Written for Skyeward Month, Week Four, Day One.

[Headcannon: Missing Moments]

'What Are We?'

"You got some time to talk?" Grant climbs into the back seat of the car with her abruptly. Skye nearly jumps, having not noticed his approach. She's hiding out in the back of the SUV, comforting herself with the familiar interior of a vehicle.

Two hours ago, Coulson had told her about what her 0-8-4 status had done to that whole village. What her parents had done.

"Sure." Skye shrugs, closing her laptop and putting to one side. The car's not really comfortable for them to be sitting in, so it's a little cramped. "What about?"

"You." Grant says quietly. "I don't know what Coulson told you, but you disappeared right afterwards. I wanted to make sure that you were okay."

"Why wouldn't I be?" Skye lets out a small bark of a laugh. Grant gives her a concerned look.

"You know you can talk to me, right?" He says. Skye sighs, her eyes still burning from all the tears she's cried.

"Let's just say, I'm not exactly who I thought I was." She settles on telling him. Skye wants her 0-8-4 status to stay secret for as long as possible. She knows how by the book Grant is, so she's not sure what he'd do with the information. Not that she doesn't trust him, because she'd be stupid not to trust him. But she still wants to keep it to herself.

"I'm not too sure what to think anymore." She continues. "About myself, I mean."

"I had a moment like that." Grant says. Skye doesn't pay attention. Her parents are legitimate monsters. What could he say that would top that?

"You won't know this, but when I was 15, I was arrested." He says, and Skye's interest is spiked.

"What, by-the-rules Grant Ward was arrested?" She snorts. "What did you do, shoplift?"

"Actually, I stole a car, drove 10,000 odd miles back home in the night and then torched the place come dawn." He says so calmly that it takes Skye a few moments for it to sink in. She turns around to stare at him, shock clear on her face.

"You did what? Why?"

"My brother called me." Grant tells her, his eyes not meeting hers. "He told me what Christian… He'd done something."

"Christian, your brother who beat you and you brother up?" Skye checks, knowing how personal this must be to him. Grant nods.

"I was at military school at the time." He says. "My parents sent me there because they thought my behaviour was wrong. But when Thomas phoned, I couldn't stay away leaving him alone with Christian. So I decided to get rid of the problem for him."

"You mean…?" Skye whispers. Grant nods solemnly.

"I figured that killing him would solve everything. So I made sure everyone was out of the house, and then I tried to burn the place, knowing for well that Christian was in there." He says. "Obviously, I was caught, and when I was being led away, the look on Thomas's face… it haunted me. It still does. It wasn't grateful: it was horrified." Grant pauses. "So I wasn't too sure what I was after that. I'd tried to kill my own brother, and I didn't even feel guilty about it."

"My parents were monsters." Skye blurts out. "They slaughtered an entire village in China when I was a baby, all to get me back. The SHIELD agents all died, except for two. So… I'm the daughter of monsters."

"So?" Skye blinks.

"What do you mean, so?" She asks.

"So, your parents are monsters. That doesn't make you a monster." Grant's figured out what she's thinking. "Your parents' actions don't make you a monster."

"How can you be so sure? Their DNA is in me, remember." Her voice is a whisper. Grant reaches out and squeezes her hand.

"Because I know you Skye. You're the least monstrous person I know." He tells her, his brown eyes painfully honest.

Later, when HYDRA comes out of the shadows and Grant disappears into their basement, Skye thinks back to this conversation. And she thinks for a moment that she understands. She gets why he did what he did. To him, he had no other choice. He had already decided that he was a monster, so he had to follow the devil himself. Since there was no redemption left for him.

Skye approaches the smoking wreck of the house carefully. He sits on the singed grass nearby, staring off into the distance. Coulson and a whole armed battalion are behind her, but she ignores them.

"You called us?" She calls out Grant as she walks over to him. Grant looks up at her. There's blood smeared on his cheek, and it's dripped onto his collar. Soot and ash settle on his shoulders.

Grant merely smiles at her. It's a tired smile, like he doesn't know what else to do with his face.

"Why did you burn the house, Grant?" She asks him softly.

"I wanted to finish what I started." He shrugs. "I failed to kill Christian then, so I decided to do it now, when I knew I actually could."

"Why?" She asks again.

"I'm a monster." He keeps smiling. "So you answer that question."

"You killed your parents and brother to make yourself feel better." She tells him coldly. "Because you are a monster."

"I never denied it." Grant climbs to his feet, slightly unsteady. "I've allowed myself to get manipulated throughout my whole life, Skye. I wanted to do something for myself for once."

"And murder was the first thing that occurred to you?" Skye asks. She knows she should take him to Coulson, but this is the last conversation they'll have most probably.

"There's a well at the end of this yard." Grant points off into the distance. Skye follows his gesture, and sees something in the distance. It's smoking slightly. "I tried to burn that too."

"Because of your brother?" She remembers what he told her about the well. To this day, she doesn't know if he lied about it or not.

"You'll find Christian's body down there." Grant tells her calmly. "He drowned before I burnt it."

Then Grant walks past her, and goes straight to Coulson.

And Skye never sees Grant Ward again.

It turned into a slight AU towards the end.

Sorry for the late upload: I wasn't in the mood for writing yesterday. !