Chapter Nine: Yours, Mine, and the Truth
Allowing AIM to take her had been one of the hardest things Skye had ever had to do. Skye considered herself a fighter by nature. She tried to combat injustices every day of her life. With the Rising Tide and then SHIELD, Skye wanted to do something, to change things. She never let people tell her she could not do something. Oh, she could play the hapless victim, but Skye had never before just surrendered without a fight or a contingency plan.
And yet here she was.
Staring down the barrel of ten different guns, Skye was at a loss. She liked to think she could have taken them anyway, but there was one thing holding her back. Well, three things actually. Fitz, Simmons, and "Zach" were unconscious and vulnerable. If Skye had started a fight and one of them had gotten a stray bullet… Skye was not going to let that happen.
Skye had looked at the smoothed over faces of her blissfully unaware companions and knew she had no choice. Fitz and Simmons had stayed strewn on the ground like a couple of ragdolls. She had cradled Zach's head in her lap while she stared up at her captors with a look of promise. She may be helpless now, but Skye was not one to roll over and play dead.
She had watched motionless anyway while the AIM agents secured the four of them. The only time she let any distress show was when one of the AIM agents carelessly jarred Zach's obviously broken fingers. They must have twisted in his haste to push her down. That only made her angrier at seeing them knocked pointlessly. He was unconscious and unaffected, but it pissed Skye off anyway.
Part of her knew that the fierce protectiveness she felt for Zach was ridiculous. She barely knew the guy, and whatever else he was, he was working for the enemy. Really, he was the enemy. Rationally, all of that made sense, but it did not feel real to her. When she saw him, her instincts were to assume he was on her side, which she knew was not true.
But maybe it was a little more complicated than that. He did save the Fitzsimmons and her from walking into their deaths unknowingly. And he had protected her from the blast- well, the explosion he caused but still!
Skye could not get a good read on him, and she considered herself to be very good at reading people. It was a necessary life skill for orphans in her opinion, one she picked up quickly. But it felt like the more she saw of Zach, the more confused she became. She would avoid thinking about him at all because of how much it drove her crazy, except it was becoming increasingly obvious that there was no avoiding him. He was everywhere it seemed. On her missions, in her thoughts, in her dreams, he was inescapable.
She had been able to push those thoughts away in the face of danger though. Not that it mattered though. Seconds after they were all secured, a man dressed in all black approached her with a needle and robbed her of her hard earned consciousness.
When she woke up, she was handcuffed to the wall of a creepy interrogation room. The door appeared to be mechanical, and there was a control panel next to it. The place vibrated in a strange way making Skye believe they might actually be on a plane. The room was bare except for a metal table and two chairs in front of her. Zach was shackled to the left of her and Fitzsimmons were in similar conditions on her right. The fact that none of them had woken up yet was worrying her. They must be more injured from the blast than she thought.
Three fingers on Zach's left hand were twisted from the fall and it looked like some debris had imbedded itself into his shoulder because Skye could see dried blood. There was a large cut marring his face, right along his cheekbone. His lip was split as well. Fitzsimmons had fared better, probably because they were not covering anyone else. Skye ignored the guilt that rose in her stomach in response to that thought. Overall, they just seemed bruised and battered but otherwise okay. But they were not waking up, and Skye was freaking out.
Soon enough, Skye's wrists began to ache from the position. Skye considered trying to break her wrists and slip out of the handcuffs, but she chose not to. Besides the fact that she would still be trapped in the room without a clue how to drag three unconscious people out, she had also never pulled that trick before. She had seen May do it, but Skye personally had not tried to replicate the move. If she just managed to injury herself trying, it would be more humiliating than just waiting around. So Skye just tested her range of motion upwards of twenty times just to take her mind off the growing worry over her friends.
Just when she was on the edge of panicking, Simmons stirred. The biochemist let out a pained moan and blinked furiously in confusion. "Skye?"
"Oh, thank god, Simmons! I was so worried! Are you okay?"
Skye's energy appeared to startle Simmons who was still fighting off the last vestiges of unconsciousness. Simmons straightened and suddenly realized that she was trapped. She straightened in alarm and looked around in panic. "Skye! Where are we? What happened?"
"Coulson sent us to check out Futurepharm because Hydra had attacked looking for the Chitauri weapon," Skye told her. "But the building exploded and knocked you out, remember?"
Simmons nodded absentmindedly. "Yes, Hydra attacked, I remember." As she spoke, her gaze landed on the still knocked out Zach. Skye bit her lip to keep from defending him from the unspoken accusation. It was not like Simmons was wrong, Zach even admitted he rigged the bombs. It felt wrong to blame him when he saved their lives though. "Where are we now?"
"I think we're on a plane," Skye said unsurely, because really why would they be on a plane? And why were they not just dead?
"Yes," Simmons agreed primly and patiently, "But whose plane?"
"Must be AIM's," came a tired voice from Simmons' other side. Skye felt a wave of relief rush through her. Fitzsimmons were fine. She found herself still consumed with pent up worry though because the fourth captive remained dead to the world.
"Fitz!" Simmons exclaimed. "Yes, that's right. Futurepharm was supposedly an AIM base."
"Well, we're obviously not with Hydra," Fitz said as he craned his head forward and indicated towards the restrained Zach.
Simmons bobbed her head in agreement. "Yes. And if this is Director Coulson's idea of a warm welcome, I might consider giving my resignation."
Skye smiled despite herself. "Coulson? Never, he'd be more likely to wrap you up in a Captain America blanket and tell you a bad joke. Now, May? Well, she was a pretty creative S.O., so I wouldn't put anything past her."
Fitz shuddered comically, but Simmons did not appear to be listening. Her observant gaze was on Zach. She pursed her lips in contemplation. "Skye, what was that earlier, before the explosion?"
Skye feigned ignorance in the vain hope that Simmons would just let it go. "What was what?"
Fitz looked at the sleeping Zach, and his eyes widened. "Yeah, how do you know him?"
"I don't really," Skye found herself saying for a lack of a better response. Did she even know Zach? It felt like she did, it felt like she had known him for a while actually, but she knew next to nothing about him.
Simmons opened her mouth, probably to call Skye out on her blatant lying, but she was interrupted. The door banged loudly as it hit the wall. Four men entered, one dressed in a white lab coat, two in tactical gear, and one in a business suit. None of them looked particularly friendly.
"Doctors," Business Suit greeted Fitzsimmons without smiling- and without looking in Skye's direction. Rude. He inclined his head to Fitzsimmons and Tactical Gear 1 and 2 walked forward and unshackled the two.
They rubbed their wrists and both simultaneously glanced back to Skye. Skye knew they would not leave her behind, just as she did not earlier when they were the ones incapacitated. They made no move to resist as Tactical Gear 1 pushed them forward. That did not stop them from protesting verbally though.
"Who are you? What do you want? Why have you taken us?" Simmons let out a continuous stream of questions without giving their captors any time to answer.
"Don't bloody touch me," was all Fitz said.
As they attracted all of the enemies' attention, Skye focused on learning as much as possible. Business Suit was obviously the leader, looked wealthy and full of himself. He reminded Skye of Ian Quinn, which just made her hate him more. Lab Coat was fidgety and nervous but otherwise stable. He appeared uninterested in the interactions, just waiting direction. Tactical Gear 1 and 2 seemed to just be muscle. Both Were at least a foot taller than Skye and three times as big, so she figured they packed a good punch. But neither appeared to have the fluidity of a fighter, so they likely relied on brute strength. They really looked to be more in line with mob enforcement than secret agent.
Skye was unimpressed overall. More than that though, she was embarrassed. How did they let themselves get captured by these guys in the first place? Oh yeah, they walked into a building set to explode. When they got out of this, Skye was going to personally ensure that Fitzsimmons take up speed improvement drills.
"Hey!" Skye finally called out and drew Business Suit's eyes. He gave her a bored look for her trouble. "How about letting me out, too? My wrists are cramping." Skye jiggled her hands for emphasis.
Unfortunately, Business Suit was unmoved. "When I need you, I'll get you." He ushered Fitzsimmons out of the room with Tactical Gear 1 and 2 and Lab Coat. He pressed a code into the keyboard of the wall panel, but Skye could not see which numbers he used. The door clicked open.
"Hang on-" Skye started before the door was slammed shut once more. Skye glowered before yelling at it just for the hell of it, "Asshole!"
"You sure told him," came a sarcastic voice to her left.
Grant opened his eyes as soon as he heard the door close and saw Skye jump when he finally spoke. She whirled to face him as much as she could given their bonds with an impressive scowl.
"I don't see you doing anything worthwhile," she retorted stubbornly. "You've just been useless dead weight."
Since he liked needling her, Ward decided not to let that one go without commenting. "Color me disappointed, I'd really expect more from the pupil of the Cavalry."
Skye's brow furrowed in confusion before realization washed over her expression. "You were awake the whole time. Eavesdropping."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," Ward said nonchalantly. "You are a spy, aren't you?"
Skye just frowned back at him. She was practically pouting at him, and he almost smiled at the distinctly fed up expression. It was so Skye. That was a disturbing line of thought though, so Ward forced his lips into a thin line that he knew people interpreted as annoyance.
"So what's your plan then, Superspy?" Skye asked grumpily. "Because you have all the answers, right?"
"I usually do," Grant agreed arrogantly and was rewarded with an overdramatic eye roll from his fellow prisoner.
He did actually have a good idea how to get out of his current predicament. While Ward rarely found himself vulnerable enough to get captured, he was excellent at escaping. Back when he was living in the Wyoming woods, John used to tie Ward up in elaborate bonds when he visited and time how long it took Grant to escape. At first they felt impossible and Grant complained. John did not allow for such weakness and nothing could convince him to release Grant. It was up to him to find a way out of the ties.
Grant remembered one of the first times John did this. He had bound his hands and arms behind Ward's back as well as his feet. John left after a couple of hours of Grant squirming without any success at freeing himself. In the dark of the crisp autumn night, it had been even harder to try and break the binds. Soon Grant realized John was never going to help him and may not even come back. Eventually Grant managed to wiggle his way to a rock. With a combination of rubbing the ropes to weaken them and actually banging his wrist against the rock, Grant finally was able to free himself.
John had come back not long after to find him nursing his injured wrist and a little starved from the day without food. John had said he was proud of him though, and Grant had barely felt the pain.
Ward blinked slowly as he wished away that reminiscing. It had been so long since he had thought of that memory. There was no point in thinking of it now, the past belonged in the past.
"Hello? Earth to Mr. Hydra Agent, are you daydreaming?" Skye's voice successfully broke through his trip down memory lane. She was staring at him with some measure of worry. "Do you have a concussion?"
Grant leveled her a look in lieu of answering. She got the message quickly.
"Well, excuse me for being concerned," she muttered while glaring at him.
Grant's chest tightened in some emotion. Skye did not seem to realize what she had just said, but he did. She was worried about him, his wellbeing. People did not worry about him ever. Grant was not sure how to react, so he pretended not to have heard.
He returned to his planning. The question was not how he was going to escape but when. If he waited for the opportune moment, everything should go without a hitch. He just had to be patient.
"So who are these guys anyway?" Skye asked him, apparently fed up with his silence.
"AIM?" Grant wondered incredulously. "You don't know who AIM is?"
Skye frowned defensively, "No."
"What, did you sleep through Operations?" Grant questioned harshly. He did not mean to sound so acerbic but all the emotions were bottled up inside of him looking for an outlet. Skye was a convenient one.
"Operations? As in SHIELD academy?"
"As opposed to what?" Grant said with more than a little mockery, "Operation the board game?"
Skye flushed. It was actually strangely appealing, she was always so heated and passionate. "I didn't go to the Academy," she said a little petulantly. "And if I had, it wouldn't have been Operations."
Grant sent her a confused glance. She had not gone to the Academy? She was a SHIELD agent. She was a SHIELD field agent, so where would she have gone if not Operations?
"Comms," Skye answered his unasked question with an awkward shrug, her arms still tied up.
"Comms," Grant repeated. "You're a hacker?"
Skye smiled proudly as she blew a stray piece of hair out of her face. The expression transformed her face. She really was beautiful.
Unaware of the odd turn his thoughts had taken, Skye replied, "Yeah. I used to call myself a 'hacktivist' though."
"Why?" Grant asked curiously. His lips turned up in the smallest smile he could manage. Of course Skye called herself a 'hacktivist'.
"I was trying to make the world a better place. A hacker and an activist, you know. Hacktivist. That was back when I was with the Rising Tide for the most part," Skye concluded thoughtfully.
"The Rising Tide? You were one of the pseudo-anarchists trying to stir everything up?" Ward blurted out before laughing lightly, "And here I thought you were actually going to tell me you were doing real activism."
"The Rising Tide wasn't that bad," Skye defended mildly offended.
The room became silent again. Grant thought over all he just learned about Skye. She was not just a field agent, she was a hacker. Considering that what he had seen from her marked her as a capable operative, that was impressive. Grant tried to imagine Kaminsky attempting that over-the-shoulder shot of hers back at Futurepharm. He would have ended up unconscious at best or dead at worst.
More than that, she worked for the Rising Tide and never went to the Academy. Just where had SHIELD found her? It was rare for operatives to join after the Academy. SHIELD liked their agents homegrown, used to say it was the best way to ensure loyalty and confidentiality. That definitely blew up in their faces.
Skye was not even a normal agent either, the Cavalry trained her apparently. Grant had run into her on several solo missions as well. She was an outsider who had somehow become a huge player for SHIELD. Grant stopped himself from asking, but he really wished he knew how that had happened.
"Wait a minute," Skye spoke up, her voice tinged with alarm. "Did you go to Operations?"
Grant raised a brow and deadpanned, "Well, I didn't go to Sci-Tech."
"But that would make you an embedded Hydra agent. You used to work for SHIELD," Skye accused, looking weirdly betrayed for some reason.
"Once upon a time," Grant agreed. He was about to be given a front row seat to SHIELD's self-righteousness, he just knew it. There was nowhere to run either.
"You betrayed SHIELD," Skye threw the words at him as if she were trying to attack him.
"I didn't betray anyone. That implies that my loyalties changed. My loyalty has remained the same for over fifteen years," Grant disagreed mildly.
"But you pretended to be loyal to SHIELD," Skye argued without pause. "And then turned on us when we needed you most!"
"I pretend to be a lot of things," Ward told her bluntly. "That's the job."
Skye appeared a little shocked at his words. For a spy, she was really opposed to lying. She regained her poise quickly though. "But you turned your back on your friends, left them for the enemy."
Grant scoffed. "What friends? I had no friends at SHIELD even when I worked for them."
Skye tilted her head to the side and analyzed him openly as if he were a puzzle she wanted to solve. "So your friends were all Hydra?"
Grant thought about Kara, but they were not friends. She was just the closest thing he had to an easy working relationship with anyone who was not John. John was not a friend either. He was his mentor, his father figure, the closest thing he would ever have to real family, but John was not a friend.
"No," Grant replied honestly. "I don't have any friends in Hydra either."
Skye gaped as if she wanted to respond but did not have the words. Grant supposed as he replayed his answers in his head that it sounded sad to someone like Skye who clearly had close friends in SHIELD. But Grant did not need fake friends to pretend to care and then run away when he needed him. He did not need anyone anymore. Friends were just attachments dragging you down. They were weaknesses.
John had done more for Grant than any friend ever could anyway.
Skye was still confused. "But-"
"AIM stands for Advanced Idea Mechanics," Ward smoothly spoke over her. He had no desire to hash out his personal life- or lack thereof- with a SHIELD agent, or anyone really. "They are an elite group of scientists who more or less became terrorists."
"Terrorists?" Skye barked out a laugh. "You work for Hydra. Isn't that a case of the pot calling the kettle black?"
Ward ignored her. "Their previous leader was a man named Aldrich Killian. He was killed in a fight with Iron Man after setting up that whole Mandarin façade. I'm sure you heard about that." Grant gave her a pointed look.
Skye nodded. "Yeah, I remember that. It was really an actor in all those terrorist propaganda messages."
"Trevor Slattery. He was hired by Killian and used as a front to conceal AIM's true activities. They needed an excuse of terrorism to explain away a series of seemingly random public explosions. The supposed bombers were actually the bombs."
Comprehension lit up Skye's face immediately. "Extremis."
Grant nodded. He watched as she bit her lip. Thoughts flashed across her expression too quickly for Grant to get a good read on.
"Hang on, wasn't that what Hydra was doing?"
Grant raised his brow. She could not be serious. "I'm not telling you any Hydra intel."
Skye just rolled her eyes. "You guys were. Centipede was experimenting in it. It's how Mike got his abilities before… everything else happened."
Grant narrowed his eyes. He knew who she was talking about. He spent next to no time with Deathlock, but Garrett had told him the guy had escaped with his son after SHIELD broke up the incentives program. Garrett had bigger things to worry about than hunting the guy down, so that was the last Grant heard of it.
But Skye calling Deathlock by his first name, citing Centipede and connecting the project with Extremis, was she one of the SHIELD agents involved in the dissolving of Cybertek? Add that to the fact that apparently she was a hacker and newly trained by the Cavalry, and Ward was starting to feel like he sorely underestimated Skye's competence- and importance within SHIELD.
"What do you know about Project Centipede?" Grant asked just to see her reaction.
She just rolled her eyes. "At this point, probably more than you do."
Grant scoffed. "Unlikely." He did not explain his skepticism further. "Extremis is just another attempt at recreating the Super Soldier serum. Hydra, AIM, Bruce Banner, many groups and people have attempted to do that."
He let the silence return. He wanted to fill it with asking Skye countless questions until he finally understood her- and this strange attachment that he had to her.
"So…" Skye dragged the word out while she stared at him. "You said AIM's leader died, why are we here then?"
"After Killian's death, it seemed that AIM had fallen apart. In reality, they were just licking their wounds after such a brutal defeat." And because he really could not resist, he added, "Like SHIELD." Skye huffed and went to speak before he continued without acknowledging her attempt. "Clearly they have new leadership. My guess is that they took your scientist friends to try and recruit them. They are just the type of agents AIM would look for."
"Minus the whole being evil thing," Skye grumped. "Fitz and Simmons are good people. They'd never join an organization hell bent on terrorizing people." She threw him a very pointed look at that.
"Yes," Ward nodded as if in agreement. "Instead they opted to join an organization that sends them into a terrorist organization's facility unprepared and clueless." Grant faced her fully so he could appreciate her reaction.
Skye's face reddened slightly in anger as she scowled. "Well, at least they- umm, you know…" She faltered before regained her composure. "Hey, you're acting pretty cocky for a guy who blew himself up!"
Now it was Ward's turn to scowl. "If I hadn't been trying to drag someone with no self-preservation skills whatsoever out, that would never have happened."
Curiously, Skye looked away. He assumed she would meet him retort for retort as she always did, but instead she appeared almost chagrined. That was unusual for her. She had never before been cowed by his comments on her self-righteousness or SHIELD superiority.
Then she turned around and her eyes took in his face with an oddly sad expression. He could not for the life of him figure out what was going on in her head. Her eyes scanned his cheek and then dropped to his lips, but there was nothing heated in her gaze like it was back in Dr. Streiten's office.
Under the weight of her scrutiny, Grant unconsciously licked his lips, which succeeded in achieving two completely different things. First, he figured out why she was staring at him that way. He had forgotten that his face was beat up from the explosion. His split lip reminded him of that fact. He had pushed that pain as well as his broken fingers' aside as he always did and forgotten entirely. At the same time, licking his lips had transformed Skye's slightly guilty look into something far less innocent. He found himself wanting to do it again.
Or maybe lean forward and close the distance between them. He knew what her mouth tasted like, he could just imagine her response if he were to capture hers once more with his own. He could tease her lips the way she had with his in the two times they had kissed before. He could almost see how she would try to repress a shiver as she pressed fully into him.
Without meaning to, he had started to inch forward to act on his own fantasies. Skye did not seem opposed. In fact, she was leaning towards him, too.
The door opened again, and Grant quickly pulled back and affected an expression of perfect blankness. He pretended not to hear the soft noise of protest Skye gave when he retreated. It was not worth dwelling on.
Besides, it looked like his opportune moment was about to come.
Description of AIM comes from MCU. In the comics, they are way different. This feels a little bit like a filler chapter, which makes no sense but I think it's the lack of action. Skyeward continues to develop, what did people think of their heart-to-heart? We get better insight into Grant's POV, too. I'm sorry for anyone who wanted Skye to kick ass in this chapter, it just wasn't feasible that she could take out the enemy while protecting Fitzsimmons and Ward. Besides, where's the fun in them not getting caught?
Thanks to everyone who gave feedback! Please review if you're interested!
