Hey, hooligans. Sorry bout the bit of a wait, my extremely helpful laptop decided to crash last week, so it was at some fancy, specialist techy place getting repaired.

Thank you to everyone for the reviews for the last chapter! It was awesome to see your thoughts to my terrible attempt at fluff. This chapter (and the one next) will be a lot more me. Mwah ha ha. And thanks again to anyone and everyone that's favorited or followed this story. You guys are amazing!

Bit of a note, this chapter happens a few days after the events of the last. I decided not to add the actual conversation between May and Ward, because I think it's pretty self-explanatory how that would go...

Anyways, hope you enjoy :)

Chapter eleven

Three days later saw a depressing state of routine settle over the Bus. Skye, long-since resigned to the fact that her shoulder would prevent her from practicing for weeks at least, gravitated through different areas of the plane depending on who she felt like bugging at that time. She made sure to stay far away from the back of the Bus, where she knew Ward milled around when he wasn't lying on the bed in the interrogation room. Skye hadn't seen him since… well, she didn't really know what had happened that day in the lab. She could still feel the gentle brush of his fingers across her cheek as he'd said goodbye, but there had been a fire in his eyes that hadn't been there before; a sort of fierce determination that spoke volumes. Deep inside her, Skye couldn't help but hope that it was a sign of belief, that there was a chance the man she'd known was coming back.

She'd long since exhausted the other option.

With the absence of any form of exercise, Skye found herself staying up to the early hours of the morning, working away at her laptop in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, on Conrad Lloyd. So far she'd had nothing but mission overviews and recruitment details- both of which praised his quick-thinking and weapons precision. 'Funny that,' she'd thought as she'd read. She'd have her arm in a sling for at least two weeks because of his "weapons precision."

Frustrated at the lack of apparent information, Skye slumped back in her chair and swore loudly, rubbing blearily at her eyes with her good hand. She's spent the last two hours going through his medical reports and found nothing except the usual injuries one would expect from an agent who'd been in the business for more than ten years. Nothing which would suggest possible mental instability. "He said your name was Skye," Lloyd had said. No one had mentioned it, although Skye had to admit she's seen little of Coulson or May for the last three days. The Director had been holed up in his office for most of the time, only venturing out when it came to meals or- of course- his nightly excursions to the wall with the alien symbols carved into it. May just seemed… distracted, like the weight she usually carried on her back had suddenly doubled and she was still figuring out how to deal with it.

Skye opened one eye blearily when she heard footsteps approaching. Trip grinned, looking down at her as he leaned against the doorframe. "What's up, sunshine?" he said lightly. "Having a hard morning, I see."

"You know this is all your fault."

Trip fought to hide a smile. "Oh yeah? How's that?"

She waved an accusing finger in his direction. "If you hadn't called Simmons, she wouldn't've freaked out and overreacted and insisted I wear this stupid sling, and I might actually be able to get some work done. You can't do anything with one hand."

Trip kept a perfectly straight face. "I think she might've noticed a stab wound in your shoulder. She's good like that. Anyway, what would you have done? Duct-tape your shoulder back together?"

Skye pulled a face. "That's just gross. And who said you could bring logic into this?" she protested.

"Well… then I apologize- for making Simmons overreact and for making a clear argument about it."

She grumbled, clearly still not satisfied with the result.

The smile on Trip's face fell, and he sat down heavily beside Skye. "I am sorry, Skye," he said in a soft voice. "I'm sorry this happened to you."

"Oh no no no," she exclaimed. "Nuh uh. Don't try to do the whole 'macho spy' thing and blame everything on yourself. There was nothing you, or Ward could've done, alright? This was on me. Nope, don't start," she spoke over Trip's protests. "If you want to help, get your fine ass in the kitchen and help me with lunch for everyone."

Trip smiled and stood back up, shaking his head in disbelief at the girl in front of him. "You got it," he said warmly.

"Thanks, Trip," she said quietly to his retreating back.

Skye's good mood deflated the second she was alone. She stared dejectedly at her laptop screen. Her search for answers was getting nowhere, and she was just getting all-round frustrated at everything that was going on in her life; Ward, Coulson, Miles, her parents. It was like she had a thousand things to think about, but at the same time couldn't do anything for fear her life would crumble around her.

Hesitantly, hating herself for being so weak, Skye clicked on the program that allowed her to hijack the security cameras throughout the plane. Fitzsimmons were in the lab, dressed in full protective gear and burning God knows what over a bright blue flame. Trip was, unsurprisingly, busy in the kitchen raiding the fridge. It took her a few seconds to find May, the frozen statue that she was. But they weren't who she was looking for.

Ward.

He was in his cell, lying on the bed. From the angle of the camera Skye couldn't tell if he was awake or not, but his figure was completely motionless except for the gentle rise and fall of his chest. She'd been actively avoiding him for three days, but her eyes were still drinking in the sight of him, despite her mind screaming that she was weak.

She shook her head and quickly switched cameras before she did something really stupid.

There was still one person she hadn't spotted yet, and Skye frowned, sure she'd switched through every room at least once- even the camera she'd painfully installed herself in the room where he spent most nights carving symbols into the glass. After the initial incident with the photo of her sleeping in her bunk, Coulson had taken out all the cameras in the bedrooms to retain some semblance of privacy in the otherwise crowed plane, so there was always the possibility that Coulson was in his, but Skye had practically been glued to this couch for hours; surely she'd have known if Coulson had passed?

She could feel her panic growing when she still couldn't spot their Director, and scenarios of Coulson being kidnapped or hurt or murdered ran continuously through her head. Where the hell could you possibly be? She'd checked everywh-

Her screen went black.

She froze.

Her first frantic thoughts were of a hard-drive malfunction (in which case the entire plane would soon be veeery much aware of what she thought about that), but those were soon erased when a single line of text drawled itself across the top of the screen, as if some invisible ghost was tapping away at her keyboard.

Tit for tat, I see.

Skye's mind was a whirlwind of panic. There was no way someone would be able to hack her laptop; she'd programmed it herself. Not to mention the power to completely overrun the system remotely would require technology so advanced the whole thing seemed impossible.

Hesitantly, as if the device lying on her lap was about to explode, Skye reached out and typed her own sentence in reply: Who are you?

The cursor blinked. Skye found herself holding her breath.

I'm the one who you've been looking for your whole life.

Skye's heart hitched, and she sat staring at the words and all that they inferred. Shock had rendered her into a statue. When several seconds had passed, and she hadn't made one movement, not even breathing, another line appeared below the last.

Twenty-four years is much too long, my dear. It's time we met again. Face to face.

She didn't register much after that; didn't acknowledge whatever address was proposed underneath. Her eyesight was too bright and she couldn't breathe, let alone think, because her father was behind everything: Miles' death, the explosion…

She could feel panic clawing at her lungs, turning her vision into a hazy blur, and it was as if from a distance that she heard her own voice, desperately screaming for Coulson.


"Well at least we know where you get your theatricality from," Trip said to Skye.

The glares he received from the rest of the team would've put Natasha Romanoff to shame; Ward himself found it hard to see how anything was amusing in this situation. Skye's father, her god damn father, was the one who'd been, in his eyes, stalking her for the past few weeks. Ward supposed he should feel slightly grateful, as it was only the perceived threat of the photo that had spurred Coulson into bringing him back onto the Bus, but this was also the same who'd supposedly slaughtered an entire village trying to find his daughter. Ward would die- prepared to take down almost anyone with him- before he let something happen to Skye.

The girl in question was sitting on the couch, staring with an unreadable expression at the laptop they'd isolated in the middle of the coffee table like evidence from a murder scene. Her body language screamed shock and disbelief, but if Ward still knew her at all, and he hoped he did, she was probably already thinking of ways to get the answers she always desperately sought.

He studied her face intently. Ward had spent the last three days thinking of what to say when he saw her again, but after hours had been unable to think of anything even remotely acceptable to say. But nothing could have prepared him for this.

"Is this possible, Skye," he asked quietly. "Or is someone playing us?" Playing you.

She didn't even look up. "It shouldn't be. I built that system from scratch myself. There are firewalls and millions of lines of code to get through; it's a digital maze. It'd be impossible for anyone," she bit her lip and looked up with shining eyes at Coulson. "Unless that anyone knows how I think too."

Coulson stepped forward, a grim look on his face. "Until we've determined whether this man is a threat or not, we need to treat him as such. We know nothing about him, except that he's prepared to use lethal force to get what he wants."

No one interrupted. There was no need to ask what it was he wanted. The answer was slowly dawning in everyone's minds with a terrible clarity.

The truth had been written in blood twenty-four years ago, after all.

"We have no way of knowing what would await Skye if she met with him, but I think we can all agree it wouldn't be anything good." Coulson gestured to the location written on Skye's screen, one which was startlingly close to their current location; only a few hours away at the most. "This place could be the biggest trap in history. Which is why we're going to go scout it out. On our terms. Not his."

Fitz's face was horrified. "You just said it might be a trap, and yet we're still going to walk into it?"

"We're not walking into anything unprepared. SHIELD teams are already on the lookout of any unusual activity in the area. Skye, Fitzsimmons, Trip, I want you to stay on the plane where it'll be safe. Put the Bus on lockdown; no one gets in, and no one gets out." This was followed by a pointed look in Skye's direction.

Ward could see the sense in that. Coulson didn't want to risk Skye's curiosity getting the better of her, which mixed with her injured shoulder and general unpredictability of whatever awaited them, could be disastrous.

But that still left one blaringly obvious problem, one May had figured out too, if her frown was anything to go by.

"No," Ward stated simply.

Coulson's jaw clenched. "You're hardly in a position to argue, Ward. You and May will accompany me to scout out the location."

"No," Ward repeated again. "You may be the new Director of SHIELD, but I'm not an agent. I'm not yours to order around anymore, and there's no way in hell I'm leaving her side again."

The room was frozen in shock, watching the standoff between the Director of SHIELD and a traitor. Ward didn't dare break Coulson's eye contact, but he desperately wanted to look at Skye's face, just to see what her reaction was.

It was a hollow threat, and they all knew it. The only reason Ward was back on the Bus in the first place was because Coulson wanted it. There was nothing stopping him from saying one word and Ward would be rotting in a damp cell somewhere again.

But Coulson didn't.

His eyes hardened and his frown increased, showing how he truly disliked the sudden change in his plans. But he nodded all the same, and said in a stiff voice "but don't test me, Ward."

Coulson was pissed at him, but when wasn't he? Ward didn't mind, and judging from the tiniest of smiles on Skye's face, one which she hid by looking down so her hair fell like a curtain across her face, she didn't either.

And that's all that really mattered.


That evening, after around four hours of flying in which they'd landed in some remote area of Thailand and seen off Coulson and May in a flurry of dust and grit, Ward was almost regretting his decision. Almost.

He'd forgotten how much he hated being left behind, with no idea what was going on outside the plane. The lockdown of the Bus ensured that nothing, not even wifi (much to Skye's distress) or phone reception, could reach them, so they had absolutely no clue what May and Coulson had discovered. Ward was a take-action sort of guy, or had been. To be sitting blind… it was almost unbearable.

The only thing that kept him firmly anchored on the couch in the living room was the girl sitting a few feet to his right. Skye, obviously frustrated at having been equally left behind, had made a sort of nest of blankets and cushions and curled up, watching a movie. She hadn't said a word when Ward had gently eased into the chair opposite hers, which he took to mean she was indifferent either way, and they hadn't spoken once.

Fitzsimmons and Trip were probably in the lab, trying to waste away time making things explode. Probably a better alternative than brooding about everything that had happened that day.

He subtly glanced at Skye from the corner of his eye, noting her frown and stiff posture that he doubted had little to do with whatever rubbish she was watching. Was she angry at him? Or just at not knowing about how Coulson or May were doing? Whatever it was, she obviously didn't wan-

He sat up suddenly.

Skye's head snapped up. "What?" she questioned seriously, catching onto his mood.

"Did you hear that?" he asked slowly, straining his ears to the murmur of raised voices he swore he'd heard moments before.

Skye frowned. "It was probably just one of the science twins setting Trip on fire," she tried to brush off. After all, nothing could get through the Bus on lockdown, right?

Ward would've agreed, simply passed it off as uneasiness, if it wasn't for the shattering scream that broke out the second she had finished talking.

They stared at each other in horror, because there as only one other person that could make a sound like that, and it meant something far more sinister than a fire had occurred.

Simmons.

They were both on their feet sprinting to the back of the Bus without another thought. Ward was fully expecting the worst, but there was something about the scene in front of him when they reached the lab that would be joining his nightmares for years to come.

Maybe it was the sight of Fitz lying unconscious on the floor, blood streaming from a nasty wound on his forehead, or of Simmons as she stood sobbing, desperately calling out his name.

Maybe it was seeing Trip pointing a gun, not an ICER, directly towards Jemma's head, effectively stopping her from running to check on her best friend with the threat of yet more blood. Trip's eyes were glazed, unseeing, unnatural.

Or maybe it was just the fact that there was another person there, sitting calmly by one of the med-benches. Someone that made Ward instantly push Skye behind him, just so there was something between her and the man. Because, God, it was him.

"Well," Skye's father said calmly, spreading his hands out in a gesture that screamed 'so?'. "I've waited twenty-four years for this day, my dear Skye. Forgive me if I'm a little dramatic."


Cringed at that cliffhanger... sorry guys... but not really, cos the next chapters gonna be fuuuun.

Loved writing a sort of protective Ward, because for me that's one thing that doesn't really make sense in season 2. If Ward knows about Skye's parents decimating a village, why is he offering to take Skye to them? That whole "you can be monsters together" thing seems a bit too uncharacteristically selfish to be the reason...

For Skye's father, I've still got in mind Kyle MacLachlan, because for me he's just going to nail a whole creepy dad persona.

Anyways, you'd all be amazing(er) if you reviewed :)

-F