Chinese. I found out her mother was Inhuman and her father was human just like my parents. Apparently pure Inhumans have strict breeding laws and aren't allowed to be with humans. However, those banished to Earth and the Exposed don't know any different. My grandmother was banished so she just found someone here on Earth." Skye removed her arms from around her legs and laid them out on the floor, surprised when Ward took her feet in his hands and started massaging them. "My mother was born with her abilities but due to my diluted blood, as a former Inhuman called it, I had to be exposed to the mists to develop abilities. First generation mixture results in a gifted individual but subsequent generations need to be exposed to gain abilities."

"Azara is a first generation, her father was Inhuman and had just surfaced about ten years before."

"Which is common when Inhumans arrive here." Skye nodded and giggled slightly as he ran his finger up her sole. "That tickles."

He quirked his lips and did it again, Skye laughed as she removed her feet from his hold. Ward looked past her to the clock on the wall to see if was getting late. "I should go, I have to get Azara to bed before heading there myself. I have an 0800 meeting with Conway to give her an alternative location for assessments."

Skye stood as he did and smiled at him, "you could always use Providence Base. We had to trek through snow over a mile to get there and it's hidden so there isn't map. It's nicer in Canada right now than the Appalachians. It's been abandoned since before we relocated so technically it still has all of our biosensor information and I still have my lanyard, you can have it to use."

"I'll supply it as a possible location, given the weather its probably best the kids have shelter but I doubt the parents will agree to letting us take their kids across borders."

"Even with another chaperone?" Skye smiled at him, "Conway sent me a message asking if I'd assist you with the field assessments due to the winter weather and having a second adult on alert."

Ward shook his head, "I'll find someone else, Azara opted out of the dormitory this year as you know so she wouldn't have anywhere to stay or anyone to stay with her if we both go."

"Jemma or Bobbi can watch her," she looked up at him with a smile. "Or Thomas could watch her, I'm sure a week with her uncle would be exciting for her and she's more responsible than me so we're good on the get up, go to school and eat properly front."

He sighed and met her muddy brown eyes. "Despite not being biologically related, I swear she gets the ability to win arguments by using her eyes from you."

"Nope." Skye grinned at him, "you're just raising a daddy's girl. You are giving Azara all the love and attention you and siblings never received, making sure she knows she is worth more than the world to you." Taking a step closer to him, she placed her hand on his chest over his heart. "Which is why when she learns the truth one day, she will be hurt but you won't lose her. She'll know you had a choice and you chose to let her live, to protect her and love her as much as those you took from her. She'll know you regret your actions and would change it all if you could go back."

Ward looked down at her, her words struck him as he often forgot how well Skye knew his daughter. She really was the only mother Azara remembered and despite it being only a year back around her after close to ten years, four since he realized he almost lost her on a cliff face, he was falling more in love with her. They were closer than before and every day the lines were blurred between friendship and more. He'd went down a road with Coulson about them not getting along because he knew they still viewed him as being obsessed with her while Skye knew it wasn't lust or infatuation but instead genuinely being deeply in love with her.

Mesmerized by her eyes and words, he allowed himself to take a risk by leaning down and hovered over lips. Skye let her eyes drift between his eyes and lips before closing the short distance, take a step closer as his hand was tentatively placed on her lower back to pull her against him. Skye let a whimper go as he pulled back from her, a soft chuckle escaped him when he heard the sound. "Disappointed?" It was playful and earned him a punch to the arm.

"You're a bastard." She slightly pouted as her hands rested on his chest, he kept her close.

"That was established over ten years ago. I believe you phrased it as 'lying bastard, son of a bitch' and I didn't deny it as both were actually true." He tilted his head slightly, "I never did get a chance to tell you that the head butt was a good touch, we never covered that one technique."

Skye smirked as she dug her fingers into his shirt, "you're actually complimenting me on the fact I beat the shit out of you, or at least tried?"

"Well I'm not complimenting you on the poor shots you took at me." He gave her a slight smile as he ran his hand up and down her back, slowly caressing the skin through her shirt. "I know May trained you on how to take a kill shot."

"I wasn't trying to kill you, wound you yes but kill you no. We've already gone over this at least twice."

His phone beeped and he dug into his pocket to retrieve it, finding a text message from Azara on the screen. "Our daughter wants to know if she needs to recruits some of the kids and retaliate against the director and deputy director when they visit Polaris in the spring."

"That's the first time you've used that phrase."

"Which phrase?" He asked while typing out a message.

Skye leaned closer to see the message he was typing. "Our daughter, I never expected you to use that phrase."

"She's claimed you and you've claimed her so for all intents and purposes, you are her mother in my eyes. I doubt Azara would disagree on the matter." Putting his phone up he looked down at her to see her smile. "I should go, I just told her you were fine and that she needed to brush her teeth before getting in bed."

A nod was followed by the former hacker leaning up to gain a goodbye kiss. She let yet another whimper go when he pulled back from her. Curling her fingers into his sleeves, she bit her lip before asking something on her mind. "Do you mind if I tuck her in tonight? After today, I need some of her infectious happiness."

"There's something you should know about me." He spoke seriously and Skye braced herself for what he was about to say. "I'm in love with this beautiful woman and I tend to want to give her the world, so every demand she makes I plan to give her what she wants so she's happy. She deserves all the happiness in the world, despite her protests against it."

While originally afraid he was going to spill some dark secret, as if they hadn't had their fair share in the past much less that night, Skye found herself smiling at him instead. She felt herself loving him more for just his words alone, not the intent behind them. He spoke to her as if she was the most precious thing in the world, always tender and loving and never aggressive. She figured he had no reason to be aggressive anymore given she wasn't exactly ignoring him or calling him a Nazi. His tenderness seemed to amplify with Azara but it only existed between the three of them, he wasn't really tender with anyone else.

"So in short, that's a yes?"

"It means you don't have to ask, if you want something then just tell me." Ward brushed her hair out of her face, her bangs had been gone for years and she once again wore it like she had when they'd met. "We should go before we find her passed out in bed."

They found Azara reading in bed, she looked up to see Skye in the doorway and smiled. "Skye, why are you here tonight? You never come over here."

"I had a really bad day and I needed some Azara time." She moved over to the bed and sat down on the edge. Taking the book from Azara's small hands, she put it aside and laid down beside the girl. "Can I tell you a story?"

"Yeah." The girl curled up to her surrogate mother and Skye wrapped an arm around her. "What's it about?"

Using her hand to rub back Azara's bangs, Skye kissed her temple. "It's about three lost values and how they are gained back every generation. Once upon a time a mighty race lived in a hopeless darkness full of lies, where no light shone and neither truth nor hope existed…"

Ward watched from the doorway as Skye told Azara the story of the Inhuman beacons and how they emerged every generation. He smiled as he leaned against the doorframe, soaking in the sight of Skye lying in bed with Azara telling her a story. He'd thought she'd died in Salt Lake, his grief only kept in check by the need to protect Azara from those who wanted her. However, he'd gained her back by just walking into the school. Now, after close to a year they seemed able to move forward, it would probably be at an agonizingly slow pace but it was better than nothing at all.

"Dad come join us." Azara waved him over and he moved over to sit on the bed, leaning down to take off his boots before he laid down on the other side of Skye. The bed was pushed against the wall so it was either lay beside Skye or crawl between Azara and the wall. She'd probably fall asleep during the story so he wouldn't risk laying against the wall. He was grateful that he insisted on a full bed for Azara because they wouldn't have all fit in a twin. "Skye is telling me the story about how a mighty race lived in darkness with no hope or truth. It sounds horrible, listening to lies all the time."

"It is hard having to lie all the time, even harder to listen to lies." Skye let her free hand rest above her head and Ward wrapped his fingers through hers, the other hand laying on her back as she started telling the story again. "However, one day a powerful witch saw how bad the people needed these three things and determined that every generation they would be born, allowing everyone to experience them…"

A/N: Well...talk about spilling secrets.

Next...A visit to Providence brings back both good and bad memories.

Please read and review...