I'm just going to start off by saying that the start of season 2 was everything I could've hoped for (huzzah for TVNZ for actually getting the new season on Sundays! I take back everything I said about its incompetence). Skye's a badass, and what is it about Fitzsimmons that practically has me in tears every single time?! Honestly, my mum was almost crying and that, my friends, is quite an achievement.

Thank you all so much for your reviews :) It makes writing this story that much easier knowing that you guys are still reading. My biggest fear is that I'm going to completely trash this story, so anything you as readers say is incredible.

I'll be honest, this chapter was extremely hard to write. I swear, it started off as cheesy fluff, but somewhere-out of nowhere!- it... well... I won't ruin anything.

Chapter ten

The lab was as silent as a grave when Ward walked in. Well, that wasn't exactly true. There was all the usual whirring's and ticking of the many machines dotted across the room, and the distant roar of the Bus's engines in the background that Ward had long since gotten used to. But a pervading negative mood had settled over the Bus since the unsuccessful mission in retrieving Conrad Lloyd. Skye's injury had done little to improve the morale.

Despite himself, Ward hesitated in the doorway, as if imagining the pain that he'd experienced earlier that day just by taking another step forward into the room. Fitzsimmons looked up at him from the corner, and for the first time since he'd returned to the plane, fear wasn't the instant reaction on their faces

Simmons smiled nervously, unsure of how to act in this situation. Ward wasn't either, to be honest. "She was asking for you," the scientist said quietly. "Wouldn't let me give her anything to help her sleep until she'd seen you." She gave an affectionate huff, and Ward had to hide a smile.

"I don't need to sleep!" came an indignant voice from the med bench, the exhaustion evident in her voice a harsh contradiction. "What I need is to get out of this sad excuse for a bed and have a shower."

Simmons turned to Skye with an irritated look on her face. "Considering you had a knife in your shoulder an hour ago and now have over twenty stitches, you are going to lie there until I tell you differently."

Skye dropped her head back down onto the bed and closed her eyes. "I'd forgotten how strict you were," she mumbled.

"And I'd forgotten what a terribly stubborn patient you were."

Ward walked up to the bench, feeling more nervous than he'd ever felt around Skye. He had no idea how she would act, no idea what she would say. Skye had never been someone he could easily read and she'd used that to her advantage numerous times.

"Hey," she said softly as he fell into the fold-out chair by the bed.

Ward swallowed the sudden lump in his throat when her slightly-glazed eyes focused on his. "Hey," he croaked out. His eyes roamed the mass of bandages that covered her shoulder.

She followed his gaze and chuckled weakly. "Getting stabbed isn't too fun, I've decided."

He let out a light laugh. "I know. Mission in Paris three years ago; took one to the leg. Still got the scar."

Skye frowned slightly. "Add that to the list of things I don't know about you." Her eyes flickered shut. "I've always wanted to go to France. Not for some mission where we have to hightail it out of there after a day, but where we can just… relax."

"You'll be able to do that one day," he said simply. She only hummed in response, her eyes still pressed shut. "You're tired," he continued, "I'll let you sleep."

He got up to leave, but froze when her hand gripped his wrist and her eyes flew open again. "No, wait," she said insistently. "I- I was stupid. With Lloyd. He just mentioned Miles and how his death was part of this huge plot and I just… I couldn't… I should've moved."

"Hey, it doesn't matter," Ward said. He was still standing awkwardly by her side, bound in place by her death grip around his wrist, but he didn't fight it. And she didn't pull away either. "You wanted to know what happened to Miles. None of us could've known that Lloyd would be like that." Ward swallowed, his gaze shifting down to their locked hands. "But I should've been there," he finished simply.

Skye raised an eyebrow. "Why? So you could be the one lying here? And what would that have achieved? I know you're trying to get back in everyone's good books, Ward, but there's other ways of doing it than jumping in front of a knife. Besides," she shrugged, then visibly winced when the movement jarred her shoulder. "I should've been watching, I had this coming."

Ward sat back down heavily in the chair and inched it closer to her side. Gingerly, giving her plenty of time to stop him, he reached out and brushed the hair off her pale forehead with his thumb. She tensed under his touch, but didn't make any attempt to move, and that alone sent a rush of warmth through his body. "Don't say that," he said softly, fully aware that Fitzsimmons were only a few feet away and, despite their outward appearances, were probably listening intently. "I spent my whole life telling myself that. Every person that I killed or hurt, for SHIELD and for Garret, I'd say they deserved it, as if that was some excuse for what I'd done."

Skye's eyes were wide, and he could practically feel the emotion coming off her, but she said nothing. Probably because this was one of the few times he was actually speaking his mind.

"Maybe some of them did deserve it," Ward continued, "but in the end no one should have their fate determined for them." He shook his head. "What gives someone the right to judge when another should die?"

"Ward-" Skye tried to say.

"I have done so many bad things in my life, Skye, but I always justified them by saying that it was because of my brother, or Garret, or SHIELD. But all that's gone now, and I don't know who I am without it. I don't know who I am without orders. Everything about me was determined by others." Ward stopped, and looked Skye dead in the eyes. "Everything except you," he whispered.

Her brown eyes glistened in the bright light of the lab.

"I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm never going to forgive myself for the things I did to you, to you all," Ward looked up at Fitzsimmons and laughed once, breathlessly, at how blatantly obvious it was that they were listening, "so why should you forgive me?" He looked back down at the girl in front of him, the girl that was the embodiment of every hope he had left in the world. "All I'm saying… is that you are the one thing that I can truly say was never part of some huge scheme, and if you'll let me, I'll fight for that for the rest of my miserably underserved life."

For a long time, it seemed Skye wouldn't respond. She just stared up at him like it was the first time she was really seeing him. If it wasn't for the reassuringly steady heartbeat from the monitor beside her, Ward was sure she could pass as a statue.

Finally, she said "I've spent the last three months trying to convince myself that something about you was real," each word was careful, like she was testing how it sounded on her tongue. "Because I want to believe I'm not stupid enough to fall in love with a killer."

Ward flinched internally, because even though he'll readily admit to being a murderer hearing her reduce his character to nothing else hurts more than should be possible.

"The man that we knew was a lie." Skye shook her head. "But there are some things that I refuse to believe aren't real."

Ward opened his mouth to argue what he always says; that his feelings for her were real, no matter what happened, but Skye shushed him again with an impatient wave of her good hand.

"No, I'm sorry, just… just let me get this out." She took a deep breath, as if bracing herself for what she was about to say. "I fell in love with the guy that taught me how to get out of a chokehold, who told me about his brothers and let me win at Battleship for hours on end the last time Simmons confined me to a bed. I know that that person is in there somewhere, but I think you need to believe that too." A tear finally fell from Skye's eyes, but neither of them acknowledged it. "I'm not going to love a ghost for the rest of my life."

Silence fell after Skye's final words, and Ward found himself struggling to push past the onrushing mass of confusion in his head. It feels like his brain's been replaced by a soaking wet sponge, because honestly, he's still wrapping his head around how she could possibly still have faith in him after everything she'd been through

Skye, he realised, had given him something he didn't even realise he desperately needed: the hope that someone still believed there was something more to him than just a mindless soldier.

Tears were streaming down her face now and her breathing was ragged from her failing attempts to contain her sobs. And all Ward wants to do is kiss her tears away and run his fingers through her hair until she falls asleep to a world much less cruel than the one that endured.

But he didn't.

Because- as always- she was right. Never in an infinite number of years would he deserve Skye, much less the broken shell of a man he was now. He loved Skye; that much he held on to like a burning beacon of hope. But he needed to sort out other things before he could fully embrace that.

So instead he went for the second best thing; running a finger down her cheek before pressing a soft kiss against her forehead, ignoring the way it felt like his heart was tearing in two for being so close to her, and yet unable to do anything more. "I'm trying," he breathed.

He allowed her fingers to slowly slip from his own, and turned towards the two frozen scientists. "Make sure she sleeps," he said quietly in a voice fighting to stay even. "Please."

He didn't wait for an answer, trusting that Fitzsimmons would help Skye. He left the lab without a backward glance, feeling as though he could sleep for the next fifty years. The stress of the last few hours caught up with him, and all Ward wanted was to collapse on his bed and lose himself in whatever dream his brain conjured up.

But first he had a bone to pick with the Director.

May was numb.

She was the master of blocking out her emotions, so she definitely wasn't worrying about Skye, or replaying Lloyd's final moments over and over. She definitely wasn't thinking about the verbal beating she'd just received from Coulson.

For the last hour she'd stood impassively while the new Director had raved about how Lloyd had been their only lead, and how it went against everything he was trying to rebuild by killing an agent without so much as a second chance. He threatened that her licence as agent could be revoked if anyone outside SHIELD learnt of her actions, as if that would provoke some emotion from her.

May didn't say anything at all.

Eventually she was dismissed, with a look that told her just how angry Coulson really was with her. She ignored that too; she had much bigger things to worry about.

She was so caught up in her thoughts, it took May much longer than she'd like to register that Ward was striding towards the door she'd just exited from. There was a wild look in his eyes that for a second had her panicking- nothing could've happened to Skye, could it?

May stopped him quickly with a hand against his chest.

Ward gritted his teeth and looked down at the older agent with a raw anger in his eyes. "I need to talk to Coulson," he hissed.

"Not the time," May said simply.

"Like hell! I should've been there with Skye. She wouldn't've been hurt if I'd been there."

"I know." Ward froze, and May resisted the urge to roll her eyes at his surprise. "You'd die for her; it's one of the reasons we bought you back in the first place."

His anger was back in an instant. "So why didn't you convince Coulson to bring me on that mission?" Ward demanded, gesturing widely towards Coulson's door.

"He wouldn't listen to me." It was the simple truth, and it was the exact thing that concerned May the most. "So much could've gone wrong on that mission, but he took the risk with our lives anyway. The Coulson I knew wouldn't' have."

Ward stared down at her. The anger seemed to deflate right out of him and he sagged where he stood. "What are you saying?"

She examined him closely. Despite their platonic relationship months before, May had never truly trusted Ward, and she knew the feelings were mutual. It was an unfortunate effect from their job that kept her continually suspicious of others. There were exceptions; Skye, Fitzsimmons…the ones too innocent for this line of work. But there was something about the man in front of her that screamed a blatant need to be accepted again. Would a man really lie if he had nothing to lose but everything to gain?

"I want you to tell me everything you know about Raina and GH-325," she said finally.

Raina again, huh? She's going to be interesting...

Well that wasn't fun. I've decided I like writing action a lot better, this just felt way too rushed and... bleh. I don't know, it started off as fluff, but this just seemed a bit more realistic.

So, stick with me for the next few chapters, because- trust me- stuffs about to go down.

So, please please leave a review telling me what you think of my terrible attempt at romance.

Thanks so much guys,

-F